Overlay and the New Champions enter “The Hollow!”

Seamus walked his apartment for the third and final time. He had tidied everything up. He made sure his brother Gearalt had a copy of the keys. He had written down key passwords and placed them in a drawer in case… the worst happened and Gearalt and his parents would need to take care of his remaining business on Earth.
 
Seamus had sworn Gearalt to secrecy for at least one week. If Seamus didn’t return by then, Gearalt was to tell their parents everything – Seamus’s powers as Overlay, that he found and joined the New Champions, and was going with them to help them put an end to Dr. Destroyer.
 
Seamus sometimes wondered what he was doing, trained in Aikido, believing in not harming others, but going along as a potential accomplice to… murder? To… justice? Seamus didn’t know, but every time he paused, he soon lived in the déjà vu of seeing collateral damage from Destroyer’s victory over the forces defending Millennium City resulting in building rubble falling on Gearalt, crushing Gearalt’s legs like a spoon on mashed potatoes, and Seamus helpless to do more than call for help, at that time having rejected his powers and pretending they didn’t exist, that they couldn’t be used to scan ahead for dangers in the middle of a war.
 
Seamus didn’t recognize his old self anymore, but his new self was going to help kick Destroyer off the planet and help lead a revolution to change things back to the way they were before.
 
Speaking with Sensei Kobayashi had been even harder. Sensei had great wisdom and perception, and appeared to know Seamus had powers, of some sort, without Seamus ever having told him. Seamus didn’t tell Sensei exactly what he would be doing to help get rid of Destroyer, or even anything about the New Champions, but looking into Sensei’s eyes, Sensei seemed to know everything without words. Privately, they bowed to each other, Seamus to his Sensei, Sensei to a hero going off to war with no guarantee of return, and then they hugged and cried for what felt like minutes.
 
Then each stood straight, and Sensei, of course, had tissues ready for each man to clean their face and restore their stoic faces.
 
Sensei spoke first, “uchi-deshi, I know you. Whatever the circumstances, I know you won’t throw the first strike. Remember – every enemy carries within them the seeds of their own destruction. You need only allow their own actions to defeat them. Their own greed for wealth and power will do them in without you lifting your smallest finger.”
 
Seamus smiled and finished the conversation the only way he could: “Hai, Sensei.”
 
Seamus bowed, straightened, and left the M.C. Aikikai Dojo.
 
Seamus took the bus to the edge of Millennium City, and then walked for an hour or more to the designated transportation site where Cypher had arranged for his teleport to the New Champions’ base.
 
Soon enough, Cypher’s robot army had met him and then, in a flash, Overlay was in the base.
 
Overlay did a lot of listening in the leadup to the planned journey. It seemed every other day a New Champion was vanished, or reportedly made their way to The Hollow through some unusual route or another…
 
Standing with the New Champions at Socrates’ platform, Seamus felt a sudden bout of imposter syndrome – was he really here, not so long after embracing his powers, about to walk to… another dimension… with a rag-tag (well, not so rag-tag) group of freedom fighters with superpowers?
 
Were they, even united, powerful enough to defeat Dr. Destroyer? Overlay was barely into his 20s, had never entertained the thought of joining any military service, yet here he was, in uniform and armor, no weapons but those of his fellow heroes, and about to face the madman who’d turned the world into his personal dictatorship… who was worse, Destroyer or Hitler? Hitler killed many more, but Destroyer effectively exterminated freedom!
 
After a figurative eternity of waiting, Socrates said it was time to go, and go the New Champions (and Overlay!) went!
 
Overlay was thankful that the New Champions didn’t immediately enter battle after a transition between dimensions so strange Overlay thought he was watching the introduction to the original Tron movie. His new friends knew a lot more about the people ahead of him than he did, so Overlay remained quiet, watching and smiling as he learned that he was looking at the original Champions, and… wait, Overlay knew Ironside was an alien, but what about these others? Overlay tried saying “ahk-thale-ian” on his tongue but it was just to foreign, even to someone who grew up with exposure to Japanese, and, um, a whole lot of Japanese monster movies – his father had made sure the household always had some streaming service or some DVDs or Blu-Rays of Godzilla and the rest, both in the badly dubbed American versions and the original Japanese versions with subtitles.
 
And then… Judge Osborne killed Socrates. Who was this judge anyways? Apparently Overlay had missed out on a lot by not joining the New Champions earlier! And… an old man with an axe? And… THREE Doctor Destroyers?!?
 
Overlay knew right then, it was now or never. Just as they’d practiced at the base, Overlay’s overclocked nervous system leapt into action and Overlay reached through the quantum entanglement communication field with each New Champions and spoke to them all from his subvocalization causing spooky action at a distance, “I am online with all seven of you. I will keep red circles around each of the three Destroyers. I will add a yellow circle around their arms or guns whenever they’re about to fire. I will paint their blasts and bullets so you know where not to be. Aim true, strike hard, and free Earth!”
 
Overlay then focused on his augmented reality and began circling the three Destroyers in not just his vision, but in the New Champions’ vision as well ( + 3 OCV). Overlay wasn’t certain the old man was a true threat, but he red-circled the old man anyways since he had an axe, and some of the New Champions didn’t look necessarily axe-proof.
 
Finally, Overlay overclocked the nervous systems of his friends too, enabling them to more quickly dodge incoming blasts and bullets ( +3 DCV). In a split-second, before anyone else could move, the New Champions were hopefully now fighting at Destroyer’s level. The only problems of course, were that they were fighting THREE Destroyers!
 
The most powerful New Champions immediately began engaging the Destroyers. The Hot Shot, also a relatively new addition, wasn’t doing anything at first… and then she channeled J from Men in Black, leveled The Heater at the old man, and shot the most dangerous person in the battle. Aided by Overlay, The Hot Shot used her impressive aim to focus on headshotting the old man and… succeeded on the first try!
 
Overlay was seeing the whole battle through every New Champion’s eyes, though with little detail or focus as he had to constantly adjust the red circles and such to where the Destroyers had moved to, but he froze for a split second when it looked like The Hot Shot outright murdered the old man! Sure he had an axe but… the echoing blasts of the Destroyers unfroze Overlay, and he was about to try to leap out of the way of an explosion, but then Hope came out of nowhere and flew him far away just in time, as the unimaginably large explosive blast from a Destroyer hit where Overlay had just been!
 
Hope said something about “stay here” but Overlay missed it, and happened to choose the same action anyways, resuming red-circling Destroyers, yellow-circling glowing power gauntlets and so on. Then… after the last massive explosion, all of the Destroyers fell, whether in sky or on the ground, and the battle was over! Overlay had a long run back to the group and was shocked to find out that the Destroyers had accidentally killed their master, helped along greatly by The Hot Shot.
 
Overlay’s maternal great-grandmother, of Irish descent, had once told Seamus as a young boy about the conflicting emotions she felt when the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, and the war ended soon thereafter. She’d been ecstatic that the Second World War was finally over… and then distraught and retching at the massive loss of life in two fell swoops, and then felt even worse when news accounts came out of the “survivors” who lived only days or weeks with portions of their bodies melted, damaged, irradiated. To her dying day she never knew exactly how she should feel that such an awful unnecessary war with millions dead… should have ended in such a way with the release of unimaginable weapons of destruction. She never offered a better solution, simply choosing, in her Irish Catholic faith, to thank her God that the war was over and no one else had to die in that manner… she had hoped.
 
Now here stood Overlay, enabler of Destroyer’s murder, virtually guaranteeing that The Hot Shot’s murderous impulse would end a man’s life, nearly exploding his head like a watermelon on Mythbusters… Now Overlay knew exactly how his great-grandmother had felt. Seamus was ecstatic that Destroyer would never harm anyone again, and retching with his perceived betrayal of his beloved Aikido teachings.
 
Then… Seamus recalled Sensei’s final words to him, before Seamus left the Dojo, “You need only allow their own actions to defeat them. Their own greed for wealth and power will do them in without you lifting your smallest finger.” The Hot Shot had only severely wounded the old man. Seamus didn’t know if medical care worked in The Hollow, but it was Destroyer’s own programming of his clones that delivered his death blow… and for now, that was enough for Overlay to rest and for Seamus to rise to the new order.
 
Seamus looked around at the inactive clones, the dead Destroyer, and lifted off his helmet. Smiling, Seamus walked the New Champions, shaking the hand of each. When he came to The Hot Shot, he added, “thank you for seeing the threat no one else could see.”
 
Seamus then, helmet in one arm at his side, walked over to the original Champions and said, “thank you for keeping everyone together while you were stuck here. You must have learned a lot about the geography of The Hollow. Now that we’re here with powers, perhaps we can combine our powers with your knowledge and then explore together to find a way back to Earth?”
 
 
Epilogue: Gearalt
 
It had been a full week since Seamus left – fool or hero, Gearalt didn’t know, but there was no point in delaying any longer. Gearalt wheeled himself from the living room to the kitchen where his parents were preparing dinner, and asked to speak with them about something serious.
 
It was the hardest thing Gearalt had ever done in his 18 years – how do you tell your parents that your only brother, their son, is probably dead at the hands of Dr. Destroyer himself, and not just him, but all of the New Champions who were the world’s last hope against Destroyer’s world dictatorship? The shared grief was unimaginable, yet it happened among all three, and only the sharing made it even slightly bearable.
 
It was a significant amount of time before it was clear that the world dictatorship was falling apart, and in that time, Seamus’s parents had made the necessary lies and excuses to friends and extended family – they couldn’t let it be known that their oldest son was a traitor to Dr. Destroyer – the world dictatorship would have them all executed! Instead, Seamus’s parents paid off his apartment lease, took all of his things home, and told the landlord that Seamus had moved and left his parents to clean up, and that the landlord was to advertise for a new renter right away.
 
Then the Satos set about rebuilding their shattered emotional lives. With only Gearalt remaining of their children, they made sure his college education took top priority, and were pleased when he chose the path of science, and even more pleased when Gearalt eventually became a professor of Physics. The Satos didn’t know, but Gearalt had become obsessed with finding a way to reach other dimensions, to find out what this “Hollow” or “Cyberplane” really was, and if he could, to find a way to rescue Seamus.
 
Gearalt grew up, married, had kids, and then they grew up, influenced by Gearalt’s stories of Seamus and obsession with finding and rescuing their long-lost uncle whom they’d never met.
 
Then one day in 2071, with Gearalt in his 70s, SPOILERS FOR GM_CHAMPION’S SEASON THREE HERO!