Down the Trade Route

Growing more confident in their abilities, especially after their easy victory against the AssMachenstani troop, the sisters and Marco set out to find the AssMachenstani base in LusciousLocks. Estonia would use her spatial abilities to sense the immediate surroundings for enemies, Latvia would freeze them in time, and Lithuania would make them vanish and reappear in a faraway universe, or as she liked to call it, “burst them”. If they suffered another power drainage, Latvia and Estonia were to take cover and yield to Marco and Lithuania’s firepower. If worst came to worst, Latvia would whip out her quilaire and hope for the best.

“No matter what happens,” Marco said as they marched through the woods, in the direction of the trade road, “We steer clear of the mist woman. She’ll render you powerless. And my bullets won’t work against her.”

“Good old fashioned bullets don’t work against her?” Estonia asked, incredulous. “How do you know? It’s not like we’ve tried.”

Marco frowned. He knew the woman resisted bullets, though he didn’t know how he knew. “She’s telekinetic, or something,” said Lithuania. “When I traveled to that other universe and found Marco, she—Delilah—just wrenched my gun from my hands without moving a muscle. What I don’t get is why she’s—why she’s not a villain in that other world.”

Marco felt a wave of confusion sweeping over him. His memories from the other world were jumbled. “You never told me,” Lithuania said to him, “What she did to you in the other world.  I mean, she simply handed you to me, unconscious. She didn’t seem to mean us any harm.”

Marco shook his head. He wasn’t sure he agreed, but he couldn’t remember enough to prove the contrary. “I don’t think she can die,” he said. Lithuania looked at him questioningly as they walked. He focused on the ground. “I can’t remember much but—I think I might have tried to kill her. I don’t think she was good. When the woods caught fire and AssMachenstan revealed itself as one and the same as LusciousLocks, I might have—I dunno.”

Lithuania continued to look at him, sympathetically now. “It’s OK. Your memories should return, in time,” she said, hoping it was true. “I just wonder, when you say LusciousLocks and AssMachenstan were the same over there, how much of that holds true in our universe.”

“I don’t know if they were one and the same, exactly,” Marco said. “But they seemed to be celebrating AssMachenstan. They were either newly converted, or a part of AssMachenstan all along—I don’t know. This whole other-universes thing still kinda blows my mind.”

“You know what I find strange?” piped in Estonia. “How you guys seem to be able to do anything I can do, but I can’t do what you do.”

Lithuania stopped and looked at her sister. “What?”

“I mean our powers,” said Estonia, tucking her red hair behind her ears and looking everywhere but at Lithuania’s eyes. “Sorry, I’m off-topic, I know, but—Did I get the short end of the stick?”

“Space. Time. Infinity,” said Latvia. “If I remember my quantum physics correctly, infinity encompasses space and time. And time encompasses space. Space is the most basic.”

“Exactly,” said Estonia, avoiding her sisters’ gazes and resuming the march forward, “which explains why you can do what we can do,” she said to Lithuania, “And you can do what I can do,” she said to Latvia. “and I’m the lame one, right?”

Latvia frowned. “We do seem to lean towards our respective abilities though,” she said. “I mean—I haven’t been able to teleport without you—or outside of a magical high. And I can’t do that thing you do, sensing your surroundings like that. I also haven’t been able to teleport other objects.”

“I have,” said Lithuania. “And I’ve teleported, alone, though I was pretty charged up at the moment.”

“I mean, technically, we can both move through space, if we can move through time,” Latvia said to Lithuania. “And since you can move through worlds, moving through space and time should be a piece of cake for you, right?”

“I sure as hell can’t do those time tricks you do, returning laser beams to their guns and what-not,” Lithuania said.

“But you could, if you tried, couldn’t you?”     

“OK then,” Estonia said, resigned to her fate, “So I did get the short end of the stick. Which is fine, I guess. God knows teleporting gives me enough of a hard time—”

“Don’t look at it that way,” said Latvia.

“Oh come on, don’t patronize me,” said Estonia. “I’m OK with it, really.”

“Maybe in theory Lithuania’s got the most going for her,” Latvia said. “But that doesn’t mean we each don’t have a specialty—a focus, of sorts.”  

“What are your focuses?” asked Marco. “I know it’s the whole space, time, infinity thing. And I was never great at physics, but I’ve seen you all do a hell of a lot of crazy things that seem entirely unrelated.”

“They’re not,” said Latvia. “Estonia can move through space, move others through space, and sense the space around her—to a distance. As for me, I guess I’m occasionally psychic. Not Psychic-mind-reader psychic. It’s more like I catch glimpses or feelings about what’s going to happen. Except that doesn’t seem to be happening much anymore. And I can’t really seem to control it… I guess that’s why mom left me that fortune telling kit.

“And when supercharged, I traveled through space and time, once. And I can control time around objects, meaning, I can basically make things fast-forward, rewind, or pause.”

“Damn it woman you get all the cool stuff,” said Estonia, kicking a twig. Her tone was more harmlessly, almost jokingly envious than resentful.

“As far as I know,” said Lithuania, “I can burst—er, send things into other universes or move them across space, and move myself across universes and space. If, as you guys say, I can mess with time… well, I haven’t figured that out yet.”

Marco gave a short whistle. “Who would’ve thought you three would become, like, superheroes or something,” he said, looking at Lithuania. “I can’t say I’m not jealous.”

Lithuania laughed. “Stop looking for praise, you know what you’re capable of.”

 “That sounds dirty,” said Estonia. Latvia snorted. Lithuania smacked her. Marco felt his face flush but pretended not to notice.

“Sooo,” he said. “Estonia, can you sense anything nearby yet?”

Estonia looked up abruptly, alarmed. “Did you feel that?”

“Feel what?” said Marco, Latvia and Lithuania at once.

Estonia blinked hard. Something was off. Something was different. “Lithuania, did you just do something?”

Suddenly everyone had a split-second case of double vision. “What the hell?” cried Marco, rubbing his eyes. The colors around them seemed to have shifted, almost imperceptibly, into slight variations of themselves.

“I swear it’s not me,” said Lithuania, alarmed.

“Oh my God,” said Latvia, looking at something behind them. Lithuania, Estonia and Marco all turned around—and their jaws dropped.

Standing just a few feet away from them, exactly where they had all walked just a few seconds before, were themselves. Another Marco. Another Estonia. Another Latvia. And another Lithuania.

Their expressions were equally stunned.