"Adem, let me kill them."
"We've been over this before." Lykopis grunted as she shifted gears. Adem, meanwhile, continued to try to calm the Amazon down. "We need to just accept their behavior and move on. You can't change them."
"Which is why terminating their lives is the only remaining option."
In order to get to Espejo, Spain, the group needed to rent a vehicle to drive them over the hilly countryside. And the only car they could rent was something resembling an old 1987 Bronco. Lykopis was the only one in the group that remembered a time when cars didn't have automatic transmissions. So, she became the designated driver.
Which left Icarus and Tommy in the back with the unlucky Mr. Montez, who was beginning to think that this entire trip was divine punishment.
"I'm just saying, Batman could totally kick Superman's ass."
"The only thing could for Batman is his brains and kyrptonite. And that's cheating."
"It's not cheating. He's going up against Superman, for God's sake. Define 'cheating' when your opponent has unlimited powers and can withstand bullets?"
Lykopis dodged a pothole in the road. "Will you two shut up?"
Tommy shifted in his seat. "Lykopis...can we stop at the next petrol station? I haven't had a piss since before the flight."
Lykopis turned back to Adem. "I am turning this car around right now."
Adem decided the subject needed to be changed. He opened the glove box and pulled out a map. "Do you know which way you're going? I mean, we've been heading west for a while now."
Lykopis continued looking down the long road and smiled. "Of course I know where we are going. Espejo is about fifteen minutes from here. I have been in Spain before, you know."
Adem noted the small town on the map and put it away. "Point noted. But why Espejo? You told Drake we should head there."
"Simple. I spent a lot of time in Spain when they were at war with England, around the 1520s and later decades. I had this Spanish officer who...well, nevermind the details. It just so happens I heard a lot about a new village forming west of Madrid, closer to the coast. It was called 'Espejo'. Granted, that was centuries ago, but I remember it."
Adem shrugged. "I'm still not following."
Lykopis sped up on the abandoned highway. Montez looked at the speed limit sign, Lykopis's meter, and groaned. "'Espejo' is Spanish for 'Mirror'. Cortez defeated the Aztecs in 1521. Coincidence?" Lykopis winked at Adem. "Hardly. Granted, I never put two-and-two together, but there has to be some sort of a connection."
Elsewhere in Rob's Universe, a little 4th dimensional imp sneezed. And the Earth's axis tilted.
And in a Bronco on the way to Espejo, horrible repercussions were felt by everyone.
Mr. Montez was turned into a native species of lizard. He was not at all happy.
Tommy could not control his shape-shifting. He changed into every Prime Minister between Churchill and Thatcher and then leading characters in Shakespeare plays.
Lykopis spotted the distraction in her review mirror. She turned around. "Bow of Diana, what is going on?" She looked at the lizard, and then at King Lear, and finally at Icarus. "Why did you not tell me what was happening -- where the hell your mouth, Icarus?"
In fact, Icarus's mouth was nowhere to be seen. He could breath and mumble a bit, but for the first time in history, something had finally managed to shut Sidewinder up.
Normally, Lykopis would be as giddy as a schoolgirl to see this sort of event happen, but something bothered her. She faced foawrd again to check her driving and then looked at the side passenger.
Adem was uncommonly tall. Most of the time. Ozzy use to joke about how Adem came from planet Basketball all the time. Lykopis was looking at a three-foot version of Vanguard's alien. It was like looking at a hobbit. An orange-eyed hobbit.
"Something freaky is going on, Adem. I seem to be the only one not affected. I wonder why."
"Oh, I'd say you've been affected," said Lady MacBeth in the back seat of the Bronco. Icarus tried to verbalize his agreement, but all that came out was "Mhherr...muhhhh..."
Lykopis snapped her head back at Adem. "You are looking at me like you have seen a ghost."
Adem looked very small and very nervous. "Funny you should say that..."
Annoyed, Lykopis looked in the mirror to see what all the fuss was about. It was around that time that she began screaming, shouting hysterically, and cursing in about seventeen different extinct languages. Lykopis was bred to be very vain about her looks -- and she was proud of her olive skin, earthy-brown eyes and capachino-colored locks. Which is why the reflection was so surprising. Her long brown hair was tainted with grayish-white streaks, and for the first time in three thousand years, Lykopis remembered that youth is only an illusion...and her illusion was running out.
