into the Archived 2 - Cheek Squad
Vapor; an enthusiastic adventurer faces his biggest fear and challenge; losing his best friend to a demonic spirt obsessed with him and enjoys being hunted. Running through the galaxy and multiverse to save Cherry Bomb from this possessive spirit, will Vapor succeed in saving his friend?
Heads up! These are not canon!
Because of a minor multiversal catastrophe, this cluster of the multiverse is completely closed off and quarantined. In single-universe-terms, these adventures, versions of characters, and events do not exist in the modern Vapor into the Galaxy world. This universe will stay closed until further notice, and any crossing into this universe will result in a 7 year banishment to the “not-so-very-fun-zone”.
Book 10 - Akkadian Wars
“’The name is General Definitely Not Hitler, an Akkadia needs you Vapor’ said General DNH (Definitely Not Hitler)”
Summary
After saving the galaxy months ago, the story opens with Vapor exploring a desert set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland and turning on the song Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked. He uses his robot arm to display a map, and to find someone named D-Stuff who eventually knocks him out and drags him through the desert. The guy ties him up and sits him down next to Cherry Bomb while she has a crazy purple haze in her eyes and crazed attitude. Zirco has Vapor start to tell his story about what adventures he had happened prior to their desert meeting.
Vapor starts off with how him, Cherry Bomb, and Pikachu lived together, and they were called for help by the general. Dreamhero’s group of Akkadians’ couldn’t take down an army of a shapeshifting alien species called the Zygine, and they were having just Vapor, Cherry, and Pikachu take them down. After an epic fight with an army of Zygines, Vapor noticed a hooded Akkadian with big fluffy Teal hair with purple tips poking out of her hood.
After General Definitely not Hitler told him not to go back, they went back and chased the girl into a strange DC dimension that was starting to be taken over by Zygines and replacing people. Vapor and Cherry get arrested and sent to the Marvel’s Kyln. Vapor adopted the identity of Dark Cheek, a rip off Batman, and Cherry adopted the identity of Dead Cheek, a rip off of Deadpool. After some boring conflicts, Vapor faces off with the Zygine king and uses the INFINITY GAUNTLET to destroy him.
Vapor and Cherry returned and found the strange Akkadian again and followed her to a base set in space. They talk and learn some cool tricks, but the girl reveals herself as Alexa, an Akkadian with a similar jacket to Vapor. She reveals that there is ancient Darkness that influences Akkadians. After they returned to Akkadia, Zygines disguised as Akkadians attacked them and they had to run through the city. Once they fight their way down to Xyla’s chamber (The dark evil), they defeat the host body she was taking over. Cherry Bomb falls and sacrifices herself to save Vapor while she falls into a volcanic void of lava.
Vapor, Pikachu and Alexa return to the Moon to figure out a plan to save Cherry Bomb. They go back and try to save her, but it turns out she is possessed by Xyla, and she is in love with Vapor. Xyla escapes with Cherry Bomb, and Alexa, Pikachu, and Vapor are set off on their journey to stop Xyla and save Cherry Bomb.
What?
Vapor into the Galaxy Cheek Squad; Akkadian Wars is the opening for the 7 book long series. I do think the story got really confusing towards the end, because I forgot what consistency and continuity looks like. But besides that, the story relied heavily on Vapor and his fight against the Zygines, leading to losing Cherry Bomb. When I wrote this book, I was dealing with sadness and anxiety for a friend who wasn’t a great best friend. The story was set to take that relationship away from Vapor and have him fight for it, while bonding with Alexa on his adventure.
The stories are expanding on the universe and introducing new dimensions, worlds, and characters, by just expanding on Akkadia itself. Since this book was very plot heavy, there isn’t too much to talk about for why I chose to do it. I really liked DC and Marvel, and I honestly could’ve done better when it came to copyright. But, I’m glad the stories are much more original and not copying story plots like sometimes in the previous series.
Book 11 - 5 Nights in Hell
You would probably think I would be lying if I told you that Vapor gets a powerful electric guitar that added a unique layer to his character, and that it would be used for the rest of the series. In that case, it only lasted in this one book, so yes I’m lying.
Summary
The three start off their adventure through time and space, and Vapor is hit with a deep and sorrow feeling of guilt and loneliness ever since he lost Cherry Bomb. As the group runs from a hoard of monsters and devilish creatures, they stumble upon a girl with long braided black hair with a purple stripe in her bangs. She brings them to a mansion, which turns into a murder mystery.
Vapor and Alexa go to the party there, and Vapor stumbled upon a glitched out Lunar that was apparently a hallucination? Then they get attacked by the curse of snake vomit??? Which leads them to explore below the mansion and defeat the person behind it with the power of All the Single Ladies. It turns out that Xyla was behind it, and they fall deep underground into Rapture from Bioshock.
Vapor has crazed hallucinations about Cherry Bomb, and his depression hits harder to the point where hallucinated Cherry comforts him. Alexa wakes him up, they save a little Akkadian girl with bright red hair while Red (from the return of the Inklings book murder mystery aspect) returns and tries to take the life force from her. Vapor finished Red off with his new electric guitar and protects the girl Rosie. The five go back to the surface and Vapor faces off against Xyla’s energy to save the dimension. Xyla gets away.
Why?
Vapor into the Galaxy Cheek Squad; Five nights in Hell is my take on a horror genre with the same quirkiness. Obviously, it didn’t work out and the writing was a huge hecking mess. I do think the world was interesting enough to retain that story, and having Vapor face the uncomfortableness and depression really helped move the plot forward.
One thing I forgot to explain last week that is a VERY CRUICAL piece of reason, most of these characters are actually based off of friends I have in reality. And obviously, they did agree to be represented in these stories, but I did take my content down due to copyright issues and basing fictional events off of my interactions with actual people. So starting from Akkadian Wars, we have me as Vapor, Jade (my best friend through middle school) as Cherry Bomb, Dawson (another best friend I had) as Zirco, and my friend April as Emo Emu. The rest of the characters so far do not have any resemblance to actual people outside of the books.
Book 12 - megalovania of Time and Space
I don’t know why I didn’t have shame for this kind of thing when I was younger ;-;
Summary
Vapor, Alexa, and Pikachu arrive in this corrupted undertale dimension where everyone is evil and dark and is in chaos. Vapor meets Ultimate Sans, also known as U. Sans, and his goal is to save his brother Ultimate Papyrus. Ultimate Sans could open portals to the multiverse and be able to travel a step further than Vapor and Alexa can throughout dimensions. While Nega Sans is Ultimate Sans nemesis,
They go to space to visit a space station that U papyrus is supposed to be on, and it turned out to be a huge trap. Pikachu takes a bullet for Vapor, and Vapor gets to hear him talking as his last words. Pikachu was killed, and died in Vapor’s arms, leaving a grim twisted tone for the rest of the book.
Vapor, going into a lonely state of depression and anxiety gets trapped in Aperture science, from yep, the Portal game series. After meeting an individual Akkadian named Flameboy Sungoat, they set to escape and fight GLaDOs. They do fight their way out and Ultimate Sans and Alexa join to fight again Nega-Sans who appears in the engine core room? I forget how quick these events happen… Anyways, they have an epic fight throughout the multiverse, and the good guys win as always.
Why?
Vapor into the Galaxy Cheek Squad; Megalovania of Time and Space is centered around Ultimate Sans and Vapor helping this character. It did deviate from chasing Xyla, but it did make Vapor suffer more for losing Pikachu. The story kept progressing and moving on without Pikachu, and it was a simple story.
Book 13 - Thunder Squad
This one was a fun one but I still feel bad about the copyright stuff ;-;
Summary
The book opens up with Vapor taking Alexa out on a date, and travel to Pandora from Borderlands. They get kidnapped by psychopaths and forced to participate in a bloodlust arena. They meet Zesty Cabinet, a blue-haired Akkadian working with Vapor to survive the Arena. They started a group called the Thunder Squad, hence the title name. After they won, Vapor confronted the arena-owner Augustus. Vapor was thrown out easily and the arena fighters went to bed.
Vapor awoke from a nightmare about Pikachu’s death, and the Thunder Squad are forced to travel to their next match. They fought against Ninja’s, and an individual on the opposite team saved Vapor from falling to his death and helped the Thunder Squad win. He also had lighting powers, similar to Vapor, Alexa, and Zesty.
The group eventually returns to a splatoon type arena, and it was a typical ink-turf war in the game. When suddenly, the arena got overrun by enemy octopus people? But Vapor lead Alexa and they saved the enemy teams from being held a hostage. Skyra, revealed herself and faced off with Vapor herself. She defeated Vapor easily, and she was forced by the Arena to join the Thunder Squad. Vapor and Skyra kept physically fighting with both of them having to restrain themselves.
In their fourth arena battle, it was sparring and Vapor barely bested Skrya, but their points did not go through since they fought each other instead of the enemy team. Which leads to Vapor and Skyra to go through therapy, but they both refuse it during so and agree just to keep their distance. Skyra rescues Vapor after he got knocked out while confronting Augusts for the final match. Vapor and Skyra talk, and work through their issues when they were one on one. Eventually, Skyra saved Vapor’s life and sacrificed herself to face Augustus alone so she the group can live. She sacrificed herself (and somehow comes back later).
Why?
Thunder Squad was obviously set to focus on an arena type of storyline and slowly progress into a bigger fight. As it did, the twist that Skyra came back happened and changed the plot in a completely different direction. I do enjoy how I brought her back and it was a slow transition of bringing each other close again, just for Vapor to lose Skyra again. She does come back and I honestly have no idea how, but we’ll see next time.
Book 14 - The Dimensions Affect
Summary
The story opens up with Vapor and Alexa taking down an intergalactic T-rex as it rams through a city, to be defeated by a stranger that is an Akkadian like they are. The stranger finished off the dinosaur and tried to make Vapor feel jealous, but the two left to go chase Xyla through space again.
They actually nearly caught Xyla, but Vapor and Alexa got burnt from her and she got away, leaving them in a strange Star Wars ship. They sneak around the space craft, and accidentally meeting a giant blob and an Akkadian riding him. The blob’s name is Blobby, and the Akkadian’s name is Fabio. The four escape, steal Grinder’s space ship after Vapor knocks him out to escape from Darth Raven.
They eventually sneak back to the space craft to stop galactic danger, but Vapor disguised as Grinder and took Alexa out on a date on the space ship. They discover that they are using a Halo, yes, from the Halo franchise, to destroy the galaxy. They escape again, except Alexa gets taken and the rest of the group had to escape. They first decided to look for a special crystal to enhance Vapor’s sword to fight off other lightsabers, so they explore space to look for it.
Vapor faced off Grinder himself, but they both destroyed each other’s weapon and knocked each other out cold. Vapor fell into a deep hole while Zirco breaks the fourth wall and talks to Grinder. Vapor upgrades his sword with the crystal he finds, and with Grinder joining their side (since he wanted to fight for a better cause since he was abused and neglected on his dark side).
They blew up the space station, stopping their plans with an old fashioned star wars ending. The group’s next destination was the Halo to destroy that too. When they arrived, they could visibly see Xyla taking it over, as it rapidly produced more purple energy across other dimensions and portals. They try to stop her, but Vapor sacrifices himself to Xyla’s purple energy conscience.
Xyla tries to impress Vapor while she’s in his world and get his affection and attention. She even dresses in dark blacks and teals but Vapor didn’t want her attention. He heard Cherry Bomb and ran towards the voice. Xyla tries to prevent Vapor but he disrespects all her privacy, and fights her to find Cherry Bomb. They temporarily reunite, but Vapor leaves with a blue print Cherry gave him, and he leaves to destroy her. Xyla escapes with Cherry’s body, and the book ends.
Why?
The more I write these articles, the more I see a theme for Cheek Squad be more than something about depression, but about losing people in your life and dealing with that grief. Although Vapor forms new relationships as the story goes, death follows wherever Vapor goes and leaves more guilt and depression in his life in Cheek Squad.
This story focuses entirely on Xyla (when the plot gets done with filler), her relationship with Vapor and how she wants something more from him after she finally got him. Going with the theme of depression and grief, Xyla could be easily a character suffering something similar with Vapor since she yearns for his validation and affection, while Vapor is hurting to get his one friend back.
Besides Xyla’s arc, the story didn’t have much to offer for character growth besides Xyla. Although, I did realize some venting I did throughout this series I never noticed until right now. In Cheek Squad, I wrote Cherry Bomb as my idol best friend that would really care about me and be there for me. By taking that away and making Vapor face loneliness, I was also going through that in reality due to losing a friend, just to find out they were toxic and not healthy for me. By venting that hurt and longing for a friend, I was projecting myself onto Vapor very easily through Cheek squad (so far).
Book 15 - Time Peril
A time travel episode before the season finale? Huh, I hope it doesn’t repeat the same tropes as last season
“As the group neared it, Vapor blasted lightning and the plant became charged up and then everyone was bounced into the air towards the giant hourglass cube.
‘Anyone here got quantum physics ability because I’m out!’ said Scar.
‘Yeah hold on” said Ultimate Sans as his eye glowed purple and he opened the wall to the hourglass.
‘WE WILL FIND YOU AND DESTROY YOU PARADOXES’ Screamed the purple cloaked person.
‘Someone needs a fricken Xanax’ said Vapor as they went into the portal.”
Summary
Vapor and Alexa arrive at a sci-fi high school floating in space. An Akkadian girl named Scar, abused by the school councils, greets Vapor, and they both get bullied on the drive to the school. Later, Scar gets beaten up by a popular Girl with plant powers, and Vapor steps in, getting himself bullied and the three of them in detention. As they get into detention, Xyla completely attacks the school and causes it to crash and burn, a GIANT Fortress in space. Elluna opens up to Vapor about her loneliness and putting on a mask, and he accepts her and the three stick together.
After Xyla gets away again, the group decides to confront the council of Time and Space and get ready to hop into the portal to the Nexus. Before so, Skyra, Emo Emu, and U Sans joins Vapor, Elluna, and Scar, and they head to the Nexus. After some time travel, they get confronted with another devil species as Xyla, named the Time Devil. He throws them back in time to the younger Vapor, and the group gets blasted through different times throughout Vapor’s adventure.
Time devil eventually kills past Vapor, and it destroys current Vapor. Xyla works with the group to bring Vapor back by defeating Time Devil, and the group works together. The council turned angry, and transformed themselves into a ginormous time god as they tore through the fabrics of time and space and confronted the tiny group. Vapor defeats them with the power of friendship or something, and Emo Emu and Sans finish them off.
After doing so and time restores, Vapor is brought back to a strange aspect of time, as it was Xyla’s old home; A fractioned old treehouse Vapor used to live in with his friends. Vapor discovers that Alexa, who showed up anxious, was the future and genuine version of Xyla the whole time. Vapor rejects Alexa and moves on without her for alone time, while dealing with even more grief than ever. The story ends introducing how Vapor met Zirco, and he finishes up his story.
Why?
Time Peril was actually a lot of fun to make, not only did I bring back some Cheek Squad heroes, but brought back the older Vapor. The arc with Elluna was the most interesting in the book, going from someone Vapor could heavily relate to with his loneliness. After that, the plot became more over saturated with characters and it had the basic Vapor into the Galaxy ending.
Although with Alexa’s arc, that was a lot of fun to make. I always had the idea to have Alexa be the future version of Xyla, so it conflicts Vapor even more with this whole space demon women.
Book 16 - Stand Together
This is going to be a looooong one
“My point isn’t to kill, but to get Vapor out” said Alexa.
“And how are you planning on doing that?” said Xyla
“Because I know your weakness.” Said Alexa.
“And what’s that?” said Xyla.
“This” said Alexa kicking Xyla in a place we don’t speak of.
“Holy crap she did the thing I talked about, holy crap this is amazing!!!” Yelled Zirco.
Summary
The story opens up continuing where the last story left off. Vapor is feeling grief from everything that happened, and meets Zirco and Xyla. Zirco tries throwing Xyla into a machine to extract her out of Cherry Bomb. Of course, it doesn’t work, but Xyla just has enough and uses Vapor’s arms to locate the other Cheek Squad members and open up a portal to those dimensions.
Xyla’s energy started to spurt out across the Fallout dimension they were in, and she grew bigger and smashed through buildings. Vapor eventually tried absorbing her demonic purple electricity to stop her himself, but it eventually shatters his armor and leaves burns and tears to his outfit. Xyla stops and tries to help Vapor feel better, but he’s so sick of everything that he slaps (on the cheek, keep that in mind) and offends her, and it surprisingly, deeply upset her.
Xyla angrily tore through dimensions, chasing Vapor as he gathered his friends as she was combining dimensions to create her own wonderland of chaos. As they’re being chased, Vapor gets everyone together and they all meet up in this strange new dimension.
Alexa comes back and saves Vapor’s life from Xyla’s chaotic craze, and Vapor was not happy. Alexa wanted to help Vapor, but he rejected her for the drama, and the problem with Vapor bringing together his friends, is they are all not going to agree with him. Unfortunately, this went into a fight as Xyla made the scene tense once they fought again, and Scar blasted Vapor to defend Alexa. The two groups went at it, and eventually, Skyra killed Zesty Cabinet out of revenge (because Zesty actually was betraying Vapor behind his back apparently?) while Vapor and Alexa made up.
Vapor stopped Alexa from defending Zesty, which gave Skyra the perfect opportunity to finish off Zesty and kill her. Skyra was obviously shocked at the damage she caused, and regretted it as Alexa’s and Vapor’s make-up was destroyed since Vapor protected Skyra.
After another fight, Fabio tried decapitating Skyra, but Vapor intervenes and Fabio tries to kill Vapor with his own sword. Suddenly, Xyla appears and grabs Blobby and Fabio and kills the two, in her giant electric hand. Xyla kidnapped Vapor, and trapped him in her purple energy dimension. Xyla reveals to Vapor what her world was like before she knew of Vapor. It was dull, dark, and colorless. Xyla’s demonic outfit reflected that, and she explained her hurt and disappointment from Vapor and his lack of heroism she remembered him as. She trapped him right next to Cherry Bomb, and Cherry Bomb was super disappointed and refused to talk to Vapor for what he did.
Vapor felt nothing but guilt and depression at this point, as he let everyone down when he was just trying to be the hero of his story, not THEIR story. After the cheek squad is left broken hearted and tired from the wars, they see Xyla use Vapor’s body as a host and travel to the Akkadian Empire to destroy it by using a combination of both Vapor and Cherry’s power. Alexa and the Cheek Squad do save Vapor after Alexa faces Xyla alone.
She frees Vapor, and the cheek squad work together to fight against Xyla trying to take over the city with purple energy. Vapor and Alexa confess their love for each other for the first time, and the Cheek Squad stands together for the first time and works together to stop Xyla.
The Cheek Squad stopped her, but she retreats back to her own dimension. Vapor and Alexa blast off through dimensions and chase Xyla, together for the last time. After Vapor has an intense one on one fight with Xyla, she’s brought down onto an asteroid floating in the purple electric void of space, with Xyla waiting for Vapor to finish her off. Vapor gets prepared to do so, but ends up kissing her in the cheek (the same way he slapped her), and saves her life as she was about to be destroyed in a black hole. Vapor loves Xyla, and encourages her for the little bit of good she’s done, and she transformed herself into a normal Akkadian girl. She leaves to continue Vapor’s hunt for Xyla, as Alexa comes in to thank Vapor for what he did. Unfortunately, there was a black hole needed to be destroyed still.
Alexa locked eyes with Vapor, as she had to stay behind and destroy herself as a paradox to save Vapor. Vapor didn’t want to let her go, not after fighting so hard to save Cherry Bomb, only to lose his real best friend who was by his side the whole time. Vapor had to let go, since Alexa wanted him to enjoy his time with Xyla, and she needed to pay the consequence of what she did in the past.
The book ends with the Cheek Squad moving into a giant island in the sky of Akkadian Empire and everyone having their own home. Vapor looks through his armor collection and adventures, now updated with the adventures with the Cheek Squad. Vapor suddenly notices a book glowing, and he dreads opening it to see where his next adventure takes him. He opened the book, realizing it was a note saying that his brother and sister are out in the galaxy, and they are looking for him.
Why?
Cheek Squad, Stand Together was probably the bets finale and ending of the series yet. It challenged the story by letting certain characters like Skyra, Vapor, Alexa, and Xyla’s arc just explode and affect the plot completely, like most characters did. As for the characters that died, they were just friends I stopped talking to in person. But alright, lets start with Skyra.
Skyra’s arc was more about how her uncontrollable and impulsive behavior costed Vapor, even though she was trying to protect him, which will be continued later in Infinite. Alexa’s was more about forgiving her past self and taking the responsibility of what he’s caused to Vapor even though she loves him. Xyla’s was about confidence and how she tried so hard for Vapor’s validation, that she behaved arrogantly and selfishly disregarding Vapor’s feelings.
Vapor’s arc is something really dang complicated, with multiple arcs. For example, there is his loneliness and fear of getting hurt that caused him to be afraid of vulnerability, especially when Alexa was honest with him. Secondly, there was his leadership role and how he can manage a group of people to work together, and the only way he worked through it was by being the mature person and doing what’s right for others instead of himself. Thirdly, he had to fight through tons of grief and depression even though he was sad, he kept pushing himself and having hope when he saw opportunity for change in his life.
But now, that most of these characters have overcame these obstacles, the series wraps up in a nice bittersweet bow and continues Vapor’s adventure for a third season. A big reason I wrote Cheek Squad was because of a friend was toxic and Cherry was the perfect version of her where I felt loved and appreciated. Taking that away from Vapor motivated him enough to go through Hell, Time, and Space, and back, to try to save this one friend.
You made it to the (Almost) End!
The Biggest Takeaway
One thing I took away from all of this now, is sometimes letting go of the past to move on to greater meanings in life, like meeting new people and chasing out new opportunities for adventure is more important than trying to recreate the past. Vapor doing so damaged things worse, and put him into a deeper depression as life kept changing. Obviously Vapor had to save his friend he cared about still, but chasing someone with a toxic attitude can be hurtful and damaging. Once Vapor faced that toxicity (Xyla) with love and forgiveness, the whole world changed and Vapor was able to save someone, along with the whole universe. Although most of these stories were rushed through and had some cringey and cheesy moments, Vapor into the Galaxy; Cheek Squad was one Fr*ck of an example of what these stories really mean. So, will you get ready for the Infinite?