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Spider webs can be beautiful but sometimes they can be creepy. Especially when you walk through one. What a jolt that can be!
Then the next thing that goes racing through your already frazzled brain is - WHERE IS THE SPIDER???
Really creepy stuff out there - so be careful when you go wandering about during the night. The thing that goes bump might be you!
Bwa Ha Ha! Happy Halloween!
Following the end of the Cold War, Canada was left with a fleet of upgraded Leopard 1s, the Leopard C1 and C2. Though an excellent tank for its era of introduction, even late-life upgrades such as the MEXAS applique armor package and early-2000s fire control updates were not enough to compensate for a nearly 50 year old base design. When the Second Eastern European War broke out in 2016, the West was collectively jolted from the quarter-century of relative peace. Frightful losses in the first days of the NATO-led intervention spurred a rethink of 21st century stratagem. The primarily air and naval-based Songun Cold War could no longer take sole priority to coalition members, as ground supremacy, once assumed, could no longer be assured.
Canada was fortunate to have not been required to deploy its modest surviving C1 and C2 fleets into the fray; however, it was clear that the nation would need to fast-track procurement of a new MBT. Despite eyeballing ex-US M1 Abrams (being mothballed in favor of the new M6 Jackson series), Leopard 2s, and even the exotic Strv. 141, the decision was made to invest in a (largely) domestic solution. From a partnership between General Dynamics Land Systems-Canada and BAE Systems, the Timberwolf was born.
The base C3 variant, represented above with the “Arctic Wolf” moniker, is a broadly conventional 3rd generation Western MBT. The Timberwolf is crewed by three: a driver, commander, and gunner – a loader was contemplated but deleted owing to overall force size limitations and new, efficient autoloaders. The commander has access to a 3rd generation thermal viewer with 360 degree visibility; additionally, the German-manufactured remote weapons system also has a thermal viewer, granting the commander additional all-weather visibility. The vehicle’s command-and-control network is fully NATO-compatible, and allows for the near-instantaneous transmission or receiving of target data from almost any friendly asset, be it on land or in the area (barring jamming from systems like the M-103 Chislobog). This targeting acumen is perhaps the tank’s greatest asset, allowing it to engage its principal targets (opposing tanks) as soon as spotted. The vehicle sports a 130mm electro-thermal-chemical cannon capable of firing most NATO-standard ammunition, including programmable munitions and laser-guided ATGMs. Its base armor is of relatively standard composite composition on the glacis and critical areas and RHA steel elsewhere. It is neither the most, nor least, protected Western MBT, erring on the side of lighter weight and greater strategic mobility. Mobility is provided by a hybrid-electric powerpack, allowing efficient off-road cruising and short-duration “silent” movement.
The Timberwolf C3 was designed with cost and “scalability” in mind, hence, the lighter weight and relatively unsophisticated active and passive protection systems installed as standard. C3s on training in Canada (or abroad) are typically found in that configuration. However, Canada concurrently procured a smaller number of Passive/Active Armor, Wartime, Supplemental (PAAWS) survivability enhancement packages for use in-theater. PAAWS-equipped ‘Wolves have extra turret-mounted laser dazzlers and EW systems, as well as soft and hard-kill APS suites. Hull armor is increased via composite armor and ERA on the side skirts. PAAWS is very expensive to procure and makes the vehicle significantly heavier and bulkier. Therefore, is intended to be fitted to vehicles after arrival in-theater. While slowing the vehicle somewhat, the proliferation of advanced ATGMs and lethal JNA / SPA armor around the world has made it essential for the Timberwolf’s survival.
GLDS-C and BAE have heavily marketed the Timberwolf on the global arms market, and has found several interested parties. As of [date redacted], no orders have been firmed up.
Huge thanks to Evan for the photos and decals!
{7:30 A.M.}
(Beep! Beep! Beep!)
My alarm causes me to jolt forward. I quickly tap the off button and rip the covers off of my body. I’ve never really been the type to hit the snooze button. Wastes too much time. I like to get a good jump on the day if I can help it.
“Up so early on a Saturday?” A voice behind me grouchily murmurs.
”Sorry, Linda, didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Where you going?”
”Out for a run.”
(Ring! Ring! Ring!)
”Or not…” I grab my phone my dresser and quickly hit the green phone button to answer the call. ”Hello?”
“Wally, it’s Commissioner Bellows. I’d like to see you down at the precinct.”
”What’s going on?”
“Just hurry.” The Commissioner hangs up pretty quick as he finishes speaking.
”Well it looks like I’ll be going down to the station.”
“You don’t work on weekends though.”
”I know, that’s why I’ve got to go.”
It’s really discerning to hear that Bellows wants me down on the weekends. I’m not that important to operations there and there are plenty of other mechanics that normally work the weekends. Something must be up so I don’t bother taking the bus or even try to get my car to start. I’ve got no time.
Within seconds I find myself just a block away from the station and I begin running at a normal pace so as to not bring attention to myself. The Commissioner is outside the precinct, just waiting for my arrival.
”Commissioner, what was so important?”
“Wally, I found a note in my office this morning.”
”Secret admirer?”
“I wish… No this note was more on the opposite side of things.”
”Opposite how?”
“It was a death threat.”
”Don’t you get dozens of those a month? Why’s this one special?” I can tell by his hesitance to answer this question that he’s very shaken by this note. It must really be a bad note, one he’s seemingly only trusted me with. But why me? I’m just a mechanic to him, why does he want my help.
“It’s the hand writing.”
”Remind you of one from an old enemy?”
“An old friend.”
Huh?” He motions me into his office. As we both enter he locks the door behind him and shuts the blinds of the windows that face the rest of the office. As I sit down I unfold the note and look at the message it reads.
“Look familiar?” He asks as I read the few words.
It can’t be…
====Cobblepot Subway Station====
"Get away from him."
Flannegan smirks, admiring her makeshift costume. "Hello gorgeous, A for effort, F for execution. Oh boys!" He lets out a whistle, and on cue, rats come pouring through the walls towards her. Kate fires a warning shot, but, realising it's a waste of ammo, sets her sights back on Flannegan, shooting him squarely in the chest. The connection severed, the rats squeek away, back into the sewers where they came from. Flannegan mumbles "Come back, come-" before trailing off into unconsciousness.
Kate rushes to Batman's side, trying to silence his crying, then plunges a needle of adrenaline into his arm, jolting him awake. "Sorry."
Bruce sits up, back to business immediately. He doesn't know who this woman is, but, he also doesn't have the time for introductions. "Where are they-?"
"The guy in the rags? Must've gone before I got here"
"The children, he's got-"
"I know, I know. Just hold still," she says, applying antiseptic cream to his bite marks.
Bruce mutters in protest, before finally asking "Who are you?"
"I don't know yet, trial and error I suppose. But I'm here to help," she replies
"If you really want to help, you can start by ditching that," he responds, now on his feet.
Confused, Kate looks at her holster.
"I don't like guns." he explains, as he handcuffs Flannegan to a pipe.
"That gun just saved your life."
"And it could've just as easily taken his. You're an soldier, aren't you?"
"Was. Sargent Kate Ka-"
"No. I don't need your identity, that's how we end up with-"
"End up with what?" she asks.
Could it be? "Kate *Kane*?"
"Yes, why?"
Bruce smiles weakly to himself. Of course it'd be her. "Nothing," he responds, as he examines the Scarecrow's laboratory... The children, who took the children? He looks at the walls, across them are various formulas, essays and theories all linked to fear. On the table, there lies a shipping manifest Paris, it's cargo? A hundred wild mushrooms. Strange.
He opens a drawer, inside a letter. The recipient's name has been marked out, but it's been written by...
"Hellfern."
"Who's Hellfern?" Kate inquires.
"A Nazi. Figures... A master chemist, run into him before. Whoever this... Scarecrow is, he's learned from the very best..." He moves the letter away, and jolts back. "No."
It's a blueprint of Gotham General's ventilation systems... The kidnappings were only a teaser of what's to come. He pulls a camera from his belt, and hands it to Kate. "Send these to the GCPD. That madman's going to hit the maternity ward. Hundreds of newborns!"
"Wait, where the hell are you going?"
"To see if I can't get there first."
Batmobile's parked outside, must be how she found me. Clumsy... I jump in, and go over the files. "Master Bruce! Thank goodness you're alright. I've been trying to reach you all night!"
"I'm fine, Alfred. Had a run in with our kidnappers. I'm fine, but the ringleader escaped. Goes by Scarecrow. Don't worry, I know where he's going..."
"That's all well and good sir, but your vitals, they're still far too high... Can't you let the police handle this? We wouldn't want you to faaaaaaaail aaaaaaaagain wooooullllld weeeee?"
I pause. "Alfred, what did you say?"
"I said, surely the police can take care of this?"
I'm still not at my best, still hearing things...
"No, this maniac's got some kind of hallucinogen. I've seen it, Alfred, it's able to bring anyone's darkest fears and phobias to life. Anyone's."
I turn the corner.
"Now a scarecrow... He chose a scarecrow for a reason. Alfred, bring me up a list of families living in the rural areas of Gotham, cross referenced with students of Karl Hellfern... Any psychologists who specialise in fear."
Alfred sighs. He knows something's wrong. "One moment, sir. Here we are, one Doctor Crane, Jonathan Crane. Rather troubled upbringing, orphaned at birth, raised by his aunt. She died when he was a teenager- a rather grisly end at that..."
"Go on."
"She was pecked to death, by hundreds of... Crows. They never linked it to him, but later evidence seemed to suggest she beat him on a regular basis... A neighbor of theirs claimed she locked him in their family's aviary, on a nightly basis. She said she could hear the screams almost a mile away."
"So what happened next?"
"Crane left for college a day later, and, upon graduating, took up a role as a professor in psychology at Gotham University up until... One year ago. Reason for dismissal... ah. "Unorthodox and dangerous teaching methods."
"So he was testing his toxins on his own students..."
====Gotham General====
"Who are you, you can't be here!" an orderly yells, as the Scarecrow enters the maternity ward, smiling his Glasgow smile, and stretches out a bony finger. "Earl, stop him-"
"Hush little baby, don't say a word," he cackles, spraying the doctor, Earl with gas. "Momma's going to buy you a mockingbird..."
"Spiders! Spiders everywhere!" he screams, rolling on the ground, trying desperately to scratch them off.
"Arachnophobia. How... Boring," Crane says, disappointed, as he approaches the now cowering orderly. "How about you, my dear," he asks, a vial of toxins in his hand.
"Please," she's begging. "Please don't."
"Oh don't worry, there's nothing to fe-"
A batarang knocks the vial out of Crane's grip, and it falls to the floor.
"Get away from her."
Scarecrow laughs. "You're too late, Batman. My work is done. All that separates the newborns from their nightmares is this detonator."
Alfred's right... The GCPD *can* deal with the gas, but leaves me with Scarecrow. Have to keep stalling. "Don't."
"You know, we never finished our talk. So, tell me, what nightmares keep the Batman awake?"
The gas... I'm still... Keep focused on him, keep focused on-
-----------------
I'm here. Crime Alley. Dirty, damp, dark... My parents' blood runs along the ground, in the centre, is him. The gunman... Their killer.
No. No, it's not. I'm not in the alleyway, I'm in Gotham General.
He has a gun. A revolver. Mother is dead, Father is dead.
No. It's not him, it's the Scarecrow. They're gone, he's gone, I have to move past it. I need to move past it.
"You've failed us, Bruce," my father calls. "You killed us..."
It's just the toxin... Not in the alley, I'm in the hospital... Remember Bruce, it happened, they're gone, now fight it! Remember what you promised them, that's how you honour them, not by surrendering to these... Ghosts.
Remember. Remember. "By the spirits of my parents-"
"Bruce, this is your father!" the ghost screams.
"I will avenge their deaths-"
"Bruce, stop it now! You're too late," Mother echoes.
"by spending the rest of my life-"
"Stop it, I command you, I-"
"warring on all criminals."
-----------
The hospital. I'm in the hospital.
"Now... tell me, Batman, what did you see?" Scarecrow asks again.
So I tell him. "I see... A boy."
"A child-?" he inquires.
"An orphan. His parents, dead."
"Of course... Yes, of course it'd be your childhood... What do you see now? Failure, is that it? The fear of failing, of disappointing them?"
"Yes, I... I see bats, and alleyways, and I see birds."
For a second, Scarecrow falters. "Birds?!"
"An aviary. Filled with them, all of them angry, and hungry, pecking and knawing at this poor little boy... He calls for help, but no one listens... What do you suppose that means, Doctor?"
He's on edge... Push him too hard and he might press the detonator.
"How do you... How could you possibly-?"
"Because I'll tell you what I think-"
"Enough!" he cries.
"I see a sad, broken man, a man who shuts himself off from everyone else, a man burries himself in his work, all to find that final, pressing answer, the question that's followed him all his life... What drove his aunt to beat him?"
"I said enough-!" he bellows. "How... How are you doing this? How are you resisting my toxins!" His finger's on the detonator.
"I'm not."
His lip's trembling. "Impossible. Impossible!" With a click, he presses the detonator and... Nothing. Gordon... Gordon's done it. Realisation dawns on Crane's face, he runs at me, and then, a crunch. He's stepped on the vial, breaking it.
"No," he whispers, as he falls to his knees. Whatever he's seeing... It's too good for him.
"Now," I ask, pulling him up. "Where are the children?"
"T-the mushrooms... I needed the mushrooms for my research..." he stutters.
"The children, Crane, where are they?"
"S-so, s-so I gave him the children..."
"I need a name!"
"The Monk! The m-mad m-monk," he shrieks, as he returns to his nightmares.
White-eyed Vireo (Vireo griseus) - Lettuce Lake, Florida
I always get a bit of a jolt when I see these birds. In my experience, I tend to catch them in the shadows. When I do get a good look at them in that environment, those wonderful bright eyes seem to shine out of the darkness.
I caught this one on a short trip to Lettuce Lake, Tampa last week.
Thanks for visiting!
[Time: 1:18 P.M.]
[Location: Fluxx's room inside FF HQ]
Training was a nightmare! Mr. Sharp really put us through the wringer. I guess he's just a "tough love" kinda' guy. Still, I'm so drained right now I can barely stay afloat… I'm being literal this time.
-Philip floats over to his bed right before his white aura flickers out and he plops into bed-
I think I'll just sleep forever now. Yeah, that sounds nice…
-Sprawled out on his bed, Philip slowly drifts off to sleep...-
???: "Yo, Phil!"
-Startled, Philip spazzes out and jolts up.-
Fluxx: "Whahummyhuh?"
Ugh, too tired to make words…
-Philip squints at the doorway and sees Fant A.K.A. Matchstick leaning on the doorframe.-
Matchstick: "Hey, man. Scott told me you had to train with Sharp, so I thought you might want to come out to eat with us. Sound cool?"
-Philip just stares at his friend, too tired to make decisions-
Fluxx: "Uuuuuuuuhhhhh… I don't know."
-Fant smirks at Philip's lack of function before adding-
Matchstick: "Scott said he'd pay."
Hm, I am an unemployed bachelor I'm pretty sure I legally can't say no to free food.
Fluxx: "Okay, give me, like, five minutes."
Fant: "Coolio."
[Time: 1:30 P.M.]
[Location: Mighty Munchies (Fast food restaurant)]
Advent City is famous for having many superheroes. I mean, a villain has to be a special kind of stupid to stir up trouble in this town. Supers are so popular that they even worked their way into local culture. For instance, this place, "Mighty Munchies" is a superhero-themed fast food place.
Even the menu items are references to heroes both real and fictional! For instance, I got a 10-Piece Chicken McNobody with a side of The Dark Knight Fries-es and a Honey Lemon-ade to drink. Fant ordered Bat-Wings and an orange Fanta. Lastly, Wavelength just got a Super-Hero. (The name's kinda' low-hanging fruit if you ask me, but I'm getting off-topic.)
-The trio heads outside to enjoy their meal.-
Finally! I'm starving…
-Just as Philip inserts a nugget in his mouth, a loud rumbling interrupts their, previously peaceful, meal. The three of them watch in bewilderment as a giant Monster Truck, of all things, comes to a halt outside the restaurant-
Okay, that's a little random.
-The driver side door opens and a muscular man leaps down to the ground, landing in a super hero pose. He stands up revealing his chiseled face and glossy beard.-
Matchstick: "Who is this hunk?"
Wavelength "You meant to say punk, right?"
Matchstick: "..."
Wavelength "Really, man?"
Fluxx: "Um… Hi Stan."
Wavelength "Hold up. You know this guy, Phil?"
-Noticing Philip, Stan scowls and points an angry finger at him-
Stan: "You're going down, Shrimp!"
Fluxx: "Yeah, we've met once or twice..."
Stan (Better known as "Stan the Man") is one of my "nemeses" from back in Entree city. He likes to fight supers to prove how macho he is. Why he continually becomes my problem, I have no idea. Speaking of questions I don't know the answer to...
Fluxx: "Sooo, whatcha' doin' here Stan?"
-Stan marches up to their table and glares down at Philip, who uncomfortably shifts in his seat-
Stan: "I just told ya'! I'm here to pound ya', Shrimp!"
Fluxx: "One, you know I don't like that nickname. Two, I'm not fighting you. We've been over this, you don't have to prove your stronger than me. (It's obvious enough already.)"
Stan: "I don't gotta' prove nothin' to ya'. Nah, this time, it's nothin' personal."
Fluxx: "What's that supposed to me-Aeegh!!"
-Before Philip can finish his question, or even react at all, Stan punches him straight in the chest and sends him crashing into the restaurant wall. The impact is so great it leaves a crater and the calamity causes surrounding civilians to either run in fear or pull out their smartphone cameras.-
I… Didn't... See that... Coming.
-After he processes what happened, Philip is able to sit up. Fortunately, he was able to use his powers to cushion himself just enough to not sustain any major injuries.-
Fluxx: "Uh, OW! What was that for, man?! You almost broke my glasses. Do you know how expensive prescription sunglasses are?"
Stan: "Does it look like I care? I came here to pummel you, and that's just what I'm gonna do."
-Stan starts walking towards Philip as he threateningly punches his hand in his fist. Frightened, Philip scrambles to his feet.-
Fluxx: "Look, man we don't have to fight like this."
-Stan isn't fazed and cracks his knuckles.-
Looks like my luck has finally run out. I could only sidestep and dodge so long... No way out except to fight my way out.
-But before Phil can "put up his dukes" Fant steps between him and Stan.-
Matchstick: "That's far enough."
Oh yeah, I have friends who are superheroes and can actually fight. How did I forget that?
Matchstick: "Are you alright, man?"
-Fant looks back at Phil who responds with a thumbs up and a grin.-
Stan: "Ya' need your Super Friend's to protect you, Shrimp?"
Fluxx, under his breath: (Again with the nickname…?)
Matchstick: "Okay, Mr. Macho Man. Here's what's going to happen. You're going to walk away, or you're gonna leave looking as crispy as the chicken nuggets "Shrimp"'s been eating."
Stan: "You wanna go, Twig? It's been awhile since I've had a real fight..."
Matchstick: "Let's go, pretty boy! Flame on!"
Wavelength "Fant! What did we talk about? You can't say that!"
-Fant turns to Scott and starts wagging his finger.-
Matchstick: "No copyright law in the universe is going to-OoOof! I wasn't ready, man!'"
-Now ready, both of the combatants leap into the air, fists pulled back, ready to rumble.-
2-Player Battle!
*DING* *DING*
• • • • • •
-Fant attempts to hit Stan with a fiery downward spike, but Stan is ready for him. Instead of punching, Stan grabs Fant with both arms does a backwards flip and slams into the ground with Fant underneath him. Fant's body bounces across the pavement as Stan leaps backwards.-
-Despite the rough landing, Fant quickly recovers. Already frustrated, Fants starts charging towards Stan. Stan smirks and does the same, reeling back his fist. Once close enough, Fant leans forward and blasts fire from his hands to propel himself forwards, spinning into a spectacular flaming corkscrew that crashes into Stan.-
-As the two titans clash, Philip moves back to his seat.-
Fluxx: "So… You gonna' help him out, Scott?"
Wavelength "Maybe next time, I wanna see how this plays out."
-Wavelength looks on as he noisily drinks Fant's soda.-
Well, I guess we're just gonna watch this go down.
-Phil pops a nugget in his mouth as he sits back to watch the fight.-
The two of them seem pretty evenly matched. Fant seems to have an advantage with his powers, but he's nowhere near as strong as Stan. One things for sure, this is gonna' be interesting.
-Phil takes a sip of his lemonade as he watches Fant attempt to hit Stan with a blazing shoryuken. Stan easily rolls out of the way and punches Fant as he comes back down.-
Ouch! That's gotta hurt…
Fluxx: "Scott, are you sure we shouldn't do something?"
Wavelength "You're right. We could be selling tickets!"
Fluxx: "Okay, you know that's not what I meant."
-As Philip looks back towards the brawl he sees Fant charging towards Stan again, only to be grabbed by the shirt.-
That's not good.
-Stan proceeds to bash Fant's head with his own before spinning around and chucking him.-
Stan: "Ha! Take that Twig!"
-Fant lands and slides to a stop next to Phil.-
Matchstick: "Thanks, *wince* I hate it. You, uh, got any advice for me, Shrimp?"
Fluxx: "Uh, 'dodge his punches then counter punch?'"
Matchstick: "So basically, try not to die?"
-Phil just nods in response and Fant rolls his eyes.-
Later…
Matchstick (Out of breath): "Take!... *huff* This!..."
-Fant softly punches Stan before bending over to catch his breath.-
Stan: "Is that… *puff* the best… *hoo* you can do?"
-Stan half-heartedly swings his fist at Fant's head but misses due to Fant falling on his knees to rest.-
-Looking bored, Scott checks his watch.-
Wavelength "They've been at this for the past two hours now."
Fluxx: "Okay, this is just ridiculous."
-Phil walks over to the "fighters" who are both catching their breath.-
Fluxx: "Uh, Stan? Buddy? Maybe you oughta' just head home."
Stan: "No way! Stan the Man never quits a fight! He only wins!"
-Phil looks over to see Fant lying on his back and gets an idea.-
Fluxx: "Would you look at that! He's KOed! You did it Stan, you won."
Stan: "Huh, I did?"
Matchstick: "What? No, I'm just resti-oof!"
-Before Fant can mess things up, Fluxx subtly pulls him down with his powers.-
Fluxx: "See, totally knocked out."
Stan: "HAHA! That'll teach you to mess with Stan the Man! Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to leave. But not because of anything you said, Shrimp."
Fluxx: "Of course not."
-After Stan gets back in his truck and drives away Philip lets Fant sit up.-
Matchstick: "*Gasp*, I could barely breathe man! What was that for?"
Fluxx: "Sorry, but after dealing with Stan for so long I've come to realize fighting him doesn't really help with anything. It's best to just tell him what he wants to hear so he doesn't do any more damage."
Matchstick: "Ugh, I hate it when you get all pacifistic."
Fluxx: "C'mon, I'll get you a soda."
Matchstick: "But I already… Scott drank it didn't he?"
-------------------------------------------
Special thanks to Bricktailor and Fantxtik for letting me use their Flickr Fighters for this part!
I actually thought I was never going to finish this part and it'd be another failed project of mine. But by some miracle I was given inspiration and was able to complete the part and edit the picture all just yesterday.
Anywho, if I find the motivation to write the next part it will feature Rongokongo's Flickr Fighter and the villains Dr. Nancy Nimble and Jumping Jack! So if you would like to see more be sure to show your support, it goes a long way with motivating me to write more!
Rebel Spirit Amelie front and center wearing MonikaFashionDoll
Right: Jolt! Amelie wearing French Kiss Vanessa fashion and Fashionable Violaine boots
Left: Rebel Spirit wearing Come Thru! Tulabelle jacket, pants by DuDidier
Group shots of my Amelie sculpts that I took before getting Zing!
Two with dark hair are Color Infusion Rebel Spirit Amelie (one on original body, one rebodied onto a NuFace “Light Honey” body formerly an Electric Enthusiasm Dominique.)
The blonde is ITBE Zing! Amelie (rebodied onto an FR “Sunkissed” tone, formerly French Kiss Vanessa)
A little Amelie crazy, some shots from last year playing musical heads!
Jolt! Amelie swiped French Kiss Vanessa’s Sunkissed FR Body. Rebel Spirit Amelie on an Electric Enthusiasm Dominique Light Honey NuFace body. (And another Rebel Spirit on her original first gen Color Infusion body)
... in some Bergmanesque moment,
you find that all the clocks have stopped,
that your familiar furniture sits unmoved,
that particles of living room dust
lie trapped in garish sunlight,
that the life-line of mantle place photographs
has come to a shuddering stop,
that the habeas cosmos has been suspended,
that existence itself lies waiting in some overheating crouch,
anticipating some tectonic shift beneath its feet,
waiting for Zeus's big jolt.
My vision was black for so long, but I could still hear the man's voice above me...
Robed man: Superman? Superman!
My eyes jolted open.
Superman: Ugh... Wh-... Who are you?
I got a better look at him, he had a green mask and hood, a brown satchel, and he was wielding a silver blade.
Robed man: My name is Ra's al Ghul... I am the leader of a group of superheroes, we are known as "The League of Shadows". I even trained the Batman himself many years ago.
He reached his arm down towards me...
Ra's: Come with me, and we shall save the city of Gotham.
Superman: All right...
I put my hand in his as he helped me up, and we walked to the door. Now in the street, the city was still filled with crime, though this war was almost over... Ra's sprinted around a corner...
Ra's: This way! Quickly!
I used my speed to get there even before he did, even though my speed was still slower than usual, as the sun hasn't been up yet. It almost feels like it's always night in this city. Around the corner, I saw all 7 of the Riddler bots from before. They were fixed, by someone...
Ra's: Yes, these... I've had trouble with these mechanical ones.
Superman: No problem, I'll be done in roughly 3 seconds.
I flew at the first, and it attempted to fire at me, but I dodged it. I tried throwing a punch, but it got me down with a green laser from the same arm... Kryptonite. Where are people getting all of it?
Superman: Agh! Maybe it'll take... Longer than expected...
Robot 1: Oh, Superman... I've bested you once again. What was that now, the 50th time? 51st? Something like that.
That voice... Luthor. He was the one who rebuilt the robots.
Ra's: Superman!!!
Ra's rushed towards me, and pulled out a vial of some green liquid from his satchel, which he poured onto my wound. The kryptonite just dissolved, my injury disappeared, and my suit fixed itself.
Superman: W-Whoa... How did you-
Ra's: Lazarus... My special formula. It's what's kept me going for 600 years...
Superman: I see...
The same robot was charging up their kryptonite laser once again, so I flew out of the way. Ra's wasn't fast enough, but blocked it with his sword, before lunging at the robot, and slicing it clean in half.
Ra's: Aha! I've finally gotten close enough...
Robot 2: What the... Whatever.
I flew up behind another robot, picked it up, and threw it onto the ground, destroyed. I defeated another with my laser vision. I froze one with my breath, which Ra's finished off with his sword. I dropped down on another, defeating it with just my fist. Another shot at my back with their kryptonite laser, taking me down again.
Superman: Ugh...
Ra's poured more of his "Lazarus" onto me, before defeating that robot with his blade.
Robot 5: How are you doing that? Who are you?!
I defeated 2 more at the same time, one with my laser vision, another with my fist, and Ra's took out the last one with his saber.
Superman: Wow! Nice work!
Ra's: Much obliged. Now, we must be on our way. This war's not going to stop itself.
~Madam Web
A little Amelie crazy, some shots from last year playing musical heads!
Jolt! Amelie swiped French Kiss Vanessa’s Sunkissed FR Body. Rebel Spirit Amelie on an Electric Enthusiasm Dominique Light Honey NuFace body. (And another Rebel Spirit on her original first gen Color Infusion body)
We're finally getting hit with the 1st real cold snap of the season in our area.
It's kind of a jolt to the system after the mild temps we've been used to.
Thought I'd post something to remind me of warmer temperatures.
Amélie was rerooted by me. She's happy to spend time with her friend Candy Cutie Misaki.
Jewels by me
After a jolt of java with flickr contact DeniseJC aka Joy, I located a warm florist shop at the strip mall, barged in and asked if I could practice my photography skills. I told them macro was the order of the day, they obliged, and I dove in to the color all around me. This is the back side of the Orchid flower.
Pastel Goth Sunset with Tilda, Poppy, and Amelie!
I knew I needed a “Pastel Goth Girlfriend” or a Pink Grunge Girl for LoS Lukas and I realized I had already been putting together a lot of great looks that fit those aesthetics. So now Amelie has a tentative posse? Maybe groupies for Lukas’ band? Maybe they are Lukas’ bandmates?!!
On Garth’s call we jumped down to attack the Gordanian soldiers, my eyes landed on the lieutenant. I’ve been trained well by the Amazons, by Wonder Woman, I know how to take this guy. I catch him off guard, so he doesn’t have a weapon, though I still need to be ready just in case it’s concealed. I deliver a punch to his chest, it knocks him back. He says something in his language, before looking at his shoulder, and then pressing a button, most likely to activate a translator. I swing my wrists at his face, the gauntlets impact on his face, then I follow it up with a kick, and a very powerful one at that, knocking him into the pod. He looks tired for a second, then gets up and flips around to the back of the ship. He’s good at acrobatics, but I can fly, so let’s see how he likes this.
I blitz at him, but then I see something, he grabbed a weapon from the pod, and he’s about to stab me. I jolt to the right, and impact on the ground, he walks over slowly, I get a good look at this weapon, it’s gold, the base looks like a sword with spikes on the handle, and then a small knife like blade under it.
“At this point you’ve earned yourself a warrior’s death.”
“Alright tough guy, hit me with your best shot” he spins the weapon around once and then charges at me, he jabs it at me once, I jolt backwards, he repeats the same motion, that time I kick, he winces, that gives me a good opening. I swipe at his feet and he goes straight to the ground, but pops up again, he slashes my chest, the costume I’m wearing helps protect me, but I use my bracelets to protect my chest even further, it hurts but I’ve had worse.
“If you surrender now I’ll go easier on your friends!” I sprint at him, and push the weapon down, it’s still in his hands, but I’ll be able to take him out. I punch his face twice, then kick him, I follow up with smashing the braces on his shoulders, I move back, he looks like he’s down for the count, now I can help the others.
Suddenly he pops up again, and slashes at me, but I dodge, but doing so makes me loose balance. I fall to the ground, as he stands over me.
“I always remember the first kill I got on a planet, but you’ll be special, because you really fought back” his words are cold, the voice of a hardened killer, who takes pride and joy in his work. He raises the blade up, about to pierce it through my chest, when suddenly, Wally zooms over to me, he releases a barrage of punches on to the lieutenant, it lasts for about a minute, he steps back as Garth blasts him with some Atlantean spell, knocking him to the ground. I stand up and walk over to him, he’s in pain, a lot of pain.
“Let me help you with that” I smile, and then punch him in the face, he’s out cold, now it’s time to take care of the foot soldiers.
“Thanks guys, I probably would have been dead by now” I say, kind of embarrassed that I let him get the upper hand on me.
“No problem, I’ve known you for years, you always got to watch out for your old friends” Wally states, looking right at me, while he normally jokes around, you will often see him get emotional about certain things, it’s a habit he has.
“Donna, we were the original Teen Titans, and we can’t leave a member behind” what Garth says makes me happy, and gives me enough energy to keep fighting, and so us three charge into battle, ready to take on as many soldiers as possible.
__________________________________________________
Hope you guys enjoyed this issue of Titans, I wanted to show some action, and figured the best way was to show Donna's skills, anyways if you enjoyed this issue leave some feedback or comment what your favorite part is, have a good day.
“What was the thought-process here?”
There hadn’t been much of one, really.
“We call the Dunbars and they tell us you aren’t there. They say Roger told them he would be HERE for the night.”
Yeah, that had been a rookie mistake.
“It’s one thing to lie to us, it’s another to let your friend be a part of it. Did you forget that we are your parents, and we want to know you’re safe? Chris.”
Chris jolts out of his internal reflection. He’s back at 231 Jewel Avenue. His mother sat forward on the couch, hands clasped under her chin. Some strands loosened from her otherwise kempt hair, and the dark of her eyelids, betrayed the anxiety she was trying to bury. His father had not spoken since driving Chris away from the scene at Frannie’s place.
“We… I didn’t do it to make you upset,” Chris explains sincerely.
“We don’t think that,” his father sighs.
…
“What we think-“ began Mrs. King.
“… is that you’re restless, moving back here,” Mr. King resolves, earning a fixed stare from his wife. “But we know, now that you and your old friends have caught up, you’re going to be focused on things like, let’s say, your classes. And you’re going to be responsible, not looking for trouble. Am I in the ballpark?”
“Yes sir.”
Neither Mr. nor Mrs. King follows up with ultimatums. Chris puffs air behind his lips, cringing as he takes turns studying each of their expressions. The living room clock ticks incessantly throughout their still largely-unfurnished home.
“Well,” Chris pitches forward onto his feet. “I guess if that’s all sorted out, I can make it to class if I hurry.”
“Chris, where-“ Mrs. King objects as he darts to various corners of the room, recovering his backpack and materials that had been dropped the other afternoon. “You haven’t slept or even-“
“Going to school, being responsible!” contests Chris, one arm through the wrong strap of his pack, attempting to unlock the already-unlocked front entrance. “I’ll be home on time! We won’t get into any more trouble, I promise!”
He manages the door and peels out down the sidewalk, in the direction of Hamilton Junior High. Chris’ parents approach the stoop uneasily. Detective King’s fingers curl in and out of a fist on the doorframe as he watches his son.
Mrs. King laces her fingers at her waist. “Couples finish each other’s sentences.”
“Mm.”
“You didn’t finish mine correctly though.”
…
“I was going to tell Chris that we think he needs to stay at home when he’s not at school, for the time being. Until he can be honest with us. Be honest with himself about-“
“Liz.”
Her husband’s interruption is indistinct, but only so in volume. Behind the airy word, a storm brews. “… Can you appreciate… that I cannot and will not tell our son how he should be handling this? We know what… happened. Christ I don’t even know how I’m handling this.”
“Forgiving yourself is a good place to start, Greg.”
“Easy for you to say, you were always the bigger man,” Greg King chokes on a laugh, and his wife lays one hand on his shoulder.
“I can’t t-“ he begins, faltering. “… take more of his life away from him.”
“It’s our job to keep him safe, not in the dark” Liz King asserts resolutely.
“Our son is fine.”
***
The room didn’t hurt anymore.
Bryan wasn’t sure how it had been hurting in the first place, but, whatever it was, it had finally dulled.
No. It hadn’t? Now that humming, which had plagued him every moment he could remember being here, was inside him. It didn’t hurt; it fueled him. He was a furnace, unquestionably alive.
He was standing upright as well: an unexpected revelation. The woman with the calmative eyes was there, like always. Her staid face, and even the way she stood, was a veneer, hiding a dangerous avidity.
“Wait,” Bryan stops her as she clears her throat. “You’re going to ask me if I… I know my name. You keep asking me that. It’s Bryan Smith. And I’m here. ‘Here’ is…”
“Out of the woods, Mr. Smith,” she affirms warmly. “It was about this time last week that you were caught in an atmospheric phenomenon brought on by the meltdown of Trojan Labs’ greenhouse reactor.”
“I’ve. Always heard people, like, died to that kind of thing.”
“It was highly experimental, we knew. But we had run enough simulations and smaller models, to persuade the city we were secure. To know there wouldn’t be malfunctions,” she elaborates to a puzzled Bryan. “… We thought we knew. We might have been looking at a termination of all our funding and projects, but you’ve pulled through. More than that, you’re why we aren’t back at square one.”
As she said this, someone very new swaggered into Bryan’s makeshift recovery room: Dressed in fluorescent green and baby blue, with a collar and beard of equivalent extravagance. He grinned with just his bottom teeth and gave the pair a tiny salute.
Bryan nearly blanked on everything the woman had just conveyed. “Uh, how’s that?”
“We lost the reactor, but we gained you. You didn’t simply survive the event; the energy we lost control of superseded your physiology. As we speak, your cardiovascular and respiratory systems are essentially backup generators; you’re running on emissions that weren’t scientifically recognized last week.”
Before he knew what was happening, the woman takes him by the back of his hand, and places it under a lip of the capsule in which he had been convalescing. She applies almost no pressure at all, and the bed lifts like a sheet of paper. As Bryan’s eyes bug out, she steps away, leaving the feat of strength to his body alone.
“That’s you,” is her assurance.
“Wh- HOW is that..?” he grasps the frame, for fear of it crashing down. “… Oh god, what did I eat last night?”
The amusement on the new arrival’s face had not broken for a second, even as he made to mollify Bryan’s perplexity. “Your eyes do not deceive, friend. You’re like a real superhero, what do you think about that, eh?”
Bryan lets the cradle drop to the tiles at their feet, and pinches his arm. “Real?.. I have to get home!”
“Mr. Smith- BRYAN!”
The woman’s outburst cuts short his sudden beeline to the closest door. “Everything you have to your name was found in your car. Like I said, you’ve been here for days. We checked your records, we consulted with the authorities while they were investigating our mishap… you’ve been living paycheck to paycheck. No residency,”
She takes a moment to formulate the words, but her eyes stay locked on Bryan’s.
“no living relatives.”
It was all still so dizzying. Bryan wanted to believe there was some mix-up, some grand prank being played on him. If not for the woman’s face… those eyes, like bottomless wells that seemed to encapsulate the sadness he had been relieved of for his time away from the conscious world… if not for the feeling in his fingers and soles deadening at the mention of the life he had carved out for himself thus far, Bryan might have bought into his own mercy.
“It’s true, isn’t it? … I remember now.”
“We’re sorry,” the woman stresses. “All of us at Trojan. We are so sorry our hubris—our lack of caution—disrupted your life. I have to tell you, behind closed doors… we didn’t know what the machine was capable of, not really. It could ended far worse for you.”
Bryan couldn’t be certain if she was about to cry, the way she hung her head. “Well… hey, don’t beat yourself up; I took the job. I guess I signed some kind of… liability thing. Yeah. And it turned out okay, so. If you were worried I was going to charge the presses, don’t be.”
“‘Press’… ‘charges’,” the bearded man corrects.
“Or that!” Bryan agrees.
The woman is hardly comforted. “You would be well within your rights…”
“How can I be mad when I got super-strength out of the deal?”
Bryan tenses his arms in front of himself as if to refresh her memory, and in doing so, realizes the small light display traveling along his skin: Suspended eddies of yellow and orange, their forms disturbing in sync with Bryan’s own heartbeat. They furled like the cloud Bryan saw swallow him on the day of the incident.
“Whoa.”
The woman inches nearer; at once, no longer keeping up the repentant facade, but Bryan was too entranced to notice.
“It’s for this unforeseeable… blessing that resulted from our error, and only because we are aware of your living situation…”
She passes a hand onto Bryan’s forearm, stealing his attention.
“… that Trojan is asking of you to aid us once again.”
Bryan flinches, as one would do to ward off a drunken stupor. “I hadn’t picked up on it… your red hair. ‘cause your eyes-“
“I get that sometimes.”
She smiles. On Bryan’s cot, the bearded man sits cross-legged, observing. He beams, when meeting Bryan’s baffled look.
The recently-created metahuman focuses. “Err, what was it you were thinking to have me do, missus..?”
“Doctor. I’m Dr. Angela Wainwright, a technician here at Trojan.”
What WAS it with those eyes…
“You’re going to deliver Fairfax, Mr. Smith.”
***
“’Never’, as in, ’NEVER never’?” Chris prods.
“Never.” Glinda tugs the bag’s strap firmly onto her shoulder again. “I take pride in my classes.”
“So your first time ever skipping a period, you skip three,” Roger summates. “Go big or go home.”
Both boys snicker lightly; the levity, complementing the brisk midday. A passerby would not have suspected the heightened nerves within the children’s ranks.
“Would you both leave it alone?” pleads Glinda. “I’m going to turn back if I think about it anymore…”
“It’s just this once.”
Vicki steps into the lead of their troop, as all five kids venture past the civilization of Fairfax, to the woods waiting ahead. She has in an iron grip her satchel, bearing the enigmatic H-Dial.
“We’re going to get to the bottom of this, and then we’re going to get out. For good. To be clear-“
Vicki halts, pointing at the boys individually with a middle and index finger.
“Glinda’s grounded. SHE’s got to be back in town when school lets out for real. So don’t be the reason we get hung up.”
“US?!”
“How did your guys’ parents not flip out over you being attacked by supervillains?” Glinda questions them, stumped. “Seriously, it’s so unfair.”
“I don’t know, my… dad bailed me out. It was weird,” Chris confesses.
“Grounding just isn’t my folks’ thing. Anyway, running into crazy metahumans is par for the course; I live in Fairfax,” Roger points out bleakly.
“So do I,” Glinda fires back. “Of course it’s only my family that treats it like I was out shopping for criminals to fight.”
“And, uh,” Chris takes his eyes off Frannie, who had—all through their cafeteria meeting and now the hike—only listened to the others’ recounts of last night, beyond one very stilted acknowledgement of the four of them saving her. “I’d have bet your mom wouldn’t have let you out of the house, Frannie. For your own safety, I mean.”
Chris, still quite unsure of how to engage with the quiet girl, covertly checks with Glinda: Her face tells him he was decidedly in “blunt” territory, nearing “tactless”.
He makes a move to patch things. “With how reclusiv-“
Roger holds his own face mournfully. Frannie merely shrugs.
“I stashed the Dial, then went back to see how she and her mom were doing,” Vicki brings up. “And to hear what the police were making of it, but, I couldn’t really get close. Offered to walk Frannie to school for Mrs. Nash, since I was the only one of us she didn’t see in the yard. I mean, she did, but I was… blue… and several different sizes.”
“She thinks I’m going to be at Vicki’s after school,” Frannie finishes.
“Everyone’s parents…” Glinda gripes. “EVERYone’s. But nooo, not mine…”
Vicki stops the other four with a barely-raised hand. She can’t seem to look any of them squarely in the eyes.
“Guys, I just want to tell you, I’m sorry I left you all to get chewed out by-”
“No, Vicki, we had to keep the Dial secret,” Roger cuts in. “We were all thinking it.”
Glinda softens, forgetting her self-pity. “No sense in all of us getting into hot water,” she offers. “There’s no guarantee your parents would’ve let you off the hook.”
“Yeah,” Vicki concurs dubiously, glancing away at the trees.
Deeper into the forest the five of them walk, led on by Vicki. It was only because the girl had been utterly lucid from terror the previous night that she could now find her way. A few short intermissions, allowing Vicki to reclaim her orientation, were all that deterred them, before they arrived at the large fern veiling the mines’ inconspicuous exit. Urging her friends to the tunnel, Vicki comes close to trampling over the hand of the man guarding the lip of the hole; he holds a hefty wrench aloft. The resolve on his face is intertwined with petrification, as he realizes who he is threatening. Frannie takes an uneven step back.
Vicki initiates the encounter with a “Hi”, wincing soon after. “You were there last night- or, early this morning, I guess. … when I fell through the ceiling. Right? I’m seriously hoping-“
“For godsakes, let them in before the entire county hears her!”
Behind the guard was the lady doctor whom Vicki had witnessed tending to Nick. The two adults hastily pull Vicki and Chris into cover. Glinda shields a still shaken Frannie and descends inside before either can be similarly handled.
“Hey, personal space. We can walk!” Roger adds.
“Quiet!” the doctor frowns.
“Before you ask,” Vicki confronts her with an only slightly lower tone, “no, I didn’t lead any supervillains here.”
“No, you didn’t.”
Now, it was the man from earlier, that had hounded Nick about the Dial, who was trudging up the tunnel. He was perhaps only approaching middle-age, but his hair had completely greyed. It was now that Vicki noted, with the exception of Nick, everyone in the mine appeared to have on a lab coat, or varying stages of scholarly wear; this man—their apparent leader—wore his with a morose demeanor.
“Just more accessories. Brilliant.”
“Uh. ‘Accessories’ makes it sound like you’re doing something illegal too,” comments Chris.
Seven pairs of disparaging eyes divert to him.
Chris hides his hands in his pockets. “I’m not… wrong…”
Vicki examines the stacked crates crowed near the mine’s mouth. “Planning a trip?”
The man looks at her down the length of his nose. “You saw to that. By tangling with Nick. By running off with that-”
“Nick gave it to me.”
“By involving YOUR FRIENDS, yes, we are now forced to relocate! Because whatever risks come of trying to flee, they are greatly outweighed by the suspicion you’ve brought here; running in and out as you have, leading our hunters straight to us-“
“I told you, one way or another I’m getting the full story. It just so happens I was in the neighborhood, dropping something off for a friend,” Vicki jiggles the H-Dial under the man’s nose. Then she waves an arm at the other kids. “And you know what? Pardon me if I think they deserve the same answers, considering they live here and each of us could’ve died in the last twenty-four hours thanks to whatever X-Files bull all of you are involved in.”
Beleaguered, the man sags his head at the girl, then his associates. He does his best to ignore the latter segment of Vicki’s counter. “We’ll take the Dial to him for you.”
“I’ll take it to him myself, thank you. C’mon guys.”
Hesitantly, Chris and the rest resume following the dauntless Vicki down the crumbling passageway. The grey-haired man and doctor keep the guard from blocking the children, but do not let their surprise-guests out of view. Frannie stays right on Glinda’s heels, of which Roger takes notice. He snaps the frizzy-haired girl out of her inwardness by shallowly swinging an arm out.
“Hey. I hope you didn’t feel like we forced you to tag along. Don’t worry though-“
“I wanted to come,” Frannie says distantly, but not conflicted.
This is enough to satisfy Roger. “That was a great pitch. Back at your place, when you clocked that red Stormtrooper guy.”
“‘Stormtrooper’?”
Roger tries again. “I like baseball too.”
Frannie shrugs again. Glinda, listening to them trail behind her, tries not to visibly sulk; she distracts herself, nudging Vicki.
“Psst. Vicki.”
“Why are you whispering?”
“It feels like we whisper right now,” Glinda supposed, thrown off. “… You said that that boy outside school was also using the Dial?”
“Yeah.”
“And you said he got hurt? What happened when you hung up the phone to use it for…”
“I don’t know,” Vicki draws a sharp breath. “I don’t know, but if he-“
Around a tight corner, their path empties into a cavern. Milling about are dozens more men and women than Vicki had approximated during her initial visit. Likewise, a smattering of floodlights reveal just how expansive the hideout is. Some of the adults have stopped carting supplies around, to regard Vicki and her entourage. A good number are angry. More are scared, though no one openly opposes the grey-haired man allowing them this far; he singles out one person to Vicki, coldly advising her:
“There’s your friend. Give him that deathtrap back, and then take your band of hellions and go. Home.”
Sitting right where Vicki remembered seeing Nick with his leg half-fused with the tunnel wall was a paunchy, towheaded man guzzling a water bottle. He wore thick glasses, a bright red button-up, jeans, sneakers. He was clearly older than the grey-haired man in charge, but had a very round, clean face. It was strange, but Vicki’s first thought was that he was like an unused person.
Vicki exaggerates tilting her neck, doubtfully judging. “That’s Nick. Really.”
“He’s old?” Glinda looks pale. “Oh, gross, I thought they could be an item.”
Nick overhears this, taking a swig of water at an inopportune time. He spits when he recognizes Vicki, immediately getting up and dusting off his pants.
“I told you not to bring that back here,” he announces loudly to Vicki, but also for the grey-haired man to hear. “… but uh, actually, this works out okay because-“
“First,” Vicki orders, “tell me something only the boy I saw would know about what happened yesterday.”
He thinks for a second. “At the park, I got your shoes all muddy when I ran into you. And uh, you accused me of throwing you into a tree… I’ll have you know I was perfectly in control.”
Vicki’s eyes narrow. “You don’t look like a ‘Nick’.”
He pokes at himself, as if to somehow rebut her thesis. “No?”
“Maybe St. Nick,” Roger coughs.
Vicki hands off the H-Dial to the peculiar man, who accepts it quickly, yet confusedly. She taps a foot on the loose dirt. “So. That young guy was just the hero you were using. You had me hang up and redial. That made you… you, again.”
Nick juggles the Dial, winding the cord up haphazardly. “That’s… exactly right. Hit the nail on the head. I had a feeling you’d get the hang-“
“You’re not dying anymore. As in, you had me use this thing, without any training, to go save my friend who YOU incriminated by running into us… when you could’ve just redialed, and helped Frannie yourself!”
“Kid…”
“‘Vicki’,” she amends curtly, making their introduction official. “… ’Nick’.”
“Vicki. I…” The words catch in Nick’s throat. He holds the back of his head and laughs to himself, aware of his own explanation. “… I didn’t think the real me would be alive to go back to!”
“You mean you had me… when you thought you were going to..!“
Vicki stomps back up to him. He grins skittishly, looking to the other adults for help.
“What is with you and involving me in things that will get one or both of us killed, without TELLING ME??”
She turns back to her four friends, to see them uncomfortably and quizzically standing in an row.
“Oh, yeah! That’s a whole thing with this guy!”
“Yeaahh…” Roger trails off. “So, we’ve got some ground to cover here, but, let’s go for why you were going to have Vicki kill you..?”
Nick had no sooner opened his mouth than he received a bombardment of other questions from the kids.
“Did these people hire you to help Fairfax?” Glinda wonders.
Chris interposes, “Where’d you even find that thing? Did you make it?”
“Why does the Dial-voice-guy sound like my dentist?” Vicki mumbles, distrait.
Nick, cupping his ears, can endure no more. “Okay, okay! You know what? Confession time, alright?”
As passive as he had been, the grey-haired man now moves alarmingly fast to be practically nose to nose with Nick. “Absolutely not.”
The kids, doctor and all the rest of their on-edge company freeze where they stand, but Nick restfully addresses the man. “Mike…”
The man recoils in frustration at his name being divulged; Nick does not let him turn away fully.
“It’s a lost cause now, keeping them in the dark. This is all coming down, probably sooner than we think. We may just need some more allies. Besides,” Nick smiles, pulling the three-finger sign to his shoulder, “Scout’s honor.”
“They’re children,” Mike tiredly cues him, not a hint of humor in the words.
“If even one more person makes it out of this cave alive because these kids could help… Mike, you can’t tell me you wouldn’t say that’s worth taking the chance.”
Nick doesn’t wait for a response. He sweeps his hands up to be noticed. “Everyone…”
The entire cavern was already giving him their full attention.
“Ah. … Well I… found the H-Dial—that’s what it calls itself—in a cave, in my hometown. That was out west. I was a little younger than these guys here.”
Nick gives a fatherly wink to Chris and Roger, both of whom eagerly await more of the story.
“I don’t know how it got here any more than you do. But I learned to use it. I told all of you,”
Nick motions to the crowd, “what it let me do. When I realized what was going on in Fairfax, I made the promise that I’d help you, whether or not… some of you thought I was insane.”
The man named Mike only adjusts his neck, saying nothing in dissent.
“But I didn’t tell you everything. ‘suh matter of fact, I haven’t told anyone everything for something like thirty years.”
…
“My real name’s Robby. Not Nick.”
…
“That hero I’ve been using—Maquette—I changed into him back in 1962. I’ve stayed that way, because that last time that I changed, Robby was mortally wounded. I thought if I ever went back, to be him again, I’d be a goner for sure. I thought…”
The deluge of admissions breaks; Robby, overwhelmed by those admissions, regulates his breathing for a moment. Then he holds his hands out to emphasize Vicki.
“… that last night was my time. Your friend needed help, and I had reason to believe I couldn’t be the one to give it to her. Seems like I gave the Dial to the right kid for the job.”
Vicki shies away from all the stares placed upon her; annoyed, more than embarrassed.
“As for why I’m still kickin’,” Robby ponders, with his chin tucked into his flannel like a turtle, “I couldn’t say… I guess being in limbo for a few decades did me some good.”
All is silent once again. Just as Chris and Roger appear to be shaping up to let loose another bout of scrutiny on Robby, someone’s shoes intrusively shuffle on the rocks and, stunning everyone, it is the reticent Frannie who lets her will be known. Glinda and the others clear away to give her a direct line of sight to the odd man, as all of Frannie’s social inhibitions seemingly fall to the wayside, overridden by her question’s import to her.
“If you became Maquette to save yourself… what happened to Robby’s life?”
Robby jerks back, caught quite off his guard. Then, feigning relaxation, he crosses his arms robotically and gives her a smile and a nod. “I’m glad Vicki got to you in time,” he states, avoiding her in uninventive fashion. But Vicki’s gaze bullies him into submission.
“Uh. Truth be told? I don’t really know what I’m going… to do with myself. I’ve been Nick longer than I was ever Robby.”
Glinda, remembering something, drifts from the conversation with Robby, to where Mike and the lady doctor stand.
“Mr. um… sorry, I should’ve said right away, Vicki told me there were a bunch of you down here and that you looked like you needed help, so I brought food and a little water, here. There’s some fruit…”
She starts to unload her rucksack onto an old workbench.
“I asked some of the kids at school to chip in-“
Mike’s eyes bulge with fury and fear, and the doctor intuitively steps between him and the girl.
Glinda panics. “I… I d-didn’t tell any of them what it was for!”
Mike holds his tongue. “… I’m sorry. But you need to understand-“
The doctor hugs Glinda.
“Dr. Clark and I, and all of us,” she says on behalf of their concealed community, “are very grateful. We haven’t had enough food since we’ve been here. This is more than generous, thank you. You can call me Shelly.”
“I’m Glinda.”
Her friends had migrated over now, with Robby and some other adults; all of them, commending Glinda in their own way. Most had stony faces as they did so, but all of them were genuine.
Vicki gives Glinda a slap on the back. “Pretty good idea, Glinda.”
The throng eventually settles. First the kids’, then everyone’s eyes fall to Dr. Michael Clark. He hunches over the bench, arms straight, watching what came across to the newcomers as a high-tech desk toy: A rotating tray, with spires of silver flowing up and down themselves, reconfiguring into a handful of simple structures every few seconds.
Vicki has the first go at reaching the man. “So this is the stuff you’ve got in all these crates?”
Nothing.
Roger steps up next, more fed up with the inaction than Vicki was. “Hey. I think we all get that you don’t want anything bad to happen to these people. And I get that you don’t know us from a hole in the wall. But you trusted this guy to help you…”
jabbing a thumb at Robby.
“Wow,” he exclaims.
“And we were neck-deep in all this, way before we knew names,” Roger determines. “I think you’re stuck with us, at this point.”
Dr. Clark reads the room, the looks being given by his peers. It was evident that metaphorical walls had been dismantled by Robby. Prolonged secrecy would be pretense. The consensus had shifted with Glinda’s act, and it was time to speak.
“… We worked for Trojan Laboratories. Biologists, engineers. I’m an architect.”
He accredits the shape-changing creation before them to himself, with his last comment. The kids raise an eyebrow at the already-suspect Trojan Labs being mentioned; Glinda, mouthing something to Vicki about the monster they saw. The five of them, even Frannie, near the senior scientist. Dr. Clark continues grimly, clinically, as though fending off a force of nature in order to get the words out.
“We signed on because we had aspirations of leading the world into a new revolution in all fields. Medicine, transportation, leisure… But Trojan didn’t want innovations for a better future. They want weapons, for reasons we never learned, which scared us even more.”
…
“We devised a way to smuggle our projects out in one night, or we would give Trojan the chance to catch on. … They did anyway. They had metahumans, from off the street no doubt. Guard dogs. We were ambushed just when we thought we were in the clear. They split us apart, kept us from leaving Fairfax where we might find authorities beyond their reach. We knew we were surrounded. Those of us you see now collapsed this branch of the mine behind us, and it seems to have worked in discouraging their hunters from thinking we could be here. For now.”
Shelly, the doctor, quits handing out Glinda’s donations to the more malnourished among them, long enough to add, “Twice, some of our number have left the cave to make it outside city limits. But it’s been months now. We have to assume Trojan got them.”
“But, your families-“ Roger attempts.
“Trojan’s employees were and are alone, every last one. We have no relatives or relationships outside of our work. They find you on that basis, they ensure it stays that way,” Dr. Clark informs bitterly. “That’s how they like us. Helpless.”
“Hang on, aren’t you throwing in the towel kinda early here?” Vicki spins around to all the Trojan defectors, then stops at Chris. “Didn’t your dad say anything about officers responding to a disturbance out here, by the mines, last night?”
Chris blinks. “No..? He wasn’t the one under a microscope, y’know.”
Vicki rolls her eyes.
Robby takes over before the kids can make more presumptions. “I told you Vicki, those weren’t cops last night. Trojan’s smoking us out. They’re at our front door. You can’t go to the ‘real’ police either, we don’t know how many Trojan’s bought out. But it has to be some higher-ups, and more than just a few; it’s the only reason Trojan can get away with that prototype reactor nonsense.”
“My dad’s not some spy,” Chris warns, defensive toward Robby’s intimation.
“Your father’s a cop?”
“A detective.”
“If you- sorry, this is weird being this tall,” Robby bows and grabs his knees to be less imposing, at Chris’ own height. “If you let your dad in on this, he has superiors to report to. Maybe some bad ones. That’s his job. It’s not his fault, but he could make things worse for these guys.”
“You know you were right, Robby,” Dr. Clark interrupts him. “This could all very well end tomorrow, or tonight. We can’t. Stay here. It’s getting to be that trying our luck with the local law is wiser than waiting for your Dial to… to part the Red Sea for us.”
Robby massages his forehead as if he has a migraine coming on. “We’ve been over this Mike, you haven’t been up there. You canNOT surface yet. And the Dial… it’s not NOT science just because we don’t get it yet. It’s… eccentric. That much is obvious. But it works. It’s saved me, and it can save you. And whereas I’ve been up there, dancing around with Trojan and apparently every superpowered criminal in New England… now there’s six of us that can be eyes and ears up there. Using the Dial to its full potential. Making Trojan go underground for a change.”
Vicki slashes at the air, miming for the debate to end. “Hey look, all I wanted were some answers. That’s what we deserved, after last night. Frannie and her mom are safe now; they’re going to have squad cars out front for the next year. Guys… we can’t actually… I mean c’mon!”
I’d like to do something,” declares Glinda, “but I-I really don’t think I want to use that thing…”
Robby withdraws a little. “No, no I’m not forcing anyone to help, or to use the Dial. But I can walk you through this. We can do some real good with it.”
At this, a scientist from the crowd speaks out, inciting more and more of them to object.
“You’ve barely kept yourself safe with that thing!”
“They need to get their families to leave Fairfax, now!”
Frannie ducks off towards an alcove of the mine as tensions mount.
Shelly stands by Glinda with a hand on her shoulder. “Nic- Robby, never mind forcing them. You can’t ask this of them.”
“I can,” Robby contradicts staunchly. “Easily, actually. Because I’ve known this whole time what could happen if I really am your one and only hope, and it terrifies me. You don’t want just me; you want us.”
“Ever since I got back,” Chris injects, surprising himself by suddenly having the floor, “Roger’s been telling me stuff like ‘let’s not go there’, ‘it’s best not to go there’… But, Rog, all I’ve been trying to do is to ‘go there’. So I can understand what in the world is going on with my home! So I can fit in again! I haven’t been around when everything went bad, but I didn’t have the choice then. I’m here now; I want to be involved, now! … That’s uh, how I feel about it.”
Vicki strides past him to be with Frannie, uttering offhandedly: “Chris I really don’t think you need to be extending devotion to friends into crime-fighting, okay?”
From the time he had met her the month prior, Chris had scarcely, if ever, been able to follow up her more charged remarks, let alone criticize them. He had yet to comprehend how she, as he perceived, could be heedlessly altruistic one instant, as it had been with racing to save Frannie, then so closed-off and cynical in the next breath. He was at last compelled to call her out.
“What- Are you telling me you could straight-up walk away from this, knowing these people are down here, knowing Trojan’s this villain think tank-“
“Don’t tell us you weren’t having fun, kicking those guys all over Frannie’s yard,” Roger goads her.
Vicki glares. “I’d stick with Chris’ argument. … I’m trying to be practical here, alright? We keep chancing it like dumb kids, and we’ll go out like dumb kids. That ASIDE, there’s one Dial. What would we do, play hot potato?”
“If that’s what keeps Trojan off balance, and all of you alive, then yes,” Robby proclaims with authority. “Any one of you may just need to use the Dial in the coming days. Yes, Frannie has the police keeping an eye out for her for now—and we can only hope they’re all on the level—but what about you, or him? You’re that sure Trojan can’t find you?”
“Frannie and I beat two of these bozos by throwing small, dense objects at them,” dismisses Vicki. “Are we really going to pretend like-“
Robby reproaches this scathingly, harsher than anyone present would have thought him able to channel. “They’ve killed before, or did you forget that?! You? You got damn lucky! You want to try going three for three, chucking rocks? Maybe one of you ends up getting kidnapped, or just turned into dust, but hey, it’ll be REAL impressive if you set them back a whole day!”
Though startled like the rest of them, Roger backs the man’s sentiment, hoping his friends will be convinced.
“Robby’s right. The look on that guy’s face when he saw we had the Dial… He and his pals want this tech and they want it bad. We’re not going hold them off just by sticking together. The best way to keep them from getting the Dial is to push back, using the Dial.”
Robby and Dr. Clark react to the boy’s earlier statement with equal consternation.
“Say again…”
“You SHOWED them the Dial…”
Roger protects himself. “Hey the guy was a second away from hurting Frannie! It bought us time! I’d do everything I did the same way if I had a do-over!”
“Then that’s that,” Robby digresses.
…
“You know what we’re up against. You know this doesn’t go away without a fight. What I swore to every man and woman in this cave, I swear the same thing to you five.”
Those same five—unconventional guardian angels to a fraught host—have no shared resolution to give the man in return. The illuminated walls of the mine stand silently by just as its occupants do. Robby exhales.
“You must all be ditching classes right now. Time’s a-wasting. What’s it going to be?”
***
“Why does it feel,” Cathan queries, drumming his fingers on the other fist, “like, instead of sending you boys out there to make improvements to our situation, what I’ve actually been doing is sending you boys out there to find out everything’s already properly shagged, and you only come back here to confirm it with me?”
Still dressed as Golden Web, minus the ruined mask, George rests his knuckles on the table between them. ”We’re telling you, the little snot-heads had this- this phone, and they used it to give one of ‘em powers. SO…”
He side-eyes Kaleidoscope and Chain Master.
“… our new bunkies didn’t exactly do their job either. Isn’t that right? So much for the stupid pen being-“
“If you want to give us a rundown of how we should’ve done a job you weren’t even there for,” Kaleidoscope glowers, drowning him out, “please, George, go ahead. I’ve got a great imagination.”
“You’re not my master and commander just because you do psycho-weed with the boss,” George spurns.
Chain Master shoots up from his seat on the bottom stair-step. The gloves in his balled fists squeak.
“There you go Brent, don’t let him talk to her that way,” Cableman seems to cheer the large man on, only his delivery is devoid of all passion as he does not avert his concentration from the minuscule components and circuitry at his fingertips.
George sizes up Brent, who eclipses him. The younger man calls his bluff. “Ooh, y’know I wasn’t going to apologize, but then I remembered you were tall. … Get outta town, man.”
Edward Murr steers away from the conflict, conversing with Cathan one-on-one. “What we need to do is weigh our priorities again. How wise can some delinquents be to what we’re aiming for, really? They think we’re just another band of these metas running all over this town, knocking over gas stations. They’ve got their hands full. We’ve got openings.”
Gazing at his right-hand man dolefully, so as to jog Murr’s recollection of their past, Cathan then imparts, “We’ve cut corners on jobs like this before, Ed. Did you sleep well afterwards? When you realized we didn’t get everyone out we could have, if we hadn’t gotten twitchy?”
To which, Murr has no challenge; only a quiet forewarning. “Before we sink, Cathan.”
“Would’ve been great if we’d had those comms by now,” George now directs at Cableman. “Might’ve coordinated things more quickly, might’ve surprised the kid and made a clean getaway… but, sure, let’s pretend it was all on me and Distortionex. So sorry we fell short of expectations.”
This time, the sullen Cableman does look up. “You act like I’m being paid.”
Cathan’s pent-up irritation runs over. He punches the central table; the arm fluctuates with numerous, alien textures in a split-second, sufficiently silencing his five onlookers.
“We’re doing all this to right wrongs where we can, not for pay.”
Their leader’s scowl bores holes in Cableman’s reflective face shield; it moves on, to George.
“Not for petty bragging rights.”
Golden Web backs off. “Hey… your cause is our cause, man. But honestly, where’s this big blue meathead get off, acting like he and his gal pal-“
“Give it a break George,” Murr begs, fatigued. “He hasn’t said anything.”
“Yeah? I’m beginning to wonder if he can say an-“
Cathan subtly recedes from the escalating disagreement, noticing Kaleidoscope has done the same. He follows her into a secondary, uncompleted nook of the basement, pausing at the doorway when he sees what she’s doing: a mouse at the base of the far wall noses through a mound of lint. Kaleidoscope flexes her wrist, and the harmless particles morph into a trap, triggering instantaneously and cracking the pest over the head. The woman and the mouse are still.
“Kalei.”
“You can just use my real name.”
“I’m not talking to Nancy, I’m talking to Kaleidoscope,” Cathan says matter-of-factly.
“I’m just… so ready for this plan to be over and done with.”
“So am I,” Cathan confirms sensitively, hovering a hand over his heart.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’ll have none of that from you.”
Nancy shakes her head vigorously, leaning against the tattered wallpaper, tracing the sculpted crystal of her palm with a thumb. “Getting rid of the boy should have been easy. I still… STILL can’t change things with a will of their own.”
She scoffs at her own words, swiveling on the wall with her shoulder, away from Cathan. He stifles the reflex to take hold of her hands. He makes two fists and collects himself.
“You haven’t let me down. You’re honing your abilities every day; I’ve seen so. The others will straighten themselves out sure enough, and soon-“
“These people you want us to save,” Nancy inquires, “… it really is important, isn’t it? Like you couldn’t forgive yourself if you didn’t.”
“It’s exactly that,” Cathan admits.
The glass woman walks up to him. “Then let’s. Just. Do that. We don’t need to cover all our bases, chasing down potential threats in some… some KIDS…”
A dejected look creeps onto Cathan’s face. “You wouldn’t kill that boy last night. Not that you couldn’t, but that you didn’t let yourself.”
“PLEASE Cathan. Let’s do the job and end this. For Brent and me.”
“For you and Brent,” Cathan echoes, shutting his eyes. “… Yes, alright. Within the month. I-I know that’s not quick enough for your liking, but this is me, promising you: Within the month, we’ll make our move.”
“And our debt will be paid, when they’re free,” Nancy prompts. “Then, we’ll be square.”
“I wish you would stay anyway, debts be damned,” Cathan smirks boyishly.
“We can’t live this life forever. Neither can you,” Nancy reminds him solemnly.
“Now you’re not going to get all serious on me. I’ll sing one of my shanties, and you’ll have to pretend you don’t like it.”
Nancy laughed wholeheartedly despite herself, only encouraging Cathan.
“Oh I shan’t forget the day
When I first met Maggie- Nancy Mae;
She was cruising up and down old Woolwich place.
She had a figure finer
Than the fastest ocean liner,
And me, being a sailor, I gave chase.”
The song went on unheard by those beyond the rooms’ divide, except for Brent, the Chain Master. He too sidled away (as well as his mammoth frame would allow him to do so) from George’s squabbling, and listened to the pair from around the corner.
“Oh Nancy, Nancy Mae,
They are taking you away,
And you’ll never walk down Lime Street anymore.
For you’ve rolled so many sailors,
And you’ve skinned so many whalers,
And now you’re doing time in Botany Bay!”
Brent felt a weight on his chest at Cathan completing the shanty, and at the ensuing chuckles.
“Can I call upon you to take us on another trip?” Cathan asks under his breath.
“You know how it riles the others, especially Cabl- Todd. Us, using my illusions that way. The look he had last time…”
“To the Devil with Todd. We could do with some beauty in our lives, us two.”
Colors dance out from Nancy, up to the vacant hinges of the doorway where Brent remained unnoticed. Cathan and Nancy are enveloped by her powers, transported to carefree days of the past, or to days that had never truly been at all. Brent did nothing.
***
What had Chris been thinking?
The armored man was crouched in the treetops across from the Nash household. All day, the police had made efforts to communicate with Frannie’s mother, and identify the order of events. They made note of the residual materials left by Distortionex’s attacks, and zoned the yard off for further analysis. For all the good it did; the successful captures of meta-criminals that Fairfax’s law enforcement had under their belt were due to luck. They knew it. The man knew it.
Chris was never this rash. What got into him? His friends? They should know even better than him that this is no town to fool around in. … I save them from one disaster and they go run into another one…
That thing from the cornfield had put up more of a fight than he had anticipated. By the time he had caught back up with the children, the scuffle here had subsided. All he had seen of Chris was the boy being escorted away by his father. It might have ended so much worse.
Greg was there for them; he’ll make sure they stay away from things like this. It’s all over now. But, Chris looked real rattled. If I could see him again, and know he’s alright-“
A red squirrel scurries along the next tree over from the man. The creature attempts a leap to a branch from his tree, but misses. It falls, all the way to a log waiting below, and onto exposed jags of bark in the rotted trunk. There is no more movement.
The man’s face hardens beneath his frightening disguise.
You’re too emotional right now. You know what happens if you get anywhere near him, like this. Get your head on straight. Then get back out there, and don’t let it come this close, ever again.
He only got a glimpse. That’s all he could ever get anymore.
Don’t jinx it.
***
Robby claps his hands. “Alrighty, lightning round. Hit me.”
“Why were you ’Nick’?” Glinda puts forward.
“Why not?”
“No like, why not any other name?”
“‘sjust a name,” Robby concocts sheepishly.
It was well into the afternoon, and the children had need to get back into town. In the wake of Robby’s move to get a solid decision out of them, an unspoken understanding had been achieved. They would be back. To what extent they might be aiding the Trojan refugees was, as ever, up in the air, but they knew this would not be their last time in the mine. The majority of the scientists had been won over, as far as accepting the kids as allies, partially thanks to Shelly ultimately showing faith in Robby. Dr. Clark had said all he would on the matter.
All that was left to be settled were a few discontented curiosities.
“What was the deal with ‘Maquette’ anyway?” Vicki throws in. “You would draw in a notebook-“
“Doodle-based aptitude. I could manipulate my own physicality and perform impossible stunts by drawing it first.”
“Sounds tedious.”
“Ah! Not so,” Robby contends. “It also made me draw subconsciously, faster than a human mind could design.”
“So it gave you a superpower just so you could use the actual superpower.”
“… Well when you put it like that. … Ah yes, the gentleman in the jersey,” Robby readily moves on to Roger.
Roger inspects the H-Dial. “So I was thinking, this thing’s gotta have someone that teleports, right? We can just… cycle through until we get one who can zap everyone out of here! Outside Fairfax. Or, like someone who can disguise all of you; Vicki said one of the creeps from last night was making it so she couldn’t see anyone in town.”
Robby slows him down, taking the Dial away from him and setting it aside. “Heroes with powers like that come once in a blue moon, and I do mean ‘once’. I had the Dial for three years before Maquette, and I’m telling you the only time I got a hero on the level you’re describing was with The Prime Mover. Now she was somethin’ else.”
A nostalgic twinkle enters his eyes, bemusing the kids.
“I was listening to my radio, and the Siren Gang was robbing a bank all the way over in Granite City, but she helped me get there and stop them in a matter of-“
“I’m sorry…” Vicki snorts, making a time-out “T” with her hands and exchanging a look with Glinda. “… You got a ‘she’?”
Robby takes a seat. “The Dial works in mysterious ways,” he enlightens her, a little too seriously.
Vicki lets up on ribbing him. “Right. About that: It was making me say Saturday morning cartoon catchphrases..? Basically as painful as the guy that disintegrated part of my leg.”
“The heroes have their own personalities that you have to make space for. If you stay on the line for as long as I did, you can work past it. But eh, the one-liners are more or less a feature of the H-Dial that’s here to stay. It’s a packaged deal.”
Vicki nods wryly. “Awesome. And by ‘awesome,’ I mean ‘that majorly blows.’”
“We really need to get going now, guys.” Chris recommends. “Remember, Glinda especially-“
Roger hops off his boulder. “Yeah, agreed.”
Glinda pats down her pack to make certain there was no more food to leave. “Do we have…”
“Hey,” Robby whips around. “Which one of you took the Dial-“
“… Frannie?”
The gang looks behind themselves, as one. She was loitering near the tunnel by which to exit.
The H-ring on the Dial is pulled back in her hand.
Letting go of the mechanism, the rotary phone ignites into a shower of neon sparks. It consumes itself in a collapsing cyclone, and where once was Frannie, a sleek and scarlet being emerges from the pinkish fog.
“Frannie.”
With the Dial, and without a word, the newly-summoned hero splits away for the tunnel in a puff of dust, impossibly fast, and she blinks out of sight.
Jolt! Amelie on French Kiss Vanessa’s body and wearing her fashion. (Boots are Fashionable Violaine)
**Paladin base med bay, 11:40 P.M:**
Connor: “Erin! Wake up!”
Jesse: “Shit, she’s gone deep inside his head. How do we reach her? Our powers ain’t working.”
Lyra: “I hope she can hear us though..”
Connor: “Whatever it is, we need to find a way to get in.”
**
I wake up inside a garden, one that looked like my home, the backyard Dad used to keep. Then I step into the house, I recognize my old place. The couches, the bathroom, the big kitchen. And in my old room. Ty is sitting there, in his younger self. He reminds me of the night that we first made love after confessing to each other weeks earlier.
Ty: “Erin?”
Erin: “Ty?”
Ty: “Look, I just made a rock. What do you think?
Erin: “With flowers? Is this for me?”
Ty: “Yes, just for you.”
Erin: “You’re so sweet...”
Then I hear a voice, an older man...the source of the voice is coming from my dad, walking up the stairs.
Rex: “What did you do to the garden? And why are you in your room! Erin! Who is this? Did you let this boy in?”
Erin: “No dad, I didn't do anything...he’s my boyfriend. He wanted to see my house. He's T--”
Rex: "I said no boys allowed! I don't care who it is!"
Erin: "Dad! He's my boyfriend! You know who he is!"
Rex: “I’m afraid not. You let him slip in. Now, get out! All of you!”
Dad shoves me out of my room, as Ty dissipates into thin air along with him, and I fall down the stairs...
***
I wake up with another jolt of shock. That must be some old memory me and Ty shared. I look around again, unfamiliar with my surroundings, as an older Ty, who is dressed in his suit the year before the Paladin accident. He approaches me slowly, comforting my arm.
Ty: “Hey sugarplum.”
Erin: “Ty? Can you tell me what’s going on?”
Ty: “Oh, just hanging out on the car mom gave me. I fixed it y’know. We’re going over to Jesse’s house.”
Erin: “Right now?”
Ty: “Yeah? You got something to do?”
Erin: “Nothing...it’s just that I remembered this was your sister’s favourite.”
Ty: “Ah, don’t mention it. It’s my mother’s.”
Erin: “But it is your sister’s...”
Ty: “Look, I don’t know wanna go through it, ok?”
Erin: “It is hers, Ty. Your mother never drove. She didn't want to.”
Ty: "That's enough, you don't know me."
Ty: “Stop it! I don’t want to hear it!”
He proceeds to shoot a blast through me, as I deflect with my shadow shields. He keeps shooting, but I begin to realize this is actually an old memory, also a mixture of it treasured by nightmares. Memories of us and our love. Before the heartbreak and becoming friends again. It can’t be real. Ty would never act over his emotions like that. I feel like I'm going to sob to myself, but I have to hold it in and be strong.
My eyes fade to the current sight of my fellow lover, letting my powers down. He then goes to sit over at a rock by himself as I follow him, and there are the sounds of a beach, the seas, a battlefield on the left side, and silhouettes of our family and friends on the right. What a dream.
Ty looks tired, and I rest my head on his shoulder. I can feel his scent. He is wearing normal clothes, just like me. I hold his arm tightly, before letting go and caressing his face. Our eyes meet, and he takes a deep sigh.
Erin: “I swear to god, please tell me this is the real you. I'm so gonna cry right now.”
Ty: “I don’t wanna go back right now....I can’t, Erin. I love you, but I don't want to.”
Erin: “Why? Come with me, we're in your head right now. Please...?”
Ty: “I know you're tired, Erinbug. You’ve tried too much. He brought out the worst in me. I killed my sister. I let her fall. And dad isn’t with us anymore.”
Erin: “Look, it wasn’t. It was all a damn accident. It's not your fault. No one could do anything. And your dad made his choice to leave you long ago. It’s not your fault, Ty.
Ty: “It was me, it was me! He didn’t love me enough… he made mom and sis suffer! Even Gran too! All of us!
Erin: “Ty, we’re doing this together, but I need you to understand there is so much going on right now. What's happened in the past stays there. We're here, living the moment this instant. If you’re not gonna tell me what happened to yourself, Riley and Harry at the landing, I’ll have no choice but leave you here without help. You’re stuck in nirvana forever, trapped in this loophole. Our friends are trying their best and you’re gonna give up now?!”
Ty: “What am I supposed to do? I didn’t want my dad to go either...you know what, I regret giving the ring to you.”
Erin: “You don't mean that, did you, Tyrone Wilcox Shore?”
Ty: “You’re not my mother. You don’t get to say or use my full name. Don't lecture me.”
Erin: “Ty, this isn't you. Stop it.”
Ty: "There is no real me, this is me, just like this. Are you happy?"
Erin: "No, it isn't. Stop being stubborn."
Ty: "Then stop being a bitch. Stop being so damn whiny. I'm not your plaything."
Erin: "This is the part where I’m going to lose myself too before you slip away into the path of sadness—even deeper and not coming back.”
Ty: “Who cares? That’s why I’m going to stay. I killed my sister, drove away father and I couldn’t do anything to stop them. I drove the wedge in my family.”
Erin: “And you’re gonna use that as an excuse over the woman you love? The real you wouldn’t be a coward like that. That influence is gonna eat you up inside the more you think about it. When I stepped into your head, I saw everything, from moment I laid my eyes on you, my dad not approving...we went through that. We survived great lengths and hell for each other—we’re still young! You told me we were gonna have kids...cute babies! And you can’t let go of the past? Tyrone, you’re a leader, a great role model for others...and you’re gonna grieve further because someone manipulated you? You need to let go...please...”
Gosh. That was such a fucking speech. I start bawling, tears streaming down my face as I hold him close to me, even if he doesn't respond. Every word from my mind is pulling my heartstrings and I’m in my fiance’s head, out in a world where he’s in a coma and now he’s acting like that...I feel so lost, so powerless.
I feel like I'm about to give up before I heard something...the voices of my friends. Two people, two brothers?
Jesse: “Not so fast yet, hermana. I’m here to fix your loverboy on the edge.”
Connor: “Nothing gets better than a proper reunion with the Arden brothers.”
Erin: “Jesse! Connor! You’re here!”
Connor: "Sorry if we're late. Caught up on things. If you can't convince him to leave..."
Jesse: “Yeah well we got through some big shit and ended up back in base...there is some ever bigger shit outside and thank you you’re safe like Gary, who’s out there fighting. And double thanks I didn’t have to pry open your head when Lyra almost insisted on it--"
Connor: “Save the talk later, little brother, we've got limited borrowed time. Hello Ty, we’re all here. We need you.”
Ty: “I said, I need nobody. Go somewhere else. Leave me alone. Fuck off.”
Connor: “You really don’t? Remember the time when I left everybody? It was hard as hell. But I held onto the thought of people I cared about. My brother, you—and Erin. Sam too."
Ty: "Go off. I don't need you here. Go off. Did I make myself clear."
Connor: "Yes, but don't you wanna remember our fun memories? I’ve said it once, and I'll say it again. Erin. she was pretty, smart, had everything I wanted for the perfect girl. I liked her, but you were always there for her. Got ahead before I had the chance, but I didn't interfere. I didn't step in. I admired both of you and I didn’t want to get in your ways because we’d be in a messy triangle. Instead I learnt more about myself as we supported you like us too. But the most important thing—you’re a sweet person, you're inspiring. You are one hell of a leader, daring to defy. You’re like a younger brother to me as well you know?”
Jesse: “Yeah Erin, she’s a great sister to me, man. We're all homies. But Ty, we've all known the truth already for ages...you didn’t kill Alecia. Your dad abandoning you guys wasn’t your fault. It was just an accident and just one of the shitty life stuff. You know I’m sorry for your loss.”
Ty: “How can you prove that you know something? You’re all just fake images. You don't care about my feelings. Alecia is real. Dad is real. You all are not.”
Jesse: “If it’s fake enough then we’d be voices who can put your shit together Tyrone. We already went through shit together. Who was the one who stood up for me? Who stood up for you? And your girl?What about the pranks we did? Everything mattered!" I spoke to Mrs Wilcox about it; and yeah it was hard opening up, but you did it in self defence. During infancy, your dad protected you when you had your house robbed, and when Alecia--"
Ty: "Stop talking about Alecia. You don't get to talk about her--"
Jesse: "Ty, Christ, let me continue. When she returned home from the army, her vehicle took a hit—your powers slipped. It was just a natural reaction. It was damn uncontrollable and there’s nobody to blame. You were a young kid back then and can’t put guilt on your shoulders, man.”
Ty: "But...but..."
Connor: “The real answer is because North had special pheromones unleashed all over, targeting those with especially painful memories. I know PTSD isn’t easy to treat and cope for everyone, and it'll take time to heal, but you were under the influence that you killed them. You didn't kill anyone. So come back, come back to the real world and take the fight against it. You’re not the only person here who's being oppressed when the agency is in dire hands! Wake up, Ty! Wake up!”
***
My mind fades again. Hopefully it’s the last as I wake up next to my still comatose fiancé, and I see Jesse and Connor on the opposite side of the bed. I take a big sigh.
The systems still work, thankfully. I assume things are really shit like they said when I hear gunfire. Jesse wakes up next, followed by Connor, while a worried Lyra shows relief on her face as she frenetically walks around in circles. Then she notices me and gives me a bear hug.
Lyra: “Thank god you all made it back! Erin, I thought I was gonna lose you! I don’t know what happened inside, but at least Ty's signs are normal now. Me and Navin had to move you and Riley to stabilized beds.”
Erin: "Hey, right back at you. I owe you and Riley."
Ty: “Ugggh....”
Erin: “Shiro! You’re back!”
Ty: “Sure...I guess. Hey gorgeous. I felt like had a weird dream and you three went inside huh? Wait...you guys did. I feel so much better after opening up. And you guys opening up to me."
Jesse: “Yeah. But we got bigger problems to solve. North is here and we’re running out of time actually. How long was the process, Lyra?”
Lyra: “Just 10. ”
Jesse: “See? Long enough in your head, and just a couple minutes here. Your wife is totally a badass chick with that power upgrade.”
Erin: “Hold on, wife? What? Like now?—“
Connor: “Ugh Jesse please don’t spoil and skip things; I mean you'll easily figure that out later, soon-to-be-married as Mrs Wilcox. You need to fix Riley and Harry ASAP too. This is what Edens left behind as a wake up injector. It will free their minds, some chemical solution of sorts. Make it fast. We’re gonna need to help our friends. Lyra, you’re coming too.”
The three of them rush out the medical room, leaving the two of us behind with virtually a mess on the outside. I help Ty get out of his bed as his weapons and gadgets are there. He looks into one of the drawers and puts on a new pair of socks before slipping into his boots.
Erin: “Did you tell them something before we woke?”
Ty: “Yeah. I did. But y’know I gotta get knives and guns up and ready.”
Erin: “I can now go if you want....”
Ty: “No, Erinbug. I am not leaving you, never ever. When we’re done we’re definitely getting married.”
Erin: “Aww. Shiro...you're just charming aren't you?”
Ty: “I realised we haven’t called each other nicknames in a while, but then, we gotta help friends and catch up, whaddya say?”
Erin: "Yes, absolutely. We gotta use these little things."
Ty stands up, grabs my hand and leans in for a deep kiss. He pulls me into a hug, which feels longer than expected and...I'm not complaining. Honestly I want to forget everything and just focus on this moment that I don’t want to let go.
But responsibility is right in front of me...and this time with my powers in motion, I’m gonna have to fix it right where they are.
And you come down with a jolt.
Just for a moment
You have the experience of being an object
At the mercy of a malevolent staircase
I haven't had a proper ramble for ages, well not a public one anyway. In fact there hasn't been any action, from me, out here in cyberspace, for quite a while.
I'm quite prone to introspection, you may have noticed if you hadn't been staring at your own bellybutton. And it is both a gift and a bind. But it is something wrapped up within my insides, feeling tightly wrapped around like I have been rolled over and over inside a carpet so it clasps the whole of my being.
Perhaps introspection is another name for sensitivity, perhaps even hypersensitivity. I crave peace and quiet, loud noises jolt me with impatience and I baulk at how the non-sensitives will shout into their mobile phone whilst sat next to you, or park themselves adjacently to your long-searched-for-solitude on a remote beach ovelooking the sea.
At the hinges of the seasons I feel my sensitivities even more and they career between overwhelm and near blissful wonder at the world.
As autumn begins I feel this the most strongly. My feeling for the world is so fiercely overwhelmed but amongst the raw and vulnerable feelings are glimpses of infinity and heaven. But what can be imagined and intellectually understood is not the same as the experience itself. As to live through a hyper-sensitive episode is to be within it, rather than an impassioned observer of its trials and wonders.
Here's something I wrote just as a stream of conciousness back in September, when I was staying away from home for work and felt the full force of autumnal sensitivity.
"I ache, I ache all over.
People watching: what is it to be old, what is it to be young, transporting my enquiring mind into theirs to live their lives for a brief moment. Looking into each persons eyes through my dark glasses, looking at them looking at me, looking at them. Too many interconnections, too interconnected. Need to turn the volume down.
The inxplicable ache of beauty. An impossible Tsumani of creativity and experience, overwhelming sensitivity. Want to bottle it in a jar, keep it and live with it always but also be able to put the lid on so I can breathe and take a break. Sensitivity is such a paradox. While you ache, things take on such infinite proportions, whether you ache for a break, for the world not to keep rushing you with such force, or whether beauty makes you ache, grabs you and affixes its beauty to your soul so you cannot escape, like your brain is being pulled out through your eyes. The aches oscillate between positive and negative each with pull like a powerful magnet, pulling into its clutches or repelling you strongly.
Hard to escape and hard to resist, a trap so overlwhelming you want it to stop and yet when the pain is gone, back comes mundanity. You don't feel the absence of pain, only at the moment it recedes, when the relief replaces the sensitivity. And yet when it's gone you ache once more, you miss it once it's gone, you want it back. You want to feel alive to your core, once again.
Thoughts and interconnections tumble out of your mind, such a thrill if you can catch a ride on one but so often, you just want to pres the pause button and see what it is like to watch and experience what it is you are experiencing. To sit back and watch yourself deluged in a sensitive flow of tumbling thoughts so you can make sense of them, take a step back, have them happen whilst be able to witness the flow, see them for what they are, bring them altogether, condense and channel them. But as soon often in life your instrospection does not allow you to silently witness the flow, you are ungulfed in its midst a passenger in the torrent."
"I am writing this sat in a hotel room on a sunny Sunday. What a day to be hyper sensitive.
Away from home for work, with no outlet except a pouring out of words into my laptop, like an ever open ear. Earlier I sat in a pub and ordered myself lunch and attempted to read my Sunday newspaper. My brain on overdrive, I could only muster two paragraphs before my eyes would lift and scan around me to see what was happening, jittery and unfocused, the tsunami gathering momentum all the time.
Battling self conciousness, sat on my own, the sad travelling worker. Newspaper and sunday lunch, pint with billy no mates. And yet the feeling of exposure, the looking at people and the lives, and their ways, their companions and them looking back at me. It heightened it all, the flow of words, the introspection. the self loathing, the strong feeling of the utter transience of existence, the overwhelming power of inexplicable beauty in the world, what it is to be alive, what it is to be sensitve, what it is to trying to make sense of all these things, trapped in a wave crashing onto the shore, tumbled over and over and over.
Me watching them, watching me, whathcing myself, always trying to draw back one more level to make sense of it all, put a box round it and be a witness, so desperate to make sense of it all.
And yet when you think you make sense of it, one of two things happens, it suddenly diminishes, to explain is to take out the mystery, to extinguish its flame or sometimes the opposite happens.
Sometimes it is a revelation as two parts of your mind speak to one another for the first time, like an explosion of inspiration, a never bofore made connection opens up an entire new world.
The world comes spinning back and the wave you were once engulfed in is just one roller hitting the shore, there are 100's more following it in, to engulf you once more.
But what becomes so evidently clear is these words are futile, a nothingness, a distraction in pointlessness. My imagination cannot bottle up those and replay them to me at will, I cannot take them home in a little box tied up with string. I need to be living them now, in the here and now, they are there while they're there and it is then when you feel them in your soul. The memory is bitter sweet, it isn't that thing, it has none of its intensity but it has enough of a clue to remind you to go back and feel it once again.
And this leads me to the ache I feel most of all. the transience of existence. Just as a flower is transient so is a thought, so is a life, looking back is neither here nor there, it is all present in the here and now in its infinite beauty and variety.
But each moment is gone as quickly as it arrives as will be my life, my existence. Embrace the brevity for it is all you have. One day soon you and I will be gone."
“Run,” as Green muttered over the comm.
“I knew the real Knott wouldn’t be talking like that.” said Edens. “Now that I’ve realised you’ve been playing games, I might as well have to take you down.”
“So you say. Come find me then.”
The comms were cut off as Edens helplessly watched. Without a word forming from his moth, he quickly ran to the room where the real Green was knocked out, and reached for a dosage he kept in his pocket—-with a matter of seconds, Edens stabbed him right through with the needles. He immediately woke up with a jolt, eyes being bloodshot
Real Green: “What the f*ck happened?!”
Edens: “You were knocked out for three days. You were supposed to have called me to arrive a day after until your imposter delayed it for his own plans.”
Green: “What?! No, no way.....where is...?”
Edens: “Still searching. But this isn’t your time to talk now. Breathe.
Green: “But I’ve got this thing....”
As he calmed the shocked agent down, Edens turned on his mental link to Jesse. After a few minutes, he finally responded.
Edens: “Where is he?”
Jesse: “Taken but still safe. I put a tracker mark with one of the tools.”
Edens: “Good. Now go do your job, and look for Patrick as well. You have to keep him and his men alive as possible. I have to deal with Green myself. I might as well have to stay here.”
***
Patrick: “You can’t do this!”
Green: *voice over speakers* “I can do whatever I want. This ain’t your place to judge, Pat.”
Patrick: “Don’t bullsh*t me. You know what you did. Then all of those were lies!”
Green: “Maybe you were just too foolish to listen in. My friend will handle this better. Tanaka, kill him.”
Patrick and his remaining men were on the verge of death. He had managed to escape the chaos in the interrogation room as the impostor Green has duped them, sending in his own assassin, a woman who had already killed more than half. His forehead started dripping more at the thought. They were in the base, with no help or sign to be able to get out. The lobbies weren’t working as the signals were jammed. As minutes passed, his only though now was to usher his men through the emergency exits. “Go! Go now!” as Patrick exclaimed. “It’s just you and me now, they leave without me. Come face me if you dare!”
“Sure.” As the imposter Green muttered. “Tanaka, end him once and for all. He’s too invaluable for a witness anyways.” As he was about to be hit, bolts of fire appeared from the smoke, as if it were a Star Wars film. When it cleared, Silverjack was holding his rifle, aiming sternly at the mute killer.
Jesse: “We traced you just in time.”
Patrick: “How? Who are you people?—-“
Jesse: “Told ya Edens wasn’t just a normal scientist. Now, I’ve got a dance to attend, excuse me.”
Without much words to say, Silverjack reached forward, and sideswiped the forthcoming assassin, only for her dodge in mid air while he came down below. She did the exact same thing, by landing a roundhouse kick, but he dodged it with ease. Patrick’s eyes glared as if there were two tigers struggling for battle. Then he realised the idea, that the agent was trying to distract the killer. In the instant moment, he sank into deep thought, for a good 5 minutes while they were duelling out. He quickly ran to get his other men in safety, feet quick yet steady.
***
Edens wasn’t so lucky however. Surrounded by walls and rooms, intelligence might have played him for a fool. The broadcasting image of the false Green was still playing, voices repeating again and again. He could only stay in the room alongside with the real Green, who at this time was finally awake thanks to the serum, whom he had to inject twice to due his severe injury.
Edens: “How do you feel?”
Real Green: “Better. Tastes like metal.”
Edens: “It’s a common after effect. You’ll get used to it. Slows the pain.”
Real Green: “I.....I should have known, you were the doctor. Why would I call you in for such a *cough* emergency?”
Edens: “I was probably a bit dumb to take it, I was suspicious actually. I knew what happened back then for Blue, Knott.”
Knott: “You do? Still....you could have saved us?”
Edens: “But I couldn’t. Like I told your imposter, it’s impossible to do all of this. I can risk my life for sacrifice, but the project had to be safe. On the lab that night, I should have died but I didn’t.”
Knott: “I know....but....there could have been a chance if there....was actually one.”
Edens: “More could have been done.”
Knott: “Listen carefully, doc, Blue’s important....but not that important anymore. Right now, you can’t stay here longer. I want you to leave me.”
Edens: “Why?”
Knott: “My life ain’t worth is anymore now. What I need you to do—-is to find Blue right now.
Edens: “I told my partner he’s safe when we tracked him down. Is there anything you need for him?”
Knott: “Right....yes. Give this to him. Please. Give him this . This is a bunch of data I managed to keep about the ES. I want my friends safe, Edens. Do it. Do it for me. For him. And Blue can’t die worthlessly. There’s more than just the project we all know about......”
***
They wear each other’s clothes!
I have almost all of the fashion pieces accounted for from the Barbie Sharin’ Sisters set I had as a kid! Perfect chance to dress-down Vanessa to match her sisters.
With Vanessa, Violaine x2, and a bonus Amelie (and Stacie I guess lol) all I need now is a Veronique!
French Kiss Vanessa, My Love Violaine, Beyond Thus Planet Violet Violaine, and Jolt Amelie
“A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble on the road.” ~ Henry Ward Beecher
Have a wonderful Sunday. HSS
Niles jolts awake, his eyes opening to a darkness so absolute that he’s half convinced he’s gone blind. He takes a moment to calm himself, eyes adjusting to the oblivion around him, and notices unrecognisable shapes dotted around the space before him. He casts his mind back to how on earth he ended up here, but finds it causes a frightfully nasty headache and promptly gives up. He realises he’s sat on something, and after a few moments of wriggling around determines it to be an armchair. Before he can make any kind of assessment as to what this may mean, the sound of a heavy switch being pulled fills the air and he winces as a dazzling light illuminates the bleak darkness and sears his eyes.
After a few minutes, his eyes adjust to the newfound brightness, but if anything the sudden clarity only adds fresh questions to his mind.
Niles: What the blazes…
Niles finds himself sat in what would appear to be an old television set. Bright studio lights shine from high above him, lost in the industrial beams of the studio ceiling and disappearing into the shadows. In front of him, stretching up to the lights, are rows upon rows of empty seats, like some morbid abandoned theatre. A stretch of track runs along the floor before them, supporting a few large cameras that are all pointing his way. He cranes his neck to look around, and realises he’s sat in what would appear to be a living room, like something out of an old eighties sitcom. He spots a door, windows and mismatched furniture, but before he can take in any more details he’s filled with the sudden sensation of being watched. He turns his head away from the faux house and notices, rather alarmingly, that all the seats in the studio are now filled. An excitable hush falls over the audience as they realise Niles has spotted them, and one by one they quiet down and start to smile at him, sending a shiver down his spine. Niles’ mouth hangs open for a moment, his brain attempting to work in harmony with his mouth to begin an inquiry as to what the hell’s going on, but before he can so much as grunt a catchy tune fills the air and several disembodied voices start to sing:
~What are you up to, Niles Caulder?
Your legs are weak, but your spirit is bolder!
He’s the man behind, the Doom Patrol!
Turn off his brakes and watch him roll!
What are you up to Niles Caulder!?~
The crowd erupt into applause. Niles looks around, bewildered. He spots someone sat behind one of the cameras and points a finger at them.
Niles: You there, yes you! What the devil is going on?
The sound of canned laughter fills the air and the audience whoop and clap their hands. Niles frowns.
Niles: Something funny?
The audience laughs harder, some wiping tears from their eyes. Before Niles can say another word, there comes a knocking at the faux-house’s front door. The audience calm themselves as Niles turns to the source of the noise. The knocking comes again.
Niles: What?!
The door opens and into the house steps an old man with out of control grey hair, wearing some kind of 1950’s spacesuit paired with corduroy trousers. The audience burst into applause as the man closes the door, steps onto his mark and places his hands on his hips. He smiles at Niles as he waits for the applause to die down.
Niles: And what are you supposed to be?
A chuckle makes its way through the audience as the man’s smile widens.
Dubrovny: Name’s Dubrovny. Jonathan Dubrovny. Just thought I’d pop over to meet my new neighbour!
He steps forwards and extends a hand to Niles.
Dubrovny: It’s a pleasure to meet you, neighbour! I hear you’re a budding scientist quite like myself! I’m into molecular engineering, whatever that is! Ha!
Niles is dumbfounded. He looks to the man, then to the grinning audience, and decides life would probably be a lot simpler if he just shook the man’s hand.
Niles: Niles Caulder.
Dubrovny: Dash and blast! If you’re colder you should put on a jumper!
The audience burst into hysterics. Niles cringes.
Dubrovny: Haha, you must forgive me! My friends tell me I’ve a terrible sense of humour.
Niles: They sound like wise friends.
Dubrovny ignores him and continues on.
Dubrovny: They all call me Mister 103, after my fascination with the one hundred and three elements! I very much hope you’ll call me that, too. Although you may only want to do it… periodically!
The audience laugh again. Niles doesn’t wait for them to finish before replying.
Niles: There are one hundred and eighteen elements. I’d have thought a budding scientist would know that.
Dubrovny frowns. He lifts up a small keypad on his wrist, hits some of the keys at random and throws his head back in a laugh.
Dubrovny: So there are! You must forgive my ignorance, it’s been a while since I’ve perused the pages of the science journal. I guess you could say I’m a little out of my… element!
The audience are beside themselves with laughter. Niles puts his head in his hands and sighs.
Dubrovny: I can tell living next door to you is going to be most enlightening! One might say… elementary!
Niles: Is there a point to this?
The audience calm themselves as Dubrovny frowns, a little taken aback by Niles’ outburst.
Dubrovny: Oh, of course. You see, I’m working on a top-secret project, and wondered if you could help a fellow scientist out and lend me some fresh sodium chloride – that’s sa-
Niles: Salt, yes. I’m aware.
Dubrovny: Oh.
Niles: How on earth do you expect me to know if I have any salt?
Dubrovny: Umm… is that rhetorical?
Niles: Oh for heaven’s sake, just look in the kitchen!
Dubrovny grins and moves to the small kitchen set across from the lounge. The audience laugh as he throws open the cupboards and begins to empty them excitedly. Niles rubs his forehead and sighs as Dubrovny produces a small bottle and shakes it over his head excitedly.
Dubrovny: Found it!
He moves back to Niles, clutching the salt carefully against his chest.
Dubrovny: Well, that’ll be all for now. Unless you want to report me for… a-salt!
Niles: You can go.
Dubrovny: Okie dokie neighbour! I look forward to sharing my further scientific achievements with you!
Dubrovny turns on the spot and saunters out the front door. The audience applaud wildly as he exits, some whistling and waving frantically at him. Niles, exhausted, attempts to speak, but suddenly the lights dim and more music plays:
~That was all from, Niles Caulder!
We’ll see you next time when, we’re all a bit older!
Scientific fun, same time every day!
Grab all your things now, and be on your way!~
And just like that the audience are gone, leaving the set in the same eerie quiet from before. Niles looks around, not all that uncertain he may be dreaming the entire thing. He pinches himself of the arm and goes to wiggle his toes, finding them as unresponsive as they are in the waking world. He thinks for a moment, but is startled by the sound of a solitary clap coming from the audience.
Nobody: Oh, bravo! Bravo!
Eric Morden, or at least, what remains of Eric Morden, continues to clap as he makes his way through the rows of seats and down onto the studio floor.
Nobody: I was worried the humour was a little too below the belt, but the audience seemed to really love it, don’t you think?
Niles narrows his eyes and watches him silently.
Nobody: You were great, of course. But was there ever any doubt?
Niles adjusts himself in his armchair as Mister Nobody steps onto the set and smiles at Niles menacingly. Niles grits his teeth but maintains his composure.
Niles: It’s Eric Morden, isn’t it? What did you do with the others? Rita, Cliff, Larry?
Nobody: Oh don’t panic, they’re fine. I sent them straight back home like the children they are. They did me no wrong, after all…
Niles: And Brain and Mallah?
Nobody: Do not speak their names! They’re off on their own little adventure, one that’s none of your concern. I don’t imagine you’ll be seeing them again.
Mister Nobody grins and stretches his arms toward the roof of the studio. Niles takes in his appearance in the clear lights that surround them, noticing the freakish way his body manages to simultaneously exist and not exist at the same time.
Niles: What happened to you?
Nobody: You mean – what became of me after you so mercilessly had me tossed into that awful, awful machine? Honestly, I’m not too sure myself. But it does seem pretty groovy, doesn’t it?
Niles scowls.
Niles: You’re insane.
Nobody: Oh no, not that old shtick! That would be far too easy. God, what a cop out!
He grins.
Nobody: Maybe I just got a sneak peek behind the curtain at the backstage of reality...
Niles: Whatever it is, I’m not just some animal who will dance for your amusement, Morden. If you want me dead bloody well get it over with.
Nobody: Oh no no no! I don’t want to do that!
Niles: Then what is this? Keeping me prisoner in this… this… what even is this?
Niles looks around.
Niles: Some kind of… parallel void-space? Interdimensional pocket dimension? Non-Euclidian hellscape generated by-
Nobody: Eh ch ch ch! Just – go with it, okay? Quit it with the questions, Doc. Not everything needs an explanation!
Nobody takes a moment to compose himself then smiles.
Nobody: I call it – the White Space! Cool, huh? This is my dominion! A place where I can do whatever I please! And oh, I will. And please, less of the Morden. That man’s nothing any more. Quite literally, haha!
Mister Nobody throws his arms out wide and smiles.
Nobody: Take a look around, Caulder. All this is all my design. A place to crack you open like the clever little egghead you are!
Niles says nothing.
Nobody: And what better place to drown one’s sanity than the starring role in your very own sitcom, eh?
The smile on Mister Nobody’s face fades. He steps closer to Niles, leaning over him as threateningly as you can when you look like little more than an ink blot on the edge of a camera lens.
Nobody: Here’s the deal, Doctor C. You’re just too interesting to be left alone. You’re like a scab, that’s just asking to be picked. There’s more to Niles Caulder than meets the eye, and I would love to make its acquaintance. Why was Brain-
He spits on the floor.
Nobody: -so interested in you? Why do you hide away from the world in that decrepit old wreck you call a home? And just why do you insist on surrounding yourself with those kooky cats you call a family?
He pushes away from Niles and leaps around the set.
Nobody: All your burning questions answered, same Niles time, same Niles channel, on next week’s episode!
He laughs to himself and kicks his feet on the carpet. Niles watches him with combined anger and disgust.
Nobody: This is all here just to break you; to wear you down until I can go poking around in that big melon of yours and find out what makes you tick. I’ll get there eventually, but why not have a little fun on the way?
Niles sits forwards.
Niles: You think, for one moment, that this crude little display is going to make me tell you anything you want to know? You can try everything in your power, and it will still be insufficient enough to break me. So please, do your worse.
Nobody flinches.
Nobody: Maybe. But where’s the harm in trying?
Niles: You may soon find out.
There is silence for a few seconds as Mister Nobody processes Niles’ threat. Masking his unease, he smiles widely and claps his hands.
Nobody: Ooh!
He turns away from Niles before he can realise that his words have had some effect on him.
Nobody: This is where I leave you. I’ll be along again in a few… days, maybe? I don’t know, time doesn’t really work like that here. Play nicely, and try not to cause too much damage. And remember, if anyone offers, just say no.
He turns away from Niles and takes a few steps. Niles holds up a hand.
Niles: One more thing.
Nobody: Yes?
Niles: What the devil is the Doom Patrol?
Nobody: Oh, of course, I didn’t tell you! It’s what your little gang are calling themselves now. Groovy, huh?
But he gives Niles no time to reply. In the blink of an eye he’s gone, leaving Niles alone with his thoughts on the empty set, very much un-groovy.
Commander Jolt sets out to find and eliminate a group of Commando droids before they find his missing squad.
Casting couch, but not in the way you’d think! Amelie is casting the couch, testing out the suitability of the busy design. Some dolls get totally lost against the metallic embroidery, but Amelie just glows!!💕
Jolt Amelie rebodied onto Electric Enthusiasm Dominique’s NuFace body.
(I’m sorting through older photos I forgot to post from before the sun started trying to kill me. Sunny and 80 F in Alaska for a record number of days. We have to keep the blinds closed to try to keep the house cool. I can’t utilize the daylight for indoor shots, and the air is so smoky I can’t linger outside!)
Early November snowfall in Michigan jolted us awake this morning with about five inches of the wet, fluffy, white stuff. The trees haven't even finished shedding their leaves yet. Mother Nature's timing is a little off, and near-60 with sunshine is forecast for next weekend. The duck in the photo doesn't seem to have a care. It was an appealing scene this afternoon.