Heart of Darkness Chapter 12: Regrouping - Tales of the Parodyverse

Previously:

Visionary has just survived a night of partying at the Willow, thanks to the intervention of many of his friends. (It was a harder night of partying than it sounds, honest.) Though they all made their escape, Vizh is still stricken with a deteriorating heart condition caused by an infection of dark Elder Gods magic, which is really not a good thing. But, more importantly, it has come to his attention that his ward Kerry Shepherdson has run off from foster care, and that she’s missing and presumed nuclear…

“All right… everyone make yourselves at home…” Visionary said, opening the door and turning on the lights to Sarah’s flat. Liu Xi had relocated them all to the Bean and Donut coffee shop below, where an argument over the next course of action had ensued between the one faction that believed Visionary should be taken straight to a hospital bed and the other (namely Visionary) who believed he should maybe have some hot coffee and a few crullers to refresh himself and then people should get the hell out of his way. It was decided, through careful Yo negotiation, that the tie-breaking vote would go to Sarah, seeing as she was the only one who might know how to turn on the kitchen coffee pots anyway. “Excuse the mess…” he requested of them, “Things have been a little hectic lately and…”

“What the bleedin’ hell is all this then?” A huge bare-chested man covered in a thin sheet growled, sitting up from the couch and blinking painfully in the bright light. “First you go stepping out on my sister, and then you bring your orgy party back here where good people are trying to get some sleep?”

“Karl?” Visionary said, surprised. “What are you… Orgy? It was just a group hug… honest… That is…” He shook his head and tried again. “Sorry, I didn’t expect that you’d be here. Weren’t you going to some play or something?”

“It’s one-thirty in the friggin’ morning!” he growled.

“Oh” Visionary noted. “And… you’re staying here, then… On the couch I sleep on.” He eyed the large Irishman warily. “Please tell me you’re wearing something under that?”

“Naught but what the good Lord gave me” he noted, wrapping the sheet around his waist and standing to tower threateningly over the Legionnaire. “Now how about you tell me who your no-good friends are, and then you can explain these articles I’ve been reading in the paper about you and your smutty escapades and how you practice those perversions on sweet little Sarah.”

“What? That’s in the paper? I mean… what?” Visionary asked, thoroughly confused. He then darkened considerably. “And wait… Don’t you dare call my friends no good. You have no idea what they went through tonight for me.”

“According to the gossip columns, it likely involved whips, chains and jellies.”

“Actually, Lisa is apparently doing something with Ma Shepherdson. And the Shoggoth isn’t really a jelly” Visionary argued. “Wait… what gossip columns?”

“And to think I nearly bought your excuse about how you weren’t mistreating my virginal sisters. I’ve been waiting to cram your teeth down your throat for cheating on my sis…”

“I’m a little lost in this conversation…” the Regular noted. “Did you just pluralize virginal sister?” He looked around hopefully for back-up. “Speaking of which, where is Sarah?”

“She came back a while ago, before Con stopped by again to collect her for a little problem he was having. Said something about how now you’ve been taken care of, maybe she could help him unclog some plumbing. Says she’s a handy girl who knows how to work a tool. Never saw much evidence of it myself, mind you...”

“That’s odd… You’d think he would have called Xander with a…” Visionary stopped as his mind caught up. In his defense, it had been a long, soul-devouring night. He really needed to thank Johnstantine properly for this evening. “Um… right. Anyway, I wasn’t out cheating on your… um… virginal sister.”

“Oh really? Don’t bother. This is a dead man talking to me.”

“See?” Urthula insisted to the others. “I told you, it’s a perfectly understandable mistake.”

Karl jutted his thumb towards the crowd in the door. “And what of your roaming bacchanal orgy troupe here?”

“My what now?” Visionary responded, totally losing the conversation again. He really hoped he hadn’t suffered too much brain damage to follow the English language any more. Or maybe Karl was speaking in that Gaelic he had heard so much about on the Travel channel...

“Before the orgy really gets into full swing…” Sarah’s voice sounded from the back of the group in the doorway. “Maybe we could do the full round of introductions?” She squeezed through the group to confront her nearly naked brother. “Some of us like to know who we’re meeting before we take our pants off.”

Visionary swallowed a reflexive “spark test” joke. This was no time for friendly fire. He smiled at her in thankful relief. “Er… yes… introductions. Well, everyone, this is Karl Shepherdson… Sarah’s brother. He’s in town for a visit. Karl, I’d like you to meet some very dear friends… Let’s see…” He looked over the assembly in the doorway. “Er… this is Ms. Chiaki Bushido” he decided to start with the easier choices. “She’s a samurai warri… um… let’s just go with ‘bodyguard’.” Okay, maybe easy wasn’t really an option with this crowd. “Ah… This here is my best friend Yo. He’s a teammate of mine from the Lair Legion.” Visionary stressed, prodding Yo to pick a gender and stick with it for the moment.

“Right… I’ve been reading about this “Lair Legion” of yours in the papers.” Karl scoffed. “I tell you, what the blokes in those rags will print… You Americans will believe anything. Explains your foreign policy, assuredly. What garbage… Obviously a big scam you’ve got running Mr. Visionary. Next they’ll be trying to tell us that American television is for real, what with that TransWorld Trek mini from last year.”

“Is why I only am reading the funnies” Yo supplied.

“Let’s move on…” Visionary suggested gamely. “There in the back is, um… the Manga Shoggoth.”

“What, is he coated with some kind of lubricant?”

“No, no… er… he’s actually a… um…”

“Da-boon-jao” Liu Xi supplied darkly, still miffed at the elder beast.

It’s not as if I’ve gotten around to ritually decapitating him yet… the Shoggoth replied to the girl. At least, not how time is currently comprehended in these limited dimensions…

“That’s Liu Xi Xian with him” Visionary supplied. “She’s really very sweet.”

“Au wui waht lei dui an chut lei yuen hau bai ju hai lei go see fut dau, sau yi lnei hau yi geen do au teck do lei go see fut biu C!” she hissed back at the Shoggoth.

…I admit, that one might be anatomically possible in my viscous state… he conceded.

“Okay…” Karl said, squinting. “I don’t know how you did the trick with the snot in the suit and hat, but I’m not impressed.”

“Right then… Moving on, the green woman there is…”

“Which one?”

“The one in the bikini…” Visionary clarified, realizing how his life was both very blessed and very strange. “That would be Miiri… she’s…”

“The great Master Visionary’s former pleasure slave” Miiri supplied, stepping forward to face Visionary intently. She drew a deep breath. “And moth…”

“And a very dear friend of Visionary’s who has news to tell him. Later. In private…” Dancer interrupted hurriedly.

“What was that first thing she said?” Karl growled, clenching his fists.

“Nothing” Visionary and Sarah answered quickly in unison.

“I could have sworn she said…”

“Nope. These’re all just good friends of mine. Like Hallie here…”

“The other green one?”

“Yes” Hallie agreed with a tightly fixed smile and a glint in her eye. “The other one. Who is just a friend.” She offered her hand, which Karl unwisely took.

“Ouch!” he cried, pulling back his arm and shaking the sensation back into it. “Hell of a static charge you built up there…”

“Yes, I can see” Hallie replied, nodding towards the sheet wrapped around the big Irishman, which was now clinging to him embarrassingly. Or not, depending on how you looked at it.

In fact, Visionary found himself a little unsettled by how the women of the group were looking at it. Karl, for his part, managed to snag a pillow from the armrest of the couch to help obscure the view. “Man… I sleep on that too” Visionary sighed under his breath. It just wasn’t his night. “Um… this is…” he gestured to the Sorting Hat, which Urthula carried in her arms. “Ah… I’m sorry” he said to it, slightly embarrassed. “Do you have a name?”

The hat blinked. “Nobody has ever asked me that before” it noted. “I usually only answer questions about other people. Do I really need one?”

“Yes, I am thinking so” Yo said happily. “Is very important for commendation purposes. Hero hats should have names for listing in the papers.”

“I’ll… give it some thought” the hat promised.

“Good” Visionary replied with a nod. The shapeless hat had taken a bullet for him, after all. “And finally, this is Ms. Urthula Underess…” He introduced the ghoul girl, who had decided not to try and revive her glamour since the mayhem at the Willow. As a result, she stood in all her glory with her grey skin, stringy hair, burning red eyes and narrow, sharp features. “She’s, um… She’s…”

“Visionary’s date for the night” the ghoul supplied with an ironic smile. “It’s actually a pretty funny story...”

“Yes. Wait… what?” Visionary managed, just before Karl punched his lights out.

“All right, all right…” Karl was saying reasonably from where he was pinned to the wall with an antique sword. “Maybe I acted a tad bit aggressively…”

Hallie ignored the group on the other side of the apartment. Instead she stood with her arms folded, looking out the kitchen window through her own glowing reflection and mentally scolding herself. She was smarter than this, she knew. After all, her brain was all she really had… everything else was an illusion. She wasn’t human any more, and her mind was no longer nearly as limited. Things should be simpler… clear. So feeling this stupid was an especially bitter pill to swallow.

Of course Epitome would use her blood that way… That was his nature. It wasn’t even personal. He saw an opportunity to advance his cause, and any personal feelings he may or may not have harbored were completely irrelevant to his actions. She knew all along she was sticking her head in the lion’s mouth with their relationship… It’s her own damn fault for becoming so attached to it that she ignored that a lion’s nature was to bite down.

So why did it sting so? Admittedly, she had some very fond memories of that mouth… and other assorted parts of him. She had originally thought to get to know Dominic as a defensive move… He was a threat, invading her home as he joined the Lair Legion. His handsome features hadn’t been that much of a sway, had they? Admittedly, they hadn’t hurt… especially when he unexpectedly showed some romantic interest in her. Their first date was something of a flop… both of them thinking of other people at the time. Yet they kept finding themselves together over and over…

Hallie’s eyes closed in memory. She knew when it happened. They were in bed together… afterwards. His guard was down, which was rare enough, and he was talking about himself, which was even more so. While her head rested on his chest she caught the glimpse of everything he had given up for his goal of making the world a better place… every personal comfort in friends and family and loves that he had lost. And she knew how dearly those sacrifices had cost him, how haunted he was, and why it had driven him to be such a hard, unyielding man on the surface. Those sacrifices couldn’t be for nothing. She fell a bit in love with a lonely, heartbroken, self-sacrificing soul whose last chance for redemption was to save the world. She got stupid.

Why didn’t it scream out to her that he’d burn straight through her to save the world without the slightest hesitation? How could the fact that he did so possibly feel like a betrayal?

She swore out loud.

Because she was also a bit in love with a lonely, heartbroken, self-sacrificing soul who didn’t have the chiseled good looks, or the finely tuned body, or the barely contained physical power. But this one would burn straight through the world to save her… and she wasn’t even his lover. And she might have been able to save him now if she hadn’t been so incredibly stupid.

So much for her life being less complicated now that she wasn’t human any more.

“Ugh…” Visionary noted as he regained consciousness to find himself sprawled out on the bed. “Did I get shot in the face again?”

“In a manner of speaking…” Sarah answered, leaning over him. “He’s okay!” Dancer called out to the other room. “So please don’t kill Karl… He buys me such nice Christmas presents!”

“What’s going on?”

“My brother’s learning the value of some anger management… at least around your close friends. Last I saw, Liu Xi was threatening to hang Karl out my window, which now seems to be located on the 87th floor of the Twin Parody Tower.”

He tried to think on that, but it hurt too much. “Okay… Now why do I smell like a Greek platter?”

“Oh!” the waitress reached down and lifted the spiced lamb shank off of his throbbing eye. “Sorry… I didn’t have any steaks in my freezer so I had to raid downstairs.” She looked at him critically. “Um… the marinade may actually have inflamed the swelling.”

“Does it look bad?”

“Compared to the rest of you?” she countered with a nod to his corpse-like features.

“You haven’t seen the rest of me since I was 16” he noted dryly. “Unless you took advantage of my helpless state just now, and ruined the surprise for our wedding night.”

Sarah smiled wickedly. “That line would have made Kerry gag out loud.”

“I know” Visionary said, a grin splitting his tired face. “All the more reason for you to tell me what’s going on so we can find her and try it out…”

“Sister..?” a voice prodded gently from behind her. “Are you… all right?”

Hallie groaned and opened her eyes. “Miiri” she greeted the Caphan ex-slave civilly.

Miiri shifted her annoyingly perfect body uncomfortably. “You seemed troubled… I thought… I don’t mean to intrude.”

The holographic woman sighed. “It’s not you. It’s just… I’m feeling cheap and stupid, and I’m busy pitying myself, and, well… I can’t really complain about feeling thoroughly used to someone who was kept as a pleasure slave for years by the Slimey Slaver Lovetoad, now can I?”

Miiri nodded. “If we performed adequately we were given coarse blankets to cover ourselves when we slept on the metal floors” the Caphan noted with a perfectly straight face.

“I’m… I’m sorry… I…” Hallie studied her closely. “You’re teasing me..!” she accused, shocked.

Miiri broke into a sly little smile. “A bit. Life isn’t a competition, sister. I’m sure you’re capable of finding perfectly valid ways to feel stupid and used.”

The AI blinked and then snorted with appreciation. “You’ve come a long way from when you and the others arrived, haven’t you?”

“I had people step up to help me when I was troubled” the ex-slave explained.

Hallie looked over the voluptuous bombshell with the creamy olive skin that always managed to make her feel like a gangly horse with a coat the color of under-ripe fruit. Life wasn’t a competition, she reminded herself. Besides, a little petty part of her noted, it looked like the perfect Caphan was putting on weight…

“Hallie?”

The hologram shook herself out of such small thoughts and sighed internally. Did she have to be more compassionate and wiser than the artificial woman as well? “I… I can’t really talk about it to any of the others. I’d die if they knew I’d been that foolish. And I suppose I might have to kill Dream before he could say “I told you so…”

Miiri nodded. “I’m really very discreet. I’ve hardly told anyone how woefully unimpressive the Lovetoad’s anatomy was.”

Hallie smiled in spite of herself, as she couldn’t help but like the young green woman. How annoying. “Do you remember Mr. Epitome?”

“The eunich?”

“Not yet…” Hallie noted darkly.

“I didn’t do any of this…” Visionary argued in a slightly sick voice, studying the paper. “Not to the Juniors… not to Liu Xi… not to the Caphans… Not to Kerry!” He swallowed thickly. “I wouldn’t.”

Sarah reached out to take the paper from his hand, then rolled it up and swatted him in the head with it.

“Gah!” Visionary winced, blinking his swollen eye. “What…?”

“That’s for thinking you had to tell me that” Sarah noted. “Um… sorry about the eye.”

“Okay… I might have had that coming. Visionary conceded, standing up and pacing despite the wooziness he felt. He hoped he could blame it all on the recent head trauma, especially as he didn’t want to draw attention to the tightness that had returned in his chest. “I should probably cancel my subscription” he noted dryly, then sighed. “It’s a problem for later. I’m barely keeping a grip as things are… No need to get distracted from the matter at hand…”

“You’re what?!?” Hallie’s voice rang out from the kitchen area.

Visionary blinked and looked towards the door. “What do you suppose..?”

“Um… probably nothing” Sarah assured him quickly. “Unfortunately, the lies in the paper might have some bearing on the problem at hand…”

If possible, Visionary went even more pale. “You think Kerry might have read them?”

Sarah tried to look optimistic. “She’s not one for the news…” she answered gamely. “Maybe she didn’t notice.”

Visionary nodded. “The headline on this one is “Sexcapades of the Super Pervert”.”

“Yes, but, um… the font could be bigger.”

The Regular frowned. “What do you suppose the odds are that she hasn’t seen them at all?”

The quiet night was broken by the sound of fire alarms ringing across the city as multiple trucks rushed to respond.

“Probably not all that good” Sarah conceded.

“… So that’s the course of action.” Visionary summed up to the group in Sarah’s tiny apartment. “Sarah and I are going to go find Kerry. After that, it seems like there’s a reasonable chance that I might drop dead, so I’d appreciate any help I can get on that front.”

“You might drop dead…” Karl said from his seat on the couch, as far away from Liu Xi as possible. “And yet that’s your second priority after finding where Kerry’s run off to this time?”

“She’s my responsibility” Visionary sniffed defensively. “No matter what that lady from the state says.”

“Now don’t you feel sorry for punching him?” Sarah asked her brother sweetly. “… Karl?”

“You’re an idiot” Hallie snapped at the Regular.

He blinked. “I just felt that this plan was…”

“I’m not talking about the plan” she grumbled.

“I thought you knew…” Miiri said unhappily.

“Knew what?” Visionary asked, completely lost again.

“Nothing” Hallie sighed, coming forward to kiss his cheek. “I’ll do my part. But if you think I’m angry now, just you wait… If you die on me, I’ll find some way to kick your ass for it.”

“I’ll make some calls for her.” Urthula offered. “I know people.” The ghoul got up and straitened her dress. “I’ve got a few ideas on who to talk to about your heart condition as well…” she added darkly.

“I would be feeling better if Visi would be visiting cute Grace first…” Yo said worriedly.

“Sarah can keep an eye on me.”

“Sarah isn’t a medic” Hallie countered. “She should have some way of knowing when you’re pushing past your limits… since it’s a fair bet you won’t tell her. Idiot.”

“Well, I…”

“It is being settled then!” Yo declared happily, slapping the sorting hat on his teammate’s head. “Cute Mr. Hat, please to be telling Sarah when Visi’s condition is worsening.”

“Can do” the hat replied.

“You’re not going to go spouting confidential medical information and history, are you?” Visionary asked pointedly.

“What, like that rash you developed last month? Or that time you caught your zipper on your…”

“Nevermind” Visionary sighed. “Aren’t I going to look conspicuous with a huge Gandalf-esque hat trying to track down Kerry?”

“Little bit” the hat agreed. “Lemme see what I can do…”

There was an alarming series of grunts and twists from atop his head, but when Visionary checked his reflection in the window he seemed to be wearing a battered and misshaped fedora instead. “Well, that’s not too bad…” he admitted. “It even sort of matches my coat. I look…”

“Like Dick Tracy’s inbred cousin” Hallie muttered.

“Do I want to know what I did this time?” he asked the holographic woman.

“It’ll save until you get back” she promised him.

“See?” Miiri said gamely. “Something to look forward too.” She nestled into his arms and rested her head under his chin. “Go and take care of Kerry… I know you need to. Just… promise to come back to… us.”

“I promise” Visionary said, touched by her sincerity.

Have you given any more consideration to having your heart ripped out and replaced by protoplasm? the Shoggoth asked.

“Um… let’s call that ‘plan B’. Or maybe around ‘Q’…” Visionary suggested nervously.

Liu Xi just shook her head at the Shoggoth, then gave Visionary a peck on the cheek before folding herself, the elder beast and Miiri back to Antarctica to retrieve Ebony.

“So… Karl...” Sarah began. “Will you be all right here alone until Ma comes back with Lisa?”

“Yeah, like that’ll bloody well happen. You think I’m letting you run off alone with the pervert, do you?”

“I’ll have the hat to chaperone” Visionary noted reasonably.

“You’ll have more than that” the huge Irishman growled.

“Cute Karl is being right…” Yo noted critically. “Chiaki and I will be returning to the mansion, but I will be calling cute Fleabot in as well. He is practiced at keeping you out of trouble.”

That wasn’t exactly in line with his personal experience, but Visionary was past arguing. “Right then… It’s a big city out there, and most of it’s flammable.” He tugged down on the brim of his hat with determination. “Let’s go find Kerry…”

to be continued...

Post By Visionary presents a bit of filler before Dancer kicks things up again. Sat Oct 08, 2005 at 06:04:34 pm EDT	Subject Heart of Darkness Chapter 12: Regrouping

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