Adventures in Parodyverse - Within These Walls Part 1 (UT#315 tie-in)

Adventures in Parodyverse - Within These Walls Part 1 (UT #315 tie-in)

    Lara Night awoke abruptly, like a person wakes up when something has suddenly changed. She sat bolt upright, and her breathing was fast. Overwhelmed with senses she couldn't quite sort out right away, she stumbled out of bed.

    Her first clue that something was different about the infirmary she woke up in was that even though she stumbled out of the bed and she should have fallen she never touched ground. She was floating an inch above it, in fact, on her knees. It was as if the floor was repelling her.

    The second clue gave her a start, and sent her heart racing. When she rose again, she was also still lying in the bed. Only it wasn't really her, it was a construct, a hologram. But the instruments by the side of the infirmary bed continued to read as if she was still attached to them. She wondered who put it there.

    And everything felt strange. She felt as if she was made of energy and everything around her was feeding that energy. But she didn't remember transforming...or know that she could do so while she was asleep. Unless...

    Lara shuffled over to the rack the I.V. was mounted on. There were two bags attached - the last time she remembered looking there when she was last awake, there was only one bag. She looked closely at the second one, and it appeared to be...a sedative? What was going on?

    She moved over to another bed where Sir Mumphrey lay unconcious. She didn't remember him being there before - what happened to him? He too had a bag of sedative. She reached for it...but then pulled away when the thought occurred to her that it was better if she wasn't discovered.

    Maybe the entire infirmary was...a hologram?

    Then she remembered what awakened her. The scream of a young girl somewhere in the mansion...not out loud, but in her mind. A psychic scream, from someone close to her, who felt the worst kind of terror. Lara took on a worried look as she wished she knew exactly where it came from - but those kinds of senses were like a rock thrown into a pond. It could have come from anywhere.

    She decided that since that simulation of her unconcious body seemed to still be in the infirmary bed, at least that gave her an opportunity to investigate - at least until someone figured out she wasn't really in the infirmary anymore.

    As she left the infirmary, slipping through the wall without using the door, she couldn't decide if she was fortunate at having been freed from whatever calamity had obviously occurred, or whether she would have been better off staying asleep like she was supposed to. Only one way to find out, she thought to herself.

---

    The Psychic Samurai surprised the Parodopolis Police. She arrived through the front entrance of their headquarters and strolled confidently into the lobby. Once the shock of her arrival had passed, a small posse of twelve police officers moved in to block her way...hands on holstered guns.

    "I've come here to speak to the person currently in charge," she said calmly without missing a beat.

    "You're violating curfew," one of the officers pointed out. "And the Lair Legion is wanted by Baroness Zemo."

    Chiaki gave them the slightest nod, careful to keep her hands clasped in front of her and visible the entire time. "I'm happy to inform you that I am not a member of the Lair Legion. I'm not a superhero or even metahuman. You have nothing to fear from me."

    "There's still the matter of a curfew violation--" the same officer began.

    The Psychic Samurai interrupted him. "The curfew is for anyone caught outdoors after 8 pm or in groups larger than three. As you may note I am indoors and alone. Plus I am here on legitimate business. I wish to speak to your supervisor."

    "He's not available," the officer said. "Now turn around and surrender in the name of Baroness Zemo."

    Chiaki simply nodded and turned around slowly. There was a distant yet very loud explosion and the police station went completely dark.

    The police officers switched on their flashlights and swung them quickly around the room. At first they couldn't find the Psychic Samurai...but then all of them finally focused on her standing with her sword drawn. Hanging from the blade were all of their sidearm weapons. She dipped the blade and they all fell in a pile to the floor.

    A couple of the officers tried to call for backup but the radios were all dead. The explosion and power outage took out the police communications network.

    "The explosion set off the security system," she spoke to them firmly yet softly. "All the doors have been automaticall barred shut. I have limited time...you can either agree to speak to me or you can fight me and die."

    "Why are you doing this?" another officer asked, and in a smaller, more pitiful voice, "I have a family."

    She nodded again. "That is indeed why I am here to speak to you." She punctuated the last part by sheathing her sword. "Your families."

    The officers looked at each other, unsure of what exactly she meant...but they had an idea where she was headed.

    "The orders you are following are unjust," she continued softly.

    "Yeah well I can't afford to get fired. And I don't want to be executed." There was a grumbling among the officers to rush her and get this over with.

    Chiaki frowned and speaked louder above the noise. "When you tell your children, or your grandchildren, about this day...will you hold your head high or hang it in shame?"

    A shamed silence fell over the room, and there was a scattered nearly silent embarassed shuffling.

    One of them replied again, only sounding more defeatist this time. "I can't afford to get fired...and I don't want to die. Not over this. My family needs me."

    Though Chiaki coudn't see their faces in the darkness she could hear them agreeing. "I cut the power to the police station to free you," she said. "If you cannot recieve unjust orders you cannot enforce them. The security system will keep the doors sealed so nobody gets in until power is restored...however long that will take." Those last words implied that it would be a long time.

    "We can't just go on strike," another officer piped up. "Baroness Zemo will send soldiers here to break down the door and shoot us."

    "You can't get orders from her with the power out. Instead you will take orders in person from someone you trust." Chiaki strolled casually to a back stairway door and tapped on it three times.

    The door opened, and out stepped Commissioner Don Graham and Detective Jack Burns - they smelled of explosives. The officers were surprised to see Graham - they heard he had been jailed by soldiers for refusing to follow orders. Somehow he had been freed.

    Graham looked at the Psychic Samurai. "You're crazy," he said, "But I like your style. I still don't see how this will help slow down Zemo, though."

    Chiaki replied quietly, with a slight smile. "The fiercest creature cannot harm you if it has no claws or teeth." She then bowed slightly and headed into the stairway, springing up the steps into the darkness.

    "She's a walking fortune cookie," Jack Burns noted with some amusement.

    Graham smiled, and then turned to the officers assembled in the lobby. "What are you all standing around for? We have work to do!"


---

    After stopping for a change of clothes - the hospital gown they put her in during her stay in the infirmary was terribly uncomfortable - Lara Night decided to check out the surroundings in the mansion. A quick exploration of the mansion's halls revealed to her that Baroness Elizabeth Zemo had taken control of the mansion. It was easy to figure out that with the Lair Legion apparently missing from the building and Sir Mumphrey Wilton unconcious in the infirmary, that she probably had taken over a lot more than that.

    Lara never did find the source of that scream, or the location of Beth Zemo or any of the Lair Legion or the kids. She hoped they were okay, sequestered in one of those areas of the mansion she was afraid to check because they were heavily guarded or under surveillance.

    She also began to understand the strange sensation that everything around her was giving off energy. It's because it all was indeed energy - it seemed everything to the range of her extrordinary senses had been transferred from matter to energy. It was all like a giant computer game.

    Lara could have guessed Beth Zemo was behind it...but she didn't have any proof until she happened to catch a news broadcast about Baroness Zemo's 'ambitious plan to save us all from the Parody Master'. She shivered when she watched that.

    As she returned to the infirmary she looked around again. Mumph was safe for the moment, so Lara could breathe a sigh of relief. Her own simulated avatar hadn't changed. Both of those bought Lara some time to explore since nobody would be suspicious.

    She froze as she saw the door to the infirmary open and a doctor with two soldiers entered. She quickly slipped through the wall into an open storage area - she hid behind the shelves so she could look through the items piled on them.

    "How do they look?" another voice asked.

    It was Herbert Garrick, Lara recognized. Something was wrong with him, though. He was giving off a strong electrical signal. That set off a warning in her mind that prevented her from simply stepping out from behind the shelves and asking him to release her and Sir Mumphrey.

    "They're stable, sir." the doctor reported.

    "Good. Keep me posted." Garrick strode out of the infirmary with the two soldiers.

    The doctor checked the I.V. bags and turned to leave. But then he stopped, turned around, and headed right for the shelves. Lara slipped backwards through the wall, not really caring where it went - she was too shocked that he may have seen something.

    The room she stumbled into revealed just how unusually confusing the layout of the Lair Mansion was. There was an ancient, rusted iron boiler that had been decommissioned long ago when it became cheaper and lower maintenance to heat the mansion with baseboard heaters instead of steam.

    Plus, she noted as she examined the huge iron structure, at some point the boiler had been neglected and exploded. A huge chunk of it was missing, and fragments on the floor accounted for the hole. She looked inside and created a light source - inside was an oily black liquid, a mixture of fuel oil and water left when that room was abandoned.

    There were entire areas of the mansion like this. There had to be. Entire huge rooms abandoned to time...or perhaps reclaimed. That thought gave Lara a little hope...that somehow the Lair Legion, or Visionary's, Mumph's, and Dream's kids could have escaped into one of those areas.

    And she also began to understand how that hologram of her sleeping could have been set up. She smiled inwardly as she left the basement, knowing that someone had been looking out for her. She hoped she would be able to repay the favor.

TO BE CONTINUED

-- Story written and copyrighted (C) 2007 by Jason Froikin, and may not be
-- reprinted without permission.
-- Yuki Shiro designed by Jason Froikin, based on designs by Masamune Shirow
-- Liu Xi Xian and the Psychic Samurai are original design by Jason Froikin
-- Lara Night is an original creation by Jason Froikin

Post By Anime Jason Thu Jun 07, 2007 at 02:12:35 pm EDT	Subject Adventures in Parodyverse - Within These Walls Part 1 (UT#315 tie-in)

	[New] [Email] [Print] [RSS] [Tales of the Parodyverse]	Next In Thread >>