Well…here it is. It sucks, to be sure. I’ll explain why later.
Oh, and I split the main story and B-Story into separate posts, to make it a bit easier to read. I hope it works.
Issue 28: Into the Woods
A FEW DAYS LATER, IN DEEP 14…
“…daring spree of jewelry store robberies…”
BZZT!
“…still baffled by the librarian’s grisly murder…”
BZZT!
“…building a Del Taco inside the RPGCity Museum…”
Now depressed beyond all reasonable measure, Pierson switched off the small television set. They had been literally living underground for the last few days, trying to find some way to secretly enter and exit the hidden shelter. The front door was out; the elevator was way too slow, and even if they could get upstairs in time, the streets were no doubt being monitored. They thought about digging a tunnel to a more secluded area of town, but that was little more than a temporary solution.
And even then, they had no vehicle anymore, thanks to the Illuminati. Their communicators and CSAs were all connected to the UN’s central database…which was probably also Illuminati controlled. Demigod could teleport the team anywhere, but that could easily be tracked…
Then it hit him. After pulling himself from under the fallen boulder, Pierson quickly ran back into the main cavern.
INSIDE THE MAIN CAVERN…
The Task Force sat huddled around a small table, a number of vehicle blueprints scrambled about. Dr. Forrester stood behind them, his back turned, tinkering with what resembled a pile of pointy, glowing Tinker Toys. Frank was still busy in the restaurant, and thus was not privy to this conversation.
“And so,” said Pierson, “we need a new means of transportation.”
Everyone looked around for a few seconds, before returning their attention to their esteemed leader. “So…what’s the plan?” said GG Crono.
Pierson pointed to an old blueprint of the Task Force-Mobile. “I figured that we could follow the exact same design as before, with some modifications.” He grabbed a pencil and started drawing on the paper, finally stopping to reveal crossed-out rocket launchers replaced with a stealth field generator. With some changes to the engine, we should be able to power the thing without too much difficulty.”
The other Task Forcers looked around for a few seconds, trying to rationalize the scheme in their heads. Fortunately, Dr. Forrester was not in the mood for candy-coated deconstructions. “And just HOW do you plan to build this thing?”
The heroes looked at their new landlord, once again raking their brains for a solution. Mabat was the first to speak. “Um…we could just…borrow stuff from the junkyard…”
“You apparently can’t even go outside without some sniper blowing your brains out,” said Dr. F. “And don’t even bother asking us to help! I already took you do-gooding heroes in; I don’t need any more brownie points!”
An uneasy silence fell over the cavern. GG Crono was the first to actually speak up. “Well, we can’t drive, and we can’t walk. Obviously flying’s out of the question.”
“The ground here is too thick to tunnel through, not without sending all of Deep 14 crashing down,” said demigod. “And even with this shield generator you are proposing, the Illuminati could still detect us.”
The deep thinking session continued unabated, with everyone trying desperately to figure out something, anything, that they could use to escape their underground prison. After what seemed like an eternity of this increasingly dull meeting, Mabatsekker finally shot to his feet, toppling the entire table onto GG Crono with his momentum. “I know what we can do! We can TELEPORT!”
Pierson looked up from helping GG Crono escape his captivity, a look of confusion plastered across his face. “We can what??”
Mabat spun around to Doctor Forrester. Despite the madness behind him, the mad scientist was STILL working on his little pile of toys. “Quick! Do you have a phone down here, preferably with a signal scrambler?!” The doctor motioned to a small rotary phone, sitting on a shelf at the other end of the chamber, right next to a strangely-colored toaster. “Pierson! Give Martinez a call!”
MEANWHILE, IN PUERTO RICO…
Martinez was halfway through a pretzel when he heard a buzzing noise on his counter. Sighing at yet another ruined meal, he pulled himself up and grabbed his cell. “Hello, hola, whatever,” he muttered.
A bunch of static erupted on the other side, before being replaced by Pierson’s distant, scratchy voice. “Wil? Wil!”
“Um…yes, this is him,” said Martinez. “Just one second.” He quickly rushed into his bedroom, slammed the door shut, and closed down any source of incoming light. Had this been twenty years ago, his siblings would have been pounding on the door for whatever smut he brought in that weak. “Where the hell are you?!” he snapped, trying his best to speak in hushed tones. “I heard the headquarters was destroyed, and-”
“No time to explain,” hissed Pierson. “We’re barely able to hold this jamming signal together. We just need something that avoids standard teleportation detection.”
Martinez shook his head sadly. “I can’t help there. Pretty much any low-level mage worth their salt can pick up on any spells big enough to move four people. If…whoever is watching you detected the source, they could follow it all the way back to your hideout.”
“Th…why we need you!” The other side was getting worse; they couldn’t hold it together much longer. “Do you know someone…nyone…that ca- help?”
Martinez’s response was immediate. “There’s one…slight possibility. I’ll send a courier in fifteen minutes.”
“…snap…Auntie…crackle…Pie Shop…pop,” and the other side died out, replaced with an ever-familiar dial tone. Martinez stared at the phone for a few seconds, trying to figure out just what was going on. Finally, he just plain gave up, turned the small device off, and raced to the large antique chest at the foot of his bed.
BACK AT DEEP 14…
Pierson kept shouting into the phone, long after everything snapped into a dial phone. “Hello? Wil? Can you hear me?” Finally frustrated beyond belief, he slammed the phone down, growling and snarling under his breath. “God damn phone scramblers!”
“You didn’t have to pay for it, remember?” said Dr. Forrester, finishing his radioactive scale model of an amusement park/death trap.
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER…
A small intercom next to the elevator suddenly started buzzing. Doctor Forrester quickly abandoned his most likely cancerous sales pitch, practically tripping over an impatiently waiting Task Force, and finally slammed down on a big green switch. A voice emerged from the squawk box, its speaker talking in a hushed tone. “Um…Steve? There’s this weird chick up here, keeps mumbling about meeting some people down here?”
“You didn’t invite someone over for dinner again, did you?” said Dr. F. “We don’t want a repeat of the Sandy Frank incident, do we?”
A series of pathetic whelps answered back, followed by the same hushed tone. “But…she’s saying some guy named ‘Wil Fred-o’ or something sent her! It might be important!”
BACK IN THE RESTAURANT…
Frank, still dressed in his Auntie McFrank disguise, stood staring at the kitchen’s intercom. Around him was a complex system of automated cooking devices, quickly preparing the day’s food stock faster than any human conceivably could. That, and it kept down on the total number of potentially disloyal employees, while also providing a quick and easy disposal option. Dr. Forrester’s voice finally buzzed over the system. “All right, they said send her down.”
Without as much as a second thought, Frank switched off the intercom, fixed his wig, and walked back through the double doors into the main restaurant. Between the small army of customers running in for a sugar high, as well as the FDA inspectors looking for a sizeable payoff, stood Ivonne. The half-elf girl was clutching a small bag to her chest, her eyes darting to and fro as if afraid someone was going to slit her throat any second. “WELL, DEAR!” shouted Auntie McFrank, practically sending the poor girl jumping through the ceiling. “We absolutely LOVED your resume!”
“Um…uh…but I didn’t…”
Frank grabbed the girl in what looked like a normal shoulder hug…but might as well have been a kung-fu action death grip, and started herding her towards the shop’s back area. “Now, we’re all ready to hire you and everything, but we still have to go through the interview process. Just some formalities and all, you know, hon?”
“Are…you really a male?” whispered Ivonne. Frank wisely ignored that question, instead choosing to push open the doors to the storage room. Once he was sure nobody else was looking, the not-so-sweet transvestite flipped the hidden elevator switch, flipping open the secret passage. At the same time, the elevator slowly lumbered back up, coming to a grinding halt just as Frank was shoving Ivonne inside. “Wh-What the hell are you…?”
“The Task Force is at the bottom,” said Frank. “Just hit the button, and it’ll do everything else. And buzz me before coming up, please?!” With that, he gave a quick wave before the wall flipped back, shutting Ivonne inside. The elf dropped the bag and charged at the closed wall, trying to pound away in hopes of hitting the door switch. Unfortunately, in the time since the wall sealed itself, it also sprung up an electric fence; upon contact, she was sent flying backwards, into the elevator. Her foot caught the bag’s strap, dragging it along behind her. As she pulled herself up, her hand accidentally pressed the switch, closing the elevator doors and sending the carriage downwards.
SOME TIME LATER, IN DEEP 14…
“HIS DAUGHTER?!”
For about the fifteenth time that day, the half-elf was practically thrown across the room by sheer vocal power. The Task Forcers, meanwhile, were more concerned about exactly why their “beloved mentor” decided to hide this important piece of information. Doctor Forrester didn’t have any idea what was going on, but until the girl was out of his lair he had to keep an eye on her.
“Well…it’s a long story,” stammered Ivonne. She then looked down at the bag, and remembered the reason she came in the first place. “Oh yeah, Wilfredo sent me to give you this!”
She dropped the bag on the table, its top flap coming undone on impact. From inside, she pulled out a map of the Very Scary Forest of Bad Things and small glowing rock. “What…does the Very Scary Forest of Bad Things have to do with anything?” asked Pierson.
“Father said you needed a teleportation device,” said Ivonne. “As far as he knows, there’s no way to build such a thing with current technology. There is ONE thing we can use, though.” She grabbed the small rock and held it up for all to see. As she touched it, green runes and glyphs began to etch and ebb through the stone, forming a seemingly ever-moving weave of characters. “This is a piece of the Waypoint, the same relic we elves used to come here in the first place.”
Everyone simply stared at the small, seemingly dancing inscriptions…except for Doctor Forrester. In the most stereotypical of mad scientist behaviors, he simply scowled at the whole spectacle. “Oh, please! You expect us to believe this thing is really magical?” That was what he would have said, had he not actually tried to touch the thing. He didn’t say much else after a few thousand volts raced through his body; he just looked at everyone in a bemused rage, smoking and sizzling all the while. “…That’s it. You guys have fun, I need to take a long bath.” With that last little bit of unnecessary squick, Dr. F ran off.
With that distraction gone, everyone’s attention returned to the task at hand. Demigod was the first to notice the flaw in their cunning plan. “If this stone came from an ancient teleporter, it might still work. How much power still remains, though?”
It seemed to take Ivonne a few seconds to fully digest everything demigod had said, and even then, it took more than a few head cranes to make out his inhuman voice. “Not…really. We need a larger piece of the waypoint. Fortunately, what’s left is still fully charged.”
“So…all we have to do is go in and grab these rocks?” asked Mabat. Ivonne’s head bowed slightly in response. “You’re hiding something, aren’t you?”
“That waypoint…is holy ground. It’s the one link we have left to our heritage, before the humans slaughtered us.” Nobody knew what she was talking about, but they did not like where the conversation was going. “We might…MIGHT be able to convince them to give you a larger piece, but after that, you’re on your own.” She held the stone over her head, and started chanting in some sort of unearthly sweet, yet also menacing language.
“Shanna kaie, ohka mis tre. Shanna kaio gre ny ireh ope.”
ROUGH TRANSLATION: “Return to me, gateway of my forefathers. Take me to the land of our ancestors.”
After a few rounds of chanting, a green shield appeared over the waiting heroes. Before anyone could rationalize what was going on, the entire field suddenly blinked out of existence, taking them with it.
AN INSTANT LATER, AT THE VERY SCARY FOREST OF BAD THINGS…
The entire group appeared deep inside a dark, scary forest. A VERY scary forest, in fact. The only things to travel with them were the clothes and armor on their backs, the forest maps, and the stone (now looking like nothing more than a grey pebble). After a few moments of disorientation, everyone started to look to and fro, desperately searching for some clues as to their current location.
“Wait a minute,” said GG Crono. “Did…did that thing just work?”
“Looks that way,” said Ivonne. She regarded the stone with no small sense of sadness. “The spell used up almost all the piece’s power, though. We need to find the actual waypoint, and fast.”
MEANWHILE, ABOARD THE AIRSHIP…
Damascus was halfway through filling out a day’s worth of reports when his comm system suddenly started buzzing. The video screen was filled with a picture of a young man, dressed in a stereotypical mage outfit (right down to the pointy hat and crook staff). The only sign of a uniform was an upraised collar and a few rank insignias, designating a lieutenant. “General Damascus, sir?”
Damascus grunted in reply. “Yes, Pariah?”
Pariah cleared his throat, as if unsure of what to say. “Sir…we’ve detected some sort of magical disturbance. It’s practically covering the entire US-Canadian border.”
“Sounds like the Task Force,” said Damascus. “Pinpoint the source, and prepare…”
“That’s the problem, sir,” muttered Pariah. He buried his eyes under his hat’s brim as he continued. “There’s no single source. It’s hitting over two dozen locations, all of them with an extremely weak signal. They keep moving, too; we can’t keep track of everything.”
Damascus simply stared at the screen, seemingly totally lost on what his next step should be. Seeing his bewilderment, and not wanting to get on his bad side any more, Pariah quickly switched off the live feed.
MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE FOREST…
“And a few months later, the blessed event,” finished Ivonne. The Task Force simply nodded in acknowledgment, more than a little amazed at Wil’s former sexual prowess.
They continued to march through the forest, using the maps to slowly but surely work through the confusing woods. “So,” said GG Crono, “this is our first time meeting any elves. What are they like?”
Ivonne cleared her throat, preparing for the usual cultural posturing. “Well, to be quite honest, we’re obviously superior to you humans and metahumans in every way possible. Why, when you primitives were still trying to figure out flint and tinder, WE were using laser weaponry, magic totems, and even robots! ROBOTS!” Her face morphed into that usual “oh look at me I just verbally owned you” look that so often precludes a crushing ego deflation session.
“Well, that’s well and good, but what was that about ‘humans slaughtering you all’ or whatever?” asked Pierson.
Ivonne’s mood quickly dropped. “Well, there were these two guys, Grok and Mok I think. They didn’t see how we were improving your lot, so they…kind of destroyed the waypoint. We couldn’t leave after that, and the humans went crazy and started killing anyone with pointed ears. The ones that survived went into the forest.”
“And…what were you doing, exactly?” said demigod.
“Why, we were teaching you your place in the universe!” said Ivonne. “Do you think humans would have developed that whole ‘We’re so special’ view if they actually KNEW how insignificant they were?”
Nobody knew quite how to respond to that. Well, Mabat had an inkling, but he figured Martinez would object to receiving his daughter’s spleen in the mail. That, and he couldn’t afford the shipping costs. Fortunately, GG Crono was, as always, able to interject. “Do the elves STILL have all their cool toys?”
Once again, Ivonne’s mood darkened. “Um…no. We lost most of them during our escape, and we couldn’t gather the parts to repair them.”
“And you can’t rebuild your waypoint?”
“…No.”
“And these…inferior stone age humans practically wiped you out?”
A long sigh from the half-elf. “Yes, in a typical violent primitive sort of way.”
“And this was AFTER you enslaved the entire species, just because you could?”
No response this time. Ivonne wasn’t even looking at him anymore.
Finally, everyone arrived at a large, empty clearing. Pierson looked back at the map, and noticed a large red X over their current location. “Well…according to this thing, we’re here. Everyone split up and start searching for…”
His words were interrupted by the most usual of forest-dwelling traps. A net, cleverly hidden by the underbrush, was quickly pulled up by invisible strings. Despite the entire troop weighing over five hundred pounds combined, the sheer web of hidden cables proved to be enough to not only lift the net over their heads and encompass their entire bodies inside, but were also capable of jaunting the whole thing into the treetops with a single quick motion. Only Ivonne was standing far enough away to avoid the net, and thus remained alone on the forest floor. Her eyes locked on the distant tree tops, a look of grave concern on her face.
“Everyone,” she whispered, “please forgive me.”
THE END OF STORY A
