Forest Week:  Lost In The Tropics Part 5


    As the Yeti spawned of Anna’s imagination began tearing into the drop bears on a landscape of ice, snow, and trees, she was surprised to see no blood or torn flesh.  The drop bears simply made a juicy sounding ‘pop’ when they were hit hard enough, and then they vanished.

    Then, Anna felt alone.  Not because she was literally alone at that point - the friends who journeyed with her had been replaced by drop bears and then popped by the Yeti - but because she had no guide, beyond her own instincts.  No one to bounce ideas off of, nobody to gain the approval of as she made her way around this strange place, and hopefully toward the Lair Legion.

    She tried to expand her senses again, as the cold northwest wind began blowing through the trees, sending loose snow cascading around her.  There was a mind behind everything that was going on here, and it had to access her mind to make it happen.  And just like with the internet, it could be back-hacked.  Anna was exceedingly good at that.

    Then she suddenly knew where the Lair Legion was, and every fiber of her being warned her to stay away.  She knew the Chronicler was not in control of this place, meaning the story coming together around her could change drastically at any moment.  No amount of back-hacking could prevent it.

    And she sensed a great anger at the center of it all.  Not the kind of anger that came from a loss of control - a cold, calculating kind of anger.  One that would never be quenched it touched everyone it intended to.

    Anna knew the name Pooty.  And as soon as she did, she knew she was in grave danger.  She also knew this was no minor dimensional disruption that she could get out of somehow.  This was a war, and she wouldn’t be freed until it was won, or she became a casualty.

    She was convinced that there was no way for her to win this war herself - she needed help.  The Lair Legion was trapped in this huge, vine choked palace somewhere between these dimensions.  The very same one she knew she must stay away from.  Inside those walls, Pooty’s control was total...

    ...but what if she brought the outside, inside?  A smile came to her face as she suddenly formed a plan.

    Unlike the Lair Legion, Anna could sense the psychic signal that corrupted humans’ memories.  It was attempting to command her as if she were human, at a very low simple level of the brain.  Since she lacked such simple, instinctual responses, most of the signal proved to be nonsense to her.

    But the signal could still affect her perceptions, and her surroundings.  Whoever broadcast it was smart enough to know that while it couldn’t understand Anna’s thoughts enough to control her, it could modify her behavior through her surroundings.  But she was becoming wise to that, and it was working less and less.

    Anna’s plan was to take the helicopter and fly to Pooty’s palace.  She still wondered, however, how she was going to find it...until she entered the helicopter, and found Peter Pan’s flickering pixie still there, looking worried.

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’ll find him again,”  she reassured the winged creature.  “Hey, can you show me where Pooty’s palace is?”

    The pixie couldn’t speak, but it fluttered around the cabin excitedly.

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“Excellent.”  Anna said with a smirk as she started the engine of the aircraft.  “I plan to fly us there, probably crash-land nearby as we’re attacked on approach, and then I’ll blast through the palace wall.  Most likely I’ll get lost once I’m inside.”

    She looked at the pixie, and shrugged.  “I’ve got to be realistic, right?”


---


    The flight was rather long, and Anna knew she was pushing the little helicopter to its limits.  It wasn’t supposed to be an attack helicopter, it was supposed to be for civilian use.  But she knew it would be doomed eventually anyhow, once she arrived where she wanted to be.

    And there it was, towering over the tree canopy, enveloped in a thick mist.  A huge dark castle, choked with vines, looking like it had been abandoned and left for nature to reclaim it.

    Just as she anticipated, Pooty’s control over what passed for reality was much stronger there.  Multiple alarms began sounding in the helicopter cabin, and she began descending fast, plowing through trees as she did.

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hang on.”  she told the pixie flittering around the cabin.  She braced her feet against the steel structure of the helicopter just as the loudest and most annoying alert sounded - the impact alarm.

    Glass shattered all around her, and there was a teeth-jarring ‘thud’ as the fast-moving helicopter came to a sudden and violent stop.  She could see two of its blades fly free, and fling through the vegetation ahead like dual machetes.

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“I guess this is our stop.”  Anna said.  She reached up and snatched the pixie out of the air, and slid it into the single front pocket of her white survival suit.  “It’s just to keep you safe, okay?  So don’t be upset.”

    Since the door’s frame had been dented so that the door wouldn’t open anymore, Anna kicked her way through what was left of the windscreen, and climbed out.

    Ahead was the vine choked, stone wall of the castle.  Stone, so it would be difficult to blast through.  But she also knew if she believed, maybe in something small, even Pooty’s power over semi-reality would falter.

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“Just a small hole.”  she said out loud as her lasers energized to maximum with a high-pitched whine.  “Just big enough to crawl through.”

    She fired the lasers, and there was a loud bang of an explosion.  She turned her head away from the shower of rock fragments and scorched vines.

    And then when she looked again, there was a hole in the wall, into darkness.  It looked daunting, for sure, but the alternative was waiting outside for the drop bears to find her.

    Anna gently patted the pocket with the pixie in it, and climbed inside.


---


    There was a stiff, cool wind blowing past Anna, and out through the hole she made.  It felt like souls were trying to escape the prison-like walls of the castle.

    Inside, things were surreal.  The halls appeared to be changing in shape, length, and destination as Anna progressed.  She knew then for sure that Pooty was involved - it was an old trick the Hooded Hood used at Herringcarp Asylum.  The solution was to stay focused, not allow herself to be confused, and keep her eyes open for traps.

    She froze when she realized there was a phantom moving beside her, like a projection on the wall to her right.  She took a couple of steps back before recognizing who the phantom was.  Then she moved closer...

    ...and Faite stared back.

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“Do not fear.”  Faite whispered like a gentle breeze.  “You are on the right path.”

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“How did you escape Pooty?”  Anna asked her.

    Faite smiled briefly, and replied, “I didn’t have to.”

    Then she vanished.

    Anna began walking again, thinking about what Faite meant.  Lara Night once told her that Faite used the most subtle and undetected methods to keep things on track.  And she knew that at the moment, she was fairly subtle and undetected.  After all, she wandered Pooty’s palace and he seemed to be unwilling to stop her, like he didn’t consider her a threat.

    And in a way, Pooty was right.  All he had to do was keep Anna lost in the palace someplace until he neutralized the Lair Legion.  After that, it didn’t matter anymore - one android wouldn’t be able to do much to someone who can control all of reality.

    Then she stopped.  There was something wrong, all of reality was already changing.  The walls and floor ahead of her had changed texture suddenly, and she was more sensitive to noticing those kinds of things than the Lair Legion might be.  It was a trap of subtle change in reality, and they most likely literally walked right into it.

    She extended her focus to examine what was ahead more closely.  It looked unusually smooth, like the interior of a dollhouse.  If it was a transformation that was in progress...Anna knew at that moment she could be reduced to a simple toy if she crossed into there.

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“I don’t like this.”  she whispered.  She backed up a little, and decided to take a different route.  Anna then stopped again, as she saw...

    It wasn’t a transformation, it was another dimensional anomaly.  The whole palace was riddled with them.  She realized that when she switched to infrared for a moment, because while light penetrated the transitions between the anomalies, heat did not - it was like looking at a solid wall.

    Her heart sank then, as she realized the Lair Legion was probably trapped inside one of those dimensional anomalies.  To attempt to save them, she would have to find the right one and survive it, and maybe pass through and survive several others along the way.  And she had to do it quickly, because the longer she stayed, the more power Pooty had over her.

    That meant it was time to unleash her true power.

    Anna sent out a signal, trying to ‘ping’ the Lair Legion comm-cards like she did before.  This time, she got a response from all of them at once.  She felt elated, but also had to keep in mind it could be part of the trap.

    She ran quickly into the stone wall closest to her, trying to break through, but it only cracked under the force.  It was far too thick to push through.  She hated to use her lasers so much, as they drained her internal battery quickly.  But time was of the essence, and she could already be too late as it is.

    Chiaki Bushido was a quite ordinary young Japanese woman.  She was a highly trained Samurai, who had learned with a sword, and kept it by her side, from a very young age.  When asked what her true strength was, however, she would say it was a strong belief in herself.  And she lived her life by it, always irrepressible, always making her own way.

    Anna didn’t have that same confidence in herself, so she looked up to Chiaki.  Just like Chiaki carried a sword, Anna too carried weapons of her own.  She longed to have the discipline and the wisdom to use them as effectively as the Samurai.

    Now was her chance.  She clenched her teeth, moved back until she was up against the opposite wall, and blasted away until it was nothing but rubble.  Then she raced through the hole into another similar hallway, and blasted through another wall, and another.  She felt like she was being tested, like someone was trying to find the limits of her power.  She would not show her limits.

    To balance her sudden high use of power, she ran as much as she could.  The kinetic movement recharged her batteries more quickly.  It fortunately helped her feign more confidence than she actually felt, which came in handy when she suddenly ran into a large room and came face-to-face with Pooty, the one-eyed teddy bear.

    The room was very large, and almost completely dark.  It had a very high ceiling, and no windows, and it smelled musty, and moist, like a neglected basement.

    Anna looked around the room, and there were life-sized plastic action figures of the Lair Legion, complete with large cardboard packaging, all along the walls.  She didn’t have much time to look, but she did see that the Yuki Shiro box said something about interchangeable jackets and a separate motorbike accessory.

    Before she could examine the rest, however, Pooty interrupted her.

    Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’ve been an annoyance long enough,”  he said in a cold, angry, gravelly voice.

    Anna spread out her feet and steeled herself for a fight.  She was certain she could beat a simple teddy bear, even one with powers over reality.  For a moment, she knew what it felt like to be a highly disciplined Samurai.

    And then she fell, for what seemed like an eternity through darkness, like she had been dropped through a trap door.  She landed painfully on her back, on soft ground, but was undamaged.  Then she felt cool air, and the sound of water nearby, and saw a blue early morning sky above her.

    She raised her head, and realized she was on the lawn of the Lair Mansion.  She had been thrown out of Pooty’s reality and sent home.  It was a bittersweet moment - happy to be home, but disappointed that she didn’t get to save the Lair Legion.

    For a moment, her mind raced with thoughts of finding Liu Xi Xian and getting back there right away, to save her friends - but it would be so risky, racing in blind like that.  The next step would have to take some planning and strategy.  

    Or maybe there was no next step...maybe the best thing to do would be to keep things safe at the Lair Mansion until the Lair Legion returned.  The real trap could be what happens if the Lair Mansion is left unprotected.  Hallie was there and vulnerable, and Visionary’s kids too.

    Anna sighed and sat up in the grass.  So many options...she would have to think about each of them carefully.  She hoped she would make the right choice.


TO BE CONTINUED?
    

-- Story written and copyrighted (C) 2009 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