"This isn't possible..." Agent Garrick complained.
"Sure it is..." Griffin responded, swinging his flashlight back and forth through the dry underbrush. The bright blue beam cut its way deeper into the woods, while a glance behind him showed the wrecked rental car marked by burning flares at the edge of the forest maybe 30 yards away. The remnants of the road lay under and between the tree trunks, although sections of it had been tossed aside where they had sprouted underneath it. "You said we were here to investigate a spooky voodoo forest... what did you expect?"
"I never said it was a spooky voodoo anything!" she snapped, although she had to grab quickly to keep from losing her glasses now that one of the earpieces had bent in the crash. The crooked way they barely perched on her nose would be endearing on someone with a bit less facial swelling. "The increased forest growth could have been any number of things, from pollution to a natural occurrence..."
"Maybe before it jumped out in front of you, sure..."
"It didn't jump out in front of me!" she growled.
"Well, whatever you want to put on your paperwork is fine with me. From my experience though, paying chicken with a tree usually doesn't go over real well with superiors..." He bent down to inspect the road where the roots of another tree emerged. "Besides, while this might technically be the middle of nowhere, I think someone would have had to have used this road in the last 12 hours before we came along... meaning that this is less than a day's growth. For a tree, that kind of motion is practically agile." He looked up at her. "Well, do you want to call it in, or should I?"
"Call what?" she asked defensively.
"Call in that it's a paranormal investigation now, and get OPS out here to take over. And have them drop off a new rental car while they're at it, cause that last one is pretty shot."
Special Agent Garrick sniffed. "I should think we could be bothered to actually conduct a rudimentary investigation before we call anything in" she argued. "Besides, we might not be able to get a signal way out here..."
"What, are we in some cheesy horror movie now?" Griffin snorted, pulling a mobile device from his pocket. "It's the middle of United States. I'm pretty sure..." He paused, looking at his phone with a worried expression. "Uh-oh..."
"What?" she asked, digging in her jacket for her own phone. "Some kind of interference?"
"No... The Seahawks are losing 27 - 0 in the Monday Night game." He chewed his lip thoughtfully. "Crap, that's going to put me behind in the pool."
She glared at him. "Okay, fine... so we get a signal" she muttered, thrusting her phone back into her pocket and continuing into the woods. "But I fought too hard to get this assignment, and I'm not calling in the cavalry to come and take it all away just when it gets interesting."
"They're trees" Griffin argued after her, slapping his hand against the rough bark of a nearby trunk to emphasize his point. "There's only so interesting they can be."
There was a sudden rustling sound as shapes began to form within the trunk, bulging and curving until the young agent found his hand gripping something significantly softer, rounder and altogether perkier.
Griffin quickly retrieved his hand as the nude woman stepped from within the trunk, her skin a perfect match for the bark. "Well..." he conceeded, "Maybe some trees are more interesting than others..."
The woman smiled up at him, her green eyes twinkling. Then she raised the assault rifle.
"What the hell are you doing?!" Acting Special Agent Gina Garrick asked with equal parts alarm and irritation as the SPUD agent raced past her, grabbing her arm and dragging her along with him.
"Dryad with a machine gun! Dryad with a machine gun!" he submitted urgently. He swung her around a tree trunk, pressing his body protectively over hers.
"Get off of me! What do you think..."
"One sec." Drawing a pistol from beneath the back of his shirt, he rolled out from behind cover. In a flash he squeezed off three shots which cracked heavily through the night air, then froze, squinting to see clearly in the starlight.
"Huh" he noted finally, biting his lip. He walked back the way they had come.
"What is it? What did you shoot?" Agent Garrick whispered harshly, staying behind her tree. She finally peeked around the side to find him carefully inspecting an oddly shaped trunk.
"But... This is just a tree" he noted.
Hesitantly, she came out from cover. "Yes..."
"It's not a naked woman with generously proportioned... military ordinance. Not at all."
"No" she agreed carefully with the armed man.
His eyes flashed towards her. "Don't look at me that way! I know my nymphs, and this was a nymph with an assault rifle!" he gestured to the bulging irregular trunk.
"I'm... sure you do..." She smiled her most broad, nonthreatening smile at him and held a hand up in front of her while reaching into her jacket pocket. "You know, maybe we could use an ambulance after all..." she announced in a tone that also carried an "I have chemical mace and know how to use it" subtext.
Griffin scowled. "Dammit... I didn't hit my head that hard in the crash. Put your phone away." He touched a bullet hole in the side of the trunk and rubbed the leaking sap between his fingers. "No... wait. Better yet, use it and start doing whatever it is you do" he said, turning towards her. "The road is obviously a hazard, so get the local cops to shut it down. We'll need arial surveillance to determine just where the boundaries of these woods are and any other roads it may intersect and shut those down too. You're going to need to start pulling missing persons cases from the county or counties it has spread across... find out if anyone has gone unaccounted for in the last few days especially, and get a search and rescue team on standby in case they have."
She looked at him warily. "Okay, that all sounds rational... so how do you explain your little moment of Rambo vs. conifer?"
"I... don't know yet" he conceeded. "I need to make a few calls of my own." He looked around the forest in concern. "From outside the tree line, I'm thinking."
"No, Bixby, buddy... I know SPUD has files on this kind of thing, whether they acknowledge its existence or not. I just do, okay? I don't care if neither one of us has clearance for it... you find out who is in charge of the Mythlands desk... it's gotta be either agents Eddings, Brooks or most likely Pratchett. I need to know if there's any intel on a possible gateway in Kansas. You don't need to know what that means. Go above his head if you have to. Oh, I expect he'll take it up with the director too... don't worry, she'll back me on this. What? No, dammit... that wasn't a hickey, I took a judo chop to the neck! NO she wasn't the one who did it! Just get the damn information!"
Griffin jabbed the off button on his phone and scowled at it as Garrick came to join him sitting on the back bumper of the totaled rental car. "It took a bit of talk, but I have the local police taking me seriously now" she told him. "We're going to use roadblocks to establish a 5 mile perimeter around the forest from all sides. They put me in touch with the local land-owners as well... all are accounted for except for one, the Willigers homestead about 3 miles west through the forest. Phone and power may have been disrupted... but then the sheriff says they always did keep pretty much to themselves. They're going to keep trying" She looked pointedly at the phone in his hand. "So what was your call about?"
"Eh... Just following some leads."
"I see" she noted tensely, sizing him up. "May I remind you, Agent Griffin, that you report directly to me on this assignment? I don't think I like you following up "leads" while keeping me in the dark." She looked at him over her broken glasses. "Now... what is this "Mythlands"?"
He ran a hand through his brown, unkempt hair. "You know, my mother always said that eavesdropping is a nasty habit."
"Says the spy."
"Yeah, I suppose it wasn't all that convincing coming from her either" he admitted. "Look, there are some things that even an Acting Special Agent of the Bureau of Land Management isn't cleared to know about, surprisingly enough" he countered. "But honestly, as soon as I know something concrete about the situation, I'll..." he paused as his phone started vibrating. "Oh... I was waiting on this call back. I need to take this."
She raised her eyebrow but made no motion to get up.
"It's family... kind of personal..." he prodded.
She gave him a tight smile and crossed her arms, not budging.
"Right" He sighed and raised the phone to his ear. "Iris! Hey, thanks for getting back to me... Listen, I... Uh-huh... Yeah, that's... Uh-huh... Iris... Iris... Iris, I need... Uh-huh... Issue #1700, you say..? Uh-huh... Iris... Iris... Well, maybe he didn't know about... Uh-huh... uh-huh... Iris... No, I would think they must make some kind of ointment to... Uh-huh... Would you just... What? ...No, I'll hold." He took a deep breath and sighed.
Garrick raised her eyebrow again.
"She had another call" the SPUD agent noted.
"Busy girl. Lucky we aren't doing anything important."
"No, wait... this is relevant. Maybe. Eventually." He paused as he caught Agent Garrick's look, and covered the reciever with his hand. "She's not always like this, it's just... well, that's a long story. Once she's winded enough, or pauses to take a drink, then I'll..." He suddenly broke off his explanation. "No, Iris, I'm still here. Great... Hey, listen, I just need to know if Ollie is up to any of his old tricks in the midwest... No, Kansas... Wait, what's happening in North Dakota? No, I'm not accusing... Dammit, Iris, I am *not* "the man"... Well, that doesn't make... You can't call that a... Okay, *maybe* that one time... Uh-huh... uh-huh... Iris, listen... I gotta... uh-huh... uh-huh... Oh, totally... Yeah, I'll be there for Christmas. You too. Later."
"...well?" Agent Garrick prodded.
"It isn't my teenage cousin Oliver trying to take over Kansas" Griffin asserted. "Probably. Though I'm guessing it's a bad time to visit Mt. Rushmore." He shrugged as she shot him one last look of disgust before pushing off the bumper and walking around to the other end of the car. "Hey, you're the one who wanted to be left in the loop."
"If you're not going to give me answers, I'll go find some of my own" she growled, scooping up a backpack from the car as she headed out into the looming forest. "The deputy should be here to coordinate efforts in about 20 minutes... tell him I've gone in for a look around."
"Whoa, whoa!" Griffin exclaimed, sliding off the bumper to pursue her. "I don't think splitting up's a good idea."
"Now who thinks we're in some cheesy horror movie?" she asnwered. "It's a forest in the middle of Kansas. I'll be fine."
"Yeah..." he agreed, falling in beside her as they once again stepped out of the moonlight and into the shadows of the treelimbs above. "You really look like the outdoorsy type, and not at all like Velma from "Scooby Doo" in a power suit. I'm coming too."
She glanced dismissively to his leisure shirt while she pulled a can of bright orange spray paint out of the backpack. "Right... woodsman that you are. I suppose that in addition to the rest of your colorful background, you were raised by wolves too?"
"Well... a border collie, actually" he corrected her absently, shaking his flashlight until it once again cast a bright blue beam off into the depths of the trees. "And I wouldn't say she raised me exactly, but "It takes a village" and all that."
She snorted as she began tagging tree trunks along their path with orange lines. "Why is it that everything you say is either annoying or makes no sense?"
"Frustrating, isn't it?" he sympathized. "You should see me at dinner parties trying to make small talk. Let it slip that a raven taught you all you know about English Lit, and see how long until you're left standing awkwardly alone by the cocktail weenies."
"Oh, come on..." she prodded as they pushed through some underbrush trying to follow the increasingly broken path of the main road. "Surely you can keep people entertained by regaling them with the epic exploits you witnessed throughout your childhood among the reckless and famous..."
"Yeah... it's a lot of fun talking about your family and loved ones to people who think they already read enough in the papers to have a valid opinion about them... Isn't that right, Ms. Daughter-of-the-former-Vice-President?"
Her eyes tightened but stayed focused ahead of her as she reached up to catch her slipping glasses once again. "Okay... so maybe dinner parties do suck." She pulled out her phone to check the GPS. "In about a quarter mile, a dirt road is supposed to branch off and lead to the Willigers farm. I'd like to find it and mark it."
"And then head back to the car?" Griffin prodded.
"What's the matter? Afraid of getting lost in an endless tree farm?"
"A tree farm? No. Now, if it were endless corn... then I've heard stories." He inhaled and added under his breath "...admittedly, I've never heard the end to those stories, but still."
The sound of a assault rifle being cocked comprises two distinct halves. Griffin was already tackling Gina Garrick by the midway point between the two.
The edges of trees around them exploded into splintered fragments as they hit the ground. Weapons fire thundered through the darkened woods deafeningly. The SPUD agent covered the beauracrat's body as best he could, pushing her deeply into the brush of the forest floor.
The sudden halt to the gunfire was nearly drowned out by the ringing in the ears of the two targets. Griffin reacted first, lifting his head and scanning the immediate ground for better cover. The visible landscape of Kansas was maddeningly flat, but the heavy trunks around them broke up the line of sight adequately.
"Move!" he commanded, hauling his assigned superior up by her armpits and forcing to stagger 15 feet to their right where he once again tackled her over the trunk of a sizable fallen oak as the next round of gunfire began. He pressed her body as far underneath the great trunk as he could, his own right up against her, face to stunned face.
"Wha...what's happening?" Garrick choked. Her glasses hung diagonally across her face, and yet her eyes seemed even larger.
Griffin just shook his head tearsely and listened as the second round of shots ended. Whomever was out there had a light footfall, especially with all the dried leaves about. Reaching under the back of his shirt, he removed his SPUD-issue Masamune ND-38 pistol. He closed his eyes and concentrated, forcing his attention away from Special Agent Garrick's shallow breath across his face.
There. Magazine slide. West-southwest. He threw his arm over the trunk and fired in that direction before his head cleared the tree enough to see. There was a snarl of profanity and a figure some thirty yards away dove for cover of its own. The SPUD agent was nowhere close to hitting it, but he made his point. He hated to be on the only side cowering.
"I think there's only one of them" he whispered, ducking back down.
"Them? Who's them? "Them" is decidedly plural!" the Interior agent whispered back in a high, tight voice. She bit her lower lip, then added "This tree is deadfall."
Griffin blinked. "What?"
"It's an oak tree, and it's deadfall" she breathed. "It died and fell over."
He nodded uncertainly as he pondered whether this new observation suggested that she was more or less hysterical. "We're being shot at by someone with a really, really big gun" he pointed out, not unreasonably.
"This tree is an oak, and it wasn't here yesterday, and it has grown old, withered and died here" she countered.
He opened his mouth to retort and then paused. "Okay, I admit, that is more unusual than people shooting at me with really big guns." He switched out clips on his handgun and pressed it into her palm. "Take this and fire it into the air now and again. I want that bastard to keep his head down."
"What?" She struggled to focus on him, with his face nearly pressed into hers.
"Close your eyes" he said, inhaling deeply.
"I don't... what are you..." She flinched, blinking, as he blew a quick, sharp blast of air into her eyes... and just like that, when she opened them again he was gone.
"Griff?" she whispered, paradoxically trying to make her voice carry.
"Fire" his voice answered from nearby... perhaps on the other side of the trunk? "Two shots, straight up will do."
She followed the instructions with little hesitation.
"Good girl. Now roll out and stay low, but be ready to move if... Crap! GO! Go-Go-Go-Go!"
Gina sucked in her breath at the sudden urgency of his voice. She rolled out from under the fallen log just as a pear-sized metal object thudded into the dirt and leaves directly in front of her.
"Over the log! Go!" the SPUD agent commanded. Suddenly, he was there again, grabbing her around her waist and flinging her away across the top of the fallen tree.
The ground behind her erupted with a deafening sound as she slammed into the forest floor on the sheltered side of the trunk. She wheezed to draw a breath, panicked as all air had escaped from her lungs. Clods of dirt and debris rained down around her. "Griffin!" she tried to call out, but if her voice left her throat at all, it couldn't compete with the ringing in her ears.
The last image she had of him was a confusing flash of the young agent throwing her away from himself, only to be replaced by an explosion. She fought to keep consciousness, trying to roll over, to push herself up and go to his aid... but then the foot descended to pin down her hair, and her blurry vision was entirely focused on the impossibly large gun barrel being held inches from her nose.
"You're kidding... That really was Griff?" asked a voice from the other end of the gun just before she blacked out. "Now that's just too perfect."
to be continued...
Footnotes:
The Mythlands are the extradimensional realms, including the Many Colored Lands of the faerie, where Griffin spent the first 11 years of his life. They are accessible through various gates on Earth.
Iris is the daughter of CrazySugarFreakBoy!, an infant in current continuity. Whether she's always as hyperactive as her father, or if there are special circumstances is up to Kirk.
Ollie is Oliver Hastings, CSFB's little brother who is a mere toddler in current continuity. Early signs point to the child gravitating towards world domination.
Some of Griffin's early mentors after being returned to the Parodyverse include Glory the super-powered border collie (and partner of Legionnaire Epitome), and Quoth, one of the Ravens of Destiny that work for the Chronicler of Stories.
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