He glanced down at the slip of paper in his hand -- written in nearly unreadable writing was the name of a club. More specifically, the TTPCTS (Take the Plot Concept Too Seriously) Club.
At the afore mention club, a boyish looking blond who was known to most all who would call themselves proud MSTies as Mike Nelson was busy trying to console a boy. The lad looked about sixteen, though given the extensive damage to his form, it wasn't an easy guess. After a few drinks to dull the pain (the kid needed it pretty damn bad, considering the agony), Mike had finally coaxed his name from his bruised lips.
Lucas Wolenczak.
"Now how did you get hurt so badly?" Mike asked, gently, calling on an empathy he seemed to have.
Lucas moaned something unintelligible, throwing back another swallow of Everclear. That loosened his stitched tongue enough to say, "Elves!"
Joel Robinson, Mike's partner and best friend, raised a finely arched eyebrow. "Elves...?"
Lucas nodded pitifully, looking down at the missing arm, the peg leg, the horrible tropical skin disease, all from behind a black eyepatch. "They... they..."
"Shhhh," Mike soothed, wrapping his own black ShadowKnight jacket around the boy's shoulders. "Take your time."
"And... and I graduated from MIT and UCLA!" Lucas bawled. "In canon, I graduated from Stanford!! And I've been regressed to when I was younger! Can you imagine going through early puberty again and again?"
Joel winced pretty heavily, shaking his head, "Just relax and slow down a bit."
Wolenczak sniffled with some difficulty, probably due to the pneumonia that had been inflicted upon him. Letting out a loud string of coughs, he finally took a slug of his drink, hoping to hold the sound back.
Mike cringed at the gurgling sound that came from the young man's throat and looked him over again. It seemed as though a new wound would appear every time the farmboy looked. There was a bullet hole over the missing arm and through the shoulder, and there seemed to be letters branded into the palm of Lucas's remaining hand. "E-L-F," he noted looking over to Joel.
They both watched the boy shudder at the letters before continuing on through his string of problems. "I used to be a genius, you know... Heck, I was the Head Computer Analyst aboard the largest ship in the UEO, but now I'm just a p-pawn for shumone'sh thorrible hesires!" His speech slowly degraded down a slope as the stitches began to loosen, leaving the poor kid lost. Letting his head fall down onto the bar with a loud thump, he groaned, his blood stained and then unruly blond hair far around his face.
Joel nodded Mike away from Lucas so they could talk, shuddering when he saw the clumps of missing hair, and the bruises left behind. "Man, talk about a hard-luck case. How do you think it happened?" The older man pushed his hands into the pockets of his jeans, keeping an eye on the ailing teenager.
"I have no idea, but someone really must hate the poor guy," Mike answered, frowning. He glanced over in time to see Lucas lose an ear lobe, and cringed. "Well, let's see what we can do for him, and hopefully something good will come along."
"Chief!" A gravelly voice broke the autumn air as Nathan made his way through the ever-changing realm of Subreality. He didn't immediately answer to it, as he was a Captain and not a Chief, but when a shorter and scraggly looking man wearing a battered ball cap came over, he stopped. The man stopped humming some sort of sea shanty. "Chief Brody! Fancy seein' you in this place."
Nathan frowned, looking the man over. "Have we met, Mister...?"
"Quint!" the old shark hunter answered, clapping Bridger on the back. "Ya got some gray goin' there, Brody. Been that long?"
"Guess so," Bridger said, placating the man. "Hey, I don't suppose you know where I can find the..." he squinted to read the paper, "...TT...TTPCTS Club?"
"Sure do." Quint wrapped an arm around Bridger's shoulders, leading the way. The song echoed after the two men...
"Fare'ell an' ado to you fair Spanish ladies,
"Fare'ell an' ado, you ladies of Spain!
"For we've recieved orders for to sail back to Boston,
"An' so ne'ermore shall we see you again!"
Joel traveled back behind the bar, searching below the bar for some object or another while Mike returned to the stool next to Wolenczak. They teen had finished the rest of his drink, and was in the process of standing. "Whoa there." Nelson shook his head. "I don't think you should leave in the state you're in."
Setting his peg leg on the floor, Lucas was granted a moment of steadiness before it snapped in half, causing him to nearly fall if Mike hadn't been there to catch him. Looking up at the older man with one bright blue eye, he frowned. Composing himself, he managed to speak with some semblance of normality. "If I don't go, they'll find me again," he replied, painfully, his voice cracking under the pressure.
Robinson sighed slightly, pouring himself a glass of water. "Alright, you're here so I'm assuming you've got a Writer."
"Writers," Lucas corrected, pulling himself back onto the stool with what little strength he had left.
"So you have more than one Writer? We're kind of like that, but ours aren't that bad. How'd all this happen to you?" Mike asked, softly, hoping not to disturb their guest too much.
"Very quickly," the dejected boy answered, letting his head drop into his hand.
Bridger audibly sighed as he listened to the old sailor round out the fifth verse of a newly created shanty about the "good Chief and his pal's travels." Wonder caused him to walk a slight bit faster in anticipation of what this club was going to offer. Obviously someone thought he needed to go there if they gave him a tip towards the place.
Quint looked over at his friends, grinning. "So, how's the shark huntin' been going, Chief?"
"I don't hunt sharks," the Captain replied, wondering just how far away their destination was.
"Well, then what d'ya hunt? Women, eh there? Aaah, I always knew y' t'be the sly type!" The older man took off his hat and slapped at his companion's arm, grinning.
Bridger sighed and stepped away from Quint. "Right now I'm hunting for answers."
"There has to be something we can do!" Mike hissed, lowly, aside to Joel.
"Yea, but I don't know if we're allowed," the inventor said, frowning in concern. "I mean, worse comes to worst, we can take him back to our universe, but that might bring some flack."
They both looked over at the boy, who now had gray hairs popping out in some spots and clumps falling out of others. A particularly hairy looking growth appeared on his single arm, and was quickly joined by about thirty more. "Anything's gotta be better than this," Mike said, softly. "I mean, why torture the poor guy? Especially so much?"
"I have no idea." Joel got out a pitifully small first-aid kit, walking back over. "Lucas?"
"HnnnMmmmm?"
"Why don't you let me put some bandaids on that," Joel said, gently beginning to bind the wounds. Much to his dismay, they kept falling off. What really shocked him was when all of his clothes fell off as well. "Eeep!!!"
Mike gasped, quickly grabbing a table cloth and wrapping it around Lucas, as whip marks began appearing. "Holy sh*&!" the farmboy yelped, resorting to cussing for one of the rare times.
Thankfully the clothes leapt back onto Wolenczak a moment later, and everyone let out a sigh of relief. Joel shook his head. "Where the heck are this kid's parents?"
A howling sob answered.
Having sucessfully lost his companion, Nathan continued his jaunt through Subreality. He wasn't doing a very good job in finding the club he had been directed to, but he figured that it wouldn't take too long to stumble across the place. The Captain had noticed that things seem to appear just on time and he was counting on that happening again.
Walking through a patch of blizzard, he mentally cursed himself for wearing shorts, but most of the time it was warm where he stayed. Snow wasn't his favorite thing in the world, but he figured he could stand it for the moment it took to disappear.
Moving back into the sunlight, he shook the snow from his hair and stopped for a moment. Letting the sun warm him back up, the well-tanned man looked around for some well needed bearings. He was great at navigating when on the water, but not so good on land. Of course, it would have helped if he had been given directions, or if he hadn't caused his guide to walk away from him.
"You're a stupid man sometimes, Nathan Bridger," he consoled to himself. God only knows how close he was to his destination. For all he knew, he could have been walking around in circle since he left his little shack, and even the weather offered no guidance for him.
"I think I know how we can help him," Joel commented quietly, watching the young man as he slept on the counter. Cleaning out some glasses and drying them, he then turned his attention back to Mike.
Mike carefully draped a wool blanket over Lucas that he had grabbed from manager Joel's office, then looked up. He kept his voice just as low. "How?"
The inventor dipped below the bar and dug around for another moment, pushing all different kinds of bottles aside. Then, carefully, he straightened up and set a familar machine on the bar. The Plot Convenience Device beeped a few times, and some lights blinked. "It might be only a temporary fix, but I think it'll make him feel better... if I can get the thing to work right."
Mike nodded, smiling. "Hey, we know it'll do for now." The PCD had saved their bacon a few times, and with any luck it would help the teen out.
Joel worked the buttons like the pro he was, having invented the Device in the first place. A new set of batteries later, he pointed it at Lucas and hit enter.
Lucas turned into a frog.
Joel frowned and tried again.
Lucas turned into a rabbit.
Mike caught the rabbit as it made for the door, and Joel hit another sequence.
The boy reverted to a human state, looking a little groggy but otherwise healthy. Now that the atrocious horrors had been taken from him, he looked a good bit better.
"What happened?" Wolenczak looked around for a moment, then tried to rub the sleepiness out of his eyes. Startled for a moment, he looked at both of his hands, suprised to see that his number of arms had doubled. "How?" He glanced over at the two friends standing next to each other.
Mike smiled warmly, leaning on the bar. "I'd say it was a magic trick, but I don't think you'd go for it."
"It's just an invention that we came up with some time ago." Joel sipped at newly poured water, nodding in conjuction with his own thoughts.
The boy's eyes lit up and he leaned forward with a quirky smile on his face. "Can I see it?"
"Sure." The inventor pushed the hand-held device over towards the teen, watching while he continued his cleaning ritual. Lucas, however, was transfixed, and turned the machine over and over in his hands. Before he could even marvel at the object he held, he was amazed at his own working hands.
"Still looks a bit tired," Nelson comment to the side, very quietly, "but a whole lot better than he did."
Joel nodded in agreement, arranging a few bottles. "Can say that again. I don't think I've seen that much destruction in all my life."
"This is amazing!" Lucas piped in, looking up at the two who had been so kind to him. "I've never seen anything like it. You could rearrange anything you like with a push of a button."
"Sure does come in handy," the farmboy nodded, sipping at a newly poured Guiness. "That is, when it wants to. That thing's got a mind of it's own."
"Pulls us through when we need it to," Joel added, passing a glass of water to the young man.
Taking the water into one hand, he passed the machine back to its inventor. Tapping his fingers on the side of the glass for a moment, he nodded and looked at the two. "I really owe you guys a lot of gratitude... not many people would have helped me."
Mike picked his head up proudly, blue eyes twinkling. "We're ShadowKnights. That's our job."
"ShadowKnights?" Lucas asked, taking a sip of the water.
"A mostly normal human team in our universe," Joel explained, putting the PCD back where it was somewhat safe. "It's basically our job to work on human/mutant relations from the other side, and to back-up the X-Men sometimes."
Wolenczak smiled slightly, shaking his head. "I'm not going to pretend I understand that, but thank you."
"You're welcome." Mike sat down.
Bridger came through the door not even a moment later. "Ah ha! This is it!"
"Welcome to the TTPCTS Club," Joel said, smiling. "Can I get you anything?"
Nathan nodded, "A water, please. The sun's blazing out there," he commented, then stopped for a second. "Lucas?"
The young man turned around. "Captain? What are you doing here?"
"I suppose I should be asking the same thing." He sat next to Lucas, eyeing him over.
"I was just having a conversation with these guys... they kind of helped me out."
"Helped you out?" Bridger looked at Joel and Mike, then back to Lucas. "Should I be expecting armed men when I get home?"
Joel interjected, "No, sir, he didn't do anything wrong."
Mike shook his head sadly, continuing on Joel's thoughts, "What this poor lad has a problem with, is his Writers. They obviously wound him for no good reason."
Nathan visably frowned and looked over at his surrogate son. "Why didn't you tell me? You know how bad things can get when Writers go wrong." Sighing slightly, his powerful visage melted into a relieved, father demeanor, and he patted Wolenczak on the shoulder.
"I would have, but I couldn't talk," the teen defended, though with no real attempt to win the argument.
"Well, I'm just glad you're alright."
"And it's all thanks to these guys." Lucas grinned to himself, sure that he would be traveling back to the TTPCTS Club more and more as time continued on.
Bridger stood and offered his hand to Joel, then Mike, nodding to each as they shook his hand. "How can I ever repay you two? You name it."
Mike looked over at Joel, noting the older man's expression and wondering how many zeros the inventor could honestly think of. Glancing back to Nathan, he shook his head. "Just keep an eye on him, and try to get him away from some of those abusive Writers."
Joel merely nodded in agreement.
"I'll be sure to do that. Thank you, gentlemen." Noting that Wolenczak had stood as well, he smiled. "Ready to go?"
Lucas shoved his hands into his pockets, nodding. "Yea, I think I am." He tossed an appreciative glance towards the two original occupants of the club. "Bye, guys... hope t' see you around."
"Same here, we're always open," Joel replied for them both, grinning.
Bridger put an arm around the teenager's shoulders and started out the door, leaving the two men inside to hear the Captain talking to his companion. "Have you been drinking?"
"Captain, if you would have seen what I looked like, you would have been drinking too."
"Lucas..."
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Disclaimers: SeaQuest belongs to Amblin Entertainment. The TTPCTS Club is Bodger's creation, and Subreality is Kielle's. Quint and any other Jaws reference goes to Spielburg (all hail!), and the Dynamic Duo of Mike and Joel belongs to Best Brains, Inc. These two, in particular, are part of the IP&S universe, and are much loved. Under no circumstances do we approve of underaged drinking, but it's just a fic... you should really just relax.
You can find Subreality and the TTPCTS Club at http://www.subreality.com