Chapter I: Dire Expositions
The craft swooped low over the dark, dank water. It circled around a bend in the tangled trees and hovered briefly over a patch of ground that looked solid. After a hesitant moment, it touched down, its landing gear sinking in the soggy earth. The bottom hatch opened with a hiss and a tall, thin figure emerged. He sloshed through the dense mud with a familiarity which was not shared with his companion. He too was thin, though not tall by any means. He managed two whole steps before falling flat on his face in the mud.
"Are you ok Toney?" Jeff Andonuts asked his companion.
"…I think so." Toney responded in his nasal tone. "I'm just not used to this mud… or the heat… or the humidity…"
"Yes, it takes some getting used to." Jeff said. He remembered with no great fondness his first visit to deep darkness. "Avoid the deep water if possible," he warned "it's a bit of a health hazard…"
Toney wiped his face thoughtfully. "This place is pretty bright." He observed, shielding his eyes. "It's a bit contradictory, given its name, don't you think?"
Jeff didn't respond he wasn't really paying attention, as there was work to be done; a research project for his biology class involving natural observation. He and Toney were going to gather data on the various undiscovered species of, flora, fauna, and animalia that lived in deep darkness, a tepid jungle that had been devoid of sunlight for centuries. A place that was still deep, but not quite so dark, thanks to the exploits of Jeff and his three comrades a year before. Back then, the region had been under the influence of an evil alien megalomaniac by the name of Giygas, and the local wildlife was psychotically aggressive and man-eating. Now, a year later, with all alien influences removed, the plants and animals were still psychotic and man-eating, but far less aggressive.
"This looks like a good spot." Jeff called to Toney, "The ground feels solid."
Toney waded awkwardly over to Jeff, carrying a camera bag.
"Why did we have to come here?" Toney whined, eying a rather large crocodile with apprehension.
"You suggested we go somewhere exotic." Jeff retorted, "Something about everyone else going out to observe goats around the school?"
"Well… yeah, but I didn't mean DEEP DARKNESS!! I've heard they have giant man eating leaches here!!!" said Toney, still whining.
"No, Toney, no giant leaches, just demonic petunias." Jeff sighed. "Don't worry about it!" He added with all the cheer he could muster, "This place is harmless, except for the poisonous snakes, giant spiders, piranhas, and Malaria. It's your standard jungle, really."
"That's not funny, I remember all those stories you told!" Toney complained, still whining.
"All those stories?" asked Jeff perplexed. "I mentioned this place in passing once or twice. But…" Jeff never finished that sentence, for at that exact moment several very irate and rather large leaches hoisted themselves out of a nearby stagnant mud-hole and attacked. Although he was caught by Surprise, Jeff was not caught unprepared; losing no time, Jeff whipped out his Gaia beam and proceeded to clear a path back to the Sky Runner III.
"Go!" he yelled to Toney.
They ran clumsily through the waist deep water, Jeff firing bolts of energy from his beam pistol with practiced precision. Toney reached the Sky runner first and leapt inside, entering the ignition sequence with panicked haste. Jeff sprinted through the mud towards the aircraft, simultaneously loading a new charge into his pistol. Suddenly, he felt a sharp pain in his back, as one particularly large, and exceptionally irate leach latched its self onto his back and flung him into the water. He heard Toney screaming over the whirr of the Sky Runner's engines as the dark water rushed into his mouth and sinuses. He felt the leaches swarm him, and then, he knew no more.
X X X X X X X X
The phone rang.
"I've got it." Ness yelled downstairs.
He heard his sister answering the phone. "Ness! It's for you!!" she called.
"I said I had it." She stuck her tongue out at him. "Hello?" he answered into the receiver.
"Ness, honey, its mom," His mother said, "Your father and I are going to be gone for a few more days, so could you baby sit your sister?"
"Baby-sit?" Ness asked. This was not good. There was a baseball game coming up to which he had already bought tickets. But, being the dutiful son that he was, and realizing that arguing with his mother was essentially pointless, he simply agreed. He would have to concoct a strategy for getting out of it later. "Yeah, Sure I will, but is that really necessary? I mean, Tracy had a part time job last summer!"
"Your point being?" Mom asked
"Well, can't she take care of herself?" Ness Replied
"Oh honey," Ness' Mom interjected, "That was just a plot device. You know she's only in second grade! Oh, look at your father's shirts, I need to iron them pronto, I'll see you later, Honey!" and with that she hung up.
"Where are mom and dad anyway?" Tracy asked.
"I dunno, they went somewhere for their anniversary." Ness replied absently.
"Ness," Tracy said, "Mom and dad got married in December."
"So what's your point?" Ness asked, slightly irritated.
"It's May." Tracy said simply.
X X X X X X X X
Poo stood sagely at the edge of the icy cliff, a profound darkness looming at the edge of his thoughts. A shiftless mass of malice was gaining strength somewhere in the world, and he feared that he and the other chosen ones would soon be called on to vanquish it.
"I picked a hell of a time to get married." He spoke into the wind. More accurately his mother had picked a hell of a time for him to marry. Upon their return to Dalaam one month after his adventure, his parents decreed that he would marry princess Pei the daughter of General Mao, ruler of Wu Tang, a tiny mountain kingdom North of Dalaam. Now, three months before the wedding date he was on a journey to Mao's palace to deliver his bride-to-be's dowry. In his opinion, the whole thing wreaked.
Poo sighed.
The fact that he was about to go through with an arranged marriage didn't bother him. He trusted his mother implicitly, far more than he trusted his own judgment when it came to women. His father often joked that Poo would be wed to half the women in Dalaam, were he left to his own devices. This was of course an exaggeration, but not by much. What really bothered Poo was the timing. He had told his father about his premonitions, who had jokingly replied, "Well, my son, you had better hurry and marry so you can provide this country with another heir, In case you die." Then, his father had added with all seriousness and graveness of face, "I'm serious."
Though he shared his father's twisted sense of humor, he did not share his mother's optimistic appraisal of his bride. The last time he had seen her, they had both been children, and she had been a fat, pretentious, spoiled brat.
"Not that I have a problem with pretentious, spoiled brats." Poo joked with himself. He glanced down at the dowry, a jade dagger, sheathed in a scabbard crafted from solid ivory. It belonged to his mother, and had been handed down from queen to queen in Dalaam for a millennia and a half. Though Poo's mother called it by the name of her mother in law, and his grandmother had called it by hers, Poo preferred to refer to it as the dagger of queens, a companion to the sword of kings lashed to his belt.
Poo groaned as he remembered the other part of this arrangement that upset him. He would have to leave the Sword of Kings with Princess Pei until their wedding day, as a sign of his pledge and their engagement. He directed a shower of stars into a nearby mountain, dropping its elevation by 400 feet. He never relieved emotions through such a display, but this was a special occasion. So out of sorts was he that he did not recognize the approach of the four figures until they had surrounded him. He looked calmly from one to another. They were definitely looking to intimidate him that he could tell from their posture. He laid a hand on his sword and sized up his opponents. One was tall, and thin. He wore a turban and was heavily cloaked in a tattered robe. The other was a stout creature, bulky, and no less hostile. The third was short and wore a hood with a pair of gleaming red eyes. The fourth wore no cloak, but was clad in light armor and was strapped with an array of swords. Poo could sense that they were very strong fighters, and though he could not discern exactly how strong, he could clearly see that they were not human. The horns and scales made that abundantly clear.
"You have business with me?" Poo demanded.
The one in the turban smiled. "The sword." He said simply.
"Bite me." Poo said, equally simply, and with that they charged him, first the smallish one, he threw a punch which Poo ducked easily, the one with swords charged in low, and with his left hand brought his blade to bear on Poo, who leapt over the assault, twirling in midair. The swordsman redoubled his assault, this time with his right hand. Poo unsheathed his sword and parried with a singular motion. The large one hurled himself into the fray, the ground exploding under his savage fist. Poo leapt into the air just as the blow was landed and hurled a several bolts of lightning at his attackers. The large one took two of the bolts to the chest, but the swordsman caught the third with his right hand sword and hurled it back at Poo, shattering his hastily raised psychic shield. Poo landed close to the precipice and readied himself for another bout. He could feel the small one begin to focus his energy into his palms as the swordsman charged with blinding speed. The leader dressed in the tattered robe and turban, watched calmly as Poo held his own against the three others. Though the unknown swordsman was slightly faster than Poo, he had not mastered the art of Mu, nor did he have the finesse native to Poo's fighting. Poo could have taken the swordsman and the large brute and come out on top, however, by this time, the smaller assailant had massed his energy into an enormous ball and hurled it at the prince and, with no time to dodge, Poo weathered the assault by splitting the ball of destruction with his sword. This threw Dalaam's heir off balance long enough for the other two to end the fight. Poo was sliced, pummeled and left in the snow, bereft of his sword.
X X X X X X X X
"Shannon, what's wrong?" Paula Polestar asked the sobbing little girl clutching her leg. "Tracy," She called, "Could you go get me a box of Kleenex?"
"Ok, Paula." Ness' sister replied.
A brief frown crossed Paula's face. She liked Tracy, and enjoyed babysitting her, she was a little older than the other children, so she needed less looking after, and she shared her some of her older brother's more charming characteristics. That said, it was this same charm that bothered Paula, as they inevitably led her to think of Ness. It had been entirely too long since the two of them had spent any real time together
She could tell that he wanted to spend time with her, though she didn't quite grasp to what extent, she knew that he had cooked up this scheme to leave Tracy at Polestar Preschool/Daycare center so he could catch a baseball game with his friends. And Paula really wanted to catch this baseball game with him, because as she had "forgotten" to tell him on the last day of their adventure, she loved him. She didn't really know if he felt the same way, she would have read his mind if she could, but found that impossible. It was part of the reason she loved him, he was so different from anyone else she had ever known…
"What's wrong, Shannon?" She inquired of the little girl, still blubbering into her knee caps.
"I'm scared." Shannon finally replied when she calmed down.
"Awww, scared of what? It's still light out." Paula observed.
Shannon simply pointed in response. There in the middle of the street, stood a woman. She had jet black hair and green eyes and she wore a black dress. This was, of course, not what scared the little girl. It was the giant black widow spider crouching next to her. Paula blinked incredulously. How in the world had she not sensed THAT coming? The woman smiled a malicious hello.
"Who are you?" demanded Paula, un-intimidated.
"Not afraid of spiders?" the woman responded, "We shall have to fix that."
Paula mentally reached into the kitchen and took a hold of a frying pan in the cabinet.
"We're here for the…" The woman continued, but Paula didn't let her finish. She yanked the pan through the window of the preschool while simultaneously hurling a blast of PSI fire at the woman and her spider. The woman glared at Paula as the flames dissipated. Paula leapt forward, bringing her pan down on the woman's forehead. The woman chuckled evilly, formed her hand into a claw and took a swipe at Paula. She dodged the attack, and ducked a swinging appendage from the spider. Gathering her PSI, Paula hurled herself upwards over the Spider and gathered her concentration. She forcibly removed the heat from the air around her hand and hurled a gust of freezing wind at the Spider.
"PSI FREEZE!" she yelled. The monstrous arachnid was encased in ice, while Paula, using PSI to propel herself downwards, landed on it with the force of an incendiary bomb. The beast shattered, and with a sinister chuckle its woman companion charged Paula, who fended off most of the blows with her frying pan, but was caught on the thigh by a low swipe. The woman's claws tore Paula's skirt and drew blood, but the wound was shallow. The woman stood back with a satisfied grin.
At this Paula began to worry. "Those claws, they're poisoned!"
"Bingo." The woman replied. She then knelt and drew two mysterious symbols on the sidewalk with her nails. Two very large jumping spiders erupted from the ground in a flash of light. They attacked Paula savagely, while the mysterious woman hurled a stream of silk into the broken window of the preschool, and yanked. There was a scream and out came Tracy.
"We have what we need. Let's go." The woman said with a wicked grin. The two spiders and their master retreated, Tracy in tow. Paula, too weakened from the poison could not follow. Rather, she did what any telepathic psychic would do. She passed out.
X X X X X X X X X
Becky glanced nervously at Ness for the hundredth time. She was perhaps the single most passionate fan of baseball in the entire town of Onett, yet for some reason that she could not explain, or at least didn't want to think about, she was having an exceedingly difficult time keeping her focus on the game. Jim, Sam and Bobby had all bought tickets months in advance and while she wanted to go, her parents simply wouldn't fork over the money for the tickets and the bus to Fourside. It wasn't that they were poor or frugal; refusing to pay was just their way of telling her to tone down her tom boyishness, they were passive aggressive that way. They would never tell her outright to behave a certain way, but would do things in such a way that she clearly got the message that they were concerned with her lack of interest in Barbie and wanted her to focus on something besides her obsession with baseball, something that was largely impossible. Well, maybe not that impossible she thought as she caught herself staring at Ness yet again. She had good reason to stare, she rationalized, after what had happened. When Ness invited her to the game she was at first ecstatic, but quickly realized that he had bought tickets for a game that was if Fourside, seven hours by bus from Onett, and was scheduled to start in a little less than fifteen minutes.
"Unless you can like, teleport or something you wasted your money." She snapped at him. He simply smiled and took her hand. Her stomach did a somersault as Ness' skin touched hers. Suddenly the world around her began to spin and there was a potent buzzing not unlike the sensation that accompanies the licking of a nine volt battery, followed by a bright flash. Upon opening her eyes, the city of Fourside assaulted her vision. There was no explanation, and Ness dismissed her stammering questions with a simple, "it's a long story." Eyeing him now in the midst of all these people, Becky found that she was insatiably curious as to what the hell had Ness been doing during his summer vacation? He was still… the same. He… he still had… he was…why was her head getting so fuzzy?
Ness stood in the bleachers, lost in the crowd, and cheered wildly at the grand slam that had just put the Fourside Mayhem in the lead and thought that the only way to improve this already perfect outing would be to share it with Paula. Granted a baseball game was a bit mundane when compared to the adventures they had shared, but he would enjoy time spent with her regardless of what they did. Not that he was romantically interested in her or anything; there just wasn't anything he wouldn't do to make her happy, to keep her well, or to protect her. Many was the time when he had selflessly thrown himself between her and certain death during the course of their adventure, and since their first meeting, late one night somewhere in their collective dreams, they had shared an indescribable bond that went infinitely deeper than the trivial romances of other young people their ages. There weren't the typical stars and butterflies that he had felt with other girls in his short tenure in romance, just the hardened and impenetrable bond of friendship.
As it stood, however, she was still in Twoson babysitting Tracy. He had felt bad dumping his younger sister on Paula and splitting for a baseball game, but there was really no way around it short of wasting the tickets altogether, and he was not about to do that, they had been expensive, bought at the last minute. So there he was with four members of his sandlot team, taking in a long awaited, overly expensive, but well worth it match up of the Fourside Mayhem and the Ellay Hunters.
He was still cheering his lungs out when he noticed the voice to his immediate left had dwindled into silence. He turned to Becky wondering why the biggest Mayhem fan in Onett was silent at a moment like this and found her blankly at him, her eyes glassy. He was unnerved when he saw her usually lively face so devoid of emotion. He was surprised when she abruptly cocked her fist back and slammed it into his face. He was bewildered when the punch from Becky, an ordinary fourteen year old girl sent him, the alien smashing guardian of earth flying across the stadium.
He skidded across the top of the crowd causing dozens of injuries to the hapless bystanders when one of them caught him gruffly in a full nelson. Gaining his wits, Ness noticed that many of those around him had the same blank expression as Becky had had.
"Now you die, chosen one." The man who held Ness whispered as Becky came charging across the stadium. Ness quickly smashed the back of his head into his captor's face and leapt to the side. He broke free just as Becky demolished the bleachers on which he had just been standing. Several of the spectators that were affected by the strange malady hurled themselves at the still airborne Ness, one grabbed his ankles and threw him violently into the concrete stairs of the stadium which exploded in a cloud of dust under the impact of Ness' fall. Ness barely had time to wonder what in the hell was going on before he was mobbed by ten bystanders who all suddenly had inhuman strength. Ness parried some of their blows but they managed to latch onto his arms and back holding him in place.
"I have a strange power." A wiry, balding man on Ness' back said.
"I can project my consciousness into others and act through them." A petite blond woman said, holding Ness' arm.
"Not only that," said the large biker holding Ness' other arm.
"But I can use my PSI through them." Becky chuckled, stepping slowly, purposefully up the steps towards Ness. "Can you fight me, chosen one? Can you figure out who I really am? Can you harm these innocent people?" She laughed aggressively. "PSI Quake!" she yelled. The massive shockwave tore up the steps towards Ness and sent chunks of concrete into the air.
"That's a new one on me…" Ness mumbled as he gathered his PSI. He could have throw these people off of him and evade the attack, but that ran the risk of their being hurt in the crossfire. He would not let innocent people get suffer if he could help it, and his opponent was counting on this. Ness grunted as the wall of concrete smashed into him, "Lifeup…" he whispered, healing himself and those that held him down.
Becky roared with laughter, "It's too much! You actually healed those that are trying to kill you! You are predictably weak as I thought chosen one." She leapt towards him and slammed her fist into his chest. Ness weathered the blow and caught her follow up attack. "If you are this much of a pixie with total strangers, how will you handle fighting one of your precious comrades?" she asked mockingly. Ness dropped and tripped her with a low sweeping kick. He then leapt out over the baseball diamond. Random spectators and even members of the team launched savage assaults at him as he flew through the air towards the bat rack. He took hold of two good sluggers and began fending off half of the out fielding team.
"PSI FIRE BETA!" Becky launched a wave of fire at Ness, which he evaded just as it exploded. I have to find him before more innocent people get hurt! Ness thought frantically.
"PSI FLASH OMEGA!!" Ness bellowed. The flash was so maddeningly bright that many of Ness' opponents seized and collapsed. In an incredible stroke of luck, Ness noticed the flash dissipate against a small shield around one particular bystander. It was a short dark green creature with horns and scales wrapped in a gray trench coat. Ness charged through the crowd of murderous civilians and was upon his real opponent, flooring the creature with one solid blow.
"I see. So that's why you hid behind those innocent people." Ness said, towering over his groaning assailant. "You're a real pansy!" He added, grinning. He looked around. The game was for all intents and purposes canceled. Many of the fans were unconscious, and half the players had broken bones, he had heard them crack. So much for staying off the radar… he thought, cringing at the reproachful look he knew Paula was going to give him. No sooner had he completed that thought than he felt someone take a firm hold of his mental shoulders and scream into his telepathic ear. It was Paula, and she was in trouble! Ness knew it was irresponsible, but then and there he teleported away to Twoson, with no explanation to anyone as to what happened or why. In his haste to aid Paula, Ness missed the shadowy figure that stood atop the scoreboard, surveying the scene.
"He is strong." The figure said, seemingly to no one.
"Perhaps." Another figure seemed to materialize out of nothingness.
"If I had not used that diversion medium, he may found me." The first figure said.
"Yes. And as you said, he is strong. But it will take more than strength to defeat you, even at half power. And if he cannot defeat you, then he will not stand a chance against HIM."
The first figure smirked darkly. "You're right. None can stand against HIM."