I dreamed of this last night. Just sit back and enjoy. It's a mix of everything and everyone. There will be apperances by nearly every single villian in literature history (and they will be staying classical to their original stories) and almost every hero too. This is just the beginning. The war is starting...
Dedication: To all the authors and writers and everyone who gave me the imagination that I do.
The explosions woke me. I shot up in bed, throwing aside the covers. I stumbled with my sleepy feet to the window. I yanked open the curtains and threw open the blinds. The now familiar explosions lit up the sky like fireworks on the 4th. I cursed, ("D'Arvit!"), and ran to the emergency button. I slammed my fist on the shiny red button. Instantly, alarms were sounding in every child's bedroom across the neighborhood of my division. My own alarm was blaring as I ran to my closet and grabbed my battle-gear. Struggling into it, the explosions got louder.
How did it get to this, you ask? A 22-year-old gal getting into battle-gear in the middle of the night to go to battle against the mysterious forces that lurked outside my house? Well...it all started like this.
A Few Years Ago...
Hook slammed his fist against the plans and papers on his desk. He grabbed them and threw them into the air, scattering the papers crazily as he stalked away, pacing his quaters. He cursed loudly as the maddening laughter of the children echoed across the lagoon. All day, all night, laughter, children, foiling his plans! And that ridiculous chant..."Faith, trust and pixie dust." Them and their stupid imagination!
Hook stopped pacing for a second. That was it...wasn't it? Their blasted imagination! No matter what, he was always defeated by their imaginations. They used them to defeat him, again and again and again. And they forced the baby to be Hook...the baby! So easy to defeat a baby. He was not a baby.
"Smee!" He bellowed. His faithful coxsain dove into his quaters, stumbling in that bumpkin way that he had. Hook grabbed him by the front of that striped shirt and hauled him close. "I have had lightining strike my brain, dear Smee." He grinned gleefully. "The most genius idea."
"What is it, Captain?" Smee panted, struggling to gain footing on the wooden floor as his Captain hauled him upright.
"The children, Smee!" Hook smipered, gesturing grandly. "Those blasted children. With their ingenuity...where do you suppose they aquire it?"
"Uh, their brains?"
"No, you blithering idiot! Their imaginations!" He stalked over to the expansive windows that looked out over Neverland. His black heart was not moved by the beauty of the scene: moonlight glittering on the waves, the glint of fairies flittering in the trees, the slumbering Neverland sleepin peacefully. All he saw was the conjuring of thousands of children and their imaginations... "Those imaginations hold the key to everything!"
And in an instant, he knew just what to do.
It wasn't long after that when he got in touch with other villains from other stories and tales. They formed a group and with their combined efforts, they declared war on children and their imaginations. I was eighteen when it happened. I still remember that night when they made their first raid...
It was a dark night, even the stars were hiding. I think they knew what was going to happen, but they couldn't warn us in time. I was staying up late that night because I was writing. It's an activity that I love doing at night when it's quiet and I can let my imagination run rampant. I dunno what made me look out my window that night. Maybe it was the sound of a beating heart that stirred me, maybe it was the rustling of the leaves out in the street. All I know is that when I looked out of my window, I knew something was wrong. Horridly wrong.
One by one, the kids around my neighborhood started snapping on their bedroom lights and screaming cries echoed through the streets. As I watched, men leaped out of their windows, grabbing what seemed to be the very night and they were hoisted up out of sight. I strained to see what was lifting them, but was interuppted by the ugliest face I had ever seen slamming against my own window. I admit it, I screamed. But then I smashed his face and the window with the bat my kid brother had left in my room earlier that summer.
As I realized that my kid brother wasn't screaming, I ran out of my room and down the hall, throwing open his door to see him sleeping peacefully, despite the screaming and crying from the other kids. I breathed a sigh of relief until I saw that his window was open. Mom always locked it and drew the blinds at night. I looked at my brother, then around the room, stepping across the floor lightly, trying to sense where the burgalar was. I heard a noise behind me and spun around, my fist aimed at throat height.
My fist stopped in midair, cause there was no-one there. I looked down automatically and nearly fainted. There was a little red-haired man in my brother's bedroom, all dressed in green, including his knickerbockers and buckled shoes. He looked like he had stepped out of a picture of leprechauns. He didn't even give me a second glance, he just hurried over to my brother.
"Just what in the Seven Hells do you think you're doing-?" I yelled but I was cut off by the little man sending me a withering glare.
"I'm with the L.E.P." He snapped, pulling a strange looking techno-gimzo out and starting what I could only guess would be a scan of my little brother's brain. "It's a war out there, Mud Maid."
"A war?" I hadn't heard anything on the news or Facebook...
"D'Arvit!" (That would be my first encounter with the curse word.) He stuffed the gizmo away, back into the invisible (I guessed) pouch on his back. "We've already lost him!"
My heart froze and when the...fairy dude turned and saw the look of horror and loss on my face, he shook his head. "Stupid Mud Maid. He's not dead."
"Then why did you say-?"
"We've lost him because the Others have already stolen his imagination."
I stared at him, not comprehending. He rolled his eyes and grabbed the pair of wings from the floor where he had dropped them. It looked like a jet pack, but with a pair of fairy-tale wings attached. "Look outside, Mud Maid. There's a lot of this going on." With that, he started up the wings and left, via the open window. I ran to it and looked out. In the middle of my street, there were a lot of the little green people all centering on a kinda command post of sorts. There was yelling and children were starting to run out and find out answers.
Well, I deserved them too. I shut and locked his window, drawing the blinds and letting him sleep. But why wasn't he waking up? I didn't want to wake him up and just let him lie. I snuck out and went back to my bedroom. My window was mysteriously fixed and I didn't really care why at the moment. I just grabbed a jacket and ran downstairs. The party in the street was still going on when I exited my house. Several of the neighborhood kids were wielding guns that were loaded with what looked like gumballs and ice-cream cones, shouting about "adult tyranny" or some crap like that.
A white canvas tent had been erected in the center of my street and I made a bee-line for it, weaving about the kids and teenagers, many of whom were starting to fight amongst themselves. It was starting to turn into a riot. I pushed open the flap door and stared at what I never thought could exist.
A centaur jumped when he noticed me, which I'm surprised he did with the magnitude of electrical equipment he had managed to stuff into the small confines. He was wearing a foil hat (didn't surprise me, for some reason) and chewing a carrot. "Just what do you think you're doing?" he demanded.
"I want answers and this looked like the most likely place to get them." I snapped back, stepping in and letting the flap close behind me. "Some LEP guy said that my brother's imagination was stolen. What's he talking about?"
The centaur turned back to the many flashing monitors and beeping dials and switches. "Answers huh. Well, we don't know what's going on fully, but someone's stealing children's imaginations. We down in the L.E.P Headquaters in Haven got a strange transmission earlier and when we finally decoded it, we rushed right up. Apparently, someone named Hook has worked up a bunch of people and they've gotten together to steal childrens' imaginations. They called it war."
I let it sink in. "Hook. Captain Jas. Hook." He was fictional. Then again, I was talking to a centaur. Who was I to argue? "Okay, so Captain Hook is being a douche again. What's keeping Peter from stopping him?"
"Who?" The centaur asked absently as he tended to several beeping messages all at once. "I dunno, Mud Maid, but I've got reports of stolen imaginations all across the world."
I sat down in a swivel chair that was a little short for me, but worked. I scooted up to the monitors and read them all as quickly as I could. Hong Kong, Paris, Indonesia, Texas, Canada...the places were everywhere, the kids all ages. It was war...an all out war. And we were unprepared. I stood up and exited the tent, knowing someone had to tell the mobs.
I waved my arms and tried to be heard above the screamin and yells, but it wasn't working. A sudden loud bellow from the person beside me silenced the crowd. Yeah, they'd listen to the person who was yelling as loud as a stadium announcer. Clutching my hands to my ears, I looked in shock at the slip of a guy that was standing next to me, dressed in long black robes. He pointed a stick of wood at his throat and shouted "QUIETUS!". His throat gleamed for a moment, then he looked at me and smiled and said in a normal tone of voice, "Tell them what you know, Miss."
"A wizard, okay then." My mind was quickly adapting to the fact that fictional stuff was turning more and more real. "Listen everyone! This is really serious! Imaginations are being stolen!"
"How?" shouted a few of the crowd, getting restless again. I shrugged.
"No idea!" The crowd started booing. I held up my hands and the kids all kinda quieted down. "But I do know this. Hook's the one behind this!"
Unsurprisingly, the kids automatically accepted the fact that a fictional villain had done the evil deeds of the night. What had taken me nearly a half hour to accept, these kids were already ready to fight. It was inspiring and frightening all at once. I decided then and there to be at the forefront of the now Rebellion.
I spent the next week working with the KND (Kids Next Door) in order to set up an alarm system so that when a raid was happening, we could wake up every single kid in a matter of seconds, learning about this war and meeting with the heads of the Rebellion.
I admit, during the day, it was as if nothing had happened. I went to school and work, the kids played in the neighborhood. My kid brother didn't draw anymore and dove into his school work with a fervor that I had never seen in him. At night, a different world emerged. Fairies were suddenly real and I was talking to that centaur on a nightly basis, getting more intel. After that first raid, there was a long lull, the Others probably sizing us up. I met Peter Pan and planned the lock-down of Neverland. I met Mister Willy Wonka himself and his apprentice Charlie. Mister Wonka sympathized with the children and he vowed to keep his factory villain free as well as to provide supplies to the troops.
I didn't know how bad things were...until I met with the Others. And their leaders.
Review, please.
