Boilerplate Disclaimer: The various characters from the Kim Possible series are all owned by Disney. All registered trade names property of their respective owners.
Sammy King wrote Penny Arcade, recorded by Roy Orbison in 1970. I prefer King's recording, a 2011 benefit performance for the Glasgow Rangers. Can a song written without sectarian meaning take on a sectarian significance if Protestants sing it when the Rangers play against a Catholic team?
Not a Halloween story, but written in honor of the season. Reminder: Jane is Kim and Shego's third daughter, Catlyn is Tim's daughter, and Junior is son of Joss and Wade.
Penny Arcade of Doom
It was dark. That was a fact. Where I was, and when, remained mysteries. I looked at the Chrono on my wrist, which showed no lights. Safety feature. On arriving somewhen in the night you might not want to advertise your position to Doctor Crime, or Cyber Snake, or your Mom if she thought you were upstairs asleep and you'd been out saving the world. Especially my Eemah. She takes a very dim view of hero stuff. How she and mom got together...
How she and mom got together didn't help my present situation. Neither did my Chrono. No lights. No readings. No nothing. I don't know if Chronos can 'die'. Junior always keeps them in good repair. Had I found a way to kill one? It even felt wrong on my wrist. Like I was wearing it, and not wearing it as the same time. I know that doesn't make any sense, but it is the only way I can describe the feeling. My phone still did its duty, meaning I could use the flashlight app. No signal. Just as well. You ever called someone and asked, "When am I?" I have. You get some weird answers, especially if it turns out you haven't been born yet or something.
The light on the phone showed the Chrono on my wrist, but it appeared blurry. As long as it felt wrong it was stubbornly continuing its little game by looking wrong too. I found that comforting. It suggested a nightmare, a reassuring nightmare. I'd wake up in the morning and wouldn't even remember this. A less attractive thought buzzed around inside my skull. A Chrono works in multiple dimensions. It controls spatial dimensions, allowing me to move to different places. It controls time, the temporal dimension as well. Junior theorizes it may bend and twist some other dimensions too. Dimensions we don't really know or understand. Maybe I was in a dimension outside my normal time and space. I could think of another ugly option. Junior once asked a Junior+ about the possibility of landing out-of-sync – like, your body is not exactly in temporal synchronicity with the where and when you've gone to. Being in a nightmare sounded way better than the other choices.
I tried to get a bearing on my surroundings. I felt ground under my feet. Much better than being in an ocean or falling through the air. The flashlight app showed something on the ground that looked sort of like grass, almost but not quite. I looked around and "A light shown in the night some way ahead, blue turned into green then it was red." Since I couldn't imagine another option besides electric lights of some sort, (People say I have a vivid imagination. Some people say I have a vivid imagination. Others accuse me of being a compulsive liar. Those people have no imagination.), and electric lights mean people. I headed for the light.
Should never have used the expression 'headed for the light'. That's what people say about near-death experiences. I wasn't near death... We have a family ghost. Well, she isn't family. She came with the house. One theory is that not everyone goes to wherever dead people go when they die. Some of them, for one reason or another, stick around some dimension that overlaps with us. Some people, like my sister Sheki or Hana Stoppable, can communicate with those who haven't passed over. I can sometimes see Helen. I can't talk with her. Maybe I was dead...
Well, not dead dead. No way was I dead dead, I just mean if I'm a little out of sync I might appear... If I was a ghost, would I know it? I don't know a lot of ghosts personally, but Sheki says Helen claims that she didn't realize she was dead for a long time. The world was all weird around her, but she felt normal.
That was a scary thought. At least I didn't feel normal.
I passed large dark shapes in the night... Houses? Houses with odd angles I've never seen before on a house.
"The light I saw in the night was a penny arcade." At least I'm going to call it a penny arcade. On a family vacation we visited a penny arcade. The machines took quarters. Why did they call it a penny arcade?
There's an expression about not being in Kansas any more. Off the top of my head I'm not sure I've ever been in Kansas. But I wasn't there now. The people feeding money into the machines... I'm calling them people. They weren't insects, or lizards, or birds. But I'm pretty sure they weren't humans. They were tall and slender and looked human if you didn't look too close. If you looked close, something about their ears and eyes wasn't human, mouths too. And they may have come in three genders. I couldn't be sure. Maybe some of them just dressed funny.
Anyway, I wasn't in Kansas, and I was out of sync. When they talked the words were out of sync with the movement of their lipless mouths. At least if they had been human the lips would have been out of sync with the words. Maybe the rules for alien mouths with no lips are different.
If the mouths couldn't be trusted at least their inability to see me meant I was out of sync. I might be out of sync. They could see my Chrono. Some pointed. Some whispered. Some called to others who I assumed were friends.
What would I do if I saw a watch or bracelet floating in mid-air? Probably try and tackle the invisible man or woman wearing it.
Could I be tackled? How out of sync was I? Helen could walk through closed doors and walls. Could I? I hadn't tried. You grow up believing that trying to walk through solid objects in a dumb idea and you just sort of come to believe it. Part of me told myself, 'Don't try and walk through a solid wall unless you really, really, need to.' And part of me argued that, 'It might be a good thing to find out now, you know, just in case.'
I backed into the night, and most of the Arcadians... If you don't like me calling them Arcadians come up with a better name. Most of them seemed to shrug it off and went back to their games. A couple were more persistent, and came out to look for the floating Chrono for a couple minutes. One of them might have been cute if his eyes and... Can you kiss without lips? That was just rhetorical. I wasn't going to try. Just asking.
They gave up and went back to trying to make the colored lights cascade.
There were more buildings here. Maybe someone in one of them could help me. I wasn't sure how to find help, but I walked along, wondering what their research labs would look like. No streets. No sidewalks. Houses, or some kind of buildings, some clustered together, some far from the others.
I paused a minute to form a plan. Junior says it's always a good idea. I'm of the opinion that hitting the enemy first is the best plan. There was no enemy to hit to I had to fall back to thinking.
And that was when I noticed one of the houses was moving.
Except it wasn't a house. The houses had odd angles. This was rounded, and larger than any of the houses. Far away, but moving in my direction, and it moved through houses.
Both those facts concerned me.
Moving in my direction might be coincidence. No point in going paranoid, yet.
Going through the houses... Not crushing houses, moving through them like they weren't there. And maybe they weren't, at least as far as Mr. Mountain was concerned.
Before I tried to decide what that might mean I needed to see if Mr. Mountain had a reason for moving in my direction. And the number one reason for moving in my direction would be me.
I headed off at an angle from its movement. Mr. Mountain adjusted his angle. It didn't seem to be moving fast... Perhaps it wasn't really slow so much as the size made it appear slow. Heck, it was the fastest moving mountain-like thing I've ever seen. Not a lot of competition for the title. It could still be coincidence. I moved back in the opposite direction. So did my pursuer. I upgraded him. He wasn't a random mountain, just taking a stroll for his health. He was looking for me.
He was looking for me. And the fact he moved through houses suggested he was as out of sync with this world as I was... So, what was his problem? I couldn't think of anything I might have done to piss off a mountain.
How many worlds could a piece of me be in at this moment? Was a part of me in Mr Mountain's home turf? When you time travel, time cooties... temporal dust... chronal energy particles... whatever you chose to call it, they set off alarms for those who are looking for it. I didn't know if I'd generated any time cooties by showing up wherever and whenever I was. Maybe I had. Maybe there are spatial cooties too if you bend those dimensions. Maybe I had bent dimensions I'd never heard of before and I was lit up like a beacon for Mr. Mountain there.
Who was the monster? I mean, figuring out that a mountain is looking for you makes me want to cast him in the role of baddie. But if I turned on a light and there was a startled looking roach in the middle of the floor I'd stomp that sucker without a second thought. Maybe Mr. Mountain regarded me as a roach.
Was there some way to tell him, "Hey, this is all a simple misunderstanding. Not going to hurt anything, just trying to get home."? If a roach said that to me would I sympathize and let him go back to the wife and kids?
Maybe next time I may give a roach a break. 'Cause right now I felt like a roach. Have you ever sympathized with a roach? Me neither. I'll stomp that sucker. And I figure I'd get squished if I couldn't find a way out.
Mountain stopped. I breathed a sigh of relief. He moved to the right, and as if he rounded a corner I couldn't see, he began to move toward me. Something in his dimension was solid to him, even if I couldn't see it.
How big was it? Where was it. I didn't think I could outrun the huge thing, but if I could keep whatever was in his dimension between him and me I'd be safe. And so began the cat and mouse game. I felt I had an advantage. I didn't think he could see through the object in his world. I could. If he circled one way, I circled the other way. He stopped and changed direction, so did I.
Sounds easy. If you can see what you're keeping between you and the pursuer it is. I couldn't.
He was maybe a kilometer away, and he was approaching again. I'd gotten out in the open, and I wasn't sure how to find the invisible protection. I started running. It was pointless. It was faster than me, but maybe there'd be another something blocking him.
The chase was completely silent, as far as he was concerned. Any sounds he made were in his dimension. I'd no clue how close he was. I wasn't about to turn around and look.
He had to be getting closer. I was panting, out of breath, seconds from being a flat, greasy spot.
My Chrono started to feel different. It felt right on my wrist. It showed a light, and suddenly I'm in a field of soybeans.
"... and that's what happened," I finished. "I was, like, three miles outside of Middleton. And no way I'd use my Chrono. I mean, if it has popped back into sync it's fine, but I won't use it until Junior okays it. No battery left on the cell phone. So I hoofed it to the Rentons and–"
Junior looked worried, "Give me your Chrono. If it's not working it's dangerous."
Cat just looked disgusted, "There's nothing wrong with her Chrono," she told Junior.
"Why do you say that?"
"Because she'd rather make up a story like that than claim, 'Smaug ate my homework'."
"Huh?"
"She was supposed to work on a group project with me and Lou. We're supposed to give a report on colonial Africa in social studies and–"
"I'm telling the truth," I insisted.
"No way!" Catlyn shot back. "And the Rentons? So convenient," she replied in a sarcastic tone, "Francis was home, wasn't he?"
Lenny voiced his opinion by jumping into Cat's arms and saying something obscene to me in lemur. I assume it was something obscene. I don't speak lemur. And I can't understand why Cat insists he gets a vote in discussions.