Author Note: This chapter was once again split into two parts – this is the first part and contains a little background as to what happened during the invasion of South Park. The next chapter will be up in a day or so and is the one where the action goes into high speed.
Thanks as always to thequillofdestiny for reviewing! It was actually her desire to see Ike that made the chapter too long to be kept as one part (I got carried away writing the li'l genius). Enjoy! Review! Eat cookies! Live long and prosper! Don't forget to floss! And always take a towel!
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Mephisto ushered Stan and Kyle down a corridor, barking orders at a passing Kelly to make something for them to eat. Both boys were anxious to see more of the Rebel Base (and hopefully, more of the Kelly's) but instead they were hustled into another smallish room, this one with several bookshelves jammed with scrapbooks and newspapers.
"You boys might like to see what's been happening since you've been away," said Mephisto, sounding distracted. "I'd better go and speak to Ike – and then maybe we can create some kind of environment for you to live in. It'll blend seamlessly with the reality you're used to."
"We're fine without all that," snapped Kyle. "Just go get my brother!"
Stan managed to wait until Mephisto left the room before speaking. "Ike's gonna be older than you now."
"I know."
"It's gonna be super weird."
"I know!"
Kyle didn't seem too interested in the rooms contents, so Stan wandered over to the bookshelves and checked out what was there. The newspapers were several years old and after a while, appeared to have been replaced by computer printouts of internet news, much of it from websites associated with Canadian and English newspapers. The scrapbooks held much the same thing. The earliest reports had an undercurrent of amusement, that an entire town had been taken over by a child. Later on, the situation was being treated as a great deal less funny.
A Kelly, presumably the one Mephisto had spoken to, entered the room with a tray, containing a large Thermos of soup and some cups, a second Thermos which upon closer inspection turned out to have coffee in it. Kyle took the items distractedly, pouring out some of the soup for them both and ignoring the coffee.
"Isn't there any bread?" asked Stan.
The clone shrugged. "Sorry. We have the ingredients, but no one's made any recently and we're all out."
"How exactly do you get supplies?" asked Kyle. "It doesn't seem likely that you can get much from foraging."
The Kelly looked at him as if he were insane. "This is Professor Chaos's base," she said, as if this explained everything. Upon seeing no reaction, she sighed. "Professor Chaos made sure the base was stocked with everything we could ever need, weapons, computers, you name it. We can't be traced down here, so we can stay here indefinitely if we need to. There's enough food to last a lifetime. Most of it's tinned or dried of course, nothing fresh, but we're not going to starve."
Kyle nodded and sipped absently at the soup, while Stan threw some of the printouts he'd been examining on the table and grabbed for his own cup. "So, according to these, the situation with Cartman doesn't look so good."
"There's been a few setbacks," replied the Kelly guardedly. "They have superior numbers and the rest of the country weren't much help. But we'll win in the end!"
"How?" asked Stan, minor scorn in his voice.
The Kelly shrugged, which caused her barely-clad bosom to move interestingly and neither boy caught her answer. It took them a couple of minutes to realise she seemed to be waiting for a reply and that they were staring.
"Ahem." Stan flushed and put his soup down hurriedly.
Before he could think of a cover story, there was a commotion in the corridor outside, not the heavy tread of Professor Chaos, but the raised voices of at least three people having an argument.
"...Could totally destroy the space-time continuum and cause significant damage to..." Mephisto's voice.
"I don't give a shit!" A much younger voice, unfamiliar.
Another person, from somewhere further than the first two. "Dammit Broflovski!"
The door banged open and revealed a boy perhaps in his early teens standing at the other side. For all the fuss he had been making, he suddenly didn't seem to anxious to enter the room, instead freezing on the threshold and staring at the occupants of the room. Specifically at Kyle.
All Kyle could do was gape. The kid had grown up since he last saw him, but there was no mistaking the features of his baby brother, no matter how much time had altered him. Intellectually, he had known that Ike would have changed but somehow, he had expected a taller version of his three year old self. Instead, Ike sported the look of disaffected youth, black hair spiked up through constantly running his hands through it rather than by design, a couple of pimples on his forehead and a T-shirt and jeans that were in desperate need of a wash, or possibly disposal by hazardous waste experts. There was a silver hoop through his left eyebrow, the skin around it looking slightly red as if it hadn't been there long.
Mom would have a fit if she saw that thought Kyle distractedly, then realised he still had his mouth open in shock and closed it hurriedly.
Ike finally managed to take a few steps into the room. "Jeez... I kinda remember you being taller."
Kyle stood up, eyebrow raised. "Well, I kinda remember you not being able to say much more than, 'I pooped my pants'!"
Ike flushed, glancing around at Mephisto, who was sniggering in the doorway. "Shit, you've been back five minutes and you're embarrassing me already!"
"It's a big brother thing."
"Yeah." Ike grinned and crossed the room, pulling Kyle into a slightly self-conscious hug. "I missed you bro."
"Me too Ike," replied Kyle, his voice breaking slightly, returning the hug with less concern than his brother showed.
"I never forgot how you looked out for me," continued Ike quietly. "I thought – I was sure you had to be dead. I knew if you were here, you'd be here, trying to stop fat ass."
There was a few moments silence, then the brothers released each other. Ike looked down at Kyle, noting the several inches height difference, then grinned. "Y'know, I'm thinking that 'kick the baby' might be more fun these days..."
"Don't even try it Ike! I'm still your big brother – um, older brother... ah shit. Something."
Ike snickered. "This is weird, isn't it?"
"Fucked up," agreed Kyle.
"At least the space-time continuum isn't making us all implode or whatever," said a new voice from by the door. Kyle turned and looked, but didn't recognise the boy at all.
"This is Filmore, remember him?" asked Ike casually.
Ah yes, the kid from Ike's class, Kyle recalled. Hadn't Ike been over there while he and Stan were being chased by the snow? But he would never have recognised him now. Filmore had been hurt somewhere in the missing years and a large, ugly scar bisected his face from above his left eye, over his nose, splitting his lip at the right corner and vanishing into the neck of his shirt. The scar was long healed and broken in places where Filmore had grown and the scar had not, but it was prominent enough to be the first thing anyone would notice about him. The second thing would be his walk. He leaned heavily on two canes that put Kyle in mind of their classmate Jimmy, or Stan's friend who had thought his own cane made him look more Goth. It was difficult to tell if Filmore was as tall as Ike or not because of the strange way his legs looked – too short, too stiff. Again, Kyle thought of Jimmy, but as far as he could remember, there had been no such issues with Filmore.
"Hey," said Filmore, ducking his face away with a scowl. Clearly he knew exactly what people thought when they saw him.
"The Prof's gonna want a meeting of some kind," said Ike. "There's you two turning back up and something strange going down at Camp Cartman and he'll want to address it. Even if it's just to tell us to carry on. It's the whole 'leader' thing, he takes it too far sometimes. Might as well head over to the control room and then I can show my 'little' brother around some."
"Hey!" objected Kyle.
"Sweet, sweet revenge," grinned Ike. "I'll introduce you to some people. We've got ages while Chaos puts on his formal cape or whatever."
"No one seems that intimidated by Professor Chaos," mused Stan as the group headed off deeper into the base.
"Well, you don't wanna cross him when he's in one of his pissy moods," replied Ike, striving to sound casual but with underlying tension in his voice. "He's pretty unpredictable. But he's doing everything he can think of and he kept us all safe all this time, we all respect him... it's just kinda hard to take him seriously sometimes."
"He's like a kid playing dress up," added Filmore. "Stamping around and coming up with evil schemes and yelling about how he'll take over the world once Cartman's out of the way. But none of his plans ever really help things."
"It's too much for him," continued Ike. "Whatever happened when him and Cartman struck that deal, it fried his brain. He wanted to be Professor Chaos, but that meant adding twenty years to him right away, and overdosing his system with testosterone. And then he ended up with responsibility for us. I think he's scared shitless. If he screws up, it could cost all of us our lives but if he does nothing then Cartman wins and we'll probably all be killed anyway. He was out for revenge y'know, not responsibility. It's enough to fuck anyone up."
"Most of us were just kids when we got here," Filmore reminded them. "There was only a few adults. But by the time the rest of us were old enough to do something, Cartman's power had spread too far. There's not enough of us to make a dent in his authoritah."
"But there's only two adults now, according to what Kenny said," Stan pointed out. "Mephisto and the Professor."
"Three if you count Scott," said Filmore dryly. "We usually try not to."
"Six if you count Kenny and Token and Pip," said Ike.
Kyle sighed. "They're barely legal!"
"And lots if you count the Kelly's," said Filmore, slightly more cheerfully.
"They're barely legal either," Stan commented.
"There were more people around at the beginning," said Filmore, clearly choosing his words carefully. "But we've been fighting a war. There were a lot of casualties over the years. The main reason the people here are still around is because we were too young for most of the fighting at the start."
"Chaos still thinks we're too young," added Ike, a note of peevishness in his voice.
"At least he doesn't think you're incapable," snapped Filmore, glancing down at his canes.
"What the hell happened that day?" asked Kyle, unable to hide his curiosity any longer. "How did you all come to be together anyway? Or did Chaos find you later on?"
Ike shrugged. "Sort of both. Most people who got stuck in South Park were split up at first, but we joined up together a bit later on."
"I don't really remember any of it," said Ike bitterly. "Just that we were playing something – cars I think – then just noise and pain and running. I mean, I know what happened, I just don't really remember it."
"It's pretty confused," agreed Ike. "One minute we were sat in the house, then there was a noise and the windows all caved in. Filmore's mom was out in the back, hanging washing I think... we couldn't go that way though, so we ran out of the front door shouting for help. But no one was paying us any attention, which was pretty weird because we were only kindergärtners. Everyone was just running around and yelling."
"There was just noise and smoke and confusion," said Filmore. "I kept trying to go back inside the house because my mom would be pissed and Ike was trying to get us away. It was crazy."
"Then we started walking down the street," Ike said. "I think I might have wanted us to get home, y'know, to our house. There was a mob just screaming and cars that had run off the road. A couple of cars came past us, going hell for leather, but I didn't see any cops and it was like no one was trying to keep any order. Then this other car came along, heh, no way was it street legal. One of the tyres was totally flat and it was spewing enough smoke to give an environmentalist a heart attack. But it pulled up alongside us and the driver got out."
"Carol McCormick," remembered Filmore with a smile. "Damn, I didn't know whether to be more scared of her then I was of what was happening. She had a shotgun in one hand, a bottle of vodka in the other and she just looked – crazy. She ran around the side of the car and hustled us into the back seat, then got back in and tore off. I guess she recognised Ike."
"Well, she kept on calling me 'Mike' anyway."
"Yeah. Started going on about how she had to find her husband and kids. So she's almost flying down the road, heading to the bar she said, because that's where her husband said he was going, then she hits the brakes and we both went flying off the seats and onto the floor. Probably lucky we didn't go through the window. We didn't see, but a kid had run out in front of the car without looking and she nearly hit him. She leans out of the window and tells him to get into the car before he gets himself killed and he says..."
Unexpectedly, Filmore started laughing and Kyle frowned, unable to see the humour. "What?"
Filmore grinned. "He says, 'I'm terribly sorry, but I'm not supposed to get into a car when the driver has been drinking.'"
"Pip," said Kyle and Stan simultaneously, exchanging glances.
"Right," said Filmore. "I dunno what she said, she just kinda yelled and he leapt in and we took off again..." He trailed off, looking at Ike. "That's all I remember."
Ike nodded. "She yelled something at Pip about how he'd be killed if he stayed and Pip got into the car. Carol took off again and Pip grabbed us off the floor and managed to belt us in the seats. Probably saved our lives right there. A bit further down the road there was another explosion and the car went skidding sideways. Carol screamed, I think, then there was a bang – the tyre blowing out. She was trying to get the car under control, all three of us in the back were screaming and crying – but I think she got it back on the road. We were going in a straight line for a second anyway, but there was this huge crash from the front of the car and we flipped right over."
"Carol shouldn't have been driving," said Filmore defensively, noting the horrified expressions on Kyle and Stan's faces. "But she couldn't exactly wait around to sober up either. With the panic and half the town coming down around our heads, she didn't have much of a choice. She was the only person who stopped to take care of us."
"The only other thing I remember about that it waiting in the car," said Ike. "Filmore might have been unconscious, he wasn't saying anything. Pip wasn't moving, but he was breathing heavily so I'm pretty sure he was watching. The car was on it's roof and all squashed up, it'd been there like that for a while because everything had quietened down. There was some noise but not the mob panic there had been before, no explosions, hardly any gunshots and they were all in the distance. But there were people in the streets, soldiers you could tell. They were organised, carrying weapons and looking around for people. I wanted to shout over and tell them we were trapped under here, but Carol had her hand over my mouth. She kept whispering that she didn't think the soldiers were our friends..." Ike shrugged. "Don't remember anything after that, except being here."
"The crash was how I lost my legs," said Filmore.
Stan and Kyle stared at Filmore's legs, finally working out what was up. Under his jeans, they were misshapen and skinny and his walk was careful, not to mention the canes.
"Just from the knee," continued Filmore irritably. "Mephisto did his best with prosthetics, but we're not exactly in a position to do much more than rudimentary replacements."
"I've cloned the limbs," interrupted Mephisto. "But so far, surgery to reattach them has not gone well. It might be that the time between severing the legs and reattaching the cloned legs was too long... I'm working on it."
There was an awkward pause, that Ike eventually broke. "Carol turned into Sarah fucking Conner when Kenny was the only other McCormick to be found. Managed to break into the stronghold four years ago and take a few shots at Cartman. According to our spies, for a moment everyone thought he was hit, but there wasn't a scratch on him and Carol was caught and executed." Ike scowled thoughtfully. "Always thought that was weird, Carol was a great shot and if she got that close, she shouldn't have missed. Hell. Maybe the fat fuck was wearing Kevlar."
"This is the main control room," interrupted Filmore before either Stan or Kyle could ask the question that was on both their minds – news of their own parents. Kenny had said there was no news either good or bad, but it was also possible he wasn't telling the whole truth. He'd certainly been very evasive about the people they knew in town and where they were now.
The control room was the same room that Stan and Kyle had briefly been rushed through upon their arrival to the base. Several Kelly's sat around, apparently monitoring computers and television broadcasts. Upon their arrival, several jumped up and dashed over.
"Ike!"
"Hi Filmore!"
"Who're the newbies Ike?"
"This is my brother Kyle, and his friend Stan," replied Ike, grinning at the girls. Filmore spotted someone in the corner and gestured with a jerk of his head, the pair going over with Kyle and Stan trailing behind, as Mephisto remained with the Kelly's.
"Why are those girls always so pleased to see everyone?" asked Stan.
"Mephisto thought it'd be nice to get a friendly greeting after fighting to save the country," replied Filmore.
"I thought it was Kenny's idea," said Ike with a smirk.
"God bless that pervert," said Ike fervently.
"So, which one is the original Kelly?" continued Stan curiously.
"Oh, the original was killed a few years back," said Filmore. "Mephisto tried to clone a few other people but none of them worked as well as she did. It's something to do with the ageing process of the clones, accelerating their maturity doesn't work well with everyone but she had something in her DNA that made it possible."
"I could explain it," said Ike.
"Please don't," replied Filmore in a voice Kyle recognised – it was the same tone Stan used when he thought his friend was getting unnecessarily technical. Perhaps he and Ike were similar even if they weren't brothers in the strictest sense of the word. "Do you guys remember Scott? Maybe not. Scott, this is Ike's brother Kyle and his friend Stan."
"I remember them," said Scott, turning his head to them. He was shockingly skinny, almost emaciated, a wild mop of russet curls hanging around his pale face and his eyes wide. On the desk in front of him were several screwdrivers and a dissembled rifle with telescopic sight. "You told me the pony would bite off my weiner."
Ike gave a pained smile. "Um, Scott has a rather unique relationship with reality, don't worry about it too much..."
"It's true, we did tell him that," said Stan guiltily. "We didn't know Cartman wanted us to!"
"Oh hell." Ike palmed his face. "I didn't know you guys were involved in the chilli incident."
"Cartman fed me my parents," continued Scott in a cheery voice that was at odds with the information he was giving. "Then he gave me a muffin basket, to apologise. Who knows what was in it this time? But once we fix him, he won't be able to mess with the food again. We'll all be safe."
"Sure we will Scott," said Kyle.
Ike pulled them away. "Damn, I didn't know. Scott's a bit unhinged but he's really studied weapons and tactics. I know he's a little..."
"Psycho?" suggested Stan.
"Well yeah, but he's good at what he does."
"Oh, well that makes up for it," said Kyle with heavy sarcasm.
Token and Pip chose that moment to enter the control room themselves, spotted the group and headed over to them. Token remained stoic, but Pip managed a genuine smile. "Hello Stan, hello Kyle. It's excellent to see you're not dead. Sorry about our rudeness earlier, we had something important to discuss."
"Where's Kenny?" asked Stan.
"Dead," replied Token flatly.
Filmore rolled his eyes. "Chaos again?"
"He has a lot to be concerned about right now," said Pip.
"So, let me get this straight," said Kyle. "The entire Resistance has been reduced to a bunch of clones and a few people who mostly wouldn't be able to vote yet, if anyone were still voting. You've given guns to an crazy anorexic, the leader is a homicidal megalomaniac without a clue what he's doing, Kenny's out of commission until he comes back to life again and the sanest people in the whole base are twelve?"
"Um, I'm thirteen," objected Filmore.
Kyle rounded on Token, aware that he was attracting attention but really not caring any more. "Does anyone here have a plan or are we sitting around here waiting to be blown up?"
Token regarded the nine year old, unimpressed by the outburst. "We've done pretty much everything we can. Unless something changes, we're out of options."
"Well, you could..." Kyle trailed off. "Um, you could... uh..."
Filmore shook his head. "We've done everything and we're not the only people fighting against Cartman. There's nothing else we can do until we know his next plan."
"And probably not even then," added Ike gloomily.
"God dammit," muttered Stan. "We get unfrozen for this shit?"
