A/N: So this chapter got started, restarted, diverged, got lost for a LONG time, and was just challenging. Eventually I determined that this chapter had to get split into 2 parts. So I will have to leave Wanda hanging for a little bit. I'm sorry this chapter literally took years to post.
Return of the Magic School Bus by RogueDragon
Act 3: Save the Day
Chapter Eleven: GP
"Is it all my fault?"
Arnold hesitated. He had just come back with several of the others from grabbing some fast food and was just about to offer Wanda a sandwich.
Miss Frizzle had enough forethought to make a quick stop for food. "I believe we will probably need something more nutritious than what the bus can conjure," she had said. Wanda did not want to think about the implications of what "magically-conjured" food contained if fast food was more nutritious.
But Wanda didn't want to think about the fact that Arnold had chosen to sit next to her either; she didn't need that confusing distraction either.
"Just to be clear," Arnold placed a sandwich in her hand before taking his seat beside her, "what are we talking about?"
"Geri Poveri," Wanda responded as she absent mindedly started to unwrap her sandwich.
"We all helped expose Geri's fraudulent lake monster," Arnold responded, taking a bite of his sandwich. "Just because you sort of spearheaded the effort in some ways doesn't make it your fault," he responded, talking with the half of his mouth without food. "Besides," he added with a swallow, "didn't her ratings spike after that incident?"
"For a little while," Wanda confirmed, "but when her truth-seeking show is exposed for staging at least one hoax, viewers were never going to quite trust her again."
"It's still her own fault for her demise," Arnold concluded. "Besides, D.A. was saying that if she's the GP from the crazy conspiracy website, then she's actually a lot newer to the group than the others. So all of this may have still happened even if Geri wasn't involved."
Wanda nodded, feeling a little reassured. But she was still way too anxious with her thoughts jumping all over the place. A jolt told her they had taken to the air and, with no idea what they were getting into, she strove to keep her imagination from jumping to the worst possible scenarios. Anyway things went down, Wanda was sure they were in for a long night.
It was a good thing it wasn't a school night. It was also pretty lucky that everyone's parents trusted their kids enough to let them stay out late for something very important, but very vague. Well, Ralphie's step-mom hadn't actually given her approval, but instead complained about some unrelated household politics nonsense. He hung up on her, claiming he was long overdue for an act of teenage rebellion
With parents contacted, Janet dropped off at her house with her prisoner of war to help her with her fundraiser, and now with some food in hand, there was nothing else to do. Nothing to do but think about things Wanda didn't want to think about or else stare out the window.
She wasn't sure if the foreboding feeling in the air was due to the unease of the unknown that they were closing in on, accentuated by the dark night as they left the city lights behind. Maybe it was the threat of real danger. Oddly enough, danger was a lot scarier now than it was in elementary school. Broken bones she could live with; but she couldn't help remembering the last time their whole group had separately shown up at an event together. The funeral was held out in the hills, very much like the ones they were now passing over, so Wanda was sure some of the others were remembering too. Wanda glanced at Carlos who was picking on Ralphie for something he probably deserved. If Carlos wasn't dwelling on it, then neither would she.
Staring out into darkness isn't terribly easy, even with the cabin lights low in the shuttle-bus, but with the flat farmlands of outer Hillvale being so bland, the unusual stands out a bit more. Honestly, she had no idea what it was at first, but it hung in the air and flailed around, possibly had some kind of head lights. She spoke up when she was sure her eyes weren't messing with her. "Miss Frizzle! Out there towards the, uh, south east?"
Some of those on the right side of the bus started to move to the left side but a sudden turn and momentum change of the bus made them rethink that idea. As Miss Frizzle steered the bus toward the unidentified object it became more clear.
It was obviously a helicopter wrestling a submarine.
The helicopter didn't appear to have much room for occupants but the possibly military-grade blades atop the aircraft and on the tail were impressively compensating for the extra weight of a single-occupant submersible. And by "impressive" it was amazing that it even got off the ground; that sub looked heavy! The manipulator arms of the watercraft struggled against what appeared to be after-market-added manipulator arms that were obviously hastily installed.
"Those are my arms!" R.U. exclaimed, pointing at the windshield.
"As opposed to those things connected to your bod-?" Carlos began but was stopped when the bus jostled around and sprung out some manipulator arms of its own as they closed in on the vehicular squabble.
"As my mother used to say, 'keep your hands to yourself!" the Friz declared as she and the bus, a well tuned team, efficiently got the two crafts apart and eased everyone down to the ground (which happened to be some poor farmer's field, torn up by the activity). Well, the mini-sub didn't land all that gently; it's density was still a bit much for the bus to handle.
Now on the ground, the small helicopter started to slow its blades to the point that it no longer was attempting lift off. The recently retrofitted manipulator arms stolen from R.U.'s shop contracted into a rest position. The submarine on the other hand, once in the ground started to use its manipulator arms (obviously factory originals with only a few, non-recent, non-magical modifications) in an attempted to drag itself through the corn stalks, assisted with rotatable fins that presumably help with steering and stabilization when in the water. Somehow, the watercraft was flopping and dragging itself away from the chopper and bus. It didn't get two meters before the bus traded in its own arms for a cage perfectly sized to contain the land sub.
With all three vehicles on the ground, the doors of the chopper and the bus opened and the occupants disembarked.
The scene had the feel of an old-west standoff. The sharp contrasts of blinding headlights and a moonless night made most everything appear as flat silhouettes. The audio ambience had similar extremes. The chopper's engine and blades no longer made a deafening roar, but now with them outside the vehicles and in close proximity to each other, it was still pretty loud. It didn't help that the mini-sub was also still flailing around its cages making its own racket.
"Ms Valerie Frizzle!" The former reporter called out in greeting, "I would never ever have thought I'd be so glad to see you!" She didn't get very close, staying within ten feet of her chopper. Her hands were presented in a way that said either "I surrender", "I'm unarmed", or possibly "yeah, I'm at your mercy, but the night is young."
"I might have found seeing you again to be a pleasant surprise as well, Ms. Poveri," Miss Frizzle replied. She had to raise her voice over the noise, making the emotional tone of her voice hard to read. "but I slept in a birdcage the last couple of nights, so I apologize for any diminished enthusiasm."
"You're human now aren't you?" Geri replied. "I was surprised we managed to contain you at all! Lucky guess work from what we were able to investigate and uncover about your device was really all it was. Radioactive materials aren't cheap either. But I knew in my heart of hearts that we couldn't really hold you for long!"
"That doesn't make you less guilty or less of a criminal!" Wanda called out over the increasingly noisy sub thrashing around in its cage.
"Wanda Li, you're here too? Of course you are! Are all your little friends here too? How about Tim Whats-his-last-name? Look at you all grown up, sort of. And the disagreeable mechanic from the magic chop-shop too!" Geri noted, "your partner in crime, Valerie? For you are the real criminals, perhaps? I did my best to keep you from seeing me, but now that you know I'm involved maybe I could finally get the full scoop on this story! So is it the usual? Illuminati? Free Masons? Libertarians?"
"Another loon?" R.U. huffed, "seriously, Val, how did these people get the drop in you?"
Geri approached as an old friend, though Wanda could have swore the bus's engine started to growl. "Oh we deserve more credit than that!" The middle-aged blonde countered, "but I do have to admit, it's amazing tech! Who'd have thought I could bring my own mini sub to life! On that note, why did it freak out and run away?"
"Are you for real?" Keesha spoke up, maybe more of a holler, "this is your mess! We aren't telling you anything!"
"No no, kid," R.U. interjected, keeping his focus between Geri and her mini-sub which was making less noise for some reason, "let's figure this out, I want to know how your sub came to life. It's a mundane vehicle, and you can't simply control my manipulator arms just by welding them to your chopper and have them work! What have you done? And in only a matter of hours!"
"It wasn't easy, we just had most of the ground work already done," Geri responded proudly, "Dave and I have been experimenting almost non-stop since I joined his team. Only part of the focus was on the containment device." Geri then added dismissively, "Also, I've been adding gizmos and devices to my mini subs and whatnot for years, didn't take long at all to wire some of your equipment into-"
"Yes yes you're a genius," R.U. waved his has as if to cut through Geri's B.S., "you're not actually telling me anything; what specifically did you do to animate your submersible?"
"Oh that?" Geri scoffed, "that's nowhere near as impressive! When we found those processor chips on your desk I figured they'd be a perfect first experiment to just solder into the sub's interface and, lo, it came to life!"
"Processors?" R.U. asked, baffled, "you don't mean the mesmostellar datadipper modules I was preparing, do you? That's not their purpose!"
"You don't expect us to believe you plugged them in," Keesha challenged, "and hoped really really hard that they'd magically bring your stuff to life!"
"Actually..." R.U. interjected ponderously.
"Are you kidding me?" Keesha snapped, more annoyed than anything else.
"Like I said, spiritual physics is not my strong suit!" R.U. huffed defensively.
"So what are we going to do about it?" Wanda had to nearly holler over the ambient noise, hoping to bring everyone back on point.
"We'll have remove the datadipper module," Miss Frizzle concluded.
"What? You can't talk to it? Ask it to chill out?" Geri countered.
"It's got the feeling and thinking capacity of a virus!" R.U. barked, "and not even the computer kind! All it knows is a single purpose."
"To tear up corn fields?" Carlos asked.
"It was heading toward the city," Tim observed, motioning to the drag marks in the ground. He was barely audible over the racket, which Wanda suddenly noticed, was not coming from the mini sub.
The mini sub had stopped struggling against its cage and seemed to be watching Geri; or rather, Wanda realized, the helicopter behind Geri.
How long had the blades been powering back up? The chopper seemed to realized that it's subtle attempts had been noticed and gave up the ruse.
"Oh sh-" Geri got drowned out as the sound became deafening and air got blasted in their faces. The vehicle hovered off the ground, raising above them before flying off in the same direction the sub had been crawling.
"What the hell!" Geri spoke the words most of them were thinking. "It just flew off!" Geri spazzed, " why did it just fly off?"
"Why not?" Ralphie spoke up unhelpfully.
"I'm guessing you did something similar to your helicopter?" Miss Frizzle offered as a question when it really wasn't.
"Well when the sub freaked out and started crawling away like some half-dead five-ton raccoon I needed to stop it!" Geri protested; Wanda got a little distracted by her analogy. "Took a lot longer to figure out something to catch it! Dave and I rushed to come up with something. Mine got finished first, but as you all saw, it wasn't enough!"
"Was its purpose truly to catch it?" Miss Frizzle queried.
"Of course!"
"Judging by the actions of both hastily created automatons," Miss Frizzle remarked, "heading back toward population centers and all, you wanted something a little more public, subconsciously at least."
"What? No!" Geri floundered, completely confused, "The chopper was cooperating until just now!"
"Until we started discussing the sub's - de-animation," Arnold offered.
"And by extension," Dorothy Anne concluded, "the helicopter's own animated existence was in danger!"
"You wouldn't get your fame!" Wanda cut in, "your chance to get back into the public spotlight! It's unnatural birth only allows it to understand its purpose through a twisted interpretation of your own deeper desires and vanity!" Wanda clarified for Geri's benefit, "And it won't care how it accomplishes that!"
"And the real question is," Phoebe spoke up with force, "How much damage would you be willing to see caused for your own notoriety? How many people would the helicopter hurt so you'd be noticed."
"Like a tornado or hurricane," Keesha affirmed her friend's line of thinking, "you never want to see anyone hurt but it's always more exciting when they do."
The night setting made her face hard to read, but Geri's stance at least became more submissive. "I honestly don't know," Geri offered, "What do we do?"
"We need to catch it!" Wanda said as if it was obvious.
"What are our options?" R.U. asked, "How much extra mass does the bus have, Val?"
"I highly doubt it has enough mass to hold two violently uncooperative vehicles," the Friz responded. Not what Wanda was hoping to hear.
"What's wrong?" Dorothy Anne pried.
"We are ill equipped for this," the teacher sighed. Wanda braced herself for an unnecessarily long explanation. "We normally borrow some pre-mapped matter from the deep bedrock out in the national park. Solid rock that doesn't disturb any habitats. But the bus can't keep track of all those extra atoms all of the time so we only take what we need and return when finished. We're prepared for an avian fieldtrip, which doesn't even require extra matter, we just use the student's own matter and store any excess in the neighboring dimensions."
"Neighboring dime-" D.A. started but was cut off by Carlos who thankfully appeared to trying to keep her on point.
"And the extra matter that was kept on hand is all in the cage right now?" he clarified, thankfully keeping the focus on the present.
"Not all," the Friz confirmed, "but it's safe to say we don't have time to map any new matter; but we can't contain the vehicles with what we have. Disabling them is our best bet."
"You have anything like a tractor beam?" Carlos offered, trying to cut to a solution.
"The pulsarangler might work like that, but it was meant for space and it will excite the atmosphere molecules too much and might get dangerous." Miss Frizzle prattled.
"Can't we just smash them?" Ralphie protested, or maybe it was a suggestion.
"Too risky," R.U. droned on, "destructive energy can have unpredictable effects on animated material, even second-hand animation. Best to simply undo what was done like with your robot."
"So we rip out their processor chips," Geri over-simplified, "we just gotta figure out how to get in them to do so. Shouldn't be too-"
"You're staying away from the machines, lady!" Wanda declared with a threatening tone, her impatience boiling over. "Miss Frizzle, Bus, if you could conjure me a crowbar, sledgehammer, and a walkie-talkie, please, and then compress this cage to restrict this sub's movement and take any excess; you can leave this sub to me!"