It had been a late Saturday evening...
Outside, the air wafted with odorous scents of blooming meadows, spiced with the soft warmth of a beginning summer night. The winds were almost ridiculously honeyed, as if sardonically jeering to the one whose mind was buried under a cold tombstone of worries. A few fluffy clouds floated across the sky, which was turning navy-blue as the sun strolled downwards.
So, out there the sickenly sweet panorama continued its mocking. But inside Buzz' house, in the unlit living-room, one desperate space ranger fought against a beginning headache. The mental devastation drove his head to feel like as if it had been slowly chiseled into pieces. He sat in a bent pose on the edge of the sofa, massaging his temples. A curled piece of parchment lay on the adjacent padding.
This note was the origin of terrors. How much everything had turned worse just in one single day...
It had gotten Mira.
It had gotten her. What would be his next move?
And just yesterday... they had been here, the whole team. Asking questions... Lightyear had thought he had been able to throw them off the track. Now as he leafed through the journal of past miseries, he understood how transparent his behavior had been. Or at least Nova had seen it only as a cloud of bluff. And gone further with the spying... further... and further... too far.
Buzz raised his eyes and picked up the parchment once more. The scarily familiar handwriting laughed out the cold sentences against his face.
"What happened to the curious bluebird that crossed the road...?" The comfortless message enclosed nothing else but the Shadow's cackling announce of how he had caught the second prey. Gloating it explained how the Tangean had decided to stay the night in the town and how he had cleverly lured her into the doom. And under the cacophonic confusion of his mind, Buzz knew this was no lie.
"I have to stop this... somehow..." he kept repeating to himself. "I have to get them back. But I must do it alone, somehow... Blast! Why is everything turning against me? But I may not mess anyone else into this anymore! It'll possibly be dad or someone else who's going to suffer next... and how on blazes does father know so much? He isn't supposed to know anything about Yoka and still he sends Team Nova here? He's such a strange goof-off fooling around with adverse alphabet anancasm and other absurdities hinting to mental dotage; so how can he be so clever?" He shook his head in disbelief. "But that diabolic foe will somehow persuade him into some dreadful snare sooner or later. And who knows, maybe there are more villains behind this than just one."
Buzz thumbed his Van Dyke distractedly. "Odd... how it still looks so obvious that this someone is working alone. Possible henchmen would have contacted me until now. And where could he be hiding? I haven't seen ships... can't be so far away, can it?" A sigh wriggled out of his chest. The logic was washed away once again, since he had not even seen the whole enemy face to face. Just heard the laughter of invisibility, and received a ton of these threatening letters. They seemed to come from the same roll of parchment, since many of their ripped edges matched like jigsaw puzzle pieces.
Thus... what was sure? Maybe there was a ship, maybe there was a whole city of invisible things somewhere. No, no, that was stupid reasoning. The foe had to be lurking nearby somewhere. Perhaps in some sheltered place that nobody could expect to conceal evilness. Yes, that was how Buzz himself would do it if he wanted to hide... in the nook least expected.
"Fiendishly clever scheme... Am I after all starting to find the logic? I have to! I have to stop it! I have to find the hideout!" Lightyear squinted his eyes, his hand clenching around the rag. He was beginning to boil in the cauldron of his anger, gradually forgetting the oppressing bewilderment. It was a positive effect that the antipathy raised his fallen self-esteem again, but also made him rather venturesome. Although he would have believed being able to take a hundred men down single-handedly, the reality was not that promising. The Shadow had means he had no clue of. What kind of weapons possibly hid behind the unseen? What was he to face eventually? The beginning of the end, if the worst was expected?
And yet, the main question was still open. How to find out?
"Now, think..." Buzz hammered his forehead with his fingers, "Do not let the fear and anger control you. Anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering. And that's the path back to the dark side. There. So, Mira stayed the night in Kaon. Then it would make sense that the crime has happened this morning. The note did not tell where, but it clearly told that Mira went somewhere where she was kidnapped. But it can't be far away, by lofty lunulas! Let's see... I need to figure out where she went! That should push me a bit further."
Abruptly, a mosaic of clear conceptions was emerging from the subliminal fog. It resembled very much the means the Tangean herself had used in order to track Yoka-hanen. To ask if someone had seen her... to find out where she had stopped overnight and try to search for more hints that way.
But there was the vast dilemma of how to do it so that this villain would not notice him. He and his sneaky eyes could be generally anywhere. Perhaps even in this very house, right at the moment...
Buzz jerked due to his wild-running imagination. He cast a nervous glance around the empty room, listening to every rustle possibly coming from the shady alcoves.
Did he hear someone breathing...?
No, those were his own gasps. The jumpy Lightyear perceived how his heart was pounding like a mad drumstick against his sternum. Since Yoka's disappearance, this house had begun feeling so abhorrent. As if it was grimly haunted from inside, and gave such a falsely mild look from outside... He literally had grown to hate this place during the last few days. If the man had been able to burn the whole building down just right now, he would not have hesitated to shake the dirt off his shoes and leave only smoldering ruins behind. Everything here teased him about the absence of his dearest; every inch of furniture reminded him of the few gentle moments they had shared here... before the bale had fallen.
The Captain rose up, and walked tardily towards the staircase. Up he ascended, until the last floor was reached. There, he opened a small closet nearby the landing. His old space ranger uniform greeted him from the inners, with its gleaming white surface and surgically clean green trimmings. He still cherished his past through this piece of history. It had been fully repaired after the crash-land of Forty-Two, just like the Mother Ship herself.
He detached the wristcom and attached it around his arm. These wrist widgets meant for harsh fieldwork had tremendously much more useful functions than those the white-collar division of the Universe Protection used. By clicking a sequence of keys, he activated a small infrared detector. The open screen showed a rough view of the environment, him in the middle as a reddish, blurry dot.
The diameter was not that magnificent, but there were no other red spots around.
Was he really alone? He could not see the menace, but could he possibly detect it? Or was it using invisibility that sucked even the body heat?
He had no clue.
What was its nature...? How did it move...? Had it all a pattern he had not comprehended...?
An ambivalent idea rose up from the sea of haze. It had a pattern, after all. The rival avoided open, crowded places. It never had followed him to work, or to the city center, had it? Of course Lightyear could not be perfectly assured of this notion, but it had a glow of perfection. His ranger intuition was slapping him encouragingly on the back; the Captain had stepped a gait forwards. So... could he possibly find out something about Mira while he was working? Would he be safe in the populated Space Ranger Recruit Office? Or was he being eavesdropped somehow...?
Not likely. What he recalled from the times when Yoka had been haunted by the Shadow, it had all happened here. Far away from the teeming city centre.
And there were no infinite shelves of alternatives to select from. This was his first and only better plan.
So, as he would go to work on Monday, he would make calls. Figure out where Nova had stayed the night, and if especially needed, go to visit the place personally. It would be a huge risk, but as said, the options were dying down. Yet, there had to be some eyewitnesses...
*******
Two days later Buzz sat on the same padding of the living-room sofa, holding another piece of parchment in his hands. It was suffocatingly hot. The sky was draped in colossal, deep-gray clouds. A distant rumble boomed in the horizon, the hollow sound of thunder. The beginning storm had not yet reached Kaon; here the atmosphere was stuffed with the pre-thundery, dank, inert air.
Lightyear was sweating so much that his hair was glued onto his forehead and his palms left wet marks everywhere. It was not just the heat bringing the hot water drops to roll down his temples. Mostly it was the horrid mental anticipation that had struck him so hard.
He knew where Mira had gone.
In his shaking fingers he was squeezing the map piece that had been enclosed once in her letter. He had found it while inspecting the room that had been given her in the Bates Motel. There was no doubt of its origins, it all matched. The handwriting, the same ripped parchment... It had been lying behind the room's large desk. That was why Mr. Bates had not noticed it when he had come to clean the cabin later.
Nova had apparently dropped it there unnoticed. Namely, she had used the satellite scan print as her guide while walking towards the demolished turret. So the hastily drawn doodle had had no further use.
Today, Buzz had indeed made his calls. And craftily pulled the right strings to snatch just the evidence Booster and XR had not been able to discover in the same time.
Mira had gone there. In the place the large 'X' marked...
If it even existed... was it so sure, after all...?
His eyes widened, as he abruptly remembered something Yoka-hanen had told weeks ago. Ruins in the forest. Old ruins. And what had he read in the closed Detective Division Network? Was the X pointing at the destroyed Nex Crucio Headquarters?
Nana Lightyear's bedtime stories told about a great evil the Forest had hid in itself...
Buzz felt so unreal.
Even more unreal as he went to put on his space ranger suit, and checked that the laser worked.
And the unreality embraced the forest as he entered it in a cineritious cloudburst. The thunderstorm had been finally conjured above Kaon.
Hours later he understood that his laser was removed and the jetpack whacked broken...
_______________________________________________
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Back in the musty halls of the Nex Crucio Headquarters, Buzz Lightyear and the Shadow stared at one another. Or rather to say, two Buzz Lightyears glared at one another. The major variation between the appearances was that the one wearing black robes had a tad more bluish tint in his hair and beard, and that the raven locks fell into his eyes more on the right side. There the outer differences ended. But if the hearts were compared, there the universes were ripped apart. No mind blacker and tyrannical was there than the one of the Evil Buzz Lightyear from the chaotic mirror universe.
The space ranger's face stood ruthless, his mouth being a thin, determined line. The enemy then again gradually started fidgeting annoyed. The prisoner did not seem to be rather shocked after he had revealed his face.
"Aren't you surprised at all to see me?" he croaked and fumbled his hood not knowing whether to set it back or not.
"I won't give you the pleasure of gloating over my disturbance. I said I know who you are. So why should I jump to the ceiling just because I happened to be right?"
The Shadow frowned from under his bushy black brows. The lantern that was propped onto the floor, created a sickly green glow around. It made the foe's visage look even unhealthier, as the callous lumen colored his scleras and teeth with the same shade of toxin. He had prominent wrinkles under his eyes, slightly deeper than those of Buzz'. The Morphean's face had been stamped with the premature lines of emotional suffering; this other muck carried the labels of physical withering. However, the difference between these two forms of torment was not all that clear from outside. The anguish only drew its grooves across one's physiognomy, not telling why and how they had been scratched there.
Lightyear broke the strained silence. "...the only thing I'm surprised about is that how you have ended up here. I'm not at all amazed to see you using again your twisted evil means to produce chaos. You have never had any bits of goodness in you, have you? But I always thought you plotted your schemes for something more larger-scale than just to capture my wife and Mira..."
A flame of anger flashed in the Shadow's pupils. One of the things he hated most was someone comparing him with some wretched minor skunk. His fingers tightened around the viper staff, and it sent green fire towards the cell bars. But Buzz had expected this. He ducked in time, and the plasma-laser pulse hit the wall behind him.
"YOU RUINED MY UNIVERSE, BUZZ LIGHTYEAR! I WILL PAY IT BACK! EVEN IF IT STARTS AS A SMALL THING, I WILL PAY IT ALL BACK! I WILL DESTROY YOU AND THIS PATHETIC GALAXY!" the manic man bellowed on the top of his lungs, not obviously even noticing he had missed the shot. "Don't you puny twerp question my might! You will be afraid! Because of you I became this darned half-dead invalid; because of you, I lost once even the minor things I had planned to destroy your stupid Capital Planet and its useless crawling fleas!" Foam was dripping out of the crook's mouth. His frenzy had reached some sort of summit, and gradually was beginning to climb down the fury mountain. But that did not draw away the impression of a rabid bat, as he hissed, flapped his black cape, and sent spit showers out of his maw.
The space ranger raised a brow. He quite did not stir under the threats and bawling. Now that he knew with whom he was dealing, part of the stress had been wiped away temporarily.
"Invalid? I thought you were in a perfect condition. With those swift movements to shoot me and all."
"Oh, oh, you say so, huh?" Evil Buzz glowered, "Well guess again, idiot. After you and your stupid companion destroyed my Sunstation, it has been just a continuous downfall for me! Look at me, you witless monkey!" he raised a corner of his long robe, revealing a pair of heavy age-old boots carrying bare wires and circuits all over them. It looked as though they were partly hand-made; obviously rebuilt from something that had lain unused for mere centuries. Yet, with this footwear he was able to literally float in the air. Upper, just beneath the kneeline, his shins were strapped with some sort of tight surgical bandages. "Look at me! My legs are useless! They barely can support my weight, walking is impossible! And thanks to your chick who has kept kicking me, they have gone worse! Even sitting hurts. But... " he let the hem fall back down, "...at least I am alive. Most of my muscles had atrophied too, but I was able to grow them back with electric stimulation. But all this, this pathetic illness, all your fault!"
"How so?" the man behind the grating snorted, "I haven't heard from you since you fell into that sun. It was all your evilness that drove you into that. If you had surrendered and given up the paths of wrongdoing, perhaps that would have never happened, whatever happened to you then. Assumingly you were hurt in the explosion. But you can't blame me from something that was caused by your greediness to destroy everything!"
"Oh, now it's MY FAULT suddenly? What? No, it was you and that stupid Tangean and that idiotic lightbulb head Gravitina who foiled it all! I could have escaped the place with a good time limit unless that stupid chick had not gotten jammed under the debris and you with your goody-doody-melodramatic attitude to save her had not distracted me!"
"Hmh. That's for caring for her, then. And all that muffin-wuffin-whatever stuff in front of us, just another play of yours?"
"For once I have to give you a point for guessing something right, Lightyear", the Shadow sneered, "Once I would have gotten the upper hand of this Galaxy, I would have fed that chick to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beasts of Traal. I don't need allies if I have the full control. They are just muck on my way. But as long as I am not the High Supreme Commander of Everything, I unfortunately would need to keep some cringing henchmen..."
Buzz responded nothing, solely just rolled his eyes.
"Ah yes, it's you again willing to know logical reasons to everything..." the menace shifted the topic as remembering the Morphean's older question. "Willing to know how I ended up here? Huh? Well, I can tell you, we have nothing but time... Well..." he went on with his snarly mutter. It brought him perhaps some sort of twisted relief to squawk out his miseries and blame someone innocent on them. "It wasn't actually the falling into the sun that did this to me... but what happened afterwards. Do you see, you puny-brained bigot, that if I had reached my ship, I would have been saved. But instead, I was forced to stay long time in space just with my suit on. I flew for a while with the aid of a loose jet I had saved from the Sunstation ruins. But it began soon malfunctioning, and there I was, in the middle of nothing, wearing a space suit whose jetpack had gone broken. Sure I was able to retain my speed, the one the jet had given me, but that it was. No planets nearby, I had no idea where I eventually was. After a certain amount of hours, the life support system of the suit began sending me to hypersleep. With no water and food there, in that dratted vacuum, I would have died in a few days. I tried fighting against the anesthetics that would put out my vital functions, but in vain. So, I fell into hypersleep... and wake up two years later, in some dark, damp place, so weak that I barely could move! Two years! Do you know what two years in a non-gravitational hypersleep does to your body? Such a void makes your bones brittle, your muscles wither away, you become just a sick pathetic wreck! Human body needs the gravitation; it can't survive endlessly in nothingness, even if in hypersleep. A bit more time, and I would have possibly wasted away totally."
Buzz listened, recalling how he had scanned the sun's area after the Sunstation's explosion, and how no track of Evil Buzz had been spotted. The cloaked individual continued his bark.
"So, then one moment I wake up, horrible pain everywhere, my space suit all torn, everything broken except the stupid clock of my wristcom... All alone, no clue where I was. The instant my eyes began seeing after the long-lasting haze of the awakening process, I understood I was in a forest of some sort. But then I had no time to think; I was starving, I was sweltering, this impossible ache everywhere. Blast... Then I saw water. A few meters distance I saw a little pond that saved me from dehydration. Gradually I started dragging myself forwards, although I kept losing my conscious every other hour. Darn it, I was living by eating grass and roots like some mindless animal, worming in the ground just with my elbows. Days went on and I found nothing, no civilization whatsoever. I was afraid that some beast would eat me while I was defenseless and weak, but for my surprise there were no carnivores around. I gradually began feeling better, I would not fall unconscious any more... I began telling myself that I have to survive and take my revenge on you. I tried thinking how I had ended up in this unknown place. Did not understand it then, but later, yes. Obviously during the two years of floating in space, I had traveled so far that the gravitational field of this sodden planet napped me and I crushed on it like some stupid meteorite. Apparently my space suit had saved me once again, by decelerating the fall and keeping the frictional heat away. But all the same, it was destroyed in the drop."
The man paced around, walking on air, casting malevolent glances towards the prisoner.
"One day I came upon something weird. At first I was thinking I saw just big rocks in front of me, but no. They were ruins. I was seeing signs of civilized life; this place was inhabited after all. But while I was approaching the stones, I suddenly fell. There had been a hole in the ground hidden by all the vegetation. The drop didn't do good for my body, but what did I find? Regarding my state, I found a paradise. I found this, an abandoned fortress under the ground. I had fallen through some forgotten exit, which the last Nex Crucio members had fixed after the major collapse of the cult. I wasn't lost in the tunnels since after some crawling I found the main chambers. The place had electricity, water generators, heating, even a small storage of canned food. I found my sanctuary here, I found clothes and shelter. I was afraid at first to eat the food stocks since they looked like hundreds of years old. But since I had no choice, I tried them, and didn't die. But that way I was able to recover a great deal, although it took very long. But... after I had found a means to walk without my destroyed legs -meaning that I took your nice ancestor Zoxewa Lightyear's hover boots and repaired them; in case you didn't get the thing, you blob-brained idiot- I simply started looking about the surroundings here... So, I quite soon found Kaon, and could eventually locate myself. Thanks to your impressive forefathers, I was also able to move around incognito. See, Zoxewa had something really amazing in the pocket of his robes. A large cloth that has a light-interferating surface. I bet those capes were quite fancy shelters in the secret attacks the cult members made against the Grays. No wonder the police could not track them, hahaha. Who's able to track invisible people? Hahahah."
Buzz frowned. The story sounded so impossible that nobody could actually have fictionally created it out of his head. So apparently this time Evil Buzz Lightyear was not cheating.
"So, why didn't you then leave this place behind if you can move so freely around? What's keeping you from stealing a ship and flying away?" the Captain indignantly tapped the bars with his fingers.
"I've always said you're an idiot, Lightyear, and I say it again", the Shadow's lip curled. "Can't you still get it? How am I supposed to drive a ship in this condition? I can't control pedals, and my hands tend to spasm. And don't start whining about autopilots", he added as he saw the jailbird opening his mouth, "If you are too thick to understand things, then shut up, don't shout out your stupidity. You'll embarrass yourself less that way. I..."
Abruptly the vile man flopped quiet. His regard turned distinct, as if some sort of deep vagary had popped up in his cranium. He slowly raised a few fingers to stroke his whiskers. A lopsided, maliciously twisted smile was tardily spreading across that face. His eyes narrowed into slits as he pondered the notion that had conquered his frontal lobe.
"But that's it... I actually could get away from here... darn it, why haven't I come to think of further alternatives during these years?" with a violent waft, he turned to meet his captive, his simper widening into a toothy grin. "With your help I could do actually anything I want! Or do you want to see your li'l kitten suffer?" he drew his madness-gleaming visage closer to Buzz, the green light dancing in his wicked oculars, "Do you want to watch closely how I put your sweetheart to scream in pain? Huh? Would that be fun to watch?"
The space ranger paced a few steps backwards in horror. Evil Buzz was making faces with a scull-like grimace behind the bars. That slick, smooth voice of the foe was like venom for his ears. That sadistic, sick man could not possess any sort of humanity, could he?
"D-Don't you touch Yoka..." he panted, shaking a warning finger in the air.
"Don't you touch Yoka!" the second Buzz mocked with a high-pitched voice. "Oh yes I will, unless you obey what I say. You are my servant now, Lightyear. If I command you to cringe, you do that. If I command you to kiss the soil, you do that. HAHAHAHAHAH! And no whining, or one cute kitty will go bye-bye!"
"Y---y--you are MAD! SICK AND MAD!" the Captain stuttered with wide-flown eyes. His whole being was reflecting the sudden, desperate terror. How could he had let his mind fly so calm momentarily? The stones were dropped back over him with an appalling force.
"Tut tut, Lightyear", Evil Buzz simpered, "One more time I hear you offending my glory, and it'll be that Tangean that will die. We don't exactly need her, do we?" he smoothed the viper staff's bar with ill affection, "We keep your chick alive until you have helped me back to my original majesty... I will become the Supreme High Commander of this galaxy because I cannot get back home..."
The sadistic psychopathy was starting to bulge out of his eyes. His irises were reduced to mere dots, and his mentally disordered smile was reaching his ears. "...and actually, why to go back home? I have nothing to do there any longer, I would have no challenges! But here, it's just a whole new game... hahahaha... and, yes... perhaps I was meant to end up over here! Perhaps it all has a grand, superior meaning! Hahahahaha! I am a Lightyear, am I not? Perhaps I was meant to arrive here to heal the corrupted and devolved blood of the Lightyears, and upraise again their ancient evil grandeur from the ashes! HAHAHAHA! Yes, it must be so! I shall become the new heir of Nex Crucio! I shall be the dark light that will burn this pathetic galaxy and make it cringe under my feet! I shall resurrect the Dark Lightyear inheritance!"
The Captain shuddered in the furthest corner of his cell, staring at the bewitched lunacy of the Shadow. That horrible uproar had not a single ray of sanity in it; it was plain megalomaniac phrenopathy. The tales of his family's past were creeping back into his awareness, sending cold wriggles down his spine. Evil Buzz laughed his unceasing cackle, and for some reason the outer wall had begun sliding back over the bars.
"See you later, Lightyear! HAHAHAHAHAH! And remember your place, you unworthy minion!" The horselaugh's clatter was turning distant. And finally, the wall banged seamlessly back into its slot.
Buzz collapsed to sit onto the floor. He wanted to scream, just scream with his whole force. The reality was revealing its most poisonous fangs, ready to bite with the fatal venom. Or could the reality be so cruel? Was this all just a part of some continuous, infernal nightmare?
His regard swirled across the cell. Every time it fell onto the skeleton that was sitting against the nearby wall. Whatever he did, always his eyes ended up onto the decayed features of Jardaz Lightyear. The empty scull was staring at him, from every single direction it looked like that. As if the dead man had been mocking his mental limbo, as if it had cackled Evil Buzz' laugher with that crooked, hanging jawbone.
The room was beginning to fly in psychedelic circles in his vision. The pain of the shots had come back. Green flames were grilling his muscles, as he crumpled onto the dusty floor and fell into a fatigued hallucination. He could stand no more. The sleep took him into its hard bony grasp. Jardaz' dead face lingered in front of him...
Zurg was lying on the floor, raising a clawed hand towards him, pleading for forgiveness... He had his loose helmet in his lap... A woman, a beautiful young woman was doing a fidgeting movement. It kept curling a lock around her finger and wiped it behind her ear... then, a faint sound of some silent melody hung in the air.
The woman was not doing the fluttered gesture any longer... she was smiling, she was humming a melody. Her lips were slowly moving, and a calm song was floating around. Her blue eyes had a modest, placid look in them... Next, the image was jerked away. It turned to grim blackness... someone was screaming... a woman was screaming...
It screamed with the same voice that had sung the lullaby...
It pleaded for mercy... desperately pleaded for mercy in front of someone...pleaded to spare her life...
Buzz had sunk back into the deepest abysses of his subliminal mementos. The forgotten monsters were released by the shock. Roaring they wormed inside the darkest nightmare he had ever seen.
...to be continued...