A mental tumult resided initially in Buzz Lightyear's house. Zurg and his henchmen jutted at the dresser in uncannily lopsided poses, a miniature multitude of parchment rags taking their whole concentration. The Emperor had an ill shade of grayish green tinting his cheeks, while Booster and XR showed other remarkable signs of fear, puzzlement, mistrust, slight ague, and bile, all at the same time. The emotions quite much kept shifting every other second, so it was hard to say what was on the top.
Actually, the uncanny atmosphere hovering over the parchments had transformed a lot dodgier as the ever-first gags and gurgles of wonder were over. As the confusing messages about Mira and Yoka's napping were read, the enigma of the too-familiar handwriting whacked Team Z on their heads with a sledgehammer. And it definitely did not enhance the situation that XR provided a quick handwriting analysis to the notes.
The reaction was amazingly similar to Mira's one. Zurg buried his throbbing forehead into his hands, while Booster and the robot were quarreling whether Buzz had thoroughly gone bananas by writing himself gloating messages about something evil he had plotted. Yet, something at least became sure. Mira and Yoka were both in real danger, and apparently had been closed into some unknown devious hidey-hole.
"But... but... it can't be Buzz' handwriting! Buzz is not crazy or evil or... That's someone else's writing! Someone who's imitating him!" Munchapper whimpered in his largely growing perplexity.
"I did the test twice. AND the results are 99,9999% firm that it is Buzz who has written these to himself", the mecha rolled his eyes, "And what do you mean he's not crazy or evil? Prince Zenith, the heir of Zurggieland, the son of that other... politely said, oddball... How much proof do you need? Does he have to dance ballet in front of you with a proton blaster in his hands so you believe? I've always said there's something vile lurking hideously inside him. It's in the eyes, you see... the way he squints them. The way he hushes his tone. The way he glares from under his brows... well, and nowadays he has even that evil beard! Looks so Zurgish and... well, not only that but it's like walking beside his evil twin brother from the alternate universe! You know that... Evil Buzz Lightyear."
"I won't hear you! I won't hear you! Blaaablablaablabalaaaa!" his chum stuck his fingers into his ears and started to chant an odd burble to hide his fellow ranger's horrible accusations.
The Emperor slowly lifted his blanched visage up from the shelter of his chapped hands. The whole sphere of his thoughts had been dropped into some dreadful hole of perdition, where indescribable monsters fought and devoured one another. His expectations... the whole notorious feeling that had habited his inners for weeks, occasionally making his stomach lurch, his temples thump as if someone had played trombone in a very false note inside his skull... it was all becoming real once again. So ill with trepidation he had not been since the Gate case. And again, the horrid emotion engorged him from inside. What was going on? What the dratted izzard was going on? Buzz... what had he done to himself? Had the venomous inheritance of his blood always kept a strangling claw around his throat in secret, roasting his heart blacker and blacker behind the coulisses? Or was it he behind this? And what had after all happened?
Last night, the old man had bounced up from his bed like a mad spring And why? Because of the nightmare. Yes. Otherwise he would not have spurted to bellow his lungs sore to Commander Nebula. It was the dream...
A glazed, distant glimmer remained in his half-paralyzed eyes. They just stared at the opposite wall, as if every inch of life had been drained from them. Buzz, he had writhed inside the nightmare. But... he had been the one crouching in the feet of that other shadow, the one robed in black... Like a cringing servant he had been... not the Master of Darkness.
Someone else had started the whole dilemma, Buzz could have not written those letters, could he? Perhaps someone was impersonating him, like that squirt claiming the sick leave. Still, it made no much sense. Oh, if he only could perceive...
And whose were the blue eyes he had seen in a manic glimpse of time? Raven hair drooping over them... they were so unpleasantly familiar.
The images flied past his vision in a howling swarm of ghosts. The moldy old vaulted corridors... the roughly sculpted wallstones.... An obscure, hooded figure hovering inches above the floor, gliding onwards... its hoarse cackle rattling impishly in the musty, sepulchral crypt, like a demonic canto.
What was all this meaning, Zora inquired himself. After his redeem, he had feared the day when his son would finally select the path of sin, and stop the inner fighting against the Dark Side that had once gotten such a callous pinch of him. Buzz had sworn his heart had changed, but had it? Although Zurg had no clear perception of the ghastly inheritance he had transferred to his son via the Lightyear blood, he had tens of years presumed that something odd resided in the veins of his family. Mizar, he himself, his father... Zoxekov Lightyear's feathers were not white either, although he had not been quite as corrupted as his offspring. Nonetheless, pools of mud water decorated this deceased person's life road; countless misdeeds had been hidden behind the veil of false innocence. Hence the Emperor had his reasons almost never to utter a word about his father; it was another eyesore in his past. However, as the years had slithered onwards, his grim assumptions concerning his ancestry and estate had grown only more portentous. The Lightyear name was deceitful. Although the standard measure called light year was meant just to describe how many meters photons traveled during one regular year, the prefix light in it was rather ironic.
And why, why did his senses tell something far more ruthless was being bred in the bowels of Gehenna than just the simple disappearance of two or three people?
It looked like a mere nothing, just a simple tiny crime in the vast Galactic distances... just trivial dust particles in the great wide universe. But chaos always chose to blossom from very delicate preconditions. Some insignificant shift in the state of entropy could smash planets, drain oceans, destroy a whole civilization... And this Zoxedaszeĉ somehow sensed, saw the more probable than probable raise of utter darkness behind the insignificance.
The background noise was gathering more decibels. A metallic tone with a sneer in it, was accusing something. Gradually the thunderclouds drifted away from Zurg's lobe as he woke up to conceive the reality.
"It's like walking beside his evil twin brother from the alternate universe! You know that... Evil Buzz Lightyear." His ears caught the last bits of XR's mocking. The gibbering went on, as if a pack of jackals had barked at one another while quarreling about who could eat the newly spotted carcass on savannah.
"I'm not listening! Laalalalaaa! Tattaraa! Uaa! Habahabahaa!"
"Alright, you may not listen now. But it will be too late when you find yourself in a huge cauldron, fire crackling under it, and someone beside you flipping through a cookbook trying to find the recipe of boiled Jo-Adian in cayenne. And then you can't say ol' XR didn't warn you!"
Some kind of pallid dawn was abruptly illuminating Zora's grave illusions. Some distant comprehension, as if he had been Einstein just figuring out that energy might equal the square of lightspeed multiplied with the particle's mass.
But... it was generally impossible. That could not be... He slapped his almost nonexistent forehead with a large palm. Oh, if his ultra-intelligent brains had just worked a tad faster... did he have thick rust in the cranial cogwheels or what was the trouble, for he could not picture anything clearly? And that dissonant fanfare of those insufferable minions was just ripping the entities more apart.
Before nobody could put duct tape over Zora's mouth, he had inhaled his lungs full of air, and with all his might, bellowed a terrible boom out of his mouth. The gentle music of exploding a-bombs was truly just a placid lullaby compared to this thunder.
"SHUT UP, YOU LOUSY SPONGEHEADS! CANNOT YOU SEE I AM THINKING OVER HERE?"
A crystal vase in the near table shattered with a loud crack. A heavy cemetery-silence fell over the room. Only the chinking of the numerous windows and glass items in the house played their ominous symphony, abating slowly to make the reticence perfect.
"W-We stay q-q-quiet, your Highness!" XR squeaked with a high-pitched voice, looking as though a hurricane had tossed him a few miles in the air. Booster was picking his ears with a deformed grimace, asking if a sudden earthquake had hit the house.
"Always some insufferable bug is ululating in the background while the Emperor tries to think! Inexcusable! Unpardonable! Indefensible! Unforgivable! Srnoff! Gruff! Snarl!" the elder Lightyear roared, his fists whacking the air above him. Nonetheless, nobody granted him pondering peace. Out of the blue Munchapper's wrist communicator began having its own recital. The comlink was beeping infernally.
"Ninny quasars! Now what? Is it that grizzled coot from Star Command having a blast?"
"Uh, sorry Sir, but I need to answer, it might be important!" the accused one deplored.
"Hyrrhymph", Zurg crumpled, and took such a surly expression on his face that his already rather long upper lip looked as if someone had stretched it twice longer.
The former farmer flapped his wristcom open, but winced due to the high-pitched birr the com channel kept. The received transmission sounded more like a battered analog radio wheezing and bemoaning when some desperate snailbrain in vain tried finding the FM channels in the AM frequency level.
"Skiuuviuu... prrts... cpt mrrr--- viuuu--- str comm --- sking for mmedieate ... skuiiv... rpeat, cptn--ra no--screep... mand ask--g for imm--elp snap-crackle-pop surr... I cannot lo-- mys--plea... cate thi sig--- skuiivskuubiduu--- I rpt ple... locate this -nal... iuurk... svuiiish..." the com channel whined like tired kids in supermarket.
XR and Booster looked mystified at one another. Zurg clicked his tongue annoyed.
"Tsut tsut. Is that pitiful crow chorus the way you pathetic turkeys at that Star Coma communicate at one another? And they keep blaming me about meticulousness because I bought second-handed machine parts from flea market... It was just good dandy money saving! At least my hornets worked, although they sometimes had gramophone parts inside them."
"I... I don't get it..." the Jo-Adian rubbed his bald and squinted hard, "This isn't from Commander Nebula. And it still came from the team channel, not from outside!"
"Hey, my fancy internal comgadget caught it too. But I'd say leave it, it's probably just a cloud of cosmic noise lost in our frequencies---" XR threw in a lazy sarcasm, but a second outburst of whirr and drone smashed his sentence. The same extraterrestrial gibberish nauseated the ether a few times more before it utterly died.
"What is this, a prank call? Are we in the Candid Camera?" he exclaimed the conclusion.
But Zora was nothing but on a satire mood. His deeply furrowed bushy brows and that particular pout of his lips told that someone had scraped the rust a bit off from his cerebral pinions. He was reflecting hard the meaning and existence of that random-sounding squall.
"Grub! Ehh... Booster, from where did you say it was coming from?" he pointed at the fatty ranger with a sharp-appearing tip of an abnormally long finger.
"Ehh... our team channel."
"By flamenco-dancing Andromeda, what is a team channel? Speak more technically, so that my marvelously clever mind can understand something from that pestilentially indelicate barbaric grunt!"
"Team channel is a strict frequency in the field of electromagnetic wavelengths that transports data signals carried by a strictly defined modulation. Team channel is reserved only for the usage of a specific Star Command space ranger team, and their commander. Team channel strictly implements the standard 53v-5nAp3-222 of the Agreement of Intergalactic Communications Systems, signed by the 2nd Alliance president Z. Beeblebrox, and the former Chief Telecommunications Administrator W. Löllösääri-Pulupolla", the robot had taken a mattress-thick book out of his inners, set a pair of bottle-bottom glasses over his artificial eyes, and was now reading the lines in a raspy, monotonous voice that would put to sleep even someone in caffeine high.
But the old Emperor was more than delighted. "Jim-crackin' -dandy! This is what I call analytical explaining! Remind me that I shall give you my imperial 'worker of the week' badge, when we get home. Now, where was I..." he rubbed his hands together with glee, "Ah, indeed." The nutty mien melted off his face. "That creaking... I think it was a message. I hearkened, and there were clear words in it, though chaotically mixed with the background noise." It did not need much explaining, even if your lackeys were insufferable gits. If the distorted transmission was not from Commander Nebula, it left only one alternative: Mira had squealed it. How, why, from where, that was shady even to the majestic mastermind. Yet, if it was the blue one, it meant that nobody had yet filched her life.
Munchapper and the bot were rather suspicious concerning this newly discovered theorem, but at least the generic giant shyly nodded that perhaps Zurg had a point. The foggy crackle had been recorded, and the old man now listened to it several times. A long thin index kept ferociously tapping his chin, while he contemplated more.
"str comm --- sking for mmedieate... hmh. That is Star Command and something for immediate... I cannot lo-- mys--plea...She cannot lo-something. Lo-mys-plea? Hmh. Then I clearly heard 'locate this'. She is asking to locate something that is 'this'. Hyyhyhyy. Hem. Hem."
"I cannot lo-mys-plea?" XR looked a bit uninterested, "What's that supposed to be? I cannot loathe muesli plea?' Even amoebas talk things that are more sensible. I still think it's some prank call from some evil hacker kid. Maybe Norbert Klerm. Who knows. But seriously, why would Mira send a message that sounds like Kellogg's Rice Crispies cereal?"
"Perhaps... the transmission was distorted somehow. Scrambling was not invented in yesterday's nerd parties..." Zora's oculars roamed along the ceiling's shadows, "I think... she is trying to explain we should locate the signal, that is, locate her. Perhaps your Tangean friend does not know where she is." A little annoyed pinkness decorating his cheeks, he snapped at the robot, "And you are supposed to carry one of the most advanced AI chips in your badly lit bulb? Then, tell me why are you not even trying to descramble the signal, or correct it, or whatever? Lo, the Emperor is always the one slaving away with speculation! AND, I am quite positive you pathetic pilchard tin might also be able to LOCATE THE SIGNAL!"
The mecha looked as if someone had thumbed him on the head with a bucket of bricks. That was what he had always teemed with on Team Lightyear missions: analyzing complex things with his instruments. Now he just stood there like a futile tree stub.
"A-Okay, righto, gotcha, sure, aye aye captain! Even though you're not a captain" the android fussed about and finally let his inner analyzers to sniff thoroughly the failed message. It seemed, however, that the com channel gibberish had been so badly contorted that only some faint new lumen fell upon the obscured sonnet. But that was enough to draw some crucial conclusions. The sound diagram matched quite well Mira's one, and amazingly, the signal appeared to origin from an unknown place a few miles away. Still, the squabble was not over.
"Uh... Sir, shouldn't we do... umm... a report to Commander Nebula now? I mean... with those parchmyn... erm... parchments, and this really really odd message, shouldn't we like try to get help from Star Command?"
Zurg scowled, having the unserene impression that Zeb would just bark something about early retirement and spas against his face. But he agreed, this situation was not a merry meadow frolicking. Any possible backup might be useful, especially as he was personally going to flit to that burrow from where that transmission had come. Here and now.
Indeed, the old walrus-moustache was somewhat glowering as the two remaining rangers of Team Nova did their prompt report. He was not too happy to hear how they had bustled into Buzz' hut with no permit, and just because one nutty ex-emperor on parole had doggedly insisted it. In addition, he was bathing in confusion. Parchment, almost lyric threat letters, sensing of the Dark Side? It all sounded like clipped out from some besotted children's fantasy book, which definitely was not very realistic. Still, Zeb did not flush the facts down the toilet, but promised to put up some serious action. The whole hodgepodge was so utterly dodgy that it needed deep-diving under the surface.
"Alright, kids. I'm ordering a few rangers from the local headquarters to come and inspect Buzz' house. XR, transfer the so-called 'message' here, and I'll let the LGM's analyze it, and don't forget to send the details of its origins. We'll deal with that later, when we're sure it's from Captain Nova, as you claim. Sweet mother of Venus, what an infernal mess. And they even said in the office that Buzz had taken sick leave. Craters. Then, the stupid parchment rags..." The austere jaws of the Commander grated the sentences in the wristcom's holoscreen. Unfortunately, he made the mistake of starting to cavil at Zora. He suggested the ex-criminal now ought to go home and leave the rest of the dirty job to the rugged rangers. The following bellow-roar-wrangle performance was so hideous, that it was a mere wonder that Buzz' neighbors in a mile diameter did not all turn deaf. Once again, Star Command was defeated and the victory went to Zurg. Next he was stubbornly dragging both Booster and XR out of the house, in order to go and find out from where the signal had come from. Of course Zeb had suggested the triplet should stay inside and expect the local forces to appear there soon. But, Zurg was not going to perch here like a chubby old chicken on roost and wait for some tardily waddling lousy backward rangers. They would probably sit in their office with their coffee mugs and doughnuts till the end of the universe, before not even understanding to lift their fat hinterlands up. The shreds of Team Nova knew approximately from where the message had been sent; they could well dash out and reach the origin by foot. This was a severe situation, if not an emergency. Something so weird was constantly wriggling behind the scenes, in the obscure pits of unknown...
"Uh, where are we actually going?" Booster panted while stomping forwards on Zora and XR's heels. They had passed the outskirts of Xi Muon forest, slowly entering the darker marquee of green.
"I don't know. I'm just following the trails of the signal. I'm just a cheerleader. Ask the big boss", the android pointed at the Emperor, who leaded the whole pack a few meters ahead. The tracks were very vague, but gave at least the direction where the gabble could have been bred. But even though Munchapper wheezed more questions, the dictator remained quiet like bedrock. And so it was, the more the pine needles crackled under his huge boots, the more laconic his form transformed.
The Emperor could not conceive why the weird searing in his temples had come back. Was it a sign of something... something atrocious that was sliding nearer? Or what?
He still recalled these bushes, the bottle-green mist of the trees... the sweetish scent of resin and bark... The years had whipped past, the shrubberies grown thicker, whereas countless new sprouts of life had emerged from the mould. But the stones and the oldest tree grandfathers were the same. Yet, the point of view was slightly different. Whereas these sky-tickling woods had been so colossal in the impression of a knee-high brat, nowadays they were missing a hunch from that awe-inspiring majesty. And the one who observed them with his age-grooved face, had fallen towards the evening of his life... unlike these ancient giants that would stand long after he had turned to dust.
He had not galloped in this forest since his early teen diurnals. But those times, this introvert shelter had been one of his favorite hideouts. He had later on become to hate nature with the whole darkness of his heart, but just because he saw his past in it, the past of grief losses. Morph just kept reminding him of Adi... even now, involuntarily. He gulped the tart dollop down, and carried on his half-jogging form of clomping.
A drowsy, almost gummy silence tarried in the trees, merging with that something ominous, nameless...
He had never understood why his mother had always warned him not to enter too deep into the woods. And that fingershaking had not come just because she though her wee Zoxe Iddikens would get lost. No, there was some other, unknown reason. As if she had been afraid of something unidentified that might reside here...
From beyond the black seas of decades, Zora tasted his childhood adventures. If his deceased mother would have whispered the same words into his ear now, he would have perhaps agreed. Time made the difference; he was mature enough to understand... But what was there to be understood? There were no answers, just the miasma prowling behind the thickets.
His long legs leapt over a tree trunk covered in thick, ruffled moss. His sturdy body angrily stormed through a large, superbly opulent shrub. A swarm of minuscule, golfball-sized bush owls burst out of it, hooting anxiously. Behind him, Booster and XR had trouble keeping up with the haste. Especially the robot, whose caterpillars were not designed for cavorting in semi-swampy moss. In Zurg's left side, in the dark-green mist, was delineated the black lumpy outline of a gigantic erratic.
He recalled this place... vaguely... some distance away was the odd stone circle he had once found. The memento had just abruptly popped out of the sackcloth liquids of his subconscious. Were the ruins still there? Zurg had been perhaps twelve or thirteen when he for the last time had laid a glance over them. Those boulders that had attracted him in such a magical way when he was a kid... He never had slipped a syllable to Zoxekov or his mother what he had found during one prohibited escapade. Repeatedly, the bewitched allurement of that nameless wreck had called him to visit it... as if the earth underneath the partly burnt rocks had sung some sort of sweet beguiling lore...
Were they traveling towards those particular ruins? A slightly cold emotion filled Zora's chest. And the ghost of XR's unconcernedly shot jest about Buzz's looks compared to a certain someone did not waft away from his sober mind.
---------------------
Mira slapped the lid of her wristcom shut. It was futile to cry for help any longer; the wane network connections had passed away. Sighing, she looked around in the narrow, vaulted alleyway. Hunger churned in her stomach, the air's musty dankness nettled in her lungs. The Tangean was so exhausted, thirsty, fatigued... Staggering she stood on her jellyish legs, but the ghosting force was snatched away. Now what? This nightmare was nothing but over.
There were two alternatives where to go, and the both options looked just as saddening. The both ends of the corridor dived into mere blackness. She chose haphazardly a direction, and began limping towards the pitch-dark larynx.
*****
Evil Buzz glared at his spyscreen with aghast frenzy. Where was Mira Nova? He flipped through the channels, and a picture of every one of those blue cubicles appeared in turn onto the monitor. And their shimmer was existing without the Princess crouching inside any of them. A gurgle of spit gargled fiercely in the Shadow's maw. What had happened? His sweating fingers clicked all over again the switcher. More slimy earthworms wriggled down his back as more and more empty cells appeared in front of his nose. And this day had started so well... he had broken into Buzz' house, and lured the idiots in his work place to believe the Captain was on a sick-leave. Oh, how easy it had been to cheat those feeble-minded lack-wits just by showing his mug in Lightyear's vidphone. It was his sole luck that his non-evil alternate universe twin had, for some reason, grown a beard just identical to his one. Why, it was unintelligible. Had not that goody-goody pipsqueak always preferred smooth cheeks and presenting the ninny swirl of his chin?
Either this or that, at the moment the topmost issue was Nova's alarming absence. Had that cursed blue chick gotten out? Nothing like that was supposed to happen! The prison was supposed to be firmer than Karn's mountains.
On the other hand... Karn's mountains were not firm. At least not in his universe, where he had bombed them to ashes just for one day's fun.
"Where is that darn Tangean...?" he spluttered, saliva trickling down his beard. The flickering lantern hued his scowling mad eyes xanthous. Indeed, something peculiar was going on in the deep dungeons. Unfortunately, Evil Buzz had not activated the whole ancient monitoring system; he had only this one screen in use on the vast console. It would take a whole day or more to warm up the unused, cobwebbed thingamabobs.
"Craters!" he barked at the walls, taking a violent swoop in the air with his black, flowing robes. Would he himself need to go and search for the runaway bunny? What a hellish task to do... especially as he now recalled that Mira was armed. In the corner of his lobe, he yet wished that he would find her crumpled in some remote cell, preferably dead.
By pushing a small button near the monitor, he extracted the flat screen out of the main console. Luckily he was able to turn it into a nifty portable version, otherwise the scanning of the cubicle myriads would have been even more infernal. He would continue the screening on the way towards the jail floors.
He picked up his viper staff from the nearby table. The Evil Lightyear's fingers smoothed its shiny surface with ill hilarity. A sickly sadistic grimace drew his mouth from ear to ear, as he petted his weapon.
"Perhaps I could get rid of that pest for good... hahahaha. I could finally take the last squeak out of that chick... wouldn't be there any more to foil my plans... hehehe..."
The Shadow swept out of the main chamber's door, the poison-green orb of the lantern hovering around him like a vile aura.
...to be continued...