Koosh: Sorry for the delay with this chapter, but a lot has been happening lately. Psychotic teachers for Kitty, moving outta home for the first time for me—
Kitty: YOU NEVER TOLD ME YOU LEFT HOME!
Whisky: Yeah, well we did. We're now in the oh-so-sticky-and-hot Australian city of Brisbane.
Koosh: Pretty big for someone who's been a country kid for a good 18 and a half years.
Zing: Bubbles! Glittery bubbles everywhere! WHEE!
Kyle: Ok, that's enough about Koosh. If we have to hear about her one more time, I'll go crazy.
Whisky: I second that.
Kitty: This chapter was written by Koosh…
Kyle and Whisky: -Run away, screaming like little crazy banshees-
Kitty: …and edited by moi! Enjoy!
Zing: …I like the bubbles!
Disclaimer:
Koosh: No, we don't own MASH.
Kitty: If one of us inherits a fortune from a long lost great aunt we didn't know even existed and can suddenly afford the rights, we'll let you know.
Quote of the Day
Frank: I wrote on the school paper.
Trapper: I wrote on the walls.
Chapter 8
The Portals
Holly was in the Mess tent. She didn't particularly like the Mess tent, but it was the only place she could sit while Frank tried to clean the Swamp. After an incident involving alcohol, Laura, Holly, Hawkeye, Trapper, sleeping Frank and a plate of cold mashed potatoes early that morning, let's just say something hit the fan. And it wasn't the potatoes, although they had been splattered all over the tent.
She hadn't seen Hawkeye or Trapper anywhere for the last hour or two, they were possibly with nurses. As for Laura, Holly wasn't sure where her companion had gotten to. Last she'd heard, Laura was muttering something about being bored and seeing their friend at the black market about finding a PS2 for them. Not that there was any hope in finding one in the next fifty years or so.
Holly hated to admit it, but she was feeling slightly homesick. She missed the Simpsons on TV, and music that didn't involve Frank Sinatra. She missed fast-food, even though the Mess tent tasted surprisingly like McDonalds before the company went "healthy". She missed Coca-Cola. She missed her computer. Most of all, she missed her books. It seemed like forever since she'd been able to reread the Harry Potter books.
Holly half-heartedly glanced at Klinger as he came into the Mess tent for lunch, and she sat up.
"Klinger!" she hollered across the tent. "C'm'ere a minute!" Klinger looked around at her bitterly.
"What?" he asked, striding up to her. Holly grabbed the dark green handbag off his shoulder that matched particularly well with his new skirt. She opened the bag (a magnetic clasp!) and dug through it.
"Lip gloss!" she cried, holding a small purple cylinder in the air. "Klinger, where'd you get this bag?"
"Uh," Klinger said, obviously trying to think up a good lie.
"I can get back to my room through your closet, can't I?" Holly demanded. "And you stole my favourite bag."
"Uh," Klinger said, still trying to find a lie.
"Keep it," Holly declared, standing up and running out of the tent and in the direction of Klinger's tent.
"Hey!" Klinger yelled, following her. "What are you doing?" Holly didn't reply as she skidded into his tent, knocking over the mannequin that was fitted with a bra. She picked herself up and ripped open the closet door.
"Stay outta my stuff!" Klinger yelled.
"My room is back!" Holly said joyfully, dancing around. "My room is back!" She hugged the surprised Corporal. She then proceeded to fight through the hanging clothes to get to her room. "Tell Laura I'll be back later!" Holly yelled before she shut the doors behind her.
"Wait," Klinger said, opening the door again. "Where do I…" But only the wooden back of his closet met him.
"Ok, repeat that again, will you?"
Klinger shuffled uneasily in his red heels.
"Holly's gone."
"Where?" Henry demanded.
"I don't know!" Klinger promised. "One moment, she's in my closet, the next, she'd vanished."
"This isn't another section eight attempt, is it Klinger?" Hawkeye asked.
"Or maybe Laura and Holly are just playing a joke on you," Trapper suggested. Klinger shook his head obstinately.
"This is not a joke, and it's not a section eight attempt," he said.
Laura bounded into the small office, a small burlap sack filled with only the Greek gods know what. Why Greek gods? Because they're better than the Roman gods. So there. Nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah.
"What up?" she asked happily, staring around the slightly subdued room.
"Holly's gone missing," Henry repeated. Laura's smile slipped a fraction. "Klinger was the last person to see her, and that was hours ago." Laura's insane grin disappeared completely.
"Where did she go?" she asked. Hawkeye and Trapper shrugged at the girl.
"Klinger says she went through his closet," Trapper explained. "This isn't one of your tricks--?" Too late, Laura had run out the door without listening to further questions. She had to see this for herself.
Ten minutes later, Laura slipped out of Klinger's tent again, slightly annoyed. Holly had gone home without telling her! It didn't occur to the teen that she hadn't actually been in camp for Holly to find, but that wasn't the point!
Thinking hard, Laura tried to remember what tent she'd staggered out of when she'd first arrived, only to be put under arrest by Frank. Due to a memory lapse, maybe caused by the trauma of Sporky's Pointed-End-of-DOOM being snapped, she couldn't remember.
Now, after thinking very hard for a while, which may have been any time between five seconds to five hours, the call of nature struck Kitty, meaning a quick trip to the officer's latrines.
Though reports are varied at what happened next, most corpsmen agree that Laura's last words before disappearing were: "Oh, so this is the tent I came out of when I arrived!"
Laura looked around her room from her seat on the floor, surprised it hadn't changed any. She'd have thought Kyle would have done it up like a small throne room for himself, but no, it was exactly as she'd left it.
"Are you ok?" Kyle asked, sticking his head around the doorway of the frame.
"Why wouldn't I be?" Laura demanded.
"Well…" Kyle said uneasily. "You got zapped, remember? After I said 'I hope you get electrocuted.'"
"I did?" Laura asked. That was months ago. She barely remembered what happened to her that day. Kyle nodded miserably.
"I didn't mean to jinx you!" he yowled, showing a strange, and unusual sense of remorse.
A dream, Laura sulked when she realised it was only five minutes after she'd originally been zapped. Those months spent in the MASH universe were just an electrical shock induced dream. None of that actually happened.
"Hang on," Kyle said suspiciously, stopping his whimpering a moment. "Why are you in army fatigues?"
The months went by, and Laura contacted Holly about the whole thing, just to make sure. Apparently, the whole thing was real, though neither could explain why no time had passed while they were in the MASH universe.
"Time anomalies hurt my brain," Holly complained in one e-mail.
It was then, Laura had the idea.
"Let's write about it," she said. "No one will believe us, but it'd be good to keep a record!" Holly readily agreed, and they started writing. It took a few e-mails to established what had really happened (for example, Holly was sure the Korean farmer was called Jae-Hwa, but Laura insisted it was Bob), but finally, they had the whole thing under control.
"Too bad it didn't last longer," Holly said in one e-mail. "Think of all the things we missed out on." But of course, it wasn't quite over yet. Otherwise, this fanfic would be very short. And nobody likes a very short fanfic, unless they're drabbles.
Am I right, or am I right? That's what I thought.
Anyways, back to the story...
Nine months passed, and Laura was kneeling in front of her closet. Inside was a small shrine to Sporky, the brave Spork who had been lost at war. Kyle and Zing were watching her mourn the plastic utensil.
"This is stupid," Kyle moaned. Zing was patting Laura on the shoulder comfortingly, saying "There, there, I'm sure Sporky had a long life, taking over civilisations run by bubbles."
"Thanks, but Sporky was meant to be supreme over ruler of the human race by 2010. He can't do that if he's stuck in a TV show," Laura said glumly.
"You could get a new Spork," Kyle suggested. Laura snapped her head around to glare at him.
"I could get a muse to replace you, too!" she said.
"You did," Kyle pointed out. "Zing." Laura ignored him.
"Oh Sporky, where are you?" Laura wailed. The back of the closet seemed to shimmer.
"Bubble time!" Zing exclaimed, picking up his bubble blower. He handed it to Laura and gave her a pleading look. "Bubbles?" he asked. Laura gave a small smile and blew a few bubbles for the weird muse. Zing started laughing psychotically, and began chasing the bubbles.
"MY BUBBLES! HEHEHEHEHE!"
Laura seemed to forget the spork quickly, and appeared to be enjoying herself blowing the bubbles for Zing to chase.
"Get the bandaids," Kyle muttered as Zing took a flying leap at one bubble into the closet and disturbing Sporky's shrine. However, instead of smacking into the wall like expected, Zing seemed to go straight through it and disappear.
"Zing?" Kyle asked. Laura was too busy blowing bubbles for her muse to notice. "Kitty, Zing just disappeared," Kyle said, sounding confused. He went to the closet and touched the back wall. His paw went straight through. "Kitty!" he yelled, sounding scared now.
"What?" Laura demanded.
"There's something wrong with this closet."
Laura took a closer look and touched the closet back experimentally. Her finger went straight through. "Hey, what if it's…" she started, a grin growing quickly on her face. "Come on, Kyle," she said, grabbing the muse's paw and pulling him into the closet. "I think I know what's on the other side!"
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Holly was watching TV in her living room.
"Mighty-ful master," Whisky said sarcastically, making the teen glance down at the lizard-muse by her foot. The foot-long fire salamander was never really courteous towards Holly, not since the girl had yelled at her for burning the front cover of one of her Stephen King books.
"What?" Holly asked, picking the muse up gently.
"There's a hairy guy in a dress in your room," Whisky said. Holly was confused for a moment.
"A hairy guy in a dress—Klinger!" Holly jumped up after putting the muse on her shoulder and ran to her room. When she reached the door, she glanced in carefully, making sure it wasn't a joke on Whisky's behalf. The muse had a cruel sense of humour.
However, like the salamander had promised, there was a man in a dress in her room, by the closet, staring at what appeared to be a book with strange reflective disks in it. Maybe one day, he'd understand the concept of CD's, but not right now.
"Klinger!" Holly exclaimed, opening the door and making the man jump.
"I thought you said you weren't going to be long," he said sourly as Holly grabbed her old school bag from the floor and tipped all the books out.
"I know, Henry must be pissed at me," Holly said, shoving anything she could lay her hands on into her bag. She stopped abruptly. "Henry's still around, isn't he?" she asked. It had been months since she came back, maybe he had... Klinger nodded and Holly relaxed slightly. "Good," she said, resuming to stuff her bag full. "I know he can be a little difficult at times, but he's a good guy." She zipped her bag up and sighed. "It's been months since I was at the 4077th," she said.
"Months?" Klinger asked. "It's only been three days. And let me just say, you almost got me a section eight. When the others realised you went missing and I told them you went through my closet to… well, wherever this place is, they thought I had gone nuts!"
"So why didn't you get sent home?" Holly asked.
"Henry talked me into saying how impossible it was," Klinger said sourly. "I was this close to going home!"
"So it's only been three days?" Holly asked, just to make sure. Klinger nodded. "The people arguing if time was straight or curved both had it wrong," she murmured and shaking her head with a small smile. "It's twisted."
"What are you doing?" Whisky demanded as Holly swung the backpack onto her shoulder.
"Going back to the 4077th," Holly replied. "Coming?"
Klinger stared at the talking lizard, and looked like he might really think he was going nuts.
"I don't see why I should have to," Whisky complained.
"Fine, I'll go alone," Holly offered, going to take the muse off her shoulder.
"No! I'll come!" Whisky yelled, dodging Holly's hand. "Without me there to keep and eye on you, you might do something stupid."
"Right," Holly grinned at Klinger (who was looking like he might pass out or something), "Let's go!" She followed Klinger through the closet and shut the door behind them.
"Kitty!"
"Koosh!"
The two girls started laughing crazily at each other at the sight of each other, for no real apparent reason. Klinger raised his eyebrow nervously as he watched the two girls hug each other to death, babbling random things ("The Sporks are smiling down at us!"--"Time anomalies will not keep me from this hellhole!"--"I'VE GOT NEW SOCKS ON!"--"SO DO I!"). No wonder he couldn't get a section eight with these two around.
"Hey," Klinger interrupted them. "Henry will want to see you. He thinks you've both gone AWOL."
"Oh, right," Holly said, still grinning. "Better go see ol' fishing hat Henry, hey?"
"Maybe we should ask him to sign our muses on as well," Laura said. "I'd like to fill out more of those army forms."
Holly glanced at the three muses staring around the camp, who were all slightly aghast. "Yeah, but we'd have to go through Radar for that," Holly reminded her. Both girls' expressions darkened slightly. They still hadn't forgiven Radar for the BBQ incident, and it was more than likely that they'd take a while to.
"Anyway, I got a better idea," Laura said after a moment. "Let's keep 'em hidden for now, and we'll scare Hotlips and Ferret Face with them later!"
"Yeah, or get back at Radar with them," Holly suggested. Both girls started cackling.
"I should've stayed at home," Whisky said, sweatdropping.
"Definitely," Kyle added.
"There's no bubbles here," Zing pouted.
"You guys go hide," Holly commanded to the muses after a moment. "Just watch out for the minefield. Maybe go find Bob and live on his farm with Steve the Cow and Mr. Pig until we need you." The muses slunk off, giving the teen's dark looks over their shoulders.
"They'll be fine," Laura said, skipping towards Henry's office.
"Exactly," Holly agreed, following her.
Five minutes later, they were in their CO's office, beaming crazily at Henry after telling him they hadn't gone AWOL, and now they were back again, he didn't have to worry about his sanity, because they would be more than happy to take it from him and hold onto it.
Henry eyed the two girls cautiously.
"If you didn't go AWOL, where were you for three days?" he asked.
"I was helping Columbus find America," Laura said cheerfully.
"And I was abducted by alieums. They're like aliens, except taller," Holly explained. Henry closed his eyes and slowly counted to twenty. Nope, they still didn't make any sense to him.
"I should call the MPs to take you away," he said. "I should, but I won't. Only because they probably wouldn't take you anyway."
"Thanks Henry," the girls chorused.
"You're not such a bad guy, Henry," Holly chirped. "I mean, you sometimes go funny and army on us and try to punish us, but when you realise there's nothing you can do about us, you can be great! We're sorry we said you suck all the fun out of everything…"
"…And we'll make sure no-one calls you a fun-sucker from now on," Laura added cheerfully.
"You're the only two people who have ever called me—"
"See ya later, Henry!" Laura and Holly said before prancing out of the office.
Henry made a sound that sounded suspiciously like a whimper. It was so much easier when he thought the two had been abducted by the enemy…
SURPRISE BONUS ADDITION TO CHAPTER BY KITTY, WHO FELT GUILTY MAKING KOOSH RIGHT THIS CHAPTER!
Laura and Holly quickly learned how the portals worked. It all had something to do with the alignment of the planets, the positions of the stars, and what was served for lunch that day. Or something like that…
The arrival of the Terrible Two had caused several celebration parties to be cancelled, which put over half of the personnel in rather grumpy moods. Actually, the only people that seemed happy to have the two psychos back was Hawkeye and Trapper, who had begun to find the quiet and peacefulness of the compound a bit dull after having gotten use to the usual mayhem and chaos the two girls tended to create—wow, that was a long sentence...
Anyways, a week after the duo's unexpected return, Laura returned from her time, via the portal in the latrine that only seemed to activate upon her entry. She was not in a happy mood. Her face was red, her eyes were flashing, and she was lugging around a baby blue messenger book bag that was bulging with books, folders, and notebooks.
Holly, who had returned from her time only an hour before, watched her friend storm into their tent with raised eyebrows.
"Bad day?" she asked dryly, turning a page in her Artemis Fowl novel.
"You have no idea," the younger girl muttered, dumping her bag on the floor and flopping over onto her cot.
"You know, we seriously need to start unpacking sometime soon," Holly said, gesturing to the many cardboard boxes filled with the girls' personal possessions that took up most of the space in the tent.
The two girls had brought everything they could bear to part with to Korea, including Laura's soda machine (which her uncle, an owner of a Coke factory, had given her for her fifteenth birthday), Holly's collection of shoes, their many fantasy novels, their videogames, and some beanbag chairs (a purple one with had silver swirls on it that had 'The Almighty Kitty' written on it in black permanent marker and a greenish-blue one that had 'The Great Kooshball' scrawled on it, also in permanent marker).
They had also brought wacky bedspreads the girls had brought from home, some white sheets the two girls planned to tie-dye, some posters of various things (such as Laura's giant poster of a white baby seal that had 'Help Support Greenpeace' written across the top in big green letters, and Holly's giant poster of Stewie from Family Guy torturing his teddy bear), and a boom box that Laura had swiped from a family member who was either her third cousin four times removed, or her fourth cousin three times removed, several CD cases filled with (what else?) CDs, and other junk you'd find in a young girl's room.
"Yeah, you're right," Laura admitted grudgingly, shoving Kyle and Zing off of her paperback copy of 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince' irritably. "But let's not do it right now… I'm not in the mood."
"Obviously," snorted Holly, setting her book down. "So, you wanna tell me what happened?"
Laura shrugged. "Well, nothing really happened per se," she began, "it's just that America has seriously sunk down to an all time low."
"How so?" Holly asked curiously.
"Well, for starters," Laura began, her voice taking on a dangerous edge, "today over the school announcements we learned that a finger was found in a bowl of chilli from Wendy's."
"A… finger?" Holly echoed.
Laura nodded. "Yup. And everyone was making a big deal about it—and I mean a really big deal!"
"Well… It was a finger after all."
The fifteen-year-old scowled. "Well yeah, but it wasn't really that surprising. Frankly, I was surprised that everyone else was surprised! If there's one thing that I thought that anyone born in America would know by the time they turned five, it's that you should always prepare for the worst when you go through a drive-thru at a fast food restaurant!" (Kitty: This is true!)
Holly blinked. Laura continued to rant, oblivious to all else.
"It's like some freakin' human instinct! It's one of the things that little voice inside your head talks to you about: don't eat anything that's served to you out a window unless you're a seagull! For God's sake, people are acting all shocked that a human finger was found in a bowl of Wendy's chilli. Hey, it cost less than a dollar! What did you expect it to contain? Trout? Luckily, it was only a finger! If it was a whole hand, Congress would have voted to keep it alive!"
"Er… Laura? Don't you think you're takin' this just a little bit too seriously?" Holly suggested. Laura shook her head furiously.
"No, no I'm not! America is doomed! Do you know what the number one reason for health problems and death in America is caused by?"
"Er—"
"Obesity! Because of the freakin' fast food places, who aren't exactly helpin' to prevent it! The more complicated the Starbucks order, the bigger the ass ordering it. If you walk into a Starbucks and order a 'decaf grande half-soy, half-low fat, iced vanilla, double-shot, gingerbread cappuccino, extra dry, light ice, with one Sweet-n'-Low and one NutraSweet,' ooooooh, you're a huge azzhole!"
"You know, Australia's the same way." Holly said loudly, trying to make her friend feel better. Laura, too involved in her rant, did not hear this.
"And the IQ's of the teens of America today are dropping with each generation! Girls are too busy worrying about their looks, and guys are either too busy thinking with what's in their pants, or are too busy being brainwashed by videogames!"
"Laura calm down—" Holly cried in an attempt to soothe the younger girl, who seemed unable to hear her.
"Over two-thirds of the kids at my school either do drugs, spend their time trying to make others feel bad while making themselves look good, or are in gangs! I saw this one chick in the bathroom in tears and on the verge of killing herself because she thought she saw a wrinkly near her eye! It turned out to be one of her eyelashes! Next thing you know, she's all happy and perky and giddy once more!" raved the tiny girl.
"LAURA—"
"I mean c'mon! They're throwing their lives away! I swear, one day I'm just gonna go up to some women fixing themselves up in a bathroom at a restaurant and say, 'Ladies, leave your eyebrows alone! Here's how much men care about your eyebrows: Do you have two of them? Okay, we're done!'"
Holly finally decided to just give up and let her friend rant and rave herself into exhaustion.
"And the old people! No one's got any respect of 'em anymore! I saw some skinhead boys bullying an old man the other day at the mall. Pissed me off more than anything, y'know? Stop messing around with old people, dammit! Y'know, Target is introducing a redesigned pill bottle that's square, with a bigger label. And the top is now the bottom. And by the time grandpa figures out how to open it, his ass will be in the morgue. Congratulations, Target, you just solved the Social Security crisis!"
"Right you are, Laura," Holly agreed, thinking that if she just nodded her head and agreed with everything her friend said, that she'd eventually stop.
"And why do people have to make things so damn complicated all the time? When I asked how old my little cousin was, I didn't need to know how old the toddler was in months. '27 months,' my aunt said. Why the hell did I need to know that? 'He's two,' will do just fine, thank you very much! He's not a cheese, and I didn't even care in the first place!"
"Yup," said Holly, back to reading her book. Laura was now pacing across the tent.
"And Internet pop-up ads! Don't even get me started!"
"I won't," promised Holly, not really listening as she had reached a rather climactic part in her book.
"Stop giving me that pop-up ad for Laura said shrilly. "Aside from the fact that I'm not even out of high school yet, there's a reason you don't talk to people for twenty-five years: because you don't particularly like them! Besides, I already know what the captain of the football team at my school is gonna be doing in twenty-five years: mowing my effin' lawn!"
"I completely agree," Holly said, still absorbed in her book. Laura collapsed onto her cot, having finally tired herself out.
"Thanks for listenin', Holly," she muttered gratefully, yawning.
"WATCH OUT ARTEMIS! IT'S A TRAP!" screeched Holly, oblivious to what the younger girl had said. Laura blinked, then shrugged, picked her Harry Potter book back up, and began to read.
"Wow…" Kyle finally said, he and the other two muses having long been forgotten.
"You said it," Whiskey muttered, shaking her head.
"I wonder if they want to try some of my bubble-therapy…" Zing muttered to himself, going into his own little world…
Kitty: That's it for now!
Koosh: Come back later for chapter nine, when we—
Kitty: DON'T GIVE ANYTHING AWAY!
Koosh: Oops, sorry! Anyway, come back later, and don't forget to review!
Kitty: And buy a spork, to support Sporky and his global take over. MWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA—ACK! –chokes on one of those little Valentine candy hearts-