The Symphony of the Physics Police
Chapter Five: Christmas Eve
Bob and Joe arrived on Planet Namek safely enough. Joe began their stay there by first removing a large scanner from his pocket. He scanned the area and then dropped a Capsule Corp capsule on the ground, on the small island where they landed, and from it a structure appeared, with what looked like a Chronosphere from the Commanded and Conquer Red Alert games protruding from the roof.
Bob paid little attention to this and used his ghost powers to fly up and look around the area. He quickly decided that irony was indeed a cosmic trait, as he noticed that all the grass on the planet was blue, yet the sky and the ocean were green. "Ha, ha," he thought aloud. "Hilarious. It's the pallet-swap planet."
"Don't knock what you don't understand," Joe shouted from the ground. Bob floated down, then Joe amended, "Well, except scat, M-PREG, murder, sadism, and monochronologistic meta-tropism. Those… feel free to knock 'till your heart is content."
"What is monowhatzit metawho?" Bob asked with a perplexed look on his face.
"Even if I explained it, you wouldn't understand. Nobody outside the Interview With a Vampire universe even believes in it anymore," Joe replied.
"Is that Chalts' way of taking a pot shot at Anne Rice?" Bob inquired?
"The first of many," Joe answered.
Bob sighed deeply. He had rather enjoyed that vampire movie with Allaya. Eventually, his thoughts returned to the task at hand, so he thumbed at the building Joe had removed from the capsule. "What's the frontier settlement for?"
"In missions like this we never know how long it will take to find and solve the problem. This building will act as a shelter for all our food and research, while these," Joe said, reaching for a pair of belts hanging on the wall of the base just inside the entrance, "are anchor belts that will allow us to retain any mental and physical changes that happen to us before the time loop restarts." He handed one to Bob and secured one around his own waist.
"What if we get impaled or something?"
"Just turn the belt off and the wound will vanish when time resets, as will all your memory of it."
Joe was beginning to develop a glint in his eye that Bob wasn't sure he trusted. "And considering we have as many loops as it takes to fix this problem…"
The next few paragraphs would normally, in a story like this, be used to explain and describe what our heroes were doing in all the time loops where they goofed off.
Unfortunately, this is old hat. It's been done by Groundhog Day. It's been done by Stargate SG1. It's been done by fanfic author Jedi-And. Doing it again would be tedious.
Furthermore, you must take into account the fact that there just isn't much to do on Namek. With all the inhabitants slain by Frieza and the Z-Senshi fighting the Kold Prince on the other side of the world, there was no real interaction to be had, no sports stadiums to visit, no golf clubs to use in inappropriate places, no superiors to act like a jackass in front of.
So describing these actions would really do nothing more than slow the story down and bore you to death.
After several loops, Joe and Bob realized this too, especially after Bob thought it would be a good idea to insult Frieza and got a hole drilled through his skull with a Death Beam, and thereby forgot the past loop entirely—for Joe, as promised, had deactivated Bob's belt and when time snapped back like a rubber band, it was as if nothing had gone wrong.
Though Bob did wake up to an earful he didn't rightfully deserve, considering he didn't really remember the notion or action of insulting Frieza…
Which brings us to this point: Bob and Joe both eventually began using some of the time to train their ghost and chi powers respectively, and this is where we pick up.
"Ka… Me… Ha…Me…. HA!" Joe shouted, pushing forward with his cupped hands. The ball of energy exploded into a massive blue-white beam of energy that arced towards Bob.
"Ecto-Blast!" Bob shouted. His posture was quite different. Instead of the deep stance Joe was in, Bob stood with his feet shoulder width apart, and instead of cupping his hands in proper Hadouken/Kamehameha form, he had them both extended directly out in front of him, locked completely straight.
Nevertheless, a green-white ball of power erupted from his hands as well, and an ectoplasmic energy trail followed after it.
Unfortunately for Bob, the collision of the two waves was akin to a speeding Lamborghini slamming into a lazily tossed basketball; Joe's wave instantly overpowered Bob's attack and both energies blasted towards Bob.
Bob gulped, quickly going intangible as the waves passed through him.
"Holy crap!" Bob blurted. "You could have fried me!"
"It wasn't enough to kill you," Joe replied. "I just wanted to make a point."
"What point?"
"That you need to train your chi powers. Bob, being half-ghost gives you some unique advantages. You could defeat Superman by jumping in his body and beating yourself up. But there are some things you can't overshadow, and sometimes the most practical course of action is a good old-fashioned beat down."
"Joe, you know how much I hate… anime.." Bob said weakly.
"Would you quit with that. Anime is just a medium the Japanese use to tell the stories. If Captain America had the power to throw a Kamehameha you'd be jumping all over the ability to learn it."
"…" said Bob.
"Exactly." Joe walked over to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. "I know you're not the strongest. You'll never be a chi fighter on even my esteemed caliber—" It was obvious the word esteemed was being used sarcastically—"but you need something more. And you're just not strong enough in the Force for it to be your sole back up."
"Fine. Later. I'm sick of training," Bob said. "Let's go advance the plot some."
"Good idea," Joe said, glancing at the sky. It was midday on Namek. On a world with three suns, this meant that one sun was rising, one was setting, and one was at high noon. He then scanned the south, picking up a scouter and a copy of the DBZ manga…
"Alright," he said. "The dimensional anomaly that is causing the time loop is in this direction, but so is Frieza's ship. We're going to have to be very cautious. Fly with ghost power only."
"What about you? I've watched you enough to know that ki-flight at any decent speed causes that explosion of energy thing and that it can be detected."
"I'm going to fly the other way—hurl myself at the ground and miss."
"That actually works here?"
Joe shrugged. "I sort of brought a…somewhat illiegal… permit for it, considering the danger of this mission... Enough talk, let's go."
Joe jumped off the edge of the cliff towards the ocean, when suddenly, a fish jumping out of the water caught his eye and distracted him, and he immediately missed the sea and began flying…
Bob joined him in the air, and together they blasted towards the anomaly.
Initiating primary program…
Booting…. Running primary diagnostics…
Done…
Analyzing surroundings….
Trinary starsystem. O-Class planet. Heavily populated Oceans, significant lizard life on the larger islands. Few trees.
Planetary database match. Namek. 89 probability of match.
Initiating secondary program…
Done... Motor functions online…
Initiating tertiary program…
Running final diagnostics
Sapience active. Unit
designation:
Ashe…
On a lonely hill, there rested a crumpled mechanical mass. But slowly, it stood, four legs supporting its light frame, making it resemble a sort of crab being. The droid's optical scanner blazed with scorn for everything it saw, and the desire to possess every last inch of it.
"We are Ashe," said the machine. "We shall consume all."
As Joe and Bob neared the indicated location of the anomaly, it became increasingly clear that the anomaly was up, rather than anywhere near the ground. And considering there were no true mountains on Namek, this was rather strange.
"What if it's being generated by something in space?" Bob asked.
"Well, my readings don't suggest it's that high up," Joe said, letting his disappointment creep into his voice. "I hate high-altitudes. I don't know how Arthur Dent could stand having sex on the wing of an airplane."
Bob sighed. "Did you have to remind me of my least favorite part of the novels? The whole flight subplot was so stupid…"
"Sorry. I hated that part too, if it makes you feel any better. Which it probably does not. Nevertheless…"
"You don't want to go up there?"
"Well, no. But it seems up we have to go. If it is in space, well, I brought a space ship along, we'll have to go back to the base, probably wait for the loop to run its course, then fly up there and hope that Frieza's men don't start shooting at us."
"You know how to lift the spirits, Joe," Bob said sarcastically.
So, up the duo went, ascending vertically until a very distinct circle appeared above them and gradually grew larger.
"What is it?" Bob asked?
"Well I'll be tortured by a Twi'lek," said Joe… "I think it's a Kami Sanctuary…"
"What?
"A sanctuary for the Kami of Namek. Literally, it means god, but they aren't really worshiped or anything. They function more like a Guardian of the Planet, making sure nothing mind-bogglingly awful happens, usually with little success. Unfortunately, no such god bothered to stop the creation of reality TV, so I'm not inclined to believe they exist outside this universe."
"Is it something like a System Lord from Stargate?" Bob asked.
"No. It's nothing at all like a system lord from Stargate.," Joe said, a nerve pulsing in his forehead.. "Never mind. It is not important why it's here; it's clear that the anomaly is coming from somewhere inside. Let's go."
The two flew up over the edge and landed atop the sanctuary which looked rather like the one on Earth—called Kami's Lookout by the uninformed—except that the aesthetic of the building was decidedly Namekian.
"I think I'm starting to have an idea of what happened." Joe blasted towards the ground, and Bob did likewise, following him into the building and through a maze of passages and stairwells until he came to a stop in front of him. Several minutes had passed by this time, and Bob's legs were beginning to ache from all the stairs.
In front of the duo was a massive gold-trimmed door, sheer white, and possessing ornate decorations. And in the middle there was a massive burn-hole, at least two feet in diameter.
"This explains it." Joe said. "There is a hole in the door to the Room of Spirit and Time."
"You mean like what we trained in before I went active?"
"Yes, Bob," Joe said with exasperation. "Here, use the Force…" Joe pointed to a piece of metal lying on the ground, a panel that had fallen from the wall because of disrepair. "And lift that over the hole in the door and I'll seal it shut."
"I'll try," Bob said.
"Do or do not. There is no try," Joe reminded him.
Bob shot him an annoyed glance and reached nervously into the frightening realm of the Force, gradually feeling his way towards the metal and picking it. It hovered towards the hole in the door, covering it completely.
Joe walked over to it and pointed both fingers at the edges of the panel. "I theorize that the hole caused a discontinuity between time here and time elsewhere on the planet. Gradually, it would get so bad that time would literally be jerked back to the point the build up started." A light purple beam burst from Joe's fingers, welding the panel to the door as he traced its contour.
"That's done," he said.
"But what could have made the big hole to begin with?"
"We're going to find out," Joe said, reaching over to a panel and commanding the door to slide open. "This place has obviously been abandoned for years and there is no record of it even existing, that I'm aware of…" Joe trailed off, gaping.
Bob turned to see what had caused Joe's mouth to fall hanging open, and to his surprise, there, hovering out in the middle of the Room of Spirit and Time, was a red portal, perfectly round, though strange blasts of red lighting arced from it to the surroundings.
Otherwise it looked just like a Physics Police portal.
"Phrack," Joe cursed. "Who ever did this knows how to travel."
Joe approached, Bob close behind. No energy field blasted them away or sucked them in so they got very close, and the door shut behind them.
"Where does it lead?"
"I can't tell from the analysis."
Bob arched an eyebrow. "Can you send a camera through it, see what's on the other end?"
Joe nodded. "That could anger someone on the other side, but as long as we aren't standing where we can be blasted through the portal, we should be okay… unless they send a swarm of tiny insectoid drones through that burrow into our skin and eat us alive from the inside out. Granted that's a worst case scenario. They might just come through themselves and shoot us."
"Whoopee," Bob said grimly.
Joe removed a small Capsule from his pocket and depressed the switch. It exploded into a POOF and when it was gone, there was a small screen with an antenna in his hand, and attached to it a small camera drone.
"Here goes nothing," he said, removing the camera drone and tossing it into the portal. A few seconds of static later, there was a bright flash on the screen and a setting materialized. It seemed the camera was on the ground, looking up at the ceiling of what appeared to be a warehouse.
Suddenly, Phillip J. Fry entered the frame, looking at the camera directly, "Hey!" he said, "was this oddly high-tech looking camera lying around here before Bender went through the portal?"
Suddenly, Leela entered the frame as well. "No, Fry, it wasn't. Why don't you try touching it or waving like an idiot?"
"What if it's a bomb?" Fry asked, picking the camera up.
"Then it will kill or maim one or all of us depending on how powerful it is," Leela answered in a completely casual tone.
Suddenly, a loud thundering was heard at a large distance in the video, and Fry quickly turned around, holding the camera behind his back so that the disturbance could not be seen.
Suddenly, Fry adjusted it so that it was pointing at Leela's chest while she was distracted.
"Typical," Joe muttered. By this time Bob had joined him viewing the screen and groaned in concurrence.
Then, from the recording, Joe's voice came loud and clear, followed by Bob's...
The two Physics Cops stared at the screen, blank looks on their faces... "Did I just here us?" Bob asked...
"Indeed you did," Joe said...
"But that means whatever made this portal was that THING, that fusion of Brainiac and Bender!"
"Holy buckets of crud!" Joe blurted. "Kriff it all, you're right!" Joe tossed the screen down and removed a small device from his belt, a Tachyon emitter, and blasted the portal with it in a wide beam that narrowed to a laser-focus as the portal closed.
"Crud, Crud, Crud!" Joe hollered. "We have to go, yesterday!"
Joe darted towards the room's exit, and Bob followed. Bob was about to suggest that he phase them both through the door, but Joe suddenly blasted forward, his ki aura flaring, and blasted right through the panel he had just welded on!
Bob phased through himself and then shouted at Joe, "What the heck are you doing? What about the temporal distortion build up?"
"It's covered," he shouted back to Bob, flying up and breaking through the ceiling. He continued up through the sanctuary, Bob close behind, until they were both high above it looking down. Joe started to get a nosebleed.
"I told you I hate high-altitudes," he sighed.
Bob facepalmed. "Now what?"
"This place is abandoned, and as our little incursion here has demonstrated, is not much more than a security hazard to the denizens of this universe. Frieza is going to destroy the planet later today anyway." Joe cupped his hands behind him as if to prepare for a Kamehameha. "There's no harm in blasting the portal altogether now."
"If you say so," Bob ventured.
Suddenly, Joe's aura exploded into being, and then another explosion made it a bright, frightening red. "Five times Kaiyo-Ken should be plenty," he said. "KAME...HAME...HA!"
A column of sheer white energy exploded from Joe's hands as he pushed forward, and flew down into the sanctuary, blasting through the roof and into the very center of the building...
KRAKALOOOOOOM!
The entire sanctuary lit up in a massive ball of chi, shattered chards of metal and polished stone flying in ever which direction until there was nothing left but a massive, derelict basin floating in the air, and even that began to crumble...
Bob knew his jaw would have hit the floor had one been there to intercept it. "That was amazing!"
"It also probably alerted Frieza's men to our presence. Get ready for a fight." Joe removed a special Physics Police scouter from his belt and began looking around the horizon. "I see a very high-tech something-or-another moving that way," he said... "Towards, Frieza's ship, darn it all."
"If worse comes to worse I'll overshadow Frieza long enough for you to take down the metal dude."
"You have learned well, my young apprentice," Joe mocked. "Fine. We're off." And so the two blasted towards the ship...
The cold sterility of the ship was fitting, given the vessel's owner was named Frieza, the son of the great King Kold. Nevertheless, it was often unnerving for the lord's underlings, especially when one of them was tasked with giving him potentially disturbing news.
When Buki entered the throne chamber of the ship, he was very unnerved. "Lord Frieza," he said, trying to keep his voice even. He noticed that Frieza was admiring a hologram of his ancestor Lady Kalt, but he did not dare make any mention of this to his master's face.
"Yes?" said Frieza.
"The search for the Dragon Balls continues, though it has been so far unfruitful. We've been picking up several anomalous power readings over the past few days, and still no word from Dodoria or Zarbon…"
"I can only assume that they are dead," Frieza said with a sigh. "What of the search for Vegeta," Frieza asked.
Buki could offer know answer.
"But sir, there is some good news."
Frieza's eyes narrowed. "If you so much as think the word Geico, I'll kill you where you stand!"
"Sir," Buki said, "the Ginyu Force has contacted us, and they said that they will be here within the hour. There is one other, minor concern…"
Frieza arched an eyebrow. "Yes?"
"A while ago, we began detecting a very week power signature, apparently unrelated to the other signatures in the Namekian village or to Vegeta. Two minutes ago it suddenly flared up massively, reaching five times that of even Dodoria's… We fear…"
"You think I cannot handle such a fighter?" Frieza barked.
Buki took a step back, sweatdropping profusely. "No, sire, that is not at all what I meant! I merely wished to keep Your Majesty from dirtying his hands with the work of a soldier, that is all!"
"Good," Frieza said in a way that made Buki feel not at all 'good'… "Now get out of my sight before I decide to send you the way of your predecessor."
Buki gulped, not wanting to suffer the fate of the last person to give Frieza bad news, and swiftly backed out of the room, leaving the master to his own business…
And quickly deciding that as soon as the Ginyu force got there with more ships, he was gone.
An hour later, things were bad. Very bad.
Because Joe and Bob had been flying and still not arrived this whole time, but had been tracking a massive energy struggle with power levels far higher than the good guys could muster for fifteen minutes. And it was taking place in the area around Frieza's ship.
Joe glanced over at Bob. "Remember that technique I taught you to make us fly faster?"
"The one that makes me really dizzy?" Bob asked.
"That's the one," Joe said.
"Unfortunately, I do," Bob confessed.
"We're doing it."
"Crud."
Concentrating, Joe and Bob focused their respective auras into a tunnel around themselves, gradually making it faster. Then the moved inward and let the two aura's touch. An explosion of energy suddenly surrounded them and they were jerked into a cyclone of energy, their speed increasing in a burst of wind and energy, sending them forward at thrice the speed or more than what they were traveling before.
Unfortunately, they arrived just in time to see Frieza explode into his final form way too early.
"What's going on?" Joe blurted.
"I'm afraid," Bob said, noticing the sky had gotten dark, and massive bolts of lighting had started arcing through the sky.
"It's the Dragon Balls… someone has summoned Porunga and is going to make a wish. That means the timeline is secure—for now. But what is attacking Frieza?"
Joe's question was answered when a small machine suddenly exploded forward towards the tyrant, blasting lasers at him and then attempting to drill a hole through his chest with one of its crab legs.
"Stay dead, you!" Frieza barked, raising his fingers. "DEATH BEAM!"
Suddenly the small crablike robot raised its head and revealed the Brainiac symbol.
"Wait a minute!" Bob blurted. "How did it get this new look?"
"No idea."
Frieza screamed again and pistoned his fingers forward and the magenta laser arced out. But the robot charged at it head on, turning over on its underside to reveal a big red panel that the death beam slammed into… and vanished.
"No!" Joe cursed. "It can absorb energy attacks, you idiot!"
The red panel on the robot's underside glowed, and it charged forward again, compressing itself into a smaller volume, the angular knees of its four crap like legs becoming painful impact points as it slammed into Frieza.
Joe blasted forward in attempt to subdue it, but then, the worst case scenario came to pass. The machine twisted into a distorted shape, like an Autobot in mid maximization, but it surrounded Frieza, and suddenly sharp prongs extended from key places around the deformed robot.
And in they went, jabbing through the purple pads across the Kold Prince's body. The head that bore the Brainiac symbol opened up and revealed another such ghastly mechanism… and then it sunk into the pad on Frieza's head, and his eyes bugged out as it sank into his brain, wiring itself into his twisted psyche.
"PHRACK!" Joe screamed at the top of his lungs, even as light and chi exploded from the confusion, drowning out his words in a rush of wind and blasting him away from the fray.
When it cleared, there were no longer two organisms, but one: a cybernetic terror with the technology of Brainiac… and the chi power of Frieza.
"Unit designated: Ashe 1.5. Integration of humanoid life form known as Frieza Kold complete."
Bob gulped as the newly identified cyborg turned to look at him and Joe, the Brainiac symbol clearly visible on its amalgamated head.
"We are Ashe," the fiend said. "We shall consume... Everything."
Author's Note: Lady Kalt was created by BobCat in the original Ballad of the Physics Police. Kalt is german for cold.