6~
It seemed as if the troubles of the prior weeks hadn't even touched the lives of the patrons, who milled about the fairgrounds of Greenman's Garden of Glee, formerly Fleach's Folly Factory, but that wasn't the case.
This was as much a catharsis for the visitors who paid to enter the park, as it was a relief. If it was a legal, socially appropriate, and relatively fat-free solution to getting their minds off of the confusion and the problems of the town, after the world-wide change, then it was a blessing to be had.
Situated in an open space just before the mountain range of the roller-coasters, stood a not-so-new attraction, at this point in time, but one of interest to the park-goers who had sampled every other ride, in the past.
A curiously-designed and exceptionally big tilt-a-whirl sat, constructed of a ring of five, large, fiberglass boulders that looked as though each had a bite taken out of them. Within the seated, hollowed-out space of the boulders' 'excavations,' three to four people could strap themselves, comfortably.
Apparently, the visual appeal to the ride's motif was that of mining, due to the notion that the boulders were carrying cosmetically-exposed veins of gemstones around their girths, as well as sporting, what looked to be, a fat gem set near the top of them.
However, the truly eye-catching part of the ride was what stood on top of it. In the center of the ride's wide, rotating platform was raised the fiberglass mock-up of a stone plateau. That plateau was the personal stage for the visual attraction of the ride, a giant.
Spanning a little over thirty feet tall, the statue of a grim, fairy-tale giant commanded a view of the park's proceedings, hefting a huge boulder over his head, in both hands, as if to hurl it at the unsuspecting.
As the riders, spinning in their seats at variable speeds along the randomly undulating platform, screamed in surprised excitement, the overall theme of Rolling Boulder screamed fantasy, as people would spot a hunched, robed and hooded figure, occasionally, pacing nearby, while young children would point, in curious wonder, at the four Thorn Soldiers that stood around the periphery of the ride.
The patrons, walking by, thought that seeing this dark, mysterious figure was fine fun, as he swept his shadowy hood from one passing group to another, as if searching hard for someone, in particular.
Looking momentarily out of character, the hooded man took a glance at a rather expensive wrist watch. When the time he was waiting for had finally arrived, whether he found his quarry in the crowds or no, he slipped a small remote control device from the voluminous depths of his sleeve.
He walked a fair distance from the tilt-a-whirl, followed closely by the unusually sedate Thorn Soldiers. He then turned to face the ride, and then, pressed a button.
Immediately, the platform and the spinning boulders slowed to a disappointing stop, signaling the riders to disembark. Once they had done so, a second button was pressed, while the man looked up at the giant.
From its crotch to the top of its bald head, and even over it, though the height of the held boulder, the titan split down the middle, as explosive bolts boomed, like fireworks, over the visitors, catching their attention for a moment, before they ran, screaming into a scattering, terrified panic, as the two halves of the statue, ponderously, fell away and crashed to the sides of the ride, clearing the area for yards.
The hooded man turned back to the concerned crowds around him, satisfied that the two sections resting on the ground were not lying across the boulder rides, themselves.
Afraid and perplexed, the throngs didn't know what to make, next, of the object that was standing in the statue's place, now revealed in the bright light of day, after the giant's destruction, although some had the presence of mind to take quick photos from their cell phones.
It was another statue, a crude effigy, leaner, in dimensions, to its host and standing in a similar pose to it, but holding nothing. It looked fragile and flimsy, yet it was, actually, framed in strong, dark woods, and skinned with weaves of wicker.
However, it was the desperate shouts for help that caught the people's attention the most. Sitting in what was the midsection of the statue's hollow torso, were a frightened Ricky Owens, his gravid wife, Cassidy, and a confused and terror-struck Winslow Fleach.
"Hey, what are they doing up there?" one man in the crowd, asked the hooded man, staring a chain reaction of other concerned people starting to move in to, perhaps, climb the structure and free the prisoners. The man in the dark robes had other ideas.
With a raised hand, the unusually sedate Thorn Soldiers assumed more bellicose postures and brandished their weapons.
"Don't be afraid! It's just some guys in suits!" one man reasoned, as he tried to maneuver past one of them, and was quickly proven wrong. The sharp tip of the Soldier's thorn-sword slashed his shirt open and carved a deep line of red along his pectorals.
He backed away, painfully, as another man's head was clutched in the tendrils of another Soldier's bulb-arm, and he was tossed back into the crowd.
The plant creatures regrouped and made a loose ring of defense around the effigy, changing peoples' minds about any more foolish frontal assaults, at the moment.
In the midst of the consternation, someone, a woman standing at the outer edges of the crowd, pointed to something that she thought at first was a large bird. At some point, the bird-thing's daylight silhouette grew, gradually, as it appeared to approach the air space of the park's grounds. It soon became apparent to everyone that whatever new thing was entering the fray, it was not, at all, avian.
An immodestly-dressed, wild-haired demoness with red, black-tipped horns, and dark, taloned wings, alighted to the ground in front of the crowd, standing between them and the strange man, his fighters, and his statue.
The robed man took a defensive step back, and although no one could see under his hood, for the first time since people saw this man, he, genuinely, gave the hesitant body language of someone who didn't know what to make of this new visitor.
He raised his hand, again, signaling for his Soldiers to attack. As they approached her, the demoness took a wary stance, clawed gloves brought up in a combat posture.
Then, her glowing, cat's eyes widened when she saw the true tactic that the mysterious man had employed. The Thorn Soldiers split away from her, and instead, were marching towards the closest members of the crowd.
She leaped over to one, and as the Soldier reacted to her presence and tried to cut her down, she caught the sword in one hand and twisted hard, snapping the weapon in half, and then, stabbing it through the soft, vulnerable bulb head.
As it stumbled and raised its limbs to ease the agony and sensory confusion, the demoness grabbed it by the shoulders and threw it the next Soldier, who moved in on the retreating humans.
The dying body of the one, toppled onto the other, pinning it down long enough for her to fly to it and tear its fleshy head away from its shoulders.
The other two Soldiers stopped their advance, and then, turned to face this creature, swords raised.
The demoness unfolded her broad leather wings and took to the air, swooped upon the pair, and slashed their heads apart with her claws. As she landed, again, the last two creatures collapsed to the ground, bleeding sap from their wounds, copiously.
A shout of "Look out!" came a second too late, as the hooded man ran swiftly behind her and clutched a huge handful of her hair, pulling her head back, with force. The other hand came up, but then, changed into a wooden, dangerous-looking parody of itself, with thorns for claws, dancing ever closer to her scaled, exposed throat.
The people gave a shocked and sad gasp, as the robed figure raked his talons across, endeavoring to rip out her trachea in one savage motion.
Still holding the back of her head, he angled it to see the ruin he made, but there was, strangely, no weight from the dying body, or no heft from the slumping head.
He turned the head around and held up a haunted, eyeless face staring back at him, an empty mask, where, moments before, Marcie had ducked, hard, pulling herself free, at the very last second, only to fall to the ground.
"It's a girl!" someone said, while she straightened her glasses and stood up to face the dark figure. Soon, others murmured their bewilderment upon discovering the identity of their strange savior. They were sincerely grateful that she wasn't hurt, but astonished to find her wearing such an outfit, and being alone, handling herself against this obvious threat.
"Marcie? Is that you?" a flabbergasted Winslow asked from above, once he caught a sight of her getting up from her fall. "What are you doing here, and why are you in that get-up?"
She spared a glance up at the torso cage of the statue and the captives, within. "Dad!" she called up, recognizing the voice, and deeply relieved to know that he was still alive. "Are you all right? Is anyone up there with you?"
"Mr. and Mrs. Owens, from Creationex!" said Winslow. "Call the police, Marcie! Tell them where we are!"
"Oh, I think you'll find that the police are too busy dealing with other problems, at present, but since this masquerade is over, I suppose it's just good manners if I unmask, as well," the man said to her, tossing the captured mask aside, and letting his hood slip back to reveal Everest Greenman.
Greenman spent the seconds looking, quizzically, at the cautious Marcie, unmasked in her suit. "I have your mask, Marcie Fleach. I could keep it as a trophy, but it would look far better with your head in it. Just your head. Out of curiosity, what do you call this persona of yours?"
Marcie thought of just answering, 'Dark Lilith,' but that didn't feel right to her, now. Originally, the suit was made to help promote the cause of evil. But now, it had a new purpose, since she needed its strength and abilities to help defeat an evil and to give honor its creator's memory.
"Lilith," she said, simply.
"Curious. Did you decide to wear that to frighten the fair folk of Crystal Cove, or to better reflect the nature of the young woman within?"
Marcie, grimly, flexed her claws. "You better hope it's the former."
That reply reminded Greenman of what his gods had just warned him about, concerning her being '...cloaked in a she-demon's fury.'
He banished such distracting thoughts and focused on the present situation. "During my preparations, here, I managed to hear news about the hospital. How did you know where my second sacrifice was?"
"You know that we have your history book, and it's a good thing that you wrote down 'water of the king,' in English, and not in Gaelic, or I wouldn't have figured it out," she said. "'Water of the king?' 'King's water?' 'Royal water?' Aqua regia.
"It's nitrohydrochloric acid. I'm a chemist, and I know what that stuff will do, if not handled properly, or breathed in. It creates nitric oxide, which causes, spoiler alert, pulmonary edema. That's a pretty specific thing for all of the patients in Crystal Cove Hospital to have, a thing whose main symptom is fluid build-up in the lungs, technically drowning. The second sacrifice.
"But, it takes time for that to happen, so you must have had Dr. Quest make those robot arms, we found, to spread those fumes, for days, before you betrayed him. Oh, by the way, the programmer you forced to help you has already come up with a program to call the arms out of the hospital, to be destroyed."
Understanding the costly mistakes that allowed her to out-maneuver him, he chuckled low, and gave a slow, gracious nod, in acknowledge to her surprising, deductive powers. "Well played, Miss Fleach. Well played."
But, the battle had just started, and he decided to switch tracks, as he paced around her, keeping her at high alert, trying a more psychological approach to rattle her.
"Do you know that we all have a turmoil swirling inside of us?" Greenman asked, breezily. "Dark thoughts about even our closest friends and family that we're either too guarded, or cowardly, to acknowledge. When I met your father, I must confess that I had an...edge in the negotiations."
He held up his now human-looking hand, exposing the palm, and Marcie, from where she was, peered out to see a tiny, sharp spike of wood curving out of the center of it.
"What is that?" she asked.
"A thorn of discord," he said. "I used it when I shook your father's hand, the first time we met. He hardly felt it. One poke, one scratch, would release its sap, a poison that seeks out those dark impulses and thoughts, and brings them to light. All of the things your father said, and did to you, were based on all of the fears, insecurities, and anger that he held deep within himself. He may still love you, but he's only human."
Marcie, and unbeknownst to her, Winslow, stood in revelation at the destructive depths of the war both found themselves in.
"More so than you," she said. "Why did you do it?"
"To drive a wedge between the two of you," he said with a simple smile. "You see, the gods guided me here, and warned me, early on, that you, Marcie Fleach, could somehow, undo everything that I have worked so hard to gain, in my new world. So, with the thorn of discord, I made your father so blinded by his negative emotions, he'd connect that recording of your unwitting betrayal of him, and all the other disappointments in his life, as the true reasons why he lost his park, and then, take it out on you, thus, keeping you too emotionally off-balanced to interfere."
Marcie was struck speechless for a moment, and had to concede to the sheer effectiveness of his long-term mind-game. For Greenman to so cleverly craft her as a weapon to use against her own father was diabolical, and it chilled her.
"But, why do you want the park so bad, in the first place?" she pressed.
"Because of the treasure it hides!" he explained, with grandiose gestures. "I chose this spot and gotten rid of the old ride, for a reason. Passing under your feet are ley lines, paths of great, ancient power, coursing through the Earth, like magical circuitry, and directly underneath your pathetic father's park lies not just one ley line, but a ley line hub, a convergence of their raw, magical energy, concentrated in one point, as they intersect!"
He then gestured at the ride and his wooden statue. "Look around my Wicker Man. Do you see the cars with the gems on top, which surround it? The ride is more than what it appears. Underneath it, are energy collectors, drinking in the ley lines, like taproots through a water table. At my signal, they are going to concentrate that energy and create beams of heat to set my glorious offering to the gods, alight.
"My theocratic power as the people's Undying Pagan Emperor is based on the inevitable exultation of our religion through me, and so, by following my gods' wisdom, I will kill many birds with one mighty stone. I will complete my sacrifice and have my hard-earned vengeance for all to see, I will get rid of you, and afterwards, I will claim the hub's energy for my own, and force this town to be my personal seat of power. As a businessman, I like the efficiency of that. Don't you?"
With that, he raised his remote control, with a flourish, and touched the last button on the device.
Marcie, the captives, and the crowd watched, as the ride's five cars quickly aligned themselves to face the feet of the giant Wicker Man, with the gems, set in the tops of the cars, giving off an alarming glow.
Suddenly, colored beams of power touched the ankles of the effigy, making them smolder at the points of contact, and give birth to puffs of thick, black smoke.
Marcie shifted her stance, preparing to run over to the cars and rend them apart with her new strength, but Greenman, expecting that reaction, reached out and intercepted her, bringing her to the ground with a whipping, backhanded blow.
Satisfied, he casually turned to watch this ritual that had taken him centuries to prepare, while, Marcie, groggily, got back on her feet. Finally, the glowing shins of the statue succumbed to the beams, and became ablaze.
Inside the torso cage, Winslow looked through the rising smoke, saw his only daughter getting bested by Greenman, and, worryingly, called her name.
Realizing that it would take too long to try and fight her way past Greenman to get to the gem cars, Marcie quietly clicked the heels of her boots to activate the Super Helium micro-pumps that inflated the inner pockets of her suit, shook her shoulders to flex open her wings, and launched from behind him.
She arced overhead and circled the flaming Wicker Man, trying to see through the choking miasma for a safe place to tear into the torso, and free everyone, within.
Down below, Greenman gave a sincere growl. "Not this time, girl! You will not cheat me, this time!"
His hands shifted, once more, into clutching, thorned horrors, this time, allowing the change to creep up to his forearms, hardening them into thorny, ivy-laced wood.
As the crowd, fearfully, backed away, the hands shredded his robe, easily, revealing another robe, underneath, one displaying the design and green-gold colors befitting a king.
His coifed hair loosened and became undone, changing its color and physical nature to that of long, soft, flowing ferns, as his sneering face and, indeed, his entire body, under the vestments, became transmuted into a commanding, green-tinted figure of dark, hard, gnarly, and knotted wood, with a splay of thick roots for feet.
A regal growth of thick branches began to grow from his scowling forehead, spreading wide, like the weighty antlers of an alpha stag. The base near the forehead curved thinner branches around the sides of his head, until they formed, like a bosky crown, over long, elfin ears.
Watching Marcie, finally, chance to perch upon the effigy's ribcage and snap her way through it, as a final point to his transformation, two growths of arm-like branches sprang high from his back, which, in turn, started weaving thin plant tissue in between the spaces of the branches, until, Greenman, finally, spread out a mighty pair of leaf-life wings.
Already naturally tall, he now looked, to the dumbstruck people, like an imposing patch of forbidding forest that, suddenly, stood and walked like a man.
As his precious fire quickly licked and climbed up the Wicker Man's legs, on its way to the caged torso, Greenman launched high, in an explosion of winged down-thrust, rocketing up to an unsuspecting Marcie, and violently shoved her off the structure.
Shocked at what she was now facing, she recovered her wits and corrected her tumble, hunching her strength-enhanced shoulders to provide natural wing motion to hover and study him.
"Look at you!" Greenman snarled, accusingly, while perched above the flames, on his creation's high head. "There was a time when you couldn't get away from your father's park fast enough. Now, you risk defending it? Is this the hill you truly want to die on?"
If he was hoping to intimidate Marcie with that last question, it didn't register. All she focused on was the heavy, frightening smell of smoke, the coughing of loved ones and innocents in the air, and the knowledge that only she was here, capable enough to do her damnedest to stop it.
"That's my people, down there, Greenman!" she yelled back, in challenge. "Is Crystal Cove the hill you want to die on?"
His answer was an eager dive, with spread wings and bared claws, down towards her.
As angry determination overcame her reasonable caution of the man, Marcie hunched her strength-enhanced shoulders, sweeping her wings hard, on the downbeat, and blasted from her hover, into a powerful ascent, claw-tipped fingers aiming for his insufferable face.
In the quiet woods, a small path of ruin lead from where a motorcycle and a sports car were parked in the driveway of Everest Greenman's estate.
The bodies of two decapitated Thorn Soldiers and the remains of their still-born bulb-arm progeny, chopped to pieces and reeking from poured bleach, cluttered the driveway's connecting path to the house. The front door was ajar, breeched by a violently broken lock.
In the located home office, Velma, trying not to sink into the wide, leathery depths of Greenman's office chair, sat in front of his booted-up, desktop computer, while she found a small, sheet of notepad paper next to the keyboard.
She gave the paper a quizzical look, upon which, was drawn a large, strange symbol that looked like a reversed number five, transfixed with a short line through its center, and its bottom curve continuing to loop into a spiral.
She put the mysterious icon out of her mind, and muttered to herself, "I hope you're right about this, Marcie." When the computer asked for a password, and offered a vertical bar to fill in, Velma typed in the words, 'Esus, Teutates, and Taranis,' as one word, with no spaces, before she noticed the rest of the gang entering the room from their individual sojourns.
"You know, for a maniac, he's got surprising taste in antiques," Daisy commented, as she rounded the huge desk. "There's enough good stuff, out there, to start a shop."
Jason and Red approached Velma's side of the desk, as well, Red holding up a hunk of cold roast chicken that he was tearing into, and Jason, digging into a hoagie of his own making.
"Boy, for someone who tried to kill me, he sure knows how to live," Jason replied. "That's not a kitchen, back there, it's a deli! Am I right, Red?"
Red's answer was a food-obstructed mumble, prompting Daisy to tell him, "Red, chew your food, then talk."
"We'll have time to raid his house, like Visigoths, after we take care of this," Velma reminded them, as they gathered behind her, curious about her progress.
She held her breath and tapped the Enter key. The wallpaper of a dappled glade, covered with small folder icons on the upper right corner, appeared on the screen, making Velma give a loud sigh of gratitude.
"Are we in?" asked Jason.
"I think so," Velma said, maneuvering the cursor to click on a folder that struck her fancy: Emperor's Guard.
When she opened it, she saw that it was the same set-up as the wayward programmer's Questoid command override program, just downloaded into this computer.
"This was how Greenman, and later, I, were able to control those robots," Velma explained.
"I'm just glad Stone threw those things in an impound," Red muttered, uneasily.
Velma left the folder's contents and sought out another. There were various others, some detailing plans for how he would rule and maintain conservative, religious policies through propaganda, history, force and fear.
Another had plans, still in development, on how he would seize control of Sundial and use its resources to control time, and eventually, create an earthly, eternal theocracy.
The others read Greenman's scheme, and it made Daisy ask, "Why don't we just go to Sundial, first, and beat him to the punch? We ask the cat if we can just travel back in time, and stop this creep before he did all of this."
"Cause and effect," Velma simply said. "If he was stopped before he had a chance to do anything, then everything that Marcie and you guys did *in response to that, wouldn't have happened either, because there wouldn't have been a need."
"But, Greenman's got to be stopped, now," Jason pressed. "How do we do that without having to go back in time?"
Velma stared at the computer screen, in deep thought. The whole purpose of them being there was to hurt Greenman, while Marcie bought them time, in the park. But now, indecision frustrated her and clouded her thinking. She had his operation by the throat, and she didn't know what to do with it.
She shook her head, left the folder, and returned to the wallpaper. As long as she kept looking at the Sundial scheme, her mind would always gravitate towards it. A new plan of attack was needed.
Her eyes scanned the names of the others folders, one of which read, "Finances."
Out curiosity, she opened it and beheld a long list, documenting the war treasure and plunder that he had laid claim to, and hidden, over the centuries, and the vast, monetary value that booty would now be worth, today.
Above the list was the decidedly, European-sounding name of a bank, and then, a thunderbolt of inspiration flashed through Velma's mind.
"We do that by fixing the problem, in the here and now, guys. I think I have an idea. I'm going on-line to check out this bank's website," she finally, answered.
"Uh, to do what, exactly?" Red asked.
"Greenman sacked and plundered his way into the history books," Velma said, with a sly grin. "I think it's time we plundered him, for a change."
A blue, stylized animated fish splashed, happily, from a blue, stylized wave that graced the monitor's now white screen, once she pressed the key that allowed her to go on-line.
"Welcome to the FintanNet, the electronic gateway to the World-wide Ocean..." a feminine voice greeted her, accompanied by a light, up-beat chime.
"World-wide Ocean? What the heck is that?" Red asked. "I know I'm not computer savvy, but even I know that's not the Internet."
Velma admitted that she was hard-pressed for an answer, until she realized that she was attempting to enter the width and breadth of the World-wide Web. What if that Web's world had changed?
"Of course!" she gasped, as much in frustration, as to self-congratulation, for deducing the problem. "The world's changed! The Internet, as we knew it, is gone, obviously, replaced by this! I guess they consider cyberspace to be an ocean of data."
Then, she fretted. "Whatever this is, I hope I can figure it out, or we're sunk!"