This chapter is for those who wanted to make an appearance in the story. I had planned a simple one shot, and as usual, it has gotten deliciously out of hand. Thank you to everyone who has gotten involved in something for a little fun. Special thanks to those who did the beta work. Star, you have the comic flair.
I've thrown in a piece of my childhood, since the story was set in Los Angles. I was a huge fan of Emergency! as a kid. I decided to bring the boys from Station 51 out of retirement. Forgive a guy his bit of nostalgia.
Yes, I do have Myotonic Muscular Dystrophy. I was clinically diagnosed several years ago. As you can see, it doesn't get in the way of the important things in life. The beauty of the Kimmunity, you don't have to leave your desk.
As usual, Disney has the rights to Joss and Wade. The authors named here are by permission. The characters of Emergency! are the property of Universal, and the creation of Jack Webb.
Betrayal Most Foul
Thomas sat in his chair, his eyes rolled into the back of his head. His fingers just seemed to fly over the keys, and words scrolled at an unnatural rate up every screen in the room. The plot bunnies firmly attached to his legs twitched in glee with every click of the keyboard. Every so often, Thomas would jerk in his seat.
KT pulled out the BE4000, and swept the room with her gaze. Finding no other targets, she aimed at one of the creatures attached to the man.
"No!" shouted Joss. "Look at him, KT. If you shoot at this range, he'll either get hit and burned, or go into shock." She ran to the secondary terminal that KT had been typing at before 'neb had called. "I'm calling for medical help."
xx
Some few miles away, the crew of LAcoFD Station 51 was sitting in the lounge. Another meal had been finished, and the mess cleared away. While the six men in the room debated what channel should be on the new flat screen television, there was a buzzing noise, followed by the normal dispatcher's voice from the public address system throughout the station.
Beep, Beep, Buzz. "Squad 51, Squad 51. Unknown medical emergency. Patient in shock. Respond 471 Alameda Ave."
John Gage and Roy DeSoto jumped up from their seats on the long couch. They raced for the unit waiting in garage, checking the address on the digital map. The station Captain came out of his office and grabbed the radio mike from the unit on the wall.
"Squad 51, KMG365!"
Returning the mike to its holder, he slammed the large button on the wall and the door swung up, just before the truck screamed out, siren wailing.
xx
The elevator doors of the office opened, admitting two men carrying several boxes on a stokes basket. One glance around and it was plain where they were needed. Three young women in matching outfits were hovering over a man in a chair. What looked like rabbits were holding onto his legs with their... teeth?
John looked at Roy. This was a situation that they had never seen in years as paramedics.
Joss ran to them and grabbed one of the equipment boxes from the stokes. As one of the men reached for her arm, she shook him off and took the case over to Thomas' feet. Opening it up, she plugged in the paddles and charged up the unit.
"What do you think you're doing!" Roy yelled. "That's the defibrillator. You could send him into a cardiac arrest!"
"Ah need to get these varmints to let go of him!" Joss yelled back at him with the stress of the events making her fall back into her deep Montana farm girl accent. "If we don't, nothin' ya do is gonna save him." When the box emitted a tone, she placed the paddles on the first bunny. Depressing the buttons on the paddles, she shocked the creature, and it vaporized. "Charging!" she screamed, as she got ready to zap the next one.
John and Roy stood there in a kind of shock as they watched the red haired girl move form bunny to bunny, repeating the same actions of charging the defibrillator and then shocking the rabbit, which caused it to vaporize instantly.
When the last bunny had been destroyed, Thomas collapsed in the chair. John and Roy were there instantly, checking his vitals. Pulse was there, thready but there. Blood pressure was spiked, to almost dangerous levels.
John pulled open a radio box and grabbed the mike.
"Rampart, this is Squad 51. We have a patient in shock from what appear to be... rabbit bites?... on his legs." The two men just looked at each other. John and Roy just shrugged their shoulders, neither really believing what they had just seen.
"Squad 51, this is Rampart, say again?"
"When we arrived on site, there were approximately six rabbits with their teeth in the victim's legs. He was convulsing in a chair and typing on a computer terminal." Roy just looked at his partner and shrugged. "Sending you an EKG feed now." While John had been contacting the hospital, Roy had stripped Thomas of his shirt and applied the electrodes. "Patient has a thready pulse of 63 and a blood pressure of 185 over 110."
"Stand by 51." The three girls were standing in a cluster, just out of the way. All of them were looking scared, but also looked as if they had an idea of what was going on. Which was more than could be said for the paramedics.
"An ambulance is on the way, 51. Begin an IV, lactate with ringers tko. Prepare for transport."
"Copy that Rampart." Reaching into the medicine box, John pulled out a bag with tubes attached. Roy was inserting a needle into Thomas' arm.
A voice suddenly came from the speakers hidden in the ceiling. "What's his condition, Angels? 'neb has had me scanning, but I had to turn it off to not interfere with the paramedic equipment."
"Who was that?" said John and Roy at the same time, causing the girls to smile for the first time since the paramedics had arrived in the office. John could have sworn that he heard one of them say the word "Jinx."
"Dr. Wade Load, Team Possible and Blaze-IT Search and Rescue." the voice responded. "I've patched into the hospital computer, Angels, and I'm finding a ride for Dr. Possible. I should have her to Rampart General by the time the ambulance reaches the emergency room doors." All three girls were relieved. The names 'Team Possible' and "Blaze-IT" had reassured the paramedics as well. Many times they had seen the results that those organizations produced. They had not heard too much about Dr. Anne Possible, however.
xx
On arrival at the hospital, an auburn haired woman in a white lab coat and scrubs rushed out to the ambulance, closely followed by Rampart's own Nurse Dixie McCall. Dixie was a gorgeous blonde with a dazzling smile but a business-like demeanor. Roy helped the attendants with the stretcher while John parked the truck in its usual spot in the emergency parking lot. Anne Possible looked at the EKG that was at Thomas feet. The readings were starting to come back down to a more normal range. She was far more concerned with his color and the glazed look in his eyes.
"Has he said anything at all since you stabilized him?"
"No, doctor. He's twitched a few times. It may be from his existing condition." As the gurney was wheeled into the trauma unit, Roy showed her the medic alert tag that hung around the patient's neck. "Myotonic Muscular Dystrophy" was etched on the back, along with the words "allergic to penicillin."
"Dang, 'neb, why didn't you make a note of this? No wonder the bunnies had him in shock." Not trusting the equipment, she felt for a pulse the old fashioned way. That too was on its way back to normal. "We've been getting reports that plot bunnies have a serious effect on people with neuromuscular disorders. Apparently, the pathology works to the bunnies' advantage, letting them take almost full control of the victim's nervous system."
By this time, there were a number of doctors surrounding Thomas on the exam table. All of them had a confused look on their faces. Plot bunnies?
Some time later, three young women, now changed out of mission wear, were sitting in chairs in a room of Rampart General Hospital. They had been sitting there, just watching Thomas, waiting for him to come to. He had been given massive amounts of sedatives, to relieve his blood pressure. So far, it had been two days. Akinyi was sitting at the side of the bed; KT and Joss were dozing on a pair of chairs in the corner.
Slowly, at first, Thomas began to open his eyes. Akinyi missed it, having been looking at the hands folded in her lap.
"So just who is minding the office if I'm flat on my back and the three of you are here?" Thomas asked in a hoarse voice.
"Thomas!" Akinyi cried. "Girls, he's up, he's awake!" This last was unnecessary, as the other girls had heard him croaking his question. They had rushed to either side of his bed.
The PosComm on the bedside table beeped twice. This was Thomas' silver and black unit, a little larger than the ones that the girls carried, and that had been color coordinated with their mission clothes. Joss picked it up and passed it to him.
"Welcome back to the land of the living, Thomas." The Neb's Angels logo came up on the little screen. The mellow baritone of cpneb came out of the unit. "I hope you don't mind, but I've been monitoring the room since you were moved out of the emergency unit." There was a slight pause. "Don't worry about the expense, Thomas. Wade Logistics has agreed to cover it. I realize that most companies are pretty stingy with hospital insurance for out of country patients."
"Thank you, sir, and please thank Dr. Load for me. My original question still stands. Who is manning the office while I'm here? Those bunnies were more aggressive than I'm used to." Thomas groped for the control that would raise the head of the bed a little further.
Not to worry." the answer came. "There has been no shortage of volunteers. PRT (Pharaoh Rutin Tutin) and JA have been taking turns, as has Star (Star-Eva01). Seems everyone has been itching to see the new office. Once JA got it fixed and cleaned up that is. He's a one man "Mr. Fix It" when he's channeling Star Trek's Scotty. Got the office cleaned up and fully operational in less than two hours. Quite the miracle worker, since originally he said it would take two days. Took out a hidden embedded nest of plot bunnies too. KT, you never told me your dad could use a bullwhip like that! He would have made South Dakota Smith proud. By the way, how many did you get with the crazer before they overpowered you?"
"Five. But that's not the worst of it. Before they chewed in through the ceilings, I heard a human voice. Sir, these bunnies were working under human orders." Thomas looked almost incredulous. It was unheard of for these creatures to follow any kind of command. All they did was bite and hold. This was entirely new behavior, and very disturbing.
"I'll have our people go over the audio and infrared/Doppler recordings, assuming the culprit didn't disable the system. You are under doctors' orders to rest for the next couple of days." There was a quiet count down from five. On one, the door opened, and two individuals entered the room.
Dr. Anne Possible, looking very tired, stepped over to the foot of the bed. A second doctor, a slightly older African American man with a genial smile on his face, was taking the chart from a bin on the outside of the door.
"Dr. Possible, I am pleased to meet you in person." Thomas tried to rise from the bed, but three small pairs of hands pushed him back down. Anne just smiled at them. "I really don't think the girls need to restrain me, doctors. I promise to behave myself."
"Sure, we've heard that one before!" Akinyi quipped.
"Have we met, doctor...?" Thomas asked the other doctor, as he could not get past the feeling of knowing this man from somewhere.
"Adams. C. P. Adams. No, we haven't. I'm an old friend of JA and KT, and they called me in to help out when Dr. Possible here was so concerned. Fortunately for me, Global Justice and Betty owe me a few centuries of vacation time." Dr. Adams walked over and shook hands with a now grinning Thomas. 'So this is GJ's Chief Medical Officer who keeps Dr. Director in line. From his sense of humor, he's her perfect foil.' thought Thomas. "Don't worry, you'll be back in the office soon enough. We just want to run a few tests, to make sure that the bloody animals didn't do any permanent damage."
"I see you are in good hands there, Mr. Linquist." 'neb said through the PosComm that now sat in Thomas' lap. "I'll let you know when we have the analysis of the recordings from the office." The screen went blank, and Thomas could not help noticing just how much alike Dr. Adams' and cpneb's voices sounded. Almost like they were twin brothers.
"If you ladies wouldn't mind waiting outside, Dr. Adams and I would like to do some tests on Mr. Linquist here, and hospital gowns aren't much for modesty." The three young women giggled a little at that. With reluctant looks, they left the room, but didn't stray far.
Nurse McCall pulled the screen around the bed, and then came to assist the doctors. Thomas took one look at the two women by his bedside and the blood pressure monitor betrayed him. 'Dang, two gorgeous women, and me without my best boxers!' he thought to himself.
xx
In a makeshift lair on the edges of the city, a man stood; surrounded by plot bunnies, plot squirrels and laughing. He had a video image running on a computer sitting on the grimy work bench. He watched as Thomas sat twitching and typing like a madman. Every now and then, he would focus in on a screen. He compared the words scrolling on it with printouts. They were almost perfect matches, with only slight variations.
'When this plan is complete, I will move from this crummy time-share lair and into something much better. Like Neb's Angels head office' the man thought, an evil grin overtaking his face. 'They'll be sorry they passed me over for a Fannie award. Oh yes they will!' The current set up was temporary, and still smelled of Drakken's last stay. Synthogoo had a tendency to rot and putrefy if left for more than a few hours.
"Come my furry little minions. We have many writers to bite. Then we will see who the best author at fan fiction dot net is. Mwahahah!"
xx
It was just after nine the next day that Thomas Linquist was finally permitted to leave the hospital. Several MRIs, CAT scans and an EMG (the last of which list Thomas had found extremely uncomfortable), had shown no permanent damage. However, he was too weak to walk with just his cane, and was forced to resort to a wheelchair. Fortunately, the office, and his connecting apartment, had been outfitted for a person with diminished mobility.
What made the sitch most awkward for Thomas was that all three of the Angels insisted on treating him like he was made of crystal, and might break if hit with a slight breeze. On the other hand, he was enjoying the looks of envy he was receiving from the younger men in the hallways. Mrs. Linquist would have laughed at him and called him a dirty old man for enjoying those stares.
As soon as they reached the office, Thomas wheeled himself over to the central terminal. Punching in the appropriate code, he contacted cpneb. "Good morning, sir. I hate to push, but has there been any progress in isolating the images and voices on the office recorders?" He moved himself from the wheel chair to the seat he had been pulled from four days previously. JA had done a good job of getting out the bunny drool stains.
"We ran it through Wade's programs that Global Justice uses. We are still running it against known voice and image prints. The hardest part is that only a relatively small number of people have, ah willingly provided samples for the database." cpneb chuckled.
The monitor on the wall came to life. On one half of the screen, a picture would pop up, and on the other, a bio of the person in question. On the bottom, the voice print recorded in the office would be compared with the one on file. Pictures suddenly switched from being a combination of genders to being all male.
"So we are definitely looking for a guy? I'd have thought that maybe DNAmy was up to something. She'd be the most likely to manipulate bunnies to make them more dangerous." KT was pulling at her lower lip.
JA came in and looked at his daughter. "I know that expression. Something isn't adding up. What is your gut telling you?" He approved heartily of his little girl's mental abilities. She just had a hard time going from cold, logical analysis to hunches and intuition. Sometimes things couldn't be figured out on paper or computers. Since she had started writing, she had become an even more rounded person.
"I don't know, Dad. Something just feels, wrong. It's like we are looking in the sock drawer for a pair of shoes." KT furrowed her brow.
"Careful your face doesn't freeze that way, KT." Thomas chuckled softly to himself. His reward was to have the young lady stick her tongue out at him.
Akinyi was looking at the computer use records that were automatically logged. There was something so odd. "Do you realize that you were rewriting your own stories when those plot bunnies were attached to you?" She called up the data from the recorders on one screen and the story list from Thomas' account. "There are minor changes, but it's the same story, each and every time."
By now everyone was crowding around her work station.
"Hey, she's right! Some of these are even stuff that I rejected out of hand as being substandard." Thomas switched positions in his chair so that he could see the results his young charge had found. "It's like somebody dusted off an old file folder and started copying it, with inaccuracies."
"Dust... bunnies. Dust bunnies! Just like in Wade's closet after we moved the servers to the bunker." Joss giggled to herself.
"That's it, somebody is trying to cross dust bunnies and plot bunnies. Nobody who is bitten will be able to write anything new!" KT practically had a light bulb over her head. "'neb, does this seem at all reasonable to you? Could somebody want to stop the writers from writing new stories?"
"Well, I suppose it's possible, but highly..."
At that moment, a picture came up on the screen, and stayed there. Oddly enough, the image was of a person in a floral print dress, cowgirl style, though Joss would scoff at that description. It was definitely a male. In large red print, the words "voice and image match 100 percent", flashed over the picture. Below the photo appeared the name ...
"Snake muffins!" Joss whispered. "It's one of ours. A fan fiction writer is trying to bring down the system!"
"I think we are in deep trouble." Thomas stared at the monitor and shook his head. "Girls, we have to find him, and fast."