Zilo: Hooray! We've returned!
Chizi: That's kinda what we do.
Zilo: So let me take out some special time to thank Glitterthorn, Salamander B. Hat, Rawrzness Wolf, The Name Is Greed, LeFay Strent, Lorelei Rinoa, Beleg Ohtar, DOTB18, Beryl Bloodstone, Shinigami's-Neko-GakI, MuffinMuffin, alexthegreat123, darkshadowgirl666, Spot'sGalFrom1899, SamIAmNot, and Hachikoo for awesome and encouraging reviews!
Chizi: Yep. Now let's get to it. (cracks knuckles)
13: Arrival In Headquarters
in which Ike's teeth deliver some answers
"Ike?" I said an hour into the drive.
"Yeah?"
"So does everyone run around talking about Manual Reconnaissance Young'un blah-blah-blah all the time? It's a damn mouthful." I was trying to find some sort of starting point, some way to make this understandable, and I'm not ashamed to admit I picked something really stupid and irrelevant.
"Manual Reconnaissance Youth in charge of Summaries and Extractions."
And why does everyone correct me about it?
"Yeah, it's pretty lengthy. Some people like to joke and use the acronym 'MaRYSuE' instead," Ike said.
Lovely. "Just tell me when to turn, Ling," I sighed, giving up on understanding for now.
"Right here," Ling said, indicating a dirt road off the main street.
I turned without signaling, still pretty lost in thought.
"Can you explain what exactly these…MaRYSuEs, you called them? What is their purpose?" Riza asked Ike.
Ike put a finger on his chin and looked at the ceiling, as if the answers were up there. "That's a little complicated. Basically…they're supposed to travel to different dimensions, gather information, interact with pre-selected individuals, and regulate jumper traffic," he said.
"And what's jumper traffic?" Riza asked next.
"Well, 'jumpers' is our term for people who use chainletters to visit other dimensions without our license. It's not exactly illegal, but we keep tabs on them to ensure they don't warp or break canon."
"And canon is…?"
"Hmm, let's see. I guess you could call it the predetermined path that a specific dimension is destined to follow, according to the source material," Ike said. "We let jumpers travel, but if they cause any trouble, well, that's where the Extracting part comes in for Manual Reconnaissance—well, let's go with MaRYSuE agents. They extract any jumpers who are causing too many problems. Of course, there's always the occasional rogue MaRYSuE who decides to break canon themselves, and they're quite the handful, believe me."
"You sound like some annoying scholar," I commented absently. "No, scratch that. You sound like that annoying Koizumi guy from Haruhi Suzumiya."
Ike made a face. "Insult or backhanded compliment?"
"Both, I guess," I sighed.
"So in other words, you're some sort of supernatural police force," Ling guessed.
"I guess we are!" Ike said with a little laugh.
"And when did you think it would be a good idea to tell your best friend?" I cut in, annoyed.
Ike's smile faded. "Sorry, Joey. It was a pretty huge secret, I know. But I wasn't supposed to tell you at all. Your mother said it would interfere with your tests if you knew beforehand what you were getting into."
"Well maybe I could've reacted better if I had a clue what was going on!" I snapped.
"I know. Well…I didn't think it was such a good idea for you to be tested in the first place. I thought you'd probably enjoy living a normal life better. Being a MaRYSuE wouldn't fit you, you know? But your mom insisted that you were perfect for testing. She would have started when you were younger, but a senior officer intervened."
I just sighed again.
"Well, in any case, you failed the testing anyway, so it's not even an issue now," Ike reminded me.
"Well, wonderful, let's just turn around and go home and celebrate that I don't have to be a part of the Asswipe Corps," I griped.
Ike bit his lip.
"I mean, seriously? What, am I supposed to be happy or something? I just found out my mom's been a lying scumbag for who knows how long, and so have you! Add to that putting my brother and sister in danger, and random masked punks coming in my house and kidnapping my guests? And then waving their guns in my face? And I'm supposed to be relieved for some reason? You'd better be relieved I don't toss you out the window and back over you!"
"Well in any case, you need me to get in, remember?" Ike pointed out, used to my angry outbursts.
"Yeah, don't remind me."
Eventually I did calm down, and, following Ling's directions, found myself getting closer to Florida's border. Riza continued to quiz Ike on his mysterious organization, and we all learned that though they weren't technically villainous—I snorted at this—they still kept themselves under the radar when it came to government and local law enforcement. Their outfit was something strange and rather exclusive, considering it only regulated anime dimensions. Apparently, however, there's several more off-the-radar organizations that cater to dimension travel to the other media of choice—literature, television, movies, video games, and so on. Most of this explaining was done towards me, since I'd get it better, though Riza and Ling looked pretty interested at the idea.
"This world you live in seems like it can enter into others at will, with the help of these chainletters," Riza commented at one point.
"That's a pretty powerful ability," Ling added.
"I guess you could put in that way," Ike said. "That's why there has to be people who keep an eye on what goes on."
I just shook my head a little. It felt a little like Ike was on a PR mission for his job. I had already set in my mind that my mom was secretly evil all this time, and long-winded explanations weren't going to change that. I already knew what I wanted to do after I located Ricky and Cassie (and hopefully the missing FMA cast) and gotten them to safety: I was going to have it out with my mom, one way or another. I wanted to know everything she'd kept from us all this time, and why. And I wouldn't let up until I got answers.
I was beginning to wonder if the headquarters was in Georgia when Ike suddenly fell silent, and Ling said, "We should probably stop here and go the rest of the way on foot."
"Huh?" I was making a wide turn around a bunch of trees, on yet another unpaved path.
"We're close," Ike said. "We don't want them hearing the car."
I immediately parked behind a big scraggly bush and turned the van off. "Behind these trees?" I asked, feeling my heart start to beat wildly. It seemed like it was too soon to be here already.
Ike nodded. "There's a little hill right under the trees up ahead. We can get a look at the place there."
"Then let's go," Riza said firmly, unbuckling her seatbelt and pulling open the passenger door.
Suddenly nervous, I clipped the keys to my belt loop, unbuckled my seatbelt, and climbed out of the car. Ike noticed my expression and gave me a reassuring smile. "Don't worry, Jones, we can do this."
"How do I know you're not leading us into some other trap?" I bit out, unable to drop the last of my cynicism.
"Normally you would have to worry about that, but your brother and sister shouldn't be involved. I don't like that," Ike said.
I heaved another sigh, feeling like air was leaking out of me like a balloon. "Okay. I…really hope you aren't lying to me again, Ike."
He looked sad at this, and looked away for a second. "Sorry you've got to doubt me still," he said to the trees.
Riza put a hand on my shoulder, and I looked up at her. She had an understanding look on her face. "We'll do everything we can to help you," she assured me.
"Yeah, and if I'm going to learn anything more about this power, I have to help you take it down too," Ling added.
That's probably the best I'll get out of him. I nodded, then reached back into the van and pulled out Ricky's baseball bat from behind the driver's seat. "Let's do this."
The hill was a pretty good place to spy. The trees that grew around it had branches hanging down over the top, making a great cover. Ling, apparently unafraid of being caught, had disappeared up in the tops of the trees, while Riza, Ike and me laid down on the hill to spy on the headquarters.
"So is it in Georgia?" I whispered to Ike.
"Half of it is," Ike replied. "Somehow it helps with the off-the-radar part if we're located in two states."
It sounded dumb, but almost dumb enough to work. I focused on the castle we were about to storm—a huge gray building that sprawled through open lands in a massive T shape. I saw no guards of any type, like Ling had said. I didn't see any searchlights, watchtowers, barbed wire, or anything.
"Why are there no security measures?" Riza asked, beating me to the punch.
"We don't need them. No one knows we exist, remember? And the few that do and want to hurt us somehow don't have anywhere near enough firepower or resources to do anything about it," Ike said.
"You mean no one's ever tried what we're about to do before?" I asked.
"Attempted a jailbreak, you mean? Not as far as I know. We don't have prisoners very often anyway," Ike said.
Okay. So then maybe we don't have to dodge gunfire while jumping over land mines like I thought. "Then what's the plan? Where would they keep their oh-so-rare-occasion prisoners?" I asked.
"Hmmm…probably in one of the meditation wings. Those rooms can be like solitary confinement and you can't get out without a letter." Ike pointed at the top left branch of the T, the farthest away from us.
"Well fantastic. How do we get in?"
"Maybe we can try a bluff. I can bring you and Riza in with me and say one of the bigwigs, like, oh, your mother, requested you guys and I'm bringing you in. Ling can scout the place out in the meantime. He can meet up with us once we're clear and we'll make with the jailbreak," Ike said.
"Wait, if you work there, wouldn't you have one of those mystical chainletter things you were gabbing about? Why not just teleport us in?" I pointed out.
"Well, we're not stupid. We monitor all chainletter activity inside, and outside for a sizable perimeter. Do that and you'll be transported straight into a meditation room."
"Lovely." I glanced at Riza. "Does his plan sound good to you?"
"It's a good start, but what if we're discovered?" Riza asked.
"Then I transport you guys away and handle the problem myself," Ike said confidently.
It still didn't sound right, but we didn't have many other options. "Fine, let's do it," I said firmly.
"Aye aye, lady captain," Ling said from the trees.
And so it was that Ike, Riza and I descended the hill and made our way to the front door. Riza was concerned that her not being restrained in any way would be suspicious, but Ike assured her it wouldn't be a problem. "Why tie someone up when you can just teleport them away if they try to escape?" he pointed out.
"I suppose…" Riza agreed, though she still seemed unsure.
"Just try to look disgruntled, you know, like you're a captive. Joey, you can look pissed, like…well, like you do right now is fine actually."
"Great," I scowled.
As we got closer, I could feel my nerves tying my stomach into knots. I shouldn't be anything but raging mad; why am I nervous? We can do this, no sweat. But even saying that, I had the feeling it wouldn't be as easy as I was desperately hoping.
Ike covered a yawn as we reached the front double doors, and I wasn't sure if he was faking or really yawning. He pulled one of them open all the way, held it, and gestured grandly to me and Riza. I wasn't too fond of the gesture at the moment, and conveyed my feelings with a glare as I stepped through. Riza ignored him entirely.
Inside was not a villainous lair. Instead there were blue walls and a gray carpet and silver ceiling, with fluorescent lighting. Before us stretched a hallway with no doors on either side, leading instead to what looked like a lobby up ahead. I could see the edge of what looked like a reception desk made of dark wood and maybe a potted plant.
"Great digs," I said sarcastically.
"Not an interior decorator," Ike replied as he left the door to swing itself closed and took the lead again.
"Ike!" a voice squealed from the room ahead, making me wince. "Is that you? Where have you been?"
"That's Rabekk'Hah. Don't say anything to her," Ike told us under his breath as we passed through the hall.
The room was indeed a lobby, though besides the reception desk and random plant next to it, there were no other pieces of furniture in the room. In fact, the only other thing besides the desk, the plant, and the spastic redhead behind it was a huge wood sign mounted on the wall above her head that screamed LOBBY.
"Bekki," Ike said, in a tone reminiscent of someone trying to politely greet the annoying next-door neighbor they hated.
"You are soooo late, mister! You never call, you never write, you never c-mail! It gets so boring around here without you! Too many girls!" the redhead whined. Her hair was such a vibrant red it hurt my eyes to look at it, and her eyes were lavender.
"Yeah, I'm the type to fix the 'too many girls' problem," Ike sighed.
"So what's up now? More character delivery? Oh!" The redhead (because I refuse to use that stupid name) noticed me and did a double take, her eyes widening. "Isn't that Ms. Phoenix's daughter?"
Ms. Phoenix?
Ms. Phoenix?
"Yeah, she asked me to bring her in after cleanup," Ike said, pulling what looked like a credit card from his jeans pocket and sticking it into a slot on the desk's surface.
The redhead turned automatically to a computer monitor I'd missed on my initial inspection and quickly scanned some readout. "No unauthorized use," she said in an automatic tone, and then, more naturally and more annoyingly, "But Ike, she's a…" Here she applied some sort of annoying whisper I guessed I wasn't supposed to hear. "…failed tester."
I clenched my fists to keep from snapping at her. I clenched them hard.
"You heard what I said, Bekki. No arguments," Ike said, removing his card thing and stuffing it back into his back pocket. "It'll just be a few minutes, and no skin off the innocent receptionist's perfectly sloped nose, all right?"
"Wellll…okay," the redhead finally conceded, twirling a strand of hair. "Just don't show her anything failed testers aren't supposed to see!"
"Wow, didn't think of that," Ike sighed, with what sounded like some of my sarcasm. He waved for us to join him facing a wall to the left of the desk. "Hold hands please, ladies, and no funny business now of all times."
I glanced at Riza, who shrugged a little, and we clasped hands. Almost immediately, it felt like the floor had dropped out from underneath us, like an elevator that started off a little quickly. But before I could even register that feeling, it was gone, and I was on solid ground in a completely different area.
A completely different dark area.
"Ike?" I whispered, feeling a sudden jump in my stomach. No, it's not a trap. He wouldn't have done that. Would he? Please, answer, Ike, don't make me think—
"Here, sorry." A hand sort-of landed my shoulder, making me jump. "I guess nobody turned anything on in here today. Sorry, again. We're in the black room, named not because of the awesome ambience but because…" Here he trailed off like he was occupied with something else, and I thought I heard fumbling. "Here we go!"
A blacklight flipped on, causing Ike's teeth, shirt, and the rims of his glasses to glow neon blue. I turned and saw that Riza, who still had my hand, had the lighter parts of her uniform also glowing. "What is this?" she said in amazement.
"It's a special light. It acts as sort of a scrambler for anyone tracing chainletter activity," Ike's teeth told us.
"And a scrambler for brains at parties," I added.
"That too," Ike's teeth agreed good-naturedly.
"So where do we go from here?" I asked.
"From here we can safely move to the meditation wing and figure out exactly where everyone's being held. Also we can rendezvous with Ling and find out how successfully we'll escape."
"Will we need to return here to avoid detection?" Riza asked, having gotten over the "parts of me are neon signage" thing fairly quickly.
"Possibly, but by then they might be onto us, so agents could be waiting here in the dark to nab us. A massive move outside headquarters will probably be in order. If that's the case, I'll either have to steal a different chainletter to support a multitude of people, or Joey will have to help with transport."
"Do you want to say that again and make sense?" I cut in.
"I know what I said. Joey, you can't possibly have seen all of this and think you're somehow normal. You've already performed partial crossings without using a chain letter: the time you and Cassie vanished off the sidewalk, the time Ricky passed out in your kitchen, and two of the unscheduled appearances in your house—Riza herself being one of them."
"Wait, hold on! You're saying that when those happened, it was me?"
"Yeah. Being able to visit other dimensions without letter assistance is a sign of being a potential Manual—MaRYSuE, sorry."
"But then how come I've never done it before?" I wanted to know.
"Well, it requires a special set of circumstances, and maybe when we're not in the middle of a dangerous mission we can discuss it further?"
I heaved a rather annoyed breath, but nodded. "Okay. Fine. I'll help you with whatever, however I'm supposed to do that. Let's get moving."
"Sounds good." Ike's teeth grinned at me. "Make sure you're both still holding hands."
The second time wasn't as nauseating, and I kept my eyes firmly open. So I watched the neon-tinted darkness quickly swirl into fluorescent lighting again, only this time everything was white. Walls, ceiling, tiles of the floor. And once again there were no doors.
"Here we are, the antisepticalicious meditation wing," Ike, now fully visible again, said. "I hate this place."
"Not hard to see why," I commented.
Riza glanced up and down the hall. One end was a dead end, the other was a dead end with a water cooler. "No entries or exits," she pointed out.
"Yeah, we don't really need them," Ike said.
"So how do you know where the rooms are?" I asked.
"Look closely," Ike said, pointing to a section of the wall in front of us.
I squinted at it for a few moments, until I saw the faint outline of where a door should have gone, in slightly darker white paint. Squinting down the hall, I saw several more ghost doorways.
"Why so many?" Riza asked.
"Honestly? I don't know."
A sudden bang made us all jump. "What the flying hell?" I exclaimed.
Another bang, and I realized that something—someone—was hitting the wall. Then another bang, and another, becoming a rhythmic pounding on the wall.
"It's this room," Ike said, pointing to a ghost doorway four up. I went first, determined to find out what it was, and tell whoever it was to shut the hell up because they were freaking me out.
"Do you hear that?" Riza said a moment after she'd joined me.
I blinked at her, then strained to listen. Behind the pounding, I thought I heard it: a faint muffled sound, almost like a voice.
"I think we found someone," Ike said, and before I could turn to him, he was gone, the air swirled up funny where he'd been.
"Hey—! Ike, wait—!" I exclaimed, looking around as if I could spot him.
He was back in a same spot in no time, though, and with him was Ricky. Ricky, who had blood on his shirt and looked like he'd been crying.
I think we all know that I have times where I want nothing more then to ram my brother's head into the corner of a steel pole. But seeing him like that, I could only feel two things: insane fear, and ridiculous relief.
"Ricky!" I yelled, flinging my arms out.
"Melissa!" He ran into my outstretched arms with no shame, and as I hugged him tightly I realized he was shaking. He had to be on his knees to get the full effects of the hug, but he didn't seem to care. And I didn't care either.
"Are you okay? Are you hurt? What did those bastards do?" I was saying as I held him.
"No, no, I'm okay," he was saying, but his voice sounded like his body felt, and he had one arm free to wipe his face. "I can tell you what happened—it's not my blood, it was Lieutenant Hawkeye's—but I—I'm so sorry I didn't watch—"
"No, don't start 'I'm sorrying' me. Don't even think stupid like that," I said to his shoulder. "I don't blame you for what happened."
He started to cry for real on my shoulder, and I could tell that he had been seriously freaked out by these guys, which made me even madder at them and Mom especially. How could she do this to her own son?
"Where's everyone else? In these rooms?" I asked.
"No, they—most of them got sent back, I think, but they separated me and Cassie—and—"
Cassie.
"Sent them back? Well that's no good," Ike commented. "We need power in our corner to ensure a clean getaway."
"Do you know where they took Cassie?" I asked Ricky.
He sniffled, then sat back on his heels, wiping his face with both hands now. "No, um, I tried to hold onto her, for real, but one of the guys with guns just made her disappear. They said…" His eyes widened as he seemed to remember something. "They said that Mom would be taking care of her! Joey, do you think Mom's here?"
"Yeah, she is, and she's got a lot of explaining to do," I said grimly.
Ike nodded. "And that's where it gets tricky. Finding your mom in here won't be easy, but she'll probably have Cassie with her in any case. But if we go searching around every room, we're bound to set off alarms. And once they realize the situation, we'll all have rooms of our own here in a blink."
"Not gonna happen," I said firmly as Ricky got back to his feet, rubbing self-consciously at the nearly healed bruises around his neck. "You've can counteract whatever with your own chainletter mojo, right?"
He looked surprised. "Yeah but—"
"Great. If they sent everyone back, we're gonna have to re-yank a few of them over here."
"The colonel?" Riza asked.
I nodded. "And Ed. And Al too. And get Ling back here. There needs to be a ruckus made in this joint."
"So…you've got a plan, Joey?" Ricky asked, sounding hopeful.
"Hell yeah."
Zilo: PLOT BE THICKENING!
Chizi: …Right…
Zilo: So, you ready to get some action going?
Chizi: Born ready, let's do this. Until next time, folks.