The Enchanted Forest, 6:00pm
Patton had been trailing Emma, Snow and Mulan for some time now, still a bit wary of them. When they stopped, she stopped a bit behind them, observing from the bushes. She was a far cry from Delta Force, but she might just have been the most lethal person in that whole forest at the moment. Most lethal person.
She was again listening in on their conversation with the Dragon Runner; they were setting up camp for the night.
"Uh, if we're hiding from ogres," Emma started, "shouldn't we maybe, I don't know, not start a fire?"
"Ogres are blind." Snow replied abruptly. "They hunt by sound alone."
Should probably make a mental note of that Patton thought before just penning it to a tissue.
"Right," Emma replied sarcastically, "because that's something everyone would know about ogres."
"Look," Snow talked down, as if Emma were still a little girl, "I know you're out of your element."
"I'm fine!"
"I know, but maybe you should just stay here while we get wood and water; guard the campsite."
"You mean the big empty clearing?" That wasn't really the best place for a camp anyway; Patton would have gone for somewhere with more cover, or built a lean-to at least.
"It's the safest place; we'll be right back." Snow was exasperated as she and Mulan walked off. Once they were definitely out of earshot, Patton walked up.
"Holy shit! Where were you?" Emma demanded as the guardswoman walked up to her.
"Right on your heels. Let me cut to the chase, do you trust this Mulan chick?"
"I guess so; why?"
"When we first went into Afghanistan, we didn't know who to trust. The enemy blended with the civilians; so, is Mulan my friend or my enemy?"
"Snow seems to trust her, so…"
"Do you?"
Emma sighed. "I'd have to get to know her more first, y'know. See what type of person she is. How've you been holding up?"
"Meh, basic MREs are holding up; got enough ammo. I'm already sort of ready for this, what with SERE training and all. You?"
"It's all French to me; I was born here, not raised."
Patton smiled. "Well, I'll be back in my bushes over there; if something happens I'll probably see it so don't give me away."
"See it? How?"
In response, she throttled the Dragon Runner forward.
"Oh, that's cheating!"
"Nobody ever said the National Guard plays fair, kid. Besides this, I've got my scope, binoculars and an InstantEye drone."
"Drone? Come on!"
"It's very small." She pinched her fingers together to show.
"Why were you so well equipped again?"
"Old Hickory wanted me to be geared for an 'outside context problem' with that Regina of yours. Now I'm glad he did."
"Yeah, she can be a real doozy, right?"
"I'll say."
Adelphi Laboratory Center, Adelphi, Maryland, 6:30pm
"Hokay, boys. Move Monopoly up onto the scanner very carefully." Davif Beckett ordered over the microphone, gazing in on the clean room his two scientists were working in from the other side of a bulletproof glass mirror.
"Monopoly? Really?" Emily Bronte asked, taking a fiber sample.
"C'mon man!" Greg Tanner protested. "You could have called it anything in the world! Sample Zulu-Kickass-Viper; and you went with Monopoly?"
"What? He had a hat just like this one! Whatever, put it on the scanner."
The top hat was scanned about a dozen different times, each taking snapshots, with all sorts of image enhancers. Infrared, radar, active sonar, laser, thermal, night vision, microwave, radio waves, x-rays, ultraviolet, color-enhanced, color-dimming, gamma rays- every single system imaginable, and then some classified ones, were used on this singed top hat.
"Alright, the results are in." Beckett announced as the images came onto his monitor screen. "Drumroll please."
"Just tell us!" Emily protested.
"Fine! Jeesh, you guys are such buzzkills!" He coughed loudly in anticipation, still getting his dramatic moment. "And the verdict is… it's a hat."
"Duh!"
"No, really, it's just a regular hat. A crappy, torn-up top hat."
"Weird. Are we sure our soldiers aren't the crazy ones?" Emily joked.
"Well, that one just up and disappeared down this thing, if their Sergeant Major is to be believed, so either a highly decorate war veteran went cuckoo-bananas and invented this whole thing or that poor guy really did fall down an interdimensional hole." Beckett thought on that for a moment. "Y'know, this is just weird. I think it's about time somebody told the President about this."
Oval Office, White House, Washington D.C., 8:00pm
"Madam President," Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey began, pointing to a big map of Maine pinned to a whiteboard, "this one's a real doozy, so bear with me please."
President Janice Kay Brewer- who preferred to go by "Jan"- put on her glasses to gaze where her Joint Chiefs was pointing at. "Alright, go ahead Marty."
"Three days ago, the control tower at Bangor Air National Guard Base picked up a massive energy output that closely resembled an EMP- in fact, they interpreted it to be an EMP, and were prepared to lose power. However, on later inspection, we found that this energy output was not, in fact, an EMP, but something… just different. Alien. We had never quite encountered anything like it. Basically an EMP, but it didn't shut down electronics. The eggheads started calling it Imp."
"Oh, ha-ha, nice play on words there." Jan sarcastically clapped at the 'originality' of the scientists.
"Whatever it was, it spurred the base commanders to send up a patrol to the source to check it out; consisted of eight Humvees, a Bradley fighting vehicle and an Apache for air support. Furthermore, the USS Thunder Child was just offshore and notified to be on standby just in case something should go down. The source of Imp was a small town, population about five-hundred, called Storybrooke." He pointed to it on the map. "The force was led by Sergeant Major Basil Apricot. I believe you've heard of him?"
"I certainly have. Who could forget the hero of Tzipporah?"
"Fair enough. Well, anyways, they found nothing on the way in. Geiger counters were clear; no radiation. Electronics in town worked just fine. What was really weird was what happened when they got into town. Sergeant Major Apricot sent out one of his soldiers, a Staff Sergeant, in civilian attire to sit in on an emergency town meeting that had been called moments after they arrived."
"Civilian attire, eh? So, Iron Hickory started his own FBI, then?"
"It would appear more like the CIA, ma'am, because what happened next sounds like some bad crossover fanfiction on the internet: the Staff Sergeant, in no uncertain terms, heard a young woman tell her very seriously that she was Little Red Riding Hood."
"What?"
"Everyone else had that same reaction, ma'am. To top off that craziness, the mayor of the town, Regina Mills, kicked down the doors, panicking the residents. She then threw two people across the room with some invisible force, and hurled a fireball around the hall."
"Seems a bit unlikely, Marty. Any hard evidence?"
"Well, ma'am, the Staff Sergeant has some singed hairs, and the town seal at the front of the hall was set alight when the fireball impacted it. It's remains were sent to the Army Research Lab in Adelphi to check it out. We are still awaiting results on that. However, there is another object from the town that we have checked out, and we found some interesting results.
"There was an attack by what the Sergeant Major described, short of any other words, a dementor."
"Like, Harry Potter?"
"Yes ma'am. Anyways, it swooped down upon the units, stationed just outside of the town itself, but still in the town proper. It injured two, killed one; tore up the town. The Apache engaged it in a dogfight; it had the upper hand the whole time and fired at least five-hundred rounds and two Hellfire missiles at it; visibly annoying it but with no other effect. They couldn't bring it down; at least not for good."
"Doesn't sound too good."
"Ah, I haven't got to the interesting part yet. Apparently, the Staff Sergeant was talking with the town sheriff and her parents- incidentally, the parents claimed to be Snow White and Prince Charming- to get rid of this thing before it could kill Mayor Mills."
"So, they didn't want to kill fireball lady? Why?"
"Put simply, ma'am, the Staff Sergeant probably thought that it would be better to interrogate her than just kill her."
"Probably? Did something happen?"
"Well, they seem to have opened a portal of some type; some sciencey crud that I only half understood; into another dimension; the dimension everyone in the town claimed to be from. Something did happen to the Staff Sergeant; as they were trying to force this monster down the portal, she got knocked in with it, along with the sheriff and her mother. The father was left behind because the portal abruptly shut closed on them."
"Sounds like the ending to a paranormal blog story."
"It certainly does, which is why Colonel Tyreese Albion, who was sent in after Governor LePage quarantined the town, gave all those left who were involved, from Iron Hickory himself to 'Prince Charming' to the Apache pilots. All came back negative. They were absolutely telling the truth."
"So, one of our Guardsmen is trapped in another dimension is what you're saying?"
"Not necessarily trapped, ma'am. They recovered the object used to create the portal; it was pretty beaten up, but ARL thinks they can patch it up to work again. It was a top hat; literally a dapper, top hat that wouldn't look out of place on Snidely Whiplash's head. And, pardon the pun, but to top that off, Hickory managed to get the guy who owned the hat and knows how to work it; he's trying to talk him into helping us out."
"Well, that's sure good news. What's the bad news?"
"ARL ran some tests on it, as it was found, and it registered just as one would expect it to; as a damn top hat."
"Hmm." Brewer pondered this for a moment. "You know, the public at large doesn't know this, but you are aware that the Resolute Desk was a gift from the British, correct? Queen Victoria sent it over in 1880."
"Yes, ma'am, I was aware of that."
"Did you know that Queen Elizabeth II sent over another piece of the furniture set in 1946 as a gift for our help in the Second World War? It was a certain wardrobe with an… interesting history, to say the very least. Might be worth investigating."
"Well, do tell, madam President."
The Enchanted Forest, 9:00pm
Snow was placing down some firewood in the clearing, just getting ready for the night. Patton saw her coming, through her scope from across the clearing, but she wanted to see where it went.
Their captor from earlier, the auburn one, came up from behind Snow like lightning, putting a dagger to her throat, saying something Patton couldn't hear from thirty yards out. She didn't need to hear anything though; her eyes were her guidance as she took aim with her M16. Before she could fire, Snow tackled the woman to the ground, pinning her down.
Now's as good a time as any Patton thought, rising to her feet and jogging across the clearing to meet them.
"You listen to me princess! You think I don't know what it's like, to be separated from the people that I love?"
"Hey!" Patton shouted, running up and pulling Snow off of the woman, grabbing her at her stomach and lifting her off. "Come on, get off her!"
"What happened to Philip was not our fault!" Snow shouted, kicking against Patton. The guardswoman dropped her down a few feet away, safely out of punching range as this other princess pulled herself to her feet. "So I suggest you find another way to channel you anger!"
"Alright, you've both had at each other and…" Just as Patton started, Mulan came up and sucker punched her in the face, pushing Snow back to the ground. "Oh, hell no!"
"Don't talk to her like that!" Mulan shouted, bearing down over Snow.
"Hey, she tried to kill me!" Snow protested, shoving Mulan off of her, almost reflexively gripping her dagger, but not drawing.
"I'll handle her!" Mulan replied, drawing her sword.
"Oh, and a hell of a fine job you're doing there Inigo!" Patton retorted.
"Hey, don't talk to her like…" Aurora started, but Patton just kicked her down.
"Shut up!" the guardswoman shouted, taking aim at Mulan with her M16.
A single, ear-shattering gunshot broke up the argument and any silence in the forest. All eyes went to Emma taking aim.
"Emma, what are you doing?" Snow whispered, half-panicked.
"Protecting you." Emma replied, advancing towards Mulan. "Drop the weapon!"
"Do you have any idea what you've done?!"
A low, terrifying growl echoed through the forest, as the wildlife kicked up a storm, running past them in a panic behind rustling and shaking trees.
"Ogres?"
"RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNN!" Snow shouted as all five took off sprinting. Patton and Mulan were in the lead, both being uber-fit for fighting, with Emma and Snow close behind, and the other woman in dead last, her long dress hampering any movement, let alone adrenaline-fueled flight. It brought back almost painful memories of Muslim women in Fallujah trying to flee from the constant firefights, getting slowed down to a trudge by their long robes and burqas.
Now, Patton was overwhelmed by this memory, and suddenly found herself not in the Enchanted Forest, but deep in wartorn Fallujah.
"Come with me, ma'am!" she shouted, running up to the now-burqa clad woman, helping her behind a mudbrick wall under a hail of AK fire. A steady stream of white hot lead returned fire at the hidden insurgents on the other end of the street, coming from the Bushmaster of an LAV-25. Two Marines on the other side of the street went behind the armoured vehicle, trying to reach cover, only to get gunned down from above. Patton looked up at the roof of a sooty apartment just in time to see an RPG streak downrange and detonate on the turret of the LAV. The armoured vehicle exploded all over, Patton ducking down to avoid the white hot debris.
"Son of a bitch!" Patton screamed, pulling the pin on an M67. "Frag out!" she shouted to anyone left alive.
"Al mout li Amreeka!" an insurgent shouted. "Al mout li Amree-ke up! Amreeka up! Wake up! WAKE UP!"
She came to and saw Emma and Mulan leaning over her, shaking her shoulders. She groaned, rubbing her head in pain. "W-What the hell happened?"
"You had some sort of flashback or something; started acting all crazy and shouting about insurgents down an alley."
She sat up, gazing at the corpse of what appeared to be a giant man. "What the hell is that?"
"Oh, that's the ogre you just massacred." Emma replied.
"You fired some sort of yellow arrows at it," Mulan replied, wide-eyed with awe. Shock and awe. "Then you threw an exploding egg at it! You must come from a very magical land."
Patton smiled as she rose to her feet. "Hah! You ain't seen nothing yet." She looked at the mangled corpse before them; its face was a smashed, bloody pulp. Apparently the grenade had hit it in the worst possible place to have an explosion go off- right on its damn head. The face was just shattered, bits of skull and brains were scattered everywhere, a giant pool of blood was around the head.
"Christ, where did I hit this thing?"
"The egg went in its mouth."
"It ate my grenade?"
Mulan's eyes lit up a bit; finally the woman had given her a clue to where those exploding orbs came from. "Grenade? What sort of bird is that to lay such eggs?"