Visionary and the Heart of Darkness Chapter One. **Cross-over/Continuity Warning**

“First I’m not healing quickly enough for you, now I’m healing too fast” Visionary grumbled from within a light blue paper smock that let an alarming draft in the backside as he sat on the examining table. “There’s no pleasing you women.”

“With that attitude, it’s no wonder you don’t get any second dates.” Lisa noted absently while paging through an old waiting room copy of “Modern Malefactor”

“Actually…” Miiri began, “as a lover, Visionary was quite…”

“Regardless of his attitude…” Hallie observed irritably, “people don’t usually go from being hobbled by a massive coronary to being perfectly fine overnight. It’s obviously the kind of thing the doctor should check out.”

“Right. How exactly did this cure happen again?” Dancer asked curiously.

Visionary sighed. “I already told you… That Liu Xi girl… you know, the one that the Shoggoth… er… envelopes… She… kind of set me up on a date with this woman… um… from another universe… who took me to lunch and, well… sort of… healed me.”

Four sets of attractive eyes looked at him incredulously.

“Yuh-huh.” Lisa summed up. “And you weren’t going to have this checked out? This didn’t seem unusual enough to you?”

“Compared to my average dates?” Visionary countered.

“Well… um… while you may have a point…” Dancer allowed with a delicate cough and a slight blush, “I’m sure everyone will feel better once Dr. Gale verifies…”

“If you’re going to waste my time…” Dr. Gale intoned dryly, breezing into the room at full speed to jam a pair of X-rays into the light box along the wall. Nurse Grace O’Mercy trailed in after him. “…The least all of you could do is dress like this green woman here.” He nodded towards the crocheted-bikini clad Miiri. “Oh… except you, the patient… Mr…. Visionary. Yes, well… You can see the areas of damage here, here and here…” he pointed out with the back of a pen on the first x-ray. “And how they’ve completely mended themselves here, here and here. Rather offensive, when you consider how much time and effort I put into a degree to learn how to fix such things. If I wanted to be the good news fairy instead of cutting people open, I wouldn’t have gone to med school. Still, I declare this man fit enough to wrestle an ox… He'd lose, mind you, but he's welcome to try. Although he should still lay off the crullers… getting kind of tubby. Thank you, and be sure to pay the nurse on your way out.”

The assorted Legionnaires and company blinked as the renowned doctor was gone before they even fully registered what he had said. “Wait… what about the crullers?” Visionary finally managed.

“I… shall go ask him for you.” Miiri offered quickly.

“No… wait, you don’t…” the Regular began, but the Caphan woman had already left. “Huh. Well, I told you this wasn’t necessary. I feel perfectly fine.”

“Hmmmm… You do look 100% better than you did yesterday” Dancer agreed. “I mean, what with that grey, splotchy complexion, and the sunken eyes…”

“And the short stature… receding hairline… whiney voice…” Lisa added.

“What do those have to do with my heart attack?” Visionary groused.

“Hmmmm? Oh… sorry. I thought we were playing a different game.” Lisa smiled pleasantly. “So no more Caphan ‘therapy’ for you, I suppose. I really thought she’d finish you off with one of her sessions. I swear that girl is more stacked than she was at Christmas… Island life apparently agrees with her.” The lawyer looked out to the hall where the former slave had caught up to the physician and was deep in conversation with him.

“Mmmm” Visionary noted non-commitally. “I, ah… hadn’t really noticed. Honest. So we’re done here? I can put my pants back on?”

“Like anyone here’s going to stop you.”

“Thanks” the Legionnaire muttered in reply, gathering up his clothes and heading for the bathroom.

“What’s this?” Hallie asked, studying Visionary’s x-rays.

“What’s what?” Nurse O’Mercy asked absently, filling out some charts in the patient file.

“This black stuff spreading out from here” the holographic woman asked, gesturing to the center of the image.

Dancer looked over her shoulder. “What black stuff?”

“This stuff” she argued, again circling a section with her finger. “See how it’s concentrated here, with the little tendrils radiating out? But on the new one, it’s all condensed, like it’s drawn in upon itself.”

“I don’t see anything…” Lisa admitted, joining them. “Is this some kind of abstract interpretation? Because I may have had this painting over my sofa bed in college…”

“This black stuff!” Hallie argued with agitation. “This squiggly, squirming black stuff right here!”

“It’s a still image…” Grace reminded them, finishing up her writing and coming over to the light box. “There’s nothing squiggling in… it…” She trailed off as she squinted closely at first one, then the other x-ray. “Oh dear.”

“What?” Dancer asked with concern.

“I know Dr. Gale comes highly recommended…” the Night Nurse answered, absently chewing on her bottom lip. “But you may want to get a second opinion.”

“I think I can make out a head…” Xander said, squinting at the medical images. “Is someone having twins?”

“It’s not a sonogram!” Hallie said impatiently. “It’s an picture of Vizh’s heart!”

“Ah” the magician replied. “Well, if you wanted a medical opinion, you probably should have summonsed a different Sorcerer Supreme. The best I could do for Visionary would be to retime his clockwork, tighten his plumbing or adjust his ball cock.”

“He has Miiri to do that” Lisa noted. “Actually, we wanted your opinion on the squiggly black things that Hallie sees in the image. Grace says she can almost see something as well....”

“It’s like it’s only visible out of the corners of my eyes” the vampire nurse noted.

“Is it now?” Xander answered with interest, taking a pair of spectacles out of his pocket and cleaning them on his faded red robes before perching them on the end of his nose. “Well, isn’t that interesting…” He observed with obvious distaste. “I think we’re definitely going to need some special consultants.”

Visionary shrugged on his coat as he exited the bathroom just in time to see Miiri hug Dr. Gale’s and give him an excited peck on the cheek. He returned the favor by giving her a friendly pat on a different cheek altogether. Visionary stifled the urge to indulge his jealousy by decking the famous physician… Miiri did seem to be in a good mood, and besides, he still needed the man to fill out a cruller prescription before Sarah was likely to serve him any at the Bean & Donut. “So…” he said casually instead, coming up beside the voluptuous green woman after the doctor went on his way, “what was all that about?”

“That?” the former slave said innocently. “I just wished to express my appreciation to the Doctor for his efforts in your care.”

“Mmmm” Visionary agreed judiciously. “The 8 seconds he spent on me was one of my better hospital experiences.” He scratched the back of his neck. “That Dr. Gale… he’s pretty good looking, isn’t he?”

Miiri blinked. “Are you attracted to your doctor? I have heard of such things happening… Nightengale syndrome, I believe Hallie called it. Still, no wonder you’ve been so resistant to my sisters’ advances…”

“What? Me? I didn’t… That’s not what I…” he paused as he caught the glimmer of light in her eye. “You’re teasing me, aren’t you?”

“I would never tease the dread Master Visionary.”

“Hmmmph” he replied, not sounding terribly convinced. “You know, I never did get to hear all those stories about me while I was recuperating on Lemuria. Although a lot of the locals came to whisper and point at me through the flaps in the tent. Which wouldn’t have made me nearly as paranoid if they hadn’t done it during my sponge baths.”

“It was our honor to care for you and repay your kindness to us” Miiri informed him as they headed back to join the others. “And in some ways it was a pleasure as well… I know Odoona has had a crush on you for quite some time.”

“I thought she was maybe slipping a little too often with sponge” Visionary noted. “I have to admit, I was tempted to keep my recovery a secret just to enjoy the attention a bit longer.”

She smiled at him. “You don’t need an excuse to get attention, Visionary. Not from us, and not from the others that love you.”

He smiled and took her hand. “Well, I’m glad I can put all of this behind me finally and everyone can stop worrying…”

“While that would indeed likely remove the infection…” Ebony was saying patiently to the blob of Manga Shoggoth that had considerately wrapped itself in hospital gauze so as not to drive the rest of the room’s occupants insane, “…it would also likely rip out Visionary’s heart, which is something he’d be bound to find uncomfortable at least.”

“I could spare some protoplasm to lodge in his chest and pump his blood while he waits for his heart to grow back. It would pump through six dimensions, but it would get where it needs to go.”

“This solution is not sounding cute” Yo observed worriedly.

“Personally, I’m concerned that this Lara woman was able to reset the damage back to zero, and yet the infection was able to shield itself from whatever she did.” Lisa noted. “The question I have now is whether it’s beginning to spread out again or not.”

“Have you tasted his blood?” Hallie asked Grace suddenly.

“What?” the vampire woman responded with offense.

“To see if it’s carrying whatever this is… It’s not showing up on any medical tests… I just thought… I mean, you can almost see it too…”

“I can’t find any record of another case like this in the Earth hospital database…” Lee Bookman informed the others after closing his notepad connection to the Moon Public Library. “However, I’ll work up a cross-reference search program that should make short work of any similar symptoms in all medical databases in the Library’s collection.”

“So what do we do in the meantime?” Dancer asked worriedly.

“The Necronastycon isn’t letting go as easily as we had hoped… I may have some ideas on who to consult about it” Xander said. “In the meantime, just try to keep him calm… away from agitation and stress that might affect his blood pressure or inflame the negative energy in his body. Wouldn’t do to have his heart explode and send his soul screaming though the void to the Fairly Great Old Ones. Above all, stress that there’s nothing to worry about…”

“Um…” Visionary interrupted, taking in the much more crowded exam room filled with Legionnaires and associates as he and Miiri stood in the doorway. “Did I… miss something?”

“It really should have worked” Liu Xi Xian noted to Visionary as he entered into the foyer of the Legion Mansion. “I still do not understand why it did not.”

“CLEAR A PATH!” Trickshot yelled as he dashed by the group that had just returned from the hospital. He was dressed in some kind of heavy rubber containment suit and had large canisters that resembled oversized fire extinguishers strapped to his back.

“Um… Okay” Visionary began carefully as he noted the alarms and klaxons sounding on the upper levels. Lisa, Dancer and himself had split off from the others at the hospital, who were remarkably apparently all there at the same time to deal with unrelated ailments of their own. It occurred to Visionary that his friends did not give him much credit for intelligence, especially after Yo suggested that the Shoggoth was in for a hysterectomy. As a result, it didn’t take him very long to deduce that his medical condition wasn’t as rosy as first thought. Of course, the impending disaster announced by the multiple alarms and a sheepish looking Kerry and Liu Xi merely served to remind him that the odds of him living through any particular day had never been all that good to begin with. “What should have worked?” he asked carefully.

“I might have, sort of, mentioned to Liu Xi here that living arrangements were kind of tight here in the mansion…” Kerry began in her most reasonable tone of voice. “I mean, they actually expect me to live in the same suite of rooms as dorkus here, and he goes and gets all huffy and sets off the security systems every time I try to bring some of the local youths into my room to study…”

“It was one a.m., and you were in the process of convincing the starting line-up of the Hogan Academy basketball team what you’d do for them if they’d fill a shopping list of yours from their High School chemistry locker…” Visionary growled.

“Well, you turning the Stunulators on them didn’t help their chances in the State Championships, now did it?” Kerry argued back. “You’re the one who said I should try to make friends there…”

“Friends keep their pants on while visiting!!!”

“Is it raining?” Dancer interrupted. “I only ask, because I’m getting water on my head and we’re indoors…”

Visionary looked up to the ceiling were a dark splotch was spreading across the plaster and drips of water were beginning to form.

“So anyway…” Kerry continued. “I might have mentioned that you and I were somewhat crowded in our current living conditions, and that it might be a really nice way to pay you back for watching her if Liu Xi here could use her powers to make our quarters a little bit bigger on the inside than they were on the outside…”

“How much bigger?” Dancer asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Turns out, there’s really no upper limit… Isn’t that right, Liu?” Kerry said brightly. “Seems with this void stuff that one square foot may as well be fifty.” She sighed and considered the growing water stain. “I suppose the Olympic sized swimming pool might have been a bit ostentatious…”

Visionary fought to control a facial tick as he simply stared at the two young women.

“It really should have worked.” Liu Xi argued again. “I still do not understand why it did not.” She pondered it a moment longer. “The problem seemed to stem from intersecting that closet” she added, pointing across the hall.

Lisa froze. “Space Ghost’s closet?” she asked. “You intersected Vizh’s quarters with Space Ghost’s closet?”

“Not in this dimension” Liu Xi said, clearly baffled.

“MORE FOAM! MORE FOAM, I SAY!” Mumphrey’s voice called out urgently from upstairs.

“IT’S NO USE… THE SOCKS ARE EATING THROUGH THE BIOHAZARD GRID!” Trickshot yelled back. “AND THE FRUIT OF THE LOOMS… DEAR LORD…”

“WE’RE LOSING CONTAINMENT!” Al B. Harper advised strenuously. “EVACUATE!!! SAVE YOURSELVES! RUN WHILE YOU STILL CAN!!!!”

“Aheh…” Dancer began good naturedly, grabbing Vizh by the arm and pulling him towards the front door. “Nothing to get excited about… I’m sure they’ll have this all cleaned up in no time. So… who wants a cruller?”

to be continued by Dancer…

Footnotes:

Visionary suffered a major heart attack while in Lemuria visiting with Miiri and the other Caphans following Ian’s The Tenth Caphan storyline.

This heart attack wasn’t natural at all, having been brought about by the Death Magics of the Necronastycon, the fabled Book of Rude Names, as seen in Hallie and the Sepulchre of Destiny. It turns out that Hallie served as the Mansion’s defender against incursions of this kind of Dark Magic, and was able to defeat the villainous HV who was attempting to assassinate Visionary from afar, allowing Dancer and Yo to revive Vizh using CPR. It seems that while they brought him back, however, they did not manage to purge the black magic from his heart after all.

The Shoggoth asked a recovering Visionary to look after Liu Xi Xian in Jason’s Adventures In Parodyverse: Two For the Price Of One story. In it, Liu Xi set Vizh up on a date with dimension traveling Lara Night, who manages to heal him of the visible aftereffects of his heart attack, but not, apparently, the cause.

Oh, and Space Ghost was an early Legionnaire and a member of the Family of Pointless. Very little about him made sense, which was probably for the best as there are some things man is simply not meant to understand.

Post By Visionary finally contributes something new to his own theme week, with help from Dancer. Sun Jun 05, 2005 at 12:20:45 am EDT	Subject Visionary and the Heart of Darkness Chapter One. Cross-over/Continuity Warning

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