Rules, Fouls and Penalties Chapter One - Tales of the Parodyverse

Once upon a time there lived a young Princess who would one day be Queene of an enchanted land. Luckily, however, she was rescued from all that and spirited away to a kingdom besieged by war, where she was kept away from the general populace in a tall tower alongside a rocky, wind-swept shore...

The Faerie Princess Magweed started her morning as she always did, dutifully making her bed with some helpful assistance from the mouse guard. While the former lab mice Archimedes and Bunsen scampered across her pillows, pushing down the lumps, she carefully tucked the corners and smoothed the sheets as she had seen Mr. Clancy do in the Mansion's infirmary... For that, he said, was the proper way to do such things. "There" she declared with satisfaction and a nod to the mice. There were many new rules to learn with this world, and she was determined to master all of them. Rules, after all, were quite important... she had learned that growing up. One did not take one's lessons lightly when a misstep could lead to a misfortune of magic, or worse... a run in with a slavering Gothenmander.

Griffin had helped her learn the rules of the enchanted forest while growing up, after hearing them himself from the animals of the glade. "Always carry a sprig of cowcluster in your pocket when crossing by the witchwood, and hold your breath while you pass under the stone arch. Never, ever cross the river, nor speak to the Pooka that grazes near there... though should it speak to you, you must bow your head and be ever so polite. Never feed a Cait Sidhe, or you'll never be rid of it..." Admittedly, this last one had come from Sir Jacob Fieldmouse in his most exasperated of tones, and may have been more in the nature of advice than a hard and fast rule. Still, it didn't do to be careless with such matters.

As she carefully made her way down the cast iron, spiral stairway that climbed up the lighthouse to her room and then beyond to the lantern, she reflected on the rules of this new world. "Always carry your communicard with you, and be ready to show it quickly to deactivate the stunnulators. Look both ways before crossing the motorways that lead to the Mansion, and always hold the hand of a guardian. Never talk to strangers until introduced by someone trusted, and then be ever so polite, especially to the ones with flags on their cars or stars and medals on their coats. Never feed Godmother Lisa's cat..."

She sniffed a bit at this last one and thought of Griffin. He had hardly gotten to know his Godmother before she was taken in the war. Since coming here, they had been showered with friends and family... it was all nearly overwhelming to the girl who had gone for long winters shut inside with only the company of her nearly imaginary brother and the quiet, menacing rocking of the thing by the fire called Auntie. A real family was, however, a wonderful burden to have... even if it came with a heavy, painful cost whenever they left on a mission, as heroes often did. This world was such a dangerous place...

No one knew how much longer they would hold out... She understood this, although the adults tried to keep such things from her. Even Samantha, though much closer to Maggie's age herself, kept secrets about what was really happening. But Griffin shared everything with her, and Griffin heard and knew things that others would never have guessed. Together, they knew what was at stake, and how precarious this new life of theirs actually was. There were rules to deal with that too...

"I left you some ChocoChrunch Blastoff Surprise" Griffin informed her as she made her way to the kitchen. He was already at the breakfast table, finishing off what was likely his third bowl. "I think it turns the milk into some kind of pudding. Either that, or Dad has let the dairy products expire again."

She shuddered a bit at the thought. "No thank you... too sugary."

He raised an eyebrow as she pushed a chair over to the refrigerator to retrieve a simple box of Raisin Bran from the top of it. "Dream would be soooo disappointed in you."

She smiled wryly through the hair hanging in front of her face. "Dream could never be disappointed in us" she observed confidently. She still had to fight the instinct to refer to him as "Mr. Foxglove" (as Ms. Quoth insisted was the proper way for a child to address an elder) but the brightly colored hero had implored her not to lest he break out into hives at the thought of being adult. Besides, Ms. Quoth acknowledged that terms of respect could be negotiable for adults who delighted in sneezing Silly String out their noses at the slightest provocation.

"Try telling him that you want to be a Republican talk show host when you grow up" a disembodied voice suggested from near the sink, "That ought to do it." There was a flash of light, and then their mom appeared in the kitchen to catch a hold of Magweed and kiss her on top of the head. "Morning sweetie" Hallie greeted her. "You slept in for a change."

Maggie nodded and brushed her hair behind her good ear. "I'm sorry... I must have been really tired."

"Don't apologize, you need to get more sleep. I had trouble with it myself when I was... younger" her mom admitted. "Nightmares again?"

Magweed looked away. "No... I just... couldn't get comfortable" she lied, rubbing her underdeveloped left arm.

Hallie looked unconvinced as she gently ran her fingers through her daughter's hair, but didn't press the matter. "You two get the morning to yourselves, okay? But I want you back here by noon if we're going to make it to the game on time. It's an afternoon one, because of the blackout."

"Mr. Clancy says that day games are one of the better things to come out of the war efforts" Maggie observed.

"I've memorized the lifetime stats for every member of the Parodiopolis Pigeons!" Griffin declared proudly. "Go ahead... ask me the batting average of any player."

"Ugh... men and baseball statistics" the holographic woman moaned, ruffling her son's already mussed up hair. "Honey, I'm made out of numbers, and even I find baseball stats boring."

"Oh. Well, I also know some cricket ones" he offered. "The Great Wooly Gabbo is teaching me the game."

"Um..." she blinked. "The great what now?"

"He's the bunyip who lives in the linen closet on the second floor." Griffin explained.

Hallie raised an eyebrow. "There's a bunyip in our second floor linen closet?"

"Sometimes" the boy confirmed. "Ms. Ebony says his lair is only there on the 12th weekend of every Derleth lunar month, according to the Pamaelian calendar. Dad was going to complain, but apparently he has a lease."

"There's a cricket-playing bunyip who timeshares the Lighthouse's second floor linen closet?"

"It's okay" Griffin ensured her. "Ms. Ebony says he's a fine sort, provided you don't lend him money on account of his gambling problem."

"I... That's..." She paused then sighed. "Right. I wasn't planning on it anyway. Did this bunyip have anything else to say?"

"He says we shouldn't use fabric softener on the towels" Griffin advised. "It makes them less absorbent."

She closed her eyes and shook her head. "The man couldn't just hire a real-estate agent to get him a new condo, oh no..." she sighed to herself. "Anyway, I..." she stopped in mid sentence, stiffening. The children recognized the look on her face as she shifted a portion of her consciousness away to multitask. "Oh bother... I'm sorry, kiddos, but..."

"We know what you do is important" Griffin assured her, and Maggie nodded when her mother's eyes turned to her. "Go to work."

Hallie smiled apologetically. "Remember... back here at noon for the ballgame!" she reminded them before she blinked out of sight.

Magweed waited a moment after she left. "Another break in the barrier?" she asked her brother.

He nodded. "A pretty big one, I'd guess. She can handle a lot of conversations at once without slipping up." He chewed his lip thoughtfully. "A whole lot of people just called for help."

Magweed stopped making her breakfast, pouring the dry cereal out of her bowl and back into the box. "Then we should check with Sam and see if there's anything we can do to help" she suggested. This was the first of two rules for dealing with the end of the world, should it look like it is coming in the morning. The second was just as straightforward: Make plans for the afternoon.

"Right" he agreed matter-of-factly. "Then I'll teach you how to catch a foul ball."

"Get under the ball! Watch it into your glove... Don't close your eyes!" Griffin called out to her from across the beach. It was a beautiful day along the shores of the island, and the bright sun shone down on the sheltered inlet where the twins practiced their fielding. "You're going to get brained if it hits you on the head!"

"That's not making me any braver!" she complained, wincing as the latest pop fly embedded itself in the sandy beach to her left with an audible thud. As she couldn't throw that ball back with the oversized leather glove on her good hand, she waited instead for her brother to fish another ball from the equipment bag they had borrowed from the mansion.

"C'mon... you have to be ready... A stray foul ball is sure to find its way into the stands near us! You're naturally lucky thanks to Godmother Dancer, after all." He tossed the next one into the air and swung the bat.

She cringed as the ball rose high above her, and it occurred to her that she and her brother might have very different definitions of lucky. Still, she steeled herself not to turn away... she could do this. She backed up and raised her glove as the ball arced towards her, just as the sun flared out from behind a cloud. She panicked momentarily as she lost the ball in the glare, and her bad leg failed her, toppling her backwards into the sand. The baseball fell and smacked into her shoulder, causing her to grunt... Yet without even thinking about it, her glove shot up to snatch the ball out of the air on the bounce before it could hit the ground.

"I... I got it!" she said in amazement, looking straight up from her back.

"Yes. Nice catch" a new voice agreed flatly, startling her. "You are lucky."

Magweed scrambled to her feet and backed away a few steps as a strange woman stepped out of the shadows of the cliffs, having come down the wooden stairway stretching up to the lighthouse above. She was middle-aged with graying brown hair and she wore a business suit with a press badge hanging from her blouse pocket. Despite having nothing outwardly menacing about her appearance, she made the young girl deeply uneasy... and not just because she was a stranger.

The little girl swallowed. "I... you're not supposed to be here..." she managed, backing up until her heals slapped the wet sand at the surf's edge.

"You dropped your glove..." the woman noted, stooping to retrieve it. She hefted it in her hand and threw it to the green-tinted girl. "You're Visionary's daughter, aren't you?"

Magweed caught the glove and clutched it to her chest, glancing up the beach to where Griffin was charging in with the bat still in hand. "Hey!" he yelled, "Stay away from her!"

"You are Visionary's daughter." The woman stood her ground and stared at Maggie with an expressionless face. "Tell me..." she asked with a haunting curiosity. "How does it feel to be a soulless little monster?"

There was a sudden rush of wind and a blinding spray of sand which caused both woman and girl to tumble backwards with separate cries of alarm. Maggie held her good arm protectively in front of her face as she looked up from the wet sand. Between them, in the shallow crater made from her impact, now stood the snarling form of a great border collie.

The fur on her shoulder blades stood straight up, and her lips were curled back in a fierce snarl to show her gleaming teeth. "This area is off limits" Glory warned vehemently with a low rumble in her throat. "You do not belong here. Leave immediately."

A shaking, dripping Magweed picked herself up out of the surf with the help of her brother. "She... she says you need to go" she translated weakly for the super-intelligent canine.

From the way the woman was scrambling backwards from the snarling dog, none of the message had been lost. One step from the collie was enough to make the woman turn and run back to the stairs, headlong into the team of security hippos descending to greet her.

Glory nodded at them and held her ground until they had led the woman back up the stairs and towards the Mansion's security office, then she spun to face the children. "Did that woman touch you?" she asked intently.

"I... no... She just tossed me Poppa's glove..."

"Drop it" Glory ordered. "Now hold out your arms, please. Quickly."

Both children did so, and the dog inspected them very carefully, double-checking against the smell of the glove. "I do not smell any foreign substances" she noted with relief. "Now where are your communicards?"

Griffin found his in his back pocket after shifting the bat to his other hand. The princess felt the pockets of her dress, but came up empty.

The great collie turned it up after a quick inspection of the beach, finding it half buried in the sand near where Magweed had fallen. "Your mother will be quite upset about this. Quickly now... we're going back inside. Leave the equipment bag."

Maggie translated for her brother and the three of them began climbing the stairs back to the lighthouse. "Glory..?" she said softly as they went. "I'm sorry... I didn't mean to cause trouble."

"It is not your fault" the collie assured her, herding the children back up the landing. "We are a pack on this island, and we do not accept anyone threatening our pups. We will find out what this was about, and what she intended..." Glory promised, "...And we will deal with it."

to be continued

Post By Visionary Mon Jun 04, 2007 at 01:16:36 am EDT	Subject Rules, Fouls and Penalties Chapter One

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