Rules, Fouls and Penalties chapter two - Tales of the Parodyverse

Following the events of Chapter One, in which a reporter trespasses outside of the Lighthouse to accost young Magweed and Griffin.

Author's note: This story takes place before the events of Untold Tales #312, in which the Doomwraith B'Rath attacked the Mansion.

Once upon a time there was a fellowship of heroes who stood between the innocent and the forces of darkness. Unfortunately, it was not always easy to separate the two...

"How the hell does this happen?" Hallie snarled to the enormous bipedal hippopotamus who was standing at attention in the doorway. "How does some psycho woman end up accosting my daughter right outside her own home?!"

"It's nae like we didne check 'er at th' bridge..." Sergeant MacHarridan argued. "Th' lass's press pass was in order. She's e'en on th' list ay approved joornalists."

"Mansion logs show she's been here repeatedly over the last two months" Mr. Epitome offered, flipping through a folder collecting the sign-in sheets from the front gate. "Her initial background check came back clean... Nancy Nates... Divorced mother of two... No prior arrests. No history of any kind of political activism that might raise an alarm. Been in the press corps for the last 3 years covering the President, seven years before that as an investigative reporter for the Daily Trombone..."

"I know all that!" the holographic woman snapped. "I've already dredged up every passing reference to this woman from our digital records... And if it weren't for this damn blackout I'd have scoured the internet for her entire life history by now... Every article she ever penned, every column she's ever written, every anti-robosapien rant she's ever posted thinking she was completely anonymous..."

"We'll find the answers" Dominic assured her.

Hallie took a deep breath and let out a long, shaking sigh. She crossed her arms and looked out the security office's window towards the lighthouse on the opposite shore. "I'm supposedly designed to be the world's foremost program for collecting an collating data, and all of the information I need is sitting just out of my reach on computers that are unplugged because of the damn blackout... Do you have any idea how maddening that is?"

"Always wantin' mair information than anyone sees fit tae give ye, eh?" Sergeant MacHarridan sympathized. "Aye, Ah think we may ken a thing or two about that in our business."

"Then we do this the old fashioned way" Dominic suggested. "We've learned all we can here. Until Yuki gets back to us from the field, I think it's time to see if the suspect is ready to talk to us." He held up his hand to cut the holographic woman off before she could speak. "And no... there's no chance I'm letting you in there while I'm questioning her."

"Exactly how do you plan to stop me?" Hallie snorted. Finally, under Dominic's level gaze, she relented. "Fine. I'll stay out of it. But I want to know how much she knows about my children, and I want to know how she learned it!"

"Ah..." Flapjack's voice sounded from the office door. He held up the morning's newspaper in his hand. "I don't think that's all that much of a mystery any longer."

"...are an impediment to operations within Earth's United Command Center on Lair Island, a highly placed Lair Mansion source charged" read Amber St. Clare grimly. "Not only do the children cause undo distraction, but they have necessitated the implementation of special security measures which hinder communications and lower global response times to high level incursions by depleting available personnel."

"Bull$%*!" CrazySugarFreakBoy spat as he paced back and forth through the conference room, nearly bouncing off the walls with pent up energy. "That's a bull$@# quote from a bull@#$ reporter, and I don't believe for one second anyone in the Legion would feed it to the press!"

"Well, certainly not" Citizen Z agreed blandly. "It's unthinkable. But... it doesn't necessarily say it was a Legionnaire, now does it? Only a "highly placed Lair Mansion source". That leaves the entire mansion staff, the Liaison's office, and, arguably any number of staffers of the United Command Center and much of the military presence on the island. Not to mention frequent guests like Ms. Allen or that Samurai woman, if the reporter stretched his definitions a bit."

"Entirely possible, with this particular reporter" Bernice Teschmacher noted. "I've not met Mr. Brock personally, but his reputation is somewhat... colorful. Still..."

"Just what are you two implying?" the Legion's current chairman asked dangerously. "That someone on staff fed this bile to the press?"

"I'm not implying anything..." the deputy chairman responded calmly. "I'm merely pointing out that there's a long list of possible sources for these quotes. I don't know that we can work on the assumption that the reporter spun them out of thin air. It may be prudent to start an internal investigation into the leak... I'd be willing to spearhead it, if you really think it's necessary."

"What?" The Wired Wonder began. "I don't think it's necessary..."

"Fair enough" Citizen Z noted. "Then instead of concentrating on the past, we should stay focused on how to handle it now that it's out there."

"There's a whole expose' on the children in here... not just Magweed and Griffin, but Samantha, Oliver and Iris as well." Amber noted, still reading. "Detailed information... not the kind of thing one picks up from casual gossip that military personnel might pass in the halls."

"What kind of slimeball would write that kind of article... and what would possess Jerkson to print it?!" Dream challenged. "Even the friggin' mafia has too much class to go after somebody's children."

"Mmmm" Bernice Teschmacher noted noncommittally, skimming her own copy.

"Oh, please..." Dream turned on her, shaking the paper. "You're not going to defend this... this..." he checked the byline "...Topher Brock prick, are you?"

Bernice looked pained. "It's a tough call..." she noted judiciously. "Without the histories of the children--the details of their pasts--then it's not really clear to the reader why any special precautions would have to be taken to keep them safe. Dream, protecting a family member from harm during the war is one thing... but with these children, collectively we're talking about living computers, alien lovetoads, interplanetary slavery, fantasy kingdoms, fairy godmothers, pure chaos beings, Disciples of Order, Brides of the Parody Master and sadistic immortal murderers with a mad-on for Sir Mumphrey... and all of this on top of the threat of your average villain with a grudge?" She sighed and set down the paper. "These are some special needs children."

"Which is why they don't need to be dragged through the press at all!" He bounced to the window and threw open the heavy drapes. "We already have reports of wackos gathering at the far end of the causeway bridge, carrying picket signs to protest... I don't know, the %$^ing existence of children that go against their religious beliefs! As if it was any of their &$@%& business in the first place!"

"Dream... you have to ask yourself, from a neutral view... How can all that stuff I listed not seem like an unbearable distraction to drop into the middle of the planet's defense planning? It is everybody's &$@%& business, because if you all fail, then the rest of us... the entire world... go down with you. How can any reporter ignore it if someone in the know comes to them and tells them that you're in danger of dropping the ball because of this?"

"You seem to have done a fine job of ignoring it" Citizen Z noted mildly.

The embedded reporter stiffened. "I've not been privy to any such charges... on or off the record."

The hero shrugged. "Maybe whomever it was thought you were a little too cozy with the team to be trusted. Lots of politics in the Mansion these days, and they do make for strange bedfellows, don't you agree?"

"So, what..." Dream interrupted, stepping in front of Bernice. "Are you suggesting we should send the kids to... to, what? Some kind of boarding school?"

"Dream, I'm not suggesting anything..." she argued. "I'm only saying that it's not so black and white as..."

"Well, I'll tell you what... When other people have put their asses on the line as often as this team has, then they can tell us what more we need to sacrifice in order to perform better" he growled. "Because I guarantee you... family is a package deal in this case. Even with Hallie's help, we're barely able to organize a response to incursions around the globe... So unless they want to be plugged into the comm system 24-7 as her replacement, they'd best not suggest that she take her kids and move elsewhere!" He spun and bounced for the door. "Hell, if they think they can do better, then I'll take Iris and they can have my damn job too if they want it!"

"Wait... what was that last part again?" Citizen Z asked as the door slammed.

Yuki Shirow tucked the lockpick back into her pocket and softly closed the door behind her as she stepped into the modest apartment. Even though it was in one the better neighborhoods in uptown Parodiopolis, the furnishings spoke to the relatively humble income of the single tenant. "Probably rent controlled" she noted internally. The space was clean and well kept, but lived in... The morning's dishes sat in the sink: A glass with the remnants of orange juice lining the bottom, a salad plate with a bit of toast residue and a butter knife. Flipping up the kitchen trash can's lid she observed the used coffee filter and grinds on the top, and that the whole can needed emptying. Opening the refrigerator, she found a chicken breast freshly transferred from the freezer, thawing inside a zipper bag in a tray of water.

"So..." she recorded herself, "Our little Ms. Nancy Nates, former ace reporter and newly self-appointed accoster of little girls, left her apartment this morning with every intention of coming back tonight to a lovely chicken dinner and some left-over dishes." Good news, that... although the lack of premeditation likely wouldn't ease Hallie's fears any. Mobs traditionally haven't needed a lot of planning time to find some pitchforks and torches once they get rolling. "No sign of a newspaper... She didn't read it over breakfast, unless she folded the inserts back into it to take with her. She likely instead picked it up outside her door to read on the Metro."

She made her way to the living room area, behind the couch that faced the small flat panel TV. The televisions were out 24 hours a day now, but had she been able to turn it on, Yuki had little doubt she would find it tuned into CNN, C-SPAN, or something similarly depressing. All of the magazines that rested in a neatly laid out fan on the coffee table were hard news journals... not an Us Weekly or a People in sight. A collection of DVDs turned up documentaries and historical movies. "Not one for escapism, are you Nancy?" she noted, heading down the hall towards the bedroom.

"Yeesh... spoke too soon." The detective raised an eyebrow at the bookshelves opposite the tightly made queen-sized bed. They were filled with row upon row of cheesy fantasy fiction. A woman with a heaving bosom swooned into the sweaty arms of handsome knight on one cover, while nymphs and satyrs danced on the next and Hansel and Gretel explored the cover after that (albeit teenage versions, with a strategically torn dress covering Gretel's lithe form.) "I'm guessing that these are the only things you've been curling up with for a while, huh Nancy?" Yuki asked with a chuckle. She checked the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, possibly confirming the theory when she turned up no signs of any visits to certain aisles of the pharmacy.

Pictures on the bedside dressers showed Ms. Nates with two teenage boys... sons, from the resemblance. The older one was thick-necked and tanned, while the younger was more gaunt. Another picture on the wall showed the three a few years younger. The boys were closer in build then. A more recent picture showed Nancy in a Christmas sweater next to a tree. The older son was there in a military dress uniform, but it was just the two of them.

A shoebox in the closet turned up more pictures, and Yuki began to lay them out into her best guess at a time line based on handwritten notes on the back of the prints whenever possible, but barring that by the faces themselves. Anthony Nates graduated from West Point in 2001. His brother Peter attended the celebration. Anthony was married in 2003. No sign of Pete at all. Yuki studied the pictures of the younger Nates boy leading up to the gap as he grew thinner and more pale. "A sickness?" she asked, tapping her finger to her lips. Having memorized the photos, she put them back in the box and closed the closet door.

"Now then..." she decided, heading to the spare bedroom. The door opened up to show a small work area with a desk, computer and various filing cabinets. She could have easily started here, but she preferred to get to know Nancy before she began. After all, she still might not know what she was looking for exactly, but now she had a much better chance of knowing when she found it.

The financial records didn't turn up anything especially unusual. Her expenses were under control, and while she floated a fair amount of credit card debt, it didn't seem to be getting too far ahead of her. She cleared a modest amount after taxes (rent controlled was right), but still donated generously each year. In 2002, she shifted the bulk of her donations to the Robert Carlisle fund, and continued to donate to it each year after that. Yuki made a note to dig up what cause they supported.

Unclasping the battery pack from her belt, the cyborg detective reached behind the home computer and plugged the portable generator into the back of it. As it was powering up, she next retrieved a small thumb drive Wi-Fi connector and pushed it into one of the two available USB ports on the front of the machine. Before windows had fully booted up, she had downloaded all of the files from the hard drive and began perusing them in her mind.

Nancy had written two stories regarding sentient rights... One about a protest in Pierce Heights, and one about an assault on a RoboAmerican family during the dock worker's strike of 1999. Neither suggested a strong bias, either in the printed versions or the various drafts that were left in the document files. In 2001, her work began to take a harder, more investigative tone. Corruption in city hall, and a series of exposés on organized crime in Mangatown before turning to a series on drug trafficking, leading to two major journalism awards in 2002...

Yuki froze. "Oh, &$#@$%^ it..." she swore as things clicked into place in her head. "Please be wrong..." she added to herself as she headed back into the bedroom. She pulled down the first paperback on the bookshelf and flipped through it. Dropping it, she turned to the next one, and the next one after that, then swore again. "Why can't it ever be simple?" she sighed, her eyes glancing over the highlighted passages and handwritten notes.

The mobile emitter drone sat as unobtrusively as possible on the wall of the holding cell, opposite the woman seated at the metal table. She was not, Hallie noted, nearly as frightening a figure as she was within the virtual woman's imagination. Nancy Nates had fairly short graying black hair and wore a simple, affordable business suit. The clip from her press credentials still hung loosely from the breast pocket, although the documents themselves had been yanked from her by irate hippos a few hours ago. Her face was a mask of defiance tinged with something else... It wasn't fear, Hallie thought. Nor regret...

There was a loud "clack" as the door was unlocked, and Mr. Epitome entered the room for the third time. His eyes flicked to the wall where Hallie lay concealed and his mouth tightened, but he did not say anything.

"Oh please... as if you really thought I'd stay out" Hallie snorted silently to herself as he turned and took a seat with his back to her. "Honestly now..."

"I understand you have contacted a lawyer after our last session" Dominic addressed the reporter in custody, setting a bundle of folders on the table to his side. "While we wait for him to arrive, I thought maybe we'd pass the time with a story."

"I'm not saying anything until I talk to a lawyer" Ms. Nates repeated for the 10th time that afternoon.

"That's your right" Dominic agreed. "I can't continue to question you until he arrives, and so I'm not going to. As I said, I'm just going to tell a story. Shall I begin?"

Nancy's eyes narrowed, but she remained silent.

"Our story is about a young boy... let's call him Peter" Dominic said, flipping a few pages on his clipboard. Hallie could make out Yuki's handwriting on some of it, but couldn't read it from her position. "Peter was a bright boy, perhaps not the best in school, but he had a lot of friends and a real lust for life. The thing is, sometimes a boy can have too many friends... and friends can sometimes lead them astray. Especially by the abandoned train station on Quesada Blvd."

Ms. Nates' blinked. "What? What is this?"

"It's a story, Ms. Nates" Mr. Epitome answered. "A kind of... urban fairytale. You like fairy tales, don't you?"

"You ^%$#! You sick ^%$#!" the formerly composed reporter hissed to Hallie's surprise. "You leave Peter out of this!"

"Can I?" the star-spangled hero asked blandly. "Isn't he what this whole incident was about?"

"No, it isn't!" the reporter snarled. "It's about her. It's about that soulless bitch and all the lives she's ruined!"

A spot in Hallie's virtual stomach turned cold as she realized the crazed woman wasn't talking about Maggie...

"Camellia Le Fay" Mr. Epitome confirmed. "Her people sold the drugs to your son, didn't they?"

"People? She targeted my son!!!" Nates hissed in barely restrained fury. "I was working on a piece linking the dock inspectors to the influx of cocaine into the city, and detailing how various levels of city government were bribed to look the other way, and she... she..." There were tears running down her face now. "It took years for them to kill him. Every time I got him into a rehab clinic... no matter how far away... they'd get to him. They'd get him back on that poison..."

"Tell me about the Robert Carlisle fund" Dominic said, his face emotionless.

"They told me the truth!" she growled. "They showed me what she really was... I didn't believe... couldn't believe. But then I realized... how unlikely was it really, what with people like the Lair Legion running around every day? So I started digging again. I did the research, I saw the patterns, and I accepted the truth." Her mouth tightened and she drew a sharp breath through her nose.

"So why didn't you publish it?"

She snorted. "Publish that faeries control the drug trade in Parodiopolis? That they seduce police, city officials, congressmen, and senators with sex and narcotics to look the other way?" She sneered, but then weariness stole the defiance from her face. "Cross them again when I still had one son remaining?"

Mr. Epitome laid his hands palm down on the table. "I have read the report of Lieutenant Anthony Nates' sacrifice in the recent China campaign..." he noted solemnly. "I am sorry for your loss."

Her face twisted once again to rage. "Sorry? You're sorry?!" She leaned back and spit across the table at him, but the man of might didn't flinch. "Corrupt piece of &$#@! You think you can keep Camellia's little princess safe from justice? You think they won't be coming for her, now that the truth is out there finally? You think they're going to let your little faerie queen grow up right under their noses, just because you sold your soul to that bitch?" Her eyes burned. "Each of my sons died in a war, and neither of them are over yet!"

Epitome's face remained an unmoving mask. "Whose organization does the Robert Carlisle fund support?"

The reporter's eyes grew cold as ice as she glared across the table. Hallie knew the answer before she even said it, and it was suddenly too much... She had to get out of there.

"Desmond Djinn's" Nancy Nates hissed with malice as Hallie fled the room. "And I hope they kill you all."

Post By Visionary Sun Jun 17, 2007 at 08:29:34 pm EDT	Subject Rules, Fouls and Penalties chapter two

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