DVANDOM _____ ______ _____ _______ THE DEATH DUCK SAGA part 2 of 7 [ ]__ [ ] [] [ ]__)) [ ] ` [ ]__ #91 - "A Flight of Dreaming" [ ] [ ] [] [ ] \\ [ ] [ ] copyright 1998 Dave Van Domelen [_] [_]__[] [_] \\ [_]___/ [_]____ -------]==+ <*> +==[------- [Cover shows Lynk flying through puffy, dreamlike clouds, a serene smile on her face. A menacing winged shadow is cast on one of the coulds outside her line of sight.] [Editor's Note: The first scene of this issue contains a certain amount of erotic content. More sensitive readers may want to skip down to the scene break. More prurient readers may also want to skip down, since it ain't porno and you'll just be disappointed if you expect that. }->] Kid Pocky ran a hand through his short black hair as he looked at the open fridge. Dawn's first light was just starting to touch the kitchen wall as he pulled out a gallon jug of milk and a Bl00penware bowl of strawberries, then closed the fridge and walked over to the kitchen table. The house was silent except for the whir of various appliances and the distant sound of the television. Probably the VAXX...sometimes he just sat in front of the TV for days on end when nothing else was happening. Only Lynk knew if he even needed to sleep. He sat down and poured some LagWheets (300% the fibre of pure bran) into his bowl, followed by milk, a few strawberries and a LOT of sugar. Pausing a moment, he smirked and conjured up a stick of Pocky to add to the mix. Just as he was about to sink his spoon into the sugary mix, he heard the gentle padding of bare feet behind him and turned to see Kat breeze into the kitchen, wearing a robe over her bandaged body. Al felt himself flush slightly, mostly from guilt over letting her get so beaten up in the battle against the Hydrablaster [DF #89 - Ed.]. "You're up early," he said, quickly shoveling a spoonful of cereal into his mouth to have an excuse not to say anything more for a few seconds. "Well, it's hard to sleep with all this," she gestured at herself, the robe briefly flaring open to reveal the bandages wrapped around practically her entire torso. She'd broken five ribs and suffered a rupture of the abdominal wall, and for a few days after the fight the bandages were all that was holding her in. Al felt the warmth in his face intensify, and imagined that he was starting to turn five shades of red, although he knew that wasn't really the case. He *was* a little surprised that Kat was so at ease around him this morning...she'd been pushing him away since their talk the other week, when she was recovering from her first Angstvangelion fight. Kat sat down and studied Al's face for a moment. Then she slowly peeled off a gauze pad from her forehead, revealing a purplish-brown bruise on her otherwise perfect, coffee-with-cream skin. Somehow, the way she removed the bandage seemed...provocative. Al blinked twice, wondering if maybe he was reading too much into her action. "You know," she purred. "Maybe if you kiss it, it'll get better...." Al swallowed hard, almost choking. Kat laughed, a delicate, warm laugh with no hint of derision in it. "Didn't your mother ever say that? Either of them?" she asked, referring to the fact that Kid Pocky had led a different life before being reborn in his current body. "You know," Kat mused, picking up a strawberry, "I'm old enough to be your first mother, maybe even grandmother, given the time I spent in a robot body." She took a slow, delicate nibble from the tip of the strawberry and smiled warmly at Al. VERY warmly. "I guess you are," Al replied weakly. He was having trouble concentrating on anything but the strawberry held firmly between Kat's forefinger and thumb. Suddenly, she snapped up the rest of the fruit with a quick chomp of her teeth, leaving only the green stem. Swallowing, she grinned at him seductively. "I'd say I look pretty damn good for a granny, wouldn't you?" she arched her back, letting the robe fall open to show her tightly-wrapped chest. "I bet if you kiss it, it'd get better," she whispered. Al's spoon slipped from his hand and hit the floor with a clatter. It sounded like it was a million miles away, though. Nothing in the universe was as near to him as Kat was, right here, right now. His whole being burned, and he ached to leap over the table and take her in his arms...hold her so close to his heart that she'd be able to feel it beating. Already it was beating so loudly in his ears that he couldn't tell what she was whispering now, if anything. Maybe she was just moving her lips. Her full, wet lips. A strand of her tawny hair fell across her face, and she let it hang there, as if waiting for him to push it aside so their lips could meet.... Wait. A voice in the back of his mind was screaming at him, trying to cut through the blood-red haze of lust that was clouding his thoughts. Something was wrong here. It was like his wildest dreams come true. Why fight it? another part of his brain shouted back. Sometimes dreams really do come true! No, not like this. This isn't Kat. It was Al's dream vision of her, what a part of him wanted more than anything, even while the rest of him knew that if she were like this, she wouldn't really be Kat. She was reaching around the table, leaning on its edge and sliding along it, her eyes narrowed hungrily and her mouth open and panting. Like a dream. A dream. "A DREAM!" he shouted suddenly. And just like that, he was alone in the kitchen again, soaked in sweat, his heart racing. The removed bandage was gone from the table. The strawberry was back in the bowl. "A dream," he mumbled between deep breaths. He picked up the spoon he'd dropped and set it next to the bowl. Then he stood and strode purposefully from the room. * * * * "How?" Lynk muttered under her breath as she let the hot water of the shower run through her long hair. She'd managed to wash away the sweat, but not the memory of the nightmare she'd just waken from [Last issue - Ed.]. Granted, it hadn't been a particularly personal nightmare, except at the very end, but the point was that she didn't *have* nightmares anymore. Her dreams were her own, and usually spent fully concious in the dreamlands, exploring her realm and keeping an eye out for attackers. Only this attacker had somehow totally evaded her vigilance and gotten into her dreams, shaping them into something unpleasant. And unlike the last time she had been attacked in her dreams [Dvandom Force #77-79 - Ed.], she wasn't able to simply break out of the nightmare. It had remained with her until it killed her dream form and she escaped in the time-honored way of waking in a cold sweat. Over the shower noise, she heard a knocking on her door. Her heart caught in her throat. She hadn't even stopped to consider that she might not be the only one under attack! Odds were, whoever was at the door to her rooms had just had his or her own unpleasant dream, and was looking for advice. Anna turned off the shower and quickly dried herself off. "Coming!" she shouted, wrapping the towel around her still-wet hair and tossing on a silk robe which barely met the standards of modesty. "Who is it?" she asked as she walked across the front room to the door. "It's Al." Lynk opened the door, and Kid Pocky immediately flushed bright red. Anna frowned for a moment, then gestured with her left hand and summoned up her usual "costume," a leotard and a long shirt secured at the middle with a belt. "Let me guess," Anna said, gesturing for Al to enter the room. "You just had a suspicious dream?" Al nodded, returning to more of a normal color. "And, um, I don't think I need to tell you the kind of dream, do I?" "Not unless you suddenly became a prude, no," Anna smirked. "You don't look like you just woke up, but you *do* look like the dream just happened. So what's up?" "Waking dream. It was like she was right there in the room with me, but when I realized it wasn't real, she vanished and the strawberry was back," Kid Pocky explained, somewhat flustered. "Strawberry? And who was 'she,' as if I really need to ask?" Al just shot her an icy glare. "Okay, okay, I think even Shane would be able to answer that one," Anna demurred. "Did you see anything strange in this waking dream that might be a clue to why you had it?" "If you mean, did I see any imagery consistent with the Divine Comedy, no. All I saw that wasn't real was her, and her appearance was correct, just her actions were...suspect." Al paused. "Why, did someone else have a waking dream already today?" "You catch on quick, but it wasn't waking. Someone sent me a nightmare, and I couldn't break out of it like I could Dante's previous manipulations." Anna sighed, plucking at where one of her sleeves had shown her toweling off to have been incomplete. "There didn't seem to be any point to the nightmare, just...doing it because he or she could." "Or wanted to see if he could," Al added. "I think we're being tested. My dream could have been a lot more subtle and harder to resist if whoever was behind it had really tried. Maybe our dream-demon just wants to check our limits?" "Dream demon," Anna mused. "Could be. Could also be a member of that Dream Court that Mr. Zklmcgyx mentioned, testing my ability to defend my domains. I think we need to wake everyone up and see if anyone else had strange dreams tonight...." * * * * "This is it?" a man asked as he looked at a number of crates stacked in a corner of the facility's storage area. "I was hoping for a giant robot or something." A second man cracked open a crate and looked at the object inside. "These power suits will have to do," he said, lifting out the bulky chestplate of one of the suits. "They're coming...we all saw it in our dreams...and we have to be ready to fight, or they'll kill us." "Why?" asked a third. "We don't have anything or know anything they'd want, why would they want us dead?" The first shook his head. "I don't know. I really don't know. But we can't have all had the same nightmare by chance, it has to mean something. And the odds are too good it means we die today if we don't do our damnedest to protect ourselves from them." There was a silent wave of assenting nods, and the other men moved to start opening the crates and assembling the devices inside. * * * * Kat walked into the conference room, wearing a green sweatsuit and limping slightly. Al had to suppress a sigh of relief...if she'd been wearing a robe like in his waking dream, it would have made for a somewhat uncomfortable meeting. "Okay, everyone's here but Stan, and he's out in Net.York on a business trip," Squidman said as Kat gingerly sat down. "I've left a message for him at his hotel to contact us if anything happened to him there. So...did anyone besides Lynk and Kid Pocky have strange dreams, waking or otherwise, last night or this morning?" Kat shook her head. "No dreams at all...sleeping pills," she replied tersely and somewhat muzzily, the pain medicine showing its traces in her speech. "I was watching Nick at Net," the VAXX chimed in. "Nothing here," Macroman said. "But I've been spending my nights in meditation instead of normal sleep, trying to get more control over my powers." Sidewinder looked somewhat uncertain. "Maybe. I started to dream about something strange, I think, but then I got sidetracked and I can't remember what the dream was about." "Shane?" Squidman asked after a pause. "Hm? Oh, no...nothing out of the ordinary. But at least I've stopped having fallout from Zklmcgyx," he smirked. "I think I must have had every variation of the 'naked in class' dream possible since we met that imp." [In RACC Presents #3 - Ed.] "And I was unmolested as well," Squidman added. "So we have two definite attacks, a possible third, but no immediately obvious purpose. Most likely reason seems to be that someone conducting tests. Either testing us for weaknesses, or testing his own abilities to determine their strength. We may not even be the final targets, so I alerted the LNHQ to be on the lookout for dream manifestations. Lynk?" Anna nodded. "It's possible that Mark Dante is back from whatever fate he suffered when he dropped out of sight. If it *is* him, the test-of-powers seems a likely motive, to see if he could control my dreams this time." "I didn't find any sign of him at the Century Pact base before it self-destructed, but there's no guarantee he was there in the first place," Macroman noted. "There's a good chance he's still involved with some of the Pact's cover operations if he's active, though." "My thoughts exactly," Squidman nodded. "Shane, can you think of any of the Hunter Red operations which managed to escape the general fall of the Pact, and might be worth looking into?" Shane nodded. "A small industrial park in Sko.key. Most of it was rented out to various tenants, but a lot of Pact operations ran there under the cover of fake tenants. It got sold off recently, but I bet it was just sold to one of Hunter's accomplices." "Okay, we'll send a team to check there. Any other significant possibilities, Lynk?" Squidman asked. "Politics," Anna replied. "I could have a rival in the dreamlands who's seeking to expand his or her domain at my expense, and is testing to see how well I protect both myself and my friends. Frankly, I know so little about the rest of the dreamlands beyond Harnegu that I'm surprised something like this hasn't happened before. I'm going to take the VAXX with me and find this 'Dream Court' that Zklmcgyx mentioned, see if I can appeal to it for help, or find out if I should be worrying about defending myself from it." "I recall something of the way politics are run on the dreaming level from my brief stint as master of the Multiversal Office Building [Constellation #14-16 - Ed.], since the bureaucracy reached even into dreams," Kid Pocky volunteered. "If you don't mind, I'll come along." Lynk nodded. "I could use a few extra pairs of eyes." "Then take me too," Kat said, somewhat more brightly and awake than a few minutes before. "I'm still too beat up to help in a fight in the real world, but if you can grab my dreaming self I should be able to at least act as a stalking horse if you need one." Al shot Anna a concerned glance, but she only shrugged. "We'll see. I'll go in physically, as will the VAXX, but I'll take both of you in dream form, so if things go badly it'll just be a nightmare for you two." "I'll take Shane, Macroman and Sidewinder with me to Sko.key," Squidman added. "Kat, stay near a phone so if we have to call in for help, it'll wake you up." Kat looked like she was about to protest, then silently nodded. "Dream team, get to bed," Squidman smirked. "The rest, follow me." He rapped on the table and headed out of the room and towards the garage. * * * * "It's going to take the others a few minutes to settle into a dream state, even with the little nudge I gave them," Anna told the VAXX, who had chosen to leave his monitor on rather than revert to his original body in the dreamlands. "You keep a lookout for them, I'm going to do a little high recon to make sure at least the immediate area is clear...check for impending Bisz stampedes, that sort of thing." "Gotcha," the VAXX nodded as Lynk took to the skies. Soon he was little more than a beige dot on the green and rolling foothills below. Anna relaxed for a moment. This was one of the nicer perks of her position...the flying dream. Sure, she could put on an anti-gravity harness and fly in the waking world, but it just wasn't the same. Out there, she would be carried by straps, like hanging from a wire. Here she was *really* flying, the freedom that such dreams represented washing over her and wiping her cares away for the moment. Then the moment ended as a sizzling bolt of blackness lanced out and narrowly missed her. She wheeled around and saw an ominous figure coming out of the Sun, baroque metallic mask hiding his figures, purplish cape fluttering in the breeze. "Who?" "Pay attention, Lynk," the figure purred, menace modulating each word. "You know so little about how your powers really work, so little about the true responsibilities of your position. Such ignorance could cost you dearly, like so!" Another bolt of darkness emerged from the figure's visor, but it struck a shield Anna called up using the mystic echo of the Gauntlet of GIF that was now a part of her. Still, she reeled back under the impact of the dark energies. A second shot and the shield corroded into dust. "The Gauntlet of GIF is a useful toy, especially in the waking world, but you make a mistake in relying on it overmuch," the dark attacker explained, almost as if he were a schoolmaster. "Especially since I can neutralize it so easily," he added, a viscous streak of inky blackness spraying forth from his fingertips and coating Anna's left forearm. The coating was cold, but didn't seem to hinder movement of her hand. But when she tried to summon up another weapon, nothing happened. "Are you the one who invaded my dreams this morning?" Anna demanded. The figure mockingly cocked his head to one side. "Why ask me? You should know already if I am or not. You *are* master of this domain, aren't you? You slew your father and took his throne." Anger flashed in Anna's eyes, and lightnings sprang from her outstretched hand, much to her surprise. However, they passed harmlessly through her opponent. "Now you're getting the hang of it," he cooed. "You have vast power within this realm, if only you cared to use it. However, I am not really here, or that unfocused attack would have seriously harmed me. No, I am out in the waking world, and this is but a dream of a dream...." With that, he vanished, and the black coating on Anna's arm vanished with him. * * * * "...got it. We'll go on with our side of the mission, in case that was Dante after all. Yeah, he did say he was in the waking world, so this could be it. Go ahead with the rest of your part once the others are asleep. Okay. Good luck," Squidman flipped the encrypted cellphone closed. "Looks like our opponent is making a day of it, he just attacked Lynk in the dreamscape. Shane, how close are we?" "About ten minutes. I only drove out this way once while I was working for Hunter Red, but it's not too hard to find. Edge of town industrial parks rarely are," Shane noted. "Say, Shane...have you picked a net.hero codename yet?" Sidewinder asked from the back of the van. "I mean, okay, you do have a secret identity since it says John Q. Smith on your ID and Shane's the name of the body you left behind in 2077, but 'Shane Boxer' doesn't really sound like a net.hero name, you know?" "Hadn't really given it any thought, actually," Shane admitted. "And most of the good names for people who turn into or get covered in metal are taken, aren't they?" "Most of the lame ones, too," Macroman interjected. "Heck, there's at least two Steeljackets out there, although one of them doesn't even turn to metal, he just uses guns, I think." "I'll give it some thought. Maybe the readers have some ideas," Shane briefly broke the fourth wall, then spackled it over. "Anyway, here's the turnoff. Do we drive in the front way, or park and sneak in?" "You and Sidewinder drive in, if there's nothing here there won't be any security on the driveways. Macroman and I will sneak in in case the security is of the 'hide in plain sight' variety." * * * * Kat stepped out from behind a tree to join the others. "Man, this lucid dreaming is bizarre," she commented. Al and Anna were looking at her strangely. Specifically, at her face. "What?" she asked. "Did I grow a third eye?" "The scars," Anna replied, tersely. A mirror appeared in her hand, and she held it up for Kat. Kat's face had one long scar running down her cheek, and a number of smaller scars scattered across her face. Her hair was cut down to little more than peach fuzz, and one scar cut into her scalp, an ugly inlet of baldness over her left temple. "Oh." Kat turned away. "This is how I looked before...before I was scanned. At least I have all my limbs, which is more than I can say for the condition of my body when they downloaded my brain into a robot shell." "You didn't look like that in Dante's Infer.net," Kid Pocky said, questioningly. "I guess being bounced around while piloting a Robo brought back some old nightmares of my first life as a squishy," Kat sighed. "I was practically the poster child for why humans weren't allowed to pilot Robos. Even the best of us just couldn't compete with a robot that had its own brain. I was lucky, in a way. Most of my friends died trying to disprove the idea that humans couldn't protect themselves from RoboMAC aggression back in my home reality." "So you push people away, hating the idea of being protected," Al said, blurting out the words before he realized he was saying them instead of merely thinking them. Kat turned back around and fixed Al with an icy glare. She didn't say anything, but her meaning was quite clear. Still, he couldn't shake the feeling that she was like a porcelain tiger...fierce and dangerous-looking, but fragile. He'd hit closer to the truth than she liked. Anna sighed. "We can leave this for later, please? Okay. Now, we have a lot of ground to cover, and I'm not exactly sure where to start. Flying is out, since that's probably what caught the badguy's attention before. So let's start walking," she gestured at the distant sandy beach and whitecapped waves. * * * * "I could only stay in for a fraction of a second, to avoid triggering the alarms, but I'm pretty sure this building is the one we wanna check out," Macroman said to Squidman, pointing to a low building a few dozen meters away. "It has several sub-basements with a lot of surveillance and more general security measures than a light industrial setting really needs. Not to mention, the building directory doesn't list any sub-basements." "Sounds good to me. Shane?" he said into his short-range comm.thingy. "Yeah, boss?" came the reply, barely audible outside Squidman's cowl. "Building...E-4 looks like it has what we want. Have you run into any trouble?" "Nope." "Fine. Bring the van around to E-4's loading dock and be ready to come in like gangbusters when I give the call," Squidman said. "Roger," Shane replied, and then closed the channel. "Okay, let's go," Squidman whispered to Macroman as they crouched in one of the long shadows cast by the early morning light. "Get us as far as the first layer of serious security, and I'll take it from there." Macroman nodded and motioned for Squidman to get up on his back, which he did. Then Doug ran into the building, making use of his "time pop" ability to pass across doors without opening them. He'd mapped the interior on his first pass, so now it was simply a matter of following a pre- programmed macro through the floorplans. They stopped in front of a doorway marked "Authorized Personnel Only" and secured with a keycard lock. Squidman pulled a Superconducting QUantum Interference Detector (SQUID) from his utility belt and attached it with suction cups to the card reader. The SQUID hummed for a moment, looking for the telltale traces of a magnetic strip card having been passed through the reader. It then separated out the signals and isolated one valid card code, sending that back into the reader. With a breep, the door unlocked, and Macroman swung it open. Inside were half a dozen men in powered armor, carrying large guns, all aimed at the two heroes. "Ah, I didn't see these guys earlier, honest," Macroman apologized before hauling Squidman to the side just before the door was blown apart into a shower of oak shards. "Shane, we need backup!" Squidman shouted into his comm.thingy. There was no response. "SHANE!?" * * * * Al noticed that as they walked on, Kat's hair was growing back out and her scars were fading. He couldn't be sure if she was willing herself to change appearance for some reason, if the memories were simply fading on their own, or if Anna was doing something to try and help Kat. Oddly, though, even through the scars, Al still saw the beauty that Kat so often tried to hide behind an ugly facade of anger. "So, you said you didn't have an exact idea where to go," Kat ventured, breaking the silence. "That implies you have some idea. So what's the idea?" "Follow the coast," Anna replied. "Hm?" Al raised an eyebrow. "Think we'll reach a wall or something?" "A port, actually," Anna explained. "This all," she swept her arms out to encompass the mountainous Net.Zealand landscape, "is a symbolic representation of the dreamlands, or my little corner of them. My realm is somewhat small, quiet and insignificant in the grand tapestry, and so is the real world Net.Zealand, so it fits. But as isolated as it is, there has to be some kind of link, or I wouldn't be getting visitors like Mr. Zklmcygx. So, to extend the metaphor, there should be a port somewhere along here where we can get a boat to 'civilization.' Or at least to the site of the Dream Court. I should probably be able to just wave my hands and zap up there in an eyeblink, but that's one of the things I need to go to the Dream Court to learn about." "You need to learn more than that," said a voice from behind the quartet. They whirled to see a vaguely female form dressed in bladed, spiked armor and cloaked in shadows and lightning. She carried a barbed spear formed from solid nightmare and dripping with screams. "And I'm going to teach you a lesson or two...." ============================================================================ Next Issue: Not one, but TWO cliffhangers to resolve, golly! And who is die Stahltraumerin? ============================================================================ Author's Notes: Okay, those of you who are reading this in "first run" probably know all about what I'm going to say here, this part of the notes is mainly for the benefit of those who come across this issue later on, in the archives or on my webpage. When I plotted out this issue, I realized that the only way to do the first scene right would involve a certain amount of erotic content. Due to lingering Catholic Guilt, I wasn't very comfortable with writing something like that, especially in the LNH, which is geared towards a more general audience. And I certainly didn't want to repeat the infamous "Woody Scandal" from the early days of the LNH. On the other hand, I wasn't any more comfortable with the idea of copping out, toning down the scene or leaving it more implied. If I was going to do this, I had to do it right and try to convey the full impact of the situation as it happened to Kid Pocky. This was, after all, an important character development point for him. He'd been reborn to seek Kat's love, and she'd done nothing but turn him aside...would he clutch at the chance to have her if she threw herself at him, even if he knew it was totally out of character for her? Or would he, as happened, find the willpower to realize that even if it was real, something was wrong? So, being balanced so perfectly on the horns of my dilemma, I put the matter to discussion on RACC. The response was overwhelmingly in favor of doing the scene and doing it right, so I went ahead and wrote the scene. By the time I was done, I was about as red-faced and heart-pounding as Kid Pocky was, which probably means I need to get out more. }-> Special thanks to Alexander of the Eyrie Mafia for his expert opinion on the first scene, assuring me that I hadn't gone too far over the top for what I wanted to accomplish. In other notes, I do occasionally run "name that character/item" things here, as happened when I needed a name for Skysabre's RoboVector (I took Jameel's suggestion of the Slipstream initially, until I decided to rename it the D-Star). Now it's time to solicit names for Shane Boxer, whose current name is a cross between the Galaxy Rangers character Shane Gooseman and Jack Kirby's Kamandi-era character Ben Boxer. And finally, the armored figure in the last scene has appeared in this series before, I leave it an exercise to the reader to figure out where. This is not a particularly hard one. }->