From metlay@netcom.com (metlay)
Subject: [Louis/Oberon, Inc.] Who WAS that masked man?
Date: Wed, 14 Jul 1993 04:27:33 GMT

[ADMIN:I'm posting this for Donovan, whose newsfeeder appears to be hosed.
I will be posting all of his posts until things get fixed. In fact, I may
even ghostwrite a few and put his name on them, nyah hah hah....metlay]

---


        [Some days ago.]

        The automatic shoved in one pocket, dark spots of blood on
his shirt, the palms of his hands scraped and swollen where he'd
fallen countless times as he'd made his way out of the apartment
complex he'd used to live in (apparently), grinning, weaving and
stumbling like a drunkard and gasping as if he'd run a marathon, the
boy made it to an alley far away from where he'd awakened earlier
that evening.  It was just before dawn.
        He stopped.  Looked about cautiously.  No one in sight.  The
alley was short, narrow, and, for the most part, unlit.
        There was a gap between one side of the wall sealing the end
of the alley and a bordering building.  Beyond it, a hideout.  Even
though he knew it wouldn't work, he tried to see if he could.
        He was too big to fit through.
        Not that he was an impressively-sized human, but he massed a
decent amount.  Maybe about seventy keys now.  Around double what he
had weighed, a little more than that.  Than before.  The grin
wavered.
        Not that any of his things would fit anymore.  Not quite, no.
 This was going to be hard.  Keeping a profile as low as he was going
to need now wasn't something he'd ever been good at.
        Then all the aches set in, muscles protesting just from
standing straight, and the heels of his palms needing antiseptic and
hurting, and he was positively ravenous.  Much less that his face
hurt from the weird, twitching smile.
        "Stupid body," the boy said through his teeth.  Trace of an
accent slipped out, even in four syllables.  He was going to need
some time to work things out.


        [The day of the Oberon, Inc. grand opening.]

        It was lunch time in the little park.
        "And there I was," Jack Carver said in an exaggeratedly slow
voice, "surrounded.  They were everywhere, the air dark with their
uniforms and gold badges and all about me the unholy aura of
eeeeevil."  He made a slow, expansive gesture with both arms, and
looked around slit-eyed at invisible people.
        Trenton rested his chin in one hand, elbow on the
ceramic-tiled concrete park table, an open can of something cold in
the other hand.  Trini had an arm around Trenton's back, cuddling up
against him, tenderly patting the (mostly healed and scarring) injury
on her forehead.
        "So what do we do?" said Trenton.
        "I dunno," said Jack.  "Though we're empty on EQ.  Getting
*another* truck isn't a pressing concern, then."  (Their "hobby"
being gunrunning.)
        Trenton said, "Wish we could have made that Oberon thing."
        Trini said, "Wasn't that the Norse god of something?"
        Trenton said, "Sounds like some sort of antacid."
        Trini said, "I mean, not even money for bus fare, that's
sad."
        Jack said, "And there I was--"
        "...Hey... look..." said Trenton, eyebrows raising.  He
pointed, and they looked.  Jack and Trenton got up, and Trini,
bewildered, trailed after them.  They started off across the grass at
a brisk pace.
        Jack said, "Now where in *hell* has he been all this time? 
Well, not that we really care, actually, slubberdegullions that we
are...."
        "Louis!" called Trenton.


        For the moment he was stuck being a caucasoid human kid. 
That was fine for the time being.  He had his nine mikey-mike, 11
rounds of mortared snakeshot, and a little money left, reasonable.
        The vertigo attacks had gone away, mostly, though sometimes
they'd wake him up at night, and remind him he wasn't insomniac
anymore.  Apparently it'd been biological rather than psychological,
which stood to reason, considering.
        Just human, now.  And male, which was something new.  It
wasn't as confusing as it could have been, mentally anyway.  He'd
always wanted to be someone else.  Species and gender changing was
something one didn't see every day.  No point worrying *how*, or
*why*, he thought.  That for later, first it's time to scout around.
        A week.  It wasn't too bad.  The case of military-surplus
MREs had been cheap, as were the jugs of water.  His appetite had
ballooned in proportion to his size.  He wasn't worried much about
what had happened to the old him, even though he'd been the old him
for, well, all his life.
        The tiny room he'd gotten was bleak but had a good lock. 
He'd locked himself in with his supplies and didn't come out until he
could walk without staggering.
        Thinking of boinging a rubber ball off every surface in the
room and getting beaned on the head trying to catch it as
entertainment helped.  He'd payed for about a week of roomage, and
when it expired, he was still clumsy, but not too spastic.  With a
duffel bag and a change of clothes and a concealed pistol and a
practiced expression of innocence, he headed out.
        The occasional speeder passed him as he walked along the
cracked sidewalks, ignoring the city scenery.  A long, spaghetti-like
park approached on one side, placed in the middle of the
light-industrial-zoned neighborhood.
          Things the past week had been strange.  Real strange.  But
he felt calm.  Violent.  He wondered if his taste buds worked the
same as, as his old set.  He didn't have any medical rating to figure
if his new gray cells worked as well as his old ones, though he was
actually happy that he didn't pick out every shiny bit of broken
glass in the streets.  He wondered if anything strange had appeared
in the missing-persons newsfaxes.
        Someone called a name he vaguely recognized from the ID he'd
found in his jeans, so he turned.  The next few moments went wrong. 
And fast.

        *       *       *       *       *       *       *

>     "And now," Kevin announced, "The last door prize-- the final
>Excalibur mechabike!"  He indicated the last bike in the lineup,
>a vision in pure white with matte black and silver trim.  Its
>stark simplicity stood out in marked contrast to the festive
>colors of the other bikes.  The randomizer whirled once more, and
>Kevin said with a flourish, "And the winner IIIIIIIIIIS....!"

[Elly.  Yay.]

>     She looked back at the bike again, and her smile widened.
>Very gingerly, she scrambled up onto the seat, settling in place
>and looking at the controls. Her brows furrowed and she pulled on
>her lower lip carefully, and she began to whisper to herself as
>she touched each gauge and switch with a fingertip.
>     She looked up at Python again. "I think... I think can do
>this," she whispered.
>     Her smile, just for a moment, became more dazzling than
>anything Ree could produce. "I CAN DO IT!" She squealed in
>delight and clapped her hands again, looking down at the bike.
>     Louis hmm-ed a little, an ear flicking around.  She pulled
>her tail around her waist, and fumbled the correct key into the
>ignition.  The Ex started up with a low thrumming sort of noise.
>LED gauges lit up around the central crt, everything in the
>green.
>     "Well," said Louis, trying to reach the footrests (the 'bike
>not having been calibrated down to the proper scale yet), "I can
>do it too, then."  Heh heh, she thought, starting to grin at the
>idea....

[...flight suits, helmets, tutorial AIs....]

        The revving of the engine didn't sound too bad.  Sort of a
bass, engine sort of sound, probably mostly subsonic.  Sounded cool.
        Like power.  Louis grinned, settling the helmet over her
head.  It was heavy in her little paws, but the weight wasn't much,
actually.  The front of the helmet was elongated enough for it to fit
right, short muzzle and all, and if she folded her big rat-ears flat
against her head they fit into cup-like dents in the foam on the
inside.
        Diagnostic things began displaying on the HUD, seemingly in
the air in front of her, asking for customization.  She stared
blankly, the crowd and people forming around the desk at the back
placing orders for new mechabikes (properly mecha*trikes*, really)
going out of focus.  Despite her mediocre fur and the still-folded
flight suit draped over her lap, she felt cold.
        Someone ran past the extensive glass paneling in the front of
the building, knocking over a couple about to enter the showroom and
falling to the ground.
        When he got up, the rat-girl got a brief look at his profile
through the open glass doors, as he bared his teeth and a gun at the
couple.  "Zzap!" he said in an exaggerated falsetto (Louis heard it
somehow, ears oriented on the door, the helmet was off), and then he
sprinted away, duffel bag swinging wide.
        Her tail lashed once against the plastic 'armor' alonside the
pilot's seat.  It hurt.  The helmet bounced once on the elevated
platform as it was dropped, then skidded a little, spinning fast.  A
few people stared.
        Squawking once incoherently, fur on the back of her neck
bristling, Louis stared out the front door, fumbling with the
handlegrips.  Where was the gas pedal?  Where was the bloody clutch? 
She pulled hard on the trigger-pull throttle, and the engine roared,
loud over the crying of the rear tires on the ferroplastic platform. 
She was thrown back against the seat, holding on precariously with
one paw on the accelerator.  Red lights warned about the unsecured
safety harness as the front end lifted a meter skyward and the trike
cleared the front of the platform.
        Bystanders threw themselves to the floor.  The little
rodent-girl had gone nuts.
        The trike's entire frame jolted hard after brief airtime,
bouncing her head off the dashpanels.  The trike fishtailed, still
accelerating on the showroom floor, hastily dropped Oberon, Inc.
flyers fluttering in its wake.  The only reason the Ex stayed on its
wheels was the fact that it was a trike, and not a two-wheeler.
        Shouting, "Come back!  Come back!" she oversteered towards
the door in a wide curve, assorted bystanders running and yelling and
getting out of the way.  
        As the Ex slid to one side of the doorway she swung a leg
over and jumped off the seat and to one side, but the trike's abrupt
impact with the armored glass alongside the main entrance halted it
before she'd completely cleared the seat.  Striking hard on her
shoulder and the side of her chest, the impact wasn't enough to keep
her momentum from carrying her out onto the sidewalk.
        Landing on one hip, she rolled over backward into the street
and onto her knees.  Leaning hard forward from the waist, to keep
from rolling again, she fell forward onto her head when she stopped. 
She got up.  Spitting blood and feeling ruined, she couldn't focus on
wherever the running figure had gotten off to.  
        A loud honking of an airhorn and a looming shadow set her
stumbling back over the curb and onto the sidewalk moments before a
heavy transport speeder rushed past in a cloud of dust.
        "Come back!  Come back!  That's me!  That's me!" she was
shouting from the sidewalk in the direction whoever it was had run
off to, mostly oblivious to the fact she'd nearly been run down.  A
tall triangular jag of armored glass--from the panel the 'bike had
impacted on the inside of the showroom--tilted outward slowly, and
cracked over the top of her head as she was getting up.  Dropping her
to her knees and cutting her off in mid-squawk.
        Tears wetting the fur beneath her eyes, she got to her feet,
panting, a small crowd watching.  Her legs were wobbly all of a
sudden, and fur tacky with odd-colored blood was showing through a
knee of her pants.  She leaned against the broken glass, one paw-hand
out to stop herself and slipping and leaving a wet orange pawprint on
the glass, then fell through the gap in the window and bounced her
head off the front fairing of her trike.
        Louis curled up into a ball on the floor against the
Excalibur.  Her tail, pink and naked-looking as usual, curled around
the front tire, looping around itself in a sort of knot.  Louis
coughed, and glanced around hazily, eyes glittering.
        "Oh, man, man," she croaked, looking burnt-out, revelation in
her eyes, "that means I'm still alive...."
        With that, the rat-girl's breath started to hitch in her
chest, and even though she didn't want to, she started to cry.


Donovan / Louis
--
"When these beetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles
and the bottle's on a poodle and the poodle's eating noodles... they
call this a muddle puddle tweetle poodle beetle noodle bottle paddle
battle."  -_Fox in Socks:  a Tongue Twister For Super Children_

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-- 
mike metlay * atomic city * box 81175 pgh pa 15217-0675 * metlay@netcom.com
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