The Makings of a War...

B'Elanna

Yeah, the TV repair/retail store the Low Men are heading towards....

Of course, we didn't know what we'd stepped into the d*mn middle of, but....

....

It started this way. We'd stopped at a corner store, looking aghast at the latest headlines of the news. In the past, I am told, some Champions had wondered just how things would go back on this old world that Roland's Ka-tet came from. We know that with Roland the Gunslinger actually reaching the Dark Tower, it had all SORTS of strange effects on Midworld (Roland's home world). Time literally had bent back on itself and gotten set off onto a different track, and for the first time in it's entire existence something like quantum fissioning took place (if only for a little bit and of a VERY small scale). Exactly how it happened is just murky, period, but it was Q.F. stuff, only done on a planetary level. No new universes were made, rather it was like certain sections of Roland's old life got . . . . revived and put off into a new track. What I'm saying is that....

Ah, nevermind what the flaming Hell happened back on Midworld!

Bottom line, Roland's past took on new life. Roland, through that small scale quantum fissioning, got him quiet a few new analog brothers. Versions of himself from various times of his long life, suddenly finding themselves on different paths. Took a lot more time, effort, and energy for the Celestrials to solve certain . . . problems that arise when the Dark Tower was put to right in the quickest manner possible. The solution (exact details not even Roland remembers, though he was the KEY to it) could have been a lot more . . . bloody. Time paradoxes could have torn the whole of Midworld apart, wiping out all life and leaving this world a mass of rubble.

Uh, could go and explain the exact details with a LOT of techno-babble, but will refrain. Chiana hates techno-babble, I believe....

Well, here on this Earth it's different. Doesn't appear that such care was taken. Nope, no care of with such restraint exercised. No, no world threatening crisis, no.

Remember, with Roland and his Ka-tet reaching the Dark Tower and putting it to right causes a time paradox which must be dealt with by the Celestrials involved in the operation: Rule 1 and Agent 1 (free willed representatives of Order and Chaos) and....

The Drone Agent and Rule who are in charge of matters of order and chaos of this Earth's reality.

Drones do not have free will. Do not have anything within them remotely human, including compassion!

No, if they'd have compassion they'd would have created quantum duplicates of the people (Eddie and Susannah Dean) that our Roland had snatched into Midworld to help him complete his quest. Would have been . . . more human.

Now, don't know what had happened with the duplicate of Susannah Dean. With the Door that Roland used, she'd been snatched Susannah back in the 60's. With this Dark Tower business, only Creator knows where the charred body was now!

Oh, what am I saying? Well, it's this way. Just a guess, but it fits with hints that that one elder Champion, Morganna, had dropped in passing with Inquirer and the Doctor at their wedding. It appears that, what I and the others can cypher out, the Drones take the path of least resistance in fixing time paradoxes. With the time distortions back upon Midlworld, there was no Roland to snatch them. Rule 1 and Agent 1 had done their Celestrial things to make the continued existence of our Eddie Dean and others who'd come to settle on Terra Prime and Midworld continue to live and not be snuffed out by the side effects of the time paradox you get from . . whatever the flaming Hell the Celestrials did in fixing the Tower.

Here? With the Drones? Nope.

News tells of a horrifying account of a child matching the description of the kid who's now a crystal block in Inquirer's pouch. Seems that witnesses had seen this kid (who'd been reported missing by his parents, the Chambers) walking near an abandoned house, looking to get in when....

He'd burst into flames. Spontaneous combustion.

Seems that the path of least resistance for Drones, in this case, entails letting the subjects of time paradox burn alive....

....

Imagine that the version of Eddie Dean (who's a child himself in this year of 1977) will combust himself when it gets to the time HE would have gotten snatched.

But that's all speculation right now, but it sure as heck derailed our trains of thought, let me tell you!!

Still, the Rules and Agents who'd sent us on our way here HAD warned us we might learn of a few things that might not be to our liking, but it was business that was beyond their control. Yeah, Rule 1 and Agent 1 are overall BOSSES of their Offices, but even that authority has limits. Limits that apparently we've just heard about on the news at this dump of a store...

Or at least some of us have. Do sometimes forget that Betty, Ragan, and the Doctor have less acute hearing than the rest of us....

"Frell...." breaths Chiana, staring at the tiny TV through the barred glass display window. She can hear the reporter chattering away, even through the glass from a television set to a low volume....

"What?" Betty finally asks, wondering why the rest of us are gapping at what's on TV.

We'd tell her, but it seems that we've got company.

Men in a Buick that, at odd times for a split second looks like something....alien! That and the riders inside....

"Low Men," Inquirer hisses, feeling them at her back before seeing their reflections as they, the Regulators (Stephen King monsters) get out of their car (that isn't a car).

"I see that not only did you get her you got here before...." one begins, sounding reasonably human until they sense that we...

"Opposition," he rasps in a voice that loses a LOT of humanity. Sounds like a lot of wasps (or some other flying pest) nestled down inside his voice box.

Okay, for the initiated here let's go into a few facts about Champions of whatever Office you'd care to talk about (Order/Chaos, Evil, and Good). Besides being immortal due to boons given them by their Celestrial "handlers" (for want of a better word), they also give off some kind of signal. Between Champions of the same Office, the range of the signal is relatively decent (like say across a room or more). In the case with Champions from other camps, the range is . . . cruddy. About maybe a handful of paces away, really.

Just about as far away as the Low Men (who happened to be one of the "lucky" realities where the Infernals had chosen) are Champions of the Army of Darkness and the Doctor's group (who are Champions of the Rules and Agents).

The spokeman for the Low Men had spotted Chiana (still looking human) being boxed in (by appearance) the others and come to wrong conclusions. They had thought that Chiana was their target. They had thought that Chiana the Champion was actually Aeryn-Pip (their target). Their eldritch senses (psychic in nature) had told them enough to make them believe that this was their quarry. Yeah, told them that despite the fact that the former Nebari woman was actually a Dragon (albeit in her human seeming, further enhanced to appear human "normal" with magicks). Then again, to be fair, there are darn few Nebari women turned Dragon out there (and Champion to boot). The mistake is understandable.

So, when the dime finally drops and the Champion senses start to tingle (as it were), things start happening! Before, a slightly chagrinned Low Man was giving compliment (rare indeed) to those he thought were the thugs who'd phoned him. Now?

Later, the few witnesses that were there to actually see it (and not either stoned or drunk due to cheap booze), would describe it...

....as something out of what they'd figure would be WWIII.

Now, a LOT of witnesses (out of good sense) will keep their trap shut at what was seen. Enough though, blab (much to their detriment) enough to get thrown into the "loony bin".

Champions cannot be killed by anything of the Mortal realms. Not even by their own hands (or other Champions' hands). But they sure can hurt each other a LOT!! One side has their.....their Low Man powers (for want of a better term . . . strange stuff goes flying). The other side has all sorts of things from spells (ala lightning bolts) to phasors. And in the end, when things are STILL hot and a LOT of things are on fire (at least the streetwalkers and other mortal creatures of the night had enough sense to flee to a safe distance when the shit hit the fan).

One brave (and stoned) soul would swear at the very end of this slugfest a blonde woman had changed into a fire breathing dragon and BREATHED on this one dude in a mustard colored coat, but that's not believed by anyone who hears him (whenever he's let out of his padded cell).

At least in the tail end of the chaos, a quick tricorder reading scanning for any fleeing Nebari (read Aeryn-Pip) detects a sign which was vectoring away from the now burning hotel. The Doctor's group had won (at the expense of a LOT of spell power and ammo expended). They' managed in changing the Low Men into piles of steaming garbage....which would eventually reconstitute and be VERY pissed off indeed at these other Champions who.....were like the Opposition but. . . something had been off about their "scent").

But it was the last thing that clinched it as the fire trucks (and SWAT team) finally came storming into control the leftover mess was what Chiana (who was still in dragon form, just somehow managing to have hid out in one of the larger (intact) alleyways the mad rantings of a hotel clerk, swearing up a blue streak about how his protection money hadn't been worth....shit).

"And after they'd knocked down my own hotel door to that Aussie sounding b***'s room THIS happens," he screams, waving at his burning hotel. "And what do they do? No, don't attempt to stop this but instead haul her and those other goons off to that Gentleman's club....."

The ranting goes on, but thing are getting too hot to stay.

Shifting form back to human seeming, she submits to another change in looks (this time a red headed woman vice her old Gigi look).

Then as the others get done with their changes in looks, she tells them what she overheard. She finishes up.

"So, what's so special about this Four Fathers place?" Betty asks, along with Ragan looking at the others who'd actually gotten around to reading King's The Dark Tower series.

At least they'd recovered from reaction to all that violence that they'd had to be a part of. At least their conscious was clear. Wasn't like the Low Men were . . . . really dead. Inconvenience by and large, being crispy critters right now, but not dead! Besides, so alien were their true form (revealed quiet quickly in the battle) that NOBODY felt particularly bad to see them gone for the moment. Quiet something to say and sounds bad, but then again....you'd have to see them to know why it's not. Hideous. Evil vibes and I mean REAL evil vibes...

1. Later....

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