No Romance Chapter 10

This is very much a first draft, and the writing is definitely rough. It's kind of meant to be at this point. But the rougher parts will be cleaned up in future drafts.

Beginning of Act II, “Embrace”

Chapter 10. Mathemagics, a trapmaster gets lost in his own museum, and our hero gets swept away.

Marek Tishtar had just been promoted. To a boss’s assistant, no less! He got to be Under Secretary to Norrigan North himself! And as a lover of fine guns and an appreciator of high marksmanship, he was excited to see this man, his personal hero, in action. And especially so as North actually seemed to want him along with him on action sequences. Marek deduced this by the effort North put in to enunciate words properly in his presence.

            “Come along, yunggun!” North said to Marek, coming out of his bedroom at the crack of dawn. Marek had been sitting at his desk just outside the room. He was ready for this because North woke up at the exact instant the sun rose, and fell asleep, no matter where he was, the instant the sun fell out of sight. North’s room had windows on both the east and west side so he could be situated when the respective moment came.
            “Right away, Mr. East!” Marek said, completely dressed and draped in two ammunition belts to boot. “Where are we going, sir?”
            “Fugitive escapin,” North said through his mustache. “I kin feel it inm’toes.”
            North’s mumble healed slightly overnight, and progressively worsened as the day passed.

And just as they started bounding down the stairs, Marek in awe of North’s surprising nimbleness, the alarm suddenly went off. (North’s limp may have been psychosomatic.)

“See ah toldyou!” North said, his eyebrows quite high with pleasure, revealing almost all of his eyes.

“Yes sir, Mr. North!” Marek said.

North’s bizarre enthusiasm was contagious. The two exited the villa and approached North’s personal jeep in Golbez’s parking garage. It was blue with white stripes.
            “It’s yer job to drive, yung Malik,” said North as he got into the passenger seat. “Take us out of this blasted place!”

“Where to, sir?”

“The damned jungle,” said North, spinning and cocking his revolver.

Marek maneuvered through the traffic of the base. The whole troop of guards were being mobilized.

“Gettoo the Lone Pine Tree down there,” said North. “Then left, into the trees.”

“Sir? There isn’t a road there---”

“Into the trees, I said!” North did indeed say. “Drivin’s easy enuff. I’n’it?”

“Yes sir!” said Marek, gulping but turning as he was told.

            “I kin feel it. Headin fer the river. Goin through the swamps. Ol’ Swampyland. We’ll cut im off there.”
            They drove around trees and through ferns, under vine-wrapped branches and across streams, up ravines and, on North’s order, delicately around a bush covered in beautiful blue, star-shaped flowers. Then down a steep slope that almost up-ended them, but got them to the edge of a giant swamp, full of gray, slimy water and lots of floating logs that weren’t actually logs.
            “We’re safe in here, right, Mr. North?”
            “‘s’the jungle, lad. Never safe. But they arnt safe either. We’ve got guns. ‘S’the ferst lesson I’m teachin you. Now let me show you some magical things. Drive around the perimeter of this swamp, Malachi. Slowly.”
            Marek did so, being very careful to ensure the ground ahead of him was solid before driving on it.
            “It’s all about the math, lad, the mathematics! Angles and velocities and frictions. Let me show you sumthin mathemagical. Stop the car. Here.”
            North stood up in the car as it came to a halt. A kind of fog had come in, depriving the surrounding environment of details. It had turned into one soupy gray blur with darker blurs here and there. Bird cries resounded but nothing seemed to move.
            Then North did. Like lightning. Two hands on his revolver, leaning out over the windshield, a shot and a controlled kickback. The discharge echoed around the area, silencing the bird calls, but felling nothing.
            “This here is the fastest thing a human does,” North said with surprising clarity. His mumble seemed to be psychosomatic, too. “And that’s me. Watch now. Got yer sights on em running through those trees, over there? Almost at the swamp? I’m gonna take em down, both, with a single shot. Observe, yunggun. Observe Trustwerthy.”
            Marek watched Trustwerthy, North’s gun, prepared to be in awe of North’s platinum psychedelic mathemagical jive.
            BLAM! (It didn’t really sound like that, but that’s how Marek heard it in his head.) The bullet sliced through a branch above the running figures and caused it to clatter down upon their heads.
            “What timing!” breathed Marek. “What precision! Where did you learn such things?”
            “Taught math and physics, didn’t I, eh?” scowled North. “Don’t teach kids nothing useful these days, do they? What’d you do in school, yunggun Mackenzie?”
            “I did---I didn’t---”
            “Hold off!”
            Another BLAM! and North’s revolver kicked back. He kept his hands steady and his eyebrowed aim straight.
            “Didn’t get em, damned fugitives, refugees, whatever the hell they’re called these days. Damn em. Now watch this, boy. See how they hid behind that tree?”
            Marek could barely make out the tree.
            “Then the boulder just past it.”
            A faint outline in the fog.
            “We ain’t gonna let em git into the swamp. If we do, they get away. So watch this. Keep in mind those angles and velocities I told you about!”
            North fired again: BLAM! A storm of sparks blew up around the boulder and a short, shrill scream sounded. A branch of the tree the figures had kept behind fell to the ground, just like the one before. And the figures resumed their dash through the fog and trees.

“I wonder who it is we’re shooting at,” North mumbled. “Probably some real bad guys,” he reasoned. “Let’s see if I can get another ricochet on em.”

“Do you want to use another weapon?” Marek offered hopefully. “See, earlier I threw a machine gun in the back and I have these ammo belts---”

“What in the hell are you playing at, lad?” North said. “Shut the hell up.”

Marek shut up.

“That’s better.” And North turned back to his hunt.

BLAM! BLAM! Two shots in succession, bouncing off boulders just as they were supposed to, but hitting nothing afterward. Norrigan North narrowed those bushy white eyebrows and snorted.

Then he promptly holstered his weapon. “Seems there’s only one way to deal with this: a quickdraw.”

And before the last syllable had even entered Marek’s ears, the gun had been drawn, fired twice (two times) and holstered again. The first shot went off, but the second one merely clicked: empty.

That first bullet happened to hit a rock that even North, with the power of his eyebrows, couldn’t see, and ricocheted off and onto another rock. This second rock formed a sixty-one-degree angle where the first had been a perfect sixty.

            As that last syllable of North’s words entered Marek’s ears, the bullet entered the windshield. It shattered, but North didn’t much care. He was more than enough surprised by his gun. Trustwerthy had always been trustworthy.
            “Huh,” said Norrigan North, scowling again. “It usually doesn’t run out on me like that. Before it’s always been unlimited...unlimited power....”
            Then his eyes caught sight of young Marek or Mackenzie or MacAvoy or whoever it was who was driving, slumped over on the wheel, and he sighed.
            “Now who in tarnation is goin ta give me a ride back home?”

---

Trapmaster Clement Jorgensen smiled as he listened to the orders and commands and reports of the chase over his radio. Smiled and laughed sinisterly. The “hero” wouldn’t last much longer, thanks to him.

At the first signs that another chase sequence had begun, Trapmaster Clement Jorgensen knew exactly where he needed to go and he got there: a place they called “Hell’s Drawbridge,” a narrow, linear clearing where most possible routes leading south from the villa converged, hedged in by thick growths of trees and boulders. When Trapmaster Clement Jorgensen heard that the Hero---very much a Villain in his eyes---was trying to head for the river, he knew the Hero would end up coming through here. He laughed at his good fortune, that he would happen to be out close to their already patrolling the Outer Perimeter, that he would happen to have all his trap-making equipment with him at that moment.

“He’s been heading south for twenty minutes! And he has someone with him! A woman! I think,” came a voice on the radio. “They’re about to hit Swampyland!”

That was exactly what Trapmaster Clement Jorgensen wanted to hear, and he put his trap together with glee and the occasional evil smile. As from time to time the radio crackled, Trapmaster Clement Jorgensen giggled and cackled.

“Passing through the trees, now. We’re driving him to you, Clemmy! Only one spot of land that’s reachable at this point, and from there it’s right on up the canyon!”

Trapmaster Clement Jorgensen worked faster with the trip-wire, the spikes, the spring.

“He just swung on a vine over an open-mouthed group of alligators! Holding the woman, too! “

Trapmaster Clement Jorgensen rolled his eyes. He had yet to see any real, actual person have the strength and grip enough to truly swing on a rope or vine or cable or anything while holding someone else. It was impossible. But not for those damn heroes.

Then something startling came over the radio.

“AAAAIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!”

Then the report.

“No! Terabonis fell into the open mouths of the alligators! NOOOOOOOO!!!”

He could hear the bloodcurdling screams. Horror marred his face. He vowed to destroy this man, this monster, this hero. He’d do it for Terabonis. And the other guys that died, but Trapmaster Clement Jorgensen couldn’t remember their names. Or what they looked like.

Strange, he thought.

But he forgot his sorrows as he set the wire. The trap was almost ready.

“He’s made it to the other side...and we had to turn back. Trapmaster, it’s all on you. The Chief is leading a group of Toon B guys around the swamps to meet you down near the river after it’s happened. They’re going to reinforce you and stop that bastard once and for all. Trapmaster---good luck.”

            Trapmaster Clement Jorgensen breathed in deeply. So. It was to be a one-man war. Without even the one man present.
            He made the finishing touches on his beautiful spike trap. This work was pretty much all he knew how to do. He had joined Golbez Industries in hopes of developing his craft more, but so far he had had few opportunities to actually spring one on anyone. Until now. Now he had one more than few.
            He heard someone crashing through the bushes behind him. With a final glance at his camouflaged handiwork, he jumped behind a tree. The tree barred his view of the scene of the trap, so he would just have to listen. Listen for that trip, that swing, that impalement. Oh what joy!
            The rustling in the brush stopped. That should be them, emerging onto the bare patch of earth that was right before the wire. Trapmaster Clement Jorgensen chortled evilly and quietly. How sweet the sound...

But he heard nothing after that. Not even a whisper. Just ten seconds or so of nothing. Did they see the wire? Impossible. There were three wires that could have triggered the trap, and they had all three been disguised as cleverly as could be! So even if they had tried to step over the wire, they would...

Trapmaster Clement Jorgensen squirmed behind the tree, impatient and nervous. What could they have possibly done to get around? He wanted to check, but not to play his hand. He would have to wait.

Then he heard more rustling of the bushes, as if they were going back the way they came.

“No, get back here!” Trapmaster Clement Jorgensen wanted to cry at them (but didn’t). They couldn’t do that! It was unfair! And life was meant to be fair. Life was meant to be about justice, social justice. And it would be just to impale the hero.

Enraged, he pulled out his knife and rounded the tree. He found nothing, nobody, trap still entirely in place. But then he heard more rustling.

From above.

He looked into the trees and gaped. There they were, the hero and his anonymous girl, jumping from the branches of one tree into another! Crossing right over his beloved, beautiful trap!

No, he thought. This was supposed to be the culmination of my life! The fulfillment of all my potential! Right here, this moment!

His gaping expression turned devilish as he watched the hero and the girl drop down from the tree on the other side of the trap. They both looked at him and waved casually before he took her hand and started running again.

He could not let this happen. He could not let them get away.

Filled with the fury of hell, he charged after them.

And tripped his own trap. The swinging spikes impaled him casually; their graceful arc truly expressed the genius and artistry of the design. By golly, it was a well-made trap after all.

Justice. Ironic justice, sure. But justice. He who springed the trap, sprung it.

---

            “The river is just ahead!” Jack said to Annie as they raced down the length of the little canyon.
            “Why do we have to go into the water?” she said loudly, in between breaths. “We already lost the dogs in that Swampyland.”
            “Don’t ask questions! Don’t think about it too deeply! It won’t make sense if you do. Then where will we be? If everything doesn’t make sense? Think about that!””
            And all of a sudden they were confronted by a humongous tiger. The glorious beast stood at the canyon’s exit, prowling back and forth as if guarding some treasure. A red collar hung around its neck.
            “Oh, come on!” said Jack in frustration as he threw his hands in the air. “So it got out here after all.”
            He didn’t have to see or hear Annie to know her thoughts and feelings. Fear, distress, all the usual stuff. He was about to groan about that, too, when the huge tiger, whose size made him big enough to ride on should that possibility ever come up, began moving towards them, one casual step at a time. As it stepped Jack noticed that its giant, fuzzy paws were quite cute. But clearly it still had designs to destroy them, so its cuteness would have be admired later, if at all.
            Jack sighed as he brought out Wrench and aimed it at the tiger. He didn’t want to do this, but pulled the trigger anyway.
            It clicked.
            “What the...?” Jack said, staring down at his apparently empty gun. He’d have to check it after this whole chase sequence ended.
            “Jack, what do we do? What are you going to do?”
            “Why is this on me all the time?” Jack said irately. “Why don’t you try something? Go up to it, see if it will roll over on its tummy?”
            “Me? Me? You’re the one---Jack! Jack, it’s getting ready to pounce, Jack! Jack!”
            Jack groaned. He tried the gun again, but didn’t fire, as he noticed something happening to the tiger. As it was in its pouncing position---front paws and head down low to the ground, its bottom wiggling back and forth high in the air---it was scrunching up its nose.
            Now, no ordinary cat had the ability to do this. Cats’ noses are just built into the facial structure, no cartilage about it. So how Jack could perceive that its nose was crinkled up as if something foul were in the air, he wasn’t sure. But the big cat seemed in consternation at what it could smell, and it started moving backwards.

“Annie, move closer to it. I want to test something.”

            “Are you crazy?”
            “Has there been anything sane happening on this island at any time while we’ve been here?” Jack said. “No? So it doesn’t matter if I’m crazy, does it? Just move toward it!”
            “Why?” she shouted.
            Jack lost his patience and pushed her forward, towards the massive tiger. Confirming his theory, surprising Annie, and offending the poor tiger’s nose, the beast backed up very quickly.
            “It’s your perfume!” said Jack triumphantly. “It can’t stand it! Chase him, Annie, chase him!”
            But Annie, still trying to gain her bearings on what was happening, didn’t need to. The tiger retreated, and dashed away into the thick, dark, but no longer very foreboding jungle.

“Hurrah for peaceful conquerings,” Jack commented. “Won’t see that too many more times on this island. But it’s a cute, fuzzy cat, so we don’t want to kill it. The poor thing. Anyway, let’s go!”

Before Annie could recover, and continuing on in her perpetual stage of fright and flight, Jack pulled her onwards. Out of the canyon, they passed through another grove of trees and emerged from the jungle atop several large boulders that sat on the borders of the raging river. The river itself was about as wide as Jack could swim in one breath, which is to say, either not very far at all (if he’s at home in his own swimming pool, if he were to have one to begin with) or about the length of the Caspian Sea in a rainy season (if a girl happened to be in trouble or a nuke was about to go off in Switzerland and the only way to stop it was....well, you get the picture).

            But the length was nothing compared to the rapids themselves, filled with more multitudes of sharp rocks than a vengeful caveman’s armory, and more undertows than the mosh pit of a punk rock concert. Here was clearly not where the gods intended him to cross.
            He hoped.
            But what the hell? It might be more exciting this way.
            He was about to jump when Annie screamed and grabbed his arm. He looked around but found no one nearby to frighten her.
            “You frightened me!” she said. “We can’t jump in there! We’ll die! Why do we need to go into the water, anyway? Where are we going? What’s the exit strategy to all of this?”
            “No idea,” I---he---said, and prepared to jump again.
            She screamed and grabbed my---his arm again. “We can’t jump in there! We’ll die! Why do we need to go into the water, anyway? Where are we going? What’s the exit strategy to all of this?”
            “Just shut up and trust me on this one! And on all the other ones, too!”

She grabbed his arm. “We can’t jump in there! We’ll die! Why do we need to go into the water, anyway? Where are we going? What’s the exit strategy to all of this?”

            Something fishy this way came. In addition to the fish in the river. If there were fish who went down river rapids that led to a waterfall.
            He looked at her, and tested it once more. Started to jump.

She grabbed his arm. “We can’t jump in there! We’ll die! Why do we need to go into the water, anyway? Where are we going? What’s the exit strategy to all of this?”

            He noticed it. Our heavy-handedness. But what can you do when your creation tries to do something you never planned for him to do? Subtlety, admittedly, is not our strong suit. But you already know that, and who wants subtlety in a tale like this?
            “Fine,” he said. “We’ll go down river a bit and try to cross at a gentler place.
            And so they made their way down the rocks to the more smooth parts of the river bank. The rapid did decrease, but the noise did not.
            Hmm, thought Jack. That’s a clear sign.
            “I can still hear the rapids,” said Annie.
            “Those aren’t rapids, honey,” said Jack wryly before smacking himself in the face.
            Annie looked like she wasn’t sure which clause of that sentence she should respond to. The first one evoked confusion and, to a lesser degree, fright, and the latter, utter bliss. The various aspects of her face reacted in different ways, her mouth smiling, her eyebrows raised, then lowered in confusion as she was still smiling in delight, then her smile vanished and she blinked, then she opened her mouth to say something, then her nose got all scrunched up, her cheeks flushed, and so on and so forth.

Jack took advantage of her conflicted silence to act and get away from that unfortunate moment, that unintentional term of flirtation. The only problem with this act was that it was to again take her by the hand and pull her along, as he had been for a while. For Jack, holding her hand served as a signifier of frustration, the same as a frown and a sigh, as he had to keep on rescuing her again and again. For Annie, this was the most romantic thing he had ever done, besides saving her life, which Annie felt like he had done multiple times but had never actually done at all. In consideration of both cases, it really adequately summed up their whole situation.

They came to a spot in the river where they could not pass on the bank itself, as it was too full of trees and shrubbery and pink fluffy flowers that looked like they’d bite you if you got too close. So they had to go around and climb over a huge fallen tree trunk, then duck between two trees whose branches formed a tiny arch that would have been a perfect size for a panther standing on its hind legs, or a human on its hands and knees, which is what they had to do.

When they found the river again they also found an open stretch of land on the bank, about thirty yards across and free of jungle trees until about twenty yards inland. In addition, the roaring of the not-rapids-honey had grown much louder, and it became quite apparent to Annie what was making that sound.

“A...a waterfall?” Annie gasped.

“Yes,” said Jack. “It’s here where we need to decide where we want to go and what we want to do.”

The river disappeared over the edge about ten meters downstream. Jack couldn’t tell how far it fell, but the deafening roar was a pretty good indicator: fairly far.

“We have to be careful in the water here, if we do want to cross,” said Jack. “We don’t want to get swept away.”

“Isn’t that what’s already happened?” came a calm, demure voice, barely audible over the waterfall.

Jack and Annie spun simultaneously. Vanasmas and a team of gun-wielding soldiers materialized on the fringe of the jungle, coming out of the thick, foreboding darkness. Upon seeing this, Annie immediately spun back to face the river. Jack did not notice this.

“Now, Roget!” Vanasmas said.

One of the soldiers raised what looked like a real gun and fired it at Jack. A splotch of red hit his white shirt. Jack touched his fingers to the stain and raised them to his nose.

“Paint?” he said, his head tilted slightly.

“You are now marked,” said Vanasmas. “All will be able to recognize you on sight. And you will come with us or die.” The gun-wielding soldiers stood there stupidly, blank and empty looks in their eyes.

“You’re really still trying?” Jack said. “After you’ve seen it all? After you’ve seen how I’ve evaded and defeated your men? And that one woman, too?”

“But see, you are surrounded!” proclaimed Vanasmas with delight. “I have my soldiers. You are backed against a lethal waterfall of the most deathly or peaceful powers, depending on how connected you are to the spirits. And to you, it is most assuredly the deathly power. You see all this yourself. So I ask you: Where is your god now?”

Jack glanced behind him at the churning waters, then back at Vanasmas.

“Why don’t you shoot me now? Why talk to me? Why insist on trying to spike the ball before you’ve scored?”

Vanasmas gave him a wary, appraising look. “What---”

“Exactly! Because you need to let me get away. It’s in the script.”

And Jack whirled around, grabbed the back of Annie’s shirt, and shoved her protesting into the water. He himself lurched into the river, still holding onto her shirt, and let the current sweep them away downstream, right into the raging waterfall of death.

“Shoot him! SHOOT HIM!” shrieked Vanasmas, and the guards all raised their weapons simultaneously and fired.

“Come on! You can do better than that!” Jack shouted back at Vanasmas. Then he clarified as bullets zipped into the water all around him: “I mean your line, not your aim! But maybe both are impossible, for fellows like you...”

He pulled Annie, who was shocked by the sudden wetness of the water (water tends to get pretty wet) as well as its coldness, as he paddled downstream. When Annie finally realized what was happening she screamed again.

“No! No no no, Jack McDowell! NOOOO!!!!”

This last bit was said as the water delivered them to the precipice of the waterfall, the aquatic event horizon, and they saw in slow motion the fate before their eyes, before their whirling arms and foundationless feet, and as their already churning stomachs rose into their very mouths.

A downward plunge of two hundred feet. Down, down, down, so far that much of the water was turning into mist before it hit the ground. Jack, having done this kind of thing many times before, took it in stride, and actually yawned as he dropped. He didn’t really mean to; it was not a purposeful display of irony, and he noticed it in himself and chuckled afterwards.

Annie’s typical and predictable scream fell with him.

“You’ll want to not land on your belly!” he said to Annie over the waterfall’s roar, but under her scream, so she didn’t hear. He shrugged and twisted into a feet-first position that would shield his most vulnerable parts, something Annie didn’t have to worry about. The thought occurred to him that she had known how to dive properly out of that seaplane in the beginning. But that took preparation for her, mental readiness. Here Jack had just pushed her over the side, almost literally.

Say! he thought, snapping his fingers. Is Annie really---?

Then, mid-thought, he, they, hit the water. This time, both had fallen like tortoises.

The water’s impact severed their handheld connection, and the raging, whirling currents threw them in different directions. This was far preferable, however, to the sharp rocks severing them literally, or being thrown against the boulders. As it happened, they survived, and without major injuries.

As Jack surfaced, rose out of the water and took his first steps onto the rocky, he glanced around, looking for Annie, but not consciously, so he didn’t think about it too hard. In his mind, which was still gathering its sensibilities, he was congratulating himself on another successful waterfall plummet. He had done this previously, of course, but he was always so grateful that he went over the other horrible possibilities in his mind. He did this as he craned his neck to see the very top of the waterfall. All that way and not a single scratch, nor a single bruise! He laughed out loud at his triumph.

Then he stepped forward, slipped on a wet round rock, and landed on a different rock, cracking his skull and knocking him out cold.