"Seek" - Part Two

Part Two

            “Ya know, workin’ in the B.R.P.D. or just bein’ the type of guy I am, ya’d think I’d seen it all,” Hellboy reflected. “But I gotta admit – I ain’t ever seen a telepath like this kid do what she did a while ago.”

            Si herself had to profess to her half-demon companion’s reflection.

            She was a two-hundred-thousand-year-old Time Lord who had traveled across over a billion different worlds in the multiverse; not in a single one of them had she encountered a girl powerful enough to control her T.A.R.D.I.S.

            Si walked right up to the girl, who fancied the technological wonders of the control console.

            “What’s your name, honey?” Si asked her, yet the girl merely just stared at her. “Do you have a name? My name’s Si. And that tall red fella back there is named Hellboy. What’s your name?”

            After a moment of some hesitation, the girl held up her left forearm.

            On it, Si noticed the numbers “0,” “1,” “1” branded on the girl’s skin.

            “Eleven?” The Time Lady interpreted. “Your name’s ‘Eleven’?”

            The girl nodded.

            “I happen to know another person who goes by ‘Eleven’,” Si snickered. “That is, that version of him sometimes does. Usually, we just call him ‘Doctor’.” Realizing she was veering off topic – something that she tended to do in this regeneration, she refocused on Eleven. “Do you have any parents? A mother? A father?”

            Eleven gave no reply.

            “Think she’s broken,” Hellboy said.

            “She’s not broken,” Si countered. “She’s just…reserved.”

            “Which is a fancy way of sayin’, ‘She’s broken’.”

            The red brute’s commentary was not helping whatsoever; but Si didn’t let it distract her from what she attempted next: “I’m going to look into her mind.”

            Hellboy beamed at the idea. “Hey, that’s right! You’re a telepath, too!”

            Si slowly motioned her hands towards Eleven’s shaven head.

            The gesture made Eleven recoil in fear.

            “It’s alright, sweetie,” Si assured her. “This isn’t going to hurt at all.”

            Eleven trusted the kindness of this young woman, who physically looked to be close in age with her.

            Si gently placed her hands against the sides of Eleven’s head.

            Shutting her eyes thereafter, she focused.

            A few fragmented memories flashed: Eleven’s childhood, unusual experiments conducted to examine her mental capacity, and – in the midst of it all – a white-haired man in a suit and lab coat, observing the experiments.

            Papa.

            Eleven’s father. At least, Si hoped that it wasn’t.

            How could a father ever be so cruel as to put his daughter through the torture that he had with her?

            Si tried to dig deeper, but she suddenly found her own thoughts deflected back to her: the centuries she spent fighting in the Time War as Candace, the Mortal Kombat tournament she participated in as Margie, marrying her only true love Heather Lockhart as Neas, and Shyla – the child they bore together.

            Eleven was now reading her mind!

            Si severed the link right away, falling back and gasping.

            “Kid,” Hellboy cried, kneeling to help her sit back up. “You O.K.?”

            Si felt her nose running, lightly touching her upper lip with her index finger and discovering blood on the tip of it.

            Both hers and Eleven’s left nostrils seeped with the crimson fluid.

            “I’m fine,” she reassured Hellboy. “S-She just surprised me…that’s all.”

            “This kid’s gotta be even stronger in telepathy than you to knock ya on your butt like that,” Hellboy perceived. “Were ya able to find out anything while you were searchin’ around in there?”

            Si shook her head. “Not much.”

            “Time Lord,” they heard Eleven utter – her first words to them.

            However, what she said astounded Hellboy more than her ability to speak. “How does she know what you are?” he asked.

            “Because while I was looking into her mind, she looked back into mine,” Si said.

            Without warning, Eleven moved back towards the T.A.R.D.I.S. control console and once again placed her hand down on it. Hellboy and Si heard the familiar humming and grinding of the T.A.R.D.I.S. engines not much sooner afterward.

            “Has she taken us out of the dimensional corridor?” Si wondered.

            She brought up their newest destination on the view screen.

            A forest of some kind that was normal in appearance.

            Together, the dimension-hopping trio of travelers stepped out of the Gallifreyan module to breathe in air that was far more breathable than that of the dark dimension.

            “Smells like fall,” Si even noted.

            Hellboy cringed. “What exactly does fall smell like?”

            “Never mind that,” Si insisted. “I’m going further out to investigate this new world. You stay in the T.A.R.D.I.S. with Eleven.”

            “Seriously?!” a demoralized Hellboy reacted. “You’re benchin’ me?!”

            “I don’t wanna leave Eleven alone.”

            “The kid’s proven more than once to us that she can handle things herself!”

            “It’s not just her, H.B. I need you to stay for your own good.”

            Hellboy was crestfallen in realization of her logic. “You mean that you want me to stay put here ‘cause of the way I look.”

            Si hated for that to be the case, but it was just how things were.

            “We don’t know what kind of world this is yet,” she reasoned, “and I’d rather not take the risk.”

            Hellboy did not say another word.

            Instead, he discouragingly followed through with Si’s command, returning back into the T.A.R.D.I.S. with Eleven, while Si voyaged out into the new world.

            Moments later, she reached the town of Hawkins, Indiana.

            It looked vastly different in the real world as opposed to the dark dimension.

            This urged Si to methodically consider the two dimensions running parallel to each other, with Eleven serving as a possible link between them. How else could she bring the Type-Z in and out of the two worlds?

            In her wandering through town, Si sighted many of the townsfolk dressed retroactively – somewhere between early to mid-eighties from what she could gather on the hairstyles, vehicles, and product brands. Her perception proved to be correct, as soon as she spotted the date at a newspaper stand.

            October 31st, 1983.

            It was Halloween.

            Dang. Now I feel terrible for telling poor Hellboy to stay behind.

            Quickly moving beyond her guilt, her eyes followed from the newspaper to a flyer for a missing boy named Will Byers. She stared at it for longer than she should have, managing to attract the attention of a local.

            “Do you know him?”

            Si turned to see a teenaged boy – an attractive one, at that – holding more flyers.

            “N-No,” she replied, momentarily distracted from how cute the teenager looked. “Do you?”

            The boy despondently sighed. “Yeah…he’s my brother.”

            Si’s attitude towards him changed dramatically, turning from fixation to remorse. “What happened?” she asked.

            “He just…didn’t come home one night. And that was a week ago. Our mother’s been worried sick. She thinks that the lights in our house are communicating with her or some crazy stuff I don’t even understand.”

            Remorse soon gave way for intrigue, as Si requested of the teen, “Could you take me to see your mother? I might be able to help.”

            Hellboy fumed with impatience and irritation over the purpose for his seclusion.

            As in the right as Si was to keep him there in the T.A.R.D.I.S. and out of sight from whatever civilization there was past those woods, the fact that he couldn’t walk among society even in another dimension aggravated him.

            “I’m sorry, kid,” he told Eleven, after minutes of pacing around the console room with her. “Somethin’s beggin’ me to get out there and find out what’s up, and I’m no use to our blonde friend out there, if I’m lodged up in here.”

            He flipped the switch on the control console that permitted him exodus.

            On his way out, he felt something tug at his Right Hand of Doom, noticing it to have been Eleven, whose face registered deep apprehension.

            “I won’t be gone long, kid,” Hellboy promised. “You’re in one of the most impenetrable alien ships in the multiverse. You’ll be just fine.”

            The half-demon departed, leaving the special girl standing alone in the vast ship.

            Its limitless power began to fluctuate in correspondence with her rising anxiety.

"Seek" - Part One

Part One

Whenever you call me, I’ll be there
Whenever you want me, I’ll be there
Whenever you need me, I’ll be there
I’ll be around

            In certain regenerations, Neas would acquire one that had the gift of song.

            Such was the case of her nineteenth regeneration, who she named “Si.”

            Physically a young woman of seventeen years of age, she sang with an angelic, soulful voice that harmonized throughout her T.A.R.D.I.S.

            Gizmo, her pet Mogwai, was her only audience; perched on her shoulder, he chirped along to the acoustic melody she played on her guitar in her rendition of the Spinners’ “I’ll Be Around.”

            The comforting session lasted for a short time before it was disrupted.

            Rock music blared from further within the ship.

            “Sounds like our recent ‘guest’ just woke up,” Si groaned, setting aside both her guitar and Gizmo on the console platform seat next to her. “Keep the tunes goin’ for me, Giz. I’ll be right back.”

            The little Mogwai followed her lead, plucking at the guitar strings.

            Si smiled, recognizing the melody he played as the one his previous owner, Billy Peltzer, once taught him.

            She ultimately left the console room and went to one of the many bedrooms reserved for herself and her guests. There, she walked upon a space cluttered by trash, an array of electronics, and cats – among other things. It reeked with the scent of dry-roasted peanuts and cigar smoke.

            At the center of it all was the cause of it all, her companion: the one and (thankfully) only, Hellboy.

            The well-meaning half-demon was shirtless and weight-lifting at the moment.

            “What’s happenin’, kid?” he said with a lit cigar in his mouth.

            Si could barely hear him through the loud rock music.

            There were at least a dozen stereos in his room, any one of them being where the music blasted from.

            Rather than guess, Si simply used her sonic screwdriver to shut all of them off.

            “You twisted my sisters,” Hellboy griped.

            “That was Van Halen.”

            “Really? These 80s rock bands sound all alike, after a while.”

            “You know, I was in the middle of a session in the console room before your music loudly interrupted mine.”

            “How can ya even hear me all the way from there?”

            “Because that is how loud your music is!”

            “Whatever happened to the big Italian lady? She was my kinda woman and a way better hostess than you.”

            Si felt a headache coming on – one as big as Hellboy’s biceps.

            “We’ve been through this several times, H.B.,” she said. “Rickert got hurt real bad, and she had to regenerate…into me. And, as her successor, I take serious offense in how you talk about her like she’s not me. I’m standing right in front of you!”

            Now Hellboy felt a headache coming on.

            “Yeah, I still miss the big Italian lady,” he professed.

            Si moaned with aggravation; it was like talking to a big kid.

            Technically, Hellboy was one.

            Like Si herself, he did not physically look his age; he was sixty years old but barely out of his twenties.

            Their spat was suddenly intruded by the violent lurching of the T.A.R.D.I.S.

            The ringing of the cloister bell soon followed.

            “What’s goin’ on?!” Hellboy exclaimed.

            “I dunno,” Si remarked. “Let’s go find out.”

            Together, they rushed back into the console room, finding a dazed Gizmo lying atop of Si’s slightly dented guitar on the floor. “You O.K., fuzz-ball?” Hellboy asked him, afterwards receiving a contented chirp in response from the tough little Mogwai.

            “We’ve materialized out of the infinite dimensional corridor,” Si noted through the console readout. “But I wasn’t anywhere near the controls.”

            “You think the fuzz-ball might’ve done it?” Hellboy presumed.

            Si questionably frowned at the presumption. “He was sitting six feet away.”

            Before Hellboy could have come up with any other asinine theories, Si brought up their new, unexpected destination on the view screen. They discovered that they arrived in a dark dimension devoid of human life, with ash-like spores floating in the air.

            “O…kay,” Hellboy uncomfortably muttered. “That doesn’t look good.”

            “No,” Si acknowledged. “But I’m going out in it anyway.”

            “You nuts?!” Hellboy said. “It looks like death out there!”

            “So you’re coming with then?”

            “Bet your sweet butt I am, kid.”

            Hellboy armed himself with his usual assortment of items: his utility belt, his jacket, holy relics, horseshoes, various herbs, hand grenades, and his trusty, oversized revolver, which he called the “Good Samaritan.”

            Si only required her sonic screwdriver, smarts, and a change of clothes.

            The Time Lord and the half-demon trekked through the eerie atmosphere, seeing how it strongly resembled a small Midwestern town, one whose name they learned to be Hawkins, Indiana from the “Welcome” sign.

            It was deathly quiet – not a single living soul to be found other than themselves.

            Or so they thought until they detected movement within a nearby police station.

            Hellboy readied the Good Samaritan while Si illuminated their path with her sonic screwdriver, both preparing themselves for whatever might’ve been scurrying around in the station.

            As it soon turned out, what they cornered was a 12-year-old girl with shaven hair, wearing a hospital gown.

            Si immediately had Hellboy lower his oversized revolver.

            “It’s a kid,” the half-demon identified.

            The girl was incredibly terrified, quivering as she looked on them.

            “I think my handsome mug scares her,” Hellboy surmised. “I have that effect.”

            Si didn’t want to admit that he might have been right in the assumption, noticing the girl’s gaze fixated more on Hellboy than her. Because of this, she soothingly told the frightened child, “It’s alright, sweetie. We’re not gonna hurt—”

            A loud, ear-splitting shriek emitted out of nowhere inside the station.

            Turning away from the girl, Si and Hellboy spotted a tall, thin humanoid creature with a head absent of any facial features, opening like a flower to reveal nothing but teeth.

            “Ah, crud,” Hellboy moaned. “I knew it!”

            “I’ll get the girl out of here,” Si notified. “You deal with…whatever that is!”

            She didn’t have to pull Hellboy’s Right Hand of Doom to get him to concede; he went right away with combating the predatory creature, while Si got the girl to her T.A.R.D.I.S. for safety.

            Hellboy eventually caught up, marginally battered from his fight.

            “Let’s get outta here,” he ordered Si.

            She tried escaping back into the infinite dimensional corridor but experienced difficulty in doing so. “There’s high interference we’re getting from this dimension,” she isolated the issue.

            “That freakin’ wallflower-head’s gonna catch up with us,” Hellboy alarmed. “And when it does, it’s gonna—!”

            He and Si both froze as soon as the girl they found approached the control console.

            She placed her right hand on the console and, all of a sudden, the Type-Z dematerialized back into the infinite D.C.

            By this circumstance, it became clear to the travelers that the girl possessed special powers – ones that could influence even a T.A.R.D.I.S.