"The Missing Face" - Part Two

Part Two

            While voyaging down the dimensional corridor, Clarence noticed that his new friend – the Darkman – was able to regain some of his speech. The first thing that he asked was, “Where are we?”

            His voice still sounded gruff to Clarence.

            “It’s hard to explain,” he told the Darkman. “But I guess you can say that we’re in an alien spaceship that can travel between parallel dimensions.”

            “YOU MAKIN’ FUN OF ME?!?! TELL ME THE TRUTH, KID!!!!!”

            The Darkman randomly flew into rage.

            Clarence flinched in terror as the man advanced on him. “I-I-I am tellin’ the truth, Mr. Darkman, sir. A-And if Mandy were awake right now, she’d say it is, too.” He gestured to the bandaged Time Lady lying on the floor, still unconscious.

            “I’m in no mood for jokes, boy! If you don’t tell me what’s really goin’ on, I’m gonna—!”

            In his rage, the Darkman caught sight of his reflection from the monitor over the control console. Seeing the obscurity his face, he unraveled the bandages to see how badly burnt he was. Needless to say, the result was less than gratifying for him.

            He wept at the control console, unable to even look at his reflection any longer.

            “It’s not so bad,” Clarence less-than-helpfully reassured.

            Of course, it was not what the Darkman wanted to hear.

            Again, he raged, taking it out on the T.A.R.D.I.S. control console.

            “Oh, no,” Clarence cried. “Don’t do that, Mister Darkman! We need that to fly across the ‘finite corilor!”

            The Darkman didn’t listen.

            Sparks flew as he punched into the console with his new superhuman strength.

            The T.A.R.D.I.S. spun off-course, lurching the ship violently out of control.

            Clarence was thrown against the wall, knocked unconscious.

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            Some moments later, he woke back up.

            The chaos he endured from the Darkman’s horrible temper quieted down, yet the console room suffered horribly from it.

            Upon awakening, he saw a handsome-looking group of people led by a man in dark clothing. Clarence wondered if he hit his head harder than he imagined, because these people all appeared as if they were in black-and-white.

            They checked on the still-comatose Mandy.

            The Darkman was nowhere to be seen or found.

            “Take her to the city, so that she can receive treatment,” the group’s leader ordered in regards to Mandy.

            Clarence panicked, watching the handsome group of people carry Mandy out of the T.A.R.D.I.S. “Hey, get back here! Where are all you good-looking people taking my friend?!”

            “It’s O.K., son,” their leader calmed him. “They’re going to get her some help. She’s badly hurt and needs a doctor right away.”

            “I could’ve told you that,” Clarence defiantly stated. “Who are you anyway?”

            “My name’s Walter Smith. And, telling from your unbelievable vessel here, you and your friend aren’t from around these parts.”

            “We’re travelers. We were gonna see all sorts of worlds, before she got hurt.”

            “Well, I assure you that both of you will be back on your journey in no time. There are brilliant surgeons in the city that will restore her – but perhaps not in the way you might hope they will.”

            That last part uneased Clarence. “What do you mean?”

            “They’re not your regular surgeons,” Walter said.

--------------------

            Mandy startled herself awake, gasping.

            Everything was completely dark.

            The last thing she could remember was being caught in that explosion, while she was putting the Loki mask on.

            She felt herself lying comfortably in a bed.

            She touched her head, unsettled to feel how much it was wrapped in dressings.

            “I-Is anyone there?” she asked, her fear rising. “Is anyone there?!”

            “I’m here,” a voice in the darkness spoke.

            It was a woman – presumably a nurse.

            “Oh, thank god,” Mandy muttered. “I don’t know what’s going on. Where am I? I…I can’t see with the bandages blocking my vision.”

            “It’s best to keep your eyes covered until we know they can readjust to the lights,” the nurse informed. “They suffered just as much damage as the rest of your face, but Dr. Douglas was able to repair all of it. He’s the finest surgeon we have.”

            “Reconstructive surgery,” Mandy deduced. “You’ve given me a new face.”

            “Yes,” the nurse confirmed.

            Concern soon outweighed curiosity, once she reminded herself of a certain 8-year-old companion. “Clarence! Is he alright? Where is he?”

            “I’m afraid I don’t know who that is, Miss,” the nurse said.

            “He’s a friend,” Mandy clarified. “He’s a very impressionable little fella. I hope he’s somewhere safe.”

            “I’m sure that he is. But, for now, you must worry only about yourself. Dr. Douglas will determine when you’ll be allowed to take off your bandages and see your new face.”

            Mandy nervously chuckled. “I gotta admit…I’m terrified of what I’ll see. I’ve been used to getting a new one after six times now. But this is the first I’ve gotten one while still being me.”

            The nurse was lost on her meaning, thinking her to be delirious from the medication. “Get some rest,” she suggested.

            Mandy did so, permitting the nurse to leave her room and move out into the hall.

            There, she consulted with the head surgeon, Dr. Stuart Douglas.

            “And how is our patient?” He asked with much exuberance.

            “A little out of it under the high dosage of painkillers we gave her, but otherwise recuperating speedily.”

            “We’ve done it. We’ve conducted rare, experimental treatment on our first patient. The Superior Leader will be pleased. The first of a new breed shall be born in his name!”

"The Missing Face" - Part One

Part One

            “A terrible, terrible thing has happened.”

            That was what Clarence cried to the doctors at the hospital where he brought his Time Lady friend, Mandy.

            The Loki mask.

            The mask that turned Mandy into that green-faced monster Clarence feared.

            She still had it – hiding it the whole time.

            It had started with a gang war Mandy and Clarence happened on while taking a slight detour in their travels. Mandy figured she could do some good and stop the warring gangs, using the Loki mask.

            Then the explosion ensued…and Mandy was caught in its path.

            She tried to put on the mask as it occurred, only managing to get the accursed thing grafted to her face and scorched into uselessness.

            The doctors in the dimension where these events took place were successful in removing the charred mask from Mandy’s face; but the extensiveness of the injury left her without a face, much to the horror of Clarence. She had to be placed on life support.

            He spent days of waiting bedside for her to eventually wake out of her coma.

            The uncertainty of whether or not he would ever return home crept on him. Thoughts of never seeing Jeff or Sumo again brought tears to his eyes more than the thought of Mandy never recovering.

            One day, while drowning out his sorrows over some pudding he got from the cafeteria, he heard commotion from the hallway.

            Wandering out of Mandy’s room, he found a group of doctors carting in a hideously burned victim into the emergency room. “Wow,” he muttered. “I wonder what happened to that guy.”

            Sometime later, he strolled into a room where the doctors treated the burn victim, bandaging him from head to toe.

            He looks like a cool mummy, Clarence thought with great interest.

            Clarence heard the doctors spout a bunch of medical terminology he hardly comprehended – stuff that they did to the man to keep him from feeling any pain, which in turn gave him enhanced strength from adrenaline overload.

            “He’s like a superhero now,” Clarence verbally observed.

            His outburst drew all attention on him.

            “How did this little boy get in here?” the lead surgeon asked. “This is no place for children. Get him out of here.”

            Clarence was promptly removed from the scene by one of the doctors, who was kind enough to treat him to some candy out of the vending machine down the hall before sending him on his way.

            For a while there, Clarence had a little fun.

            Discovering the burned man and the experimental procedure that the doctors subjected him to was like being on an adventure with Mandy again.

            Alas, the Time Lady had yet to awake.

            That night, he said a little prayer for her:

            “Dear Santa Claus. This is Clarence again. We haven’t really talked much since last time. Sorry about that. But I just really want my friend Mandy to wake up again. I know she won’t have a face to talk with…or eat with…or breathe with…or maybe even hear with again. But I just want her to rise and shine again, so we can keep going on our fun adventures. Can ya do that for me, Santa?”

            Shortly thereafter, he heard movement outside.

            “Santa?”

            Through the window, he was surprised to have seen the mummified burn victim fully conscious, wildly scurrying through the halls.

            Clarence stepped out to follow, unintentionally attracting the man’s attention.

            He garbled something to him, yet Clarence could not understand him.

            “You want something to eat? I think I still got some of that candy left.”

            Clarence soon began to get an understanding of what the man tried to tell him, once he saw flashlights in the distance.

            “Oh, no,” Clarence gasped. “They’re coming for you, Darkman.”

            The man gave a baffled grunt, triggered from Clarence’s nickname of him.

            “Darkman,” Clarence repeated. “I don’t know your real name, so I made one up for you. I picked ‘Darkman’ ‘cause I found you here in the dark…and you’re a man.”

            The voices down the hall grew closer.

            “C’mon, Darkman,” Clarence beckoned his new friend. “I know of a way out of this hospital and off world. But you’ve gotta help me back. You gotta help take my friend Mandy with us. Deal?”

            The Darkman vaguely understood the boy, but grunted and nodded regardless.

            He carried the boy’s comatose friend, who appeared to have sustained severe burns herself, with her entire head bandaged like his.

            Clarence neglected to mention that his “way out” was through a heavily occupied first floor. The Darkman’s presence (and appearance) terrified everyone from the front desk to the waiting room. It also didn’t help much that he carried a woman whose limping body seemed dead in his arms.

            Despite not being as covert as he planned, Clarence still got them out.

            They disappeared into the rainy night and through an alleyway where Mandy’s Type-Z T.A.R.D.I.S. was parked. Since Mandy was the only one capable of opening it, Clarence took her drooping right hand and pressed it to the black solid.

            After a long bio-scan process, the alien ship permitted them access.

            Clarence operated the T.A.R.D.I.S. controls between guesswork and what he had seen Mandy do.

            Eventually, the 8-year-old was able to dematerialize from the dimension.

The LEGO Infinite DC Story - Chapter One (Sneak Peek)

Chapter One: Enter the Void!

We built this city
We built this city on rock and roll
Built this city
We built this city on rock and roll!

            When it came to singing and playing the guitar, Si had the best voice and hands in the business. She would be a sensation on stage. Alas, her only audience was a little Mogwai who delighted in listening to her music while munching on a cookie.

            “Say, ‘You don’t know me or recognize my face’…Say, ‘You don’t care who goes to that kind of place’,” Si sang the lyrics to her newest tune, with Gizmo dancing all around the TARDIS console room. “Marconi plays the Mamba, listen to the radio! Don’t you remember? We built this city…we built this city on rock and rolllllllll!!!”

            BOOM!

            Heavy turbulence knocked Si and Gizmo down – not to mention interrupt what was a jazzy music session!

            “The Infinite D.C. – my biggest critic,” Si jested.

            The problem, however, turned out to be more serious than she thought, as soon as the cloister bell tolled. Her TARDIS’s emergency alert system had informed her of strong interference brewing from within the infinite dimensional corridor itself. She saw it on the monitor in the form of a massive electrical ball of energy.

            “Uh-oh!” Gizmo fearfully chirped.

            Si agreed with the little Mogwai’s reaction. “You said it right, lil’ buddy! We need to get out of here now!” She worked like crazy, trying to vwoorp (as her people – the Time Lords – called it when a TARDIS disappears and reappears) out of the dimensional corridor.

            But, no matter how many levers she pulled and buttons she pressed, the electrical interference kept her TARDIS stuck in place.

            By then, it was too late. Her TARDIS was caught in the electric energy ball.

            Si and Gizmo received a huge shock that knocked both of them out.

            When Si woke up, minutes later, she saw an intruder standing right in the middle of her console room. He was dressed-up in white bandages, including those wrapped around his head, somewhat covering his hideous greenish face. On his chest was some sort of device that Si figured to be for some medical purpose.

            “Who are you?” she asked the mummified stranger.

            He said only one word: “Void.”

            Lifting his left arm, she unleashed a bolt of lightning out of his hand that struck Si, paralyzing her with a painful jolt.

            “I am taking your TARDIS to find an old friend,” he declared, “and make him pay for what he has done to me.”

---------------

            Bricksburg was the one realm Neas loved to visit, especially for its coffee. Brewed just the way he liked it, he shared it with his friends, Rania (a regeneration of his Time Lord father, Aznavorian, a.k.a. “The Tinkerer”) and Al-Lee Kirsch (a human from his home planet of Gallifrey).

            As delighted as she was to taste such amazing coffee, Rania couldn’t help but to make a minor complaint: “It sure is ridiculously expensive. Thirty-seven dollars a cup? That’s outrageous!”

            “I know, but it’s so darn tasty,” Neas said, taking a big sip. “Ahhh! It sure is great to finally spend some time with you, Pop.”

            Rania chuckled. “But, Neas, we see each other all the time – or all the times.”

            “Yeah, but I almost never see this version of you.” Neas gestured up and down at her frame.

            “Meh, this regeneration is the same as all my other lives,” Rania said. “Superior intellect, acerbic wit, quick-tempered, strange admiration for wearing tight pants…There’s nothing really new about this version of me – except for maybe how much I love the color green. Before this body, I’d always been a violet type of person.”

            Al-Lee nearly choked on her coffee. “You were a violent person?!”

            “No, no, sweetheart, I was a violet person,” Rania reiterated. “That means I liked the color violet.”

            “Ah, that makes more sen—”

            KA-BLAM!

            All of the sudden, a huge explosion from outside broke through the coffee shop. It was an unusual type of explosion – exploding outward instead of inward. Bricks were detached from the shop’s foundation, floating towards the culprit of the attack: a green-faced stranger wrapped head-to-toe in bandages.

            He possessed some kind of telekinetic power, moving pieces of the coffee shop and every other structure around him, including vehicles, trees, park benches, and even cats! They all levitated over him in a huge cyclone.

            “Aznavorian!” The stranger bellowed. “I know you are in this world! I sense your very presence! Come out and face me, old friend!”

            Neas angrily slammed down his coffee cup. “So much for a pleasant afternoon!”

            He was just about to leap into action with Al-Lee by his side, until three other individuals were way ahead of them.

            A construction worker, a girl dressed in black stylish clothing, and…

            “Is that Batman?!” Al-Lee noticed of the third individual.

            The three brave characters attempted to tackle the telekinetic villain to the ground. Unfortunately, his power was greater than theirs, and he used it to construct a cage around them.

            “Oh, this is so not cool!” Batman griped.

            The bandaged villain grew more relentless. “AZNAVORIAN!!!!!!!!”

            “Why does he keep calling out your father’s name?” Al-Lee asked Neas.

            “I don’t wanna find out,” Neas replied. “Let’s just take him down!”

            Rania watched helplessly as her son and his companion charged out of the wrecked coffee shop and towards the villain. Their effort was just as futile as the three brave souls from before. They were caught in the cyclone that was increasing in size, much to Rania’s horror.

            She couldn’t stand to let this chaos go on any longer.

            “VOID! STOP!”

            Her command was loud enough to carry over all the screaming and crashing. The villain she addressed as “Void” immediately ceased in his telekinetic attack. The cyclone disappeared and everything caught up inside it fell back to the ground, including Neas and Al-Lee…and, of course, the cats (lucky they land on their feet).

            Rania stepped out into the street, boldly staring down Void.

            “I’m who you’re looking for,” she said. “I’m Aznavorian.”

            Void approached her, his hands sparking with electricity. Getting a close look at her beautiful young face, he sensed that she was telling the truth. “You are Aznavorian…but you are not the Aznavorian that I seek. Don’t think for a second that means you are safe. Soon, this form of you will no longer exist, once I find your original!”

            At that declaration, he disappeared into a vortex of his design, leaving the people of Bricksburg unsettled from the frightening experience.

            With Void gone, Neas and Al-Lee rushed over to check on Rania.

            “Pop, are you O.K.?” Neas asked her.

            “Never mind me,” Rania said. “Are you two O.K.?”

            “Nothing a little more of that expensive coffee can’t cure,” Al-Lee joked.

            Neas, on the other hand, took things more seriously. “Pop, who was that guy?”

            “Someone that I thought was lost forever,” Rania answered.

            “Well, it certainly looks like he was found again,” Neas said, surveying the damage that Void brought to the once-orderly city of Bricksburg. In doing so, his attention was drawn to the still-caged heroes that tried to help stop Void.

            “Uh, could you guys maybe help us out here?” the woman in black requested.

            Neas took out his sonic screwdriver and, with the press of a button, reduced the cage Void trapped the three brave souls in to nothing more than a pile of bricks.

            “Hey, that’s a neat trick,” the construction worker said with a smile.

            “I would’ve done it a second ago,” Batman ungratefully moaned. “My utility belt has something just like what that guy has. It just, you know, would’ve taken too long to get it ready.”

            “Who are you guys?” Neas asked the trio of heroes. “I mean, Batman we know, obviously. But who are you two?”

            “My name’s Emmet,” the construction worker eagerly introduced himself before introducing his lady friend in black. “And this is Lucy – my girlfriend.” He appeared especially giddy in adding that other bit of detail.

            “You can call me ‘Wyldstyle’,” Lucy said. “And we’ve got some questions of our own. For starters, why was that mummy after this lady in the tight pants?”

            Realizing the “lady in the tight pants” Wyldstyle spoke of was her, Rania replied, “A long time ago, there was this accident, and…”

            A loud groan interrupted Rania’s story.

            Everyone turned towards the noise to see a teenaged girl that had wandered their way with her hand clasped against the side of her head. Rania, seeming to be the only one to have recognized her, went to the girl’s aid.

            “Si, where did you come from?” she asked her.

            “That dude with the green face brought me here,” Si said. “He took control of my TARDIS and said that he was coming after you.”

            Neas curiously walked up to the girl. “Did you just say, ‘my TARDIS’?”

            “Yeah,” Si confirmed. “My TARDIS…your TARDIS…both our TARDIS.”

            “She’s you, sweetheart,” Rania told Neas. “She’s a future regeneration of you.”

            He looked on the girl in wide-eyed disbelief. “But she’s…a kid!”

            “Gee, thanks,” Si sarcastically said. “Look, we can make fun of my youthful appearance later. That Void dude is going after Pop’s original self, and we need to find him, so we can stop him.”

            “I think I know just how we can track him,” Rania said. “Thank goodness he left us with your TARDIS, Si.”

            “Yeah, why did he even need a TARDIS in the first place, when he can create his own vortexes?” Neas questioned.

NEXT WEEK!