[ Contents | 7. Lover and Servant | 8. Escape! | 9. Flatlined Eightfold ]

Yamucha's Student

By Dragoness Eclectic

Chapter 8. Escape!

"Well?" asked Puar anxiously as the little goddesses looked in all directions.

"There's no one coming," they chorused.

"Good! Get close to my feet, but not too close..." Puar gritted her teeth, and changed--

CRACK! The strong plexiglass, built to hold two fairy princesses, was not strong enough to hold a grizzly bear. Puar the Bear braced her back against the tiny chamber and split it apart as she grew.

A guard rushed in, unslinging a carbine as he ran--and skidded to a stop, his arms flailing. He gaped at the great brown bear half-filling the room, too shocked to speak.

With a growl, Puar the Bear swatted him, flinging the hapless guard across the room. He hit the unpainted cinderblock wall with a thud and slid to the floor, quite unconscious. Puar charged through the door; with a squeal, the two goddesses bounded up and landed in her fur, where they clung for dear life.

Another guard made the mistake of standing in Puar's way; the bear simply slammed into him with one shoulder and knocked him sprawling, then wheeled and swatted two more who ran up behind her.

Puar the Bear blinked and looked, turning her big bear head to either side. No one else; just three unconscious guards and the two goddesses. She padded down the corridor, looking this way and that. Unpainted concrete floors, cinderblock walls, bare pipes, electrical conduits and plain grey utility doors marked with stenciled numbers met her eyes. Where to hide?

"A-ha!" growled the bear as she reached up and hooked her claws into a ventilation grill, prying it loose. Puar the bear rippled and changed, becoming a plump blue and white Persian cat once again.

"We've got to hide," she squeaked, pointing at the now-open air vent. She floated up to it and peered in. "It looks safe enough."

The twin kami floated up beside her, carrying the grill. They helped Puar pull the cover back in place behind them, and then the three of them scurried down the dark air duct as angry shouts sounded nearby, and feet pounded up the corridor outside.

"WHAT?? Repeat that!" screamed an incredulous Tao Pie Pie at the cringing soldier.

"Th-They're gone, sir! The goddesses and the cat have escaped!" the man said, trembling.

Cold cybernetic eyes focussed on the underling. "What is being done about it?" the assassin snapped, dangerously quiet.

The grey-uniformed soldier gulped nervously, still holding his salute. "Ah, Lieutenant Grey has formed search parties and is combing that level of the base. It's sealed off; they can't possibly get away. The lieutenant says he should have them any moment." The soldier's voice was hopeful.

"So... things are well in hand." Tao Pie Pie smiled, a cold, hard, narrow smile. "Now that you've reported to me, you're not really needed, are you?"

The soldier's eyes widened in confusion. "Well, uh, I'm supposed to report back and join in the sear---- UNHHH!"

The soldier's eyes widened further as the long knife blade entered his chest just under the breastbone, angled upward and sliced his heart in two before emerging from his back beside the shoulder blade. Tao Pie Pie held him up, watching the surprise and shock in the man's face, savoring the moment as the life left him. Only then did he withdraw the blade, letting the corpse slump to the floor.

"You, there," Tao Pie Pie said to the now-trembling guard at the door. "Clean up this mess." With that, he turned on his heel and headed for the Command Center.

"Ah-choo!" Puar sneezed; the air ducts were full of dust.

"Shhhhhhh!" hissed the scared little goddesses. "Ah-choo!" "Ah-choo!" They both sneezed themselves.

"If we keep sneezing like this, someone will hear us. We have to get out of here," worried Puar. "We have to find Yamucha and Saisei and free them--they could fight all these soldiers!"

The goddesses disagreed. "We must go outside," they chorused, "where we can see the sun and the stars, and then we will call Mothra to rescue us."

"We could do both," squeaked Puar.

The goddesses looked thoughtful, and bent their heads together, whispering. "Very well," they said in that sing-song chorus. "Do you know where to look for them?"

Puar's face fell. "Uh, no. Do you know which way is outside?"

The twin kami looked at each other in dismay. "No, we are lost. But..." They whispered together a bit more. "go far enough up and there must be a roof and sky."

Puar nodded. "That's right! We'll go up, and look in each room as we pass for Yamucha and Saisei." Puar flicked the dust out of her tail and floated down the duct, the little goddesses following.

Tao Pie Pie frowned as he looked over the scene of the escape. He turned to Lieutenant Grey. "Well?"

"The entire level is sealed off; you and my messenger are the only ones to enter or leave since the escape was detected, sir!" Grey, an average-looking man in his mid-thirties, snapped off a salute. "My search parties are combing Level D room by room, and sealing all corridors that have already been searched. We've already secured the armoury and the main machine shop. It's only a matter of time, sir; we'll flush them out."

Tao Pie Pie frowned in disgust, and strode a short distance down the corridor to stare at the twisted corner of a ventilation grill. "Did you seal off the air ducts, and are you searching them?"

The officer paled. "N-no, sir. We didn't think that---"

"You didn't think, period! Do you even know what you are trying to recapture? Two ONE-FOOT-TALL women and a CAT, you fool, AND YOU DIDN'T EVEN THINK OF THE AIR DUCTS??" In the blink of an eye, the knife blade snapped out of Tao Pie Pie's cyberhand and slashed up and across the hapless lieutenant's throat. Red splashed across the wall and floor as he collapsed, gurgling his last breath through his own blood.

"There is no place for idiocy in the Dark Ribbon Army," Tao Pie Pie hissed. He turned to the now-pale sergeant who had just reported. "You've just been promoted. Seal the ducts, and prepare to fumigate this level. The twins and that cat will be 'neutralized' when they are dead."

When Tao Pie Pie returned to his quarters many levels above, he was still scowling. His scowl turned to a mere frown as he regarded young Mist, who was laboriously crawling across the floor and mopping it with a damp rag.

"I'll have to use you," Pie Pie said as he reached down and lightly touched the three nerve clusters. Mist almost collapsed in relief as the pain faded away, and she could unknot her cramped legs.

"Get into your uniform and take over from those idiots on Level D. They've managed to let the twin kami and that damn cat escape, and they'll never find them in the garages without help; they haven't a brain among them. I don't have time for this, or I'd do it myself; you might be of some trivial use here," Pie Pie sneered.

Mist got to her feet and bowed low. "Yes, master. It shall be as you command."

"Of course it will." Tao Pie Pie nodded and entered his office; he had a battle plan to design, and the sooner Dark had it, the better.

It wasn't until they reached the junction of the vertical air shaft and the ducts for the next level that Puar and the twin goddesses again disagreed. They debated politely, but persistantly; the goddesses wanted to follow the shaft all the way up, and Puar wanted to check the rooms on each level.

"We agreed to move upward toward roof and sky, and check any rooms on the way," noted the goddesses. "Only rooms that this shaft opens on are 'on the way'."

Puar cried in dismay, "But there are no rooms off the shaft; only the horizontal ducts go to the rooms! I'll never find Yamucha and Saisei!"

"Please!" the tiny twins begged. "We must see the sky, and call Mothra. After that, we will help you find your friends, we promise!"

"Oh, all right," Puar said. She couldn't help looking wistfully down the air duct as they climbed, though.

It wasn't long before they floated up to the roof ventilator; Puar dislodged it with a brief change of form, and they were out.

"Oh!" The twins said as they looked out across the hilly island. They turned, this way and that, looked at the sun, and finally turned to the northeast. Holding hands, the tiny goddesses began to sing.

Two floors down from Soliere's lab, Haze shoved Saisei into a small cell and started to close the barred door. He stopped abruptly, an evil smile crossing his normally surly face.

"Hey, I bet the doc has the harness rigged so you can't escape or fight back, don't he?" The smile was turning to a wicked grin. "Bet you can't even fight back against a one-armed man," Haze taunted as Saisei glanced involuntarily at Haze's broken arm in its sling.

Uh-oh, thought Saisei. This will be bad--

Haze's one good arm snapped forward, and Saisei reflexively tried to block it--and screamed. His arm suddenly felt like it had been crushed to pulp and powder as its pain nerves triggered.

Haze punched him in the solar plexis, smirking as Saisei hunched over double. "Hey, I was right! Looks like it's payback time, pretty boy!"

Saisei collapsed as Haze tripped him, and then kicked him hard between the legs. The pain doubled him up, retching--

Haze laughed. "Oh, this is too easy!" He brutally stomped on Saisei's outspread left hand, grinding the bones under his bootheel, and then kicked him in the stomach. He laughed again at Saisei's groans, and waited--

As soon as Saisei started to recover, Haze kicked him in the groin again, licking his lips as the young man held himself and groaned in pain. "I want to hear you scream like a girl again," Haze snarled. "And I know how to make you cry like a baby!"

Haze reached down and grabbed the golden, many-branched metal tiara circling Saisei's head and gave it a good shake.

Saisei screamed, a high-pitched sound like that of a woman--or a man tortured to death. The screaming went on and on, and Saisei began to convulse, flecks of foam dotting his lips. Haze stepped back, appalled as the young man's back arched, lifting him off the floor except for his head and heels. Saisei's eyes stared up, unfocussed, at nothing; blood trickled out of his mouth--and the screaming never stopped.

Haze backed quickly out of the cell and slammed the door; the doctor had ordered him to keep this subject in good health, and if anyone knew Haze was responsible for... whatever was happening to the kid, he'd be lucky to be just taken out and shot. More likely, he'd be the doc's next experiment! If he left quickly, by the time someone checked on the kid, they'd probably figure he'd triggered the harness himself. Haze fled the cell block, forgetting in his haste to lock the cell block door.

There are ways the brain can shut out physical pain, separate mind and body when the agony becomes too great to endure. Unfortunately for Saisei, the source of his all-consuming agony was within his brain; he could not shut it out, he could not deny it. Not even madness could free him from his torment; he could only endure it, or die--and no mortal brain could endure such unending agony.

The control harness was not intended to kill its subject, merely lash its pain centers so severely that the subject would never, ever think of tampering with the harness again--so that the subject would do anything, would commit the most unspeakable atrocities, would permit the most obscene degradation, anything at all rather than permit the harness to be touched.

Unfortunately Doctor Soliere had been in a hurry, and had forgotten to reset the intensity of the punishment program, nor had he changed the duration, originally intended for the dull nervous systems of giant reptilian monsters. It did, however, have one failsafe built-in.

The continual stimulation of the pain centers of Saisei's brain wreaked havoc with his neurochemistry--as the nerves fired continuously, with no chance to rest, the supply of neurotransmitters became exhausted, and the young man's brain simply shut down.

The neural sensors in the control harness detected the cessation of neural activity and triggered the failsafe, aborting the punishment program... too late. Saisei flatlined; without brain function, his breathing stopped. His heart staggered on for only a few moments longer.

Saisei was dead.

[ Contents | 7. Lover and Servant | 8. Escape! | 9. Flatlined Eightfold ]

Disclaimer: See Credits.

Copyright 2001 by Dragoness Eclectic