Dianetics Another Day -14
Dianetics Another Day
Chapter 14: In Which Minor Characters are Expediently Set Aside in the Interest of a Faster Resolution
Even the city municipal underground base felt the shock wave, quaking briefly during the initial impact and then plummeting into a darkness that lasted for exactly as long as it took for Iwata to remember where on his body the flashlight was.
What jus' happened?
"I don't know," said Momochi. "There's no internet and the TV signal has disappeared as well."
"My head's full of static," Iwata whined.
"It's kind of like the world ended, huh?" noted Watanabe. "My PSP can't find the internet, either, by the way."
"Oh! I think my cell still has reception," Momochi noted. "I'll see what I can find out."
Before she could say anything, however, Shiouji's pocket began to ring. The room fell into silence as he checked the ID and answered the phone. "Hel-"
"PROFESSOR I WAS CLEANING THE LABS AND THERE WAS A LOUD NOISE AND NOW I CAN'T OPEN THE DOOR AND-"
"Umi. Are you hurt?"
"No..."
"Does the lab seem in any impending danger of collapse?"
"Um... I don't think so...?"
"Then stay there, and save your calls for when your oxygen starts to run out."
"P-Professor! How will I know when the oxygen is--"
He hung up. "My humblest apologies for the irritation. What were you saying, Ms. Momochi?"
"It seems like most of downtown was obliterated," she said.
"So he blew it up," said Watanabe.
Was the doctor... right all along?
"I wouldn't go that far," said Misaki, "but it's becoming increasingly clear what we're going to have to do."
Serious glances were exchanged by all, followed by nods of agreement. Never had the government workers been more of one mind.
Misaki slammed her palm against the table for dramatic effect. "How quickly can we surrender?"
I think I c'n speak for everybody when I say we're willing to forego negotiation.
"And be sure to grovel," add Watanabe. "They like it when you grovel."
Momochi nodded. "I'm already sending off the e-mail."
"Ah, Ms. Momochi too..."
* * *
"What were you doing!?" Excel cried, shaking Elgala far longer and with far more vigour than was probably necessary. "How could you-- you nearly-- and if Tom Cruise wasn't-- we would've-- explosion--"
(Y-you're f-f-foaming a-at the m-m-m-mouth), Elgala thought as best she could while fighting off shaken baby syndrome.
Excel dropped her only to clutch at her own head. "How dare you? How dare you? Lord Il Palazzo will never forgive us now! At least, he won't forgive you! I'll kill you if I have to! Yes, I'll definitely kill you!"
"Not to interrupt," Miwa interrupted, "but there's something you should see."
That robot with her face was at it again, making an announcement over the television. She was saying, "There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission. We control the horizontal and the vertical."
"Your face is on every station," said Miwa. "Fortunate it's so easy to look at."
"Your old governments tried to control the world with money," the transmission went on. "The population thought their governments would protect them. Work a job, get your pay. If a terrorist attacks, the government will help you. It looks perfect on the outside. But we do things differently. We control the world with fear. A little fear will control the minds of the common people. There's no need to waste money on them."
"I never thought I would say this," said Elgala, "But I like you better, Senior."
"She and I aren't so different!" declared Excel. "If Lord Il Palazzo burned that city, then that city deserved to burn!"
Elgala slapped her, hard. "Would you listen to yourself, Senior? ACROSS is about blowing up abandoned buildings, not populated cities!" (Especially while I, Elgala, happen to be in them!)
Excel punched back. "You idiot! You still haven't explained what kind of crazy shenanigans you were up to in the first place!"
"You want to know what I, Elgala, have been doing? Fine! I befriended the hobos down the river! I lived among them as though a member of their tribe, and gained their confidence! And further applying my charm and charisma, I raised a whole army... which that evil robot pod person blew up!"
"Wow," said Excel. "That's really what you've been doing this whole time."
"What did you think I was doing?"
"To be honest, I'd completely forgotten about you."
(I take it back. I like the other one better.)
Tom Cruise stepped up beside them. "I see, you're a telepath. You must have robust thetans."
"And you're amazing to have noticed, Mr. Cruise!" (He's so dreamy. I, Elgala, wonder how much money he is worth.)
Excel averted her eyes from the blinding stupidity. "I WILL KILL BOTH OF YOU."
"Lighten up, Senior! With Tom Cruise, we're getting together a pretty good party! We'll be unstoppable!" (And rich! Very, very, very rich!)
"When I see an evil space alien conquering the world, I know that I'm the only one who can really help," Tom Cruise added.
"I want to help him, too," grumbled Excel.
"You want to help Xenu? Even after he goofed the floof?"
(Senior wants Lord Il Palazzo to goof her floof,) thought Elgala, and the raw correctness of her thought did not stop Excel from punching her in the face.
"This is all well and good," said Tom Cruise. "But more importantly... what do you think of my movies?"
Excel opened her mouth to say the most dismissive and cruel thing which she could think of, but Elgala cut in, "I, Elgala, love them! My only regret is that I haven't watched them enough!"
"You're emitting energy like an exploding volcano," said Tom Cruise, staring deeply into her eyes. "It says... 'Tom Cruise, I need to watch your movies'."
"Oh, Tom Cruise..."
Excel snuck out of the room that she might dispose of the vomit rapidly gathering in her mouth.
Miwa trailed after her. "Really, what is Katie Holmes going to say? I'll have to console her in her grief..."
Excel groaned. "What, not a Top Gun fan?"
"Oh honey, I've see it a million times. I was thinking you and I might spend some quality time together."
"Okay."
Miwa nearly recoiled with the shock. "Excuse me? I mean, I'm delighted, but--"
"Don't look too happy! We're going to surrender to Lord Il Palazzo as soon as possible and get this whole mess sorted out! But something has been wrong since that impostor showed up... so I need to be able to beat the living hell out of her!"
"Ah, I should've known it was something like that... well, then. Let's do it."
* * *
There is a men's room stall in the University of Illinois which tells something of an untruth; as Excel quickly discovered, Miwa Shiouji did not go down easily. No, she handled herself amazingly well for a woman whose spine looked as though it might snap at any minute. From the moment she put on her fighting gloves, Miwa was a typhoon of relentless blows that Excel could only ineffectually block. She flew like a Butterfree and stung like a Beedril, and she had Excel on the defensive the moment they locked eyes.
"Do you want to train me or kill me!?" Excel yelped.
"If you can complain, you can fight!" Miwa paused in her attack, but only to laugh. "You'll need to be a lot stronger than me if you want to win!"
Excel felt like she was in Fight Club; specifically, the parts with the nihilism and getting the crap kicked out of her. It didn't help that all the Scientologists were watching.
"I know you've transformed before," Miwa went on. "You can do it again. You're the true reincarnation of L. Ron Hubbard!"
Now the Scientologists were cheering, and it was for their benefit that Miwa said such things, not Excel's. The sound barely registered to Excel's punch-drunk brain, anyway. She did find herself seriously considering the possibility, or at least seriously refuting it. Even if she believed in the strange world of the Scientologists (and she didn't, because it was all quite silly), she knew she wasn't any reincarnation of any mediocre science fiction writers...
No, definitely not. She couldn't explain how she knew, but Excel could tell that Miwa was lying, and as soon as she accepted her instinct on the matter, she could see the lies wrapping around the woman like heavy chains. Perhaps it was simply the amount of blows she'd taken to the head, but Excel could not help but think how ludicrous it was that she could be losing to a woman carrying such a heavy burden. This time, swinging her weapon with that very thought in mind, Excel managed to knock Miwa back.
"Listen to yourself, you liar, petty con, counterfeit faker! You haven't said a truthful thing since I got on this stupid ship!" Excel knew with a sudden clarity that she was right, and that she could win this, perhaps even commandeer this vessel and take it back to Lord Il Palazzo as a trophy. She pointed the Thetanator with a note of triumph. "Your pants, good madam, are blazing!"
Miwa pulled herself back into a fighting stance. "I'm not wearing pants."
"Then I hope you didn't leave them anywhere flammable, because you're a lie-faced lying liar!"
"Honestly, dear, just because you don't want to hear something doesn't make it untrue. If you're going to blame someone for your troubles, maybe you should try blaming Xenu."
"OBJECTION!"
The Thetanator began to glow, and a melodic, digital theme wafted onto the Free Winds as Excel began her transformation. As though trying to reinstate a dignity lost during the last sequence, Excel's new henshin sequence provided her a blue suit, red tie, and a little gold badge that glimmered in the light just so. Ethereal letters appeared in the mist:
[TODAY'S COSTUME PROVIDED BY CAPCOM]
No one threw anything this time. They watched in silent awe as a reborn Excel continued to point.
"If you're going to refer to a person, do it by his proper name! And it's not Xenu or Xangu or Xena... but Lord Il Palazzo!" she cried.
"I knew you had it in you," Miwa said finally. "But it's not enough just to stand there shouting. If you think I'm lying about your Lord Il Palazzo, let's see some evide--"
She didn't get to finish. Excel smashed her straight in the Psyche-lock. "Just gotta break these open, right?"
Miwa scrambled away indignantly. "You're supposed to press or present--"
Excel gave it another good thwack. "Spill it!"
The lock shattered, and Miwa blurted, "L. Ron was a robot. We fabricated his whole existence. Even his books were generated by computer."
"So I'm the reincarnation of a robot?"
"There's a robot that's the reincarnation of you, after all." Miwa straightened herself up, brushing the intangible lock shards from her dress. "But no, you're not. I think you knew that all along."
Excel peered around. "You're lucky these weird celebrities don't speak Japanese."
"They wouldn't be here if they could."
"Did you really recruit all of them?"
"I told you, my husband and I founded Scientology." She tried to punch Excel in the head, but Excel zipped around her and smashed another lock.
"You keep talking about your husband. Not that I care, but what happened to him?"
Miwa stumbled, trying to regain her balance. "You don't actually expect me to-" SMASH. "-you're looking at him."
Excel peered at the Scientologists. "John Travolta?"
"No. Have you ever heard the phrase, 'It's a trap'?"
"Well there was this one time when we were 'camping' out in the woods, and we saw a nice piece of cheese placed within a rim of sharp metal, and immediate discussion began regarding the extraction of said..." Excel paled as realization dawned. "Hold on... are you saying...?"
"Yes."
"So you're a..."
"Yes."
"Who has a..."
"Yes."
Excel backed away slowly. "So uh... where's your wife, then?"
Miwa's stare was intensely sorrowful, but Excel was too busy being disturbed by her creepy trapitude to notice. "Isn't it obvious?"
"No, not particularly."
"Il Palazzo happened to her."
Excel reddened with instant jealousy. "W-well... you can't blame an able-bodied, heterosexual woman for preferring Lord Il Palazzo, can you?"
"Rather, I would say that he killed her."
Excel could see that this was not a lie, and though it startled her immensely, she adapted quickly and felt no pity. "Well she deserved it, didn't she? Only a fool would stand against Lord Il Palazzo! If you had any sense, you'd take a lesson from it rather than prancing around in a... is that a suit or something, seriously? Are you supposed to be Mrs. Robinson or Mrs. Doubtfire?"
"What was I supposed to do? A boy needs his mother."
"Maybe, but somehow this doesn't seem like the first option a normal person would've taken..."
"Do you want to know what happened? Do you want to know what your Il Palazzo did to her very soul--"
Excel had found the opportunity ripe to kick Miwa while she was down, and did did just that. "Nope!"
But Miwa was tough, and she chuckled as blood dripped from her mouth. "You're the most deluded person I've ever met, and I'm a Scientologist. Say whatever you want about me, but at least I'm not an ACROSS member."
"I might not be anymore, either!" Excel shouted, and the admission hurt much less than she thought it would, if only because she accompanied it with another good kick to Miwa's ribs. "nd that's why you're going to stop trying to 'train' me with all this meaningless exposition! It's time you took me to Lord Il Palazzo!"
Chapter 14: In Which Minor Characters are Expediently Set Aside in the Interest of a Faster Resolution
Even the city municipal underground base felt the shock wave, quaking briefly during the initial impact and then plummeting into a darkness that lasted for exactly as long as it took for Iwata to remember where on his body the flashlight was.
What jus' happened?
"I don't know," said Momochi. "There's no internet and the TV signal has disappeared as well."
"My head's full of static," Iwata whined.
"It's kind of like the world ended, huh?" noted Watanabe. "My PSP can't find the internet, either, by the way."
"Oh! I think my cell still has reception," Momochi noted. "I'll see what I can find out."
Before she could say anything, however, Shiouji's pocket began to ring. The room fell into silence as he checked the ID and answered the phone. "Hel-"
"PROFESSOR I WAS CLEANING THE LABS AND THERE WAS A LOUD NOISE AND NOW I CAN'T OPEN THE DOOR AND-"
"Umi. Are you hurt?"
"No..."
"Does the lab seem in any impending danger of collapse?"
"Um... I don't think so...?"
"Then stay there, and save your calls for when your oxygen starts to run out."
"P-Professor! How will I know when the oxygen is--"
He hung up. "My humblest apologies for the irritation. What were you saying, Ms. Momochi?"
"It seems like most of downtown was obliterated," she said.
"So he blew it up," said Watanabe.
Was the doctor... right all along?
"I wouldn't go that far," said Misaki, "but it's becoming increasingly clear what we're going to have to do."
Serious glances were exchanged by all, followed by nods of agreement. Never had the government workers been more of one mind.
Misaki slammed her palm against the table for dramatic effect. "How quickly can we surrender?"
I think I c'n speak for everybody when I say we're willing to forego negotiation.
"And be sure to grovel," add Watanabe. "They like it when you grovel."
Momochi nodded. "I'm already sending off the e-mail."
"Ah, Ms. Momochi too..."
* * *
"What were you doing!?" Excel cried, shaking Elgala far longer and with far more vigour than was probably necessary. "How could you-- you nearly-- and if Tom Cruise wasn't-- we would've-- explosion--"
(Y-you're f-f-foaming a-at the m-m-m-mouth), Elgala thought as best she could while fighting off shaken baby syndrome.
Excel dropped her only to clutch at her own head. "How dare you? How dare you? Lord Il Palazzo will never forgive us now! At least, he won't forgive you! I'll kill you if I have to! Yes, I'll definitely kill you!"
"Not to interrupt," Miwa interrupted, "but there's something you should see."
That robot with her face was at it again, making an announcement over the television. She was saying, "There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission. We control the horizontal and the vertical."
"Your face is on every station," said Miwa. "Fortunate it's so easy to look at."
"Your old governments tried to control the world with money," the transmission went on. "The population thought their governments would protect them. Work a job, get your pay. If a terrorist attacks, the government will help you. It looks perfect on the outside. But we do things differently. We control the world with fear. A little fear will control the minds of the common people. There's no need to waste money on them."
"I never thought I would say this," said Elgala, "But I like you better, Senior."
"She and I aren't so different!" declared Excel. "If Lord Il Palazzo burned that city, then that city deserved to burn!"
Elgala slapped her, hard. "Would you listen to yourself, Senior? ACROSS is about blowing up abandoned buildings, not populated cities!" (Especially while I, Elgala, happen to be in them!)
Excel punched back. "You idiot! You still haven't explained what kind of crazy shenanigans you were up to in the first place!"
"You want to know what I, Elgala, have been doing? Fine! I befriended the hobos down the river! I lived among them as though a member of their tribe, and gained their confidence! And further applying my charm and charisma, I raised a whole army... which that evil robot pod person blew up!"
"Wow," said Excel. "That's really what you've been doing this whole time."
"What did you think I was doing?"
"To be honest, I'd completely forgotten about you."
(I take it back. I like the other one better.)
Tom Cruise stepped up beside them. "I see, you're a telepath. You must have robust thetans."
"And you're amazing to have noticed, Mr. Cruise!" (He's so dreamy. I, Elgala, wonder how much money he is worth.)
Excel averted her eyes from the blinding stupidity. "I WILL KILL BOTH OF YOU."
"Lighten up, Senior! With Tom Cruise, we're getting together a pretty good party! We'll be unstoppable!" (And rich! Very, very, very rich!)
"When I see an evil space alien conquering the world, I know that I'm the only one who can really help," Tom Cruise added.
"I want to help him, too," grumbled Excel.
"You want to help Xenu? Even after he goofed the floof?"
(Senior wants Lord Il Palazzo to goof her floof,) thought Elgala, and the raw correctness of her thought did not stop Excel from punching her in the face.
"This is all well and good," said Tom Cruise. "But more importantly... what do you think of my movies?"
Excel opened her mouth to say the most dismissive and cruel thing which she could think of, but Elgala cut in, "I, Elgala, love them! My only regret is that I haven't watched them enough!"
"You're emitting energy like an exploding volcano," said Tom Cruise, staring deeply into her eyes. "It says... 'Tom Cruise, I need to watch your movies'."
"Oh, Tom Cruise..."
Excel snuck out of the room that she might dispose of the vomit rapidly gathering in her mouth.
Miwa trailed after her. "Really, what is Katie Holmes going to say? I'll have to console her in her grief..."
Excel groaned. "What, not a Top Gun fan?"
"Oh honey, I've see it a million times. I was thinking you and I might spend some quality time together."
"Okay."
Miwa nearly recoiled with the shock. "Excuse me? I mean, I'm delighted, but--"
"Don't look too happy! We're going to surrender to Lord Il Palazzo as soon as possible and get this whole mess sorted out! But something has been wrong since that impostor showed up... so I need to be able to beat the living hell out of her!"
"Ah, I should've known it was something like that... well, then. Let's do it."
* * *
There is a men's room stall in the University of Illinois which tells something of an untruth; as Excel quickly discovered, Miwa Shiouji did not go down easily. No, she handled herself amazingly well for a woman whose spine looked as though it might snap at any minute. From the moment she put on her fighting gloves, Miwa was a typhoon of relentless blows that Excel could only ineffectually block. She flew like a Butterfree and stung like a Beedril, and she had Excel on the defensive the moment they locked eyes.
"Do you want to train me or kill me!?" Excel yelped.
"If you can complain, you can fight!" Miwa paused in her attack, but only to laugh. "You'll need to be a lot stronger than me if you want to win!"
Excel felt like she was in Fight Club; specifically, the parts with the nihilism and getting the crap kicked out of her. It didn't help that all the Scientologists were watching.
"I know you've transformed before," Miwa went on. "You can do it again. You're the true reincarnation of L. Ron Hubbard!"
Now the Scientologists were cheering, and it was for their benefit that Miwa said such things, not Excel's. The sound barely registered to Excel's punch-drunk brain, anyway. She did find herself seriously considering the possibility, or at least seriously refuting it. Even if she believed in the strange world of the Scientologists (and she didn't, because it was all quite silly), she knew she wasn't any reincarnation of any mediocre science fiction writers...
No, definitely not. She couldn't explain how she knew, but Excel could tell that Miwa was lying, and as soon as she accepted her instinct on the matter, she could see the lies wrapping around the woman like heavy chains. Perhaps it was simply the amount of blows she'd taken to the head, but Excel could not help but think how ludicrous it was that she could be losing to a woman carrying such a heavy burden. This time, swinging her weapon with that very thought in mind, Excel managed to knock Miwa back.
"Listen to yourself, you liar, petty con, counterfeit faker! You haven't said a truthful thing since I got on this stupid ship!" Excel knew with a sudden clarity that she was right, and that she could win this, perhaps even commandeer this vessel and take it back to Lord Il Palazzo as a trophy. She pointed the Thetanator with a note of triumph. "Your pants, good madam, are blazing!"
Miwa pulled herself back into a fighting stance. "I'm not wearing pants."
"Then I hope you didn't leave them anywhere flammable, because you're a lie-faced lying liar!"
"Honestly, dear, just because you don't want to hear something doesn't make it untrue. If you're going to blame someone for your troubles, maybe you should try blaming Xenu."
"OBJECTION!"
The Thetanator began to glow, and a melodic, digital theme wafted onto the Free Winds as Excel began her transformation. As though trying to reinstate a dignity lost during the last sequence, Excel's new henshin sequence provided her a blue suit, red tie, and a little gold badge that glimmered in the light just so. Ethereal letters appeared in the mist:
[TODAY'S COSTUME PROVIDED BY CAPCOM]
No one threw anything this time. They watched in silent awe as a reborn Excel continued to point.
"If you're going to refer to a person, do it by his proper name! And it's not Xenu or Xangu or Xena... but Lord Il Palazzo!" she cried.
"I knew you had it in you," Miwa said finally. "But it's not enough just to stand there shouting. If you think I'm lying about your Lord Il Palazzo, let's see some evide--"
She didn't get to finish. Excel smashed her straight in the Psyche-lock. "Just gotta break these open, right?"
Miwa scrambled away indignantly. "You're supposed to press or present--"
Excel gave it another good thwack. "Spill it!"
The lock shattered, and Miwa blurted, "L. Ron was a robot. We fabricated his whole existence. Even his books were generated by computer."
"So I'm the reincarnation of a robot?"
"There's a robot that's the reincarnation of you, after all." Miwa straightened herself up, brushing the intangible lock shards from her dress. "But no, you're not. I think you knew that all along."
Excel peered around. "You're lucky these weird celebrities don't speak Japanese."
"They wouldn't be here if they could."
"Did you really recruit all of them?"
"I told you, my husband and I founded Scientology." She tried to punch Excel in the head, but Excel zipped around her and smashed another lock.
"You keep talking about your husband. Not that I care, but what happened to him?"
Miwa stumbled, trying to regain her balance. "You don't actually expect me to-" SMASH. "-you're looking at him."
Excel peered at the Scientologists. "John Travolta?"
"No. Have you ever heard the phrase, 'It's a trap'?"
"Well there was this one time when we were 'camping' out in the woods, and we saw a nice piece of cheese placed within a rim of sharp metal, and immediate discussion began regarding the extraction of said..." Excel paled as realization dawned. "Hold on... are you saying...?"
"Yes."
"So you're a..."
"Yes."
"Who has a..."
"Yes."
Excel backed away slowly. "So uh... where's your wife, then?"
Miwa's stare was intensely sorrowful, but Excel was too busy being disturbed by her creepy trapitude to notice. "Isn't it obvious?"
"No, not particularly."
"Il Palazzo happened to her."
Excel reddened with instant jealousy. "W-well... you can't blame an able-bodied, heterosexual woman for preferring Lord Il Palazzo, can you?"
"Rather, I would say that he killed her."
Excel could see that this was not a lie, and though it startled her immensely, she adapted quickly and felt no pity. "Well she deserved it, didn't she? Only a fool would stand against Lord Il Palazzo! If you had any sense, you'd take a lesson from it rather than prancing around in a... is that a suit or something, seriously? Are you supposed to be Mrs. Robinson or Mrs. Doubtfire?"
"What was I supposed to do? A boy needs his mother."
"Maybe, but somehow this doesn't seem like the first option a normal person would've taken..."
"Do you want to know what happened? Do you want to know what your Il Palazzo did to her very soul--"
Excel had found the opportunity ripe to kick Miwa while she was down, and did did just that. "Nope!"
But Miwa was tough, and she chuckled as blood dripped from her mouth. "You're the most deluded person I've ever met, and I'm a Scientologist. Say whatever you want about me, but at least I'm not an ACROSS member."
"I might not be anymore, either!" Excel shouted, and the admission hurt much less than she thought it would, if only because she accompanied it with another good kick to Miwa's ribs. "nd that's why you're going to stop trying to 'train' me with all this meaningless exposition! It's time you took me to Lord Il Palazzo!"