erinm_4600
in
12to32
Fic: We Tell This Story Different in the Zone
Title: We Tell This Story Different in the Zone
Author: Erin (erinm_4600)
Characters, Pairing: Cain and mea faceless narrator (mentions of everyone)
Rating: PG with snark
Summary: I needed a prompt to get Steve moving. oddsbobs suggested Goldilocks and the Three Bears with Cain's hat. Steve decided to make fun of the suit, instead. The rest, I have no excuse for...
Warning: post-series *Written for Round 11 of prompt-in-a-box. Prompt #12: "I don't want to talk about it." CRACK, plain and simple. Idea is from oddsbobs and blade_girl liked it!
Disclaimer: The original characters belong to L. Frank Baum and their respective actors. The current characters belong to Sci-Fi, the movie folks and their respective actors. The OCs are mine.
Once upon a time in the Outer Zone, there lived a man with whiteish-blonde hair named Wyatt Cain. He was once a Tin Man, which is something like a policeman, and fought against an evil witch. As punishment, the witch sent her guards to lock Wyatt up in a suit made of iron.
When the men arrived, they had three suits.
"Wait, what?" Cain interrupted.
"Be quiet. I'm telling a story here."
"But there weren't three suits. There was only one suit."
"You're throwin' off my groove. Shut the yap, Tin Man. And don't look at me like that. I'm not scared of you. As I was saying..."
When the Longcoats arrived, they had three suits. When they put Cain into the first suit, they found it was far too large. It was so large, three more people could have been shoved in there with Cain, which would have given him company, but still been awkward, probably. The next suit was far too small; really, Cain couldn't even get into the thing comfortably. In fact, he kinda looked like Alice when she was sticking out of the house.
"Who's Alice?" Cain asked.
"She's from a book. She ate a piece of cake and grew really big. In fact, the moral in that part of her story kinda fits the moral to this one."
"I didn’t eat cake. I was beat up by Zero. Then he beat up my wife and my son. How's that fit into your moral?"
"..."
The last suit, however, was just the right size for Cain. The men put him inside the suit and closed it up tight. And, there, Cain sat for eight whole years.
"Annuals," Cain corrected.
"Years."
"This isn't the Other Side, this is the Zone. They're annuals."
"Whatever."
Before Cain knew it, he was being let out of the suit by a girl with a stick and a man with a zipper on his head. Cain wanted to find the men who put him in the suit, but the girl managed to guilt him into helping her find her parents.
"She did not guilt me into anything. I agreed to lead her through the fields of the Papay so that she wouldn’t get herself eaten."
"Uh huh."
"Look, the kid had no clue where she was, the headcase wasn't much more helpful and I couldn't just let her go alone."
"I said nothing."
"Will you just get this over with," Cain grumbled.
"Keep up the 'tude and we'll go back and cover the choosing of the hat and the pants... That's what I thought."
Cain and the man with the zipper on his head - Glitch - walked with the girl, DG, through the fields of the Papay. Cain was trying to make sure they didn't attract attention, while Glitch was trying to remember why the dead trees were dead, and why Cain was worried about the land.
DG saw a weird, dark blue mass in one of the trees, and it was huge. As they walked a little further, she spotted a small, white mass-
"No, she didn't."
-but she wasn't impressed. A few rows of trees along, DG saw a brilliant, blue and white mass. It looked like cotton candy and was making an odd sound, like someone crying. DG moved closer and Cain got all over-protective and pulled her back. Again, DG guilted Cain into getting her way and he cut at the strands.
"Hey, do you find it at all like foreshadowing, they way DG hears Raw when you and Glitch don't?"
"What?" Cain asked, leaning back with a frown.
"Never mind."
They managed to free Raw, a Viewer, and were found out by the Papay. Raw took off running, throwing himself off a cliff - without any kind of safety harness, might I add - and was followed by Cain, pushing DG and Glitch off the same cliff.
"I particularly like how you took off your hat before you jumped. And that 'on the count of three'... it's like a Monty Python joke in reverse."
"A what?"
"'One, two, five'... Never mind."
"Are you gonna go through the entire week?" Cain huffed.
"Maybe..."
So, the group managed to find their way to a place called Milltown, where all the people were actually robots and DG found her missing parents. She also found out that they weren't her parents. And they were robots.
"Y'know, that poor girl did have a lot to take in. And she handled it pretty well, all things considered. I'd have probably given up the second the twister showed up in the cornfield. Or just called in sick when the alarm didn't go off. Would have kept her from getting the speeding ticket, too."
"What ticket?" Cain asked with a snap.
"You were still in the suit. Don't worry about it."
Our fearless team was directed to Central City, in search of a wizardy-type, known as the Mystic Man. Cain, it turned out, knew who he was and, conveniently, Zero showed up. Instead of Cain taking his revenge, of course, he grabbed DG, Glitch and Raw and bolted.
"What's up with that, Tin Man?"
"I don't want to talk about it," Cain mumbled.
"Decided revenge wasn't really you? Remembered that you fired all your bullets at the Papay?"
"I said I didn't want to talk about it," Cain replied again, through gritted teeth.
"Again with that face. What is that?"
"Y'know, we tell this story different in the Zone."
"Really?"
"Yep," Cain nodded. "Ours has beds and porridge and bears."
"Oh my..."
"Funny. Can we just get this over with?"
"You don't have to be here, Cain."
So the gang made it to Central City; Cain manhandled Roth- DeMilo and they snuck into the Sin District. Cain left DG to Glitch and Raw's supervision and headed off to find Zero, who he seemed to think made it back to the City before they did, when Zero was still in Milltown when they left.
"He had a truck."
"Really, did they load the horses in the back of the truck with the chainsaws?"
"Anyway..."
"Right."
DG, Glitch and Raw headed in to Twister to see the Mystic Man while Cain headed off to some house of ill repute to find Zero and get his revenge. At the same time, someone told Zero that DG was at Twister and I'm beginning to think it might have been DeMilo, but that's another story for another time.
As soon as Cain found out where Zero went, he headed for Twister and caught up to the guards outside of the Mystic Man's room. Then, he proceeded to stare at DG for a good minute in her dress before snapping back to reality and moving into the room.
"Thoughts on that one, Cain?"
"Nope," Cain said simply.
"You sure? 'cause I've got a list of instances here..."
"I'm sure," Cain growled.
"Oookay..."
Knowing Zero was at the end of the hall, Cain ushered DG to hurry up and get the information she needed about her mother while Glitch and Cain watched the door. The Mystic Man made a comment about DG's blue eyes and her mother's purple eyes-
"Lavender eyes."
"Lavender is purple. Duh. Shut up."
-and Glitch and Cain were quickly caught up on the situation. As Zero got closer, Cain ordered DG, Raw and the Mystic Man out of the room, but the Mystic Man stayed and guilted Cain into staying with DG. Either because he knew something about Cain's intended revenge or something more, we'll never know.
"It wasn't guilt," Cain stated sharply.
"Uh huh."
"It was an order."
"Thought you didn't want to talk about it."
Managing to get down to the street while the Mystic Man caused a diversion, Cain spotted the Longcoats' truck. It was far too large for the four of them to take and slip out of the city unnoticed. He considered stopping the car coming around the corner, but it only seemed large enough to hold two people, and he wasn't about to put anyone on a lap.
"I heard that."
"Heard what?"
Suddenly, Cain spotted DeMilo's truck. If they were able to get into the city unobserved, they could surely get out the same way. So Cain manhandled DeMilo, again-
"You really need to work on the rage, Cain."
-and loaded Raw and Glitch in the back. The group took off, stranding DeMilo in the Sin District and headed for the Northern Island, where the Mystic Man had indicated DG's mother was. Driving into a blizzard trying to show up the Fellowship-
"The what-ship?"
"Fellowship. Quit interrupting. Crap..."
The closer they got to the Northern Island, the worse the weather became. Glitch, Raw and DG were wrapped up in the few thin blankets they could find in the truck, while Cain was being all manly and toughing out the cold.
"Speaking of cold, when did DG get back into her own clothes, anyway? ...I will slap that look off your face, boy. Do not push me."
The axle broke, forcing the group to walk the rest of the way.
"What purpose did the axe serve, Cain?"
"Y'never know," Cain said slowly.
"So: 'Be prepared?'"
"Yeah," Cain shrugged.
"God, you are a boy scout."
"What does that even mean?"
The group reached the palace and DG used the axe to break the ice, allowing her access to the door.
"Guess it's a good thing you brought the axe, then, isn't it?"
Once inside, the group learned a few things. DG leaned that her mother was a queen; Glitch learned he was in a portrait with a queen and discovered a harp; Raw informed DG that not only was the evil witch her sister, but that she'd also spent a portion of her childhood dead. Cain learned that his great Tin Man-skills weren't so great, because he didn't even hear Az and the Longcoats come up behind them until they were already surrounded.
"Again, I ask you: Are you going through the whole week? And I'm still waiting for this moral you mentioned."
"Dude, what's got your knickers in a twist? I mean, beside they fact they're probably too tight. Did you have a larger pair? Or were these ones the 'just right' and there was actually a pair tighter?"
"What is it with you people and my pants? Is that really all you have to talk about?"
"Yeah, pretty much..."
"Really?"
"Well, there's the pants... whether you're sleeping with Glitch or DG... or Glitch and DG are sleeping together and you're pining for either your wife or Zero. Or you, Glitch and DG are all sleeping together. Or Glitch is sleeping with the Queen. Was sleeping with the Queen. And then there's Jeb..."
"Excuse me?"
"You asked."
"I'm leaving now."
"But I didn't get to the part where you had to beat up six Longcoats to find two jackets that fit just right! Or that Tutor had to try three levers to find the one that opened DG's cell. Or that DG had to try three levers to open Raw's cell."
"Goodbye."
"Oh, come on, Cain... I can keep this going all night: Zero finding three logs to tie you guys to; Az trying three coffins for DG; you having to go through two brown horses before you realized the white one was the 'right' one. I can even turn the three suits gag around on Zero. The spoons, the group that put the witch in the cave trying two other caves first... Az and DG finding the right stone on the third try..."
Well... that's what he gets for crashing the story.
The sort-of moral of the story is this:
Eternal sunlight: TOO BRIGHT
Eternal Darkness: TOO DARK
Two suns, as is: JUST RIGHT
Author: Erin (erinm_4600)
Characters, Pairing: Cain and mea faceless narrator (mentions of everyone)
Rating: PG with snark
Summary: I needed a prompt to get Steve moving. oddsbobs suggested Goldilocks and the Three Bears with Cain's hat. Steve decided to make fun of the suit, instead. The rest, I have no excuse for...
Warning: post-series *Written for Round 11 of prompt-in-a-box. Prompt #12: "I don't want to talk about it." CRACK, plain and simple. Idea is from oddsbobs and blade_girl liked it!
Disclaimer: The original characters belong to L. Frank Baum and their respective actors. The current characters belong to Sci-Fi, the movie folks and their respective actors. The OCs are mine.
Once upon a time in the Outer Zone, there lived a man with whiteish-blonde hair named Wyatt Cain. He was once a Tin Man, which is something like a policeman, and fought against an evil witch. As punishment, the witch sent her guards to lock Wyatt up in a suit made of iron.
When the men arrived, they had three suits.
"Wait, what?" Cain interrupted.
"Be quiet. I'm telling a story here."
"But there weren't three suits. There was only one suit."
"You're throwin' off my groove. Shut the yap, Tin Man. And don't look at me like that. I'm not scared of you. As I was saying..."
When the Longcoats arrived, they had three suits. When they put Cain into the first suit, they found it was far too large. It was so large, three more people could have been shoved in there with Cain, which would have given him company, but still been awkward, probably. The next suit was far too small; really, Cain couldn't even get into the thing comfortably. In fact, he kinda looked like Alice when she was sticking out of the house.
"Who's Alice?" Cain asked.
"She's from a book. She ate a piece of cake and grew really big. In fact, the moral in that part of her story kinda fits the moral to this one."
"I didn’t eat cake. I was beat up by Zero. Then he beat up my wife and my son. How's that fit into your moral?"
"..."
The last suit, however, was just the right size for Cain. The men put him inside the suit and closed it up tight. And, there, Cain sat for eight whole years.
"Annuals," Cain corrected.
"Years."
"This isn't the Other Side, this is the Zone. They're annuals."
"Whatever."
Before Cain knew it, he was being let out of the suit by a girl with a stick and a man with a zipper on his head. Cain wanted to find the men who put him in the suit, but the girl managed to guilt him into helping her find her parents.
"She did not guilt me into anything. I agreed to lead her through the fields of the Papay so that she wouldn’t get herself eaten."
"Uh huh."
"Look, the kid had no clue where she was, the headcase wasn't much more helpful and I couldn't just let her go alone."
"I said nothing."
"Will you just get this over with," Cain grumbled.
"Keep up the 'tude and we'll go back and cover the choosing of the hat and the pants... That's what I thought."
Cain and the man with the zipper on his head - Glitch - walked with the girl, DG, through the fields of the Papay. Cain was trying to make sure they didn't attract attention, while Glitch was trying to remember why the dead trees were dead, and why Cain was worried about the land.
DG saw a weird, dark blue mass in one of the trees, and it was huge. As they walked a little further, she spotted a small, white mass-
"No, she didn't."
-but she wasn't impressed. A few rows of trees along, DG saw a brilliant, blue and white mass. It looked like cotton candy and was making an odd sound, like someone crying. DG moved closer and Cain got all over-protective and pulled her back. Again, DG guilted Cain into getting her way and he cut at the strands.
"Hey, do you find it at all like foreshadowing, they way DG hears Raw when you and Glitch don't?"
"What?" Cain asked, leaning back with a frown.
"Never mind."
They managed to free Raw, a Viewer, and were found out by the Papay. Raw took off running, throwing himself off a cliff - without any kind of safety harness, might I add - and was followed by Cain, pushing DG and Glitch off the same cliff.
"I particularly like how you took off your hat before you jumped. And that 'on the count of three'... it's like a Monty Python joke in reverse."
"A what?"
"'One, two, five'... Never mind."
"Are you gonna go through the entire week?" Cain huffed.
"Maybe..."
So, the group managed to find their way to a place called Milltown, where all the people were actually robots and DG found her missing parents. She also found out that they weren't her parents. And they were robots.
"Y'know, that poor girl did have a lot to take in. And she handled it pretty well, all things considered. I'd have probably given up the second the twister showed up in the cornfield. Or just called in sick when the alarm didn't go off. Would have kept her from getting the speeding ticket, too."
"What ticket?" Cain asked with a snap.
"You were still in the suit. Don't worry about it."
Our fearless team was directed to Central City, in search of a wizardy-type, known as the Mystic Man. Cain, it turned out, knew who he was and, conveniently, Zero showed up. Instead of Cain taking his revenge, of course, he grabbed DG, Glitch and Raw and bolted.
"What's up with that, Tin Man?"
"I don't want to talk about it," Cain mumbled.
"Decided revenge wasn't really you? Remembered that you fired all your bullets at the Papay?"
"I said I didn't want to talk about it," Cain replied again, through gritted teeth.
"Again with that face. What is that?"
"Y'know, we tell this story different in the Zone."
"Really?"
"Yep," Cain nodded. "Ours has beds and porridge and bears."
"Oh my..."
"Funny. Can we just get this over with?"
"You don't have to be here, Cain."
So the gang made it to Central City; Cain manhandled Roth- DeMilo and they snuck into the Sin District. Cain left DG to Glitch and Raw's supervision and headed off to find Zero, who he seemed to think made it back to the City before they did, when Zero was still in Milltown when they left.
"He had a truck."
"Really, did they load the horses in the back of the truck with the chainsaws?"
"Anyway..."
"Right."
DG, Glitch and Raw headed in to Twister to see the Mystic Man while Cain headed off to some house of ill repute to find Zero and get his revenge. At the same time, someone told Zero that DG was at Twister and I'm beginning to think it might have been DeMilo, but that's another story for another time.
As soon as Cain found out where Zero went, he headed for Twister and caught up to the guards outside of the Mystic Man's room. Then, he proceeded to stare at DG for a good minute in her dress before snapping back to reality and moving into the room.
"Thoughts on that one, Cain?"
"Nope," Cain said simply.
"You sure? 'cause I've got a list of instances here..."
"I'm sure," Cain growled.
"Oookay..."
Knowing Zero was at the end of the hall, Cain ushered DG to hurry up and get the information she needed about her mother while Glitch and Cain watched the door. The Mystic Man made a comment about DG's blue eyes and her mother's purple eyes-
"Lavender eyes."
"Lavender is purple. Duh. Shut up."
-and Glitch and Cain were quickly caught up on the situation. As Zero got closer, Cain ordered DG, Raw and the Mystic Man out of the room, but the Mystic Man stayed and guilted Cain into staying with DG. Either because he knew something about Cain's intended revenge or something more, we'll never know.
"It wasn't guilt," Cain stated sharply.
"Uh huh."
"It was an order."
"Thought you didn't want to talk about it."
Managing to get down to the street while the Mystic Man caused a diversion, Cain spotted the Longcoats' truck. It was far too large for the four of them to take and slip out of the city unnoticed. He considered stopping the car coming around the corner, but it only seemed large enough to hold two people, and he wasn't about to put anyone on a lap.
"I heard that."
"Heard what?"
Suddenly, Cain spotted DeMilo's truck. If they were able to get into the city unobserved, they could surely get out the same way. So Cain manhandled DeMilo, again-
"You really need to work on the rage, Cain."
-and loaded Raw and Glitch in the back. The group took off, stranding DeMilo in the Sin District and headed for the Northern Island, where the Mystic Man had indicated DG's mother was. Driving into a blizzard trying to show up the Fellowship-
"The what-ship?"
"Fellowship. Quit interrupting. Crap..."
The closer they got to the Northern Island, the worse the weather became. Glitch, Raw and DG were wrapped up in the few thin blankets they could find in the truck, while Cain was being all manly and toughing out the cold.
"Speaking of cold, when did DG get back into her own clothes, anyway? ...I will slap that look off your face, boy. Do not push me."
The axle broke, forcing the group to walk the rest of the way.
"What purpose did the axe serve, Cain?"
"Y'never know," Cain said slowly.
"So: 'Be prepared?'"
"Yeah," Cain shrugged.
"God, you are a boy scout."
"What does that even mean?"
The group reached the palace and DG used the axe to break the ice, allowing her access to the door.
"Guess it's a good thing you brought the axe, then, isn't it?"
Once inside, the group learned a few things. DG leaned that her mother was a queen; Glitch learned he was in a portrait with a queen and discovered a harp; Raw informed DG that not only was the evil witch her sister, but that she'd also spent a portion of her childhood dead. Cain learned that his great Tin Man-skills weren't so great, because he didn't even hear Az and the Longcoats come up behind them until they were already surrounded.
"Again, I ask you: Are you going through the whole week? And I'm still waiting for this moral you mentioned."
"Dude, what's got your knickers in a twist? I mean, beside they fact they're probably too tight. Did you have a larger pair? Or were these ones the 'just right' and there was actually a pair tighter?"
"What is it with you people and my pants? Is that really all you have to talk about?"
"Yeah, pretty much..."
"Really?"
"Well, there's the pants... whether you're sleeping with Glitch or DG... or Glitch and DG are sleeping together and you're pining for either your wife or Zero. Or you, Glitch and DG are all sleeping together. Or Glitch is sleeping with the Queen. Was sleeping with the Queen. And then there's Jeb..."
"Excuse me?"
"You asked."
"I'm leaving now."
"But I didn't get to the part where you had to beat up six Longcoats to find two jackets that fit just right! Or that Tutor had to try three levers to find the one that opened DG's cell. Or that DG had to try three levers to open Raw's cell."
"Goodbye."
"Oh, come on, Cain... I can keep this going all night: Zero finding three logs to tie you guys to; Az trying three coffins for DG; you having to go through two brown horses before you realized the white one was the 'right' one. I can even turn the three suits gag around on Zero. The spoons, the group that put the witch in the cave trying two other caves first... Az and DG finding the right stone on the third try..."
Well... that's what he gets for crashing the story.
The sort-of moral of the story is this:
Eternal sunlight: TOO BRIGHT
Eternal Darkness: TOO DARK
Two suns, as is: JUST RIGHT