# 77 -- WHAT?
Disclaimer: I own neither Without A Trace, nor the characters involved. They belong to Warner Brothers Television. I realise no financial return from these works, they are for entertainment purposes only. I also do not own Return To Oz. Hopefully, the big D doesn't notice me over here.
Title: "Reassigned to Oz"
Fandom: Without A Trace
Character: Martin Fitzgerald
Prompt: #77 -- WHAT?
Word Count: 15,800 (approx)
Rating: R (language) maybe... or PG-13. I'm too lazy to go counting.
Spoilers: For the movie? Lots. For WAT, not so much. Maybe minor S5 and S6, but nothing specific.
Credits: Beta'd by the great squeelated and jennukes
Author's Notes:: I know, I know. The puns are… bad. Puns are. I couldn't help myself. Thus, this is me, asking for help. My name is crazy_magpie and I have a problem. I am an inveterate punner. Any and all assistance in overcoming my condition is appreciated.
I recognise that I have played merry hell with some of the continuity of the film… but then again, the film plays merry hell with the continuity of the books, which play merry hell with themselves. (Seriously. Read them. I love them, but if ever there was an example of universal non-continuity…) Given the context, it's not badly altered. No, this has nothing to do with the Tin Man series recently released. Rather, I cling to childhood memories. :)
Yeah, it's crack. I couldn't keep them all dark and miserable. I started writing this ages ago, when rinkle was doing her 'Reel SPN' fic here, a fantastic blend of Labyrinth and Supernatural. I thought... why not?
Summary: "I'm not running away like a scared little girl. I'm suggesting a strategic retreat, like a well trained FBI agent."
Reassigned to Oz
Shit. He stares out the window at the rain coming down in a virtual sheet of water. He can't remember seeing anything like this since he left Seattle, and even there - in the heart of a rainforest - this sort of deluge was a rarity. It took forever to get the brats to bed once they found out that the 'evening' had turned into a sleepover with their parents not driving in this weather. Thank God the wedding said 'rents had gone to was in a hotel. It was an added incentive for them not to risk it, along with his reassurances that the kids would be 'fine.' He reminded his sister that she had, after all, sent them with DVDs and he had plenty of books that could be suitable for impressionable minds. Unfortunately, those impressionable minds didn't want to go to sleep until all other options had been exhausted, which is why he is.
Lightning flashes and thunder jumps in close behind it, rattling the walls as it lands. He listens carefully, but from the sounds of things the girls didn't wake up. He counts his blessings, turning away from the window and heading for the couch. The sacrifices he makes for this family; fortunately he's slept out here enough to be used to it.
He closes his eyes, settling in under the blanket. He tells himself that this arrangement makes sense for several reasons. One, he's up later than the girls so he's not keeping them awake. Two, if they get up earlier than him, they're more likely to wake him and he'll be around to avert disaster. Three, they're seven, and it's rather cruel to force a pair of seven-year-olds to sleep on the couch. Four, he's outnumbered two to one. Five…
His arm falls down, his hand knocking something off the coffee table before brushing the floor as he drops off.
Whga? Something's wrong here, he can sense it. It sounds like waves lapping against something, and his hand feels… "Emma…" She'd be the one to test that old wives' tale about putting a sleeping person's hand in warm water, all right. He straightens up, opening his eyes. "Holy shit!" Reflexively, he jerks his feet closer to him, trying to get as far up on the couch as possible. "Emma Bridget, Jessica Marie, what the hell have you done?!" He doesn't care about the MPAA rating of his language. His apartment is flooded. Insurance doesn't cover this. And it has to be the work of both of them, because there is no way, no way either of them could manage it on their own. They have to have turned on every tap in the place and blocked all the drains, and even then…
Even then, you live on the seventh floor. It should have drained down and the neighbours would be at your door with pitchforks. His brain kicks in with a dose of rationality. His couch is floating, the coffee table is gone… now that he looks around, the entire apartment is gone, not to mention New York City. His first instinct is to yell out at the heavens that alright, fine, he gets it, he didn't need quite that kind of a miracle as proof, but he doubts that if God were to spare anyone in the destruction of New York City, He'd choose Martin Fitzgerald as that one. So, this has to be a dream. Logically, rationally, that works - even if this is even stranger than he remembers his detox hallucinations being.
Okay, good. So all he has to do is just ride this out until the alarm rings, the girls wake him up, or Emma really does pull that warm water stunt, and it's okay. This is what he gets for double-pepperoni pizzas and banana splits with extra bananas, followed by kids' movies with a hot-chocolate-and-marshmallows nightcap. He'll live.
"Well, I hope so. I'd hate to see the result if you didn't." The voice sounds vaguely familiar, though it takes him a second to place it. He's definitely not mentioning this dream tomorrow at the office. For one thing, he doesn't think Sam would be very flattered to find that his subconscious has cast her as a chicken. There are just too many wrong ways to take it, and Danny would point every single one out to her.
"How did you get here? Last I checked, my lease didn't allow pets." He tries to focus on the fact that a talking chicken can't be real, and therefore cannot be sitting on the back of his couch. Because, if he's honest, barnyard animals freak him out. His cousin has way, way too much fun with that fact.
The chicken shrugs, a rather complicated move for a chicken. "Beats me. So, when we getting off this raft?"
"Not until the water…" he glances around, and to his somewhat dismay sees that the water is rapidly disappearing, leaving a rock-strewn sandscape in its place. "Aww, no." If his mind had to borrow a plot, did it have to be this one? Because if this is what he thinks it is, and if his mind cast Sam in the role of the chicken, that only leaves one part left for himself. "Please say we are not marooned in the Deadly Desert."
"Well, I would, but it looks kind of deserty to me. Any ideas on how to get out of here? Chickens don't fly too well."
"Don't rush me." It's only a matter of time, after all. He can stay here all… the couch shakes for a moment and he looks down to discover… "No. No, no. This isn't supposed to be quicksand." Why did dreams always have to do this? His ultimate dream is to have a dream where all he's doing is sleeping. None of this running and jumping and…
He stands on the seat of the couch and gauges the distance to the nearest rock. Fortunately, his mind also saw fit to dress him decently for this sort of thing. Rock jumping in sweats and runners is a hell of a lot easier than attempting it in a full suit and slick-soled dress shoes.
"Hey! Are you just going to leave me here?" The chicken squawks, a rather panicked and quite loud noise from such a small creature. "Deadly Desert? All living things that touch it turn to sand, right? Including chickens?"
Martin sighs. That thing is damn lucky it sounds like Sam. If it had that grating chicken voice from the movie… bracing himself, he reaches out and picks it up. Chickens, he realises, are a lot heavier live than they are in a grocery store freezer, which is where he prefers his contact with them. Well, he prefers his contact to be much more on the eating end, and the more unhealthy the coating on it, the better. "One… two…" He jumps, landing somewhat unsteadily on the first rock. "Okay, so far, so good."
"Mmm…" Chicken-Sam seems to be thinking about something. "Why are you playing Dorothy, anyhow? Is there something the world ought to know about you?" She begins humming the tune to 'Somewhere Over The Rainbow'.
In response, Martin loosens his grip. "One chicken sandwich coming up," he mutters.
With a little scream, the chicken grabs on with talons to Martin's side. His scream is far from little. "Hey! Whoa! I've already got holes there, thank you." He reaches instinctively to grab the chicken's feet, suspending it in midair. "Je… Shit. You stupid bi…"
"You know that word really doesn't apply," the chicken tells him crankily, sounding even more like Sam. Somehow she does cranky better than anyone else he knows. It is, he decides, a good thing that this is just a dream. If he called Sam 'stupid' in the real world, he'd find himself searching for his teeth. At the same time…
He inspects his shirt and the long rents that decorate the sides. Beneath that he can see matching red welts, already beginning to swell. "That hurt."
"Well, you shouldn't have tried to kill me." She glares up at him, only looking slightly ridiculous. "I was just saying…"
"You know, I might be able to make room for a little midnight snack." He eyes the tree casting a shadow over a nearby meadow - if dream follows story, the grass should be fairly safe. "Shouldn't take long to get a fire going. Some nice, fresh roast…"
"Okay, okay, you don't have to get nasty about it. Sheesh. One simple question and he gets murder on his mind. I won't ask it again, since you're obviously so sensitive, which means the answer is probably…" She lets out another squawk as he proves that chickens can indeed fly, given enough propulsive force. She lands rather ungracefully on the grass before picking herself up and shaking out her feathers. "Really. Was that necessary?"
"Yes." Freed of his awkward ballast, he negotiates the rest of the stones and hops safely onto the grass. "I am not some sweet little girl from Kansas." He shudders, and not just slightly. "I hate Kansas. It's freaking flat, and the cold'll freeze your fingers off in the winter. In the summer, you wish it was winter. All the major-league sports teams are actually out of state…"
"Not exactly flat," the chicken argues.
"You're from Wisconsin." If it's going to sound like Sam, and nit-pick like Sam, it might as well be Sam. "Don't sit there and tell me Kansas ain't flat. I had to live in Kansas. It was one of the worst eight months of my life." Thank God Dad had gotten out of that office in a hurry. Martin had prayed for a natural disaster, hopefully one that would land him in L.A. or Oahu. Instead he got Idaho which was, at least, a change. Idaho has the occasional mountain. "Trust me. I hate Kansas." If he ever gets transferred there himself, he's going to take a Deputy Director hostage and explain all the reasons why it's a very, very bad idea, reminding him about the last time and the fact that it took two hours to get the axe out of the doorjamb. Kansas, he'll remind his father, is where they discovered that Martin didn't miss out when it came to inheriting the family crazy.
"There is nothing wrong with Kansas." If a chicken could roll its eyes, he imagines that this one would be doing so.
"Yeah. Uh-huh." He can feel some of that crazed feeling coming back. He does his best to avoid even having stopovers in Kansas. He'll take an extra connecting flight, several hundred miles out of his way, just to avoid Kansas. "You keep on believing that." He starts heading off across the meadow.
"Freak." Sam-Chicken mutters, trundling along after him.
He keeps going. If he was a sweet little girl from Kansas, he might be nice and carry the chicken, but as things go it can either keep up or get left behind. There's woods up ahead, and he feels more comfortable with a lot of trees around. Trees, or buildings actually, it doesn't really matter. As long as it's not wide open space. Like Kansas.
"You know, short legs here. You're not exactly making this easy," the chicken complains.
"Why would I make it easy?" Now that he can no longer see the sky, he's calming down. "'The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.'"
"Don't quote Vince Lombardi at me," she snaps. "I'm the one from Wisconsin."
"Ah, and what does a chicken know about football, anyway?" Besides, last he checked, Sam was a basketball girl. It was one of the few things they had in common.
"Probably more than you, mule-brain." The rest of the comment devolves into what sounds like muttered swearing.
"It's called perseverance," he retorts, but his attention isn't really on the conversation. Instead it's on the weatherbeaten wood… well, he'd say farmhouse but the better description is 'shack' on the path in front of them. He walks around it, examining it from all angles. "Hmm…"
"Hmm… what?"
"I was expecting more structural damage." He turns around to see the chicken scrambling over a log. "Think about it. To dislodge something like this, we're talking minimum EF3, which means winds of over a hundred and thirty-five miles per hour, and then dropped from height, when you calculate in the mass at nine-point-eight-six meters per second squared… this thing oughta be matchsticks. But most of the main support beams are still intact and…"
"Whoa, whoa. Back up. EF3?"
"Enhanced Fujita Scale. They brought it in in February. It standardised the damage indicators and…"
"You are a serious geek. You know that?" Now the chicken sounds disgusted. "Are you sure you're not one of those risk-assessment people?"
"Just because I'm an accountant doesn't mean my secret dream was to become an actuary. If I wanted that, I would have gone into statistics. You know, unless you want to keep walking, I'd suggest toning down the attitude a little."
"Keep walking?"
He shrugs. Annoying as it is, he doesn't really want to leave the chicken behind. Rather than answer, he kicks one of the nearby stones. "Yellow brick road. Twenty bucks says that way lies The Emerald City." He jerks his thumb over his shoulder. "Shall we?"
"You got a better idea?" The chicken seems a little tense as he picks it up and tucks it under one arm. Maybe it's thinking he's going to wring its neck. That is, of course, always an option.
"Several, but somehow I don't think I'll get away with them." He starts hiking down the overgrown, broken path.
There's a brief and wonderful pause for silence before the chicken starts talking again. "Where do you suppose the munchkins are?"
"Sleeping." He's only half-paying attention, the other half of his brain occupied with trying to remember how the story goes from here. "Otherwise I wouldn't be."
"I mean the ones that aren't blood-related to you."
"Oh." He thinks about it for a moment. "I haven't got a clue."
"At least you finally admit it."
"Shut up."
Fifteen minutes of good, solid (and blessedly silent) walking later, he glimpses something over the tops of some trees just past a small clearing. If it's The Emerald City, it looks like it got hit by an EF3 tornado, and then a Jerry Bruckheimer film just after. Skeletal domes and crumbling spires create an eerie skyline, and the complete lack of any wildlife sounds doesn't improve the mood. "All in favour of turning around and going back, say…"
"Dorothy wouldn't have run away like a scared little girl." The chicken doesn't even let him cast his vote of 'aye'.
"I'm not running away like a scared little girl. I'm suggesting a strategic retreat, like a well-trained FBI agent. Sorry, but you're not exactly inspiring as 'backup.'" He's been feeling pretty good about himself and life lately. There's no reason to go charging into a place that is clearly abandoned except for those hell-bent on destruction. Especially since while the chicken has a tendency to be rather offensive, it's not exactly a weapon.
"Coward." The chicken clucks at him like… well…
"And your point?" He sighs, though, knowing she's right. He's not going to be able to get away with running away, even if it is his best talent. Nope, the only way through this is forward. He has an idea for a weapon, but a quick check confirms that his mind isn't that nice: he isn't wearing any socks. Which is a shame, because a brick in a sock can be pretty formidable if swung right.
He steps warily through the unguarded city gates, keeping his ears open for any sounds of someone about to attack. Even the cushioned soles of his running shoes aren't enough to muffle his footsteps in this near dead silence. He tells himself not to think of words like 'dead.'
Stone figures decorate the central square, doing all the things that people normally did in a city (or a least a sanitised child's-book version of a city), reading a book on one of the many benches, trimming the hedges or chasing a ball. Or rather, they would be if they weren't all frozen in place. Somehow, Martin gets the sense that these aren't normal pieces of statuary. Something is very, very wrong.
On one side of the square, a circle of headless maidens is frozen in mid-dance. He stares at them for a bit, knowing that there's something important about this. He just can't figure out what.
"Well, that's kind of careless," the chicken comments. "They've lost their heads."
"Hush." He picks up a broken limb from a statue someone knocked over. Now that he's armed, he feels a little better. A piece of graffiti catches his eye: Beware The Wheelers.
"Wheelers?" He frowns. That does not sound good. Neither does the high-pitched noise coming from one of the parapets, though when he looks there's nothing there.
The chicken, in the meantime, has wandered off. She lets loose a panicked scream from on the other side of an archway, and he heads over to see what the problem is.
"Look out!" She suddenly yells.
He turns reflexively, to see what looks like a person made out of cans, holding an axe aloft. "The Tin Woodsman." He's a little awed. One of his unwanted nicknames is 'Tin Man', playing on the last syllable of his name and his reputation for lack of feeling. People seem to forget that the Tin Man was the most sensitive of all of them. His next thought is that while the man himself may have turned to stone, he's holding an axe, and that Martin knows how to use one of those things. Carefully, he sets his pilfered arm aside and begins working the axe handle free of the stone fingers gripping it. Now this is more his métier. He swings it a couple of times, experimentally. Nice balance, good weight… the chicken eyes him warily, as though it understands the usual relationship between axes and chickens, and suspects he might employ it.
He hears the high-pitched sound again, and this time the chicken sounds really panicked. "Wheelers!"
He looks to see one of the strangest things he's ever seen in his life, and once again that includes the detox hallucinations. It looks like an extremely long-limbed person on all fours, with large wheels for hands and feet. A leering mask covers the face, insane laughter emanating from behind it. "Chicken!"
Martin swings the axe, catching the wheeler directly in the middle of the face with the flat of the blade. As it goes down, he realises that it's not a mask, but rather a helmet and his shot didn't do nearly the damage he thought it would. More of them approach, and he comes to the conclusion that he's a lone tourist who's just wandered into gang territory. Axe or no, he's severely outnumbered.
They all begin to laugh, as though they're high on nitrous oxide and he's dressed like a clown. Their wheels squeak painfully as they inch closer.
"Chicken," he says, picking her up.
"Yes?"
"Now I'm going to run like a scared little girl." Matching deed to words, he spins and takes off, hoping that if a child could outrun these things, someone who goes for a nice long run every day will have a better chance.
It seems, however, that they match their speed to their prey. He dodges around a corner to find himself in a dead end. Behind him, he can hear the sound of metal wheels on stone, drawing closer.
"Come on, come on." He hefts the axe in his hand again. How many can he get before they get him? Will it even matter?
"What's that hole for?" The chicken asks.
"What hole?" He wishes there was a hole, either big enough for him to hide in, or too big for something on four wheels to jump.
"Here. In the wall. Looks like a key-hole."
Lock. Lock generally means door, and door means escape. A key is just a secondary concern. As long as he can find something to serve as a tension wrench and a pick - and gee, looky there at that wire piled with all that junk in the corner - and the lock might as well not be there.
"Hey." The wheelers seem annoyed as a heavy section of stone wall springs outward. "Get him!"
He slips through the door, pulling it closed behind him before the wheelers can wedge a wheel in and keep it open. He can hear them yelling through the lock.
"You can't stay in there forever, chicken." Martin isn't sure whether the Wheeler is addressing him or the bird, or if it even matters. "You have to come out sooner or later, and when you do, we'll tear you into little pieces and throw you in the Deadly Desert!"
Martin doesn't bother asking what he might have done to deserve it. Basically, they're a gang and he's not part of it. That's reason enough, as far as groupthink goes. He does have another question, however. "What's the big deal with the chicken?"
"The Nome King doesn't allow chickens anywhere in Oz." The wheeler says it as though the answer should be obvious.
"Right. The Nome King." Well, it is an answer, even if it's a stupid and cryptic one. Martin turns around to take stock of his surroundings. 'Cornered' pretty much sums it up, seeing as there appears only to be the one exit. "Well, this is good." It's a small room, and the bulk of the space not occupied by junk, one human and a chicken is taken up by a squat, metal figure that looks vaguely familiar. "You have got to be kidding me." He brushes cobwebs off to read the inscription on the figure's 'stomach'. "Royal Army of Oz." Well, okay, this subconscious arrangement makes a little bit of sense. Army… Jack was a Ranger… He is not, however, going to tell his boss that he sometimes thinks the man's brains have wound down ahead of his speech and his action. In a fair fight between them… well, the only way Martin could conceivably win would be to make sure it wasn't a fair fight.
He leans the axe against the wall and winds up the clockwork man's gears, starting with the 'thinking' key. 'Speech' brings both blinking eyes and some garbled sounds before. "Good morning. Are you Dorothy Gale?"
"Do I look like it?" Martin asks.
"What are you doing here?" It not only looks like Jack, it talks like him too: irritated that things have not gone according to plan, and belligerent as a result. "I'm supposed to be waiting for Dorothy Gale, under orders from His Majesty, The Scarecrow."
"I don't suppose this has anything to do with Bodie out there, does it?" If The Emerald City qualifies as anything, 'ghost town' is it.
"What are you talking about, person?"
"Ah, forget it." He's not about to give a history lesson to a talking piece of metal. "And it's Martin, not 'person'."
"Nice of you to formally introduce yourself to me," the chicken snarks.
"I didn't see a reason to." Martin shoots back. "I rarely, if ever, introduce myself to future meals."
"Well. I never," the chicken huffs.
"When everything began to turn to stone, the Scarecrow locked me in here." The clockwork, one-man army seems content to ignore the peanut gallery. "I yelled for help until my speech ran down, then I paced back and forth until my action ran down, then I stood and thought until my thought ran down…"
"And when has that ever stopped you from anything?" Martin mutters. Despite what everyone seems to believe, he isn't a complete acolyte of Jack's. He's just learned that when dealing with authority, passive aggression often works better than the real thing. Let the others tell the man he's an idiot to his face. Martin knows better than to argue with crazy people. This, however, is a dream. Here, he can safely vent his feelings and not have to suffer the consequences. Maybe that makes him a coward, but it makes him a smart coward. Smart cowards are the ones who survive.
"For someone who has a life to lose, you do not seem very concerned about it." The movie Tik-Tok - as far as Martin's memory is willing to cooperate - wasn't quite that threatening to his companions. He's definitely imprinting more than a little Jack on the character.
"For someone I could dismantle with this axe," Martin picks it up again, unwilling to abandon a weapon, "You're awfully mouthy."
"Are you sure about that?" The clockwork army seems to be calculating the odds of Martin's success and finding them at a level demanding bluster over discretion. "I am not alive, so cannot be afraid of losing what I don't have. You, on the other hand…"
"Yeah, yeah." Martin juggles the axe from hand to hand, thinking of his own strategic advantage. "I on the other hand, have a brain that doesn't stop working just because a spring ran down."
"Are you sure about that?" The chicken and the tik-tok man chorus it together. It's a very Sammish and Jack-like dig at his occasional lapses in judgement. As if they've never had any.
Martin ignores them, stalking to the door to peer through the keyhole. It's all clear at the moment, but that doesn't have to mean anything. All that really means is that the wheelers are hanging out at the end of the hallway and taking another hit off the nitrous. "Inventory. I'm outnumbered, probably about ten to one. I've got an axe, a tin soldier, and a chicken."
"Copper," the army corrects him.
"Great. You'll match all the unused pots and pans in my kitchen." He can cook, he just never really bothers to. There's no real point when you can get anything delivered to your door at any time, and no dishes to do afterwards.
"If you do not mind," the sarcasm in the tik-tok's voice - emotion that should have been non-existent in a clockwork man, but one held in high esteem by J. Malone PhD - could have smothered a more sensitive person than Martin. "I have come up with a plan."
"Right." Martin steps aside, gesturing at the door. "Go for it."
"If you would…" the clockwork man begins.
Martin coughs, embarrassedly. He goes back and winds up the Army's action. "Lay on, Macduff."
The copper creation seems confused. "I am not a Macduff, I am…"
"It's a saying." Martin is beginning to regret this. On the other hand, this motley crew is all he has. "A quote. From a play."
"Ah." The Army inclines the upper part of his body in a semi-bow. "If you would open the door, please?"
With a deep breath, Martin does as he's told. No immediate squeaks or laughter greet him as he peers carefully around. "All clear."
They make an odd crew proceeding down the littered hallway, with the automaton stumping his way in the lead, and the chicken in the middle. Martin brings up the rear, holding tight to his axe. He likes this axe. It's a nice axe. It's sharp and it's heavy, and it makes him feel better in that if he's actually gone crazy, it's much better to be crazy with an axe. When you're crazy and have an axe, it's a very definite crazy. People take you seriously when you have an axe. Dad took him very seriously on that chilly fall day, when he emerged from the house to find out why the chopping noises had stopped. He even arranged for Martin to take a nice, long vacation with Bonnie and Roger in lovely, non-flat upstate New York. Axes, Martin decided then, have power.
His first glance at the ruined city seems to leave the tik-tok man in awe, even if a machine isn't supposed to feel. Martin can feel some sympathy. If he walked out of his apartment to find New York looking like this, he'd be the same way.
They barely make it to the square before a squeal heralds the approach of a wheeler. Or six, Martin revises, catching a glimpse of a few more. By the time they reach the stairs at the side of the square, it's up to an even dozen.
"You run up the stairs, and I'll take care of them." The Army squares off with one set of the wheelers, and if Martin isn't mistaken, there's a very evil Jack-like glint in one of the glass eyes.
Martin does as he's told, telling himself that he's protecting them from the small group of wheelers along the wall at the top.
The wheelers laugh, creeping closer to the tik-tok man until they're stupidly within striking range. Suddenly, he begins to spin, knocking several off their feet at once. Before they can recover, he grabs one by the collar, hoisting it up menacingly. The others flee the moment they regain their footing, leaving just the one, poor hostage. "Come here, you."
"You'll be sorry for treating me like this," the wheeler threatens. "I'm a terrible, fierce person."
The Army doesn't seem any more impressed by the statement than Jack would be. In fact, just like him, it merely shakes the wheeler a little to get its attention.
"What's happened around here?" Martin hurries down the stairs, not wanting to be left out of this interrogation. "Isn't the Scarecrow supposed to be in charge, or something?"
The wheeler says nothing at first. The tik-tok shakes it again. "Answer."
"The Nome King! He conquered the Emerald City. He took all the emeralds and turned everyone to stone."
"And the Scarecrow?" Martin crosses his arms, deliberately moving the head of the axe into the wheeler's line of sight.
"Only one person knows that. Princess… Princess Mombi." He seems afraid to even say her name.
"And where is this Princess Mombi?" It's almost comforting to be on familiar ground, working on a Missing Persons case. Maybe it is a straw man, but that's not really new, either.
"You will take us there." The tik-tok decides at the same moment.
"No. Nooooo!" The wheeler sounds terrified.
If the tik-tok resembled Jack before, the image becomes cemented in Martin's mind with the next move. It pulls the wheeler close, whispering something in the hapless creature's ear, before relaxing its grip just slightly. "Hmmm?"
The wheeler leads them to what looks like a large, semi-destroyed building, but nothing special. If it weren't for the way the thing was trembling, Martin would think that it was sending them on a wild-goose chase.
He uses one of the heavy knockers on the door, listening until the echoes die. "Hello?" There's no answer from inside.
"Lemme go," the wheeler whimpers.
"Might as well," Martin decides. "He's liable to just get in the way."
The tik-tok seems rather disappointed, but does so. "Behave yourself," he admonishes.
"Nice one, Jack," Martin snickers.
"Jack?"
"Someone you remind me of," Martin tells him. He's vaguely aware that the name ought to belong to someone else, but here is where it fits. He turns back to the door, this time banging on it with the axe. "Hello? Mombi?"
The door creaks open just slightly. "Oh, great," he mutters. "One of those." Inside, the castle doesn't look much better, with everything covered in a thick layer of dust.
At first, he's willing to believe that this place is long abandoned, and the wheeler managed to fool him. Then his ears catch the slight sounds of music ahead.
"I think it is up these stairs." 'Jack' points at a heavy door to their left.
Martin nods. His ears tell him the same thing. As they approach the door, it slides open automatically.
On the other side of the door is another home-decorating nightmare entirely. Gold and mirrors decorate every conceivable surface - walls, floors, ceilings, and even light fixtures. In the centre of the room, a woman sits on a chaise lounge, playing what looks like a sitar.
"Princess Mombi?" Martin can't shake a certain 'on edge' feeling. Sitar music does that to him, but he gets the sense there's something more to it as well.
The woman yawns in an airhead sort of way and extends her hand. "Help me to rise."
Martin does, noting that the moment her hand touches his, he's struck with an instant and powerful desire to jerk his hand back and run. Screw the Scarecrow, screw Oz… just get the hell out of there. With the chicken watching, he doesn't.
"I think I'll put on something more… appropriate." Her soft voice is almost hypnotic. "Your friends can stay here."
"It's about the Scarecrow." He finds himself following her out of the room. "I don't suppose you know what happened to him?"
She doesn't answer. They pass through a bedroom and into a kind of gallery. A series of very realistic looking heads hold various wigs, each in a separate glass compartment. There are blondes, brunettes, redheads… if hair comes in that colour and style, it's here. Mombi approaches one of the cabinets and unlocks it. "I think number thirty-four will do for this afternoon."
To Martin's horror, she detaches the entire head and places it on the empty pedestal in the cabinet. The 'number thiry-four' she selects only makes things worse.
"What do you think?" the disembodied head asks, as Mombi turns around with it in her hands.
Martin feels his mouth go dry. It's not the detachable nature of the head, so much, but whom it resembles. "I think I'll be going. Door's that way, right?" He begins to inch away.
Mombi settles the head on her neck. "Come here. This is about the Scarecrow, you said?"
He feels his body following the order automatically. It always has, to some extent. "No, no. It's okay, Mom…" Somehow he knew beheading her wouldn't make a difference. It never did with hydras.
"The Nome King has taken care of the Scarecrow. You are just going to cause trouble."
He knows better than to deny it. That will just cause trouble. Instead he wonders if it's possible to take his own head off with the axe. It would save time, at least.
"I think I'll put you in the tower, for now. Until you cease to be a problem. A shame you're not a girl, or I'd add your head to my collection. As it stands…"
"No…" He takes a deep breath. "Guys! A little help here!"
Mombi grabs his collar, avoiding any actual physical contact. She twists the fabric tight, and he can feel it cut into his neck. As she hustles him out into the other room, something light brownish colour comes flying in at eye level.
"Yes!" There's something rather satisfying in seeing the evil witch attacked by a chicken. "Ha!"
Mombi jerks his collar, causing him to stumble, at the same time, grabbing hold of the chicken's legs. "You, I'll have fried for breakfast."
"I'm coming," Tik-tok Jack's reassurances are hardly comforting, though, as he totters to a halt. "It seems the fight with the wheelers has caused my action to run down sooner…"
Martin doesn't hear the rest. Rather, he concentrates on holding onto his axe, and is grateful for the small blessing that he still has it. She's too close for him to use it at this moment, but later she's going to be in for it.
She drags him up a winding flight of stairs, somehow using her hand with the chicken to open a door at the top. She tosses the chicken in, and propels him after it.
"Real creative, Mom!" He yells at the door as she closes it. "Locking me in my room! Yeah, this is new." He gives the door a good swift kick, before wandering over to the window at the far side. He can see a mountain in the distance, and an instinct tells him that it's where he needs to get to. Unfortunately, it's there and he's here. He goes over to a junked couch in the middle of the room. He drops down on it, then falls to his side, curling up. Maybe if he goes to sleep now, he can wake up again, back on his own couch, in his own lofty rooms. He closes his eyes, holding his axe close like an uncuddly teddy-bear.
"Mom? Mom?"
"She'll be back soon," he mutters. "What time is it? Go back to sleep."
"Mom? Is that you?"
"Oh, no." For one thing, he realises, the girls wouldn't have to ask what his parental status was, and for another, it's not a little girl's voice. He cautiously opens one eye, only to confirm what he dreads. He's still here.
"I'm beginning to think I should have took my chances on the Desert." Martin groans, rolling into a sitting position. "After all, isn't one of the terms for death, 'rest'?"
He looks over to see a stick figure sitting in the corner. Well, a stick figure with a carved pumpkin on its head. One of the sticks used for a leg is broken and sits at an angle to the stickman in a way that almost turns Martin's stomach. After all, the figure is anthropomorphic enough to cause him to have empathy pains, and broken bones are something he's intimately familiar with.. The clothes are bright and almost deliberately mismatched. This is what Martin thinks of as a scarecrow, but he instinctively knows it's not the Scarecrow. Even dreams aren't that easy.
"Mom?" The voice is definitely coming from the pumpkin head. The tone is kind of sad, yet hopeful at the same time, that of a lost child. It's pathetic enough that Martin can't bring himself to be nasty.
"No, I'm not your mom." He stands up and walks closer to the stick… he wants to say 'boy' given the naivety, but 'man' fits the form better, given that if the thing were standing, it'd be taller than him.
"Oh. I thought maybe my Mom had come back." Now it just sounds disappointed.
"Sorry." Martin looks down at his feet, genuinely feeling bad.
"Could you check and make sure my head hasn't spoiled? I'm always worried it's going to spoil and go soft, before I've done or seen anything. I've only been alive for such a short time, but when your head is a pumpkin…"
"Sure. No problem." For one thing, he has a problem saying no to such an earnest request, and for another, it's nice to find someone who isn't a smart-ass right off the bat. He looks the gourd over. "It seems fine."
"Could you maybe help put me back together?" The pumpkinhead gestures, and Martin can see that in addition to the broken leg, one arm has become detached and has fallen to the floor. He starts to lash the pieces back together. One nice thing about those years Dad made him attend Boy Scouts: he's pretty good with knots.
"Are you sure you're not my mom? She looked like a boy when she made me… she made me to scare that awful witch, Mombi - she's the one who made my mom look like a boy. She stood me in a place where the witch would see me, face to face. Sure enough, she was scared, but then she got angry. She has a terrible temper."
"I know." Martin shudders, involuntarily. People who think he has rage problems have no idea. Comparatively, he's a saint.
"She was going to destroy me, but then she decided to test some powder of life she just bought from some magician. She sprinkled it on me," the pumpkin head leans on him, attempting to stand, "and here I am." It wobbles, a skinny, gangly giant. Instinctively, Martin knows that the creature is - in the canon at least -- Jack Pumpkinhead, but the voice belongs to someone else, entirely. If Jack is the automaton downstairs, then the pumpkinhead is the only real stickfigure person Martin knows.
"Does she have any more of it?"
"If she does, it's in cabinet thirty-four with her original head." The pumpkinhead doesn't sound overly certain.
"What happened to your mother?" the chicken asks.
"I think Mombi enchanted her," the pumpkinhead says. "Then she threw me in the corner and said she was going to make a pie out of me, but she was wearing head twenty-six at the time, and I don't think she's worn it since, because she seems to have forgotten all about me."
Martin's only partly paying attention. A plan is forming, or at the very least, being remembered. "Okay. I have an idea."
To Be Continued
Title: "Reassigned to Oz"
Fandom: Without A Trace
Character: Martin Fitzgerald
Prompt: #77 -- WHAT?
Word Count: 15,800 (approx)
Rating: R (language) maybe... or PG-13. I'm too lazy to go counting.
Spoilers: For the movie? Lots. For WAT, not so much. Maybe minor S5 and S6, but nothing specific.
Credits: Beta'd by the great squeelated and jennukes
Author's Notes:: I know, I know. The puns are… bad. Puns are. I couldn't help myself. Thus, this is me, asking for help. My name is crazy_magpie and I have a problem. I am an inveterate punner. Any and all assistance in overcoming my condition is appreciated.
I recognise that I have played merry hell with some of the continuity of the film… but then again, the film plays merry hell with the continuity of the books, which play merry hell with themselves. (Seriously. Read them. I love them, but if ever there was an example of universal non-continuity…) Given the context, it's not badly altered. No, this has nothing to do with the Tin Man series recently released. Rather, I cling to childhood memories. :)
Yeah, it's crack. I couldn't keep them all dark and miserable. I started writing this ages ago, when rinkle was doing her 'Reel SPN' fic here, a fantastic blend of Labyrinth and Supernatural. I thought... why not?
Summary: "I'm not running away like a scared little girl. I'm suggesting a strategic retreat, like a well trained FBI agent."
Reassigned to Oz
Shit. He stares out the window at the rain coming down in a virtual sheet of water. He can't remember seeing anything like this since he left Seattle, and even there - in the heart of a rainforest - this sort of deluge was a rarity. It took forever to get the brats to bed once they found out that the 'evening' had turned into a sleepover with their parents not driving in this weather. Thank God the wedding said 'rents had gone to was in a hotel. It was an added incentive for them not to risk it, along with his reassurances that the kids would be 'fine.' He reminded his sister that she had, after all, sent them with DVDs and he had plenty of books that could be suitable for impressionable minds. Unfortunately, those impressionable minds didn't want to go to sleep until all other options had been exhausted, which is why he is.
Lightning flashes and thunder jumps in close behind it, rattling the walls as it lands. He listens carefully, but from the sounds of things the girls didn't wake up. He counts his blessings, turning away from the window and heading for the couch. The sacrifices he makes for this family; fortunately he's slept out here enough to be used to it.
He closes his eyes, settling in under the blanket. He tells himself that this arrangement makes sense for several reasons. One, he's up later than the girls so he's not keeping them awake. Two, if they get up earlier than him, they're more likely to wake him and he'll be around to avert disaster. Three, they're seven, and it's rather cruel to force a pair of seven-year-olds to sleep on the couch. Four, he's outnumbered two to one. Five…
His arm falls down, his hand knocking something off the coffee table before brushing the floor as he drops off.
Whga? Something's wrong here, he can sense it. It sounds like waves lapping against something, and his hand feels… "Emma…" She'd be the one to test that old wives' tale about putting a sleeping person's hand in warm water, all right. He straightens up, opening his eyes. "Holy shit!" Reflexively, he jerks his feet closer to him, trying to get as far up on the couch as possible. "Emma Bridget, Jessica Marie, what the hell have you done?!" He doesn't care about the MPAA rating of his language. His apartment is flooded. Insurance doesn't cover this. And it has to be the work of both of them, because there is no way, no way either of them could manage it on their own. They have to have turned on every tap in the place and blocked all the drains, and even then…
Even then, you live on the seventh floor. It should have drained down and the neighbours would be at your door with pitchforks. His brain kicks in with a dose of rationality. His couch is floating, the coffee table is gone… now that he looks around, the entire apartment is gone, not to mention New York City. His first instinct is to yell out at the heavens that alright, fine, he gets it, he didn't need quite that kind of a miracle as proof, but he doubts that if God were to spare anyone in the destruction of New York City, He'd choose Martin Fitzgerald as that one. So, this has to be a dream. Logically, rationally, that works - even if this is even stranger than he remembers his detox hallucinations being.
Okay, good. So all he has to do is just ride this out until the alarm rings, the girls wake him up, or Emma really does pull that warm water stunt, and it's okay. This is what he gets for double-pepperoni pizzas and banana splits with extra bananas, followed by kids' movies with a hot-chocolate-and-marshmallows nightcap. He'll live.
"Well, I hope so. I'd hate to see the result if you didn't." The voice sounds vaguely familiar, though it takes him a second to place it. He's definitely not mentioning this dream tomorrow at the office. For one thing, he doesn't think Sam would be very flattered to find that his subconscious has cast her as a chicken. There are just too many wrong ways to take it, and Danny would point every single one out to her.
"How did you get here? Last I checked, my lease didn't allow pets." He tries to focus on the fact that a talking chicken can't be real, and therefore cannot be sitting on the back of his couch. Because, if he's honest, barnyard animals freak him out. His cousin has way, way too much fun with that fact.
The chicken shrugs, a rather complicated move for a chicken. "Beats me. So, when we getting off this raft?"
"Not until the water…" he glances around, and to his somewhat dismay sees that the water is rapidly disappearing, leaving a rock-strewn sandscape in its place. "Aww, no." If his mind had to borrow a plot, did it have to be this one? Because if this is what he thinks it is, and if his mind cast Sam in the role of the chicken, that only leaves one part left for himself. "Please say we are not marooned in the Deadly Desert."
"Well, I would, but it looks kind of deserty to me. Any ideas on how to get out of here? Chickens don't fly too well."
"Don't rush me." It's only a matter of time, after all. He can stay here all… the couch shakes for a moment and he looks down to discover… "No. No, no. This isn't supposed to be quicksand." Why did dreams always have to do this? His ultimate dream is to have a dream where all he's doing is sleeping. None of this running and jumping and…
He stands on the seat of the couch and gauges the distance to the nearest rock. Fortunately, his mind also saw fit to dress him decently for this sort of thing. Rock jumping in sweats and runners is a hell of a lot easier than attempting it in a full suit and slick-soled dress shoes.
"Hey! Are you just going to leave me here?" The chicken squawks, a rather panicked and quite loud noise from such a small creature. "Deadly Desert? All living things that touch it turn to sand, right? Including chickens?"
Martin sighs. That thing is damn lucky it sounds like Sam. If it had that grating chicken voice from the movie… bracing himself, he reaches out and picks it up. Chickens, he realises, are a lot heavier live than they are in a grocery store freezer, which is where he prefers his contact with them. Well, he prefers his contact to be much more on the eating end, and the more unhealthy the coating on it, the better. "One… two…" He jumps, landing somewhat unsteadily on the first rock. "Okay, so far, so good."
"Mmm…" Chicken-Sam seems to be thinking about something. "Why are you playing Dorothy, anyhow? Is there something the world ought to know about you?" She begins humming the tune to 'Somewhere Over The Rainbow'.
In response, Martin loosens his grip. "One chicken sandwich coming up," he mutters.
With a little scream, the chicken grabs on with talons to Martin's side. His scream is far from little. "Hey! Whoa! I've already got holes there, thank you." He reaches instinctively to grab the chicken's feet, suspending it in midair. "Je… Shit. You stupid bi…"
"You know that word really doesn't apply," the chicken tells him crankily, sounding even more like Sam. Somehow she does cranky better than anyone else he knows. It is, he decides, a good thing that this is just a dream. If he called Sam 'stupid' in the real world, he'd find himself searching for his teeth. At the same time…
He inspects his shirt and the long rents that decorate the sides. Beneath that he can see matching red welts, already beginning to swell. "That hurt."
"Well, you shouldn't have tried to kill me." She glares up at him, only looking slightly ridiculous. "I was just saying…"
"You know, I might be able to make room for a little midnight snack." He eyes the tree casting a shadow over a nearby meadow - if dream follows story, the grass should be fairly safe. "Shouldn't take long to get a fire going. Some nice, fresh roast…"
"Okay, okay, you don't have to get nasty about it. Sheesh. One simple question and he gets murder on his mind. I won't ask it again, since you're obviously so sensitive, which means the answer is probably…" She lets out another squawk as he proves that chickens can indeed fly, given enough propulsive force. She lands rather ungracefully on the grass before picking herself up and shaking out her feathers. "Really. Was that necessary?"
"Yes." Freed of his awkward ballast, he negotiates the rest of the stones and hops safely onto the grass. "I am not some sweet little girl from Kansas." He shudders, and not just slightly. "I hate Kansas. It's freaking flat, and the cold'll freeze your fingers off in the winter. In the summer, you wish it was winter. All the major-league sports teams are actually out of state…"
"Not exactly flat," the chicken argues.
"You're from Wisconsin." If it's going to sound like Sam, and nit-pick like Sam, it might as well be Sam. "Don't sit there and tell me Kansas ain't flat. I had to live in Kansas. It was one of the worst eight months of my life." Thank God Dad had gotten out of that office in a hurry. Martin had prayed for a natural disaster, hopefully one that would land him in L.A. or Oahu. Instead he got Idaho which was, at least, a change. Idaho has the occasional mountain. "Trust me. I hate Kansas." If he ever gets transferred there himself, he's going to take a Deputy Director hostage and explain all the reasons why it's a very, very bad idea, reminding him about the last time and the fact that it took two hours to get the axe out of the doorjamb. Kansas, he'll remind his father, is where they discovered that Martin didn't miss out when it came to inheriting the family crazy.
"There is nothing wrong with Kansas." If a chicken could roll its eyes, he imagines that this one would be doing so.
"Yeah. Uh-huh." He can feel some of that crazed feeling coming back. He does his best to avoid even having stopovers in Kansas. He'll take an extra connecting flight, several hundred miles out of his way, just to avoid Kansas. "You keep on believing that." He starts heading off across the meadow.
"Freak." Sam-Chicken mutters, trundling along after him.
He keeps going. If he was a sweet little girl from Kansas, he might be nice and carry the chicken, but as things go it can either keep up or get left behind. There's woods up ahead, and he feels more comfortable with a lot of trees around. Trees, or buildings actually, it doesn't really matter. As long as it's not wide open space. Like Kansas.
"You know, short legs here. You're not exactly making this easy," the chicken complains.
"Why would I make it easy?" Now that he can no longer see the sky, he's calming down. "'The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.'"
"Don't quote Vince Lombardi at me," she snaps. "I'm the one from Wisconsin."
"Ah, and what does a chicken know about football, anyway?" Besides, last he checked, Sam was a basketball girl. It was one of the few things they had in common.
"Probably more than you, mule-brain." The rest of the comment devolves into what sounds like muttered swearing.
"It's called perseverance," he retorts, but his attention isn't really on the conversation. Instead it's on the weatherbeaten wood… well, he'd say farmhouse but the better description is 'shack' on the path in front of them. He walks around it, examining it from all angles. "Hmm…"
"Hmm… what?"
"I was expecting more structural damage." He turns around to see the chicken scrambling over a log. "Think about it. To dislodge something like this, we're talking minimum EF3, which means winds of over a hundred and thirty-five miles per hour, and then dropped from height, when you calculate in the mass at nine-point-eight-six meters per second squared… this thing oughta be matchsticks. But most of the main support beams are still intact and…"
"Whoa, whoa. Back up. EF3?"
"Enhanced Fujita Scale. They brought it in in February. It standardised the damage indicators and…"
"You are a serious geek. You know that?" Now the chicken sounds disgusted. "Are you sure you're not one of those risk-assessment people?"
"Just because I'm an accountant doesn't mean my secret dream was to become an actuary. If I wanted that, I would have gone into statistics. You know, unless you want to keep walking, I'd suggest toning down the attitude a little."
"Keep walking?"
He shrugs. Annoying as it is, he doesn't really want to leave the chicken behind. Rather than answer, he kicks one of the nearby stones. "Yellow brick road. Twenty bucks says that way lies The Emerald City." He jerks his thumb over his shoulder. "Shall we?"
"You got a better idea?" The chicken seems a little tense as he picks it up and tucks it under one arm. Maybe it's thinking he's going to wring its neck. That is, of course, always an option.
"Several, but somehow I don't think I'll get away with them." He starts hiking down the overgrown, broken path.
There's a brief and wonderful pause for silence before the chicken starts talking again. "Where do you suppose the munchkins are?"
"Sleeping." He's only half-paying attention, the other half of his brain occupied with trying to remember how the story goes from here. "Otherwise I wouldn't be."
"I mean the ones that aren't blood-related to you."
"Oh." He thinks about it for a moment. "I haven't got a clue."
"At least you finally admit it."
"Shut up."
Fifteen minutes of good, solid (and blessedly silent) walking later, he glimpses something over the tops of some trees just past a small clearing. If it's The Emerald City, it looks like it got hit by an EF3 tornado, and then a Jerry Bruckheimer film just after. Skeletal domes and crumbling spires create an eerie skyline, and the complete lack of any wildlife sounds doesn't improve the mood. "All in favour of turning around and going back, say…"
"Dorothy wouldn't have run away like a scared little girl." The chicken doesn't even let him cast his vote of 'aye'.
"I'm not running away like a scared little girl. I'm suggesting a strategic retreat, like a well-trained FBI agent. Sorry, but you're not exactly inspiring as 'backup.'" He's been feeling pretty good about himself and life lately. There's no reason to go charging into a place that is clearly abandoned except for those hell-bent on destruction. Especially since while the chicken has a tendency to be rather offensive, it's not exactly a weapon.
"Coward." The chicken clucks at him like… well…
"And your point?" He sighs, though, knowing she's right. He's not going to be able to get away with running away, even if it is his best talent. Nope, the only way through this is forward. He has an idea for a weapon, but a quick check confirms that his mind isn't that nice: he isn't wearing any socks. Which is a shame, because a brick in a sock can be pretty formidable if swung right.
He steps warily through the unguarded city gates, keeping his ears open for any sounds of someone about to attack. Even the cushioned soles of his running shoes aren't enough to muffle his footsteps in this near dead silence. He tells himself not to think of words like 'dead.'
Stone figures decorate the central square, doing all the things that people normally did in a city (or a least a sanitised child's-book version of a city), reading a book on one of the many benches, trimming the hedges or chasing a ball. Or rather, they would be if they weren't all frozen in place. Somehow, Martin gets the sense that these aren't normal pieces of statuary. Something is very, very wrong.
On one side of the square, a circle of headless maidens is frozen in mid-dance. He stares at them for a bit, knowing that there's something important about this. He just can't figure out what.
"Well, that's kind of careless," the chicken comments. "They've lost their heads."
"Hush." He picks up a broken limb from a statue someone knocked over. Now that he's armed, he feels a little better. A piece of graffiti catches his eye: Beware The Wheelers.
"Wheelers?" He frowns. That does not sound good. Neither does the high-pitched noise coming from one of the parapets, though when he looks there's nothing there.
The chicken, in the meantime, has wandered off. She lets loose a panicked scream from on the other side of an archway, and he heads over to see what the problem is.
"Look out!" She suddenly yells.
He turns reflexively, to see what looks like a person made out of cans, holding an axe aloft. "The Tin Woodsman." He's a little awed. One of his unwanted nicknames is 'Tin Man', playing on the last syllable of his name and his reputation for lack of feeling. People seem to forget that the Tin Man was the most sensitive of all of them. His next thought is that while the man himself may have turned to stone, he's holding an axe, and that Martin knows how to use one of those things. Carefully, he sets his pilfered arm aside and begins working the axe handle free of the stone fingers gripping it. Now this is more his métier. He swings it a couple of times, experimentally. Nice balance, good weight… the chicken eyes him warily, as though it understands the usual relationship between axes and chickens, and suspects he might employ it.
He hears the high-pitched sound again, and this time the chicken sounds really panicked. "Wheelers!"
He looks to see one of the strangest things he's ever seen in his life, and once again that includes the detox hallucinations. It looks like an extremely long-limbed person on all fours, with large wheels for hands and feet. A leering mask covers the face, insane laughter emanating from behind it. "Chicken!"
Martin swings the axe, catching the wheeler directly in the middle of the face with the flat of the blade. As it goes down, he realises that it's not a mask, but rather a helmet and his shot didn't do nearly the damage he thought it would. More of them approach, and he comes to the conclusion that he's a lone tourist who's just wandered into gang territory. Axe or no, he's severely outnumbered.
They all begin to laugh, as though they're high on nitrous oxide and he's dressed like a clown. Their wheels squeak painfully as they inch closer.
"Chicken," he says, picking her up.
"Yes?"
"Now I'm going to run like a scared little girl." Matching deed to words, he spins and takes off, hoping that if a child could outrun these things, someone who goes for a nice long run every day will have a better chance.
It seems, however, that they match their speed to their prey. He dodges around a corner to find himself in a dead end. Behind him, he can hear the sound of metal wheels on stone, drawing closer.
"Come on, come on." He hefts the axe in his hand again. How many can he get before they get him? Will it even matter?
"What's that hole for?" The chicken asks.
"What hole?" He wishes there was a hole, either big enough for him to hide in, or too big for something on four wheels to jump.
"Here. In the wall. Looks like a key-hole."
Lock. Lock generally means door, and door means escape. A key is just a secondary concern. As long as he can find something to serve as a tension wrench and a pick - and gee, looky there at that wire piled with all that junk in the corner - and the lock might as well not be there.
"Hey." The wheelers seem annoyed as a heavy section of stone wall springs outward. "Get him!"
He slips through the door, pulling it closed behind him before the wheelers can wedge a wheel in and keep it open. He can hear them yelling through the lock.
"You can't stay in there forever, chicken." Martin isn't sure whether the Wheeler is addressing him or the bird, or if it even matters. "You have to come out sooner or later, and when you do, we'll tear you into little pieces and throw you in the Deadly Desert!"
Martin doesn't bother asking what he might have done to deserve it. Basically, they're a gang and he's not part of it. That's reason enough, as far as groupthink goes. He does have another question, however. "What's the big deal with the chicken?"
"The Nome King doesn't allow chickens anywhere in Oz." The wheeler says it as though the answer should be obvious.
"Right. The Nome King." Well, it is an answer, even if it's a stupid and cryptic one. Martin turns around to take stock of his surroundings. 'Cornered' pretty much sums it up, seeing as there appears only to be the one exit. "Well, this is good." It's a small room, and the bulk of the space not occupied by junk, one human and a chicken is taken up by a squat, metal figure that looks vaguely familiar. "You have got to be kidding me." He brushes cobwebs off to read the inscription on the figure's 'stomach'. "Royal Army of Oz." Well, okay, this subconscious arrangement makes a little bit of sense. Army… Jack was a Ranger… He is not, however, going to tell his boss that he sometimes thinks the man's brains have wound down ahead of his speech and his action. In a fair fight between them… well, the only way Martin could conceivably win would be to make sure it wasn't a fair fight.
He leans the axe against the wall and winds up the clockwork man's gears, starting with the 'thinking' key. 'Speech' brings both blinking eyes and some garbled sounds before. "Good morning. Are you Dorothy Gale?"
"Do I look like it?" Martin asks.
"What are you doing here?" It not only looks like Jack, it talks like him too: irritated that things have not gone according to plan, and belligerent as a result. "I'm supposed to be waiting for Dorothy Gale, under orders from His Majesty, The Scarecrow."
"I don't suppose this has anything to do with Bodie out there, does it?" If The Emerald City qualifies as anything, 'ghost town' is it.
"What are you talking about, person?"
"Ah, forget it." He's not about to give a history lesson to a talking piece of metal. "And it's Martin, not 'person'."
"Nice of you to formally introduce yourself to me," the chicken snarks.
"I didn't see a reason to." Martin shoots back. "I rarely, if ever, introduce myself to future meals."
"Well. I never," the chicken huffs.
"When everything began to turn to stone, the Scarecrow locked me in here." The clockwork, one-man army seems content to ignore the peanut gallery. "I yelled for help until my speech ran down, then I paced back and forth until my action ran down, then I stood and thought until my thought ran down…"
"And when has that ever stopped you from anything?" Martin mutters. Despite what everyone seems to believe, he isn't a complete acolyte of Jack's. He's just learned that when dealing with authority, passive aggression often works better than the real thing. Let the others tell the man he's an idiot to his face. Martin knows better than to argue with crazy people. This, however, is a dream. Here, he can safely vent his feelings and not have to suffer the consequences. Maybe that makes him a coward, but it makes him a smart coward. Smart cowards are the ones who survive.
"For someone who has a life to lose, you do not seem very concerned about it." The movie Tik-Tok - as far as Martin's memory is willing to cooperate - wasn't quite that threatening to his companions. He's definitely imprinting more than a little Jack on the character.
"For someone I could dismantle with this axe," Martin picks it up again, unwilling to abandon a weapon, "You're awfully mouthy."
"Are you sure about that?" The clockwork army seems to be calculating the odds of Martin's success and finding them at a level demanding bluster over discretion. "I am not alive, so cannot be afraid of losing what I don't have. You, on the other hand…"
"Yeah, yeah." Martin juggles the axe from hand to hand, thinking of his own strategic advantage. "I on the other hand, have a brain that doesn't stop working just because a spring ran down."
"Are you sure about that?" The chicken and the tik-tok man chorus it together. It's a very Sammish and Jack-like dig at his occasional lapses in judgement. As if they've never had any.
Martin ignores them, stalking to the door to peer through the keyhole. It's all clear at the moment, but that doesn't have to mean anything. All that really means is that the wheelers are hanging out at the end of the hallway and taking another hit off the nitrous. "Inventory. I'm outnumbered, probably about ten to one. I've got an axe, a tin soldier, and a chicken."
"Copper," the army corrects him.
"Great. You'll match all the unused pots and pans in my kitchen." He can cook, he just never really bothers to. There's no real point when you can get anything delivered to your door at any time, and no dishes to do afterwards.
"If you do not mind," the sarcasm in the tik-tok's voice - emotion that should have been non-existent in a clockwork man, but one held in high esteem by J. Malone PhD - could have smothered a more sensitive person than Martin. "I have come up with a plan."
"Right." Martin steps aside, gesturing at the door. "Go for it."
"If you would…" the clockwork man begins.
Martin coughs, embarrassedly. He goes back and winds up the Army's action. "Lay on, Macduff."
The copper creation seems confused. "I am not a Macduff, I am…"
"It's a saying." Martin is beginning to regret this. On the other hand, this motley crew is all he has. "A quote. From a play."
"Ah." The Army inclines the upper part of his body in a semi-bow. "If you would open the door, please?"
With a deep breath, Martin does as he's told. No immediate squeaks or laughter greet him as he peers carefully around. "All clear."
They make an odd crew proceeding down the littered hallway, with the automaton stumping his way in the lead, and the chicken in the middle. Martin brings up the rear, holding tight to his axe. He likes this axe. It's a nice axe. It's sharp and it's heavy, and it makes him feel better in that if he's actually gone crazy, it's much better to be crazy with an axe. When you're crazy and have an axe, it's a very definite crazy. People take you seriously when you have an axe. Dad took him very seriously on that chilly fall day, when he emerged from the house to find out why the chopping noises had stopped. He even arranged for Martin to take a nice, long vacation with Bonnie and Roger in lovely, non-flat upstate New York. Axes, Martin decided then, have power.
His first glance at the ruined city seems to leave the tik-tok man in awe, even if a machine isn't supposed to feel. Martin can feel some sympathy. If he walked out of his apartment to find New York looking like this, he'd be the same way.
They barely make it to the square before a squeal heralds the approach of a wheeler. Or six, Martin revises, catching a glimpse of a few more. By the time they reach the stairs at the side of the square, it's up to an even dozen.
"You run up the stairs, and I'll take care of them." The Army squares off with one set of the wheelers, and if Martin isn't mistaken, there's a very evil Jack-like glint in one of the glass eyes.
Martin does as he's told, telling himself that he's protecting them from the small group of wheelers along the wall at the top.
The wheelers laugh, creeping closer to the tik-tok man until they're stupidly within striking range. Suddenly, he begins to spin, knocking several off their feet at once. Before they can recover, he grabs one by the collar, hoisting it up menacingly. The others flee the moment they regain their footing, leaving just the one, poor hostage. "Come here, you."
"You'll be sorry for treating me like this," the wheeler threatens. "I'm a terrible, fierce person."
The Army doesn't seem any more impressed by the statement than Jack would be. In fact, just like him, it merely shakes the wheeler a little to get its attention.
"What's happened around here?" Martin hurries down the stairs, not wanting to be left out of this interrogation. "Isn't the Scarecrow supposed to be in charge, or something?"
The wheeler says nothing at first. The tik-tok shakes it again. "Answer."
"The Nome King! He conquered the Emerald City. He took all the emeralds and turned everyone to stone."
"And the Scarecrow?" Martin crosses his arms, deliberately moving the head of the axe into the wheeler's line of sight.
"Only one person knows that. Princess… Princess Mombi." He seems afraid to even say her name.
"And where is this Princess Mombi?" It's almost comforting to be on familiar ground, working on a Missing Persons case. Maybe it is a straw man, but that's not really new, either.
"You will take us there." The tik-tok decides at the same moment.
"No. Nooooo!" The wheeler sounds terrified.
If the tik-tok resembled Jack before, the image becomes cemented in Martin's mind with the next move. It pulls the wheeler close, whispering something in the hapless creature's ear, before relaxing its grip just slightly. "Hmmm?"
The wheeler leads them to what looks like a large, semi-destroyed building, but nothing special. If it weren't for the way the thing was trembling, Martin would think that it was sending them on a wild-goose chase.
He uses one of the heavy knockers on the door, listening until the echoes die. "Hello?" There's no answer from inside.
"Lemme go," the wheeler whimpers.
"Might as well," Martin decides. "He's liable to just get in the way."
The tik-tok seems rather disappointed, but does so. "Behave yourself," he admonishes.
"Nice one, Jack," Martin snickers.
"Jack?"
"Someone you remind me of," Martin tells him. He's vaguely aware that the name ought to belong to someone else, but here is where it fits. He turns back to the door, this time banging on it with the axe. "Hello? Mombi?"
The door creaks open just slightly. "Oh, great," he mutters. "One of those." Inside, the castle doesn't look much better, with everything covered in a thick layer of dust.
At first, he's willing to believe that this place is long abandoned, and the wheeler managed to fool him. Then his ears catch the slight sounds of music ahead.
"I think it is up these stairs." 'Jack' points at a heavy door to their left.
Martin nods. His ears tell him the same thing. As they approach the door, it slides open automatically.
On the other side of the door is another home-decorating nightmare entirely. Gold and mirrors decorate every conceivable surface - walls, floors, ceilings, and even light fixtures. In the centre of the room, a woman sits on a chaise lounge, playing what looks like a sitar.
"Princess Mombi?" Martin can't shake a certain 'on edge' feeling. Sitar music does that to him, but he gets the sense there's something more to it as well.
The woman yawns in an airhead sort of way and extends her hand. "Help me to rise."
Martin does, noting that the moment her hand touches his, he's struck with an instant and powerful desire to jerk his hand back and run. Screw the Scarecrow, screw Oz… just get the hell out of there. With the chicken watching, he doesn't.
"I think I'll put on something more… appropriate." Her soft voice is almost hypnotic. "Your friends can stay here."
"It's about the Scarecrow." He finds himself following her out of the room. "I don't suppose you know what happened to him?"
She doesn't answer. They pass through a bedroom and into a kind of gallery. A series of very realistic looking heads hold various wigs, each in a separate glass compartment. There are blondes, brunettes, redheads… if hair comes in that colour and style, it's here. Mombi approaches one of the cabinets and unlocks it. "I think number thirty-four will do for this afternoon."
To Martin's horror, she detaches the entire head and places it on the empty pedestal in the cabinet. The 'number thiry-four' she selects only makes things worse.
"What do you think?" the disembodied head asks, as Mombi turns around with it in her hands.
Martin feels his mouth go dry. It's not the detachable nature of the head, so much, but whom it resembles. "I think I'll be going. Door's that way, right?" He begins to inch away.
Mombi settles the head on her neck. "Come here. This is about the Scarecrow, you said?"
He feels his body following the order automatically. It always has, to some extent. "No, no. It's okay, Mom…" Somehow he knew beheading her wouldn't make a difference. It never did with hydras.
"The Nome King has taken care of the Scarecrow. You are just going to cause trouble."
He knows better than to deny it. That will just cause trouble. Instead he wonders if it's possible to take his own head off with the axe. It would save time, at least.
"I think I'll put you in the tower, for now. Until you cease to be a problem. A shame you're not a girl, or I'd add your head to my collection. As it stands…"
"No…" He takes a deep breath. "Guys! A little help here!"
Mombi grabs his collar, avoiding any actual physical contact. She twists the fabric tight, and he can feel it cut into his neck. As she hustles him out into the other room, something light brownish colour comes flying in at eye level.
"Yes!" There's something rather satisfying in seeing the evil witch attacked by a chicken. "Ha!"
Mombi jerks his collar, causing him to stumble, at the same time, grabbing hold of the chicken's legs. "You, I'll have fried for breakfast."
"I'm coming," Tik-tok Jack's reassurances are hardly comforting, though, as he totters to a halt. "It seems the fight with the wheelers has caused my action to run down sooner…"
Martin doesn't hear the rest. Rather, he concentrates on holding onto his axe, and is grateful for the small blessing that he still has it. She's too close for him to use it at this moment, but later she's going to be in for it.
She drags him up a winding flight of stairs, somehow using her hand with the chicken to open a door at the top. She tosses the chicken in, and propels him after it.
"Real creative, Mom!" He yells at the door as she closes it. "Locking me in my room! Yeah, this is new." He gives the door a good swift kick, before wandering over to the window at the far side. He can see a mountain in the distance, and an instinct tells him that it's where he needs to get to. Unfortunately, it's there and he's here. He goes over to a junked couch in the middle of the room. He drops down on it, then falls to his side, curling up. Maybe if he goes to sleep now, he can wake up again, back on his own couch, in his own lofty rooms. He closes his eyes, holding his axe close like an uncuddly teddy-bear.
"Mom? Mom?"
"She'll be back soon," he mutters. "What time is it? Go back to sleep."
"Mom? Is that you?"
"Oh, no." For one thing, he realises, the girls wouldn't have to ask what his parental status was, and for another, it's not a little girl's voice. He cautiously opens one eye, only to confirm what he dreads. He's still here.
"I'm beginning to think I should have took my chances on the Desert." Martin groans, rolling into a sitting position. "After all, isn't one of the terms for death, 'rest'?"
He looks over to see a stick figure sitting in the corner. Well, a stick figure with a carved pumpkin on its head. One of the sticks used for a leg is broken and sits at an angle to the stickman in a way that almost turns Martin's stomach. After all, the figure is anthropomorphic enough to cause him to have empathy pains, and broken bones are something he's intimately familiar with.. The clothes are bright and almost deliberately mismatched. This is what Martin thinks of as a scarecrow, but he instinctively knows it's not the Scarecrow. Even dreams aren't that easy.
"Mom?" The voice is definitely coming from the pumpkin head. The tone is kind of sad, yet hopeful at the same time, that of a lost child. It's pathetic enough that Martin can't bring himself to be nasty.
"No, I'm not your mom." He stands up and walks closer to the stick… he wants to say 'boy' given the naivety, but 'man' fits the form better, given that if the thing were standing, it'd be taller than him.
"Oh. I thought maybe my Mom had come back." Now it just sounds disappointed.
"Sorry." Martin looks down at his feet, genuinely feeling bad.
"Could you check and make sure my head hasn't spoiled? I'm always worried it's going to spoil and go soft, before I've done or seen anything. I've only been alive for such a short time, but when your head is a pumpkin…"
"Sure. No problem." For one thing, he has a problem saying no to such an earnest request, and for another, it's nice to find someone who isn't a smart-ass right off the bat. He looks the gourd over. "It seems fine."
"Could you maybe help put me back together?" The pumpkinhead gestures, and Martin can see that in addition to the broken leg, one arm has become detached and has fallen to the floor. He starts to lash the pieces back together. One nice thing about those years Dad made him attend Boy Scouts: he's pretty good with knots.
"Are you sure you're not my mom? She looked like a boy when she made me… she made me to scare that awful witch, Mombi - she's the one who made my mom look like a boy. She stood me in a place where the witch would see me, face to face. Sure enough, she was scared, but then she got angry. She has a terrible temper."
"I know." Martin shudders, involuntarily. People who think he has rage problems have no idea. Comparatively, he's a saint.
"She was going to destroy me, but then she decided to test some powder of life she just bought from some magician. She sprinkled it on me," the pumpkin head leans on him, attempting to stand, "and here I am." It wobbles, a skinny, gangly giant. Instinctively, Martin knows that the creature is - in the canon at least -- Jack Pumpkinhead, but the voice belongs to someone else, entirely. If Jack is the automaton downstairs, then the pumpkinhead is the only real stickfigure person Martin knows.
"Does she have any more of it?"
"If she does, it's in cabinet thirty-four with her original head." The pumpkinhead doesn't sound overly certain.
"What happened to your mother?" the chicken asks.
"I think Mombi enchanted her," the pumpkinhead says. "Then she threw me in the corner and said she was going to make a pie out of me, but she was wearing head twenty-six at the time, and I don't think she's worn it since, because she seems to have forgotten all about me."
Martin's only partly paying attention. A plan is forming, or at the very least, being remembered. "Okay. I have an idea."
To Be Continued