LotS/The Story/Lu Bu's Halloween/RunningFromMonsters
Running From Monsters
"Get away from her, children!" Lu Bu said. "This woman is a dangerous psychopath!"
"Oh, look who's talking, Mr. Kill-them-all-and-let-the-algorithm-sort-them-out!"
Her musical laughter made her breasts undulate, a fact which her coquettish pose did nothing to conceal. Some of the older boys stared. Lu Bu stepped forward and interposed himself between his children and the offending cleavage.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded. "If you require directions to the nearest brothel, as your manner of dress appears to suggest, my memory banks contain local maps which-"
"Ha! Those TALOS nerds programmed jokes into you?"
"My humor capabilities are actually autonomous, and allow me to... That isn't relevant. What are you doing with those children? Given their varied ethnic traits, I don't believe they're all your own offspring!"
"My offspring? I thought robots were meant to be smart! They're the kids I got assigned."
"We're her Cybersmashies!" a girl in a Rylattu mask said.
"Cybersmashies!" some of the others chorused.
Natasha reached over and patted one on the head.
"Of course you are!" she said.
"They entrusted you with the care of children?" Lu Bu asked. "You?"
"Hey, I was a kid once. And I'm very popular with the tween demographic! Anyway, what about you? Are you taking those guys trick or treating, or did the robot uprising start early? Maybe you're leading them off so they can be processed into robo-food!"
"I don't want to be robo-food!" a vampire wailed.
"I do!" a furry monster declared.
"No one is going to be robo-food!" Lu Bu said. "I don't even consume food. And if I did, your nutritional value would be... That's not the point! Get away from those children. I'll contact the Lady Hollister, and explain that someone must have inadvertently allowed you to take charge of them."
The robot strode towards her.
"Screw you, nutless twerp!"
Natasha Cybersmash stepped forward to meet him, between the two crowds of costumed children.
"Actually, my body contains several... Oh. Your language is inappropriate."
"Kick his metal butt!" a werewolf howled.
"Go Natasha!" a fairy added. Several others took up the cry.
"Hey, our adult's way cooler than yours!" shouted the wizard he'd saved from vehicular homicide.
"He can transform into stuff!" a ghost added.
"Actually," Lu Bu said, "I cannot-"
"Our one's hot!" a cyborg Hitler exclaimed.
"Our one's awesome!" the highwayman retorted.
"At least our one has a soul!"
Natasha laughed, and stuck her tongue out between her fangs.
"Get lost," she said. "Otherwise I'll let my Cybersmashies tear you to bits!"
"Get lost?" Lu Bu crossed his arms in what he believed was a suitable stance to illustrate his scorn for the notion. "This is our assigned street!"
"Yeah!" several of his children said.
"Our street sucked," Natasha replied. "They were handing out fruit. Fruit!"
"Fruit's for losers!"
"Fruit's lame!"
"We should've beaten them to death with frozen bananas!"
"We want candy!"
"And chocolate!"
"And reindeer!"
"That's Christmas, sweetie," Natasha said. "But I'll see what we can do."
"Actually, children," Lu Bu said, "fruit is an important part of-"
A shriek tore through the night and brought a premature end to his discourse on nutrition. Halloween or not, the robot knew genuine terror when he heard it. He and Natasha Cybersmash turned with synchronized swiftness.
There was a narrow pedestrian path between two of the houses on the other side of the road. A little girl in a flowing pink gown, her head adorned with a tall pointy hat of the same hue, was hurtling along it. A pumpkin bucket dangled from one of her hands, swinging this way and that like an orange pendulum -- spilling candy in her wake. She screamed again, from a pale, terrified face.
"Stop!" Natasha cried. She held her hands out, as though her palms could brace the child and stop her flight in spite of the distance between them.
A blue car was speeding down the road, roaring to simulate an archaic engine. It shifted and swerved as it came, annexing first one lane and then the other.
The girl didn't listen to the Twisted Steel fighter. And the engine's hellish growl didn't even make her turn. She ran out into the road, tears streaming from her eyes, a fresh scream wailing from her mouth.
Natasha Cybersmash dashed forward. So did Lu Bu.
The car zoomed towards them. Its headlights glared like a predator's shining eyes. Perhaps it was that blinding white light that made the girl aware of her peril. Perhaps it was the sight of the robot and the vampiress running towards her. But she stopped in her tracks and turned towards the oncoming vehicle. Her eyes widened. She screamed once more.
Natasha Cybersmash leapt. She threw her lithe body into a spearing tackle, the kind she'd used to break her opponents' bodies in the Twisted Steel ring. A distant part of her perception was aware of the smashing of glass close at hand. She ignored it, as her arms wrapped themselves around the girl. She turned her body as they fell, adjusting in mid-air with practiced agility. When they hit the ground, Natasha was underneath -- the girl unscathed in her embrace.
The siren of sports entertainment sat up. The car had stopped in the road. There was a gaping hole in its windshield. The lower half of Lu Bu's body protruded from it.
As she looked on, unconsciously cradling the sobbing girl out of maternal instincts she didn't even know she possessed, the robot drew himself out of the vehicle. He dragged its driver out with him -- yanking a fat man in a red jumpsuit through the hole in the glass, enlarging it with a fresh series of tinkles. Lu Bu pulled him over the hood. A moment later both stood in the street, and Natasha laughed in spite of it all.
The driver's obese body was bulging against the stretchy fabric of a replica 'Ace' Flashheart outfit.
Something fell from the driver's hand. It smashed in the road, a fresh cascade of broken glass. Orange liquid dribbled away from its remains. Natasha had recognized the object before its demise. A bottle of pumpkin vodka.
"You're drunk!" Lu Bu declared.
His metal fists grasped the man's stretchy lapels.
"Sho?" the man replied. "It'sh Halloween! Shposed to be drunk!"
Lu Bu pivoted, and threw him down into the road. The man sprawled there, grumbling unintelligibly. He made no effort to get up. A moment later, he was curled up -- snoring.
"I've called the cops!" a man's voice said.
"I saw everything!" another added.
The plump couple, the hanged man, and several of the street's other residents had gathered at the scene. A few of them applied semi-surreptitious kicks to the sleeping drunk, none of which resulted in him waking up.
Natasha shifted the girl off her, and moved into a kneeling position.
"What happened?" she asked. "Why were you screaming?"
A look of sheer horror overtook the girl's face, banishing the warring emotions of her near death experience and subsequent rescue.
"Monsters!" she wailed. "The monsters killed our adult, and took the others!"
Many curious glances followed Sun Xi as she made her way through the imperial palace. Patrolling guardsmen stared at the object under her arm. Servants raised their eyebrows. A clerk who emerged from one of the offices frowned, perhaps deeming it an unseemly thing to be carried through such august corridors.
But no one thought to question one of the Emperor's closest advisors. At least not until she drew near to her quarters. Then a lovely giggle turned her head.
"Why do you have that, Mistress Sun?" Princess Illaria asked.
The little girl stared at the metal object, and met its ghastly glare.
"I... It might brighten up my chamber," she replied.
That wasn't a lie, at least. Sun Xi didn't wish to deceive the child.
She exchanged a few pleasantries with the smiling Princess, then excused herself and entered her chambers. There she set the grinning metal pumpkin down on the floor of her sitting room. The psychic sat cross-legged in front of it, before its sculpted features.
Mistress Sun tapped the pumpkin's nose. Holographic flames sprang to life.
She gazed into the flickering fires of the jack o' lantern's eyes.
There was an ancient expression about the difficulty of locating a needle hidden within a haystack. Compared with her present task, such a labor was child's play. For she had to locate a needle in all of time and space.
Under normal circumstances, she would have rejected it as impossible. To find a single thread among all that turbulent vastness... But her vision of the previous day had been powerful. So perhaps it would guide her mind. Thus she'd purchased the jack o' lantern in the hope of directing her psionic forays.
The pumpkin's burning eyes widened into twin infernos.
"Jack," she whispered. "Jack."
The world shimmered. Reality span aside to the right and left, like a troupe of dancers whirling their way offstage. In its wake came something else.
A man wanders between heaven and hell, denied the former because of his sins and the latter for the jests he played upon the devil. He's left to roam the world, with a lantern to guide his path. His name is Jack.
No. That wasn't it. Not what she was searching for. The image was sharp and clear, but tinged with unreality. The scene before her was woven from imaginings -- folktales passed from lip to ear, page to eye. Held firm and regarded as chronicle by many, perhaps. But discernible for one such as she who's witnessed so much of thought's raw fabric.
False etymology. She'd come across it before. Ancient and forgotten truth carried in the great collective unconsciousness of humanity, the racial memory which bound every man and woman on a level so unfathomably deep that it often passed unregarded. As Terracles gave birth to the legend of Heracles, so too did the Jack she sought become the genesis of this other.
Her mental self pressed onwards. Burning pumpkins glared at her from the periphery of her vision. Perhaps they wished to frighten her away. But they only served to guide her. Earth's lost neighbor was her destination. It's there that she had to go...
Ah, yes. A thread gleamed in the maelstrom. She would never have caught sight of it were it not for the vision in the marketplace. But the connection had been made.
A man stands in a field. There's a knife in his hand and wickedness in his mind. He thrusts and slashes, cuts and tears. His victim is bloodless. A pumpkin. His blows aren't those of murder, but rather of sculpture. He's bringing a horrible face into being on the fruit's hide. Ah... This is its true origin. The first carved pumpkin, which will have descendants first on this world, then on Earth, and then throughout the void.
Satisfied with his handiwork, he places the absurd yet terrible helm over his head. Then he rushes into the village, where his nemeses await the fright of their lives. The children... How he despises them.
The boys and girls scream when they see the pumpkin's ghastly, infernal features. They run in terror. He drinks their fear as though it were a fine wine, and pursues them.
But some of the children are brave. One of them seizes a club, and smashes the supposed fiend in the groin. The man doesn't laugh after that. Instead he falls in the street. And he can only groan when another child douses him with pitch. Then a burning torch is flung at him. His head and its pumpkin guise burn. Thus Jack dies, and legends are born.
That body, with its incinerated mask and skull... Yes. That was what she'd seen, entombed in a fragment of the planet, hurtling through space -- carrying a dead man's malevolence within.