On the Subject of Pie
Created | Updated Nov 29, 2007
Quandary Phase - Episode Twenty
Gerald watched as Emily the swan waddled around inside the empty room in which she had been temporarily imprisoned. He remembered when the Council of Earth had forced him to do exactly the same to Cedric – at least they'd been able to give Cedric a fair trial, albeit one governed by the punitive laws of their land. Gerald remembered when the pair had worked together, keeping an eye on the prisoners being kept on Earth. Cedric had been young and foolish back then and hadn't realised the possible consequences of playing around with humans, and Gerald felt just as sorry for him as he did for this human who had been instantly convicted of trying to bring Cedric back to his home planet. This thought led Gerald to have a rather good idea. The only problem was that the Council of Earth weren't responding to his enquiries – he'd have to send the pair of swans to a different planet instead. A nagging thought at the back of his head started to suggest to him that this wasn't the right thing to do, and he realised that he was just about to have an even better idea. A few more seconds of thought and the plan was finalised, and Gerald started to prepare to send Cedric and Emily through the portal and back to Earth.
'Quack!'
Emily couldn't help but comment on how lovely a day it was. Her surroundings were almost pleasant enough to make up for the shock of having just been flung rapidly through time and space for the second time that day, and so she was quite content to put it all down to it just being one of those days. It was, after all, the sort of lovely day that makes any waterfowl innately happy, and so Emily reasoned in a rather swannish manner that she simply needed to relax and assess the situation. Unfortunately, for a swan, assessing the situation is a process akin to removing blood from a stone with a particularly blunt hypodermic needle – all she found out was that she was indeed a swan, it was sunny, she was in some water, and that she was exorbitantly happy about those last three details. She tried again and got the same answer. She'd always thought that swans were such intelligent and majestic beings, but it turned out that they could be exceptionally Spartan with their thought processes. Normally, Emily would have been dejected about this but it was, after all, an incredibly lovely day. The fact that she was swimming along a very familiar-looking river just simply didn't register.
Whilst the reader will note that Emily has in fact arrived in a place that isn't terribly dissimilar to Earth, they will probably not be too shocked to hear that Cedric isn't quite in the place he was meant to be - in fact, he is now what some might call a long, long way away from being not quite in the place he was meant to be. Thankfully, his new location has plenty of wildebeests quite unlike the sort that majestically sweep across the plains of various backwater planets, thus placing Cedric on the planet that is in fact his home, albeit a few epochs earlier than normal.
Cedric had spent less than thirty seconds waddling around when, against all probability, he came across a rather sullen-looking putrid bloke who he recognised only too well. Being of the sort of waterfowl that glows in the dark, Cedric managed to gain Pyrodaemon's attention at a moment best described as almost before he came into view. However, it just happened to transpire that at that very moment, a putrid man representing a much higher echelon of evil than Pyrodaemon decided to appear and render them both unconscious by way of some very silly-looking hand motions which made him look much like he was groping an attractive passer-by while trying to conduct an orchestra at the same time. Thus it was that in just a single minute, Cedric managed to go from being almost completely safe to being in the worst sort of mortal peril that a swan can possibly experience, perhaps with the exception of exploding boathouses.
Galen laughed maniacally, using the sort of laughter usually reserved by extremely evil people for the moment just before they bring the lives of various good guys to rather sticky and possibly painful ends. This wasn't exactly what Galen had on his mind at the time, but such an evil laugh was too good to keep in reserve for just a few fleeting moments, especially after all those afternoons he had spent practicing using his reflection in a nearby tarn. His amazingly evil plan had worked not once but twice, providing him with an interesting selection of captives. Without further ado, he went over to Pyro and heaved him over his shoulder, following which he grabbed the unconscious swan and headed off for his bunker.
Unlike the classic British Cold War bunker, which is filled with various equipment and amenities and more importantly has a small cottage on top so that nobody will ever suspect that it's a bunker, Galen's bunker was simply a smelly little hole in the ground with no particular purpose other than that of belonging to Galen.
A series of stone steps led down out of the hostile territory above, ending in a reasonably-sized room containing various pieces of wooden furniture that those who were feeling generous might describe as 'rustic'. Around the room were scattered various items of dubious value to the average person, but which produced a smell that suggested they were either of use as food, or as ingredients for witchcraft of some description, or perhaps both. Some of the more pork-like items looked slightly burnt, as if the boars they had come from had suffered some form of combustion in order to bring their lives to a convenient halt.
Galen lit the fire in the corner of the bunker with a single arc of fire from his fingertips, watched as the smoke began to rise up through a small hole in the chimney, and then turned to take a closer look at his captives. This evoked a gasp followed by a puzzled look, which was soon followed up with a moment of thought which eventually led to an evil grin. His son had gone gallivanting off without so much as a goodbye all those years ago, and had done so at the very time when Galen had needed him most. Pyro was going to pay for that now, and hopefully he was going to be useful in doing so.
