C.N. - chapter 90

G!

I woke up, and everything was silent. I was still strapped to the gurney. A steel trolley beside where I lay had a pile of bloody gauze and bandages on it. My chest was freshly bandaged and still had a numb sensation. A single fluorescent light tube was on at the far end of the large room. Terry and Terry were nowhere in sight.
I tried to get up, and found that I couldn't. The straps around my wrists and ankles pretty much restricted all movement of my limbs. I could only raise my head to look around me.
Without hearing footsteps first, I saw the door at the far end of the room open, and someone stepped in. This person was wearing flannel shorts, and looked like he had never shaved his legs before. Maybe he was one of Mr. Dragon's henchmen who had been on vacation in a tropical place and just returned.
The person approached me, and from the posture of his walk and his physique, it occurred to me that it was unlikely that he was Mr. Dragon's henchman after all. This person looked like a late-teenager, around my age, in fact.
'Hello Charlie.' The person said.
'Hello, are you one of Mr. Dragon's henchman who had been on vacation and just returned to base? Because if you are I think there's an invasion going on right now.' Although this was now a dubious assumption, I still wanted to test it out.
'I know about the invasion in progress, but I'm not one of Mr. Dragon's henchmen.'
'How did you know my name?' I asked him.
'Why wasn't that your first question?' The person pointed out.
'I don't know, it just came out that way.'
'Well I know, because I wrote it that way.' The person smiled.
'What do you mean?'
'I'm the author of this story, your author, to be exact. I created you on a word processor.'
'Wow, really?'
'That's right, I'm here now because there's a lot of exciting things happening in the story right now. This is the grande finale of your story, so I don't want you to miss out on all the action that is taking place which you aren't there to witness.'
'So what's happening right now that I'm not there to witness?' I asked.
'Allow me to take over the narration for a moment, you'll see it all.'
'Ok,' I said, 'how will you do that?'
'It's extremely simple, I just replace your narrative voice with mine. You can simply sit back and enjoy the grand finale of your story, without having to narrate any of it.'
'Wow, I didn't know I was narrating the story this whole time.' I exclaimed. Indeed, I had no idea the thoughts in my head were being recorded for other people to read, if that's even how this is supposed to work.
'By the way, how's your bullet wound? It wasn't too painful was it?' My author asked.
'Oh no, just a flesh wound.'
'I knew it, you took it extremely well. Even I couldn't handle it like you did if I got shot in the shoulder by Harvey Keitel. Now, where are we...

The Lynx was rudely woken up from her afternoon nap in the reading room by an explosion that shook the whole floor and ejected a stream of concrete dust from a crack in the ceiling straight onto her face.
'That blasted vulture better not be playing with his explosives again.' She thought to herself. Then there came the gunfire.
'Must be the Dragon and the Wolf,' she said again to no one in particular, 'those two imbeciles are reenacting the finale of The Matrix again. This is shameful, when will boys grow up?'
The Vulture ran into the reading room, with not one, but two belts of explosives strapped to his waist and an AK-47 slung over his shoulder. His turban was covered in soot.
'How many times do I have to tell you,' the Lynx said with great annoyance, 'if you want to play with your explosives, don't do it on the recreation floor-'
'We're being attacked!' The Vulture cut her off, 'Every man for himself!' He ran off via the entrance on the opposite end of the room to the one he came through.
The Lynx rolled her eyes and yawned. The rattle of machinegun fire and footsteps got closer. She made her way to the floor mirror and combed her gray hair. Shouts and screams of pain were now audible in the approaching noise. It sounded like two groups of people are fighting intensely in the hallway. The Lynx thought to herself how much she was beginning to look like the Queen of England. Maybe it's time to retire, she added. The footsteps were just around the corner. Dense gray smoke was blowing into the reading room. The Lynx pressed the side of the mirror, it swing back to reveal the entrance to a hidden passageway. She slipped through the entrance. The mirror swung back to place just as the fight in the hallway spilled into the deserted reading room.
Meanwhile, Mr. North, grandfather of Theo North, was finishing off a squadron of poorly-trained henchmen who had the misfortune to run into him as he made his way towards the Dragon's Den, where he had been held captive just several hours ago. Mr. North, freshly pissed off that he wasn't able to thoroughly crush the Dragon at their rematch on the submarine (which he exploded before reentering the underground complex), was not going to let that villain get away this time.
Moreover, he had to find his granddaughter. Though he knew perfectly well that she could handle the situation on her own, he wanted to be there to see her kick ass, and also kick some ass in her presence to prove to her that he wasn't getting old like he had assumed she was beginning to think. Mr. North had radioed the League of Justice as soon as the submarine was abandoned and the fight moved underground. Their aircrafts should arrive in no time. The terrorists did not stand a chance.
Then Mr. North heard the loud cursing coming from close by, followed by a blast from a high powered rifle and then more swearing. He stopped by a door that read 'Auditorium - center balcony' and confirmed that the swearing was coming from the other side.
The constant stream of cursing was sporadically interrupted by hails of gunfire. Mr. North slowed opened the door and peeked through. Standing at the edge of the balcony with his back to Mr. North was the Panther in a bloodstained white suit, firing a machinegun and cursing wildly at the main floor below. At the Panther's feet were piled several bags of white powder.
The Panther was screaming, 'You think you can take me? You need a fucking army, if you gonna take me! You hear? Come on! I take you all to fucking hell! Who you think you fucking with? I'm-'
At this, a hail of bullets from below struck him in the chest, but the Panther did not fall, he regained his balance as more bullets struck him all across the front of his exposed body. His cursing did not stop.
'You fuck with me, you fucking with the best! I'm still standing. Come on! I take your fucking bullet!' The firing below had stopped. Everyone was dumbstruck by this terrorist, still alive and standing after having been shot numerous times. Mr. North silent approached the Panther from behind, while raising his rifle in slow-motion.
'You think you kill me with bullets? I take your fucking bullets! Go ahead!' With astounding cocaine-induced strength, the Panther raised his machinegun for a act of defiance in the face of certain death. 'SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE F-' At that, Mr. North fired one round right into the Panther's back. The Panther's battle cry was abruptly cut short, and he pitched forward over the railings. A thud was heard below, following by cheers.
Mr. North approached the railing and looked out below. Laura's henchmen in the League of Shadows were coming out from behind their cover spots to attend to the wounded.
'Hey look, it's Mr. North!' Someone said.
'Hello there Mr. North,' someone else said, 'if you hadn't shot him down, we'd have been here for another five minutes.'
'Drug kingpins can sure absorb those bullets.'
'So thanks for that!'
'No need to thank me,' Mr. North called down, 'now let's go finish those damn terrorists once and for all!' Everyone cheered, and the fight continued.
Meanwhile, the Serpent was running along a pitch black hidden passageway with a flashlight to guide him. He had to make it to the escape pods at the lowest level of the complex before everyone else. If he could strand all the other terrorists on the island, the League of Shadows wouldn't think to pursue him until he long gone.
He turned a corner, and his head collided with a hard object which smelled faintly of perfume. There was a crack, and his glasses broken in two down the bridge. His vision - even in the darkness - suddenly became blurry. The hard object happened to be the head of the Lynx.
'Ouch!' They both clutched their heads and yelled.
'Fancy seeing you here, Serpent, sneaking away like a rat!' The Lynx remarked.
'As if you're not!' The Serpent retorted. He grabbed onto her arm. 'You broke my glasses too, now I can't see shit!'
'Well too bad for you, let go of me!'
'No! I'm not letting go until you compensate for the damage!'
'What? In case your idiocy caused you to not notice something very obvious, we are being invaded!'
'Exactly! You have to get us out of here and to a lens store, or we'll both get captured.'
'What makes you think I'm going to take you?'
The Serpent smiled slyly, 'Once you reach main land, you'll need certain documents from scratch to stay in hiding,' he said, 'only certain individuals know how to create these documents, and only one of them knows how to do it from scratch...do you catch my drift?'
The Lynx sighed. 'Fine, you little weasel, it's a deal, but don't get any clever ideas, this alliance is only temporary.'
'How can I expect anything more?' The Serpent replied, 'By the way, I wouldn't mind starting a art collection of my own. How about in exchange for crafting you a new identity, I get half your-'
The Lynx lifted the much shorter Serpent up by his neck, 'Don't even think about it.'
'Deal.' The Serpent squealed as he tried to loosen his neck from her iron grip. The Lynx dropped him, and with his grip on her arm and she leading the way, they made their was towards the escape pods.
Meanwhile, Laura, John and Eric were running to the scene where Graham was injured. A fire had erupted in the power generator, which was spreading quickly throughout the underground complex. Smoke filled the hallways.
The League of Shadows had cornered the Wolf and some remaining henchmen under his command at the laboratory of the complex. The Wolf and his henchmen were cornered at the dead end of the laboratory, behind a barricade made of steel trolleys. The League of Shadows fighters were shielded behind a similar barricade just beyond the main entrance, which was steadily moving forward towards the Wolf's barricade. It was here that Laura, Eric and John found Michael, Terry, Terry and Graham, who was bleeding profusely from a chest wound.
'You know, this is quite unfair,' Graham said between gasps as Terry and Terry tried to wrap their shirtsleeves around his chest to stop the bleeding, 'Charlie gets shot in the chest and you two patched him up in a jiffy, well why don't I get the same treatment, eh?'
'Save your breath old chap,' Terry said, 'the trouble is Charlie's bullet didn't puncture a major artery, yours did. God dammit blood, why won't you clot?'
'Everybody duck.' Michael shouted.
A hail of machinegun fire peppered across the bullet-ridden walls behind them. The League of Shadows returned fire.
'You know what would really come in handy right now?' Eric shouted to Michael.
'What?' Michael replied.
'A bazooka.'
'We have a bazooka.' Michael said, he dragged it out of the stockpiles behind their firing line.
'Then why don't we use it?'
'We don't have any rockets. Some brilliant chap left them on Flyasaurus No. 5, and Flyasaurus 5 blew up while we were busting open the air vents so we could blow hydrogen sulfide into their ventilation ducts.'
'I don't smell any rotten eggs.' Terry remarked.
'That's because some other brilliant chap mistook the water vapor canisters for hydrogen sulfide.'
'What about the grenades?' Eric shouted.
'We used them all.' Michael said.
'Wait, do we still have smoke grenades?' Laura asked.
'Two left.' Michael checked the stockpile.
'And that's an all-purpose rocket launcher, correct?'
'Of course,' Michael held it up for her, 'I designed it myself.'
'Load the smoke grenades.' Laura said.
Michael's eyes brightened up, 'Of course! He said, and stuffed the two smoke grenades into the bazooka.
'Everybody run!' Laura yelled, loud enough for the terrorists to hear.
Michael fired, ditched the bazooka, and ran, as did Laura and the others. On the other side of the room, every terrorist except the Wolf leaped over their barricade in panic and out into the open. As soon as they did that, Laura and her henchmen turned around and opened fire on the exposed terrorists. They were gunned down shortly.
'Ah, evil henchmen always fall for that trick.' Michael said as the smoke grenades released their fumes. They charged past the fallen henchmen and trained their guns on the dense cloud of smoke.
When the smoke cleared, the Wolf's body was not found among the slain.
'Well boys, it looks like Clark's hidden tunnels in this place got a bit more extensive since our divorce. Start searching.' This commenced.
Laura walked back to the entrance, where Terry, Terry and Eric were treating Graham's injury.
'How is he doing?' She asked.
'Not good.' Eric replied.
'How not good?'
'He has no pulse.'
Meanwhile, the Tyrannosaurus Rex, perhaps the most determined terrorist still left standing at this point in the fight, when the rest of his brethren had been all struck down or making their hasty escape, was a man on a mission. Using the numerous hidden passageways built into the island's underground facility (which most of the other terrorists, in their panic, had completely forgotten about), he sneakily dodged the soldiers of the League of Shadows and their newly arrived reinforcements, the League of Justice led by Mr. Parker and Mr. Wayne, which had swarmed the terrorists' stronghold like floodwater. He had only one single destination in mind, and one confrontation to settle. The bodies falling around him and the bullets flying over his head had hardly any effect on the psyche of this determined, fanatical man. He headed straight for the Dragon's Den, the idiotically named lair of his contemptuous boss which was where he took his afternoon tea. He knew he would find the Dragon there, the Devil's voice was guiding him, and he would have his vengeance...'

'Why did you stop there?' I asked my author after he trailed off on that sentence and didn't pick up again.
'Well, that part of the story belongs to Theo. According to the traditional laws of storytelling, the main character of any story should be afforded the opportunity to confront his or her arch nemesis at the climax of his or her story. This enables the character to complete his or her story arc, figuratively speaking. Theo's story arc can only be completed by her confrontation with the Dragon.'
'Do I have a story arc too?'
'You do, your arc in this story is your journey towards making new friends. You now have several new friends you didn't have a week ago, so your arc is complete.'
'Wow, but will I have a new story after this one is over?'
My author paused for a moment to think, then he said, 'As much as I dislike giving indecisive answers, I'm going to have to swallow my pride and quote the old saying: we'll see about that, we'll see. Any final questions before I leave?'
I thought for a moment, then I said, 'Something tells me that you know what I'm going to ask you.'
'Ask anyways, it's not everyday that I get to talk to a character of mine.'
'What's a fob?' I said.
My author smiled as if recalling a long-forgotten memory, 'A fob is someone who looks at the world through rose-colored glasses.' He said.
'I don't wear glasses,' I said to myself.
'Then you're not a fob, good bye Charlie, may we meet again when the situation calls for it.' I blinked, and my author disappeared.