Memoirs of a RAFian

[redtailedsaffa]

I like how the villain here is defining a hero.

[Cloak]

Of course, Joke Meister's assertations are wrong.

New chapter.
 

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:
Gotta Go Fast

Aquilai never terminated the communication when he was telling Cloak about the situation with the cure. At the Realm Walker's insistence, and operated under radio silence. He heard everything, and immediately sent Cerulean, the RAFians' resident speedster, to find and disable the bombs.

Cerulean wasn't one to take such a task, such an undertaking, very lightly. He streaked all over the city, and was frankly a little surprised how easy the first one was to find. He quickly when about defusing it, only to discover that it opened like a treasure chest. Inside lurked . . . sugar, spice, and a note that said "everything nice". Cerulean didn't see the humor.

The second one was just as easy to find, and Cerulean found that this ease disconcerted him. He went about defusing it as before, but then it cracked open length-wise. Snails and puppy dog tails. Cerulean wasn't entertained.

The third one was just as alarmingly easy to find as the other two. Cerulean was given pause by this, but he went to defuse it anyway. His reaction time would allow him to save himself and the locals, he felt. But he wasn't amused at the kittens and marzipan that was inside when it cracked open like a locket.

"This guy is seriously screwed up." he muttered before speeding off to the fourth one.

That one was full of expired candy. Correction -- stolen expired candy. Cerulean was starting to wonder if there were any actual bombs and not just the tale of a deranged psychopath.

And so on it went. It was when Cerulean came to the thirteenth bomb, and he was really irritated at this point. He was expecting this one to be a dud as well. However, he was wrong, and this was the real deal. And mere spitting distance from city hall, too.

Cerulean entertained the thought that maybe he shouldn't defuse it have a few less ineffectual politicians (which is a rather redundant description, when you think about it) to worry about. But he defused it anyway, and administered the cure to the compartment sacs that held the gas, rendering it inert.

As it turned out, out of the twenty-five only three were legitimate bombs. The rest were duds filled with really bad jokes. But it was done.

Cerulean took out his communicator and began to contact Cloak.

[guitarhero01234]

I died at the "Stolen expired candy" part. I don't remember which one, but it reminds me of some cartoon I watched when I was a kid.

[redtailedsaffa]

Haha, I just watched the new Avengers movie today and this chapter reminded me of Quicksilver.

[Cloak]

New chapter.
 

CHAPTER NINETEEN:
Incarceration and Doubts

"Very well, Cerulean. Excellent job, per usual." Cloak said.

"YOU COULDN'T HAVE GOTTEN THEM ALL!!" Joke Meister raged.

"The perpetrator, I presume?"

"YOU'RE LYING!! You hafta be. YOU MUST BE LYING!! I PLANTED THEM IN VERY SECURE SPOTS!! FAR AWAY FROM ONE ANOTHER!! IT ISN'T HUMANLY POSSIBLE!!"

"Clearly, Laughing Boy, it is. Cerulean managed it just fine." Parker said, with a shrug.

"IT . . . IS . . . JOKE . . . MEISTER!!!"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever." Cloak muttered indifferently, befire addressing Cerulean. "Can you put Aquilai on?"

"Yeah, sure." Cerulean said, with a casual shrug.

"Don't you ignore me," Joke Meister said, voice becoming softly malicious. He seemed to be trying to reach something behind the stained, threadbare, right side lapel. But he could not find what he was looking for. "What? Where is it? Where is it?"

"Oh, you were looking for this little toy?" Underseen said, holding what appeared to be a dandelion lapel flower thing with a tube leading to a rubber bulb that could be squeezed by hand. An acid flower.

"Hey! Give that back!"

"Don't think so, Laughing Boy," Underseen said, antagonizing him almost deliberately. "Besides, Cloak has more earth than you've acid. Your plan would have never worked."

"Yes, Cloak?" Aquilai said.

"We need the law of the city informed that we have captured a dangerous megalomaniac, and he needs to be detained in the most maximum security facility they have." Cloak said. He even had his doubts that that would stop him entirely if he wanted out. The Stone of Megalomania may not have increased his common sense or his maturity or his need for criminal artistry that makes sense to him alone, but it was obviously evident in increasing his intellect.

Cloak narrowed his eyes in a scrutinizing look at Joke Meister. He wondered just how much his intellect was increased. Cloak was well aware that he may have been very well zmarter than the Realm Walker himself. The thought sent shivers down his spine, to the very tip of his tail. But he said nothing about it.

The fact that Joke Meister didn't look disconcerted at all about his fate caused Cloak some misgivings. But Cloak, still accustomed to internalizing his emotions, did not show anything but stoic seriousness. But he eyed Joke Meister severely.

[redtailedsaffa]

Smartassery is a Joker thing.

[Cloak]

True. Dunno if I will post another chapter today. Had another "I-want-give-two-weeks-notice-and-quit" day. Stupid lazy coworker wanting to loaf around and goof off, like he normally does. Only this time, I called him on it.

New book ideas.

• Book DCCX: "Hosting" -- All Emotional Entities simultaneously take the being they call the Steward as their host.
• Book DCCXI: "Unintentional Animosities" -- The Lantern Corps come to reclaim their Entities from the Steward.
• Book DCCXII: "Emotional Avatars" -- The Lantern Corps make Emotional Avatars, except the Orange Lantern.
• Book DCCXIII: "Rapid Recruitment" -- The Lantern Corps make rapid recruitments to to their ranks.
• Book DCCXIV: "Lady of Illusions" -- The RAFians must deal with a malicious illusionist called "the Deceiver".
• Book DCCXV: "Deceitful Love" -- Two recent enemies of RAF have a tumultuous relationship.
• Book DCCXVI: "Jailbreak" -- Three former adversaries seek asylum in RAF.

Remember, all titles are subject to change.

New chapter. May be a bit short.
 

CHAPTER TWENTY:
Suspicious Slaying

Even as the Joke Meister was carted away to the maximum security prison -- charged with a plethora of murders, connected to several others (unbeknowst to them, he really had commited, but as Mark Napier) -- Cloak had misgivings. He wondered if old Laughing Boy had somehow had an escape plan. He may have had a scheme already on hand for this eventually.

The Stone of Megalomania was still -- presumably -- inside him. Cloak could not bring out, could not pull it out of Laughing Boy. It wasn't because of some pretentious, Saturday morning cartoon reasoning. He simply couldn't do it. This caused doubts to continued swirl and percolate inside him.

"Uncle."

He wanted to believe this was the best option available to them, but the fact of the matter was that there was one final option that the Realm Walker didn't want to consider. The most final option anyone could make. Even then, it wasn't permanent . . . the ordeal with the Black Lanterns should have taught him that.

"Uncle."

Nothing was ever permanent. The only thing that is absolutely certain to happen is change. His mind continued to dwell on these dark musings until the Joke Meister was well out of sight, and the resident Elements Master barely noticed. He tended to dwell on these things and pick them apart, overthink and amplify the negative aspects of things. It was almost a way of insulating him possible misfortune.

"Un-CULL!" Shadow said, with the tone she always used when she was mildly exasperated with her uncle.

"What?" Cloak said, coming out of his reverie of musings.

"I gotta go check in at home," she said.

"You have school tomorrow."

"Crud, you remembered." Shadow replied, with a cheeky smile.

***

A few days passed by since they incarcerated Joke Meister. It was a high profile case, and an open-and-shut one at that. He was sentenced to life incarceration, and he was bound up in a straitjacket, muzzled, and confined to a dolley. This may have seemed like overkill to those not familiar to the case, but the precautions were potentially prudent.

Then he was killed.

At least, it looked that way. The gunshot could have been faked. It would have been an needlessly elaborate faking, but "needlessly elaborate" was his thing. Cloak wasn't sure if this was a true slaying. Something about it shouted fake to him but, in all honesty, Cloak was being hyper paranoid about this. He recognized this and pulledbback a bit and calmed himself.

Whether he survived or not remained to be seen.

[redtailedsaffa]

Damn. Ending left me a bit cold.

[Cloak]

Yeah, I suppose it would do that, Saffa. But we never see Joke Meister again in the series (at least at this point -- even he does it probably wouldn't be for eight years, in narrative time).

New chapter. Sorry about the brevity.
 

BOOK LXXXVI:
IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD VILLAIN
CHAPTER ONE:
I Need to Know

Despite himself, Cloak found himself dwelling on his past, yet again. He knew consciously that he shouldn't be doing this, but he couldn't help it, on a subconscious level. He remembered the harsh tone his mother used.

He was now of the belief that the only reason that he was born was so his mother would have some leverage, some amount of control over his father. It may have sounded farfetched, sure. But she had tried a similar ploy with him and Shadow, using his love for his niece to manipulate him. Is it such an outlandish conclusion to assume the same may have been done to his father? With he and his sister, Dagger, as the weapons.

Cloak had often struggled with feelings of inadequacy and of not belonging. Before he found RAF.

"Will someone tell me where I belong?
Where I should go?
Can someone tell me where I’m going wrong?
I need to know.
Why does does she hurt me so?
If I can’t be what she wants of me . . .
What am I do do?
When can I be me?
The son she doesn't want to see?
There must be someone who understands out there. . . .
Somewhere.
When will I find a home?
A place where I belong. . . .
Surely there must be more like me . . .
Out there . . . somewhere. . . .
There must be somebody,
Just like me. . . .
Out there . . ."

And there was. Not just one, but many. Many people who know, like, and understand him, in addition to his aunt, Faith, and Shadow.

They are called RAFians.

[Cloak]

New chapter.
 

CHAPTER TWO:
Parole From Reality

At an undisclosed prison, a small, pale, macrocephalic man was walking dimidly away from it. He had principally blond hair with red highlights and was rather like the volume of cotton candy. He had a rather large nose and overbite, with his front teeth being rather comically large. He wore rather drab clothing of a dark green, ag with the saddest-looking bowtie that you ever did see. While he was hatless, he had a particular obsession with hats. But that was far eclipsed by his obsession with "Alice in Wonderland", evidenced by a copy he kept an iron grip on as he continued walk out.

It was Jervis McDowall. A man without any real friends. It was odd that this story was considered newsworthy.

Jervis, as a technical designer and inventor who was very knowledgeable and skilled expertise in nanotechnology, had fallen in love with a coworker. Completely head over heels. And when this coworker, Alice, was dumped by her boyfriend, Jervis took this as an opportunity. He took her on the town, in a rather innocuous attempt to win her affections.

However, she misinterpreted these intentions, believing Jervis was only doing any of this to simply cheer her up. She informs him of this, and the short-statured man was heartbroken. Alice wasn't aware of just how heartbroken he was. She remained oblivious.

Jervis was of the belief that Alice was stringing him along. That she and all of his other coworkers were laughing about it. Laughing about it behind his back. He felt used and hollow. His face contorted with anger, with rage, with fury. Well, he was the office joke now, was he? The butt of every cruel joke at the metaphoric water cooler? The derision and the derogation of every employee and boss?

No.

No. No, he would not allow it to happen. He would make them all pay for what they done. He wouldn't allow them to mock him! He prepared to go into the office and shoot the place up. Only there was one thing that he had not anticipated.

A dinosaur dancing ballet.*

But he should have realized it, living in the city that was. The gun had clattered out of his hand and was stomped flat and useless by Dino, who unknowingly saved several lives. Jervis eventually was arrested, not for conspiracy or attempted murder or anything of the like. Instead he was charged with public intoxication (he wasn't given any sort of test, and whether he was or not was rather hard to discern) and disorderly conduct. He was sentenced to only a few days to a month.

But now that he was out, he found that he was quite a different man than the one who went into the clink. His sense of reality was skewed horribly. He believed the world should be like the Lewis Caroll book his obsessed over. He was completely distrustful of adults, trusting only kids. Although, his definition of "trust" was different from others. . . .


*Book XLIII. The Piper one.

[guitarhero01234]

Strangely enough, that's disturbingly similar to how I was around my sophomore year of high school (aside from his appearance). Paranoid, social anxiety, delusional, possibly bipolar . . . that's honestly really scary.

[Cloak]

I assure you that the actual inspiration for him is actually a lesser known DC character (at least, I assume that he is lesser known), GH.

New chapter.
 

CHAPTER THREE:
Worry and Consternation

"Why is this treated as a high-profile story?" Sakki was asking.

"It's the news media," Asmo said, jadedly. "There's probably a story that some company or billionaire is leaning on them to bury."

"Such a pessimist." Abby chided.

"I prefer 'realist'," Asmo countered easily.

"He does have a point, you know." Chad said. "The news media is rarely completely unbiased, if ever. Like or not, they're run by people, people with strong opinions one way or the other."

"Doesn't mean it's right." Underseen put in.

"Of course it isn't," Asmo said. "No one said that it was. But that doesn't change the fact that corruption in government does exist."

"And has existed," Cloak spoke quietly, still thinking of that man, that Jervis McDowall. Something about him stuck out to him, but he did not know why. "Has existed long before the Realms themselves existed."

"Are you talking about governmental corruption, corporate corruption, media corruption, or the aye-aye?" Kelly said. She was hoping to get a smirk out of the Realm Walker, but Cloak doesn't really smile all that often. Well, unless Shadow's around.

"Why do you ask a question to which you already know the answer?" Cloak said, stiffly. Cloak in one of his broody moods.

Of course, this had the unintentional effect of killing the conversation. Cloak felt abashed and shameful a bit at this. He muttered a half-felt apology and used this as an excuse to excuse himself from the discussion. He left the thread and walked out upon the grounds.

He was angry with himself for a bit, for having this spurt of apathetic emotionlessness. There is a fine line between stoicism and being an arrogant prick. He believed he was being the latter and felt genuinely contrite. He did not know why was feeling so moody, so cranky.

Thoughts of that short man on the news media with slightly large head. That couldn't be it. That was nothing more than a relatively harmless miscreant. Not a threat. But then why did he feel this way? Why did he feel these burst of melancholy every so often? Whenever he did he would, without fail, dwell on his mothers and things not said that should have been.

UGH! He was not a teenager anymore! Angst should be left behind in adolescence. Yet here he was . . . still unable to cope, to reconcile his past. His traumas. Why was he so emotionally constipated?

[Gaz]

All caught up!

[redtailedsaffa]

And the PDF for the last one!

[Cloak]

Thanks, Saffa. Anf good, Gaz!

This book might be rewritten from my previous notes a bit.

New chapter.
 

CHAPTER FOUR:
Wonderland and the Runaways

"Rollo," a boy with dirty blonde hair who looked to be about ten or thereabouts, "I dunno about this."

"You heard them, Ricky! Telling us what to do. Talking to us like we're kids." Rollo groused. He was Ricky's peer in terms of age, but the most adventurous and ambitious of the two.

"But . . . we are kids, Rollo." Ricky said, trying to be reasonable.

"I'm not! I'm not a baby."

"You said 'kids', not 'babies'."

"Don't quibble."

"I don't think you know what that word means."

"Don't be stupid, Ricky. Of course I know what it means."

"What does it mean, then?"

"That's not important," Rollo said, brushing the question aside.

The two boys were runaways after having a fight with their respective guardians. They had entered the sewers of the city and were wandering around aimlessly down here. They were lost, but Ricky was far too proud, too arrogant, to admit it.

"Do you know where we're going, Rollo?" the boy said, sure that he saw black mold infested bricked wall before.

"You ask too many questions, Ricky." his fellow snapped.

"And you don't ask enough, Rollo." Ricky countered, coolly.

"Whatever," he replied, having no quips of his own to throw back. "Let's go this way."

Ricky was going to say something how every path looked the same and they were walking aimlessly in circles, but decided against it. He followed his black-haired cousin down the pathway, but he felt that it was against his better judgment.

They walked into an impossibility, an inplausibility, an mystery.

A beautiful verdant garden with topiaries, hedges and everything. Short grass beneath their feet certainly felt real, but this was not possible or even plausible. This kind of vegetation, whether neatly manicured or not, could not thrive like this in such a dark, dank, dirty place like a sewer.

In the middle of this garden was a long table with a long, somehow pristine tablecloth drapped ever so delicately, almost looks lovingly, over it. Upon this table sat a white ceramic teapot with decorative flower prints, with matching ceramic teacups with delicate floral patterns. Tea steamed from both the teapot and the cups.

Around this table sat kids, no older than they. A girl dress as Alice, a pair of twin boys dressed as the Tweedles, a girl drssed as the Queen of Hearts, a biy dressed as the March Hare, a four-year-old boy dressed as the dormouse, and a boy dressed as the White Rabbit. There was something unnatural about the way they sat, the way they looked with unfocused eyes . . .

Rollo didn't see how suspicious this whole thing was, and just saw it with hidden surprise. Ricky, however, was shrewd enough to know there was something off here. Something not right, but yet he said nothing. He wanted to, but he knew Ricky's retort, anticipated it.

"Oh, dear," came a rather goofy voice. It was Jervis McDowall, dressed as the Mad Hatter. "More runaways?"

Before Ricky could stop him, Rollo said, "How do you know that?"

Jervis motioned to the other kids, "You aren't the first runaways to come to my Wonderland."