Tonya, although nervous, was happy with how her relationship with Keaton was developing. She took a gamble, bounded up and kissed the dour Arm on the forehead. In some strange fashion, Tonya’s subconscious now regarded Keaton as safe, part of her household. Which Keaton wasn’t, on either level.
“Politics,” Tonya said, slinging an arm over Keaton’s shoulder. It was like hugging a rock. “I’ll tell you if you want to know.” It was this, the getting out into the countryside, which Tonya missed from her Monster hunting days. She had to face it – Monster hunting trips had been vacations, until the bill came due in the terror of cornering a Monster and the inevitable loss of one or more of her Transforms in about a third of the successful hunts.
Keaton wiggled free of Tonya’s hug and grabbed Tonya’s hands. Keaton felt full of juice, but she always did, even when low. “What’s going on with you? And why aren’t you wearing a dress and five ounces of expertly applied makeup?”
Tonya blinked and smiled. Dr. Zielinski called this her ‘Safari Tonya’ look, the thick khaki slacks, the woman-cut but otherwise male looking button down shirt laden with pockets, her hiking boots and her favorite crushed leather Monster hunting beret. “This is the real me. Back home, I’m called upon to be the bitch Focus far too often, and it wears on me.”
Keaton smiled, actually smiled, and gave Tonya a bruising soft punch on the shoulder. “You need to get out of the house more often, then. For once, you feel like you can kick ass.”
As in – damn, woman, I’m glad you’re on my side. Tonya’s smile turned into a grin. “Let’s go kick some ass, then. They’re holed up in that farm.” Tonya pointed across the cornfields to a non-descript farm two miles distant, down the county road and then over on a long private dirt road. “They’re set up so that if we approach in a vehicle, they’ll see us coming and be ready.”
“On the other hand, these tall fields of whatever this crap is will make good cover for a stealthy approach,” Keaton said. She didn’t recognize cornfields? Where had Keaton been raised, anyway, Tonya wondered. “Save for the fact the fields end over a hundred yards from the farmhouse, which is a long way from allowing an easy stealth entry. Are you trying to get us killed, or captured?”
“Captured, actually,” Tonya said.
“Oh, fuck, you have a plan. Great. Not only do I have to hobble two miles through some goddamned fucking fields...” Keaton wiggled her not yet fully healed leg, with a special boot she had cobbled together that went up to her knee to cope with the fact one of her legs was significantly shorter than the other. “…we’re doing it to set up some damned Focus mind game trick?”
“That and capture their eyeballs, so Focus Weiczokowski, her people, and the rest of my people can roll in on vehicles. My orders are to capture as many of them as possible.” Weiczokowski and her people could handle mundane thuggery, but for anything more than shooting, looking tough and simple bullying, they weren’t worth the air they breathed. Tonya doubted Esther could outthink a mindless newborn hundred pound dragon Monster.
“To deliver them to the big shot Focus who found these rebels for you?” Keaton said. Tonya blinked, surprised Keaton had figured out what was going on. She gave this a couple of seconds of thought and decided that in these paramilitary matters, Keaton not only had instinctive advantages, but advantages in experience. If the media and FBI reports were at all correct, Keaton did capers like this at least once a month.
“Her name is Focus Shirley Patterson, and she’s the behind-the-scenes leader of the Breakout Focuses,” Tonya said. “She’s someone we both need to be on our best behavior for, and be polite.”
“Never heard of her.”
“That’s the way she likes it.”
“How far away is she?”
“Not too far. Pittsburgh.”
Keaton shrugged. “Never liked the place. Gives me the willies, the same way Denver and Kansas City do.”
Interesting.
“So why aren’t they going to just shoot us and be done with it?”
“Just like when I’m Monster hunting, I’m going to be using DeYoung’s tricks against her,” Tonya said. “And, no, you don’t have to worry about them doing the same. Nobody knows my tricks. I’ve only ever used them while hunting Monsters.”
Keaton looked her over, and nodded. “Fine. You have some fucking tricks. I assume that’s why I’m disguised as one of your bodyguards?”
“Uh huh. I’m going to put a juice pattern on you, to mess up what your juice structure metasenses as, which will keep DeYoung from realizing she’s going to be facing two Major Transforms. Don’t fight it off.” Given Tonya’s at-best minor abilities with juice patterns, it wouldn’t take much.
“Fuuuuck me,” Keaton said, shaking her head. “What the hell is a juice pattern?”
Tonya explained the basics of juice pattern use as she called forward the rest of her small bodyguard crew, and they, and Keaton, walked off into the cornfield.
---
As predicted, DeYoung’s people grabbed them while they were still trekking through the corn. Tonya captured their eyes, one at a time, and turned the three DeYoung guards into Tonya’s new bodyguards, convincing them that she and her people had surrendered. Watch out for repeaters, Polly had said. Anyone with Focus DeYoung’s skills will have metasense repeaters out around her, extending her metasense range. Tonya, quite limited with juice patterns, had never heard of repeaters before. Tonya hadn’t ever progressed far beyond the standard ‘tag the air, then modify the air tag to make the juice outside you do things the way the juice inside you does things’ juice pattern use; using those basics she had taught herself a basic suite of defensive juice patterns. Mess up metasense. Keep enemy-produced juice patterns from taking over your mind or your body. Protect your tags, and the tags of your Transforms. About a year ago, in one of her and Polly’s arguments about increasing their stature on the Council, Polly had dropped a juice pattern on Tonya that took over Tonya’s body and had her dance, ballerina style, even outside of Polly’s normal hundred-yard Focus metasense range. She told Tonya that until she could protect herself from juice patterns like that, she shouldn’t be doing anything on the Council except saying ‘yes, ma’am’.
“You captured them? How?” a melodious voice said as they entered the farmhouse, feet thumping on the wooden floor. Focus DeYoung, who Tonya still couldn’t metasense. “Dammit, Jules, she got your people with some damned illusion. Nobody’s that stupid.”
“Ma’am, they’re right here,” Jules, who Tonya had charismatically grabbed as they entered the farmhouse, said. Tonya, leading the way, followed the voices and escorted her supposed captors into the tiny farmhouse parlor, then to the right and through the open doorway, framed in chipped paint over stained wood, into the big farmhouse kitchen.
“Yes, we are,” Tonya said. As Tonya hoped, the surprise of her voice shocked everyone in the room, including Focus DeYoung, into looking up. That was all it took for Tonya and her charisma to freeze the four of them in place.
Focus Martine DeYoung was beautiful even for a Focus, wearing clothes and makeup to accentuate her beauty and her charisma. She stood about five seven, a willowy woman with straw-blonde hair, cut so that one wave of her hair covered her left eye. Her one visible eye was a magnetic dark blue, her skin was a blemish-free chalk white, and her carmine nail and toe polish matched her lipstick. Her charisma was close to Council quality, but what really put the snarl in Tonya’s face was the zoo of juice patterns surrounding the enemy Focus.
DeYoung fought back, and one of DeYoung’s people slipped out of Tonya’s charismatic hold, partially vanished from sight, and waved his hand at them. Foul bad juice sprang from nowhere, around Tonya, Keaton and their escorts.
A Crow! Tonya had never fought one of the hidden male Major Transforms, but she knew the theories. She fought off the splitting headache and skin-sliding-off-her-body sensation with her own charisma, and forced out a juice pattern that Polly said would drive away enough of th
e bad juice to allow a Focus to function again.
As Tonya squeezed out the juice pattern, Keaton, beside her, fell puking to the ground, as did the mind-addled escorts. Fisticuffs and wrestling noises erupted behind Tonya, as her three guards ‘un-surrendered’ themselves and went after two of DeYoung’s troops they had passed on the way to the farmhouse kitchen. DeYoung wiggled free from Tonya’s charismatic hold and summoned up a juice pattern, likely a juice-stripper that would leave Tonya defenseless.
“Lightning,” Tonya said, and bent her charisma. For all intents and purposes, DeYoung believed she had been struck by lightning. DeYoung twitched, and fell, psychosomatic burn blisters appearing on her hands and face, and likely under her clothes as well. “Stacy! I need these guards down now!” Tonya couldn’t maintain her upper end charismatic tricks for long before they depleted her always low juice supply.
Worse, she metasensed, barely, around the Crow attack, that DeYoung was recovering faster than Tonya had ever seen before from this particular trick of hers. DeYoung had access to her household juice buffer! Not full access, but some trick that gave her the equivalent of a straw allowing her to suck juice for personal use from her household juice buffer about an order of magnitude faster than Tonya could manage via willpower alone.
“Fuck,” Keaton said, then exploded off the worn painted linoleum kitchen floor, becoming a whirling fighting machine. Tonya blinked and found Keaton on the ground again, puking, but the only person left standing was Tonya. DeYoung’s bodyguards littered the kitchen floor, including the charisma-befuddled escorts Tonya had grabbed in the cornfield, all wounded, unconscious and needing medical attention. Gunfire started outside the farmhouse. Tommy, her head of security and head of the tiny bodyguard crew Tonya had with her, stuck his head through the kitchen door, and hand signaled trouble. She waved him off, signaling that he, Robert and Russell should take cover.
“Three more troops coming for orders,” Tonya said, as she knelt down beside DeYoung. She had to trust Keaton.
Despite Tonya’s hold on DeYoung, tendrils of juice wound themselves around Tonya, another juice pattern from the fallen Focus. Tonya managed to fight off what she suspected was a charisma use inhibitor with a juice pattern of her own, one she had learned from Polly back before Polly became Council president. Then she went back to charisma use. “You’re a failure: you can’t use juice patterns, you can’t see, you can’t feel anything below your elbows or knees,” Tonya said, commanding with her charisma. “You’re nothing!”
DeYoung’s resistance ebbed. Tonya watched and waited, and as she did, the itchy place in the center of her back, shoulder high, suddenly twitched and got goosepimply nervous.
The damned Crow. Tonya unholstered her pistol and fired, without looking, at the wall behind her. The nervous feeling vanished. The cowardly Crow had fled.
Keaton rolled to the door and tossed her own vomit in the face of the onrushing troops, kicked out with her good leg, and the three troops went down like bowling pins. The life force of two of them faded, juice sucked by the Arm, who fell, unconscious. The third, a normal, drew on the Arm and shot Keaton in the chest, thankfully missing her heart. Tonya, pistol still in hand, shot the man in the back, where he fell, bleeding out, on the unconscious Arm.
Tonya smiled and turned back to DeYoung, making sure she had DeYoung’s eyes good and tight. “Heart stop.”
DeYoung’s heart stopped, and panic filled DeYoung’s beautiful face. “Heart start,” Tonya said, and DeYoung’s heart started. “Don’t fight off this next order, or I won’t start your heart the next time.”
DeYoung nodded. “Untag all your Transforms, and dump your juice buffer.”
The former rebel Focus did as ordered. She screamed and wailed, now powerless.
Outside, the gunfire stopped. Tonya’s people, and Focus Weiczokowski and her people, started taking surrenders. Weiczokowski would get the now untagged Transforms, while Tonya would get DeYoung.
---
“And this is what you want?” Keaton said. “Me in the back seat with this bitch?”
“I’m exhausted, and can’t hold her with my charisma,” Tonya said. “And, despite your wounds, you aren’t low on juice.”
“Hell,” Keaton said. “I’m not sure I’ve ever had this much juice. It was an accident.” Tell me you’re not going to punish me for taking tagged Transforms, Keaton thought. Tonya kept her face blank, but smiled inside.
“In battle, things happen,” Tonya said. “I’m just glad you didn’t go Monster from taking all that juice.”
“Huh. Now that would have messed up your fucking plan, wouldn’t it?”
Tonya drove now, with one of her non-Transforms, Robert Dawson, next to her, in the front seat of the Olds. Keaton and a bound but not gagged DeYoung sat in the back. Bad juice rolled off both of them, fouling the air.
Keaton turned to their captive, and snapped one of DeYoung’s fingers. “Look at me, bitch!” Keaton said.
“No, no no no. This can’t be happening!”
“You aren’t going to give me any problems, are you?”
Not likely, not as a bare-ass Focus with low juice and a lot of healing to do. Keaton had already broken both of DeYoung’s arms.
“No! Please. Don’t do this. Not Patterson. Don’t take me to Patterson.”
“How does she know?” Keaton said.
Tonya shrugged.
“You’re all slaves,” DeYoung said. “Enslaved and you don’t know it.”
“Who has me enslaved?” Keaton said. “Amuse me with your bullshit. If you keep amusing me so nicely, I won’t hurt you.” She smiled a nasty smile. ”As much.” Keaton dislocated another of the Focus’s fingers. DeYoung screamed.
“She does.” DeYoung glanced at Tonya. “And the first Focuses have her enslaved. It’s the juice, but not the way you think.” DeYoung took a set of ragged breaths, and let out a sob. “Tags and juice patterns are juice, but that’s just one axis.” She spoke quickly, probably hoping to keep Keaton distracted from her tortures. “There’s ritual juice, too. They got her” indicating Tonya again “with a ritual of blood and juice, the same way they got Sarah.” Sarah Teas, a first Focus herself. “Then there’s the social juice. The Council controls the social juice, and they’re using it to mind control all of us.” DeYoung paused, and hacked up some blood. “The senior Major Transforms, all of them, know all this and they’re hoarding their tricks, keeping y’all weak and enslaved. They know so much more! I know this because I’m the Commander, the promised savior. I died, and came back from the dead, and so I broke free of their slave juice tricks.” DeYoung sobbed, and her voice lowered to a whisper. “I’m the Commander, and I’m going to save all of us.” She began to cry, repeating “I’m the Commander”, over and over as she sobbed.
“Delusional bitch,” Keaton said, shaking her head and grabbing at one of DeYoung’s hands. DeYoung screamed again, before returning to her sobbing. “You’re no commander. Not if you couldn’t stop this half-assed caper we just ran. So shut the fuck up or I’m really going to cause you some pain.”
DeYoung quieted down.
---
Tonya, on her third driving shift, drove the bad-juice-doused Olds up to the Hilltop front gate. Pittsburgh, at last. Focus Patterson, all knowing as always, must have directed her people to let them in, as they did so without checking out Tonya or the other occupants of the car. They didn’t let in the rest of Tonya’s people. Focus Weiczokowski and her people hadn’t come, content to go back to their home base in Indianapolis. Following Focus Patterson’s orders.
Hilltop was a wondrous place as always, a luxurious fairyland of beauty and charm, all Shirley’s work. Tonya parked in front of the opulent mansion, and patiently waited. Goodness came to all who waited.
“What the fuck is going on?” Keaton said. Tonya turned to Keaton, and saw the Arm clawing at herself, and then scrambling out of the car, and falling face first on the pavement. She rolled and patted at herself, as if she was on fire.<
br />
Tonya smiled. Who could understand Arms? They were just beasts, mindless predators. Unworthy of even being in Hilltop. She must have imagined such a beast being able to talk.
“Tonya!” Shirley said, striding toward the car. “You succeeded! We thank you, oh so much.” A radiant holy glory surrounded the older Focus. Tonya exited the car, and Shirley gathered her up in a glorious hug. “Yes, you are worthy, now. You have done us a great favor, goading old poor troubled Mary Beth into betraying herself by her own actions, by taming this failed Focus beast, and capturing and bringing to us Focus DeYoung, who we are going to make worthy.”
“Make worthy?”
“Yes, she will be joining me in Hilltop, as a Focus servant of mine,” Shirley said. “You will tell the others she died in the capture.” Tonya nodded. Shirley’s words made excellent sense.
Shirley let go of Tonya, ending the hug, but kept hold of Tonya’s hands. “Of course, ma’am,” Tonya said. Behind her, Keaton’s frantic struggles and animalistic calls for help faded, then stopped.
“Tell me about your success,” Shirley said.
Tonya did so, happy to report the traitorous DeYoung’s forbidden dalliance with a Crow.
“She was a rebel in all things,” Shirley said. “Unwise, and unguided. I will be having words with those unwise South Region Focuses who heard her call, and unthinkingly followed her. They will never repeat that mistake again.”
“Thank you, Gloriana,” Tonya said, bowing, using Focus Patterson’s secret holy name. Shirley, a tall Focus with white-blonde hair and mesmerizing green eyes, wore a long white penitent’s dress and walked barefoot.
“No, thank you, Tonya,” Shirley said. “Together, with my information and your timely actions, we have done the impossible. We have defeated the Commander, made her ours, and brought her into the everlasting holy light.”
The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Eight Page 10
