ATM II RPG

[Celuien]

Panakeia watched Anakron's robes flutter down the hall. She was fuming. She had no idea what Anakron was? Panakeia thought she did. He was a pouting child, determined to wreak havoc and let slip the dogs of war on an unsuspecting world merely because...she didn't know why. If this wasn't a reaction to her earlier (admittedly bad) behavior, she didn't know what else it could be, unless Mount Doom really did retain some of its prior evil. That thought had not occurred to Panakeia. Womb of the Ring. Anakron was right, though Panakeia would have preferred the word tomb. The Ring was dead. Sauron was gone. And yet, she supposed it was possible that some of their evil lived still. Perhaps that, coupled with irritation with her, was why Anakron now behaved so badly.

Stop trying to figure him out. The reason behind Anakron's sudden change in character did not matter. What mattered was that a man in control of a powerful force was now behaving in a most out-of-control fashion. Panakeia had to stop him. It was her duty, not only because she cared about Anakron, but also because the planet was in danger of annihilation. Panakeia's thoughts hiccupped. Planet? What an odd word. She'd heard someone use it before. But who? She shrugged to herself.

Anakron's robes floated around a corner. He was leaving. No! He can't get away! The thought, urgent and frantic, screamed in her mind's ear. She had to stop him. She had to bring him to his senses, or at least pose a roadblock to his more malevolent behaviors. Yes. That was what she would do. Anakron had given her back her conscience. He now seemed to have lost his own. Panakeia couldn't convey the Dweomer and give it back to him, but she could serve in its stead until he found it himself. She chuckled grimly. Anakron would know what she had gone through when her own conscience took form and spoke to her. Only this time, Anakron's replacement nagging conscience would have both physical and mental form. Panakeia.

She was off in a flash. Racing down the hall, she caught up to Anakron and tapped him on the shoulder, a stubborn glint in her eye.

"Excuse me. You seem to have lost something."

Anakron looked her over, contempt in his expression. "Lost something?" he mocked. "You could not possibly refer to yourself, could you? I have the distinct impression I decided to be rid of you quite intentionally. No accident or mistake was involved."

Panakeia gritted her teeth. Anakron was going out of his way to hurt her. But she had a mission. Personal feelings were irrelevant.

"Not me. Yourself. Your conscience. You said I could leave. Well, I might. I'll admit the thought had occurred to me. But not yet. You see, Anakron, you gave me back my conscience. Now that you appear to have lost your own, I thought I'd repay the favor by being your conscience for you. At least until you come to your senses. After that...after that, we'll see. And you said it was only my pride speaking when I tried to help you. I won't reply to that. But whether I'm acting out of pride or love doesn't matter. It's your well-being that's at stake."

She stopped, more determined about this than anything in her life, past, present, or future. Yes, this was her mission. Of that she was certain.

[littlemanpoet]

Anakron closed his eyes in sudden weariness. She was doing the best he could have imagined from her. In any other circumstance, he would be basking in her glow, but she did not understand. He opened his tired eyes - for his thought had taken but a moment - and looked into her determined ones. He sighed.

"You don't understand, Panakeia. In all the malevolence I employ, I still have the will not to hurt you save with words ... for now; while I still have enough control. Don't you see? I am evil!" He began to pace and gesticulate.

"Anakron is evil, intended for evil! The Blue Istari intended the entire set-up for evil! So far I have been able to partly thwart their purpose because there was enough of Elempi still within." He thumped his chest. "But he's dying! He can't withstand the Dweomer! I'm getting more evil every day, and I can't-" he closed his eyes with the anguish "-I can't fight it anymore! Do you understand?"

Her eyes were wide and her lips still. She was getting it. He hoped that she believed him.

"That is why you must leave. I don't know how long it will be before I can no longer hold myself back from harming you. And if you pursue your present course of harassment, I fear it will be the sooner. Leave me! For your own sake! Can you not see that I am doomed!"

[Celuien]

Panakeia's eyes went wide with pity. Poor Anakron. He truly had lost himself. He wasn't evil - not really. She had to help him. It was her duty. Her mission.

"Evil? No, don't say it! Don't think it! You aren't intended for evil. No one is supposed to be evil. And you don't need to turn to darkness. You won't, if you won't let it. I won't let it!" A light like a fiercely burning wildfire came into Panakeia's face. Nothing could stop her efforts. This was her destiny. To save Anakron from himself. For her? She could have been saving him for her own sake, but there was more to it than that. More to it even than saving him for his sake. This was bigger than both of them. Her mission came from - could it be? - her Captain.

Yes! That had to be it. Panakeia would have come to Anakron's aid in any case. She cared about him. But now she held the certainty that she had to push on, not only for their own reasons, but because the Captain wanted her to do so. And the Captain's word was law. And so Panakeia approached her task with all the passion of both a woman in love and of fanatic belief.

"You say that you fear you'll harm me. That's good! Don't you see? It means that you aren't evil. If you were, you wouldn't care. And since I seem to be the only thing you do care about, I can't leave you! I'm the only thing standing between you and your dark side. I won't abandon you to it. No matter what the cost to me. Because it's worth it. Not just for us, but because this, Anakron, is what I'm supposed to do. What I'm destined to do. I know it!"

The light flashed over her features again. For an instant, she thought Anakron raised a single eyebrow. Maybe he did. Maybe he was scowling with both brows and she mistakenly thought one had a greater displacement. Maybe his face was blank and Panakeia, swept up in her visions of glory, only imagined it. But whatever, the case, she thought she saw one eyebrow move. It was a sign. Anakron understood. Or if he didn't he soon would. The brow of Spockú had twitched.

[Diamond18]

"Odds my bodkins, you two do go on."

Panakeia and Anakron both came up short and turned towards the sound of the voice which interrupted their dramatic interlude. Skittles stood behind them in the hallway, damp and sandy, with her surfboard under one arm.

Anakron sneered. "You have something to say, half-wit?"

"I just said it. You've been blocking the hallway for half an hour standing there whinging on about how evil you are. You've got Sylvester the Cat on your staff, for Looney Tunes' sake."

Anakron advanced upon her slowly. "You do not fear me, madwoman?"

"Pah. I fear poodles more than you." Skittles turned and addressed an imaginary camera; "Seriously, those things are terrifying."

"Skittles," said Panakeia impatiently, "We're busy."

"I'm not. I've been waiting around for you to clock the lout, and I'm getting kind of bored. So much for hell hathing no fury," she rolled her eyes. "Why don't you just slap him or give him a good kick in the gonads?"

"We are discussing matters you could not comprehend," said Anakron imperiously. "Begone, mindless child!"

Skittles began to dance an Irish jig. This gave her audience some pause, but Anakron was not amused. He raised his staff, a fey look in his eyes (well, feyer), and said, "Konvey!"

"Konvey what?" Skittles chirped. Then she waved her hand up and down in front of his face, making an odd, Curliesque noise, before poking him in the eyes with two fingers.

"Aaarggh!" Anakron fell back, clutching at his eyes in pain.

Skittles laughed merrily. "Who's the big evil Anakronist Konveyor now?"

"Oh no! Oh no! Oh no, no, no!" cried Panakeia. "Now you've done it!"

Anakron straightened with a cry of rage. Well, it was really more of a yodel of rage, strangely enough. He turned a pair of bloodshot eyes upon Skittles and something inside him snapped. Again. Apparently, there were a number of somethings inside him hanging together on wispy threads, waiting to snap. "Fool!" He lifted his staff and brought it down full force upon Skittles' head.

She fell to the floor in an explosion of sparks. "Hello, I am Elmer J. Fudd, I own a mansion and a yacht," she said, lying facedown on the floor. "Hello, I am Elmer J. Fudd, I own a mansion and yacht," she repeated. And again. With each repetition, her voice got lower and her speech slowed, slurring, till finally she dribbled off, "Iiiiiii ammmmm Elmeeerrrrrrrrrr...."

Anakron laughed in maniacal fashion.

Panakeia gasped, covering her mouth. "You've killed her!" she said, shocked.

Anakron continued to laugh in a maniacal fashion.

Panakeia bent over the inert, bikini-clad form of Skittles and reached out hesitantly to feel for a pulse. She could find none, and Skittles hand flopped down lifelessly when she released her wrist. She choked back a sob, horrified at what Anakron had done, and tried to turn the body over. "Oh, foolish girl... foolish... uh...." She stopped, blinking in confusion. Where Skittles forehead should have been was a large hole with mangled wires, switches, and diodes. Panakeia gasped (she does that rather a lot) and recoiled. "Why, she's a robot!"

Anakron continued to continue laughing in a continuous fashion, rather maniacally.

[littlemanpoet]

"She should die," Anakron said. "It's a shame it was just a robot."

"Anakron! What a terrible thing to say!" Panakeia cried.

"You'd say the same thing if ridiculous words were put in your mouth and you were treated-" Anakron became articulate for a moment, gnashing his teeth, wiping at his eyes, looking for blood and not finding any.

Panakeia was the only thing keeping him from lashing out. He dearly wanted to lash out.

"I'm going to find her! And kill her." He hurried off in the general direction of deeper into the Mountain.

Panakeia allowed herself a moan and a roll of her eyes and followed.

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

Alli stood for merely a moment before spotting Anakron's disinclination to address her question. She looked down the side of the mountain and gasped, seeing what looked distressingly like the Gondorian Ambassadors under her protection and supposedly under house arrest. She left Anakron at a run.

She found the chambers of the Gondorians disconcertingly empty with a single guard wandering vaguely around muttering about "them." Cursing Roggie's guards and resolving to trust nobody but her own recruits from now on, Alli made her way to a secret chamber at ground level, pulling keys from her pocket as she went.

No, no, no! Somebody is going to get hurt...

Alli jammed a key into the ignition of a quad, mounting it's leatheresque seat with practiced ease, and flicked it on, squeezing the gas. With no hesitation, she barreled in a most dangerous fashion through the dizzily turn-filled bowels of the mountain until she found an exit. She braked quickly, spotting the ground zooming away from the hoisted mountain. Steeling herself, Alli put the four-wheeler in reverse just long enough to give herself a running start. She took a deep breath and revved the engine, speeding from zero to thirty-seven in a few short seconds and shooting, air-borne, from an exit of the mountain in a way James Bond would find impressive.

Ignoring the mountain steadily making its way away from her, Alli headed in concern toward the Gondorians. Her ambassadors... the Mordorians... they knew their way around. They would remember their mission: to calm Roggie into renewing negotiations. They would remember, eventually, that they had a purpose: to calm their king in a diplomatic fashion. They would find Roggie and they would convince him to sit down and talk. And they would work together as a group in such a way befitting politicians, which meant to say that yes, they would find him, sit him down, and they would all, as a group, talk. And talk, and talk, and talk, and maybe, hidden within all of the talk, they would possibly hit upon something important. But no matter what, Alli had faith that her Mordorian ambassadors, crazy though they were, would get something done.

She had faith that Smilog would develop some sort of allegiance to his king and would work for him rather than against him. She shook her head, uncertain that her faith was warranted, but hoped that he would remember that he was an official, chosen for an official job, and that job meant that he needed to be able to work with Roggie.

Alli had faith as she rode that Maika would keep being Maika, that Igör would continue to be her loyal spy and would help to smooth tensions, that Skittles would... well... Alli had little faith in Skittles. A quiet bleating voice in her ear whispered to Alli that Skittles had just been made chief war advisor. Alli very seriously and very suddenly had a strong urge to turn her quad around, but Mount Zoom Palace, Casino, and Motorvehicle was growing farther away by the second.

Anakron... Alli considered Anakron as she drew closer to the Gondorians. He had never ignored her before. Spoken harshly to her... told her to stop crying and get a move on... glared austerely as she drunkenly danced with Aime upon table tops to celebrate the slaying of Mario... but he had never ignored her or looked so gleeful to witness chaos as he had just then. Alli hoped that Panakeia could exude some sort of positive influence.

Lola... Alli gasped as she considered Lola, feeling gravel pull her quad in directions purely unintentional. She leaned all of her weight to the left, trying to keep from eating dirt after a badly balanced landing from a bit of an accidental jump.

Alli had total faith in Lola's abilities. She knew that if the bombshell couldn't accomplish something, she would know when to enlist the aid of Ms. Martinet. Ms. Martinet could inflict order while Alli was gone.

The Gondorians though... They were stranded in Mordor. They were technically political prisoners until Roggie changed his mind. Escaped prisoners... the only time that Mordorians would help their king was if it meant making others miserable. Alli had to get the Gondorians back to Mount Zoom before Roggie found his prisoners missing. And she had to keep them from becoming Mordorians during the process. She groaned as she pulled up beside them, all looking utterly dumbstruck as the black-haired speed-demon kicked up dust as she braked.

"Gondorians, it seems your current home has left without you. Why you were not in it upon its departure I do not care to learn. I'll find out soon enough without your help. However, we must get back to it. First, though, I suspect that your hunger may be nudging your stomachs and the bodies that carry them in the direction of the eateries whose scents have filled the air? I can't guarantee your protection from any other anakronisms, but I can ascertain that eating food here will not harm you. Where would you like to go for midday meal?"

[Diamond18]

In a dank and dark corner of a dungeon, deep in the nethermost regions of Mount Doom, nothing much of interest was happening.

However, in one the residential suites (Anakron's, to be exact) Skittles MacFarlewyn, still leather-clad and still insane, was crouched over the erstwhile Elempi's trunk. She held a canister of itching powder in one hand and giggled with wicked glee as she shook the contents over Anakron's clothing. He owned several different kinds of identical black robes with matching black Spongbob Squarepants underpants, and all were now guaranteed to give him a rash.

"Let's see how evil you are with itching powder in your underwear," she snickered aloud to no one in particular.

Suddenly, a small device disguised as a wristwatch began to give off horrific noises. "Blast!" Skittles cried, dropping the itching powder and flipping the device open to read the display. "Head trauma and skin breakage and snapped wires, oh no!" she said aloud, to no one in particular, through gritted teeth.

She leapt to her feet and kicked the trunk closed, then spoke into her device. "Hot Stuff, this is Taste The Rainbow. Come in, Hot Stuff. I repeat, Hot Stuff, this is Taste The Rainbow. Come in, please." She thwacked the device a couple times and then cursed. "Why does he not answer?!" Dauntlessly, she continued to speak into the pseudo-wristwatch as she hastened stealthily from the suit. "Hot Stuff, if you can hear me, there has been a complication in Operation Drive Anakron To Madness. Automated Skittles has suffered a blunt object to the skull in sector 17 and is now a liability. I am going to retrieve the robot. Do you read me, Hot Stuff? Oh, bother."

She came up short, confronted by an androgynous, yet fierce-looking-in-a-stupid-sort-of-way Orc in the hallway. "What are you doing in his Staffnesses' room?" hissed the Orc.

Skittles kicked him in the gonads, poked him in the eyes, and issued a jugular crushing karate chop to his neck before slitting him from belly to clavicle with a switchblade. Perhaps a bit excessive, but she had a general dislike for Orcs, if you hadn't already noticed.

(Fear not, gentle readers, for this hapless Orc was not the beloved Lugnut, but Lugnut's evil twin, Nuglut.)

She left the scene at a run, hoping to get to the damaged Automaton before it caused too much damage.

[Formendacil]

The Gondorians stared, dumbstruck, as the supposed-to-be immovable mountain raced off over the horizon.

"I don't believe it..." Angawen started to say.

"Best that we don't," said Hyarmenwë, doing his best to keep a brave face on things. "Believing in... that... could get us Assignment."

"Old man," said Angawen, "just about everything here could get us Assigned."

"They're gone..." Bearugard wasn't listening too much, it seemed. "They've abandoned us."

"Well, seeing as we weren't supposed to have left the mountain in the first place, we can hardly get upset about THAT," said Angawen irritably. "Let's get on with what we planned to do in the first place: gather some information. The presence or absence of Mt. Doom doesn't make a whit of difference to whether or not we can accomplish that task."

"But the negotiations..." Bearugard persisted. "They just rolled away!"

"The negotiations were practically terminated anyway," Hyarmenwë pointed out. "The Lady Angawen is right: we should make practical use of this time. Surely it won't be long before they realise we're missing?"

They all stood silently, watching as the last glimpse of Mt. Doom disappeared from sight.

"Right," said Angawen. "Enough of this standing around. Let's get to work."

"And how do you propose we do that?" asked Hyarmenwë. "Just walk up to a Mordorian and ask for inside details of King Roggie's court?"

"Why not?" asked Angawen. "Have you got a better idea?"

"I haven't got any idea," replied Hyarmenwë. "But considering that most Mordorians were banished to this forsaken land by the laws of Gondor, I don't see the locals being too friendly. And we stand out in this land like trolls in the Shire. And more than a few of those things or people banished are dangerous. What have we for weapons? A few blades and some personal prowess."

"All we have to be is careful," said Angawen. "It's no different to be careful in Mordor than it is in Gondor. Keep our wits about us and we shall be fine- right, Bearugard?"

Angawen turned to the third Gondorian for support, to see him staring into the distance. An anakronism of some sort was racing towards them. As it drew nearer, they saw that the spymaster, Alli Umfuil, was riding it.

"Gondorians," she addressed them once her ride had halted, "it seems your current home has left without you. Why you were not in it upon its departure I do not care to learn. I'll find out soon enough without your help. However, we must get back to it. First, though, I suspect that your hunger may be nudging your stomachs and the bodies that carry them in the direction of the eateries whose scents have filled the air? I can't guarantee your protection from any other anakronisms, but I can ascertain that eating food here will not harm you. Where would you like to go for midday meal?"

"Anywhere with food and as low a number of anakronisms as possible would be fine," Angawen told Alli immediately.

"I'd rather forgo food altogether, and get back to Mt. Doom," said Hyarmenwë. "Food can wait until things are back to as they should be."

"This is Mordor," said Alli. "Nothing is as it should be."

"I'm hungry," said Bearugard. "I think we should eat."

"Two to one," Angawen flashed Hyarmenwë a self-conceited victorious smile. "We win." She turned to Alli. "Lead the way. We don't have a clue where we're going."