CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN
COLORADO, CO
10 NOV 2011, 17:44 MST
“Huh. It doesn’t look anything like the movies.”
Agent Brown chuckled tiredly. “Yeah, that’s what everyone says. We don’t get the flashy hardware, or giant wall-sized displays. Your command center back at Peterson is closer to the fantasy, but this... All those consoles let us see everything going on in North American airspace, and we have direct feeds from the satellite networks to cover much of the rest.”
General Shepard strolled down the row of monitoring stations, peering at each in turn. As he neared the end of the first row, he noticed Agent Brown checking his watch. “Am I boring you?”
“Not at all. Just... If something is going to happen tonight, it will be soon.”
“And what is this mystery event?” asked the General.
Before Brown could answer, a klaxon sounded and the DEFCON board lit up. A distant rumble heralded the closing of the big door.
The General stared up at the glaring red indicator on the board. It was lit unevenly, as if one of the bulbs had burned out since the last time it was needed. “What the hell? Why are we at DEFCON 2?”
“Reports from the California guard,” said the soldier manning one of the monitoring stations. “They just lost 18th Cavalry Regiment and 160th Infantry Regiment.”
Agent Brown swore, and pulled out his phone. “Carter. What happened?”
The General glared at Brown. “How the hell do you have service in here?”
“Magic,” answered Brown, while listening more intently to the other end of the line. “Understood. So far, no problems here. Yet.”
“What is going on?”
“One person just wiped the floor with the California National Guard. You can probably see them on the airspace map. Jim, got anything?”
The soldier at the relevant monitor nodded. “Fast mover heading northwest at Mach 2 and still accelerating. Air guard had units on overwatch, but it blew right past them. Air Force is vectoring a flight of F-22s to intercept.”
As they watched the monitor, the F-22 transponders all went red for in-flight emergencies. One recovered, took a shot, then went dark. The trajectory of the intruder barely wavered.
“Target?” asked the General.
“Unknown,” replied the soldier.
“Disneyland.”
General Shepard turned to stare at Agent Brown incredulously. “Disneyland? What are you playing at?”
“Deadly serious sir. The fast mover is one Duncan Faulkner, aka Donna, aka Dia. They are the most powerful magic user we are presently aware of, and also a talented engineer.”
“Why would being an engineer matter?”
“Magically crafted weapons. Up to and including antimatter based weaponry.”
“Jesus H. Christ. Why are they heading to Disneyland? Have we evacuated the area?”
“The park was evacuated due to a mysterious ‘maintenance issue’ earlier this afternoon. As to why... Disney is holding their family hostage.”
“Object is slowing, will be over target in ten seconds.”
*** *** ***
JUST OUTSIDE DISNEYLAND
ORANGE COUNTY, CA
10 NOV 2011, 16:50 PST
“Donna, we should probably slow down. That shield...”
Donna braked their headlong flight, banking slightly to the right to aim for the building her family was in. As a result, when they encountered the shield their robotic body was flung violently to the side and sent flailing through the air.
“Bastards,” cursed Donna once they’d stabilized. She stared at the building hungrily.
“We need to take out the shield generators first.”
Donna unlimbered the new mass driver from Duncan-bot’s back, and lined up a shot at one of the towers. Before she pulled the trigger, Duncan suggested an alternate target, one where the reflected shot would end up embedding in a parking lot, instead of a residential tower.
Donna snarled, but made the adjustment and fired. The shield flared white where the projectile deflected off of it, and the ricochet carved a ten foot deep crater in the empty parking lot. Four more rounds followed in quick succession, to no greater effect.
The maser fared no better, with the shield turning silvery where it hit and deflecting the beam to scorch the cratered parking lot. “Damn it, get me through this thing!”
Duncan tripled the size of the mass driver, and amped up the power even further. That obliterated the prior craters in the parking lot, leaving a gaping scar that could swallow dozens of cars.
A plasma burst at the same target was absorbed by a dark ablative layer. “Damn it, did he think of everything?” groused Donna.
“I’d rather not go further up the scale with the family so close. However, I noticed something interesting with that last shot...”
*** *** ***
DISNEYLAND – THE TOWER
ORANGE COUNTY, CA
10 NOV 2011, 17:00 PST
“Shield is still holding at sixty percent. Recharging as fast as we can.”
Elias Disney shook his head to clear the ringing from the last impact. “Dad did good work. Reinforce that side with anything we can spare. What the hell are we dealing with? He was just supposed to be a mage, but he’s shrugging off or dodging everything we can throw at him.”
“Engineer-mage, sir.”
Elias frowned at his aide, Lilith. “So?”
“He’s building a new weapon system as we watch.”
“How? He’s out in the open and has a dozen cameras trained on him, he shouldn’t be able to do any magic at all!”
“He appears to be using hammerspace.”
“What are you talking about?”
“There, see?” She pointed at the distant hovering figure in the tracking camera display. “Pulled a piece of metal out of the bag he’s holding. It’s brilliant – fabricate it in the bag, then add it to the assembly.”
“Stop admiring him and figure out how to stop him!”
“Drop the shields.”
Elias’s frown turned to a grimace. “What? That’s insane.”
“Do you really think you can stop him? That combined-weapons volley took out half our capacity, and he’s bringing more online.”
There was a staccato report that echoed even through the armored glass windows of the tower. Elias’ head snapped up to see the source: three expanding fireballs inside the perimeter where towers once had been.
“Towers twelve, one and two are gone, sir. The northern shield segment has collapsed.”
“Survivors?”
Lilith barked a bitter laugh. “You saw what happened.”
Elias sighed mournfully. “You were right. Shut it down, evac everyone. Including yourself.”
Lilith slapped a big red button, and alarms started to ring. “What will you do?” she asked as she rose from her desk.
“Wait for the inevitable, and hope...” He watched the figure arc toward the hostage center instead of arrowing for the tower. “You don’t have much time. Go already!”
*** *** ***
DISNEYLAND – “HOSPITALITY CENTER”
Donna pulled up short of the squat grey building despite her desperation to rush inside. The threat of the bomb, and the uncertainty of how to safely remove it stayed her hand.
Duncan used that hesitation to take control, and pulled their crystalline form out of the Robo-Duncan body. They shrunk to a point and darted forward to examine the fine silver layer that acted as a magical Faraday Cage around the entire building. It was thin, and on the inside of the walls. A deeper scan revealed that it had been applied under the wallpaper. There were plenty of sensor cables running through the walls, any large breach would be detected and possibly cause problems. But a pinhole breach...
Their thoughts spun together, sped up as they considered the best place to breach. Thermal imaging worked poorly on such thick walls, but there were other ways. The fastest would be just to locate their crystals, and the fastest way to do that was to be inside.
A laser-bored hole opened a pinprick inside the wall, and a sensor crystal appeared inside. Without the blocking layer, it could pick up everything. Duncan’s family, the bombs, various other people around the building. More than they’d expected. But only four guards.
Gwen’s mind caught up with theirs about then, she was the only one who could think as fast as they did when empowered by the full Moon. “Maybe go a little easier on these guards than the last?”
Duncan was focussed on the bombs. He slipped hardened air between the contacts and could finally relax a little. “Why?”
“They haven’t started shooting. That, and you might not want to traumatize your kids.”
“Fine.” Air hardened around the four guards, pinning them in place in crystalline statues that quickly reformed into mockeries of Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and Donald. “Better?”
“Much. What are you going to do about the bombs?”
“Get them out of here.” More holes appeared in the walls, larger this time – one near each of the half dozen bombs. Duncan relocated them somewhere suitably ironic.
“Did that seem like rather too little explosive to you, too?” asked Gwen. “Six backpack sized bombs?”
“Fuel air explosives. Wouldn’t have done more than scorch the paint... but everyone inside would have asphyxiated if the shockwave didn’t get them.”
Donna’s rage at that thought nearly broke Duncan’s control. To assuage her, he tore a hole in the wall leading to the room where his family was being kept. They stared at him in surprise.
“Daddy?” asked Courtney. “Why’d you break the wall?”
“Would you prefer a door?”
Courtney nodded, so Duncan-bot stepped inside, and with a gesture replaced the gaping hole in the wall with an enormous, ornate and heavily armored door. “There. Better?”
Courtney darted in close to hug her Daddy, and Victor followed soon after. Sidney watched him warily. “What took you so long?”
“I had to wait for the full Moon. Disney is, in fact, a magic kingdom.”
“And the explosions earlier?”
“Taking down the shield generators. Speaking of which, I need to have words with the ass... I mean, the jerk who brought you here. There’s an FBI team not far behind me, they’ll keep you safe.”
“Can’t we just go home?”
“I don’t think this can wait. I need to know why he did all of this, then we can go. You’ll be safe here, this building was built to withstand almost any attack. And I’ve reinforced your room further. There’s an FBI team coming that’ll manage the other hostages.”
Sidney nodded reluctantly. “I guess. Stay safe.”
“Always.”
With Sidney’s admonition in mind, Duncan kept his crystalline self near the hostage center as he sent Duncan-bot flying toward the tower under remote control. That doing so left him able to watch over his family as well was a bonus.
The tower windows put up more resistance than Duncan expected, but a touch of extra thrust and a well-aimed laser burst got him through without a repeat of the embarrassing bounce off the outer shield.
Elias studied the creature that had entered his domain. “You look human enough. But my sources say you’ve transcended flesh and are made of pure magic. Is that so?”
“Yes.”
A sphere of energy flicked into existence. It was some fifteen feet in diameter, and enclosed the entire tower office.
“An anti-magic shell,” mused Duncan, after studying it for a moment. “Nice.” He raised an arm, and a single railgun round went through the center of the generator, destroying it. “Are you quite done? Don’t even think about reaching for the deadman switch in your top left drawer. I took care of the bombs already.”
Elias raised his hands. “I swear, that wasn’t me.”
Duncan narrowed his eyes. “That could have seriously hurt me, if I hadn’t taken certain precautions. Who else is trying to kill me?”
“I don’t know. This has all spiralled so far out of control. Are you actually willing to talk?”
Duncan nodded sharply. “I’d like an explanation. You’ve made a hell of a mess.”
“Thank God,” said Elias fervently. “Maybe this will be worth it after all.”
“What in the world could be so dire that all this...” Duncan gestured at the wreckage of the northern towers. “Seems worth it?”
“What do you know about the Worldstone?”
“I’ve heard the term. It supposedly anchors the world-spell that controls all of the rules of magic.”
“It does. And part of that spell is a prohibition on certain forms. Some very specific ones.”
“Why does it prohibit Disney copyrighted forms?”
Elias’ eyes lit up. “Ah! So you’ve seen that. Dad was very clever, and linked our trademark registry to the worldstone. I do not know how. The problem is, he was too clever by half. The process is entirely automatic. So with every new movie, we add another stack of trademarks. The Pixar merger alone added hundreds. It’s straining the world-spell, weakening it.”
“So turn it off.”
“I can’t. Dad designed this tower so that one of us always had to be bound to it. Besides, the old coot played his cards very close to his chest. I have no idea where the Worldstone is, or how to change things if I did.”
“So you want me to find it and fix it before the world-spell breaks. Why now? Why the rush?”
“Because corporate is working on an acquisition deal for Lucasfilm.”
Duncan’s eyes widened at the implication. “Oh hell.”
“Exactly. When the deal closes, our trademark portfolio explodes. I’m certain it will do so catastrophically. But they just won’t listen!”
Duncan raised his hands placatingly. “It’s okay. We’ll sort it out somehow. And if not, can’t you stop the deal?”
“No,” crackled a voice through the intercom on Elias’ desk. “He can’t. It isn’t his company.”
“I’m pretty sure I can deal with whatever roadblocks you decide to put in my way,” grated Duncan, feeling Donna’s wrath rising once more. This voice was the true author of their troubles.
“Are you so sure you dealt with all of the detonators, Mr. Faulkner?”
Duncan laughed. “I didn’t have to. I transported the bombs to the floor below this office, just in case Elias here got jumpy with that switch.”
Elias’ eyes went wide and he was shaking his head as Duncan spoke. That got him a puzzled look. “What?”
“Thank you, Mr. Faulkner. You’ve made this much easier.”
A moment later, the main tower of Sleeping Beauty Castle disintegrated in an enormous explosion.