The Triumphant Return of Jolt! (or not)

     NRH jumped up and ran out of the arena. If Jolt had been kidnaped 
and replaced by Oni, that meant that a rescue mission was in order. And 
since no one else in the immediate vicinity was a spy sort, that meant 
it was going to be up to him. "007 time again, looks like," he muttered 
as he ran towards the Powers That Be Access Station and Shinji.
     As he ran, he realized that he would need someone to cover for him 
at the interdimensional guard station. There were always more evil 
characters just waiting to ruin everything. But who to pick? He thought 
over the short list of people he would trust to hold things while he was 
out. "Let's see, Lynxara has her own problems right now, Shinji is busy 
keeping things together, poor guy, Katone nar'Hlass... well, Katone had 
enough power to cover it, but I don't want some hapless traveler getting 
fricasseed. KFF seems to be working elsewhere at the arena, Ryan is a 
bit annoyed at J.P. recently and probably wouldn't want to help, Dinobot 
wouldn't fit well in the station, Nigel is too obsessed with his gender 
problems, and Damien, well, Damien is just... Damien. Anyone left? Oh
boy. Only one. It's gonna have to be X, I guess."
     Having chosen his temp and given some chatroom pals a cheap thrill 
at seeing themselves in print, NRH arrived at the Access Station. 
"Shinji!" he called, urgently, "It's NotReallyHere! I need
to talk to you! Fast!" As always, Shinji responded.
     {What is it, NotReallyHere? Much deserves my attention.}
     "Shinji, Jolt's been kidnapped!"
     {I am aware of this.}
     "I'm the only one who stands a chance of getting into Sonic's 
dungeons undetected and back out again with Jolt! There isn't anyone 
else who can do it!"
     {Rather sure of yourself, aren't you?} sent Shinji, wryly, but 
tiredly.
     "Look, I know it sounds like an ego trip, but it's not! I've got 
to save Jolt! But in order to do it, I need your help. Can you make 
sure I get to Dark Mobius?"
     {Very well, NRH. The next time you use your Plot Device, you 
will arrive at Dark Mobius. I must go now. Good luck!} and with that, 
Shinji left. NRH also walked off, determined to save Jolt.
     An hour later, NRH was still walking around. Before he could go 
save Jolt, he needed to find X to get him to take over the interdimensional 
guardian job for a while. He'd thought X would be in with the Avatars, 
but he was told that X had left a while ago. Eventually, NRH checked the
newly-opened Reality Store.
     The Reality Store had been created to help those poor individuals 
who got caught on the fringes of a contestant's reality-warping power, 
like the two nameless audience members who also got hit when Tuxedo Chris 
zapped Lynxara. Unfortunately, there was no reliable way to restore
those who were directly hit by the blast, but at least the innocent 
bystanders could get fixed up. X was there, quietly looking over the 
merchandise.
     "X! Boy, am I glad to see you!" called NRH. X looked at him. 
"Look, X, I need to head out for a little while, and I need someone who 
can cover for me at the interdimensional guard station. Would you do it?" 
X considered for a moment, then nodded yes. NRH led him to the back of the
store. "Hey, Dirk! Where are you!"
     A voice floated out of the back of the store. "NRH? Are you here?"
     "No, of course not! I'm NotReallyHere!" he responded, with the old 
joke he used on many, many people. Dirk was an old friend, though, and 
had delivered the straight line as a token of that friendship. Dirk came 
out behind the counter and said, "So what can I do for you today, NRH?
Looking to sell that Plot Device, at long last?"
     NRH shook his head no, then told Dirk, "I need J.P.'s Remote Control."
     Dirk paled, then said, "But... but... that's a genuine Reality Warping 
Device! You know those are fundamentally uncontrollable! Don't you have 
enough problems with using the Infinite Improbability Generator? No, wait. 
Please, please, PLEASE tell me you're not going to actually try
wiring those two together. You could destroy the entire tournament!"
     NRH calmed his friend: "Don't worry, Dirk, I'm not doing anything that 
stupid or desperate. I just need to go somewhere for a while, and X here 
will need a Reality Warping Device to cover for me. I know J.P.'s not using 
it..."
     At this point Dirk jumped back in: "And just how do you know that?"
     NRH explained that Jolt had been kidnaped, and since he hadn't used 
the Remote Control earlier, he must have left it somewhere safe. Since the 
only safe place was here, where there were special reality-enhancing buffers,
NRH knew it had to be here. Dirk went over this, decided it worked well 
enough, and gave X the Remote. "Now, you be careful with that. It's pretty 
powerful,"
	Dirk said. X nodded. Then X and NRH left the store.
     As the two Avatars walked towards the interdimensional access station, 
from which point they could reach the interdimensional guard station, 
NRH explained the basic functions of the Remote and the duties of the 
interdimensional guard. X listened attentively and nodded at all the
right points, so NRH assumed he got it. Either that or he was really 
bored. When they reached the station, they warped to the guard station 
between dimensions. X looked around, cracked his knuckles, and took his 
position. NRH nodded in approval, picked up one of his bags full of
gimmicks, and activated the Plot Device.
     Due to Shinji's assistance, the super-spy arrived directly at his 
destination: Dark Mobius. Unfortunately, he hadn't specified Sonotropolis 
as his goal, so the Infinite Improbability Generator had displayed its 
rather perverse nature and dropped him somewhere in the middle of the 
Great Forest, with no clues as to what direction he had to go. Naturally, 
he had taken one of the bags loaded with weapons and other destructive 
implements. What he didn't have was a compass, map, or translator. He 
hoped that he wouldn't have to talk with Antoine or Bunny, but then 
remembered that in this universe, Antoine got rid of the accent.
     With no better way to choose a direction, NRH climbed a tree. He 
hadn't been a very good tree-climber when he first got started, but the 
problem had come up several times since then. He still wasn't a master 
at it, but he could get up if there were some low branches, which there 
were. Once he reached the top, he looked for some sign of Sonotropolis. 
He decided the spot with big plumes of smoke and lots of dead trees nearby 
looked like a good choice.
     NotReallyHere was almost blown out of the tree when some sort of 
flying robot flashed past him at a very low altitude. He watched it leave, 
heading towards the mess he had decided marked Sonotropolis. Since it 
hadn't altered its path, he decided it hadn't seen him. Still... NRH 
phased out of reality. If Sonic had even the middle of the Great Forest 
under patrol, it wasn't safe to be detectable. NRH thought back to how 
far away Sonotropolis had been. He sighed, something he often did. He 
grumbled, "This is gonna be a looong walk."
     After walking for a full day, NRH decided that there had to be a 
better way. Those flying spybots had been zipping over his head every hour 
on the hour, and they were giving him an idea.
So, the next time one was due, NRH climbed another tree and got ready to 
jump. He saw it zoom into view... approach... approach... and he jumped!
     The spybot noticed nothing out of the ordinary, since NRH wasn't in 
its universe. Nonetheless, it now had a passenger hitching a ride. In less 
than an hour, it had returned to Sonotropolis to deliver its results- all 
negative. NRH climbed off and walked further into town. Since he was still 
outside of normal space, people walked straight through him. He was used to 
it.
	Most people complained that they felt invisible at times. NRH knew 
truly being invisible was much less worthy of actual complaint. At least 
his way, you knew it was for a reason.
     NRH hopped a bus (without dropping in a token- yet another advantage 
of invisibility) and rode toward Sonic's palace- the largest building in 
town. The bus only came to within ten blocks of the imposing edifice; 
anyone with official business closer would have a private vehicle 
available.
	Obviously, NRH had no vehicle waiting for him. There also weren't 
any heading in to hitch a ride on. He looked over the area. Still nothing. 
He started walking.
     NRH walked through the main gates of the palace, right under the 
watchful eyes of the camera- which saw nothing. He went further in right 
under the nose of the small armada of receptionists and guards. They all 
missed his passage. He stopped outside the dungeon doors.
     Here, the dungeon guards left the keys to the cells. Since Jolt wouldn't 
be able to get through the thick metal doors and was probably shackled, 
NRH would need the keys. It would have been even better if he could pick 
the locks, but as far as *this* spy was concerned, that was an ability not
found outside of the AD&D universes. Of course, there were people from much 
more plausible dimensions who could pick locks, but NRH wasn't among them. 
It had something to do with a total lack of manual dexterity.
     NRH phased into reality, grabbed the keys, then phased back out. The 
dungeon entrance wasn't under constant video surveillance. Sonic apparently 
felt that there was no need, since opening the door to the dungeon would 
trip all sorts of alarms, even if you had all the proper authorizations
and keys and codes. Of course, that only took effect if you had to open 
the door to get in...
     NRH walked through the closed door, grinning to himself at having 
rendered this incredibly pervasive security irrelevant. Inside the 
dungeon, NRH poked his head into each room as he passed.
	In many of them, pitiful-looking females of all sorts of species, 
though no humans, were lying on their pallets or were strapped/tied/chained
down. NRH looked at them sadly. None of them was in any sort of condition 
to escape, and even if he did get them out, where would they go? They were
native to this dimension, and weren't even cameo characters. These were the 
extras. The only way NRH could get them out would be one at a time, making 
sure to establish each as a developed character on the way. That would 
work, but he'd probably die of old age before he got a tenth of
them out. Better to work for Dark Sonic's downfall. Either that or make an 
impossible ethical decision and begin mercy-killing.
     In the forty-seventh cell NRH looked into, Jolt was lying on a rack, 
held down by thick metal restraints, unconsious, and badly wounded. NRH's 
eyes widened in shock. "What kind of damage did Oni do to him? He's an
Author! He's supposed to have special toughness! Fast healing! A lawyer,
even!" NRH scanned the room for bugs, found none, and returned to reality. 
He took the keys and opened Jolt's restraints, then gently shook him to 
wake him.
     "Jolt... Jolt, it's NotReallyHere. I've come to rescue you."
     Jolt slowly regained awareness. "NRH? That you? Thank God."
     NRH quashed a smarmy "You're welcome," and said, "Come on, Jolt, 
you've gotta get out of here. Oni might be back at any time."
     Jolt weakly responded, "I can't. My legs..."
     NRH looked down. Jolt's legs seemed fine. "What's wrong?"
     "Dark Sonic... he... did something. A fragment of a demon, or something. 
I don't know. I can feel them... there's something wrong with them. If I 
try to stand, he'll know. If I go back to the tournament... it'll break 
free. It might try to take over someone. Imagine what would happen if
Lynxara or Shinji was possessed!"
     NRH looked down again, this time in anger. It was one thing for Sonic 
to kidnap an Author. That was *barely* within the bounds an evil character 
could be expected to fit in the AAA. Sort of like what Tux-boy and Sonic 
did to poor Lynxara. *Barely* acceptable, if only because anything else
would be unnatural. But to try to poison the Powers That Be... (well, he'd 
already messed with Lynxara, but she wasn't being a PTB right now- not 
that Jolt needed to hear that) ...that was beyond an evil character. That 
was frighteningly like an unknown Power. Not quite there, but disturbingly
aware. NRH knelt and whispered in Jolt's ear, "Alright, this is what we're 
gonna do..."

     [I'd tell you all about the epic battle NRH and Jolt faced, getting 
him out of there, but it'd take 30 pages of writing, hundreds of ASCII art 
pics, involve both Jolt and NRH experiencing more
incredible strokes of luck than Marissa and Kintobor combined, and would 
fill at least 200k. Besides, there are a number of people who have made 
themselves infamous for writing battle scenes poorly, and I'd rather not 
join their ranks. Did I mention the Spaceballs refs? You know, the bit
about, "You've captured their stunt doubles!" Pulitzer quality, I'm telling 
you. You'd laugh your head off.
     Anyhow, here's the brief rundown: NRH was able to heal Jolt's injuries,
and the two broke out of Jolt's cell. They fought through half of Sonic's 
army, trying to get free, saving each other's lives dozens of times in the
process. During a short lull, NRH experienced a heart attack due to a
strange fluctuation from the Plot Device, leading to Jolt rising brilliantly 
to the challenge and implanting the Heart of Gold in his chest to serve 
as an artificial heart. We rejoin our heroes in a diner in a reasonable 
facsimile of New York, ruminating over their incredible adventure and 
plotting against Dark Sonic.]

     "So the physics professor says, 'First you assume a spherical chicken 
of uniform density!'" Jolt concluded.
     NRH sputtered helplessly at the joke. He'd heard the punchline before, 
in several different books and MiSTings, but he'd never come across an 
author with the common decency to include the setup. At last, the joke made 
sense, and wow, was it worth the wait!
     Suddenly, without warning, a car driving quickly by began blasting some 
sort of lasers into the diner. NRH, acting with unbelievable speed and 
nobility, tried to interpose his body between Jolt and the lasers. 
Unfortunately, super-speed wasn't one of NRH's abilities, so it was 
sort of futile anyway, and he automatically phased out of existence when 
the lasers hit the spot where his body had been. As a result, Jolt was hit.
     Hit very badly.
     Very very badly.
     NRH faded back into reality as soon as he could (i.e. the lasers 
stopped) and looked helplessly at Jolt. A significant portion of Jolt's 
head was now splattered all over the far wall, indicating that those were 
some sort of blasters, not mere lasers. Naturally, this didn't occur to 
NRH. This is what he actually thought:
     "Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no. I am going to be in it up to my eyebrows 
when Shinji and Lynxara hear about this. Absolutely f*cking shit."
     Normally NRH was a fairly clean-cut guy, but this definitely warranted 
a f*cking shit or two. After all, he'd known that Jolt could get out 
eventually, but nooo, he had to try to be a hero and get him out sooner, 
and now look what happened! Jolt was dead!
     NRH, as befits an Avatar, quickly figured out how he could salvage 
the situation. He reached into his bag for the Plot Device, but remembered 
that Jolt had implanted it into his chest to save his life during the 
copout [ummm... breakout]. So instead, NRH concentrated, and....
     It activated!
     NRH felt a warm glow expand from the Plot Device, and the glow 
quickly expanded outside his body. It took the visible form of warm 
shafts of yellow light. The shafts played over Jolt's corpse,
and as NRH watched, his head began to reform. Unfortunately, the light 
show cut out before his head was all the way back together. Jolt was 
still dead. So, lacking any new alternatives, NRH tried again.
     This time, there was no buildup. With no flash, no fanfare, Jolt 
was gone entirely. NRH looked at the place where his body had been. 
He was too numb even to curse again. As long as he had the body, 
there was a chance he could revive Jolt. Now, there wasn't any 
possibility at all.
     "This isn't fair!" he screamed, angered by the utter indifference 
of the universe. The Plot Device spontaneously activated again, and 
for a brief time, NRH could hear the narration.

     Jolt was ripped out of the fabric of time and space, then dropped 
in front of Oni at an earlier point in time and a completely different 
universe. Oni looked at this Jolt, thought for a moment
about what this implied, then took this Jolt (restored to his 
condition at this point in time) to a different part of Sonic's dungeon 
from the other Jolt.

     As his ability to hear the narration faded, NRH began screaming at 
his author. "WHAT!?! THAT WHOLE THING WAS FOR NOTHING?!? I ALMOST GOT 
KILLED AND NOW IT DIDN'T EVEN HAPPEN?" His author considered sending 
NRH a message to let him know it happened, but no one else would know, 
but decided it wouldn't help. Better to just let him rant for
a while and get it out of his system. After a few hours, NRH was about 
done.
     "YOU BLOODY INCONSIDERATE JERK!" he finished, throat hoarse and 
voice raw. When no response seemed forthcoming, NRH dropped his shoulders 
and activated the IIG. He warped out of existence, to return to the 
remaining Power to report his success and the after-the-fact defeat. He
really wasn't looking forward to it.
     NRH slipped back into the universe of the Author Avatar Association 
disconsolately. He looked miserably towards the majestic Powers That Be 
Access Station where he made his reports and drew his paycheck. Walking 
slowly, NRH approached the awesomely powerful (but recently, strangely 
distracted) Shinji. As he came near, Shinji actually seemed to pause 
in his apparently endless activities maintaining the AAA. The awesome 
Power spoke.
     {It's not your fault, NRH.}
     "What do you mean, it's not my fault? I was supposed to rescue 
Jolt! Do you see him here? If I hadn't taken him to that stupid diner, 
he'd be safe right now, not trapped in Sonotropolis!" NRH
responded, disbelieving.
     {You couldn't possibly have rescued him. It was not... fated... 
to be. Nonetheless, you had to try.}
     "The hell I did! All you had to do was tell me that I couldn't 
do it, and I wouldn't have! What would have 'made' me try?"
     {Your author,} concluded Shinji dryly.
     "What? Well, yes, I suppose you have a point there... alright. 
So I had to try. So I had to fail. Why did I have to almost get killed, 
then? What was the point of that?" NRH asked.
     {That would normally be a matter for your author to answer, but 
I happen to know. He was getting tired of people snatching the Plot 
Device away from him in the chatroom, so decided to put it where it 
would be inaccessible. I'm sorry, but I really must be going now. 
There's more than ever to do with Lynxara gone and... it's not your 
concern. Farewell, NRH. Until next time.} And Shinji faded away, off 
to deal with some crisis somewhere else in the AAA. NRH stood for a 
moment, considering the mental state of an author who would put his 
own Avatar into mortal jeopardy for the mere sake of not being 
inconvenienced in a chatroom. Finally, he shook his head and muttered,
"Well, since I'm supposed to be him, just inside the story, I guess 
I'd probably do the same."
     With his moral dilemma gone, NRH headed back to his interdimensional 
guard station, ready once more to keep malign forces from disrupting 
the AAA. At least, any more malign forces than were already present. 
Dark Sonic was plenty, he was sure. Besides, he'd better see how X 
had done with J.P.'s Remote Control. When he warped into the station, 
he decided it would have been better to sulk for a few years and 
get really, really drunk. X grinned, sheepishly...