A Kindling Flame

Author's Note:

"Fellow Writers, (I do not use the term 'knights' as I feel I am more like a knight in training) I apologize for the long wait, I should not have been so negligent in beginning something and not finishing it, especially with a two year gap. However, I have finally written the rest and I do hope you all enjoy it! Sincerely, Kal.

File:Cal Kover.jpg

Chapter 1: Tragic Beginnings.

Kalaren strolled to the shiny new playground.

One week ago, time seemed to have disappeared. Time itself had no restraints, causing histories to repeat itself, futures to become past, presents to not exist. Everyone has their own sense of time now. "5 seconds for me is something entirely different for someone else." His life had been changed, and it had been some time since he had been able to relax. However, today was his 13th birthday, according to himself, and he had asked permission to take a walk to the new playground. His sisters, Sarah and Lucille, would join him after they finished cleaning dishes.

The only thing that marred his relaxation was that his father was ill with a sickness called "Maelstrom Infection". Some sort of space disease that originated from far away. It was interfering with his father's work as Ankoria's foremost Swordsmith. The doctors would not tell much to Kal or his sisters. The doctors would spend a lot of time with their parents...

But he was not supposed to be worrying about that now. Mother had said to enjoy himself.

As he rounded the corner of some trees, he saw smoke.

"A barbecue!" he said, pleased. He hurried to it.

As he neared it, he realized it was anything but a barbecue fire. Rather, a fire from torches and siege weaponry.

File:Barbarian.jpg

It was a barbarian raiding party from the prehistoric ages. This was not the first time this week that barbarians had appeared in downtown, but this time... they had space-age weaponry as well. And they knew just enough to be as maximally dangerous as possible.

One of them swung up onto the top of some monkey bars, and let loose a honorary war-cry, which Kalaren recognized from the news reports.

"HOOOOGA!"

As distracting as the sight of a kilted barbarian with a laser rifle and space miner's helmet yelling 'Hooga' was, Kalaren noticed something else.

File:Mysterious Man Stretch.jpg

A quite more civilized character with a black cloak and sword, in matching red and black armor. He walked around the general chaos, but Kalaren noticed how the barbarians made way for him. They did not look at him, but they went out of their way to not interrupt his passage to...The general direction of ...

His house!

He ran after the cloaked man, hardly noticing the barbarians as they attempted to detain him with fist and knife. Kalaren's heart suddenly felt very cold and achy. Something terrible was about to happen. He knew it for a certainty. Even as he ran as fast as he could, the dour man got further and further out of reach, even though he went no faster than a businesslike stride, till he was out of view. Kalaren realized that his sense of time was getting slower than the mysterious man's, and there was nothing he could do about it...

--------

Once Kalaren got to his house, he pushed the unlatched front door open.

A horrible sight greeted him home.  His sisters would not be meeting him... at the park, or anywhere. Ever. Again.

He ran into the living room, tears bursting, and saw the cloaked figure, with his back towards him. He was standing over his father, who lay still on the floor.

Kalaren glared at the figure, and grabbed a weapon off the wall, not really caring what it was. He charged at the figure with it, venting his emotions through sound and action. At the last second of Kalaren's vehement charge, the armored figure spun around and deftly disarmed Kalaren of his ceremonial knife with a flick of his  sword. The knife was sent quivering into the wall.

The man gave a light chuckle as Kalaren slowly raised his fists in a boxing stance. Withdrawing something from his belt, the mystery man threw it at the floor. Then everything went white.

Chapter 2: Prisoner

Kalaren awoke briefly. His mind was foggy, and it was somehow difficult to concentrate. The lighting was dark green, and very sparse. There was a low humming noise.

He also became aware that he was strapped to a chair. Finding a window to his left, he was able to look out it's heavily tinted portal, and saw multi-colored lights streaking along. Then he fell back into slumber.

-----

The next time he awoke, he was strapped to a table, in a dark room. There were four figures in the room. One of them was the mystery man. He was leaning in the corner. The others could only be described as modern doctors, or perhaps scientists.

One of them was standing in front of Kalaren, thoughtfully stroking his chin.

"The test-subject is awake, M'lord Vladek."

The mystery man walked forward.

"So that is his name!" thought Kalaren.

"Good, give him the prescription." Ordered Vladek.

The doctor in front of Kalaren smiled most sinisterly. Then Kalaren felt a needle being inserted into his arm by one of the other doctors. All in all, it didn't hurt that bad.... Immediately.

"I leave him in your care, doctors. Be sure that I will not regret it. I must return, lest my absence be noticed."

As soon as Vladek left, one of the doctors began poking his neck with a long toothpick. Most annoying.

----

Time passed. The same routines would occur, in different orders, always ending with him blacking out again. One of the 3 doctors would almost always be there, running some test on him. Or Vladek would come in and check on things. At one point, Kalaren woke up, and found his right arm was missing. There were two of the doctors, and they were talking with Vladek.

"It's not our fault we ran out of sample-needles! So we decided to just lop off a limp and freeze it! That will-"

"You do not have my permission to carve up the test subject!"

Kalaren decided to speak up. "Nor mine! It hurts!"

"Give him more silencer." Vladek said, not taking his furious gaze off the doctors.

"Listen, M'lord," said one of the doctors, as he looked around for an injector. "His DNA is proving hard to match and mix with everyone else's. We believe it's because he's from a different dimension. So instead of doing tiny batches, we thought a BIG batch might actually have better cohesion with the others."

"And if you're wrong?"

"Then he has a second arm, we can use that!" he said, stabbing Kalaren in the neck with the injector. Kalaren tried to object, but found his vocal cords would not work, to do whatever toxin he had just been injected with.

Vladek scowled. "No! If it doesn't work, then what is the point in trying something that doesn't work?"

"...You're right. We'd have to do a BIGGER batch!"

"THERE'S ONLY ONE MAN." Burst out Vladek.

"Then why don't we just clone this guy directly, instead of trying to make a new clone just yet?"

Vladek pondered a moment. "You tell me. Would that dilute the DNA?"

"It would just make it easier to mix with, as the copy would show that he was made in this parallel, instead of that other."

"Then that might work." Conceded Vladek. "The sword his father made will only answer to someone from his bloodline."

"Well, this clone would still have the same fellow's... Bloodline. Just not sure if it would have all the weird parallel-dimension wavelength DNA nonsense, which would be helpful to be without."

"Very well. You may proceed."

"Thank you, sir!"

The two doctors unstrapped Kalaren from his restraints. Holding him by his shoulders, they took him into a small tube-like closet, and closed him in, as green gas began to fill the small space. Moments later, Kalaren was forced to breath the gas, and he fell unconscious.

-------

When he awoke, he was staring at himself. A perfect clone, also without an arm.

The small tube, or cloning device, as it appeared to be, opened, and he stumbled into a doctor's arms, who immediately shuffled him back into his restraints on the tilted table. His clone was more comatose, and landed with a solid splat on the floor.

Noticing his throat felt different, Kalaren decided to try his luck with his voice.

"So, how's the weather, doctor? What's your name?"

The doctor looked at him with a straight face. Looking around, the doctor seemed to belatedly realize he was the only one there.

"Well, this has never happened, has it?" he said. "It appears I'm the only one here."

"Huh, looks like that. 'Cause I'm chopped liver?"

"No, you're 'test subject.' However, Vladek did not say that I was not allowed to give you cybernetics!"

"What?!"

"Cybernetics! Do you want an enhanced arm?"

"Why would you give me cybernetics?"

"Because you soon will be chopped to bits. I know this clone will work. Also, I simply love the blending of man and machine!" he exclaimed, a wild light glinting in his eyes. "Oh, and plus, Vladek gave me my pay in advance, and without some prosthetic limb of some kind, you may not survive. Your natural internal imagination count won't flow without a 4th appendage to flow through, it would seem."

Kalaren's eyebrows tweaked worriedly. "Oookay. Do you know how long I've been here?"

"One and a half years, roughly."

"Huh. It seems high time I escaped. Any ideas?"

The doctor pondered a moment. "Yes! I suggest... LASERS! Also, my guidance." He said, sounding insane and then sage. "But let's see about those cybernetics first. Would you like a glove?"

"What do you mean? I still need the arm."

"No, I mean a glove, to cover the cybernetics a bit. It would still have glowey highlights, because, well, those are awesome."

"Very good point. Ok, sure."

"JELLYFISH!"

"WHAT!?!"

"Do you want jellyfish tattoos?"

"No! What makes you scream 'jellyfish' like that?!"

"I forgot to take my jellyfish-based sanity medication this morning. Forgive me."

-------

A few hours later, Kalaren had his life-saving prosthetic limb, complete with a fancy black mesh-fiber glove.

"So, what's next?"

The doctor looked up. "Well, since I have a copy of you, which is turning out much easier to extract and mix DNA with the others I have, I guess you're free to go!" He smiled.

"I thought you said I needed your guidance?"

"Oh yeah. You do. But first, let's get some lasers. Before Vlads shows up and gets fussy about you." He muttered nonchalantly, unstrapping Kalaren.

Kalaren couldn't believe his luck. His doctor was... quite possibly insane. And ridiculously helpful.

Chapter 3: Lasers and Sharks.

"I still don't know your name, doctor." Kalaren said, as they ran down a corridor. Kalaren was carrying a large wormholer, while the doctor was holding the blaster and missile rack. They had taken them from a guard they had overpowered. Kalaren had also taken the armor.

The doctor paused at a corner. "Give me a minute; I forgot." He said, looking mildly perturbed. "My name is... Um... Today I shall call myself Doctor Jellyfish! Sound good?"

"Sure, Doctor Jellyfish." Kalaren facepalmed.

Doctor Jellyfish fired at a door with his missile. "This way! I'm 48% sure!"

"I don't like those odds."

"Is that your unlucky number?"

"No, it's just less than half."

"So your lucky number is more than 96?"

"No, I... nevermind." He said, as he focused his attention on the troop of shinobis striding into the room. In a moment, they were all around him. His wormholer took care of two, and the Doctor was able to hit one with his blaster, leaving 13 left. Kalaren espied a nearby window.

"Over here!" He exclaimed, shooting the window to enlarge it. Then he made a break for it, only realizing it was above a moat once he had jumped though it.

A few shinobi followed after him, and they all landed with a splash in the moat. Kalaren used the blade part of the weapon to swing around, as the firing system wouldn't work with water. Suddenly, something grabbed the wormholer, and wrenched it out of his hands, leaving him with only his cybernetic arm.

"Well I'm glad doc made these waterproof!" he belatedly realized. Swimming out of the moat, Kalaren looked up into the faces of two shinobi.

"Hi there. I hope we can be civil."

"Nope." Replied one, swinging his foot at Kalaren to kick him into the moat. However, Kalaren dodged to one side, grabbing his foot and pulling him down. Snatching a sword from the shinobi, he used it to parry the other's blow. Then he stood atop one, while he attempted to fence the other. Sadly, it took no time at all for the other to disarm him. Just as the final blow was about to be delivered, a blaster shot got him squarely in the temple.

"Jellyfish power!" rang out a voice from the window high up.

After kicking the other shinobi in the head to knock him out, Kalaren looked up.

The doctor was waving. "Be free, test subject! And wait for me!" then he too jumped out the window. Kalaren looked into the moat. There were shark fins.

"Wait! The moat is filled with-"

"Geronimooo!" screamed the doctor. Unfortunate, the sharks had been alerted to this fashion after Kalaren and the other shinobi had, so they were all too prepared to gobble the doctor as he came down. Doubly unfortunate, for the sharks, Doctor Jellyfish had his blaster, and an empty missile cartridge, which he used to shoot the waiting sharks, causing them to scatter.

A few minutes later showed the odd duo safely scampering into the nearby woods.