Chapter One
By The Chronicler
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6 hours.
6 freakin' hours.
Bloody well 6 freakin' hours.
Jessica James, a.k.a Knuckles, glanced down at her watch. "Okay, 5 hours and 58 minutes. They're ONLY 5 hours and 58 minutes late. Gotta give them credit for those two minutes." she mumbled, pacing back and forth, waving her hands about.
After all, standing out here, all alone in the rain on a landing strip, loaded down with equipment, suffering from killer jet lag for 5 hours and 58 minutes was soooo much better than 6 hours.
Sure. At 5 hours and 58 minutes, she was perturbed.
At 6 hours, she'd be ready to kill.
She glanced down at her watch again.
5 hours and 59 minutes.
Now Knuckles was really pissed!
Last time she let Rawhide set up her meet.
Admittedly she hadn't had alot of time to do it herself. The provisional government of the Mauritius island had only contacted the Banzai Institute two days earlier, complaining that their bird population had gone... how did they put it? Well, roughly translated, out of their freakin' brains! So, eight hours later, packed with the best gear Buckaroo Banzai had (he wanted her to test a new portable field lab, with a few additions/changes to fit the zoologist's needs), and her constant companion, Oddity, an Austrian Shepard, she was on her way. Rawhide graciously offered to call up a friend in Curepipe, Mauritiues who could meet her and show her about.
She was still waiting for said friend.
A horn honked and Knuckles spun about to see a small, beat-up jeep make its way across the landing strip. It stopped in front of her and a tall, skinny, blond man stepped out.
"Allo, mon ami... James?." he called to her, stepping around the front of the jeep
"Allo." Knuckles answered him in french, resisting the urge to add `'bout time.'. "Je m'appelle Jessie James. Um... English?"
The man frowned. "Thought you were fluent if french?!" he growled accusingly. "Big, dumb cowboy... always asking for this and that and sending me children who can't even speak with culture."
"Excuse me?" Knuckles growled back.
"Why should I?"
The girl stared at him, startled by his attitude. Rawhide wasn't the type to befriend jerks (Perfect Tommy aside) "Look: I am dead tired, cold, wet, have a head ache..."
"Oie? You too?" He shook his head. Then he held out the jeep's keys.
Hesitantly, Knuckles held out her hand and he dropped the keys in it.
Then, with only a quick "Au revoir." he turned and started to walk away.
"Hey!" Knuckles called after him. "Aren't you supposed to show me around?"
He paused to look back at her. "Curepipe is one mile that-a-ways. The old mission where you can make your base camp about fifty miles passed that." He flinched as a bird flew high over head, casting them with its shadow. "If you ever see Rawhide again.... tell him I'm out of the charity business. He want something, tell the dumb cowboy to get it himself!" With that, he was once again walking away.
"Well... Merci." Knuckles mumbled. For a moment she wondered about him, but, with a shrug, decided she was more interested in getting to camp and setting up than chasing after a creep for some additional witty exchange. She turned and began to load up the jeep.
Driving through Curepipe was as interesting as her meeting with Rawhide's friend. The city streets were in a shambles in some areas, completely dead in others. The citizens that even acknowledge her presence did so by glaring at her with suspicion, some even calling out to her in varies languages, telling her to go home, that she wouldn't get anything from them. At one point, a mother pushing an empty stroller through a rock at the jeep, sending Oddity diving for the underside of his seat. Many people just wandered around with blank expressions, bumping into each other, seemingly disoriented.
"Birds aren't the only ones going batty here abouts." Knuckles observed after coaxing her pet out. "I know I promised you a treat, but I'm thinking we best head for camp."
The dog wined his agreement.
Nearly an hour and half later, driving up a steep, narrow, unpaved road that cut through the rain forest, Knuckles finally found the site chosen for her base camp. It was a small clearing just within sight of an old burned out mission. Despite obviously being abandon for years, possibly a couple hundred years, the angel fountain in the center of the courtyard could be seen through the broken down doors, water still spraying up from stone flowers at her feet, making it look as if the ancient mystical woman had just launched up out of the crystal clear pool.
"Wish Rawhide could see this." Knuckles whispered, in awe of the angel and her fallen mission. "He'd of loved to have seen her."
Oddity barked at her, then gave a shake, trying to rid himself of the wet that had finally soaked through his thick fur.
"Yea, yea." Knuckles mumbled. Rubbing her ears, she turned her attention to setting up camp and getting them both dry and warm.
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3 days latter at the Banzai Institute...
"Hey, Jersey." Mrs. Johnson yelled at the top of her lungs.
Wincing, Tommy Boy and Big Norse covered their ears. "We do have go-phones for a reason, you know." TB pointed out.
Mrs. Johnson shrugged. "When the doc gets his head into something, there is only one way to get his attention." Again she took a deep breath for another shout through the house. "Hey..."
"Yes, I heard the first two dozen bellows." New Jersey stopped her as he took the last step up the stairs to the same floor. Frowning his best reprimand, he glared down at the girl. When she just grinned back, he sighed and rubbed his eyes. "You have been spending way too much time with Perfect Tommy." he mumbled.
"Anyway..." Big Norse interrupted. "Knuckles has called in and Buckaroo wants you to have a look-see."
"A look-see?" Jersey frowned again. "Something wrong? She get shot again?"
"That's what Buckaroo wants to find out." Tommy Boy answered as she stepped into the bunkhouse. She paused and looked back to see if the doctor would follow... as if there was any doubt.
New Jersey scratched his head, wondering what sort of trouble their little wandering hothead had gotten herself into this time. Couldn't be too bad, considering Perfect Tommy was down in his lab and not partnered up with Knuckles. If one was bad, two of them together was horrific. With a sigh, he followed TB into the room.
Buckaroo Banzai stood in front of the big screen of the communication station, his arms crossed over his chest, his brow wrinkled with thought.
Knuckles' fuzzy image paced on the screen, the fingers of one hand twisting one of the braids of her frizzy hair. Her other hand flipped a miniature CD around her fingers. "Yea, well, I was sayin' that the birds here abouts are flopping about, running into things, dive-bombing the locals... like, maybe..." She paused to rub her temple.
Jersey stepped up beside Buckaroo and watched the girl fidget.
Knuckles was generally a strong minded, decisive young woman, neat and precise in everything she did. She did not fidget. She did not fill her conversations with useless, wasteful words. And she never had frizzy hair.
New jersey turned his back to the screen and leaned toward his fellow doctor. "What's wrong with her?" he whispered.
"Don't do that!" Knuckles snapped, drawing the attention of everyone in the room. "Don't you whisper about me! It's... That is wrong! You talking about me? Don't EVER talk about me! You've got something to say, say it to me!"
"Knuckles!" Buckaroo had to snap himself to silence the girl. When her jaw snapped shut so hard, half way around the world they heard the click of teeth and her cloudy green eyes locked on the doctor, he continued in a softer tone. "Knuckles, you need to take a deep breath and calm yourself. Sid would never say anything against you, and you know it."
She glared at him for a moment before returning to her fidgeting. "'Course he wouldn't. Where'd you ever get such an idiotic idea." Before he could answer, she waved a hand in the air, dismissing the subject. "Look: all I wanted was for you to check out the info I sent you. Let me... sense of... you are the brai..."
Buckaroo glanced sharply at Big Norse as the transmission began to break up. She was already taping away at the consul, searching for a reason, so he turned his attention back to the girl. "Knuckles... you're breaking up."
She only frowned at him.
New jersey took a step closer to the screen. "Knuckles, are you alright? Are you feeling normal?"
"Well... duh!" Knuckles tried to respond. "Feeling... 'nd dandy. Perfect, in... rub Tommy's nose in... Perfect!... head hurts, ears ringin' bit, but..."
The image flashed and disappeared all together, leaving them to stare at a blank screen.
"What happened?" Jersey wanted to know.
Buckaroo watched, patiently, as Big Norse and, now, Tommy Boy worked.
Finally, Big Norse turned to face them. "Some sort of interference from her side. It grew stronger through out the transmission until it finally just kicked her off the line... so to speak." She shook her head. "Probably screwing around with most of her remote equipment. Why we can't get a precise location on her go-phone. Keeps bouncing around a five mile radius."
"A storm?" Buckaroo asked.
Norse shook her head. "It was close to super sonic. Best of my knowledge, storms don't go super sonic."
"Or follow a very precise, very complex pattern." Tommy Boy spoke up, though her back was still turned to them as she tapped away on a key board. "Whatever, where ever, and/or whoever this signal is coming from, it wasn't nature's doing."
Buckaroo glanced back at Jersey. "What's your take on Knuckles?"
"Something's wrong with her." Jersey pointed out the obvious. "She seems rattled, jumpy." He took a second to think. "Headache, ears ringing... can this signal have hit the right octave to be playing with the inner ear?"
Buckaroo Banzai's frown deepened. He did not like what he was hearing. One of their own was a long ways from home, alone, and, very likely, in trouble. And that left only one choice.
Turning and heading for the door, Buckaroo ordered "Mrs Johnson, call the required people. Tell them to pack for a rainy day... or two or three."
Tommy Boy, her eyes still scanning the information displayed before her, mumbled "Saddle up, boys and girls. Time to rock 'n' roll."
