OOC: For those who watched Doctor Who Proms, here's a tribute for you. Accidental use of body swap ticket and high potency of necromancy leading to something entirely unexpected and then....
“ph'nglui mglw'nafh
Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn….”
“Wrong tune, Fred.” Alexandrine quickly said to her best friend singing as she entered the room. It was very late in night at Gotham, where the blood and mayhem were common sight in self-claimed Ruland of the North. Her hands were calm, graceful and in control as she slowly assisted herself downstairs to the underground chamber. Built right under the 50-metre high Border Walls separating Villa Nova and Gotham, the laboratory’s built with state-of-art technologies to befit the very purpose and prevent people from getting into. There were few others in the chamber, but they were all lying on a couch or ground, clearly looking exhausted.
Already done work, and seems like it’s only down to adding final ingredients, Alexandrine thought as she assessed her fellow necromancers. They were all asleep, trying to get their additional hours of sleep. Even in penal colony of Gotham there were schools and those state schools they had over there started at 6am. Given Gotham’s status as penal colony and their parents’ status, the education was valued even greater than at some parts of the mainland. So this meant that the necromancers had exactly 3 and a half hours of whatever to do before their normal wakeup time- missing out on school would reduce their chances of getting out of Gotham.
She sighed as she saw all 6 of them safe and asleep, while Frederic, her best friend, was getting ready for the ceremony herself by gently stirring the pot. With the steam it produced while heating up, it clearly looked like everybody’s done their job. Alexandrine decided to walk to the pot and checked if Frederic knew whom she was. He recognised her, but decided to keep on staring into the pot instead. This didn’t really surprise her though. Sometimes her hyper-focused friend would spent solong just observing and doing the duty to maximum utility that he’d kinda become institutionalised while in process.
"Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son. Flesh of the servant, willingly given, you will revive your master. Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken, you will resurrect your foe."
Okay, what? Alexandrine thought as she turned around to her good friend. There’s something weird going on with him, perhaps playing too much RLStates, I guess. The pot was hot and more than ready, with the foams forming around thick, orange liquid.
Perfect, She thought. Time to add the final ingredient.
She took out from her trenchcoat 3 tickets that she stole from this Miss Oswald’s place. Hyperscape Body Swap Ticket, as they were written in some sort of alien language. But since nobody knew how to speak nor read Ancient Klingon in Gotham, let alone that mysterious language, she decided to scratch the surface and put the ticket to the box out of curiosity and experimentation. In past occasions her and her company had failed to make further progress into reviving a bear or bat, let alone a human, mostly because the part with final ingredient in recipe was ripped off the page of the local library’s book of necromancy by a vampire a decade back when Gotham was Magnaeus and under Corvidae rule. So she hoped that cannabis paper tickets would lead them to the successful execution of necromancy.
Alexandrine scratched the surface, put the tickets in the pot and waited for a minute. She hoped this would give the fluid yellow colour as have written on the very library book. Instead it turned into green, blue and POOF.
“Ouch, where are we?” Frederic asked as he suddenly was found lying on ground. He felt very unusual with the surroundings, with the lights all around him. He slowly got up and found that he’s in a locker room. Not just any locker room. The locker room in City Centre Arena where the Grim Reapers were bound to start the game 3 of semifinals series against the Surge (which he found to be pretty funny, ‘cause that reminded him of erection).
A voice quickly responded from the other side. “I don’t know, since when did you become a Kigab Freddie?” Laurent, his silver suit shining from the distance, asked from the other end of locker room as he pointed out the number 12 right on his chest. Frederic turned around and looked at the jersey right below his. Yikes, where’s my shirt? He thought in horror as he realised that something’s wrong with the situation. He knew that Coach Tordoloff always wore silver-shaded suits that shone whenever he’s at the arena or media conference. Something was wrong.
“Please don’t tell me it’s that Body Swap ticket I read about not too long ago.” That’s all Alexandrine said, as she groaned in failure of her mission. She was very disappointed. Not only did that not revive Xavier-Luke, her old friend back when she lived in Halifax as a child, but that instead swapped their bodies with somehow the Quebecois basketball national team players and coaching staff.
The actual players were not there, nor the coaches. Instead…..a bunch of high-school necromancers were in their place with their jerseys and suits on. This was not right.
It would not be long before the necromancers had to stop thinking about this accident though, as they heard the loud, thumping knock. It was not of human, but of moving metals.
They all screamed, as they heard the knock getting louder and louder until the door broke.
“Hello. Veniamin Guchevsky speaking. Oh, hey Marie. What’s up?”
“Ben, are the basketball fans still in City Centre right now?”
“Around 5,000 are still in city. I don’t know about the others though. Probably about a thousand got deported as you know, while the other 4,000 headed home or decided to watch outside.”
“Cancel the remaining tickets Ben. This is urgent.”
“What do you mean? You know how much we spent for the playoff tickets, right? We can’t have 3,000 members of our own family be deprived from watching this big game!”
“There’s something wrong with the players, bae. Nobody’s shooting nor driving that well right now, and they all move a little bit….slow and mechanical in practice. It’s as if they are bunch of….less fit athletes. Not something that I’ve seen of them in a long while, even in Game 1.”
“You sure that’s just the boys being tired and maybe stoned? This ain’t an easy business y’know. Playing basketball, man I’d not do that because of how deep in trouble would I be by mid-court.”
“No. All their skin…..sweatless and cold even after 2 hours of practice. And we’re talking about a sweltering practice gym, where all of them tried dunks and bastardised versions of eurostep. We need to get them out.”
“Okay, you gotta tell me what they they are then, so I can invalidate the tickets of 5000 remaining tickets and give ‘em to others.”
“They are…...Dalek puppets. As clear as that.”
“You gotta be kidding me.”
“No, I’m not….ACK!!!!!!”
“Hello? Marie? Anybody? Hello?......”
“..............”
“Oh dear.”
Meanwhile the Grim Reapers were nomming this exquisite packet of biscuits they found while watching the basketball game. Pretty nice compensation for getting bodyswapped, most of them thought, as they enjoyed an unexpected day off. The game was not enjoyable though, for it was not going well for whomever they were replaced by Grim Reapers; the score was 43-27 in favour of Saint Kanye near the end of second quarter. The players knew something was wrong with those boys in red: They somehow were in not in function and seemed lot slower, rougher and messier in executing their plays, let alone defending the opponents. It’s as if they’re performing differently.
Man, what’s wrong with those Grim Reapers? Coach Tordeloff thought as he uncomfortably watched from the corner with his juice on. Wearing nothing was definitely not something he'd have liked in any circumstance, but since there’s no wearable clothes on the room, he was stuck with none other than staying naked. Besides, they couldn’t even get out of the chamber because of gazillions of passwords and 4 barriers built in case of nuclear explosion. Blimey.
Then they heard a massive bang, as the room shook a little bit. The players all ducked to their nearest tables, while the coaches all accepted this as part of their fates. Nothing could’ve gone more bizarre anyways. At the same time Lorne Scrubb felt that something was wrong and ran, punching through a couple of doors and before outside.
Gotham was on fire.
