Infinite DC
Chapter Six: Goonies 'R' Good Enough

Flight Lieutenant Skeeta Jenkins woke with a snort.

His clean-shaven head hung back as he sat in what he believed to be the cockpit seat of his P-51 Mustang, having engaged in dogfight with German fighters.

But he was not in his Mustang, nor was he engaged with any Germans.

He awakened inside of a large, brightly-colored area with technology beyond the era he previously occupied. At the center of it was a circular control console; beyond that, a large view screen with an alien insignia affixed above it.

The World War II flight lieutenant felt an intense restraint over him, looking down to see himself shackled to one of the chairs on the console platform. Steel cuffs around his wrists and one large band over his waist.

Then he discovered that he was not alone.

A pigtailed Caucasian blonde with a fresh, young face – burdened by a black eyepatch worn across her left eye – was crouched beside him; her one good eye attentively gawking right at him with a large, warm smile. Skeeta found her rather peculiar, not just from the distracting grin but her attire as well. She seemed to have some fixation with birds – her white, frizzled dress adorned with print of various fowls, quills, and birdcages, and one actual birdcage strapped atop her head.

“Hello,” he greeted her.

The strange girl did not answer.

He tried not to let it stop him from making further conversation: “My name’s Skeeta. What’s yours?”

“Teacher,” the girl enthusiastically answered.

Skeeta nodded, smirking. “That’s a rather…intriguing name for a young lady.”

He spoke in jest, of course.

It was enough of a start in forming some sort of discussion…or so he thought.

“Teacher! Teacher! Teacher!” She continuously said with more vigor than before.

After a while, Skeeta grew confused with her constant exclamations of that one term. “I don’t understand,” he steadily told her. “Who’re you talking about? Me? I’ve never met you before in my life.”

“GEN!”

The assertive voice of a middle-aged woman thundered from across the room, attracting enough of the girl’s attention to silence her.

Skeeta ascertained the speaker to have entered from his right.

He nearly diverted his eyes the second he took notice in her revealing attire.

Stilettos clicked on the hard floor, as the older woman stepped onto the console platform. Her godlike, defined figure imposed over the cowering young one-eyed girl she addressed as “Gen.”

“What did I tell you about bothering our guest?” She chastised, as if Gen were her own child. “Return to your spot! Now!”

Like a dog to its master, Gen obeyed, crawling and recoiling in the shadow beneath the control console. She hugged her legs close to her body, rocking back and forth.

This new woman brushed back her long, flowing brown locks and focused on Skeeta. “I apologize for my young friend’s odd behavior,” she said. “She recently had an episode with a magic ring and is now a full-fledged fruit loop.”

She stood uncomfortably close to Skeeta, the majestic, flowery scent of her perfume seeping into his nostrils. There were not many women from his time who dressed down as much as this one had with only a black thong, embellished leg covers, and a long-sleeved, layered crop top.

“I’m Sanders,” she presented. “It’s a name I felt fit with the body, even though it reminds me of the colonel from the chicken place. The name, not the body.”

His brow furrowed at the oddity in her words. “I don’t understand. You chose your name because of your body?”

Sanders playfully slapped her forehead. “Duh! How silly of me to forget to tell you that I’m a Time Lady!”

Skeeta squirmed in his chair more discomfortingly. “I…I’m not familiar with that designation. A-Are you some type of alien?”

She giggled with amusement at the African-American gentleman.

“Oh, I think you know exactly what I’m talking about, Skeet.”

From out of her right leg cover, she retrieved a pen-like device – her sonic screwdriver.

She aimed it between her well-rounded breasts, activating it with a low whirring register. Soon afterward, Skeeta heard overlapping heartbeats resound from the speakers built within the room.

“That’s the beats of my two hearts you’re hearing,” Sanders identified. “The heartbeats of a true, full-bloodied Time Lady.”

She then directed the tip of her sonic screwdriver to Skeeta’s chest.

Brisk corresponding heartbeats rang through the speakers.

“And that’s your heartbeats,” she revealed to him. “Now you’re more familiar with a ‘Time Lord’ than a ‘Time Lady,’ right? It is what you are.”

Skeeta blew a defeated breath. “You got me. Satisfied?”

“Only if you tell me that you remember one child of Gallifrey by the name of ‘Neas,’” she required.

Hesitant in answering at first, Skeeta denied, “No, I don’t.”

Sanders sulked. “Well, that is a shame. Because she can certainly use your help right about now.”

“And how’s that?”

“A powerful hunter Dalek has been tailing her since she deserted from Gallifrey all those years before the Time War ended. And you, fine sir, know exactly how to defeat it, because it was you who pioneered the same interdimensional technology for a T.A.R.D.I.S. that the Daleks used on their golden boy.”

Astounded from her keen awareness, Skeeta bellowed, “How do you know about my work in interdimensional travel?”

Sanders coyly beamed. “Because you’re sitting right in your one and only Type-Z prototype.” She leaned in close to his increasingly overwhelmed mug and antagonistically inquired, “Now are you gonna help me kill this thing or not?”

Upon a coastal hillside in Astoria, Oregon stood a thirty-something blonde in a black long coat, its tail whipped by the fall breeze. Her crystal blue eyes were fixated on the ancient, wooden green mask she held in her trembling hands. She wished it was the chilly air compelling her grip on the remnant to quiver; in actuality, her anguish influenced it.

For as long as she had been living in this seventh incarnation, which she aptly named “Mandy,” she was careful not to allow herself to be too attached to any artifacts uncovered from her journeys. Gizmo was the only exception, a relic in his own special way – her longest companion, incapable of aging nearly as much as she could.

This one, on the other hand, was different in the most calamitous way.

“Hey, Mandy!”

Her hearts skipped. Her grip on the mask nearly slipping out of her fingers and down over the steep hill.

Clarence Wendell, her fun-loving, spirited, and pudgy companion.

That sprightly energy of his was a curse and a blessing all the same.

She could not be angry with him because of the angst this mask put her through.

“Yes, sweetheart?” She asked of her lively companion.

“Did you do it? Did you bury Mr. Ipkiss’s mask like you promised him?”

Clarence had been her companion in recent days, drawn to her T.A.R.D.I.S. one day after school and instantly captivated.

One trip and it’s back home.

That was the rule she laid out.

Clarence was only ten years old. He had family, friends, and a future to hold onto. None of that was worth the danger of traveling through parallel dimensions in space and time.

Yet it was danger they found in one city, within one world, by the name of Edge City. There, they met Stanley Ipkiss – a mild-mannered, down-on-his-luck bank clerk whose life was flipped upside down from the same wooden mask Mandy was in possession of.

Following an escapade involving vicious gangster and unearthly magic, she promised Stanley to take the mask as far away as possible and bury it in whatever hole she could dig up.

Instead, in a foolhardy gesture, she buried it deep within the left side pocket of her long black coat.

“Of course, I did,” she fibbed to a child.

“Yay!” Clarence cheered. “Now we can go on another adventure!”

“Oh, no, no,” she rejected. “We’re taking your little butt back home, mister.”

Clarence pouted. “But you said…”

“I said ‘one trip,’ and I mean one trip. Do you want to go through the same nightmare we did back in Edge City?”

“That wasn’t a nightmare. That was a dream come true.”

Mandy sighed. “Clarence, honey, don’t you miss your mom? Or Sumo? Or Jeff?”

He timidly looked down, trailing the tip of his right foot along the grass.

Sensing the conflict in him, Mandy knew she was successfully getting through.

“Listen, sweetie,” she said, “I know you have your own special – and perhaps weird – sense of ‘having fun,’ but my life is just not safe for a lil’ guy like you. You could really get hurt, and I wouldn’t want that on my conscious. Understand?”

He did not verify, remaining absolutely quiet in staring towards the grass.

For a moment, she worried of having broken the poor child’s spirit, which was not her intention.

Then she received her clarification when Clarence rushed right up to her and embraced her by the waist. “You’re the best alien friend any kid like me could ask for,” he said, crying into the fabric of the tight grey sweater dress she wore beneath her coat.

His sentiment touched both of her hearts.

How could she possibly part ways with him after that?

Clarence’s sobbing was suddenly drowned out by heavy humming and grinding.

“Hey, that sounds a lot like your time and space machine thing,” Clarence noted.

Mandy shook her head, grimacing. “Can’t be. Mine’s still orbiting this planet.”

Her keen range detected the familiar noise to come from beyond a small collection of trees. She and Clarence scuttled there, spotting an identical Type-Z T.A.R.D.I.S. in the glade, smoke seeping from its exterior.

“Why’s it smoking?” Clarence questioned.

“I don’t know, sweetheart.”

“Only one way to replace out.”

Clarence skipped ahead to the panic of Mandy, who pleaded the child to come back, but to no avail.

He was already knocking on the smoking solid in less than a minute.

“Hello in there,” he said. “Checkin’ to see if you’re O.K.”

To their surprise, the Type-Z’s doors opened outward to Clarence’s call.

Mandy joined at his side to see just who it was inside the capsule.

They backed away from the seeping puffs of black smoke, accompanied by the collection of passengers piling out into the fresh air, coughing and spitting. Neither Clarence nor Mandy could believe how bizarre some of them were in their appearance, such as a walking and talking blue jay, raccoon, yeti, and gumball machine, as well as a ghost, green-skinned man, and one with a lollipop-shaped head.

“Oh, my gosh,” Clarence cried. “There’s a fire! Someone call the fire department!”

“It’s O.K., Clarence,” said the tall black man in the group, dressed as a Tuskegee airman. “There’s no fire – at least, not anymore, there isn’t.”

Clarence questionably glowered at him. “Hey, how do you know my name? I’ve never seen you before my whole life.”

“Good question,” Mandy muttered, frowning as well.

Her eyes met with a young auburn-haired girl in blue skinny jeans and a grey t-shirt gathered with the other travelers of the smoking Type-Z, and she caught a distinguishing Mogwai swaddled up in the girl’s plaid shirt.

“Gizmo?” Mandy whispered.

It then dawned on her who and most importantly what this girl was.

“Well, bless my soul,” she fervently said. “My future standing right in front of me.” She approached the girl, warmly embracing her, careful not to smother Gizmo in-between them. “The Doctor once told me how easy it was to run into yourself when traveling through time and space. What name you chose for this regeneration?”

“Shel,” the girl answered.

Mandy merrily tittered. “I love it. Short for ‘Michelle,’ I suppose. But I love it regardless.” She centered on the entertaining group of characters that scurried out with Shel. “I’m impressed with the companions you’ve made. They’re certainly an interesting bunch, especially the World War II airman of color.”

The eyes of the aforementioned pilot flared. “Airman of color? Seriously?”

She amusingly grinned over his reaction. “No need to be so hot, big man. I’m only complimenting you on your service.” She sincerely added, “I’ll admit that I forget how race is a sensitive issue for people from your time. My bad on that.”

Shel did her best to stifle a laugh.

“For your information, this face of chocolate handsomeness you see happens to be another from your imminent future,” the airman told Mandy.

From this news, she was even more impressed by the gentleman.

“Really now?” She teasingly remarked. “A male regeneration – a tall, dark one at that. Though I do wonder about the World War II getup.”

“I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise,” he cynically said, his ire snowballing.

“And that attitude,” Mandy observed, clicking her tongue. “Nice to see I’ll still retain some of that wit in my old age.”

“Old age?!” The airman fumed.

“Neas,” Shel beckoned to him, before asking Mandy, “Where are we?”

After having her fun with Neas, Mandy transferred back to a more serious tone in her address to Shel: “You’re along the coast of Astoria, Oregon.”

“What?!” Benson howled. “You mean we’re no longer in the Park?!”

“Relax, Benson,” said a composed Rigby. “We’ll just hop on a plane and be right back home in an hour tops. No biggie.”

“That’ll prove difficult, considering we’ve traveled to a-whole-nother dimension where your park doesn’t exist.” Neas disputed.

“You’re saying we’re stuck here?!” Mordecai panicked.

“Of course not.” Shel reassured. “We can just as easily return you all back home.”

The sudden violent burst of fiery sparks through the Type-Z’s doors prompted her to have a grim change of opinion.

“In another decade.”

Taking notice of the ravaged state in the interior of this T.A.R.D.I.S., Mandy asked, “What happened?”

“We had a gremlin problem.” Skips replied.

Mandy was not at all pleased by this. “Alright. Who’s the idiot that got Gizmo wet and fed his brothers after midnight?”

No one confirmed or denied responsibility, which only made Mandy suspect them even more.

“How ’bout we shelve that for a later time and focus on repairs,” Neas suggested.

“With two Type Z’s here in this dimension, that should be rather easy,” a hopeful Shel signified.

A series of beeps went off among the three present regenerations – in the back left pocket of Shel’s jeans, inside Neas’s bomber jacket, and within the right pocket of Mandy’s long coat.

“What noise is that?” Mordecai queried.

“Our sonic screwdrivers – it’s an emergency signal.” Neas explained, while he and his past and future selves each took the same device out from their respective pockets.

“What’s the emergency?” Rigby probed.

Fascination filled the faces of Mandy, Neas, and Shel, gazing on their sonic screwdrivers.

“Another Type-Z just materialized a few clicks from here,” Mandy reported.

Minutes later, the explorers discovered where the signal emitted from: an old, abandoned summer restaurant.

“Best you guys stay by the T.A.R.D.I.S.,” Neas advised the Park crew. “We don’t want to scare any locals should they pass by and see your ‘unique’ appearances – no offense.”

“Oh, no offense taken,” Pops guaranteed. “We are quite unusual.”

“Benson,” Shel said, handing her enveloped Mogwai to the gumball machine man. “Watch over Giz while I’m gone. Keep him out of the light as best you can.”

Benson tried not to smile too much from this small chore she laid on him.

It was more than an excellent chance to prove himself to her.

“I’ll guard him with my life,” he vowed, mentally slapping himself afterward for sounding like a complete tool with such a cheesy sentiment.

Once that was taken care of, the three regenerations and Clarence proceeded on their way into the isolated diner.

At least they believed it to be so, until they sighted three adolescent boys (an Asian kid, another pudgier than Clarence with curly hair, and one other with spiky hair) sitting at one of the tables with an acrimonious old woman looming over them.

“More?!” The vehement woman roared in dissatisfaction, cursing subsequently in her secondary Italian tongue. “We’re closed!”

“No, you’re not,” Clarence said. “You’re serving those kids.”

“Junior discount,” the woman venomously snapped.

“Oh, well, that is just perfect!” Mandy portrayed enthusiasm, energetically clinging to Neas’s right arm and hugging her body against his. “My husband and I have been on the road for days with our two children.”

Clarence, Shel, and Neas gawked on her, their eyes (Neas’s particularly) registering enormous skepticism. Yet there was no other choice but to play along with this impromptu plan of hers.

“Yeah,” uttered Shel, making use of Mandy’s mock eagerness with the voice of a teenage valley girl. “I’ve always, like, wanted to eat in a place like this. It’s so, like, far out there! Right, Daddy?”

“Oh, you betcha, my little princess!” Neas acted, mustering a very Ward Cleaver-type personality to his fatherly role.

The old woman appeared marginally pessimistic of their act.

For a second, Neas believed they would be forced to abandon the investigation – or possibly worse, judging from the aggressive way this elderly lady carried herself.

“Whatever,” she said, seeming to buy into their story. “Plant yourselves down over here.”

She guided them to a table across from the three boys.

While they seated, the old woman motioned over to the boys and asked, “Where’s your friend? The one with the overactive bladder? He’s been gone for a long time.”

“May take even longer, ma’am,” answered the spiky-haired boy from the trio. “Mikey had fifteen galloons of soda before we got here.”

“Sure he did,” the old woman derided. “I’m goin’ to look for him. Any one of ya even thinks about wanderin’ off, I’ll staple your sorry little keisters right to your seats!”

Her threat did not go unrecognized by the three boys, who looked intimidated enough just from the ominous presence of the woman.

Soon after the old woman left the area, Mandy looked to the three boys and asked, “Have any of you young gentlemen happen to see a tall, black rectangular object somewhere in this repulsive place?”

“What are you talking about, lady?” The Asian kid snootily responded. “We know nothing about that.”

Neas groaned. “Guess I’ll just have to scout this place out myself.” He instructed to Shel, Mandy, and Clarence, “Stay here and wait for me. If I don’t come back in ten minutes, get back to the guys and into Mandy’s T.A.R.D.I.S. and get out of here.”

Shel disapproved of this plan, specifically when it counted for her previous incarnation putting himself in great danger, which consequently placed her mere existence in danger. But there was no talking him out of it.

“Just watch out for Mother Teresa back there,” Mandy advised. “Somebody desperately needs to throw that woman from a train.”

Neas made his way towards the back, replaceing a short flight of stairs leading down to the sublevel of the forgotten bistro. The lighting was poor, offering little to guide him down a murky, foul-smelling corridor.

Thankfully, the “flashlight” setting from his sonic screwdriver was enough.

Deplorably, its timing was unfavorable, as Neas turned it on at the same time he bumped into what felt like a child.

“Don’t hurt me! Don’t hurt me! I just got lost!”

Neas shushed him and shined his lit sonic screwdriver to the boy’s face, illumining the bracelets in his teeth.

“You must be Mikey,” Neas deduced.

The boy’s breathing weakened from the scare, urging him to remove an inhaler from the pocket of his yellow raincoat and use it. Once he regained his breath, he gruffly returned, “Yeah, and who are you?”

“Name’s Neas. Those other three boys must be your friends.”

“Did that old lady send you after me?”

“No. I’m the same as you – wandering no place I should be.”

“I’m not wandering,” Mikey defensively said. “I’m on the hunt for something.”

Neas eyed the boy’s right hand, which brandished an archaic, rolled-up piece of parchment. “By the look of that map you’re holding, what you’re hunting is treasure,” he declassified.

Mikey pocketed the parchment into his coat, giving a dissatisfied moan for allowing himself to be so careless.

“It’s okay,” Neas told him. “I already have my share of treasure to get me by. Whoever’s you’re searching after can’t be as much.”

“You wouldn’t be saying that, unless you knew One-Eyed Willy.”

The Time Lord sneered. “One-Eyed Willy? The pirate One-Eyed Willy? Of course I knew him. I even know where he buried his treasure, since I was the one who helped him do it.” His dark eyes searched skyward, reminiscing. “I met him in a previous life, that old scoundrel. I had quite the silvery hair back then, which is how he took quite the fondness in me.”

His countenance marred by obliviousness from the odd ramblings of this total stranger, Mikey stepped away as slowly as he could, albeit awkwardly.

“Well, sir,” he said, “I’ll just be on my way and—”

Mikey ceased in both speech and movement as he heard loud, wild moaning further down the corridor.

“What the heck is that?” He questioned in fright.

Though it terrified Mikey, the horrid wailing purely sparked intrigue in Neas.

His sonic screwdriver held higher, he headed towards the howling, all while Mikey backed into the opposing route.

“What do you think it could be?” Neas grilled the frightened boy. “A werewolf? Maybe even a lost Sontaran? How great would that be?”

He heard no deductions out of Mikey, not that he would have paid them any mind.

His attention was squarely on the sealed-off room at the end.

Through the porthole of a closed door, he saw a misshapen man chained to the wall with a television set as his only source of entertainment. Standing near to the left of this unfortunate human being was a Type-Z T.A.R.D.I.S., the very one that brought Neas, Shel, Mandy, and Clarence to the rundown eatery. A provocatively-dressed, middle-aged woman exited from it, in the company of a bald, black gentleman in Tuskegee attire similar to Neas’s and young blonde wearing a birdcage and an eyepatch.

“Skeeta? Gen?” Neas quietly managed to identify the latter two.

Something felt all wrong about this scene.

Shel and Mandy had to be warned about it.

Turning to leave, his forehead met with a hard steel object that only in seconds did he realize to be the barrel of a gun wielded by a brisk-looking Italian man. Not far behind him, another wearing a noticeable hairpiece held Mikey at gunpoint also.

“Dead end, Ace.”