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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/interactive-story/item_id/1510047-The-Book-of-Masks/cid/2429228-The-Adventures-of-Diana-Might-and-Friends-2
by Seuzz
Rated: 18+ · Interactive · Fantasy · #1510047
A mysterious book allows you to disguise yourself as anyone.
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Chapter #25

The Adventures of Diana Might and Friends (2)

    by: Seuzz
The Rocket Car pulls up in front of Dr. Meredith's offices, and Diana Might and Nitro Girl hop out. They enter Dr. Meredith's office and surprise him there. Naturally, he recognizes them and asks how he can be of help. They ask him about his secretary. He evinces puzzlement that they want her, but explains that he let her drive back to town for lunch, in his own car. "Do you really need to speak to her?" Diana insists strongly that they do. "Fortunately, I have a short-wave telephone installed in it," Dr. Meredith says, and he picks up a phone receiver and presses a button on the base -- then presses another button on the desk, and the camera dollies in close on an alert light by the button that glows yellow, then green.

Cut to the car wreck, where a light on the dashboard below a telephone receiver blinks. The Andro-bot stirs and frees itself from the wreckage. With sparks coming off it, it totters and stumbles around the hillside, as though searching for something. It spots it in a footprint clearly embedded in a patch of mud, and follows.

In Dr. Meredith's office, he frowns -- a real frown of concern and anger -- and tells Diana that Linda doesn't answer, and says that he himself would be obliged if she could find Linda. He relates to them the make and model of his car, and the license number. Though our heroines are skeptical, they leave. Dr. Meredith picks up his phone and calls for his rotaplane to be prepared.

Out in the Rocket Car, Diana relates to Nitro Girl what she knows of Dr. Meredith. "He's a specialist in holograms, which are like three-dimensional photographs. You take a 3D picture of something, then you project it. But you don't project it on a screen, you project it from a screen, and it creates a three-dimensional image. You can walk around it and look at it from any angle." "You mean like a mirage?" Sandra asks. "Like that," Diana says, "but you can get right up close to it. I saw a demonstration project he put on for the National Defense Council. He projected one of his illusions around a cottage. The cottage disappeared and in its place was a church, and then an office building, and then the Eiffel Tower. Even when you got up close, they looked just like the real things. But that's not important. Right now we need to check out that smoke column you spotted. It might be the car with our missing agent!"

[In the margins, here, is a handwritten note: "Lose the technical shit, just say it creates an illusion."]

Cut to an open field, across which an exhausted Doug is carrying an unconscious Linda. An Andro-bot appears in front of him, and he whitens and tries to run away, but he stops when it waves him down and calls his name in Lydia's voice. It touches its breastbone, glows, and turns into Lydia. She hurries up and asks about Linda, and fusses with her collar and collarbone as she talks. Doug says she'll be okay if they can get her to a hospital. "But what happened to you?" he asks. Lydia starts to answer; as she stammers out the story of being almost run over, she accidentally touches her breastbone again -- and transforms into Linda. Cut on her and Doug gaping at each other.

Next scene: Diana and Nitro Girl explore the car wreck. They note that the driver is gone, and they find the footprint and start to follow. They pause at a noise, however, and dive undercover as a rotaplane appears above. Diana recognizes Dr. Meredith at the controls, and tartly observes that it's not every boss who worries so much about his secretary. Ducking under the bushes, Diana and Sandra continue their search.

Lydia and Doug (still carrying Linda) enter a clearing and spot two of their classmates: JACK and CASSANDRA, who are a handsome Negro couple. The latter's car is nearby, and the four students get Linda laid in the back seat. Doug suggests that Jack and Lydia take Linda to the hospital; he and Cassandra will get his van and follow. Lydia, who has been tapping her collarbone and frowning at the very familiar way that Doug and Cassandra are carrying on, pitches a small fit and insists that each couple stay together. After Jack and Cassandra have driven off, Doug rounds on her, and says he wanted to send her (Lydia) to safety ASAP. Lydia retorts, "Are you sure you just didn't want to go off in the woods alone with Cassandra?" Doug stammers that he doesn't, but she cuts him off by saying that she can arrange for him to be alone with Cassandra -- she touches her breastbone and transforms into Cassandra, and pulls a stammering Doug back into some bushes.

Diana and Nitro Girl are searching the underbrush when the bushes part and they are surprised by the damaged Andro-bot. They are worsted by it, with Sandra taking a bad spill, and Diana has to lure it away to a hillside. She knocks it down the side of the hill but the thing is still mobile; she watches as it stalks away, and clearly would follow, but returns to tend to Sandra; she observes that the presence of the Andro-bot pretty well settles it that Dr. Meredith is working with Ouroboros. Her ward is mobile but has a twisted ankle, and Diana must help her hobble back toward the road.

Elsewhere, Doug and Lydia (back in her own form) are coming out from under the trees and approach a van. They are arguing about what to do. Doug warns her that there is skullduggery afoot; Lydia laughingly asks why they can't just go home and keep their mouths shut. "We could have a lot of fun with this thing," she says. "You could have a lot of fun!" As Dan opens the door to the van, she turns herself back into Cassandra, and when Doug angrily tells her to cut it, she turns herself into Linda and hops up into his arms and asks if he'd like to "rescue me all over again." They hear the noise of a motor, and squint the sky. The rotaplane appears overhead. Dr. Meredith growls, "There you are, my dear," and issues instructions by radio: "All Andro-bots rendezvous at coordinates 25448!" He swings about and fires a laser bolt that blows out the engine of the van while Doug and Lydia run back into the woods.

Diana puts Sandra in the Rocket Car, and looks up to notice the rotaplane, about a mile down the road, firing at something. "Looks like I better go check that out," she says, and uses her Turbo-Speed to race to the scene of the action. Dr. Meredith sees her coming and issues another order: "All Andro-bots, avoid Diana Might. Repeat, do not approach or attack adversary Diana Might." He sheers off as Diana approaches the disabled van, and as she watches the rotaplane is surrounded by a glow and turns into a biplane as it flies away.

The camera pans over to the trees, where Doug and Lydia are watching. Doug wants to break cover to talk to Diana, who he recognizes, but Lydia pulls him back. "Maybe it's not really her! There are so many fakes walking around. Let's find another way back." Doug reluctantly returns to the woods, but Lydia lingers, and taps her collarbone while staring at Diana with an enigmatic expression.

Diana approaches the van cautiously. She opens the hood and clucks over the ruined engine, then looks inside the cab before stepping around back to scrutinize the license plate. She calls Steve on her Belt-o-phone to give him the license number. "And Steve," she tells him, "I just saw the most remarkable thing. Dr. Meredith was flying around in a miniature helicopter, and it suddenly transformed into an airplane!" Steve replies that this news coincides with the information that their agent was giving them from the inside. "He's been purchases high quantities of miniature electronics, the sort of the thing that would allow him to create holograms capable of disguising objects smaller than that house he was experimenting on. We've also been reexamining some of the communications we have intercepted from Ouroboros, and we're starting to suspect that his technology is such that it would allow him to create holograms of people. A kind of super disguise!" [Another margin note: "This better not be the actual dialogue!"] Diana exclaims that there's no limit to the kind of mischief Ouroboros could get up to with that kind of technology, and says she will go back to looking for Linda.

As they tramp over the hills, Doug and Lydia argue again about what to do. Doug wants to go to the police, but Lydia wants to use the device. She names one of their classmates, whose father is a millionaire. "What if I disguised myself as her?" she says. "Aren't you tired of having to work in that grocery store part time to pay for your classes? I could use her face to get some of her money -- she'd never miss it -- and then you could quit and we could spend all our time together!" Doug is shocked by this fantasy, but he's interrupted when three Andro-bots come out of the bushes around them. For a moment they appear to be trapped, but Lydia, after cycling through the faces of the Andro-bot, Linda, and Cassandra, appears as Diana Might, and the Andro-bots turn and hurry away. "Pretty convenient, huh?" Lydia says. Then she spots the Rocket Car through a gap in the trees, and adds, "And I think I see a way back to town."

Sandra is sitting in the passenger seat of the Rocket Car, nursing her ankle, as Diana Might emerges. The latter smilingly asks after Sandra's health, then asks her to get out of the Rocket Car. "I need to borrow it for a bit." Sandra is puzzled, but complies. Diana gets in, starts the car. It lurches and jerks, and Sandra shouts after it before it zooms away. A surprised and stricken Doug runs up, and he and Sandra stare agape after it. When Sandra says, "My boss just up and left me in the lurch here!" Doug grimly replies, "That wasn't your boss!"

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