SG: Crazy Guy #14 - "Nun Shall Pass"

[David Van Domelen]

Sunlight had just started to trickle down the western face of the
mountain. The breeze blew with a temperature and a direction appropriate to
the season, but since the Author really has no idea where in continuity this
story fits, it could be anything from dew-laden ocean breezes to Santa Ana
winds to a blizzard. Well, not the last one, it's not that cold yet.
Although it has been unseasonably cold and snowy on the west coast this year,
and....
/Chitter!/
Oh, sorry, right, time to get on with it.
Fluttering slightly in this breeze of unknown quantity are the tails of
two small furry creatures. Squirrels, to be specific. RED Squirrels to be
even more specific. In fact, if you wanna get REALLY specific, their names
are Max and Dexter, and they're the leaders of the Red Squirrel Nation. Not
that this will ring any bells among human readers [It's a little known fact
that a significant portion of the Author's readership is, in fact, composed
of quadrupeds with University accounts - Ed, bucking for a Grunion as
Best Footnoter or something].
/Chitter, squeek,/ said the first squirrel, who then reached out and
cuffed the narrator a good one to remind him to turn on the autotranslator.
"As I was saying, Max, our Mount Graham operatives assure me that the
tall-ugly-skinbags ["Humans" would be a better translation, but the
autotranslator tends to be literal - Ed, vote for me!] are totally distracted
by their actions. No one suspects a thing, they think our geographic range
is still limited to that one mountain, when in reality we've established
secret bases around the world!" Dexter crowed.
"All well and good, but the distraction will only last so long. Are you
sure we can complete Project SquirrelGuy before someone stumbles onto the
truth?"
Dexter held up a small crystal. "The final data gained from scans of
Superguy is in this datacrystal. It took years of painstaking effort, since
he never stays in one place more than a millisecond or two, but we finally
have enough information to engineer an army of squirrels with Superguy's
power! The tall-ugly-skinbags will fall within minutes, and then we can turn
our efforts to the real enemy."
"Indeed. The hated Grey Squirrels will taste our superpowered wrath
before the flowers bloom again. Is that our only copy of the data?"
"Yes, but don't worry, once I leave you I will take this to our
emplacement nearby and the information will be transmitted to our scientists
around the world."
"Good. Say, what's that?"
Regular readers shouldn't be at all surprised to find that Jack chose
this very moment to reach the ground, pulverizing both squirrels and
cracking the crystal (along with most of his bones).

Coherent Comics UnInc. Presents: ___ __ __ ___ _ _ ___ _ _ _ _
CRAZY GUY #14 / '/ | / | / \/ / ' / / \/
"Nun Shall Pass" / /--' /--| / / / __ / / /
copyright 1996 Dave Van Domelen `___ / | / |/__ _/ `__/ \__/ _/
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

"Ow," was Jack's first word upon regaining consciousness. His bones had
knit and his burst organs repaired themselves, but little things like bruises
and cuts were still fairly fresh and unhealed, which always seemed to be the
way with his immortality. Plus, it was more dramatic to have a hero stagger
around bleeding from a dozen cuts, so he knew he'd have to get used to it.
"Must have landed on something pretty soft, I don't seem to have bounced
down the side of the mountain any," he noted. Good thing, too, since down
there were a whole lot of Chinese demons howling for blood. And with his
luck, they were all buddies of Eng Fan Boi's [the demon Jack helped dispel in
Crazy Guy #10 - Ed.].
He looked up. The mountainside was fairly shallow as mountains went,
and he could see the monastery perched atop the mountain maybe a mile away,
maybe two. A road snaked around the mountain, looping twice before reaching
the top, but no one seemed to be driving on it. Of course, anyone trying to
get in or out would likely be ripped to small pieces by the demons, so you'd
kinda expect traffic to be light.
A glint of light caught his eye near where he'd landed. Stooping over,
Jack picked a small shard of cracked, blood-spattered quartz out of the
ground. Shrugging, he pocketed it like he would a bit of small change and
looked back up the mountain.
Jack pulled his staff out of his wristband and shook it out to regular
size, then started to huff his way up the slope. Times like this he really
wished he had a plan of some sort....

* * * *

"...over this way," chittered a squirrel, pausing to sniff at the ground
again. "It doesn't smell good, though..." he added, knowing that he didn't
really need to. The others weren't expert trackers, but even they could
smell blood when it was this strong.
A pair of armed scouts rushed past him to secure the site and avoid
risking a tracker to unknown attackers. He heard them gasp, and a moment
later he rounded the corner and saw why.
"Those filthy Greys killed our leaders!" one of the scouts screeched,
his face contorted by rage (inasmuch as a squirrel's face can contort).
"Wait," the tracker held up a paw for silence as he sniffed around the
area. "I don't smell any Greys...just a very recent scent of a human [we
fixed the translator - Ed.]. There's a great deal of his blood here as well,
but...odd, only one trail. Must have doubled back on himself after being
wounded while slaying our leaders."
"Could this human be a pawn of the Greys? It wouldn't be the first
time, after all," posed one of the squirrels who filed in after the perimeter
had been secured.
"We can get that information from him by force when we find him, Larry,"
the tracker replied. "Look at all that blood...he can't have gotten very far
in his condition."
"Sir! The datacrystal...it's gone!"
"That tears it. A human might senselessly slaughter our kind for no
reason other than their sick need to assert their false dominance on nature,
but he wouldn't have taken the crystal unless he was on to our plot. It is
imperative we find him and kill or capture him before he can return to his
masters! Jasper, you head back for reinforcements, the rest of us will try
to find the human!"
A squirrel with a bent tail from years of fighting experiences nodded
and scampered off in a cute but deadly serious way.
"Let's go, Reds!"

* * * *

Jack paused at the side of the road to rest for a moment, shrinking his
magic sea-fixing pin down and stowing it for the time being. That last bit
had been steeper than the rest, and it looked like he had another ten to
fifteen feet of near-vertical climb before it leveled off again, since this
bit of the road had been dug into the side of the mountain to a greater
extent than the rest. He sauntered across the road and leaned against the
rock face to catch a breather while deciding whether to climb it or walk down
the road a bit to find a shallower slope.
Then he heard the rumbling of the engine, a rumbling he hadn't heard
until then over the pounding of the blood in his ears and his own ragged
breath. Someone was coming up the road, someone who had managed to make it
past the demons! He leaned over to catch an early glimpse of the car.
It was a Lincoln Continental. And while it was still pretty far away,
he could just make out the form of the driver, wearing one of those funny
little nun hats [The Author spent 8 years in Catholic school and can't
remember what those things are called...and he's pretty sure it's not
"wimple," that's the really big version. Go figure - Ed.].
A synapse fired and a memory of watching the Road Race From Hell (TM) on
TV came back to him.
A nun. On the road.
This was gonna HUUUUURT! No one gets around the Nun On The Road, you
simply go under her wheels and pray for the best. Jack shut his eyes and
braced for the inevitable impact.
And waited.
And waited.
And...you get the picture.
"Excuse me, young man? Why are you standing there looking like you're
about to have the mountain fall on you?" came an alto voice from the
now-idling car.
Jack carefully opened one eye, to see a trim hispanic woman in a black
dress and funny little nun hat sitting behind the wheel of the car. On
opening the other, he noticed a few small dings in the fender of the car, as
well as a rust spot or two.
A wave of relief swept over him. She wasn't THE Nun On The Road, she
was just A nun on the road.
"That's the fifth time since I rented this car I've seen someone react
like you just did. How strange. Are you headed for the Mission, or just out
mountainclimbing?"
Jack peeled himself off the wall and stepped forward. "Ah, the Mission.
I've been sent to help out with the little, er, problem they have there."
The nun looked at Jack for a second. "Okay, you're obviously not the
plumber, come to fix the sink. Not with all that blood on you," Jack looked
down and realized he was something of a mess, then tried to brush some of the
dried blood off. "And you don't have strong enough demontaint to be working
with them, so *why* are you here fighting demons?"
Jack did a doubletake. "How...?"
"Get in, we can talk on the way up. I'm Sister Sara, and you are...?"
"Jack," he replied, getting into the passenger side. "I was sent to
help either defeat the demons or evacuate the priests."
"Hmmm. You a Taoist, then? I thought they said they couldn't spare
anyone."
"Er, I'm an independent agent, actually. Stunt man's my day job, to be
truthful. But I was raised with a little bit of everything, and I've fought
a Chinese demon before."
Sister Sara snapped her fingers. "That's where I've seen you before, I
knew you looked familiar. You worked on that Crazy Guy movie, didn't you?"
"I didn't know nuns went out to see martial arts movies."
"We don't. But...well, better start at the beginning. I used to be a
cop in L.A., but after a while I started to see I wasn't doing much good
there, so I went into public service and eventually found my way into the
Order. Ironically, for someone who sought out the Church to get away from
fighting, I got tapped for the special unit the Vatican founded in the wake
of Hell's attempted invasion, so I'm back on the beat, but now my gun's
loaded with silver bullets instead of lead. I watched news reports of your
fight as part of my regular briefing."
"Wait, you said Hell(TM) without the TM," Jack realized.
"Jack, if anyone can ignore Hell's trademarks with impunity, it's us,
okay? Anyway, I was sent to try and give some relief to the Mission up
there. The trunk's full of supplies they can't make on their own, mainly
medicine and gasoline, they grow most of their own food. And to get a
closer look, since we obviously don't want to leave those demons ringing the
place, regardless of which infernal region they call home. You're welcome to
help out if we need to kick some tail this time around, and I can get you out
of here without too much fuss if you don't feel like going out the way you
came in...I blessed the car," she explained.
There was a slight bump on the floor of the car.
"What was that?" Sara asked.
Jack looked back through the rear window. "Looks like we hit a
squirrel. Even bent his tail."
"Poor thing," she replied.

* * * *

"The tracks end here. He got in a car...going uphill."
"Do you think he's headed to our base? If he knew about our leaders
meeting down below, he might know about our secret installation," Larry
chittered nervously.
"If he does," the tracker noted with as much of a hint of doom in his
voice as a squirrel can muster, "then he's got a little surprise waiting for
him. It may be no SquirrelGuy, but the Mobile Suit Hudsonicus should be able
to seize the crystal from him...we can save the day yet, lads. Come on!"
The small band of squirrels rushed uphill towards the mission buildings,
vengeance on their minds.

* * * *

Sara pulled the car over to one side of the dusty courtyard and engaged
the parking brake before killing the engine. "Well, here we are. The Holy
Mission of Santo Andreo, lesser patron saint of pack animals."
"Pack animals?" Jack asked.
"What else are you going to praise after reaching the top of a mountain
in pre-automotive days? Come on, you can help me bring in the gascans."
The two got out of the car and fetched several jerrycans from the trunk,
then headed for the entrance, where a youngish man in overalls and work
gloves had come to meet them.
"Ah, hello. You must be Sister Sara, the bishop said you should be
arriving soon. I'm Brother Leo, pardon the dirt, I was bringing in the beet
harvest. And your companion is...?"
"His name is Jack. He's been sent to help with your problem as well,
although he's not with the Church," Sara answered, handing Leo one of the
jerrycans.
"Hi," Jack nodded.
"Well, we welcome any help we can get...it's starting to get a bit
lonely up here even for monks," he grinned. "Come, Brother Charles is in the
garden, feeding the squirrels. I'll take you to him, and maybe we can get to
the bottom of these...problems before anyone gets hurt."

WILL THEY GET TO THE BOTTOM OF THESE...PROBLEMS?

IS BROTHER CHARLES IN LEAGUE WITH THE RED SQUIRRELS?

WILL THE RED SQUIRRELS REGAIN THEIR LOST DATA?

WHAT *IS* IT WITH THE AUTHOR AND THESE RED SQUIRRELS, ANYWAY?

All this, and some holy two-gun-blazing exorcism the hard way, on the next...
SQUIRREL...er, SUPERGUY!

============================================================================

Author's Notes:

The Red Squirrel, Tamiasciurus Hudsonicus, is at the center of a major
environmental debate on the Ohio State University campus, among other places,
due to the school's involvement in the Graham Mountain telescope project and
its impact on the Red Squirrel population. Red Squirrel stickers have been
put up all over campus by deluded pawns of this sinister species, including
all over the doors of the building I work in. And they're really hard to
peel off, too.
In case anyone thinks Sister Sara is a ripoff of Warrior Nun Areala, she
isn't. At least not intentionally. About halfway through writing this
episode I realized with no small horror that Sister Sara was starting to look
like a Warrior Nun (albeit one in modest clothing). Her real origin is the
Two-Fisted Priest archetype, but as a nun. Sorta like Left Hand of God, but
without the fraud. Plus, I really wanted to use the "Nun On The Road/NOT Nun
On The Road" bit. }->
Excuse me, I must go answer the door. Oh look, it's a bunch of
squirrels with a bazooka. How cu/NO CARRIER/