No One’s Gonna Take Me Alive

[out_of_time]

WHO: Ned the Pie Maker, Jack Bauer, and the world’s most absurd NPC super-villain
WHERE: The Pie Hole
WHEN: The following takes place between 10PM and 11PM, backdated to Sunday the 7th. Events... don’t really occur in real time because backdating.
WARNINGS: Cartoon violence
SUMMARY: Having solved the mystery of who framed Ned for murder, Jack and Ned return to the Pie Hole for more evidence, only to be ambushed by Ned’s sinister arch-nemesis: the fiend who calls herself Pie Die.
FORMAT: Paragraph

The facts were these.

Ned the Pie Maker had been happily making pies in the Pie Hole one day when Walter McConkey, a man whose career was dedicated to criticizing said pies, fell over dead while eating one of them. The pie was found to be poisoned, and since Ned personally made all his pies, he was quickly arrested on suspicion of murdering one of his critics.

Ned’s friends did not approve of this at all, and they slipped him out of prison to use his unique talent to find the real killer, by bluffing their way into the morgue and having a brief chat with the deceased Mister McConkey. Thanks to the talking corpse, they learned the true killer was Vanessa Traeten, proprietor of the EarthCake shop and one of Ned’s unlucky rivals in the punnily-named baked goods business. While the police were notified to find Vanessa, Jack and Ned returned to the scene of the crime searching for evidence that the poisoned pie had in fact been planted.

It was the dead of night. The Pie Hole was dark and deserted. The crime scene tape had since been cleared away. Jack took the lead, approached the door, and frowned. “Something’s wrong,” he said. “The door’s already unlocked. And I think I hear something.” A clanking noise.

Ordinarily this would have been when Jack Bauer drew his gun, but right now Jack was not allowed to use guns in his work as part of his release conditions from NOHoPE (technically, he also was not allowed to help accused murderers clear their names, but Ned was a very good friend and Jack tended to make exceptions in cases like these). Instead, he drew his flashlight and shined it into the empty pie shop as he opened the door and stepped inside.

The clanking grew louder. Jack swept the light around the shop, and froze when it landed on an impossible figure standing atop one of the tables, hands on her hips. They were confronted by a doughy woman in her mid-forties with frizzy brown hair beginning to grey. She was wearing a poorly-fitting custard-yellow jumpsuit with matching (garden) gloves and (rain) boots. Her costume was covered with a sort of homemade strap harness attaching the many pie plates she was festooned with: smaller pie plates over her elbows and knees, larger plates on her chest and back, another atop her head as a sort of deranged helmet.

The plates were what clanked as she posed. It was improvised armour for a self-made supervillain. She also carried an open shoulder bag bulging with pie-themed weaponry. Behind the blue domino mask across her face, her eyes were black pits of madness. Madness baked in Hell itself. Jack recognized her from a photo- he had looked up their suspect before heading to the Pie Hole.

“Vanessa Traeten,” he breathed. Clearly Ned’s rival was more desperate than he had ever imagined. He pointed the flashlight with authority in absence of a gun. “Federal agent! Give it up Vanessa,” he ordered. “We know everything. You’re under arrest for the murder of Walter McConkey and for framing Ned. Show me your hands!”

The villain’s eyes widened, and she reached for one of the plates in her bag. “Vanessa?” She hissed. “There is no more Vanessa Traeten! There is only... PIE DIE!”

She hurled the plate like a Frisbee straight at Jack’s face. He had just enough time to think that this was the stupidest thing the City had ever inflicted on him before the metal pie plate struck his forehead and bounced off his skull, clattering on the floor next to the flashlight falling from Jack’s hands. His eyes glazed over and he slumped to the ground, out cold. Avenge him, Ned.

Pie Die pointed at Ned, snarling between her teeth. “Now you’re mine, Pie Maker. If I can’t put you in jail, I’ll put you in a coffin!”

Comments

[onetouch]

Ned watched in frozen horror, hanging just behind Jack in his proper place. And the moment he'd turned away, down he went. Immediately, he reached out an arm to try and break the man's fall, but it was no use. Jack was out and out cold. Without wasting a beat, Ned plucked up the broom from the other side of the counter and tried to barricade himself behind it. If he was going out, too, he was going out swinging.

As much as he didn't care for and/or was apathetic to guns, he could see their appeal now, in this moment, as Pie Die's greasy visage bared down on him. What worse way to die than death by pie for a pie maker, he wondered. He raised his broom threateningly and called out to her, plotting out a way to gracefully hop on the counter if the need should arise. "Vane--Pie Die! You won't get away with this. And if I have to put myself in a coffin to-- wait, no."

He frowned his pie maker frown and bore his white pie maker teeth and waited for her attack. He knew if he rushed her he'd only wind up like his poor, and dear friend he was actively trying to distract her from remembering was there. Unconscious or otherwise.

"No one is being put in a coffin, Vanessa. And all you've proven is that pie really is superior to cake." Oh. Oh Ned. What have you done. Even he seems to know he's fucked up, no cake baker wants to hear that her cake will never be good enough on the basis of being, well, cake.

Even if it was true.

[out_of_time]

If Ned's cunning strategy was to enrage the homicidal maniac even further, surely he had just succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Her mouth opened wide as she bellowed, still pointing at him. "You're wrong. I've proven that no one ruins my business and gets away with it! My business is bankrupt because of you. I'm losing my shop and it's your fault!"

She stopped pointing for a moment to grab her EyePod in one of her jumpsuit's pockets, turn up its volume, and start playing this. Yes, Pie Die had prepared battle music, just for the unlikely event that she would have to confront her nemesis instead of just framing him from the shadows. This was because Vanessa Traeten was a very troubled person.

"Just so you know," she snarled. "Once you and Agent Loud are dead, I'm burning your stupid Pie Hole to the ground. If the Porter brings you back, it will only be so you can know my PAIN!"

She punctuated her shriek of vengeance by grabbing a cup-pie from her bag and hurling it at Ned's face. Unlike the last pie-throwing incident in the Pie Hole, this harmless food-fight instigated by a child. Instead of a delicious filling, this cup-pie was stuffed full of sulfuric acid beneath its oddly salty crust.

Again, Pie Die was a very troubled person.

[onetouch]

He neglected to tell her burning the Pie Hole wouldn't actually work being it was made of Zatanna's magic, but there was a pie being thrown at him and we all know how Ned feels about pie-throwing, precedent being absolutely taken into consideration. As gracefully as could be expected, he dodged the acid-pie and turned when he heard the sizzle. His floor. Not his floor.

"And just so you know," he announced with grit teeth, hoping she would hurl another so he'd have a chance to swat it back at her. He'd kind of missed an opportunity there and he regretted it. "Pie fights are grounds for automatic banning from Pie Hole premises."

He paused pointedly, eyes darkening with an uncharacteristic rage. "But then again, so is murder."

The music was starting to make this all seem like some hideous dream, but he tried to block it out despite its ridiculousness. This City had shown him far more hilarious things, and circumstances being what they were, he was failing to see the humor in all of this.

[out_of_time]

"You are the one who is getting banned, Ned! Banned... from life!"

Pie Die drew her next weapon, and unfortunately for Ned it was not another pie. Baking a sulfuric acid pie was a very demanding process from a technical standpoint, after all. Instead, it was just an ordinary knife, if an awfully large one. It was of course the kind of knife that was used for cutting cakes- Vanessa did have a theme to keep up.

Screaming, Pie Die raised the knife over her head and charged forward with murder in her eyes. She was going to lunge over that counter toward Ned, bury the knife in his face, and then keep stabbing until all her problems were stabbed right out of existence. That would prove that cake wasn't worse than pie!

[onetouch]

Ned screamed too, it just seemed like the thing to do. There was nowhere to really go to get away from her and he lifted the broom to try and knock the knife out of her hand when suddenly--he heard a familiar sound.

A golden retriever who was as much of an ImPort as Ned or Jack came rushing in just then, nails clicking against the tile. Digby paused briefly to sniff at Jack's head when he realized there were much more serious matters to attend to. He charged straight for Vanessa Traeten's back and leapt bravely for her, digging his paws into her back.

"Digby!" Ned scuttled out of the way of the large woman and watched with a grimace as she fell down on her own knife. Fate was a cruel, cruel mistress.

[out_of_time]

"NOOOOOOOO!" Vanessa cried out as she slowly toppled forward onto her terrible, pointy fate. She landed with a terrible clatter as her homemade pie-armour banged around and the pie plate helmet on her head flew off to skitter across the floor. Vanquished, Pie Die lay still where she had fallen. Surely nothing could have survived that!

Then she rolled over, groaning, to reveal her knife broken on the floor and a nasty dent in the large pie plate strapped to her chest. She looked down at it, bleary-eyed from concussion. "It worked," she mumbled. "Not crazy. It worked." She blinked, noticed Digby, focused on him with the most terrible glare a half-conscious person could manage. "Bad dog. Very bad... dog..."

Then her eyes closed as she passed out from the cold ministrations of the hard Pie Hole floor. Pie Die had been defeated.

[onetouch]

Ned can't stop the grin that slowly spread across his face, and nor would he want to. "Good dog," he praised Digby, smile only growing as the retriever's tail went a mile a minute.

Digby moved slowly toward their fallen friend and began to lick his face. The pie maker slowly followed, carefully nudging Jack's shoulder on the other side, kneeling beside his very best friend. Arguably the only friend he had ever had, to not expect something from him in return.

"Jack. Jack? Wake up, and please, don't have a concussion..."

[out_of_time]

Jack sat up immediately. He had a distressing amount of experience with unconsciousness and blows to the head, and had become adept at quickly recovering from them. He shook his head, rubbed his bruised nose, and looked at Ned.

"What are you still doing here? You need to get out until she's dealt with, it's not safe to-"

Jack looked around the room, locating the threat. He saw that the threat was lying out cold on the floor with a broken weapon, dented armour, and a very proud dog sitting by her, wagging his tail. It was dead silent- Pie Die's music had shut off when she fell upon her EyePod. The crushed media player was the last casualty of the madness.

Jack's mouth dropped open. He shook his head again, wondering if his vision was being distorted by the injury. "Ned, what the hell happened?"

[onetouch]

"Digby happened." He was still wearing that stupidly wide grin as he helped Jack to his feet. "Are you alright?"

With his elbow propped up under Jack's arm, he wanted to be sure the man could stand on his own before he let go. Pie Die would go to prison and he could return here, to his pie home. And EarthCake would be shut down. All was well with the world and Walter McConkey would be writing no more awful reviews for Ned.

He couldn't be happier, especially if Jack was in fact, all right.