October 30, 1987

What went before is the result of what I remember happening, what the others told me, and (unfortunately) the tapes.
    The first thing I did upon coming back to myself was to trip and stumble into Phoenix Talon, thanks to a combination of four-inch spike heels and a very different distribution of body weight than I am used to, which was by the way "covered" by about six square inches of fabric all told. It was a very small consolation to know that it wasn't my body anyway.
    "Tell me this is not happening," I muttered plaintively, struggling to regain my balance.
    "I've been waiting for this for years. Finally decided to take me up on the offer, eh?" Talon leered.
    "I'll castrate you later, Talon."
    "Needle? Is that you?" Thunderbolt asked hopefully.
    "You're back. I was getting so worried," Scott sighed.
    "What?" Talon asked.
    "Shut up," I snapped. The Toy Man was going to die. Painfully. Talon would probably argue a prior claim, but he was going to have to get in line.
    "You okay?"
    "I will be."
    "But it is you?" Thunderbolt put in.
    "Yes, it's me."
    "Thank God."
    "Wait a minute, that's not you—oh, well, never mind." Of course he wasn't in the right body, none of us were.
    "That's not you, either," Scott pointed out.
    "I hadn't noticed." I noticed that Phoenix Talon was looking remarkably confused. "Do you think that if we slap him around a little he might wake up?"
    "I suppose if the entire team kicked his ass tragically..." Scott said thoughtfully.
    We kept moving; I floated rather than trying to walk in this getup. My body felt weird. As we approached the base, Thunderbolt and I scanned the area for signs of trouble. He found major energy sources ahead, unsurprisingly. What I found was much stranger.
    "Guys, I don't want to alarm any of you, but try not to get too damaged in whatever happens ahead."
    "I think that's generally the rule of thumb," Thunderbolt pointed out.
    "I hate to ask this, but why?" Scott wanted to know.
    "Um... you're all reading really weird."
    Thunderbolt raised an eyebrow. "Define weird. This is not the time to be vague, Needle."
    "Um... not like flesh."
    "What are you saying? We're action figures, we're robots?"
    "That would be my first guess."
    "I suppose kind of like that giant Godzilla thingy," Scott suggested; he, naturally enough, had less of a problem with this idea than the rest of us—and besides, from what Thunderbolt could tell from the energy signals, the robot was actually in a little tiny piece of his own real body, not a toy per se. I do have to say I was rather pleased with how well I kept a grip on myself throughout. I have not, historically, dealt well with sudden major shifts in my perceptions of reality. I was fine until several hours after it was all over, actually.
    We checked ourselves; our bodies certainly looked real. But Thunderbolt found tiny energy sources in the back of each of our necks, and one buried deep within Scott's substance, eluding any attempt to locate it.
    "Dammit," Thunderbolt summed up the situation.
    "I mean, I don't want to bet on the possibility that if we get blown up we'll wake up back in normal life," I told them.
    "She's right, we are. Dammit."
    Phoenix Talon was looking downright alarmed.
    "Phoenix Talon, you are mind-controlled. Just deal. The rest of us are fine. It's happened before, remember?" I prodded. "Remember Count Bastard?"
    He frowned.
    "Musical appreciation mind control?" I reminded him, but the sound of approaching robots put a halt to further attempts to snap him out of it. Phoenix Talon drew his katana, stared at it as if there was something wrong with the weapon.
    Robots poured down the corridor, larger and more dangerous-looking than the last bunch. After about fifteen minutes the sheer mass of them began to drive us back, despite the havoc that Thunderbolt and Scott were wreaking on them. I noticed to my puzzlement that I didn't seem to be having my usual problems with inorganic objects. Still no life forms ahead. We fell back into the corridor.
    "Scott, were you saying that this is not the real Boston?" I asked him.
    "No, it's not."
    "So this is kind of like a movie set?" I read a book in which something like this happened.
    "Action figure playscape."A series of energy blasts tore down a huge chunk of ceiling, blocking off the robots' advance.
    "It's a 1/1000 scale model." Phoenix Talon's (plastic) katana shattered on the rock as he suddenly surged into renewed action. "I'll kill him! I'll kill him!" he shouted. "I'll strangle him with my bare hands!"
    "Thank God. I guess," Thunderbolt spoke for all of us.
    A vein in Talon's temple was throbbing strongly, and his eyes were wild as he picked up rocks and smashed them against the barrier. "Those tanks you found, they brought people back to life, right?" he asked Scott, panting with effort.
    "Well, not exactly...."
    "Close enough!" he barked. "Gonna kill him. Bring him back a few times. Kill him again!"
    "Well on the good news side of things, it is Phoenix," Scott announced. "On the bad news side, he still hasn't switched to decaf."
    "How do we get out of here? I have to go kill him now!"
    "I don't care if he's two hundred times my size, I'm going to kill him anyway?" Paul pointed out.
    "It'll be better that way. I'll crawl up his urethra and wreck his genitals from the inside."
    "Not cool...."

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