The Guardians of Freedom - Part 2 (standard:other, 9519 words) [2/7] show all parts
Author: Dan Tana	Added: Oct 29 2010	Views/Reads: 2448/1685	Part vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Teddy and its friends save a parallel Earth from the tyranny of corrupt Guardians.

Hi there.  This is Teddy, the living toy from the dimension of the Goo. 
It has been several months since I introduced myself to you and told 
you about the Guardians of Freedom. 

A lot has happened since then, starting with the decision of Shannon's
uncle, Brian, to join the Guardians.  He was there with us, talking 
quietly with Jakinda, while I made my first broadband transmission to 
the people of this world.  In the course of their conversation she 
asked him why he had not decided to be a Guardian when his niece and 
her friend did.  He answered by saying that he could not be a hero like 
them because he did not have their special powers. 

Jakinda gave this statement a bit of serious consideration, and then
announced that Brian was just being silly, because even if he could not 
be a hero with superhuman powers he could still be an ordinary human 
hero, which was actually a pretty super thing to be.  This declaration 
initially left him speechless, with a look of surprised bemusement 
frozen on his face for several seconds.  Then he cracked a wide smile, 
shook his head in amazement, and announced that he was officially a 
Guardian of Freedom. 

A few days later Brian was lying in a hammock, enjoying a cool, quiet,
and very pleasant morning, when he heard someone yelling next-door.  He 
went to see what was going on and found a large woman clutching a small 
boy by the upper arm, dragging him toward the house where they lived.  
The boy cried out to be let go of, and tried to wrench himself from the 
unyielding grip of that much stronger person, which prompted the woman 
to slap him with her free hand and tell him to stop being so difficult. 


As he watched that scene unfold Brian wrestled with his conscience, his
reluctance to get involved in such an unpleasant situation fighting 
fiercely to restrain his desire to rescue that child.  He quickly 
resolved this conflict by deciding that he would honor his promise to 
be a Guardian for all vulnerable people. 

He walked over to his struggling neighbors and calmly asked them what
the trouble was.  Instead of answering this simple question the woman 
began to yell at him about minding his own business.  For almost three 
whole minutes she spat a torrent of angry words at him, hardly pausing 
to breathe.  Eventually she exhausted herself, and Brian got the 
opportunity to respond.  He told her that protecting defenseless people 
from abuse was the business of all Guardians.  Then the woman began to 
scream that nobody was getting abused, because it was her right as a 
parent to discipline her child as she saw fit. 

While he tried to calm the irrationally irate woman, without much
success, Brian discretely activated his communicator wristband to 
summon some other Guardians to assist him.  Avian and I answered the 
call, arriving at the scene to find the larger neighbor threatening to 
do some incredibly uncomfortable things to Brian if he did not go away 
immediately. 

I scanned the recent memories of everyone present in order to figure out
what was going on.  I watched all of the events that I have just 
relayed to you, and also saw the trouble begin when the boy was playing 
outside and the woman told him that he had to come into the house to 
pick up the toys that he had left on the floor in the room where he 
sleeps.  The boy was unwilling to interrupt what he was doing, so the 
woman tried to force him inside. 

Then I told the woman that she had no right to treat another person in
such a way.  But she insisted that as the legal guardian of this child 
she did have the right to decide when he could play outside and when he 
had to come inside to clean up, and that she had the right to make him 
comply with whatever she had decided for him.  Quite to my surprise, 
she then asked me if I hadn't said as much during that previous 
transmission in which I introduced myself to the people of this planet. 


In her thoughts I saw how she misinterpreted my previous statement that
it is not a criminal act of oppression for one person to make decisions 
on behalf of someone else who is mentally incapable of making its own 
decisions if the happiness of that incapable person is the primary 
concern of the decision maker.  She thought that her actions did not 


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