The Ikons of Ikammanen

**"The Ikons of Ikammanen"** is the first episode from season one of The Adventures of the Lion Boy

## Plot

Daniel is escorted to his room by Sonic the Hedgehog for a reunion with Charlie Dunne, a former student, who tells the lion boy that his sister, Edith, and he have learned the location of the legendary Ikons of Ikammanen, a set of statues said to be capable of becoming living avengers. Daniel is skeptical of their existence but Dunne suddenly drops dead from a knife thrown into his back from outside the window by an unseen assailant.

The killer escapes. With the only trail to follow being the address of Edith's hotel in Liberia among Dunne's belongings, Daniel sends Team Chaotix to find the killer while he and Sonic sets off to meet Edith in Africa.

After a flight with Blue Ship and thirty hours by steamer, Daniel and Sonic arrives in Krikamibo, a port town on the Liberian coast that reminds the lion boy of Cairo. Edith Dunne rendezvous with them. She sticks out like a sore thumb in her khaki safari outfit, pith helmet and circle-framed glasses, and as they head for the hotel, Daniel has to warn her to be more discreet about speaking of the Ikons so publicly: while they're predominantly of scientific interest, the Ikons of Ikammanen are reputed to be made of solid gold.

When they check in, Sonic privately wonders to himself whether or not Edith is more capable than Daniel initial impressions of her given the state of the establishment holding the Dunne siblings' research. However, just as they discover the upstairs hotel room has already been ransacked, they're suddenly attacked by a pair of robed figures who were shadowing them. In the brawl, Edith is hurled out of the window and carried away by a third man.

The vegetable stall that cushions Daniel and Sonic's fall as they follows the kidnapper outside is not a graceful landing but it fulfills their desire to avoid time lost tackling the stairs. Despite the maze of back streets, and the locals minding their own business, Daniel and Sonic keeps up which raises the hedgehog's suspicions as they is led alone into a dead end. A metal gate slams shut behind them then they's dropped into a rat-infested dungeon. They overcomes the exit door's lock with the Sword of Fire and a well-placed kick then steps out into the subterranean throne room of Solomon Black, a local gangster and self-proclaimed "business man" awaiting their arrival surrounded by piles of gold and flanked on each side by a hooded individual, one of whom holds Edith Dunne at knifepoint.

Black explains that he has been helping keep Edith safe in Krikamibo in anticipation of luring her brother to him so that they could come to an 'arrangement' in order to acquire the Ikons of Ikammanen. Edith bristles at Charlie being solely credited for their joint-effort but warns Daniel and Sonic that Black's interest in the statues is purely for profit not the historical significance of the find. Daniel and Sonic doesn't doubt it; nevertheless, with Edith's life on the line, the heroes stands down and makes a deal.

Daniel, Sonic, Edith Dunne, Solomon Black and his men charter a Czech vessel to a small island encased in fog two days away from Liberia using Dunne's map. With the waters off the coast littered with shipwrecks and Black having no interest in risking himself, he sends the lion boy, the hedgehog, Edith and two of his enforcers to the island in a motorized dinghy. Edith notices that the jungle is unusually dark but Daniel is preoccupied wondering about whether or not the locals are friendly. When one of Black's underlings makes footfall on the beach, he's showered with arrows and killed, sending the remaining of the group ducking for cover. Finding the volley of projectiles too convenient for the necessary number of natives required to just so happen to be on the same stretch of beach where the boat came ashore, Daniel correctly deduces that the ground is actually booby-trapped instead by lobbing a knapsack onto the sand.

At gunpoint, Daniel, Sonic and Edith are encouraged by Black's man to go on ahead to navigate a safe path across the beach. On the other side, the trio make their way through the jungle and climb a mountain though the geology leads the lion boy to suspect that they're actually on a volcano. At the summit they find an old, deserted village that isn't easily identifiable as African surrounding a 15-story tall temple which reveals the Ikons inside.

The all-too realistic gold statues encircle a single chamber with an inscription beneath said to be the words that awaken them. However, Sonic is distracted by the chain and pulley system linked to the ceiling—situated over the much older altar at the center of the room—undoubtedly salvaged from one of the wrecked ships offshore. When Daniel turns his attention to the statues themselves, he notices that the precious metal has also been used secure each of them in place for their own individual alcove up on the wall. A challenge, the lion boy decides one will be enough to show to Solomon Black before they return for the rest of the Ikons. The effort to remove one of the artifacts sees it break off at the legs and human bones tumble out. Daniel realizes that the Ikons of Ikammanen aren't statues at all just as he's knocked unconscious.

Daniel recovers suspended over the altar by the chain, tied back-to back with Edith Dunne and Sonic, an unpleasant reminder of his experience with Po, Princess Celestia, the five, Team Sonic, the Mane 6 and the Ark of the Covenant earlier this year. The trio then notice that the gathered village population has been reduced to a group of old men. The locals move the altar aside to reveal a pit of molten gold and begin to lower the adventurers down into it.

As Daniel, his brother in armsand Sonic the Hedgehog and his former archaeology student Edith Dunne descend towards the pit of molten gold which is to see them join the Ikons of Ikammanen, the African temple in which they are suspended is rocked by explosions outside. The hostile villagers go to investigate and the tremors start to move the chain that Daniel, Sonic and Edith are tied back-to-back to. The lion boy uses their new-found momentum to swing the trio back and forth which affords just enough time for them to collide with the lever operating the pulley system and dump them safely to the floor.

While Daniel undoes their bonds, Edith remarks on her good fortune that her brother, Charlie, was knifed in Daniel's palace, and the three adventurers exit the temple to find gangster Solomon Black waiting with his armed entourage who have eliminated the villagers. As Daniel, Sonic and Edith are no longer of use to find the Ikons, Black orders their deaths but the arrival of more angry natives convinces the gangster to forestall their executions. The group fends off the attackers when Daniel improvises a barricade by toppling one of the settlement's huts which neutralizes their opponents' spears, allowing the gangster's automatic weapons to put down the villagers with little resistance. Afterwards, the lion boy tricks Black into sparing Edith, Sonic and himself by saying that an inscription on the Ikons reveals the location of further statues.

Back on board the Czech ship that was their passage to the island and locked in a cabin with an armed guard positioned outside, Daniel reveals his deception to Sonic and Edith and regrets that Black's security has thrown a wrench into his plan to reach the radio room to call for help. Edith proves more resourceful than her former teacher gave her credit for by switching into a gown from her luggage to lure the guard inside with the promise of keeping her company. Daniel then lays out the man with a sucker punch and arms Edith with the guard's gun before he and Sonic heading off to find the radio room.

Daniel knocks out the radioman and Sonic starts broadcasting a signal in Morse code which is cut short by a bullet that destroys the machinery. A minute later, Black's men converge on and disarm Edith. Out of patience, the gangster has his prisoners taken to walk the plank, a decision which turns out to be fortuitous for Daniel, Sonic and Edith's distress call caught the attention of a passing HYDRA U-boat which, with hostilities brewing between Czechoslovakia and Germany, fires on the vessel. Daniel notices the approaching torpedo right before it hits, grabs Sonic and Edith and jumps ship. Everybody else on board is lost in the explosion, including the recovered Ikons of Ikammanen, except for one lone crate carrying a statue that floats to the surface which the surviving adventurers use as a makeshift life raft.

The Nazis fish them out of the water and Daniel arranges passage back to the United States of America by convincing the captain of the folly of firing on animals

Back in the US one month later, Daniel and Sonic joins Edith Dunne and her Ikon at Idlewild Airport. There, Dunne has hired a private plane to take her back home with the statue, eager for the glory that the discovery, hers and hers alone, will bring, caring little for the loss of her brother Charlie in the process. When Daniel and Sonic asks to join her on the journey, Edith accuses them of trying to horn in on the find to which the heroes assures her that them simply feels an obligation to Charlie to take care of her.

On the flight out of New York, Daniel tells Edith that he knows she had her brother murdered, pointing out that he never told her that Charlie had been killed in his palace, and that Solomon Black's entourage only reached the radio shack on board the Czech ship after the radio had been shot out. The lion boy and the hedgehog was simply lucky that Edith had lost her glasses back on the island so she never hit her intended target: them.

What Daniel can't figure out is, with Edith Dunne back in Africa, who delivered the killing blow? The plane's pilot, Jerry, answers that by stepping out of the cockpit with a gun pointed at Daniel. Although Edith is adamant that Jerry loves and appreciates her, Daniel suspects that the golden Ikon of Ikammanen was the real lure. When the pilot offers the choice to Daniel of either being shot or falling to his death, the lion boy offers a third possibility. Having had a few weeks to translate the inscription on the statue, Daniel reanimates the golden avenger which, true to its legend, climbs out of its crate to bring justice upon the wicked.

As the statue, immune to gunfire, slowly advances on the murderous couple, Daniel and Sonic directs the autopilot of the aircraft out across the Atlantic Ocean then escapes the plane with a parachute, leaving the Edith and Jerry to their fate.