Baron Zemo's Lair. - On the Trail of the Manga Shoggoth

Baron Zemo's Lair

On the Trail of the Manga Shoggoth
Thursday, 28-Oct-1999 13:21:40
158.152.24.86 writes:

On the Trail of the Manga Shoggoth
Soho, London.
CrazySugarFreakBoy was annoyed. He was on the trail of one of the most terrible phenomena that he had ever heard of, and the trail had just run cold.
To add to the irritation, He was in the middle of a major city, in full costume, and being almost totally ignored.
The final insult - as far as he was concerned - was that the trail had led through all the comic shops in the west, and he had no time to stop and, well, browse.
The problem was this: The comic shops of the world were undergoing a rather strange haunting. On Friday evenings, a cold wind would sweep through the neighbourhood; and in the comic shops, certain Japanese comics (and videos, if they were sold) would just disappear. It was not exactly theft - who or whatever took the comics also left a few coins behind. Usually very old coins, corroded by salt water.
The witnesses, when questioned, could only remember the sense of something very large passing by and a feeling of terror, quickly suppressed into the subconscious. He had followed the trail until he reached Soho, in London.
And now the trail was cold.
None of the comic shops in Soho reported any sign of anything out of the ordinary.
Bored, he started to browse the shelves. Perhaps if he waited long enough something might happen. After all, this shop had not been "haunted" yet.
Suddenly, he felt a shiver run down his spine. Slowly, he turned. To his mounting horror, he saw a vast shape outside the shop, extending a pseudopod towards the counter.
"Good evening, Sir.", said the assistant behind the counter as he placed a small stack of comics on the counter, "I think that these are the ones you are looking for."
There was a flurry of activity as the pseudopod passed some gold doubloons and a small gold-coloured plastic card to the assistant.
"Up to 230 points," said the assistant, passing the card back, "See you next week."
The pseudopod receded, taking the stack of comics with it. The shape outside the building moved away in the general direction of the Thames. There was a faint splash in the distance.
CrazySugarFreakBoy walked up to the counter.
"What on earth was that?" he asked.
"A Comic Bookshelf 'Gold Card'." the assistant replied. "As you buy comics, you earn points. When you reach 250 points, you get Ł5 off your next purchase."
CrazySugarFreakBoy knew that his next question would be critical:
"How do I get one?" he asked.
* * *
One swift application form later, CrazySugarFreakBoy was the proud possessor of a Comic Bookshelf Gold Card. He then started to question the sales assistant.
"Didn't that seem a little odd?"
"What?"
"Well, a giant pseudopod just extruded into your shop and brought some comics."
"Well, no. We do sell comics, after all."
"But a giant pseudopod?"
"So? This is Soho - most of the locals are a little odd. Besides, he is a regular customer. He even has one of our gold cards."
CrazySugarFreakBoy then spent some time trying to convince the shop assistant that large pseudopodia entering shops and buying comics was possibly a little unusual, even for Soho.
Eventually, the assistant relented enough to suggest that further enquiries be directed to the "Soho Manga and Anime Club", which met at a certain address in Soho which by mere coincidence happened to be the same address as that on file for the aforesaid customer, a Mr M. Shoggoth. This on the clear understanding that he (CrazySugarFreakBoy) had not received the information from him (the assistant).
* * *
Enquiries at the club were only slightly more useful. CrazySugarFreakBoy attended a meeting in the hopes of meeting Mr Shoggoth, only to find that he was not in attendance. The other members were reluctant to discuss him - not out of fear, but an almost complete inability to discuss anything other than matters Japanese. He left with only the following information:
Mr Shoggoth was a founder member of the club, and supplied most of the videos for their sessions.
He had a wide collection of Anime videos in many languages, and was fluent in most of them.
In particular, he was fluent in Japanese, which fact impressed many of the club.
He was happy to loan videos to the members - even the rare ones - but tended to be a little excessive in his response if someone forgot to rewind them, or accidentally returned the case with the wrong video.
None of the members of the club thought him at all unusual as most of the odd people in London tend to congregate in Soho. In any case, after an evening of watching Anime, it is difficult to regard anything as strange.
One member of the group let slip that in a rare non-anime conversation, Mr Shoggoth had commented that the weather in Antarctica was unseasonably warm for the time of year.
With this collection of (largely useless) information, CrazySugarFreakBoy resigned himself to a trip to Antarctica to chase up a tenuous (and therefore extremely important) clue.
* * *
It took some time for CrazySugarFreakBoy to charter a plane to Antarctica. All the usual agencies refused to fly anywhere near the place, muttering something about mad explorers and penguins. Eventually, he found a pilot prepared to fly him there, on condition that the pilot not be required to leave the plane at any time.
After an interminable flight, the plane landed on a rough airstrip within a ring of mountains within the landmass of Antarctica. The pilot refused to explain how the runway got there, but helpfully suggested that he (CrazySugarFreakBoy) try exploring the caverns to the south.
CrazySugarFreakBoy descended into the caverns. The caverns were made up of vast open "cathedrals" of stone, linked by large corridors, running ever downwards.
All around, the walls were decorated with fantastic stone tableaux, depicting scenes of some ancient civilisation. The pictures were most unsettling to look at, a matter not helped by the pictures being illuminated by the luminescent moss that populates underground caverns to aid the hero who is too stupid to bring his own light sources.
As the corridors descended further into the earth, the scenes became more primitive, like the early comics drawn from a long-running series.
Many of the scenes were defaced, as if a child had run a crayon across the pages. Since the tableaux were stone, CrazySugarFreakBoy tried very hard not to think of the nature of the crayon.
On the fourth level down, the floor was covered in some sort of rotting material. CrazySugarFreakBoy tried hard to think of rotting moss, not wanting to consider any of the other alternatives. He was already starting to run thin on sanity.
As he approached the end of the seventh corridor, CrazySugarFreakBoy noticed a bright glow emanating from the cavern beyond. He could hear what sounded like a thousand voices all calling at once, accompanied by eldrich music from myriad instruments. He edged closer, and gingerly looked round the entrance to the cavern.
As his eyes became accustomed to the light, his sanity (such that it was) slowly drained away.
Seated in the middle of the cavern was the vast, unholy mass of a Shoggoth, reading several comics.
"Oh wow!" CSFB! gasped. "A creature which Man Was Notte Meant to Know, right here in this Cyclopean temple as described by H P Lovecraft in his fantastic Cthulhu Mythos stories and in particular The Mountains of Madness which means that thing roughly the size of the Yurt with the added pseudopods must be a Shoggoth as described in that Boy's First Big Book of Cthulhic Entities that Aunt Olivia got me for my eleventh birthday! Excellent!"
That was not the main reason for the loss of sanity.
The main reason was the thousands of video monitors, each playing an episode of an Anime series, simultaneously being watched by the Shoggoth.
Eventually, CrazySugarFreakBoy turned and ran, screaming, back to the waiting plane. Admittedly, this was 3 days later, after watching (or reading) Ranma 1/2, Slayers, Neon Genesis Evangelion Urusei Yatsura MaisonIkkokuProjectAKoAllPurposeCulturalCatGirlNukuNukuSailorMoonMermaidsScarGalacticPirates SolBiancaClangersMacrossTenchiMuyoChildrenOfTheStonesInuYashaDragonHalfElHazardSpiritOfWonderHyperdoll...
He was noticeably quiet for the next few days, and flat refused to write up any reports about the case.

By Manga Shoggoth (who did you expect, spiffy?)