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This message (come on baby) Don't fear the repost : dull thud #7. was posted by dt on Tuesday, December 31, 2002 at 13:58.
dull thud #7.
featuring Cressida, the Worm Wonder and, would you believe it... Nats again. Tchoh.
unnaturally masculine voice: Previously in dull thud...
Out of a cloudless sky came the sheep. Plummeting as if from a thousand feet up, it spun lazily around the y-axis, gave a single plaintive bleat and landed squarely on Nats’ head, knocking him to the ground. Weighed down by twenty pounds of gelignite, it looked thud in the eye as the tasteful clock display counted down 002, then 001, then flickered to zero.
Opening credits. Lots of flash-cut images of a hopelessly malnourished garage rocker falling on things. Theme tune is the Cramps’ cover of Strychnine. Credits end. Fade up on...
It’s Only Flock And Roll
Yeah, I know. Sorry.
Nats blinked three, four times. He rubbed his jaw where it had struck the asphalt. It was wet with blood, but no teeth had come loose. Everything else seemed fine, except... “I can’t move my legs,” he moaned.
“Aye,” said dull thud, standing over him and blocking out the sun, “that’s because ye’ve got a sheep lying on them.”
Nats sat up, alarmed. “A suicide sheep! Everyone take cover!”
“Naw, it’s counted out already.”
“Counted... out? To zero?” He gave it a tentative prod. “Why didn’t it go off? And what is this green goo everywhere?”
dull thud looked uneasily over his shoulder. “I’ll tell ye about it later. We need to go.”
“Go? Where?”
“We’re goin’ tae the music school. Right now. Bring the sheep.”
Nats rolled the stunned ovine off his legs and stood up. A number of people were looking at him in a very strange way. thud was holding open the door of a cab. Nats tucked the sheep under his arm and got in.
“A’right mate?” said thud to the near-monolingual Latvian driver, his eyes barely visible in the rear-view mirror, obscured as it was by a multitude of air-fresheners and lucky charms. “Malmo Diphtheria’s School of Music, please.” He slammed the door behind him.
“Baa,” said the sheep groggily. They pulled out from the kerb and headed west.
* * *
At police headquarters, Commissioner Graham paced in front of his desk. “There’s just no way of knowing where Little Bo Pepys will strike next. We can’t cover the entire city at once and it looks like most of our regular superhelp is in space.”
“It does look bad, sir,” replied his deputy. “And even if we do find him, our anti-terrorism specialists just don’t have experience of killer sheep.”
“We need someone who does. Someone who can handle sheep. Someone with an intimate knowledge of sheep.”
“But where are we going to find a Welshman at this time of day?”
“Propping up a bar pretending he’s a poet. But that’s not what I meant.” He lifted a telephone. “Put me through to Virkin’s Petting Farm,” he barked.
Carla Virkin, owner of the troubled attraction and until recently of the sheep now commandeered by the deranged Little Bo Pepys, listened to his request.
She let the line hiss for a while. “What sort of help?”
“It doesn’t seem that strange, does it?” Commissioner Graham stirred his coffee. “The Police Department doesn’t have anyone with experience of sheep-handling. Dogs yes, escaped tigers yes, kamikaze sheep no. To be honest, we’re kind of clutching at straws here.”
“Commissioner, the petting farm is finished. I’ve given up. It was the only thing keeping me here. I’ve got a seat on a flight home to Kansas, tonight, and I mean to be on it.”
“Miss Virkin, this could be a matter of life and death.”
“The farm was my life. I’m sorry.”
Graham growled and clicked his pen. Women! He squinted over to his deputy. “Shut your ears, Jim.” He went back to the phone. “Look,” he said, “I’ll get on the blower to City Hall, talk to some friends, pull a few strings, get you some sort of funding so you can keep the farm open. Just give us some help here. How’s that?”
“I’ll... give it some thought.”
“I’ll wait.” He drained his cup.
“Well, okay. But I’ll want some sort of guarantee.”
“That can be discussed later. I’ll send a car to pick you up in one hour.”
“If it’s alright, I do really need to finish one more thing at the farm. Can you give me two hours?”
Graham looked at the clock. “Alright, expect a car at half past six. And thanks. This could be really helpful.”
* * *
The taxi disgorged them outside the gates of the music school, a mansion in the well-to-do district of Pierce Heights. Malmo Diphtheria’s was the place for studying contemporary music, and the man himself also dabbled in increasingly obscure scientific experiments. It was here that Jonny Rockets had been bitten by a radioactive double-bassist, conferring upon him the powers with which he now fights crime as Captain Astounding*. When Rockets, thud and the rest had worked as a superteam Diphtheria had pretty much been Charlie and Q rolled into one. dull thud hoped he would be able to help now.
* Waaay back in Tales To Make You Say Shit! That’s Incredible #54.
Nats looked pointedly at thud, who had made no attempt to help with his woolly burden. “You haven’t explained why we’re not dead,” he said, struggling to follow the Scot up the marble steps. Faint strains of impossibly atonal bassoon music floated down from a high window.
“Well, it’s a bit... weird.”
“I can do weird.”
“Naw, I mean it’s really, really weird.”
“Go on.”
thud picked his nose with his thumb, looked at the results with satisfaction and said “Fine. First things first. I have a tapeworm, right?”
Nats nodded and put the sheep down.
“And this tapeworm is a bit - heh - special.”
“Okay.”
“And her name is Cressida.” He reached to push the bell, but before he could reach it the heavy door flew open. A figure in turquoise-and-gold spandex, a huge letter A stretched across his chest, pounded down the steps trailing a cape behind him. “Can’t stop,” he panted, “wrongs to right.”
They watched him go. “The incomparable Captain Astounding,” said thud with a smirk. “A bit keen, but he’s actually a pretty decent bloke once you get to know him.”
They went in. thud nodded greetings to a sullen girl in a badly clashing purple skirt/baggy pink sweater combo, set off by green and black striped stockings. She directed them into a side-room and informed them that the Professor would be with them in a few minutes, after his colonic irrigation.
“Thanks. Aye, so Cressida,” continued dull thud, putting his feet up on a table, “can turn any object into another object, the crucial detail being that the two things must rhyme.”
Nats was indeed finding this ever-so-slightly unlikely, but then again his friends included a shape-changing alien dragon with psionic control over his genitals, a witch and - frankly - CSFB!, so I suppose it’s all relative.
“The sheep that fell on you - which as far as Cressida can make out jumped off the top of a building, as if it had been left there as some sort of trap - was carrying a whole cackload of explosives, connected to a timing mechanism. When it reached zero, it would detonate the explosives by electric charge. Cressida was able to transmute the timer into something else at the crucial moment.”
Nats looked down at the green mucousy substance smeared over his legs and still webbed between his gloved fingers. He had a nasty feeling he knew where this was heading. “Go on,” he said in resignation.
“Cressida turned the timer into the Greedy Green Ghost from the movie Ghostbusters, also known in the Real Ghostbusters cartoon series as Slimer.”
Nats looked pained. “You’re quite serious, aren’t you?”
“Yep. Sorry, chief. Anyway, he then proceeded to eat the explosive, and would have caused a whole mess of trouble upsetting hot dog carts and so on had she not changed him back. And that’s why you’re covered in green slime rather than having been reduced to red slime, and why everyone was looking at you like that.”
“That’s still absolutely ridiculous.”
Without warning, Nats had the feeling of a red-hot wire wriggling through his brain. An angry voice filled his head. “~~Well EXCUSE ME for saving your life. Perhaps I won’t bother next time.~~”.
Nats doubled up, clawing at his hair and howling.
“And that would be Cressida. It’s a bit unsettling when ye’re not used to it. She tends to be a bit crabbit after a transmutation.”
The voice sounded again, more quietly. “~~Sorry. He’s right. Let me try this again. Hello Nats, I’m Cressida. It’s nice to meet you.~~”
“Er, hi there,” said Nats, in the voice of a man recovering from a massive electric shock. “So what’s a nice girl like you doing in, uh...”
“~~thud’s small intestine?~~”
“I was going to say ‘my head’.”
“~~How else am I going to communicate, hmm? Semaphore?~~”
The girl came back in. “The Professor will see you now,” she said.
* * *
Amazing Guy soared over the bay, still wiping mud from his gauntlets. A dam burst in the Ukraine and a collapsed mineshaft in Poland had taken a lot out of him, but he had cleared everything up in the end. He was even back in time to read the Amazing Bunch their bedtime story. He changed course slightly and began his descent, wondering what it was that didn’t seem quite right. Why were the streets so empty?
Why was there a sheep on the steps of the art gallery?
What the...
He rocketed towards the pile of rubble that a moment earlier had been the gallery’s limestone facade.
* * *
Malmo Diphtheria’s office was impressive, with a high bossed ceiling and a huge south-facing window. Sheet music was piled several feet high on a harmonium, and the walls were covered in certificates and photographs of former students playing at prestigious venues. The Professor - with his round pebble glasses, a mane of wispy white hair, a stoop and an accent of indeterminate origin - stood at the window looking uncomfortable and occasionally wriggling his pelvis. “Good afternoon,” he said.
thud lifted the sheep onto the desk and held it there. It was now almost fully conscious and getting restless. “A’right Prof, what goes on?”
“~~Professor Diphtheria, this is Nats.~~”
“Er, hi,” said Nats for the second time in as many minutes.
The Professor went to sit but changed his mind at the last minute. “Pleased to meet you. Vell. So. Und vot can I do for you all today?”
“~~We’d like you to help us run some tests on this sheep,~~” chimed Cressida.
Diphtheria gave a little start, as if noticing it for the first time, and bent slightly to inspect the animal. “Vot exactly do you need to know?”
“~~As much as possible about where it’s been in the last couple of days.~~”
“Zis vould be to do vith ze terror campaign mounted by Little Bo Pepys?”
“Aye,” said thud. “We’re hoping he’s got some sort of secret hideout, which you can locate by virtue of the unique silty mud on the animal’s feet, like Sherlock Holmes would do with people’s shoes. Or something.”
The Professor looked doubtful. “Vell, let’s see vot ve can do. Come.” He moved to the wall and lifted off a photo of Olga Bonniwell shaking hands with someone in no way related to the United States Military*. He jabbed a four-digit code into the keypad behind and a section of wall hinged slowly back.
* That would be a ref to dt#3, in case you were wondering.
The lift took them several stories underground. “Doing much new?” asked thud.
“Zis und zat.” He fumbled in his pocket and produced a black box about the size of a bar of soap. He opened it to reveal a tiny brass instrument, and played through a few rather shrill bars of Saint James Infirmary.
“Hey,” said thud, “you made a pocket trombone! Class!”
“Ach,” said the Professor modestly, “after making der pink oboe und der pork flute it seemed like der natural step.”
The elevator settled with a clank. The door slid back. This immense room was a fantastic mad-scientist lab, with robotic arms, flasks of bubbling liquids and crackling Van der Graaf generators, like a collision between a small car factory and the set of The Bride Of Frankenstein.
“Now, if you chentlemen - and Cressida - vill vait here for a little while, I’ll see vot ve can make of zis animal.”
Nats battled down the temptation to say “what about a casserole?”, and Professor Diphtheria led the sheep to a far corner of the lab where a pair of biochemists were hastily clearing up the makings of their unique herbal tea.
Nats whistled gently and ran his fingers over some of the Professor’s cutting-edge high-tech creations. “Sorry if I’m getting ahead of myself,” he said to thud, “but I was just wondering... you’ve got access to all this ludicrously advanced kit, right?”
thud nodded.
“For instance...” continued Nats, picking up a heavy machine the size of a VCR, comprising two metal cylinders and a series of inlaid dials and baffles. “I’m guessing this is some sort of jetpack or something. Or this deely looks like one of Enty’s forcefield generators for trapping marauding monsters. Or this purple thing looks like his plasma-bottle antigrav unit.”
“And you were wondering...?”
“Well, with this sort of support you could so easily do the techno-hero bit, like Falcon or NTU-150. Why is your primary crime-fighting technique still jumping on people’s heads?”
thud looked back at him coldly. “The Prof isn’t that sort of inventor. His stuff tends to be a bit more... well, look.” He leant over the second item and turned a switch. Nats flinched, but instead of a projecting a shimmering force-globe it tinkled the opening bars of a Diabelli sonata, glowing a different colour with each chord. The triangular purple device turned out to be a nigh-unplayable cross between a harmonica and a theremin.
He pointed to the ‘jetpack’. “And as for that, how d’you expect me tae fight crime wi’ a compressed-nitrogen-powered underwater accordion for scuba-diving lovers of Breton folk music?”
“Oh. I see. Uh, has there been much interest in the last one?”
“About as much as you’d expect.” dull thud flexed his fingers and scooped it up.
“~~And then there’s the small matter of thud’s innate ability to damage expensive equipment beyond repair by messing about with it.~~”
“Don’t worry Cress, I’m only looking.”
He flipped open a panel on the Scubaccordion and probed inside the mechanism with a screwdriver. Then he released some valves on one of the cylinders. He produced a few experimental wails, and then using the screwdriver as a tone-bending lever he succeeded in squeezing out some wheezy noises vaguely discernable as I said a hip hop, hippie to the hippie a hip hip hop and you don’t stop, a rock it to the bang bang boogie say up jump the boogie to the rhythm of the followed by a painful SNAP. Then it broke down into feeble hissing and bubbling noises.
“Bollocks,” said thud, stashing it at the back of a cupboard.
“~~Fool.~~”
“Hm.” The flying delivery boy floundered for something else to say. At length he stopped fiddling with his nails and spoke softly into his Legion communicator. “This is Nats, just checking in. Sheep investigation still going on. The world safe?”
A burst of static, then a scaly green head filled the LCD screen and there came a low reptilian growl that commanded respect even over a tinny micro-speaker. “No problems here. Well, except that after we stopped the second alien invasion a dozen brainwarping demons stormed the mansion on another of those irritating let’s-strongarm-Foom-into-getting-married things. But it’s all okay now. We’ll get out looking for kamikaze livestock after Al B. gets this space-time rift sealed once and for all.”
“Married, ack. Anyone I know?”
“Uh... no, not really.” There was movement behind the dragon’s shoulder.
“Fin, why is Flapjack wearing lipstick and a veil?”
“No reason,” said Foom abruptly. “My, is that the time? I’ll talk to you later.”
The screen went blank. Nats pocketed the communicator. dull thud was now wrestling with the bastard offspring of an alpenhorn and a Flying V, cranking out a version of Smoke On The Water punctuated with ground-shaking squonks. It was not pretty, and everyone was grateful when Professor Diphtheria called them over.
“~~What have you found, Professor?~~” beamed Cressida.
“Vell, I’m afraid der mud thing vos a non-starter. Zere is only vun thing zat vos a bit unusual.”
“~~Go on.~~”
The Professor put an arm round the sheep’s neck and forced its jaws apart with the other hand. “Betveen der teeth. Zis fluffy substance. Zis sheep has been eating carpet.”
thud frowned. “What has its sexual habits got to do with anything? Ow!” he collapsed as Cressida set his head jangling.
Diphtheria ignored him. “Der sheep has not been kept in ein field; judging from der fibres it has been kept in someone’s house. The carpet vos green, vich vill haff confused it. But it seems in very good health, barring some bruises consistent vith falling from a great height. Und zat’s all I can tell you.”
“Doesn’t narrow it down much,” observed Nats. “Unless we could... um... check through the documents of carpet companies and see who’s... no, that’s stupid. Sorry.”
“Not going to happen,” said thud. “Need another lead. I really hoped that was going somewhere.”
Cressida took charge. “~~Fine. Let’s get it back to Carla and keep looking. Little Bo Pepys could be anywhere, and time is of the essence.~~”
* * *
Little Bo Pepys took in the aftermath of the last sheep attack. He had a grudging admiration for the red-suited hero, tired but still pushing himself to the limit to rescue people. Pepys straightened his wig and strode off, making sure his long coat rippled in a suitably scary way. Things had moved on quicker than he had expected. The real target of this campaign, the one it was all leading up to, would have to come now. He thumbed the controls of his psionic shepherd’s crook and the remainder of his flock trotted obediently at his side, wagging their tails behind them.
Next: up jump the boogie.
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