Tales of the Parodyverse

Post By

Josh Clement (and with only on very minor Star Wars III spoiler)
Sun May 22, 2005 at 08:09:57 pm EDT
Subject
The Intermittent Adventures of De Brown Streak Giant Sized Annual #1, Now With Added Star Wars References
[ New ] [ Email ] [ Print ] [ RSS ] [ Tales of the Parodyverse ]
Next In Thread >>

“It’s going to rain,” Hatman sulks. Canadians can sulk you know. They’re just very polite about it.

“No problem once we get the tent up,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! assures him. “But it was perhaps not the best idea to let the Manga Shoggoth pick the tent. I think this tentpole has more than two ends.”

“I improved your tent design,” the Shoggoth gurgles. “Can you believe that thing the mortal in the shop tried to fob off on us only had three dimensions?”

“It’s going to rain elder slime,” Hatman sighs.

CSFB!: “Lighten up, Hatster. This is one of those good old fashioned heroes-take-a-camping-trip and-bond-together stories… to help Josh feel at home in the Lair Legion despite his recent problems.”

Hatman: “I am his recent problems. I don’t see why we have to make him feel better about being a lawbreaking womanising anarchist.”

De Brown Streak runs through one point six million possible tent combinations to find something that stands a chance of keeping the rain out and eventually manages to find a way of keeping the canvas up by hammering the frame straight with a rock. It takes about half a second.

DBS: “I don’t think this camping trip is going to work, except maybe as mitigation when I do to Hatman what I just did to this tent frame. Besides, didn’t we already have a Lair Legion camping story when you went to the moon?”

CSFB!: “Yeah, but that was a long time back, at least a hundred Untold Tales ago. We’re due for another one. And this isn’t the moon, this is Baja, California.”

Shoggoth: “This time we’re getting more away from civilisation.”

DBS twirls a stick around at super-speed to make spark, then gives up and sprints home to get a box of matches, returns, and gets the campfire going.

Hatman: “That is so cheating.”

“C’mon guys,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! says. “Relax, willya. Unwind. Bond. Er, not literally, Shoggy. Spit DBS out now.”

Shoggoth: “Sorry, Ptiu!”

DBS races home, gets a shower and change of clothes, and zooms back.

Hatman: “Will you stop doing that! We’re supposed to be braving the rugged outdoors. Even if it does rain.”

DBS: “Yeah, but you brought a hat, right?”

Hatman: “Grrrrrrr…”

CSFB!: “Let’s just settle down, roast some weenies – no jokes Josh and Jay – and exchange secret origins or something.”

Hatman looks uncomfortable. “I’m not sure I trust De Brown Streak enough to reveal how I got Strange Matter in my brain.”

DBS: “Hatty has a brain?”

CSFB!: “Playing nice, guys….”

“Okay. Well, one day I woke up and I could go super-fast. That’s pretty much it for my origin.”

Shoggoth: “I could explain my origin, but then people usually have to be dragged screaming into a mental asylum. Shall I proceed?”

CSFB!: “Maybe later. Look, I’ll go first. It all started when mild-manned Dreamcatcher Foxglove got a scholarship to…”

But suddenly, with no warning, the plot begins!

Hatman: “Aaagh! Who put something prickly in my sleeping bag?” He looks accusingly at DBS as he shakes out his sleeping gear and a couple of hedgehogs roll loose.

DBS: “It wasn’t me. But I sure wish it had been.”

But these are not just hedgehogs, of course. Oh no. These are the Hedgehogs of Time, introduced many adventures ago and almost universally ignored since (except for AG – thanks AG!). And the Hedgehogs are here on a Mission.

Shoggoth: “Interesting. I was not aware that Atleris Albiventris usually had so many dimensions attached to it. Or that it was capable of projecting holograms.”

Our four heroes look with interest as a nine-inch high image of a woman appears in a blue light beam above the hedgehogs. And not just any woman…

“Hey, that’s a Twi’lek!” CSFB! calls out. “Oona, from Return of the Jedi” And of course he adds a capsule commentary on the quality of the movie.

“The green-skinned chick who didn’t want to date Jabba the Hut and got dropped in that monster’s pit.” DBS is good at remembering girls in netting costumes.

“Because the Parodyverse doesn’t have enough scantily clad green-skinned women running around the place,” Hatman sighs.

DBS frowns at him. “You can NEVER have too many scantily-clad green-skinned women running around the place. Never. Remember that.”

“It was the Rancor that ate her,” CSFB! says. “The Twi’lek are from the planet Ryloth, and Oola was kidnapped by Bib Fortuna and sent to Jabba’s lair to…”

Hatman: “That’s just a story, Dream. What’s the hologram of a fictional character doing…”

CSFB! frowns at him. “You can NEVER say that Star Wars is just a story. Never. Not the original trilogy.”

The Shoggoth examines the hologram the Hedgehogs of Time are projecting. “I believe she is speaking… She is saying… Help me. You are our only hope.”

A holy awe comes across CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s face. “The call! At last! We’re being called! The Force needs us, Hatty!”

De Brown Streak has other priorities. “A hot fictional green-skinned dancing wench needs us. Okay, I’m a bit hazy where the projector hedgehogs come into this, but I’m completely down with the rescuing the damsel part.”

Hatman: “This is very weird, but we have to be careful. It could be a trap.”

CSFB!: “And it could be the Force, Jay! We can’t take the risk. Now where can we get a Millennium Falcon at this time of night?” He thinks hard. “What time is it in the Phillipines?”

The Shoggoth looks around. “The radio signal is coming from other there,” he mentions. “It tastes a little purple to me.”

“You can taste radio signals?” Hatman boggles.

“No. But if I use the actual words for what I perceive people tend to go spend time with the people I explain my origins to. But I can tell where the signal is coming from.”

“Tatooine?” asks CSFB! hopefully.

The Shoggoth prods the hedgehogs with a pseudopod and the image fizzes and changes to show a white farmhouse. “Skywalker Ranch!” CSFB! breathes reverently. “Home of the Star Wars franchise, the most secure place on the planet.”

Hatman: “I thought that was supposed to be the White House?”

Shoggoth: “This house is white. At least if you go by the electromagnetic spectrum.”

DBS: “So are you saying this signal of the hot green girl asking for help is coming from George Lucas’ house? And it has security?”

CSFB!: “Even the President was denied access. Of course, that was Reagan, so you can understand…”

Hatman: “We can’t just barge in to George Lucas’ house and say we’ve come to rescue a fictional character from one of his movies. Hey where’s De Brown Streak?”

Meanwhile, at Skywalker Ranch, Josh speeds up to the front door and knocks. “Hi. I’m here to rescue a fictional character from one of your movies?”

The Imperial Stormtroopers looks fiercely at DBS. A guy on the balcony in an Imperial Admiral’s uniform says: “Destroy him!”

Suddenly three dozen battle druids spring up out of nowhere. And those spider-things that roll towards you with the forcefields then blast the hell out of you? Three of them too.

DBS: “Whoa! This is more serious than I thought. You guys have definitely turned to the Dark Side!”

Josh swerves away as the druids start firing. In the distance a pair of Imperial Walkers swing round and orient their guns.

DBS: “Could be worse. I could be assisted by hundreds of furry teddy bear things while the bad guys try to blast the hell out of me. Or an annoying guy with floppy ears who can’t speak English properly.”

Hatman pounds through one of the walkers with his Rockets cap on.

DBS: “Or by Hatman, which is even worse.”

CrazySugarFreakBoy! whizzes past, wrestling Kiwi clones, shouting, “If you strike me down I will become more powerful than you could possibly imagine!”

The Manga Shoggoth oozes up to envelop a couple of Banthas and one of those whatever-the-hell-it-wases that Obi Wan rides in Episode III. “Interesting. These things have been pulled here through timespace rifts. They have been shifted to this time from…”

“Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away?” CSFB! guesses. “Yes! Thank you! This is the best adventure ever!”

Hatman to Josh: “You haven’t really got the hang of this teamwork thing yet, have you, Clement? Or due process. We had no right to invade private property without proper cause.”

DBS: “Proper cause? We’re being staffed by freaking TIE fighters, Boaz! Doesn’t that strike you as a little odd?”

Hatman shrugs off stormtroopers who are leaping onto him as they hum “Dah dah dah da dah-da-da, dah da da da dah-dah-dah…” “Of course it’s odd. But this isn’t the way to investigate this stuff…”

Meanwhile Josh has already zoomed off. It’s page five of the typed story and he still hadn’t found the damsel in distress yet. He whizzes into the deep cellars of the Skywalker Ranch, which bear an amazing resemblance to Jabba the Hut’s dungeons.

Then he has to choose between rescuing Oona or Yarna . Guess which he goes for.

DBS: “Okay, and chance of a very quick plot summary, Oona? And maybe an explanation of what’s with the big tentacly things coming out of your head?”

And back at the fight, a sinister figure in a black hood and cloak has appeared on the balcony to shoot lightning bolts through CSFB!, Hatman, and the Shoggoth. “So you have come at last, young Dreamcatcher!”

Hatman, writhing: “He knows you, CSFB!?”

Sinister cloaked figure: “How could I not know him after eleven thousand e-mails criticising the genius of my Phantom Menace? After nine thousand six hundred and twenty-one online articles about Jar Jar Binks? Not to mention all that Padme Amadala-C3P0 slash fiction. Oh yes, I know him. And now the time has come for him to DIE!”

CSFB! finds himself being pushed back towards a deep metal shaft. “Hey wait! You haven’t chopped my hand off yet!”

The Shoggoth is writhing with the rest, which is going to give George on heck of a de-gundging budget item later on, but another part of him is also analysing the timespace distortions around him. “Everything here, all the alien lifeforms and technology, appear to have been shifted from the distant past on the other rim of the universe.”

“Of course!” gloats the sinister cloaked figure, who is not to be named for legal reasons. Let’s just call him the Grand Director. “Of course. How else was I to bring these projects in on budget? Do you know the savings in prosthetics alone I made by kidnapping in actual aliens for the movies? A little bit of persuasion and they were acting at least as well as my muppets. Well, except for Heydon Christensen and Natalie Portman .”

“I knew it!” CSFB! writhes happily. “All real! Yay!”

Hatman: “You haven’t won yet, villain! I have a director’s hat here somewhere….”

Grand Director: “And since when have I listened to directors? Or any other movie professionals?” He gestures to make an improbably large and unstable movie prop fall down and crush Hatman. But Hatman isn’t there.

Hatman is actually downstairs, dragged out of the way by a fast moving De Brown Streak. “Quick,” says Josh. “Put this on.”

“This?” Jay objects. “This is the top off R2D2.”

“Right. And this device you’re stood next to is the time projector the Grand Director bought off Wang the Conqueror. Shut this down and everything and everyone gets set free and sent back to their own time and place.”

Hatman, with flashing metal robot dome on his head: “Bleep blip wheeee squip!”

But a moment later he’s inserted his probes (you don’t want to know) and shut down the time machine. Suddenly it all goes quiet.

Grand Director: Die, Dreamcatcher, die! Er, hang on. Where’s my special effects gone?

CSFB!, punching him. “Cut!”

And afterwards, as the Lair Legion hear about this:

Visionary: “Green-skinned slave girls? And I missed it?”

Trickshot: “Heh. You’re not the only one that missed it this time, eh DBS? You kind of shot yourself in the ass when you catapulted all those captives back where they’d been brung from.”

DBS shrugs and grins. “Well, maybe… there’s some advantages to having the power of super-speed.”

Dancer: “So what happens to the Grand Director now? Prison for life?”

Lisa: “No evidence against him, He’ll walk free. Maybe sue the LL for huge damages. It’s up to his legal council.” *Preens*

Nats: Aw no…

CSFB!: The good news is the Grand Director’s power is broken now. He’ll never make another movie again. The world is safe…”

But right at that moment, the Grand Director walks through a huge warehouse full of crates until he finds one buried right at the back, stencilled PROPERTY OF U.S. GOVERNMENT. He pulls it out and listens to it humming…



dial-80-47-193-46.th.lond.access.as9105.com (80.47.193.46) U.S. Company
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6/Windows 2000 (0.6 points)
[ New ] [ Email ] [ Print ] [ RSS ] [ Tales of the Parodyverse ]
Follow-Ups:

Echo™ v2.4 © 2003-2005 Powermad Software
Copyright © 2004-2005 by Mangacool Adventure