Tales of the Parodyverse

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Dancer
Wed Oct 05, 2005 at 10:02:48 am EDT
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Far Away #6 - a last bit before i go back to work
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    From where she was imprisoned, Katarina could hear the roar of the arena crowds shouting: “Bruut-oo! Bruut-o! Bruut-oo!”

    She tried her manacles again. Already her wrists were raw with her attempts to slip free, but the shackles were too tight. She remembered action films where it was possible to strangle and enemy with a pair of handcuffs. She didn’t rate her chances.

    She huddled miserably in the corner of the eight foot metal mesh cube she’d been thrown into, tried to get her short silk dressing gown to cover as much of her as possible, and tried not to think about the future. She wondered where Miles was now, then reviled herself for clinging on to such desperate hopes. She’d met the man for, what, less than a day? Not only didn’t she know him, he didn’t even remember who he was himself. She’d lent him her body for one night. He wasn’t going to come for her. How could he? Why should he?

    “Miles… please come!”

    There was something about him, a confidence, a competence, a self-assuredness. His touch was strong and honest, but gentle. A man in control of himself, a man confident in his manhood.

    She imagined for a moment what it might have been like to meet him before. If he’d walked into her shop, looked at the custom fabrics, spotted her there behind the spinning wheel and asked her about them. And they’d talk, and maybe he’d make her laugh, and then…

    That was a long way from this iron dungeon, waiting to be given to the winner of a blood-contest in the nearby arena. Katarina wouldn’t be taking this boyfriend home to meet her parents.

    Her dad would like Miles. Her dad was a veteran, and he would look at that upright bearing, that forthright gaze, and like what he saw. She bet Miles polished his shoes every morning. And they’d shake hands, Miles and her dad, and they’d be a bit wary at first, but then as they got to know each other…

    Kat felt very stupid. Those were dreams from another life. She was here to be a gladiator’s comfort slave. Surrender or die.

    She decided she was going to die.

    The roaring was louder now. “Bruut-oo! Bruut-oo! Kill! Kill.” The shouting was almost deafening. She could see a stream of blood running away down the drainage channel beside her cage.

    The crowd screamed at an unexpected turn of events. Suddenly some of the audience were chanting a different refrain. “Babyface! Babyface! BABYFACE!”

    Katarina waited to see who would win her. She wondered if she could trick him into beating her to death before she was raped.

    There was another loud cry. “Kill! Kill! Kill him! Finish it!”

    There was howling and jeering and the sound of electro-whips, then the loudest cry of all as the killing blow was delivered.

    A pair of the leather-aproned slave masters dragged a struggling figure by long poles attached to a metal collar. “No point struggling, Babyface!” one of them warned. “The dampener’s on again.”

    The other one slashed an electrolash against the captive’s back. “When are you ever going to learn, slave? It’s kill or be killed out there. Sooner you get that the longer you’ll live. The crowd doesn’t like it when someone else had to deliver the killing blow for you.”

    Babyface swore back, and they hit him more.

    “Well, you won anyhow,” a guard said when the captive finally stopped trying to rise. “So that means you get a reward. The General has generously given you a new slave to break in. So have a good time. Remember, there are rewards as well as punishments here in the games pit.”

    Then Kat’s cell was unlocked and the champion was hurled inside. The door clanged shut again and she was imprisoned with the blood-stained gladiator.

    She leapt forward to try and strangle him before he recovered from his beating. He caught her wrists and held her immobile.

    “Hey, that’s not very friendly,” he said. He was almost human, except of his skin colour.

    “I’m not here to be your friend!” Katarina warned him. “I won’t be your slave. I’ll never co-operate. I’ll kill you if I can.”

    Babyface looked a little confused. “You think I’m going to hurt you? Rape you?” He let go of her abruptly and backed away to the far corner of the cell. “I wouldn’t do that. I’m not like that at all.”

    “You’re… you’re not?”

    He shook his head and grinned at her. A little trickle of blood ran from his split lip. “No way. I’m one of the good guys. I’m a superhero.”

    “A superhero?”

    “Sure. I’m your friendly neighbourhood Glowing Bouncing Man. Hi.”

___




    The raucous wake-up klaxons woke him after four hours of troubled sleep. He was shivering and borderline feverish from the cold of the slave pits. The four tusked creatures in the corner had smacked him down and stolen his blanket and shirt yesterday.

    The man with the bitter, angry eyes let himself be herded by the slave drivers out of the sleeping pen and down to the transport unit.

    There were less than a dozen humans left in this work party now. Another one didn’t rise with the rest this morning, dead of starvation or overwork, or maybe murdered in the night. Hard to tell. Nobody cared.

    The angry man was shoved in tight with the other work slaves, packed like sheep. The door slammed shut on them, leaving them crammed in stuffy, smelly darkness. The contained swayed as it thundered to its destination.

    Some of the beings there roared, or complained, or wept. The angry man said nothing, did nothing. The angry man waited.

    Beware the anger of a patient man.

    The doors opened again thirty minutes later. The blast of heat from outside hit everybody like a blow. The air was scorching, almost unbreathable even without the brimstone stench. The sky was a lurid orange.

    The slaves were chivvied out with electro-whips and cattle prods. The drovers were on a schedule, and the transport was needed to bring other work gangs to the site. Slave taskforce 9778/sigma7k/91 stumbled down the metal gantry to be assigned their place in the ore refinery.

    The job was simple. Broken metal, old machinery, wrecked armaments went in the a-chute. Any organics, food, faeces, corpses, went in b-chute. When the bins were full, a slave would stagger with them down to the main bridge and carry them out for disposal into one of the feeder shafts.

    The shafts were black metal tines that jutted down into the burning ten-mile-wide wound that blistered the landscape. The magma pit went all the way to the burning nuclear core of the planet, its vast forces held in check by gravimetric engines that prevented disaster. The materials it was fed made it burn ever hotter, powering the machines of war, the engines of destruction, the whole empire.

    The angry man had heard that there were fifty such pits. A hundred. A thousand. The rulers here tormented their world as they tormented their people.

    A sharp lash over his bare shoulders reminded the angry man to work faster. He worked faster.

    Soon his ore bin was full. He hefted it as best he could, taxed to the limits of his strength. He knew he wouldn’t be able to do this much longer. Two days labour and already he was nearly done. He’d been told that some human captives lasted over a month. He didn’t know how.

    He thought about the alternatives, about how he might already be dead. He wondered if this was better.

    The trek with the bin took him past the punishment racks. Those the drovers wanted to make an example of hung here. Their scourged bodies danced in agony as the pain wands fed impulses to their central nervous system. Their screams were almost unbearable.

    The angry man hardly glanced at them. He stumbled once, at the foot of the man in the green and purple tatters, but rose quickly before the overseer could bring his cattle prod to bear.

    After all, it was only a moment’s work to attach the device.

    The angry man strained on with his load. He came to the gate by the access gantry. The heat was almost unbearable this close to the lava blister, but he knew if he passed out here it would be his death. The Soldiers on the gate checked his manacle ID, logged his ore load, and kicked him through the checkpoint.

    He dropped to the floor and cowered. While they were sneering at him he was able to attach the second device.

    Then was the terrible march out to the ore chute. Waves of heat hammered at him. The choking fumes seemed to dissolve his lungs. Every step was a challenge.

    He forced himself to keep going. He had places to be.

    Even so, he barely staggered to the chute in time.

    The orange-and-black armoured Soldier watched him stagger up with his load. The angry man held out the object in his hand. “Excuse me, sir. I found this.”

    The soldier accepted the item, then shuddered as the electrical discharge pulsed through his armour, locking it solid. He stood like a statue, helpless, bewildered.

    The angry man dragged the final device from his waistband. It had been a mistake letting him rummage through all that discarded technology. It was only natural that some of it could be reused as an act of rebellion.

    “This is for you, whoever you are,” the angry man whispered. He was thinking of the victim who’d died in his place the day before. The angry man hadn’t known when he’d been messing with the manacle codings that it would mean another person would be misidentified as him, carried away, dissected in his place. He hadn’t meant to send anyone to their death. He still felt guilty to have survived.

    He felt angry. Angry at his guilt. Angry at this system. Angry at all the bullies, big and small, who reigned here. Angry at this place, wherever it was, and at the fate that left him here, bereft even of the memory of who he was.

    And his anger could only be manifest in one way: He thumbed the button on his device.

    At the security gate the automated defences cut into overdrive, mowing down the guards. The security cannons accepted their new programming and began to strafe the other towers, then launched drones to fire on the Soldiers. The other gantries ground to a halt, confused about what was going on. Their automated programming didn’t include what to do if attacked by their own security systems. Nobody had orders.

    A loud explosion sounded even over the omnipresent booming of the magma pit. The punishment racks had been powered down. The prisoners were free.

    The angry man tried to see through the fumes and the flames. He spotted the prisoner in the strange clothing fighting against a pair of slavers, saw the slavers go down. The escapee was obscured by smoke for a moment. Then he was racing across the gantry towards the chute.

    The angry man needed someone to cover his back. Someone who wasn’t afraid. Someone who took punishment and kept on coming.

    He turned back to his own task and began reprogramming the chute to begin a lethal cascade that would destabilise the pit and destroy everything in a thousand mile radius.

    Beware the wrath of a patient man.



___




    Kat stared at the rather torn green and orange costume with the grubby smiley faces on it. “A superhero?”

    “Right. So as you can see, you’re perfectly safe with me, ma’am.” His golden face darkened and his eyes became troubled. “I just need to figure out a way to somehow save the day.”

    “Glowing Bouncing Man?”

    The strange champion looked a bit sheepish. “Well, that’s a working title. I was also considering Dynamo Defender, or Captain Colourful, or The Fluorescent Phantom. What do you think?”

    Kat stayed well in her own corner of the cell. “I’d stick with Glowing Bouncing Man for now.”

    Again, those haunted eyes. “Actually, I don’t remember who I am. I think I might have been abducted by aliens.”

    Kat’s heart skipped a beat. “You don’t remember? Amnesia?”

    “Sure. That’s a common side effect of close encounters of the third and fourth kinds. That and time loss. I do remember waking up in a desert and then there was this big grey flying saucer, the Bradbury type, and then…”

    “That was a Seeker. They capture us, sometimes use some kind of green ray to make us disappear.”

    “Yeah. I’m thinking it was probably the Greys that were behind this, because this just isn’t like the Nordics who usually want to have a peaceful dialogue with humans and just co-exist.”

    “You arrived two days ago?”

    Glowing Bouncing Man nodded. “That was my fourth time in the arena. I… I couldn’t save anyone. I couldn’t stop them executing Bruut-oo when I beat him.” Suddenly he looked so like a hurt little boy that Kat wanted to hug him. She resisted the urge.

    “But you remembered you were… a super-hero?”

    “Well, I have amazing powers beyond those of mortal men. I have a great costume that mends itself when they’re not using this power dampener on me. What else would I be but a crusader for truth and justice?”

    “Right.”

    “So I picked out a good name until I work out who I really am, and I’m trying to figure out a way to escape this trap and take down the archvillain. I keep asking myself what would James T. Kirk do?”

    Kat huddled back again. “Don’t get any ideas. I’m not an Orion slave girl.”

    “Nah, you’re not. Besides, I don’t think Miiri and the others would be any happier to… Huh? Who’s Miiri?”

    “I don’t know. What episode was she in? And how is it you can remember Star Trek but not your name or how you got here?”

    “Oh, I can remember the important stuff,” Glowing Bouncing Man assured her. “I know that with great power comes great responsibility.”

    She couldn’t help but return his grin.

    “You’re not the only person I’ve met whose lost their memory recently, you know,” Katarina confessed. “I’ve met two others, and one of them had peculiar physical gifts. He was very strong and fast and… well, he was a hero too, maybe.”

    “Could be my partner,” Glowing Bouncing Man considered. “Maybe I lead a super-hero team? We could all be trapped in one of our enemy’s sinister plots.”

    “Er, yes. And the other was a woman called Sarah. She didn’t have any powers though.”

    “Maybe she’s my girlfriend? Is she an innocent blonde or a hip redhead?”

    “I’d say a vivacious brunette. And she might be in quite a lot of trouble…”



___




    “Ohhh, Stuart,” sighed Sarah, “That feels sooo good!”

    “Massages are a speciality of mine, my dear,” the handsome visitor assured her. “I always say that there’s nothing like the right touch in the right place.”

    “You always say that, do you?”

    Stuart smiled at the bliss-drugged face of his subject. He’d got the subliminals pounding out on the passionate-submissive wavelengths, which the psyche profiles suggested would be very effective in seducing this particular being. Certainly it seemed to be working so far.

    Sometimes Splendiferous Stuart loved his job.

    He reached down and cupped Sarah’s chin and drew it up to his for a first kiss.

    Sarah turned her face aside. “Stuart, are you trying to seduce me?”

    He frowned a little. “What if I am?”

    She smiled coyly. “Well, you have been very kind since I got here. I am kind of worried though. I think I might be married.”

    “Married? No, you’re not married, my beauty. Free as a bird. Now fly to me.”

    So you know who I am, or you’re lying through your teeth, Sarah concluded. Either way, you’re not to be trusted.

    “Do you want to make love to me, Stuart?” she asked, languishingly.

    “I think I could be persuaded.” He came in for another pass at those inviting lips.

    A hand stopped him again. “Stuart… I know this is going to make me sound so cheap and slutty, but… No, never mind.”

    But Stuart was intrigued. “Never mind what? Tell me, Sarah.”

    She blushed. “Well, I was wondering… It’s a bit too kinky, I suppose. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

    “We’re both mature adults, Sarah. We should be honest about our sexual needs.”

    “Well… okay. I was just wondering if you, maybe, wanted to handcuff me to the bed? So I’m just stretched out naked and helpless.” She shook her head. “Forget that. I’m so embarrassed. I mean, it’s not like you could get hold of any chains or a light whip or anything anyhow, and I’m just… I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Maybe it was the champagne.”

    “No, that’s fine, Sarah. It so happens I can probably find the items you suggest. Wait here.” The subliminals were working even better than expected, Stuart gloated. This was going to be fun.

    “You get them, Stuart. I’ll got to the bathroom and get myself ready,” Sarah purred. “Things are going to get a lot more interesting with handcuffs.”



___




    “I was terrified,” Kat admitted. “I thought this was the end, when they tossed you in here. I thought…”

    “Yeah well,” Glowing Bouncing Man said. “Just be glad I was able to do that backflip on Bruut-oo. Otherwise you might have been in trouble.”

    “Believe me, I’m glad. But I don’t see…”

    There was a loud clang as a shock-stick hit the metal cage, sending a charge through the two occupants. “Hey, moron!” a crude voice came from outside. The jailer leaned down to peer through the mesh. “This ain’t a discussion group. Use her or lose her.”

    “I’m not an abuser or women, you…” Glowing Bouncing Man might not abuse women, but he knew how to abuse slave drivers.

    Another shock seared through the prisoners. “You know that every time you annoy that guard we both get electrocuted, right?” Kat demanded of her cellmate.

    “Listen, Babyface,” the jailer sneered. “We’ve given you a prime piece of new meat. If you don’t want her there’s plenty who do. In fact we’re a bit bored right now in the guard room.”

    Katarina’s fears all clawed their way up her throat again to almost choke her.

    “So here’s the deal, champ. Either you do her good and proper in the next half hour, or we pass her on to the next in line. We’re looking for a show here. Your choice, Babyface.”

    He gave the cage a last shock because he could, then stalked off chuckling.

    Kat and Glowing Bouncing Man stared at one another in horror and wondered what they should do now.



Continued…???




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