Tales of the Parodyverse

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Dancer is great at acting, dancing, massage, fitness etc, not so much on the maths
Sat Oct 08, 2005 at 06:10:55 am EDT
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Far Away Part... 8 is it? I'm pretty sure it's 8. Or 7. It's part 7.5 on average anyhow :-)
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    Splendiferous Stuart wasn’t used to waking up with a headache. Then again, he wasn’t used to being hit on the side of his head with a heavy cut-glass shampoo bottle then manacled to a bed with his own handcuffs.

    He said as much when he woke up, using somewhat more colourful language to illustrate his displeasure.

    He wasn’t used to being gagged with his socks, either.

    “I don’t remember if I’m used to that sort of language,” Sarah told him, “but I am sure that if I was I didn’t like it.”

    Stuart used his enhanced strength to snap the manacles; except they didn’t snap. He’d brought standard-issue power dampeners for Sarah’s kinky sex games, since they were the closest bondage gear to hand. That was clearly a mistake.

    “Just so we’re clear, this isn’t foreplay,” his human captor told him. “This is an interrogation, followed by a big escape. Mine, not yours.”

    She was a good actress. She didn’t show any of the fear that was clawing at her. If Stuart’s adventure with the stupid little prisoner was being monitored she was already doomed. If she couldn’t keep resisting the persistent inappropriate thoughts that kept slipping into her head then she was finished.

    Stuart did look very handsome stretched out there on those black silk sheets though. It wouldn’t do any harm to…

    She squeezed her hand again, and the broken glass she was clutching bit into her palm, shedding blood. She had to resist the passion.

    “Now, you might know who I was before I lost my memory, Stuart, but I don’t. I have no idea if I was the sort of person who would torture a prisoner who was attempting to take advantage of me. But I feel right here and now that I could probably manage it.”

    Stuart tried to speak through a mouthful of sock.

    “I know. Shocking, isn’t it? I blame it on a lack of remembering my upbringing. Still, I’ve been looking around to find what kind of things in this rather nice pleasure suite I could convert to use for an inquisition.”

    She fingered the leather whip and riding crop Stuart had packed in the valise he’d returned with, then dropped them with distaste. “I found a pair of scissors, and a toasting fork, and some nail clippers. Do you happen to know if it’s possible to circumcise somebody with nail clippers? I’m guessing it is.”

    Stuart strained at his bonds as Sarah opened his bathrobe.

    “Did you pack a magnifying glass in that valise too?” Sarah asked. “Still, under the circumstances…”

    She looked at the nail clippers and the scissors pensively. “Do you think you’d bleed to death if I severed your scrotum, or would it just hurt a lot? Anyhow, I’m going to take your socks out now, but it would be good for your lower regions if you didn’t swear or shout. Just saying.”

    Stuart gasped for breath as he was ungagged. He’d gone an unflattering shade of puce.

    “I’ll have you flayed for this…!” he began, until Sarah held up the clippers.

    “I have a few questions. You had really better be very convincing with the answers.”

    Stuart managed a winning smile. “Sarah, do as I say. Untie me and fall to your knees.” The subliminals were still being piped into the suite, after all. Submission and passion.

    Sarah shook her head. “I’m sorry. I can only assume I have had a very crappy love life, given the volume at which my boyfriend-bullshit sense is firing right at this moment. It’s rather worrying, really. Anyhow, I have a few questions. Mr Nail-Clippers and I have a few questions.”

    Stuart went an even more furious shade of red.

    “Actually, thinking about it they could be Ms Nail Clippers.”

    Stuart strained at his bonds again, desperately.

    “Let’s start with where am I? The full address, starting with dimension or planet.”

    “I told you. We rescued you when your Earth… No, don’t! Wait. You’re on Apocalyspe, a world far from your own. In one of our Research Domes. On level 92-B. Room 101.”

    “And for ten points, how did I get here? To this planet, I mean.”

    “When your planet…”

    “Not the blown up Earth story, Stuart. The truth.”

    “How do you know that’s not the truth, Sarah?”

    “You told it to me. Now how did I get here?”

    “We’re running a series of tests. On sentient races. Assessing their potential.”

    “Bringing whole chunks of towns here to see how long people survive?” Sarah asked angrily.

    “Yes. It’s not my idea. I’m not in charge here any more. Torkamahda, the Minister of Torment, he’s running this operation.” Clip anything you like off him, Stuart didn’t add.

    “Where’s Katarina?”

    “Who? Oh, the girl? She was nothing special. She’s been given to the gladiators. Aaaagh!”

    Sarah tossed away the handful of pubic hair she’d just pulled loose. “Where will I find her?”

    “Down in the arena pits,” snarled Stuart. “If she’s still alive, even. Those warriors can get a bit rough with their entertainments. Aaaghhh!”

    “Can you order her to be brought back up here?”

    “No. She’s out of my jurisdiction now. General Steppenstoat doesn’t like me very much.”

    “I can understand that, Stuart. I think you’re probably very slimy. I think you deserve a date with Ms Clippers.”

    “No! Look, I was only following orders. I had to seduce you, so you’d co-operate, so we can map your metahuman gifts. Then we can probably replicate them for our special forces.”

    “I have metahuman gifts?”

    Stuart realised he’d rather given the game away. “We don’t know.”

    “I have powers, just like… others,” Sarah reasoned, thinking of what Miles could do. “Kat didn’t, so she was disposable to you. Why don’t I remember who I am?”

    “I don’t know that. Really. I didn’t bring you here. I don’t know the details.” Stuart suddenly smirked. “You’d have to ask the Minister, up on level 118-A.”

    “What are my metahuman gifts then?”

    Stuart shook his head. “We don’t know. No, really, we don’t. If we knew then we wouldn’t need to keep observing you, and I wouldn’t have to train you… Aaaghhh!”

    “I don’t think I’m a person who enjoys being trained, Stuart. I think I have a bad attitude to it. What do you think?”

    “It… it seems like it.” Somebody in the psyche-profile department was going to get crucified, Stuart decided.

    Sarah tried to collect her thoughts. She was trapped on an alien planet in the stronghold of her captors, and her main assets were some undefined powers and a set of nail clippers. She had nothing else but a rather nice silk kimono and a surfeit of bondage gear. She had to rescue Kat from a horrible end, then find a way to this Minister of Torment to put him and his whole sorry operation out of business.

    She felt the chances weren’t very good. But what else could she do?

    She forced herself to be patient, to have Stuart describe the complex, the security, the procedures. Every second was time she wasn’t helping poor Katarina, but likewise every moment increased her chances of actually succeeding in her mission. Increased the chances for zero to almost impossible.

    Who knew how much of what Stuart told her was true and how much was deceit? Sarah didn’t.

    “Okay, how do I get out of here?” Sarah asked at last. “How do I get the doors to open and stuff?”

    “You can’t get out,” Stuart warned her. “But by all means try. When you’re caught I’m going to make sure they bring you back to me, and I will make you suffer as no creature has in the history of the universe. Women will tremble at your fate for a million years, creature!”

    He meant it. Sarah could see it in his eyes. Stuart wasn’t just a cruel, deceptive villain. He was a powerful, persistent, cruel deceptive villain, who knew how to hate. He was deadly serious in his intentions towards her.

    It would make far more sense to kill him now.

    But that wasn’t going to happen. Sarah sighed. Still, at least that helped clarify who was the goodie and who was the baddie.

    There was one more squeamish bit to do. Sarah bared her arm and felt the metal disc they’d implanted under her skin. It had to come out, and Sarah had a toasting fork and a pair of eyelash tweezers. She gritted her teeth as she cut into herself and slipped the gory circle loose.

    It hurt like hell, but after wards she felt more in control. She flipped the disc into the corner and felt she was free. In a prison surrounded by mind-controlling sadists on a mad alien planet, but free. Well, freer.

    Stuart watched her limber up with vengeful eyes. “You won’t get far.”

    “Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I have to try. You have to shut up.”

She bandaged her wound with torn up bedding then gagged her prisoner again.

    She had to go, but she invested a precious minute making good use of her lipstick on her captive. She couldn’t kill him, and she’d never really intended to maim him, but she had absolutely no problem embarrassing him at all.



___




    The heat from the blister-pit was intense, like standing atop a blast furnace. Two wretched escaped slaves huddled together under cover of the feeder tines control hut and tried to endure it.

    “Next time you decide to bust me out and take on a whole planet,” Trickshot told his ally, “bring some bottled water.”

    The fugitive who’d just rewired the gravimetric controls that contained the energies of the magma funnel looked up from his work. “I’ll make a note.”

    Another flying Soldier buzzed too close to their position. Trickshot bent his bow back and picked the intruder off with a single shot. “I’m guessing they’re rethinking their policy of hanging the weapons of their prisoners as trophies over the pain racks they’ve put us on.”

    “Could be. They’re probably also working out why having a shunt buffer over-ride on the main plasma vortex modulator would have been a smart move too.”

    “Yeah, that’s just what I was thinking, Doc.”

    “Doc?”

    “I gotta call you something, right? I can’t just keep saying, ‘Hey, weedy bozo what pulled me out of my torture rack and gave me a chance for payback’, can I?”

    “I suppose not.”

    “And you got all this brains trust stuff going on, with the wiring and the bleeping and the thousands of guards rushing ta surround our position.”

    Doc had to agree. He was waiting until the leaders arrived before he blew them all the kingdom come. He hadn’t mentioned that part of the plan to Trickshot yet.

    “So I figure Doc it is, okay?”

    “Whatever. Just keep them back while I crack the last safeguards. I can blow this pit whenever I like, but I haven’t managed to find a way to trigger a cascade into the others. But I will.”

    “They’re taking us pretty seriously already.”

    “Not as seriously as they will do,” Doc assured him.

    “So the way I see it, we gotta make some demands now we’ve got a standoff. They gotta free the slaves, and arrange that the humans here get sent back ta Earth, safe and sound. And they gotta give up the guys what caused all this, so we can take them back for trial and stuff.”

    Doc stared at the archer in disbelief. “You want to arrest the leaders of this planet?”

    Trickshot nodded. “I figure, I had this card, right, that said I was a lawman. Trickshot. So if I’m a lawman, I gotta uphold the law. I am the law.”

    “It doesn’t bother you that you don’t even remember how you got here, or anything about your past life, yet you’re trying to take world leaders of an alien planet into custody?”

    “Nah. I guess this could be a pretty typical day for me. And even if it isn’t, I don’t see myself as the kind of guy who’d just sit back and let a bastard get away with what he’s doing.”

    “And you don’t feel that you being scourged and burned and tortured and half-dead and getting low on those arrows of yours would get in the way of your mission?”

    “Look, we got to do something for these people, or what’s the point, Doc? Why are we even here, frying ourselves over this hellpit? I see myself as…”

    “Dead?” suggested Kwatrain, the Imperial Assassin, as he decloaked behind Trickshot and buried a vibra-knife into the archer with clinical precision. “Allow me to assist.”

    Kwatrain was a handsome man in beautiful classical clothing, all frills and bows and buttons, but he moved with lighting speed to knock Doc away from the gravity controls.

    Trickshot hit him from behind with a hand-held electroshock-tip.

    “I set up a standing field to neutralise vibra-weapons,” Doc explained, dabbing his bust lip with the back of his hand. “I’ve had two days to watch all the bad stuff.”

    Kwatrain ripped the arrow-tip from his flesh. “This is a new jacket!” he complained.

    “Sorry, Elton John, but I’m gonna do more than rumple your suede,” Trickshot assured him, firing a series of shafts.

    Kwatrain’s knives knocked them all aside. The last of the shafts contained sneezing powder though.

    Doc dived for the console again, then stared in surprise at the dagger in his shoulder. Kwatrain smiled, unbreathing, and hurled half a dozen marbles towards Trickshot.

    The archer avoided them but they curved round to follow him. He managed to deflect four of them, but the other two impacted to deliver their neural shutdown charges.

    Kwatrain stood over the two men, one unconscious the other bleeding. “Congratulations,” he told them. “You have earned the personal attention of the Minister of Torments.”



___




    The big escape was going pretty well until the guard checkpoint by the main elevator.

    “Halt!” the Soldier called to Sarah as she skittered to a halt, caught unawares. “What do you want?” Stuart hadn’t mentioned the guards on the landing.

    “Truth and justice and a nice cup of coffee?” She smiled bravely at the guard. “Hi. I’m Sarah. Um, Stuart asked me to fetch him something.”

    “You’re an escaped prisoner!” The guard wasn’t too bright, but this was the first time he’d seen an unescorted woman in a mini-kimono loose on the corridor.

    Sarah nodded. “I am. I admit it. But look, do you think you could just overlook that and let me go? I mean, I don’t know you, but you must have some redeeming features. You’re not just a generic stereotype guard, are you? So come on, cut me a break, huh?”

    What were the chances of this working.

    The guard pointed his cattle-prod at the escapee. “Sorry, sister, but…”

    “Please? Because it’s the right thing to do?”

    “I… I’m not…”

    “Come on. Stop conforming just for the sake of it. Be yourself. You’ll be so much happier.”

    The guard stared at her. “Happier. Happy… would be good to be happy…”

    Sarah nodded at him. “And, not wanting to push this, but do you think you could show me how to summon the lift?”

    The Soldier punched in the correct sequence and showed her how to use Stuart’s keycard.

    “Thanks. What’s your name?”

    “I… I don’t remember.”

    “Lot of that going around.” The elevator whirred open. “Well, good to meet you. Hope you don’t get into trouble for this. Thanks again. Good luck with that remembering your name thing.”

    She punched the button for the Arena level. She only relaxed when the doors closed.

    What were the chances of that guard actually helping her?

    The chances were zero. But as soon as she was gone, the guard remembered his name. “Yo,” the guard said. “My name is being to be Yo.” And then G’roznon slumped back into his chair and wondered why on earth he’d said that.

    He was confused but happy.

    The amnesiac pure thought being passed on, looking for an identity.

    Sarah got halfway down to the Arena level when the power went out and the alarm klaxons began to scream.



___




    On Level 118-A, Torkemahda the Minister of Torments glowered through the eye-slits of his pointed hood as he heard the emergency alarms go off again for the second time that day. Presumably more of the Terran metahumans had made their presence felt.

    A communications screen crackled into life, and an angry withered face appeared, sixty feet high, livid with fury. “Torkemahda, you idiot! What’s this I’m hearing about the Lair Legion?”

    “What about them, Granny?” the Minister asked calmly.

    “What about them? Are they on Apocalyspe? Were you stupid enough to bring them here?”

    “Have a care, Granny Grimness. Not even you can speak so to the Minister of Torments.”

    “Every Soldier in every Faction at your command was trained by their Granny. One word from me and you’d be dead in your own laboratory, so don’t try threatening me, you toadying worm. Just tell me the worst. Have you brought those troublesome Terrans upon us?”

    “They were brought in error. One of our collection agents panicked. She is now being Corrected for her mistake.”

    “So it’s true. Some of them almost triggered a catastrophic cascade in the blister pits?”

    “Yes. It was very imaginative. I was most impressed.”

    Granny snorted. “Do I need to remind you of the simulation scenarios? Of how it plays out if we transport the Legion and their island and that city of theirs to Apocalyspe?”

    “I have reviewed those scenarios very recently, Granny,” the Minister said coldly. “Most amusing. However, we have not brought the mansion or Parodiopolis to Apocalyspe. The Legion simply got caught in a misfired Doom Tube when they poked their noses where they were not meant to be. By the time I was made aware of Gloriana’s error they were scattered far and wide. But they were disoriented by the unstable transfer, and I have since set the Psycheworms to keep them unaware of who they are or how they came here.”

    “And you think that’s going to stop them, do you? Is that another security klaxon I hear in the background? What were you thinking, dragging samples from Earth for testing, anyhow? Standing orders…”

    “Standing orders have been changed,” snapped the Minister. “I have new orders now, direct from the Master. He is coming here very soon, and he wants a full military assessment of these Terrans, enhanced and unenhanced. For the big push. So stay out of this, Granny, and leave me to my researches.”

    Granny Grimness knew when she’d been trumped. “This will end badly, mark my words,” she said before cutting the link.

    Torkamahda turned away from the dark screen and looked down at the bay below, where a troubled blob of protoplasm bubbled and seethed inside a perfect electronic Elder Sign. “I do not think so,” the Minister mused. “If I can find a way of reverse engineering this entity and creating engines of war from its structure, re-educating it to be my abject slave, then I can rise to be the supreme power in the universe.”

    It was a dangerous ploy, taking advantage of accident and circumstance. But the prize was worth the risk, and nobody cared if the Earth champions died.

    Torkamahda turned his attentions back to his painful experiments on the mindless Shoggoth beast.



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