Tales of the Parodyverse

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Messenger finally posts the next chapter
Thu Jan 18, 2007 at 02:03:33 pm EST
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'Sunshine Days' Part Two: Regret Not...
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‘It's like being born...'

There's a bright white light and a cold slab of meat hits the pavement. It's a man, a man who shudders and convulses. His nude form rests in a puddle and the heat given from it is so extraordinary that steam rises into the night air.

"Hey man... Hey..." a vagrant with dirt encrusted hands touches the shoulder of this pure milky-white being. "Hey man, you fell from the sky..."

Like a cat pouncing for a kill, the man reacts with a swiftness the vagrant is shocked by. Before he knows it he's held against a brick wall slicked by the rain.

"What year is it...?" the clean, nude man asks.

"Huh?"

"WHAT YEAR IS IT?!?"

"... please don't hurt me... I got no money..."

The being who fell from the sky drops the man to the floor, feeling guilty for what he's done. This degenerate has nothing to do with his predicament. The Time-God known as Millenia had promised to send him to a time when he could undo all the wrong that's been wrought on his life.

A car passes by blaring Ricky Martin.

"Shit... it really is 1999," Messenger sighs as he scrambles out of the alley.


Sunshine Days

Part Two: Regret Not

"This is what I wanted, right?" the Postman asks himself as he breaks into an Armani store. The alarm goes off, but by the time squad cars have surrounded the ultra-chic store, the intruder has already disappeared into the shadows. His attire is the same on a basic level, gray trench-coat, black shirt, pants and combat boots, but with a cumulative price-tag that dwarves his older wardrobe selection. Red and blue lights flash off his face as he watches from a nearby roof-top. "Not my style to pull a Winona Ryder, but naked times call for desperate measures..." he rasps to himself.

He glances at an apartment window adjacent to him and sees President Clinton give an address on the news.

"This is strange. I've vaulted back in time before, but it's always been far-flung... not a handful of years. And yet these past years have been so crucial... so much has happened. All my old friends... all my old enemies... Jarvis, Crimson Courier, Mailman, Energizer, Puritan.... Poisyn.... They're all alive. I can save all my old friends... by pre-emptively striking and taking out my old enemies."

Messenger leaps from roof-top to roof-top under a whole (and unscarred) moon. An epiphany hits him. Before he leaped back in time, he had just failed to stop a cataclysmic terrorist attack.

"The attack...! I can stop that from ever occurring. I can stop it all. I can truly save the world..."


-----------------------------------------------------------------

Lair Mansion....

"Haha, you fools... you will never defeat Baron Zemo..." a man clad in a purple mask screeches as he fires a Lugar at an array of colorfully costumed heroes.

spiffy lets loose with his ferns entangling the villain. Dark-Hwk swoops around him looking for an opening to attack.

Rocket Raccoon leaps off Sersi's shoulder and towards the dastardly villain in order to take a bite out of him. "C'mon, sweet cheeks, get me closer!" he tells the Australian Goddess.

Baron Zemo grins as his body breaks free of spiffy's ferns. He swats away Rocket Raccoon sending the furry hero into a wall. He smirks. "Foolish vermin,"

Banjooooo, King of the sea-monkeys, swats at him with his giant hand. Zemo leaps out of the way and as he evades one manuever, he executes another by blasting Visionary with an electro-magnetic scrambler.

"Gaahhrhrr.... I'm real dammit..." he short-circuits and falls to the ground.

More destruction and carnage follows. One by one, the Lair Legionaires fall to the ground, victim to Zemo's carefully planned offensives. As the smoke clears... Only Zemo and a man in a billowing black trenchcoat remain.

"Ahhh.... Messenger.... the newest Lair Legionnaire. Our first encounter was all too brief..." he rasps.

"This time will be different," the postman smiles as he leaps towards Zemo, dodging blasts of fire from his Lugar. He kicks Zemo in the jaw sending him to the ground. "Don't bother getting up..." he tells him. Zemo rolls on to his side and lifts his lugar towards the young man's head. Messenger instinctively pulls out two Razor-Letters and lets them fly towards Zemo's throat. They embed into his larynx and blood spurts over the floor.

"WHOA... Whoa... Danger-Room deactivate!" a voice booms out from a speaker in the wall as the body of Zemo dissipates into particles and then fades away. The surrounding environment of a damp dungeon is replaced by a sterile linoluem arena.

Tall, blonde and dressed in regal purple and a white button-down shirt, the cosmic super-hero known as Jarvis stomps out the side-door.

"One of the most hallowed rules of being in the Lair Legion is no killing!" Jarvis shouts at Messenger. "This is the second time in a week that you've broken the rule during a simulated combat encounter. I have a feeling it's only a matter of time before you break it during a real-world operation."

"He had a gun pointed at my head!" Messenger grits back.

"We offered to supply you with concussive letters when you joined a month ago... There were numerous ways to incapacitate him without resorting to decapitating him with a lethal weapon."

"Christ, Jarvis..." Messenger sighs. "I'm thankful for you taking a chance on me and taking me in. I really am. But a Zebra doesn't change stripes. All my life I've fought for my survival. I'm trying to change, I really am. But it's 1999... and the world just seems to become more and more dangerous. I don't know what's waiting around the corner for the next millenium, but something tells me it's unpleasant."

"You're being paranoid. It's called millenial angst. Nothing will change.... Frankly, everyone is getting a bit crazy over this Y2K thing..."

Messenger weakly smiles. "I'm not talking about the new year, but everything that comes after it. I had a dream recently.... It took place in the near future. It was so... so vivid. Real. I've forgotten most of it, but when I woke up all I was left with was this incredible sense of dread and sadness."

"You're reading tea-leaves."

"Am I, Butler? In the dream...." Messenger turns and walks out the door. ".... You were dead."

........


---------------------------------------------------------------------

Elsewhere...

The Messenger from the future, scruffy faced and haggard looking compared to his younger, fresher, clean-shaven counterpart, leaps from rooftop to rooftop, with the grace of a cat. There's a sense of familiarity, for this is still Paradiopolis no matter what the year, but at the same time it's a distorted vision as if he were looking at it through a kalediascope. Everywhere he goes he sees businesses and buildings that no longer exist... their demise ranging from the innocence of low sales to something as sinister as destruction resulting from a super villain rumble or terrorist attack.

He pauses on a rooftop and looks over the city's skyline. "Out there... somewhere.... there's Poisyn," he glances at the bright, full moon above him. "She's looking at the same night-sky. She's breathing the same city air. She's here somewhere...."

Suddenly, he hears a muffled laugh behind him.

"Well, well.... Messenger... I didn't know my revenge would come so quick. It can't be more than a couple weeks since you were cleared of the Mayor's assasination."

".... oh no..." the future-flung Messenger whispers to himself as he whirls around. ".... mailman...."

"Yes, Mailman!" the blue-uniform clad villain announces as he points his finger at the Postman. "And now you see that---.... that---..... holy shit, seems like you've had a rough week."

Messenger slowly runs his fingers over his ragged features, battle-scars and age-induced wrinkles. In reality, he's eight years older than the Messenger that Mailman is familiar with.

He smiles. "Yeah. Guess it's been one of those weeks."

"Well..." Mailman retorts. "It's about to get a whole lot worse."

Messenger leaps at his long-dead enemy and they tumble off the rooftop, with their fall being broken by a fire-escape.

Mailman swings his fist towards the postman, but it's easily dodged. Messenger leaps back up with a well-placed knee to Mailman's chin, knocking out a tooth. Mailman falls back against the railing.

He wipes blood off his lips and looks at the postman. "I must... heh... must be off my game or something. You were supposed to die quick. You were...." he looks at Messenger with just a hint of fear in his eyes as he spots the glistening of a Razor Letter under the moon's illuminous shine. "SHIT!" he rolls out of the way just as a sheet of metal sticks into the railing he's leaning against. "Alright let's slow this dance down a notch. This should be a waltz, something graceful for age-old enemies such as ourselves.... not a full-blown moshpit. You get my drift, deliverer?"

Messenger is unaffected. He pulls Mailman towards him and clutches his throat. "Listen, miscreant. In case you haven't noticed, I'm NOT the Messenger you know. My counterpart in this time may be your equal in age and combat skills, but I'm not. I'm older, albeit more experienced, more ruthless and generally more suicidal. To sum it up, I'm your worst nightmare given form.... a Messenger who will not only kill you, but humiliate you in the process."

The Postman picks Mailman up and tosses him off the fire-escape sending him plunging into a dumpster five stories below. There's a groan. "Good. You're alive," the Postman replies.

"Because, the pain..." he leaps towards Mailman, while the latter can only mouth a silent 'no', "...has only begun!"


Several yards away, a news-van screeches to a halt.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lair Mansion...


"MESSENGER! MESSENGER! GET IN HERE!!" Jarvis screams.

"Whoa... tone it down a bit, Butler. Look I'm sorry about what I said earlier, but that's no reason to---....." the Postman drops his take-out food while he watches the television. "... to.... to...."

"... And if you're just joining us.... the vigilante and recently renewed Lair Legionaire Messenger continues his brutal, and some would say sadistic, beating of the super-villain known as Mailman."

On the screen, a man in a black trench-coat who strongly resembles Messenger, continues to slam Mailman's head into the concrete.

"Doppleganger?" Jarvis asks as he glances back at the shocked 1999 Messenger.

"Maybe," he replies in a soft voice. "Or some kind of hallucinatory effect to draw me out. Whatever it is, it has all the markings of a trap. But I'm not going to fall victim to one of his fucked-up games again. This time.... I'll be prepared."


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Back to the action....

"... please..." Mailman spits out gravel, blood and chips of his teeth. "... please I beseech you. Have mercy...."

Messenger once again slams the villains head into the ground. "MERCY?! THE SAME MERCY YOU SHOWED STANLEY MCDONALD?!? THE SAME MERCY YOU SHOWED CRIMSON COURIER?!?! THE SAME MERCY YOUR ILK SHOWED MY-... my Poisyn?! And you ask for mercy...?"

"I... " Mailman gasps for breath. "... I have no idea what you're talking about... "

Messenger drops him and he falls to the ground in a crumpled heap. This Mailman from this time has no knowledge of those murders. He has yet to commit them. However, he will. And that makes this next action all the sweeter. He will save them all with one merciful shot to the head.

Messenger pulls out a gun and presses it against Mailman's blood soaked head. "Desert Eagle. I save this for special occasions."

".... this... this wasn't how it was supposed to ....."

Messenger starts to squeeze the trigger.

"STOP!!" a cry rings out. He glances to his side and sees Jarvis with his hand stretched out. Next to him is his past-self... almost a decade younger. It's hard to tell which one is more shocked.

"You're not a doppleganger, are you...?" the younger version asks. "And you're not my clone, Crimson Courier either... You're something else... I dreamt about this...." his voice trails off.

"What the Hell is going on here?" Jarvis demands.

The older Messenger stands there panting over a broken Mailman. He drops his gun.

"I can fix it all. You gotta trust me. I've come up with a list of targets and we can undo all the damage that-... that...."

"I have no idea what you're...."

"I'm you! You from the future!"

"Fu- Future...?"

Mailman starts to scramble away, clinging to the sidewalk with broken fingers. Messenger stomps on the villain's head. "Stay."


The younger Messenger grips a Razor-Letter between sweaty fingers. “What’s going on here?”

“Look....” The older Postman slowly approaches him. “.... I know how confused you must be. It’s vital that you trust me. I’m you, from the year 2007... Crimson Courier, Poisyn.... the man standing by your side...” he gestures to Jarvis. “...... friends and lovers you’ve yet to meet... thousands upon thousands of innocents; They’re all dead due to mistakes and missed opportunities.... My regrets... are mistakes which you’ve yet to make. Now I can fix it all. The first step is Mailman...” He points the 45 calibur gun at the trembling Mailman who continues to crawl away leaving a trail of blood in his wake.

“... No...” He mumbles in a pathetic voice. “Please just--...”

*BLAM*

Bits of his skull and brain fly against the alley wall. His fingers continue to twitch, but it must be involuntarily because there’s nothing left of his head.

“I effectively just saved Crimson Courier’s life. Next is Energizer... Which will effectively save Poisyn. Next is Puritan which will effectively---”

“SHUT UP! JUST SHUT UP!!” The younger Messenger screams. “You can’t do it like this....”

“Wait...” Jarvis puts his hand to his mouth as he looks at the smoldering, headless body of Mailman. “In the future...”

“.... I’m dead?”


“Yess....” the older Messenger hisses. “And it’s an agonizing death too... Your very molecular structure... ripped apart... atom by atom!”

“Well ... You have to tell me.... How do I stop it? What do I do?”

“JARVIS!!” the younger twenty-something Messenger screams. “You’re not listening to this shit are you?!”

Jarvis stares blankly at the man standing before him.

The older Messenger who looks far beyond his thirty-something years smirks as he first looks at Jarvis and then his younger self.


“I can stop it. The question is... can you do something for me?”

“What?”

“I need free reign to prevent all the death... all the pain.... all the mistakes from happening. However my plan cannot be enacted with a younger version of myself running around... especially one who doesn’t understand the gravity of the situation...”

“JARVIS!”

“.... Knock him out.”

The Butler turns towards the younger Postman. He raises a fist which has cosmic energy revolving around it.

“I’m sorry, Messy. But I don’t want to die.”

“You know I’m not going to go quietly, right?” Messenger grits his teeth as his older self shakes his head.

“You’re idealistic. You still believe you can solve all the problems in the world just by “doing the right thing.” You stupid son of a bitch....” he leaps at his younger self shoving him into a wall, shattering the bricks behind him. “Look at me! LOOK INTO MY EYES... Look at what “doing the right thing” has gotten me.... a lot of dead friends and a lifetime worth of trauma... Now we do things my way!”

“Get... Off.... Of me..!” he kicks his legs into his older self’s chest knocking him back. “What the hell happened to you...?” the younger Messenger asks as his future self catches his breath. “What the Hell happened to me...?”

“Like I said... Life. Do it, Jarvis. Do it and I’ll save you too!”

Jarvis points his fist at the younger Messenger. His hand lights up and a white concussive blast slams into the postman. He shudders and fall to the ground. "... just like my dream..." he mutters as his world fades to black.

The older Messenger picks his unconscious younger self and slings him over his shoulder, his trenchcoat still smoldering from the blast.

“So...” Jarvis asks. “What’s the plan?”

“The plan...” Messenger grits his teeth. “I lock up my younger self in some dark closet somewhere. Then I take care of business that only twenty-twenty hindsight could alert me to. Basically I hit the ground running. Mailman’s already dead. So one dead, several hundred to go. Next I kill Energizer... then Smoke, Puritan, Red Dragon, Grand-Master, Zemo and any other slob I’ve ever crossed paths with. I kill the aliens who killed you. And I kill the would-be terrorists responsible for any attacks in the future. Then... When it’s all done and there’s no one left... I kill myself. Now call the Lair Legion...”



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Elsewhere...

“We’re getting word from Jarvis...” says Lisa as she listens to her wrist comm-link. “He’s with Messenger. He’s saying it’s a false alarm. They’re ready to be picked up....”


TO BE CONTINUED....!

NEXT: The final Messenger story ever continues as 2007 Messy introduces the world he knows to the 1999 Lair Legion. Sure, this new Messenger seems different.... But there has to be an explanation right? Well as the body-count grows questions start to arise. To secure his mission, Messy might find himself crossing a line he never thought he would!


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