The Moderator Saga #27: Too Close For Comfort
Previous Chapters
***
It was misty and lonely that night on Kwapitz Street. A haze circled the street lamps and fuzzed the details of the old row houses. The woman’s footsteps echoed as her heels tapped on the old stone sidewalk.
She reached a break in the houses where a tunnelled alley led to the overgrown gardens behind. She paused and sniffed. “Engine grease,” she detected. “Ms Aston, I presume.”
“Multigrade oil actually,” the fugitive engineer for Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises answered defiantly. “It’s better than baby oil for the skin.”
“You contacted me,” the woman noted. “Through the late Mr Johnstantine.”
“He said you could help me,” Amy admitted. “He said you could take me to the Shoggoth.”
The strange woman drew back her hood to reveal a classically beautiful face framed with blonde hair. “He was correct,” admitted Whitney Darkness, the Sorceress.
“Is it true that the Shoggoth can shift through dimensions? See other times and places and realities?”
“His perception is certainly different from that of a human’s,” agreed Whitney. “My turn. Is it true that there’s an organised resistance against the master? A group of survivors still determined to take down the Moderator?”
Amy had to make the contact. There was no time for caution. “It’s true,” she agreed. “We’re getting organised. I’m part of it.”
“Ah,” smiled the Sorceress. The shadows made her eyes seem dark and distant. “How splendid.”
“How do we get to the Shoggoth, then? Is he imprisoned in the Lair Tower?”
Whitney’s smile never reached those shadowed eyes. “In a way. It requires rather more dimensions to bind a Shoggoth than just four. I can get you to him, where he’s hidden himself, but I’m going to need some help. A means of traversing through those dimensional wards.” Her smile vanished. “Then I can get the Shoggoth.”
“We’ve made contact with a girl called Liu Xi Xian. She claims to know the Shoggoth and to be able to twist void to link dimensions. Or I could pick up the portable emergency transit gate at our firehouse headquarters and try to fire up our old planar jump engine?”
“Very good,” Whitney told the engineer, placing a hand on her neck to guide her into the mists. “Let’s do those things then. The Shoggoth’s dying to see us.”
***
The emergency teleport from Gamma Ray Gary’s exploding starship locked onto a signal from CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s eerie earring, dropping Gary, Yellow Flashlight Dur’Acell, the Parodyverse’s deadliest assassin Gamona, and the heavily bandaged Killer Shrike in a seedy underground drinking joint somewhere in Gothametropolis York.
“You people really haven’t got the hang of stealth operations, have you?” VelcroVixen noted as a huge horse-Ausgardian composite, a man bathed in a sheath of yellow light, another man with a purple topknot on his cowl, and a nude green woman with all-over body mesh tattoos appeared in the corner booth to join the man in the fluorescent green and orange silly suit. “It was bad enough that your four-coloured friend here has a robot arm that won’t stop beeping that tune from Close Encounters.”
“It’s kind of new,” CSFB! explained. The bruises on his yellow skin from his earlier encounter with the Dominator has mellowed from purple to blue but he’d had to improvise to get his arm back.
“My Vessel!” Gamma Ray Gary gasped. “Ship…!”
“She’s gone, my friend,” Dur’Acell mourned. “I could only shield us for so long from the Moderator’s deletion powers. Once he got smart and stopped trying to eradicate all of us and Ship and targeted just one element that caused a core overload we were done.”
“You’re just lucky that I always like to have a back way out,” Gamona pointed out.
“This has got to be the suckiest rescue in the history of the planet,” Killer Shrike complained. “But hey, at least there’s cold beer on tap. Greenie, you wanna get up on the table and collect a few bills?”
The first patron who tried to get a lapdance from Gamona was stretchered away for reconstructive surgery.
“Guys, I know things are going awfully fast,” CSFB! told them, still struggling with hazy half-remembered histories, “and thanks for the rescue earlier, Donar and AG, but I ran out on a major raid on a Moderator weapons store just to take this meeting with VV. I’ve got to get this done.”
“Yeah,” smirked Shrike. “That’s what lots of guys say about Vicki.”
VelcroVixen looked with disdain at the butcher bird. “Are you still alive?” she asked.
“The whole history and culture of my people, their hope for survival…” went on Gary.
“They live on,” Dur encouraged him. “Or then can, if only we can defeat this Moderator and snap reality back to how it was. The retcon wave radiating from this planet must be neutralised before it reaches your fleet, or Flashlight Headquarters on Owna. That’s why we journeyed here, remember?”
“I remember,” agreed Gary. “The Moderator must die.”
“I enjoy a challenge,” agreed Gamona. “Not that kind, Killer Shrike.”
VelcroVixen watched the interactions with fascination. “Well, you people have certainly got a lot of sub-plots happening in your lives,” she admitted, “but I don’t see what that’s got to do with me.”
“It’s got everything to do you with, sweetheart,” Shrike told her. “You and your little black address book, I guess.”
“You want me to set you up with Appendage Man?” VV asked with a mocking smirk.
“We need to take down the Lair Legion,” CSFB! replied. “We want you to join us in putting together the New Purveyors of Peril.”
***
“What did you do?” Lara Night leaned over the android Anna’s inert form and used her sensitivity to electrical activity to check the robot body. “She seems to be functioning just fine, but she’s catatonic.”
“We were just… talking,” Yuki answered evasively. “And then she folded up.”
“Talking about what?” Lara persisted.
“She ran a diagnosis, to check her systems hadn’t been compromised. And they haven’t been. I double-checked myself. I don’t think they can be.”
Chaiki Bushido leaned over the fallen Anna with a worried frown on her face. “It’s not her systems,” the Psychic Samurai considered. “It’s something else.”
Behind them Liu Xi Xian tried not to be disturbed by the fuss as she prepared to fold the extradimensional space she’d created to another, safer location. Since Chiaki and Yuki’s recent forays into the Moderator’s changed world their current location was no longer secure. The trick wasn’t just to move the pocket space somewhere new, it was to do it without being detected.
“What do you mean, something else?” Yuki demanded. “Anna’s about the last word in sophisticated synthezoids. She functions almost exactly like a human brain working at peak capacity.”
“That may be the problem,” Chiaki puzzled. “I sense something… I don’t know what.”
Lara stroked Anna’s forehead. “I know,” she said. “This isn’t a physical, electronic, or software problem. This is mystical.”
“Mystical?” Yuki glanced over at Liu Xi but the young elementalist was deep in concentration, her fists clenched white.
“Of course,” agreed Chiaki. “That is it! Like a human.” She quietly drew her blade. “Anna… I believe she is… possessed.”
“Possessed?” Yuki looked down at the sleeping android. “Exorcist-type possessed? Green pea soup and rotating head possessed?”
“A walk-in spirit called Dead Boy,” Lara replied. “The Moderator recruited him in the ruins of a version of the Parodyverse that had been devastated by Baron Zemo. He was the last thing that was remotely alive on Earth – or undead at least. He has the power to enter people’s bodies and take them over.”
Liu Xi struggled harder. There was some kind of force working against her void manipulation.
“And you know about this Dead Boy how?” Yuki demanded. She’d seen the Lair Legion secure files. Lara hadn’t.
“Because when Anna sensed his influence and shut herself down he waited until I touched her brow then jumped into me,” Lara explained calmly.
Then she discharged lightning bolts across the room, arcing into Yuki and Chiaki and Liu Xi.
Yuki’s insulation held for a moment before her safety cutouts did what they were supposed to do and isolated her human brain from her cyborg form; then she slumped across Anna, her fuses blown.
Chiaki actually managed to dodge the first of the discharges, leaping forward with her katana to take Lara down. Her hesitation about the kill was what gave Lara the chance to shock her to unconsciousness with a discharge down the blade. Liu Xi might have been able to resist the electricity for a while but she was already tangled in her void manipulation. She spotted the attack too late and had no time to disengage herself before the shock seared through her body.
“I should have picked this form from the start,” Dead Boy noted as he made sure his enemies stayed down. “What a babe. I’m going to have so much fun as Lara Night.”
With Liu Xi unconscious the dimensional space she’d been folding slipped and began to decay. The Moderator reached out, lifted it down, and folded it up in his pocket until he needed it and the woman it contained.
***
“It’s a Bautista Enterprises mark VII Advanced Security Retinal Codex Lock,” Samantha Featherstone explained. “I’ve disabled the primary sensor and spoofed the attack detection buffers with a couple of tricks I picked up from Ziles and Champagne, but there’s still the main recognition software to get past, and for that we’ll need…”
“The code is 39948620/3887490EL” Salieri Meng told her impatiently. “Seventh-smartest boy genius on the planet, remember?”
Sam failed to bite back her frustration. “Do you happen to have the phone numbers for any of the top six?” She inputted the offered code and managed to get the lab door to open.
“Why do you want them?” Salieri shot back. “Need someone else to punch?” He was developing a splendid shiner around his left eye.
“You jabbed me with your energy transfer wand,” Sam objected. “You stole my temporal displacement field to hide your mouldy firehouse and trapped me here instead of reporting back to grandfather like I should be. He’ll be worried sick.”
“I didn’t have that many options,” Salieri argued, using his Blackberry to check the laboratory for traps and neutralise them. “Anyway, if you’re so angry about it how come you’re here with me as I break into the impregnable Lair Tower?”
“It can’t be impregnable if we’re breaking in to it,” Samantha told him. Her face softened. “Anyway, there wasn’t anyone else to help you rescue your mum from the Moderator in time. I’ve got very strong feelings about parents being kidnapped and tortured to death.”
There was something in her tone that made the boy genius shudder. “I think I’ve got access to the tower’s systems,” he noted. “I think I’ve got secure files.”
“Watch out for snooper programs triggered by what you’re accessing,” Sam advised. “According to what I’ve gathered that Search Engineer person is rather good at this.”
“Of course I’m watching out,” Salieri answered testily. “And it’s not just Search Engineer. There’s a whole agency out there working for the Moderator, S.P.A.M., with agents like LOL INTERNET and CAPS LOCK and Content Filter. Anyway, I’ve broken into the coded data. Let’s see what the Moderator is up to.”
Sam crowded in to peer at the screen with the boy genius. “He’s been getting very accurate intel,” she scowled, skimming the files. Too many of the names she recognised were in the Deleted folder. “Intel from… Madame Symmetry of Synchronicity? That bitch.”
“Another of your coffee klatch from another reality?” Salieri supposed. “Never mind that. Look at the plans for remodelling the world the Moderator has got. And he’s intending to start in three days time.”
“If we haven’t stopped him by then it’ll be too late to put the world back the way it should be anyhow,” Samantha pointed out. “We’ll just have to take him down.”
“Here are a list of his prime agents,” Salieri noted. “His Lair Legion. Hmm, let’s see… Search Engineer, the Link, the Superlative Simulacrum, Scarlet Lawnmower…”
“Or Crimson Lawnmower according to some of these records,” Sam chipped in.
“Dr Spoon, Killer Flea, Partial Man, Pirate Monkey…” The boy leaned forward suddenly as he came across names he didn’t know. “Who is Dead Boy? And why is Sorceress listed here? She’s not supposed to be inner circle.” His face went pale. “Amy’s meeting with Sorceress right now.”
“Not Sorceress,” Sam realised, skim-reading the file. “Whitney’s possessed! By Nyarlurkhotep, a cosmically-nasty elder beastie that makes the Shoggoth look soft and fluffy and normal.”
“Gee, it’s sure good the way you tell it.” Salieri dug deeper. “Hey, look at this. Search Engineer and Dr Spoon both got themselves murdered tonight – but according to these files the Moderator has deleted their deaths! He’s brought them back in new bodies. Dr Spoon’s been poured into Xavier Bellums from SPAM Control. Search Engineer is now housed in someone called dull thud?”
“That’ll keep him confused for a while, just because of the bio-toxins in his system,” Sam approved. “But are you saying that the Moderator can actually bring his people back from death and just plant them in someone else’s body? Because if so he’s going to be tough to beat.”
“This is new information, and we need to get it to the others,” Salieri agreed. “But we still haven’t located my mother. The men from S.P.A.M. took her from Wuthering Heights a couple of hours ago. If I hadn’t rigged up so many detectors and things round my toolshed I wouldn’t have known.”
“You have a toolshed?”
“Doesn’t everybody? Hey, here’s a list. Looks like S.P.A.M. also picked up some relatives of CalmSereneFlunkyBoy. And that internet cartoonist Kat Gillespie. Her stuff is so great!”
“Where are they taking them?” Sam demanded. “Because the chances are that’s where your mum’s headed too.”
Salieri rattled through another layer of security coding. “Some place in Iowa?” he puzzled. “An abandoned factory complex?”
Samantha saw the address and shuddered. “That place should have been demolished,” she said grimly. “In my reality it was a superhero concentration camp created by an undead monster called Disco Hitler.”
“A... a concentration camp?”
“A death camp. Belson in America. And the Moderator is sending people there.” She clenched her fists tight. “We need to go now. We need to get help and we need to take that place down!”
“Yeah,” agreed the Scarlet Lawnmower. “Just one problem with that.”
Sam and Salieri turned round and saw the doorway blocked by the killer with the psychic blades.
“You didn’t think the boss was going to let you find all that stuff then walk out alive, did you?” the Lawnmower asked. He gestured and the spinning telekinetic shards at his control spiralled out to surround the two teenagers.
“It was a trap after all,” Salieri swallowed. “Sorry, Sam.”
“Not your fault. Mine,” Samantha replied. “I’ve trained for this and I still fell into a rookie trap. I didn’t mean to get you killed.”
“Aw, sweet,” mocked the Lawnmower. “You’ll be giving each other hickeys next. Guess I’d better start slicing bits off you to keep you busy. My record for chopping two kids is nine and a half hours, but with you I think we should try for at least twelve before you die.”
***
“Well?” demanded the Moderator.
Search Engineer was still accustoming himself to his new body. It seemed very itchy and there was a disturbing odour that no amount of showering seemed to quite remove, but now wasn’t the time to worry about the curry stains. “The children came as you predicted. I’m quite impressed at how they breached our security, but thanks to the information from your secret source we knew to wait for them. The Lawnmower has them now. They’ll be slow to die.”
“Very good,” replied the Moderator. “What else?”
“Functionary and Flapjack have discovered Killer Flea. Some of our protocols have triggered. The AL36-24-36 has unleashed the Venom symbiote. I think that party of pathetic losers might end up dying prematurely.”
“A shame. I enjoyed Functionary’s grovelling. Doorman just doesn’t do it right. What else?”
“Sorceress is bringing in the Aston woman,” Search Engineer reported. “She will help Nyarlurkhotep through the Shoggoth’s defences so the thing can be killed.”
“Send them over to Iowa too. Have the Link shift the Shoggoth’s prison entrance to the complex out there. We might as well bring all the strands together now. It’s about time. What else?”
“And we have begun extraction the prisoners from the pocket dimension you captured,” Search Engineer continued. “We’ll neutralise their abilities then send them off to Iowa to join the rest. Except that Dead Boy wants to keep Lara Night’s body for a while for reasons of his own.”
“Tell him to find another toy,” commanded the Moderator. “She goes with the rest.”
“The rebels are gathering their forces. Once they learn of the public executions planned in Iowa for the ‘space fandoms’ that we have discovered infiltrating our planet they’ll have no choice but to try and intervene. And the Legion will be ready for them. More ready than they could imagine. Dominator’s virtually frothing at the mouth for revenge.”
The Moderator nodded in satisfaction. “Everything is coming together. Soon all that will remain is my final triumph.”
“It’s true,” agreed Search Engineer. “Nothing can stop us now.”
The Moderator killed him almost before he’d finished the sentence. “Fool,” he hissed. “Don’t play into the hands of the narrative.” He sighed as he looked down at dull thud’s stained remains. “Now I’ll have to find you yet another bit of flesh to wear.”
***
“If you want to beg,” the Scarlet Lawnmower told the kids he’d surrounded with whirling psychic blades, “now is the time.”
“Will that help us,” asked Salieri Meng in a small voice.
“He’s just toying with us,” Sam spat. “Don’t give him the satisfaction.”
“Ooh, a tough cookie,” sneered the Lawnmower. “I love those. A tough cookie who doesn’t need her face any more.”
Sam braced herself and closed her eyes as the blades whirred closer.
The hurled fire extinguisher caught the Scarlet Lawnmower on the back of his skull and he folded like a house of cards.
“What?” demanded Salieri Meng, blinking in surprise at the sudden turn. “Who?”
“Guess that would be me,” said Doorman, appearing beside the downed Legionnaire. “I’ve been waiting a long time to do that, but the moment seemed right.”
“Jay?” Samantha gasped. “Jay Boaz!”
“Yeah,” agreed Doorman, blankly. “So?”
“So you’re Hatman!”
“No, I’m Doorman. But I think I’ve just handed in my resignation. I couldn’t just stand by and watch you two kids get cut to bits. Now let’s get out of here.”
Samantha realised that in this reality Jay had never been exposed to Serious Matter, never gained the powers of the Capped Crusader. The Moderator only kept him around for gloating purposes.
And Jay had still just saved their lives.
“Let’s go then,” Sam said. “We have a mass execution to stop and a world to save.”
Jay stopped abruptly. “We do?”
Samantha took his arm. “We do, Mr Boaz. It’s going to be tough. But I have faith in you!”
***
Continued…
***
Coming next? My view is that we’re probably at the point where we need to move this towards a culmination. I suggest we try and get all the cast together in one place – probably Iowa – so we can set up the big showdown. There’ll be plenty for everybody to do. Of course, as always with these round robins, your view may vary.
Dramatis Personae:
Still in a big warehouse battle we have: Functionary, Flapjack, Helen MacAllistair, Brap, the Sorting Hat, the AL26-24-36 (with Venom symbiote) and Killer Flea.
Headed for the Death Camp as prisoners we have: Kat Gillespie, Mrs Meng, Meggan Foxxx, April Apple, Lara Night (possibly still possessed by Dead Boy), Yuki Shiro, Anna, Liu Xi Xian.
Escaping from the Lair Tower we have: Jay Boaz, Salieri Meng, and Samantha Featherstone (with knowledge about the Death Camp before the scheduled executions are made public)
Heading towards the Shoggoth we have: Amy Aston and the Sorceress (Whitney Darkness possessed by Nyarlurkhotep)
Putting together the New Purveyors of Peril we have: CSFB!, Killer Shrike, Gamma Ray Gary, Dur’Acell, Gamona, VelcroVixen (plus whoever else they recruit)
Working for the Moderator as New Legionnaires we have: The Link (Cath Katz), the Scarlet Lawnmower (Bill Reed), Search Engineer (new body required), Sigmund the Superlative Simulacrum, Dr Spoon, Pirate Monkey, Partial Man, Dead Boy, and Killer Flea; also on his side are the S.P.A.M agents LOL INTERNET, Auto-Censor, and CAPS LOCK. He may well have other, as yet unseen, minions.
On the sidelines looking in we have a range of cosmic types, including Sir Mumphrey Wilton, Lisa Waltz (Destroyer of Tales), The Chronicler of Stories, Madame Symmetry of Synchronicity (Shaper of Worlds), and Faite.
***
Previously:
The Moderator Saga #1 by Hatman
The Moderator Saga #2: Minions for the Moderator by Killer Shrike
The Moderator Saga #3: Captured is the Carpathian! by the Hooded Hood
The Moderator Saga #4: Interview With the Archvillain by the Hooded Hood
The Moderator Saga #5: Lord and Master of All He Surveyed by various posters
The Moderator Saga #6: Mouse and Ming by Hatman
The Moderator Saga, oh let’s say #7 by Killer Shrike
The Moderator Saga #8: One More Day by CrazySugarFreakBoy!
The Moderator Saga #9: Let’s Be Bad Guys by CrazySugarFreakBoy!
The Moderator Saga #10: With his Hands Tied Behind His Back by the Hooded Hood
The Moderator Saga #11: The Moderator Strikes Back by Killer Shrike
The Moderator Saga #12: Acting On a Hunch by the Hooded Hood
The Moderator Saga #13: Something Nasty in the Cellar by the Manga Shoggoth
The Moderator Saga #14: My Little The Moderator Tie-In and More Tie-In by L!
The Moderator Saga #15: New Players by Hatman
The Moderator Saga #16: Meanwhile… by the Hooded Hood
The Moderator Saga #17: Outlaws of the New Law by Jason
The Moderator Saga #18: The Impossible Win by CrazySugarFreakboy!
The Moderator Saga #19: Time for Genius by the Hooded Hood
The Moderator Saga Part… What 19? by Visionary
The Moderator Saga #21: Visiting Time by the Manga Shoggoth
The Moderator Saga #22: Armed and Dangerous by CrazySugarFreakboy!
The Moderator Saga #23: Check Again by the Hooded Hood
The Moderator Saga #24: Outlaws of the New Law by CrazySugarFreakboy!
The Moderator Saga #25: The Birth (and Death?) of a Hero and #25a by Killer Shrike
The Moderator Saga Part 25-odd: Attempting to Restrain Large Felines by Means of the Flexible Appendage to the Torso by Manga Shoggoth
***
Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2008 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2008 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
|
Post By
The Hooded Hood resorts to Untold Tales-length chapters now
Mon Jan 28, 2008 at
06:53:07 am EST
In Reply To
Manga Shoggoth
Mon Jan 28, 2008 at
06:30:25 am EST
|
Posted from United Kingdom
using Microsoft Internet Explorer 6/Windows 2000
|
|
|
Copyright © 2004-2008 by Mangacool Adventure
