This message Premiere #4: Say You Want a Technolution? was posted by on Thursday, January 31, 2002 at 07:34.
Premiere watched the sun come up on this brave new world the residents seemed to call the Parodyverse. It started as a faint smudge over the Atlantic ocean and dappled the dying night with smudges of orange and red, then gradually turned into a cloud-spattered blue. He couldn’t remember the last time he saw anything as awe-inspiring.
The waters around the Lair Island were freezing, but he didn’t feel cold as he allowed himself a dozen circuits of the isle. He figured that if he stayed within a hundred yards of shore he wouldn’t be breaking his parole.
Even so, Dancer was waiting for him when he stepped out of the water. She was holding a white fluffy towel in one hand and a steaming mug of chocolate in the other. “I was going to say be careful of the currents, but then I remembered you can bend steel with your bare hands and withstand small nuclear explosions,” she said.
Then why did it hurt so much to be alive?
Dancer watched as Premiere made his way up the beach. Stripped to his shorts his lean six-foot-two frame was more visible. His body was covered in wiry greying hair and old scars.
“But not indestructible, I see,” she noted, looking at the pale lines across his chest and back.
“Every hero has to push themselves to get the job done sometimes,” Premiere answered, glancing down at himself. “A lot of these were from the time Red Watchman managed to neutralize my powers and had me flayed. That hurt.”
Another memory crossed his face and Dancer flinched to see how much whatever it was pained him. She didn’t think it was recalling his beating at a villain’s hands. “You don’t have to go back to Technopolis, you know,” she urged. “I’ve seen how powerful you are. You could just… take off. Into space maybe. You don’t have to let them execute you.”
Premiere caught her hand as it brushed his chest. “Yes I do,” he said. “For three reasons. First, because I’m guilty. I murdered the Science Council, and in the same circumstances I’d probably do it again. Murderers have to be stopped. Second, by means I can’t begin to imagine, Technopolis has somehow transferred across the dimensional rift and is now in your world. Technopolis is powerful enough to devastate this planet if it chooses to.”
“We have champions too,” Dancer promised him. “The Lair Legion will…”
“Do you have eight thousand champions, all trained from childhood to be warriors defending the Rule of Science?” challenged Premiere. “Could even your Lair Legion stop eight thousand science heroes, all backed by military technology hundreds of years advanced from yours, from doing whatever they wanted? I’ve seen what Technopolis can do, when the Buffer Realms caused trouble, against invaders from other worlds. The best I can say is that you’d die bravely.”
“And the third reason?” Dancer asked, her beautiful eyes moist.
“Because I don’t want to live any more,” Premiere admitted. “There aren’t many things that can kill me, but they’ll find a way in Technopolis.”
Dancer’s eyes narrowed into fierce flaming slits. “Uh-huh. Well the first excuse is noble and the second one is expedient. But the third one is pure B-S, buster! You’re guilty about what you did to your Science Council. You want to be punished so you won’t hurt any more? Well then don’t take the easy way out. If you die it gets you off the hook. No need to work to redeem yourself. No need to live every day atoning for your crimes. No need to fight for what you know is right, to help those who really need you, to make the world a better place than the one where you committed your crimes. How dare you allow yourself to be executed!”
Premiere stepped back, amazed by the passionate arguments of his companion.
“Sorry,” Dancer said, calming down. She ran a hand through her long black hair to pull it away from her face. “Sorry. I just don’t like to… to see people wasted, that’s all.”
“You make your point very… vigorously.”
“All that super-hearing and you still weren’t listening too good. Are you listening now?”
He could hear a sparrow singing in the woods a hundred miles away. He could hear sandworms tunneling in the beach beneath his feet. He could hear Dancer’s fast-beating heart as she leaned forwards to kiss him.
“There’s more,” he warned, gently pushing the Legionnaire away. “I was very fond of someone.”
“You have a girlfriend?” Dancer flushed. “A wife?” She smiled a crooked smile. “Both?”
“I was attracted to a science villainess called Xanadelle. She’s dead now. I killed her.”
“Another murder?”
“No. This was business, on a mission from the Science Council. They put me in a position where I had to kill her to save Technopolis. She fought for what she believed in. I fought for what I believed in. I won.”
Dancer’s eyes were soft again. “Oh,” she breathed. “Now I think I understand.” She came close to Premiere again and brushed her lips across his. “It’s all right to hurt. That way you remember. But it’s not all right to give in. You have a job to do.”
Dancer’s comm-card beeped. “We’re wanted,” she reported. “I think they’ve come for you.”
________________
Nats, Goldeneyed, and Hatman stood on the helipad out back of the Lair Mansion and watched a futuristic grav-car glide down onto the tarmac.
“I don’t like this,” grumbled Nats. “I don’t like this and I don’t like them. We should be busting them for trying to nuke Ohio not making nicey-nicey with them.”
“Not that I wouldn’t love to hand them their spleens, but we do have to respect national jurisdiction on this matter. International even,” Hatman reminded him. “We have a secret treaty with Technopolis, and Premiere has confessed to the murder of their ruling Science Council. We have to hand him back even if we don’t like the delivery boys.”
“Can we kick their butts and then hand him back?” suggested Goldeneyed. “I don’t like how they look down their noses at us as if we’re some kind of amateurs. Just because their city has the technology to custom-design superheroes and they have thousands of them doesn’t mean we couldn’t take them if we had to.”
“Part of the reason the White House is being so helpful to these guys is exactly because they have eight thousand metahumans ready to deploy if we don’t co-operate,” Hatman pointed out. “And sure, I’d be willing to try containing them, but the odds would be pretty much impossible. We only have about fourteen hundred known super-types on Earth, and most of them are untrained. And that’s counting the super-villains.”
“I don’t care if they have the science to bomb us back to the stone age,” said Nats. “I still don’t like these guys. I don’t like bullies.”
The grav-car had landed now, and the saucer section folded open to extend a ramp to the floor. The Death Squad strutted out, looking at the Lair Legion’s old mansion facilities with an amused contempt. Red Bounty, Razorbarb, Detonator, Flashfly, and Index were a formidable and ruthless metahuman suppression unit from the alien city that now occupied the area that was once Billings, Idaho.
An unhappy-looking Falcon trailed behind them, again tagged as their liaison officer from SPUD, the international security agency. “They’re here,” he told the LL unnecessarily. “Again.”
“No weapons of mass destruction on them this time, I hope,” Goldeneyed snarled, talking past Red Bounty to Falcon.
“We are weapons of mass destruction, teleporter-boy,” boasted Razorbarb. “Pray you never get in our way.”
“Oh yeah?” flared Nats. “Well you better…”
“Hey, Nats, calm down,” Hatman called grimly. “Remember who the professionals are here.”
“Yeah,” Nats breathed with a nasty smirk at the Death Squad. “I forgot. Nearly acted like a mercenary bozo.”
Red Bounty swaggered up to Hatman and handed over a document wallet. “Paperwork,” he said. “The Science Council has acceded to your government’s petition that Premiere be granted a retrial. Hand him over and we can get this over with.”
“And then you guys take your city and go home?” Goldeneyed checked. “And we get back all the people you displaced when you dimension-hopped here?”
“Hey, we’re experts in killing metahumans,” Detonator answered. “We don’t do politics.”
“Sometimes we do politicians though,” snickered Flashfly, allowing a ripple of flame to run up his arm.
“We’re not experts at killing,” Hatman admitted. “But we’re experts at taking down killers. Cross the line again on our turn and I’ll be happy to demonstrate. Remember that.”
“Oooh, like some hick wannabees from some stupid dead-end dimension are gonna worry us,” jeered Razorbarb. “Lemme tell you who you’re facing, cappy…”
“I should imagine the Lair Legion can spot worthless scum without any lessons,” Premiere interrupted, walking from the mansion flanked by Fin Fang Foom and Dancer. “I know I can.”
Premiere was back in the monochrome jumpsuit that served as his costume. Somehow the simple design of his black and white uniform made the Death Squad seem gaudy and tacky. Onlookers asked to determine which was the hero and which was the villain would have been confused when the truth of the situation was revealed.
Index came forward and fixed the power-dampeners onto the fallen science hero. Even then Index flinched away when Premiere turned to glance at him suddenly.
“All done?” Red Bounty checked. “Then let’s blow this dismal little world.”
“Goodbye, Victor,” Dancer called softly. Premiere nodded to her.
He was marched into the grav-car and then he was gone.
________________
“Are we away and clear?” Red Bounty asked as they set course for Technopolis.
“Yep,” agreed Detonator at the grav-car controls.
“Then let’s beat the shit out of him,” Red Bounty snarled.
________________
The White Room had been cleaned of all the blood, Premiere saw. The only stains were dripping from him as he was dragged into the Science Council chamber and propped stretched on the pain rack before the technocrats who ran the city. He forced his swollen eyes open to face his accusers.
“Z-Zalas?” he gasped.
Dr Zalas was at his customary place at the central dais. “Of course. Do you think I didn’t have a contingency prepared in the event of my death?” challenged the chairman of the Science Council.
“A clone?” realized Premiere. “But they’re illegal. And you don’t have the technology.”
“True,” Zalas admitted. “But my sponsor does.”
Premiere gaped in horror as he focussed on the sinister figure behind the Council.
Zalas smirked. “May I reintroduce the new leader of Technopolis, the power behind the resurrected Science Council, the means of our entry to this helpless little dimension, and the future ruler of Earth… the Red Watchman.”
Technopolis’ greatest enemy was now her master; and Earth was to follow.
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