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This message Premiere #13: Asylum was posted by This series brought to you by... the Hooded Hood on Friday, March 15, 2002 at 06:27.
* Previous Premiere Episodes*
Herringcarp Bedlam for the Insane was built upon a bleak granite outcropping washed by a turbulent sea. Black waves pounded incessantly, and a chill rain and salt spray lashed the barred windows of the old asylum. Those seeking the institution could follow the old Gothametropolis turnpike north from the city, but all they would find was an anodyne modern mental health facility. The real Herringcarp, its real master, and that master’s guests were all elsewhere.
“Ioldabaoth!”
The Hooded Hood turned round to regard his visitor. Lisa Waltz joined him on the wrought iron balcony overlooking the storm-tossed cliffs. “Ah, good afternoon, my dear. I trust you slept well after your traumas and exertions?”
“Do you mean being kidnapped and threatened with torture by Dr Zalas and the Red Watchman, or our date last night?” the amorous advocatrix shot back. “Never mind. I need to know what you are up to.”
“Up to? Why Lisa, what makes you believe that I am…”
“Cut the bullshit, HH. We’ve played this scene before. First time we met you gave Jarv and me dinner, and a few months later I was a villainess on your team and then he was dead. Now you’ve gathered half the good guys in the Parodyverse plus five hundred or so wounded science heroes from Technopolis under your twisted gothic roof. I want to know what your angle is.”
“Surely enlightened mutual benefit is sufficient explanation?” the Hood suggested. “The triumph of Technopolis benefits neither of us. The President of your United States has declared war upon the Red Watchman for his murder of your citizens, and I feel personally slighted that the Technopolitians attempted to detain me with so little regard for my competence or capacity.”
“But you never do things for just one reason, right?” Lisa challenged. She held up her old ginger cat which the Hood had given her for so many complex purposes long ago. “So what I want from you, Ioldabaoth, is your word – your word – that you won’t use this situation to your own advantage or to our disadvantage.”
“Or what? You’ll pack up your injured and your dying and go elsewhere? How?”
“Your word, Hood. I mean it.”
The cowled crime czar looked at the determined young woman they called the First Lady of the Lair Legion. “Very well,” he sighed. “My word on it. As long as you promise to tell people I betrayed you vilely if they ask.”
“I shall call you an utter bounder, I swear,” Lisa smiled.
---------------
Professor Brudas presented his prize prisoner to the Red Watchman, but the science archvillain was not impressed. “A human,” the Watchman noted. “A baseline, unenhanced human. Does he have class ten strength? Psionic capacity to detonate a mountain? Light-speed reflexes? No. He had a primitive flying carapace and weapons exo-skeleton and he dressed like a bird. And yet somehow he managed to thwart fifteen of your science squad and prevent my missiles from destroying Gothametropolis.”
Amazing Guy looked up from his chains at the pummeled Falcon and managed a thumbs up.
“It wasn’t like that, master,” Professor Brudas stammered. “There was that indestructible aircraft.” He gestured to the main floor below where the Knightjet was completely coated in steel-solid silicon polymer, imprisoning the Dark Knight in his own disabled vessel until its oxygen supply ran out. “And then the SPUD helicarrier came and…”
Brudas winced as the Red Watchman’s face darkened when he mentioned the helicarrier. “Ah yes. And what became of that vessel. Zalas?”
Dr Zalas, still the titular head of the Science Council but utterly enslaved to the Watchman, stepped forward to answer. His lips and teeth were still coated with the feces that his master’s programming forced him to eat. “Vanished, sir. Scans showed it as crippled, helpless beneath the waves. Professor Brudas commanded a science police taskforce to pick it up, and then it just… went.”
“We screened against that reality-altering power that saved the Lair Legion,” Brudas gabbled. “It could not have been retconned. It couldn’t.”
“The enemy’s major technical ordinance asset,” the Red Watchman said carefully. Brudas found he could not move as the science archvillain glared at him. “One we have been seeking for several days now.” The Watchman reached out a finger and brushed the terrified science councilor’s cheek. “And you simply allow it to oppose us and then slip away.” As the Watchman’s finger smoothed down Brudas’ flesh, the skin flowed under it, searing a deep, bloody gouge. Assak Malevi had the power to control chemical and electrical bonds, and he could make flesh run like putty.
“Please…” begged Brudas.
“You know, I never liked your face,” the Red Watchman told him. “But I can change all that.”
Falcon, Amazing Guy, and Dr Zalas watched in horror while the villain worked and Brudas screamed, and Zalas realized that there were far worse fates than having to eat his own shit.
---------------
“Status report?” Drury demanded.
“Well,” Al B. Harper sighed, “We’re still seven inches long and hiding in the sea-bed silt under the Sheldon River. And I still don’t know how it happened. There’s some speculative papers by Writchards and Vincent that might give some clues as to process, but…”
“I think these visitors might be able to explain that,” Contessa Romanza suggested, re-entering the war-torn helicarrier bridge accompanied by spiffy and Banjooooo.
“That would be me, sir,” the King of the Sea-Monkey explained. “Using the mechanism my people possess to change size so we can interact with you giant-size surface dwellers. The Sea Monkey nation wishes to join the allies.”
“Dude,” spiffy said on behalf of the US of A. “We so accept.”
---------------
Premiere returned from visiting his wounded comrades looking grim. “Not many of them are going to be fit to fight against the Watchman,” he frowned. “Some of them will never fight again.”
“This isn’t your fault, man,” Visionary assured him. “You saved them.”
“I murdered the Science Council, betraying a sacred trust. And that gave the red Watchman his chance to use their greed and stupidity against them to escape and take over Technopolis. Now thousands of my people and hundreds of thousands of yours are dead. Good men and women, friends, tortured and murdered…”
“And you know who’s to blame?” NTU-150 suggested. “The guy who pulled the trigger, this Red Watchman asshole. Or maybe the Science Council for cutting a deal with him in the first place to get cloned immortality. You screwed up, yeah, but don’t allow yourself the luxury of wallowing in blame.”
“Of course,” Premiere acknowledged. “My apologies. This is no time to get maudlin. We have to work out a way of taking these perps down.”
“I’m glad you pulled me in for this,” Exile admitted to his cousin Goldeneyed. “Not just to rescue Val. To kick bad guy. This is what I needed.”
“What we actually need is about three thousand extra metahumans,” Fin Fang Foom growled. “We’re good but it’s a going to be hard to fight hundred to one odds, and so far our resistance has cost us a lot of casualties.”
“I need to brief you on the most powerful and dangerous remaining science villains,” Premiere suggested. “Apart from the Watchman himself, there’s Count Armageddon, Thermonuclear Man, Technovore, Bodyhopper, Biohazard, and Dreamripper. Any one of them could give me a good fight in their own way. And if the Watchman has managed to reprogram Steel Enforcer, well… let’s just say he was considered the number one science hero of the current crop, as good as me back in my heyday.”
“The good news just never ends, does it?” Hatman scowled.
---------------
Martin Hernandez had been scared before, lots of times. Just a couple of days ago, for example, as the science hero Phase Shift, he had turned his back on his way of life and faced down a legion of sadistic science villains who he had no chance of beating to try and rescue a damsel in distress. Premiere had saved them both, of course.
But this was a different kind of scared. This was the kind of scared that comes when you’ve laid awake half the night thinking about a girl, about how brave and kind she was when things went so badly wrong. About how she cared for the wounded under fire and still found time to comfort the dying. About how good she looked even in ragged clothes with a filth-smeared face. And about how great it might be to be able to make that sad face laugh for a little while. It was the kind of scared that comes when a man has to speak to a woman and he isn’t very good at it.
Kareen O’ Connor, Windblossom, was sitting in the gothic long gallery of Herringcarp Asylum, as she had done most of the day when she hadn’t been nursing the sick. She’d somehow found some seeds and grasses in the rambling sinister house and she was using her talent to nurture them back to life. And Martin Hernandez screwed up all his courage to go speak to her. It was now or never.
She was already laughing. As Phase Shift peered into the hallway he saw Wind Blossom sitting on the edge of the table, in close conversation with the local science hero they called Nats. She seemed interested in everything he had to say, and he didn’t seem to have any confidence problems at all in talking to the gentle beauty.
Martin Hernandez clenched a fist uselessly and slipped away.
---------------
Dinner was excellent. The Hooded Hood presided over an excellent banquet in the main formal dining room, an immense hall that CrazySugarFreakBoy! swore the crime czar had stolen from Harry Potter. It was a strange meal, something between a state dinner, a refugee camp, and a last supper. Conversation was stilted and forced, and nobody except the Hood himself seemed at ease.
Finally Flapjack (who had inexplicably appeared in all his shabby glory to wait on table) cleared away the last desert and circulated the cheese and wine, and the master of Herringcarp rose from his throne to call for order.
“I don’t like this,” Premiere admitted to Dancer. “Why are we sitting here nice as pie making cozy with a science villain?”
“That’s ‘science archvillain’,” the Hooded Hood corrected. “Because you already have enough problems without annoying me. And because you need my help.”
“I don’t know about that, Hoody,” CSFB! argued. “Hasn’t anyone noticed that this guy can change the course of mighty rivers? More powerful than a locomotive? That he’s faster than a speeding bullet? You might as well call him…”
“You need my help because I can return you to your homeworld, Victor Brooke,” the Hooded Hood interrupted.
“He’s hardly going to just go home and leave us like this,” Dancer objected. “What kind of…?”
“Of course,” Premiere acknowledged. “Yes, you’re right. If you can do that then I do require your assistance.”
“What?” gasped Ziles. “We need you here.”
“Actually, no,” Finny answered. “I see where this is going. The only tech able to counter Technopolis is going to be back where it came from. If we could get one of those power-inhibitor globes that the Watchman trapped us in, for example, and set it up over Parodiopolis…”
“Lots of science villains who suddenly have no powers,” Sorceress realized. “And a lot of very irritated Parodiopolitans. Oh my.”
“And if I could find a way to overcome those control chips…” NTU speculated.
“Exactly,” Premiere agreed. “I know Red Watchman. I know how he plans. How he thinks. I know him only too well.” His piercing gray eyes swept over the heroes assembled round the table. “And this is how we’re going to bring him down…”
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