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This message Premiere #20: The Battle of Parodiopolis was posted by The Hooded Hood presents this epic turning point in the Technopolis war, with apologies to those maimed in a good cause on Monday, May 27, 2002 at 08:17.
Premiere #20: The Battle of Parodiopolis
Previous issues at the Premiere Archives
Checklist of Technopolis characters at Who's Who in the Technoverse
Everything else at Who's Who in the Parodyverse
A pair of heavy grav-gunships flanked the newly-arrived SPUD helicarrier ready to bracket it with weapons fire. The Technopolitan support aircraft, more experienced at working in aerial combat than the hundred or so ragtag grav-craft assembled by the resistance, easily cut off the air screen support to the battle-scorched flying carrier.
“Watch out!” Phase Shift called from one of the soviet grav-wagons. “Don’t let them split us up. Work in formation, come round at their main ships so they can’t afford to peel off their fighter screen. Make them use more energy to stop us flanking them!”
“Enemy vessels,” Warmaster boomed over all the comm systems of the attacking forces, “This is the Technopolis First Fleet. You are now going to die like the ineffectual scum you are. That is all.”
Then a monochrome streak pounded into and through the starboard Technopolitan gunship, tearing through vanadium-titanium hull-plating to rip out the vessel’s reactor core and hurl it into near-Earth orbit. The grav-gunship faltered and toppled from the skies.
The blur wheeled round and caught it. Then Premiere hurled the thirteen thousand ton vessel at its companion craft, swatting both of them down into the Parodiopolis Sound. Then he saluted to Warmaster.
“Wa-hoo!” came a voice over the comm-links. “Alright boys n’ girls, lets show these scumsucking science villains how much we appreciate them visitin’ our fair city.” Dan Drury, Director of SPUD, stood on the command deck of the helicarrier, grimaced at the viewscreens, and told Al B. Harper at the systems board, “Load those photonic scatter charges we borrowed off those Sov-Blok guys. I want maximum spread. Split the enemy up so our forces kin get a ground footprint.”
“Sounds good,” Visionary agreed, trying to look intelligent and not fall over as the helicarrier rocked.
“Yeah,” agreed Drury. “Now get down to the hangar bay, git yourself a skycycle, and go an’ rescue Commissioner Graham from Parodiopolis Plaza.”
A flare of energy crackled up to the skies from the offshore island where the supervillain penitentiary the Safe was currently the site of a major confrontation. The nastiest and most experienced science villains of Technopolis were experiencing no-holds-barred conflict with the nastiest and most experienced villains of the Parodyverse.
“Random Access, huh?” giggled the abominable Appendage Man. “We just have to get to know each other better!”
“Love the explosions, Blast Zone,” called VelcroVixen, “but you have to keep your eyes on the target. That would be up here, not at chest height. Otherwise you won’t see me do… oh, never mind.”
“Call those shattercannons, Rimshooter?” mocked HuntingJustice DeathMarrow. “These are shattercannons.”
“Oh yummy!” Technovore giggled as he fell on Expired Warranty. “New toy!”
“You are all expendable,” promised Yellow Fever unleashing a swarm of fever silhouettes. “Now you die!”
From thirty thousand feet a silver streak dropped like a bullet towards the SPUD helicarrier, ready to gut it as Premiere had taken down the gunships. Al B. hadn’t even got time to warn of an incoming attack. Then Premiere intercepted the attacker, slamming into him with a force that winded both of them. “Sorry, Steel Enforcer, but I can’t allow you to do that.”
The indestructible metal science hero hammered a punch that could shatter a mountain into Premiere’s solar plexus. “You can’t stop me, old man.”
“I have to,” answered Victor Brooke, but took another three blows in rapid succession. Steel Enforcer was as fast as he was, as well trained, and younger.
“A shame I couldn’t have met you like this in your heyday,” Steel Enforcer told him, his conscience and morals eliminated by the alterations Red Watchman had made to his brain chemistry. “I’d have liked to settle once and for all who was the all-time champion.”
“You can have the title. Just back off from this battle, Charles. Come on, fight what they’ve done to you.”
Another blow, and this time Premiere felt something inside him snap.
From the ground Count Armageddon saw the combat. “Much as I’d like to sit and watch the two most famous heroes of Technopolis beat each other into snot I need Premiere down fast,” he ordered. “Dreamripper, Technovore, Quake, go uneven the odds.”
“That seems hardly fair,” the Hooded Hood objected, slipping out of the shadows again. “Perhaps I should check with the referees.” His eyes flashed momentarily and the Lair Legion appeared between him and the science villains.
“Fan out,” Hatman called tersely. “Mark your adversaries, keep them from clustering. CSFB!, Whitney, take Dimensionweaver and Yellow Fever. Dancer, on Random Access. G-Eyed, Ziles, find Finny, Donar, and Banjoooo. Move.”
A few minutes earlier the Lair Legion had retreated beaten and broken. Now they were fresh, prepared, and ready for round two. “I love this,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! cried as he leaped up to tangle Dimensionweaver in his unbreakable yoyo. “Usually it’s the baddies who get to use the old spend-a-day-recovering-and-get-zapped-back-ten-minutes-later trick. And we got dinner with the Ausgardians.”
“Come once or a hundred times, it’ll end the same,” promised Count Armageddon. He unleashed his kaos energies at full power, sending friend and foe alike spasming to the ground. “Let’s take you all down and let the Watchman sort you out!”
“That’s not chaos!” objected CSFB! as the neon ribbons crackled round his impossibilitium costume. “It’s just some kind of evil cthulic power-effluence. False advertising!”
Armageddon laughed and concentrated more malice at the struggling CSFB!
“One… moment… felon…” came a voice from behind him. Incredibly, Donar Oldmanson was rising to his feet despite the beating he had taken. “I hast not yet kicked thee to hel and back.”
Across the water on Parodiopolis Island the fighting began as soon as the signal operating the obedience chips was interrupted. Science police who had been constrained to obey the Red Watchman’s terrible orders for many days suddenly found their free will returned and took out their wrath upon the criminal scum that commanded them. Within moments the area around Parodiopolis Plaza became a war zone.
Don Graham, Commissioner of Police and supposed object lesson to the people of the city about resistance, hung in his chains and laughed at Professor Brudas. “Better go back to your calculator and think again, sonny,” he told the Science Counselor responsible for the occupation of the city.
“Shut up!” snarled the disfigured dictator. “It will only take me a few seconds to recalibrate the control chips to another frequency and re-establish command. None of your heroes can penetrate the defense perimeter I have set up around this square in time to stop me.”
“Um…” said Visionary worriedly. He tried not to think about why he didn’t show up on any superhero detection apparatus. “Let Commisioner Drury go now, please.”
Brudas spun round and pointed his sonic liquidifier at the interloper. “Or what?” he smirked.
“Or I’ll step aside and let these people have you,” Visionary threatened.
And for the first time Professor Brudas realized that although the super-powered heroes of the Parodyverse were busy elsewhere, Parodiopolis was populated by an awful lot more quite normal, everyday people. And they didn’t like their city being invaded. And they didn’t like him. And they were flooding into the square from all sides carrying makeshift weapons with vengeance in their eyes.
Across the water, Technovore possessed the security installations of the Safe and went wild with the anti-escape technology. Half a dozen Parodyverse villains were cut down before Nats telekinetically ripped the circuitry out of the walls. All the circuitry, out of all the walls.
Armageddon fired a full burst of kaos magics to plaster the flying phenomenon across the wall but the energies earthed themselves in Nats’ staff. It consumed them utterly.
Blast Zone dropped a roof on Nats instead.
“I’ve secured Finny and Banjoooo,” Ziles reported to Hatman across the chaos of the combat field. G-Eyed’s gating them out now that Dimensionweaver can’t interfere. But the casualties are mounting.”
“We have to hold the main bad guys up long enough for the others to do their stuff,” Hatman called back, hoisting Blast Zone through a wall. “We knew this would be dangerous. But it’s our only chance.”
The aerial war was still going on above. Chronic yelped as Lisette jinked Ziles’ cloaked Xnylonian spaceship to avoid the dogfighting going on between NTU-150 and the Technopolis Grav-Fleet. “First you get me brain-chipped, then you beat me senseless, then you almost fry my mind to jam these control devices, and now you’re trying to kill me in a mid-air collision,” he complained.
“I’m not too good at piloting this vessel,” admitted Lisette. “Ziles only gave me one lesson.”
“We’re receiving an incoming message,” Exile reported. “It’s Drury. He needs De Brown Streak aboard the helicarrier right now.”
“Hold it,” DBS objected. “Drury wants me where? Aboard the HQ of the people who have been sending Sentinoids after me for the last year? And he expects me to go?”
“Now’s your chance to prove you’re a better man than they think,” encouraged Valeria brightly as Lisette swing the ship towards the carrier.
Outside there was a burst of blinding radiance as Premiere unleashed his thermal blast on Steel Enforcer. He knew it wouldn’t harm the indestructible man but it did blind him long enough for Premiere to get in tight. He caught the Enforcer in a full nelson and powered them both down towards the ground at roughly MACH three.
“You can’t hurt me, Brooke,” Steel Enforcer boasted as the rocky coastline of the Gothametropolis seaboard veered up to meet them, “but sooner or later I’ll manage to cripple you.”
“Right,” agreed Premiere. The impact shattered the cliff face and sent a sixty foot wave sweeping out from the shoreline. Steel Enforcer took the brunt of the blow, silencing his threats for a moment. Still Premiere kept going, hammering him down into the granite bedrock beneath the city, deeper and deeper until they were far into the planet’s mantle.
“Once you find a way out of here,” Premiere concluded, smashing his opponent backwards and retreating away using his thermal blasts to melt the deep silicon into molten liquid. Victor Brooke knew Steel Enforcer’s limitations as well as the other science hero knew him. Enforcer was fast and strong and utterly invincible, but he only had class 5 flying capabilities and class 2 enhanced senses and he was going to struggle to find which way was up and out from the crust of the planet.
“Premiere, can you hear me?” came an anxious voice from his comm-link as the last science hero reached the surface once more. Al B. Harper sounded agitated.
“I’m here. What’s wrong?”
“We’ve managed to hack into the Technopolis comm-signals using that kit we brought from Conurbation Sigma Theta Twelve. Red Watchman is calling his troops back. He want them out of Parodiopolis.”
Premiere’s eyes narrowed. “A neutron missile spread?”
“That’s our best guess,” agreed the worried scientist. “Your bad guy is a real sore loser.”
“Better move fast then. Get NTU-150 and Phase Shift in position. I’ll meet them there.”
In the ruins of the Safe the freed villains and the Lair Legion eyes each other suspiciously. The Hooded Hood stepped forward between them. “Splendid job, ladies and gentlemen, splendid. Your actions have assured the liberation of Parodiopolis, at least for the nonce, and thus we have established out first beachhead against the Red Watchman.”
“Yes,” agreed Professor Manyarms. “And so now?”
“So now you will all return to your cells and sit quietly until somebody rebuilds the walls around them,” the Hood told them. ”As I promised.”
Hatman’s comm-badge crackled into life. “…man? Can you hear me?”
The capped crusader recognized the voice. “HALLIE? Is that you?”
“Yes,” replied the computer sentience extracted from the Lair Legion’s computer banks when the Lair Mansion had been captured. “I’ve just escaped from the Technopolis with the assistance of a few runaways like Amazing Guy and ManMan and I’ve uploaded myself to the SPUD helicarrier. We have a problem. There’s three spreads of twelve quantum packet neutron warheads in each heading for the city, enough to make this place a crater roughly the size of Michigan. We have less than twenty-five minutes.”
“Oh man!” worried Exile. “It damn near killed us and cost us Dark Knight just to stop nine of them last time!”
Premiere’s voice cut into the signal. “We’re on to it.”
“Yep,” agreed NTU-150, sweating inside his battered combat armor. He was kneeling in Parodiopolis Plaza now, not far from where Don Graham was getting much needed medical attention under the supervision of Reverend Fleetwood. “If only we can get this to work.”
“Look, I went to a lot of trouble to get this to you on time,” De Brown Streak warned. “And I don’t want to get crispy fried as a reward. So let’s just finagle it and save the day, huh?”
“What is it?” Mr Papadapopolis asked handing the heroes much needed mugs of coffee.
“It’s a bigger version of the force field generator that the Red Watchman used to trap the Lair legion a few days back,” Premiere explained. “It transforms bio-energy into a hopefully unbreakable barrier.”
“A barrier big enough to cover all of Paradiopolis and Gothametropolis and their suburbs?” worried Phase Shift. “We have a dozen nuclear reactors to create a field like that over Technopolis.”
“I know,” Victor Brooke acknowledged. “Here we have me. I’m a significant source of bio-energy. I shall power the force-field.”
“You?” the young Technopolitan gasped. “Your life force? But that’s… how strong can you be?”
Premiere set his jaw and grasped the power transfer handles set up by NTU-150. “How strong do I have to be?” he answered. “I can not fail. I must not fail. I will not fail.”
Nuclear death rocketed down towards the twin cities and Premiere flew into the air grasping the energy paddles to meet it.
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