DarkBeast.com :: Forums :: Post New Message :: Board
This message Premiere #21: Lines in the Sand was posted by The Hooded Hood on Friday, May 31, 2002 at 17:25.
Premiere #21: Lines in the Sand
Previous issues at the Premiere Archives
Checklist of characters at Who's Who in the Technoverse
All the other background stuff via Who's Who in the Parodyverse and
Where's Where in the Parodyverse
Thirty-six quantum packet neutron missiles flew towards Parodiopolis…
In Nebraska masterspy Natalia Romanza turned to thank Trickshot for his sudden rescue and found him gone…
In the Technoverse Starpom Omega stood right behind Lisa Waltz and glowered at the delegates as they began to hammer out a new world order…
In Technopolis the Red Watchman left off hurting Falcon for a short while to welcome his latest prisoners, dull thud, Messenger, and spiffy…
In the shadows, the Dark Knight watched him…
In Basement 13, Amazing Guy and his friends managed a desperate escape…
At the federal holding center at Birmingham, Alabama, Thermonuclear Man rescued science villain Deathspore from FBI custody with a body count in the thousands…
Over Parodiopolis the SPUD helicarrier faltered and made an emergency landing in Off-Central Park, its systems finally overwhelmed by its combat damage…
In Parodiopolis Plaza the citizens of the besieged metropolis showed Professor Brudas of the Science Council what they thought of him with some looped rope and a lamp-post…
At the Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital surgeons battled to restart Fin Fang Foom’s respiration after his battle wounds and to reassemble the pieces of Banjoooo so he could start to regenerate…
Aboard Ziles’ stealth starship Exile strained to keep interfering with the command codes of the obedience chips in the Technopolis science police…
Above the city Premiere clutched to ends of the power transfer cables that would convert his bio-energy into a forcefield to save the city – if his will was strong enough…
And thirty-six quantum packet neutron missiles flew towards Parodiopolis…
___________________________________
“Aaaaaghh!” cried Premiere as the first warhead detonated at the barrier. It wasn’t enough to merely reflect the blast from the surface of the energy screen. That would only send radioactive clouds spraying inland from the east coast, poisoning Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Ohio. Instead NTU-150 had programmed the Technopolitian defense field to actually encompass the missile, containing the whole detonation; which meant that Premiere had just effectively taken a sixty megaton nuke to the gut.
The next four came in the star-spray pattern designed to lay waste to the suburbs from Dullard’s Corner to Shyminsky Falls. They hit the screen almost simultaneously, wringing another cry from the last science hero that powered the barrier, almost toppling him from the skies.
“It’s working!” Hatman called to him. “Hang in there.”
“No… problem…” gasped Victor Brooke.
Then the other seven missiles of the initial spray impacted.
___________________________________
“We’re not frightened by you,” Messenger told the Red Watchman as the insane master of Technopolis looked down at his chained prisoners.
“Could you speak for yourself?” spiffy objected. “I’ve been in hell and I’ve fought elder beasties and he’s still scaring me spitless.”
dull thud didn’t join in the bravado or prattle. He was trying to find a way to wake up Cressida, the sentient psionic tapeworm in his stomach; preferably before she was surgically removed in an interesting autopsy exercise.
Assak Malevi shrugged. “It’s irrelevant really. Once I’ve implanted obedience chips in the two of you you’ll be on my team anyway. And what fun we can have once you’re subject to my every whim.” The Watchman leaned down and whispered in spiffy’s ear, “Some people probably dream of taking it up the ass from a lean-muscled mailman.”
“Two people?” dull thud worried. “Hello? What about me?” Then he added, for clarification purposes, “Not that I’m keen to be buggered by Messenger, y’understand.”
“Dead people aren’t interesting,” the Red Watchman told him, triggering an artificial epileptic spasm in the roadie just to see what it would look like. “Take them to holding cells while we get the surgeries back online after our recent… problems. Let them chat with their old friend Falcon for a while to work out why it’s a bad idea to oppose my works of genius. And somebody clean up thud’s mess, for goodness sake.”
___________________________________
The second spread of nuclear warheads burst above Parodiopolis, again contained by the defense screens powered by Premiere’s energies. Barely.
“I hate to interrupt the drama,” Visionary interrupted, “but I don’t think Exile can keep blocking those obedience chips for much longer either.”
“I don’t want to go back to being controlled by Count Armageddon,” Chronic objected. “And you people really don’t want the three thousand science police armed to the teeth with futuristic weaponry and loose in the city to revert.”
“I understand the problem,” agreed the Hooded Hood. “Very well. This will exhaust the Portal of Pretentiousness’ capabilities and my own powers for some while.” The Hood was suffused by a green glow. Across Parodiopolis every person with an obedience chip implant shimmered and vanished.
“What did you do?” Goldeneyed demanded. He could sense there had been some kind of time/space transfer but couldn’t discern the specifics.
“I have transported those affected to a place where technology will not function,” the Hood replied coolly. “You may recall the anti-energy fields in the Savage Park.”
“You sent them to a place where dinosaurs rule the Earth?” Sorceress objected.
“Aw, Caveguy’ll look after them,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! soothed her. “And it does get them out of our hair.”
Al B. broke into the debate. “Next missile barrage incoming.”
___________________________________
Sam Wilson woke from his painful slumbers to find somebody kissing him.
“Huh, wha?” he groaned. He opened one swollen eye to find a drop-dead gorgeous redhead standing over him.
“What?” she said, “You’d have preferred I just shake you on the shoulder and say ‘Wake up, Falcon, it’s a jailbreak’?”
“No… No… I’m just sorry I’m not in a fit state to enjoy it.”
“Darling, you could be dead and you’d enjoy me kissing you. Now limp this way and let’s get out of here.”
Falcon remembered something. “Wait,” he winced. “There are some other prisoners here. Friends of mine.”
“It’ll be hard enough getting you out, sport,” the redhead warned him.
“I’m not going without them.”
His rescuer sighed deeply, shrugged, and nodded. “They’re in adjacent holding cells. Just let me gimmick the computer locks and we’ll get Messenger, spiffy, and dull thud free as well.”
Falcon watched the woman expertly bypass sophisticated computer security with casual ease. “Who are you?” he asked in awe.
She flashed him a radiant smile and a wink. “The girl your momma warned you about, honey. Or your fairy godmother. But you can call me Xanadelle.”
___________________________________
The penultimate barrage hammered into the defense screen, kicking Premiere from the skies, his skin blistered and his face wrinkled in agony.
“This is killing him!” Dancer objected. “The feedback on that device…”
“Better him than two cities,” Hatman argued. “He knows what he signed up for.”
“I’m more worried about the shield generator,” Ziles interjected. “It’s only jury-rigged and it’s getting awfully hot.”
“We didn’t have time to do a proper adaptation,” warned Al B. Harper. “But there’s only seven more missiles incoming.”
“Seven…” gasped Premiere.
“No sign of an elder creature to help out this time, I suppose?” worried De Brown Streak.
“Watch out,” NTU-150 warned. “Here they come.”
Parodiopolis seemed to fall silent as the final array seared towards the barrier. Premiere winced, doubling over in pain as he gripped the power transfer handles. CSFB! held back Dancer. “Touch him now and you’ll die!” he cried.
The missiles impacted. The barrier blistered and cracked, spilling radioactive backwash out beyond the perimeter into upstate Gothametropolis. Nine thousand acres of woodlands and farms suddenly became nuclear badland. Two of the missiles penetrated the screen and screamed down towards Parodiopolis.
“I’m on one,” called Nats, streaking skywards and aiming his psychostave to wrestle the rocket into a different trajectory.
“Then must I taketh the other,” growled Donar, shaking off the medics who were trying to set his bones and whirling his enchanted weapon over his head.
The city looked upwards as two heroes wrestled with nuclear death.
___________________________________
The sun set on a different landscape and different cities to the one it had risen over. A new earth-wound glowed ten miles northwest of Gothametropolis. Plumes of smoke from the twin cities attested to the fighting that had shattered parts of the metropoli. But Parodiopolis was free, the first victory against Technopolis and its seemingly unstoppable conquests.
“How’s Premiere?” asked Windblossom worriedly, picking her way over the debris from the downed SPUD helicarrier. Technicians were frantically working to restore its systems and those of the grav-cruisers that had survived the air war with the Technopolitan fleet.
“Exhausted,” Phase Shift admitted. “I’m amazed he’s still breathing. But we did it! We stopped the Watchman!”
Windblossom couldn’t help but grin at the enthusiastic young science hero, his uniform torn and his face bloodied from the fighting earlier but ready for more and delighted in his triumph. She caught Phase Shift looking directly back at her with an odd expression on his face.
“Well, I’d better go see to the clean-up,” she said at last.
“Sure. Catch you around,” answered Martin Hernandez.
___________________________________
“How’s the Watchman taking it?” Count Armageddon worriedly asked Dr Zalas as the evacuated science villains set down in Technopolis. “Who’s he slaughtered?”
“That’s the scary part,” the head of the Science Council answered. “We’ve lost Gothametropolis and Parodiopolis, been thwarted twice on nuclear assaults, had two separate security breaches and breakouts here. I’d have expected him to disembowel someone by now. Probably me.”
“But?” demanded Armageddon.
“But he’s laughing.”
Coming Next: The episode written by Dancer!
This poster posed from 212.159.1.1 when they posted
Message Thread
Post A Message
DarkBeast.com :: Forums :: Post New Message :: Board