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This message Premiere #35: Forgotten Corners 2 was posted by More loose ends knot themselves together into a noose, courtesy of... the Hooded Hood. on Sunday, October 6, 2002 at 12:59.
Premiere #35: Forgotten Corners 2
Premiere Archive (Previous episodes)
Who's Who in the Technoverse
The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom
Who's Who in the Parodyverse
Nats and Miss Framlicker by Dancer
CrazySugarFreakBoy!, dull thud and Hatman went down to a concussion wave from Thermonuclear Man’s left hand. Steve, Chronic’s supernatural guitar, wasn’t even scorched by a quarter-megaton rad-bolt, but the backlash was enough to lay out the musician, steaming gently with a deep Mediterranean tan.
That left Donar, NTU-150, and Trickshot in the fight. Exile was lying seared on the battlefield half a mile back. NTU-150 was up at Donar-class strength right now because he was able to absorb and redirect the radiation that was spilling from Thermonuclear Man’s glowing frame.
“We canst still take him” the battered hemigod of thunder proclaimed, getting in close despite the radiation burn to wrestle Thermonuclear Man’s right arm. NTU-150 swooped in and locked the villain’s left arm too, clinging tightly even as the ambient rads overloaded his chestplate circuitry.
And that gave Trickshot the shot. “Last chance, Thermy!” the arrogant archer called. “Adamantite-tipped arrow here, it can slice through even you!”
Thermonuclear man strained and began to break free from his opponents’ grips.
Trickshot fired. The arrow plunged straight through Thermonuclear Man’s eyeball and into his brain.
And Thermonuclear Man laughed.
___________________________________
Deathspore had been captured by the Lair Legion once, after he had wiped out the population of a string of small towns first. The sadistic lunatic had the gift of peeling off complex organic spores that could mimic any kind of disease and even animate the corpses of those killed by the infections. This gave Deathspore many opportunities to play out the sick little scenarios in his head.
The Red Watchman has given South America to Deathspore to play with. All of it. And it didn’t matter if he broke it.
Right now Deathspore was preparing a carnival. He’d heard that the Day of the Dead celebrations in Rio were something to behold, when the peons processed through the streets dressed as skeletons and zombies, dancing and partying with wild inhibition. Deathspore decided he’d like to see that. He’d been marching towards the center of Old Rio for three hours now, gathering up suitable zombies and skeletons for his festival. The celebrants shambled after him, their dead faces aglow with the fevered eagerness he had placed in them to recruit their friends and family to the party.
The thin Englishman in the trenchcoat stubbed a cigarette on one of the spore- zombies and shook his head. “Bad mistake, squire,” he told Deathspore. “Bad, bad mistake.”
The insane science villain turned to look at the annoying intruder. “You have some last words?” he giggled.
“Messing with the Day of Los Muertos? They don’t like that. And using nasty twisted plantlife to do your dirty work and muck up the biosphere? He doesn’t like that.”
“He? Who?” demanded Deathspore.
Con Johnstantine shrugged and took a step back as the vegetation began to spill out of the drains, out of the houses, up from the parched soil in a vengeful wave of moving green.
“Oh, you know. The swamp god. The guardian of the green. The Bog Thing.”
“The what?” Deathspore demanded, struggling as thick thorns grew up and into his body. Suddenly his own biospores sullenly refused to obey him. There was another mind there.
“You… will not live… long enough… to know…” a voice in his mind said.
And then the dead had their due.
___________________________________
“Done it!” Windblossom called, crawling out from the service panel of the stolen grav-cruiser and triumphantly waving the over-ride unit. “They can’t call us back now. We did it! We escaped Technopolis – again!”
“We left Premiere and Dancer in there,” Phase Shift reminded her. “Can you take the controls? I’ve exhausted my phasing powers so much that I can’t stay fully solid any longer.”
“I’m not cleared on a class two grav-cruiser.”
“I won’t run you in given the circumstances,” the science hero promised. “Just head us back to Parodiopolis. We have to find out how bad it is there, and if any of the Lair Legion survived. And we have to warn Dan Drury that the Watchman is planning his final push.”
“Right.” Windblossom took the conn with an unsteady hand and tried to concentrate on her job.
“It’s okay to be upset,” Phase Shift told her. “We’re just little people caught up in something terrible. There must be thousands like us in every war. We just try to survive, and put the bad stuff behind us.”
“Dancer tried to save me,” Kareen O’Connell whispered. “But when Premiere told me to run away, I did. Dancer’s still in there.”
“I know. And every time I tried to do something right I screwed it up. I needed Premiere to bail me out when I tried to rescue you both times. I deserted my comrades when the science villains attacked Herringcarp. I didn’t even kill Zalas. And in Mad Wendy’s dream, I…”
“Like you say, Martin, we just try to survive. And… intentions count for a lot, you know?”
Martin and Kareen looked at each other for a moment but were interrupted by the threat warning alarm. “Damn!” hissed phase Shift. “Two stealth cruisers flanking us. That’s why they let us get clear of the point defense perimeter.” A sighting laser shot scorched their hull. “We’re outnumbered and outgunned, and I don’t think I can phase this whole craft again.”
“Don’t let them catch me!” screamed Windblossom as the vessel shook at the second salvo.
Then the two attacking crafts shook, spun, and were propelled hard into the cornfield below by an irresistible telekinetic pulse.
“Okay, whoever’s in the grav-cruiser,” Nats called over the short term communication band. “Set down quietly and be identified, and then we’ll talk about why you lit out of Technopolis like a bat out of hell.”
“Nats?” Windblossom called. “Bill, it’s us! Me and Phase Shift.”
“Kareen? Okay, set down so I can check it’s you. And then let’s get you escorted back to the Big Banana.”
“Wonderful,” hissed Martin Hernandez. “Saved again.”
___________________________________
When the circuit-covered walls of the Technopolis service tunnel closed around them Ziles had thought it was the end of the road. She was surprised how outraged she felt that her life was ending while there was so much unfinished business for her to sort out. She was astonished who her last thoughts were about. Then the machinery had balled itself around her and ManMan and HV and Cobra, sealing them inside an airtight, skintight shroud of metal and dragging them deep into the bowels of the metropolis.
She lost track of time and maybe lost consciousness. She was vaguely aware of HV trying his tactile telekinesis on the circuitry roll that confined them. She felt her weight shift so that she was sometimes upright, sometimes inverted, spun like a gyroscope. The metal was pressing in on her ribs and belly, squeezing the last breath out of her. It was a terrible, claustrophobic way to die.
Then the bubble of machinery burst, spilling Ziles and her companions onto the wire-mesh floor of one of the deepest level maintenance bays.
“That was a wild ride,” Cobra noted, rolling out of the wreckage and to her feet with a single lithe motion. HV rose more cautiously. ManMan was still out after being rendered unconscious ton prevent his obedience chip from turning him against his companions. Knifey lay on the floor beside him.
“What exactly happened?” the sentient blade asked.
“We were surrounded by animated technology and transported through the infrastructure of the undercity to this place,” Ziles surmised, trying to keep her voice calm.
“Yes,” agreed Technovore, “That would be me.”
“Technovore!” Hunter Victorious recognized the science villain from Premiere’s briefing. “Class 10 matter manipulator and machine telepath specializing in the infiltration and possession of technology. A sentient technical waveform.”
“Well that’s the short boring version,” the science villain admitted. He hung in a cat’s cradle of cables and conduits, attuned to the pulse of the undercity, a part of the very machinery around them. “But it was me who brought you here, yes.”
“Why?” Ziles demanded. “What are you planning?”
The Dark Knight glided from the gloom. “That would be because of me.”
“DK!” Ziles gasped. “You’re not dead!”
The Dark Knight backed off as she moved to hug him. “No. I’ve been observing our enemy and preparing a counterstrike,” he told them. “Technovore here has kindly agreed to co-operate with me in exchange for my Plutonic computer systems not wiping his program like the triviality he is.”
“Nice,” approved Cobra. “What’s next?”
DK gestured to the Technovore. “Next? Right now he’s going to disable that obedience chip in ManMan’s brain. And then we’re going to take down Technopolis’ defense force screens so Drury and his boys can pay a little visit.”
___________________________________
In the Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital, the Reverend Mac Fleetwood and Lady Valeria of Carfax were coordinating a massive volunteer effort to deal with the casualties of war that were still coming in. Commissioner Don Graham limped in leaning heavily on a stick to get a status report.
“Over there, yes,” Fleetwood called amongst the chaos. “Tear up those sheets to make more bandages… Blood donors? Yes, down the corridor, beside the hospital shop… There’s a list of unidentified patients over by reception. If you recognize a loved one tell us so… The dead are laid out in the car park, I’m afraid. Only room for the living here…”
“How long will this go on?” Valeria despaired. “How long can we keep this up?”
Fleetwood rubbed his aching forehead. “As long as we have to. This is the last resort, Valeria. Even without medical supplies and a full staff we have to hold the line here.”
“Damn straight, Mac,” the Commissioner told his old friend. “It’s getting bad out there. Initial word is that maybe half the countries of the world have capitulated to the Red Watchman by his midnight deadline. And now word’s in from some refugees from Technopolis itself that tomorrow night’s going to be the Watchman’s big push.”
“Here?” Fleetwood shuddered. “We can’t withstand another siege.”
“The force screen generator that we used last time is slag,” Valeria protested. “And so many of our heroes are lost or…” She fell silent, thinking of Fin Fang Foom laid still and silent in the physiotherapy gymnasium, of Goldeneyed and Frog-Man and Falcon and Amazing Guy, all hovering on the very brink of oblivion.
“We do our best,” Graham told them. The old man who had hung in chains for three days defying Count Armageddon wasn’t about to surrender now. “The tree of liberty sometimes needs nurturing in blood, or whatever the saying is. If we go down, we go down fighting.”
There was a whisper of sound and a soft pastel rainbow light as Visionary, Yo, Cheryl, and the JBH dimension-slid into the foyer.
“And after a good pizza,” agreed Vizh.
“We are to be being back!” cried Yo, jumping up and down in excitement. “And we are to be bringing cute cellular healing regenerator!”
Cheryl gestured to the unit that the JBH had bled to recover. “This thing’s charge won’t last more than another twelve hours. Who do we hook it up to? Where’s Foom?”
“And just like that we’re back in the game,” said Commissioner Graham.
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Message Thread
- Premiere #35: Forgotten Corners 2 - More loose ends knot themselves together into a noose, courtesy of... the Hooded Hood. - 12:59 on October 6, 2002
- I rock. - (nt) Nats is damn good lookin', too - 19:39 on October 7, 2002
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