Premiere #46: The Last Watch


Post By

The Hooded Hood presents the long awaited showdown between the last science hero and the last science villain - to the finish
Wed Jul 09, 2003 at 01:28:33 pm EST
[ Reply ] [ New ] [ Tales of the Parodyverse ]



Premiere #46: The Last Watch

Assak Malevi, the Red Watchman waited in the center of the White Room, the corpse of Premiere’s lover at his feet. Shackled about the walls were the captured and neutralized champions of this planet, many of them barely alive. The Watchman liked the patterns their blood made on the sterile white floor of the Technopolis control room. The surviving members of the Science Council cringed in corners.
Premiere came in at full speed, ripping through reinforced plasteel walls like newspaper, burning willpower and lifeforce because nothing else would keep him going. He was ragged and scarred, his struggles to get this far leaving him bleeding and exhausted.
The Red Watchman reached out a hand that commanded every electromagnetic force within Technopolis and discharged the whole power of the city in a radiant bolt that burned through the last science hero’s chest and smacked him backwards like a fly.
Victor Brooke realized that he no longer had a heart. There was literally a hole through his body, his vital organs shredded by the blast.
Then he saw Xanadelle, her neck twisted obscenely so she was looking over her shoulder, her beautiful face smashed like a fallen porcelain doll, and he knew his heart could still be broken.
The Red Watchman laughed and pressed out both his hands. The electrical spray would have powered North America over the winter holidays but it all arced and earthed through Premiere. Then Malevi stabbed his hands hatefully and another burst of plasma seared across the hero’s face, burning away skin and eyes and hair.
“So much for level eight senses,” the Watchman giggled. “The right leg goes next, I think.”
Premiere hammered the ground, shattering the floor and toppling Assak Malevi from his feet. In the moment it took for the archvillain to remember he could levitate his enemy was upon him, fists that could shatter battleships hammering down at his face and chest. The Watchman gasped as he struggled to divert away the massive kinetic energies the science hero could command.
“That won’t work, Victor,” Malevi smirked. “I’ve been practicing, and now I have the whole power of Technopolis to draw upon. You’re powerful, but I know your limits. I know them better than you do.”
It was true. The Red Watchman had lined the room with innocents, hostages so Premiere couldn’t loose his thermal spray, couldn’t unleash his full wrath; not without murdering the heroes and making the Watchman’s victory complete.
“I’m not fighting alone though,” shouted back Premiere. “All it takes is one of my allies to get to the Operations Post next door and shut down the computer links and you’ll be commanding a city robbed of power and control functions.”
The Red Watchman exploded a miniature sun inside Brooke’s skull. “You’ve clearly not been paying attention, old friend. I have all your heroes here. I’m collecting the set. There are a few grubbing around outside the city force screens but they can’t get though and they’re being wiped out one by one. And the ones here who aren’t dying or wishing they had are bound by power neutralizer shackles that turn their own powers against them.”
Premiere reached out and got his hands round Malevi’s throat. He couldn’t force his fingers to close. It was getting harder to think, harder to believe. “That’s where you went wrong then,” he hissed. “This world knows what we’ve forgotten. You don’t need powers to be a hero. Some of the people you chained up using their own powers don’t have any.”
Across the room, ducking to avoid the debris, Visionary had an oh-crap-he-means-me moment, threw his shackles to the ground, and dived on Dr Zalas. “I know twenty-one ways to cripple you with a matchbox,” he assured the leader of the Science Council. “Get that door open.”
Assak Malevi turned to annihilate him, but Premiere still had the Watchman held. Instead, the science hero propelled the archvillain upwards, through the room, through all the rooms above, out through the top of the Command and Control Building into the skies above the city.
Technopolis was burning. The riots were out of hand. Half the maintenance systems were down. Some of the science police were still command-chip controlled and others were fighting them. Civilization was falling to anarchy.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” breathed the Red Watchman.
Those mocking words stirred the last flames of anger in Premiere. All the friends lost, the horrors done, the betrayals and the deceits, the sheer waste of life and potential and the naked evil behind it burned across his mind and sparked his will as never before. He dug his fingers in and ripped out the Red Watchman’s throat because perhaps without a windpipe Malevi would shut up for a minute.
Even as Victor Brooke was using his powers to maintain himself past all physical biological limits so now Assak Malevi turned his power on himself. Lights died across the city as more and more of its power diverted into the Red Watchman. The force field dome that kept the attackers from the city rippled and weakened.
From outside the barrier came the discordant sound of a guitar being punished, amplified through the most powerful speaker system on the planet. A swarm of Technopolitian warships, the only aircraft still aloft, were batted from the skies.
A ragged cheer came from the seething city streets.
“Hear that? The sound of freedom,” Premiere told the Watchman.
“The last gasp of fools,” the throatless Malevi answered, hurling the reply straight into his enemy’s head. “You love this city? Now it dies.”
Too late Premiere remembered that all brain function is electromagnetic activity.
But then there was a spray of sparks from the circle of force screen generators across the city. All the lights across Technopolis went out, even those with independent batteries since the Watchman was sucking at them.
For an instant Premiere thought that the science archvillain had won, had killed his city. Then he realized that the force screens and automatic defenses were down. He could perceive Visionary in the control center, standing over the unconscious Security Chief Vaagen, a worried expression on his face as if wondering if he’d have to pay for the damage he had caused.
Dr Zalas was pulling a hidden weapon to liquidate him.
Freed from his energy draining shackles, Phase Shift passed through the Science Councilor and came out the other side bringing Zalas’ circulatory system with him.
“It doesn’t matter,” the Red Watchman laughed. “I can still kill them all. I command it all now. I can do anything.” And he twitched to slay every living thing in a thousand mile radius.
Premiere twisted Malevi’s neck just as the Red Watchman had done Xanadelle’s. Unstoppably strong fingers crushed the villain’s skull with precision accuracy, pinpoint thermal lances cauterizing the centers that controlled his powers. With breathtaking speed Victor Brooke shattered each and every bone in Malevi’s body. He burned out eyes and ears and tongue.
And then Premiere stopped.
He floated wearily over the burning city, a burned, ragged carcass powered only by his own will.. The fighting still went on, although everybody operating on a control chip had just folded like a puppet, not only here but across the planet.
Assak Malevi’s bloody body hung in the science hero’s hands. He was still alive.
“Did you really think I was as stupid as all that?” Premiere asked his archenemy, knowing that even now the Red Watchman could somehow hear him. “Did you really think I’d kill you so your failsafes would go off? Some transnuclear devices planted, maybe, or a nasty metavirus? Did you think I’d release you so you could hop to whatever clone you’ve undoubtedly got prepared for yourself? Oh no.”
The last science hero held Malevi’s broken skull up to his burned lips to be sure the Watchman heard this. “Oh no. You’re going to live forever. You know we have the technology to do it. You’re going to live, powerless and impotent in that useless, shattered body, in the silence and the darkness, alone with your madness, alone with your guilt, year after year, century after century, for as long as our machines can keep you alive. All of this started with me becoming a murderer. It stops when I don’t kill you.”
The last science hero laughed bitterly. “Congratulations, ‘old friend’. You’re going to outlive me after all.”

Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2003 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2003 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved.



chillwater.plus.com (212.159.106.10)
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)
[ Reply ] [ New ] [ Tales of the Parodyverse ]
Follow-Ups:

Echo™ v1.1 © 2003 Powermad Software
Copyright © 2003 by Mangacool Adventure