Tales of the Parodyverse

Third Degree


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The Hooded Hood contributes to New Villain Week
Tue Jul 08, 2003 at 06:25:57 pm EST
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The Confiscator had used many names over the years, but right now he was travelling as an Australian national called Dennis LePaul. The real LePaul wasn't going to object ever again. He wouldn't need his ID, or his rather nice matching calfskin luggage, and even at sixty-one years old the Confiscator looked better in his white safari suit than the software salesman ever had.
It felt good to be back. It felt good to be taking a job again. The Confiscator disembarked from the light aircraft with a confidence and vigour he hadn't felt sine that encounter with the Dark Knight over a year ago. When you assassinated a hero they were supposed to stay dead.
The island was beautiful, the sort of tropical paradise where one expected to see a midget shouting about the plane's arrival. Isla Lamora was no more than a mile long, a tiny dot in the Pacific chain. It's whole economy was based around the tourists at its single exclusive hotel and casino, which meant that if one was rich enough to come here one could do whatever one liked.
And this whole island had been hired by one man, one powerful man, for his recruiting exercise. The Confiscator was headed for a job interview. He didn't expect to fail.
“Hey, buddy!”
The Confiscator turned round slowly, his shoulders stiffening to be addressed in such a manner. He turned with the demeanour of a man who knew seventy-four ways of killing whoever was speaking without even putting down his suitcases.
“Are you the Confiscator?”
The speaker was a youth in ragged jeans and a black T-shirt with the words “Fuck You” blazoned across it. He had a set of earphones around his neck and a disrespectful smirk on his face.
“Yes.” The Confiscator wondered if this was a particularly ill-mannered hotel functionary. Surely not. The island was informal – there was no beach clothing code, he’d been delighted to hear – but this was too much.
“Great,” the young man grinned. “Die then, you old bastard.” Then he snapped his fingers and the Confiscator burst into flames.
There was panic and alarm amongst the other passengers who were disembarking from the plane. After all, one of their number had just combusted. The Confiscator was burning merrily, screaming for the brief moment he still had muscles and lungs. Then he was just a pile of charring meat. He would go on burning for three more hours despite any attempts to douse him, until he was nothing but ashes.
The young man wandered over to look closely at the blazing corpse, then lit his cigarette off it. “Looks like there’s a job vacancy opened up here,” he snickered to himself.

***


    The cocktail lounge was hosting some of the most wanted super-villains on the planet. By the bar Anvil Man was trying to get a beer through his armoured helmet, chatting with the over-muscled rampager from a dystopian future that would never happen now, Quake. VelcroVixen was flirting mildly with the Captor, a tanned and fit-looking man in hunting garb, but nothing serious. The Captor wasn’t high enough in the chain of command to really interest Vicki Vee..
    There was a fair turnout of Pacific basin talent, local boys looking to make the big time. One or two of them tried striking up conversations with the big names like Professor Manyarms or Savagetooth, but mostly they kept to themselves, looking for a chance. When the young man in the black t-shirt breezed into the bar and ordered a Pilsner a lot of them watched him carefully, casing the opposition.
    “Excuse me, sir,” one of the waiters ventured. “Are you on the guest list.”
    The interloper caught the man’s arm and held it before his face. The waiter screamed as the words “I AM NOW,” were burned onto his skin.
    “About that Pilsner?” he asked the barman, who hastened to fulfil his request.
    The young man took a long draught, crumpled the can, and tossed it onto the bar. Then he looked around for the best place to sit.
    Alone in the corner, surrounded by a natural comfort zone of at least ten feet, sat a girl woman. At first glance it seemed as though the beautiful girl was wearing green bodypaint beneath a fishnet body stocking. If anyone had dared to get closer to check they’d have found that the mesh effect was a full-body tattoo. Gamona the Assassin’s only clothing were wrist and ankle bangles, a necklace, and an ornate dagger strapped to he forearm.
    The newcomer sauntered over and hopped down onto the sofa next to her. “Hello darling,” he grinned. “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”
    Gamona turned her violet eyes on him. “I aren’t a nice girl,” she answered.
    “Then I won’t take you home to meet mother. I’m Third Degree.”
    “I see. Because of the pyrokinetics, I presume. Did you think of that yourself?”
    Third Degree stopped grinning. “Are you taking the piss?” he demanded. “Because the last bitch that took the piss out of me will be spending the next twenty years of her life having plastic surgery.”
    “Then presumably she didn’t have a psychoreflective energy mesh grafted onto her body capable of shrugging of psionic molecular manipulation, enhanced skeletal and muscular capacity, and speed enough to rip your windpipe from your throat before you blinked,” Gamona suggested. “But by all means feel free to threaten me some more. I was getting bored.”
    “What about your eyes?” hissed Third Degree. “Are your eyes protected as well, greenie?”
    “Actually yes,” replied Gamona. “I think I’m going to have to kill you now.”
    The drama in the corner was interrupted by the doors at the far end of the cocktail lounge opening. An Oriental woman in a pink business suit glided out to speak to the assembly.
    “Good afternoon. You will be pleased to hear that we have concluded our negotiations. The Cartel has officially granted a franchise to run the city and state of Badripoor, and we would like to welcome our newest member. Any or all of you he chooses are free to work for him with our blessings. That is all.”
    The Cartel filed out through the lounge. After Akiko Masamune came the bald Junker Count Wolfgang Fokker of HERPES and the huge floating Humpety-Dumpty biomass that was M.O.D.E.M. and the ascetic form of Justus Screwdriver, the underworld financier.
    Gamona rose as her own principal strode into the room. The vast bulk of the Lynchpin loomed through the assembled villains-for-hire, and the assassin took her place by his side. “Lucky escape, fire boy,” she promised Third Degree.
    “Later, bitch,” the young pyrotechnic promised. “You won’t hear me arrive, but you’ll sure here me coming.”
    “Excuse me a moment, sir,” Gamona murmured to Harry Flask, the Lynchpin of Crime. “I have a small task.”
    Third Degree was ready for her. As she lunged across the bar with frightening speed she blazed forth plasma, melting the very floor beneath her. She somehow balanced on molten fragments and leaped right at her enemy’s throat.
    Third Degree laughed as she passed through his flaming, insubstantial form. “Oh dear. What are you going to do now, bitch?” he demanded as he notched up the heat. Most of the other denizens of the bar retreated from the inferno. Anvil Man finished his beer and watched with interest.
    Gamona fell through to the cellars below. Vats of alcohol started exploding around her.
    “Booze and naked broads. Kind of like Spring Break all over again,” Third Degree called down to her. “And y’know, after my mutate powers developed there wasn’t a girl on the beach would say no to me?”
    Gamona leaped out of the flames without warning, her vibra-knife perfectly calibrated to Third Degree’s psychic pattern. This time her attack hurt, a neat slash that sliced through his flaming torso and sent him screaming backwards.
    Gamona didn’t make a quip. Gamona didn’t waste time with banter. She lunged for the kill.
    A fresh burst of flame hammered into her, pushing her tattoo mesh beyond its limits, blistering her skin, forcing her backwards. She rolled aside, executed a complicated flip manoeuvre, and leaped towards Third Degree once again.
    A green strand of something very alien flicked the knife from her grasp, at the same time as every flame in the room shut down; or rather was absorbed by the man in the board room doorway.
    Then the newest member of the crime cartel strode into the lounge, his handsome bearded face examining the talent present. The new ruler of Badripoor leaned on a silver-handled cane he didn’t need and surveyed to wreckage. “There goes my damage deposit.”
    Third Degree scrambled to his feet. “My flame!” he shouted. “What have you done to my flame?” He realised he was all too solid now and only six feet away from that wrathful, beautiful alien killing machine bred by Dark Thugos for one purpose only.
    “I confiscated it,” Belasco Medici told him. “And speaking of Confiscators, what happened to him?”
    Gamona rose warily but didn’t continue the fight. The commanding presence of the new Lord of Badripoor was enough to give her pause. He exuded self-confidence, a personal power that was almost tangible.
    “I eliminated the opposition,” Third Degree boasted. “The old man never knew what was coming.”
    “He would have been very useful on my payroll,” Medici frowned. “He had rare skills and talents that will be hard to replace.”
    “I can be useful too,” Third Degree argued. “I’m powerful. More powerful than anybody knows. And I’m not afraid to use it.”
    “You’re weak, and immature,” the crimelord warned him. “You don’t understand power, and you don’t know how to use it. You’re an amateur.”
    Flames flickered again around Third Degree as his ire rose. “Screw you, man! I don’t need this crap! Maybe I’ll whack you too, and take your little city for my own.”
    The anger seemed to flick on in Belasco Medici as if a switch had been flipped. “Pissant!” he snarled, his eyes blazing. “I was running nations when you were peeing in your diapers.” Count Armageddon opened his palms and streamers of lurid green light snaked out to burn into the youth.
    Third Degree screamed.
    Everybody who was still in the bar watched in horror as Medici sucked the life out of the mutate. He did it slowly, not because he had to but because he could. His writhing strands of kaos-energy picked at his victims soul, burning away anything that was moral or good.
    Then Armageddon let the young man drop to the ground. Amazingly, Third Degree wasn’t dead.
    “You’re hired,” the crimelord told the unconscious villain. “When you wake up you’ll understand about power. And evil. And how to use them. You’ll be fit for my team.” He looked over at Gamona the Assassin, “Beware him then.”
    The Count Armageddon turned to the other candidates awaiting recruitment to his private army. “So… who’s next?”

To be continued in Untold Tales #118

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.


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