Posted by CrazySugarFreakBoy! on June 28, 2001 at 12:21:30:
Saving Gwen Stacy, Part One: An
Untold Tales of the Lair Legion World Tour Interlude
(Continuity note: This dialogue takes place during Untold
Tales of the Lair Legion World Tour #79: The Revenge of the Return of the
Creature from the Land That Time Never Forgave)
“Mara.”
“Sydney.”
“Wait. You two know each other?”
“Mm. Yes, Ms. Hastings, I think you
could safely say that Ms. St. Sylvain has been a thorn in my side for quite some
time now. Wouldn’t you agree, Sydney?”
“Well, I would certainly hope so,
darling. Likewise, Meg, it’s never been the world’s most well-kept secret that
Mara Musashi, President and CEO of Extensive Enterprises, is also the Hentai
Hierophant, leader of the Thunder Monkey-Worshipping Brotherhood of Ass-Raping
Ninjas’ Student Loan Collection Agency. Even when she was still a little errand
girl for Molestro the Mirthless, Ms. Musashi managed to set standards of
depravity and callous indifference towards human life that went well above and
beyond even those of her already decadent Ass-Raping Ninja allies. Isn’t that
right, Mara?”
“Why, Sydney, I’m quite flattered that you think so highly of
me – even though you’ve never been able to prove that Mara Musashi and the
Hentai Hierophant are actually the same person. But then, considering the
extended period of indentured servitude that your disloyal whore of a
grandmother endured under the tender ministrations of the Ass-Raping Ninjas, I
suppose I should expect no less from you.”
“Ookiosewada ama! Achike
sorede kusu o taberu na! Both the Japanese and American governments granted
Madame Butterfly full pardons for the actions that she committed during World
War II and the Cold War, because the aid that she selflessly offered to the
CrazySugarBlast-OffLad! and the AtomicSci-FiSecretAgent! allowed them each to
save the world, several times over. The only people she betrayed were yours, and
for that, she’s as much a hero as any one of us could ever hope to be.”
“My,
my, my ... what a filthy little gutter mouth you’ve picked up in your old age,
Sydney-chan. I daresay some of the things you’d said just now would have
made even Ms. Hastings blush, if you’d spoken the same words in English,
ne? It’s inspiring to see you still clinging stubbornly to your insolent
sense of defiance, even though being bound in those hard, heavy, cold chains of
Inquisition Iron must be unbearably agonizing for you by now. Make no mistake,
though - your will WILL be broken, eventually, and then, you shall obediently
see to all of my most ... intimate needs, just as shame-facedly as your slut of
a grandmother catered to the urges of Molestro the Mirthless.”
“I’ll die
before I ever do anything to help you, you chikuoso.”
“Is that so?
Hmh. As it turns out, my little Fashion Fairy, your death might well provide us
with exactly the sort of help that we require. After all, I can’t help but
imagine that your untimely demise would do a great deal to demoralize the
Ass-Raping Ninjas’ other most hated adversary, the
OtakuSenshiEcchiBishounen!”
“Huh? The whowhatnow?”
“Your son, Ms.
Hastings. Dreamcatcher Kokopelli Foxglove, the ‘CrazySugarFreakBoy!’, as he is
known in America.”
“Okay, so, then why did you call him ... all of that
other stuff, that I ain’t even gonna attempt to pronounce?”
“The
OtakuSenshiEcchiBishounen! is the name by which Dream is known by in
Japan, Meg. He’s quite popular over here, actually.”
“Oh, yeah? Huh. Learn
something new every day. And that whole big Japanese whatchamacallit name of his
means WHAT exactly in English, again?”
“Well, otaku literally
translates to ‘house’ in Japanese, but in conversational form, it can also refer
to someone with a heavy, perhaps even near-religious interest in something. In
the Japanese culture, it can be employed in a derogatory fashion, to identify
someone as a fanatical hobbyist with no real social or personal life outside of
the object of his or her obsession, I suppose in much the same manner as the
terms ‘fanboy’ or ‘nerd’ are applied in Western culture. However, I should
hasten to point out that many Western anime and manga fans proudly
refer to themselves as otaku, to distinguish themselves as more
knowledgeable or ‘hard core’ fans of Japanese anime and manga.
Senshi can convey several different meanings as well, including those of
‘soldier’, ‘warrior’, or ‘combatant’, and is perhaps the closest literal
translation of the Western implications of the term ‘superhero’ - which refers
more to one’s status as a costumed crime-fighter than to any assumptions
regarding the degree of his or her innate heroism or honor - that you’re likely
to find in the Japanese language. As for ecchi, it’s the literal
pronunciation of the letter ‘H’ in the Japanese language, for hentai,
which means ... erm, well, ‘pervert’, although ecchi certainly implies a
much milder meaning of that particular term than hentai does. And
bishounen, translated literally, is a combination of the Japanese words
bi, meaning ‘beautiful’, and shounen, meaning ‘boy’, and in the
context of anime or manga, the term typically refers to a
physically attractive young man whose strong, masculine interests are belied by
a soft, feminine appearance.”
“Uh huh. So, Cliff’s Notes version - you’re
telling me that, in Japan, my baby is known as ‘the comic book-collecting
crime-fighter and mildly perverted but beautiful boy’?”
“Um ... yes?”
“Heh. Okay, then. I guess I can get along with that.”
“Um, hello?
Fearsome supervillain over here, plotting blood-curdlingly evil schemes – you
know, the same archenemy who’s already locked the one of you up in painfully
anti-magical manacles made of Inquisition Iron, and has thrown the other one
into the firm, sweaty grip of her Ass-Raping Ninja henchmen? Could the two of
you BE any more f*cking rude?”
“Oh, how impolite of me! I humbly apologize
for not finding you frightening enough to pay attention to, Mara, although I
would hasten to point out that, if your intended victims become distracted
enough during your attempts at intimidating them that they can comfortably
digress into extended dissertations on such mentally demanding topics as
Japanese-to-English linguistic translations, then perhaps you might want to take
it as a sign that the underworld credibility of the Ass-Raping Ninjas has not
improved appreciably since you usurped your equally ineffective sinister
Oriental stereotype of a former sensei, darling.”
“Oh, damn. Now, I’ll
admit, I may not be nearly as skilled at the witty repartee of the more
diplomatic verbal interactions of high society as Sydney here clearly is, but
even I know enough about the subtle nuances of genteel communication to
recognize that you done got your scrawny little chicken ass punked the f*ck out,
bitch.”
“That’s it. Go ahead and laugh now, you slattern hags. The only
reason that I’ve not yet slain the disrespectful gaijin mother of the
OtakuSenshiEcchiBishounen! is so that she may taste the despair of
outliving her only son, before she meets an even more gruesome fate than that
which I have in store for her irritating idiot of an offspring. But no such
prerequisite of vengeance prevents me from dispatching YOU once you’ve fulfilled
your obligations to me, my decadent Western Fashion Fairy.”
“Now you open up
your goddamned ears and listen to ME, Miss Thang. You harm even a single HAIR on
my sweet little baby boy’s head – you so much as GLANCE at him funny - and I
will END your miserable existence. They won’t even have a f*cking STAIN left
behind to remember your worthless ass by.”
“Ah, my dear Ms. Hastings, you
misunderstand my intentions - which, quite frankly, fails to surprise me, given
the modest capacity of your limited intellect to comprehend the broader plots
that are a hallmark of any criminal mastermind truly deserving of the title. *I*
will not even be laying the merest of feather-light, fingertip touches upon your
beloved child. Instead, it is he himself whom I expect shall eagerly volunteer
to charge ahead, both headlong and headstrong, into the gaping maw of the
patently obvious trap that I have planned for him. After I have absconded with
our esteemed mutual acquaintance, Ms. St. Sylvain, I shall do him the proper
courtesy of leaving behind a trail of breadcrumbs in my wake, just to make it
that much easier for him to find me, out of consideration for his infamously
short attention span. Indeed, key among those clues that will wind up leading
the OtakuSenshiEcchiBishounen! to his certain doom is YOU, since my only
other motive for sparing your unworthy soul from a damnation more final than
death is my expectation that you’ll do me the favor of relaying my comments to
him. Granted, if you choose not to conceal the truth from him, you would be as
guilty of killing him as any of my henchmen ... but then again, the alternative
would be to risk sacrificing the life of your newfound friend, the simpering
Miss Sydney-chan, out of some selfish, misguided maternal impulse to
safeguard the welfare of your young man. *Sigh* Decisions, decisions,
ne?”
“Meg ... Meg, you don’t have to –”
“Uh-uh. Don’t even
suggest it, Syd. Alright. Fine, then. I’m listening, you sick skank, so say what
you have to say.”
“Ah. How honorable of you. I humbly commend your course of
action. Please, if you would be so kind as to pass on the following message, to
the meddling, stupid bastard that you shall forever bear the shame of having
spawned? Ask him to recall when last he might have happened to share a
correspondence, with one of his friends or other family members, back in his
native city of Seattle. After all, by this point in his jaunt across the globe,
it’s certainly been a while since he’s been back stateside, and I myself have
often noticed that, even in one’s own home town, locating a loved one can be
like trying to find a needle in a haystack.”
With that, Mara Musashi, the
Hentai Hierophant, and her henchmen, the Thunder Monkey-Worshipping Brotherhood
of Ass-Raping Ninjas’ Student Loan Collection Agency, were gone.
With them
went Sydney St. Sylvain, the Fashion Fairy.
And of the scant handful of
survivors that now remained, in the wake of all that had happened, only Meggan
Foxxx, mother of CrazySugarFreakBoy!, was left in a fit enough state to shoulder
the responsibility of telling the tale.
To be continued in Saving Gwen Stacy, Part Two ...