Tales of the Parodyverse

Balefire #4: Reports of my Demise were Greatly Exaggerated


Post By

Balefire
Sun Oct 19, 2003 at 07:55:33 pm EDT
[ Reply ] [ New ] [ Tales of the Parodyverse ]



Balefire #4
Moving Up in the World,
Politically and with Bunnies

“Good afternoon, and welcome to the Channel Threeve afternoon news. I’m Jim Chinling and I’ll be replacing Rachel Lane, who has moved to Brazil to become a missionary.

“In this afternoon’s afternoon news in the afternoon, we’ll have live coverage of former GothamMetropolis mayor spiffy’s press conference, the Scandinavian Waffle Festival, and the weather with Greg Taylor.

“Our first story of the afternoon is Mayor spiffy’s press conference, where he will announce his successor. Already approval ratings for the new mayor have risen to 56% from the former mayor’s 13% approval rating. Let’s take a look at the event as it unfolds.”

***

“This thing on? Good then. Well hello everyone. My name is Jeremiah Frost. I also go by the name Balefire, though chances are you don’t know much about that. You see, I had something of a spat with the Lair Legion a while back… Well you don’t really care about that.

“Moving on, I’m really quite sorry, but former Mayor Hopkins couldn’t make it to our little get-together. Despite this, he wishes you all well and he’s also asked me to host this little talk with you.

“After some careful thought and deliberation by all sides involved, it’s become clear that some changes are going to be occurring around here. First of all, the Canadian prime minister has graciously agreed to the former mayor’s petitions for GothamMetropolis York to become part of that great province of Ontario. Additionally, as he had announced, the mayor has decided to step down from his position, leaving me to serve as acting mayor, or whatever you Canadians call them nowadays.

“You’re probably asking yourself, what does this all means for me? Well if you’ll look to my left, you’ll see your standard neural amplification harness, as operated by Canadian Nightmare. With it, he should be able to simultaneously control every person within the city limits. By now, or perhaps in a few moments, most of the city’s residents and their actions will be directed for them. This should eliminate any measure of free will and hopefully lower crime rates at least 40 percent.

“Well that’s about all I really have to say for now. Oh, and I should probably also mention that as I’ve been speaking, a high grade shielding grid has been activated around the city. No one in the city should really want, or for that matter be able to leave. Additionally each attempt to enter from outside the city will result in the instantaneous death of two-thousand randomly chosen citizens. As a show of my sincerity, I’ve already killed off every person attending this press-conference. If you would Quake, pan the camera around and let everyone see what I’m speaking of.

”Other than that I suppose I’ve covered everything. I wish you all a pleasant day.”

”Did you get all that?” Balefire asked, stepping down from the dais.

”Yeah we got it all,” Grrl responded. “It’s a good thing too. The bodies were starting to smell.”

“Indeed. Quake, take care of them when you have a chance. Oh, but before you do that, head up to my office and the fetch blue folder from off my desk,” Balefire said. “Grrl, I have a job for you and Florist. Apparently Xander and the Dark Knight were recorded entering the city just before the energy barrier was full activated. Hunt them down and eliminate them.”

”The rest of you are free to womanize, drink, and pillage to your hearts’ content.” This comment caused a short period of revelry and rejoicing by many until it was broken up by disheartened remarks from the rest of his team.

“Hey, why do I have to go?” the Florist whined, at the exact same moment as Grrl chimed in with a nice little, “Why the hell do I always get friggin’ stuck with him?”

Before Balefire could respond with a witty remark to quiet his insolent minions, the explosion which came from the twelfth story corner office of city hall managed to perform the job quite nicely for him. “The hell! That was my office. The explosion would have most likely killed me. Grrl, Florist, you know your orders. The rest of you, figure out who did that and help them to enjoy a long and painful death.”

A bulky form fell from the now open wall and landed on a car below. Balefire made his way towards the miniature crater. “That should be Quake. And he better have my blue folder. It was my favorite one, dammit.”

***

Samuel shook his head as the communiqués ended. He had been hoping to retire into the shadows of villainous servitude, but secretly he knew that it was only a matter of time until his master needed a generic, relatively pointless minion. At least he didn’t die nearly as much as the extras did in Star Trek.

But all that was beside the point. Everything was almost in place for the first stages.

“Prepare the class beta battle-droids. And prepare to extend the energy shielding,” Samuel announced through the communication array in his command chair.

Slouching back, Samuel realized it would be quite a while until he got a chance to fade back into obscurity.

***

“Are you sure this is all you have to do?” Fin Fang Foom asked Nats who was at the moment engrossed in the contents of his computer screen.

“Of course,” Nats replied. “Al B. Harper is busy fixing up something to get us through the barrier undetected and no one else can really do anything until he finishes it. Plus, I’m finally going to beat my friend Eriflab at Minesweeper Flags…. wait a minute… damn! How’d he come back from that? I had a 22 mine lead on him and I only needed one more to win!”

“And how coincidental his name is. Did you ever notice that its Balefire spelled backwards?”

Meanwhile, at an office in GothamMetropolis York, Canada…

“Balefire, we think we’ve figured out what Xand-”

“Damn, you’ve broken my concentration. Wait a moment Florist. Hmm… well, yes… alright… Hah! Take that FlyingDeliveryBoy296! That would be four hundred thirty-seven consecutive wins. Ahem. You were saying?”

“Oh yeah, Grrl and I found Xander. It was little too easy though.”

“How so?” Balefire asked.

“Apparently, he was standing in the middle of a busy street complaining about a rash on his crotch. When we got there we took him out easily. Grrl left to find Dark Knight and pick up where she left off last time. I figured it was better to leave them alone, so I brought Xander back here.”

“Hmm, it’s obvious that he has at least some idea of what I’m planning. It doesn’t really matter though,” Balefire mused. “I assume that you’ve placed him into one of the temporary holding cells. Perhaps I’ll see why he’s had himself captured before transferring him to the castle holding cells.”

“One last thing Florist, see to it that immigration papers are drawn up for Xander. We’ll see if he’s ready to sign them, or if he’ll require some persuasion.”

As Florist left, Balefire prepared to return to the computer and gloat over his latest victory.

***

“We can’t hold it back much longer!” Grrl shouted. In a surprising turn of events, Balefire’s yet nameless team of villains found themselves defending GothamMetropolis from seemingly inevitable destruction. “Birthday Bandit, you’re pretty useless. Sound the general alarm and get everybody here.”

Grrl reached down and activated the portable communicator on her waist. “Balefire, we’ve got a problem down here.”

“What would it be this time?” The miniature hologram of the flame-wielding fiend asked Grrl, who seemed to have taken charge over his strike-force.

“It’s kinda about your rabbit, Paulo. Turbo Treesloth sorta took him down to your office, and well… You remember how it sorta blew up?”

“You mean Paulo’s… dead?”

“No he’s alright, sorta.” Grrl responded. Then to explain her message more thoroughly, the noise that a 10 story high, nigh-indestructible, radioactive rabbit makes when it gets really mad exploded through the comm-link.


***

Suddenly, Jean-Pierre rounded a corner of the city waving a loaf of bread above his head, giant rabbit chasing him down. Things weren’t going too well for the man with the powers of an ordinary Frenchman as he narrowly avoided being crushed to death.

“Here Paulo, down zis way!” the Frenchman yelled, launching the better part of his arsenal of French items at the rabbit.

As he attempted to keep the rabbit busy, Turbo Treesloth flew around and launched another volley of missiles which Paulo shrugged off and a somewhat ragged Quake attempted to put the giant fuzz ball down with a series of sonic blasts.

Looking somewhat annoyed, Paulo took a swipe at Turbo Treesloth who dodged the claw and replied with another missile flight. “Ha, you miss-” He managed to get out before he was hit with the twin energy eye-beams.

“This isn’t fair! That was so my power first,” Quake complained as he continued his barrage. “And since when do giant radioactive rabbits get energy eye-beams?”

Canadian Nightmare moved in and landed a punch fueled by the combined strength of all Canadians. It should be said that the combined strength of every Canadian is considerably less than that of a 10 story high radioactive bunny, as Canadian Nightmare discovered after finding himself smashed through two levels of sub-sewers.

Jack knife hurled concussion-butter-knives at the relentless rabbit, cursing under his breath for leaving his giant-rabbit-stunning-knives back at the castle. The knives, like everything else, were ineffective, though they did provide Paulo with the location of another interesting person to crush.
Moments later, Balefire arrived on the scene with the Florist in tow. “This has gone on long enough,” the Romanian super-villain muttered to himself. “Florist.”

On his prompt the Florist moved forward. Throwing a handful of genetically altered seedlings at the rampaging rabbit. He was forced to jump back to avoid having his head ripped off, but by that time, the seeds had sprouted into quick growing vines which quickly entangled themselves around Paulo.

Balefire gestured for the rest of his team to back off, of whom only Quake, Grrl, and Birthday Bandit remained conscious. It was time to see if he could negotiate with his temporarily detained pet.

***

“Well this isn’t good,” Al B. Harper said to himself as he examined one the diagnostic panels.

“What is it?” Fin Fang Foom asked the Lair Legion’s scientific advisor. “Can’t you get through the energy barrier?”

“No it isn’t that. I’ve actually got something together that should you walk right through it. There’s some sort of electromagnetic disturbance-field located above the city. It’s streamlining visible light around the area.”

“So, there’s something that’s really big and invisible hovering over GothamMetropolis York?” Nats asked.

“Basically, yes,” Al B. replied fiddling with some rather interesting diagnostic equipment. “Here, let’s see if I can find out what’s behind there…”

Now, a group of great philosophers once got to wondering, what Nats would say if he found out that a giant castle, and a good deal of the surrounding Romanian real-estate had suddenly relocated themselves above GothamMetropolis? If they had been paying real close attention, the next few moments would set the record straight.

“Oh, crap.”

***

That evening, Balefire found himself sitting in his castle with his pet rabbit Paulo, at a somewhat more manageable size, in a cage next to him. He was enjoying a pleasant fire, watching the A&E Biography on Satan.

Clearly, the fallen angel had nothing on him. Did he ever hold an entire city mindless and obedient to his every whim? Did the devil have a loyal strike force of super villains at his command? Probably not, but untold hordes of demons sorta outranked that. Balefire was fairly confident, though, that the devil didn’t have a giant radioactive bunny that could shoot energy eyebeams anywhere in his arsenal.

All in all, it had been a good day. His castle was in position; ready for the next stages of his plans for world domination, and it would be a while until the heroes would find a way to reach him without causing the deaths of several million people.

Life was pleasant.


So long as I ever get around to writing it: Stuff happens! There’ll be people, and things… But in a slightly more detailed way of saying it: Where exactly is DK and what is he doing? Why did Xander get himself captured? Will Balefire be having guests, and because somebody might care, what’s going on with spiffy? Find out at least one of these things next issue!




du16109.haz.ptd.net (204.186.16.109)
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.0.3705)
[ Reply ] [ New ] [ Tales of the Parodyverse ]
Follow-Ups:

Echo™ v1.6 © 2003 Powermad Software
Copyright © 2003 by Mangacool Adventure