Tales of the Parodyverse

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killer shrike
Mon Nov 21, 2005 at 12:54:11 am EST
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The Adventures of Alcheman #22
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The Adventures of Alcheman #22


“Civil Disobedience, Uncivil Discourse”



The Lavender Room of the Birdwell Building Convention Center was a bit too flashy for the tastes of Cyrus Honig: purple was, after all, one of the four colors in the Palette of Paranormal Pernicious Behavior (a term coined by Honig in his most recent paper “The Clothes Destroy the Man: How Supercostumes Discombobulate the Id/Superego Causality in their Owners”). He would have to talk to Mitzie about inspecting likely meeting sites for the appropriate décor.

Cyrus had hung a Printshopped Banner welcoming the COPE Clients in the front of the room. There were two sets of tables bearing refreshments (Hydrax Cookies and Redberry Chill Ade) and the paperwork necessary for his agency’s patients to approve the transfer of their private case files to the Office of Paranormal Security. It was the first step for these men and women towards complying with the Metahuman Control Act, which may not be law yet, but Cyrus wanted his clients to be ready when it was.

“Mrs. House, how are you?” he smiled warmly at the crooked old woman, “How’s Mr. House?”

“Still trying to touch my Galatea Spot and trigger my transformation,” she spat, “He’s a persistent bastard.”

“Well, Mr. House is part of ‘The Greatest Generation,’” Cyrus leaned forward and whispered, “It’s a sign of your convictions that you’re unwilling to surrender to your husband’s urges.”

“My husband’s. Right,” Amelia House, mother to five and grandmother to seventeen steered her walker towards her seat.

“OK, people,” Cyrus clapped his hands to get their attention, “The press is going to be escorted in. Expect some tough questions about our support for SR 1066. But I know you can handle them: you’ve all been through so much already,” the man’s eyes misted over, “I know I try to avoid the expression, but you are all my heroes.”

Cyrus pointed to Mitzie, who swung open the mauve doors to those waiting outside.

Alcheman strode purposefully into the meeting with several reporters trailing him. He went to the front of the room and glared at Honig. Then he turned to the audience.

“Please,” he beseeched, “You mustn’t do this.”

*****


“Some of you may have heard of me. My name is Alcheman. I have the power to mimic the properties of various elements and compounds because of the tattoos on my arms. Unlike many of you, I chose to receive my powers. I wasn’t the victim of a lightning strike or a fall into a vat of chemicals. That may make it appear what I’m about to say is patronizing, or at the very least ignorant. But it would be wrong of you to think that.”

“Mr. Alcheman, we have an agenda we need to follow-” Cyrus interrupted.

“Shut up,” Michael snapped. He pointed to Honig, “This man is not your friend. He is not trying to help you. He’s trying to, to, infantilize you. Make you less than you are. Why? Well, I have my theories. But what we must concern ourselves with at this moment is how to stop him and his organization.”

An lumpy, green-hued figure of indeterminable sexuality objected, “Hey! COPE’s been a big help for me! You know how tough it is to find a job and a home after you’ve been bit by a radioactive sea cucumber?”

“No, I admit I don’t. And I’m sure COPE has helped you establish a “normal” life. But you’re not normal.”

Cyrus nearly objected again, but refrained when he realized where Alcheman was going with his tirade. It would be a mistake to interfere now; not when the man was in the process of destroying himself.

“You’re not normal,” Alcheman repeated, “You people are super. And the Parodyverse needs all the supers it can get. You are the ones who know the magic words. You’re the strange visitors to an even stranger world. And it’s wrong for you to live a life that’s merely ordinary.”

“Alcheman! Bernice Tessmacher from The Watchmen,” a young woman bulled her way through the throng of reporters and waved a mini tape recorder in the hero’s face, “Are you saying that if a metahuman doesn’t put on tights and jump around the city like a hyperactive child she’s wasting her life?”

“No, Miss Tessmacher. I… it’s like my grandfather used to say: ‘Never hide your light under a bushel.’ These people have so much to offer the world. But men like Honig tell them it’s wrong to want to be different. He’s trying to strangle their potential while it’s still in the crib.”

Cyrus tutted knowingly and sympathetically, “I want nothing of the sort. Really, Mr. Alcheman, you’re proving my points for me: your operatic entrance, your broad generalizations that miss the subtext of the situation, your use of graphic imagery to try and make a point. You are a textbook case of a sufferer of the Übermenchian Paradigm.”

“You forgot the reliance on violent behavior to solve problems,” Michael observed before he struck Cyrus Honig.

*****


The Morning After:

From his Washington brownstone Rex Regent watched the raw footage of Alcheman’s assault on the founder of COPE. Honig was going to be useful as a victim, almost as much as he was as a dupe. Rex reached for the special phone and called the only person he could on it.

“Looks like we just got our version of the burning of the Reichstag,” he told the old man.

“I saw it. I thought it was more Martin Luther nailing his theses on the church door.”

Regent laughed, “Because of the headbutt?”

“Yeah. What do you have in store for our protestant, Rex?”

The second in command to the Grey Eminence looked at his latest briefing from Paradopolis, “I figure we could let the locals handle Alcheman. The cops have a warrant for his arrest, and there’s a team of metahumans who have vowed to bring the guy in.”

“Not the Legion?” Aldrich Grey asked.

“Hell, no. That group that have the reality show. The Joy Corps. Must be looking for some free publicity.”

The Grey Eminence thought a moment, “Send in Warner. I have a job for him, besides nabbing Alcheman.”

“Care to share, boss?”

“We’re going to give our bodiless friend what he wants most, and take care of some unfinished business at the same time.”

Regent tried to figure out his mentor’s thinking. He knew the ‘friend’ had to be the Omni Competent, who demanded a corporal form before he would begin aiding the Conspiracy ‘to his fullest ability.’ It had been difficult finding a body that could survive the surgery necessary for such a transplant. Then the realization came:

“You’re going after Weapon V,” Rex said in admiration, “After the lawsuit and everything. I love it.”

“Punk’s government property, no matter what the Supreme Court says,” Grey growled, “and its past time he did his part for the Cause.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“Good,” the Grey Eminence hung up. He didn’t like the circumstances that allowed him to operate with such candor, but if they provided him with an opportunity to further the Group’s own agenda it would be worth it. Of course, for him to show any gains from all this Grey had to make sure the forces of the Parody Master loses…



Next: Anyone here remember Whitney Spheris? Howabout the Munitioneer? Varmint? Brickhouse? Bendist? Smooth Operator? Echinoderm Lad? If you said yes to more than three of them, you’re a dirty rotten liar. We’ll be meeting a whole bunch of new characters next time, as the Joy Corps (and others) go hunting for Alcheman (and others) in “Rebel on the Run”, out this week.

Footnotes:

COPE: the Committee for the Occulation of Paranormal Experiences is a non-profit agency that works to mainstream people with supernormal powers back into the mainstream. Alcheman has long suspected that Cyrus Honig, the group’s director, has been part of a larger plot to rid the world of superheroes. It appears he is correct.

The Grey Eminence: speaking of conspiracies, nonagenarian Aldrich Grey is secretly the chairperson of a group of powerful business and political leaders who want to spread American values and markets throughout the world. To this end they seek to control the Parodyverse’s population of metahumans. Having once been the mentor to Mr. Epitome, Grey is now aided by several functionaries including Rex Regent, Harmanda Barriere of Special Protocols Against Metahumans (SPAM), and the Omni Competent (a ruthless, brilliant alternate reality version of Epitome).

Joy Corps: is a superhero team that also doubles as a cast for a reality television show on the Super Human Station (Cable Channel 616) in Paaradopolis. Alcheman almost tried out for the team, until he realized it was backed by COPE and was made up of some very dysfunctional figures. More on them later.











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