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Post By The Hooded Hood dares to publish on the same day as Harry Potter Fri Jul 15, 2005 at 07:14:44 pm EDT |
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#221: Untold Tales of the Wastelands: The Machinery of War, or Lost Causes | |
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| #221: Untold Tales of the Wastelands: The Machinery of War, or Lost Causes Previously: The Lair Legion investigated incursions of giant mutated insects from the radioactive wasteland northwest of Gothametropolis and discovered an army of giant creepies led by the Bagpiper and His Sporran of Horrors. Nats and Fin Fang Foom were ambushed by robots of the Machine Shop. Dancer, Visionary, and Yo are absent in Ausgard. Meanwhile, cyborg P.I, Yuki Shiro has discovered there is a bounty on her head - and plenty of villains eager to claim it - because she is believed to be a secret member of the Lair Legion. Note: Parts of this story follow on from Dancer/Donar #19 and 20 (but it’s not necessary to read them to follow what happens here). I’m assuming that events here occur shortly after Visionary and the Heart of Darkness and Adventures in Parodyverse – New Edition. Previous chapters at The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Character descriptions in Who's Who in the Parodyverse Location profiles in Where's Where in the Parodyverse  The giant earthworms were nearly a hundred feet long and they burst from the blackened earth on the northeast perimeter of the radioactive wasteland on the fringes of the national park. Their weird ululations echoed across the forests as they slithered forwards in search of a spawning ground. “Uck!” shuddered Princess Uhunalura of the Abhumans, watching on the monitor screens of the SPUD Helicarrier hovering above. “That reminds me of Karkus’ home cooking!” “There’s rather a lot of them,” noted Lee Bookman, Librarian of the Moon Public Library, as he closed a work on lumbriciae and megascolecidae. “If they breed at the same rate as their normal counterparts we’ll be needing a new planet in about four months.” “Relax,” Colonel Dan Drury assured the nervous scholar. “We didn’t buy all this flying doohicky hardware just to hike up the tax rate. We got the firepower of a carrier group on this bucket.” He nodded over to the clean-cut young men manning the control surfaces of the helicarrier command deck. “Clean up the lawn, boys.” The flying fortress wheeled in low and began an efficient detonation of the treeline at the edge of the radioactive wasteland that was the legacy of the Technopolis War. Everyone who could gazed down from the command deck, fascinated by the ballet of destruction below; except Al B. Harper. “Okay I’m checking the readings from my force field generator,” he reported, ignoring the battle. “You remember I cobbled it together from bits of Technopolis tech after the war? And it’s been working ever since until now.” “You didn’t provide a warranty,” the Librarian comforted him. The archscientist frowned. “If I didn’t it wouldn’t cover deliberate damage.” “Whut are you saying?” Dan Drury demanded. “Someone or something deliberately sabotaged it to let these things out. And judging by these fragmented sensor reading the Librarian retrieved, I think they may still be down there.” Uhuna stared down into the thick green mists covering the heart of the wasteland. “But Bill is down there,” she said quietly. Nats landed hard, trying to shield himself from the hurricane-force gales that tore at him from Wind Machine, still pierced by hundreds of needles from Sewing Machine. A savage burst of telekinetics hammered the approaching robots away into the churned-up landscape. “Okay,” the flying phenomenon noted. “You’re a bunch of metal villains with this whole Machine motif going for you, right?” He counted at least a dozen enemies closing on his position. “I really don’t want to meet Condom Machine.” He jinked aside just in time to avoid the fragmentation spray from Popcorn Machine’s range attack and the razor-sharp slivers from Ice Machine, then used his pyrokinetics to detonate the ground beneath Kidney Machine and Karaoke Machine. “You guys want to explain why you’re here and what the secret plan is while you’re overwhelming me with bad shticks?” Bill Reed demanded. “Apart from you being so damn annoying?” Slot Machine answered, spraying nickels like bullets. Nats diverted them to strafe X-Ray Machine and Dream Machine. “And being human?” Death Machine added, his anti-life scythes crackling as he reached up for his enemy. Thick black fumes enveloped the flying delivery man, making it impossible for him to track where his foes were. Smoke Machine moved aside so the sleek blue android Copy Machine could send in a dozen of her duplicates to locate the choking hero. Nats pushed the roiling clouds back towards his adversaries and twisted out of the grasp of the lithe azure she-robots. “Yeah. You guys sabotaged Al B.’s cosmic whoozit and took down the wastelands forcefield. How did you get in and why did you zap the frammistat?” “That would be me,” Time Machine explained, his virtual form flickering as he shimmered from moment to moment. “I passed Answering Machine through the barrier before it was ever erected, and she brought the field down so the rest of us could acquire our goal.” “Don’t bother explaining to the fleshling,” Death Machine demanded, randomly blowing apart chunks of the obscured terrain. “Let him die as he lived, ignorant and useless.” Slot Machine moved up behind Death Machine, then transformed back into a huge angry dragon. “Harsh but fair,” Fin Fang Foom admitted as he bit the robot’s head off. He was still angry from the sucking chest wound he’d received earlier, but that wasn’t going to stop him. The sonic blast from Karaoke Machine’s speakers did though. “Kill them while they’re down,” Dream Machine ordered. “I’ve got them seeing nothing but TV static right now, so they’re blind, choked, and injured. Finish them off!” “Except X-Ray Machine!” Vending added. “X-Ray, you’ve absorbed the radiations here at the explosions’ core? Then get out of here and deliver them to our client.” “I wanted to stay and watch the heroes get killed!” X-Ray Machine complained petulantly. “You want to explain to Master Machine why you’re behind schedule?” Time Machine warned. Nats scattered them again and rose into the air, wobbling. “You guys might want to concentrate on killing the heroes,” he advised. Finny rose up again, shrugging off Kidney Machine and Ice Machine and searing Vending with a breath of nuclear fire. “And even then that plan never works,” he added. Gothametropolis Mayor Velma Klein had many enemies, so the mayoral mansion in exclusive Lutwich had heavy security. Most of the guards were culled from the Mayor’s own police force, which meant they all owed her their freedom from prison and relied on her for their supply of high tech weaponry and sophisticated ultrasteriods. At 3.23am the manor’s gatehouse was totally demolished when an atomic metahuman was hurled bodily though its wall and detonated on impact. A second unlicensed metahuman vaulted over the perimeter fence and raced towards the main house while security was still scrambling. That one had purple hair. “Breech! breech!” screamed the security chief. “We have a breech!” Atomic Bumpkin rose from the rubble of the gatehouse, checking his clothing. “It’s only a small tear,” he objected, feeling the back of his dungarees. “My ma could fix that quicker’n a possum up a drainpipe!” Two more figures raced from the darkness. One was clad in a dark grey bodysuit and carried a variety of firearms. The other was an albino with a too-large head and googly eyes who was staring into the darkness past the assembling guards. “Come on, Tullis!” Crosshairs called to the Bumpkin. “Stop playing with the rent-a-cops and get after the quarry. She’s making a monkey out of us.” “She threw me into this li’l hut!” the Ozark mountain boy complained. “I still have a lock on her mind,” Encephaloleech reported. He shut down the higher brain functions of the approaching security men almost as an afterthought. “She’s heading towards Kline.” “One’s an arrogant bitch that doesn’t know when to die and the other one’s…” Crosshairs considered. “Hmm. Separated at birth. Let’s just bag the target before Kline decides that it was a bad idea to have her heavy squad turn a blind eye to the hi-jinks in GMY tonight.” Up at the main house Yuki Shiro ripped the security screen off Velma Kelin’s window but she wasn’t surprised that the Mayor was already evacuated. “ Madam Mayor, as a registered voter I want to lodge a complaint about the hooligan behaviour we’re seeing on the city’s streets these days,” the robot P.I. declared to the concealed security camera. “And also the littering. I think you should do something about it. Or I’ll be back.” She raced from the room before the first of the city’s licensed mutate security teams arrived at the mansion at just about the same time as Atomic Bumpkin, Crosshairs, and Encephaloleech. “I’m getting a signal from the Wasteland!” one of Dan Drury’s tech-weenies called out from his position on the helicarrier command deck. “It’s on a Legion frequency!” “Nats?” Uhuna asked. Ever since she had been awaken from a tormented dream in the middle of the night the Abhuman princess couldn’t shake a feeling that something bad was going to happen to her boyfriend. She’d been too worried to even flirt with the nice security men who took such an interest in making her feel at home on the vast SPUD headquarters. “Nah. It’s Hatman,” Al B reported, checking the frequency. “They’re at the southern perimeter of the radiation zone, nearest Gothametropolis.” “Well would one of you science geeks kindly git the picture up on Uncle Sam’s very expensive video screen so we kin find out whut the hell’s going on?” Drury suggested scathingly. The thirty foot high main monitor was filled with a view up the Bagpiper’s nose. “That’s not Hatman,” the Librarian observed. “Unless he’s got a Billy Connolly hat?” “Can y’here me, you godless heathen Southerners?” demanded the highland horror. “Is this device o’ the devil on?” “That’s not a device of the devil,” Al B. objected. “Although it does use a transdimensional coding circuit that includes some vibrational frequencies from the lower theological scale and a…” “Geek in your own time, Harper,” Drury snapped. “Who the hell is this and how did he get Boaz’ comm-card?” The Librarian was running a hasty image recognition search. “It’s hard to tell from that angle,” he admitted. Just then the Bagpiper worked out how to hold the card to get a clearer view of the tiny people on the communication device’s miniature viewscreen. “This is Ewan McGore, th’ Bagpiper, ye ken?” he announced. “Ah’m the last best hope o’ Mother Nature!” “Wow, is Mother Nature in trouble,” Al B breathed. “McGore…” Lee Bookman breathed, his hands flashing over the database console. “Got him. Radical ecology protestor. Chained himself to the Sellafield nuclear plant last year and got horribly mutated…” “Why is a wearing a skirt?” Uhuna asked, fascinated. “And a big furry pouch over his…” “It’s a kilt!” the Bagpiper shouted, his voice rising with his anger. “A kilt, ye fekkit tralee spaleen scunners! An mah Sporran of Horrors!” “The traditional dress off Scotland isn’t actually an, um, dress,” the Librarian explained to the Abhuman princess. “The kilt is a tartan garment worn instead of trousers by the males of the clans. And instead of, um, undergarments.” Uhuna regarded the kilt with renewed interest. “There’s nothing worn under that?” “Nay!” denied the Bagpiper defensively. “Tis all in perfect working order!” “Till I get my hands on you, you haggis-smoochin’ haystack,” Colonel Drury growled. “Now you wanna tell us how you’ve got Hatman’s comm-card and what in Sam Hill’s goin’ on down there?” “Ach, now ye’re talking. Well, I’ve dealt with your shilpit redcaps already, and now ah’m ready t’lead mah loyal insect armies down on yoor fleshpots o’ decadence, devouring all in their way.” The card angle changed to show the thousands of giant insects that milled behind the Bagpiper, controlled by his music. “If the governments of the world dinna renounce th’ use of oil, coal and eeelectricity within one hour, I’ll release mah beauties an’ that’s the end of the hooman race once an’ fer all!” “You want humanity to stop using electricity?” Al B. Harper was appalled. “You fiend!” “What have you done with the Lair Legion?” Uhuna demanded. “And also, ah want a case of best whisky,” the Bagpiper continued. “And maybe a wee bag o’ pork scratchings. Ye have one hour.” The running battle entered its second hour with Fin Fang Foom winging laboriously though the green ooze with Nats clinging to his neck ridges and fending off the Machine Shop as best they could. “How many of those robots are there?” the wounded dragon complained. “There seem to be hundreds of them, popping up from nowhere.” “Somebody spent a lot of time designing those things,” Bill Reed admitted. “Lucky us.” Just then Ghost in the Machine flickered in next to them, a mere insubstantial image of neon dots. “I have located them,” it reported in crackling static tones. “They are in quadrant four, and their life signs are low. It will not be long until they are deactivated.” A thin blast of dragonbreath did little to disrupt the insubstantial spybot. Foom wheeled away and tried to gain enough altitude to made the next cliff. Nats leant a hand with a telekinetic push. “You know,” Finny gasped, landing heavily on the crest, “They seem to be bringing more robots in all the time. I wonder how.” “You think maybe some kind of teleportal or something like that?” Nats considered. “They also sent that one Machine back with the radiations they’d been gathering here.” “If they can use a route in, we can use it to get out,” the Makluan suggested. “And we find it how?” Finny braced himself. Shapechanges hurt when he was this badly cut up. “I guess it’s time for Virtual Machine to catch one of the heroes,” he suggested. It was dark and cramped and smelled of rotting meat and heavy body odour, and the Legionnaires were crushed together so they could hardly breathe. “What just happened?” De Brown Streak asked. “And could Trickshot please get his butt out of my face?” “Could Streaky git his face outta my butt?” demanded the irritating archer, squirming to grab a flare shaft from his quiver. “Ack! Please tell me I didn’t just put my hand in the Manga Shoggoth.” “Yo is thinking is not the time for people to be panicking,” Yo advised his/her team-mates. “Yo is to be thinking now is the time to be working out of what is happening.” “If we’re going to be crushed all together like this couldn’t Yo at least turn female?” DBS asked plaintively. The heavy course bag that the team were stuck in churned momentarily, spilling them about in new combinations. “Wherever we are, we’re on the move,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! guessed. “I had a dream like this once, only instead of you guys it was the Swedish Bikini Team and the X-Women, and we were all…” “Let’s concentrate on getting out,” Hatman suggested hastily. “We could hear about the Swedish bikini team first,” De Brown Streak suggested. “It might be relevant.” “We are currently confined in a pocket dimension,” the Manga Shoggoth explained, drawing his ooze together in an attempt not to be completely squashed by his teammates. “One of the demiplanes that intersect reality?” Hatman frowned. “Does the Wasteland contain some kind of dimensional instability that…?” “No, a pocket dimension,” the Shoggoth insisted. “We are in that Scotsman’s pocket. Or more precisely, his Sporran of Horror.” “The Bagpiper!” CSFB! remembered. “The guy with the tartan skirt who was playing music to control the giant creepy crawlies from the Wasteland! We ran into him and he said something and then…” “And then we are to be waking up inside of his uncute Sporraning of Horrors!” Yo reasoned. “Wait,” Trickshot complained. “You’re sayin’ we’ve been zapped inside Hagrid’s groin pouch? That’s just wrong.” “We should be to being attacked by many fears and loathings also,” Yo explained, “but Yo did not think that was to be cute, so Yo is not to be allowing it.” “This does explain the funky odours,” De Brown Streak accepted. “But boy do we ever need to get out and make Hatman put on his Shower Cap.” The course hairy sack shifted again, tossing the Legionnaires over to a new tangle of limbs. “Perhaps it would be best if I interrupted the dimensional anomaly that contains us here?” the Shoggoth offered. “It is an interesting weave of dimensions but I believe we have approached the limits of the experience.” “You’re askin’ do we want to get out of this Scots bug-handler’s sporran?” Trickshot asked. “You’re sayin’ you could have done it before but you didn’t because you were interested in sniffin his crotch?” “Elder being,” CrazySugarFreakboy! reminded Carl Bastion. “Just get us out now, please, Shoggy. We have to thank the Bagpiper for his hospitality.” “Help!” came the muffled sound from under the fallen ravengenbjeast. “Do not to be worrying, cute Visi!” Yo called encouragingly. “Nastying marauding creature is to be being quite dead now. Is only little twitches left.” “But I happen to be under it,” Visionary pointed out. “Is it heavy?” asked Kerry Shepherdson curiously. “Maybe it’ll help flatten that paunch of his?” “Fear not, brave possibly-faketh companion,” Donar called out to the pinned Visionary. “Tis a great honour to be used thus as bait to entrap so large a marauder as a full-grown ravengenbjeast.” He hefted the massive carcase aside so Vizh could breath again. “I thinkest twas also on heat,” Harlagaz Donarson added helpfully. “Twas not trying to eat you, methinks, hoary teacher.” Dancer giggled. “Well, you do look very cute in that bunny costume, Vizh.” Visionary brushed down his somewhat dishevelled outfit with what dignity he could muster. “It was you people who got me fired from my job at the Byrnewood theme park,” he noted. “And didn’t give me time to change before you decided to go have an adventure in the Mythlands.” “A money-making adventure,” Kerry Shepherdson corrected him. “The idea is to make a huge fortune so we don’t have to live in poverty any more, right? I mean, I’ve got my eye on this new automated weapons package they usually only ship to aircraft carriers…” “Yo is just glad to be picknicking with Yo’s friends,” the pure thought being who was brushing down Vizh’s bunny tail told them. “Is why Yo is of two minds right now so Yo can be with cute-Donar and also with cute-LL on adventuring. Is shame uncute huge ravengenbjeasting was to be deciding to be dating of Visi.” “Nay, twas the best part of yon hunt,” Donar assured his guests. “Save for the smiting part.” “The smiting part wast good,” Harlagaz agreed. Dancer was a little worried. “Did you say you’re also adventuring with the Legion, Yo? They’re on a case right now, without us?” The pure thought being shrugged. “Yo thinks so, but when Yo is in two minds Yo does not know what Yo is doing until Yo and Yo become Yo again.” Dancer turned to Visionary. “Perhaps we should be getting back, Vizh? We can make our fortunes in Ausgard another day, but if the LL need us…” Kerry checked the seeping carcase. “Tell me if I’m missing something, but this big dead thing doesn’t seem to be carrying any gold. It doesn’t even have an Amex card.” Donar and Harlagaz weren’t perturbed. “There are a fine market for ravengenbjeast parts,” Donar told them. “The horns doth make fine helmets, the pelt is sought after by yon ladies, and the scrotal regions art said to be sooth for those who art not so spy any more in the valkyrie department.” “We just needst to get this back to yon marketplace is Ausgard,” Harlagaz agreed, hefting the massive bulk with one hand. “Then our fortunes wilt be assured.” “I don’t really like the idea of us killing things for money,” Dancer admitted, “but since this thing had been raiding the villages and stuff I’ll make an exception in this case and allow myself to become filthy rich. I do need some new shoes.” “A little cash would be nice,” Vizh admitted. “So why do I have a feeling something’s going to go horribly wrong between here and the bank?” Yo was still thinking over what Dancer had said earlier. Something did feel wrong with his/her other self. “Yo is thinking maybe we are to be heading back,” judged the pure thought being. They returned to the goat chariot and followed the main ley all the way back to Ausgard. Ausgard was no longer there. ATMachine looked at the transformed dragon sceptically. “Virtual Machine? You’re newly built by Industrial Machine then, are you? Only you’re not on my database.” The disguised dragon looked like a rather generic robot, and he was swaying slightly from exhaustion. “Maybe you haven’t got the upgrades yet?” he suggested desperately. He held out the crumpled form in his arms. “Look, I killed one of the humans. Fleshlings. Yes, death to fleshlings!” Answering Machine was equally sceptical. “So you’re not, perhaps, the shapechanging dragon Fin Fang Foom, using your self-transmutative abilities in a last-gasp attempt to escape destruction at the hands of the Machine Shop?” “Well,” Finny admitted. “I suppose I might be.” He shifted back to his humanoid-dragon form. “I don’t suppose there’s any point in surrendering.” “None at all,” Fax Machine assured him. “We have no reason to keep you alive.” “I meant you surrendering,” the dragon clarified. And too late the robots realised that when Foom had changed back to his comfortable form Nats had vanished also. The dragon hadn’t just been an ersatz robot; he’d been an ersatz robot carrying a dead human. Which left the real Nats unaccounted for. “Gotcha!” the real Nats cried as he came from the green fog from behind and crushed Answering and ATMachine together and into metal splinters. Fax Machine was suddenly alone with two wounded, dangerous enemies. “Er,” she worried. “When I said we had no reason to keep you alive… you humans have a much more developed moral code than we do…” “I’m not human,” Fin Fang Foom growled. “But fortunately for you, Faxy,” Nats told the captured robot, “we have reason to believe you have teleportational capabilities.” It was turning into a bad night for Vera Klein. Not only was the estimated repair bill on the mayoral mansion going to require a 1% business rate hike but now reports of a swarm of giant insects were coming in from upstate. “I thought SPUD was dealing with that?” she snapped. “And the Lair Legion. I even signed the damn forms to let them die to sort it out!” “Word is the Legion’s down and there are literally thousands of thirty foot locusts approaching Shyminsky Falls,” her principal secretary advised her. “Should we send our security teams in?” Klein considered this. “No. They won’t be able to stop the intrusion anyway. Just have my private helicopter warmed up on the pad and arrange for me to have an emergency summit meeting on the West Coast. We’ll leave it to somebody else to do the dying.” The eerie skirl of the bagpipes echoed around the hastily evacuated townships and villages beyond Shyminsky Falls. State troopers had bundled frightened citizens into coaches and trucks and were fleeing down towards I666 before the unstoppable wall of insects. But the last three buses were cut off as twenty-foot cockroaches burrowed up through the road and cut off all escape. Riding atop a sixty foot long slug, the Bagpiper giggled with glee. “Ah warned ye!” he told the world. “I warned ye t’stop yuir rapin’ of the environment an’ ye’re destruction o’ nature. Well now nature’ll be destructing of ye! Forward me beauties! Ye fought fer Wallace, noo fight fer me!” The trapped families in the buses screamed as the mutated monsters slithered to surround them. And then the Bagpiper’s sporran exploded. “Lair Legioning,” Yo told the escaped heroes. “To be lining up!” Next issue: Revenge of the kilt invaders! Mystery of the missing Ausgard! Velma Klein’s unscheduled flight detour! Illegal uses of a Fax Machine! Uhuna’s dream comes true! The man who set the bounty on Yuki! And Sir Mumphrey Wilton has a cup of tea! Oh, and did nobody pick up the throwaway line last time about ghosts at Paradopolis U? You must be slipping. Untold Tales of the Wastelands: The Tangled Web, coming soon. The internet will crack into at least eleven pieces, and maybe as many as fourteen. The Footnote Machine: The robots of the Machine Shop include: Master Machine, their mysterious leader Mean Machine, a razor-wielding psychopath Weighing Machine, who manipulates gravity Fitness Machine, agile combatant Speed Machine, who moves very fast Sex Machine, who manipulates certain hormones Death Machine, with the anti-life scythes Media Machine, controlling broadcast transmissions Sewing Machine, uses needles in unpleasant ways Kidney Machine, powers undisclosed X-Ray Machine, projects X-Rays and manipulates radiation Mystery Machine, powers and nature undisclosed Dream Machine (f), casts illusions Industrial Machine, credited with creating many of the others Wind Machine, manipulates air pressure to create high winds Threshing Machine, a massive combat robot Diagnostic Machine, a walking sensor array Flying Machine, a fast dexterous aerial combatant Political Machine, abilities unknown Copy Machine (f), produces duplicates of herself (and she’s blue) Karaoke Machine, with sonic attack capabilities and maybe more Slot Machine, shoots high-velocity coins Vending Machine, abilities unknown Ghost in the Machine, an insubstantial creation of neon pixels Adding Machine, abilities unknown Popcorn Machine, fires incendiary grains Ice Machine, manipulates temperatures Smoke Machine, generates choking black fog Answering Machine, abilities unknown Coffee Machine, abilities unknown Time Machine, manipulates time in a local area Fax Machine, teleports others and sends messages ATMachine, abilities unknown Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2005 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2005 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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