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Post By The Hooded Hood tries again with a revised edition Fri Sep 08, 2006 at 08:08:02 am EDT |
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#286: Untold Tales of the Parody War: Urgent Concerns - Read this version | |
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| #286: Untold Tales of the Parody War: Urgent Concerns Previously: The Parody Master’s attempts to conquer Earth have been delayed but not stopped by a solar system-wide force field preventing the majority of his troops from invasion. One elite division let by the Avatar has secretly penetrated the defences and now prepares its attacks. Meanwhile, the heroes continue to struggle with their own lives and with the defence of the planet. Sir Mumphrey Wilton has recently captured his enemy from the Shadow Cabinet, Edward Gramayre. Visionary, Hallie, Fleabot, and Flapjack are newly returned from Faerie, having retrieved Visionary’s children. Donar investigates the woman he believes to be his lost Queen Annj. The rogue nation-state of Badripoor is no longer in the Pacific but has been shifted to the shore of the Swiss Lake of Constance. And as the heroes assemble to fight the Parody Master so do the supervillains in the Terminus Team rehabilitation programme led by Major Standard. Amongst those recruited are the biofield-altering Exemplary and the widget-manipulating Alice White, the Widget; the villain who put ManMan’s aunt into the hospital and ManMan’s ex-girlfriend. Previous chapters at The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Character descriptions in Who's Who in the Parodyverse Location descriptions in Where's Where in the Parodyverse  Avatar conquered Beijing in the early hours of the Sunday morning. Parody Priest battle mages conjured up dense choking mists that filled the Chinese capital with thick freezing fog and kept the population in their homes. The tech squads quietly disconnected the target from all electronic communications, substituting grey noise. Elite Avawarrior forces slipped past sentry posts and brought sudden death to the local units of the world’s largest standing army. A small cadre of Z’Nox assassins visited prominent civic leaders and politicians in the night and murdered them in their beds. By the time most of the city woke up it was to the unfamiliar sight of red and black clad Parody Troops lodged on their street corners, alien tanks patrolling their city, and a bleak martial law that made previous governance look liberal by comparison. Heat sensitive grav-mines were seeded around the urban perimeter. Eight and a half million people had just become the Avatar’s hostages. There was no traffic. The Avawarriors patrolled the captured streets, seizing all who ventured out in defiance of a single broadcast bulletin of warning. Captives were led towards the newly-built stadium intended for the 2008 Olympic Games. That was where the tech agents were setting up the machinery to process prisoners to swell the ranks of the lobotomised zombie army that would sweep across the world and conquer it for the glory of the Parody Master. A few desperate refugees tried to slip through the cordon. Most were ruthlessly suppressed by a well-equipped, well-trained, conscienceless army. The two young women who crouched in the shadows and watched very different tanks roll across Tienamen Square were subtle enough to avoid the patrol, and shielded from the movement and heat sensors that the cyborg shocktroopers used. “This is very bad,” Yuki Shiro assessed, watching the seemingly-endless invasion forces tightening their death grip on Beijing. “We suspected there was something strange about the signals we were getting out of China, but we never expected this.” “That’s why we came to take a look,” Contessa Natalia Romanza reminded the P.I. “Now we just need to get out of this interference field and warn the Lair Legion.” Mark Hopkins winced as Lisa Waltz applauded him. “Well done, spiffy,” she told him in acid tones. “After all these years we really didn’t think you would ever be able to top those early disasters you caused. But clearly we completely underestimated your ability to screw things up on a planetary level.” “It wasn’t Mark’s fault,” Beverly Campbell, spiffy’s P.A., argued loyally. “The whole city of Badripoor was stuck shrunk in that force-field bottle, starving and suffocating, and there was only one way for us to escape.” “This would be escape as in what Leticia Gahagan has done,” Mr Epitome summarised, his dour frown almost enough in itself to slam the fern-wielder to the floor. “The wanted criminal known as the Idiom that you granted sanctuary to.” “Look, we didn’t choose to be here,” spiffy told them. Badripoor’s president for life was having an incredibly bad day. “If Legion security wasn’t so lax that an entire city of people could get stolen from the Mansion by the Parody Master’s freakin’ herald…!” “Oh, there’s no point assigning the blame,” Lisa interrupted him. “I’ve already done that. What we have to do now is work out where we go from here. And quickly, please. I hear Visionary’s back home at last and I need to go yell at him next.” Fetish Lad had remained behind when the other rescued young heroes had been ferried back to America. Badripoor was his kind of place. “Ooh, where do I apply to be on that list?” he asked hopefully. Mr Epitome was still cross, but his foul temper was slightly dulled by the happy memory of angry Swiss diplomats arguing about the sovereignty of a rogue Pacific basin nation state suddenly appearing on one of their lakesides. “There is no legal precedent for this kind of estate transfer,” the paragon of power noted. “I wonder if the Swiss are regretting not entering into Sir Mumphrey’s mutual defence pact now.” “We’re here, and we stay here,” Mark Hopkins insisted. “We couldn’t move Badripoor now if we tried. The teleport field would prevent it even if the Idiom was here to repair and reprogram the shunt engines.” “The Swiss are saying that Badripoor is now part of their jurisdiction,” summarised Lisa. “They’re arguing that just because Badripoorian property illegally entered their territory that does not imply Badripoorean eminent domain.” “But the Swiss are no fun,” Fetish Lad pointed out. “We have several hundred metahumans and we’re not afraid to use them.” “Most of them are willing to volunteer against the Parody Master,” Bev offered, “if we can only get this little mess here sorted out.” “I’ll have the OPS consider amnesties for them running from SR1066 on a case by case basis,” Mr Epitome conceded. “Get in touch with Major Standard of the Terminus Team programme to arrange their induction.” “And as for the Swiss jurisdiction issue…” Lisa prompted spiffy. “Fine,” the fern-wielder hissed. “Tell the Swiss that Badripoor has just annexed a chunk of their country. It’s not theirs now, it’s ours. We conquered it.” he pointed down to the crystal lake where hundreds of tiny junks fished the waters. “And tell Sir Mumphrey that this is a purely domestic political situation and doesn’t come under his planetary defence purview to interfere with.” Lisa’s mouth twitched in appreciation of her old team-mate’s growing ruthlessness. “I’ll pass it on,” she agreed. “I don’t guarantee that your assertions will be accepted.” “But if Badripoor is willing to join the fight against the Parody Master that will go a long way,” Mr Epitome judged. He strolled over to spiffy, grabbed the ferned phenomenon by his collar, then slammed him high up on the wall. “Which brings me to my next question, Hopkins. What did you do with my dog?” “Who the hell are you?” Flapjack of the Carpathians demanded. “Ow!” The last ejaculation was occasions by him being pinned to the floor and roughly frisked by six hundred pounds of bipedal hippopotamus. “I?” said the huge beast on top of the Legion’s newly-returned butler. “I is Sergeant Argus MacHarridan, of the Most Loyal Order of the Detonator Hippos. I is the new Lair Mansion security officer. I is the one who is telling you that you do not have a current security tag, laddie.” “Get off me, you big hulking dope!” Flapjack objected, struggling feebly. “Didn’t the prominent hump and obscene protuberance clue in your tiny ungulate brain that I’m Flapjack, butler and major domo to the world famous Lair Legion? And I have to tell you, buddy, the role of comedy retainer is already filled.” “Comedy?” snarled the detonator hippo. “Let’s see hoo comical ye are when ah’ve plastered yuir unauthorised protuberance all o’er yon wall!” “Ah Flapjack, welcome back,” Amber St Clare noted, entering the room as if seeing the butler beneath a large self-exploding ruminant was an everyday occurrence. “He’s alright, Sergeant MacHarridan. You can log him onto the authorised list.” “Are ye sure, ma’am?” asked the tartan-uniformed security officer. “He looks like a lairy shifty character tae me.” “You’ve just summed Flapjack up in one sentence,” Amber agreed, “but to be honest I owe him big time, so I’d prefer if you didn’t detonate him today.” MacHarridan reluctantly climbed off the hunchback. “It’s yuir lucky day, Jimmy,” he declared, brushing the butler down with great heavy swacks. “Though why yon lassie should be grateful to ye I do not know.” “She’s just remembering our last date,” Flapjack answered with precise honesty. He looked past the detonator hippo at the technicians and soldiers milling around the operations floor of the Lair Mansion. “I’m not tidying up after all those people.” “Is that nae yuir duty, laddie?” demanded the sergeant in menacing tones. “Oh right. As if ManMan trying to steal my job wasn’t enough, now I have the hippopotamus Dan Drury on my case. Well, for your information you’ve just slipped several of my discs. Old dancing injury. Now I’m going to have to limp to the Lair Infirmary and lie down with a few of CSFB!’s art magazines for a day or two to recover. So there.” MacHarridan snarled at the butler. “Ye be stayin’ away from yon infirmary, ye weekit malingerer. Dinnae be disturbing yon puir wee ghostie lassie what has been in that coma ever since she was brought back frae being a banshee.” Flapjack’s face changed. “What?” he demanded. “You mean Marie? She’s alive? She’s in there?” And he had dodged round the hippo with deceptive ease and was racing for the infirmary before anyone could stop him. The Avatar’s troops moved with a precision that only comes with low level co-ordinating telepathic fields. Avawarriors closed in on police stations and military barracks, concentrating in the first instance on shock assaults with high body counts to break any resistance. Prisoners for conversion could come later. The tech squads concentrated on unlocking the launch codes for China’s nuclear arsenal. Yuki Shiro and Natalia Romanza split up to breach the incursion’s security perimeter. At the pre-appointed time, Yuki dropped her stealth field, channelled all her energy to her muscles, and hurled an Avatank into an anti-aircraft emplacement. “Okay, the good news,” she told the surprised Parody Forces, “is that the Lair Legion decided it would only take one of us to spank your butts and send you all crying back to your weenie Parody Master.” The Avawarriors moved with power-armoured speed but the cyborg P.I. had studied how they moved and was able to keep one step ahead of them, racing away from the Great Hall of the People and the Chairman Mao memorial and into the older streets around the Grand View Garden. “The bad news,” she added, “is that the Lair Legion sent me.” Avacannons demolished the frontage of the Natural History Museum but Yuki was already past it, heading over the rooftops of the old temple of Heaven and across the slates of the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests. The Avawarriors gave pursuit, calling up remote antigravity combat drones to help with the chase. As soon as their strategy appeared locked, Yuki dropped to ground level, tore the cover off one of the subway ventilation ducts, and timed her drop so she landed on the 0731 north to the Worker’s Stadium. The train was empty but it ran with computerised precision away from the combat zone. Back at the Great Hall of the People, the Contessa slipped unseen through the Museum of the Chinese Revolution, located the emergency escape duct that only high officials of the government administration were supposed to know about, and began urgently crawling away from the occupied capital to bring a warning to the world. “Good morning,” Sir Mumphrey Wilton bade as he strode into the Legion holding cell. “I trust your injuries are painful and slow to heal.” Edward Gramayre’s glare had enough venom to poison a planet. “You will die for this, Wilton. My allies…” “Have abandoned you as a failure,” the eccentric Englishman told him. “You’ve been dragged out from under your rock, denied your shadows. Your fellow vermin have gone to ground and left you.” Edward Gramayre had been an agent of the Shadow Cabinet, the secret cabal that operated through other secret cabals, the archmanipulators whom some said were the secret masters of the Earth. Gramayre had served them for the better part of the twentieth century, carrying out their twisted agendas including the destruction of the Second World War generation of superheroes when they had outlived their usefulness. Gramayre had been Shadow Cabinet liaison during the recent virtual coup through Special Resolution 1066. Now Gramyre seemed like an old, injured man. The casts on his fingers and toes, the wire on his fractured jaw, the plaster on his broken nose, the purple mottled bruises across his face and body were only the outward signs of his destruction. Gramayre had set an agent to murder Sir Mumphrey’s family, and Mumphrey’s daughter and son-in-law had been tortured to death. Now Wilton was dragging Gramayre to trial, a public trial under the spotlights of the press with all the world watching. “They won’t let you do this,” Gramayre warned the eccentric Englishman. “They’ll kill you first?” Mumphrey suggested. “Shame if that happened, of course, but I’m takin’ a few precautions. That’s why we had you swallow a gob of Shoggoth, old chap. Prevents you usin’ those nasty mind control powers of yours and you’re carryin’ instant protection if anybody comes for you.” Gramayre twitched and shuddered. “It is in my gut. In my lungs.” “So you’d best behave, you nasty little reptile.” Sir Mumphrey gestured to the manila file he was carrying. “Just came to check you were uncomfortable and to fill you in on your itinerary, what? You wouldn’t believe how many people from how many agencies want to question you.” “I have classified information that would bring down governments if I revealed it to the wrong people,” the former Shadow Cabinet representative warned. “Jolly good. Let’s have ‘em down then. Fresh start. Carry on, you miserable worm. You can start at 0800 tomorrow with Agent Dawes of the Office of Paranormal Security. Then it’s Governor Rashomon at 0930 in her role as chair of the judicial review of who did what in that 1066 fiasco. Chief Inspector Gallowglass for Interpol at 1130. Commissioner Graham and his men at 1245. Special Agent Garrick at 0130. And so on. I’ll leave the list here where you could look it through if I hadn’t broken all your fingers, what?” “You will die for this,” Gramayre threatened. “There are those who will see you dead for exposing one of their own.” The eccentric Englishman leaned forward until he was staring at Gramayre from less than a foot away. “I don’t care,” he answered with chilling force. “You murdered my daughter and you tried to murder my grand-daughter. You threatened my friends. You tried to overthrow my country. You are a verminous scum, and by God I know what to do with you, you pissant. So endure the rest of your life until your so-called allies find a way of getting past my security arrangements. Every day you will answer for what you have done in the long years of your service to them, and every day you will help destroy the web of deceit you have laboured so long to build. And then damn you to hell.” Marion Nightshade accepted the pot of tea from the kindly old Greek man. She set it down next to the formal Ausgardian war helmet with the curly horns. Some kind of dead animal was nailed to the crest of the heavy metal dome. She looked over at the hairy warrior who filled the double seat opposite her in the diner booth. “So,” she said.” “Mine profuse thanks mine lady for agreeing to yon meeting with me for the nonce,” Donar began, fiddling nervously with his enchanted baseball bat. “Well, I had the DNA tests with your Al B. Harper, I answered all those creepy personal questions about my background and childhood from that scary bondage lawyer of yours. I can survive twenty minutes in a public place with my superhero stalker.” “Mine friends and boon allies wert just trying to verify whether thou hast been enchanted to believe thyself mortal,” the hemigod of thunder explained. “To discover if thou art truly mine Annj, queen of Ausgard.” “I’m not,” Marion told him. “I can remember every detail of kindergarten. I have a passport, a drivers licence, video club cards.” “Twould not be the first time a god wast ensorcelled to forget their godly origins,” Donar explained earnestly. “Mine own self wast exiled unto Earth in the mortal form of one Gavan Carstenson, and twas only when I dids’t find how to use mine enchanted stick in the Worralorracaves…” “Too much information,” Marion assured him. “I art just saying thou mighst hath been tricked by mine evil sibling Hoki, or enspelled by yon Enthrallress or somewhat… Although tis true as Xander pointed outeth that Annj didst have yon Oldmanpower within her when she didst vanish, which maketh it hard to think she wouldst be overcome by fell magicks…” Marion saw the helpless hope in the huge man’s face. “I’m sorry,” she told him. “Dancer explained all that stuff about your Queen going missing with all your Aus…” “Ausgard,” supplied the hemigod. “With Ausgard. But that Parody Maker seems to have got it, like he got those other places they mentioned in the news, like Wakandybar? And I’m really sorry you lost your true love. But I can’t be her for you.” “But mine heart…” “Is wrong,” Marion said. “I’m sorry, Donar, but…” The hemigod fingered Mjalcolm miserably. “Dost not thine own heart sing in response to mine call?” he asked plaintively. “When thou lookest on me dost thou feelest nothing, queen of mine life?” Marion made to deny it, but the words wouldn’t come out. “Look,” she said instead, “supposing I did decide to try dating you or something, what happens when you find your queen and she wants to know why you’ve been slumming with the mortal chicks instead of getting on with the big wife rescue?” “You art mine queen, Marion. Thou art Annj. I knowest it, as surely as a grimpenbeast doth rend a marshenwjallow.” He impulsively reached out to grab her hands then pulled his arms back guiltily. Marion smiled sadly. “It would be kind of cool if I was, big guy,” she admitted. “Y’know, releasing my inner goddess and all that stuff. But I’d be cheating you if I pretended to be something I’m not.” Donar stated at her. “Thou hast the soul of a goddess,” he vowed to her. “I see thy shining courage, the beauteousness of thine spirit, the nobility of thine… damn, mine bleeper!” “Your what?” Marion asked, snapping out of the trance she had seemed to be in. “Oh. Your helmet’s playing Ride of the Valkyries.” Donar pulled out his Lair Legion comm-card and looked at the message on it. His face went grave. “I hast to go,” he told her. “Tis an emergency most emergenceous. But I wouldst not…” “Go,” Marion told him. “Do the world saving stuff. We can do this again.” She closed her eyes and took a leap. “Maybe over dinner and a movie.” Visionary had a headache. He’d had a headache even before he’d become the default recipient of Hallie’s angry tirade about her virtual reality systems being co-opted in her absence as a holding zone for interned sentient robots. The Legion’s A.I. didn’t appreciate her digitiser being used to turn her into the de facto jailor of every urban robot that hadn’t gone into hiding after the government’s decision to incarcerate them for public safety. He’d had a headache when he’d heard back about his ward (and technically little sister) Kerry and her Junior Lair Legion classmates falling into a dimensional vortex after dropping a rogue Asian nation-state on the shores of a Swiss lake. It hadn’t been helped by having to return the two hundred and forty-nine voice messages from his adoptive mother Ms Shepherdson about the wellbeing of her youngest daughter. He’d had a headache as he’d caught up with the state of the world now it was at war with the Parody Master; with the news of Uhuna’s death and of the loss of Miss Framlicker and Cody Harper; introducing his new children Magweed and Griffin to Cody’s bubbly replacement Kara; sitting through a debriefing session with Deputy Leader CrazySugarFreakBoy! and trying to explain the centaurs and the gothenmanders and the invasion threats via faerie and where half his adventuring party had been mislaid. And now the alarm klaxons for an emergency meeting were going off and there was a six-foot-three hippo in the hallway bellowing for the Legion to join Captain Hatman in the Conference Room. “Welcome back, Vizh,” Trickshot told him. “Sit rep?” Hatman asked, striding to join the others in the Conference Room. Sir Mumphrey Wilton slipped in quietly behind him. “”We just got word from Talia in China,” Trickshot supplied, tossing over the communications log. “We got Avawarriors on the ground in Beijing.” CrazySugarFreakBoy! jumped onto the desk so he could speed-read the report over Hatman’s shoulder. “We’ve got a lot of Avawarriors on the ground,” he whistled. “With tech and mystical support.” “The information sent by the Contessa suggests that these intruders have been here for some time,” reasoned the Manga Shoggoth. “At least as you humans insist on counting it.” “They probably came in during open season a few weeks back,” supplied Al B. Harper. The archscientist winced. “They probably had time to bring in their heavy weapons.” “And now we gotta play catch up.” Trickshot declared. “Talia and Yuki are in there on their own. They need backup. We’re it.” “Do we think the Avaforces have control of China’s nuclear arsenal?” Visionary asked, cutting to the chase. There was an unpleasant pause. “Yes,” agreed Amber St Clare at last. “At least most of it.” “Could we stop them if they launched everything they’re got at us?” ManMan worried. “Yes,” said Dancer darkly. “If we had to.” “We won’t have to,” Citizen Z argued. “Not if we don’t strike first. If the Parody Master had wanted to destroy this world he could have gated weapons of mass destruction through any of his rifts. He could have depopulated the planet with a virus. He could have sent through a Negativity Zone mine. He could have set off a photon cascade in the sun and taken us out in the nova. He didn’t.” “Because he wants to fight us conventionally,” Knifey agreed. “It’s more fun for him that way. He gets more of a sense of victory.” “Only if he wins,” rumbled Hatman. “So if we don’t go nuclear then the Avawarriors won’t?” “Best guess,” CV replied. “Then we’ve just got to deal with an estimated third of a million ground troops,” ManMan said. “That’s a relief!” “A third of a million troops occupying a city with eight million hostages,” Dancer clarified. “That restricts what we can do immensely.” “We might be forced to choose,” Mumphrey warned her, “between saving those eight million and saving six billion on the planet.” “I don’t buy that kind of math,” CSFB! snorted. “We go in there, find the bad guys, beat the snot out of them, save the day, and everybody lives.” The eccentric Englishman cast a significant look to Hatman. Jay Boaz sighed. “This isn’t a superhero scenario,” he warned his team. “We can’t solve this by storming the archvillain’s fortress of evil and pushing the self-destruct button. The Legion can’t be everywhere, and these guys are spread out over a province maybe the size of Texas.” “It’s about bringing force to a point,” Sir Mumphrey explained. “The Legion can probably smite the ungodly wherever you choose to go, what? But you can’t be in five thousand places at once.” “Not anymore, I can’t,” murmured the Shoggoth sadly. “So we do ‘em one at a time,” Trickshot shrugged. “Let’s get started.” “They’ll just wear us down then overwhelm us,” Hatman countered. He looked grave. “This is a time for us to send in the conventional forces.” “Lots of people will die,” warned Vizh. “Yes,” Jay Boaz said quietly. Alice White woke up to the master sergeant’s shout with a numb horror at another day in Terminus Team boot camp. The food was horrible, the metahuman convicts who made up the government’s suicide-or-rehab squad were horrible, the prospect of having to fight for her life against invading armies was horrible; but most horrible of all was another day with the torments of her sadistic squadmate Exemplary. Alice tested her right foot. The big toe was moving again now. Yesterday, Exemplary had suggested to her that it was paralysed for twenty-four hours, and it had been. The day before it had been a pain in her right earlobe. The day before that it had been loss of bladder control. Exemplary could manipulate organic biofields to control living beings, and he was making Alice his special project. “But not forever,” Exemplary had whispered to her. “Only until you crawl up to me on your hands and knees and beg me to stop, then promise to be my slave ever after. Only until then.” The master sergeant’s oaths were getting louder and more obscene. Alice forced herself out of bed, splashed water on her face, and hurried to pull on her tight gold-lame jumpsuit, the costume of minor league supervillainess the Widget. She quickly checked the power supplies in her twelve golfball-sized remote controlled hover-units – her widgets – but hadn’t had time to brush her hair before the assembly klaxon blared out bringing the women from her dormitory scuttling to parade. She took her place in the squad lineup with the other men and women of Terminus Team Five. Exemplary took his place next to her looking cool and refreshed. It was Major Standard himself who came down to brief the team and he looked stressed. “Pay attention,” he warned them. “I don’t have time to repeat myself and you don’t want to miss this.” “I hope it isn’t a surprise inspection,” Exemplary whispered to Alice. “Not with your hair in that shocking mess. You’ll have to take better care of yourself when you belong to me.” “Won’t happen.” The Widget’s defiant if somewhat unimaginative retort came out as a kind of frightened strangled gasp. “We’ll see,” Exemplary smirked. “I think today you will experience unimaginable pain in your nipples every time they touch anything, such as when they rub inside that tight-fitting costume of yours as you move. Yes, that’s what your little penance will be today. A fitting punishment for denying me your allegiance, ex-girlfriend of Joseph Pepper.” The Widget gasped as agony lanced through her breasts. Major Terminus turned from his whiteboard and focussed on Alice. “Did you have something to say, soldier?” he snarled. “Something important enough to stop me telling you about your immediate combat deployment?” “No, sir,” Alice stammered, trying to blink away the tears salting her eyes while she stood at attention. “Because if you do, then say them, private. They can be your famous last words. You’re heading to China to fight half a million Avawarriors.” Major Standard spiked a finger at the Widget. “And you just volunteered to be the spearhead scout.” “Ooh,” muttered Exemplary under his breath. “Nasty.” The Avatar’s forces had locked down the countryside in Hebai and Tainjin and had pressed into Shangdong as far as the Yellow River. They established that as their first natural fortification and began shooting down any aircraft that attempted to overfly them. The parley took place in the ruins of Jinan, ancient site of the Shang Dynasty three thousand years earlier. The thriving Westernised town was now a shattered shell from the batteries of the Avawarriors, its population of two and a half million fled into the countryside to the east. The Avatar himself came to speak with the representatives of Earth, his ornate black and red armour a slimmer version of his Master’s own elaborate suit. Hatman, Epitome, and Citizen Z waited to face him. “Well met, Lair Legion,” the Avatar greeted them. His own retinue consisted of one Avaleader and a Parody Cultist. Jay Boaz got straight to the point. “We’ve come to give you a chance to withdraw,” he said. “Lay down your weapons and we’ll let you generate a gate to return to your armies.” The Avatar gestured around him. “My armies are here, Hatman. This is all land that we have conquered.” “Land you have conquered for now,” Mr Epitome clarified. “You do not have the will to take it from me,” the Avatar assured him. “Humans have no stomach for mass casualties. It is a weakness that makes our victory inevitable.” “Not all humans have that weakness,” Citizen Z told him. “Enough do. You do not wish a nuclear or biological conflict, although those are your best chances to defeat us. You do not want to endanger the millions of humans who are now our property. So you will engage in a major land war with what you call conventional forces, and we will slaughter you.” “It could get messy,” agreed Hatman, “on both sides.” “That is why I am here,” Avatar explained. “The human expression is… to bloody your nose a little? I am here to take what territory I can and hold it for my Master. To test your resolve. To test your mettle. To take your whole world if I may.” “That’s not going to happen,” Epitome told him. “Whenever you try to open a dimensional rift to get reinforcements we can blow it to hell.” “Not without cost. But I do not require a rift to gain reinforcements.” He pointed his molecule thin sword behind him, to where thin plumes of greasy smoke were rising from distant Beijing. “You are familiar with the technology of necro-zombies?” he asked. Hatman went pale. “You wouldn’t…” he said, and even as he spoke he knew he was wrong. “This nation is rich in organic resources,” gloated the Avatar. “My armies will swell quickly.” “We won’t surrender,” Epitome told the Parody Master’s war-leader. “He hasn’t asked us to,” Citizen Z noted. “Didn’t you notice? The time for us to be able to surrender is gone.” “You are correct,” the Avawarrior answered. “This is now total war. You will be destroyed, slowly and surely. I am my Master’s hammer and I will shatter you all.” Coming Next: The land war continues! Terminus Team live up to their name! The Widget vs Exemplary! Yuki vs a third of a million Avaforces! Friendly fire casualties! Donar gets grumpy! These and many other exclamation marks in Untold Tales of the Parody War: The Battle of the Orient. Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2006 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2006 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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