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Extract Twenty-Four: The Testimony of Thugos In which the Tyrant of the Sol Empire outlines the nature of his plans regarding the Sempiternus Singularum, and details a few of the last minute hitches that crop up in any nefarious cosmic domination scheme Tuesday, 28-Dec-1999 21:47:11
Extract Twenty-Four: The Testimony of Thugos In which the Tyrant of the Sol Empire outlines the nature of his plans regarding the Sempiternus Singularum, and details a few of the last minute hitches that crop up in any nefarious cosmic domination scheme From the Sacred Utterings of Dark Thugos, Tyrant of the Sol Empire, Lord High Necrocrat of Death, to his one true love, the Dark Vortex Which Consumes All Life in Her Eternal Embrace: All was in readiness, my love, for the ultimate power of the universe to be mine. Two Earth-decades ago I caused a certain item to be passed into a mortal dimension wherein I had been supporting the pathetic attempts at villainy of an ineffectual tinkerer called Peter von Doom. This item was none other than the Sempiternus Singularum, the cosmic key which was stolen from the Celestian Space Robots by their erring servant the Obliterator (and for which crime the Parody Master later sent the Obliterator to Earth to deter ambitious entities such as myself from seeking the stolen artefact – little realising that I had arranged for it to end up there in the first place). My motives for so doing were simple. Like many of the Celestian technologies there is an inhibition preventing creatures beyond a certain level of power from interacting directly with it. Likewise, the semi-sentient Singularum can twist causality to protect itself from discovery by those who would seek to use it for their own gains. I therefore arranged for the item to fall into the hands of the adoptive father of my insipid that-dimensional self, and ultimately to be discovered by the most minor of the cosmic office-holders, the Keeper of the Chronometer of Infinity. As I suspected, this Keeper had so neglected the trappings of power around his office that he was able to interact freely with the Singularum, reassembling it after overcoming the various precautions that I had taken to prevent the ambitious lesser criminals of his world from gaining the device. He arranged for a technologist called Bautista to rebuild the machine so that they could “see what sort of things the johnny did.” Here my irritating father chose to intervene. I have spoken to you of him before. The Hooded Hood decided to take an interest in the Sempiternus Singularum, albeit mainly to prevent my that-dimensional self, the weed-wearing spiffy, from prematurely learning the truth of his parentage. He has now ret-conned the Keeper of the Chronometer, removing him from the search for the artefact and confining him in the bowels of Herringcarp Asylum, subject to cruel experimentation and eventual destruction. This is of no consequence except to remove one of the wild cards from my little pageant. Bautista continued to reassemble the item which has now been gathered for him by the clone-girl Asil. Bautista finally activated the Sempiternus Singularum’s cycling process, bringing all my plans to fruition. Within twelve hours it would be fully operational. It is a great thing when the major projects of one’s life coalesce into their full potential, and I did it all for you, my love. In deep space, the now-freed Obliterator sensed this activity of the Celestian artefact which he once possessed and began his return to Earth at full speed. Up to this point all was going according to my long-laid plans. It was only as I ordered the activation of the teleportation gate to Earth that things began to go awry. It seems that the new so-called Protector of the Universe, the ineffectual Amazing Guy, had survived our previous encounter and had gained some inkling of the importance of my travelling to his homeworld. At least this is how I interpret his squeakings of “Hold it there, Thuggy! You can keep your grubby, death-dealing paws off my planet!” “Ah, my adversary,” I duly replied, “How fitting that you should present yourself to be crushed now, at the moment of my absolute triumph!” It appears that the various unstable powers which this annoying interferer has previously demonstrated have now settled down into force-construct manufacture through a limited manipulation of the electromagnetic spectrum and associated quantum particles. Rather than seek to pit my own considerable entropic force against the juvenile energy-box he formed around me as I strode to the teleport gate I simply activated a contingency which I had prepared earlier in case he should return. One does not become Tyrant of the Sol Empire without making a few judicious plans. The Lethatrix 3000 warsuit is one of my better designs. Completely enclosing the human wearer, it makes full use of the creativity and conceptual planning capabilities of its host to devise a series of increasingly devastating attacks upon its quarry. Of course no human brain can withstand bonding with one for more than a few hours, but humans are very plentiful. In this case the Lethatrix took Amazing Guy completely by surprise, doubtless because the armour protects its wearer from giving off any kind of E-M emission until it has attacked. Amazing Guy made quite a spectacular crater, but came up fighting. I covertly channelled my own power into the Lethatrix 3000 armour so as to ensure that only killing force from the young hero would be sufficient to stop it and thus save his life. That way he would either refuse to kill, and so die, or kill the innocent human trapped inside my war-armour. Amusingly, I had arranged to kidnap a young woman of Amazing Guy’s acquaintance known as Janeen and place her within the suit. I was intrigued to see which of the young lovers would kill the other, and what their subsequent reaction might be. I was distracted from the rather brutal combat by a report that the Obliterator has now arrived on Earth, and was engaging the so-called heroes of that world, the Lair Legion (who apparently had some kind of link with this technician Bautista). Since the Lair Legion have yet to prevail over the Obliterator after the restraint mechanism placed upon it by the Parody Master was destroyed I felt it behoved me to even the odds up a little, and released an Entropy Eyeblast at it. My bolt of death crossed into interstitial space and reappeared half a universe away to smash the organic robot to its knees. This gave the Lair Legion their chance to take the intruder down. I noted with interest the various power levels and abilities of the team: An intermediate-growth Makluan possessed by a human; the current wielder of the Strange Matter called Impossibilityium; two of the three fundamental force manipulators that were engineered a few years back; one of the annoying thought beings from the Yo-planet; the this-planar version of my spiteful and laughable sister Kumari; one of those bizarre agglomerations of former worship that sometimes clog up human belief-systems; the arrogant archer who helped rob me of my empire; and some others of little or no consequence. That they managed to bury the Obliterator in a stream of lava is a testimony to their luck rather than their skill. A rending of metal drew my attention back to Amazing Guy and the battle at hand. Somehow the so-called protector of the universe had managed to trick the Lethatrix 3000 into firing a full-spectrum burst – enhanced by my power – right into the teleport gate. The usual defences could not hope to stand up to my entropy beams, and thus the whole mechanism was rendered into dust. This was a serious setback to my timescale, which called for me to be present at the moment the Singularum completed its’ startup cycle. Using my personal energies to teleport me so far would leave me considerably weakened. Withdrawing my force from Lethatrix I released an Entropy Eyebeam at Amazing Guy – only to have him grapple Lethatrix and use her as a shield. The Eyebeams overcame the formidable defences of the Lethatrix 3000 armour, shattering it, leaving the battered form of the mortal wench Janeen in the hero’s shocked grasp. I took advantage of the moment to shift him (and the now-useless girl) into the Realm of Confusing Sub-Ditko Artwork, which should disorient him long enough for the indigenous Hero-Feeders to latch onto his spoor. So much for Amazing Guy. It would have been amusing to make him choose between escaping to save the girl and leaving her to die while maintaining his protectorship of the universe, but one can always devise such a test later if he survives. There was no time to lose. Amazing Guy’s destruction of the teleport gate meant that I had to use my own personal reserves to jump the vast distances to Earth, no matter how debilitating that might be. I caught the Lair Legion by surprise. Just as they were congratulating themselves on overcoming the Obliterator and worrying about the new volcano they had caused when I loosed my Entropic Eyebeams upon them. It was satisfying to see them all fall in an instant, even if I did not have the reserves left to make the Beams lethal. And there before me, in all its multidimensional glory, was the great key, the Sempiternus Singularum which would unlock the very secrets of the Celestians. I reached forward for it as it peaked to the conclusion of its warm-up cycle – and was struck on the back of the head with a chair. I turned round in surprise, knowing that I had eliminated the interference of the Lair Legion, and amazed that any mortal would have the courage and stupidity to assault me. It was the clone. “Keep away from it, whoever-you-are,” Asil warned. “I don’t know what you’ve done to Visionary and the others, but you’ll be sorry for it.” I was about to snap her neck like a twig when a man in the purple mask appeared from nowhere and shot me in the head. Then time stopped everywhere as the Sempiternus Singularum completed its purpose. You may remember that Mumphrey is unavoidably detained in Herringcarp Asylum just now, so here's another guest writer for the ongoing saga more usually told by the eccentric Englishman |
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