This message Premiere #15: Civil Liberties was posted by The Hooded Hood on Tuesday, March 26, 2002 at 07:32.
A light snow was falling over the blacked-out city of Gothametropolis York. Down on the oily shingle shore at the edge of the Sheldon River a trio of conspirators huddled under the stained concrete pier that used to unload the big cargo ships that didn’t come here any more.
“They’re late,” De Brown Streak complained. He didn’t like having to stand around, and the cold was making it worse.
“If they can possibly make it, they’ll be here,” spiffy assured him. “But we lost contact with dull thud around dawn and we’re worried that the whole operation might be blown.”
“Or Chronic might have betrayed us,” growled the Messenger. “In which case he is going to be one sorry ex-musician.”
He played his binoculars over the water to the gray slab building called the Safe where the world's captive supervillains were confined. The prison was under new management now, controlled by the Science Police of Technopolis who could implant control circuitry into felons and use them in their war to control the planet.
“You should have sent me in there,” De Brown Streak complained. “Nobody is going to take a guy with a haunted guitar seriously.”
“Well thanks, pal,” Chronic snorted, appearing from behind and leaning on one of the grimy pylons. “Any other votes of confidence?”
“Chronic! You got out then,” spiffy cried. “What happened to thud?”
“Ah, I got ordered to kill him,” the guitarist shrugged. “But I blew it, and then Count Armageddon took us both down. Then I got the control chip implant and they sent thuddy back to Technopolis so they could dissect Cressida. I hear the Red Watchman’s gathering quite a collection of our heroes out there.”
“You got the chip implant?” Messenger noted. “So you’re working for them now?”
“Sure,” Chronic grinned nastily. “Led them right to you.” He stepped aside to let Random Access, Razorbarb, and Index at the heroes, but Dimensionweaver was already amongst them, scrambling the local laws of reality and making it impossible for them to navigate in a place where height was transposed with color and movement became heat.
Then Messneger’s stun grenades went off, the sudden explosives that anti-terrorist forces called flashbangs, calculated to shatter the eardrum and disorient the opponent for ten seconds. The postman caught one of Razorbarb’s incoming strands of monofilament wire and looped it neatly round Index’s neck, slicing it clean through. spiffy’s fern slapped out and sent Dimensionweaver reeling. As the reality-twister’s power faltered De Brown Streak caught up Chronic, jack-punched him in the stomach to stop him resisting, and sped away with him at speeds which sent a sonic boom churning up the waters of the bay.
Random Access screamed his high-pitched probability whine and staggered the other heroes by disrupting their bodily processes long enough the other science villains to recover. Then they called in their new big gun.
It took Quake less than five seconds to hammer Messenger and spiffy to the ground.
________________
The Red Watchman waited for Sam Wilson to drag himself up to his knees again after the beating. “Still conscious? I like that in my victims. And since you played a small role in thwarting my ambition to convert your Gothamtropolis state into a mausoleum I feel I owe it to you to have you broken by the best.”
“I already told you, I don’t know how that last missile got stopped. All I do know is that you are a fu… aagh!” Falcon’s defiance was cut short as Steel Enforcer broke another section of the prisoner’s femur.
“It is becoming clear that there are unscientific forces at work in this reality,” the Watchman mused absently as Falcon bled on the floor. “The power which makes that aircraft used by your Dark Knight invulnerable to my abilities to manipulate matter, for example.” He gestured from the gantry to the workshop below, and watched with satisfaction as the Knightjet was lowered into a vat of fast-setting plasteel. “Your urban legend was already trapped inside his own craft,” the archvillain said. “I’d very much like to see him get out of this one. Before his air supply runs out, I mean.”
“Yeah? Well I want to be there when he does, you s… ugh!”
“Still defiant? Hurt him some more. When he’s reached the begging stage we’ll think of something more creative to do to him.”
“Master,” Dr Zalas ventured hovering nervously out of reach of the science archvillain, “I have made those preparations you commissioned. We can be ready soon, although things are delayed because most of our citizens are still staying in their homes, even when we do release their door locks to allow them to work.”
The Watchman considered this. “More resistance?” he asked dangerously.
“Everyone was forced to watch Premiere’s torture,” Steel Enforcer said neutrally. “So everyone saw his escape, and knows he’s out there now.”
“I see,” the Red Watchman replied. “Well we can’t allow people to have hope, can we?” He turned to Zalas. “Lock down all habitation units again. Shut off food and water generators. Shut down heating and lighting. Then turn off the air recycling. How long can they survive without fresh oxygen?”
Zalas paled but responded. “It depends on the style of habitation, master, but I’d say somewhere between twelve hours and a couple of days.”
“Good. Then let it be known that I demand a gesture of loyalty from every household in Technopolis. Once that gesture is given then I will authorize the restoration of amenities to that particular unit.”
“I’m sure that the people will be happy to swear their allegiance,” Zalas soothed the Watchman.
“I require more than an oath,” the science archvillain laughed. “I require a tithe. Three severed fingers given up by each household. They can choose which fingers and from which family members. Then they can breathe again.” He turned to the leader of the Science Council. “Make it so.”
From the shadowed girders of the lab roof, the Dark Knight watched and waited.
_______________________
The badlands that had been Lincoln, Nebraska were silent now. The SPUD cruiser that had landed three miles from ground zero burned quietly, its metal shell ripped apart by the powers brought to bear on it. Flashfry, Detonator, and Moodswing hadn’t even needed to use the science police troopers they had commandeered on their raiding mission.
“What have we got, then?” Flashfry asked, looking down at the survivors of the crash. “Anything worth keeping alive?”
“Despair,” commanded Moodswing, turning his psionic emotion-generating abilities on the three prisoners.
“They’re going to kill us…” the SPUD pilot whimpered, all hope suddenly lost. “We don’t have a chance.”
“No…” the consulting scientist shuddered, facing the blackness of the future.
“Go…to hell,” Natalia Romanza told the Death Squad.
“Ooh, a strong one,” Detonator mocked, smirking at the helpless prisoner’s mental defiance. “Not many that can resist your nasty thoughts, eh Moody?”
“Including you,” Moodswing warned. “Oh, I’m going to have fun with this one.”
“Or not, bozo,” Trickshot contradicted, putting an arrow through the villain’s left shoulder and sending him screaming to the dust.
Flashfry rounded on the two new intruders, demanding of his science police squad why they hadn’t detected metahuman activity signatures approaching.
“That’d be because we don’t have any super-powers really,” Con Johnstantine suggested, covering Trickshot’s back. “But we’re going to kick your arses anyway.”
_______________________
His people had winced when Professor Brudas had returned from his interview with the Red Watchman and had seen what the mad archvillain has done to the Science Councilor’s face, but they quickly returned to their duties within the Safe. The obedience chip program was being stepped up, and there were still over a hundred Parodyverse metahumans incarcerated here who were adjudged to require the process.
Yeoman was with Brudas in the command center on watch duty when the Hooded Hood appeared before him and said, “Good Evening. Don’t you think you should sound the alarm?”
The startled science hero fumbled with the unfamiliar security equipment. “That one,” the Hood pointed helpfully.
“You’re insane!” Professor Brudas shouted from behind his desk. “We have over ninety metahuman troops here!”
“Actually, no,” the Hooded Hood corrected him. “You had over ninety such minions. Now, with the exception of the few equipped with causal timeline stabilizers, they have been shipped… elsewhere.”
Yeoman examined the security board. “He’s right, sir! They’re gone! Where…?”
“Somewhere that the sudden influx of seven dozen boorish supervillains will be viewed as both unwelcome and inconsequential intrusions,” the cowled crime-czar answered darkly. He felt no need to explain that his adversaries had now been retconned to the city of the Austernals, to the Great Relief of the Abhumans, and to far Ausgard, or that these places were more than able to deal with a few jumped-up metahumans.
“What do you want?” Brudas demanded, playing for time while the heavy squad arrived. Count Armageddon and all the key science villains had been shielded from the Hood’s interference.
“Oh, the usual things. World domination, ultimate power, the slow bitter destruction of my enemies. But just now I want this facility and the people in it.”
The control room wall disintegrated as Count Armageddon’s kaos energies ripped it apart at a molecular level. “Too bad you can’t stop me then,” the leader of Parodiopolis’ occupation forces boasted. He was flanked by a half dozen other major players, including Technovore and Dreamripper, and all of them carried technological shields against the Hood’s power designed by the Red Watchman himself.
“Indeed,” agreed the Hooded Hood. “That is why I brought along the Lair Legion.”
Then the Parodyverse’s greatest heroes burst through the roof and the battle for the Safe began in earnest.
This poster posed from 212.159.1.6 when they posted
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