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This message Premiere #30: Level 10 was posted by A discussion of what real power is from... the Hooded Hood on Thursday, September 19, 2002 at 03:16.
Premiere #30: Level 10
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Donar by Dancer
The fleet had assembled in the Indian Ocean, a mixed collection of various flag battleships including three carriers and two dozen submarines. Plan Verdant Vigil called for them to steam to Midway and await orders for a counterstrike against Technopolis. So far the order to sail had not been received. Central command has gone terribly quiet.
The air warning systems burned into life as they detected transients incoming at MACH-2 from the east and south. “Radar contacts! Designate Raid 1 bearing one-eight-niner, Raid 2, bearing three-zero-fiver, speed nine hundred knots.” Then the radar screens fizzled into static as the powerful jamming signals washed away any chance of tracking the attackers further.
“Hawk-three this is base. Air warning Red. Weapons free. Release authority is granted. Repeat, weapons are free. Splash these bastards.”
“Sir, our communications with the flight wings are down. It’s this jamming.”
“Crank up the volume son, and get those SAM radars lit up.”
“Sir, we’re registering an electromagnetic spike event. Oh shit…”
As the flare of the EMP weapon detonated over the fleet, frying systems and taking down even shielded command and control functions with 98% efficiency, Steel Enforcer flew up though the carrier flagship, hammering a hole through its engines and its tactical center before shredding the bridge and turning round for another run. Detonator concentrated hard, focused on the missile storage locker on the second carrier, and released an explosion sufficient to trigger all the other charges aboard. Dimensionweaver was less ambitious, choosing two of the smaller gunships to press together into the same bit of space, merging men and machinery into a twisted sculpture of horror then letting it mercifully sink to the ocean floor.
Beneath the troubled surface Yellow Fever’s fever dreams passed silently though the hulls of the submarines, their sickly shapes resembling pulsing human cardio-vascular systems as they reached out to transform sailors into more of their own. Meanwhile Flashfry’s high temperature plasma shapes swept across the decks of the vessels above, searing with phosphorescent flame all who sought to escape. And in the skies Rimshooter and Quake engaged whatever aircraft had survived the loss of their electronic systems in a one-sided dogfight with no need to take prisoners.
By the time the main force of Technopolitian grav wagons had closed to combat distance all they needed to do was shoot the survivors in the water.
___________________________________
“Pretty, isn’t it?” the Red Watchman asked Dancer as they watched on holographic viewing screens the destruction of the most powerful battle group remaining in Earth’s defense.
“I’d have used other words,” Dancer admitted, glaring at her captor as he delighted in mass slaughter. “But then, I’m not fruity-loops insane.”
“We shall correct that shortly,” Assak Malevi promised. “But little by little. I want everything to be just right for your destruction. I want to peel your mind a sliver at a time.”
“Everyone has to have a hobby.” Sarah Shepherdson rubbed her neck where the power neutralizer collar was starting to hurt. The sleek metal was warm to the touch. “Have you thought about stamp collecting?”
“I know what frightens you, Sarah. I know how terrified you were waiting to be sold at that sordid slave auction. I know your secret fear of disfigurement. I know exactly how to break down that perky façade to get at the timid, broken thing that hides inside,” promised the Watchman.
“So you can scare a helpless prisoner by hurting her. Wow, that must make you a world-class baddie.” Dancer shook her head. The collar burned hot on her neck.
“No, co-ordinating the conquest of the most powerful city on my world and then bringing it to take command of your own backward planet is what makes me world-class,” Malevi told her. “Hurting you is, as I have said, merely a hobby. Breaking you will be a pleasant diversion, something to show my old friend Victor Brooke before I finally destroy him. You are just another way of proving to him that his world-view is hopelessly naive.”
The collar was hurting Sarah now, burning her skin with its scalding touch. “He remakes the world to match his noble vision,” Dancer argued. “You just destroy the world because you can’t think of anything better to do with it.”
The Red Watchman shrugged. “I think I’ve finished tormenting you with the hope of keeping me occupied in banter now,” he announced. “Next I think I’m going to hurt you. And then I’ll have you crawl over here and thank me.”
The collar flared in a shower of sparks and Sarah Shepherdson winced as her neck was seared. “Ouch!” she complained. Then she looked surprised. “Oh,” she said as she realized that the power-dampner had just overheated and shorted out.
The wrist-cuffs coincidentally also failed as she pirouetted away from the Watchman, and then the structural integrity of the White Room failed burying Assak Malevi under a hundred tons of superstructure. “Yes,” the Probability Dancer scowled. “Ouch.”
___________________________________
Thermonuclear Man hadn’t gone far when Goldeneyed had teleported him away from the ruins of Herringcarp. He strode out of the nuclear wasteland north and west of Gothametropolis York, reinvigorated by the radiation he had absorbed, feeling mean and looking for trouble. He literally melted the flesh off the first police patrol that encountered him, but took his time with the ambulance crew so they had a desperate opportunity to radio for help before dying. He blew the SPUD-crewed grav-car out of the skies as it approached.
“Cretins!” he shouted at the burning wreckage. “Don’t you know who I am? I’m a class 10 energy manipulator with all the power of the split atom to kill you with. I’m a walking nuke-bomb. I’m unstoppable and unbeatable, and I’m coming to do whatever I want to you because I feel like it. So bend over, heroes, because I’m gonna…”
Donar’s hammer thundered into Thermonuclear Man’s mouth to shut him up and smash him a full half a mile back into the wasteland.
“Class ten, art thou, radioactive caitiff?” the vengeful hemigod demanded. “Only class ten? Well then, let us put thee to remedial school for the nonce.”
___________________________________
“Okay, I’m open to ideas right now,” admitted Hunter Victorious, clutching his left arm to try and stanch the blood-loss where Diamondcutter had gashed him to the bone. “Because this is starting to look like a famous last stand.”
“We kill them while there is breath left in our bodies, and our screaming ghosts haunt their nightmares for eternity,” suggested Cobra, gouging Icechilde’s eyes then hurling his screaming frozen bulk back to keep Browbeater at bay.
“We try and break the codes on this security hatch,” suggested Ziles, frantically deploying her tools to unseal the reinforced doorway against which the remnants of the assault team were backed. “And we hope there aren’t another zillion bad guys on the other side.”
“And soon,” Knifey urged her from his place in ManMan’s grip. While Joe Pepper was rendered unconscious the sentient weapon was controlling his body to fight against the mounting odds. “I think they’re bringing up their big guns.”
“What do you mean, blade?” demanded Cobra.
“He means the wiring on the walls is starting to twist like snakes,” HV noticed.
Then the circuitry walls twitched, closed in, and devoured them all.
___________________________________
These were lesser science villains and corrupted science heroes that poured out to take on Premiere, Phase Shift, and Windblossom. Grandstand and Killer Fish and Destructormax and Primal and Screaming Blade and Torment and the Needle Sisters all piled in, eager for their shot at the big time, their moment of glory against the fading champion.
Premiere moved faster than any of them could see, faster even than Destructormax’s onboard computer could track. Grandstand found himself impaled to the wall by Screaming Blade’s weapon. Screaming Blade’s arm still clutched it, but the rest of the science villainess was nowhere to be seen. Killer Fish exploded in a thermal spray while Primal died from the fist plunged through its chest. Torment stared with his pain vision but could see nothing as his head was ripped from its body. Destructormax and the Needle Sisters died when the corridor was pounded flat above them.
Four seconds had passed.
“This way,” Premiere commanded Phase Shift and Windblossom. “While they’re distracted.”
“That was a distraction?” Phase Shift gulped.
There was a hollow explosion from the Council Tower’s main computer core and every computer lock across Technopolis failed simultaneously. Inhabitants trapped in their apartments without food or air were suddenly free to burst into the streets. Millions of angry Technopolitans swarmed over local science police guards.
“No,” Premiere answered. “That was a distraction.”
“What did you do?” Windblossom wondered as the heroes scrambled through the tunnel of torn wreckage that Premiere had carved and climbed into the open beneath the city’s shimmering energy dome.
“I freed Dancer,” Victor Brooke answered. “Used hypersenses to locate her and a long-range thermal flare to overheat her collar. I knew she’d try and escape and that would cause a diversion, and I knew she was more powerful than she usually lets on, but this…”
“They’ll kill her,” Windblossom worried.
“No,” Premiere scowled. “They’ll try. I’ll stop them.” He pointed to the grav-car pad. “Martin, get Kareen out of here. Warn the Lair Legion that the Watchman has the NATO defense chiefs. He knows all their plans and deployments. He’s ready to extend his rule over the rest of this planet. He’ll be going after the SPUD carrier and Parody Isle next. Tell them to get ready for the last push.”
“Yes sir,” Phase Shift answered. “And you…?”
“Me?” Victor Brooke wiped the blood off his hands onto his uniform shirt. “I am the most powerful metahuman ever produced by the science-pits of Technopolis. I’ve had thirty years of experience and training fighting every menace that has arisen to threaten innocents in need. My enemies have slaughtered my friends and enslaved my city and spat on everything I believe in, and they have finally brought me down to their level.” His eyes blazed. “What do you think I’m going to do?”
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Message Thread
- Premiere #30: Level 10 - A discussion of what real power is from... the Hooded Hood - 03:16 on September 19, 2002
- - (nt) - 07:54 on September 19, 2002
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