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This message Premiere #36: Smackdown was posted by A story of various people being pushed too far, wrathfully written by... the Hooded Hood on Thursday, October 10, 2002 at 12:17.
Premiere #36: Smackdown
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Hatman by Dancer
“Beware the fury of a patient man.”
John Dryden
___________________________________
Hatman was awoken by the screech of rending metal as Thermonuclear Man peeled NTU-150’s life-sustaining armor from him piece by piece. The rest of the Lair Legion were down. Trickshot, the last to fall, was sprawled awkwardly at the radioactive villain’s feet, his body twisted at an unnatural angle. CrazySugarFreakBoy!, Exile, dull thud, Chronic, even Donar were spread across the nuclear wasteland northwest of Gothametropolis, unmoving and broken.
Jay Boaz dragged himself to his feet ignoring the searing of his skin and the pain where broken ribs rubbed together. A grim cold fury rose from his chest and seized his mind. In the last few days he had seen atrocity and murder. He had seen teammates hurt and maybe killed. He had sacrificed the woman he loved, letting her be taken captive by a merciless and cruel foe, to save a roomful of wounded innocents. Even now she could be screaming in pain, dying with his name on her lips, hating him with her last breath. And Thermonuclear Man was slaying a hero in front of him, and the villain was laughing.
Hatman reached into the extradimensional space of his Hatility Belt, searching to the very bottom to drag out a cheap cotton cap with a smiley face on the front: a sun hat. Holding it with one hand he dragged on his Torpedoes hat and cannoned into Thermonuclear Man, barreling him away from NTU-150 and the others, slamming them both into the broken land half a mile distant from the fallen heroes.
Thermonuclear Man swung round and seared Hatman’s left arm off.
Jay staggered back, his body starting to close down with the shock. He scrabbled to drag the grubby white linen in his remaining hand onto his head.
“Still haven’t got it yet, have you hero?” Thermonuclear Man asked him as he leaned down and deliberately crushed Jay’s kneecaps. “I have the power of a nuclear blast. There’s nothing more powerful than that. Nothing more powerful than me.”
“There… one thing…” Hatman gasped, grimacing and pulling his sun hat on with a last gesture of defiance. “Absorb this!”
For a millionth of a second a miniature star blazed where the capped crusader had lain. The night sky lit up like day, the scorched earth evaporated into silicon gas. The thermal bloom of a fourteen million degree flash was restrained by a gravity event confining it to a sphere a quarter mile in diameter. The seething core of Thermonuclear Man’s hard-radiation sentience was ripped apart by the thermonuclear signature of a solar radiation five million times more powerful than his own.
When the rocks had cooled enough to be liquid again Trickshot roused Donar and got him to retrieve the blackened shriveled silhouette of Jay Boaz that hung in the middle of the molten hemisphere wracked by residual gravity tides. Of Thermonuclear Man there was no trace at all.
___________________________________
Hacker Nine reprogrammed the food console to produce salsa chips and shoveled them into his mouth as he broke through the best security safeguards that Technopolis could offer. “Tricky. They’ve manually locked off some of the really key systems by physically separating them from the system. I guess the Watchman’s getting a bit impatient and Zalas is trying to keep his hide.”
“So it’s not going to be possible to program the force shields around the city to come down and then safely self-destruct all the obedience chips implanted in the Science Police?” Dancer sighed.
“I didn’t say impossible,” Hacker Nine shrugged. “Just tricky.” He spliced more wires into the colorful confetti he had made of technical service depot Green Beta 312.
“Ah, we can handle improbable,” Dancer promised. “Um, should that bank of machinery be moving like that?”
Hacker Nine sprayed nachos out as he spotted Technovore emerging from the wall. “Crap! Run! That’s bad news, and he said that the next time he caught up with me he’d ram a power pylon up my…”
“Don’t move,” a voice from the shadows warned them.
And Dancer relaxed. “About time you got here,” she complained without looking round, “Dark Knight.”
___________________________________
Fratricide’s psychoplasmic hatred tendrils seared around Premiere’s throat, choking the last science hero as Steel Enforcer and Iron Monk pounded him again and again and again. The Telepath College dredged deep into his mind dragging all his childhood fears and traumas to the surface, pounding away at his will, trying to break him. Given chance to focus Blast Zone was now able to detonate his explosions inside the struggling enemy, targeting the major organs for multi-megaton impacts.
Ziles, ManMan, HV, and Cobra watched on the viewing screen that DK had forced Technovore to pirate into the Science Police observation channels. “How much more can he take?” Ziles wondered. The fight had been going on continuously for over eight hours now.
“I don’t know,” Hunter Victorious admitted. “I’m surprised he’s lasted this long. I thought he’d cave when they sent in the chip-controlled Science Heroes on suicide missions, or later when they started executing a hundred schoolchildren every minute until he surrendered.”
“He is a true warrior,” argued Cobra. “He knows that to yield now will cost many more lives later and he will give no quarter. But those children will be avenged. This I swear.”
ManMan, newly released from control by obedience chip himself, shuddered. “There had to be a non-lethal way of stopping those heroes. They’re the good guys, just under outside control. That could be me out there.”
“It’s all he can do to stay alive and keep fighting,” HV adjudged. “He has to make critical life and death decisions each moment of this battle. The first time he chooses wrong then he dies and our world’s hope dies with him.”
The wall blossomed into a web of wires as Technovore opened a corridor to allow DK, Dancer, and Hacker Nine to join the others inside Computer Adjunct 914/B. “Then he’d better keep choosing right,” growled the Dark Knight. “This is Hacker Nine. He knows how to bypass those security protocols that were baffling the Technovore. In turn the Technovore can manipulate machinery to physically establish contact with systems that aren’t connected to the main grid. They’re going to work together to accomplish our objective.”
“We are?” swallowed Hacker Nine.
“If you know what’s good for you,” answered Cobra.
Dancer watched Premiere struggling to survive as the odds mounted against him, while Technovore and Hacker Nine carried out the Dark Knight’s instructions. “Now they’re sending in the Tech Pack against him as well! We have to get him out of there,” she worried.
“No,” HV disagreed. “He has to get us out of here. We now have the ability to make a hole in the force screen, but somebody has to physically transport this computer core we’re hiding out in away from Technopolis. My tactile telekinesis isn’t strong enough, so we need Premiere. He’s been keeping everybody watching him – especially the Red Watchman – and now we’re ready to go.”
“How can you contact him?” Dancer asked. “Can’t the Science Council track or intercept any communications signal we use?”
“Yes,” DK agreed. “So we don’t use one.” He cocked his head and merely spoke in a calm, clear voice. “Premiere, this is the Dark Knight. We’ve planted the protocols and we’re ready to leave when you are.”
“Understood,” replied the man with the senses that could hear a leaf fall in Africa. “On my way.”
The sonic boom toppled the Telepath College into disarray. Fratricide burst into a bloody spray and Iron Monk into a tangle of metallic wreckage an instant after. Blast Zone retreated as his clothing burned from Premiere’s thermal spray. Then the science hero picked up Steel Enforcer and used him as a club to pound the giant robotic hunting hounds of the Tech Pack.
“Not so fast,” Steel Enforcer warned, sinking indestructible fingers into Premiere’s flesh, shattering collarbone and shoulder-blade. “We finish this.”
“Not that fast,” Premiere promised him. “This fast.” Then Steel Enforcer was hammered through superstructure and bedrock into the nearest of the city’s power generation substations. The four thousand terrawatts were enough to wind even Premiere but the Enforcer would have normally just shrugged them off. Only his obedience chip was affected. As it spasmed so did Steel Enforcer, jerking epileptically in the web of power conduits.
Victor Brooke crawled from the wreckage, his flesh steaming from the voltage. He forced himself to fly, fast and hard, his thermal spray melting metal before him, until he reached Computer Adjunct 914b. Grabbing the whole structure he lurched upwards, seeking the minute disturbance in the city’s defensive fields established by Hacker Nine. For a moment the energy wall resisted him and then he was free and clear, the reinforced data-vault with the recovered heroes in it towed behind him.
This time he made it almost two hundred miles before he fell to the ground.
___________________________________
To dissuade pursuit the other protocols established in the Technopolis data banks cascaded away. The main power grid cycled down, shutting off surveillance, security, and heavy weapons systems. The locks across the city failed again, restarting riots brutally quelled not eight hours earlier. The force fields protecting the city switched to emergency back-up power. Most importantly, the sophisticated positronic intelligences manipulating the civil service’s obedience chips fell over, leaving hundreds of remaining science heroes and thousands of remaining science police stunned and gradually reasserting their free will.
And the Red Watchman rose from his bloody throne and said, “No. This will not do.”
The most powerful energy-manipulator on the planet reached out along conduits of pure thought he had previously prepared and took control. Power stations flickered back to life fuelled only by the Watchman’s will. Every door in Technopolis clamped shut in obedience to his command. The force fields hazed and turned midnight black, reinforced by the bio-energies of the Red Watchman. Thousands of obedience chips twitched and flicked back on with even more malevolent programming. And now one mind controlled the city and everyone in it.
“Better,” giggled Assak Malevi. “Ooh, yes. Much better.” A mere thought activated the long-range offensive systems of ten thousand grav-wagons and fifty thousand war drones. A second pointed them on their mission of mass destruction.
“That’s… No-one can do that,” swallowed Dr Zalas, clinging to the Science Council podium. “Nobody is that powerful!”
“You stupid man,” the Watchman spat. “Of course we are. Premiere and I, we are gods locked in a struggle for supremacy. You and your twitching scientists, this pitiable victim world, the screaming millions on our City’s streets, they are nothing, mere trimmings in a clash of opposing destinies. One of us will win and the other will die. Nothing else matters.” He turned away from the shocked remnants of the technocrats that had once ruled here and spoke much as Dark Knight had into thin air.
“Victor, I know you can hear me. You have taken your very best shot. Now it’s my turn.”
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- Premiere #36: Smackdown - A story of various people being pushed too far, wrathfully written by... the Hooded Hood - 12:17 on October 10, 2002
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