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This message Premiere #38: The Countdown Hours was posted by The last-but-one chapter before this series gets a rest for a while from... the Hooded Hood on Wednesday, October 16, 2002 at 12:14.
Premiere #38: The Countdown Hours
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Xanadelle by Dancer
Fin Fang Foom woke up to find the Dark Knight staring down at him. “About time,” the urban legend told him. “Get out of the cellular regenerator contraption. We have things to do.”
The Makluan dragon looked up at the Technopolitan device that had saved his life. “Situation? What’s this?”
DK shrugged, dismissing the miracle machine. “That’s some short-life technology that repairs living cells. You’ll be fine for twenty-four hours then feel like crap for a month. We’ve got Hatman, Amazing Guy, Falcon, and Donar hooked up to it now. Goldeneyed, Nats and the others are already back up. Even the minor scratches are treated. We should be able to field a full team by 0600.”
“And the rest?”
“Not good. World military at 25% operational capacity, most world governments decimated or in disarray, roughly half the world’s nations capitulated to Technopolis, and the entire Techno-fleet due here at dawn on a scorched earth mission. But we have a few surprises for them too.”
Foom jumped up from his bed and strode towards the meeting room. “Fill me in as we go.”
___________________________________
“Dancer? Are you okay?” Ziles found Sarah Shepherdson standing down by the shore where the Lair Island met the turbulent Atlantic. She was looking eastwards towards the smudge that would eventually be morning.
“Me? Oh sure. Absolutely fine.” A couple of hours ago Dancer had learned that Premiere’s supposedly-dead Sov-Blok lover was alive and waiting for him in the Lair Mansion. Xanadelle was at his bedside now awaiting his awakening.
“Really?” Ziles wasn’t convinced. “I guess things are a little uncertain right now.”
“As in we don’t know if any of us will be alive tonight?” Sarah asked.
“Well, that too,” the Xnylonian admitted. “You know, I think I’m going crazy. There was a time when I’d have just jumped in my starship and got off the planet if something like this was going down. I still could. I know I’ll probably die today, but I haven’t the faintest intention of running away.”
“That’s the Lair Legion for you. We all laugh at Finny for being all do or die and then we go do or die with him.”
“Yeah” smiled Ziles. “I guess we do. But about Xanadelle…”
“He loves her,” Dancer cut in. “I know he does. I was just a substitute, a comforter. We both knew it. It doesn’t matter. He deserves…”
“Dancer. It’s okay to be upset. It’s okay to wish things had turned out differently. He’s a heck of a guy.”
“Yeah,” smiled Sarah crookedly. “And the sex was great too.”
___________________________________
“You’re still here?” dull thud was surprised to find Chronic raiding the Lair Legion’s kitchen. “I thought you’d have headed for the hills by now.”
“Nah. I figure I’ll probably hitch a lift with the costumes tomorrow and have a few words with the Technopolitans,” the guitarist shrugged.
“Secret heroic tendencies after all?” teased thud.
“You wish. No, it’s just that those bastards stuck a microchip in my head and tried to make me a good little soldier, and I tend to have a problem with oppressive authority figures. So I intend to express my discontent.” He downed the best part of a pint of milk and gestured to thud. “What’s your excuse?”
“I have a do-gooder telepathic tapeworm with a civic conscience,” the Scotsman growled sullenly. “Also, I don’t see Technopolis as really promoting small label indy music if they conquer the planet.”
~~So we’re also going to express our discontent Cressida contributed telepathically.
“Yeah. I’m going to express the Red Watchman in the goolies,” promised dull thud.
___________________________________
When it was Hatman’s turn to awake he found Whitney Darkness watching over him.
“Please, don’t be a dream,” he told her desperately, fighting off the anaesthetizing effects of the cellular regenerator. His new skin itched over tender reknitted flesh and muscle.
“It’s me, Jay. Welcome back.”
“But… how are you back? What did they do to you? You’re not…?”
“Shut up, Jay, and don’t excite yourself. You transformed yourself into a miniature sun and back again. You nearly died, you know. You would have if Donar hadn’t put that Ausgardian helmet on you and shared half your wounds and then Exile got you to this cellular regenerator thing in time. As it is you’ll not be able to use your powers for weeks, you strained them so badly.”
Jay Boaz didn’t care about that just now. “But you, Whitney. Are you alright? What…?”
The Sorceress outlined the strange events of her rescue by Xander the Improbable. “I came back here intending to turn you into something shriveled and crispy, but when I got here I found you’d done it to yourself, you dumb jerk!” she concluded. “Oh Jay, don’t die on me. I thought I’d lost you.”
“I thought I’d lost you too, Whitney! Hell, I thought I’d sent you to your horrible death. I chose to let you die!”
“I know that. I know it was the right choice, too. I understand that now, at least in my head. I do.”
Hatman pulled himself from under the regenerator. He wasn’t strong enough to stand yet but he only needed one knee for this. “Whit, we might still die in the next few hours, but I don’t ever want to lose you again. Will you marry me?”
___________________________________
Nats found Kareen O’Connell in the arboretum that doubled as a breakfast bar. It was still dark but she found comfort moving amongst the plants, tending and watering them.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you,” Bill Reed told her. “But, um, I have a package you asked for.”
“Oh,” blushed Windblossom, taking the pregnancy testing kit from him. “That. It’s okay now. I’m… not. And that’s all.”
“Right. Good, I guess. Is it good?”
“Of course it is. I don’t have any kind of contraceptive implant chip because I never expected to… well, I’m not…”
“Is this something it would help to talk about?” Nats asked kindly. And he wondered why all the great girls were happy to cry on his shoulder about other men.
___________________________________
She was with Nats again, Martin Hernandez saw. He was hugging her. He was able to comfort her as Phase Shift couldn’t. He had been able to rescue her. She could release to the Parodyverse champion all the pain and fear she’d stored up from her ordeal with Zalas, things she would never tell the junior science hero.
Phase Shift turned away, concentrated to solidify his fist, and slammed it into the wall.
A strong hand caught it before it smashed into the plaster. “Is not good to be wrecking the décor, cute Finny is to be saying,” Yo pointed out. “Is better to be not doing that, but to be telling Yo why is to be so unhappy you are.”
“I don’t think so,” Phase Shift answered, turning away. “Sorry about trying to damage your HQ.”
“Yo is thinking so. Is to be Yo is pure thought being and what Yo is thinking is happening. So you must be telling Yo what is making cute-Martin not happy. And then cute-Martin is to be leaving everything to Yo.”
___________________________________
“So,” Trickshot said, not quite sure how to make casual conversation with an elder being from the dawn of time. “You’re a shoggoth, then?”
“Yes,” agreed the Manga Shoggoth. “The clue’s in the name.”
“A Lovecraftian beastie.”
“I prefer to think of myself as a miracle of bioengineering using rules that have now been repealed as unfair to reality,” the Shoggoth replied.
“And you’re going to help us take down Technopolis.”
“They did interrupt my viewing of Princess Mononoko, yes.” Manga Shoggoth wondered as he spoke with the brief human if it knew that it was in the middle of a timespace anomaly that had little to do with the current crisis but would lead to interesting consequences later. Best not to mention it.
“That’s a film, right?” the brief human checked.
“An animated movie,” confirmed the Shoggoth. “I happened to have the DVD here if you would care to…”
“Hey, we got some time to kill before the apocalyptic battle,” shrugged Trickshot. “I’ll grab the popcorn.”
___________________________________
Premiere awoke with Xanadelle lying beside him. He was alert in a flash, his enhanced senses checking her to a microscopic level to detect forgery or fraud. He couldn’t find any.
“How?” he asked.
“The Red Watchman,” the woman told him honestly. “After you killed me Zalas got hold of my body for experimentation. Malevi confiscated it when he took power, and used his own abilities to repair and restimulate my organic functions. And I just… came back.”
“Why?” Premiere demanded.
“Why what?” Xanadelle smiled. “Why did the Watchman do it? Because he wanted another of your women to humiliate, another tool to wound you with. Why did I come back? Because I could. Because I wanted to be with you.”
“Malevi hurt you?”
“The Technopolitan prison that can hold me hasn’t yet been built, Victor. You know that. So I wandered out and picked up a few of your allies that had got themselves somewhat lost and came back here to wait for the man who killed me to get back.”
“I see.” Premiere dragged himself painfully from the four-poster bed in his guest room at the Lair Mansion. “I don’t know what to say.”
“’Sorry I killed you’, maybe?” Xanadelle suggested. “But you don’t lie, do you?”
“Sorry I had to kill you,” the science hero answered. “You didn’t leave me any alternative other than to let you overrun Technopolis.”
“And your Science Council didn’t leave Sov-Blok any alternative but to try, given your city’s political and economic adventurism.”
“I suppose not. But having to choose like that damn near killed me. It did kill Zalas, since I ripped him and the entire council to pieces because they forced me to terminate you. And because I failed myself then I precipitated this whole disaster.”
“Yes, I heard you were blaming yourself again,” admitted Xanadelle. “I also heard that little Probability Dancer offered you a measure of… comfort.”
“She saved me. I can never repay her for what she did.”
“Then I guess I owe her one too. Unless you intend to stay with her, maybe?” The former Sov-Blok agent leaned forward and brushed her lips against Premiere’s. “Victor, what are we going to do?”
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