Premiere #49: Journey into Legend


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The Hooded Hood presents the shattering conclusion to the PVB's longest-running continued story so far
Thu Jul 17, 2003 at 06:44:02 am EST
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Premiere #49: Journey into Legend

“Victor Brooke,” the Hero Feeders called to the last science hero, “We have come for you.”
Premiere hung limply on the conduit cables through which he was channeling his life force; offering the energy to maintain the reality bubble that kept Technopolis from dissipating into meaningless chaos in the interstiticial void it traveled. Well past his limits, his former wounds were telling on his strength. Old scars had burst open. His chest was a bloody mass of gore. He was pale and ragged and exhausted.
He looked up savagely and released his thermal spray on the Feeders.
They absorbed it. “You will be a great feast,” they promised him. “You have been a great hero, and your city would have been legend. But we shall take them and we shall take you, and all will be forgotten as if it never was.”
“No,” growled Premiere. “Technopolis is going home.”
He could see it so clearly now. The city was needed where it belonged, the last piece in the patchwork puzzle shattered world that the Red Watchman had destroyed, the final element needed to make something new and better from the ruins of the old. Premiere knew he wouldn’t be able to do it now, but Starpom Omega could, if only he had the tools.
“It’s for the best, Victor,” the Hero Feeders told him seductively. “So much pain and hurt, erased forever. All those friends who suffered and died cruelly and unfairly will never have existed, the shame and pain of their undeserved destructions never borne.”
“No.”
“The evil done by your city to that other little world, the millions dead by bomb and matahuman, the scars of war on land and mind, all undone,” they continued.
“No…”
“The villainy of the Red Watchman, of Count Armageddon, of Thermonuclear Man, of Technovore, of Yellow Fever, of Dreamripper, of the Mynadrine Host, all undone.”
“No!” Premiere shouted. “What’s done is done. Erase the bad and you erase the good. Delete it all and nothing is learned and the pain and horror have been for nothing.”
The Hero Feeders giggled. “We weren’t offering you a choice,” they clarified as they came for him.

_______________


Phase Shift kissed Windblossom. “Goodbye,” he told her.
Kareen O’Connell blinked away tears. “You’re going back,” she recognized. When the Lurkers Between had arrived, Martin Hernandez had responded to Premiere’s barked command to get her to safety, and the two of them had phased through the bulkhead floor to the service conduits below.
Now Phase Shift turned to return to the fight. “I can’t leave it to him,” he explained. “He fights for everybody, but who fights for him?”
Windblossom grabbed his wrist. “We do,” she answered.

_______________


The Hero Feeders came at Victor Brooke from all directions, tearing and clawing at his very being, Unable to release the cables in his hands lest Technopolis be destroyed Premiere could only writhe as the creatures’ talons shredded his very self. He tried not to scream.
His left arm went numb and he could no longer hold the transfer coil. The reality bubble around the city flickered.
Phase Shift rose through the floor and caught the conduit. Solidifying in the midst of the Hero Feeders he dragged the other cable from Premiere’s failing grasp and harnessed his powers as never before. It only required the smallest of phases to keep his city from destruction; but it was the smallest of phases on a city four times the size of Paradopolis.
“Martin?” Premiere croaked, blinking in surprise.
“You said I had to save the day from now on,” Phase Shift gasped, grimacing with the pain of his labors. “So I came. Now do the hero stuff…”
Premiere rose up from the floor spraying Hero Feeders as he came. Flames washed the room, powered by a will so fierce it could keep a man alive to save his beloved city. Hero Feeders that had laughed off his attempts before burst open like suppurating sores.
Faster and faster he fought, stronger and stronger as he burned himself up to defeat them. More and more came upon him, but again and again he fought them back, ripping and tearing with strength that could sunder continents. Premiere would not fall quietly into silence, and neither would his Technopolis.
Phase Shift dropped to his knees and forced himself not to beg for release as his own life was pulled into the machines that preserved the wandering city. “At least I got to see Premiere doing that,” he thought as the blackness washed over him.
Then small arms wrapped round him and a gentle gift that could make flowers grow and seeds spring to life washed through him to nurture a whole city. Martin Hernandez blinked in surprise as he realized Windblossom was behind him, hugging him, hugging Technopolis, lending her own life to sustain his, to sustain everybody.
“Silly man,” she whispered in his ear. “Did you really think he’s the last science hero? There’s never a last hero.”
Someone somewhere had finally repaired the vidcom system because as Kareen spoke every monitor in every home in the city flashed to life. Windblossom’s words and the scene beyond echoed from every screen in Technopolis.
So they knew. They all knew. Premiere fought for the city, for the people. Phase Shift stood with him. Windblossom stood with him. And maybe… maybe everyone could be a hero?
Premiere slammed more Hero Feeders aside and battled on. The tide seemed to be turning, as if the intruders were distracted. Then his level eight senses alerted him to what was happening. Across the city people were joining the fight.
“Yes,” Victor Brooke breathed as he realized what was happening. “Yes! This is what it means! This is what it’s about! This is my city, my people, my Technopolis. This is what we must become, will become, have become!”
Hero Feeders scattered away from him as he rose to the air, power rippling around him as his will tightened to iron.
“We’re almost there,” Phase Shift whimpered in his pain. “Almost home. I can feel it!”
“Hold on,” Windblossom encouraged him, biting back her own screams. “Hold on, my love. Just a little more.”
Premiere moved to join them, but then he jerked his head to one side and looked out with eyes that saw far beyond the electromagnetic spectrum.
The Hero Feeders that had breached the city had only been the vanguard. There, trailing Technopolis through the vortex between dimensions, an infinite host of the parasites clawed their way forward, seeking access. If Technopolis passed back to the Technoverse they would come with it, breaking through to ravage the world and the universe beyond.
The parasites had to be stopped.
“I have to go,” Victor Brooke apologized to Phase Shift and Windblossom. “Duty calls.”
He flew over Technopolis one last time, saluting it and the brave men and women who had struggled with horror and death and triumphed to heroism. Then he faced the hero feeders beyond, flying into their host with a burning determination not to be stopped, not to fail, not to be wiped away.
Images and memories danced around him as he attacked; of Lament and Xanadelle; of Dancer in the rain; of Clockwork Soldier and the others in happier times; of his brief camaraderie with the Lair Legion. They were things he would not surrender, things that he would never let go.
The Lurkers recoiled as he impacted, writhing and twisting as they found they could not rend him to non-existence. Something greater and nobler than they could understand was amongst them, blazing like a nova, unstoppable, eternal. The shrieked and struggled as premiere plunged into their dark host, ripped away from the city they trailed. Angrily they turned on their enemy seeking to rend him, but Premiere struggled on. They sought to erase him, but failed. Too many people believed in him now. He believed in the virtue of what he was doing. He knew how it all had to end. Legends cannot be forgotten.
Premiere journeyed into legend.

_______________


With a last shriek of tortured dimensional engines, Technopolis appeared back in its familiar place on its home world.
Windblossom toppled to the floor, wiping flacks of blood from her face. Phase Shift ignored his own weariness and helped her up.
Only then did they notice the live vid-feed. The city was watching them.
“He’s gone,” Martin Hernandez admitted to Technopolis. “But he is not forgotten.” Something else needed to be said too, and after a moment it came to him. “Now we build a world he would be proud of.”
A legend.


Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2003 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2003 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved.



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