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Post By The Hooded Hood recounts the end of the third race Sat Oct 16, 2004 at 03:57:48 pm EDT |
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#179: Untold Tales of the Transworlds Challenge: Tactics, or Hunting In The Dark Places | |
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#179: Untold Tales of the Transworlds Challenge: Tactics, or Hunting In The Dark Places Previously: During the third leg of the Transworlds Challenge, the Scavenger Hunt, Nats is critically injured in combat with the Shee-Yar Imperium Guard. Leaving Goldeneyed to care for him, with Amazing Guy missing, and with CrazySugarFreakBoy! assumed dead, Hatman, Visionary and Trickshot continue the chase. What they don’t know is that the real G-Eyed and CSFB! are prisoners aboard the slaveship of the Repiloids of Frammistat Eight along with Thonnagarian warrioress Shazara Pel, and that G-Eyed’s bitter alternate reality double Blackhearted now has Nats at his non-existent mercy. Who’s Who in the Transworlds Challenge  The dying woman loved the smell of the morning, the dew on the wet heather, the soft aromas of the wild flowers on the peat bog. She was glad she’d survived the night. It was best to say goodbye in the morning. Her family were gathered round her, four generations, though the newborn babe could hardly know that his great-grandmother was passing on before he ever knew her. She scolded them for their tears. “Just make damn sure it’s a good wake,” she warned them. “I want them to be complaining about the riot for a hundred years.” Everyone was surprised by the strange noise from outside. The dust swept up past the window of the turf-roofed cabin as if a sudden storm had descended, and there was an unfamiliar machine whirr. The family were still staring at one another when there was a knock at the door. “Well,” snapped their matriarch from her sick-bed, “See who it is!” One of the grandchildren, a sleek young beauty with raven-dark hair, padded to answer the summons. Her grandmother watched approvingly. “Good morning,” said the grey-mantled stranger in the doorway. He managed to even make that simple greeting sound ominous. “You!” spat the old woman. “I don’t want your trouble on this house, Marquis! We have nothing more to say to each other, haven’t had for a long time.” “Marquis?” one of the older woman repeated, remembering stories she’d learned at this old lady’s knee.” Not the Marquis of Herringcarp?” “None other,” the Hooded Hood told her. “And I think you will discover we do have one final transaction to make, Sarah of Dunboggie.” The year was 1809, and the last surviving member of the Improbable College dragged herself up on one elbow to glare at her visitor. “What is it now?” she demanded. “I thought I was rid of you at last!” “You should have known better,” the second visitor noted, entering the hovel and pulling back her own hood. She was a porcelain-perfect beauty with glossy dark hair and a Mediterranean complexion. “Hello, Sarah.” “Hello, Circe,” the old woman smiled toothlessly. “And damn you’re finally looking better than me at last!” “I have a natural advantage,” the Austernal immortal pointed out. “Not that I ever really needed it.” The family looked at one another in confusion, uncertain what these exchanges meant or what the visitors wanted. “Say farewell to your kinswoman,” the Marquis told them. “You shall not see her again.” “You’re not going to hurt her,” the girl who had opened the door warned. “Oh yes, that one’s yours alright,” Sersi admitted, smiling at the determined glint in the child’s eye. “Peace, girl. We mean your grandmother no harm.” “It’s all right,” Sarah told her family. “They’re old acquaintances, and it seems I have one last adventure after all. That’s good. I had hoped to live to a ripe old age and become a scandal and a byword, you know.” “Grandmama, you’re a hundred and eight!” a grandson pointed out. “Yes, but I really needed more time to be properly scandalous,” Sarah sighed. She made her goodbyes to her kinsfolk, taking a moment to give each one a piece of sharp advice. To her raven-tressed granddaughter she whispered, “There’s three gold coins in the mattress that should get you and the young man as far as Dublin, and after that it’s up to you.” Then the frightening Marquis herded them out of the cottage. They stared for a moment in disbelief at the huge shining machine that filled the garden, a great gleaming engine of red and gold and orange metal. Nobody asked where it had come from, or how it hovered two feet above the turf. “So what now?” Sarah asked the Hood and Sersi when they were alone. “A last adventure,” the Marquis of Herringcarp told her. “If you want it.” “A long adventure, too,” Sersi warned. “Long adventures are good,” Sarah of Dunboggie assured them. “Unfortunately I’m not at my best right now.” The Marquis squatted down beside her bed. “No,” he said sadly, “I’m afraid you’re dying. But there is one way we can give you that last adventure, if you’ll make one last bargain with me.” “Your bargains are always more than they seem, and they have sharp edges,” the old woman snapped. “Yes,” agreed the Hooded Hood. And he explained about the Transworlds Challenge, and the need to win it. Then Sersi described the last Abhuman exploration vehicle, rescued from the museum where it had been mothballed, and how it would be needed to run the race. “But its controlling sentience has long been erased,” she concluded. “If it’s going to function now we need a sharp mind to lodge inside it, a formidable will.” Sarah of Dunboggie pursed her lips. “Was this your idea, Circe d’Aea, or his?” “His,” admitted the Austernal. “You know what he can be like. But he does tell the truth.” “So does the Devil,” muttered the old woman. “But I suppose I’d best go along with the plan. Otherwise he’ll just get esoteric. What do you have to do?” “It’s just an extrapolation of my transmutative powers,” Sersi told her. “I change your form, permanently, into something I can implant into the flying machine there. You become one with it, and it becomes your new body. Then you can go wherever you like and do what you want until you’re needed.” “Within the limitations of our pact,” added the Hooded Hood. “Sounds good to me,” sighed the old woman, laying back her tired body for the last time. “Do it.”  Aunt Sally broke free of the memory bubble and spun disoriented amongst the framework of narrative threads that underpinned the Parodyverse. Visionary was the first to recover, sitting now at the pilot’s station aboard the Abhuman vessel. He stopped the yawing and pitching and brought the ship to a full stop. “Wow!” Trickshot groaned from his weapons nacelle. “That wus a memory?” “We needed to harvest one as the fourth item of the Scavenger Hunt,” Hatman gasped. “But I thought it would be one of the crew’s memories. Not…” “Mine?” Aunt Sally asked in her lilting voice. “I hadn’t expected that either, to be honest. Gosh, didn’t I look terrible back then?” “That was you?” Trickshot checked. “The old lassie? And Sersi changed you into an Abhuman racecar?” “It was a little more complicated than that,” Aunt Sally noted – Sally is an old diminutive of Sarah. “But essentially, yes. I was Sarah of Dunboggie.” “Sarah Shepherdson’s from Dunboggie,” Visionary pointed out. “She looks a bit like that grand-daughter of yours.” “I was going to say the girl looked like Dancer,” Hatman noted. “Who knows? They could both be descendant of mine,” Aunt Sally suggested ingeniously. “It’s not like I didn’t work hard to bring a large family into the world.” “So you’re an ancient Abhuman exploration machine with the mind of an eighteenth century adventuress,” Visionary summarised. “I wouldn’t say ancient, my dear,” Aunt Sally chided him. “Mature, perhaps.” She began to move forwards through the maze of narrative lines to find the next portal. “Do you want to know about the next target?”  “They’re out of the narrative underplane,” the Librarian called as his monitor board lit up again. “I have contact with Aunt Sally once more.” “We still need to set up a time-space fold,” Al B. Harper called out urgently to Miss Framlicker and Amy Aston. “We need to get over to Nats fast.” “I’ve lost contact with his signal and Goldeneyed’s,” the Librarian reported. “They may be under attack again.” “It’ll take us too long to calibrate the gateway,” Miss F warned. “A couple more hours at least before we’ll be set to use it.” Princess Uhunalura burst into the room, summoned by the Librarian. “What’s wrong?” she demanded, panicked. “I was just chatting with this interplanetary real-estate salesman called Vorm and…” “Nats got himself gutted,” Amy answered harshly. “Now he’s bleeding to death and we can’t get to him.” “If we render assistance Nats and Goldeneyed will not be able to rejoin this leg of the contest,” the Librarian warned. “If we don’t render assistance Nats will be dead,” Al B. pointed out. He flicked some switches on the modified console he was operating. “Sir Mumphrey, can you hear me?” “Absolutely, m’boy. What do you need?” “We need assistance for Nats, right now. We need the Shoggoth.” “On it,” came back a disturbing bubbling voice from the far end of the comm-link; but Al B. Harper was strangely comforted.  “I never liked you, you know,” Blackhearted told Nats as he leaned over the bleeding Legionnaire. “Even before you wrecked my plans to revitalise the Legion you were always a pain in the ass.” He kicked down and shattered Nats’ kneecap. Bill Reed screamed and tried to cling to consciousness. He knelt if he fell asleep her would never wake. “You weren’t even fit to be on the team,” Bry Katz went on, enhancing his strength by shifting in force from other dimensions, snapping Nats’ fingers one by one. “I mean, flying powers? That was it? The ability to fly? How lame can you be?” He stamped down on his enemy’s other patella. “That lame I guess,” he chuckled. “You…” Nats gasped, trying to focus his telekinetics; but he could either use his powers to keep the blood inside his body or to defend himself, not both. “You’re not Goldeneyed!” Blackhearted dragged off the black full-face mask. “But I am Bry Katz.” He kicked Nats in the jaw until he felt is shatter. “And you’re history.” Nats felt the agony going away, and a cold numbness suffusing his broken body. “Don’t die yet,” Blackhearted urged him. “I haven’t even started teleporting bits of you out of your skin.” Then Blackhearted felt the cool edge of a blade across his jugular. “You could try teleporting yourself or me,” Keiko warned him, “but you’d better be very sure of your reaction times.” Bry Katz froze. “Aw, I still say you should have let me kack him!” Killer Shrike complained. “After he left me ta die on that blowing up spaceship just so he could come and play evil twin and get his jollies…” “It is over, Blackhearted,” Whitney Darkness warned the embittered young man. “Your mission was to aid the champions, not to kill them. I don’t think the Hooded Hood will be very happy with you.” “And the Hood’s got to be happy at all costs, has he?” Bry sneered. “You might like being his slave, but I have other plans. And now that Goldeneyed’s dead, I’m free. I don’t need the Hood to keep willing me into existence. I’m off the leash.” “Goldeneyed isn’t dead,” Keiko told him. “He teleported to another ship and has been there ever since. So come along, puppy, or you’ll have to get spanked.” Blackhearted’s head jerked, nearly decapitating himself. “What?” he demanded. “No!” Keiko shifted to kill him as his eyes flashed yellow, but Bry had practiced long and hard and was gone before the blade had moved a fraction of an inch. “What about him?” Killer Shrike asked, looking down at the dying Nats. “Can we at least put him our of our misery?” “No,” answered the Sorceress. She knelt down beside Bill Reed and tore strips from her dress to make hasty combat bandages. Keiko, also trained in first aid, joined in. “This totally sucks,” complained Killer Shrike. The three of them were gone before the world rippled insanely and the Manga Shoggoth unfolded himself to claim the fallen Nats.  . “Any word yet on Bill?” Hatman asked as he and Trickshot raced back onto Aunt Sally with the brick from the formerly-great wall of Deneb and a hundred or so angry security patrolmen at their heels. “I just heard from the Librarian,” Vizh answered as he spurred Aunt Sally out of range of the blaster fire. “The Manga Shoggoth used one of those chymeric gate-thingies he does, the ones that bypass time-space because he doesn’t believe in it? Anyway, he got to Nats in time. But G-Eyed was nowhere in sight. He’d just bandaged Nats up and vanished.” “I know Bry and Bill row all the time,” Hatman admitted, “and there was that bad blood over the deputy-leader bit a while back, but deep down they’re like brothers.” “Cain an’ Abel,” suggested Trickshot. “Anyway, the Shoggoth’s shifting Bill back to the EEE building, and Al B.’s setting up a transfer point so the can get Uhuna back there to see to him.” Trickshot leered. “Meanwhile we’re down to a crew of three, and we’ve still got a long way to go,” Hatman worried. “What’s the last object?” Aunt Sally told them. Vizh took a hurried bathroom break.  The dimensional engines fired up by remote control, filling the old Gothametropolis firehouse with a grinding hum as vast energies opened a pinch in the fabric of the universe to connect a small doorway with a similar machine millions of light years distant. Worn out machinery groaned and sparked into action, and Al B. Harper and Uhunalura, former Princess of the Abhumans, spilled through the breach just before the shining rectangle vanished and the dimensional equipment expired in a cloud of sparks. “Damn and blast!” shouted Al B. Harper, dousing the fires on his jacket and looking over the scorched interface generator. “I thought I’d found a way to bypass the conceptual feedback on the vortices transduction coils! Now I’ll have to reinstall the whole phase equivocation array!” Uhuna picked herself up and looked around the darkened EEE headquarters. “I don’t understand why we had to come here,” she admitted. “Why couldn’t we just go straight to Bill?” “Because the Manga Shoggoth’s method of shifting through timespace tends to drive his passengers insane,” Al B. shrugged. “I’m sceptical about that. They dared to call me mad! But we already had the co-ordinates and equipment here to be the receiving end of a cross-universe special pleat, so it made sense to have the Shoggoth bring Nats here and then…” “And why is it so cold?” Uhuna shuddered. It was cold. The firehouse was rimed with frost, and the first icicles were forming from condensation on the rafters. Al and Uhuna’s breath steamed. “I’m… well it must be cold out in Gothametropolis,” the scientist suggested worriedly. Uhuna reached down and brushed her fingers against a stain on the floorboards. “This is blood,” she declared. “Human blood.” She extended her Abhuman biological gifts to learn more. “Life’s blood,” she warned urgently. “What?” Al B. suddenly realised how unsafe the firehouse felt, as if they were perched on the brink of an abyss. Another Legionnaire would have searched for a weapon. Al flung open a portable waveband analyser. “Something’s very wrong here,” Uhuna sensed. “More wrong than I’ve ever encountered.” “There’s a rift,” Harper reported, frantically recalibrating the complicated tangle of sensor equipment in his arms. “A dimensional rift. Not one of ours. It’s… oh!” “Oh?” Uhuna asked, looking round into the gloom. “Before we took this place, Sorceress was here,” Al B. Harper recalled. “She opened a gateway to death, tried to bring what she thought was Hatman back through. The gate collapsed when De Brown Streak interfered. Or so we all thought.” “We thought?” the princess shivered. “It was never properly closed with due ritual or whatever,” Al B. frowned. He hated magic. It felt like cheating. “Everyone just assumed it was gone. And then we came here and started generating dimensional energies with our machines, and all the time we were feeding the old crack. No wonder Amy saw ghosts.” “The dead were slipping through?” Uhunalura swallowed hard. “Like moths seeing a flame,” Al admitted. “We have to…” But just then something changed in the corner. The angles there shifted well past three hundred and sixty degrees and reality dropped away like a paper mask to show something deeper and more awful, crawling with maggots larger than universes that cried out with human voices and danced on the wreck of time. And then the wall was just a wall and the gelid shape of the Manga Shoggoth wobbled forward bearing the bloody form of Nats. “You never mentioned you had a necrotic gateway open here,” the Shoggoth said accusingly. “I nearly overbalanced and fell in.” “It’s a new discovery,” Al Harper admitted. “Sorry.” “You could at least put up signs,” complained the elder being. “Bill!” Uhuna cried out, flying over to her wounded lover. Nats didn’t move or respond to her in any way. “Is… is he going to be okay?” Al B. ventured as the Abhuman princess laid her injury-transferring hands across her patient’s bloody chest. Her hands recoiled from Bill, stained red. “No!” she screeched. “No!” “No?” Al B. worried, looking down at the pale distraught woman sitting back on her heels and sobbing. “Uhuna?” “He’s dead!” she gulped, lost in her misery. “I can’t save him. I can’t help him! He’s dead!”  “You fought for Wallace,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! told the slaves whose control collars had just been neutralised by Shazara Pel’s destruction of the slaveship’s security panel, “Now fight for me!” Most of the prisoners were in no condition to join in CSFB!’s crusade to crush the Slimy Slaver Lovetoad. But a number of green-skinned young woman in exotic costumes reached for objects that could, if misused properly, double as weapons. “Ouch,” considered Dr Blargelslarch as he imagined what the exotic toys might be and how they could be applied. Goldeneyed flashed back into the holding bay. “Have you discovered where we are?” Shazara Pel demanded. “Yep,” Bry Katz agreed. “We’re aboard a Frammistat Eight slaveship that’s supporting the one competing in the Transworlds Challenge, and we’re on the third leg of the race, the scavenger hunt, just like Blargelslarch said.” “If I was going to lie to you I wouldn’t have come and released you,” the archaeologist noted testily. “Supporting?” CSFB! checked. “I thought each race only got a team of seven and the rest just stayed behind and helped out in between?” “The Slimy Slaver Lovetoad likes his comforts,” Dr Blargelslarch explained. “He has some rather specialised leisure interests that are best served on his own territory. Hence this second vessel in which the first can dock when it’s not off chasing down items for this cosmic treasure hunt.” “Then our enemy is not here?” Shazara Pel demanded. Her hands were bloody from the Reptiloid guards who had crossed her path on the way to free the other captives. “We must track him down and destroy him for the indignities to which he has subjected us.” “And also because he’s a grade-a slimo who needs dropping into the Sarlac’s pit!” CrazySugarFreakBoy! added. “I’ve located the control deck,” Goldeneyed reported. “There’s about a dozen Reptiloids there, heavily armed. I think they know there’s something wrong. But if we can take the ship we can use the comms array to let our friends no we’re alive.” “I have no friends,” spat Shazara Pel. “But we could use the sensors to locate the Lovetoad’s quest vessel and annihilate it.” “We get to kill frogs?” one of the green-skinned slave girls asked eagerly. She hefted an electro-enema with anticipation. “Well, make ‘em wish they were dead at least,” G-Eyed suggested. “Let’s go!”  “Okay,” admitted Hatman. “This one’s gonna be kind of tricky.” He stared down at the writhing mass of mile long tentacles that groped blindly in the midnight void. The creature was one of the Fairly Great Old Ones, and just looking at it was making him nauseous. “Tricky,” agreed Aunt Sally. “But the final item of the scavenger hunt is one of its polyp nodules, those greasy egg-things clustered down near its mouths. Somehow we have to get past the planet-crushing tentacles and the sanity-mangling psychic emanations and grab one.” “Hey, you already said the answer,” preened Carl Bastion. “Tricky. Me. Just get me close enough so I can use my monofilament fibre arrow.” “Wouldn’t you prefer to use a tractor beam?” Visionary suggested from the pilot’s station. “Nah. This is serious work,” the irritating archer replied. “My gravity beams wouldn’t work that near to Yog-Frothoth,” Aunt Sally warned. “If fact the whole of the laws of physics seem to break down the nearer we get to that thing.” “Okay,” decided Hatman. “We get in as close as we can, Vizh and Aunt Sally try and keep the beastie distracted, and I fly Trickshot in to get close enough to nab one of those polyp nodules.” “And we never eat sushi again.,” added Visionary. Aunt Sally banked hard and spiralled down towards the reality-shredding tentacles.  “Bill!” keened Uhuna, clutching Nats’ lifeless body. “Billll!!” Al B. Harper exchanged a helpless glace with the Manga Shoggoth. “His biomass will be reabsorbed and recycled into new organic forms as the timespace continuum unfolds,” the Shoggoth comforted the princess. “And also, your own life functions will likewise dwindle and fail within a few brief decades.” “Wow, and I thought I was bad at this,” Al B. admired. “No,” hissed Uhuna, kneeling next to her lover and placing her hands on his head and chest. “I won’t let you die. I can bring you back! I can shift your death to me, and…” “Whoa, wait!” Al interrupted, pulling the Abhuman girl away from Nats’ corpse. “You can’t do that. And even if you could, Nats wouldn’t want you to die in his place.” “But I love him!” Uhuna wailed, shaking with sobs. “I love him!” “Love?” came a voice from the shadows. “You don’t know what love is, you self-absorbed preening little slut.” A plump woman in black shimmered through the cold dimensional tear. “I love him,” declared Temporary Death. “And now Bill is with me.”  “I don’t see why I have to do this,” complained Fashion Accessory for the twentieth time, glaring at Ham-Boy. “I mean it’s grunt work. Mumphrey could just have easily sent just you. You’re suited to it.” “I think he thought there was safety in numbers,” Ham-Boy suggested, carefully parking the Ham Scooter and fastening his helmet to the handlebars. “Also, it’s going to take years of therapy for me to get over having to ride on that,” FA shuddered. “And be seen riding on that.” “Well, you did shout out to everyone we passed that you weren’t with me,” Ham-Boy pointed out. “So that was cleared up.” “This is so stupid,” Fashion Accessory glowered. “I mean, some crank caller talks about some weird meeting at EEE’s building, as if anyone could get past Al B. Harper’s nerdy forcefields, and we have to miss E! Tonight to come and check the building’s not vanished or someth…” Samantha Bonnington and Fred Harris stared at the junction of Sixways in Gothametropolis York. The EEE building had vanished.  Visionary jinked Aunt Sally to avoid a flailing tentacle that sliced through her force-fields like they weren’t there. Aunt Sally liquefied the appendage with a concentrated burst from her gravity accelerator cannons. “I should point out that at existing power usage I’ll be dead in space in around seven minutes,” she mentioned helpfully. “Ah good,” Vizh winced, desperately trying to keep the ship from being seized and torn apart by dozens of flailing bits of Yog-Frothoth. “Nice to have clear goals.” “Also this is reminding me about a good deal of dates back when I was mortal,” Aunt Sally noted. “Even the slime is familiar.” “Okay, too much info now,” the possibly-fake man admitted. “Wait, is that Hatman?” It wasn’t Hatman. The Skree Warcruiser loomed up behind Aunt Sally, fired a heavy gravity burst broadside on to hurl her down into Yog -Frothoth as a distraction, then loosed its nuclear arsenal at the elder beast to clear the way to claim a nodule. “So perish the enemies of the Skree!” gloated Dronon, the Public Accoster.  “Dammit! That is so unfair! Dammit!” shrieked Nitz the Bloody, watching on the monitors back on the Gamesmaster’s Gameship. “Those Skree bastards will pay for this!” “It was to be being totally unfairing!” admitted Yo. “Uncute behaviour in the most uncute ways!” S/he turned to the Librarian. “Have we to be still getting any signal from cute-Visi?” “The timespace anomalies around Yog-Frothoth are screwing up even the Gamesmaster’s transmissions,” Lee Bookman admitted. “I can’t tell whether Aunt Sally’s destroyed or not.” “Not!” Amy Aston called out, pointing to a few meagre monitor readings. “There’s still a gravity anomaly down in that mass of groping tendrils.” “The Skreemen miscalculated,” Ebony of Nubilia told them. “Yog-Frothoth thinks nuclear radiation is far more tasty than Abhuman technology. Now it’s focussing its feeding and mating urges on the Skree warship.” “You know a lot about these elder beings,” the Librarian noted. “They created the Shoggoths,” Ebony pointed out, “Know your enemy. That is not dead which can eternal lie, but that shouldn’t stop you from kicking it in the nuts.” “Yo is to be thinking that something is happening over there on the other side of uncute loathsome elder-being!” Yo called out. “Looking! Is to be Aunt Sally?” “It could be,” Falcon called hopefully. “Blowing her way out while that thing’s attention is on Dronon.” The conversation caught up with him. “Did you say it wanted to mate?” “Who doesn’t?” shrugged Nitz. “But the Public Accoster’s not my type.” “I hope that’s not Aunt Sally,” Miss Framlicker hissed through gritted teeth. “If so she’s flying out directly into the line of fire of the Frammistat Eight slavership. It’s waiting for her!”  Hatman and Trickshot toppled through the force-screen canopy over Aunt Sally’s engineering deck, covered in slime and clutching the polyp nodule. “You shouldn’t have come to get us!” Jay Boaz gasped, trying to overcome the screaming visions that Yog-Frogoth had pounded into his head. “Right,” agreed Trickshot, coughing up mucous. “Cause we could have died down here without any help at all.” “Cheer up, boys,” Aunt Sally told them. “We’re all in this together.” “I’d really prefer to be all out of this together,” Vizh noted, staring at the alarming fall of the power gauges. Aunt Sally had less than a minute of energy left at these levels of output. “Can we get out of here?” “Systems at forty-eight percent, power nearly zero,” Aunt Sally considered. “No, my dears, I’m afraid we can’t.” Hatman rummaged in his knapsack and pulled out a Con Ed hardhat. “We have power,” he declared. “Just tell me where you want it sending.” “Get some ta the cannons,” Trickshot urged him. “I got me some octopus ta fry!” “Get us out of here while Jay lasts,” Visionary told Aunt Sally as the capped crusader channelled enough power to light up Paradopolis through her systems. “These radical transformations really take it out of him and he can only last as long as his willpower and body can hold up.” “Performing a getting out of here manoeuvre,” the Abhuman vessel promised, and spiralled up between the thrashing tentacles. Every time they were clipped the alien matter of the elder being seared a new gash in her hull but she kept on weaving. At last she broke free, soaring beyond the perimeter of the blind horror’s reach. Hatman gave a great cry and collapsed to the floor. His hat rolled across the deck, and he lay still, his skin blackened and charred. Aunt Sally’s power systems failed, leaving the ship floating forward dead in space. “Uh-oh!” Trickshot worried as the slaveship of the Reptiloids of Frammistat Eight manoeuvred into position above them. “Stand by for boarders!” But instead of an invasion of Slaver Lovetoads, the vessel merely unshipped a five hundred foot long energy gun and aimed it at Aunt Sally. “You think maybe he’s compensating?” Visionary speculated. “I think we’re dead,” Trickshot admitted. “But yeah, he is.” “Interfering humans!” gloated the Slimy Slaver Lovetoad’s voice over the ether. “You have interfered in our business dealings once too often! You no longer have any resale value! It is with great pleasure that I terminate your retail cycles!” Trickshot grabbed the microphone and said a few last words that would have got him severely censured by the broadcasting standards authority. “So perish all meddlers!” croaked the Lovetoad, cycling up his main power-blaster appendage. Another of his crew of six indentured mercenaries looked up from the scannerscope. “Master, we’re getting an incoming hail. It’s the support ship!” “What do they want? Can’t they see I’m annihilating nuisances?” “They say… happy July 4th?” “What? That doesn’t make any sense. Try and get me a visual.” “They say… they say ‘A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down, but it is not this day. This day we fight! For all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!’” The Slimy Slaver Lovetoad frowned, his finger on the trigger that would destroy Aunt Sally. “Are they mad? Have they been at the oomozoo spice? Demand of them what they mean? Who’s sending those signals?” The mercenary relayed the curt demand, and its response. “Master, they say Flash Gordon is approaching?” “What do you mean, Flash Gordon’s approaching?” Then the second Frammistat Eight slaveship flashed out from subspace. “Now that’s overkill,” complained Vizh. But the second, larger vessel wasn’t aiming at Aunt Sally. Instead it kept speed and course and rammed into the first. Both ships crumpled together in a tangle of wreckage before there was a bright sear of flame as the jump engines detonated.  “What is to be status?” Yo demanded of his/her harried technical team. “The Skree have got clear and are heading to be first across the finish line,” Lee Bookman reported. “The Slimy Slaver Lovetoads are out of it, spiralling through dead space, burning. I have no idea why their support ship would crash into them, though.” “What about Aunt Sally and our friends?” Yo demanded impatiently. “Hey, we’re still breathing,” came back Visionary’s voice over the intercom. “Hatty’s not in a good way, and Aunt Sally’s pretty beaten up…” “Functioning at thirty-five percent systems viability and three percent power levels,” Amy interjected. “She could still limp home if you’ve got all the quest items.” “We got ‘em,” Trickshot agreed. “Get going then,” Nitz urged them. “You could still make second place!” But the Librarian stood up and called urgently “Beware! You have more visitors!” Then the Z’Sox Assassin Ship decloaked beside Aunt Sally. “What, is there a queue?” objected Miss Framlicker. The sibilant hiss of Broodmaster R’Pr of the Z’sox Consortium crackled over the ship-to-ship channel. “Contesstants of Earth. The Z’Sox Assassins’ Guild greets you, and acknowledgesss your achievementss. We have evolved a ssubstantial resspect for you in the course of this contesst.” “And now he’s gonna blast us outta the skies,” growled Trickshot. “Get me some power ta the cannons, Aunt Sally. Or if not, get ready ta launch me into space so I can get off a detonation arrow before I freeze an’ explode.” “Thiss sscavenger race was always going to be our weakesst leg,” the Broodmaster continued, “so we decided to sscavenge in our own way insstead. We sscavenged on Earth.” “Uh oh,” frowned Visionary. “Here it comes.” “We sscavenged the population of one of your ssettlements, some three hundred and ssixty-seven humans and their livestock, taken aboard our vessel here. And we will trade the lives of thessse humans in exchange for the quessst items you are carrying.” “Why those sneaky slimy sons-a…” Trickshot spat. “What do we do, Vizh?” The possibly fake man hesitated. “If we give up the items they’ll come in second, maybe win the Starseed. But we can’t just let them kill the hostages. Dammit!” “You will now exchange your treassures for these captivesss.” “We can’t do it,” Vizh swallowed, his face a pallid white. “We have to just, just go. We have to.” “Maybe we can pull off a trick?” Trickshot suggested. “Get aboard their vessel, mix it up? There’s only seven of ‘em.” “Decide, humans,” R’Pr demanded. Then the assassin ship rocked. Alarms bleeped their warnings of imminent hull rupture. Starfield-twinkling energies seared through the superstructure, carving it like butter. A gigantic energy hand wrapped around the holding deck where the hostages were imprisoned and ripped it free of the collapsing vessel. “Here’s our decision,” said Amazing Guy, standing in space surrounded by a shield of multiversal force. He concentrated more and lifted the rescued population of a Bavarian village free of the assassin-ship. “We decide to take our people back.” “AG?” Trickshot blinked. “I thought we lost him?” “Cosmic awareness,” Amazing Guy answered. “Don’t leave home without it. I sensed what these sneaky spiders were up to and realised I had to stop them. I’ve been on their trail ever since.” Five Z’Sox assassins launched themselves from the wrecked spaceship to take out the protector of the Parodyverse. R’Pr and the remaining killer spider leaped towards Aunt Sally. “Ooh, I wuz hopin’ you’d do that,” Trickshot grinned as the assassins shimmered towards him, cloaking themselves in invisibility. He nocked a pair of arrows with absolute confidence, closed his eyes and fired. Amazing Guy created an energy insect-swatter and smashed the others into deep space.  “Shee-Yar worldship bearing towards the finish line to take second place!” the Librarian screamed, his usual calm demeanour abandoning him. “Use your reserves! Give it everything you’ve got!” “Go!” cheered Yo. “Go! Go! Go, Yo-friends!” Aunt Sally wobbled a little as she had difficulty holding course but Vizh coaxed her forward, faster and faster, her damaged shields shored up by Amazing Guy, who flew alongside towing the whole Z’Sox prison deck enclosed in a sheath of multiversal energies. “You can do it!” Amy cried, bobbing up and down in a way that made Nitz choke on his beer. “Come on!” “Those Imperium bozos are trying to shoulder Aunt Sally outta the race!” Falcon recognised. “Watch out, guys!” Aunt Sally corkscrewed under the aileron fin of the mile-long Shee-Yar vessel, landed on its underside, and used its own velocity by literally driving along its outer hull in wheeled mode. She made it through the finishing gateway with four yards to spare ahead of the Imperious Guard, to claim second place for the heroes of Earth.  And coming next: After the traumas of the third leg of the Challenge its time to deal with the ramifications. So next time we go behind the scenes, as Mumphrey wheels and deals, as Nats has more girlfriend trouble, as things develop in Badripoor's corridors of power, and as Beth and Lisette compare notes. In Gothametropolis, Covenant House, Herringcarp Asylum, Yog-Frothoth, and of course at the Gameship, we consider Untold Tales of the Transworlds Challenge: Diplomatic Solutions. Let's Do the Footnote Again! (It's Just a Jump to the Left…) Sarah of Dunboggie: We first met Sarah as a free-spirited tavern maid in 1720, wherein she was revealed to be an agent of the mysterious and free-thinking Improbable College. Here we catch up with her eighty-nine years later, and learn for the first time how the last Austernal exploration vehicle acquired a new personality. Other stories, particularly UT#149 - Untold Tales of the Lair Legion and Forebears: What Mortals Are Not Meant To Know, have revealed the Hooded Hood's guise at the time as the Marquis of Herringcarp. And of course, Austernal party-girl Sersi has been active over long swathes of history, and has played several roles during that time. Narrative Strands Underpinning the Parodyverse were first depicted in UT#17 - The Final Untold Tale of the Lair Legion: The Judgement of the Celestians, which at the time of writing it I intended to be my last word on Parodyverse matters. Various ways of zapping round the Parodyverse: To make some dramatic sense of this particular story I've had to think through various ways people and ships can teleport and plane-shift and faster-than-light travel through the ether. Some of the ways, used in this story arc, are: Dimensional Portals: These are effectively doorways linking two points in the timespace continuum, the four-dimensional equivalent of folding a sheet of paper so two crosses drawn on it now touch. They are easiest to accomplish with efforts being made at both points to connect, but are possible with much more effort and preparation from just one side. They require a lot of math. This is how ITC and EEE usually deliver their materiel, and why it's easier for Al to set up a jump back to the EEE firehouse than to the alien world where Nats is dying. Some spaceships, including Aunt Sally, can also form ad-hoc dimensional portals providing they know where they're aiming. Very sophisticated dimensional portals can be combined with other techniques for extradimensional travel or even time travel (although beware the wrath of the Hedgehogs of Time). The Portal of Pretentiousness, a prime artefact of the Parodyverse, is pretty much the last word in Dimensional Portals. Teleportation exactly recreates the structure transferred to somewhere else, ignoring solid matter because the structural information is transmitted through the transdimensional vortex, the scaffolding of the multiverse. Goldeneyed and others who teleport usually use this method, and extreme practitioners can also dimension or time-hop with this method. Amazing Guy can't teleport as such but can drop into the multiversal substratum (see below) and travel that way if he needs to. The further distance a teleporter travels and the greater the mass transferred the higher the energy required and the greater the risk of mishap. G-Eyed's range and ability has developed with practise, and he can now master interplanetary distances if he has sufficient motivation (but not intergalactic distances). Subspace and Hyperspace are two more of the layers of reality used as frameworks for causality to happen. These voids have their own characteristics but both allow travel at normal sub-light speeds to cover proportionally greater distances, like cutting through the middle of a sphere rather than having to trek round the circumference. Reed Richards explained all this back when Stan and Jack were still cutting their teeth on the FF. For Parodyverse purposes beyond the spectrums of hyper and subspace lie the interdimensional vortex, a turbulent dangerous place where possibilities meet events and Hero Feeders lurk, and the great extradimensional void beyond that. Warp Speed is a means of enabling effective faster-than-light travel within normal space, by using mechanisms that modify the usually-constant speed of light to allow movement beyond the usual theoretical point where all mass and energy become infinite and zero at once. This cheating of physical laws is extremely costly in energy. Aunt Sally can also utilise this means of travel. Reordering Reality so a person or object is just somewhere else now is a massively difficult proposition, but some beings of immense power can do it. The Keeper of the Booke of the Law – currently Lisa L Waltz – is one such wielder of this power when she uses her authority to summons a witness or defendant. Chymeric Gates shouldn't work under the laws of the Parodyverse, and only do in those areas where the usual physical conditions are overruled by the presence of a squamous elder being using different rules of reality from sanity-mangling other realms. The Manga Shoggoth uses this technique to shift his mass from one of his plasmic forms to another (being careful now not to mix his main biomass with the tainted one residing with the Lair Legion, from whom he is currently physically and psychically separated). He also uses it to shift himself and others through dimensions in defiance of conventional science – but this tends to drive mortals insane, and the more they understand what's happening the more insane they go. There are also risks involved in this kind of travel for the Shoggoth, since virtually anything else using those means of travel and encountered on the way is likely to be an enemy. Human cultists sometimes open these kinds of portals to summon loathsome elder creatures, usually at the cost of their sanity, other people's lifeforces, and almost inevitably sooner or later their own lives. Necromantic Portals at the Firehouse: The portal mentioned was opened by Whitney Darkness and closed by De Brown Streak in UT#131- Untold Tales of the Lair Legion vs the Sorceress: Dead End. The ghost witnessed by (and witnessing) Amy was one of those "slipping though" because EEE's dimensional engines were repowering the rift. Chronic took advantage of the same opening to slip through and warn Dead Boy, who was likewise attracted by the conduit, of his plans. Temporary Death is the younger sister of Death, two of the conceptual Family of the Pointless, representatives of various fundamental forces of the Parodyverse. Death has recently been murdered and replaced by the Chain Knight. Temporary Death has previously met Nats (during his last death) and the two of them have shared a quiet dinner – at least. Yog-Frothoth is one of the Fairly Great Old Ones who bear some resemblance to Lovecraftian elder beings of other fictional universes that take themselves more seriously. These ancient beings infiltrated the Parodyverse like a virus and rewrote its rules to become its rulers before being overthrown and made to "sleep" – shorthand for being carved from reality until they were able to reset the laws of physics back to how they need them to be to fully exist. Yog-Frothoth is one of the few elder beings still to have vestigial elements in the modern Parodyverse (Shabba'Dhabba'Dhu, the Groper Out of Grossness, who sleeps beneath Paradopolis is another), and it is believed that he is the gateway through which many others may one day return. And Introducing… the Multiversal Substratum: After some negotiation with AG about how the Parodyverse works, we finally suggested the following: There's a distinction between parallel universes, where one divergent event changed the future, and alternate universes, where something has always been fundamentally different, and extradimensional planes, which are not versions of the normal universe at all. Under that definition a parallel universe is one where Trickshot gets run over by a bus and things develop differently from then on. An alternate universe is one where Trickshot has always been a talking turkey. An extradimensional plane is something like Comic-book Limbo or the Negativity Zone. The Dimensional Vortex is kind of the space between things, the scaffolding of reality. The Dimensional Void is the space beyond the Vortex (a vortex is something swirling, in this case the narrative-rich bits of the PV orbiting the Dimensional Nexus), where little or nothing exists. They're part of the same place, the difference between a solar system and deep space. The Vortex is a swirly, misty, organic sort of place, constantly moving like a twister or a whirlpool. Alternate universes cluster around the Dimensional Vortex The Multiversal Substratum is a different thing entirely, being a physical manifestation of vibrational differences between possible realities. Sometimes it appears to human perception as lots of ultra-fast-moving waves bucking past and through each other, at others as a place of humming standing waves, a kind of starry deformed 3-d grid. Parallel universes are separated by Multiversal Substrata, and each whole clump of parallels whirl round the Dimensional Vortex glued together by the interlocking harmonics of their sunstrata. Amazing Guy is linked to the vibrational harmonics of the parallel universes, where they interact on the multiversal substratum. He presumably does this by the powers given him by Eggo, who is in some way responsible for caring for these harmonics. Through the multiversal substrata Amazing Guy can concentrate this usually negligible potential energy latent in each universe, damming it with his will, and using it to form some kind of colloidal shape - a solid sheet of connected energy packets. This link also accounts for him "cosmic awareness", which is tuning in like a radio to pick up information on the differences between these parallel universes. The energy frequencies of such a multiversal substrata jump are only possible when there's not other ambient energies around to spoil the vibrational harmonics. In other words, there's no problem doing this in space, but on a planet with electromagnetic activity or near a high-energy event like a sun or a nuclear blast, or close to energy transfers like a big space battle it becomes much harder, with a much greater risk of a backlash. All clear? There’s be a test later. And Finally, the Scores To Date: At the end of the third leg of four in the Transworlds Challenge, the scoring has been as follows: First Leg (Speed Trial): Z’Sox (1st) 5, Shee-Yar (2nd) 3, Nakluv (3rd) 2, All Other Finishers 1 Second Leg (Obstacle Course): Slaver Lovetoads (1st) 5, Skree (2nd) 3, Nakluv, (3rd) 2, All Other Finishers 1 Third Leg (Scavenger Hunt): Skree (1st) 5, Earth (2nd) 3, Shee-Yar (3rd) 2, All Other Finishers 1 Rankers Eliminated from Competition: Slaver Lovetoads, Z’Sox Leaders to Date: Skree 9, Shee-Yar 6, Earth 5, Nakluv 5, All Others 3 or less Place your final bets. The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse    Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2004 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2004 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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