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Post By The final leg begins, with everything to play for, from... the Hooded Hood. Wed Oct 27, 2004 at 08:44:59 am EDT |
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#182: Untold Tales of the Transworlds Challenge: Endurance, or Dangerous Choices | |
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#182: Untold Tales of the Transworlds Challenge: Endurance, or Dangerous Choices Previously: The cosmic Gamesmaster’s Transworlds Challenge has reached its final leg with everything to play for. Earth’s team on Abhuman vessel Aunt Sally must survive and triumph in the endurance contest. An ad-hoc group of misfit adventurers seeks to prevent outside forces destroying Earth’s chances of victory. And those heroes who are not engaged in the contest still seek a way to prevent the Gamesmaster from annihilating many losing races at the end of the game. Who’s Who in the Transworlds Challenge #181: Untold Tales of the Transworlds Challenge: Theological Debates and Ethical Quandaries  Driving sulphuric rain pelted down between the sheet lightning discharges, stinging steaming into the volcanic caldera below. Every few minutes the planet convulsed, sending half-mile high plumes of magma spraying into the skies. The screeching of rocks being compressed to dust was almost deafening. Aunt Sally navigated rapidly around the ever-changing landscape of shifting columns and sudden threats, twisting her red and orange hull as if she was some mad roller-coaster ride. Amazing Guy clung to his navigation desk and reinforced the vehicle’s own force-screens with a bubble of energy willed by his mind. Every time his construct was washed with lava he winced. “Geothermal build up to starboard!” Visionary warned, clutching sickly to his sensor panels. “Starboard is right, yeah? A big one.” “Cause these are just so small,” complained Trickshot from the port weapons nacelle, using Aunt Sally’s gravity accelerator cannons to clear the crumbling basalt columns that were too big to easily circumnavigate. Nats grimaced and angled Aunt Sally upwards, pitching her almost vertically to avoid the next broad sheet of electrical discharge that lit the hellish scene with a neon flare. “Okay, I think we all got the message that this is the endurance race!” he shouted angrily to the skies. “Being dead was more relaxing than this! Except for the bit where that Chain Knight was trying to kill me more.” “Just keep us on track,” Hatman called from the engineering deck where he strode in his sou’wester. “Aunt Sally’s using energy right now faster than she’s generating it, and she can’t spare the systems to metabolise boosts from AG or me. We need to get out of this tempest as soon as we can.” “We’re going,” Nats promised as he spun Aunt Sally on her side to avoid another lava column. “As soon as this world strops trying to fry us!” “Not going to happen,” AG advised him. “Head 130 by 60 by fifteen or as close as you can. That’s the beacon. Once it’s tagged and logged us we can head off into deep space.” “And if you think it’s bad for us,” Visionary pointed out, “imagine how much worse it must be for… certain other people.”  And in Aunt Sally’s tiny lavatory and shower cubicle Goldeneyed and CrazySugarFreakBoy were bounced together and off the walls with each jink of the craft. “Is there any possible way,” snarled Bry Katz, “that you could not bounce and redirect kinetic energy every time we’re slammed into the roof?” “Hey, that’s the way my silly suit works,” Dreamcatcher Foxglove explained. “Usually it’s kind of cool.” “Not in confined spaces like this,” complained G-Eyed. “Tell me again why I have to be shut in a toilet with you for hour after hour.” “The opposition doesn’t know you and I are back,” grinned CSFB! “They think the team’s two men down. That means we’re aces in the hole. And this is the only place on Aunt Sally we could hide where they can’t see us.” The room looped as Nats avoided another of the lightning walls. “This is the most stupid plan you’ve ever come up with in the history of your stupid plans,” snarled Bry as his stomach flip-flopped. “Really. Number one!” “Aw, I know you don’t mean it,” the wired wonder assured him. “You’re just kind of sore that there’s an evil double Bry wandering around out there somewhere, the one that tried to off Nats while we were being Slimy Slaver Lovetoaded. And also you’re bugged that maybe he went conjugal visiting to the Bry-harem and you don’t know what you’ll find when you get back home.” “And I couldn’t call because of this stupid plan of yours!” Goldeneyed added wrathfully. “Hey, my mom’s upset too!” CSFB! argued. “But I know she’s want me to keep secret so I could do something good, so I am doing. I haven’t even called up April Alice Apple for any cybersex. I’m…” “You’re driving me crazy, is what you’re doing!” Goldeneyed shouted. “Nine hours so far in this flaming cubicle being tossed against you, listening to you describe your love life, hearing your theories on Gwen Stacy and Norman Osborn…” “There’s just no way that could have…” “And I want out! I don’t care about your plan. If I don’t get out there’ll be another casualty. Real soon!” CSFB! grinned at his irate friend. “Hey, it could be worse,” he pointed out. “It’s only a matter of time before one of the guys needs to use the bathroom.”  There was a whine of dimensional engines, an unexpected rattle that Miss Framlicker cured by hitting a phase resonance separator coil with her shoe, and then a bright actinic flash as the dimensional portal was established in the transfer gateway. For a moment there was a straight passage from the headquarters of Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises to the Gamesmaster’s gamesship on the other side of the galaxy. Al B. Harper and Amy Aston stepped through. “Well?” Miss F asked, hastily shutting down the overheating equipment. The portal flickered and vanished. “No sign of the necrotic portal,” Al B. assured her. “No sign of big bleeding knights with hundreds of chains trailing off them trying to kill us.” “He has what he wants,” Temporary Death shuddered, waiting with Miss F to hear the news. “He has claimed my domain and added it to his. Now he is the master of death and of temporary death.” “And our equipment?” Miss Framlicker demanded, since she was the one who had to try and balance the books of the struggling new company. “Not so good,” Amy admitted. “but it wasn’t so good to start with. Nothing we can’t fix with some cobbling. Once we get rid of the corpse by the main tachyon inverter that is.” “Corpse?” Miss F turned enquiringly to Temporary Death. “Tricia?” “Not one of mine,” the cosmic phenomenon replied with a shrug. “I don’t know him.” “I referred it to Amber St Clare to brighten her life,” Al B. interjected. “Seems he was a two-bit arsonist, and he was there with tools to torch the place. He must have run across one of the escapees from that unclosed death portal Sorceress left in the place a while back.” “We must remember to thank Ms Darkness for leaving a necrotic rift in our building for us,” Miss Framlicker said coldly. “She’s on the observation deck, isn’t she?” Amy pointed out. “We’re not allowed contact with the planetary stakes “ “Poor Whitney,” frowned Al B. Harper. “She must be going frantic with worry and boredom up there.”  Whitney Darkness wasn’t bored. She was furious. “The was no need to kill them all!” she hissed, glaring round the blood-splattered control room of the Locustship Deeds of Vengeance. “Hey, my name is Killer Shrike!” objected the wrist-blade wielding killer responsible for the massacre. “Not Stunner Shrike, or Talk-to-‘Em-Reasonable Shrike or Social Worker Shrike. I’m a killer. It’s what I do.” “Not for much longer,” warned Keiko, gripping her katana in both hands and glaring at the mercenary. “Not if you keep behaving like this.” “Look, they’re crummy paid assassins from the Negativity Zone, working’ for that bigger crumb Anihillatus,” Simon Maddicks defended himself. “They took a bribe from the same guys what were sending the heralds of Galactivac against Earth team. They were going to crash their big-ass Locust Ship into our boys’ dinky little spacecraft. We had to stop them. Mission accomplished.” “I have no problem with it at all,” admitted Blackhearted. “Job well done.” “You don’t get to have an opinion, slime-breath!” Killer Shrike warned the alternate-reality Bry Katz. “You’re only back with us cause you found out your other self ain’t wiped and so you’re still behoven to the Hood to keep you in existence. So after betraying us to take Goldeneyed’s life you come crawling back when you find it hasn’t worked out. You get to shut the hell up and hope I don’t rip your guts out!” “You want to see guts?” offered Blackhearted. “How about I teleport yours out to show you, butcher bird?” “How about you both shut up now,” the Sorceress commanded them, “while you still have mortal flesh to threaten? I mean it. One more word, one more action I disapprove of and I will flay your minds and your flesh and set you to such horrors as you will howl your remorse to the day of doom!” Keiko felt the cabin go cold, and there was a rough whispering at the edge of her hearing that chilled her worse than the temperature drop. “Okay, we still have a job to do,” she interjected hastily. “We calm down and get the mission done. Period. We have this Locustship, and that’ll give us an advantage in the next section of the endurance run, when it shifts into the Negativity Zone. Yes?” “Yes,” agreed Blackhearted sullenly. “It’s specially designed to navigate the Queasy Zone, and that’s where the path runs. We shadow Aunt Sally and we wait for the other hired guns to line up their shots. If it’s anybody but the Doobi or the Super-Skunk we can’t interfere because they’re just playing the Gamesmaster’s stupid game. But if it’s K’lap then he’s working for the outside agency that set on the Heralds and we slap him down hard.” “The Skunks were eliminated from the Challenge in the first round,” Keiko recalled. “They have nothing to lose by interfering now. They will be eliminated for good anyway when the contest ends.” “Is it alright to engage in crude fisticuffs with the Super-Skunk then?” Killer Shrike demanded of Whitney. “Or should we just invite him over fer a coffee?”  The Librarian received his strong black coffee with a distracted “Thanks,” and went back to staring at the multiple monitor screens that fed back live views of the contestants in the Transworlds Challenge. “What are we looking at?” Falcon asked him. “Trying to get a feel for how things are going,” Lee Bookman admitted. “Trying to work out where they might go.” “We have to do well in this final leg if Earth is to prevail,” Ebony of Nubilia explained. “At the moment, Earth has five points from the previous sections of the race. That puts us third equal with the Nacluv, behind the Shee-Yar Imperium Guard on six, and Dronon the Public Accoster and his Skree with nine. All the other remaining contestants have three or less. Previous leaders the S’Sox Consortium and the Slavers have been put out of the race.” “There’s five points for the winner, three for second, and two for third,” calculated Princess Uhuna. “So that means if the Skree finish and we don’t win they get probably get the prize.” “That’s why we should frag their asses,” Nitz the Bloody pointed out. “Before they frag ours.” The Librarian pointed to the monitors. “Aunt Sally’s out of the plasma maze and she’s heading into the Queasy Area of the Negativity Zone. But the Shee-Yar worldship is closing in on her.”  “There they are,” Temptest of the Imperium Guard reported to his captain. “The vessel of the Earth Austernals and the Lair Legion!” “Can we cripple them without destroying them?” asked Gladeater. “Not guaranteed,” warned Fangface. “That little ship seems very tricky at avoiding missile fire and the like. Those Austernals build good stuff.” “I know that,” Gladeater answered stiffly. “I am an Austernal myself, last survivor of my world’s people. I know what Abhumans are capable of.” He sighed then ordered, “Destroy them, then. For the glory of the Imperium.” “With pleasure,” Sunbursts snarled. The Lair Legion has smeared the honour of the Imperium Guard once too often. The worldship lost all power for a moment as the main computer went down. Then the back-ups cut in. “Report,” snapped Gladeater. “We just lost the primary computer core,” Nightslide alerted them. “Software or hardware error?” “No, I mean we lost it. It’s not there anymore. It’s… well, it’s floating in space about half a light year behind us.” The Praetor of the Imperium Guard frowned. “How? Some kind of attack?” He stared across at Aunt Sally with vision that could examine a molecule from a solar system away. “The five remaining crew are still aboard, and they already lost their teleporter.” The secondary computer core vanished as well. Gladeater span his gaze round to his own ship. “He’s alive! Goldeneyed on deck nine. Put up the anti-teleport field. Smusher, Temptest with me.” And he vanished in a blur of speed. CrazySugarFreakBoy! dropped from the service duct above the command deck and sprayed combat candy liberally across the room. “Hey, folks!” he called. “Stay in your seats for now. I’ll be signing autographs after the show!” Magica, Nightslide, and Sunburts were all stunned by the sudden attack, but Fangface avoided the sudden assault and came at CSFB! snarling, claws out. “Nuh-uh!” CrazySugarFreakBoy! told him, dodging aside. “I always thought in those Spidey-Wolverine battles that they didn’t give Spidey credit for his reflexes and enhanced senses, y’know. I guess because most were done in the height of the Wolvie-is-kewl phase so he had to look better, but really when a big growly killing machine takes on a fast-moving wisecracking dexterous-as-hell impossible-to-catch trickster there’s only one way it can work out.” The wired wonder barely slipped aside so that Fangface instead shredded the anti-teleportation controls. “It’s Bugs vs Taz all over again!” Goldeneyed was with them in a flash. “Time to go,” he suggested, grabbing CSFB! and teleporting out along with the command deck’s control systems. The massive worldship could normally cope with even such critical systems failures. But the massive worldship usually had more than seven crew aboard, and personnel trained as engineers not as super-soldiers. So the worldship hung on the edge of the Negativity Zone, drifting down towards the matter/antimatter destruction interface unless Gladeater abandoned his chase of Aunt Sally and rescued his teammates. The Imperium Guard were quite surprised when that was exactly what their Praetor did.  The intruder weighed about thirty pounds and was small enough to fit into one of the service conduits that webbed through the many-sphered structure that was the gamesship. Well prepared for possible tampering and espionage, the gamesship activated its decontamination package, searing all unauthorised matter in the tunnels and breaking it down to its basic atomic structure as free-floating particles. Lisa’s ginger cat licked its fur and continued its exploration, unbothered. Lisa’s ginger cat was indestructible by the will of the Celestians. There were some interesting features to the new tunnels it had discovered. Those little defence robots were quite amusing to bat around and chase. There were some fascinating smells that could be drowned out in the traditional way a rampant tomcat overcomes other odours. There were little sparkly strands of plastic and wire that shredded so easily when stropped. It never occurred to the cat that this wasn’t a place he should be. That idea has never yet occurred to any cat. The gamesship’s automated systems bounced the problem up to higher levels of thinking and response and shimmering golden beings twinkled into creation to investigate the problem. And by pure chance the systems were so distracted by what was happening in the ducts that they improbably overlooked for now a minor malfunction in the security systems on the central sphere. A random computer glitch erased the log of four beings entering the forbidden area. Otherwise the gamesship might have taken note of the intrusion of two terran humanoids, female, one terran Mythical being, male, and one conceptual pure thought being, of indeterminate gender; reason for intrusion: unknown.  Beyond the Queasy Zone, into the second day of the endurance run, the trail took the competitors to the surface of a heavy-gravity world where they had to traverse the pitted terrain by ground travel only. The gigantic beetles that inhabited the world fed on precious metals and were attracted to the take-away that had been provided for them. The Nacluv, holding first place by dint of their superior technology, were the first to discover that the burrowing coleoptera could phase through force-fields as easy as they could phase through rock, but quickly adapted to emit a high-pitched pulse the creatures found unpleasant. The terrans, currently fourth, used the lower-tech solution of having Hatman and Amazing Guy flying shotgun, warding off the monsters before they could get too close. Ninety-fourth of the remaining hundred and seventeen competitors still in the race, the Klan Klayhog struggled across the dangerous landscape, fending off the beetles with sonic rifles or relying on their seeress to steer them a course that avoided the massive predators. “You need to rest now,” Clan Elder Broto warned Yesmin as she crouched on the outer balcony of the nomads’ junky craft. “You’ve been doing this for fourteen hours.” The seeress clutched her enlarged belly and shook her head. “It’s not safe to stop. We have to get through this. Besides, the contractions are getting worse.” “You’re going into labour,” Broto warned. “We should abandon this Challenge. We’re safe now. We completed the first leg. And we have no chance of winning. Let’s just leave this world and call it a day.” “No!” hissed Yesmin, doubling over again. “We don’t give up! Not while there’s any chance we might win, however small. We don’t. Do you want to have to tell my child, Argo’s child, that we gave up his father, our stake, your son, just because of some discomfort? That we didn’t take any chance, however small, of redeeming him?” “Of course not,” Broto promised her, “But I know my son. He would not want to risk your wellbeing, or the wellbeing of his firstborn, even for his own life. Yesmin, I’m sorry, but I’m calling a halt. We’re taking you to proper medical facilities, and we’re giving up the Challenge.” The Skunk shapeshifter seemed to appear from nowhere. “Ah, but you’re not,” he warned them, casually slamming Clan Defender Strunn into a bulkhead. “You’re staying the course.” Clan Defender Askad tried to go for a blaster but was seared to ashes by a bolt of energy from the Super-Skunk’s fingertips. “You can all die if you want,” K’lap assured them. “I’d only be doing the universe a favour by wiping out weaklings. But if you co-operate some of you might live.” “What do you want?” Clan Elder Broto demanded. “You’re the idiots who befriending the humans, aren’t you?” the Super-Skunk said. “They trust you. If they received a distress signal from you they’d probably stop to help you again.” “The humans are far ahead of us,” Yesmin told their tormentor. “They wouldn’t hear a call for help.” “That can be corrected,” K’lap assured her. “And then, when they come near, a localised nuclear explosion should terminate their chances of completing this Challenge.” He gestured to an egg-shaped container he was telekinesing behind him. “Thus is the honour of my people restored, and our future preserved. It has been agreed.”  “Put down the knife and step away from the altar,” warned Cleonie, appearing at the door of the deconsecrated church by Audubon Park and Laurel Market in New Orleans. “She’s not a virgin anyway.” The drugged-out cultists turned away from their struggling victim to confront the silver-haired vision. “And who the hell are you?” demanded their self-proclaimed grandmaster. “Have you ever heard of the sorcerer supreme?” Cleonie asked him. Clearly he had. “I heard the sorcerer supreme got himself gutted. “There’s always a sorceress supreme,” Cleonie advised him. “Or sorceress.” The punks were getting their confidence back now. “And how are you planning on stopping us?” the grandmaster smirked, reckoning the odds. “That old time voodoo?” “No,” answered Cleone. “I was rather counting on the gargoyle I brought with me.” She pointed to the shadows. “This is Gunther. He’s here to assist me” Word was going to get out real fast about the new sheriff in Dodge.  “If we have to endure,” Visionary philosophised, “on the whole I’d rather endure being stuffed after a well-cooked meal. Or perhaps having to watch repeated screenings of Matrix 2 and having to explain the plot to Donar and Yo. Not twenty-four hours of bug-scrunching life and death tension, really.” “Or relaxing with your nine nubile slave gals,” Trickshot added, with just a touch of envy. “I’m just looking after them,” Vizh explained. “Yeah,” leered CSFB! “I bet you are.” “Matrix was the best film ever made,” Nats answered by reflex. “Nah, Rings was the best film ever made,” Hatman countered. That quibble kept both heroes awake and at their post for another few minutes. And Vizh was satisfied with his efforts. “Are the tension, lack of sleep, and constant danger getting to you?” Amazing Guy asked Visionary. “Nah,” shrugged the possibly fake man. “Once the bathroom situation was resolved things became a whole lot more bearable.” “And I think those big bug-thingies must be settling down for their sleep cycle,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! added. “We haven’t seen one for twenty minutes.” The giant mantis loomed over the horizon and spat fire at Aunt Sally. “That’s because they’re hiding now the big predators have come out!” Trickshot realised, grabbing for his bow. “I may need another bathroom break,” noted Vizh.  “We will not help you,” Clan Elder Broto told the Super-Skunk. “Then you will die,” the marauder warned them. He pointed to Seeress Yesmin. “Starting with her.” “She is with child. She is in labour.” “Then she is too much trouble to keep alive anyway.” The Super-Skunk raised his finger to annihilate Yesmin. A razor-sharp samurai blade bit into his wrist, and would have taken his hand off but for his super-dense bones. Keiko pulled back the weapon and planted a kick onto his surprised face. K’lap seared sheer energy from his body to vaporise his attacker, but a second figure had grabbed her and vanished with her a moment before. Killer Shrike came in next, working close with his blades despite the pliable nature of his opponent before falling back and using his wrist lasers. K’lap used his magnetic gifts to seize this attacker and smash him into the wall. He followed with a spray of energy that took out the side of the Klayhog vessel. Shrike barely tumbled aside to miss it. With another golden flash Keiko was back, launching a pair of shuriken into the Skunk’s eyes, then slashing again with his katana. K’lap lashed back with his psionic attack, dulling her reaction so he could grab her throat with his enhanced speed. Blackhearted teleported a three-foot long piece of cabin wreckage into the Super-Skunk’s gut. K’lap shifted his internal organs around to avoid the inconvenience and slapped Blackhearted to the ground with a gravity pulse that hit him with nine G’s. But now the Sorceress was ready. “From the earth we come,” she said in a weird multiple voice. “To the earth we return!” The Super-Skunk looked at her unbelievingly for a moment, then melted into ooze. He seeped away through the wreckage of the Klayhog craft and dribbled into the cracked soil below. “Isn’t that the ending of Wizard of Oz?” asked Keiko.. Yesmin blinked in horror. “You… you made his mind one with the planet! He thinks he’s this world. He’s turned into it!” “And he deserved worse,” answered Sorceress, with the voice of the abyss. Yesmin doubled in pain again and slipped from her seat. Suddenly the dark Sorceress was gone and Whitney was crouched beside her. “What is it? What’s wrong?” “Well, I feel like I got hit by a train,” Blackhearted complained, lifting himself painfully from the indentation he’d made in the ground. “Not you,” Killer Shrike spat, likewise dragging himself to his feet. “The frail.” “She’s having a baby,” Keiko declared. “Soon.” “We were to abandon the Challenge, take her to a medical facility,” explained Clan Elder Broto. “Now…” He gestured to the wrecked vessel. “We are stranded.” “She’s not having a baby,” Whitney warned, touching Yesmin’s distended belly. “It’s not coming out right.” She laid her hand more carefully, reaching out with senses other than those possessed by normal flesh. “It’s going to die.” “No!” moaned Yesmin. “Oh no, no, no…” “That’s too bad” Blackhearted shrugged. “Our condolences. Now we’ve got to go.” “You can take Yesmin,” suggested Broto. “Get her help.” “Not our problem, sparky,” Killer Shrike answered. “We don’t do freebies.” “What if I make it our problem?” asked Keiko quietly. “She can’t be moved,” Whitney interrupted, cutting short the next round of argument. “It would kill her. She has to be treated here. She has to birth her child here.” “I don’t want my baby to die,” Yesmin pleaded. “Let me die instead. Cut it out of me.” The Sorceress shuddered, from old memory. “We don’t have time for this!” Blackhearted shouted. “This is a distraction. We still have the Doobi to stop!” “Then stop them,” Whitney told him. “I’m staying here.” She looked down at the pain-wracked seeress. “For once I know exactly where I should be, and exactly what I should be doing.” “You can’t,” Blackhearted warned her. “You made a pact with the Hood. We’re saving the whole flaming world here, and you want to throw it away on one alien bimbo?” Keiko drew her sword again. “Get out of here,” she warned Bry Katz. “You saved my life twice so I’m giving you a warning. Get out of here. Go do your mission. Go f*ck yourself. But get out.” “The boss is going to be pissed as hell,” Killer Shrike noted. “Then he can f*ck himself as well,” Keiko answered. “See to the woman, Whitney. I’ve got your back.” “No…” sweated Yesmin, biting back tears. “Don’t kill my baby.” Whitney Darkness stroked the hair back from the seeress’ sweating forehead. “It’s okay,” she promised Yesmin. “It’s okay. I’m here now. I’m here to help you. Now you have to work with me. It’s going to be hard, and it’s going to hurt, but you have to work with me. Together we’re going to bring a life into this universe, okay. Let’s get on with having your baby.”  In our next senses-shattering instalment: The contestants scream towards the finishing line and there’s everything to play for, but a certain guitar-wielding dead anarchist has yet to take his final bow. Whitney faces some unusual midwifery challenges. Donar must survive the awesome threat of questing with Lisa, Dancer and Yo all together. Xander and ManMan pay a visit to the Chain Knight’s home. And Harlagaz has a date. We’re racing to a conclusion now, with UT#183: Untold Tales of the Transworlds Challenge: More Endurance, or Matters of Life and Death  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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