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Post By Sorcy, Chronic, Donar, and a cast of thousands from... the Hooded Hood Sat Oct 30, 2004 at 06:10:04 am EDT |
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#183: Untold Tales of the Transworlds Challenge: More Endurance, or Matters of Life and Death | |
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#183: Untold Tales of the Transworlds Challenge: More Endurance, or Matters of Life and Death Previously: The final leg of the Challenge is the endurance contest, a gruelling days-long journey across some of the hardest terrain in the Parodyverse. While Abhuman vehicle Aunt Sally labours towards the finishing line with her crew of Nats, Hatman, Amazing Guy, Visionary, Goldeneyed, Trickshot, and CrazySugarFreakBoy!, a number of enemies conspire to eliminate Earth’s team from the race. Amongst these agents is the undead anarchist Chronic, working unwillingly in the service of the Hellraisers. Seeking to prevent such interference a group recruited by the Hooded Hood have already prevented three other sabotages, but at the last they have separated when Sorceress and Keiko elected instead to aid the wounded Clan Klayhog and their seeress Yesmin, who is in labour and likely to lose her child. Meanwhile Lisa, Donar, Yo, and Dancer have infiltrated the forbidden centre of the Gamesmaster’s gameship at the advice of the Chronicler of Stories to seek a way to prevent the destruction of those races who fail the Challenge. Who’s Who in the Transworlds Challenge Warning: This episode contains gory bits and a few bad words.  Dancer retched, while Yo looked on in horrified disbelief at the corridor before them. The forbidden service tunnel in the central sphere of the gameship’s modular array was lined with alcoves, and wired into each alcove was a twitching, decaying corpse. Those that were humanoid enough and undecayed sufficiently to still have recognisable expressions had clearly died in agony. The bodies still spasmed as the tubes affixed to them continued to draw undefinable energies from them. Lisa’s voice seemed flat and strange. “So now we know what happens to the planetary avatars when they are forfeited after the Transworlds Challenge.” “Tis monstrous,” Donar, hemigod of thunder scowled. “These victims hath been drained of all soul essence, consumed to naught.” “Yo is thinking,” choked the shocked and outraged pure thought being, “Yo is thinking that this is to be why wicked Gamesmaster is to be demanding planetary avatars as stakes. Is to be greater souls, better fuel for to be draining by vile machinings!” “Dancer is thinking that this guy is one the greatest mass-murderers in history,” Dancer added, wiping her lips with the back of her hand and standing up pale and determined. “Dancer is thinking it’s time to stamp this guy into pulp.” The four intruders carried on down the first of the many alcoved passages. Nobody dissented from Dancer’s view.  Lagoon Nebula, M8 in Earth’s astronomical catalogue, part of the constellation Sagittarius about 5,200 light years from Sol, was a thick dark clump of dense matter, over a hundred and forty light years long and striated with collapsing protostellar clouds. From a distance the formation looked like a pink wheel. From inside it was like trying to fly through dirty soup. Goldeneyed was on navigation, since Amazing Guy was actually out in the dense gooey mass pathfinding a route of least resistance through the morass. “AG, check 30 by 90 by 40 will you?” he called over the crackling comm-link. “There’s something there but the sensors just can’t penetrate this crud.” “This is certainly one of the most unpleasant environments I’ve ever had to press though,” Aunt Sally admitted as Nats pushed her onwards through the course granular ooze. “It’s like swimming though a bath full of slugs.” “And that’s no fun at all,” admitted Visionary. “Yeah, I had a mishap with those alien bathroom features back on the Gameship. Who knew what all those taps did?” “I can see something ahead in the murk,” Amazing Guy reported back. “It’s a vessel. I’m just checking it with my cosmic awarene… It’s the Nacluv! It’s the Nacluv ship! And its wrecked!” “Any survivors?” Hatman asked urgently. “No, it’s completely void of life,” AG called back. “Split apart by particle weapons.” “An ambush,” Trickshot spat. “Nobody can see worth spit in this gunk!” “The radiations have the signature of Skree weaponry,” the protector of the Parodyverse detected. “It was the Skree warship that killed the Nacluv.” “That means the Skree are playing for keeps this round,” Nats noted. “And they’ve just taken down the second-to-last contestant that could stop them winning.” “Us being the last,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! reasoned. “And it also means they’re in front of us.” Aunt Sally pressed on through the murky ooze.  “The Clan Klayhog are out of the race,” the Librarian advised. “They’ve activated their distress beacon, but it’s coming in rather weakly.” This drew the attention of the strange group of supporters in the Earth team’s gameship monitor room. “Can you switch the output cameras to show us the Klayhog vessel?” Ebony of Nubilia checked. Lee Bookman ran his fingers over the complicated menus. “The Klayhog output isn’t being privacy-coded any more,” he noted, “but it looks like they’ve suffered critical systems damage. Their beacon is just about working at minimum power, alerting to a medical emergency, but that’s it.” “Medical emergency?” worried Uhuna. “Yesmin?” “Who can say? But they’re officially out of the running and calling for help.” “Those Klayhoggers are poor as dirt,” Nitz the Bloody pointed out. “They don’t have any kind of support ship or nothing to go fetch ‘em home.” Falcon caught on to what the priest of Zeku was hinting at. “We can’t go taking the Librarian’s Galactibus to shuttle back every bunch of losers that gets themselves into… ah, crap alright. Can we go get em, book-guy?” “If you go after the Klayhog then you won’t be available to assist our team if trouble arises,” pointed out Miss Framlicker. “And does anybody here think our boys would want that to stop you?” Ebony asked adroitly. “Warm up your space-Volvo, Giles,” Nitz called to the Librarian. “We’ve got something worthwhile to do at last!”  As Acamar IV spun round shifting its major continent away from its star Theta Eri the temperature dropped to –140C, more than cold enough to freeze mercury in a thermometer. Keiko herded the shocked remnants of Clan Klayhog into the engineering section of their wrecked spacecraft and sealed the hatches to keep out the weather. She only hoped the predatory giant lifeforms that had menaced travellers during the warmer day cycle would take shelter from the extreme conditions of the night. Sorceress had taken Yesmin into the repair bay beyond the main reactor room, where the pregnant woman could have some privacy in her torment. The birth was not going to be easy, compounded by the child having not turned properly, by the mother’s extreme stress and exhaustion, and by the recent attack of the Super-Skunk. Keiko slipped in while Sorceress was stroking Yesmin’s forehead and singing to her softly in some ancient language. “I checked the power systems,” the Garden City cop reported in whispered undertones. “There’s enough residual power to keep the heaters going until morning. After that it’s not looking good.” “The emergency beacons?” “On, but Broto doesn’t know how far they’ll penetrate given the power shortages.” Sorceress sighed. “We’ll just have to do our best then.” “You’ve done this before?” “Midwifery is one of the first arts of the wise woman. I attended my first birthing with my grandmother when I was six.” “But never an alien seeress?” “No, never that.” Keiko shifted uncomfortably. “So why are you here? I mean apart from the obvious, that this poor woman needs help. Why pick this rather than saving your superhero friends or carrying out the Hooded Hood’s big master-plan?” Whitney shrugged. “Because this is something I can try to do right. I don’t really know about the rest, about who I should trust or what I should do. But here’s a life trying to come into the universe and a woman in pain and a family in need, and there’s life and there’s death and my job is to stand on the edge of both and be the guardian!” Keiko has seen Sorceress at her scariest and her coldest and at her most powerful, but she’d never liked the strange witch as much as she did at that moment. “Okay.” “What about you?” Whitney countered. “I didn’t expect you to stay when Blackhearted and Killer Shrike went off on the mission. I thought you were all about the mission.” “I don’t like having my buttons pushed,” the Garden City assassin admitted. “And it suddenly seemed like a great idea to help preserve life rather than take it. I don’t like to see helpless people being ignored.” “I’m glad you stayed,” Sorceress admitted. Keiko almost asked her then about the Bloodreaper in the cellars of Herringcarp Asylum, and whether she had entered into her pact with the Hooded Hood to betray him to the Hellraisers. Some last vestige of caution held her tongue. “It’s going to get scary, you see,” Whitney Darkness cautioned. “The child inside Yesmin is dying, unless I stop it. And to stop it I have to turn back Death. And Death won’t be happy that I’m here.” “Death?” Keiko echoed. “Capital D Death?” Sorceress gestured to the shadows of the dimly-lit ruined vessel. “Capital D Death. The new one. Over there.” Keiko drew her sword as a tall figure in bloodied mediaeval armour scraped from the darkness trailing many shackles behind him. The Chain Knight had come for Yesmin and her baby.  The beach was almost deserted. The weather had turned cold this late in the year, and most of the population of Paradopolis was clustered round television sets watching Aunt Sally struggle through nebula. Harlagaz Donarson was able to find a rocky promontory and watch the turbulent sea churning below him. “Penny for your thoughts, big guy?” an unfamiliar voice offered. The demihemigod of thunder jerked round. He wasn’t used to being taken unawares. A woman stood at his side, her dark hair whipped out behind her by the offshore wind. She was muffled against the cold in windcheater and slacks, and stood with her hands in her pockets and her shoulders set to the gale. “My lady?” She gave Harlagaz an amused glance. “You wish,” she answered. “Just thought you looked kind of lonely, all by yourself watching the ocean.” She gestured to the empty beach. “There was nobody else to talk to.” “Twas why I came,” Harlagaz admitted. “But I mean not that you should go. Please, there is plenty of rock for everyone. Sit with me a whiles.” “You’re not from round here are you?” the woman suggested. “Nay. Sometimes that becomes plain to me.” “Me either. People here don’t just walk up to each other and talk. They don’t connect. It can be very lonely.” “Aye,” agreed the young godling. He turned suddenly and held his hand out awkwardly, as he’d seen Sir Mumphrey do it. “I art Harlagaz, fair maiden. Heilsa!” The girl accepted the massive fingers awkwardly and shook the proffered palm. “Pleased to meet you big guy,” she smiled back. “I’m Maladomini.”  Aunt Sally broke from the surface of the white dwarf star with her energy levels at 9% and surface blistering. Her crew felt like well-cooked lobsters, and Amazing Guy, who has additionally shielded the vessel, and Hatman in his Arctics hat, were close to total exhaustion. The vessel careened through the next gateway and passed into void. “Where the hell are we now?” Nats demanded. “I feel very strange.” Visionary muffled the obvious retort. “The instruments aren’t picking up anything. No bounceback, nothing. And especially worrying, no marker beacon signal.” “It’s the edge,” Amazing Guy gasped. “The very outer edge of the Parodyverse. There’s nothing past there, forever. No light, no energy, no reality.” “I’m straining, boys,” Aunt Sally warned. “The forces that hold molecules together don’t seem very strong here. Reality is very thin. I’m exerting all my remaining power just to keep us together.” “I feel it too,” G-Eyed admitted, attuned as he was to the shifting of forces into other dimensions. “Hell, this is a dangerous place!” “Yeah, but can you get us out of here?” Trickshot asked. His voice had the rough edge of uncharacteristic panic. The nothingness spooked him, called to him. “To where?” Goldeneyed wondered. “Hold on, Aunt Sally,” CSFB! encouraged the straining craft. “Just keep moving. Don’t give up on us!” Then the vehicle dropped out of void as swiftly as it had entered it, plunging into the vicious eddies of the transdimensional vortex. The shrieking wind and stomach-turning buffets were actually a comfort.  Shazara Pel stalked the quarters of the Terran team, and glared as she found the kitchen cluttered with green-skinned slave girls. “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded of them. The young women looked up from their labours. “We are cooking dishes for our master and his chattels,” one of them explained, as if surprised that the bird-warrioress couldn’t recognise the domestic task. “We wish to show our usefulness, so he will not cast us out.” “You should be seeking weapons to slaughter this Visionary who holds you captive, and proclaim your freedoms!” the Thonnagarian told him. The girls looked horrified. “We would never do a thing like that!” they promised. “Except maybe to that Slimy Slaver Lovetoad,” one of them admitted honestly, and there was a general susurrus of agreement that maybe he might be the exception. “You want to be slaves?” Shazara Pel objected. “Have you no honour?” “Of course we do,” they answered her. “That is why we do not wish to be… ownerless. Then we would be nothing, unprotected, without status or hope. A girl must have a master. That is the way of things. Despite how horrible it was to be sold offworld to that Slimy Slaver. Otherwise we are... disowned.” The last word was spoken as a whisper. Pel shook her head. “And this is what you want? A life of subordination and drudgery, chained to some man?” One of the girls shook her head. “We… we just want to be owned by a nice master who will treat us kindly. Perhaps we could settle down? And some of us might gain favoured slave status by bearing our master strong sons.” Shazara Pel stared at them for a moment, then spun on her heels. “Excuse me. I really have to go find something to kill.”  ManMan cut his hand on one of the jagged black crystal outcrops. He’d have sworn his blood seeped right into the rock. “Try not to feed it,” Xander the Improbable advised him. “It’s grown powerful enough as it is.” “This was one of the Fortresses of Light, yeah?” Knifey, ManMan’s talking blade, realised. “A place of shining goodness?” ManMan looked around the grotesque shattered castle that perched on a barren basalt spur surrounded by the roiling torment of the Interdimensional vortex. “This place? What happened?” “It fell,” the master of the mystic crafts told him tersely. “Perhaps Knifey can tell you what he knows of the Virtue Wars. All second hand, of course.” “I don’t know much,” denied the weapon. “They say there was conflict between the various pocket dimensions that spin in the Dimensional Vortex near the Nexus. Some were Fortresses of Light, others Sinkholes of Evil. In the last days of the battle there was a necromancer who grew to power and took some of the Fortresses by treachery and betrayal. They say.” “I’m starting to get an idea of what we’re up against,” Xander admitted, “I don’t like it.” Joe Pepper stared at the stained walls of the finely-carved stronghold, trailing behind Xander past undead guardians that did not seem to perceive them. “Really?” he asked with irony. Knifey went on. “The necromancer won his war but died when one of his torture victims surpassed him in evil and took everything he had. Everything. And this guy became worse than the wizard ever had been.” “The Chain Knight,” Xander supplied. “He gathered comrades and they called themselves Hellraisers. Ravaged whole planes before they were stopped.” “But they were stopped,” ManMan checked. The master of the mystic crafts smoothed down his shabby red robes and sighed. “Apparently not stopped enough,” he admitted, leading his companion on.  “It’s horrible,” Dancer shuddered, looking round the vast chamber full of avatar corpses, “but we need to understand this more. Can you summons Al B. Harper here, Lisa?” “I’d rather not,” the first lady of the Lair Legion admitted. “I could do, but I sense it would be noticed. I don’t think we’re ready to be noticed.” “When we art ready tell me and I shalt be noticed forthwith,” growled Donar. The hemigod had been brewing his outrage and temper with every additional victim they had passed. “Yo is thinking that Yo could be raising Al B. on communicard,” Yo suggested. “Yo is thinking Yo is good on communicards.” “Carefully then,” Lisa warned. “Dancer, can you make sure there’s no chance this transmission is detected.” Sarah Shepherdson had been moving constantly since they had infiltrated the inner area four hours ago, because she translated her movement into probability alteration Now she was getting tired. “I can never get things to no chance,” she confessed, “Just very improbable. It’s taking a lot to keep the defences here from noticing us already. The odds keep mounting. But I’ll try.” A tiny blurred image of the Lair Legion’s scientist flickered onto Yo’s comm-card. “Cute Al B-ing,” Yo whispered, holding out the rectangle so it panned around the equipment draining the corpses. “What are you to be deducing of this?”  Aunt Sally was in aqua mode, skimming over the surface of an azure sea between the reefs and outcroppings of coral and amber. The sky was a perfect blue and the twin suns cast sparkling reflections on the broad expanse of water. “We’re doing pretty well,” Amazing Guy observed, tempting fate. “Aunt Sally’s really suited for these bizarre terrains. Lots of the other ships will have trouble complying with the rule that says at least a fifth of their mass must be under the waterline for this section of the endurance run.” It was the third day of the final leg, and Visionary was at the helm while Nats slept on the reclined Navigation chair. CSFB! and Hatman likewise dozed at their stations while Trickshot and Goldeneyed kept watch. There were giant saurians around but so far they hadn’t proved hostile, just curious. “How are we doing in the race?” Visionary asked Amy Aston over the comm-link back to the support team. “Good,” the engineer assured them, “but you need to keep picking up the pace. You’re around fifth right now, and the Skree are ahead of you. If they finish in the top three at all, even if you win this leg, they win the Challenge on points.” “So we take ‘em down,” Trickshot reasoned. “Works fer me.” “They’ll be looking for the same chance with us,” Goldeneyed warned. “They’ve ambushed other competitors before. Don’t forget what happened to the Nacluv.” Amazing Guy’s head suddenly jerked up. “What’s that?” he demanded, pointing to the east. “Over there. On the horizon?” Aunt Sally focussed her sensors on the dark mass. “Tidal wave,” she warned. “A big one. That water column’s maybe half a mile high.” “I knew this pretty place was too good to be true!” Vizh complained. “It’s not natural,” AG sensed. “It’s directed!” “We can’t fly or teleport to avoid it,” G-Eyed worried. “So what?” “Underwater,” Trickshot called out. “Aunt Sally can be a sub. We go under.” Visionary nodded and quickly converted to sub-aqua mode. Amazing Guy took to the skies to get an overview of the incoming tsunami. “It’s a lovely day for a dip,” Aunt Sally agreed as she plunged underwater. Then the sonic boom hit her, ripping through her force field bubble, slamming her to the depths, stunning her crew. She was pounded to the ocean bed and before she could do anything her decks were flooded and her passengers were drowning. A second noise came in, toppling her over again, spilling out CSFB! and Hatman and Nats and half-burying her in the silt. Amazing Guy flew down to help but a sudden chord lanced through his brain, slapping him backwards unconscious into the oncoming tidal wave. “Okay heroes,” Chronic called, hefting his satanic guitar and taking it to the bridge. “You can’t say I didn’t warn you!”  Keiko assessed her chances against the Chain Knight. They weren’t good. She looked for other ways out, but they all involved getting out of the path between the new manifestation of Death and Sorceress and Yesmin. And that wasn’t about to happen. She realised that her bluff had been called. Damn. Her ethics were showing. “You’re not taking this child or this woman,” Sorceress told Sir Lucian. “And you’re going to stop me, little witch?” the Chain Knight sneered. The thick barbed links that trailed from him twitched sinisterly. He looked round at the terrified Clan Klayhog. “You’re going to stop me taking all of them?” “I promised to protect and serve a while back,” Keiko pointed out, hefting her weapon. “Back off. Now.” The chain moved faster than she could see, and it was sheer instinct that caused Keiko to jerk her head back. The end of the thrashing steel links whipped half an inch from her face and tore the katana from her hands. “I don’t know who you are, anomaly,” the Chain Knight warned her. “Pray I’m never interested enough to find out.” Yesmin screamed in agony as her child tried to be born, but things were wrong. There was far too much blood pooling on the engine room floor. “You take no one,” Whitney Darkness warned, channelling all her skill into coaxing the child to turn. A caesarean wasn’t practical in this environment. The birth would be natural or not at all. “You want something of me, so you don’t interfere.” “What you’re doing here will deny you the chance to do what you agreed,” Sir Lucian declared. From that Keiko surmised that this was the creature for whom Sorceress had agreed to release Bloodreaper from Herringcarp Asylum. “Then get out of my way and let me do this so I can get on with the things I said I would.” The Chain Knight moved forward, one bloody silver gauntlet outstretched towards the agonised mother. Keiko brought her knife down on the wrist, aiming at the gap where the metal glove hinged. The blade turned and snapped, and she found herself pounded back by thrashing chains that pinned her to the wall. The Chain Knight turned from Yesmin and regarded his captive. “Beg,” he commanded her. Keiko snorted defiance. The Chain Knight started hurting her. He was very good at it. “Beg.” Behind Sir Lucian, Whitney was working all her craft on the pregnant woman, using improvised tools: a bottle of surgical alcohol, a blowtorch for sterilisation, a laser scalpel, an old-fashioned meat knife. Yesmin was lost in agony, clutching Clan Elder Broto’s hand with bone-crushing force. Keiko knew she had to hold the Chain Knight’s attention, and her defiance was the only chance for Yesmin’s baby. She told the Chain Knight was he could do to himself. Sir Lucian responded by showing her that the pain she had experienced was only the beginning of his repertoire. “Interesting, isn’t it, my little meat-puppet?” he noted casually as he tested the limits of how far Keiko’s joints could stretch without dislocating. “I’ve tortured thousands, hundreds of thousands, but every victim is different. A new experience. The defiant ones like you are best, because when they fall they fall so much further. I was defiant once.” Keiko couldn’t answer, or even grit her teeth, because of the chains down her throat. She snarled her resistance and damned herself for her tears of agony. “You’ve been trained to accept pain, to withstand it,” Sir Lucian noted. “That’s good. That always makes these things better.” His flailing chains drubbed Keiko’s flesh, not yet hard enough to break the skin, just to pummel. For the first time Keiko began to wonder how long she could endure his attentions and still stay herself. “The first flash of fear,” the Chain Knight observed. “Such a special, intimate moment.” Yesmin gave a last sob and crumpled to silence. Whitney pulled the small red infant from between her thighs and laid her hand on it. She focussed all her will. “Live!” The baby wasn’t breathing. The Chain Knight chuckled as he won a small cry from Keiko. Whitney laid her lips across its nose and mouth and breathed for it. She rubbed its chest to stimulate its heart. Live Keiko allowed a scream to well up from inside her. The Chain Knight shook his head. "Feigning despair to keep me occupied?” he suggested. “Do you think I can't tell the real thing, just bubbling under the surface? Let's see if we can't let it out. Beg for me, little one!” So far he hadn't even drawn blood, but Keiko realised Sir Lucian understood her limits better than she did. Yet if she failed now she failed more than herself; so she held on. Whitney Darkness dredged down into the depths of herself to gather every vestige of power she possessed. Come on, she mocked herself. You can tap your rage and your horror when you want to be scary, to do harm. This is more important than that. You have to do more than that. Go deeper. Reserve nothing. There was love deep down too, for Jay, for a child that never was, for a grandmother she could never understand, for friends, for a life now lost, for dreams now shattered. It was all mixed now with bitterness and regret and misery and shame. And it all had to be used, unhidden, dredged to service, given up. It was time for the Sorceress to grow up. Live! The planet shook. The Chain Knight turned in shock as the babe took a shuddering breath and cried in protest at being born. Yesmin, seemingly unconscious a moment before, twitched a hand by instinct at the cry of her baby. Whitney laid a hand on the seeress’ brow, soothing and strengthening, and hoisted the bloody infant onto Yesmin’s breast. “You have a son.” Then the Sorceress turned to the Chain Knight. “And you have no place here!” The Chain Knight turned to kill them all; but the ancient rules that had allowed him to manifest at the point of death now meant he could not stay. Keiko slumped to the floor as he vanished. Sorceress let the Klayhoggers attend to the wounded ninja while she cut the child’s cord and sewed Yesmin up. Only then did she come and check how much Keiko’s sacrifice had cost her. “I’ll live as well,” grimaced the wounded assassin. “Just some callisthenics, that’s all he did. That’s all.” “You beat him,” Sorceress told her. “You defeated Death.” Keiko choked back a sob. She hurt, but it was pain she could live with; the pain of triumph. She could hear the screams of an infant demanding its mother’s breast. “Good.” Whitney Darkness looked down at her hands. They were bloody again. But this time she felt no shame. This was the blood of life. Coming up in our penultimate chapter: The Challenge team versus Chronic! The secret of the Gamesmaster! The fate of Whitney and Keiko! Blackhearted vs Goldeneyed! Shazara Pel’s secret! Killer Shrike unleashed! Xander’s discovery! And more nasty cliffhanger endings than ever before in an episode of Untold Tales. All coming in UT#183: Even More Endurance, or the Secret Game  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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