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Post By Speed, shocks, and every cliffhanger the Hooded Hood could think of except he one with the actual cliff and the thing with the girl on the railway line. Wed Nov 03, 2004 at 11:28:33 am EST |
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#184: Untold Tales of the Transworlds Challenge: Even More Endurance, or The Secret Game | |
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#184: Untold Tales of the Transworlds Challenge: Even More Endurance, or The Secret Game Previously: The last leg of the Challenge is interrupted by Chronic attacking Earth’s team at the behest of the Hellraisers who do not want to see the Starseed prize available to the Hooded Hood. Blackhearted (the alternate reality version of Goldeneyed) and Killer Shrike still aim to thwart Chronic, but their companions Sorceress and Keiko have chosen instead to save lives on the downed Klayhog vessel. Yo and an espionage team have intruded into the Gamesmaster’s private sanctum aboard his gameship. Xander and ManMan have infiltrated the Hellraisers’ stronghold in the interdimensional vortex. Who’s Who in the Transworlds Challenge  Chronic stood on a rocky spur jutting from a churning sea on an alien world where he intended to murder seven heroes. He clutched Steve, his demonic guitar, in his cold dead hands, and every chord he strummed caused more catastrophe. Amazing Guy was already fallen, his mind shut down by the chords at the same frequency as human thought cycles. The protector of the Parodyverse had tumbled into the path of the half-mile high tidal wave that Chronic had caused earlier, and had been lost beneath the waters. Aunt Sally, Earth’s vessel for the Transworlds Challenge, was half-buried in thick silt on the ocean’s floor. Her protective force-screen was down, allowing the cloudy waters to envelop her crew. CrazySugarFreakBoy! and Hatman had been lost to the torrents. Chronic strummed again, hammering sound down through the waters, setting teeth rattling and wits wandering, stunning drowning men even as they choked for air. Steve exalted. There was a bright flash behind the dead musician and two men arrived to stop him. The latent sound bubble around Chronic hummed as it deflected Killer Shrike’s wrist cannons. “Of course,” hissed Blackhearted. “Send in somebody who knows the Legion from happier times! Chronic, you die!” “Too late,” the musician told him, striking a chord that pounded Blackhearted off the outcrop. “Been there. Done that.” “Try it again!” Killer Shrike snarled, lurching forward to gash Chronic’s chest with his forearm razors. Chronic reeled back, but no blood came from the deep gashes. It was the perfect setup for Blackhearted to teleport in and land the clincher; but Blackhearted didn’t come. Deep underwater Goldeneyed had blinked out of his seat-belt and was struggling to free the trapped Visionary from a watery grave. Blackhearted appeared behind his alternate self and teleported half of G-Eyed away. To his surprise the rest of G-Eyed followed, and so did he. On the outcrop above, Chronic smashed Steve into Shrike. The impact chilled the mercenary to the bone, and the stench of brimstone filled his nostrils. “Wha… what?” he gabbled, as his mind churned up childhood sins and ancient wrongs. Chronic sounded another note and Shrike fell to the floor in epileptic fits. Chronic stood over him and his fingers found the frets for a sound that would liquefy the butcher bird.  “We’ve lost contact with Aunt Sally!” Amy Aston warned, slamming her fist onto the monitor console in anger. “There was some kind of pressure wave and a discordant screech and then…. Nothing.” “The Gamesmaster’s monitors are just showing churning waves,” Miss Framlicker complained. “Those that haven’t gone into reset/repair mode.” “So what’s happening?” Nitz the Bloody demanded. “It sounds like those guys are in trouble. Can’t we help? Somehow?” “If we interfere they forfeit the race,” Ebony of Nubilia pointed out. “And even if the Galactibus was still here, not heading out to help the Klayhoggers, we’d never get there in time to do any good.” Shazara Pel, last survivor of the Thonnagarian crew destroyed two legs earlier watched with arms crossed over her shoulders with a cold, disdainful look. “If your warriors are worthy then they will prevail. If they are inferior, they deserve to die.” Miss Framlicker turned on her. Nobody could do cold and disdainful better than Miss F. “In other words, you’ve very grateful for being rescued from the Slimy Slaver Lovetoad and the Scavengers.” Princess Uhunalura was also angry with the tall arrogant Pigeonwoman. “Don’t you have somewhere else to be elitist and insensitive?” she demanded. “No,” admitted Shazara, turning away. “No?” Nitz checked. “What about all your Thonnagarian buddies on the station? I thought they’d be glad to see at least one of their team made it through.” Shazara Pel kept her back to them. A warrioress did not show weakness. “I did not die with the heroes of my people,” she answered neutrally. “I was taken captive, humiliated, dishonoured. I allied myself with lesser beings to survive. And… I allowed an outsider to use the sacred z-metal, which is treason and blasphemy. I can not go back.” “Tragic,” spat Amy Aston, “but right now we’ve got some heroes of our own down and we’ve gotta do something!” “Roll back that monitor feed on camera nine,” Ebony called out. “There, just before the tidal wave hits. What’s that on that rocky column? Is it a man?” Miss Framlicker enhanced the image. “Chronic!” she gasped. “He’s dead.” Nitz the Bloody looked at the devastation on the screens. “He seems to want company.”  Al B. Harper had retreated to the private lab at the end of Aunt Sally’s maintenance bay, where he could try and make sense of the data being transmitted to him from the quartet who had infiltrated the forbidden centre of the gameship. So far he wasn’t liking his initial conclusions. “Those bodies in the alcoves, with the wires attached,” he said to Temporary Death, double-checking the data on the cadavers of the previous world-avatars confiscated from losing races millennia since, “the ship seems to still be leaching something from them. I think there must be close to a million of those apparati in there, one for every victim the Gamesmaster has ever taken.” “Yes,” agreed the exiled conceptual entity. “The equipment is prolonging their moment of death from instants to eons, the better to drain away their eternal essences.” “Is to be being wicked!” Yo proclaimed at the other end of the communications feed. She reached out to tear the wires off the nearest corpse but Lisa stopped her. “Don’t,” the first lady of the Lair Legion advised. “Dancer’s barely keeping up with the probability mods needed to stop the ship’s systems detecting us as it is. If we get caught then we probably get wiped out, and then Earth gets deleted next.” “I’m… fine…” sweated Dancer. “No problem… at all… I needed to get more exercise…” “What is the purpose of yon fell contrivances?” Donar, hemigod of thunder, demanded of the Lair Legion’s scientist. “I can’t tell with the equipment you’ve got there,” Al B. admitted. “But if you follow those larger conduits you should get to the storage area, and then maybe we can find out what they’re storing.” “And how to blow it up,” suggested Lisa.  Dawn came up on Acamar IV, and as Thera Eri rose in the sky the weather systems shifted radically, the snow of the night cycle evaporating into thick swirling mists. The gigantic life-forms that had been dormant during the cold awoke to hunt and feed for the minerals and metals that were their steady diet. And the downed Klayhog clanship seemed like a fine breakfast. Keiko and Clan Defender Strunn stood atop the rent shell of the vessel trying to fend away the land-crawlers. Sorceress floated inside, her legs crossed beneath her, warding away the beasts that tunnelled below. All aboard knew that it was a short-term defence. “But help is coming,” Seeress Yesmin promised them, her newborn clutched to her breast. “Coming now!” The Lunar Public Library’s Galactibus broke through the clouds to offer a tow. Falcon swooped low and lay down a barrage of air to surface missiles to drive back the giant beetles while the Librarian and A.L.F.RED attached towing straps to the damaged clanship and helped the Clan aboard the sturdy rescue vessel. “Wait!” Clan Elder Broto called to Lee Bookman as he made to seal the hatch on Falcon’s return. “Where is the Sorceress? And Lady Keiko?” But of the two heroines there was no sign.  Blackhearted had sought to rend his dimensional counterpart Goldeneyed by means of sudden teleportation. G-Eyed had reflexively understood what was being done to him and had locked himself and his attacker together in a series of wild random jumps that left both of them gasping and powerless on a low shale bank under a foot of water. “You… are going… to die!” Blackhearted promised breathlessly. “Says the… loser… wannabeee…” Goldeneyed panted back. Blackhearted pulled himself up out of the shallows. “You know what annoys me most about you? You had it all and you didn’t value it. You had Laurie, you had Beth, your kid, the Legion, everything, and you just threw it away!” “Except I didn’t fail everybody,” retorted G-Eyed. “I didn’t let my Laurie die!” Blackhearted sneered. “My Laurie now, bud. I paid her a little private visit while you were playing space cowboy. She was pretty glad to see me.” He smirked more. “Beth too.” Goldeneyed took a step forward in wrath but forced himself to hold off. “Look, much as I’d love to tear your heart out right now, the LL’s in trouble. We need to get back and help them. And then I’ll be more than happy to wipe you and your scummy smirk off the face of the Parodyverse. Evil doubles are passé.” His rival took the opportunity to enhance his strength from the same dimensional energies that allowed his teleportation, and to drive a sucker punch into G-Eyed’s guts. “Let ‘em die,” she shrugged. “They had their chance.” Goldeneyed smashed his fist into Blackhearted’s groin, then grabbed and squeezed. “So did you!” Then the fight began in earnest.  Hatman arced out of the seething sea with his Dolphins cap on his head. As he passed above Chronic, CrazySugarFreakboy! dropped down from his friend’s back and landed heavily on the undead musician. That was enough to cause the shot that would have ended Killer Shrike to go amiss, plummeting him instead into the turbulent ocean. “Hey, Chronic, you might want to consider less Alice Cooper makeup!” CSFB! advised him. “I know the 80’s are back right now, but you don’t have the tongue for it.” In mid-flight Hatman switched to his Jets cap and rocketed down to smash Chronic aside before a devastating chord could spread the wired wonder across fifteen miles of water. “Leave Buddy Holly to me,” Dreamcatcher Foxglove advised. “Dive and help Nats save the others.” The capped crusader nodded, switched hats again, and vanished beneath the waves. “And now some music criticism,” CSFB! announced, turning back to pound Chronic again and again, all the while gumming up Steve with more and more silly string. “You know you were a whole lot cooler when you weren’t being somebody else’s zombie puppet.” “Tell me about it,” snarled the musician. “Just punch me out, will you?” Just before CSFB! rendered Chronic insensate it seemed as though the rebel without a pulse made a conscious effort to let go of his guitar. Then it was all over. The undead musician slid beneath the waves and was lost in the swell.  Blackhearted still sneered despite his broken nose and Goldeneyed hit him again and again. It was clear that this fight too was over. “So clean living does it every time, eh?” the cynical Bry Katz mocked, spitting a tooth. Goldeneyed’s own costume was shredded, and his left arm wasn’t working properly. “We’re both the same person, a big bastard,” he told his counterpart. “Only difference is I’m fighting for something more important than me.” “So now you kill me.” G-Eyed stopped in mid punch. “Nah,” he decided. “I don’t kill if I don’t have to. That’s why I’m me and you’re you, and I’m better. Don’t come near my life ever again, loser.” He dropped the broken Blackhearted onto the shale and teleported to help his friends.  Hatman pulled off his nurse’s cap when Visionary started to breathe again, as the possibly-fake man spewed thick salty gunge onto Aunt Sally’s deck. “I didn’t need rescuing, really,” Trickshot told Nats, shivering as he wrung out his tunic. “I’d got the rebreather from my quiver. I was just having a little trouble working out where up was, that’s all.” Goldeneyed reappeared with Amazing Guy, who was still unconscious from the earlier encounter with Chronic. Bry allayed his teammates fears by telling them the identity passwords he’d agreed with them to demonstrate his bona fides after Blackheart’s last substitution. “You’re just leaving your other self here?” Hatman asked. “Kind of like in the Phantom Zone,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! suggested., “He can teleport away eventually, back under whatever rock he crawled from,” G-Eyed shrugged. Then he winced painfully. Blackhearted had done his share of damage too. “I’m sure that was Killer Shrike I saw tackling Chronic,” CSFB! puzzled. “But that doesn’t make any sense. In fact Chronic being here doesn’t make any sense either.” “We don’t have time to wait for the world to make sense,” Visionary gasped at them, still lying like a drowned rat on the engineering deck. “We’re in a race, aren’t we? How’s Aunt Sally?” “I’m at 37% capacity, thank you for asking,” came back her prim grandmotherly voice. “But I’m ready to press on.” Nats leaped into the pilot’s chair. “We’ll do the mystery solving later then. Let’s press.”  “How much longer?” worried ManMan, glancing nervously over his shoulder again. Xander the Improbable slowly leafed his way through documents in the library before them. “As long as it takes,” he answered distractedly. “We went to an awful lot of trouble to get into this fortress of darkness,” Knifey pointed out to his Elvis-suited wielder. “If we crept back now without finding out what these Hellraisers are up to it would be a terrible waste of time.” “Yeah,” admitted Joe Pepper. “It’s just that some of us are mortal and can’t just find another shmoe to carry us round if the current one gets mulched. And I’m spooked by all these dead guards shuffling round the place, even if they are ignoring us.” “All my wielders are special to me, Joe,” Knifey replied in a strange, sad tone. “Every one. But I’d be especially sad to lose you. You know that, right?” ManMan felt a knot form in his throat. “Got it!” Xander interrupted, standing up and spilling his chair backwards. “Here it is. A pact with some lower planar beings. A sponsorship deal, if you will.” “The Hellraisers have backers?” Knifey asked. “Exactly. Powerful backers, which is how they’ve been able to overcome some of the entities that would otherwise have stood in their way. There’s a lot more to this than a quartet of extradimensional n’er-do-wells throwing their muscle about.” “A quintet,” Nosferos the Undying corrected the mage. “We are five in number.” ManMan realised that the undead who had been looking blindly past him for the long hours that Xander had laboured in the library were now staring directly upon him. “I’m quite impressed you got this far,” Nosferos admitted. “When you’ve died and risen as my vampire slaves you’ll have to tell me all about it.”  The very heart of the central sphere of the gameship was hollow, and it was lined with worlds. More properly, it was lined with the ghostly representations of planets, one transparent sphere for every race the Gamesmaster had destroyed over his long career. There were hundreds of thousands of them. “Verily, this caitiff dost need smiting most wrothfully,” breathed Donar. “Al, are you getting this?” Lisa asked. The comm-link was failing now, this close to the centre of the Gamesmaster’s power. “This is where the conduits all lead.” “Just about,” came back the crackly answer. “I’m starting to get some idea what’s going on there, and I don’t like the answers.” “Care to share them with the rest of us?” Dancer asked, trying to remain bright despite the fatigue on her face. Al B. checked his calculations again and had a hurried conversation with Temporary Death. “I don’t think the Gamesmaster is destroying worlds. I think he’s consuming them. I think the Planetary Avatars, life-forms somehow linked to their planet as guardians or representatives, or just attuned to their world’s bio-rhythms, give him the key to leaching away the very essence of the planets themselves.” Yo looked up sharply as an idea came to him/her. “The power needed to do this is phenomenal, but the power it confers would be even greater,” Al B. continued. “I think this whole Transworlds Challenge thing is a planet-harvesting scam.” “By Galactivac’s big brother?” commented Lisa. “The Triumverate seemed to think the Gamesmaster was an Oldster of the Parodyverse, one of the primal beings who existed before the current rules came into play. That’s why he can do what he does.” Al B. frowned. “If he was outside the rules, would he need all this scientific kit to do what he wants? Would he need to feed on these worlds he deletes?” “No!” Yo burst out. “Is not to be! Yo is to be knowing what kind of creature is to be stealing of futures and to be taking of heroes! Yo is knowing what is to be uncute Gamesmaster really!” The others looked at the agitated pure thought being, except for Dancer, who was staring round fearfully. “Uncute Gamesmaster is to be feeding on of heroes!” Yo yelled. “Is to be Hero Feeder! Lurker Betweening!” “No Hero Feeder ist this powerful,” argued Donar. “Not the modern ones, who were reduced after their war with the Second Oldest Race,” Temporary Death answered worriedly. “But the primal ones, the ones from before the Celestian intervention, they were… The Gamesmaster has been doing this for a very long time, hasn’t he?” Dancer was looking up at the very first in the line of charnel alcoves, at the very first corpse to be attached to the gameship. “I don’t think he has,” she said quietly. “Look.” She pointed to the mummified figure in the classical robes. “I think this is the real Gamesmaster, the oldster of the Parodyverse. And I think he’s long gone. Long replaced.” “Very good,” admitted the creature calling itself the Gamesmaster, clapping his hands. “You’ve done very well, and played beautifully, the best of all the competitors that have got this far.” He smiled nastily, and in his eyes roiled the death of worlds. “And now let’s see what you’ve won!”  The Portal of Pretentiousness darkened and became a simple mirror once again, reflecting the three individuals who had just been pulled by its timespace folding power back to the shadows of Herringcarp Asylum. Keiko forced herself to overcome the terror of being shifted through realities and deal with the situation at hand. “Where’s Whitney?” she demanded. “On the Gamesship,” the Hooded Hood replied. “A crisis is developing and people will be looking for her.” “People who want to kill her?” Keiko asked. “Very much so.” “Then you need to send us there, to cover her back.” “Go yourself,” Blackhearted spat, dabbing his shattered nose. “I’ve done my job.” “You mean you ran away and got yourself ass-kicked when the mission needed you most,” snarled Killer Shrike, and added a number of uncomplimentary epithets. “I will not send you to the gameship again,” the Hooded Hood declared. “The time for outside intervention is over. You have fulfilled the task for which I assembled you.” Killer Shrike perked up. “We get paid?” “Indeed. Although Keiko’s reward is still dependent upon the performance of Aunt Sally and the Lair Legion.” “I’m not happy about leaving Whitney without back-up,” Keiko persisted. Killer Shrike snorted. “You heard the man. We’re done. We’re dismissed, right, boss?” The cowled crime czar assented. “You are. I have arranged for nine million dollars to be present in a numbered Swiss account, Mr Maddicks. And I will be retconning your existence to be permanent, Mr Katz. You are all welcome to remain at the Asylum until the present Challenge is concluded.” Then he took his leave. “Wow,” breathed Killer Shrike. “He didn’t even double-cross us at the end. That’s real classy.” Keiko turned back to the Portal of Pretentiousness. “There’s got to be a way of getting this to work,” she reasoned; but the giant glass had vanished from sight. “So, we’re free,” Killer Shrike declared, grinning. “And rich. You know the very first thing I’m gonna do?” “What?” asked Blackhearted sourly, still trying to staunch his bloodflow. “This,” answered the butcher bird, and reached out and slashed Blackhearted’s throat from ear to ear. “Sneer at that, you traitorous bastard!” Blackhearted toppled to the floor, already dead. “Haw!” Killer Shrike crowed as his enemy fell. Then he noticed the Japanese blade protruding from his own chest cavity. “Aw no…” he added as he saw the blood begin to flow. “Not you…!” Killer Shrike tumbled down beside Blackhearted and their blood mingled on the stones of Herringcarp Asylum. Keiko stood alone, her katana dripping, and wondered what to do next.  The final haul of the last leg of the Transworlds Challenge was through the vast corpse of one of the Constellation, the energy-being agents of the counter-prophecy wherein the Fairly Great Old Ones return when the stars are right to rule infinity. The decaying shell was over two thousand miles long, formed of varying decomposing energies. Some of the entity’s internal defence systems, the equivalent of human antibodies, were still working autonomically. Ambient radiation and the unique conditions inside the carcase made it impossible to use anything but mundane travel, and the livid strands of energy drawn from a thousand dark stars meant that no force-field in the universe could protect an unwary ship that brushed an undischarged nerve. “Okay. This place gets my vote for spookiest we’re been in,” Visionary opined as Nats carefully threaded Aunt Sally through one of the internal tubules of the vast dead thing. “Seconded,” Amazing Guy agreed. He was nursing a concussion, and being inside one of the Constellation was completely blanking his cosmic awareness and retarding most of his energy construct abilities. He was feeling vulnerable. “Aunt Sally’s systems are down to 26%,” Hatman warned from the engineering deck, “and falling.” “I can do it,” Aunt Sally said, sounding for all the world like the Little Engine That Could. “Just get me through this dreadful place.” “Still no contact with the support guys?” Trickshot checked. “Damn. This place is the pits.” “We’re on our own,” G-Eyed frowned. “At least I hope we are.” Which was a cue for the Skree warship lying in wait for Earth’s heroes to let loose with a full laser barrage, shorting out every circuit on Aunt Sally. “Dronon!” shouted CSFB!, spinning free of the crippled Austernal vessel. “They can’t afford to have us win!” “And we can’t afford to let them finish!” Amazing Guy added. “Guys, watch out!” Visionary called. “They’re going to…” But it was too late. The Skree warship’s main battery slammed into Aunt Sally again, and its primary laser sliced the little ship into two neat halves.  “Foul felon! Mass-murdering caitiff!” shouted Donar Oldmanson, hammering his enchanted baseball bat with a nail in it into the Hero Feeder Gamesmaster. “In the name of all these thou has slaughtered I cry thee ‘Vengeance!’” “Way to go, big guy!” Dancer called out. “Keep him busy while I get this gooey Gamesmaster corpse out of this energy-sucking bay, okay? That should slow down his world-zapping powers.” “But to be watching out for his hero-erasing abilities too!” Yo warned, dancing aside as Donar unshipped his unfettered power. “Be careful, cute-Donar!” The ancient Hero Feeder lashed out with diabolical speed, and laughed. Lisa frowned and turned to Yo. “Donar?” she asked. “Who’s Donar?” The hemigod of thunder had been erased. “And you are next,” the Gamesmaster told Lisa, Yo, and Dancer.  In our double-sized concluding issue: Well, let’s see. We’ll probably deal with a few of the situations mentioned here. Like the Gamesmaster being the most powerful primal Hero Feeder in the Parodyverse. Like Keiko and the Hooded Hood. Like Sorceress and the folks on the Gameship when things start to go to hell. Like the destruction of Aunt Sally. Like the finish of the Transworlds Challenge and the fate of the Starseed. Those kind of things. Coming soon in The Finishing Line.  Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Footnotes: Chronic was a junkie wannabe rock musician who happened up (or was happened upon by) Steve, the Devil Guitar. Steve granted Chronic the power to transform his drug-induced musical genius into devastating sonic force released by hard-rock riffs on the Satanic stratocaster. We’ve had hints that Steve is much older than it seems, and has taken the form of other instruments in the past. Certainly Steve and Knifey seem to have a previous hostility. Steve enhanced Chronic’s natural anarchistic tendencies and dislike of authority to further the guitar’s purpose. The sonic power unleashed by Chronic’s playing is most effective against supernatural and mythological adversaries. After a forced separation from Steve Chronic was catatonic for some months, until the guitar mysterious appeared in his room. Thereafter Chronic took up Steve and cut his own wrists. His undead form then went and freed the Chain Knight from imprisonment. Chronic has unwillingly served Sir Lucian since, with a brief detour during the Crisis on Multiple Earths which served only to increase Steve’s potency. Hero Feeders, or Lurkers Behind, are parasites that infest the interdimensional vortex between realities in the Parodyverse, and occasionally break through to prey upon weak narratives, erasing them and the people and events contained in them from reality. Some Hero Feeders are mindless instinctive beasts, while others are cunning and subtle. Simonides Slaughter and most of the inner circle of Paradopolis’ exclusive Heckfire Club are Hero Feeders, and they occasionally harvest heroes from the city they farm. Other Hero Feeders have appeared as transsexual trandimensionals, as gothic vampires, and as galactic estate agents. All modern Hero Feeders are mere shadows of the powerful creatures that once moved through the vortex though. Those terrible beings were spilled out into reality by unwise experiments of the Second Oldest Race, and were only contained by the creation of the Psychostave that Nats once wielded and by a destruction of the Second Oldest Race so complete that even their name is lost. We haven’t encountered one of those first generation Hero Feeders in the stories before now. The Constellation were energy beings, immensely powerful agents working to fulfil the prophecy of the Fairly Great Old Ones’ return. They were set against the Celestian Space Robots and were seemingly wiped out during the reign of Lord Resolution, itself an opposing sentient prophecy about the final battle of the Parodyverse. In our story today the residual energy-carcass on one of these unfathomable Constellation beings forms the backdrop for some of the action. 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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