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Untold Tales: Damnation Friday, 07-Jul-2000 15:04:44
AUTHOR’S NOTE: A little while ago, Dark Knight proposed that I should attempt a story in the sort of serious and dark style more commonly used by him and Messenger rather than the humour/adventure/soap blend I customarily use for my BZL work. I replied that I might do so but would require the donation of a Parodyverse character or two to put through the wringer. Lee Callaway has kindly obliged, so here is such a dark tale. However, this tale DOES require a warning. It is definitely certificate 18. It contains graphic violence and more unpleasant things still, and it might upset some people who are sensitive to such things. It is not my usual fare. I have set out to shock people here, and to present a different kind of reading experience to the ones I usually provide for this board. So caveat lector. IW Untold Tales: Damnation Everitt Kasell looked trim and handsome in his Brooke Street three-piece. Even the slight grey highlights on his well-cut hair and the vestigial scar on his left cheek only added to the piratical good looks which the camera loved so much. He smiled for the camera as he spoke to Terry and to the estimated nine million viewers at home. “Well Terry, you’ve got to remember that this was the ‘60’s and we were all a little wild back then. Being a so-called supervillain, it was a way of rebelling against the establishment. We really all thought we were going to change the world, bring about the Age of Aquarius and that stuff.” “But you did change the world later, didn’t you Everitt?” the interviewer noted. “Media tycoon, international speculator, and now named in the Queen’s birthday honours list, did you ever expect to become such a universally acclaimed international figure?” “Back when I was Damnation, Scourge of Society? Well Terry, as you know I never sought greatness. Even the super-villain shtick was all a bit of fun back then, a sort of social commentary. But it gives me great pleasure to look back and see all the good I’ve been able to accomplish for society.” “About being Damnation, Everitt. I mean before the book deal and the top-selling records and all the stuff that propelled you to fame and fortune…” Kasell smiled. “We all had some great times back then, Terry. As I say, it was a simpler, more innocent age.” The interviewer nodded and returned his guest’s smile. “Do you ever see anything of your old friends and foes from the old days? You were always linked with the superhero Commander Courage back then, as I recall.” “Old Curry? Oh yes… that takes me back. He played the opposite role, the supposed good guy, defending the establishment and so on. We used to go at it like cat and dog. I wonder what ever happened to him? He seemed to just drop out of society about, what, 1970? Curry, if you’re watching this give me a call for old times sake, huh, and we’ll go out for a pint, okay?” “That’s a remarkably generous attitude if I may say so, sir,” Terry told Kasell. “After all, didn’t Captain Courageous once hospitalise you, gashing your face and…” “Best not to dwell on that, Terry,” the media tycoon advised. “I think that series of articles in the papers back in the ‘80’s best explained the sort of strains and stresses poor old Curry was under those last few months he appeared. It’s never nice when the truth behind the myth is revealed as a bit ugly and tawdry – and some of those poor abused boys are still in therapy today I understand. I prefer to remember Curry as he was in his heyday… before we knew what he was really like.” “Moving on, Everitt, can I ask you about your latest novel…?” He stopped the tape at that point, freezing it on his wide, friendly smile. “So what do you think?” he asked his companions. “I thought it was a bravura performance, especially the bit about the abused boys.” “It was… it was magnificent,” the old man shackled to the wall told him. “It was wonderful… as always.” Everitt Kasell had to agree. “It was wasn’t it? After all, if Commander Courageous himself says it, it must be true, mustn’t it?” The skeleton-thin old man with the haunted eyes nodded. “It must be,” he agreed. For almost eight full years of his captivity he had managed some measure of defiance against his tormentor. But that was long ago, back before his enemy had taken such lengthy, detailed pleasure in showing him that every one of his principles was misguided, that good did not triumph over evil, that in fact he had wasted his life, betrayed his family to torture and vile servitude, condemned himself to an eternity of…Damnation. “And do you have anything interesting to say on this matter, Freedom Lady?” Kasell asked the twitching naked mass on the soiled pallet beside Courageous. The once-beautiful sidekick would not answer of course. Thirty years of torture and prostitution and drug addiction had destroyed her mind. Now she merely whimpered and soiled herself when it was time for her fix. “No? And you were so very vocal in your espousal of causes once.” Courageous didn’t even wince as Kasell raked a thin gash along her thigh simply because he felt like it. Once he had raged and sworn and wept, but now it was just another day in hell, the continuing victory of evil over the illusion of good. Kasell was feeling pleased with himself. “What shall we watch next Curry? One of your daughters’ movies? Some tapes of how your grandchildren are doing in Taiwan? How about the one where your son is dissected? Or shall we come up with something entirely new?” Everitt Kasell loved his life. “Are you sure it was me you wanted to interview?” ManMan asked the bright young girl researcher from the BBC. “You contacted the Lair Legion but you specifically asked for me?” “I take it you don’t get the media attention that the big guns get,” Felicity Bedding (yes, she got all kinds of jokes about her Bond-girl name) asked. “And I’m sorry but this isn’t really going to change that. I’m just a fact-checker, and to be honest I’m actually doing this in my own time.” The waitress at the Bean and Donut Coffee Bar brought them their cappuccinos and wished them a nice day. ManMan was always a good tipper. “Doing what?” ManMan asked. “We’re doing a piece on Everitt Kasell, the millionaire philanthropist. He’s getting a knighthood. I’m supposed to check some stuff about his early days, back when he was a swinging 60’s ‘supervillain’.” “A bit before my time,” Joe Pepper pointed out. “I wasn’t even born.” “I know that,” Felicity smiled. “But I heard that you had, um, a talking knife?” “You… want to interview my knife?” ManMan had a sinking feeling. “Well I was the one who battled Damnation,” Knifey piped up from Joe’s ornate Elvis belt. “One time only, mind you.” Felicity Bedding’s eyes widened a little. So the stories were true. Joe laid Knifey on the counter. “Tell us about it then,” he sighed. “It was your standard hero-villain thing. Villain was trying to come up with some everlasting life formula, and I helped out some English super-athlete called Commander Courageous. We freed some people Damnation was experimenting on. It never made the papers. No-one would press charges.” “Commander Courageous?” Felicity frowned. “The child molester?” “Really?” Knifey sounded surprised. “I’d never have believed it. I’ve seen a lot of long-underwear guys in my time, and I’d have put him in the top five square-jawed straight ones. Heh, I don’t think he ever even laid a finger on his hot little sidekick Freedom Lady.” “It was in all the papers a while back, a few years after he vanished,” Felicity explained. “Nobody mentions him now.” “You can never tell,” Joe shrugged. “So is there anything else you need, Ms Bedding?” “No. Thanks for your time, er, both of you. I have a plane to catch.” The insistent knocking woke Joe Pepper out of a sound sleep. “There’s someone at the door,” Knifey told him helpfully. “I’d worked that out,” Joe grumped, untwisting himself from sweaty sheets and dragging on a robe. “What time is it?” “About 2am,” Knifey guessed. “Somebody sure wants to talk to you in a hurry. Heh, maybe Troia’s h----!” “Shut up,” ManMan growled and opened the door. “Dancer!” “Even better,” snickered Knifey. “Dancer, what’s wrong? And, um, how did you find my address?” “Probability Dancer, remember?” the superhero identity of Bean and Donut waitress Sarah Shepherdson reminded him. “Look at this.” Something about Dancer’s serious demeanour focussed Joe’s mind and he looked at the newspaper she proffered. The front page story wasn’t a pretty one. Joe skimmed the headline and the first few paragraphs: young woman… raped… tortured… burned body discovered in Thames… tentatively identified as… “Felicity Bedding,” ManMan gasped. “I have reason to believe you were talking to her a while back,” Dancer told him. “Sure. She was checking some facts for a story, about… about Commander Courageous and Damnation.” A worried scowl grew on Joe Pepper’s face. “She certainly upset someone,” Dancer said grimly. “What are you going to do about it, Manny?” “Me? I’d like to investigate, Dancer, honest, but I left my ManMan jet in my other secret headquarters. I have no way of getting to England.” “Sure you do,” Dancer told him. “Knifey, do you know Sir Mumphrey Wilton’s telephone number…?” It took a long time for Commander Courageous to find the courage to speak. He knew he would be punished for this. “D…don’t cry,” he finally managed. Felicity Bedding looked up from her blood-stained pallet. “What?” she managed. “What did you say?” “Don’t. It won’t help. It…” “What’s happening to me?” the frightened woman asked. “They… they hurt me. They…” “You’re his prisoner now,” Courageous told her. “He owns you. Like us, me and S-Susan. You’ll be here for a long time, suffering. He’s… he’s already faked your death, you see. He’s good at manipulating the media, he owns a lot of it. He made them brand me a… a pervert.” A sick horror dawned upon Felicity. “Y…you’re Commander Courageous? What… oh sweet… what has he done to you?” There was a catch in the drained broken voice as he answered. “Everything.” “I have simply taught him that evil triumphs over good,” Everitt Kasell answered, returning for his pleasure. “And now Felicity I have that same lesson to impart to you.” ManMan wiped the blood off his face and staggered to his feet. “Alright,” he warned the eight armed men in the grimy London alley. “You outnumber me badly and you’ve got guns. I can’t guarantee to stop you without badly hurting you. A knife’s not a defensive weapon. Back off now or you’re going straight to the ER.” And he meant it. Then they tried to kill him. ManMan rolled aside as the first one lunged at him with a bowie knife and ribboned the thug’s cheek to the bone as he passed. While that one screamed he twisted him round so the spray of blood would momentarily blind his comrades. The second one fell to a broken femur as ManMan kicked out. The third literally ran onto Knifey, giving Joe no chance to temper the blow to something less fatal. The hero’s ploy had worked. Provoked by his words they had chosen close-range attack rather than firearms. Bullets would have ended this. As it was a bicycle chain in the side of his head still nearly finished him, and only the thick leather of his jacket turned aside a switchblade to his chest. Part of him wanted to give up then, to surrender to the grey haze that was filling his eyes. But another part remembered the interview a few hours earlier with Felicity’s weeping parents, with a numb, angry boyfriend who felt guilty for not somehow impossibly saving her, with professionally polite forensics people who assured him of her death. And the grey haze was replaced with a red one. The fourth attacker died as ManMan spun him into the path of the bullet from the gangster who had held back. The fifth took Knifey in the guts and staggered to the ground trying to hold his internal organs in. The sixth and seventh backed off a little, simply holding him at bay while the eighth turned his gun on the little man with the briefcase that ManMan had come to meet. Knifey took the gunman in the throat. The hurled shot was the only way to save a life, and it cost one too. But that left Joe unarmed against the last two attackers. “Come on then, you bastards,” he snarled, gesturing with his hands to indicate he was ready. And they came, one with the bike-chain the other with cudgel and knife. ManMan caught the chain on his forearm, dragging it from its owner and breaking his nose with a sledgehammer right hook. The cudgel caught him on the back, sending him to his knees, and the knife arced down to finish him. ManMan kicked the legs from under his attacker at the last moment, bringing the man down on top of him. From then on it became a dirty-rules wrestling match as the man went for Joe’s eyes with his thumbs and ManMan caught him by the throat and squeezed. Meanwhile the remaining bloody-nosed gangster seized up Knifey and lunged forward. “Oh no,” the sentient blade warned the thug, twisting in his grasp and burying himself instead into the back of the attacker on top of ManMan. Joe rolled free and took down the last of the men with a pounding blow to the stomach and a head-bounce off the wall. He retrieved Knifey, steadied himself on the dirty brickwork arch while he caught his breath, then looked up at the terrified scientist with the briefcase. “So tell me about the immortality process,” he snarled. “You are free to go,” Detective Inspector Gallowglass told the bandaged crimefighter. “We have decided not to press charges for the three fatalities and the five grievous bodily harms, given that they appear to have attacked and you appear to have been acting purely in self-defence. Besides, you come with good references.” Here he glanced at the third figure in the Scotland Yard interview room. Sir Mumphrey Wilton nodded back in acknowledgement. “Thank you Detective Inspector. Very decent of you.” “What about Damnation?” ManMan asked. “What about the evidence I brought from that scientist that he’s been draining life-preserving chemicals from human victims to keep himself immortal?” “It’s not going to go anywhere,” Gallowglass told the hero honestly. “Your scientist witness has revoked his statement, and any decent defence solicitor will throw out the whole thing as weird science anyway. I couldn’t get it within a hundred miles of the Crown Prosecution Service. Frankly, without an absolutely airtight case against Kasell, even trying this would cost me my career.” “Man’s a bounder though,” Mumphrey pointed out. “What about Felicity Bedding, hmm?” “If you find anything out, I’ll listen,” the Inspector promised. “I don’t like this any more than you do. But I have to be realistic. And Mr ManMan, the next time you get brought in after a fight with three fatalities, don’t expect your titled friend here to be able to pull you out. Sir Everitt has powerful friends as well, and their pull is at least as good as Mumphrey’s. Now be off. You can collect your talking knife down at the property locker.” Everitt Kasell was waiting for them on the forecourt of New Scotland Yard. “Ah, there you are,” he called to them. “I thought I’d better have a word with you.” “Kasell,” Mumphrey spat. “What the deuce do you want, you bounder?” “I want you to stop bothering me, Wilton,” the millionaire answered. “I want to make it very clear that this isn’t one of your leather-clad little friend’s superhero games. I don’t play those games any more.” “Too bad, Damnation. You should have thought of that before you had Ms Bedding killed!” ManMan snarled. Kasell gestured to his Rolls Royce, where a camera crew were taping the whole encounter; without sound. “Behave,” he advised. “You can hardly afford to stab another person right now. I assure you in prison your superhero name will take on a whole new meaning.” “Say what you came to say, Kasell?” Mumph demanded. “very well,” Damnation smirked. “It’s this. Stay out of my business, or your loved ones will suffer the same fate as Felicity Beddows. I want you to know she’s not dead, by the way. That was faked. She’s quite alive, and she’s my newest toy, and she’ll stay that way until she dies. And as I f--- her tonight and she screams for mercy I’ll be laughing because you can’t do anything about it.” “What?” Mumphrey gasped. “You have a son and daughter, Wilton, and a grandchild on the way. And you, Joe Pepper should have taken more care about your secret identity too. How is your Aunt April these days?” “Felicity is alive?” ManMan shouted. “Where…?” “Ah-ah!” Kasell warned. “No rough stuff. I know where your friends live. Oh, and since I perfected the immortality formula – albeit at the cost of a few worthless human lives, I admit – I can’t actually die either. So any attempt to take me out will result in the slow and horrible destruction of all you hold dear. If I vanish, they’re dead. Get attacked, they’re dead. In fact I might even go one better and share the immortality with them, as I did with Commander Courageous and Freedom Lady, so they can suffer forever as my playthings.” Mumphrey was pale with rage. “You will not get away with you, you… you bastard.” “On the contrary,” grinned Damnation, “I have, for thirty years, and will forever. I want you to remember this, noble heroes. The triumph of evil over good. Remember it every day you live your cosy little lives with your loved ones, and think of Felicity screaming because of it. Goodbye.” Mumphrey lunged forward as Kasell turned to go, but ManMan held him back. “Mumph, no! He’s got us by the short hairs. Don’t try it!” Kasell was laughing as his care drove off. “I’ll have him,” Mumphrey seethed. “By God I shall have that man!” “I want him nailed too, Mumph,” Joe Pepper assured the angry Englishman, “but he’s got some pretty good cards. We want him, we’ve got to play smart.” “I won’t give in,” Mumphrey shouted. “I won’t surrender to threats. I will not let evil triumph!” “Nobody said we were giving in, Sir Mumphrey,” ManMan assured him. “But if he’s playing rough, we’ve got to find a way of playing rougher.” The eccentric Englishman reigned in his temper and controlled his breathing. “What do you need?” he asked. ManMan considered this. “A plane ticket to upstate Gothametropolis,” he answered. Joe Pepper turned off the videotape of the Kasell TV interview and turned to his host. “So that’s it. What do you think?” “I think I am most surprised that you sought me out here at Herringcarp Asylum of your own volition,” the Hooded Hood replied. “Especially in an attempt to recruit my assistance in overcoming a so-called supervillain.” “Bullshit,” ManMan told the cowled crime-czar. “I know you. You’re wicked and twisted and evil as hell but you don’t approve of that kind of thing. Admit it. And you owe me, for all the times you manipulated me into doing stuff for you an’ Troia.” “Way to piss off the big time archvillain, Joe,” Knifey mumbled. The shadows darkened in Herringcarp Asylum. ManMan refused to break away from the cowled crimelord’s green-eyed stare. “Why did you become a superhero?” the Hood asked suddenly. “I had an… industrial accident,” Joe Pepper explained. “And then I got Knifey.” “That is how you gained your so-called powers,” replied the Hood. “Why did you elect to use them in the way you do, as a superhero?” ManMan considered this. “Well, I never really thought about it,” he admitted. “It just seemed… you know… great power, great responsibility… right thing to do.” “Hmm,” the cowled crime-czar reflected. “Those with metahuman abilities who have little imagination or regard for their world become petty villains. Those with little imagination but a developed regard become superheroes.” “And what about those with regard and imagination?” Joe couldn’t resist asking. The Hooded Hood’s eyes flashed. “They become archvillains.” Knifey snorted. “Well if you have all that stuff, Hood, then you should be consenting to help me,” ManMan persisted. “I’m not going away until you do.” “You do know he could retcon us out of existence,” Knifey reminded his wielder. “But he won’t,” ManMan judged. “He needs us for his plans with Troia for some reason. And Troia would never forgive him if he hurt us.” “If I retcon you from existence then Troia would not even remember you,” the Hooded Hood assured the hero. “And Nats would do almost as well in the role I have prepared for you.” ManMan suddenly felt in deadly danger. “Well,” he swallowed. “I’m still not going.” “Because it is the right thing?” the Hood hissed. “Yes. Evil can’t be allowed to triumph.” “How far are you prepared to go to accomplish your ends?” asked the archvillain. “As far as I have to Hood. All the way.” “I see,” the Hooded Hood considered. “This is a side of you I have not seen before, Joseph Pepper. It rather becomes you. But beware that speaking to me thus does not become a habit.” ManMan breathed again. “Very well, Joseph. For my daughter’s sake, and because, as you say, Kasell is scum that deserves to be cleansed from existence, and because the decisive triumph of good or evil would not suit my needs at all, what is it that you require of me?” Everett Kasell’s Shropshire mansion was protected by a security system as good as any on the planet, and specifically tailored to keep out interfering superheroes. Dogs and armed guards were augmented by electronic mines, live surfaces, lethal sonics, even a fast acting short life flesh-eating virus. “That was a challenge,” Ziles admitted as she managed to neutralise the last of the security web. “I didn’t realise that your planet had got this devious in its security arrangements. Perhaps my visit here won’t be boring after all.” “Thanks, Ziles,” ManMan told the strange visitor from another planet, a visitor who fervently denied being one of the best thieves in the galaxy, and just happened to have a range of equipment which could be used to circumvent most perimeter protection devices. “Look, I need to go on from here on my own. This isn’t a normal sort of case. It wouldn’t be at all pleasant of Damnation caught you with me.” “I don’t get caught easily,” the silver-suited alien pointed out. “Neither did Comander Courageous or Freedom Lady, and they’ve been tortured in this house every day for thirty years, and if the bastard in here has his way they will be for the next thousand. I mean it Ziles. This guy is scary. I’ve faced off Thugos and the Hooded Hood and even the Prince of Fibs himself and none of them could beat this one for sheer nastiness. So please, for my sake, go home now.” “So you’re going in there with just a talking dagger and a pocket mirror?” “Knifey’s the only weapon I need. And that pocket mirror is actually the transdimensional Portal of Pretentiousness. That’s the thing I’ve got to get inside. But I’ve got to go alone from here.” “He means it, Ziles,” Knifey agreed. “This is serious.” “Don’t die then,” Ziles advised Joe with a smile. Then she vaulted back over the outer wall and vanished from sight. ManMan unsheathed Knifey. “Showtime,” he said grimly. Felicity Bedding has stopped making noises for now because it hurt too much to use her throat. Instead she cringed in her corner and felt terribly guilty at how relieved she was that Kasell was torturing someone else. “Ah Curry,” Damnation chuckled as he wielded the razor, “how delightful that our new attraction should reawaken that long-dampened spirit of gallantry within you. Now I shall have the joy of dousing it all over again. Before I have finished with you you will beg for the privilege of torturing her, just as you learned to abuse your beloved Susan in the end.” The broken superhero soiled himself and begged for mercy, but he would not assent to do the things to Felicity that his captor demanded. The playroom door splintered as a heavy bodyguard was thrown through it. ManMan stepped over the bloody security man and strode towards Damnation. “So you want to join my list of entertainments,” Kasell leered. “How delightful. I rather hoped you would when I saw the dossier on your pretty little girlfriend.” ManMan plunged Knifey into the villain’s heart. “Nice try,” Damnation sneered, “but the Immortality Formula is just that. Stab me, burn me, dissolve me in acid, scatter me to the four corners of the globe and I will reform and return to destroy you and yours. I won’t even feel pain. You have lost, little hero.” “Wasn’t trying to kill you,” ManMan clarified. “Just keep you out of the way.” And he heaved the impaled man up and pinned him to the wall with his knife. “There.” Kasell struggled to pull free of Knifey. “No you don’t,” the blade told him. “When I don’t want people to let go of me, they don’t.” ManMan went over and released Courageous from his fetters and helped him slump to the floor. The emaciated prisoner was crisscrossed with old scars. Clearly the variant of the immortality drug which Kasell had given Courageous did not shield him from pain. Joe wondered how many times Damnation had literally tortured this old man to death. Felicity flinched when ManMan approached her, but he soothed her with quiet words and wrapped her in a blanket. “It’s okay now. Really. I’m gonna fix it. I am.” “Wh… who are you?” Commander Courageous managed to ask. Somehow he found the strength to drag himself up to his knees. “Who are you?” “Someone who believes in the triumph of good over evil,” Joe Pepper replied. Kasell snorted. “Then you haven’t understood the world properly, Pepper. You might win today, but tomorrow I shall have you. And my victory will be all the sweeter for your temporary triumph today.” ManMan brought out the Portal of Pretentiousness and watched as it unfolded to its full size. “Borrowed this from another villain,” he explained to Damnation. “But a classier one. With proper powers. He set this to act as a time/space portal to 1970.” Captain Courageous looked up sharply. “That’s when Damnation gained his Immortality Serum and captured us.” “I know,” ManMan nodded. “Look, here’s the deal, and it’s the best I could get. I can send you and your sidekick back to 1970 to try and stop all that stuff happening. But if you succeed, you’ll get wiped out. The you of the last thirty years won’t exist. And worse, to balance out the time-transfer, the you from 1970 will vanish too. You’ll just… stop.” “Better that than the thirty years of what we have become,” Courageous answered in a half-whisper. “Better a clean end erasing the triumph of evil over good. Better to remember what it used to be like, what we used to be.” “Of course,” Knifey added more cheerfully, “Kasell won’t have been around these last thirty years either, so any contingencies he might have set up to get Mumph or Joe’s family and friends will cease to exist as well, along with all the murders he’s committed to get the materials for his Immortality Fluid.” “No!” snarled Damnation, suddenly realising the danger he faced. “I’m afraid you’ve both got to go,” ManMan explained, helping Courageous support the glassy-eyed Freedom Lady towards the Portal. “It’s a temporal physics thing. I don’t understand it, but the Hood’s pretty good at that stuff.” “I understand,” Courageous answered. The feeble prisoner straightened his shoulders. “Thank you for the chance to prove my beliefs about good and evil too.” “Are you, um, are you going to be able to handle Damnation?” ManMan was forced to ask. “I mean, you can hardly walk and he’s at the height of his strength…” “I can’t,” the old man admitted. He gestured then to the rippling image in the Portal, where a costumed hero strained uselessly at bonds of iron, “but he can. All I have to do is open the clasps.” “Fair enough. You’d better go then. Good luck.” “Take care of the lady, won’t you,” Courageous asked, gesturing to Felicity. He tenderly lifted the vacant-stared Freedom Lady and limped with her towards the Portal. “C’mon Susan, my poor love. One last fight. One last deed. That’s all.” Then, to Kasell he added, “I win.” The two shattered heroes passed though the threshold of the mirror. With a roar of anger Kasell ripped free from his prison, dragging part of the wall with him. ManMan turned to see him leap over and drag Felicity to her feet. Damnation placed one hand around her neck and one on the side of her head. “It’s not quite over yet,” he warned. “Step aside and let me through that magic doorway as well. I can have Curry back in chains before he’s scabbed over from the last time.” ManMan deliberately moved to block the way to the Portal. He would have felt better with Knifey in his hand, but Knifey was still embedded in the villain’s heart. “Out of the way or I’ll snap her neck,” threatened Kasell. “Then I’ll snap yours.” ManMan almost faltered. “One life against all the rest, Damnation. I’m not folding. Hell, if you don’t exist she might even not be dead at the end of this.” Felicity Bedding hardly had time to make a sound from her raw throat before Kasell had broken her spine. She toppled to the floor, still aware and alive for a few seconds, staring in paralysed disbelief at the villain’s boots until he deliberately kicked her face aside. Then Damnation came for ManMan. Joe thought he was ready for the charge but at the last moment the villain feinted, catching the hero off-balance, and hammered a stunning blow into Joe’s right cheek. He followed it up with a slam on the back of ManMan’s neck and a kick which numbed the hero’s leg and sent ManMan toppling to the floor. Pausing only to stamp on his enemy’s gonads Damnation dropped onto Joe’s chest and closed his hands around the hero’s neck. “You’re lucky,” he told ManMan, “You’re going to die quick. But I promise to spend extra time on your loved ones.” ManMan couldn’t even mouth defiance as those inexorable hands wrung his neck and crushed his windpipe. With weakening fingers Joe Pepper reached up and pulled Knifey from the villain’s chest. The first slash caught Damnation across the eyes. The second sliced open his left arm from elbow to palm. The third severed his right hand at the wrist. Kasell toppled back, cursing. Behind them both in the mirror, an old ragged man freed the captive Commander Courageous from his enemy’s trap. Leaping forward just in time to prevent Damnation from using his Immortality Formula, the freedom-fighter dashed the serum to the ground. As it shattered so too did the reality in which any of them existed any longer. Its work done, the Portal of Pretentiousness faded away back to its master. The effects rippled through time/space, erasing all but the most fundamental features of Kasell’s continued existence. The world now thought of Damnation and Courageous and Freedom Lady in the past tense, relics of a simpler, more innocent era. All had vanished along with hula hoops and free love and Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. But at the very core of the old reality Everitt Kasell still lived, laughing. “You’ve failed, hero!” he gloated. “Failed. The girl is still dead, and I am already restored to health by the Immortality Formula! And now for round two.” ManMan dragged himself painfully to his feet. His left leg still couldn’t support his weight and his arms felt like lead weights and his opponent was immortal. “But you don’t have the Immortality Formula any more,” Knifey pointed out to Damnation. “It never existed.” In the moment that Everitt Kasell paused to consider this, ManMan tested the theory by plunging his weapon again into his opponent’s heart. Damnation was silenced in mid-laugh. Joe watched the life-light go out of the villain’s eyes. Only then did Damnation’s body fade out of existence, leaving Knifey clean on an empty floor. When Ziles returned to find ManMan she found him in the cellar of an ruined country house cradling the corpse of a kidnapped BBC fact checker. “So did we win?” ManMan asked Sir Mumphrey Wilton as they watched Felicity Bedding’s coffin being lowered into the churchyard clay while her family and fiancée wept. “Did good triumph over evil, or did the Hood get his no-score draw? Did I act like a hero or did Damnation bring me down to his level?” “Sometimes the imperfect solution is the right one for this imperfect world,” the eccentric Englishman observed. “Damnation was a blaggard and needed stopping. You paid the price necessary to do it. That’s what heroes do, to ensure that triumph of good over evil.” ManMan gestured to the grave. “Didn’t she pay the price? And Courageous and Freedom Lady?” “For each of those deaths there are now how many weddings, births, anniversaries, whole lives that would have been snuffed by Kasell?” Mumphrey pointed out. “Poor Felicity was a victim, yes, but Courageous at least made his choice, and a damned good one it was too in my book. Hope to be able to do as much when my time comes. And the reason you pay the price, Joe my boy, is because you’re the one who will have to remember it for the rest of them” “For what it’s worth Joe, I think you came of age,” Knifey added. “Just so long as you never visit Herringcarp Asylum ever again.” “C’mon lad,” Sir Mumphrey Wilton advised, “Let’s go get a cup of tea.” The Hooded Hood offers something a little different from his usual material. This story comes with an 18 rating. |
| Untold Tales: Damnation (The Hooded Hood offers something a little different from his usual material. This story comes with an 18 rating.) (07-Jul-2000 15:04:44) |
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