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Virtual Death Parts One and Two Tuesday, 20-Jun-2000 16:02:32
Virtual Death Somewhere in Siberia Siberia... the very name makes most men's blood run cold . And Igor Ivanovich would be spending the rest of his career guarding some of the Russian Military's most deadly secrets. Ivanovich was never allowed to go into the labs the darkened bunker held. But he soon became bored with the cramped quarters and his post... but they told him to stay there... they said it was for his own safety. They were right. Currently he was peering into one of the darkened labs. He was fascinated by the actions that were occurring inside. Sparks of light emanated by welder robots bounded off the metallic form similar to a human, behind the machine's was a computer monitor, beholding the face of a new era. The face.... of Zemo. That's when the alarms sounded. Charging cables detached from the monstrosity in the lab, and it rose to a formidable height. Horrified by the sight, Ivanovich ran... it seemed he ran forever. But he was too slow. The awakened machine caught up to him in a matter of seconds. "Don't kill me. Please.... I have a family.... two boys... they're all I have.*" he sobbed. "And you're all I have. You will help me." the cold machine's voice answered, holding Ivanovich by the neck, all the while. "Anything... just don't hurt my boys." "Granted." (Speech in italics is translated to English) Virtual Paradopolis, the VR world created by Zemo’s Movie Gun and guarded by the Lair Legion’s part-time computer HALLIE: “What is it Fleabot?” HALLIE asked the holographic incarnation of the micro-robot as she sunbathed on the virtual roof of the virtual Lair Legion mansion. “Do the LL know you’ve created yourself a hard-light body in here?” Fleabot wondered as virtual visionary brought the computer another pina colada. “Hey, I work hard all day trying to make some sense out of the case files those bozos input, balancing the books, supervising the repair nanobots that work in NTU-150’s laboratory – a full time job in itself, by the way – and organising Lisa’s social, um, rota. I deserve to put my pixels up and relax once in a while.” “Fair enough,” Fleabot shrugged, moving round the virtual Fin Fang Foom HALLIE was using as a footstool. “Anyway, I just dropped by to let you know all the emergency alarms are sounding down in one of the basement labs.” HALLIE concentrated and flickered for a moment. “None of the mansion alarms are going off,” she frowned. “Everyone in the real world is busy watching ManMan trying to explain to Troia why he didn’t write to her on his road trip.” “Not the alarms in the real world lab, HALLIE,” Fleabot clarified. “The virtual lab here.” “What?” HALLIE snapped, paling under her virtual tan. “Which lab?” “Lab thirteen, I think,” Fleabot shrugged. HALLIE said a virtual bad word. Parliament Hill, Canada "Mr. Prime Minister. I'm sorry about the "all French people suck" comment... but frankly.. I haven't had much luck with the French... they all yell at me.. And say curses I cannot understand." said spiffy, apologising for his actions during a meeting of the House of Commons he'd attended, being mayor of almost everything was a tough job. And he was learning first hand. "ZO you zay la poisson est dans la salle de bain!!! Huh Huh Huh???" "WHAT?" Gothametropolis City Hall, between Bowery Alley and Easy Street: “I want to speak to the mayor, dammit!” Banjooooo towered over the PA and shouted. “I happen to be the king of the sea-monkeys, you know. And I am half of a detective agency with spiffy, who is the other half. I’m the senior half, of course. He looks up to me as a role model. Anyway, I want to see him, and pronto. I need to know what happened to some scientific gear we confiscated a while back that went to the Gothametropolis police locker” “I’m afraid Mr spiffy is busy humiliating himself and his country in front of the Canadians just now,” the PA told him. “But I imagine any confiscated scientific gear would have been auctioned off like Mayor spiffy said to deal with the budget crisis from his pizza binge.” Now Banjooooo said a rude word. Castle Zemo, South America Zemo was sleeping. And as with most future world dictators, he couldn't sleep well. Thoughts of plans failed, and things gone wrong clouded his mind. Most of all.. he was haunted by the thought of the monster he created.... himself. What would his father say? The Bean and Donut Coffee Bar, Paradopolis Square, Paradopolis Centre: “Hello? Hello? Who is speaking please?” “Kyle? Is that you? Kyle Runner?” “Is Mr Papadopopopolis speaking. You want to order takeout?” “What? What the hell are you talking about? Get me Saint on the line tight now. Tell him its Maverick. Tell him not to jerk me about because I don’t have a sense of humour.” “Humus? You want catering?” “I want Saint. If you want to live you will get him on the line now.” Sarah Shepherdson came to her puzzled employer’s rescue.” Hello? I think you might have got a crossed line. This is the Bean and Donut Coffee Bar. What number were you trying to connect to?” “Damn! Then he’s already infiltrated the telephone systems, even our black lines.” Maverick said a bad word before letting the line go dead. Back in Siberia Igor is driving a tracked cargo truck. It's covered by both a cargo net and snow shield. But its only passenger wouldn't mind the snow, he can't feel anything.. except hate. The truck rolls onward through the high snow drifts. And both its occupants stay deep in thought. Only when they reach their destination to does one of them speak. "Get out of the truck" Reluctantly, Ivanovich does as he's told, only to be ripped apart by the monstrocity. "Only trust yourself. My father told me that.. Now we will find out who has the brains to be the true Zemo." VR Zemo walked to the nearby hanger and jumped into one of the Russian government's outdated Migs, flipped a few switches then shoved the flight-stick forward, causing the craft to lurch onto the runway. With a blast of jet-exhaust the plane had left the ground, and made its way to its destination.... Paradopolis. The Lair Mansion “But I did write to you, honey!” ManMan continued to plead. “Five’ll get you ten that she stabs ‘im,” Trickshot whispered in a too-loud voice to Space Ghost. “If she doesn’t love you Manny, I do!” Space Ghost contributed encouragingly. “I loooooooooooovvvvvvvvvveeeeeeeee yooooooooooouuuuuuuuu!!!!!!!!” “I volunteer to stab Space Ghost,” Exile suggested. “Don’t Amazons kill guys they date after they’ve finished with them?” CrazySugarFreakBoy! speculated. “I think I remember this Charles Moulton issue where…” “Yo is thinking that maybe being to be watching this is not to be best thing for delicate relationship talk with cute-Troia and cringing-ManMan,” Yo suggested. “On the other hand it’s great to watch Joe squirm,” Goldeneyed considered. Troia and ManMan both turned furious gazes on the assembled spectators. The phone rang. Flapjack stopped calculating the odds of Joe Pepper’s various injuries on the blackboard and picked up the receiver. “Hey, this is either the Lair Mansion if you need the world saving, or Lisa’s lovedesk hotline if you need more personal relief, or Flapjack Enterprises Video Emporium for all your Amazon showering media requirements… er, forget that last one.” Only the fact that everyone present in the room was reduced to digitised electronic impulses and sucked into the phone saved Flapjack from a major spear insertion at that moment. There was nobody left to say a rude word. Space Ghost said one anyway. Soviet Weapons Control Center, Moscow His eyes were tired., heavy, and the radiation from the relic monitor was enough to make Sergei Raymov quit. He was currently checking on some of the government's newer weapon's construction facilities. But what we want to know is Mr. Raymov's past. This man was once one of the most powerful men in the Russian empire. Not anymore. He was demoted for a breach of command. He didn't follow an order to terminate a project... Ironically, it was the one that was now on its way to the U.S. via one long-range fighter. KGB Headquarters, now the Happy Diaper Day Care Centre, for the modern Moscow tot: “Talk to me Dmiri, before I smother you in the diaper sack,” the Dark Knight snarled at the trembling former KGB operative. “Raymov picked up certain items at a Gothemetropolis Police confiscated goods sale. He shipped them back here for a black project that was ordered terminated after the ramifications were understood. But he didn’t terminate it as ordered, right?” “I… I don’t know anything,” Dmiri Russkioff pleaded, now needing a diaper change himself. “Do you know how many unpleasant things I can do to you with this simple baby bottle?” Dark Knight asked him. “Don’t make me resort to the breast pump.” “Alright! Alright! It was Virtual Zemo. We opened up the conduit to the virtual world where the Lair Legion trapped him! We didn’t know. But we imprisoned him in our own mainframe. Wiped the chain of scientists and experts who’d brought him back. Raymov killed the last ones himself. And we honestly thought he’d wiped the hard drive.” “He didn’t,” the urban legend snarled. “And now Virtual Zemo’s loose again.” Dmiri Russkioff said a rude word before fainting. LL Island The day was going incredibly slowly for the current leader of the Lair Legion. Once again someone had stolen his letter of resignation and he was sure NTU had H.A.L.L.I.E. delete the back-up on the computer system. But all wasn't lost.. He still had another back-up, in disk form. At least that's what he thought... until he discovered it melted over the heater. That one was probably Lisa. He decided to go for a drive, and hoped Enty hadn't stolen any parts from it, preventing him from leaving. "Y'know Fleabot." the ‘human' started, "This job sucks. Why couldn't I be a football coach... or president, or something?" "I don't think they allow androids to do those." As the door to Vizh's office clicked shut a yell could be heard from down the hall. "I'M REAL DAMMIT!!" Virtual Lair Mansion, five seconds later: “Not for much longer,” Virtual Zemo chuckled as he blew the smoke from his pistol and stepped over HALLIE’s virtual corpse. “After all, there’s not many of you left.” LL Island "Um.. Donar, why are you poking the bean bag chair with the broom?" queried a slightly worried Hatman, who was sitting on the couch watching Thundercats. "It dost be looking at mine rear most vexingly." "Huh?" Suddenly the chair jumped from its docile position on the floor and surprised the Ausgardian. Then began making erotic movements toward the bedroom. "Like it Big guy?" questioned Lisa, using her own version of ‘urban camouflage'. "HOLY SH*T!!" yelled NTU-150 as he ran up the stairs from the lab. "Uhh guys.... I got some good news.. And some bad news..." "What's the good news?" asked Vizh, who wanted to hear something optimistic for the day. "We're not dead." "Dare I ask the bad?" Under his faceplate Jaimie winced.. Obviously he didn't want to give his friends the news. "He's back.... Virtual Zemo is back." Virtual Lair Mansion, less than one second later: “Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Virtual Zemo triumphed at last!” Virtual Zemo laughed. Using the reconstructed equipment from the Russian black operations lab he had now sucked the last of the Lair Legion into the virtual realm through the communications equipment filling the Lair mansion. Once the troublesome Legion were dealt with, his virtual father, the real Heinrich Zemo, would be next; and then, the world. All could be sucked into the virtual realm and then destroyed. “Bwahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!” he cackled again. All around him in the virtual mansion, the Lair Legion faced a variety of bizarre dooms. Hatman and Goldeneyed were trying to climb up the staircase while a large monkey threw barrels down on top of them. CrazySugarFreakBoy! and NTU-150 were trying to repel little green spaceships that were descending on them, even as they strove to disable a fast-moving mothership above that. Donar and Trickshot were trying to run through a complicated series of deathtraps in the Lair Mansion’s plumbing system to rescue Lisa. Troia, ManMan, Yo, and Finny appeared to be stuck in some kind of turtleshells wading though the Mansion’s sewer system in quest of unsanitary pizza slices while a giant rat sent ninjas to try and kill them. And Visionary and Space Ghost seemed to be able to run very fast despite the hedgehog spikes on their backs, which was just as well given the improbable array of creatures seeking to kill them. Virtual Zemo chuckled again. “Game over, and you lose your last lives,” he warned the beleaguered, um, league. Exile would have said a rude word to him but he was too busy running through a maze, jumping on dots, and trying to avoid some very hungry ghosts. He would have been dead by now but something kept making him turn exactly the right way to avoid the spectres. And then he saw it, right ahead of him, as if he’d been guided to it by an invisible hand: a shining glove of pure energy, potent and shimmering, hanging in the maze as if waiting for an energy-manipulator to find it; and Exile was an energy-manipulator. Absorbing the power into himself Exile swivelled round. He noted that the ghosts paled with fear before he blasted them. The unseen hand guided his arm again and he fired at something he hadn’t seen before, something he now understood to be Virtual Zemo’s Virtual Modem. “Noooooooooooooooooo!!!” screamed Virtual Zemo. “Yesss!!” hissed HALLIE, pleased that her Exile gambit had worked although miffed that she was going to have to generate another virtual body for herself after all the trouble she’d had getting the last one tanned. Then the Legion were back in the Lair Mansion and the threat was over. The wrecked modem lay at Exile’s feet, and Finny gave it to Enty to repair so it would never work again. ManMan and Troia decided to go have a pizza that hadn’t been soaked in sewage first. CSFB! and Hatty vanished off to dig out their old Nintendo systems and finish off what they’d started. Lisa wanted to discuss with Donar how to refute an article by some so-called professor who claimed that Ausgardians couldn’t procreate with mortals. Visionary wanted to lie down and gibber. HALLIE and Fleabot cracked a virtual bottle of virtual bubbly and toasted a job well done. Virtual Zemo screamed in his virtual prison under the virtual Lair Mansion, knowing that this time there was no escape. Virtually. Exile and the Hooded Hood |
| Virtual Death Parts One and Two (Exile and the Hooded Hood) (20-Jun-2000 16:02:32) |
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