🚀 go-pugleaf

(continued from part three...)

                                   ***********

     Spectrum fired blast after blast of energy, each one increasing in size and
power.  Radian leaped and flew to dodge the blasts, and returned fire with
heavy blasts radiation, microwave energy, and laser beams.  A mage spotted the
pair blasting each other and grabbed his walkie-talkie.
     "Hey Bruce?"
     "What Bruce?"
     "Some pooftah is havin' a row with our favorite Sheila."
     "Bugger him, Bruce!"
     "Can't Bruce! The pooftah just shrugs me off."
     "Maybe the Sheila needs Bruce's help."
     "Too right, mate! Thanks Bruce!"
     Spectrum flew straight at Radian in a full power dive.  Radian hovered,
then rolled, kicking Spectrum in the face, deflecting him into the ground below.
"You are a tough one, but I've got your number, Spectrum.  I can fly rings
around you."
     The ground shook and a baseball-diamond-sized hunk of ground suddenly
blew out towards Radian.  She blasted a hole as the ground flew past all around
her.  "I think I just made him mad."
     Emerging on the far side of the massive projectile, Radian was punched by
Spectrum as he blindsided her.  She relaxed and rolled with the punch, letting
the force of the blow carry her away from him.  "OW! Ow Ow OW.."
     "Alright, lady!  Thats it!  I've had it with you.  You aren't going to get
away with trying to destroy the world and then walk away!"
     "Why not?  The Magistrix nearly did the job for me, right before I tried.
Why not take out your frustrations on them?"
     Spectrum landed next to Radian and blasted another beam of energy at her.
She leapt up to fly away and faceplanted herself back into the ground.  She
rolled onto her back, trying to get up. Spectrum stood over her.
"Gravitational Energy, ma'am. I'm going to just keep on bumping up the juice.
Either you surrender now or I'm going to give you a quick tour of the Earth's
crust."
     But before Radian could hiss a reply, a massive blast of Xolchipalian
energy speared Spectrum from behind.  The force blew him past Radian, and
imbedded him headfirst into a grassy hillside up to his ankles.  The Masked
Bruce looked at the slightly twitching feet, then at Radian, and wordlessly
flew away.
     Kyoko flew over the feet. Drawing an imaginary bullseye on them.  -Alright!
Payback time! Don't hold back! Let him have it!-
     Radian stood, dusting herself off.  She walked over to Spectrum and
grabbed a boot, tugging hard.  Spectrum's unconscious body slid out of the
dirt.  Spectrum groaned weakly, but lay still.  A small toy mouse fell out of
his pocket.
     -Roast him!  Toast him!  Give him the KwikeeMart Burrito Treatment!-
Kyoko was beside herself, but Radian paused, and picked up the toy.  *What the
hell(tm) is this thing?* Radian pondered.  *What's a grown man doing carrying
a kid's toy with him?*
     China looked over Radian's shoulder, *Maybe it belongs to his kid?*
     -EXCUSE ME!- Kyoko stomped her foot, -AREN'T WE FORGETTING SOMETHING?-
     <<Kyoko is correct,>> HAL intoned, as a image resembling David Carridine
materialized next to Spectrum's prone form.
     -Well, its about time someone listened to me.- Kyoko pouted.
     <<I expect Dave to recover consiousness in 58.4 seconds.  A retreat before
that time is advisible.>>
     -NO WAY- Kyoko raged, -This tincan was going to grease us.  Grease him
first!-
     Radian looked at the toy again.  Why did this piece of plastic bother her?
     *Forget it Kyoko,* Raidan thought silently as she worked the helmet loose
from Spectrum's armor. *I have a better idea.*
     Radian gathered the armor parts in her arms and jogged away from Spectrum.
*Where is Hotflash or Meltdown when you need 'em?  This gear is too tough for
me to shred, and I can't be sure I will be able to short it out enough to
make it unusable.*  She scanned the battle scene. The armor was surprisingly
light, for all the firepower it packed.  As she wondered where the power pack
was, something small and furry pounced on her shoulder.  *Andro, how the
Hell(tm) did you get here?*
     *What?*
     "Frink! Ptang! Ptang! Ptang-frink frink!"
     Radian was suddenly blanketed by Lemurs.  Bouncing, frinking and
tickling, she broke down in giggles in spike of her surprise.  "Hey! Cut that
out!"  But the seething pack kept up their assault, bouncing and crawling up
her back, staring at her with big round eyes.  She spread her arms wide,
dropping the armor, and released a blinding flash as she flew up into the air.
Lemurs rained off her, while others tackled sections of the discarded armor.
Radian looked down and the mammilian mass.  "If you furballs want that stuff
that bad, you can have it.  I have other things to do."
     A minute later, Spectrum stood slowly. The morning air chilled him as he
shook his head to clear the cobwebs away.  "Geez, what hit me?" He ran his
fingers through his hair and paused.  His hair?
     He looked down and around him.  A piece of his armor lay on the ground.
Burned into the ground in block letters was a message:

     "Took your toys away.
      Consider the concept of mercy.
      Hope you don't sunburn easily.
      P.S.  Nice buns."

     "Arrrrrgh!"

                                   ***********

     It was getting tougher for Chris to keep the Awesome Force One still long
enough to fire the driver.  If Damien hadn't been able to help control the
stabilizers he never would have gotten the last two shots off.  He pointed the
bow of the ship again, it's muzzle looking like the mouth of a hockey player.
The enemy ship was well aware of what would come out of that hole and was
engaging in some fairly frenetic evasive maneuvers.
     Chris tried to keep the ship steady, but Damien was getting weaker and
with every hit, the stabilizers' manual controls were more difficult to
handle.
     "Come on, Damien, we just need one more shot."
     "I'm trying, man.  I'm trying."
     Yes, he was, Chris thought.  He had the shot, right...now!  He raised his
fist and brought it down on the button.  However, a concentration of weapons'
fire exploded from the enemy ship and entered the muzzle of the awesometonium
driver.  A shudder stirred at the aft of the ship.  Like water being shook from
a dog, it traveled up the length of the hull.  Damien was tossed to the
ground onto his broken arm. Chris had managed to fire the driver, but that
last burst shorted out the superconductors and the shaft of awesometonium, the
most dense element known to mankind, crawled feebly along the last vestiges of
magnetic power and teetered precariously on the torn and smoking edge of the
muzzle before plummeting to the ground below.

                                   ***********

     Marie was on her way to back up Wayne and some Revolutionary troopers
when she saw Spectrum go down.  Her suitcomp ID'd the bozo who did it as
'Masked Bruce' of the A.L.U. (whatever _that_ meant). Whoever he was, he was
about to become hamburger.
     "You hurt my Lawrence!!" Marie shouted, pushing the thought of the mage
she had just killed out of her mind, while doing an armor-assisted anime
leap up towards the flying hero. "Prepare to _DIE_! Tornado Micromissile
Deathstrike!"
     Alerted by Tornado's shout, the Masked Bruce whirled and blasted the pair
of minimissiles out of the air with a well-aimed Xolchilaser blast.
     Marie's boot thrusters kicked in and the two faced each other in mid-air.
     Masked Bruce made the first move. "I will not buy this record, it is
scratched," he said in deadly serious tones.
     "What?!" Marie replied. Was this some new form of attack?!  "Chainsaw
Disembowling Attack!" she exclaimed, slashing with her wrist-mounted chainsaws
at the Masked Bruce's gut.
     "Please fondle my bum!" he exclaimed, parrying with his Tihorn.  Sparks
flew as the two weapons ground against each other.
     "Do _WHAT_!?" Marie shouted, "Will you hurry up and die?!"
     "My hovercraft," said the Masked Bruce, "is full... of eels."
     "You _are_ talking to me, right?" Marie asked, looking around. The Masked
Bruce grinned and zapped her with a massive Xolchipulse, which blew out all
the actuators in her armor.
     "_Now_ you see the violence inherent in the system!" he shouted as Tornado
dropped like a rock and got stuck in the top of a tree.
     "Come in, Bruce," said the Masked Bruce over his comm-link.  "I found that
Sheila you were looking for.  She's down, should be no threat."
     "Bruce here.  She won't be when I get through with her.  Damn Sheila just
beat up pretty much the whole rest of my team," said a voice that the Masked
Bruce somehow identified as Roger of Force Ten.
     "Aw, spit!  Give her an extra helping of sheep dip, then!  Bruce out."

                                   ***********

     The battlefield seemed to grow silent for a moment as they all heard the
sound that somehow, in a very strange and probably unexplainable way, was
obvious to all of them as being the sound made by a misfiring awesometonium
driver.
     There was a peculiar sliding, scraping sound as the projectile made its
ponderous way forward through the enormous barrel of the gun.  The Dalek
ship's weapons fell silent, the crew waiting, watching for what was about to
happen.
     Those combatants standing nearest that spot underneath the bow of the
Awesome Force One shuffled their feet uneasily as the massive hunk of ultra-
dense metal slowly eased its way from the ruined muzzle of the gun and
teetered precariously for a moment.
     "RUN AWAY!" somebody shouted, and Daleks, Revolutionaries, Monsters,
Airport Pests and Magi scattered as the projectile dropped straight down.
     Nora dropped the Revolutionary she'd been beating up and blinked as her
foes suddenly vanished.  What was going on?  She glanced around herself, then
down at the dark shadow that was growing rapidly out from the spot she was
standing on, a long narrow shadow centered almost exactly at her feet.
     She looked up.
     "Hmmm," she thought as the awesometonium projectile dropped toward her
skull.  "That shouldn't be..."
     The massive cylinder crashed to the Earth and sank three and a half yards
into it, sending up a fine spray of dust, rock, plant matter, previously-
unconscious-but-now-deceased Revolutionary, and water vapor.
     The water vapor coalesced into an alarmed-looking pale woman with jet
black hair.  "I should pay more attention to what's going on around me," she
muttered, and rejoined the battle as it resumed in all its fury.

                                   ***********

     Ginsu World Class stood virtually inviolate against every attack levelled
against her.  Link continued to pummel her with 20mm shells to no avail.
Mages by the dozen fell under her constantly moving fists.  Perhaps reminded
of Bulletproof, none of them were able to muster any serious form of magical
resistance against her.  None of their tactics, even those that seriously
threatened her, dissuaded her in the least.
     "You must be really proud of yourself."
     The voice froze Ginsu World Class in her tracks.  The armor identified
the vocal patterns instantly and almost every warning system went off at once.
     Shadebeam drifted down in front of her.  HAL appeared in Shadebeam's field
of vision, invisible to everyone else around her.
     "Shadebeam," Ginsu World Class said coldly.  "You should have stayed in
your cell.  I'm glad you didn't."
     *HAL,* Shabebeam thought, *any chance you could disable her armor before
she pounds me into pudding?*
     <<I'm attempting to break through the security lockouts now,>> HAL told
her.  Shadebeam remembered how oddly Superuser had looked at Radian when she
had asked about the codes, refusing to say why she would need them.  It would
have been easier to have him give the codes directly to HAL, but HAL's
involvement with them had to remain secret, no matter what.
     Ginsu World Class brought a pair of laser batteries on-line and leveled
them at Shadebeam's chest.
     *Any day now HAL!*
     <<Ginsu World Class has detected my intrusion attempts and has shut down
her remote receivers.>> HAL replied.  <<I am unable to access her systems.
I'm sorry for the inconvenience.>>
     *Run!* screamed China.
     -See you on the other side, hon,- Kyoko sighed.  -It was fun while it
lasted.-
     The lasers hummed to life and were about to discharge when bouquets of
daffodils abruptly materialized in their turrets.  The flowers exploded into
flames and malfunction reports raced across Ginsu World Class's status
display, forcing her to warp the damages lasers away.
     *Hmmm,* Symon commented.  *Don't see that every day.*
     DEATHKNIGHT 3000 raced into view, not sure how to interpret what he had
just witnessed.
     "Would somebody mind telling me what's going on here?!" he demanded.
     -Life in progress, pal,- quipped Kyoko. -Better get used to it.-
     "Stay out of this!" Ginsu World Class roared. "It's not your fight!"
     "She just tried to kill you, didn't she?" Pinky asked, turning to
Shadebeam.
     "No, she just wanted to give me a real killer tan!"
     "Well I don't know what this is all about, but nobody does any killing in
Bob City while the Extreme Team is on the job.  Right guys?"
    Mr. Safety and Captain Non-Sequitur joined Pinky presently, with the
Captain dragging Deadman behind him on an odd little walking trash can he'd
discovered along the way from the Thruway.
    "Our pickles are united in guacamole!" the Captain announced proudly.
     "You've got to be kidding me," Ginsu World Class groaned.
     Sarah Connor and Link joined Shadebeam and together they and the Extreme
Team surrounded Ginsu World Class on all sides, backed up by one or two mages.
     -Looks like we got ourselves a real fight here,- said Kyoko.
     "Fine," said Ginsu World Class as she powered up her electric blade
again, "Your funeral."
     *Didn't someone already use that line?* China asked.
     -Well, what's she gonna say?- Kyoko asked.  -Your bar mitzvah?-

WOULD SHE SAY THAT TO SHADEBEAM?
WOULD SHE SAY THAT TO BE MEAN?
ARE THE COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARIES DOOMED?
WILL THEIR HOPES BE ENTOMBED?
WILL SOMEONE DRIVE UP IN A BEEMER?
WOULD YOU, COULD YOU, WITH A LEM--*whap!*
THE ANSWERS ARE SO STUNNING AS TO MAKE YOU SAY 'PSHAW!'
AND CAN ONLY BE FOUND ON AN UPCOMING SUPERGUY -- HUZZAH!