🚀 go-pugleaf

[Continued From Part Three]

     Boomer and Angel fought back to back, the former with every gadget
that he could grow and the later with kicks, chops and the occasional
blinding teleport. Boomer, normally cheerfully rotund, was drawn and nearly
skeletal, most of his mass having gone into gadgets which had been lost,
destroyed or lent out that day. Looking down at his skin which hung in
sagging flaps, Boomer realised that should he lose his organic laser, he
wouldn't have nearly enough mass to create another. With a sigh, he prayed
that the force field generator which he had grown earlier and used with
such gay abandon would last until the end of the battle.
     Or until the end, which was another matter entirely.
     Angel felt the stresses of teleportation clutch at her body once again
as she was drawn into the bright, wondrous place through which she passed
for too brief a time. With a sudden shift of physics, the woman was cast
back into the real world in exactly the spot to where she had wanted to
appear, her passage marked by a blinding flash of light that followed
closely behind her. Angel's body was wracked by a sudden fit of shivering,
as the fatigue and stressors of so much teleportation in one day began to
take their toll upon the woman. Flitting lightly from one pseudo-demon to
another, Angel's cramped and tired legs shot out to knock the sense from
each. But she was in no condition for prolonged combat, and the wear began
to show. Angel's manoeuvres were slow and clumsy, and her aerial jinking
not fast enough to escape capture from above. Several slavering creatures
surrounded Angel, grasping her by the limbs with clear intent to pull the
woman apart. Wearily, Angel tried to draw herself away - into the
otherwhere which, for her, existed for only microseconds - but it was no
use. Angellica had spent the last of her energies far too quickly, and had
no more held in reserve. Her limbs jerked; the demons pulled.
     "Angel!" shouted Boomer, stumbling towards his teammate. Hordes of
combatives blocked his movements, ready to keep his laser out of effective
range. Above, Angel's features contorted in pain as the pseudo-demons
smirked and laughed cruelly, tugging the women ever the more taut.
Desperately, Boomer's laser lanced out at the creatures, but he was simply
too far away. He needed something heavier than a personal defence weapon.
     Biting down on his lip, Boomer reached deeply within himself,
overriding the safeties which nature and fate had placed on his powers. As
he watched, Boomer's right arm began to wither and curl, cannibalising
itself into a large, fleshy nodule which he plucked one-handed from his
torso. Ignoring the phantom limb sensation that he felt so acutely - and
the lack of pain which he felt even more acutely - Boomer one-handedly
manhandled his weapon into position, aiming it at the demons which were
attempting to break his friend. A bolt lanced out... the weapon tracked...
another shot... and another... demons fell from the sky, singed and
blackened while Angel flew down dizzily to where Boomer stood.
    "Boomer..." she began. Finally, her eyes focused once more and Angel
took in the sight of her friend, now somewhat incomplete. "My god, what
have you done to yourself?"
     "Had to," muttered Boomer, slumping to the ground, "No mass left
anywhere else..."
     "Boomer, are you okay?"
     "Not really..." murmured Boomer, as he slipped into unconsciousness.
***
     "So we're gonna put off what we planned to do for another day, just
'cause of a stupid demon attack?" groused Artaud, in the New Tribe's
apartment meeting place. He and the others sat around in poses of abject
boredom while their leader, Slate, stood stock still before them.
     "In essence, yes," said Slate, with a small nod of his head, just
enough to get across his point to the others.
     "Why?" asked Aristotle. "We're more than capable of handling them."
     Slate turned to face the second-string villain, barely deigning to
focus his eyes on the man. "The devastation is extreme. To go outdoors
would be suicide. Our safety is not assured within, although our number
gives us a greater chance of survival." He simply omitted to mention that
by staying in the apartment, the group would be protecting Slate's
holographic employer, Big Behn.
     "Wait out Armageddon here," mused Ghost Writer. "Why the Hell(tm)
not." It wasn't as though he had any real friends with whom to wait for the
end. The others agreed, to some degree or another, and settled in to curse
at each other, watch news reports, drink copiously from the dwindling stock
of beer in the fridge and complain loudly about anything and everything.
Although stripped of all emotions, and thus beyond disgust, Slate felt the
need to absent himself from the main room as often as he could. He simply
preferred the silence to the rough and grudging camaraderie of which his
group was capable. Therefore, Slate found himself drawn to the one room in
the house which offered a place of reflection and quiet meditation.
    Yes, Slate went into the bathroom. He stood on the tile floor and
allowed his mind to reach blissful emptiness, that state which allowed him
to slip closer to blessed void. For a long moment, Slate was able to forget
that he existed. Then a voice called him back from the almost spiritual
emptiness which he enjoyed.
     "Hello, Slate," said a voice from behind the mercenary. Slate's eyes
opened and he turned around to face the speaker, just as the apartment
building shook. "That shaking sensation you've just felt is an army of the
creatures which are invading your world crashing against your apartment
building. I'd further tell you how high your insurance premiums have just
risen, except this self-same army has already rent limb-from-limb every
member of the firm which held your homeowner's policy. They have plans to
do exactly that to you and anyone else in this building."
     "I see," stated Slate, flatly. "I should prepare the others to make a
stand."
     "I think not," replied the newcomer, with a small chuckle. "Your
associates - under your august leadership, of course, could be quite
helpful in undertaking a few small jobs for my superior. I know that you
and your motley band are between jobs at the moment. Should you accept my
offer, I can see to it that your apartment and everyone within it remain
unscathed through this crisis." The man's eyes narrowed as his mouth turned
up into a wicked smile. "That includes the holographic woman that the
others don't know about. What say you?"
     Slate did not feel a thrill of fear as the man revealed his knowledge
of Big Behn's existence. He did not cry out, asking from where the man had
gained his knowledge. He simply pondered his options rationally for several
moments, before nodding once.
     "I'll listen to your terms," he stated. "Although I do wish to enter
into this knowing the name of your employer."
     "Oh, it's just a small corporation with big plans," replied the man
with a wave of his hand. At the gesture, the thudding noises ceased.
"Called Omnus, they don't even have a prospectus yet."
     "I admit, I haven't heard of them," replied Slate. The man simply smiled.
     "You will," he replied, with a wink. "Oh yes, you will. But now, let's
talk."
***
     One moment Portia Jennings' HUD was trilling merrily, chirping a
warning of an incoming attack. The next, the armoured trooper was lying
flat on her back, feeling strangely languid. Idly, she wondered when her
suit's helmet had become so comfortable. After all, her neck and head
weren't usually supported by two inflatable balloons...
     A sick thrill of terror ran through Jennings' spine, ending far too
early in its run to reassure her. The downed trooper tried experimentally
to wiggle her feet before coming to the horrible realisation that she
simply couldn't feel them. A twist of the wrists told her that she was
currently only a paraplegic. Possibly, with therapy and medical attention,
she could regain use of her legs. Possibly, but there was also the very
good chance that she would be jostled or bumped about given the battlefield
conditions in which she found herself. Jennings shuddered as she pondered a
life without legs. Other people had learned to deal with it, but Jennings
was not other people. Independence, mobility, the sheer thrill of athletic
achievement; all of these were the core of the trooper's life. Without
them, she felt that she would rather die.
     And as that thought passed through her mind, Jennings realised that
she might have a chance of an active life again. It was a crapshoot with
the odds stacked against her, but Jennings faced the truth with a brutal
honesty: she was far too weak a person to deal with the only certainty that
the house was offering. A trembling hand began programming glove controls.
     The ADVANCE standard automedics could be disengaged with some
difficulty. It was, after all, every soldier's prerogative to try for a
career change to 'hero'. There were many events in history where individual
heroism won the day; massive instances of heroism were usually more
accurately called 'massacres' where the winners simply assigned laurels to
the losers rather than deal with the horror of producing that many corpses.
With an effort, Jennings managed to deflate the spinal support system in
her suit, taking a tentative step on the road to heroism. Continuing her
work, rewiring horribly small circuits with one hand in an impossibly
cramped space, Jennings began to feed electricity directly into her leg
servos' muscle clusters, forcing them to stand as though her own feet had
given the order. Portia had begun to stride along the path to legend. A
final, painful wiring job which cost Portia her thumb-knuckle skin
encouraged her torso armour to jettison itself from her body. She began to
skip merrily towards the land from where pigeon beshat monuments and
time-worn memorial plaques were born.
     It did not take long for a roving pseudo-demon flock to notice the
half-unarmoured woman gesturing rudely in their direction. Extending
talons, they dove towards her and prepared to rip short her time on the
earth. Taking a deep breath, Jennings stared into the face of her salvation
- either through life or sudden, painless death. She hoped and prayed that
her infection had progressed to the point where a fatal wound would cause
her to undergo beneficial mutagenic expression. After that, it would just
be a waiting game until a cure was found for the mass-mind...
     ...until. That was the word. Not if. Put 'if' out of your mind...
     Jennings' final thoughts were of Carol Trent; would she have approved?
Trent had been a hero too. But hadn't she died in the line of duty because
she couldn't escape her fate, giving her life willingly for others? No, she
would not approve. At the last moment, Jennings closed her eyes.
***
     Amiga closed his eyes and entered the slumbering grey void, silent and
dark except for the intermittent flashes of dreamthought. The commodore
strained to see what they were, but they always remained just out of focus.
No matter how he tried, they remained tantalizingly out of reach. There!
And there! Dammit, what *was*--?
     He choked down the rising wave of frustration. However intertwined
these thoughts might be with his own, they were not his. Not his...
     Taking a deep breath, he focused his mind and sent a message across
the void.
     {<ahem> Hello?}
     No good. A dim glow radiated out from his position in the void and
quickly extinguished itself.
     This wouldn't do at all. The world could not afford his hesitation. He
had to go now.
     {Wake... up!}
     Something was wrong. In one last moment of clarity, he realized this.
     The void burst into flame, its white-hot intensity searing his mind as
the army of puppets returned to life.
     The armrest of Amiga's chair splintered in his grip. Then, suddenly
and without warning, the commodore disappeared.

     Outside the Beanstalk, a passing pigeon squawked as Commodore
Amiga materialized not three feet away, clutching his head.
     "AAAARRRRGGGHHHH!!"
     The gray-haired sailor fell a few stories, then vanished. The
preoccupied pigeon slammed into a window and fell, dazed, to its
grisly demise.

     "AAAARRRRGGGHHHH!!"
     Victor Martin opened one eye, decided that the screaming commodore at
the foot of his bed was a mere hallucination, and drifted back into his
plague-induced stupor.
***
     "I _knew_ it!!!"  Night Owl paced wildly about the laboratory, chewing
off bits of her fingernails as she ranted.  "I was afraid something like
this would happen!"
     Healer gazed with concern at the screen  "It's the classic
'fight-or-flight' response," she explained to the exposition receptacle at
her side as they monitored the commodore's rapid-fire teleports. "His
powers, like the rest of his body functions, are hardwired to that
primitive instinct."
     "But what set it off?" asked the receptacle, pulling a stick of
chewing gum out of his lab coat pocket.
     "WE DID!!!!" declared Night Owl, bitterly.
     "A thousand separate streams of consciousness running through one
mind," continued Healer, shuddering slightly at the thought, "At the very
least it's disorienting. Given the commodore's age and his recent fatigue,
the strain clearly must have been overwhelming. I can almost sense the
turmoil from here."
     "When will it stop?" asked the receptacle, chewing his gum to a nice,
soft consistency.
     "With luck, he'll regain control of his mind within a few minutes, at
least enough to avoid these reflexive responses. So far I've had no luck
reaching him with my own telepathic powers. His mind is just too...
cluttered. If he doesn't recover... well, the act of teleportation drains
the commodore's strength. Eventually, he'll start slowing down, and we'll
be able to track him down and subdue him. For now, all we can do is wait,"
a look of deep concern for the Admiral crossed her face, "And hope that he
doesn't come to any harm along the way."
    "And goodness, knows, we've had a wonderful stream of luck so far with
this!" Night Owl interjected sarcastically.
        The exposition receptacle blew a bubble with his gum, which
promptly lost its structural integrity and deflated. As this was gum of the
chewing (as opposed to bubble) variety, it stuck stubbornly to his chin.
     The ER grumbled an obscenity and went to find a chisel.
***
     "AAAARRRRGGGHHHH!!"
     "Dammit, I told ye tae ge' out of the bloody way!" snarled Colleen as
she looked up from ADVANCE's new, experimental, recently-discharged stun
rifle, situated on a tripod mount at one end of the testing range.
     "But I did, Colleen," her assistant-of-the-week protested squeakily
from within the forest of target dummies.
     Commodore Amiga slumped to the floor.
***
     "When can we try again?" asked Doyle, just outside the small
intensive-care facility where Amiga lay. Sporkboy stood next to Amiga's
bed, guarding the hero. He had stood there for several hours, refusing a
chair when offered. Those who saw him got the idea that he would continue
to stand there until either relieved or until he fell over from sheer
exhaustion. The Preteen Patrol had taken up the task of guarding Amiga
while the other heroes remained elsewhere, keeping hordes of pseudo-demons
busy and thus from realising that he existed. Spoongirl would soon be by to
spell Sporkboy. In theory, AquaRegia was a part of the rotation. In
practice, TFA's catering bills were about to skyrocket.
     "I'm not sure that we can," Healer replied with a tired shake of her
head. "For whatever reason, Commodore Amiga seems to have lost the mental
coordination required to keep a handle on that army."
    "I don't know the commodore very well," Night Owl said, "but until we
started this project, he seemed perfectly sound of mind to me. Not one
prone to instability or mental weakness."
    "I'm not arguing that point," replied Healer, feeling a touch on edge
from lack of sleep and almost constant work, "But the stress of the past
few days has undoubtedly had an effect on his ability to concentrate."
    "In other words, this is all our fault!" Night Owl declared bitterly.
"If it wasn't for our interference, our insane, amateur meddling..."
    "We'd all be citizens of scenic Maladroitland now,"  Doyle reminded her.
    "Sir, my concerns are with the patients we're trying to treat _now_,
not interdimensional demons!"
    "Night Owl," soothed Healer.  "We do the best we can in a crisis like
this. We can't be perfect..."
    "Then what gives us a right to...."
    "Night Owl, please!  The stress is getting to you, too.  Why don't you
get some rest?" suggested Healer.
    Tears stinging her eyes, Liberty nodded and made her exit.  Maybe a
short nap would clear her head.
    "The commodore's under sedation now?" inquired Doyle.
    "That's right," said Healer. "Until we know what to do--"
    "But the army is still linked to him, yes? Still programmed to obey his
thoughts?"
    "Yes," nodded Healer, leaning against a filing cabinet as a wave of
fatigue passed over her, "At least I'd assume so. I've tried several times
now to reach into his mind and help lift his burden. But it's so...
frustrating! I can get so far and then a thousand minds push against me!"
     "Thank you for trying anyway," said Doyle, shaking his head sadly, "I
know that this has been hard on you..."
    "However hard it's been on me," said Healer, trying to keep the horror
from her voice, "Think how infinitely worse it is for those enslaved minds
that are trapped in their Purgatory between slavery and free will."
     "I know," said Doyle, quietly, "And that's what I wanted to ask about."
    Just then, the exposition receptacle wandered back into the scene, a
large bandage taped to his chin.
    "What are you getting at?" he asked Doyle, precisely on cue.
    "What I'm wondering is... what happens when Amiga starts to dream?"
***
    Across the continent, the fires of war raged. Superguys and
pseudo-demons continued to slug it out, retreading nearly every variation
on that theme ever chronicled in the whole of human history. And as the
carnage progressed, Amiga's soldiers hauled themselves out of the alcoves
and alleyways to which they had retreated and began to sing.
     They grouped together to form duets, quartets, and full blown choruses
where sufficient man-power was available.
     The specific tunes involved were different from place to place, but
the compiled reports later revealed there was a definite emphasis on
rock-and-roll hits from the 1950s, with a few Gershwin show tunes thrown in
for variety.
        Admittedly, these antics amounted to little more than an
interesting diversion for the combatants; they had little effect on the
fighting itself, with one notable exception.
***
        ADMINistry had fled the stage of the San Diego Arena some time
before. "'The show must go on,' be damned!" had been the general consensus.
Besides, most of their fans had reached the same conclusion long before the
first clump of flaming demons and superguys, their limbs hopelessly
intertwined in the throes of last-ditch combat, had crashed through the
ceiling and landed on several unfortunate extras.
     Nevertheless, the inevitable diehards had remained in the crumbling
arena, and were now demanding, with great volume and a general lack of
taste, the resurrection of the stage before them, even as several dozen
combatants took up firing positions in the rafters and began trading
potshots.
     Jean, Jeannette, and Mireille D'Oblique flew through one of the larger
holes in the ceiling, passing effortlessly through the network of flying
death to execute a perfect landing in the middle of the stage.
     The die-hard concert-goers cried out their approval.
     "OK, kids!" Jeannette yelled out. "Let's all sing a song!"
     "Yes, my dear, that sounds like great fun!" Jean replied. "How
about... 'Johnny B. Goode'?"
     "Yay Johnny B. Goode!" yayed Mireille, because it seemed like the
right thing to do.
     The die-hard concert-goers cried out their disapproval with the same
lack of manners they had demonstrated a few seconds before.
     "Hey!" Jeannette shouted to the enraged crowd. "Don't you dare talk
that way around my daughter!"
     But Mireille was already striking back with a steady stream of
obscenities that shocked the concert-goers into submission. Even the
combatants paused their death-slinging to look down with amazement at the
tiny fountain of filth who now stood proudly in the center of the stage.
     "MIREILLE!"
     "But, Mommy! Daddy taught me all those new words when the
fire-monsters burned down the jail! How come he can say them and I can't?"
     Jeannette clenched her teeth and forced a fake grin in her husband's
general direction. "Remind me to eviscerate you later, my dear. In the
meantime, we've a show to put on, so let's get to it."
     "Of course, my dear."
     And so, the D'Obliques set off on a fairly decent a Capella rendition
of "Johnny B. Goode." The crowd, not wishing to risk the wrath of the
D'Oblique women, at least pretended to enjoy themselves. Meanwhile, above
their heads, the combat intensified. This blatant visual dichotomy
progressed smoothly for about two dozen measures.
     Then, Jeannette attempted to harmonize.
     The resulting cacophony, amplified hundreds of times by the huge
concert speakers, caused normalguys and superguys alike to writhe in agony.
The pseudo-demons, however, apparently possessing more sensitive hearing
than the humans, were driven into unconsciousness. Most fell from the
rafters to the unforgiving ground below, where they split apart like
watermelons, or perhaps pumpkins. Their assorted viscera gave off foul
demonic fumes as it spewed across the vacant seats and the sneakers of the
crowd.
     And thus the forces of good inched that much closer to victory....
***

[Continued In Part Five]