Blacklisted in Hungary (Story)

[Matteo ((Taed))]

“Listen closely, you blasted Canadians.”

Pete stood, legs apart, arms at waist height, a gun in either hand pointed at the two identical men in front of him. One was his good friend, the occasionally unreliable but ultimately handsome and talented Matteo DiGiovanni. The kind of man who you could forgive being preoccupied and absent because he was just that great and, in the end, you knew he’d be there for you when it really counted.

The other was a doppelganger. Possibly a punctual one, but definitely inferior in every other regard.

“All right,” Pete continued. “Here’s how it’s going to go. Doppelgangers are sneaky. They don’t just take a snapshot of your face, they take a snapshot of your soul. They learn every quirk, every flaw (and really, occasional lateness isn’t that bad as far as flaws go, is it?), every strength (I mean, just think how many of them there are to balance out the flaws!), everything that makes you, you. But luckily, there is one area, one supremely esoteric field of study, that no one, man or beast or elder god, has the patience and the stamina to master.”

Pete paused dramatically. “Except for the real Matteo DiGiovanni. Prepare yourselves to be tested on …” Pete paused again. He respected the possibility that his life was actually an elaborate reality show for a superior alien species, and conscientiously wanted to give the editors room to insert dramatic organ music.

‘ANCIENT CANADIAN HISTORY!’

“Son of a bitch, you yelled right in my ear!” James said peevishly.

“Oh, err … sorry. I was trying to lend the situation appropriate gravity.”

“What ‘gravity’? We’ve been replaced by doppelgangers thirty-seven times. We all know the drill. Your ‘supremely esoteric field of study’ to be tested on is midget erotica. Get on with it all ready.”

Pete sighed. The moment was gone. Somewhere, a sentient Calabi-Yau manifold television producer was weeping.

“Fine. Matteo on my left, for how long have the Canadian people guarded the world against the Ice Giant advance?”

“Since time immemorial, next question.”

“Correct. Matteo on my right, what is the maximum incline of an icy surface that a true Canadian can walk on comfortably?”

“One-hundred and three degrees.”

“Correct. Lefty-loosey, what is the minimum temperature a true Canadian can survive in without a jacket?”

“Also one-hundred and three degrees. Kelvin.”

“Correct. Righty-tighty, how many heads did the primordial Canadians have?”

“Just one, don’t be a dick, we’re not monsters.”

“Ha. Correct. Democrat, how tall is an Ice Giant?”

“Variable, dependant on how many villagers it has recently ingested.”

“Correct. Repub--” Pete was cut off as a torrent of bloody, dead-eyed Shakespearean actors came crashing through the doors into the lobby.

“Hang on,” The Matteo on the right said. “Are we still in a brutal firefight?” He snapped up Sweet Baby Caroline with an acrobatic leap and popped left-Matteo in the face without looking. He then turned the weapon on Sensar’s horde and opened fire. Pete and James joined in out of sheer habit. Within seconds the lobby was a mess of shredded flesh and ridiculous ruffled Elizabethan collars.

“Right, that settles that then.” Matteo said, holstering his sidearm and heading for the doors to the street. “Let’s go get Sensar. The man has murdered Shakespeare.” James gasped audibly. Matteo rolled his eyes. “I meant Shakespeare’s plays.” James gasped twice as loud.

“Hold on,” Pete said. “You messed everything up! You interrupted the quiz. How do we know if you’re the real Matteo?”

Matteo froze, one hand on the door. His head seemed to droop a touch, but when he turned the steely glint in his eyes was as cold and sharp as the sun glinting off a barren Arctic plain. The temperature in the room seemed to drop dramatically, and the other two men knew instinctively that it had nothing to do with the breeze blowing around Matteo through the half-open theatre door, the breeze that was whipping his overcoat about in just … just such a badass way.

Dead silence descended. In a faraway ten-dimensional theatre, a studio audience was breathless. Then Matteo began to speak, and the orchestra began to swell.

“The Last March of the Ice Giants,” he intoned. Then cleared his throat.

“Human hands hold weapons high,
Sturdy spears flash, like silver sterling.
Upon the walls, white banners fly,
To challenge the giants, boulders hurling.

A hoary horde, ten thousand strong,
Amassed beneath a steel-grey sky.
A column of battle, five miles long,
Their final march, their final cry.

The giants bellowed, the giants screamed,
Whilst their empire crumbled ‘neath their feet.
Tiny humans swarmed and teemed,
And knocked the Ice-King from his Seat.

With armies broken and cities razed,
The giants act in desperation.
By insult angered and bloodlust crazed,
They mass against the human nation.

A crash of thunder, a primal roar,
The epic battle joined at last.
Immortalized, in all our lore,
Eclipsing all the ages past.

Walls are sundered, bodies broken,
The giants are set to win the day.
But then our good king’s famous words are spoken:
Give them nothing. Make them pay.

He rallies the soldiers, left and right,
No giant blade can do him harm.
Unmatched in speed and guile and might,
Giants die in shocked alarm.

And then our king, before him faces,
His wicked counterpart.
The lord of all the giant races,
Our king, unimpressed, stabs him through the heart.

The giants flee in terror,
And leave their dignity behind.
To late they realize their error,
In daring to challenge humankind.”

Silence reigned in the theatre lobby. “I’m Matteo DiGiovanni. Do you have a problem with that?”

“Um … No … I’d say that proved it.” Pete said, but Matteo was in full speech mode and nothing was going to slow him down.

I’m Matteo DiGiovanni. I’m an Ice Lord. I was born at the North Pole in the middle of a blizzard. I am nine hundred and three years old and I am the man who is going to save your lives, and all six billion people on the planet below. Do you have a problem with that?”

“Are you quoting Doctor Who?”

“I’m always quoting Doctor Who,” Matteo said. “Now then …

“Allons-y!”



********************************



Here are the options for tomorrow’s story. PM your votes to KAEZ.

In what inexplicable and badass way will our heroes break into Sensar’s Sanctum Sanctorum?

• A. Crashing through the wall on the back of a robot dinosaur?
  
  
• B. Rising up through the floor inside a giant drilling machine?
  
  
• C.
  SPOILER: Click to show
  

[Matteo ((Taed))]

Utah, 2011

The wind blows fitfully across a red-dust plain, stirring up complex vortices of crimson particulate. If not for the shriveled, hardy bushes, and the emaciated jackrabbits trying to eke out a meager existence, it could have been the surface of Mars; rusty and barren. The bushes, the jackrabbits, and the black, 1956 Buick Roadmaster racing at high speed towards the horizon. Mars doesn’t have those.

The car drives, straight as an arrow, its destination fixed, for an interminable stretch. Finally it stops, skidding to a halt in front of a battered white trailer home, parked incongruously in the middle of the desert. The dust stirred by the Buick’s passage curls lazily around it as a man in a fedora and a crisp black suit steps out.

He takes a few steps away from his vehicle, still ticking away as the engine settles and cools, and stands, arms crossed and feet slightly apart, staring at the trailer. Eventually, though no words have been exchanged, a man steps out, struggling slightly to force open the rusty screen door. He is unshaven and disheveled, wearing a white wifebeater stained an uneven pink by the ever-present dust.

“Mr. DiGiovanni,” the suited man says. “The world needs your help.”

The other man’s eyes narrow ever so slightly. “Then the world had better come ask me itself. Who are you supposed to be?”

The suited man reaches into his breast pocket and withdraws a gleaming brass badge held in a black leather flipbook. “Agent Pearson, Bureau of Temporal Action and Reconnaissance. We’re new.”

DiGiovanni snorts loudly. “Oh yeah, Pearson. I knew you years ago, when you were an old man. You’d better enjoy that leg while you still have it.”

“I …” Pearson trails off, frazzled, then shakes his head and continues. “Sir, the Bureau is concerned about this situation with the Immortal Ones. You and your associates left the matter unresolved fourteen months ago. Since then the situation has deteriorated considerably. Even with a third of their number still unaccounted for, the remaining two have made considerable inroads in destabilizing the Quantum Temporal Nexus. We’ve reported sixteen Time Quakes, level eight and above, in twelve major cities within the last sixty days.

“Just last week a group of hunters in South Carolina fell back to 1863 and managed to sway the course of the Civil War with their automatic weapons. Slavery is now legal in eleven states! We need the assistance of yourself and the other members of the Triumvirate!”

At this, DiGiovanni’s face tightens and he turns away. “We’re not called that anymore, and I can’t help you. Find someone else.” He begins to walk away.

“Mr. DiGiovanni! Mr. DiGiovanni! Matteo!” Pearson strides forward, pulling a wrinkled manila folder from inside his jacket. “There is no one else, sir. Look at these reports.”

He thrusts the folder into DiGiovanni’s hands who, after a moment, grudgingly accepts. Inside, intelligence documents are interspersed with large colour photos of a hulking, wrought iron structure perched broodingly on the English countryside.

“This is Sensar’s base of operations,” Pearson continues. “A ten-times scale replica of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, built from metal instead of wood atop the ruins of Birmingham, and modified with razor spikes here and SAM missile emplacements here and here.”

Matteo nods absently, his eyes flicking appraisingly across the images. “Cold iron keeps the fairies out,” he mutters. “England is teeming with the buggers.”

Pearson nods as well. “All technological and supernatural attacks thus far have failed. Sensar now controls everything from Bristol to Manchester, including all of Wales.”

Matteo’s eyes bulge. “Is Torchwood safe!?”

“Sir? …”

“Um … Never mind.”

“Sir … I know you’ve been inactive since … since the Incident, but we really need you for this mission. The world needs you. We’ve had two of our own operatives inside Sensar’s operation for weeks but we lost contact three days ago--”

“Decapitated in a dungeon,” Matteo interjects.

“W-- What?”

“Decapitated in a dungeon. That’s how I’ll find them. That’s how I always find them when you ‘lose contact’. Or fallen down a spike pit. Or brainwashed into the enemy’s service. Yeah, actually, that’s the one. Five bucks says they’ll have been brainwashed. Sensar has mind control powers. You government types really have to stop sending the C-listers in first.”

“So … that means you’ll do it? You’ll take the mission.”

Matteo sighs, long and slow. “Yeah. I’ll do it.”

“That’s excellent! Just excellent. I’ll contact my superiors and let them know you’re on board. Then we’ll track down your partner and get the both of you up to speed. You two have been really out of the loop.”

“Yeah,” Matteo sighs again. “That’s what happens when one of your best friends is murdered.”

*****************

Calcutta, India

“Hey,” Matteo says, standing in the doorway of a small, cluttered shop.

The man behind the counter looks up. “Hey,” he replies. He is dressed in a tweed jacket despite the sweltering heat and, although he is still a young man, he is inexplicably hunched and balding. A century of hard living and bitter regret crammed into a youthful frame.

“What do you sell here?” Matteo asks, looking at the orderless piles of seemingly unrelated esoterica scattered about.”

“History,” the other man replies passionately.

“History? This is a history shop?”

“Yup.”

“I see … do many people here buy that?”

“Not even a little bit.”

“Can I have a demonstration?”

“Oh yeah, sure.” The other man gets up and putters over to where Matteo is standing at the door. Then he leans out his head and glares at the dozens of Indians walking by on the street outside. “We used to own you people!” He screams. “Show some damn respect!” The passersby stare strangely at this foreign display and give the shop a wide berth.

“You’ve fully made the transition to racist old man, you know that, James?” Matteo says, as his companion reenters the shop.

“Somebody had to. This country needs people like me.”

“… Does it? Really?”

“Oh I don’t know. What else is there for me to do?” James stomps back over to behind the counter, the weight of phantom years resting on his shoulders, dusting and straightening in an absentminded way that has absolutely no effect whatsoever on the greater mess gestalt that exists in the room.

“Ever since Stratford,” he continues. “Ever since … Pete.” He trails off into silence. “What’s the point? I mean … We were the goddamn Triumvirate for God’s sake! Triumvirate. What will they call us now? The Daring Duo? That’s horrible!”

Matteo stomps over to the shop counter and claps James on the shoulder. “I will be Batman, and you can be Robin. It’s perfect. It’s—“

James holds up a hand to stop Matteo, shaking his head despairingly. “No, no I’m not being Robin. And even if I was, who would be our Alfred? Who would be our Alfred, Matteo!? We can’t do this without Pete. There’s nothing we can do anymore.”

Matteo glowers at the other man, then reaches into his jacket, and slams a fully loaded pistol down onto the wooden countertop. Its handle is inscribed with a miniature version of the Bayeux Tapestry. “We can still fight,” Matteo hisses. “Whatever else happens we can always still fight.”

James reaches out tentatively, almost fearfully, and brushes his fingers against the pistol. “Oh sweet Victoria, I thought I’d lost you.” Slowly, ever so slowly, he raises his eyes to meet Matteo’s and there is something in them that has not been there for a very long time.

Hope.

Without a word, James reaches up and pulls a string dangling from the ceiling and a metal rack lowers through a concealed trap door, absolutely festooned with weapons and garlands of ammunition. In the time it takes it to fully descend, the hunch in James’ shoulders has vanished and his bald spot has miraculously been replaced by bright ginger locks.

“Cue the Kill Bill suiting up for battle Theme,” Matteo says. “We’re back.”

*****************

Globe City, United Kingdom
Formerly Birmingham

It was an ordinary day in Lord Chamberlain Sensar’s Globe of Torment.

The sun was shining. The blackbirds, buntings, choughs, cocks, cormorants, crows, cuckoos, daws, dive-dappers, doves, ducks, eagles, falcons, finches, fowl, geese, guinea hens, hedge sparrows, herons, jays, kestrels, kingfishers, kites, lapwings, larks, loons, magpies, mallards, nightingales—these are the birds in Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets if you hadn’t realized—osprey, ostriches, owls, paraquitos, parrots, partridges, peacocks, pelicans, pheasants, phoenixes, pigeons, popinjays, quails, ravens, rooks, sea gulls, snipes, sparrows, starlings, swallows, swans, thrushes, turkeys, vultures, woodcocks, and wrens were chirping. The legions of mindless thralls were … thralling. And two heavily armed men dressed all in black were crashing through a conveniently placed skylight.

That last may have been slightly less ordinary than the others.

The two men landed in a crouch, broken glass crunching under their feet, and immediately opened up with their assault rifles. The thralls, stumbling towards them in a mindless trance, were ripped to pieces by the hail of bullets.

“Ratatatatatatatatat!” Matteo screamed in time with his firing rifle. “Oh man, it feels good to be back! That present tense was getting tedious!”

The rifles clicked empty and the two men dropped them fluidly, James drawing his sword and Matteo lobbing two grenades into the hordes of writhing Elizabethan zombies. “Fahboom!” he roared, as two explosions blossomed in the enemy ranks, before slipping his fingers into a pair of brass knuckles and joining James in the fray.

Drooling, vacant faces turned to pulp beneath his whirling fists. “Thwap. Thwap. Pow!” he continued to cry, delivering vicious blows to anyone who tried to get around James’ scything blade. A particularly daring thrall leapt at them from several feet away and Matteo swung his fist downward into the top of the man’s head, slamming him to the ground. “Krakkathoom!” He bellowed.

“Krakka--? Wait, isn’t that the sound Thor’s hammer makes when he hits someone?” James asked over the din of battle. “Are ... Are you doing your own sound effects!?”

“I read a lot of comic books while we were separated.” Matteo replied. “If only I had adamantium claws I’d be screaming ‘snikt’ like a motherfucker.”

“That’s never going to happen.”

A single tear rolled down Matteo’s cheek. “A man can dream, James. A man can dream.

“Oh hey look, we won,” he added. There were no thralls left standing and the two had been swinging at empty air for at least half a minute now. They were just preparing to storm deeper into the iron fortress when a pair of massive double doors at the other end of the hull slammed open and yet more thralls came pouring through. Leading them was the Lord Chamberlain himself, Sensar Prospero.

“You!” he thundered. “You dare come here? Now? On the eve of my triumph? Didn’t you learn your lesson the last time?”

“Nope,” Matteo said. “Guess we have a learning disability!”

“Ohhhhhh,” James said. “That’s terrible. That was the worst one liner ever.”

“Look, it’s been a while. I guess I’m a bit rusty.”

“Fools!” Sensar roared. “Your minds may be too strong for my powers, but I am still far too great a threat for you to face alone! Behold what I have done to the puny Time Bureau agents you sent to spy on my.” Sensar beckoned into the crowd of thralls and two came forward, each holding the severed head of one of the missing agents.”

“Oh wow, they were decapitated,” Matteo said. “I should have gone with my gut. Now I owe Agent Pearson five bucks.”

“Minions!” cried Sensar. “Destroy the interlopers. Send them to join their dearly departed comrade.”

“Oh no you didn’t!” yelled James. He reached into his backpack and withdrew a long stick of dynamite. “Any of you take one more step and I’ll blow you all right to hell. You won’t even know what hit you. I will--”

“I’m sorry,” Matteo said, “But I have to interrupt. Is that an actual stick of dynamite?”

“What?” James asked, all dramatic momentum lost. “Yeah, of course it is. As I was saying. I will--”

“It’s red.” Matteo said.

“I-- Gah! Yes, so what?”

“It has a wick!”

“I know it does, I bought it.”

“Where? ACME!? That’s amazing! Have you got an anvil and a little sign that says ‘Help’ in there too?”

“Matteo! I’m trying to be intimidating here!”

“I think we can safely say that ship has sailed.” Matteo said, pointing at the army of charging thralls that had already crossed half of the distance between them in the time they were talking.”

“Son of a bitch,” James groaned. “We really have to start paying more attention.”

“Ditch the pixie stick and get Victoria ready. This is gonna be a big one.”



********************************



Here are the options for the next chapter. PM your votes to AGRO.

Will we:

• A. Continue the battle with Sensar.
  
  
• B. Discover the fate of Kaez.

[James]

“Comrades, I have to say. I was expecting more,” Pete said as the Triumvirate stared at the headquarters of the second Immortal One.

“I sort of agree with you but then we are talking about the Immortal Ones here,” Matteo replied.

The trio was stood in front of barbed wire, except it barely reached their knees, the fence easily conquered by a single step. Inside the boundary was a small cottage, glass shattered and tiles pooling around the walls, the roof left to its bare essentials. Beside the, quite frankly, sad cottage was an old wooden sign, the word inscribed in flowing Attic.

Sensar Prospero,
Future Ruler of the World,
One Third of the Immortal Ones,
Amateur Actor

“Well,” James said stepping calmly over the fence and into the grounds of Sensar’s headquarters. “At least he’s honest about his acting capabilities.”

Matteo and Pete stepped over the wire, the latter in a thick jacket to protect him for the cruel English wind. Matteo and James too were encased in duffle jacket and trench coat alike, but not for the weather. They sweated furiously from such a warm temperature, content though in their knowledge that upon defeating Sensar they would look like badasses in the process.

“Even though this is simply pathetic, I think we need a plan of attack,” Matteo muttered, his words somehow cutting through the whistling wind.

“Oh, I agree, Sensar surely has some defences in place,” James replied, watching Matteo pull out Dear Natalie, the pistol glinting somewhat in the meagre light. “Pete, what do you think? Pete? Pete?!”

Pete could hardly hear the words having already began the charge upon the building, a rifle raised over his head like a sword as he yelled a battle cry that rung throughout the English countryside. “FOR FRODO!”

Sharing a look of exasperation between them, James and Matteo chased after their companion, weapons ready for any potential ambush. They joined Pete’s side just before the door, the American running in slow-motion, before Matteo swung his leg into the air, his foot battering into the wood.

“Who’s there, bitch?” Matteo growled as the door fell away and he stepped into the cottage, the other two closely following him.

If the exterior of the cottage was pathetic, the interior was indescribable. But we’ll have a go anyway: pitiful, beggarly, deplorable, lamentably, paltry, wretched and whatever other words you can find in a thesaurus. Dust clogged every artery of the single room cottage and a horrendous stench stung at the nostrils of the trio as they entered the room. The only furniture of note in the building was a small wooden table and chair, a young man seated behind it.

“Lo, three adventures step into my sacred home and sully the hallowed floorboard with their filth,” Sensar said, not looking up from his work upon the table. He was an unusual figure, robed and shadowy, his features hidden beneath an inscribed hood.

“Umm…” Pete retorted, throwing a glance over the cottage once more. “Are the floorboards hallowed due to the fact that they are breeding new life forms?”

Sensar sighed audibly as he looked up, pushing the paper and parchment to one side. “I suppose it was asking too much that Drall might have managed to finish the Triumvirate off. It is always left for me, always.”

Before anyone could react, Sensar pressed a palm against a spot in the wall, churning metallic sounds suddenly blaring out of the floorboards. Without warning the wood began to fell away, disappearing into the abyss as a machine appeared beneath them, steam pouring out of valves and funnels. In a second only two grouping of floorboards were left, one each directly under the Triumvirate and Sensar.

“Well, that’s convenient,” James said, looking down at his feet.

“Look upon my works,” Sensar whispered, his voice barely audible.

“You should have gone for the yell,” Pete interjected. “Not the whisper, it doesn’t have the same effect.”

“It does ensures that we’re all listening,” James retorted, casually pulling out Jack the Ripper, the barrel of the gun pointing directly at Sensar’s chest.

“Ensures or insures?” Matteo said, Dear Natalie already locked onto Sensar’s form. “I’m never quite sure.”

“Enough!” bellowed Sensar, his form shaking within his robes.

“See, loads better,” Pete said proudly.

“You don’t understand what I’ve done, do you? You haven’t realised what I’ve created?” Sensar pressed on, arms spread wide into the air.

“A natural habitat for insects and rodents?” James guessed.

“Collapsible floors? I think someone else got there first, like every cartoon villain in existence,” Matteo said.

“Another stream in our storyline?” Pete answered. The Triumvirate had many powers, but none so great as the power to completely disrupt a villain’s monologue.

“Fools,” Sensar spat, realising that the moment for his final speech was over. “I have created a machine able to tap into the Quantum Temporal Nexus. I have power over time, far more than you’ll ever be able to dream of.”

“You dream of time? I dream of Zooey Deschanel,” Pete interrupted.

“I can create events that have only existed in legends,” Sensar bravely struggled on, his voice rising in volume to try and overpower the discussion now taking place on the other set of floorboards. “I have created the ability of to artificially create Time Quakes!”

“Look, she’s fine and everything, but I’m telling you that Emm…” James said, pausing to look up at Sensar. “Did… did you say Time Quakes?”

“Well, this just got slightly more serious,” Matteo breathed.

“Fuck,” Pete added.

Sensar decided against words for his crowning moment, laughter instead pouring forth from his mouth. All the mockery that he had received from the Triumvirate, all of the patronising advice and jokes were forgotten as they finally surveyed him with seriousness and even a hint of fear. Reaching into his pockets, he pulled out a small remote control with one large red button and with a gleeful smile in his enemy’s direction, he pressed it.

The effect was instantaneous, the machine disappearing as a swirling blue vortex appeared beneath their feet. Walls shaking and the chair whizzing through the air, the entire roof of the cottage blew away, rain now openly pouring into the house. Wind and vortex turbulence wrapped around the four men, coats and robes flying out from behind their bodies. The building’s walls began to tumble into the rift, the English countryside now present to their eyes, an escape route at least in sight.

“Is that where I think it is?” Matteo asked, leaning slightly over the floorboards they were standing on.

“Oh, of course it would be. Fuck Times Quakes. When we’re around they always lead to the fucking Jurassic Period!” James said.

Below them a scene was unveiling itself within the blue vortex, a herd of four-legged dinosaurs fleeing away from some undoubtedly incredibly dangerous predator. Trees were flattened beneath the pack’s flight, everything in its way being trampled to death. If they fell into the Time Quake this time, there would be no survival.

“And now friends,” Sensar said, leaping across from his floorboards and onto the solid ground of the grass around the remains of his house. “You must head once more into the breach.”

Gunshots rung out into the air, all three members of the Triumvirate attempting to bring down the Immortal One, but he was already running. Bullets narrowly missing him, Sensar disappeared into the night, his shadow vanishing in the darkness. Almost on cue the floorboards began to shake, disappearing underneath the trio’s feet.

“We’ve got to jump for it!” James roared, hurling himself across the gap and through the empty doorframe of the cottage. He had never appreciated solid ground more in his entire life.

Matteo swiftly followed, clearing the distance in a leap, his boots landing on the wooden doorframe before James yanked him onto the ground, grass pressing against his face refreshingly. Pete closely followed, muscles springing into action as he jumped across the divide. His foot though slipped upon the frame, leather sliding backward and he tumbled towards the vortex, James’s arms flinging out to reach for him.

“Not the beard!” Pete cried, but unfortunately he didn’t have a beard. Instead James’s arms fell short and he watched horrified as Pete fell through the Time Quake and disappeared into the dust and carnage of the stampeding herd of dinosaurs.

Within a moment, Pete was gone.

***

“And that,” James said, his sword slicing through the leg of a particularly large thrall before bringing his gun down upon it to fire several bullet into its brain. “Is how our dearest friend, Pete Crivellaro died.”

“It’s a sad story,” Matteo replied, sliding underneath a thrall before firing into its unprotected back. “But I don’t know why you’re telling it now.”

“I fight better when I’m telling a story, heck, we recited the Odyssey when we fought the Werebeast of Jakarta,” James answered, throwing his elbow into one thrall before lopping off the head of another. “And I think it’ll help us emotionally to realise that Pete died doing what he loved best.”

“Being Mufasa?” Matteo asked, flooring several attackers with a single sweep of his foot.

“No,” James said. “Quoting Lord of the Rings.”

“Oh, I see. By the way, we’ve won again,” Matteo pointed out. Both men were covered in blood from head to toe, although the top of James’s head always appeared to be covered in blood from a distance. Dismembered or bleeding bodies of Sensar’s numerous thralls were scattered across the floor around them, leaving only the two remaining members of the Triumvirate and the Lord Chamberlain himself alive within the room.

“Time for a little revenge,” James said.

“Hell yeah,” Matteo said, cracking his knuckles.

“Do you think I fear you clowns anymore?” Sensar cried, his voice cracking despite himself. “I can see all of time! I can control the fabric of existence itself! You can’t stop me! YOU CAN’T!”

“You can see all of time?” Matteo asked, his words bitter and low. Suddenly Sensar’s voice left him, fleeing from the room and the Canadian’s anger, leaving the Lord Chamberlain’s capable of only nodding.

“Can I ask you a question then?” James said. “Has anyone ever survived in the modern era invading Britain?”

“No,” Sensar squeaked.

“Has any actor who loves musicals been capable of remotely taking over the world?” Matteo asked, smiling darkly.

“Again, no,” Sensar muttered, sweat now pouring from his brow, stinging his eyes.

“Okay, one more, just one,” James said, moving forward, music appearing from nowhere with each step. “Is this world and its time stream protected? Because you’re not the first lot to try and take over the world, oh, there have been so many. And what you got to ask is… what happened to them?”

Sensar opened the time stream in front of his very eyes, a side-effect of his efforts to destabilise the Quantum Temporal Nexus. Time; past, present and the future, whizzed in front of his very eyes and for the first time he truly saw the world and its history. And fear clutched at him.

… A metallic god towered over the civilisation of Persia, bearing down upon its cities before three men tore it down with nothing but rope and candles… Giants rushed forward to do battle with druids, the latter being commanded by three oddly robed men…

… A Minotaur bore down upon a young Alexander the Great before crashing to the floor, wrestled by a man with a fro-like hairstyle… Ancient faeries of old surrounded King Alfred, pushing him against a castle wall before a red-headed man arrived with fire and iron… Massive demon wolves circled Joan of Arc before a young man drove them back with nothing but vegetables…

… Three men appeared beside the Duke of Wellington to help plan the battle of Waterloo… Three men were gathered around the table within the War Cabinet, Winston Churchill listening to each intently… Three men saved the lives of the first men on the moon… Three men arrived on Mars to save the colony… Three men fought with gods and stars…

“Hello,” James said, breaking Sensar’s concentration.

“We’re the Triumvirate,” Matteo said, moving forward to join James’s side, Lady Piper clutched within his hand.

“Basically,” James continued, readying his sword.

“Run,” Matteo finished.













****************************************************

Here are the options for the next chapter. PM your votes to TAED.

What does Sensar do next after such an epic Doctor Who reference moment:

• A. Run?
  
  
• B. Attempts another Time Quake to save him?
  
  
• C. Reveals the final phase in his master plan?
  

[Matteo ((Taed))]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3W5GDkgf2w#t=0m26s

Sensar ran, like few men have ever run before. He had hesitated the barest fraction of a second after the conclusion of the epic speech, and then took off at full speed. If Usain Bolt and a treadmill had a baby, and that child grew up to receive a doctorate in cowardice from the University of Pants Wetting and Speaking French, it might just have been able to keep up with Sensar on a good day.

James and Matteo began their pursuit, firing their pistols as they ran. The shots were unerringly accurate, but mind thralls kept bursting out of alcoves and hidden trapdoors, acting as living shields for their master.

“I hate running,” Matteo shouted between gunshots. “It would have been so easy to just shoot him. Why do we always do the intimidating speech thing? They always run from us.”

“You know what the problem is?” James shouted back, and then repeated himself because a dying thrall had made a sound like a manatee caught in a wood chipper and cut off the end of his sentence. “Our problem is that we’re too badass. People only feel comfortable standing still around us when we’re in the middle of a horde of henchmen, or facing down an overly complicated butchercution machine. Like a Raiders of the Lost Ark rolling boulder made completely of scorpions interlocking their claws.”

“Or a sperm whale that’s full of sharks, so when it swallows you and your uncle Geppetto, you have to fight a bunch of sharks before you can escape.”

“Exactly. And thank you for not questioning my coining of the word ‘butchercution.’”

“It addresses a gap that desperately needed filling. No other word adequately describes what a dragon that breathes knives instead of fire can do to a person.”

“Or a dragon that breathes knives in addition to fire.”

“Now you’re being deliberately ridiculous.”

Sensar continued his mad dash and flung open the doors to the theatre/fortress’ central courtyard. The massive, open-sky pavilion was packed tightly with a forest of complex machinery. Gangly brass steam pipes and bundles of fiber optic cable twisted in and around stacks of furnaces, vacuum tubes, tesla coils, cyclotrons, and every other technology you could imagine.

As James and Matteo followed Sensar into the mechanical labyrinth, they were initially worried about losing him amidst the nooks and crannies of the convoluted dynamo. However, as the devices around them began to come to life, they realized their problems were nowhere near that simple.

“Puck!” Sensar screamed to a spindly, bedraggled man perched high up among the machines. “Initiate the Final Sanction.”

“You son of a bitch!” Matteo snarled, his voice echoing hollowly between the glittering metal spires.

“We are the ones who quote Doctor Who! Not you!” James cried with equal rancor.

“Taking a big space truck with a bunch of strangers across a diamond planet called Midnight... What could possibly go wrong?” Sensar shrieked back, his voice dripping with glee.

“Gah! No! That doesn’t even make sense!” roared James.

“You have to tailor the quote to the situation! Please!” entreated Matteo.

“Look at these people, these human beings. Consider their potential! From the day they arrive on the planet, blinking, step into the sun, there is more to see than can ever be seen, more to do than—“

“AHHH! Damn it!” Matteo half sobbed. “You’re quoting the Doctor who was already quoting The Lion King! That’s not allowed!”

“My nose is bleeding.” James said through a monogrammed handkerchief he had pressed against his face.

Thankfully, any further misquoting of Doctor Who was cut off by the sudden and unexpected sundering of time and space all across the West Midlands.

Bolts of cyan and magenta lightning arced from a thousand gleaming antennae, and James and Matteo were suddenly chasing Sensar, not through a mazelike laboratory, but through a schisming corridor of endless quantum timestreams.

On their first step, Matteo and James were disoriented and stumbled through a Venetian delicatessen. On their second step, they were finding their bearings and leapt through a helium-3 skimming facility above the third gas giant of Epsilon Indi. By their third step, Matteo was high-fiving a velociraptor and James was fist-bumping Napoleon, because that the kind of shit we do, bitches!

It didn’t take long for Sensar to realize that running through an infinite stream of disparate temporal loci is pretty tiring, so he turned to face his two pursuers, pulling a brass-plated rod about a foot long from inside a hidden pocket.

“This device,” he cried triumphantly. “Will extend my abilities of mental control over the decoherent waveforms of this quantum mindscape! I will reshape reality as I see fit. I will decide whether the cat is alive or dead. I will become master of this realm. King of all I survey.

“Now kneel! Kneel before your King and pray for my benevolence! Ha! Ahahaha! Muahahahahaha! Hahagah! Ngaahh! Ow! Stop it! Stop hitting your king! I-- Ow! Fuck! Stop! Stop regiciding me!”

Matteo and James paused momentarily in their merciless beating of Sensar to allow him to wipe the blood and mucus and, confusingly, urine, from under his broken nose.

“Do you give up?” Matteo asked.

In answer, Sensar thrust out a hand, still clutching the brassy control rod, and Matteo and James were thrown backwards by a wave of telekinetic force. When they cleared their heads and sat up, Sensar was twelve stories tall and aglow with the light of caustic, unnatural energies.

“Oh goodie,” James groaned. “Another omnipotent superbeing. How original.”

“Five bucks says he refers to himself in the third person, or with the royal ‘we.’” Matteo muttered out of the side of his mouth.

“We are Sensar,” a thousand voices boomed. “We are eternal.”

“Ha! Score. You owe me five bucks.” said Matteo.

“I never agreed to that bet! Only an idiots bets against the royal ‘we.’”

The Sensar-thing spoke again, its voice reverberating the fabric of the cosmos themselves. “We are Sensar. We are all things. We are infinite. How many are you?”

Matteo and James both smiled imperceptibly and James replied. “Two.” Drawing the vowel out ever so slightly.

The god-child’s perfect brow wrinkled in confusion, or perhaps pity. “You would destroy Eternity with two humans?"

James began to speak in a halting, mechanical voice. Like Christopher Walken having a conversation with his Mac’s speech emulator. “We would destroy Eternity with one hu-man. You are superior in only one respect.”

“What is that?”

“You. Are. Better. At. Dying.”

“That’s how you quote Doctor Who, motherfucker!” Matteo yelled, and both he and James quick-drew and fired at the brass rod still held in one of Sensar’s six glowing hands. The device shattered into a million glittering golden shards.

There was a flash of light, and then nothingness.



********************************



Here are the options for the next chapter. PM your votes to AGRO.

What is Sensar’s fate?

• A. Destroyed by the cataclysmic energies unleashed.
  
  
• B. Flung off to an unknown location. Perhaps to reunite with Drall in Hawaii?
  
  
• C. His mind control powers are reversed upon him and he becomes an ally of the true Triumvirate.

[James]

Something lighting up like the Fourth of July implies a heavy amount of explosions, generally fireworks, and blinding light. Lighting up like the year 7204 A.GG (after Gary Glitter) leans more towards the implication that the entire universe had just exploded into a ball of fire, being hurled towards another universe as a weapon by the Mole People of the Planet Penton X-46.

The sky above Hawaii was somewhere in the middle of these two parameters. The dark night was torn in two by reality itself splitting apart in a very serious manner that we should not question. Fire licked at the heavy rainclouds and lightning’s jagged arrows hurtled towards the ground before, in a second, a blinding light exploded and all returned to normal.

“Could be an omen,” a female voice said into the silence. “Could be.”

“Yes, mother,” Drall crooned, stroking the skull that lay within his outstretched palm. Somewhere the reanimated corpse of Freud had an erection. Or an infection.

A knock startled Drall, the Immortal One turning away from his window and crossing to the door of his room. He was within the decrepit building of a former accounting firm, the vanguard’s current headquarters in their campaign of reclaiming the various islands from Sciencetology rule. Zovo had sent him to lead the initial attack with the power of his magic.

“Commander Drall,” a solider said, garbed in camouflage gear and carrying an assault rifle of some manner. “Something has fallen from the sky no more than two miles from here. Sergeant Gough said it looked almost like a body.”

“Two miles, you say?” Drall squeaked, before groaning audibly. He hated being caught unawares by his troops; it never gave him any time to prepare his voice. “Steve, could you just leave the room for a second.”

Steve nodded, closing the door behind him as he left, leaving Drall alone to perfect his commander’s voice. “Husband… husband to… husband… husband to… husband to a murdered wife, father to a murdered son. Yes, that’s better,” Drall declared, swinging the door open. “Two miles, you say?”

“Very good,” Steve said, Drall swelling with pride at the compliment. “And yes, no more than that.”

“We should investigate,” Drall ordered, leading his solider down the stairs and into the main living area of the building, twenty other men gathered around playing cards and drinking.

“Listen to me,” Drall barked, heads turning in his direction. “Something fell from that show in the sky and I want to know what. So we’re moving out, assume the position.”

“Commander,” one boy said, raising his arm into the air. “Do we… do we have to go in the normal way? It’s not far, can’t we just walk?”

“It’s safer this way,” Drall explained. “We won’t be seen. Why? Do you question my powers? Do you fear that I might not be able to turn you back?”

“Not exactly, sir,” the solider replied. “But what happens if I eat a worm or something, and then I really like it and when we turn back… I can’t eat them anymore?”

“I… I… move to France?” Drall dumbly suggested before the skull glowed green and the room was filled light. Where twenty two men had stood now flew twenty two pigeons. With a chirp or a hoot or whatever the fuck pigeons do, the group took to the skies and raced towards where the thing had fallen from the air.

One pigeon, clutching a skull within its tiny feet, made a startled sound at the sight of a fallen body and led the regiment into the deserted park, grass spiralling high into the air. As each bird touched the ground, they turned into a man, each unsteadied and spitting feathers from their mouths.

“Men,” Drall croaked, a feather fluttering to the ground. “Secure the perimeter while I take care of this.”

Knowing that the men would not question his order, Drall scrambled to the fallen body, recognising that it immediately as his companion Sensar. He was in a bad shape. Clothes rugged and torn, skin scratched and bleeding, the actor was pale and looked hardly alive. Slapping him across his cheek, Drall shook his friend’s body, trying to revive him.

“You’re alive!” Drall shouted with glee, watching as Sensar’s eyes fluttered open.

“You’re alive,” Sensar droned.

“Well… yeah, I know, I’m actually leading a regiment of troops now, I’m a grown-up now,” Drall explained, once more proud of his achievement.

“Well… yeah, I know, I’m actually leading a regiment of troops now, I’m a grown-up now.”

“I… oh,” Drall mumbled, realising what had happen. Somehow Sensar had made himself a thrall, clearly to the first person he saw. He was useless unless Drall could figure out a way to fix him.

“Shamble-bobble-dibble-dooble,” Drall said, confirming that his friend now was a thrall.

“Shamble-bobble-dibble-dooble.”

“Oh, Drall, you’re so handsome… yes I am, thank you.”

“Oh, Drall, you’re so handsome… yes I am, thank you.”

“Well… that confirms it,” Drall finished, watching Sensar intently.

“Well… that confirms it.”

“No, you can stop that. I know you’re a thrall.”

“No, you can stop that. I know you’re a thrall.”

“Shut up!”

“Shut up.”

“Fuck.”

“Fuck.”

Head brimming with frustration and annoyance, the skull within Drall’s hand turned into a dangerous red, and there was a small bang. Sensar disappeared and in his place was a small newt. Panicking slightly, and rushing to reverse his mistake, Drall turned Sensar back into a bruise and battered man.

“You turned me into a newt!” Sensar roared.

“You’re better!” Drall cried happily, ignoring the correction that every reader just uttered in his head. Yeah, I’m onto you.

“Where am I?” Sensar said, rubbing his temples gingerly. “The Triumvirate destroyed everything except my body. I can’t even see time anymore.”

“Don’t say that too loudly, you’ll only be allowed to stay with me if they think you’re useful,” Drall whispered. “I’m basically a slave myself; Zovo uses me to fight back against this new regime. I think if I didn’t agree to he would have just thrown me to the wolves.”

“Zovo?” Sensar asked. “We’re in Hawaii?”

“Yep,” Drall said, gesturing to the ghost city that the park laid within. “Welcome to paradise.”








****************************************************

Here are the options for the next chapter. PM your votes to Taed.

Meanwhile, what are our brave heroes up to?

• A. Restoring a grateful Queen back into power as Archbishop of Canterbury Marquess Matteo DiGiovanni, Governor-General of Canada and Sir James Rowland, Duke of Wessex, First Earl of Lancaster, Viscount of Colchester.
  
  
• B. Meeting their weapon and gadget dealer, David Mitchell.
  
  
• C. En route to Seoul to finish the job of thwarting the Immortal Ones.
  
  

[Matteo ((Taed))]

James and Matteo slunk down a London alleyway, the sound of sirens in the distance. It was the night after their defeat of Sensar. Actually, to be totally accurate, it was the night before their defeat of Sensar, as the temporal explosion following his downfall had ejected them twenty-four hours in the past. The duo had long ago, however, learned to take such minor disruptions of the time stream in stride. As long as Nazis weren’t riding robot dinosaurs, everything was probably fine. And if Nazis were riding robot dinosaurs, they figured all bets were off and they may as well have some fun. Hence their decision to carry one extra emergency grenade at all times, for use only against Hitlersaurus-Rex.

The two men sidled up to a traditional, red, British telephone booth, checked to see that no one was watching, and then both slipped inside. Totally not gay.

Matteo punched a numeric string into the keypad and clicked the receiver up and down twice. With a rattling of gears and a hissing of pneumatics, the phone booth sunk quickly into the ground and out of sight.

“Party on, dudes,” Matteo muttered.

“?tahW” James garbled.

“Bill and Ted’s quote,” Matteo replied, after a short pause. “We’re time travelers in a phone booth. I thought it was appropriate.”

“?ohW rotcoD etouq ton yhW” James asked. “.htoob enohp a si SIDRAT ehT”

“It’s a police call box. The Bill and Ted’s time machine looks way more like this booth.”

“.nam ,ecneidua ruoy wonK .etouq ohW rotcoD a ta dehgual evah dluow I .hguoht ,erucsbo erom yaw si etouq s’deT dna lliB ehT”

“We always quote Doctor Who! I was trying to mix things up. Jesus!”

“.llew repus tuo dekrow taht yraelC”

“Oh kcuf off!” Matteo snapped.

After an interminable stretch, the phone booth dropped down through the ceiling of a large room to rest on rich parquet flooring. The walls and ceiling were bare, unfinished stone—a natural red sandstone cavern—but were covered in works of fine art and lush draperies of silk and velvet. Soft-looking leather armchairs and intricate furniture of dark wood and gold filigree were scattered about on thick, patterned carpets. Strains of Vivaldi could just be heard, echoing from some nearby chamber.

James unlatched the phone booth door and the pair stepped out. They had barely gone two steps before a rather nasal voice exuded tinnily from a concealed tannoy (a complicated legal document I share with James obligates me to call a public address system a tannoy when my stories are set in London. Please excuse the convoluted labyrinth of British nonsense-speak I have unwittingly dumped you into).

“Oh for goodness’ sake!” The voice said. “At least wipe your feet before you come in. It’s not hard, I put a mat out! Why do I even bother buying doormats if people aren’t going to use them? And why do I bother buying nice carpets if people are just going to come stomping in and get mud all over them. I don’t even have a door; I have a crazy telephone elevator thing! I have to resort to putting doormats in front of my telephone elevator. There’s no buffer zone. No patio or front hall. You are literally taken straight from the muddy street on one step to the middle of my bloody living room on the next! Have some common courtesy!”

“S-Sorry, David,” Matteo stammered, shaken by the sheer ferocity of the rant directed against him. “We’ll just take care of that now. Can we come in, then?”

“Yes, yes, you can come in. I’m in the laboratory,” the voice said, and you could clearly hear the pleasure it took in pronouncing the word ‘lah-boh-rah-toh-ree’ in the proper British fashion.

James and Matteo carefully scraped their shoes across the rough bristles of the doormat, and then proceeded further into the underground dwelling. They passed more tapestries and paintings and sturdy mahogany doors before coming to a large, circular metal portal, like one might see on a bank vault, set incongruously into the wall. The heavy steel gate rattled and hissed and then swung outwards at their approach.

The room beyond was starkly different from the rest of the estate. Rather than rough, unworked stone, the walls and ceiling—like the floor—were thick, reinforced concrete. Bare, fluorescent tubes hung overhead, casting sterile, uniform illumination on the clinically white chamber. A number of unadorned steel tables were set in rows down the length of the room, and were covered in a boggling array of wires, tools, stacks of papers, bubbling test tubes, blinking computers, and inscrutable half-finished machinery. At one table a man sat, mid-thirties and overweight, with combed brown hair and a rumpled lab coat over slacks and a red, button-down shirt.

James and Matteo strolled down the centre aisle and stopped in front of the man’s table. A forest of lenses in different types and sizes extended upwards from a headpiece made from leather straps he wore on his head. When he twisted a small brass dial, several lenses snapped down into the active position in front of his eyes, changing the arrangement of his optics. James and Matteo waited patiently until he flicked all the lenses into the inactive position and removed the helmet.

“Hello David,” Matteo said cheerfully.

“,divaD olleH” James echoed (kind of).

“What the hell is wrong with him?” said David, his voice fairly dripping with quizzical disdain. He wasn’t sure if he could rant about James’ speech yet, but he was chomping at the bit for the opportunity to present itself.

“Hmm? Oh, his backwards talk. I stopped noticing it. That’s one of the reasons why we’re here. Near as I can figure there’s a localized time loop between his mouth and the speech centre of his brain. His mouth is receiving nerve impulses from the end of his sentence first, and the start of his sentence last. Side effect of a major chronal detonation we were/will be at the center of.”

“Interesting,” David said, slightly deflated. “Only he was affected? Not you?”

“No, actually, I wanted you to check me out too. This isn’t normal, right?” Matteo said, unbuttoning his shirt and holding it open.

“Jesus Christ!” David shrieked, knocking his chair over backwards as he leapt up and away.

“No, I didn’t think it was,” Matteo sighed.

“.uoy dloT”

“Quaid... Quaid... Start the reactor. Free Mars...” croaked a voice drifting from the twisted homunculus growing out of Matteo’s chest.

“Quiet you,” Matteo snapped. “He won’t shut up about that. I think we must have drifted through 2084 and picked him up on our way back to linear causality. Most people don’t realize that Total Recall was a documentary from the future.”

“Right … well …” said David, regaining his composure. “Why don’t you cover him up again and I’ll just see what I can do for James first.” David picked up several blinking, beeping lengths of metal and began poking and prodding at James’ head.

“Ah yes, here we are. I can’t get rid of the time loop, but I can move its endpoints together so that there’s no discernible difference. Just let me …” David flicked several switches on his tools, and strobes of coloured light played across James’ face. “There. Try it out.”

James opened his mouth to speak. His face stayed impassive but his words came out in a desperate shriek, as though disconnected from him entirely. “No Charlie Chaplin! Please don’t let that chimera rape me with its three different penises! I-- No! Noooooooo!”

“Whoopsie,” David said over the screaming. “Must have shifted one too far into the future. If I can just …” more flashing lights and the screaming stopped. “How’s that?”

“Ah, much better, thank you,” James said. “… Wait, did you say that was from my future?”

“Okay, moving on,” said David, a chuckle in his voice.

“I don’t want to be raped by a chimera …”[/color]

“Matteo, There’s a gadget I’m working on that should fix you up, but right now it’s only wibbly wobbly. I have some more work to do before it’s timey wimey as well.”

“Where will the other two penises go? …”[/color]

“That’s fine, David. We need a bit of a break anyway. Not to mention a resupply.”

“Oh, splendid, splendid. I’ll see what I can scrounge up. You’ve got the green, I’ve got the gear, eh? Not that British money is actually green, and you know I only accept payment in pounds sterling.”

“Surely it won’t be all three …”[/color]

The trio marched towards the far end of the room, David leading, James muttering forlornly about how he never should have sold his Pegasus, and Matteo shifting awkwardly in an effort to make Kuato comfortable.

David manipulated several dials and switches on a wall panel, revealing numerous racks of weaponry and exotic mechanisms.

“Anything in particular you’re looking for?” he asked.

“The usual,” Matteo replied. “Firearms, ammunition, grenades, plastic explosives, and at least one highly impractical but still incredibly deadly exotic weapon.”

“Like a catapult that fires chainsaws!?” David asked excitedly, poised to rip the covering sheet off a large, catapult-shaped object.

“No, something a bit more subtle, I think,” James replied.

“Oh …” David said dejectedly. “Actually I think I do have something like that.” He stepped over to another rack and lifted out a Louisville Slugger, hefting it experimentally.

“Here we have an ordinary baseball bat. Perfect for a fun day at the park with your children or with your friends. Not suspicious in the least, right? You can carry it anywhere. But, if you twist here,” David twisted the bat’s handle. “And pull here,” David tugged on the handle, causing it to detach. “You see that it’s actually a knife,” he said triumphantly, holding up a six-inch stiletto blade protruding from the bat’s handle. “I named it Kenneth.”

“A small knife … hidden inside a large baseball bat?” James asked incredulously.

“Yes, exactly that.”

“That’s brilliant! We’ll take ten.”

“Splendid, splendid,” David said. “I’ll put that on your tab. Now, if you’ll step over this way, I can show you my large collection of innocuous objects that are actually powerful incendiary devices. I think you’ll find that I’ve been making brave, ironic strides in the fields of ‘baby toys as shrapnel bombs’ and ‘fire extinguishers that dispense napalm.’”

David started to walk towards another, heavily scorched section of the lab, but was stopped by two hands, which suddenly grasped his left sleeve. One belonged to Matteo, the other to Kuato, who had somehow wriggled free of his cotton shackles. Kuato was quietly ordering David to ‘open his mind’ but David ignored this, focusing instead on Matteo, whose face had gone slack with wonder.

“What,” he breathed reverently. “Is that?”



********************************



Here are the options for the next chapter. PM your votes to AGRO.

What sort of fantastic device has Matteo spotted in David Mitchell’s lab?

• A. A weapon of unspeakable, inscrutable power.
  
  
• B. A vehicle of great speed and greater sexiness. (Like the Normandy SR-2. Oh baby.)
  
  
• C. An artifact which holds great sentimental value.

[James]

James’ eyes followed Matteo’s gaze to the item that sat nearly hidden beneath several stacks of books, a simple white shirt and black jacket combination and a large recycling container. Magnificent would fail to fully capture the majesty of the item, polished gleaming wood perfectly carved into the shape of a crossbow, a wonderfully crafted sword armed within the bolt. That’s right. A crossbow that fires a fucking sword.

“Holy fuck, that’s a fucking crossbow that fires a fucking sword,” Matteo whispered, striding over to the weapons, tears falling freely from his eyes.

“That is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life,” James added, running a finger along the cool metal surface of the sword. “The Lights of the End of the Universe won’t even match this.”

“An invention of mine,” David said proudly, bobbing up and down upon the balls of his feet. “You fire the sword at the first attacker and then you subsequently run up, pull the sword back out of the now deceased assailant, and stab the next one like a normal sword. Recycling. It’s important.”

“Wait,” James said, pulling the sword free from the crossbow. “This looks familiar.”

Not a fingerprint glared out from the blade, the steel perfectly cleaned and glistening with ruins. The hilt was decorated with vast rubies, gems and diamonds, red and gold mixing with royal purple to add to the pomp of the blade. It felt light within James’ hand, perfectly balanced within his grip as he swung it around in a clean sweep.

“Oh yes, so familiar,” James muttered.

“No,” Matteo said, taking the blade from his companion’s hand. “It can’t be. This is the sword we used to kill Thomas Becket!”

“Wait… you killed Thomas Becket? That was you lot?” David asked, vaguely curious.

“Yes, it was our first mission,” Matteo explained. “When Richard Nixon first arrived to give us the Machine it was to go back in time to kill Thomas Becket. If we didn’t he would be the catalyst that would create the first Holy Planet of the Universe, commit crimes against the law of the galaxies, begin hundred of crusades against such worlds like the Hephaestus System, the Planets of the Emerald Belt and New Portland.”

“But I thought it was four knights,” David said. “I know my history.”

“A simple framing,” James answered, reaching into pocket to pull out a small tome and a pair of glasses. “It was really us and Richard Nixon; the knights were merely there to take the blame.”

“So was it you who left the sword in the bloody spoon compartment of the draw? Because I hate that. You get a nice yogurt out of the fridge, reach in to drab a spoon and you pull out a fucking knife, how I’m I meant to eat a yogurt with a knife? Or in this case a medieval sword? It’s ridiculous and easily preventable.”

“Umm… it was Nixon,” Matteo spluttered.

As the conversation continued, James had the pair of glasses perched upon his nose, his eyes scanning the tome before flicking back to the inscriptions that ran down the length of the blade. The language tacked violently from Latin to Greek to Jumanji, a rare language spoken by only seven people throughout the entire extent of time.

“James, why are you wearing glasses?” Matteo said, staring down the ginger haired man.

“I need glasses,” he replied, eyes barely moving from the tome.

“You’re short-sighted, James. You don’t need glasses to read, stop trying to look more intelligent than you are.”

“Oh shush,” James said, dropping both glasses and tome back into his pocket. “I was translating the inscription, apparently someone added in a story about our efforts. It some high-flung Olympian prose about how the sword defeated Thomas Becket, the one who would have been Immor… Immortal.”

“Becket was an Immortal One,” Matteo said, his jaw dropping comically. “A Richard Nixon to our False Triumvirate.”

“Maybe the sword is a key to killing the Immortal Ones?” James suggested, placing the sword back into the crossbow.

“That makes no sense James. That would be a horrible plot if there’s one random sword with the power to kill our enemies,” Matteo rebuked.

“Look, I’m trying to come up with an excuse for us to take the crossbow that fires a fucking sword and then for us to use it on those dickheads,” James sighed.

“Touché.”

“It’ll cost you,” David said, returning to the pair, now carrying a rather large blood-stained chainsaw in his arms. “I’ll add it to your tab.”

“What’s the chainsaw for?” Matteo asked cautiously, already a glint of understanding forming within his mind.

“Well, I’ve been thinking about your little problem,” David said, revving up the chainsaw, a chuck of flesh being hurled from the ridges of the saw to the other side of the room. “And this is the best idea I’ve got.”

“James!” Matteo squeaked over the whirling of the motor. “Help!”

“Yeah, I bet I ask for help when that chimera comes to rape me,” James said, turning his back of the Canadian. “And it sounds like I don’t get it.”






****************************************************


Here are the options for the next chapter. PM your votes to TAED.

Such an interesting side-trip, where will we head to next?

• A. To witness the ‘surgery’ to remove Kuato from Matteo’s chest.
  
  
• B. To witness the daring escape of Drall and Sensar from Zovo and the Freedom Fighters of Hawaii.
  

[Matteo ((Taed))]

Misty rain fell lightly on the fat, green leaves of the Hawaiian rainforest. In stark contrast to the destitute, battle-ravaged towns and cities, the forests were still teeming with life. The kind of life that definitely exists, but that I couldn’t be bothered to look up on Wikipedia, and am therefore unable to go into specifics about. Use your imagination or something. The forest was--

Pigs! They’ve got those, right? The forests were still teeming with pigs. Just absolutely lousy with the bastards. Snorting and grunting away. And probably some monkeys or something, too. I don’t fucking know.

Alongside those pigs, moving almost undetectably through the verdant underbrush, Zovo led his men onwards; all dressed identically in military fatigues and heavily painted with camouflage. He held up a closed fist suddenly, and the platoon of freedom fighters instantly froze, melting from view.

Zovo extended an arm and a brightly plumed, magnificent bird of proud lineage and indeterminate native species (seriously, use your goddam imaginations, I don’t feel like doing any research) dropped through the overhanging canopy to rest on it. Zovo cocked his head to one side as though listening to something, and then began murmuring indistinctly to the bird. Several of his men exchanged covert glances. There were a thousand myths and rumours about the old soldier, and all of the best ones mentioned birds in some way. Some said that he was born from birds himself, and that he would return to them in death—a phoenix biding time in human form.

Zovo flicked his arm upward and the bird took flight once more. He then motioned for the platoon to follow and set off in a new direction, perpendicular to their previous course. The new recruits seemed incredulous but the veterans, the ones who had served with Zovo before, knew that the grizzled warrior’s intelligence never lied. Sure enough, less than a klick later the platoon was perched on a small ridge overlooking a clearing in which a Scientologist patrol was resting.

One of the new recruits sneered openly at them. “Look at those idiots,” he whispered. “Walking through the jungle in reflective silver robes like something out of a science-fiction B-movie. How haven’t we beaten these guys yet?”

Zovo whirled about silently and grabbed the rookie by the scruff of his collar. “Because,” he hissed. “Those goofy looking gold guns they’re carrying are third generation Marcabian plasma rifles. They’ll burn right through you, along with two hundred meters of the jungle you were standing in.”

The recruit’s eyes bulged hugely. “You mean they have, like … alien technology?”

Zovo released the young man and turned back to surveying the clearing. “You bet your ass they do.”

“But,” the young soldier who didn’t know when to shut up began pensively. “If their whole religion is about aliens coming to Earth … and they actually have alien technology … doesn’t that mean that they’re righ--?”

“Stow it, son” Zovo said, working the slide on his rifle. “Wrong or right, it doesn’t change what's going to happen next.”

*****************

Zovo and his men calmly picked through the remains of the Scientologist patrol, scavenging what they could. Most of the alien tech fried when its owner checked out, but there were still more conventional supplies to be had.

There was a sudden rustling in the trees, and Zovo and his men were instantly aligned in a combat formation. Their rifles trained on a dense cluster of ferns that shuddered, and then parted to reveal Drall and Sensar.

“Hey guys,” Sensar said cheerfully. “What’s with all the L. Ron hubbub?” There was a long silence in which he smiled hugely and gestured repeatedly for applause. One of the men began to slowly draw his sidearm but Zovo held up his hand in a ‘not quite yet’ sort of gesture.

“You’re late,” he said. “You were supposed to meet us at the rendezvous point over an hour ago.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Drall squeaked, then cleared his throat noisily and dropped into a comically low register. “We got kind of held up doing all this grown-up stuff we’ve been doing. You know how it is, fellow grown-up. Drinkin’ beers and … and sexing. Sexing at all the ladies. We sort of lost track of time.”

“Whatever,” Zovo growled. “You’re here now. Let’s go.” He stalked off into the forest, followed by his men, and Drall and Sensar quickly followed.

“You think we should get some of that camouflage stuff?” Drall whispered out of the side of his mouth. “It looks so cool. My mommy could magic some up for us.”

“But if I take off this shirt how will people know that the bird is the word!?” Sensar replied.

“I … don’t know. I guess you could tell them? Or … maybe play them the song?”

“What are we, barbarians?”

The group continued on for some time until the woods began to melt away and a large compound could be seen in the valley below them. The men spread out into cover while Sensar and Drall moved up to join Zovo. He was sighting through the scope of a high-powered sniper rifle and didn’t immediately notice their approach.

“Hey Zovo,” said Drall. “What’s so special about this place?”

“It’s a major Scientologist base,” Zovo replied absently. “But it’s not the base that interests us. It’s who’s inside.”

“Who exactly is in there that could be so important?” asked Sensar.

“We’re not exactly sure,” Zovo replied. “His name has been lost to time. But we know that he’s very important to the Church. The ancient scrolls refer to him only as ‘Tra-Vol-Tron.’”

“I … No.” said Sensar. “It’s Travolta. He’s an actor. Voltron is a giant robot with lions for arms and legs.”

“Oh …” said Zovo, momentarily looking away from the scope. “Wow. We are out of touch in Hawaii.”

Drall patted him on the back. “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s the same way in Quebec. We’re separatists, you know. Our film knowledge pretty much begins and ends with Bon Cop, Bad Cop.”

“The bad guys in the Star Wars prequels were called Separatists, weren’t they?” mused Sensar.

“I really don’t know,” Drall sighed. “Is Star Wars the one with the bald captain and the big metal circle? I think I like that one. A World War Two battleship in space! Hilarious.”

“I … Wow. No wonder Matteo wanted to kill you so bad.”

“Wait till he gets to Seph.”

Zovo returned his attention to the scope and grew suddenly tense. Through the magnifying lens he could spy a large retinue of Scientologists moving out of the base’s central structure. He looked about for the telltale pilot’s uniform that would identify Travolta, but when his gaze fell upon the head of the column he found someone else instead; a short, thin man with tousled brown hair and--

“Son of a bitch,” Zovo breathed. “It’s Cruise!”

“What’s that?” Sensar asked. Did you say ‘Cruise’? As in Tom Cruise?”

“Yessssss,” hissed Zovo, in the voice of a man obsessed by a single goal.

“Wow! That’s so cool,” bubbled Sensar. “Ethan Hunt right here in Hawaii with us! What are you going to do?”

In answer, Zovo tightened the grip on his rifle’s stock and inhaled sharply, holding his breath. At the last possible moment Sensar realized Zovo’s intent and acted instinctively.

“Jerry Maguire, no!” he screamed, and lashed out with his palm, smacking the rifle barrel to one side. Zovo fired, a fraction of a second too late, and the bullet struck one of Cruise’s silver-cloaked retainers. Bodyguards instantly leapt forward and dragged the man himself to safety, ruining any chance Zovo had at a second shot.

“What. Have. You. Done!?” he gasped; not in surprise, more like a fish out of water.

“That man played Austin Powers in the movie about Austin Powers inside the movie Austin Powers!” Sensar shouted. “He’s a national fucking treasure! I wasn’t going to let you kill him. If you want to mess with Tom Cruise you have to go though me!”

“Er, Sensar? I don’t think he has a problem with that,” said Drall, pointing at the massive vein that had begun to bulge in Zovo’s forehead. “I think now is probably running away times again.”

“Woo woo woop woop woop woop woop!” yelped Sensar and Drall as they took off into the rainforest at a dead sprint, pursued by a hail of gunfire from Zovo’s platoon.

“I feel the need for speeeeeeed!” Sensar shouted over his shoulder as the pair disappeared.

Zovo stood perfectly still as his men clustered about him, numb not merely from shock or rage, but from the sheer volume of emotion raging within him, which his brain had simply given up attempting to address.

“Should we go after them, sir?” someone nearby asked.

“Yes,” Zovo replied mechanically. “Right now we are going to go after them. And if they escape we are going to finish this war, right the mistakes that they have caused here today, and then we are going to track them down wherever they may be and commit horrible, unspeakable acts.”

Zovo lifted his gaze to stare daggers at the footpath that Drall and Sensar had bolted down. He very deliberately straightened his clothes, laid down his rifle, and drew a worn machete from its sheath at his belt. He raised the machete, pointing down the path, still with no emotion of his face whatsoever, and he whispered two words.

“For Dio,” he said, and then he started running and screaming at the top of his lungs and didn’t stop until he reached the beach, an hour and a half later, and saw Drall and Sensar flying out over the Pacific on the back of a summoned wyvern.



********************************



Here are the options for the next chapter. PM your votes to AGRO.

What sort of greeting can Matteo and James expect in Seoul?

• A. A desperate entreaty from the South Korean government to stop Sepheron.
  
  
• B. Their plane shot down by anti-aircraft fire.
  
  
• C. Ninjas (because I don’t care that Korea isn’t Japan)

[James]

“Matteo?” James asked aloud, watching the Siberian wasteland pass beneath their private jet before turning his attention back to his newspaper.

“Yes?” Matteo answered, looking up from his copy of the twenty-first Dresden File novel, published 2018 A.D. The pair was sat upon reclining armchairs, a table nailed to the floor, tea and scones sitting quietly¹ upon the surface.

“What happened to the di Gioplane? I mean, I love the luxury of our current form of transport but that was a pretty expensive piece of kit and we have seemingly completely forgotten about it,” James said, popping down the newspaper and reaching for a buttered scone.

“That… is a good question,” Matteo replied. “We should really get it back, it’s kinda important, isn’t it?”

“Well, we had it when we went to get Drall but we left Canada by state sponsored time travellers aid jet, so it must still be in Quebec,” James reasoned and the pair exchanged a dark glance.

“Ah, well it’s gone now.”

“Cannot be helped.”

“We are never going back to retrieve it.”

“Never.”

“Fucking Mimes².”

Toasting the death of the fist di Gioplane, the pair lapsed back into silence as the jet roared towards Seoul, like a lion. Or a jet engine. All around the cabin were various bags and boxes, filled to the brim with equipment that had been gathered from David Mitchell’s lab. Turning to the sports section of the paper, James caught sight of his companion gingerly massaging his chest, bloody bandages hardly visible beneath his shirt. Besides excessive bleeding and a gaping hole, Matteo was completely healed from David’s surgery.

James however was still on alert for chimera rape. As soon as Charlie Chaplin appeared he was running. Running forever.

“Hello, this is your pilot speaking, Captain Muhammad Jamal Hussein,” a voice said, floating over the plane.

“Such a nice man,” James muttered, Matteo nodding in agreement.

“We’ve just hit some slight turbulence… and by slight turbulence I mean I’m dodging some motherfucking missiles up here. Sepheron has control of South Korean³ military capabilities and the government-in-exile is redirecting you to their compound south of the city. But I can’t get any closer so enact Plan Ford Anglia.”

“Oh hell yeah,” Matteo yelled in glee, unbuckling his seat and grabbing the nearest bags of explosives and weaponry.

“Wait, what side of the road does Koreans drive on?” James asked, a smile plastered across his face, yanking open a box and pulling out several baseball bats.

“Right!” Matteo said, hitting a panel of numbers on an electronic pad, a wall sliding away to reveal an Aston Martin within the back of the plane.

James swore loudly as the boot and doors were popped open and the car was filled with varying levels of lethal force. The Fucking Crossbow that Fires a Fucking Sword (FCFFS) was placed carefully within the boot before doors were slammed shut and the pair was clambering into the car, Matteo within the driver seat. Cursing silently that Japan and left-hand traffic were only stone-throw away, James pulled on his seatbelt⁴ and stored the co-ordinates of the government’s compound upon the GPS system.

“Government Compound, long way down. Take first steep drop available,” a robotic voice said into the car.

“Muhammad,” Matteo said, flicking open the communication system and receiving an earful of Arabic swearing (try coughing, but then stop halfway through. Congratulations, you probably just swore in Arabic). “We’re ready to go here.”

“Godspeed,” a voice said, as the back of the plane was flooded with wind, rain and maybe some cloud, if it’s scientifically possible. “Wait… fuck, no I didn’t mean that.”

That was all the duo heard though, Matteo screaming several choice words (YIPPIE-KI-YAY MOTHERFUCKER!) as he planted his foot upon the pedal. With a lurch the Aston Martin shot out from the end of the plane, driving for several seconds through rainclouds…

I’ll let you rest for a second after that image of badassery.

… before gravity took hold and the car began to fall. James caught sight of the missiles that Muhammad was still furiously dodging and wished him well. If the pilot succeeded in surviving he could look forward to a well-earnt life of being discriminated against within the land of the free.

“Engaging glider mode,” Matteo said, flicking a switch, two smooth metallic wings sliding out on either side of the car, the Aston beginning to glide in the wind. “This never gets old.”

“It was slightly more adventurous before the invention of the motor vehicle though,” James commented.

“Government Compound, twenty thousand feet and approaching,” the GPS said, cutting through the conversation.

“Thanks Sarah,” Matteo said, patting the dashboard.

“It’s Sara, and you never called me b…”

“Won’t need that,” Matteo said, flicking the GPS off with a press of the button, the compound already beginning to come into sight, a blot beneath the stretching city of Seoul⁵. Guiding the car with feather light touches, Matteo led the Aston towards their destination, James comfortably leaning back in his chair, watching the ground hurtling towards them.

To the unskilled man, this form of travel was particularly dangerous, fraught with potential pitfalls like dying. However, as the rubber of the tyres lightly kissed the runway within the compound, the duo was both completely relaxed. Wings folding back into the car, Matteo drove straight into the main hanger, drifting the car around the solitary corner and then committing the Aston to a one hundred and eighty degree spin as a method of parking.

“You called?” James asked, stepping out of the car and looking at the wide-eyed (well…) expressions of the various South Korean officials.

“Man, we need to get around to composing theme music,” Matteo added, locking the car before pulling on his coat.

“Where is the third?” a well-dressed man said, the South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.

“Second footnote,” James answered shortly.

“Oh, I am sorry to hear that,” the President said, gesturing to a table within the corner of the main hanger. “But not as sorry as I am for my people, a being known as Sepheron has taken control of much of the country and is enslaving my people. There are rumours that they are taken away in large machines and never seen again. People say the countryside is beginning to bleed with horrible red vines.”

“So… we’re in another version of War of the Worlds?” James asked.

“That is what we said when we communicated with him, but he said he didn’t know what that was.”

“What?” the pair said sharply. “He’s never seen or read War of the Worlds?”

“We have sought to negotiate with him but that failed quickly,” the President continued. “We then resorted to a form of aggressive negotiations and sent in a SWAT Team.”

“Nice, but you needed lightsabres to make that work,” Matteo chuckled.

“When he called us in anger at being attacked we told him that it was a form of aggressive negotiations… he did not understand,” the President said.

“But… it’s Star Wars,” James spluttered.

“I mean, it’s nothing to the originals, but it’s still fucking Star Wars,” Matteo said, and his eyes were beginning to water. “Did you say you can talk to him?”

“Yes, a phone line has been set up directly between us,” the President said. “Would you like to speak to him?”

Nodding with barely concealed rage, Matteo sat down within the nearest chair and waited for the phone to be brought over to him. James disappeared to look over several maps of the area, Korean generals muttering hurried words to him as the phone arrived upon the table and Matteo lifted it to his ear.

“Hello,” a voice said. “This is Sepheron speaking, ruler of Asia.”

“South Korea isn’t Asia, Seph,” Matteo said, his voice calm, revealing nothing of the anger that coursed through his veins.

“Yes, it is, Matteo,” Sepheron replied, apparently unfazed at the Canadian appearing upon the phone. “South Korea is in Asia, therefore it is Asia.”

“No, Seph,” Matteo replied tiredly. “South Korea is in Asia, but that doesn’t make it Asia. It’s just a part of the continent. Look… just shut the fuck up. I have something to say.”

“Say your piece and leave; I have no time for such lowly creatures now.”

“Look Seph,” Matteo began before taking in a deep breath, his lungs filling with oxygen. “I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.”

“Dude… I don’t have your daughter, I didn’t even know you had a daughter,” Sepheron replied.

Matteo threw the phone into the wall.





¹ Scones are capable of high quality singing at a frequency inaccessible to humans. Fortunately at the time of our heroes’ tea they were resting their ‘vocal cords’.
² As some of you may remember, this is in fact Pete’s catchphrase. But he’s dead now.
³ That’s the one we’re friends with, Sarah.
⁴ Safety first, kids.
⁵ Ha. Made you look. Lulz.





****************************************************


Here are the options for the next chapter. PM your votes to TAED.

What is Sepheron actually trying to achieve in Seoul?

• A. The resurrection of a team of Asian heroes, including and co-led by Genghis Khan.
  
  
• B. The construction of a race known only as the Zerg.
  
  
• C. A machine that would allow him to wipe out entire memories and histories, including all the pop knowledge he somehow doesn’t even fucking know. Like seriously, Seph. Have you ever even seen a television?
  

[Matteo ((Taed))]

Guards snapped to attention and blast doors rumbled open as James and Matteo strode purposefully into the depths of a South Korean bunker, tailed by the president and a retinue of scurrying clerks and advisors. A final portal hissed loudly and cycled them through into the hermetically sealed war room. Massive screens on the walls displayed maps and troop movements, and the floor was a mess of computer terminals clustered about a large central conference table.

“There’s no way Seph came here just to take over Korea,” James was saying. “It doesn’t fit. The Immortal Ones, as a group, have been far more … cunning than that, since this whole mess started.”

“You sure you’re not giving them too much credit?” Matteo asked. “Drall was holed up in a condemned mansion doing his best Norman Bates impression.”

“Drall hadn’t had time to set himself up yet. He was still building infrastructure. Think about it, when we found him he’d just installed himself as the leader of a cartel of French mime assassins, right?”

Lee Myung-bak raised a hand and opened his mouth as though he had a few questions about that, but James and Matteo both waved him into silence without looking.

“When we first found Sensar,” James continued. “He was doing the same thing. Gathering henchmen and solidifying his power. He was only able to kick his plans into full gear with the six months we gave him during our retirement.”

“Was it really a ‘retirement’ if you were only gone for six months?” Lee began before Matteo shushed him.

“Every action hero ever is two days away from retirement, every day,” Matteo explained brusquely. “When they leave and then come back again, it’s always because they were grudgingly forced out of retirement. Once you’ve been through that once it authorizes you to complain about being ‘too old for this shit’ no matter how old you actually are.”

“We’ve done it seven times now,” James added. “Which means I get to buy senior tickets at amusement parks.” He turned back to Matteo. “Seph has had even longer than Sensar to develop his plans. He’s up to something else, I’m sure of it.”

As if in answer to James words, the air in the room suddenly grew heavy and warm, like the pressure front before a big storm. There was a swelling sense of wrongness—a bubble inflating in the skin of the universe—and then a sudden wave of nearly intangible energy rushed through the room.

“Oof!” Matteo grunted. “I sense a disturbance in the Force.”

“The what?” James asked.

“The … The Force,” Matteo replied uncertainly. “… It’s a Star Wars quote.”

“Are you sure about that? I don’t remember that one.”

“That … That can’t be. It’s a famous quote!” Matteo looked around at the others in the room. Blank faces and shaking heads greeted him. A room full of clerks and computer analysts and not one of them could place a Star Wars quote!

Matteo began to breathe heavily. “G-Get me an internet connection! Wikipedia! Now!” He lunged for the nearest computer, shoving the man sitting in front of it out of the way, and hammered on the keys.

Tap tap tappity tap.

There were no results matching the query.

Taptaptaptaptap!

There were no results matching the query.

TAP! TAP! TAP! TAP!

There were no results matching the query.

“My God,” he breathed. “It’s not here. He erased it. Star Wars … It doesn’t exist.”

“What’s Star Wars?” James asked.

Matteo whirled around wildly. “I--! … I … I don’t … know.” Matteo’s face fell slack and his eyes trembled, twitching back and forth as though looking for something that wasn’t there. Abruptly he doubled over with a groan and vomited blood onto the floor.

“Matteo!” James shouted in alarm. “What’s wrong!?”

“I DON’T KNOOOOW!” Matteo shrieked. “Something … something is gone! Something important … in me … is gone. Is it … my appendix? James, I think I’m missing my appendix!”

“Matteo, don’t be ridiculous! The appendix isn’t real, you know that. The Guild of Sinister Physicians made it up so they could assassinate people and call it a botched appendectomy.”

Matteo squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his fists into his temples. “Grrrnn! Ssssss! Ssssomething! Something. Sssssss! … S-Seph. Seph! He’s doing something! Screwing with history! We have to stop him!”

James watched helplessly as his friend writhed on the ground. “Matteo, all right, you have to snap out of it. Our enemies mess up history every single day. We do it ourselves! Remember when we went back and made the Australia Prison Colony into a real country? You laughed for days! It was slightly less funny when a nation of convicts became the world’s thirteenth largest economy, but still, how is this time any different?”

Matteo stood up shakily, wiping viscera from under his mouth and nose. “I don’t know yet. I think he’s erasing something important. More than just our memories, he’s going after our … our culture. The little things that define us as a society, and worm their way into who and what we are. The things that let us relate to one anoth--” Matteo’s eyes snapped open wide. “He’s making us all like him. Taking away all the life lessons and in-jokes and shared experiences.” Matteo, wild eyed, with blood still drying on his face and hair, grabbed the President of South Korea by the arms and shook him, screaming in his face. “He’s making the whole world like him!”

Two Korean soldiers tackled Matteo off of their president and wrestled him to the war room floor. He lashed out like a mad dog, laughing and screaming and spewing nonsense syllables. “Frankly my Rosebud, love means never having to show me the smell of napalm in Kansas anymore!”

James rushed up to the struggling trio, prying the soldiers off of Matteo. “Gentlemen!” he shouted. “You can’t fight in here!”

“Why not?” Matteo cackled.

“Because! … because … I … I can’t remember. Something about where we are? Something, something, non sequitur? ….. What was I talking about?”

“You see? You see!?” Matteo shouted, scrambling to his feet and jabbing an accusatory finger at just about everyone (it was actually pretty impressive. He had to do sort of a pirouette thing and hop up on a chair to jab accusingly at the people in the back). “He’s screwing with us, man! You and I, we’re Time Travelers, we’re supposed to be immune to these sorts of changes. We both remember when Al Gore was president before Dick Cheney changed it.”

“Crazy old vampire warlock bastard,” James muttered. “I miss my Goretech^TM flying car.”

“But noooow,” Matteo said, waving for James’ attention. “We’re getting hit too. There are still bits and pieces floating around, but only enough for us to know how much we’ve lost! He’s fucking with fundamental universal laws! We have to stop him!”

“To save this … what was it called again?” Lee Myung-Bak asked.

Matteo scratched his head furiously. “Space? ... Warsaw? Is that it? That sounds awful. But whatever, we have to save it! And, you know, the universe, because at this rate it’s going to blow like a proton torpedo in a ventilation shaft.”

“Like a what in a what?”

“Gaaaaaah! This sucks! Come on, we have to get moving.

James nodded and slipped on some sunglasses like … you know … that guy? With the thing? And the glasses? He tells knock-knock jokes or something.

“Right behind you, chief. Let’s go get him.”

“And his little cat, too.”



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Here are the options for the next chapter. PM your votes to AGRO.

Will we:

• A. See our heroes set off to fight Seph?
  
  
• B. Witness Seph's reunion with Sensar and Drall?

[James]

“You should not have delayed,” a cold, dead voice spoke as the wyvern landed softly within the canopy of a South Korean forest. If they have forests, maybe they don’t and then they landed on a plain… actually, no, fuck that, they have a forest. Poetic licence bitch.

“We didn’t delay, we were apprehended by freedom fighters and forced to serve as their slaves,” Drall grumbled, sliding off the wyvern and onto solid ground once more.

“I think he might be referring more to the whole detour to Australia,” Sensar whispered, eyeing the man before them. He was short, very short, with brittle like limbs and a ragged unkempt beard.

“Oh yeah… that was a delay, but also, the Ashes were playing!” Drall replied.

“Who are the Ashes?”

“I don’t know.”

“Silence!” the man in front of them shouted. “His Excellency wishes to speak to you and urgently, I need to bring you to him.”

“His Excellency? Seph is thinking highly of himself these days,” Sensar commented as the trio began to hike through the forest. Humming a tune to his favourite musical Sensar was drifting away before the other two harshly told him to shut up.

“So,” Drall said, taking a brave stab at conversation. “What’s Seph up to?”

“Sepheron has taken control of much of the city of Seoul,” the man replied, devoid of all emotions. “The government-in-exile is situated in a compound to the south of the city and nearby the outskirt of the city is alive with gunfire from where the government is trying to push back into Seoul.”

“One warzone into another, how pleasant,” Sensar groaned. “And all for oil, I tell you. Bloody Bush.”

“What is Seph actually doing though? What is his evil scheme?” Drall asked again.

“We really should have collaborated. Although at least I managed to partly set up my plan, you just suuuuuuuuuuuucked.”

“Let me ask you a question,” the man said, stopping within the midst of towering trees and scattered leaves. “Do you have a sudden urge to disappear into the trees and fight off a host of Vietnamese fighters who are all hunting you down?”

“How did you know?” the pair gasped.

“Why? Why are you thinking this?” the man continued.

“I… I don’t know,” Drall muttered.

“Because… because it… it would be awesome?” Sensar added.

“Would you want to draw First Blood?” the man said, a smile playing at the edge of his lips.

“I want to draw it so much!” Drall shrieked.

“And I don’t know why!” Sensar cried. “What has Seph done?”

“He has performed great evil and left me with no choice, he will be here soon,” the man said, falling back to sit against the trunk of the largest tree. “I am sorry, I do not think highly of betrayers but I wish to tell someone to ‘zerg it’ and I do not know why.”

“What are you talking about?” Drall said, holding his mother’s skull in front of him like a weapon. Sensar stood awkwardly to one side because he’s actually useful for fuck-all right about now. That what happens when you like musicals, kids.

“I want to zerg it,” the man said, weeping openly. “He wants you captured, so much. He promised that if I delivered you two to him, he would help fix it. He would fix everything he said. Then I can start zerging things once more.”

“What are you on about?” Drall said, turning left to right, scanning the tree-line with the skull held aloft in his palm.

“Pretty women, fascinating... sipping coffee, dancing... pretty women, pretty women, are a wonder. Pretty women!” Sensar cried, dancing around between the trees.

“Oh god! Make it stop, zerg it! ZERG IT!” the man cried, rolling into a ball.

In a second the forest erupted into life, footsteps thundering between the trees as armed men poured in from behind branches and exploding up from the ground. Leaves covered their entire bodies, only a slit at the eyes was not covered by the leafy material.

Drall swung around, blasting the first two men back into the trunk of a tree, the third being turned into a butterfly. Sensar turned this way and that, asking the men rushing towards him to try ‘a bit of priest’. Losing it, the dreadful singing driving the young man to insanity, Drall turned and sent his magic towards his comrade, replacing his mouth for a beak. Those precious seconds robbed him of his defence though, one of his attackers tackling him to the ground as Sensar was caught within a net.

“Tie them up,” a voice said from between the trees, Drall catching sight of a shadow edging closer to him. “Hello again.”





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Here are the options for the next chapter. PM your votes to TAED.

How are Matteo and James fighting back against Sepheron?

• A. Leading the assault in the urban warfare, like… in that game… where you’re in some slums and then this guy just happens to live nearby in a helicopter?
  
  
• B. Launching an attack on Sepheron’s headquarters with a Special Forces unit, in the same manner… as… with the yellow digital clock… and the countdown noise… and the numbers.
  
  
• C. Entering Sepheron’s throne room/office by being inside a massive peace offering from the South Korean government… I think it might be a horse… but it could be a badger.
  

[Matteo ((Taed))]

Soldiers of Korea’s 707^th Special Mission Battalion shouldered Daewoo assault rifles and snapped to attention as James and Matteo entered their barracks, tailed by Lee Myung-Bak. The three men took their place at the head of the column and returned the salute briskly. The soldiers and the two time travelers were garbed in full tactical gear, with the addition of numerous strange, blinking objects attached to their kit. A cluster of thick, matte-black antennae protruded above their right shoulders, and tiny chrome earpieces on James and Matteo projected holographic screens over their left eyes.

“All right troops,” James began, “our target is Sepheron; a seventeen-year-old Korean-American Starcraft player from Alaska. Hey! Stop laughing, I’m being serious.” The soldiers quickly ceased their tittering and adopted grim, impassive faces.

James continued, “Sepheron is an Immortal One. He is almost impossible to kill, and possesses a supernatural ability that is thus far unknown to us. His associates have demonstrated telepathy and magical abilities in the past.

“As a precautionary measure, we have outfitted each of you with advanced sensors of every possible variety. Sonic, kinetic, electrical, thermal, radiation, full EM-spectrum, barometric, gravimetric, thaumaturgic, laser spectrometer, pH, RADAR, SONAR, doom-o-meters, killographs, murderscopes, and of course, anal rape probes.” Every single soldier in the room winced and clenched.

“These sensors,” James continued, “will collect every conceivable type of environmental data, and thereby warn you when Seph is about to use his ability. Yes, question?” James said, pointing at a soldier in the front row who had raised his hand.

“Yes sir. I was just wondering, sir. What exactly do we do once the sensors warn us, sir?”

Matteo and James traded a brief glance, “Just let us know. We’ll take care of it. We promise.”

“In unrelated news,” Matteo said, “the sensors you’re wearing,” (he over pronounced it sen-sors, although since all memory of Mr. Spock had been wiped from his memory, he was not sure why), “will also feed data back to us, asterisk, so that we can best devise how to combat Seph’s ability.”
* After the ability has already been used on you

“Did you just say ‘asterisk’?” the same soldier asked.

“Fall out, troops!” James shouted, and marched out the door. Matteo and Lee quickly caught up to him, followed by the soldiers, and the group walked towards the hanger.

“Mr. Rowland,” the president began, “I am still uncertain of this plan of yours. It seems, pardon me … utterly ridiculous.”

“That’s just because you don’t know Seph,” Matteo said, “Trust us, this plan is perfect.”

“I just don’t see how anyone could fall for such an obvious ploy.” The president persisted.

“You have to remember,” James explained, “Seph lives in a cultural bubble. He’s only erasing popular media at the moment, but there’s plenty of other stuff he is equally ignorant of. Military history, for one thing. Or idioms about certain nationalities and the suspect motivations behind their largesse. And while that all makes talking to him rather frustrating, it makes plotting against him the easiest thing in the world. He hasn’t heard of anything important before, so every overused tactic is back on the table.

“The oldest tricks in the book are usually the best ones,” James said, and the timely opening of the hanger doors at that exact moment—revealing the wooden construct within—dramatically punctuated his next words, “and there are very few tricks older than the Trojan Horse.”

“Badger,” Matteo interjected.

James deflated by at least three inches. “Matteo … Why? Why must you always-- … There was literally wind billowing around me when I was saying that. If my life had a sound track it would have needed John Williams himself to do that moment justice. For a second there, I was Indiana Jones. I was him. The very fact that I can remember who Indiana Jones is should prove that, since Seph deleted the movies from existence. I was so awesome that I was actually able to fill the void left after their deletion and transcend time to become Indiana Jones. I am holding a bull whip that didn’t exist a second ago because my very presence manifested it … and you had to go and point out that it isn’t a horse … WHY ISN’T IT A HORSE!?”

“Dude, badgers are terrifying motherfuckers. A honey badger would absolutely ruin a horse. I told them to build it this way instead. This is way more ‘us’. The only thing we have to worry about now is that a giant wooden badger will be too scary, and Seph will be afraid to bring it into his base.”

James sighed so hard that he peed a little. “Fine. Everyone into the Trojan Badger.”

*****************

The timbers of the great wooden beast groaned as it was wheeled into the scarred and masonry-strewn expanse of Seoul Plaza. Matteo heard the clink of chains being disengaged and then the muffled sound of the Humvees which had towed them driving away. The trap was set.

Inside the badger there was little room. Korean soldiers were packed as tightly as they could go. The badger was over two stories tall, but lacked any interior floor space, so the soldiers at the top dangled from crossbeams or stood on a lattice formed by their comrades below. Matteo and James were in the badger’s head; the former squeezed into a foetal ball and the latter pressed flat into the wooden siding by the press of bodies.

“I sure hope Seph gives us some time to limber up,” Matteo mumbled, “My legs are nothing but frelling pins and needles.”

“Did you just say frelling?” James asked, his voice hollow and distant on account of his mouth being pressed directly into a wooden plank, “What the hell is ‘frelling’ supposed to mean?”

“It’s a made up curse word on Farscape. One of about a billion of them.”

James thrashed briefly and impotently, like a fish out of water, trying without success to turn and face Matteo. “You can remember Farscape? How!? Wait, I can remember it too! Or that it exists, anyway. Do you think whatever Seph did is wearing off?”

Matteo shook his head, even though James couldn’t see it. “No, I don’t think so. Farscape is just obscure enough that Seph didn’t even know to delete it. I’m sure he’ll find it eventually, though, so I’m going to enjoy these drad memories while I still have them.”

Matteo was distracted by a sudden, insistent prodding in his vertebrae. He craned his neck around, trying to locate the source. “Who the hazmana is that?” he barked.

The disembodied voice of the same Korean soldier from the briefing drifted up from somewhere behind him. “Me, sir. I was just wondering, sir, if you really need this sword-firing crossbow, sir. It’s stabbing me quite badly, sir.”

“Grin and bear it, soldier,” moaned James’ reply, “that crossbow is the only thing that can take out an Immortal One.”

“A … crossbow that fires swords? How is that supposed to kill … anyone, sir? Other than me, sir, since, as I said, it is stabbing me more and more each moment.”

Matteo sneered and spat at the whiny soldier, though since he was facing the exact opposite direction, the phlegmy projectile struck someone else entirely. “What kind of a soldier are you? How can you gaze upon a crossbow with swords for arrows and not be overwhelmed with awe?”

“It just seems … oh god, my blood … somewhat impractical, sir.”

“That’s just because you don’t have a degree in killrithmetic,” said James, “or algebutchery. Allow me to explain.” He cleared his throat and dropped into fell professor mode.

“When discussing projectile weapons, one usually treats ammunition and firearm as a single entity. A gun is not complete when it isn’t loaded, just as bullets aren’t really weapons without a gun to fire them. It is also true, however, that the gun and the bullet possess individual qualities, which are mutually distinct, but which have an effect on the deadliness of the implement as a whole. A gun is deadlier when firing larger bullets, just as a bullet is deadlier when fired from a faster or more accurate gun. Adjusting the properties on either aspect of the equation has a cumulative effect on the sum.

“In the case of the sword-firing crossbow, this relationship can be exploited with alarming results. Usually, ammunition is treated wholly as a part of the Crossbow system, consisting of the firing apparatus (the crossbow) and the projectile (a crossbow bolt). When the ammunition is deadlier, it doesn’t increase the crossbow’s deadliness, it increases the Crossbow’s deadliness—namely, the entire capital-C Crossbow system. Likewise, a deadlier crossbow makes for a deadlier Crossbow. A sword, however, is its own distinct weapon. Unlike a bolt, it forms its own independent, yet interrelated system. So, when discussing the sword-firing crossbow, we are actually talking about two weapons systems: the Crossbow (consisting of only the crossbow) and the Sword (consisting of the sword).

“The sword is still a form of ammunition, however, and therefore subject to the interrelationship of deadliness between a crossbow and its projectile. But because crossbow and sword exist in separate, closed systems, deadliness is not conserved during the exchange. Normally, a deadlier bolt makes for a deadlier Crossbow, and a deadlier crossbow makes for a deadlier Crossbow, but the relationship ends there. In this case, a deadlier Sword makes for a deadlier Crossbow, and a deadlier Crossbow makes for a deadlier Sword. This creates a theoretically impossible Perpetual Deadliness loop. The relationship feeds off of itself, collapsing space and time in the moment before firing, until the weapon as a whole reaches a state of Infinite Murder.

“It is imperative that the projectile be a sword. It must be sufficiently removed from actual crossbow ammunition to be its own system (so, for example, a spear would not work, as it too closely resembles a bolt), but still maintain a close enough resemblance to be treated as ammunition (a Morningstar is too dissimilar from a bolt to form an entangled system).”

“And that is why,” Matteo concluded, “a sword-firing crossbow can kill someone who is otherwise immortal. And why you will now stop complaining about whether it is or isn’t stabbing you. Got it?”

“Gurgle”

“Good.”

There was a sudden juddering clang as something large and metallic clamped down on the outside of the badger, quickly followed by a moment of disorienting momentum as the badger was hauled up into free-fall.

“NOBODY VOMIT!” Matteo yelled, “You are not allowed to vomit in here! That would be the worst thing ever! The grappling claw has got us. We’re going in.”

*****************

Sepheron’s command center was a vast metal fortress, roughly equal in width and height, floating on columns of radioactive flame high above the city below. Drone aircraft buzzed about in constant patrol, piloted from safety by thousands of drafted Korean gamers. The terrifying bulk of the Trojan Badger was hauled up on an impossibly thin string of monomolecular cable, and deposited in an ancillary cargo bay to await Sepheron’s inspection.

The cargo bay was empty and unguarded, and after a few moments there were loud bangs as secret panels popped like champagne corks out of the badger’s sides and a torrent of heavily armed men came literally pouring out. James and Matteo quickly regained their feet and stretched in a popping of joints that sounded like machinegun fire. They quickly went about the task of organizing the groaning soldiers into ranks, and within a few minutes the strike force was ready to move.

Fire teams split up and advanced swiftly and quietly into the base. James and Matteo went alone, but were kept well advised of the other groups’ progress by the sophisticated detection and communication suites they wore.

The grey metal halls were mostly deserted, and the rooms they passed seemed to contain nothing other than vast stockpiles of green metal barrels. James and Matteo were unsure what substance the barrels contained, but by the sheer quantities present it was obvious that Seph constantly thought he needed more of it.

Suddenly a voice crackled over the radio channel. It was the curious soldier from before, somehow still alive despite the reported severity of his stabbing. What a baby.

“Sirs,” he said, “we’ve got movement on the scanners. Not sure what … wait … who--?” On the holographic displays James and Matteo wore, the many dials and graphs representing that soldier’s sensor data began to spike wildly into the red. “Oh god no, si--” he managed to get out, and then everything was screaming. All screaming all the time always.

James and Matteo desperately slapped at the radio controls, muting that fire team’s channel, and began to run towards the pinging beacon that represented their location. As they went, more and more channels gave way to panicked screams, and life signs indicators began to flatline like dominoes. Fuck you, that simile totally makes sense.

The duo readied their weapons and raced through a pair of massive steel blast doors that let in to a cavernous central chamber. They immediately skidded to a halt before the scene that confronted them.

“Oh yotz,” breathed Matteo.

There stood Sepheron, all terrible five feet two inches of him, flanked by a pair of colossal Zerg Ultralisks. Their scything tusks scored furrows in the metal floors as they restlessly shook massive heads from side to side, and great plumes of caustic steam shrieked from their nostrils with every breath. Between the Ultralisks and our heroic duo, the floor was packed with a small army of robotic soldiers, each one heavily armed and inexplicably branded with the Hyundai logo.

Matteo checked his holo readout and saw that every single member of their assault team was dead. They were on their own.

Sepheron gave a small smile and raised his hand. James and Matteo had seen enough dictators give the ‘kill the infidels’ command to know what came next. The pint-sized supervillain opened his mouth … and was interrupted by the sound of a heavy fist knocking against metal.

Everyone in the room turned to face the open door from which the sound had come. There was something moving in the shadows beyond. Sepheron squinted, trying to make out what it was. The shadow was humanoid, certainly, and there were two bundles at its feet. The shadow reached down with one hand and lifted the left bundle, tossing it several feet into the light of the room.

It was Drall, bound and gagged, squirming helplessly on the floor. The shadow reached down for the other bundle and casually lobbed an equally helpless Sensar to lie beside his ally.

Sepheron’s eyes bulged with rage. “Who dares lay hands upon the Immortal Ones!?” he shrieked, “I demand you reveal yourself!”

The shadow remained silent. There was a rustling sound and a sudden flare of light as it lit a cigarette. The shadow inhaled deeply, causing the smoking tip to glow a dull cherry red. The light was just enough to outline the shadow’s cigarette, but not enough to reveal its identity.

“What are you doing here!?” Sepheron roared, and the Ultralisks at his side growled dangerously.

The shadow exhaled a long plume of smoke, it ephemeral whorls highlighted by the dim, red light. “I’m here to settle an old debt,” it growled, and stepped into the light.



********************************



Here are the options for the next chapter. PM your votes to AGRO.

Who is the mysterious stranger?

• A. Zovo
  
  
• B. Indiana Jones (resurrected from the void by James’ badass display)
  
  
• C. George Lucas

[Matteo ((Taed))]

The Conclusion


Part One: He Isn't George Lucas


****************

The mysterious figure stepped out of the shadows, and light from the chamber’s massive fixtures suddenly reflected off of the gleaming silver robe he wore, obscuring him in a brief nimbus of white radiance. James and Matteo shielded their eyes from the sudden brilliance and then peered hesitantly from between slatted fingers to look upon his face. Their eyes grew immediately wide with wonder.

“It cannot be,” James whispered. “You fell.”

“P-Pete? …”

The figure cocked his head on one side and took on a faraway look. “Pete? Yes … That’s what they used to call me. Peter the Grey. That was my name.” His eyes snapped back into focus and he smiled at his two friends. “I am Peter the White.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” James burst out. “Nobody anywhere has ever called you ‘Peter the Grey’ before. That sounds like a pensioner’s nickname for his penis.”

“Are you quoting something?” Matteo asked. “Is this some sort of re-enactment? Stop quoting things that don’t exist anymore! It’s annoying.”

“I just spent the last decade Quantum Leaping my way across time and space!” Pete spat. “I’ll quote whatever I damn well please. In fact, I think I’ll quote Quantum Leap! Trapped in the past, Doctor Peter Crivellaro found himself leaping from life to life, putting things right that once went wrong and hoping, each time, that his next leap would be the leap home.”

“Yeah, nobody here knows what you’re talking about. Did you pick up your current ensemble on one of these ‘leaps’?” Matteo asked. “Seriously. A reflective silver robe? You look like David Bowie right after he gets out of the shower.”

“It’s like every bad sci-fi movie had an orgy and you’re the lamentable result.”

Pete crossed his arms. “It’s called class, you yokel. All the cool lifeforms in the year 49-22-D dress like this.”

“You look like Flash Gordon threw up on you. Hey! I still remember who Flash Gordon is! Score! Pete, I love you, but we only have fourteen hours to save the Earth!”

The trio rapidly devolved into a complicated, bickering feud; leaping quickly between disjointed, confusing trains of logic and dipping deep into reservoirs of the most baffling, inscrutable insults known to man (what’s a piss-kidney?). To an outside observer it no doubt looked like they were practically at each other’s throats. In reality, within the intricate system of macho etiquette and wordless understanding the Triumvirate had developed, they were engaging in a reunion as touching and meaningful as any heartfelt embrace. They were also saying cunt an awful lot, because it’s honestly just a fun word to say out loud.

They were moving into their second hour in a debate on exactly how big of an asshole James would have to be to accommodate the enormous dick that Pete obviously was when Sepheron finally couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Hellooooooo,” he cried, waving his arms about to try and attract someone’s attention. “Immortal villain trying to take over the world, here! Ultralisks? Giant robot army? Remember any of that?”

The trio finally fell silent and turned to face the forces arrayed before them. A still bound-and-gagged Sensar kicked Drall, who had drifted off to sleep sometime around Pete’s thesis on the existence, or lack thereof, of Matteo’s genitalia.

“Thank you,” Sepheron said, pleased that he once again had the spotlight. “Now where was I? Oh yes! Killing all of you and removing the last vestiges of popular culture from the timestream. I think I’ll start with this Flash Thompson.”

“Flash Gordon, dumbass. Flash Thompson bullied Spider-Man in high school.”

“Excellent. He will be deleted as well.”

“I don’t think so, Seph,” bellowed James. “Not if we have anything to say about it.”

Sepheron looked slowly around at his massed legions. “Seriously,” he said slowly. “Do you not see the robot army?”

“Oh we see it,” Pete whispered, the light glinting prismatically off his flamboyant silver dress. “But I think you’re forgetting that, when you budgeted for this little brawl, you were only expecting two super powered, secret agent, time travelers. With all three of us here,” Seph’s confidence began to falter. “I’m thinking you’re going to have a little problem.”

Pete whipped off his silver cloak, revealing a crisp, three-piece suit in the Victorian style underneath. He bundled the cloak into a ball with a flick of his wrist and tossed it out over the robotic army. With a slight puffing sound, the cloak unravelled into an ephemeral cloud of fine thread, which drifted down onto the motionless robots. Wherever the thread settled, metal and ceramic were cut cleanly through, until a large swath of the robots were reduced to nothing but confetti and pools of coolant, lying amidst the thicket of monofilament wire.

“David Bowie’s bathrobe indeed,” smirked Pete, and for the first time in many months, all three members of the Triumvirate unsheathed their pistols in perfect unison. Shaniqua shone like the sun. Sweet Baby Caroline glittered like diamonds. Queen Victoria shone like ... a different sun. There was a moment where the nauseous, hateful radiation that still emanated from Sepheron’s time-altering machine faded away, and the universe seemed to sigh in contentment, as though everything was going to be all right again.

Then the moment passed and some robots got seriously fucked up.

Seph’s army started forward, knives and saws and flamethrowers ratcheting into position. A number of the simple machines advanced across the field of wire, and promptly collapsed into its deadly folds as their legs were sheared away.

Seph loosed the chains on his straining Ultralisks, but already he could tell that they wouldn’t be enough. More than half the robots were already nothing more than scrap. He cast about desperately and spied the bodies of Sensar and Drall, still bound on the floor. Sepheron thrust out a hand and hissed: “ropes are made from string, therefore they are no stronger than string.” The cords which bound his companions broke easily away, and they scrambled to their feet.

Matteo saw this out of the corner of his eye. “What just happened? How did he do that?”

“Seph’s power,” Pete replied. “He can warp reality to suit his baffling, illogical worldview. It’s limited, but he has a machine that can amplify it. That’s how he’s erasing pop culture. When he’s done, only the things he believes in will exist.”

“So Jesus will be fine then,” James said. “Good. I have poker with him next Tuesday.”

In seamless unison, the trio broke off their mid-fight conversation and dodged a fireball, lobbed from the glowing sockets of Drall’s mother’s skull. More blast of mystic energy soon followed, as Sensar possessed the minds of the Ultralisks, granting the fearsome beasts his *cough* prodigious *cough* intellect.

“We need to regroup,” Matteo said. “We can’t take them all at once.” The three men hacked and dodged their way out of a cluster of robots and made for one of the exit doors, covering their retreat with pistol fire. The passed out of the chamber and into a hallway, but the Ultralisks were in hot pursuit.

Pete tugged on his cravat and the whole suit peeled away, revealing Roman Legionnaire’s armour underneath. He chucked the bundled rags down the hall and they evaporated into a fine mist, which promptly burst into a wall of flame. The trio had to shield their eyes from the sudden and intense heat.

“How many layers are you wearing!?” Matteo yelled.

“And do they all explode!?” said James.

“That will buy us some time,” Pete said, ignoring them, and proceeding deeper into the labyrinth of Seph’s floating fortress. The trio traipsed through endless metal corridors, the sounds of pursuit growing and fading all around them.

“So Pete,” James said, as they swept a room for hostiles. “What gives? How are you here and where have you been?”

“I told you,” Pete replied. “I’ve been outside normal time, bouncing around all over the place. Sensar’s machine didn’t kill me, it transported me. I’ve spent this whole time trying to get back.”

“Is that why you remember everything Seph’s deleted?” Matteo asked.

“I guess. The damage he’s doing to the timeline is radiating outwards, but I wasn’t technically part of the timeline when he started. The deletion waves just pass right over me. But I was still able to follow them back to the origin point and find my way home.”

“Pete!” James exclaimed. If you’re still carrying around a remnant of the unaltered timeline--”

“We can use you to reboot history!” Matteo interjected. “Space Warsaw will be reborn! ... Which is a good thing, apparently.”

“We just need to find Seph’s power-amplification machine,” Pete said. “Then we can overlay my temporal pattern on the artificial one he’s imposing.” James shoved open a door and the Triumvirate entered yet another massive chamber. This one happened to contain Sepheron’s power-amplification machine.

“Well that was convenient.”

****************


End of Part One

[Matteo ((Taed))]

The Conclusion


Part Two: The Die Hard Ranger


****************

A sudden rattling from a nearby grate caused all three men to pivot about and point their handguns. The cover popped off and a Korean soldier came tumbling out. He was badly injured, with numerous burns and broken bones, as well as a deep gash in his side the approximate size of a sword-shaped crossbow bol--

“You’re still alive!?” Matteo exclaimed.

“What happened to ‘oh no, I’m bleeding to death from this crossbow-related injury,’ huh? Such a baby,” James shook his head in disgust.

The chagrined soldier attempted to salute, but his dislocated right arm was little more than a sack of meat at this point, and simply would not flop into the correct position. After the most pathetic thirty seconds in history it occurred to him to use his left arm, and he finally came shakily to attention.

“Sirs--?” was all he managed to say before an Ultralisk dropped from above and ripped his torso away in its teeth.

“Well, he’s definitely dead now,” said Matteo.

“Yep,” said James, and they all dove to one side to avoid the second Ultralisk, which was dropping towards them. Robot soldiers descended as well, jetpacks hissing shrilly, and a moment later the Second Triumvirate, reunited at last, appeared as well.

Our trio sized up their situation in full. The room was large--large enough to hold a small robot army and two angry Ultralisks (which, incidentally, is a standard unit of measurement in at least three alien cultures)--and was roughly pentagonal in shape. At the centre was The Machine, a column of convoluted mechanisms rising the full seven stories from floor to ceiling. Numerous catwalks radiated outward from The Machine, connecting it to the perimeter floors. Circular platforms ballooned off the catwalks seemingly at random, and it was onto these that most of the robots had gathered. Both Triumvirates stood on the middle level, meaning it was a full thirty feet down to solid ground. On this level, halfway up its length, the walls of The Machine became a glass tube filled with crackling purple lightning. Its light illuminated the chamber in violent, pulsing strobes. The Second Triumvirate stood across a catwalk from our heroes, directly in front of The Machine’s core.

“You arrogant fools,” said Sepheron. “You think just because you were here first that you’re better than us? Second Triumvirate, First Triumvirate, whatever! We’re the Triumvirate with powers! We’re the ones who are immortal! We! ... We are the True Triumvirate. And when my Machine’s cycle is complete, we will be the only Triumvirate.”

“We will erase you,” said Sensar.

“Like the chiens sans valeur you are,” said Drall.

“Don’t speak French, it doesn’t sound as cool as you think it does.”

“Sorry,”

“And there’s nothing you can do to stop us,” Sepheron continued. “You fought us in Montreal, and we’re still here. You fought us in England, and we’re still here. You keep fighting us, and we always, always survive! We are the Immortal Ones! We cannot be ki--“

James unlimbered the Crossbow in one fluid motion and drew back its thick string. He slapped a straight-bladed, three-foot-long sword into its oversized groove, sighted down the length and fired. The sword shot out almost faster than the eye could follow, and passed clean through Sensar’s head. And when I say ‘clean,’ I simply mean in the sense that the sword made it all the way through without trouble. It was not clean in the sense that his head exploded, like a melon hit with a sledgehammer. His headless body tumbled from the platform and, when struck by a stray bolt of energy from the machine, promptly caught fire and disintegrated.

Drall and Sepheron just stared for a moment, their eyes very wide. Then Drall shouted, “son of a bitch!” and ran from the room. Sepheron spun about, wild-eyed. It was clear that he was terrified, but his pride demanded he defend his claims until the bitter end. Thinking quickly, he pointed at the dreaded Crossbow.

“Wood floats,” he croaked, and the weapon suddenly lifted upwards out of James’ hands. It went straight up for twenty feet and then stopped, bobbing against the underside of a sixth floor catwalk where it had stuck. The groups faced each other, now on equal ground. Sepheron with his immortality, and his reality warping powers, and his robot army, and his Ultralisks on one side. The Triumvirate, with three pistols, a few spare swords, and an exploding Roman breastplate--which Pete tore off and chucked at the robots, revealing tactical military gear identical to his two companions underneath--on the other.

The breastplate sailed through the air in slow motion and, from somewhere, as it always does in situations such as these, Lux Aeterna began to play.

“Attaaaaaaack!” Sepheron shrieked, just as the breastplate detonated, sending mechanical limbs flying in every direction. The robots fired, the Ultralisks charged, the three guns came out. Shit got real.

James charged towards the Ultralisks, firing as he went. He slid underneath the first one, putting several rounds into its underbelly, then came to his feet in one smooth motion and ran up the scything tusk of the second beast, landing on its back. Matteo climbed a narrow stairway to the next level, heading towards the Crossbow. He punched several robots out of his way as he went, then realized that metal is hard and decided to shoot them instead.

Pete went at a dead sprint across the catwalk, straight towards Seph. He catapulted over the impeding robots and landed next to the Immortal One. From a clip on his belt he drew out a short length of silvery metal and, by pressing a switch on its side, extended a beam of glowing blue energy from its tip. Sepheron reached within the folds of his robe (yeah, Seph wears a robe now. Like Ming the Merciless. Deal with it) and withdrew a similar weapon, this one glowing bright red.

“At last,” he said with a fiendish smile. “I always knew it would come to this. Now we will do battle with laser sabers.”

“Seriously!?” Pete shouted. “I ... God damn it, are you freaking kidding me? They’re called lightsabers, you have to know that. Everybody knows that.”

“Oh ho Pete, Pete, Pete,” said Seph, chuckling and shaking his head. “Don’t you see? ‘Laser’ and ‘saber’ rhyme. Clearly that makes it the better name.”

“I am going to murder you to death.”

Pete leapt forward and the two energy blades crashed together with a flash of light and a trademark-infringing sound. The two men went back and forth, trading blow for blow, silhouetted in the harsh light of the Machine. Whenever a robot soldier came too close it was instantly shredded into red-hot metal fragments by the whirling blades.

Matteo reached the sixth level and started across the appropriate catwalk. A swarm of robots alighted in front of him, but he hardly slowed down. He slipped into their ranks and the machines began to blow each other apart in their effort to hit him. With a wrench he tore a metal arm from its socket and used it to club the remaining robots into oblivion, then lay down flat on his belly to try and reach the Crossbow on the catwalk’s underside, using the robot arm like one of those grabber devices they give to senior citizens.

James balanced precariously on the Ultralisk’s head and fired downwards into its braincase. An unusually thick skull kept the creature alive, but it shrieked in pain and bucked wildly. James used the momentum of its thrashing to propel himself into the air, straight into the path of the second Ultralisk, which was in mid-leap towards him. James placed an open hand on the lip just above the creature’s top row of gleaming teeth and used it as a brace to pivot himself around its gaping jaws, leaving two grenades in his place. James somersaulted down the Ultralisk’s back--still in mid-air, remember--and leapt free just as the grenades detonated it from the inside.

Pete parried Sepheron’s attack and positioned himself for a killing stroke, but had to break off to deflect several laser blasts from a nearby robot. Seph recovered and pressed his advantage, stalemating them once again. All of a sudden, the pitch of The Machine’s incessant droning shifted, and Seph’s face lit up with a fiendish grin.

“This is it!” he cried. “The final cycle! My Machine’s energy will race outward and wipe all of you from existence, along with everything else I hate. The Second Triumvirate will be reborn, and I will reign supreme for all--”

Seph broke off his monologue when he spied Matteo, two floors above him, dangling most of the way off the catwalk. He was tugging inexpertly at the protruding servos of the robot arm, and the jerkily grasping fingers were millimeters away from getting a grip on the Crossbow. In a panic, Seph moved his hand in a chopping gesture and cancelled the hold his powers had on the Crossbow’s wood. The weapon, no longer buoyant, dropped away before Matteo could reach it. Without hesitating, Matteo slid the rest of the way off the catwalk and fell after the plummeting Crossbow.

James turned away from the second Ultralisk--which he had just finished blinding with a bullet in each eye--and aimed at a robot hovering below Matteo and to his right. James fired the last shot in his clip, and the bullet tore through the mounting brackets of the robot’s jetpack, sending the small thruster cartwheeling up into Matteo’s grasp. He flipped the nozzle about and fired it upwards, accelerating his descent and snatching up the Crossbow moments before it smashed against the ground. Matteo went tumbling through the air, Crossbow in hand, trying to arrest his forward momentum.

“Nooo!” Sepheron shrieked, and raised his hand to point at Matteo. The air around his fingers rippled wildly as a burst of reality-warping energy prepared to shoot forth. Pete leapt forward, lightsaber raised, and slashed the hand cleanly away at the wrist. Sepheron turned to face Pete just as Matteo stabilized his trajectory and looped the jetpack around one shoulder, leaving both hands free.

“Matteo!” Pete called, and tossed his lighsaber through the air towards his friend. Seph stabbed, and Pete twisted away, but the red energy blade still pierced his left side. Pete’s lightsaber tumbled through the air (the blade had withdrawn the moment it left his hand) and Matteo caught it neatly in mid-flight.

He dropped the lightsaber (!!!) into the Crossbow’s waiting groove, activated the blade and locked it into the on position, then aimed at Sepheron, who was about to deliver a killing blow to Pete.

Matteo reached down--deep, deep, down--into forgotten neural pathways calcified into permanence by bursts of temporal radiation. Synapses crusted over with a shielding crystal shell of kronon particles yielded scraps of untainted memories. And in that stubborn, unchangeable lobe, he found a fragment of a fragment left over from the greatest action movie ever made. And Matteo smiled, because he was positive that he had found the perfect quote to deliver before he fired.

"Hey Seph," he said, Crossbow at the ready.

"Huh?" Seph replied, turning his head.

"Hi ho Silver, motherfucker."

Matteo fired the lightsaber (!!!) from the Crossbow and it flew straight and true towards its target. Sepheron began to twist away, but not fast enough, so that when the lightsaber-crossbow-bolt struck it hit him dead center in the chest. The momentum of the blow took him off his feet and smashed him backwards, through the glass wall of The Machine’s core.

Violet lightning tore through Seph’s body, merging with the electrical impulses of his nervous system. His powers activated at full blast, charging The Machine to unprecedented energy levels. Bolts of lightning tore out at random and painful vibrations wracked the air.

“Pete!” James shouted. “Do it!”

Pete came to his feet, clutching the cauterized wound in his side, and stumbled to a control panel in front of The Machine. A fierce wind of charged particles poured out of the holes in The Machine’s skin, buffeting him backwards. With a last surge of strength he leapt forward and grasped two metal handles that extended from the panel’s surface. The wind lifted him off his feet, but he held grimly on, flapping in the radioactive breeze. Caterpillars of energy crawled up the handles and into Pete’s hands, then back down out of him into the control surface, carrying with them the imprint of the unaltered timeline.

The Machine’s vibrations rose outside the audible spectrum, then crashed down into a subsonic boom as a wave of force blossomed out of it. The wave raced across the universe and brought change as it went. Books and DVDs reappeared on living room shelves. Film projectors burst to vivid life. Music players sang a billion choruses. The Triumvirate crawled out from the various piles of wreckage in which they were buried and basked in the feeling of rightness that had returned to the universe.

“Star Wars!” Matteo shouted. “It’s Star Wars! Not Space Warsaw! That’s funny how I got it messed up. Say,” he said. “Now that I think about it, with the catwalks and the glowing purple pillars, this room looks an awful lot like that final lightsaber battle in The Phantom Mena--”

The base blew up.

*****************

Down on the ground, South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak was standing with a group of aides and soldiers, staring up at Sepheron’s floating fortress. They had just had their knowledge of popular culture restored to them, and were joyous as a result. When the base exploded into a many-ringed fireball their spirits soared even higher. All except for the President, who shed a single, sombre tear for the brave men who had been inside the base at the moment of its destruction.

His period of mourning was unexpectedly ruined when a flaming, three-story-high effigy of a wooden badger smashed down out of the sky directly in front of him. Nobody has ever screamed as loudly as someone who has faced the meteoric arrival of a giant, angry badger, which is also on fire. A panel popped out in the badger’s belly and three men came sauntering casually out, brushing a few stray motes of pale ash from their matte-black tactical gear.

“How? ...” was all President Lee Myung-Bak was able to say as the three men spread out in front of him.

“Best not to ask, old boy,” said James. “We usually don’t.”

“Your country is safe, Mr. President,” said Pete.

“Expect our bill in the mail,” said Matteo, and the three men walked casually off. They got about a hundred yards away when a heavily modified cargo plane touched down on the empty road in front of them. They climbed up the loading ramp in the back, waved once, and then disappeared inside. The plane took off a moment later, and was quickly lost from sight.

“Mr. President,” said one of the young Korean soldiers, in a tone of awed wonder. “Who were those men?”

“Private,” Lee Myung-Bak replied. “... I have no fucking idea.”

*****************


Credits roll to “Echoes” by The Rapture: www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_uhnCvEse0&feature=fvwrel

Written, Directed, and Produced by Matteo DiGiovanni, James Rowland, and Peter Crivellero


Starring (in order of appearance)

Matteo Digiovanni as The Mad Savant

James Rowland as The Fiery Gentleman

Peter Crivellero as The Dark Wanderer

Brad Pitt as Future-Matteo

An Anonymous Canadian as Drall

Helen Mirren as Drall’s Mother

Marcel Marceau as The Ur-Mime, Master of Silent Damnation

Michael Clarke Duncan as Zovo

Nicholas Sarkozy as Judge Louis Girard

Louise Bourgoin as Adele Besson

Gary Oldman as Agent Cardholder

Bruce Willis as Agent Dough

Ryan Reynolds as Doppelganger Matteo

Carrot Top as Doppelganger James

Leonardo DiCaprio as Agent Pearson

An Impoverished Liberal Arts Student as Sensar Prospero

Morgan Freeman as The Voice of God-Sensar

Ralph Fiennes as Steve

David Mitchell as Himself

Tom Cruise as Himself

Osama bin Laden as Captain Muhammad Jamal Hussein

Kang-ho Song as President Lee Myung-Bak

Cleverbot as Sepheron

Jackie Chan as Whiny Korean Soldier

Ian McKellen as Peter the White


Special Thanks to the readers of Blacklisted in Hungary

Special Thanks to everyone who voted


Fade to black


*****************


Fade in

On a wintry plane in Antarctica, an ice-capped mesa rises sharply out of the frigid earth. On its flat, glassy cliff-face, several transparent bubbles glow with a warm yellow light. Inside there is a base, carved out of the icy rock. Tunnels meander over and under one another for miles, but the chill air is utterly silently.

The largest of the glass bubbles fronts a large chamber. A single high-backed, black leather chair sits in the middle of the otherwise empty floor. Outside a blizzard roars in the night, and in here the temperature is not much warmer. The cold feels wrong, somehow, to the man in the chair. Flat and ... southern. An alien, uncultured cold.

A sudden susurrus breaks the silence. Frantic whispers barely audible. Slowly the whispers grow more frequent, more insistent, and raise in volume until the words can just barely be made out.

“It’s all right, dear,” croaks a frail old voice. “Everything is going to be all right.”

“It's not fair,” snarls a second voice. “They always ruin everything. They always take everything away from us.”

“You still have me, don’t you? They can never take me away.”

“Yes ... I guess that’s true ... Thank you, mother. You always know just what to say to make me feel better.”

The chair swivels around. The man seated in it has shaved his head. He holds a bleached human skull in his lap and strokes it like a prized cat. His lips barely move as the querulous woman’s voice emanates from the skull.

“That’s good, dear, but I’m not done yet. Nobody hurts my little boy and gets away with it.

“Nobody.”

The End?

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