Battlerman swung on his Battlerang's rope over the alleyways of Southtown, towards the sounds of a shootout. His clogged heart beat hard in his chest, and were he an older man, he surely would have had a heart attack. But putting on the old gear and taking to the rooftops again had rejuvenated him. He was a man of thirty -- of twenty -- again. He was reborn.
It was a simple matter of tracking the getaway car; the police had done half the work for him. It had led the cops on a wild chase, but the driver had been able to fool most of the pursuing cops, except for one single police cruiser, which had rammed the getaway car, pinning it right next to an alleyway. Battlerman had just arrived there moments after this happened. He swooped down into an alleyway where a pair of police officers was pursuing a man wearing bandages all over his face.
"Whoah--is that Battlerman?" asked the shorter, fatter cop. "He's back!"
"It doesn't matter!" said the tall, thin cop. "If he gets in our way I'll cap him too!"
Battlerman turned to face the cops and fixed them with a steely gaze. "This man is MINE!"
The shorter cop put a hand on the taller one's shoulder. "You heard the man, Bert."
Battlerman rushed into the darkness after the bandaged bandit. Sounds of a struggle, including the odd "BIFF!" and "WHAMMO!" came from around the corner.
"I'm going in!" said Bert. "I don't care who he is, Ernie, this is our collar! Besides, Battlerman is just a washed-up old fatso."
"Ha! I used to be just like you," said Ernie. "Dumb rookie the first time I met Battlerman."
"What the hell are you talking about?" said Bert. "You've been on the force for one week longer than I have!"
Someone squealed like a stuck pig in the alleyway, followed by the cry of "Okay! Okay! I give! I'll tell you what you want!"
Ernie grinned. "He's still got it!"
The squealer continued. "Allright! Allright, dammit! The secret ingredient to Battlerpie is rum! Rum!"
Another voice laughed. "Okay, it's a deal, then." A noise of ripping cloth. "I'm really not Turn-Face. Delita just used me as a distraction. He was in an ambulance when I took off. The clue he told me to give you was 'The greatest number of double-crosses in a single day.'"
A man walked out of the alleyway, holding the remains of bandages in his hands. "Hello, officers!" he said. "You'd better get in there, there's a dangerous vigilante back there!"
"Good enough for me!" said Bert. He charged into the alley, firing his gun.
Ernie watched the man holding bandages get into the police car, steal the shotgun, hotwire the car and take off with the siren blaring.
"Hey...wait a minute..."
[---]
"There you go, one emergency zoning permit," said Mayor Rodriguez, passing the paper to the Japanese man in a business suit across the desk. "So what business are you fellows in, anyway?"
"Er, toy factory," said the Japanese man, Saburo Nisikoyama. "Superhero toys!"
"Okay," said Rodriguez. His phone started ringing and he picked it up. "What's that? A band of supervillains? City in danger? All right! I get to use the Skullo-Signal!" He turned to a bust of John Malkovich, flipped it over and began pressing the hidden button.
A buzzing noise came from Saburo's pocket. He and the other men in suits glanced at each other uncomfortably. "I think we should go now, " he said.
"No, wait! Stay and meet the superheroes!" said the mayor, punching the Skullo-Signal again. "I hear Skullomania's teamed up with a bunch of superheroes from the 60s, it'll be great!" He continued jabbing the button. "Come on, what's wrong with this thing? He's usually here by now."
The Latino man's hands ignited. "AAAAIIIIEE! Spontaneous combustion!" he yelled. He ran out the door waving his arms around like torches.
"Ah, yes, and my human condition of gigantism requires that I receive my medication, which is at home," said the man with the enlarged head. He ran out the door as well.
"And I'm tired of living!" said Saburo. He ran through the window of the Mayor's high-rise office and fell screaming to his death below.
An instant later Skullomania crashed into the office through a different window. Freedom Force rushed into the office from the doorway to join him.
"Skullomania! Mentor! Diablo! Minute Man! Thank goodness you've arrived!" said the mayor. "We have a terrible situation. I've just received an anonymous tip that a vicious gang of jewel thieves, the Schroedingers, are stealing the Chaos Emerald from the Southtown Natural History Museum."
"The fiends!" cried Skullomania.
"The Schroedingers have four members. Their leader, Maya Schroedinger, a ruthless young woman with lots of guns and the ability to turn into fictional characters! Her little brother Alfred, the demolitions expert! Shady, a flying cat that breaths fire! And finally, an afroed, sword-wielding butler, Todd, aka 'Black Fenrir!'"
"We shall not let you down, Mayor!" said Mentor. "Your precious compacted, cut and buffed Earth minerals shall be safe from theft!"
"To the Freedom Flyer!" cried Minute Man. Freedom Force hustled out of the office.
"See you guys when I respawn there!" said Skullo. He took a flying leap through yet another closed window.
Rodriguez glanced out of his shattered office window at the splattered Skullomania and the splattered remains of his civilian alter ego. He wondered if there was a market for selling Skullomania organs.
[---]
The man wearing many, many bandages over his face held the trembling nurse at swordpoint. He was yelling into a camera he had set up to contact the media.
"I want five million dollars in unmarked bills delivered to the specified location within thirty minutes!" he yelled. "If my demands are not met, not only will this hostage die, but I guarantee one of the key structural points of your commercial infrastructure will be destroyed beyond repair! I've got lots of explosives, and they WILL go off. That's not a promise. It's a fact!"
"I knew you'd be here, Delita," came a voice. Turn-Face whirled around.
"Battlerman!" he exclaimed. "So, you figured it out, did you? My target was the freight-train crossroads. Hundreds of double-crosses all over the ground and the very heart of the shipping industry! What better place, eh?" He laughed hoarsely.
"I can't let you do it," said Battlerman, drawing a Battlerrang from his utility belt.
"Bring it on, Battly!" said Turn-Face, whirling his sword in a circle.
[---]
"Oh, Trowa!"
"Oh, Quatre!"
"Oh, Roll!"
"Oh, Rock!"
"Oh, Aunt Jemima!"
"Oh, Betty Crocker!"
"Oh, Orville Redenbacher!"
"Oh, my God," said Megaman X. "I can't believe I just photographed that, touched it up in Photoshop, e-mailed it to my worst enemy and had him publish it in Orgy Magazine!"
[---]
The bandaged man collapsed on the ground. "I can't...can't believe it. My beautiful plans...I was a good sport, wasn't I, Battly?" He ripped the bandages from his face, revealing his perfect new nose. "I kept all my promises for so long, smiled when they asked me to, acted like a good boy. It was so hard to fool them all, but at least I got a free nose job out of it! Look at me! LOOK AT ME!"
Battlerman closed his eyes. In his mind's eye, he imagined Delita, not as he was on the outside, but as he appeared on the inside.
"I see…a reflection, Delita. A giant rodeo clown, with a pork sausage in one hand and a copy of the Wall Street Journal in the other."
Turn-Face just stared at Battlerman.
Battlerman shook his head and opened his eyes. "I'm going to have to take you in, Delita," he said.
"Better make it a fast one, Battly," said Turn-Face. "After all, the explosives are about to go off."
"What!?" Battlerman swirled his rotund torso around. "But I thought you said--"
"I said they WILL go off," sneered the broken supervillain. "Oops. Sorry. Did I betray your expectations?"
[---]
Deep in the Southtown Sanitarium for the Super-Insane, the Smoker sat and stared listlessly at the television set. Aside from repeatedly sparking the flint on the lighter his left hand, he was completely motionless, his eyes blank and uncomprehending.
Simon Belmont appeared on the TV in the common room for another Belmont Family News Factor.
"This evening, Battlerman shocked the world by pulling a Michael Jordan and coming out of retirement barely a week after he declared he'd hang up his cape for good," said Belmont. "He engaged his longtime foe and once friend, Turn-Face, bare-knuckled in a minefield--hey, just like Solid Snake and Grey Fox! Now that was a real fight! -- shortly before setting off all the explosives and destroying the train yards, in an unsurprising example of Battlerman competence. Turn-Face and his hostage were rescued dramatically in the nick of time."
The Smoker stopped sparking his lighter. He continued to stare at the TV, but his lips twitched. Slowly, they began to form a word.
"Bbbbbbbb..."
"Countless property damage has occurred, sparking hot pro- and anti-Battlerman debates on tons of talk shows. Really, people," said Simon, shaking his head in disgust. "Don't you have anything better to do with your lives?"
"Bbbbbbaaaaaatllleeerrr..." muttered the Smoker. A smile reached his lips. He raised the cigarette in his right hand to his lips and lit it with the lighter in his left. He puffed on the cigarette and blew out a stream of smoke. "Battlerman. My dear Battlerman."
He laughed, loud and strong. Then he coughed for five full minutes.
[---]
"Hold it right there, Schroedingers!" commanded Skullomania, standing authoritatively at the blast area where the doors to the museum used to be. Freedom Force posed photographically at his sides. "Put back that emerald and submit to the authorities!"
"HA! Maya Schroedinger never gives up!" yelled the leather-bodiced gunslinger girl. "Schroedinger Family, let 'em have it!"
The two groups charged each other and commenced to rumble most awesomely.
Maya drew an improbably large Vulcan cannon out from somewhere underneath her skirt and fired a torrent of bullets at the patriotic Minute Man, who twirled his staff to deflect the shots.
Skullomania rushed Todd, only to be sliced in half by the butler's cane sword.
Mentor sent the wimpy kid Alfred into a berserker rage with his mind, making him forget about tossing his Molotov cocktails and pounding at the alien with his puny fists.
A blast of fire from El Diablo set Todd's afro ablaze. Shady retaliated by breathing some fire of his own onto Mentor, but being bald, it didn't have quite the same effect on him.
A sharp track whistle blew. "HALT!" The two struggling teams briefly paused at the imperious command. A man dressed in ornate medieval armor appeared out of thin air, riding an armored, oversized yellow bird of some sort. He held up one hand in the universal "stop" gesture.
"ILLEGAL USE OF FIRE IN THIS ENGAGEMENT," he said. "YELLOW CARDS TO OFFENDERS. REPEAT OFFENCE WILL RESULT IN IMMEDIATE IMPRISONMENT."
Everyone else replied with a collective, "Huh?"
"IT IS THE NEW SPECIAL LAW HANDED DOWN BY THE MASTER OF THE CITY. NO FIRE TO BE USED IN FIGHTS TODAY."
Mentor put his hands to his huge temples. "I detect no life force behind this being's appearance. Who is this 'Master of the City,' if not the mayor?"
"KYO KUSANAGI."
The winged, masked cat-thing, Shady, snorted. "We're already criminals. Why should I give a crap?" He blew a fireball at the armored rider. The fireball passed right through the rider as though he was a ghost.
"RED CARD!"
Shady's eyes bugged out. White translucent chains shot out of the ground underneath him, ensnaring the little cat-thing's body. Still struggling against them, he was pulled into a portal in the ground and vanished with a pop.
"Holy crap!" said the respawned Skullomania. "I guess we'd better not use fire."
"No fire?" whimpered El Diablo. "B-b-but that's my only superpower! I even need fire to fly around! What am I going to defeat them with, my stunning Latin charm?" The others shrugged impotently at him. "Well, thanks a lot, guys! I'm going to a bar." He stormed off in a huff.
"Three to three," said Maya. "Now, where were we? Oh, that's right!" She reached under her skirt and drew out a bazooka.
[---]
Kyo Kusanagi giggled evilly to himself in his high-rise office. He stared into the mirror he had set up on the desk and peered at his perceived reflection of Blackheart.
"Using the Judge was a great idea! I can't believe you never told me about him before!"
"Of course," said Blackheart, "his anti-fire rule is only in effect one day of the week. But I believe he will be most useful in tightening our grip on the city."
"And we're going to get even more powerful as time passes!" said Kyo. He stroked his hair, which had turned black and was beginning to get rather spiky. "This calls for celebration." He buzzed the intercom. "Send in a Kyo clone!"
Kyo crossed his office to the minibar and poured himself some vodka as a clone entered the office timorously.
"Y-y-y-you wanted to see me, sir?"
"Yes," said Kyo. "We're going to play a little game. You use the letter E, I make your life a universe of pain. Now, tell me, why shouldn't I fire you?"
Sweat dripped down the clone's face. "I...um...I...am...a good work-man..."
Kyo clapped his free hand against his thigh. "Very good! Very good! Relax, have a drink."
The clone laughed nervously along with Kyo. "So, you were joking--"
Kyo threw his drink in the clone's face. "WHAT DID I TELL YOU!?" he shrieked. He shot a spark out of his finger at the clone, turning him into a howling silhouette in a column of fire.
Deep inside, the original Kyo Kusanagi shuddered at the evil monster he had become. But that was just a tiny voice drowned out by the laugh of the most powerful man in Southtown.
[---]
"He kills mosquitoes by eating a gallon of Tabasco sauce and letting them sting him!"
"He created Alf in the 80's!"
"And New Wave!"
"He stepped on a pile of coal once and turned it to diamonds!"
"He ate a quarter and it came out two dimes and a nickel!"
"He hundred-hand-slapped a car to pieces, and then put it back together just by stomping on the ground!"
"TO E. HONDA!"
El Diablo wandered into the bar. "Hey, you guys talking about E. Honda? Seven feet tall, one thousand pounds?"
"You bet we are!"
"I was there when he was BORN, jefe!" said El Diablo. "The earth split apart, but his personal gravity pulled it back together again!"
"Buy that man a drink!"
"TO E. HONDA!"
[---]
"Ha ha! Justice triumphs again!" said Skullomania, gazing into the Chaos Emerald. He had one foot on the back of the fallen Maya, and Mentor and Minute Man were tying up the other two jewel thieves. He squinted his eye as he saw his reflection in the gem move. It was walking towards him. Then he realized he wasn't looking at a reflection at all, but rather through the gem. He put it away less than a second before a fist exploded through his skull.
Mentor and Minute Man jumped up from their knot-tying to face this new adversary. He looked just like Skullomania, only taller, more muscular and scarier. The doppelganger shook the bits of Skullo-brain from his hand and crossed his arms over his chest.
"Who are you?" demanded Minute Man.
"Yeah!" added Skullomania, running into the building.
"I am Shadowgeist," said the man. "If the name means nothing to you, know that it is your worst nightmare!"
"FOR FREEDOM!" catchphrased Minute Man, swinging his eagle staff. Shadowgeist caught the staff in one hand, kicked out the hero's feet from under him and threw the Captain America ripoff into a support column, cracking it. The ceiling over Minute Man collapsed, burying him in a pile of rubble.
"SUNS OF SHAKAR!" intoned Mentor. He levitated off the ground, gathering mental strength for his psychic blast. Too late, he realized that he had already been kicked out the hole in the wall and was sailing over the city.
Shadowgeist cracked his knuckles and turned towards Skullomania. "Now for you."
"Hey, you look just like me!" Tears ran down the hero's face. "I've got my very own arch nemesis look-alike! I truly am a superhero this day!"
Shadowgeist seized Skullomania by the throat and lifted him off the ground. He squeezed just enough to make him gasp and claw helplessly at the villain's hand.
"They say you're unkillable now, Skullomania," he breathed. "I think that's wrong." He threw Skullomania to the ground, still holding him by the neck. Using one foot to pin his lower body to the floor, he jerked sideways, snapping Skullomania's neck.
"Nope. That's entirely wrong," he said. "If anything, you're even more killable than you ever were. Most people can only die once."
Skullomania appeared again, a few feet away. "You'll never win! As long as you keep killing me, I'll keep coming back!"
A deep laugh bubbled up from within Shadowgeist. "Oh, I'm not going to even try to kill you permanently," he said. "No. I'm just going to make you feel the mind-shattering agony of being killed ten thousand times in seventeen minutes. Starting...now!"
Skullomania gulped.
[---]
"Now!" cried Quan Chi. "Now is the time for Phase 2 of Plan C. While Shadowgeist has Skullomania distracted, we can make our move!"
"Ummmmm," said Moloch. "What move?"
"You fool! I already explained Phase 2 to you!" Quan Chi waved his arms around angrily.
"No you didn't!" said Drahmin.
"Yes, I did!"
"No, you didn't! You just mumbled!"
"SHUT UP!" Quan Chi paced, fuming. "Now we have to call off Shadowgeist and tell him to start again some other time, since you DOLTS obviously can't remember something as stimple as a three-step plan."
"But you no have plan." said Moloch.
"SHUT UP!"
[---]
Skullomania dizzily swayed back and forth over the carnage that had once been the Natural History Museum. Hundreds of Skullo-corpses littered the ground, some merely killed with twisted necks or torn-out hearts, but most destroyed in viciously creative ways. Some had been clubbed to death with ripped-off Skullo arms, others had choked with dismembered Skullo feet stuffed down their throats, and a few had had entire other Skullomanias thrown completely through their bodies.
Shadowgeist plunged his fist straight through the living Skullomania's head. Skullomania respawned immediately behind his last body, but without missing a beat, Shadowgeist grabbed him by the throat and yanked him through the hole in the previous corpse. He impaled the second Skullomania with a kick and ripped the top half of his torso (still attached to his foot) off. Skullo respawned again and Shadowgeist kicked the torso off his leg into the new Skullomania with enough force to make the corpse's skull plunge straight into his ribcage.
Skullomania appeared several feet away, seemingly disoriented more and more with each death he sustained. Shadowgeist took a step towards him with intent to continue the one-man slaughter, but then he paused.
"What?" he said, seemingly to the air. "Stop? Right now, when I'm having fun?" A pause. "Oh, very well, then..." He backed away from Skullomania, a deep laugh rumbling from within him. "It's your lucky day. I only managed to kill you 1,242 times; just imagine what I could do to that tiny mind of yours at ten times that number. We'll meet again, Saburo!" The villain leaped away, cackling.
Skullomania was stunned. "He...he knows me? He knows who I am? But how?" Any further musing on the breach of his secret identity would have to wait, however, as Mentor floated into the building.
"Ah! Skullomania, I see you have defeated our foe already!" said the alien. "It is most fortunate you are immortal; this was clearly a mighty battle between titans!"
"Yeah! I showed him who's boss!" said Skullo.
"What an unsightly mess!" renarked Minute Man, crawling out of the corpse-covered debris he had been trapped in.
"I don't know," said Skullo. "Could be worse."
"HOW?!" demanded Minute Man.
"Could be raining," said Skullo. Right on cue, thunder crackled and the skies began pouring water through the many holes in the ceiling. Minute Man glowered at him, but fortunately, a lightning bolt chose that moment to incinerate Skullomania, allowing him to respawn to a less-embarrassing location.
[---]
Far from the battle, the rain began to soak into the stinking trash heaps that made up the Southtown City Dump. Stinking piles of human trash began to gather around the inanimate ones, gathering around a gigantic, muscular, fat, bald man wearing a glowing red visor. He climbed to the highest trash pile and began speaking to the other degenerates, who had also donned red visors to imitate their leader.
"They say old Battlerman came back," he yelled. "They say he strong. I'm the leader of Da Mutants, and I say he weak, stupid old man! I will break the Battlerman over my leg! I will belch louder! I will out-eat him!"
"Hey, did he just say he'd eat out Battlerman?" asked one of Da Mutants, a porcine clay opera singer dressed as a Valkyrie wearing a shirt that said "My Name Is Helga."
"Southtown is mine!" yelled the hulk. "Southtown belongs to Da Mutants, and Da Mutants belong to me, Earthquake!"
The rest of Da Mutants roared.
"Find the stupid old police man, Sawada. Kill him dead. I will carry his head on a pike, and chew on his toes--" A mutant rushed up to Earthquake and whispered something in his ear. "Oh. Okay. Bring me the new cop, the woman cop, the fox cop! I will cut off her head and make a cape out of her pelt! I will crush the fools who run this city! No one can stop me!"
The dump shuddered with the cheers of Da Mutants.
[---]
Author's Notes:
Man, that took awhile to crank out. But since there was no deadline this time (and nobody signed up after me) I wanted to take the time to make sure that it was going to be the very best I could make it. I wanted to do something with a lot of superheros, and with the DKR arc Gavok set up in the last chapter, it was the perfect opportunity. I confess to ripping off Doom's flashback from Invader Zim, Freedom Force Meets the Mayor from Futurama, and a lot of Shadowgeist from The Toilet's third Steven Segall flash cartoon, but borrowing a lot of jokes and scenes from other things is kind of an FAJ motif. We should put a list of all the stolen/parodied ideas in that extras section underneath the chapter list.
[---]
"So, Minute Man," said Mayor Rodriguez, "how do you like the 21st century?"
"Pretty cool, Mr. Mayor, pretty cool," said Minute Man.
"That's my boy!" said Rodriguez. "I knew you'd--"
"--however, I fear that I must leave now and find a way to return to the 60s."
"What? Why?" said the Mayor. The rest of Freedom Force assembled in his office looked at Minute Man with equal surprise.
"You've got to be kidding!" said El Diablo. "They've got this great bar and diner just down the street--it's unbelievable."
"They've developed an incredible information-sharing system called the Internet!" said the geeky Ant. "With all these free pictures of naked --I mean, libraries of free data!"
"They've got video games!" squealed Sea Urchin, who was now sporting some cool shades and an oversized "I Luv Southtown" t-shirt.
"And they are one step closer to developing intergalactic space travel and getting me off this planet," added Mentor grimly.
"Those are all good reasons," said Minute Man, "But these are troubled times. Licenced superheros? Zoning permits for crimefighting headquarters? Moral ambiguity? There aren't even any commies to defeat anymore! No, I shall leave and attempt to return to the simpler days of the 60s. Or better yet, the 40s, so I can finally achieve my dream of striking a blow against the hated Nazis."
"Look, if you want to beat up a Nazi, I'm sure I could dig up an old Nazi cyborg or something," said the Mayor. "Maybe there's a leftover Soviet android from the Reagan years you can tussle with."
"Hardly a fitting substitute for real justice," said Minute Man. "Farewell, Mr. Mayor! Freedom Force, are you with me?"
The rest of Freedom Force looked at each other uncomfortably.
"Can you give us a week to think about it?" asked the Ant.
[---]
Meanwhile, deep in a former Soviet Union military base, two Russian Army guards investigated a strange noise from a corner of the warehouse they were guarding. Rifles at the ready, they approached a large, refridgerator-sized crate, which was making beeping noises. One cautious footstep after another, they got close to it, until the front side of the crate exploded outwards, knocking the guards on their butts.
A stocky man made out of ice, wearing the tatters of a USSR uniform and a fur hat with a red sickle and hammer on it, stormed out of the metallic coffin inside the crate. He glowered down at the guards evilly.
"I am Lt. Colonel Suhkov. My cryogenic capsule has revived me, which can mean only one thing; my most hated foe, Minute Man, walks the earth again." Suhkov grabbed one of the men and pulled him to his feet. "You shall fetch a car and deliver me to this base's nuclear bomb storage facility."
"What?" said the poor man. "We haven't had any nuclear weapons on this base for years!"
The iceman pulled the guard close to his face until his frosty breath formed ice crystals on the guard's nose. "Explain."
"There's been a lot of disarmament in the past few years, ever since the Soviet Union collapsed--"
"Collapsed?!" exclaimed Suhkov. "Impossible! You lie!" He threw the guard to the ground and froze him solid with a freezing blast from his arm.
"He was telling the truth!" blubbered the other guard, trying to scramble to his feet on the slippery ice. "We don't use bombs anymore. It's all missiles and Metal Gears these days."
"Then you shall take me to one of these others," commanded the iceman. "The Soviet Union still exists as long as my chilly heart beats. Nuclear fire shall clense the city protected by the Minute Man. And all that shall be left afterwards will be me: Nuclear Winter!"
Posted on Jan 4, 2004, 12:54 PM from IP address 63.202.107.24