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Post by Silent on Aug 18, 2012 20:23:00 GMT -5
Chapter Sixteen: The Count
It was cold in the chamber of the most high prophets. Yet this did not bother Zhukov, his homeworld of Russiia was at sub-zero temperatures most of the time, he had spent his childhood in perpetual cold, rarely penetrated by the sparse warmth of the hearth or even a fire. He looked around at the hundreds of coffins decorating the walls of the orb-like room.
‘The final resting places of the other Arbiters, Count.’ Prudence said, floating into the room on his lounger, followed by Fortitude and the hologram of Justice. ‘Each has given their lives in service to the Conglomerate. Without the work of the Arbiters, our organisation would have been broken long ago.’
‘The taming of the penguins, the slaughter of the polar bears, the Arbiters were present at all of the great events of the Conglomerate.’ Fortitude voiced. ‘The last Arbiter, as I’m sure you realise, was killed several months ago, gunned down by a horde of those creatures from Earth, those small, orange-skinned things.’
‘I am aware of this, my lord. I am fully prepared to sacrifice myself for this Conglomerate.’
‘We know this Count and in accordance with this, we have your first task.’ Justice began, pointing to a hologram of a thick-set man in military gear. He was speaking with his arms raised as if to an audience. He had thick eyebrows and a large moustache, almost like a thick paintbrush. ‘This is the voice of heresy, against which you will be set.’
‘Yes Count, this is-‘
‘Joseph Stalin the thirteenth, communist leader of several sects of my people on Russiia. I know of this man, noble prophets, once a great man, now… nothing more than a traitor.’ The Count said, his voice heavy.
‘We are sending you down to his convent on Russiia, with you we are sending a team of our specialists, led by our shipmaster, Fat Vladimir. Together, you are to neutralize the threat of Stalin, ensure none of his heresy survives.’
‘It will be done, my lords.’ Zhukov answered, turning from the prophets and heading to the hangar bay of Low Greed.
It was not long before he arrived, using the special teleporter pads designed by the lemmings to swiftly vanish and reappear in front of his new vessel. Though small in comparison to his previous Conglomerate capital ship, the Rad Russiian, his new ship, the Crimson Flag was strong, able to confront even a human Star Choclifier despite being almost half its size.
Bulbous in shape, like the other vessels in the Conglomerate fleet, it was a deep red in colour, with purple flames spewing from its huge twin-engines. Its sides were covered in small, but very effective laser turrets, their size misleading in that they actually had the striking power of the full-sized cannons of a capital vessel. Equipped with a cloaking device, the Crimson Flag was the perfect ship for use by one such as the Arbiter of the Conglomerate.
Nearby it, he saw the soldiers of his special operations squad readying themselves. Ten black-armoured Russiians, tested on the field of battle hundreds of times, moulded into the perfect fighting force. Each had his assigned role to assist the Arbiter; be it communications, stealth, reconnaissance, bodyguard, anti-tank, anti-air or even anti-infantry. They were all ready to give their lives for the Conglomerate, no less loyal than their leader, the Arbiter, themselves.
He greeted them with a curt nod, which they returned briskly, before he strode up the boarding ramp of his new ship. It was large enough inside, the main chamber containing enough space to hold even a Boomer tank, should the Arbiter ever need such a vehicle. He stood there, surveying the scurrying lemmings as they hastily prepared the ship for take-off and combat operations before he decided to head to the cockpit.
Upon arrival, he greeted Fat Vladimir, who was awaiting his new commander. Fat Vladimir was… well, fat. Not too fat, just under obese levels. He was tallish and blond, his short hair fitting the profile of a Russiian revolutionist during the Conglomerate take-over. He greeted the Arbiter cheerily, his watery-blue eyes piercing deeply into the Count’s face, as if he could almost read his mind.
‘Good to finally meet you comrade,’ Vladimir smiled, shaking Zhukov’s hand, ‘It has been many moons since I have last flown under the leadership of an Arbiter, it will be good to fight beside one again.’
‘You’ll get your chance, captain.’ Zhukov replied, patting him on the back, ‘We leave in two hours. When we arrive, I’ll go in with eight of the spec ops. If I need support, you and the other two will land and move in to back us up.’
‘Very well, my lord. I eagerly await your call. We shall leave in two hours on the dot.’
‘Excellent. I will see you then.’ Zhukov smirked before heading back out to inspect his men.
It was not long before Zhukov and the spec ops were waiting in the transport compartment as the ship hurtled towards Russiia. Zhukov looked out the view screen at the frozen ice world.
‘Comrades, look upon our homeworld. Mother Russiia has taken a blight, we must save her this day. Are you with me comrades?’ The Arbiter asked.
‘Aye, aye!’ the spec ops replied in unison.
It was not long before the Crimson flag was swooping low over the ice-peaks of the Russiian homeworld, Zhukov left the transport bay and headed to the cockpit, eager to see Fat Vladimir at work. Upon arrival, he saw the Conglomerate captain sitting calmly in his seat, gently listing the ship passed the vast mountains of the planet, dodging huge icicles.
‘We’ll be there in approximately ten minutes Arbiter,’ Vladimir announced, sensing the door open behind him.
‘Very good captain, ensure we land on the eastern side of the complex, intelligence states that that side is the least heavily guarded.’ Zhukov voiced, looking out the view screen.
He noticed something, a small object on the horizon, moving steadily towards them. ‘What is that captain?’
‘It’s a… It’s a… Oh my god!’ Vladimir roared, ‘It’s an incoming bio-missile! All hands evasive maneuvers!’
The ship wasn’t moving fast enough, it was going to collide with the object.
‘Aaagh! We’re all going to die! We’re all going to-‘ Vladimir stopped as the object brushed off the cockpit view screen and split, floating off to reveal it was just a little flower blowing in the wind. ‘Oh… Oh… it was just a… just a pretty little flower.’
Vladimir was clutching his hand to his heart, Zhukov was steadily regaining himself. He shook his head in slight annoyance and walked off back to the transport room. Upon arrival, he saw the spec ops team were slightly shaken and he waved them down, explaining that it was a false alarm.
It was not long before Vladimir’s voice came on the intercom, revealing that they had just arrived over the complex of Joseph Stalin. Zhukov led his spec ops to the assault ramp, jump packs at the ready. He left two men behind, as part of the plan, reasoning that anti-tank and anti-air would not be much use inside the building.
With the green light, the assault ramp burst open and as one, the unit leapt out, activating their jump packs just before they hit the ground to stabilize themselves against the fall. Quick as a flash, the muzzles of their silenced weapons flashed, downing several guards who were marching around the balcony level where they had just landing.
They rushed inside, killing a pair of lemmings who were monitoring the cameras in the nearby security room before heading down into the barracks and tossing a grenade each into the room before sealing it.
Zhukov turned to his men, ‘That takes care of at least a quarter of the guards, now let’s go down to the lower levels and get Stalin.’
The operatives nodded as one, but just then, a moch rounded the corner with a Russiian fire team. Evidently, they had tripped a silent alarm somewhere and the operatives turned, laying down a withering hail of fire as the anti-infantry specialist let loose with his gatling laser. The reconnaissance operate took the acid cannon of the moch to the face, melting his head, dropping the body like a sack of bricks.
Zhukov fired his scoped pistol, the high-explosive round shattering the moch’s armour as another of his operatives fired in unison, killing the beast outright. With the moch dead, the other Russiians fell back, firing as they went.
‘They’ll warn Stalin, get after them.’ Zhukov nodded to a trio of his men, who hurried after them.
Zhukov meanwhile, led the rest of his troops downwards, abseiling down an elevator shaft, blowing open a closed door and leaping, guns blazing into a room of surprised lemmings. With the lemmings dead, Zhukov and his men travelled through the ornate corridors of Stalin’s palace, killing guards as they went, losing another of their number to a trip mine, cunningly concealed behind a piece of tapestry.
It was a few hours after they had made the first breach into the complex that they made their way down into the hangar bay of Stalin’s palace. Built into the rock of the mountain upon which the complex was mounted, they found it packed with guards. Peering around the corner into the mass of Screecher gunships, Zhukov spotted him. Stalin.
He was getting into his own combat Screecher, presumably in an attempt to escape the Arbiter’s wrath. Zhukov was not going to let him get away. He spotted his three-man team he had sent earlier arrive on the other side of the hangar. With a diversion in place, Zhukov launched his attack.
The first the Russiians knew of the attack was when a trio of grenades landed amongst them, killing several and erupting a pair of Screechers, which exploded, shattering them with shards of thick metal. Lasers etched through the smoke as the operatives opened fire, followed quickly by return blasts. Another operative fell as Zhukov charged into the fray, his pickaxe skewering one of the traitors before he twisted and decapitated another.
Stalin shot once with his pistol, killing another operative before he flung himself into his ship, taking off as fast as he could. Zhukov was right behind him, grabbing another Screecher and launching after him, followed swiftly by his surviving operatives.
As one, they swooped out of the hangar, giving chase to the Screecher of Stalin. Firing the rapid pulse lasers of the Screecher cannons, Zhukov and his men littered the sky around Stalin with rounds, several piercing its hide, but not doing enough damage to destroy it, yet.
Zhukov smiled, this was too easy. He thought too soon however, as three wings of enemy Screechers flanked them, unleashing a devastating hail into their side. Zhukov lost another pair of operatives until the Crimson flag swooped in behind them, gunning down all but two of the enemy Screechers with a blistering hail of pulse cannon fire.
Yet Zhukov had his mind singularly on the target. He hurried after Stalin as his men chased down the remaining Screechers, the Crimson Flag ominously following him, ready to unleash hell on any Russiian foolish enough to show their face. Turning around passed a mountain, Zhukov spotted Stalin ahead, he was heading for a large white facility nearby.
Zhukov could tell that Stalin was going to make it before he could shoot him down so he switched all power to engines to ensure he couldn’t lose his prey. The Crimson Flag was right behind him, firing a few cursory shots at the fleeing traitor, off target, but enough to scare the heretic, perhaps into making a mistake.
Zhukov watched as Stalin landed, getting out swiftly, flanked by Russiians who had been waiting for him on the platform. Zhukov landed shortly behind him, followed the Crimson Flag and his other operatives.
Zhukov approached the door through which Stalin had escaped, but it was locked. Waiting for his men, he immediately ordered the tech specialist to unlock the door as Fat Vladimir and his other two operatives approached to fill out the numbers of the dead.
The door was soon opened and the group entered, stopping almost immediately as both Zhukov and Vladimir stopped to sniff the air. There was a rotting stench lingering around them.
‘That stench…’ Zhukov said, turning to the others, ‘I’ve smelt it before. Be on your guard, there are fouler things here than traitors.’
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Post by Silent on Aug 18, 2012 20:23:30 GMT -5
Chapter Seventeen: The Fortune Teller
Zhukov and Vladimir led the men into an almost sterilized room. It was tiled white, almost like a hospital and had the sickly smell of something dead about it. It was then that they heard it. A loud, chittering noise and words, words that were not yet loud enough or clear enough to make out, but words to make the blood in their veins run cold.
Below them, through the tempered glass floor, they could see flashes of laser fire. They could see figures – both humanoid and… not so humanoid – seemingly fighting down there. They could hear too… they could hear screams.
Zhukov looked uncomfortably at his men as they walked onwards, heading for the door at the other end of the room. Yet before they got there, Stalin appeared before them. Zhukov knew it was merely a hologram from the way he had appeared and he and his men stopped before it, unsure of what to make of it.
‘Ah, so they sent an Arbiter to silence me. I am flattered to be considered worthy of such an assassin.’ Stalin began with a smile.
‘Where are you hiding, Stalin? Come out so we may kill you!’ Vladimir snarled.
Stalin laughed, ‘Get in line.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean? Who else wants to kill you?’ Zhukov asked.
‘Just about everyone, my nephews, Capitalists, Fascists, Aliens, Halflings, You. You name it, it’s out to get me.’ Stalin replied.
‘How did you end up with that sort of enemy list?’ Vladimir inquired.
‘I lost a lot of bets ok, and I don’t like paying them.’ Stalin replied with a wink before disappearing.
‘Let’s get going.’ Zhukov began but then the door before them opened and a trio of strange, humanoid beasts entered. They each held a laser carbine in their left hand, their right ended in a long barbed tentacle, their faces turned rat-like, with long snouts and beady eyes. There was a creature burrowed into their necks, with its leg-like tendrils sticking out in a horrible fashion.
‘Careful comrades, the Timmy’s are upon us!’ Vladimir yelled, opening fire.
With swift speed, the trio of creatures were down and out. Zhukov approached them carefully, examining them.
‘We should have brought something to burn these corpses. What sort of foul chemistry have these traitors been up to?’ he asked no one in particular.
‘They must have brought back specimens from the ring to examine them.’ Vladimir replied, ‘These heretics are far worse than we initially thought. They could unleash this plague on our homeworld and kill us all!’
‘We must destroy this facility once we have killed Stalin, we cannot allow him to escape after this treachery.’
Zhukov turned, leading his squad into the next corridor, where they watched as a horde of Timmy’s and a cohort of Russiians slaughtered each other on the floor below them. Only a pair of Timmy’s survived and Zhukov’s team quickly put them down before advancing again.
‘The Timmy’s cannot be tamed or controlled, Stalin was a fool if he thought he could use them against us. They kill his own men as easily as they would us.’ Vladimir snorted as they stepped over the bodies of the dead.
It was not long before they found themselves facing the fury of the Timmy’s, yet the Timmy’s were not alone. There were guardians.
‘Guardians?’ Zhukov gasped as the robotic centurions floated amongst them, gunning down Timmy’s as they charged. ‘What are the holy warriors of the sacred ring doing here?’
‘I don’t know my lord,’ Vladimir voiced, ‘We should keep moving, we don’t want Stalin to escape the wrath of the prophets.’
Zhukov nodded, leaving the Timmy’s to the guardians, he led his men down a winding stairway, slicing apart a lumbering Timmy with his pickaxe as they went. The few Timmy’s left stalking the corridors ahead were easy prey for the elite spec ops, who left none alive. Yet the operatives were not invincible.
Not long after they had passed another corridor of the dead, a horde of Timmyforms attacked, one injecting and imbedding itself into the anti-air specialist, killing him instantly. Zhukov pulled the Timmy out of the dead operative and impaled it with his pickaxe, refusing to let one of his men become one of the wretched creatures.
Seeing signs of more dead Russiians up ahead, he assumed they were following the right trail, thinking that they had died protecting their leader as he fled from the wrath of the Conglomerate. He was right in this assumption, as not long later, he found the pistol of Stalin, its cartridge empty, accounting for the dead bodies of many Timmy’s littering the corridor around them.
They continued onwards, eventually reaching the cold winter air of Russiia as they left the medical construct to arrive outside on a long gantry. There were many dead Timmy’s on the gantry, yet some were still alive and another operative was lost to a surprising shot from one of the Timmy’s spewing the operative’s brains all over the white snow.
With only six men including Vladimir left, Zhukov picked up the pace, rushing across the gantry, sub-particle gun blazing, ripping apart any of the Timmy’s still alive. They made it to the other side, entering the only door available to find themselves in a darkened corridor. Again they found it littered with the dead, a single Russiian in red armour lay amongst the Timmy’s, showing that some of Stalin’s guard were still alive.
They rushed through, bursting a pregnant Timmy with a lunging blow from his pickaxe, Zhukov killed the spawn with quick and effective shots from his pistol before continuing onwards, his men right behind him. After killing several more of the Timmy’s, they lost another operative to a large Timmy moch, whose acid had transformed into a large deposit of highly basic saliva, sloughing the flesh from the unfortunate Russiian before it was cut down by Zhukov’s trusty energy pickaxe.
It was not long before they found themselves in another smaller hangar bay. Inside they saw a small attack craft known as a retributor that was usually launched from capital ships, yet it was capable of short slipspace maneuvers. There were dead Timmy’s all around it, but what caught Zhukov’s attention was Stalin, who was standing waiting for them with six of his guards, each with a halberd and pistol in hand.
‘So you found me at last former comrade.’ Stalin smiled, almost cheerily.
‘Why, Stalin? Why have you betrayed our Conglomerate?’ Zhukov asked, his voice heavy with regret.
‘Do you not see through the lies of the prophets? They would have us all die for the sake of their Little Quest!’ Stalin replied.
‘How would you know of this?’
‘I know more than you could possibly imagine, for I have one of the Oracles of the Gods!’ Stalin replied, behind him a small orb-like robot fluttered into the room, its single eye glowing blue.
‘Oh good, more soldiers to be enlightened on the procedures of containment.’ It smiled, ‘Greetings, I am four-three-four Innocent Flame, former monitor of Installation Zero-Three. I was rescued by Lord Stalin’s ship just after those foolish Earthlings destroyed my installation!’
‘Oracle?’ Zhukov asked, confused.
‘Kill them all!’ Stalin roared, firing and killing another operative as the guards rushed into melee, halberds swirling. Caught off guard, the spec ops reacted slowly as Vladimir engaged the first guard in hand to hand combat, cutting off his arms with his pickaxe before decapitating him. Two more operatives fell as halberds cleaved through them as Vladimir and Zhukov cut down the guard. Soon Vladimir, Zhukov and Stalin were the only ones left standing as Innocent hummed cheerily in the background.
‘I came here to kill you Stalin. But now you have killed my men, for that I will humiliate you and drag your corpse through the streets of Russiia for all to see!’ Zhukov voiced in anger, snarling at Stalin, who merely laughed in response.
‘Two against one, comrades, not very fair,’ Stalin smiled, ‘Allow me to even this up.’
He fired once, his round entering Vladimir’s head right between the eyes before punching through the back of his skull, showering Zhukov and the floor with blood and brains.
Fat Vladimir fell slowly to the ground, hitting it with a loud thump. Zhukov roared in anger and leapt forwards, swinging his power pickaxe with increased speed. Stalin blocked swiftly with his own halberd. Zhukov kicked upwards, knocking the weapon spinning from Stalin’s hands, who turned to punch Zhukov in the face, knocking him sprawling to the floor.
Stalin ran to recover his halberd as Zhukov leapt up, throwing his pickaxe at the Russiian leader. Stalin ducked just in time and the pickaxe spun passed him, imbedding itself deep into the wall behind him. He picked up his halberd and headed back towards Zhukov, who leveled his pistol at Stalin.
He fired twice, Stalin dodged the first, then blocked the second with his weapon, making it ricochet off into the distance. Stalin continued forwards, smashing his weapon into Zhukov, who blocked with his gun, which was sliced in two, falling uselessly to the ground.
The Arbiter leapt backwards as Stalin closed in, readying his halberd for another blow. Zhukov reached for his belt, drawing his hold-out pistol and fired. The round went under Stalin’s guard and impacted in his chest, blowing out his innards.
The Russiian heretic fell to the ground, blood pouring in torrents from his ruptured body. His eyes flittered on the verge of death and he muttered, ‘Mother… Russiia…’
‘Is avenged.’ Finished Zhukov, putting another round into Stalin’s head. He turned to Innocent who was tutting in the air above him.
‘A shame, it was a delight to illuminate him. Still, it shall be good to work with others.’ Flame said.
‘Come with me Oracle.’ Zhukov began, but just then, Innocent emitted a scream of what seemed to be pain.
He was wreathed in electricity and fell through the air towards the waiting hands of Lord Hughes, who stood in the hangar, surrounded by a small team of Germanians. He held the immobilised Innocent carelessly in his hand.
‘That… is… the Oracle!’ Zhukov stammered, unable to believe the careless attitude of his ally.
Hughes looked down at the robot casually and threw it behind him, the levitation field of his transport ship catching it. ‘So it is.’
Zhukov turned to leave, surveying the damage of the battle. The cost of victory was high. All of his men were dead, including the legendary Fat Vladimir. But then, he noticed something… Fat Vladimir’s body… was gone!
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Post by Silent on Aug 18, 2012 20:24:02 GMT -5
Chapter Eighteen: Epsilon Chocolate Ring
‘What… exactly are we looking at here?’ Rachael asked, staring out the view screen of the Out Cyan Bare.
‘That, is another Chocolate Ring.’ Sarah replied, looking at the vast ring-shaped structure in space before them.
Johnny choked in med-bay, listening to the intercom, ‘Say what?!’
‘So this is what my father found…’ Rachael mused, thinking deeply. Her eyes furrowed and she turned to Silent and Dopeman, ‘We’re going to land a small strike team on the ring and try to find whatever Justice is. I want the two of you to lead it, you’re the best assets we have on this ship, if anyone can get the job done, I know you can. Obeseman, I want you to help protect this vessel. I’m going to attempt to hide us in the nebula nearby cos we don’t stand a chance alone against the Conglomerate fleet.’
‘Yes ma’am,’ Obeseman grinned, ‘Nice to have some real responsibility for once.’
‘Don’t worry Ms. Lochs, we’ll find Justice and we’ll take it down, whatever it is.’ Silent replied, ‘And if we can, we’ll take out this ring too.’
Rachael smiled in return, ‘I know you’ll do a good job Silent, meanwhile, I’ll try to coordinate communications and keep up supply runs to the surface, we don’t want you guys ending up alone down there with no way of escape.’
‘Oh don’t worry, that won’t happen while I’m around.’ Dopeman winked.
The Out Cyan Bare flew swiftly over the ring, drop-pods falling at increasingly high rates, pointed for the surface of a small temple district with a high Conglomerate presence. There were fifteen drop-pods containing: Silent, Jamsie, Timmy, Dopeman, Sarah, Jeevsie and nine UN marines.
They were headed for a small wooded valley located just above a vast cliff edge leading to a sea of burnt and charred ground. There were three little temples akin to the ancient Aztec structures located in Mexico on Earth, very old and almost sunken into the ground.
They hit the ground hard, Silent’s drop pod smashing through the roof a one of the temples and crushing a pair of lemmings before they knew what was happening. He let loose with his submachine guns the moment the doors crashed down, eviscerating all life within the small chamber. He could hear gunfire outside and peered out a small window, seeing Dopeman in hand to hand combat with a pair of large Russiians armed with pickaxes.
Sarah ran into the room followed by a halfling armed with a spear. Silent shot him in the head and the pair of them charged outside, helping Timmy to escape from the tracer fire of an orb-turret mounted on the ridge. Sarah put down the turret operator with a swift shot from her sniper rifle and ducked as a large Conglomerate dropship swooped low over the area, dropping a horde of new foes into the fight.
The Mafia hurried into the cover of the temples, shooting out the windows. One of the marines was hit in the back with a pulse carbine, the round punching through his back and blowing out his chest.
Jeevsie and Jamsie took position on a high tower on the rightmost temple and began to pour fire from their assault rifles onto the oncoming enemy troops, ducking beneath the low parapets to avoid the return lasers and the occasional arrows from the archers of the halflings.
Amidst the turmoil of the gunfight, a single lemming approached from the rear of the Conglomerate horde. He was carrying a massive pulse cannon, easily three times the size of himself but he somehow managed to carry it.
‘Oh dear,’ Silent said, ‘That looks like it could do some damage. Eh… everyone get down!’
They all hit the floor as the pulse cannon powered up, blue lightning coursing through its power core. It fired. One pure beam of kinetic energy wreathed in lightning. It hit the temple on the left, blasting the entire building down, making the first and second floors collapse down onto the ground floor. With the force of the cannon, the lemming gunner was launched off his feet from the recoil and blasted backwards, his frail body falling straight from the cliff and down into the blackened abyss below.
Silent blinked the dust from his eyes and opened fire through the rubble, gunning down the approaching Conglomerate, who were firing through the smoke. Sarah couldn’t move, her legs were trapped beneath a pile of large stone boulders, she could feel that her left leg was broken and she had dislocated her right arm. She closed her eyes in pain and tried to find her gun as she saw the Conglomerate approaching through the dense haze of smoke.
Dopeman looked down and found that his legs were no longer attached to his body, ‘Oh dear…’
Timmy had somehow managed to miraculously avoid being harmed in the explosion. He sat shaking roughly beneath a small part of temple wall that was still standing, his pistol held close in hand. His eyes darted around the wreckage, spotting Sarah struggling to get out. He panicked, she was unarmed and two Russiians were approaching her fast. He knew what he had to do, readying his pistol, he stood up and strode briskly over.
‘Whoa!’ Jamsie and Jeevsie yelled as one as the temple beside them crashed to the ground, they watched the UN marines inside get crushed by the heavy rubble as their friends desperately darted for cover.
‘Do you think the others are alright?’ Jamsie asked.
‘I hope so sir, I do hope so.’ Jeevsie replied, shooting down at the Conglomerate searching through the ruins, desperate to stop them killing their friends.
Sarah screamed as the two Russiians leveled their carbines at her, preparing to fire. Silent turned in sudden panic and rushed over to aid her.
‘Get away from her you bastards!’
If Sarah had not seen Timmy’s mouth move, she would have not believed it had been him who said the words. He stood in front of the Russiians, his pistol aimed directly at their heads.
They began to laugh, ‘Like a puny creature could defeat us!’
‘Hey Russiians!’
They turned to see Silent standing there, abject fury etched onto his face. His wristblades shot out in fluid motion, ready for combat. He nodded at Timmy, ‘What he said.’
The Russiians backed away as Silent shot forwards, ripping the throat from the first Russiian, the second tried to run but a bullet entered his neck and he died slowly, blood erupting from his severed artery. Timmy blew the smoke from his pistol and placed it back carefully onto his belt.
Sarah beamed at both of them and blacked out.
Silent turned to Timmy, hand outstretched. Surprised, Timmy took it and Silent smiled, shaking his hand, ‘Not bad Timmy, not bad at all.’
The remaining Conglomerate were mopped up quickly as Dopeman had found his legs and reattached them fast. Yet the victory had come at a higher cost than they had anticipated. Sarah was unconscious and unable to fight until she had received medical aid, so they immediately requested transport to get her safely back to the Out Cyan Bare. On top of this, five of the marines who had landed with them were dead and another two too badly injured to carry on.
It was not long before a dropship arrived to take the wounded to safety and so the group carried on, heading down a much smaller and shallower valley towards another temple, this time on its own overlooking a cavern. There was no way to cross the gorge and so they looked for a bridge mechanism within the temple.
They found one. But they also found the Conglomerate waiting for them. They lost another marine to rapid fire from a triplet of halflings with crossbows before they managed to wrest control of the temple from the aliens. They found the controls for the bridge – identical to those Silent found on the first Chocolate ring, even complete with a big red button saying push me! – and headed back outside, ready to continue their excursion into the Conglomerate territory.
Dopeman was the first member of the team outside. He turned the corner of the temple, heading to the gorge and then vanished beneath a plume of bright red flame.
The others stopped in their tracks, stunned.
‘What the hell was that?!’ Jamsie yelled.
Silent hurried to the other side, peering carefully over at the gorge, the answer lay before him. He hurried back to the others, looking slightly worried.
‘Eh… there’s a Boomer tank over there.’ Silent muttered.
‘Ah… that explains it.’ Jamsie replied, ‘So, what are we gonna do about it?’
‘Well… we could wait for Dopeman to come back and get him to do something about it… or we could use this rocket launcher that we brought with us,’ Silent answered, lifting up the large multiple rocket launcher over his shoulder.
‘Sounds like a plan Silent.’ Jamsie grinned, ‘I guess we’ll provide a distraction for the tank until you get a clear shot… And of course by we… I mean Timmy.’
‘I like potatoes.’ Timmy grinned.
‘We know you do Timmy, now get out there and run like hell.’
Timmy saluted and rolled out before starting to chase his tail, somehow avoiding the vast plumes of explosive fire from the enemy tank. Silent climbed to the top of the temple, rocket launcher swung over his back to allow easy transportation.
Timmy rushed over to a large rock and started to eat it – being of course, like everything else on the ring, made of chocolate – as the Boomer tank locked on to the small rat creature.
The tank’s gun powered up, ready to end the little creature’s life but before it had the chance to fire, a rocket impacted into its side, shattering the armour before causing the tank to erupt in flames with a dazzling display of explosions.
‘We’re clear!’ Silent shouted down to the others, ‘Let’s get across the bridge!’
They hurried across the energy bridge, Jamsie still surprised at the fact that he was walking across what seemed to be just an clear image of a hologram bridge. Silent and Timmy were the last across, with Silent having to drag Timmy away from the chocolate rock – which proved to be a lot harder than he thought it initially would.
They passed by the blown-out Boomer tank and entered into what looked like another ancient stone temple. Yet this temple was built directly into the mountain face that they were approaching. They stepped inside the cold construct, wary of Conglomerate ambush.
Sure enough it was not long before the Conglomerate attacked, whole wings of lemmings swooping in to battle mounted on flying carpets and motorcycles. Firing their small laser pistols, the lemmings swooped around the Mafia, who fired out from behind the cover they had hastily run towards.
It took several minutes to drive off the Conglomerate attackers and none of the UN were killed, luckily. Silent led them forwards under the mountain gully and out to the open cliffside. They walked in single file to prevent the Conglomerate from spotting them easier.
Dopeman returned to them then, running up behind them clutching his chest near his heart and panting.
‘Jeese you guys, wait up, I’m not as young, fit or doped up as I used to be!’ he moaned, panting up to the front of the column, ‘Man, you guys could have waited for me.’
‘We knew you’d catch up at some point man.’ Jamsie grinned at him. ‘How was dying this time?’
‘Dammit man, I don’t die! I regenerate, I’m like a Time Lord!’ Dopeman replied, taking charge of the group and leading them around the cliff edge towards the next temple district, which was far larger than the others they had previously explored. It was a much bigger building, with two floors and had a vast stone wall constructed all the way around it.
They approached under cover of rocks, hiding carefully from the Conglomerate sentries posted all across the walls. There were a large amount of Russiian sentries marching and occasionally glancing down to the ground, but the Mafia managed to dodge behind cover every time they did so.
Dopeman nodded to the others as they rushed into the large entrance gate to the courtyard of the temple as he flung out a foray of toothpicks into the air. Each toothpick homed in swiftly on their targets and before they knew it, every sentry had hit the floor, dead.
Silent and Jamsie were the first to open fire, their assault rifles dealing out swift death to the nearest Conglomerate units – a trio of thoroughly surprised halflings drinking and eating roast tomatoes over a fire.
The UN marines scurried in under the cover fire, rushing into secure positions and take key fire points of the temple. Jeevsie led a pair of marines up to the wall and hurriedly gunned down the lemming workers who were rushing to the orb turrets mounted on either end of the temple wall.
Russiian fire teams charged out of the main building but were caught in a cross fire of the Mafia and UN, with Dopeman leaping over the wall to land above them and launching toothpicks down onto them. The Russiians managed to kill another three marines before they began to retreat back into the main temple building and they were quickly hounded by Silent as he led the others after them.
It was not long before they came to a bizarre wooden and sand barricade built up in front of them. Some lemmings were behind the barricade, pouring sacks of both sand and a strange green-coloured cement onto the ground in a weird attempt to block up the corridor.
Met by a hail of bullets, the lemmings died quickly, their screams of ‘Oh No!!’ echoed down the cold stone hallways of the temple.
Kicking and smashing down the hastily made barricade, Silent led the soldiers into the main temple alcove where they found a large host of penguins who were honking loudly and launched a vicious torrent of laser fire into the human force. Again Dopeman was the first to go down, his arm melting under the ferocious firepower.
The last few marines also died under the terrible green lasers before Silent and Jamsie tossed a pair of frag grenades into the tightly packed alcove, slaying most of the penguins.
Timmy followed them inside, gunning down one of the fleeing penguins before spotting a large hologram of one of the strange Conglomerate prophets. ‘Ooh… silly man!’
‘Who’s the silly man?’ Silent asked, turning to the prophet.
‘Oh right, who’s that?’ Jamsie asked.
As if to answer his question, the hologram spoke, ‘Most noble Conglomerate, hear my voice, for I am Justice your leader. In a few days the Little Quest will begin and we shall control the universe!’
‘Little Quest?’ Jamsie asked, puzzled, ‘What the fudge is that?’
‘Beat’s me, but at least we know who Justice is now.’ Silent said, ‘Oh… oh shit… what are they?’
He was pointing to the floor above them, which was open to the alcove. There were a pair of very large Russiians standing there in very red armour with black lining, they each held a vast halberd in either hand. Their faces were covered with sharp red helmets with green visors.
They approached, leaping downwards to engage the Mafia. Silent parried the first weapons, flinging one of the halberds to the side as the Russiian kicked him, knocking him to the floor before raising his other weapon above his head to strike the killing blow. Silent rolled to the side as the halberd smashed to the ground, shattering the floor and spraying dust and rubble into the air.
Jamsie shot the other Russiian in the chest and the Russiian’s armour stopped the round before kicking Jamsie into the wall and spinning the blades, getting one of his arms shot off by Jeevsie, who stepped in pumping a shotgun.
‘Who are these guys!?’ Silent yelled out, holding back the Russiian with his wristblade as he fought the halberd off himself.
‘Oh they’re the Spetznatz I believe,’ Dopeman replied, getting back up off the ground before driving a toothpick into the man fighting Silent, ripping out his heart and tossing it aside.
‘Oh, that makes sense,’ Silent said, helping Jeevsie and Jamsie kill their Spetznatz. ‘Anyway, now that we know who Justice is, let’s go and kill that prophet, right guys?’
‘We’re right behind you Silent.’ Dopeman replied. ‘Where do we go to kill him?’
‘I have absolutely no idea.’
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Post by Silent on Aug 18, 2012 20:25:45 GMT -5
Chapter Nineteen: Justice
The Mafia held out in the temple for a day, unsure of where to go. They soon found out as an LAAT transport landed outside and an attack team of twenty Oompa Loompas marched out to join them, led by Sarah, who was now fully healed.
Silent rushed over and embraced her, kissing her hard. She grinned, ‘Hi darling, I’m all better now. Ready to kick Justice’s ass?’
‘Damn right I am baby.’ He replied, following her lead as she headed outside, going down through another very narrow valley towards a further temple construct.
‘Man, this place is full of temples? Who the hell built all these things?’ Dopeman yelled.
‘No idea, now shut up!’ Sarah replied, ‘We’re trying to do this silently here!’
‘Alright, sorry… gawh!’ Dopeman complained, following them cautiously.
‘I’m amazed how fast the medics managed to patch you up,’ Jamsie said to Sarah.
‘Yeah, me too, technology has really advanced over the years. You should see Johnny, he’s almost completely healed.’ Sarah replied, scrabbling over a short rock and peering over to the temple.
‘That’s pretty impressive,’ Dopeman said, ‘I should sign up for the health program, it’d be easier than what I have to go through.’
‘What do you have to go through when you die?’ Silent asked him.
‘You don’t want to know, you really don’t.’ he answered with some finality.
‘Superglue?’ Jamsie asked.
Dopeman nodded slowly and shamefully.
‘Really?’ Jamsie asked.
‘Of course not, it’s far more degrading and horrible than that!’
‘Yeah I thought it would be.’ Silent said. ‘Probably some fucked up thing involving a bunch of monkeys putting you back together with sellotape.’
Dopeman glared at him a little and continued forwards, glancing up at Sarah, ‘What’s it like down there?’
‘Same as most of the other temples, we’ve got at least twenty Russiians and a whole bunch of lemmings and halflings. There’s also a Boomer tank but I don’t think it’s crewed at the moment. There’s a pair of orb turrets up on the left and right corners of the temple too, we’re going to have to take them out first.’
‘Got that, right, Sarah you take the one on the left, I’ll take the right, the rest of you charge down the centre and kill everything you can.’ Silent ordered generally.
‘Right,’ they all replied together.
Needless to say, as all good plans should, it went flawlessly. All the Conglomerate lay dead and the Mafia were advancing deeper into the temple.
Silent laughed, ‘Haha, I knew all plans can work if you try hard enough.’
Dopeman turned, facing nowhere in particular, ‘That’s right kids, if you keep trying, you’re plans will persevere, never let people say it won’t work, cos it will. Just make sure you have a god of gods on your side and it will all work out.’
‘Who are you talking to?’ Jamsie asked.
‘No one in particular.’ Dopeman replied, ‘Let’s go into this temple and kill some shit.’
‘Right… ok then.’ Silent said, following him cautiously.
They marched through the cold, damp and cramped corridors for some time, rarely coming across any resistance – any they did was destroyed swiftly. Through the winding darkness, they gunned down several Russiians as they ran, coming across heavier and heavier concentrations of enemy forces.
‘We must be getting close to something important,’ Dopeman voiced, slicing the neck of another Russiian with Bob.
‘We are, satellite photos from the Out Cyan Bare showed that this temple has an underground link to a Conglomerate city constructed in one of the oceans of the ring. These must be the guards to the channel route.’ Sarah replied, ‘We should be on Justice’s tail soon enough.’
The last Russiian soldier fell, with only three of the Oompa Loompas lying dead behind to show for their resistance. Silent took point, seeing a pair of Spetznatz specialists at the end of the next corridor, flanking a huge door.
‘I wonder what’s behind there?’ Dopeman asked.
‘It could really be anything… With the Conglomerate…’ Sarah answered, unsure of what they would find.
The Spetznatz moved to attack the moment they caught sight of the Mafia, halberds and now – submachine lasers – swinging into action.
‘Quick Towelie go!’ Dopeman yelled, suddenly launching the doped-up towel into the face of the first Spetznatz, who fell backwards, surprised as the towel flailed his arms yelling, ‘I have no idea what’s going on!’
The other members of the Mafia stumbled over the confusion for a second as the other Spetznatz cut his way through a pair of Oompas.
The Spetznatz flailing managed to throw Towelie to the side, his halberd slicing through the towel’s roll up.
‘Hey, that’s my last jay asshole!’ The towel yelled, kicking the Spetznatz in the balls, which didn’t really do anything, but gave Silent enough time to shoot the Russiian elite in the face.
‘One down,’ Sarah muttered, pulling out her pistols and shot both of them directly into the other’s chest.
He kept fighting, despite the blood leaking down his front, tearing apart another pair of Oompa Loompas before the sheer numbers of the little orange men and their bizarre chocolate weaponry gunned him down.
Looking around in a state of recovery, Silent noticed that Towelie had vanished, turned to Dopeman, ‘Seriously man, who the fuck is that towel?’
‘I told you, he’s Towelie. One of my best friends.’
‘I’m just going to try now to just never think or ask about anything you do anymore at all. It’ll just save me so much mindfucking.’
‘Yeah, it’s probably better that way.’ Dopeman replied. ‘You should all just do that.’
They headed over to the door, which was surprisingly large given the small size of the corridor linked up to it, but they ignored that fact and just opened it. Nothing could possibly have prepared them for what was behind it.
Timmy wasn’t sure what exactly he was looking at. It looked a lot like the creature he had seen back in Old Mombasa… the greedy one. Greed it was called, he remembered. This one was different.
This one was bent over and looking fervently through a magazine, his eyes flickering madly, his tongue wildly licking his lips. It was wearing a bizarre party hat, with Happy Birthday! splashed across the side of it in bubble writing.
There was a cocktail placed in his chair which was hovering in the middle of the room which he sat on. One of his hands was holding the magazine. The other was doing something peculiar.
‘Oh fuck! Seriously fuck!’ Jamsie yelled, ‘That’s fucking sick!’
‘Oh God kill it!’ Sarah yelled.
Silent complied and the Prophet of Lust hit the floor, brains and blood pouring from his shattered head.
‘Not good enough!’ Dopeman yelled, ‘Burn it! Burn it, for the love of God burn it!’
God appeared in a flash of light, ‘You called?’ He turned and looked down at the prophet’s corpse, ‘Oh my me! Burn it!’
Silent nodded and set it alight with an incendiary grenade.
As the body smoldered away, they all breathed a collective sigh.
‘Oh thank God,’ Jamsie gasped.
‘Don’t thank me, thank ridiculous flaming grenades.’ God replied before vanishing again.
They moved on from the cramped room very swiftly, heading straight across to the opposite door, which led downwards, heading diagonally down through the temple building.
It was now so cramped that they could only move in single file, there could be no ambushes planned for them ahead as there was just no room for anyone to get near them without being seen. How could anyone possibly attack them in such ridiculously cramped circumstances?
That’s what they thought anyway.
And of course, they were right. Nobody did ambush them.
Although it took them several hours, they eventually came to the deepest level of the ancient temple, finding themselves at the shore of a huge underground lake. It was set out like a vast submarine bay, with large metal platforms and control towers everywhere.
Oh and there were, as usual, Conglomerate soldiers all over the place. It was not long before the gunfire started.
Conglomerate died. Oompa Loompas died. It was a pretty normal firefight. Then Dopeman opened a warphole and it all went to shit.
From the portal marched a pair of very… strange creatures. They looked rather like human fish, being humanoid and having large gills and huge bulging eyes.
Yet they were wearing what looked a lot like ancient samurai armour and holding what looked like torches.
Yet these torches fired laser beams and proved very effective at punching through Russiian armour.
‘Ah the Sea Devils, ya gotta love ‘em.’ Dopeman grinned, watching the pair of bizarre aliens gun down much of the Conglomerate before they themselves were shot down by the searing lasers of the enemy.
‘Oh well, shall we try another portal or just finish them off?’ Dopeman asked the others, who were forming up with the remaining three surviving Oompa Loompas.
‘Maybe one more,’ Silent replied, watching the only surviving Conglomerate – a bunch of penguins – waddling as fast as they could towards one of the bizarre submarine vessels, which was open-topped yet forced open a huge energy bubble which held out the air from the vessel.
‘Warphole coming right up,’ Dopeman grinned, spinning Bob in front of him, ripping open a hole in reality.
A polar bear clambered out. At least, it looked like a polar bear, which was enough to freak out the penguins as it was. The polar bear also happened to be wearing a full suit of ornate armour.
‘Hmm… interesting, I’ve never had one of these before.’ Dopeman murmured to himself. ‘An armoured bear from Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials universe. How strange.’
The bear roared and charged at the penguins, smashing into the site of the sub and climbing inside, starting to tear the creatures apart. There was a ruckus of noise as the penguins tried to escape, knocking down the force shield and diving into the water.
It was the first time any of them had ever heard a penguin speak. It was a surreal experience.
One, seemingly the leader called in a squeaky voice, ‘Hurry, we must escape from our great enemy, the polar bears!’
‘My lord, how, we thought we killed them all by forcing them to swallow us while they slept and our beaks pierced their hearts!’ Another cried before the bear tore him apart.
‘Fly you fools! Fly! One has obviously avoided our slaughter!’ the leader called again.
‘We can’t fly lord! We’re bloody penguins!’
‘Oh.’ It replied, flapping its wings and flying off, ‘I guess I’m the only one, see you all in hell!’
As it swooped off, Silent shot it down, turning to the others, ‘Penguins… what the hell happened to those cute little birds you see in the zoo?’
‘I’ll tell you what happened, we gave them technology.’ Dopeman replied, saying the first thing that came to his mind.
As the bear finished off the last of the penguins before lumbering off back to the warphole, the Mafia headed to another sub, preparing to go underwater.
‘I don’t think we should really mess around with any of the buttons on this thing until we figure it all out,’ Sarah began.
Silent stepped over and pressed the button he saw the penguins push and the shield shot up quickly. He then hit a large red button.
‘Auto-pilot activated, transferring sub to last destination.’ A soothing voice said.
Silent grinned as Sarah glared at him, ‘Funny thing is, I had no idea what I was doing, I just hit the first button I saw.’
‘This ring is so fucked up.’ Sarah said, staring out from the sub into the bizarre atmosphere of the underwater scene.
The water was most definitely water, not chocolate. But there were chocolate rocks and formations and even more strangely… chocolate creatures.
‘Every ring is fucked up,’ Dopeman replied, watching closely as a choctopus drifted passed, squirting chocolate sauce to defend itself from a large chocolate shark, which drifted away, snapping it’s jaws through a shoal of white and dark chocolate fish.
‘Hey Dopeman, can I ask you something?’ Sarah began, walking slowly to his side.
‘Yes, of course,’ he replied, unsure of what to expect, having never been asked anything by Sarah before.
‘You haven’t made a move on me since God told me I was his daughter… How come?’
‘Well… why should I? I mean, you aren’t the only girl in my life…’ Dopeman replied, going slightly red.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she asked, ‘I’m Silent’s girl anyway and you know that.’
‘Yeah… maybe that could be the reason why I stopped, did you ever think of that?’
‘It isn’t that, I can tell.’
‘Well, what do you think it is then?’ Dopeman inquired, folding his arms.
‘I think this has something it do with what God said, this means something to you, what is it?’
Dopeman frowned and turned, ‘Why look, we’ve just arrived at our destination. Let’s go kill Justice!’
He charged out as fast as he could, followed by the others.
Sarah smiled, ‘I’ll get you later.’
Two dead Spetznatz and an Oompa Loompa later and the Mafia found themselves in a huge rectangular room. Strangely enough, it was a courtroom.
They passed by rows of benches, heading towards the jury box and judge’s podium. They stopped just before it, staring up at the creature sitting in the hover-lounger at the podium.
He was wearing white robes. He sat in front of a wooden lectern. He wore a thick white and woolly wig and held a gavel firmly in his right hand, his brows were furled in deep scrutiny. The Prophet of Justice.
There were six Spetznatz standing below the podium, halberds held at the ready, each of the Russiians glaring at the approaching Mafia.
‘Ah, so you’re Justice.’ Silent smiled, ‘Nice to meet you, we’ve been hearing a lot about you over the past few days.’
‘I’m sure you have whilst killing the holy warriors of my army and the most high Conglomerate. For this you shall all die, perish in the flames of the purgators of heresy! Kill the blasphemers! I deem them unworthy of life! Execute them all!’ Justice yelled, smashing his gavel down hard on the lectern and directing the Spetznatz forward.
Dopeman face-palmed himself as the others engaged in hand to hand combat. Silent kicked the man fighting him, cutting his halberd shaft in two with his wristblades before spinning and cutting open his throat. Sarah shot the one approaching her before driving her knife into his ribs and slicing his heart.
With two Spetznatz down, the Mafia had the number advantage and things started to go very much their way. The last Oompa Loompas died, which was no real big deal. They were starting to become wary of the overzealous values of the soldiers of Columbo del Monko.
Dopeman cut down another with a cursory flick of his wrist, sending one of his deadly trademark weapons punching through the neck of the Russiian, who spluttered blood until he stopped moving.
Jamsie and Jeevsie shot down the others after pushing them back, punching a hail of armour-piercing rounds into the elite of the Conglomerate. Timmy had spent the entire fight cowering in the jury box until the gunfire had died down and he slowly and carefully clambered out and shuffled back to the rest of his… “friends”.
Justice backed away slightly, raising his gavel in defence, ‘Stay back foul heathens of Molgath! Justice will come to you someday!’
‘Calm down hammerhead.’ Silent grinned, approaching him, ‘We aren’t going to kill you.’
The prophet eyed him suspiciously, ‘You aren’t?’
‘No, we’re going to have a little trial.’
Justice sat in the accused seat alone, Silent sat across from him in the prosecutor’s chair, throwing him a cursory wink. The holy prophet of the Conglomerate felt weird feelings for the first time in his life… both fear and intrigue. He knew he was not going to escape this alive… yet the Earthlings were playing this out for him, perhaps a last mercy. The system of court would claim his life in a trial, not a bullet on the battlefield or cowering in the corner.
He looked around the rest of the courtroom, the other Earthlings who had killed his guards were sitting behind him on the rows of viewing benches. He could not see the small, squatted creature that had crawled out of the jury box anywhere. Nor could he see the man who had rested so casually at the back of the earthling force until he had killed one of the Spetznatz with the flick of his wrist.
He stopped at the jury box, looking at the strange and motley crew of creatures that the god had placed in it to be his judges. He had never seen such beasts before… so diverse and bizarre.
Silent rose, ‘All rise for the honorable Judge Dopeman!’
They all stood as one, even Justice in his enticement for the law. He scowled as he watched Dopeman, the god, donning the wig of the judge and walking briskly to the judge’s lectern and sitting down with a throwaway smile to the prophet.
‘Alright, court is now in session, let me introduce our most noble jury, who have come here at the last minute because I asked them nicely to.’ Dopeman grinned.
He pointed to the first of the thirteen jurors, a creature very similar to an octopus, yet in a humanoid form wearing a white wetsuit. It was red-skinned in colour and had huge yellow eyes. ‘This is Admiral Ackbar, a Mon Calamari from the planet… Mon Calamari. He’s an admiral in the rebel fleet against the Empire.’
‘Beside him we have Rogal Dorn, one of the Primarch sons of the God-Emperor of Terra. Beside him we have, of course, Gandalf the Grey. Next to him is the Wicked Witch of the West and then at the end of the first row is Randy Marsh, a geologist in the town of South Park.’
Everyone waved to the first row of jurors before Dopeman moved on to the next bunch of four. ‘And here we have Batman, the caped crusader of Gotham City. Then we have Sergeant Johnson of the UNSC, Vice President Al Gore and last but not least, Starscream.’
Everyone looked up at the massive and imposing form of Starscream, the red and white transformer waved in response with a cheery smile.
‘Finally, we have the last row of jurors, namely Apu Nahasapeenapetilon, Brock the Gym Leader from Pewter City, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot and finally, Ms. Anne-Marie Dawson, a teacher I found roaming the streets handing out pamphlets about mental health awareness.’
‘The jury will judge this case impartially, so I’m told anyway and given they are all from various different galaxies, universes and time zones, they really don’t have the slightest clue who the defendant or prosecutor is. You can’t get much more of a fair trial, right Justice?’ Dopeman asked with another wink.
‘I suppose not… no.’ Justice replied, slightly relieved. Then he realised something, ‘Um… Judge? My lawyer hasn’t yet arrived.’
‘Oh yes of course, I’ll just call him now, he must have gotten lost again.’ Dopeman smiled disappearing for a few seconds before reappearing at the back of the room, ‘Here he is.’
Timmy walked down to sit beside Justice, a big beaming smile on his face.
Justice frowned down at the little creature, ‘I assume you know the word of law?’
‘You smell like apples.’ Timmy replied, smiling again as Justice watched on in sheer terror.
‘Alright Mr. Prosecutor, you first. Reach out to the noble members of the jury.’ Dopeman grinned, maniacally.
Silent stood up, holding his hands to his armour plate as if he were a Texan lawyer making a speech. ‘Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, I bring before you today a fiend of monstrous proportions. The prophet of Justice of the alien organisation known as the Conglomerate.’
Rogal Dorn’s eyes narrowed merely at these words alone.
‘This alien led his warriors to our homeworld of Earth and in doing so, unleashed a torrent of destruction upon our fair world, killing hundreds and thousands of innocents just last week. But this is not all, over the course of the last two months, the Conglomerate have repeatedly attacked planets colonised by the Human race and ultimately purged them of all life, clearing them for their own colonization. They give us no warning, no negotiation, they simply kill. We have no time to evacuate and any attempts to escape are met with outright destruction. They care not for women and children, nor do they care for refugees, they simply slaughter their way through our race as if we are nothing but cattle.’
Silent continued to pace in front of the jury, who he could visually see where getting more and more enthralled and enraged towards Justice by his speech.
‘As a leader of this organisation of genocidal maniacs, Justice must be charged for the crimes of his men, which were carried out at his orders. Members of this supposed jury, I beg you to think of the lives lost by the words from this creature’s mouth and I urge you to do the right thing.’
The jury applauded Silent as he sat down, ‘Prosecution rests, your honour.’
Dopeman nodded, hammering his gavel to quiet down the clapping and turned to Timmy, ‘Defence Attorney, your statement please?’
Timmy smiled back up at Dopeman and began to twiddle his thumbs.
‘Eh Timmy, that’s you. Go up and say something.’ Dopeman urged.
Timmy nodded slowly and got up to stand before the jury, in almost an imitation of Silent.
‘Members of this surprising journey. I call you here tomorrow to place on trial this man, thingy.’ He began, frowning and pointing at Justice, ‘He is an… ambomi-… ambone… a very bad man and he should be taken away and farted on. I do not like him at all. So he should just be put away. I sleep now.’
‘You mean defence rests.’ Dopeman corrected as Timmy waddled back to his place, where Justice was having what looked like a minor stroke.
Justice stood up, ‘Your honour please, let me represent myself, you cannot let me be represented by this creature!’
‘Sit down Justice, you’ve had your chance to speak.’ Dopeman said, coldly.
‘But he… he turned them against me. I didn’t want to say what he said.’
‘Tough, he’s your lawyer, get used to him.’
But… but…’ Justice spluttered before Dopeman banged his gavel again to silence him.
Following several hours of witnesses and evidence files, the jury moved to the next room to deliberate.
‘I think he should burn for his menace. Being a Xenos is enough to burn before the Emperor in my universe, that he should live here is beyond my comprehension,’ Dorn began the proceedings.
‘If I were his race of people I probably would have killed him immediately and took his place,’ Starscream replied.
‘Perhaps, but do not be so quick to deal out death and judgment, for even the very wise cannot see all ends.’ Gandalf voiced.
‘Oh shut up Gandalf, you’ve been feeding us that crap for years, we want to hear something new from you,’ Randy Marsh interrupted. Gandalf looked very shock, having never been spoken too like this before.
‘Well, what would you suggest Mr. Marsh?’ Al Gore asked, ‘I mean, I agree with Mr. Dorn, this alien must clearly be put to death, his glassing of our planet is just increasing the rate of global warming!’
‘I think we should just dump him on the moon, that’s how we dealt with Tom Cruise,’ Randy argued. ‘He’d run out of oxygen and just die.’
‘An interesting suggestion,’ replied Starscream, ‘But perhaps he has the ability to breath in a vacuum, unlikely but it is possible and we cannot allow him to escape.’
‘Excuse me, but aren’t we supposed to be deciding if he should die or not? Instead of saying how he should die?’ Apu asked, leaning in to join the conversation.
‘Well I don’t think he should be killed, but he is guilty, I don’t really like violence.’ Brock said.
‘Dammit Brock he has to be killed, the Earth civilians couldn’t resist the firepower of his Conglomerate’s magnitude!’ Ackbar replied angrily, waving his hand in the air.
‘Yeah, I say we should toast this mother along with all the other Conglomerate bastards,’ Sergeant Johnson joined in.
‘Indeed, even without all the proof, we can see that this fiend must go down for what he has done.’ Dumbledore included, adding his opinion to the jurors.
‘I don’t think anyone should be killed for their crimes, there is always a chance for a cure, no matter how bad. But I will go with what the justice system decides.’ The caped crusader explained.
‘Dammit Batman, that was always your problem, you’re too soft!’ the Wicked Witch snarled, ‘I agree with the Primarch, he should be burned, just like the scarecrow!’
‘So, are we all decided then?’ Rogal Dorn asked, ‘Shall we proclaim Justice as guilty and sentence him to death? What do you say Ms. Dawson?’
She blinked up at him slowly and smiled, ‘I like potatoes.’
Dorn frowned, ‘I’ll take that as a yes then.’
‘Ah, excellent, the jury has returned and so we have given voice to the fate of the Conglomerate Prophet of Justice!’ Dopeman grinned, vehemently, ‘What is the verdict foreman Dorn?’
‘We find the defendant guilty of all charges!’ Dorn’s voice boomed out.
Dopeman grinned wickedly, ‘Excellent.’
Justice’s face drained of all colour but he resigned himself to his fate.
‘I sentence the Prophet of Justice to death by monkeys!!!’ Dopeman boomed.
Justice looked very confused and faltered, ‘To what?’
‘You’ll see.’
They stood overlooking the canyon, it was at least a mile in diameter, a vast circle cut into the planet. They could just see the Prophet of Justice sitting in his hover lounger in the dead centre of the canyon.
‘Here they come,’ Dopeman grinned, as vast gates opened all around the canyon and a loud, irrepressible chittering was heard and Silent was reminded of the noise when monkeys are fed at a zoo.
They came in their thousands, no… their hundreds of thousands! Monkeys of all shapes, sizes and forms bounded across the desolate rock towards the Prophet, who was now paralyzed with fear and downright confusion. As one, the first rank reached him and in less than a second, he disappeared beneath a wall of fists and furry bodies.
‘Well, that’s that.’ Dopeman smiled to the others, let’s get back to the task at hand.
‘How can you be sure he’s dead?’ Sarah asked.
Dopeman grinned, ‘Oh he’s dead alright. Those monkeys haven’t eaten in three days.’
They all vanished quickly, arriving on a platform just outside the temple they had convened the trial inside. It was hanging off the main building, suspended just over a massive body of water. Then a shadow fell over them and they looked up.
A vast Conglomerate capital ship was slowly stopping above them and its main hull cannon was lighting up to fire.
‘Oh dear.’ Dopeman said as the ground around them began to shake.
He grabbed the others as fast as he could and teleported away.
They landed on the floor of the bridge of the Out Cyan Bare, where Rachael Lochs jumped at the sudden intrusion of the Mafia.
‘Whoa, I forgot you guys could do that, what’s been happening? Did you find Justice?’ she began as they clambered off the floor and dusted themselves off.
‘Yeah, we found Justice, he’s history.’ Jamsie grinned.
‘Excellent, where’s Silent?’ she asked, warily.
They looked around, eyes widening in sudden fear.
Sarah turned to Dopeman, anger etched into her face, ‘Where’s Silent?!’
He faltered, backing away. For the first time ever, Sarah saw genuine concern in his face.
He held his hand close to his mouth and glanced down at the Chocolate Ring where there was a sudden flash of light and a small circle of fire appeared, ‘Oh dear.’
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Post by Silent on Aug 18, 2012 20:26:26 GMT -5
Chapter Twenty: Desecrated Celebrity
It was a dark time for the Russiians. Zhukov walked down the path to the office of the most high Prophets to see a terrible sight. The Spetznatz, ever the Prophet’s noble bodyguards for countless centuries of time, were being stripped of their ceremonial rank and handing over their gear to the Germanian special forces of the Gestapo.
He snarled at the nearest Gestapo guard as he walked, feeling that the honour of all the Russiians had been blemished by this exchange before he knocked on the door of the chamber and entered.
What he saw, surprised him. There was the holy Oracle, the most noble Fortune Teller Innocent Flame, resting in the centre of the room, behind it were the Prophets, Fortitude and Prudence but also, talking to them, was Fat Vladimir!
Zhukov strode over swiftly, ‘Noble Prophets my greetings to you. Fat Vladimir? You are alive? I would have you tell me how, I saw your head shatter open.’
‘Oh… I have a reinforced skull and techno-brain enhancers to allow my skills and personality to be transferred to another body if I am killed in battle, my reserve energy gives me enough time to get away to repair myself.’
Zhukov blinked, ‘Really?’
‘No, I’m actually a god and I have regenerative powers.’
‘Blasphemy!’ Zhukov gasped, unwilling to hear such words from a higher echelon officer.
‘He speaks the truth Count.’ Prudence voiced, ‘He is indeed one of our god’s taken humanoid form to aid us in this crisis.’
Zhukov felt his head ache at such news and fell to his knees. ‘How?’
‘The gods work in mysterious ways Arbiter,’ Vladimir replied, ‘I am indeed the god you name as Grinyiler, the bearer of weight, the heavy-hearted. I have come to deliver my children from the torment of war and to deliver them victory.’
Zhukov bowed his head.
‘Rise Count, we must speak with you.’ Prudence began.
He stood, turning to the prophets, ‘What would you have me do my lords?’
‘Zhukov, this is a time of great sorrow. I know your people are the worst affected, even though it is over this simple exchange of hats.’ Fortitude voiced.
‘It is more than that lords, we failed in our duty… we allowed the prophet of Justice to be slain.’ Zhukov murmured quietly, his heart heavy with the sadness of it all.
‘He is not the only member of our order to have fallen prey to the humans. The prophets of Lust and Greed have also been murdered.’ Prudence explained to Zhukov’s further despair, ‘But fear not, for look. After the destruction of the Chocolate Ring, we prayed to the gods to deliver us from salvation, see how our faith has been rewarded!’
Zhukov marched to the view screen where he saw, to his surprise, another Chocolate Ring!
‘Chocolate Ring! It’s divine flavour will rush down the mouths of our enemies and deliver us to the Little Quest,’ Fortitude smiled.
Zhukov smiled for the first time in days, perhaps the Conglomerate was not doomed to failure after all.
‘We need something located on the surface in order to activate the ring and lead us to the path of the Little Quest.’ Prudence continued from Fortitude, ‘We need you to find this desecrated celebrity. He is found deep within the Quarantine Zone, where somehow a new infection of Timmy’s has managed to spread.’
‘Fat Vladimir will go with you in this task, you will need his skills to fight off the infectious horde. Find Jim Carey – the desecrated icon – and help us to discover the Little Quest.’
Zhukov bowed, ‘It will be done my lords.’
It was snowing as they landed on the platform of the vast machine complex at the heart of the Chocolate Ring’s fudge mountains. Zhukov and Vladimir loaded their weapons and dropped down only to be immediately confronted by a guardian of enormous size.
‘Ah, this could be a problem.’ Vladimir exclaimed as the huge robot targeted them with its gatling cannons. ‘Hughes, fire on the guardian now!’
‘Yes… lord.’ Hughes’ voice replied over the comm. system, the Crimson Flag turned and fired, all of its pulse cannons together crushed the machine to dust and Vladimir saluted to the vessel.
‘Thanks Hughes, I’ll make a note of your work to the prophets.’ Zhukov said, gleeful to hear Hughes grumbling on the other end of the line.
The two men, god and Arbiter of death, headed inside the machine complex. They knew what they had to do. In order to advance further with the gunship, they had to make their way down to the maintenance control centre and find a way to open the vast metal doors which separated the air channels from the main complex to the rest of the ring. They had to do this simply because the facility was under quarantine, a procedure automatically activated by the guardians upon discovery of a virus or infection.
Unfortunately, opening the gate would ultimately allow the Timmy’s to escape into the other parts of the ring, something Zhukov was not keen on doing, but it was the only way to ensure the recovery of Jim Carey and thus, the future of the Conglomerate.
There were no lights in the complex, so the duo had to rely on the torches mounted on the shoulders of their armour suits, which gave just enough light to see where they were going, but most definitely would not give them enough time to react to an ambush.
Heading down further into the facility, they found it devoid of life. At least… organic life. All the Conglomerate posted here on guard duty were dead, having been slaughtered by the guardians the moment quarantine had come under effect. They were not keen to leave host bodies for the Timmy’s to use.
Zhukov and Vladimir had to kill or at least, destroy several of the guardians in order to safely reach the maintenance centre. It didn’t take them long once there to find the controls to open the main doors.
That, as they say, was where the fun began.
‘I assume we’re going to go down to the ring to see if Silent is still alive?’ Dopeman asked, a little unsure of what else to say.
‘No, you are going to do that, because you are the one who left him behind!’ Sarah screamed back.
Dopeman flinched, ‘Ok, ok, I’m going alright!’
He vanished hurriedly as the others turned to discuss wider matters of concern. Rachael had found the main control tower of the ring, but they knew they did not have enough soldiers aboard the Out Cyan Bare to launch an assault on it.
‘But, we have also found the location of this ring’s Loud Satnav and from there, we have discovered the location of the Activation Celebrity residing on the ring.’ Rachael smiled, ‘So, we do have a hope at stopping the Conglomerate from activating the ring’s destructive capabilities if we manage to get to the celebrity before they do.’
‘So, where is he?’ Sarah asked, watching as Rachael brought up a 3-D hologram of the ring on the bridge and auto-located to the celebrity.
It zoomed up to a vast machine complex high up in the snowy peaks of one of the ring’s large fudge mountain ranges.
‘So, which celebrity is it?’ Johnny asked, his eyes focusing hard on the complex, ‘Whoever it is, it looks like a tough nut to crack to get to him, the whole place looks like it’s sealed up.’
‘It’s Jim Carey. And yes, the facility has been placed under isolation due to a certain outbreak of a plague-like virus that turns organisms into zombie-like creatures… creatures very similar in fact to those that you encountered on the first Chocolate Ring. They even say Timmy.’
Jamsie and Sarah turned to Timmy, ‘What. Did. You. Do!!!’
Timmy shrank back into a corner, looking very, very afraid indeed.
‘I can’t believe you did it again! You actually did it again! How fucking stupid are you?!’ Jamsie yelled.
‘I didn’t mean to!’ Timmy cried, shrinking even further back, almost curling himself into a ball.
‘Well, regardless of whether or not you meant to do it, Timmy, the problem is still there. Now let’s just overcome it and go and get the celebrity and end this second ring now. Timmy’s mistakes can’t be helped, but if Silent did die, we won’t let him die in vain, we’ll complete our mission and destroy this weapon.’ Rachael voiced, ‘Let’s head down to the transports Johnny. We’ll go together, the Conglomerate are also trying to take the facility, so they’ll be too busy fighting the Timmy’s to notice just two of us.’
‘Yes ma’am,’ Johnny replied, gathering up his chainsaws and heading down with her.
Zhukov lay down flat beneath the rim of the huge metal platform, clinging to the edges with all his strength lest the beast find him. He could see the laser reflections of Vladimir blasting at the machine as he slowly clambered back up, energy pickaxe at the ready.
The huge guardian backhanded Vladimir and turned to face the new threat of Zhukov, using its arms to form a massive hammer with which to smite the Arbiter aside. As it moved, Vladimir hit it from behind with his fist before, somehow, tearing a chunk out of its circuitry with his mouth!
In synthetic pain, the beast shot out, hitting Zhukov and knocking him over as Vladimir fired into the ragged hole of metal, rupturing the core of the machine and causing it to explode in a shower of sparks.
With the gate’s guardian down, the duo were free to cross the icy steps of the mountain on the ski-lift, the Crimson Flag slowly swooping into position behind them as the airlock holding out any interfering craft was turned off.
‘Looks like trouble.’ Zhukov voiced, nodding towards the opposite side of the facility to which they were headed.
Vladimir nodded in reply, watching as a horde of Timmy’s both human and Conglomerate were amassing on the opposite side, weapons at the ready, shouting and braying in their bestial tones.
‘Hughes, broadside the Timmy’s, clear off as many as you can before we arrive, it will certainly make our entry to the building easier if you do.’ Vladimir voiced over the comm-link, hearing a grunt of acknowledgement in reply.
It was not long before the Flag opened fire, Timmy’s bursting and vanishing in a sea of searing lasers and pulse fire which blew their fragile bodies apart in a guttural display of green-crimson fireworks. Zhukov and Vladimir joined in, their carbines gunning down any Timmy’s visibly alive after the initial barrage before they reached the point and leapt down amidst the dying flames.
They headed down the long metal corridor towards the energy lift. It was now incredibly quiet, as if nothing existed there at all, not even the electronic hum of the generators that powered the lights, nor the growl of the Timmy’s who were surely everywhere.
They heard movement up ahead and fired without hesitation, the burnt form of a Timmy-Russiian collapsed from the ceiling to land before them, groaning in its death throes before Zhukov finished it off with a double-tap to the head.
It was not long before they reached the elevator, hurrying downwards amidst the ever growing shrieks and screams of enrages and embattled Timmy’s within the main sanctum of the complex. As the doors opened, the duo leapt out, weapons at the ready, to meet, to their surprise, a pair of Russiians!
The men turned, surprise and relief etched onto their faces, ‘Arbiter! Captain Vladimir!? We are relieved to see you both here.’ They exclaimed together.
‘Are you survivors from the Conglomerate troops posted here?’ Vladimir asked.
They nodded in reply, ‘We are sir, when the guardians took charge, we fought them off and hid in this corridor, blocking up the passageway as best we could. Then the Timmy-creatures arrived and killed off the other survivors, there were initially twenty of us. Now we are all that remains.’
‘Come with us soldiers, we are on a very important mission for the sake of the Little Quest and need all the help we can get breaking through the defences of the Timmy’s and the Guardians.’ Zhukov voiced, at this the pair dropped to their knees and praised his name in honour.
The four of them headed down the corridor, passing the bodies of the other fallen Russiians along with a host of Timmy and Guardian dead before at last they reached the door to the outside.
It was snowing. At least, what could be termed snowing on the Chocolate Ring, more accurately perhaps it can be described as sugaring, as the fine white granules of material dropping from the atmosphere was indeed that of sugar.
There was a huge commotion all over the surrounding area heading up to the main sanctum of the complex. The main cause of this commotion were the tanks.
Or more accurately, the Timmy’s driving the tanks, who were firing at just about everything they could see, driving into each other and, occasionally, driving into one of the massive sinkholes that dotted the sugary landscape of the fudge mountain.
As Zhukov took all of this bizarre setting in, he spotted the rather alarmingly huge force of guardians spread amongst the thousands of encroaching Timmy’s.
The Crimson Flag hovered over the outer walls and held its place above the four Russiians.
Vladimir turned to the others, ‘Four of us and a gunship against the entire Timmy horde and the Guardians of the ring. Piece of cake. For Mother Russiia!!!’
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Post by Silent on Aug 18, 2012 20:26:54 GMT -5
Chapter Twenty-One: Isolation Area
Three tanks, a huge guardian and roughly a thousand Timmy’s later, the four Russiians found themselves inside the huge labyrinth that was the inner sanctum.
‘That wasn’t too hard, was it?’ Vladimir asked the others.
‘Not too strenuous no.’ Zhukov replied, leading the group downwards, towards what looked like a massive complex of rooms connected by holographic bridges.
‘Stay close comrades, it looks as though the power is out up ahead. We don’t want to get separated.’ Zhukov voiced, watching the flickering lights and the darkness beyond up ahead with some anticipation.
Again, they found themselves surrounded by an eerie silence as they entered the gulf of blackness beyond the failing lights. The quiet was now penetrated only by their heavily armoured footfalls and clanking of armour and weapons. Strangely, it was not so cold here, despite the fact that it looked rather desolate and frigid.
‘Smoke or gas up ahead,’ Vladimir warned, ‘Helmets on.’
He was right of course, there was some sort of terrible green gas drifting through the empty rooms before them, swamping the area in a terrible fog. They walked through it, rebreathers doing their work as they went.
It was then that Zhukov heard it, a low hissing noise just loud enough to hear over his own breath. Unfortunately, he acted far too late.
By the time he had turned around, the Russiian behind him was impaled on a vast tail barbed with a huge scything blade, it was long and pink, like that of a rat’s tail, but altogether larger and more hideous.
Zhukov drew his pickaxe, eyes struggling to see through the darkness as Vladimir and the other Russiian formed up with him, watching both the tail and the dead Russiian vanish into the smoke.
‘Stay close, form a circle. Don’t let it get in.’ Zhukov muttered under his breath. The others complied swiftly and they soon formed a very tight circle, each facing outwards into the gaseous dark.
‘What is it sir? What is that creature?’ asked the Russiian.
‘It’s a Timmy, but a new form, one we have not seen before.’ Vladimir replied.
‘How do we kill-‘ the Russiian was cut off as a massive beast with a snarling rat’s head lunged from the darkness and ripped his head clean off with a vast claw the length of a small car.
Zhukov and Vladimir turned and fired.
‘This is the right way, ma’am, I can smell Timmy’s ahead.’ Johnny exclaimed, leading the way for Rachael, who followed carefully behind him, submachine guns at the ready for any sign of hostiles.
‘Good work Johnny, our low-level infiltration seems to have worked, they haven’t managed to find us yet and we’re almost at the celebrity, he should be just in the next room, passed this corridor.’ She grinned.
Johnny turned into the corridor to see a tall human-Timmy waddling towards him shouting, ‘Will you be my friend?’
Johnny cut off its arms before severing its head, yet the cry of the Timmy had done more than it had thought. Others were now drawing in to the noise and it was not long before Johnny and Rachael found themselves back to back in the narrow corridor, with Timmy’s on all sides.
The Timmy-Moch roared, spraying the two Russiians with a hideous decaying saliva which they had to turn away from to avoid being knocked unconscious just from the sickening smell alone.
Bleeding from several deep wounds, the creature snarled and bounded into the darkness with the two Russiians setting off after it. A globule of living faeces met them as the beast unleashed it’s Timmified organic gun.
Zhukov leapt to the side as Vladimir took the shot to his chest, knocking him over as the faeces began to sludge over him in an effort to suffocate the supposed god. The Arbiter rushed over, blind-firing as he went before dislodging the poo with a swipe of his pickaxe.
The faeces attempted to slime away but Zhukov caught it and drove his weapon home, the pickaxe blade destroying the sentience of the bizarre and horrific creature.
Just then, the Timmy-Moch barrelled out of the darkness to collide with Zhukov, knocking him sprawling to the rough ground. It stood above him, swiping his weapon away with the palm of its hand before bending low over him with its snarling mouth, opening its jaw wide.
Zhukov looked into the gaping maw of his enemy, seeing the rows of razor-sharp fangs and assumed this would be his end. But just then, the head fell, landing on Zhukov with a thumpf before rolling off to the side, followed by a fountain of greenish blood.
Zhukov blinked and saw Vladimir standing over him, a bloodied pickaxe in hand, holding out his other to Zhukov to help him up.
Zhukov grinned, ‘That was one tough Timmy. Perhaps the Conglomerate should focus on destroying the infection before initiating the Little Quest.’
Vladimir nodded, ‘Let’s go Arbiter, we’re almost at the celebrity. Soon Carey will be ours and the Little Quest can begin.’
‘I have to say, when I heard about the Timmy creatures first, I did think you were all over exaggerating their horribleness. But these things really are the most disgusting beasts I’ve ever seen.’ Rachael exclaimed, wiping the green blood from her naval uniform as she glanced around at the pile of dead around them. ‘It’s just lucky they’re so easy to kill or else we’d be dead by now… or worse, we could be one of them.’
Johnny nodded, pushing a path through the dead in order to reach the celebrity room, ‘I know what you mean, they’re too disgusting even to eat, even Obeseman won’t eat them and that really is saying something.’
‘Well, let’s just get Carey and get the hell out of here before more of those things turn up, or worse, the Conglomerate.’ Rachael ordered, leading Johnny into the next room.
It was a surprisingly large oval shaped room, built, as the rest of the facility was, completely out of metal. Yet this room seemed to slope gently downwards towards a large hole in the centre. Floating above the centre hole, was a chair and sitting on the chair was Jim Carey, complete with a checkered shirt, sunglasses and floaty hair. He seemed to be in some sort of stasis, which makes sense, given his age if he were still to exist almost 3000 years after his stardom on Earth.
Rachael approached him carefully, Johnny holding back just behind her, looking hurriedly around the room in case of a trap or ambush. There was only one other entrance into the room and Johnny watched it carefully, his eyes narrowing.
Rachael meanwhile, was working furiously on the console near the celebrity, which was overrun by what looked like large tentacles that were protruding from the pit beneath Carey. She brushed them aside, knocking them back down into the depths. Unbeknownst to her, one of the tentacles made a little attempted lunge to wrap around her leg, but missed and joined the others back into the depths.
After clearing off the bizarre, decaying tentacles, Lochs set to work powering up the console as Johnny again looked around, this time checking the door through which they had entered, just in case anyone had followed them behind.
He turned back again, only to feel a hard punch to the chest that knocked the wind out of him, before a sharp headbutt delivered him to unconsciousness.
Lochs turned to see Johnny hit the floor and readied her weapons, eyebrows furrowing. She headed over to him, looking around.
She saw nothing as she scanned the room but then she saw light shimmering near the console and opened fire. Her shots rang true as a large Russiian decloaked and walked briskly over to her. He was tall and dark-haired, holding a pickaxe in his left hand.
The bullets pierced his armour several times yet he did not slow until he had reached her, slapping the weapons from her hand and picking her up. He snarled as she kicked him in the chest and he let go.
She ran, looking for another weapon, but just collided with the waiting arms of another man. He was also tall, with short blonde hair and a black military uniform. He had a cruel smile and brushed her hair, holding her tightly, ‘You’re not going anywhere, fraulein.’
Zhukov looked up from Johnny’s unconscious body to the new party, ‘Lord Hughes, what are you doing here?’
‘I am doing the will of the prophets. Now get Jim Carey out of his stasis so we can complete the Little Quest.’
Zhukov snarled but did as he was told, soon the unconscious Carey was being taken away by the Germanian troops along with Johnny and the struggling Rachael.
Zhukov turned to Hughes, ‘Where is Vladimir?’
‘I don’t know where that bumbling fool is.’
‘Careful Hughes, what you say is heresy.’
‘Is it? The prophets have decreed a new order Arbiter, the Russiians can no longer be trusted.’
‘Is that so?’ Zhukov asked, his hands reaching for his weapon.
‘Did you really think the prophets trusted you? Were you truly naïve enough to believe that you would be a part of their great plan? You failed them, Zhukov, you failed the Conglomerate and for that, the penalty is death. You and all of your kind will burn for your failures. This is the word of the prophets, Arbiter.’ Hughes spat the last word with a mingled laugh.
‘My people will not surrender without a fight.’ Zhukov replied, ‘The Conglomerate will suffer for this transgression.’
‘Goodbye Zhukov, I had hoped it would be me who got to tear you to pieces. Looks like it is my lucky day.’ Hughes smiled, before firing his pistol into Zhukov’s chest.
Zhukov felt the icy pain of the bullet smashing through his armour, not killing him, but being enough to knock him backwards as he collapsed, tumbling through the air and down into the pit.
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Post by Silent on Aug 18, 2012 20:27:26 GMT -5
Chapter Twenty-Two: Timmymind
‘Where the hell am I?’ Silent asked, opening his eyes slowly before running his hands over his eyes in pain, ‘What the hell was I drinking last night?’
He could feel something wrapped around his legs very tightly, almost as if someone was clinging on to him. That’ll be Timmy, he thought.
‘Timmy, get the hell off me, I’m not in the mood for your shit right now!’ he yelled before his eyes fully adjusted to the gloom of his new location.
He very nearly had a heart attack. He was suspended at least twenty metres from the ground, being held by the legs by a rather large amount of greenish-brown tentacles running down to the base of what looked like a monstrously Godzilla-sized Venus flytrap.
He blinked several times to ensure that he wasn’t dreaming. Then he blinked again and finally slapped himself. He was not dreaming.
Then his other senses came into effect and he acknowledged the smell. It was not pleasant, being rather like the decomposing faeces of a million unbaptized babies mixed with the stench of Rob Reiner’s armpit. If he could have cut off his nose, he would have.
He looked around the room he was in to discover it wasn’t so much a room as a vast cavern that stretched for miles all around. There were rotting pools of liquid on the rugged earth far below and what looked like a large amount of Timmy’s huddled close together, staring up with what seemed to be awe at the huge plant before him.
He turned back to the plant, realising that on closer inspection, it was not so much a plant as a creature. Beneath the flaps of what he had initially thought were its petals, he could just make out a face. As he was doing this, it rose its head and turned to face a commotion above them.
More of its tentacles were drooping downwards from a large sinkhole up above, they were holding what appeared to be a struggling figure. As it was brought closer, Silent recognised it to be a Russiian soldier, not just any soldier, but an Arbiter of the Conglomerate.
Silent stared at him carefully, it appeared that he was injured, but seemed to ignore the pain, instead focusing on breaking out of the tentacles grip.
Feeling the tightness of the creature on himself, Silent decided to advise the newcomer, ‘Just relax, I’d rather not piss this thing off.’
‘Don’t presume to help me, Earthling!’ it snarled in response.
‘Alright fine, just trying to make the best of a bad situation.’ Silent replied, ‘I’m Silent by the way and I’m not an Earthling, I’m a Tergan.’
‘All the same to me. I suppose for courtesy I should tell you that I am Zhukov, former Arbiter of the Conglomerate.’
‘Former?’
‘Yes, former. The Conglomerate has seen fit to… do away with my people.’
‘Oh, that’s good. One less bunch for me to fight then.’ Silent threw him a wink, which only caused him to struggle more.
‘I’ll kill you, human!’
‘Silence!’
They both stopped at the sound of the booming voice. It had come from the monstrous creature before them. Silent watched as the petal shield unfolded from the beast’s head, revealing it’s infinitely more hideous visage.
It was pale, paler than Silent thought was possible for a creature to be. Its mouth was wide and cracked, with broken teeth lining its black gums like chips of slate fallen from a high roof. Its eyes were jet black but filled with a purpose of evil, the thick black brows furrowed in scrutiny. Even its nose was a cracked hole torn into the face, every inch the image of its creator, except for its undying malevolence and even intelligence.
‘What are you?’ Silent asked.
‘I… I am a monument to all your shite. I am the Timmymind!’ it boomed, voice shaking the very caverns with its echoes.
‘Parasite!’ Zhukov snarled, forcing away the tentacles with renewed fury.
‘Cease your pointless bickering Arbiter. I have a task to set you both upon.’
‘I will not bandy words with you, creature! Even with the Conglomerate no longer at my side, I would not ally with an infection!’
‘Then perhaps, listen to this machine.’ Timmymind voiced, another of his tentacles bringing to the fore a small monitor.
The eye powered on and it spoke, ‘Oh, greetings, I am Eight-Nine-Eight Heretic Obtuse, monitor of installation zero-six.’
‘Oracle?’ Zhukov asked.
‘Why do you insist on calling us that, foolish Conglomerates, we are merely machines possessed with the knowledge of our creators and have no such powers of foresight. I am here to speak to you about containment.’
‘You mean, about activating the ring?’ Silent asked.
‘Indeed.’ Obtuse replied, happily.
‘Nonsense, the Little Quest will deal with the infection along with the Earthling’s and propel my society into prosperity!’ Zhukov voiced with pride.
‘This one’s containment,’ began the Timmymind, looking at Obtuse, ‘And this one’s Little Quest are the same.’
‘So the Conglomerate are planning on activating the ring, don’t they know what it does?’ Silent asked.
‘It begins the Little Quest.’ Zhukov answered.
‘Fool, your Little Quest will bring only your destruction,’ Timmymind voiced.
‘Blarg!’ came a high-pitched call from below.
‘Quiet tentacle 42!’ Timmymind bellowed.
Silent’s brows furrowed in understanding, ‘Oh, I see, this is all playing out like that Halo 2 game isn’t it?’
‘What?’ said both Timmymind and Zhukov together.
‘Yeah, you’re going to convince Zhukov and I to help you stop the prophets from activating the ring in order to save your own skin before backstabbing us both. Well that ain’t going to happen.’
‘Why not?’ Timmymind asked.
Silent drew his pistol, ‘This is why.’
He fired once, the shot hitting Zhukov directly in the head and killing him instantly.
Timmymind shrugged, dropping Zhukov’s body to the floor, ‘No matter. I sense another will come soon enough.’
‘Blarg!’
‘Shut up tentacle 42!’
‘Yeah whatever.’ Silent replied, ‘If you’re a Timmy, how come you’re so intelligent?’
‘That’s simple, Silent. Every parasitic and instinct driven race needs some sort of Hive Mind or control node in order to focus its drives, otherwise it would drive itself to extinction and serve no purpose in the universe.’
‘I see. So, who’s this other being that you are sensing?’ Silent asked, a little bit intrigued.
‘Blarg!’
‘Well, tentacle 42 is detecting him right now, so he must be on his way. Ah, here he is.’
Just then, Dopeman appeared on the ground far beneath them.
‘Oh damn, what the fuck is that thing?’ he yelled, looking up at the Timmymind.
‘It’s a Timmymind, leader of the Timmy’s. It’s actually pretty intelligent, who’d have thought huh?’ Silent replied.
‘Oh thank God, you’re alive! Sarah would have killed me if you’d died!’ Dopeman shouted back.
‘Enough of the social interactions gentlemen. Fate had us meet as foes, but this ring will make us brothers. We must find the activation celebrity. There is still time to stop the key from turning.’ Timmymind voiced.
It turned to Silent, ‘You will search one likely spot and you,’ it turned to Dopeman, ‘Will search another.’
‘Wait a minute, I just want to ask-‘ but Silent was cut off as he was teleported away.
‘The Little Quest begins today my children!’ Prudence smiled, speaking over the Conglomerate broadcast to the entire organisation. ‘Fear not, as the desolation of the Russiian rebellion burns through our hearts, we shall witness the rise of our new and more sacred Conglomerate in the fires of the Little Quest!’
Prudence turned to Jim Carey, who was standing beside him, along with Fortitude and a host of Gestapo, ‘Here is the desecrated celebrity, with him, our course is clear and nothing, nothing can stop the Little Quest now!’
Silent appeared right in front of them and raised his rifle quickly, ‘Hi.’
‘Kill the Earthling!’ Prudence yelled to the Russiians as he and Fortitude fled through the next door.
The Gestapo headed forwards, laser pistols and energy pikes at the ready as Silent shot the first in the head before drawing his wristblades and engaging the others in hand-to-hand combat.
He slit the throat of the first and then took a pike to the chest, piercing his armour and rupturing one of his lungs. He gasped heavily, finding it hard to breath and slowly fell backwards to the ground, the pike still imbedded in him.
He coughed as the three remaining Gestapo closed in for the kill. They never reached him. There was a blinding flash followed by a hail of gunfire and they were down.
Silent looked up, still coughing, to see Sarah, Jamsie, Timmy, Jeevsie and… something that looked remarkably like a bear heading over to him. His eyes focused on the newcomer, seeing that it was indeed a living teddy bear, dark brown in colour with shaggy fur, it lifted him up and pulled out the pike before licking his wound with its long tongue.
‘Hey what the hell are you doing?’ Silent yelled, but stopped as he felt a sudden soothing as his wound healed, feeling his lung knit itself back together. The bear let him down with a big beaming smile on its pudgy face and he frowned.
‘Not to say that I’m ungrateful or anything, but… what the fuck is that!?’ he yelled, pointing at the bear, who was still smiling.
‘Eh, Silent, I’d like you to meet Huggles. Huggles the Bear.’ Sarah answered, completely confused herself at the bizarre situation.
‘Ok, Huggles, what are you, other than a bear?’
‘I’m Huggles, the first and most powerful of the 42’s. I know you’ve already met my brother’s Dopeman and Obeseman.’ Huggles replied in a cheerful, almost Barney the dinosaur voice.
‘Wait a minute, you’re their brother?’ Silent asked.
‘Yes, I’m the eldest of the trio.’ He smiled in return. ‘I came here to help you fight the Conglomerate because I realised my brothers were taking such a big role in the war, I couldn’t let them have all the fun.’
‘Ok… so what’s your power then?’ Silent asked as the others stared on, just as confused, bemused and befuddled as he was.
‘Why, hugs of course! C’mere and give Huggles a cuddle!’ Huggles smiled, giving Silent a back-breaking bear-hug.
Silent frowned, ‘What is the universe coming to when there are three brothers forming the gods of hugs, dope and obesity…’
‘Well, let’s go, we have to stop Prudence and Fortitude, they have the activation celebrity and they’re going to fire the ring!’ Silent yelled, leading the ever-growing group out into the corridors of what he now realised, was the Conglomerate city, Low Greed.
‘They need an earthling to activate the ring along with the celebrity, Innocent told me that on the first ring, but we still need to get Carey off them in case they do find a human.’ Silent voiced as they ran, shooting down a bunch of halflings who had assembled barricades in an attempt to slow them down.
‘Eh, Silent… they do have a human. Two, in fact.’ Sarah replied as she shot her sniper rifle across the corridor to hit a Germanian in the neck.
‘What? Who? How?’ he asked in surprise, rushing forwards to slay another lemming.
‘Johnny and Rachael, they captured them when they went to get Jim Carey. We have to rescue them too!’ Sarah replied, leading the group out into the next long corridor, which was accessible via an energy bridge.
They crossed it swiftly, Huggles rushing forwards to hug a charging Gestapo to death, literally crushing his bones to dust and dropping his fleshy body to the ground.
‘Well, I do have some good news.’ Silent explained, ‘The Conglomerate turned against the Russiians, so that means there’s going to be a lot of infighting between them and may give us the advantage we need to slip passed the majority of their forces.’
‘Why did they turn against them?’ Sarah asked, as they headed down into an earthy lobby of the vessel where they found Russiians engaged in combat with Germanians.
‘I’m not sure, I think it might have had something to do with us killing their prophets though,’ Silent answered as they rushed through the swirling firefight, shooting any that attempted to engage them before diving through the door at the opposite side.
Finding themselves walking along the metal corridors of the ship again, they saw a host of dead bodies up ahead, some Russiian, some Germanian. Passed this, they opened the next door, to which they found themselves embroiled in a fight to cross a vast walkway. One side was held by the Russiians, who were being aided by lemmings and Mochs. The other side, opposite the Mafia, was controlled by Germanians, backed up by halflings and penguins. The civil war between the Conglomerate forces had truly placed a schism in their military ranks.
Yet this played to the advantage of the Mafia who - using Huggles’ infinitely more accurate version of dimension jumping, though still using Dimension X - simply vanished and reappeared straight on the other side of the bridge and hurried onwards, desperate to reach Fortitude and Prudence in time.
In the next room, they found themselves accosted by no less than twenty Gestapo, who themselves were embroiled in combat with the remnants of the Spetznatz. A bloody fight ensued.
Huggles took out the leading Gestapo hastily, ripping his arms from his sockets before clawing open his face. He may be cuddly, but Huggles was still a bear. Silent and Sarah cut around the flanks of the room, gunning down any who attempted to take up firing positions against the Mafia.
Halfway through the chaos, the doors on the opposite end crashed down and a Russiian Hierarch entered, his white armour shining in contrast to his Spetznatz warriors, an energy pick in each hand. He strode into battle, decapitating the first Gestapo before driving the axe blade into another’s head, bursting it like a watermelon.
Sarah fired at him, blasting one of his weapons out of his hands as Timmy rushed forwards in an attempt of insane stupidity to beat him to death with his rubber knife. The Hierarch batted Timmy aside and advanced on Sarah, who drew her combat blades and leapt to meet him, blocking his first attack and parrying with a riposte that knocked him off balance.
He kicked out, knocking her sprawling, but she rolled to the side as the pickaxe imbedded into the ground beside her, giving her the time to stand and drive her blade into his neck with insane speed which severed him apart. The Hierarch collapsed to the floor as the last of the Conglomerate fighters also died, bleeding out from their multitude of wounds.
The Mafia hurried out to the next corridor, knowing they were not far from the prophets and perhaps, ultimate victory against the Conglomerate.
‘Take the humans to the control centre Hughes, but split them up, one in each dropship, we don’t want them conspiring against us.’ Prudence ordered.
The Gestapo did as they were told, one group taking Rachael to one dropship, the others taking Johnny. Hughes threw Jim Carey in with Rachael, keeping him entertained with a lemming who constantly took pictures of him.
‘What of you noble prophets?’ Hughes inquired, staring at them as they prepared to enter the third dropship.
‘We go to Earth, to finish what we started, the honour of beginning the Little Quest is yours, Lord Hughes, do not fail us.’ Fortitude replied.
It was then that they heard it. That all too familiar noise. The chittering of the Timmy’s. Fortitude and Prudence turned as the Gestapo readied their weapons to face a tide of Timmyforms charging up from the platform all around them.
The platform was out in the open and there was little they could do but stand and fight. And so the first wave of Timmy’s died, as did the next and the next. But alas, one got through. Just one. But one was enough.
The prophet of Fortitude fell from his chair, crashing to the ground with guttural cries of pain as the burrowing form cut deep into his neck.
Lord Hughes stepped over to him, hand outstretched to retrieve the creature before it killed Fortitude, but a smaller hand held him back.
He turned to Prudence who smiled evilly, ‘Leave him.’
Hughes grunted, heading to the dropship with Carey and Rachael and entering, preparing for takeoff.
Prudence turned to Fortitude, who lay on the ground being slowly eaten alive, a look of absolute betrayal etched onto his visage.
‘The Little Quest waits for no one brother, not even you!’ Prudence voiced, before getting into his own dropship.
As one, the three dropships took off and headed for their separate destinations.
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Post by Silent on Aug 18, 2012 20:27:49 GMT -5
Chapter Twenty-Three: Rebellion
Dopeman stood up. His first thought was, what the hell am I doing here? His second was, what the hell is he doing, dead?
He examined the dead Russiian on the cliff edge beside him. He was on a small ridge of a cliff leading higher into the mountain, which seemed to have some sort of facility built into it. The sea stretched as far as the eye could see on the other side of the ridge, with a huge metal, pyramidal construct sitting in the centre of the ocean.
There were trees dotting the landscape as Dopeman deduced that the Russiian had been killed by Conglomerate laser fire. Perhaps even betrayed by his own kind. Dopeman found this interesting indeed and rounded the corner, moving quickly into hiding behind a tree as he spotted a Germanian soldier talking to another of his brethren in amongst a clearing full of dead Russiians.
‘Haha, they had no idea what hit them. The prophets worked their plan well.’
‘So they were betrayed, by the Germanians and the prophets… that must mean the Russiians aren’t part of the Conglomerate anymore.’ Dopeman thought to himself.
Deciding he had hid long enough, he stepped into the opening, the two Germanians turned their guns on him.
‘Eh, hi! How are you guys?’ Dopeman began with a cheery smile.
‘What?’ one asked, staring at him with deep scrutiny.
‘I said, “How are you guys?”’ Dopeman repeated.
‘We are… fine. I guess. Who are you?’
‘Oh I’m a doctor and if you want my second opinion, you aren’t fine, you’re dead.’ Dopeman smiled, killing them both swiftly with a toothpick each to the neck.
He strode onwards, casually dispatching another triplet of Germanians before clambering up the side of the mountain towards the entrance to the facility. Upon reaching the door, it opened and a Russiian in Spetznatz armour stepped out, a pickaxe in hand.
He noticed Dopeman, but paid no real attention to him as he took in the devastation caused by the Germanians to his people.
‘The Germanians will pay for this in blood!’ he roared, turning to Dopeman, ‘Earthling, help us and our war will be forgotten.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ Dopeman shrugged, following the Spetznatz inside, where he was greeted by roughly twenty more Russiians armed and ready for combat.
‘Now, we shall cut a hole into the forces of Germania that they shall never forget! Take the facility from them!’ roared the Spetznatz as the Russiians eagerly sprang out and immediately into combat with the Germanians within.
Dopeman sauntered in behind them, watching the battle eagerly for a few seconds before joining in, using Bob to open a warphole within a Germanian’s chest and causing it to explode outwards with an fully formed xenomorph alien leaping out.
Dopeman smiled at his work and carried forwards into the fight, gutting another foe with his toothpick before gliding over the battlefield to the other side of the cavern, standing before the door to stop the Conglomerate from escaping.
He formed a toothpick disc and launched it forwards, decapitating a pair of Germanians and even slicing the flipper from a penguin who collapsed from rapid loss of blood. With Dopeman’s aid, the Russiians soon found themselves deep within the facility, leaving many Germanian troops dead behind them.
Using his warp powers, Dopeman pulled forth a legion of skeleton soldiers for him to command and set them loose into the forest surrounding the facility, ready to hunt down and slay any Conglomerate soldier. He smiled as his undead troops clashed with the enemy, gutting them in close combat with their sharp blades and bodkin arrows.
He commanded several to follow him down the deep ravines towards the next major complex, the Russiians also followed, having received communications from Fat Vladimir himself that he was pressing the attack on the Conglomerate control centre.
As a joint force, the Russiians and Dopeman’s undead swept the forests clean of life, even cutting through the armoured hulls of Boomer tanks until they forced their way into the next facility.
Very little could stand in the way of the Lord of Dope and so it did not take long for Dopeman to battle his way through hundreds of Germanians, leaving a sizable force of dead Conglomerate in his wake. Within a couple of hours, Dopeman had far overtaken the other Russiians and even his undead, who remained behind to ensure no Conglomerate escaped alive.
Dopeman found himself heading down a waterfall, dropping several metres into the icy water below. He shook himself in a pointless attempt to get dry at the edge of the pool and then looked up, realising that he was surrounded by Germanians and halflings, all of whom had weapons aimed at him.
‘Oh look guys, I’m really tired and this is just getting boring and repetitive now ok, so just please go. I’d rather not have to kill you all right now.’ Dopeman sighed.
‘Ha, one against three hundred, you cannot win.’ A voice said.
‘Oh, alright then.’ Dopeman muttered, opening his arms and spinning once on the spot. There was a flurry of movement and they all lay dead, showered with toothpicks.
Dopeman sighed again and walked into the complex, heading through the main cavern system. Halfway through, he was accosted by a lemming on a bike and he stuck his leg out.
The wheel hit him and the bike flipped over and exploded. Dopeman yawned and continued forwards. He was so bored he started chatting to Bob, occasionally lashing out with his wrist to slay any Conglomerate who thought he was an easy kill.
‘It’s just no fun doing this with no one around to see it. I really need to show off my powers, I can’t just do it by myself y’know Bob.’ Dopeman voiced, walking slowly through the most heavily guarded Conglomerate fortress on the ring. Shots bounced off his armour and the occasional blast that got through healed almost instantly as he summoned a pair of dragons to do his work for him.
‘I know what you mean Dopeman, with no one to go, Oooh and Aaagh around, it just isn’t the same when we do something spectacular.’
Dopeman sighed, punching through a Boomer to pull the driver out the side and toss him into the waiting mouth of one of the dragons.
He walked slowly onwards as a Boomer shot landed directly on him. Walking through the smoke, he coughed and brushed the dust off himself before heading onwards, the Conglomerate now fleeing before his apparent might.
The Conglomerate were heading for a small tunnel that he assumed led further into the complex, so he launched Bob at the entrance, opening a warphole which dropped an immensely large Snorlax in front of the opening, stopping the Conglomerate from getting through.
Dopeman yawned in boredom as the dragons closed in, ripping apart the trapped enemies as Dopeman vanished the Snorlax and continued into the tunnel.
Deciding he was sick of walking, he summoned a thanator from the planet Pandora and sat astride it, letting it deal with the Conglomerate opposing him as he took a quick nap.
Disappointingly, the nap did not last long as the thanator was killed rather quickly. So Dopeman found himself walking again, holding his hand out before him and blasting toothpicks everywhere in a blind hail of fire to kill everything before him.
He was tempted to just drop a nuclear bomb and then walk through the waste towards his target, but if he did that, he might destroy something worthwhile so he scrapped that idea.
As he headed down through the complex, his mind wandered to what others things he could pull out of dimensions to throw at the enemy, deciding on the obscure and downright bizarre to aid his taste, he opened several warpholes at once, sending a vampyre, a tree-kin and a single, solitary Borg all at once to kill the enemy. Admittedly, he was very disappointed with this result. The Borg had no idea what to do without a collective to tell him what to do, the tree-kin burst into flames the moment the first laser hit him and, unfortunately, the sun was out, which caused the vampyre to shrivel into dust the moment it arrived.
Dopeman sighed again, resulting in him resorting to his usual tactic of launch toothpicks at everything that moves. It did the trick, but in no way sated his ultimate boredom. After clearing the facility, he found himself exiting onto a rather large and beautiful white chocolate beach, there were huge cliffs either side of him, leading the beach to channel either up a ridge to the left or down the centre towards the ocean and the structure that he now recognised was in fact the control centre of the ring.
He rounded the corner of the thicket of trees before him to stand on the beach itself. He heard a loud humming noise to his left and turned to see a Boomer tank approaching, gliding down the ridge towards him. He yawned and readied a toothpick, rolling his eyes at the monotony of it all.
Then the tank stopped and the hatch on top opened and Dopeman saw a familiar face.
Fat Vladimir gasped, ‘Dopeman?!’
Dopeman frowned and inclined his head, ‘Obeseman? What are you doing all skinny and in a Conglomerate tank? And leading the Russiian rebellion?’
‘To be honest, I don’t really know,’ he replied, ‘It started off just as a second job and a little bit of spying and then all this story and developing characters happened and here I am.’
‘I see, well, apparently the Conglomerate have gotten the activation celebrity for this ring, so we better get to the control centre and end this now.’
‘Good idea,’ Obeseman replied, ‘The Russiians will help us and the control centre isn’t far off. It shouldn’t be too much of a problem at all.’
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Post by Silent on Aug 18, 2012 20:28:17 GMT -5
Chapter Twenty-Four: Low Greed
The dropships took off. Three of them, and headed their separate ways. One split from the others at the start, heading directly for the large vessel that Silent saw far below in the main city of Low Greed. It was pyramidal in shape and looked to be very similar in construction to the vessels of Earth several centuries ago.
‘That Germanian has Johnny, Rachael and the celebrity, he can activate the ring!’ Jamsie called out, pointing after the escaping vessels.
‘One of them is still down there.’ Sarah voiced, pointing to the convulsing body of Fortitude, lying on the launch pad far below them.
As a group, they descended the stairs and approached him with caution. Silent walked right up and pulled the Timmy from him, crushing it in his hand.
‘Where is Prudence going?’ he asked.
Fortitude coughed and spluttered, ‘Earth… to… finish what we started…’
‘And the others?’
Fortitude almost laughed or perhaps he intended to but failed. ‘Haha… ha… ha… he… bla… blarg… blarg!’
Silent backed off from him, drawing his pistol as the prophet rose, his face growing a snout and his mouth growing sharp teeth.
It looked at him, ‘Friend?’
Silent fired and the prophet fell dead.
‘That ship that Prudence is heading for, is an early Earth ship, used by humans centuries ago. It appears to be a Battlestar class warship. If Prudence brings that ship to Earth, it’ll all be over. The Conglomerate will be able to invade.’ Sarah voiced, pointing at the vessel.
‘Look!’ Jeevsie pointed to the sky where they saw the Out Cyan Bare suddenly crash downwards, colliding with Low Greed not far from their position. It was as if the vessel had attempted to land but failed barely. It was largely unharmed, but the front of the ship was buckled beneath the pressure of the impact.
‘What the hell happened?’ Silent asked, confused.
‘Timmy’s must have found a way onto the ship, there’s no way the crew would land it like that.’ Sarah replied.
As if to give evidence to her theory, a pair of LAAT dropships swooped down from Out Cyan Bare, crashing nearby them, on the platform just ahead and disgorging a horde of Timmys.
‘Alright, we’ve got to find a way to that ship that Prudence is headed to, we can’t let him get to Earth.’ Silent said.
‘I’ll detonate Out Cyan Bare’s engines just like we did with the Statue of Spring, that’ll destroy this ship and possibly the ring, at least we know it’ll work.’ Sarah voiced.
‘Alright, but make sure we’re clear before that happens.’
‘Silent, we can’t chance a remote detonation, I’ll have to stay here.’ She explained quietly.
‘No and that’s final. We’ll sort it out when we come to it, now let’s get Prudence.’ He ordered, looking at her rather fiercely.
They charged back up the steps towards the main hangar, shooting down a pair of Timmy’s who flailed their arms towards them. Luckily, the Conglomerate troops defending the platforms had engaged the large part of the Timmy force, so the Mafia had little trouble in making it to the main hangar, passing through even as they saw it falling under the rather horrifying transformation of the Timmy’s, with large welts and warts of terrible pungency and generally disgusting looks growing out of the ground and walls, almost as if the hangar was a living being succumbing to a disease.
‘Why is it that everything to do with Timmy’s have to be disgusting, whatever happened to your cute and cuddly side?' Sarah asked Timmy as she wiped slime off her sleeve.
‘He has a cute and cuddly side?’ Jamsie asked, in deep confusion.
‘Everybody does Jamsie, everybody does.’ Huggles replied, ripping open a Timmy with his claws.
‘Indeed,’ Silent frowned, ‘Hey Huggles, could you summon things from time and space, like Dopeman and Obeseman can, cos if we had more men, we could finish this a lot faster?’
‘Good idea, why is it that we never come up with these ideas by ourselves, we always have to be told.’ Huggles replied, spinning his claws to open a portal in front of him. Something huge and spherical shot out, a being, yellow in colour with a wide, black mouth with no real sign of teeth and only two small black eyes as its other features.
It moved with its mouth constantly moving in an eating motion making one single, simple noise with every chatter, ‘Paka.’
It clattered through the corridor before him, chomping through Timmy’s, Conglomerate and metal as he went, ‘Paka, paka, paka, paka, paka, paka, paka, paka, paka, paka, paka, paka, paka, paka, paka, paka, paka, paka, paka, paka!’
‘Is that pac-man?’ Sarah inquired.
‘Yes, yes I believe it is.’ Huggles answered, watching the creature mesmerised as it ate forwards.
Silent looked at Sarah, surprised again that she knew of the ancient earth game character.
‘Like I said before, there wasn’t all that much to do on Rayclif.’ She replied in answer to his look.
He nodded as the group followed the trail of destruction the huge creature was causing. Yet, like so many of their plans, devices and creatures of chaos, it was not to last.
As they battled their way through the main hubs of Low Greed, a Timmy infection managed to worm its way into pac-man’s brain and… well… it was not long before the creature continued, growing a terrifying snout, warts, beadier eyes and changing its voice to… ‘Timmy, Timmy, Timmy, Timmy, Timmy, Timmy, Timmy, Timmy, Timmy, Timmy, Timmy, Timmy, Timmy, Timmy, Timmy, Timmy, Timmy, Timmy! Timmy, Timmy, Timmy…’
Silent dropped to his knees and hit himself on the head, ‘I just… I just can’t do this anymore, this is too fucked and weird and I am absolutely fucking sick of all this Timmy crap!’
‘I’m sorry.’ Timmy replied, teary-eyed, as he walked slowly over to Silent and hugged him closely.
‘Don’t touch me Timmy, seriously don’t touch me.’ He replied, frowning.
‘I mean, it couldn’t just be a simple military operation. Oh no, it couldn’t just be a straight fight. We go in and fight Prudence and kill him. Oh no, we have to fight a bunch of retarded, filthy and downright hideous zombie-infection… rat… things!’
‘Yes, it is rather annoying,’ Sarah conceded, putting an arm around Silent as the Timmy Pac-man disappeared down the corridor.
‘Yeah, I know I said it was great to kill infinite Timmy’s, but this is getting very repetitive and boring and I’m pretty sick of hearing blarg and Timmy every second.’ Jamsie voiced, walking over to the others.
‘Ah, come on, the sooner we catch up with Prudence, the sooner we can get off this ring and away from the Timmys.’ Silent said, standing up and readying his weapons. ‘Let’s just do this quickly and it’ll all be over and there’ll be nothing more to worry about.’
They nodded as one and headed off after him, shooting down anything that moved, too pissed off and tired to discriminate between armed, unarmed or injured opponents.
The power had gone in these sections of the Conglomerate city and so they had to rely on Silent’s shoulder torch and Jamsie’s torch to see anything at all. The group huddled together to ensure they were not separated as they entered a vast habitation zone. It was clearly in the process of being timmified, as large boils and welts were grotesquely sprouting from the ground, turning the small – once pleasant – moat of the area into a sickly brown colour.
There were several dead Conglomerate scattering the area, yet there were many more alive and embattled with the Timmy menace, which were spreading through the zone like a plague – which, of course, they were.
The Mafia stuck to the edges, eager to avoid contact if it indeed could be avoided. As it proved, it was not. Several times they were forced to open fire, turning whatever it was that provoked them, be it Timmy or Conglomerate, into a pile of ragged flesh. They were not to be trifled with, not with the stakes now so high.
Making it out of the zone, they found themselves heading up to the next level in a massive elevator clearly designed for mass troop movement. Reaching the top, they noticed they were facing a large barricade of Conglomerate benches and weapons crates, behind which stood several Germanians and halflings, who opened fire on first sight.
Silent and Sarah dived to the right whilst Huggles took the majority of rounds, blowing bits of his soft fur off. Timmy shot back, but his round merely pinged off the stockade as Jamsie covered their retreat with hasty Tommy gun fire.
A laser blast hit Sarah in the leg and sent her sprawling. It had burnt her badly and she stood up slowly with the aid of Silent, barely making it to cover as Huggles unleashed a roar of fury and barrelled over the stockade, biting the head off a Germanian before him. Faced with the fury of the God-bear, the Conglomerate turned to flee, but met a horde of Timmy’s, who had snuck behind them.
There was ensuing slaughter, with wholesale destruction of both sides in seconds. The Timmy’s may be retarded, but they had numbers and animal instinct on their side, which was just as deadly as anything the Conglomerate had to bare.
‘Can you walk?’ Silent asked Sarah, concerned.
‘I… I think so…’ she replied weakly, straining to stand.
He helped her to her feet and she leant hard on him, using him as a crutch to move. Huggles stood in front of them, batting Timmy’s away with his strong claws and roaring to frighten away the Conglomerate. Timmy and Jamsie formed up with them and the group slowly advanced through the maelstrom of battle, heading for the next elevator.
They were only one floor away from the access point to Prudence’s ship and they were determined to get there in time. Silent fired his shotgun one-handed, shattering a Timmy with a slug to the face. Sarah blinked back the pain and managed to raise one of her own pistols to shoot down a halfling attempting to get under the legs of Huggles armed with a hoe.
After five minutes of intense struggle, they tumbled into the waiting elevator, hitting the floor with a crash. Silent landed first, catching Sarah on top of himself to stop her from getting further damage. Jamsie hurriedly closed the doors, shooting one last volley into the battle before it shut to scare off any would-be intruders.
They all struggled to their feet as the elevator began to move, Silent and Timmy helping Sarah get up and taking either side of her to support her. Huggles stood at the door just in case the enemy were waiting for them when it opened.
As it happened, they weren’t. The Conglomerate here already had their hands full with a fullscale Timmy assault. The creatures were swarming the platform and the Mafia pushed forwards, using a wall of bullets from their weapons as a shield. Their target was dead ahead, a gravity well aimed straight at the access point to the vessel. Stepping into it would blast them into it and allow them to finally end the war by silencing Prudence.
They were two metres away from it when the Timmy’s made contact. Jamsie was knocked aside as a huge Timmy-moch batted him with its talon, ripping open his shirt and spraying them with blood. Immediately, the small group fell apart as Timmy tripped over Jamsie, causing Sarah and Silent to fall in turn.
Silent rolled over and blew off the creature’s head with a shotgun shell at point blank range. He was showered in the bloody ichor of the dead beast as he struggled to pick up Sarah. A pair of strong arms grabbed him around the waist and he felt himself flying through the air.
He turned to see Huggles looking at him, ‘Go! Kill Prudence! I’ll get the others!’
The toss launched Silent straight into the gravity well before he could reply and he roared after Huggles, seeing the Timmy’s closing in, ‘Get Sarah! Get Sarah!’
Huggles smashed another Timmy aside before grabbing the real Timmy and throwing him into the well also, followed by Jamsie.
Silent smashed onto the hard metal of the human ship and stood, staring at the chaos of the platform. His heart was pounding, Huggles hadn’t picked up Sarah yet…
He saw Timmy and Jamsie heading for him and turned back to see Huggles rising from the swarm, Sarah in his arms. He stepped towards the well… and fell.
He looked to be in incredible pain as he rolled to the side, his chest had exploded outwards, blood and entrails bursting out. Two Timmy’s stood behind him, a shotgun held in each of their twisted claws. Huggles struggled to get a little closer to the well as Sarah fell limp in his arms. She had fainted.
Huggles was shaking and he tried to stand. Another shot rang out and Huggles dropped.
‘No!’ Silent roared. Sarah fell from his arms into the waiting tentacles of the Timmy’s as the body of Huggles fell from the platform, disappearing into the murky darkness thousands of miles below.
Silent fell to his knees as the ship began to move, the energy shields dropped, separating him from the platform. He turned slowly to Timmy, nothing but pain in every line of his face. He was surprised to see that the pain and sorrow was measured in the small creature’s own face and he understood. He closed his eyes and rolled to the floor, lying on his back.
‘I’m sorry.’ He whispered.
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Post by Silent on Aug 18, 2012 20:28:51 GMT -5
Chapter Twenty-Five: The Little Quest
‘What is that place?’ Dopeman asked, pointing at the large building that rose from the ocean nearby.
‘Where the Russiian councilors were supposed to watch the beginning of the Little Quest, they are all dead now, murdered by the Germanians,’ Obeseman replied.
Dopeman thought carefully as he stared at the building, remembering the words of the Timmymind, ‘There is still time to stop the key from turning.’
‘We have to get inside that building, we have to stop them from activating the ring.’ Dopeman urged.
Obeseman nodded, ‘Mount up Dopeman, I think I know just where to find a key.’
Dopeman smiled and hopped onto the top of the Boomer as Obeseman began to drive. He summoned a missile launcher and held it in his hands, watching for enemy attack. Sure enough, they soon found themselves swarmed with Germanians mounted on hover bikes and smaller attack speeder.
Dopeman fired, the missile hitting the front of a bike, causing it to shoot off in a fireball before impacting on two others, forcing the pilots to leap out as their craft were annihilated in flames. The Boomer tank launched a ferocious ball of pure energy into a cluster of swooping bikes, reducing them to molten slag as it drove on, all but impervious to the small arms fire of the enemy.
Dopeman took a laser to the shoulder but healed himself in seconds before killing the shooter with a sharp toothpick through the brain. Together, the two gods fought their way through the scout party of the Germanians and headed around the cliff basin, stopping outside a large facility constructed within the cliff itself. Standing outside the building, covered in Conglomerate guards was a millipede. It was inactive as of yet but Dopeman soon realised why Obeseman had brought him here.
‘I caught chatter over the battle-net that the Germanians dropped off some of the human prisoners here, if you’re lucky, you might be able to find them. Take control of the millipede and we’ll use it to get the control centre open. I’ll stay outside and make sure nobody follows you in.’ Obeseman shouted up to Dopeman, who leapt off the tank and rushed towards the wide entrance doors as a horde of Germanian soldiers prepared to open fire on him, spilling out from the surrounding rocky outcrops.
Dopeman smiled and opened fire.
The dropship swooped down low, Obeseman’s shot went wide, flying over the top of the vessel to land with a torrential splash in the sea behind. The gunship opened fire and Obeseman swiftly moved the Boomer behind the rocks before firing again, this time splashing the hot plasma all over the front of the craft, ripping off its forward weapons and exposing the cockpit to air. One of the Germanians inside was dead but the other fled with the ship, disappearing behind the cliffs. Obeseman smiled and turned to face the Germanians who were swarming behind him.
Dopeman pushed his way inside, kicking aside the bodies of the Germanian defenders who lay pinchushioned with toothpicks all around. The atrium was wrecked, laser blasts scorched the walls as a pair of Russiians approached, frowning.
‘How did you get passed the Germanians?’ one asked in awe.
‘It wasn’t as hard as you might think,’ Dopeman replied with a smile, ‘Now come with me, we’re taking that millipede.’
The trio barged into the next room, weapons blazing at the Germanians and halflings fortified within. Dopeman batted away a huge Germanian with a meat cleaver, knocking the man flying into the sold cave wall and smashing him to a pulp. He turned to a squad of trembling halflings and ripped the life from them with a torrent of toothpicks.
The Russiians watched in awe as Dopeman annihilated the enemy with a wave of his hand and followed him into the barracks. A halfling armed with bow and arrow attempted to halt them, his shaft digging deep into Dopeman’s neck. The god ripped it out with a gasp of slight pain and launched it back, skewering the creature and pinning him to the wall behind.
The barracks was almost empty, with most of the guards embattled outside and patrolling the facility. Still, they did find a terrified lemming hiding beneath a bed. Dopeman helped him out slowly and convinced him to join them, noticing his brethren lay dead around, clearly they had sided with the Russiians here and died with them.
The god led the group cautiously into the next room, noticing that the Germanians had set up defence lasers on the floor below them. They were standing on a platform that surrounded the lower floor where the Germanians prowled.
‘This is the prison lord,’ one of the Russiians began, pointing to the holo-cells around the enemy. They were mostly empty except for one, which Dopeman noticed held a Russiian hierarch within.
He nodded in reply and launched Bob down, ripping open a portal along the way and unleashing a large black-furred humanoid into the fray. Quick as a flash, the beast drew a scimitar and decapitated the first Germanian, letting his blood spill over the monsters golden collar. The others turned to face the beast, which was tall with a pointed snout and ears, almost like a jackal.
‘An anubite, a mythical creature of Earth’s ancient Egyptians. An interesting creature to say the least,’ Dopeman said aloud as his companions watched the soldier of Anubis rip open the stomach of another warrior of Germania, spilling his entrails on the floor.
The final Germanian managed to shoot the anubite in the head, yet even as it died, it managed to launch its weapon across the room, impaling the man and killing him instantly.
As it collapsed to the floor, the jackal-lackey turned its head to face Dopeman, its face lined with hatred, ‘My lord does not take this aid lightly… one day you will pay for your laxity… one day…’
Dopeman frowned, then turned to the others with a slight laugh, waving his hand to show it meant nothing, putting the others at ease. ‘Don’t know what it’s talking about.’
Bob returned to him and the group leapt down, freeing the hierarch.
He stepped over to Dopeman, ‘You are the death god? Why do you help us?’
‘I’ll help anyone that the Conglomerate tries to kill,’ he answered, ‘Can you help us take their millipede?’
‘Of course lord, I should tell you. I saw them take some humans this way, some soldiers and a sergeant, he looked mad, almost demented.’ The hierarch voiced.
Dopeman nodded, ‘Johnny.’
He led them up the passageway and out onto the large landing pad. The millipede sat before them, yet also the pad swarmed with guards. Three UN marines lay handcuffed to some crates nearby and Johnny was about to be executed by firing squad.
Dopeman acted fast, launching a sharpened toothpick forwards, piercing the head of the first soldier of the execution squad. The weapon continued until the whole line hit the floor, blood pooling from their heads.
‘The millipede!’ he roared at Johnny as the Conglomerate turned to engage.
Johnny nodded, sending a bone-crunching punch into the nearest Germanian, ripping his gun from his hands and shooting him dead with it. He charged to the millipede, gunning down another Germanian who stood guard over his chainsaws. He smiled, lifting them up and leapt into the access hatch of the metallic beast.
The lemming lay dead beside Dopeman, his brains spilling from his head as the god stepped forwards, pushing a halfling off the platform to his death. The other marines, freed by the hierarch, charged into the millipede with Johnny.
As the last Germanian fell, the millipede rose as Johnny and the Russiians gained control. Johnny’s voice rose over the speakers, ‘Alright Dopeman, we gotta stop that Germanian from activating this ring, or else we’re all gonna die.’
‘I’ll cover you from the sky.’ Dopeman replied.
‘How, you haven’t got a ship?’ Johnny asked.
‘It’s me, remember?’ Dopeman grinned, opening a warphole and pulling out Darth Vader’s TIE Advanced.
Dopeman winked, hopping inside and taking off, using his toothpicks to hold the ship at a steady speed. The millipede turned as Obeseman pulled the Boomer close, forming up against the mounting Conglomerate resistance forming on the beach below.
‘Man, they really don’t want us to get to that control room!’ Dopeman voiced over the intercom, watching as hordes of Germanians mounted in bikes and tanks approached, others setting up heavy cannons on the cliff walls and a whole wing of Screechers shot towards them from the sky.
‘I’ve got the ground troops.’ Johnny acknowledged.
‘I got the cliff guns.’ Obeseman said.
‘Guess that leaves me with the fighters.’ Dopeman smiled, ‘Let’s do this.’
In seconds, two of the enemy tanks lay burning as the millipede strode forwards, pulse cannons blasting as it brought a lance-like foot crashing through another vehicle, scattering the Germanians below like ants. Obeseman worked his magic, using his super eating beam of consuming to rake the first line of cliff guns, reaping them off parts and crew before using the main gun of his tank to blow up another.
The guns returned fire, blowing Obeseman’s Boomer to pieces, but the god climbed out of the wreckage and teleported to the cliffs behind a pair of thoroughly surprised Conglomerate firing another cannon. He widened his jaw and swallowed them in one bite.
Dopeman spun and opened fire, the first pair of Screechers fell in burning wreckage from the sky, crashing down on the battle below, flattening a bike. They returned fire and Dopeman spun the Advanced, dodging the lasers expertly before swinging around behind the enemy vessels, locking on the leader and firing.
It was not long before all the cliff guns were silenced, but there seemed to be no end to the air reinforcements and Dopeman was hard pressed to fight them all off. Eventually, one hit his mark and the Advanced tumbled, hitting the cliff and exploding. Obeseman watched the wreckage of the craft slide down the cliff as Dopeman shot out of warp behind him, wiping his brow.
‘That was a close one,’ Dopeman said, ‘What do we do now?’
‘Hmmm?’ Obeseman thought, rubbing his chin, ‘How about calling in a few favours?’
‘From who?’ Dopeman asked, puzzled.
‘Well… say someone who could cause a big lightning storm to strike down the enemy ships.’ Obeseman explained.
Dopeman smiled and pulled out a phone. He dialed a number swiftly and put it to his ear. ‘Hi, yeah it’s me. Listen, could you maybe do me one itty bitty favour? Yeah, I promise it’s the last one. Yeah I promise Zeus. No, I really do mean it this time. I won’t bother you again. You sound a little gruff, you trying to screw girls as a goat again?... Ok Jeese, sorry I asked. Ok. I just need… Ok I just need one lightning storm to strike down all aircraft on my location now. Ok… ok… one minute. Alright thanks, promise it won’t happen again. Alright thanks, bye. Bye. Bye.’
He hung up and watched the sky. Obeseman turned to him, ‘We really probably should stop asking them though. I mean, we don’t won’t them to turn against us.’
‘They won’t,’ Dopeman replied, though he was visibly uncomfortable, his mind shifting back to the anubite’s last words.
‘Ten seconds.’ Obeseman said. Dopeman nodded and watched as the sky began to darken.
Exactly ten seconds later, a torrential hail of forked lightning shot from the sky, the powerful blasts eviscerating the Screechers and sending them crashing down onto the rocks below, destroying the entire fleet in less than thirty seconds.
Dopeman smiled, ‘That was nice. Wish we could do that.’
‘We probably could. I mean, one of us must be able to in order for him to do it.’ Obeseman replied.
‘Yeah, I guess. We probably just forgot how.’ Dopeman answered, ‘Anyway, we better get going, the millipede’s almost ready to blast open the door for us.’
The two gods teleported to the control centre door as the millipede approached, it’s head and mandible guns aimed at the entrance, primed to fire.
‘Y’know… why didn’t we just teleport inside?’ Obeseman asked.
‘Dramatic effect… and I forgot we could do that.’ Dopeman shrugged.
Obeseman grinned as the door shot off its hinges and a part of the ceiling collapsed inwards as the millipede recoiled from firing.
Dopeman advanced inside, Obeseman holding position at the door to ensure no other Conglomerate entered.
The god easily slew the Gestapo posted to guard the main room and stepped over their bodies to see a familiar sight. It was almost an exact replica of the control centre of the first ring, the only difference was that there were three levels of floors in the wide room accessed by a central grav-lift.
It seemed he’d arrived just in time, Hughes was standing at the control panel, holding what looked like the Innocent Flame monitor, with Rachael held prisoner beside him with Jim Carey standing nearby, a lemming with a camera constantly taking pictures of him. There were six Germanians with them, all Gestapo.
No problem, Dopeman thought.
‘Come on Earthling, it is easy, tell Carey to place his hand on the identification marker and them do it yourself.’ Hughes was saying to Rachael.
She stared at him defiantly, but Carey walked over and placed his hand on the marker, which shone green, admitting him access.
Hughes turned to Rachael and snarled, pushing her forwards and saying what sounded like, ‘Garharhrem, and do as you are told!’
‘Please, don’t be so rough, being mean won’t get you anywhere!’ Innocent voiced.
‘Quiet you!’ Hughes snarled in return, ‘Or I’ll rip you apart!’
He leaned in to Rachael, ‘Which is nothing compared to what I’ll do to you!’
‘Alright Hughes, stop.’ Dopeman said calmly, Bob sitting casually on his shoulder.
Hughes turned and snarled, ‘Impossible.’
‘Give me the commander, unharmed.’
‘Give her to you, and disobey the prophets!?’ Hughes said, incredulously.
‘Your prophets don’t know shit!’ Dopeman boomed.
‘Careful Earthling, what you say is heresy!’ Hughes replied.
‘Really? Against your ridiculous religion maybe, but where are your gods? Huh? Do they walk among you? Do they take form and help you?’
‘Careful what you say Earthling, you’ll anger my men and then you will have no form to walk in.’
‘Go on, tell them Innocent, what is the ring’s purpose?’
‘Altogether, the nine –‘ Innocent began, but was cut off as Hughes lifted him up with a growl.
‘Not another word!’
There was the sound of a rifle cocking, ‘Hey, don’t shake the eyeball!’
They turned to see Johnny holding a rifle aimed at Hughes’ head, ‘Now unless you want your brains all over the ground and me chomping on your spleen, I’d tell those boys of yours to chill!’
Hughes held out his arms to stop his men from attacking, clearly concerned for his own safety.
‘The rings, Innocent, what are they?’ Dopeman continued.
‘Weapons of last resort, built by the ancient humans to eliminate a zombie-like plague who could not eat chocolate by turning everything in their radius to chocolate. Anyone caught in the radii died, as planned.’
Dopeman nodded, ‘Your prophets have betrayed you. There is no Little Quest!’
Hughes snarled, launching Innocent across the walkway at Johnny, knocking him to the ground and forcing Rachael’s hand onto the activation panel.
Hughes raised his weapon and roared, ‘No Earthling! The Little Quest has begun and the Germanians shall be the prophet’s guardians!’
No sooner had he said this than his guards fell dead around him and Dopeman was on him before he had time to move.
‘I. Am. Not. An. Earthling!’ Dopeman roared, lifting the Germanian leader off his feet.
‘Then what are you?’ Hughes asked, in fear.
‘I. Am. A. God! A God of Gods! I am 42!’ he boomed, causing the lights to flicker under the strain of the power venting from his body. There was a flash of light as his fury enveloped the room and Hughes exploded in a shower of blood which turned to atoms before it had the chance to settle.
Dopeman leant forwards and switched off the ring, halting it from firing. He breathed one long breath and turned to the others. ‘Well, we stopped them. For now.’
Rachael clambered to her feet and walked slowly over to him with Johnny, Obeseman and Innocent.
The control panel flickered red and an image of all nine rings appeared holographically before them. One was flashing red to indicate its destruction.
‘What’s going on?’ Rachael asked.
‘In the event of an unexpected shutdown, all other installations become primed and ready to fire.’ Innocent explained.
‘Ready to fire? From here?’ Johnny asked.
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Innocent chuckled.
‘Then where? Where would you go to fire them?’ Rachael asked.
‘Why, the parabola of course!’ Flame replied, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
‘Right and where the hell is that?’ Dopeman asked.
Columbo del Monko stood alone on his space station, the Yorkie, his pimp stick in hand. The Conglomerate fleet had embattled the Earth fleet and things were not going well at all. His super star Choclifier had been destroyed early, flanked by no less than thirty capital ships. He’d had to evacuate and retreat to the station, which he was sure was soon to suffer a similar fate. He had been so close, so close to matching the Conglomerate fleet in power. He watched as Dark squadron destroyed another vessel, but he knew it was too late. Far too late, to turn the tide now. Earth… his precious planet… his factory… would be destroyed.
It seemed the entire Conglomerate armada had arrived to turn his planet to smouldering ruin and there was still no word from Commander Lochs and the Mafia. He knew the other members of the Mafia were securing a base in Africa, knowing that as one of the now least populated places on the planet, the Conglomerate were unlikely to destroy it early on.
He knew he would have to leave soon, he was sure that Charles would arrive any minute to drag him away to his shuttle to escape to Earth. Escape? Ha. More like retreat to his tomb, a slow certain death under the guns of the Conglomerate, the aliens who had started the war he had been all too eager to join. He thought he had been strong enough. He had the quality, he had the firepower. He just didn’t have the numbers.
He patted his pimpstick carefully and spoke to it, ‘We shall return to Knockbeg my sweet, we shall hold the enemy there. We can hold them, we must hold them. Won’t we… my precious.’
On the smouldering control panel beside him, a light flashed, signaling a communication. Even as it did, a new vessel entered the fray. It was shuttle-like in form, vast and prow-like, white in colour. It was an ancient human ship, yet it was unknown, most likely salvaged by the Conglomerate. This theory was affirmed when it opened fire, blowing apart a station nearby.
A deck officer behind coughed, ‘Sir, the communication is incoming from that vessel.’
Columbo frowned, ‘Patch it through.’
There was static for a time, then a voice broke through, a voice Columbo knew well, ‘This is Silent 228, can anyone read me? Over.’
‘Silent, this is Columbo. Do you mind telling me what the hell you’re doing on that ship?’
‘Columbo. Finishing this fight.’
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Post by Silent on Aug 18, 2012 20:29:23 GMT -5
Chapter Twenty-Six: Silent 228
‘I’m sorry.’ He repeated the words again. The same words he had said every day for at least a week. Every morning, every evening, every night. It was the same.
‘I… I’m worried Timmy. For the first time in my god-damned life I’m worried.’ Jamsie gasped, looking down with furrowed eyebrows at the small creature who sat huddled beside him. ‘He’s been like that for days, just sitting there, not moving, not eating. He’s broke.’
Timmy nodded, unable to speak. His eyes were closed, tears built on dried tears holding them shut. His small suit was covered in the filth of the battle, Timmy blood splattered all over.
Like a corpse vessel, the ship moved through space slowly, the old human vehicles unable to jump to hyperspace like the present day vessels. The Conglomerate had been forced to operate under its warp capabilities, which were infinitely slower, having to travel through the nightmare realms of the satanic demons to move through the void of space. Then, that day. They had arrived, planet Earth lay before them. The Conglomerate had won.
The cargo hold where the trio sat was never searched, not once in their long wait, not once.
Jamsie looked from Timmy to the form lying still against the wall opposite. Silent lay prone, as if he were a mere mannequin, a shadow of the warrior he was, of the person he was.
Jamsie found it hard to believe the man before him was his commander merely days beforehand. It was all going so well… all of it… no matter how long it took, they had been winning. Now what? They had arrived on the ship only to find they had no purpose, no strength to find the prophet of Prudence.
Silent stared blankly before him, no tears clouded his eyes. He simply lay there, but for the small fog of breath before his nostrils and thinly-open mouth, he would look dead. Jamsie stared sorrowfully at him, he had been hurt, worse than Jamsie had imagined possible.
As far as he knew, Silent hadn’t slept all the time they had been there. He hadn’t eaten, he hadn’t drunk. He should have been dead, but Jamsie reminded himself that the being was a superhuman. He could survive longer than he could guess, but even he could see that Silent was pushing his limits.
Timmy sniffled beside them and, for the first time since they had arrived, Silent moved. Jamsie was so stunned by the sudden movement he thought the Conglomerate were searching the hold and drew his weapon, standing sharply up and staring at the door.
Seeing Silent’s lined face, he dropped to the floor, letting the weapon fall from his grasp.
‘How are you?’ Jamsie asked, holding out his hand to steady Silent.
‘You loved her. Didn’t you?’
Silent’s words were quiet, almost whispered.
‘I… I don’t…’ Jamsie began but halted as he saw Silent was staring intently at Timmy. He frowned again, confused.
‘Timmy?’ Silent asked again softly, moving closer to the animal.
He rose his head, opening his eyes slowly, letting the crust of the tears tear away and crack from his eyelids. If anything, he looked worse than Silent.
Slowly, very slowly, Timmy nodded. Silent’s eyes watered and he held the rat’s hand, his expression hardened.
‘No more sitting around.’ Silent said, his voice gaining back the deepness, returning to normal level, if anything becoming more gravelly, lined with anger.
He looked hard at Timmy, who frowned.
‘We’re going to find her Timmy. I swear we’re going to find her and save her. I know you think it’s your fault. It’s not. Those Timmy’s are not you. Don’t ever think that. Don’t think that.’ Silent voiced.
Timmy felt a tear rolling down his cheek.
Silent hugged him, ‘You’re our Timmy. That’s the difference. No matter what, they are nothing but beasts, you are so much more.’
Timmy sobbed softly into him and Silent held him back, staring earnestly into his face.
‘We’re going to find her and if those Timmy’s have hurt her. If they’ve harmed a single hair on her head. I swear… I swear. Not one of those animals will ever ever escape my wrath. No.’ He looked hard at Timmy and nodded his head. ‘Our wrath.’
Timmy nodded, tears in his eyes. He grasped Silent’s arm and they rose together. They turned to Jamsie. Silent opened his communicator and called, closing his eyes as he let the tone of the call wash over him, the first noises they had heard in many days other than the endless hum of the vessel.
After what seemed an endless eternity of waiting, there was an answer and Silent took it.
‘This is Silent 228, can anyone read me? Over.’
There was static and then…
‘Silent, this is Columbo. Do you mind telling me what the hell you’re doing on that ship?’
‘Columbo. Finishing this fight.’
‘But… the vessel. It’s… it’s firing on us.’
‘I know, the Conglomerate have control but we’re in the cargo hold.’
‘Well… what are you going to do?’
Silent’s reply was hard and unarguable.
‘We’re getting off this ship and we’re going to destroy every living creature in the Conglomerate.’
‘Johnny sir! Over here!’ The soldier’s call was clear and succinct over the noises of the jungle.
Through the canopy of trees and ferns, Johnny approached, brushing aside the plants with a fireteam of marines behind him. Tony and Farrell brought up the rear, Tommy guns at the ready.
He trudged through a pool of mud and saw it right up ahead. A huge piece of metal, like a box lay half buried in the ground. The drop-pod had landed in quick-sand, trapping the inhabitants within the metal shell.
‘Life signs?’ Johnny asked, looking at the soldier.
‘I… I’m not sure, the scanner can’t make it out under all the quicksand.’ Came the reply.
‘Useless piece of shit. Tony?!’ Johnny called over to his companion. ‘Radio for VTOL, heavy lift gear, we need to get it out of here!’
Tony nodded, picking up his phone as Farrell looked nervously around the trees, gun at the ready.
There was silence for a few minutes, the group gathered close together, staring out into the dark tree canopy, searching for any sign of movement. They could hear the calls of beasts, both feral and more sinister echoing from miles around. The yells of monkeys and birds, the sounds of the jungle adding to the cacophony building up in the silence. Every soldier held their weapon close, fingers on the triggers, ready for anything. Sweat dripped from their brows as they looked around, anxious and alert for anything, anything that might prove hostile.
‘Boo!’
Tony jumped, bullets spraying the air before him, hitting the figure who had appeared before him whilst screaming in terror at the top of his lungs. Blood splattered out from the wounds, decorating Tony’s skin and suit in droplets of red. He shook his head, trying to wipe the blood from his face with his hand as he let his weapon fall from his grip and clatter to the floor.
Farrell turned to him, also letting off rounds into the sky like a startled rabbit… with a machine gun. The rounds echoed into the empty air above him, shattering the silence of the jungle with ear-splitting shells. The others turned, eyes searching furiously for targets.
‘Ow… ow… Jeese, maybe I should stop doing that,’ the figure on the floor began, slowly standing up and shaking his head back in place. Dopeman looked at Tony and Farrell, ‘And you two should be ashamed of yourselves. Look before you shoot you fools.’
‘Where the hell have you been?!’ Johnny yelled, looking furiously at him. ‘Do you have idea what’s been happening while you’ve been gone?!’
Dopeman frowned, looking a little alarmed, ‘What are you talking about? What’s happened?’
‘Well maybe you can get that drop-pod out and answer to the people inside.’ Johnny said.
Dopeman frowned again, looking increasingly worried as he approached the vessel, grabbing it on either side and slowly lifting it up, inch by inch, until it broke free of the sand. He lowered it gently to the jungle floor, letting the sand fall from its hinges and tough sides before wiping away the strong hold of the wet sand from the door.
‘How long has it been stuck?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know… hours… days…’ Johnny replied, staring intently at the drop-pod door.
They all gathered around it. There was silence and then… a knock. A single knock on the other side.
‘Get it open!’ Johnny ordered, looking at Dopeman.
Dopeman nodded briskly, spreading his hand to launch toothpicks at the vessel and splitting the door open.
Three bodies fell out. Silent followed by Jamsie, followed by Timmy, all landing in the mud before them, panting hard.
‘How long were you in there?’ Johnny asked, helping Jamsie up. Timmy slowly rose to his feet and hobbled over to the grassy floor before collapsing onto the gentle ground, letting the soft nature press against him.
‘About five hours, pretty stuffy.’ Jamsie began but was cut off as he saw Silent leap from the ground, charging furiously at Dopeman.
Silent looked like a wild man, feral fury etched in every line of his face as he sent an earth-shattering punch into the god’s face, cracking his jaw open, breaking his nose, bursting one of his eyes and knocking him flying into the muddy pool.
‘Silent? What the hell?’ Johnny yelled.
Silent breathed heavily, before roaring at the wounded god, ‘Where the fuck were you?!’
Dopeman turned to him, blood pooling beneath him, streaming from his wounds as they knitted slowly back together. ‘I… I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He spluttered, blood coughing from his ruptured jaw.
Silent lifted him from the ground by his neck, right off his feet. ‘Don’t play games with me Dopeman. Don’t you dare play with me!’
‘I don’t know.’ He choked back, blood seeping down onto Silent’s hand.
‘Where were you, the one time. The only time we actually needed you.’ His words were low, but fierce, fiercer than anything Dopeman had heard before, every syllable lined with threat and something, far more subtle, on the tip of Silent’s tongue, hidden in the depths of his eyes: Pain.
Dopeman slumped, staring directly into his friend’s eyes. ‘Silent?’ He began, softly, voice laden with worry, ‘What happened?’
Silent’s hatred faded, his eyes watering with the pain and released his grip, dropping Dopeman to the ground. The god spluttered and gasped as Silent turned from him, shoulders sagging as Dopeman slowly rose to his feet, wounds repairing even as he did this.
‘They took her Dopeman. They took her and there was nothing I could do.’ Silent’s voice was quiet and soft, almost as if he was lost. ‘I had to stand and watch as they took her away from me.’
Dopeman frowned, understanding, ‘Sarah?’
Silent turned and nodded, ‘Where were you?’
‘I… I was stopping them Silent. I was stopping them from firing the ring. If… if I’d known I’d…’
‘I know.’ Silent conceded, ‘I’m sorry…’
‘We’ll get them. We’ll get her out. I promise you,’ he turned to Timmy, ‘Both of you.’
‘You really do know more than you let on, don’t you?’ Silent smiled weakly.
‘I have my moments.’ Dopeman grinned in reply, ‘The Conglomerate have invaded Earth. America is in pretty bad shape, it got hit first. Columbo is holding Ireland and the United Kingdom from the enemy though and we haven’t hear anything from the East.’
‘I see.’ Silent bowed his head slowly, ‘What you’re really saying is… we have more pressing matters on our hands than saving Sarah.’
‘That… that isn’t what I meant.’ Dopeman frowned, he grabbed Silent’s arm strongly, ‘Don’t forget who she is. She is god’s daughter, do you really think he is going to let that filthy parasite harm her?’
‘I…’ Silent faltered and conceded, ‘I hadn’t thought about that.’
‘The Conglomerate has to be beaten first.’ Dopeman voiced, ‘Remember, “The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few.”’
Silent smiled slowly, ‘“Or the one.”’
Dopeman grinned, ‘That’s the spirit.’
‘Where do we begin?’ Silent asked, staring around at the UN marines and Mafia members who had watched the confrontation in silent awe.
‘The Godfather has a base set up not far from here, we can teleport straight there.’ He rubbed his chin, almost irritated. He grinned, ‘Hell of a punch you got there. In all my years, I can’t recall ever being hit that hard.’
Silent nodded, his lips curling into a soft smile, ‘Sorry about that.’
Dopeman leaned in slowly and whispered, ‘Amazing what love can do isn’t it?’
Silent frowned, seeing something more in the being’s eyes, something that almost mirrored his own mood. He narrowed his eyes and the pain faded from Dopeman, returning him to his usual cheerful self.
He smiled again, ‘Oh young Silent, you’re very wise for your age. Let’s get going, time is running short.’
He clicked his fingers and the group vanished.
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Post by Silent on Aug 18, 2012 20:29:58 GMT -5
Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Sparrow’s Tree
‘Is that Silent?’
‘He’s back!’
‘Yes, I knew he would be!’
Silent stepped forwards from the warp portal to see himself inside a huge machine complex. Sitting on a bench before him were June, Proway and the Godfather.
The Godfather walked over to him and shook his hand, ‘Good to see you again Silent, we thought we’d lost you there for a while.’
Silent nodded in reply, ‘Where exactly are we?’
‘In the Sparrow’s Tree, it’s the UN’s largest military base in this sector. We volunteered to help spruce it up a bit. Belgor’s been working frantically to heighten all our sensors so we can identify any Conglomerate attack.’ The Godfather replied. ‘While you’ve been gone stopping the Conglomerate’s rings, we’ve been hit pretty bad. Our base in New York was completely destroyed, along with most of the city. We only barely made it out with the help of Columbo’s men. That Dark Chocolate can really fight. I saw him cut down a whole squad of Spetznatz without breaking a sweat. I’d hate to be up against him.’
‘Glad to hear you guys made it out.’ Silent spoke, ‘So, what’s our plan of action, how are we going to fight the Conglomerate off Earth?’
‘I’m not sure yet, we’re going to head down to the command centre where we can discuss this properly, please follow me.’
The Godfather led the group carefully down from the large rigged platform to a vast steel door, the UN marines were everywhere, lining the corridors and holding open the doors on the way to the command centre. Silent could see that the base was largely underground with huge drainage pipes half inside the stone walls of the caverns. Small streams of water ran across the ground as they marched, at last reaching the heavily guarded command centre, flanked by six UN guards armed with shotguns.
It looked rather like an underground courthouse, except that it had a large video screen behind the main stand. Silent followed the Godfather down the first row to his seat, where Jamsie and Timmy sat beside him. Rachael Lochs stood before them examining a report as Johnny and Dopeman sat in the row behind them.
Lochs looked away from her report and smiled as she approached Silent. ‘It’s wonderful to see you again, we thought we’d lost you on the Chocolate Ring.’
‘No, not me.’ Silent replied weakly, shaking her hand, ‘But we lost Sarah.’
Rachael’s smile faltered. Her eyes narrowed.
‘What?’
‘Rachael, Sarah was taken. By the Timmys.’ Silent breathed slowly.
Rachael eyes ached with sadness and she took a step back, staring directly into Silent’s eyes and he saw the genuine concern of a best friend.
‘She’s alive.’ He finished.
‘Alive? But… how was she taken?’ Rachael whispered in desperate questioning.
‘I’d like to know that too,’ Dopeman interrupted, ‘I mean, that woman is not easy to move when she doesn’t want to go and she’s the daughter of God, it isn’t like she’s helpless.’
‘She was wounded… I couldn’t help her. I was… trapped, on the other side of the portal. I begged for him to save her but… they killed him.’
‘Who?’ Dopeman asked, confused. ‘They killed who?’
‘Huggles. His name was Huggles the Bear,’ Silent replied, seeing the sudden fear in Dopeman’s eyes, ‘He said he was your brother.’
Dopeman’s face contorted in anger and for the first time in his life, Silent saw the fury of Dopeman. The god raised his fist in sheer, unbridled wrath and brought it down on the desk before him, smashing it to atoms with a single, solid blow.
He shook with rage, eyes flashing red before falling to his knees and shaking himself back to his senses.
‘My… brother!’ he spat. ‘He has not been my brother for some time! I’ll destroy him, I’ll crush that bastard, that traitorous cur beneath my boot if I ever lay eyes on him again!’
He rose and turned to Silent, fixing him with his powerful gaze, all trace of former laxity and drowsiness caused by the dope had vanished and Silent saw the pain of the man behind the mask.
‘What did he tell you? Did he give you a reason for being there? Why was he there?’ Dopeman yelled in furious interrogation, using all his might to stop himself from grasping Silent’s throat to pluck the answers from him by force.
‘He said… He said he heard that you and Obeseman had joined in the war, that he didn’t want to miss out on the fun!’ Silent called out in reply as everyone watched in terror at the furious god.
‘He lied. I know full well what he wanted. To damage me even further. How did he die? Tell me!’
Silent told him and Dopeman scoffed at the mention of Huggles attempting to bravely get Sarah to safety.
‘Injured? Are you joking? He did that on purpose. Tell me Silent, did he look at you before he fell, did he look you straight in the eyes?’
Silent thought back, blinking then froze, ‘Yes… yes he did.’
‘He was feeding on your pain. That is what my noble brother does. He hurts people in the most sinister ways and then feeds off their fears and their pains. Did you ever wonder why I became the Lord of Dope?! Remember Silent, I was not always what I am now!’ Dopeman yelled, shaking again in fury before exploding into a warphole and vanishing before their eyes.
Silent fell back to his chair, shaking with fear. Timmy had wet himself and Jamsie was holding Rachael in his arms who was clutching onto him for dear life. Even Johnny was backed up against the wall, his face white.
Eventually, the Godfather spoke, in a hushed whisper, ‘Where… Where do you think he’s gone?’
Silent bowed his head, ‘To calm down.’
He fell silent and thought. If Dopeman was to be believed, then Huggles had been playing them all for fools. It was not the Timmy’s who Silent had cause to be angry at, though he still reserved some hatred for them for taking Sarah… it was this bear… this Huggles.
He frowned. The brother of Dopeman. If it was to be believed. The evil brother of the god of gods had set himself against them. Silent stood, shotgun in hand, he turned to Rachael, ‘What’s our plan of action?’
‘What do you mean?’ she replied, too flustered to think clearly.
‘About the Conglomerate, Rachael. One step at a time. We take out the aliens holding our planet, then we strike at the Timmy’s and rescue Sarah and then… then we kill a god.’
‘I think we’re in way over our heads here.’ Rachael replied, ‘Let Dopeman sort out his own business, what can we do against a god?’
Silent glared at her furiously, ‘We can fight him, we can hurt him. He made this personal against not just me, but all of his. He will strike again, we can be sure of it.’
‘And then what? We die?’ Rachael answered him, standing to her full height and looking up to stare him in the eye. ‘You saw how easily Dopeman can destroy whole armies! What can we do against that power Silent? Wake up and get back into the real world. You’ve lost your girlfriend, I’ve lost my father and now my best friend, but we have more pressing matters on our hands now. Don’t let you emotions get in the way! You are a soldier in this war and I am your commanding officer. You will listen to me!’
Silent backed down as if he had been slapped, a surprised look splayed across his face. He shook his head very slowly before regaining his senses. He nodded, ‘Yes ma’am…’
There were tears in her eyes as she stepped back to her podium, ‘Gentlemen. The Conglomerate have formed up around one particular area of Africa, the Old Mombasa ruins.’
The video screen behind her flickered into life, displaying a huge crater in which lay the human vessel Prudence had stolen from the second ring.
Silent stared at it intently, determined to end the Conglomerate threat as swiftly as possible. Of course Rachael was right. He was thinking too far ahead, too hell bent on revenge. Under normal conditions he would not so hastily cast aside the notion of destroying an entire alien empire. His gaze flickered to Lochs as she continued, the tears had faded and her gaze returned to one of passion, her belief in the human race. Silent smiled. She was a strong woman. He had almost forgotten in the rush of the war that she had lost her father. Thinking of his planet, he felt his stomach clench… he knew how she felt.
‘Following our excursion on the second Chocolate ring, we have discovered that all of the weapons are now primed to fire, from an installation known as the Parabola. Unfortunately, we have no idea where this construct is, but we do know the Conglomerate fleet is undergoing an operation to discover it. When they do, we will follow them and hopefully get there to fight them off it. They still need a human to operate it and we will do our utmost to destroy the installation and the Conglomerate with it.’
‘How will we know when the Conglomerate have discovered the Parabola?’ asked Jeevsie.
‘They are bound to send their entire fleet to its location, so we will move the minute they move.’ Replied Rachael, ‘Admittedly, we don’t have many vessels remaining capable of the journey, but we will send all we can. Columbo del Monko has unfortunately retreated to his fortress at Knockbeg but he has agreed to send us the aid of his Super Star Choclifier, the Curly-Wurly, under the captaincy of Dark Chocolate.’
‘That’s good. We’ll need that sort of firepower if we are to break the Conglomerate fleet and luckily the Timmy’s took care of Low Greed, so the Conglomerate have lost their largest vessel.’ Silent informed, ‘How many other ships do we have?’
‘Four battleships and sixteen cruisers and a few frigates, not much against the Conglomerate armada, but backed up with the fleet the Russiians have sent to help we do have a chance.’ Rachael continued.
Silent almost choked, ‘Wait, the Russiians sent us aid?’
‘Yes, apparently they have atoned for their crimes against us in the war and have fully turned their attentions to destroying the Conglomerate.’ The Godfather answered him.
‘Well I suppose we’ll take all the help we can get.’ Silent muttered grudgingly.
‘Plus they think Obeseman is one of their gods, so why not let them?’ Rachael continued. ‘Anyway, we’re going to be moving to our larger base of operations near Old Mombasa tomorrow and since there are no gods around to teleport us anymore. I guess we’re going to have to take the M1 motorway to get there.’
‘Ah, so the fights will actually be dangerous now, with no gods to get us out of trouble.’ Jamsie murmured uncomfortably, ‘This isn’t going to go down well.’
‘Hey don’t worry, you got me to hold your hand,’ Silent winked at him as Jamsie scoffed in reply.
‘Tony, Farrell and I are going to stay here and hold the fort, so I’ll say my goodbyes now and wish you all the luck Silent,’ the Godfather said, grasping the super soldier’s and shaking it warmly, he smiled softly, ‘You’ll find her Silent, don’t fret. You’ll find her.’
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Post by Silent on Aug 18, 2012 20:30:26 GMT -5
Chapter Twenty-Eight: The M1
‘So, just the three of us again,’ Silent muttered as he stepped into the driver’s seat of the warpig, followed by Jamsie in the gunner seat and Timmy in the passenger’s chair.
‘As usual, can’t split up the A-Team, eh Silent?’ Jamsie smirked.
‘Yep,’ he answered as he drove the warpig out into the sunlight of Africa, down a side road and straight on to the wide motorway. ‘Right, anyone know where we are going?’
‘Turn right, like Rachael said I guess. Then just follow the road.’ Jamsie suggested, shrugging his shoulders.
‘Alright then,’ Silent replied, swinging the car right and driving onwards. ‘Anyone actually know what this base we’re driving to looks like?’
‘It’s like a quarry on the edge of a cliff, with half the base open to the air.’ Jamsie answered.
‘Right ok, tell me when you see it… or anything else of interest.’
‘Gotcha,’ Jamsie replied, ‘Y’know Timmy’s asleep?’
‘Yep, he dropped off the second he got strapped in.’ Silent replied.
‘Bloody typical, any idea how long we’re going to have to drive till we get to this base?’ Jamsie asked, looking around at the vast expanse of desert and shrubs all around them, distant mountains far away.
‘Nope, I guess we’ll know when we see it.’ Silent answered, ‘Pity we couldn’t have gone in a convoy, at least then we wouldn’t have to ask these questions.’
‘True, but then we’d be drawing too much attention to ourselves.’
‘Yeah, let’s just hope they don’t catch us out here on our own. I’m not too happy about the idea of the two of us fighting off a Conglomerate army.’
‘Neither am I, Silent. Neither am I.’
They stayed quiet for much of the next few miles, leaving Silent with time to think over the last day. So much had happened so fast it took a long time to absorb it all. He took the opportunity of the silence to run over Dopeman’s last words.
“Did you ever wonder why I became the Lord of Dope?! Remember Silent, I was not always what I am now!”
So he wasn’t the god of dope at first. Then what was he? Silent’s mind burned with questions. What drove him to turn to dope. Silent thought about the substance, what it did. It calmed the mind, altered perspectives, brought on happy states of mind and almost schizophrenic actions. Why would a good man turn to such things, why would he devote his life to an illusion?
“He was feeding on your pain. That is what my noble brother does. He hurts people in the most sinister ways and then feeds off their fears and their pains.”
Huggles had done something… so many years ago. He must have done something to really hurt Dopeman, or at least the man Dopeman was. What could he possibly have done to drive him to insanity, to drugs that would ease his pain, make him forget the events of his past?
He had seen some shadow of Dopeman’s former self that day. The pain behind him, the pain he was trying to forget. For the first time in his life, Silent felt sorrow for the god. His brother had turned against him. That was bad enough. But he had also done something so despicable it had driven Dopeman crazy. What had Huggles done? He burned to find out, to discover the crime the bear had committed. Would he ever know? That was his next thought, followed swiftly by, did he really want to know?
Another thought crossed his mind. Where was Obeseman in all this. It was clear he was on Dopeman’s side… but had he fallen foul of his brother also, or simply joined Dopeman upon learning of Huggles’ evil. Had he…
Silent was cut off as a sharp laser cut through the wind shield and lanced into his shoulder. He yelled in pain as he yanked the wheel, sending the warpig careening off the road to the left, tumbling through shrubbery before flipping over and smashing upside down.
He felt his vision darken as a shard of glass slashed down his forehead, slicing a small portion of his left eye. Blood trickled down into his line of sight and the landscape turned red under the new pigment filtering through his retina.
He tried to rise himself off the ground but found himself trapped under the warpig canopy, his legs caught underneath the bar separating the driver’s seat from the gunner.
Jamsie was lying face down a few metres away, his artificial leg shorn off by the mounted weapon as it snapped off the pintle. Silent couldn’t tell whether he was alive or not and looked frantically around for Timmy as blood seeped down his face.
The creature was alive, somehow managing to hold on to his seat in the vehicle even as it flipped and he was now dangling above Silent, frightened but unhurt.
‘Timmy…’ Silent breathed, ‘What’s going on?’
‘Bad guys… shot us.’ Timmy replied quietly, snaking his hand inside his jacket to pull out his pistol.
‘Go see if Jamsie is alright.’ Silent ordered, trying slowly to shake himself out from under the warpig to no avail, ‘Be careful.’
Timmy nodded shakily and dropped to the ground, lying flat he crawled to Jamsie’s side and looked around. There was little evidence of the Conglomerate ambushers. There were few hiding places in the sparse landscape but Timmy warily eyed every piece of shrubbery large enough to conceal a humanoid.
He bent down to Jamsie and turned him over. Jamsie was alive, but badly hurt. His stomach was bleeding from a shard of metal that had slashed across his chest and a large chunk of his artificial leg had been torn completely off.
‘Timmy?’ Jamsie gasped, ‘Get help.’
Timmy didn’t know how to reply, he couldn’t just get up and leave them there, they’d be killed off for sure. Nor could he go by himself and be killed. What could he do?
Thinking as quickly as his small brain would allow. He wandered back to the warpig where Silent had finally passed out and began to search for some form of communications device. The warpig’s radio itself was completely busted, but he searched through Silent’s pockets for any sign of a phone.
After a few seconds of frantic searching, he found it. Holding it quickly in his hands, he began to look through it for contacts. He didn’t really know what he was looking for, ready to click on the first name that was familiar to him. Then he stopped as one name froze on the screen before him: Sarah.
He slumped as he felt his stomach churn with sadness, his eyes filled with tears and his heart burned with such fearsome pain it was as though the organ itself was angry and determined to hurt him.
He was thrown out of his reverie by the sound of footsteps, loud and heavy. Hurriedly he climbed upwards, clawing his way to hide in the passenger’s seat above the ground. He held his pistol close, the phone gripped barely in his other hand as he struggled to hold himself above ground, fighting the force of gravity.
A shadow fell on the ground before him and he became aware of a figure in Germanian armour. It was a bad guy. He saw him for the first time as the soldier bent down at Silent’s body. He was a thickset, brutal looking man with short blond hair held beneath a thick Germanian helm. His armour was jet black and he held a large rifle in one hand as he ran his other hand over Silent’s body, checking to see if he was still alive.
Timmy’s heart clutched as he saw Silent exhale slightly. The Germanian saw it too and drew a long, curved knife. Timmy had to do something and fast.
As quickly as he could without making a noise, Timmy cocked and aimed his pistol, using every ounce of precision he could muster to aim right at the Germanian’s face.
The soldier lifted his arm to strike the knife downwards and Timmy fired. The bullet missed its target, but hit the knife, knocking it far away into the desert land. The Germanian turned, readying his rifle to fire into the warpig as Timmy shot again. This time the round impacted on the soldier’s armour but did little more than scratch it.
The Germanian opened fire and Timmy scrambled away, flailing out of the seat as bullets tore up the upholstery behind him. He clambered to the underside of the vehicle and leapt with a fury that belied the creature’s usually gentle nature.
He landed with a clash on the Germanian, knocking him to the ground as the rifle spun from his grasp, hitting the ground and firing, sending a precise laser beam off into the distance.
The soldier launched Timmy off him and drew another combat knife from his survival pack as Timmy pulled out his own rusty blade. The creature dropped to all fours, fighting in the stance as perhaps a rat would do if it had longer limbs, almost like a cat.
The Germanian was surprised at the animal before him and dropped into a combat stance, knife at the ready. Timmy pounced forwards and the soldier parried, missing as the creature ducked beneath his blow and bit him ferociously on the hand, causing him to drop the weapon.
The Germanian yelled in pain as the creature clung on to his wrist by its teeth, holding on with all its might. Timmy took the opportunity to swipe out with his knife, but the Germanian was not entirely slowed and managed to block it carefully with one of his bracers.
In a sudden flurry, Timmy clawed out with his other hand, scraping the man across his face. Not expecting this, the Germanian fell to the ground in pain as three jagged scars sprouted across his face, splitting open his mouth. He landed with a crash and Timmy scurried onto him, slitting his throat before he had the chance to act.
The Germanian died quickly as blood shot from the severed artery. Timmy rose and headed back to the warpig, checking his pockets to ensure he still had the phone. Luckily it was still there and he hurriedly found the number for Rachael Lochs.
Fumbling with the buttons, he made the call and waited as it began to ring. Barely a second later she answered.
‘Hello? Silent?’
‘Timmy. Attacked. Injured. Help.’ Timmy gasped, still exhausted from his scrap with the Germanian.
‘You were attacked? Where?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know where we are. On the road.’
‘Where are Silent and Jamsie?’
‘Both knocked out. Badly hurt.’
‘Alright Timmy, just remain on the line, I’m going to track your co-ordinates and send help. Just stay put.’
‘Ok,’ replied Timmy, frowning as he saw a dust cloud rising up in the distance but clearly heading his way.
‘Ah… Nice lady… we might be having a little… problem.’
‘What is it?’
‘Ah… bad guys.’
‘Just hang on Timmy.’
Timmy laid the phone carefully on the ground and quickly rushed to Silent, finding his binoculars. He looked over at the dust cloud. There was a truck coming his way. Inside, he could just make out the forms of halflings, armed with pitchforks, sticks and bows and arrows.
Timmy frowned, ‘Oh dear. This… doesn’t look good.’
Dropping the binoculars, he trawled through the hard earth towards the fallen Germanian’s rifle. It was easily the size of him and it took great effort to heft it back to the warpig. Looking back to the dust cloud, he saw that it was now much closer and hastily set to work lifting the rifle to the underside of the warpig and nestling it between the wheel and bulk of the vehicle, holding the weapon in position as Timmy lay down, gripping the trigger and allowing the stock to nestle in to his shoulder.
He looked through the scope, seeing clearly the truck heading swiftly towards him, he would have to be fast. Taking aim, he fired twice, sending a pair of laser beams straight into the truck. One ricocheted off the tough armoured front, yet the other shot in under the windscreen and ruptured the airbag, causing the driver to suffocate and lose control of the wheel.
The vessel hit a slight ridge, crashing through it before a wheel burst off, sending the truck careening to the right. For what seemed to be an eternity the truck listed before eventually coming to a slow halt.
Timmy sighed, he had hoped more damage had been done but at least he had bought himself more time now that the halflings had to walk to his position. Dropping the rifle, he slid off the warpig and examined Silent’s body, looking for any weapons he could put to some use.
It was not long before he had stocked himself up with three frag grenades, an SMG and a larger combat knife. Smearing dirt across his forehead and carefully planting a trip mine near the warpig, he knew he was ready.
Peering out from behind the cover of the warpig, he saw twelve halflings approaching, looking very angry over the halting of their vehicle. Timmy held his weapons close and waited.
The creatures closed in and halted at the scene, seeing the dead Germanian. One moved to investigate, as the others split off in two groups to examine the bodies of Silent and Jamsie. Timmy knew it would not be long now… he would soon have to act.
The group approaching Silent halted, seeing a portion of metal protruding from the sand before them. Confused, the leader knelt down to look closer. There was a light, it was flashing red. Timmy froze, they had discovered his trip mine. Then, with a move that belied all states of intelligence, the halfling took out his pitchfork and prodded the device.
The resulting explosion blew the leader into several separate pieces and reduced his trio of followers to little more than red paste on the floor. The others turned to the plume of smoke as Timmy made his move, leaping down from the warpig and opening fire.
The first burst of rounds killed two halflings as the rest dodged for cover, one of the unfortunates took seventeen bullets before he hit the ground, the sheer numbers of rounds halting the effects of gravity on his corpse.
One halfling launched his spear, but Timmy dodged, rushing forwards as he dropped the spent submachine gun. Drawing his new combat blade in fluid motion, he cut open the stomach of the first halfling and savagely blocked the thrusting hoe of another.
The remaining halflings backed away, desperately attempting to gain some distance in order to use their bows as Timmy dispatched the hoe wielding halfling. He gave them no such chance, pistol in one hand, blade in the other, he leapt forwards, shooting one down and cutting the arm off another.
He finished off the injured one before charging down another, leaping ferociously on its back before driving his sword down its neck. The final halfling ran as fast as he could but Timmy managed to aim and fire. His pistol round shattered the back of the creature’s skull and burst out the front, dropping the body to the ground like a sack of potatoes.
Timmy fell to the ground, tired and fell asleep.
‘Timmy?’
‘Timmy, are you awake?’
His eyes fluttered slowly open. He saw a familiar face and smiled, it was Rachael Lochs.
‘You came.’ He grinned.
She smiled back, ‘I came. How are you?’
‘Ok.’ He replied, ‘Silent and Jamsie?’
‘They’re going to be fine, we’re taking them to base now, you coming?’
‘Sure,’ he smiled, taking her hand as she led him to a large military transport bristling with weapons.
‘I assume all of those Conglomerate were killed by Silent and Jamsie back there?’ she asked.
Timmy grinned, ‘Don’t be so sure.’
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Post by Silent on Aug 18, 2012 20:31:34 GMT -5
Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Cloud
Silent woke up in a hospital bed. Looking around him, he saw the almost crystalline white walls of the ward stretching far across a space, showing him that the room was indeed very large. There were six beds on either side of him, yet only three of them were inhabited.
Jamsie was lying asleep beside him, he didn’t look in too bad of a shape, but Silent could see his artificial leg was held up in a cast fixed back again. His face was slightly scratched, but Silent could see no permanent damage, to still be in this state however, Silent realised they must have only been in the ward a few hours at most, given that the modern age medicine was known to fix ruptured lungs in days, minor scratches and lacerations were child’s play.
He sat up, very slowly, noticing a thin feeding tube in his right wrist. He looked at it uncomfortably, he was never very happy about medical fluids. It made him feel uneasy. He blinked, noticing that it hurt to move his eyes. He ran his hand over his forehead, gently feeling for his wound, he found a large and jagged scar running from his scalp down through his eye.
He frowned and looked around on his bedside table for a mirror. He found one fast and examined his face. As he feared, the left side of his face was covered with a terrible slash, just about knitted together.
‘Wonderful,’ he muttered to himself, stroking the scar and then glancing down at the previous laserburn on his cheek, ‘This war is doing wonders for my looks.’
‘Yeah,’ a voice said weakly to his left, ‘You look gorgeous.’
‘Shut up legless,’ Silent replied, sneering at Jamsie, who was sniggering into his pillow.
‘Any idea how long we’ve been here?’ Silent asked.
‘Nope, just woke up right now. Who are the other two guys?’ Jamsie continued.
Silent shrugged and turned to look over the other patients. Both looked to be completely unconscious. They were both male UN marines, one was completely covered with bandages, even his entire head was draped, making him look rather like an Egyptian Mummy. The other had his arm in a sling and lay curled in his bed, snoring.
‘They’re marines Jamsie. Battle injured, like us, yet considerably worse by the look of it.’
‘Oh right, ok. How long do you think we’re going to be here before they bring us in on the main plan?’
‘As long as we need to be, I guess.’ Silent replied, ‘We can ask next time any doctors or nurses come in.’
He stopped and listened, ‘Do you hear that Jamsie? That high-pitched buzzing?’
Jamsie frowned, ‘Yeah, what the heck is that?’
He sat up and opened the curtains beside him, peering out the window. He could see a wide open sea from the cliff below, the rocky shore was covered in partial excavations as the UN attempted to expand their base. He narrowed his eyes as he looked around for any signs of the buzzing and then peered upwards, seeing a vast shadow cover the landscape, blotting out the sun.
‘Oh… fuck…’
Silent frowned, ‘Don’t tell me. There’s a Conglomerate capital ship hovering just above the base about to unleash an army to destroy this base.’
Jamsie nodded. Silent sighed, ‘Today just keeps getting better and better.’
He stood up, wincing slightly in pain as the feeding tube was ripped from his arm by the force of his standing. Jamsie copied him, almost falling over as he was unused to his new prosthetic leg. Silent hurriedly ran to the other patients, trying desperately to get them out before it was too late. Unfortunately, it was.
All of the windows around them exploded inwards, sending shards of glass spewing into the ward like razor-sharp rain. Silent and Jamsie dived for cover under the beds as the glass skewered the other patients, ensuring they would not live to see the Conglomerate troopers zip lining into the room.
Pairs of legs hit the floor either side of Silent’s bed, heavy boots slamming off the screed ground. He recognised them to be Germanian standard issue boots. There were eight troopers in the room. All were armed and armoured. Silent and Jamsie were both wearing hospital gowns and were armed with nothing more than their fists and feet. It wasn’t looking good and Silent knew it… but he had to act. He couldn’t let the Conglomerate passed him so easily.
The Germanians spread out quickly and he noticed them beginning to search the room. The one nearest him on the right dropped to his knees, rifle in hand and peered down under his bed. He found himself staring face to face with Silent, who acted fast, grabbing the rifle and whipping it out of his hands before whacking him in the face with the butt, shattering his mouth, knocking teeth all over the floor. The man tried to shout but Silent hit him again, breaking his neck before rolling out from the bed, standing and without hesitating… he opened fire.
Before the Germanians could even act, the majority were cut down from the deadly laser fire, blowing holes in their armour and shattering their bones, searing their flesh and boiling their blood. Jamsie grabbed the nearest rifle and stood up behind the remaining men, gunning them down with all the ferocity of his counterpart.
With the assault force dead, Silent grabbed another rifle and looked out the window. The cliffside was now swarming with laser fire and bullets. Two vast millipedes were attempting to scale the side of the base, clambering up, packed with Conglomerate soldiers. Silent could see hordes of UN troopers packed inside the base shooting out windows, trying with all their might to bring down the towering monstrosities whilst simultaneously attempting to bring down the growing tide of Conglomerate warriors charging up the cliffside and dropping down from fleets of dropships.
‘It’s a fullscale invasion.’ Silent turned to Jamsie, ‘We have to help the others.’
‘We’ll need armour,’ Jamsie replied, ‘We haven’t got any gods on our side right now, we could really get hurt.’
Silent nodded and looked down at the dead Germanians, ‘We’ll take theirs for now. Leave the helmets or else we won’t be recognised. We don’t want our allies shooting at us too.’
A few minutes later, the duo left the hospital ward, rifle in each of their hands, they were ready for anything.
Passing down an empty corridor they became puzzled, ‘Where the hell is everyone?’
‘C’mon, let’s head downwards, the command centre is more likely to be down there.’ Silent voiced, looking around for any sign of a stairs.
At the next junction, they found one, running swiftly down it, where they met a blown out wall to their right, showing a clearer and much closer view of the battlefield. A ladder was set up from the bottom of the building and a Lemming had just reached the top when Silent caught him. A single laser later and the lemming fell four stories to land with a sickening crunch on the ground.
Jamsie ran passed and used all his strength to push the ladder away, sending at least twenty lemmings to their deaths.
‘Hey, Silent, I just had an idea,’ Jamsie voiced, turning to Silent as he fired out into the tsunami of Conglomerate below.
‘What?’ Silent asked, shooting off one of the occupants of the nearest millipede.
‘You remember when we first went into Dimension X and Dopeman told us that the only people who had ever been there before us were him, Obeseman, that Melkor guy and the Unspeakable.’
‘Yeah, I remember.’
‘And before Spank was destroyed he told Dopeman that the Unspeakable was his master?’
‘Yeah, what’s this all about?’ Silent inquired, confused.
‘Silent, you don’t think that Huggles is the Unspeakable, do you?’
Silent halted, letting his rifles drop to his flank. He turned slowly to Jamsie, ‘He must be.’
‘So he sent Spank, he’s the one that caused all this trouble in the first place.’
‘C’mon Jamsie, let’s get down to command and finish this battle. Once we’ve beaten the Conglomerate and the Timmy’s, then we can worry about Huggles.’
The duo headed downstairs, the heavy staccato of weapons fire accompanying their every step. Passing through the next corridor, the wall exploded inwards, knocking Silent backwards into the other wall as Jamsie rolled to the side.
Struggling to his feet, Silent saw a massive leg of a millipede gripping hold on the floor right before him, watching the ground crack below him as the vast construct attempted to claw itself upwards. Silent backed away to the wall as the machine crawled up to the next level before leaping over the gaping hole to continue on down the corridor, followed swiftly by Jamsie.
On the next stairwell downwards, they found themselves face to face with a pair of Mochs. Silent leapt into action, blazing rifle fire point blank straight at the closest alien whilst Jamsie backed off, burst firing with his own weapons as the two beasts approached, flexing their talons and charging their acid weapons.
The first blast of acid ate straight through the wall to the right of Silent as he dodged to the side, feeling the singing fire of the melting stone scrape against the side of his armour. Luckily the stone took the brunt of the corrosive liquid, allowing Silent to rush forwards, ramming one rifle straight into the slightly blown out stomach of the first Moch before unleashing every laser blast straight into its innards. The Moch roared as the hot lasers burnt through its flesh and melted its intestines, causing the alien to collapse in pain as its heart exploded under the intense pressure.
Jamsie kept backing off as the other Moch advanced forwards, ducking under a globule of acid which melted the glass of a window to his right. He was uneager to get too close to the alien, remembering all too well how he had lost his leg in the first place. Sporadic rifle fire clipped off pieces of the creature’s thick armour, but little damage was done to the beast in the first place.
Silent approached from behind and together, he and Jamsie had the alien trapped between two hails of deadly laser fire. The Moch twisted and turned, unsure of how to respond to the brute ferocity usually shown by his own kind. When the alien finally collapsed, the duo gladly made their way down to the lowest level of the base, where they finally found the soldiers of the UN. This was where the bulk of their allies were holding out, following a fireteam, they found themselves near the control room, where Johnny and Timmy were trying to organize the men in fighting units, allowing them to regain control of the base.
‘Finally!’ Silent gasped, making his way inside, where Rachael Lochs was waiting with Dark Chocolate. ‘I thought we’d never get here.’
‘Oh thank god you two are alright, we thought we’d lost you for sure when the Conglomerate attacked!’ Rachael exclaimed rushing over to them. ‘It just came out of the blue, they’ve killed half of our fire teams and they’re making their way down here.’
‘It’s alright ma’am, we’ll sort it out, just one question: Where’s our stuff?’
‘In the armoury, it’s just down the hall, Timmy will show you.’
Silent nodded and left the room, grabbing Timmy with him. When he left the armoury, he finally felt complete again. Resplendent in his battered, scarred and broken blast armour, he dropped his shotgun to its holster and hefted up his rifle.
Timmy following in his wake, he headed outside, two UN teams right behind him. Taking cover in the lower and rockier areas of the quarry, they advanced as quietly as they could towards the Conglomerate army.
When the two forces made contact, it was easy to see that the human forces were more than a match for the aliens, who melted away before the deadly hail of bullets.
Turning to fight the climbing millipedes, Silent stopped as he saw a single figure standing on the roof of the base before the monstrosities. He stopped, confused and squinted his eyes against the sun to try to see the full figure.
The figure lifted up his right arm and the millipede to his right lifted to the air. Silent gasped, having never seen such power before, except from Dopeman. Yet this figure was not Dopeman. Although, it was familiar. The floating millipede scrambled with its legs but then it collapsed inwards on itself, completely crushed as if it was placed inside a car masher. It collapsed to the ground with a shattering crash, causing the Conglomerate nearby to flee from the destruction of their huge machine.
The other millipede turned to leave yet the figure leapt upon it, igniting some sort of blade as he landed upon it, bringing the weapon down through its head and causing the beast to rupture in a massive explosion. The figure landed on the ground in a perfect crouch as the millipede collapsed to the quarry floor behind him.
The figure stood and Silent realised who it was.
‘Wow, I’m scared if Columbo can make people turn into that.’ Jamsie muttered, frowning as Dark Chocolate shrugged his cape around his shoulders, blade detracting into the handle.
‘Wait, what’s that?’ Silent asked, pointing to an object in the sky.
Jamsie and Timmy followed his finger to what seemed to be a Conglomerate ship dropping from orbit to the Earth, trailing a huge cloud of brown and green smoke.
‘What the hell?’ Jamsie muttered as the vessel swooped passed, crashing to the ground roughly two miles away.
‘This isn’t good… do you smell that?’ one marine voiced.
‘Yes,’ Silent sniffed, then smiled, recognizing the tainted smell of the Timmy’s… ‘It’s a chance for some revenge.’
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Post by Silent on Aug 18, 2012 20:32:42 GMT -5
Chapter Thirty: Timmygate
Silent stared over at Jamsie, who was taking cover behind a large rock formation nearby. Night had fallen when they reached the area where the Timmy-infested Conglomerate vessel had crashed. Unfortunately, it had landed very near to a small and inhabited military barracks, which, as far as communications could tell, had already fallen to the tide of zombies pouring from the vessel.
They moved up as a pair, Timmy waddling along behind, looking very scared and nervous, almost as if he wanted to hold Silent’s hand for reassurance. There was no sign of any of the infections yet, but the barracks was burning, they could see that clearly enough from the flames just passed the perimeter fence and the plume of smoke rising from its centre.
Crossing the sparse clear space of land as fast as they could, the trio dived into cover behind some wreckage of the perimeter fence. Silent raised his head and looked around, searching for any sign of the Timmys. He found them… at least a few of them. They were leaping over the rooftops above them, their splayed limbs and odd angled heads snarling and wailing as they went.
Silent snarled slightly as he watched them, Jamsie and Timmy closing up near him as he ducked under the cracked fence and entered the barracks, rolling passed some smouldering wreckage to take cover behind a broken truck. He swung his rifle to his shoulder and fired without hesitation, his rounds indiscriminately launching into the group of Timmys, slaying them before they even realised he was there.
As they fell, he rolled forwards, constantly in motion as he headed deeper into the barracks, tumbling under the half open, rusty door of a garage. He met the wreck of a military truck transport crawling with Timmy pus and spouting small and foul Timmy forms. He snarled at them in disgust and sent a great gout of flame from his flamethrower to consume them in fiery death.
He turned to see Timmy and Jamsie roll under the door with panicked looks on their faces.
‘What is it?’ he asked, quickly, yet both merely shook their heads and hurried behind the truck as a massive form burst into the garage, shattering the doors and walls as it went. Silent dived to the side, the creature’s gigantic teeth barely missing his legs as he landed face-down in a slimy pool. The beast rushed by, exiting through the other side of the garage with a cataclysmic crash.
‘What the hell was-?’ Silent began but stopped as he heard the building creak around him.
Jamsie and Timmy stood up and looked around fearfully.
‘The roof’s caving in.’ Jamsie whispered. As one, they dashed out as the garage began to collapse in earnest around them. Luckily, the old building wasn’t very large and they made it out just as the shell hit the ground, bricks and tiles shattering on the hard concrete floor, sending out a vast dust cloud that choked both their throats and robbed them of sight.
Silent coughed the dust out of his lungs and turned, raising his wristblades just in time to block a swiping tentacle. Into the cloud, the Timmy’s poured in dozens, eager to investigate the racket. The real Timmy backed away, managing to shoot one of his brethren in the head as it stumbled towards him, before running to hide inside an old rubbish skip. Jamsie shot down the horde as they advanced on him, almost zombie-like in their endless chant of, ‘Timmy, Halo, Tyranids and Blarg!’
Silent batted another Timmy to the side and broke free of the dust cloud, intrigued to find the vast beast that had crushed the complex. It was most certainly a Timmy, of sorts, as it had yelled the word Timmy as loudly as its lungs could call as it barrelled through the walls around him. Yet now, aside from the battle behind him, the complex was silent. Either the creature had left or was acting cautiously, perhaps by way of an ambush.
Silent stared hard into the surrounding area, looking at the large buildings around him. Where the Timmy’s smart enough to lay an ambush? That was the real question. The Timmymind was, he remembered enough of his time with that monstrosity to figure that out.
Suddenly an explosion flared out from the building to his right, blowing apart the wall facing him in a plume of flame and dust. Silent shielded his eyes from the blaze, backing off slightly as he saw a band of UN marines firing sporadically into the gaping hole of the construct they had just vacated.
The vast beast followed them, yelling before it swallowed a marine whole, the others backing away, still shooting with everything they had to seemingly no effect. Silent froze as he saw now in full what the creature was. He had seen its creation not so long ago. It was the Timmy Pac-Man.
‘Oh shit,’ he said to himself, ‘How the hell do I kill that?’
From behind him, the sounds of fighting had died down as Jamsie and Timmy walked to his side, both frowning at the sight of the looming monstrosity before them. He could tell they were both thinking exactly the same thing he was.
The marines began to run, backing away from the Timmy as fast as they could as it started churning its mouth to attack. Suddenly, it turned as a blazing flame coursed across its back. The creature turned to find Silent spraying flames from his weapon all over it, in a seemingly vain attempt to slay it.
Yet, it did give the marines the time to regroup.
‘Marines!’ Silent yelled, ducking to the side as the beast lunged, ‘Call for support! We need heavy firepower!’
Surprisingly, Timmy himself leapt forwards and stabbed the gigantic creature with his stolen blade, actually causing it to spurt some festering blood. Silent frowned at Timmy and smiled, ‘Damn, Timmy you’ve got it! It can be killed by melee weapons!’
Jamsie nodded and drew his own flick knife as Silent’s wristblades shot out. The Pac-Man tossed in fury, knocking Timmy flying back against the wall with a soft thumpf. Silent ran to his aid as Jamsie held his knife blade threateningly at the monstrosity.
He frowned, ‘Silent, you better help him quick, I kinda feel like this knife is a little… inadequate!’
The Pac-Man roared, the potency of its breath’s stench sending Jamsie reeling and knocking him to the ground. Silent rolled Timmy over to the side, seeing he was still breathing, he rushed to Jamsie and jammed his blades up into the Pac-Man’s mouth as it prepared to swallow his friend.
The creature yelped in pain and backed off, almost like a bulldog being swiped at by a Chihuahua. Silent stepped forwards, waving his wristblades wildly and the beast backed off further, knowing now that Silent could hurt it. The former bounty hunter knelt down to help Jamsie to his feet before stepping forwards again.
‘Go help Timmy, I’ll deal with this thing.’ Silent ordered, glaring at the Pac-Man thing with disgust.
The creature opened its mouth wide and Silent dashed deep into the leftmost building, knowing that the beast was about to strike. As he reached the door, he heard the creature yelling its call: ‘Timmy, Timmy, Timmy, Timmy, Timmy, Timmy, Timmy, Timmy, Timmy, Timmy!’
Using the noise as identification for the location of the Timmy, he rolled to the left, just as it burst through the wall, shattering the concrete and sending a cloud of debris tumbling towards him. Using his shotgun, he blew open the thin wall before him and leapt inside as the creature shot passed, munching through the floor and ceiling as the building collapsed around it.
Silent made his way out to the other side of the construct, driving the Timmy as far away from his friends as he could. He hit the ground with a crash as the beast shot out of the building behind, flying just above his body and landing before him, shattering the tough concrete floor.
Silent got to his feet and charged forwards, the creature answering him in kind. At the last second, he leapt aside and sliced the side of its face. He repeated the action several times and the beast visibly slowed.
Then, with a sudden accuracy belaying its size, it shot forwards, knocking Silent to the ground with a bone-shattering crash. He held up his arms in defense as the beast moved in for the kill, its mouth widening to extreme sizes, bloody visceral tendrils of saliva dripping from its numerous, deathly-sharp fangs.
Suddenly, as fast as the Timmy had pounced on him, the creature was off, flung to the side under a hail of immense-calibre shells. Silent rolled to his feet and looked, bleary-eyed to the sparse land to his left where he saw three huge tanks in UN colours blasting at the creature.
He grinned as he turned to see the smouldering remains of the Timmy melting away under the intense fire, turning to little more than a pool of shattered and broken flesh against the hard walls of the barracks.
He nodded in thanks to the marines and headed over to the crashed vessel, which was very nearby now. There was no sign of any more of the Timmys, which he assumed were destroyed by now. Indeed, his guess was confirmed when he finally entered the Conglomerate vessel, as no life signs met him in its innards. He used this word to describe it as the old Conglomerate ship was no little more than a virulent hive of pustules and screaming mushrooms in the shape of rat’s heads.
Silent frowned as a bizarre, plant-like creature moaned to his right. He shot it, popping it like a firework and continued, glancing uneasily left and right at the rather horrifying array of life forms.
The floor beneath his feet seemed to squelch with his every footstep, feeling like he was within a marshland. When he reached the end of the first long passage, he headed downwards, making for what he knew was the control centre of the fallen vessel, if there was anything to be learned from this wreck, it would be found there, in the main computer.
He was right.
Upon entering the main room, the command console lit up with purpose, recognizing his DNA. He frowned, almost as if it had all been prepared just for him. Then he realised, it had been.
Walking to the console, he clicked the glowing play button and stepped back in surprise as a hologram of the person he cared for most appeared before his eyes: Sarah.
He stepped forwards again, holding his hand out in a vain attempt to touch her face. Then she spoke.
‘Silent? Silent are you there?’
‘It’s me…’ he breathed, hardly able to believe his eyes.
‘Silent? Silent are you there?’ she repeated.
He frowned, ‘I’m here. It’s me…’
‘Silent? Silent are you there?’
He slumped. It was just a recording… a broken one at that. He fell to the floor and closed his eyes, listening, letting her lost voice float over his senses. He lay back, thinking quietly.
He was not alone for much longer.
The ceiling above him lifted as a beam blasted through it, cutting open the roof and letting the night sky fall upon him. He looked up, blinking as a Conglomerate ship hovered up above. He froze. They were not colours he recognised, it was crimson.
Something floated down from the light. An orb-like object… with a single blue eye. Silent snarled and raised his rifle. He fired once, hitting the robot as it dropped towards him.
‘Ow… that hurt Earthling!’ Innocent Flame jibed, floating to his side.
‘What are you doing here? I thought I’d killed you already?’
‘No no, Earthling. I am here to aid you.’
‘To help me? On the Chocolate Ring you tried to kill Sarah and you tried to kill me? Why should I trust you?’
‘You want to see the whole recording?’ Innocent asked, slyly, nodding to the hologram.
Silent froze and conceded.
‘Then come with me.’ Innocent chimed, floating both the holographic key and Silent up towards the Conglomerate vessel.
‘Wait, where are we-?’ Silent began.
‘Relax. You will see.’
The beam of light from the vessel carried them both directly into its main hangar, where, to Silent’s surprise, he found several familiar faces waiting for him. Jamsie and Timmy were both sitting to his right, looking tired and sick, but cheerful all the same. Rachael and Johnny stood before him, both shaking his hand with Rachael giving him a welcome hug. To his right was the most welcome surprise and he smiled to see both Obeseman and Dopeman smiling at him.
‘Good to see you again, Silent.’ Obeseman grinned, shaking his hand softly as Dopeman stepped forwards, shifting awkwardly.
‘Eh Silent, I just want to apologize for losing it the other day. It’s just, Huggles brings up a whole chapter of my history I would rather forget.’ Dopeman muttered, uncomfortably.
Silent grinned and hugged him, ‘Hey, you’re Dopeman. I got nothing against you.’
He turned around to the others and pointed at Innocent, ‘Now… anyone mind telling me what the hell this thing is doing here?’
‘Pardon?’ Innocent replied.
‘He… well he helped us on the last Chocolate Ring.’ Rachael replied. ‘He seems to have had a change of heart since you last met him.’
Silent glared at him, ‘Well, I can’t say I’m going to ever trust him. But I guess I’ll tolerate his presence, if he can fix the recording I found.’
‘Recording?’ Rachael asked, interested.
‘Yeah, Sarah left a recording for me.’ He answered quietly.
‘Sarah? This could be vital to defeating the Conglomerate and finding her.’ Rachael said, excitedly, she turned to Innocent, ‘Fix it as fast as you can.’
‘Yes ma’am,’ he replied, ‘I estimate I shall be completed within half an hour.’
Rachael nodded, ‘Very well. I’ll call for a meeting of all our leaders in the main control room of this vessel.’
Silent smiled, ‘What is this ship anyway? How did we get it?’
‘Oh, that was all me.’ Obeseman grinned, ‘It’s a Russiian ship, called the Crimson Flag, they gave it to me because they thought I was one of their mythical gods. Then again, I probably am.’
‘Right, that’s good, so the Russiians really are on our side now?’
‘Yeah, pretty much.’ Rachael replied with a smile. ‘Good thing too, or we really wouldn’t stand much of a chance at defeating the Conglomerate.’
‘That’s true, but I’m still not sure if I can trust them.’
‘Yes… anyway. We better get this meeting set up, someone better go and alert Columbo in his room.’ Rachael voiced.
‘Columbo’s here?’ Silent inquired, surprised, ‘I thought he was in Knockbeg or whatever his little castle is called?’
‘He was, but we brought him here to formulate a full battle plan, we needed to get him more involved as, frankly, his assistance seemed to be a lot less than he could actually provide.’ Rachael replied.
‘I see, I’ll go and get him I suppose.’ Silent answered, ‘Where is he?’
‘Three doors down the left hallway.’ Rachael said, ‘I better alert the others, see you in a few minutes.’
Silent nodded, heading to Columbo’s room. Timmy and Jamsie filing in behind him as usual.
When he at last reached the room designated as Columbo’s, he opened the door slowly and paused as he saw Columbo sitting at a long table with his back to him. Strangely, he was wearing a thick black hooded cloak and standing beside him was Dark Maulteaser. There were two holographic North Koreans sitting at the table alongside them.
‘This is my apprentice, Dark Maulteaser.’ Columbo was saying, in an exaggerated deep and evil voice, ‘He will find your lost ship.’
The holograms then faded and Columbo turned to Silent with a smile, throwing back his hood and revealing his short blond hair.
‘Ah, Silent! Great to see you again!’ he beamed, standing with the aid of his pimp stick even though he was perfectly capable of walking without it.
‘Good to see you too Columbo. How are you, Dark Maulteaser?’ Silent asked, pleasantly, holding out his hand to the mysterious figure.
The man nodded but declined the handshake.
Columbo leaned over to Silent and whispered, ‘He’s very quiet. A little unnerving. I much prefer Charles as a bodyguard but at least Maulteaser will be leaving soon to find that ship.’
‘Ship?’ Silent asked, confused.
‘Never mind, it’s not important. Anyway, here’s Charles!’ Columbo said with a grin, pointing to the doorway where Charles had just entered, wearing his usual butler outfit, waving nonchalantly to Silent and the others.
Silent greeted him happily and they headed as a group to the control room. Though he was glad to see Columbo again, he was beginning to pick up yet more subtle signs of his possible insanity. As they walked, he noticed that Columbo was bent low in order to use the pimp stick, almost as if he was dependent on it. His eyes seemed to dart left and right, as if in suspicion of those around him. Silent was starting to think his cheery appearance was merely a web of deceit, used to draw those into a false sense of security whilst he scrutinized them for any signs of threat to his own person. Silent glared at the pimp stick… it was responsible for this. Somehow… this thing was changing Columbo… and not for the better.
He put it out of his mind as they entered the control room, taking his place to the right of Rachael around a rectangular table. The Godfather stood opposite him, alongside most of the rest of the Mafia, followed by Dopeman and Obeseman. Columbo took his seat at the head of the table.
Innocent floated over the table, ‘My reconstruction is complete, the recording is ready to be viewed.’
Silent nodded, ‘Good. Play it.’
The hologram of Sarah appeared on the table, it flickered as through damaged, but played on nonetheless: ‘Silent? Silent are you there? Low Greed, that ship infected with Timmy’s is on its way to Earth. I can’t tell you everything, the Timmymind knows I’ve escaped, it won’t be long before it finds me. I have just enough time to detach this vessel. The Timmy’s won’t recognise the hologram, they aren’t smart enough. I don’t know why but for some reason the Timmy’s aren’t interested in turning me into one of them. They just want to keep me prisoner. They even fixed my leg, which is kind of nice of them. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine, you have to stop the Conglomerate. Unfortunately, Low Greed is full of Timmys, which is going to cause a real problem for Earth. If possible, could you maybe get me out of here before you destroy it. I’d rather that my last moments weren’t spent with a bunch of deranged mutants. Look, I found out that the ship Prudence took is attempting to open a portal to something called the Parabola, the Timmy’s don’t know about it, but apparently the Parabola is some sort of installation were all the rings can be fired. You have to follow them through. It’s the only way you can stop the threat of the rings and the Conglomerate once and for all. Hurry Silent. The Parabola. There isn’t much time.’
The message ended and Sarah disappeared. Silent nodded, ‘Well… we know what to do then.’
‘Our fight is through the portal, with the Conglomerate and the bastard Prudence.’ Obeseman called.
Columbo bowed his head. ‘I’ll stay here, defend the Earth from the Timmy’s. If I can, I’ll save Sarah.’
Silent acknowledged him with a respectful nod as the Godfather agreed to do the same as per the initial plan.
‘Be wary, a Timmymind has you in its sights. Do not forget that a single Timmy spore can retard an entire species.’ Obeseman warned.
Columbo turned to Silent, ‘Can we be sure that the hologram was not tampered with? Do you trust Sarah that much?’
‘With my life Columbo and, like she said, the Timmys are too stupid for tampering.’ Silent replied.
‘Well this is either the best idea she’s had or the worst. I just hope I live long enough to find out which. I’ll take my leave. Dark Chocolate will go with you along with the Super Star Choclifier, as I have previously ordered. I will assign you Dark Squadron also.’
‘Thank you, Columbo.’ Rachael replied. ‘Your ship is ready for transport.’
Columbo bowed and turned to leave with Charles and the Godfather as the main command screen lit up, showing the Conglomerate barricade around Prudence’s vessel.
‘It’s activating.’ Dopeman murmured as the vessel began to glow before firing a long, lance-like beam up into the sky above. The beam separated roughly five hundred metres above, opening up to form a huge dome, which was rapidly spreading into a sphere about the size of the moon.
Silent watched intently as the Conglomerate vessels all shot into it, followed by Prudence’s own ship. Yet the portal remained. Knowing it was time to act, Silent turned to Obeseman, who was already ordering the fleet into orbit.
He felt the Crimson Flag move around him and realised that Rachael had already left the control room, heading towards her own ship, the Backwards Into Dusk. The view screen was now showing the Earth/Russiian fleet moving in formation towards the portal.
He saw the vast form of the Super Star Choclifier overshadowing the entire fleet, the tip of it entering the portal before most of the other vessels had even gotten close.
Silent turned to everyone else, ‘Get to the drop ships. We’re going to war.’
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