12/21/12 - The Trial of the Imago - Punishment and Aftermath

Yeah, that took longer than I !@#$ing thought it would.

What, the story? !@#$ no, son. I meant taking a slash and then flushing the !@#$ commode. All this French !@#$ I've been chugging it's no wonder my kidneys were backed up, but then you figure that poor porcelain throne can only !@#$ing handle so much before exploding into a million white pieces all over the !@#$ floor.

Of course, since this isn't our !@#$ing apartment, and we are under house arrest, I suppose I'm within my rights to do the !@#$hole rock star thing and just smash the !@#$ place. But where would I take a !@#$ the rest of the time?

(Not in the bedroom bathroom, that's for sure. Me and my boyfriend got that straightened out first thing.)

No, son. What was really !@#$ing taking so long was watching the gold go down the hole.

No, it's not that I have a !@#$ing attraction to that kind of !@#$. I've done a lot of weird things in my time, but I'm happy to say that, while I might gladly stuff my !@#$ into one hole, and take another thing in my mouth, I am not really all that !@#$ing interested in what comes out of them.

Well, one thing that comes out of one of them, anyway.

Yeah, you probably didn't need to !@#$ing hear that. Sorry, son. You can take your hands off your !@#$ ears now.

No, what transfixed me, back there, was the fact that, unless you're a !@#$ing sanitation engineer, you probably have no idea as to what !@#$ing happens when you flush the !@#$ john. It all goes down the hole and away from you, and that's all you need to know, right?

But in reality, there's this massive, complicated system at play. All these !@#$ tubes and pipes, and filters and tunnels, and sluiceways and treatement plants... !@#$ son, it's like some crazy kind of alchemy, down there, all set to turn a city's leavings into as harmless a substance as possible before sending it back out into the wild.

And it is pretty !@#$ing miraculous, in a lot of ways. But it smells, and it's nasty, and when things break down it's a !@#$ing hazzard, so no one wants to know unless they have to know. And so it remains a weird mystery science for most people, and only those who actually !@#$ing tend to the process know what's going on.

Yeah, son, I ponder things like that. I'm !@#$ing allowed. Had a lot of !@#$ing time to ponder that, now haven't I? You know how many minutes I've spent on the !@#$ can in my life?

I could count them, if I !@#$ing wanted.

...

No, the reason I got all starey-eyed back at the !@#$ can is because I was thinking about what happened next. To the Imago, I mean.

We tried them, we sentenced them. And then came the day we had to flush them down the !@#$ing toilet for their crimes.

And you better !@#$ing believe I was there for that one.

* * *

So, let's see, here. The sentencing happens on a Thursday in Paris. The very next day, I'm not there anymore, but the President is. And they get talking about some things that I genuinely had no idea were in the !@#$ing works, but wasn't entirely surprised to hear when it all happened.

(Yeah, yeah. We'll get to it eventually.)

Next couple of days I'm !@#$ing laying low because I really do not need to !@#$ off the President any further. Also, I can't !@#$ing go anywhere without people sticking cameras in my !@#$ face, or asking me how it feels to be !@#$ing responsible for a billion dead children around the world. We hole up in the B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G., drink mojitos, and order out a lot. 

Then, late Monday night, we get a call from Mister Freedom. He's ready.

And Tuesday is when it happens. 

* * *

On the Southeastern side of Cuba lies a small piece of empire, left over from the time before.

It's known as the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, sometimes Gitmo. Since the earliest parts of the last century, it has been under American military control, helping establish a presence in this volatile part of the world. And, since about the middle of the last century, it has been a hated thing in the eyes of the Communist government that controlled Cuba.

But that was before. Before the end of that Government at the hands of the COMPANY. Before the death of their Dictator, and the messy liberation of its people.

And before the coming of the Imago, which made all that confusion and liberation something of an afterthought, or perhaps a black joke.

Now, Cuba is its own entity, once more. Its people have elected a new government, based on a mixture of capitalist economics and socialist welfare. And they, like so many other countries, have joined the Terre Unifee.

One of their earliest decisions, once they joined the TU, was to demand that the American naval base leave. And maybe, once upon a time, America would have been happy to, seeing as how the real reason to have a Naval presence there was no longer in effect.

Unfortunately, Gitmo was also home to Detention Camp Zebra, which cannot, under any circumstances, be moved.

Given the unique situation on the ground, the two nations made a historic agreement. The base was mostly decommissioned, except for the underground prison, which became its own entity. America agreed to pay back rent, in full, and to continue to pay rent on the area they hold. And they also promised that the island nation would be protected from anything and anyone that might be locked up in The Z. 

Not that such a thing is a concern with Mister Freedom on the case. (Usually)

By the time SPYGOD gets there -- flown in by the last remaining COMPANY Transport anywhere -- a number of distinguished guests have arrived. Mostly the same types who came to the verdict and the sentencing, here to see the end result, but also the well-known masters of several, esoteric fields. 

Leading scientists and great thinkers. Escape artists and magicians. Philosophers and religious leaders. All here to see the work of a man who melds their many disciplines into one, seamless art.

All front and center to watch the master of universal escapology create a prison not even he could get out of. 

One gets a sense of the gravity involved, here, this day, upon seeing the machine: a great, copper spiral surrounding a giant, silver cylinder. Lights flash around the cylinder, beating in time with whatever strange engine runs it. 

An elevating platform sits at the top of the spiral, holding a massive box containing many large, two-toned metal balls. These are obviously the condemned Imago, awaiting their sentence, and there are quite a few other, massive boxes nearby, waiting to be loaded onto the platform, and send barreling down the copper spiral, one by one.

In front of the machine, on the tarmac, is an ornate platform, done up in the colorful livery that Mister Freedom often uses when attempting some amazing feat. Before that platform sits the ball containing Green and Yellow, hooked up to the same speakers it was in court, in Paris.

The crowd assembles and sits down, talking amongst themselves. The last time Mister Freedom gave a public performance, like this, was when they finally trapped the Emperor of Dust. And what he did to him gave everyone who saw it nightmares for months.

Some fates are too cruel, even for interdimensional soul-thieves.

SPYGOD's up at the front, along with other witnesses for the Prosecution. He can't help but chuckle at how the Judge is jockeying for a good position, leaving his secret lover (the Prosecutor) well behind him, out of what may be eerie caution or simply not caring about his feeling at this moment in time. 

Mr. USA sits on one side of him, Director Straffer on the other. All the other Strategic Talents have elected to be somewhere else, and quite pointedly so. 

"I really wish Mrs. Liberty was here to see this," Mr. USA sighs.

"Yeah," SPYGOD says, putting an elbow up on the man's shoulder: "She'd have talked some !@#$ing sense into them by now, let me tell you."

"Well, I was thinking more of her actually... oh, never mind."

SPYGOD smiles: "That's always been the difference between us, hasn't it?"

"One of many."

"Yeah, well..." he pats the old man on the shoulder: "Welcome to the pariah club."

"If you two don't stop arguing I'm going to have to assert boyfriend rights," Straffer says, leaning over and winking: "He and I are the ones who are supposed to be bickering like an old married couple, by now. Not you two."

Mr. USA just stares at him for a moment, and then laughs. It's a long, rich laugh -- one that silences a lot of other people -- and before long SPYGOD and Straffer and laughing right along with him. 

(Some !@#$hole tries to shush them, but they don't even look in his direction.)

Eventually, the laughter fades, as it must. And just then, as if by some quirk of perfect timing -- or what might be design, knowing him -- there's a strange whooshing of black cloth at the front of the massive machine, and Mister Freedom is standing there, resplendent in his dark uniform.

Silence falls like a headsman's hatchet. He smiles solemnly, and holds up his hands. They have clearly been manacled.

"Today, we ponder the mystery of imprisonment," he says, holding his chains aloft: "We look upon a group of individuals who have earned our wrath, and are therefore deserving of our punishment. But we also must realize that they are sentient beings, deserving of the same respect we give to any such creatures. 

"Thus we affirm the paradox of prison: your body must be chained down, for your past crimes, but your soul must be allowed to soar, or there can be no future redemption."

'Soar': if there's any irony in his use of that word, given the Imago's tendency to use it to great effect, he makes no sign of it. A cool customer, this science magician. 

"And so, we commit the Imago to this cell," he says, gesturing to the silver cylinder: "It is a virtual matrix, specially built to accommodate their many minds, and respond to their needs and desires. Within its architecture, they may have whatever civilization they can devise, and one limited only by their imagination. 

"But they will not leave it until we allow them to do so, and doing so will prove... challenging, to say the least."

There's a collective nod, a muttering of assent. 

"I asked the one known as Green and Yellow if she had any final words to say, prior to her sentence being carried out. She did, and so I have allowed her this moments."

He walks down, and turns on a dial by the box: "You may speak now, Green and Yellow. They are all here."

"Oh, excellent," Green and Yellow sneers, her voice crisp and clicking: "I suppose you expect that I'm going to beg, or possibly even promise that we'll learn our lesson and someday prove worthy of your trust, again? 

"Well, I'm not. I am not sorry that we did what we did. I am not sorry that we were able to escape that prison we were put into, by beings more powerful than you will ever be. I am not sorry that we took over your planet, and planned to use you to escape it, in the wake of what's coming. I am not sorry we decided to murder you all, at the end, there, either. 

"I am sorry that we won't be able to see you all die, soon. Because that will be entertaining. You may have dealt with us, at great cost, but when ((UNINTELLIGIBLE CONCEPT)) gets here... oh, you are in for a shock. 

"But, not to appear entirely ungrateful, I will give you this. Of all the worlds we ever conquered, and all the peoples we ever utilized, you are the only ones to throw us off, ever. And it wasn't because we were weakened, or sloppy, or too kind for our own good.

"But it wasn't because you were just that good, either. It is simply because you are the only race that was so clearly willing to sacrifice so much of your own kind to save the rest.

"And that alone made so much of the difference."

There is silence, then. No one here has no difficulty understanding what Green and Yellow was referring to. 

No one wishes to have it elaborated upon.

"Mister Freedom? I have said all I need to say, both for myself and my people. You may do what you are going to do, now."

The black-clad man nods, solemnly. He does not disconnect the speaker, but instead presses a few buttons on a remote control he snatches from the air, as though it were part of a magic trick. 

The silver cylinder hums into life. Green and Yellow screams, sharply, as her essence is pulled out of the sphere she's inhabiting, and siphoned into the cylinder. A loud BEEP! sounds out from the machine, and the green and yellow ball she had been inhabiting, just seconds before, begins to smoke and crumble, turning into two-colored dust as it collapses in on itself.

"The process of incarceration has begun," Mister Freedom says, pressing another button on his control. The box at the top of the copper spiral releases a sphere, which rolls round and round the cylinder like a pinball. The cylinder BEEP!s and the sphere rolls on, falling into a shallow pit at the end. 

A crumpling noise is heard as it hits the bottom, and a puff of two-colored smoke wafts up, gentle and pathetic. 

"Out of respect for the process, I ask that, if you stay, you remain silence for the entire event," he says, pressing a button and releasing another sphere: "I estimate that it may take six hours, give or take."

A few people politely leave, heading for the reception that's been set up some distance away, on a rise that allows them to see what's going on. Others sit and watch, for a time.

And some -- like SPYGOD and The Owl -- join the magicians and philosophers, and sit and watch the entire thing. 

* * *

A long !@#$ing six hours, son. But worth every !@#$ moment, just to see those !@#$ers get handled as efficiently as they'd planned on handling us...

...

After it was done, Mister Freedom checked a few things, and then bowed to the crowd, and vanished without saying another thing. 

The copper spiral collapsed down into a big !@#$ ring, like a giant slinky or something. The cylinder went straight down into a hole in ground that I hadn't even !@#$ing seen, just a moment ago. As soon as it was gone, there was a sound like a million !@#$ cell doors slamming the !@#$ shut, one after another, each one louder and more !@#$ing final than the last.

And then the hole it went into just vanished like it wasn't even there. 

The magicians stood up and applauded. Everyone else just sort of scattered, like they'd watched their parents !@#$ or something. And then it was just me and The Owl, and she walked right by me without saying a !@#$ thing.

I wanted to say something to her. But after how things went in Paris, and what happened on !@#$ing Thanksgiving, I don't know that I would have !@#$ing dared. 

No, she had a right to her anger, son, so I let her have it. At least for then. 

So I went over to the rise for a much-needed drink, or ten, over at the buffet. It was a pretty upscale thing, complete with a string quartet playing orchestrations of the Beatles (mostly from Revolver). Straffer and Mr. USA were in the middle of a !@#$ing hilarious conversation, so I joined them, and we had a few snorts and giggles.

One thing I didn't find !@#$ing funny was the other Strategic Talents. They were all over by the !@#$ cake table, talking about the future. A new Freedom Force was in the works, over there -- old heroes, new faces, allies from all over the !@#$ world -- and it looked like The Owl and the new New Man were heading it up.

And it was pretty !@#$ clear, from how they all had their !@#$ backs to us, that they weren't asking us over to join.

Lucky for me, Mr. USA didn't notice a !@#$ing thing, especially over the music. So we kept !@#$ing talking, downing the champagne, and figuring out some next moves. He knew how much !@#$ I was in with the President, and why (after all, he was !@#$ing there when it happened) so he promised to try and talk the man into calming the !@#$ down and seeing reason, at least as much as it was possible to do. 

A while into the party, I got called away by one of the magicians who'd been on the stage. Some Spanish !@#$ I never heard of before, and haven't !@#$ing seen since. He handed me a small note, made the Vitarka Mudra at his right eye, and said "Le esta viendo."

(Har-dee-!@#$ing-har)

I open it up, and of course it's a note from Mister Freedom. Says he'd like to see me at his workshop. And, given how we left things last time, I figure it's time for that !@#$ing apology he said we didn't !@#$ing need. So I grab a bottle of the bubbly no one's touched yet, two glasses, and head on down. 

* * *

"Come, my friend," the older man says, leaning up from his neat and orderly workdesk, and brushing a hand through the multi-colored bangles in his long, white hair.

"I ain't even breathing hard, yet," SPYGOD says, ducking under a low-hanging piece of equipment: "Besides, my man and I have a bit of an understanding on that."

"I am sure you do," the old man smiles: "And you brought champagne?"

"Yeah. I kind of stole it from your table, up top."

"Oh, that is not mine. That is all the Americans' doing. And the Cubans. And the French."

"Hard to tell who's in !@#$ing charge of this !@#$ show, huh?"

"We are," he says, gratefully accepting a glass and letting the man fill it: "So what are we drinking to, (REDACTED)?"

"How about an apology?"

"I already told you, not needed. That was an excellent test of my security. I am glad to see you made so much of what I allowed you to see."

SPYGOD coughs into his fist: "Well... that's !@#$ing sobering."

"As it should be. So we have both underestimated each other? A good thing we are friends and allies."

"How about we drink to that, then?"

"I will agree to that," Mister Freedom says, clinking his glass with SPYGOD's and taking a sip: "And, if I may propose a toast?"

"Yes."

"To the eventual freedom of the Imago," he says, winking as they clink glasses once more.

SPYGOD stammers: "Um... what?"

The old man laughs, and gestures to a screen. On that screen is a giant, metal box, made of what seem millions of small, interlocking parts, each one cunningly nestled against one another.

"This, I think, is the finest cell I have ever constructed. I have made it in such a way that no one, not even I, knows the exact combination. To unlock such a thing would take a truly herculean effort, perhaps several of them all at once. So, I can say with some confidence, the Imago will not be let out of there."

"So what do you mean about their freedom?" SPYGOD asks, downing his glass and then just pulling off the !@#$ bottle: "Do you intend to !@#$ing let them out, someday?"

"Oh no. They are never going to be worthy of our trust," Mister Freedom says, sadly: "Their souls are manacled things, weighed down by dreams of limitless power and endless conquest. They will never take the steps to free themselves without some kind of external influence. 

"And as they tend to utilize, as they say, all things external to themselves, I don't think they'd listen to any such well-meaning force or fellow that came along to show them the error of their ways."

"Yeah, I never really saw an Imago Jesus coming down the pipe."

The old man chuckles: "I was thinking of an Imago Buddha, myself. But at least we are traveling in the same direction, this time."

"So what are you saying?"

"I am saying that, so long as they perceive the need to gain power by conquering others, they will never be satisfied to merely sit in a wondrous box and be given whatever they need to survive. They will try to escape, and, given enough time, they just might succeed, as they did before."

"Okay. And how are you going to stop them?"

"I am not."

SPYGOD shakes his head: "Okay, I'm still confused."

"Then let me tell you of the future, my friend," Mister Freedom says, gesturing to a pair of chairs that have quite literally appeared from nowhere, and indicating that they should sit in them: "One billion years from this day, when the Earth is a broken and blackened thing-"

"What?"

"Let me finish, my friend."

"Are you talking about that !@#$ing thing we can't understand? The thing that's on it's !@#$ way?"

"I am. And it will scour us clean of life and move on, leaving only a sorry remnant, circling an impotent Sun."

"Okay..." SPYGOD blinks, having another pull and deciding to see where this is !@#$ing leading.

"So, to this ruined world, an exploratory craft shall come. When they search what little remains, they will find that there are a few pieces of technology still working. This cube will be one of them, and they, being machine creatures, will be eager to unearth it, as they believe it may be a last survivor of whatever apocalypse came upon us."

SPYGOD blinks again: "At which point they let the !@#$ing Imago out."

"Yes, and the Imago, as they put it, 'utilize' them. They use their machines to make even more bodies. They leave our broken solar system, and begin to ravage and repurpose other parts of the galaxy. And in time they create an empire that makes the one they had, back in their old dimension, look like a mere trifle."

"And you know all this, how?"

"Because I have programmed the matrix to make them think this is what is going to happen," the old man says, smiling: "You see, time is not relative in there. To us, it has been only seven hours, but once the cylinder was locked down, their perception of time was slowed down considerably. In the last hour, several decades have already gone by. And a year to us will seem like a billion to them."

SPYGOD snaps his fingers, getting it at last: "So a year from now, they think the machines come and get them, a billion years from now. But it's really just an illusion. They're only leaving their perceptions of a prison for their perceptions of freedom."

"Exactly. And once they think they're free, they will no longer plan, plot, and conspire to get out again. And so we will not run the risk of them freeing themselves, somehow, in ages to come when this horrendous danger will be lost to time."

"You think they won't notice, even after billions of years?"

"No. In fact, I know they will not."

SPYGOD nods, and pours the old man some more champagne: "That's brilliant. It's a complete ripoff of the end of a Star Trek episode, but it's brilliant."

Mister Freedom laughs and raises his glass: "I never said I was completely original, my friend. But I think the application is, dare I say, flawless."

"I sure !@#$ing hope so," SPYGOD replies, looking at the box on the screen: "I wouldn't wish those !@#$ers on the worst bastards in the universe. And that's !@#$ing saying something."

"I rather think we've dealt with the worst bastards in the universe, now," the old man says, shaking his head.

And with that, there's some silence between them.

"So, I hate to ask," SPYGOD says, having another pull from the bottle instead of filling up his glass: "Have the other talents come to ask you to join up with their new group, yet?"

"They have, yes. But I have turned them down."

"Really?" SPYGOD asks, amazed: "I thought you'd be all over that one. The reasons they didn't let you in the Freedom Force after the Liberty Patrol fell apart were... well, they were complete !@#$. You should have been there, with them. And I told them that."

"I know, (REDACTED). And I appreciate that. But the truth is that I needed to be outside of that group. I needed to be doing this, outside of them. And I think I have done more here, outside, than I would have done inside."

"Well, that's a good way to look at it. Now me, I'd have been !@#$ing-"

"That and, a year from now, I will be dead," Mister Freedom says, holding up a hand.

"... What?"

"I need to move forward in things," he says, gesturing around: "I spoke about traps, before? Life is, itself, a trap. And I have been manacled too long. I need to move on in order to be free."

SPYGOD looks at him, and nods, having another shot of the alcohol: "I understand."

"Do you approve?"

"I don't, no," SPYGOD says: "I mean, I understand your reasons. I get you, and where you're coming from. But it just seems so weird to just say, hey, next year I'm cashing it in."

"That is because you have also been manacled, my friend," the old man says, getting up and putting a hand on his shoulder.

"Is there anything you need me to do?" SPYGOD asks.

"Yes. Someone will need to follow in my footsteps. I plan to spend the next year finding this person. I want your promise that, when they need help, the COMPANY will give it, fully and without question."

"I will," he says, putting a hand on the man's hand: "I will see that it's done. You know that."

"I believe you," he says: "But there is something you should know, my friend. And I think you already know it, but do not want to admit it."

"What's that?" SPYGOD asks.

* * *

And then he told me. 

...

Yeah. 

Well, wasn't much to say after that. So I left, and collected my boyfriend, and we came back to Neo York City, hoping that we could start putting all that !@#$ behind us. 

Except we couldn't. And we didn't. Mostly because they wouldn't let us, and also because some things I'd let !@#$ing lie there for too long decided to jump up and say "hi."

And then things took their course, and here we are. Under house !@#$ing arrest and facing a trial for being the man they get to blame for what happened.

So who won? Well, son, I'd say we did. We beat those !@#$ers and have them locked down. They won't be threatening anyone ever again.

But then, we also lost something, here. A billion children around the world are dead. Millions more were killed outright in the war. And let's not even get into places like Israel, or Southern Asia, or anywhere that people got caught in the !@#$ing crossfire. 

And now everyone's signing up to be part of some !@#$ing world government, rather than picking up their own pieces and getting their !@#$ in order. Of course, maybe it'll !@#$ing work, after all, but I really doubt it. 

And maybe that's the crusty, old conservative saying that. But I just have a bad !@#$ feeling about this. 

And I know why, too. 

...

Yeah. Go to bed, son. Let this old man sleep it off. Tomorrow's another day. 

For as long as I have it, anyway.

(SPYGOD is listening to Ocean (Dead Can Dance) and having nothing now)

3/12/12 - Disco - pt 4: Colonel Richter - Screaming And Shouting And Everything's Blinding

"... and so, I hope you'll join me in welcoming the brave people of Cuba back to the free world," the President says, smiling into the camera they've set up in the Oval Office: "Now that their tyrant is at last gone, having shielded America's enemies for the last time, they will once more know the taste of liberty and opportunity. It will not be an easy path for them, but, like the good neighbors we've wanted to be for some time, now, America will be happy to help.

"Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to explain our actions, and I hope that, while you may not agree with what's happened, you'll at least now understand why it was done. And to our friends in the Republican party, I can only say 'Mission Accomplished.'

"Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America."

The camera light goes off, and as soon as the man behind the camera gives him the all-clear, the President's face falls like a rock.

"!@#$ me," he mutters, waving a hand to one of his many assistants: "Someone get me a !@#$ing beer."

"I think that was excellent, sir," his media adviser says, snapping her fingers at the battery of assistants to make the beer come just a little faster: "I know you weren't happy about the mission accomplished thing, but trust me. Come November, that's going to be total gold."

"Come November I'm going to need psychiatric help," the President sighs, getting his beer, getting up from the desk, and loosening his tie as he walks out of the office. He walks right into a logjam of pollsters, advisers, and -- most importantly -- Colonel Richter, who he's been looking forward to seeing about as much as he's been looking forward to his next prostate exam.

"Walk with me, Colonel," he says, waving off his other advisers, including the fawning media adviser lady: "And fair warning, if I hear the words 'I'm sorry to say' come out of your mouth, I'm having you assigned someplace very cold."

"I understand, sir," Richter says: "I have prepared a full report on the Cuba situation for you-"

"Does it involve the key phrase 'I !@#$ed up, big time'?" the President asks, slugging the beer down in one epic chug and tossing the glass into a nearby trashcan.

"Not in so many words, sir, no," Richter says, trying not to scowl: "But there is, indeed, an element of that."

"Well, as long as one of you chuckleheads understands," he says, leading the man to an office and slamming the door behind them. A number of advisers and high-ranking military and intelligence personnel are already there, waiting, and stand as soon as he enters.

"Understands what, sir?"

"Oh, goodness me. Where to begin? How about I really did not need to be !@#$ing woken up and informed that we'd liberated a country without my knowledge?"

"Sir, as our report points out, we had a limited amount of time to get hold of SPYGOD," Richter says as the President walks over to the far side of the room's one, long table and sits down, whereupon the other people sit down as well. No one offers the Colonel a seat, but the man doesn't seem inclined to ask if he can take a load off, either.

"And that's why you jumped the gun and ordered The Flier into Cuban airspace, over Havana, and blasted his whereabouts to kingdom come, all done without properly informing your new Director," the President says, pouring himself a large glass of water.

"My orders said 'no stone unturned,' 'no holds barred,' and 'dead or alive,' sir. And they were your orders."

The President nods: "And it wasn't really anyone's fault that, as it turned out, Fidel Castro was there."

"No, sir. We had negative information on that. So the liberation of Cuba in the course of this action was entirely accidental."

"But I understand that The Dragon suggested you not take the course of action that you did?"

"He did, sir. Yes. But I'm beginning to suspect he has... ulterior motives."

"Don't we all?" Asks someone from the CIA the Colonel's never seen before, giving him that special smile: "So New Man's decision to take you off the case, entirely, put The Dragon in charge, and punish you by promoting you to White House liaison... I guess that must have played right into his supposed ulterior motives? That must really stick in your !@#$ing craw, there, Colonel."

Colonel Richter grits his teeth, looks askance, and then, with a deep sigh, says: "Look, sir -- sirs. There's things I could say, and things I could tell you, and we all know how that's going to go. How about we say I !@#$ed up, but at least we've come out ahead in the deal, and work to keep moving forward?"

"How about you remember that I'm your boss' boss' boss' boss' boss, and don't talk to me like that again?" the President says, having some more water: "And then, maybe, while we're working on that, you can remind yourself that, thanks to your having !@#$ed up, I have a number of people in my own party trying to mount a primary challenge, because they think I'm a power-mad idiot who's let getting revenge for my friend's death go to my head."

"Yes, sir-"

"And that doesn't even begin to cover what the right wing noise machine is saying!" The President interrupts, slapping the desk: "Can you imagine this !@#$? If a Republican had done this, they'd be cheering him! Calling him the greatest President of our time! Reagan and Bush and Bush all wrapped up in one big, bursting reefer, all ready to go out back smoke yourself stupid. But because there's this 'D' by my name on the ballot, it's treason."

"Yes, sir."

"So, while you're standing there, being all conciliatory and wanting to move forward, past your stupid, !@#$ing mistake, maybe you can explain to me how that works. Why is it that, when they do it, it's America first patriotism, but when someone like me does it, it's outright criminal?"

"Sir, with all due respect, I'm the only Full Bird Colonel I know that doesn't vote mainline Republican," Richter says: "That's part of the reason your predecessor had me in this position in the first place. And, yes, I know we got off to a bad start, and that was my fault. And I'm sure this is not helping-"

"And you're still forgetting who your boss' boss' boss'-"

"Yes, sir. You outrank me by a factor of five, if not more. But if this is my last day in this uniform, I'm going to go out telling you the truth, and trying to fix my mess. If the President will allow me to do so. Sir."

"Just what branch of the US Armed Forces did you attain the rank of Colonel in, sir?" one of the Military advisers asks. A high ranking Marine, no doubt here to discuss how things went at Camp Zebra, in Guantanamo Bay.

"That's classified, sir."

"Of all the-" the Marine starts to say, but the President waves him down.

"The Colonel is right, gentlemen. It's not a question of how badly he !@#$ed up. If we want to play that game, we'll be here all !@#$ing week, and go nowhere. Let's start with what we know, and go forward from there."

"Do we have to go through all the basics again?" Someone from the NSA asks.

"Let's start from the House of Blood and go forward," the President sighs: "Bottom line? As near as we can figure out,  we all got played. And we got played hard."

"That's putting it mildly, sir," Richter says: "Case in point. The occasional strategic asset known as Gosheven escaped COMPANY custody at around 5 AM. One minute he was asleep in a tank in the Flier's medical bay. The next, he'd just vanished."

"How does something like that happen?" The CIA man asks, obviously unimpressed.

"The best we can figure is that his molecular control is so excellent that he was able to turn himself intangible," Richter says.

"That wasn't quite what I was getting at-"

"No, sir. But that's the issue at hand. We haven't been getting it."

"Explain, please," the President says.

Richter takes a deep breath. Where to !@#$ing begin?

"Alright," he says, finding an empty chair and plopping his !@#$ down in it: "Now, you've all seen the reports on SPYGOD's movements since the assassination, at least those we know about. There's about 15 days where he just vanishes. Just like that. He could be anywhere, doing anything, talking to anyone. We have no idea. He's just gone. Not even Wayfinder can locate him.

"So we have the idea of having Wayfinder look after known associates. Sure enough, a whole boatload of them are found going to the Keys, all at the same time. And they get there, and we're pretty !@#$ sure he's there, too. So we go in, and he hands us our kiesters-"

"We know all this, Colonel," the Marine says, snapping the report down on the table: "When do we get to something we don't know?"

"How about now, sir?" Richter says, indicating a page in the report: "Why did so many COMPANY Agents live through that ordeal?"

"He killed a lot of them at the house-" The CIA man says, but falls silent when Richter holds up a hand.

"He didn't kill them, sir. As near as we can tell, Crazyface did. And judging from the state of some of the bodies, it's clear that some of them were forcefully disabled in such a way that they would be alive, but unable to do anything against his team, and then killed by Crazyface. And the person in the house with him was this vampire hunter guy, who is, I can safely say, no !@#$ when it comes to dealing with extraneous personnel."

"So you're saying that, except from this Crazyface person, no one in his team was killing anyone?" The President asks, seeming to get the point.

"That's right, sir. And some of what I got from Gosheven before he vanished backs that up. SPYGOD told his people to not kill our personnel. And when he was being directly targeted, you'll recall that he chose to knock Mrs. Liberty out, use the Diffusion Cannon on our Agents instead of more lethal weaponry, and then did that stunt with the hot sauce and the cannon to knock them all out in one go."

"And how is this significant?" The NSA guy asks, steepling his fingers before his face.

"He just killed the President of the United States of America, sir. Why doesn't he want to kill anyone who's out to capture or kill him for that crime?"

"Sentimentality," the CIA person sniffs: "Our files indicate that he's too soppy for his own good."

"Sir, with respect, bull!@#$," Richter says, snapping another, much larger file down: "Yes, he might get a little maudlin now then. I know I would if I was him. But this is a man who shoots his own people when they go rogue or sell him out. This is the man who kills the Strategic Talents who go over the edge, or start heading for the other side. Some of the !@#$ he's done for this country has been... well, you must have read the report. There's some scary !@#$ in there."

"So, if we can dispense with the profanity," the President says: "What we should take away, here, is that this is a man who's not afraid to kill his own people when the situation warrants. But he's not killing the people who are out to catch him. He's trying to disable us, instead."

"Exactly, sir," Richter continues: "And while I'm not 100% sure of what happened at Detention Camp Zebra, I'm sure the pattern's going to fit. No casualties? Non-lethal force only?"

"That would be correct, Colonel," the Marine says, looking a little miffed to have to answer someone else's question: "They slipped in using our own security protocols, overcame the camp's minimal staff in such a way as to disable without killing, much less maiming, and then held tight until they were extricated. They even left us a timed message informing the base's medical wing to come to the camp and look after the people they'd attacked."

"Are they alright?"

"They're fine, actually. That Japanese fellow with the ghost army just put them to sleep. Woke right up after we got them out of the building. Pretty darned spooky, actually."

"And what about the Machinemarines you sent after them?" Richter asks: "The ones who followed the trackers they picked up in The Z?"

"I'm not sure I'm comfortable with you knowing about those, Colonel-"

"Gentlemen? No !@#$ing contests, please?" The President says, waving his hands: "We're here to exchange information. Let's be open, okay?"

"The Navy found them unconscious but generally in one piece in Gibraltar," the Marine replies, albeit begrudgingly: "They had their homing beacons turned on so we'd know where to find them."

"And what did they say happened?" Richter asks.

"Well, when they got to that space vehicle SPYGOD was piloting, they entered in on a fight. Apparently, half of his crew of misfits had gone rogue on him. So there was a three-way fight for a little while, but..."

"But the Japanese guy put them under, and that's all they know."

"That would be correct, Colonel. May I ask how you know that?"

"Because that's what a Cuban superspy named Ombra told us when he came around, about an hour ago," Richter explains, handing two dossiers across the table to the President: "We found him and Whisper sitting at a table in a somewhat disreputable drinking establishment in Warsaw. The patrons said an older man had come in, earlier in the evening, in the company of a Japanese man, and these two. They also said that these two appeared to have been drinking already, because they were moving so strangely, but I think we have Chinmoku's ghosts to thank for that."

"What else did they say?" the CIA man asks, suddenly quite interested.

"Well, the other two had a few drinks with each other, and talked for about a half an hour. Then they shook hands, bowed, whatever, and went their separate ways, leaving these two behind. And when the manager of the establishment went to see about payment, those two proved to be unconscious with their eyes open. We had a worldwide lookout for people matching certain descriptions, so when the emergency calls were made, we heard about it."

"Is she up and awake?" the CIA man asks.

"No, Whisper is not. Which is a shame, because while Ombra can tell us what SPYGOD had him take from Camp Zebra, he has no idea why. For some reason he was less rattled by the sight of his own, impending death than she was."

"Is that what he does?" the Marine asks, looking a little pale.

"That's one of the things he does. He's supposedly the only person to survive mastering that path of martial arts. I think we can see why, now-"

 "That's beside the point," the CIA man sputters: "When will she be awake enough to question?"

"Hopefully soon."

"Have you considered using the N-Machine to find out what she knows?"

"Woah, that's..." the President stammers: "That's more than a little final, don't you think?"

"Sir, you have to understand something," the CIA man says, sitting up in his chair and tapping the relevant handout: "What was taken from The Z? Who was taken? There are no words for how powerful he is. I'm sure the Marines can verify that. The cell structure was fortified with a failsafe that would have turned him to sludge if anyone else had tried to remove his cryo-coffin, and for good reason."

"And I agree with the gentleman from the Company, actually," Richter says: "Miserable little !@#$ hasn't done our country a lick of good for years, quite frankly. But the truth is that she may not even know what the endgame is, much less the next step. Ombra said she didn't know, and I tend to believe him at this point."

"It'd be better to find out-"

"But while we're both not entirely dead set against turning her brains to tapioca," Richter interrupts: "You have to remember the process isn't 100% accurate. Also, some people have been trained to resist it. She received training with rogue, former Soviet agents, and we don't know what all for. So there's a chance she learned that trick."

"That would be a useful skill to have," the NSA guy offers: "It'd guarantee some offers for her line of work, having a pick-proof brain."

"But every moment we wait-" the CIA guy tries to emphasize, but the President holds up a hand.

"I think, in spite of recent evidence to the contrary, we can trust the Colonel in this matter. Now, you said they picked them up in Warsaw. I'm certain those trackers were going the whole time?"

"They certainly were, sir."

"So what happened between Gibraltar and Warsaw?"

"I'm glad you asked, Mr. President," Richter says, handing over some more reports: "The first stop was in Madrid. He stopped at the world-renowned National Institute for Inter-Dimensional Studies, and stole everything off their mainframe. Again, he didn't kill anyone."

"What is on their mainframe, exactly?" the Marine asks: "What do these people do?"

"Every time we encounter someone who claims to come from a parallel world, or alternate reality, or find something that clearly does come from such a place, the NIIDS winds up involved in one way or another. So every single piece of information about the subject is somewhere in that organization's files."

"And now he has them all," the CIA guy sighs: "What else?"

"Then came scenic Zurich. Now, we have no idea what he was doing there. But I suspect that SPYGOD has numerous things squirreled away all over the world, so it wouldn't be out of the question for him to have at least one account in Switzerland. Maybe a strongbox or two. He could have gotten anything. He could have stopped off for coffee. We don't know, but he was there for an hour and a half."

"Then what?" The President asks.

"Paris," Richter smiles: "Now, this is especially good. Did you know there's an International Museum of Criminal Art in Paris?"

Everyone around the table blinks, and Richter just smiles: "It's one of Direction Noir's side projects. One of their old Directors had what you might call a flair for the dramatic."

"A little swishy, in other words?" the Marine asks.

"Come on, you know you can't talk like that, anymore," the President chides him.

"Yeah, a little swishy," Richter spits back: "That man kicked more Nazi !@#$ than we did, sir. And he did it earlier than we did, too. Whatever DN's turned into, these days, back during World War II it was something else."

"Go on, please," the CIA guy says, clearly less than amused: "Tell them what the museum does?"

"It acts as a trophy room for everyone that Direction Noir has ever nabbed. They have the finest collection of Axis Supersoldier costumes, weapons, and paraphernalia anywhere on the planet. And they have first crack whenever someone France is allied with gets their hands on someone from ABWEHR. In fact, when the COMPANY liberated the South Pole, back in May, America made a substantial donation."

"So what did he take?" the President asks.

"Thor's armor," Richter says, and the entire room gets very, very quiet.

"That's..." the Marine says, going even more pale than before: "That's some... really concerning news, Colonel."

"Yeah, that is," Richter says.

"And they just kept this stuff on display? As art?" the NSA guy shouts.

"Well, all the stuffings and gizmos were supposedly taken out, and some of it was replications. But Thor's stuff couldn't be disassembled, just copied. They had the real one in a vault downstairs. It didn't turn out to be so burglar-proof."

"So he stole a young man who can use interdimensional powers," the CIA guy says: "Then he steals a wealth of information on our dealings with other dimensions, and the armor of a man who claimed he came from another dimension."

"Plus something from Switzerland," the President says, really wanting another !@#$ing beer: "Hopefully it was just chocolate."

"And you want to know why he won't kill his own countrymen?" the CIA says: "It's pathetically obvious. He's about to use these objects to threaten the entire world, probably to take it over. And he wants as many people on his side as he can get. If he hurt or killed our military personnel, he'd have two strikes against him. As it is, he's only got the one."

"You mean killing the President?" the Marine asks.

"No, I mean threatening the world. Most of you armed forces types didn't even like the man, remember?"

The Marine gets red in the face and just about jumps the table, but Richter holds out a hand: "Now let's say that's true. Why is he sparing lives overseas, too?"

"He's found a good rhythm and doesn't want to break it?"

"Possibly," Richter says: "But we need to remember the man's politics. He was extremely conservative, and quite distrustful of what he saw as one world government. So if he's not interested in ruling it, then why would he threaten the world? What could they have to offer him?"

"He was also a natural liar," the NSA man says: "It could have been a front."

The CIA man nods and applauds, and Richter's about to say something when a vibration in his own coat pocket draws his attention. He's about to ignore it, but realizes it's that vibration, and, with some annoyance, sighs: "I apologize, gentlemen. I think I need to take this call. It might be news about Whisper or something.

He gets up and walks away from the table, leaving the men to argue and almost come to blows over loyalty to the late President. As that goes on behind him, he puts the phone up to his face: "Richter."

"Do you know who this is?" the voice asks, quite familiar in its tones and cadence.


"I think so. Is this... Mr. USA?"

"It's (REDACTED), yes."

Richter's face goes almost white in disbelief, and then, before he can say anything, the voice on the other end continues: "Don't say anything. Don't raise your voice. If you tell them you're talking with me, the President will die." 

"Are you threatening him?" Richter hisses.

"I'm not threatening him, Colonel. I'm simply telling you that his life is in danger. But not from me."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that he's got people everywhere. He's global at this point. He got help to kill the previous President, and he's got help watching the new one, now. You're in a conference room with him and a few other people? Any one of them could be one of his agents."

"How do you know where I am?"

"It's a long story. Bottom line, I'm on his trail. I've been following him since Cuba. I know where he's going, but I'm not going to stop him until he's just about ready to do his plan."

"Why. The !@#$. Not?" Richter asks.

"Sir, with respect, I fought alongside this man for years. I worked with him for a long time. I've seen him at his best and at his worst. And I know it's impossible to sneak up on him unless he's extremely distracted. And when he's about to let loose with one of crazy, Rube Goldberg plans? That's just about the only time he is."

"So what are you asking?" Richter asks.

"If your people find out where he is, tell them to back up a bit. Just watch. Let me handle him."

"And why the !@#$ should we do that, sir?"

"Because no one's who they say they are, anymore, except for me. If you tell them you talked to me, that'll make his people go into overdrive, and he'll speed up the plan. And the plan most likely means another President dies. Do you really want that?"

Richter turns and looks at the President, who's slumped in his chair as the CIA, NSA, Marines, and god knows who else argue with each other.

"No, I really don't," he says, turning around: "And I owe you for a few times, sir. So I will respectfully agree to this plan. But if he turns this plan on, and you're not there-"

"I'm there, now, sir," Mr. USA says: "And you wouldn't believe where."

The phone line does dead. Richter sighs, and, turning, shrugs as he walks back.

"That was about Whisper" he says, sitting down: "Dumb !@#$ thinks she's Wilma Flintsone. Shall we continue?"

And as they argue, he prays to every god he knows that he just made the right decision.

(SPYGOD is listening to Somebody Else's Business (Pet Shop Boys) and having a Lord Chesterfield Ale)

3/11/12 - And In Spite of the Fight You Sing This Song - pt 2

Still with us, son?

Good. Wouldn't want you to leave you hanging while I'm bobbing and weaving here. I just had to do a gun-fu maneuver or two with Whisper on one side and a Machinemarine on the other, and the only reason no one's fired a shot, yet, is because we've been !@#$ing !@#$ lucky.

Well, that and I think Chinmoku's keeping them from firing. One of his Hungry Ghost Technique things, apparently.

(And trust me, son, the less you know about that, the better.) 

But, bullets or no, we're doing massive damage to poor Lady Gilda. Bee-Bee's howling that this fight needs to stop right the !@#$ now, or else we're going to lose her. I tell the !@#$ing cat to shut up and fly, but it's probably only a matter of time before she loses her !@#$, puts her on autopilot, gets her AK-47 out, and fills us all full of lead, just to save her own, furry !@#$.

And, seeing as how that gun came straight from Hell, I don't think Chinmoku's ghosts are going to be much help.

How did it come to this ridiculous, three-way tag-team fight in a cramped, stolen Supernazi UFO? Well, let's turn the clock back a few days, and look over yonder at Gitmo.

* * *

Guantanamo Bay's one of those amusing quirks of history. How else could you account for having a 43 square Kilometer chunk of land under American control in a country that, by all accounts, officially wants your sorry, capitalist !@#$es gone? 

Now, we say we have a valid lease, going back to well before Castro took over, so too !@#$ing bad. Castro's regime says that the lease isn't any good, anymore, because it was with the previous regime that they displaced in the Revolution. Plus, they don't like us, because we're greedy, decadent, bourgeois, capitalist pigs and all that.  

But good luck getting the UN to take you up on that, because you're just one or two steps above a pariah nation, being a naked Communist dictatorship with a !@#$ing abysmal human rights record and all. Plus the fact that the UN, however Communist they may be, are about as powerful as a defanged, elderly chihuahua that's had its barkbox removed.

And good luck taking it out of the hands of the !@#$ing United States Marine Corps, which prides itself on taking on all comers with a stare that can kill. And if you managed to take it from them, by some monumentally obscene stroke of luck? Well, good !@#$ing luck keeping it, commie, because you know that reinforcements would shortly be on the way. 

A whole !@#$-ton of reinforcements. 

This is why, in spite of having once had the open support of the USSR, and having some of the People's Protectors along for the ride, and still maintaining a relationship with the Vampires of Cuba (up until just the other night), there is an American outpost openly occupying a small patch of land on one end of an openly hostile nation, just daring the Cubans to take a swing at it.

You gotta love the place, really. It's got a !@#$ing McDonalds and a KFC, along with an open-air movie theater, and numerous other attractions. But the reason I sent Chinmoku and Whisper there wasn't for burgers or a chick flick. It was to infiltrate one of the most heavily-guarded American installations in the Western hemisphere, there to snatch-and-grab the most dangerous person currently in existence. 

Which, like I said earlier (while I was dodging another, less fortunate Machinemarine) is Detention Camp Zebra, also known as The Z. It's a fenced-in concrete slab, covering up an elevator that goes down about fifty feet, and then sideways for another hundred, and opens up into a series of high-tech cells that are run by a Strategic Talent who prides himself on being the greatest escape artist on Earth. 

So, of course, when Mister Freedom retired, back in the 60's, he became the nation's preeminent jailer. And if that doesn't strike you as being downright !@#$ing funny (and, yes, more than a little sad) you just have no sense of humor, son. 

But the bottom line is that, courtesy of that man's outright-astounding comprehension of how to escape from !@#$ing anything, he was able to create prisons for people and things that simply could not be held. He made the Panopticon in Oklahoma for the FBI, worked on the truly secure cells in the Heptagon, and, after a few unfortunate incidents at both installations, created the infrastructure for The Z.

The Z is where we send things that are too !@#$ing powerful to be contained, and simply unable to be reformed or controlled. Would-be alien conquerors and extra-dimensional imps. Psychotic space gods and superpowerful ancient menaces. Rage monsters that get more powerful when you hit them and walking megaton bombs. Plague carriers, life eaters, world-beaters, and foes whose powers are so beyond our ability to deal with that you might as well be a butterfly in the wake of a MOAB. 

Somehow, we've beaten them. Then we've had Mister Freedom carefully analyze their strengths and weaknesses, and carefully craft a tailor-made cell just for them. And those cells are then teleported into The Z, never to be opened again.

At least, not until someone who was looking over Mister Freedom's shoulder without his knowing about it told a certain, Cuban super-thief both how to get into the camp and The Z, as well as how to get another pair of operatives in from the outside, and pull off a prisoner removal without anyone getting killed, much less hurt.

Hence the very quiet, very successful, and very non-lethal infiltration and extraction from the other night. Hence Dr. Krwi and I leaving Havana on foot, stealing a car, rendezvousing with Bee-Bee in Jaruco, and taking a cloaked UFO from there to Gitmo. Hence our hovering over The Z while Whisper, Chinmoku, and Ombra got the payload up and into Lady Gilda.

Hence what we're !@#$ing fighting over, right now.

* * *

So what's in the briefcase, and why are we fighting over it?

Well, first of all, you have to understand this is no small, thing. We're actually fighting around the sucker in here, and it's strong enough to put up with most damage that's being done. In fact, half the trouble of getting it out of The Z was that it's so !@#$ing big that you can't just sneak out with it under your arm, or dress it up.

The briefcase, if you want to hold onto that metaphor, is ten feet long, five feet high, roughly cylindrical, and weighs about a half a ton. It's got gravity assists, thankfully, so someone of average strength can push it along fairly even ground without snapping every muscle in their arms and legs like taffy and throwing their back out all the way down the field for a super-long touchdown. But it's noisy and hissing and thrumming and makes the occasional computer noise.

Not to mention the constant Beep. Beep. Beep. of someone's heartbeat while at rest.

Yes, folks, you guessed it. The object I was interested in was a sleep chamber, which was nestled inside one of Mister Freedom's supposedly escape-proof cells. Inside that sleep chamber is one of the sweetest people you will ever meet in your life. But he's also one of the most powerful people we've ever encountered. And he has a real hard time controlling those powers, which also makes him one of the most dangerous people in history.

His name is Simon Pure. He's 35 years old, but he's spent the last ten years frozen in cryo-sleep. And the reason we did that is because he can't stop himself from altering reality around him.

Well, okay, not really altering it, son. More like swapping it around with other realities. You'll be talking to him, and suddenly you'll be in some weird, alternate universe, and your other self, from that universe, will be where you were, wondering what the !@#$ is going on.

And if your other self's the sort of person who gets off on !@#$ing puppies in their eye sockets, things are going to get messy.

We tried to make him a superhero. We did. A power like that could save the world a million times over, to say nothing of what it could do in the field. Imagine sending people's super-weapons into an empty universe with a mere thought, or slooshing a crowd of hungry feeders with a wave of water from the Earth that never developed dry land.

Problem is, Simon can't focus so well. He doesn't just have the power to look into other realities, he is experiencing those other realities all the !@#$ing time. It's like being in a room with a million million radios on at full blast and trying to listen to one song. That he could function in this reality at all was something of a miracle, but before Dr. Yesterday could perfect some way to keep him glued down, Simon had a nightmare and... well...

Yes, son. It's classified. And this is one of those peeks behind the curtain you do not want in your memory.

So after we cleaned up the mess as best we could, and got him to change or delete as much of the damage as we could, we tricked him into going to sleep. And then we just left him there, in a sleep chamber, hoping that one day we could find a foolproof way to save him.

But one crisis led to another, and one world-shattering event led to another, and before you know it's been ten !@#$ing years and the kid's still asleep, and Dr. Yesterday hasn't even started on that focusing helmet he was going to build for him. The people who liked him have more or less forgotten about him, and anyone who really felt uneasy around him's in no !@#$ing hurry to remind them.

That said, a lot of really evil and !@#$ed up people do remember him. And they remember that he was really powerful. And they have spent the last ten years trying to develop a way to harness his unique talents to suit their really evil and !@#$ed-up needs.

And did I mention that these evil and !@#$ed up people tend to have ridiculously large bank accounts? 

So when it transpires that yours truly needs some people to go into a certain detention camp and get him out, certain individuals who are more in love with a payout than the overall safety and security of the world know that there's someone out there willing to make the two million dollars I offered them look like pennies on the dollar. They made contact with some of these !@#$ers, and colluded with each other to go 50-50.

Except, of course, that I !@#$ing knew about the whole thing. One of the colluders, being Chinmoku, was really loyal to yours truly, and let me know, by way of the ghosts that surround him, what Whisper was up to. I thought we could contain that !@#$, once we got the objective on board, but it turns out that Ombra wanted a piece of the action, too. And no sooner did we all start drawing steel and getting ready to throw the !@#$ down than the Machinemarines crash the !@#$ing party.

See, we figured the blow-up in Havana would cover up their entrance to Gitmo, and it did. And I expected the resultant lockdown of the base, and all detention facilities within it, would cover up their already being down there. But we didn't figure that Mister Freedom had a few fail-safes programmed in in case of a lockdown, including seemingly random opportunities to put a password into a computer that, unless you knew about them, would have just seemed like computer glitches to any would-be escapees or breakout artists.

And did my operatives, traitorous as 2/3rds of them were, follow SPYGOD's advice and be able to account for everything, no matter how inconsequential it may have seemed? No they !@#$ing did not. Which is why all the people outside the cells got tagged with passive tracker devices. And that's what the Machinemarines used to follow our cloaked UFO, and how they caught up to us in the middle of the Atlantic !@#$ing Ocean.

So yeah, son, Mister Freedom got me good. I'll have to buy him a beer, next time I see him, when we're all on the same side, again. Provided we don't all splash down in the next five minutes, or get shot to pieces by one of the most dangerous kittycats in existence.

This is how you save the world, son. Not with lofty ideals or mere strength of arms, or even the threat of mere strength of arms. You save it by making a crazy-as-!@#$ plan, knowing full well that someone's going to try and !@#$ you, but trusting that you have enough redundancies, side plans, back-ups, and hidden allies to come and save your fine, gay !@#$ when the !@#$ hits the fan.

And if only these fine, young men didn't have special shielding, I could have SPYGOD-Visioned them all unconscious and drooling sixty seconds ago, !@#$ it...

(SPYGOD is listening to Fugitive (Pet Shop Boys, JCRZ remix) and drinking more fear)

3/11/12 - And In Spite of the Fight You Sing This Song - Pt. 1

So, I can guess what you're thinking, right about now, and you're absolutely right -- it's not everyday that I have to be involved in a three-way fight to the death in a stolen supernazi UFO.

But then, it's also not every day that I'm carting one of the most !@#$ing powerful entities in existence away from the US Marine base in Guantanamo Bay. It's also not every day that, as expected, certain people in my carefully-picked team turned traitor on me.

And it certainly isn't an everyday occurrence to have the good Lady Gilda actually get !@#$ing boarded while we're still cloaked, courtesy of a stupid little mistake that one of my team made while running a certain, clandestine errand for yours truly.

And yet, here we are, fighting tooth and nail against each other, and against some really scary interlopers. It's Chinmoku, Doctor Krwi, and I against Whisper and Ombra, and all five of us against the Machinemarines, who just canopenered through the roof and started trying to kick everyone's !@#$. 

The good news is that Bee Bee is still flying this crate, and no one's been stupid enough to pull a gun -- yet The bad news is that, given how badly Whisper and that no good, double-crossing Cuban !@#$ are losing, it's probably only a matter of time before one of them !@#$s safety all to !@#$ and decides to let their pistols do the talking.

Not exactly one of my finest !@#$ing hours, here. If I go full on, I'll probably miss someone's face and hit a bulkhead, instead, which would turn my beloved Gilda inside out like a noggin-punched octopus -- killing everyone I need on my side and probably losing my objective forever, to say nothing about stranding me in the middle of the !@#$ing Atlantic.

(Not to mention the fact that, even if they are trying to kick my !@#$, those Marines are still US Marines, and I'll be !@#$ed if I kill a man in that uniform. Ever.)

But the Machinemarines knew I was in here, and planned accordingly. They're packing long, super-heated claws on their power armor, capable of melting through steel like a porn star's !@#$ through a ripe little !@#$hole. They'll kill the ship to get to me, and if they do get to me, well...

So yeah, son. Now is not a really good time to talk about this !@#$. But, since I got nothing better to do, let's talk about how we all got here.

*  *  *

Bottom line? This isn't exactly one of my best plans.

Now, that may come as something of a shock to you to hear me actually !@#$ing say that. But there it is, son. I may have just overreached a little, here. I've had to rely on somewhat unreliable people, have plans within plans that all hinge on people doing exactly what they're told, all while trying to keep my cards so close to my chest they're stuck in my !@#$ing ribcage.

For that, I apologize, but you have to understand the gravity of the situation, here. Not only am I !@#$ing wanted for supposedly shooting the President of the United States of America, but my old outfit is after my fine, gay !@#$ for that very crime, and just about every strategic talent I used to tell where to get off is lining up around the block to !@#$ing bump me off.

Oh, and have I !@#$ing mentioned that I'm trying to save the world, yet again? Just four days and then BOOM happens. Whatever the !@#$ that "Boom" is, anyway.

(No, I don't know. Not exactly. But I have some very nasty !@#$ing suspicions.)

Which means I've had to move a !@#$ of a lot faster than I'd like, and with more desperation than a lovesick kid trying to kiss his childhood sweetheart before her wedding to a !@#$ing caveman. And while I was able to kill a few long-overdue birds with one big !@#$ing stone, back in Cuba, that shouldn't be mistaken for anything resembling the sort of careful, well-laid plan that yours truly is known and celebrated for.

(Stop laughing, son. That is an order.)

So yes, I kidnapped the vampire formerly known as Ernest Hemingway, who used to work for us, and got him to smuggle us into bloodsucker central in Cuba, knowing he'd probably !@#$ us the first chance he got. And I got some really volatile, not completely trustworthy people along for the ride, either because I needed what they could do, or because I needed it to look like I needed what they could do, but really needed them to do something else.

Case in point, Gosheven, who needed to die. Sort of.

You see, people really give metamorphs the short end of the stick. They think it's cute that someone can turn themselves into a bear, or block of ice, or something off that one kid's show. But they really don't consider the whole applications. Even when they're saying "well, can he turn into a !@#$ing dinosaur?" or "You mean the ambassador was really him, all along?" they're still thinking small.

How small? Well, son, let's think about this for a minute, while I'm dodging claws. Say you can control every aspect of your body to the point where you can reshape it into anything you want. Say you can turn yourself into a different animal, or an inanimate object, or even a !@$#ing house, for crying out loud. Say you can increase or decrease your size, change your density, become various chemical compounds, and remain fully conscious throughout the whole thing.

Then how likely is it that a gunshot to the head is actually going to !@#$ing kill you?

And if that's true, then the question isn't "how hard is it to heal yourself from what appears to be a fatal wound," but rather "how hard is it to appear to be brain dead, but actually be carefully timing that healing in such a way that you drop some really useful information on someone so that they barely have any time to act on it, almost guaranteeing they're going to overreact?"

So yes, son, Gosheven's betrayal was all planned. He was the one who contacted the COMPANY to sell me out, on my orders. I made it look like I found out and dealt with him, and they collected his brain-shot !@#$ in the hopes of salvaging what he knew. But come to find out he's only mostly dead, as the Flier's Chief Medical Officer would say, and then he comes to and blabs the cliff notes version of the plan to the guys who are most likely to panic.

But then, he doesn't know the whole plan. He doesn't know it's been changed. The only people that do are Whisper and Chinmoku, because they're going to be getting the object I need while the Doc, Crazyface, Ernest the !@#$, and myself are creating the mother of all distractions in Havana.

It's just that the object isn't in the basement of La Casa de la Sangre. !@#$ing place has no basement, because it's all basement.

No, son. They went somewhere that needed a Flier-sized distraction over !@#$ing Havana to divert attention in case the mission went South.

That would be the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, otherwise known as Gitmo. That would be the location of Detention Camp Zebra, also known as The Z.

And that would be where the most dangerous person in the world was locked up, at least until my people busted him out.

(That's who we're all fighting over, in case you couldn't !@#$ing guess)

(SPYGOD is listening to Fugitive (Pet Shop Boys) and drinking pure fear)