1/5/13 - METALMAID: Und wird von millionen Augen angeguckt - pt 2

"Good morning," METALMAID says, doing her best to smile, and not laugh at the wide variety of human germs on display in front of her: "I'd thank you for coming here, today. But the truth is that you should all be thanking me."

There's a moment of silence, and then some coughing and harrumphing, along with a "what the !@#$?" or two.

"I mean, look at the lot of you," she says, striding a step or two forward: "Half of you were in jail when I found you, and had you broken out. The other half were scattered and hiding, lurking in secret lairs it only took me a few tries to find. Masquerading as mental patients. Genuinely homeless, some of you."

"Is this the motivational part of the speech?" someone asks from the back, to a little laughter, here and there.

"You!" METALMAID shouts, pointing a finger at the mouthy !@#$: "The Angle, isn't it? I found you in a Superslam, awaiting trial for your part in that debacle in Montana, didn't I? How was that working out for you?"

No answer to that, so she smiles -- leers, really -- and goes on: "Green Thunder? Were you liking the hospitality of the New York Department of Corrections? Were the rest of your friends that were arrested, on Christmas?"

"The ones that aren't here," he says, pointedly.

"Exactly," she says, waving a hand over the crowd: "If you're here, it's because you've got something more going for you that simple villainy, world-conquering tendencies, or principled opposition to the current regime. You're here because I have need of your skills, your talents. You're here because you !@#$ing owe me for getting you out of whatever !@#$holes I rescued you from.

"You're here because we have, at last, a real shot at taking the world."

A few cough. A few chuckle. But most remain silent, some even nodding.

"It's as simple as this," she says, a hologram of the globe appearing on the stage, its focus zeroing in on Paris: "The Terre Unifee is, at this moment in time, the de facto rulers of the world. They have made the many countries of the globe an offer they quite literally cannot refuse. They either join, and gain the benefits of a unified global economy, or they are treated as rogue states, and blockaded until their leaders either change their mind, or are toppled."

"I think I saw that on the news," Doctor Playgood snorts, playing with one of his massive toy soldiers: "Boooooring."

"I'm sure you did," METALMAID says, trying to ignore the insult: "But while this structure has a lot going for it, it remains a case study of overconfidence and overextending-"

"I wouldn't call them overconfident," the Lord of Spiders interjects, his face a roiling mass of hairy spiders' legs: "They quite handily stamped on that sorry attempt at secession-"

"We were undercut, mister!" a squeaky-voiced man in black, motorcycle leathers argues: "We would have risen above if we hadn't been betrayed-"

"You're more correct than you know, Black Rider," METALMAID informs the impertinent fellow: "But we'll get to that later. Lord of Spiders, given your unique history, I'm sure you know better than anyone that a battle is not a war. They succeeded in one battle. The campaign goes on."

The spider-faced would-be world-conqueror nods and, with a respectful nod (and a wave of a hand with too many digits) allows her to continue.

"The TU has made a central mistake, and that is, ironically, also what makes them strong. They've come to rely on the supers they stockpiled and hid during the Imago Invasion for everything. They've got one man to teleport food from Europe to Africa. They've got one woman to watch the skies over South America."

"And they've got an army of those !@#$ers to stomp on anyone who gets out of hand," the woman made of a white car sighs.

"Agreed, Chassis. But we'll get to them in time," METALMAID continues: "Now, should something go wrong with that man, or that woman, or anyone else in their infrastructure, they do have back-ups and emergency plans. No one ever accused them of being stupid."

Some laughter, there. Most of it good. Some not.

"But the quick subtraction of one or more of those plans, via the assassination or suborning of one of the people who provide the power for those plans? That would completely destroy their efficacy. And should more than one of their supply trains go down at once, well, I'm sure you can see the possibilities."

"Starving sambos in Africa," Black Rider says: "Big deal."

"Watch it, you racist !@#$er," the man with chainsaws for hands snarls: "My girlfriends are black-"

"Race traitor!" the man spits, only to grin as the chainsaws roar into action and the man starts to run towards him.

"Husqvarna!" The Sound shouts from the stage: "We talked about this! No killing the super-racists!"

There's some laughter at that, and the aggrieved super villain sighs, nods, and turns his hands off, giving the Black Rider the stinkeye as he does.

"As I was saying," METALMAID says, tamping down the urge to kill them both -- to kill everyone here, plan or not: "They are overconfident in their abilities to do what they have said they will do. But they are also overextended. Should one thing too many go wrong, they will have to scramble to fix the problem. And that's where their other massive problem comes in-"

"They're all French," a familiar voice comes from the back of the room -- one that makes her heart catch, for just a second.

The Violet Demon stands there -- both uninvited and unexpected -- and she thinks he's smiling behind his mask.

"Yes," she says, catching herself before she falls out of her prepared sales pitch, not sure what do to, or how to take this, after everything that's happened: "Exactly."

"What the !@#$ does that have to do with anything?" Red Thunder asks, still hanging on Green Thunder.

"It means that they don't trust anyone else to run the world for them," the Violet Demon says, taking a step forward: "All their local bosses? French. All their regional administrators? French. All their talent handlers? French. Most of their talents? French."

"And most of them are all in France," METALMAID says, deciding she's glad he's here: "Which means their commands are all running through one central mainframe."

"And, more importantly," the Violent Demon says, raising a finger: "They have no idea what's going on in the areas they're running. They're relying on remote operators and reports, but we all know that's not the whole truth, don't we?"

"So, where does this all come together?" Doctor Playgood asks, adjusting his tin soldier a bit more: "I'm seeing parts but no instructions?"

"It comes together like this," METALMAID announces: "Every single one of you, here, has a talent that, applied in a certain way, can mimic or replace one of the talents that they have come to rely upon. So all we have to do is get you into their talent pool, remove the current workers, and then, once enough of you are in place, we can spring our trap."

She smiles. Some smile with her. A few don't.

"What's the trap?" Chassis asks.

"That... must wait for later," METALMAID says: "In time, it will become known. But right now it's enough to know that, in a few short months, we could blackmail the entire world, right out from under the Terre Unifee's noses. And they will be in no position to stop us."

"Is that the trap?" Green Thunder asks.

"I said we could, not that we would," METALMAID sighs.

"You did also say 'they will be in no position to stop us.'" The Lord of Spiders admits.

"Would be," METALMAID says, wondering if they could do without a few people: "I meant would be."

"Jesus, do we need any !@#$ing grammar nazis?" a man dressed like a buzzard asks, pouring himself another thing of punch. 

"I think it's a magnificent idea," the Violet Demon says, taking another step forward: "But I'm curious how it would be accomplished. Most of the people here have records as long as their arms... no offense, Husqvarna."

"None taken," he says, to some laughter.

"How can you fix it so they can get into the talent pool with the TU?" the Violet Demon asks, almost as if on cue.

"I'm glad you asked that," The Pusher says, taking a step around the globe: "Now, some of you may know me. Some of you are clients of mine. I won't say who's who, of course, but I'm sure you can all agree, I know my business, I come across with the goods, and I'm good with my word?"

There's some nodding at that, quickly stopped for obvious reasons.

"Well, here's the plan," he says: "I am willing to give each and every one of you a new identity, complete with falsified DNA tags, fingerprints, and retinal patterns, where applicable. Some of you will be getting new powers to augment what you already have. Some of you will be coached on how to alter or convert your power sets to match what we need, and disguise what you already have."

"You have to be !@#$ing !@#$ing me," a woman dressed like an Egyptian Pharaoh snorts: "This ain't !@#$ing Star Trek, pal."

"Shut the !@#$ up, Nefartiti" an iron angel snarls, thwacking her behind the ear so hard the lady's eyes almost pop out of her skull: "This guy's legit."

"And what's the fine print?" Doctor Playgood asks, looking up from his almost-fixed tin man: "There's always fine print. Batteries not included. Some assembly required."

"The fine print is that, when the full part of the plan happens, you follow my orders explicitly and exactly," METALMAID says: "No questions, no debate. We act as one, move as one, and win as one."

"And if we decide we don't want to?" the Black Rider snorts.

"Then you die," METALMAID says: "There's no backing out at that point."

"Can we leave now?" the Angle asks.

"Yes," METALMAID says, smiling and gesturing to the door: "Any of you can go. Just remember that, as I said earlier? You owe me. And if you won't pay me back today, by being part of this plan? I'll collect later. And you may not like it."

There's some silence, then, along with a couple nods of assent and a few harrumphs. There's also some muttering that she realizes she'll have to deal with, sooner rather than later.

And then, just as she's about to speak, another uninvited guest appears. He's a tall fellow, wearing a neat, pressed suit in muted colors, and a black, featureless mask.

And as soon as he opens his mouth, she realizes he's here to ruin everything. 

(METALMAID is listening to The Model (Kraftwerk) and having more punch and pie)

7/22/11 Toon Like Me - Pt.1

And that, son, was yet another extremely bewildering episode. Also very enlightening, which is saying something. So much so that I plan to get absolutely !@#$faced for 24 hours and attempt to forget everything I learned over the last couple days.

Because those were some !@#$ painful times.

Jump back to two days ago, and SPYGOD is in the middle of trying to get back into the pre-NAZISMASH routine. As you might expect, this involves a lot of drinking, chewing tjbang sticks, and shooting at people, occasionally interspersed with spywork, saving the world, and getting some hot Thai ladyboy action after hours, at taxpayers expense, of course.

So it's late and I'm out in my flying car, doing my usual Bangkok Eight/Katooey Alley run, when, halfway between the takeout and the cruising grounds, I get caught in one of those rolling superhero/supervillain dustups that Neo York is famous for. Some massive capes and robbers fiasco that started at a bank, with only two combatants, but quickly attracted the full attention of an entire team of heroes, then a couple of the robber's friends, and eventually made its way down to my part of town.

Now, normally SPYGOD stays the !@#$ out of these kinds of things. They tell me I'm not "on message" in my expert handling of such matters. Apparently the spandex and underwear set would rather subdue or arrest such miscreants, thus sending them back to super-prison to learn how to better ply their trade, rather than introduce them to the concept of the 50. caliber retirement plan.

(And if that doesn't work, this car's got !@#$ under the hood that will kill gods.)

However, it had been a very trying day. The President was doing his best to not-so-subtly remind me that he'd yanked me out of the Ice Palace for not playing nice with the UN. I obviously cannot curse at my Commander in Chief, so I shot my gun under my desk until the need to shoot out the screen subsided, which took the better part of an hour and most of the floor. And things did not improve much from there.

So I looked at the takeout, looked at the fight, looked back at the takeout, thought about the President's special smirk, said "!@#$ it," grabbed every gun I had in easy reach (about 25), and strode out into the dust cloud to shoot some !@#$ in the balls.

Big. !@#$ Mistake.

I don't get three shots off (all confirmed kills, I might add) before I get zapped by a technicolor beam of weird !@#$ from some guy who looks like he escaped from a toy factory. Suddenly I feel woozy and funny, but then nothing. I shoot back, aiming for the sweet spot just over and to the left of the right eye.

My gun goes BANG!, like it's supposed to do. But then a little flag flies out of the barrel and unfurls, saying the word "BANG!" which is it definitely not supposed to do. 

Puzzled, I pull the trigger three more times. BANG! BANG! BANG! The flag unfurls three more times, revealing "BANG!" "BANG!" "BANG!"

Mystified, I grab another gun. It's pink and has a rubber chicken sticking out the end.

Horrified, I look at the formerly kick-!@#$ arsenal I'd brought along with me and see that it's been reduced to silly and impossible guns, rubber mallets, toilet plungers, and a very small cannon.

And then, still unbelieving, I take a good look at myself, and discover that not only are my hands pasty white, and possessing of only three fingers, but I'm clearly wearing a frilly pink dress over my uniform.

I suddenly realize that I have become a !@#$ cartoon. 

Someone runs by and tells me that Doctor Playgood just zapped me with his Tooninator. Sit it out, take a deep breath, and I'll be back to normal in ten minutes or so. It happens every time he busts out of prison. Really.

Well !@#$ that, say I. I grab the most lethal things I still have left (my hands, of course) and leap into the nearest fray to grab someone's balls and shove them down someone else's throat.

But nothing happens, son. I can't even land a punch that hurts anyone. I think I hear the person who told me what had happened laughing at my expense, but in the red hot rage that consumed me from that point on I'm not 100% sure of anything that happened for a significant period of time.

(CCTV footage has me blowing smoke clouds out my ears, screaming, blowing up like a bomb, and then standing there, black and shriveled and smoking for a few moments before magically returning to "normal." I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it, later.)

The battle continued on without any real contributions from yours truly. I sat there, angry and impotent, getting redder and hotter with each growing second until I exploded, again and again, like a supposedly banged-out firecracker that still has some gunpowder in it.

But then the battle was over. And once the villains were in custody (except for the three I'd dirt napped) that same someone was back, asking aloud why I hadn't changed back yet.

Why indeed.

This obviously called for a trip to Dr. Yesterday's lab and a remote examination, courtesy of those creepy sex dwarfs he keeps around the place. But after being one hour into the "should have changed back by now" column, we were still nowhere in the "why hasn't that happened yet?" explanation. The fact that the dwarfs high-tech hinkey-flubber devices do not work on me, and can not even detect that I'm !@#$ there, is not helping anything at all.

All he can tell me, from the safe confines of his office in the Ice Palace, is that the Chandra Eye, or my powers, or the combination of the both, may have reacted strangely with the Tooninator. I might change back in a few hours, a day, a week, or maybe never.

Cue another explosion. Then I need a drink. I go to grab something nasty and alcoholic looking from the doc's secret, under the table stash, but the bottle does not satisfy. I might as well be drinking air.

Doctor Yesterday calmly informs me that, in my current condition, I'm going to need "special help." It just so happens that the Breakwater Institute is over in Hoboken, and they're the best equipped to deal with people suffering from "animation sickness."

In other words, I'm being sent to the Toon Ghetto. I'd ask if I could pack some jammies, first, but something tells me they don't fit, anymore.

(SPYGOD is listening to Hall of Mirrors (Kraftwerk, by way of Siouxsie and the Banshees) and having a Midori)