5/5/61 - The Things We've Done Together While Our Hearts Were Young - Pt. 4

Main Photo: Chicago -1928
Jester of Justice, The Owl, The Wraith, Sky Commander, Mister Future
(Art by Dean Stahl)

 * * *

"Okay, so let me get this straight," Liberty Belle says, shaking her head: "They did get their orders from SQUASH?"

"That's what the multiple lady is saying, yes," Mrs. Liberty says, watching as the two surviving super-commies get packed into a COMPANY helicopter, awaiting a one-way trip up to The Flier, directly overhead.

(Krasnoye Koltso died as soon as Dr. Chaos went back to "normal," which was probably the best thing.)

"What else is she saying?" the small woman asks, patting one of the pouches of her utility belt. Shivering a little.

"The Crimson Assassin showed up at their headquarters in the middle of the night with orders, which he said came straight from SQUASH. They were told to drop everything, pack up, and get onto a submarine. Then, halfway through the journey, they each unsealed their actual mission briefs. And that was that they were to come here and create a believable diversion, but not actually attack the rocket, itself."

"Why the !@#$ not?" Liberty Belle asks, quickly growing impatient. Needy.

(Desperately hoping her old friend doesn't notice.)

"She doesn't know," Mrs. Liberty answers, doing her best to pretend she isn't noticing: "But the two-man rocket teams were a distraction for them to sneak onto the base, and then they were a distraction for Crimson Assassin. We were meant to think the danger was over, so we could go along with the launch as scheduled."

"And then he'd blow up the rocket from God knows where," the short heroine sighs: "So where the !@#$ is he?"

"They don't know, hon. He left hours before they did, and they weren't supposed to ask what he was doing. But he took the weapon he always uses for long-distance kills."

"The perfect thing to kill a rocket with," Liberty Belle muses, looking at the bag holding what's left of the ring-slinger -- now being carried towards another waiting helicopter, along with the sorry remains of Sovetsky Skorost: "And we have no idea where he is, do we?"

"No. Dr. Yesterday says SPYGOD does, though. He drove off in his car to go find him."

"So if we find SPYGOD, we find him. Great. Where's Mr. USA?"

"Finding SPYGOD," Mrs. Liberty says, smiling a little: "I figured we were good, here."

"I sure hope so," Liberty Belle sighs: "Alright then. Tell Corporal Flag to get his !@#$ over here. I want to know more about this mysterious janitor who saved his !@#$."

"You got it, hon," Mrs. Liberty says, hoping what her friend is using chills her out before he gets there.

"And find that useless speeder, will you?" the short heroine shouts after her: "I haven't seen him since I saved him from that red soviet streak of !@#$. He probably got himself stuck in a hole, somewhere."

Mrs. Liberty nods and keeps going. As she does, the helicopter carrying the dead Soviet supers takes off, and Liberty Belle watches it go, remembering the medical helicopters from Korea -- ever-ferrying the dead and the dying away from the killing fields.

She also remembers the time she met Krasnoye Koltso in battle, somewhere in Naktong. Only then he was six foot something, and built like a brick !@#$house -- not the scrawny, little guy she'd just seen zipped into a bag.

Maybe his weapon was too hungry for him to handle...?

"Masks," Liberty Belle sighs, taking a quick bump of a red and moving powder from the box at her belt: "They'll !@#$ing get you killed..."

* * *

"I just don't know why she has to be so darn mean about it," Swiftfoot says, putting his pants back on: "I mean, we're both getting something out of this arrangement."

"Yeah," SPYGOD says, looking at his watch and wondering how much time they actually have, now: "She's covering for you being !@#$ing queer. And you're !@#$ing covering for her being found out to be a big !@#$ ballbuster. I don't think that's a fair trade, Steven."

"So, should I tell her it's over?"

"Under no !@#$ing circumstances," SPYGOD says, giving the speeder that look: "As long as she's got a perceived hold over you, you've got a !@#$ing hold over her, too. Someday we might need it. Especially if she keeps using that Martian cocaine. That !@#$ will mess her up."

"She needs it for her throat-"

"Bull!@#$. She's hooked. And the only thing more dangerous that a junkie with powers is a junkie who happens to be a !@#$ing national symbol."

"You don't trust her?" Swiftfoot asks, putting his helmet back on.

"I !@#$ing trust no one," SPYGOD grumbles, getting up to get dressed: "Not her, not you. Not even my own !@#$ self, sometimes."

"Sounds pretty lonely," Swiftfoot says, now completely clothed and kitted out.

"It !@#$ing works for me," SPYGOD says, considering what to do now.

The Crimson Assassin is lying facedown in the grass, not ten feet from where SPYGOD and Swiftfoot had been coupling. They hadn't actually planned to have sex after this, but something about the moment had been too much for either them to resist. So they'd let that moment take control of them, and just hoped no one called or came flying by in the meantime.

(One good thing about sex with a speedster -- it's as fast as it is furious.)

As for what they had planned -- well, that had gone off pretty !@#$ well.

Swiftfoot was alone and at loose ends, back at the Cape. He was, therefore able to zip over to SPYGOD's location when he called, and then hide nearby. He watched SPYGOD approach the island and land. He also watched him be shot at, threatened, and then challenged by the Crimson Assassin.

And then, when the Soviet's count had reached zero, he ran across the water, zipped up onto the island, snatched the would-be rocket-killer's bullet from the air, and then took the wondergun from his hands. That left SPYGOD clear to dive to the ground, get his guns back, and put a bullet from each into the Crimson Assassin's brains -- dead-bang right through those sunglasses.

Again -- luck. Bright blue, obscene luck, still shining on mother's little (REDACTED). 

"So," SPYGOD says, putting his shirt and jacket back on: "Anything else to report?"

"Well, New Man's still chasing young girls, but then so's Dr. Chaos," Swiftfoot says, clearly not liking to dish the dirt on his own people: "No one underage, thankfully. But still-"

"One bareback rendezvous and we got !@#$ing superbabies, bad headlines, and a big !@#$ paternity lawsuit," SPYGOD sighs, picking the boxed-in-ball that Hǫfuð's turned into from where his speedy lover dropped it: "Whine about it to Belle. See if she'll get them to stop. Anything else?"

"Yeah, about Dr. Chaos... he's getting really darn weird, lately."

"What the !@#$ do you mean?"

"I mean he's spacing out more often. Says things all mixed up even when he's not using his powers. Stays under longer."

"Not good," SPYGOD muses, finally just shoving the box that was a wonderweapon into one of his jacket's deeper pockets, right along with the highly-peculiar bullet that Swiftfoot snatched from the air: "Mention something to Mr. USA. If the blue-haired !@#$er goes over the edge, he's the best to deal with it."

"Okay."

"And... has he said anything about me lately?"

"Who?"

"You know who," SPYGOD says, scowling a little.

"Um, no," Swiftfoot lies: "Not really. No."

"Alright, then," SPYGOD says, knowing he's being lied to but, also knowing why, deciding to let it go.

Instead, he moves over to the Crimson Assasin, and regards his cooling corpse. He thinks of how good it would have been to have actually beaten the !@#$ out of his man in something approaching a fair fight. How satisfying it would have been to have had a real duel with him -- maybe a harried, twilight chase over the rooftops of Berlin, each one just a careless mistake from taking a bullet to the back of the head.

Something like this almost seems like an insult to a worthy opponent -- one who'd been at least willing to give him a slim chance...

That reminds him. He kneels down, gently turning the fallen Soviet's head to the side so he can get a better look at his ruined face.

"Well I'll be !@#$ed," he says, suddenly realizing something very important...

"What?" Swiftfoot asks, clearly impatient to be going.

"Nothing," SPYGOD lies, turning the head back, and knowing what he has to do, now.

"So, what's the story, then?" the speedster asks: "Was I even here?"

"No, but you are now," SPYGOD says, going to his car and reaching somewhere under the dashboard: "I called you to come get me back to the Cape, since my car's !@#$ed. You got here to find me smoking a !@#$ cigarette over a dead !@#$ commie. Problem solved, day saved, and if you think I'm going to !@#$ing tell them any more than that..."

"... they're !@#$ing !@#$ out of luck," Swiftfoot finishes, shaking his head: "You're a tough nut to crack, (REDACTED)."

"You didn't do so bad, just now," SPYGOD chuckles, grabbing a few things out of the glove compartment and the back seat, and tossing them into a handsome, leather carrying bag he had under the passenger seat.

"Don't remind me. I'm still in pain after what that other guy did-"

SPYGOD interrupts him by taking him roughly by the collar and giving him one !@#$ of a kiss: "I'll kiss it and make it !@#$ing better, next time. Now how about you !@#$ing get me to the Cape before that stuck-up flying !@#$ comes by and catches us at it?"

"IThinkICanDoThaT," the speeder says, picking him up and carrying him away.

Ten seconds later the Aston Martin Spider goes BANG with the power of a half a ton of TNT -- all but vaporizing the surface of Bird Island, and incinerating the body of the Crimson Assassin right along with it.

* * *

After that, it's all just pieces to pick up, remix, and reassemble as though nothing had ever happened.

SPYGOD gets back to Cape Canaveral in plenty of time to catch the launch. He makes arrangements with the Flier to have the living Soviet heroes taken to the Heptagon for interrogation and confinement. He makes similar arrangements for the dead ones, though they'll be going somewhere entirely different.

(He also puts out an APB on Black Shadow, if only because he isn't assured that New Man really "dealt with him" this time.)

Mrs. Liberty and Mr USA take the opportunity to pose for publicity photographs with the others, which SPYGOD takes a perverse pleasure in not being in. He also finds amusement in how everyone's faces fall after the shots are done, and they have to face one another again, though that's a sadder, more awkward kind of humor.

After that, the majority of the Freedom Force gets onto the weird vehicle that Swiftfoot powers with his own motion, and zooms back to the Heptagon. Gold Standard shakes SPYGOD's hand, they settle on the when for their bet, and he flies back to Atlanta. 

Then Mr USA flies after him, doing his best to avoid looking in SPYGOD's direction. As such, he probably doesn't see SPYGOD flip him the bird. Or maybe he does.

Once they're all gone, he meets Agent Jerome "Jolly" Jones, and realizes he likes the bespectacled little nerd on first sight. He's competent and obedient, but not afraid to talk straight or insist on certain standards of behavior from his superiors -- which he does after the third time SPYGOD tries to get him to share a victory beer.

They shake hands and part well, though, and as he watches him leave SPYGOD decides he's found the one man he can trust to be his second in command.

(He doesn't even bother calling that brown-nosing twerp who's got the post now. Let Fredericks sweat a bit -- see what he does, who he calls.)

Then the Flier's gone, leaving behind a new car for him. It's just like the last one, only the new license is BTFU02, and the instruction manual indicates there's even more weapons under the hood than the last one. Excellent. 

They also left him a box of cigars in case he felt like sharing, which he most certainly does not.

* * *

Twenty minutes until the launch, SPYGOD parks his new car into what passes as the officer's lot. In the process, he angles it across two spaces so as to be at just the right position to catch the best view in the house. Some Captain walking by gives him a dirty look, but as soon as he realizes who it is, he hustles away without saying another word.

Five minutes later, an old, tall, black janitor walks on up to the car, and nods. SPYGOD nods back, and offers the man a beer, but his visitor politely declines.

"I heard you saved Corporal Flag's !@#$ today," SPYGOD says: "Thanks for that."

"He's a young fool," the old man says, his voice a lot more firm than his body would suggest: "He thinks with his fears, not his mind. He sees power as a thing to be had, not earned."

"Yeah, well, he's still learning," SPYGOD admits.

"He will fail to be anything more than he is unless someone teaches him better." 

"You volunteering, then?"

The old man considers it, then nods: "My classroom. My rules. No mercy."

"Wouldn't have it any other way, old man," SPYGOD says: "Anything else I should know?"

"The crazy one is going to be a problem," the old man says: "Sooner or later he's going to go so far out that he won't come back. Death comes closer every day."

"Anything we can do?"

"Kill him now."

SPYGOD sighs, looking at his beer: "That's what I !@#$ing love about you, Wraith. You know how to just come straight to the !@#$ point."

"You don't hire me for my looks," the old man says, smiling: "Have my student ready for me in a month. Don't expect to see him for a while."

"Okay," SPYGOD says: "Thanks again."

"Be seeing you," the Wraith says, making a curious 'ok' sign by his right eye with his right hand, and then walking away. He takes three steps and then disappears into thin air, as always. 

"'Be seeing you,'" SPYGOD muses, really liking it.

* * *

9:34 in the AM finds him watching Mercury-Redstone 3 carry Alan Shepard up, up, and away into space and history. He salutes the rocket with an open beer, which he leans back in the drivers' seat and sips at, pleased as !@#$ that, for once, being in the right place at the right time doesn't involve shooting or being shot at.

The car phone rings, just as the rocket arcs out of sight. He shrugs, belches, and picks it up: "Hello?"

"I take it you got my message," a voice he's only heard a few times before breathes into the other end.

"I did, yes," SPYGOD says, putting the beer down and looking this way and that, wondering if he's in someone's crosshairs right now.

"You are most welcome, my sweet enemy," the Dragon says: "I knew you would know what to do with it."

"I sure !@#$ing did," SPYGOD grumbles: "So what's the big !@#$ idea? I didn't think ratting the Ruskies out was your style."

"Who says that I did?"

SPYGOD blinks, thinking: "Wait, was Nikki telling the !@#$ truth? Was all this out of his !@#$ing control?"

"Clearly," the Dragon says, and not without some humor.

"So what was the big !@#$ plan, here? Did you have one of your !@#$ people pretend to be SQUASH, get them all on a sub, and then send them over here to provoke a !@#$ing war?"

"That would be foolish. Why would I then tell you how to find the killer?"

"I have no !@#$ing idea," SPYGOD sighs: "I gave up trying to !@#$ing figure you out years ago."

"That is disappointing to hear. I would think our relationship should be a wonderful puzzle for you to keep solving, every day we are at each other's throats."

"Yeah," SPYGOD replies, wondering what that throat might taste like. His lips. His chest.

His !@#$...

He shakes that strangely-delicious thought out of his head, just as the Dragon starts speaking again: "To that end? Let me make a suggestion. It was not the Kremlin, the KGB, or SQUASH. And it was not me or mine. But that leaves many other players on the field, some of which even you know nothing about."

"Yeah, that'll be the !@#$ing day."

"Everything is changing, my sweet enemy," the Dragon breathes: "The borders are moving. Allegiances shift in their wake. And not everyone is who or what they seem."

"What is this? Zen koan-a-go-go?"

"It is the model of the world to come. Be aware. Trust no one. And be careful where you step."

"Yeah, well... be seeing you," SPYGOD says, slamming the phone down: "Mother!@#$er."

He drinks another beer, grousing all the while. He thinks about what this all means, and decides he doesn't !@#$ing like it. Not one !@#$ bit.

So he decides to drive back up to DC. Tonight. And he's not going to bother saying goodbye, either.

"Running Scared" by Roy Orbison comes on the radio just as he leaves the base. Of course it would.

* * *

1/11/13
The Heptagon, Washington DC

"So that was Operation Mercury Maybird Boom?" Henri asks, almost incredulous as he scrolls down the report on his office computer in the Palace, in Paris. 

"That it was," Josie replies over the super-secure video-link line they're communicating over, in the strangely-stark Director's office in the Heptagon, in DC: "Our former Director had a really darn interesting way of putting things, if you ask me."

"I have to agree with you," the President's personal secretary says, turning down the American music he's been listening to (Steely Dan: Glamour Profession): "These Triple-Black cases you have been kind enough to help me with are just insane. Operation Easter Pizza? Operation !@#$ Your Mother? Merde!"

Josie laughs, running a hand through her short, spiky pink hair: "Yeah, they're a real hoot, some of them."

"And some of these Projects... Battle Apple? What's that-"

"Hey now," she gently chides, winking: "That's still need to know, Henri."

"Oh, alright. But tell me, what happened next? Operation Mercury Maybird Boom has not been given any addendum to indicate it was solved?"

"No, it wasn't," she says, looking at her copy: "They never found out what happened, there. Could have been an attempt to get rid of some of the People's Protectors that were too close to SQUASH, but that seems like such a dumb way to go about it. Why not just disappear them like they did to the others?"

"Did they ever get hold of Black Shadow? Maybe he could have provided some answers."

"We did, yes. And after we caught him we had him penned up with the other two survivors of that raid until Glastnost. But we never learned anything more from any of them."

"Why did you not hook them up to this... this N-Machine I see referenced?"

"Well, we considered it, but we decided they really didn't know anything we didn't already know. So we kept them around as bargaining chips for an eventual prisoner exchange. It just never came around."

"And when Glastnost came, still nothing?"

"No. All the SQUASH files they got around then were no help, either."

Henri sighs and shakes his head: "Well, I remember the Chinese and the Soviets were not friends by that point? Perhaps this was something Beijing did?"

"The Dragon said otherwise, but he could have been half-lying, again."

"Half lying?"

"Yeah, he always did that kind of nonsense. One truth for one lie. Quid Pro Bull!@#$"

Henri laughs again: "This is insane! C’est des conneries!"

"Well, that's the spy business. And you're just looking for more rope to hang SPYGOD with. You want some really crazy stuff, you should look a couple years later, after 1965. That's when things got really weird."

"Yes, I was looking at that. I suppose that is why a lot of the personal problems the Freedom Force was having were put on hold for a time?"

"Got it in one, Henri. Got it in one."

"So many loose ends, though," he continues, flipping through the links: "I see they never found the Crimson Assassin's weapon, which astounds me."

"Yep. We think it blew up along with him when he triggered his suicide charge. A lot of those super-soviets were wired to pop."

"I'm also curious about this Wraith person that Dr Chaos talked about while he was under...?"

"Mostly irrelevant," Josie shrugs: "You might want to check out what happened to Dr. Chaos, though. SPYGOD bears some real responsibility for that."

"Oh... I see what you mean," Henri says, his jaw dropping: "You know, we should talk to his son. Mr. Chaos? He is off at some Buddhist shrine, somewhere, is he not?"

"Yes he is. And I can get you in there, if you need to."

"Oh, you have been such a massive help!" he says, overjoyed: "You know, when I was told to work with you on this, I thought you were going to be stalling me. After all, he was your Director."

"Well, you have to know, Henri. I was the third banana, looking to never be anything more than third banana. Then the first and second banana got disgraced and killed, in that same order. And I'm a girl who knows which way the wind is blowing, you know?"

"I take your meaning," he says, grinning.

"So now, I'm in the Director's chair, in the Director's office. And I'd like to stay here a while, you know?"

"Oh, I agree. I really like people who are politically expedient!"

"Well, good," she says, leaning in a little: "Now, if you'll excuse me? I have to go get expedient with a few people down in the motor pool who keep forgetting to oil my car."

"Oh, haha!" he laughs, smiling at her: "Until tomorrow, then?"

"Until tomorrow," she says, turning the secure channel off.

The moment the screen goes black, her face falls: "What a little merde-weasel."

"Not much longer now, Josie," a familiar voice whispers in her ear: "You ready to do your bit?"

"Oh, am I ever," she says, getting up from her desk, straightening her padded, black uniform, and then, ever so carefully, reaching under the desk to press a black button that's hidden on one side of it.

The moment she does, a portion of her office wall creaks open. She walks over to it and opens it up the rest of the way, and then carefully closes it behind her.

Inside the wall is a dimly-lit, long-unused passageway, filled with old photographs and pieces of times gone by. Redacted team pictures, strange trophies under glass, missing bits of history -- all the secret things no one knows about, thrown up on walls that doesn't exist.

"Hmmm," she says, patting a photo of a group of heroes as she passes -- one from Chicago, 1928: "We were just talking about you, Mr. Lambordeaux."

"Be !@#$ing careful," one of the voices counsel: "The Wraith might !@#$ing hear you."

"Really?" Josie asks, hurrying a little bit faster now. All she gets in return is laughter, though, so she's not sure if her ghosts are teasing her or not.

She passes the boxes of lost weapons, the racks of missing plans. She wonders what all might be in that steel case, humming at the bottom of a pile of things.

(She wonders who Eisenengel was, and why the pathetic, withered skeleton in a small, glass box is wearing a NASA lab coat.)

At the very end of the hallway is a phone. It's an old, rotary-style thing -- black and full of cobwebs. She picks it up, taking care to wipe away the webs before she puts it up to her face, and dials a number she's been waiting to use for a while.

"Hello," she says to the person who picks up on the other end of the Black Telephone: "It's time. Are you ready?"

"I am," the person on the other end says, her voice sounding just a little too eager.

"Alright then. I'm going to give you a location, a number, and a combination. You will memorize them. Rendezvous with your transport chief, go there, look for it, and get into it. You'll know why I've sent you for it when you see it."

"And what then?" she asks.

"Then," Josie says, smiling just a little: "You're going to take that thing and kill a few superheroes, just for me."

The ghosts behind her chuckle a little at that.

It has begun. 

(SPYGOD is listening to Devil or Angel (Bobby Vee) and having irony beer, since they don't make real Blatz anymore)

12/17/12 - A Way To Break Through This Cellophane Line

You know, son, the last !@#$ time I was in prison for any appreciable length of time, it was back in !@#$ing Korea, all those !@#$ years ago.

The !@#$ commies had me locked down in a POW camp, and chained up with these special Chinese manacles that kept me from using my !@#$ing powers. And, as I didn't have this shiny little beauty of an eye in my noggin, then, I was pretty well !@#$ed.

Or so they !@#$ing thought, which shows you what your average stupid-!@#$ commie !@#$ knows.

Truth was, I could have broken the !@#$ out of those power-dampeners at any time. I had the know-how, the skills, and an ace up my sleeve that I'm still not !@#$ing allowed to talk about. But I had my orders, which said that I had to stay there until I could ascertain what the Chinese and Soviets were up to.

And you know why orders are !@#$ing orders, son? Because you don't have to !@#$ing like them, but you gotta !@$#ing do them.

So I sat still, played helpless, and watched while terrible things happened all around me. I saw good American GIs and Koreans get starved, beaten, and shot. I saw Strategic Talents get tortured to death, just inches away from my !@#$ eyes.

!@#$, son. I saw ten men raping a South Korean fighter with nightsticks until his intestines fell out of his !@#$hole like bloody !@#$ sausage, just to make the other South Korean prisoners more compliant.

And I watched this, knowing that I could have !@#$ing saved them. But if I did I'd have blown the mission open like a monkey in a barrel of !@#$ing dynamite who's crammed a book of matches up his !@#$.

So I just sat there and watched, manacled by orders stronger than any chain their commie science buddies could have come up with. And I kept my eyes and ears open, even though I did not want to see. And only when I had the information that I'd come for, courtesy of The Dragon's presence in their camp, did I finally !@#$ing shake off those !@#$ chains and get some payback.

Oh, did I ever get some !@#$ payback. I hear the North Koreans still whisper about the Night of SPYGOD, just in case I ever make it North of Seoul, again. Something about fists and guns and fire and the honest power of American revenge.

(And how !@#$ hard it is to run away with a lit nightstick up your !@#$ing !@#$...)

Anyway, that !@#$ed me up something severe for quite a while, sitting there and watching all that without being able to do anything. Thankfully, General MacArthur understood, and graciously set my !@#$ straight, courtesy of my first ever skull-!@#$ing. And I know that makoli house still remembers me.

After that, I kind of associated prison stays as either a temporary setback, or an opportunity to get intel. But I never, ever let myself get !@#$ing maneuvered into a situation where I'd have to watch my friends die and do nothing. Never ever again, son. Never !@#$ing ever.

Which is why I'm not feeling very !@#$ happy to be sitting here, in this nice apartment the city of Neo York City has thoughtfully given the TU to cage me in, along with my boyfriend and my cat, prior to my trial for crimes against Humanity.

That's right, son. TU. As in Terre Unifiee. As in the !@#$ing French, who didn't even have any !@#$ skin in the game while their friends and neighbors fought and bled, and then walked out of the !@#$ end of the Reclamation War with a ton of stuff and strategic talents.

And then they all said "Bon !@#$ing jour, mes amis. Let us tell you how to run things, now."

Okay, okay. No. It didn't exactly happen like that. But it's !@#$ near close enough for !@#$ing government work.

See, all those years we were laughing at Direction Noir and their pathological do-nothing ways, it turns out those horse-chewing !@#$ers were playing it smart. They had a doomsday plan all ready to go, ever since the !@#$ 60's. They horded and they tweaked it and they waited, and, most !@#$ing important of all, they kept their !@#$ mouths shut,

And now, here they are, and they're in charge, and it's like !@#$ing Esperanto all over again.

And it's not like they're doing a bad !@#$ing job of it, either, son. That's what really sucks about this. If they'd been cruel or conquering, or even somewhat graft-handed, then I could justify sneaking out of this well-heeled !@#$hole and kicking their pasty white !@#$es back to Paris and shoving fresh baguettes where la soleil does not !@#$ing shine. 

But it's not like that at all. They've actually done a good job under the circumstances. Things are better than they were two months ago. !@#$ they're better than they were a week ago. They even got the !@#$ internet back up and running again...

But we could have done so much more.

The world was down to pieces, son. Just parts and people, looking up at the sky and asking "what now?" We could have built a new world up from that. A free world, full of free people and free markets. We could have had gun rights, civil rights, everything...

Instead, we get francophone caretakers who think they know what's best for us.

And worst of all, especially for me? They're being led by someone who's got it in for me like you would not believe.

Which sort of explains why I'm here, right now. Although there are many other reasons... not all of which are my !@#$ing fault, but some of them might as well be. You know how !@#$ing reckless I can get when I need to kick some !@#$ for life, liberty, and the defense of America.

And oh, isn't that just !@#$ing ironic, now.

So yeah, son. Long story, short time. The trial's due to start after New Years, which gives me a couple weeks to figure out what the !@#$ we're going to do. My legal team thinks we're !@#$ed, and I can't see that they're wrong, either. And if they aren't, and we are, well... SPYGOD could be in some deep !@#$ing !@#$ come the trial.

But this also gives me some time to take it easy, and enjoy actually !@#$ing having a boyfriend, and a cat. Not having to worry about the whole !@#$ world, anymore, is something of a novel experience. Sort of like realizing you didn't have to recite Shakespeare while you took a !@#$, after years of going through play after play, sonnet after sonnet.

It also gives me time to play around with a few things I've been learning about myself, too, though that's not something you have to know about just yet, son.

(Though the TU might just be learning about it before too !@#$ long.)

So, why don't we call it a night on getting maudlin and complaining? I'll fill you in on what !@#$ing happened as we go along, here, I promise. But for now, I'd like to settle in, have some wonderful homemade Pad Thai, watch some tube, and have hot gay sex in front of an open window just to make those protesters out there really !@#$ing angry.

Because I'm not the one who's locked up here, son. And by the time they figure that out, well... I think the world will have well and truly !@#$ing turned.

Bon apetit, mother!@#$ers.

(SPYGOD is listening to Living in a Box (Living in a Box) and having a bottle of La Biere du Demon )

12/16/12 - The Big !@#$ Story So Far - !@#$ing House Arrest Edition

SPYGOD.

Immortal. Superpowered. Drunk.

Highly conservative. Queer as !@#$. Out as Hell.

The man who killed Hitler with his bare hands, rescued the world too many times to count, and saved the lives of three... no, wait, make that four Presidents, mother!@#$er. FOUR.

(But, yes, had to shoot one.)

Director of The COMPANY, tasked with handling (and occasionally killing) America's Strategic Talents.


The man who just masterminded the saving of the entire !@#$ing world from an old enemy no one knew was that dangerous and deadly. 

And now... is under !@#$ing House Arrest? Seriously? 

...

Okay, obviously we need to back the !@#$ up a bit, here. Maybe all the way to !@#$ing Mongolia, or something.

But you know what happened before, right? How GORGON framed SPYGOD for the assassination of the President of the United States of America? How they then framed the United States of America for their own super-secret (and way too successful) plan to conquer the world, and then pretend to be its saviors? How they masqueraded as the friendly, technologically-advanced Imago to put the world at ease, and told them to just deal with the inconveniences (some more inconveniencing than others) because some terrible world-destroying threat was coming right for Earth?

And then, you know all the crazy-!@#$, !@#$ed-up !@#$ that happened right after... right?
 
Well, okay then.

So SPYGOD comes back from his weird, parallel-future experience with Jim Morrison's parallel-future self, in which he saves the parallel-future world, kills an evil parallel-future Jesus, and gets !@#$ing killed, himself, and then has something else happen that he really does not want to !@#$ing talk about, yet. And he's full of !@#$ and vinegar, now, and gets it into his head that he and the President of the United States of America are going to team up and save the !@#$% world, together, because he's the only rock-steady ally he's got.

(Or at least the only one he can !@#$ing boss around, now.)

Needless to say, this means SPYGOD's got to turn the President into a lean, mean, killing machine. Lucky for him, he's got a captive audience and special, somewhat-dangerous Soviet drugs. So for a few days, the poor guy gets the Matrix kung fu treatment at scenic Camp !@#$ You Up, Mongolia, only for real, and by the end of it he's actually good enough to hand SPYGOD his !@#$, for real.

Now, while that's going on, a few other things are happening, and these are all pretty !@#$ important.

One big thing is that METALMAID, who's suckered no less than Zalea Zathros (brainwashed into stupid complacency by the Imago's e-television signals) into becoming her personal !@#$ arms manufacturer, has hit upon the great !@#$ing idea of going to OUTLAND and hooking up with some super villain sugardaddy. This way she can take over the whole !@#$ world from the Imago, so she can get on with trying to !@#$ing kill SPYGOD, which she's been failing to do for a long !@#$ time now.

The plan doesn't go too !@#$ing well, unfortunately, but she does meet a cool, fellow, would-be world-conqueror calling himself the Violet Demon, and actually almost does a !@#$ deal with him. Except that, of course, that's when this creepy old !@#$ named Doctor Kyklops (who used to run with METALMAID's creator, Doctor Morbo, back in the day) decides to buy her services.

What's a cuckolded super villain to do? In the Violet Demon's case, he takes it pretty !@#$ well, and covers for their rather explosive product demonstration, so she and the Doctor can go make a deal on his big !@#$ Jacques Cousteau sea-saucer just before the Imago show up and crash the party. And she !@#$ing goes back to Africa, there to crank out more !@#$ Slaughterbots for her questionably-sane (but super-!@#$-rich) partner.

(Who, incidentally, really wants to get in her !@#$ing pants.)

While that's going on, a whole bunch of remaining heroes, strategic talents, and hangers-on are converging on B.A.S.E.C.A.M.P. 4. It's a mini-parallel Earth just like B.A.S.E.C.A.M.P. 3, where the SPYGOD SCOUTS used to have their yearly Saturnalia jamboree things. But that one got "compromised" then the Imago took over, so now, they're all in the spare backup version, with people like Mark Clutch, and Myron and Winifred (who are seeing each other, now). And they've joined forces with the Toon Nation, all acting under the commands of some blonde !@#$hole in a loud ascot named Fred.

(Oh, and everyone's taking orders from some weird, masked guy who's supposed to be the leader of the resistance. Except that no one knows who the !@#$ he is, but he's supposedly acting under SPYGOD's orders... whatever they are.)

So they're joined by a bunch of Supers from the Middle East and Northern Africa. Some of whom we've met before (The Fist, The Lion, The Wall) and some of whom are totally !@#$ing new, and might only be notable because they've !@#$ing lived in spite of the Imago hunting them the !@#$ down.

Oh, yeah, and the Green Man's there, too. The last we saw him he was stumbling around in a daze after Chinmoku did something to him in Key West, and now he's back to normal, but more !@#$ing !@#$ed-off than ever before. Which is really !@#$ scary, under the circumstances, and given what he can actually do.

And he's there to look after Thomas Samuels, who was badly maimed the night the Owl Nest was destroyed, just before 3/15. It turns out Thomas is actually his son, by way of Martha Samuels, who's the Owl, now. And given that the Green Man killed her brother, earlier in his career as a revolving-door supervillain, is really !@#$ strange.

(Hopefully someone will !@#$ing explain that !@#$ to me, at some point?)

Anyway. There's also the international super-spies, like Dosha Josh and Mikhail and everyone else, who aren't too numerous anymore. They meet up at this special Bar in the ladyboy sector of Bangkok to compare notes, mostly to talk about what happened to Israel, which wasn't !@#$ing pretty.

Only the meeting gets crashed by the Thai secret police, who are in league with the Imago for !@#$ only knows what reason. Oh yeah, and one of those crazy-!@#$ flying vampire women who have their guts hanging out of their neck when they go out hunting blood tries to take them out, and actually splashes the guy from MI-whatever. Long complicated story, especially since Dosha and Anil kind of set them all up, sort of. Luckily, Dr. Krwi the Polish, bad!@#$ vampire hunter showed up and saved their !@#$ing bacon, but now they're all on the same page, again. Maybe. 

Okay, so you got all that? I sure hope so, because here's where it starts to get !@#$ing complicated. And nasty, too.

First off, SPYGOD does a really !@#$ bad thing to the Imago's fancy space elevator, using a group of crazy terrorists and a high-tech bomb. That stunt gets a few people killed then, and then a whole bunch more slaughtered by the Imago when they go looking for answers. Of course, SPYGOD's not too !@#$ing happy about that, but it's not like he didn't know that might happen, or take precautions.

And the real !@#$ of it was that all that was just a !@#$ing distraction. The real action was going on up in China, where the President made "friends" with the Chinese Premier, who was something of a massive !@#$ing wuss. Thanks to their "understanding," which you can bet was one-sided as !@#$, SPYGOD was able to find out where some files on WWII Japanese intelligence he needed were stored, and broke in and took them.

What was in those files? !@#$ing everything. A really nasty story about Unit 731, which the Japanese set up in occupied Manchuria to supposedly study how to create and use plague weapons, but was actually a horror show butcher shop for the education of this sick !@#$ named Dark Star.

(You might remember her scary !@#$ from his bad-idea-jeans attempt to take out GORGON with a single squad and an unlucky strategic talent, last year? Old and nasty !@#$ with the power to suck your life and memories out?)

Anyway, it turns out, young and cute (but still !@#$ing deadly) Dark Star told the Imperial Japanese government a crazy!@#$ story about being an alien who could give them the kind of technology that would make them masters of the world. But they can't get down to her ship, on the bottom of the Pacific, without better tech than they have, so she offers to help them with that. Only she up and !@#$ing creates GORGON right under their !@#$ noses, which proves to be really !@#$ embarrassing to her handlers, especially when they realize their so-called space alien's actually a girl who was drowned, presumed dead, some years before...

Or was she? That's the thing, here. As !@#$ing crazy as all this !@#$ SPYGOD reads is, it makes perfect sense. It not only falls in line with everything that GORGON's been doing, all along, but it really falls in line with what they've been doing since SPYGOD decided to rid the world of its science terrorist organizations, the other year.

(And it explains why they wanted to get their hands on The Object, and why a certain city's poking up from the Pacific Ocean, right now...)

So now that he's got that information under his belt, he goes off to talk to Doctor Krwi, who just ended the vampire head woman that attacked the super-spies in Bangkok. Turns out SPYGOD did a deal with her, after the attack, and got her out of her bad, very one-sided relationship with her Thai handlers in exchange for a little favor. But you know how SPYGOD handles his favors, so the poor !@#$ is messed-up and crazy from her ordeal.

See, he had her infiltrate one of the Imago's massive, white cities to see what was going on in there. It was one of the "schools" they had all the kids in the region super-learning in, or so they said. In reality, it was a massive vampire of a building, with all the kids either having their life and memories sucked the !@#$ out of their bodies, or else hauling around the less fortunate because, having been drained themselves, that was all they were !@#$ing good for, anymore.

Yeah...

So you can imagine how bad this was for the poor vampire. Once she was in she couldn't get right back out again, and the Imago showed up to beat her down. And then, when she got tired of hiding and too !@#$ing hungry to think straight, she finally gave up following orders and tried to eat one of the kids. But the building fed on her, instead, though the kid, which is why she was insane and dying when Krwi found her, and why he put her out of her misery.

Of course, SPYGOD doesn't give a !@#$, because now he's got his intel. Only Dr. Krwi has had it with his !@#$, and actually makes him give her last human victim a decent burial.

(Yeah, yeah. Super-drama. It happens in this business.)

Of course, by then SPYGOD's got another piece of the puzzle, but he's still working on the whole plan. So he goes to Russia, and abducts the former Russian President, who's been in hiding since 3/15, and "persuades" him to take him to where they warehoused the files they took from Unit 731 at the end of the War. SPYGOD figures that if he's going to find a weakness in GORGON, or the Imago, he'll find it there.

So they take the train over to Yekaterinburg, which used to be Sverdlovsk, which was a big-time closed city back during the Cold War, to go find those things, because that's where the Ruskies put them for whatever reason. Somehow, the Imago find out and blow the !@#$ out of the train, when it gets into the station, but SPYGOD knows what's going on, down the tracks, and gets them off it just before it happens. And he figures that the Chinese Premier's finked on them, which would be no real surprise.
 
(That and the Chinese Premier's got really big !@#$ing problems of his own, but more on that a little later. Promise.)

So SPYGOD and the Russian President get to an empty room, and the Imago show up, right on cue. It turns out the fink was the Russian President, all along. He confesses that he did it all so he could escape Earth's fate when that big dark something showed up to eat the planet. And the Imago cops to the fact that their "invasion" was really an escape.

Oh yeah, while all this was going on we learned, courtesy of Winifred's memories finally coming back to her, that the Imago are apparently energy-beings in metal spheres who have been taking over human bodies all this time. Mostly all those missing mentally retarded people the Imago took away "to help" early on. Poor Winifred found this out the hard way by breaking into the special death-Olympics' slaughterhouse, and she'd blocked it out, not that you can blame her.

(Of course, this means her relationship with Myron is !@#$ing borked, but what can you do?)

And while all this is going on up in Russia, the American President is trying to shoot the Chinese Premier, down in Beijing, just to make sure he doesn't get nabbed and made to squeal on them. Only he !@#$ing hesitates for one second too many, and the Imago !@#$ing show up to make sure the Premier's okay.

And get this -- that stool pigeon is so !@$#ing sure they know he sold them out to SPYGOD (because he's sure his really big !@#$ing problem told them) that he actually spills the beans on himself, Tell-Tale Heart-style. And it's all the President can do to try and shoot the poor guy, but the Imago are floating in his way, and...

Well, that's when things get weird.

You see, we don't actually know how SPYGOD got out of that empty room, and out from under yet another orbital strike from Deep-Ten, once again blamed on terrorists in league with the big space nasty.

(The Imago said the same thing a little earlier when they torched a lot of LA, trying to get The Owl and The Talon. Luckily, they missed them, but it was a near !@#$ thing, and yet another sign that the people in control of the world are not even remotely !@#$ing reasonable. At all.)

But the next thing we know, SPYGOD's in Japan, meeting with the superspies in some crazy bar where everyone dresses up like !@#$ing SPYGOD, or COMPANY AGENTS, or folks like that. He's got things he needs them to do, and whatever he tells them is !@#$ scary, even to them. And it's all part of his big !@#$ plan, which he's still assembling on the fly out of a dozen or so smaller !@#$ plans, all rat-mazed into one another in a big !@#$ing flow chart that only he gets to look at. 

After that, he hooks back up with the American President, who got to Japan earlier to deal with Mister 10, from Organization 10. Whatever SPYGOD's big !@#$ plan is, it apparently requires getting his hands on some really big !@#$, crazy-!@#$, re-purposed (or just plain stolen) E.T. weaponry, which is what Organization 10 and all its !@#$ing predecessors (Organization 9, Organization 8, and so on) have been looking after since !@#$ only knows when.

Unfortunately, Mister 10 is this crazy, Yakuza mother!@#$er with a perky young assistant, no sense of humor, and no time to waste on outside persons, especially under the current circumstances. But they somehow manage to get him to hand over use of something really !@#$ powerful and scary, mostly because the President actually knows how to !@#$ing negotiate.

(Yeah, who would have !@#$ing thought, huh?)

Oh, and while all that's going on? That creepy, old, robot-bothering super villain !@#$ Doctor Kyklops decides to declare war on the Imago with the Slaughterbots that METALMAID, got for him. Apparently, if it'd been up to him, he'd have just built his stores up to Wagnerian heights and banged his metal love toy, but The Violet Demon talked her into telling him it was time to !@#$ or get off the !@#$ pot, and !@#$ he did. Unfortunately for him, he really just !@#$ the bed, and the so-called Kyklops War was all over within 48 !@#$ing hours.

But still, that's depleted the Imago's resources, just a bit. And this is just after they got caught killing civilians on live TV after something really bad went down just outside Neo York City with the Black Card and Whisper (remember her?).

And that was all courtesy of the Masked Leader of the Resistance, who's apparently been flying through !@#$ing time and space with some weird guy. And he's been setting a number of things into motion, in places in Africa, and the Kingdom, and Neo York City, and God only knows where the !@#$ else. And none of these things they do are anything that SPYGOD actually knows about, but all of them are things that lead up to his big !@#$ rat-maze of a plan. 

(Which is really !@#$ funny if you think about it, just don't expect SPYGOD to want to !@#$ing laugh)

Okay, so you got all that? Good. Because this is where it all comes together and tries to sing a song for a  charity record.

The day comes to take back the planet, and SPYGOD's got just about every last !@#$ thing he could pull out of the bag pulled out. He's got all the strategic talents we knew about, and a bunch only he ever knew about waiting in the wings (including the Violet Demon, who turns out to have been New Man's son, all along). He's got the weird armies of the world all ready to go. He's dressed to the 9s and has his playlist all cued up, and weapons you've never even heard of before jammed into his dress every which way but sideways.

And as soon as he kills the entire !@#$ internet (which is what had all the super spies spooked) he gets ready to roll out his stolen supernazi UFO, and pull the curtain back on this massively !@#$ing powerful giant robot that Organization 10's been hiding in plain sight since whenever-the-!@#$ A.D. and march it all the !@#$ way to the Lost City, there to smash the Flier to pieces.

Of course, with any luck, it won't be much of a fight. And that's because the primary plan is for the Toons to get six satellites from the folks at B.A.S.E.C.A.M.P. 4, and then launch them into orbit just after Deep-Ten's been turned off. The satellites are going to broadcast a signal that's a more powerful version of the one that Myron used to stun anything using GORGON technology on 3/15, and with luck that should !@#$ing knock out the Imago, the Specials, and anything else they've got on hand. With more luck, they'll stay !@#$ing knocked out.

Oh, and the person who's responsible for knocking Deep-Ten out? None other than Director Straffer, himself! Turns out he didn't die when the Imago took over his weapons platform. He just jumped out an airlock and aimed himself at the !@#$ Moon, which he can do since it turns out he's as cybernetic as he is queer (which is to say, "as !@#$.") He's been hiding at what's left of Alpha Base Seven since then, and coordinating with Freedom Force on what to do next, with the stipulation that no one tell SPYGOD it's him, or that he's alive, because he wants it to be a big surprise.

(Isn't that just !@#$ing romantic?)

Which would be a great plan, if only it had actually !@#$ing worked. You see, there's some big !@#$ problems, and they're all because of other people and their big !@#$ problems. And while the Masked Leader and his weird friend might have seen them coming, apparently it was all !@#$ that had to play out, one way or another, though they could do a little bit to help out, here and there.

(If that makes any !@#$ing sense...?)

Case in point? It turns out that one of the new Arabic Supers that was teleported over to B.A.S.E.C.A.M.P. 4 was none other than Moloch in disguise. He figured he'd get there, gum up the works at a critical moment, and then demand SPYGOD come there and die in exchange for his precious satellites. Fortunately, the Green Man had an idea that he was going to be fighting to save his son, and was prepared, so this big, back-and-forth battle rages across the treehouse as the good guys try to get the satellites away and Moloch keeps attacking, getting fought back, and creating new !@#$ bodies out of whatever metal's available.

Lucky for us, they finally get the satellites away. But no sooner do they launch them than things go !@#$ed up at the moon base. It turned out that the commander of the base wasn't so keen about having Straffer show up, boss her and her people around, and make them part of a plan that, if it went wrong, might get them all !@#$ing killed. So one of her people sneaks a bomb into the place where he's working, and it goes boom, and while Straffer lives through it, his device does not. 

(Neither does Alpha Base Seven, thanks to Deep-Ten seeing the explosion. Way to go, !@#$holes. Sometimes it really does make sense to just shut up and do what you're !@#$ing told, huh?)

So Deep-Ten is still live, and it not only shoots down the satellites, and Alpha Base Seven, but also starts shooting at the white boxes the Strategic Talents and weird armies are attacking. Before you can even blink, a lot of SPYGOD's plan is in the !@#$ing toilet.

Of course, that's when he decides to go forward, anyway, because there's nothing else he can do, so he tells the supers to converge on the white cities he was hoping they wouldn't have to touch, and tells Mister 10 to get the giant robot up and running.  And while Deep-Ten's trying to zap Tokyo, that perky young assistant turns out to be this massively powerful android from the future in disguise. And she's using her shields to keep Tokyo and the giant robot safe, but she can't keep that up for too !@#$ long.

Still, that's enough of a ego boost to the various weird armies, out there, to make them get off their !@#$es and stop hiding under rocks and go kick some !@#$. Which starts to really annoy the Imago, as you might expect, especially since they're losing a lot of their white cities. So they come up with a really nasty plan to deal with it, which involves snagging the First Family to use as hostages, and then telling the American President to end the war, or else.

(Yeah, I forgot to mention, he got on the TV once the internet went down and told everyone they had their brains back, and the revolution was happening. Not a bad !@#$ speech, either.)

Meanwhile, back at B.A.S.E.C.A.M.P. 4, the masked leader comes through to help them out, and turns out to have been Mr. USA all along! Which is really !@#$ weird, because the last we saw him he was on Alter-Earth, and being !@#$ing disappeared by this really powerful kid with dimensional powers and really serious anger management problems. But he's here, and he's !@#$ing old, but he's still got his powers, and uses them to kick Moloch's metal !@#$ all over the treehouse.

And, up in orbit, past the Moon, Director Straffer manages to get close enough to Deep-Ten to actually blow it the !@#$ up, which is not what he wanted to do, because it leaves the planet defenseless from outside threats. But under the circumstances, there was nothing else he could do, and that really should have killed him because he was linked to it, but he found a way to get out of it. Maybe.

Of course, that really horks the Imago off, so they decide it's time to stop being so nice. They send out every last Imago they can find, including ones that are what they really !@#$ing look like (which is not !@#$ing nice to look at) and start trying to genocide the whole !@#$ planet. And that's when SPYGOD gets all these kids that got powers in spite of the suppression drugs in the water to come out and kick their !@#$es, because it's literally now or never.

(He also calls this Native American shapeshifter named Gosheven, who we haven't !@#$ing seen in forever. Turns out he's been hiding on the Flier this entire time as a big cloud of sleeping, gay molecules or something, and now he's up and running, and he finds the original New Man, who we also haven't seen in forever. And they go off hand in hand to go !@#$ up some !@#$ for SPYGOD.)

SPYGOD also gets what few heroes he can get together in the central building in NYC to go get the First Family back, without letting the President know what's happened. (And after what happened in China, can you blame him?) Lucky for those few heroes, the B.A.S.E.C.A.M.P. 4 survivors show up in the exact same place, having barely escaped that reality from the third or fourth coming of Moloch. Green Man's dead, but his son's alive, and while some of the heroes break off to get to the Ice Palace, the rest go try to find something to save the kid, who's failing fast.

After that, it just comes down to blind !@#$ing luck. Poor Thomas gets put into a medical machine, but it "uploads" him instead of curing him. Lady Gilda gets shot out of the sky but SPYGOD's able to keep fighting. White Robot's able to handle the Flier's weapons, but the Flier's about to really crank up the firing solution. But then a bunch of War Spawn from the Kingdom finally !@#$ing get there and start destroying the city and drawing the Flier's weapons off the robot. And then New Man trashes the Flier's engine room, which just takes the !@#$ fight out of it.

And, in spite of something going really !@#$ wrong at the South Pole, because they just didn't get there fast enough, Myron's able to shut off the Imago, because they were !@#$ing stupid to guard their communications circuits. He just uploaded the signal he was going to put into those satellites into their radio feed, and boom, they all fell down.

And, except for a really tender reunion between SPYGOD and the thing that had killed and become The Dragon (He !@#$ed in his face until his skull melted) that was the end of the Reclamation War.

(...*whew!*)

So, by all rights, SPYGOD should be the man of the hour, here. He should be getting showered with medals, booze, and ladyboys. He should be leading The COMPANY, again, and being hailed as the man who saved the world, and ended the pall of terror it's been living under since World War II, when the science terrorist groups that came up out of that conflict started threatening the planet's safety and security every !@#$ time you turned around.

(And he really should be getting ready to deal with that oooga-booga threat from beyond space and time that's coming here, too. Not to mention the Alter-Earth SPYGOD, who's still out there, and no longer working with his former partner, masquerading as Geri Tomorrow {see, I told you we'd get back to her, sooner or later}. And who knows what Aaron and the Beautiful Stranger are up to...?)

And instead, he's under !@#$ing house arrest with his boyfriend and his cat, and not nearly enough beer to deal with this !@#$?

Something obviously went wrong, here. Maybe he didn't do enough? Maybe he didn't do the right things at the right time? Maybe something from his past came to light, at long last, and now he's got to pay?

Or maybe the world's changed too much for someone like him to be free in it...?

I guess we're going to !@#$ing find out, aren't we?

SPYGOD. He's an !@#$hole, but he's still our !@#$hole. And when the time came, that !@#$hole was ready and willing to save the whole !@#$ world.

Hopefully, someone can now save him from it. 

(SPYGOD is listening to Welcome To The Pleasure Dome (Frankie Goes to Hollywood, the full 40 minute version) and wondering where they stashed the !@#$ booze)

12/15/12 - Hold Your Head Up, Keep Your Head Up

-  SPYGOD stands naked before the burning, twitching corpse of the Flier, strewn across the ruins of the Lost City, and knows peace for the first time in months.

He watches as cyclopean War Spawn heave and slither across the crumbling ziggurats and pyramids, searching for more paralyzed Imago to stuff into their fanged and puckered orifices. In the dying light of the setting, Pacific Sun, they become less things from nightmare, and more like weird forces of nature. Rarely-seen elementals, perhaps -- mighty knots of earth, wind, and water given both form and a voice, however disturbing. 

He turns to regard the steaming, stinking mess he's turned the Dragon into, but cannot find any sign of that grotesque act of violence left. Not even the massive, caustic pool of long-withheld god-urine remains, now, to say nothing of the battered lump of plastic, metal, bone, and brain it was so angrily unleashed upon.

All he can find is a large plastic spoon, still in its see-through wrapper. 

SPYGOD considers this, and picks up the utensil. As he looks at it, he realizes that it has become night. What he thought the last, wavering rays of the Sun are merely the great, unearthly fires that burn uncontrolled under a dark sky, bereft of Moon and star. 

The great white robot is nowhere to be seen, now. The War Spawn have all gone. Only the fires remain, casting their ominous shadows about the cracked surfaces of the Lost City.

Or is it? Now this city has changed its shape, before his eye -- becoming a single, small temple that SPYGOD remembers all too well. 

It a small and beetling thing, this temple; a throwback to a truly ancient time in a distant land that was fought over for so long, but for all the wrong reasons. Its towering, rhomboidal entrance blazes with pure white light, and strange and angry noises issue forth along with that pure and brilliant illumination.

SPYGOD doesn't so much walk over to the door as he simply appears before it. He smiles, just a little, knowing  that this must be a dream, or else a very skewed memory, and what happens next proves him quite right. 

Inside, he sees himself as he was, a little over fifty years ago -- a vision in tight black leather, with not nearly enough guns and knives at hand. He is a man who appears younger than he really is, but has the eyes of an old man who's seen too much. He's just just starting to sag in the wrong places, and really feel the weight of what he's signed up for.

Especially here and now. 

He has just shot his way through every doughty, vermillion-robed warrior monk of the temple, perhaps a hundred in all. They all attacked him, as they attacked the one who came before him -- the one he was trying to beat here -- and seemed almost apologetic about trying to kill him. But he had no such sentiments in return, and gladly shot, stabbed, and punched them all into the oblivion they claimed to be guarding against.

(Or served, perhaps? Nothing here was quite what it seemed at the time, he would later realize.) 

Now, at the end of his quest, he is carefully approaching their great and only treasure. It sits on a small dais in the center of the main room, glittering every color known to man, and many that are mysterious and incomprehensible.

The Chandra Eye, itself.

"I pity you..." the eldest monk is saying as he bleeds out, not bothering to staunch the sucking wound below his heart: "This burden you must take upon yourself. We would have stopped you, but you alone have proven worthy. For that, we can only apologize..."

"Apology accepted," the younger him says, holding a hand up to his eyes (my god, two eyes!) and reaching towards the treasure: "Now, if you don't !@#$ing mind, I got a world to save, and not a lot of !@#$ time to do it..."

"But do you know what saving it like this will mean? The burden... it will bring upon you?"

"Yeah, well, I got a bad !@#$ing habit of getting burdened. Kind of goes with the !@#$ job description."

"This is nothing like that," his dying attacker says, watching as the man's hand closes around the treasure: "Other things, you could walk away from. Once this is inside you, there is no escape. It will be you, and you it, from now until forever, and perhaps beyond."

"So it's just like Camp Rogers, again," he says, taking the eye from the dais and holding it in his hand. As he does, it shrinks down, becoming exactly the size of a human eye.

"That experience you could understand, my friend. What is to come, however, will constantly confound you. You will slowly learn what it means to be a God, one revelation at a time. And in the ages to come, you will know nothing but change... and obligation...

"And regret..." dreaming SPYGOD says, in time with the last words of the monk, who closes his eyes and slips away.

"Yeah, well, !@#$ regret," the man SPYGOD was says, searching his pockets for the right tool for the job. All his knives are rusty or bloody, and not really good at gouging...

The dreaming SPYGOD looks at the plastic spoon he's had in his hand the entire time, and chuckles darkly. He assumes the right throwing stance, cocks his arm back, and tosses the spoon in such a way that it lands in the very pocket his old self found it in, all those years ago. 

"How the !@#$ did that get there?" that one says, looking over where his future, dreaming self stands, as if he can see him, though he cannot.

But a few fevered seconds later, after he's done the bloody and irrevocable thing that spoon needed to be used for, and put the Chandra Eye in the ragged, bleeding socket that action has created, he can.

"But you didn't know what you saw, then, did you?" a familiar voice asks from right behind dreaming SPYGOD as his old self holds his head and screams: "You didn't recognize yourself, any more than you could have recognized me..."

"You...?" SPYGOD says, turning around as-

- he's shaken from dreams by the sound of a shrill and insistent alarm clock that is not is own.

His eyes crack open. His mouth sours. He reaches for the gun he normally keeps by the side of the bed for the purpose of shooting his alarm clock, but cannot find it, and wonders what the !@#$ is going on here.

Then he remembers, and would much rather be !@#$ing asleep. 

In the end, he extends his penis out of the sheets, and over to the night stand, where it becomes a giant, meaty fist and beats the living !@#$ out of the offending noisemaker. The sound the device makes in its last seconds on earth -- five considerable thumps into its demise -- is akin to a pocket video game in desperate need of new batteries.

That done, SPYGOD snuggles up to the person in his bed, trying to get back to sleep. But something's not right. The exertions of his motile manhood have disrupted the cozy configuration they were in, and now they can't quite get it back. He moves one way, the other man moves the other. He tries to compensate, so does the other.

And he'd love to wake his partner up and try to coordinate their shared movements, but Straffer looks so angelic when he's asleep, SPYGOD doesn't dare disturb him.

So he just watches him sleep, for a few minutes, smiling as he does. And then he slips out of bed, realizing he's not getting any more rest this morning, and pads naked through his new bedroom, towards the kitchen.

(Their new bedroom, he has to remind himself. Theirs.)

The halls are jam-packed with hastily-packed boxes and things, some of which are marked with where they're going to go. Remnants of an old life, and reminders of a new reality, all stacked atop one another in teetering piles one bad move from crumbling over and down.

He remembers MacArthur leaving Korea, after Truman had had enough. How that stately General had looked at his packed-up office, and then at him, and said "It's the old rule about changing assignments, son. You can't stay here, anymore, but you can always take it with you, one !@#$ box at a time."

"Good thing you've got people to carry them for you, sir," SPYGOD had said. He'd never known if the man had appreciated the joke or not. He was always hard to read, MacArthur.

On the way to the kitchen, he comes across Bee-Bee, who's sprawled atop a tall tower of boxes, snoozing next to an empty bottle of vodka. They got him a new pillow to make up for the one he lost (along with a much better gun than that old, museum piece) but the cat's turned up his nose at both of them, clearly preferring this dangerous perch, instead.

SPYGOD reaches up to scritch him under the chin, but the cat mumbles sleepy obscenities at him ("Eбут выключен, мудак...") and he decides to let the ungrateful bag of fuzz and farts sleep it off.

At last the kitchen, full of thai takeaway boxes and empty cans of Singha. They haven't properly set up in there, yet, but the important things are out. A microwave, plastic silverware, a big block of sharp, long knives.

And, most important of all, a coffee machine that's set at the same time as the alarm.

As he watches the coffee drip down into the pot, SPYGOD thinks about the dream/memory he just had. He remembers how he saw himself, all those years ago, when he put the Chandra Eye in his skull. He also remembers who was standing with him, though he didn't know him yet.

(This changes things, to say the least. Something to look into, when he has the ability, again. Whenever that is...)

Before he knows it, the pot is full. He takes the entire thing with him into the living room, and, staring at the windows with their heavy drapes, absentmindedly drinks the whole !@#$ thing down in two gulps. Then he tosses it onto the couch, and belches loud enough to make the windows shake.

"Ah, !@#$ it," he says, striding over to the drapes: "No sense delaying it."

He opens the drapes up and looks down from his high window, Life of Brian style. It's a beautiful, winter's day. The sun is shining, the air is clear, the snow is new and sparkling.

And someone down below screams "Murderer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and throws a bottle up at him.

She's not alone in this. Before he can even blink that bottle is joined by snowballs, trash, cans, and the occasional moltov cocktail. The massive crowd down there, far below his window, is screaming and baying for blood, holding up signs that scream "Murderer of children!" and "Assassin of the poor" in a dozen languages.

He can count them with ease: two thousand, five hundred, forty-nine -- six more than yesterday. He can tell they come from all over the world, based on their looks and the languages he can hear them using. He can practically smell their hate from up here.

Between the throng and the building is a line of police. They look like they would rather be anywhere other than here. One of them turns and flips SPYGOD the bird, eliciting cheers from the nearby crowd. 

And beyond them all, a solid line of news vans, and reporters with video cameras, all happy to lap this up for the constant news feed.

"House arrest, day two," SPYGOD sighs, watching them burn him in effigy, and wondering how much trouble he'd get in for putting out the fire by peeing on them.

(SPYGOD is listening to Sweet Dreams (Eurythmics, by way of Emily Browning) and having black coffee by the gallon.)

10/15/12 - The Reclamation War - Epilogue

At first, there's just the silent darkness -- total and absolute.

The Dragon is unsure how long he's floating in it. Is it hours, or days? Weeks or months? Maybe even years?

He does not care. All sense of time and space have floated away, here in the black, and with it any anxieties or fears he might have had.

He cannot hear the constant communications of The Flier within his mind, anymore. He cannot feel the rush of the winds on his body, or sense the power as it courses through him. He cannot sense the movements of those who work and toil within the aircraft he has become.

And, most disconcertingly of all, he can no longer feel the presence of the Imago within him, or sense that his Leader is near, anymore.

A lesser mind could have gone mad from this sudden, all-encompassing disconnection -- especially when he wonders how he got here, and flashes back to what little memory remains of the epic battle he just lost. Anyone else might be screaming in the hopes of being heard by some higher power, or gibbering in terror at the thought that this is death, and there's nothing awaiting but an eternity of black.

But he is no sad little soul, left to wander unawares in the world. He is The Dragon.

And he realizes that he may have finally achieved the perfect moment of Zen that accompanies the removal of all needs, desires, and distractions.

He gets the sense that he had been striving towards something, at the end of his life. Perhaps this is what he would have found at the end of that striving, perhaps not. But if this final, darkened silence is to be his new reality, then he can both accept and be content within it.

He can simply be.

Of course, that's when everything goes wrong.

At first, he's not sure where the light is coming from. There is a weird flickering in front of him, and that brings with it both awareness and pain.

The light solidifies, and with it the agony. Horizontal lines unfold, like an old television warming up. Shapes slowly resolve themselves, flickering and crackling.

(He has a flashback to a scene from that one, terrible western movie he watched along with SPYGOD, that one time, while pretending to be his lover. Only that was played for laughs. This makes him feel dread, once more.)

There is a brightness, sharp and painful, and then he's seeing things, once more. He sees a vast and ruined -- and eerily silent -- landscape: toppled stone temples and buildings, strewn with smoking heaps of twisted metal. Smokeless fires burn out of control, here and there, and men and women in garish, metal suits lie broken under the Sun.

Beyond it all is an ocean, roiling and vast. In that ocean he can see things moving around, just under its surface, or bobbing just above it. Wondrous and terrible things, seemingly born from nightmares inspired by the unknown depths of the wet below.

Just out of his field of vision -- which he cannot change, for he cannot move -- stands a great, white colossus, somehow standing upon the ocean, yet not going up or down with its waves. Its fists are caked with burning debris, and its baleful gaze sees all things at once.

His vision shifts again, as though someone were moving his head. And then someone is. He is picked up by hands, lifted up, and shown the rest of the landscape around him.

And at last he realizes what he is seeing, and cries out silently, in massive, Nirvana-dispelling despair.

The Lost City of the Imago is destroyed -- cracked and broken, shattered and flattened. Massive War Spawn drive their tentacles and pincers into what little remains, and pull out limp and passive Imago to shove into their massive, toothy maws.

And all around the ruin lies the sorry, smoking remnants of what was once The Flier -- what was once him. Heaps of metal and plastic smolder and buckle, and except for the occasional twitch or shudder, there is no sign of it trying to put itself back together again.

The Flier is dead. His body is gone.

And The Dragon cannot feel anything.

At some point, he wonders why he's still being held aloft. Then the hands that are keeping him up put him down on the ground, and turn him back to face their owner.

It's SPYGOD, of course.

He's still naked, and doesn't have so much as a scratch on him. He must have healed all that damage from earlier, and for that The Dragon curses him.

He's smiling, too, but it's not the kind smile, or the happy smile, or the "let's !@#$" smile. It's the smile he gives those he's just utterly and completely beaten, just before delivering the coup de grace.

The death smile. 

He's talking, SPYGOD is, but The Dragon cannot hear any of it. His eyes are working -- probably reconnected by his former lover -- but the ears are out of action, and probably strewn over a nearby heap, or buried under it.

As such, he does not hear the man say what he needs to say at this moment, though he can make out a few words, here and there. "Nice try," is one key phrase, as are "stupid," "evil," "alien," and "!@#$heads."

At some point, he stops rattling off insults and accusations, and just looks at him. When he starts up again, he seems almost tender, but The Dragon knows this is not directed at him. It's directed at the man The Dragon once was -- the dying, Chinese super-spy who foolishly threw in with GORGON in the hopes of gaining a new, healthy body, and eventually betraying them for his own purposes.

That one had no idea that the uploading procedure killed as it copied. He had no inkling, until it was too late, that the process made a new being: one made up of the memories of the original, but the mind and soul of an Imago.

And then one Dragon was dead and gone -- dust on the ground of the house they'd imprisoned him in --- and a new Dragon was alive and well, and ready to be put into action.

SPYGOD knows this, now (though how, exactly, is unknown). And now that he's no longer interested in mourning the man he loved -- at least for now -- he's gone back to excoriating The Dragon for having been born from that dead man's ashes. He's raging, screaming, frothing at the mouth. He's shaking his fists and shrieking, his face a mere inch away from whatever The Dragon is using to see with.

The Dragon cannot reply to this, any more than he can hear. He can only watch, helplessly, and wonder when the man who's beaten him will finally get it over with.

Or will he? This is the first time a takeover of the entire world has succeeded so well for so long. Will The Dragon be captured, then? Will he be nursed back to health, to some degree, and then put on trial? Will he be refitted and rebuilt, just to be torn down and executed for his role in things?

For a moment, he imagines himself on the witness stand -- proud and defiant. He will have nothing to say but the truth, and nothing to offer for defense except for the simple fact that he wanted to save his species from captivity, and then from the certain annihilation this planet will soon experience at the hands of (UNINTELLIGIBLE CONCEPT). 

He will proudly go to whatever guillotine they might make for him. He will stare into the executioner's eyes for only so long, and then stare into the distance, noble in death.

He did what he did for love, and let that be his epitaph.

He's so wrapped up in that thought that he almost loses track of SPYGOD's harangue. When he catches up, he realizes that the man isn't screaming or yelling, anymore. He's stepping back a few paces and putting his hands on his hips.

He's saying something about drinks, now. "Whiskey," "vodka," and "Scotch." "Beer," "beer," and more "beer."

And something about not having a chance to visit the bathroom since he left Tokyo...

The Dragon gasps and tries to protest what's about to happen, but he can't. He can only watch as SPYGOD reaches down, takes hold of his impossible genitals -- now unrolling just like a horse's penis -- and unleashes a heavy, steady, firehose-stream of caustic, smoking god-urine right into The Dragon's face.

It's like being washed away by a breaking, yellow tsunami at first, and then, for the first time since his Flier-body was smashed into the Lost City, he can at last feel pain. A horrible, nauseating, burning sensation as the !@#$ rushes through his eye sockets and begins to melt his living brain.

And as he feels his memories and hopes and dreams turn to runny, bloody mush in his skull -- reliving the same agony the real Dragon went through, in his last moments of life -- he can actually hear SPYGOD's black and mocking laughter, following him down into whatever true fate now awaits the likes of him.

* * *

And so -- as he sees nothing at all, ever again -- The Dragon does not see the world as it crawls back up into the light at the end of this black and red day.

He does not see common humanity rising up from fear and flight to retake their lives -- attacking those that would have killed them with any weapons they can bring to bear. He does not witness men, women, and precocious children smashing the skulls of the fallen, lest they get back up again and kill some more.

Today is not a good day to be merciful to a fallen foe.

He does not see what little remains of the strange armies his alien brothers and sisters fought against, and how they try to celebrate in the wake of this narrowest of victories. The term "Phyric" is used more than once, by some commanders who suffered much worse than others. And as for the spies who helped arrange these armies, most are simply too tired and weary to label it anything other than victory.

Today is not a good day to examine the costs too closely.

He does not see the sad, battered remnants of the heroes and strategic talents that SPYGOD and his mysterious "leader" assembled. Around the world, they stagger and stretch, wondering if this really is all over, or if they need to remain vigilant still. Some cheer, some cry, and some can only collapse in pure exhaustion, or else stare into the distance -- their minds broken from slaughter and loss.

Today is not a good day to feel like a hero.

He does not see the American President cheering and whooping it up from the safety of The B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G. in Neo York City, alternating between thanking his God and having some of Old Ben's special victory brew. He does not see how hard Ben Franklin is working to avoid saying something pithy or wise, now, knowing that it's best to let this man have this moment, as the sobering reality of what's to come will be painful enough.

Today is not a good day to be a leader of what little is left.

He does not see a group of demoralized men and women who could only stand by helplessly as the boy they fought tooth and nail to save from a monster dies under their watch -- his mind absorbed by a machine that seemed unwilling to do anything but kill his body. He does not see the disgusting thing that has just happened elsewhere in that building, while they struggled to save that boy, or the strange change that has just come over the city around them.

Today is not a good day to have not known the shape of the future.

He does not see the monster in human shape that his people bargained with, so many years ago, as he carefully slinks from these changes, unseen and unheard. He does not see that this person is still aroused from the ghastly and bloody horror he has created with his hands, a knife, and his genitals. He does not know this man's plans, or the terrible things he's about to do in their name.

Today is not a good day to be in the way of those who would shape the future.

He does not see a so-called outlaw journalist as he cries, holding the dead body of a woman he'd come to love. Neither of them saw as she walked between him and the weapon that was meant to take his life as he watched history happen, and how she did it with the certainty that comes from being in the right place at the right time. He does not see his allies and friends as they carry on the recording in his name, mourning both that loss and many, many more on this day.

Today is not a good day to have been focusing only on the big picture, and not seeing the small details.

He does not see one of the newly-minted heroes as she staggers downtown, amazed that she's still alive. He does not see the red-suited girl is so much in shock that she's having a hard time realizing how many of the new friends she made today, in battle, were not as lucky. He does not see up above her, on a tall building, where a young boy in a poorly-fitting, blue and white costume bleeds out from his nose and mouth, having given his all to keep a strange woman sniper alive. He does not see that the woman is long gone, having spared that boy's noble sacrifice next to no thought over the need to get away unseen.

Today is not a good day to have been called to one's destiny.

He does not see another group of demoralized men and women, as far South as one can get from Neo York City. He does not see a man stare at the blood on his blistered hands as he kneels in a dark hallway full of dead genetic experiments, too stunned at the events of the day to take it all in. He does not see the no-longer-hidden leader of the resistance as he waits for news from the outside world, somehow knowing that the greater parts of his plan have worked, but also knowing that many smaller and painful failures and oversights have yet to be tallied up.

And he does not see the self-proclaimed master magician of Earth as he kneels by one of those oversights -- the  brutalized body of the President's daughter -- and is unable to assuage the anguish of her mother or younger sister because there is nothing he can do, now.

Today is not a good day to have been too late to do anything.

He does not see what little remains of Alpha Base Seven, and the sorry, imploded remnants of its once-considerable crew -- brought down by fear, jealousy, and motives that may never be fully understood. He does not see the shattered remnants of a lunar escape pod, tumbling slowly back towards Earth in time with the expanding wave of debris from what was once Earth's best defense, and then its worst enemy. He does not see the small remnant of the man that destroyed that defense, barely kept alive by what little power his craft has left to give.

Today is not a good day to have been willing to sacrifice everything for the cause.

Nearer to him, The Dragon does not see a pair of men entwined together on the molecular level, shivering in and out of phase with reality as they fight to come back to it, step by step. Nor does he see the wreck of a repurposed Nazi flying saucer -- itself repurposed from alien technology -- as it falls to the bottom of the Pacific, trailing debris behind it. Amongst the things falling down are full bottles of vodka, a silken, never-cleaned cat pillow that says "Бегемот," and an AK-47.

Today is not a good day to have been along for the ride on a plan too uncertain to write down. 

He does not see a taciturn man inside a great, white robot as he howls in despair, crying his eyes out over what he sees on the screen. He does not see the burning, mangled horror that is the center of Tokyo, and the giant pile of dead Imago that dominates its center. He does not see an android that looks like a young girl lying atop that heap -- her head at a strange angle, her eyes dark and blank.

Today is not a good day to have risked what you loved in the name of a greater duty.

He does not see a gloriously ugly robot finally return to her secret, underground base, only to find it completely bare. He does not see that all of her work is gone, all of her tools are taken, all of her Slaughterbots have disappeared. He does not see that all that remains are ten words, carefully painted on the wall by the most dangerous woman in the world:

WHEN I SEE YOU, I WILL KILL YOU

START RUNNING. 

Today is not a good day to have been reckless in planning, or untrue with one's allies.

He also does not see, in a pocket reality, a metal monster screaming as it realizes that it has no way to return to our world, and gain its revenge upon SPYGOD for the crime of existing. He does not see that the exotic components in the machine it became have burned out from the strain it put itself under, trying to follow where its targets went. He does not see its comatose, meat body lying dead in a sorry splatter of blood, bone, and feeding tubes in Dubai -- a victim of the push and pull of fighting that took place there, earlier this day.

(Today is not a good day to have been a mentally !@#$ed-up supervillain, either, it would seem.)

And The Dragon does not see the living, either.

He does not see families as they reunite and thank their Gods that they have survived. He does not see communities band together to clean up the mess, put out their fires, and tend to their wounded. He does not see leaders come back out to gather their people, or new ones step forward to be counted in the moment of need.

He does not see old friends and new allies as they clasp hands, grateful for the presence and aid of one another. He does not see the brotherhood that comes with war as it transforms the hearts of many people around the world -- setting aside old hatreds and rivalries, and creating in their place the hope for a new beginning. He does not see that the peace he and his people had falsely peddled has finally come around, at least for some.

He does not see that humanity has survived yet another attempt to subjugate, enslave, harvest, and kill it. He does not see that, while there are tears and sadness, there is also joy and hope. He does not see that from these ashes, this world can arise again -- perhaps stronger and better than the last time.

He does not see the story of human survival as it is written once again.

But he does see that today was not a good day to have been the cause of all this sorrow, destruction, and death -- for as long as it takes him to die from being !@#$ed on, anyway.

SPYGOD laughs. The pain recedes into a speck of memory. Everything goes well and truly black.

And then-

(SPYGOD is listening to Black Celebration (Depeche Mode) and having a Black Death Beer )