Starfall: Spellbinder #4

[Andrew Perron]

On Fri, 9 Dec 2011 01:43:45 +0000 (UTC), William Strickland wrote:

> In the realm of faerie, there was a butler who wasn't a butler
> anymore, because he had nobody left to butle.
> 
> Hey, I'm a wizard; I can claim that's a word if I want to. Besides,
> I'm narrating here, okay?

See, my problem is, I'd phrase it "to butle *to*".

> Anyway. This entity-formerly-known-as-butler now had the faerie-
> kingdom known as the Realm of Loud Sorrows to his own. It wasn't
> nearly so loud or sorrowful anymore, because he wasn't like the last
> person who had run it. In fact, it was actually turning into a bright,
> cheerful place; he was on permanent vacation, after all.

Oooooooh.  Neat.

> "This," he declared, "Is the good life. And it will be for at least
> two more days, but no more than five."
> 
> He frowned, wondering when he had developed a gift for prophecy, and
> then shrugged, deciding it wasn't important. There's always ways
> around trouble, and as a butler he was very good at finding them.
> 
> Besides, it was at least two days away. Plenty of time to enjoy some
> of those fancy drinks with little umbrellas in them.

Bwahaha. <3

> The Grim, Dark Adventures of Spellbinder, Mystic Defender of the Earth
> Dimension!

XD Oh my.

> Chest heaving, covered in sweat, the whole routine. And by now it
> really had become routine; it'd been happening just about every night
> since I got the first of the phylacteries, the one that gave me a
> headache every time I tried to think about it.

Innnnnnnteresting.

> Also, apparently giant city-stomping monsters enjoy automatic tax free
> status in Japan these days. I wondered if there was some way I could
> get in on that before going back to more pressing matters.

...one wonders how other countries expect to levy taxes on them.

> After prying myself off the roof of the patio, I started to ask who he
> was, but then realized that was a stupid question. Instead I said,
> "Good morning, Coyote Oldman. Why him?" I also wanted to ask 'why me'
> but was starting to get used to supernatural entities being an
> expectedly unexpected part of my life.

Good girl!  She's catching on quicker than most protagonists.

> He chuckled, which was an odd sound coming from a dog's mouth (and
> making it even stranger that his speech sounded perfectly human). "No,
> no. You won't like the change, but it'll be good for you, and
> afterwords you'll be a bit more alive than you are now."

Ahhhhhh, one of *those*.

> I eyed him for a while, trying to figure out if he was lying. But I'm
> not good enough at that to figure out a trickster god (or a trickster
> dog),

*giggles fiendishly*

> He nodded, and we went in and ate. I had the bizarre experience of
> watching an ancient deity of incalculable power eating off a paper
> plate on the floor and enjoying it.

Where does a god eat?  Wherever they want.

> I was trying to grow
> some outside my cottage, and working on another patch in the little
> world inside my soul, but the soil seemed to be too thin in both
> places. At the time that worried me less than it probably should have.

Eesh.  Talk about metaphor.

> Athena paused. "Yes. Yes, one million dollars is a lot of money." She
> was starting to think that having him out of the house would be a
> blessing. As the god of thunder whooped and cheered and traipsed down
> the hall - never should the lord of Olympus be traipsing! - she
> decided it was time to talk to Hera about getting Olympus some new
> management. It would be hard to figure out who should take the throne,
> mostly because everyone would want to, but she had by now decided that
> it would be entirely worth it, and believed most of the other gods
> would agree.

Who will be... The Next Pantheon Godhead!?

> Others aren't. They have no powers (at least, nothing obvious), they
> don't like to show off, they carefully guard their secret identities,
> they even have day jobs.
> 
> Silver Arrow was one of that latter type, damn him.

Woo!  Crossover!

> So when the Silver Arrow arrived on the scene, he stood there staring
> for a bit as two rival gangs stood there pelting each other with balls
> of foam about half a foot across.

*snerk* Nice.

> "I'm
> going around and introducing myself to crime fighters such as yourself
> so that you can call me in when you need help with magic, mythic
> monsters, and miscellaneous mystic mayhem.

But can she say that three times fast!?

> "Crap," said Arrow and immediately launched a weighted projectile at
> the priest. Did he sense it too? That would be interesting if so, but
> it's more likely this just wasn't the first time he'd seen what
> happens when some mysterious robed guy waves his arms and chants all
> hokey-like.

That is a pretty big giveaway.

> The cult he'd started was
> doing well, bolstering the criminals of the land he had once ruled to
> the point where they were opposing the nation's military on nearly
> equal ground, and enabling to expand their reach beyond its borders
> into the fat, rich, feckless nation to its north.

Feckless!?

> Fortunately, he had just the thing. The super heroes were mighty
> indeed, but they had a great and terrible weakness; rather than ruling
> through fear, they relied on the goodwill of the public. And good will
> was such a terribly fickle thing. All it needed was a push and it
> would begin to eat itself, and before long it would be gone, replaced
> by fear and hate.

That old trick again!?

> A man walked out of the dark, grim streets and into the grim darkness
> of a grimly dark alleyway. In the grim dark of night, he was hardly
> noticed, which suited him just fine. In a grim, dark sort of way.

I sense a motif.

> He imagined
> the final explosion unfolding behind him in slow motion as he walked,
> although in truth it moved at the same speed any other explosion
> would.

*cackles*

> Mostly, this is because beating the crap out of a small army of drug
> soldiers is amazing good fun. Which is just what I was thinking at the
> time, although I was trying to keep it off my face.
> 
> "Your mask looks like it's giggling," said Silver Arrow. I guess I
> wasn't trying hard enough.

Eeeeeeeeeee. <3 I love it when they love their work.

> "Shut up," I explained. That was actually something I was pretty
> touchy about at the time, because for all I liked being able to bench-
> press an SUV, I was still uncomfortable with the reason for it. "We
> can't all pick the way we're born!"

I'd do a "Born This Way" parody here, but I'm not that familiar with her
music.  Anyone else want to step up to bat?

> The spell only lasts a few seconds - the trick is to make
> people drop their guns because they think it's permanent. My handy
> dandy aura of trustworthiness helped here - I'd totally never lie to a
> comrade, after all. The clattering of firearms on pavement told me it
> had worked.

Ooooooooooh.  Nice.

> Hermes smiled. Loki didn't always like it when a plan went wrong, but
> for the Thrice-Great it was the best part.

All part of the game.

> "Or we could have another player," said Loki. He frowned at a memory
> of something he'd spotted earlier, when he'd been watching the mystic
> defender bathe.

Oh gods. D:

> Hermes grinned. "I don't know. No. Idea." He laughed. "Isn't it
> grand?"

I've mentioned I like Hermes, right?  'cause I really do.

> The creature was tall and
> covered in wrinkled red skin that looked like uncovered muscle, and
> tipped with hooves and long, curling horns. Each hand ended in long,
> vicious claws, and so on and so forth. He was really terrifying if you
> didn't know him. But I knew him.
> 
> "Bob?", I asked incredulously.

You know, it's predictable... but hell, I loves it. <3

> "Is that what you call her? Ha! Maybe I should move here too if I'll
> get such a snazzy title out of it!" He smiled. "And besides, even if
> we weren't friends, I don't stand a chance against someone like her.
> And neither do you. Give it up, boyos." His little speech, aside from
> being true, gave me time to work the spell to send him home.

I like Bob. <3

> "If we surrender," said the older one, "Can you protect our souls?"
> 
> That was a good question. I had to think about it.

Oooooh. Now this, on the other hand, is an angle I hadn't considered
before.

> "Right. Then you probably shouldn't tell your wife about this," I said
> as I grabbed him and shoved his face at my cleavage, into which he
> vanished.
> 
> Jose stared at me and grabbed his nose as it started to bleed.

Oh goodness. XD

> The strangest thing, tho, thought Alejandro, was the strawberry
> patches. Someone had been trying to grow them here, although they
> weren't doing very well; the soil was apparently very poor after you
> cleared away the grass that covered it. It was also a strange red
> color, although it felt loamy when he ran his hands through it.

Suggestive!

> I heard his mind laughing at that, which is another weird experience I
> wish everyone could have at least once.

Damn.  I totally want to try that.

> "Hey, it works," he responded, dropping his concentration and talking
> out loud again. "I need to tell my cousin Cleo about this. She's a
> magic user too, this would save us a fortune on phone calls."
> 
> Or maybe he had a relative who used magic and this was more or less
> normal to him. Huh.

Chelsea, never underestimate Jeff's affability.

> So, Texas. Never saw any cowboys there; I was pretty disappointed.
> Once again I felt like I'd been lied to all my life, and so on.

Weird bit of shelteredness.

> Sorry, I'll get off my high horse now. It's just, y'know... Goddamn
> *necromancers*.

Man, Starfall has a thing against zombies. XD

> Turns out his suit of supertech powered armor had started out as an
> experiment to see if he could make a portable air conditioned
> environment, and just kind of ballooned from there once he realized
> what he was creating. So now he could fly, shoot stun lasers (he was
> proudest of those, really) and lift heavy things and so on, and he
> used it to fight crime because, as he said, "Hell, someone has to".

As Saxon would say, costumed heroes going about being ostentatiously
civic-minded!  Excellent!

> We stood there quietly for a while. After a while, Rocket shook his
> head and said "I still can't believe the zom-- the ghouls went for the
> Hostess® Fruit Pies(tm). Or that they exploded when they ate 'em."
> 
> "Believe it," I said. "Like I told you, decomposition speeds up
> when--"

...see, I'd have included a bit more ridiculous exposition. XD

> The joke is that if people ask
> 'where do you put it all', I can actually tell them, although they
> probably won't understand without a lot of explaining and an
> introduction to the idea of pan-dimensional metaphysics.

See, I've always wanted that power.

> Tank took a moment to collect his thoughts as Cenotaph finally fell to
> the ground, more from apparent exhaustion than actual damage. It had
> been a long fight, but Cenotaph was beginning to crack and become
> fatigued, and Tank was neither. He was exhilarated, but despite the
> fact that they had been fighting for two full hours, he wasn't the
> slightest bit tired.
> 
> The fight had ranged across the docks district, and had resulted in
> the destruction of most of the warehouses, several of the docks, and
> even the sinking of a tanker. Tank did not care; he was sure the
> tanker had been smuggling something anyway, for reasons he couldn't
> pin down and didn't bother to think about. More gangsters had come to
> try to stop him, and he'd killed them. Some police, probably under the
> gangster's pay, had come to try to stop him as well - they must be
> crooked to try to stop his quest! - and he'd killed them as well.

...wow.  Now *there*'s your adrenaline high.

> and was
> probably pissing off other people without even knowing it (that is
> part of the territory when you're a superhero; random newspaper
> editors and corporate bigwigs will abruptly blame all their problems
> on you for little to no apparent reason),

Seems like the normal modus operandi for many such people.

> so since the logical
> assumption was that an enemy's uncovered my secret identity, such as
> it is, I did what any sane, rational person does in these situations.
> I reached for a weapon while planning on how to kill the guy without
> revealing who I am.

...see, it's the word "kill" that's problematic...

> Oh. That explained it - the Knight of Cydonia, a superhero from
> another world, was known to have shape-shifting powers he used in
> combat. I guess he could use them cosmetically too. He was really one
> of the top end super-people, if not *the* top end super-person.
> Between telepathy, super-strength, shape-shifting, some sort of
> psychic sword, and a bunch of other odds and ends, he had a solution
> for just about every problem.

Interesting!  Has he been mentioned before?

> "Okay, well. I have this," I said, handing him a business card.
> "Slightly psychic posterboard. If you focus on it, it'll put you in
> mental contact with me no matter where I am. I'm pretty sure it even
> works through time differentials."

I assume it would be relative to the original timeframe of the card.

> This guy was the
> genuine article, whether through birth or training or being struck by
> lightning while holding a walking stick and mixing chemicals in a
> cosmic ray storm on an experimental bomb range. (That totally happened
> to a guy, too. Seventeen simultaneous OSHA violations.)

Oshi--

> "Television on," he said, and the television turned on. He'd patented
> a lot of neat little knicknacks like that, and they were starting to
> make him wealthy. Which is why he could afford the mobile comfort zone
> that was his suit, as well as a nice house in an affluent part of
> town.

You know, I'm surprised that I can't think of anybody who's combined
"independently wealthy hero" with "super-inventor hero" before.

> Rocket cursed to himself. Something needed to be done about this, and
> fast. He would have to get together some people and go after the guy
> before the media said--
> 
> "Could this be a new kind of super-hero, one willing to break the law
> and even kill, in order to hand out their own idea of justice?"
> 
> ...damn. Before they said that.

Gosh dark it. >:/

Andrew "NO .SIG MAN" "Juan" Perron, the plot keeps rollin' along~