REPOST: RAC Challenge! #9

Arthur Spitzer arspitzer at earthlink.net
Tue Sep 29 15:28:58 PDT 2015


REPOST: RAC Challenge! #9

Chapter by Marc "Notthebeastmaster" Singer who wrote a
number of stories for RACC mostly under the OMEGA imprint.
He also finished up the Savior of Net cascade.. (and did
a very nice job of that..)

From: franke at ucs.indiana.edu (Jerry L Franke)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.creative
Subject: REPOST: RAC Challenge! Ch. 9
Date: 10 Nov 1995 04:39:34 GMT

Continuing the retrospective...

===========================================================================

                                RAC CHALLENGE
                                       
Chapter 9: A Farewell to Arms (and a few legs)

   by Marc "The Jazz" Singer
   title, and my snappy new nickname, by Kirk "Bierce, comma" Ambrose
     ________________________________________________________________
   
    Brussels, Belgium...
    
   
   
   "His name is Horst Bock-Pilsner Malevo and he's the maddest scientist
   alive. Now he possesses the means to conquestor the world." Malevo
   slipped a tiny round object, not unlike a superball, into a small
   opening in a strange, twisted device. And, much to the horror of the
   onlooking Paragon the Ultimate Man and Tito and Tina the Ultimate
   Twins, the ball fit the opening perfectly. Doctor Malevo rose into
   the air, crackling with energy. "His name is Horst Bock-Pilsner
   Malevo," he cried, "and now he's going to kick some Ultimate Ass!"
   
   "Galloping Snails!" cried Paragon, the Ultimate Man. "Doctor Malevo
   now possesses the Ultimate Marble and the Jas Rswert! And he's so
   drunk on power, he's referring to himself in the third person!" Then
   Paragon realized the power of the combined devices washing over him
   as well. "No," he gasped, "he's also making me give... running
   commentary and plot summaries... this makes me wish I'd never...
   taken Tito and Tina to Brussels to use the Ultimate Library to learn
   about the mysterious Ultimate Menace... especially since Tito might
   have gotten brain damage from Tina constantly whacking him on the
   head... now no doubt I'll black out from the pain and fall to the
   grou--" Paragon blacked out from the pain and fell to the ground.
   
   Tina the Ultimate Twinette looked around. Paragon was down, all the
   Belchans--er, Flems--er, good citizens of Brussels had fled in
   terror, and Tito was drooling from his apparent brain damage. That
   would teach her to smack her own brother in the head with Ultimate
   Strength. Now it was up to her to stop Malevo.
   
   Then Tina saw Mary Lu Retina: the Ultimate Woman, a psychotic
   super-villainess, and through a rather Dickensian coincidence, Tito
   and Tina's mom. "Mom will save us," Tina said, "just like the time
   our third-grade gym teacher flunked us, and mom ripped off his arms
   and bludgeoned him to death with them."
   
   Tina paused. When she looked at it that way, it was kind of dumb that
   they hadn't realized their mom was the Ultimate Woman a lot earlier.
   
   Tina ran to where her mom was lying unconscious on the ground, but
   before she could get there, Mary Lu suddenly became encased in a
   sticky yellow mass. Tina scooped a little onto her finger, and licked
   it. "Egg salad... with extra toluene! That's Malevo's special
   recipe!" She looked up at the flying Malevo. "How did you do that?"
   
   "His name is Horst Bock-Pilsner Malevo, and with the Jas Rswert and
   the Ultimate Marble, now possesses any superpower he can imagine!
   He'd long planned to... oh, shoot, he's doing it again." Malevo
   flicked a small switch on the Jas Rswert from Third Person to First.
   "Ah, that's much better. Now, where was he--I?"
   
   "Possessing any superpower you can imagine," Tina yelled. She was
   furiously scooping the egg salad off Mary Lu before Malevo also
   realized he'd left the Jas Rswert idling on Villain's Lecture.
   
   "Thank you, my dear. For that, I shall only kill you 'fairly
   painfully.' As I was saying, the unique combination of Marble and
   Rswert allows me to remove all carbon from my body. And, as I once
   told that idiot Paragon, carbon is the one substance that keeps
   humans from having superpowers!" [* RACChallenge #2--ed.] Malevo
   pointed to his left, at the floating editor's caption he'd summoned
   to show just how powerful he was. "And now, with these powers, I
   shall--what the hell, did Paragon leave this thing on Lecture? No
   wonder the bastard's so longwinded..." Malevo switched off the
   lecture mode as well. And he looked at Tina with murder in his eyes.
   
     ________________________________________________________________
   
    Some Spooky Asteroid...
    
   
   
   "You see?" said the Pen-Ultimate Man to the two evil figures at his
   side. "Malevo and the others are too busy fighting amongst
   themselves. And with our proper entrance established, the Ultimate
   Collective will be helpless to prevent us from arriving on Earth."
   
   "You'd better be right, Reeves," said the human-sized figure,
   grabbing the Pen-Ultimate Man's neck with a cold metallic arm. "I
   have a score to settle, and I'm not letting anything stop me. Least
   of all the Collective."
   
   "Not to worry," Reeves choked in a high-pitched rasp. "Those Ultimate
   Morons have provided us with the perfect 'back door' to Earth. Soon
   it will be ours for the conquering."
   
   "Conquesting," said Spurgo, the giant third figure whose mere
   presence filled the asteroid with evil, not to mention the smell of
   trout. "Spurgo likes his allies to say conquesting.'"
   
   "Whatever you say, big guy. With all of the superheroes down for the
   count, Earth will be a conquesting smorgasbord."
   
   The mystery man's metal fingers tightened around Reeves's neck. His
   free hand pointed to the screen of the small Watchman they were all
   gathered around (a clumsy proposition in and of itself, because
   Spurgo's toenails alone could have been said to be the size of large
   Dobermans, if Dobermans were giant toenail-shaped creatures about
   twenty feet tall). "All of the superheroes?" the mystery man cried.
   "Then who are they?"
     ________________________________________________________________
   
    Brussels, Someplace Marginally Less Spooky...
    
   
   
   Malevo looked at Tina with murder in his eyes, and his twisted brain
   thought of the thirteen most despicable super-powers imaginable
   ripping her to shreds... all that remained was the act...
   
   "Hold it right there, Malevo!" A green blur rocketed up from the
   streets below and careened into him. Malevo hit the ground hard, only
   remembering at the last minute to give himself invulnerability. He
   climbed out of the crater, and saw that Tina was now protected by six
   small children in green uniforms.
   
   "Back off, Malevo," the tallest child said, in French-accented
   English. "If you try anything else in this city, you'll have to
   answer to... The Brussels Sprouts!"
   
   Malevo was too stunned to say or do anything. But before the Brussels
   Sprouts could leap into action, a muscle-bound man in a silvery
   costume swept out of the clouds and dive-bombed the six children.
   Before the children could run, the flying man swept his hands
   forward. Each hand carried a large silvery disk with a square pattern
   on the inside, and the man clapped them together like cymbals,
   trapping the Brussels Sprouts in between. "You nevair should 'ave let
   your guard down, my petites sprouts," he cried, "for now you are at
   the mercy of your arch-enemie... le Belgian Waffle! Nyah-ha-ha!"
   
   Malevo staggered around in a circle. All over Brussels, costumed
   combatants were springing out of the woodwork and beating the snot
   out of each other. Afraid he knew what was going on, Malevo looked
   down at his Ultimate Device....
     ________________________________________________________________
   
    A Few Feet Away, A Place Of Equal Spookiness...
    
   
   
   "Before I fell unconscious," Mary Lu coughed, after Tina had scooped
   the egg salad off her face, "I set the Ultimate Marble from 'stream'
   to 'spray.' The carbon removal should have a much wider field of
   effect now..."
   
   Tina gasped. "Then you mean..."
   
   "Everyone in Brussels has super powers, and we're trapped right in
   the middle of it."
   
   "Again?" Tina moaned.
   
   "There's no time for complaining... get me out of this salad!"
   
   Tina wasn't sure if that was such a good idea. After all, Mary Lu was
   a homicidal maniac who could probably kill every single one of the
   superpowered Belgians. But, on the minus side, she didn't let Tina
   and Tito stay up as late as Paragon did.
   
   Then again, Paragon wasn't much help right now. He was still reeling
   from Malevo's whammy, giving expository dialogue even in his sleep.
   "Tina must be debating whether to free Mary Lu, whom we recently
   learned is her mom and my former sex kitten... meanwhile, I'm still
   unconscious, yet giving dialogue... now I'm giving dialogue on my
   dialogue... Drat! I'm caught in a loop... Drat! I'm..."
   
   Tina realized the only way to get Paragon out of this jam was to
   start doing something else he could narrate. So she pulled Mary Lu
   out of the egg salad, and said, "We've got to get the Ultimate Device
   away from Malevo. Maybe that can undo the damage."
   
   "Or re-do some old damage," Mary Lu said, looking at Malevo's arms,
   which had the nerve to still be attached to his torso. They were kind
   of tantalizing, actually. Mary Lu charged across the street and
   grabbed the [* RACChallenge #2--ed.] caption, which had fallen to the
   ground after the Sprouts' attack on Malevo. (The Sprouts themselves
   were currently being covered in syrup and butter by the Belgian
   Waffle, who was licking his lips.) Pulling the * out of the caption,
   Mary Lu hurled it at Malevo like a shuriken.
   
   It knocked the Ultimate Device out of his hands. Mary Lu grabbed the
   razor-sharp d from the caption and put her hand through the loop at
   the bottom, wielding it like a cutlass. Screaming in triumph, she
   leapt at Malevo. Brandishing the d and eyeing his unsevered limbs,
   Mary Lu said, "It looks like this'll be a farewell to arms... and a
   few legs."
   
   Malevo gasped and pointed behind Mary Lu. "This is no time for
   amputation, woman, particularly mine! We have to stop this terrible
   new menace!"
   
   Mary Lu smirked. "I'm not afraid of anything that Brussels could
   throw at me. Unless Aaron Levitz was in the radius of your carbon
   removal and now has awesome super powers."
   
   "It's worse than that, woman! It's-- it's--"
   
   A shadow loomed over Mary, who finally turned around. She saw the
   grinning figure behind her. And she screamed, "It's... you! And...
   they're still letting you teach gym?!?!?!?"
   
     * To be continued in RACChallenge! #10! But first...
       
   
     ________________________________________________________________
   
   
   
    Dain Bramage
    
   
   
      The backup story, not at all spooky until the end.
      
   It was all because his dad, Dirk Darringer aka Paragon the Ultimate
   Man, liked the Jackson 5.
   
   Tito could still think. He didn't look like he could think, because
   he was sitting in the middle of Brussels drooling--and not because
   his sister Tina had been smacking him on the head, but because of a
   much more sinister factor. Ultimately, because Dirk liked the Jackson
   5. And he'd named his son after his favorite Jackson.
   
   Tito tried to warn somebody, anybody, of the impending danger, but
   all that came out was a little giggle. Tito cursed the day he'd come
   to Brussels--wait, that was today. Well, he cursed it anyway. Dirk
   had taken him and Tina to the Ultimate Library to find out exactly
   who this mysterious "Ultimate Menace" the Collective feared so much
   was. Unfortunately, they only found grim prophecies... one book with
   a prophecy so grim that Tito had been afraid to share it with the
   others. And now he couldn't warn them before it was too late.
   
   It was in the Titonomicon of Abdul Al'Bhubles, the sorcerer who had
   been driven mad by his own work and turned himself into a chimp.
   Bhubles wrote that the Ultimate Menace would break through to Earth
   three times, each time heralded by a man named Tito. Once in
   Yugoslavia in the 1940s, to start a chain of events that would
   culminate in brutal ethnic cleansing, not to mention the most hideous
   car ever seen on the planet. Once in America in the 1970s, which
   explained the puzzling success of "ABC" and other Jackson hits. And
   once in Belgium in the 1990s, to take over the world and torment
   innocent souls by making them drive around in Yugos with radios that
   only played "ABC" and other Jackson hits. It would be a hell on
   Earth.
   
   Tito had tried to leave Brussels as soon as possible, but then a
   strange paralysis set in and it was too late. His sister thought it
   was brain damage, but that was only because he'd laughed at the
   overused joke of reversing the letters to form "Dain Bramage." Hey,
   you'd laugh too, if you knew that the Ultimate Menace was coming to
   Earth with his buddies Spurgo the Conquestor and the traitorous
   Pen-Ultimate Man, and they were using your body as the gateway...
   you'd laugh, because you'd know that the people of Earth wouldn't
   have anything to laugh about once they got here... you'd laugh as
   Tito is laughing, because otherwise it would be a really depressing
   way to end this chapter... um, this chapter of his life, yeah, that's
   it...
     ________________________________________________________________
   
   Will Brussels be overrun by superheroes? Will Tito bring the villains
   to Earth? Will Mary Lu have to face her children's old gym teacher
   with only a lower-case letter for defense? Will the Belgian Waffle
   really eat the Brussels Sprouts? Will Paragon ever wake up from his
   trance? Come to think of it, is this really a blurb for next issue or
   is it just Paragon babbling?
   
   These questions and more may very well be ignored in:
     * Next issue: Chapter 10: I Got Those Tampa Bay Buccaneers Blues by
       Mark Rosendorf
       
   
     ________________________________________________________________
   
   Well, that was fun! Let me know what you thought, because those
   bullies over in Omega rarely let me flex my humor writing! I'd like
   to thank Henry "Longest, Tallest, and" Broaddus for starting this
   enterprise, and all the previous writers for continuing it.
   Especially Kirk "Nectar and" Ambrose for providing a beautiful
   set-up, and Daniel "Chief Justice Earl" Warren for creating the
   carbon-removal plot point, which I'm sure he never thought he'd see
   again. And good luck to Mark "Dozin'" Rosendorf, who inherits a far
   more convoluted plot than any human deserves. It's been a ball!
   
   
    Marc
============================================================================

--

Jerry L. Franke                        franke at cs.indiana.edu
Computer Science Dept.                 Indiana University
formerly from Florida State University http://www.cs.fsu.edu/~franke



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