SG: Rad #94 (1/2): We Will Eat

[Gary]

     Ninjas had never been Rad's favorite foe--at least, not the kind
of ninjas he used to encounter in his old days of being a superguy.
There was little they could do against his psychokinetic blasts, and
they seemed too occupied by their innate need to pose and issue
bizarre ultimatums to actually fight.  Their sole advantage had been
numbers.  And some of their poses were kind of cool, and thus
distracting.  Rad later learned that some ninjas were actually good at
ninja activities such as lightning-quick death strikes and stealth and
throwing smoke bombs so that they do not rebound, but had never
encountered such exemplars of ninja-ness in person.
     He observed that he was in no danger of encountering such a ninja
today.  The thirty or so people who had burst into the large, shadowy,
goat-scented, stuff-filled office/studio space of his friend Templar
Maccabee, the fallen Hollywood star formerly known as Criticalman,
were about as far below what he considered to be the 'average ninja'
as the kind of ninja he would have liked to fight was above.  Their
black robes were ill-fitted at best, and they brandished throwing
stars and donuts as if they could not distinguish the difference.
(The donuts were present because a donut delivery guy had recently
been absorbed into their wannabe ninja troupe.)  A couple phony ninjas
fell down as they attempted poses beyond their clearly non-ninja-like
physical capabilities.  The only point Rad could see in the favor of
these 'pseudo-ninjas' was that none of them appeared to be Timothy Van
Patten.
     "Hai kiba!" they exclaimed.  "We judo chop and zoom-zoom our way
to the Tom!  We seek the Tom!  Toshiba!"
     The only Tom in the vicinity was another friend of Rad's--Tom
McCavish-Laffalot, the former MicroVax.  Together, he, Rad, and Manny
Seconds had come to Templar's studio in Van Nuys to seek help from
Guillermo, the seven-foot-tall anthropomorphic donkey (formerly known
as Badass) working for Templar as his advisor on explosives and guns
and general violence and how to make it look good in his movies.  Both
Guillermo and Tom had contacts through which they could investigate
the man formerly known as The Programmer, on the instructions of
'Miranda Satori' (who Rad and Manny and very few others knew to be a
pseudonym for Rad's sister, Akane Moroboshi, the former Radian,
falsely believed by the world at large to be dead, and so reclusive
and elusive that she might as well have been).  Tom had managed to dig
up a connection between The Programmer's current employer and the
mega-corporation named Harxxon, which employed Manny.  Rad could not
believe that the sudden invasion of these pseudo-ninjas was a
coincidence.
     "Will you guys stop that?" Guillermo asked, swatting away three
pseudo-ninjas who were attempting to climb him.  "Just because there's
thirty of you---"
     Ten more pseudo-ninjas swung through the previously shattered
studio windows.  Several skidded on the bare, glass-littered floor and
crashed into 'futuristic' movie props.
     "--forty of you, don't think I won't personally give your
individual not-ninja asses a good kick--ow!"
     "Take that, grasshopper!" the pseudo-ninjas yelled.  "We seek the
Tom!  We are ninjas and stuff!  Mitsubiggi!"
     All at once, the forty or so pseudo-ninjas lifted their weapons
and/or donuts and rushed en masse toward Tom, Manny, Templar,
Guillermo, and Rad.  After pausing for a display of nearly-
synchronized facepalming--only 'nearly' because it had been a long
time since they had been in this sort of situation--Rad, Guillermo,
and Templar moved so that they could defend Manny and Tom.
     Rad's psychokinetic blasts punched holes in the ill-considered
assault, but the pseudo-ninjas were on them before he could launch
more.  Guillermo lobbed a stun grenade toward the rear of the pile,
then swung his fists in wide arcs, sending attackers flying.
     "Eat our ninja porcupine!" one yelled.  "I swing this mighty...
lobster?  Spool your trout of mass destruction no more?"
     "We're all Sir Garnet today!" another exclaimed, as he attempted
to shove a glazed donut up Templar's nose.  Templar, the one among
them most clearly not in top physical shape, nevertheless was able to
shake free and retaliate.  Long black strips of celluloid sprayed from
Templar's thumbs, ensnaring his attacker and a few other
pseudo-ninjas.
     Rad blasted a couple more targets, and noticed Manny's look of
intense concentration.  When several of the pseudo-ninjas turned on
one another, starting up smoke bombs and then dropping them into one
another's costumes while shrieking 'Bjork!', he realized that Manny
was using his old confusion-causing abilities on their foes.  He had
forgotten that Manny, unlike his brother Eivandt, had not lost his
mind-altering abilities.
     A moment later, Manny crumpled to the floor.  Behind him, a
pseudo-ninja brandished a pair of numchucks and yelled something
incomprehensible.  Rad blasted him into the nearest wall.
     "Like, how did he get past us, dudes?" Rad asked.
     "Who did?" replied Templar, as he wrapped a couple more pseudo-
ninjas in celluloid.  "I didn't see any---"
     "Behold our ninja badness!" another assailant called out, as he
slammed cream-filled donuts down on Templar's thumbs.  The celluloid,
undamaged by this ineffectual assault, arced back to find the
attacker.  It was successful, but also managed to ensnare Templar.
     "Urk!" said Templar, as he was bound mummy-style to the
pseudo-ninja.
     "Hai-kiba?" asked the pseudo-ninja.
     [Stock footage: old ladies not clapping.]
     "That's two of us down," said Guillermo, as he tossed a pseudo-
ninja into a balsa-wood model of an alien spaceship.  The model, Rad
saw, took more damage than the pseudo-ninja.  "They shouldn't even be
able to... hey, stop that!"
     The anthropomorphic donkey staggered as no fewer than six pseudo-
ninjas climbed on him, all trying to knock him over.  What Rad found
strange was that they had abandoned their weapons and/or
confectionery, and were instead slapping at Guillermo with their bare
hands.
     "Smack that!" they exclaimed in unison.  "All on the floor!"
     "Are we on the floor?" one of them asked.
     "Smack that!" the other pseudo-ninjas shouted, while Guillermo
windmilled his arms, trying to knock some of them off.  "'Till you get
sore!  Smack that!"
     Rad glanced down at Manny, and observed that his friend still
seemed unconscious.  He was not sure why the pseudo-ninjas had gone
from lame ninja exclamations to lame song lyric exclamations, even if
this attack actually seemed more effective.  With two psychokinetic
blasts, he dislodged three of the pseudo-ninjas assailing Guillermo,
enabling the former mercenary to swat away the other three.
     "How can there be more?" Guillermo asked.  Rad had lost count of
how many pseudo-ninjas had been in the room at the start of the
battle, and of how many he, Guillermo, Templar, and Manny had actually
dispatched, but was almost certain the room should not still have been
as crowded as it was.  He blasted holes in the crowds of advancing
pseudo-ninjas, then felt hands on his arms and ankles.
     "We seek the Tom!" two pseudo-ninjas exclaimed at him.  "You are
not the Tom!  What is up with that?"
     Rad shook them off and looked around.  Where *was* Tom?
     The large room filled with a rumbling sound.  Rad, Guillermo, and
the pseudo-ninjas all turned toward the shadowy far end of the room.
What they beheld was something that would have filled an ordinary
person with fear.  Rad was no ordinary person, and even he felt his
nerves shake.
     "I, like, knew this place smelled like those for, like, a
reason," he said, just before the herd of gunbelt-wearing goats ran
headlong into them all.

                                 ***

                                 RAD
                             Episode 94
                  [ Rad Returns, Part Four of Ten ]
                       "We Will Eat Your Bran"
                                 by
                            Gary W. Olson

                                 ***

     The cramped two-bedroom apartment was not a good place for a
battle against people pretending to be zombies.  Rumiko Moroboshi had
lost count of how many gray-greasepaint-wearing men and women had
forced their ways through the door or the living room window, but
guessed that that number would not be increasing soon, as both were
now jammed.
     "We seek the Miguel!" several pseudo-zombies exclaimed, as they
unconvincingly lurched.  "Moan!  We will eat your bran!  Bran!  Bran!"
     The pseudo-zombies collectively paused and winced.
     "Brains!" they exclaimed again.  "Make that brains!  Or the
Miguel!  Your choice!  Moan!"
     The pseudo-zombies all seemed focused on Miguel Veracruz, the
werewolf DJ who lived in the apartment with his girlfriend Cendra
Seconds and his younger brother Esteban.  Rumi, watching from the
doorway to Esteban's bedroom, felt her muscles tense as her mother,
Glum, sent bright zaps of bioelectricity into several of the pseudo-
zombies.  Cendra's parents, Eivandt and Alice, who did not currently
have any superguy-like powers, had nonetheless armed themselves with
materials at hand--Alice with a heavy hardcover book, Eivandt with a
limited-edition lucite-encased replica of one of Superguy's famous
notes--and were alongside their daughter, knocking back
pseudo-zombies.
     "I can't lock onto their thoughts," Cendra told them.  "Something
else has them."
     "We are locked on thoughts of Brauns!" a number of pseudo-zombies
informed them.  "Brauns!  Brau... no, us stupid... brains!"
     "You'll get neither our coffeemakers or our gray matter!" Eivandt
declared.
     "Shut up," the pseudo-zombies collectively replied in exasperated
tones.
     Miguel Veracruz, the purported object of this visit of the
pseudo-zombies, raised a hand as if to strike several of the closer
invaders.  There was no rage in his eyes or expression, but the laid-
back confidence Rumi had earlier seen was also gone.  Rumi could sense
the energy building in him, as surely as she could sense her mother's
bioelectricity field, and knew that he was purposely holding back from
transforming into a werewolf.  He seemed strong enough as he was,
knocking back pseudo-zombies that got too close.
     Rumi had inherited her father's metahuman ability to use
psychokinetic energy, and that same energy inhibited the full
development of the bioelectric abilities she inherited from her
mother, a native of planet Hottentot.  From what Rumi understood of
the report given by Ottsamaddawiduan scientists--the same ones whose
intervention overcame the biological divide between Earth-Human and
Hottentotian and allowed her to be born--her body could not sustain
both, and had to select one over the other.  However, though she could
not use it to fly or zap, she had enough bioelectricity to sense field
activity in others.  As she watched the battle, she saw something that
made her shout.
     "Mom!" Rumi exclaimed.  "Stop zapping them!"
     Glum heard her, and turned her head.  That was when the pseudo-
zombies started slapping.
     "Smack that!" they shouted.  "All on the floor!"
     Three pseudo-zombies smacked at Glum, causing her to stumble
back.  At the same time, two more lunged at Cendra and eight moved in
on Alice and Eivandt, waving their hands in unison.  In the close
quarters of the apartment, it was a difficult maneuver to avoid.
     Several smacks sounded, and Miguel went flying into a wall.  Rumi
winced, but knew she should not have been surprised.  She had earlier
seen that the pseudo-zombies were getting power from a small area just
behind their right ears, and that they would prove more formidable
than they looked.  What she had not realized, until just moments ago,
was that her mother's bioelectric attacks only made them stronger.
     Why that would be, Rumi did not know.  But she no longer had the
luxury of holding back.  Rad would not have, she knew, no matter what
promises had been made about not taking on ravening hordes of zombie-
like beings without first getting permission.  Psychokinetic power
flared along her skin, forming a shield over her body and pooling in
her hands.  It was invisible to others, but to Rumi it was like
sliding into a warm, tan-tinted sea.  She raised an arm, ready to
shoot.
     Glass shattered behind her.  Rumi spun on her heel, right arm
still rifle-straight.  Two pseudo-zombies had found the bedroom window
and were trying to climb through, though they were encountering
interference in the form of a two-foot-tall flying bronze-gold-metal
bonobo who appeared to be threatening them with some unspecified form
of aerial martial art.  Rumi, who knew three, had no idea what Coco
was trying to accomplish with his exaggerated chops, kicks, and odd
poses, but it certainly seemed to be giving the pseudo-zombies pause.
She looked for Esteban.
     "Why... won't... this... work?" Esteban growled, from the knee
region of what appeared to be a plus-sized pair of bronze-gold-
metallic pants.  According to him, the pants were properly named Los
Pantalones, and were half of a powerful armored suit built one or more
centuries ago.  While she had some doubts on that score, as what she
had already seen of Los Pantalones indicated it was built using a
technology far in advance of what was generally available to Earth in
previous centuries, it seemed a moot point.  Los Pantalones was not
responding to whatever it was Esteban was doing.
     "Esteban!" Rumi called.  "Get back!  They'll get you!"
     "It was working an hour ago!" Esteban called back.  "Kind of!  If
I can get it going again, I can get rid of the zombies!"  The fifteen-
year-old pressed his hands against the knees of Los Pantalones, and
worked his fingers as if massaging the metal.
     If it responded, Rumi did not see.  Coco struck the wall next to
her head and toppled onto the desk.  The pseudo-zombies he had been
fighting before now toppled through the broken window frame and into
the room.  Though this maneuver gashed a deep cut into one of the
them, it stopped neither.
     "Brains!" they yelled.  "Brains!  And whatever else zombies like!
And the Miguel!  You give us the Miguel, you can keep your brains,
what do you say?"
     Rumi blasted the bleeding one back out through the window frame,
and blasted the other into the wall.  The pseudo-zombie slid down
slowly, and for a moment seemed aware.
     "What?" asked the pseudo-zombie, a girl who appeared barely older
than Rumi's fifteen years.  "Where... how did I get...."
     The look of awareness passed when she reached the floor.
     "Braaainnnsss..." she gurgled, before falling over.
     Coco leapt over Rumi and landed next to Esteban.  The bronze-gold
bonobo watched Esteban for a moment, then started massaging Los
Pantalones, along the rococo-style ridges that ran where seams would
have been on ordinary pants.
     Rumi started to speak, but at that moment the wall surrounding
the open window frame shook.  Large chunks of plaster fell in.  Six
pseudo-zombies, the evident authors of this destruction, fought to
widen the opening some more, using far more strength than Rumi thought
non-superguy humans possessed.
     "You're out of time!" she exclaimed, as she tried to pull Esteban
away.  "Get back here and let me---"
     Esteban knocked her hand away, and her palm landed on the right
thigh of Los Pantalones.
     Everything in her head went bronze-gold-metallic.
     Within the moment was a temple in ruins.  Above it was a
beautiful and monstrous bronze-gold ship.  Electricity arced from the
nose of the vessel to the top of the more-or-less pyramid-shaped
ruins.  Or vice versa, though she could not see where in those ruins a
weapon capable of launching such energy might be.  It was like the
picture she had seen in the old photocopied journal Esteban had shown
her, but real, and close....
     The moment passed, and Esteban's room returned.  She had not
fallen, as she thought she might, if only because Coco caught her in
time.
     "What...?" asked Rumi.  She brushed her dark red hair out of her
eyes while re-orienting herself.
     "Whatever you did worked," said Esteban.  His grin was as wide as
his eyes as he looked at the PDA he and Coco had hooked into Los
Pantalones.  "Not full power, but enough to kick some zombie ass!"
     Rumi remembered some more.  Her bioelectric energy had flowed
into Los Pantalones.  More than flowed; it had been pulled, as if the
metal had been hungry for it.  Had she full bioelectrics, she likely
could have powered Los Pantalones with little problem.  But her
capacity for giving energy was stunted, and the power drain had nearly
knocked her out.
     "Glad... to help..." she groaned.
     Coco flew around to her front, holding her shoulders to make sure
she would not fall again.  When he seemed certain she would remain
standing, he clapped his paws on her cheeks and gave her a kiss far
sloppier than any flying metallic creature could be expected to give.
     *I knew you wouldn't let us down,* something said inside her
head--a voice that seemed boyish and slightly stoned.  Rumi, though
she had little experience with telepathic communication, knew enough
to recognize it for what it was.  Coco grinned at her, then dived into
the metal-filled top of Los Pantalones, disappearing without so much
as a ripple of liquidy special effects.
     "He knew you wouldn't let us down," said Esteban.
     "I heard him," said Rumi.  "Now where---"
     "You heard him?" Esteban asked.  Rumi was not sure how, but his
eyes managed to grow wider.  Rumi was sure that had to hurt after a
while.
     "Yeah," she said, then wiped her hand over her mouth.  She was
surprised to find her lips were dry, even though the kiss had been
wet.  "Um... what?"
     Esteban shrugged.
     Rumi remembered that Esteban had said earlier that the 'metal'
was an element unknown to Earth science, far lighter and stronger--
and, apparently, excitable--than the metal humans knew ought to be.
There were numerous possible extraterrestrial sources, Rumi knew, but
Los Pantalones did not quite seem like any of the ones she could think
of.  Besides, there were pseudo-zombies to fight, and---
     "Where did the pseudo-zombies go?" Rumi asked.
     She, Esteban, and Coco looked about.  Save for the one knocked
out by Rumi, who was still on the bedroom floor, and a few other
equally-inert examples in the living room, the apartment was deserted.
The wall around the front door frame was missing several large chunks.
     Rumi wasted no time with crying out.  She burst through the door
and into the sky.  The setting sun washed the buildings around her
with gold, and a few moments passed while her eyes adjusted.
     Two more pseudo-zombies lay on the ground near the bushes.  They
seemed even more pathetic in the light as she landed--two middle-aged
guys in disheveled suits smeared with gray greasepaint that was
running down their sweaty faces.
     "No," one murmured.  "We got... all.  One of them is th...
Miguel."  He paused.  "More... interference.  We really think...
sure...."
     The man's voice trailed off, joining his companion in the happy
land of unconsciousness.  Rumi noticed a piece of paper in his hand,
and pulled it out.
     "A bus ticket," she said.  "What the hell...?"  Had the pseudo-
zombies used mass transit to get to their target?
     Rumi rose into the air, ignoring feelings of imbalance.  The
energy drain from her to Los Pantalones had likely messed up her inner
ear, she thought.  But she could not wait; if the bus or busses were
close, she could follow them.  She could rescue her mother and all the
others.  She could show them she was ready.
     If only the ground would cooperate, she thought.  It kept weaving
and skittering around, and made focusing on the roads impossible.  She
went up further, hoping some altitude would lessen the shaky
appearance of her surroundings, though it only seemed to make it
worse.  By the time she decided she would be better off on the ground,
she was no longer sure exactly which direction the ground had gone.
     A moment later, everything went bronze-gold again.  The color
consumed her as her body started to fall.

(continued in part two, following...)
--
Gary W. Olson
swede at novitious dot com
swede3000 at earthlink dot net
LJ Superguy Discussion: http://community.livejournal.com/superguy_list