Tag: revenge

I live, I die, I live again

I like an action movie as much as the next person.  Actually that’s not true since the next person is Martialla and she likes action movies more than me.  I like action movies fine is my point.  But.  At a certain point you’ve seen it right?  How many times do you need to see Sly Stallone machine-gunning foreigners?  I don’t understand the people that watch tons of action movies any more than I understand the people that watch tons of rom-coms.  Even if you like the formula after a certain point it has to become rote doesn’t it?

What getting at is that I’m not sure if there’s any point to outlining the rest of our encounter on the high plains.  But Ela, what’s the point to any of this?  There’s no one even reading this.  A well measured argument.  I suppose to quote Del the Funky Homosapien “I brought all this so you can survive when law is lawless”. 

After a smashed the first enemy Mario Kart I got hung up chasing one of the other ones.  Their driver was a crafty one, whoever they were they knew a few maneuvers and I couldn’t get him.  I think military people in plane movies call that getting target fixating.  Is that what Kelly McGill was in Top Gun?  The problem is that when the only method of attack you have is ramming there’s not much you can do but dump and chase you know? 

While I was doing that the two other bogeys bracketed Lucien and Paul’s car and harpooned the Christ out of them.  Was that the plan?  Car one get killed, car two distract me and then car three and four go in for the kill on our other vehicle?  Since I’m the best driver should I have been driving the worse car?  Should Martialla have been in the slower car since she’s the best shot?  Should Paul have been with me since he’s useless anyway?  Should Lucien have been with me since he was injured?

It’s a classic question, do you give your best scene to your best actor and really knock people’s dicks off, or do you give that scene to the producer’s girlfriend who can’t act for shit and hope that the writing is good enough to stand on its own? 

Martialla likes to say that I have no friends other than her, which mostly true, but my friend Dobalina was one of those “I’m in this movie because I’m sleeping with someone” sorts.  We met on the set of Out of Luck Two – Honeybee’s Revenge.  I never did figure out if it was Billy Zane or the director she was banging to get the role.  Could have been both of them, you know?  To her credit she knew she couldn’t act worth a damn and often asked for her role to be reduced.  It’s not like she was getting paid by the word you know?

I wonder how she died in the apocalypse.  I hope she was just obliterated by an orbital missile or something like that.  Something quick.

Anyway, I chased car number two into an ephemeral river that popped up after the storm.  It really came out of nowhere.  I very nearly went over the side myself.  I would have if I didn’t suddenly see the car ahead of me dip down and then slam into the opposite bank.  Doing a hundred and ten on the coastal highways makes you forget how fast forty miles an hour is.  Seeing those bodies explode on the embankment and sclorch into the water below was a good reminder.

By the time I got back our other vehicle had been wrecked but everyone was still alive.  Lucien shot one of the drivers of the attacking vehicles and they bugged out after that.  I suppose they’ll be back.  Since we can’t cram everyone into J-Lo Two we were brought to a halt once again while they tried to get the other machine working.  It’s going to take us forever to get back to Junktown at this rate. 

That’s how sad things are, I’m annoyed that I can’t get back to a junkheap faster.

While the mechanic (who I swear to god said was named Skank) Martialla and Lucien were messing with the other buggy and Paul was off doing whatever he does I invited our other new friend to sit around doing nothing with me.  Her name apparently is Wool.  I asked her if she grew up on a sheep ranch but she didn’t know what a sheep or a ranch was.  That’s just her name. 

I asked her what she thought of all this, assuming she had never been out of Junktown before, and she said that it reminded her of when she first came across the plains on account of they had been attacked by the plainspeople all the time as well. 

I don’t know if she’s from the seaweed scum town that Martialla and I first encountered however many weeks ago that was or one that’s just like it, but the point is she’s originally from that valley.  On account of her great beauty (add quotes there) she was sent to Crow when she was of age where she worked until she was bought by a Road Hog gang boss who then swapped her to a merchant in New Frisco.  I didn’t know what to say that, what can you say?

“It wasn’t so bad, I was drugged most of the time” is what she said about it.

I was about to ask her how she ended up with the Church of the Lady Jesus when she threw a curveball at me. 

“I saw you die once in Murdertown.”

“That’s the entertainment place right?  They must have old movies there?  Which one did you see?  There aren’t many parts I had where my character dies, not ones where I have many lines anyway.  Was it Blood on the River Nile?  That’s not a bad flick, it got really screwed up in editing but if we had had a few more weeks to shoot and eight million more in the budget . . .”

She didn’t know what a movie was any more than she knew what a sheep was but I figured that she had seen one of my films without understanding what it was – you know the old gag where aliens see Gilligan’s Island or Murphy Brown and think it’s real because they don’t have entertainment.  But that isn’t what it was at all.  She claimed that she saw me actually get killed in really real life. 

I figured there was a tiny chance that it was someone who looked like me, tiny on account of everyone now is small and ugly and I am tall and stunning attractive, or more likely she was just insane in the membrane.  Who knows what those future drugs did to her brain?  Plus, maybe she has “religious visions” or something.   

“So how did I die?”

“Duke Eagle strangled you in the arena.  After you tried to kill him and were captured.”

I laughed politely, must be what passes for a joke these days “Oh yeah, and it doesn’t bother you that here I am alive now?”

She shook her head and gestured to my necklace “No, I’ve seen you die a couple times, you die and then you live again.”

I smile “I hope things work out better with the Duke this time eh?”

She nodded somberly “Me too.”

OOC – Revenge of the transformers

I saw a headline about some people doing angry social media things because they were at Disneyland and they were cordoned into the lame areas of the park because Kim Kardashian was there and they were closing down the park for her as she wandered around. 

I feel that I must once again share my harrowing story. 

The year was 1988.  Someone was president.  A song was number one on the radio.  A movie was tops at the box office.  Mostly what I remember is that people were falling into wells constantly and we children had to be vigilant to the ever looming threats of Satanists, Dobermans, and quicksand.  Dungeons and Dragons was teaching a whole generation of kids to commit ritual abuse and set their houses on fire. 

Also my family took a trip to Disney World.  I used to think my family was poor when I was a kid, but as an adult I’ve been disabused of that notion.  We had a home and two cars and we went to Disney World once.  We weren’t poor.  It only seemed like we were poor to me because we were always the poorest family in the nice neighborhoods we moved to every few years. 

I was not terribly excited about this trip because even as a kid I wasn’t into trips and since I didn’t really like rides or Disney stuff, what was there to get excited about?  If there wasn’t GI Joe or Transformers involved I wasn’t that interested.  Or wrestling.  I was very excited about my GI Joe wrestling federation.  Stormshadow was a long reigning world champion but I realize as an adult that a guy that doesn’t talk isn’t a great choice for your #1 heel.  I should have given him a manager.  I know that now.

As I recall, the trip to Florida took approximately 8 million hours.  In the backseat of a blazing hot car.  Next to my sister who was blasting Poison at maximum decibels and who would stab me with a nail file if I made a noise or moved or just because she felt like it. 

I remember that outside the window of our hotel room there was a billboard with a naked lady on it.  And I mean naked naked not “you can’t actually see anything” naked.  What was it advertising?  I don’t know.  I never looked directly at it because I didn’t want to be caught looking.  Also it was a few years before I would be super interested in naked lady billboards.  Was having a naked lady billboard legal in Orlando in the 1980s?  I don’t know that either, but it was there.  I remember my mom calling the front desk to complain but what was the hotel supposed to do about it?  I also remember sleeping on a cot. 

We went to a beach covered with dead jellyfish and then it was time for Disney World.  At this point I did get excited because we had traveled millions of miles for this so surely it had to be great.  And maybe it is great, but I wouldn’t know because all I got to see was Main Street USA (no parade) and some gift shops. 

Why?

Because Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley were there.  I kept saying different things I wanted to check out and my parents kept saying that we couldn’t go there because it was closed.  Just a bunch of gift shops.  Gift shops that had no Transformers or GI Joes to buy.  I couldn’t understand what was happening at first because I was kind of a dumb kid (and adult) but eventually I figured it out.  Christie Brinkley and Billy Joel were important, whereas we were scum, ergo it was critical that they get access to the park while we stood there like fucking idiots. 

One image that’s really stuck with me is standing there on GD Main Street USA watching the tram go by that was empty except for Billy Joel, Christie Brinkley, some kids, and various hangers-on and bodyguards and functionaries.  The kids couldn’t have given two shits about what was going on.  Christie Brinkley looked like a stepmom trying her hardest and getting nothing back but shitty comments.  Billy Joel was staring at nothing like a zombie. 

I often say that that’s the day I learned that there is no justice in this world.  I’m only partially kidding.  It was a kind of important learning experience.  Some people are just better than you, societally speaking.  A few years later, in the naked lady billboard interest years, I swore to myself that if I ever saw Billy Joel I’d punch him in the face.  I’ve told any woman I felt might do it that they should do the same to Christie Brinkley on my behalf.  I was mostly kidding. 

Later on I found out that Billy Joel has had issues with depression his whole life and tried to kill himself at least once.  At which point I felt robbed again because now even if I did punch him in the face it wouldn’t be “okay”. 

I’ve told this tale a few times, and blogged about it before – possibly even on this blog – and on one blog 7 blogs ago I threw out this emo-gem about how I was giving up my quest for revenge on Billy Joel –

“Now here’s the funny thing about revenge.  There’s no such thing.  The scale never balances.  Why? Because there is no scale.  If my life is worthless (which it is) and I kill a guy whose life was valuable, how you gonna make the scales balance?  Forget it.  There’s no scale. So don’t trick yourself into thinking that there is.”

That’s some prime childish nihilism right there.  That would have been a good quip to throw into one of the more revenge focused Ela stories.  Well, there’s always the next Ela story right? 

Mildly related final note.  We used to go to a local carnival every year also and I was never much into that either.  Even before a carny whipped out his dick at my cousin and me.  I remember one year asking if I could use my carnival money to buy a Transformer instead of for the dumb carnival.  The answer was no for reasons that I didn’t understand at all then but kinda do now. 

OOC – Martialla Monday

As you all know this blog started off as “real play” solo RPG that I turned into narrative form.  Each successive story has leaned less on RPG structure but I still use a character sheet and rules set because I find it helpful in resolving things/injecting randomness and I also still use some RPG random “create an X” charts because what am I going to do, come up with my own ideas? 

Point being that I’m kind of in a low energy mood for the Ela-pocalypse story.  The dice aren’t giving me anything that I find interesting right now and I can’t really think of anything on my own at the moment.  But it’s clearly very important for me to stick to my schedule because . . . . of a reason.  So let’s talk about the Martialla character. 

Back in the bad old days of the D&D Ela story I decided I wanted to write more dialog so I needed a sidekick for Ela to talk to.  I don’t remember my childhood teachers generally, but I do remember two of them – my gym teacher and my creative writing teacher.  I remember my gym teacher because she hated me and made my life miserable because my sister was a few years ahead of me and she was a nightmare.  I believe they call that misplaced revenge.  

I remember my creative writing teacher because she would give me helpful feedback like “your dialog is terrible” and then I would say something to her like “oh that’s bad, how could it be better?” and she’d sneer at me at tell me to figure it out.  I mean what was she going to do?  Teach me something?  As if.  In fairness to her my dialog was terrible.  I mean I was in HS. 

I don’t remember how I came up with the name Martialla but I like it.  Is it a real name?  Maybe.  I bet I only misspell it about 14% of the time.  Partialla the Martialla character was meant to balance the ticket, D&D Ela couldn’t fight for shit so Martialla was a melee combatant.  D&D Ela had all the social skills maxed out so Martialla was rough and tumble.  D&D Ela was a leader so Martialla was a follower.  D&D Ela hated magic so Martialla was a spellcaster.  And so on.  What they had in common was ruthlessness, a hard-scrabble background, a penchant for nonchalant quips, and a lust for revenge. 

Over time D&D Martialla also became something of a morality pet/voice of reason, not that D&D Ela listened to that kind of thing much, but she (Ela) did soften somewhat over time.  None of my friends read my blogs anymore but a couple of them did try and support me in those early days – their main feedback was that they couldn’t handle Ela constantly scamming everyone and stabbing them in the back.  I doubt it came across but the idea was that Martialla would pull Ela back from being a totally immoral monster. 

A recent comment made me think it would be funny if the “twist” at the end of this is that really Martialla was the protagonist all along, there is no Ela and Martialla is in Hell eternally being reincarnated in different scenarios and living horrible “lives” as imaginary construct Ela’s minion because in the real world she murdered the man who killed her loved one. 

One concern I have with the Martialla character is making her too much of the “hyper-competent sidekick” trope.  Across genres I like to keep that Martialla is Ela’s “muscle” but sometimes I think I go too far in having Martialla fill in knowledge gaps for Ela.  On the other hand I have to remind myself that just because something is an archetype that doesn’t make it bad – it’s pretty hard to come up with something completely original.  I used to work with a guy that had been writing a novel going on 17 years and part of his process was he wanted to make sure that everything in it was something that had never been done before.  Which is insane in the membrane.  Still, I make an effort to reign in it sometimes and not have Martialla know about a topic either, or have her have ideas that don’t work out just as much as Ela. 

Recently I had Apocalypse Martialla get tore up from the floor up because I wanted a way to establish finally for real and true that they’re full of nanorobots.  But then after I hit the reset button and made sure there was no chance of any kind of real emotional impact there I mildly regretted it.  It would have been “better” writing if Martialla had died for real but then who would Ela talk to for me to practice my crappy dialog?  A new character?  Gasp.

I try (and mostly don’t) take my writing too seriously, but the other day I was having a laugh at an article that was talking about how male writers writing female characters make them models or actresses or hookers a ridiculous amount of the time and feeling superior and judgey, but then I realized that some of Ela’s baseline traits across all universes are being pretty and vain and catty, and a singer which is actress-adjacent and kind of “girly” occupation.  So in that context, if I wanted to defend myself (against whom?) Martialla serves another purpose as well, she’s the one that can get laid, and she’s “normal” so it’s okay. 

In conclusion one time I had had someone do some art for superhero Martialla and it’s great so here it is again. 

It’s hard to draw feet

Revenge

It takes a village to raise a child, but how many people does it take to make that village to raise that child?  I think of these people as villagers but does five treehouses make a village?  I guess either way it isn’t a village anymore since all the tree-houses are burned up. 

The villagers are bald, just like the other people with the lumpy heads, but whereas the potatoheads are close to normal human proportions, these people are even shorter than the norm we’ve seen so far.  I’d call them squat.  Seemed like they were not even five feet tall but were three feet wide.  One other thing that really stuck out to me was how hairy the backs of their hands were.  It was thick enough you could have braided it. 

Had I been thinking about it, I would have expected them to swarm around us in thanksgiving and offer us their finest foods and sing songs of praise for saving them.  But I wasn’t thinking.  Not about that anyway.  I was thinking about how on the news they used to have some dullard standing there shell-shocking mumbling “it all happened so fast” after a natural disaster or a plane crash or something.  I shouldn’t have judged them.  It does happen fast.  And afterwards you don’t know what else to say.  It’s like it happened too fast for your brain to understand it.

Some of the squat bald villagers that were fleeing during the attack continued fleeing.  Some of them started trying to help the wounded that weren’t able to flee.  A couple of them stared at us warily.  The guy that Martialla shot and I ran over was super dead, but there was another one of the attack bikers that was alive.  I’m pretty sure he wished he wasn’t soon enough, because a couple of the hairy-handed people tied him to a burning tree and started in on him with their spears. 

I guess I can’t blame them but it didn’t make his screams any more bearable.  When you hurt someone, they scream.  Most people know that.  But what I’ve learned in California After Apocalypse Twenty-Two Hundred is that if you hurt someone bad enough they don’t scream, they make a different kind of sound.  This sound has no name because the overwhelming majority of humans throughout history don’t know it exists and those that do know about it also know that nothing can do justice to that sound other than hearing it for yourself. 

Martialla stayed low and dashed from cover to cover, sliding up beside the car in a way that seemed very unnecessary since the fighting was over.  She had a pistol in her hand and was scanning the area in a sort of crouch.  Her voice was strung tight as a tennis racket.

“Are you hurt?”

I shook my head and then realized that she wasn’t looking my way and couldn’t see me “No, I’m not hurt.”

Her voice trembled a little “You can’t do that Ela.  You can’t just drive into something like that.  You need to check with me.  You can’t make snap decisions.  We could have been killed.  We should have been killed.  What the hell is this car made out of?”

“I know, I’m sorry.”

Her head whipped around and she stared at me like I had never said that I was sorry before.  Maybe I hadn’t.  Her lips moved like she was about to say something but then she stopped.  She threw one leg over the window and slithered back into the car without taking her eyes off the ridge. 

“You’re not thinking about going after them, are you?”

“No, not them.  But I think we should put our vacation to Colorado Springs on hold.  What do you think about this idea?  We head north and find the leader of these assholes, Duke Eagle, and we murder him.”

“That sounds dangerous.”

“Yeah, it’s probably pretty dangerous to try and kill this guy, but I’ve realized we’re not going to live very much longer no matter what we do.  Might as well go out with a bang, right?”

She took a break from darting her eyes around manically to glance over at me “Are you sure you’re okay?”


“Yeah, I’m okay.” I pointed at a cluster of village people dragging one of their dead friends out of the rice mud “Not like that guy.  He’s not okay at all.”

“I guess going on a roaring rampage of revenge is the cinematic thing to do.  That’s what the mysterious stranger always does.  Does that make us Shane, or Chris from the Magnificent Seven? “

“Girls can’t be the mysterious stranger, Martialla, that would be silly.  If this was a movie, you would have been killed for trying to fight and I would have been taken as a sex slave.  The real mysterious stranger would have been badly hurt in the attack but he’d crawl into a cave and heal himself by willpower alone and then when he got better and came to rescue me months later, before I died in his arms from all the sex slavery, I would whisper to him ‘you gotta kill them for me mysterious stranger, kill them all, for me’.”

“And then you guys would bang, right?”

“Obviously.  When you’re dying from sex slavery, that’s all you want to do on your way out.  Being the mysterious stranger has to be rough, knowing that you have to wait until right before a woman dies before you make your move.  That’s probably very frustrating for him.”

Martialla finally put her gun away “Yes, leading men have a bad hand for sure.”

I put my hand on the gear selector, which is also a skull in case you were wondering – who the heck made that? 

“So what will you have, Martialla?  A deadly mission of revenge or continue on our way to Colorado Springs?  I want to make sure you feel heard here.”

“I hear wine country is lovely this time of year.”

“That’s more east than north really, but I’ll allow it.”

December 18, 1973 – Time to get int-ro-spect-ive

When I was nine I was playing on the roof my grandma’s house.  She had told me not to go up there.  This may shock you, but as a kid I wasn’t always the best at minding what I was told.  I saw some kids playing on the roof across the street.  What was I going to do, let them outshine me?  I didn’t fall off the roof, but when I was climbing back down onto the back porch I lost my footing and hit the railing pretty good.  I had the wind knocked out of me for a minute but once that was over, I started crying.  And I mean hard. 

After a minute my grandma came out, lit up a cigarette and leaned there and smoked it while I bawled my eyes out.  When she was done smoking she went back inside without saying anything.  I swore then that I would never cry again.  I haven’t kept that promise, I doubt many people keep promises they make when they’re nine, but I’m not a big crier.  Not for real anyway, I’m a fantastic fake crier, it’s a great way to make people feel uncomfortable if you need to do that.  If there’s any good that comes from living under a tarp on the roof of a fireworks factory (and there isn’t) it’s that you can pull one flap down and have some privacy for a good cry.  I heard Blue shuffling around “outside”.

“What’s the protocol here?  Am I supposed to throw back the tarp-flap and try and comfort you or stay out here and pretend nothing is happening?”

I peeked out from under the tarp-flap “I wasn’t crying, I’m cutting onions for a lasagna.  Don’t come in yet because it’s a surprise.”

He sat down on the roof “A surprise lasagna?  What a delight.”

I threw the tarp-flap back into a vague tent shape “What did you feel after you killed someone for the first time?”

“I don’t remember.”

I scowled “You don’t remember how you felt the first time you killed someone?”

“I don’t remember the first time I killed someone.  Have you ever been to Borneo?  It’s all jungles and swamps and mangroves, even when you’re in the mountains.  We were shooting all the time without having any clue if we were hitting anyone.”

“You know what I mean.”

He nodded slowly “Yes, I know what you mean.   I remember the first time I know I killed someone.  I was on recon and I threw a phosphorus grenade into the back a halftrack.  I hope I never get so jaded that I forget burning four men to death.  Although what I remember much better than how I felt is my sergeant dressing me down because the grenade destroyed the communication equipment and codebooks that were in there.  I should have found a way to kill them and get the intelligence materials.  That’s what I remember most.”

“So how did you feel afterwards?”

“Didn’t bother me, that’s why I was there.”

“It didn’t bother you at all?”

“Maybe a little, but by then I had been in the field for almost two years.  I had seen so many people on my side get hit that I didn’t spare too much time feeling sorry for the people trying to kill us.  Plus I wasn’t even twenty, I wasn’t given to a lot of soul-searching at that time.”

“How about now that you’re not twenty?”

He flicked his tongue in what I’ve come to understand is a shrug “Still doesn’t concern me much.  War is what it is, people die, not much anyone can do about that.  Except stop having wars, which is a little bit above my pay grade.”

“Doesn’t that make you a sociopath?”

“I don’t think so, but I wouldn’t know it if I was, now would I?  Ideology and governments and countries and all that has nothing to do with it Ela, not really.  There’s a reason nations send young people to fight in wars, they don’t know anything.  I was trained to kill people and I was told to kill people and I was rewarded for killing people – how could I feel bad about that?  I killed six men one night and they gave me a medal for doing it.  People can say they’re defending what they believe in or they’re stopping bad people or whatever they want.  But it’s just training and conditioning.  They tell you to do it and you do it.  If you’re good at it you get rewarded.  It’s what the state does, sometimes there’s due process and a needle in the arm and sometimes you get shot in the head by a sniper.   Why do riot cops shoot demonstrators?  Someone gives and order and they follow it.”

“And that makes it okay?”

“What’s okay about anything that happens?  Ela what you’re going through here is the dilemma that warriors have been struggling with since the first time a caveman told the big caveman in the group to bash someone with a rock.  Why am I doing this and what does it all mean?  And thousands of years later we still don’t have any answers.”

“But you’re not in the army anymore, so why are you still doing this?”

“Because I can’t sing and I can’t dance.  I can’t shoot a basketball, but I’m pretty good at killing people.  I’ve been doing this for more than twenty years, it’s all I know, what else would I do?  Plus I have to find the people that turned me into a freak and make them pay.”

“Revenge?  Is that it?”

He huffed a lizard laugh “You’re chastising me for wanting revenge?  That’s your reason for everything you do.”

December 14, 1973 – Justice is a noncorrosive metal, but metals can be melted by the heat of revenge!

“Oh hey Blue, I was just thinking . . . oh shit!”

When he turned and snarled at me, I realized that it wasn’t Blue.  That was my mistake on several counts.  First of all, I was going to meet Blue and Martialla, so it would be strange to bump into him on the street.  Second of all, he wasn’t even blue, he was kind of greyish-brown with some pale yellow marks.  Once I got a good look at him I realized my mistake, but at the risk of being a lizard-racist, when you’re walking about and you see someone who’s got scales and is three feet taller than everyone else, your mind kind of fills in the blank.  It’s not like there’s SO many lizard guys around here that it’s unreasonable when you’re not paying attention right?  I mean there’s like four lizard guys tops.  Sidenote why aren’t there any lizard women?  Probably because lizards don’t have boobs.  Why would any male scientist turn a woman into something without boobs?

He roared something at me, his breath was simply AWFUL with the stench of rotting meat, and I was so distracted by that that I didn’t realize I actually understood (mostly) what he was saying until he referred to himself as “Bestia-lagarto cornuda devoradora.”  Beside the color he was much different from (than?) Blue, he did indeed have little (and big) horns jutting out from his dinosoury skull.  Although he didn’t really look like a dinosaur, maybe more like a dragon guy?  Really what it was was like one of those little thorny desert lizards, only you know, a huge monster-guy.  He said “Me cago en la leche. Déjame solo!” to me which is some kind of slang (or he’s insane) I didn’t understand in full, but I got the gist of it.

I was tempted to give him a good shove, but we were in a crowd and he probably would have plowed down fifty people.  He may weigh eight hundred pounds but I have the strength of twenty strong men.  And that’s only forty pounds per man, which is something a non-strong man should be able to handle.  Not wanting to crush a bunch of locals, I contented myself by telling him “estás bien pendejo” – but I totally could have knocked him on his ass.  For sure. 

No sooner had I walked away from that dust-up when I heard someone shouting (in English, well sort of, Australian) at me from the street.  I turned to see that a small gap had formed in the crowd where my old friend the Crimson Cardinal was holding one giant red robo-fist in the air – which seemed to be the only piece of his suit left.  For reasons unknown he wasn’t wearing a shirt, and he really should have been – not a lot of meat on those bones, you know what I mean?  There was a network of wires running down his dirty bare arm to some kind of glowing chest-piece strapped to him like a bullet-vest.  He was making such a spectacle that I didn’t notice at first that Captain Patriot USA was at his side furiously swooshing his finger around his glowing green alien pad.

“Stand and deliver, Jezebel!  Your time of judgement is at hand, for you face the Hammer of God!”  He threw his hand up dramatically and made a fist, which resonated with a thunderous clap.

“Is the hammer invisible?”

“What?”

“Are you holding an invisible hammer above your head?”

“No . . . I . . . the gauntlet is the hammer of God.”

“Why wouldn’t you say the fist of God then?  Or the hand of God?”

Patriot muttered “I told you it didn’t make sense.”

Red Fist all but spat at him “You’re the one that wanted to call us the Ela Revenge Squad.”

“Like the Superman Revenge Squad?  That would have been cool.  But there’s only two of you, that’s hardly a squad, that’s the problem.”

A local guy that I thought was just watching shouted something angrily and the Scarlet Fingerman gestured “Yes, Halimah is a member as well.  Three is enough for a squad.”

I peered at the man “Uh, what did I do to him?  He doesn’t look familiar.”

They spoke briefly “He says you wrecked his kiosk.”

I made a face “Oh yeah, I did do that.  Can you tell him I’m sorry?  There’s not enough big heavy things to throw around here, I don’t know what they want me to do.  Are there boulders around here?”

“Silence!  The time is nigh, you shall be punished for your insolence!”

“Why are you the one with the robot fist?  No offense, but you’re like the guy in those Charles Atlas ads before he does the program.” I pointed at the Blond Bomber “Isn’t that guy like a special forces army ranger marine commando?  Shouldn’t he be the one with the robo attack glove?”

The Aussie pulled his fist back and made some awkward looking punching motion and a wave of concussive force went in my general direction and knocked over a bunch of boxes. 

“No more questions!  I demand satisfaction!”

I pointed “The red light district is over there.” I laughed and laughed and laughed.  Because I am hilarious.  

Mr. America growled “Just kill her already!  You only have enough power for . . .”

The Aussie’s eyes went wide “Don’t tell her how much power we have!”

I walked towards them “Alright, look guys, we had some issues in the past but surely you’re not going to kill me just because I wrecked your suit, are you?  You didn’t even really own that suit, didn’t you steal it?  Plus, I was defending myself.  Are you really suggesting that you’re going to kill me for the crime of not letting you kill me?  That makes no sense.”

“I’m not going to kill you, I’m just going to defeat you.”

I shrugged “Okay, I’m defeated.”

He frowned “What do you mean?”

“What do YOU mean?” I raised my hands “Everyone, everyone, your attention please, I Ela hereby admit defeat.  I am officially defeated.” I went down to one knee “I submit to you good sir.  You are the better man.”

His head whipped around at the curious crowd “Get up!”

I looked up at him incredulously “What?  Do you want to hit me?  You’re going to punch a defenseless woman in the face with a cracking bionic fist?”

Blondie’s face was flushed with bloodlust “Yes, do it!”

The Aussie looked around desperately “No . . . I . . . just . . . what . . . I mean . . .”

I stood up and tapped the rig on his chest, which seemed to be burning his skin “Did you guys rig this all up yourselves?”

He shook his head slowly “No, we . . .”

Blondie spit-screamed at his back “Don’t tell her!”

“Yes, do tell her.  My crew needs a contact with a good tech guy.  There have to be some of them around here right?  Some guy who worked for a company and then flew off with one of their prototypes suits and came here to sell it and now he’s like an underground outlaw tech guy?  Something like that?  I feel like that happens all the time.  There would probably be a lot fewer criminals in supersuits if the superheroes quit forming companies to make supershit.  Can you hook me up with your guy?  I’m about to come into some money and I need an equipment source.”

He looked back uncertainly at the rest of his squad, Blondie was freaking out and Dr. Kiosk looked like he had no idea what was going on “Yeeeah.”

November 27, 1973 – A Duke by any other name something something revenge

I’m working on a new song.  I wish I could find a guitar so I could really get into the nitty-gritty of it, but I’ve got some good ideas in my head at least.  It’s a song about who we are on the inside.  About how, for a bunch of reasons, we’re perceived very differently from who we are.  Some people try really hard to make people think that, but even the people that don’t are thought to be something they’re not.  It’s not a new or revolutionary idea but that’s why music is the truest and greatest form of art.  

Want proof?  There are a million songs about getting your heart broken, and there needs to be a million songs about getting your heart broken because each one speaks to people in different ways.  With music, the same basic message in a different package really is something different because it hits people in a different way.  You can’t achieve that with any other medium.  

If you’re into mountain climbing, you may read a bunch of books about climbing Everest but one is all you need to get the message.  The other ones are just entertainment.  With literature, the same story is the same story.  Maybe one writer is better than the other or there’s one perspective that you identify with more, but you don’t need more books about the same thing like you do with songs.  

Paintings and sculptures and drawings and things like that can evoke feelings and ideas but it’s open to interpretation.  Maybe the artist intended those three red lines to signify the sunrise but you see what you see.  When I look at ‘The Poetess’ by Joan Miro, I have a strong reaction, but it’s one that I can’t really explain.  When I hear Etta James singing about how she’d rather go blind than see her man walking away from her, I know exactly what she’s talking about.  

The point is while that song speaks to me, maybe someone else really feels it when Janis Joplin is telling them about someone taking a piece of her heart.  And maybe another body feels it when Otis Rush is telling them.  They’re all singing about the same thing, getting hurt by love, but we need all those different ways to say it because everyone is different.  Music speaks to the soul in a way that other art doesn’t.  Sorry other kinds artist, but as a singer I’m better than you.   At least you’re still better than horrible non-creative types.

Fred (editor’s note, she means Frank) told me that Duke Eaglevane is in a prison in German East Africa.  When I suggested that the world’s most wanted man being captured and put in jail was something that would have been in the papers, he said that they don’t know that’s who they have.  According to Fred, a few months ago the Pecos military launched a missile attack at a guerilla camp in southern Mexico under the impression that in residence at the time was an international criminal by the name of Miro Viga, wanted in connection with several violent uprisings in South America.  Miro, who either wasn’t there or survived the attack, in retaliation, tried to enter the Pecos Republic intent on blowing up several government buildings.  There was a battle at the border in which six men were killed and thirty more wounded before Miro was taken into custody by one of the only PR NBH operatives, Justice Ranger – which is a terrible name.

Fred claims that Miro Viga is none other than Duke Eaglevane.  As Fred tells it, the good Duke has many different personas that have been constructed and maintained with such detail as to be practically different people – hence why the Pecos authorities don’t know who they really have.  He said that this is at least the third time the Duke has been captured without the authorities knowing who they really have.  Seems pretty far-fetched to me.  I asked Fred if this was so super-duper secret how did he know about it, and he said that he was part of an “op” that broke the Miro Viga identity back when he was still in the good graces of the US spymasters.  

“If this is true, why didn’t your government tell the Texans who they had?”

He half-shrugged “I don’t know, I’m not in the loop anymore.  Maybe they did and the Pecos authorities didn’t believe it.  Or maybe they like having one of the Dukes identities that no one else knows about.  There are a lot of angles they could be playing.”

I glanced at Martialla “So all we need to do is get to German Africa once we wrap up this other thing.”

Fred looked somber “Get there quickly is my advice. As I said, this has happened before – the Duke’s minions always break him out in a couple of months.  That’s the whole point of these supplementary personas, if they knew who they had, Duke Eaglevane would be in some black site where you’d never find him.  Actually, he’d never be taken into custody in the first place, if they had him in their sights they’d kill him.  But Miro is just an ordinary terrorist wanted by fifteen world governments, so he’s merely in a normal maximum security facility.   If you want to kill him, this is the best chance you’re going to get.”

“Do you know any of his other identities?”

“I did, but it doesn’t matter, the Duke knows those ones are burned.  Miro Viga is the only one that’s still active that I know about.”

While I was thinking, Martialla gave me a look “I think you’re overlooking an obvious course of action, Ela.  Half the world wants the Duke dead.  The safe bet is to give this information to someone who has the juice to make sure he goes down.”

I shook my head slowly “No.  It has to be me.  He has to know I’m the one that got him.”  

Martialla frowned “But he doesn’t even know who you are.”

“He will.  For a few seconds.”

September 20, 1973 – Revenge, and a shipwreck

So now what?  I’m in a foreign land (where they don’t seem to like my music) with no money, and as far as anyone back home knows I’m dead.  I tried to think of someone I could call for help, assuming I could figure out how to make an international call, but I came up empty.  My parents and I aren’t close, my friends are mostly pretty casual acquaintances or broke.  Most of them are both.  I have a manager I haven’t heard from in months, and that was before I was blown up and kidnapped and lost several months of my memory.  He wouldn’t be terribly interested in anything that would cost him money anyway.  My ex could probably afford to bring me back, but I don’t know if he would.  Or where he lives currently.  

I assume the easiest route back to the CS from here would be through Panama.  And then somehow convince the police or someone that I’m me.  Fingerprints?  I’ve been arrested so I would have fingerprints on file right?  But that was in the CS, not the US.  Do they share information?  Is getting home what I even want?  Eventually, yes.  But someone by the name of Duke Eaglevane tried to blow me up.  Did blow me up.  I’d be dead now if not for . . . whoever did . . . uh, whatever they did to me.  I never thought of myself as vindictive or vengeful, but that’s a much easier attitude to have before someone murders you.  

I asked where Duke Eaglevane was and Alcazar laughed.  He’s the most wanted man in the world.  Several countries are offering millions of dollars to anyone who can give information on where he might be.  Not even for his capture, just for information.  When he asked me why I wanted to know, I told him I was thinking about killing Duke Eaglevane.  He didn’t laugh at all.  He looked at me like I said that I was thinking about swallowing molten lava.  He was pretty harsh in expressing his view that a singer from the “softest” country in the world with no training, no resources, and no support should not attempt to hunt down the world’s most dangerous and notorious terrorist.  Correction, the world’s most dangerous and notorious terrorist who may possibly be immortal.  

I barely know the guy, where does he get off talking to me like he’s my father?  I couldn’t get too mad at him though because he loaned me some money to get a place to stay and got me a job down at the docks with a French shipping company unloading ships.  The manager, who was skinnier than me, didn’t bat an eye when I picked up a crate that had to weigh a couple hundred pounds.  I guess Madripoor does have its fair share of weirdos.  

I foolishly thought that since it was a French company, most of the other workers would speak French, but they didn’t, even though it seems like some of the locals do.  The one guy there who spoke Spanish told me they were Vietnamese, but don’t they speak French there too?  I should have paid more attention in model UN.  So I can’t understand whatever horrible things my co-workers are saying about me.  Which is probably for the best.  Out of the many paths I thought my life might take, I would not have put lugging boxes on that list in ten thousand years.

While I was working one day, I heard a horrendous noise and looked out in the harbor to see that two ships had collided.  Actually it looked like one ship had sliced another in half.  Everyone came to gawk as the one ship listed badly with a half-ship stuck in its side while the other half sank like a rock.  I don’t know why it took me so long to realize that what I was seeing in the water were people.  My Spanish speaking “friend” Omar happened to be nearby and I asked him what I should do.  He thought about it for a moment, looked around and then shrugged.   

(translated from Spanish) 

“I don’t see anything you can do.”

“I have super strength.  I must be able to do something.”

He squinted out at the water “Like what?”

“I don’t know, hold up the ship until everyone gets off?”

“How would you do that?  There would be nothing to support you.”

“Maybe I could rip the side open in case anyone is trapped inside.”

He looked at me appraisingly “Could you?”

“I could try.  I mean I have to do something don’t I?”  At that moment the bossman, not the skinny guy who hired me, a big bald bastard with a mess of tattoos on his arms, came over and bellowed something not in English, French or Spanish.  “What did he say?”

“Boss says back to work.”

I gestured “But what about the people in the water?”

Omar and the boss exchanged a few words, Omar gesturing at a small boat nearby, and then he turned back to me with another shrug “Boss says back to work.”

September 13th, 1973 – Duke Eaglevane

I stood looking out the window of Pinetree Exports, also known as Alcazar’s office, which despite its small size and generally messiness would have been a much nicer place to stay than his apartment.  I was watching the steady flow of pedestrian traffic down on the street as he looked for my file in his stacks of papers.

(translated from Spanish)

“What is the deal with this place?”

“You’ll have to be more specific, Madripoor has many ‘deals’ at any given time.”

I pointed down at the street “There’s a dude wearing like a space helmet.  And the other day I saw a woman riding a bike whose skin was yellow, like banana yellow.  I’m pretty sure I saw a guy jump into a second story window too.”

“That was probably Bayu, he jumps all over the city.  Usually into the windows of married ladies.” 

I turned and gave him a look “Hey can you do me a favor and be a little more nonchalant about impossible things people can do around here?”

He stared at me for a moment “Sorry, I guess I’ve gotten used to it.  The ‘deal’ is that Madripoor, for this reason or that, has more than its fair share of NBHs – that’s non baseline humans – like you.  And not for nothing, there may also be an alien or two in residence as well.  The military usually finds aliens and shoots them in the head as soon as they crash-land but a few slip through the net.” 

“Oh sure, aliens exist and are on earth and that’s normal.  How about you give me a little build up to these shocking revelations?  Are your CIA buddies the ones that kill the poor little green bastards as they stumble out of their wrecked saucers looking for their triple A cards?”

He snorted “If I was in the CIA it would have been much easier for me to get this.” 

He waved a stained folder at me that had budget written on the tab, then crossed out and written 1968 redeposit which was itself crossed out and replaced with something I couldn’t read.  I sat down across the desk from him, he handed me the folder and helped himself to a cup of coffee while I thumbed through the papers inside.

“So I’m dead huh?  That’s very dispiriting.”

He nodded with a grin “I know, it’s a real shame you were cut down in your prime like that.”

“Who’s Duke Eaglevane and why did he blow me up?”

He raised an eyebrow “Don’t you read the newspaper?”

“Just the box score of the Tropics game and my horoscope.”

“Duke Eaglevane is someone who a man that was actually in the CIA would call a ‘bad guy’.  He’s a super terrorist, or supervillain if you want to be theatrical.   He’s maybe hundreds of years old and when he’s not killing German communists, he spends his time running the largest criminal organization in the world.  An organization that does things like blow up pretty singers in the heart of the Coalition.” 

“Why would he blow me up, what did I ever do to him?”

“I would imagine that you are what people who blow buildings up call ‘collateral damage’, I wouldn’t take it personally.”

“Of course not, it’s just my life.” I shuffled through some more papers “So I was blown to bits and then the government scooped up the pieces and put them back together?  Like the Six Million Dollar man?  That was nice of them.  And then these Shadow Lords stole me?  I would have expected the Coalition Super Soldier Division to have better security.”

“If I was with the CIA I could answer that for you, but since I’m just a humble businessman, all I can give you is guesses.  I don’t think it was the Coalition, from what I gather a private organization did the Humpty Dumpty job on you.  Maybe they sold you to the Shadow Lords, maybe you were stolen, maybe they were funding the whole operation, I don’t know.  But it wasn’t the super soldier program, that medical report says you’re negative, this was something lower key.  Just saving your life and giving you some ‘minor’ super powers.  You’re stronger than you have any right to be but I’m pretty sure Angel would rip you apart, if she wasn’t dead.”

“Being dead does increase the degree of difficulty.” I flapped the folder at him “How did you gather all this, non-CIA man?”

“I have a lot of friends, I keep my ear to the ground. Information is critical in my line of work, other vague answers are available at request.”

I read from one of the pages ‘Due to the stimulation of neurological, chemical, and glandular activity, subject will suffer from chronic headaches and will need to consume fifteen to twenty thousand calories a day to avoid rapid weight loss and death.’ “Well that’s just great.  I thought my head hurt because I wasn’t smoking enough.”

“You may as well smoke up, on the next page they anticipate that with your increased metabolism and all the damage it’s doing to your systems, you’re going to die of organ failure in another five to seven years.  Live fast and die young, etcetera.”

I tossed the file on the desk “This day just keeps getting better and better.  So who did the Shadow Lords want me to fight so badly that they went through all this trouble?”

“Other gangs probably.  Or maybe they were going to rent you out as a mercenary, there’s always fighting on the mainland.  Or maybe they wanted you for the tournament.  Madripoor is the proud home of the only super powered death sport in the world.”

“That sounds pretty illegal.”

“Even though you’ve only been with us a couple of days, you’ve probably picked up on the fact that legality is a flexible concept around here, especially for people with money.  And the psycho that does the annual tournament has gobs of it.”

“Lovely.  This is all good information but how is the project of getting me home coming along?”

He leaned back and steepled his fingers for a moment “Not great.  Since you’re legally dead, that complicates things.  And being an NBH complicates things even more.  It means that you have to register with all kinds of groups with three letter names.  Smuggling you into the States would be super illegal.  People are going to be very interested in you, Ela.  It’s a good thing that I’m not with the CIA because if I was, you’d probably be knocking over some east African dictatorship right now.”

“I feel like you’re saying you’re not going to help me without saying it.”    

He held his hands out “I ship matchbooks and crummy electronics, what do you expect that I could do for you?  I don’t know anything about sneaking people through multiple countries illegally.  You’re too hot for me to handle.”

“That would be a good name for a song.”  

“I think Otis Redding already did that one.”

Montumazin 1 Year 888 (New Imperial Calendar)

Sending a Vieland army to attack Three Rivers isn’t the most satisfying of revenge on the Lumber Consortium but I’m not confident that I’m going to secure any better.  I’m reluctantly crossing them off the List while reserving the right to further avenge myself on them at a later date.  I don’t feel great about it but they’re proving to be a tough nut to crack.  Królewna & Bonifacja Trading Company was reckoned to be on be one of the movers and shakers in the Kingdom but I was able to completely ruin them without too much trouble.  It helped that they were complicit in treasonous activity but even so they had a lot of clout in the halls of power and they still went down hard.  The Lumber Consortium on the other hand I don’t think has any influence outside of the County, or very little, and they’re proving to be a far more stubborn opponent. Maybe the fact that their providence is smaller helps them?  K&B most likely had people trying to drag them down I gave them the chance.  Perhaps no one with enough power to do anything cares about the Lumber Consortium.

Point is I’m done with them for now.  I tried to the road back to Narhold and that displeased the collar around my neck forcing me northward.  And since the road north is crawling with Vieland soldiers (for some reason) I took off into the woods.  That always works well for me.  As you might imagine a gigantic warhorse is not well suited for picking your way through the trees and underbrush so I did significantly more leading than riding.  I had to use my Beastspeech several times to keep the big lummox moving.  In case you were wondering animals can be jerks.  And this guy is.  It’s probably not really his fault, I’m sure he was bred and trained to be like this, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying.  I’ve heard tell that  the savages that live out on the plains indulge in horse-fighting instead of  civilized bloodsports like dog-fighting or bear-baiting.  In my less charitable moments that’s where I feel this fellow belongs.

Since I can’t ride him and since he probably needs a ton of food and since I don’t really care about all that armor he’s carrying I was thinking about just turning him loose.  But just about the time I was convincing myself to do that was also the time when I noticed a form in the underbrush stalking after us.  Some folks call them stalhounds, others call them festrogs, they have many names – but a rose by any other name would smell as rotting.  Whatever you call them what they are is undead wolves with slack limbs and empty eyes driven by the needed to slaughter the living – and not just kill, terrorize and dismember first.  I would imagine it was keeping its distance on account of big hairy brute beside me, if I had been alone I’m sure it would have attacked.

Certain types, your intellectuals and academics and whatnot like to speculate on why the living dead spend all their time trying to kill us.  Is it because they envy the living?  Is it because of the dark magic that propels them forward?  Is it to avenge their own deaths against the entire world?  This is a great example of pointless conjecture – the undead want to kill us, does it really matter why?  I can assure you when you have a zombie wolf eyeballing you (metaphorically, as they have no remaining eyes) you don’t worry about its motivations in the least. 

The crossbow I stole from the commander was as huge and awkward as his stupid jerk horse.  It makes no sense for an officer to have something like this, it’s not like he’s going to be standing shoulder to shoulder with a unit of crossbowmen firing at the enemy, he should have a smaller weapon that he can keep around all the time in case things go sideways.  I managed to get it loaded once and fire at the skulking beast but I don’t think I hit it and I gave up on the idea of a second shot quickly.  I can barely raise the thing to my shoulder.  I suppose if it comes at me I can throw the crossbow at it, this thing weights thirty pounds it feels like.

The good news is with this murder-collar on me for once I can always make sure I’m heading essentially in the right direction – if I get turned around it lets me know by starting to kill me.  The bad news is that as the day wore on several more undead wolves turned up the join the very slow silent “hunt”.  Anticipating that they would eventually reach a critical mass where a single warhorse wasn’t going to keep them at bay anymore my first thought was to mount up and ride, despite the dangers of doing so in dense woods, but I quickly realized that was futile – the chances of enduring beyond the capacity of a living wolfpack is a tough prospect, and if there’s one thing the undead have going for them it’s that they don’t get tired and they don’t give up. 

Unfortunately I wasn’t coming up with a second thought very quickly.  It was hard to tell how many of the beasts there were as the day worse on since it was dark and they kept to the shadows, but I’m pretty sure there were at least six, and based on the stench there could have been more.  However many they were they were emboldened enough to get closer.  I think attack was imminent when I spotted a lumber camp in the distance.  I leapt onto Stanger’s back and set him to as fast as a gallop as I thought prudent given the terrain.  Still I was almost thrown away just by the force of him moving beneath me – it was a jolt to the spine when he started running in earnest.  I don’t think he liked those creatures sneaking about any more than I did.  They didn’t chase us, which is always unsettling.  Whenever you run away from a deadly menace and it just watches you go you have to wonder what’s you’re running towards.

The camp was abandoned, what with the war and all, but there were six men in a line in the middle of the place – hands tied behind them.  Five had been beheaded, one on the end had had his throat slashed, maybe the ax had gotten dull before they got to him but if anyone should have a good supply of sharp axes it would be loggers.  They weren’t wearing uniforms but I think they were Vielanders.  With that cheery sight revealed I headed for what is generally the most secure building in a place like this – the paymaster’s hut.  I tied the reins over the saddlehorn to make sure they wouldn’t get in Stranger’s way, refraining from touching him as I used the Beastspeech.

“If those things come up here stomp them in the head, keep your back to the wall here, make sure they don’t get behind you.”

He horse-snorted “I don’t need you tell me how to fight wolves female.”

See what I mean?  Jerk.  I went inside and checked the hidden compartment that I know now is usually in these places – I’ve been in a depressing amount of lumber camps at this point.  It was empty, the entire place had been cleaned out other than a massive desk that was probably too heavy to shift easily.  Even the chair for the desk was gone.  I took a seat to consider my options.

“I don’t remember inviting you in.”

The voice belonged to a shaggy wolfman that was couching in the corner.  It was covered with dark fur that was matted and tangled in ways that looked painful.  There’s no way I could have overlooked it but yet there it was catching me unawares.  When I think of a werewolf I think of a full wolf-head with a long snout but this being wasn’t like that – it was more like a wolf-skin face stretched over a flat noseless human skull.  It wasn’t a good look.  Not helping the overall appearance was the fact that this was clearly dead – not only were its guts splitting out of its belly like an apron but it had deep gouges across both arms and the back of the neck.  Whatever it was it was deader than a doornail, yet there it crouched.

“I let myself in.”

It made an odd coughing noise “Hasn’t anyone told you that’s very inconsiderate?  What would your mother say?  Not to mention it can be very dangerous as well, you never know who could be home.”

“Clearly.  I thought that werewolves turned back into humans when they died, how do you end up a zombie werewolf?”

“How should I know?”

“Because you are one?”

It made a raspy wheezing noise that I think was supposed to be laughter, sounded like it really had to work to push out that rattle “Zombie werewolf, that’s a good one.”