Thursday, February 10, 2011

Tyrant - 15

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~*~

"Who the hell are you?" Tyrant asked. "Another Skull? Better costume, at least. Sword's a bit much, though."

"It's over," the Skull said.

"Yes. I thoroughly agree." Tyrant threw Sumerset's armored corpse aside. "It is over. Boomerang, would you be so kind?"

Boomerang Kid sprang out from his hiding place, his boomerangs spinning forward. The Skull's sword flashed out in two quick, murderous strokes; the boomerangs were neatly carved into separate pieces.

Boomerang Kid charged shortly after, a fresh pair of boomerangs in hand. As he brought the first one down in a jagged arc, the Skull side-stepped; the hilt of their sword snapped out and hammered into Boomerang's nose, neatly breaking it. Boomerang stumbled back just as the Skull's left knee snapped up into a brutal blow, leaving him breathless and confused.

The flat of the blade swung down to deliver a final blow against Boomerang's skull. He dropped to the ground, knocked out.

Tyrant watched, an expression of disbelief settling over him. "Impossible," he said. "You're dead."

"Oh?" the Skull said. "You think you know who I am?"

Tyrant narrowed his eyes. Energy coalesced in his irises; with a simple exertion, the energy extended into a murderous blade of heat.

The Skull's sword lifted up at an angle, meeting the heat-ray; they tilted the sword's edge, reflecting the beam up, then down--until it struck Tyrant's face, burning a path straight through his eyes.

"Fuck!" Tyrant roared, and he fell to the ground, clutching at his smoking eyesockets. The tissue damage healed rapidly, but for a moment, he felt panic gripping him. "You're--you're dead!"

He blindly grabbed the nearest thing he could find--an SUV. His fingers dented into its side as he twisted and threw it in the Skull's general direction; they easily sprang up above the SUV, feet blurring as they ran across its roof, leapt down, and landed in front of Tyrant.

"Elizabeth," the Tyrant whispered. "It can't be you--"

The Skull hammered their fist into Tyrant's face. The powered armor growled as it kicked into full-force; Tyrant flew back into the far wall and kept going. As he got back to his feet, he shook off his blindness and growled.

"Who are you?!" he roared.

The Skull took off her helmet.

An older and slightly more scarred Sue Daysdale stared him down.

"...what? You?" Tyrant said. "That stupid little--teenage twit? But your fighting style--that technique. It was hers--"

"Picked it up from her old teacher," Sue said, walking forward. "Picked up a few other things, too."

Tyrant narrowed his eyes. "You do know what I'm capable of, right? You realize you don't stand a chance in Hell against me. Not now."

"No," Sue said. "I've had two years to prepare for this moment, Scourge. Two years to train. To learn. And to prepare."

"I don't care if you had two hundred years, you snooty little fuck," he said. "You think you're going to defeat me? You and what army?"

Sue smiled. "Really," she said. "In the long history of human fuck-ups, do you think anyone's ever asked that question and not lived to immediately regret it?"

Lights flashed around the parking complex. Figures began to appear.

"What the hell--" Tyrant said.

"Two years to prepare, Scourge. Two years to gather weapons from every obscure corner of human history," Sue said. "Two years to train in their usage... two years to keep returning to this same moment... and use them on you."

Tyrant's eyes widened. Around him, more Sue Daysdales were appearing--all of them in the same armor. All of them with swords. And all of them holding a different superweapon.

"F--fucking... fucking time-travel bullshit!" Tyrant said.

"No shit, Sherlock," Sue said. "This one's for Sumerset. Everyone: Open fire."

All at once, Tyrant's world exploded into a thousand penetrating beams of light.

~*~

"Ambulance has Mulligan," Anna reported. "Lost contact with Sumerset. Wytch? Is Red okay?"

"Yes," Wytch said. "Hurt, but okay. Scourge hit us hard--"

"Something's happening in the parking lot," Mulligan said. "Something just--"

Everyone stopped talking as the parking lot where Sumerset and Tyrant had continued their fight promptly ceased to exist. In its place appeared a smoking, burning crater.

~*~

Tyrant fell to the ground. His left arm had disappeared from the shoulder joint down--holes riddled his body. Nearly every bone was shattered; his skull was fractured, his internal organs ruptured, and blood leaking from what might as well have been every pore.

As the other Sues disappeared, the one who had first approached him stepped forward, sword in hand. She pressed the crook of her foot down against his throat and pointed the tip of his sword blade at his face.

"I've had a lot of time to think about what I'm going to do to you," she said. "For what you did to Sumerset."

"Nngh..." Tyrant spat up a few chipped teeth. His regeneration was already kicking in, but the process was still too slow.

"Killing you is what he would have wanted, I know. Easiest solution. Stops you from hurting anyone else."

A brilliant, burning light opened up behind Sue; Temporis emerged from the portal.

"But I've thought of a better solution," Sue said. "I'm just going to put you somewhere where you won't bother anyone ever again."

Temporis opened another portal next to Sue; Sue crouched down and lifted Tyrant up by the throat.

"We're just going to dump you a six thousannd million years into earth's past."

Tyrant made a low, pitched whining sound. Sue smiled.

"Try fucking shit up there."

She threw him into the portal; Temporis slammed it shut. For a while, the two kept silent.

Somewhere behind them, metal clattered. Boomerang Kid emerged, a boomerang in either hand.

Sue turned to look back at him, sword still in hand.

"You can't be serious," she said.

Boomerang Kid paused, thought it over, and then turned and ran like hell.
~*~

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19 comments:

  1. That was awesome!

    I am assuming that in order for Temporis to interfere in the fight, they had to lose once. And the intervention could not have undone that loss because then Temporis would have no reason (or knowledge) to interfere with it and thus create paradox/divergent timelines.
    But there's no reason she could not have interfered AFTER the initial loss. :)


    Minor nitpick; Tyrant is, presumably, immortal. If they sent him into the very distant past, he could just wait for civilization to reemerge, living through the years the hard way.
    On the other hand, the solar system and the galaxy itself would not have been even close to the same place 6 billion years ago so Tyrant would reappear in intergalactic space, a billion or so light years from the closest star. Unless he could see far enough to find our galaxy and travel fast enough to reach it, we would never be seeing him.

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  2. Thanks; also, close, but the event was actually triggered by Sumerset's death (rather than losing the battle, which became irrelevant after Sumerset died).

    Tyrant is immortal, yeah, and I think Sue realizes that; she figures six thousand million years of poisonous gases, magma, and starvation (also, three thousand million years before the first conclusive signs of life show up) will either drive him irrevocably insane or kill him.

    Really, Sue kind of cheated here; throwing him through that time portal is, in essence, the same as killing him.

    Also, I think I want to reboot the whole series. I'm not satisfied with how this turned out at all. That, on top of a huge spat of depression and a lot of financial woes is what created the huge time gap between posts.

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    1. Hm... Ah, the time-travel thing was a little cheap but had enough build up that it worked. At least we know Temporis dies probably relatively soon, so that cuts down on the number of times she can do this. Anyway, I didn't think it was confusing at all, so don't worry about that.

      Also, I'd think the safest option would have been something like the end of the universe, but I don't know what Temporis's limits are.

      You know, if Kid Boomerang actually kicked her around a little before losing, that would have been pretty hilarious. After all, unlike Tyrant, he's not facing an army of her with super-weapons from across all of space and time. Still, probably better to retreat.

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    2. I feel like Tyrant still has resources, he knows how to contact powerful magical beings that may or may not exist in that time, if that falls though he has a ludicrously sturdy body and has in the past resurrected himself, launching himself into high solar orbit and either just hoping his body is found by those interested in bringing him back, or setting a time delay or conditionally activated resurrection might be long shot options, then there's always the chance of another time traveler (they happen) going back to find him.

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  3. I once wanted to reboot my own blogfiction story but because it coincided with some fairly serious personal trouble I could not finish it and eventually lost interest. Morale of the story? Unless you are sure you're invested enough in a story to really do the rewrite, do not start such projects when there are RL problems around.


    Also, clarification; is the sword she used Jin's sword? It seems to be able to cut through anything even that Noble woman that could survive anything else and not even get hurt.

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  4. I think I've got a handle on my problems now; I'll see. I'm waiting to move forward on my next few projects.

    Yes, it's Jin's sword; one of the people Sue trained under (for the better part of a year, in fact) was Jin, who trained the second Skull (Elizabeth Bristle). There was supposed to be a whole substory about Sue's training under Jin; I don't know if I'll ever get around to it, though.

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  5. OK, Tyrant is effectively dead but what about Sue? What happens to her after beating the Big Bad? What happens in the government after the plan to kill Sovereign failed? (and I am assuming they saw Tyrant in the future newspaper, not Sovereign). What about Sue's friends?

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  6. I'll address some of this in the epilogue, but--It was Sovereign, not Tyrant. Percival Murdoch framed him as the bad guy and set the entire government after him as a prelude to the next Mirroverse invasion.

    The whole timeline shenanigans thing with Temporis is one of the reasons I feel such a powerful need to rewrite; I had this planned and plotted out, but didn't express what happened very clearly.

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  7. I'd concede that what happened with time travel could be a little clearer, but as a reader, it didn't bother me. That's the kind of stuff I'd be happy to see clarified in an epilogue, but didn't bother me as I read the story.

    I enjoyed the ending quite a bit though despite any problems that you might fix during a rewrite.

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  8. I'm just dropping by to send you some comment-love, and to tell you that I absolutely loved this ending. (I've been coming back to this site for the longest time, waiting for an update).

    I agree with you - a rewrite would be good (with pacing issues at certain parts) but I think what you've got here is (at its core) really good. A little bit of polish and you've got a rich story-world to build all kinds of cool stories on!

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  9. This was great. Seriously. Great. I can understand that you know you can do better, so take what is here and polish, add, copy and paste, etc. But there's no reason to just reboot everything. Add the training stories in, clear up the time travel, if you want. I think the way it was done keeping it all a secret, then a big reveal was great. I hope that I can continue reading stories based on all these characters.

    Thank you very much for sharing.

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  10. I've been thinking on it, and considering the comments here--I'm just going to take a break before I make any rash decisions (my original thought was a complete reboot rather than just some editing). Either way, I intend to write more about Sue Daysdale and friends.

    I appreciate the comments, and the support. In the meanwhile, please feel free to review and rate at the webfiction guide! I should have the epilogue (followed by plans for sequels/other works) up by the end of this week.

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  11. Good. Feeling less than happy about what you've written just after you're done is completely natural.

    Personally on rereading my own stuff, I find that I vary between thinking, "That's better than I expected," to "I need to rewrite EVERYTHING."

    So taking a step back before doing anything drastic sounds like a good idea to me.

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  12. I have very few issues with where this has gone.

    1) Woot's powers, to my previous understanding, could not have assisted Tech Head/Man-of-War.
    2) Temporal Shenanigans are hard, especially because they always bring one back to the question: "Couldn't you have done one better?"

    It is, otherwise, glorious.

    -ID

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  13. Woot's powers cover, essentially, everything. He has a sort of magical influence over his own conception of technology.

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  14. While it wasn't spelled out as such, since Scourge also knew how to use magic and Woot's power was described as magic, it's quite possible that he was able to give some permanency (or at least a much longer duration) to Woot's modifications after they weren't in contact with him anymore.

    Thank you for the story GH. I wouldn't worry too much about making the time travel shenanigans clearer since such things by their very nature tend to muddy the waters and create paradoxes.

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  15. 6 thousand million years ago is about a billion and a half years before the Earth even formed.

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