Party Goers Book Chapter 10
Chapter 10 by SteveT: May Be Dark[edit]
| Chapters in the Party Goers Book Project |
| Prologue - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - |
“He had his orders, as unusual as they may seem. Stop a certain boy at a certain pizza shop in a certain town on a certain date from certainly accomplishing something certain.
“He had certainly failed.
“He had hesitated back outside the pizza shop. He had been too obsessed with coming off as a dangerous villain that he, well, came off as something of a pretender.
“‘Bearded cosplayer.' Vorpal muttered Captain Marsharoon's words over and over in his mind. All he had to do was not let Golem accomplish anything, and he would have succeeded. Instead, Vorpal's flare for the dramatic had resulted in all sorts of adventuring for the bescarfed young man.
“Vorpal peered over the bow of the S.S. Swordfeller, wondering if he was really cut out to be a supervillain. The bright white clouds hurt his eyes, cutting through his sunglasses like Golem's adventures cut through his dignity.
“He resolved, after resolving to buy a stonger pair of sunglasses, that he would double his efforts to complete his mission. Golem would certainly accomplish something, and it was all Vorpal's fault.
“He had certainly failed.”
“Oh, start a journal,” Steve sneered from behind him, throwing a ball-point pen at Vorpal's back.
Vorpal stuttered. “Oh...erm...sorry. Old habit. I do a lot of walking between missions, and self-narration helps pass the time.”
Steve only stared back at him. Vorpal found it odd that something without eyes could cast a more fearsome gaze than any he had seen before.
“I'll try to keep it down,” Vorpal promised. Steve clanked away.
“Vorpal sometimes wondered how the Swordfeller stayed in the sky with something so heavy as Steve on it. Then again, there was also the artillery. Perhaps he would ask Captain Marsharoon how the ship worked someday.
“The penguins scampered about, tying knots and adjusting the sails to keep the ship afloat. They looked so silly. Any other day, he would have laughed.
“But these thoughts were naught but a diversion. Vorpal leaned back over the side of the ship and his pony-tail flopped over his right shoulder. His sunglasses jerked forward, but at the last second, a gloved finger pinned them to the bridge of his nose.
“Golem had stolen his dignity, his pride. He would not let a young boy in a black cap ruin his career as a villain. This was no longer a mere mission. He was Vorpal! This was revenge, and Vorpal had never failed at revenge.
“His hand rested on a mounted harpoon gun as he formulated a plan.”
“Gyar, ye be doing it again,” drawled the captain. Marsharoon chuckled beneath his feathered hat.
“I've been meaning to ask, how do flying ships work, anyway?” Vorpal asked him.
“Aye, it be quite simple,” Marsharoon answered. “I thought I explained it to you. Me ship be run by penguins.”
“Which are flightless birds.”
“So?”
“Nevermind,” Vorpal replied. “Did you get any information about Golem?”
“Me and Flutter conversed in the brig, but his tongue be stiff,” Marsharoon answered. “In English, at least,” he added after a pause.
“We should have had Steve talk to him,” Vorpal suggested. Then he shrugged, “Well, he's gone now anyway.”
“Yarr, along with me best fork!”
Vorpal turned back to staring down at the clouds. As the wind pushed them about, the swirling clouds opened to reveal a castle tower. Vorpal couldn't be sure, but he thought he saw a submarine docked by a giant stain-glass window.
“Sweet Madame Blue! I think we may have found our target!”
“Yarr, ‘tis about time,” Marsharoon exclaimed. “Ready yer sword, matey. We're taking her down.”
Vorpal watched as Marsharoon stared through his spyglass while the Swordfeller circled its way down to the ground. Just before they would have docked, Marsharoon started waving the spyglass and making some show of being off balance. “Adjust course!” he shouted to the helms-emu.
Vorpal held his hand out for the spyglass, and Marsharoon pointed his eye in the direction of a black dot moving quickly along some building-tops below the floating castle. Normally, a black dot would be been suspicious, but not grounds to adjust course. This black dot, however, had two wavy white lines trailing behind it.
Golem.
Vorpal stepped up onto the bow. He straightened his back and placed his hands on his hips, tilting his body to maximize the billowing of his cape. He stayed in that exact position until the Swordfeller was just above the buildings.
Marsharoon, meanwhile, shouted nautical terms the entire time. At least, he shouted terms Vorpal thought were nautical. “Hard to starboard! Keel the anchor! Reef the mast and port the main hull!”
Finally, he felt a tap on his shoulder. “Vorpal, we be in range,” Marsharoon said. With some reluctance, he terminated his pose and stepped back onto the deck.
“Ready to cast anchor, captain?” Steve asked in a surprisingly respectful tone. Still, his voice was very reminiscent of a low-pitched version of knives scraping together. With a voice like that, everything sounded like a threat.
Marsharoon gave the order, “Deploy the landing party,” and the suit of armor tied a long chain around himself. He then vaulted over the deck of the ship. Marsharoon immediately leapt over behind him and grabbed onto the chain with his left hand. Vorpal did the same, and the two dangled upside-down as they fell. After a few seconds passed, Vorpal began to wonder whether they should have just waited for the ship to come a little lower. He hated the feeling of weightlessness.
Finally, the chain went taut for just a brief second. Vorpal and Marsharoon nearly lost their grips as the chain jerked them to a halt. They started falling again, slower this time, and their scrambling feet finally touched ground again.
Steve was standing in a small crater, surrounded by a cloud of dust and atomized plaster. The chain was still tied around his waist, and he showed no signs of taking it off. “Just in case things get ugly,” he explained. “I can pull on this chain and crush you all with the ship.”
“Ye mean, pull on the chain and they'll hoist us back up,” Marharoon corrected. “It was me own idea.”
“If that's what you want to think,” Steve patronized. “Where's the kid?”
“He was running around the rooftops,” Vorpal answered. “He was in a hurry when I saw him. I don't think he'll be too easy to catch.”
Samuel Flutter was not particularly well accustomed to the idea of certain doom. Yet there it was before him, refusing to be ignored. The first instinct was to empty his pockets, of course, and the first wave of bailing still left him with one fourth of his own weight in valuables. Luckily, he remembered that acceleration due to gravity was independent of mass before he threw those away.
That left the problem of the parachute. The ropes were tangled, the cloth had been punctured by forks, and it was all-around useless at this point. Luckily, the long fall gave him time to think. Unfortunately, all he could think about was doom.
He was desperately holding on to Mr. Predict and praying in Spanish when suddenly he felt his descent slowing. Then he felt his descent changing direction.
When he finally built up the courage to open his eyes, he saw that Mr. Predict had somehow found a way to untangle the parachute. They were now slowly floating down to a city, the wind nudging them now to the right, now to the left. Flutter didn't care which way they went, so long as it was slow.
They finally landed on a rooftop. They rested there for a while. Flutter wanted to immediately go looking for his friends, but Mr. Predict insisted that they wait. “Our patience will be greatly rewarded should we merely hold our position,” he said.
“But I'm hungry,” Flutter complained.
“Well, it's not as if there is any convenient pathway to the ground, and there certainly aren't any of your beloved pizza merchants atop this dismal canopy of brick and cement.”
“I guess not,” Flutter mourned. He sat down.
Finally, after a few hours, their patience was indeed rewarded, for a human figure dropped down from the sky. They didn't recognize who it was, but stepped away from the shadow just the same.
The body hit the rooftop and nimbly rolled back to his feet before Flutter could even see the flowing scarf. “¡Ariba! ¡ Golem está vivo !” he exclaimed when the figure became fully visible.
He was instead met with a cold, mechanical voice. “Subjects equal secondary. Ignore,” and Golem turned and jumped to the next building top, landing in a sprint.
“Indubitably, just as I predicted, the mechanical doppelganger arrived in this very spot,” Mr. Predict grinned.
“We have to catch up with him!” Flutter screamed. Then he paused, “Wait—did you say doppelganger?”
“Indeed I did. That is no Golem, but rather a being brought to life from inanimate materials through unnatural means. Ironic, don't you agree?”
“Come on!” Flutter yelled as he tried to find a way to follow. The buildings were all closer together, and it didn't take robotic legs to jump from one building to another. It did, however, require a lack of concern for falling to one's doom. Unfortunately, Flutter had already used up all his spare lack of concern for the day, if not the whole month.
Nonetheless, he worried about Golem. So what if Mr. Predict said it was just a robotic clone? Flutter had to be sure. Besides, if someone had the means to make a robotic version of his friend, perhaps that same someone might know where Golem could be found.
For a little boy in a scarf, Golem was fast. For cheap sneakers, Golem's shoes had awfully large jets of flame emanating from the heels. Flutter could tell after only five buildings that Golem was getting away. He kept running anyway.
Then, suddenly, he saw Golem trip. Flutter sped up, hoping to take advantage to close the half-roof lead. He almost did, and for a few seconds, he could nearly grab onto the white scarf trailing from the boy's neck. Mr. Predict wasn't far behind.
Then all three stopped.
Abruptly.
They crashed into a metal wall.
Named Steve.
“Avast, be these me prisoners?” came the arrogant, swaggering voice of Captain Marsharoon.
“And the boy,” Vorpal gloated.
“Finally,” Steve added. “He can take his revenge and stop talking all day.”
“Which of us has a fire sword?” Vorpal asked rhetorically. “And which of us can melt?”
“Actually, metal is not alone in its capacity to be liquefied. Nearly every material has some melting point, and that of human flesh is surely within the range of an enflamed sword such as your own,” Mr. Predict answered, apparently not afraid to die.
Flutter wanted to tell him to be quiet, but was slipping into unconsciousness due to the collision.
Steve would have crushed that upstart if he hadn't refuted Vorpal. If the man ever corrected Steve...well, he wouldn't do it twice. Vorpal, however, seemed offended enough to tie up and gag Mr. Predict.
Steve noticed that the boy was standing up again. That was odd. Usually people who slammed into him were unconscious before they hit the ground. Eight out of ten times, to be precise. He'd kept track. Now he'd have to round down to seven. He hated odd numbers.
As he watched the boy stand up, he noticed that Golem didn't move like a normal human. His joints were less fluid, his motions more angular, and his muscles less silent. There was a distinct whir with ever bend of the arm or leg.
Golem looked up and stared Steve in the face. He then turned his gaze to Marharoon and Vorpal. “Processing,” Golem muttered to himself. “Processing...”
“Subject equals villains. Terminate,” Golem finally decided.
“Yar, that not be how English works, lady,” Marsharoon interjected. “Sees, ye be needing verbs, not math symblees. Besides, ye used nouns o' two differing pluralities.”
“Begin RHYK attack sequence,” the boy said flatly.
“That be a bit better,” the captain nodded.
“I think he's a robot, Marsh,” Vorpal said quietly.
“That be silliness,” Marsharoon scoffed. “Why would a robot be wearin' a scarf?”
Steve didn't hear Vorpal's answer. Something about the dent in his chest seemed a bit more important. He turned his gaze down just in time to see Golem's fist withdrawing itself from the aforementioned dent.
“Oh, that...” Steve sputtered. “I can't...did you just...” Words failed him. They always did when things got ugly. Luckily, metal gauntlets were more versatile than words. He swung his heavy steel fist at the robotic doppelganger, but Rhyk dodged the blow.
They traded punches for a time. Steve found it invigorating. He had never before met someone who could actually hurt him without a gun. It was rather refreshing, really, to be engaged in a fair fight. Annoying, but refreshing.
As the brawl went on, Steve accumulated two more dents, also in his torso. Finally, though, a blow from the armor's elbow knocked Rhyk to the floor. The swords of Vorpal and Marsharoon crossed over the robot's neck.
“Target equals superior. Initiate compliance sequence,” Rhyk said, raising his hands over his head.
“Thar ye go again with yer bad grammar,” Marsharoon chided as he adjusted his hat.
“Back to the ship, then, Captain?” Steve asked, preparing to tug on the chain.
“Back to the ship,” Marsharoon agreed.
| Chapters in the Party Goers Book Project |
| Prologue - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - |