Post by redsycorax on Aug 12, 2020 4:06:43 GMT
Earth-55, which used to be Earth-12 before several Crises intervened to mangle the order and reassign it several universes downward, is host to several highly derivative avengers from the caustic regions of the parodyverse. Mr Might, the Man of Titanium (Neon ran out of steel)!!! Lady Liberty, the Tiaraed Terror of All That is Statist (and Ayn Rand addict)!!! Princess Power, the Enormous Amazon!!! The Patriot, Annoying Emblem of a Varnished and Heavily Romanticised American Past!!! Bowman, the brown clad archer type guy!!! Bat Woman, the Uncaped Crusader Who Owes Nothing At All to Bill Finger!!! Captain Swift, the openly gay speedster!!! Green Trashcan, wielder of the noxious smelloring, an alien artefact from the Guardians of Phwoa!!! Lightpower, the reformed adult former Robber the Boy Plunder!!! Mermaid, the Sovereign of the Seven Seas!!! Together, they are the World's Most Grating Superbeings, the Freedom Brigade of the United States of America!!! They stand for post-truth, moral ambiguity and the American way!!!
+++
MARRACAS TRENCH:
In the lost continent of Pacifica, another hidden cephalopoid race dwelt, unbeknownst to the rest of that Earth. For some reason involving lack of intellectual property to exploit other Spongejim Saggytrousers characters, they all looked like his saturnine neighbour, Squalidwidge. It probably has something to do with clones and parthenogenesis, they're the usual excuses for lack of diversity. Anyway, when they'd been devastated by one oil slick too many, Supersqualidwidge, the emperor of these unaesthetic green dangling tentacled creatures, raised an appendage:
"Brothers!!! Sisters!!! Non-gender-specific Siblings!!! Neuters!!! The time has come to avenge our everlasting degradation by the beings of the surface world!!!"
"Why are you speaking standard English, given that we're all water dwellers?"
"Look, I'm not, this dialogue is a rough translation of the wholly gestural symbolic language we really use, but the author of this crap is too lazy to- awp !!!" Although Supersqualidwidge I was instantaneously crushed to a pulp beneath a conveniently falling ocean liner. Fortunately, or conveniently, he had just fissioned and his mitochondrial twin, Supersqualidwidge II, took over without the aspersions unjustly cast at the authorial presence. Halfway through the impassioned bellicose rant, the other Disgusting Green Tentacled Things raised their own manipulator appendages and gurgled deafeningly as one in consent to his planned devastation of the surface world and its oppressors!!!
FREEDOM BRIGADE SATELLITE:
"Oh no- I've just heard a telepathic message that a long lost submarine civilisation vaguely resembling octopoids is intent on invading the surface world and forcing humankind to submit to their disgusting green tentacled personal habits!!!" Mermaid gasped as her husband, Mr Might, looked up:
"Lauren dear, isn't that slightly xenophobic? So they're cephalopoids. That doesn't mean they don't have feelings too. Even if they are ravening sentient calamari leftovers."
"This is serious," commented Bat Woman, looking through her Bat Penetra-Scope at the Pacifican city on the bottom of the Marracas Trench,"they look far better organised and armed than the Neptunian invaders we easily dispatched back to their homeworld last week. We may all be in deadly danger. Mermaid, can't you control them with your maritime psionic skills?"
Mermaid shook her head: "My telepathic skills are rudimentary at best, except when convenient for the plotline. It was only by chance that I intercepted the stray message. What about you two, Princess Power and Lady Liberty? Surely your Amazonian culture might have encountered this long-lost civilisation before?"
"Er, well, yes," confessed Princess Power,"that was when Thymiscrier was going through its multinational corporate capitalist phase three thousand years ago. I'm afraid corners were cut involving factory farming of octopoids and nuclear waste dumping and it may have kind of been in that approximate area..."
"Are you saying you're responsible for this ghastly situation?" Mermaid said icily.
"Look, it's not our fault our civilisation diverged from ancient Greece and we share its culinary tastes, y'know."
"And you were going to mention this when? Oh never mind. Mr Might, dear, head seawards and round up their surface invasion force."
"Er, sweetheart, you know my one weakness? I can't swim."
"You're supposed to be invulnerable!"
"On land and in space, yes."
"Oh, I see. This episode is supposed to centre on me, is it? All right."
PACIFIC OCEAN:
Abruptly, Mermaid realised that something was off kilter here. Squidgeward Betentacled was a creature from the Dork Multiverse, that inexplicable realm of badly designed characters with no appreciable continuity whatsoever and little plot development. And hadn't there been an Extremely Large But Not Actually "Infinite" Multiversal Crisis which had destroyed numerous such hapless universes in a cascade of antimatter storms and crimson skies? Which might have explained the abrupt cancellation of Spongejim Saggytrousers across those alternate Earths where it was a fictional property, she deduced. So... Squidgeward had taken advantage of an editorial oversight to cross the multiverse and breed parthenogenic, genetically enhanced copies of himself, had he? Which meant that her telepathic command capabilities wouldn't work on them. All right, let's see how they handle an influx of bad-tempered cetaceans though...
FREEDOM BRIGADE SATELLITE:
Meanwhile, 22,300 miles above, the Freedom Brigade had been surprised and captured by two erased continuity characters who had also slipped into the Earth-55 universe through a convenient gap in logic- Mr Might's old and previously extinguished flames, Lori Lake and Louisa Louche. Captain Swift rolled his eyes, grateful that he wasn't heterosexual and had a comparatively simple background continuity and timeline- or at least, he had until the Great ManFlashing, until it had been undone by the last Multiversal Crisis. Mr Might gritted his teeth, wondering how the two women had abruptly gained Neonian class superpowers. How? Had one of his rogues gallery gifted them with them? Magic? Alien genetic engineering?
Lori Lake laughed evilly: "Haha hahaha! If I can't have you, Mr Might, noboby can."
"This isn't going to be a repeat of that episode where you derange the space/time continuum trying to get rid of my marriage to Mermaid again, is it?"
Bat Woman sighed: "Yes, but why does this have to involve the rest of us? You're Barb-El's ex-girlfriends. I'm quite content with one suitor at a time, although I acknowledge he shouldn't have left you dangling throughout most of the fifties and sixties before he and Lauren tied the knot."
Lightpower nodded: "Although I know what that sort of annoying sexual tension can be like. Badman and I had it in spades after I turned eighteen. Why not untie us and we'll pretend this never happened? We'll only slightly send you into the Spectral Zone."
Louisa Louche scowled: "Never! And what about you and Captain Swift over there, Lightpower? Two stone cool foxes going totally to waste."
Captain Swift interjected: "We're gay, albeit not with each other."
Patriot contributed his own perspective: "Look, if you two want revenge on Mr Might for leading you on all those years, I'm sure we can work something out."
Lady Liberty stared daggers at her husband: "I'll bet you could, except for the slight fact you're inert in the groinal area."
Patriot groaned: "Why do you two want to get married to Barb-El anyway? Isn't the gory spectacle of the wedded blitz that Dana and I share enough to put anyone off?"
Mr Might shook his head: "Yes, but it's different for you two. Anyway, the rest of us are happily married, except for S.Mel the Trashcan over there. Unfortunately for him, olfactory-disabled women are hard to find."
Lori Lake considered this: "It's a deal! We'll abscond with him to Earth-46, where polygamy's legal in its United States and get him married to both of us."
Green Trashcan protested at this: "Uh, excuse me? I don't want to get into a laser cannon marriage. For some reason, they don't have divorce on Earth-46 either."
Louisa Louche smiled malevolently: "Too bad, studhunk. Lori and I have wanted to get into Mr Might's leotards for a while, but yours will do equally well. So long, Freedom Brigade!!!"
And with that, the two ex-girlfriends of Mr Might vanished with the Emerald Asphyxiator. Fortunately, Bat Woman had found her Bat Swiss Pocket Knife and hastily sliced through the ropes that held them with it. As they sat rubbing their wrists, Mr Might tuned in the transmatter cube to Earth-46:
"Now, this may be strange for those of you who haven't visited alternate worlds before now. On some parallel Earths, there are things like cannabis prohibition, untaxed sugar, and we are nothing more than characters in a comic book. Where Bat Woman is a man. Where pointy-eared superbeings serve the cause of good instead of evil."
"Ah, a cheap rip off of Badman and Robber, you mean?" Mr Might nodded.
"All right, enough cheap ironic humour. I was just warning you." Captain Swift said, as the group headed into the pulsating blue and green vortex...
PACIFIC OCEAN:
Mermaid hovered above New Beluga Bottom, as hundreds of cephaloids mustered, holding large laser cannons and particle beam weapons in their multiple arms, while Supersquidgeward II presided over them in an elevated box above the arena. She noticed that he had mysteriously acquired a toothbrush moustache and was ranting and raving and gesticulating. There was no doubt about it- Supersquidgeward II had been driven insane by the destruction of his own Earth by the Great Crisis, even if he'd probably been relieved to get away from Spongejim Saggytrousers and the somewhat dim Patrick Echinoderm. She regretted having to do this, but the giant squid would overrun the oceans and cause an ecological crisis and she didn't like the look of those land ascent tanks elsewhere in the submarine metropolis. She averted her gaze as she sent out the fateful telepathic message and hordes of assembled cetaceans descended on the throng of cephalopoids below. There were telepathic snarls of rage and fear as battle was joined and then, Supersquidgeward II himself was before her:
"You! Why are you doing this, especially given this world's maritime pollution?"
"No, I'm sorry, that's far too serious for this continuity. Anyway, you can talk. From what my husband Barb-El told me, your perished Earth Beluga Bottom was the product of an ancient nuclear war which created your community's remote ancestors. Your plans of global domination are over."
"But my world was destroyed in the Great Crisis."
"So do you have to invade our particular alternate Earth? There are large numbers of Earths that are completely covered in water that would be a far better prospect. No pesky land dwellers to dump their waste and foul our environment. Here's one- Earth 28, 336."
"Wow, that looks beautiful."
"And here's a transmatter cube, so you can take your surviving forces and resettle that placid world where no sapient species previously existed."
"Saved by a highly convenient and improbable deus ex machina! How can we ever thank you, Queen Lauren?"
"Just don't make any inopportune remarks about the Authorial Presence."
"Oh no. I saw what happened to my clonefather."
And so, the last survivors of Earth-Beluga Bottom made a new life for themselves on the waterworld Earth 28,336 and in time developed a highly advanced civilisation.
FREEDOM BRIGADE SATELLITE:
"Okay, that was unusually quick to resolve. And even better, Lori Lake was hit by a massive intellectual property infringement lawsuit from Earth-B and Grant Morrison when she stepped foot on Earth-46. Good thing Louisa Louche fell into that ravine shortly afterward. Granted, it left us with nothing else to do but sightseeing, but the peace and quiet was worth it." Mr Might said as Mermaid materialised on the FBUS teleport pad. Amidst communal laughter, they opened bottles of mead and had a massive knees up.
THE END
+++
MARRACAS TRENCH:
In the lost continent of Pacifica, another hidden cephalopoid race dwelt, unbeknownst to the rest of that Earth. For some reason involving lack of intellectual property to exploit other Spongejim Saggytrousers characters, they all looked like his saturnine neighbour, Squalidwidge. It probably has something to do with clones and parthenogenesis, they're the usual excuses for lack of diversity. Anyway, when they'd been devastated by one oil slick too many, Supersqualidwidge, the emperor of these unaesthetic green dangling tentacled creatures, raised an appendage:
"Brothers!!! Sisters!!! Non-gender-specific Siblings!!! Neuters!!! The time has come to avenge our everlasting degradation by the beings of the surface world!!!"
"Why are you speaking standard English, given that we're all water dwellers?"
"Look, I'm not, this dialogue is a rough translation of the wholly gestural symbolic language we really use, but the author of this crap is too lazy to- awp !!!" Although Supersqualidwidge I was instantaneously crushed to a pulp beneath a conveniently falling ocean liner. Fortunately, or conveniently, he had just fissioned and his mitochondrial twin, Supersqualidwidge II, took over without the aspersions unjustly cast at the authorial presence. Halfway through the impassioned bellicose rant, the other Disgusting Green Tentacled Things raised their own manipulator appendages and gurgled deafeningly as one in consent to his planned devastation of the surface world and its oppressors!!!
FREEDOM BRIGADE SATELLITE:
"Oh no- I've just heard a telepathic message that a long lost submarine civilisation vaguely resembling octopoids is intent on invading the surface world and forcing humankind to submit to their disgusting green tentacled personal habits!!!" Mermaid gasped as her husband, Mr Might, looked up:
"Lauren dear, isn't that slightly xenophobic? So they're cephalopoids. That doesn't mean they don't have feelings too. Even if they are ravening sentient calamari leftovers."
"This is serious," commented Bat Woman, looking through her Bat Penetra-Scope at the Pacifican city on the bottom of the Marracas Trench,"they look far better organised and armed than the Neptunian invaders we easily dispatched back to their homeworld last week. We may all be in deadly danger. Mermaid, can't you control them with your maritime psionic skills?"
Mermaid shook her head: "My telepathic skills are rudimentary at best, except when convenient for the plotline. It was only by chance that I intercepted the stray message. What about you two, Princess Power and Lady Liberty? Surely your Amazonian culture might have encountered this long-lost civilisation before?"
"Er, well, yes," confessed Princess Power,"that was when Thymiscrier was going through its multinational corporate capitalist phase three thousand years ago. I'm afraid corners were cut involving factory farming of octopoids and nuclear waste dumping and it may have kind of been in that approximate area..."
"Are you saying you're responsible for this ghastly situation?" Mermaid said icily.
"Look, it's not our fault our civilisation diverged from ancient Greece and we share its culinary tastes, y'know."
"And you were going to mention this when? Oh never mind. Mr Might, dear, head seawards and round up their surface invasion force."
"Er, sweetheart, you know my one weakness? I can't swim."
"You're supposed to be invulnerable!"
"On land and in space, yes."
"Oh, I see. This episode is supposed to centre on me, is it? All right."
PACIFIC OCEAN:
Abruptly, Mermaid realised that something was off kilter here. Squidgeward Betentacled was a creature from the Dork Multiverse, that inexplicable realm of badly designed characters with no appreciable continuity whatsoever and little plot development. And hadn't there been an Extremely Large But Not Actually "Infinite" Multiversal Crisis which had destroyed numerous such hapless universes in a cascade of antimatter storms and crimson skies? Which might have explained the abrupt cancellation of Spongejim Saggytrousers across those alternate Earths where it was a fictional property, she deduced. So... Squidgeward had taken advantage of an editorial oversight to cross the multiverse and breed parthenogenic, genetically enhanced copies of himself, had he? Which meant that her telepathic command capabilities wouldn't work on them. All right, let's see how they handle an influx of bad-tempered cetaceans though...
FREEDOM BRIGADE SATELLITE:
Meanwhile, 22,300 miles above, the Freedom Brigade had been surprised and captured by two erased continuity characters who had also slipped into the Earth-55 universe through a convenient gap in logic- Mr Might's old and previously extinguished flames, Lori Lake and Louisa Louche. Captain Swift rolled his eyes, grateful that he wasn't heterosexual and had a comparatively simple background continuity and timeline- or at least, he had until the Great ManFlashing, until it had been undone by the last Multiversal Crisis. Mr Might gritted his teeth, wondering how the two women had abruptly gained Neonian class superpowers. How? Had one of his rogues gallery gifted them with them? Magic? Alien genetic engineering?
Lori Lake laughed evilly: "Haha hahaha! If I can't have you, Mr Might, noboby can."
"This isn't going to be a repeat of that episode where you derange the space/time continuum trying to get rid of my marriage to Mermaid again, is it?"
Bat Woman sighed: "Yes, but why does this have to involve the rest of us? You're Barb-El's ex-girlfriends. I'm quite content with one suitor at a time, although I acknowledge he shouldn't have left you dangling throughout most of the fifties and sixties before he and Lauren tied the knot."
Lightpower nodded: "Although I know what that sort of annoying sexual tension can be like. Badman and I had it in spades after I turned eighteen. Why not untie us and we'll pretend this never happened? We'll only slightly send you into the Spectral Zone."
Louisa Louche scowled: "Never! And what about you and Captain Swift over there, Lightpower? Two stone cool foxes going totally to waste."
Captain Swift interjected: "We're gay, albeit not with each other."
Patriot contributed his own perspective: "Look, if you two want revenge on Mr Might for leading you on all those years, I'm sure we can work something out."
Lady Liberty stared daggers at her husband: "I'll bet you could, except for the slight fact you're inert in the groinal area."
Patriot groaned: "Why do you two want to get married to Barb-El anyway? Isn't the gory spectacle of the wedded blitz that Dana and I share enough to put anyone off?"
Mr Might shook his head: "Yes, but it's different for you two. Anyway, the rest of us are happily married, except for S.Mel the Trashcan over there. Unfortunately for him, olfactory-disabled women are hard to find."
Lori Lake considered this: "It's a deal! We'll abscond with him to Earth-46, where polygamy's legal in its United States and get him married to both of us."
Green Trashcan protested at this: "Uh, excuse me? I don't want to get into a laser cannon marriage. For some reason, they don't have divorce on Earth-46 either."
Louisa Louche smiled malevolently: "Too bad, studhunk. Lori and I have wanted to get into Mr Might's leotards for a while, but yours will do equally well. So long, Freedom Brigade!!!"
And with that, the two ex-girlfriends of Mr Might vanished with the Emerald Asphyxiator. Fortunately, Bat Woman had found her Bat Swiss Pocket Knife and hastily sliced through the ropes that held them with it. As they sat rubbing their wrists, Mr Might tuned in the transmatter cube to Earth-46:
"Now, this may be strange for those of you who haven't visited alternate worlds before now. On some parallel Earths, there are things like cannabis prohibition, untaxed sugar, and we are nothing more than characters in a comic book. Where Bat Woman is a man. Where pointy-eared superbeings serve the cause of good instead of evil."
"Ah, a cheap rip off of Badman and Robber, you mean?" Mr Might nodded.
"All right, enough cheap ironic humour. I was just warning you." Captain Swift said, as the group headed into the pulsating blue and green vortex...
PACIFIC OCEAN:
Mermaid hovered above New Beluga Bottom, as hundreds of cephaloids mustered, holding large laser cannons and particle beam weapons in their multiple arms, while Supersquidgeward II presided over them in an elevated box above the arena. She noticed that he had mysteriously acquired a toothbrush moustache and was ranting and raving and gesticulating. There was no doubt about it- Supersquidgeward II had been driven insane by the destruction of his own Earth by the Great Crisis, even if he'd probably been relieved to get away from Spongejim Saggytrousers and the somewhat dim Patrick Echinoderm. She regretted having to do this, but the giant squid would overrun the oceans and cause an ecological crisis and she didn't like the look of those land ascent tanks elsewhere in the submarine metropolis. She averted her gaze as she sent out the fateful telepathic message and hordes of assembled cetaceans descended on the throng of cephalopoids below. There were telepathic snarls of rage and fear as battle was joined and then, Supersquidgeward II himself was before her:
"You! Why are you doing this, especially given this world's maritime pollution?"
"No, I'm sorry, that's far too serious for this continuity. Anyway, you can talk. From what my husband Barb-El told me, your perished Earth Beluga Bottom was the product of an ancient nuclear war which created your community's remote ancestors. Your plans of global domination are over."
"But my world was destroyed in the Great Crisis."
"So do you have to invade our particular alternate Earth? There are large numbers of Earths that are completely covered in water that would be a far better prospect. No pesky land dwellers to dump their waste and foul our environment. Here's one- Earth 28, 336."
"Wow, that looks beautiful."
"And here's a transmatter cube, so you can take your surviving forces and resettle that placid world where no sapient species previously existed."
"Saved by a highly convenient and improbable deus ex machina! How can we ever thank you, Queen Lauren?"
"Just don't make any inopportune remarks about the Authorial Presence."
"Oh no. I saw what happened to my clonefather."
And so, the last survivors of Earth-Beluga Bottom made a new life for themselves on the waterworld Earth 28,336 and in time developed a highly advanced civilisation.
FREEDOM BRIGADE SATELLITE:
"Okay, that was unusually quick to resolve. And even better, Lori Lake was hit by a massive intellectual property infringement lawsuit from Earth-B and Grant Morrison when she stepped foot on Earth-46. Good thing Louisa Louche fell into that ravine shortly afterward. Granted, it left us with nothing else to do but sightseeing, but the peace and quiet was worth it." Mr Might said as Mermaid materialised on the FBUS teleport pad. Amidst communal laughter, they opened bottles of mead and had a massive knees up.
THE END