Post by redsycorax on Oct 5, 2020 1:01:19 GMT
They are their world's mightiest heroes, primarily because their offspring got extremely annoyed with waiting for the Aluminium Foil Age to end and absconded. Mr Might, the Man from Yesterday's Tomorrow!!! Princess Power, the Enormous Amazon!!! Lady Liberty, the FBUS' other Amazon!!! Patriot, a guy who wears an Uncle Sam outfit!!! Mermaid (who is self-obvious)!!! Captain Swift, the gay sultan of speed!!! Green Trashcan, the Olfactory Avenger!!! Bat Woman, the Capeless Crusader!!! The Eye, master of the optical arts!!! Black Vulcan, gifted with control over lightning!!! Lightpower, the reformed Robber the Boy Plunder!!! Together, they right wrongs, fight crime and get into unbelievably convoluted scrapes!!! They are the Freedom Brigade of the United States.
++
As on many Earths, the western died on Earth-55 and few examples of the antiquated and obsolete genre get made anymore. Much the same happened with the musical genre, in which people burst spontaneously into song numbers and danced around for no convincing reason. Several decades ago, Mr Might was saddled with two combative would-be girlfriends, Lola Lake and Louisa Louche, and a best friend named Jiminy Crouton, who kept getting into ridiculous adventures of his own. One of them included the microplanet "Transilvane", which zipped around the world and whose inhabitants evolved from horror movie characters. Mr Might decided to fix that by changing the in-flight movie to more wholesome fare like the musical Oklahoma. Don Rickles' evil identical twin sister Goody Rickles also showed up, upon which the series was cancelled forever. However, Goody Rickles then abducted Jiminy and nothing was ever heard from him again.
Unfortunately for the sake of posterity but fortunately for the purposes of this story, the renamed "Oklahome" got corrupted by a rogue virus which carried RNA from the former inhabitants of Transilvane, producing the following weird plot twists in Oklahome's cultural and evolutionary development. Curly Hare invited himself into farmgirl Laurey Driver's courtyard and sung the praises of the morning, at which point there was a massive solar flare and things got crisped. Climbing out of their shelter, Curly and Laurey sung a duet, and were informed by Laurie's Aunt Yeller that there was a domestic competition going on, in which women would cook their tastiest fare and then go on dates. Curly liked the idea, but Laurey had problems with her cooking, leading to a song about curry that was singed on top. At this point, in a cloud of ill-smelling smoke, Lucifer Prince of Darkness showed up and promised that Laurey could win the competition if she simply sold her soul to him. Desperate, Laurey agreed. Duplicitous and deeply worried, Laurie chose somewhat crazed farm hand Baker Fry over Curly. In another subplot, cowboy Bill Parkour turned up, seeking the hand of Antic Annie, also prone to bursting into song for no reason. Bill was no good with money, but Annie was also being wooed by Persian rug salesman Reza Hakim. Unfortunately, Annie's father Bluto was a homeware entrepreneur and liked the look of Reza's carpets. Meanwhile, Laurey had taken a bizarre chemical and dreamt that Baker was actually a serial killer and would try to garrote Curly after their wedding. However, Curly turned out to be a werewolf and tore out Baker's throat. Unfortunately, at that point, she woke up and ended up at the social with Baker as her date anyway.
At the social, things got even worse. Aunt Yeller, the resident elderly spinster, turned out to be a criminal psychopath, and shot down most of the town's inhabitants when they started ruminating excessively about marriage. Reza Hakim was promptly called back to Persia, having made a mint on his rug fortune, much to the relief of Antic Annie. Exactly why, given that Reza was now a multi-millionaire, is hard to fathom. The next convoluted plotline had the townswomen bidding for the men's (...) baskets (...), which led to overly complicated financial transactions. Bill Parkour's basket ended up with Annie, while Curly and Baker's baskets were also subject to (...) frenzied scrutiny (...) , especially from the inexplicably recently introduced character Gertie Gherm. Unbeknownst to the rest of the cast, Gertie was actually Nihilata the Vampiress, and wanted to claim Curly for her undead love slave.
Meanwhile, Baker confronted Laurey about his feelings for her and when she refused and sacked him, Baker converted himself into a werewolf and lunged toward her. Fortunately, she actually turned out to be a witch and zapped Baker with a suspended animation spell, before proposing to Curly, who accepted. Gertie consequently chased Reza around a bizarrely misplaced gothic castle, before she cornered him and turned him into her undead love slave. At that point, Laurey's suspended animation spell wore off and at the wedding, there was an unseemly brawl, during which Gertie had an attack of polyandrous lust, slapped Curly and fought a knife duel with Laurey for the hand of her husband. At first, it looked like Gertie might triumph, but resourceful Aunt Yeller had sawn the steeple cross off the building frontage unnoticed and Gertie burst into flame, screaming. The Devil showed up to claim Laurey's soul, but was satisfied with Gerties instead. With nothing left to stop them, Curly and Laurey finally tied the knot. Baker stormed out of the surrounding, only to see Curly and Laurey fly off on her broomstick. At Antic Annie's wedding to Bill Parkour, Baker attacked those two instead. However, much to his surprise, Annie turned out to be a werewolf as well, and tore his throat out. And finally, Aunt Yeller's deed of psychopathic mass slaughter and deadly combat proficiency had caught the eye of Annie's father, Bluto Korn. He went down on one knee and proposed to the startled spinster, who however accepted. The two of them opened up an anachronistic branch of the NRA as Oklahoma finally became a US state.
++
Abruptly, the Oklahome characters rushed into Freedom Brigade headquarters and several of them liplocked with members of the heroic ensemble. Laurey Driver kissed Patriot, Curly Hare smooched with Mermaid, Bluto Korn deeply kissed Lady Liberty, Aunt Yeller made time with Mr Might, Antic Annie embraced Bowman, while Baker Fry delivered a schmecker on the startled lips of Princess Power. Reza Hakim delivered the final kiss to Captain Swift. Abruptly, their forms vanished and the core members of the FBUS slumped to the ground, unconscious:
"What the hell just happened?" Lightpower asked.
"It looks like the characters from Oklahoma came to life, turned evil and delivered poisonous kisses to the rest of the FBUS." Bat Woman knelt over the unconscious Mr Might.
"But why would anyone deliberately masquerade as characters from a barely memorable 1955 cowboy-themed musical and then attack the classic members of the FBUS while ignoring the rest of us?" The Eye swivelled, furrowing his eyebrow as he used his optical senses to scan the room for radiation residue.
"There's something else. It's about the smell from those characters. If they're really from that era, they should smell either of the barnyard or greasepaint. They don't. In fact, the odour is distinctly familiar. It's from Transilvane." Green Trashcan interjected as his smelloring analysed the olfactory trail.
"Oklahome, you mean?" Lightpower asked
"Oh no. I've just realised what must have happened. Although the reels on the Transilvane sky projector were switched from horror movies to Oklahoma, that version must have been corrupted and badly edited. As a result of which, we're being besieged by curdled characters from a world which should never have existed."
"But with Mister Might unconscious, how do we return things to normal and avoid making the same mistake?"
Bat Woman glanced up: "Wait a minute. This preceded Clint's marriage to Lauren, didn't it? When Lori and Louisa were still engaging in their cut-throat competition for his hand in marriage?"
Lightpower nodded: "I remember. I was still Robber the Boy Plunder back then. Didn't he have a red-headed doofus sidekick named Jiminy Crouton? What happened to him, anyway?"
The Eye momentarily faded from view, then returned:
"Okay, found him. He's on several decades worth of skeezy tapes, tied up and captive of Don Rickles' identical twin sister Goody."
"And Clint didn't notice? He was supposed to be his 'best friend,' for goodness' sake. All right. Making a massive inferential jump, I surmise that Goody Rickles is behind this evil Oklahoma plot."
Puzzled, Lightpower asked: "Surely you mean Oscar Hammerstein and Richard Rogers?"
"No. Goody has outlived her identical twin brother Don, who passed away in 2017. Without Don, Goody has no reason whatsoever to continue to exist."
And so it was that Goody Rickles stood on the green, green grass of Oklahome, with Jiminy Crouton on a short leash:
"Ha ha ha ha. Soon, Oklahome will triumph forever over the wretched Freedom Brigade and the whole world will be ruled by an awful recut of a fifties cowboy musical! And I, Goody Rickles, will be global empress!!!"
The Eye was first to appear: "Incidentally, why do you have the former cub reporter on a leash?"
"I did some genetic interpellation with a savage dog. The trouble is, it was a highly irate chihuahua."
"You didn't dispatch the entire Freedom Brigade. We're still here and we will stop your vile plot in its tracks." Bat Woman replied.
"And banish me to complete and total irrelevance? Never!!!"
"Look, Goody, you belong there anyway." Lightpower protested.
"Riiight. Says the gay adult version of Robber the Boy Plunder, a cheap unconvincingly badly costumed female Batman impersonator, a gigantic Golden Age public domain floating Eye and a refugee from the sixties Charlton Comics "Bestest League" impersonating Green Lantern."
"Incidentally, what happened to the Oklahome characters? And why is the landscape and sky changing...oh." Green Trashcan nodded.
"You monsters! You've changed the tape again!"
"Well, yes, the Eye is nearly omnipotent so we decided to intervene with central casting. Let's see how you like spending eternity in... Ed Wood's Orgy of the Dead!!!"
With that, Bat Woman cut Jiminy's leash with her Bat Shears and grabbed him, as the four conscious members of the Freedom Brigade teleported back to their satellite headquarters. As they rematerialised, the core Freedom Brigade members were moaning, stirring and sitting up, nursing large headaches.
"What happened?" Mr Might exclaimed, woozily.
"Oh, nothing much. Remember that Transilvane microplanet? Well, there was some malarkey with a corrupted version of Oklahoma, but we've fixed it."
"What-kla-watchit?" Patriot asked, bewildered.
"It's a fifties Hammerstein and Rodgers western musical, but that's not important right now, especially as we switched tapes with a vintage Ed Wood number." Bat Woman said, reassuringly.
EPILOGUE:
From the dark, sinister environs of a crypt that overlooked a cemetery, the Emperor and his female associate, the Black Ghoul, watched Goody Rickles undulate before them, clad in an uncomfortable metal bra and panties, in a wretched and unwieldy parody of an erotic dance. Emperor Criswell rolled his eyes, but the Black Ghoul salivated:
"I know I said 'torture, torture, it pleasures me' a few minutes ago, but this isn't tantalising, it's excruciating. And not in a nice way either. And it's getting late. Soon the Sun will be up. Who wants to watch a man undulating before them in total erotic abandon, anyway? Particularly in drag that awful? There isn't even any angora in that get-up!"
But the Black Ghoul was captivated, which just goes to show there's no accounting for taste, or perhaps this had something to do with the fact that it was an Ed Wood production:
"No, my Lord Emperor Criswell!!! This is a splendiferous woman, not a man!!! I claim this gyrating, erotic visual feast for myself! This time, my pleasures must take precedence! Come to me, you abandoned nubile hoyden, and share the demonic, shameless, erotic embrace of the everlastingly damned creatures of the night!"
A werewolf and mummy crashtackled Goody, tied her to a pallet, and bore her away. Goody wailed, aware that on this wretched new incarnation of the microplanet, formerly known as Transilvane and Oklahome, but now relabelled Orgasmotron, she would forever be a captive of bad dialogue and these threshold people, bizarre and perverse monsters to be pitied and despised in the twilight time!!! She knew that it was unbelievable, incredible, but true. Soon she would be in thrall...for the thrills!!! Thank hades for little ghouls!
THE END.
++
As on many Earths, the western died on Earth-55 and few examples of the antiquated and obsolete genre get made anymore. Much the same happened with the musical genre, in which people burst spontaneously into song numbers and danced around for no convincing reason. Several decades ago, Mr Might was saddled with two combative would-be girlfriends, Lola Lake and Louisa Louche, and a best friend named Jiminy Crouton, who kept getting into ridiculous adventures of his own. One of them included the microplanet "Transilvane", which zipped around the world and whose inhabitants evolved from horror movie characters. Mr Might decided to fix that by changing the in-flight movie to more wholesome fare like the musical Oklahoma. Don Rickles' evil identical twin sister Goody Rickles also showed up, upon which the series was cancelled forever. However, Goody Rickles then abducted Jiminy and nothing was ever heard from him again.
Unfortunately for the sake of posterity but fortunately for the purposes of this story, the renamed "Oklahome" got corrupted by a rogue virus which carried RNA from the former inhabitants of Transilvane, producing the following weird plot twists in Oklahome's cultural and evolutionary development. Curly Hare invited himself into farmgirl Laurey Driver's courtyard and sung the praises of the morning, at which point there was a massive solar flare and things got crisped. Climbing out of their shelter, Curly and Laurey sung a duet, and were informed by Laurie's Aunt Yeller that there was a domestic competition going on, in which women would cook their tastiest fare and then go on dates. Curly liked the idea, but Laurey had problems with her cooking, leading to a song about curry that was singed on top. At this point, in a cloud of ill-smelling smoke, Lucifer Prince of Darkness showed up and promised that Laurey could win the competition if she simply sold her soul to him. Desperate, Laurey agreed. Duplicitous and deeply worried, Laurie chose somewhat crazed farm hand Baker Fry over Curly. In another subplot, cowboy Bill Parkour turned up, seeking the hand of Antic Annie, also prone to bursting into song for no reason. Bill was no good with money, but Annie was also being wooed by Persian rug salesman Reza Hakim. Unfortunately, Annie's father Bluto was a homeware entrepreneur and liked the look of Reza's carpets. Meanwhile, Laurey had taken a bizarre chemical and dreamt that Baker was actually a serial killer and would try to garrote Curly after their wedding. However, Curly turned out to be a werewolf and tore out Baker's throat. Unfortunately, at that point, she woke up and ended up at the social with Baker as her date anyway.
At the social, things got even worse. Aunt Yeller, the resident elderly spinster, turned out to be a criminal psychopath, and shot down most of the town's inhabitants when they started ruminating excessively about marriage. Reza Hakim was promptly called back to Persia, having made a mint on his rug fortune, much to the relief of Antic Annie. Exactly why, given that Reza was now a multi-millionaire, is hard to fathom. The next convoluted plotline had the townswomen bidding for the men's (...) baskets (...), which led to overly complicated financial transactions. Bill Parkour's basket ended up with Annie, while Curly and Baker's baskets were also subject to (...) frenzied scrutiny (...) , especially from the inexplicably recently introduced character Gertie Gherm. Unbeknownst to the rest of the cast, Gertie was actually Nihilata the Vampiress, and wanted to claim Curly for her undead love slave.
Meanwhile, Baker confronted Laurey about his feelings for her and when she refused and sacked him, Baker converted himself into a werewolf and lunged toward her. Fortunately, she actually turned out to be a witch and zapped Baker with a suspended animation spell, before proposing to Curly, who accepted. Gertie consequently chased Reza around a bizarrely misplaced gothic castle, before she cornered him and turned him into her undead love slave. At that point, Laurey's suspended animation spell wore off and at the wedding, there was an unseemly brawl, during which Gertie had an attack of polyandrous lust, slapped Curly and fought a knife duel with Laurey for the hand of her husband. At first, it looked like Gertie might triumph, but resourceful Aunt Yeller had sawn the steeple cross off the building frontage unnoticed and Gertie burst into flame, screaming. The Devil showed up to claim Laurey's soul, but was satisfied with Gerties instead. With nothing left to stop them, Curly and Laurey finally tied the knot. Baker stormed out of the surrounding, only to see Curly and Laurey fly off on her broomstick. At Antic Annie's wedding to Bill Parkour, Baker attacked those two instead. However, much to his surprise, Annie turned out to be a werewolf as well, and tore his throat out. And finally, Aunt Yeller's deed of psychopathic mass slaughter and deadly combat proficiency had caught the eye of Annie's father, Bluto Korn. He went down on one knee and proposed to the startled spinster, who however accepted. The two of them opened up an anachronistic branch of the NRA as Oklahoma finally became a US state.
++
Abruptly, the Oklahome characters rushed into Freedom Brigade headquarters and several of them liplocked with members of the heroic ensemble. Laurey Driver kissed Patriot, Curly Hare smooched with Mermaid, Bluto Korn deeply kissed Lady Liberty, Aunt Yeller made time with Mr Might, Antic Annie embraced Bowman, while Baker Fry delivered a schmecker on the startled lips of Princess Power. Reza Hakim delivered the final kiss to Captain Swift. Abruptly, their forms vanished and the core members of the FBUS slumped to the ground, unconscious:
"What the hell just happened?" Lightpower asked.
"It looks like the characters from Oklahoma came to life, turned evil and delivered poisonous kisses to the rest of the FBUS." Bat Woman knelt over the unconscious Mr Might.
"But why would anyone deliberately masquerade as characters from a barely memorable 1955 cowboy-themed musical and then attack the classic members of the FBUS while ignoring the rest of us?" The Eye swivelled, furrowing his eyebrow as he used his optical senses to scan the room for radiation residue.
"There's something else. It's about the smell from those characters. If they're really from that era, they should smell either of the barnyard or greasepaint. They don't. In fact, the odour is distinctly familiar. It's from Transilvane." Green Trashcan interjected as his smelloring analysed the olfactory trail.
"Oklahome, you mean?" Lightpower asked
"Oh no. I've just realised what must have happened. Although the reels on the Transilvane sky projector were switched from horror movies to Oklahoma, that version must have been corrupted and badly edited. As a result of which, we're being besieged by curdled characters from a world which should never have existed."
"But with Mister Might unconscious, how do we return things to normal and avoid making the same mistake?"
Bat Woman glanced up: "Wait a minute. This preceded Clint's marriage to Lauren, didn't it? When Lori and Louisa were still engaging in their cut-throat competition for his hand in marriage?"
Lightpower nodded: "I remember. I was still Robber the Boy Plunder back then. Didn't he have a red-headed doofus sidekick named Jiminy Crouton? What happened to him, anyway?"
The Eye momentarily faded from view, then returned:
"Okay, found him. He's on several decades worth of skeezy tapes, tied up and captive of Don Rickles' identical twin sister Goody."
"And Clint didn't notice? He was supposed to be his 'best friend,' for goodness' sake. All right. Making a massive inferential jump, I surmise that Goody Rickles is behind this evil Oklahoma plot."
Puzzled, Lightpower asked: "Surely you mean Oscar Hammerstein and Richard Rogers?"
"No. Goody has outlived her identical twin brother Don, who passed away in 2017. Without Don, Goody has no reason whatsoever to continue to exist."
And so it was that Goody Rickles stood on the green, green grass of Oklahome, with Jiminy Crouton on a short leash:
"Ha ha ha ha. Soon, Oklahome will triumph forever over the wretched Freedom Brigade and the whole world will be ruled by an awful recut of a fifties cowboy musical! And I, Goody Rickles, will be global empress!!!"
The Eye was first to appear: "Incidentally, why do you have the former cub reporter on a leash?"
"I did some genetic interpellation with a savage dog. The trouble is, it was a highly irate chihuahua."
"You didn't dispatch the entire Freedom Brigade. We're still here and we will stop your vile plot in its tracks." Bat Woman replied.
"And banish me to complete and total irrelevance? Never!!!"
"Look, Goody, you belong there anyway." Lightpower protested.
"Riiight. Says the gay adult version of Robber the Boy Plunder, a cheap unconvincingly badly costumed female Batman impersonator, a gigantic Golden Age public domain floating Eye and a refugee from the sixties Charlton Comics "Bestest League" impersonating Green Lantern."
"Incidentally, what happened to the Oklahome characters? And why is the landscape and sky changing...oh." Green Trashcan nodded.
"You monsters! You've changed the tape again!"
"Well, yes, the Eye is nearly omnipotent so we decided to intervene with central casting. Let's see how you like spending eternity in... Ed Wood's Orgy of the Dead!!!"
With that, Bat Woman cut Jiminy's leash with her Bat Shears and grabbed him, as the four conscious members of the Freedom Brigade teleported back to their satellite headquarters. As they rematerialised, the core Freedom Brigade members were moaning, stirring and sitting up, nursing large headaches.
"What happened?" Mr Might exclaimed, woozily.
"Oh, nothing much. Remember that Transilvane microplanet? Well, there was some malarkey with a corrupted version of Oklahoma, but we've fixed it."
"What-kla-watchit?" Patriot asked, bewildered.
"It's a fifties Hammerstein and Rodgers western musical, but that's not important right now, especially as we switched tapes with a vintage Ed Wood number." Bat Woman said, reassuringly.
EPILOGUE:
From the dark, sinister environs of a crypt that overlooked a cemetery, the Emperor and his female associate, the Black Ghoul, watched Goody Rickles undulate before them, clad in an uncomfortable metal bra and panties, in a wretched and unwieldy parody of an erotic dance. Emperor Criswell rolled his eyes, but the Black Ghoul salivated:
"I know I said 'torture, torture, it pleasures me' a few minutes ago, but this isn't tantalising, it's excruciating. And not in a nice way either. And it's getting late. Soon the Sun will be up. Who wants to watch a man undulating before them in total erotic abandon, anyway? Particularly in drag that awful? There isn't even any angora in that get-up!"
But the Black Ghoul was captivated, which just goes to show there's no accounting for taste, or perhaps this had something to do with the fact that it was an Ed Wood production:
"No, my Lord Emperor Criswell!!! This is a splendiferous woman, not a man!!! I claim this gyrating, erotic visual feast for myself! This time, my pleasures must take precedence! Come to me, you abandoned nubile hoyden, and share the demonic, shameless, erotic embrace of the everlastingly damned creatures of the night!"
A werewolf and mummy crashtackled Goody, tied her to a pallet, and bore her away. Goody wailed, aware that on this wretched new incarnation of the microplanet, formerly known as Transilvane and Oklahome, but now relabelled Orgasmotron, she would forever be a captive of bad dialogue and these threshold people, bizarre and perverse monsters to be pitied and despised in the twilight time!!! She knew that it was unbelievable, incredible, but true. Soon she would be in thrall...for the thrills!!! Thank hades for little ghouls!
THE END.