h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

[YK] Eat my shorts! [makes faces at the clones]

[sea] besides, your name implies--

[evillene] enough already!

[Aside]
Just getting into the spirit of the whole continuity thang. And my mind works overtime on coming up with byzantine connotations for your name. But they are all rather tenuous. And I don't want to make any more innuendo (I'm quite embarrased, actually, about red's forum)
[Aside]

This is grinding to a slow death, really, isnt it?

It will stop unless either (1)HP shows up and has the villains do something (de)constructive, or (2) one of us decides to just throw continuity out the window for a single post, and changes absolutely everything. Besides, the heroes already won the first challenge: reverting Atross to normal. According to most stories, continuing to fight the ex-EGs would probably need to have a "To Be Continued..." sign, or something.


*Affy mounts a spherical weapon on the front of his machine*


...like the OmeGauntlet, it'll fire any one of the pre-programmed weapons, but I need the extra...

[Mackenzie] Think it would add to the fun if I were to cause a major earthquake?

[YK] No.

*Mounts a snowzar. Mounts a polka gun. Mounts a sleetzar. Mounts a lazer beam. Begins preparing to color in the emblazoned name of the machine*

*In HP's office*

Business Henchman: Sir... your popularity figures are down 25%... you've been linked with organized crime.

Hmmmm... is there any evidence of this...

BH: Of course not sir... we all know that the secret to your power is your-...

Yes, yes, I know, I know... Have you briefed the spin doctors on the situation?

BH: Yes sir.

The turn consultants?

BH: Yes.

The revolve surgeons?

BH: Them too, sir. We'll be on it in a matter of hours, sir. It won't get far.

Excellent. Oh, and continue the mind control ray tests....

BH: Yes sir...

*an hour or so later, a small brown envelope arrives at IE's IEs containing a transcript of this conversation. There is no postmark, or stamp, or writing...*


[HP}=~~

*Adds a hood ornament*

[YK] Short my eats, but I think Affy's up to something.

[Mackenzie rummages around in YK's backpack]

[YK] Hey! Stop futzing with my snacks!

[Mackenzie] You /said/ to short your eats.

[YK] Oh, eat my shorts!

[Freeze frame: Dylan is digitally inserted over this]

[Dylan] Get it?

A screeching sound makes itself known as the distant glimmer of headlights appear down the street. Lurching from side to side, they slide and swerve towards the crowd of heroes/villains. As everyone jumps out of the way a shiny, low-slung black sports car screeches to a halt. The engine *pink-pink*s itself cool, and muffled scratches and scraping can be heard inside. A sharp Alien hiss sounds out, and suddenly the darkened passenger window bursts into a shower of glittering shards as a young man in a leather jacket and shades is thrown bodily out.

The car revs hard and wheelspins drunkenly around the corner, scratching on a building as it swerves...the receding roar rapidly fades. The man lies on the floor groaning as everyone crowds around him. Hesitantly he gets up and without a word begins to limp away, until Uncle Heavy grabs him.

"Are you...alright?" he enquires, but the man just shrugs and wipes a speck of blood from his lips.

"Who are you?" demands UH. The man rips off his sunglasses and stares into UH's face. His eyes are pure black, except for a horizontal white slit; UH hurreidly lifts his hands away and steps back.

[UH] What...

The man tenses and bows over...he draws his lips back and lets out a low snicker. Everything around him fades into shade and a discordant sound, like the universe wrenching itself apart to get away from the man, slices through the company's heads. Then, as quickly as it came, the feeling goes, and everyone looks up at the man with newly realised knowledge. Maestus, as is his name, replaces his sunglasses and strides off down the street. As the figure fades, an opressive and soundless aura of immense, sould-destroying sorrow and grief descends on the darkened road. In the half-dark of dusk, all the street lights flicker red and then die out.

*Other than taking over UH's persona, that was pretty neat*

*Affy, meanwhile, still in his secret garage, is almost finished. He notices some lights go off outside. At the same moment, he feels his mindshield go out. He reaches for his spellbook, and incants the Zorkish spell to refresh a mindshield. He then sits on the seat of his machine, and prepares to turn it on*

[In his capacity as 'cose friend of mine' Gigus has the permission to make Uncle Heavy style comments]

Zackly.

[YK] Hello, something seems to be happening.

From somewhere a few blocks away the sound of the black car can again be heard; the wheels are screeching and braking sporadically. There is a muffled crunching noise and the sound of the car reversing. Haltingly, it seems to be coming nearer, although it keeps stopping, going backwards or taking detours. After a few minutes an insanely loud squeal resounds and the car rounds the corner. It is heavily dented and scarred, and the back has been smashed to a crumpled mess, the one remaining headlight lighting up the road with a blinding glare.

The car brakes to a halt, then revs and jumps forward towards the wall. The front wheels turn but lose traction and it impacts with a bang into the wall, broken glass and twisted metal flying onto the floor. Darkness rolls back in like a blanket. As a rapidly rising whine eminates from the crumpled bonnet, the door is kicked open, smashing into the opposite building and denting it. Squeezing through the narrow hole of the door frame, Giguschild scrambles out of the car, and leaping up onto the wall runs off in pursuit of Maestus. In the background, a biting whoof lights up the street with a gout of flame as the fuel tank ignites. Clattering metal smacks the buldings and bins. Giguschild darts through burnt out shells of apartments and scales walls in pitch black alleys, pausing occasionally to assess the array of sensory information available to him, and guide himself towards Maestus with chilling effeciciency.

*Affy considers turning on his machine, but decides to wait until some time after someone explains this new character to him. He thinks he knows, but just wants to avoid making assumptions*

My eyes!
*clutches face*
I'm blind!
*collapses*

Maestus turns into the black maw of a small alley and purposefully strides down it. He pauses, and in the dusky grey of the alley stands, motionless for several minutes. Had anyone been watching, they would have seen the figure dim and fade into virtual transparency...after a while Maestus regains himself and walks to a low, battered and rusty door that is barely noticeable amongst the graffiti and peeling posters on the wall. Air squashes, and the metal door blasts open with a ringing crash. Maestus ducks through it.

In the suffocating, inky blackness inside, vague people shapes litter the floor and the rotting chairs. The floor is bare dirt and soft, sinking floorboards, the cieling is stripped to the supports and the ceiling gapes holes like empty eyesockets. The pressing growth of absolute silence lightly strokes the decaying walls and collapsed furniture. Again Maestus pauses, but after a few seconds walks noiselessly to one of the figures. Thin clothes hang over the blackened, skeletal body like a fungus, and the sunken eyes pool blackness on nothing. Maestus reaches out a hand in the darkness. The figure's head lolls imperceptibly. Then, a withered hand slowly raises, barely holding onto a small, dark key. The fingers fumble, drop the key; then fall lifeless onto the corpse's lap.

Picking up the key, Maestus quickly walks through a gutted corridor into another, similarly derelict room. Broken-backed beams straddle the ceiling, and in the center, a rough circle of broken chairs hunch around a rotten table. There are figures in some of the chairs - tatters of suits and rags hang off their jutting shoulders. Raising his hands to shoulder height, Maestus carefully places one foot in front of the other and walks to the table. Delicately he places the key down with a faint *clink*.

[Dylan appears, digitally inserted over the rest of the image]

[Dylan] Would someone please explain this Maestus character to me!?

Softly, silently, the steel key rots and smothers, spreading into a pile of soft white mould. The figures around the table jerk upright, tatters of clothes scattering. Their taut black skin pulses and wrinkles like a live thing; Maestus backs into the shadows. The animated bodies fly to their feet, and twisting like wood in a fire their backs arch, throwing their sunken faces to the ceiling. A bent and cracked aura shimmers into existence around them as a discordant, mind-flatteningly grievous and angry and mournful Roar, rising and falling like a wind storm, flies from their deformed mouths. The table tenses and buckles, withering into soft dust that ripples and whirls disconcertingly in the still air. Glassy cracks bend into existence amid the howling figures and the room, the building, the whole city, lean yearningly towards the focus. The scream pitches to a deafening yowl; the walls and gutters resonate with insanely gibbering harmonics and overtones. The space in the circle fractures and collapses again and again, writhing and rebending with the death rattle of eaten worlds. A driving, thrusting roar shakes the foundations of the city as the windows crack and shiver in their panes. The air itself judders in silent agony.


?![---[!!_+)+_)*&*!*()!!MJ! -+ &&&&&&&&&!!&&]]##--+]!!!---------------------..__////-------######[]p][#'[[[[ --[(FW-hoo-mm...for, who-m...

]]]]For a sliced shard of a millisecond, the world waits [#-


OOO00o...._____Time waits//


-
=''_


_____god Waits<






like a soft pillow smothering yourself the city covers with soft amazements of ripples eating outwards in paroxy frenzies of backwards hating outwards of the grief that covers bending inwards the light of stealing streets and buildings fall and fly to the roads recourse trysts of bendsnapping line withdrawing the activities outwards like a worm jar buried in that sucking dry life out onto the digging face

---...

Rippling like a mathematically perfect sine wave of dischord, the glassy mushroom cloud envelops and swallows the city, which crumples and implodes to dust, but at the same time, rebuilds and reclaims itself as the overaweingly solid grid of normality resets its broken struts and crumpled crossbars. Most of the heroes and villains feel nothing except a dull crump and a stab of gnawing self pity. Those with any psychic tendencies at all, slump on their feet, averting their eyes from the sky, from the city, from the ground, from themselves, from eachother, from the blacknes of their closed eyelids; but before they are driven to distraction, the feeling fades - leaving them alone in the stealing light of dusky evening.



In the empty and faded building, Maestus watches Giguschild, who faces him back over the wreck of the table. Reaching into his pocket, Maestus removes a small, and ordinary looking, length of chain