GARISH GEWGAWS AND GAMMA GUARDIANS: THE RECOVERY OF CALLIOPE

By Quillon42

ONCE UPON A TIARA IN 2006 (BY READER'S TIME AT LEAST)

Far up above the moments-ago-mutated maiden's agony-etched face, the last plank was nailed into position, effectively shutting the sunlight out of her new, acrid bottleneck of an abode. She who was, just an hour previous, the most majestic mistress to grace the castle ruling over the entire kingdom, was now walled up in a well with seemingly no reprieve forthcoming.

In the weeks preceding this terrible turn of events, the young lady known as Princess Calliope was a winsome woman of jubilant follicles of jonquil. The blonde blessedness that she radiated from without, however, had belied the beastliness within, the cruelty at her core in shunning those who could not even begin to play at being as physically perfect as she. When this king's daughter had made a bid for an ominous beau, just the day after she slaughtered a mystical toad who carped for her care and companionship, the girl had by tainted tincture been transmogrified from belle into brute. Sans hesitation the ruined royalty sprinted in her scaly amphibious form towards the first hole she could find, she plunging down the very well that wrought the cruel change.

What had felt worse than the splash into the murky, stagnant water at the bottom of the well was the spill Calliope had taken in terms of not merely her princessly pride, nor the conceit she cherished through her charms…the entire dignity of her very humanity had been dashed, degraded, discarded. And now suffocation in this slop-slathered pit was the best she could possibly hope for, concerning her ultimate miserable fate.

About an hour ensued consisting of the downcast countess's shouts and sobs, the aghast shrieks echoing wretchedly all across the curved walls of this dank chimney drilled into the crust of this fantasy planet. Verily, the girl that lurked down at the bottom of this shaft for sustenance was far more fearsome than the ghoul glutting the same kind of space in the second season of a particular postapocalyptic opus conceived by Kirkman.

Yet unlike that reality's hapless inductee into the undead…here the crudely-changed comely lass would be afforded a second chance…courtesy of a fellow, Abominable humanoid amphibian whose mien and demeanor was far rougher and tougher than any of the wiles of that wussy Monarch of Croak. And by the time Calliope's new champion was through…there would be a new regime of reckoning indeed in this grim fairy land.

It was just after the downtrodden toadess had hushed out her last hoarse holler that he happened along, that that Bellerophon in fins, that Gilgamesh in gills, that effing Scott Pilgrim in scales who heard the karma-kiboshed lady's cry…he in one sweeping motion of his hardy hands, scraped open those wooden slats which shielded Calliope from subsistence-affording sunlight. Her eyes so dilated from the dark, the girl had to cover her now-crusty features a moment while she adjusted herself to see more clearly the outline defining the creature whose presence would now purchase a possibility for her to rejoin those on the surface, and perhaps even on her own terms to boot. Whoever it was who delivered her, the princess thought, she would embrace in more ways than one, regardless of how he looked, sounded, or otherwise appeared to the world at large.

"From about three leagues away I could hear ya. Really, I gotta imagine yer a newt ta all this, the way you were carryin' on and on…"

When the aquamarine Adonis obscured the blinding sunlight above the aqueduct-doomed asylee…she forgot in an instant all those preceding princes who lay claim to her heart in the past. He was a shamrock stunner who irradiated the lady with arousal in a way that no human man ever could in the times when she was comprised of only the flimsiest of flesh. Yes, this entity who delivered the dame had the look of a constituent more from that of the Black Lagoon than the Blue one—yet especially with the altered brand of hormones coursing through Calliope now, she was not now so much in search of a Prince Charming as moreso a Prime Cthulhu anyhow, so it…so he…was perfect.

So shocked and piqued in the most pleasant manner was this erstwhile princess, in any case, that she hardly even heard the sarcasm in her savior's voice. "A…newt…?"

"Yeah. It's like a noob…'cept it's one of the amphibian class. C'mon, let me haul you up, and I'll explain a bit more topside."

By the time Calliope hopped off the flagstones that crowned the top of the well, she found herself so eager to breathe the fresh surface air that she leapt wholeheartedly into the arms of the oversized emerald oaf who freed her.

"Hey, heyyy…just jump off the real jade giant a hot second."

Calliope relented, she resigning herself to the ground in a stream of tears. Near to her, the superhumanoid who harrowed that which held the maiden had mumbled to himself.

"Imagine it wasn't this tough for old puny peaface, when he made his way through his own Crossroads."

Yea it was, a bit more than a score of years past, that the old time adversary of this savior—a brute whose altered self often went by the handle of Banner—that Hulking horror had his way across a number of intersticed worlds, each one weirder than that which preceded it. One in particular featured a mess of a medieval milieu in which a lady of viridian skin, but also of auric tresses, had prompted the pulverizing powerhouse to remain in that place, in an effort to help the embattled enchantress of his stalwart heart. She brought to mind another maiden, also of green and gold, whom the Hulk had known only so fleetingly, until she passed from the planet of 616 (at least for the first time, as is always the case with the life-recycling Machine).

Now, it appeared that this at least latter lady in truth was comprised by the Calliope that the beastified Blonsky here beheld—a conjuration of a Jarella just for him, hopefully.

After about a stint of minutes discussing the dame's fate, the enamored Emil:

"So they slipped you a drink, that you think just…magically changed you into what you are?"

The crustaceous Calli stifled another sniff. "Y…yes…their enchantment worked, I guess…the spell made me, supposedly, into what I was on the inside…as 'beautiful' without as I was within, or so they said, I would suppose."

"That's a bunch of bull."

The transmogrified miss perked up in a sudden panic. "Where? A stampede is upon us?!"

The woman's Abominable Samaritan snickered. "Naw, naw…I meant, that's so incredibly not the case.

"First of all, I can recognize the nature of the water from that well. It's not magic that did this to you…it was science."

A dazed glance of incomprehension from Calliope.

"It's like what went on in, like, 'Y the Last Man' and shit, you know?"

"Why the who?!"

"Ahh…, it was this thing…there was a whole hoodwink regarding this magic spell coming from a doodad called the Pendant of Helene, but then it turned out that what went down, it all happened 'cause of some airborne flu involving monkey turds or some such…"

Upon seeing Calliope's failure to follow, Emil once again: "…Don't worry about it. Just some made-up story, after all.

"Basically what I'm sayin' is, I think it wasn't a spell, what did this to you…I think it was radiati…er, it was some other power. Lucky for you, that power and I are old buddies.

"And you and I're gonna pound out some payback, on those tadpoles that did this to you."

In the course of the following few days, the pummeler and his polliwog princess trained, the former assisting the latter in reaching her peak physical shape and skills in the figure she flaunted. By the time it had been a week since Calliope had been bombarded with her libation of radiation, she was ready to shove that karmic crapola right back up the derriere of the douche who deemed it should occur unto her.

It was while the fail of a Froggy Fuhrer was languishing by his lake that Blonsky and the babe had fallen upon them.

The Abomination was only all about the assist, he whisking by the throat the Majesty's literal and virtual toady. In a trice the King's underling was thrashing in the grip of the green goon, all in vain, as Emil then with a flex of his forearm flung the stripling sycophant forcefully, sending him skipping several times over the sodden surface of the waterway till he sunk underneath, not to reemerge from thereunder with the same weight of wits.

As for his horned Highness himself, that monster was soon placed in the cruelest chokehold by that beauty who was so basely besotted. "Oh, so you think you had a blemish on your neck BEFORE?!"

So Calliope throttled the toadling, she strangling with her cherished tiara the monster who made her into the unspeakable creature that she became. By the time said garish gewgaw was through with the enemy's throat, the King could barely cop a croak or rally even a ribbit.

This punishment proved merely a prelude, as the princess then commenced, to the utter erotic arousal of the Abominable one, to execute every single punch, kick, chop, throw, and hold which Blonsky taught her, all upon the self-styled emperor of amphibians. At the close of this coastal castigation, every bone was unmendably broken in the King's frame, such that no kiss in any universe could make the entity improve…much less make him a prince.

But for Queen Calliope and her consort, such intimacy was entirely another matter. The two taking a cue from a certain Spectre and Owl in yet another, Watchful comic continuum, they similarly turned on after taking out the trash, Cal and Emil turned to one another, completely bereft of breath…

…and battened down one upon the other, then the other upon the one, then back again, and then back again once more, Calliope especially putting to use every hold she learned once more…only this time so much more tenderly.

Upon a spin of the sundial in this scene, still shepherded by magic in addition to science (despite Emil's insistences)…one lover turned to the other in their lustful languishing, expecting eyefuls of forest hue…

…but finding those of flesh instead, each to the other.

It was Blonsky first who basked in his humanness once more, he who was regularly a galoot in gamma incredulous at his unexpected, humanizing rejuvenation. Then Calliope too, she cantering and shrieking with glee in the altogether, she more than pleased to be her homo sapien self once more.

The two beheld one another from a distance, each observing his or her lover's bodily bounty in turn. They then came crushingly together once more, they achieving bliss in discovering the cure for their physiological deformities…as well as for their own personal desolation.

One more incredible revelation for the trysters was that the gamma presence had persisted with beauty and bruiser alike…but now it was more of a grace than a strain. Rather than pose itself as a physical plight, there was now emerald energy that emitted from each, which could be applied in any manner deemed appropriate to the wielder, as it were.

What was even more marvelous, the passion that Emil Blonsky found had afforded him flight back to the thick of 616, and with his magnificent mistress in tow no less. The bliss brewing between the two inspired the princess enough to proffer that power from within, the gamma presence within her radiating out now, to rend the horrific haunt of the Hulk from Banner, split him specifically into three beings of Green, Gray, and Bruce respectively. From there, the gamma-endowed power couple of Calliope and her cohort let the good Doctor go on his way, to be with Betty. Then that Frog-fraught maid once mangled by mutation, she flooded the Green Savage with serenity, so that he would continue to adventure with more focus than fury.

And as for the Gray Snideness, he was beset with a tide of toxic waste, thanks to certain gamma-goaded treatment by an Abomination who owed him that much. (NB: See Incredible Hulk 364 on this). Then the extra mile by Emil as the man used his own new gammalicious imbuements to irradiate Tyrannus, the deranged despot despairing in his again-transformed straits for more than a fair spell. (NB: Amazing Spider-Man Annual 23 is for this last one).