KINETIC DRIFTS AND PHONETIC SHIFTS: THE UNKOOPALING OF MADAME HYDRA/VIPER
By Quillon42
SOMETIME IN 1998
Tens upon umpteens of missions with the Wild Pack, all set back to back to back, could not have exhausted to this extent the lustrous Scion of Symkaria who was now enduring through an endless ocean encased within a castle. Never, indeed, had this mistress of munitions suffered so.
Silver suppressed a shudder of panic as she passed through another enormous emerald piping, the lady hoping that the peridot portal would exit her out to dry ground, but she then groaning within once again upon encountering only more environs aquatic.
It had been about a couple miles of this already, or so it seemed. How Silver wished, she mused as she rationed the remaining breath in her lungs, for the sweetness of the air-breathable battles in which she engaged a half hour back. The elegant operative firing her semiautomatics fruitlessly at what appeared to be bulletproof beetles, then she leaping them to assault and assassinate foot soldiers who brandished and tossed what looked like the proverbial symbolic Hammers of the former Soviet Union. Well, Silver certainly had Sickles for them, in the form of the lethal mini crescent chai blades that reaped the chaff of their existences ever so grimly.
When the dust settled from that skirmish, Silver Sablinova—more commonly hailed as Silver Sable to her compatriots, of course—she had discovered little more than a Kelly-Green conduit which she surmised would bring her closer to that Man of Sand whom she adored and whom she now endeavored to rescue.
News regarding the capture of William Baker—otherwise known as the Sandman, and known to be the most fervently loyal of soldiers under Sable's mercenary schematic—the terrible revelation had reached Miss Sablinova through an audience with one whom she thought to be a traveling musician. It all occurred during the floating-timelined thirty-fifth celebration of her twenty-fifth birthday. The Symkarian siren was already on her guard when she first learned of the band's name which this "Lou Gramm" had headlined…
…but when the stringbean songbard had taken her aside, after his concert to speak with her personally…Silver knew that it was more than a coincidence that the man's group went by the moniker of Foreigner.
"Damn you, Basil," gritted Sable, an impulse within her to toss against the wall this headband-sporting hitman who was once her husband (without the headband). "How dare you show your felonious face around here again, after all you've done before…!"
This bastard known only to a sparse few as Basil Whatshisface continued to stare impassively upon that winsome weapon-laden woman whom he once knew to be his wife.
"You knew that I would not return unless it were for a worthwhile cause," he said, the man starting to grasp at the Gramm-guise upon his features, flinging them from his face a beat later. "That I would not hazard a…homecoming, if I may say, unless it were a matter that were indeed…urgent."
Even though the emo epidermis mask was discarded, the interloper's act was still very much intact.
"…so urgent, urgent, urgent, urgent…"
"Goddamnit, Foreign—ahh, fuck…Basil," spat Sable, she already tiring of her ex's antics in aping that Eighties outfit's frontman. "Just come the eff clean. What is it that you need to tell me?"
Stifling the most sardonic of smiles, the former Sablinova-swain fixed a determined gaze upon his host of ineffable houri beauty. "Ever wonder, this evening, why the bombastic Mister Baker wasn't in attendance…?"
This was met by the most silvery of sneers. "It had crossed my mind; William has been here at my side generally for some time now…I couldn't figure how on Earth he could have skipped out on my own special day—my thirty-fifth twenty-fifth, no less.
"I take it maybe you had something to do with his disappearance…?" And then this statement, punctuated by a most puncturing chai blade, the tiny shank positioned between the lady's forefingers and poised to fly out at the Foreigner's flannelled forehead any second.
"No, my erstwhile, treasured betrothed," said the enigmatic ersatz-Eighties man, the brash Basil not even giving his once-wife the satisfaction of flinching at her ever-so-sharp threats. "You can consider what I am about to impart to you a…separation present, of sorts…I swear to you that I have never known freedom as that which I regained pursuant to our splitting up.
"To breathe so easy, without your shiny-ass self in my way now…the liberty I've been tasting…it's as if I never had it ever in my existence.
"I tell you…it feels like the first time. …It feels like the very firs…"
"Alright, alright, Basil, enough with the greatest-shits love ballads from like thirty years ago. Get on with it."
And then it came about that, twenty-four hours more into her latest twenty-five, Sable was slipping into that bricky foreboding fortress that somehow seemed just to manifest at the edge of Symkaria over the course of the past week. After the initial foray of hard-shelled beetles and hammer-slinging bastards, the lady allowed that sewage portal, that spring-hued pipeline to swallow her silver self quite palpably.
Several strokes into the drink later, the resourceful Sablinova found herself pistoling away, plugging piranha and squelching squid all over the place in these moist cyan depths. The former fish were colorful, boasting hides of crimson and cream, and sporting mustard mohawks besides. The most conspicuous characteristic these organisms owned, however, were their eyes, the peepers expanded out to such an extreme that it suggested the pets might have been at home in a household populated by Don Knotts, Bette Davis, Elijah Wood, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Amanda Seyfried.
The latter mammals, on the other hand, made for a much more muted sort of presence, the squids in question as vanilla plain as their aquatic allies were vibrantly pied. The strangest thing Silver noted, as she roamed and rustled among them, was that none of them could effect eye contact with her, the creatures always looking at a ninety-degree angle away from the woman as if gazing out into another dimension to harass some interactive observer.
These maritime monsters, at any rate, served to distract Sable only momentarily from the fact that she was seemingly looping again and again through this same subterranean lake, the lady pushing through another pipeline upon reaching another rock face only to find herself emptied out into another oceanic abyss. The regal guerrilla was beginning to tire now, after having undergone this gauntlet about six times now, and she was starting to wonder if her outstanding, Olympic-classed constitution would conk out at any moment.
Then, within sight of the next sea-stretch's far end, a grain of hope happened…then another…then another…
…and then Silver pondered as to whether her deluged self was deluded into believing she was beholding a reverse oasis of sorts, in this deep-dampened underwater desert. Was that sand ahead of her?
As the sultry soldier neared ever closer, her aforeheld hopes becoming confirmed all the more completely as more and more streaks of sand shot into the waterway before her. With overwrought energy, Sable swam hard, she pushing past the piranha and outstroking the squid in the vicinity as she eventually reached what was a pulsating knoll, a glistening seamount of sand before her. Desperately the diligent dame flung her frame against the dumped-in dune and climbed, clambered up and up and out…out breaking a surface that was heretofore prohibited her by a ceiling of chartreuse brick.
Impulses coursed through this choicest of combatants as she ascended, without a shade of doubt…frenzied thoughts of whether this sand pertained to the person of the one she was so fervently set to rescue. The fact that the dune somewhat drifted underneath her, as if alive and charged with a frantic kinesis, suggested as such. Clenching herself together, the lady allowed these anxieties no purchase, and pressed on, she certain that even if the grains were ground from William Baker, she could at the very least avenge the man who moved her so, if not save him yet still.
Upon her sprouting from the seamount, Silver discovered that she was in yet another scalding corridor, this one even more sweltry than the first heated hall she came across upon entering the castle. Ahead were revolving gates of interlinked flaming orbs, the barriers swinging combustingly-circularly like the spinning sword of scorch that obstructed Adam and Eve from reentering the Garden of Eden in Genesis. (And by "Genesis" this author means more along the lines of Scripture than sixteen bits of Sega, mind you).
Effortlessly the elegant emissary of sensual soldiering sallied through those fierce fiery gates, she listing and leaping her way across to alight atop a tenuous, brash bridge spanning the worst sea she'd espied all day: it was nothing less than an excavation of the infernal, a plunge of pyre…
…a chasm containing a conflagration, a congregation of flames more fatal than any Silver had come across in so many quarter-century iterations of existence she'd experienced.
And standing at the opposite edge of the bridge upon which her beautiful body had now been braving…was a vixen most verdant, a shrew most shamrock whose portentous presence made even the Silver one shudder a slight tad.
"You," gritted the girl of grayish glimmer as she beheld the sensuous entity in emerald whom she'd encountered on several sorties. "You're the one who scammed my sand!"
Before the brilliant, beauteous brawler was a foe decked head to toe in harlequin hue, with leotard of lime and boots of broccoli. Verily Sable was beset with an insidious enemy whose appearance was permeated with a predominant tint of pear.
The harlot in question, who occasionally headed a most ubiquitous terrorist outfit which assailed every continent, allowed a she paroxysm of glee to fly from her as she addressed the Silver seductress. "Yes," said she, her fingers twitching at holsters on either side of her shapely hips, "It was I who made off with your man of mush, and who set into motion the gender-inverted gauntlet which you so eagerly undertook just now."
Sablinova wasn't entirely aware of what her avocado opponent was getting at here, but was in any case focusing upon the fuckeress's mitts rather than her mouth of mint.
"Should I address Her Haughtiness as Madame Hydra…or as Madame Viper?" said the sterling soldier, she feeling her own hands itching for a most explicit, violent engagement now.
As the flames licked at each's arches (arches of their fine, lithe feet, that is) from the abyss below, Madame Whoever:
"It won't be your concern, in a second, as to the way in which to refer to me. All that matters is that I have effected an inversion of intervention, which shall echo itself in a series of similar rescues in the decades to come.
"For too long, it has been the case that our universe has mandated missions in which maidens are the ones to be saved. I cannot fathom why it cannot ever be the case that the lady leads the gentleman out of a given jail or other kind of dire circumstance. You can't, after all, spell 'manacle' without 'man'…can you."
Silver spied the other lady lifting her right hand towards the corresponding hip once more…towards what appeared to be some kind of long stickpin of an implement.
"But through this task I have undertaken, I have made it so that there has been a dude, rather than a damsel, who is in distress. And you have played the part to the hilt as the ravishing female rescuer…just as I have fulfilled my role as the woeful woman boss to be brought down in the end.
"The only snag is…I'm looking to spin another variation, in another instant. You see, Sable…"
And then a flash of fingers as the Madame made her hipside syringe manifest at her fingertips a beat later.
"I'm not looking to have you complete your quest, after all…"
Then said fingers flashing back as the viridian vavavoom curled back to hurl the syringe forward.
"As it will be the game's Last Guy…er, Girl…who will get away this day!"
Following this was a rhythm of reflexes which spanned only scant seconds and which also utterly aped the climax of a certain Little China opus executed by a cinematic creator named Carpenter. In particular, the countess in clover cocked her syringe hand forward, letting the invading instrument fly straight for Sable's face. In a complementary kind of flourish, the latter lady threw her own hand up, she nabbing the needle in midair, then flinging it back towards the Madame a mote of time thereafter. A quick breath's length later and the jade jackanapes that was Silver's foe had that selfsame syringe protruding from her—not from the forehead, as was the case with Lo Pan in Little China, but rather from the side of the throat.
"Nnnnnggghhh," grunted the egregious gal on the other side of the bridge, she stamping her feet and rattling the fire-faring bridge as she struggled with the substance that was shunted through her system now. "This…serum…it would have murdered you outright…
"But for me…nngggh…it will bring about the originally-considered confrontation that…ummfff…I had thought of imposing upon you…
"…No matter!"
She threw a hand to either side of her, the lady enlarging before Sable's eyes and taking on a tinge of green to the skin now, to match the material she was wearing. About a minute moved along and Silver saw no longer a mistress in myrtle but rather a monster in moss (in terms of tint and not texture, mind you).
"The chemical compound in that needle, it can mutate lesser mofos…convert them into serpent-people…as I did, for example, with a particular portly scientist back in 1989, during an Atlantean-related conflict."
(The reader can refer specifically to Eighties Punisher Annual 2, specifically, for what in eff this author's talking about here).
"I knew you had an immunity to such poisons, though," spat the basest spirit with flesh of forest hue who loomed before Sable. "But I sought to slay you in style, using the methods I utilize most uniquely."
Now the Madame menacingly leapt up and down upon the bridge, tears of fire fleeing from her nostrils as she proceeded.
"How it proved to be my undoing…but again no matter.
"You will fall for certain this day, Silver Sablinova…but at the hands of not one hailed as Hydra or Viper…
"…But one to be called MADAME KOOPA, forevermore!"
And then this ogre of grass-shaded flesh took no more to talking, as instead it set upon the inkling of slaughtering Silver Sable by tooth, nail, or blistering breath…whatever it took for the task.
The merciless mercenary measured calmly her enormous enemy, as the latter lifted herself into the air again and again on the strength of scaly, slimy legs. The dapper dame dodged fireflow after fireflow, both above and below the center of gravity, as the Madame muttered such emissions to enflame the protagonist opposing her.
It was finally when Madame Koopa made to touch the ceiling with her now-horned head that Sable saw her chance. The former sprinted towards the foe just as the titaness took off after tensing, the monster meters into the air while Silver slid underneath her.
Knowing that her blades could begin to break the spinachy skin of the boss barreling towards her now, the sleekest soldier of Symkaria instead vaulted for the space beyond the bridge, from the side upon which the Madame alighted, and whipping out one of her diminutive weapons, she addressed that crumb of a Koopa once more.
"Too bad I'm not interested in your libation of burn, lady…
"But perhaps I could interest you…in a CHAI LATTE?!"
And with that, Sable shot out with one of her own patented chai blades, the small shank screaming towards the rope holding the fire bridge in its stable position. Then the heroine huffed with satisfaction in the midst of a subsequent jump to safety as the blade bit into said twine—just as an axe wielded by a plucky plumber would do the same, in an ubersimilar reality—and made both said conveyance and Koopa collapse into the pool of liquid perdition below.
Allowing herself a gap in the action to gloat, the mistress of mercenaries looked over the side of the damning dropoff. "Madame Whoeverthefuck: You're hot blooded, check it and see…as Basil would say in his latest guise."
Ahead, to her relief Silver could see not a disappointingly-heartrending retainer before her as she somewhat subconsciously feared, but rather that magnificent Man of Sand all bound up just yards away.
Upon espying him, Silver sprinted to the side of this mofo of unstable molecules, she kissing his cheek and caressing his face otherwise with lithe fingers…all just from the joy of reconnecting with her soulmate of shimmer once more. It was just as the lady let loose the third or fourth vibranium bond holding the man, courtesy of certain tech that members of the maiden's Wild Pack whipped up for her…
…that a particular adversary of artichoke emerged, wholly and womanly once more, up mysteriously from the molten morass that had seemingly claimed her seconds ago. As it turned out, her human self was able to shed from the spiny skin she wore down to her dreary doom…and using the same as a raft atop the hazard, she could propel herself upward from the makeshift tuft. The lady now wasted no time in training a most enigmatic energy weapon at the pair in front of her, just as Sable put herself in a most unprepared position while unbinding the Baker to whom she was spiritually betrothed.
"Viper," gritted William of the Wily Sands, he hunkering into such a sandy configuration as to protect his taupe temptress from any kind of output the Madame's pistol could manage.
"Won't do you any good, Billy-Bakes…the beam that could bust out of this baby, it's made to melt to totality any substance from sand to pure silver…and flesh as well, of course. I'd suggest the two of you just go ahead and take your medicine, without the futile theatrics and such."
"Why," spat the Silver one, she walking out from behind the non-Gaiman-iacally-generated Sandman to address this asswhip who plagued them both. "Why bother with this entire foray…if you were just going to go and off us in the end? What's with this whole 'gender inversion' and role reversal whatever the eff?"
The Madame muffled a slight chortle as she paced a bit; then cleared her throat. "The whole thing was an…experiment, of sorts, in all actuality. I wanted to toy with the idea, as I mentioned minutes back, of a female heroine rescuing a male, for once…or at least attempting to do so. I would have you, Sable, run to Sandman's aid…
"Then in a diabolical twist, I would have evidence planted that would make you out to be one who wished to eliminate William Baker, once you had him back in your clutches. You would be presented to the world, via my own media means, as a Silver Saboteur…as the veritable female mantis who devours her male mate, a mantis greener in her sickness than any costume I could possibly devise.
"As I would be represented on HYDRA's media to be the one who did you in with a syringe, I would be hailed as the true heroine…so as not only to turn the old rescue story on its head genderwise, but also alignmentwise, in terms of who is good and who is evil.
"…Of course, the cameras aren't rolling right now, so it doesn't matter if I tell you all about this. Really, it doesn't matter for two reasons, considering that the second involves my eradicating your elegant ass from this…"
[KABAAAAANNNNNNGGGGGGGGG]
Just as the Madame made to pull the trigger of her miserably melty device, there emerged from the air what appeared to be a giant bullet with sneering features upon it. Miss Hydra-Viper-Koopa noted it out of her peripherals just in time to jaunt out of the projectile's way, dropping her weapon by accident in the process. Shrugging an instant later, the lady continued to backflip towards the fiery cliffside, then executed a leap that vaulted her over the fire and over to the other side.
Both Baker and Sablinova then shot glances upward to see a woman of middle age, yet one of majestic beauty nonetheless. It was a wonder for Sand to see…
…but an incredible revelation for Silver.
"…
"…
"…Mama…?"
As the woman on the above brick ledge dropped to her side what appeared to be a rocket launcher the shape of a giant kettlebell hourglass, Sable realized that she could indeed make out the features fully. It really was her: none other than Anastasia Sablinova—Silver's mother—someone who was supposedly brought down by bullets before the young graying-haired girl's eyes when she was ever so tenderly young.
"It would appear my darling little baby's not the only heroine coming to the rescue today, Viper!" shouted Anastasia as she focused the launcher once more on the lichen-hued lady in the distance. "Begone…before I bust out another Bullet Billie upon your asparagass!"
This responded to by the titaness terrorist through her flipping the eff away into the distance, so that the the HYDRAaulic threat was no longer imminent.
Silver now did not know whom to kiss more, between her man and her mom. All the instinctual hardness within her dissipated upon this most heartwarming of huddle-hugs between herself, Anastasia, and William.
While the younger Sablinova lass wiped the tears of relief and overjoy from her eyes, her mother: "It was the both of us, who helped you out of that cyclical sea trap, you know."
Anastasia motioned to indicate herself as well as Sandman at this.
"I stealthily approached Mister Baker here, while the Madame was all strutting her stuff before her terrorist friends. I emptied by Billie payload momentarily to fill the launcher with some of Bake-Cakes's own lifesand…which I then used to blast into the waterway, to give you something to climb up and out from."
The argent adjutant of the Symkarian mercenary militia was beside herself with appreciation. Not a second later, she smothered William's granular gums with her silver-salivary tongue.
"Oh, Sandy," she said, in a most DannyZukoly sentimental fashion.
It was Anastasia, however, who was the Olivia Newton John here—the fair maiden whom the hero of the story missed so much and wanted to be near all this time. And in the ensuing days, Silver's mother would explain her evasion from the apparent end of her life, so many years ago—that fact that her constitution could retconnily and cornily absorb bullets like iron vitamins, to enhance her essences and thus become stronger from being shot…and that she went into hiding thereafter to train to become the soldier that her husband was, but on her own so that she could realize her own womanhood and potential otherwise and all this sort of 'Secret X-Men in the background' retcon falderal like the real story behind Tessa Sage and all that. Whatever the eff.
In any case, in the present moment, before anyone could break out into a riveting rendition of "Summer Nights" or "Hopelessly Devoted to You" or even effing "Beauty School Dropout," a violently vibrating voice shook up the entire castlescape through HYDRA-hounded loudspeakers:
"DO NOT THINK THAT I AM ELIMINATED FROM THIS EARTH, YOU WRETCHED SAND AND SABLINOVAS," it said, an inflection laced with haught and bitterness. "YOU MISERABLE MOTHER AND DAUGHTER DREGS…YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY INTERGENERATIONAL PHENOMENA TO PASS UPON THIS PLANET. MY OWN OFFSPRING AND I, WE SHALL REVAMP AND REVITALIZE THE ROLE OF THE ADVENTURESS, FROM DAMSEL IN DISTRESS TO DAME OF DESTRUCTION!
"AS I HAVE REVOLUTIONIZED MATTERS THROUGH THE REVISION OF GENDER ROLES IN OUR COMIC CONTINUUM…SO SHALL MY OWN DAUGHTER ANITA DO SO, IN THE REALM OF THE GAMES! SHE SHALL OPERATE FREQUENTLY ON A FREQUENCY MOST FEMINIST IN NATURE, AND NO ONE, NOT FROM THE JOURNALIST MEDIA NOR ANY OTHER FACET OF SOCIETY, SHALL QUESTION OR CHALLENGE HER!
"AND SO SHALL THIS PERPETUATE, THROUGHOUT ALL FONTS OF FICTION…
"…OR MY NAME IS NOT…OPHELIA SARKISSIAN…"
The voice wavered with whimsical, crazed cackling as it continued, leaving the beleaguered trio of Silver, Sand, and 'Stasia scratching their heads as they hoofed it toward the Symkarian Castle's now-ajar rear entrance.
As the heroes made for the Sablinova Estate, the two lovers among them planning a most appropriate getaway to the Silver Sands of Edinburgh for R and R and R (rest, relaxation, and relations of a most prurient kind), the intonation uttered on incessantly:
"I SHALL SLIGHTLY SHIFT THE SPELLING AND PHONETIC PRONUNCIATION OF MY DAUGHTER'S LAST NAME, SO THAT NONE IN ANY UNIVERSE WILL EVER CATCH ON TO OUR CONSPIRACY…"
But by this juncture, Sable and Baker were already too bathed in their bliss to notice the ever-distancing droning.
(NB: You can check it online-Viper's real name really is Ophelia Sarkissian. Slightly different in spelling than that of the fraulein of Feminist Frequency, but both are equally insidious and such. I believe that a connection between the Madame-Mistress and the Damsel-Decrier is not hard to imagine, and is in fact very plausible, despite the fact that the former is fictional and the latter is unfortunately very extant in our reality.)