Evil Buzz stared at the sudden anarchy that had blazed up in the corridor. Even Zurg spun around, a deep scowl of immense hatred creeping on his aged visage. Booster and XR bustled around Mira, who was lying in an oddly warped position, slack as an empty flour sack. However, as the Shadow understood what was going on, his lip curled into a hideous, malignant smirk. Only such a demonic sadist as he could be enjoying the morbid view. Sweeping towards the hubbub mountain, he cackled,
"Hehehehe. There you see what happens when a pathetic fool raises a finger against my supreme authority. Now, watch her rot... see what happens when death kisses you... because your souls will eventually shatter too and join the mortification of this galaxy... hahahaha." Distracted by the sick satisfaction, he stroked dreamily the fatal cane. His eyes had briefly caught a glazed, distant glint in them. His mind was wallowing in a land of lethal nightmares, his Black Eden... Dead beings sprawling under a roaring scarlet sky, the burned black ground grimacing under it...
Nonetheless... his dark joy fell to be imperfect. As the old emperor had supposed, there were the screams hovering in the cavities of his mind too. At first there had been only a few of them, crawling tardily around his head, accusing... Year by year the screeches had grown stronger, as the phantoms had begun multiplying almost exponentially. Their dissonance was sometimes utterly unbearable, as they howled piercingly about their devastation.
So sang the souls of the innocent...
And he clogged his ears from their bawling lament. He still possessed the capability to freeze his icy inners near the absolute zero, turn to fight against the wail of those ghosts, and defeat them with the sharpened ax of his determination. This measure made the Dark Side drape him with ever more sackcloth evilness, while it drew him deeper, deeper into the endless pits of mental pandemonium. The more he suffocated the screams, the more the darkness devoured him from inside. It ripped apart his senses, leaving only an ill psychopath with satanic dreams instead.
As the Shadow lingered in his illusions, he did not notice how Mira on the floor opened very slightly one eye, and gave the tiniest wink to XR and Booster. The men responded with a petite nod, and instantaneously acted. Zap, the robot elongated his metallic arms, and succeeded to snatch the viper staff away from the menace's hold. Evil Buzz had held it rather light-heartedly the last few seconds. But this was enough for crafty space rangers to perform a quick action scene. The robed demon could only utter a hasty 'Wha?', before startling to notice how his game was over. In the fraction of a picosecond, Booster had jumped behind him and arrested his arms with a good, firm Jo-Adian grip. The Princess on the floor was taking long, wheezing inhales again. Lying still on her back, she gave a feeble thumbs-up to her teammates. They were both grinning broadly like a bunch of primary school kids who had just won the Junior League Cup in football. Zurg had halted his pose in mid-turn, surprised. The old emperor had possessed no idea lamp whatsoever about the schemes of his temporal minions. Now he was standing on one foot, his jaw verging the floor, his mug having such a lopsided expression that it looked as though his already overstretched upper lip had been dilated twice more.
"Good job, boys!" the Tangean coughed, "The old Vogon Feint has never failed."
"Yeah, and it was Buzz who taught us that!" Booster yapped proudly. "Mira, XR, and I were just faking! We're space rangers, and we know the space ranger maneuvers!"
She took some support from her shaking elbows, squinting. Her voice came out slightly nasal due to the respiratory aid that was slapped over her face. "Ugh... craters, wasn't that easy though. I though I'd start coughing any second, but good that you guys were so quick. Egh... I need a good holiday after this..." So she slumped back down, trying to relax.
Evil Buzz was hissing and squirming like an irritated rattlesnake. The sudden perception of being arrested was like a red-hot meteor being dropped onto his blockhead. He could not believe it, not an inch of it. His scene of victory had all been bluff?
"You... you... you tricked me?" A shower of saliva was flying in the air. "How dare you evanescent mortals defy my raising might? I am the apocalypse of this universe, and through my hands it shall fall! You can't oppose the dusk of your pathetic galaxy! You can't oppose the future, what I have foreseen it to conceal! I will..."
"...shut up now." Zurg gave an aloof sneer. "Grhoh. This just plucks my pigeons. Put that twerp to wear a muzzle or something. I do not wish to hear his pitiful yammer any longer." Face hardening back to the flinty, severe pout, Zurg tapped in front of Evil Buzz. "The future is always in move... clouded it is, you never can be sure how a sole, delicate string may alter the pattern of the whole tapestry. You may see glimpses of it, possibilities, but your whole anticipation can be swung upside down like my glorious imperial helmet which was turned into a flower pot by my wee teensy weensy Smoopsiepoo." Absent-mindedly, as though forgetting which planet and year it was, he whisked a claw-like hand to the space rangers. "Good work, grubs... I shall donate you extra muffins on the afternoon tea..." Next, Zora prodded a sharp fingertip between the Shadow's eyes, putting him squint. "Now we shall dig ourselves into the core. Where is my son, you puny mallard-brain?"
"Why should I tell you? The force was supposed to be strong in you, but can't the blood-traitor sense the goody-goody pipsqueak? Only the bad boys?" the villain smirked arrogantly.
"Mwahahah, you stupid birk. Why am I even wasting my time on you, trying to explain things that are too large for your bean-sized brains... The force works in complex ways; you cannot make it your myrmidon. And, seems that you are even more pathetically distracted than I ever knew. My son is rather far away from an innocent dove of peace. He turned to the Dark Side just a tad before my Empire fell, but was able to unlock its nefarious chains on his own. Hmpf. I have feared he might eventually become something like you... now with the utmost concern since I now surely know what the Lightyear blood is."
There was a brief silence in the dark vault. Dust particles faintly flitted and glimmered in the rim of XR's spotlight. The black, empty doorways stared at the small crowd like the hollow eye sockets of some gigantic scull. Mira, Booster, and the mecha had not thoroughly registered the vile saga about the Lightyear ancestors, but started gradually fully comprehending it. A frosty shudder went through the spines of those aliens. So, here they stood, inside a horrible inheritance. It gave a well-knitted impression about the curse flowing in their ex-captain's veins. Had all Buzz' forefathers been just like Zurg, or even worse? How deep inside the past's abysses did the path of darkness lead? Also the callous discussion, about the howls of deceased conjuring one's mind, poured ice water down their collars. The old man rarely talked about his past crimes and how they presently affected him. Mira and Booster were young; they were not even born when Zoxedaszeĉ had taken his throne. Thus they could not be aware of all the savagery that besmeared the ground with crimson blots. Yet, the recent conversation definitely depicted rather gruesomely what kind of keepsakes the eldest Lightyear had to bear.
Zurg's bass voice was soon again echoing in the ancient archway, as he gave another hollow cackle. "'The Dark Lightyear blood', about which you puny twerp have been glibbering all the time, has not died nor perished. But if it depends on me, there shall be no new heir of the Dark Side raising from this family. I shall make sure that my son never descends there, never again. And he shall not become your servant either. Indeed, your Dark Lord fantasies shall fall into the ashes, if it depends on me. I am unfortunate to notice that my supreme intelligence has been itty bitty slow, but yet I am beginning to comprehend the message of my nightmares. They have been warnings, not yet quite the thing the future might possess. They have given out the alternative of what might happen if a rubber-duck-witted twit like you had gotten the upper hand of the tides. But if it depends on me and this moment, your presumable rise as the new Dark Lord is washed away, just like once my grubs used wrong detergent onto my brilliantly purple robes and the whole laundry turned pink." He eyed at Evil Buzz from under his bushy black brows. "I was warned; I was made to see the disgusting options. However... now you puny bluebottle are trapped in spider's web, and the old coot of Star Command knows where we have gone. This Tangean", he pointed at Mira, "succeeded to send a distress signal which we followed. Besides... there is a big molten hole in the ground, out there, leading here. You have to be a blind bream if you do not spot it. Muhahah. We are just generally waiting for backup."
The Shadow's sardonic simper had died. Only there was this half-shocked gawp painted instead. Zurg's roaming gibbering about dreams, predictions, and the real Buzz' troubles had worked well as the gag the Emperor had requested earlier. There was something weirdly dreadful in the old man, both in his appearance and in his uncanny mentality. Zoxedaszeĉ was perhaps the only person he had ever feared. This was quite a contrast since usually every alien was miserably cringing in front of the mirror universe foe.
Zurg's jabber went on, "So, you shall not tell us where you have trapped my son? How pathetic an attempt to shatter our hopes. The Tangean is probably not having the energy to do mind-probes, but... or?"
"Eh... sorry, but I'm feeling pretty much like boiled spaghetti..." Nova coughed, "But I know a bit about this place since I wandered quite long down there. There are huge dungeons with maybe hundreds of cells several floors below us, and they're controlled with some kind of surveillance cameras... or so I think. At least that guy was able to follow my course. He must have some sort of monitor through which he can see what's down there. And undoubtedly the real Buzz and his wife are somewhere in those same cells. So maybe we can use the surveillance stuff to find them." Sorrow shaded her tone, "But... I have no idea what he has done to them. It... it has sounded like the Kalevan woman might be dead."
Whereas Booster and Mira merely sweatdropped to the latter notion, Zurg was keeping his bushy head cool. "Not likely. I can fully see through this lack-wit's flimsy stereotypical strategy. I would be able to see through it even without the parchments that told the whole thing already. Hmf. So predictable and unoriginal. Buzz has been his marionette mainly because my son is afraid this tufted duck might harm the Kalevan. So logically she is alive. And now... you, hornet... erm, XR, check out his pockets. He might be hiding there just the answer we need."
The extragalactic antagonist had been so far floating in mid-air with his hover boots, Booster pinching him as though he had been an especially nauseous insect in tweezers. However, as the Jo-Adian was pushing Evil Buzz down for investigation, the robed male began whimpering in pain and gurgling some mantra about his withered legs. A brief study affirmed that he indeed lacked the ability to stand and walk on his own. But nothing hindered the checking of his pockets, although he remained aloft.
The non-criminal pickpocketing indeed revealed interesting secrets. While XR was goggling at the invisibility cloak, throwing in some sarcasms about corny children's fantasy books and how people should stop taking them too seriously, Zurg was inspecting the portable spyscreen in his skeletal hands.
"Anything else? Is he hiding a wand or a collapsible broomstick there too? Or a cauldron? I wouldn't be surprised to see a spell book sticking out of his breast pocket either", the robot mused.
"Hymm..." the Emperor kept twiddling with the monitor, "I think we shall stop pottering with those other futile accessories... I am quite positive I have found what we need... only you shall check out that this nitwit is not hiding any more weapons." Not even a blink passed, and Zurg had put the screen to display very intriguing facts. The thingamabob showed a perfect map of the immense Nex Crucio fortress, complete with zooming abilities. Snap, and he dug up the very same corridor where the quintet was lodging. The screen viewed the scene from bird's eye view, currently exhibiting a shrubbery of black hair as Zora had zoomed in too much onto himself. As egoistic idiots never can be less egoistic idiots, he traditionally took a pithy evaluation of himself, picked up a comb from his pocket and started brushing the bush. This would have probably lasted beyond infinities, unless Mira had ceased the absurdity by uttering a sharp comment that this was not a barber's shop.
"Humm... indeed. My glorious hair just looked a tad windswept... hrhrm. My apologies."
Thus the monitor was put in a far more rational use. It appeared that the core of this whole complex was just a short distance away along this same corridor. Thus they decided to trot over there and settle down for a while. Raking this immense subterranean behemoth was not a nanosecond's work. And as there seemed to be more comfortable quarters ahead than just a moldy dusty corridor, there was no reason to grow roots here. Also, the space rangers could perhaps contact Nebula via those console panels that jutted in the colossal oval main room. All the wristcoms were namely still as mute as rotten cauliflowers.
"Anything with which we could tie up this humbugger?"
"No problemo. Now, say hasta la vista to your Dark Lordship." XR drew forth a pair of Star Command ionized handcuffs from his inners, and clamped Evil Buzz' wrists with them from the front. A plasma-forced rope was attached to them and the android took a good grip of its other end. Thus, the team set their toes towards the main chambers, Mira back up in Booster's arms, and XR dragging the cursing and hissing Shadow as though he had been a giant, grotesque balloon.
Still, the atmosphere was far away from cheerful. The gothic corridor in the bowels of earth looked merely like hell's courtyard. Their every step clanked hollowly in the archway, singing together with the black lore of this horrible history. More thunderclouds gathered to overshadow the tenor, as the squad arrived inside a round atrium. Like everywhere, the scarlet and golden tapestry shreds sung about the ancient pomp, but in this room they rhymed darkly with a second canto. Natural-sized marble effigies circulated the walls, squatting in their own embowed alcoves. They depicted human men, apparently the most important members of the cult. Coldly their dead, haughty eyes stared down at the intruders that had broken their centennial sleep. All the stone figures had a similar, sepulchrally evil, inhuman frown on their faces. And... the space rangers dared not to pip a syllable in the shadow of the glum Zurg. The old emperor had perfectly noticed what glared down at him: several of those statues carried facial features almost identical to his, complete with the clefts on their hard chins. Zora's heart was burning with atrocious guilt and shame. This cursed inheritance only reminded him of the souls he had erased permanently from the galactic map. Was he now forced to carry even the sins of his forefathers besides the damned blood?
No... he would not surrender and become the past's slave. He had not committed those ancient deeds; he had no part in their memento. His own burden was enough for one weak mortal to drag.
Hence, he straightened his temporarily hunched pose, prodding a proud, imperial nose upwards. From this gesture Mira, Booster, and XR knew he had at least partly overcome the inner traumas. So Munchapper risked to light up the silenced conversation.
"Umm... Mr. Lightyear? Can I ask... how did you know it was Evil Buzz and not the real Buzz behind this all? I mean... we all though it was him! I mean, we thought it was Buzz, but not the other Buzz, umm..." the concept went over his IQ.
"Hmph", Zurg grunted, "I find your lack of faith disturbing. Your minds are too weak to see the difference. There was a disturbance in the balance, and this presence I had not felt since... since I got lost in the mirror universe years ago. And to be frank... a tiny piece in your trivial balderdash about my son's beard", he peered at the male ranger duo, "awoke me to think of certain possibilities. Everything of course became affirmed as I met that insufferable widgeon eye to eye. Even you, although you mostly are feeble pathetic snivelers, should see what his eyes are like. Although my son was in the Dark Side, he never had that kind of sick, inane gleam in them. Always watch the eyes; they are the soul's mirror. I... I remember when I first met that twirp... I thought he was a dolt joke whipped up by the holographic warfare boys. But, it was partly that psychotic glint in his eyes that made me understand it was not my ninny son or his holograph after all. That, and of course the presence of the Dark Side. And a raygun pointing at my head", he added with an undertone.
"Easy for you to say. We all though this mockingbird was dead", the mecha hummed.
"Never suspect a sneaky villain to be dead unless you can be five hundred percent sure."
****
After the atrium and a set of short passages, the pentad stepped inside the core chambers. The space was littered with partly restored furniture, patched curtains, slightly reeking unwashed clothings, and parchment rags. Tattered books were sprawling open among half-eaten sandwiches, used bandages and medicine ampoules were heaped on rickety tables. Generally the place looked like a bad travesty of landfill. The good-side quartet did not astonish Evil Buzz' walking troubles any longer. All those pharmaceutical knickknacks clearly told he had trouble also elsewhere than under his cranium. All this jumble basked in the orbs of a few sickly green lanterns. Overall, there was nothing cozy in this repugnant hole.
Nonetheless, here the troopers laid their hinterlands. Mira was put to rest on a sofa, which spat out a dust cloud as dense as London fog, when someone sat on it. The vastest dilemmas were encountered with the Shadow. He started caterwauling like a maltreated tomcat when Booster tried to tie him in a chair. Ferociously vociferating, the Shadow squealed something about coxalgy and how his lower back hardly supported the weight of his overly-buffed thorax. So, the only option was to let him sulk and hover in a nearby corner.
Zurg had fast attached his dark eyes at the large device console that towered over the sundry trash. As he was not only just a self-proclaimed genius, but a genuine one, he in a breeze had comprehended that this controller was obviously supervising the whole subsurface leviathan. After he had plugged the portable spyscreen back into its slot, he let his long thin fingers dance on the various keyboards. This made the whole control panel waltz. It hummed, buzzed, and vibrated, and umpteen larger screens on its surface blazed into life. Evil Buzz was goggling at the panorama petrified. The ex-emperor was doing tricks in minutes he had not figured out during his whole lodging down here. He had also believed that warming up those cobwebbed gizmos would take far more time units than just a few blinks. That infernal blood-traitor was just so tremendously dodgy.
The newly kindled monitors near the ceiling were so large that they presented clearly their pictures even to the remotest parts of the oval cove, excluding the fact that they were flickering after their long slumber like malfunctioning oscilloscopes. However, perhaps Zurg would be able to scan through the fortress quicker if he had more than just one peephole down to the stomach of this stone gorgon.
*****
Blib, blib, beep, bleep, the blinking lights and buttons played their symphony. Mira relaxed on the sofa, gnawing some snack stolen from Evil Buzz' food stocks. The antihistamines and cortisone that XR had given her as first aid, were efficiently healing her lungs. The coughing had ceased, and her worst bruises had been bandaged. Nova had also collected a tiny amount of energy so that she rather sat than invalidly lounged on her back. Nonetheless, she was miles away from any healthy state. If this Tartarus ever would belch her out into the sweet daylight, the Princess would flit straight to hospital.
Zurg had reached the blue cells with his noveau candid camera set. The software was scanning the cubicles so, that every monitor snuffled a different compartment. Room after room, the eerie cubes flickered on the screens. That monotonous indigo shimmer was painstakingly depressing. Nobody wanted to know why those myriads of dull boxes were built down there. The only task was to locate Buzz and Yoka, and any other captives there might be.
Suddenly a horrid image on one monitor made the tetrad flinch on their spots. The zoomed-in picture was displaying a large pile of grayed humanoid sculls grimacing at them. Why there was a heap of loose dead heads dumped in one of those revolting rooms, remained without an answer. Wiping sweat off his forehead, Zora clicked the disgusting vista away.
Evil Buzz' silent sniggers could be heard in the background. He obviously enjoyed immensely their abrupt fright.
"Can't you look death into its eyes? Hehehe. Even the grand Emperor Zurg is quivering in his puny pants like his frail-minded son... Can't after all bear your legacy? Remember, you shiny butterflies... you will join those too some day, rot, get eaten by worms... hahahaha... I only could have made it happen sooner, and perhaps will---" His ill drawling was shredded to atoms as he unexpectedly noticed Zurg's fierce figure soaring inches in front of him. Such a furious, thunderous mien he had never seen before on Zora's grooved visage. Even the grim reaper himself would have had a hard time to compete with the frostiness that starched his mad gaze. His bass voice exceptionally adopted a silky, whispering tone instead of the traditional bellow-your-lungs-out bluster. This was suited to color the instant even more ghostlike.
"I have looked death into its eyes... I have seen it lowering its hood, revealing its putrid face, smelled the stench of its rancid breath... I took its form too many times, grabbed the scythe, ripped souls apart, celebrated the harvest of doom... All over again, all over again... Then the parts suddenly changed, unexpectedly. It was I, who stood in front of death as its next prey. Its breath's fetid stench prickled in my lungs, suffocating me... there were no mercy in its blank eyes... and then I understood how all those innocent beings that had died in my hands, had seen me... how they had tried to beg mercy, how they had prayed me to save their feeble flames of life... I gave no mercy. And neither would be given mercy to me, as the parts had suddenly turned upside down. I, in my greatest might, was made to beg and pray just like them..."
Zurg's glazed eyes glowered unblinkingly at Evil Buzz.
"There is no beauty, no glory to dress up in death's robes. And when you someday meet its shadowed skeleton, sniff its putrid breath, you will beg and pray too... and maybe it shall not save you as it oddly did let me live. I would have deserved the perdition, but perhaps there is some higher reason it turned away from me and vanished. But, be warned... in front of it, you have no supremacy. Your might shall perish to dust. From ashes you have born, and into ashes even you shall return."
A saturnine silence had been dropped over the vault. Mira, Booster, and XR were staring open-mouthed at the old man who was radiating some sort of mind-numbing coldness. But Zurg had finished his diphthongs. He turned about on his heels and stomped back to the console.
Zora's gnarled fingers seemed to have achieved trice more speed as they jazzed on the keyboard, switching the cells in a blur of blue light. The monitors puked up a few more skeleton rooms, which were switched quickly away. The chamber still bathed in total silence, not even the Shadow sneered in his puny hole any longer. He had moreover fallen into an uncannily fossilized state, as though he had truly become shocked during Zora's harangue.
And the screens continued their tedious travel along the cubicles. Had they no end at all? Where were Buzz and Yoka? Or had the infinite crypt thoroughly devoured them, concealing them inside the mould for forever?
More to come. Comments?