#07 CARNAGE MUTANT NINJA FREAKS
Roof of the Palmer House Hotel
Downtown Callisto City (Callisto, Jupiter IV)
Present day
“The goose seems cooked, fellas…” Bill Murray said. Raising an eyebrow, he leaned forward to pick up an old comic book crinkled by acid rain. “Here! I knew it rang a bell…” Stiffening the cover with a flick of his wrist, he handed it to Ali. “Your story sounds suspiciously like an episode of those Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, doesn’t it?”
My partner grabbed the magazine featuring the mighty scaled heroes before rolling it into a ball. “Bullshit…” she defended herself.
“Busted!” the actor continued, pointing to illustrations in the last few pages left between his fingers. “You got radioactive creatures. The rat. The mega-intelligent gum. An underground base. All we need is some ninja shenanigans… like grapples.”
Seeing my human pouting, I decided to lay it on thick. “Ali? Are you being accurate? I also have the feeling you’re copying recent movies and morning cartoons.”
Upset, my partner crossed her arms. “I may use some artistic freedom… but whatever! I’ll stop right here! No more story!”
“Quit sulking!” I scolded her.
She resumed, rambling: “Alright. Alright! So this is how my awesome exploits in the sewers came to an end. Inspired by real events.”
Baby Krang’s lair
Beneath Downtown Callisto City (Callisto, Jupiter IV)
A month ago
With her weapon, June Roger forced my sex sidekick to extract the symbio-fetus capsule from the black monolith. Keeping me at a distance, she watched the Maiden’s every move.
“Hurry up!” the Freak muttered, glancing over her shoulder in fear. “I can hear some of those mutants already climbing that dismal hill.”
“How many green bills is the Mendel Genomics printing to get their biological storage unit back?” Zéphyr asked, struggling with the half-melted keys.
“None of your business…” she grunted, waving her gun.
Quickly done with the program, Zéphyr cautiously unscrewed the rusty nuts holding the organic symbiont’s globe to the frame. She then pulled the glass aquarium out of the computer before slicing two large pipes with her teeth. An orange-brown liquid spilled out at our feet into the silver puddle. Lisa still remained linked to the monolith by an electric cable of red color.
“Wasn’t so hard, after all. I could have figured it out myself,” June joked.
Zéphyr tore apart the last connection cord, and the room sank completely into darkness and silence. All that persisted was a halo of light and gray water falling on the computer from a sewer opening on the surface.
“You got what you wanted, right?” my cyber-girlfriend asked. Her holosuit went off at the same moment, revealing her black coating and a strand of white hair sticking out of her mirrored-sewed balaclava.
“A holosuit? Who the fuck are you?” June said, before something roared meters behind her. “Shit…”
I too heard grunting and clawing on metal. Pairs of yellowy eyes danced in the darkness. Around us, the monsters were getting closer.
“You only have a few minutes left before Lisa expires for good…” Zéphyr warned the Freak. “She’ll be worthless—and your employer will be incredibly pissed.”
June ordered her to be quiet, then opened her jumpsuit with the tip of her gun before pulling out the grappling hook folded over her belt buckle.
“I’m so sorry, Ali-love…” apologized Zéphyr, withdrawing her hood.
Her long silver hair fell on her shoulder. Without the holographic disguise, I saw that the electric arc she shielded me from dug a hole in her chest. Creamy cyber-blood ran over her stomach and laps.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Not really…” She brushed the fluid from her suit. It was already dry. “I ruined your birthday.”
“Yes, indeed…”
“I’ll make it up to you…”
Facing us, the fake reporter cocked her grapple’s ejection system. After she pressed a button on a suspender, the reel shrieked, and the hook flew toward the heights.
“Oh yeah? How?” I asked, looking up, trying to find the pipe it hooked up to.
“Goodbye, lovers!” June taunted us, pressing the button below her shoulder again. The rope tightened, and she armed a jump. “I’ll send you a holo-card from Byblos Gate!”
“You wish!” Zéphyr shouted.
Diving her hand into her punctured chest, my partner pulled out a crackling wire she plunged into the pool of liquid at our feet. The polluted slick suddenly ignited, and huge ethereal flames surrounded the metal case of the supercomputer.
“What the hell?” the Freak shouted as she propelled herself over the rampart of flames. Protecting her face from the deflagration, she dropped her gun.
Snakes of fire swept down the hill to the graves, zigzagging between the various revealed monsters. Purple sparks then crackled along the walls to the surface, causing explosions and screams within the hive.
I congratulated Zéphyr as I grabbed my Desert Eagle from the heart of the inferno. I burned my fingers in the process—but nothing serious. With the weapon back, I aimed for the wire of the grappling iron.
“And you haven’t seen anything yet!” Zéphyr angrily declared, still holding her synthetic guts.
Her eyes shone in red, before a dull roar was heard. Upon us, something exploded, showering us with shards, dust and… traffic cones. Zéphyr’s ship, the Kisugi, burst through the vault and dived towards us.
Swinging above us, the Freak screamed, her legs inches above the turbines of the swirling ship. The intense heat ignited her lacquer-soaked boots. With the cylinder of her grappling hook stuck, she struggled to extinguish the meager flames eating away her knees.
“Stop moving, bitch!” I grunted.
With two shots, I severed the wire. She fell on the Monsutā’s metallic frame where both Zéphyr and I immediately jumped to avoid roasting in the incandescent pool.
“Did you just blow up a street in downtown Callisto City?” I asked as Zéphyr prepared to hoist me onto her ship.
“Gas leaks happen,” she answered, as I climbed the wing.
“Is the Freak still alive?”
“She lost consciousness…” my girlfriend went on below, moving aside with her foot the Freak’s arm to glance at Lisa’s module.
I quickly reached the previously opened canopy. At the fighter’s controls, I immediately deactivated the Baltimore reactor cycle. A few blows with the stabilizers would be enough to reach the surface.
A shock at the front of the ship slammed me against my seat. A Radio Freak similar to the worst Monsters & Mazes’ abominations had jumped from the heights. Opening its wide mouth of teeth and tongue and even more teeth, he planned to chew my head off.
“Kill that thing!” shouted Zéphyr as she clutched the aileron the best she could.
I span the ship around. The monstrosity slid off, clawing at the machinegun’s cooling fins. Bad call. That’s all it took for me to violently send it flying—alongside its viscera—into the barbecue party below.
Meanwhile, Zéphyr sat on my lap to reach for the dashboard. I felt all the weight of her augmented body as she plugged her temple-wire to a little outlet below the beeping radar. “Is that the handle or are you happy to see me?”
“That’s the kind of joke I’ll do.”
“I know. You rub huff on me.”
“And you’re lovin’ it.”
Something shook the ship as the conversation was taking a weird turn.
“Keep going! Here’s some more!” Zéphyr warned me.
“Shit! They’re falling from above!” I cried as two more mutants landed on the left spoilers, destabilizing the ship.
Smoke began to fill the area. “Close that airlock, Ali! I will be out for a couple of seconds!”
“What for?” I asked.
“Help!” screamed the Freak below.
Still alive, June Roger waved at us from the top of the monolith. A bunch of monsters were trying to eat her magneto-boots through the flames.
“Wait! I’m coming out first!” I retorted as I slid out of the cockpit. “Z, can you—crap!” She was already browsing the web.
From the wing, I shot the throat of a new beast a little too enterprising. The humpbacked nonsense spat purple blood, and slipped on the flaps. He broke his back against the dark monolith, causing a frightening indigo pyrolysis. The fiery blast nearly toppled our precarious ship.
I yelled, looking down despite the nausea: “December?”
I saw her, her hands firmly anchored to the Kisugi’s landing gear. She was severely burned. Her hair was black as carbon. Wide bloody scratches ran across her yellow jumpsuit.
“By the rings of Saturn!” she pleaded, Lisa still under her elbow. “Don’t let me die here!”
I stretched out along the wing, the feet tucked in a maneuvering thruster, to approach the traitorous Freak. “Throw me the big bubble gum!” I ordered. I had to repeat myself because of the commotion caused by the fire.
“Catch!” she coughed. Blood was running on her chin.
Not without hesitation, she tossed the life pod and its precious—if ignominious—merchandise to me. Slowly raising, I went back to the cockpit and tucked the M-unit between my still unconscious cyborg’s legs.
I came back to June the quicker I could, dodging sprays of molten plastic grazing my face. The mercenary was nowhere to be found. “Where are you?” I yelled, probing the tumultuous smoke because of the ship’s blowing thrusters. “Fuck!”
The Kisugi realized a sudden lurch, and I turned around. The Freak was done climbing thanks to the front machine guns. On her hands and knees, crawling to the open cockpit, she was looking for Lisa.
Finding my balance, I yelled, and Zéphyr’s eyes stopped glimmering. She was back with us. Surprising the Freak so close, my cyber-thief immediately swirled the ship after closing the canopy.
Ejected, I caught the last torpedo’s red nose plate from the tips of my fingers. From there, I could witness June’s fall. Not in the fire, but in the sea of agonizing monsters climbing on the monolith.
I heard a bloodcurdling scream. Despite the sweat invading my eyes, I saw her almost being torn to pieces by panic-stricken creatures.
“Holy shit…” I whispered.
My hands hurt. The toxic smoke liquified my lungs. Exhausted, I was about to let go when Zéphyr appeared.
“Do you need a hand?” she asked, still wired to the ship.
I cursed at her. Horrified, I glanced at the monsters forming a pyramid below. They were feet away to grasp my charred sneakers.
My cyber-girlfriend smiled, reaching for my arm. “Don’t panic! I sorted things out!” Her eyes turned purple as she lifted me on the wing.
All around, the surviving speakers spat dust. Very loud chords could be heard from the heights, before giving way to lyrics and music.
I never meant to cause you any sorrow
I never meant to cause you any pain
I only wanted to one time to see you laughing
“What the hell is that?” I coughed, figuring Prince’s voice out while I sat down on the wing against the cockpit. I was shaking.
Meanwhile, the vessel steadily hovered to the top, far from the inferno and the mutants. Temperature remained hot, but became tolerable again.
Zéphyr slowly slumped on the edge, opening for me an ice-cold brick of Mr. Pibb from her ship’s reserve. “Happy birthday, Ali-love…”.
Below, the Radio Freaks started howling in pain. Their screams grew in intensity until their heads suddenly burst out—first one by one, then by entire batches.
Purple rain, purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
Violet mists silently scattered across the whole vault, also causing the flames to turn purple. In a blink of an eye, the entire blazing hill resembled a breathing lavender storm cloud. It was beautiful.
Purple rain, purple rain
I only wanted to see you
Bathing in the purple rain
I smiled, resting my tired head on her metal-coated shoulder.
