"There's bad news creeping up/And you feel a sudden chill/How do you do, my name is Trouble/I'm coming in for the kill/...In for the kill...and you know I will/Set the ball a'rollin', I'll be clicking off the miles/On the Train of Consequences, my boxcar life o' style/My thinking is derailed, I'm tied up to the tracks/The Train of Consequences, there ain't no turning back" -- Megadeth, "Train of Consequences" Operation: Phoenix, Falls the Shadow, Part Three by J-Rock, jjr5020@rigel.tamu.edu # Anthrax w/ Public Enemy "Bring The Noise" I had lent MoHo my XRifle, prefering instead to wield my Plasmatronix 2000 Handheld ER PPC and Da Holy Sibling-Sawblade. Not suprisingly, I insisted on being the second one through the door. As everybody started to file in behind me, MoHo went on ahead to the escalator. He said, "All right, anyone know where the--GRRRK!!" before a bullet impacted his left shoulder, spinning him around and down. More shots soon followed, and CP and JFox soon had their share of caught bullets. Scrambling behind a section of escalator, I thought aloud, "I'll be... Where're they getting these people from, the Rival Ninja Corporation?" I punctuated that comment with a PPC blast, but only succeeded in causing random property damage. "You forget the Cloud," Owsen said as a bullet lodged itself in his armor's shoulder plate. "Besides," JFox added while doing a great impression of Mr. Orange from Reservoir Dogs, "these guys wouldn't know a ninja if one punched them in the face. Oh Christ this hurts.." "I was refering to the manpower being thrown at us," I said as Morgenna and Samhain tossed the snipers' bodies over the side of the balcony. "Dammit, I never get to go up close and personal," I complained to the two as I headed up towards MoHo. "Quit complaining, will ya?" Morgenna said. "The way our luck's been going, your turn will come soon enough." Checking MoHo's wound, I was relieved to discover that it had missed the bone. Which meant that I could save the magical crew some mana and pump a Body Rehabilitation Injection into him. However, before I could pull out the disposable spray-hypo, a hand settled on my shoulder. "Useless for this," Windi said as she indicated my hypo and shook her head. "Healing with magic, I am." "That's all right," JFox said, "bring it over here." "Uh, it looks you need a Massive BRI," I replied, looking at JFox's gut-shot self. "And I only brought one of those." But before I could toss it over, Owsen had already started another heal spell. I resigned myself to simply walking up the escalator with the rest of the crew. You can't conserve mana if the spellcasters don't want to conserve it, I guess. As we neared the bank of elevators, JFox let out a little "Uh-oh.." Looking at the row of lights, five of the eight elevators were coming down. The sad thing was that none of us had even touched the call buttons. Well, guess there's no prizes for guessing who's in the elevators, I thought. "Stairs?" Samhain offered. # Fear Factory "Zero Signal" _"Mortal Kombat" soundtrack_ "Aye," Owsen said, taking over point as he opened the door and darted in, followed by the rest of us. CP stayed behind to cover our asses as the doors opened to reveal a small armada of Spongers, singing the Dark Hymn in sweetly retarded voices. He hesitated, and almost joined in for a second. This was a little more than he was prepared for, but sanity reasserted itself and CP kicked his XRifle into overdrive, cutting the whole cohort down. I didn't see much more after that, because Sam closed the door behind him as we headed up the stairs. We had only made it up to the third floor before a horrific explosion rocked the stairwell, causing the lights to flicker and the lot of us to fumble for the handrails. As the fire alarms went off, drowning out most sounds in god-awful noise, I shouted, "HOLY GHOST! What was that?" "I don't know," JFox said, "but we'd better get moving." The crew pressed on to the fifth floor before CP came running up to rejoin us. "Up the stairs," he said breathlessly. "Fast. The entire first floor will be burning soon." "What the Hell did you use, plasma seduction grenades?" I asked. "Close. High explosive incinderaries." "I don't know if you realize this, genius," MoHo began, "but YOU'VE CUT OFF OUR ONLY MEANS OF GETTING DOWN!" CP fixed him with a baleful glance and said, "If we can't dispel the Purple Cloud, then it won't matter if we can get down or not. In case you missed it, I nearly went Sponge out there." "Then let us make haste!" Owsen said as we picked ourselves up and began moving once more. The vanguard had made it up fifteen more floors before a burst of fire from the upper landing forced Owsen to dive back into cover, crying "AMBUSH!" Just then, numerous footfalls below told of Spongins advancing to trap us. Windi started chanting a spell which caused spikes to start growing from the landing we had just passed. I didn't notice this, as I let the impromptu pillbox have a PPC bolt. "This is for mega-sucks," I said. "They're not making this any easier, are they?" "Never mind that," Morgenna answered. "Windi's pinned us in some more with those Spike Stones of hers!" "O ye of little faith," CP replied, while chanting another spell. "There's a method to her madness." Just then, a flow of mud began to drip from the upper landing, followed by the Wyrm-Minion snipers a few seconds later. As for their fate, let's just say that between the spikes and the rear guard, the mud started turning red soon enough. "Transmute Rock To Mud," I said as Cerberus restored the landing with a snap of his fingers. "Sweet!" "Yeah," CP responded as we ran past Owsen, who was preparing an Incinderary Cloud for our pursuing "friends" below. "And they fell for it." **************************************************************************** About three-quarters of the way up, MoHo stopped to check out a computer whose screen saver was turning said screen psychedelic colors. CP and I broke off from the rest of the column to see if we couldn't bring him back to the line. But by that time, he had already touched the mouse, and revealed that the computer was running Win95. "Why do I have a very bad feeling about this?" I said. My worry was proven right a few minutes later, as the background began to swirl in hypnotic patterns. "Hello again, my special friends!" came the Satanic Purple Saurian from Hades's voice a moment later. "Here's something super-deeeeeee-uper for you to read! Have fun!" "C'mon guys," CP said, "we don't have time for this!" "Let's just see what Lord Bar-- er, B'Harne wants to show us," MoHo responded. "Yeah," I replied a half-second later, proving once again that while the spirit may be willing, the flesh is still weak. Doubly so under a Purple Cloud. I for one didn't want to see anything B'Harne recommended, but my mouth was betraying me at this point. The screen begain to print up a document in the same manner as a HTML page loading on Netscape. I took one look at it and blanched. It was Neon Wizard's horrid (and to be brutally honest, self-serving) account of the end of Operation WorldWalk! The rational side of my thought processes (which was now in the minority) wondered why B'Harne would try to spongify us with this crap. And yet, MoHo wanted to stick around and read this, as per Barn--nonono, B'Harne's instructions. The rational voice argued for leaving and pressing on towards the top floor, but the hordes of Spongin voices won out. # Queensryche "I Am I" _Promised Land_ [AUTHOR'S NOTE: If you want details of what happens over the next few paragraphs, email CyberPyro at cybrpyro@iac.net and ask for TPB Part 9: Into The MiST. -- J-R] What happened next defies description, but I'll try and explain it anyway. My memory, which at this point was starting to resemble stir-fried sponge, cued up my MiSTification of the Purple Book. Then MoHo, who we all thought was long gone, started humming the Love Theme! CP jumped in on vocals as we all began to shake off B'Harne's influence. "...Then repeat to yourself, 'It's just a show, I should really just relax', for MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000!" By now we were all singing the Love Theme, momentarily ignoring the Spongin voices echoing throughout our heads. "Gentlemen," CP said when the song died down, "we have here an incredibly boring fanfic on our hands. We also have been singing the Love Theme from MST3K to avoid spongification. In short, our duty is clear." He paused before continuing with mock solemnity. "We have a riffing to perform." "Right with ya, Mike," I said, taking a position at CP's left hand. MoHo took the right hand spot, saying "Ready when you are, Tom." And for the next fifteen minutes, the three of us shredded that story with the gay abandon usually practiced by pirahna or sharks in feeding frenzy. When it was finally over, we fell about the place laughing, occasionally pausing to wipe a tear or two from our eyes. It had been a long time since any of us had cut loose like that. At length, Samhain came down and said, "I've been looking all over for you guys! Everybody else is almost to the top except you three. Now get moving." "Sorry," I said, taking a deep breath and smiling. "We'll be right up." As the three of us left the room, CP took a look back and said, "Well, it was good while it lasted." **************************************************************************** Windi's terrified howl echoed throughout the stairwell before we had even ascended three flights. Covering the rest of the way to the penultimate floor in record time, we stragglers saw two things that everybody else seemed to be gawking at: 1) Windi in the arms of some armored guy, and 2) A big-ass hole in the wall. She was beating on the armored guy's breastplate with her fists, barking "Funny, that was not! Scared me, you did." The armored guy said, "Sorry, girl. I needed to get to the stairs, and I didn't know if you were a Spongin patrol." Windi responded to this by planting a kiss firmly upon the warrior's lips, which was returned in kind. When they finally seperated, he eased her back on her feet and saw my party, who were looking for all the world like they had seen a ghost. Sheridan Iscarius, Khornate daemon prince, then said, "Don't look so scared." Everybody else started to crowd around him, but Sheridan waved them all back and said, "We can do the mushy stuff later. Right now, there's a Cloud to dispel!" As he led the way up to the top floor, Sam went by to tell me, "He sure knows how to make an entrance, doesn't he?" "Your entrance was good. His was better," I responded in my best Jim Carrey. **************************************************************************** When we got to the top floor, it was some cause for celebration. They say that the way to Heaven winds through Hell, and we had certainly been through the latter over the last twenty-four hours. Now Heaven lay before us in the form of a spacious atrium in the middle of the hallway we entered into. [INSERT RANDOM DEITY HERE] be praised, there weren't any Spongins guarding this floor. "Hey," MoHo said. "There's nobody up here!" "You're looking to tempt fate, aren't ya?" CP asked rhetorically. To the rest of us, he said, "Ok, magick-peoples, it's time. The rest of you, watch our asses." The mundane half of our party didn't waste any time in preparing a defense. JFox and I stood at opposite sides of a hallway entrance, while MoHo and Sam did the same on the other end of the atrium. Sheridan, on the other hand, had pulled up a desk near the triple bank of elevators that reached this floor. He crouched behind said desk, holding a heavy bolter at the ready. # The Johnny Otis Show "Cast My Spell On You" _Dr. Demento Halloween Special_ Looking back, I saw the magick-users holding hands, such that they formed a circle around the center of the room. Sweat was already beginning to pour off their bodies, and a white vapor was forming a cloud in the center of the ringed ritualists. Light flashed from random places within the cloud as a pin-prick line of pure light bisected the ever-growing cloud and ceiling. As they continued chanting, the beam of light grew wider and wider, soon conforming to the diameter of the circle. I thought I could feel the walls and floor vibrating as the light from the beam grew brighter. Instinctively, I threw an arm over my eyes as the light became unbearable! And then, for some strange reason, the chanting stopped. I'm not entirely sure what happened next, but what I do know is that I suddenly felt more tired than I had ever been in my life. So tired, in fact, that my body just said "Heck with it" and collapsed right there on the floor. When I could open my eyes again, I saw three things that amazed and scared me: 1) The roof had been blown off; 2) Everybody else was on the floor, same as I was; 3) The ritualists had failed to dispel the Purple Cloud. My thoughts drifted back to the expedition to the B'Horn Homeworld and a discussion of the perils and pitfalls of magic with Solar Warrior. If I was remembering this correctly, he described a ritual magic situation not unlike this one that turned into a poochscrew. I believe he called the resulting phenomenon "sympathetic drain." Well, this was "sympathetic drain" of the worst kind, coz it threw all of us for a loop. Solar had gone on to say that it was caused when some member of the casting circle suffers from a lapse in concentration. But I was too tired to start figuring out who mucked it up. Things fall apart, the center cannot hold. I had very little time to reflect further on this, because a soft "ding" alerted anyone who cared that an elevator had arrived. How odd. The roof's like, gone and the elevators still work. Now, I idly wondered, what Beast shuffles toward Bethlehem to be born? # Guns 'N Roses "Sympathy For The Devil" _"Interview With The Vampire" soundtrack_ The elevator doors opened to admit B'Harne and the rest of the Triad of Evil, bigger'n life and three times as ugly. "Heeheehee," the Satanic Purple Saurian from Hades laughed as he waddled forth from the car and regarded the ten of us sprawled along the floor. "Finally getting rid of you is going to be stuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-pendous fun!" To be concluded in "The Dark Half"... you'll be here, right? All material copyrighted by the original author.