Ultimate S.H.A.D.E. #8: The Good, the Bad, and

[jackalope]

Ultimate S.H.A.D.E. #8
The Good, the Bad, and the Weird pt. 2

“So.” Lyta taps her foot under the table.

Robotman continues to look at her. Lyta takes another chip, dipping it in the ketchup and eats it. Robotman sits with his cup of coffee between his hands. She sips her coke and looks out the window. A couple of Elvis impersonators walk by. She looks back at the metal man across the table, sitting quietly with an uncanny creepiness. It is probably the non-blinking thing, she concludes. She takes another chip and munches it. She clears her throat. Nothing.

The waitress, a slightly dumpy looking brunette with an uninterested frown, walks up with her burger. “There ya go hun. Anything else you want?”

Lyta smiles, shaking her head. “Thanks.”

Robert finally looks up, as if waking from a dream. “Oh, right, yes. Could I please get another coffee please? Hot.”

The waitress looks at the, still full, cold cup of coffee and shakes her head. “Sure, why not? You're paying for it.” She takes his cup and shuffles off.

He looks out at the casino across the road then back at Lyta. “Did I miss anything?”

She shakes her head, finishing a bite of her burger. “No but you were kind of out of it. Were you sleeping or something? I didn't think you slept...”

The waitress places the coffee down as she walks by. Robert takes the coffee between his hands and looks at her. “I sleep. Two or three hours a day. Haven't figured out how to go without it, but I wasn't sleeping.” She takes another bite and raises an eyebrow. He continues, “I should have probably said something, probably looked a bit weird there, just sitting.”

“A little.”

“It's just I thought I'd try out something I just invented.” He leans forward. “I can smell...”

She swallows her bite. “What do you mean?”

“I can smell things, I mean it's a bit off, soap smells like butter and most meat smells like chicken, but I can smell. And coffee, do you know how long it's been since I've smelt coffee? It brought me right back to...” He waves his hand. “They say smell memory is the strongest.”

She frowns a little. “But you haven't even lifted it to your face.”

His fist appears a couple of inches in front of her face. He wiggles his thumb. “The sensors are in my thumb pads.” He brings his arm back down and leans back. She smiles. Even with barely any facial movement, he looks happy. She takes another couple of bites as she looks out the window. It's a sunny afternoon, and the streets are moving with tourists and gamblers. It had been the same all of yesterday, even through the night. It was like time had no place here.

She looks back to Robotman. “Uh, Robert? When you sleep, do you...”

“Dream of electric sheep?”

Lyta frowns again. “No, do you dream of being...”

There’s a huge crash. A giant mutated bat crashes out the glass windows covering the side of the casino, sending glass shattering across the street. A man in a black suit, holding onto his leg, drops onto the street below. Manbat swings around in the sky and dives back into the casino, with an awful screech. People look up, some run, but most get on with the day. This was Las Vegas after all.

Robotman gets up, throwing some notes and a tip on the table. “I think that’s our cue.”



A security guard stands, nodding his head faintly to the music from his mp3 player. Through the piece in his other ear he hears a warning to be on alert. He looks left and right before standing back in his highly trained bad-ass stance. The song is kicking into the good bit, the bit where the lyrics drop and the guitar rips into a full-on instrumental chorus. The drum slams into speed combo thumping mode. He closes his eyes, and wiggles his hips slightly. Here it is, the guitar comes in loud, like wood cracking. He smiles and opens his eyes, then drops his eyebrows in confusion. He lifts into the air and flies down the stairs. The lyrics kick back in. He hits the steps and continues to roll downwards.

Frankenstein briefly looks back at the guard he had just thrown, then turns back and kicks open the door. Gunshots fire at him and he ducks out of the doorway. He looks to the figure behind him and nods.

“Don't shoot!”

The two security guards stand with their pistols drawn, aiming at the giant blue man entering the room with Joan, one of the receptionists from downstairs, being held as a human shield in front of him. She is naked and crying. His huge hand grips her throat. The guards warily try to aim their weapons as two pale breasts hang pendulous in front of them.

“Put down your weapons or she will be killed.” Frankenstein keeps edging around the room.

“Please, just do what he says!” The woman's voice is shrill; her arms flail back and behind the giant man's back. The security guards look at one another then back at the blue man. The one on the left hesitates, aiming, then squeezes his trigger. Two shots fire out.

The security guards drop to the ground. The woman lowers her gun and shakes off her face, returning it to Laura de Mille. She walks back out and grabs her clothes. Frankenstein deliberately turns away and walks further into the room. A quick glance to his left shows a giant one-way mirror showing the casino in all of its chaos, Manbat flying about, dodging gunshots, and lifting guards at random only to throw them into other guards. The Face walks back in adjusting her shirt. She nods to the door behind the two guards bodies. Frankenstein runs, lowering his shoulder into it. The door collapses onto the floor. The office is empty, the chair behind the desk pulled out slightly, as if just been sat upon.

“He is not here,” Frankenstein says to both Laura, and the backup monitoring him.

Laura looks in, “shit.”

“Ok, ok, he has not left the premises.” The Brain's voice tries to reassure him. “There are five levels underground the building. I suggest heading there. Go back two doors and then take a turn to the left. There should be an emergency staircase you can use to get down.”

“Don't worry about the alarms,” Bride chimes in, “I think Manbat has set most of them off anyway.”

In the van, parked just across the road from the casino, Jules scans over some blueprints on his screen. “Where are you.... slippery bastard...?” His voice mutters, becoming louder and softer in waves, between sips of coffee.

“The naked thing was a bit much, don't you think?” Bride looks over to the Brain, who ignores her. She continues flicking through the casino's hijacked security camera feeds. She looks through the shots of the casino floor, then rolls back through them again. She pulls her lips to the side. “Anyone heard from Father Time?”



A punch lands across an Indian man's face. He looks up through a bruised eye and spits blood onto the ground. His turban hangs loosely, the material coming undone. At the edge of the room, Mr Recluse nods. The shaven headed security guard throws a left hook slamming across the Indian man's temple. The brown suited Mr Recluse holds up his hand.

“Your silly bat guy is wreaking havoc upstairs.”

The Indian man shakes his head warily. “I don't know what you're talking about...”

Mr Recluse lifts a finger. An uppercut drives into the injured man's stomach, forcing a moan from him. Mr Recluse walks a few steps across the warehouse store room. “You know, we know it's you. Tracking showed that we started losing another twenty two percent of people from the floors. Camera's showed that where ever you walked, people started to leave more quickly...”

The Indian man raises his eyebrows in confusion. Mr Recluse rolls his eyes. “The lack of windows, no clocks, repetitive music and atmosphere. Time has no place in my Casino!” He snarls and turns back, pacing. “Where ever you went people remembered the time... You don't think S.P.I.D.E.R. knows about your whole yearly face shift-a-roo? You don't think we have a big fuck-off file of you and your agents and all the fucking dipshit attempts at undermining us?!” A glint shines in the Indian man's eyes. The brown suited boss walks right up to him, jabbing his finger in his face. “I'm almost flattered you wasted your annual show-your-face mission on trying to capture me! Well old Father Time, you fucked up. We have you, we have your agents, we have a fucking truck-load of our men on our way to pig stick every single one of you like flies in a Petri-dish.”

He turns away, and the suited thug smacks the Indian man once again. “The turban's a nice touch, though I wouldn't have picked you in it. It's the kind of thing that I would have thought you would think was culturally insensitive or something.”

“Cultural sensitivity is so nineties,” says Father Time through swollen lips. “Haven't you heard? We're in the age of the hipster. Style over substance.”

Mr Recluse smiles. The door behind him opens and his red-haired assistant walks in holding her palm pilot and a file at her side. Through the doorway Father Time spots the two grey blurred aliens standing in their black suits. The assistant walks to Mr Recluse, leaning in to talk in his ear. “Two are trying to break in from behind the building...”

“You're making deals with Macrolatts?” Father Time interrupts. “Do you have any idea who you're dealing with? I mean you know they're planning on invading our dimension right?”

“Shut up!” Mr Recluse turns back to his assistant, taking the file from her. Another fist slams across Time's face.

“...they call it expansion, but it's invasion,” continues Time. “You know they're two beings only in our dimension, but in theirs they're just one being. They're fucking ridiculous; they don't work on human logi...” A punch aimed at the base of his chest winds him. He doubles over forward, the guard pushes him back.

“Sorry,” Recluse says to his assistant, “you were saying something.”

She smiles, “I was just saying that they've taken out most of your guards upstairs and the four in the room outside. All you really have left is the five in here.”

Mr Recluse looks at her with a quizzical stare. With a crunch, the roof cracks open as the hulking body of Frankenstein drops down onto the thuggish security guard, holding Father Time. The assistant pulls out a pistol, shooting the guards posted around the room in rapid-fire succession. She turns with amazing speed, smoothly pulling a syringe from her pocket and jabbing it into Mr Recluse's...

A thin knife, being held by Mr Recluse, is dug in at the base of her shoulder. The assistant’s face slowly turning back into her own, Laura looks up at the grinning Mr Recluse, then stumbles back, falling on the ground. Froth starts to form at the edges of her mouth. Mr Recluse pulls the syringe from his neck. “You didn't think it would be that easy surely... you didth thunk I woo..oo.” He too falls to the ground.

Father Time pushes himself up. Frankenstein runs to Laura, lifting her in his arms. The door kicks open and Bride walks in, only to be pushed aside by Jules. “Laura!” he shouts, running to Frankenstein and touching her face. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. What happened?!”

“The knife...”

Bride runs over to Father Time, helping him to his feet. “Are you ok?”

He shakes his bruised head. “Don't worry about this, make sure Laura's ok.” She touches his shoulder and turns back. He grabs her hand. “When you came in through there did you see anyone? Two grey blurry guys?”

She shakes her head. “Why?”

“Macrolatts. Fuck. Get Robert scanning the area for any unusual energy movement in the area.”

Jules wipes his sleeve across his eyes, and tries to steady his shaking hand, as he injects Laura. He feels her pulse, then makes a fist, knocking it against his forehead. “She's stabilized slightly, but I don't know what the fuck this guy has poisoned her with. Fuck.”

Father Time places his hand on Jules's shoulder. “We'll save her. Frankenstein, take her to the chopper.” He turns back to Bride. “Get Mr Recluse. We need to get moving.”

The two unconscious bodies are carried up through to the casino floor, with Jules running out ahead and Father Time following at the end. Majority of the gamblers have left with all of the chaos caused by Kirk, except for the diehard few still unwilling to leave their slot machines. The sound of cars honking in the street outside echoes through the lobby. One of the managers runs up to Bride, trying to stay in front of her as she strolls.

“W...what are you doing with Mr Brr.. Mr Brown? What are you d.. doing here?”

“Don't worry,” she says, walking to the revolving doors. “We were called for, it's all official, you can look us up.”

“Look up ww...what?” He stops, looking at her with helplessly confused eyes.

“We're from the Homeland Department of Pest Control. You've got a bat problem.” She follows Frankenstein and the others through the revolving door.

Either side of the street cars beep, as the chopper lands. Daylight is fading. Lyta throws open the helicopter's side door and stands back as Frankenstein lifts Laura into the cabin.

“What happened?” she asks.

Jules silently jumps in and opens his case of chemicals. Bride gets in, throwing Mr Recluse into the corner. Father Time follows. The helicopter starts to lift off, when Manbat dives into the cabin, pulling himself into the slightly crowded cabin. Father Time pulls off his tattered turban and pulls on a radio headset. “Robert, anything on the aliens?”

In the pilot cabin Robotman pulls the control stick up, lifting the chopper further into the sky. His internal systems flash with maps and wave lengths. “Nothing apparent, they might not be travelling by craft, or they've already teleported.” Below them in the street, two black cars pull up. “Here's trouble.” Men jump out, some aiming up at the helicopter, letting loose automatic gunfire, a smaller group edge towards the black van they once occupied. Robert clicks his fingers. The van explodes, throwing the gunmen to the ground.

Father Time looks about the passenger cabin, at the evidence of the mess of the mission. He rubs his temples. “We really need to find what they are looking for...”

Frankenstein lowers his head, watching Jules frantically trying to synthesise multiple anti-venoms and anti-poisons. “...Or who.”



A lanky, awkward-looking man stands outside a glass window looking in. He licks the ice cream he holds in his hand. He takes the bottle of cola in his other hand, lifting it up and pouring it down his throat. He holds it in his mouth for a moment then spits it out in a burst across the window. He runs his tongue around his mouth, smacking his lips. He shivers all over, then leans down, placing the drink on the ground, then beside it the ice cream upside down. He stands back up.

He walks over to the doorway, and looks up at the sensor that clicks on a red light. The electric doors open. Inside the young teenagers and preteens watch as the somewhat haggard looking man enters the neon lit arcade. Looking like a lost bum, except for the engaged look on his face, the unshaven man walks into the centre of the room. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a coin. He slides it in the slot. The fast paced music starts, and the man carefully walks onto the floor pads. He hits start and begins to play Dance Dance Revolution.