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#5
JUN 11 |
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“The Fall of River City” Part Two
Running was never a strong suit for Clock King; he had always planned ahead for such things. When things went belly up on a caper, he would normally have an escape device nearby so as to avoid the necessity of running. If he were to spend three hours on a plot to steal an antique grandfather clock from a museum, he would have likely spent at least one of those hours figuring out how to avoid running away if things went poorly. Now he was in a situation that he only vaguely understood and had no control over his present circumstances. Running was the only viable option.
Dozens of police officers throughout the unsavory River City were apparently possessed by something, likely demons of some kind. The Outsiders, a group that Clock King had been affiliated with for all of three hours and twenty-two minutes, were in River City to recruit someone called Black Orchid. The people that Clock King had met in the last few hours of his life, and the situation that he has found himself trapped within, had scared the small amount of courage that he’d had straight out the window. As they ran to fight the demon-cops, Clock King fled.
After three blocks he was pushing his limits. Wheezing and short of breath, Clock King leaned against a traffic sign to rest. He heard the crashes and other various sounds of battle in the distance, momentarily thinking that he had done the wrong thing and he considered returning to his new teammates despite their inability to make his involvement seem voluntary. Recuperated enough to proceed, he kept running away. He was no hero and was surprised at the fact that he had just considered such behavior.
He jogged for a bit, sprinting was no longer an option for his subpar lungs and inadequate legs, as he approached what was undeniably the police headquarters, his chest filled with anxiety. With so many police officers apparently gone wild, there was no place more undesirable to find himself than the place where they all worked from.
He slowed and listened, hugging against the wall and hoping to hide in the shadows of the darkened city. All seemed silent as he gazed from a distance until a lone man exited the building. Clock King tried to mash himself deeper into the darkness as he heard the man whistling a children’s song a little too loud. Clock King felt a rush of adrenaline as the man turned to walk in his direction.
The man wore a pristine black suit with a slender tie and a derby hat covered his head, concealing his face. He walked with a shining golden cane which he occasionally spun in conjunction with the song he whistled. Clock King was scrunched as tightly as he could be against the wall, realizing only then that he had chosen a poor place to hide. As the man was merely twenty feet away from him, Clock King saw that he was no ordinary man. Tan bandages covered the man’s face and hands, no discernible facial features could be perceived. A monocle was in place over where the man’s eye should be with a golden chain dangled from his lapel to his chest pocket. He was a mummy.
Clock King was sure to be discovered as his hiding place was quite poor and was rolling over options in his head as he found that the mummy man had known that he was there the entire time. The man stopped a few feet from him and addressed him abruptly.
“Cheerio, Master Tockman,” the mummy bellowed in a monstrously stereotypical English accent. “So it appears we are finally to meet.”
Clock King was silent, hoping that he had misheard the mummy using his proper surname.
The mummy cocked his head at Clock King, curious at the lack of a response. “Let’s not dawdle,” the mummy said, sounding nothing like a mummy at all. “It’s quite cold and my bandages take ill in such environs.”
There was no mistaking it now; the mummy knew that he was there. The reality of his predicament was too much for him to handle, so he did what he did without thinking. Where cowardice and retreat seemed so instinctual mere moments ago, maniacal attack mode took its place. In his moment of panic, Clock King was sure that he could take a mummy in a fight.
Clock King thought to say something along the lines of “Damn you back to Egyptian Hell, you son-of-a-mummy-bitch!” but all that came out of his mouth was “Rahg!” as he leapt through the air directly at the mummy. The mummy sidestepped to the left as Clock King flew past him. Clock King landed poorly on his feet, twisting his bad ankle and rolling across the dirty street. He cussed and cursed and realized that the Outsiders had equipped him with some new form of weaponry.
The mummy spun to face his unsuccessful assailant as Clock King rose to his feet, pulling two barbed darts out of his new belt. The darts were coated with tranquilizing medicine capable of subduing an alligator. He was sure that it would take down a mummy.
He flicked the darts at the mummy, who absorbed the darts into his fine suit coat. He looked at them in disgust, pulling them out, none the worse for wear.
“You’ve pricked my coat and vest, not to mention the finest silk of my cummerbund,” the mummy said, his voice ridiculous. “I had been advised to keep you unharmed but such a brutal battery against mine outer clothes might change my mind.”
“Die, Mummy!” Clock King managed to yell, his words much less articulate than he had intended. He flung more darts into the mummy, waiting for the mummy to fall asleep. He was yet to realize that mummy’s were not technically alive, thus making tranquilizers insufficient.
The Mummy spun his golden cane in front of him quickly enough to produce a whirring noise that deflected the darts away from him back at Clock King. One of the darts bounced off of Clock King’s face mask, missing his eye slot by mere millimeters. The other buried itself in his neck, penetrating the thick cloth easily.
“Duh, Mufha!” Clock King cried, his vocal chords deadened by the deflected dart. He took two more darts from his belt and threw them. His vision began to tunnel as he threw them. He was barely able to see the mummy get really tired of him.
The mummy bent his cane impossibly as the darts missed him easily. His cane collapsed upon itself and sprouted frond and arms that transformed and mechanized into a large golden gun that latched its strange technology into the arm of the fancy mummy. As Clock King went temporarily blind and teetered on the verge of a coma, the mummy formally introduced himself.
“Please do not mess with Archduke Nigel Mummington,” the mummy said as he raised his weaponized arm. “No one still will be tolerated to mess with the Archduke’s lavish accoutrements. Outsider or not.”
“Ubb Yuhhs, Guhht Flumma,” Clock King drooled as he fell over defeated.
Clock King was shocked awake by the warm sea water spray from the blow hole of a majestic blue whale. Somehow, he was sitting in an inflatable raft floating in the middle of the ocean. Somehow, that did not surprise him.
Just when the absurdities of his life seemed to be filling to overflow, waking up on a raft seemed almost comforting. He was no longer stuck against his will with the Outsiders. He was not in River City anymore, destined to be torn to shreds by homicidal cops. He was no longer fighting a steampunk mummy. As far as what he had gone through recently, this situation was the best he could hope for.
Knowing that questioning things would lead him in circles, added to the fact that no one was around to answer questions had he any, he decided to relax and wait for the inevitable arrival of the Outsiders to his rescue. Catching up on some zzz’s was a good idea…or so he thought.
“You gotta be Tockman,” a voice interrupted his tranquility from beyond the edge of the raft. He darted to attention and saw a long haired tan young man bobbing in the water. The man seemed to be at home amidst the seas as he grabbed the side of the raft and effortlessly flipped his weight into the floatation device.
“Rescue already?” Clock King replied, nonchalantly disregarding the strange nature of the other’s presence.
“I’m not here to rescue you, man,” the man replied. Clock King noticed definite gills folding back into the man’s throat. “I’m your subconscious back up. The name’s Koryak.”
“Sub-what?”
Koryak grinned at Clock King’s ignorance. “I’m an operative of a separate faction of the Outsiders. Each member has a different member of a different squad linked through their psyches to back them up in case of trouble, such as you have gotten yourself into as we speak.”
Clock King looked around; possibly not understanding what had been explained to him. “You, this, isn’t real,” he deduced, taking note that the water was too calm, the temperature was too moderate. “Your brain has come to help my brain wake up?”
“Exactly, man.” Koryak was proud of his ability to explain things, as he had never had to do so to another person before and it seemed like a difficult thing to grasp at first. “So, I have to tell you that you’re going to be all right and, if anything goes down that you can’t handle, I’ll be the guy that you can rely on.”
“Thanks, I think,” Tockman replied as he thought it over; a back up mind to help in times of need, an Outsider’s secret specialty. “So I guess I’m your back up too?”
“Right on. You’re getting the hang of things.”
Clock King snorted a self-deprecating laugh. “Of all the things I’ve had to take in since I met Robby Reed, this might be the easiest to understand.”
“Don’t stress over all that junk,” Koryak smiled. “It can get complicated but just stay yourself. That’s who they wanted on the team in the first place.”
“I’ll keep that in mind when I find out that my alternate future mother-in-law turns out to be an extra-dimensional wizard from Krypton’s moon.”
“You mean Bev-Ra?” Koryak asked in surprise. “I wasn’t aware that you had been to Earth-K yet.”
“Jesus,” Clock King grumbled as he rubbed the temples of his armored facemask. “So when do I wake up?”
“When you realize that you were fighting your new partner,” Koryak replied as he stood up, precariously rocking the small raft.
“That mummy is my partner?”
“Shouldn’t be a surprise,” Koryak responded as he hopped back into the water. “Just expect the last thing that you’d ever expect, and expect that.”
Koryak disappeared below the waves as Clock King considered the words he had been given. He certainly did not expect a dream buddy that lived in the sea. He didn’t expect to have a mummy for a partner. He didn’t expect to be working for the Outsiders to protect reality fissures and dimensional discrepancies. He didn’t expect to have an alternate reality relative from Krypton and that just did not make sense to him at all anyway.
What did he least expect as he sat in the middle of the ocean, miles away from civilization, unconscious within his own mind?
To fist fight Darkseid.
As he thought of it, he knew that he should have expected it.
Clock King was up lying on a smooth surface that felt incredibly hot. As his vision returned to him, he saw the entirety of the Outsiders standing around him, apparently waiting for him to revive. Robby Reed was squatting next to him, with Odd Man, Peekaboo, Artin and Black Orchid nearby. Obviously, they had succeeded in recruiting Black Orchid since she was with them.
He sat up quickly, the heat of the ground too hot for him to stay horizontal. He saw that there was nothing around them for miles; the ground itself had been fused into glass. It steamed in places as it cooled.
“Mission accomplished, Tockman,” Reed congratulated him by clapping him on the shoulder.
“What?” Clock King replied, confused as was seemingly recurring.
“Our mission and yours,” Reed replied. “We’ve shunted River City into a parallel pocket until the Overwriters can get rid of all the bugs. It turns out that everyone in the city was infected by some virus that did something or other to their brain-whatsits.”
“Why were they dressed as police men?” Clock King asked.
“Hell if we can figure,” Reed laughed as he helped Clock King to his feet. “So how was your day? What do you think of your backup?”
“I’m saving all my questions for my diary,” Clock King said, tired of the confusing runaround he usually got when he wanted answers.
“Oh what marvelous reading it would be,” Archduke Nigel Mummington spoke up as he extended his bandaged hand to greet his new partner. He firmly shook Clock King’s hand before giving him a polite bow.
“Archduke Nigel Mummington at your service,” he said as Clock King looked on, not sure what to think. “It is a merry pleasure to be paired with one of stock such as yours.”
Clock King had ran, he had ignored, he had denied…but now it was time to take Koryak’s words to heart. To expect the least expected, Clock King accepted his place in the Outsiders.
“I guess you can call me Bill,” he replied to his mummified partner, smiling reluctantly beneath his mask.
Robby Reed interrupted the introduction by giving Clock King a white envelope. “Now that you have your partner,” he said, exaggerating his enthusiasm, “it’s time for your first recruitment exercise.”
Hoping that whatever was in the envelope explained anything, Clock King opened it and could not believe the terrible turn that his life was about to take. The single note card contained in the envelope had one word written upon it.
“Apokolips.”
Clock King hoped that Darkseid was not available for fist fights.
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To Be Continued...
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