------------------------------------------------------------- Girls With Guns Chapter 26 - Statue Cthulu is coming... to town (Or, "How I wasted a couple of lunch hours and preserved my insanity") Scribbled out by Steven Scougall Girls With Guns created by David Kelk (dkelk@sympatico.ca) Hosted at Improfanfic (http://pixelscapes.com/improfanfic/) ------------------------------------------------------------- Last time on Kinnikuman people wrestled. And then fought. And wrestled and fought some more. However, that really isn't important to the story of Girls With Guns. Ah, of course, Girls With Guns. I knew I was forgetting something. It was a real surprise on the author's part to read Delfina's part and see that it was his turn next, he can tell you. Or is that "I can tell you"? It's so hard to tell. I mean, er... he means, talking about yourself in the third person is only something great Roman leaders or silly people do. And... Oh, sorry, he seems to have rambled off again. I do that sometimes, especially when I can't think of anything to write. Did he ever mention the time - *WHACK* Steve's Editor: (Wielding a cricket bat) Sorry about this, people. Give me a minute or two and I should have this idiot giving you that rich creamy "Girls With Guns" goodness you've been waiting a few days for. (The Editor drags the dazed Author off the stage, out of the metaphorical sight of the readers, and starts browbeating him into being sensible. Sounds of a cattle prod and water can be heard) And after an inordinately long time... Last time on Girls With Guns, mayhem ensued. But not just the ordinary mayhem - this was at least a tenth of a magnitude wackier. For a start, in a very good demonstration of the good old "curiosity kills the cat" saying, Fuki accelerated War Rocket Ajax to previously unthought of speeds, crossed the Pacific Ocean in less time than it takes to say "The Pacific Ocean", crashed headlong into the Statue of Liberty and another incarnatiuon of Ctuhlu arose - the Statue of Cthulu. This was only one facet of the rich creamy "Girls With Guns" wacki... er... goodness that we had last time. In another, Aki Villyn from the future arrived in order to get her sanity back. Which shows quite how far she's gone, for there's nothing like the complexities of time travel to get you good and confused and insane. But perhaps the craziest was when Aika and Becky (or was that Aki and Becky?) managed to transcend time and space, or at least the limits of the story, and met up with Plotty. Who's Plotty, you ask? ... Oh, forget it. Read the previous chapters if you want to know what's happened in Girls With Guns. This is getting too long as it is. Let us just focus one little thing that happened shortly after last time... - - - - - Hans continued to flex his impressive musculature, a word he never would have even concieved of using. However, a thought slowly came to him. Thoughts always came slowly to him, for he was not the most intelligent of people. But he was slowly realising that this latest conquest-to-be, the woman with the weird eyes and skin and skimpy leather clothes, was not paying him attention. Considering that one third of his thoughts could be summed up as "All ze chicks dig me" this was an amazing feat of deductive reasoning on his part. "I am big and muscular," he said, flexing his bicep at her pointedly, demonstrating that while he could sometimes catch a clue he was remarkably unoriginal. "Go away, lug," was her response. He was confused. What did trees have to do with anything? Maybe she was alluding to the bigness of his muscles. Cheered with this thought he struck another Mr. Universe pose and grinned winningly. In response she shoved her hand into his well-muscled chest. Hans blinked. Hadn't something like this happened before, with a woman very much like this one? Possibly it had been this very woman. But, in what passed for his mind, he was rather sure that the last time this had happened he'd shortly met up with that brown haired lady with the nice smile. That lady had really seemed to dig him. And with that he keeled over, too stupid to realise he'd just been killed a second time by the same being. - - - - - And now... to the main part of Chapter 26! - - - - - "Well," said Daisy (who had been oddly silent the last chapter), "War Rocket Ajax's threat to the Betty Ford Clinic, and by extension the Do Gooders, seems to be ended. Quite why it suddenly accelerated so quickly I don't know, but it doesn't really matter." "Does this mean you're going?" asked Becky. "Oh yes," said Daisy nobly, "but as long as danger looms and Nemesis Serendipity Villyn is loose, my work shall not be finished. I shall not say 'farewell!' for I have a feeling that we shall see each other again." The cat stood there for a moment, somehow managing to look heroic and noble. She then ruined the mood by saying "So then, tata." The mood of the speech thus ruined, the cat jumped through a nearby window and disappeared for at least the rest of this chapter. "How truly odd," said Aika. And this was coming from a girl who had seen her fair share of oddness. "Murray" - that is, the foulmouthed buzzard who was technically her magical pet - "would just swear a lot before going." "Sounds a bit like Rover," said Becky. "A bit," agreed Aki. "Who?" asked Aika. Becky shuddered. "Be glad you'll never see him. And anyway, Aika- chan, what happened to you last time? Last I saw you you were on that rocket." "I was so disgusted by the thought of having 14,000 children with Villyn that I could barely do a thing." "Ah yes," said Aki, "There was another reason for why I came back in time." She drew a gun and pointed it at Aika. "Because of your 14,000 children, the future is drastically overpopulated. People figured that since I was coming back to this time anyway, I might as well make myself as useful and get rid of them at the source." "But you said that your father was still gone, looking for a shrubbery." "Well yes, but the Mad Author wanted to make sure his Prophecy came true and so introduced, or will introduce, or whatever, quite a number of men to Aika." Aika blushed in embarassment and then turned red with fury, effectively meaning her face stayed red. "Hentai jerk..." she muttered. "Anyway," said Aki. "To do what I came for." She fired the gun at point blank range. - - - - - Let us have a moment of silence... For someone dies in this chapter... The author is pummeled by lots of Aika fans. Not Aika you idiots! You think I'd kill off a major character like that? The author is pummeled by lots of Aki fans. Not Aki either, you idiots! The author's quite an Aki fan, you know. Predictably, the author gets pummeled by lots of Becky fans. And a Becky fan, too. Besides, she's a major character. So who died? The author is pummeled by lots of readers who are getting tired of this foolishness and weirdly formatted text. Sheesh, I just can't win, can I? There is a glower, a hint of promised violence. You want to know what happened? First read this. ******************************************************************* MAGICAL GIRL DO-GOODERS Data File Entry #MN15-3: Weirdly formatted text Type: Meta-narrative writing construct. Better known as 'text'. Font: Best viewed with a Courier font Components: Characters and spaces. LOTS of spaces Text that is not normally positioned. Instead of being consistently flush up against the left of the page, each line has a different left margin and occasionally different right margins. The purpose of this is to be all arty and different. Well... Actually, the purpose is to take up space and time and put off a surprising revelation as much as possible. ******************************************************************* Now read on and find out what really happened! - - - - - As Aki fired her gun, there was a complete lack of the sound of a gunshot. This is what caused Becky to pull her shot at the last second. This, combined with the fact that Becky and Aki were old friends, was perhaps the only thing that let Aki get off with nothing worse than a minor flesh wound on the side of her arm. Instead, there was a completely non threatening buzzing noise, along with what Aika and Becky had to admit was quite an impressive lightshow. And after it, Aika was completely unharmed. "What on earth was that? I thought you were going to kill me!" The Aki from the future looked confused. "Whoever said I was going to kill you?" She indicated the 'gun'. "This is just to... ah... do certain things to your body so that you can't have anywhere near that number of kids. It just looks like a gun. It's useless now that I've used its charge." She then tossed the gun away, coincidentally enough into a nearby alleyway and severely surprising a passing cat. ******************************************************************* MAGICAL GIRL DO-GOODERS Data File Entry #C-1-R: Future Aki Villyn Full name: Aki Villyn of the Future Occupation: Regaining her sanity and doing her best to thwart the Prophecy of the Mad Author. (All statistics are rated from 1 to 10.) Intelligence: 8 Age: That's either a secret or an Reflexes: 7 inconsistency. Technical: 5 Measurements: Well, I asked, but she Body: 8 didn't want to say. Strange girl. Looks: 9 Blood Type: The usual human sort Charisma: 7 Favourite Food: Rice Cool : 6 Least favourite food: Cucumbers Charisma: 6 Hobbies: Complaining about her father Cool: 10 Luck: Usually bad, though it seems to be getting better Hit points: 17/17 Mana: 53/53 AC: -3 (-24 when wearing Power Suit) Abilities: -Magical Girl -Arcane legalese -Complain -Posing -Brackets of Power -Future knowledge REALLY wants a normal life, but will settle for a moderately sensible one. Fashionable. More to her than meets the eye. Batteries not included. Tap for World And Future Shaking. Background: Some undetermined yet probably short time into the future, Nemesis Serendipity Villyn was still missing, searching for the perfect shrubbery for his beloved Aika. Which just goes to show how effective that gambit was at getting Villyn off Aika's back. His daughter Aki was already contemplating going back in time to stop herself going insane at the time of "Girls With Guns". She thought that she might also do something to stop her father going missing while in the past. At about the time she was getting ready for this epic venture, a weird man from further in the future crashed through her front door. He told her about the future's overpopulation and gave her a Neutraliser Gun to use on Aika. He then ran away, followed closely by a horde of people with Big Guns. Aki took one look at the Neutraliser Gun, thought that she'd been in more ridiculous situations, and decided to go along with the mad scheme. ******************************************************************* Becky finished reading Aki's datafile entry. "Ah, so that explains the inconsistencies." "Yes, I suppose it does," said the girl from the future. "So... what now?" asked Aika. - - - - - "Don't ask me," said Plotty. "This is getting really hard to twist to the way of the Prophecy." Aika, of course, couldn't hear the meta narrative entity and would have forgotten its answer if she'd heard it, but it's nice to know that sometimes, there is an Answer. Even if it's not a very reassuring one. There was a pause, filled with dramatic tension. "Hey, I've just had a great idea," said Plotty. - - - - - The very earth shuddered. It shuddered so much that the mirror Sofixupia was admiring herself in shattered into hundreds and hundreds of glass shards. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" she screamed, and then turned red with anger. Whoever did this would PAY! She would flay its skin and eat its soul! She just hoped its soul wasn't nut flavoured. She turned to look through the now glassless window - it was a good thing it was glassless, she thought, otherwise the reflections would distract her again - and saw a giant green foot crash to the ground in a huge earthshattering footstep. The Statue of Cthulu had come to town. Sofixupia sighed. Metal skin, and by the looks of it (and she was after all an expert on such things) a rust flavoured soul. Not the best combination. She'd just have to exact vengeance for the mirror. Which was bad enough, she thought grimly as she prepared herself for war. - - - - - The trio of alert schoolgirls, and one pained one, stared up at the giant mobile statue, and at its oddly glowing eyes. The unconscious one, Sakura, was in no state to be looking at anything. "I just had to ask, didn't I?" sighed Aika. - - - - - Kasumi looked at Hans and Mr. Sunshine, and blinked. "You two again?" asked Kasumi. "You really must be more careful," she chided gently, which was about as close as she ever came to being annoyed. It still sounded like she was pleasantly reminding Hans, Mr. Sunshine, Ms. Moonlight and Ms. Moonshine to not forget their umbrellas just before leaving. "Who are you?" asked one of the women suspiciously. "It doesn't matter," Kasumi said, smiling serenely. "For now, you must return. Your work on Earth is not yet finished." She smiled, and waved, and from the perspective of the four everything became foggy, and her voice became harder and harder to hear. "Have fun now, and remember to be careful!" "Zhe digz me," said Hans, quite predictably. And then the four vanished. Kasumi smiled to herself. It was nice to sort things out for such nice people. Even if they did seem to just keep coming back. - - - - - Oh yes, NOW I remember. Aki was going to - oh wait, I'd better write this In Character. - - - - - "Oh yes, NOW I remember," said Aki. "I was going to assemble the Sailors. And if we were together once more we could surely take this giant statue." "I have similarly resolved to rescue my friends the Do-Gooders, from their own self-destructive tendencies if necessary," Becky declared nobly. "But for now, shut up and keep your head down!" she yelled, and pulled Aki back behind the fallen masonry, where the five girls were busy cowering. "Why don't we just shoot it with your Little Big Gun?" asked Aika. ******************************************************************* MAGICAL GIRL DO-GOODERS Data File Entry #W999g: The Little Big Gun Type: Energy weapon Components: High technology Range: Lots Class: Really really really heavy ordinance Size: Handgun sized Ammo: Energy cells Ammo per shot: 100 cells Capacity: 102 cells Rehcarge time: Single cell recharge time x 100. Better known as "Too long." A weapon that is deceptively handgun-sized, but causes HUGE damage and can destroy an entire city block. Or, of course, a rampaging Statue of Cthulu. It takes ages to recharge, though. ******************************************************************* "Are you out of your MIND?" yelled Becky. "That's the Statue of Liberty, even if it is moving around and being weird! I can't destroy the Statue of Liberty! It's a symbol! For my entire country!" The Statue of Cthulu chose this moment to grow tentacles and lash out at Sofixupia with them. It missed, and with the creak of metal, opened its mouth and roared unintelligibly. "Doesn't look like a symbol of much to ME," said Aika. - - - - - So, you might be wondering - who was the one who was said to have died in this chapter up above in the Weirdly Formatted Text? Why, Hans, of course. It's a good thing Kasumi's looking out for him and keeps on sorting out the messes he gets into, isn't it? (To be continued) Author's not... er, no, I won't do that gag again. *ahem* Author's Comment: 'No comment. Now get that camera away from me.' Author's Rambling: It's TRUE! I have no comments! No prereaders to thank as I don't have anyone preread these Girls With Guns chapters! No especial things to say! All my wackiness was expunged in the writing of the above! (Though I would like to just put a rough time on how long it took to complete this - about five hours in three sessions, including a quick edit job. Possibly just a BIT too much effort for a ChibiImpro such as this. Compete to get the shortest time today!) Most of it, anyway. Now go on, get out of here and wait for the next chapter. -- Steven "Silly" Scougall s_scougall@hotmail.com http://www2.crosswinds.net/~sscougall