Post by columbia18 on Aug 15, 2007 19:42:04 GMT -5
This is a fanfic fusion of the American Big Bad Beetleborgs and Japanese B-Fighter. Overall, it follows the B-Fighter plotline and characterization, but with the children and Flabber (although it will mainly be about the Magnavors, the actions of all will be portrayed). This story is up at Beetleborg Mania, but I also placed it here due to the greater traffic. At any rate, first two chapters:
* * *
Americana
The three kids tramped in the woods, ignoring periodic scratched ankles by rough scrub. Woods around Charterville were sparse, both in area and foliage, and the plants that grew in the bought and cultivated topsoil of sidewalk planters took no hold in the dry dust just outside the city proper. But what made the children pick up and shake their feet, flipping them as a cat flips water, was not the nick and prick of small bushes, but the hard, fast needles of feet:
Bugs.
Beetles, to be more precise. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them maybe. More than any of the three of them had believed existed in any tropical rainforest, much less three miles from suburbia. Indeed, many a shiny, skittering jewel looked like a denizen of some remnant of the jungles in which prehistoric man was still somewhere lost. They went over shoes and shoelaces, opening places for six feet to land, never once caught under them, nor venturing up some thin calf for an adventure that would be most unpleasant for their human. The bugs were on a mission.
It was this forwardness, this march of predestinate intensity, that had made the children follow the first. A shiny blue rhino, making his way in a straight line unusual in citizens of his sphere. This one was following the light. A ball of light bobbed through the trees, as though one of the oranges of the grove had been taken down, set aflame and was being drawn along by some leading ghost. It dipped and wove through the trees, leading on, never so far away that it could not be followed, never so close that there was doubt that it wanted to be.
The orange grove ran in regular rows for acres around, but in the direction the light had chosen, it seemed somehow to get more robust, more abundant, the man-made cultivation taken over by wilder growth than the Californian soil naturally produced.
Suddenly, away it flashed, turning a corner too fast to follow. But in front of the children the forest-orchard opened into a clearing. In the clearing, was a house.
* * *
The Magnavor fortress loomed up out of the interdimensional hole. Shaped like a giant, clawed hand, it emerged menacingly from the dark clouds that dissipated behind it to float in the earth sky. Only one inside was watching, looking outside the great floating ship, seeing where he had brought them out. The others waited for him out in the atrium. They had all done this before. None cared where they went; no matter where it was the events unfolding would be the same as they had been many times before. Total destruction, total domination. And then they would move on. No reason to look.
Out in the atrium, three generals waited at the head of a roomful of soldiers. The soldiers were nameless, faceless, identity-less. They wore black bodysuits with yellow, abstract masks, yellow gloves and yellow breastplates. In mass they functioned, in mass they moved, in synchronized, otherworldly flowing movements in the background.
The three generals stood at the fore, before the place where their leader would appear. On the right, as they would face him, stood a white metal humanoid, his only garb a slick white lab coat, his hair a mass of coiled wires. Every bit of him was metal, his eyes blue glass, his joints wired, his mouth a sliding panel, two down-turned blue lips painted on. To the left was a hulking being, multifarious in his limbs and appearance, a compilation of shellfish plating, plantlike sinew and animal teeth. A small, gnomelike face etched into the side of his head had tiny red eyes and a mouth full of sharp, triangle teeth. Above this, the flat roof of his tremendous head opened to reveal a second mouth with rows and rows of more. He wore a green cape across his massive shoulders.
Between the two of them stood the third, the only female in the room or on the ship. A flesh humanoid, she wore a full red cape with high collar, which hung down in front like a robe. Over this she wore breast plate and shoulder guards of a red alloy (a breast plate it truly was, for this was all of her it covered). Her head was encased in a full mask, an immobile white face with red and black markings that latched around her skull, complete with black hair in comely waves. A red beret with badge of her rank rested atop it. She stood in the middle, but to the right with the metal man. There was no room beside the green mutant. At a sign of white steam that signaled their leader’s arrival, the three generals turned to face him, kneeling down as the Scabs behind them prostrated themselves on the ground. He appeared as the steam vanished.
The leader stood seven feet tall, white and regal. He wore a white cape, and his body was of some opaque alloy in chitinous plates. His face was hidden in the many lines of his head. No legs were visible, but he put out a hand and ordered:
“Report yourselves.”
Rising up from their kneeling positions, his generals one by one presented themselves to him. First, the female:
“Jara, Commander of the Magnavor Mercenary Army.”
Then the metal man:
“Noxic, Commander of the Magnavor Battle Machines.”
Then the green monster:
“Typhus, Commander of the Magnavor Synthetic Beast Army.”
“Good,” hissed the leader, “And once again I, Vexor, shall lead you all to domination of one more worthless, weak dimension in our path to ultimate power.” Jara, Noxic and Typhus all hit their left fist over their breast in smart salute. “Now-” snarled Vexor. He reached out a clawed plate-mail hand. A blue jewel glowed, set in the palm, and as it did, the giant blue gem in the outer hand of the ship glowed with it, and with a shot released a ray toward the earth below.
* * *
Americana
The three kids tramped in the woods, ignoring periodic scratched ankles by rough scrub. Woods around Charterville were sparse, both in area and foliage, and the plants that grew in the bought and cultivated topsoil of sidewalk planters took no hold in the dry dust just outside the city proper. But what made the children pick up and shake their feet, flipping them as a cat flips water, was not the nick and prick of small bushes, but the hard, fast needles of feet:
Bugs.
Beetles, to be more precise. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them maybe. More than any of the three of them had believed existed in any tropical rainforest, much less three miles from suburbia. Indeed, many a shiny, skittering jewel looked like a denizen of some remnant of the jungles in which prehistoric man was still somewhere lost. They went over shoes and shoelaces, opening places for six feet to land, never once caught under them, nor venturing up some thin calf for an adventure that would be most unpleasant for their human. The bugs were on a mission.
It was this forwardness, this march of predestinate intensity, that had made the children follow the first. A shiny blue rhino, making his way in a straight line unusual in citizens of his sphere. This one was following the light. A ball of light bobbed through the trees, as though one of the oranges of the grove had been taken down, set aflame and was being drawn along by some leading ghost. It dipped and wove through the trees, leading on, never so far away that it could not be followed, never so close that there was doubt that it wanted to be.
The orange grove ran in regular rows for acres around, but in the direction the light had chosen, it seemed somehow to get more robust, more abundant, the man-made cultivation taken over by wilder growth than the Californian soil naturally produced.
Suddenly, away it flashed, turning a corner too fast to follow. But in front of the children the forest-orchard opened into a clearing. In the clearing, was a house.
* * *
The Magnavor fortress loomed up out of the interdimensional hole. Shaped like a giant, clawed hand, it emerged menacingly from the dark clouds that dissipated behind it to float in the earth sky. Only one inside was watching, looking outside the great floating ship, seeing where he had brought them out. The others waited for him out in the atrium. They had all done this before. None cared where they went; no matter where it was the events unfolding would be the same as they had been many times before. Total destruction, total domination. And then they would move on. No reason to look.
Out in the atrium, three generals waited at the head of a roomful of soldiers. The soldiers were nameless, faceless, identity-less. They wore black bodysuits with yellow, abstract masks, yellow gloves and yellow breastplates. In mass they functioned, in mass they moved, in synchronized, otherworldly flowing movements in the background.
The three generals stood at the fore, before the place where their leader would appear. On the right, as they would face him, stood a white metal humanoid, his only garb a slick white lab coat, his hair a mass of coiled wires. Every bit of him was metal, his eyes blue glass, his joints wired, his mouth a sliding panel, two down-turned blue lips painted on. To the left was a hulking being, multifarious in his limbs and appearance, a compilation of shellfish plating, plantlike sinew and animal teeth. A small, gnomelike face etched into the side of his head had tiny red eyes and a mouth full of sharp, triangle teeth. Above this, the flat roof of his tremendous head opened to reveal a second mouth with rows and rows of more. He wore a green cape across his massive shoulders.
Between the two of them stood the third, the only female in the room or on the ship. A flesh humanoid, she wore a full red cape with high collar, which hung down in front like a robe. Over this she wore breast plate and shoulder guards of a red alloy (a breast plate it truly was, for this was all of her it covered). Her head was encased in a full mask, an immobile white face with red and black markings that latched around her skull, complete with black hair in comely waves. A red beret with badge of her rank rested atop it. She stood in the middle, but to the right with the metal man. There was no room beside the green mutant. At a sign of white steam that signaled their leader’s arrival, the three generals turned to face him, kneeling down as the Scabs behind them prostrated themselves on the ground. He appeared as the steam vanished.
The leader stood seven feet tall, white and regal. He wore a white cape, and his body was of some opaque alloy in chitinous plates. His face was hidden in the many lines of his head. No legs were visible, but he put out a hand and ordered:
“Report yourselves.”
Rising up from their kneeling positions, his generals one by one presented themselves to him. First, the female:
“Jara, Commander of the Magnavor Mercenary Army.”
Then the metal man:
“Noxic, Commander of the Magnavor Battle Machines.”
Then the green monster:
“Typhus, Commander of the Magnavor Synthetic Beast Army.”
“Good,” hissed the leader, “And once again I, Vexor, shall lead you all to domination of one more worthless, weak dimension in our path to ultimate power.” Jara, Noxic and Typhus all hit their left fist over their breast in smart salute. “Now-” snarled Vexor. He reached out a clawed plate-mail hand. A blue jewel glowed, set in the palm, and as it did, the giant blue gem in the outer hand of the ship glowed with it, and with a shot released a ray toward the earth below.