LNH 'Tsk' Force #5: "Spoiler Space"

Starring: Convoluted Origin Man, Bandwagon Chick, and No Sense of Direction Man

with: Irony Man and Writers Block Woman

Special Guest Villain: Spoiler Man

Extra-Special Guest Villain: Purple Prose

* * * * * *

"Look, I'm Irony Man. I'm not going out on a routine mission on my last day as 'Tsk' Force leader. Think about it. Convoluted Origin Man starts his hitch tomorrow, and he's more than qualified to serve as field leader. I'll see you all in the Command Center in five minutes." Irony Man shut off his communicator before anyone else could object. As he waited for the rest of the team to arrive, he reflected back over his stormy six-week reign as the first leader of the LNH 'Tsk' Force. One alien invasion, a terrorist bomber and a plot by his old foe the Mandolin -- all thwarted with relative ease. Not a bad track record, especially given the limited resource he'd had to cope with. The 'Tsk' Force Supercomputer still wasn't 100% operational; he'd had to call the team together himself.

Bandwagon Chick and No Sense of Direction Man came in together. Irony Man wondered, not for the first time, whether the Escherian hero would ever learn to find his own way around even a familiar location like the headquarters. He also wondered whether Bandwagon Chick minded being his unofficial "seeing eye girl" all the time. His musings were interrupted by the arrival of the man who was slated to replace him as leader of the 'Tsk' Force.

"Come in, Gary," he said, waving the newcomer to a seat. "You know Bonnie of course." He nodded toward Bandwagon Chick. "And this is Alan Smithee, also known as No Sense of Direction Man."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Convoluted Origin Man. I've heard of you, naturally, but I am embarrassed to admit that I don't exactly understand how your powers work."

"He has whatever powers are consistent with what he currently remembers about his past," Bandwagon Chick said. "Is that right?"

"Not really, no," Convoluted Origin Man said. "Not any more. I have powers which are more-or-less consistent with what's generally known about my past, whether I remember it or not."

"Last I heard," Irony Man said, "you were raised in a virtual reality lab, which caused you to have fragmented memories of all sorts of different scenarios."

"As it happens, that turned out to be a false memory implanted by the evil scientists who killed my adopted parents. That was before I was a professional pickpocket in Spokane, but after I was injected with the experimental papercut vaccine that gave me super strength."

"Okay, now I'm confused," Bandwagon Chick said. "Didn't you tell me that the papercut vaccine was originally given to you by Baron von Paepperkutt when you time-traveled back to World War II?"

"Maybe. I don't remember," Convoluted Origin Man admitted.

"It doesn't matter much," Irony Man said, attempting to get the briefing back on track. "I doubt you'll be needing your superpowers today, whatever they may be. For the past couple of weeks, we've been getting complaints about a young man loudly discussing new movies in public, giving away plot twists and surprise endings to all within earshot. The worst part is, he tends to do this while standing in line for the very movie he's discussing. This afternoon is the premiere of the movie based on that TV gardening show, er . . . "

"FIGHT THE FUCHSIA," Bandwagon Chick said, helpfully.

"Thank you. Yes, EXTREME GARDENING: FIGHT THE FUCHSIA opens this afternoon, and we expect that this person, whom we've codenamed 'Spoiler Man,' will be at the Net.ropolis 256 Cinema for the first show. We'd like to shut him down --"

"Shut him up, you mean," Bandwagon Chick said, laughing.

"Thank you, Bonnie." Irony Man looked at her sternly as she composed herself. "As I was saying, we're hoping to . . . to put an end to his reign of spoilage, before he gives away the ending to this particular film."

"What's special about this film?" No Sense of Direction Man asked.

"The fans of the TV show on which it is based are legendary in their . . . well, in their fannishness. If someone were to spoil the movie for them, the consequences could be dire."

"Such as?"

"Whining like you wouldn't believe. Convoluted Origin Man will be leading this mission, but I do have one suggestion. A bunch of superheroes at the movie theater will draw attention and possibly scare our man off. You should go down there as Bonnie Chique, Alan Smithee, and Gary . . . um?"

"Indiana?" Bandwagon Chick suggested, giggling.

"What is with you?" Irony Man said, looking at her again.

No Sense of Direction Man rubbed his forehead. "You remember last Tuesday night, after dinner, when everybody got the giggles?"

"You mean she's just now . . ." No Sense of Direction Man nodded, wearily. Irony Man shook his head. "Never mind. Gary, what's your last name now?"

Convoluted Origin Man mumbled something under his breath.

"I didn't catch that."

"Imbroglio." This grudging announcement sent Bandwagon Chick into gales of laughter.

"Really?" Irony Man asked.

"It's a long story."

* * * * * *

Later that day, the three 'Tsk' Force members, in casual "civilian" clothes, joined the line outside the Cinema Complex. The line wound past a gallery of "Coming Soon" posters, mostly for future blockbusters based on barely remembered TV shows such as MY MOTHER THE CAR, HOLMES AND YOYO, and CHiPs: THE MUSICAL.

"Are there really 256 different movie theaters in this building?" Alan asked.

"Apparently," Bonnie said. "Although you'll notice that there are only 8 movies playing. Each one is on 32 screens."

Gary held his finger to his lips, in the international but really annoying sign for silence. Nearby, a young man in an EXTREME GARDENING T-shirt was engaged in an enthusiastic if not very erudite recounting of the film's plot. "And then the dude grabs the gardening shears, and he's like, 'YAAAAAAAA!' and so Jacoby grabs the hose from the spraying machine and he's all 'Don't you do it!' and the dude's all 'Don't make me do it!' and Jacoby's all 'Don't you do it!' and then Carruthers throws her cell phone at him and --"

"And I've heard enough," Gary said. "Time to show this joker something I picked up in a little place called Roswell, New Mexico."

"You're going to beat him up with some alien martial arts maneuver?" Bonnie asked, enthusiastically.

"Ooh, that would be cool," Gary said. "But all I ever learned in Roswell was how to weave Indian baskets. I thought I could distract the guy by making a watertight container from some dried grass."

* * * * * *

But the 'Tsk' Force were about to have a bigger problem on their hands than how to deal with the rudeness of "Spoiler Man." For at that very moment, on a rooftop across the street, a strange figure stepped out from the shadow of a Mr. Paprika billboard. It appeared to be a portly middle-aged man, of above-average height, with horn-rimmed glasses and a salt-and-pepper beard, wrapped in a billowing purple cape. And in fact it was.

From beneath his cape, this mysterious stranger produced a large book. And quite an impressive book it was, too: a leather-bound folio-sized volume with brass fittings. The title was picked out in gold leaf on the cover: ROGET'S SUPER-THESAURUS. "And now," he said to no one in particular, "Net.ropolis will feel the wrath of . . . Purple Prose!" With that, he opened the book and laid it at his feet.

* * * * * *

Meanwhile, back in the movie line, Bonnie was proposing another solution to the Spoiler Man problem. "Maybe we could just, you know, ask him to keep it down? I'm sure if . . . if this miscreant perceived the discomfiture to which he is so obviously subjecting his fellow cinema enthusiasts, he would perforce curtail his narration, thus securing a desirable resolution to our unpleasant circumstance."

Gary and Alan stared at her for a second. Gary asked, "Pray tell, what has brought on this unprecedented permutation in your verbal self-expression? For though you and I have been comrades lo these many years, never can I recollect such an outpouring of grandiloquent verbiage from your person. But, what is this? It would seem that I, too, have been stricken by the malady -- if malady it be -- to which you have been subjected and to which I was so very recently alluding. My own discourse has strayed far from my accustomed vernacular. Friend Alan, pray endeavor to relate to us a brief utterance, that we might ascertain whether even your extra-dimensional self has been similarly afflicted."

"Indeed, your verbalization is most discrepant with that which I have come to perceive as representative during my brief sojourn in your reality. But, alas, it now becomes manifest that I, too, am scourged by this uncanny predilection for sesquipedalian remarks."

Up and down the movie line, people began speaking in the same obtuse manner. Spoiler Man remarked to his friend, "Verily, my dear sir, this does seem quite a vexatious plight. Manifestly, this deviltry must be the handiwork of the villainous Purple Prose, that blackguard who twists one's very communications against one."

"Wherefore has Spoiler Man such comprehensive erudition regarding this individual dubbed Purple Prose," Bonnie asked her companions, "when that fellow is categorically unrecognized by ourselves?"

Gary thought about it for a second. "Mayhap this betokens that his spoilage is the harvest of no mean incivility, but rather some heretofore misunderstood preternatural capability."

"Oughtn't we to assail this adversary, lest his machinations go unchecked?" Alan asked.

"There is wisdom in your suggestion, colleague. But initially, leave us avail ourselves of the opportunity afforded by the proximity of that unusually knowledgeable gentleman who was until very recently the objective of our effort, in hopes that he might disclose additional data about this unprecedented scoundrel, such as the ilk of his strengths, what his schema might be, and how we might best vanquish him," Gary said. The three heroes fell silent again, listening to Spoiler Man.

"We can only indulge in the aspiration that some protagonist or protagonists will arrive directly, antecedent to the fruition of this fiend's design. For you see, currently the loquaciousness affects only the people of Net.ropolis. But momentarily the hex will outstretch to the very narrative in which we play out our existence. At that time, Purple Prose will be unstoppable. The bulk of delineation essential to impart even the most undistinguished of accomplishments will prostrate even the most stupendous of heroes, rendering them defenseless."

"Heaven forfend," Bonnie said. "This is ignominious. Colleagues, we tarry no longer."

"Indeed," Gary averred. "Manifestly, alacrity must be our watchword. But, Alan, what afflicts your countenance with such despondency?"

His companion sighed deeply, in the manner of one who has presaged his own imminent demise. "I find myself enmeshed in trepidation to the effect that the hour has already winged past that which would have been propitious to apprehending yon fiend, for the merest trice heretofore, when you addressed to us your most meritorious and laudable appetite for expeditiousness, you 'averred' it," that worthy declared.

Their female associate flung a dainty arm to her febrile brow, not unlike an astonished ingenue or a youthful female overcome by vehement fortune, declaiming as she executed this maneuver, "I suspect that you lecture with veracity, my dimensionally displaced coworker. Espy, by way of illustration, the unmitigated magnitude of verbiage essential for the consummation of the relatively undistinguished, and not incidentally quite uncharacteristic of myself, accomplishment with which my current oration commenced."

"One idea, and one alone, is incontrovertible," their ringleader proclaimed, hurling a recalcitrant fist at the mocking firmament. "We shall not vanquish our adversary by enduring here unproductively palavering anent our quagmire. As an alternative, we should strike intrepidly, usurping the initiative to sally forth and engage our antagonist upon the terrain of incorruptibility." Having so pronounced, he effectuated what even the most sardonic and adverse of beholders would have found themselves constrained to designate a prodigious exertion to reconcile the accomplishment to the utterance. He upraised a mightily thewed leg, prefatory to endeavoring that primary footfall with which the proverbial lengthiest peregrination inaugurates . . .

* * * * * *

Contemporaneously, on the rooftop commanding this disheartening monstrosity, Purple Prose was beside himself with delectation. So exhilarated did he wax that he undertook to caper, to cavort, to rollick, to frolic, to prance, to . . .

"Zounds!" the scoundrel enunciated. "I have been hoist by mine own petard, fallen prey to my own stratagem, become ensorcled by my own enchantment! Bother!"

* * * * * *

On the thoroughfare below, Spoiler Man's less extrasensory companion conveyed a rumination which beleaguered and bedeviled the lucidity of the entire multitude there enmassed. "We are as doomed as Prometheus in Hades," he asserted. "Nothing can expunge this bane which importunes us in such an inauspicious fashion."

"On the contrary," his unfathomable confidant alleged. "For even at this very juncture the kernels of that uninvited individual's Waterloo have been seeded in the person of the redoubtable and resplendent heroine recognized by all and sundry as Writer's Block Woman, summoned hence by an eleventh hour emergency signal conveyed by Bandwagon Chick a hair's breadth anterior to the perennially behind-the-times Legionnaire finding herself subjugated to the nefarious jinx. With her transcendental faculty of Writer's Block, she will terminate this prolixity and reinstate orderliness to our beleaguered municipality once more."

Nearby moviegoers began to mutter in disgust. "Oh, man, he gave away the whole ending!" "What's the point of even hanging around?" "Yeah, let's go." They began to wander away.

"Gary? Alan?" Bonnie asked. "Is everything back to normal?"

"It seems so. We're speaking normally again and the narrative seems to have reverted to its customary dry style," Gary said. "But what happened to Purple Prose?"

* * * * * *

(A few seconds earlier)

Purple Prose stared down at the crowd. "Impossible! They're freed from my spell. I didn't even get started on my reign of terror!" He picked up his thesaurus and snapped it shut decisively. "On the other hand, I'm freed from my spell, too. Can't be bad." With that, he wandered off, already planning his big revenge scene.

* * * * * *

As the assembled heroes and bystanders wandered away, a flash of purple and gold appeared on the horizon. Within seconds, it was revealed as the net.heroine Writers Block Woman flying at top spped, her jaw set in grim determination. Her fellow Legionnaires were in trouble, and only she could save them. She lived for moments like this.

Arriving at the rooftop recently vacated by Purple Prose, she reduced speed and assumed the traditional flying superhero landing pose: arms thrown back, toes pointed, one knee slightly bent. Lighting gracefully, she quickly scanned the scene for the supervillain. "Hold it right there, you -- huh." Not seeing anyone on the roof, she ran to the edge and looked down on where the hostages should have been. There was no one to be seen. "Well, apparently they didn't need my help after all. I guess you can just send an emergency distress signal, pull a superheroine away from whatever she happens to be doing to come and save your butts, then just wander off for a pizza. I mean, it's not as though I might have something else to do on a Friday night. This is really the last straw. I'm going to . . . I'm going to write a very strongly-worded memo about the way guest stars are treated these days."

* * * * * *

Copyright 1998 by Steven Howard.

Bandwagon Chick created by Sue Clark.

Convoluted Origin Man created by Matt Rossi.

Irony Man created by person or persons unknown.

Used without permission.

Writers Block Woman was created by Jessica Ihimaera-Smiler and appears with her kind permission.