Chapter 7: Connections
It was still night in Mylok. The Void didn't contain any sun or moon, however. As the car the robbers sped in entered the void, the night sky of Mylok gradually faded to the pure white of the Void. The edge of the Void glowed a very faded blue towards the very edge, formed by Mylok's late-time lighting.
As usual, the Void was silent. Once upon a time, the Void was booming with the explosions and chaos of super-powered people waging war with one another. For now almost 15 years, however, the Void was a soundless plain.
The only sound that was in the Void now was the engine hum of a car hovering over the featureless land. Inside, it was stocked to the ceiling with a various amount of odd weapons, which were stacked on top of the four passengers inside the car. The back held Scondie and Omniscott, who held guns, swords, and other weaponry in their laps. Blue sat in the passenger seat in the front, also holding an amount of weaponry (the odd, three-pronged portal gun being the most apparent). Blue was also still wearing the pair of bracelets he was wearing at the museum. Driving the car was Yarameh, who had his personal space cleared so he could drive the car. Silently, but still apparent, McJunior was soundlessly gliding with the car above it.
For a long time, none of the Brotherhood members held any conversation with one another. Yarameh was looking ahead at the path to the headquarters, as he should have. Blue rested his head in the palm of his hand, using the elbow to prop himself up on the edge of the window, and stared at the blank space before him. Scondie sat with hands between his legs, staring at the small space the vast amount of weapons didn't block off. Omniscott seemed to be concentrating on an imaginary point ahead of him.
Scondie suddenly looked to the center of the car. He stared at the people around and studied their empty expressions. Scondie gave each one of them a good look before he looked ahead, similar to Omniscott's expression. He arbitrarily started to say something in a half-whisper.
"Dum, duh-da dum da-da dah dah... dum dada-dum dada-dum dada dah-dah da duh da duh..."
Blue looked back once he heard Scondie in the back. He looked back to the window, smiling and shaking his head as he returned to the previous position. Yarameh smiled briefly and Omniscott still looked ahead.
Scondie spoke softly still, but now more melodically.
"Well, I walked into the room. Passin' out hundred-dollar bills and it kills, and it thrills like the horns on my Silverado grill..."
Yarameh was mockingly nodding his head back and forth. Blue was starting catch on to Scondie and sang along side him.
"And I buy the bar a double round of crown and everybody's gettin' down and this town-" Blue and Scondie looked at each other excitedly. "Ain't neva gonna be the same!"
Blue and Scondie were growing a little louder. Yarameh was soon finding himself singing with them as well.
"'Cause I saddle up my horse and I ride into the ci-teh! I make a lot of noise, 'cause the girls, they are so pre-teh!"
Scondie was nudging Omniscott, who seemed to ignore all of the singing.
"Riding up and down Broadway, on my old stud Leroy and the girls say:" The singers were leaning back and flung their hands in the air. "Save a horse! Ride a cowboy!"
Omniscott was starting to nod his head back-and-forth while emitting a smirk. Soon, McJunior even broke through on the radio.
"Well, I don't give a dang about nothin'! I'm singin' and bling-blingin' while the girls are drinking! Long necks down!"
Finally, Omniscott was whispering the words as the others sang loudly.
"And I wouldn't trade 'ol Leroy or my Chevorlet or your Escalade or your freak parade! I'm the only John Wayne left in this town!"
The five were happily singing the song as they headed to their home. As they sped along, the sound of the car hovering to its destination was almost completely drowned out by the sounds of joyful singing among friends.
The car had been speeding for some time now. Still, the plain white was evidant everywhere and the city of Mylok had disappeared behind the car. The group still sang aloud, but now sang a different song as the car buzzed along, this time lead by Blue.
"Everybody stutters one way or the other, so check out my message to you! As a matter of fact, don't let nothin' hold you back! 'Cause if the Scatman can do it, so can you!"
After a bit, the others laughed as someone complained about not knowing the song's lyrics.
The car was joking around and the passengers were insulting and poking fun at one another. Yarameh occasionally looked back to look at why he was laughing. He looked back to the front of the speeding car to see the edge of the cavern. His happy smile faded to shock as he saw the wreckage near the headquarters' entrance. He took one hand off of the wheel and patted Blue's shoulder. Blue looked to the front, his happiness also fading to wonder. Scondie and Omniscott looked past the two front seats to see what caused the shock up front.
The radio clicked on.
"What the world happened here???" McJunior asked.
"You freaking got me..." Yarameh answered.
The wreckage by the edge of the cavern was quite astounding. The ground was littered with overturned vehicles and the corpses of many different viruses. In some places, the ground was painted with the viruses' greenish blood and had pieces of twisted and torn metal planted all along the ground.
Along with the hundreds of flipped convoys and cruisers, there were holes littering the ground. The holes had white earth spread around them and busted in a way to give the impression that the holes originated from underground.
"Well, I'm definately asking them once we get inside..." McJunior's voice commented.
"Well, duh," Yarameh said back. After that, he reached up and pressed a button at the top of the car's interior. The large elevator emerged from the ground and Yarameh parked above the lift for the car.
*****
A virus was sitting at a desk in its small, partially clean bedroom. It fiddled with a radio on the table, which rested near its laptop computer. The radio only sounded with static as the virus turned and twisted a tuning knob. The virus twisted the radio knob until the inner-needle that pointed to the station pointed to "1600 AM". Static still sounded, but now not anywhere near as noisily. The virus looked at the radio for a quick moment before it grabbed the walkie-talkie attached to it.
"Hello...? Is anyone there? Hey...! Hello?"
Still static. No one answered. The virus gloomily looked to its waist and took a free hand to turn off the radio.
Right before it pressed the button, a noise sounded with the static. The virus perked up its posture quickly. It spoke into the handset again.
"Hello? Who's there?"
The voice spoke over the radio again.
"It is natural for them to seek power..."
The virus wondered as it stared at the radio. It took a moment for it to commit another action. The virus frantically browsed under the desk through papers.
"It is natural for them to seek power....?" the radio voice sounded annoyingly.
The virus pulled out the paper it received on the porch to hear another voice on the radio.
"Dude, just forget it. It was probably a glitch or something."
The virus read over the note clipped on the newspaper excitedly.
"But the worst they can do is shroud us in lies!"
The voices whispered to each other over the radio.
"That... that's it, right?"
"Yes, yes! That's it! Uh, yeah.... so I take it you got the message?"
The virus jumped a little in its seat in excitement.
"Yeah! Definately! What was that about?!"
There was a delay in the response. The first voice came on to the radio.
"We figured you could help us out. We saw your website."
"Well, uh... sure! But...what is all this?"
"What the hell do you think it is?" the second voice yelled. "It's a frikken newspaper..."
The virus looked in a bit of shock mixed with confusion. The first voice explained the second away.
"Don't mind Nick. He's an asshole."
Nick could be heard telling the other voice to "Fuck off". The first voice chuckled.
"Hey, guys," the virus interupted. "The paper..."
"Oh, yeah," the first voice responded. "Well, that's Brawl City News. Didn't you read the very top???"
"Yeah, but where is Brawl City?! I've never heard of the place!"
"Figured you wouldn't," the first voice continued. "Well, do you want the long version or the short?"
"I've got time. Let's hear the long one."
As the virus answered back, there was a faint noise of clanging in the background from the radio. Another voice was saying somthing, but the virus couldn't make it out. The first voice came back on.
"Would you mind waiting a bit?"
"Uh... sure. Go ahead," the virus agreed.
The first voice could be heard shuffling around in a chair and saying something back that sounded like "What do you mean outside?". The virus continued to listen to the stangers talking to one another. It could hear them speaking, but couldn't completely understand any of the words. After a bit of time, the first voice came back to the radio.
"...we'll check it out later. I've got that Ganld guy on the radio."
"Really? Yes!" another voice said faintly. "Let me see the talking thing. I wanna say something." The radio clicked a bit as the handset was being passed.
The new voice sounded.
"Hey! Hey! Hey! How ya doin', Ganld?!"
"Um.... I'm good," Ganld stuttered. "I never got an explination, though..."
"About what?" the new voice asked.
"Well, Brawl City."
"You're living there now. What's there to tell you about???"
Ganld shook its head in a bit of denial. "Wait, wait, wait.... do what now?!?!"
The new voice talked to another.
"What do you mean you haven't told it yet...? Alright, I got it."
The voice came back.
"Yeah. Brawl City was the name of Mylok 15 years ago."
"...you mean before the Conquering?"
"Yeah... the insane amount of bullshit that mess is..."
"Get over it, Blue!" the first voice yelled again. "Let's not have you freak out again!"
"Wait, Blue?!" Ganld the virus questioned. "The Benedict Blue?! Are you serious???"
"As a matter of fact, yes," Blue answered. "And I would prefer 'Brawler', if you don't mind."
"Well, sure. If this is true, though, then the papers
are lying to us!"
The radio stalled a bit before Blue finally answered back.
"Papers? Should I ask?"
"The newspaper over here! They said that you were gunned down last night!"
"Pssh! Well, I can't say they didn't try..." Blue said sarcastically.
"I'd say it was more like an ass-whoopin' on our part!" a different voice shouted.
"Yes, yes, Yarameh, we all know that we are total badasses," Blue replied to the voice. "But now we got something else to settle."
Blue started to speak to Ganld again.
"Right. Sorry. Let's get back on track... you wanted to know about Brawl City, right?"
"Well, that is sort of why I called. Yes," Ganld said into his handset.
"Okay," Blue started. "This is how it goes..."
*****
Gassuk was still shakey from the encounter at the edge of that canyon. Again, it stormed into the government building just like it did after Blue escaped, but this time it was shivering slightly, unwilling to speak at all. Viruses were, again, looking in wonder at Gassuk as it walked into the office, partially with the fear of it bringing out anger like it did one time ago. This time, however, Gassuk only walked to its temp-office without saying a word at all.
Gassuk was sitting alone in its office. A look of fatique and worry was across its face. Occasionally, the virus would look down to shuffle through papers or fiddle with a pen, but was later back to the worrysome stare.
An official virus slowly cracked the door open.
"Uh... sir... do you have a moment?"
Gassuk sighed heavily.
"Yeah... sure. What is it?"
The virus, now a bit more confident, opened the door completely while carrying a closed laptop under its uppermost shoulder. The virus walked in to the Emperor's desk.
"Sir, you know that 'Will of the Viruses' site?"
Gassuk lowered its eyebrows. "I don't have time for these conspiracy nuts... you know they aren't a problem."
"I know about them, sir. But something a wee bit interesting has happened on there."
The virus removed the laptop from its shoulder and placed it on the desk in front of Gassuk, who was looking rather skeptical, and opened it so the screen faced Gassuk. The laptop showed blackness for a second, but soon awoke and lit up with an Internet page. A banner showed ragged, black letters spelling out "Will of the Viruses" were overlapping a grim virus face with two rifles crossed over behind it.
From behind the desk, the official virus looked around to the screen and rubbed its hand on the screen so that it scrolled down towards the bottom. Eventually, a news post showed on the screen with a video feature embedded under the title. Under a large "play" button, a green virus sat in the dark.
Gassuk looked in curiousity as it read the title to itself. "Brawlers Will Help the Will be Known". Gassuk grew a bit of concern after it read the title completely.
The official virus pressed its hand on the play button. It flashed momentarily, then faded away. The green virus in the dark had its image perfectly visable. It sat in a chair on a red floor. The dark managed to shade all of its upper body except for the very tip of its head.
It sat in complete silence, but eventually it spoke and the words came through the laptop's speakers.
"Comrades. Our moment is ripe. The time for the good to overrun the evil is soon to come upon us. I hope this comes as good news. For long, we were forcedd to simply tell the truth about our corrupted empire, but now we can fight the corruption.
"I have made contact with our new allies. And now I know the truth about this place. They are the children of those who once roamed the land on this planet. They are the ones who escaped with the 'Benedict'. Though they are called 'Benedicts' by us, their real name were 'Brawlers'. They lived in 'Brawl City', which was invaded 15 years ago and rebuilt as 'Mylok'. The quote-unquote 'glorious' Vyrokk betrayed them long ago. Vyrokk was once a Brawler among them, but used our virus-creating ability to distribute a deadly virus among both Brawlers and normal citizens alike. Now they have all been destroyed, and we have stolen their soil from them.
"But we can help them reclaim the world. And in return, they have agreed to help us destroy the corruption. They shall help us, and we can contact them. Get to know them. We can get to know them. But I cannot give away how. We know the Emperor is going to see this eventually. Gassuk seems to keep an eye on many things in the emipire.
This is my message to you all. Now let us band together, brothers. And let us finally put an end to all this madness. And before I go, the Brotherhood of the Wolf wishes to broadcast this message:
'16 of us walk and talk in the morning among hundreds of problems'.I hope to see you soon, Gassuk."
With that, the video image went to black and the play button showed up into existance again. Gassuk stared angirly, seemingly concentrated on the Internet broadcast, despite the fact that it has already ended.
The official virus stared at Gassuk's forehead while it still concentrated on the laptop's screen.
The official virus eventually broke the silence.
"Uh, sir? Do you have any courses of action to take?"
Gassuk's angry stare shifted rapidly from the screen to the official virus, who looked back in anticipated fear.
Gassuk turned the laptop back to the official virus.
"Get to the administrator's IP adress on this page. Track it to the guy's home. After that, send in an assault immediately. I want this virus dead yesterday!"
"Yes sir!" the official virus half-shouted. It closed the laptop and carried it to the door.
The official virus looked back when Gassuk adressed it again.
"And I also want our guys on that message the virus spoke of. It's obviously a riddle of some sort. I want advisors, scientists, everyone possible on decoding that message!"
The official virus nodded and continued to carry the laptop through the doorway, shutting the door behind it.
Gassuk rose from its seat as the door shut it from the office mess outside of its office. Gassuk looked around and scanned the office in a feign curiousity.
It scuttled around the room for a short time and eventually came to the office's large window behind Gassuk's desk. A flesh-ridden statue of Gassuk stood at the window and stared in concentration. It stared with a grim face and both pairs of arms crossed.
Gassuk was thinking. It was planning. It knew the gravity of the situation. It knew that the empire was in trouble.