Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2011 20:15:36 +0100 From: Davey R Subject: BlueShark-Video-8 Author's note: This is sheer dumb fantasy, with sex and violence and dark elements. Not cool in real life, and not to be taken seriously. Just to be clear, any movies, actors, television shows, comic books, etc, named are totally fictional. ------------------------------------------- BlueShark Video 8 Ah, there you are. Did you enjoy your refreshment? Take a seat. Here, try out the remote for size. It's a bulky object, you find. Heavy in your hand in a satisfying way. You press 'play' and the movie resumes right where we left off. There are the big cruel men gathering with leering, high-spirited menace around the diminutive, downtrodden Pilce. However, as you handle the remote, discovering its contours against your palm and thumbs, you discover the hidden controls embedded into the side, and the sensors subtly reacting against your touch on the bottom. It's a more intuitive device than it appears. As you give it a gentle squeeze, menu options appear on the side of the screen - small, square thumbnail images cascading clumsily with old-fashioned videogame beeps. Each is accompanied by some text in dated digital script. There is Option 1. JORDON'S KEEPER. A frozen close-up on Jordon Lunar's pretty face. The - gloved? - fingertips of a hand seem to be reaching into frame to touch it. Option 2. JUSTIN'S SECRET. A mid-range shot of the cute Justin Benchley tugging at his underwear. A glimpse of his thighs. Half his face is visible, just his jaw. Option 3. RAMON'S BEATING. An image of Ramon's face, half hidden by wildly dishevelled hair, locked in a contorted grimace Option 4. UNPAUSE Hmm. Interesting. You scroll meditatively over the options. Each of them illuminate temptingly as you go. You think about continuing on with the torments of Daniel Pilce. There is something cruelly, terribly satisfying in watching him be so relentlessly and mercilessly ground down. But then there's the chance to see more of this gorgeous Justin Benchley guy. You were kind of taken with him. This cute young man who'll happily take Sharkey's cock up his ass as long as he can take a wad of his money too. You could quite happily watch Justin getting fucked some more. You don't feel like you saw nearly enough of that plot thread before it disappeared. Plus you're still wondering why he seemed familiar, like he was someone you already knew. And then there's the other one. Ramon's beating. Could it be that the brutal Gregory finally gets his chance to give the beautiful Ramon the rough treatment he really thinks he deserves? Or could Sharkey's sometimes vicious aggression turn on Ramon after all? You've already seen the bastard's treatment of Jordon in the ring. Might the sweet Ramon need putting in his place? It's an uncomfortable thought, but it leaves you curious nonetheless. Okay, let's choose Jordon first. You're interested to know what new master the hot surfer dude ends up with, after Sharkey sells him on like a used car. Plenty of time to resume the Pilce thread later. Yes. Click on the Jordon option. As you make your choice, a tiny sliver is knocked, nearly imperceptibly, off the end of the purple credit bar in the bottom corner of the screen. The microchip cluster in the video cassette shudders into life. A strained electronic gabbling hums from the clunky equipment then quietens down. --- This is familiar too. As seems to happen often with these strange engorged BlueShark videotapes,we shift roughly from one movie to another, apparently mid flow. It's always like there's some part at the beginning you've missed. But it doesn't matter too much; the movie we've picked up with is one that you've seen before. Or rather, it looks just like one you've seen before. Same actors, same sets, same music, same directorial choices. It's just that as you watch, more and more scenes unfold that aren't how you remember, or that didn't happen at all. Some of them... some of them are more like scenes you perhaps wanted to happen, at the back of your mind. What you are seeing now, in an abrupt shift, is a superhero movie. One of the Mighty Sun Surfer series. This particular superhero has had many incarnations on screen, and this film is from the most recent but one version of the franchise. The movie is as much a capsule of the 90s as the Roman Decker adventure was of the 80s. Gaudy, colourful, overstuffed and confused, with a dated nu-metal soundtrack. Attractively stylised, though. The Mighty Sun Surfer's adventures take place, as always, in the vast city of Sol Casali, a sprawling hypertropolis that is rendered with loving attention on screen. It occupies a parallel world west coast in the way most comic book cities occupy the east. Instead of being New York City in pulp drag, it's more like a Los Angeles that has erupted from the ground and grown in every direction, sucking in the characteristics of every major surrounding city and not stopping until its suburbs touch Arizona. Sol Casali is characterised as a hot and sunny labyrinth of a city - alternately gleaming and bright and parched and cracked. As this movie portrays it, it has a permanent reddish dustiness, particularly during its long and lazy stretches of dusk. Everything in the distance disappears into a bronze haze. Where other superhero cities are tall, this one is supremely wide, a massive expanse of urban vistas brooding in the dry heat. The trend in recent films of this type has been to return to location filming in real cities. This one is unashamedly, brazenly fake, glorying in its own artfulness and exotic beauty. Through this glorious morass leaps the Mighty Sun Surfer. You may recognise the actor. Dressed in a mix of moulded rubber and lycra the colour of burnished gold, this buff behemoth looks as ludicrous as any superhero you could name. And as hot, in every sense. This is not the first installment in the series, so the origin story has already been established in an earlier chapter and isn't addressed a great deal here. As you remember it, flirtatious meteorologist Bryce Cunningham suddenly found himself the target of a shadowy guild of assassins. Rescued from an attempt on his life by a suprisingly spry, mysterious old man, the handsome Cunningham was taken to a secret chamber in the Sol Casali museum of antiquities and handed an ancient Egyptian orb. This item was said to be untouched by the bare hand of man in thousands of years - or something like that. The wise old man, who referred to himself only as the Pharoah - and shrugged this off with a chuckle as an idiosyncracy - told Bryce Cunningham that he was the last survivor of ancient bloodline. The Pharoah explained that the line of his ancestors had all harboured strong supernatural talents that lay dormant in everyday life 'for their own safety', but that this dangerous guild of assassins had nonetheless successful hunted them all down and wiped them out. All but Bryce himself, of course. And so, said the Pharoah, the time for secrecy was over. On the longest day of the year, with the sun at its zenith, Bryce Cunningham was prompted to hold the ancient orb aloft and receive the powers that were his birthright. Shot through with endless bolds of sunshine that somehow coalesced out of the air and directed themselves through his limbs, Bryce received the superhuman powers that would make him the Mighty Sun Surfer! Why he chose to adopt such an outrageous disco outfit whenever he used them was, as ever, glossed over. Bryce appealed to his wizened new mentor for further answers about his birthright and destiny, about the true source of his powers. Unfortunately, that was when two trained killers smashed in from the skylight above and callously murdered the old man. Invested with his new powers, Bryce was able to fight them off before making good his escape to think things over. It had, after all, been a hell of a day. From there ... well, you know the kind of thing. Bryce continues to do his stuff in movie number three or four, whichever this is. Battling a series of outlandish nemeses in a skintight outfit. We come in here with a rooftop confrontation between the shiny, gladiatorial Surfer and a bulky old man tanning himself by the rich blue waters of a penthouse poolside. This face-off comes right after the audacious big-budget nuclear heist setpiece that opened the movie. The bad guy is full of murderous good cheer, happy to let the Mighty Sun Surfer know he is plotting his downfall. Instead of a towel, the old guy rests against a deeply black ream of silky, infinitely rich material. This is the Black Cloak of Seth, and it is his protection from Sol Casali's so-called 'golden guardian', the Surfer. There's evil in the web of it, this old, enchanted piece of cloth that can soak up the Surfer's sunny powers like a damp cloth on some spilled lemon juice. "Hadn't you better run along, Surf boy?" the man taunts. "Soon the sun will be setting..." He gestures to the sky, the reddish orb of the sun hanging low over the horizon. You see, the Mighty Sun Surfer's achilles heel is that he depends on sunlight, the light of day, for his strength. His miraculous abilities last little more than an hour into full darkness, and so he has to retreat into safety each evening as the light goes. By night, he is reduced to a normal, vulnerable man. He's kind of like a vampire in reverse, or a very macho Cinderella, hurrying home well before midnight. Somehow, not all of his enemies have managed to get wind of this weakness - but this one certainly knows. "Yes," the braggart bad guy repeats, "The sun will be setting. And not just over Sol Casali. Soon, the light of your tawdry ... abilities" - he spits the word out grudgingly - "will be forever extinguished. Soon, free of your showy meddling, I will plunge this city into an eternal darkness, and I will be its lord!" "Drama queen," the Surfer smirks. Again, a very mid-90s sort of zinger. Then he flits off with a 200ft bound over the neighbouring rooftops, leaving the bad guy fuming quietly over his tequila. The villain we watch here is the Mighty Sun Surfer's perennial arch enemy, Cardinal Sin. This is the transparent non de plume of Mortimus Cardinal, Sol Casali's biggest underworld kingpin. A gangster overlord, Cardinal Sin has been duking it out with the our gold-clad hero since the first issue of the comic back in the late 60s - albeit he has appeared in various changing guises, each suited to the nightmares of different eras. In the 1970s, for example, he was seen fomenting unrest among civil rights groups, goading minority and hippy protestors into acting as his unwitting army against the city's authorities. The comic strip's creators would become embarrassed by this in later years, and would work hard to shake off the social conservatism it implied. In the 1980s, Mortimus Cardinal became a ruthless businessman, operating in a world of shimmering skyscrapers and kick-ass board meetings. He was often to be seen chomping on a Cuban cigar while throwing a corporate rival from a top-floor window. In this period, the writers came up the wheeze of having Mortimus's offices atop the tallest building in the city - tantalisingly just out the range that even the Mighty Sun Surfer can reach in one of his Sun-assisted power leaps. In his most recent incarnation, and the one rendered on film here, Cardinal Sin has become much more the brutal gang boss of old, but with various twists, such as his retinue of scientific geniuses who are either exiles from other countries or - in one case - a kidnapped alien left over from an alien invasion storyline a couple of years back. To avoid stretching credulity a little too far, this character does not appear in the movie. The main job of these scientists is to help Cardinal discover new ways to defeat his pesky superhero nemesis. Naturally, they come up with an abundance of them but never get anywhere. Sentient internet viruses and gene bombs are among their colourful arsenal. This postmodern version of Cardinal Sin is also a paid-up member of a vast secret society that stretches all the way back to the most ancient civilisations and makes the Knights Templar look like a short-lived bowling league. We see him skilled in voodoo, blood-based magic rituals and hypnotism. Some stories imply that it was this cult, the Scorpions of Ra, that imbued Bryce Cunningham's ancestors, the Kin-Ammon bloodline, with their superhuman powers in the first place. But that's not really touched on in this movie version either. The Mortimus Cardinal we see here is a powerfully-built man in late middle age, the kind of guy who looks like he might have been Mr Universe forty years before. His hair is a slicked-back iron gray and he's about as tanned as bacon. In fact, he kind of resembles what you'd imagine the Mighty Sun Surfer himself might look like in a few decades. Assuming, that is, that our hero makes it to a ripe elder age. Certainly he won't if Cardinal Sin has anything to do with it. The steely-maned old powerhouse is constantly promising his underlings with relish that the troublesome hero will die by his hand - never to any avail. A few of the supporting 'family' of characters have made it into this movie version, so a little background on them: There is Blakkout, the Mighty Sun Surfer's unofficial partner in crimefighting. Not a sidekick, this is a lunar-powered hero who defends the city by night in the same way that the Sun Surfer can best defend it by day. This character, originally simply called Blackout, first debuted in the comic in the mid-70s, and started off as another unfortunate symptom of their ingrained conservatism in that period. The first dark-skinned character to appear in the strip, he was introduced as both a villain and a dupe. Blackout, real name Chuck Felix, was a naive college student with a killer afro, from the ghettoes of Sol Casali. Given superpowers in a series of experiments by his malevolent science professor, and whipped into a quasi-steroidal fury, he was unleashed against the Mighty Sun Surfer to destroy him. Not before he'd been kitted out in a skintight dark blue outfit, of course. Blackout's miraculous powers were, thanks to the vagaries of the lunar invigorator device used by Professor Reimar, at their most potent in moonlight. Conversely, the Mighty Sun Surfer's were at their strongest in the hours of sunshine. This meant the foxily dressed titans were only equally matched in strength around the hours of dusk and dawn. Here we saw in finest pop art form the titanic struggles of the musular giants to gain supremacy. For some of the boys growing up with these comics at the time, these pages were fucking hot. Even now you'll find secondhand copies where those well-thumbed ones are mysteriously stuck together. It's hard to imagine they were intended as anything other than raw, stylised homoeroticism. Go figure. For the remainder of these page-turning narratives, hero and villain were engaged in a protracted game of cat and mouse. The Mighty Sun Surfer had to keep himself well hidden from his new enemy during the night, and Blackout had to do likewise during the day. The hero and the villain came up with numerous ingenious ways of working around this, enlisting the help of friends, allies and other super-gifted individuals. The irony was that their alter-egos were good friends. Bryce Cunningham was, of all things, Chuck Felix's basketball coach and mentor. We were asked to accept, with the traditional comic book suspension of enormous disbelief - that these guys who even occasionally showered together in the college locker rooms didn't recognised each other's bodies when they were wrapped in lycra, or faces when they were partially covered by minimal masks. The four-color vendetta of the Mighty Sun Surfer and Blackout went intermittently on for a couple of years before the strip's creators started listening to the complaints. Readers started to notice - or perhaps their parents did - that Blackout, the only dark-skinned character in the strip, was a young guy from a deprived background trying to make a better life for himself. He was basically a sympathetic character - and yet he was also a bad guy out to destroy our hero. What was the message behind this, people started to ask; what was it teaching the children reading it? The strained, condescending jive talk the writers put into the speech bubbles floating from his mouth didn't help anything. Over time, a consensus started to build among readers that they really didn't want to see Blackout defeated by the Mighty Sun Surfer. In fact, a sizeable minority said wanted Blackout to have his victory against the Surfer, who they suddenly started to notice was a smug, wealthy priveleged white guy - precisely because he'd been put in a scenario where you could hardly fail to notice it. What was worse were the handful of letters complaining that there was a black man in the strip at all, and expressing their fervid hopes that the heroic surfer would kill him very soon. Yes, the only ones really keen to see the Surfer win in this battle were crazed racists. All of this rattled the strip's creators, as did the growing popularity of Blackout. They soon realised the solution was for the character to see the light and be reborn as a superhero comrade of the Mighty Sun Surfer himself. Soon enough, Blackout started to recognise the error of his ways, and extra narrative emphasis was piled upon the evil Professor Reimar's manipulation of him. What had started out as charismatic persuasion ended up as outright hypnotism. Thus, Blackout's culpability for his supervillainous actions was erased. Once he turned upon his puppetmaster Reimar and helped the Mighty Sun Surfer to defeat him, the stage was set for him to become one of the good guys, And, naturally, once he became one of the good guys, he got boring. Readers' support for him as an underdog waned away once he became a crime-fighting partner for our hero. Most had preferred him angry. Many had found his blind, young rage more interesting, more real, than his safe new persona. The same people who'd criticised the racist undercurrent of the aspiring young black guy plotting to destroy the powerful white man, now found him neutered and lacking. As can happen in the odd timeline of comics, Chuck Felix got older, graduated and became a famous basketball star while Bryce Cunningham remained the same age as he had always been. Chuck's face was known to everyone in Sol Casali, but he was never recognised in his superhero attire. Another silly comic strip superhero. Soon he wasn't worth making a fuss over. He'd gone from something alive and interesting and important to some flat dime-a-dozen drawings on a coarse page. No-one remembered that they'd cared enough about something so dumb to argue about it. The controversy has been headed off, dissipated as easily as the memory of a dream. The character's appearances in the comic book became more intermittent, and early into the 1980s he quietly disappeared from it entirely. But eventually, during the 1990s, a search for fresh blood and new angles on the strip combined with a growing cult interest in what was suddenly being regarded as a halycon age of the Surfer's adventures. It was inevitable that characters from the past would return, and the moribund Blackout was enthusiastically resurrected as Blakkout, complete with a sleek new look - sexier spandex, and massive afro replaced with a completely shaved head. The jive talk, naturally, was a thing of the past. New writers, who'd grown up with those earlier strips, were eager to bring Blakkout back as the bad guy they remembered from their childhood. Conceptually, they thought he was a great yin to the Surfer's yang. Older hands remembered the controversy from the first time around, and vetoed this. A kind of compromise came about where a new villain very similar to the original Blackout was introduced, who had all the same powers and the same burning desire to kick the Surfer's ass, but wasn't black. This was Eclipse. By day a crummy journalist detailing the superhero's exploits in the city's most sordid daily rag, by night a black-clad fiend looking to wipe out the Surfer and nab himself the greatest scoop Sol Casali had ever seen. Last but not least in this movie's cast list, there is crime boss Mortimus Cardinal's son. This is an effete yet vicious boy who's pierced and eyeined like a rockstar. This kid is faced with the arduous task of mounting an effective teenage rebellion against a father who's the baddest guy in the entire city. Funded by his dad, Corinth Cardinal runs an enormous delinquent gang - an army really - of teenage thugs. Once the whole emo thing took off later, readers started to notice that all these gang members, like Corinth Cardinal himself, had emo stylings, and were being made to look villainoius. Once again, mountains of complaint letters weren't far away. This time they were ignored, because the vicarious anarchist thrills this gang - the Corinthians - offered to the readership proved popular, and the outrage was assumed to be feigned. ----------------- So. Back to the movie. In a nighttime scene designed to show off the budget and advertise the thumping soundtrack, the camera swoops around the enormous derelict warehouse district of Sol Casali. The area has been colonised by Cardinal's son and his delinquent legion of Corinthians, and as we whoosh past the various hulking shells of storage buildings in all stages of disrepair, we see them populated by thousands of roaring, partying teenagers. Fires, fighting and brutal tribalistic dancing go on everywhere, a seething bacchanal of youth. Looks kind of fun, to be honest. In an uneasy truce managed by the corrupt city fathers, the police don't come anywhere near the so-called Corinthian district. They let it be, and it exists almost as a separate, lawless state within the metropolis. The swooping of the camera continues. With a couple of just noticeable cuts and dissolves, we track to the end of this pyrotechnic combination of matte, modelwork and computer compositing to close in on a solitary car moving slowly through the deserted streets. The polished, pristine BMW penetrates the morass of rowdy kids without a single one of them so much as spitting in its general direction. Normally any vehicle that risked a trip into these streets would be recklessly set upon - a pile of burnt-out old carcasses of automobiles in the distance is testament to that - so this is exceptionally good behaviour on the part of the adolescent mob. A door to a parking garage slides open and the vehicles glides neatly inside. Moments later, Mortimus Cardinal emerges, patting down his immaculate suit and tie and striding into the mass of youths, which parts like a sea before him. A couple of the kids chance their alien hand gestures at him, which he nods at and takes as signs of approval, since they would scarcely dare to be anything other. A particularly muscular young guy stand guard at the main entrance of one of the warehouse, with a bright blue mohawk and wearing what looks like adapted fetish gear. Itching for the chance to beat the crap out of someone, he instead nods politely at Mr Cardinal and holds the door open for him. Cardinal strides up a rickety staircase strewn with kids drinking, making out or lying passed out, heading for the heart of this particular gathering. Having passed a couple more beefy young punks recruited as bodyguards, he ignores the thumping bass pound of the music and strides purposefully for the inner sanctum. Finally he comes to his son's 'throne room'. Corinth rules from here with the demeanour of one of the loopier Roman emperors. He doesn't do a bad job of looking regal, considering his throne is bolted and welded together out of old oil drums and decorated with barbed wire and blinking strips of neon. A blinking Cardinal wonders how the hell he puts up with that. Kids. He wonders ruefully how things have changed so much since his day that they now think its cool to be so fucking limp and effete. At least his son appears to be swigging from a flagon like a medieval conqueror. But those tight ripped jeans - is the idiot boy actually wearing fishnets underneath them? - and the black painted nails and thick smudgey mascara. Corinth's boney knuckles are festooned with an eruption of silver rings, and he has what looks to Mortimus like a girl's hairstyle. Jesus. Mortimus is a man of the world, he's had homosexual associates. But they were old school brutal gangsters, tough men. If his son's clothes weren't so dark and ... industrial looking, he'd refer to this odd phase of his as flamboyant. A dated phrase, perhaps, from the Liberace era, but Cardinal never really came to terms with, say, glam rock or punk, let alone anything that came after them. He has no reference points for this style his son has adopted. The boy wears a comical tiara on his black birds' nest of hair, almost daring his peers to mock him. None of them will, of course, because he's their ruler and they fear him. Or fear Mortimus, at any rate. Corinth perches there like some goth queen because he can. He also rests each of his massively booted feet on the hunched, bent over backs of two young men, apparently chosen at random. Mortimus approves of this vulgar display, at least. Idly he wonders if the obedience of this teen legion extends to his son being able to pluck any of them from the crowd that he wishes to fuck. Mortimus can't see any reason why not, yet he can't quite picture it. Then again, he's out of touch. Kids, a mystery. In spite of everthing, he's glad he has his son as a useful conduit to the younger generation. Corinth, meanwhile, rolls his eyes at his father and his ridiculous out of date suit and slicked back hair. What a dork. "Corinth," Mortimus greets. At this distance from that horrendous music, it's just a muffled roar, so he only has to raise his voice a little. His son nods. "Hey dad. What do you want?" His father looks around. "Frankly, I want a scotch. But you don't appear to be well set up for that. Is there any chance of a seat? Or are you out of oil drums." Corinth springs from his ersatz throne. He does so quickly yet with an appearance of laziness, like all the volition comes from outside himself. He jaunts over the backs of the two balled-up youths like they're stepping sons. Gesturing at his throne with a sarcastic flourish, he mumbles "Be my guest" Mortimus shakes his head as he studies the ludicrous edifice, but takes a seat anyway. "After all, you're not getting any younger," Corinth snarls. He squats to take a seat on the back of one of the two guys, a blonde football player type. Mortimus makes a conscious effort not to let out an elderly relieved sigh as he takes the weight off his feet. He settles himself down with as much dignity as he can muster. "Whereas you, my son, appear to be becoming more and more infantile by the day. It's causing me a great deal of time and trouble to keep the exploits of you and your little gang free of consequence." "Oh, bullshit" Corinth dismisses lightly."Most nights this is all we do. Fucking party, man" Mortimus snorts. "Life isn't one long party, son. Now, from what I understand at least seven of your little ... crew.." Corinth laughs outright at his dad's attempt to come up with a contemporary term. "... have died here in the last four months." Corinth shakes his head like he's been reprimanded for not putting the garbage out. "Yeah, well what can I tell ya, pop, we party hard." Not acknowledging the interruption, Mortimus goes on: "And for each of them, not a single prosecution. Not even an investigation. All thanks to me, pulling strings on your behalf. But I'm not here to mop up any mess you feel like making, son. You're out of diapers now." Corinth laughs. "Yeah. Like you ever changed my diapers" "Out of interest, just what did become of these late, lamented children?" "Jeez, pop, do you have to. We are not 'children'." "They certainly aren't, now they're dead. Any explanation?" Corinth shakes his head and tugs at his fringe in disbelief. "This from the man who once tried to wipe out all of Europe with the starfire destructor" "I'm not asking out of sentimentality, son. You can slaughter as many of your little punk friends as you like. I just want to know you're not being reckless." "Fuck's sake. Should I show you my report card too. Okay, we have some initiation rituals for the Corinthians. Not everyone survives them." He chuckles as a memory comes back to him. "I guess Chad Manners didn't make it as a first-time tightrope walker. Jason Meretti didn't manage to fight off a shark in a tank til his minute was up. You know. Shit happens." Cardinal tsks but is basically satisfied with this explanation. He presses on. "And when you and your conscripted bunch of zit-faced hoodlums burned down that casino?" "Come on, dad, I already told you. We were bored." "Nonetheless, son," Mortimus goes on, "You need to learn some discipline. I worked for everything you have, and you're going to have to work to maintain it - when the time comes. A long, long time from now, I assure you. By the time you're running things, you will not of course have to worry about the interference of the Mighty Sun Surfer..." "Yeah, yeah. I know, dad. Because by then he'll have..." "Died by my hand," Mortimus can't resist completing the sentence, even when it seems his son is mocking him. "But super-powered freakshows are far from the only obstacles you'll face -" "Probably the coolest, though" Corinth nods infuriatingly. " - and I will not have you piss away everything I've built up. You need to learn the ropes, earn your role as my heir. Don't just think you can walk into it. And you won't get the experience you need if you continue to - as you put it - 'party' every night of your life. In a goddamn tiara!" "Whatever." "There's no 'whatever' about it, my son. I've come here tonight with a task for you. A very important job." "Oh yeah?" Corinth asks. He leans forward , black-rimmed eyes wide. The gesture is ironic, because all his gestures are, but he's genuinely intrigued. His father's never bothered him with this kind of thing before. "Yes. I mentioned the upcoming demise of the Mighty Sun Surfer. I'm offering you the chance to be an integral part of it." "Kind of a father-son bonding thing, huh?" "If you like," Mortimus agrees curtly, not really understanding the faddish phrase. -------------------------- Within days, Corinth and a select party of his delinquent gang members have been despatched on a mission. An adventure. What would amount to a heroic quest if they were not the bad guys. Thet set off on a lavish widescreen journey to Egypt, traversing land, sea and sky accompanied by a sweeping orchestral score. A zippy montage keeps us abreast of their escapades as they hunt for the secret lair of the Nephthys Incarnate. Striking deals in bazaars, knife fights in ancient ruins, negotiating secret entrances to both the major and the undiscovered tombs. Booby traps and murderous challengers abound. Any other movie, this bunch of punk kids would be killed. Here they seem protected by the pendants and amulets given them by Corinth's father And the terrible aims of the skilled killers throwing knives and axes at them. A couple of non-speaking youngsters are lost along the way. The evil Corinth shrugs off their loss. Finally, enough montage has passed for the motley band to zero in on the object of their search. Arriving in a godforsaken spot in the moonlit desert, the site that is the X on their hard-earned, blood stained map, Corinth takes from its airtight container a crumbling scroll of indescribable value. He has his kidnapped translator take this item and read aloud from it, each word erasing itself from the dessicated papyrus as it is spoken. As the words seep softly in the air, a number of distant crumping sounds fill the air, noises like muffled fireworks. The translator dude hesitates, but with a smirking Corinth cocking a pistol at his head it doesn't take long for him to agree to continue. As the forbidden words are read, evaporating slowly from the scroll, the sounds become more widespread. Jets of sand begin to erupt everywhere like geysers of dust, twirling about each other in enormous threads as they extend into the sky above. When the translator comes to the final phrase, the roar of wind becomes a screech, and sand swirls everywhere about them. However, they are safe in the eye of the storm. Even as the sand beneath their feet begins to shift, starts to cascade away as if someone has suddenly pulled an enormous stopper out of the earth, they find that it leaves behind a solid staircase, built of compacted sand, beginning where they are standing and descending into darkness in a mighty spiral. The group head down, only one of them left behind as a single shot is fired. Their reluctant translator is just dead wood now, Corinth cackles. Deep below, blue lights burn. They clamber ever further into the depths, and the starry sky above is swallowed up as the sands swirl back into place over them, re-establishing their miraculous solidity and forming a roof over this underground lair. When they finally arrive at the base of the sandy staircase, it loses its shape and collapses like a feeble sandcastle. A smooth computer generated effect. All the torches down here burn blue, and the air is surprisingly fresh. Lucky for them, some kind of spooky tour guide turns up. This woman is herself floating on a gassy cloud of flaming blue, whose licking flames refine themselves into a shimmering robe as they reach up her body. Her body itself is partly transparent, as if she were made of glass, with no internal organs. She beckons them to follow her. Living in a city crammed full of supervillains with a range of freaky abilities, Corinth and his buddies take this more in their stride than you or I would. It's no stranger than that guy in Sol Casali who's made entirely out of water, after all. Corinth and his gang are taken into an ornate and elaborate labyrinth that's like some enormous underground cathedral. Anyone out there knew about this place, it'd oust the pyramids way off the top of the tourist hotspots. Its immense, and richly carved and decorated in every nook and cranny. As the floating blue woman leads the group on, they pass a number of creepy hooded figures who step quietly back to allow them passage. The deeper they go, the huger the man-made halls and caverns they are taken through. As they walk, Corinth glimpses through one of the doorways an immense library area with a number of these hooded figures working away at carved stone desks. It's kind of like a monastery. They arrrive at their destination. Without a word, the evanescent tour guide deposits them in a crystalline cave. It forms a savage fissure in the centre of this finery, with jagged walls of onyx black shimmering with the light of the ominpresent blue flames. Two of the monk guys stand guard at the entrance they came in through. "Yeah, and we're all real impressed," sighs Corinth into the empty air. Typical teenager. "But before you send us out to the gift shop to buy our 'we love secret subterranean lairs' t-shirts, do you think we could get round to the reason we're here?" Defiantly he takes out a cigarette and lights it up. Takes a couple of drags. Abruptly his cigarette is snuffed out as if grabbed by an invisible fist, and the smoke he's blown into the air curls inward and shrivels up to nothing like it's been sucked up by an invisible vacuum cleaner. He soon realises why. An enormous plume of thick smoke heaves up from an unnoticeable crack in the ground before them, and starts tugging around jerkily like someone struggling to take off a sweater that's too small for them. Smoke is the Nepthys Incarnate's medium, and he's horning in on her act. The towering smokey-shaft fluxes in and out out of the shape of a giant woman, never staying solid long enough for them to get a clear impression of what she looks like. "I am Nephthys Incarnate!" booms a deep, female voice, as dark deep and scratchy as a petrified forest. "Yeah, hi. So you're like a badass Wizard of Oz," Corinth snorts. "Why do you mortals disturb my slumber?" demands the eternal goddess. "Oh, sorry. Didn't realise you were catching forty thousand winks. We'll try to keep this quick then" Corinth goes on to explain the purpose of their pilgrimage here. He decided somewhere along the eventful journey that 'pilgrimage' was the kind of word that would go down well with this secret sect. He hadn't expected to testing it out on an actual ancient Egyptian goddess, but hey ho. Corinth tells her that he - well, his better informed father - has heard whispers about the nature of this particular preternatural cult. That, aside from the superheroic Blakkout and the villainous Eclipse, there are other men scattered about the world who harbour unnatural powers stimulated by the moonlight. Cardinal has heard that the reason these men do no attract any apparent attention is because their powers go unused - that they are rounded up and kept in check by the follwers of Nephthys. "That is so," the moon goddess bellows simply. "So, those monk guys back there keep them under control?" asks one of Corinth's punk associates. "In a manner of speaking," the goddess says with a lofty vagueness. Guess you can't expect much clarity from a puff of smoke. Then she clarifies, for those in the back row: "'Those monk guys', as you call them, mortal boy, are the acolytes of the moon for whom you search." "Huh?" "She means the monks ARE the super-powered guys, dumbass" says Corinth. Then to the shifting smoke plume: "So all those guys have the same super powers as Blakkout and Eclipse back in my city?" "That is so, mortal child" says the voice, rustling like dead leaves. "Then what's keeping them all down here, shuffling about in silence? What do they do down here anyway?" "The acolytes of the moon live lives of repentance, scholarship and silent contemplation," the voice states. "Fuck! They must be bored out of their minds." The giant smokey lady ignores the lad's impertinence. "The acolytes wish for nothing more." "Really? Why's that?" "Because I control their wills" "That kind of sucks for them though, right?" "Foolish mortal. I control their hearts and souls, the very seat of their desires. They are all content in their present lives" "Ah!" They're getting to the reason Corinth has come here. "So you basically control their minds, yeah? Like hypnotism?" The plume shudders with what might be laughter. "My influence is far deeper than your mortal parlour tricks. But yes, they obey absolutely" Corinth nods. "So what's your interest in getting all these guys down here? You building an army or something?" The smoke is briefly shot through with an angry bolt of flame. "It is not my intention to bring violence and war to your world, child. I... made that mistake before ..." Corinth rolls his eyes. Here we go, he thinks. A deity with a sob story. As bad as those angst -riddled do-gooders in Sol Casali that his father itches to slaughter. Every one of them has some tedious inner turmoil. He waits, and the voice continues. "It was I who first brought the gifts of preternatural skill to the acolytes of the moon. I my vanity, I bestowed them at whim. I believed I could seed this earth with new gods and give it direction. But with great power comes ... great cruelty and corruption. Given abilities and strengths beyond those of mortal men, all but a very few of my children became reckless and tyrannical. They used their powers to become rulers, but their rule brought only destruction. I found I had brought not a new order, but chaos." "Wow. Bummer." "The gift of these powers cannot be revoked, but its influence will die out in time. After four thousand years, there are a very few men left who are born as acolytes of the moon. There are less than a hundred here. Within centuries, there will be but a handful, and then none at all." Something about the way she says 'centuries' suggests to Corinth that she regards this a very short amount of time - like a mere mortal would refer to 'five minutes'. "So you keep these super-powered dudes here?" "Myself and my sisterhood bear this responsibility, yes" "Oh yeah, the blue fiery girls. And it's to stop them causing trouble?" "Yes, child. Oh, you are a vicious child, I see that. You know very well of the wickedness I seek to contain, for it burns in your own heart." "Flirting's gonna get you nowhere, smokeface" Corinth grins wickedly. "And I know you have no power over me. My dad made sure to check that out. He has a team of guys sussing out the smallprint in all those old scrolls of yours." The smoke is silent for a moment. "I am bound to the covenants of old," it admits. By the way, the writers of the Mighty Sun Surfer comics find these convenants of old a delightfully elastic plot device. They're used extensively in the strips, though this is their first mention in one of the movies. Internet dorks complain that the way they're used in the film contradicts what has been revealed about them in the strips. In fact, the strips routinely contradict themselves anyway. "So ..." Corinth tries to get a handle on the situation. "You get into these super-dudes' minds, make them want to live this of peaceful, um, whatever it is, and they're all basically neutered, right? They do everything you say and they never use their powers?" The smoke wobbles affirmatively. "And after living their lives like a bunch of real happy monks, they all die I guess, and you just keep on doing this until every last one of them has died out and the moon-super-guys are extinct? Right?" "Men's wickedness is too fierce a force. It must not be combined with godliness and set free. Yes, to atone for my error, I have tramelled up its consequences." "By putting the poor bastards into some kind of eternal detention," Corinth says. Not that any teacher at his fancy school has dared put the son of Mortimus Cardinal in detention. A thought strikes him. "I don't suppose you can do the same with guys who get their powers from the sun, can you? I mean, say there was some pumped-up faggot leaping around in a gold leotard..." "The sun's mysteries are unknown to me" "I get it. Not your department." He shrugs philosophically. "I thought maybe we could take a short cut. I guess we do this my dad's way after all." Corinth clears his throat, suddenly stands tall like he's about to deliver a Shakespearean monologue. But his question is simple: "How? How's it done? How do you control them?" The smoke, if it can be said to do so, ponders. "Step forward, my servant," it says. Corinth is affronted, his face taking on a petulant snarl. No-one tells him what to do. Then he realises that the goddess isn't talking to him anyway, because one of the hooded and cloaked guards at the door is gliding towards their little band. "Disrobe" Nephthys intones. "Whoah, cool!" Corinth grins as the sombre blue cloak is cast off, and the acolyte is revealed as a total hottie. Beneath his garment, the guy is bare-skinned, wearing only some threadbare knotted cloth underpants and, strapped around his shoulders and across the top of his chiselled pecs, some kind of metal harness. Corinth addresses the smoke in pleasure: "I didn't think there were gonna be strippers." "The harness, child," booms the smoke, forming briefly into a huge angry visage. "You see the harness." It's more a statement than a question, and Corinth steps over to take a closer look. Made up of a series of somehow flexible blue plates of metal linked by tight chains, this item is suitably inscribed with decorous archaic nonsense and detailed design. It's quite a prop. Corinth reaches out to have a feel of the cool metal surfaces of the harness, but enjoys a leisurely fondle of the hunk's warm torso on the way. In the middle of the central strap that cleaves to the upper chest there is a small blue jewel. "This is important, right?" he asks. The smoke agrees. "That is the eye through which the harness's power is channelled. Without it, it would be mere metal, easily cast off by the acolytes." Corinth looks up into the guy's handsome Asiatic face. "So this dude can't cast it off himself?" He's surprised when the dude himself looks at him in affront, almost horror. "You misunderstand, child," continues Nepthys. "The influence of the eye means that the acolyte does not want to cast it off. The very thought is abhorrent to him -" "Because you've told him that it is!" Corinth exclaims, getting it now. He turns back to her face her suddenly. "Lady, I've gotta get me one of those harnesses. Well, two actually. I don't suppose you have a two for one offer going ... ?" The Nephthys Incarnate is not amused. "Guess not. Okay, well, can we..." He has another glimpse back at the hunky monk guy, then gets his mind back on his business. "Can we cut a deal?" ----- Pause. JORDON'S KEEPER continues shortly.