Chapter 15: Don’t Be a PRICK

Already in love
Already in love
Already in love
Already in love
Who made up the myth
That we were born to be covered in Bliss
(Pearl Jam, Satan’s Bed)

---

It was in the Omega FAQ when it first came out.

“Matthew W Rossi III (mr.9767@acc.rwu.edu) just wants you to know that his comics Pulse and Tempest are literally autobiographic.”

He walked down the streets of his home town, Providence. He wore mirrored sunglasses, of course, to cover his eyes. He didn’t need anyone to see them and give the game away, of course. He was a moody young man with black hair and wearing a rather worn leather jacket. He’d recently been dumped by two different women in one month.

So when the bullet from the gun of Dirk Darringer smashed his glasses off of his face, revealing his glowing multi-colored eyes, he was more than a little pissed off already.

“What the…!”

His senses zeroed in on Dirk. He smiled the smile of the well and truly pissed off. Black metal flowed out of nowhere, covering him in a malevolent mass of spikes, blades and edges.

“Oh, you are gonna be sorry!“

---

Dirk was confused (And more than a little drunk) as to what had just happened. He’d pulled the trigger at Bob’s request, there had been a flash as the muzzle had discharged… and then the kid had taken the bullet to the face with no more than mild annoyance.

“I don’ geddit.”

Bob, meanwhile, looked equally concerned. “He should have been…”

[EXCUSE ME.]

They looked up. Floating above them was a serrated, spiked, extemely badass looking dude in metallic black armor.

[MY NAME IS MATTHEW W ROSSI III. I AM HERE TO KICK ASS AND SPOUT ALL CAPS DIALOGUE… AND MY SHIFT KEY IS ALL USED UP.]

The black armored form tore into ‘Bob’ with a speed and power that the inebrieated Dirk couldn’t even follow. The yelps, screeches, moans and whimpers for mercy were not heeded. Soon, the whirlwind of chaos ended, and a naked and badly bruised form fell to the ground at Dirk’s feet.

[IMBROGNO. IT FIGURES. DIDN’T ANYONE EVER TEACH YOU, CHAD… DON’T BE A PRICK.]

Having gotten the title out of the way, the black armored figure turned to face the former Paragon, the ultimate man.

[YOUR TURN.]

“Pretty brave… hic… beatin’ on a guy wit no powahs.”

[OKAY, YOU WANT POWERS? HERE YA GO.]

With a wave of his hand, Rossi caused Dirk’s Paragon costume to re-appear on him. He felt a wave of his ultimate powers come washing over him.

“I… I feel reborn! Henceforth, I shall use my Ultimate Powers to vigilantly stand triumphant over all evil, and…”

[PARDON ME.]

A black fist smashed into Dirk, who smashed backward into the Fleet Bank Tower and through it, out over Narragansett Bay, and eventually over the Atlantic Ocean. Which he then smashed into.

[ARROGANT SOB. NOW, DIDN’T SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING WITH GOD A FEW ISSUES BACK IN THIS STORY?]

His glowing eyes burned with multi-chromatic fire. Isn’t it odd the way everything does that around Rossi? I mean, this is one melodramatic bugger. Anyway, he smiled as he found Kier’s story.

[I’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO DO THIS.]

He vanished in a flash of light, leaving ‘Bob’ in a naked, quivering, crumpled heap on the sidewalk. Providence Mayor and former Convicted Felon Buddy Cianci stepped over his body on the way to City Hall.

Then, a cab pulled up. Out of it stepped a seven foot tall man and Mary Lou Retina. They walked up to ‘Bob’.

“Damn!” Jack Armington, the Dragonslayer, shouted as he looked down at the crumpled heap of his greatest nemesis. “It’s that bastard Imbrogno!”

“How do you know this guy?” Mary Lou asked.

“Do you feel anything different about this place, Mary Lou?”

“Well, now that you mention it… things feel kind of spooky. Almost as if I was being watched by menacing forces just lurking in the darkness to pounce on me and dissect me to discover the secrets of my powers.” Just then a large man with four arms and red skin bumped into her from behind. “Hey, watch where you’re going!”

“Sorry… have any of you seen a big, six armed female robot patterned after a Hindu Goddess?”

“No.” Said Armington. “We’re kind of busy right now. Couldn’t you just get back to Rig Veda where you belong?”

“Terribly sorry.” The four-armed being walked around the corner. Dragonslayer looked down at Imbrogno’s quivering form. “I guess we’d better take him with us. And then I’ll explain… The Omega Sanction.”

Mary Lou looked around. “Where’d that spooky music come from? And who are all those guys wearing sunglasses watching me?”

“Former Dynamax employees. They’re probably just stalking us so they can stay in top form should some evil corporation begin hiring.”

---

**** Hmm… What’s going on in the storyline? **** asked the deluded being that thought it was God. It had been ruminating in the realms beyond on existence when suddenly, the black armored Rossi appeared.

[HEY, BOZO.]

**** Who dares address the supreme… **** That’s about as far as it got before the Rossi figure pasted it one in the jaw, knocking it to the ‘ground’ in this otherrealm. **** OUCH! Hey, that hurt! ****

[OF COURSE IT HURT, YOU IDIOT. DID YOU REALLY THINK YOU WERE GOD? IN THIS STORYLINE? WHAT KIND OF A CHUMP ARE YOU, ANYWAY? YOU PROBABLY VOTED FOR ROSS PEROT!]

**** Hey, Big Government is out of control and all… wait a minute! If I’m not God, who am I? ****

[YOU ARE THOSE IDIOTS TITO AND TINA, REMEMBER? YOU GOT A DOSE OF COSMIC POWER, AND LET IT GO TO YOUR HEADS. I KNOW… I HAD THE SAME PROBLEM WHEN I GOT ULTIMATE POWER. UNFORTUNATELY, I’M GONNA HAVE TO STOMP YOU NOW.] Rossi advanced on the Tito/Tina being, who responded by trying to will him into a slug. Which didn’t work.

**** How is this possible? I can do anything! ****

[FRAID NOT.] A blast of power flung the gestalt being back, and the armored figure leapt at it, grabbing each hand of the radiance. [MAKE A WISH…]

**** No! Please! ****

The black form yanked. With a sizzling burst of light, the white being popped back into the dazed forms of Tito and Tina. A hole opened up in the fabric (tailored especially by really precise Haberdashers from beyond the cosmos) of this space, and Rossi tossed the Ultimate Twins through the hole.

[OKAY. ALMOST HAVE THIS STORYLINE WRAPPED UP. LET’S SEE… PUNISH IMBROGNO. CHECK. POUND PARAGON, YET GIVE HIM HIS POWERS BACK. CHECK. DEAL WITH THE ‘GOD’ AND GET THE ULTIMATE TWINS BACK INTO THE STORYLINE. CHECK. ANNIHILATE DR. MALEVO.]

He disappeared again. Annoying how he keeps doing that.

---

Jack Armington, the Dragonslayer, and Mary Lou Retina, formerly the Ultimate Woman (Not that I was paying attention. I was originally planning to have someone with a rather convoluted last name kill them by now… but then I went and killed them all off. How silly of me.) plopped ‘Bob’ into a chair in a dimly lit room somewhere in Rhode Island.

“So, great plan, Dragonslayer!” Mary Lou sent spittle flying with her irate words. “So what’s next? How do we get this Rossi guy now?”

“It won’t be easy.” Countered the abandoned concept who walked like a man. “After all, he is writing this. Everything we say, everything we do comes from him.”

“Even this?”

“Yep.”

“And this?”

“Yeah, he wrote that too.” Tiring of all the lame fourth wall jokes, Armington or Armitage or whatever his pathetic name is stood and walked to a curtain blocking off access to a doorway. “But rest

assured! Our ultimate weapon for ending Matt Rossi’s reign of terror is behind this curtain!”

“What, Keanu Reeves as Don John the bastard?”

“No.”

“His intro to acting professor?”

“No, not him either! The man waiting behind this curtain is none other than a certain… David Divad!” The curtain parted, and a man wearing a tight red spandex outfit strode out into the room. “Are you prepared?”

“For freedom from inane plotting… Matthew Rossi must die!” A sword of black lightning erupted from his clenched fist.

“Uh, excuse me?” Mary Lou waved her hand.

“What?”

“I’ve read your book… are you sure you aren’t just a clone?”

“Knowing Rossi… who can say?” Armington and Divad turned and began gathering up their things. “We have to get to Dr. Malevo’s lab, right away! He’s been working on a device to put Rossi down and out once and for all, but we need to help him!”

“I’m confused.” Mary Lou sat up. “Rossi had very little to do with all that happened before, like Splurgo and so forth, but now, it almost seems as if…”

“As if all of the entire RACC Challenge is an elaborate ruse to destroy Matt Rossi once and for all, a Machiavellian scheme so breathtakingly subtle and intricate that only the entire pool of RACC writers, angered by Rossi’s hubris during the rACCIES, could have dreamed up? That Broaddus and Franke are the ringleaders, and that all along they’ve had their sights set on eliminating this scourge once and for all?” Armington was breathing rather heavily after his outburst.

“Uh, actually, I was going to say that it seems as if this was being written by Oliver Stone.”

“No time! We must get to Malevo’s lab!”

As the three of them rushed out the door, Divad paused and spoke out loud. “I wonder what happened to Paragon and the Ultimate Twins, anyway?”

---

The Atlantic Ocean.

An unconscious Paragon, AKA Dirk Darrenger (That’s how Chad spelled it! I call retcon!) floats in the icy waters where the great glaciers feed into the sea. Next to him float the bodies of the Ultimate Twins, also out cold.

That’s it. I’m probably not going to use them again this issue. Take a good look. See? There they float, heading straight for that glacier… say, is that a guy in an army uniform frozen up in that block of ice? With a red, white and blue costume and a shield underneath? Naaah. Couldn’t be.

The ice begins to move, surrounding them… almost as if guided by an intelligence. Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s the last of them for this issue.

“Splurgo… hungers.”

---

Dr. Malevo’s lab.

The evil one-armed bandit scientist sits scheming sardonically, saturnine schemes satanic (Enough with the alliteration!) brew that fill his evil thoughts. He feverishly makes another connection on a huge machine.

“Success!” He shouts, to no one in particular. “I have done it! I have created, using the primitive technology availiable in this world… a Jas Rswert! Now I can once again have all the power I crave! Power enough to cease with continuous villanous

exposition! I will rule all the worlds there are!”

[DR. MALEVO?]

“Yes?” Blinded by triumph (Not to mention the Macauly-Schenker Group) the madman didn’t realize that his plans had come to an end. Until he looked up at the now-familar to the reader form of a black armored, all powerful Matt Rossi. (I gotta tell you, just as an ego boost, I love the fact that Chad made me a character in this thing! Look at all the havoc I’m wreaking!)

[I’M AFRAID IT’S TIME TO DIE, DR. MALEVO.]

“I can’t die yet… I haven’t seen Buffalo Girls! Never mind James E. Michener’s Texas!“

[HAVE YOU SEEN LONESOME DOVE?]

“Well, of course I have! Everybody’s seen that! It proved once and for all that Ricky Schroeder is a man!”

Suddenly, in a puff of smoke, Ricky Schroeder appeared. “The name is Rick, damn your eyes! I’m Thirty-Eight! Pay attention. MacCauly Culkin… I am the dark specter of your future! Silver Spoons sent me to hell… but I still have that neat model train.” Oh, this is getting out of hand. Suddenly Schroeder exploded.

[THEN YOU’VE SEEN ENOUGH.] A blinding blast of red light erupted from the armored figure. The mad scientist was reduced to ash (Look, Van Domelen, I’ll get Warden finished eventually! Cut me some slack here!) just as Mary Lou, Armington and Divad burst into the villain’s lair. They witnessed the consuming of their last chance.

“No!” Jack Armington, the Dragonslayer, shrieked. Divad manifested a large sword. Mary Lou… well, she just turned green at the sight of one of Dr. Malevo’s feet in a huge pile of grey ash. (Look, Dave, you don’t own the word!) “You bastard! You killed him in cold blood. You murdered him.”

[WELL, OF COURSE I DID. HE SPOKE ALMOST ENTIRELY IN EXCLAMATIONS. I HATE THAT.] Rossi landed, light from the fire he started and the flourescent bulbs overhead playing in scintillating patterns off of his vicious black armor. [I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOUR BEEF WITH ME IS, ARMINGTON.]

“You advised Imbrogno to go with… with… Covenant! I could have been the character that Chris Gumprich fell in love with! Me! Instead, he went with the adventures of a one-armed scientist.” Everyone stopped for a moment and looked at the pile of ash. (I swear to god, Dave, I don’t need your permission to use that word. And Warden is coming.) “Do you have any idea how much that hurt?”

[COVENANT WAS THE BETTER CONCEPT. YOUR ORIGIN INVOLVED IDEAS THAT NEEDED VERY DELICATE HANDLING… THAT WHOLE MISSION FROM GOD THING. AND BESIDES, I READ YOUR FIRST ISSUE… IT WASN’T THAT GOOD. CHAD MADE THE RIGHT CHOICE. TOO BAD HE LET BITTERNESS POISON HIS SOUL LIKE HE DID.] Stopping so as to give the readers a break from the caps, Rossi pointed one heavily spiked arm at Divad. [AND AS FOR YOU… WHAT, DID YOU EXPECT ME TO SPEND MY ENTIRE LIFE WRITING ABOUT YOU? YOU HAPPEN TO BE A ONE TRICK PONY… HARDLY MY GREATEST CREATION.]

“Let’s see you say that with a Claymore stuck up your snout.” Divad went into a classic Mandalay blade position. Armington prepared his seven foot bulk to leap. Rossi simply looked at them from behind the featureless black of his helmet.

[OKAY. LET’S GET STARTED WITH A WHOLE LOT OF THE OLD ULTRAVIOLENCE, THEN.]

((One unimaginably violent scene of chaotic aggression later.))

Armington was now armless. Of course, his torso was missing too, so it wasn’t likely he’d miss them. Mary Lou was hiding under a dumpster, and Divad had been beaten silly.

“Why… let… me… live?” Croaked the defeated swordsman.

[BECAUSE PUTTING YOU BACK IN YOUR HORRIBLE STORYLINE IS A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH. SINCE ARMINGTON DIDN’T HAVE ONE, HE DIED. NOW…]

The author in black armor waved his hand, and Divad vanished. He surveyed the carnage, and smiled underneath his featureless mask.

[MARY LOU… STAY UNDER THE DUMPSTER.]

“You got it. Nice and cozy here. Think I’ll get a couch.”

[I THINK THAT’S ENOUGH FOR ONE STORY. TIME TO PASS THIS MAGILLA ALONG.]

Ross vanished from the story in a blinding flare of white.

WILL PARAGON AND THE TWINS DROWN OR FREEZE IN THE ARCTIC? IS MARY LOU GOING TO STAY UNDER THE COUCH? DON’T ASK ME… I’M OUTTA HERE! ASK THE NEXT WRITER! TUNE IN NEXT TIME FOR ISSUE NUMBER SIXTEEN OF RACC CHALLENGE, A STORY TITLED…

Next issue: Chapter 16: “If I wasn’t such an evil, evil man, I’d give a short and pithy title that could easily be fit into the dialogue. But I am evil, and therefore any title I’d select must be fit to that evil. And also, it must mention cheese. Twice. Definitely has to mention cheese twice.” by Poet