The Long Con
Prompt: Pauline Vanier
The Long Con
by
doqz, thatpalebluedot, and avariel_wings
Warnings for language, general insanity, and reckless use of real people. (Blame Doqz. Really.) My apologies for being late in posting!
St. Johns, New Brunswick
2008
Once this was a barren wasteland, bereft of culture and good conversation. It was good to know, despite everything, that some things remained the same.
It was a dark and stormy night, and as the clock chimed 12 am, two figures huddled against each other in futile defense against the cold August morning. The two stragglers crept carefully down the alleyway of the last free city in Canada.
The blinking lights of the American embassy beckoned them to safety, but their minds were consumed by the horror they had experienced over the last decade. They approached the illusory safety of the grand brick and concrete, Old Glory flying as proudly as ever against the lightning strikes throughout the city.
As they paused at the gates, the shorter bearded figure could not hold the terror locked inside of him. His voice breaking into a shriek of rage and fear, he cried out: “I fucking warned you Warren Ellis would ruin Thunderbolts!”
The Marine guarding the gates blinked, but made no other reaction. Nothing much surprised him anymore in this land of chaos and death. He was one of the Old Guard. He had survived the Death Ride as the American Embassy had been evacuated first from Toronto, then from Winnipeg when it fell to the ravening hordes. It was he who had wounded Jack Three-Tooth, the GoldMouth, at the Siege of Quebec. On this sunny evening he was tired, pissed, and way too sober for this. After a cursory check of their documents, he waved the two figures inside.
***
Pauline Vanier had spent her entire life working in the government. She was a State Department brat, raised and bred in every country across the world except her own. Now, finally, after 25 years of service to her country, she was again serving her people in another land. And to tell the truth, she was sick and tired of her people. The only pleasure she received was the whiskey bottle discreetly hidden under the picture of her daughter, in the third drawer of her desk. A judicious sip, now and then, was taken after sending another ungrateful, whining wretch home to the bright, shining American civilization that she hadn’t seen for a quarter of a century.
The two figures in her doorway hesitated for a moment before coming. They seemed vaguely familiar at first, but so did all the refugees, whose faces blended together into a collage of grime and despair.
“Name, place of birth, last residence please,” she recited tiredly, looking back down at her paperwork. It was easier if she didn’t look at them.
“Smith,” the taller one replied tiredly. “Jim Smith. Evansville, Kentucky. Yellowknife, Northern Territories.”
Pauline didn’t even bother to look up as she snorted in disbelief. “You people aren’t even trying anymore, are you? Smith? Jim Smith? Couldn’t you at least come up with something entertaining, like Paul Anka?!”
The shorter one responded to her, his voice muffled by his thick beard. “It is his name! Like we’ve got nothing better to do than play games with you!”
It was the muffled voice that caught her memory, and she looked up at him in shock, now recognizing the short man whose beard was worthy of an angry prophet. She paled and reached for her whiskey, gulping down the remnants in one swallow.
“Michael! James! How did you escape Toronto?!”
“No thanks to you, you cock juggling thunder cunt.” Michael was glaring at her in fury. The pale, emaciated figure spewing obscenities at her…actually resembled the man she remembered from Toronto. But how they escaped? And wait, wasn’t there---
“Wait, where’s your friend, the Jewish girl?”
James looked away, his face dark and frozen, the memories of that terrible in front of the CN Tower, the hordes of RavenBlack Hand who had ripped Brucha from their sight in the midst of the battle frenzy.
“She didn’t make it.” He closed his eyes for a moment, and decided not to mention the two others who had fallen that day, Kate and Daroos crushed beneath the feet of the teeming mass of people, trying vainly to escape the black-clad wave of ninja warriors gone mad with blood-lust.
The rumor still stubbornly persisted that deep underneath the rubble of the Tower lived another survivor–if you could call him that–a mad Doctor. Whoever entered his domain from either side was never seen again. One did not trespass on the grounds of the Benway cult lightly.
Pauline stared at them in shock which slowly began to build into a cold fury. These were the instigators. These were the ones who were part of the Epicenter. And they dared to come to HER for aid? She remembered that August day perfectly, the heat drowning the Toronto streets, the prospect of finally going home. She had stepped outside for a quick lunch, to stop at the Bishop and Belcher for a bit of bangers and mash. She had heard reports of a disturbance at a nearby pub, but had shrugged it off.
Less than a day later, Toronto was in flames.
What started off as a seemingly harmless, even academic debate, pondering the age old question: Ninja, or pirate—had soon escalated into a war that had torn apart the Great White North.
She stared at them, and then sighed in resignation. “I suppose you want out, then, from this mess that you created.”
James shuffled a little uncomfortably, not answering, but Mike blurted out in anger: “Fuck yes, we want out! What the hell do you think we came here for? Your company?”
She deigned to respond, gritting her teeth against the onslaught of curses she’d like to unleash. Instead, she pulled her paperwork together and handed them across. “Fill out each of these. In triplicate. Unfortunately, we have no copy machines as our last generator was destroyed in a suicide mission from the GreenBeard Crew.”
***
Two hours later, as she processed their paperwork, she sighed and threw her pen down. She rubbed her head in a futile effort to relieve the headache that never really ended. Perhaps it wasn’t fair of her to place all the blame on the Smith brothers—after all, mediators from both sides and numerous third parties had tried to end the conflict without success.
They had even tried the oldest strategy of all—which had almost worked. The cease-fire during the Lawrence-Hemler wedding, officiated by a supposedly neutral party (a priest from the newly arisen Church of Apocolypse Soonish, who wore biker shorts and drank Guinness during the ceremony) had lasted almost 10 full days before culminating in a vicious bloodbath on the steps of Montreal city hall.
Long story short—there is no more Montreal.
The last anyone saw of the priest he was disappearing into the crowd of pirates, swinging his Guinness bottle with joyful abandon, and screaming something about: “The bloody Frogs!”
Pauline finished the last of the Smiths paperwork, and then pulled a very special list out of her top drawer. It wasn’t official, and it wasn’t public, but everyone did it anyway. Everyone had a list of the Dexcon Cursed. She glanced down over the names, sliding down the roster with a practiced indifference, moving past those whose fates had been accounted for. Some, like Pebblin, had remarkably short histories—she didn’t even make it out of Fiddler’s Green. Legend had it she went down under the weight of the mob with teeth still in the throat of a hapless waiter, jamming a pastry of some sort into his face and asking him, in a chillingly mild voice: “How do you like me now, bitch? How do you like me now?”
Others had slightly longer and somewhat more exciting careers. Like JBMcDragon, whose sheer lack of morals and scruples, aided by her inherent nature of viciousness, quickly clawed her way to the leadership of the DragonClaw Ninja Society, and led them into a six month bloody rampage over three provinces before they were cornered and lynched by the cowboys of Alberta.
The victors of that battle weren’t able to celebrate their success for long though—led by their small but fierce Captain, Fatima’s Rangers were halted at the border of British Columbia by the survivors of DragonClaw, now known as the Elven Warriors (quickly renamed the Fairies by the rest of the nation). The battle lasted three days and ended with a standoff between Captain Fatima and Shinobi Chandri—both fell into the raging waters of the Fraser, never to be seen again.
Even the stalwart leaders of the Cursed could not escape the dark night that fell upon the once proud nation. Some fought to the bitter end, like Matthew Nute, who started out with the noblest of intentions, and for a time, gave hope to all those who yearned for a time when the cruel dynamic of ninjas vs. pirates would be broken. But in the end, his armored column was subsumed into the greater whole of the EatonCentre Corsairs.
Unable to deal with this cruel fate, Nute escaped into the wilds of Algonquin Provincial Park and went feral. Each night he would venture out into the last remaining pubs in the city, and carry off one child and one laptop back to his cave of trade paperbacks of the Authority. He was eventually vanquished by Shai PeriHawk, the only one brave enough to enter the rank cave where he dwelt. The battle of Mizzy Lake lasted ten days and took both their lives.
Of course, the fate of the architect of the disaster is the most tragic. The pinnacle of his career turned out to be his undoing. He still wanders, forgotten and quite mad down Bloor Street, shivering in his rags, and keeping a tight grip on the bell which he rings each night. His pitiful shriek echoes through the vast expanse of the dead city: “All is well, all is well. Come back to the con!” His constant shadows are the two cats who trail at his feet, bringing him the rats he lives upon. At night he is rumored to sleep in a fort of beer bottles, rambling incoherently to the renamed Wink-Wink and Nudge-Nudge.
The only other companion Dex has in the city is Ben, the Pirate Queen of Church Street.
Pauline sighed, and then carefully picked up a silver pen she kept for occasions like this, marking ‘alive’ next to the names of Jim and Mike Smith. She glanced at Brucha’s name, with a question mark still waiting, and put down the silver pen to pick up the black.
***
As the Smiths walked into the crowded basement currently serving as the refugee center, their eyes habitually scanned the crowd for familiar faces, and ignored the miasma of despair with the ease of long practice. They walked towards the small table holding the limited amount of personal supplies distributed to the refugees.
Standing in the line and gazing vacantly ahead of him, Jim slowly became aware that the conversation taking place in front of him contained names he didn’t expect to hear again.
“She almost succeeded,” the short woman said.
“Well, no wonder with her enforcer,” the other replied. “Do you what they’re calling an impalement in Calgary now? Doing a Sichter.”
“Gods only know what damage they could have done if they’d broken out. Four Australians running loose in Alberta! Thank goodness Tap’s Marauders and Rith’s Sea and Sky Legions caught them.”
Jim shook his head, barely having the energy to spare for grief and moved ahead to pick up his supplies. He and Mike sat down on a threadbare cot, and Jim leaned back, closing his eyes.
The story didn’t move him that much, he expected something similar. Familiar faces were becoming fewer. The last time he met somebody was in Moosoonee where the ill-conceived idea of having dinner with Aisy, Alicia, Lauren, and Heatherly ended in blood, tears and glitter.
Nobody expected Azzy’s Blue-Nose Crew to come by dog-sled. The town fell in one night.
Unfortunately for them, the Blue-Nose Crew indulged during their victory a bit too much, and Tangerine’s Trucker-Ninja’s wiped them out. Dog-sled wasn’t the only form of transport after all.
Thankfully, Doqz managed to get the two brothers out of the ravaged town, with his battered helicopter, proudly named Black Smoochee. But they were unable to rescue Doqz when the intrepid captain piloted his proud ship into the teeth of a winter storm, screaming defiantly into the whirling snow: “I am BATMAN!”
***
Two days later, the Smith brothers boarded the good ship Diefenbaker, feeling something strange and unfamiliar—hope. At last, they were going home, escaping this benighted den of misery and despair, once known as Canada, a wretched hive of scum and villainy.
Jim stood on the bow of the ship, watching his brother talk quietly with one other survivor fleeing the northern wastes, Indiana-J. He looked out at the open sea…which suddenly was not open anymore.
That unfamiliar feeling of hope died quickly in his chest and he stared at a rapidly approaching shape in the distance. No—no, it couldn’t be. Everyone had sworn the Black Pearl had destroyed it! But still, it was there, the white and silver shape of the plane slicing through the sky.
“Mike! Mike, look!”
His brother and Indiana turned, almost in slow motion, their faces showing confusion that turned into shock and fear.
“No!” Jen screamed. “I thought she was dead!”
“Some one forgot to tell her that!” Mike shouted in response, staring as Alestar’s Iceberg swooped towards them.
The three watched in horror as the silver and white jet careened towards Diefenbaker, and with a loud and grinding sound, slammed into the aft hull. The world disappeared into a haze of flame and smoke.
The last thing the world heard from the doomed ship Diefenbaker was a quiet and resigned voice crying out: “I fucking told you Warren Ellis would ruin Thunderbolts!”
The Long Con
by
doqz, thatpalebluedot, and avariel_wingsWarnings for language, general insanity, and reckless use of real people. (Blame Doqz. Really.) My apologies for being late in posting!
St. Johns, New Brunswick
2008
Once this was a barren wasteland, bereft of culture and good conversation. It was good to know, despite everything, that some things remained the same.
It was a dark and stormy night, and as the clock chimed 12 am, two figures huddled against each other in futile defense against the cold August morning. The two stragglers crept carefully down the alleyway of the last free city in Canada.
The blinking lights of the American embassy beckoned them to safety, but their minds were consumed by the horror they had experienced over the last decade. They approached the illusory safety of the grand brick and concrete, Old Glory flying as proudly as ever against the lightning strikes throughout the city.
As they paused at the gates, the shorter bearded figure could not hold the terror locked inside of him. His voice breaking into a shriek of rage and fear, he cried out: “I fucking warned you Warren Ellis would ruin Thunderbolts!”
The Marine guarding the gates blinked, but made no other reaction. Nothing much surprised him anymore in this land of chaos and death. He was one of the Old Guard. He had survived the Death Ride as the American Embassy had been evacuated first from Toronto, then from Winnipeg when it fell to the ravening hordes. It was he who had wounded Jack Three-Tooth, the GoldMouth, at the Siege of Quebec. On this sunny evening he was tired, pissed, and way too sober for this. After a cursory check of their documents, he waved the two figures inside.
***
Pauline Vanier had spent her entire life working in the government. She was a State Department brat, raised and bred in every country across the world except her own. Now, finally, after 25 years of service to her country, she was again serving her people in another land. And to tell the truth, she was sick and tired of her people. The only pleasure she received was the whiskey bottle discreetly hidden under the picture of her daughter, in the third drawer of her desk. A judicious sip, now and then, was taken after sending another ungrateful, whining wretch home to the bright, shining American civilization that she hadn’t seen for a quarter of a century.
The two figures in her doorway hesitated for a moment before coming. They seemed vaguely familiar at first, but so did all the refugees, whose faces blended together into a collage of grime and despair.
“Name, place of birth, last residence please,” she recited tiredly, looking back down at her paperwork. It was easier if she didn’t look at them.
“Smith,” the taller one replied tiredly. “Jim Smith. Evansville, Kentucky. Yellowknife, Northern Territories.”
Pauline didn’t even bother to look up as she snorted in disbelief. “You people aren’t even trying anymore, are you? Smith? Jim Smith? Couldn’t you at least come up with something entertaining, like Paul Anka?!”
The shorter one responded to her, his voice muffled by his thick beard. “It is his name! Like we’ve got nothing better to do than play games with you!”
It was the muffled voice that caught her memory, and she looked up at him in shock, now recognizing the short man whose beard was worthy of an angry prophet. She paled and reached for her whiskey, gulping down the remnants in one swallow.
“Michael! James! How did you escape Toronto?!”
“No thanks to you, you cock juggling thunder cunt.” Michael was glaring at her in fury. The pale, emaciated figure spewing obscenities at her…actually resembled the man she remembered from Toronto. But how they escaped? And wait, wasn’t there---
“Wait, where’s your friend, the Jewish girl?”
James looked away, his face dark and frozen, the memories of that terrible in front of the CN Tower, the hordes of RavenBlack Hand who had ripped Brucha from their sight in the midst of the battle frenzy.
“She didn’t make it.” He closed his eyes for a moment, and decided not to mention the two others who had fallen that day, Kate and Daroos crushed beneath the feet of the teeming mass of people, trying vainly to escape the black-clad wave of ninja warriors gone mad with blood-lust.
The rumor still stubbornly persisted that deep underneath the rubble of the Tower lived another survivor–if you could call him that–a mad Doctor. Whoever entered his domain from either side was never seen again. One did not trespass on the grounds of the Benway cult lightly.
Pauline stared at them in shock which slowly began to build into a cold fury. These were the instigators. These were the ones who were part of the Epicenter. And they dared to come to HER for aid? She remembered that August day perfectly, the heat drowning the Toronto streets, the prospect of finally going home. She had stepped outside for a quick lunch, to stop at the Bishop and Belcher for a bit of bangers and mash. She had heard reports of a disturbance at a nearby pub, but had shrugged it off.
Less than a day later, Toronto was in flames.
What started off as a seemingly harmless, even academic debate, pondering the age old question: Ninja, or pirate—had soon escalated into a war that had torn apart the Great White North.
She stared at them, and then sighed in resignation. “I suppose you want out, then, from this mess that you created.”
James shuffled a little uncomfortably, not answering, but Mike blurted out in anger: “Fuck yes, we want out! What the hell do you think we came here for? Your company?”
She deigned to respond, gritting her teeth against the onslaught of curses she’d like to unleash. Instead, she pulled her paperwork together and handed them across. “Fill out each of these. In triplicate. Unfortunately, we have no copy machines as our last generator was destroyed in a suicide mission from the GreenBeard Crew.”
***
Two hours later, as she processed their paperwork, she sighed and threw her pen down. She rubbed her head in a futile effort to relieve the headache that never really ended. Perhaps it wasn’t fair of her to place all the blame on the Smith brothers—after all, mediators from both sides and numerous third parties had tried to end the conflict without success.
They had even tried the oldest strategy of all—which had almost worked. The cease-fire during the Lawrence-Hemler wedding, officiated by a supposedly neutral party (a priest from the newly arisen Church of Apocolypse Soonish, who wore biker shorts and drank Guinness during the ceremony) had lasted almost 10 full days before culminating in a vicious bloodbath on the steps of Montreal city hall.
Long story short—there is no more Montreal.
The last anyone saw of the priest he was disappearing into the crowd of pirates, swinging his Guinness bottle with joyful abandon, and screaming something about: “The bloody Frogs!”
Pauline finished the last of the Smiths paperwork, and then pulled a very special list out of her top drawer. It wasn’t official, and it wasn’t public, but everyone did it anyway. Everyone had a list of the Dexcon Cursed. She glanced down over the names, sliding down the roster with a practiced indifference, moving past those whose fates had been accounted for. Some, like Pebblin, had remarkably short histories—she didn’t even make it out of Fiddler’s Green. Legend had it she went down under the weight of the mob with teeth still in the throat of a hapless waiter, jamming a pastry of some sort into his face and asking him, in a chillingly mild voice: “How do you like me now, bitch? How do you like me now?”
Others had slightly longer and somewhat more exciting careers. Like JBMcDragon, whose sheer lack of morals and scruples, aided by her inherent nature of viciousness, quickly clawed her way to the leadership of the DragonClaw Ninja Society, and led them into a six month bloody rampage over three provinces before they were cornered and lynched by the cowboys of Alberta.
The victors of that battle weren’t able to celebrate their success for long though—led by their small but fierce Captain, Fatima’s Rangers were halted at the border of British Columbia by the survivors of DragonClaw, now known as the Elven Warriors (quickly renamed the Fairies by the rest of the nation). The battle lasted three days and ended with a standoff between Captain Fatima and Shinobi Chandri—both fell into the raging waters of the Fraser, never to be seen again.
Even the stalwart leaders of the Cursed could not escape the dark night that fell upon the once proud nation. Some fought to the bitter end, like Matthew Nute, who started out with the noblest of intentions, and for a time, gave hope to all those who yearned for a time when the cruel dynamic of ninjas vs. pirates would be broken. But in the end, his armored column was subsumed into the greater whole of the EatonCentre Corsairs.
Unable to deal with this cruel fate, Nute escaped into the wilds of Algonquin Provincial Park and went feral. Each night he would venture out into the last remaining pubs in the city, and carry off one child and one laptop back to his cave of trade paperbacks of the Authority. He was eventually vanquished by Shai PeriHawk, the only one brave enough to enter the rank cave where he dwelt. The battle of Mizzy Lake lasted ten days and took both their lives.
Of course, the fate of the architect of the disaster is the most tragic. The pinnacle of his career turned out to be his undoing. He still wanders, forgotten and quite mad down Bloor Street, shivering in his rags, and keeping a tight grip on the bell which he rings each night. His pitiful shriek echoes through the vast expanse of the dead city: “All is well, all is well. Come back to the con!” His constant shadows are the two cats who trail at his feet, bringing him the rats he lives upon. At night he is rumored to sleep in a fort of beer bottles, rambling incoherently to the renamed Wink-Wink and Nudge-Nudge.
The only other companion Dex has in the city is Ben, the Pirate Queen of Church Street.
Pauline sighed, and then carefully picked up a silver pen she kept for occasions like this, marking ‘alive’ next to the names of Jim and Mike Smith. She glanced at Brucha’s name, with a question mark still waiting, and put down the silver pen to pick up the black.
***
As the Smiths walked into the crowded basement currently serving as the refugee center, their eyes habitually scanned the crowd for familiar faces, and ignored the miasma of despair with the ease of long practice. They walked towards the small table holding the limited amount of personal supplies distributed to the refugees.
Standing in the line and gazing vacantly ahead of him, Jim slowly became aware that the conversation taking place in front of him contained names he didn’t expect to hear again.
“She almost succeeded,” the short woman said.
“Well, no wonder with her enforcer,” the other replied. “Do you what they’re calling an impalement in Calgary now? Doing a Sichter.”
“Gods only know what damage they could have done if they’d broken out. Four Australians running loose in Alberta! Thank goodness Tap’s Marauders and Rith’s Sea and Sky Legions caught them.”
Jim shook his head, barely having the energy to spare for grief and moved ahead to pick up his supplies. He and Mike sat down on a threadbare cot, and Jim leaned back, closing his eyes.
The story didn’t move him that much, he expected something similar. Familiar faces were becoming fewer. The last time he met somebody was in Moosoonee where the ill-conceived idea of having dinner with Aisy, Alicia, Lauren, and Heatherly ended in blood, tears and glitter.
Nobody expected Azzy’s Blue-Nose Crew to come by dog-sled. The town fell in one night.
Unfortunately for them, the Blue-Nose Crew indulged during their victory a bit too much, and Tangerine’s Trucker-Ninja’s wiped them out. Dog-sled wasn’t the only form of transport after all.
Thankfully, Doqz managed to get the two brothers out of the ravaged town, with his battered helicopter, proudly named Black Smoochee. But they were unable to rescue Doqz when the intrepid captain piloted his proud ship into the teeth of a winter storm, screaming defiantly into the whirling snow: “I am BATMAN!”
***
Two days later, the Smith brothers boarded the good ship Diefenbaker, feeling something strange and unfamiliar—hope. At last, they were going home, escaping this benighted den of misery and despair, once known as Canada, a wretched hive of scum and villainy.
Jim stood on the bow of the ship, watching his brother talk quietly with one other survivor fleeing the northern wastes, Indiana-J. He looked out at the open sea…which suddenly was not open anymore.
That unfamiliar feeling of hope died quickly in his chest and he stared at a rapidly approaching shape in the distance. No—no, it couldn’t be. Everyone had sworn the Black Pearl had destroyed it! But still, it was there, the white and silver shape of the plane slicing through the sky.
“Mike! Mike, look!”
His brother and Indiana turned, almost in slow motion, their faces showing confusion that turned into shock and fear.
“No!” Jen screamed. “I thought she was dead!”
“Some one forgot to tell her that!” Mike shouted in response, staring as Alestar’s Iceberg swooped towards them.
The three watched in horror as the silver and white jet careened towards Diefenbaker, and with a loud and grinding sound, slammed into the aft hull. The world disappeared into a haze of flame and smoke.
The last thing the world heard from the doomed ship Diefenbaker was a quiet and resigned voice crying out: “I fucking told you Warren Ellis would ruin Thunderbolts!”
