Spanner Chapter 13: The Battle of Evergreen Park (Revision 2)

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Chaos Angel Spanner — Book 1: Rock City Blues
Chapter 13: The Battle of Evergreen Park (Revision 2)

Sparks sends word from the COPCO offices that Cascadia’s persistence in liberal heresy is provoking Governor Brinkman and the Fearsome Foursome to bring the King of the Holy Christian People’s Dominion of Texas (which today [i.e. in 2014] stretches well into California), Patriot I (a.k.a. Roger Steele Becket of Dictel, Incorporated, patriarch of the House of Cromwell Becket), to scare the fear of Jesus America into the state’s stubborn city people come this Sunday. Byron Scofield, Shepherd and self-proclaimed Holy Prophet of the Church of America, decides that now is the time to take his revenge against his beloved Drusilla Becket’s accursed changeling, Shira Thomas. In Mr. Whitmer’s philosophy class, Leila and Fiona Shelley decide they would choose perfect happiness at the price of dying young rather than live forever. And the big conflict comes to a head when Team Bremelo accept a Team Challenge from Scofield, Stan Green, and their gang of Moral Enforcers in Bremerton’s biggest downtown park. Shira wields a mean loaded Go-Yo™ — but Scofield’s gotten his hands on the dreaded Travelling Shovel of Death...

Table of Contents:

1. Wake-Up Call (August 18, 2011)
2. Guess Who’s Coming (August 19, 2011)
3. New Weapons (August 20, 2011)
4. Who Wants to Live Forever (August 21, 2011)
5. Way to Be a Lady (August 22, 2011)
6. Fight Club Picnic (August 23, 2011)

The original introduction remains mostly relevant, except for two things pertaining to this second revision and the upcoming third: the political aspect now draws much more strongly on previous chapters, and the characters I neglected in the first edition are now much better developed in the second and especially third editions, carrying over their story threads from previous chapters. And Byron Scofield, having made his first appearance in Chapter 3 part 6, is no longer such a new menace...

Halfway into a story, you expect something important to happen that will power the story to the shocking conclusion. Well, we’re now well into the second half of Spanner, which means the Author had better pick up the pace. And how better to do that than by having one villain draw a higher-ranking villain into his fight? Charmian Fleer has done this already. Now it’s Stan Green’s turn. Next — who knows?

From the Project Notebooks: the homeroom teacher’s question, “Ilsa, She-Wolf of Hollywood,” the mock fainting spells, Mimi in the locker room, the battle in the park, the loaded yo-yo, and the policebots (and what Shira does to them). All are from the early ’00s except for the robot idea that has remained essentially the same since the ’90s.

So far, I’ve neglected some major players and elements in the story. I left them behind when I took the story to high school. But now the strife is beginning to spread outside the school. Particularly from Chapter 5 onward, I downplayed some of the story’s more political aspects so I could introduce important plotlines and focus on the interplay of specific characters. That’s done. Now it’s time for me to start kicking the story into high gear.

Since Team Bremelo are holding a big gathering with family and friends invited to come, I’m taking the opportunity to bring some of the back. I’m also debuting another major villain, one I originally created for a very early version of Chapter 1 I plotted out in the later Project Notebooks. He’s a major player in my still unfinished prequel, Bad Company: A Corporate Terror Story. But he never appeared in the Script Frenzy 2008 comics script. So he hasn’t yet had an opportunity to start making trouble — till now.

Beware: the Travelling Shovel of Death craves blood...

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Copyright © 2011 Dennis Jernberg. Some rights reserved.