Chaos Angel Spanner — Chapter 22: There Is No Law
Part 5: Total Police Breakdown (Final Revision)
Part 5: Total Police Breakdown (Final Revision)
foot ferry terminal. Almost as soon as the nudefighters get on the pier, there’s Lefty Lucy approaches already prepared to paint. She gives Shira a lusty kiss, but this time Shira waves her off. “No paint this time, thanks.”
“What, y’all ain’t Stylin’?”
Jennifer puts an affectionate arm around her. “What, during a strike? Not when the Slashers are out in force.” She smiles at Brandi and Arisa; they wink at Lucy.
The girl with the violet eyes embraces Shira from the side and gives Lucy a She’s mine, bitch! smile. Lucy takes a good look at her. “That must be that gorgeous girlfriend you been talkin’ ’bout. Mmmm-mm! she looks delish.”
Jennifer embraces them both. “Come on, we’re a famous couple now.”
Lucy lets go of Shira, puts her hands on Leila’s shoulders, and looks her up and down. “Glad y’all still playin’ for the all-girl team.”
Akimi studies her skeptically. “Guys, can we go now?”
Shira pulls Lucy in to kiss her. “Sorry gotta go ’bye.” The girls follow the other fighters off the pier and into the city.
above the city. Desiree launches herself from the Black Tower’s roof and unleashes an electric field attack at her screaming mother. In her fury Drusilla tries to Repulse it back into her only to have it Repulsed back into any drone, copter, or Mech Knight in range. Desiree flies around, leading the robed priestess on a mid-air wild goose chase, inflaming her rage to irrationality. She spots a surveillance camera — she hovers before it, fully nude, knowing exactly who’s watching, taunting him.
pioneer square. In an alley where only bums he considers beneath lifeforms can observe, Locke Holmes takes a call from... someone. “No... The Chief... Come on, damn it! He’s onto us! He knows!”
He hears a gun cock. His blood goes cold. “Shit!” He throws the phone away and spins around to see his attacker.
The nameless Asian beauty? The ex-agent? So gorgeous in a sweater dress. She points her pistol at him. “I knew he’d play you eventually.”
He grins hatefully at an old enemy. “Fancy meeting you again... Misato Katsuragi.” He launches himself into her; she tries to throw him, then pistol whip him, but he quickly overpowers her.
underground city. Right- and left-wing terrorists brawl in the covered pedestrian streets between nightclubs. Shira, Jennifer, and the girl with the violet eyes find themselves forced to fight some off from both sides; but all the brawlers avoid Jane Dead. The naked blue headless DeadBot is the nudefighters’ ticket. They follow their least favorite music. The hate metal leads them to the techGothic.Spanner: Remember when America used to have cops? Not anymore. The Conservative Revolution replaced them with COPCO, a private company for hire. Conservatives have a hopeless infatuation with the idea of private government agencies. All it does is make them much more corruptible.The cops who arrest you may not even be cops at all. They could be gangsters impersonating cops. They could be gangsters working as cops. They could be Chinese spies out to shanghai you. They could be serial killers with a badge. Chances are you won’t even make it to a Dictel Corrections-owned jail.Attention, COPCO agents. Are you sure your fellow agents aren’t impostors out to get you?
Nameless Reporter: Reports are coming in from various cities showing COPCO agents accepting bribes from known figures of the Syndicates...COPCO CEO Sparks: There are rumors going around that this company has been infiltrated by crime syndicates. They are rumors. There are no Syndicate moles in this company.COPCO Chief Becket: There are no Mob moles in this company! How many times do I have to [censored]ing repeat it?
ABCNN: COPCO CEO Brendan Sparks has denied any infiltration by Mob agents—QVCBS: COPCO CEO denies any moles in the company—ESPNBC: CEO Sparks is denying that there are any Syndicate moles—Sun: COPCO spokesmen deny—Fox: COPCO has issued an official denial—
They dramatically throw open the double doors. What they see appalls them. Jennifer keeps her glasses up. “Boosted and shirtless, boxers high, jeans low, gangster tats all over...”
The girl laughs. “A bloody lout convention. Figures.”
“And the way they’re attacking those bots,” says Shira.
They look at each other. They nod together. “CUNT.”
That look contains a plan. “Let the gangsterskin harvest begin.” Shira disappears into the club. Jennifer and the girl look at each other, then Jane.
Without them noticing, Shira steals spray cans of female pheromones from storage and sprays them on all the sexbots and DeadBots. These are not conscious men: she knows this will work. Soon the militants are overcome by lust and gang-rape the gynoids in irrational fury. One trojan later, the gynoids crush the man weapons and rip them off their bodies. Castrated man-terrorists scream in rage, horror, and humilation; in absolute panic they run around the club bleeding like decapitated chickens. She returns to her lovers with a wicked grin. “He’s gotta shit his pants now.”
Jennifer winks. “I want video.”
They hear a pistol cock behind them. They turn to see club owner George Hassan. “Well! Shoulda figured you were Old Shithead’s piss partner.”
“Golden Dawn, even?”
“Women!” he spits. “Always out to get—”
“Your precious bodily fluids, I get it.”
“Stavros!” He points the gun at Shira. Jane slips around him, leaps on his back, slips her arms around his neck, and squeezes with robot strength. He tries to pry her arms off to no avail. His eyes and tongue pop out of his head. Finally she lets go; he falls gargling to her feet dead. Behind them, his brutal Syndicate bouncer Stavros runs toward the door naked, screaming his hatred of Woman at the top of his lungs before he bleeds out between the legs.
copco seattle. Jack Becket leaps out of his seat the moment he sees his hated cousin Desiree on screen. “What the fuck is she doing?”
Martin hisses. “Pretty cousin Desiree, it seems, has decided to spit in our faces.”
Litton chuckles. “I know exactly how to bring that bitch down.”
underground city. They walk back toward the stairway to the city above along a skylit street littered with the battered bodies of unconscious men to the right and left when who blocks their path but a Corporate man and woman. In mock surprise the girls cry out together, “Oh my god it’s John Nike!”
They look down at her unclothed body. The woman frowns. The man grins. “Girls, you be mad Stylin’ tonight!”
Jennifer and the girl with no name cross their arms and glare at them. “You caught us at the worst possible time,” says Jennifer.
“We’re in no mood to deal,” says the girl.
Shira gives them that look. “You want me to work long hours to deceive people who can’t work, to sell gratuitous baubles to people who can’t buy.”
“It’s true, the opportunity to work oneself to death has become a coveted status symbol these days. Just ask Peter Ross.” The headhunters look at each other.
“Also long dead is Rock ’N’ Roll, whose corpse has been plastinated and is constantly being reanimated by multiple producers, writers, and fashion designers at a time and performed by acts engineered to make tweens or carboys or gay bitch-cultists succumb to fangirlism and give up their money like a pagan offering. It’s gotten disturbingly uncanny-valley.”
“Stylism’s next. Pretty City’s bound to IP-protect it sooner or later. Besides, nudism deprives the loathsome Molotov Twins of their ill-gained profits, to which I say good riddance.”
“There’s one more problem,” Jennifer adds. “Your ‘sweet science’ is coming up against some hard limits imposed by the facts of economics. The rate of profit is collapsing faster than ever, like a trash compactor’s walls about to crush your industry. Wages are unaffordable now, slaves have to be fed, and even robots have maintenance costs. The Revolution was intended to force the rate of profit back up by any means necessary. It’s already failed.”
“So,” says Shira, ”no.”
John cocks an eyebrow. “No? What do you mean by no?”
“With what you know,” the woman says, “you could strike a fortune beyond your wildest dreams.”
Shira’s mocking smile disappears, leaving just a hard stare. “Tell me something I don’t know.” The nudefighters and their headless DeadBot leave; the headhunters can only stare. The woman jealously nudges John.
above the city. Holoprojectors across the city, left over from the Seattle Incident and still used for advertising, fill the sky with ghostly Michelin Men. Desiree begins to panic; but when she sees her mother approaching to fire a cheap shot, she quickly regains control of herself. She quickly flies out of Drusilla’s range, focuses on the projectors, and shorts them all out each with a single small spark. The Michelin Men disappear all at once. She catches her breath and returns to face Drusilla.
copco seattle. Litton stares at the monitors in disbelief. “Nobody could have done that.”
“Except another superhero,” Jack snarls. “Meet Livewire III, live without a costume.”
pioneer square. The nudefighters and their DeadBot open the door to the city only to find themselves facing down the gun of Chinese Corporatist Party (Holdings) Limited’s Newtype hunter Toni Wong. “You were right to reject those petty marketing fools,” she says, ”in favor of our glorious offer.”
Shira shoots her that look. “You mean sell out and kowtow to the Eight Immortal and Forty-Four Exalted Houses of Chinese Corporatist Party (Holdings) Limited? You’re as bad as the Beckets.”
“You’ll ‘shanghai’ us over your dead body,” says the nameless girl. ”Go back to Shanghai, agent, or I’ll send you back.”
Jennifer glares at Toni. “You again? Did you know she’s selling your spies disinformation?”
Shira grins. “The Eight Immortal and Forty-Four Exalted Houses of China, or the One Imperial House of America? A rock or a hard place, which should I choose?”
Reiko Matsumoto the miko cocks her pistol behind Toni’s head. “My friend and her lovers will not sell out. You will go away and leave them alone.”
“Lovers,” Toni hisses.
Shira tilts her head. “Sounds dysgenic, eh?”
At that moment Daisy, Brandi, Akimi, Arisa, and Polly arrive, nude like their friends, geared up and armed with their special weapons. Reiko lowers her gun. Toni glowers at the newcomers, silently gives up, and runs away. Shira thanks Reiko silently. Reiko turns and winks at Daisy. Then she leaves.
Shira says, “Let’s go!” Together the nudefighters leave the girl with the violet eyes behind.
back alley. Cop versus cop. He rapes her viciously. She fights him like a crazed animal, clawing at his eyes, biting anything that comes near, hurts him as hard as she can. The pain only enrages him into ever more irrational fury.Amanda: COPCO employees marching outside the Public Safety Building, protesting persistent rumors that they’ve been targeted for takeover by the Syndicates...CEO Sparks: (waves arms) This is un-American! I can’t let those thugs betray Our Nation to the Chinks! I’ll shoot ’em all myself if I have to!Nameless Reporter: (over the Seattle Public Safety Building) Breaking news: Shots have been fired at COPCO Seattle as part of a suspected war between Syndicates known to have infiltrated the company. New reports from the New York Stock Exchange in BloombergCity™ say Chinese Corporatist Party (Holdings) Limited is taking advantage of the chaos to extend its hostile takeover bid to COPCO.Jack: Our chief investigator is on the — what the [censored]? Him too? [censored]!
above the city. At last, Desiree stops directly above the Black Tower. She holds out her arms, shifts her attention elsewhere, and hovers. Drusilla concludes that she has an easy shot and rises into position to destroy her daughter forever.
Suddenly all the war machines in the sky explode in a series of fireballs above the city. Drusilla looks around in shock. They burn in the sky, the fires quickly dissipate into smoke, and then the sky is clear. She looks back at her daughter, younger and stronger and now more powerful, staring at her, focusing her power on her — in a panic Drusilla flies away with a flourish of fluttering robes.
Desiree descends to rejoin her own daughter, her girl with no name. They kiss long and passionately. She gives the girl a questioning look. The girl nods happily. They begin to make love on the roof in defiance of Echelon’s paranoid eye.
capitol hill. At a Seattle Central Community College campus crowded with strikers and radicals, the nudefighters find the now naked feminists painting slogans on their bodies. Shira throws water on them. “What the fuck you guys doing? Damn it, we’re on strike! Haven’t you people ever worked a job before, or are y’all just sorority girls playing radical on daddy’s trust fund? Didn’t you ever get fired, cheated or molested by Corporate predators only out for profit and glory? Cut the bourgeois radical crap for once! The Party are bourgeois radicals!”Fox: It’s a war out there!Sun: Cops are battling cops at COPCO Seattle!ABCNN: Reports are beginning to come in of serious infiltration into the law enforcement company.QVCBS: There’s no way of knowing which is a cop and which is not.ESPNBC: And my evil clone’s watching all of it as it happens! (scornfully) Just look at the [censored] gloat.
Jennifer interrupts them before they can yell back. “Never forget we women are the most exploited workers. Divide and conquer’s the traditional Corporate strategy.”
“Which side are y’all on, ladies?”
They try to yell back, but Jennifer whistles to shut them up. “Why do we fight naked? Girls, it goes beyond topfree rights or Freikörperkultur. Nudity, you see, is the antithesis of costume. The Party determine their hierarchy by costume, with the superheroes standing above all. We reject costume to affirm our equality and stand together as our ordinary, unspecial selves. This is the way of nudefighting! Now will you get those greasepaint costumes off your bodies and nudefight?”
The painted radicals stare at the sweaty bare-skinned nudefighters. They look amongst each other. One by one they come to agree. They look for soap and wash the slogans off.
naval base bremerton. They arrive by train. Cranes lift them from their cars onto the deck of the aircraft carrier USS George W. Bush. Now Admiral Currie surveys the sound cannons massed upon the deck with satisfaction. “This’ll teach you monkeys a lesson,” he exults. “You want heavy metal? Let’s rock!”
On all channels, the strikers swarm back into the now cop-free streets, battle to take back the streets from terrorist factions and Syndicates using weapons the agents left behind, until at last they reclaim the streets and the general strike resumes.Amanda: What’s this? New reports are coming in that COPCO is calling in agents, abandoning strategic locations throughout Seattle to the radicals!Jack: My hands are tied, [censored] it! We gotta take care of the threat at home first!CEO Sparks: We’re sending in more outside agents to regain control of the situation.Drusilla: Johnny, you fool!Nameless Reporter: COPCO Seattle has collapsed!
pioneer square. Holmes lies on the pavement bleeding and cursing. The nameless female ex-agent he calls Misato Katsuragi calmly puts her sweater dress back on, dons her shoulder holster and puts back her gun, and picks up her phone.
She calls Shira. Once she knows, so will the world.
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[Revision 4 Final, 4/12/13: Contains new scenes plus older ones heavily revised to fit Final Revision continuity and for plot reasons. The title story thread originally an entire section of Chapter 19 R2. Original R2 title: “The Spanner Show” (now very much irrelevant).]
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