GRILLO-MARXUACH DESIGN BUREAU

so - according to a poll conducted by the kind folks over at “goshyesthemiddleman”, there seems to be some demand for middleman crossover fanfic…

…and while i have publicly stated that i am more or less done writing stories for the middleman and wendy… well… what the hey, it’s christmas, and i suppose that technically, this isn’t so much a middleman story as it is a fanfic for another character…

disclaimers - please forgive any runaway typos, as this was something of a lark, and any bizarre formatting resulting from the transfer of words from pages to tumblr’s cumbersome text editor…

this fanfic is rated PG for the wanton use of the expression “jump his bones.”

SOMEWHERE IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC

8 A.M.

 

 

“Fudgety-Bow-Wow, Dubbie!”

 

The Big Green Cheese’s language was extra-salty today, but Wendy Watson couldn’t muster the gumption for a witty rejoinder for two distinct reasons. Reason number one? Two adamantine thoughts currently raging like an electrical storm in her brain:

 

Thought number one: an intense calculation of the tangled path of clues and conspiracies that had led her to this current, and precarious situation. The winding and dangerous intrigue of the past few days included but was not limited to: a. the kidnapping of a genetically-enhanced, superintelligent dolphin from a children’s waterpark in Dubuque, b. the sudden manifestation in a Bhutanese monastery of the Vitrioplasmoid Consciousness - an alien entity comprised pure hatred expressed as a small pool of malodorous brown bioluminescent ooze and c. the HEYDAR’s discovery of a not inconsiderably large rift in the fabric of space and time emanating from this location. 

 

Thought number two: a certain yearning for her aunt Margarita’s Ropa Vieja, a thick and vinegary Caribbean stew of meat, peppers, and onions whose preparation inevitably filled the house with a. a delicious and savory aroma and b. the irresistible strains of Miguel Bosé’s signature 1980‘s hit single Amante Bandido.

 

Thought number two always intruded into Wendy’s mind during moments of extreme danger… and may have been the key contributing factor to her trademark serenity in the face of overwhelming odds.

 

Reason number two for Wendy Watson’s lack of a witty rejoinder? She was - indeed - experiencing a moment of extreme danger when she heard the voice of her employer: hanging upside-down, her legs magnetically shackled to a shining steel girder over the Coliseum-like lair of yet another egomaniacal-male-chauvinist-pig-supervillain who was probably neither breastfed as a baby nor picked for the football team as a child…

 

…and beneath her, an army of somewhat comical salt-and-pepper-shaker-shaped robots… all sporting plunger-shaped manipulator arms and lethal gunsticks… all crying out the same word with shrill and excruciating homogeneity:

 

“EX-TER-MI-NATE! EX-TER-MI-NATE! EXTERMINATE!”

 

The Middleman and Wendy

in

THE WIBBLY-WOBBLY, TIMEY-WIMEY JIGGERY-POKERY

 

 

While The Middleman’s wide stance and arms-akimbo gave him the necessary heroic demeanor as he leaped from a sparkling Tesla coil onto the ramp leading to the current supervillain’s coliseum-like lair, the truth of the matter is that he had very little idea as to what expected him on the other side… 

 

…aside from an appropriately grandiose architectural enclosure, a doomsday device of unfathomably Byzantine construction, a robotic army, and a sidekick in peril.

 

“What is that thing beneath you, Dubbie?”

 

In spite of the distracting thoughts and blood rushing to her head, Wendy somehow gathered the strength to turn to her boss and give him the lowdown:

 

“While you were fighting the Tesla-powered mechanical octopus -”

 

“You mean defeating the Tesla-powered mechanical octopus,” corrected The Middleman with a tooth-gleaming smile to complement his usual meticulous exactitude.

 

“- I discovered that Kanimang Kang has gathered the necessary elements to open the Cinderellica!” 

 

“Sweet singing mice! Not the Cinderellica!” Declared the Middleman - but no sooner had he made his distress clear that a Jumbotron (because, after all, what coliseum could ever be complete without one) flared into light and motion on the far wall of the coliseum… 

 

“My plan is sheer elegance in its simplicity!”

 

“Shoulder of Orion!” Snarled The Middleman, recognizing immediately the face of his arch-nemesis, “it’s Kanimang Kang!”

 

…and indeed, across the screen blazed the dark-lensed-Shuron-Sidewinder-bespectacled visage of Kanimang Kang: head of the Federated Agents of Tyranny, Betrayal and Oppression’s Yoke, dressed in his signature beige Mao suit and sporting his trademark Ronald Reagan coif.

 

Behind Kanimang Kang snivelled the gorilla-suit-and-necktie-clad, twin Tommy gun-carrying form of Manservant Neville: the often-believed-to-be-dead-at-birth older evil twin brother and namesake of a business leader once renowned as the greatest new technology visionary in the world! 

 

“Ha-ha!” chortled Manservant Neville, “Middleham’s about to hear a monlogue!”

 

“Indeed, Manservant Neville,” declaimed Kanimang Kang, “how else will our enemy know what he gave his life to fail to stop.”

 

Instead of marshaling the final ember of a consciousness about to black out to execute the most epic eye roll in the history of contempt, Wendy simply blurted out the following -

 

“They are using the hyper-intelligent dolphin to perform the ongoing calculations that keep open the rift in time and space, with which they punched out a window to the planet Necros, through which they teleported the salt-and-pepper shaker dudes, whose combined weapons will blast open the Cinderellica, inside which is trapped the M.P.T.I.T.U. - “

 

“The Most Powerful Thing In The Universe,” confirmed The Middleman as Wendy drew a tortured breath to finish briefing her employer:

 

“ - which they will corrupt through exposure to the Vitrioplasmoid Consciousness into a weapon of unspeakable power!”

 

Her last thought before passing out? “Amazing, what a girl can learn while the boss is out defeating a Tesla-powered mechanical octopus.”

 

“Oh, phooey,” came The Middleman’s response.

 

“Damn you, sidecar!” Shouted Kanimang Kang - clenched fists shaking with the impotent frustration - his once-magnificent rant now sanctioned with extreme prejudice: double-tapped execution-style in the back of its metaphorical spine by the lethal weapon of brevity.

 

Having now duly cursed his opponents - and been vexingly deprived of a gordian explication of his nefarious scheme - Kanimang Kang exchanged befuddled looks with his sidekick. After a vaguely dispirited shrug, Kanimang Kang casually reached over to his control panel and flicked the tin toggle that engaged the nuclear-fusion reactor powering the brobdingnagian clockwork holding shut the gargantuan bellows maintaining the seal on the dauntingly large hatch of the sarcophagus containing the Cinderellica.

 

“KAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANG!” cried out The Middleman.

 

And while the unveiling of the Cinderellica - entombed in all of its transparent, slipper-shaped, crystalline vastness from the Beginning of Time Immemorial beneath what was now Kanimang Kag’s Coliseum-like lair - may sound like so bombastic and operatic-in-magnitude a process as to take hours to complete, in truth, it took a mere fraction of a second.

 

The shattering of the foot-formed glass crypt by the fire of the thousand gunsticks mounted on the salt-and-pepper shaker cyborgs took no longer.

 

Neither did the corruption of the M.P.T.I.T.U. by the dark thoughts and tortured soul of the Vitrioplasmoid Consciousness.

 

By the time The Middleman reached for his utility belt, the hybrid life force resulting from the corruption of the M.P.T.I.T.U. by the Vitrioplasmoid Consciousness has already decided that it was better off without the stewardship of Kanimang Kang, Manservant Neville, the legions of F.A.T.B.O.Y. and the salt-and-pepper shakers, and all had been smitten in a series of lightning strikes punctuated by a. eruptions of bimechanical offal (in the case of the salt-and-pepper shaker dudes) and b. far messier eruptions of purely biological offal (in the case of the humans).

 

By the time The Middleman fired his grappling gun and was halfway through his arc over the ball of light and dread where the salt-and-pepper-shaker dudes had once stood - hoping to make the final, desperate act of his life the simultaneous rescue of his sidekick and dropping of a Hydrogen Atomizing, Incendiary Load, Multi-Armament-Radiating Ypsillon (so named for it’s Y-shaped form-factor) into the opening maw of the Cinderellica, the fate of the world had already been signed, sealed and delivered. 

 

The Middleman’s final desperate act of self-sacrifice was to have been in vain.

 

Had he not heard - over the clamor of exploding cyborgs and henchmen - an aural phenomenon he had many years ago vowed to never forget… an echoing, pulsating mechanical howl best described as the animal husbanding of the arooga-horn from a Ford Model-A and a 1930’s Parisian hotel elevator inside one of the vacuum tubes of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop circa 1963.

 

AROOGA-THUMP…AROOGA-THUMP…AROOGA-THUMP!

 

By the time The Middleman’s swashbuckling trajectory had taken him to the spot where Wendy Watson hanged unconscious - but before he was able to flip the switch arming the Hydrogen Atomizing, Incendiary Load, Multi-Armament-Radiating Ypsillon - both he and his sidekick were in a different place altogether.

 

Inside the cobalt blue police call box which had inexplicably materialized over the late Kanimang Kang’s Coliseum-like lair and briefly hovered in space before vanishing with a final echoing AROOGA-THUMP!

 

—-

STAY TUNED FOR PART TWO…