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I realize that this doesn't fit under the accepted definition of
anime, but it *is* animated... And no, it has nothing to do with
the spate of "Final Choice" fics floating around.
"Will that be all for you, Mister Flanders?"
Ned Flanders peeled a twenty dollar bill from his rather thick
money clip and set it on the counter.
"I think this'll do it, Apu," he replied cheerfully.
Apu eyed the twenty. It was far more than what he was owed for
the purchases. Perhaps it was time to push for an impulse buy.
"Would you care for a lotto ticket while you're here?" he asked
greasily. After all, he did have those octoplets to feed... "They say
the jackpot will hit fifty million."
Flanders gave him an uncomfortable smile. "Mercy, no!" he cried,
a little horror creeping into his otherwise good-natured voice. "No
gambling for me, thankily-dankily-doo!"
Apu nodded ruefully and made change.
Ned left the Kwik-E Mart, whistling tunelessly as he walked to
his car. As he neared the sensible, fuel-efficient, American-made
sedan, something out of the corner of his awareness took him by
surprise, and he froze in anticipation.
"Se�or Flanders," a thickly accented voice called to him.
He spun around to face the Bumblebee Man, his antennae bouncing
over his brow with nervous energy, and his face set with a grim
determination. Clutched in his hand was a long, curved sabre, the
steel glinting under the sodium lights of the Kwik-E Mart parking
lot.
Ned Flanders edged away from the car as the Bumblebee Man
approached him, the sword held low but ready to strike in his hand.
"Hi-diddly-doh, there, Bumblebee Man!" he greeted nervously.
"Say, that's a right-peachy sword you've got there. Ah, unless I
miss my guess, I'd say that one dates to the Napoleonic era, right?"
The Bumblebee Man gave him a curt nod of affirmation.
"Well, that's all good then," Ned added, his hands reaching into
his pockets. "Oh, mercy me; look at the time. Gotta get back to the
kids."
The Bumblebee Man took a menacing step towards him, raising the
sword as he moved.
Ned skittered out of the way as the blade whistled past his head.
The Bumblebee Man followed up with an off-hand stroke, slicing into
Ned's forearm as he stumbled away. Ned gave a girlish shriek of pain
as the sword cut him, and bright red blood spattered the body of his
car.
"Somebody help me!" he cried, hoping that Apu would hear him and
call the police. He underestimated the Pakistani's self-preservation
instincts, however, as steel shutters slammed down over the entire
storefront, and the parking lot lights went out with a *snap.*
The Bumblebee Man took advantage of this distraction to check
Ned to the ground. As Flanders sprawled out along the blacktop, the
Bumblebee Man raised his sabre to cut him down.
"HEEEELLLLLLP!!!" Flanders screamed one final time.
The Bumblebee Man brought down the sword with all his might, a
blow that would have surely cleaved the hapless Ned Flanders from
crown to crotch had the sweater-clad man not clapped his hands
decisively to either side of the blade. The stroke stopped just short
of his brow as the Bumblebee Man looked down at him in disbelief.
Flanders wrenched himself up into a sitting position, twisting
his shoulder as he did so, and throwing his weight into the grip he
held on the sword. The weapon popped from the astonished Bumblebee
Man's hand and clattered to the pavement. Flanders quickly swept it
up into his hands as he scrabbled clear of his assailant.
"�Ay, Dios mio!" the Bumblebee Man cried, and watched in
amazement, too stunned by this display of physical prowess to flee,
as Flanders examined the blade.
"Very nice, Bumblebee Man," he enthused. "Good Toledo steel. You
don't see that much anymore."
He tested the heft of the tip-heavy sword with a few swipes at
the empty air, his skill with a sabre immediately apparent by his
grace and precision. Satisfied with the sword's excellent construction,
he leveled the curved tip at the Bumblebee Man's nose. His former
assailant looked at him with an expression of defiant resignation as
the sabre came away from his nose, reared back, then shrieked through
the night air to cut his head from his neck in one clean blow. The
ring of steel on bone echoed briefly in the silence that followed.
Ned Flanders looked down at the decapitated body of the Bumblebee
Man and shook his head sadly. He made the sign of the cross over his
fallen enemy, then tucked the sword into his belt.
Arcs of ghostly blue light began to wisp around the Bumblebee Man,
lifting his body several feet off the ground. The parking lot lights
began to crackle as well, as lambent flames of blue-white rolled off
the decapitated Spanish-language TV actor to coalesce into a whirlpool
around Ned Flanders.
He threw his head back as the Quickening coursed through him,
blowing out the parking lot lights and exploding the windshield of
his car in a shower of safety glass. His brief shout of pain and
exultation trumpeted through the empty night, ending abruptly as the
body of the Bumblebee Man dropped to the hot pavement with a heavy
thud.
Ned brushed at the fragments of glass that dusted his green knit
sweater for a moment, then fished his car keys out of his pocket. It
was a good thing he had taken that home video course on auto-glass
replacement, he mused as he opened the door to his car.
He cast one final look at the Bumblebee Man, whose head lay
upright on the pavement next to his body, the antennae gently bobbing
up and down in the breeze.
"There can be only one," he said solemnly to the dead man.
"Toodily-doo!"
______________________________________________________________________
J. Austin Wilde and Fission Park Press proudly present
HIGHLANDER V: THE FINAL RIP OFF
by J. Austin Wilde
Safety Control Rod Axe Man
Fission Park Press
wildeman@gci-net.com
http://www.gci-net.com/users/w/wildeman/
The Simpsons are the creation and property of
Matt Groening and 20th Century Fox Television.
Highlander belongs to Highlander Productions LTD,
Republic Entertainment, and Spelling Entertainment,
and after all they've done to it, they can keep it.
_____________________________________________________________________
Chief Wiggums surveyed the crime scene with a sage and world-weary
nod before stepping on the headless body of the Bumblebee Man to reach
the wax paper cup of coffee and glazed doughnut offered to him by his
faithful assistants.
"The store proprietor claims he didn't see or hear a thing," his
first lackey declared.
"Their kind never does," Wiggums returned cynically.
"What a mess, eh, Chief," his other lackey observed.
"I'll say," Wiggums agreed, licking his fingers. "I hate it when
the glaze drips down the sides of the doughnuts. It gets my fingers all
sticky and..."
"Chief Wiggums!" another of Springfield's finest cried excitedly.
Wiggums turned to give a dispassionate look at the cop.
"What?" he demanded impatiently. "I've got a doughnut waiting
here, you know."
"We've established an ID on the victim," the man declared.
"Really? So who *is* this poor hispanic-looking sod wearing the
bumblebee costume and cooling in his own sauce - some assembly
required, I might add?"
"The Bumblebee Man," the cop said proudly.
Wiggums was unconvinced. "And how did you arrive at that
conclusion, eh, smart guy?"
"I was watching Telemundo this morning, and they were having a
memorial service for the Bumblebee Man. They said he was found
decapitated late last night at the Kwik-E Mart."
Wiggums nodded gravely at this phenomenal exercise in police work.
"Good work, men."
"Any ideas on who did it, Chief?" his lackey asked him.
"I've got a few ideas," Wiggums confirmed smugly. "We'll round up
the usual suspects."
* * *
Sideshow Bob stared in disbelief through the double-thick
plexiglass that separated him from his attorney in the visiting
area of the Springfield Penitentiary.
"What do you mean, I've been convicted _in absentia_ for the
murder of the Bumblebee Man, and that I've been scheduled to die by
lethal injection this very night?" he demanded indignantly. "Besides
the fact that Springfield does *not* lie within the borders of the
great state of Texas, and therefore the process of capital punishment
is just a *tad* more lengthy than the timetable you've presented to
me, I've been right here this whole time, rotting in this detestable
state correctional facility! One could imagine that this ONE...
MINOR... LITTLE... DETAIL... would constitute something of an
ironclad alibi!"
The lawyer gave him an apologetic look. "Hey, I did what I
could," he added with a shrug.
Sideshow Bob slapped his hand against his forehead in disgust.
"You were a product of the public school system, weren't you..."
* * *
"Hey, Bart! Didja hear the news?"
Bart Simpson looked up from his Adventures of Radioactive Man
Annual #6 to see Milhouse standing over him, his glasses fogged in
his excitement.
"They lowered the age you can be to see R-rated movies to ten?"
he asked hopefully.
"Noooo," Milhouse responded. "It's even better than that!"
"I dunno," Bart said, disappointment in his voice. "That would
have been pretty cool."
Milhouse could contain his excitement no longer.
"Someone chopped off the Bumblebee Man's head outside the Kwik-E
Mart last night!"
"Really?" Bart chirped, his devotion to his comic book completely
lost. "Cool."
"Isn't it, though?" Milhouse asked him. "I heard you could see
his eyes bugging out from beneath his hood."
Bart grabbed his skateboard and slapped it down on the sidewalk.
"Let's go sneak into the morgue tonight and see for ourselves..."
Milhouse turned green at the thought.
"I dunno, Bart. That sounds a little... spooky."
"Aw come on," Bart wheedled. "What could go wrong? I'll meet you
tonight outside your window. C-ya!" He jumped onto his skateboard and
tore off down the street, leaving Milhouse in the dust.
* * *
Chief Wiggums chomped absently on a doughnut. He was troubled by
the events of that morning. For one thing, that first glazed doughnut
he'd eaten had been a little undercooked in the middle. Then there was
that little matter of the death of the Bumblebee Man.
"I don't know about all this," he said after a moment's thought.
"Maybe Sideshow Bob didn't do it."
"Gee, Chief," his lackey replied. "If that's what you think,
maybe you should say something to the Springfield Clemency Board.
He's scheduled to be executed tonight."
Wiggums shrugged. "Nah... Even if he didn't kill the Bumblebee
Man, he's probably guilty of something. We'll just play it safe."
"Should we reopen the investigation?"
Wiggums considered this. "I don't think it would look too good
for us if we found out who the killer was, and it wasn't Sideshow
Bob. We'll just have to hope that no one else around here winds up
losing their head between now and midnight tonight." An idle thought
took him. "I suppose if something like that *did* happen, we could
always claim it was the work of a copycat..."
"Well, in case you change your mind, the lab analyzed those glass
fragments we found outside the Kwik-E Mart. They were safety glass
from a domestic make of automobile; probably a late model Geo Storm."
Wiggums ate another doughnut. "Fascinating. Those lab boys never
cease to amaze me. I guess if we were still pursuing this case,
instead of looking the other way while a gross miscarriage of justice
executed an innocent man, I'd be on the lookout for any suspicious
types replacing their car windshields..."
He honked his horn and waved out the window to Ned Flanders, who
was busy replacing the front windshield on his year-old Geo Storm
while his two sons scrubbed vigorously at some curious red-brown
stains on the door and quarterpanels.
"Heya, Ned!" he called to Flanders, who waved back cheerfully.
Wiggums returned his attention to the street as his patrol
cruiser lurched and shook, apparently hitting something before
continuing on without further incident.
"Lousy potholes," he complained. If he had been the type of
driver to use his rearview mirror, he would have seen the crushed
body of Bart Simpson and his splintered skateboard lying in the
street in an expanding pool of blood. Not that it would have
stopped him from continuing on without a second look back...
* * *
Marge Simpson was on the verge of hysteria as she waited outside
the Emergency Room of Springfield General Hospital. Her son was in
there, fighting for his life after being run over by a car. Would
she ever see him alive again?
A blood-spattered trauma surgeon resembling a goggle-eyed George
Clooney appeared in the waiting room even as she grappled with this
terrible question.
"Mrs. Simpson?" he asked, his voice taut and unemotional, and
sounding remarkably like that of George Clooney.
"How is Bart?" she demanded, her voice cracking.
"Is he gonna be okay?" Lisa added worriedly.
The doctor shook his head. "I'm afraid that the internal injuries
he sustained in the accident were beyond our ability to cope with..."
he began. "I'm very sorry, Mrs. Simpson."
Marge reeled, her world collapsing around her, a thin and ragged
scream whistling from the depths of her throat.
"How can this be?" Lisa moaned in disbelief. "Bart was a
Simpson... No Simpsons are allowed to die on this show..."
The doctor shrugged. "This *is* a fanfic, you know..."
Lisa fell back into one of the uncomfortable chairs that came as
standard issue in hospital waiting rooms.
"A darkfic..." she whispered. "Oh, the horror."
"Hey everybody!" Bart Simpson cried as he bashed through the
swinging doors of the emergency room. "What's with all the long faces?
Did someone croak?"
"BART!?" Marge shrieked, her fragile eggshell mind on verge of
total breakdown. Even the doctor seemed stunned by Bart's amazing
recovery.
"Bart, you were supposed to be dead," Lisa said, gripping him by
his bloody shirt collar and shaking him violently. "What are you doing
standing here like nothing's happened?"
She turned pale as a possibility presented itself.
"I see dead people..." she breathed in horror.
Bart brushed her aside and tugged at the flabbergasted doctor's
coat sleeve. "Hey, man, could ya show me the morgue? I wanna check out
the Bumblebee Man."
The doctor nodded slowly, and began to lead him away. "Right this
way, sir." The only thing that kept him going was the knowledge that
his malpractice insurance premiums wouldn't be going up this month...
* * *
Ned Flanders sat on the couch watching television while his sons
busied themselves with some needlepoint. He was not one to spend much
time in front of the tube, since there was little in the way of
wholesome family programming these days, but he liked to watch the
evening news before the 700 Club came on. Today, he had a special
reason to watch television, for he wanted to know what had happened
to poor Bart Simpson. He had been busy with the windshield replacement
when the accident happened, so he didn't see who had hit the boy, but
he had done what he could to see that Bart survived while his sons
dialed 911 for help.
Kent Brockman appeared on the screen, looking stuffy and
pretentious as usual in his hideous brown suit. An image of Bart
Simpson flashed to life over his shoulder as he delivered the news
straight off the TelePrompter in his clipped and nasal anchor voice.
"And in other news, what is being described as a medical miracle
happened today at Springfield General Hospital," he declared. "A young
boy named Bart Simpson was involved in a hit and run car accident
early this afternoon, and was rushed to the hospital, where after a
desperate struggle to save his life failed, was pronounced dead by the
attending emergency room physician."
Kent paused to let his announcement sink in. Ned's eyes widened
in dismay at the news. Bart was dead, and they were calling this a
miracle? He couldn't deny that the boy had led a troubled life, and
could have used a healthy dose of the Holy Spirit, but he couldn't
see how his death would be something the media could celebrate as a
miracle!
And his parents! he thought darkly. He had seen Homer through his
kitchen window just an hour ago, and the man was without a shred of
grief - a sign Ned had taken as positive for Bart's well-being at the
time. He shrugged inwardly. Perhaps Homer was incapable of feeling the
loss of his son, but Marge had seemed strangely happy as well. It
didn't make sense.
He was grappling with this as Kent continued.
"But apparently," Kent went on, pausing to chuckle arrogantly.
"The emergency room team were a little too hasty in their judgement.
Acting as if nothing had happened, young Mister Simpson was seen to
leap off the blood-soaked table and gallivant around the room, his
mortal injuries having completely vanished."
Kent raised an eyebrow. "When questioned by the press,
spokespersons for the hospital declined comment..."
Ned's jaw dropped, and a cold hand seemed to grip his spine. Kent
droned on, oblivious to the silent turmoil that raged within the
Flanders home. Even his kids noted the sudden change that had come
over their father, and they set down their handicrafts to give him
worried looks.
"Daddy needs some time alone," he finally said to them, and left
the room for the basement.
Ned Flanders opened the door to a long neglected closet in the
basement, and withdrew a heavy suitcase that was coated in dust. He
set the case down, taking care to brush at the dust with his hand
before opening it. Maude had never known of the existence of this
suitcase and its contents, something he had taken care to ensure
from the first day of their marriage, and something that the twins
must never discover.
The suitcase hasps snapped open, their sound deafening in the
silent tension of the moment. Ned lifted the top of the case slowly,
the glint of steel reflecting in his eyes. His breath caught in his
throat as the gravity of the situation became more and more apparent
to him. There was no turning back now.
Within the case were the disassembled pieces of a broadsword. Ned
inspected the two sections of forged steel blade with care, before
snapping them together in a perfect fit. The blade slid with a dry
metallic rasp through the heavy quillions, and locked into place with
the hilt by means of a simple twist of the rounded steel pommel.
He stood abruptly, whirling the heavy broadsword through the air
in a sweeping series of brutal circles and deep thrusting lunges
before bringing it up inverted and spinning it on the tip. The sword
rolled along the inner curve of his forearm, across his chest, and
then to the other arm, demonstrating the weapon's exquisite balance
to even the most ignorant observer. The craftsmanship of the weapon
was unequalled, Ned reflected. He had paid a dear enough price for
it. It would serve him now in the task he had waited to complete for
almost twenty centuries.
"It's time to do the Lord's work," he said gravely. The time of
the Gathering had come at last - after two thousand years of iniquity
and sin - and in the end there could be only one. That man would be
Ned Flanders, and the Quickening would be his at last. Not even Bart
Simpson would stand in his way.
END?
Author's Notes
1. This came out of the blue while driving around town with the wife.
If anyone is to blame, it is her for encouraging me to do this. This
spamfic also marks my first dedicated attempt to do comedy, which I
tend to avoid in large amounts because I don't really think I'm cut
out for it.
2. Yes, I know that Immortals can't have children. I'm going with the
idea that Ned's kids aren't really his (an argument for the power of
nurture over nature, perhaps?)
3. This was mostly just to be silly, but if I do get around to
working on this some more, I'm figuring on having Bart take on the
MacLeod role, with Krusty the Clown as his tutor, Ramirez. Other
Immortals would probably be Moe, Groundskeeper Willy (gotta have a
Highlander in there somewhere, right?), possibly Montgomery Burns,
the Comic Book Shop Owner, and of course, Ned Flanders in the role
of the Kurgan. Naturally, all of the characters must remain true to
themselves while still being Immortals for this to work as intended.