Average Joe and the Extraordinaires (25 page)
Read Average Joe and the Extraordinaires Online
Authors: Belart Wright
(Narrator Hates My Book Script)
Chapter 1
Something Exciting This Way Comes
Pinned to the inescapable and
high tech wheel of death as he was, the dashing space captain Don Daniels could
only pray for a miracle. He needed to escape for his crew’s sake and he needed
to do it fast. He had only one chance and if he didn’t do it right the metal
cutting lasers would make sure that he never did it again. He had taken the
key he needed and nestled it between his cheeks and we’re not talking about those
on his face. Luckily the captain had taken extreme measures just in case a
situation like thi-………..
Hmm?
The script just stops.
Where is the rest?
Umm? Huh?
So…what do you mean it’s not that
kind of story? That's the wrong script? Oh it’s a WIP. So you want me to
start over? So this flimsy thing over here is the script? Ok ok. Just give
me a moment to look it over. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. That is uhh, ok
I guess.
Okay! Well I damn sure can’t in
all seriousness narrate this! It’s a piece of crap! Nothing interesting
happens and the way it ends is just abysmal. Have you ever read a book,
watched a movie, or played a videogame in your life? Listen! The only way
that I’m narrating this is if you let me make a few alterations to this,
this…series of happenings. I need to spruce it up (like Henry Ford would
spruce up a horse carriage, sheesh!)
So do I have
permission?.......Yes? Okay, well here we go! Welcome to my spruced up
adventure.
(Narrator's Bad Jokes)
"The day was hot as hell and
the crowd was rowdy and rambunctious. Such conditions made me glad that I had
this disembodied narrator’s position."
"Let’s say hi to Joe and his
friends! Not there. Nope not there. Bear with me for a moment folks, Joe is
actually quite hard to find. He doesn’t really stand out too much. Hold on
for just a second. I’ll just look for something Mod would wear and bingo!
Where there’s Mod there’s his sister Kate and where there’s Kate there is our
protagonist Joe. Hi guys! Well our protagonists are, wait I think that
they’re about to say something."
Joe: “This line is long.”
"He speaks and what a
voice! I wish he had more to say but oh well. Well these three are here to
support their hometown team, the Pickers. Joe and Kate are pretty set on going
to Orange Town University, mostly because they didn’t even think about the
alternatives. Okay here’s some action, it looks like the line has moved a
little. The game starts in only thirty short minutes."
"The crowd started to move
forward now faster and the group’s shady acts were cleverly hidden from the
security staff. I, your faithful narrator, could barely make out what they
were doing with all the secrecy. Mod had taken what looked like a dead albino
baby seal and placed the thermos in it before attaching it to Kate and hiding
it under a sweater that he had worn. Well in hindsight that probably wasn’t a
dead albino baby seal because that would be a ridiculous and smelly thing to
attach to someone, even more ridiculous than attaching a regularly pigmented
dead seal to someone. Mod had attached a fake pregnant belly to his sister by
the look of it."
"Inside they all had a
pow-wow about where to go and if they would get snacks. Very boring and
mundane stuff but eventually they got it all together and found their seats.
They all sat down and waited for the game to begin. It began with the singing
of the national anthem which got everyone all riled up and patriotic so much so
that I felt the need to wear this stylish powdered wig and petticoat which, too
bad for you, you can’t see. But if you close your eyes and think of the
coolest person you know dressed as the founding fathers then you’d have an
idea."
"Mod pulled a couple cans of
Double Dog brew for himself and handed another to Joe and then to Kate. Now
this narrator in no way recommends actions like this from our amazingly bright
youthful readers but I just report it as I see it. These kids liked to get lit
up like the fourth of July. They downed their first cans almost instantly. This
narrator was even surprised to see Kate doing better than the boys and belching
the loudest when finished. They all had seconds while sharing stories of a
time when Mod had accidently soiled his underwear during a camping trip. Mod
tried not to laugh but couldn’t help himself."
"So as not to confuse you
glorious readers I guess I’ll call miss perky dark tresses Beauty from now on.
I really did like Dark Tresses though *sadness*. Anywho, Beauty ran her
fingers through her long…dark tresses and produced what seemed to be a key
card. She took the key card and inserted it into a small slit on the other
side of the elevator. Three glowing squares popped up in the middle of the
wall. They were marked UG5, UG6, and UG7. Beauty had pressed the square for
UG6 and as if touch activated the elevator began to move and the display
disappeared. The card reader spit Beauty’s card back out and she picked it up
and placed it back amongst her dark tresses. Joe wondered, as did I, where the
hell she put that thing but neither of us lingered too long on that thought for
the elevator had stopped. For some reason Beauty was still facing the wall.
Joe went to tell her that they had reached their stop but was halted when the
back wall of the elevator suddenly slid completely open. Joe gaped down the
hall to see if there was anyone there but didn’t see or hear anyone."
“'Hey look! This guy’s the
terrorist from the news,' said some guy in the cells. Joe looked at the man
and then to the T.V. and saw himself, face up, being put into a cop car. 'This
kid blew up the Picker stadium? Evil little scumbag, get over here!' And that
was the end of Joe."
"Remember when I said that
was the end of Joe, well…I embellished a bit. I like to keep you readers
pumped up and turning the pages. It’s a compulsion really, I’m getting help
for it. What I meant to say was: and that was the end of Joe…sharing a cell
with the others. They pulled him out and placed him in a room by himself after
those guys tried to thrash him."
"And thus went the
conversation with Hanky Panky Borland and Sir Josephus Black. Now it was done
and our story could progress with action, intrigue, and suspense. Now let’s
proceed ladies and gents…"
"Joe marveled at the man’s
tiny feet and thought they could’ve easily been confused for tic-tacs in those
shoes. This narrator could confess to that. My nearly omniscient eyes have
never witnessed feet so tiny on an adult male before."
"They were going to turn Joe
into swiss cheese and that would make things terribly difficult. This book is
kind of named after the poor fellow. I supposed we could find another Joe but
it just wouldn’t be the same. Not many Joe’s have as much heart as our Joe
here has. I’ll miss the guy. Oh come on Joe! Survive this you crazy
kid!"
Belart Wright was born and raised
in Detroit Michigan with a short but adventurous stint in St. Ignace during his
childhood. Always poor, Belart had to learn to use his imagination to fuel the
fun he had. Whether it was drawing cool and dangerous looking heroes to
creating fully fledged storylines with his action figures to writing stories
about kids similar to himself with fantastic abilities and destinies, Belart
was always an expert in delving into other worlds that were not his own.
Always naturally talented at writing, it took the advice of his brother, and a
little creative boost from his high school creative writing instructor to get
him to realize that writing was something he could do really well and pursue as
a career. To this day he revels in building worlds and characters from the
ground up such as the worlds of Hell Warriors, Story of K, Cyborgs and Deadmen,
and Pannam which are all working titles.
In his spare time Belart writes on
his two blogs and ‘facebooks’ (now replaced with ‘goodreads’) far too much. As
a huge gamer he plays a lot of games online and off with his favorites at the
time being Borderlands 2 and Dark Souls. He just wishes he had more time to
whittle his impossibly long gaming list down. He and his buddies at
FlubberKnuckle Studios are also working on several new game IPs.
He also wrote this himself, in
third person, so he’s probably a bit of a jerk face. An awesome
self-deprecating jerk face.
My
Personal Blog:
www.belartscorner.blogspot.com
My Tumblr:
http://belart-the-illiterate-reader.tumblr.com/
Flubberknuckle
Games:
http://www.flubberknuckle.com/wordpress/
My Cover
Artist’s Page:
Alexandra
Engellmann (cover 2)
Michael
Holladay (cover 1)
http://www.nerdpromotions.com/
Xbox Live
Gamertag:
kidNihilnom
IV
Average
Joe and the Beauty
Book 2 of
An Average Joe Series
R&D
Liandra was beginning to sweat and so she decided that she
had enough of her helmet. She had no reason to hide her face at this point
anyway. She took it off and compressed it into the form of an earring with
just a mere thought. The warm night wind of the Floridian fall blew her hair
from her face to her neck and back again as she pushed upwards of ninety on her
motorbike, which tonight was clad in white and brown owl's wings on the body
and frame. Her helmet was also typically adorned with wings. The wings were
symbolic of her, she thought, unfettered and always in flight and able to do as
she pleased at any moment. The wings were, however, a tribute to the Order of
the Owl. She had found a true home amidst the Order and missed them all
dearly. The owl perfectly described her. She was most at home prowling during
the night. Tonight was no different.
What was she prowling for? Answers. She needed answers to
questions she didn't even know. Her quest for answers had taken her all over
the sunshine state in a very brief period. Now she was heading roughly a hundred
miles from where the man she'd been keeping her owl's eyes on had set up his
main base of operations. That man's name was Grabas and he was the one
responsible for posing so many of these questions that she needed to answer.
She was headed to another town which held yet another base for Grabas'
operations. Here she hoped to knock some of those questions from her list.
Answers never came cheap or easy but if Grabas was keen on
playing games then she would at least enjoy them. She soon found herself in
the town of Flatland which was deeply inland with no prayer of touching either
coast. It was very plain and mostly unpopulated but many businesses had set up
manufacturing operations all around. There was building after building of
textiles, metalwork, fasteners, and other such developers. There were also
plenty of bars but not a lot of homes. At this time of night most of the
factories looked to have closed production for the day and so the bars looked
to be where all of the people were. Luckily her destination was well away from
all of that.
When she neared her destination she turned off her bike's
headlights. The building was tall. It had five floors from what she knew of
it and no telling how many underneath. She wasn't surprised in the least when
she saw that it was bustling with activity even at this late hour. She had
come a while back during her initial search for Grabas and remembered that only
a select few were given the honor (or misfortune as she thought of it) of
working overnight. They had special security clearances. She didn't have
those same clearances so she opted to try a more creative approach.
She rode further on down the street from the facility and
parked her bike near a cluster of trees. From here she went to her messenger
bag, tied at the rear of her bike, and pulled binoculars from it. She scoped
the facility out from afar and saw that it was nicely secured with high barbed
fences, foot patrols, and patrols in cars that circled the area in intervals.
There was only one apparent way in and that was guarded by a shifty and
formidable looking guard. That was only the entrance they wanted the everyday
layman to think was there but Liandra knew better. She was no layman. She was
trained in the espionage arts by a teacher at her former Order, to her master's
chagrin. So now she could spot not one, not two, not even three, but four ways
to get into the facility. She found them pretty quickly too.
She tied her hair into a ponytail in a single smooth motion
then silently ran closer to the building where she found the perfect pair of
trees. Looking at them and taking note of their reasonable height and distance
from one another, an idea quickly came to her mind. She almost laughed out
loud at the thought. She removed her left earring and cupped it in her left
hand. In her mind she echoed the phrase: "elastic, tough, resistant, yet
stretchy." She pictured a giant coiling rubber band and quite suddenly
had it in her hand. She could've wrapped the thing around her body like twenty
times.
She unwrapped the giant rubber band and laid one end near
the first tree to the north. It was cut at the center, which made it simple to
wrap around the tree to the south. She walked around and pulled the elastic
band over to the first end and connected the two. The elastic was too loose
and so Liandra touched the band and thought the words "tighten" and
just like that her makeshift human catapult was complete.
Liandra: "That's the absolute perfect length. My eyes
are in tip-top condition tonight. On the flipside, it looks like I've been
hanging around that boy too much, this is downright juvenile."
She laughed to herself, thinking of Joe, and briefly
wondered how he was doing. Despite his murderous principal being back at his
school, he seemed to be in very little danger as of late. The necklace she had
given him, to detect danger, hadn’t relayed that message to her. It seemed
Patrias was constantly trying to assault the boy with craftes but he had proven
that he wasn't the most powerful crafter so she assumed that he didn't have the
means to break her enchantment. The man was "tricky" though, so she
still had her concerns for the boy.
She walked between the two trees, placed her back against
the elastic band, and pushed herself backwards, as far as she could, at a
downward angle past the point of the band's tautness, to its maximum
resistance. She thought the words "velocity and lift" and muttered
the chant aloud to increase her focus and hopefully precision. She then
slackened her feet and let go of the bands and suddenly found herself
airborne. She swiftly flew over the fence and towards the building in
seconds. She was unseen under the guise of night but now she needed to land
and quietly. She thought of her sneakers and the word "float" came
to her mind. That slowed her descent greatly and allowed her to land in the
quietest way possible. Once there, her earrings rematerialized on her ears as
they were simply Life Force constructs. She pulled her trusty lock pick from a
compartment in her watch and popped the lock without any craftes, as she always
liked to do. She walked into the building from the side entrance and disabled
all the cameras she came across that she remembered from her last visit. She
disabled them each of them with just a tap or an electrified earring. She only
left one operable since didn't want to be completely anonymous to Grabas.
She walked into the halls completely confident: her head
high, shoulders back, and all in black. She was a lovely prowler with her
sun-kissed skin, long ebony locks, and full rouge noir painted lips. She
strutted around like she owned the place, a catwalk burglar. There were others
in the halls that either ignored her or gave her the briefest of glances. They
were mostly scientists in white coats. None had told her that she was in a
restricted area. She chalked them up as having the keen insight to know that
she was trouble. None had even stopped to call any security personal. She
knew where she wanted to go but needed to figure out how to get there. She
also wouldn't mind at all if she got to into a skirmish or two in her search.
Some exercise would do nicely for her.
Liandra: "I'm going to need to liven this place up a
bit. I know! I'll just grab the next white coat I see and..."
She honestly couldn't believe her luck just now. A young
scientist rounded the corner and nearly jumped out of his skin when Liandra
grabbed him and hemmed him against the wall. She put her finger to his lips
and took note of his familiar face.
Liandra: "Shh. Don't make a scene."
It was an absurd thing to say, given the situation. He
nodded his head in agreement however.
Liandra: "What's your name and don't hesitate or I'll
kill you."
Loudly and clearly the young scientist said his name.
"Marc Jamison."
Liandra: "Very good, Mr. Jamison. Take me to whoever
runs this show."
He boldly looked her in the eye and dared to question her.
Marc: "Why?"
Impressed, though a little annoyed, Liandra decided to
answer him.
Liandra: "I have some questions that only that person
can answer."
He nodded.
Marc: "Follow me."
She did just that, following his deliberate pace down the
long bare corridors. There were offices everywhere and enough paperwork to
cover the building over. The color of choice by the decorators looked to be
tan with matte brown accents all around. The hallway's walls and ceilings in
this area were covered in these colors in what looked like a purposeful effort
to make the surroundings look comfortable, laidback, and sort of
sophisticated. The tan and brown backgammon-like design of the patterns on the
floor tiles seemed to back that idea up as well.
Marc finally came to a stop at an office in the middle of
the hall and looked inside. He shook the doorknob a few times trying to open
it. He was forced to gawk in from the outside after he loudly declared it to
be locked.
Marc: "I'm sorry but it looks like he's not here
tonight."
Liandra: "Who?"
He looked unsure.
Marc: "Our head R&D guy."
Liandra smiled and closed the distance between them. They
were now face to face, almost nose to nose which suddenly made Marc very
uneasy.
Liandra: "Marc was it...? I'll fill you in on a few
things. First, I have no interest in your operations above ground. I want to
go where the real research is taking place, the research this facility is made
for. Second, I'm a very dangerous person and third, the person I'm looking for
is the scientist heading your testing division which would be the Head of
Applications. Fourth, I want you to lead me to him because you're the Head of
R&D and to get what I want I'll need you both. Try me for a fool again and
we're going to make a test subject out of you. We'll see how you like being
experimented on."
The young scientist was sweating profusely. He was covered
in a nice sheen in no time at all.
Marc: "Please, follow me to Mr. Girino's Office. It's
in the subbasement."
Liandra: "Yes, along with your own. Now lead on."
He led her to the back of the facility, through a pair of
double doors. The room was filled with shelves so tall they reached the
ceiling and stacked with boxes galore and other useful supplies. There were
multiple rows but he simply led her straight ahead to the large service
elevator. He called it and they waited for about thirty seconds for it to
arrive. They stepped unto it and as she expected there were only buttons for
the five floors above ground.
Marc: "This is a strange request but can you keep your
eyes closed?"
Liandra scoffed.
Liandra: "I can't begin to explain to you all the many
many reasons why I won't do that. I suspect that you want to pull out your
keycard and place it in a hidden slot in this elevator which will then display
another set of buttons, one of which you'll press to take us down to the lower
levels. Now if you don't want me to see that you can rest assured knowing that
I already have. If you want me to close my eyes so that you can kill me then
you are a colossal idiot. Now carry on."
The man quietly pulled out his keycard and slid it into a
slot under a diagram of the building's upper floors. The diagram lifted up and
there were three more floors listed as numbered subbasements. There was a
small button next to each number. This elevator wasn't as high tech as the one
at Picker's Stadium but its purpose was the same. It was built to hide secret
and terrible things. Marc leaned over and pressed the button to the second
subbasement.
They came out of the elevator to a hallway where Liandra saw
men in plain clothes, gloves, and long sleeves moving large flat beds around.
She saw other scientists around too and more laborers. Some of the scientists
directed the laborers around. There was a lot of space and the whole floor
looked unfinished. Liandra looked around at the dirt and scrapes all over the
bottom of the walls and could tell that this was a high traffic area.
Marc: "This way please."
He walked towards the end of the hall and turned down into a
dead end hallway with four rooms, two on each side. He opened the door to what
Liandra supposed was an office. It looked more like the inside of a file
cabinet with papers bundled and stacked on top of everything. There was a
small old man seated in the middle of it all behind a tiny paper covered desk.
She was barely able to make out his nameplate on his desk that was buried
amongst the various papers.
Mr. Girino: "Dammit Jamison! Can't you see that I'm
eating a goddam sandwich!?"
The old man didn't even seem to notice Liandra.
Marc: "I'm sorry sir but this is important."
Liandra waved at Girino, wriggling her fingers as she did.
The old man finally took note of her.
Mr. Girino: "Who is this?"
Liandra: "I'm an associate of the owner of this place.
At his behest I've come seeking answers."
Mr. Girino: "Listen miss. I don't know who you are or
why he brought you here but I need you to leave right now. And you Jamison,
I'll make sure to let the boss know about what you've just done."
Liandra smirked and sat down on a stack of papers that were
bundled on the floor in front of the man's desk. He looked at her
contemptuously and wiped his hands with a paper towel.
Mr. Girino: "I don't have any time for this."
He pressed some sort of button on the side of the table.