THE CERTAINLY NOT TRANSPARENT ADVENTURES OF OPAQUEMAN
Last week in the adventures of Opaqueman:
Yet another race of absurdly looking aliens are attempting to invade Earth with their improbable weapons and stupidly designed spaceships. The situation looks bleak. In order to find a way to make the audience plausibly believe that aliens are superior the writers have used buzz words such as electromagnetic radiation and quantum amplified lasers to explain why the defences of the Earth are powerless against the invasion. The Governments of the world have all but surrendered, yet one hope still remains. In secret our hero, Opaqueman, the man through whom no light may pass, and his sidekick, the attractive girl who states the obvious quite alot, have snuck aboard the alien mothership in an attempt to sabotage their main weapon: the über-nuclear-force field-based-antimatter ray.
Opaqueman was crawling through the air vents of the alien mothership, with his sidekick attractive girl just behind him. They had been crawling for hours, as the situation on Earth below them became increasingly grim. It was somewhat lucky therefore that the entire mothership was connected by a series of unmonitored air vents to allow our hero to make his valiant attempt to save Earth quite so easy. Eventually they found the grill which they were looking for. As they both peered out, Opaqueman hoped his overly coloured lycra suit wouldn’t be visible from the room outside.
“Oh no” exclaimed attractive sidekick girl, perhaps a little too loudly considering the situation, but luckily none of the nearby surprisingly dim-witted guards heard her. “How can this situation be any worse? I mean, not only are their at least 30 armed guards who probably have extremely poor aim and positioning, but also the evil alien mastermind himself is overseeing the completion of the über -nuclear-force field-based-antimatter ray. Surely the situation is hopeless!”
“Fear not,” said Opaqueman, putting on his boldest tone, “for I have seen a fatal flaw in the grand master plan.” It was at this point that the air vent split open, spilling Opaqueman and his sidekick onto the floor at the feet of the alien mastermind. Surrounded by guards, they held their arms up in surrender.
“Opaqueman,” the alien leader said in high pitched but extremely good English, “I should have been expecting this. You thought you could sneak aboard and foil my infallible schemes of domination, but you were wrong. The alien threw its head back and performed a perfect example of clichéd megalomaniac laugh #3.
“Curses” Opaqueman whispered to no one in particular, “Now no one can stop your fiendish plan”
“As if anyone was going to stop me anyway, with a plan as brilliant as this! Little did you know that it was so well thought through that there is only a single weak spot, where the trigger sends a beam of light to a receiver on the far side of the room for purely aesthetic value when the ray is fired. I got the idea from the ships self destruct system, which also works by shining light on another receiver which happens to be in this very same room. Still, I have a weapon to finish, say goodbye to your planet Opaqueman!” And with that the alien mastermind strode off to complete his plans.
“What should we do?” said the sidekick helplessly to Opaqueman, both surrounded with armed guards, just as the final countdown to the destruction of Earth started. 20 seconds.
“Well I do have a smoke grenade in my belt which I forgot about…”
Bang. Flash. The guards choked on the thick purple smoke which had appeared around them.
Biff!
Pow!
Slam!
Seconds later Opaqueman appeared from the cloud of smoke, the guards unconscious on the floor, just the countdown struck zero. A flash of light came from a laser by the alien mastermind, destined for the receiver two foot to the right of Opaqueman. It was now or never, Opaqueman threw himself to the right and summoned his strength in order to use his one superpower: the ability to stop light.
A long, stereotypical scream of “Nooooo!” was heard as Opaqueman somehow found that he had beaten the light to the receiver, and saw it conveniently bounce off the shiny logo on his lycra and hit the self destruct receiver, as if this improbable set of events wasn’t entirely obvious to the reader from the moment they started reading.
Opaqueman crashed to the floor, his strength drained from being opaque for so long. As the ship started to explode around him his sidekick dragged him to the again conveniently nearby escape pod, where they escaped the exploding ship and returned to Earth.
And so the Earth was once again saved by the unique talents of our hero. But with ever more villains forging improbable plans which can usually be foiled by blocking light in some form, how long will it be before our hero is needed to save the world once more?
Add comment May 26th, 2008