#groundshaker

[5 August 238 Before Age.  Planet Wist.]

Tobiko's sanctum was a large hut made of peat and muck, submerged beneath a swamp.  Long ago, he was part of the Mystic Council, the ruling body of Ancient Wist.  When he fell out of favor with his peers, they put a terrible curse upon him, transforming him into an amphibious creature forever bound to the swamps of the planet.  They had also made Tobiko virtually immortal, in order to prolong his exile.

Ironically, their punishment had been a blessing in disguise.  Cut off as he was from their civilization, Tobiko was a living witness to its decline.  Now over five thousand years old, he possessed great wisdom and expertise about his homeworld.  He had found ways to teleport himself and others to almost any fen or bog on the planet, and he knew of secrets that had long since been forgotten by others.  He was a valuable ally, provided one was willing to see past his fearsome appearance.  

M'ranga, otherwise known as Ensign Liberty, was more than willing.  Her critics called her a revolutionary and an idealist, but she embraced those labels.  She had fought for freedom on dozens of worlds oppressed by tyranny, and she had learned long ago that courage and skill came in all shapes and sizes.  Others might have balked at the idea of using his underwater home as a base of operations, but she was honored by his hospitality.  

Besides, the place didn't smell nearly as bad as one might have assumed.  She had expected an odor like sulfur mixed with rotting fish, but instead there was an aroma reminiscent of an incense shop.  It was possible that this was an illusion brought on by Tobiko's magic.  He normally spoke in a slurred and gargled voice, but he had a spell to sound more normal whenever he had a lot to say.  

Tonight was such an occasion, as he was telling her what he knew of the origin of the Shockmaster, in the hopes that this would provide the key to defeating him and freeing Planet Wist from his control.  While she didn't mind the way his voice usually sounded, she was grateful for the clarity the spell provided.  The story spanned more than seven thousand years, and she was having a hard enough time following along as it was.  

"All right, so the Ur-Ember powered the Golden Age of Wist," she said, "But that ended about seven thousand years ago, when Wist's moon, was destroyed, and the Ur-Ember was lost along with it.  But the Mystic Council still had a lot of magic power left over to work with, so even though it was a serious blow, it wasn't enough to collapse the Wist Hegemony right then and there."

"Correct," Tobiko said patiently.  He was examining a gemstone M'ranga had obtained for him.  He claimed that it possessed an even more detailed historical record than his own long memory.  Though now that he had it, he seemed uncertain of how to use it.  

"Then, you could call it a Silver Age, where the Mystic Council relied more and more on conventional resources," she said.  That's why they gave the Shockmaster his Helm of Power, so he could lead a whole group of super-powered champions to defend the planet.  Without the Ur-Ember, that was the best they could manage, but it still worked for a long time."

"Indeed," Tobiko said.  

"So what went wrong?" she asked.  "They chose him because he was such a noble man, so why did they seal him away?  The Shockmaster of today is so brutal and ruthless.  I don't see how he could have lost his way so completely."

He chuckled quietly.  "The Shockmaster’s greatest flaw was his over-zealousness.  In his youth, it was his strength.  Those were perilous times, and the world needed a principled, uncompromising standard-bearer to show the way.  Someone rather like you, M’ranga."

"We’re nothing alike," she insisted.  "I’m fighting for Wist’s freedom.  The Shockmaster’s nothing more than a petty tyrant."

"In my experience, today’s liberator often becomes tomorrow’s oppressor," Tobiko said.  "Long, long ago, you might have found a kindred spirit in the Shockmaster.  But as the years passed, he became disillusioned with the world around him.  Wist was changing.  Indeed it always had been changing, but in his mind it was changing for the worse.  Perhaps he was right, but it didn’t excuse him from his duty..."

*******

[7 January, 7018 Before Age.  Wist.]

They had rejected his proposal.  He had waited three years for an answer.  Three years of dithering and useless protocol, designed to make bureaucrats feel an illusion of importance.  And in the end, they told him no.   He shouldn’t have been surprised.  No one took action in this day and age.  It was all about gathering signatures and countersignatures, making sure no one rocked the boat, or upset the status quo.  

The Golden Age hadn't been like this.  In those days, Wist had been strong, and its leaders hadn't wasted time fretting over every little detail.  When something needed to be done, it was done, and with the full confidence of the people.  

But the Golden Age had been over for centuries.  He was the only one left who even remembered it, and he had been born at its very end.  To have never known the beauty and glory of Wist as it should have always been!  That was true blindness.  

The Shockmaster had found a way to restore that Golden Age.  It was there for the taking.  He only needed the Mystic Council's approval to proceed.  It should have been a mere formality, an obvious decision ratified by a unanimous vote.  Instead, it took three years.  And they said no.  

He wondered if they even knew what it was they had rejected.  The Mystic Council wasn't what it once was, after all.  He respected that great body, but the sorcerers who served today were but a pale imitation of the great leaders from fifty years ago.  

He had found the Ur-Ember.  There was a way to bring it back!  And with it, all of the splendor of Wist's Golden Age would follow!  The last four-and-a-half centuries of decay would be wiped away, like a bad dream forgotten in the light of a new dawn.  But for this generation of Wistians, the bad dream was all they knew.  They feared losing the meager prosperity they had, simply because they couldn't understand what lay ahead.

"Penny for your thoughts, Shockmaster," asked the Groundshaker.  Like himself, she was a warrior specially empowered by the Mystic Council, though she had only entered the service eighty years ago.  She was formidable and skillful, but terribly naive.  And like so many of Wist's youth, she lacked the proper respect.

"THE WORLD DOESN'T MAKE SENSE ANYMORE, GROUNDSHAKER," he replied.  He saw no need to share details about his disagreement with the Council's ruling.  It would be unseemly, and besides, she wouldn't understand his position.  

"I know what you mean," she said.  She wore a pair of massive gauntlets and a mask that covered most of her head except for her eyes.  Though her function was similar to his own, she had different abilities, which mostly involved power over the earth.  They and their other colleagues patrolled Planet Wist on a regular basis, and the two of them had worked together for decades.   She likely considered him to be a friend.  

The feeling was not mutual.  

As they flew across the western continent, she shook her head sadly.  "It's not like it used to be, is it?" she said.  "This whole area used to be factories.  Back when Wist used to make things, you know?  Now it's all being converted to farmland."

The idea of Wist growing crops from the ground was appalling, to be sure.  But what disgusted the Shockmaster was that she actually missed the factories, as if they weren't just as bad.  He remembered a time when Wist didn't need to export manufactured goods of any kind.  Everything was produced through sorcery, but with less and less magical power to work with, the Mystic Council had to focus on matters of defense and infrastructure.  Using magic to produce food and goods was a luxury in this benighted era.  

"And children these days are so entitled," she went on.  "They don't know what it means to work for a living."  

She was right, but he couldn't help but be reminded that she had been approved by the Council for empowerment with less than a quarter of the training he had received.  The standards for excellence were already low a century ago.  That they had gotten bad enough for her to notice was especially dismal.  

"And they wear such salacious clothing!" she whined.  "The loud colors on their kilts are just atrocious.  And if they wore them any shorter, they may as well be belts!"

He stifled a groan.  The Groundshaker's kilt barely covered her calves, but that hardly mattered to him, since he found the very notion of kilts revolting, regardless of their hemline.  Pantaloons had been proper Wistian attire for tens of thousands of years.  Kilts and dresses were a sign of foreign ideas contaminating the culture like a blight.  If the Groundshaker and her generation didn't like the way things were going, they only had their own poor example to blame.  

He continued to brood as they went about their patrol, until suddenly a giant image of a man's head appeared before them both.  They immediately recognized him as the intelligence chief of the Mystic Council.  Privately, the Shockmaster resented the office, as it was an overt admission that the Council no longer had the raw magical talent to divine information through sorcery.  However, the conventional method used by the chief were sound, not even the Shockmaster could dispute the chief's effectiveness in exposing threats to the Hegemony.  

"Shockmaster!  Groundshaker!" he called to them.  "Are you receiving this psychic transmission?"

"WE ARE," he replied.  "HOW MAY WE SERVE THE COUNCIL, MY LORD?"

"A new lead on the Kashvar attacks," he said breathlessly.  "We've found their secret base!"

*******

The Kashvar’s latest weapon of mass destruction was a monster called Vorshiki, which resembled a hideous flying lizard of enormous size.  It could teleport across interstellar space, an ability the Kashvar used to launch attacks on various planets in the Wistian sphere of influence.  

Naturally the Mystic Council launched an investigation to track down the Kashvar, but they were shocked to discover that the enemy had been had been controlling Vorshiki from a secret base on Planet Wist itself.  When the Shockmaster and Groundshaker exposed their lair, they summoned Vorshiki to protect themselves.

The battle had been ferocious, but the Shockmaster had won the day.  The Vorshiki was utterly destroyed, and the Groundshaker had captured the Kashvar before they could make any more trouble.

Now, as work crews arrived to begin repairing the damage to the city, the Shockmaster stood alone, and looked pensively at the crater in the road where Vorshiki had met its end.  Nearby, the Groundshaker was giving an official report to a representative from the Mystic Council.

This never should have been allowed to happen, the Shockmaster thought to himself.  The Kashvar were a fanatical race of black magicians who believed the universe was theirs alone, and that all other species were to be eradicated.  They had menaced the galaxy since time immemorial, but they had never dared a direct attack on the Wist Hegemony or its interests.  Until now.

Now, the Kashvar were bold enough to wage their genocidal war from the Wistian homeworld, right under the noses of its citizens!  And when discovered, did they cower in fear and beg for their lives?  No, they went on the offensive, bringing their monster here to fight.  It was the first such battle fought on Wistian soil in over a hundred centuries!

And the Shockmaster had won, yes.  The people were grateful as always.  But the battle should have never been fought!

How he longed for the days of old, when Wist was unchallenged in the universe!  He dreamed of restoring it to that stature, though with each passing day he wondered more and more if it was too late.  Perhaps the decay was irreversible.    Other enemies would brazenly attack Wist, and her people would simply be grateful for men like the Shockmaster who protected them.  And in return for that protection, they would perpetuate Wist’s decline, until there was nothing left of value.

"Oi, Shocky-baby.  Grand bit of work out there, brah.  Anytime you’re in the borough an' you want to have a brew, just give me a shout, hey?"

He turned and saw a man smiling at him, offering his hand in friendship.  He was wearing a lime green kilt with a slit that exposed his left thigh, and his upper body was wrapped in what looked like a series of interconnected belts.  The Shockmaster was familiar with the fashion, but too revolted to learn its name.  As the man grinned and looked up at him, the piercings on his lips and eyebrows glinted in the sunlight.  His hair had somehow been artificially colored, arranged to form three peg-like columns that were lined up in a row  that ran from his forehead to the back of his neck.

Perhaps it was the recent battle, or centuries of pent up frustration, or the Mystic Council’s refusal to grant his request, or the way this man spoke to him like an equal.

Whatever it was, in that moment, the Shockmaster didn’t see the man as a fellow Wistian, or as an innocent person, or a grateful admirer.  In that moment, the Shockmaster could only see an enemy of everything he held dear.  A threat to the continued safety and prosperity of Wist.  A monster just as insidious and destructive as the one he had just slain.

In that moment, the Shockmaster unleashed a torrent of lightning upon the man.

It was only a brief indiscretion.  He came to his senses almost immediately and ceased his attack, but the damage was already done.  The man collapsed to the ground and started convulsing, and passers-by noticed the incident right away.  The Groundshaker turned when she heard the crackle of lightning, and gasped with horror.

The woman from the Council sprang into action at once, rushing to the fallen civilian’s side and weaving spells to ease his pain and heal his injuries, but there was only so much she could do on the spot.  There were burns that would require more extensive treatment, and the Shockmaster could only speculate on what internal injuries he had inflicted.

"What happened?!" the Groundshaker shouted.  The answer to that was obvious.  What she really wanted to know was why.  No, what she really wanted was for him to reveal a perfectly logical reason for what he had done, to say that this man was a powerful enemy disguised as a helpless, unarmed civilian.

But he couldn’t tell her this, and so he simply stared down at his victim, and awaited the consequences.

*******

[5 August, 238 Before Age. Planet Wist.]

"They tried him, of course.  Not that they had the power to compel him to stand trial.  By that time the Mystic Council was far weaker than in the era that birthed the Shockmaster.  If not for his respect for jurisprudence, no force on the planet would have been enough to stop him.    And he did save them all from the Kashvar, so there was that."

"How can you say that he and I have anything in common, Tobiko?” M’ranga asked.    “He was sworn to defend his people, and then he assaulted one of his own countrymen?  Without the slightest provokation?  He was as brutal then as he is now, only this time he doesn’t have the Mystic Council to answer to.  Not that they had much control over him in the first place..."

"I say you are alike because of your idealism," Tobiko explained.    "This isn’t your home world, yet you fight for its people as if it were, because you consider it to be the right thing to do.  The fact that many Wistians object to your intervention is unimportant to you.

"The Shockmaster was driven by similar ideals of right and wrong, and eventually his ideology overshadowed his reality.  In the end he was more focused on the Ideal Wist of his imagination than the one he was supposed to be protecting.    I cannot tell you why he attacked that man, but I’m certain his discontent with the world had something to do with it.  In the end, Wist had changed, and he had remained the same, until he could no longer recognize his own people."

"And you think that could happen to me someday, is that it?    I either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain?  I refuse to believe those are our only choices."

"Nor do I," Tobiko said.  "I merely submit that the Shockmaster’s fall from grace can serve as a cautionary tale against rigid adherence to a cause.  The Shockmaster craved a new Golden Age, but gold is soft, flexible, and ductile.  Now that he has power, we see a reign of antimony, brittle and dubious."

"Is that what happened to you?" M'ranga asked.  

"My banishment provided me with a change of perspective," Tobiko said.  "Like the Shockmaster, I feared that Wist was losing its way, sacrificing long-term political stability for temporary security.  I was born some twelve centuries after the Shockmaster's sentencing, and in those days Wist was relying more and more upon private mercenaries to bolster its military.  I spoke out against this, calling for Wist to end its policies of military adventurism, and this offended enough special interests to seal my fate.  

"Their punishment was cruel, but it allowed me to see the bigger picture.  Over time, the sorcerers ceded more and more power to the Wistian generals, who relied more and more upon the foreign fighters, until eventually a powerful faction of mercenaries were ruling the planet through Wistian proxies.  Eventually, they dispensed with the proxies, and the Lords of Goldwall claimed sovereignty outright.  But to see it all happen so gradually, I realized that it wasn't the disaster I had feared during my political career.  One day the last traces of Wist were gone, but life went on.  And my agenda was fulfilled.  The military adventurism did stop, after all.  Not because anyone listened to me, or because it was the right thing to do, but because Wist and its military had ceased to exist.   I could do very little to alter the course of events, and in time, I learned that it might be better that way."

"Then why did you help us when the Shockmaster first returned?" M'ranga asked.  "You could have stayed in your swamp and waited for things to play out like always."

He rose from his seat and glanced down at the gem in his hand.  "Like me, the Shockmaster is a living relic of a bygone, a man out of time.  Unlike me, he does not recognize this.  The Mystic Council preserved him like a fly in amber, sealing him away in suspended animation.  They feared he might turn against him someday, but what they feared even more was that they might need him even more in the future.  The idea was that there would come a time when the Mystic Council could summon him once more in their hour of need, but that time never came.  Now he stands unleashed in a world that has forgotten his values, and he remains as embittered and uncompromising as the day he was sentenced.  I feared that he was too anomalous, that he would cause far more suffering than I was willing to ignore.  At first, I was unsure how to proceed, but then I found you and Scotch Woodcock bravely opposing his takeover.  It reminded me of myself when I was younger, back when I was willing to take a stand even if I didn't have all the answers."

He held up the gemstone and showed it to her.  "That is why I asked you to retrieve this Crystal Chronicle for me, Ensign.   The Shockmaster lacks historical context, and while I can fill in some of the gaps, we need more information before we can act.  Unfortunately, my cursory examination of the Chronicle reveals that it would reject my attempts to use it directly."

"Because of your curse," M'ranga said.  "There has to be another way."

"I believe there is," Tobiko said, "but it will not be easy..."

*******

[9 July, 7018 Before Age.  Planet Wist.]

It was appropriate that he be sentenced here, in the Great Hall of the Mystic Council.  This was where his father had saved the gutless cowards from Beerus the Destroyer.  This was where they had begged him to don the Helm of Power and rescue their decrepit empire from their own ineptitude.  This was where he had stood to receive orders every day for the last four hundred seventy-three years.   Orders to ignore the decay of society while he propped up their failing regime.  This was where they had denied his simple request to put things right again.  

"I pray, noble Shockmaster, that this will not mark the end of your service," the Council Elder said solemnly.  

"MY DUTY IS EVER TO WIST," the Shockmaster declared.  To himself he added: the true Wist, not the pathetic joke you have allowed it to become.  

"Know that should our successors ever have need of a great champion, they shall summon you to aid them, as you have aided us for so long."

"I SHALL AWAIT THEIR CALL," he replied.  It was only a matter of time, after all.  They were fools, and their descendants could not help but become even more foolish.  Without men of conscience like himself and his father to help them, they would be lost and helpless.  At least this way he would awaken to a world that actually wanted his help.

The Elder nodded and joined hands with two of his colleagues.  They performed a series of ritualistic chants, and he felt himself fading, as if into a deep sleep.  

His last conscious thought was that when he next awakened, he would let nothing stand in his way.

*******

[7 August, 238 Before Age. Planet Wist.]

"You’re certain you wish to do this?" Tobiko asked.  He had spent the past forty hours devising a workaround that would allow his magic to decrypt the Crystal Chronicle without directly accessing it himself.  She had no intention of backing out now, although she supposed she could understand why he was asking.

"It’s the only way," Ensign Liberty said.  "Your curse prevents you from using the Chronicle, so it’s down to either me or Scotch, and it might reject Scotch because he’s an alien."

"Yes, but you’re an alien too, Ensign," Tobiko reminded her.  "I can’t be sure of the risks..."

"Risk is my business," she insisted.  "If there’s a chance of discovering the Shockmaster’s plans in that gem, something that can help us defeat him and liberate your people, then I’m willing to try."

"Very well," Tobiko said.  Sitting in a lotus position, he began to wave his webbed hands, making a series of esoteric gestures until he Chronicle floated from its pedestal and hung in mid-air, directly in front of his face.  "I shall need but a moment more to align the mystic fields.  Please stand and focus your attention on the crystal."

She did as he asked.  For a few seconds, nothing happened, and she wondered if something had gone wrong.  Finally, he spoke again.

"Good, now hold out your arms," he said.  "No, lower.  A little lower..."

She brought her outstretched arms down until her hands were roughly level with her abdomen, but he said nothing further.  She wasn’t sure what to do with her hands.  After another delay, she finally asked:  "Is this righ--?"

And then suddenly the crystal glowed bright green, and her mind was flooded with so many images and sounds that it felt as if she had been struck by a physical force.  For a moment, M’ranga worried that the unexpected blow might have caused her to flinch, disrupting the pose Tobiko had requested.  Then she realized that she was no longer aware of her own body.

It seemed that she now existed as a being of pure consciousness, surrounded by pure information.  Tobiko had spoken of "accessing" the Chronicle’s records, but this was nothing like what she had expected.  It was as though her mind had somehow entered the gem’s very memory... or it had entered hers... or perhaps it no longer made a difference.

She found that if she concentrated, she could filter the deluge of information and focus on key points of interest.  Slowly, the swirl of images and words began to make more sense.  This was the Crystal Chronicle, an artifact used to record the history of Wistian Civilization.  It contained thousands of years worth of knowledge and wisdom, covering topics from all walks of life: governance, agriculture, technology, magic, science, engineering, philosophy, bureaucratic data, art, and many more.  The answers to her questions seemed to spring into her mind almost as quickly as she could ask them.

As she struggled to express the purpose of her visit, she found that the exchange of information went both ways.

Are there records on the Shockmaster?

[Yes, over one hundred thousand individual files.  Who are you?]

My name is M’ranga.  I’m a revolutionary trying to free your planet’s people.  I need to know what the Shockmaster wants from Planet Extraliga.

[You are not of Wist.  What is your world of origin?]

I’m from the Planet Basteel in the Gallis Sector.  Please, I need to know--

[Is your attire typical of your culture?]

I designed it in honor of the spirit of the Great Revolutionaries of my homeworld.  It’s made from a special material that repels--

[Are the colors symbolic?]

Yes.  The red represents the noble blood of patriots who died in the name of--

[Why aren’t you wearing pants?]

It’s the style of costumed freedom fighters of my world’s history.  Why does it matter what I wear?  Tobiko only wears breeches made of seaweed.

[Tobiko was banished from the council of Elders in Year 29,874 of the Wistian Reform Calendar.  He was cursed to live in exile as a swamp creature for not less than--]

And on it went.  The Chronicle asked questions faster than she could answer them, and the answers it gave her in return seemed to distract her from the matter at hand.  Curious about the nature of Tobiko’s curse, she found herself learning about the Wistian legal precedent behind it.  Then she became engrossed in the sorcery that had transformed him into a swamp creature, and how it might be possible to reverse the effect.  As she researched this, the Chronicle interrogated her on the cultural and historical background of her tricorne hat, and the physical properties of the special material of her costume.

And then, in the middle of researching political theory of Wist’s Third Dynasty, while informing the Chronicle of her planet’s attitudes on gender as a social construct, she remembered why she was here in the first place.  With great effort, she struggled to separate herself from the Crystal’s immense flow of information, and she forced herself to formulate a specific query:

What did the Shockmaster want on Extraliga?

It wasn’t that simple, of course.  She had to ask a dozen follow-up questions to narrow things down, and each time she had to resist the urge to respond to the Crystal’s questions about her own knowledge.

And then, as she felt she couldn’t go on any longer, and it seemed that her very sense of self would be absorbed into the Chronicle’s endless stream of information, she suddenly found herself back in Tobiko’s inner sanctum, standing before him with her arms held out at a particular angle.

Disoriented, she took a step forward and grasped at her forehead with one hand.

"How... how long...?"

"A few seconds," Tobiko replied.  "I sensed your consciousness becoming overwhelmed, and terminated the spell."

"Seconds?!" she exclaimed.  "It felt like... like...!"

With a wave of his hand the crystal returned to its pedestal and he rose to his feet.  "I apologize," he said as he gently took hold of her shoulders to steady her.  "Though it seems you were able to link with the Chronicle, you had no way to navigate its archives."

He led her to a cushion of moss, where she sat down and tried to collect her thoughts.  The sensation of her body against the cushion, of Tobiko’s hands on her, even her own hand on her face was strange.  Gradually, it became more and more reassuring.  She was alive, corporeal, individual.

"Don’t apologize, Tobiko," she said after several minutes.  "It didn’t go quite the way we planned, but it worked.  The Chronicle told me about Extraliga.  It showed me what the Shockmaster wanted from that world."

"What is that?" Tobiko asked.

"I’m not completely sure," she said.  "I’ll need your help to sort out what I learned, but I know this much: If someone don’t stop him, a lot of innocent people are going to die."