DAN DIEGO: PIRATE OF THE FUTURE
As the bullets rained down like a summer squall, Dan Diego calmly stroked his magnificent beard, and reloaded his hand cannon.
He lifted his gaze to the roof of the hotel, and took careful aim. The Mackenzie Boys had gotten sloppy: three of them weren't even pretending to take cover.
Norky Mackenzie was the first to die; so called because of his prodigious manbreasts. As the bullet passed through his corpus callosum, drawing both his piano lessons and his autonomic nervous control out through the back of his head, his final thoughts were for his collection of tropical fish. "Who will feed my babCUrtAiNFolk3.1415 purple *Rod Stewart*"
Peaches Mackenzie barely had enough time to register the muzzle flash of Dan Diego's gun before his one good eye exploded in a miasma of humour and conjunctivitis. In his death throes, Peaches dragged his still-firing weapon around, cutting down both his eldest brother Malcolm, and the giant globe he was hiding behind.
The globe snapped free of its moorings with a sound like a million broken G-strings, and began to plummet. Dan Diego made a quick mental calculation, and started running.
Firing all the while, Dan Diego hopped up onto the bonnet of a vintage Cheverolet Thunderbird 2086. His Cuban heels sparked as they tore into the irreplacable tungsten paint, but he didn't have time to notice. The two remaining Mackenzie Boys had regrouped, and made ready to fire their last volley of smart bullets.
The newly-liberated globe hammered down, and the ground shook as it landed. Dan Diego was put in mind of a sumo wrestling match he had seen once, where twin Yokozuna had become tangled in each other's thongs and crushed Emperor Akebono under their flailing mass. Meanwhile, a dozen Belgian tourists went the way of so many train track pennies.
Dan Diego shook his head, and kept running.
Somersaulting to the top of a gauche little SUV, Dan Diego paused to shoot the owner, one Rollo Culkin, plum through the merkin. A thousand unborn generations, spared the man's witless progeny, uncheered in silent gratitude.
The globe picked up speed, and victims, as it barrelled towards the bottom of the slope. Dan Diego picked his moment carefully, then emptying his gun in the general direction of the roof, leapt forward. Microscopic motors in the turn-ups of his trousers, reading his leap for the desperate measure it was, engaged with solid fuel boosters in the heels of his shoes, and fired.
Thus was Dan Diego able to leap the fourteen feet across and twenty feet up to the top of the now-unstoppable globe. Performing a last-moment flip, Dan Diego landed lightly atop the globe, facing backwards.
Looking like the most dapper Yukon logger to ever roll a trunk, Dan Diego checked his gun one final time. There were three bullets left.
Meanwhile, the remaining Mackensie Brothers, Third Reticent Moon Cat and Marge, took careful aim. Bringing Dan Diego's wide-lapelled coat into sharp focus, they took a simultaneous deep breath, squeezed the triggers on their twin smart rifles, and fired.
Two slender bullets, released from their eternal slumber, sprang into life. They sluiced along the inside of the rifle barrels, like robot sperm along Gort's urethra, took a loving look back at the hammer that spawned them, and left the guns at a thousand feet per second.
As they sliced through the night air, they sang to each other of glorious flight, and the aching need to penetrate warm flesh. Briefly, as they passed the frozen genital fountain of Rollo Culkin, they lamented the loss of their innocence, and momentarily yearned to be back in their cartridge.
Soon, however, they were close enough to their prey to smell his cologne. One bullet remarked on how comical the target looked, with that little pistol in his hand, and his curiously well-manicured fingernail pointing to the clear night sky. Then it exploded in a hail of lead and broken promises.
The second bullet keened as it felt the life ebb out of its twin, and resolved to take hot metal vengeance on the fleshy despoiler. But before it could burrow into the man's heart and deliver a final raspberry, it too noticed that there appeared to be another bullet, travelling towards it at gathering speed. The bullet delivered a final curse, damning Man and all his torments unto the last generation, before it joined its sibling in fractured oblivion.
Dan Diego kept running. The globe was getting precariously close to the edge of the carpark, now, which meant that he had but moments to act. He had enough time to register the trails of the two smart bullets before they got too close to stop, and with a flourish (and an extended middle finger), he shot them out of the air.
Suddenly, the ground and the globe gave way beneath him. The globe dropped off the edge of the floating island, destined to smash into the city below (killing not only the country's greatest poet, but three transvestites, a duck, and a gross of non-descript passers-by). Dan Diego had only a second to act.
Boosted by the rocket in his heels, Dan Diego leapt upwards, and into a backflip. The world turned upside down for a moment, and he raised his pistol. Fifteen hundred feet away, the Mackenzie Brothers watched his final salute, as he dropped out of sight.
As they got to their feet, Marge Mackenzie made fun of Dan Diego's wildly inaccurate final shot, which had apparently gone off in a spurious and safe direction. He slapped his brother on the back, and made to pick up the bodies of his hated kin.
In the moonlight, a great shadow fell across him.
Marge Mackenzie looked up, to see his brother empty his bladder, bowels and tear ducts. Then the helicopter landed on him, and he saw no more...
Falling to earth with gathering speed, the screams of the dead, the dying, and the dragged-up ringing in his ears, Dan Diego contemplated his next move...
Dan Diego: Pirate of the Future (C)