2217/Coming of the New Gauds

Coming of the New Gauds
Date of Scene:	29 August 2017
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	Summary needed
Cast of Characters:	Blue Beetle (Kord), Booster Gold, Dragonfly (Arazello)

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Blue Beetle (Kord) has posed:
The skies are scarlet this early morn, hanging over the city like a flimsy gauze cast down by the gods.

A sound like the crashing of cymbals--crack! Smash! CLANG!

And then, in the middle of a heavily trafficked intersection, appears a half-dozen individuals garbed in strange attire.

"LO!" one shouts, extending its arm out before itself. "WE ARE COME! LET THE CONSULTATION COMMENCE!"

The others begin assembling a complex apparatus that looks like a hybrid printer, Play-doh fun factory, and oscilloscope.

"TOUCH NOTHING, LEST YE RUIN THE ULTRA-FENG SHUI OF THIS ORB!" the leader shouts, a garish cloud of crackling energy dots growing visible about its hand.


This was thirty minutes ago.

Now--the intersection is covered in a horrific combination of colored patterns--plaids and paisleys! Stripes and dots!

All is amok!

ALL IS IN PERIL!

For the Earth has seen the coming of ...

DAWN DRAPER AND THE RUINOUS RENOVATORS!


Meanwhile, even now, at Superbuddies HQ--which is to say a local wings bar...

"Booster, you seein' this?" Blue Beetle says, pointing his thumb at the TV. "Wackiest parade in weeks."

Just then, his cell phone beeps an alert.

"Wait a minute..." Beetle says, checking his notifications. "There's a lowest-bid call for applications right now on this thing. The city's willing to take anyone for the job!"

"Well!" the Blue Beetle shouts, slamming his palm on the bar top. "No one's more lowest-bid than US!"

Booster Gold has posed:
Booster's dressed in the suave fashion to which he's become accustomed-- the 'my dad is a lawyer' starter pack. Louvered green sunglasses, a pink polo shirt with the collar turned up, khakhi shorts, and boat loafers. He looks like he just came up from Columbia University on Spring break, and he's throwing back beer and hot wings like no one's business.

"Man, you don't even /know/," he mutters, over his fifth plate of spicy wings. His knees are weak, his palms are sweaty, but he keeps digging in. "Real chicken, this would be, like-- you can't even afford it in the future. No one keeps livestock."

He glances at Ted's phone when the notification comes in, and promptly shovels the last fistful of boneless wings into his face once Blue Beetle swings into action!

"Hurghgagffkfkkrgh!" Booster agrees, chewing heavily then wincing as he swallows a third of his triple mouthful of chicken breast. He nods and claps Ted on the back, throwing a few bills from his wallet on the bartop to cover their tab.

Dragonfly (Arazello) has posed:
    Nancy is simply staring in shock (and a bit of awe) at Booster's performance. "Wouldn't it be more efficient to get rid of your teeth?" she wonders aloud. "I mean then you could just push the food down without it getting caught."
    She shakes her head and picks up another of her pieces of deep fried zucchini. Because yes, she is, in fact, an old school yuppie lost in time somehow. The sudden notification startles her, causing the dipping sauce to smear over her cheek as she turns to check out Beetle's shouting.
    "Oh, God," she mutters. "This is going to be an SB job, isn't it?"

Blue Beetle (Kord) has posed:
"HUMANS!" Dawn Draper shouts, its voice an off-key synthesized polyphony. "KNEEL BEFORE US ... THAT WE MAY MORE EFFICIENTLY PREPARE THY GARB!"

The alien points a sceptre of some sort at a minivan. There's a prismatic beam and a ZONKKKK sound, and the minivan turns neon orange.

Another beam creates a sort of 'pleated khakis' facade on a nearby storefront.


Even at this moment, the Beetle shifts gears at the helm of the Bug, the not-even-remotely-aerodynamic vessel shrieking through the morning sky.

"Coming in hot, everybody!" Beetle shouts. "Get ready to jump!"

As he leaps from the Bug's belly like a paratrooper, Ted is struck by a renovation beam.

No longer is he the Blue Beetle!

Now he is ... THE ARGYLE APHID!

"Noooooooooo!" shouts the Beetle, clawing at his hideous ensemble as he plummets to certain doom.

Dragonfly (Arazello) has posed:
    "I've got you!" Nancy shouts, as she jumps from the Bug herself, transforming in mid-fall to her other persona. (It's a trick she's been working on to help save the renovation bills for the van.) "Hold on..." The beams coursing around the place find her, and she finds herself translated into ... THE TIE-DYE AVENGER! You can practically hear the sitar and smell the patchouli as she zooms down to catch the Beetle in his plunge to the ground.
    "MOTHER. PUS. BUCKET!" she shouts as she sees the colours she's been transformed to, her sun-darkened skin clashing with the white bodysuit with its psychedelic decorations. "SOMEONE IS GOING TO SUFFER FOR THIS!"

Booster Gold has posed:
Why does the Blue Bug have gears? Who knows!

It's a totally legitimate question, of course; it's not like it has a transmission or a drivetrain, or really any gears at all. Likely it's more of a function of a narrative effect; like when the hero pumps a shotgun for emphasis or how people don't say 'goodbye' before hanging the phone up in TV shows.

Booster considers none of this, though, as he drops from the bug's cargo hatch as resplendent as the noonday sun-- golden, glittering, and full of hope!

"Holy Mother of Megazon, what is he WEARING?!" screeches one of Draper's cronies. "It's so... it's so..."

"Tacky!"

"All that gold? Ugh! Kill me with a glitterbomb!"

"I'll fix him up proper!" another one of the Renovators says, aiming a lasergun at Booster. It smacks against the forcefield around Booster's person, and momentarily the Golden Boy of the Future becomes THE PLAID PROTECTOR!

His shield flickers and resets itself, and Booster Gold stands akimbo in the air, hands on his hips. "Hah! You'll have to do better than that, villains!" he crows exultantly at the Renovators.

A laser beam lances up from below and smacks into Booster's chestplate with stunning force, knocking him sideways and through the side of a building.

"...'kay!" one of the Renovators calls after him.

Blue Beetle (Kord) has posed:
"OH, HONEY," Dawn Draper calls out to the Tie-Dyed Avenger. "THOU ART NOW GLORIOUS! ALL HAIL!"

"HAIL!" shout the Ruinous Renovators in unison as two of them man a tripod-mounted 'fashion cannon' that fired bad taste gatling-style at frightened passersby. Porkpie hats! Platform soles with goldfish in them! Zoot suits! JNCO jeans! Puka shell necklaces!

"WHERE IS THE PLAID ONE? HE SHALL BE THE NEXT HERALD OF OUR INTELLIGENT DESIGNER!" the Draper intones.

Hanging from Dragonfly's grasp, Ted sneers. "Stomach--churning! So...very...gauche!" Choking back vomit, the Beetle nods toward the cannon team. "Send me that way, coach--*urp*--and maybe, just maybe, I can try to reverse-engineer this slaughter of style..."

Booster Gold has posed:
Booster grunts and tries to channel his inner T-Swift and shake it off-- the beam was mostly concussive force, and lightly singed his golden breastplate.

"Sheesh," he mutters, flying back out of the hole in the building. "These guys are playing for keeps, Beetle!" Booster shouts, flying an acrobatic loop and peppering them with blasts from his photon cannons. One of the vehicles that was an early target gets hit by their redesigner gun-- this time, it goes from polka dots to plaid, and the car abruptly rusts away in vast sloughing dustfall.

"Yikes! Don't let it hit you twice!" Booster yelps, tryring to run coverage for Nancy and Ted. "That recombobulator of theirs isn't just a toy!"

"No, it's not!" one of the Renovators screams, gleefully. "Once we establish a color palate... then we have to START WITH A BLANK CANVAS!"

Three merchant's stalls in a row get decorated with a riotous shade of neon pink and lime green that make it look like 1988 threw up on them and then yanked down their parachute pants.

Dragonfly (Arazello) has posed:
    "Oh God," Tie-Dye Avenger whines, "my eyes! They're stabbing needles of hot, neon shame into my eyes!" For a moment she's distracted by the colourful carnage and smacks into a traffic pole, the blow thankfully being cushioned by Blue ... erm ... Plaid ... erm ... Paisley ... ah, whatever! ... Beetle.
    "Sorry about that!"
    Pulling herself together, the Avenger catches the falling part of the traffic pole, suspending it in midair behind her as she focuses on the device the Beetle mentioned. "You're about to go ballistic, BB. Get ready for a landing. I'll distract them from the front while you take 'em from above!"
    With that she slings the Beetle away from her in a telekinetic trajectory while she goes full frontal in the assault, combining the visual assault of her garish outfit with fists as she swoops across the gunners, strewing them like bowling pins.
    The Beetle soars in from above, now ballistic once his final trajectory is set.

Blue Beetle (Kord) has posed:
"NONSENSE!" booms Dawn Draper. "THIS WORLD IS MADE THE BETTER FOR EVERYONE WEARING 8-BALL JACKETS!"

The Ruinous Renovators begin rapid-fire attaching rhinestones to every available surface.

The Beetle is flung through the air. The fashion cannon zaps him again, and his costume begins to disintegrate around him. "No!" he screams. "My secret shame!" Ted flails about in the air, attempting to cover his tighty whities.

"Master!" one of the Renovators cries, lumbering toward a large blue mailbox. "What of this?"

"IT IS DECREED," the Draper continues, "PUT A BIRD ON IT! PUT A BIRD ON--EVERYTHING!"

Moments before the Beetle collides with the fashion cannon, he is suddenly engulfed in a giant felt bird cut-out. "Mmmrpphh!" he groans as the cannon and its operators skid across the asphalt like knocked-over bowling pins.

"YOU FOOLS!" Dawn Draper shouts, sweeping its sceptre around before embedding its base into the street. "IF THIS BE THE SITE FOR EARTH'S DRAMATIC NEW REVEAL--THEN SO BE IT!"

The scepter begins to hum and glow, casting out a number of multicolored lights in true 'disco party ball' manner.

Dawn Draper closes its eyes in intense concentration. "YOU BETTER /WORK/ IT!"

Booster Gold has posed:
Booster's visor turns black to protect him from a particularly garish blast of rhinestone-studded glory that'd make certain cowboys faint with joy.

"Gah! I'm flying blind, Beetle!" he yelps, trying to avoid a fashion blast. Booster's already the most garish thing in the air, so the Renovators are at least only attacking him with lethal force instead of embarassing him like poor Ted.

Booster takes two hits and drops like a stone, bouncing off a power transformer that's currently covered head to toe in Elvian velour.

Vegas Elvis, not Tolkein Elvian.

"Oh god! It's on me! It's on my armor!" Booster screams, staring at his hands as velour crawls across him, turning his attire into a screamingly seductive shade of deep scarlet with yellow trim. His pants vanish, becoming a kilt sans pleats.

"Oh god! I'm turning into Captain Brannigan!"

Dragonfly (Arazello) has posed:
    "Captain who?" the Avenger wonders aloud as she employs her most important skill: hit things with other things. She wrenches one of the weapons being directed at Booster out of the henchman's grasp and pummels said henchman over the head with it, putting a significant dent into the barrel.
    The weapon begins an ominous whining.
    "Oh sh..." She reflexively throws it away, hard, embedding it into the wall of a nearby bank. The gun explodes, converting the side (and most of the interior) of the bank into cheap rayon brocade with garish western interpretations of Japanese seven-clawed dragons. You know, the ones that have only six claws because rip-off artists can't count or something.
    Rayon, it turns out, isn't much for building supporting curtain walls. (Not much for curtains either, but that's another story.) Loud metalic creaking, paired with the explosive sound of reinforced concrete snapping under a heavy load, begins to fill the air.
    "Oh sh..."

Blue Beetle (Kord) has posed:
"LET NONE DISRUPT THIS TRANSFERENCE OF STYLE TO THE WORLD!" Dawn Draper shouts, tossing its head back and raising its arms to the scarlet heavens.

The air begins to whirl about, casting debris from the street and nearby disintegrating buildings into the air like wind through leather fringe. Lighting illuminates the sky, changing its hue like a Hypercolor(TM) shirt that's gotten wet.

"You fool!" Blue Beetle screams in reply. "You can never defeat us--we have /NO FEAR/ of bad taste!" He attempts to walk toward the sceptre, slowed by the wind and buffeted by debris. "We've seen Ed Hardy and lived to tell the tale! Just--just look at us!"

The Renovators look at Dragonfly and Booster Gold.

Slowly, Dawn Draper does the same, silent for a long moment.

The air seems to settle and the sound fades away.

"MY GOD," the Draper whispers in a dull shout, a single glittering tear trickling down its extraterrestrial cheek-plate. "THIS WORLD ... IT'S FULL OF CHINOS."

As if in sync, the Renovators clutch their temples and shriek, falling to the ground. "No hope," they wail. "No hope!"

Booster Gold has posed:
Nancy's wrecking terrific havoc; it turns out that interior designers make for bad martial artists, or at least, none of THIS crowd are secret fashion ninjas.

Booster looks down at his outfit.

"Y'know, this isn't too bad," he says, catching a look at himself in an unbroken piece of business glass. "Nice lines, the pauldrons add a certain... dashing flair," he remarks, turning this way and that. "The skirt is... daring, but... bold," he says, flexing his arms. "It shows real confidence. It takes a MAN to wear a skirt this.. certain. Assertive. A man who says 'I'm proud of my quadriceps'," Booster says, staring at his reflection with an expression of total rapture.

"Wow, my calves /are/ gorgeous. Someone take a memo! Re: My amazing legs," he says. Booster's out of the fight, staring at his own reflection with a focus Narcissus would be envious of.

Dragonfly (Arazello) has posed:
    "Dammit, Booster, we've got invaders to take out! People to save!" The Tie-Dye Avenger swoops in again on the Renovators, aiming with both fists extended for the Draper itself. "Snap out of it!" she shouts as she hits the Draper, carving through it like it's made of light. Which it is. Holograms are that way, after all.
    Surprised by the lack of actual contact, the Avenger smashes instead into the bus behind the Draper, its polka-dotted side now indented by one female form. Indent currently filled by one female form.
    "Ow?"

Blue Beetle (Kord) has posed:
"THAT CUT ... SUCH POSES ... THE ESSENCE OF MAGNIFICENCE!" Dawn Draper falls to its knees and begins sobbing.

"TRULY, THIS PLANET IS BOTH UNWORTHY AND READY FOR ITS NEXT TURN ON THE EVOLUTIONARY CATWALK!" the Draper chokes out. "RENOVATORS--WE MUST PAUSE OUR WORK!"

The Ruinous Renovators slowly get to their feet, wiping away their own tears, and begin disassembling their machinery.

"REJOICE FOR THE MOMENT, HUMANS!" the Draper calls, bowing. "A GREATER POWER SHALL YET DECIDE THY FATE!"

The sceptre flies into Dawn Draper's hand, and the odd weather patterns surrounding it cease to exist.

Blue Beetle, having braced himself against a strong wind, suddenly falls forward onto his face with a wet thud. The undies offer him no cushioning.

Dawn Draper turns its head to consider Dragonfly's point of contact. "CONGRATULATIONS, MORTAL," it says. "THAT ACT OF DESTRUCTION WAS, OF A SORT, CONCEPTUAL ART. SO LIKE FASHION--IF ONLY A FAINT ECHO THEREOF."

Booster Gold has posed:
IN THE VAST REACHES OF STYLISHLY BLACK SPACE

"Sir!" Elegant patent-leather shoes scrape and slap against perfectly ordered granite as one of the endless Courtiers of the Fashion Citadel scampers towards the Butane Throne. He moves with his head bowed in polite obsequiousness, which also shows off his intricately embroidered skullcap; manners and customs change almost weekly as the minions of the Master Decorator find new and fascinating clothing options and move from bows to salutes to show them off.

A brief flirtation with cuffed trousers had led to an interesting high-kick hello that resulted in a number of bruises.

"We have found a world, sir!" the courtier yelps, moving into his master's proximity-- the Amber Throne towers high, and the immaculately attired giant atop it stirs in silent reaction. "Drab, all blues and greens-- and greys! Greys everywhere! It's a world RIPE for redecoration!"

"An entire world needing my touch?" the giant muses, in a lyrical voice. "Intersting! Bring me images of this world, and we will see if it deserves the tender caress of..."

"...MISTER NEBULA!"