ransom bennett

Working on this as well...
RANSOM BENNETT!
this is the story of a badly written action super hero who begins to question his existence and role on this earth. enjoy or die.

                Ransom Bennett was a hard man to kill.

Even when he was a kid, no one could kill him, and people tried. People from all around the world came to Ransom Bennett’s Dad’s house and tried to kill him. But he was too strong for them, even as a little baby. Once a man, a big scary biker from a bike gang, came to Ransom Bennett’s Dad’s house and said “I’m gonna kill that baby,” but Ransom Bennett’s Dad just said “no you wont,” and Ransom Bennett beat the biker up. He was three years old then, but now he was a big tough guy who wasn’t to be messed around with. Ransom Bennett was like a cobra and a tiger mixed together and given the radioactive powers of the Hulk but he is able to control it. Was. Is. Is like that what I said before. Ransom Bennett is actually better than that.

One day Ransom Bennett was going out to his awesome badass motorcycle to go pick up some chicks when he heard a strange noise behind him. Ransom Bennett knew it was a ninja assassin. They were always waiting for him by his sweet bike. Ransom Bennett turned around so fast and pulled out his sword that he had cleverly hidden in his motorcycle incase of ninja assassins. But when Ransom Bennett looked down at his sword, there was no blood on it.

“what the heck?” said Ransom Bennett.

Usually there would have been a ninja there, sword in hand, raised high above his head, ready to strike. It should have been that way; always. But there was nothing, just a cool morning breeze and the silence of his vast estate.

“something isn’t right,” said Ransom Bennett. The ninjas should have been there by now, and he should have been knee deep in their blood and bowels, but he wasn’t. Ransom Bennett was confused. What the heck is going on, Ransom Bennett thought. Ransom Bennett got on his motorcycle and decided to ride into the town and get some beer and a scratch ticket, which he would win lots of money on, just like always. He rode down the road at high speed, racing around corners and hugging turns with intense precision. Then he heard a “DING” and noticed he was running out of gas. WHAT? He thought, this never happens to me. Ransom Bennett was beginning to feel nervous, another first. He pulled his badass motorcycle off to the side of the road and saw a gas station up ahead, so he pulled back onto the road and drove toward it. Ransom Bennett was not having a very good day.

The gas station was quaint and small, but Ransom Bennett knew there would be a big buxom lass there waiting for him to have hot sex with. However, when he got to the gas station, there wasn’t a big buxom lass, but rather a fat old man with a big scar on his face.

“where’s your girl?” Ransom Bennett asked.

“what in the hell are you talking about boy?” the man said.

“your girl, nevermind…I need gasing up” Ransom Bennett said.

“you got money boy?”

“excuse me?” Ransom Bennett was not accustomed to money.

“cash money boy,” the man said, “I aint giving you no gas till I see some cash.” Ransom Bennett shot him a look, then reached into his pockets…which were empty. No wallet, no money, no nothing. Ransom Bennett had never needed to get gas before.

“I…”

“You better just move on then…”

“But, I need to…I’m running on empty,” Ransom Bennett pleaded.

“Don’t make me get my gun boy.”

“Can I leave…”

“No you cant leave the bike here…walk it” The man went back inside.

Ransom Bennett shot the gas station attendant another harsh look as he rolled the motorcycle out of the gas station and began walking down the road. Ransom Bennett was really nervous now, he hadn’t ever had to get gas, and when he did there was always a big buxom lass there wanting his sex. Not some overgrown monster of a man covered in sweat and piss and gas. The sun beat down on Ransom Bennett’s head.

After about a mile Ransom Bennett turned his badass bike over on the side of the road and left it; it was much too heavy and Ransom Bennett was feeling tired. As he walked he could feel himself fading, running through his heads a billion and one thoughts and feelings he never remembered having before; fear, anger, frustration. Why is this happening to me, Ransom Bennett thought, what changed in the world. One minute he was the most awesome badass mother fucker on the face of the planet, and the next he was walking down the side of the road, sweaty, beaten, and sullen. Ransom Bennett cursed, what am I supposed to do?

Ransom Bennett thought about his life as he walked. The many adventures, the many villains bested, the many women conquered, the prizes of his life as THE hero. Ransom Bennett didn’t want to give that up. He remembered them all, for the first time in his life, he was remembering things that happened long ago; and feeling the pain of his actions. Radio Man was one such case. In the helio actic base miles beneath the earths surface, Ransom Bennett had ended his reign of microwave terror. With a rocket launcher. To the face. It was a bloody mess. Radio Man had tried, and failed, to steal all of the earths radio frequencies, (which made no sense I’ll concur, but he did it anyway) and covert them to a single frequency which would blah, blah, blah. Ransom Bennett hadn’t waited for Radio Man to finish his explanation; Ransom Bennett had already expertly untied the knots that bound him. Ransom Bennett had lunged at Radio Man, gripped him by the throat, and stuffed the nearest thing to his hand into Radio Man’s mouth, which was Radio Man’s RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade, Radio Man Role Playing Game available this Christmas) and promptly exploded the back of his head from the rest of his body. He had never really thought much about icing a villain before; it always seemed so natural, so easy, like it was meant to be and he shouldn’t question it. For the first time in his life, Ransom Bennett wondered, Was that the right thing for me to do?

Radio Man was his first big break into the super hero world. Ransom Bennett went from local do-gooder saving cats from trees and servicing buxom lasses to member of mutli-national, multi-galaxial, inter-dimensional group of super beings that protected the earth from the threat of evil. The Earth Defense Force Mach One, the greatest assembling of heroes ever known in this universe. Ransom Bennett had been approached personally by Uberman and Dark Vengeance and presented with his own Earth Defense Force Mach One Identification Card and ½ off at Denny’s gift certificate. Ransom Bennett was now a protector of the earth itself. Along with Uberman and his super human strength and flying abilities, and Dark Vengeance with his Super Suit and detective skills, there was The Beam, an alien sent to protect/police the earth by a group of all knowing, sentient plants on a distant planet (protect/police the earth with an intergalactic flashlight,) Tim Time, a time sliding Englishman with no whit and a penchant for burning people alive with his other superhuman ability to burn things, Uberlass, Uberman’s less powerful cousin (female,) Honey Badger, a Canadian civilian who camped on a Nuclear test site and was granted the powers of a honey badger nearby (love of burrowing, healing factor), Black Man, a super powered black man named Jamal Wilson with the power to turn his body into electricity, and finally, The Neptunian bounty hunter Kaal Duu Marr, who had all the powers everybody else had and that was his power. Together they protected/policed the earth in perfect harmony, without women to interfere with their perfectly laid plans. They often joked about it, but Ransom Bennett had known it was deathly serious. A women in control of the Earth Defense Force Mach One? The world would be in flames by noon. But now Ransom Bennett wondered if that was right as well, or had he been so afraid of women he pushed them away; turned them into sex objects and feared them because of his mother? He shook the thought from his head; a memory. He was only a child.

It disappeared as fast as it had risen.

The road was still unfolding before him, straight like and arrow up into the hills ahead, like a stream of light shooting through the cosmos into the hands of god opening into the new world. Ransom Bennett raised his hand to block the warm rays of sunlight, and brushed the dirt from his face. He couldn’t remember where he was; where he was going. The road was off to somewhere, that was for sure, but Ransom Bennett didn’t know where that was. He knelt on the shoulder of the road to catch his breath, cupping his face in his hands and biting his lip. Pain. He was feeling pain. He doubled over.

Ransom Bennett had been with the Earth Defense Force Mach One for ten years when the Cataclysm happened, but even now it seemed like such a short time. They had solved crimes, thwarted plots to destroy the earth, captured murders, fought in major wars, and even helped broker peace in Israel, all just in ten short years. The world had become a better place; people were free, the evil was jailed, and the earth was safe from peril once more, thanks to our brave heroes. Thus began a however brief Shangri-La period on earth, under one world government appointed by the members of the Earth Defense Force Mach One, all people on earth strived for peace and prosperity and a new world order. The evil of the world was laid to waste, violent criminals and rapists were slaughtered like pigs, villains and philanthropists and distributers of pornography and drugs and alcohol and sin were rounded up and re-educated into civil society, liberals and revolutionaries and libertarians were made to surrender and join society or be annihilated, and the world was at peace once more. Arboreal sins were made illegal by pain of death by the Earth Defense Force Mach One and thus humanity ascended to an intelligence unseen in any of its eras before. Subsequently, some measures had to be taken to ensure the pure hereditary traits of the human race, and many children born with defects or disabilities were put to the fire, but it was needed if the world was to move on. Ransom Bennett had agreed then, that they must take precaution against the same vices and ills that led the human race to the brink they had come to, and Uberman and the rest of the Earth Defense Force Mach One had carried out these orders, and the world followed suit. Eventually it began to change the way humans gave birth, and scientists learned of ways the genes that caused down syndrome and autism could be detected and the fetus neutralized before it was too old. These advances in medical learning led to the discovery of cures for cancer and other diseases that had ravaged humanity for centuries. Ransom Bennett had been a part of that, the curing of humanity, the rebuilding of a new society free from depression and guilt. But it had all come crashing down in the Cataclysm, when the dark one came. Ransom Bennett had changed when he showed up.

The dark one was what Dark Vengeance had called a “mirror person;” a figment of our imagination given life by some dark magic not understood yet by mankind. These Mirror People were all around us, the manifestation of our ego run wild; waiting in the shadows to grow and divide and become real in their own bodies with their own minds and thoughts and feelings. Dark Vengeance had said, “they are you, but they are not you at all. They are the black and dark mud that boils deep down in your gullet; the fear you neglect to reason with. And they spawn when someone is about to die, but not always the person that sees them. They are ill omen.” The dark one had slipped out of Ransom Bennett’s own ego and crawled across the bedroom floor in what Ransom Bennett had thought was a dream; a shadow, thick and viscous like margarine, limping along leaving a trail of foul looking grey slime. By the morning it had grown into a middle aged man, and stood against the wall in his bedroom with a look of sheer malevolence on its face. Ransom Bennett paid it no mind at first, it was after all only a figment of his imagination, and Dark Vengeance had given him a few tips on how to get rid of these “Mirror People,” so there it stayed, on the wall, growing and looking more and more like him everyday.

When one day the Mirror Person was gone, Ransom Bennett didn’t think all that much about it. He went on with his usual day, fighting a robot alligator in the subway, stopping a gang of clowns from robbing a national bank truck, investigating and breaking open the case on an international child smuggling ring, meeting with president Arthur Krantz and former Texas Gov. Lyla Rose Hardin and the joint chiefs of staff, beating up a teenage bully at his nephews middle school, reading to sick kids at the hospital, then bedding nine Swedish models in a hotel room for the afternoon. But when he returned to the Earth Defense Force Mach One Mach Two, a giant earth orbiting satellite where the group conducted its meetings, everyone was dead. Uberman, Dark Vengeance, The Beam, Tim Time, Uberlass, Honey Badger, Black Man, and Kaal Duu Marr were all lying on the floor of the satellite covered in their own, and everybody else’s blood. Ransom Bennett remembered what he had though at that very moment, what kind of sick joke is this? It was like someone was intentionally placing these horrible obstacles in his path, and every time he was left alone, the soul survivor of some brutal massacre. Just like his parents; he could see their faces draining of life before him.

It was the dark one, Ransom Bennett would soon find out; he was trying to take Ransom Bennett’s life away piece by piece. He wanted to break Ransom Bennett down and take his place, to destroy him and literally become him. They battled on that ship for days, an equal match for each other, before Ransom Bennett had finally won, like he knew he would. The dark one was beaten unrecognizable, and in fact Ransom Bennett had wondered how long he had continued fighting him after he was already dead. That was when he felt pain, for the first time since his parents died, real deep pain that racked him to his core. Depression; he felt like a great and heavy weight had been lain on his chest to carry now for all time. Whenever he closed his eyes, he saw their faces; the faces of the men he had killed in his days. Frightened faces, twisted and bloodied, draining to pale in his hands, and every time they turned into the faces of his friends and his loved ones, his parents. Did I kill them?