Kevin sat at his computer looking at old fan fiction stories he’d written a few years ago. The middle-aged man with a distinct lack of shape, mongrel blonde hair and glasses like coke bottles chuckled at his former glory.
“Oh, I loved this one,” he said out ‘loud to his empty apartment, which resembled a small war held within a comic book shop. He scrolled down seeing his spelling and grammar mistakes. “I miss the Iron Age!”
Outside a storm raged across the sky. It made its presence known by making the lights dim as ionized particles danced through the sky above followed by a massive lightning strike with simultaneous thunder which sent the apartment into complete darkness as the windows rattled from the rain.
“WTF!” Kevin swore as he climbed back into his chair. He fumbled for his phone and managed to illuminate the room. “That was intense!”
“You’re telling starking me!”
Kevin yelped and held the phone up. Standing there in the dark was a man in a stylised red and black bodysuit, katana in hand with a slightly confused look on his face.
“Scalphunter?” Kevin asked.
“That’s my name tubby, don’t wear it out,” Scalphunter looked around. “Seems I’m not in Nebraska anymore.”
“It’s Kansas…” Kevin slowly stood as he corrected the character, he’d created for a fan fic universe, thinking he’d bumped his head when he fell out of the chair from the lightning strike. “We’re not in Kansas anymore!”
Scalphunter stepped forward and grabbed Kevin by the collar. “I WAS JUST IN NEBRASKA! Judging by the décor that isn’t of the Smoke Stack, where I JUST WAS can mean either I’ve been snatched into another dimension or this is a level of hell because Darius Stane killed me! So, which is it, fat boy?”
Kevin gulped. “This isn’t possible…”
“Spit it out tub of guts,” Scalphunter shook him like a British nanny. “Speak!”
“You’re a character I created for a fan fic universe on a comic book site!” Kevin wailed as he felt his mind melting at the whole concept he was verbalising. “You’re not rea…”
Scalphunter slapped Kevin silent. “How was that for real? Stark for brains! Okay, I prefer to do my killing when it’s well lit, so where’s the holo-pad that runs your mainframe?”
Kevin was simply stunned and unable to reply. Scalphunter sighed and shook him again as the power clicked back on.
“Oh goody!” Scalphunter tossed Kevin onto the floor. “Please beg, I always like it when they beg.”
“You’re the head of the European Assassination Division!” Kevin blurted out.
“So, you read up on me,” Scalphunter shrugged. “That extended your life by seven sec…”
“Your name is Gerald Wimple and your parents were killed by the Suppai Jorōgumo!”
Scalphunter stopped dead. “We shall never suffer a spider to live!” He said on reflex. He gazed intently at the man on the floor. “How the stark do you know that?”
“Um because I wrote it!” Kevin gulped as slowly stood up.
Scalphunter lunged forward, impaling Kevin through the shoulder to the floor. “START TALKING! NOW!”
“AHH! F$%&! OH GOD!” Kevin screamed as blood seeped from the wound down the sword.
“It’s gonna hurt more when I reef it out,” Scalphunter declared. “Now talk!”
“What are your parents names?” Kevin blurted out.
Scalphunter opened his mouth and stood there like a carnival clown. “Um…mum and dad, der!”
“You don’t know because I haven’t written it. I created you!” Kevin panted.
“So, you’re my real daddy?” Scalphunter said in a weird falsetto voice. “Maybe the Supreme Commander is messing with my head again.”
“IT’S ALL TRUE!” Kevin screamed. “Check my computer!”
Scalphunter looked around in a circle and shrugged. “Where?”
Kevin pointed to the black, oversized late 2000’s computer. Scalphunter whistled. “What year is this, like 2150 tech?”
“2018!”
“GET THE STARK OUT!” Scalphunter cried. “I need me a sports almanac, or is that an anorak? Okay crouching wombat hidden pop-tart, what am I looking for that is going to prove this starking pile of krang crap you’re shovelling!”
“Iron Age Library file,” Kevin panted. “It’s all there. My notes, stories…”
“Deepest desires, sickest fantasies, perhaps? If I find naked pictures of me then…Old Man Scalphunter? What is this stark?”
“I starte…”
“SHUT IT!” Scalphunter snapped. “Trying to read here! Seriously, you write like ten-year-old!”
“Gerald, cou…”
Scalphunter stopped, walked over and smacked Kevin into unconsciousness. “Seriously, stop calling me Gerald, starking piece of stark!”
--
Kevin awoke spluttering as he spat out water that had brought him back to consciousness.
“Wake the stark up!” Scalphunter yelled waggling the empty bucket. “I’ve just read the ENTIRE Iron Age thing, must thank @wildvine for the reading order and whoever @cbishop is for such a neat orderly library, but I digress; you need to explain…like now!”
“Don’t kill me!” Kevin whimpered.
“Oh, look at yourself nutcage! I’ve bandaged you up, put a field dressing on you BECAUSE I NEED YOU ALIVE! Now talk, explain how you’ve written my whole life out before it’s even happened huh? Wizard? Time traveller? Deus ex Machina? Make with the talk!”
“I don’t know!”
“From what I’ve gather you’re either some sort of fat useless nerd from Australia OR some sort of god, can’t decide which yet. You know more about me than I do and I’M ME! THAT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE! And for some reason I don’t win, which is just rude!”
“You’re the bad guy, that’s why,” Kevin coughed.
Scalphunter smiled, “Bad guy, hell’s yeah. Now explain WHY I don’t jump down and kill Ngumi Takada at the end of Hole In The Shield huh? That’s such an UN-ME thing to do.”
“Ngumi is a character created by…”
“So, all my world lives in your head?”
Kevin pushed up his sweat-caked glasses. “No, Josh came up with the concept.”
“WHO THE STARK IS JOSH?” Scalphunter slammed the desk. “Seriously this is like keeping an eye on your girlfriend during an Indakistan orgy!”
“Stop yelling at me.”
Scalphunter rolled across the floor and grabbed Kevin by his piggish nose and reefed it hard. “You don’t get to tell me what to do, Kevy my boy. Now you’re going to talk like your life depended on it, because it does. So, breathe, focus annnnnd…….go!”
Kevin exhaled. “You’re a fictional character I created for a fan fic universe called Iron Age in which Stryfe, now calling himself the Supreme Commander, took over the world and has ruled for about two hundred years. Characters were created and we wrote collectively in the universe which was created by @joshmightbe, well that’s his user I.D on comic vine where we post the stories. I created you.”
“Based on what? Because reading me over, seems you’re not that clever to have created someone like me by yourself.”
Kevin hung his head. “Your name comes from an X-Man villain.”
“There’s an X-Man villain called Gerald Wimple? Get the stark out!”
“No, Scalphunter. Gerald Wimple was a name I came up with as I wanted something distinct but relatively normal. You’re also partially based on Deadpool…”
Scalphunter turned to the reader who was looking at these words and said to them. “Well he sounds cool, doesn’t he kids!”
“But that came later. You’ve got the super power of healing slash regeneration which is a blessing and a curse for you because you take extreme risks because you can’t die although fire and gas-based toxins take longer to process because they destroy your cells.”
“You seem to spurt extremely large sections of word bull$#!+ from your noise hole,” Scalphunter remarked. “But go on.”
“You’re the head of the European Assassination Division or EAD which is a poorly defined section of the Supreme Commander’s army. I based it in Sweden because it was close to where Doom’s empire was and I’m tired of every super story being US-centric.”
“Preach brother, preach,” Scalphunter hallelujahed.
“You grew up in Japan and could’ve easily become part of S.H.I.E.L.D or any one of the resistance movements we set up in the Iron Age, but a splinter spider group killed your parents when you were ten which set you on the path to becoming this universes premier assassin and killing machine.”
“…You killed my parents?”
“Sorry,” Kevin hung his head as he saw the wave of sadness sweep over the man holding him hostage in his own home. “They’re just chara…”
Scalphunter lashed out and knocked Kevin’s two front teeth out with a backhand. “NOT TO ME! They were my parents! Any idea what that does to a ten-year-old, you fat STARK! And seemingly because you wrote them…you wrote them…oh that’s just brilliant!”
“Ooo bwoke my teef!” Kevin coughed blood.
“Ah shut up nerd! I’m going to memorise this life of mine you’ve written out for and then, you are going to write me BACK into the universe, WITH ALL MY NEW KNOWLEDGE, and possibly some cosmic powers and hyper extended adult pokey bits, and I’m going to rule the world!”
“Vat’s inthane!”
Scalphunter crouched down. “You, Kevin Toothless Fat Bastard, are going to rewrite my universe or I’m going to do some horrible stuff to you, starting with engraving every name I know into your back with a fork! Then I’ll throw you in a tub full of salt and lemon juice! Then I’ll…”
“Othkay, othkay!”
Scalphunter flicked him on the forehead. “Don’t interrupt! Then I’ll tie electrical cable to your nipples…”
--
Scalphunter stood triumphantly as he held the four hundred pages of “The New Adventures of Scalphunter, Super King Sexy Man of Every Single Universe”. He looked down at the battered, bloody and tired Kevin slumped in the computer chair.
“You’ve done well, little fatso. Sleep. This is so cool, I mean beyond cool. I go back into the Iron Age, defeated Darius Stane with a finger click, shove the Supreme Commander’s head UP his own butt and take over. Carol Danvers becomes my love monkey, I do like that but you’ll have to make her nineteen again somehow. Then, to begin my magical universe conquering adventure these Chronos Cops you half-assedly wrote a bit for show up and BOOM I’ve got access to time and space, which gets Warstar, a gay Native American mutant from my universe, to show up with a whole bunch of other magical Doctor Strange fan fic amalgams you made up which I easily defeat and take all their stuff giving me, insert Genie rip off, PHENOMINAL COSMIC POWER! I don’t know who this Dallas Riordan character is you slot in, but I do like a redhead, so she can stay but she’s got to cut down on the effing swearing. She’s like a starkmouth!
I do like a bit of conflict where you have me fight your original creation Gunship, which as I find out is essentially just John Cena as Colossus who can fly and shoot beams but I’m tangenting aren’t I, and couple of others. Honestly you should’ve emailed that @delphic dude and used Kon-El from Corrupted, that dude can write! But you were on a dead line.
I take over universe after universe with pockets of love, lust and tragedy. It’s almost Shakespearian if that’s even a word. You’ve finally written something worthwhile, Kevin from the Wonder Years, and it makes me so happy. And the fact you named my parents and wrote them back into reality without using time travel or cloning which is SUCH A MARVEL thing to do! Ladies and gents, my mumma and papa, Mr & Mrs Fred and Wilma Wimple…why does that sound familiar? No matter, they’re alive and okay and…
BLAM!
“…why do I feel strange?”
Kevin sat shakily holding the gun Scalphunter had left lying around. “Becath now, you arthowl, you’re no wonger you! By having me rewrith you, your mootant powerth didn’t twigger in Japan.”
Scalphunter looked down at the hole that went right through him and blobs of blood pumped out. “No, not like this…”
“You totally skwipped over the small paragraph in chapter theventy,” Kevin lisped as he stood up. “If I can wewrite you, I can make thith end my way!”
Scalphunter dropped to his knees, paper flying about like a John Woo film. “Mummy! Daddy!”
“Thhark isn’t even a thwear word, iss your ooniverses version of thwearing thince you can’t thwear on $%#^&@! Comic Vine!” Kevin aimed the gun at his creations head. “Thouldn’t of methed with me!”
Scalphunter felt his life ebb from his body, the first time that had ever happened considering his powers. His eyes flickered as darkness rushed in to take him. Suddenly pain returned, his eyes bolted open and he was being crushed.
-Oh, this isn’t good- Gerald thought as he looked around. A peal of light poked through and he twisted his head to see a man pulling his sword from the rubble like a knight of old.
“Oh, this is that lazy but clever writing where Kevin links it back into something he’s already written,” Scalphunter addressed the reader. “Not bad fat boy. Okay, let’s see if I remember my lines…ahem…me me me me. Mo mo mo moooo. Red leather yellow leather. Okay…”
The end but continued here https://comicvine.gamespot.com/forums/fan-fic-8/marvel-iron-age-distain-part-4-651234/#1 if you really want to read some Iron Age stuff
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