by Scott Keith   
TheSmarks.com/411Wrestling.com/OnlineOnslaught.com

The wind whipped through his hair, his cape flapped majestically, and the city was open below, waiting for him to deal with the criminal element as only he could.

Oh, and Gregory Shane Helms, 1/3 of the puppet ownership of HHH Networks, was dragged along by a beam from the Power Belt, shrieking like a 12-year old girl the whole way.

"LET ME DOWN!"  He yelled again, as if Hurricane really WANTED to be carrying along a whiny executive instead of a hot super-heroine like Mighty Molly.

"Hey, jackass, you weren't exactly my first choice either."  Hurricane called down to the simpering exec.  "But in case you didn't notice, we're currently flying at an altitude of 30,000 feet, and all you're protected by is the force-beam coming out of the Power Belt, and your boxer shorts."

The Power Belt in question was strapped around the Hurricane's waist, looking like some sort of championship belt from boxing, and a green beam of light emanated from the center and held Helms in place behind him.  The boxer shorts in question had pictures of Underdog on them.

One again, the Hurricane questioned the sanity of his superiors, but then that was nothing new.

Years ago, during a qualifying race for a Nascar event in Alabama, driver Bob Holly had been visited by a mysterious alien calling himself Meete.  He pulled Holly from his car just before it was about to crash into a retaining wall and explode, thus saving him from certain death.  Holly never got a chance to explain that it was Meete's landing in the middle of the damn track that caused him to swerve in the first place, because they had been off and flying to the very spot Holly was now dragging Helms to before he got a chance.  They made some small talk along the way, as Meete explained that he came from a far off planet called Stasiak, and that he had been chosen by a strange group of omnipotent beings who watched over everything in the universe and shaped it to their will.  Apparently they called themselves The Bookers.  No one knew what that name meant or why they chose it, but they had ruled the universe for millions of years and were all powerful.  Powerful enough, in fact, to take a small portion of that awesome power and fashion it into a belt that would bestow fantastic powers on the wearer  unlimited strength, the ability to fly, beams of light that could be fashioned to do anything the user wanted  the possibilities were only limited by the imagination of the man wearing it.

However, the belt had one weakness:  Self-control.  Requiring a degree of concentration to operate that few people had, any sort of laughter would generally disrupt the flow of power and expose the person wearing it to immediate danger, especially if they happened to be flying at the time.  So, by decree of The Bookers, it was vitally important for whoever wore it to have absolutely no sense of humor.

Naturally, Bob Holly was a perfect choice to wear the belt given this qualification.

Meete from Planet Stasiak, who had been the one wearing the belt until he found Bob Holly in 1985, explained that in order to keep the power flowing from The Bookers into the belt, it had to be charged every 48 hours with a special machine that was kept buried deep in a cave in Colorado.  In fact, The Bookers chose Earth to house their charging machine precisely because up until the sudden emergence of the Justice Legion in the 70s, Earth had generally been described by snottier members of high society in the region as "a boring, jerkwater planet with no hope of evolving to the next level any time soon and lousy food".  Given the two decades or so of heroes which had emerged from the small blue planet since that time and advances in cuisine, the rest of the universe was starting to come around, noting that perhaps the food wasn't as bad as originally thought.  In fact, the general concensus was that if they could do something about France, the planet might have a chance.  At any rate, alien tourism wasn't exactly a big industry for most of the time, so The Bookers put their most precious creation in a cave in what would come to be Colorado back before man even started walking upright, counting on no one bothering to visit a drab dump such as Earth.  Some galactic talk show programs have since suggested that if the powers that be had just taken care to send a glacier crashing through what would come to France right then and there, perhaps things wouldn't have gotten to where they did, which was generally Earth coming in last in the Good Galactic Housekeeping's "Best Inhabited Planet of the Year" voting for 400 millenia straight.

So indeed, just as Meete led Holly to that cave years before, Bob Holly (who had been dubbed The Hurricane by television media due to his fondness for creating windstorms to deal with his enemies) dropped off Shane Helms and prepared to pass the torch.

"Okay, we're here."

Shane seemed a bit confused what "here" was.

"The cave?"

"Yeah, the cave.  In case you hadn't noticed, I'm a bit beat up."

That was actually sort of an understatement, as Holly's left arm was literally being held in place only by the power of the belt, and half of his face seemed to be missing, hidden under various bandages.  Holly had encountered a giant alien robot created by his arch-nemesis, Crash, and got into a heated battle with it that had gone very badly once the robot starting cracking jokes stolen from Pauly Shore.  Unfortunately, that proved to be the Hurricane's undoing, as he proved to be the only one in the known galaxy who thought that Pauly Shore was funny.  He burst into laughter once Crash's robot started calling him "buddy", and from there the rout was on.  Hurricane Holly managed to regain his self-control long enough to save his own life and destroy the monstrous creation, but his career as a super-hero was over, for good.

And so the Power Belt, driven by instructions from The Bookers, had sought out the closest person who had absolutely no sense of humor whatsoever.  In this case, Shane Helms.  In fact, it pulled him out of his office so fast that his clothes were left behind like a cartoon character.

Bob didn't like giving up the Belt.  But then Bob didn't like much, it seemed.  Especially dying, which didn't seem to be far off.  Some people get introspective and calm as death approaches.  Bob Holly got pissed off and decided to take out his frustrations on the nearest available target.

"Look," Helms said in an increasingly desperate tone of voice, "I'm late for a very important meeting back at the offices, and I'm afraid I don't deal well with being kidnapped and taken to a weird-looking cave by a guy who looks like he was just put through a food processor."

"You think I like this any more than you do?  Here I was, having a perfectly good career as a superhero, righting wrongs and stuff like that, and I get my ass kicked by a giant robot from space?  A GIANT ROBOT FROM SPACE.  No one gets beat by those things anymore.  Hell, giant robots from space were supposed to have gone out in the 50s.  What kind of super-villain builds that sort of thing?"

"How did it beat you, then?"

"It, uh, attacked me when I was carrying a busload of orphans and I was distracted.  That's not the point.  This is the Power Belt.  You have to charge it using the machine in that cave every 48 hours or you won't have any power."  Bob undid the belt.  "But there's just one thing I have to tell you, which will save your life."  He handed the belt over to Helms, and dropped dead right there before he could tell him.

In the interest of promoting a positive attitude, it should be noted that Bob had a particularly hilarious scene from "Bio-Dome" running through his head when he died, and thus he was at least happy when the end came.

For his part, a confused Hurricane Helms strapped on the belt, didn't feel any different, and started the long walk back to HHH Networks in his underwear, while he waited for the belt to kick in, unaware that Bob "Hurricane" Holly, body already fading away due to the power of the belt, had last charged it 40 hours previous.

* * * * *

"Wow, you weren't kidding about your followers."  An awed Terry Bollea said to his ex-henchmen and best friend Ed Leslie, who was going by The Disciple these days.  They were standing backstage at a raucous gathering of members of the newest religious sensation sweeping the yuppie nation:  The Human Union of Life and Karma.  Leslie's pitch was simple but effective: the supervillain known as the Orange Goblin was actually a fallen angel from Heaven, and for a small fee you could join a group of followers who could benefit from his divine light.  Unfortunately, Satan's minions in the mental health field had declared him insane and locked him away in an asylum, but then God had spoken to Ed in the form of a tabloid photographer, and given him divine inspiration in the form of a picture of Eric Bischoff (at that point merely a Governor, but running for President), engaged in immoral activities with a stripper.  And a goat.  Ed Leslie suddenly became a very good friend of Eric's, and found himself with funding for his new non-profit organization, which was simply known as HULK by most people in the media.  With the backing of the incumbent President, the Orange Goblin had been declared wrongfully locked up and was released with apologies of the state as soon as possible.

Some in the media, their minds obviously (to Leslie) warped by the word of Satan, had declared him a huckster who bilked little old ladies out of their life savings and blackmailed his way to political and religious power.  Some of his own followers even had such questions when they saw those sorts of reports on the news.  For them, Ed had a moral riddle that he often asked:  If a child, not knowing any better, accidentally drives a semi-trailer into a crowded street and kills dozens of people, is it not better to stop the child by eliminating him for the greater good before such carnage can occur?  And thus, is it not better to deal with members of the media, not knowing any better, by hiring a mafia hitman to have them and their family gunned down in their home before they spread lies about the glorious organization of HULK?

Ed usually got as far as asking the questioning member if they were a part of any media outlet before they ran from the room declaring their undying devotion to HULK.

In fact, this strategy worked so well that many prominent members of the media themselves became bonafide HULKamaniacs, and from there the movement spread throughout the country, until HULK was a household name, although not always in a good sense.  In fact, much of the supporting money for the organization came from HHH Networks, who used Leslie's HULK group as a tax writeoff and were more than happy to pimp the organization on their multiple cable and network stations in exchange for 15% of the profit.

Some might have said that this was grossly illegal and begging for federation intervention at the earliest possible opportunity.  You sure wouldn't hear silly talk like that from anyone on HHH-funded TV shows, though.  You might on rival networks, but then a weird bald guy would usually show up at the station headquarters and suddenly turn into a giant snake, and that would usually put an end to those sorts of rumors.

And this day, with a crowd at the Pontiac Silverdome in Michigan announced at nearly 100,000 people (although the actual number was closer to 80,000, no one in the media was going to go on the record as disputing it, no sir), Disciple stepped onto the small, unadorned stage to soak up the love of the crowd.

"Greetings, Hulkamaniacs!"  He called out in the traditional, centuries-old greeting call for HULK.  Of course, it had only been around for a few years, but since angels are immortal, Leslie figured he could fudge the history a little bit and get away with it.  He was right.  "The day that you have waited 5 long years for and paid $250 plus service charges for has finally arrived!"

He waited for the uproarious and spontaneous applause at the mention of the very-reasonable ticket prices to die down.

"For years now we at the Human Union of Life and Karma have promised you that your very generous and frequest contributions to our cause would lead to you to a better place in the afterlife and happiness on earth, and now the time has come to see the fruits of your labors!  So now, please welcome, Terry Bollea, who some might have known as the Orange Goblin due to biased media coverage."

He waited for the uproarious and spontaneous boos at the mention of the devil-worshipping media to die down.

"Yes, yes, I know, but when we had Larry King shot last month I think it took care of the bulk of the problem in that area.  And now, without further ado, the man whose very excrement you all wish you could be worthy of shovelling, the reincarnation of the fallen angel from Heaven himself, Terry Bollea!"

A suddenly humbled and overwhelmed (now former) Orange Goblin, tears in his eyes, walked onto the stage to the roar to the crowd, who were presently declaring their unconditonal love for him and roaring their approval of every step he took.

Terry was almost at a loss for words.

"This is fabulous!"  He began.  The crowd roared.  "I always knew deep down that I was destined for great things, but to have it confirmed like this, well, it's just super!  Thanks, everyone!"  It was a lousy speech, but people cheered anyway, because that was just the kind of rally it was.  "And I'm really glad you all parted with your hard-earned money to come here tonight and pay tribute to me tonight, but I'm afraid that deep down, I'm still insane and I'm going to have to kill each and every one of you now!"

You'd think that would dampen the enthusiasm of the crowd somewhat, but they all cheered that one, too.  Hesitantly.  Ed Leslie took the microphone again.

"Well, we want to thank everyone for coming out tonight to meet your savior, and as you can see we were the only ones with the forethought to bring gas masks, so try not to get crushed by your neighbor when the deadly nerve-toxin gas starts flooding the stadium in about 15 seconds and you all drop dead.  We wouldn't want any lawsuits on our hands."

The joke didn't go over quite as well as Ed would have liked.  Didn't matter  the entire stadium was going to be dead in about 2 minutes anyway.  He considered that to be good enough compensation for bombing in front of 80,000 people.

"Thank you and good night!"  Terry said, grabbing the mike back to finish with a flourish.  "See you in the afterlife."

Disciple and his fallen angel, Terry Bollea, left to catch a limo back to HULK HQ in Washington, leaving the now sealed-off Silverdome to act as a giant coffin for the people inside.

In the limo, drinking champagne, Terry commented that Ed probably should have mentioned that the fallen angel he was currently channelling was Azrael, the avenging angel, but Ed retorted that a mass-suicide probably wouldn't have sold as many tickets.

All in all, though, he thought it had been a pretty good show, all things considered.

To Be Continued....

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