This was it. All of the trials, and the tribulations, the votes and the immunities, the fans and the naysayer’s: all up to this day.
I stood, tomahawks held in my hands, ready to fight, in front of the portal. Fake yellow and red feathers flapping in the wind coming from the portal. I was going to fight my opposite self.
Each step I took towards the portal caused my hair to whip even more violently around me. When I entered the portal I instantly smelled something that was a mix of garbage, animal carcass and Blockade Boy’s room.
The world was dark… Bizarro world as Superman called it. The contrast was seen immediately…
It was almost like a warzone. Nothing remained but rubble and smoke. The buildings were partially destroyed. I noticed something. The people were clothed in rags, and clearly starving.
When they started throwing refuse at me, I realized… They were jealous…
It wasn’t a realization of “I’m prettier then them” It’s a realization that they were starving and hungry. As trash struck my head, again and again. I knelt down, and I withdrew several seeds from my pouch, and I planted them.
Using my magic, I made all of the trees grow, and fruit. Apples, Oranges and Bananas, with not another word I walked by. They swarmed the tree, like bees. Grabbing fruit and eating happily.
I pulled a tissue out of my hair, and I walked towards the second portal. When I entered it, the world was reversed. It was archaic, with lush green grasslands. I was grabbed from behind by two people.
“Hello!” they shouted excitedly, “Welcome to our Village!” They took me into a nearby building.
“Your outfit looks uncomfortable and dirty…. Here!” The female said withdrawing one of my own Cherokee warrior shaman outfits, “Put this on after your bubble bath!”
After a nice relaxing bubble bath, I rose from the tub, found a towel, dried off, and put on my traditional outfit. I walked out of the room. Two sharpened tomahawks were handed to me, and I smiled at her, “Thank you.”
“Stop him,” was all she said.
She led me to another portal. I took a step inside.
The opposite world looked just like our own. But it was reeking of malignance. With the wind blowing my hair backwards, I smelled death on the air.
I looked ahead. Staring at my opposite…
I smelled, Necromancer.
He held a rod in his hand, and I held my tomahawks.
“We don’t know each other,” he said, “I am deaf, I cannot hear you. My name is Master of a Thousand Minds. Or, Thousand Minds, if you prefer.”
I signed out, knowing he could understand, ‘I am called, Master of a Thousand Faces, or Thousand Faces.’
“You know, we have to fight, Thousand Faces.”
‘I know,’ I signed out.
“I have no tricks… I will not defeat you through deceit or cunning. I want to face you head on.”
‘Thank you, I will not pull any stops. I assure you, with the resources at hand; I will put up quite a fight.’
“I know. But you should know there is a cemetery nearby.”
‘I expected as much.’
“Give it all you have.”
He started this combat by slamming his rod into the ground. A blighted area spread fourth from that, and I jumped into the air. I threw an ethereal tomahawk at him. He raised his rod, and an ethereal shield appeared.
I jumped backwards as it exploded. He strengthened his shield. I felt pain fill my stomach, as blood dropped from his mouth; he was raising the zombies from the cemetery. I looked at him, and raised my arms upward, and vines grasped his feet. Holding him tightly, breaking his concentration and his shield.
He took his rod again and from it balls of blight and sickness came flinging at me. I jumped into the air, and landed gracefully. I ran towards him, bringing my tomahawks at his head. He blocked with his rod, and he shoved me to the ground, He held the rod over my head and I rolled out of the way. The blighted ground was stinging my back.
I tripped him, and brought my right tomahawk down onto his wrist. His hand snapped off, but it was skeletal, and it pulled back together. I did a backwards summersault, and I stood on my feet. He growled, and burst of energy sent me flying backwards.
I hit something soft, and when it grabbed me and held me tightly in its grasp, and I heard the moan. I froze… It bit onto my arm, and its decayed teeth ripped through my flesh…
A green light formed over my wound, and healed it, and I kicked off of the zombie, sending it towards the ground. By the time this happened, he was already near me, and with a slam of his rod, a skeleton cage appeared around me.
I used my tomahawks in a windmill motion and I broke them. I leapt from it. Slamming my tomahawks into his arms. They shattered, but reformed. He slammed his rod into my stomach and ripped it open with the claws at the end of it, and green light healed my wounds… Focusing my healing.
The zombies from behind grabbed me, and he reached his skeletal hand and grabbed my face… I screamed in silence, having no voice to cry out my discomforts. He blasted me again, this time I landed in the garden in the park.
When I hit the sunflower seed, I was covered in little seeds. I drew upon the mana around me… Drawing the magic from the land… The whole areas warmth came to me, and with a burst of light, the seeds became a swarm of black beetles, and the crawled onto the zombie’s flesh and began to destroy and eat the flesh…
Thousand Minds leapt into the garden and with another force blast the seeds on the plants still went flying. He tried to strike me with the rod. I moved out of the way, and I slammed my tomahawks onto his arm, and as the rod went flying, I grabbed it, and threw it as far away as I could.
We exchanged glances for a moment, and when he went running for the rod, I threw ethereal tomahawks at his back. He hit the ground hard.
I ran up to him, and I went to remove his head, and he fell, a pile of bones.
I sighed, and fell onto my butt… That was rough… And that was just a copy of him… I had many back-ups of myself. I was afraid, that wouldn’t be the last I would see of him…
He fought in the old rules, like I often did…
I worked my way through the gates. Smashing them as I went through each one using vines, root systems, and my tomahawks.
Operation Polar Opposite – Success?
Then there's Bizarro.
"Its Joe Strawberry and Lyle Big Chief O'Halloran. We're the commentators of this final. Your fully wired up, we can hear you and you can hear us." explains Joe.
The race starts. I get going.
"Huh! What trash?" I look up and there up in the windows of the buildings are thousands of bizarro people throwing their garbage at me. I turn on my telekinetic aura which makes me nigh indistructable and the garbage just bounces off it. But the garbage changes as I race up the street. They start throwing books. I grab one. Its a trashy romance novel I remember my Mum reading.
"They're throwing romance novels!" says Joe stating the obvious.
"No not entirely." I contradict. "I just passed a copy of Dianetics. And there's the entire Spider-man clone saga."
"Oh no! Its Jackie Collins they've thrown her out as well." cries Joe.
I catch Brittany, Lindsay and Kid Rock but I'm too late to save Pamella Anderson. She hits the ground face first and bounces straight back up and lands gently on her feet.
After all of that I make it to the portal. I get through and standing in front of me doesn't look like me at all.
"Get off me!" spits Wendy. She writhes desperately under my significant weight advantage.
"What are you a Eunuch?" she asks, amazed that I'm not writhing around in pain.
"For our American audience a box is a cup, an abdominal protector." informs Joe.
