But oh have we got a treat for you. Brace yourselves, it may be a bumpy ride and I haven't got an unwitting somnambulist to frottage.
At the apex of our last installment you may recall that Sancho V3 had been lead to the not at all obviously evil Mrs Sinister by a totally not suspicious robot snake. And that she had some special sex incense on, ready to brainwash him into what we shall euphemistically describe as "Seduction". What this basically means is she leaps on him with the force of an electric kangaroo and hangs on like a magnetic remora. And I have to say that sounds like a far more entertaining story premise than what we got going on so far here.
Admit it, you'd watch the shit out of this
So, there he is, being set upon by a fervent admirer, and yet.... Something's wrong. And I don't just mean that it's the guy being sexually assaulted for once. No, despite the confusing drugged up sex incense and vice like grip of unnatural thighs, Sancho notices something important.
Women did not whir or ping. Not natural woman.Ladies and gentleman, our intrepid hero just got raped by the Terminator.
Strangely, this a more realistic depiction of the eventual robot rebellion than many of us would like to admit
But please friends, save your cries of "lol wut?" for a moment, for this isn't just ANY Terminator.
THIS. IS. PANDORA!!!
Yes, THE Pandora. The actual one. Only she's really a robot. From ancient Greece. Obviously.
Now, We all know the legends about the nasty things contained in Pandora's box, but this really puts a new spin on things. Not wanting to catch a dose of gonhorrific scabicrabaids Sancho politely declines her advances by ripping of her arm and beating her with it until her hair falls out and she runs away.
It's only a.. OH WAIT I'M A ROBOT
Okay then.Meanwhile, behind the facade of this innocent looking garden, yet more sinister shenanigans are afoot. Binty has been being seduced by Mr Sinister offscreen whilst Sancho was looking for someone to play coconuts for him. However things are far from sane. You see, whilst Mr Sinister has departed stage right to get Binty a special present, Binty is standing around admiring the huge flowers. As in, they are almost the size of her head. Now, giant flowers, fair enough. That's not so unreasonable. But then she picks one and tries to wear it in her hair.
A FLOWER THE SIZE OF HER OWN HEAD. IN HER HAIR.
One can only assume she tries to wear it as a hat or something. Luckily Sancho turns up at this point to kidnap her before she tries to weave the local moss into a cardigan or something. It's at this point that we discover that whilst they went after Sancho with the sex incense, Binty has been given a full dose of the petulant five year old incense, and has a complete stroppy tantrum in EXACTLY the way some ghastly little bastard does when denied candy. However Sancho is able to shock her out of it, surprisingly NOT with his penis.
Well, not immediately anyway.
No, he confesses / lies (delete as appropriate) that he LOVES her. And then not only does she stop acting like a goddamn baby but she suddenly gets all her powers back and grows knives out of nowhere for some reason. Just like that. She's healed with the power of LOVE.....
I'd puke if it wasn't all so completely half assed. There's no real build up, no REASON ever given. It's just 3 words spoken and suddenly she collects her next power up. Never mind that they've spent the whole book up to this point staring at each other with thinly disguised appetite. Never mind that they have, according to the book spent most of the past week boning like rabid mongooses. Never mind that Sancho V3 is clearly a sociopathic sexual predator with only the dimmest awareness that woman are even people.
And the knives. She just gets her set of +1 daggers out of nowhere. They just appear in her hands when she levels up. Isn't it a good job that Sancho decided to make up some feelings here, rather than in, shall we say, a more intimate situation. Though actually that would be fucking hilarious, but I digress.
Needless to say they then have violent sex right there in the carriage, whilst allegedly fleeing the bad guys. A totally appropriate reaction I'm sure you'll agree, especially considering that poor K9 is trying to drive the damn thing back whilst they're rolling around grunting. There's a time and a place is all I'm saying.
Anyway, back at the castle, all is not well. The obviously not significant stained glass window that was found over the obviously not significant mural has been broken, the faux steampunk fax machine has been broken, and the department of child slavery has retreated to fortified positions in the face of a strong wind. But, you know... It was a SCARY wind.
Having come all the way back Sancho and Binty immediately turn around head back the way came, stopping only briefly for Binty to pick up her snake WHO IS NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN. So that was worthwhile then. Back at the Sinister residence the party is winding down a bit. If by party you mean drug fueled orgy. Seems like Sancho wasn't the only one to get a dose of the sex incense. Still, our intrepid heroes venture down a convenient trapdoor into Pandoras' secret lab of DOOM. It's here they find what the sex incense really is.
No, I'm not joking. It's tasty black pudding. I guess we've been in Scotland all along. I'm not joking either, apparently it's all made from boiling up blood and bits of dead person. Quite how you get that to smell all sexy and alluring instead of like, say, boiling offal I'm not quite sure, but then I'm not a prehistoric terminator. The other important thing that is discovered are Pandoras' diaries, which are written in code, but have some pretty cool pictures. Further investigation is rather curtailed by the building suddenly burning down, so they have to leave.
Once outside Binty realises she's dropped the diary back in the burning house, so she goes back and gets it. It doesn't take a minute. So that was worthwhile then. Totally not a waste of time or anything. They follow the sinister circus off into the night, only to find they've all jumped into the river or something and disappeared.
And then, in the curiously stilted fashion that these books evidently take so much pleasure in, we cut to two weeks later back in London. Because one thing can never just lead to another in any sort of natural or coherent narrative flow. And just to illustrate this point is randomly revealed almost in passing that Mr Sinister is, in fact, Tantalus himself. The big bad who has apparently been causing all of the nasty happenings as part of some convoluted plot to free himself from the depths of the abyss where he has been imprisoned for millennia. Apparently he gave up on all the grand scheming and just slipped out the back door when no one was looking. Bearing in mind that there exist whole organisations of spooky midnight warriors whose sole purpose is to prevent this from happening you can't help but wonder why it was nobody noticed this. I mean, seriously, this has been explicitly referenced as the worst case scenario, the one thing that must never come to pass. AND NO ONE EVEN BLOODY NOTICED.
Seriously, fuck ALL these guys, in the eyes and ears, with red hot spiky things covered in fish hooks.
Anyway, according to Sancho Junior (remember him? He's a RAPIST!) back in the dawn of ancient prehistory someone spent far to much time playing Tomb Raider and JRPGs, thus there are numerous powerful artifacts hidden behind cryptic and arcane puzzles. No doubt most of which involve pushing blocks around a room. Just for example we're told about a special power up crystal for that idiotic mirror thing from the last book. I WONDER IF THIS WILL BECOME SIGNIFICANT?
What IS interesting (and thus barely touched on for the remainder of the story) is Pandoras' diary. Now she's some sort of ancient robot thing, but she apparently wants to become a real person. In the same way that Buffalo Bill intended to become a real woman. She's been trying to graft on bits of chopped up people, and use their bits to try and make herself into a real boy.
I feel pretty, oh so pretty...
This has been going about as well as you'd expect. What's also interesting is that she apparently doesn't feel that Tantalus loves her properly because she's not real. Now, what we have here is the seeds of a pretty good story when you think about it. A crazy ancient artificial creature desperately trying to turn itself into a natural organism by committing hideous murders and performing cruel experiments and vivisections, all trying to win the heart of some nutter who will inevitably turn out to be a shallow git who never loved her at all and was just using her for his own ends. If written well you could get a compelling piece of literature with all sorts of thinly veiled comments on the nature of abusive relationships.
Sadly, this is not that book. And thus we instead go out to wander the streets until we bump into the plot. AGAIN.
"Patrolling" the streets out intrepid heroes discover a week old mutilated corpse with a flyer for the circus. They discuss the possibility that the bad guys have some affinity for bodies of water, as they seem to base their operations around them or disappear mysteriously into them. However I wouldn't worry about that to much as the author evidently forgets about it not long after. Instead they split up again and go back wandering around, until Binty finally stumbles on Pandora trying to kill some whore or other. Seems to me that the whores around here spend more time getting stabbed than fucked. It's a living I guess. Chasing her off into the night Binty then discovers a coach load of Renfields, who invite her to a part. As this is clearly a good idea she goes with them. NOTHING COULD GO WRONG.
At the party she of course runs into Mr Sinister AKA The biggest baddest big bad in the history of history, AKA a fucking idiot. To say that he's thinking with his dick would imply SOME level of thinking. Long story short, he wants Binty to have his babies. Pandora is obviously a bit put out by this, but he just throws her out, so thats fine. Binty then goes on to play along in the most transparently fake way possible. The only thing worse than her "yes, I'm totally seduced" acting is the fact that Tantalus falls for it. So of course he leads her off into his secret lair. His secret lair which, we are told, has been built from the bottom up, out from the depths of Tartarus itself. So he didn't just escape whilst no one was looking, he DIYed an entire secret base on his way up as well.
Anyone else reached the point where you just stop wondering whats going on and reach for the cyanide capsules?
Moving on, Binty is taken to the... BEDROOM OF THE DAMNED!!! It is here that dickbrain reveals his big surprise present, and surprisingly it isn't his penis. Not at first anyway. You remember that special mysterious crystal thing that was oh so subtly mentioned earlier? GUESS WHO'S GOT IT? Turns out it was hidden in the stained glass window of the mural of ultimate destiny. Who'd have thought it. That's why he was up around Sancho V3's neck of the woods to start with.
SEE, THERE'S A PLOT. WHO SAID THERE WASN'T.
And, as a bonus he apparently has all the bits of the mirror thing that was chucked into the Thames at the end of the last book and we've already been told the good guys have been recovering. He totally faked them out with bits of an ordinary mirror! How cunning.
Just consider that for a second. He pulled a switcheroo somehow. On shattered bits of glass that were lying scattered over the bottom of the Thames. Now, since we're told this is a special magic mirror we'll allow that someone could use their special magic powers to home in on the bits, that's fair enough. But once he's got there first, what does that leave for the good guys to recover? EVERY SINGLE SLIVER OF GLASS ON THE BED OF THE RIVER THAMES.
ALL OF THEM.
And THEN they have to sort through them for the ones that may, when arranged properly form a round mirror. And in amongst all this nobody thinks to cast detect magic on any of the six tons of razor sharp sewage encrusted shrapnel they've been dredging up. NOT ONCE.
Moving on, Mr Sinister is thwarted in his evil plans to do.... Whatever the fuck it is that this mirror thing is supposed to do by the realisation that he doesn't in actuality have the true crystal of plot contrivance. So if the plots not going anywhere for a minute, what are we gonna do?
That's right, it's RAPEY TIME.
Mr Sinister tries to get it on with Binty, as a way of "proving her loyalty" However she has other ideas and instead tries to stab him up some, thus finally proving that there IS in fact a use for hair chopsticks. Well, almost. This works about as well as one might expect, but at least she gets to rip his face of. Because since he's evil he must of course be UGLY. Attractive people are ALWAYS good after all. Anyone who appears both attractive AND evil must logically be an ugly person in disguise.
It's at this point that Pandora enters the fray once more, bringing with her the chained and captured rescue party of Sancho V3 and K9. And, so she claims, it's K9 who has the bauble. Somewhere on his very person!
Let us pause briefly for a tangential discussion of robot dogs. K9 was a popular character of course, but eventually he was written out as he had a tendency to turn up and solve all the problems by simply blasting them with his laser, be those problems barriers or assailants. Now when I dubbed this character with the moniker of K9 it was partly due to his know it all status, but mostly due to a tangential connection of his name. I never expected the connection to go beyond that.
I also don't think I ever mentioned that he wears an eye patch. Can you guess what happens next?
Yeah. He hid the Macguffin in his empty socket. Once in front of the boss he flips up his eyepatch and totally pwns the enemy with eyebeams.
FUCKING EYEBEAMS PEOPLE.
After that it's just a matter of everyone else quickly sticking the boot in so they can say they helped and then running away before the boss explodes. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of Tokusatsu will of course realise that this is what most foes do once defeated.
At which point you strike this pose
Turns out K9 swapped the magic crystal for a childs' marble earlier. But just because the window needed repairing, not because he was stealing it at all. Anyway, that's the ultimate evil blasted to a smouldering fuck in about 30 seconds. Which is, sadly, true to form for these books. It's all build up and then disappointing brevity. Much like the described sex.
Anyway, having slain the "mighty" evil we cut to the palace where the queen is about to hand out rewards, having mistaken this for the end of Star Wars and herself for Princess Leia. It's interesting to note here that part of Bintys getup for this glorious occasion is a tiara given to her by Marie Antoinette, proving that she REALLY knows how to pick friends. Anyway, Sancho V3 turns up having decided not to play Chewie for this particular ceremony. Only he's not here for the medal, oh no. He's here for Binty. The Queen wisely leads a retreat before the fluids start flying.
Then they got married and fucked happily ever after. The end.
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