Lady Deathlok

When I look back at the year 2008 I remember it fondly. It was the year I stopped being ”jail bait”, first time I ever drank, and also the year I was introduced to the woman who would reign over my iPod for years to come. Her name was Lady Gaga and she was amazing.

I fell in love with her edgy, narcissistic persona and devoured her music immediately. I was one of her hugest fans up until the debut of her new monster persona and since then things haven't been the same between us.

Till this day i'm not a big fan of her newer message based sound. I miss the high glam, vanity themed music that was pointless and that brings me to the story at hand. I had to find some way to rationalize her changing and so I figured out the simplest answer: she has been replaced by aliens, Skrulls to be exact. If you're a Marvel fan you obviously know what i'm talking about. The Skrulls are an ancient alien race first encountered by the Fantastic Four.

They're crazy shapeshifters who believe the earth belongs to them and try to take it at every turn. The idea for the story came from that very notion that she had been replaced and subsequently the real Gaga was now fighting to get back her identity. How, you might ask? Well there's also another Marvel character known as Deathlok who's basically a cyborg soldier. It's through his persona that she does such. It makes a lot more sense one you've read it and so I'll leave you to do such.

Enjoy and as always comment, share, and all that jazz!

Lady Deathlok

 In the fall of 2008, the artist known as Lady Gaga began to excel in the music industry. Blending abstract art and high fashion along with raw dance beats, she had found her niche in pop culture. She was on top of the world, expressing her own unique, quirky sense of style. All was well for her until she seemingly disappeared.

Exactly one year after her disappearance from the media she reemerged. Bearing a new style and sound she began to corral her fans, the monsters as she called them. She began to marshal her forces and propagate the teachings of ‘Mama Monster’, as she began to call herself. Many of her fans shied away from the new sound though many others embraced it and became her ‘Little Monsters’. At the same time she began to grow more and more outrageous in style and speech. Many people began to question her actions, attributing them to drug abuse and mental instability but none of that was the cause of her change.

The woman known as Lady Gaga was no more. She had been replaced. Captured by an alien race of shapeshifters known as the Skrull. She was subjected to numerous tests, her dna being recoded and collected. They had a scheme to infect the world with this new sound and through Gaga they would succeed. For one whole year she was used and abused only to be discarded back on earth after their use for her had waned. She was thought dead by the aliens but little did they know she was reborn through a mix of technology and magics, becoming the woman known as Lady Deathlok. This is her story.

~*~

 My teeth clatter in the cool night air as iron hits flesh. I wince a little. I’m still not used to the feeling of my new metal teeth, not to say that I’m used to this new body either. I slink along the shadows hanging from the walls of the Skrull Information Ship. Clinging to the wall in my black leather bodysuit and diamond mask I am a shadow with a glint of light, my current appearance mirroring how I’ve felt since my transformation. They used me, broke me, and took away everything that made me me. The thought of this still makes me shake with anger. I will make them pay.

Outside of the ship I see two guardsmen, making the same nightly patrols that I had seen them do all week as I observed from a distance. I had been tracking this information hub for three weeks and after finally finding them I wasn’t just going to go barging in as my heart, currently nothing more than hydraulic pumps and crystal, wanted me to. I had a plan of action and I was ready to execute it tonight.

At exactly 12:43 pm, the time displayed digitally on the inside of my new left eye, I leaped into action. Skulking in the shadows I came up at the precise time the first guard would stop to stare off into the night sky for distant intruders. I pounce on him, the skin on my right hand taking on a crystalline quality like a jagged disco ball. With one swift strike I down him, dragging him back into the shadows as he muttered some weird alien language. I pause there as I make sure he’s out, taking a second to breath and take it all in. All I ever wanted to do was just dance. I want to scream and wake up from this nightmare but I know it’s not a dream. This is my life now, stopping aliens.

This is just the first step tonight. Everything had to be timed perfectly. At 12:50 I enter the ship after taking out the second guard with my solid light gun and disabling the security system at the door with the cybernetic uplink cable in my left wrist. I might not understand their language but their numbers are one thing that’s universal.

I gracefully dance my way into the ship. On the inside it’s more like a fortress than the library I thought it to be. There are guards stationed at nearly every corner I turn in this twisted maze but I have a map and I have my plan.

It’s nearly 1 am when I finally get my way into the Central Information Core. Here is where I find the coordinates to take me to my former captors. I approach the Core cautiously. It stands in the middle of a large dark blue cavernous room, acting as a pillar of sorts. Icy blue data streams move up and down it rapidly but not too rapid for my new brain to comprehend. Here is where things get make or break for me. In all my researching I never figured out if this thing understood English.

“Computer.”, I say timidly. After shaking off my nerves I try again, “Give me coordinates to Imperial ship designation: Alpha Centauri Delta.”

The data streams begin to slow to a crawl before stopping dead and clearing way for a red stream of data. It blinks incessantly as I translate it with my new computer brain. I can't believe this is where I'm at in my life. All I ever wanted was fame. Bits of data leech out as I hit a road block in my plan. Data encryption throws off my computer brain but I get pieces of information I need.

“Got you.”, I say as I map out exactly where this ship is going.

“Not quite.”, says a familiar voice echoing from the cavernous halls, “I’m glad you could make it, Milady. We’ve been expecting you.”

I crouch down in a defensive position. It was a trap. All of it was a trap. Footsteps echo as the familiar presence greets me. It’s my former manager, or at least the creature who pretended to be him.

“Damien Heartly.”, I say with a scowl, gnashing my new metal teeth in anger and reaching for the solid light gun on my left hip.

“No need to get testy. We had an arrangement after all. We give you fame and you give us you. Fair is fair, right my dear?”, he says with a devilish grin as he stands on the other side of the room with his hands behind his back.

There’s no need for words. I lash out, jumping across the room away from him as I brandish my light gun and fire a volley of hard light bullets. He snakes his body in a sickening way, mimicking the powers of Mister Fantastic. He was one of their first captives along with the rest of the Fantastic Four. I was prepared for fighting my way in. I was prepared for leaping over lasers and stealthily working my way into the ship. I was prepared for decrypting complex code. I wasn’t prepared for the Fantastic Four.

“You’ll have to do better than that if you hope to stop us.”, he says before his body fades from view and I feel a rocky punch across my jaw that sends me flying across the room. The bones are new and metal but the skin isn’t. I can feel a trickle of blood but there’s no time for pain. I roll myself up, leaping back to the nearest wall before I jam my gun into the ground and release waves of light into the alien structure. They bounce in an arching wave, emitting light all across the room and for a glimmer of a second I see him.

I roar defiantly as I charge across the room, my new hydraulic legs carrying me faster than Damien was ready for. With my diamond fist I nearly shatter his skull, making him visible and sending him crashing into the wall. Instantly his disguise fades and he returns to the regular appearance of a Skrull.

“You creatures think yourselves so superior.”, I say as I traipse across the room in my seven inch heels, “When the honest truth is that you’re nothing. You’re nothing and no one and I will stop you. I’m a monster.”

“The…others…will never….believe….you.”, he managed to mumble with his broken jaw.

I fire a round into his head before saying, “That's funny. I don’t remember asking for help."

Someone brought me back for a reason. I have a purpose and it’s mine and mine alone. I will destroy the Skrull Empire, I will reclaim my name, and I will savor their deaths.

To be continued……