Normalized (The Complete Quartet)

by David Bussell

  [115] There was no reloading it after that. Seriously, you try finding fresh ammo for an experimental matter compressor in the middle of a battle zone.

  [116] This entry runs on a bit so I decided to portion it out. I don’t know about you guys, but I see a fat chunk of text with no breaks and it’s like my brain climbs on a Harley, calls me a ccksucker and takes a 200 mph freedom leap over Dead Man's Gorge.

  [117] And it wasn’t Reno. I could tell because I had my pants on.

  [118] A day on the moon taking almost thirty regular Earth days. I found that out the hard way once when I got stuck on a seemingly eternal Valentine’s date with a frustratingly chaste Zero-Gina. You wanna impress a girl but still make it back in time for the weekend playoffs? Don’t take them to watch the Earth set, that’s all I can say.

  [119] Although as Freud himself once said, sometimes a cigar is just a penis cigar. Damn it.

  [120] The kicks and punches he laid on me were just added extras I suppose.

  [121] My apologies; that was crass. A gentleman refers to such romantic couplings as, ‘A one-way ride to pound town.’

  [122] Master plans are to supervillains what creepy diaries are to serial killers – they freaking love them. Another thing master plans and diaries have in common is that more often than not it’s the sheer amount of detail in them that leads to the bad guy’s undoing. With supervillains, it’s a case of getting distracted while they’re busy over-explaining their nefarious scheme. With serial killers it’s that their love of diary-keeping makes them all too prone to a police sting. Seriously, if you want to catch the next Son of Sam just host a scrapbooking class and see who shows. You’ll clean up.

  [123] The crown was the magical conduit that Rune used to augment his arcane power. Somehow D’eath had managed to synthesize it into his own technology, creating the perfect fusion of magic and machine (sort of like spelling BOOBIES on a calculator, but on a truly grand scale). How did D’eath get his hands on the crown though? I found out later that he’d brought Rune to the Moon with the promise of building him a pair of cybernetic arms to replace the ones I’d deprived him of. Sadly for Rune, it was only a trick to steal his crown, and once D’eath had what he wanted, he murdered him for it. The Professor opened up a portal then slammed it shut on Rune like a guillotine, leaving his top part on the Moon and his lower part posted on the spike of the Empire State like the leftover parts of a ship’s figurehead. Apparently D’eath had enjoyed the irony of ending a magician’s life by cutting him in half. Some joke; I’m not laughing just thinking about it.

  [124] He wasn’t kidding, he’d even poached that line.

  [125] In conclusion: Science.

  [126] FYI, I’d have won both of those contests.

  [127] Formerly Central Park.

  [128] Actually, that was the second thing I said, right after my marginally less heroic,“Oh fck oh fckety fck Ihave a fcking kid oh sh*tting ballsing fck and sh*t I have to be a fcking dad?” but the reporter owed me a solid, so history went with the second one.

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Part One: Superfluous

  Part Two: Powerless

  Part Three: Grounded

  Part Four: Cape Closed

  Get a Free Book!

  Dedications