Censure : Valerie Waller's Free Fall
1
VALERIE WALLER, REHABILITATIVE LIASON
Or
HOW A CAREER IS SLOWLY MURDERED
In only twelve brief months, the living legend Valerie Waller, a woman who quite literally has over nearly thirty years of service become the face of Super-Villain rehabilitation not only in the United States of America, but the entire of the planet Earth.
But, even in her own estimation, that is nearly over with now and there is so precious little even a woman of such unbridled power in both the arena of legislative management of super-powered persons and as the head of a vast network of black sites that not even she is permitted to admit knowledge of.
Her final year of service will be spent in her ruthless supervision of a team of heroes that even in her own opinion is so completely dysfunctional and bombarded by a literal cabinet of enemies who have allied against her, that even as the very same of rehabilitating Super Villains and their assigned mentors and some of the finest Super Heroes banded under the name INDENTURED HEROICS, INC. Slowly dissolves into what surely will become the very laughing stock that will serve as the example of what not to do when operating a team whose purpose should only be SERVICE, and none of the other things Val Waller has been forced to make her pride and joy embrace.
Perhaps the one true paragon who co-leads her merry band of government-aligned heroes is none other than FISSION, actual super-hero royalty in his own right.Beside him is his friend and previous romantic partner Lorna Quinn, she who is perhaps the best example of the program Waller began known only as Censure.
Recently these two shining examples of what heroic leadership indeed looks like were approached and given the details regarding Valerie Wallers slowly but surely ending career in Public Service.Neither of them gave any indication they were unaware of the facts that were supplied where her career and it’s several enemies quite efficient and timely murder of nearly any credibility still attached to her name and station.
FISSION, who uncharacteristically was lacking both emotion and interest when asked to supply his opinion as long-time ally as leader of INDENTURED HEROICS, had precious little to say.“Horrible assassination of a political career if ever there was one, even I am forced to admit.She shall not be missed by any but the most obvious sycophants.Couldn’t happen to a nicer woman.”
Previous super-villain and bride to perhaps the most successful Super-Villain in history, MANIA, Lorna Quinn might not have needed to supply her own personal opinion at all: During FISSION’s well-versed agreement on both Waller’s career being effectively murdered in earnest and that it was deserved without peer, the rehabilitated Super-Villain was smiling quite characteristically enough that it looked nearly painful to the muscles responsible.And while that is the case, very little occurs within Ms. Quinn’s presence without her very own enthusiastic and often-mean-spirited opinion being given in addition to her co-leader.
“At long last that miserable human being is no longer going to be the one calling the shots, and I say its about GOD-DAMNED time! It’s not the way that her career should end, of course, but Valerie Waller isn’t worth the price of a bullet efficient enough to end her in this economy.”
2
Valerie Waller, characteristically unable to permit even the vaguest resemblance of a smile to assemble on her face, read both FISSION’s and LORNA QUINN’svenom-laced estimations of her character as deserving of the combined effort of a great many of her enemies and their effective assassination of her character.It had been the third time she read their ungrateful assault on her station and she still could not believe that FISSION had said such a horrible thing about her after all the years they had known each other.
“It wasn’t quite bad enough, the ritual-suicide I’ve been ordered to conduct upon my very own legacy and by the vile and contemptible sort of corrupt officials whom for the last thirty years I have summarily dispatched without the public ever knowing of it, but they needed also to ask both of the leaders of that very same team, well aware that in their very eyes each and every assault on INDENTURED HEROICS, INC, is of my own volition.” Val Waller shrieked in typical tantrum-like manner behind her desk.
“To Hell with the whole mess of ’em,” Waller shouted, anger mounting and not yet ten in the morning.
“Madame Liaison, surely you are aware that the line between our fine Heroes and the elected officials who despise them has even more starkly been drawn in recent weeks, and in such times, a villain must always be identified…” Junior Liaison Cooper—more colloquially known as Waller the Improved, Valeries daughter, reminded her.“Besides, which why must I so often be assigned that very same role?”
“Nobody asked you,”Waller spat in usual indignant fashion to her own blood.“Agenda, gentleman.Let’s get this farce out of our way,”
“If I may be so bold,” the rotund technology officer assigned to INDENTURED HEROICS, INC, Mr. John McCoy, prefaced what the entire of the rooms personnel know quite well was an insult of vaguely veiled status at the very best,”But Madame Waller, you are so stupendously well-suited for that role that it would be a shame indeed should anyone else be honored so.”Under the weight of Waller’s malicious gaze, he tossed a heavy, many-stamped envelope upon her desk unable to resist his lop-sided smile at both of his slaps in Wallers general direction.
“You do pick the most curious and infrequent periods of time in which to suddenly become efficient in your oft-neglected duties,” Waller grumbled to herself.
“This sure as hell better not be what I’m quite sure it is,” Waller cursed glaring down at the classified-stamped envelope of impressive girth before her.
Directly to McCoy’s left and sharply dressed in a more fashionable and designer version of the sort of pant-suits Waller no longer replaced now that she would be needing them for such precious a limited amount of time, Amy Casanova, looked down at the ground.She had never been very shy about how immoral and villainous Valerie Waller was in her own opinion and found no humor of any kind in her brief little stab among she, McCoy and their team because it was literally never their fault for the semi-regular shit-show paraded before the Madame Liaison and almost always one of her own deceptions backfiring in karmic splendor into her waiting face.
“Say, you haven’t yet reached such am advanced age that those titanic block-letters in deepest black are illegible to you, as well,” she dryly insinuated.
“I can read the damned envelope,” Waller grumbled.
“Just a suggestion, Madame Liaison,” Waller the Improved began to suggest and without even a retort she stopped at once, her mother’s gaze warning her of what she should know very well was in short order.
3
OPERATION : CENSURE
“Isn’t it a shame, Lorna?” the hunched-and-hairy woman known if nowhere else of much import but on INDENTURED HEROICS, INC, as Ms. Bane smiled in her usual manner which, even though she was as pleasant as none other, always looked both rabid and as though she eagerly wanted to bite down hard upon any victim that presented itself. “Finally Waller get what’s coming due to her and we’ve only a minuscule twelve months in which to bask in her fall from grace.”
“Rahne!” the overbearing gruff complaint from the opposite side of their War Room quite nearly started Ms Bane who had been so happily sharing a malicious chuckle with Lorna nearby.“Guess it really must be bad news today if you’ve joined in with the mean-spirited knife-chucking at our own Madame Liaison,” the grotesquely misshapen and impossibly large BLASPHEMY commented, not because of any kind of bitter mood but rather because nobody was unaware of their few remaining days as a team left ahead of them.
“Don’t expect anything other some sort of shit-show or other from here on, good friends of mine,” FISSION barked.“These remaining twelve months can only be accurately identified as such remarkably finely-crafted bits of unstable explosive that only Valerie Waller can be the intended target.From what QUINN and I discovered from our crack team of secret-keeping, verified leaky sources, this steaming pile is titled OPERATION : CENSURE.”
“And now, my dear and lovely assistant, Ms. LORNA QUINN, would you do me the esteemed honor of detailing the exact degree of our misfortune to our very good friends and neighbors before Madame Liaison Waller gets out here and can be the one to ruin this our next horrible day as INDENTURED HEROICS, INC?”
“What are you guys ON,” The green-skinned hulk of infantile amalgamation of ferocious beats and oversized guns named VARIABLE, “I thought you two were no longer bedding each other?”
FISSURE, in uncharacteristic leveled gaze directly at their newest member and hoped it was quite clear that it was both none of their resident shape-shifter’s business whether he and Lorna were or were not still bedding together and that as the official leader of the team FISSURE found VARIABLE both ridiculous and unnecessary in an innumerable amount of ways.
“But, of course, hot stuff,” Lorna winked from the far side of her face where only FISSION could see her do so,”for those who do not know or the much greater number of which I am an esteemed member, those of us who just don’t care—at all—,the government program called OPERATION : CENSURE is a program of the political group and terrorist-like organization created by Alexander Essex himself to ensure that the world remain safe from the devious and underhanded personal opinions of none other than Extra-terrestrial members of Earth’s various crime fighting and terrestrial defense agencies.
“Furthermore, CENSURE is responsible for the monitored behavior-modification and AI-aided modification and/or deletion of personal opinions of those irresponsible extra-terrestrials who simply refuse to do as Alexander Essex and his FRIENDS of EARTH demand under the direct and self-appointed authority of their very own.”
“Oh, is that all?” VEILED ASSAULT, A currently-rehabilitating gun-toting set of body-armor chimed in, with a nearly-passible British accent which reverberated from all seven assimilated-copies of himself.
“Thank you so very much my self-replicating, homicidal friend,” Lorna giggled in response,”but No—not a chance in hell—because as a very special treat for INDENTURED HEROICS, INC, our mission involves our field trip into the very literally-illegal prison-state of NEW KHANOSHA where three new team members await our arrival.”
“The fuck you say,” VARIABLE spat indignantly onto the floor, “How many more of us is this vile, woman going to assign us in her own private fall from the shit-show which is her life?”
