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[MinDonner]

Speaking of, onwards to Chapter Nine! Despite being banished, the Aussie forces are still following the Rock Squad from a not-so-discreet distance, and Rock is pretending not to look at them (though keeps glancing backwards anyway). Looks like he's just being coy. Boyd needs to watch out if Rock ever tries that "big yawn and stretch which just happens to end up with one of his arms around your shoulders" manoeuvre.

Hilariously, Stacy presents information about this Aussies in the form of a maths puzzle. Apparently there are thirty of them and they have a combined age of nine hundred and thirty seven. Perhaps Rock's skills of measurement have gotten a little warped from all that telepathy.

Detroit is worried that the noisy swearing Aussies and their braying camels will attract enemy attention, but Rock assures him that eventually they'll just give up and go home, or get bored or something, even if it means keeping up the march for four hours! Strangely this plan does not work, and the Aussies are still following along when Ominous Clouds are sighted on the horizon.

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Clouds that moved like a pit of snakes, changing color and shape all the time and dropping down toward the land below. ... Up close, the clouds were even more terrifying, like black holes, sucking everything into them in whirling tornado winds and then spitting it back out again. The northern sky seemed to fill with the dark ocean of descending death as the air around them took on a translucent greenish tinge. The atmosphere around Rockson's head suddenly crackled with static electricity and he felt a strange tingling sensation in the center of his stomach.

Yes, it's the much-vaunted ACID RAIN, and immediately it's time to "deploy magnasheets!" Having neglected to train the newer squad members in this rather vital activity, Rock now has to instruct them brusquely, no time for polite requests! Should have thought of that earlier, dumbass. Within 3 minutes, the magnasheets have all been strapped together to form some kind of metal tent. But oh noes, what about the Aussies?!?

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"Get over here, you limey maniacs!" Rock yelled out, cupping his hands together and screaming at the top of his lungs.

Boyd takes some issue at being called a Limey, but Rock has no time to worry about getting his stereotypes correct, cos within five minutes the approaching cloud of pure death will be melting everyone to the bone.

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"You may have your boomerangs and kangaroos and whatever the hell all God on a bad night might have created down there - but over here we got us a thousand ways of dying - and one of the worst of them is coming this way!"

Boyd has no choice but to agree that America does, in fact, have the most awesomest dangerousest things in.

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"I must say that your whole bloody country is not receiving us in a very welcome manner. I daresay as ugly as our platypuses and 'roons and whatall are - you won't find them trying to bite you and claw you the moment you set foot on Down Under."

I guess all the dropbears got wiped out by the nukes.

They try to squeeze all the men and ponies and camels into the tent just as the Clouds of Death pass overhead. Rock is worried that the camels will panic and knock the tent over, but Boyd flips his long blond hair and assures him that all will be well. And, indeed, the Aussies manage to tie their camels down, sport, with much colourful Aussie swearing and reference to "bloody bludgers" and whatnot.

Sadly, eight of the camels don't make it inside, so Stacy gets a chance to describe the Acid Rain in exuberant (and oddly anthropomorphic) detail.

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The drops of bubbling black rain ate away at whatever they landed on, sending up a mist of burning skin, blood, leaf, cactus. Whatever it was that it destroyed was of no concern to the Acid Rain. It had no conscience, no consciousness - just chemicals. Chemicals sucked up from the radioactive strontium clouds, from the poisoned rivers and seas - which it deposited with a vengeance back on the planet that had created them. But those whom it dissolved with unrelenting tongues of liquid fire did have consciousnesses. Camels could feel pain as surely as any creature that has ever lived. And they died screaming.

Everyone in the tent is scared and near panic, except of course Rock, Detroit and Chen, who so badass. Luckily, the Aussies soon remember that they have beer, so they break out the tinnies and then castigate Rock for being so uptight (Rock grits his teeth).

Eventually the rain stops, and all the cactus forest has been dissolved, and all that's left of the camels is smoking bones. The Aussies plan to make their departure, but this time Rock says they can come with him, as he'd feel too guilty if they all got killed. Awww.

MEANWHILE (yawn) Zhabnov is cutting roses in the White House garden when he gets a telegram announcing the capture of Langford and Kim. Yes, a telegram. Zhabnov orders that they be brought to Washington DC (also by telegram? history is silent on this matter) then goes off to fuck some Siamese Twin virgins that he happens to have handy.

[Lummel]

I have learnt that I can never be a writer.  I just don't have the imagination to ever describe a cloud moving like a pit of snakes.  
A pit of snakes that then transforms itself into a spitting black hole...Truely excellent.

[jagilki]

Forget the Camels, at least the Beer made it safely under the "tent".

[MinDonner]

Chapter Ten I've been saving for Bones's birthday, as it's one of the stupidest so far. And we're still with Rockson! Brief Zhabnov-diversion aside, this part of the book has been pleasantly short of the Russian High Command snoozefests and thrilling exploits in the day of the life of (eg) Jimmy-47 as he drudges his way to an early yet freedomtastic grave.

The ground suddenly feels springy beneath their feet, which apparently is nice at first, but in fact is the first sign of an EARTHQUAKE. Yes. Ryder Stacy's impressive research shines through once again; I think this time he used a combination of Roadrunner cartoons and abject guesswork.

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But it only felt pleasant for a second - then the harder quakes hit, knocking the mounts to the ground, sending their riders flying through the air, flapping like so many wingless birds. Once fully unleashed, the earth shook violently - cacti, ant hills, thorn trees, all vibrating and jumping back and forth as if having a fit. The ground cracked open in all directions, creating a spiderweb of chasms whose sides groaned and grated against one another. It was as if a madman lived just beneath the surface, and holding a God-like axe, was smashing away at the fragile earth intent upon completely obliterating it.

All the other guys are floundering around and being thrown up in the air, not knowing which way is up or down. But Rock's been knocked over so many times before that he instinctively knows what to do, so he lies down on the ground in an X-shape. Not quite duck'n'cover, but at least he's not, I dunno, trying to avoid it by jumping or something. Unlike Chen and his two student ninjas, whose existence Stacy has temporarily remembered.

The quake goes on for a whole minute, two camels fall into an abyss, but no-one else gets anything more than a bit dusty. Oh, apart from 3 Aussies who have broken their legs. And one has fallen into an abyss also. Well, at least no Americans were injured. The Aussies make no effort to find their fallen comrade and he is never mentioned again. Time to quickly butcher the dead camels and move on; luckily all the Aussies are "former shepherds" so they can carry out this task with great efficiency.

The quake has made quite a mess of the landscape:

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Chasms had opened up as fast as desert plants blossom after a cloudburst. The entire prairie was cracked like a mud flat with everything from foot-wide gulleys to thirty-foot splits that whole trucks could drive down, and bottomless holes from which steam and acrid smells continued to rise as the earth burped and gurgled up her deeply buried gases.

They are only 40 miles from Fort Svetlanya, but these chasms will seriously slow their progress. Still, Rock believes they'll get there by tomorrow night. But then!

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...<Rockson> heard a shrill whistling scream like that of water boiling rapidly in a steam kettle. He had never heard the sound before - and didn't like it. Anything unknown put the Doomsday Warrior on full alert - for the unknown meant death ninety-nine times out of a hundred.

What could it be? Well, as we all know, earthquakes = MONSTERS. But no mere nest of megapedes this time, oh no. "What the bloody hell is that?" enquires Boyd.

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"I haven't got the faintest fucking -" Rock began, but his words sputtered to a stop as he saw something rising out of the final large chasm they had to circumvent. Something horrible, slimy and hungry. A hundred yards off, a tentacle edged up out of a wide hole, waving, flopping around as if it were searching for something to grab.

Despite this obviously being a tentacle, at first our heroes think that it may be some kind of snake. But then another emerges... and another! Yes, it's a giant octopus, which for some reason lives underneath the Wyoming prairie. And it's a hundred feet long! It has a head as big as a truck and rows of gnashing teeth(?) which, unlike your conventional octopus, are seemingly on the front of its head where a non-octopus would normally have a mouth. Given this unsurprising research fail, I'm sure it's just coincidence that the beast makes exactly the same noise as takoyaki street vendors.

Despite having lived its entire life in a subterranean ocean (?! - and what about all the lava and sulfurous gases that were belching out a minute ago?), it has a huge eye (yes, just the one) which blinks as it spots - FOOD! So much food! It scrambles out of the crevice and now is described exclusively as a "land octopus", Stacy having forgotten about the subterranean ocean already.

Rock shoots it in the eye, but nothing happens. He has an explanation for this all lined up.

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"It must have some sort of porous cellular structure, able to absorb bullets, god-knows-what-all without damage."

Detroit tries a grenade, again to no avail. And now there are two more octopuses emerging! And what with all the huge rifts in the ground, our guys have no way to escape!

It's time for the Aussies to step in.

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"Ah, matey - we ain't got no blooming octpussies to play footsie with Down Under, but we do got our own bunyip's as we call em - monsters to you Yanks. And over the years - we've learned a few tricks of our own."

Grammar as printed. Also I wonder if he really meant footy rather than footsie. Probably best not to speculate.

"Go ahead," says Rock, "this is a free country." Apart from the oppressive genocidal commie overlords who apparently control 90% of the land and population, natch.  "But be... bloody careful."

The Aussies draw their laser boomerangs.

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"Listen up, you bloody 'ockers - we got ourselves a little problem, then, ain't we. Now, we done this Down Under tons a times. So just be thinking that it's a bloody load of walking wool - not this too-many-armed-dinger, and before you know it, we'll be biting on some Foster's again."

While this pep talk is going on, Rock tries shooting the octopus again, with similar lack of success - he concludes that either the thing's flesh is able to heal itself instantaneously, or else it's "created of such gelatinous matter that it was like Jello". Detroit's grenades also continue to not work, and they both prepare to be eaten by the gnashing black teeth.

But then! Boomerangs start flying around making a screechy noise! All the octopuses pull their legs up to protect their heads as the boomerangs zoom past. The noise of the boomerangs appears to hurt them, and now the Aussies start herding them back down into their crevice. Blah blah, they had never experienced pain before, nothing ever had been badass enough to hurt them until now, etc etc. Eventually they are running "as if they were in the mutation Olympics" and dive back down their hole, to the unimaginable darkness below, where they are king.

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"You promised us the Foster's now, matey," the Aussie fighters demanded in unison.

"That I did and you bloody blokes deserve it," Lieutenant Boyd laughed. "You done your dinkum and turned that bonzer into bull dust. "

In unison! They must have been practising.

Fosters all round, swiftly extracted from a small portable fridge that the Aussies have brought with them and are presumably carting around on camelback. Rock expresses his amazement at their octopus-herding ways, and is treated to further strained Aussie slang about how they're all descended from "wool-growers" who use dingoes(!) to herd sheep, etc etc. Rock only has one thing to say about this.

"Bloody fucking incredible."

We'll make an Aussie of him yet.

[Hereward]

I'm a little upset that Stacy has abandoned his usual lazy stereotyping and produced such an accurate and insightful portrait of Australian culture and character. Perhaps he once lived there?

[Petyr Baelish the First]

Stacy grew tired of the underground worm so he Chose an octopus. Anyways dingoe=LOL

[Antonius Pius]

"Ah, matey - we ain't got no blooming octpussies to play footsie with Down Under, but we do got our own bunyip's as we call em - monsters to you Yanks."

Oh, god...

[Maithanet]

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I daresay as ugly as our platypuses and 'roons and whatall are - you won't find them trying to bite you and claw you the moment you set foot on Down Under."

I love how Stacey is claiming that the US has bigger/badder wildlife than Australia.  You know nothing.

[Atreides]

So that's what lives under Yellowstone!

[The Real Will]

MinDonner, on 08 February 2012 - 04:43 AM, said:

Time to quickly butcher the dead camels and move on; luckily all the Aussies are "former shepherds" so they can carry out this task with great efficiency.

I don't know about anyone else, but I for one see this as a validation of the compulsory one year's shepherding service we have here in Australia. Some see it as a breach of basic freedoms, but I think that dedicating a year after high school to the tending of the nations sheep is a valuable life experience, and the important occupational skills (viz. camel butchery) that you learn set a young person up for future success in whatever field they might later find themself.

Also, these threads are amazingly awesome. Thank you Min.

[MinDonner]

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Nearly 3,000 miles away in the Washington, DC headquarters of the Red Army Command, President Langford and Kim were being given a welcoming banquet by President Zhabnov.

Yep, Chapter Eleven is off to a cracking start already. Though not sure how DC is suddenly 3000 miles away from northern Wyoming. Maybe all those nukes shifted the state a thousand miles westwards. Or added extra hilliness.

Zhabnov ("gourmand, libertine, devirginator extraordinaire") is feeling very smug that he managed to capture the Prez. In your face, Killov and Vassily! So, he's opened up the White House ballroom and put on a ten-course meal with orchestral accompaniment, while trying to charm and flatter the irrelevant Mr Langford and his lovely daughter.

He dismisses the guards, who splutter with red faces ("But sir! They - they're - Freefighting murderers, sir!") and have to be escorted out by other guards, then mutters effusively about Russian-American friendship while they dine on oysters, hummingbird tongues, snarlizard brain, unicorn steaks AND ARE TORTURED! Oh wait, no, that's just Stacy's opinion of the entertainment. Seriously.

Adin! Dva! Tri! Chtiri!

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An orchestra of Russian musicians with violins and balalaikas began playing the Star Spangled Banner in a strange blend of Asian rhythms and minor scale harmonies from the music of Mother Russia. ... Kick dancers jumped out on the floor and began the wild acrobatics that Russians seem to love so much. Jumping, smashing, spinning, throwing each other through the air, landing on the far end of the table on which the dignitaries were eating, and doing a pounding gypsy-like tap-dance. It was enough to drive the Freefighters to madness - torture worse than anything the KGB could devise.

Oy!

I am shocked - shocked! - to find that Stacy has such a low opinion of furrin music. I'd suggest some alternative tunes for the evening's banquet but my god, that's just too easy.

Over dessert, Zhabnov mentions a treaty he'd like Langford to sign. Bear in mind what is going on here - he is nominally the leader of the oppressed people, with knowledge of all their secrets and a responsibility to either help them out in some way, or at bare minimum to do no harm by behaving stupidly, so you'd think a degree of subtlety would be involved. Travelling with his daughter was already about as stupid a move as you could get; how easy would it be for the Russians to go "tell us what you know or we feed her to the megapedes"? - so now more than ever it's time for a bit of diplomacy. Right? Right???

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"To tell you the truth, I could never sign anything with a fat murdering perverted ugly pig like you. Why, it would make me regurgitate this absolutely wonderful dinner."

*facepalm*

I mean, I get it. I get that this is supposed to be a moment of "fuck yeah! You tell 'em, Langford!" And I truly do appreciate that this saves us any further boring chapters of Langford and Zhabnov trying to outmanoeuvre each other in negotiations. But holy god, this pointless bit of bravado displays not an ounce of wit or sense, and we don't care enough about Langford for this to have any emotional impact whatsoever, it's just a pointless act by a pointless character and can we just kill him already?

Luckily Zhabnov is of the same mind, and also equally stupid. Not even thinking of using Kim as a bargaining chip, he just orders them both hauled off to the Mindbreakers, where all their information can be sucked out of their heads in any case, leaving them both as vegetables. Vegetables! And now Killov and Vassily will laugh at him!

In the background, the staff clear the remains of the banquet off the table, dropping melons and spilling gravy everywhere. Oh, those Russians.

[Lyanna Stark]

MinDonner, on 26 February 2012 - 05:21 AM, said:

Yep, Chapter Eleven is off to a cracking start already. Though not sure how DC is suddenly 3000 miles away from northern Wyoming. Maybe all those nukes shifted the state a thousand miles westwards. Or added extra hilliness.

Hilliness often creates this sort of problem. *nods*

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Zhabnov ("gourmand, libertine, devirginator extraordinaire") is feeling very smug that he managed to capture the Prez.

Devirginator extraordinaire...I wonder if that is his title in the phone book as well? Or maybe Russians don't have phone bocks in Ted Rockson land?

[KAH]

Lyanna Stark, on 26 February 2012 - 03:13 PM, said:

Devirginator extraordinaire...I wonder if that is his title in the phone book as well? Or maybe Russians don't have phone bocks in Ted Rockson land?

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MEANWHILE (yawn) Zhabnov is cutting roses in the White House garden when he gets a telegram announcing the capture of Langford and Kim. Yes, a telegram. Zhabnov orders that they be brought to Washington DC (also by telegram? history is silent on this matter) then goes off to fuck some Siamese Twin virgins that he happens to have handy.

The Russians have no truck with such imperialist-capitalist running dog monstrosities as telephones, they stay with the trusty Soviet invention of the electric telegraph and morse, invented by the then general secretary of the Polit Buro, Samuel Morsonov.

[MinDonner]

Chapter Twelve, and Rockson is being super sneaky. Dressed in an old blanket for a cunning disguise, he slips through the dark streets of Fort Svetlanya like a cat, like a shadow among shadows, like, er, a dolphin in a dark sea. Somehow all this silent sneaking has allowed him to discover where all the prisoners are, inconveniently right in the centre of the complex.

But then! Some guards with flashlights spot him! He cowers under his blanket and mumbles a bit, pretending to be a homeless madman, cos of course all heavily-guarded Russian fortresses are full of such things. Sadly, this awesome plan is doomed to fail, as apparently Russian guards like nothing more than to beat up homeless madmen for fun. And Rock can't let them get a look at his face, cos he so famous that they will instantly recognise him and raise the alarm!

Guard #1 launches a ham-sized fist at Rock's stomach, "a blow that would have killed most men outright", because gut-punches are usually instantly fatal. What is our master-tactician's response to this assault? Will he put on a show of getting beaten up, so as to return to base with his valuable information, cover unblown? Will he fight back in the manner of the homeless madman to maintain his disguise for long enough to disable all his attackers? Will he get backup from his secret ninja sidekicks and kill all four Russians before they can utter a sound?

D) None of the above. He dodges the first punch and does super kung fu skillz to break Guard #1's arm like a twig, then flings off his blanket so they can all see him as they start pulling their weapons out and screaming. "This was no time for subtlety," says the narrative, completely disregarding the entire previous two pages which described Rock's incredible subtlety and sneakiness at great length.

Within half a page, he has mashed various carotid arteries into dogfood, punched a groin with a fist as hard and immovable as the side of a mountain, and smashed a face into the cobblestones with enough force to drive the guy's teeth into his brain and slice his cerebral cortex into pink quivering pieces. Russians dead, but the alarm has been raised!

Luckily all the guards decided "with typical unimaginative stupidity" that Rock would be heading back for the main gates, whereas instead he cut through the slave quarters to the fence near the back. He has cunningly slid a pole under the electric fence beforehand, so now he can easily just polevault out.

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With every ounce of his mutant strength, Rock shifted his weight forward and up, kicking off his piston legs. A stream of Red slugs headed like a swarm of man-eating locusts towards him, but Rockson was already climbing into the air in a perfect wide arc. He saw the fence coming, then the very top. The barbed wire came toward him, its spiked teeth searching for blood. With one final burst of power, Rock twisted his wrists up and flipped his hips in a somersault over the top.

The Russians continue shooting at him through the electric fence as he runs off into the darkness, but then their bullets cause parts of the fence to explode and it blows up their own jeep. Rock jumps on his horse and rides off to his secret base, which is "completely out of the main search zones" - luckily for him, the Russians have learned nothing at all about combating guerilla warfare in their hundred years of occupation, and apparently can't even find a bunch of camels merely 5 miles from their base.

It's like playing on Easy mode. Not sure why Ryder Stacy just doesn't go the whole hog and have the Russians armed with nerf guns and peashooters, if he's so determined to handicap them in the interests of letting the good guys win.

Edited by MinDonner, 03 March 2012 - 09:35 AM.

[lacuna]

...fences...explode?

[Maithanet]

MinDonner, on 03 March 2012 - 09:32 AM, said:

It's like playing on Easy mode.

Totally agree.  Lots of long running series run into this problem when the villains have been defeated so often that they no longer seem like a credible threat.  Whether it's Rand facing off against yet another one of the Forsaken or Goldar and the putties showing up again to attack the power rangers, we can all agree on how this is going to end.  The difference is that in most competently written series, they recognize that this is happening and attempt to address it in some way.  You can up the ante, like how Goldar became like a miniboss that accompanied the villain of the week in Power Rangers.  Or have the villains learn and adapt - the Forsaken wised up (a little) and started to actively avoid confrontation with Rand after book 5.  

Stacey of course simply ignores the problem.  I don't know if he just isn't a good enough author to raise the stakes and have a new group of villains seem more competent than the previous ones (I doubt it).  But the fact that these Russians are so incompetent in spite of vastly superior technology and resources is really disappointing.  I think we're all familiar with the Rockson formula by now, and frankly I would really appreciate if the Soviet Nazis could at least have a few little victories to make their eventual defeat a bit more dramatic.

Edited by Maithanet, 05 March 2012 - 01:20 PM.

[Lyanna Stark]

lacuna, on 04 March 2012 - 03:27 AM, said:

...fences...explode?

In Russia, you don't explode fences, the fences explode you.

[lacuna]

Lyanna Stark, on 06 March 2012 - 04:14 AM, said:

In Russia, you don't explode fences, the fences explode you.

Don't you mean "The United Soviet States of America", or whatever it's called now? I guess you just didn't want to break the flow...

[Wulfram]

Does the author have something against camels?

[MinDonner]

On his ride back to the hastily-erected sekrit base, Rock has come up with an awesome plan, and immediately gathers the Rock Squad and the Aussies to share it with them. Oh, god, I wish I could hand it over to you guys to guess, but it's just too damn ridiculous.

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"These boomerangs of yours... couldn't they also - theoretically of course - couldn't they guide, say, a creature like those overgrown octopi - make them do things?"

"If you're talkin' about making 'em carry your bedding and food - forget it, chum. If you're talkin' about just heading 'em in a certain direction - that's about the limit, at least at this point, of what we can do."

"Exactly, exactly," Rockson smiled, growing excited. "Guiding them - guiding them right into the walls of Fort Svetlanya."

I think Boyd's reaction speaks for us all:

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"The bloody what of what?"

Yes. Because Rock blew their original plan of "bluffing their way in" (which sounds unlikely but still within the bounds of plausibility), our heroes are reduced to herding giant octopuses with boomerangs in order to rescue President and Girlfriend who aren't even there.

I'm not gonna be too harsh on Stacy for his use of "octopi", as that's a controversial but probably valid pluralisation. However, he also switches between that and "octapoids", a coinage fit only for a Brooklyn-accented cartoon sidekick, so we may all point and laugh with impunity.

Anyways! Back at Octopus Crevasse, they chuck in a whistling boomerang and soon twelve octopuses appear "like icebergs rising from an ocean", cos icebergs totally do that. Being the expert shepherds that they are, the Aussies move with perfect synchronisation and herd the beasts in the right direction at approximately twenty five miles per hour.

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It was as if the very clouds had descended from the skies and were marching across the land, blotting out the daylight, crushing, toppling any and every thing in their path.

Cos clouds totally do that.

Rock's Freefighters stay a quarter of a mile behind the pack, which is entirely because they want to "give the Aussies room to manoeuvre" and not at all because they are scared of the octopuses. Rock allows himself a moment to portentously ponder on man's mastery over nature, and also the possibilities of adding trained octopi to their freefighting armies. Perhaps he could nab one of the boomerangs for Dr Shecter to study!

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The parade hurtled across the prairie as the sun slowly sank like a burning ship on the horizon and at last dropped from sight. The evening sky filled with the magnetic storms that sometimes raged high above the earth in kaleidoscopic patterns, filling the heavens with constantly shifting rainbows of luminescent colour. And far beneath these waves of deadly beauty, the twelve largest creatures that had ever walked on the face of the earth moved through the darkness like apparitions from hell itself, here to deliver a message of doom.