Numbers' New Year's Newsletter: We Mean 2016

[Other years' letters: 2011 / 2012 / 2013 / 2014 / 2015 / 2016 / 2017 / 2018 / 2019 / 2020 / 2021 ]

They were dead. All of them. The final scream was the exclamation mark to everything that had lead to this point. My finger released the trigger. To make any kind of sense of it, I needed to go back 5 years. Back to the night the pain started...

I told you about my business project in 2011: selling matches to children to rake in huge profits. I told you how, in 2012, that earned me a supervillain nemesis -- and the mech I used to defeat him. I told you how, in 2013, I dealt with my nemesis' legacy: a series of demon-infested bases on Mars' two moons. I told you how I fought my way home in 2014, only to return to space in 2015 to stop my nemesis' successor.

For those among you who don't remember, the successor wasn't my late nemesis' son, daughter, or even wife.  It was his waifu.  Limpdicked cuck that he was, he entrusted his entire operation to his camwhore, who had worked overtime to end my empire.  While I fought through Time, Space, and Hell itself (it's a long story; please see my previous New Year's Newsletters for all of the details), she tore asunder all that I had built, and aimed to conquer the stars.

I assembled my crew of trusted advisors and loyal brothers-in-arms, and once we had donned our power armour and strapped ourselves into our mechs, we rocketed towards the icy refuge of the so-called Madame President, self-appointed Queen of Space.

The operation was a complete failure.  Setting up her palace on the Ice Planet was Madame President's first mistake, as even her hubris couldn't prevent the deep cold from turning her opulent fortress into a frozen mausoleum.  All my team found was a dead space colony on a lost planet.  Or so it would seem.

Scans detected no Thermal Energy (or "Tang") readings other than those of my mech team -- except for a faint trace under the icy tundra.  It could have been a false positive, dust on the lens, so to speak, but I was not about to take that risk.  Ordering my team to patrol the area, I loaded my suit with as much solidified weaponized Tang that I could carry, and popped my mech's hatch.

Fashioning versatile equipment out of the glowing orange Tang, I made myself a highly-advanced communication/threat detection system, some transparent orange skis, and a powerful transparent orange chainsaw. With these tools, and a lot of luck, I began my assault on Madame President's frozen fortress on the Ice Planet.

As I'd expected, the colony was a decoy.  Deep underground, she'd set up a multi-levelled base, with the icy castle on top, utterly devoid of life, serving to mislead any would-be heroes.  As always, I was nobody's fool and saw through the clever ruse.  The lair was impregnable.  Could not be pregnated.  Except by me.  My transparent orange chainsaw cut through the frigid barricades and I penetrated all of her defences.

Security was a bad joke and by the time I infiltrated her throne room, the only weapons Madame President had left were her words.  She was shouting something about "harassment" as my transparent orange chainsaw effortlessly tore through her chest cavity.  I still don't know what "her-ass-meant".

But I had an idea.

This deep underground, my suit's commo systems were practically useless.  I could not raise my teammates, no matter which encrypted channel I switched to.  Fearing the worst, I made a mad dash for the surface, carefully placing Tang-based detonation packs in strategic locations, collapsing the subterranean shadow complex by the time I reached the surface.

As I stood atop the rubble of her ruined fortress colony, my friends' mechs were nowhere to be found.  Comms were dead.  And I will be, too, if I don't find them soon.

I am typing this into my suit's terminal as I seek shelter in the ruins of the late Madame President's fortress, hoping the signal will bounce off the geosynchronous satellite we deployed into orbit before going planetside.  With luck, it will reach you, and, I hope, my mech-piloting friends.  If not, then I give you my word that this icy hell will not be our frozen grave.  I will scavenge what I can from the destroyed underground tunnels, build what I can with the Tang I have left, find my team, and spend New Year 2017 with you all, back home on Earth.  This, I promise.

- Numbers, Guardian of the Frozen Wastes
Ruins of Madame President's fortress, Ice Planet
January 2016

[Other years' letters: 2011 / 2012 / 2013 / 2014 / 2015 / 2016 / 2017 / 2018 / 2019 / 2020 / 2021 ]