Season 2, Episode 13 (#163 Overall) - Mojo Addresses His Audience, Part 1 of 5

Author's Note: Welcome To Another New Year and Another Birthday For "The Apex of Control." I Hope Everyone Has A Happy New Year and I Hope You All Enjoy The New Chapters!

Outside the normal bounds of time and space buried deep within the innumerable folds of interstitial time, The enormous planet-sized studio/gladiatorial coliseum of Mojoworld was in chaos as the ever present studio audience were literally rioting and the reason was simple, The MTN, That's The Mojo Television Network for those of you who are unaware, had not released a single episode of The Multiverse's favorite show, "The Apex of Control."

That probably sounds a bit **** to you doesn't it? Well when I say the studio is rioting I may be understating things just a tad because The Audience's billions of members across hundreds of thousands of species were not just raising a ruckus like The Americans, The Welsh, The British, or The Australians of Earth when their favorite football team wins or in the name of all that is sacred and holy... When they lose. No, I am talking genocide, entire races fighting, dismembering, and eating each other. In short, Entire species were on the verge of extinction because of Apex's sudden and prolonged hiatus and the chaos wasn't merely prevalent in the studio but every subscribing member race, galaxy, and universe were going into severe withdrawal with the lack of new episodes of their favorite reality show.

Mojo had tried to placate the masses his empire depended for its power and livelihood with reruns of Apex and that worked for a while then he tried new and existing programs on The MTN... He had even stooped to live executions using inventive and excruciating methods but that was just so last millennium that it couldn't hold his audience's attention for long.

Mojo nervously paced back and forth backstage, his sharp mechanical legs scarping against the smooth metal floor as he wondered aloud, "What are we going to do Spiral?," Before turning to the beautiful six-armed cyborg sorceress who assisted him in maintaining his vast twisted mediatic empire. Not like she had much choice really, Mojo had kidnapped her from Earth when she was little more than a snot-nosed teen who thought she had the world all figured out but she quickly realized that she didn't know a damn thing but luckily or perhaps unluckily Mojo had taken a liking to her and after a few years of barely surviving as a stuntwoman and **** performer in The Carnivale of ****, One of Mojo's very first productions on his way up the corporate ladder to wealth and fame he had saved her from the very same hell be had thrown her into in the first place and given her a place at his side as a program manager and co-ordinator. The cage she now occupied was lined with gold and jewels but it was still a cage and in many ways it was even more treacherous than the time she had spent on the grand stage fighting for her life.

"We?," Spiral said in a tone of barely contained contempt, not bothering to look over to her pacing boss as her six arms each busied themselves with one of the many controls in Mojoworld's central programming and control hub. Spiral enjoyed seeing her boss sweat even though the sight was as disgusting as the rest of him it still delighted her to no end to see him squirm for a change so she snuck a glance every chance she got in between pulling the levers, pressing the buttons, turning the dials, and flipping the switches that decided The MTN's programming order, the fate of its stars and thousands of other monumentally important decisions.

"If I recall correctly oh Great and Powerful Mojo.," Spiral's normally sensual wispy purr dripped with a combination of hardened steel and biting condescension as she spoke amid the flurry of activity as her six arms continued their work with practiced ease., "It was you that said that... and I quote... "Those sniveling mindless shits will be thankful to see whatever's on" Meanwhile our ratings are dropping like a stone on a high-grav world."

"What are me gonna do? What are me gonna do?," Mojo threw up his hands in mock distress, His rotund sickly yellow form jiggling nauseatingly atop the cutting edge psionically-controlled cybernetic platform that replaced the lower half of his bloated body. He sighed in exasperation, complaining in that same high-pitched nasally voice that screamed weasel and made his own kind want to kill and eat him, and they probably would if only they could stand the smell.

"There you go with that "We" stuff again.," Added Spiral, quick to deliver another biting comment with the subtlety of a sledgehammer., "I know I've said this before oh Magnanimous One but if you'd kept on top of things we wouldn't be having all these problems now."

"Eternity's Child! Who asked You?!," Grunted Mojo as he paced nervously., "It's times like this that I wish The Multiverse's favorite reality show had some actual writers so that I could kill them when we run into these little setbacks."

"Now, Now you've tried disemboweling, vivisection, and feeding our high-priced talent to the almighty sarlacc and its done nothing but rock bottom our recruitment numbers."

"Who are you kidding?," Mojo snorted., "I recruited those losers myself. Yep, I recruited those no talent wastes of space right off their little backwater hellhole worlds."

"You mean you kidnapped them and **** them to fight for their lives on the network so you could get better ratings?," Spiral shot back with barely a pause, her voice literally bursting with sarcasm.

"Tomato Tamato!," Mojo's laughter sounded like a jackass with four gallons of phlegm in its throat., "But if you really want to resort to something as cheap as the facts then yes I forcibly saved those useless chunks of meat and gave them a chance to be rich and famous and to make me even more rich and famous, and those little shits were so ungrateful. I mean most of them barely even lasted a single episode."

Spiral rolled her eyes in an overly exaggerated manner but said nothing, remembering how Mojo "Rescued" her from her own planet and made her a star and as much as she wanted to see his head explode in frustration there was always the risk that he might finally snap and kill her himself not that she didn't sometimes want that more than anything she lived for the day that she could see that slimy bag of pus pay for ruining her life and all the other lives he had destroyed in his never ending quest for bigger ratings.

Mojo's pacing was getting more and more annoying as the pressure to keep the network's ratings up had him feeling the heat which explained the horrific odor that had employees on the other side of the planet violently retching their guts out. It didn't help that Mojo had lost track of all of the cyborgs, mutants, and assorted henchmen he had killed or tortured to vent his stress on.

"The curtain's about to rise...," Began Spiral sarcastically., "... Are you ready to make the unwashed, ignorant masses happy?"

Mojo anxiously grabbed a handful of arbor worms from a large bowl sitting on a console across the room where he was pacing back and forth and stuffed them by the fistful into his mouth, his sweaty yellow cheeks bulging with sausage-sized earthworm-like annelids. Spiral nearly gagged seeing some of the still squirming chunks of worm flesh flying from his grossly over full mouth and crawl aimlessly across the room as he spoke., "Are you... [Munch... Munch]... sure... [Munch]... about this... [Munch... Munch... Ccccccccrunch]?"

Spiral queasily cocked an eyebrow., "Need I remind you that you were **** and you killed all the other executives and most of the other staff because all the ideas you tortured out of them didn't have a hope in hell of working?"

"The useless bags of flesh!," Mojo snorted, tilting his head back and sucking down one of fatter worms with a hideous popping slurp that made Spiral's stomach do cartwheels but she was used to it by now and managed to keep her meager breakfast down.

"You're on in Five!," Spiral chirped excitedly, eager for Mojo to leave or at least go somewhere downwind so she wouldn't have to smell his corrosive B.O. It was getting harder to keep the tears in and some of the electronics were actually starting to melt as a result of his close proximity.

"As if I don't have enough to worry about. A messy and inconvenient **** rebellion, workers who actually want to be paid, and my number one star has turned rebel without a cause! The Ingrate! After all I've done for his career! Who decided to let actors think?," Grumbled Mojo., "If I ever find out I'll kill them in the most horrific manner I can think of."

"What tie them to a chair and **** them to watch our programming?," The remark slipped out before Spiral could bite her tongue.

Mojo eyed her suspiciously, trying to decide whether he could keep the network together without her then in a flash of inspiration he decided., "With All Those Extra Arms I Gave Her She's A Fantastic Worker. A Bit Obnoxious and Mouthy But...," Then with the trademark sadistic smile he was known for he thought., "... If This Doesn't Work Out Then I'll Kill Her. I Haven't Seen A Decent Flaying In At Least A Minute."

"Alright dim the lights and flash the fasten seat belt sign and prepare for my entrance.," Mojo said nervously as he picked a still wriggling chunk of worm from between his teeth with a flick of his pinky.

"Already on it Bossman!," Spiral shouted over her shoulder, flipping a series of switches in quick succession and narrowly avoiding the shrieking lump of worm flesh zipping past her head as Mojo hurriedly scurried down the hall, his mechanical legs making a grating screeching noise as they dug into the metal floor.

At the end of the hall before stepping onto the hover platform Mojo paused and looked at a large screen on the wall. It showed Spiral sitting behind a bank of monitors surrounded by an array of complex controls with five of her six arms in constant motion pressing buttons and flipping switches while she used her last to countdown from five... four... three... two... one...

When Spiral made the gesture for zero and then pointed Mojo scampered onto the platform about as graceful as you'd expect from a lazy, out of shape morbidly obese toad... Like a Beluga Whale trying to tap dance on dry land in a skin tight diving suit and not the ones that scuba divers use but the one with belted weights, weighted boots and the heavy metal helmet.

The anti-grav engines of the hover platform wheezed and sputtered as they strained to lift the mountainous mass of blubber that was the sultan of television aka Mojo into the air.

Mojo looked down at the fawning masses or at least they might have been fawning if they weren't busy trying to kill each other. One of Mojo's mechanical legs tapped impatiently as he waited for them to settle down and finally notice his magnificence but as he waited they seemed more interested in dismembering one another than in listening to what he had to say. He saw a group of Nebulons, a race of gaseous entities converting the local atmosphere into a highly corrosive acid while a group of molten flame-spewing Pyronites tried to roast a school of semi-aquatic Piscciss Volanns in an impromptu fish fry, the Petrosapiens in the crowd were hurling huge jagged chunks of highly-dense silicon-based crystal, the insatiable Gourmands were eating everything in sight, the Polar Manzardills from the perpetually frozen polar planet of X'Nelli were attempting to reduce everything to ice cubes, the section housing the four-armed Tetramand had devolved into little more than a series of bare-knuckle brawls, and the foul-smelling insectoid Lepidopterrans were flying overhead and sniping the crowd below.

Those were just a few of the more sedate conflicts taking place all over the studio and the whole while a cluster of Rigellian Recorders, an immortal race of non-cellular thinking machines created by The Rigellian Empire in the image of their humanoid masters to act as probes with the purpose of exploring new territory and covertly gathering huge amounts of information very quickly.

Mojo pinched the bridge of his nose with a spindly pair of foot long fingers and huffed exaggeratedly. He was beginning to get annoyed, not by the chaos erupting below him like a long simmering volcano but by the fact that everyone was ignoring him and that was something he refused to tolerate for even a second.

Spiral saw what was coming and quickly plugged her ears while her other four arms worked furiously to pick up the slack. Mojo dug the razor-sharp tip of one of his long mechanical legs along the hover platform creating a piercing, high-pitched keening whine that reverberated through the calcium-based skeletons of the races that actually had internal skeletal structures while the insectoids chitinous plates rattled, the crystaloids silicon matrices vibrated so violently they were close to shattering, the various energy-based species nearly solidified outright, and the sentient gas clouds were nearly dispersed as the screeching sound produced by Mojo's long spidery leg approached their resonant frequency.

He cleared his throat, a sound reminiscent of a hog trough being slopped and a bag of radio parts being fed into a wood chipper. A truly unique sound... Simultaneously the most disgusting and most irritating thing ever heard by sentient life.

Mojo hated introducing himself but Spiral was busy keeping everything running smoothly and the hype man who usually introduced him committed suicide a little over a week ago which was a violent, bloody, and thoroughly messy affair considering he hailed from a race of immortals that supposedly could not be killed by any known means which just goes to prove that old human adage that states "Where There's A Will There's A Way" and to think it only took him one trillion two hundred and thirty-six billion three hundred and thirty-seven million six hundred and fifty-seven thousand nine hundred and eighty-three increasingly creative tries to find a method that works, and that kids is what we call "Commitment" but given his employment with The MTN his coworkers weren't surprised that he committed suicide but that it took him this long. After all they all work for the same slimy, putrid, flatulent, foul-smelling, pus-ridden son-of-a-spineless bitch. I know right? That kind of broad generalization probably describes most bosses to a 'T.'

"Ladies, Gentlemen, and Beings of Indeterminate or Fluctuating Gender You all know me and you All Love M...," Mojo began his pitch in his friendliest and authoritative used car salesman's voice but the crowd began booing before he could even finish his spiel. They had tolerated reruns, the rushed merchandising lines, the under performing replacement programming followed by the months of nothing. It's a good thing Mojo wasn't on the studio floor with his adoring audience or they probably would have tried to kill him or at least those species that lacked functional olfactory organs which explains why the poor Vulpimancers were writhing on the floor, foaming at the mouth and trying to bite each other to ****.

"Alright, I tried to be nice...," Even Mojo snorted at the "Nice" part as he pressed a button on his luxurious levitating soapbox's control console and the heavily-armed defense platforms situated in orbit took aim and hidden emplacements of directed-energy weapons, heavy neutron disruptors, and exotic particle weaponry emerged from the walls and floor. Everyone froze in their tracks or well almost everyone but no one will miss those Arburian Pelarotas and Florauna acting tough in the front row though that cute set of barely clothed Twi'lek triplets that got hit in the crossfire already have a GoFundMe Page and are up to 1 million republic credits.

"Aaaaaaaaach-Ptooooooooey!"

After hocking up some unidentifiable mass that promptly slithered away and into the nearest dark corner where no light could reach Mojo straightened before speaking., "Now that I have your attention..."

The booing began again and Mojo reached toward the fire controls but everyone froze again, glancing toward the scorched outlines which were all that remained of the troublemakers in the front row then back to Mojo whose bony clawed finger paused above the button.

"Gee, I just love a captive audience.," Cackled Mojo obscenely though it sounded more like a garbage disposal full of rocks., "I know everyone is disappointed with the lack of new episodes..."

Watching from the control room, Spiral winced.

Before the studio audience could start booing again, Mojo pre-emptively reached for the big red button again making them all pause in their spots. Spiral breathed a sigh of relief, seeing Mojo's finger stop short of pressing the button.

Mojo paced back and forth atop the floating platform as he peered down at the audience and spoke in that same nasally cheese grater of a voice., "I R-Re-Regret...," Mojo clasped his hands together and steepled his bizarrely elongated fingers and tried to sound sincere but nobody's that good an actor so it came out sounding like total garbage which it was., "... the economic and cultural upheaval...," Mojo was really having a hard time keeping a straight face as he pretended to actually care about the planets and dimensions tearing themselves a part because they were going into agonizing television withdrawal though he was perturbed by the drop in The MTN's overall ratings and that was the only thing keeping him from laughing his big fat, pimply yellow ass off., "I know all of you want to know the reason behind the constant delays and when new episodes of your favorite show will be premiering and I could give you some boring techno-babble/gobbledygook about quantum tunneling and Venderman's Law...," Mojo shrugged, seeing the crowd getting restless again., "... To make a long story short the team in charge of regular maintenance unfortunately juxtaposed the sonic rectifier with the linear modulator causing a catastrophic electrical upsurge turning the Time-Space Visualizer MTN depends on to peer into other realities into a useless pile of crap..."

Spiral gritted her teeth seeing the crowd's reaction., "Brilliant! Way To Go Mojo... Real Smooth You Bumbling Fuck-Wit!" Spiral was already reaching for security alert panel to summon the robotic security forces because the way things were going thanks to Mojo's oh so masterful oratory he would soon be **** to execute the rest of the audience to prevent a uprising but Spiral's hand paused above the console as she heard Mojo resume speaking and she thought., "Oh God, He's Going Full Evangelist!"