Chapter 8 and Epilogue

The epilogue is pretty short, so I just did these two together.  Sorry for robbing you of a review like that.

The Weyland corporation had a giant, chemically altered snake in a glass tank that was just right off the hallway?  Did it feature on the office tours?

"...and if you look to your left, you'll see a twenty seven foot long snake that we've been working on."

"Is that glass bulletproof or something?"

"Nah.  Jim from R&D wanted ballistic plexiglass, but you know how that goes, budget cuts and all that."

Anyway, Sonya's story in this is just this one prolonged torture sequence, isn't it?  After her savage beating and rape last time, she goes through this little character arc in just one scene, where she slowly pulls herself back together and decides to carry on with the mission, and then of course we get Jax planning to murder her and then the snake smashes her into pulp and Horowitz seems to think it's funny (in-character as you've written her, mind you, but still).  Sonya's not even one of my favorite characters or anything, this story just really decided she was going to be its punching bag.

Horowitz's backup plan against Gogedheh is actually kind of hilarious, especially because of his reaction ("No!  This is BULLSHIT!  Women do not consent to sex with me!  That isn't FAIR!").  She also comes very close to killing him there at the end, riddling him with bullets and all.

We do also see another Gogedheh tradition starting here, namely that if the target is unwilling, he'll do his best to make her willing.  As with the other traditions, this escalates in the sequels, as in Multiverse Trophies he states that if Lightning doesn't fight him willingly, he'll just start beating her until she does.  It's actually pretty likely that's a reaction to his frustration with Horowitz here.

I can sort of tell Beatrix Kiddo is one of your favorite characters, since her daughter actually gets a happy ending in the epilogue.

All in all, this was an interesting read.  Sorry if I came across as overly critical from time to time, as this was a well-written story, told with that tongue-in-cheek style you use in a lot of your work, and it was interesting seeing where all these elements that would go on to be staples of the series began, and watching the evolution of the character over the course of the story and into the next ones.

My reaction to this chapter is...complex (Facebook status: "It's Complicated").  This chapter upset me, but not in the way such things usually do, in the sense that it wasn't the content of the chapter itself that did it, but the fact that the chapter just would not stop reminding me of another story, one written by Deathstalker but I'm 95% sure based on this chapter, either in terms of DS subconsciously taking elements of this chapter and using them, or the commissioner requesting specific notes (which he pulled from the chapter) be hit, or something like that.

Whatever the case, I need to try and look at the chapter in isolation.  So...

The woman had been Laura Cruz, an educated novice nun turned pirate who lived and fought as a man. The last entries detailed demons from the skies, and the hungry devils that grew inside humans around the then-remote settlement.

 

The text got sketchy, some pages seemed to have been ripped loose. The last entry Lara read in the light of her torch. The sky demons were gone, but they had left behind devils. The pirate Laura Cruz had masterminded their defeat. Fire and burning pitch had forced the devils into the new built catacombs where burning oil consumed them. The survivors had sealed the last of the devil’s eggs beneath the Earth, and Laura had stayed behind to ensure it didn’t spawn a devil.

Have you ever considered writing this?  I mean, not only is Alien vs. Predator vs. Pirate a hilarious title, but the description of what Laura pulls off at the end there is incredibly cinematic and cool.  Throw in a colorful cast of pirate crew members, the Anne Bonny-inspired story of Laura hiding her gender to get the crew to listen to her...this could be really awesome.

Anyway, back to the present.

I'm not 100% sold on the idea that Lara can riddle Gogedheh's legs with bullets and he can just shrug that off.  Don't get me wrong, I know what this is referencing, the slaughterhouse fight in Predator 2 where Harrigan puts eight or nine shotgun rounds into the City Hunter and it doesn't die.  I guess he needed to be in top or near-top form for the fight he's about to be involved in outside.

The inclusion of Carla Burke is a nice touch, the great great great great grandmother of Carter Burke from Aliens, I presume, which means working for the Weyland corporation is a real family institution!

And, by killing the chestburster (presumably a queen), Gogedheh saves human civilization!  Of course, by rape-murdering FemShep and her crew and ensuring the total destruction of their reputations, he ensured no one was around to rally the civilized races and got every civilization in that entire galaxy burned to ash or turned into organic soup by the Reapers, so...let's call that a wash.

In the animal tank behind the broken glass screen, something big stirred.

Given that the Weyland Corporation won't get wind of the Engineers for another 83 years and thus don't know a thing about xenomorphs or the black mutagen yet, I have no idea what this is.

Chapter 6

Well, this Agent Horowitz interlude was...less funny than the other one.

I do like the mention of OWLF, keeping continuity with Predator 2, and I'd be lying if I said I couldn't see Agent Horowitz hanging out with Agent Keyes, and holy shit wouldn't that be a hell of a thing to see, Alicia Silverstone and Gary Busey ramping the crazy up to eleven?

Anyway, the rest of the interlude here is short and, again, not terribly fun to read.  Sonya does kind of provoke the fight, but it's so incredibly one-sided that I can't help but feel bad for her, especially when everybody just decides to participate in her sexual assault.

Sorry there's not a ton to say about this chapter, but it's a relatively short one, so...moving on!

Chapter 5

Did Beatrix have a daughter in Kill Bill?  I can't remember.  Pretty sure she didn't kill a Predator with an RPG in the film, though.  I think I'd have remembered that.

Two miles away and a few minutes before a series of charges took out the electricity supply of Mushroom Kingdom Inc.’s factory & HQ. The complex was one of the front businesses of two Italian-American brothers and their cousin, all by the name of Toscano. While Mushroom Kingdom Inc. cultivated mushrooms for sale to city restaurants, the Toscanos made most of their money through a large slice of the city’s illegal drugs trade.

Heh, I get it, 'cause it's two Italian brothers like the Mario brothers and...anyway.  It's a funny little reference, but moving on...

Beatrix's intro here is really cool, with a great description of her moving through the building and taking out the guards in a manner rather similar to the Predator itself.  Of course, Gogedheh arrives on the upper floor and moves down while Beatrix moves up, so...

“He killed Mario! Holy fuck he killed Mario! Where the fuck is-”

*laughing* Wow, they're actually named Maario and Luigi, and there's a reference to their cousin, Big W.  Unfortunately, their princess was in another cas...wait.

The bodyguard Daisy backed away.

The other bodyguard's not...

She was mine, bitch! She… she was my peach!

Earlier...

Kiddo vaguely recognised them; called themselves The Ninja Princesses or some tacky western shit.

*shakes fist at the sky* JAAAAYDEEEEE!!!

Anyway, moving on.

He noticed a tube of Pringles sitting on the nearest desk and grabbed it. Kiddo felt his fingers prying her cunt open again, and then suddenly the flat ended tube was forced painfully inside her.

Well, pretty sure Pringles were never used like that in any of the other stories.  On the other hand, in Becoming the Hunted, Gogedheh's complete annihilation of the Normandy crew, with extra brutal violence, extreme torture, etc., all stemmed from his rage at having his trophy collection destroyed, of having his self image attacked.  I expressed in my reaction post that this read a lot like what's technically called "narcissistic rage."

He saw things more clearly then; Beatrix Kiddo had been a great warrior, she just hadn’t been a match for him. Gogedheh – the greatest hunter in the universe!

Narcissistic traits?  Check!

I do appreciate both the level of prep Gogedheh puts into hunting Beatrix (the fact that he basically blinded her with a laser pointer is kind of funny) and the threat she poses to him even after being blinded.  This is also the only time in the entire saga that Gogedheh is forced to kill a woman with his plasmacaster out of sheer panic.  Every other time, he defeats the woman before raping her, and then kills her.  this is extremely unique, and what happens in the other stories could well be him learning from this.

Chapter 4

So now we shift into dark...ish comedy, and the sheer surreality of it is amazing.  I don't even really know where to start, so let's just go to...

Made of red leather and strapped tightly enough to bite into her tanned skin, it secured twin fourteen inch vibrating dildos – moulded from real donkey cocks

...the first time this chapter made me laugh.  I can't say why that specific detail made me laaugh, but it did.

“Like, awesome!” she whispered, as the sweat soaked Japanese woman shuddered through another forced climax.

Second time it made me laugh.

Terrified, wondering if this was some kind of sick Glen Quagmire

Giggity

approved joke, Tricia complied.

It's weird, and I'm sure for a lot of people this was hot, but I was just mostly laughing my way through this chapter.  Sorry I don't have a ton to say here, but fortunately, I read two chapters in a row, so on to the next one!

Chapter 3

This is actually one of the sadder chapters.  I think part of this is because unlike with Miho, who comes from an R-rated film with tons of death, this chapter is based on the Charlie's Angels movies, which were goofy action comedies, and it's kind of jarring, for instance, to see Alex and Dylan get shredded, in fairly realistic fashion, by shaped charge explosives.  I think it's also sad because you generally put more emphasis on the emotions Natalie feels during the whole thing, her horror and pain as she watches her friends die, her shame from orgasming from her rape and that little moment where she thinks about her and her friends, happy together, just before she bleeds out from Gogedheh slitting her throat.

Don't get me wrong, this didn't hurt me too badly (I didn't discover have a Charlie's Angels-based depression button or anything), but still, there was real emotion in this.  Natalie also puts up a lot more of a fight than Miho did, which brings me to something you said long ago.

Apparently someone called you out on Natalie zapping Gogedheh with an electrical cable from the lighting fixture due to the moment in Predator 2 where the City Hunter catches a lightning bolt with his combistick.  I don;t think this is actually a mistake at all.  My read on the Predator 2 scene is that the lightning struck the City Hunter's combistick and was then channeled around his body by the mesh he's wearing, which I presume is conductive; the creature isn't immune to electricity or anything.  Here, you specifically mention that Natalie jams the cable up against Gogedheh's skin through a gap in his armor, so the conductive mesh shouldn't factor in.

There's also an image here I liked.

There were large metal girder supports visible across the roof of the club, part of the ‘Raw Design’. Gogedheh pulled himself up onto one of the strong girders and took position close to where Alex, Dylan and his target, the warrior Natalie Cook, were talking together.

The image of the Predator crouched in the metal girders of a building, hidden in the urban environment, just seems cool, like it would be right at home in one of the movies.

For things with ripple effects through the Gogedheh saga, there are two elements of note here.  First are the explosive traps Gogedheh uses on the bathroom door.  They popped up again in a later story, where he used them to take out one of the Mass Effect characters.

The second pertains to character.

Gogedheh targeted his shoulder cannon on Alex’s head. She looked up into three bright red dots and managed to nod urgently when she recognised them as a kind of laser targeting system. He fired a single plasma shot past Natalie and ended the fallen angel’s suffering.

The mercy kill he performs on Alex is a show of empathy, which pops up again in Multiverse Trophies where, when his plasmacaster (apparently acting on its own) kills Sam and Reboot Lara cries out in grief, he slashes her throat, killing her without finishing raping her.  When he gets back to his ship, he actually berates himself for that, and never does it again.  It's interesting to look at this in terms of the character evolving and, over multiple stories, purging himself of these emotions.

Chapter 2

Alright, so this chapter-

In the room below an alliance was being hashed out between Wendy, leader of the Girls of Old Town, and Vivian Ward, former hooker, wife of an extremely powerful financier and indirect runner of almost all the girls in the city of angels.

*Googles Vivian Ward* Damn it, JayDee...

Actually, I might be adjusting to the insanity here, at least to an extent.  The idea of Julia Roberts as a ruthless crime lord is hilarious.

Anyway, here we establish how these chapters basically go, and it's interesting to see the beginning of what turned out to be traditions in the Gogedheh series.  For instance, I'm pretty sure that at some point in every story he catches a woman's hand, squeezes until her wrist breaks, and then grinds the bones together.  It's like a tradition.  You also introduced the semi-traditions (these aren't as common as the wrist break) of Gogedheh rupturing a woman's uterus due to being just that big and of him using his vocal mimicry to parrot some line at her as a taunt.

One tradition I was surprised didn't start here was...

It wore a plate metal breastplate across it’s chest, wire mesh over much of the rest of it’s flesh and a sort of loose leather buttoned pouch around it’s crotch.

...the nature of the codpiece.  Here, Gogedheh is wearing a pretty normal codpiece.  In the later stories it's an armored codpiece which, in case you haven't Googled it, looks freaking hilarious.

Miho was faced with an eight and a half foot biped with greenish-brown skin.

Eight and a half feet?  The Jungle Hunter and City Hunter were both about 7'3" (played by the 7'2" Kevin Peter Hall, and it's safe to assume the makeup adds another inch).  You know, I've been building a psychological profile/character study of him in my reaction posts, but maybe it wasn't necessary.  Maybe this has all been roid rage the whole time.

For the record, DS shrank him down to eight feet, though I don't know if he did that on purpose or by accident.

The chapter's pretty quick, all told, but it's done well, and I like some of the little anatomical details, like the fact that Predators have internal testicles because high temperatures actually benefit their male gametes.  It's kind of humorous, but at the same time is a detail that makes the creature feel more alien.

Well, over on the other site, I've been doing my next long-form reaction posts to the Gogedheh series, and I figured I should go back and check out the beginning of this epic saga.

The plot of the original version of this story was requested by Phantom on the CSSA forums where I lurk. Quite frankly, without phantom this story would not exist.

So this is all his fault!

Anyway, long before he was a nigh-invulnerable god of rape, Gogedheh came from humble beginnings...

He was the greatest hunter in every other environment. He slaughtered the hard meat like they were nothing. He withstood extremes of temperature and atmospheric conditions that would kill a lesser hunter.

Well, maybe not that humble.

At any rate, let's get into this.  I know this might be bad, but I've seen worse (either that or Deathstalker punched me so hard emotionally with one of those stories that I'm numb at the moment), so come at me, JayDee!  YOU AIN'T GOT SHIT!

5) Cher Horowitz – Kidnapped in college, brainwashed and trained to work for a government agency as the US Government’s top Assassin and counter-intelligence agent.

I ju-wha?  *laughs* Damn it, man, I was not ready for that!

Finally read it! I think you've managed a really good and, oddly (:P), believable crossover here. The degree in violence feels true to the Predator movies (okay, it was a bit more graphic here). What felt a bit out of place are the rapes, just because the rest doesn't feel like a parody to me, but an earnest (and imo successful) attempt to make the story realistic within the fandoms' parameters. Be that as it may, your imagination and ability to convey are magnificent as usual.