Baron Zemo's Lair. - <font color="lightslategrey" face="Lucida Sans Unicode">The Hooded Hood Chronicles #14: The Lair Legion vs the Purveyors of Peril</font>

Baron Zemo's Lair

The Hooded Hood Chronicles #14: The Lair Legion vs the Purveyors of Peril
Saturday, 04-Dec-1999 12:31:29
195.92.194.105 writes:

The Hooded Hood Chronicles #14: The Lair Legion vs the Purveyors of Peril

The Hooded Hood stands in the middle of a double-page splash panel, surrounded by a montage of reflections from his reality-spanning Portal of Pretentiousness which nicely recap the plot to date.
There, in the first image, are the Lair Legion. The regular members present are Jarvis, NTU-150, the Dark Knight, Fin Fang Foom, Banjooooo, Messenger, Sersi, Rocket Racoon, Hatman, Starseed, CrazySugarFreakBoy! They are joined by occasional Legionnaires Donar and Space Ghost. They look a bit hacked because they have just variously fought the gamma-powered incredible Yurt, the Lovecraftian Shab’addaba’Dhu (the Groper Out of Grossness), and eight hundred government-built Sentinoid robots. More specifically, Messenger is enjoying a major concussion and Space Ghost is passing-out drunk but still won’t stop singing.
It was a shame about the singing really because the Lair Legion are currently trying to move very stealthily away from the government forces which are convinced that the heroes have just attempted to take over the planet. Fortunately Donar is more than happy to stun Space Ghost into unconsciousness after repeated blows by Mjalcolm. “Thou shalt cease to Stand By Thy Man!” the Ausgardian commands.
The Dark Knight decides at this particular point in his career that it was time to go back to being the Chronicler of Stories as soon as possible.
On the second reflection are the other member of the current Lair Legion, Lisa, and a number of female associates. All of these are in a bleak featureless holding cell on the SPUD helicarrier. A footnote is probably discretely placed near the bottom of the page reminding readers that SPUD is an acronym for Super-menace Principal Undercover Directorate, a serious big-time government agency that has been tasked with rounding up the Lair Legion and their known associates. The other ladies present in the unflattering overhead neon light are Tina and Cheryl, who if absolutely pressed would admit relationships with NTU-150 and Visionary respectively, and a previously unidentified young woman who can now be introduced to the world as Melissa. We’ll be hearing more about this later.
The third reflection, the one that seems to be showing an endless cornfield, fails to do justice to the complicated situation that it depicts. The figure in the centre is Visionary, the long-absent and arguably least useful member of the Lair Legion. The too-small-to-see-at-this-distance robot with him is Fleabot. The can’t-see-at-all-because-he’s-nothing-but-soul-essence now squatting in Visionary’s body is the currently dead Legionnaire known as spiffy. Whilst long-time readers will instantly know that spiffy has been granted temporary reprieve from Hell, Nebraska by Mefrothto, Lord of the Netherworld, in order to annoy the Hooded Hood, it’s going to come as a really nasty shock to the Hood himself, because he’s too busy posing to pay attention to what’s happening on that particular picture.
There are a few smaller pictures dotted around just to bring us up to date on what’s happening in the rest of the Parodyverse. One shows the Agents of SPUD ransacking Magnetic Techbird’s house for evidence. Another has Gurl and her team being led away struggling by the Sentinoids. A third depicts the brief intrusion of an investigative team into Dr Moo’s laboratory until the countermeasures cut in.
And there, in the final panel, are the Purveyors of Peril. Having framed the Legion with the aforementioned taking-over-the-world scam, the Hooded Hood has now managed to get Presidential approval for his own team to bounty-hunt the Lair Legion. If the Prez had been paying more attention to the small print and less to VelcroVixen’s cleavage he might have realised that he’s also initialled death warrants for the heroes. Oops.
Anyway, there are the Purveyors of Peril: VelcroVixen, the appalling Appendage Man, Gromm the Living Flatulence, Hämmerblade, Expired Warranty, Indigo Impostor, PsychoAcidPervGrrl!, Headcase, Partycrasher, Turbo Treesloth, Rottweiler and the Terrier. Mother Whipcord’s not with them just now. The Hood has a different mission for her.
The Purveyors are searching for the Lair Legion. After practising massacring them in literally hundreds of alternative timelines they figure that this one is going to be a milk run.
You may notice, by the way, that Baron Zemo doesn’t appear in any of the reflections. This is because any arch-villain worth his salt is going to have found a way of sloping off and preparing his own counter-offensive. Zemo has slipped away into a sub-plot until such a time as he can make a good dramatic reappearance at a critical moment. See below.
“All is in readiness,” the Hooded Hood declaims, drawing his grey cloak about him and glaring with his Satanic green eyes. “Let the game commence!”

“Tim?” Lisa repeated in a puzzled tone. “We don’t have any superheroes called Tim.”
“Tim isn’t a superhero name,” Tina explained kindly to the confused young woman who had been arrested with them. “Only women use their real sensible names in the Parodyverse. Like Lisa, and Cheryl, and… Sersi.”
“Men prefer superhero-sounding names like Space Ghost or Grim Reaper or Zemo,” added Cheryl. “But not Tim.”
“I suppose he could be something like the Amazing Tim?” Lisa tried. “But there’s certainly nobody called Tim in the Lair Legion.”
“No,” Melissa was certain. “He’s a superhero and he leads the Legion.”
“That’s not possible,” smiled Lisa. “The Legion is lead by Jarvis…”
“That’s it!” Melissa remembered. “That’s the name he said. Jarvis.”
There was a pause. Then another one.
“Jarvis?” Lisa checked.
Melissa nodded.
“And you are engaged to him?”
Melissa flourished a ring as well as her handcuffs would allow.
“And you’re going to marry him?”
“Well, when the time is right, when we’re ready. Not for a long time yet…”
Cheryl and Tina exchanged worried glances. Something about Lisa’s tone suggested that Jarvis might not be living that long.
The cell door opened, and the Agents of SPUD mercifully dragged Lisa out to the interrogation block.

“So you’re saying that the best place for us to hide from the US government… is in a shopping mall?” Jarvis asked Sersi.
“Well, no,” she said, happily rummaging for her charge cards. “The best place for us to hide would be in Dark Knight’s cave or somewhere. But since he refuses to take us there because it’s a secret, this is the next best alternative.”
“We need a coffee bar,” Hatman judged, supporting the now sleepy-time Space Ghost. “Possibly a coffee plantation.”
“The bases are loaded and the prunes are invading the pitch,” Messenger contributed, still reeling from the blow that the Yurt had given him. Fin Fang Foom, now in a more normal human guise, gently guided him over towards the lost property counter to see if anyone had handed his wits in.
“We are clearly the victims of some kind of vendetta,” the Dark Knight answered Sersi testily. “There is absolutely no point in us giving away irreplaceable resources until we understand the situation.”
“DK’s right,” Jarvis decided. “We need to find somewhere to hole up, work out what’s going on, and then find a way to rescue Melissa and the others.”
“Who?” Starseed asked. He had never heard of a Melissa.
“I mean Lisa, of course,” Jarvis corrected himself. Now why had he made that strange slip of the tongue? And why had it felt so right to say it?
“Actually, a mall is a pretty good place to hide. Most of us can blend right in,” Dreamcatcher Foxglove – the uncostumed identity of CrazySugarFreakBoy! contributed. Without the bizarre costume the undistinguished superhero was an undistinguished juvenile.
“I tell thee, I have no need of thy double glazing, base mortal!” Donar thundered across the concourse.
“There’s a Radio Shack we could hide out in,” NTU-150 suggested, hopefully. He had a few ideas about countermeasures if the Sentinoids should attack again.
“I’d just like it on record that if we let NTU-150 anywhere near a Radio Shack on this mission I’m surrendering to SPUD,” Rocker Racoon clarified. “And while we’re at it, I’d also like it recorded that the next person who explains me away to the mall security guards as an Ewok is going to be missing their happy sacs.”
“We could try and get back to my undersea kingdom,” Banjooooo suggested. “If Jarvis is willing to admit to teleportation powers at the moment, we could…” he stopped as a previously-unknown danger sense hammered through his skull.
“What is it, Banjooooo?” Sersi asked.
The king of the sea monkeys gestured weakly through his agony.
“He’s trying to tell us something,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! guessed. “How many words? Animal, vegetable or mineral?”
“Trouble at the mine?” Messenger tried.
Then the noxious cloud of toxic vapour engulfed the Lair Legion and all the innocent – and not so innocent, this being a typical mall, after all – crowds around them.

“Where am I?”
“Where are you?” the seemingly-disembodied voice replied to spiffy’s plaintive question, “You are exactly where you have been for months and months. You’re wandering around in some obscure sub-plot trying to avoid getting on with the good stuff that all your friends are waiting for. You’re neglecting your wife and you’re wasting our time.”
“My wife?” spiffy scratched his unfamiliar head with an unfamiliar hand. That was when he discovered that his unseen conversationalist was none other than the micro-robot Fleabot. “Fleabot? What are you doing here? Where’s Visionary? I could really use some help – but I’ll settle for Visionary..”
Fleabot appeared to be somewhat puzzled. “Where’s Visionary? You mean you don’t know?”
“How could I? I’ve been dead for months.”
“Well, I’d say very very bored perhaps, but dead is overstating it.”
“No really. I was in hell but I escaped and now I’m looking for Visionary.”
Fleabot tried realigning his logic circuits. It didn’t help. “You… you don’t know where Visionary is?” he checked. Too much corn, he was thinking. Never a very stable personality.
“How should I know? But he’s not usually far away from you, Fleabot.”
“And who do you think you are, may I ask?” the robot enquired.
“I’m spiffy. The nice, real one, not the evil ferned one. Honest.”
“And you just happen to look like Visionary?” Fleabot answered sceptically.
“I… I look like…?” spiffy screamed for a short while; at least until a cultured voice took over his larynx and said, “Oh, please do shut up. You’re giving us a collective headache.”
“Who said that?” spiffy asked, looking around before he realised that his own throat was making the sounds.
“It’s me, the Voyeur,” the second possessing personality admitted. “Mefrothto seems to have thought it would be amusing to send me along with you to possess Visionary.”
“I’m stuck in Visionary’s mind with an outcast member of the race of cosmic Observers?” spiffy summarised.
“If you can call this a mind,” the Voyeur sniffed.
“Stop it!” Fleabot squeaked. “Just stop it! You’re messing up my processors!”
“Hey, is that a real, genuine miniature robot flea?” a third voice came from Visionary’s throat. “Cool! Be better if he had, like, cyber-blade attachments as well though, huh?”
“Who the hell was that?” spiffy demanded, appalled by the high-pitched tones of mindless youthspeak that had just passed his borrowed lips.
“Hey, I’m the dead guy who’s possessing this body,” the youthful voice retorted. “Back before I got wasted by this way-cool chick called PsychoAcidPervGrrl! I went by the name of a Junior Reader. But I’m going to rechristen this body as Spawn!”
“A Junior Reader?” mocked spiffy. “You mean that loser who’s been posting the BZL boards with a Lisa fixation?”
“Hey, now I’m back as one of the undead she’s gonna be my hot love slave!”
“Not while I’m in this body, young man,” the Voyeur said starchily.
“Bite me, baldy!” Junior Reader retorted. “I’m the dominant personality here. You’re just a failed videocamera, and this spiffy kid never did anything worth bothering about at all and then he got aced.”
“You got aced as well!” protested spiffy.
“Yeah,” snarled back a Junior Reader. “But at least I got to have sex first!”
Whilst spiffy was trying to come up with a good answer to that, another voice emanated from the overused Visionary larynx. “I ssay let the Junior Rreader have his way with the wench… Then we conquer the planet and rravage all humankind!” This voice was rasping and evil, straight out of the exorcist.
“It seems as though Mefrothto sent one of his demons to occupy this soulless form as well,” the Voyeur recognised.
“Yeah,” it answered. “Oddhorrrn’s the name, demoning’s the game. Volunteerrred for this mission to get out of the Underworld before the Hollywood V plot starts.”
“And he’s on my side!” a Junior Reader crowed.
“No!” insisted spiffy. “I came back to save the Lair Legion from the inevitable victory of the Hooded Hood! I… we have important work to do.”
“Too bad, weed-boy!” a Junior Reader sneered. “You with me on this, Oddhorn?”
“Yeah. Let’s rrrrock and urk!”
A Junior Reader was a bit puzzled by this, and so was spiffy, who said, “Um, what exactly is rock and urk, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Never fear,” another, softer, but very determined voice joined in. “The demon is currently curled into a little world of pain all of his own. And Junior Reader is welcome to join him if he says another word out of place for the rest of this mission.”
Spiffy was almost afraid to ask. “And you would be?”
“Spandex Lass,” the new voice introduced herself. “I was a founder Legionnaire once until the Hooded Hood killed me and retconned me from existence. But my potential ghost is here now to back you up. Go forth, spiffy. You have a world to save!”
“Excuse me,” Fleabot worried, having just about caught up with the Next Strange Thing that had just happened to Visionary. “Do any of you happen to know what became of the… well, I’ll use the word ‘mind’ for want of a better one, of Visionary? I mean, if you’re all in there, where is he?”
The Voyeur did a quick internal check. “Well, he’s not here. I’d guess if he is anywhere, he’s probably in hell just now.”

Visionary looked round. There was a surprising absence of corn, and an unusual prevalence of brimstone flames.
“Welcome,” the demon-lord Mefrothto bade him, leaning forward to have a better look at his new toy. “How very nice to see you.”

“Gaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!” with the last of his breath, Starseed cleared away some of the foul fumes that threatened the lives of everybody in the mall.
“What the hell was that?” demanded Foom, still gasping for breath.
“It is… it’s death!” proclaimed Banjoooo, assuming his full seventy-five foot height.
“Way to go on the stealth mission, Banjy,” Hatman commented, pulling his Dick Tracy fedora further down over his eyes.
But Banjoooo was lost in a world of instincts and racial memories. What was really confusing him was that they were all from an entirely different timeline, where the race of sea-monkeys had been genetically created by the Abhumans in order to guard the place of imprisonment of one of the Seven Great Menaces. As king of the sea-monkeys, every fibre of Banjoooo’s being was warning him that it was out, it was nearby, it was creeping up behind him and about to steal his lunch money!
People who had just about got over their mass formation vomiting from the vile smell screamed and tried to run away as they saw the great sea monkey appear amongst them. They had seen the news broadcasts. Of course, since the floor was kind of… slippery now the run-away panic quickly got to medium gross.
But Gromm, the Living Flatulence, had done his work in flushing out the Lair Legion. Now the Purveyors of Peril could attack. And as always, that meant unmuzzling the appalling Appendage Man!
“Watch out!” Rocker Racoon warned his team. “Gross multi-limbed disgusting thing incoming at three o’...” He was interrupted in his warning as forty pounds of berserker tree-sloth blasted into him and tried to gut him with its claws.
Then Hatman narrowly avoided a disintegrator blast. Quickly flipping his camouflage hat on, the many-chapeaued superhero spun around to see who had assaulted him. He was rewarded with the bizarre image of a man with the head of a Sentinoid, who was somehow using that borrowed head to adapt the powers of the hero-hunting robot. “Nice to see you again for the first time, my most hated enemy!” the newcomer said in robotic yet sinister tones.
Before Hatman could respond he was bounced to the floor again as PsychoAcidPervGrrl! blurred past him and barrelled into CrazySugarFreakBoy! “Hiya lover, miss me? Want to do the dance again, but this time playing for keepsies?” she asked her alternate-universe possible incestuous half-brother.
Rottweiler and the Terrier thought they had an easy kill. Messenger, the foe they had fought and slain a dozen times in alternate realities, was after all stunned and delirious from his earlier heroism. Yet as they leapt forwards, claws and cybernetic teeth at the ready, he swung his delivery bag with his old skill, somersaulted backwards onto an ornamental mall fountain and launched a barrage of explosive letters. “You don’t steal my underpants, Uncle Antony!” he shouted defiantly. “Not twice!”
By now Appendage Man was wrapped around Fin Fang Foom, giving the dragon no chance to change back from his human guise. “I’ll get you out, Foomy!” Sersi promised, but just then she was snatched into the air and carried into the atrium by a flying man with a permanent wave and a white disco suit unbuttoned to the waist. “Hey, Sersi babe, time for a date with the big boy!” Partycrasher leered at her in his most charming manner. Already his prehensile chest hair was fumbling with her uniform buttons.
Jarvis was about to take control of things, to organise his team against what was clearly a co-ordinated attack by those people that the Hooded Hood had given him the statistics for when NTU-150 exploded. Pieces of flying armour grazed the butler’s skull, sending him flying through the window of a bridal shop. “Melissa!” he groaned.
“Gotcha!” Expired Warranty crowed over the fallen NTU-150. “Technology is useless against me. Yours is pretty useless anyway, but even more so when you’re up against your one true master!”
NTU-150 fell backwards, apparently completely defeated, right through the window of the Radio Shack.
“Starseed! Help!” The Gaaahhh Master who had been about to assist NTU-150 turned to find Lisa being dragged backwards into a pizza shop. Already her clothing had become very dishevelled by whoever was attacking her.
Starseed rushed forward to help. To help Lisa that is. Not to help dishevel her clothing. No sir.
“Where’s the bad guy?” he demanded, catching up with Lisa just by the self-serve salad bar.
“You saved me!” she gasped, falling into his arms.
Starseed felt a little prick – no, don’t be crude, get your mind’s out of the gutter, for Gah’s sake! – he felt a little jab as a needle entered his rump and suddenly the world became a wonderful place filled with shiny rainbows and sleepy times.
“One down,” snarled the Indigo Impostor. He quickly concealed Starseed under a booth and skipped away to find the Dark Knight.
There was a rumble of thunder. Then there was a bigger rumble of thunder from the other end of the mall. Then an even bigger one from this end. The one that replied from the other end shattered all the vita-glass windows. The one at this end made all the water mains explode, drenching the remaining fleeing customers. Still Donar and Hämmerblade faced off against each other in the sort of pissing contest that only Thunder Gods can have.
So far they hadn’t even got as far as comparing the size of their hammers.
“Dark Knight! This way! We’ve got to rally the troops!” Lisa called towards one of the last unengaged members of the Legion. She beckoned from the doorway to a gun shop where she had already acquired a Ramboesque full machine gun and feed belt on sale for duck hunting purposes only.
“Of course we have,” the Dark Knight agreed, skipping over the free-ranging, rapidly multiplying limbs of the Appendage Man and ducking under the garishly-clashing ball of fighting CrazyPsychoSugarAcidFreakPrevBoyGrrl! that whizzed across the hallways, “And we could start by taking out the Indigo Impostor!”
“Where is he?” Lisa asked, taking careful aim on the Dark Knight’s turned back... just before she got hit by that boomeranging missile he had sent off a moment earlier. She crumpled to the floor as the Indigo Impostor.
Jarvis tried to clear his head and get back into the fight. A small and lethal disrupter pistol whirred its power-up sound right by his left ear. “Game over, butler boy,” the suave, sensual voice of VelcroVixen announced to the leader of the Lair Legion.
But Jarvis was a really, really bad loser.

“Alright, sweetcheeks, you got just five seconds to confess whut the Lair Legion’s up to before I have to hand yer over to the government suit-types whut want to question ya in ways even you ain’t gonna enjoy,” Dan Drury warned Lisa in the main interrogation suite of the SPUD helicarrier.
“No legal representation?” Lisa cooed back. “No Miranda reading? This is looking like a seven figure harassment suit, Danny.”
“Look, you Legion joes have always been square up to now, but you’ve crossed the line an now you gotta pay. Make it easy on yourself kiddo.”
“Mmmm. I do so go for the stubbly types, you know. Go on, call me a Yahoo, lover.”
Dan Drury nearly bit his stogie in two. “Awlright. Play yer games, lady. But sooner or later we’re gonna get to the truth. We want to know who yer working for. Zemo? That weird sister of yours? That alien Porter guy? An if you won’t tell me nice like, I gotta hand you over to the government operatives types.”
The Director of SPUD seemed almost reluctant to abandon Lisa to her fate. Still, he had his duty, so he left the first lady of the Lair Legion strapped to the pain chair and went off to get a cold shower.
Lisa took the opportunity to look around. There was a video screen just at the edge of her vision depicting half a dozen SPUD scientists dropping DarkHwk into a vat of cement for safekeeping. That couldn’t be good. Another screen depicted SPUD technicians detonating Magnetic Techbird’s house just to be safe.
Then all the lights went out. Except for the big hot spotlight shining in Lisa’s eyes.
“Come on then, lover, I can take it!” she called defiantly.
“Can you indeed, young lady?” came back a harsh, disapproving woman’s voice. Lisa’s blood ran cold as she experienced a secret origin flashback: There she was, four years old, cute as a button, orphaned as badly as Annie, being taken by the had through the doorway of the Little Sisters of Discipline Orphanage. Even now, Mother Whipcord’s first words came back to her down the years, “Wicked child, wearing a flowery-patterned dress. A decent flaying will instil some moral values into you!”
Lisa squinted into the light and gasped in horror as the wimpled form of Mother Whipcord strode forward to glare disapprovingly at her. “No!” she gasped in horror as she felt her years of confident sophistication being stripped from her, until she was the frightened four year old who had worn the sinful dress.
And Mother Whipcord frowned her terrible frown and said the dreaded words, “Bad girl!”
“I… I’m not scared of you now…” Lisa stammered. “I’m a superheroine… an advocate… a mother…”
Mother Whipcord sneered, “A harlot, a byword, and a hissing,” she retorted. “At least your so called children are no longer an problem.”
“What do you mean?” Lisa gasped.
“Well, those that you haven’t driven to super-villainy or lost to kidnappers are now safely in the custody of the Sisters of Discipline.”
“Noooo! Let them go!”
“Steps are being taken to eliminate your incestuous lover Jarvis…”
“Noooo… wait a minute? Incestuous? No, you’re just mixing up DK’s Star Wars parody…”
“The Hooded Hood’s retcon powers run very deep,” Mother Whiplash smiled coldly. “Surely you have met the young woman with whom Jarvis has actually been having a relationship over the past few months? In the timeline changes he has never been… intimate with you. Not should he, since you were twins separated at birth in the Hood’s continuity.”
Lisa felt all the supports of the life she had managed to build on the ashes of her childhood being kicked away from her. “We’re what?” she asked, incredulously, as the images of two screaming children being separated suddenly welled up in her mind. And the boy went to the aliens, and the girl went to the orphanage…. It had to be another of the Hood’s tricks. It had to be. Melissa wasn’t real, she couldn’t have Jarvis’ love. Mother Whiplash couldn’t just wipe away Lisa’s whole life like this.
Lisa suddenly felt a bit like the Scarlet Witch after ten minutes with John Byrne.
“Now,” Mother Whipcord said, flexing a lash not unlike Lisa’s own, “As to your long overdue penances…”

It was a laboratory straight from a 1940’s horror movie. There were huge silver balls for electricity to crackle between. There were big wooden beams with clunky Flash Gordon switches on them. There were pointlessly bubbling glass bottles with weird-shaped tubes coming from them. And there was a platform which had eight sinister-looking twenty-foot long ray-devices focussed down on the subjects which were strapped to the bench.
Which were seven Angora rabbits.
“Is this all really necessary?” the diabolical Dr Moo asked Baron Zemo as he pranced from control panel to control panel like some cosmetically-challenged Lionel Atwell.
“I need him. Or rather I need what he can do. I have to find a way to motivate him to come here from the Happy Place.”
“Or her,” Moo added helpfully.
“What?” Zemo was distracted from calibrating the Kurtzburg Assembler by his partner-in-crime’s strange correction.
“Yo is a genderless being of pure thought,” she footnoted. “So he is she as well.”
Zemo was so miffed with the sheer pointlessness of the conversation that he pulled the master control lever without even making a grand speech. He did have to send his threat into the Trans-Temporal MetaPhone however. “Yo, you pointless waste of space, this is Baron Zemo. If you don’t appear before me in my castle right now then these seven furry rodents are going to be cosmic toast!”
“Tact. Diplomacy. Charm. All things Zemo has never even heard of,” Pegasus muttered in the background.
But Yo had indeed heard him. And straining his/her abilities to the limits s/he hooked onto the beam of energy that Zemo has extended like a fishing line and used it to manifest above the captive rabbits. “Be keeping your uncute villainous hands off these bunnies, Zemo-nasty!” Yo warned, willing the captive creatures back along the power stream to the safety of the Happy Place. “Yo has warned Zemo before about threats to bunnies.”
“You dare to threaten me? Zemo?” the Baron puffed up.
“The plan,” Moo whispered to him. “Focus.”
“Ah yes. Well, Yo, I am very… sorry… to have been so… naughty. But I needed your help.”
“Please,” prompted Moo.
“Please,” spat Zemo. “You see, there’s this hero who has been trapped far from home and needs all our aid to get him back to safety. But my Trans-Dimensional Interlocation beam is inhibited at the moment because of the infernal meddling of that cretinous Hoo… because at the moment I can’t use my usual energy sources to help this nice man home.”
“So we need you to power the beam, Yo,” Moo explained.
“Yo would be happy to be helping nasty Moo and Zemo rescue nice hero person,” Yo agreed.
Zemo smiled beneath his mask and went to fetch the jump cables.

“It could be a lot worse,” Cheryl reassured the depressed Melissa.
Jarvis’ new fiancée looked around the bleak windowless containment cell and then at the power-dampening handcuffs that restrained her. “How, exactly?” she enquired.
“You haven’t been transformed into a robot body yet,” Tina comforted her.
“Or had to dress up as a cat,” added Cheryl. “Although that wasn’t actually as bad as you might think.”
“Or fought your evil double.”
“Or got taken hostage by Baron Zemo – which is another rite of passage you can look forward to as a superhero’s fiancée, by the way.”
Melissa looked down at her ring finger as if reconsidering this whole deal.
“It’s not all that bad,” Cheryl added hurriedly. “Being in a superhero universe does wonders for your figure.”
“It’s true,” Tina confirmed. “The longer you stay here the firmer and larger your bust gets. Ask any superheroine.”
“It’s just a matter of attitude,” Cheryl explained. “In the Parodyverse you can either be a hostage or a hero. There’s no third option for female characters.”
Cheryl left Melissa to consider this in silence for a while. Best not to mention Jarvis’ murderous insane ex-wife or his dead girlfriend who was now Shaper of Worlds right now, she considered.

“So, you’re probably neutralising my special powers with that device you’ve just slapped onto my shoulder?” Jarvis checked.
“Uh uh,” agreed VelcroVixen, running her free hand along his limbs, ostensibly to check for concealed weapons. “Now just lie there, relax, and watch my team dissect yours, butler-boy.”
“And it inhibits me teleporting away?”
“Yep.”
“And it prevents me using super-strength or power blasts?”
“Yep.”
“So that just leaves my wits and skill?” Jarvis checked.
“Yep. You’re sure in trouble.”
CrazySugarFreakBoy! and PsychoAcidPervGrrl! seemed to bounce past. It took both Jarvis and VelcroVixen a moment to realise that it was only the two costumes that were wrestling and careening off the walls. The owners were no longer in them.
“Um…” VelcroVixen began, afraid to ask.
And Jarvis did the old pull-the-carpet trick, spilling the distracted (grossed) VelcroVixen backwards, twisting aside as the disruptor blast took out the floor beside him and rolling through the gaping hole to seek refuse in the darkened cellar below.
“Am I still in trouble, Vixy?” he mocked. The lethal field leader of the Purveyors of Peril scowled, paused only to hurl a knife and pin the PsychoAcid PervGrrl! costume to wall of a music store with perfect accuracy, and followed her adversary into the darkness.
The two costumes hung on the wall and twitched as if dancing to the techno-music.
Meanwhile, Banjoooo was engaging in major property damage against Gromm, the Living Flatulence. It felt right. “I don’t know how, but I know who you are,” the king of the sea-monkeys raged. “And no way are you getting away from here except in a gas tank!”
“Big words, kelp-bait,” wheezed back Gromm, causing parts of his emissions to burst into flame around his enemy. “But you forgot just one thing… I’m not alone!”
And Banjooooo suddenly felt the distinctive sparkling of a dematerialisation effect. “Hey! No fair! What’s going…”
And then he was gone.
In the Radio Shack NTU-150 quickly spliced parts of his own ruined armour into the devices he found there. Even as the undead Expired Warranty followed him into the depths of the store the villain was surprised with a disco lightshow and a quadraphonic rendition of “Living Doll”.
“Haven’t you worked it out yet, you gimpy techno-freak!” Expired Warranty called out with immense hypocrisy. “Whatever systems you set up, I can disrupt!” And he used his abilities to take out the stuff that NTU-150 was playing with right now.
Three hundred decibels of Cliff Richard pounded into the unfortunate super-villain. That was just before the speakers exploded in his face. Then fifteen thousands volts of improbable electric current discharged through him as the lighting racks self-destructed.
“That was the whole point,” NTU-150 told the steaming remains. “I sleep now.” And the badly-mauled superhero toppled over and fell unconscious over the beaten super-villain.
And then dematerialised.
Space Ghost woke with a pounding headache that was 50% tequila and 50% Mjalcolm. He hardly had time to vomit before he too faded out.
“Hey, babe, we’re naturals together,” Partycrasher told Sersi, reeking of Brut aftershave. “Don’t fight it. It’s a karma thing. What’s your sign?”
“Oh give me a bucket!” Sersi gagged, mentally creating a large pail beside her.
Then she telekinetically hammered it onto Partycrasher’s head. At the same time she used her eyebeams to sever the intruding chest hairs. And her revised costume had spikes on the knee that came up at super-speed towards Partycrasher’s tightly-trousered groin area.
“Hey, you like to play rough, pussycat!” Partycrasher purred from within the bucket. The metal pail flew apart from his own eye-blasts. “OK, let’s do the whole sexual harassment game! Reooowwrrr!”
“No,” Sersi suggested, gesturing upwards. “Let’s do the dropping a building on the slimeball game!”
She was admiring the effect of her handiwork when she realised she was dematerialising.
OK, let’s just take a look at Starseed. Not that he’s doing anything interesting just now except lightly snoring and twitching a bit as he plays with he happy hamsters in his dreams. Oh, no, wait! Look! He’s becoming transparent and vanishing. That’s interesting!
Foom was definitely losing against the Appendage Man, and was also starting to lose his self respect under the increasingly intimate assaults of his bizarre enemy. Then he spotted the lightning-strewn blizzard in the Happy Toddler Play Area and guessed that Donar was getting creative.
“OK, gropy,” the dragon told the giggling Appendage Man. “Let’s see how all that exposed flesh handles a snowdrift.
Appendage Man shrivelled at the freezing cold, giving Foom a chance to gain his full draconic stature. “Aaaw! Too cold? Try this!” The snowbank evaporated into searing steam under the fiery breath of an angry wyrm.
Foom definitely had the upper hand now, or in this case, the upper four-yard-across foot over his enemy just at the point where he was taken away by the dematerialisation effect.
Hatman was desperately dodging the Sentinoid disintegration blasts from the severed Sentinoid head on the shoulders of his insane opponent HeadCase. “Give up, Hattie!” the robot-mouth squawked in a bizarre manner. “I only want a little bit of you for my collection! Is that too much to ask? It’s not like you use your head for much other than putting hats on it!”
Hatman whipped on his Indiana Jones hat and wrapped his whip around the balcony rail to haul himself to higher ground. “You know, there’s only one problem with you choosing to use a Sentinoid head against me,” he told HeadCase, rapidly switching chapeaus for his engineer’s helmet.
“That it’s so powerful that you’re even more outclassed than usual?” HeadCase jeered.
“Nah. That we’ve spent all day practising how to take out Sentinoids.” Hatman waited until HeadCase was near enough and twisted the little bolt that NTU-150 had demonstrated to the Legion earlier that day; the one that sent the hero-hunting robot’s rocket pack haywire.
Hatman had the satisfaction of seeing HeadCase plough right through the wall of a donut shop before the hero dematerialised.
This was probably just as well, as the part of the mall where he had been standing was suddenly devastated by a meteor strike a moment later. “Beat that, varlet!” Hämmerblade challenged Donar.
“Right!” snarled Donar, pointing Mjalcolm up to where the moon was now quietly orbiting the planet once again. “Thou asked for this!”
It was probably just as well that Donar also dematerialised at this point.
In the comic store there was a hostage situation. PsychoAcidPervGrrl! was holding a mint copy of FF#4 in both hands and threatening to wrinkle it. CrazySugarFreakBoy! was trying to talk her down. He was only in his smiley boxer shorts. Since PAPG! is underage this board would be shut down if there was any further description of her attire.
“Don’t do it, kiddo. It isn’t worth it. We can talk it through,” CSFB! was saying even as he vanished.
And then there was the foobar. In a distant corner of the organic vegetable shop there was a tight, bloody mass of fur, claws, razor-sharp implements, and four letter words. A careful observer might just have been able to pick out bits of Rocket Racoon, Turbo Treesloth, Rottweiler, the Terrier, and Messenger. There were so many fouls going on it was like an afternoon of WWF wrestling.
In fact it was so intense that it went on for about ten minutes after RR and Messenger had dematerialised.
In the gun shop, the fallen figure in the Dark Knight costume also faded away.
Which just left Jarvis and VelcroVixen, lurking after each other amidst the heating pipes and mysterious cartons in the mall cellars. Jarv had managed to get the little power-dampener off his shoulder but his powers had yet to return to him. He reminded himself that there was more to being a superhero than powers. You also needed a silly name and a death wish.
“Alright Jarvy. Here I am. I surrender. Cuff me up!”
Jarvis whirled round in surprise to see that VelcroVixen had come out from wherever she was concealed and was standing in plain view under one of the fluorescent lights. She was holding up a pair of handcuffs and had her wrists together.
“Come on, butler-boy. I’ll let you strip-search me!”
Jarvis had a sudden Lisa flashback. But that confused him more. How could he be having such thoughts about… his sister? What would Melissa think?
Jarvis pressed the thoughts to the back of his mind. The Lair Legion needed him, and he had taken far too long in subduing VelcroVixen and going to the others’ aid. It might well be a trap, but he had to spring it to find out.
“Alright, VelcroVixen. No clever moves. No tricks. And we use my handcuffs.”
“Whatever you say, Jarvy. I’ve surrendered. Of course, he hasn’t.”
Jarvis turned round to face the grey-cowled crime-czar: the Hooded Hood.
“Congratulations of fulfilling my highest expectations,” the Hood told the leader of the Lair Legion. “And farewell.”
Even as Jarvis lunged towards the archvillain, the butler began to dematerialise.
“I could only remove the Legion from the Parodyverse if they were distracted,” the cowled crime-czar felt compelled to explain. “But now, they have all been deleted to a place of my choosing. And so my master-plan continues.”
But Jarvis was already gone to the place prepared for him by the sinister portal of Pretentiousness..
The Hooded Hood turned to the shadows. “Indigo Impostor, assemble the Purveyors of Peril. We have some good news for the President… and perhaps just a little bit of bad news as well.”
“Gotcha boss,” the man in the Indigo Impostor uniform answered.

Again Zemo’s machines hummed. Because Yo was powering them they hummed a rather catchy little tune from Tellytubbies. The lights dimmed as the rip between realities opened.
Frog-Boy tumbled through the infinite to sprawl at Zemo’s feet. Zemo shot him. “Try again, Moo. Recalibrate the cosmic alignment ordinators with the Leiber referencers.”
“Got it,” the diabolical Dr Moo reported, making the fine adjustments which pulled Goldeneyed from wherever he happened to be in his own storyline onto the shining platform before them.
The hero blinked a little and fell back on superhero basic training. “Baron Zemo! What foul scheme do you have afoot, you masked menace?” It would have been more impressive if he hadn’t tripped over Frog-Man’s bleeding corpse. “My sidekick! What have you done to him, you fiend?”
“Well, quite evidently, I shot him,” Zemo answered curtly. “But that isn’t important right now. I have brought you here to make you an offer you can’t refuse.”

Lisa wondered if it was all over. The Lair Legion was gone. Jarvis was lost to her. Her children had been Byrned. She was once again in the power of Mother Whipcord and the Sisters of Discipline.
Then the shackles on her pain chair unlocked, releasing her.
Lisa sprung up and looked around carefully. She tested her powers, trying to summon Jarvis. Starseed. Banjoooooo. Foom. But they were no longer in the Parodyverse to summons. It was all true.
“Ah, Lisa. I can see that you have had a bad day.”
The last of the Lair Legionnaires spun round at the dark Latvian tones. “The Hooded Hood!” she gasped. Not that it was that much of a surprise. She wasn’t stupid. She’d pretty much worked out who the surprise villain was meant to be, and it was only a matter of time before he came to get her as well. “Is this where we fight to the death?”
“Of course not,” the Hood replied, his green eyes almost kindly – which was quite scary. “This is where you turn to the Dark Side, surrender to your evil desires, and take your place as the supreme villainess of the Parodyverse. Your old life is over, Lisa. Come now and join… the Hooded Hood!”

In our next instalment: What is the horrible fate of the dematerialised Legionnaires? What is Zemo’s offer to Goldeneyed and can it be refused? What happens when Yo talks to the President? How can spiffy help the LL out whilst dealing with a headful of hitchhikers? Visionary vs Mefrothto, who wins? Who failed to spot the unsubtle clue about the Legionnaire who escaped? And will Lisa give in to the Dark Side of the Force?

All the answers and a few more questions in the next episode, sometime towards Thursday work commitments permitting.

Added to this was a little question seeking advice from posters on their worst nightmares for an upcoming episode. And the BZL’s response was:

The Lair Legion vs the Purveyors of Peril (The Hooded Hood, bringing world domination to a neighbourhood near you.) (15-May-1999 08:35:29)

Great as usual, HH!. I expecially loved the girls talk of Cheryl, Tina and Melissa! (n/t) (Yo) (15-May-1999 08:47:55)

A few notes (HH) (15-May-1999 08:48:17)
My personal hell involves Linda Tripp,Mr.Rogers,Wonder Man and John Byrne.See what you can do. (n/t) (Jarvis) (15-May-1999 13:36:43)
Mr Rodgers is the talking horse, right? No? And Linda Tripp was one of Charlie's Angels? (n/t) (Hooded Hood, too old and too out of touch with youth culture, desperately (seriously) needing a guidebook here.) (15-May-1999 14:56:21)

If you need more heroes... there are plenty of 'em. Just let me dig out a copy of Abandoned Legion #2... (n/t) (spiffy) (15-May-1999 17:42:21)

All I could suggest is Hallie... but if the government has the Lair's computer systems, then they have "Visionary II" as well. (n/t) (Visionary) (15-May-1999 22:36:43)

erm....... I know I've already asked this question once before but...... (15-May-1999 09:43:54)
Nah. Not dead. Far too much fun to torment. Thanks for the asistance. (n/t) (HH) (15-May-1999 10:16:50)

Woo-hoo!Good story,even if you screwed up my history a little! (n/t) (Jarvis) (15-May-1999 13:33:00)
Hmmm...that should be a reply to the story. (n/t) (Jarv) (15-May-1999 13:38:17)
So You Thought You Knew Jarvis? (The Hooded Hood) (15-May-1999 14:53:54)
Well,I actually ment that in the Parodyverse my real name IS Jarvis and that Cheryl should have no memory of the new Shaper. (n/t) (Jarvis,still loved the story) (15-May-1999 19:47:24)
Ah. Well, you see, it was, um, it was all part of the Hood's retconning. Yeah. That's it. And Cheryl new about the Shaper because... because of her psionic link with Visionary who meets Shaper in the next chapter? Yeah. That's it. No mistakes here, man. (n/t) (Hooded Hood, who reminds Jarvis that he has to explain the error to get a No-Prize) (16-May-1999 04:46:07)

You'll receive my story post, describing my own personal hell, shortly. And dammit, how come me and my alternate universe sister got naked together, but I didn't get to score with her!? That's just unfair. :P~ (n/t) (CrazySugarFreakBoy!) (15-May-1999 10:06:02)
Score with your naked alternate universe sister in your own time, CrazySugarFreakBoy! This is a family world conquest. Besides, I specially left a narrative gap between the start and finish of the fight for you to add any details you um... feel you have to (n/t) (The Hooded Hood) (15-May-1999 10:15:35)

Sehr gut, mein hooded Freund. (n/t) (Baron Zemo) (15-May-1999 11:42:20)

Terrifyingly great, Ian!!! You possess a genuine gift for writing!!! (n/t) (Lisa, having the sort of week where the Dark Side becomes especially tempting...) (15-May-1999 14:22:44)
You think your week wasn't taken into account... wasn't part of the plan? How little you understand true villainy! (n/t) (The Hooded Hood, waiting for Lisa's answer about becoming the BZL's greatest villainess) (15-May-1999 14:28:25)
Yeah, why not, HH! A change is as good as a rest!! Besides, now that Jarvie has ditched me, I could do with a new image to cheer me up... >;-) (n/t) (Evil Lisa) (15-May-1999 14:34:24)
Let the Parodyverse note the message above. You have until around Wednesday to change Lisa's mind! (n/t) (15-May-1999 15:00:17)
NO!! There's enough villains as it is!! (n/t) (Baron Zemo (remembers the good old days)) (15-May-1999 15:11:02)
And she'd be so very, very good at it, wouldn't she? (n/t) (The Hooded Hood, pleased that Zemo is worried about the competition) (15-May-1999 15:17:00)
I fail to see how it could make a difference. (n/t) (Visionary has known Lisa was evil since he first met her.) (15-May-1999 22:27:52)
NAY LISA!! Thou art one of mine most trusted confidantes..if thou becomes a villianess, DONAR shall be alone once more..well, except for Yo and the others..but mine plea art most genuine. Thou must remain here, we need thee!! (n/t) (DONAR hoping he won't have to tie you up.) (16-May-1999 03:55:52)
Please do not turn any more evil than you already are, Lisa! What with losing Izzy all over again, I could not bear to lose you to the Dark Side too! (n/t) (CrazySugarFreakBoy!) (16-May-1999 07:59:03)

If that isn't long, I don't know what is. Good story though. (n/t) (Space Ghost) (15-May-1999 16:10:44)

Well, it could be worse... I suppose I could be stuck in my body with A Junior Reader. (Visionary) (15-May-1999 22:26:33)

Indeed thou art a gifted tale-teller..I must hear more of mine battle wit that Redheaded trollop, Hammerblade.Oh..and the rest was most excellent as well. (n/t) (DONAR) (16-May-1999 03:52:40)

And here’s a completely unrelated-to-anything little posting that just happened to appear around the same time, on a day when nothing at all had been posted on the BZL board:

All Quiet on the Western Front

The scene: an old, crumbling fort, where the tattered colours still flap in the hot tropical breeze. Half a dozen battle-weary men peer over the fortifications, out into the burning desert.

CAPTAIN CARSTAIRS: I don’t like it. It’s too damned quiet.

SGT BOURNE: Perhaps they’ve all gone ‘ome, sir? You know, given up, like?

CARSTAIRS: Not likely, Bourne. That’s not the way those filthy buggers play the game, and you know it. Remember what happened to Captain Sanders?

SGT B: Wot, ‘im that just stepped outside for a quick riddle and was got with that sudden parody from Baron Zemo?

CARSTAIRS: Exactly. We must always remain vigilant. Never forget the Great Parody Flood of 1998, when we almost lost the entire AMB because we let them slip by us.

SGT B: But sir, the men are saying that it’s all over. All the Pokemon tribes ‘ave gone to war with one another. A lot of the most dangerous Parody-spinners ‘ave migrated for the summer. An’ the rumour is that their insatiable queen ‘as decided to turn bad on ‘em.

CARSTAIRS: Enough of that sort of talk, Bourne. Tell the men to stay alert. It could all be a trick, ready for a surprise Parody any minute now. Remember how that selfsame Lisa went through the entire seventh regiment like it wasn’t there?

SGT B: Yus, sir. They didn’t stop smilin’ fer a month…”

CARSTAIRS: And while they were… occupied the entire BZL marched through and started another round robin which went on for months. No. Take my word for it, Sergeant… this is the calm before the storm. Tell the men to keep vigilant. The attack could come at any time. Like I said… it’s too damn quiet!

reposted by the Hooded Hood; and by the way, what are the nightmare scenarios I could have put in for all of you newer posters had you been born yet?