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This message Lair Legion Special Ultimate Edition #2: The New Order was posted by The rest of the story, courtesy of the Hood Hood and confederates. Thrills, chills, surprises, and an amazing number of groin injuries. on Tuesday, October 22, 2002 at 05:47.
Go here for Lair Legion Special Ultimate Edition #1: The Old Order
Lair Legion Special Ultimate Edition #2: The New Order
Somewhere in one of the 40th Centuries, the warlord called Kink the Conqueror rose to power over a thousand thousand worlds – arguably to stop people laughing at his name. Of course, when you’ve taken over a thousand thousand worlds you tend to get bored easily afterwards, so one day he decided to go back in time and try conquering lots of different eras to add to his collection. After all, if a thousand thousand worlds in one time is boring, how much more boring would a thousand thousand thousand worlds be in lots of times, right?
Kink had a quick look on the internet to find out what kind of eras might be specially interesting to conquer. He was particularly looking for places where a man who dressed in stripey purple spandex battlesuits wouldn’t get laughed off the battlefield when he minced forward leading his unstoppable armies. His reseaches lead him to Earth at the turn of the twenty-first century. If people could admire Prince and Tina Turner and Alice Cooper and Michael Jackson then he was going to be a big hit.
There were a few problems with that particular time and place. For starters it was at the cusp of the Resolution War, the battle for which the Parodyverse was said to have been designed. If things went badly wrong there then there wouldn’t be any 40th centuries, and Kink himself would turn out to be just a narrative echo, a useful plot device for round robins and other fragment stories. And the place was positively dripping with superheroes and gods and demons and aliens and otherdimensional entities and comic-book creators, which complicated matters. But on the whole Kink didn’t really worry about temporal physics. If temporal physics got in his way his idea was to invade it, burn its village down, and spit its children on pikes until it changed its mind.
Kink’s first few forays into the time period of his choice weren’t entirely successful. His attempt to use Troia 215’s coming of age as a means of taking over reality had rather misfired into Troia’s 21st Birthday Spectacular. The grand plot to get hold of a Dreaming Celestian had gone somewhat awry in #97: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Somewhere Over the Rainbow, or When Villains Picnic. Subsequent attempts had been equally traumatic. But this time he was sure he was onto a winner.
It was so simple. Go back in time and invent computers. Develop the microchip. Invent video games. Develop virtual reality technology that could be used to create the Movie Gun used in the classic International Incident. Allow the Lair Legion to capture the gun and place it safely in their Mansion. Then just wait for Nats to come along, buy the right game cartridge and run it on the Lair computers, arrange for it to get tied in through the VR systems, and just watch all reality crumple away and the greatest heroes of the ear reduced to gibbering imbeciles in Daisy Duke shorts. Then send in the minions Cliffhanger and Plot Device to finish them off while the infinite armies timeshift back to get on with the original business of conquering.
Kink was pretty proud of the plan. Which is a shame because it wasn’t actually his. Kink wasn’t much of an original thinker, to be honest. He was more into evil cackling, posing in purple tights, and devising cruel and improbable punishments for those who dared to cross him or snicker at the purple tights.
The real architect of all this mayhem was none other than Dark Thugos, former Tyrant of the Sol Empire (established 1987, wiped from reality 2000). Thugos hated humanity and was in a permanently bad mood and for several reasons:
1. He was a seven foot craggy-skinned grey monster with Apocalypse Eyebeams that fried people who he looked at too closely, all of which didn’t do much for his dating chances.
2. Since the most recent Hooded Hood retcon he was no longer the Hood’s variant-reality son as he had originally been manipulated to be by Jury, the Shaper of Worlds. This made him even more of a bastard than before, although it probably meant he was no longer related in any way to spiffy.
3. His major plan to take over the Parodyverse had rather collapsed after he got blown to hell when the Lair Legion did some serious raining on his parade in #58: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion Somewhat Belated Double-Sized Fiftieth Anniversary Extravaganza, or Dark Thugos Conquers the Parodyverse - a completely over-the-top mammoth triple-sized conclusion ]
4. He was now back from death in the role of Destroyer of Tales, one of the three key Offices of the Parodyverse, one third of the Triumverate that also started narratives (Shaper of Worlds) and monitored them (Chronicler of Stories). This meant that he had to regularly meet with the woman who had been responsible for his miserable origin. The Chronicler hadn’t really done anything too bad to him, but the guy just grated on his nerves and needed to be destroyed. You know how it is with some people.
So a major reality upheaval was just what the Destroyer of Tales ordered. It set Jury and the Chronicler scuttling around trying to patch things up, caused them to go somewhat strange as the reality backlash hit them and cascaded across the Parodyverse, and left the way clear for Dark Thugos to slip a few cherished alterations into the scheme of things while nobody was looking. He managed to plant the resurrected Crying Clown into the US political system for starters, and that was always guaranteed to get Chronicler and the Dark Knight pretty wound up (see You Know You Want It, Dark Knight’s compendium story).
Dark Thugos was a pretty good planner. You could tell by the way he stood on a rocky outcrop overlooking reality with his hands clasped behind his back and surveyed the wreckage of collapsing continuities. He’d planned for every contingency. At the very least he expected his erstwhile father the Hooded Hood to try something sneaky, but it didn’t concern him much since there was nothing that happened in the whole Parodyverse that Thugos couldn’t monitor or stop.
Meanwhile, outside the Parodyverse…
***
This message HH visit the Moon Public Library
was posted by L! on Tuesday, October 8, 2002 at 13:58.
Moon Public Library
Someone is at the front Desk. It's the Hooded Hood, wanting to check out one of the lost Shakespeare folios.
"Hello. How Can I help you ?" the A.L.F.RED says in a cheery British Accent.
"Hello, I would Like to check this out." Hooded Hood said
"Ok, let me scan it." A.L.F.RED scan the folios with a scan built into his hand.
"Hmmm, It says here that you, Mr. H. Hood have not returned any of the books you checked, plus these folios are for reference only, so they can't be checked out. Now, Do you want to pay your fine now or the next time you come in." A.L.F.RED said cheerily
"Uh, no."
"Well, Mr. Hood. If you do not pay your fine. You not be able to check out any Materials from the Library. If the fine is not resolved, the Library will be force to act. By Act, we mean getting Medevil on your Hiney. " A.L.F.RED said still cheerily
Then, The Librarian comes up to A.L.F.RED and says something to him. A.L.F.RED leaves.
"Hello, how can I help you Today ?" the Librarian says a little less cherry than A.L.F.RED
"I was telling the robot that I want to check these folios out."
"Let me just scan them." He takes a hand held scanner and scans the folios.
"Hmmmm, let's see Mr. H. Hood. Two things, you can't check these out, they are reference material and two, you have a big fine and unless you pay the fine, we here at the library can't let you check anything out. If you don't pay your fine, we will have to get Medieval on your Hiney. It involves a Big Metal rod, two sheep and a can of Cheez-Whizz. Will you be paying the fine now or later. " the Librarian said in a almost scary way
"Uh, No. I will come back later." HH said
He then left the Building
This poster posed from 134.39.71.59 when they posted
Message Thread
HH visit the Moon Public Library - L! - 13:58 on October 8, 2002
He's off plotting revenge now - (nt) Hat - 15:07 on October 8, 2002
Should I be scarred - L ! - 10:53 on October 9, 2002
Um, but he's the Hooded Hood. Er.. ah, you'd better read his stories cuase you never know who might wind up in them dead.. or worse, pregnant. - (nt) ag - 23:34 on October 9, 2002
Do you speak from Personal Experiance - (nt) L ! - 00:30 on October 10, 2002
Yep. But he's only killed me! He married ManMan to a demon (a MALE one). Bee careful! - (nt) ag - 06:20 on October 10, 2002
You may want to move to another moon. - (nt) Nats - 19:45 on October 8, 2002
I am. - (nt) L ! - 10:42 on October 9, 2002
There's an opening on our moon. No one's lived there in awhile!... I think. - (nt) ag - 23:35 on October 9, 2002
Ooooh crap. Well L, you could always move. - (nt) ag says if you knew our history with that man, you'd let him check it out. - 23:52 on October 8, 2002
I am. - (nt) L ! - 10:43 on October 9, 2002
Well if you're looking for a universe to live in, come on over! One more crazy is'nt going to hurt this asylum. - (nt) ag - 23:37 on October 9, 2002
Okay, what I want to know is what was the Hood's REAL plot?? I mean, if he looked like he was trying to check out a book he definitely had another 6 motives going on the background. What was he REALLY doing? IW? - (nt) Dancer knows her sneaky bastards - 03:47 on October 10, 2002
That's true! HH ALWAYS does things with 3 or 4 diffrent reasons behind them. - (nt) ag - 06:21 on October 10, 2002
The Hood's schemes are ever touched with subtle genius. We shall see how this small timely incident fits in to a forthcoming collaboration. - (nt) The Hooded Hood - 12:28 on October 10, 2002
*makes note* - (nt) The Hooded Hood - 12:26 on October 10, 2002
***
This message Dancer and the Cheesy Cliffhanger
was never posted by Dancer before now, but it’s never too late to chip in, right?
[The scene: Things are getting pretty messed up. As usual in these round robins the women seem to have unaccountably lost their clothes. Boys. Dancer imagines up a suitable danskin and gets on with wrapping up the plot]
Cliffhanger, a massive hulking granite-faced monster who kind of reminds Sarah of her old dance teacher: Hey! Stop acting sensibly. It’s not that kind of round robin.
Dancer: What, you think this kind of chaos is going to stop somebody called the Probability Dancer?
Cliffhanger: Cheat! *Uses cliffhanger power to cause Dancer to be tied to railway track with big steam locomotive racing towards her*
Dancer: Hah! I happen to look good in black and white photography!
[Dancer uses powers. Train stops and Sean Connery, Sean Bean, Humphrey Bogart, and Harrison Ford leap off to untie her]
Dancer: Thanks guys. Leave your phone numbers on the dresser.
Cliffhanger: Curses! *Uses power again. This time Dancer is trussed up on a moving conveyor belt moving towards the sawmill*
Dancer: Heylp! Heylp!
Cliffhanger: Nothing can save you n… Why are you putting on that fake Southern accent?
[Seven little cartoon gangsters rush in to rescue her. Cliffhanger and his snickering dog run away but smash into a fake tunnel painted on the side of a wall]
Cliffhanger: I’ll get you yet, Dancer! *Arranges it so that Shep is dangling by her fingernails on the edge of a crumbling cliff* The classics are the best!
Dancer: That is just what I have been waiting for. [Suddenly Dancer is actually hanging off Cliffhanger’s own big overgrown brow. She reaches forward and decks him with the Vulcan neck pinch] There. Now for your little friend Plot Device.
[In the Lair Mansion things are now going well. Right now all the Lair Legion are being 70’s Hanna Barbara cartoons such as Top Hat, Whitney and the Pussycats, Captain Cavehemigod, Help, It’s the TrickFlick Bunch, Hong Kong Finny, and, um Space Ghost. CrazySugarFreakBoy! is untransformed (and unTransformered) but happy]
Dancer: Nats, you started all this. You have to help me find Plot Device, the villain who set up the VR trap!!
Nats: Nuh-uh. Scared.
Dancer: Not even for a Scooby snack?
[Dancer and Nats look for Plot Device in Enty’s laboratory]
BOOOOOOMMM!!!!
Nats: Ouch.
Dancer: As if a groin injury mattered with your social life. Quickly, he’s getting away with the Movie Gun. After him.
Plot Device: You can’t possibly stop me! I have all the power of, uh, well plot devices at my disposal.
Nats: Oh no! I just remembered that I have to be at a press conference for old man Jerkson right now… but I need to be here fighting crime too!
Dancer: How can I choose between Con Johnstantine and Premiere? How can I love them both without violating the comics code? *sob*
De Brown Streak: Hey, Plot Device! How about something radical and new! [kicks him in the nuts]
Plot Device: Eeep!
Nats, recovering: Nah, that’s been done before. [kicks Plot Device in the nuts again] That’s old now.
Dancer: Boys, this isn’t nice.
Goldeneyed, kicks Plot Device in the nuts: But strangely satisfying.
Exile kicks Plot Device in the nuts: And sometimes you can’t beat the old favourites. There’s a lot to be said for back to basics.
Plot Device (squeakily): I surrender. Don’t kick me in the nuts any more.
Messenger: Deal *shoots him*
Dancer: Stop that! We need to find a way of stopping the Movie Gun from overloading and permanently destroying our reality to make a gateway for untold legions of future soldiers to march back and conquer our world!!
Kink the Conqueror: And that, my dear, you shall never do! You may control probabilities, but I am the Master of Time! Bwa-hah-hah-hah-hah!
[Kink the Conqueror stops time, freezing all the heroes in place. he reaches down, picks up the movie gun, burns his fingers because its running hot, so uses a pencil to push the lever up to overload]
Kink the Conqueror: Nothing can stop me now!!!
To be continued…
***
This message Sir Mumphrey Wilton and the Purple Tyrant
was posted by Mumph while time was stopped (since he has a chronal pocketwatch which can negate this kind of effect anyway).
Nothing more annoyin’ in the middle of a crucial Test Match at Lords than to find that some blighter’s gone and stopped time. Mind you it took me about twenty minutes to notice that time had stopped because to be honest the average cricket match doesn’t feature a great deal of movement these days. I blame these modern Leg Before Wicket rules, and the government. Game’s going to the dogs.
Anyway, since it was pretty clear that England was never going to make another 71 and save the follow-on unless I went and jolly well restarted time I left Blenkinsop with the hamper and tottered off to find out who was makin’ a nuisance of themselves this time.
Can’t say I was that impressed. Got to Paradopolis and found a chap in purple tights prancing around like he owned the place. Assumed he was some kind of porter. “Hey, you, chappie!” I called, “Be a useful johnnie and go fetch the tick that’s doing all the messin’ about with time, there’s a good fellow.” I slipped him a few bob for his trouble.
“What?” he gasped. “Don’t you know who I am, you… you… you…”
“Blighter with a speech impediment?” I hazarded. “Just cut along and bring me somebody in authority, old bean.”
“I am Kink the Conqueror, Warlord of the 40th Century, ruler of a thousand thousand worlds!”
“Absolutely,” I humoured him. “Now just go fetch the fellah in charge, or your keeper or somebody.”
The cove in purple spluttered some more and pointed a big green gun affair at me. “Poltroon!” he thundered, “My Ultra-Diodic Ray will teach you some manners!”
Was about to explain that Nanny taught me manners twenty-two centuries before he was born but the chap pointed his gadget at me and thumbed the zap button. Thingie exploded in his hand, setting fire to his glove and driving red hot fragments into his palm. “Aaaaghh!!” he screamed, hopping about like a Frenchie in a snail patch.
Pointed out to him that Ultra-Diodic whatnots weren’t likely to work in a timestop, given no particles could move beyond his personal temporal exception field. I’ve had a long time to work this kind of stuff out, don’t you know. Leant him a handkerchief to staunch the blood.
“You will suffer for that, primitive!” snarled the porter. “You will suffer a thousand thousand agonies in a thousand thousand… ouch!”
The ouch bit was because he was irritating me no end so I beaned him on the nose.
“That’s it!” Kink shouted. “Now you die! Your friends die! Your family dies! Everyone you ever met dies! Everyone you ever saw on TV dies! Dieeee!!! Ouch!”
Couldn’t resist it. Chap might be conqueror of the 40th century but they clearly don’t teach old school boxing. Stepped up to the mark to give the chap the thrashing of a lifetime. “All right you miserable jumped up little tin Hitler,” I said to him. “Let’s finish this.”
“Fool!” he yelled. “You don’t understand who you… ouch! You beast! Ouch! Stop it… I surrender. Ouch!”
Noticed the oik going towards some sort of projector dooberry that I later found was the Lair Legion’s Movie Gun on override. “Now you will pay,” Kink told me just before I clubbed him over the head with it.
Flicked off the temporal stasis module on his jacket and time started again. Can’t have chaps messin’ about with time. That’s my job. Keeper of the Chronometer of Infinity and all that.
“Watch it!” Dancer shouted. Very fetching young lady, that, even when somewhat agitated by impending doom. “The Movie Gun is set to explode and take out reality!”
“How’s it switched off then?” I wondered. Not good with technology, you know.
I’m told that was the point where I got blasted in the back by Dark Thugos.
“It isn’t,” he said.
***
Right now Amazing Guy was wriggling around transformed into a small amoeba, and the whole experience seemed strangely familiar. Then suddenly he was human again.
“This is no time for playing,” the Hooded Hood chided him. “I thought you were supposed to be the Protector of the Parodyverse?”
“I am,” AG protested, just before his cosmic awareness cut in and hammered him to his knees with the scream of dying realities.
The Hooded Hood handed him a pack of Tylenol. “Then you’d better come with me. We have things to do.”
“So it’s you behind this virtual reality threat,” AG growled, trying to drag himself to his feet.
“No, actually it’s me that’s been contracted to sort it out. You see no Triumverate member can directly counter the initiatives of another member. So if Dark Thugos decides to cause enough trouble to wipe out his colleagues then there’s not much they can do about it. Except call in some help.”
Scott Brunsen was sceptical. “Why would they call in you, Hood?” he demanded.
The cowled crime czar shrugged. “I suppose they wanted it to be dealt with competently,” he answered arrogantly. “Now come on. I need you to get beaten up by Dark Thugos.”
***
“Uh oh,” worried Dancer, looking at the Destroyer of Tales. “Kink wasn’t a big problem. He’s a problem.”
“I can take him,” De Brown Streak asserted confidently. “And afterwards, perhaps we can get sushi or something?”
Dark Thugos threw him through a wall.
“Or maybe hospital food?” DBS whimpered from under the pile of bricks.
dull thud leapt forward in his VR guise as Harp Marx, blew a horn into Thugos’ face, then grabbed him and teleported three miles straight upwards.
Thugos refused to fall. He hung there and grasped thud by the next, ignoring Cressida’s attempts to manipulate his molecules as he slowly crushed the life out of her host.
A spray of hunter/seeker missiles bracketed across his back, announcing the coming of Falcon. “Let the man go, Thugos!” he called as he barrel-looped down for another run. “Game over, bad guy. You’re going down.”
Thugos shook his head. “No, actually I’m not. Once I have dealt with you minor distractions then my minions will take out the Chronicler of Stories and the Shaper of Worlds, thus leaving their offices vacant to be filled by servitors of my choosing. Your only role in this is to die horribly.”
NTU-150 was rocketing up to the combat by was still too far away to stop the tyrant firing his Entropy Eyebeams at Falc. “No! Look out!” Enty warned. “Thos things can…”
Falcon turned his flight harness over to full evade mode, twisting aside so that the reality-blistering rays burned past him. There were other flyers in the skies but not had the aerial manoeuvrability of his gravity-wings. “No problem, man,” he assured the Lair Legion founder. “I can dodge these things till…”
Then the eyebeams curved back on themselves and hammered into him from behind.
“Ouch,” winced Nats, streaking upwards despite his Judy Garland disguise. “An entropy enema! Oh my!”
“Those eye beams canst killeth anything that lives, fool!” Mr Donar of the B-Team warned. “You ain’t getting me in no plane to go fight him, Hannibal.”
“De plane, de plane!” echoed Flapjack.
But Falcon wasn’t destroyed. There was a shimmering effect and where the one superhero had been now there was a mutlitude.
“Now that’s an interesting residual effect from the VR gun,” noted Al B. Harper to a shocked and horrified group of heroes on the ground. “There’s more to that lad than meets the eye.”
“You are being affected by the movie gun to be Dr Frank N.Furter from the Rocky Horror Show, right?” ManMan pleaded. “I mean, this isn’t the real you?”
Al B. lifted one perfectly trimmed eyebrow and smiled.
Meanwhile, in the sky, Super-Falc, Metal Super Falc, Stone Cold Falcon, Captain Canuck, Ocean Guy, Visible Man, and Visible Boy lead the charge against Dark Thugos. Well, those that could fly did.
“Enough of this,” Thugos snarled, allowing himself to plummet to Earth in the Lair legion’s backyard. “Last time it took the entire superhero population of the planet using stolen power to kill me.” [Again, see #58: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion Somewhat Belated Double-Sized Fiftieth Anniversary Extravaganza, or Dark Thugos Conquers the Parodyverse - a completely over-the-top mammoth triple-sized conclusion ] This time I’m dead already and I have the power of the Destroyer of Tales to make me invincible.”
“And you forgot only one thing,” Xander the Improbable noted, wandering into the story only because the plot demanded a really big spanner just about now. “I believe Kink the Conqueror left that Movie Gun on overload? Scrambling the universe to debilitate the Chronicler is one thing. Destroying it so there’s nothing left to rule…”
“Bah!” snarled the Destroyer of Tales. “It’s needed remodelling for some time now. But not by this appalling device that puts dragons in cut-offs and forces me to battle my enemies while they are dressed as members of the Baywatch cast.” He glared across at Hatman running across the beach towards him in slow motion. Everybody else was watching Whitney run behind him. “Enough!”
The energy wave he released was sufficient to stun even the most powerful of the heroes. “Shazbut!” came CrazySugarFreakMork!’s voice from under a heap of rubble.
Dark Thugos looked down at the steaming Movie Gun. If he hadn’t allowed Kink to link it into those future technologies through the Destroyer’s own power sources it could never have had this magnitude of effect. As it was…
Thugos flicked the off switch.
It didn’t turn off. A hologram of HALLIE (who was herself a hologram, so this got really confusing – if you weren’t confused already by chapter 3) appeared and said, “Please input shutdown code.”
“Problem?” enquired Xander politely. “You need the codes to safely shut down that device. If you just destroy it or fail to turn it off in the next ten minutes, then it’s game over for everybody.”
“Kink!” thundered Dark Thugos, dragging the time-travelling Conqueror from the crater that Foom had pounded him into when he had tried to escape in the confusion. “What is the shutdown sequence.”
“No problem,” Kink promised quickly. “Don’t hit me in the face! I’ve got the codes right here… er… really…”
Thugos looked in disbelief as the Conqueror started patting his purple pockets. “…Swear I had it just a minute ago…”
“Where is it?” Thugos demanded of Xander.
“You’re the one who knows how all the stories of the Parodyverse are going to end,” the mystic shrugged. “You can know everything there is to know in the Parodyverse. So you know where the codes are.”
Dark Thugos concentrated, his red eyes looking into the very fabric of the narrative web. “They aren’t in the Parodyverse,” he hissed. “They have been extracted. Hidden in another universe entirely.”
Xander nodded. He leaned over the fallen Mumphrey and checked the time on the Chronometer of Infinity. “I reckon you have about seven minutes to go and find them,” he suggested. “If you can work out who took them and where they are.”
“Oh, that I know,” Thugos answered wrathfully. “The time has come art last for me to accomplish the destruction of the Hooded Hood!”
***
“Ouch!” complained Nats. “Ouchouchouchouchouch!”
“Shut up,” the Tyrant of the Sol Empire told the lightly streaming delivery boy. “I needed a store of residual dimensional energies for this trans-multiversar jump and you were handy. Now lie there and suffer immense pain while I locate the codes and annihilate the Hooded Hood.”
Okay,” Nats agreed. He hadn’t got any problem with the last part. “Er, where are we?”
Dark Thugos looked around the massive darkened structure. “A library on the Earth’s moon in a parallel dimension just beyond the Parodyverse cluster,” he noted. “Near enough for there to have been a little interdimensional crossover, but far enough so that it’s just beyond my jurisdiction. That’s why I needed to syphon off the dimensional pollution residue in your body.”
“Hey, I wash regularly!” Nats objected.
“Good evening,” the Hooded Hood bade his erstwhile son Thugos. “I take it you are looking for the shutdown codes to the Movie Gun you so unwisely had Kink use in this rather predictable little gambit?”
“Where are they?” Dark Thugos demanded, advancing on the Hood, using his powers to shield him from possible retcon. He knew that the cowled crime czar could do nothing to save himself now.
“They’re in a Shakespere folio in the unwritten books section that I handled a few weeks ago,” the Hood replied. “Slipped them in there while the library’s AI was telling me that I couldn’t borrow them.” The Hood allowed himself a small smile. “Given that his Portal of Prententiousness can take me to any of the variant Parodyverse realities on any world at any time, I could have easily looked over Shakespere's shoulder as he wrote the play had I wanted to read it. But that didn’t seem to occur to anyone. No, it was principally a ploy to bring you here, away from the Parodyverse where your office makes you unassailable, so that you can be duly assailed.”
“Thus you set this Library’s defences against me, hoping to delay me long enough for the VR device to explode, and having me destroy this place for failing to treat you with proper respect,” reasoned Thugos.
“It occurred to me to do that,” the Hooded Hood admitted, “but you might notice that the Library is closed just now. So I brought along somebody else for you to fight with.” And he stepped aside to allow Amazing Guy’s energy-construct baseball bat smack Thugos right back into the classical history section.
Thugos snarled and loosed his Entropy Eyebeams. They screamed off AG’s defences, staggering the Protector of the Multiverse and spraying though the walls.
The Hooded Hood helped Nats to his feet. “Poor Thugos,” the Hood sighed. “He is so easily distracted. He and Amazing Guy have a little history, so I thought it would be poetic for them to die wrapped around each other’s throats.”
“Die?” Nats swallowed. “AG doesn’t usually kill people.”
“That doesn’t matter,” the cowled crime czar considered. “This entire universe is about to end in under a minute, as some chap called Brian decides to put his toys away and start again. Thugos would know that if he kept up with his reading and had looked at Librarian’s report “The End and the Beginning”, instead of being so caught up in his feeble plots. As if I hadn’t prompted his plans anyway, as a means of getting the Shaper of Worlds in my debt once more. I just brought him here where the powers of his office can’t extend because that makes him vulnerable to the kind of thing that’s about to happen and his omniscience doesn’t work so he has no idea what’s coming.”
“And AG?”
“An acceptable casualty. I expect Hatman to become the next Protector of the Universe, albeit it somewhat briefly given the coming scenario that Scott Brunsen would have otherwise faced, thus ending the Hatman/Sorceress relationship and freeing her up for the liaison I have in mind for her. A win-win situation, from my perspective, and that is the only one that matters.”
Nats balled his fists in anger. “And the Movie Gun? You don’t want a destroyed Parodyverse any more than Thugos did.”
“Oh, that,” the Hood answered. “I took care of that years ago, when I arranged for Galactivac’s probability gifts to be given to Dancer.” He glanced over his shoulder to where Thugos was squeezing the life from Amazing Guy as the two finished their ancient emnity. “Well, I have to go. Less than thirty seconds left. Goodbye, William Reed.”
“You’re leaving me here too?” Nats objected.
The Hood cocked his head on one side in thought. “Why yes,” he agreed. “What part of villain didn’t you understand?” And he vanished through the Portal of Pretentiousness in a green flash.
Nats said a naughty word. Then he turned back to the struggling opponents who were devastating the Social Studies section. “Uh, guys…”
***
“This is so not good,” G-Eyed worried as the heroes gathered around the screaming Movie Gun. “Is there no way we can crack those codes?”
“I have my computers working on it,” the Dark Knight (currently the Tartan Knight) answered. “They should have the answer in less than an hour.”
“And we have leth than one minute,” Exile answered. He looked around nervously. “Did anyone justh see a putthycat?”
The whine of the overheating movie gun rose to a frightening pitch.
“Perhaps we can fly it off-planet,” a now recomposed Falcon suggested.
“Anywhere in this reality, or set of realities, will be very very bad,” the Shaper of Worlds warned, making a rare appearance for the end of the universe.
“And it can’t be removed from this set of realities,” the Chronicler of Stories snarled, still pressing a cold compress to his forehead.
“There must be something we can do,” Ziles argued, trying not to look conspicuous in her Princess Leia slave-girl outfit.
“End of the world orgy?” Trickshot suggested.
“We have fifteen seconds left,” Al B. pointed out.
“No problem,” Flapjack promised.
The Movie Gun’s shriek became ear-splitting and reality began to tremble.
“This is it!” Finny warned. “But before the end I’ve got to admit…”
Dancer reached forward and slipped the batteries out of the Movie Gun. It fell silent and the world snapped back into place.
“Aagh!” winced the Chronicler. “Hell’s teeth!”
“There,” Sarah Shepherdson smiled at everyone. “That wasn’t so hard, was it? What were the chances of that working?”
The Lair Legion and their companions let out a collective sigh of relief.
Kink the Conqueror pushed two hidden studs on his purple glove. The first slipped him back into the future to lick his wounds and plot again. He was very interested in that Probability Dancer and her power, and already a plot was forming in his mind to make it his own. But you all know that already from Dancer/Donar Special Anniversary Edition #12 and its subsequent chapters, right?
The second stud was pure malicious revenge. The last vestiges of the VR power flickered into play and the unstoppable doom of the LL rose once more.
“FOOLS!” screeched their enemy. “DID YOU THINK TO SURVIVE? TREMBLE NOW AT YOUR GREATEST FOE, AT THE PEERLESS POWER OF GLNFRB!!!”
“Stop shouting,” winced the Chronicler, evaporating him. “I need some coffee.”
***
“Um, where are we?” Nats asked Amazing Guy. “And why aren’t we dead?” A nasty thought assailed him. “We’re not dead, are we?”
Scott Brunsen brought his borrowed cosmic awareness to bear on the question. “Nope. We’re between multiverses I think. You grabbed me just as that last one folded and somehow we got wrenched here.”
“Did Thugos escape too?”
“I dunno, but you know what dream says. Unless you see the body…”
“Yeah. So, um, how do we get home from this place?”
“Ah,” whispered the Void Spectre. “That would be down to me.”
But what the mysterious interdimensional presence that once sent the Grim Reaper, the Enemy of the World, to the Parodyverse had to say to our two heroes cannot be revealed here; nor did they remember their meeting with the Spectre or the things he told them. They reappeared in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant in Spokane and had to pay for an entire ruined vat of Sweet and Sour Shrimp.
And that was the end of the matter as far as they knew.
***
“Well,” Fin Fang Foom told Nats at the headache-inducing debriefing. “I trust that you have learned your lesson.”
“Sure,” Bill Reed agreed. “Always get fried rice or prawn crackers, because otherwise you just don’t get the full flavour of…”
“About the seriousness of monitor duty,” Finny growled.
“Hey, let’s not forget the lesson about why dragons shouldn’t wear short shorts,” Trickshot muttered.
“I thought the lesson was always know where the battery cover was,” Dancer ventured.
“No, it’s that there’s no place like reality,” Sorceress suggested.
“It’s that fantasy is a cool place to live,” CSFB! argued.
“I thought it was that there’s never a round robin without Kink screwing the plot up?” offered Ziles.
“How about there are some thing that we never speak about again?” suggested Hatman.
And the vote was passed by ten to one.
***
The Hooded Hood sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers with the satisfaction of a job well done. Of course it would be a while before it was evident exactly what that job was, but he was sure that the heroes would be suitably appalled at the appropriate moment. But for not it was time to sit back and relax.
He gestured again, his glowing green eyes flashing for a moment, as he ordained that it was…
The End.
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