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Post By Luckily, the Hooded Hood is on the case Fri Jan 06, 2006 at 02:20:39 pm EST |
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A Very Parody Christmas #8: What This Story Needs Is More Heavy Continuity and a Man With a Pink Sock On His Head | |
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| A Very Parody Christmas #8: What This Story Needs Is More Heavy Continuity and a Man With a Pink Sock On His Head He was a thin scarecrow of a man, in a bizarre collection of borrowed clothes. Even his boots didn’t match. One hand had a fingerless woolen glove on it, and that was the hand he was using to beckon to the Juniors. “This way, children! Quickly. And beware the Jabberwock!” “I’ve got to read more literature,” admitted Ham-Boy. The Juniors scrambled away from the madness down in the forest and climbed up to the rocky tump where the unusual gawky man was sitting cross-legged. “Art thou the villain of the piece?” demanded Harlgaz. “But say the word and we wilt smite thee for the nonce.” “That’s very tempting,” the stranger admitted, “but on the whole I’d prefer not to be smitten, thank you very much.” “So who are you?” Kerry demanded. “The Easter Bunny?” “Oh no. He’s taller, and has whiter hare.” “You do have some explanations though, right?” Fashion Accessory demanded. “Like what’s going on and why we just had to drag Glory out of a dog-eating rabbit hole.” “And why the sky looks like it was drawn by crayon,” added Ham-Boy nervously. “And why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings,” barked Glory, still slightly giddy from her encounter down the rabbit hole. “I have all kinds of explanations, children,” the scarecrow of a man agreed. “What kind would you like?” “If he calls us children again, that straw hat is going to burn,” Kerry muttered. “Perhaps first we should try and get some kind of clue as to what’s going on?” Ham-Boy suggested. “You know, like how we walked through a wardrobe and ended up meeting teen-actor wizards and Tolkein villains?” “That kind of stuff happens in the Mythlands,” FA shrugged. “Apparently.” “Exactly!” exclaimed the stranger, holding up one bony finger. “Apparently this is the Mythlands.” “You’re saying it isn’t?” checked H9. “Some kind of VR representation? A holosuite? Psychic projection? Ambient ectoplasmic waveform?” “Hold it, geek-o,” Kerry warned Zack Zelnitz. “First things first. You, Oxfam man: What’s your name and why are you here?” “Good questions,” agreed the stranger. “I’m the Keeper of the Interfaces. Well, that’s my job. My cosmic office, I suppose you could call it. I did have an ID badge at some point but I’m damned if I know where I left it.” “Keeper of the Interfaces?” frowned Fashion Accessory. “Well you can forget trying to interface with us, you creepy perv.” “I mean,” went on the Keeper, “that it’s my job to disentangle things when realities overlap. I had a hell of a job last year when the Avengers spilled over into the Parodyverse. Good job that thing was never properly resolved. And don’t get me started on that Crisis thing. It felt like I’d never be finished.” “So thou art not here to be smitten?” Harlagaz checked in a disappointed voice. “I’m afraid not. I’m here to prise apart the two words that have collided and got all jumbled together. You should tell that Visionary of yours to stoke up his lighthouse. It’s supposed to warn realities to stay away from the choppy dimensional interfaces. He’s not doing the job right.” “Sounds like dweebo,” admitted Kerry. “So what’s tangled where with what?” “And where does the wardrobe fit into it?” went on Ham-Boy. “And will we get back to the party in time before Hatman moves too far from the mistletoe?” demanded Fashion Accessory. The Keeper shrugged. “That depends on you, chil – er, young people.” He grabbed his straw boater and sat on it, just in case. “If you want to get home, you need to untangle the two realities for me. Then I’ll just pop you back in the Lighthouse on the Edge of Infinity and you can all have a nice cup of hot chocolate before bedtime.” “What century are you from?” Kerry checked. “I like hot chocolate,” Glory noted. “It is bad for me.” “So we musteth find yon two realities and smite them?” Gaz suggested. “He definitely needs the hot chocolate,” Ham-Boy conceded. “It’s not a matter of smiting realities as finding the creators of these particular realities and asking them to stop se we can unentangle them,” the Keeper explained. “Creators?” H9 swallowed. “You mean gods?” “Oh no, these aren’t that kind of realities,” the Keeper assured them. “These are quite local affairs.” He gestured them close and started to sketch with his finger in the snow. “If there art to be exposition I needs must go and findeth something to wrestle,” Harlagaz warned, and stomped off down the rock a way, doing his best impression of a wounded deer. “Look, Keeper…” began Zack, a little appalled at the low-tech teaching interface that was being used. “Oh, that’s just my office,” the stranger told him. “You can call me Woodbend Windyway.” “And you admit that?” asked FA. Woodbend pointed to his snow diagram. “Here’s your reality, and there are the conceptual realms and the mythlands. And this oozy patch of slush between them is the dream realms, formerly ruled by a nasty little blot called Frightmare.” “Yo stabbed him,” Glory remembered. “Yo said he was very uncute.” “Yes. Frightmare was filleted and good riddance to bad rubbish, back when the Dead Hell Lords were reminded to stay dead, around Untold Tales #196 or thereabouts. And their power was all locked away so nobody could grab it.” “Until Nats blundered into it,” Kerry pointed out. “Uhuna won’t stop going on about it. I don’t know why she’s so upset. I mean we let her keep most of the wedding presents.” “Also she’s dating DBS now,” added Fashion Accessory. “Which is so much cooler.” “Well, Uhuna’s, um, dating life apart,” Woodbend persisted, “when Nats unlocked and claimed the power of the hell-lords that also freed the power of the Dreamrealms, which promptly went off and claimed itself a new ruler.” “There’s a new Frightmare?” worried Zack. “This doesn’t in any way involve a new team of Hellraisers slaughtering us, does it?” “Of course not,” snorted Woodbend. “Not yet. Not this problem.” From down the slope came a sound of snarling and yelping, and a happy Ausgardian battle whoop. “Nor is there another Frightmare,” the Keeper of the Interfaces assured them. “The Dreamrealms adopted an entirely different person this time. A sweet little orphan girl. In fact I believe Uhuna knows her.” “A sweet little girl?” swallowed Ham-Boy. “She’s not called, you know, Mad Wendy, by any chance?” “Why now that you mention it I do believe she is,” considered Woodbend. “Hold it! We’re in one of Mad Wendy’s artificial realities?” worried Fashion Accessory. “Do they burn?” checked Kerry. “You aren’t in Mad Wendy’s new dream world,” the Keeper clarified. “Well, not entirely. Because you see just as she was coming to share her good fortune with her old friends like the Lair Legion and to save them from the coming Parody War and the awful fates that await them…” “Hold it,” Zack interrupted. “Horrible fates? Does that include me?” “You’re always going to be you,” Fashion Accessory warned him. “I’d say that was pretty horrible.” “Heilsa, boon comrades!” called Harlagaz, cresting the hill again. “Twas a snarling grimgjamgroth. And look what it was hunting!” “Hello everybody!” called Rabito, the purple though bunny dangling by his ears from the demihemigod’s fist. “Got any lettuce?” “He’s talking!” Kerry exclaimed. “Amazing,” said Glory. “And you hadn’t noticed that I was talking as well in this place?” “Well, no,” admitted Ham-Boy, “but you usually talk, just with your voice translator.” “Rabito sounds a bit like Visionary if he’d had a stroke and was being played at 33 RPM,” scowled Kerry. Woodbend shepherded the Juniors so they were standing in a circle a little way off. “If you could all just wait there while I keep on explaining, that would be very helpful. Thanks.” “So Mad Wendy’s dream reality came to get us but she crashed into another reality?” Hacker Nine summarised. “Coming to get you,” agreed Woodbend. “It seems you also upset some extradimensional imp a while back.” “Eddie!” shuddered Kerry. “Ooh, I so owe him for setting my sister up with Visionary.” “Eddie set Vizh up with Sarah?” goggled Fashion Accessory. “Okay, hold the adventure while Kare spills juicy gory details.” “Aye,” agreed Harlagaz. “Wast it before of after we rescued them in yon Off-Central Park from yon pixies that hadst disarrayed all their clothes and… Oh!” FA was following through. “Hold it. Vizh and Sarah. Vizh and his adopted sister Sarah.” “Yeah. Hard to believe having two people that dumb in the same family isn’t genetic, isn’t it?” Kerry accused. “So we’re trapped in some kind of bizarre amalgam shipwreck of two tangled and I have to say derivative realities belonging to Mad Wendy and Eddie the Imp, and neither us nor them can break out of it,” H9 summarised. “Because we so want to get back to the world where our teacher is having sex with his sister,” Samantha Bonnington sniped. “Or as it shall henceforth be known, the Ozarkverse.” “You will be required to help separate Eddie and Wendy before they hurt each other,” Woodbend Windyway admitted. “And also before the resultant reality storm hits the Lighthouse where your mentors are trapped, causing all kinds of strange ripples in the timespace continuum. But right now…” and he pointed to the middle of the circle the Juniors were forming. There was the distinctive ripple of travel through the time vortex and a pink-socked villain from the future arrived to take advantage of the situation. “Ha-ha! Now I shall…” Harlagaz clobbered him. “So, Woodbend Windyway said, clapping his hands together, “Now we’ve dealt with the obligatory guest villain, shall we get on with sending you into the heart of the chaos?” Hacker Nine didn’t answer. He was more interested in the little ring that Wang the Conqueror had dropped. He picked it up and slipped it in his pocket. “What’s that?” Ham-Boy asked him. “Nothing. Just my birthday present.” “How do we find Mad Wendy and Eddie and untangle the realities?” Glory asked. “Do we really have to team up with a purple thought bunny? It feels very Disney.” “Do you see me doing a cute motivational song at all?” demanded Rabito. “Also, next time could the big guy holding me by the ears not use me to hit the villain with, please?” “How do you find where you need to be?” Woodbend Windyway smiled at them. “Do you really need to ask?” And he pointed down at the road with the yellow bricks that was winding away into the haunted forest. “Follow that.” Continued… Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2006 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2006 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
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