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Post By The Hooded Hood dishes up old-school squabbling in the peerless Parodyverse parlance Mon Jan 29, 2007 at 12:22:06 pm EST |
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Parodyverse Team-Up #1: Faking It | |
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| Parodyverse Team-Up #1: Faking It The background for new readers: The Parodyverse is at war. It’s the day after a momentous battle with the would-be universe-conquering Parody Master, when Earth’s troops were hastily evacuated back home to lick their wounds. Now two of the world’s greatest superhero team, the Lair Legion, chase up one disturbing security breach in that retreat’s aftermath. “Well,” said Citizen Z, “This is special.” “Really,” agreed Visionary, hanging on for dear life as the mysterious masked vigilante piloted her replacement Z-Wing down towards the signal they’d been tracking for two hours. “I’m thinking of vomiting to mark the occasion.” “I mean it’s not often I get to work with a founding Legionnaire,” CZ went on, looping the loop as she brought the Z-shaped hoverboard down onto the derelict shopping precinct. Three dozen boarded store windows seemed to watch them. “I wasn’t a founder,” Vizh corrected her, still needled about it after all these years. “I was there, but Jarvis said…” “I’m sure they found the cow’s head mask a big help in their decision-making,” Citizen Z interrupted. “Maybe spiffy had filled their buffoon quota already, do you think?” “That’s for sure,” snorted Vizh before he absorbed the comment. “Hey!” CZ waved him to silence as she checked the tracker. “In there,” she said, pointing to a burned out videogame shack. “That’s where the signal’s from. Whatever alien thing slipped through the trans-planar doorways we were using to rescue people from the conceptual dimension yesterday is hiding in there. As senior Legionnaire present and former deputy-leader I guess you’ll want to go in first.” “Leader,” Vizh corrected her. “I was the leader of the team.” “Really?” The masked vigilante sounded sceptical. “Well congratulations. Who’d have thought? Lead the way.” Vizh looked into the gloom of the derelict shop. “Well to be honest I was never much good at field ops,” he admitted. “Oh?” CZ feigned surprise. “What were you good at then?” Visionary frowned, turned up the collar of his bright yellow trenchcoat, and ducked under the Do Not Enter sign into the abandoned arcade. “Watch out for ambush,” Citizen Z called after him, loudly. “We still don’t know how that whatever-it-was fooled our scanners and got this far.” Vizh felt a charred floorboard give under his foot and shifted back cautiously. “Thanks for the concern. It’s good that we can finally take the time to get to know each other.” That seemed to take Citizen Z aback. “Know each other? What do you mean?” The possibly-fake man shrugged and continued to root through the wreckage. “Well, you know, bond. Er, not in the Lisa sense, you understand. Just get to know each other and stuff. You joined the LL suddenly in a crisis, and it’s been pretty much one crisis after another ever since. So I never got a chance to find out what you’re really like. The real you.” That was just as well from Citizen Z’s point of view, since under her full-body superhero suit she was actually the villainess Elizabeth von Zemo. The full-body skinsuit was actually her pliable henchwoman Silicone Sally. “Are you sure there’s nothing in there waiting to jump out and kill you?” she checked anxiously. Vizh kept on poking in more ways than one. “I know it’s supposed to be a mystery, your identity. Hatty said he knew and vouched for you, but that’s not stopped the rest of us speculating.” “Really? By the way, try that dark dangerous patch of shadow over there.” “Really. Some of us thought you might be Sersi in disguise. Or maybe Psychic Samurai. Or Messenger.” Citizen Z froze. “Messenger? Messenger’s a man.” “It’s amazing what you can do with prosthetics these days,” Vizh told her. “People are joining super-teams disguised as the opposite sex all the time now. Nobody ever notices.” “Messenger is about six feet tall. And he smells.” “Well, it was only a theory,” Vizh assured her. “Somebody suggested you could be Finny but… well… woman parts.” “I assure you I am not Messenger or Finny,” Baroness von Zemo answered through clenched teeth. “DK?” “No.” “It was the vigilante thing that made us think Messy,” Vizh went on, checking the burned out metal boxes that had been game booths. “I mean you kind of blew up Baroness von Zemo before you joined us.” “That was never proven. That tape could have been faked as part of the SR 1066 plot.” Vizh finally picked up the agitation in his crimefighting partner’s voice. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s not as if anybody liked the Baroness anyhow. She used to be my neighbour. She still has my lawn mower.” “That piece of crap?” Citizen Z replied. “I mean, how tragic. Had it been in the family long?” “It’s okay. Ever since Enty improved it it tended to catch fire without warning anyhow. And that was even pre-Kerry.” “Well that explains what happened to my stable block,” snarled CZ. “Er, to the Baroness’ stable block. She must have really hated you, Visionary. I bet she was plotting all kinds of painful ways to make you die a slow, lingering death. Lots and lots of ways.” Vizh shrugged again. “I think perhaps she kind of liked me deep down.” “No. No she didn’t,” CZ assured him. “She was looking forward to the day she nailed you to her throne room wall and watched you bleed to death.” “I dunno. There was a kind of a spark…” “That would be Kerry setting fire to her curtains,” snapped CZ. “Look, are you going to find the monster hidden in there or not?” In her impatience she stepped through the doorway as well. Then the trap went off, dropping Beth and Visionary through the floor to land in the iron chamber below. “Okay,” said Vizh. “Ouch.” A metal ceiling slid across on top of them, blacking out the light. Citizen Z produced a pencil torch. Well actually it was a laser beam on low. “Damn it all!” she shouted. “I knew the whole place was a trap and I still walked into it!” “Wait a minute,” Vizh puzzled. “If you knew it was…” “Of course it’s a trap, you idiot!” Beth raged. “The Legion has been here before! That’s why the whole place is a burned out wreck! Don’t you even read your own mission reports?” “There are mission reports?” The laser setting dial was so tempting. “The Legion came here long ago, when it was Killingworld, a lethal trap-laden playground of a wannabe supervillain called Mall [Untold Tales #4]. This whole place is designed to kill superheroes.” Visionary considered this. “I’m not so much a superhero as a…” “Fake superhero?” “Consultant,” Vizh answered with wounded pride. “But didn’t we sort this Mall guy out? It must have been pretty final because he didn’t even make it into the Who’s Who Rogues Gallery.” Citizen Z checked the walls. “Our alien invader has somehow got the Killingworld systems back online. We’re in a trap inside lots of other traps, all controlled by one of the Parody Master’s most dangerous operatives. Our enemy has millions of dollars of state of the art murder equipment, the advantage of surprise, and absolute tactical control. I have you.” Visionary was pleased that Citizen Z seemed to be bonding with him after all. Maybe adversity was good for forging the links of comradeship. “We can escape though, right?” he asked eagerly. “My comm-card’s being blocked but you have all kinds of amazing gadgets in that slinky purple costume of yours, don’t you?” “I can get out,” CZ confirmed. The hidden speakers in the confinement room crackled into life. “But that would be too simple, Legionnaires,” came the voice of Annar, Princess of the Skunks. “That cannot be allowed.” There was the crackle of teleportation energies. It went totally dark in the cell as Citizen Z’s laser-pen twinkled and vanished. “Damn,” said Visionary. “Yes,” said Beth von Zemo. “I have a question,” Vizh admitted. “When your laser pen was teleported away, did anything else go with it?” “Maybe,” CZ replied. “Why do you ask.” “Just curious,” Vizh replied, trying to sound casual. “Did anything of yours vanish?” “Some things, yes. Why?” “No reason. Just getting a tactical overview.” The two Legionnaires stood stark naked in the darkness wondering what to do next; until the cell walls started to move together. Continued… by Visionary. Look for Parody Team Up #2: Naked Truth, coming probably moderately soon. Sooner than “Happiness” anyway. Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2007 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2007 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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