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Post By The Hooded Hood has deliberately not numbered this one in case any more chapters need to be slotted before it Thu Oct 14, 2004 at 09:01:18 pm EDT |
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Follies of Youth #?: The Time of Our Life | |
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| Follies of Youth #?: The Time of Our Life Previous chapters at the Follies of Youth Archive Page “So I turn out no good?” Lisa said. “Well, not no good really,” Asil backpedalled. “Just mean, calculating, manipulative, heartless, malicious, cruel, vicious, callous, and slutty.” She realised she hadn’t really made things any better. “Oh,” said sixteen-year old Lisa, looking rather unhappy. Asil Ashling might have been her twin, apart from a few important differences. Asil wasn’t dressed in skimpy leather mini-skirt and bustier, but rather in a conservative two-piece business suit and white blouse. And Asil wasn’t close to crying. “But slutty in a good way!” Asil added desperately. “I mean, everybody says you’re very good at it!” Lisa stared at the window but that’s not what she was seeing. “So in my future I become this horrible person, just like the bitches who were horrible to me when I was in the orphanage, and I spend all my time rutting with men and being mean to my friends.” “Er,” floundered Asil. “Look, you’re nothing like as horrid as your sister Daio. She’s a super-villain.” The first teen of the Lair Legion looked up sharply. “Daio? I’ve not killed Daio yet?” “Not that you’ve told us,” Asil answered. “Look, when I said mean, what I meant was…” “And you’re my clone,” Lisa went on. “That’s why we look like twins, except for your badly-applied make-up?” “I was made by your sister from your dandruff,” Asil answered sullenly. “To go rescue a supposed friend of yours, Visionary. Who, by the way, is wonderful, and never says my makeup is badly applied.” “So you’re what I’d have turned out like if I hadn’t been condemned to the Little Sisters of Discipline Orphanage?” Lisa reasoned, looking at the bright, clear-eyed youngster that sat before her, brimming with potential. “I see.” Asil shook her head. “This isn’t turning out right,” she confessed. “This isn’t how we talk to each other.” “When I’ve not been reverted back to sixteen along with all my big-time superhero buddies?” “Yes. Usually you’re so… confident. And scary. And, and so you!” Lisa looked down at herself. “I am me. Well, apparently I go up a bust size but that’s no bad thing, even though the slipping corset does seem to keep that hunchback butler fellah walking into doors and things.” “That’s not what I mean,” Asil confessed. “Look, I was made as a disposable thing, a throwaway knock-off to do a job nobody else could be bothered with. When I was made, and even now despite all the things I’ve done with Sir Mumphrey, I still feel like that sometimes.” Lisa raised an eyebrow. “And what have you done with Mumph, little me-clone, hmm?” Asil indignantly aged herself ten years. “Nothing like you’d do, if you had half the chance, you horrid doody-head!” she snapped. “Sir Mumphrey looks after me and is teaching me how to be a person, and also a young lady. I’m his amanuensis, which is like a personal secretary and chronicler and field agent all rolled into one. It’s not like one of your relationships!” “So you’re not doing the horizontal with the man?” Lisa asked. “Of course not!” Lisa shrugged. “Your loss,” she suggested. Asil blushed furiously. “I take it back. You are just like your older self, you big horrid doody-head!” “So Mumphrey’s not taught you grown-up swearing yet?” smirked Lisa. “He might swear when you’re around, but he doesn’t swear in front of ladies,” retorted her clone. “Touché,” admitted teen-Lisa. Her face clouded again. “I thought when I grew up that I’d be something special. A lawyer, maybe, protecting people’s rights, changing the system and stopping injustice. I thought I could make a difference for all the helpless children who would come after me so they’d never be… so nothing bad would happen to them.” Asil folder her arms and stared at the girl. “Well, you did become an attorney,” she admitted grudgingly. “And sometimes you’ve helped some people, I suppose. In between being mean. Oh, and has anybody told you you had a son?” “A baby?” Lisa’s eyes shot wide open. “Where? What? Who’s the father?” “A boy called Christopher. There were some others too but they all got retconned into him. And the paternity’s a bit complicated. Best to say there were plenty of candidates.” “Christopher,” Lisa tasted the name. “Is he here?” “He’s in another dimension,” Asil answered, aware as she said it how crazy this must all sound to the sixteen-year-old sitting with her. “Where he’s safe from your enemies.” “I have enemies? I mean apart from you?” Asil winced. “I’m not your enemy,” she argued. “It’s just… well you’re everything I’m not. You’re confident and eloquent and beautiful and popular, and you can make everything turn out the way you want it and make everyone love you and do what you say. They call you the First Lady of the Lair Legion, you know, because everyone rallies round when you call. And I’m… just Asil.” Lisa realised there was much more going on in this conversation than she realised. The ghost of the older Lisa was present as well, at least in the clone-girl’s mind. “Do you and I talk much?” she wondered. “When I’m not sixteen?” “Not much,” Asil admitted. “Mostly we stay out of each other’s way. I talk a lot with Visionary, and with Sir Mumphrey of course, and lately with Hallie and Mindy, but… no, we don’t have much to say to each other.” “I rather think we do,” Lisa answered. “I think I must have a bit of jealousy for you, Asil. After all, my life’s not been a picnic, and to see you with all the advantages I never had… Well, I can only imagine how my older self must feel. And then from your point of view…” “From my point of view I’m the lesser one, the copy,” Asil confessed. “At least that’s how it feels a lot of the time.” Lisa reached up and caught Asil’s hand. “I don’t think you are me at all,” she told the clone. “Not really. You have my body and maybe my smarts but you’re completely different as a person. You think differently, talk differently, even stand differently. I think you’ve got to get past the dandruff thing and forge a proper relationship with me. And vice versa. Even if I am a doody-head.” Asil looked uncertainly at the amorous proto-advocatrix. “Are you scared?” she asked. “Terrified,” confessed Lisa. “Don’t tell anybody.” Lisa reached down and offered a sisterly hug. Lindy dropped the plate she was washing as she heard the familiar voice. “Where the f*** am I and what the f*** is goin’ on?” demanded Sam Wilson, striding into his own kitchen in an apartment he no longer recognised. “Where the hell are we, girl?” Lindy went pale. “S-sam?” She fumbled for the nickname he liked. “Falco?” “I said where the f*** are we, bitch?” the teenage gangster demanded. “I don’t know what I snorted las’ night but it’s completely screwed my head!” “H-hold on,” Lindy calmed him. Falco could get violent when he felt frustrated. “I’ve got what you need right in the next room.” “You got stash?” Lindy slipped into her bedroom and grabbed what she’d come for. Falco barged in behind her, scowling at the unfamiliar place and the valuable things that could be sold. “What the f*** is this?” he demanded. “Tell me what’s going down before I start layin’ serious hurt!” “Well,” Lindy told him, “somehow my asshole brother’s back like he was when I was a little kid, and he’s tryin’ to scare me again. And I’m getting out this here muscular neutralisation rod my boyfriend gave me for self defence and zapping the hell out of you, Falco!” There was a sharp smell of ozone, an unpleasant crackle, and then the thump of Sam Wilson hitting the carpet. The security van was heading along Interstate 666, following procedure by driving in the right hand lane, doing 45 miles per hour. In addition to the driver there were two guards up front and six men in Sentinoid combat armour in the rear guarding the four dangerous criminals who were being transported to the OPS facility in Persephone, Virginia. Everything was going according to plan until the driver suddenly became eight years old, and all the guards aboard with him. The vehicle careened across the highway, narrowly missing a trailer van, crashed through the central barrier, then tumbling over to plough into the guard-rail on the opposite lane. The children aboard were injured and stunned, but the supervillains in transit were neither infants nor helpless. Anvil Man was the first to break loose, and he tore the rear off the armoured car with contemptuous ease. The black-and-white that had been trailing the prison van had slewed to a halt when the accident had happened. Even now the officer was desperately calling for back-up. Given who was aboard the transport he was going to need it. Anvil Man reached back into the vehicle and ripped the restraints from Huntingjustice Deathmarrow, Fleshcrawler, and Razor Ballerina. “Code Red! Code Red!” the police officer screamed. “We’re going to need the Lair Legion!” And from his dimensional vantage point, Eddie popped another soda. “So are you up to speed now on life in the future?” Lisa asked Mumphrey Wilton as they assembled in a big oak-panelled meeting room, under the portraits of Lair Legion founders. “Somewhat,” the English boy answered. “I must say it’s all a bit thick. But that Hatman lad’s a decent sort, reminds me of our house captain. And he seems to know what he’s about, while he’s got that hat of his on.” Jay Boaz returned to the room and called everyone to sit in their places. “If Sir Mumphrey doesn’t mind I’d better chair this session, okay?” he asked. “Please do,” Mumphrey told him earnestly. “I wouldn’t have the first idea how to start.” “I don’t see why you should take charge just because you’ve got a pretty cap,” Mr Epitome grumbled. “It’s not like you can even put on any other caps without reverting to a lame Canuck geek anyway.” “I’ll start with the introductions, then,” Hatman suggested firmly. “When we’re not sixteen we all know each other, but right now…” “Right now we still need to get to know each other,” suggested Lisa with a sexy smile over to Mr Epitome and Trickshot. Hatman quickly introduced those present. “Well, from my left we have Sir Mumphrey Wilton, who’s got rather more to catch up on than the rest of us since when he was sixteen technology wasn’t quite so advanced.” “Nor ladies’ fashions,” Mumphrey added admiringly, glancing from Lisa to Hallie. “Lisa Waltz. Asil Ashling, who hasn’t been affected. We think only LL members have been de-aged. Hallie, our resident computer sentience. Mr Epitome. Trickshot the Marksman…” “World class marksman,” Tricky corrected him, preening. “Anyone want me to shoot something offa their heads?” “dull thud,” Hatman persisted, “who is likewise not a member, but who…” “Never mind the cover notes,” thuddy interrupted irritably. “Ah’m not de-aged at all, but my stomach-parasite Cressie may ‘ha been affected. She’s gone!” “Stomach parasite?” shuddered Lisa. “Yes, I read my notes about her,” Al B. Harper enthused, bouncing up and down on his seat with excitement. “Fascinating. A symbiotic/parasitic relationship with an internalised telepathic tapeworm with transmutative abilities over the weak and strong forces between atomic components and …” “And this is Al B. Harper,” sighed Hatman. “Is this all?” Mumphrey wondered. “I’d got the idea there were more club members than this.” “We’re having trouble finding everybody,” Hallie explained. “We haven’t yet located Yo, Dancer, CrazySugarFreakBoy! or Visionary, who were all off the premises and are all ignoring their comm-cards. The Shoggoth’s vanished. The Librarian’s locked himself in the file room and won’t come out. And although we can hear… noises coming from Nats and Uhuna’s room they’re not answering the door.” “I have theories,” gabbled Al B. Harper. “I posit that this discrete biomass of the Shoggoth didn’t exist when the Shoggoth was newly created and so has been phased out of existence, possibly into some in-potential state pending the revision of reality once more. I further posit that Cressida may also have been transformed to sixteen, except in her case that would be ageing, which means she may have reached some other part of her life-cycle in which she is no longer a stomach resident, or more properly an upper intestinal resident, so she could be anywhere. And my working thesis on Nats and Uhuna is that they’re…” “Order,” Hatman interjected quickly. “That Amazing Guy dweeb got age-zapped as well.” Trickshot pointed out. “Heh. I kicked his ass. He ran off into space claimin’ he was lookin’ fer something, but really he was just running scared!” “Amazing Guy’s an honorary member of the Lair Legion,” Asil explained. “So far it’s looking like only members have been targeted for the effect.” “And it has not worked the same on all of them,” Hallie added. “Some have lost their memories, others not. Some have powers they didn’t originally have at sixteen, others not. There’s not a lot of logic to it yet.” “I’m confident that I can solve the problem,” Mr Epitome assured her. “Any problem.” “Try clearing up those zits,” thud suggested sullenly. He wasn’t going to forget Epitome stuffing him in a locker any time soon. “Now then,” Mumphrey scolded. “We need to work together as a squad, chaps. Bickering won’t do.” “Thank you,” Hatman declared. “So first order of business is…” That’s when the alarm warning went off to warn the Lair Legion that they were needed to save the day. It was time to grow up. To be continued… (I’m quite happy to follow this straight on with another bit in a few days if required) Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2004 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2004 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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