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This message The Hooded Hood catches up on the Parodyverse was posted by The Hooded Hood comments on those stories posted over the past few weeks to which he has not yet replied. on Friday, May 17, 2002 at 12:52.
The Hooded Hood sat back before the Portal of Pretentiousness, sipped his Earl Grey tea, and put his feet up on a lackey. “Hmm. The time has come to catch up on the doings of the denizens of the Parodyverse,” he mused. Where shall we begin?”
The shimmering mirror flickered once and showed an image of a man dressed as a mime overlooking a Romanian castle. “Ah, yes,” the Hood sighed. “I see Balefire is attracting the usual high standard of candidate. Still, I suppose it’s a step up from the Birthday Bandit.” He idly wondered if his former son spiffy would have the nerve to stand up to Balefire’s demands that the mayorship of Gothametropolis York be surrendered up to him. Then he remembered that he hadn’t finished the Times crossword yet and moved on to important things.
The Portal of Pretentiousness shimmered again. Now it showed a man in tight leather combat gear tearing open his shirt to compare glowing chest LEDs with another sinister-looking individual. “So we’ve got to the point where the antihero and antivillain are comparing genetic histories, have we?” the Hood mused. “I must record this for later. It could be quite amusing, in a gory sort of way. Underestimating the Messenger usually is.”
Thoughts of secret conspiracies turned the cowled crime czar’s attention to another ongoing black operation. “The delightful Niobe,” he mused, focussing the Portal on the svelte young woman who had just dropped Exile to the floor. “Like her classical namesake she makes a most appealing tragedy.” That triggered another association. “Hmm. Minion, remind me to make one or more of these heroes aware of the strand that runs through these various secret factions, tying Saint’s disconnected telephone with the Beginning Fields with those suburban robots with the Westminster Necropolis Company with the people who murdered HALLIE’s engram-donor and so on. Yes, that will make a useful gambit one day.”
The Hood put aside his cup and saucer and spent a few moments thinking up new ways to perplex the heroes of the Parodyverse. “Show me the surviving JBH,” he commanded his mirror. “Portray the pivotal moment in their escape from Technopolis when they have to make those fatal decisions.”
Now the Portal of Pretentiousness showed the downfall of the tear-drinking Dr Urvon and her brain modification surgeons. “As I thought,” the Hooded Hood frowned. “A concatenation of coincidences, from the fortuitous timing of the heroes’ escapes to the discovery of HALLIE and Knifey, to the various timelines merging just then. No wonder the Red Watchman lost his temper with his failed subordinates. But not my coincidences.” The archvillain sighed. “I discern the hand of the Cowled Imbecile in this. Ah well…”
The Hooded Hood paused the peepshow of heroic angst and desperation before him and reached across to the document case on the Louis XVI sidetable. He opened the leather-bound ledger and commanded the Portal. “Show me McKinley.” When the mirror rippled to depict a blood spattered corpse the Hood hissed irritably. “Not the dead Royale. The boy. Michael. His Progeny.”
Now the archvillain observed the troubled young man lurking on his twisted quest. “White rats in a maze,” he sighed. “Flunky, remind me to make arrangements to develop another source to replace the Royale connection. I sense things are going to get… complicated in that corner of the underworld.”
That reference triggered another thought. The Hood closed his ledger and scowled at the Portal. “Go on then,” he growled. “Show me the King of Tales.”
The whole of the mirror’s surface was filled with a scarlet-lit skeleton’s head with terrible, far-seeing eyes. They were looking at the Hooded Hood.
The Hood deliberately reached across and picked up his tea for a sip.
“Bother me when you’ve dealt with your more immediate problems, storyteller,” he advised the apparition. “Be very careful with that journalist. You may find his own story has rather more volumes than you think. And don’t underestimate Szandor or his son. Deal with them and then we’ll talk.”
The portal went pitch black.
The Hood steepled his fingers and concentrated. His eyes glowed an eerie green in the darkness of Herringcarp Asylum. “Balefire, Messenger, the JBH, Progeny, the Nihilist, and poor little Niobe. What a potent devil’s brew of tales in the making,” he mused. “So many opportunities, so many possibilities. To interfere or to observe and see how all of it turns out, that is the question. But even observation changes the thing that is observed, they say.”
He rose from his throne, drew his mantle around him and stalked into the Portal. “Something wicked this way comes,” he murmured to the world.
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