Baron Zemo's Lair. - <font color="lightslategrey" face="Lucida Sans Unicode"><u>The Hooded Hood Chronicles #10: A Dinner with the Hooded Hood</u>

Baron Zemo's Lair

The Hooded Hood Chronicles #10: A Dinner with the Hooded Hood
Thursday, 25-Nov-1999 10:35:06
204.178.22.19 writes:

The Hooded Hood Chronicles #10: A Dinner with the Hooded Hood

Whilst the orderlies were taking away the remnants of the torchon of foie gras with mild Scechwan pepper and brioche-crusted Muscat grapes which had been such an excellent appetiser and were wheeling out the fish entrée (poppy-crusted bluefin tuna, seared rare, with melted leeks, scallions, and a shallot broth, if you really want to know), the Hooded Hood leaned forward and poured more wine out for his puzzled guests. “Languedoc 1899,” he explained to them, “but lifted out of time in 1912, which makes it a perfect vintage.”
Lisa glanced across the candlelit table to Jarvis, who carefully nosed the bouquet. “He’s right,” the butler admitted reluctantly.
“Oh yes,” VelcroVixen smiled at her old enemy (even if he didn’t remember meeting her because of the Hooded Hood’s retconning), “Our host has excellent taste. He recruited me, after all.”
“He probably buys toilet paper as well,” muttered Lisa to herself.
The domestics shimmered away into the darkness once more, careful not to make any sound which would cost them their lives. The Hooded Hood attempted a little of the tuna. “Perfect,” he judged. “I always use the Chef of Crime and his Kitchen of Doom for all my catering now. Your sister introduced me to them when we were making our taking-over-the-planet rota.”
“I didn’t know Moo had this much taste,” Lisa replied sourly. But it was nice to have something so delicious melting over her tongue, so she soon got over her sibling rivalry.
“Oh yes. The Chef is really wasted robbing rich society functions when he can do things like this,” Jarvis agreed. Then the leader of the Lair Legion dragged his mind back to the purpose of their visit to Herringcarp Asylum, and the strange events of their arrival. Which led in nicely to a flashback for the benefit of the readers…

“I’m afraid you had a wasted journey, Mr Jarvis, Ms Waltz,” Dr Valium told the two heroes. They stood in a modern white room in a modern white sanatorium facility looking down onto a medical bed where a comatose patient survived on life support alone. “This is Ioldabaoth Winkelweald, and as you can see he is hardly in a position to do anybody any harm.”
Lisa looked a little bit disappointed. “He doesn’t look much like an archvillain,” she admitted. She’d been hoping for something a bit more Latverian. And alive.
“Perhaps we should kill him as a precaution?” Fin Fang Foom suggested. He knew the way these apparently-comatose-and-no-threat-to-anyone things usually worked out.
“Haven’t we had enough legal costs recently?” Jarvis complained, glancing sourly to the new coat that Lisa was wearing. “It’s obviously a false lead. It could all be just a big hoax.”
“CrazySugarFreakBoy! was hospitalised by that strange girl that attacked him,” Lisa reminded her glorious leader. “And there was that strange videotape of that superheroine being massacred in our old mansion headquarters.”
“And those other videotapes of our female members doing intimate things… notthatIlookedatthemnosireeedisgustingstuffsoI’mtoldbyanyonewho
watchedthemnotthatanyonedidhonestLisa,” Foom added quickly.
Dr Valium watched the interactions with interest. He had hopes of quite a bit of business here. He reached into his desk for some business cards.
“Well, we’re not going to get any answers here,” Jarvis judged. “This’ll teach us to try and work out what’s going on before the bad guys attack. It’s far easier to wait until they launch their master-plans and then thwart them.”
Dr Valium looked out of the window over the grey seas which washed around the sanatorium. “Can we offer you some accommodation here at Herringcarp for the night?” he asked hopefully. “There’s a storm brewing and it’s a long way over the causeway back to the mainland.”
“I’m flying back,” Fin Fang Foom declared.
“Jami, huh?” Lisa asked with a knowing grin.
“Only a matter of time,” smirked Jarvis.
The dragon stalked outside in a huff and flew away on mighty wings.
“Gets him every time!” Lisa laughed.
“We’re going to get back as well,” Jarvis told Maximillian Valium. He didn’t relish the idea of spending a night in a sanatorium for the criminally insane. It felt too close for comfort.
“Of course, if somebody had brought one of our flying crafts then we wouldn’t have the problem of driving back in such foul weather over back country roads and…” She stopped as she noticed Dr Valium taking notes.
“Is it my fault if we’re way over budget for destroyed flying crafts and Enty decided to service all the others all at once and Zebulon went on strike for more pixie dust and…”
Lisa noticed that Dr Valium now had the look of a man with a Major Paper coming up. “Let’s go,” she directed Jarvis. “Thanks for your time, doctor.”

“I said, what do you think, Jarvis?” Lisa said sharply, bringing the butler out of his flashback and back to the present. Jarvis tried not to flinch as he felt the steel-reinforced tip of somebody’s shoe prod him in the privates beneath the table by way of a wake-up call. He knew of old how good Lisa could be with her toes when she wanted to be.
“Oh, I agree,” he said on reflex.
“Indeed?” the Hooded Hood mused. “I must say that this surprises me. I had not thought that you would wish to step down from your position of power in the Lair Legion for anybody.”
“Step down?” Jarvis began to wish that he had not made such a hasty answer. “What do you mean step down?” VelcroVixen flashed him a sympathetic smile across the table.
“To allow me to lead your pathetic band of heroes,” the Hood recapped. “Ms Waltz… Lisa here was just suggesting that I join your team, perhaps in a supervisory capacity.”
“I’ll sort his induction out, Jarvy,” Lisa explained hopefully. “And you’d make a fabulous deputy leader, honest you would.”
“Wait a moment,” Jarvis objected, finally catching up.
“Sadly, I must decline your logical offer,” the Hooded Hood told him. “My agenda is to crush you and your band like the verminous insignificances they are, not to give your lives meaning by commanding you. Still, the invitation is much appreciated.” He refilled Lisa’s glass and the glow in his green eyes was almost pastel for a moment.
Jarvis felt that it was time to get back to business. “About how we got here,” he began. And the next segment of flashback got him…

“Lost? How can we be lost? There’s only one road out of here!” Jarvis complained, echoing the age-old call of the male being navigated by the female.
To which Lisa, in ancestral tradition, handed him the map and said, “Well, you look at it and see if you can do any better if you’re so clever.”
And the car engine spluttered and died.
“Wonderful,” Lisa frowned. “I should have flown back with Foomy.”
“I wish you had,” muttered Jarvis under his breath as he discovered that the torch he kept for emergencies had been replaced with a little note saying, “Just borrowing your torch to make a plasmic wave vectroscope but I’ll replace it with a luminescence generating phase inducer as soon as possible, NTU-150.” He began to reconsider his latest posting about the membership of the Lair Legion.
Lisa glanced through the rain-soaked window of the now-dead vehicle. “There’s a house up on that hill,” she noted as a flash of lightning illuminated a gothic edifice. “And look, there’s a single light in the tower room!”
Jarvis was more worried by the wrought iron gates he had spotted right beside where they had stopped. The sign upon them said, “Herringcarp Asylum”

“Oh yes,” VelcroVixen was saying, as Jarvis came out of the flashback, “Jarvy and I are old adversaries. I’m surprised he never mentioned me… Lida, was it?”
The first lady of the Lair Legion flashed a deadly glance across at the butler. Only the arrival of the confit of pork Anchaud-style with a fricassee of fennel, apples, chestnuts, and mushrooms saved him.
Jarvis was about to try and defend himself when he felt that telltale pressure of a soft touch on his inner thigh. It was a touch that warned of the potential for much greater pain to follow.
“Do go on, Vellux-Weasel, was it?” Lisa suggested. “I’m utterly fascinated to hear what dear, sweet Jarvikins has been up to.”
The conversation went downhill from there:
“…giant custard-making device…”
“…his secret strawberry birthmark…”
“…shaped like a combine harvester…”
“…edible costumes…”
An attack by alien invaders would have been far more preferable. Jarvis desperately took refuge in a final flashback…

“I’m afraid out telephone lines must have been washed out by the storm,” the svelte young woman in the abbreviated nurse’s uniform told the bedraggled Legionnaires. “Still, we’d better get you out of those wet things and into something more comfortable.”
“I have a few questions first, nurse… Vee,” Jarvis announced, slightly distracted because there were so many other things to look at in the vicinity of their hostess’ name badge. “Like how this can be Herringcarp Asylum. We were just at Herringcarp Asylum, and it was a lot more modern than this.”
“Less Tomb of Frankenstein,” Lisa agreed, dripping on the carpet.
“Ah, I see you are perplexed, my unwitting guests,” a commanding voice (with a trace of Latvian accent) declaimed from the staircase above. Lightning flashed, illuminating the cowled and cloaked figure of… the Hooded Hood. “Perhaps I should explain a few things… over dinner?”
“No problem,” Lisa said quickly. “Um, Jarv, do you need to scout about outside for a while whilst I’m checking out this guy’s um, story?”
“That won’t be necessary. This felon is the one from that video about the destruction of Spandex Lass and he matches the description of one of the gang that attacked CrazySugarFreakBoy! I’m taking him down!”
The cowled crime-czar snorted. “On what evidence?” he demanded. “Spandex Lass no longer exists, and never has in your current timeline. No habeus corpus. And I did nothing at the Déjà Vu club except save your team member’s life – which, it being CrazySugarFreakBoy, could be classed as a morally dubious act, I admit.”
“He’s right, Jarvis,” Lisa said, holding back the leader of the Lair Legion. “So let’s calm down, accept his invitation, and see what we can find out.”
Nurse Vicki Vee, a.k.a. VelcroVixen smiled a pouty little smile. “I see you’re waiting in antici…pation,” she purred.

The diners were onto the Poire Pochée on orange Crème Anglais topped with a caramel sauce. The candlelight was giving Lisa a warm flush. Well, it was either that of the foot slipping slowly upwards along her leg, making it’s interest in what it might eventually find if it went far enough more than plain.
“So what is you plan for us, Hooded Hood?” she asked, gulping down some more of the liqueur coffee.
“Why on earth should the Hood explain his masterplan to his enemies?” VelcroVixen asked contemptuously. But the cowled-crime czar gestured for her silence.
“Of course I should explain my plot to our guests,” he corrected. “Have you so small an understanding of villainary etiquette?”
“But is gives them a chance to stop you!” the villainess objected.
The Hooded Hood sighed. “How little you comprehend. What is the point of conquering the world, or imposing one’s vision upon all of creation, or unifying the conflicting, pointless timelines of this Parodyverse into one pristine whole, if there is no-one who understands the magnitude of that achievement? And what pleasure is there in seeing an enemy merely dead? No, the whole point is for your adversaries to realise their failure, to agonise at the fate of their loved ones and their world because they have failed… to live out their miserable lives broken and beaten, impotent and bitter because of what they have allowed to happen. That is victory.”
“Except when the heroes beat the hell out of you and smash you plans, you…ooph!” Jarvis’ rebuttal was cut short by a sharp groinal pain from beneath the table.
“Without the possibility of victory, the heroes’ failure would be meaningless,” the Hooded Hood explained. “Hence my videotape of poor, doomed, Spandex Lass’ demise. Hence my bringing you here tonight. You have a week to prepare for the commencement of my masterplan. It should be seen as an opportunity to resolve other sub-plots, to put your affairs in order, to have your farewell scenes with loved ones, that kind of thing.”
“Very generous,” flushed Lisa, still enjoying what was going on both above and below the table. “Any more clues?”
“You have the notes on my Purveyors of Peril. You are aware of some of my interactions. That should be sufficient,” declaimed the cowled crime-czar.
“I still don’t get how we came to two Herringcarp Asylums,” complained Jarvis. “Where is Dr Valium?”
You refer to the alternate reality Herringcarp which I maintain as a defence against intruders,” the Hood replied. “After all, the last thing I require is a dozen or so ill-prepared and uncouth superheroes calling without an appointment. No, return again and all you will find is the good doctor and poor, comatose Ioldabaoth. And nothing that you do to them can harm the Hooded Hood.”
“Perhaps we should just… surrender now?” Lisa suggested, her voice notching up an octave for some reason partway through the sentence.
Jarvis threw down his napkin. “And perhaps we should nip this in the bud!” He tossed the table aside, sending the porcelainware shattering across the floor. He was horribly surprised to find a hunchbacked assistant squatting where the table had been with a guilty look on his face and a videocamera in one hand.
“Oh, yuck!” Lisa cringed.
“Flapjack!” boomed the Hooded Hood. “This time you have gone too far!”
“Mercy master,” the twisted little creature cringed. He dived behind Lisa and tried to hide under her robe. “Save me!” he pleaded.
Lisa moved to one side. “Fry him,” she recommended to the Hood.
The cowled crime-czar gestured and Flapjack was gone. “Let us see how much he enjoys being Peter Parker’s boxer shorts in John Byrne’s Spider-man,” he said grimly.
“Oh yuck!” Lisa cringed again.
The Hooded Hood turned back upon Jarvis. “I believe that you were about to precipitate a confrontation?” he prompted the butler.
But Jarvis held back. He could smell a set-up. “And that way you can retcon all this meeting out of existence,” he deduced. “You would have given us the chance to stop you that you talked about but we would have wasted it by making a pointless, premature attack on you. Oh no. Put your underwear on, Lisa, we’re leaving.”
“Shame,” VelcroVixen commented. “Just when it was getting interesting.”
“Excellent,” judged the Hooded Hood. “You have passed your first test, Legionnaires. You may go in peace – for now.”
The Kitchen of Doom supplied them with complimentary mints for the journey.
The Hooded Hood watched them two heroes as they argued their way through the downpour back to the car. “I rather enjoy entertaining,” the cowled-crime czar decided. He pondered again for a moment and turned to VelcroVixen. “Get me Sersi’s phone number,” he commanded.

That’s it for the nice, simple stories. Next time the tale gets into high gear with the start of the first Hooded Hood/Lair Legion epic. Look for it.

OK, I worked it out. This one might be easier to read - at least from a layout point of view; HH