|
|
The Hooded Hood Chronicles #12: The Hooded Hood and the Rampage of the Yurt Wednesday, 01-Dec-1999 14:14:31
The Hooded Hood Chronicles #12: The Hooded Hood and the Rampage of the Yurt Baron Zemo passed two glasses over to the Hooded Hood and the diabolical Dr Moo. The Hood sniffed the bouquet and finding that Zemo’s cellar continued to be unexcelled took a satisfied sip. “How’s the masterplan going?” Moo asked the cowled crime-czar, surreptitiously checking her own drink for any of Zemo’s little chemical surprises. Unlike the Hood she couldn’t retcon such things out of existence before drinking. “As well as can be expected at this early stage,” the man in the grey cloak answered. “I believe that the Legion will be taking on a huge, unstoppable engine of destruction just about now.” “The Yurt,” Zemo recognised. He was well briefed on the opposition. “By-product of a nuclear accident involving a peasant and a small ethnic Russian hut. You carved him out of continuity to save him for a special event.” “Two hundred tons of radioactive, invulnerable, super-strong stone and glass,” agreed the Hood happily. Some people got together and discussed their record collections or their action figures. Archvillains talked minions. “In the timeline I lifted him from he survived a nuclear strike that the Legion dropped on him with a slight headache.” Moo was unimpressed. “These unstoppable monsters always get stopped by the Lair Legion,” she predicted. “I certainly hope so,” the cowled crime-czar answered, putting his glass down so he could arch his fingers together. “I would be very disappointed if there were many League casualties in phase one. I’m going to need the Legion to destroy Zemo here.” “Still holding a grudge just because one of my schemes accidentally retconned you and everything you had ever accomplished out of the Parodyverse?” the Baron complained. “Of course. Am I not… the Hooded Hood?” Zemo sighed. “So why have you got the US Army activating that Sentinoid programme? I thought those robots were designed in case we ever had a mutant invasion of the Parodyverse?” “Oh, that. I had three versions of the Indigo Impostor go into the White House and tell the president that the Lair Legion was going to run the planet from now on. It seems that the UN is reacting quite badly to the idea.” “I suppose the Impostors threatened to start breaking things if they didn’t get their way?” Moo surmised. “Of course.” “And then you get the Legion into a really big, destructive fight with the Yurt?” The Hooded Hood’s glowing green eyes flashed. “That would sort of give the government the wrong impression just now, wouldn’t it?” he said. Zemo poured him another drink. “Put down the orphans and back away from the orphanage,” the Dark Knight instructed the two-hundred ton killing machine in front of him. It said a lot that he could pull this off without looking outmatched and still manage to be stood in shadow despite the blazing noonday sun overhead. “How does he get his cape to do that?” Messenger whispered to Hatman. “I heard that he has an artistic license,” Hatman whispered back. “Probably keeps it in his utility socks,” pondered Messenger. “That was the ‘60’s pre-retcon Dark Knight.,” Hatman reminded his comrade. “We don’t talk about that.” “Yurt not frightened by puny cape man,” the unfrightened Yurt declared. He tightened his grip on the three terrified orphans, threatening to crush them like Liefield fans at an Avengers convention. “Now!” the Dark Knight called. And just as the Yurt was trying to work out which hand the children were in to squash them three things happened. First Sersi let rip with her Austernal eye beams, blasting the Yurt in the rough vicinity of where she hoped his own eyes might be. The second was that Rocket Racoon zoomed in and seized up the children, sending them scattering away from the Yurt’s grasp. And the third was that a full-sized and quite cross dragon hit the villain with a full-strength tail smash. And the Yurt blinked and grabbed Fin Fang Foom and threw him across town. “Two out of three ain’t bad,” Space Ghost declared, diving in to get between the Racoon and children and the twenty-foot tall radioactive marauder. He let the Yurt have it full blast with his spank ray, but it had no more effect than Finny’s tail-swipe. “Banjooooo to the rescue!” the king of the sea-monkeys cried, springing forward and completely failing to hurt the Yurt with his patented triple-headbutt. His adversary growled and batted him backwards over the battlefield, burying him under a 7-11. “Ouch!” came a muffled sea-monkey voice from under the rubble. “Time to call out the reserves,” the Dark Knight decided, nodding across to NTU-150. The technological genius of the Lair Legion took his cue and hit a complicated-looking panel of microswitches on his gauntlet epaulette. Several times. With a spanner. Until they sent out the alert signal. Meanwhile the Yurt was getting madder. And the madder he got, the stupider he got. “Look out, he’s attacking the orphanage!” Hatman warned as the monster took a grave dislike to the way that the frontage of the building was looking at him. There was a general scramble of Legionnaires doing heroic things as the front of the orphanage crumpled. Imagine children being saved at the last moment by derring-do. Messenger leaping from crumbling wall to crumbling wall. Rocket Racoon rescuing the best-looking teacher. Hatman in a fire-officer’s helmet stopping the gas explosion. That sort of thing. Meanwhile Sersi was going one-on-one with the Yurt. She really didn’t like bullies who beat up orphans. And being an Austernal, and therefore nearly indestructible, she was still alive three minutes later when she came up on the limits of the word “nearly”. Even as she went down for the last time before the Hut that Walks Like a Man, the Yurt was distracted by a white-hot sear of dragonfire from the really, really pissed Fin Fang Foom. Finny hated being thrown across Paradopolis into a man’s sauna parlour. “Puny dragon man thinks he can fly above Yurt. But Yurt can still hit puny dragon man,” the monster helpfully narrated. Then he threw a tenement at the dragon. Either Fin Fang Foom said something profound in some draconic tongue or else he said “Oh sh…!” in English just before he failed to avoid the four story building that hit him in the head. Messenger went into the fray again with some exploding razor-letters whilst the Dark Knight hauled Sersi out of the debris. “I didn’t know you could get bruises that colour,” NTU-150 said interestedly. At a cold glance from the Dark Knight he quickly went back to hooking up his suit to the national grid. The first news pictures went out just before NTU-150 blew the entire power supply of the Eastern seaboard. There was enough time for all the decent programming to be interrupted with the news about the Lair Legion fighting something big – or perhaps just causing more major property damage. But in the bedroom where Dreamcatcher Foxglove had been confined (with 60,000 comics back-issues) by a mother concerned about his recent battle-injuries with PsychoAcidPervGal!, there was enough time for the young man that the world reluctantly knew as CrazySugarFreakBoy! to recognise the towering behemoth that was striding confidently through buildings in pursuit of Hatman. “Oh no! That’s the Yurt. The last time he fought me he pulled my head off and we all died!” CSFB exclaimed. He didn’t stop to consider how he could remember something that had happened in a parallel timeline (it was actually a side-effect of his mom’s former cosmic awareness). All he knew was that his friends were in mortal danger. And he knew what a superhero should do about that. CrazySugarFreakBoy! painfully dragged his neon costume on and bounded off to help his team. As he went he called out his new battlecry: “Ouch! Ow! Ouch! Ouch! Agh!” “I suppose the cosmic awareness came in very handy,” Zemo considered as they all watched the devastation via one of the Baron’s spy satellites. A few of the other super-types around Castle Zemo had dropped in as well. They had popped a few beers and were laying bets as to which Legionnaire died first. Pegasus was the only one they all trusted to hold onto the money. The Hooded Hood remained aloof from the newcomers but continued his conversation with Moo and Zemo. “I had to use it rather circumspectly, but it did allow me to peel off this particular continuity from all the others during the moment of transfer of power between the old and new Chroniclers of Stories. That in turn enabled me to isolate the events I have set in motion from the interference of Hollywood V, or Pierson’s Porter, or the Shaper of Worlds, or any of those annoying mystery types.” “So that you can have your shot for the brass ring without all those cosmic sorts cutting into your agenda,” approved Dr Moo. She was fairly happy with this, because if the Hood failed – and she had great confidence in her sister’s team to screw up anything for anybody – then having all those annoying omnipotent types out of the way for a while would do her own plans no harm at all. Zemo smiled a tight, cunning little smile behind his mask. The Hood had just made his first tiny mistake. “What about Yo?” Pegasus challenged from over by the wide-screen video unit. “He and his thought-energy people could still do you some serious harm, Hooded Hood.” The Hood allowed himself a little sinister chuckle. He was trying to cut down, but it was a special occasion. “I have sent the Yo-Planet a small… diversion,” he promised. Galactivac, the Living Death that Sucks, reached out a questing utensil and sampled the energy barrier which was meant to keep him from the planet below. A small figure materialised before him. “Be going away, you most uncute planet-eating person,” it instructed him. “This is being the Yo-people’s planet, and we do not like nasty planet-eating planet-eaters to come and be eating it.” “I…. Am….. Galactivac!” “Welcome to Yo-Planet. But that is not saying welcome to be eating Yo-Planet. Yo’s bunnies and Yo’s friends’ bunnies would not like to be being eaten to death by friend Galactivac.” The Living Death That Sucks detached one of the myriad special attachments from his long, cylindrical body and sent it spinning away towards the shining green world below. At the same time he flexed his hoses, fixing them upon the barrier of Yo-thought-energy which kept him from his lunch. As Galactivac engaged his triple-action vacuum technology the Yo-people felt their thought energies being drained away. The barrier began to weaken. “Keep thinking, genderless Yo-friends!” Yo called. “Yo will talk to the possibly cute plastic thing that has gone towards Yo-Planet!” And so the former Legionnaire chased down towards the green, pleasant orb which was about to receive a visit from… the Cyan Cyclist! The emergency alarm went off at the newly restored old mansion of the Lair Legion. Three hundred and seventy-four different sirens, buzzers, bells, and exploding toasters alerted the remaining Legionnaires that there was trouble. “Where’s the off-switch?” screamed Jarvis. “What?” shouted back Lisa/ “The. Off. Switch.” “I can’t hear you. I’m looking for the off switch.” Fortunately the entire alarm system short-circuited just then. One remaining bell sounded out through the stately edifice. “That’s better,” Jarvis declared. “Why can’t we just have that one as our alarm?” “That’s the doorbell,” DarkHwk explained, moving to check on the opti-IDscope who was at the door. “Hey, it’s the government!” he explained. “Must be to brief us about the emergency call!” DarkHwk opened the door. Eight fifteen-foot robot types pointed matter-destructor cannons at him. “Can I help you?” he asked politely. The grizzled form of Dan Drury, Director of SPUD (Super-menace Principal Undercover Directorate) stepped through the Sentinoids. “Yeah, you kin help me, you blue-backed, jaw-jabberin’ gin-swillin’ space-wastin’ fancy-dan superhero type!” he answered. “Yer under arrest.” Jarvis, who had been about to stride through the door and demand the meaning of this, managed a very dextrous about turn and dragged Lisa under a table. Lisa did not object. “Arrest?” the Legion’s technical assistant gasped. “Oh, wait a minute. You’re mistaking me for NTU-150, aren’t you? It’s about that cable splice to the Playboy channel. But there’s no need to worry. Tina made him dismantle it and…” Eight matter-destructor cannons fired in unison. “That had to hurt,” Jarvis whispered to Lisa. “I’ve got to get out there and defend him,” Lisa decided, thinking of the fees. “Search this turkey joint, you yahoos,” Drury demanded. “Intelligence says that there’s at least Jarvis, Lisa, and some elf in here. Shoot first an’ ask questions later.” “Or not,” Lisa added. Jarvis frowned. “We’ve got to get out of here and find out what sort of trouble the Legion has got themselves into. Lisa, I need a distraction.” The first lady of the Legion smiled. “My speciality,” she promised. “I… am… miffed!” the twelve storey dragon explained, punctuating his emotional release by hammering at the Yurt between each word with his train-sized tail. He didn’t use the word miffed, either. “I… am… more… miffed!” Banjoooo added, getting his own licks in between the dragon’s attacks. “I… am… way out of my depth!” Messenger realised, just at the point where the Yurt caught hold of the two biggest members of the Lair Legion and smashed them together before hurling them through the remains of the orphanage. “Don’t fear, rescued orphans,” Rocket Racoon assured the wailing children. “The Maria Stark Foundation will pay for it all to be rep… er, never mind.” With Foom and Banjoooo down, the next rank to try and stop the rampage of the radioactive hut was Sersi, Space Ghost, and Hatman. “This isn’t, like, a final issue or anything, is it?” Space Ghost worried as the Yurt shrugged off his attack and turned round to look at him. “It doesn’t say something like, ‘This Issue, Somebody Dies’ on the cover?” “I can take him,” Sersi assured them, and using a different context to usual. That was just before the Yurt hammered her down through the sewer system, past the tunnels of the Morschlocks, and right into the lonely caverns of That Which Writhes Beneath Mankind. Which woke up. In the meantime, Space Ghost caught a piece of flying rubble in the groin. “Must… redesign… costume… with… box…” he gasped as he fell to the floor. The Yurt now brought his full attention to bear upon Hatman; and frankly the Lion Tamer’s Panama just wasn’t doing it. “Ulp,” was Hatman’s attempt at some famous last words. But at the last minute he was blurred out of the Yurt’s grasp by a fluorescent orange, neon green, and day-glo yellow streak. “Don’t worry, old comrade, buddy, and bestest friend,” the streak assured Hatman. “Your old partner-in-dogooding CrazySugarFreakBoy! is here to save the day!” “Did you happen to bring a clean lower half for my costume?” Hatman asked urgently. “NTU-150, there’s no more time. If you’re going to do it, do it now,” the Dark Knight commanded, eyeing the scene of combat. Ghost down, Hatman… incapacitated, Sersi, Foom, and Banjoooo lost who knew where. At the moment that left a fighting team of Rocket Racoon and CrazySugarFreakBoy! “It’s not ready yet,” NTU-150 apologised. “That Eastern-seaboard blackout really slowed me down. I had to develop a new alternate energy source from scratch.” Messenger nodded and kept running on the treadmill. “Yurt smash puny costume-men!” the Yurt promised, swiping all around him as Racoon and CSFB did the usual athletic-hero-making-monkey-of-slow-moving-monster routine. Then the Yurt got cross and picked up a gas tanker to hurl at them. “Gaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!!!!” The tanker instead exploded in the Yurt’s hands. A massive fireball burst out across the devastated suburb. Hatman leapt across and rolled Space Ghost down the hole that Sersi had made. Which was good in the sense that it stopped them being roasted by the explosion, but bad in that it went about a mile vertically down. “Eerm… Can you fly?” Hatman asked the curled-up Ghost as the two tumbled into the foul-smelling darkness below. “Gaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!” The newly arrived Starseed pressed his attack, but was unhappy when the Yurt demonstrated a previously-unrecorded ability to leap in his mighty foundations and pounded smack into the hero. “I remember now,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! reported to the Dark Knight. “I don’t quite know how, but I remember us having this fight lots of times before. And we always lose. And die.” “Oh, good,” the legion’s tactical advisor growled. “Nothing? I do nothing at all?” spiffy complained. He had just been told by the cosmic peeping-tom known as the Voyeur that he was interesting because he was the only major character who played no part whatsoever in the Hooded Hood’s conquest of the world. “Well, you are dead,” the bald, ten-foot tall, toga-model reminded him. “And in hell.” “Not hell,” spiffy replied, “Nebraska.” But his voice cracked a little on the last word. The Voyeur said nothing. A cunning look came across the dead Legionnaire’s face. “We might as well pass the time while I’m not doing anything important then,” he suggested. “Do you by any chance… play cards?” The Irregulars were cheering now as they watched the Legion go down one by one before the unstoppable Yurt on Zemo’s satellite feed. The Hooded Hood stood up and drew his mantle around him. “Well, this has been very pleasant Zemo, but I must be off to continue my destruction of you and all that you have ever loved.” “See you later then, Hood,” Zemo answered, rising politely to see his guest to the door. “I’d wish you luck with the masterplan, but considering the circumstances…” “Quite understood, old fellow. No hard feelings, I hope?” “Of course not. I’ll be doing the same thing to you shortly.” “Goodbye, Heinrich, Moo… and say farewell to your pointless and trivial minions for me.” The Hooded Hood concentrated, then stepped through his shimmering Portal of Pretentiousness. The diabolical Dr Moo sighed. “It’s nice to entertain, but it’s always a relief after the guests have gone.” There was a cheer from the crowd around the monitor screen as Rocket Racoon was belted into orbit. “Yes. So much tidying up to do,” Zemo answered. “And then there’s the little matter of thwarting that hooded maniac’s plans to conquer my planet.” And the masked maniac outlined his plans on what to do to the hooded maniac. The cow-headed maniac listened and nodded. Jarvis found the fight quite easily. It was in the quarter of Paradopolis that was in ruins. “We only just got all of this fixed,” he complained. He ran over to where the Dark Knight was watching as Banjoooo, newly returned from his impromptu journey to New Jersey, was once again engaging the Yurt. Briefly. “So, you think you can thwart the attack of the king of the sea-monk * urk *” “What’s the situation?” the butler asked the Dark Knight. “We’ve been trying to slow that thing down for about an hour and a half now. We’ve misplaced Sersi, Hatman, and Space Ghost. Foom has gone to try and recover Rocket Racoon from orbit. CrazySugarFreakBoy is under that mini-mart. Right now it’s Starseed’s turn to be totally ineffective against the monster. Oh, and NTU-150 is coming up with a gamma-ray absorber in the hopes of being able to take it down that way.” “We can’t let this go on any longer,” Jarvis reported. “Somehow the government has got the idea that we are responsible for this damage, that the Yurt is working for us. They’ve already arrested DarkHwk and Zebulon. They’ve got some kind of giant hero-catching robots after us. Lisa… she sacrificed herself to them so I could get away.” “I’m sure she did,” the Dark Knight answered neutrally. Jarvis turned back to where NTU-150 and Messenger were feverishly working. “We need that gizmo now,” he demanded. “OK, but it won’t be as good without the sound-blaster card,” sulked the Legion’s technological genius. He handed Messenger a wafer-thin metal circuit board with wires attached, which was quickly folded into one of the mailman’s letters. “Just remind me again why I’m doing this?” Messenger asked plaintively. “Because we need that device ingested by the Yurt for it to be effective,” Dark Knight answered. “And who else has such extensive experience of slotting flat rectangular objects through holes?” “I want you to know, Messenger,” Jarvis added, “that my selecting you for this mission has absolutely nothing to do with you shooting me in the stomach the other month. Honestly.” “I anticipate only one problem,” contributed NTU-150. “How are we going to get it to open it’s mouth wide enough?” “You should have brought Lisa,” Messenger told Jarvis. There was a horrible crunching sound as Starseed failed to get out of the Yurt’s way. “Jarvis, we’re up. Let’s distract it!” the Dark Knight called. “Um, you do remember that I don’t have any, what could be described as super-powers these days?” Jarv answered. “Now!” Then a huge, glowing, screaming pickaxe thundered down and caught the Yurt right in the chest. There was a sound effect. It was probably something like THAKKKAASTROOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMM! “Miscreant varlet! Taste the wrath of Mjalcom!” “That is what I call a useful contribution,” Jarvis smiled. “He’s going to want to talk to you about that expense account thing,” Dark Knight reminded the butler. Jarvis stopped smiling. Donar retrieved Mjalcom and went in for another strike. This time though, the Yurt was ready and backhanded the hemi-god away into a line of newly-arrived police cars. “Nothing can stop the Yurt, puny hammer-man!” the Yurt shouted. “Yurt is the strongest one there is!” “Now,” Jarvis told Messenger. “Should have shot him twice,” muttered the mailman, but leaped forwards and hurled his special delivery with all the skill he could muster. The letter slid neatly down the Yurt’s throat. The Yurt’s massive west wing came up and slid messily into Messenger’s chin. The Dark Knight fielded the very unconscious mailman. Donar was back in the fight. “Eat Mjalcom, thou big pink cottage!” The Yurt shrugged off the second attack and got his massive hands round Donar’s neck. “Yurt snap puny hammer-man!” A white-hot blast of flame hit the hut-monster in the rear. “Hey, that’s our puny hammer man!” Fin Fang Foom called out. “Get him RR” “Me?” the charred looking racoon on the dragon’s back asked, looking around. Jarvis spun round to NTU-150. “Any chance of your device starting to work, Enty?” he asked. Then he listened to what he had just said and sighed. NTU-150 pulled a dramatically large lever. There was a sound like fingernails on chalkboard. “This… is… worse… than… our… alarm… system…” Jarvis complained. Every window in Paradopolis shattered. And the Yurt shrank, shrank… until all that remained was a peasant in improbably tattered but still decent trousers. Donar hit him anyway. “We did it…” Rocket Racoon marvelled. “We won! And I was standing at the end of it!” “They beat the Yurt!” VelcroVixen said in shock, watching the whole thing through the Portal of Pretentiousness. “They beat him! The Yurt!” “Indeed they did,” smiled the Hooded Hood. “But in all the rehearsal realities the Yurt mulched them!” “In this reality they were warned by the sudden vestigial memories of CrazySugarFreakBoy and distracted by the additional plot which was going on. All is going precisely according to plan.” “But they won!” The cowled crime-czar merely pointed to the images on the Portal. “OK, you scum-suckin’ city-trashin’ oath-breakin’ no-good dagnabs, lissen up! This is Dan Drury, Agent of SPUD talkin’ at ya! We got you surrounded, so jest give yerselves up and we’ll have a nice quiet arrest, trial, an’ execution, see?” “Er, are you talking to us?” Fin Fang Foom asked. “You know, us, the Lair Legion. The ones who just saved the city?” “Sure didn’t look that way to me, worm-boy!” Drury megaphoned back. “An’ your boss-man blew the whole game when he tried to blackmail the President.” “Blackmailing the prez!” CrazySugarFreakBoy! whistled, dragging himself from under his building. “Cool!” “We’re innocent!” NTU-150 P-A’d back. “Well, not guilty of this, anyway.” “Did you blackmail the president, Jarvis?” the Dark Knight asked. “OK… we tried it the easy way an you wouldn’t play!” Drury called out. “So now we’re takin’ you down!” And from behind the police lines, two hundred Sentinoids rose and started forwards. In our next instalment: See the Lair Legion battle the might of the Sentinoids! Lisa in chains (again)! Yo tries to reason with the Cyan Cyclist! spiffy plays strip poker with the Voyeur! Lots more innocent people get arrested! Baron Zemo explains the plot! And a surprise guest star who really didn’t want to be involved in all this gets horribly involved! Probably out Wednesday or Thursday, depending on how the printers are doing with Wolverine. The Hooded Hood apologises for the delay in the schedule of inflicting these reprints upon the board, caused by his inadequate and feeble host body daring to contract tonsilitis |
|
Copyright © Looksmart, Ltd. 1997-1999.
All rights reserved.