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The Hooded Hood Chronicles #16: The Hooded Hood Triumphant Wednesday, 08-Dec-1999 18:07:08
The Hooded Hood Chronicles #16: The Hooded Hood Triumphant Let’s start with a really big visual effect. Imagine the sort of thing that would happen if there was this point in space which was the focus of simultaneous attacks from Starseed, Jarvis, Donar, Hatman, Sersi, NTU-150, Banjooooo, Fin Fang Foom, Space Ghost, Messenger, CrazySugarFreakBoy! and Rocket Racoon. Next imagine Wonderbooster, the Simon Williams clone from the Scourge of the BZL team (Zemo’s occasional henchpeople), actually at that focal point. Cover your ears, because that’s a pretty big sound effect, and it probably goes like this: GAAAHHHHSKRAKKLEPEOOOOO WWWSHOOMFWAMMMMM!!!!! That was fun, wasn’t it? And look, Wonderbooster is reacting to it by lying there and gently smoking. Banjooooo steps forward, hooks the extremely unconscious ionic icon over his shoulder, and dumps him in the specially prepared containment bay. Meanwhile, Dark Lisa, once again leader of the Lair Legion, albeit the current zombiefied, minds-are-elsewhere-in-pocket-hell-dimensions-of-the-Hooded-Hood’s-creation version of the Legion, steps forwards and uses her powers once again. “I summons the Late, Great, Donald Blake!” There is a short pause whilst the narrative switches to the past tense which is so much more comfortable to read and write in if you can’t have pictures with it. In that brief time, which will also give readers the chance to remember that Lisa has the seldom-used quasi-legal power to summon anybody in the Parodyverse into her presence, there is a flash of light and the appearance of a surprised man with a walking stick. He’s not half as surprised as when he gets simultaneously blasted by the entire Lair Legion though. Fortunately his surprise didn’t last very long, because he fell over and was thrown in his own specially prepared holding cell. “I summons Venom!” Dark Lisa called, and leaned against the wall and examined her fingernails whilst the acid-spittled psychopathic alien spider-thing got lightly toasted by the same strategy. It seemed so much simpler taking down the Scourge of the BZL one by one through this method than the usual bloody free-for-alls. Lisa wondered briefly why she had never thought to do this before. Then she realised it was because she had never surrendered so entirely to her dark side before. It felt really, really good. “I summons the Man Who Wasn’t There,” she announced, watching a little more carefully this time because this was a slippery customer and she didn’t want any mistakes at this point. Even then the Man Who Wasn’t There vanished away three times in rapid succession and was summonsed back by Lisa until such time as the Gaaaahhhhhh!!!!! energies of Starseed and Space Ghost could put him down. She altered the Legion’s instructions for the next visitor. She marvelled at how efficient they were without their minds. “I summons Pegasus,” she declared. Lisa staggered as a lot of power went out of her. Then Pegasus appeared with seven snivelling children clustered around her. The winged superheroine looked a little guilty. “Zemo, I can explain everything!” she said quickly. Then she realised that it wasn’t Zemo who had caught her secretly releasing the orphans the Baron had used as hostages for Goldeneyed’s good behaviour. “Lisa! Am I glad to see you!” “You won’t be,” Dark Lisa promised. “Put down the three-year-olds and surrender, Pegasus. The Legion is taking the Scourge down once and for all.” Pegasus sensed something was very different about her old friend. “Lisa?” she queried, carefully placing the children behind her and looking round at a strangely silent and serious semicircle of Legionnaires. “Lisa, what’s going on.” Lisa gestured and her obedient team took Pegasus down. The orphans screamed. Lisa closed her eyes and gestured. “Rocket Racoon and CrazySugarFreakBoy! Take them away and amuse them somehow. Or throw them in one of the holding cells. Or something,. Just get them out of here with their cute noses and wide eyes and innocent faces, just like my little ones… and their tiny little… so like Jarvis… Just get them out!” The two Legionnaires ushered the children to safety. “I summons Uatu,” Dark Lisa snarled to herself. “Watch this, buddy!” Less than a minute later, when the Uatu mess had been cleared up, she also summonsed Jam. “What the fu…” he got out before the combined Lair Legion censored him. “I summons the Grim Reaper,” Lisa proclaimed. There was a bit of resistance this time. Lisa frowned and concentrated harder and the person she had in mind appeared. Lisa wondered in what way her summons had not been specific enough the first time. Clever readers will already have worked out that it was because this Reaper was a less-powerful substitute. Of course, Lisa didn’t know that so she had the Legion use full force on him. There wasn’t really much left after that to incarcerate. That made Lisa worry a bit. The Reaper was breathing, but that was about it. He’d certainly need more than just a bionic hand before he went on his next crime-spree. This was getting too close murder to be comfortable with, and Dark Lisa was sufficiently new to be concerned about such things. She had turned from the Legion she had served so well when Jarvis had found true love with some girl named Melissa, when her children had been retconned out of existence, and when she had been abandoned by the team to the mercies of Mother Whipcord, the almost-forgotten terror of her orphaned childhood. She had prevented the Dark Knight from thwarting the Hooded Hood’s plans, and had turned him over to the Hood for questioning and torture. But even now the death of the Reaper would have seemed a step too far. “I’ve got to go through with it,” she told herself through gritted teeth. “Old comrades, orphans, they don’t mean anything to me now. And nor do sisters. I summons the diabolical Dr Moo! Or, as she should henceforth be known, the nice one!” Frog Man’s gift of regeneration brought him back even from death by multiple impact of close range bullets from Zemo’s Luger. He sat up and looked around the dimly-lit but very visually interesting laboratory of the archvillain. “What’s going on?” he asked. “What are all those alarms?” Zemo turned round from the computer panel he was examining and casually shot Frog Mam again. He gestured for a flunky to come over and deal with the corpse. “Take that outside and bury it,” he instructed. “Frog Man will regenerate back to life even from that, Heinrich,” Dr Moo estimated, looking up from the bench where she was working. “Even burying him won’t stop it.” “So? At least he won’t be bothering me any more six feet under.” Just after his partner had been dragged away Goldeneyed returned from the mission Zemo had sent him on. “I got the information you needed from that Pierson’s Porter chappie,” the reality-hopper reported. “He wasn’t at all happy about not being able to get into this continuity strand that the Hood has isolated, so he was more than happy to give me the co-ordinates.” “So you can take me to the place I need to go?” Zemo checked. “Yes. But why would you want to go there?” Goldeneyed puzzled. Then his mind caught up with his ears. “Why are all those alarms going off?” “It seems that Lisa is summonsing various of my minions to her at periodic intervals for some unknown purpose. Normally I would assume that they would be returned tired but happy after a suitable interval, but the Hooded Hood has done something to her and she is no longer the sloppy, sentimental, and overly-familiar irritant she has previously been. Additionally, I have lost contact with the Dark Knight, who was carrying out my plan to eliminate the Hood. Dr Moo is trying to calculate exactly what is going on just now. An update, Moo.” There was no reply. Moo too had been summonsed. Zemo was silent for a moment. “So, it comes to this, does it?” he said quietly to himself. “The Hood once told me that I have not got the determination or ruthlessness to pursue my conquests to the utter end. Now he shall discover differently.” He turned to Goldeneyed. “Take me to the co-ordinates,” he commanded. “Um, are you sure?” the superhero checked. “I hardly got away last time and…” “Take me there!” Zemo screamed. “Take me to Galactivac!” There was a flash of energies as the bovine-headed villainess was drawn into the ambush chamber. Moo looked around at the brain-dead Legionairres and at her dark-eyed younger sister. “Lisa! What the hell do you think you’re doing shanghaiing the Scourge one by one? Did you think it wouldn’t set off every alarm in Zemo’s castle. He’s going absolutely nuts!” “He’s meant to,” Lisa smirked. “We are taking his life apart bit by bit, paying him back in full, making him suffer. And I thought you deserved a little share as well.” “What are you going on about?” Moo demanded. “Just because I’ve tried to kill you and your friends a few times is no reason to start behaving like this, Lisa Waltz!” Dark Lisa crossed her arms. “What about our brother?” she demanded. “What brother?” Moo demanded back in a remarkably similar tone. “We don’t have a brother except for… except for… Jarvis?” “Uh huh.” “But Jarvis and you were… I mean, you spent all your time…” “Uh huh. Except that never happened now, and for the last few months he’s been seeing ‘Mel-liss-a’. And what about the orphanage?” “What orphanage… oh, you mean the Little Sisters of Discipline,” Moo reasoned as she remembered her origins for the first time as the Hooded Hood’s retcon hit her. “Well, what was wrong with that? We needed to be taught to be strong to survive in this world. Just because you never fitted in there…” “You abandoned me there!” Lisa accused. She swung round to the Lair Legion. “Kill her!” she demanded. The body of Visionary appeared in a high-tech engine room of some sort. The mind of Visionary was elsewhere at the moment, but that was just as well since his cranium was currently occupied by a number of squatters. He was, technically, possessed by the devil. Well, actually by one devil, one dead and one retconned-out-of-existence superhero, one dead adolescent, and the Voyeur, a sort of gone-funny uncle we don’t talk about to the celestial Observer corps. “Is this the place?” a Junior Reader complained. “It doesn’t look very, well, cool does it? I mean, there are no big pointless computer panels, and no arcing electricity, or anything.” “This is still the best venue for out operation,” the Voyeur determined. “This is the most propitious site to carry out the plan that the Chronicler of Stories outlined for us.” “A dimensional gateway?” spiffy remembered. “I, uh, I was sick the day we covered that at High School.” “I understand dimensional gateway technologies quite well,” Spandex Lass proclaimed. “It should be fairly easy to adapt this engine here to jump us into interstitial space, from whence I can set up a homing frequency that the Lair Legion may be able to link into providing the vibratory matrix…” Look, this exposition is going to go on for quite a long time. Let’s just say that the plan is to open up a way to a neutral place so that if the Legion are seeking a way home they get sent a lifeboat. Oh, and opening up the doorway needs some pretty large power source; hence the engine room. “So it might actually work?” spiffy asked hopefully when then super-efficient Spandex Lass concluded. “I don’t think so.” Oddhorn the resident demon interrupted. “This has all been very amusing, but I’m afraid I can’t allow this to go on any longer.” “What do you mean?” the Voyeur asked. “You were outvoted. And what happened to your drrrrawl?” “Do you think I got put here by accident, or as a joke?” the demon snarled. “No. The game was to allow this dead hero, this spiffy, hope but no more. He was never intended to actually accomplish anything. That was why the rest of you were sent with him, to prevent his success.” “Oh, treacherous!” Junior Reader breathed (with Visionary’s lungs), “Oddhorn’s here as a spy for the opposition.” “He is not the only one though,” the Voyeur noted. “Is he… Spandex Lass?” “No, not Spandex Lass,” gasped spiffy. “She can’t be a demon too! She was far too nice to have been in hell anyway.” “Of course I’m no demon,” the retconned-out-of-being-a-founder-Legionnaire answered. “Have you ever read any of Peter David’s Supergirl stuff, about Earth Angels?” “Naah,” Junior Reader replied. “I only started getting Hulk when all that borin’ characterisation crap got cut out and Byrne started really rocki * ugh *” “Now that was divine,” the Voyeur judged as Junior Reader’s spiritual essentials again felt Spandex Lass’s spiritual elbow. “An infiltrator!” Oddhorn roared. “Sent to stop me stopping them from stopping the Hood!” “Your master Mefrothto knows the rules!” Spandex Lass declared. “No interfering in human destiny, even if it is to irritate the Hooded Hood. I am here to take you down, Oddhorn!” Visionary fell onto the floor and started pounding himself with his fists. Fleabot leaped over to the engines and got to work. “So let me get this clear,” Cheryl summarised, staring into Dan Drury’s one good eye until he shamefacedly stubbed out his cigar. “First the President accuses the Lair Legion of trying to extort control of half the planet, then he orders the arrest of all superheroes and commissions some team nobody’s ever heard of to do it, then he activates a squad of giant robot Sentinoids to bring in the Legion, and now he’s thinking of changing his mind because he might have made a mistake?” The Director of SPUD (Super-menace Principal Undercover Directorate) exhaled the last of his cigar fumes. “Yup,” he answered coolly. “Is it always like this?” Melissa asked her two companions. “This superhero stuff?” “Oh no,” Tina answered. “Nothing big has blown up yet. We haven’t been attacked by demons. And nobody has said ‘Alright everybody, this is our last chance. Let’s do it’.” “Th’ Prez is a bit worried that if you outlaw powers, only outlaws will have powers,” Drury explained. “Well, that and the fact that the Hooded Hood has given the leaders of the world just twenty-four hours to surrender control of the planet to him. And that we’ve found out that it wuz his people impersonatin’ you thanks to a tip-off from Zemo of all people. An’ one of th’ Hood’s Purveyors of Peril has taken command of the world’s nuclear arsenal.” “The President hired a team of super-types who called themselves the Purveyors of Peril?” Tina asked. “And then he was surprised when they turned out to be a little bit untrustworthy?” “What do you expect us to do now?” Cheryl demanded of the Agent of SPUD. “Why don’t you use your Sentinoids against these Purveyors of Peril?” “Well,” Drury confessed. “Th’ fact is that the Legion sort of broke them all.” “You want us to convince Tim and the others to help you out after all that you’ve done to them,” Melissa realised. “They’ve gone to ground and you need us to find them?” Tina added. “Well, that would be real helpful,” Drury admitted. “See, what we thought wuz…” Then the first big explosion rocked the SPUD helicarrier. “Whut in Sam Hill is goin’ on?” Drury barked into an intercom as the vessel rocked wildly and various electrical devices burst into showers of sparks. “Sorry sir!” a voice came in over the intercom. “There’s something wrong with the engines. We seem to be falling through some sort of… of dimensional hole!” The helicarrier rocked again wildly as it got sucked into the interstitial space Spandex Lass was talking about while none of us were paying attention. Yes, spiffy and Co were in the helicarrier engine rooms in that scene earlier. This stuff is plotted really, even if it doesn’t look like it.. “Well get the blankity-blank engines back workin’ right and find out where the sweet petunia we are, mister, ‘fore I come up there an’ have your tripes for turkey-dressin’!” Drury barked. “What’s happening now?” Melissa said. She had the depressing feeling that she might end up saying that a lot. The first of the demons clawed its way through the bulkhead wall. The skies outside were an unfriendly red except for the bits that were dark with attacking demons. “It seems the Hooded Hood had a contingency plan,” Cheryl noted dryly, placing a metal stool where it would do the most good into the demon in front of her. There was a bright flash of energy as several of the demons got fried, and the familiar smiling face of Yo peered up from the top of the pile of steaming gargoyles. “Hello, cute-friends. Yo is here to fight alongside with lady Legionnaires against many bad things which fly over flying heli-thing. Hello, Melissa, you lovebird you. Let us now all be combating evil together, yes?” “He’s… one of Tim’s friends?” Melissa checked. “Or she is?” There was another burst of light as Yo helpfully transformed the girls’ clothing into what s/he felt were far more fitting superhero outfits. Melissa yelped as she realised that she was wearing less than on her average visit to the beach. Tina winced as the spikes on her thigh-pouches scratched her as she moved. Cheryl tried to look annoyed that she was in the cat outfit again. Drury pulled out a gun about the size of a howitzer and slung the strap over his shoulder. “Lissen up, you yahoos, it’s time t’ kick some demon butt!” he announced. “Yo is happy to be a yahoo, you cute stubbly soldiering person.” Drury spoke into his intercom again. “Open cargo bay three an’ dump that big chunk o’ concrete onto them bozos,” he ordered. “A block of concrete won’t stop them,” Tina judged, taking another one down with a scientifically-placed fire extinguisher. “They’ll crush concrete to rubble.” “I sure hope so,” Drury gargled back. “That particular block’s got Darkhwk stuck inside it!” There was a roar of energies outside as Darkhwk expressed how miffed he was with this whole adventure so far. He had been knocked senseless by Sentinoids and then encased in concrete while everyone else got cool adventures and major bad guys to fight. So he decided to work off his frustration by cutting loose on the demonswarm with maximum power. “Yo will go and be helping cute Darkhwk Yo-friend to battle uncute nasties!” Yo proclaimed, launching himself out into interstitial space. “Doers of evil be bewaring!” Drury clamped another cigar into his mouth. “Alright everybody, this is our last chance. Let’s do it,” he proclaimed. “See. I warned you,” Tina said to Melissa. “Um, do you have any super-powers?” “No. Except I’m not sure how I’m staying inside this costume.” “Now would be a really good time to develop some.” The demonswarm swept down upon the helicarrier. In another part of the multiverse another Melissa was competing a very long and sloppy kiss with the handsome leader of the Lair Legion, Simon Williams, the Wonder Man. “Oh, Simon, I do love you,” she sighed blissfully. “Sure you do, babe,” the Man of Wonders replied. “It’s only natural, me being a movie star and leader of the legion and everything.” A slightly sad expression crossed the Scarlet Melissa’s countenance. “I just wish…” “What’s the problem, doll?” Simon flexed. “It’s just… well, this must be really hard for Jarvis. And he took it really badly when we told him how most of the Legionnaires he knew died in those accidents.” “I really don’t know my own strength,” Jarvis chuckled. “But, hell, I was mentally unbalanced back then, so that makes it OK. And Jarv’ll understand about us. He is my best friend, after all. C’mon, let’s go watch one of my movies.” Melissa’s mind was still on Legion business. “But what about that impostor CrazySugarFreakBoy! we caught in the mansion earlier? Shouldn’t we find out about him, and why he was impersonating a dead Legionnaire?” “Nah,” Wonder Man judged, checking his hair in a mirror. “He isn’t going anywhere. I put him in a holding cell and broke his arms and legs. How’s he gonna escape?” Jarvis waited until the lovebirds had slammed the front door behind them before allowing himself to stamp a geranium to death. Even that senseless act of violence wasn’t easy for him because of the full-length body cast he was in. “This can’t be happening,” he told himself. “Melissa is my fiancée, not Wonder Man’s squeeze toy. And the Legion can’t be dead… can they?” Jarvis had no memory of how he had been placed in this tormenting personal universe by the Hooded Hood as part of that villain’s plan to keep the heroes’ minds occupied whilst he commanded their bodies and powers against Baron Zemo. All that Jarvis knew was that he had to somehow find out what was going on, get Melissa back, and kill Wonder Man horribly. “The prisoner!” he exclaimed. “That fake CrazySugarFreakBoy! He might be the key to this!” It took Jarvis thirty minutes to manoeuvre his zimmer frame down to the holding area. Fortunately no-one had thought to delete his security access codes so he was able to raise the omnium steel door to CrazySugarFreakBoy’s cell. “Jarvy!” the hyperactive multi-hued youth called out, bounding across the cell and catching the butler even before Jarvis realised that his zimmer frame had been knocked over by the newest Legionnaire. “So we’re into the big rescue scenario now, huh?” “Dreamcatcher? Is that the real you?” Jarvis checked. “Sure. This is a parallel universe, kinda like Heroes Reborn only less sucky and a lot nastier, and I had one as well, only mine had my dead girlfriend in it and then she showed me the way to think myself out, well not out, more sideways sort of and so I got here and then Wonder Man caught me and Mr Rodgers sat on my chest and…” “Hold on!” Jarvis interrupted. Every part of his body hurt now, because CSFB’s explanation had managed to give him a headache to join the rest. “Wonder Man said he’d broken your arms and legs.” “Hah! Wondy isn’t exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, is he? He completely underestimated my flexibility, and I wasn’t about to correct him, like when Spidey played possum to capture Kraven the Hunter during that fight they had in Central Park…?” “Wait a minute,” Jarvis urged. “You said your dead girlfriend got you out?” “Yeah.” For a moment the bright primary colours around CrazySugarFreakBoy! dimmed and there was a terrible sadness in his normal, human, eyes. “First, she died, which was horrible, and then we broke up, which hurt almost as bad. We're still good friends, though.” “This is all… an illusion?” “Not exactly. You remember the Hooded Hood?” Jarvis recalled it all at once. The dinner. The Hood spending time with him and Lisa, and all the while changing the butler’s history, making Lisa his sister, undermining them. And then there was Melissa, whom he remembered so very clearly, but from an entirely different history. “The Hood!” snarled Jarvis. “He has a lot to answer for!” “Yeah, he’s a really neat villain, isn’t he? I’m looking forward to having ten villains, so that I can do one of those top ten features at the back of my annual.” “We’ve got to get out of here,” Jarvis decided. “The others might be in trouble.” Fin Fang Foom and the Lady Glasrobyl were on the run through the Enchanted Forest. So far they had managed to have eight random encounters and Foomy was running out of hit points. “So let me get this straight,” the dragon in human form summarised. “You actually volunteered to be chained up and eaten by a dragon rather than have to go on a date with Sir Edmin?” “Oh yes,” Glasrobyl agreed. “Better to get eaten your way.” “And if he managed to, um, date you…” “It’s called marriage by force majeure.” Glasrobyl had done quite well at damsel school and knew all the technical terms for wedding by rape. “Then all my lands would belong to him after the death of my ailing father.” “What’s wrong with your pop?” “He would have a son-in-law with a sword,” Glasrobyl answered. “Then all the land would belong to that cruel fiend. That is why you have to promise me that you will eat me if he catches up with us.” Fin Fang Foom was not too comfortable with this concept. “Why don’t I just fight him?” he suggested. Glasrobyl gestured to the petticoat bandages which still hadn’t quite managed to staunch the crimson oozing on the wyrm’s body. “He has enchanted weapons, dweomered to destroy dragons. As you learned in your previous encounter you wouldn’t stand a chance.” “Too true!” Sir Edmin the Dragonslayer declared, spurring his charger out from the ambush he had prepared. “You stay there and loosen your corset, Glasrobyl. I’ll be with you as soon as I’ve added this dragon’s head to my collection.” “Excuse me,” Foom objected. “I’m here, you know.” “Not for long,” the black knight promised. “Eat me now, Foom!” the damsel begged. “In a moment,” the dragon responded absently. “I’ve got a question of armour-boy here. Hey, codpiece-head! Does your enchanted armour protect you from trees?” “Trees?” puzzled Sir Edmin, just before Foom changed shape and hurled one at him. The knight fell of his horse with a satisfying clang. His mailcoat would turn dragon breath, dragon claws, and dragon teeth. The manual said nothing about bloody huge cedars. “How about gravity?” Foom persisted. “Does it protect you from gravity?” And the dragon hooked the tip of his tail between Sir Edmin’s legs and flicked him upwards about eighty feet in the air. “Aaaaahhhhh!” answered the Dragonslayer. FFF selected a fine ash tree to use as a bat. “Or baseball?” he asked the falling knight. “Does it protect you from baseball bats?” And as Sir Edmin plummeted back down to earth, the full-sized dragon hit a home run with the shiny tin ball. Sir Edmin disappeared over the misty mountains and wasn’t coming back. Foom resumed human shape and fell down exhausted. He had opened up a few of his previous wounds. “My dragon!” the Lady Glasrobyl breathed. “You won! You saved me?” “All… part of the service,” Foom panted. “As you say,” the damsel acknowledged. She had done really well in Being Rescued 101 and knew the procedures. “And now you must have your reward.” There was a slithering of silk as of a gossamer gown falling onto the grass. “Ah!” Foom said. “You should know that I have a… girlfriend. We’re… well, it’s not an open relationship…” “Surely your lady would not deny you solace and comfort when you are so very far from home and have fought so bravely?” Glasrobyl suggested. Foom considered this. “Hiya Foomy!” CrazySugarFreakBoy! shouted, bounding out into the clearing and looping himself up into a tree. Jarvis strode after him, his injuries left behind in the reality he had just escaped from. The Lady Glasrobyl gave a little shriek and dived into a bush for modesty. “We’re here to rescue you from the horrors of your exile,” Jarvis explained somewhat ironically. “No way are you interesting!” the small child holding the sea-monkey bowl over the toilet pan pronounced with a deadly finality. “You don’t do any of the funny things it said on the packet. You just swim around and hide in that crappy plastic castle. So it’s sayonara, sucker!” “I’m king of the bleedin’ sea-mokeys,” Banjooooo shouted back, “and if you think I’m doing vaudeville for a snotty adolescent with the personality of a shark then you can take your Action Man and stick it here the sun don’t shine!” But since the eight year old didn’t speak the ultrasonic tongue of sea-monkeys it really didn’t make any difference. There was a sudden splash and Banjooooo’s world became circumscribed by cold white porcelain. “Don’t touch that handle!” Jarvis commanded, arriving just in time. Foom made sure that this particular boy was going to have enuresis problems until he was in college. “I tell thee, I hast no wish to be a giant bridge for thee to drive thy smurfy wagons beneath whilst singing of the joys of friendship and secondary merchandising!” Donar proclaimed to the happy blue midgets who were swinging from his hair. “Donar’s such a grouch / Donar’s such a grump / Donar makes us laugh / And we love him so much!” the Smurfs sang. Sure, it didn’t rhyme, but it was full of sentiment. For the eleven thousandth time Donar attempted to reach down and pull the head off one of these irritating cartoon creatures. And for the eleven thousandth time the Rules of the Place cut in and turned his gesture to an affectionate pat on the head. A dozen or more foot high lady Smurfs snuggled against his thighs in affection. “Way to go, dude! You’ve scored!” CrazySugarFreakBoy! called out happily. “Yeah!” snickered Fin Fang Foom. “I only got a beautiful damsel. She wasn’t blue with a huge nose or anything!” Donar growled and attempted to hurl Mjalcolm at the dragon. The Rules of the Place transmuted this into something else. “Thanks for the flowers, Donar” Banjoooooo acknowledged. “Can we get out of here now before my allergy to blue midgets cuts in?” “Thou knowest a way from this terrible place?” Donar asked eagerly. “Sure. All you have to do is sort of think sideways and realise that it’s a bit like in Avengers Forever where they’re using the chronospheres only we don’t have those cool Pachecho spheres all we have is…” “We can escape,” Foom cut into CrazySugarFreakBoy’s monologue. “Just come with us. If you can tear yourself away from your girlfriends.” “Thou rememberest that once from this place I am no longer restrained and will whuppeth thy butt?” Donar pointed out. Foom stopped sniggering then. “Jarvis is also free,” Banjooooo explained to the Ausgardian as they stepped into the next reality. “But he had to pop back to his prison world. He said that he’d forgotten something.” Jarvis rejoined the team a couple of rescues later. Rocket Racoon was now with the group, although he insisted on being carried on Donar’s shoulder. “I will never walk again,” the rodent promised, now liberated from his tortuous hamster wheel. NTU-150 had also been released from his tenure as a toy Transformer, although he appeared unscathed by his encounter. He had even got a few new ideas for some improvements he could make to himself. And Tina would probably appreciate the storage space. “We went to rescue Dark Knight and he wasn’t there,” Foom explained the Jarvis. “It was some kind of spooky loony bin but the only person we could find was the Indigo Impostor from the Purveyors of Peril, and he was just a basket case by the time we got there.” “What do you expect, the things they were doing to him?” Banjooooo pointed out. “Although I thought that thing with the prawns was way over the top.” “So where is he now?” Jarvis enquired. The Legionnaires looked at each other then at their leader. “Well, we voted to leave him there,” Rocket Racoon explained. “We decided it was more important to rescue Hatman.” Jarvis looked around. “So where is he?” The others pointed to the decorated gym where the High School Prom was taking place. “Oh Hatsie… I never knew it could be like this,” Jane Lane breathed as the music ended. She really felt as if she could Rock Around the Clock with this boy. In fact, she might even let him Find His Thrill on Blueberry Hill afterwards. “Way to go, Hatsie!” Rog Podge gasped, thanking his sister for the dance and pausing to gape at the Cheerleading Goddess that had come to the ball with his friend. “But how did you manage to convince her to come?” “Yeah,” Flotsie agreed, pausing only to place a paper bag over his own date’s head. “When you told Mr Cool that you could date Jane Lane and he said he’s rip your lungs out if you were lying I figured you were a major candidate for an iron lung for the rest of your life! So how’d you do it?” “Oh really, boys,” the perfect California blonde chided them. She didn’t usually talk to such poor specimens but since they were Hatsie’s friends she figured she could condescend to them a little bit without losing locker hall-cred. “How could a girl not go for that amazing hair?” Flotsie and Rog noticed for the first time that Hatsie had now got slicked back hair just like Mr Cool’s. “Wow!” and “Neat!” they contributed. Hatsie took them to one side so he could confide in his two friends alone. “Listen, don’t tell Jane, OK, but this hair that turns her on so much… it’s a wig. A hat. It’s not real.” “No!” Flotside was shocked. Rog had a question. “So where did you get it?” “That’s the amazing thing,” Hatsie explained. “I got it from Mr Cool. It’s his! He wears a rug!” “And he knows you borrowed it?” Flotsie wondered. The fire exit doors burst open as an enraged leather-jacketed bald motorcyclist revved into the dance-hall. “He does now,” Rog Podge estimated. The Lair Legion arrived in time to save Hatman’s life, if not his hairpiece. Sersi dragged her weary eyes back up from the special-sauce-smeared work-surface. She pushed back a tangled lock of her own greasy hair and forced a painful plastic smile for the next visitor to Burger Hell. “Hello, welcome-to-Mc-Greasy’s. My-name-is-Sersi. How-may-I-help-you?” “It’s us, Sersi,” Jarvis called, snapping his nose under her fingers to break the Austernal out of her brain-numbed trance. “We’re here to rescue you.” “But before we do,” Rocket Racoon added, “Could be get five Mega Woppas with fries, a strawberry milkshake, and...?” The others caught up with the flying Racoon three realities later. It was going badly for the Little Mermaid. Only two days after she had pledged her voice in exchange for rather painful legs she was on the run from the palace guard having decided enough was enough and castrated the prince with a dinglehopper. That last unfortunate crunch underfoot as she had carelessly fled down the steps probably meant that she didn’t have to worry about that annoying crab advisor either. You see, this Little Mermaid was not as other Little Mermaids. This one was really Starseed, of the Lair Legion, Supreme Gaaaahhhhh!!!! etc, etc. And he wasn’t enjoying the way these bouncing bits on his chest were throwing him off his sprint, nor the fact that his voice-based powers really depended on him having a voice to use them. “Over here! I see her!” one of the toy-soldier-dressed guards called out, spotting Starseed’s slim redheaded form fleeing down towards the ocean. Starseed’s escape would have worked right then and there if the witch that gave him the power to breathe air hadn’t removed his ability to breath water. As it was, the guard raised his musket, took careful aim, and prepared to take out the Bobbitting little bitch who had just ended the royal lineage. Jarvis had just one chance to save her. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a tattered black-and-red rag of costume that he happened to have there as a souvenir of a very recent encounter. He quickly formed it up into a slingshot, dug into his other pocket to find a missile, and caught the soldier right on the forehead. The guard went down as if hit by something small, spherical, and composed entirely of ionic energy. Fortunately Jarvis still had another such missile in his pocket and intended to keep it for a special occasion. “Hello, Starseed,” grinned Foom. “It seems to be my day for rescuing damsels in distress.” Freed from the constraints of the reality he had been condemned to, Starseed joined Donar in an appreciation of Fin Fang Foom’s sense of humour. There was war in the Central Post Office. There are only so many queues, forms, and closed counter windows that a man can take before he cracks, and Messenger had reached that limit. But when he had started out with a blast letter on the out-to-lunch Complaints Department shutter he had not expected such rapid response. The Postal Defence Force sprang into action, well-versed in dealing with crazed postal employees. Their restraint nets and subdual batons at the ready they tried to corner the angry mail carrier and bring him down. But Messenger was no easy Clayven, soft and snapped. He was a hero, and a really pissed hero at that, fighting for his very existence with a mailbag full of specially-prepared correspondence. And the PDF quickly got the message. Razor letters slashed through their restraining nets whilst Messenger fled through the screaming queues in a free-for-all battle for human dignity and respect. They’d just pinned him down after a three-hour chase and were about to show him dignity and respect with their batons up his backside when the Lair Legion appeared. “How many of our guys are we going to find on dates?” CrazySugarFreakBoy! wondered. It was the last rescue. Only Space Ghost was unaccounted for now, and he was clearly here, in this massive TV studio where a frenzied and mindless audience was hooting their delight as the moron on the stage suffered horribly. “Where can he be?” Sersi asked. In deference to her newfound freedom she had reassembled her wardrobe into something a bit more exotic. Hatman felt she might have gone a bit over the top with the artificial fruit. “Probably dating someone,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! considered. “Yes, that reminds me,” Banjooooo answered. “How exactly did you get to the point in that battle with the Purveyors where your costume was bouncing around without you?” “But it was bouncing around with PsychoAcidpervGrrl’s outfit,” Foom remembered. “Oh that,” CSFB! replied. “Well, I was fighting Gwendy, and she shot me up with that hypodermic, drug dart, fun-gun of hers, and when I finally woke up again ... well, if she really is my sister like she claims, not only was what we were doing completely illegal in almost all fifty states, but if even half of that scary religious stuff that my Grandma Vivian always used to try and tell me - whenever I went to visit her in New England - was actually true, then one or both of us are probably gonna wind up going to Hell for it. Personally, I honestly don't know whether or not what we did qualified as wrong, but one thing I can say for certain; she's got GREAT muscle control in her hips.” There was a pause in the conversation. “Moving on…” Sersi said quickly. Jarvis returned from looking round the studio. “I can’t see Space Ghost anywhere in the whole audience,” he reported. “He must be here somewhere,” NTU-150 objected. At which point the lights all dimmed except for the big spotlight on centre stage where Clarence “Cholly” Oxenburger, host of Superhero Death Torment was asking the crowd whether the mangled contender should go on to try and get the grand prize. “He’s been a real sport so far, ladeees and germs. He survived Flatulence Camp. He duked it out in the maggot pit with the Blubber Triplets – and survived a date with them afterwards. He got through the Moulinex Rotary challenge, and now he’s survived the ground glass body surfing. So should he take the money, or should he go on for the big prize?” The audience screamed and shouted. But most of them wanted to see the contestant go for the big one. “What kind of dumb sucker’s gonna go for that kind of game?” Messenger wondered. The Legion looked at one another. “Verily, yon Space Ghost be most deeply in the shitteth,” Donar judged. Cholly heard the roar of the crowd. “The grand challenge it is. What do you say, contestant? Speak up if you don’t want to go for the big prize!” Space Ghost didn’t speak. Or move. He just lay there and quietly seeped. “What a sport, ladies and gentlemen. Space Ghost is going for the big one! Girls, bring on the Pirhana Tank, the napalm, and the fishnet stockings!” “Do we have to interrupt this?” Sersi asked Jarvis. “It’s getting quite interesting.” There was another vote amongst the Lair Legion. “Alright. So we rescue him,” NTU-150 finished the counting. It was pretty close. “But does anyone have the slightest idea how we get out of here and back to the Parodyverse?” Visionary was a man with a dilemma. Whilst his body was being possessed by his former teammate spiffy and a few hitch-hikers from the nether planes, Visionary’s immortal essence was being held by two grossly fat horned demons before the throne of Mefrothto, Prince of Fibs. The aforementioned Mefrothto had posed a certain moral question to his guest. Either Visionary was a fake man, in which case he had no soul, so there was nothing for these pit fiends to torment, or else Visionary was real, in which case it was welcome to pitchfork city. “Um, can I have a piece of paper to help me work it out?” Visionary asked the crimson-hued abysmal ruler. “I just need some time to answer.” “There is only one time down here, and that is too late,” Mefrothto quoted (from Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, by the way). “Choose now.” Then an interesting thing happened. The sky burst open as a rip in interstitial space occurred, and a SPUD helicarrier fell through it and slammed down into the Brimstone Lake. A great deal of demons suddenly smelt new meat and took wing towards the craft. Then there was a spectacular lightshow as Spandex Lass and Oddhorn abandoned their corporeal shell and got down-and-dirty in their true spiritual forms. Then some concrete-block-crunching demons got the shock of their lives as they found a surprise Darkhwk at the centre of their package. Then a bright streak of thought-energy cut across the netherworld shouting “Hello, uncute devil-spawnings! Yo has come to be fighting with you!” Then in the distance Visionary could see through the ripped-open side of the fallen helicarrier where Cheryl was just about fending off an incoming stream of ravening fiends. “Your choice?” Mefrothto demanded of the potentially fake man, seemingly oblivious to this invasion of his nether-realm. “Oh bugger off!” Visionary told the Prince of Evil, kicking him on the shin before he raced between the two surprised pit fiends and pelted over the burning landscape. None of that dilemma crap meant a thing to him while Cheryl was in danger. “What… what happened?” spiffy demanded, getting off the floor to find himself back in his own familiar body. The Voyeur and a Junior Reader also rose in their own shapes. The Voyeur looked down at the sprawled shape of Visionary and scowled to think that he had been forced to wear that. He felt he needed a nice long soak in the tub to get the psychic musk off him. “Spandex Lass and Oddhorn got into a fight and have cancelled each other out,” he observed. “It seems that by sending you to annoy the Hood and sending Oddhorn to stop you interfering too much Mefrothto slightly contravened the celestial equivalent of SALT II and so the upper planes sent in the angelic equivalent of the Special Forces, namely the deceased Spandex Lass.” Then the prone form of Visionary rolled over and said, “Whooaaaahhhh!” “Vizh! Is that you this time?” Fleabot said hopefully. The microrobot had been trying to work out just what the heck it had done to the helicarrier engines but it hopped down now to determine who was the latest occupant of its companion’s mortal shell. “I just got near the helicarrier and there was this… sucking feeling.” “Yeah, I got that when I saw the new Star Wars film,” a Junior Reader contributed, and proceeded to ruin the plot with some key spoilers right up to the point where spiffy tried Spandex Lass’ technique and found that it worked real fine. “That really is using the force,” Visionary winced. Then he remembered his purpose. “Cheryl and Tina are in trouble,” he warned his companions. “Let’s go help them!” Then he caught up with the next improbable thing that was happening to him. “spiffy? Aren’t you supposed to be dead?” The ch-clak of SPUD assault rifles locking to kill cycle from the troopers who had just arrived to examine the sabotage to their engine room distracted spiffy from answering. The Hooded Hood turned away from watching all of this through his Portal of Pretentiousness as Lisa came into his tower room at Herringcarp Asylum. “Ah, there you are. Look at this. It seems that there has been a plot to retrieve the Legionnaires from their exile and undo my schemes of universal conquest,” he told his newest acolyte. “spiffy and Visionary?” Lisa sniffed. “The universal higher powers must be getting pretty desperate, then?” The cowled crime-czar had to agree. “But enough of this glass-gazing, amusing as it is. You have something to tell me?” “The Scourge of the BZL are no more,” Lisa answered. “The Legion are searching Zemo’s castle now to find his frozen wife so that she can be microwaved in front of him. The Baron himself has fled.” “Excellent,” the Hood replied, closing one gauntleted fist in the sort of dramatic gesture so loved of stage-villains. “Zemo struggles to the last. As it should be.” “Aren’t you worried about them?” Lisa asked, gesturing to the shifting images of the real Lair Legion in the Portal of Pretentiousness. The Hooded Hood allowed himself a manic laugh. “Of course not. I fully expected them to find their way back eventually. Why do you think I have not eliminated the Purveyors of Peril yet? After all, the governments of the world have surrendered to my sway, the very strands of the Parodyverse begin to resonate to my will and will soon be mine to control entirely, and then I shall have accomplished all I set out to do. The only other need I have for the Purveyors now is for them to destroy the Legion in final battle.” “So… you did it. You’ve won?” The Hooded Hood leaned forward so that his own shadowed countenance was very close to Lisa’s face, and he spoke very quietly. “Nothing can stop me now!” Deep in space, the massive cosmic world-sucker that is Galactivac moved across the black void seeking new life and new civilisations with the intention of hoovering them up and absorbing them whole. The transport platform bearing the two mortal lifeforms appeared right in front of him. “Is that him?” Zemo checked, looking up at the skyscraper-sized Living Death that Sucks with an unimpressed seen-cosmic-beings-before-and-frankly-you-need-a-makeover-by-Jack-Kirby look. “I think I can definitely confirm that,” Goldeneyed nodded, trying not to sink to his knees with exhaustion at such a distant spacial jump. “Good.” Zemo made sure it was a tranquilliser dart he shot into the new superhero. After all, he was going to need another lift later. “Galactivac! Listen to me. I… am Zemo!” A number of investigative nozzles turned to regard the strange human who dared confront the hooverer or worlds. “I understand you seek planets to absorb!” Zemo declared. “Well it just so happens that I know of one. It’s name is Earth! I am here to lead you to it!” After all, Zemo reasoned, if he couldn’t rule the bloody planet he was damned if anyone else was going to get it. In our next and possibly final instalment: The battle for the helicarrier! The return of the true Lair Legion! Lisa’s choice! The big showdown with the Purveyors of Peril! The final triumph of the Hooded Hood! All this and the coming of… Galactivac! Due on your mailing boards somewhere around Thursday, CPU willing. Acknowledgements Section: Thanks to those who helped by suggesting unpleasant things to do to their characters, and especially to CrazySugarFreakKirk! who in addition to expanding the narrative for his character through his own literary endeavours during the adventure also sent me two CSFB! quotes used in the work above. See if you can determine which two they are. And the responses: The Hooded Hood Triumphant (The Hooded Hood, bringing it all home soon) (22-May-1999 10:25:52) I... am... stunned... this is went well beyond phenomenal... (n/t) (Stunned Lisa) (22-May-1999 11:05:54) This was...... well........ fantastic HH!! Well done!! (n/t) (Messenger) (22-May-1999 11:19:47) Not bad... (Yo) (22-May-1999 11:33:59) Extremely cool! But us Legionairres seem to have real bad timing for resuces :) (n/t) (Hatman, whishing that a hat could get him a date in real life) (22-May-1999 11:42:08) Yes! I scored with my underage sister! Um, wait, that sounds wrong ... ;) (n/t) (CrazySugarFreakDavidLynchBoy!) (22-May-1999 12:35:55) Oh well. Even if Heike and my followers go up in smoke, it will be worth it to watch my enemies go with them. (n/t) (Baron Zemo) (22-May-1999 12:50:02) This is by far the best damn story I've ever read here.'nuff said. (n/t) (Jarvis,using Wonder Man's balls and costume as a slingshot...) (22-May-1999 14:23:17) So... We're safe from Galativac in hell, right? (n/t) (Visionary) (22-May-1999 14:28:19) I'm dead? Or am I now just nice? Either way it explains a lot. (n/t) (Moo) (23-May-1999 21:42:10) Ask yourself. did we see your body, on panel, alongside a clear narrative caption announcing your demise? (n/t) (The Hooded Hood, shocked at how easily people on this board assume that they're dead. When the Hood really kills you, you are in no doubt about it.) (24-May-1999 18:43:34) A reprise of the early glory days of... the Hooded Hood |
| The Hooded Hood Chronicles #16: The Hooded Hood Triumphant (A reprise of the early glory days of... the Hooded Hood) (08-Dec-1999 18:07:08) |
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