Baron Zemo's Lair. - <font color="lightslategrey" face="Lucida Sans Unicode">The Hooded Hood Chronicles #17: The Hooded Hood and the Snares of Mefrothto</font>

Baron Zemo's Lair

The Hooded Hood Chronicles #17: The Hooded Hood and the Snares of Mefrothto
Thursday, 09-Dec-1999 18:21:33
195.92.194.44 writes:

The Hooded Hood Chronicles #17:
The Hooded Hood and the Snares of Mefrothto

If Heironymous Bosch had been born in the twentieth century as opposed to the fifteenth he would definitely have been a comic book artist. Anyone who was that good at depicting devils, torture, and fornicating women would have made a fortune in some of the independent press titles. And Bosch would have gone down big style in the 1960’s underground comics movement with his title the Furry Fiend Brothers.
In fact Bosch would have been the best artist to depict the situation that some of our heroes found themselves in shortly after the SPUD helicarrier crashed. The massive flying headquarters of the Super-menace Principal Undercover Directorate was slowly sinking into a lake of smouldering brimstone. It was under siege by a range of increasingly bizarre demonic entities, where horns, wings, claws, teeth, and other less mentionable body parts were more or less randomly distributed. Massive yellow flames licked periodically across the surface of the pool, and the demon lord Mefrothto stood on a high black rock overlooking the carnage and watched the last stand of the Parodyverse’s last heroes.
They were the last heroes because the rest had all been pretty much neutralised. The Hooded Hood, a compelled villain with the ability to restructure continuity, had pulled off a rather elaborate masterplan by convincing the leaders of the planet to arrange for the arrest of the super-powered community. The Hood had drawn a collection of villains from alternate timelines, formed them into the Purveyors of Peril, and sent them out to do the governments’ dirty work for them. Most captured heroes were phased away into pocket dimensions through the Hood’s Portal of Pretentiousness. The rest were here, on the fallen helicarrier.
Mefrothto well understood the Hood’s scheme. Like the cowled crime-czar, the Lord of Fibs knew that the Parodyverse was almost literally the sum of its superheroes. Eliminate them and a single villain could become its god. The potential for this had always existed, and occasionally manifested as the Parody Master. Now the Hood was trying to make that destiny manifest, and had cleverly arranged it so that once the heroes were gone from the prime Parodyverse nothing could stop him.
Not that Mefrotho wanted him stopped. Far from it. That was why he had ensured that the dead Legionnaire spiffy’s plans to save the day had gone awry. The deceased hero’s struggles had led only to the sabotage of the SPUD helicarrier’s engines and the dimensional rift which had downed the great vessel here with Earth’s last heroes aboard. And once here the heroes were naught more than prey for Mefrothto’s hordes.
Now the Hooded Hood had won. Soon his power over the Parodyverse would be complete. And then he would hand that power, that absolute authority, over to Mefrotho. Because Mefrothto had a hostage, and the Hood would do anything to save his beloved teddy bear Pooty, even if it cost him the world.
There was a bright flash overhead. That would be Darkhwk and Yo battling against the Dukes of the Seventh Chasm. And that acid steam rising from the stern of the helicarrier suggested that the Chaos Ballerinas had breached the hull and were going for the kill. The heroes would not last very long now.
The Voyeur watched Mefrothto watching the last struggles of the heroes. “You used me as well,” the fallen Observer accused the Demon Lord. “You trapped me into helping that poor pathetic fern boy so you could flush out the angelic protector and neutralise her.”
“Using people is what hell is all about,” Mefrothto confided. “And I was using you long before you met poor, deceased, spiffy. How do you think you fell from your office in the first place?” Then Mefrothto glanced over his shoulder and blasted the watching Voyeur, because he couldn’t stand a being who just stared with big googly eyes. “You may go now, however,” the Lord of Fibs told the ashes.

“This is not going well,” Cheryl judged. There were an infinite number of demons outside, and they weren’t here to dance on the head of a pin. She glanced across at her comrades, and saw that although they were holding the line they couldn’t do so forever. Tina had grabbed up one of the manga-sized guns and was blowing seven kinds of hell – pretty much literally when you consider where they were - out of the creatures which were invading the helicarrier. And wasn’t that quiet, baffled Melissa with the energy nunchakas giving that slime devil the beating of a lifetime?
The rear control room door slip open and two more SPUD troopers bustled in, dragging two handcuffed figures with them. “We found the saboteurs, Colonel Drury!” they reported, throwing spiffy and Visionary onto the ground.
“Visionary! I KNEW you were behind all this!” Cheryl declared.
“All I wanted was a vacation,” Visionary said miserably. “You know, a few months off from the daily grind of being attacked by super-villains. A little quality time with some corn. And here I am again, having been possessed by a dead Legionnaire, gated through to hell, and posed terrible moral dilemmas by a nasty chap with red horns, being accused of sabotage by people with guns that make threatening whirring noises when they power up."
“It’s all my fault actually,” spiffy admitted. “I was tricked into bringing the helicarrier here. And now I have doomed the planet!”
“Isn’t that Messenger’s riff?” Tina checked. She quickly scanned what she could find of the two minds in front of them. “They’re innocent,” she told Drury. “Let them go. Things are so bad we could use even their help.”
“I came to save you, Cheryl,” Visionary told his wife as they embraced.
“Of course you did, darling,” Cheryl understood perfectly. “Now pick up a gun, shoot the things with horns and claws, and try not to kill anybody on our side.”
“These are, um, the reinforcements?” checked Melissa, pausing only to adjust her bright red costume towards semi-decency. “The rescue squad.”
“Don’t despair,” Tina shouted back across the melee. “There might be another rescue squad out there somewhere.”
The demons continued their relentless attack. In the helicarrier engine room Fleabot kept on experimenting with frequencies for his dimensional portal. And whilst nobody was looking spiffy crept out to have another word with Mefrothto.

It had been the sort of big reception that somehow the US Government never put on for the Lair Legion. The heads of all the more significant states had been there, and also the leaders of industry and commerce. It had been a glittering evening on the White House terrace, and everyone had been extremely polite and receptive on the basis that the Hooded Hood was now controlling the nuclear arsenal of the planet and could toast any nation that happened to use the wrong soup spoon.
The Hooded Hood had outlined the first of his measures for sorting out the planet to his liking. Already crime was way down after his nailing the bastards hands to a railroad track policy, and starving third world citizens were being fed due to his send them food now or have it cut out of your stomachs later doctrine. It was clear that the cowled crime-czar had given a lot of thought to what he would do with the planet after he conquered it.
“So few tyrants understand that conquering worlds is only a means to an end, not an end in itself,” he had told Dark Lisa, gesturing out past the suddenly very polite press corps beyond the White House gates to demonstrate his new domain. “What is important once one has the planet is what one does with it. There are many improvements yet to be made.” From the lawn came the screams of various popular musicians, politicians, and comic book creators being crucified.
And all the time the Hood’s power grew, and people became less resistant to his rule. The heroes of the planet had been gone for too long now, the other dominant wills of the Parodyverse absence allowing the Hood to gain an unassailable control. Even if they returned somehow it would be too late.
But for all that it was a magical evening (in the sense that it didn’t feel real, and that magic could be wondrous and terrifying both at the same time) Lisa had slipped away early and returned to Herringcarp Asylum to think things through. She knew that this would give the jealous VelcroVixen an opportunity to try and undermine her position with the Hood, but that didn’t seem important right now. She could always slip some ground glass into the bitch’s facial cream later.
So whilst the Hooded Hood accepted the plaudits and worship of his subjects, Lisa stalked the old stone corridors of the bizarre asylum until at last her steps brought her to a small, padlocked door. Lisa tried that lock-picking thing Jarvis – her brother now, she remembered –had tried to teach her, but in the end she lost patience and just took the damn chain off with her whip and went inside the small pocket dimension beyond the door..
The Dark Knight was a real mess. The Purveyors of Peril, angry to be denied a chance at torturing the remaining members of the Liar Legion, had worked out a rota for playing with their one prisoner. And still DK wouldn’t break.
“Um… are you still alive?” Lisa checked.
The Dark Knight twitched, which opened up some of the scabs.
“I… I just wanted to tell you,” Lisa hesitated, “that it was nothing personal. Betraying you, I mean. It was about me, not about you. It was about how abandoned I was… am. About how nothing matters now.”
The Dark Knight oozed some more.
“I’m still not quite up to this villainess thing yet,” Lisa confessed. “I couldn’t even kill my own sister when it came down to it. She’s locked away with the rest of the Scourge.” She straightened up and narrowed her eyes. “But I will do better.”
As she was leaving the Dark knight looked up and spoke. “Lisa?” he croaked. “This isn’t you.”
“It… it is now.”
“No. Lisa is the heart and soul of the Lair Legion,” the Dark Knight answered, each word costing him in pain and willpower. “Lisa is the most loving and most caring of us. She is the one who heals us, who protects us, and who inspires us. She is the first to encourage and the last to condemn. It is for Lisa that we come together and do the things we do.”
“No. That’s not true…”
“Lisa is our… our standard, the flag around which we rally. Do you think it an accident that in attacking the Legion the Hooded Hood chose to sunder you and Jarvis first? With Jarvis confused and distracted, and with you carved away from us, the rest could not stand.”
“No…”
“I am a man who believes in very little these days,” the Dark Knight wheezed, hanging in his chains, “…but I do believe in Lisa.”
Lisa slammed the door shut on the ever-dangerous Dark Knight and fled away from his words, down the corridors and deep into the house of madness.

DarkHwk was having a particularly tough battle. First there were the ever-increasing hordes of things that should have come from a Cronenburg movie based on a short story by Clive Barker. Then there was the fact that the gravity over the volcanic island chain that rose up from the lava pits lost interest at about three hundred feet, meaning that half the time he was having to manoeuvre in zero-G. Finally, and by no means least, Yo was enjoying this so much that he kept squealing “Wheeeeee!” very loudly every time he swooped past the armoured hero.
“Could you explain exactly what is going on?” DarkHwk asked. “One minute I was answering the doorbell, then I wake up with concrete pouring over me, and then I get pounded on by fiends from the pit. I feel as though a half-page flashback would be really useful just now.”
Yo explained. “Is simple, cute DarkHwk. Is Hooded Hood with being the Yurt in big present box to orphan. Legion fight and Sersi goes to sewers with karaoke to beat cute tentacle thing with much drinking of Space Phantom. Everybody but Yo vanish away but Yo has already vanished to save bunnies on Yo planet from being sucked. Then Yo save bunnies from Zemo and Zemo save cute golden eyed Goldeneyed and Frog Boy shot. Meanwhile Jarvis becomes Lisa’s sister, gets engaged to very cute Melissa, but he is vanished already but has done this before. Big robots sent by President to be arresting Legion because they take over the planet but arrest Cheryl and Tina by mistake and President says he is very very sorry and please not to be doing that with big obelisk thing any more so Yo stops that. Cute Dan Drury smokes big stinky cigar and drops concrete on uncute monsters to say ‘Wa-Hoo’ to them. See?”
DarkHwk concentrated on hitting the bad guys.
“Frog Man was dead but is better now.” Yo added helpfully.

You demand what?” Mefrothto, Prince of Hell, Lord of Fibs, Master of the Infernal Legions, demanded back. “You, a mere deceased spirit, have the temerity to dictate to me?”
spiffy told himself that as a deceased spirit that could not be moisture trickling down his spiritual pants. “What I said,” he answered, an octave above the voice he had ideally wanted to use, “is that you had better let my friends go.”
The High Duke of Pain leaned forward with literally burning eyes. “Or?”
spiffy swallowed. Hard. “Or else.”
Mefrothto was not amused. “Little worm, you have ceased to amuse me. Now learn the true meaning of Hell!”
A number of things happened next, so it is best to use the magic of words to do this in slow motion. First, Mefrotho decided to do such unspeakably unpleasant things to spiffy that he would never recover, things so nasty that you have to be a TV evangelist to even think of them. But next before he could act upon that thought, spiffy went through phases of panic, blind terror, imminent sense of doom etc, and finally came out on the other side with defiant. After all, these were his friends he had been set up to entrap, and spiffy was not going to let them down, even if he was worse outclassed than Woody Allen vs Mike Tyson. And that one flash of selfless courage had a profound effect on this spiritual plane, because it completed the link that Fleabot had been vainly striving to sort out in the engine room of the downed SPUD helicarrier, and suddenly the beacon he’d been sending across the various realities that the Hooded Hood had been playing with locked on to the targets and hauled them across the multiverse to join the spiffmeister himself.
Don’t question the logic too much. Hell’s just like that, OK?
So, just to recap: Mefrotho had just said, “Little worm, you have ceased to amuse me. Now learn the true meaning of Hell!”
And a much deeper, louder voice said, “You want wyrms? You got it!” And then about two point five tons of draconic tail – of the kind usually associated with Fin Fang Foom – came into contact upside of Mefrothto’s head.
“spiffy? Is that you?” NTU-150 demanded, hurriedly reconfiguring his armour to scan for concealed ferns.
“Where the hell are we?” Rocket Racoon gasped as he caught a lungful of what the locals referred to as atmosphere.
“Who is that guy with the horns that Foomy’s just batted into the lake of brimstone?” Messenger wondered.
“Yes. Netherworld. Bad Guy,” spiffy explained with remarkable brevity, just before Mefrothto rose in wrath from his hot bath. And he was much larger now. And seriously cross.
The glowing enchanted pickaxe didn’t improve his temper as it sent him down into the lava for a second dip. “This is more liketh it!” Donar shouted. “E’en here in the Mefrothean realms the lair Legion shall smiteth evil. Let the minions of corruption cower in their pits! Let the cry go forth… um, Jarvis, hath we agreed on a catchy battle cry yet?”
Mefrothto rose for a second time from the fiery sea.
“GAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Starseed added, sending the Prince of Fibs plummeting backwards over a small atoll and back again into the lava. It seemed as if the Gaahhh! Master had a lot of frustration to work off after his recent sojourn as a mermaid. It was of considerable comfort to him that he appeared to be ruining Mefrothto’s day.
Jarvis had noticed the fallen helicarrier out across the brimstone lake. And high above those energy signatures had an uncanny resemblance to the characteristic visual effects of Yo and DarkHwk. “Plan time,” the leader of the Lair Legion decided.
But there was no more time as Mefrothto burst forth from the lava again, spewing forth a horde of adamantine insects, belching acid vapours, and roaring a terrible sound which struck like a hurricane-force wind. The Demon Lord ripped a thousand ravening entities from his own interior and sent them lunging towards the Lair Legion.

“We’re losing, an’ there’s no time to rescue everybody,” Dan Drury warned his companions. “That’s war!” He fired again, noting that the charge warning meter on his energy cannon was well down into the red part of the gauge and that the helicarrier had now sunk sufficiently low for the first orange trails of lava to start trickling across the decking of the security level.
“I am not leaving Fleabot!” Visionary insisted. It wasn’t bravery as far as the possibly-fake man was concerned. It was decency. He appealed to his wife. “I’ve got to get him out. You understand, Cheryl, don’t you?”
“You’ll probably get killed trying to make it down to the engine room,” Tina warned.
“You do understand?” Visionary asked Cheryl again.
“I understand,” his wife sighed, her eyes meeting Melissa’s for one moment of perfect understanding. “Do. Not. Get. Killed. I insist upon this.”
She watched Visionary rush away with a very worried expression.
“Why’d y’go an’ let him run off like that?” Drury demanded. But Tina understood. And to her surprise, Melissa found that she did too.
Visionary found himself wishing that he had never seen the movie “Titanic.” This was a bit like that, except that the water was lava here and instead of that rich slimy English guy there were about three hundred fireproof demons stalking the corridors. Also, the helicarrier didn’t seem very well signposted.
It didn’t seem as if any of the spawn of the pit were willing to help with directions. Visionary headed for the engine room and found himself in the holding cells. He asked the one remaining prisoner if he knew the way back to Fleabot.
“Of course not!” the foreign guy in the ragged pants answered. “Please to be getting me out of this prison before that lava comes in?”
It took Visionary ten precious minutes to get the door open. All the time the prisoner kept on telling him to stay calm.
“How can I stay calm?” Visionary demanded as the streams of magma dripped through the bulkheads above. “We’re sinking in a vat of lava surrounded by Sigourney Weaver’s worst nightmare apart from Bill Murray.”
“And surrounded by vicious demons even as you speak,” a rough, unpleasant voice contributed.
“And surrounded by… who said that?”
The lead vicious demon grinned a sinister, toothy smile at Visionary and his freed prisoner.
“Don’t…” the rescued man in the ragged purple pants begged. “Please, don’t…”
The demons fell on him laughing.
“Please don’t make me angry! Please don’t make me… me… urrraaaagghhhhh!!!!”
Visionary saw his life flash before his eyes. There seemed to be an awful lot of corn. Then there seemed to be a small armoured mountain rising up in front of him; and just as he was contemplating the deep spiritual meaning of the sight, it turned on the demons and converted them into interesting new wall patterns. The Yurt was back.

The Lair Legion were coming second. It wasn’t really their fault, because they were putting up one of the best fights of their career, and the measure of their success was that three minutes into the battle with Mefrotho none of them were dead.
They were sure in trouble though. The demon-bugs were everywhere, biting and gouging. Sersi’s costume seemed to suffer the most, as all adolescent readers will be delighted to hear. This is why comics are a graphic medium. The choking vapours, the gobbets of corrosive bile, the searing hefflire blasts which burned even Foom were taking their toll.
Spiffy watched the battle from a distance, wishing that he could do something to affect its outcome. He kicked a little pile of ashes before he realised that there were shreds of toga in it.
“Aw, Voyeur, man! What’s he done to you?” he asked, crouching down over the sad pile. Spiffy was rather sensitive on the subject of ashes.
The Voyeur was hardly in a position to answer.
A terrible wrath came over him. Rising up with renewed determination, spiffy ploughed back into the fray. “Hey, Mefrotho!” he shouted at the laughing demon lord. “Look at this!” And the handful of the Voyeur’s ashes went right into Mefrothto’s eyes as the Prince of Pain swung round to glower at spiffy.
“Aaaaaghhhh!” Mefrothto screeched, clawing at his face as the remains of the fallen Observer stung him.
“The Voyeur’d have wanted it that way,” spiffy assured himself. “Watching was his thing.”
Mefrothto’s temporary distraction allowed the Legion to regroup; but the Lord of Fibs once again raised his own power levels and renewed his attack with increasing vigour.
The Demon Lord gestured again, sending a new wave of little Mefrothtos out to leap upon the heroes. He was rather surprised when CrazySugarFreakBoy! bounced over them, using several as vaulting stools, and planted his feet into the Prince of Darkness’ nose. “Hiya, Frothy! Isn’t this neat, battling a cosmic-level villain right after we do an alternate-reality scenario?”
Mefrothto snarled in disbelief, gesturing to banish CrazySugarFreakBoy! through time and place to somewhere that he would never trouble the Lord of Fibs again.
But by that time Messenger was through, and those irritating razor letters were mussing Mefrothto’s hair. And then Rocket Racoon jetted the postman out of the way before a rain of hellfire could roast him. And then a Spank Ray at full power tanned him where his tail forked. And then Sersi matter-manipulated the rock under Mefrothto to bury him in the mud created by Hatman using his fireman’s helmet. And the Banjooooo stepped on him.
And then CrazySugarFreakBoy! reappeared and flipped over his head, laughing, “Wow! What a most excellent time-travel adventure as well! Tell you about it later guys! Thanks, Frothy!”
Mefrotho reinvented himself again, more powerful than before, and rose up in wrath to destroy the fleas that beset him.

“Okay, ya turkey-talkin’ slime-slobberin’ no-good puslickers! Ya may have won this round, but we’re gonna let you know ya been in a fight!” Dan Drury shouted as he used the last charge on his energy cannon; the last charge on any weapon the besieged heroes on the upper deck of the sinking helicarrier had.
“Is this it?” Melissa asked, as the demons swarmed forwards sensing that their foes had come to the end of their capabilities. “Are we… are we going to die?”
“This is usually when the last minute rescue arrives,” Tina assured her, but there was an unreassuring tone of doubt in her voice.
The rescue did not arrive.
“Visionary,” Cheryl whispered. She closed her eyes and waited to feel the claws tearing her up.
“No!” Melissa shouted, throwing her gun at the approaching horde. “I’m not going down yet. Back off, scumbags!”
The first demons reached out for Cheryl.
“You heard her! Back off!” Visionary leapt to the rescue. The demons slammed him off the wall and ceiling and down to the floor and prepared to rip his gory bits out.
“You ain’t gonna save her, pal,” the lead demon gloated.
Then the Yurt hit him. “Fake man is Yurt’s friend!” the radioactive mutated peasant hut warned the fiends. “Yurt smash horn-men who threaten Yurt’s friends!”
The whole battle got a bit graphic after that. It was just getting to the point that even an Image comic couldn’t print it when the floor collapsed, spilling the Yurt and his adversaries down into the lava pit below. None of them even noticed.
Cheryl helped the stunned Visionary up from the floor. “Did I rescue you?” he asked her, trying to work out which of the Cheryls he could see was his beloved one.
“Of course you did, darling,” Cheryl assured him. “Except for us being on a sinking helicarrier in Hades, with a shattered floor flooding the corner that we’re trapped in, we’re now perfectly safe.”
“Oh good,” he said, passing out.
Drury, Tina, and Melissa noticed that the molten rock Cheryl had mentioned was definitely coming closer with dramatically-paced quickness.
That was when Jarvis teleported across whilst the Legion were keeping Mefrothto busy. “Time to get you out of here,” he beamed. “I’ve already dropped NTU-150 down in the engine room. He and Fleabot are shouting at each other in fluent technobabble about how to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow and revert the ship to Earth so they’re happy. The engine room’s completely submerged but is lava-tight, so that’s not a problem. All we have to do is sort out the Demon Lord, fight off the hordes of hell, and we’re out of herrrrrrrrrr….” Jarvis spotted Melissa.
Jarvis spotted Melissa’s costume.
Jarvis remembered why he liked this superhero thing. What did the occasional cripplings and deaths means when you got to have moments like this?
Melissa glanced down at the scarlet outfit and gave a depreciating little shrug. “About time you got here, Timothy. I have a few things to discuss with you, Mister Jarvis of the Lair Legion.”
Tina and Cheryl exchanged approving glances. Melissa was catching on to this real fast.

“I think I see the problem,” NTU-150 considered, crawling out happily from beneath a partly dismantled helicarrier power generator. “That Spandex Lass who set up the transfer didn’t know that there had to be an equal exchange of mass between the two locations to make it stable. How much does this ship weigh?”
Fleabot shrugged. “One and a quarter million tons, maybe?” he estimated. Where are we going to get something that heavy to appear here?
NTU-150 checked his databank. “I know a building that will do,” he considered. “I hope out insurance fund has recovered from the moon incident though.”

Back at the big fight with Mefrothto the dialogue had gone to Defcom Five:
“Vile varlet. Taste ye now the wrath of Mjalcolm!”
“GAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! And sucks to you.”
“Missed me, Frothy! But you are an amazingly super villain. You’re definitely in my top ten!”
“And you have no fashion sense.”
“But that’s not why you’re due for a spanking.”
“Special delivery for you, demon. No need to wait for Christmas to enjoy these!”
“Rocket Racoon to the rescue!”
“Um, RR, I don’t think Sersi needed rescuing just then. Oh well, he’ll dig his way out eventually.”
“You think you have bad breath? Try this!”
“A bishop’s hat is called a mitre, actually. And of course I have one with me!”
“Mortals! You shall all rot in the darkest corner of my realm for this!”
And a couple of late entries: “Should’ve know the rest of the Legion would be around somewhere. Hi guys! Is that the bad guy? Let me just see how he likes amulet blasts…”
And also: “Hello, big frothing horned cutie! Yo is here to be fighting against you spawning slime of the pits!”
“Enough is enough. My patience is exhausted, but my power is unlimited. Now you die!”

Then, with a spang and a loud explosion from the generator room, the transfer was triggered. The helicarrier, all the SPUD operatives, the heroes, all vanished.
Spiffy didn’t.
“Where the hell did they go?” the wrathful Mefrotho demanded of the suddenly conspicuous fern-boy.
“Disneyland?” spiffy offered helpfully.
Mefrothto actually steamed with anger. He prepared to vent his rage upon his last remaining victim. He never got the chance.
There were two pieces of bad news he didn’t have yet. The first was that the Yurt hadn’t gone with the mortals, and was currently making his way through the prime cadre of the Legions of Damnation. The second was that NTU-150 had pulled a building through to replace the mass of the displaced helicarrier.
He found out about the first as the Dukes of Chaos thundered their retreat across the sulphur plains.
He found out about the second when one and a quarter million tons of Paradopolis cathedral fell on him.

The Hooded Hood looked up from his writing desk as Lisa slipped into his study. He put down his quill pen and passed some papers to VelcroVixen. “You may go now, Victoria,” he told her. The Hood’s lieutenant shot a glance of pure hatred across at Lisa as she passed.
“Have you brought news of Zemo?” the Hood asked, leaning back in his carved chair and cradling his fingers together.
“No. He has masked himself from both my power and the probings of the Portal of Pretentiousness,” Lisa admitted. “But that’s not what I’ve come to talk about.”
The Hood gestured to one of the soft leather chairs. “Then what is it, my dear?”
Lisa shook her head. “This isn’t how I thought it would be. I know you’ve conquered the world and that soon you’ll have subverted all Parodyverse continuity and so will have fulfilled your plans, but somehow it doesn’t seem…”
“It is all too easy,” the cowled crime-czar agreed. “I had expected something more of Zemo than merely to go into hiding. Some last minute gambit to make my victory mean something.”
“It’s not that,” Lisa persisted. “It doesn’t seem right. I know you’ve sorted out a lot of world problems. You made the trains run on time. People have stopped littering, on pain of amputation. Crime and poverty eliminated. But you have taken people’s free will, so it doesn’t mean anything anymore.”
“Everything has a cost, Lisa. You of all people know that. Without the pain of your past you would not be the strong, passionate, and complicated woman you are now. The loss of free will is the price the world has to pay for my benevolent rule.”
Lisa took a deep breath before taking the plunge. “It’s wrong though. And I can’t allow you to do it.”
“You can’t allow me?” The Hood suddenly sounded more dangerous. The shadows seemed to gather beneath his cowl.
“No. Because even if Jarvis has Melissa now, and even if I have lost everything, I am still going to do what is right. And that means stopping you.” She stood up and faced her enemy. “I am a Lair Legionnaire, the last one, but I will fight until the absolute end to prevent you winning. And until you have got rid of me you won’t have completely subverted the Parodyverse.”
The Hooded Hood rose and touched Lisa’s cheek sadly. “I will control it completely even without your passing,” he explained. “But it would take longer than I prefer. Will you reconsider your decision to oppose me?”
Lisa knocked the hand away. “Stuff it, mister. I’m taking you down!”
“Ah,” the Hood sighed.
At a gesture the entire Purveyors of Peril were suddenly present. “Destroy her,” he commanded.
“Our pleasure,” the VelcroVixen assured him. “Appendage Man, she’s yours…”
As Lisa remarkably prepared to defend her virtue and fight to the death to save a world from perfection, there was a second flash of light as the Lair Legion arrived.
“The Legion!” Lisa breathed; because just when she needed them most, her friends were there for her.
“The Purveyors of Peril!” Jarvis exclaimed. “Just the people we were hoping to meet! Legion, get ‘em!”
“We have got to get a battle cry,” Starseed noted as the final showdown began.

And atop Paradopolis Tower the atoms of the air began to coruscate. Strange and inexplicably chunky machinery materialised from nowhere and formed a massive extension that would not have passed even a more than usually corrupt town planning process. Random lashes of energy swirled around the apex. The sky turned black.
And Galactivac, the Living Death that Sucks, descended upon the planet Earth to feast.

In our next instalment (OK, so I said this was the final one and it turns out there’s one maybe two more. Tough. Deal with it.): The Lair Legion and the Purveyors of Peril debate the relative merits of the various philosophical issues presented by the Hood’s world takeover – not! spiffy returns to his own plotline. Zemo ups the ante in the supervillain sweepstakes. Oh, and Galactivac does exactly what you would expect him to do, and the heroes fail to stop him.

I’ll make an attempt at having the next section available sometime over the weekend, depending on the frequency of sarcastic comments from my wife about the amount of time I spend writing on the computer.

And the vox populi:

The Hooded Hood and the Snares of Mefrothto (The Hooded Hood; but this episode is dedicated to Lisa and her family) (27-May-1999 21:17:27)

Ian.... Thank you. (n/t) (Lisa, who is fortunate enough to have the finest people in the world as friends.) (27-May-1999 23:50:22)

Kick-ass as always, Ian. By the way, just to insert my own shameless plug here, look for the tale of exactly what happened to CrazySugarFreakBoy! on his time-travel adventure, coming soon! (n/t) (CrazySugarFreakBoy!) (28-May-1999 02:45:36)

Massive........ but very,very good. (Messenger) (28-May-1999 10:55:38)
Actually, my secretary mocks me for my two fingered typing (n/t) (HH's dark confession) (28-May-1999 17:38:34)

Damn.That's good. (n/t) (Jarvis, has nothing more to say) (28-May-1999 12:23:03)

I tend to make friends with odd fellows whose names begin with 'Y'... (n/t) (Visionary, Yurt-friend.) (28-May-1999 12:55:16)
dammit, that is true..Yi is really weird =P (n/t) (Yo) (28-May-1999 16:26:08)

It could be better... :) (Yo) (28-May-1999 14:52:24)
Epidermiological is a good word (n/t) (The erudite Hood) (28-May-1999 17:41:07)
Thanks! I´d try to remember it! (Yo) (28-May-1999 18:05:40)
Stop trying to confuse the foreigners,you evil villain.;) (n/t) (Jarvis) (28-May-1999 18:14:09)
Most interconfusicically, embutlered intransigent (n/t) (HH) (29-May-1999 04:11:27)
.......yeah,that too. (n/t) (Jarvis) (29-May-1999 11:16:35)

Two more reposts to go after this from... the Hooded Hood