Baron Zemo's Lair. - The Hooded Hood and the Day of Galactivac

Baron Zemo's Lair

The Hooded Hood and the Day of Galactivac
Friday, 04-Jun-1999 18:13:25
195.92.194.46 writes:

"I don't believe you. Where does it say it?"
Yo helpfully materialised a copy of Lee and Kirby's Guide to Cosmic Entities (1968 edition) and indicated the relevant paragraph: 'All planet-devouring metaphysical beings shall accept one suitable native of said menaced planet as herald in lieu of devouring said planet if said planet-devouring metaphysical being does not currently have a cosmically empowered herald, true believer.'
The planet-devouring metaphysical entity known as Galactivac looked miffed. Here he was, hovering over the trembling city of Paradopolis, his celestial vacuum apparatus all assembled on New Parody Tower (the highest point in the city), the powerful tendrils from his central cylinder already attached to the nozzles within his equipment, and now it looked like this immigrant thought energy being might have got him on a technicality. "It specifies a suitable herald must be presented," Galactivac argued. "No such herald has come forth."
Yo thought about this. His eyes brightened behind his Zorro mask. "Yo thinks Yo has a thought, planet-sucking monstrosity being! Yo is thinking that you will be having to have auditions for a new herald to replace that nasty bunny-molesting Scarlet Cyclist that you cosmically splatted!"
"Auditions?" the Living Death that Sucks growled.
Yo nodded enthusiastically. "Yo knows lots of candidates. Yo will suggest many suitable Yo-friends!"

High above the world the even-more-massive spacecraft of the massive Galactivac contained three unusual visitors. The first was Baron Heinrich Zemo, last surviving scion of the house of Zemo, the terribly scarred nemesis of the Lair Legion and general purpose archvillain. Zemo had suffered through a tough time lately, with his minions, fortress, and various plans being dismantled by the Lair Legion under the mental control of one who had every reason to hate him.
That was the second of the unusual visitors. The Hooded Hood was the grey-cowled manipulator of retrospective continuity, whose long schemings to dominate humanity had been thwarted by a previous Zemo plot, and who knew how to hold a grudge. Now that the Hooded Hood had managed to wrest narrative control of the Parodyverse, a control which was growing nearer to absolute by the hour and would be complete before the week was done, he had intended to take his time and make Zemo suffer before the Germanic villain's inevitable liquidation.
The fly in the ointment had been accidentally placed there by the third character present, the neophyte superhero Goldeneyed, whose own ability to jump between various alternate universes had been put to good use by Zemo, who had manipulated him into bringing the archvillain here, to the mothership of the Living Death that Sucks. Goldeneyed was just the slightest bit concerned to find out that his actions had allowed Zemo to send Galactivac to devour the Earth, and rather more unhappy to discover that he was beneath the notice of the two clashing archvillains.
"Well," Zemo challenged the Hood, "Do you still believe I don't have the resolve necessary to
make a first rate adversary?"
"A clever manoeuvre, I admit," the cowled crime-czar answered. "You have determined to destroy that which you cannot rule."
"OK, you pair of masked menaces," Goldeneyed warned them," You're under arrest!"
"You have not yet gained enough control over the narrative flow to overcome so powerful an entity as Galactivac," Zemo pointed out.
"True. But the returned Lair Legion will possibly keep the Living Death that Sucks occupied for a time whilst I discover a means of defeating the creature," pondered the Hood.
"I said, you're under arrest! Reach for the skies! Don't try and escape."
"The Legion will not buy enough time, Hood. You know that. Only you can possibly save the prime continuity stream now. And if you fail to preserve the main stand, having linked all others to it…"
"…The Earth would be annihilated in all possible realities within the Parodyverse. You have planned this very carefully, Zemo. My congratulations."
"Hey! I'm here, you know! You can't just ignore a superhero while he's trying to battle you!"
"If I use my retconning abilities to the extent that I would have to in order to protect the world from Galactivac I would be creating a new continuity strand," the Hood calculated. That in turn would provide an opportunity for those tedious higher powers who insist on interfering in the Parodyverse to have another attempt at stopping my dominion."
"It would take a lot of retconning to undo the appearance of Galactivac," Zemo noted. "Even if you were willing to risk the wrath of the Chronicler or the others you might not be able to stop the Vacuumer of Worlds."
"That's it! I'm taking you both down!" shouted Goldeneyed.
The Hood happened to send Goldeneyed into an issue of The Trouble with Girls before Zemo pulled the trigger on his Luger. Hence Goldeneyed lived to participate in another adventure. "Heroes these days have no manners," Zemo complained.
"And such unconvincing origins," the Hood agreed. "Why, I can remember when a hero got a transfusion of mongoose blood and was satisfied with it. Now they have to have secret conspiracy laboratories with nanotechnology bioengineering before they'll even think about costume design."
"And the costumes they come up with!" continued Zemo . "Some of them are so ugly one can hardly bear to look at them much less exterminate them. And some of them are obscene."
"There is that, yes," the Hood answered. He sighed. "Well, we have both played our hands, Zemo. Either you will stop me or I will stop you in the end. But at the moment we are at that part of the plot where we have to team up and stop the greater villain."
"Time for some conspiracy," agreed the Baron.

"Eeeeeeeekkkkkkkk!!!! I mean… who dares to teleport the deadly Cobra without her permission in the middle of her… um, her shower?"
"Hello, cute Cobra-friend!" Yo called happily. "Yo always thought you were a hottie!" As you was removing the dagger from his thought-energy throat s/he wondered where the lethal supervillainess might possibly have concealed it given her current state of costuming.
Cobra realised that she was being levitated over Paradopolis through the cosmic energies of an entity which according to the latest news bulletins was very likely a sign of the apocalypse. She also realised that her arsenal of weapons was pretty much limited to a bar of soap and a loofah. Now this would probably have been sufficient for her to deal with most enemies, but for cosmic-class adversaries she preferred at least an extra backscratcher.
A towel would have been good as well.
"What the hell is going on?" she demanded.
"Galactivac is evaluating you," Yo told her happily.
"Half the bloody media of the planet are evaluating me at the moment, judging by the number of telescopic cameras down there. Why couldn't he teleport me when I was in costume?"
"Yo thought that was your daring new costume," Yo admitted. "Yo likes it." He sheepishly handed her the dagger back so that she could hurl it at him again.
"She is unsuitable," Galactivac judged. "She has too much anger within her."
Cobra's anger manifested itself as she was gently levitated down to the waiting crowd of reporters by a cosmic entity that no longer had any interest in her.
The bravest of the reporters got both a Pulitzer and a loofahnectomy.

"So if I understand this correctly," Cheryl summarised, "Your office has issued illegal warrants for the unconstitutional incarceration of my clients, has precipitated massive damages amounting to billions of dollars by using extreme methods to illegally arrest them, has surrendered control of all higher governmental functions to a world conqueror, and then has the nerve to expect my clients to deal with an incursion from a planet-eating alien?"
Herbert Garrick was not going down without a fight. "My office has acted entirely within the accords of UN and US policy in the current ongoing political situation. Your 'clients' resisted arrest, caused immense damage to government property - namely eight hundred Sentinoid peacekeeping enforcement robots and one SPUD helicarrier - and have further compromised their position by making an unauthorised entry to Herringcarp Asylum and making an assault on duly warranted government representatives designated as, um, the Purveyors of Peril."
Dan Drury, Agent of SPUD (the Super-menace Principal Undercover Directorate) exhaled the fumes from one of his particularly lethal cigars, aiming it at the smoke detector on the ceiling. "Sounds like a good day t'me," he chuckled.
"So I assaulted those Sentinoids by opening the door politely when they rang the bell?" DarkHwk complained. He was still cross because it would take weeks to get the cement they had buried him in out of the crevices of his uniform.
Tina scanned the worried little mind of Herbert Philip Garrick, Governmental Liaison for Superhuman Affairs. She pitied any man with that title who might later have to meet Lisa. He really did have issues about superheroes lodged in his tight paranoid brain, but they were being crowded out by a growing anxiety about events spiralling out of control and by a deepening illicit fascination with the chest areas of Cheryl's costume.
Melissa wondered if Tim was alright, and whether things would be different now that the Hooded Hood had somehow spliced her slow romance with a perfectly normal young man into the Parodyverse where he had apparently been a superhero consort for the dazzling Lisa. She wondered if she still had a fiancée. She wondered how to get out of this spandex outfit Yo had made for her without using kitchen scissors; other than by breathing heavily, that was.
"I think you will find that my clients acted only in the interests of the public good," Cheryl told Garrick. "We will be seeking full damages in recompense for emotional wear and tear and the public slurs made on the character my clients in the course of these events, and we shall be unwilling to settle for any sum of less than eight figures."
"Eight figures! You resisted arrest!" Garrick almost shouted.
Tina turned to the door, aware that Ms Prendergast was about to enter with more interesting news. She handed Garrick a folder marked 'Very Top Secret. Do not leak to the President.' The civil servant went pale as he examined it.
"He's just found out that he has another problem," Tina mind-read. "All those nuclear weapons that Expired Warranty of the Purveyors of Peril was controlling so the Hooded Hood could blackmail the world have just gone active and are on one hour's countdown."
Perhaps I won't need to find a way out of this costume, Melissa thought, strangely relieved because the end of the world solved a lot of problems.
"Only Jamie could stop this now," Tina considered, referring to her own ongoing problem, NTU-150.
"Unfortunately, the Lair Legion is unable to help the US government whilst outstanding litigation and contractual issues remain unresolved," Cheryl smiled at Garrick sweetly. "Until such time as all charges are dropped and a $10,000,000 compensation settlement is initialled the Legion regrets that it will be unable to save the planet."
"That's extortion!" Herbert Garrick objected.
"More character defamation?" Cheryl replied. "We may have to reconsider our compensation bid."
"Alright!" Garrick cracked. "Alright! I'll sign! Just stop those nukes and get rid of Galactivac!"
Tina immediately requisitioned DarkHwk to take her to NTU-150 at Herringcarp Asylum. The nuclear clock was ticking, but she was confident that if anyone could break it it was her Jamie.
"Now," Cheryl told Garrick, "on behalf of my other client, the Hooded Hood, we are very concerned about your condoning the actions of the outrageous Lair Legion…"

It was peaceful. Visionary found the corn strangely soothing. "This is more like it," he sighed to Fleabot. "No pressure, no responsibilities, no need to have all those adventures. Just a man and his micro-robot wandering the fields and avoiding the reapers."
Visionary hadn't been attacked or possessed since before breakfast. It was a good day.
That was when he was teleported into the presence of Galactivac.
"This one is cute Visionary," Yo explained to the Living Death that Sucks. "He is very patient man, with much experience of monitor duty. He will not throw daggers at people, and if he does be throw he will miss anyway."
"He seems to be screaming rather a lot."
"That just cute-Visionary's way. He always do that when he levitated one half mile over city by cosmic entity."
"Where am I?" Visionary screeched. "Where's the ground?"
A moment later he was back amongst the corn.
"What did he mean?" the shaken fake man demanded of Fleabot. "Who's got limited mental capacity?"

spiffy waited around in the cold and the dark to be rescued by Hollywood V. It seemed to be taking a rather long time.
"Hello?" he called out. "I'm here. Waiting to be saved from hell. Ready to start a new life as a living person. Hello?"
"You're not very impressive, really, are you?" a whining, contemptuous voice answered from the darkness. "I mean, you don't have any powers or a decent costume - no spikes or energy weapons or bits that turn into other bits or anything. You don't even have wild straggly hair down your back or leather straps round your limbs!"
"Junior Reader?" spiffy recognised the Liefieldesque world view as much as the irritating tones. "Is that you?"
"Oh, it's me alright. You stopped my last plan to get back to life and do a Crow on that PsychoAcidPervGal, or maybe score another date with her I'm not sure which, but I have a better plan now and you're going to help me!"
"I am? Why should I help a nasty pustule like you?" spiffy pointed out. He may have been dead but he had standards.
"Because, fern-boy, you currently have mastery over a level of hell. If I defeat you in combat then I get that power. And then let the world beware Junior ReaderSpawn!"
spiffy followed the sound of the whining voice and planted a fist on Junior ReaderSpawn's nose. "That's mister fern-boy to you," he warned.
"Heh!" Junior Reader sneered. "You hit like a little girl! In fact, it seems that you currently are a little girl!"
spiffy realised that he had been reshaped to have the maximum psychological impact on Hollywood V over in the story where he was going to get rescued. That left him at a definite disadvantage in the battle. "Alright," spiffy admitted. "You win. I surrender. You win the challenge. You can have the sovereignty of that plane of the abyss, Junior. It's all yours."
"Yessss!" Junior Reader snarled. "I am going to have so much…"
spiffy sidled away before the hordes of chaos that were creeping up to challenge the holder of the authority over some prime brimstone real estate made their presence known. He thought it might be good to be rescued from a bit of darkness about three miles over there.
Junior Reader's prolonged screams for mercy convinced him that he had made a sound choice.

"I have a few questions myself," the diabolical Dr Moo told the entity that was floating her over the Parody Tower. "If I consent to the role of herald, what are the holiday and pension entitlements? Do I get medical? What kind of expense account comes with the job? What size office? Can I bring my own people with me or do you have some kind of special hiring policy? What is the career structure?"
Moo vanished with a flash.
"Too pushy!" declared Galactivac.

"Can you stop it?" Tina asked NTU-150 as he looked at the countdown clock ticking its way backwards from 27:12. Across the planet similar clocks were giving similar palpitations to baffled experts.
The technological genius of the Lair Legion checked the outputs on his battered combat armour. "Possibly," he considered. "I'll need a gallon of cream cheese, thirty yards of high-tensile cable, a broken dishwasher, two large buckets, Zebulon, and Space Ghost."
"On it," DarkHwk acknowledged. He was used to NTU-150 by now.
"It's a longshot," Enty muttered, in deference to high-stakes adventure stories everywhere, "But it might just work."

"Ya gold-brickin' backside-scratchin' no good plannet scrobblin' yahoo!" Dan Drury shouted at the Living Death that Sucks. "I didn't give in to the Ratzi's back in the big one and I sure ain't about to give in to you. So you can take your herald's job and stick it right up your turkey-flamin'…"
Drury vanished.
"Too grizzled," Galactivac complained.

"We've got them all," Hatman reported to Jarvis, doffing his accountant's eye-shade. "the entire membership of the Purveyors of Peril is under lock and key in the very facilities designed to hold the captured superhero community.
"And to make extra-sure, I changed them all into potted palms," Sersi added happily.
"She transformed me by mistake as well," Rocket Racoon piped up, "but fortunately Foom noticed and pointed it out."
"Yes, thank you for that, little dragon," agreed Sersi, not smiling now.
Messenger and Starseed returned carrying Dark Knight between them. "I can stand," the tortured hero said, shaking himself loose of them and promptly falling backwards; into the shadows.
"So what do we do now?" Lisa asked. "The Hood has disappeared, but he has still managed to get control of the Parodyverse. Whatever we do now when he comes back we will be forced to agree with him; we'll even like it.
"And don't forget that there's like, an immense planet-vacuuming planet-vacuum out there for us to fight," Banjoooo pointed out.
"We needs must rescue our comrades, fairest Lisa," Donar suggested. "Let us return those heroes who are still entrapped in yon foul Portal of Pretentiousness and then band us together to give yon Galactivac the slapping of his lifetime."
"Sounds like a plan to me," agreed Jarvis. "Lisa, you were… you were with the Hood for a while. You probably know as much about that mirror as anyone. CrazySugarFreakBoy!, you seem to have some sensitivity to the alternate realities it contains. You two stay here and try and get the Irregulars and all those others back. The rest of us will go and deal with Galactivac."
"And see Melissa," muttered Lisa.
"Sure. Dealing with Galactivac," agreed Messenger. "Then we get breakfast."

"Herald? You mean I get some cool cosmic surfboard or roller skates of something and get to make long soliloquies about the terrible loneliness of the role and get drawn by Big John Buscema and everything?" CrazySugarFreakBoy! gushed. "Oh yeah! Pick me! Pick me! Pick me!"
The bouncing superhero vanished back to Herringcarp Asylum.
"Too irritating!" Galactivac judged.

"I don't see why this has to be me," Space Ghost worried. He was stood with his costume trouserlegs rolled up, barefoot in two buckets of cream cheese. High tensile cables trailed from the buckets back to the re-engineered dishwasher and from thence to the partially dismantled control mechanism of the nuclear arsenal. NTU-150 was happily chewing-gumming bits of wire together with the help of Zebulon. The elf assistant was just happy not to be scheduled for imminent dissection at the Roswell air base.
"Well, we need to drain the mutant necromantic energies of Expired Warranty from the nuclear timing mechanisms," NTU-150 explained. "So we have to earth them somehow. But to do that we need a trouble magnet, and I immediately thought of you."
Space Ghost was still trying to think of a good comeback to that when NTU-150 pulled the big lever marked 'Armageddon'.

Meggan Foxxx flashed her best dazzle-em-with-the-assets smile and went for the audition. "Sorry, but this planet is toast, toots. I don't like it any more than you do, honey buns, but I'm just the hired help. Now, if you could move aside, sugar-tush, and let the big 'G' go to town on his chow down, I'd appreciate it."
"That was being very moving," Yo clapped. "Yo is sure that Galactivac will be making you new herald of Living Death that Sucks. You can be being called the Silicone Stripper!"
"Well, I'll do pretty much anything to save my little boy, y'know," Meg admitted. "But I gotta admit, I never had to audition before where I couldn't administer some, uh, additional oral persuasion. If you could point out which of these ribbed rubber tubes is…"
Meggan vanished.
"Too embarrassing," admitted Galactivac.

Lisa and CrazySugarFreakBoy! seethed through the sea of black Kirby-bubbles that swirled around the Portal of Pretentiousness and found themselves in the high-tech surroundings of Galactivac's mothership. "Now this is what I call a really cool adventure," CSFB! enthused. "Look at those Heisenburg existentialisers. Those are a direct copy of the ones in that photoshot from FF #58. And that bizarre energy-translator was in Darkseid's lair in Mister Miracle #5 - original series of course."
Lisa was more concerned to find herself face to face with Baron Zemo and the Hooded Hood. Together. "Um,. hello," she smiled politely. "Don't mind us, we were just trying to free the heroes that the Hood exiled earlier."
"Of course," the cowled crime-czar acknowledged. "I would expect nothing less."
"Hoody and Zemsie!" CrazySugarFreakBoy! gasped in delight. "It's like when Penguin and the Joker go after Bats together, or like when Subby and Doom teamed up to steal the Baxter Building…!"
The Hooded Hood sighed. "So many superheroes. Lair Legion dripping with superfluous members. Why did it have to be that one?" he wondered.
"The Irregulars and the other displaced superheroes are irrelevant," Zemo announced. "They will all find their way back in a day or so. The Hood didn't need to displace them permanently, just long enough to establish control. He's done that now, so he will want them back to gloat over."
"Oh," answered Lisa. "That's a relief."
"So you made your decision, Lisa?" the Hood noted sadly.
"Yes," the first lady of the Lair Legion answered quietly. Only she and the Hooded Hood understood how much the decision to do what was right had cost her.
"I see. Well, you wouldn't be Lisa if you had decided otherwise," the cowled crime czar acknowledged.
"So what's the plan?" CSFB! asked. "Do we fight one-on-one in which case I bagses Hoody, or do we like, double-team and have one big epic brawl?"
"We save the planet," Zemo replied, turning back to the equipment he and the Hood had been tinkering with,
CrazySugarFreakBoy was puzzled. "Huh?"
"Like when Dr Doom joined with the heroes in Secret Wars to take on the Beyonder," Lisa explained.
"Oh! Excellent!"

"Well," Jarvis admitted, "I have handled cosmic-level powers before now. I have plenty of experience with alien races and I'm used to people being distressed. After all, I have been a member of the Lair Legion since it was founded - except for the bits where I was dead or crippled. So I've been there for almost half of the time. I don't relish the idea of giving up my humanity and becoming your herald, but on the other hand I would do it to save the Earth from being vacuumed away."
"Yo is proud of Jarvis-friend!" Yo admitted. "Yo doesn't know why other Legionnaires say Jarvis is being big butt-head."
"Thanks, Yo, I… what?"
"Yo thinks a few irritating personal habits only are be making person more interesting," the thought-creature smiled.
"Wait a minute,. what…?"
"This one has… possibilities," Galactivac considered. "But unfortunately he is already claimed."
"Yes," Yo agreed. "Cute Melissa has got him now by the curlies and shorts from what the others was be saying."
"I mean that the mark of his creators is upon him. They have not yet finished with their butler."
"I sense an impending sub-plot," worried Jarvis.
"Still, I detect in his mind one other possibility," Galactivac declared. There was a rush of power and then Melissa was floating beside her fiancée in the shadow of the world-devourer.
"I might be late for our dinner date tonight," Jarvis admitted to her.
"This one also has potential," Galactivac sensed, turning his sensory probes upon the scarlet clad woman who had claimed the butler's heart.
Jarvis reacted badly to this. "Noooo!! Let her go! She's not supposed to be dragged in to all of this! No way is she becoming your herald!"
Melissa folded her arms. "Oh, I see! It's alright for you to sacrifice yourself and I never see you again, but the minute I want to do some sacrificing then it's male chauvinist pig time!"
"Male pig," agreed Yo, being female for a moment.
"No, that's not what I meant! I just… wait a minute. Melissa, you've been taking lessons from Cheryl and Tina!"
"Good isn't it?" Melissa congratulated herself. "Anyway, suppose I want to save your life this time?"
"It is decided," Galactivac proclaimed. "This female shall become mine herald." A massive hose crackling with cosmic energy snaked down towards the levitating woman.
"Noooo!" Jarvis shouted as the first sparks of bubbling radiance reached for Melissa. His own power blast sent the pipe shimmering away trailing eye-scorching power sparks behind it. "If we have to we'll do it the hard way. Legionnaires Assemble!"
Starseed was the first in there with a Gaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!!!! strike that made glaziers across the state declare him their patron saint.

"Well, there's good news and bad news," NTU-150 announced to Tina and Zebulon. DarkHwk was still trying to put out the fires on Space Ghost. "We have stopped the doomsday countdown and neutralised the nuclear threat."
"That's all good news," Tina said suspiciously.
"Ah. Well it seems that Galactivac has started up his planet-hoovering machineries and all life as we know it will end in about ten minutes," he explained.
"Still time for a drink, then," moaned a smouldering Space Ghost.

The Lair Legion is quite powerful when you come to think about it. Banjoooo, Fin Fang Foom, Starseed, Hatman, Sersi and Donar were busy demonstrating this to Galactivac just at that moment. Galactivac was busy demonstrating that he was in a different league by ignoring their collective assault.
"This is insulting," Sersi objected. "He hasn't noticed we've started yet!"
"Gaaaahhhh! Alright then, let's try the Meforthto approach!" Starseed suggested.
"What meanest thou?" Donar wanted to know.
"He means," judged Foomy, "let's drop a building on him."

"They did what?!" gasped Garrick, his knuckles white on the telephone.
"They hit him with City Hall," Dan Drury repeated again, chuckling in appreciation.
"Good job we have that damage responsibility waiver," Cheryl commented to Garrick.

"Oh good!" Hatman commented, dragging on his Politician's Hat so he could bear no responsibility for what had just happened. "Galactivac has now noticed us!"
"That most uncute planet-eating planet eater is now seeking to be dooming us!" Yo warned.
"Tis the whole idea!" Donar said, helpfully contributing six million volts of lightning strike to the hose assembly reaching out for him. "Tis our role to die in glorious final combat, that the bard will singeth of our deeds yea for many months at the number one slot on yon MTV countdown. Tis the meaning of the word diversion!"
"I've got to buy a new dictionary," Foom reminded himself.
Meanwhile the reason for the aforementioned diversion was creeping its way inside the complex machineries of Galactivac's suction device atop the Parody Tower. The diversion's name was Rocket Racoon and Messenger, and their job was to go and do something so horrible to the planet-destroying equipment that it would void its warranty for all time.
It wasn't easy to break an indestructible device which operated on principles not due to be discovered by mankind for another ten million years. Messenger had trouble programming the VCR.
"Don't despair," Rocket Racoon encouraged him. "The worst that could happen is that we die horribly in here!"
"If I die horribly then everybody dies horribly," Messenger reminded his comrade.
Then the machineries started up. "Yup," agreed RR, "so it's a choice of everybody dying now or in ten minutes."

Jarvis managed to break free of Galactivac's levitation field whilst Donar was trying to challenge the Living Death that Sucks to an arm wrestling contest. He grabbed Melissa and managed to telekinese them down to the top of the Parody Tower.
"'Lissie? Are you OK?" he asked the bundle of seemingly-lifeless girl in his arms. The strange energies of Galactivac had barely touched her, but even that might have snuffed her out, he worried.
"Simon?" she moaned. Jarvis froze. "Just kidding," she smiled. "What's happening?"
The butler looked into the sky. "Well, at the moment Foom has managed to jam up one of thosed suction hoses the hard way by getting his head stuck in it. Sersi is doing unspeakable things to a filter unit. Banjooooo is tangled up in flex but that appears to be irritating the bad guy as well. Hatman has his housemaid's cap on in the hopes of finding an off-switch. And Yo appears to be confusing it by talking to it. All of which is a diversion for Messenger and RR to sneak in and break Galactivac's world-sucker device."
"You never speak in exposition captions when we're at home," Melissa observed.
"Ah. The superhero thing. Are you… are you OK with that?"
Melissa considered. "Well, once in a while I guess you can save the world."
Jarvis grinned and kissed her. "Thanks, my love. And, um, will you be keeping the costume?"
But his fiancée wasn't giving in that easily. "You'll just have to find out next issue, won't you?"
Then the top of the Parody Tower exploded beneath them.

"They did it!" Lisa exalted, watching the battle from afar via the mothership's scanners. "They blew that world-sucking thing right away!"
"It won't do any good," the Hooded Hood warned her. "Even though Messenger proved his ability to break even indestructible things Galactivac will just will it together again. There, see?"
The scanner proved the cowled crime-czar's point. The scattered debris reversed their direction and came back into a single machine. Each of the Lair Legion was imprisoned in a shimmering soap-bubble of force, unable to attack again. Lisa noticed that Jarvis and Melissa shared the same bubble.
The Hooded Hood noticed her noticing.
There was a clatter as CrazySugarFreakBoy! bounced back out of the Portal of Pretentiousness carrying a strange mechanism in his arms. He allowed himself to come to a stop upside-down against the far console, legs lying upwards on the wall. "Wow!" he declared. "That was a wild ride, Zemesy! Like when the Torch had to go get the Universal Weapon for the Watcher in FF#50, and he went through all those weird zones…"
"Merely give me the device, youthful cretin," Zemo demanded, snatching the Omniversal Facilitator from CSFB!'s grasp. Only someone as agile and incomprehensibly lucky as CrazySuagrFreakBoy! could have extracted this from Galactivac's vaults. The Baron plugged it into the vacant slot of the modified mothership engines and gestured to the Hood. "It is time."
"What's going on?" CSFB! asked. "What did I miss?"
Lisa pointed to the machinery. "That will magnify the Hooded Hood's power to an immense degree. In that way the Hood will be able to erase Galactivac from continuity and the world will be saved."
"But it will take all his power to do it," Zemo added with a sinister satisfaction. "It will take every last bit of him, erasing him entirely. He cannot save the world except by giving up not only his dominion of it… but his life!"
"An admirable gambit," the Hood conceded. "Beautifully arranged. Well played, Zemo old man." The two archvillains shook hands.
"I will miss our video evenings," the Baron admitted.
"And the games of Torment the Hero," added the Hood.
"Waittaminnit!" CrazySugarFreakBoy! objected. "You're my best pal archvillain, Hoody! You can't just go and leave me alone like this! You can't die to save the world you conquered!"
"That is what rulers have to do sometimes," the Hood explained. "It comes with the conquered territory."
"Lisa, make him stop!" CSFB! urged her.
"He has to do it," Lisa recognised. "Don't you, Ioldobaoth? We all have to give up things that are important to us sometimes to do the right thing."
The Hood nodded and brushed his fingers on Lisa's cheek. "I have a present for you," he told her. And he concentrated. And he made something.
It was a cat. It was an absolutely huge ginger tomcat to be precise. It had an I-can-beat-you-with-one-paw-behind-my-back-go-ahead-kitten-make-my-day attitude even though it hadn't yet worked out that the Hood had made it utterly, absolutely indestructible, so that Lisa would always have one friend who would never leave her. When it did work that out, the canine population of the planet would be in serious trouble.
"A remembrance," the Hood told Lisa.
"The machinery is ready," Zemo announced.
"Very well," declared the Hood, drawing his grey cloak around him and standing up to his full height. "Let Galactivac know that he has challenged one who shall not allow him to sunder the fair planet below. Let Galactivac know that this day he shall face the wrath of… the Hooded Hood!"

The energies of the Living Death that Sucks rippled out from the rebuilt cosmic vacuum mechanism to destroy the world.
And stopped, thwarted.
Suddenly the Hood was there, of the same gargantuan stature as Galactivac himself. It seemed to the people of Paradopolis as if two giants struggled in the sky.
Reality ripped open with a sanity-shredding screech and the two figures toppled through.
Reality joined together again with a squelchy thwapp (and about nine months intensive work by the Shaper of Worlds and the Chronicler of Stories behind the scenes).
And Galactivac and the Hooded Hood were gone.

"He did it!" Lisa exclaimed as she watched the ending on the mothership's monitor. "Galactivac is gone. And so is he."
"But not his power," Zemo pointed out, still manipulating the controls of the machineries that contained the Hood's energies. "And I'm sure he would have wanted all that power to be put to good use!"
"You planned it all along!" CrazySugarFreakBoy! accused him. "That is brilliantly devious, by the way! Perhaps you're not the bad joke everyone thinks you are!"
"What?" the Baron asked, almost distracted enough to let Lisa slip close enough to seize control of the machine; almost. "A good try, Legionnaires, but now I am the supreme arbiter of the Parodyverse, as was my destiny. I shall not be thwarted by fate!"
The machineries powered down and the retcon energies were gone.
"What did you do?" Zemo demanded of the heroes, flipping switches in disbelief. "How did you do that?"
Lisa looked around the control console to where her ginger cat was happily playing with the power cord and seemed to have accidentally pulled it from the wallpoint.
"A cat!" Zemo screeched. "My supreme destiny thwarted by a moggy!" He reached down to throttle the feline and suddenly found he had placed his hand in a blender. "Aaagh!"
"He's a big softy really," Lisa argued, snatching the spitting mad ball of hair into her arms where it magically transformed into a soft purring rag. Some readers might speculate that the cat was evil because it had been created by the sinister Hooded Hood. These readers do not know cats.
"Um, should this ship be getting transparent?" CrazySugarFreakBoy! wondered. Now that the retcon had passed and Galactivac was no more his mothership was ceasing to exist.
Lisa had no choice to save them but to call the last person she wanted to see but the one she needed the most. "I summon Jarvis!"

In the debris at street level the Lair Legion were conducting the mopping up operation (which included getting medical attention to various members of the press who had been Cobra-ed) when their leader felt the summons.
"What is it, Tim?" Melissa asked him as she saw him become alert.
"It… it's Lisa. She needs me," Jarvis confessed. He hesitated, torn between what was and what should be.
"She's your dearest friend," Melissa reminded him. "Of course you must go to her."
Jarvis went.

So to the epilogue:
With the Hood gone much of his retconning was retconned back. Jarvis was able to rescue Lisa and CrazySugarFreakBoy! from the disintegrating mothership and teleport them back to Earth. Lisa and Jarvis still have to work through a few fine points about their relationship, such as what is it and what has it always been, but that's up to them to sort out really. Zemo was not to be found and clearly died with the ship.
Herbert Garrick was declared insane by a Presidential Statement which carefully explained how the President had never surrendered to the Hooded Hood in the real definition of the word surrendered. The government therefore regretfully failed to honour the $10,000,000 honorarium the civil servant had agreed, but never dared to mention any criminal charges or compensation costs to the Legion for the entire affair. Garrick was incarcerated in Herringcarp Asylum beside the remainder of the Purveyors of Peril. Cheryl became the most feared figure in Washington.
The St Aloysius orphanage got rebuilt after an anonymous donation was left by what the children later described as "a real nice winged horse lady who said the bank wouldn't be needing all of that money just now." The Catholic diocese claimed a miracle, attributing it to Our Lady of Winged Quadrupeds.
Dan Drury, Director of SPUD, blackmailed Congress into budgeting for a new helicarrier after he pointed out the sort of photo opportunities he could provide key congressional senators.
The Lair Legion recovered from their ordeals, although Sersi still goes into flashbacks at the sight of a McWhopper with Cheese. Dark Knight absolutely denied having any conversation with Lisa of the sort she seemed to remember; anyway he was delirious when it happened.
Visionary still sat amongst the corn. But one day he will definitely get bored and come home to Cheryl and the Legion. The Yurt continues to battle his way back from hell, getting madder and madder as he goes on. The residents of the lower planes are considering getting up a petition about the nuisance, but the only person they can really think to pin the blame on is Visionary.
Spandex Girl, who never existed in the current timeline, went on to apply for reincarnation and came back as Courtney Cox. Junior Reader can rot in hell, and good riddance to him the Liefield/Byrne loving little squit.
Lisa's cat opens up whole new storyline possibilities. If it can ever be convinced to view Yo's purple thought bunny as anything other than a part of the food chain we might have the basis for a whole new super-team (led by Rocket Racoon of course). However at the moment the cat still hasn't worked out that RR isn't part of the same food chain.
And somewhere in Herringcarp Asylum, tended by the vigilant Dr Valium, Ioldabaoth Winkelweald lies comatose and unmoving, his mind absent. Waiting…

The Hooded Hood finally gets to the last instalment