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The Hooded Hood Chronicles #5: The Death of a Legionnaire (This Issue… Someone Dies) Friday, 19-Nov-1999 12:46:34
The Hooded Hood Chronicles #5: The Death of a Legionnaire (This Issue… Someone Dies) As soon as she entered the mansion, Spandex Lass knew that something was wrong. For one thing, Space Ghost should be here on monitor duty. For another, the servants shouldn’t be lying about in that sprawled out manner, ghastly green smoke rising from their orifices. The Femme of Force touched the intercom panel "Space Ghost? Enty? Anybody?" Only the silence of the abandoned headquarters of the League of Regulars answered her. Spandex Lass put aside her heavy shoulder bag. The Nobel prize clinked a little as she put it down. This had been such a happy day, the culmination of all her hard work. In the last six months the League had done so much to sort out the troubles of the world, and her discovery of the formula for world hunger had been the last in a series of glittering personal triumphs. On the way home the inkling of a new idea about how to sort out that AIDS problem had suddenly occurred to her as well. "I’m afraid the remainder of the League is… indisposed." Spandex Lass whirled round at the menacing tone of the all-too familiar voice. "The Hooded Hood! I thought you had been destroyed when your Exposition Accelerator exploded after Dark Knight changed over the cliché converters!" the Femme of Force gasped. The grey-cloaked villain sneered. "Did you see my body?" "No." "Was there an in-continuity caption from the narrator announcing my definite death?" "I suppose not. I wasn’t looking. I was ferrying the orphans to safety as the complex burned." "Has my name been recycled for another, newer villain?" "Of course not. Who’d want to call themselves the Hooded Hood?" "Then you have no one to blame but yourself for your colossal naivety," the Hood pronounced. He stepped over a prone retainer and turned to admire the books in the library, once more establishing himself as being a multi-faceted if villainously flawed individual. "Ahh, Milton," he purred. "How well he understood the darkling urge to strive for supremacy!" "How did you get past our alarms?" Spandex Lass demanded. The Hooded Hood held up a useful pamphlet published by Baron Zemo entitled ‘101 Ways to Bypass the Mansion’s Alarms and Hack Off Jarvis.’ "My esteemed rival-in-villainy asserts, and I quote here, that for all the inventive genius of NTU-150, a retarded hamster with a sharpened teaspoon could thwart the defensive net. Indeed, Zemo has done so on several occasions, which is suggestive to say the least." The Hood flicked open Paradise Lost and declaimed a few lines to himself to demonstrate his general classiness and superiority as a major-league adversary. "It is, indeed, better to rule in hell than serve in heaven," he asserted. Spandex Lass resisted the urge to use her Abhuman-spawned powers on the cowled crime-czar. She knew all too well how he had used his terrible retconning ability last time to arrange that instead of her usual hyper-acrobatics she instead had the ability to blow really large gum-bubbles. The retraining had taken her months. Even now her hair was not fully grown back. "What have you done to the League?" she demanded. "The League?" the Hood answered, carefully returning the book and stalking on to examine the materials in the gallery. "Ah yes, in the timeline you exist in there was never that incident which caused them to transform into the Lair Legion, was there?" "The what?" demanded Spandex Lass, wondering where such a bizarre name as Lair Legion came from. The Hood examined the works which adorned the walls of the mansion, passing a critical eye over the art displayed there. "One day soon I will do the world a favour by annihilating the one known as Hollywood V," he promised, checking the signatures. Energy crackled between Spandex Lass’s fingertips. "Where… are… my… friends?" "I believe I shall trade you answer for answer," the Hood replied, examining the Perez-like arrangement of team pictures that adorned the recreation room. "You were a founding member of the League, I believe?" "You know I was, Hood," frowned Spandex Lass. "Like all the posters who joined together in the first place to fight for truth and justice I placed my hand on top of all the others and swore my oath, right before we had that big argument about a battle cry… um, I mean, yes, I have been here from the start." "And you played a pivotal role in many of the League’s adventures," the Hood judged. "The International Incident, the Contest of Champions, that unfortunate incident with the alternate spiffy…" "My turn, Hood," the femme of Force insisted. "Where are the League?" "I have… removed them for now," the cowled crime-czar declaimed. "Today my business is solely with you, my dear Spandex Lass… or should I call you Princess Aphasia?" Spandex Lass gasped. "You know…?" "Your secret origin? How you travelled here from the hidden city of the Abhumans to guide mankind on a path of peace and harmony, and possibly to get a bit of rough with some of the hunkier members of the team? How you have gently guided the team towards its goal of solving world crime and promoting a free, utopian society without fear of bad television and mime artists? Of course. To know one’s enemy is to know oneself. For am I not… the Hood?" "And what do you want with me here, Hooded Hood?" the Princess demanded. The villain’s glowing green eyes flashed. "I want to send a message," he growled. "I want to show these… heroes how vulnerable they are… How even the best amongst them can be destroyed at my merest whim. I want them to lie sleepless in their beds at night, not because they have been visited by Lisa, but because they are trembling at the thought of what I shall do to them." "Give it up, Hood!" Spandex Lass retorted, preparing herself for the battle of a lifetime. "You know you can never truly destroy me. No poster has ever been killed on this board, and it’s not likely to happen now." The cowled crime-czar allowed himself a small, sinister chuckle. "You’ve obviously not got to the spiffy goes to hell incident in your timeline yet. And even posters can be retconned, Spandex Lass. You have left yourself rather vulnerable to it. Look at your name. Who is going to take a heroine called Lass seriously in the politically-correct nineties? Better to erase you and forget the embarrassment. And look at your costume..." Spandex Lass glanced down at her sensible brown and green combat outfit. "What’s wrong with my costume?" "It doesn’t show anything," the Hood pointed out. "It is practical, functional, and tasteful. It conceals your breasts in their entirety, is not prone to riding into the crack between your buttocks, does not involve spikes or thigh boots, and does not tear easily in combat. You clearly have no future as a viable superheroine." The Hood’s words made Asphasia suddenly frightened. She thought of the Image heroines and found herself lacking. Her own breasts were merely 38E, and her legs were almost in proportion to her body.. Had the archvillain indeed found a way to justify her removal? "But I… I post on other boards. You can’t erase me," she stammered. "Which boards?" the cowled crime-czar demanded. "The Razor Racer Board… and the Golden Girl Board… and I had a really long thread going on the Hampster-Man board last week…" The Hooded Hood leaned forwards for a tight panel which showed only his glowing eyes. "There are no such boards… now." "Sweet Alvarez!" Spandex Girl breathed. "Any last words before I ensure that you never even had any first words?" the Hood asked, gesturing to ensure that Spandex Girl had always been facing in the opposite direction when she used her Killer Kick Attack. "You can’t do this!" the Femme of Force insisted. "You mustn’t. I… I’m carrying Fin Fang Foom’s child!" "Not any more," the Hooded Hood promised. And then he sent a deliberately slow wave of retconning across the room so that Spandex Girl could feel every instant of her storyline being unpicked. She refused to beg or scream even at the last, as she disappeared in a colour effect only possible with really expensive modern printing techniques. "This will make a fine tale for an anniversary edition." The Hooded Hood mused to himself, looking down at the empty – and dull – costume that was all that remained of the founding Legionary. "Did you get all that on camera, Flapjack, or do I need to bring her back for yet another retake?" "I got it this time, master. It wasn’t my fault before. You see, the batteries…" The Hooded Hood silenced the hunchbacked retainer with a baleful glare. "See that a tape is sent to the Lair Legion in their current timeline," he instructed. "It should give Jarvis and his cronies something to puzzle over. I would have them know fear before they meet their doom." Flapjack nodded copiously, but all the time he was thinking, "I hope the new headquarters has a Betamax tape player…" And this episode’s free back-up bonus: Notification is Served on the BZL Board Sneek, Grabitt, & Thuggery Attorneys-at-Law 666 5th Avenue New York, NY 13th April 1999 Dear Sirs and Madams This is to serve notification of an intent to prosecute the Deja-Vu Review Lounge and Ms Melanie Hastings aka Meggan Foxxx for infringement of copyright of the character of our client’s intellectual property through the "Wonder Woman Wet n Wild" show recently promulgated on your board. Wonder Woman TM is very clearly the trademarked property of DC Comics Unlimited, and the use of her name, costume, and body parts in this unlicensed manner is clearly illegal. Our client will be pursuing damages assessed at $13,450,000 jointly from the Deja-Vu Review Lounge and Ms Hastings in the near future. In the meantime, members of the BZL are warned not to even think about Ms Hastings’ 44-D figure in Wonder Woman TM ‘s 38D costume. Our clients have further assessed that her son has also breached trademark and copyright by calling himself CrazySugarFreakBoy TM and Dreamcatcher Foxglove TM, which our client also asserts to be infringements of the Wonder Woman franchise. Hey, we got away with it on Captain Marvel with Superman, we’ll stick it to this little weasel as well. astingsHa We are therefore filing for legal ownership of CrazySugarFreakBoy TM, although recognising the prior claim of a Ninja Student Loan corporation to certain parts of his lower anatomy. On behalf of another client, Byrnefield Comics Unmitigated, we are also serving notice of the infringement on the BZL board of characters which are clearly the intellectual domain of Byrnefield Comics since they were trademarked by us this afternoon. These characters include Banjoooo TM, Baron Zemo TM, Canadian Nightmare TM, Cheryl TM, Chronicler of Stories/Dark Knight TM, Cobra TM, DarkHwk TM, Donar TM, Dr. Moo TM, Fin Fang Foom TM, Goldeneyed TM, Grim Reaper TM, Gurl TM, Hatman TM, Hollywood V TM, The Hooded Hood TM, Jarvis TM, Lisa TM, Magnetic Techbird TM, Messenger TM, NTU-150 TM, Pegasus TM, Pierson's Porter TM, Rocket Raccoon TM, Sersi TM, Shaper of Worlds TM, Shifter TM, Sorceress TM, Space Ghost TM, Starseed TM, Tina TM, Visionary TM and Yo TM. We do not claim the concept of spiffy as we feel it has no commercial, or indeed any other, value. These characters will soon be refurbished into new Byrnefield titles, with new improved origins, powers, and appearances. Amongst the improved Legion of Killers will be Jrrvis, with his cybernetic penguin companion, mutant nun Lethal Lysa with her pneumatic chest, HeadCase (previously Hatman), Dirty Dragon, Death-Seamonkki, and Blood-Robot (previously Visionary). We anticipate these new titles to be hot. In addition we have managed to broker a Saturday morning Cartoon Deal, in which various characters, reworked with cool new battle armour and the ability to transform into various toys, battle against the nefarious Baron Zemo, who has the ability to change himself into a giant letter Z, and the Hooded Hood (with interchangeable heads). The fans will go wild. Yours insincerely Albert D. Thuggery Associate The traditional HTML corrected version from the Hooded Hood. |
| The Hooded Hood Chronicles #5: The Death of a Legionnaire (This Issue… Someone Dies) (The Hooded Hood digs up more old junk from the depths of his hard drive to try and stimulate some movement in these cold, lonely times on the board) (19-Nov-1999 12:42:14) |
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