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Post By The Hooded Hood Sat Feb 12, 2005 at 09:16:58 am EST |
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Doctor Doom and The Hooded Hood: Eight Ways to Conquer the Universe - Part Two | |
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| Doctor Doom and The Hooded Hood: Eight Ways to Conquer the Universe - Part Two “Why is he so surprised?” Hatman wondered as he watched Count Wolfgang Fokker striding about on the podium before Berlin’s famous Brandenburg Gate. “The people here have been living in peace for sixty years. Why would Germany suddenly want to jump up and form the Fourth Reich?” “Right. We’d only spank them again,” added the Black Knight, slightly uncharitably. “Germans suffer a good deal of national guilt over what their forebears did to gypsies, dissidents, and Jews,” Quicksilver noted in an irritated voice. “Perhaps for once Homo Sapiens is learning from their mistakes?” “And perhaps Fokker’s going to totally lose it now that crowd won’t cheer at his plans for world conquest and turn that device he’s carrying on them,” Warbird worried. “Is that the Evil Eye, Harper?” Al B. checked his portable omniwave scope and nodded. “He’s managed to assemble the six components, and it’s putting out a signature of around seventy thousand arcaranabars on the Ridcully scale,” he told the severe blonde. Carol Danvers shrugged. “Is that a lot?” Since Al B. had just made the new energy scale up to measure the wavelengths his new device had just discovered he wasn’t really sure. “Maybe,” he answered cautiously. “Don’t hit me.” “Where are Vizh and Vizh?” the Black Knight frowned. “I don’t see them.” “Somewhere near the front of the crowd by now,” Captain America assured Dane Whitman. “I could have just run in and snatched the Evil Eye from that sad Nazi relic,” Quicksilver sniffed. “There’s too many people in the crowd to be sure,” Hatman pointed out. “And those HERPES ground-troops stationed everywhere.” “Well I expect we’ll get to play whack-a-nazi before we’ve finished,” Al B. noted. He glanced to the only member of the team with X-ray vision. “You spotted our boys, Epitome?” Mr Epitome nodded. “They’re almost at the front of the crowd, and they appear to be discussing the definitions of humanity. Visionary is asserting that the Vision is real, dammit.” “Well of course he is,” Captain America blinked. “Why would anyone think otherwise?” “We ask a man’s worth,” the Black Knight said, “not the accident of his condition.” “A person’s worth,” Warbird corrected him. “And we still sent Visionary in there,” Mr Epitome sighed. The Vision was disguised in his Victor Shade identity, for ease of passing unremarked through the crowd; but he had intensified his density slightly to ease his pushing forward. Visionary followed in his wake, slightly worried that he seemed to look like the synthezoid’s younger brother. Then they were in position at the edge of the crowd. Vision signalled back to the team. “Fools! With the power I now command, the world could be ours!” Fokker shouted at the unresponsive mass. “Are you sheep, that you would mingle your blood with the Jew and the Negro? Are you cattle, to suborn yourselves to lesser nations in economic slavery? The day has come – and I see some few of you still hide the Aryan spirit deep inside you – the day has come when…” “When the world can put those sad tired old Nazi ideas behind them forever,” Captain America called from atop a building, standing over the fallen bodies of two HERPES soldiers. “Vas?” demanded Fokker, glaring up at the star-spangled Avenger. “Yeah, Cap does that sometimes,” the Black Knight grinned, still in cover with the main team, as he saw Count Fokker’s reaction to Captain America’s sudden appearance. “Anyone else would come across as hokey as hell, but damn that winghead can pull it off!” “I noticed,” admired Hatman. “But now he’s going to get himself frazzled with that Evil Eye gadget!” “Cap’s taken on more ultimate-power villains than you’ve had hats,” Warbird assured the capped crusader. “Watch.” Fokker sneered as Captain America launched himself off the building towards the platform. He centred the Evil Eye on the bright white star on the interloper’s chest. “Thus dies America,” he told the crowd. Cap’s shield somehow got into the way of the blast, and impossibly the devastating power of the Evil Eye was reflected sideways and upwards, away from where it might cause harm. “The bevelled surface of that shield has some very weird energy-diversion properties,” Al B. Harper noted excitedly. “That blast should have shattered Cap’s arms and splattered him across the landscape even if his shield didn’t break.” “That is our Captain America,” noted Quicksilver, with the faintest tinge of pride in his voice. But now Cap was on the ground, sitting target for the other HERPES agents who carried more conventional weaponry. “The enemy’s all out of position and distracted,” Mr Epitome judged. “Time for us to go in.” And the exemplary man blurred forward to crush a couple of energy weapons then batter their wielders together. “I hardly call that fast,” sniffed Quicksilver, and demonstrated a similar manoeuvre himself. Count Fokker growled, sword some Teutonic curse, and reoriented the Evil Eye at Captain America a second time. There was something about the star-spangled Avenger that really irritated him. Ghostly yellow hands passed through the dais below him, and the Vision’s insubstantial form shimmered up and through the HERPES leader. Then the Vision increased his density just enough that being co-located with Fokker was too much for the fascist’s system to cope with. “Wow, he screams like a girl,” noted Visionary, scrambling up on the platform to seize the Evil Eyed that the Count had dropped. If Cap had experience battling villains with ultimate power, Vizh was the go-to guy to get temporarily given cosmic abilities – on the general theory that he’d still be harmless. Warbird, the Black Knight, and Hatman came in then, Hatty shielding the crowd while the others picked off the HERPES soldiers who ringed it. It didn’t take very long to contain the situation. “This appears to have been a very effective operation,” the Vision noted to Visionary. “Fool!” Visionary told him. “Neither you nor your feckless comrades have any idea what is truly unfolding! But soon this Parodyverse shall tremble before it’s new ruler, and each reality thereafter!” And Visionary and the Evil Eye vanished in a flash. “Okay Dark Thugus, put down the ultimate nullifier and step away,” Amazing Guy warned the conqueror of the Sol Empire, the Destroyer of Tales. The great gravel-skinned warlord looked over at the protector of the Parodyverse and his companions. “Or?” “Or we take it anyway, villain,” warned Quasar, appointed protector of the Marvel universe as AG was protector of the Parodyverse. “This one’s mind is closed to me,” warned Moondragon. “Beware if he…” Then Thugos released a wave of energy that smacked the heroes down hard onto the surface of the desolate distant moon where Thugos contemplated his newly acquired Ultimate Nullifier. “Ouch,” complained Quasar, dropping the tattered remains of his quantum shields. “I didn’t know the Nullifier could project galaxy-class kinetic waves. “Er, that wasn’t the Nullifier,” Amazing Guy warned. “Thugos is that powerful usually.” Dancer was the only one of the four heroes who hadn’t been pounded into the surface. Somehow she has improbably avoided Thugos’ attack. “C’mon,” she called out, pulling Moondragon from the debris. “I think old Thuggy’s in a grouchy mood this morning.” “I require no assistance,” the priestess of the mind told the Probability Dancer. “But it’s nice to get it anyway, right?” Sarah Shepherdson told Moondragon brightly. “Thugos, that device is not for you!” AG warned, flying back towards the Destroyer of Worlds at ever-increasing velocity. Thugos didn’t try to stop Amazing Guy hitting him. He simply let the hero smash into his back with a force that would have collapsed a skyscraper, then reached through the multiversal energies supposedly shielding AG to grasp him by the throat. “I have the means in my hands to destroy all that is. I believe this device is for me indeed.” Quasar flew in, grasping Thugos with giant energy pincers to force him to leave AG be. The Destory of Tales ignored him, except to shrug off another power blast to hammer Wendell Vaughn fifty miles across the lunar surface. “I can stop him,” Moondragon asserted. “As well as being a mistress of the mind, I was trained by the Priests of Shao-Lom in all the arts of combat…” “But not hairdressing,” Dancer guessed, staring at Moondragon’s shaven head. “Look, let me try something first, okay.” Moondragon glimpsed into Dancer’s mind to see what she was planning. “You are… a waitress!” she puzzled. “No, I’m a soon-to-be discovered superstar, who’s waiting tables until her big break comes,” Shep corrected. “Now hold on while I use the special magic word on Thugos, okay?” “Special magic word?” Moondragon could see no such power in Dancer’s mind. But already the lithe raven-haired girl was walking over to Dark Thugos. “Hey, Mister DT! It’s me, the Probability Dancer!” “I know you, herald of Galactivac,” Thugos assured her. “You are not immune from my Entropy Eyebeams any more than these other preening fools with their shallow fingerholds on cosmic abilities.” “Of course not. Totally vulnerable, that’s me. But listen, I was wondering if I could have that Nullifier thingie you’re holding right now. Please?” Sir Mumphrey Wilton stood in the Lair Mansion Situation Room and frowned. “There’s more to this than we thought,” he warned Hallie and Jocasta. “Another cup of tea, then?” Asil asked. “If it doesn’t restart world war three between Flapjack and Mr Jarvis that is.” “Every time we retrieve one of these power objects from whichever baddie’s holding them, the deuced thing vanishes,” Mumph frowned. “We just had word from Amazing Guy that Dancer got the thing off Thugos but then she seems to remember not havin’ it afterwards.” “And Visionary vanished when he got the Evil Eye,” Asil worried. “Dashed peculiar,” Mumphrey puzzled. “As if we’re not the only chaps out there tryin’ to collect the things…” “Wait…” puzzled Visionary. “What?” he picked himself off the cold flagstone floor and recognised the unmistakable uber-gothic architecture of Herringcarp Asylum. “You have been privileged,” the man in the iron face-mask told him, staring down on the possibly-fake man. “For a while your meagre mind was host to the brilliance and character of…” Visionary recognised the face from the posters and Marquette’s in Lisa’s quarters. “Doctor Doom!” “Doctor Do…” the archvillain proclaimed, before he realised Visionary had beaten him to the reveal. “Yes, I, Victor von Doom, merely swapped our minds for a moment or two to gain control of the so-called Evil Eye.” “Good evening, Visionary,” noted the Hooded Hood, appearing from behind the master of Latveria casually cupping the cosmic cube in his hand. “I trust you are unharmed from your recent mind-swap? I understand Doom had some difficulty in locating yours to undertake the operation.” “Hey!” Visionary objected. “So you’re the secret bad guys playing scavenger hunt with the cosmic whatsits!” “It was our dark genius which brought the items to this Parodyverse in the first place,” Dr Doom boasted. “Here, far from their usual guardians, these items may be harnessed as never before. Doom shall ensure that they can never again be used against him, and can then go on to rule all of reality in his own universe, as is his right and destiny.” The Hooded Hood had been about to employ the third person about himself too, but he shook his head and instead said, “We’ve got a good deal yet to do with these instruments. If you are going to play your little surprise upon us. Visionary, it had better be now.” Visionary blinked. “Aw crap,” complained the most irritating piece of dandruff ever to cling to somebody’s thinning receding hairline, “the Hood’s onto us. Pop the Pym particles, Hawk!” “On it,” agreed Clint Barton, flipping the canister that undid the shrinking gas provided by Ant Man to conceal heroes on the scalp of the person voted Most Likely To Be Kidnapped By the Secret Archvillains. Trickshot tumbled out of Vizh’s hair to full-size, rolled left, and shot the Cosmic Cube from the Hooded Hood’s hand. Hawkeye rolled to the right and pinned the Evil Eye from Doom’s grasp. And Lisa Waltz stated wight where she was on the floor and smiled up at Victor von Doom and Ioldobaoth Winkelweald. “I don’t suppose there’s any way I could convince you boys to take an afternoon off from multiversal domination for a little socialising?” she suggested. “I can guarantee it’d be worth it.” The Hooded Hood paused to consider this. “Who is this insolent slut?” demanded Dr Doom. “Oh, the accent,” sighed Lisa. “Call me an insolent slut again, Victor!” “I fear we cannot acquiesce to your blandishments at the moment, Ms Waltz,” the Hooded Hood told her. “Ah well.” Lisa breathed disappointedly. “Can’t blame a girl for trying. In that case I summons the Lair Legion and the Avengers.” Coming later: Really supreme power can be held by only one… but which one? The Avengers and the Lair Legion vs Dr Doom and the Hooded Hood! The Avengers and the Lair Legion vs the Masters of Evil and the Purveyors of Peril! Dr Doom vs the Hooded Hood! Place your bets and keep your arms inside the car, because this is going to be one wild ride, true believers! Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2005 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2005 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
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