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Post By The definitive narrative version from... the Hooded Hood Wed Aug 03, 2005 at 03:44:08 am EDT |
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#225: Untold Uninteractive Tales of the Lair Legion: Dangerous Paths | |
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| #225: Untold Uninteractive Tales of the Lair Legion: Dangerous Paths Previously: While Nats undertakes an uncomfortable mission to the underworld and Lisa and Dancer accompany Donar to investigate his missing mythological realm, the field team of the Lair Legion respond to a major disaster in Northwest Africa. This is their story.       “7.9 on the Richter scale, epicentre somewhere in Northeast Africa,” Hallie reported, correlating information from a score of scientific survey sites across the globe and half a dozen satellites above it. “Rainforest mostly, but depending exactly where the shock began it could hit some major population centres.” “But it’s not an earthquake?” Sir Mumphrey Wilton checked, resplendent in his paisley dressing gown. “Not natural?” “I don’t think so,” the Lair Legion’s resident artificial intelligence answered. “That’s why it’s so hard to pinpoint. And it doesn’t have the characteristic signature of say a nuclear detonation.” “Yo is to be thinking we are to be going and looking,” Yo suggested. “Is to be many people might be needing of help.” “Who’s in the mansion?” Mumphrey enquired. Many of the team were still beaten up from last night’s crisis in upstate Gothametropolis. “Hatman, CrazySugarFreakBoy!, the Manga Shoggoth, and Trickshot,” Hallie answered. “Visionary, Lisa, and Dancer are around with Donar too, but they’re preparing to head off for a meeting with the Chronicler of Stories. I can ask them to put it off, but…” “But Donar’s keen to find out where his Ausgardian kingdom’s vanished to, what?” the eccentric Englishman understood. “No, best not interrupt that investigation. Send the others, and see if Uhuna’s willin’ to go along. There’ll be some serious casualties.” “Shall I try and contact Nats and Al and Lee and DBS?” Hallie suggested. “Not till we know what’s goin’ on,” Mumphrey suggested. “Let’s get some chaps out there to take a shuftie first, I think.” “And quickly,” added Yo. “Is to be people will be in trouble!” “Hold on tight,” Jay Boaz warned the team. “We’re heading off fast.” “We’re holding onto our hats,” Trickshot snorted. Hatman jammed his pilot’s headset harder onto his head, ignored the irritating archer, and gunned the sleek aircraft out over the grey Atlantic. “Yo is thinking that is to be taking even cute Hatty an hour or so to be getting us to where we are to be helping,” the deputy leader of the Lair Legion pointed out. “Is to be everyone getting to rest.” CSFB!, Trickshot, and Uhuna settled back in their seats. “I do not rest,” the Manga Shoggoth bubbled. “I suppose I could eternally lie for a while…” The team lost communications in the electromagnetic static about five hundred miles offshore from West Africa. “I’m getting bupkis from the sensors here,” Trickshot complained, slamming the monitor panel with his fist. “Are we just going to fly right inta this snafu or whut?” N’Kinto International Airport was a ruin, the runways cracked and the flight tower toppled. Trickshot took the LairJet controls and brought the craft in on hover mode while the Shoggoth rolled over the fuel fires and Hatman used his Cranes cap to heave the larger bits of wreckage off the collapsed terminal. “If this is what it’s like here, what’s it like nearer the middle?” CSFB! pointed out. Princess Uhunalura laid her hands on one of the flight tower crew dragged clear by Yo. She shuddered a moment and the man awoke. “What happened?” Hatman asked him. “It was very sudden. The sky went dark. Something moved overhead. Something very large. Then the whole world shook.” “A pretty fair part of it, anyway,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! agreed. “There was a big rainbow flash, too,” the flight controller remembered. “Over to the north…” “The northing?” Yo puzzled. “But is to be epicentre to east!” The LairJet moved through thick clouds of dust raised by the devastation, over league after league of broken rainforest. “If it was bad enough to smash up buildings a hundred miles back,” CSFB! pondered, “what’s it going to be like in the heart of the destruction?” “The damage is deeper than you think,” rumbled the Shoggoth. “Even the adjacent sub-planes are disturbed.” “Please don’t feel you have ta explain that,” Trickshot said quickly. Suddenly the dust cloud dropped away and the Legion had a clear view of the terrain ahead. “Oh…” gasped Yo, leaning forward to look out of the LairJet windshield. The ground ahead was carved out, a massive divot seven hundred miles wide, a shallow gouge as if a giant had used his spoon to shear a slice out of the world. “That’s… not good,” Hatman swallowed. “That is what is to be happening to cute Ausgard,” pointed out Yo.” The dust storm was being swirled away by the sudden rainstorm at the edge of the crater. “I guess the weather patterns have been screwed up too,” Hatman concluded, wrestling with the LairJet’s yoke as the sky darkened again. “I blame that flamin’ butterfly whut keeps causin’ all that chaos and junk,” Trickshot complained. “Hey, that butterfly’s a hero of mine!” objected CSFB! Suddenly Yo leaned forward. “Looking there!” s/he called, pointing into the gloom. “Yo is to be seeing a colourful flash. To the North!” Hatman strained his eyes through the eerie dusty tempest. “I don’t see anything,” he admitted. “It was being like to be a rainbow spray,” Yo reported. “Is to be very pretty.” The LairJet continued its cautious overflight of the vast carved bowl. Near the centre of the great hole the force had cut straight through the deep bedrock, fracturing the tectonic plate itself. Hatman brought the LairJet low through the rising steam. “Okay, so Galactivac felt peckish,” CSFB! speculated. “It is no wonder that such a great removal of planetary matter caused the telluric reactions were witnessed at the perimeter of the event,” the Shoggoth noted clinically. “It is fortunate that the gouge is relatively shallow, and therefore has not caused too much volcanic activity.” Trickshot was fumbling with some equipment he’d dragged from a locker – a sextant, compass, and slide rule. “Okay, the onboard systems don’t know what day it is,” the archer pointed out, “but fortunately Br’er Tricky knows a thing or two about wilderness travel. An’ I think I know where we are.” “Where’s that?” Uhuna wondered. Her geography beyond the Great Relief was hazy at the best of times. “You’re not gonna like it,” Trickshot warned them. “That seven hundred mile crater down there… that used ta be Wakandybar!” There was no flat surface to land the LairJet on in the strange new basin so Trickshot kept the craft in hover mode while Yo, CSFB!, the Shoggoth, and Hatman dropped down to examine the damage. “It’s really smooth!” CrazySugarFreakBoy! observed, running his hand over the exposed strata of deep rock. “And slippery,” he added, catching Hatman as the capped crusader lost his footing and almost went on the slide ride of his life. “There is definitely a dimensional component to whatever has been done here,” the Manga Shoggoth rumbled. “The coterminous dimensions are extremely agitated.” “I’d be agitated if someone had just scooped out a whole nation and swallowed it up,” CSFB! pointed out. Yo used his/her rapier to carve a sample of rock from the side of the basin and pocketed it for later analysis. Yo thought s/he might be able to do something in the portable lab on the LairJet, but if not at least it would keep Al B. happy for a while. “There is not much else we can be doing here,” the pure thought being pointed out. “Is to be we must either be heading back with what we have found or else head down into the mistings at the bottom of the crater.” The LairJet cautiously descended through the hot steam welling from the bottom of the crater. “Pretty hot outside,” Trickshot observed, studying the sensor board. “We should’a brought a couple of lobsters ta boil.” “This is difficult piloting,” Hatman pointed out, trying to concentrate on blind navigation. The electromagnetic effects were even more pronounced here, making even his nav-readouts unreliable. Trickshot made a sound to indicate that he could do the job with his eyes shut. “I think there’s something down there!” Uhuna said suddenly. “Something alive!” “You can sense life forces?” CrazySugarFreakBoy1 asked her, “That’s so cool.” “Not usually from this far away,” the Abhuman princess admitted. “This must be a very powerful life force or… I don’t know. I’ve never sensed anything quite like it.” Yo took the flight controls while Hatman pulled on his Steelers cap and was strapped in to a drop-harness. The Shoggoth clustered his biomass around the LairJet’s bottom hatch to insulate it from any steam incursion. “Be careful down there, buddy,” CSFB! told the capped crusader. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.” Hatman choked back any number of replies and nodded for Trickshot to winch him down through the Shoggoth and into the steam. “Are we sure this is a good idea?” asked Uhuna nervously. Hatman descended through the thick choking steam, his body transformed to metal by the Steelers cap on his head. It was a surreal feeling, dropping through clouds, everything around him seething and moving. “Are you still functioning adequately?” asked the fragment of Manga Shoggoth lodged on his shoulder. “Quite adequately, thanks,” the capped crusader lied. It was quite eerie being lowered through the steam with a glob of elder slime to chat with. Then his feet brushed the bottom of the basin. “Tell your other bit we’re down,” Hatman instructed the Shoggoth. “Tell Yo I’m heading towards the very deepest point.” As if responding to Hatman’s steely voice, a shape welled through the steam-clouds. It was impossible to see what it was, except it was humanoid, bulky, and possibly silver. “A robot?” Jay Boaz wondered. “Not the Machine Shop again?” The sentry shifted about, seeking the source of intrusion. “I believe we should withdraw,” the Shoggoth advised. “There are too many unknowns here, and this is a hostile environment for your kind.” “I guess so,” conceded the capped crusader. “Ask your other half to ask Tricky to haul us out of here.” A moment later the winch jerked as Hatman was dragged back into the air. The obscured sentry sensed the movement. A bright flash of laser-light seared through the steam, slicing through the steel cable that held Hatman’s harness. Jay Boaz desperately reached up and caught the sheared end of his lifeline. “Get me up now he shouted. It occurred to him that anything able to cut through the harness cable could cut through his steel form just as easily. Another laser flash sheared nearby but went wide. The steam was obscuring Hatty too. The dark silhouette of the LairJet loomed above. Hatman felt himself oozing though the seal of Shoggoth-goo around the bottom hatch. “Do not to be touching of cute-metal-Hatty!” Yo warned. “Is to be he is very hot just now.” Another laser beam sliced the steam near to the aircraft. “We might want to be getting the hell outta here,” Trickshot pointed out. “When we come back it’ll be with special gear so we kin properly kick laser-bozo without getting’ parboiled.” The LairJet veered away back toward the rim. “I’m not sure about this,” Trickshot snorted as the Legion aircraft approached the broken rim of the missing terrain. “It feels kinda like runnin’ away.” “We need expert help and proper equipment,” Hatman countered. “We were sent on a general search and rescue mission. This LairJet’s not specially equipped for hostile environment action, we don’t have thermal suits, our sensors aren’t worth a looney, and there’s thousands of people on the perimeter of this devastation that need our help. It’s just a common sense calculation.” “And you know we’ll be back, right?” CSFB! grinned at the archer. “And next time it’s personal!” “Hallie, can you read us?” came Hatman’s crackly signal from around the world. “We’re getting interference from whatever event’s happened there, but yes we can here you,” the AI replied. “What’s happening?” “Hard to describe,” the capped crusader admitted. “The tectonic shift has caused devastation here. All the others are involved in rescue operations right now. Look, let me put the thing on screen…” The image on the main viewer shifted to a video shot from the LairJet’s nose camera. The vessel hovered high over a vast grey plain. It was like a giant spoon had carved a four hundred mile scoop out of the landscape, leaving only a deep gorge or sheared bedrock. Beyond it the land was churned up and broken for three hundred miles in every direction. “Wait a minute,” objected Sir Mumphrey, scowling at the picture. “Isn’t that what happened to Ausgard yesterday?” “Pretty much,” Hatman agreed. “And now it’s happened here.” “And where is ‘here’ exactly?” Amber St Clare, LL/government liaison demanded. “We need to know where to direct the aid efforts.” Hatman gestured to the deep earth-wound. “That down there,” he announced, “was Wakandybar!” The weather changed again as the LearJet flew north looking for the source of the rainbow flash reported by N’Kinto Airport. A blistering African sun burned away the cloud cover, and there was none of the curious red discolouration caused by the massive earth upheavals elsewhere along the rim. “Okay, now I got these sensor readings tellin’ me we’re in Memphis,” Trickshot complained. “Accordin’ to this Gracelands is about five clicks that way.” “That doesn’t seem likely,” the Manga Shoggoth pointed out. “Although I am tasting a few dimensional anomalies.” “Wouldn’t it be cool if Elvis was behind all this?” CrazySugarFreakBoy! enthused. “Maybe the aliens sent him back?” Trickshot kicked the sensor array. “We gotta get Al B. Harper some new egghead pills,” he snarled. “To be looking over there!” Yo called, again pointing out of the LairJet windshield. “Over by big cute lake! Is to be a flash of rainbowing!” “If we got a choice between fightin’ Elvis an’ My Little Pony I say we go up against the King,” Trickshot voted. Any response from his comrades was lost as Hatman jinked the LairJet sharply to starboard to avoid a mid-air collision. “What the hell…” the capped crusader gasped as he avoided the large winged reptile. “A dragon?” The saurian shrieked angrily and swooped away low over the jungle canopy. “Technically that was a wyvern,” CSFB! instructed him. “Common mistake, but your wyvern only has two limbs plus its wings, where as a dragon like Finny has four. Also, a wyvern has an armour class of three and seven hit dice…” “I’m assuming that these flying reptiles aren’t a normal part of the indigenous fauna?” Uhuna checked as the LairJet skimmed the treetops in pursuit of the fleeing wyvern. “Yo is to be thinking it is rather pretty,” Yo admitted. “Try not to be scaring of it, Hatty.” “It’s a fifteen foot long flying reptile,” Hatman pointed out. “What’s it got to be scared…” Then the three ton boulder flew up from the ground and smashed into the LairJet from below. The vehicle rocked crazily and there was a sound of tearing metal from the port wing. “We’re going down!” Hatman warned. “Crash positions.” The Shoggoth shrugged and swelled up to envelop the team in a thick protective goop. “I just washed my hair,” complained Uhuna as the stricken vehicle veered towards the ground. “Take the controls, Yo!” Hatman called, dragging on his Jets hat. “I’m going to try and stabilise our flight.” He rose to the bracing point on the cabin roof and added his own flight thrust to the collapsing aircraft’s. “Keep going, Hatster!” CSFB! encouraged his friend. “I can see the lake. And… a rainbow flash!” With a shriek of rending metal the rest of the LairJet wing gave way. The vessel flipped over and ploughed into the crystal waters of the unexpected lake. “We hadn’t wrecked one of these puppies for a while,” Trickshot noted as the heroes popped the emergency hatch and surfaced. “We were well overdue.” “What the hell hit us?” Hatman demanded, strapping on his swimming cap. “Worry about that later,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! advised him. “Worry about that disturbance in the water heading towards us now!” “Let’s head for shore,” Hatman suggested. “I don’t like the look of those v-shaped ripples over there heading in this direction.” The Shoggoth swelled up to make a thick, gooey raft. “The Shmoo was never this sticky,” CSFB! pointed out. There was a disturbance in the water around the Shoggoth. “Hmm,” he noted. “Some tiny carnivorous piscine entities are discovering that it is not a good idea to nibble elder creature.” “Pirhanas!” Trickshot recognised. “Are there piranhas in North Africa?” “There are now,” Hatman replied. “Get us to shore, please, Shoggy.” “Yo is wanting to find out what is to be behind all of this,” Yo confessed. “Why is this place not to be all destroyed like everywhere else near uncute crater? Why is to be lovely untypical creatures round here? What is to be making of cute rainbow flashings?” The Shoggoth finally floated to shore and the heroes hurriedly and gratefully pulled themselves onto dry land. Trickshot looked down the waterline and spotted a cluster of broken trees where something large had forced a pathway away from the lake. “Another big monster?” he wondered. Yo was still looking northwards into the jungle, hoping to find the place where s/he had seen the rainbow lights. “Perhaps,” s/he replied. “Is many mysteries here.” “I don’t think we can ignore such an obvious and recent trail,” Hatman admitted. “I don’t see any other such trails either, so maybe what caused it is new around here. I say we try and find out what caused it.” “To be using standard searching pattern Alpaca,” Yo called out to the Legion. “Hatty is not to be flying too high in case cute-Wyvern is still to be around and is feeling hungry.” “Something strong enough to knock down trees gotta leave some tracks,” Trickshot pointed out. “And luckily ol’ Tricky’s one of the world’s best hunters.” He considered this statement. “Nah. The best,” he amended himself. The Manga Shoggoth examined the thick shattered boxwood tree. “This was not damaged by the tectonic shifts,” he deduced. “This was snapped by a powerful impact.” “By some kind of horrible monster?” Uhuna asked nervously. And the rock escarpment that CrazySugarFreakBoy! was squatting on suddenly moved. As the wired wonder somersaulted away it rose up, unfolding massive granite arms and raising a tiny shingle head. “Puny redhair-girl says Yurt is horrible monster?” the inconceivable Yurt growled, looming over the heroes. “Yurt will smash!” “Now big fella, there’s no need to get all agitated,” Hatman suggested as the vast stone and slate bulk of the indescribable Yurt towered up over the Lair Legion. “There’s no need for us to fight. We can be friends.” “Because that always works,” CSFB! said out of the corner of his mouth to Trickshot. Well, at least we know now who busted up out LairJet, right?” the archer scowled. “Is to be Hatty is right, possibly-cute big monster,” called out Yo. “Is we can all be happy as bunnies if only we are getting along.” The Yurt looked from the pure thought being to the capped crusader. “This might just work,” Uhuna breathed. The Yurt swayed for a moment, then lashed out at Hatman. “Puny cap-man thinks he can confuse Yurt, but Yurt cannot be more confused! Yurt is the dumbest one there is!” “Eeeek! What is it?” squealed Uhuna as Yo swept her from the path of a boulder-sized fist. “That is to being the indescribable Yurt,” the pure thought being answered, skipping aside from a grasping arm ridged with razor-sharp shale edges. “Is to be monster created by uncute nuclear explosion and peasant hut.” Trickshot distracted the behemoth with a screamer arrow, which it grabbed and ate. “Yeah, this guy just upped an’ vanished from the Safe just before that Hellraisers business,” the irritating archer remembered. He turned back as his team-mates gaped at him. “What, I can’t read briefing stuff sometimes?” Hatman reached to his waist to find his Donar helmet. Nothing less was going to make a dent on the Yurt. “How did he get here, though? And what has he got to do with the crater? Or the rainbow flashes?” CrazySugarFreakBoy! dodged aside so the Yurt’s blow landed instead into the rapidly-expanding Manga Shoggoth. The Yurt flicked the elder being goo off him like a dog shedding water. “That’s the Yurt?” Uhuna gasped. “But you’ve beaten him before, right?” “The first time NTU-150 came up with a device to suck his gamma radiation out of him,” CSFB! told her. “Another time the Librarian and Al B. pumped him with intelligence to take him down.” “And guess who ain’t here now to geek the thing into submission,” Trickshot complained. “We’re here,” Hatman said determinedly. “We do the job.” He stepped up and smashed a fist into the massive creature, hitting so hard that tiny cracks appeared across six inches of the Yurt’s surface. “Uh oh,” Trickshot breathed. Hatman staggered back, gathering his wits for another blow when the Yurt hammered him down with the force of a collapsing building. Razor-shale ridges ripped across the capped crusader, gashing him deeply. “Back off, rocky!” CrazySugarFreakBoy! warned the monster, spraying a confusing array of combat candy around the Yurt. The gamma-spawned monstrosity hammered the ground, sending fragments of shrapnel spraying into CSFB! and Trickshot. “Getteth them to safety,” Hatman called rising. “I hath got him!” “The Yurt is a remarkable construction,” the Shoggoth admired. “But he does seem somewhat agitated.” Trickshot fired a brace of smoke arrows to cover their retreat. Hatman dragged on his rockets cap again and powered the team away through the jungle. “Come back, puny humans!” a gravely voice echoed behind them. “Come back and be crushed by Yurt! Yurt is the dumbest one there is…” “The Yurt’s never met Bad News Herb then,” CSFB! suggested. Trickshot took point, moving silently and stealthily with Yo and CSFB! on flank. Hatman, the Shoggoth, and Uhuna were the main party, following the trail picked out by the irritating archer. The jungle was not as dense as it looked. Small animal tracks ran through the tall rich grass, and there were occasional clearings where the blue African sky shone down. “This biosystem is puzzling me,” the Manga Shoggoth said at last. “I mean more than the usual carbon-based biosystems. This one follows no internal logic.” “I know what you mean,” Uhuna agreed. “There’s such a rich ecodiversity in so confined an area, where usually you’d expect one or two plant species to dominate. And despite the forest canopy there’s a profusion of wildflowers.” “And there’s these handy paths,” Trickshot pointed out. “I never seen a jungle quite like this.” “It’s not like a wild jungle at all,” Uhuna puzzled. “More like… a garden?” “This whole place feels very strange,” Princess Uhuna worried. “I mean stranger than the rest.” She stared at the massive fruiting trees that grew all along the valley path. “This feels almost cultivated.” “People might live here,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! suggested. “They might have deliberately planted all the fruit and flowers and stuff.” “I have difficulty telling them apart,” the Shoggoth declared, somehow managing a sniff despite not having repertory apparatus. “Flowers and fruits and people, I mean.” “But what does it have to do with that big crater back there?” CSFB! wondered. “Listen again!” Yo said, perking his/her head to one side. In the distance, in the direction of the track they were following, was the sound of a waterfall. And a clear, lovely voice singing. The waterfall fell from a high cliff ridge into a deep lush valley, where it bubbled into a crystal pool that eventually fed the larger lake the heroes had discovered. The forest floor was particularly green in the canyon, but dotted with a profusion of colourful orchids. Trickshot and Yo stealthily moved forward round the top of the valley wall. Carl Bastion stalked with the assurance of a hunter, and Yo thought him/herself a great tracker at the moment (and whatever Yo believed him/herself to be s/he was). Half an hour’s slow crawl brought them to a spot where they could see down into the pool at the base of the waterfall, where the spray rose up in clouds of mist and spawned a thousand rainbows. “What are they doing now?” Hatman asked CSFB! as the forward guard reached the cliff edge. CrazySugarFreakBoy! adjusted his gawker goggles to maximum magnification and followed the stealthy movements of his teammates. “They’re looking over the cliff edge. They seem surprised… They’re standing up!” “Standing up?” Hatman objected. “They’re supposed to be hiding.” “Something is wrong,” the Manga Shoggoth realised. Yo waved happily to his teammates then jumped off the cliff. Trickshot shrugged and jumped off after him. “What?” shrieked Uhuna. “What did they just do? And what do we do?” Hatman and CSFB! hurried through the undergrowth, all attempts at stealth forgotten as they sought to find what had happened to their comrades. “Stay back,” Hatman called to Princess Uhunalura. “I don’t think so, the Abhuman girl answered determinedly, struggling to keep up. The Shoggoth oozed patiently behind her. CrazySugarFreakBoy! was the first to reach the cliff edge. He just had time to whistle in amazement before the rainbow flash surrounded the whole team and they vanished. Trickshot opened his eyes and blinked. “Am I dead?” he asked. The naked women cavorting in the bubbling pool at the base of the waterfall waved to him playfully. “Cause if so that’s okay. I can deal with it.” “What happened?” Hatman groaned, stirring painfully. “Nothin’ yet,” Tricky answered. “But give me time.” “You were all stunned by an extraordinarily powerful telepathic assault,” the Manga Shoggoth explained. “Combined with what I can only assume was a psychoteleportational effect to bring you here.” ‘Here’ was the clearing that the singing has come from. The garden of earthly paradise was peopled with dozens of men, women, and children, frolicking on the grass and diving into the cool clear waters, feasting on the ripe fruits that blossomed on the trees, laughing and dancing with each other in the warm sunlight. “I had to follow by my own means,” the Shoggoth added slightly crossly. Yo was the next to awake. Being a creature of pure thought, s/he actually had physical bruising on his/her flesh after the psychic attack. “Ouching,” Yo declared. “Why is everybody naked?” Uhuna asked. She fumbled for her neckline. “Should we all take out clothes off too?” “That won’t be necessary,” Hatman said sternly. “We don’t need any more distractions.” “I could handle another distraction or two,” CSFB! offered helpfully. “We still need to know what is happening here,” the Shoggoth pointed out. “There is a substantial telepathic force at work. It seems too great a coincidence for it not to be related to the catastrophe in Wakandybar. Nor is it likely to be unrelated to the strange beasts we have encountered in this area, or the rainbow flashes of teleportation that you mortals have witnessed.” CSFB! jumped up with a happy grin. “So we find out,” he said. “So why don’t we ask one of the naked chicks what’s goin’ on?” Trickshot suggested. “I’m up for a little primary research.” “So I notice,” giggled Uhuna. “Why don’t we ask one of these nice naked men? Or several of them?” CSFB! bounded over to a handsome pair of Nubians who were sitting together enjoying the lush sticky fruits of one of the colourful trees. “Hi there,” he called, relying on his tongue-stud and ear-ring to do the translating for him. “We’ve just arrived and we were wondering where the holiday director was.” “We are to be hoping to be finding out what is going on,” Yo added, believing s/he could speak Swaheli. The couple stared at the strangers for a moment, giggled, then went back to their amusements. “Yeah, bad time,” CSFB! agreed. “I can see that. Still, great new recipe for fruit cocktail you guys.” The Manga Shoggoth sighed and rolled over another trio of humans, enveloping them in his biomass so he could analyse them properly. “Shoggoth!” Hatman called sharply, “Spit them out.” The Shoggoth allowed the traumatised humans to ooze free of his gelid bulk. They scrambled away desperately, but then seemed to lose interest in escaping the loathsome elder being and went back to their pleasures as if nothing had happened. “Boy, these folks are pretty single-minded,” Trickshot admitted. “These mortals are under a powerful psionic influence,” the Shoggoth reported. “A kind of delta-wave dream state. They are being mind controlled.” “By somebody with a dirty mind,” Trickshot snorted. “You think?” CSFB! wondered. “I mean, I know some of the folks here are being pretty affectionate, but a lot of them are just playing. Like children. Having fun. This isn’t an orgy it’s…” “An orgy?” Uhuna asked, intrigued. “What’s that?” “This is not being an orgy,” Yo agreed. “This is being… no inhibitions, no worryings, no problems, no responsibilities.” “Should we take out clothes off now and join them?” Uhuna checked. “Or shall we wait for Bill to get here?” “We get on with the mission,” Hatman said; but even he was feeling the seductive tug of the garden, and he wondered how long even the Lair Legion could resist it.” “Or we get outta here,” Trickshot suggested. “Just ta see if we can.” The heroes struck off back down the path, leaving the happy revellers to their sylvan amusements at the waterfall pool. “There must be hundreds of people here,” Hatman realised. “Thousands, maybe.” “And not all from the same ethnic groups,” CSFB! added. “These folks aren’t all from just round here. Sure, they’re nearly all black, but…” “They have probably been drawn here through the rainbow portals you all experienced,” the Manga Shoggoth rumbled. “There are undoubtedly several more than we have seen, transitory teleportation phenomena drawing mortals from all around the area of the crater.” “Well, they seem better off here than they are in those areas that were earthquaked and storm-ravaged,” pointed out Uhuna. “This place should have been earthquaked and storm-damaged too,” objected Hatman. “Is to be true that is nicer here for cute-humans,” Yo agreed. “But is not so good to be sleepwalking through it.” “You mean it’s not paradise if you can’t choose it,” CSFB! summarised. “Yeah, I’m with that. So what do we do about…” Then the wired wonder fell silent. They’d followed the path away from the waterfall, but now ahead of them that same waterfall with its playful inhabitants lay before them. “I don’t think we’re allowed to go away,” Uhuna noted. Hatman dragged on his Eagles cap and winged upwards away from the verdant basin. “Do not be to be getting to far away from us, cute-Jay!” Yo called after him. “Just to be seeing if is to be able to get away by going of upwards.” “No problem, Yo,” the capped crusader assured the Lair Legion’s deputy leader. “I’ll just…” “Watch out!” shouted CSFB! from the ground, pointing to where the flock of wyverns were rising from the forest canopy and winging towards Hatman. “Hunting party!” Trickshot guessed. He nocked a electroshock arrow and fired it at the first of the massive winged reptiles. Jay swapped to his Steelers cap and dropped like a stone, embedding himself in the lush jungle undergrowth as he landed hard. The wyverns wheeled overhead and screeched in rage at their lost supper. The heroes moved closer towards the loud thrumming force of the waterfall, passing the happy revellers in their sylvan amusements beside the crystal pool. “There’s some kind of rock behind that curtain of water,” Trickshot pointed out, nocking an arrow and advancing cautiously. “An I think I see somebody sittin’ on it.” Just then the same clear, beautiful voiced they had heard before burst into song anew. It was a rich deep music that spoke to them of the end of cares, the surrender of duty, the bliss of innocence. “You are all being affected by a powerful telepathic signal,” the Manga Shoggoth warned. “You may require your clothing and equipment later.” “Is right,” Yo said. Although the pure thought being was affected like the others by the psionic force, Yo was always that happy and contented. Yo was used to it. “Is to be we have to go through waterfalling and be seeing who is to be singing.” Behind the waterfall, a white girl of seventeen or eighteen sat cross-legged on a black rock, brushing her hair and singing. Her long red-gold tresses were all that covered her. She sang as she worked on her tangles. “Okay, so far I’m liking this supervillain,” Trickshot approved. She noticed the newcomers and turned to look at them. “Oh, hello!” she called delightedly. “More friends! Come on in, you poor people!” “In where?” Hatman demanded. “What is this place? Why are all these people here?” “Aren’t you Mister Questiony?” the girl pouted. “It’s rude not to say hello.” “Hello!” beamed Yo. “Is to be nice to be meeting you. What is to be happening?” The girl at the waterfall couldn’t help but smile at the thought being. Yo in turn broke into a massive happy grin as s/he felt thought bunnies nudging at his/her ankles. “This is my garden,” the girl declared. “Nobody bad is allowed in here.” “You bring folks through those rainbow portals, right?” Trickshot checked. “I invite them, yes. They’re all unhappy out there because something horrid has happened, so we decided to bring them here where they can be safe and happy.” “This isn’t another pure thought being, is it?” Uhuna wondered, glancing at Yo making friends with the new bunnies. “Oh no,” Yo replied. “We are knowing who this is to be being from the Technopolis files. She is being the most powerfulest psionic on your planeting, with the ability to be changing reality with her thinkings.” “Mad Wendy,” breathed Hatman. “She drags people into her own mind and makes worlds for them there.” “Hello,” said Mad Wendy again. “Okay,” CSFB! said. “So Wendy’s made a kind of refuge to… to help some of the people who were in trouble.” “Only the nice ones,” Wendy insisted. “The nice ones, yes. But why did you cause whatever happened to Wakandybar to happen?” Mad Wendy shook her head. “That wasn’t me. I’m just helping out afterwards.” “Not you,” Hatman frowned. “Than all of this is just a distraction.” “I don’t think I like you,” Mad Wendy scowled at the caped crusader. “And you hurt my friend Whitney. I can see it in your mind. You are a bad man.” “Uh oh,” Trickshot breathed. “Yo is sorry,” the pure thought being apologised to Mad Wendy, “but is not right to be keeping all of those people in dreaming states. Is not fair with free willing and things. Yo knows you are to be trying to help, but Yo is needing you to be letting these people to go now, pleasing.” “It’s cool that you helped them,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! agreed. “You probably saved their lives. But you can’t keep them here forever.” “Why not?” demanded Mad Wendy. “They’re happy here.” “It’s about free choice,” Hatman argued. “They’re dreaming here, not consenting with their minds clear.” “It’s un-American, okay,” declared Trickshot. “We all got the right ta screw up our own lives.” “They’re my friends,” Mad Wendy pointed out. “I made a special new world for them. The old one was all broken.” “And Yo is thinking you are to be making a very nice job of it. Yo specially likes the bunnies and the orchids. But Yo is to be saying it is time for the cute-peoples to be waking up and going home now. “No!” shouted Mad Wendy “I believe my mortal comrades require you to cease now,” The Manga Shoggoth warned the girl. Mad Wendy shrugged and crackling rainbow sprays scattered the Legion across the cave behind the waterfall. “You’re all meanies!” she spat angrily. “You don’t belong here!” CSFB! was the only one who avoided the rainbow streaks and he bounded in to grab the psionic; but he was swatted from behind and sent bouncing like a broken puppet to lie still, face down in the pool. “Bad men try to hurt Yurt’s friend!” thundered the monster with the proportionate strength and skill of a Russian peasant hut. “Now Yurt will smash you all!” “Okay, this just got complicated,” Trickshot admitted as the Yurt moved in between the battered Legion and Mad Wendy. “Yo is to be thinking this is not a good time to be violencing!” Yo called out as the Yurt approached. “Not a good time for us, for sure,” Uhuna agreed. “Hurry and do something. I think Dream may be drowning!” “I’m on him,” Hatman agreed, pulling on his swimming cap, sliding under the Yurt’s massive grasp, and plunging into the pool to find CrazySugarFreakBoy! “To be listening, cute-Mad Wendy!” Yo called out, “Is not to be needed for us to be fighting of each other! Is not to be good. Is not to be nice!” Trickshot nodded. “Yeah. So back off of we hand your rocky boyfriend here his butt.” “You want to take my friends away!” Mad Wendy accused. “You want to help the bad things happen.” “What did happen?” the Shoggoth asked. “If you did not cause the disappearance or destruction of many thousands of square miles of this planet’s surface than what did?” “You want to help the red man!” hissed Mad Wendy. “We are just wanting to be letting of these people to go and to be rebuilding their homes now,” Yo promised. “And ta not get our heads plastered across the walls by a freaking huge radioactive peasant hut,” Tricky added. “Too much talk!” the Yurt growled, thundering forward. “Now Yurt smashes!” “Ouch,” groaned CSFB! as Hatman pumped the water from his lungs. “I feel like I was clobbered by the Yurt!” “You were,” the capped crusader told him. He pulled off his nurse’s cap and reached for his Donar helmet. “And now we musteth stop him for the nonce.” “So the Yurt and Mad Wendy really did team up like ManMan claimed,” CSFB! said, climbing painfully out of the pool. “The unstoppable fighting machine that gets stronger as he gets dumber and the most powerful psionic on the planet with an Alice in Wonderland fixation and the emotional maturity of an eight year old!” “It’s still better than being in the Sporran of Horrors,” Hatman pointed out. “Let’s go do it.” The rest of the heroes were trying to contain an angry monster of slate and stone as he tried to smear them over the walls of Mad Wendy’s cave. The psionic was humming to herself as she tried to will the Manga Shoggoth out of existence. “Yo is telling you two to be stopping of it!” Yo warned the Yurt and Mad Wendy. “Now! Otherwise Yo will be stopping of you!” Uhuna scrambled to pick Trickshot up from where the archer had just been hurled. “Um, can Yo really stop those two?” she worried. “Only I thought nobody had ever beaten the Yurt in a straight fight.” “I seen worse,” Trickshot shrugged, gathering up his bow and arrows and going back in. “Don’t worry, darlin’. The Yo-ster don’t make empty threats.” CrazySugarFreakBoy! somersaulted over Mad Wendy head and planted a big kiss on her lips before being swatted away. “You have a very long tongue!” she accused him. “Too mucheth information,” Hatman said as he slammed into the Yurt from behind so hard that the walking peasant hut actually noticed him. “We are to be needing a plan,” Yo called. “Firsting we are needing of Mad Wendy to be being busy…” “I shall provide a suitable distraction,” the Manga Shoggoth agreed, pulling himself together with some effort. He oozed around the Yurt and enveloped Mad Wendy. “Graaaaaaaahhh!!!” shouted the Yurt, flinging globs of Shoggoth away to try and free his friend. “Now, cute-Uhuna!” Yo called. “Please be to be shifting radiation from Yurt. Is illness, yes?” “I’ll… I’ll try,” the Abhuman princess agreed, rushing forward to lay her hands on one of the Yurts great thick pedestals. “But where do I shift it to?” “To me,” called Hatman. He hurriedly pulled on a mortar board and his eyed filled with intelligence. “By placing this Thinking Cap on my cranium I should be prepared for the eventuality of a similar physiological transmogrification to that which the entity nomenclatured the Yurt previously underwent.” Uhuna strained and dragged the massive radiations that had transformed nuclear plant worker Vlastimock Bogoff into the inconceivable Yurt out of the rampaging monster and into Hatman. The Yurt screeched, shuddered, and turned round to pulp Uhuna. Trickshot caught the stick-like arm as it span, and knocked Bogoff unconscious with a roundhouse left. “Bozo,” he added. Uhuna relaxed, and the radiations wracking Hatman passed back into the Yurt. Bogoff bulked up again into the great brute of stone and turf and slate; but he was still unconscious. “Heh. I decked the Yurt,” gloated Trickshot. “Dude, that was awesome,” CSFB! grinned, high-fiving the archer. “No!” shrieked Mad Wendy, writhing within the Shoggoth. The elder being’s gelid bulk suddenly reflected the rainbow radiance within him, and then he exploded into little crystal droplets of solidified gel. They shattered into dust as they impacted with the cave walls. “Now,” Mad Wendy said wrathfully, turning on the rest of the heroes, “I’ll teach you how to play properly” The mega-psionic could not be more upset at the loss of her friend. Yo grabbed her and hugged her tight. “Is to be all right,” the pure thought being assured the struggling girl. “Do not to be sad! We are to be going to you Happy Place.” Yo vanished with Mad Wendy, taking the troubled psionic to the conceptual dimension from which Yo-beings drew their power and nature. With Mad Wendy gone paradise went too. The Lair Legion found themselves in another broken forest showing evidence of serious quake damage, surrounded by embarrassed naked people wanting to go home. “Yo and the others are still out there co-ordinating disaster relief,” Hatman reported over the borrowed comm-link from the SPUD air cruiser. “S/he asked me to fill you in on what happened.” “Wakandybar is still gone?” Amber St Clare checked. “Yeah, last time we looked,” Hatman said. He was exhausted and a little impatient. “SPUD has the Yurt in custody, and they’re hoping they can get him to the safe before he wakes up. Trickshot’s insufferable.” “Yes, but we want new information,” Hallie told the capped crusader. “Everyone who was in Mad Wendy’s garden of earthly delights is rescued now?” Asil checked. “Yes. Although not everyone thanked us for it.” “And Wendy herself?” Sir Mumphrey demanded. “Is she still in the Happy Place?” “Yo left her with Yi, the guardian of the Happy Place,” Hatman explained. “It’s going to be an interesting conversation.” His face darkened. “We’re still no nearer to finding out about what happened to Wakandybar, though. The whole over-the-rainbow thing turned out to be a response to the devastation, not the cause of it. And there’s nothing to find now at the centre of the basin.” “I’m afraid we do know what happened, Mr Boaz,” Sir Mumphrey Wilton answered. “Or at least we can make a shrewd surmise.” “What then?” the capped crusader wondered. “Think back to the Legion’s oldest files,” Mumph advised the tactical advisor. “We’ve seen somethin’ similar before.” Hatman’s face paled as he made the link that Lisa had earlier. “Oh crap! One of our earliest cases, when whole Earth cities were being dragged away! Before my time, or Dream’s…” “Absolutely. Same thing now, but on a somewhat grander scale, what?” “Those cities were being taken by our most powerful, most deadly adversary in those early years,” Hatman recalled. “They were taken by a man in red armour who had the power to carve up worlds. They were taken by the Parody Master!” Sir Mumphrey Wilton nodded and rose briskly. “Seems the easy part’s done with now, Mr Boaz. Let’s get to work!” Next time: Nitz has a few hard decisions to make under pressure. More on the real estate kidnapper. Nats vs Hell. Vizh and Yuki vs Daimon Soulshredder. Xander vs the alphabet. The Hooded Hood’s new ally. And the debut of a new Prince of Fibs. That’s in Nats Must Die!, coming soon to a Parodyverse near you. Link to UT#225: Untold Uninteractive Tales of the Lair Legion: Dangerous Paths for those who would prefer to read the chapter in a more normal narrative format Those wishing to try the interactive version of this story, which includes a number of additional and variant scenes, should click here. Those wishing to refresh their memories on the Parody Master’s previous plot of this kind are referred to Lair Legion: Year One, part 5 – Who stole Birmingham and other bits of questionable real estate and why the League of Regulars had to get a new name.  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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