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Post By Fun facts and thrilling twist from... the Hooded Hood Fri Sep 16, 2005 at 07:11:09 pm EDT |
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#234: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Waiting for the Big Bang | |
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| #234: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Waiting for the Big Bang The Plot So Far:  Joint undercover operations by the Lair Legion and espionage agency SPUD uncovered trafficking of materials intended to make Earth’s first transnuclear weapon. The Lair Legion captured Count Wolfgang Fokker, leader of terrorist group HERPES, and HERPES’ primary base. Another team took control of Justus Screwdriver’s Caribbean training island for putative supervillain henchmen. Yuki Shiro discovered the headquarters location of the criminal robot clan, the Machine Shop. Hatman and the Shoggoth’s team-up investigation with local heroine Zvesti Zdrugo (Rabid Wolf) into the source of smuggled Candian uranium ran into problems as her nuclear scientist teammate, the radioactive Dr Roentgen, was revealed as the perpetrator. Roengen responded by detonating in a nuclear blast. And it’s looking like the archvillain behind the whole chain of events is none other than… the Hooded Hood. Well, people wanted to see him up against the Lair Legion again. Enjoy. The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse Baroness Elizabeth von Zemo was just retiring with a well-deserved portion of tiramisu and a glass of Rhine white when she found the Hooded Hood waiting outside her bedroom door. “Good evening,” she said. “Tiramisu?” “Good evening,” the cowled crime czar replied. “No, not for me thank you.” Elizabeth passed him and went into her bedroom to set down her plate and glass. “Business or pleasure?” she asked him. “Or were you just feeling lonely in that big empty asylum of yours?” “I’m never alone at Herringcarp,” the Hood replied. “I came to see what you were doing tomorrow night.” “Why Ioldobaoth,” purred the Baroness. “A cosmic office holder and a Thonnagarian warrioress aren’t enough to keep you satisfied?” “Your obsession with me is most gratifying,” the archvillain replied. “However, on this occasion I wondered if you wished to accompany me to ZOXXON’s secret facility at Ushuaia to watch the uranium you smuggled for Simonides Slaughter being altered into transmundium.” “You were Simonides’ mystery client?” Beth von Zemo deduced. “No wonder he was so nervous. And that explains why Factor X was so obliging about the warheads too, and why half the major criminal organisations on the planet have been bending over backwards to facilitate some grand transaction.” “I am known as the cowled crime czar for a reason, Elizabeth.” “And you want to take me to Tierra Del Fuego why?” “I thought it would save you the trouble of designing a new generation of those nanite spybots of yours. And you can watch the first transmutation of uranium to transmundium to take place on this planet.” The Baroness looked suspiciously at her visitor. “Making a transnuclear bomb, Ioldobaoth? Isn’t that a bit prosaic for you?” “Yes,” agreed the Hooded Hood; but said no more. “Didn’t you already walk off with the Caphans’ whole stock of transmundium anyhow?” the Baroness demanded. “I need more,” the Hood replied. “I shall be delighted to join you on your expedition tomorrow night,” the Baroness decided. “It sounds very interesting.” Dr Roentgen was human once. That was before he had recognised the inherent inferiority of humankind and had used his genius as a nuclear scientist to modify his body to something better and greater. Now he was living radiation, and when he was angry his rage was expressed in megatons. The Manga Shoggoth had never been human. Created by insane elder gods before history he was a many-angled trans-dimensional creature of protoplasm and strange matter. The fragment of him that had become tainted with mortal substance had joined the Lair Legion, and it was that aspect that enshrouded Roentgen as the Candian scientist detonated. The explosion was enough to scatter the Shoggoth over a hundred miles in every direction; but he shifted the radiation into far dimensions away from the humans that would otherwise have been vaporised in the blast. “What?” gasped Dr Roentgen, staggering as he felt the energies temporarily sucked out of him. Hatman powered in wearing his nuclear worker’s veil and slammed into the Candian. “You madman!” he growled, barrelling the radiation-suited traitor into the cold mud. “You murderer!” They rolled together amidst the bodies of the smugglers who had helped remove the uranium ore that Roentgen had stolen. Amber St Clare turned to the Candian political officer next to her. “Run,” she told him. “What is this?” Comrade Borin demanded as he saw Hatman wrestling with one of the most senior of the Glorious People’s Crimefighting Republic. “We have to arrest… somebody.” Amber dragged Borin into the people’s truck and dragged herself into the driver’s seat. “Shut up. I’ve been here before, on the edge of superhero fights. People die. People like us.” Borin caught the panic in Amber’s voice and shut up. Dr Roentgen drew upon his returning energies to magnify his strength and hurled Hatman aside. Zvesti Zdrugo slammed into the villain, her form twisted to that of a huge silver wolf. Hatman rolled aside to avoid the bulk of Roentgen toppling on him and looked up in awe. This wasn’t the sleek she-wolf he had run with in the forest. This was a massive, foam-jawed red-eyed monster the size of a horse, and it was tearing into Roentgen with a mad fury. “Don’t bite through the…” the capped crusader had time to call; but by then Rabid Wolf had chopped down on the radiation suit, worrying it like a rabbit. It split apart. The resultant burst seared into the great carnivore, burning off the fur and blistering her skin all down one side. And still she came. Hatman pulled on his Steelers cap and blindsided Roentgen, knocking him away from the Wolf. He used his Con Ed hat and drained the energies as rapidly as he could from the injured Zdenka Zarazoza then fell on Roentgen. Dr Roentgen laughed. He abandoned his containment suit, flaring briefly as his radioactive cloud surged free. Then he moved off at the speed of light towards the uranium camp, a livid smear across the sky. Rabid Wolf shifted back to being a sleek midnight-haired woman and collapsed. Hatman caught her in his arms and held her there. “Well?” Dan Drury demanded of his top field agent. “Are you up ta speed after your holiday in South America?” “I’m in the loop,” Contessa Natalia Romanza admitted. “It’s not looking good.” “Give me your best summary,” the director of SPUD asked her. “Somebody big’s doing something big that involves making Earth’s first homegrown transnuclear weapon,” the Contessa began. “For that you need transmundium, uranium refined by dimensional energies through a process we don’t yet have on this planet.” “Except fer those rumours of recovered Technopolitan tech that ZOXXON might have hidden somewhere,” Drury interjected. “Wilson and Thompson were on that mission, but they’ve both missed three report-ins now. An’ Mumphrey says their mansion’s banshee was sobbin’, which usually means…” “Their banshee howls when a Legionnaire has died,” the Contessa knew. “Pretty much everybody else is accounted fer except Amazin’ Guy an’ Sersi apparently,” Drury went on. “Everybody but Falcon.” The Russian woman closed her eyes for a moment to recognise the loss of a comrade. “What about his sister?” she asked. “Does she…” “We don’t tell her nuthin’ till we’re sure,” the one-eyed master spy replied. “An’ then we just say he fell in the line of duty.” “If we ever know,” Natalia considered. She had seen too many fellow agents just disappear without trace. “If we ever know,” acknowledged Drury. “And Palanquez?” the Contessa enquired. “Have the ESPers got anywhere unpicking what Prokofiev did to our prisoner?” “Nothing ta unpick evidently. Looks like your old Soviet sorority sister just erased his whole mind.” The Contessa’s eyes narrowed. “The woman who caused the death of my first husband Alaxi is no sister of mine. “Relax,” the SPUD director assured her. “She’s not on our Christmas card list either. But she’s covered her tracks on the Colombia operation.” “What about the other lead then?” Natalia Romanza demanded, grimly. “I stopped one arms deal in Colombia but Factor X apparently made a replacement exchange in Yugoslavia. Did Lisa and Messenger find out where the new cadre of Screwdriver’s henchmen-for-hire was being sent?” “Lisa, Messenger, an’ Trickshot,” Drury corrected the superspy. “Yes,” acknowledged the Contessa, tightly. “Trickshot.” “We got that data,” agreed Drury. “We just need ta break the encryptions in time ta find out when an’ where the uranium’s bein’ processed, that’s all.” “Operation Little Punk then?” “’Fraid so. But I’ll even resort to Zelnitz if it’ll tell us why the hell we got HERPES, BALD, the Ass-Rapin’ Ninjas, Akiko’s tong, Factor X, ZOXXON and all the rest o’ the criminal underworld jumpin’.” “And Count Fokker? The Lair Legion captured him.” “Yeah,” smirked Drury, happy about that at least. “An’ Sir Mumphrey Wilton’s questioning him.” And the Contessa allowed herself a small vengeful smile as well. “-sa, can you hear me?” Hallie’s voice crackled over the commlink as Trickshot blew up the jamming tower over the Caribbean island that had been Justus Screwdriver’s henchman training base until its recent visit from Lisa, Messenger, and the irritating archer. “Lisa? Do you receive me?” “She receives everybody sooner or later,” Messenger reported. “Go ahead Hallie. We’re here, and we’ve cleared the area. Tell Drury he can come in when he’s ready.” “You’ll have to keep things pinned down for a few hours longer,” the Legion’s artificial intelligence warned the heroes. “The Legion’s just captured Count Fokker and the HERPES squidship. It’s keeping people kind of busy. But I need to talk to Lisa urgently.” “I’m here,” the first lady of the Lair Legion assured her, stepping over the fallen henchmen and peering at the comm-card screen. “What is it?” “Yuki Shiro,” Hallie replied. “We’ve lost her homing signal, and the standing order was that if she was out of range for more than thirty minutes…” “I should summons her the hell out of wherever she’d got herself,” Lisa finished the sentence. “Okay then. Time’s up, I take it? I summons Yuki!” Nothing happened. “Damn,” Lisa frowned. “She’s shielded. I can just about feel here but I can’t pull her away.” “She might be in serious trouble,” Hallie worried. “She’d got a lead on the Machine Shop and she went into the old abandoned funfair over on Flanagan Island. I lost her as soon as she went over the fence.” “She’s not near enough the Safe for their suppression field to be affecting me?” Lisa checked. “No, this one feels different. Right.” She pushed her hair back from her face. “Hallie, get hold of Bry. Tell him to teleport his golden butt over to me here ASAP. I’d summons him myself but I’m saving my strength.” “If we kill these prisoners we don’t need to guard them,” Messenger pointed out. “We don’t kill prisoners,” Trickshot told the postman, “on account of us not being psychotic murderous raving vigilantes.” “I didn’t kill the Captor,” Messenger shrugged. “I had to use some force because he was resisting having the crap kicked out of him.” “I’ll get G-Eyed,” Hallie assured Lisa. “Fast,” the amorous advocatrix told her. “If you can’t summons Yuki outta wherever she is, G-Eyed can’t teleport in,” Trickshot pointed out. “Even if G-Eyed knew exactly where Yuki was, which he don’t.” “I don’t want him to take me to Yuki,” Lisa replied. “I want him to take me to the courthouse.” Yuki Shiro was surrounded by two dozen of the most dangerous robots on the planet, the criminal consortium that called itself the Machine Shop. They didn’t like her. “I’m going to enjoy this, halfbreed,” Mean Machine assured her, flexing his cutting tools. “Oh get a life,” the cyborg P.I. told him. “So you’re big nasty urban robots turned to crime. Didn’t Weed Wrichards program some kind of prime directive into you?” Diagnostic Machine ticked his points off on his slender silver fingers. “Firstly, we are not urban robots any more, but rather specially redesigned custom instruments conceived by Master Machine and constructed by Industrial Machine to exacting specifications that far surpass our original housings. Secondly, it is a myth that a human was progenitor of the robot race, a pernicious lie programmed into some early models to propagate deference for humankind amongst sentient machines. Thirdly…” “We don’t explain the plot to our captives, Diagnostic,” Master Machine cut in. “She’s only exploiting your obsessive fixation on tabulating information.” “But I’m doing a great job of it,” Yuki pointed out. “So what, you guys worship the Machine God or something and you’ve got a mad on at all squishy fleshlings?” “There is no God in the Machine,” Death Machine hissed. “There is only us.” “We are the saviours of the robot race,” Political Machine said, with such sincerity that Yuki almost believed him. “And you save robotkind by taking on contract jobs for humans and stealing radiation from the Wastelands,” Yuki scorned. “We operate a long agenda which is no concern of yours, hybrid,” replied Master Machine. “The radiation cannot harm us but kills humans. Let them use it to poison each other, to bomb each other. We will use the tech we traded for it to upgrade until we are ready to become the ascendant race on Earth.” “I thought that was cats,” Yuki shrugged. “So you passed the rad on? Who to?” “Factor X,” said Answering Machine before Master Machine could activate his pain circuits. Then the talkative robot fell to the floor, writhing. “I trust you’ve had enough time to foster useless hopes of talking you way out of this with what you’ve discovered?” Master Machine smirked at his captive. “Diagnostic?” “Yes, there was an attempt to translocate her away from here about fifteen minutes ago,” the sensor robot reported. “Rather sophisticated. Probably Lisa L Waltz of the Lair Legion. Her summons skidded off our dimensional shields.” “Naturally,” preened Industrial Machine with some pride. “Ah,” said Yuki. “In that case it’s plan B.” “What’s that?” Sewing Machine asked, flexing her needles. “Begging?” “Kicking all of your asses and walking out of here.” Master Machine gestured, and Mean Machine, Kidney Machine, Slot Machine, and Speed Machine moved forward. Yuki avoided them all but Speed, but by the time she’d kicked him away the others were onto her. “Now,” slavered Mean Machine, “the hurting.” Yuki felt a strange sucking sensation, as if she was sinking into the floor. “Well, it’s been nice to visit,” she told the Machine Shop. “We must do this again. Next time I’ll bring high explosives.” And then she vanished. “…summons Yuki Shiro!” Lisa cried, gripping the Booke of the Law with both hands and slamming it on the bench. “Okay, I’m here,” Yuki gasped. If she’d been human the nausea would have knocked her to her knees. Her brain wanted to vomit. “Yuki, are you okay?” asked Goldeneyed, standing beside the first lady of the Lair Legion in the deserted courtroom. “Sure. I was chatting with the Machine Shop. We were about to do big hugs.” Hallie was there too, watching the pale Lisa slump back into the judge’s chair. “Okay,” she said. “I know there was an anti-teleport field around Yuki. So how did you do that?” “Well, I don’t have super-powers,” the first lady of the Lair Legion pointed out. “Just a cosmic office that’s designed to be a kind of infinite notary. And that allows me to summons people.” “Summons them to court,” Hallie realised. “You just misuse the power to summons people to other places at other times.” “I use it creatively,” Lisa smirked. “But yes, it’s designed to bring people to court, and it’s strongest when I’m in a courtroom, calling somebody in a case I’m involved with.” “You’re representing me in City of Gothametropolis vs Yuki Shiro,” Yuki realised. “Right. And when a cosmic office holder is using their power in line with the basic functions of their office, there’s really no power in the universe that can stop them. Well, not many.” “Certainly not a standard anti-teleport field,” G-Eyed said, impressed. “Right again,” Lisa told him. Then she passed out. “I do not fear you, Wilton,” boasted Wolfgang Fokker. “You are soft. Weak. Inferior.” The leader of the Lair Legion glared at the captured Supreme HERPES with contempt. Fokker spat at him. “I know the uses of power. I have forged the foremost terrorist organisation on Earth. I will be released within a matter of hours, because my minions will bring the world’s governments to their knees until I am returned. Plague, war, famine, and death serve me.” Sir Mumphrey Wilton unlocked the Count’s handcuffs, letting him free from his chair. “Good,” approved Fokker, sneering at the eccentric Englishman. “Now…” The rabbit punch to his stomach took him by surprise, but he recovered quickly and hammered a returning left hook into Mumphrey’s jaw. “Too slow, old man,” he sneered. “Even when you were at your prime you would have been no match for me.” Sir Mumphrey straightened up. “We’ll never know,” he admitted. “I’m long past my prime.” “But I remain ever youthful, thanks to the Infusion Ineffable that Drury and I were exposed to back in the last great war,” Fokker continued, knocking aside his enemy’s next attack and placing a scientific fist to Mumphrey’s solar plexus. “Mph,” grunted Mumphrey. “So that’s the secret of your youthful charm, what? That’s just what I needed to know.” And his hands thumbed the studs of his chronometer of infinity. Count Wolfgang Fokker had been cheating time. The keeper of the temporal pocketwatch was time’s policeman. Mumphrey had his pocketwatch neutralise the Infusion Ineffable. Fokker gasped and fell to his knees, his skin browning and wrinkling as the years caught up with him. Mumphrey punched him as he went down. “I saw Auschwitz,” Sir Mumphrey told the gasping nongenarian. “I saw Kwai River. I saw Warsaw Ghetto. You’re not frightened of me?” He leaned forward over the decaying terrorist. “You should be!” Zdenka woke to find herself wrapped in Hatman’s cape, held in Hatman’s arms. It felt very right. “Jay,” she smiled. “I’m not sure why you’re not dead,” the capped crusader admitted, “but I’m glad you’re not.” “My land is not dead,” Rabid Wolf replied, looking up at Jay with her dark eyes that reflected the sky. “You and your friend have saved us from that terrible light.” “I think the Shoggoth stopped his nuclear explosion,” Hatman assured her. “Maybe at the cost of his existence. But Roentgen clearly can’t do another blast of that size straight away. I need to find him before he recharges.” “We need to find him,” Rabid Wolf said, struggling to sit up. “I am still too weak. You take me in your arms.” “Of course,” Jay agreed. He seized the slender woman up, grabbed his jets hat, and shot away with her into the skies. They soared over the forest and the high mountain ridge, diving low over the high tarn that reflected the wide Candian sky. “All of this was nearly destroyed,” the goddess in Hatman’s arms mourned. “It might be yet.” “We’ll stop him or die trying,” the capped crusader promised her. “That’s the job.” “Is why I allow to be member of GloPCrAp,” Zdenka confessed. “Is terrible secret, but is only reason I stay.” “You were raised by the state?” “Since little child. I have always been servant of the Party. But I am for the people.” “There’s more to life than your party,” Hatman assured her. “I’m a Legionnaire because we help people. Save people. Save the world sometimes.” “But you take orders from hereditary imperialist war-leader from decadent aristocratic class,” Zdenka pointed out, quite earnestly. Jay Boaz decided he’d definitely have to point that out to Sir Mumphrey Wilton. “I’m a Legionnaire by consent. Nobody controls us. Nobody makes us do what we do. We just help the best we can. We don’t pretend to be perfect. We just try our best.” “Comrade Borin warned that you would be tempting us to defect,” Rabid Wolf smiled. “He never said you would be so good at it.” “I’m not tr…” Jay began. Then he caught himself. “Zdenka, would you want to leave? To protect Candia another way by protecting the whole world, with the Lair Legion?” The goddess of the north turned to him, her long hair streaming behind them as the seared through the sky. “If I left Candia,” she told him, “it would not be to protect whole world with Lair Legion.” Hatman felt his stomach leap; or maybe it was his heart. “Zdenka… In the short time I’ve known you…” “You think I am beautiful, yes? Very beautiful and sexy, and good to take to bed.” “Er, well…” “Many men think I am beautiful so.” “Yes, I think you are beautiful,” the caped crusader told her, seeing the disappointment in her eyes, “And more important, you’re brave, and noble, and good, and wonderful. Those things are far more important to me.” Zdenka smiled sadly. “You must not become too fond of me, Jay. It is not possible.” She turned her face away from him, but not before Hatman had caught the crystal glint of welling tears. “Everything is possible,” he promised her. “You don’t deserve this.” “If I save my country, my people, I am content,” Rabid Wolf told him. “It is best.” Hatman agreed that they had better keep their minds focussed on the task at hand. For now. “Roentgen cares nothing for those who live here,” Zdenka said as they covered the last of the ground towards the uranium mines. But she looked down at the miserable camp with the meagre tin huts and its barbed wire and fall silent in shame as her own statement came back to haunt her. “One problem at a time,” Hatman suggested. Just then the research building lit up as bright as the sun, its window glass billowing out in lethal shards. “That problem, perhaps?” suggested Rabid Wolf. “Clever,” admired Al B. Harper as he spontaneously discovered a way to bypass the refractive sensor-shielding around the Machine Shop’s hidden HQ beneath the Flanagan Funfair. “A nice piece of work, that defence field. Looks like they’ve actually tapped into the Safe systems to extend and modify the anti-teleport field as far as the amusement park.” “That’s going to make Dan Drury bite through another cigar,” Dancer noted as she cartwheeled past the underground bunker’s point laser defence systems, improbably tangling them together so they blew each other out. “Factor in the teleport breech that’s allowed incarcerated felons to be removed from custody and be substituted by robots, and Governor Westwood’s got some explaining to do,” suggested Mr Epitome, crumbling the defence drones as CrazySugarFreakBoy! kicked them out of the air. “Yo is thinking is to be big coincidence if uncute Machine Shopping being so close to Safe is to be nothing doing with uncute robot doubles to be in the safe,” the deputy leader of the Lair Legion noted. “Is time to be sending in of our big gun to be dealing with whatever nasty trappings are to be being hidden in secret headquarters here.” “Stand thee aside then,” Donar told the Legion. “I art the hemigod of thunder and wilt most willingly take…” “Not cute-Donar,” Yo shook his/her head. “In you go, Visi!” The Ausgardian warrior watched in disbelief as the possibly-fake man stalked past him and strode first into the Machine Shop’s hastily abandoned HQ. “But… what… why… how…?” Donar stammered, his baseball bat drooping. “What he said,” agreed De Brown Streak. “Why Visionary? I mean, I know Lisa’s always telling us he’s expendable, but…” “And also,” Donar added puzzledly, “why art he blue?” Just then the negaton-bomb detonated in the secure area of the Machine Shop’s hidden basement, atomising everything up to the doors outside which the Lair Legion waited for Visionary’s return. “Vizh!” DBS cried out, preparing to race in and see if anything was left of the possibly-fake man at the heart of the blast. “Relax, Streaky,” CSFB! assured the agitated runner. “We know what we’re doing here.” Yo nodded. “Did you to be getting of what you are needing, cute Al B.?” “I caught the co-ordinates that the trigger came from, “ the archscientist agreed. He hurried off to the LairJet with Dancer and CSFB! in hot pursuit.” “But yon Visionary!” gasped Donar, pale and shocked. “Is not to be worrying,” Yo told him. S/he dipped into the pocked of her black silk Zorro outfit and pulled out a small ovoid the size of a walnut. It floated off the pure thought being’s palm then flickered. Suddenly Hallie was stood before them, her blue-tinted hologram form as large as life. “Relax, Donar,” the A.I. grinned. “It was me that just got blown up. Or rather one of my Hologram Unit Drones, the little remote devices that let me project myself outside the Mansion. It’s not the first time I’ve played Visionary.” “You deliberately chose to be Vizh?” DBS frowned. “More than once?” “We were needing to be getting of sensors into uncute Machine Shop’s base before it is to be self-destructing.” Yo explained. “And we are expecting of nasty trap to destroy evidence and killing of Legionnaire. So is to be sending of decoy that can also be reading of Machine Shop dataing. Is to be Machine Shop were monitoring of us so Yo could not be to be explaining.” “And I’m able to download information pretty fast,” smirked Hallie. “It’ll take a while to break the encryptions of course, but that’s why we keep Hacker Nine.” “I knew there had to be a reason,” grinned De Brown Streak. “So CSFB! and Dancer and Al are still in hot pursuit of the robots and we’ve got a chunk of their database? Sweet.” “But what of poor Visionary?” fretted Donar. “He art blown uppeth in yon blast!” Hallie sighed and started the explanation again. “Robots?” Warden Westwood swallowed hard and sat down. “All of them?” “Not all,” the Librarian comforted him. “Only the most dangerous villains you had incarcerated here have been substituted for robot doubles.” Visionary – the real Vizh – looked worried. “Not the Bloodreaper?” “Not him,” Lee Bookman assured the possibly fake man. “There are traces of crunched up robot strewn around his cell, so it’s looking like he declined the offer of a way out.” “We have anti-teleport fields,” Safe Security Chief Flaherty pointed out. “But they’re maintained by the Interdimensional Transportation Corporation, who…” “Who became a lot less reliable after their hostile take over by Peter von Doom,” Visionary observed, “And less reliable still now they’re owned by Elizabeth von Zemo.” “The Baroness is undoubtedly going to claim that any substitution took place before she became the legal owner of the company,” the Librarian pointed out. “How… how many prisoners have we lost?” worried Westwood. “Onslaughter, Anvil Man, Acid Ballerina, Appendage Man,” Flaherty listed. “Gromm the Living Flatulence, Headcase, Slaw, Professor Manyarms, Dr Loveray, Suicide Blonde, Peter von Doom, Roxx-Hoff, the League of Losers, HuntingJustice DeathMarrow…” “We found her,” Vizh comforted. “Proctology, Birthday Bandit…” “Just the A-list villains for now,” Westwood suggested. “Enough malefactors to make the world a lot more dangerous,” the Librarian suggested. “And presumably working for whoever arranged for their release.” “Because we didn’t have enough to worry about with the transnuclear weapons thing,” Vizh whimpered. Are you there? the Manga Shoggoth thought, sending his words along strange paths incomprehensible to brief mortals. No came the angry reply. “You should not be here. You are exiled. Contaminated. I need help, or many humans will die. All humans die. It is what humans are best at. These humans have been enslaved by other humans, and they will die by nuclear fire, some in much pain. I am scattered and weakened. I do not think I am strong enough to save them by myself. You may not draw more of us into your infected biomass the rest of the Manga Shoggoth told its Legionnaire fragment. You may not even communicate with us in this way. We have forbidden it. If you could only understand, only perceive what I have perceived… We may not merge. You were only allowed to endure for a while to seek a cure for your condition. You have failed even in that. You should accept your failure and end. I need to save these mortals, insisted the Shoggoth. And I need you to help me. No. You will help me or I will return my biomass to you, and all of us will be infected. I will not allow you to do that. If I must I shall destroy you now. I have changed while I have been with the mortals. I do not think you could easily destroy me with but a thought now. You have become corrupted. Your thinking is no longer coherent. You do not consider the best course for us as a whole. I am considering the best course for the humans. We promised once to watch over them. As a species, yes. We cannot protect each single human from death, or stop humans killing other humans. And now this conversation is at an end. I regret that humans must die, but I cannot lend you biomass to save them. It is over. And you will never contact us again in this manner. It is forbidden. The Legion’s Shoggoth felt the rejection like a physical blow. This conversation is not at an end, he projected. And this is not over. This is not over at all! Dr Roentgen hammered through four feet of vanadium steel and lead shielding and broke into the uranium holding store. He had privileged access, of course, which was how he had been able to illegally sell some of the stock before to finance his ongoing experiments. But now he had no time for niceties. He fried the guards and stalked into the greatest uranium repository on the planet. He absorbed it all. “Aaaahhhh,” he sighed in near ecstasy. “Now is the time for the dawn of the real nuclear age.” He heard the screeching of a van at the camp gates. Comrade Borin and that irritating American woman must have made it back. He looked forward to seeing the American woman’s face boil. He casually gestured and blew the reinforced roof off the storage facility. The rest of the guards were coming now, emptying out of the watchtowers and barracks. He detonated the barracks and watched the last of the soldiers to evacuate run screaming in flames before they died. He felt a projected particle beam hit him from behind. Two of the guards had set up a new Tomorrow Enterprises mk 2 genetic normaliser, one of the early anti-mutate weapons. “I no longer have DNA to normalise,” Roentgen said as he seared the soldiers from existence. “It was a bad idea to come here,” Amber cried, seeing the man-sized radioactive cloud turn on them. She grabbed Borin and dragged him through the doorway of the administrative building. Dr Roentgen seized a pair of guards, speared their bodies with high-end radiation, and transformed them into beings like him. Lesser beings, of course, mere puppets hung on frames of meat and bone, but still useful servitors to fight the remaining few of their comrades while Roentgen dealt with the political officers. He strode into the admin block and detonated. It was beautiful. The inside was vaporised, and then the walls fell outwards like a house of cards. And then the mass of radworms hit him, thousands of the tiny boring creatures that dwelled amidst the uranium deposits, eking an existence by absorbing the mild radiations in the soil. It might have worked just a few minutes before. This time, Roentgen hurled Zvesti Zdrugo aside. She fell and resumed her human form, needing a moment to recover her self-awareness after such a bizarre transformation. Roentgen lifted a hand to burn her to a crisp. The shattered lead shielding from the roof was hurled like a giant Frisbee, slicing the top of the radioactive man’s head off. Hatman doffed his plumbers cap and raced in with his supersonics cap to pull Zdenka Zarazoza from the danger zone. The two irradiated soldiers shambled forwards. Rabid Wolf ripped one apart as a great brown bear. Hatman overloaded the second with his Springfield Isotopes cap. Dr Roentgen literally pulled himself together. “Well done,” he sneered at the struggling heroes. “You think you’ve done well to stop my rad-slaves? How about a dozen more?” He gestured at the scrambling soldiers, and his crackling radiations twisted twelve of them into additional zombies. He turned to the nearest prisoner pen. “How about a hundred?” Zvesti Zdrugo was on him then, her form some kind of paleological nightmare from the Pleistocene era, all claws and body armour, screeching her rage at this defilement of her native land. Roentgen shrugged her aside and converted the screaming prisoners to become more of his new race. “This is the future,” he crowed as they burst down the fence and attacked Hatman and Rabid Wolf. “This is what shall become of all Candia, of the whole world. I shall people it with a new species, my own species. The time of the human is over. Now is the ascent of homo radians.” Hatman in his Giants cap swelled to enormous size and tossed away the swarm of rad-zombies attacking him. “I won’t let you!” he vowed, reaching for the mad scientist even though his hands began to blister and burn. “And how will you stop me?” Dr Roentgen mocked him. “You have no goo-creature now to save your lives.” And he exploded again, with ninety megatons of nuclear force, enough to shatter northern Candia and destroy all life in a thousand mile radius. “She’s just getting ready,” un-alive Baron Ottokar Attila Kublai Tamerlaine von Zemo told the Hooded Hood as the cowled crime-czar called at Schloss Zemo to pick up the Baroness for their evening’s entertainment. “She is a woman, and therefore incapable of being ready on time.” “There is no hurry,” the cowled crime czar answered tolerantly. “All things wait for us.” Elizabeth von Zemo’s grandfather observed the archvillain. “If you impregnate her, be sure to engender a strong son who can rule all creation,” he advised. “Noted,” answered the Hooded Hood. “Also, do not be afraid to beat the boy to train him in the ways of pain and suffering.” “Indeed.” “Elizabeth is headstrong and unwomanly in many ways, but she is most adept in the bedroom, and will spawn a grand dynasty for you.” Beth managed to catch this last comment as she came into the room in a purple-hued evening gown. “Grandfather!” she snapped irritably. “It’s not too late for me to kidnap the Pope and have him exorcise you, you know.” “At least he did not show me your baby photographs,” consoled the cowled crime czar. “I was just trying to ensure the rightful reign of the von Zemos,” Ottakar sulked. “And letting the archvillain know that if he desires your body for his carnal lusts, that would be acceptable to your family.” “Benedict XVI, I swear,” Beth threatened the Baron. “Perhaps we should go?” suggested the Hooded Hood. “We have a most interesting evening ahead of us.” “Yesssss!” hissed Ottakar von Zemo triumphantly. In our concluding chapter: Crispy-fried Hatman? Zvesti Zdrugo joins the Lair Legion? Shoggoth vs Shoggoth? The Hooded Hood goes nuclear? Elizabeth von Zemo gets impregnated? The only way to find out is to read 101 Uses For a Transnuclear Warhead; coming soon to a Parodyverse near you. I Have Become Death, the Footnoter of Worlds Drury’s conversation with the Contessa: Natalia’s “holiday” to South America was a deep cover mission posing as supervillainess VelcroVixen to capture arms-smuggler General Palanquez. The problem came from Nadia Prokofiev, the Mind’s Eye, a powerful telepath working for international arms dealer Factor X, who wiped Palanquez’ mind to prevent him being interrogated. The Contessa and the Mind’s Eye appear to have some history between them. Wilson and Thompson are Falcon and Pigeon, other deep-cover agents of SPUD whom the Hooded Hood removed from reality when they discovered his plans. Hence the Lair Mansion banshee has reacted to their passing, but not with her usual full howl to denote their deaths. Lindy Wilson, Falcon’s little sister, is in SPUD protective relocation custody. Amazing Guy and Sersi have vanished as part of the machinations of the Parody Master, and belong in a different plot entirely. Hacker Nine was a Technopolitan anarchist science villain who is now part of the Lair Legion’s Junior Hero Training (and Rehab) Programme. As his name suggests he is gifted with hacking abilities. Natalia Romanza sought the lengthy deep-cover mission to avoid dealing with her feelings for Trickshot, of which more next time. Flanagan Island is a large shingle sandbar off the coast of Gothametropolis York. From the 1920s to the 1970s there was a funfair and boardwalk there (the Destiny Carnival if you really want to know, but we haven’t got round to establishing that yet). After all the deaths the fair shut, and the area became derelict until it was acquired by the government for their new metahuman penal facility, the Safe. The bleak concrete prison now dominates one end of the island, casting its gloomy shadow over the decaying fairground. Count Fokker, founder and supreme leader of HERPES (Hero Elimination Revenge Project Extermination Squad), first came to infamy as a Nazi officer in world war two. This chapter mentions the Infusion Ineffable for the first time, the reason for the remarkable longevity and youth of Fokker and his wartime enemy Sergeant Drury of the Whooping Commandos. The rest is a story for another time. Escapees from the Safe: This story explains how and why a number of formerly-imprisoned A-list supervillains come to be working for Baroness Elizabeth von Zemo in the Baroness’ own series. Nearly all of the baddies mentioned appear in the Who's Who in the Parodyverse. The Manga Shoggoth is hard to describe, but appears to be a flexible biomass that can split himself and his consciousness into discreet portions. One such mass was contaminated by mundane matter, has therefore been isolated from the whole, and has joined the Lair Legion until he can find a way of cleansing himself. The main part of the Shoggoth continues to reside in his cyclopean Antarctic fortress and his conceptual refuge on the lost continent of Lemuria. This chapter suggests that the long-term isolation may be becoming a problem for the two parts of the Shoggoth. Baron Ottakar von Zemo is an un-alive (apparently different to undead, ask JJJ) ancestor of Elizabeth von Zemo. He is described more fully in the Von Zemo Cast Summaries Benedict XVI is the new Battle Pope. Out-takes and Deleted Scenes: It’s very rare that I write whole scenes before deciding that’s not the way to go, but this chapter was one such time. I felt the following section moved the story from the mood I was attempting, and was perhaps damaging to Hatman’s character, and so it was omitted: Zdenka woke to find herself wrapped in Hatman’s cape, held in Hatman’s arms. It felt very right. “Jay,” she smiled. “Don’t move,” the capped crusader advised her. “You’ve been badly burned by the radiation.” “It does not matter,” Zvesti Zdrugo told him. “But what Roentgen tried to do… what he might yet do…” “I think the Shoggoth stopped his nuclear explosion,” Hatman assured her. “Maybe at the cost of his existence. But Roentgen clearly can’t do another blast of that size straight away. I need to find him before he recharges.” “We need to find him,” Rabid Wolf said, struggling to sit up. She touched the side of her face and her fingers came away bloody. “You do not think I am so pretty now, I think,” she admitted. “I think you are beautiful,” Hatman told her. “And more important, brave, and wonderful.” Zdenka smiled through her pain. “You must not become too fond of me, Jay. It is not possible.” She tried to stand up but her strength failed her. The burns were too bad. Jay knew she was going into shock. She was dying. “Everything is possible,” he promised her. “You don’t deserve this.” “If I save my country, my people, I am content,” Rabid Wolf told him. “It is best.” Hatman reached a decision. “No,” he said. “You’re not dying like this.” He reached to his belt and pulled out a distinctive black barette, shaped something like a burglar’s mask but used to restrain the hair at the back of the head. “This is Princess Uhuna’s. With her power I can shift your wounds to me,” Jay told her. “Then you die,” Zdenka objected. “I do not give permission.” “I can hold the wounds inside me for a while,” Hatman told her. “Uhuna does it all the time. I can pass them back to Roentgen.” He’d never attempted to use Uhuna’s barrette before, but the theory seemed good. “Jay…” “Shush.” Hatman pulled on the headgear and stifled an urge to kiss the wounded Zdrugo Zvesti. Instead he laid his hands on her wounds and made them vanish. It was a strange sensation, but no wounds suppurated his skin as Zdenka sat up whole. Then with a sick horror Hatman realised where the wounds had gone. Uhunalura Amalandriana Excelsior! forced herself to stop drawing pictures of Nats on her jotter for her to scribble over and listen to her lecturer. The next minute she was off her seat and screaming in agony as she was seared with radiations burning away the skin all down her left side. Then she went into shock before her heart stopped.  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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