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Post By The Hooded Hood completes the untold espionage arc. Now it's told. Fri Sep 23, 2005 at 07:06:04 pm EDT |
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#235: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: 101 Uses For a Transnuclear Weapon | |
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#235: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: 101 Uses For a Transnuclear Weapon Previously: The Hooded Hood has arranged for stolen uranium to be converted by a salvaged Technopolis ore refining machine into transmundium, the key element used in transnuclear bombs. The process is about to commence at ZOXXON Oil’s secret installation in Tierra Del Fuego, with the Hood and his guest Baroness Elizabeth von Zemo in attendance. Meanwhile in Candia, Hatman, the Shoggoth, and goddess of the north Zvesti Zdrugo (Rabid Wolf) confront the radioactive Dr Roentgen, source of the stolen uranium. Unfortunately, Dr Roentgen has just used his abilities to discharge a multi-megaton nuclear explosion.The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse Beneath the observation gantry the control deck hung over the seething caldera of an active volcano. Glass screens and sophisticated force fields held back the spraying lava and funnelled its heat into the conversion engines that powered the salvaged Technopolitan ore converter. Cone-masked B.A.L.D. technicians scuttled beside ZOXXON functionaries over the iron walkways that serviced the massive machine. Huge translucent conduits channelled dimensional energies into the device, changing colour up the spectrum as they delved deeper into the adjacent planes of reality to fold energy back on itself through many iterations. “Montiver Hole has been holding out on me,” scowled the Baroness, looking down at the installation. “We’ll need to discuss that.” “I suspect Mr Hole has a James Bond villain fixation,” replied the Hooded Hood; but not necessarily disapprovingly. “Still, there is the device that will convert the uranium to transmundium.” Elizabeth von Zemo was suspicious why the Hood would need a transnuclear weapon. She was certain that if he wanted one he could have acquired it easier than this. She glanced at her watch. 11.57 local time. “Your supervillain assault team isn’t coming,” the Hood told her without even turning around. “The ones you sent to capture the base and take the results of the experiment for yourself? They’re not coming.” “What did you do to them?” frowned the Baroness. “I asked them not to.” “Very clever, Mr Hood,” she hissed through gritted teeth. “The explosive charges have been removed also,” the cowled crime czar warned her courteously. “And your personal teleport device would have been deactivated but it was a third generation Naicluv knock-off and it will explode and kill you if you use it anyway, so I have left it as it was.” “You seem to have covered everything,” Beth von Zemo replied. Seem was the key word, of course. After all, as a last resort there was the trail of breadcrumbs she’d left that should lead SPUD and the Lair Legion to find the base just at the most interesting moment. The SPUD helicarrier flew over international waters between the coast of Argentina and the Falkland Islands, its formidable electronic intelligence equipment focussed southwards towards Tierra del Fuego. “There it is,” reported Al B. Harper, stabbing a finger at the screen. “There’s a concealed power signature about where Hacker Nine found the henchmen trainees had been picked up. These guys are getting better at concealing their tech.” “But not good enough,” smirked Yuki Shiro leaning on the back of the archscientist’s chair. “So where are we going?” “About twenty-three miles southwest of Ushuaia. Mm. There’s some unusual geological activity down there as well. Volcanic thermal bloom.” “That is to be where we are to be going then,” Yo determined, dropping Rabito into Al’s lap and turning to the door. “I shall be going and telling of cute Colonel Drury. Yuki, please to be asking of Lair Legion to be lining up.” Yuki usually resented taking orders, but the combination of happy smile and bestowed rabbit got to her every time. For the second time Dr Roentgen looked around in puzzlement to see where his detonation had gone. For the second time Hatman hit him while he was wondering about it. This time Jay was a gleaming translucent crystalline in his Atlantic League Black Diamonds cap. And diamond was a form of carbon, and carbon was used in damping rods to suppress nuclear reaction. Roentgen screamed. The powerful blast of energy drove Hatman back into the burning collapsed admin building where Amber St Clare and Comrade Borin had fled. But as he was hurled away, the ravening Rabid Wolf form of Zdenka Zarazoza tore into the radioactive nightmare, larger and fiercer than ever, her eyes blazing like suns. Her powerful jaws shook as she severed the villain in two. Hatman raced back in and hammered down on one of the squirming sections. Then a tide of mud rose up and slammed down on the other, covering it, encasing it, in hundreds of tons of wet foetid earth. Then more mud, and more. “Dmitri!” Rabid Wolf cried. The Glorious People Crime Apparatchiks had arrived to deal with their rogue member. “Da,” agreed Captain Mud, pouring on the pressure. “Is Captain Mud!” Behind Mud, Cold Warrior, the Dialectic, Hard-Working Man, Party Line, and his sister Party Animal rushed in to intercept Roentgen’s rad-zombies. “Welcome to the ball game, Captain,” grinned Hatman, continuing to pound at the wisps of radiation that were Dr Roentgen. “It looks like we’ve finally got this villain…” Dr Roentgen detonated again, hurling the capped crusader and the Candian champion backwards as the mud around him was evaporated into plasma. “Fools!” he screeched, forming back up to his humanoid semblance. “Do you think you can stop Dr Roentgen? Do you?” “Uh oh,” Jay warned Zvesti Zdrugo. “When the villains slip into the third person they’re usually about to lose it!” “Then Zvesti Zdrugo is about to lose it with him!” the massive scorched wolf growled back, crouching for the spring. Then the Shoggoth welled up from the shattered ground, oozing all around the radioactive menace, growing thicker and harder the more Roentgen struggled. The Shoggoth continued to swell until Hatman, Rabid Wolf, and Captain Mud had to scramble out of the way. In fact Hatman had never seen the Shoggoth this large or angry-seeming, and he was urgently reminded that this was a sanity-mangling elder being that sometimes consented to operate in the four dimensions humans could understand. Roentgen released another nuclear blast inside the former servitor of the Fairly Great Old Ones. The Shoggoth burped. And then the Shoggoth swallowed, and Dr Roentgen was gone. Natalia Romanza was on the secure level observation deck, where nobody without A-1 security clearance could get to her. She still wasn’t surprised when the maintenance shaft electronic lock shorted out and Trickshot climbed from the vent. “Talia,” he called. “We have ta talk.” “We don’t have to,” Natalia Romanza assured him. “There’s no rule.” “We’re gonna talk, then,” responded Carl Bastion. “I’ve been trained in not talking,” the superspy warned. “Very serious men with painful medical instruments have failed to make me talk.” “Well just lissen then,” the archer went on. The Contessa could always tangle him with words. “I’ll tell you whut I know, an’ then you kin decide whut ta do with the information, okay?” The brunette in the tight leather catsuit shrugged. “I can’t stop you, I suppose. Not without using my stun charges.” “Fact one, then. Back when you wuz younger, you made a bad mistake. You worked for Baron Zemo, an’ he sent you ta trick some dumb cluck inta leadin’ you – and Zemo – ta Professor Xalter’s School of Gifted Youngsters. This dumb cluck thought he wus helpin’ you protect the kiddies, when he was really setting them all up ta be massacred by Zemo and B.A.L.D.” “You’re talking about my husband, your original counterpart in this reality,” the Contessa recognised. “Yeah. This world’s original Trickshot. He fell fer you big time, and you got hitched ta him. And all along you were plannin’ to betray him.” “Well, I feel a lot better for you reminding me of that information,” Natalia said coldly. “I ain’t finished, princess,” the archer said. “I know you didn’t realise how far Zemo was going to go, offing the school and your hubby. Zemo used you too. An’ I know you felt so badly about it that you turned yerself in ta Drury, and eventually came onto the side of the angels.” “So that’s all right,” the Contessa said bleakly. “An then I turn up, zapped here by the Hooded Hood from an alternate universe, pretty much the same Tricky as the guy you wedded an’ got killed.” “You are similar in many ways to my second husband,” Natalia admitted. “Right. An’ at first you didn’t want ta face me. Was that guilt or were you afraid you’d fall fer me too?” “You’re the one giving the information, Carl.” “Well, whatever, we were growin’ closer, whether you wanted to or not. And then yer dead hubbie managed to claw his way back from death, as Deadshot. But he wasn’t the man he’d once been.” “He was a cruel, hate-driven revenant, bent on hurting you for existing and me for… for what I did to him,” Natalia declared. She was almost as pale as a corpse herself now. “He wuz a grade-A bastard. But you thought at first that he wuz me when he turned up ta see you. And you went ta bed with him.” The Contessa winced “He was my husband, after all.” “But you thought he wuz me.” Natalia paused. “Maybe he’s more convincing at being you than you are.” “Whatever,” Trickshot snorted. “Anyway, after that he got mean. I saw the torture marks on you after I nailed the bastard to the wall, when they wuz takin’ you ta the sick bay. But then you didn’t want ta see me.” “I was badly hurt, Carl.” “Yeah, by your ex-hubbie who’s another version of me. Everybody sympathised with Laurie when Blackhearted tricked her, but nobody thinks how much worse it wus fer you.” The Contessa stared out of the observation window. “The helicarrier engine sounds have changed,” she noted. “We’re moving into an attack vector.” “Point is,” Trickshot persisted, “I thought it wuz over between us, whatever we’d nearly had. But then after the Transworlds Challenge you kissed me. An’ then you vanished inta some deep cover assignment.” “So?” “So I’m confused, Talia. Do you hate me or fear me or love me or whut? What’s the story, princess?” The Contessa turned to him. “As I said, I don’t talk. No matter what the coercion.” Trickshot stalked towards her. “Right then,” he said, seizing her in his arms. “We’ll have ta find out the interesting way.” Yuki Shiro overrode the electronic lock on the main hatch. “Yo wants the team in the main launch bay,” she announced. “Am I interrupting something?” “We don’t fully understand the method,” Montiver Hole admitted, standing beside the Hooded Hood and the Baroness on the observation platform, “but this machine seems to draw exotic energies from other dimensions that suffuse the uranium with programmable particles. That’s what allows the energy discharge from a transnuclear weapon to be shaped and controlled as regards area, radiation frequencies and so forth.” “Indeed,” agreed the Hooded Hood, who had already discussed this with considerably more knowledgeable sources, and particularly with Dame Jana of the Janus, one of the last of the original dimension-bridgers from the dawn of the Parodyverse. Dame Jana was the founder of the Interdimensional Transportation Corporation that the Baroness had usurped, and she was being safely housed by the Hood until such time as he needed her expertise to bring ITC down. Hole moved a little closer to his masked bodyguard, the loyal and deadly Bladesman. He didn’t feel any safer. “We’re fortunate that there have been so many dimensional disturbances of late,” he continued. The Hood’s brief responses made him nervous, and the ZOXXON CEO was sweating copiously in his expensive business suit. “Sometimes it is years before the dimensional conditions are right to enable this kind of operation.” “Fortune has nothing to do with it. The Hooded Hood does not rely upon chance.” The Baroness snorted. “He means he probably fomented the attacks by the Parody Master which devastated the conceptual plane and carved Ausgard, Austernia, and Wakandybar out of timespace,” she translated. “And coincidentally got him a little action with the Shaper of Worlds.” “You may proceed,” the Hood told Hole. “Have them begin the modification.” The ZOXXON CEO nodded to his chief scientific officer, who in turn passed the word to the B.A.L.D. contractees. Someone down on the control deck pulled a series of impressive levers to plunge the heat converters deep into the lava with a spectacular golden splash. The computer technicians span up the five interlaced Cray-4s to control the dimensional variables on the Harper-Framlicker matrix. Great conduits blushed green as the stolen Wastelands radiation flooded into the machine. And the massive ore modification furnace sprang to life, spraying out dots of black energies as matter was rewritten into new and strange forms. “Are you going to enlighten me now as to why you need a transnuclear weapon?” the Baroness demanded of the Hooded Hood. “Oh, there are a hundred and one uses for a transnuclear weapon,” the cowled crime czar replied. “Could you outline a few of them? Preferably with specific reference to why you chose to make one at home? You could have just used the Portal of Pretentiousness to shift one off a Skree warship or something.” “Well,” the Hood suggested, “This way it reminds the criminal fraternities of Earth that I am a force to be reckoned with. It acts in a Darwinian fashion as the heroes weed out those villains who are weak and incompetent. It ensures that this route for creating such a weapon cannot be utilised by a lesser villain. It offsets potential unpleasantness in Candia which might otherwise have interfered with my longer-term plans. It makes the Lair Legion aware of the Machine Shop. And it allows me a pleasant evening out in your company, of course, Elizabeth.” “And that’s before you even deploy the weapon in combat,” the Baroness admired. “That’s devious and twisted.” “Thank you.” “But what are your real reasons for doing this?” Beth von Zemo demanded. The Hooded Hood smiled. Then the cavern wall blew in as the Lairjet made its entrance. “Is that what I think it is?” asked Dame Jana, the orange-hued mistress of the dimensional pathways. “The Galactic Nobbler?” “Yes,” agreed Jury, Shaper of Worlds. “It was deployed recently to stop the Parody Master. I retrieved it when I was investigating what was left of the conceptual plane afterwards.” “I haven’t seen it since it was first made,” the last of the Janus admitted. At the dawn of time they had been the first race to forge doorways between realities, at the cost of their own existence. “Back when we realised what Galactivac might become, and crafted that unique portal back to the big bang.” “The energies to open the gateway are fairly unique as well,” the Shaper frowned. “I was able to resuffuse them once at the cost of bringing the Living Death That Sucks back into existence, but he lives now so I can’t prime it again.” “That’s why we need another source of power,” Dame Jana replied. “Now I understand what those calculations Iolobaoth asked for were about. He’s intending the release of the dimensional energies filtered through the transmundium he’s creating, magnified through the additional transmundium he gained from Caph, and coloured by the weird emanations he harvested from the Hellraisers incident and from that bizarre reality ripple with the elementalist girl, will allow us to recreate the trigger energies to reactivate the Nobbler.” “It didn’t stop the Parody Master for good last time,” Jury pointed out. “Why should it stop him this time?” Dame Jana didn’t believe the Hood wanted the Nobbler for that purpose, but she kept her own council. The Hood wanted modifications to the Nobbler, and that was sufficient. The two powerful beings hung in the transdimensional Vortex and waited for the energies to wash through from the mortal plane. “I’m going to find a way to stop him,” Jury said; and who ‘him’ was remained an unanswered question in the vast void. “Oh dear,” Baroness von Zemo said smugly to the Hooded Hood as the SPUD helicarrier blew the surface to air defence emplacements around the hidden ZOXXON compound to shreds. “It looks like your plans have gone astray, Iolobaoth. The Lair Legion seem to have found your…” She glanced for the Hooded Hood. He was gone. “Ioldobaoth?” Only the Baroness, the stricken Montiver Hole, and his sword-wielding bodyguard remained on the observation deck as the heroes invaded the base. “Do something!” panicked the ZOXXON CEO. One floor down Mr Epitome and De Brown Streak were making short work of the new henchmen while CrazySugarFreakBoy! and Dancer took on the B.A.L.D. biodroids. Donar, Trickshot and Yo were already heading for the observation deck. The Bladesman drew his weapon and cast about for an escape route for his master. The Baroness did something. She tossed the defective teleport device over the balcony to explode amongst the heroes and deactivated the cloaking device around her second, working unit. “Goodbye, Monty,” she told her colleague. “Next time you shouldn’t play out of your league.” “Wait!” the ZOXXON CEO cried as she thumbed the personal teleporter. The device fizzed and shorted out against Al B. Harper’s new anti-teleport field. The Hooded Hood had promised not to use his retcons against Elizabeth von Zemo that year. He’d never agreed not to manipulate circumstances through other means to leave her red-handed in apparent charge of a major operation to create weapons of mass destruction. Elizabeth Sweetwater Dewdrop von Zemo said a bad word. The Shoggoth coughed, and the now-human form of Dr Roentgen was spat from his biomass to drop shivering and drooling on the broken ground. “Wow,” said Captain Mud, remembering the word he’d learned during his visit with the Lair Legion. He looked down at the broken wreck of the nuclear physicist and up at the towering column of gelatinous insanity. But the Manga Shoggoth wasn’t finished. Where am I? the elder being demanded, hammering the telepathic question into everybody’s heads. Bring me out! I’m going to murder me! Zvesti Zdrugo looked to Hatman in incomprehension and alarm. “It’s gone mad!” But Jay Boaz had worked out what was going on. “This isn’t our Shoggoth. Well it is, but it’s not the bit that came with us.” “Ah,” Zdenka nodded. “That’s cleared that up then. I do not think my English is…” Where is that putrid contaminated blob of treacherous elderspawn that did this? demanded the livid Shoggoth. Another, much smaller and drippier blob of goo congealed out of the admin block ruins, and sheepishly squeezed Comrade Borin and Amber St Clare from its protective gel. Neither seemed over-grateful to have been saved from holocaust in this manner. “Here I am,” the Legion’s Shoggoth replied. Do you know what you have done? thundered the major part of the Shoggoth. Do you? “I have saved the humans,” the Shoggoth replied. “It was necessary. They would have died from the radiation, even Hatman and Rabid Wolf. Now they are all free.” Vladimir Borin realised that this was literally true. In the chaos most of the dissidents had escaped from their cells and work gangs. “Catch them!” he commanded the GlopCraps. “Gather up the prisoners!” “No,” said Zdenka. “We are not…” “You heard Comrade Borin,” interrupted the Dialectic. “It is not for us to question the party.” “Maybe it should be then.” “You will not gather them up,” the Shoggoth told them. “They are free. They will never be slaves again.” “You know, we can’t really interfere in the politics of another country, much as I’d love to,” Amber St Clare warned the Legionnaires. They are free, bubbled the larger Shoggoth, hovering over the humans in a gravity-defying crouch. There is no slavery here. Hatman was about to beg to differ when Rabid Wolf said, “We are not in Candia. Not anymore. Look around.” Everyone looked around, heroes and prisoners alike. The burning camp buildings were all there on the churned ground, inside the fallen barbed wire electric fences. But the great ridge of mountains was gone, replaced by a thick rainforest rising up to distant purple peaks. “I could not convince myself to come and aid these people and stop Dr Roentgen,” explained the Manga Shoggoth. “So I brought the people and Dr Roentgen to see me at the Refuge.” “We’re in Lemuria!” Hatman realised. “Where the Shoggoth brings slaves he’s freed to live better lives!” A slow smile blossomed over Zdenka’s face. “They can claim political asylum,” she realised. “They do not have to die in the mines.” It is a forbidden thing, what you have done! the greater Shoggoth thundered at his vestigial self. Now I must destroy you! “I expected you would,” the lesser Shoggoth agreed. “But you will continue to care for these humans, and you will draw the radiation that poisons them from their flesh so that they may live unharmed?” Of course. “They are criminals of Candia,” insisted Comrade Borin. “The GlopCrap will ensure they return to Candia to serve their sentenc… mmph!” He was silenced by a mouthful of mud. “We are saddened that escape of so many dangerous dissidents,” Captain Mud said insincerely. “But recognise that they have been given asylum by decadent capitalist elder being on elder being’s territory, and cannot start diplomatic incident that will result in us all getting eaten, yes?” “Smarter than he looks,” Hatman muttered to Zdenka. “He’d have to be,” Rabid Wolf whispered back. And now, the greater Shoggoth said to his contaminated vestige, You must end.. “Can you hear me guys?” Al B. called over the static caused by the Technopolitan machine. “I’m picking up a massive energy spike. I think that thing might be going into overload.” “Yo is to be hearing you!” came back the voice of the pure thought being. “Yo is thinking Yo is an expert nuclear scientist just now, and Yo is thinking you are being right!” “How do we shut this thing down?” De Brown Streak demanded, finishing the last of his henchmen and blurring over to look anxiously at the red gauges on the monitor boards. “Yo is thinking it has been deliberately locked into destruct mode, with a coded shutdown number.” “I can try about twenty thousand combinations per second,” DBS offered. “After three wrong numberings it is to be exploding,” Yo warned. “Pick randomly,” suggested Dancer. “Chances are you’ll get lucky.” The whole gantry rocked as the force fields holding back the lava failed. Mr Epitome grabbed Yo and Dancer out of the way of a plume of fire. CrazySugarFreakBoy! made a desperate leap for the machine and caught it by his fingertips, dangling over the fiery chasm for a moment before neatly swinging onto the big device itself. The control panels tumbled down into the volcano’s core and were obliterated. “Drat,” frowned Dancer. “So what’s plan B?” “You really need one sometime in the next three minutes,” Al B. Harper advised. Donar reached the observation gantry by the simple expedient of barrelling through the battle-armoured combat troops that blocked the way. Trickshot pounded after him, picking his way over the unmoving bodies. The door to the secure deck was of vibratium alloy, which gave even Mjalcolm pause, reflecting back the force of the blow to bury Donar three feet into the opposite bulkhead. Trickshot took out the frame with an acid arrow and kicked the door in. The battle on the observation deck was well underway already. A purple-clad woman in a full-head mask was taking on three henchmen with nothing more than a cavalry sabre. One enemy was already down, his neck broken. Montiver Hole cringed in the corner. “Knock him out!” the unidentified woman called. “He’s got voice control of the defence systems. He’s able to make this whole place go up!” Such was the authority in the stranger’s voice that Trickshot had loosed the screamer arrow at the ZOXXON CEO before he’d even had time to think. The quivering fat man dropped like a sack of blubber. By that time the swordswoman had finished her three opponents with neat non-lethal thrusts. She turned to meet the incoming heroes. “What took you so long?” she demanded. “What?” Donar was caught off-guard by this. “What meanest thou? Where art all the enemies to smite?” Then belatedly, he asked the stranger. “Who are thou?” “No time for stupid questions,” she snapped. “Not with this base less than three minutes from exploding, taking out everybody here and the major population centre twenty miles away with it.” She pointed over to the swaying Technopolis machine that was now glowing alarmingly in some areas. CrazySugarFreakBoy! had managed to get an access conduit open and was trying to find a way of inputting the shutdown code manually, if only it could be determined. “Can you get me over there?” the swordswoman demanded of Trickshot. “Sure, babe,” agreed the irritating archer. “But why?” “Because I need to save your ass, dumbo,” she retorted. “Do it.” Trickshot fired a pulley line over to the conduit CSFB! had forced. “I like her,” he admitted as she swung out over the lava and joined the wired wonder around the internal access port. “Hi!” CSFB! greeted the strange woman. “Have we met?” “I’m Citizen Z,” the masked stranger told him. “Can we do the introductions after I’ve saved the day?” “Sure,” agreed CrazySugarFreakBoy! “You don’t happen to know the shutdown codes do you?” “Of course I do,” Elizabeth von Zemo assured him. After all, she’d triggered the meltdown and applied the computer lock. “Grab those two wires there, please.” CSFB! did as he was told, then spasmed as the high voltage cables discharged through him. Only his silly suit saved his life. “Moron,” spat the Baroness. Her hands flicked over the keyboard and the device quietly and efficiently shut down. “Hold it!” Jay Boaz told the Manga Shoggoth as he loomed over the Manga Shoggoth to destroy it. “This is my teammate. The only way you harm him is to go through me. And then the rest of the Lair Legion will come after you. Including Sir Mumphrey Wilton. I imagine he’ll have something to say about it.” Zdenka Zarazoza went to stand beside Hatman. “You must also go through me,” she added. “Not your fight,” Jay told her, assessing the odds. “Truth and justice,” she answered him. “That’s everybody’s fight.” Jay clasped her hand and they stood firm between the Shoggoths. “Actually,” Amber St Clare ventured, staying well out of the way of the livid bubbling elder being, “before you, um, execute your sentence, I think you should look at all the evidence. Please? Just talk to some of the prisoners, like your other biomass has. Find out what they’ve endured. See what was going to happen to them. Then decide if he hasn’t behaved exactly like you would have if you’d been him.” He is corrupt and contaminated, declared the Shoggoth. But I will check as you suggest. There was a ripple in time and space as the Manga Shoggoth investigated further, and three dozen of the inmates looked pale and wide-eyed. Two of the surviving guards had wet themselves. “Well?” asked Amber. You will leave Lemuria, the Shoggoth told the Shoggoth. You will never return. I am proscribing your dimensions to make sure of it. The Legion’s Shoggoth said nothing, so exhausted by his efforts he could hardly prevent himself from becoming a mere puddle of gel. I shall now return those of you who wish to go away back to Candia, the Shoggoth decreed. Any who wish to stay here are welcome, and my High Priestess will be along shortly to discuss your needs. Not even all the guards wanted to return to Candia. Comrade Borin was livid. Hatman and Rabid Wolf watched the Shoggoth prepare the transfer diagram to send the returnees home. The greater biomass could inscribe such gates at will, but it was only because the Legion’s Shoggoth had been scattered so widely by Roentgen’s blast that he had been able to transfer so massive an amount of estate. “You don’t have to go back either, Zdenka,” Hatman said. “I do,” she replied, still holding Jay’s hand as if she never wanted to release it. “It is necessary.” “You can serve Candia and the whole world,” the capped crusader urged her, “in the Lair Legion. With me.” “That would be lovely, Jay. I would like very much to be with you. But as I warned you, is not possible.” “The diplomatic stuff? Wait till we get Mumph and Lisa onto that. You’d be amazed how they can…” “Is not diplomatic problem, Jay,” Zdenka said regretfully, forcing herself to let go of Hatman’s hand. From the chymeric diagram, Captain Mud called to her. “Zdenka!” “You don’t have to go with him,” Jay told her. “You don’t.” “I do,” said Zvesti Zdrugo. “He is my husband.” Jay’s mouth dropped open, but he couldn’t find any words. Zdenka shrugged. “Is arranged by Party, so we have strong superhero children, yes? We are good citizens, and do what they say.” “You have children?” “No. But I have husband. So I cannot come to be with you in Lair Legion, Jay. I am sorry. So sorry.” “Zdenka!” Captain Mud called again. “I have to go,” Rabid Wolf apologised. Her lips lightly brushed across Jay’s again, and she pulled the Timberwolves cap from her belt. “May I keep this? To remember.” “Keep it forever,” Hatman told her. “Please keep it.” Jay watched her turn away and walk slowly down the slope to join her teammates and Comrade Borin. “Zdenka? Do you love him?” Hatman called after her. “He is good man, Jay. Good husband. But I do not love… him.” And then she was gone. The last of the support beams snapped and the vast Technopolitan ore transformer toppled down into the volcano, lost forever. “At least the uranium went with it,” Dan Drury declared. “We can do without transmundium on this planet, thanks very much.” “I think some transmundium was actually created,” Al B. reported, studying his logs. “But if it was successful I’d have expected far more energy discharge in the Vortex and adjacent sub-dimensions. There’s none there.” “It could have been a disaster,” Dancer pointed out. “If not for our mysterious friend here. She shut down the reactor and saved CrazySugarFreakBoy!” “He was very brave,” Citizen Z told them. “He was with me right to the end, when a stray discharge struck him. I’d never have made it without his assistance.” “He heals fast,” Mr Epitome assured her, and whether he saw that as a good or bad thing remained unclarified. “However, I’m curious as to how you happened into a top-secret ZOXXON base in the middle of a major criminal operation.” “Monty Hole’s already denying the ZOXXON connection,” De Brown Streak advised. “He woke up five minutes ago, he wants his lawyer, he says he was kidnapped here and he’s threatening to sue.” “It’s part of my crusade for justice,” Citizen V shrugged. “Since my parents were… were murdered by Baroness von Zemo I’ve dedicated my life to bringing felons to justice. The usual thing. My identity must remain a secret to protect my loved ones.” “The standard thing,” Trickshot admitted. “Well, Yo is to be thinking you have to be making a very spectacular debut,” the deputy-leader of the LL congratulated the disguised villainess. “We have to have been very lucky that you were here to be helping of us.” I’m very lucky to have squirmed out of the Hooded Hood’s trap by the skin of my teeth, fumed Beth von Zemo. I’m going to get him for this! De Brown Streak asked for her phone number, just by reflex. The Baroness’ only consolation was that the planet’s only transmundium was now concealed in her outfit, salvaged from the mechanism while CSFB! was unconscious. She was sure that was going to come in very useful. “It’s activated again,” the Shaper of Worlds announced to the Hooded Hood. “But it’s only fair to warn you that I’ve ensured that you can never use this Galactic Nobbler again. It’s too dangerous a weapon for you to have, Iolodoaboth.” “I understand,” agreed the cowled crime czar. “And were the energy refinements I suggested built in to the device, Dame Jana?” “Refinements?” frowned Jury. “Yes, they were, you devious man,” agreed the last of the Janus. “And now my debt to you is cleared.” “Excellent,” declared the archvillain. “Then the time has come for the next stage of the master plan of… the Hooded Hood.” Love’s Footnote Lost: The Bad Guys: ZOXXON Oil is your generic wicked energy company, who in this story just happen to have salvaged extradimensional tech that can translate uranium to transmundium, the core element of the transnuclear weapon. B.A.L.D. is your generic cabal of evil scientists for hire, fashion challenged silly-helmet wearing weapons inventors. Elizabeth von Zemo, Fourteenth Baroness Elizabeth Sweetwater Dewdrop Zemo von Saxe-Lurkburg-Schreckhausen, is the newest master criminal on the block. She recently initiated a contest for supremacy with the Hooded Hood by engineering him into a vow not to use his retcon powers against her for the rest of the year. The Hooded Hood is an archvillain who enjoys games of manipulation and intrigue. The Sources of Exotic Tech: Technopolis was an advanced scientific city state from a parallel dimension that attempted to conquer Earth and left some useful equipment behind when they failed. The Naicluv are a distant and sophisticated alien race who have forbidden their people all contact with Earth. The Hood acquired Caphan transmundium in UT#219: Untold Tales of the Fall of Caph, harvested Hellraisers emanations when their fortress was destroyed in UT#196: Awkward Corners, and harvested energies after an encounter with Liu Xi in Adventures In Parodyverse: Moving In (by Jason). Al B. Harper developed an anti-teleport field after he realised the plot device was becoming very worn when the Mind’s Eye escaped that way in UT#231: Plots and Ruses. The Glorious People’s Crime Apparatchiks (GlopCrap) are the premiere heroes of the nation-state of Candia, an alternate version of Canada which co-exists in a slightly parallel geography with the more well known country north of the United States of America. This is the first time we’ve seen most of them, and little is known about the team. Natalia Romanza betrayed her second husband Carl Bastion in Lair Legion: Year One, Part 2. She was Deadshot’s prey in UT#138: Double Jeopardy. Dame Jana is one of only two surviving members of the Janus, a tripedal race from one of the beginnings of time, whose transdimensional junctures were responsible for many of the dimensional conditions of the Parodyverse today. Dame Jana was the secret founder of the Interdimensional Transportation Corporation but vanished after the company was subject to hostile takeover. Now we know where she went and who offered her asylum. See CrazySugarFreakBoy! for more notes on this character. Jury, Shaper of Worlds escaped with the Hooded Hood’s help from the Parody Master, a cosmic tyrant who seeks to conquer all reality and take Jury as his bride in UT#228: Bride of the Parody Master. Jury seems to be the remaining active member of the Triumverate of senior office-holders whose job is to regulate the Parodyverse. She sees it as her duty to find a way to end the threat of the Parody Master once and for all. The Galactic Nobbler is a powerful weapon designed to stop the cosmic planet-sucker Galactivac. When detonated, it destroys matter on a galactic scale. Still, at least the Hooded Hood can’t use it now, eh? 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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