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Post By The Hooded Hood wishes everyone a Happy New Year Sat Dec 31, 2005 at 07:58:39 pm EST |
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#248: Untold Tales of the Junior Lair Legion: Parodyshack | |
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| #248: Untold Tales of the Junior Lair Legion: Parodyshack Previously: The Juniors are participating (somewhat unwillingly) in trials held for neophyte metahumans by the extradimensional Order of the Observing Eye. While young archer Artemis helps Legionnaires Trickshot and Yuki infiltrate the Order’s vortex headquarters, the Juniors must compete against Young Heckfire, the New Battlers, the Federal Metahuman Resource Centre and others to acquire special coins seeded around Monstrous Island; but like other teams the juniors have an agenda of their own as well. Meanwhile, Laurie (Lisette) Leyton is recovering from a near-lethal attack by her old lover E-Male, Liu Xi continues a strange journey with sorcerer supreme Xander the Improbable, and Sir Mumphrey Wilton continues to make preparations for coming dangers. A cast list of the Junior teams is available here. Other cast and locations are at Who's Who in the Parodyverse and Where's Where in the Parodyverse. Previous chapters are found on The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom. Laurie Leyton groaned and opened her eyes. “Laurie!” Bry Katz called out. Then, more gently he said, “Are you okay?” “I’m weak as a kitten,” the wounded superheroine admitted, trying to stir. She noticed she was in a hospital bed. “What happened?” “You have been through a significant trauma,” Princess Uhunalura of the Abhumans instructed her. “We had to shift an awful lot of health into you to keep you alive and to heal some truly horrible wounds. It’s no wonder you feel debilitated.” “We were hoping you could tell us what happened,” Goldeneyed explained, gripping his ex-lover’s hand. “Mac Fleetwood woke up yesterday and he’s ready to be discharged, but he says he was zapped from behind so he didn’t see anything.” “I… I don’t remember,” Laurie Leyton said. “I know I was in the church hall with Mac… But then…?” “Don’t upset yourself,” Uhuna advised. “The Lair Legion is already pursuing different lines of questioning. Goldeneyed, Hatman, and the Shoggoth pretty much tore up the gangs of Hell’s Bathroom. Now the team is following a lead that a clone may have assaulted you, and they’re looking for some human geneticist called Dr Moo.” “Dr Moo?” puzzled Lisette. “That’s the diabolical Dr Moo,” corrected a voice from the doorway. G-Eyed whirled round to find himself facing a woman in a lab coat who had a cow’s head mask on. She had her udder guns trained squarely at Lisette. “You!” hissed G-Eyed, teleporting between the guns and bed in a blink. “Stay back or I’ll teleport you to Mars.” “Except for my localised teleportation suppression field,” sighed Daio Waltz. “Honestly, don’t mistake me for one of the amateurs you people seem to be meeting these days. I was battling the Lair Legion when you were still taking your Observing Eye entrance exams.” “The Order and I parted company a while back,” G-Eyed glowered. “Of course you did. Over them secretly helping Lisette there birth and conceal your baby. But you still care for Laurie here, so naturally you’d react poorly to her being injured.” “Almost murdered,” Uhuna accused. She didn’t like humans who tampered with the sacred science of genetics. “Whatever,” Moo shrugged. “And now the Lair Legion is looking for me, scaring my contacts, tearing up my operations, shutting down my labs. It’s very annoying.” “We want to know why you sent one of the clones you created to attack Laurie,” Goldeneyed warned. He’d already teleported his comm-card back to the mansion to sound the alarm, but he had no way of knowing it had been intercepted by Moo’s teleport suppressors. “I really have no interest in my little sister’s former sidekick,” Dr Moo answered. “And if I had, it’d be a considerably cleverer plan than hitting her with megawatts of electricity.” “The DNA at the crime scene had the mark of your cloning technology on it,” accused Uhuna. “Yes. I intercepted the secure transmissions between Harper and Bautista,” the evil genius noted. “Given the electromagnetic nature of the assault I’d have to conclude that the assailant was a clone I recently delivered to the New Battlers, a revival of their leader…” “E-Male!” remembered Lisette. “It was Rico! E-Male did this to me when I refused to rejoin his team.” “Wonderful,” said Dr Moo. “Then if you’ll excuse me I’ll be going. I strongly suggest you tell the Lair Legion to stop irritating me now, because my next visit won’t be anything like as congenial. Good day.” Goldeneyed watched the scientist carefully until she was out of the ward. “Give me your comm-card,” he called to Uhuna. “I need to warn Mumphrey. The Juniors are in a contest against an attempted murderer!” “Yes, I’m aware that there are attempts to interfere with the trials,” Vizh answered over his commcard, through gritted teeth. “It seems as though the Observing Eye were so keen to have all the young heroes play their stupid games this time that they didn’t look too closely at the contestant list. Now somebody has completely screwed up their trials control programmes…” “More than one person,” Goomtor interrupted anxiously. “It’s looking like the interactions of perhaps three separate interferences. Your Juniors appear to have screened themselves from scanning, and others have suspended the extraction teleports and disabled the game over-rides. The effects are all… interbreeding.” “Just so as that’s all that’s interbreeding,” growled the possibly fake tutor of the Junior Lair Legion. “Anyhow, it’s looking like there’s no way to get them all off Monstrous Isle until the three days of the event are up.” “We cannot wait three days,” fumed Deborah Blitzen of the Evolutionary Revolutionaries. “All but one of my students’ biosigns have fallen off the monitors.” In the distance the beginnings of a storm rumbled across the ocean. “We think the retrieval matrix is partially working,” Goomtor assured her. “They’re being pulled out at the moment they might face mortal danger. Probably. They’re just being held in the grid in data format rather than being reconstituted here.” “And that’s good, is it?” demanded the angry Storm Trooper. “Hey, might they all come back as some kind of composite monster?” speculated Roni Y Avis. “That would be very marketable.” “You’re not helping,” snapped Visionary. “The point is that the Order has placed all our students’ lives in danger, and it’s clear from what little we know that some of the teams aren’t playing by the rules.” “I’m sure the FMRC are playing…” began Matthew Summers, the government team’s trainer, but Vizh cut him off. “Doesn’t matter. They’re all in danger, and we need to find some way of getting through the Order’s force barriers and pulling the kids out of there. Mumphrey, can you get Al B. and the Shoggoth on it?” “Absolutely, old chap,” crackled the voice over the comm-card. “Just keep a grip of things over there and we’ll see what we can do.” “But perhaps,” Goomdor added plaintively to the angry Legionnaire, “you could let go of Goomtar’s throat now?” Glory the mutt of might gave the winged porcine a final shake to make sure it was dead then trotted back to the Juniors with it in her jaws. “This will taste very good for supper,” she told them happily. “Er, I think I’ll be sticking to my secret store of chocolate,” Hacker Nine warned her. But Ohanna of Raael knelt down to examine the beast the dog had brought down. “There is good meat on this,” she admitted. “I think I could manage something rather delicious with this and the herbs I gathered today. If we could make a fire.” Kerry glanced at a nearby bush and it exploded with flame. “Won’t that kind of signal where we are to the other teams?” Ham-Boy pointed out. “And thy point is?” demanded Harlagaz Donarson. “Tis simpler if they come to us for the smiting. It saves walking.” Kiivan of Caph was checking the little bag of coins they’d gathered over the day’s journey to the foot of the great volcano. “There are two hundred and ninety-one points in here,” he determined. “That is less than a tenth of the coin values available in the exercise, and nothing like enough to guarantee victory.” “It’s not a bad haul for one day, though,” Kerry considered. “Only thing that’s puzzling me is that I thought we all got force-bubbled up after eight hours to take a break and that’s just not happened.” “We might not be the only ones who tampered with the program,” Hacker Nine admitted. “That teleport divert I picked up, for example. We know the Observing Eye use aura tags, like the one that geased HB to be here. I’m guessing they used similar tech to be able to monitor us and pull us out if things went bad. And I’m also betting that some of that stuff is no longer working.” “That makes some sense,” agreed Glory. Her ears perked up then went back. “Someone is coming,” she warned. “Okay, everyone do that defensive thing we worked out,” Kerry shrugged. “No first use of superpowers. Unless it’s Lord and Master. Then no first use of superpowers except me.” “I do not think it is Young Heckfire,” Glory announced. “It smells more like… honeysuckle?” Three of the Fey Boys staggered into view. Their gold and green hunting attire was ragged and soiled, and Glorianthus’ arm was bandaged in a sling. All of them seemed wounded. “They’ve been hurt!” Fashion Accessory noted. “Blood stains so do not go with those fabrics.” “Please!” called out Columbinus, “We come in peace. We ask for truce and parley.” “What do we know of these Fey Boys?” Kiivan asked quietly. “Sylvan elves from the Mythlands,” Ohanna supplied. “They’re very pretty. They’re also supposed to be magical and good archers, but I don’t see any weapons.” “If they seekest aid not combat then we needs must be boon comrades unto them,” judged Harlagaz. The Juniors allowed the three ragged refugees into their camp. “What happened?” Ham-Boy asked. “Misfortune and malice,” answered Festivian. “All our companions are lost, alas.” “I don’t understand these wounds,” Ohanna admitted, quickly checking over each of the three faeries. “Iridius was the first to fall, victim of the giant lizard,” Columbinus told. “Yeah, we saw one of those,” agreed Kerry. “Damn near thirty feet long.” “Thirty feet?” Glorianthus’ giggling bordered on the hysterical. “Thirty feet?” “Ours was… larger,” Columbinus admitted. “After that though our fortunes prospered. All fey can sense underground treasures, so our horde waxed large, fully six hundred coins.” “Six hundred,” frowned Kiivan. “What denominations?” “But alas, misfortune overtook us. We encountered the warriors known as Young Heckfire, and they used guile and treachery to overcome us. Mighty is that warrior of sewage who smites with the force of all effluence. And the girl who flies like a graceful bird of prey…” “Lindy,” Hacker Nine supplied tersely. “Falconne. That’s who she is.” “She knew to use missiles of iron against us,” Festivian complained. “So Demetrian, Florialanus, and Trubadorion were lost to our fellowship, snatched from doom by the Observing Eye’s wisdom.” “Hold it,” Kerry interrupted. “You’re saying you got mugged by Young Heckfire?” “Hold it,” Ham-Boy added. “You’re saying one of you was actually named Florialanus?” “And you yielded your store of treasure to these brigands,” Kiivan concluded. “We were overcome,” Columbinus admitted with a look of shame. “They took our weapons and amulets from us and destroyed them. I had that bow from my father, who had it from the great oak of…” “Yes, sad story,” agreed Hacker Nine even more tersely. “So what then?” “The one they named Lord and Master touched us with his hand, and a great horror came upon us,” replied Festivian. “For hours we fled, terrified of every thing we saw. Only lately have we returned to our senses. And then we sought to Yield.” “Yield?” Harlagaz disapproved. “Thou seekest to give up on yon contest just because thou are wounded, weaponless, and feckless? Phaugh!” “Hold it,” Ohanna said. “You’re saying you tried to use the Observing Eye’s get out clause and you couldn’t?” “We yield,” Columbinus announced, loudly and clearly. Nothing happened. Hacker Nine nodded with satisfaction. “Like I said, the game’s all screwed.” “But our friends who vanished…” Glorianthus worried. “They were taken to safety, were they not?” He swallowed hard. “Florialanus was my special friend.” “I bet he was,” answered Ham-Boy. “Look, can we let these guys stay with us? Just tonight, to keep them safe while they’re all wounded and… not Harlagaz.” The three Fey Boys looked at each other in panic. “We cannot stay with you!” Columbinus shuddered with horror at the thought. “Young Heckfire, those villains who despoiled us… they are coming to get you!” “Crap,” sighed Ham-Boy. “Excellent,” beamed Harlagaz. Fashion Accessory just fiddled with the bracelet on her wrist and said nothing. “Where are we?” asked Liu Xi Xian. “We’re in one of the narrative underlayers,” Xander the Improbable told her. “Your elemental powers won’t work here, because what you see around you is story, made up of concepts and character, not of matter and energy. These are the building blocks of the Parodyverse. The five elements you command are the levers that move them.” “It feels very strange.” “It is very strange. It’d be terribly disappointing to come all this way and find things weren’t any different than home.” The master of the mystic crafts squatted on a conundrum and pulled out his flask. “Tea?” “What are we here for?” Liu Xi asked. “I mean apart from me needing to see this and understand?” “Well, here we’re pretty much beyond any kind of monitoring,” Xander replied. “So we can talk freely. There’s a few things you need to know before we go any further.” Something in the little mage’s tone made the young Asian girl nervous. “Such as?” “I can show you things you need to understand to do the things you’ll need to accomplish,” the sorcerer supreme told her. “But knowledge isn’t always comfortable. There are some things you’ll find out that you’d prefer you’d never known, and there’s no unlearning them.” “I understand. Everything has a price.” “And there are some things I have to keep concealed from you. I have my reasons, but they may not seem so good for you. I don’t want you to feel betrayed and manipulated, although in some senses you will have been.” Liu Xi considered this. “I’d prefer the whole truth, please. You don’t need to betray or manipulate me to have me help you.” “As much as you can take,” Xander agreed. “But there are limits, and I’ve fairly warned you about it.” “Yes,” she acknowledged. “So the difference between you and the Hooded Hood is that you tell people when you’re about to misuse them?” “The difference,” said the master of the mystic crafts, sipping his tea, “is that he is an archvillain, and I am an archmage.” “But I hear you never even use magic,” Liu Xi pointed out. “Yes,” agreed Xander the Improbable. “That’s what you hear.” “Okay, so the ruins were a bad idea,” admitted Billy Goat as the Masked Muskrat bandaged him up. “Ancient ruins are pretty always a bad idea,” the Human Zamboni told him. “Always. It should be printed in a rulebook somewhere.” “There are many forces at work on this island,” Dreama Garner pointed out. “Some of them demand blood.” She glanced again at Ben Hermes, Semi-Transparent Lad. “Hey, it was tough but at least we picked up some booth tokens,” Psi-Lance pointed out. “I hope Mr Summers was watching as we went in there. We totally rocked!” “We partially rocked,” conceded Betty Marsh, the Teen Avenger. “We rocked more than usual, but we could rock more if people could keep a tighter formation.” “I like the idea of strategies that don’t depend on me as bait for the monsters,” STL admitted. “Call me old fashioned, but…” And suddenly total darkness clamped down over the recruits of the Federal Metahuman Resource Centre. “Hey, what?” the Human Zamboni called. “Guys?” “Stay loose,” warned Teen Avenger. “It could be an attack!” “It’s not true darkness,” warned the voice of Drema Gardner. “This is a mere illusion, a psychic phantasm caused by…” Then there was a tiny chink of metal and the mystic fell silent. “This is looking a lot like an attack!” warned Billy Goat. “Let’s get out of here!” “Don’t break formation,” warned Teen Avenger. “We have to…” There was a phutting noise like an air rifle discharging and Betty Marsh fell silent too. As soon as the darkness had clamped down Ben Hermes had instinctively gone semi-transparent. Now he crawled as quickly as he could into the undergrowth, hoping to out-distance the sudden darkness. Sure enough, five years into the treeline he found himself outside the thick black sphere of shadow. The attackers were there, watching the FMRC’s troubles with apparent amusement. He recognised them from the briefing materials as Young Heckfire. “I think I can get out of here, guys,” called the Masked Muskrat. “Eew. I think I found another swamp.” It wasn’t a swamp. Morty Jones had crawled into Crapsack. Ben Hermes had to decide what to do. His instincts were telling him to stay hidden and crawl away from the hardcore villains. On the other hand he was supposed to be part of a team. He was supposed to be a hero. “Aw dammit,” he muttered under his breath. All the Young Heckfirians or whatever they were seemed able to see through the darkness just fine. The girl in the bird outfit took aim and fired another shot at a target she could clearly perceive through the illusory blackness. “Guys, I think I’m stuck!” called the Muskrat. “Guys? Anyone?” Semi-Transparent Lad remembered that the WASP girl in the black corsetry was the illusion generator. For some reason he’d taken more notice when the briefing came on to her. She was crippling his team, so he only had one choice. He crept up behind her and goosed her hard. “Eeeek!” Black Princess squeaked, leaping forward. Her illusion wavered, and suddenly Billy Goat , Psi-Lance, and Masked Muskrat could see the enemy. “Something pinched my bottom!” complained Stacy Royale. “That’d probably be Semi-Transparent lad,” suggested Denial, doing a quick head count. “He’s not invisible now though.” Ben realised that he’d flickered into view when Alpha Dude picked him up and hurled him fifty feet into the undergrowth. He hit hard and fell stunned. “There they are!” the Masked Muskrat called. “Get ‘em! I’ll be with you as soon as I get out of this crap.” “Crapsack!” Gnudier Lokotowcz corrected him, rising up and headbutting the Muskrat into unconsciousness. “My name is Crapsack!” Privilege used another of her exception coins to take down Psi-Lance, altering the laws of thermodynamics so he was flash-frozen. The effect would normally have killed him, but instead Lance Jones was teleported away in a bright glimmer of energies. It took five more tranquilliser darts from Falconne before they could take down Billy Goat. “Boy, he was determined,” admitted Lindy Wilson. “And he smelled,” Privilege complained, wrinkling her spoilt little nose. “So what now?” “All over bar the fun,” Lord and Master declared, stepping forward to look down at Teen Avenger. “We’ve had this conversation before,” Denial warned the leader of Young Heckfire. “Soft hearted, aren’t you?” sneered Drugo Lodestone. “Touch the girl and find out,” Danny Lyle suggested. “Oh, we don’t have time for this testosterone crap,” snorted Black Princess. She pulled a stiletto dagger from her cleavage and stabbed each of the fallen heroes, once, in their hearts. As each would have been killed the contingencies of the Observing Eye’s safety systems pulled them away; not to be returned to base as was supposed to happen, but into some electronic holding pattern because the systems had been corrupted. Ben Hermes woke up just in time to see Teen Avenger, the last of his team-mates, be stabbed and vanish. The pile of coins they’d gathered from the ruins chinked onto the ground as she disappeared. Semi-Transparent Lad had the choice between taking on the whole of Young Heckfire by himself or running for his life. He ran. “It’s a total loss,” Elsquevio, God of Small Waters, told the Lair Legion as he held the brandy glass in his trembling hands. “Olympus, I mean. A write-off.” “’Twere most surely a fixer-upper,” agreed Donar, hemigod of thunder. Searching for information about his own vanished realm, the Ausgardian had travelled with spiffy and Caveguy to consult the Olympian Pool of All-Plot Spoiling. When they had arrived they found things had changed since their last visit to the home of the Greek gods. “The Parody Master was there before us,” spiffy explained. “Well, not PM himself, but these big black riders with a Tolkein fetish were working for him.” “The Singularity Riders,” Elsqueevio supplied. “Creatures of decay and death.” “Kind of like Ross Perot?” suggested CrazySugarFreakBoy! “They art able to drain the strength from a warrior’s thews,” warned Donar. “I could help you with your thews problem,” Lisa offered. “I’m an expert on thews.” “They attacked at dawn, mugged the horses of the sun, and drove them right into the Panopticon,” admitted Elsqueevio. “And then there were those Avawarriors. Thousands of them. Hundreds of thousands. Millions.” “Yet surely the gods of Olympus have immense power?” Mr Epitome questioned. He sounded worried. “Well, we used to have, back when we got believed in more,” Elsqueevio explained. “Now it’s all Amalgamated Pantheons. Except for the Ausgardians, who got carved off into their own little exile corner of the Mythlands for upsetting the Space Robots millennia ago.” “Twas a bum rap,” muttered Donar. “And the Amalgamated Pantheons have fallen,” spiffy warned. “It was all we could do to grab Elsqueevio here from the cult-priests of the Parody Master and throw ourselves through the nearest dimensional doorway.” “Cult-priests,” rumbled the Manga Shoggoth. “I see.” “Tis another score for which yon Parody Master must be smotethed most needfully,” Donar announced. “Yet now he hath a foothold on the Mythlands of Middlinggard, and we must look to their defences.” “You’re saying he could use the gateways from the Mythlands and Faerie to invade Earth?” Dancer realised. “It makes a lot of sense, tactically,” Sir Mumphrey worried. “Hmph. Yet another front to fight on. Deuced tricky.” “We have to do something about this, and now,” agreed Hatman, standing up abruptly and reaching for a cap. “Right now.” “Wasn’t Whitney last heard of travelling the Mythlands?” wondered CSFB! casually. “I know we have to respond to this,” Dancer said, “but don’t let’s forget Vizh and the Juniors and their situation.” spiffy looked up sharply. “Situation? My team’s in a situation?” Ben Hermes hiked as hard as he could through the heavy undergrowth, hiding when he heard something large coming, and trusting to his powers to conceal him as best he could. Too many things on the island had a good sense of smell though. “Okay I’m not panicking I’m not panicking at all,” he told himself as he jogged through the jungle. “I’m the only one left so it’s all down to me and I’m not panicking I’m not…” Then he fell over the naked girl. Both of them screamed. “Okay!” Semi-Transparent Lad called out, scrambling away on his backside. “It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you. Also please don’t kill me.” The girl scrambled back also, grabbing a sharp rock from the ground and holding it like a knife until she could dive behind a clump of shrubbery. Ben realised he’d seen her before, giggling at him at the formal ball yesterday. “You’re one of the Giant Robot Six,” he said. The concealed female peered out, her face smudged with dirt and her eyes wide. She nodded cautiously. “I’m Semi-Transparent Lad, of the FMRC. Uh, what happened to your clothes?” Teiko Yamasaki looked round in alarm to see if more soldiers were coming, but of course Ben was alone. “We were attacked,” she said at last, in uncertain English. “Bad people.” “Yeah, us too,” agreed STL. “They didn’t steal our underwear though.” He thought for a moment then pulled his shirt off and tossed it over to the girl. “If you want it,” he offered. The Butterfly Twin grabbed it and hurriedly pulled it on. “Who attacked you?” Ben asked her. “Was it Young Heckfire?” Tei-Chan nodded. “The one who leads them, he was going to do bad things to us. They search us all, and then…” She shuddered. “His touch, it makes one… He was going to… That is, he made us want to…” “Hey, they’re stone cold bastards, I know that,” Semi-Transparent Lad agreed. “I do not know how we escaped. One minute we were affected by his touch, trembling with desire and with fear, and then the other one with the black jacket said ‘They are not here’, and my sister and I were in the forest.” “Your twin? Where is she now?” Teiko began weeping again. “The fear took over us and we fled apart. We are lost. She may be dead. D-dead!” Ben Hermes looked in horror as the scantily-dressed girl in front of him burst into hysterical tears. He really hadn’t thought the day could get any worse. “When you planned this, did you consider what you were going to do when you needed a bathroom break?” demanded Yuki Shiro of the man clinging to her to gain the protection of her stealth mesh from sensor detection. “Not so much,” Trickshot admitted. “But luckily I brought this soda bottle.” “Ack,” shuddered the cyborg P.I. Suddenly the whole of the quiver in which the two shrunk-down heroes were hiding rocked to the side. “Whut the…?” the irritating archer demanded. “She’s just laying down her equipment,” Yuki reasoned. The teen crimefighter Artemis had just been recruited by the monks of the Observing Eye, and the adult heroes had used her as a Trojan horse to gain access to the Order’s extradimensional headquarters. “We must be in the room she’s been assigned. She’s heading off to meet some of the other students. We have to get out of here.” “And how do you figure that?” “Other than the bathroom thing? Because while she’s busy the Observing Eye will probably want to come and inspect her weapons. I would. And while we’re less than an inch high I don’t think they call those guys the Observing Eye for nothing.” “Point taken. Okay, the kid got us this far. Now it’s up ta us ta take this place down.” It said much of Trickshot that he considered himself capable of taking on an eons–old fellowship of technologically and militarily advanced combat tutors. It said much of Yuki that she nodded and set off after him. It was night again on Monstrous Island. Kerry had banked down the fire and Kiivan and Ohanna had taken the first watch. The frightened Fey Boys were long gone, scurrying down the slope to a shallow cave a few hours away that the Juniors had discovered earlier. As the moon reached its zenith, Kiivan woke Kerry and Fashion Accessory for their shift. “All quiet except we had to scare off a few of those little spider-head creatures,” he reported with a yawn. “And if there’s one thing this field trip has taught me it’s that I need a lot more exercise to be fit for a military campaign on Caph. I guess that’s why the Hood sent us to Earth.” “You think the Hooded Hood does anything for just one reason?” Kerry asked, pushing away the sleeping bag that FA had created for her. She tried to pursue a thought that flitted on the edge of her brain. “Y’know, the Hood rescued you and Anna. He gave FA her powers. He kind of, y’know, showed H9 and I what we could do if we cut loose. You ever think maybe he’s going somewhere with all of this?” “I don’t doubt it,” Kiivan admitted. “As long as he keeps his word to me I don’t mind, either.” “Well I do,” Kerry Shepherdson decided, wrapping her sleeping bag round her shoulders and going to the watchpoint the Caphans had established well away from the firelight. “Remind me why I’m here again,” Fashion Accessory complained as she added more layers of thermal insulation to her costume. It was cold at night on Kaibutsu Shima. “To aid your friends and to strive for victory,” Ohanna told her. “Is that not enough to warrant any hardship?” FA felt the chill right through her padding. “I must go warm Kiivan,” the young Caphan pleasure slave smiled. “Take care of Kerry.” “Kerry?” FA puzzled. “Why should Kare need looking after? We don’t share body heat.” Ohanna leaned in closer. “Because her heart is rent in twain, of course,” confided the Caphan. “She loves her comrades and yearns to triumph with you, but the enemies who hunt you include Lord Daniel Lyle, who has touched her soul with yearning of another kind. It is a hard thing to be torn between two loyalties.” “It is,” agreed Samantha Bonnington. She unconsciously touched her bracelet again. She’d made it as instructed out of a unique combination of elements; a very trackable set of elements that would bring the New Battlers down upon the Juniors. Her old team wanted to defeat her new one, and her old team had videotapes that could destroy her future. Ohanna bowed to Fashion Accessory and went to squirm into Kiivan’s sleeping bag with an easy familiarity. Kerry huddled down in the observation nest and looked into the darkness. “So,” Dancer’s little sister asked, “What’s up, FA?” “Up?” Samantha asked. “What do you mean?” “I mean you’ve been quiet and thoughtful ever since this mission started. Since before that. And you’re not quiet or thoughtful usually. So what’s up?” FA smiled weakly. “I thought you’d want to talk about you and Danny, Kare. I mean, Ohanna picked up that you were…” “Samantha, what’s up?” insisted Kerry. “What’s so bad that you can’t tell your best friend?” Fashion Accessory blinked back tears. “I’m sorry, Kerry. Really I am. I wish I could be your best friend. That I was fit to be. I wish I could be part of this dumb group with its dumb name. I wish I had something to offer except… Well, I’m sorry, that’s all.” And in the darkness outside the perimeter of firelight the New Battlers moved into position. Gromboor guided Artemis into the Cloister, a vaulted common area whose high glass dome looked out into the swirling multicoloured maelstrom of the dimensional vortex. “This is where the students from your world gather in their informal moments,” he instructed the young archer. “We only have four here at the moment, pending evaluation and assignment to appropriate training.” “Okay,” Charlotte Ouk replied, looking with interest at the people lounging by the refectory counter. “Hello!” the statue next to her said. Artemis almost jumped out of her skin. It wasn’t a statue. Rather it was a huge green and orange robot, but its sleek lines somehow suggested femininity. “Er, hi,” Charlotte returned the greeting. “I’m Glitch,” the robot said. Somehow she gave the impression of enthusiastic grinning. “I’m an Autobot, but since I got assigned to Sol III – or kind of sent out of the way so I couldn’t cause an trouble, you pick – the Order has classified me here in the Earth cloister. Anyhow, it’s great to meet another Terran. Hi!” The other occupants had noticed the newcomer now and wandered over to meet her. The girl had frizzy red-blonde hair and outrageously oversized sunglasses. The boy with his arm round her was dressed in skater pants and a sweat-vest, and his face was almost obscured by the cap pulled low over his eyes. The third was… Artemis forced herself not to stare. Stop it, she told herself. You’ve seen buff tanned guys with blonde hair and piercing deep blue eyes and an air of indefinable sadness before. He doesn’t need you to comfort him. Just get a grip on your hormones, girl. “Welcome to the restaurant at the End of the Universe,” the surf god bade her. “This is Fly-Girl and Beanni. I’m Cody.” “Ch – Artemis,” Charlotte Ouk stammered. “Nice to meet you all. Just give me a minute to get a grip.” “Take a while,” advised Fly Girl. “When the Order took me from my hospital room I totally freaked at first. But if it wasn’t for them I’d still be in a coma I guess.” “So you’re all, what, acolytes of the Order or something?” “Students, maybe,” Beanni conceded. “But catch me signing up for the long haul, with the tonsure and the itchy robes. Yeach.” “Things were getting a bit hot for us on Earth, what with the Sentinoids and mutate hate crimes and stuff,” Cody explained. “So we decided to accept the invitation for a little holiday break here in vortex central.” “You’re mutates,” Charlotte understood. “Fly-Girl and Beanni are,” Glitch clarified. “My sensors aren’t quite sure what Cody Harper is. Except a temporal anomaly, of course.” “Cody… Harper? As in Al B. Harper?” Cody shrugged. “Apparently he’s my dad.” “There they are,” breathed Lounge Lizard. “The ickle Junior Lair Legion, all tucked in their beds. Sammy’s on watch and they don’t suspect a thing.” “Good,” answered E-Mail, hiding in the grass beside the dragonling, the blue tracery on his outfit muted as much as possible. “I really want to try and capture these bozos alive if we can. It’ll much more fun that way.” “Much,” agreed Thunderstroke, anticipating. “Besides, we need Hacker Nine, remember,” Boy Wonder reminded them. “Only he can get us into the control centre where the Observing Eye has recorded everything. No data, no payment from her highness.” “We all know the plan,” L’il Buttie noted impatiently. “Do you think we can maybe just attack the Juniors before they wake up?” “Oh yes,” breathed E-Male. “Let’s go!” “There they are,” Alpha Dude pointed out, watching the New Battlers from another clearing in the forest. “Looks like they’ve found the Juniors.” “Good,” Black Princess replied. “Let them take each other out. We’ll just step in and beat the snot out of the survivors.” “But remember those remains we found today, what was left of the Wonder Friends,” Falconne argued. “The New Battlers are playing for keeps, and somehow they’re stopping the automatic safety recall teleport from working.” “We’re stopping it from sending people out of the game,” Blatant Genius corrected. “We want as many metahumans as possible in a mid-teleport holding pattern for when we take down the dimensional barriers and let the Parody Master’s forces in to capture the contestants. Those Battlers have just cobbled a crude jammer that prevents the extraction signal from being used at all.” He examined his instruments again. “Zemo technology, looks like,” he spat. “Typically crude and overengineered, using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.” “It was effective enough on the Wonder Friends,” pointed out Denial. “You just don’t want your girlfriend to get mussed up,” Lord and Master gloated. “Boy, she must be a really good lay to screw you up this much.” Danny Lyle ignored him. “Crapsack thinks we could take down all of them together,” noted Crapsack, oozing into position in the treetops. “Ew. Don’t drip on me!” complained Privilege. “Look, we just wait,” Black Princess insisted. “Watch the show. Then we act.” “It’s not going to be much of a show,” Alpha Dude guessed. “The Juniors are completely unawares they’re being surrounded. It’s going to be a massacre.” “No,” said Danny Lyle determinedly. “It isn’t.” Kerry heard a sound in the forest, smelled a faint tinge of ozone in the air. “FA…” she whispered in warning. “Sorry, Kare,” Samantha Bonnington cringed. “I had no choice.” She knew it was a lie as soon as she’s spoken it, even before she transmuted Kerry’s clothing into an asbestos straight-jacket. The New Battlers surged forwards. The ground erupted beneath them, spraying searing lava over Thunderstroke and L’il Buttie, toppling the group from their attack formation. “An attack,” warned Prince Keevan, rolling free of his sleeping furs and rising with his sword in hand to deflect a tail-swipe from the vengeful Wyrmbait. Behind him Ohanna leaped to cover his back from Boy Wonder. “Vile caitiffs!” Harlagaz shouted as he woke from his slumbers. The demihemigod of thunder sensed E-Male shifting from human form to electrocute the Juniors and commended the Battler be grounded. Then he kicked E-Male in the teeth. “Hello, puppymeat!” Ripper, the massive Apoclayspian warhound snarled as his jaws snapped at Glory; but the pooch of power was faster and jumped aside, then returned snarling for an attack of her own. Ham-Boy leaped aside too, to avoid the growing river of lava that welled up from cracks in the ground around the campsite. He caught up Hacker Nine and dragged him away, but just then Lounge Lizard dropped on him, breathing nuclear fire. “I love it when they fight back,” snickered Hatkid, concentrating on Ohanna. Suddenly the girl was gone and a diamond tiara toppled in the mud. “Anna!” screeched Kiivan, and hurled his dagger at Ben Grover. The blade caught the fat Battler in the shoulder. It had been aimed for the throat. “Come on, Sammy,” Wyrmbait called to Fashion Accessory. “Time to take them down!” FA looked stricken at the chaos. She raised her hands to use her powers then hesitated, appalled. L’il Buttie, Lounge Lizard, and Thunderstroke were teaming up to dogpile Harlagaz, searing him in turn by dragonfire and Jarvis cosmic, then hammering him down with blows that would shatter steel. Kiivan was pushing Wyrmbait back despite her poisonous tail and fiery breath, but Boy Wonder was closing on him from behind. Ham-Boy was protecting himself from E-Male with piles of meat. Hacker Nine was crawling away. He wasn’t a physical combatant. Glory and Ripper were a snarling ball of blood and fur, rolling over and over amongst the trees. Somebody was going to die. And Samantha Bonnington knew it was her fault. “Crapsack attacks!” came a shout from above, and suddenly the battlefield was washed in foul smelling effluence, sending everybody slipping and sliding in the muck. “Oh great. So much for the masterplan. Well I guess we’re going in then,” sighed Alpha Dude. He dropped down and clobbered Wyrmbait from behind. “At last,” giggled Privilege, and tossed one of her exception coins at Harlagaz. Her talent caused the laws of science around the demihemigod to change. Suddenly he was no longer an air-breather. The toppled and began to choke. Falconne flew down and strafed Juniors and Battlers alike with the tranq bullets. Then her systems completely shut off as Hacker Nine over-rode them. Lindy Wilson ploughed into a tree and went down hard. A dozen Sentinoid mutate control machines surged out of the trees to attack, courtesy of Black Princess’ illusionary gifts. That diverted L’il Buttie and Ham-Boy long enough for Alpha Dude to slam them together with a shattering impact. Fashion Accessory closed her eyes. Then she opened them. “I don’t matter,” she said. “This isn’t about me.” She gestured and the asbestos jacket around Kerry Shepherdson melted away. The angry probability arsonist looked up and fire seemed to dance in her eyes. Things started exploding: trees, the ground, rocks, Blatant Genius’ equipment, E-Male. The Sentinoids blinked out as Black Princess screamed when tree splintered sliced into her. Privilege hurled a coin straight at Kerry but it evaporated before ever it got to her. Harlagaz rose from the ground and slammed his fist into Thunderstroke, shattering Ludo Donger’s jaw. “This is going bad,” Lounge Lizard decided. “Battlers fall back.” Ripper growled and ignored him, trying to get Glory’s neck in his jaws. Lord and Master surged forward and grabbed Kerry’s exposed flesh. Then he staggered back screaming, his hands burning. “What?” the livid girl screamed at him. “You think that works twice? You think I’m easy?” “We’ve got to bring this under control,” Kiivan realised. “Samantha, help Harlagaz. Create some kind of breathing suit for him. Hacker Nine, pull Ham-Boy out of here.” The Emir of All Caph stooped and carefully retrieved the delicate filigree tiara that Ohanna had become and cradle it in his arm. “When Harlagaz is up have him try and separate Glory from that thing!” “Too clever!” complained Crapsack, rising up to smother the Caphan. The ground shook. “Kare, control it!” Fashion Accessory screamed as the trees began to topple. “You’re going to kill us all!” “And you so deserve it, you traitor!” shrieked back Kerry. “But this isn’t me! I don’t know what this is!” “Look out!” Denial warned as the mountainside split apart and gigantic boulders were toppled over the battlefield. “No-one was hit!” Now molten lave spumed out, scattering the combatants. There was an ear-splitting roar and a gigantic reptilian head rose from beneath the mountain’s surface. It was dark green with livid yellow eyes and a ridged spine, and it was huge. Really huge. The mutated reptile rose to its full two hundred foot height, ignoring the exploding volcano around it, scattering the little humans all around. Then, annoyed at being woken up, it opened its mouth and sprayed the entire area with its lightning breath. And then it got nasty. Bethany Shellett finished her teaching day at St Jude’s Orphanage and hurried back to Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital to check on her room-mate. She found Mac Fleetwood sitting in the waiting room. “Hey, good to see you up and about again,” the pretty blonde teacher called to the minister. “You had us all worried for a while there.” “Uhuna is a remarkable woman,” Mac admitted. “I hear Laurie will make a full recovery.” “Given some TLC, yes,” agreed Beth. “Is Bry in there with her?” “He’s dozing in the chair next to her. I guess he’s been pretty worried.” “Well, he and Laurie are very close. Is she awake?” “She was phasing in and out when I saw her,” Mac answered. “But by all means go find out.” Beth hoisted the bunch of grapes and stuck her head round the door. Goldeneyed was snoozing in the chair but the bed was empty. Only an open ninth floor window showed how she might have been carried away. Lisette had gone. Coming Next: More nakedness, more nastyness, more teens, more doom, and Trickshot and Yuki vs the entire Order of the Observing Eye: UT#249: Monstrous Pie!, coming soon, certificate 15. Our Guest Footnotes on the Show Tonight… The Federal Metahuman Resource Centre: Here are some of L!’s notes on the characters: Agent Ruben Holcomb: He was put in charge of the FMRC's new recruits by Mr. Garrick himself. Mr. Holcomb is a former agent of various government agencies (or so he says so). Agent Holcomb is the head of security. He is also the number 2 or 3 agent of the Parodiopolis office. Agent Holcomb is a black man of medium build. He looks to be in his late 30 to early 40's. Agent Holcomb has slicked back black hair. He wears a deep purple colored suit with a black dress shirt, his tie is also the same color as his suit. He wears shiny black leather shoes. I imagine Agent Holcomb speaking in a deep booming voice that is slightly creepy sounding. Agent Holcomb carries two guns under his suit jacket in shoulder holsters. One is a shot gun & the other is a stun gun. (Gordon) Matthew Summers: He is one of the few trainers of the new recruits at the Parrodipolis Office. He likes to be called by his middle name & according to his file, he is a former super hero. But, which hero he is unknown. Mr. Summers does not particularly like training the next generation but as he would say "it pays the bills". Mr. Summers can appear to be scatter brained at moments. Mr. Summers is in his mid '30's. He has spiky, blond hair & has an almost permanent 5 o'clock shadow. He dresses in a black Suit jacket with a few pins on the lapel, dark dress or canvas pants & a t-shirt. On his feet are either sandals or socks & a pair of tennis shoes. Mr. Summers speaks with a slight british accent. He also smokes. Various known new recruits of the FMRC, their powers & misc. information: Billy Goat (James Milton): He is the proportional powers of a goat. James wears suit that gives him the look of a Man Goat. He has a utility belt & special gloves & boots that help his hold on to various surfaces. James is in his 20's, has brown hair. The Human Zamboni (Oswald Vanderhoosy): He has ice powers. Oswald's costume is winter themed. Oswald is in his late teens-Early 20's, has dark blondish brown hair. Psi-Lance (Lance Jones): He is a telepath with the power to created large areas of silence. Lance wears a body hugging gray & pinkish purple spandex suit with the symbol of a brain on it. Lance is in his mid 20's, has black hair. Dreama Garner: Her powers stem from a magical source. Dreama has frizzy brown hair & doesn't wear a costume or have a codename. She wears her normal clothes, they look like Goth mixed with elements of the Bohemian style. Dreama is in her late teens-Early 20's but acts older. She (like The Professor) has a grudge against Semi-Transparent Lad Semi-Transparent Lad (Ben Hermes): He has the power to become mostly invisible & completely invisible in the right type of light. He wears a full body gray spandex suit with black leather boots, gloves, a utility belt. On his chest is a red & yellow oval with the letters "STL" on it. Ben is in his early 20's & has brownish orange hair. He does not know that anyone has a grudge against him. Teen Avenger (Betty Marsh): A girl with no power other then her overriding sense of justice & various gadget she had built for her. Betty wears a yellow & white costume similar to the classic Supergirl costume (Shirt, cape, belt & skirt, boots). Betty is in her 20's & has blond hair. The Masked Muskrat (Mortimer "Morty" Jones): Based his costume & gadgets after a muskrat. Morty's costume looks like Batman's if he modeled it after a Muskrat & not a Bat. Morty's age is unknown & his hair color is unknown because it's hidden under his cowl. Also in the C-Team but not involved on this mission are: The Professor (Dr. Roy Hinkley): He wears a high-tech, blue & grey colored suit of armor that uses various types of light & sound as weapons. Dr. Hinkley is in his mid 40's & is sort of self centered. He has brown hair but is covered by his helmet. He also has a slight grudge against Semi-Transparent Lad. The Amazing Rando: He is a stage magician who also works in the more occult parts of Magic. He wears a black tuxedo, white gloves & a cape with the words "The Amazing Rando" stitched onto it. He also carries around a magic wand. Rando is in his late 30's , has brown hair. The Observing Eye Recruits: From the notes of Al B: Fly-Girl: Mutate teen who first appeared in Dancer-Al B. Harper Special #1. Friend to Cody Harper and dating Beanni. Wanted by the Government because she could help them find hundreds of secret mutates. Shot by the Mutehate Monger's oversized Liefeld gun in Dancer-Al B. Harper Special #3 and was last reported to be in a coma at the Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital with serious injuries but in a stable condition. Appearance:"A young girl with funky oversized sun-glasses" (D-AlB. #1) Powers: "It’s not much. But I can tell if somebody’s a mutate just by touching them, and sometimes what their power is." (D-AlB. #2) Beanni: Mutate teen who first appeared in Dancer-Al B. Harper Special #1. Friend to Cody Harper and dating Fly-Girl. Last known appearance was sitting by the side of Fly-Girl in the Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital where she was in a coma. Appearance:"One of the youths, wearing typical skater gear (long baggy pants, and beanni pulled so low it almost covers his eyes)" (D-AlB. #1) Powers:"All I can do is make people forget what’s just happened." (D-AlB. #2) Cody Harper: Mutate teen who first appeared in Al B. Harper #7. Revealed to be a mutate in Dancer-Al B. Harper Special #1. Is the son of Al B. Harper and an unknown woman, although no one has worked it out yet. Ran away from his home town to Paradopolis to escape mutate prejudice and to search for his father. Was offered the back room of the Bean and Donut to sleep in return for his undertaking a few menial tasks during the day after Mr Papadopopolis found out he’d been sleeping rough on the streets. Last seen running off at the conclusion to Dancer-Al B. Harper Special after his mutate friend Fly-Girl was shot and he got over-emotional to a flippant comment by Kerry Shepherdson. Powers: "the ability to understand any language" (D-AlB.#1) including Dog, he was able to translate for Glory. Appearance: "His tan complexion yet piercing blue eyes and mop of curly blond hair gave him an exotic appearance that made the young ladies swoon, yet there was also a sense of sadness around him." (D-AlB.#1) Sometimes wears a Bean and Donut apron. The tanned complexion he gets from his father (and we all know who that is, even if no one else does yet). The blue eyes, blond hair and swoon-inducing good looks he gets from his mother, or at least, that's what I said back then. Some more from D-AlB. #3: Cody – teen runaway who’s mutate power is languages and has been doing odd-jobs around the Bean and Donut in return for free lodging in the back room (and who is also Al B. Harper’s kid, although neither of them know it yet); his street-kid mutate friends Fly-Girl who wears fly sunglasses in the night and in the day and who’s power is mutate detection and power summary; and Beanni, who we see on his skateboard but we never see his face, just see his beanni, and who’s mutate power makes people forget what just happened. Glitch: from an e-mail circulated by CSFB! in January 2000: TRANSFORMERS BIO & TECH SPECS CLIP AND SAVE! AUTOBOT GLITCH FUNCTION: SABOTAGE MOTTO: "Impossible? Ha! For you, maybe - not for me." Relentlessly enthusiastic, outgoing, and almost always optimistic, this popular and energetic female Transformer has earned the affection and respect of her male counterparts among the Autobot troops, despite her status as one of the youngest of the original transforming robots to have been created by the master-mold known as Vector Sigma on their home planet of Cybertron, as well as her tendency towards courses of action that are reckless and impulsive, and often stem from her impatience overriding her common sense, causing her to overestimate her own abilities. In fact, it was only after failed stints as both a spy and a communications specialist that Glitch finally found her niche, when a botched information retrieval run accidentally resulted in not only irreparable damages to the Decepticon database that she'd infiltrated, but also trigged a chain reaction which resulted in the total destruction of the nigh-invulnerable protection facility which had housed those encrypted programs. After reviewing the reports of Glitch's performance, Optimus Prime respectfully vetoed Ultra Magnus' recommendation that the already junior femme be demoted to an even lower rung in the chain of command, and instead promoted her to the newly minted post of "Head Saboteur" for the Autobots, thus utilizing her unique talent for unparalleled chaos and confusion to its fullest potential against the Decepticons. Glitch is unabashedly fascinated with human popular culture, and in particular has developed a taste for the more colorful forms of entertainment offered among their mass media, including comic books, cartoons, and any other books, movies, television programs, or even internet sites having to do with science fiction, fantasy or "super-hero" stories, which she occasionally mistakes for accurate accounts of actual historic events in human history. This interest in four-color costumed crime-fighters, not to mention her habit of confusing their fictional exploits with reality, might derive from her discovery that the apparently metallic alloy out of which she was composed, an extremely rare and seemingly inexplicable substance classified as Impossibilityium by Teletran-1, was also the element which an otherwise unremarkable human male named Dreamcatcher Foxglove had used to adopt the absurd alias of CrazySugarFreakBoy!, by reshaping the mysteriously amorphous material into a glowing garment he chose to refer to as a SillySuit, which granted him super-human abilities whenever he wore it and consumed massive quantities of sugar and caffeine to power it. Likewise, Glitch must ingest an ultra-concentrated form of Energon fuel in order to continue running at peak efficiency. Driven by the need to understand the apparent similarities linking her own past and identity to that of this Lair Legionnaire of the late twentieth century, Glitch has volunteered for a hazardous and top-secret experimental mission, which will soon send her back in time, from her native era in the current Terran calendar year 2040 A.D., to the turn of Earth's previous millennium. In robot form, Glitch prefers to shift the majority of her mass into sub-space, so that she can shrink down to the same scale size as an average human female, and thus interact with the species of whom she's become so enamored on a more accessible and down-to-earth level. In vehicle mode, Glitch has a variety of transport options to select from, since one of the characteristics inherent in her Impossibilityium construction involves the lack of any built-in preset defaults, which basically means that she can transform into nearly any land-based vehicle that she can imagine, although she has demonstrated a predisposition to certain forms of transport, such as the small, sleek and futuristically-styled motorcycle mode she sports whenever she's in the mood for fun with her human friends. However, the mercurial side-effect of this creative freedom is that Glitch must maintain her concentration in order to shape-shift successfully into the mechanical guise she has in mind, or else she will find herself metamorphosed into something entirely different from whatever craft she'd conceived of beforehand. Of course, given Glitch's hyperactively distraction-prone attention span, it should be no surprise that her tactical transformations frequently resemble a stream-of-consciousness series of quick-as-a-blink switches, from motorcycle to sports car to a newer-model redesigned VW bug, even in the midst of front-line combat. And yet, in defiance of all scientific logic or rational explanations, no matter how hopeless the odds are, or how much trouble Glitch ends up getting herself into, she always somehow manages to turn the situation to her advantage, saving the day for her fellow Autobots thanks to her missteps rather than in spite of them. This quality has led Perceptor, among other researchers, to speculate that the Impossibilityium out of which Glitch was built is what lends her such uncanny luck, by surrounding her in a probability-subverting field, but none would deny that she still owes the majority of her victories to her own quick wits, inventiveness, and phenomenal improvisational skill. After seeing her work in the field, Ultra Magnus himself has admitted that Glitch's instincts show promise, and that her devotion to her comrades is beyond reproach ... even if she could use a bit more discipline in her methods. Of all the Transformers, Glitch feels closest to the other female Autobots, including Arcee, Elita One, Chromia, Firestar, and Moonracer, who regard her as their "little sister", and dote upon her accordingly, with equal measures of playful teasing and motherly concern for the fluorescent orange-and-green femme with the smiley-face insignias on her armor. STRENGTH: 6.3 INTELLIGENCE: 8.8 SPEED: 9.4 ENDURANCE: 7.5 RANK: 5.6 COURAGE: 10.0 FIREPOWER: 6.9 SKILL: 8.2 Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2006 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2006 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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