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Post By The Hooded Hood would like to assure readers that no dragons were harmed during the making of this episode. Well only one. Fri Jan 27, 2006 at 02:53:51 pm EST |
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#253: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Living Hell | |
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| #253: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Living Hell Previously: The Parody Master’s interdimensional conquests continue, cascading many consequences. Earth’s governments seek to placate the conqueror by bringing their metahuman population under direct control. Amongst the methods is a brainwashing facility where former SPUD director Dan Drury is being tortured. Hacker Nine (Zack Zelnitz) has sought protection through an internship with the archvillainous Hooded Hood. Even the lower abyssal realms are affected by the coming conflict and must decide how to react. 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.  “The town centre of Auch was deserted, except for the tanks. The Gascogns has seen the Nazis comin’, and everyone who was able had taken what they could an’ fled. But as we crept in after dark we found the bodies of the rest. Mostly the very old an’ the very young, that hadn’t been able to outrun Die Totenmaske’s gas of death. That evil stuff left a kind of waxy luminous residue on the faces of its victims. We sneaked into town with dozens of glowing dead faces watching us. Totenmaske was down by the cathedral. Sante Marie. I remember Iggy goin’ on about how it was very unusual, a gothic church with a Byzantine façade or sumpthin’. Most beautiful stained glass in all of France. I told him to shut up and git into position. There were three trucks out front, and it was clear that the Nazis were strippin’ the place of its treasures. We could see ‘em carrying out gold plate and candlesticks and stuff. And all the while they were stepping over the bodies of the priest and the curate and the verger what they’d slaughtered to loot the house o’ God. Dimbulb was all fer going in right then an’ there, wiping the murderous goons off’a the planet. I could get behind that. It was a long time since I was an altar boy at St Jude’s down in Slumtown but there was enough of that wet-behind-the-ears kid left in me ta want to see all of these bastards burn in hell. But I made the Whoopers wait. I wanted Totenmaske too. Now there was a piece of work. Picked out from obscurity by A-dolf hisself ta be trained inta the perfect weapon of terror. They said he wore the peeled face of his step-father as a mask, glowin’ in the dark from that powder he uses ta kill people. He liked death. He liked ta give it. If you saw his face then you was probably a dead man walking. And then we saw him. Strutting around in that SS uniform of his like he owned the world, ordering the looting of Sante Marie, picking at the corpse of the city of Auch like the ghoul he wuz. I signalled to Jeb and Puker ta be ready, then nodded to Raphael ta blow his cornet and sound the attack. We jumped over the remains of the wall where the post office had been shouting our Whooper wail: ‘Whaaaaaa-Heeeeeeee!!!’ The Ratzis, they panicked. Guess these guys weren’t combat troops, more used ta pickin on the helpless and the defenceless. They went down like Zero Street whores on a Saturday night. But Totenmaske didn’t even flinch. He just reached for his machine gun and started spraying. He shot his own men, and he shot the gas tank of one o’ the trucks. The whole thing went up in a big ball of fire, scattering the Whoopers, sending us reeling, deafened, stunned. I saw Iggy rolling Jab on the floor ta put out the flames. And Totenmaske laughing. That wus when the fury took me. I dropped my empty gun and ran in at him. I ran in at that bastard to take him apart with my bare hands. I ran in. I did. I ran…” “Really, Daniel? Are you certain?” “I… I thought I did. What else could I do? He had my guys pinned down. I hadda…” “Come now, Daniel? Does that sound realistic? Would anybody be foolish enough to undertake such a risk under those circumstances? Think again. What really happened that night?” “I was… I went fer him. Why can’t I remember goin’ fer him? I hadda save everyone. I was their Sarge. It wuz my job…” “Think more carefully. What do you remember?” “I remember getting scared. Running away. Hiding in the ruins till Dimbulb came an’ found me. I remember crying with fear. But that didn’t happen. It wasn’t like that!” “Oh come, Daniel. Look at the truth. You’re not really the big strong hero you like to pretend to be, are you? Not at all. You’re actually a sad little coward, a blow-hard who crumbles under fire. Look behind the legend of the great Dan Drury, leader of the Whooping Commandos of Sleazy Company, former Director of the Super-menace Principle Undercover Directorate, and there’s just a frightened small man cowering from the light. Isn’t that so?” “I didn’t run away, whatever I remember. I wouldn’t run from Totenmaske an’ leave my guys in there. You’re… you’re doin’ something to my brain. To my memories. Changing them.” “We’re helping you see the truth about your past, Daniel. We’re stripping away the façade, that’s all. We need to see what you’re keeping hidden from us.” “You’re foolin’ with my memories. Taking them from me one by one.” “We’re searching, Daniel. I thought you’d agreed to help us, during those long hours as Manmangler’s pain-toy. We’re searching for those secrets you didn’t even trust yourself with, that you had buried deep in your subconscious. We’re helping you to find them and give them to us. That’s what you want, isn’t it?” “Yes. No more pain. That’s whut I want.” “Well then, thank me for my help in our session today, Daniel. We’re making great progress. We’re breaking down the man you pretended to be. Soon there’ll be nothing left.” “Th-thank you, Dr Faustian.” “You are welcome, Daniel. Another round of injections before you go back to your tortures, I think…” “Excellent,” applauded Sage Grimpenghast, master of ignorance and teacher of deceptions applauded. “That doctor is a master at what he does. I could find employment for him down here.” The Hell-Lord gestured round to the frozen wastes of his domain. “He has the touch,” agreed Vesperine, Lady of Torments. Where Grimpenghast looked almost human, a monkish old man with a skull-cap and Benedictine habit, Vesperine preferred the form of a gaunt drowned lady, her eyes seeping blood down her cheeks and onto her virgin shift. “It’s good to see the mortals learning their lessons so well.” “Eh,” shrugged Belaziel, Lord of the Moral Wastes. “I’ve seen better. Totenmaske, for one. He was worth admiring.” “You got him, didn’t you?” Grimpenghast remembered. “After Drury strangled him that night in Auch? You claimed him for your domain.” Belaziel was dressed in an Armani suit and Vatton tie. Only the cloven hooves and crimson skin betrayed his diabolic origins. Otherwise he was entirely Wall Street. “He’s been my guest these many years, yes. I keep meaning to find a reason to send him back to visit the lands of the not-yet-dead.” “That would be amusing,” agreed Vesperine, absently slitting her skin with her fingernails. The fourth of the five beings assembled in the Cloister of Orthodoxy shifted restlessly and yawned ostentatiously. “Is there a point to this meeting?” he demanded, his feet still up on the table as he sat back in his chair, “or are we just here to play voyeur on tormented mortals?” “Have a care,” warned Grimpenghast. “You are but a new-minted spirit, and we are Lords of Hells.” Chronic didn’t seem impressed. The pale young man was dressed in torn biker clothes, his lank hair dishevelled down to his neck, his chin covered with a grizzled stubble. Laid across his lap and chest was a black electric guitar with red and silver trim. Its strings seemed to vibrate by themselves, emitting a sinister subharmonic that echoed round the room. “I’m here on behalf of Hell Lord Nats,” Chronic told them. “You know, irritating ginger guy, just became ruler of all the infernal territory from the Agony Mountains and the Gorge of Regret to the Disharmony Spire and the Yearning Bridge where the Mewlips dance. Well, they call it dancing. I call it more flopping about like spastics at a 70s revival night.” “It is only your embassage which has earned you the courtesy of not being rended vapour from vapour so far,” warned Belaziel. “No, I don’t think so,” the dead musician considered, glaring at the lord of the moral wastes insolently. “I think it’s more to do with the fact that I’ve got Steve strapped across my chest. The Devil’s guitar. I mean the real Devil, not all you horror movie wannabees. And you don’t want to mess with Steve, because the bigger a spiritual entity you are, the more powerful Steve’s effects on you will be. He’s blown away gods.” “It is not appropriate to make threats at a council of Hell-Lords,” Sage Grimpenghast warned. “Tell that to Armani-horns over there,” Chronic replied. “And then let’s get on, shall we? You guys might enjoy sitting here for all eternity watching people suffer on the cosmic TV but I’ve got a life. So to speak. I’m just helping Nats out and then I’ve got a gig.” “It might be best to move on,” Vesperine conceded. “All of us are curious as to what our visitor has to say.” “In that case,” responded the master of deceptions, taking the lead since he was summoner and host of this enclave, “may I introduce the ambassador of the Parody Master. This is the Doomherald.” The last of the beings around the table leaned forward and gave a cheery wave. “Hello.” So the messenger from the unstoppable Parody Master talked to the Lords of Hell about marching the PM’s armies through the abyssal realms to get access to Earth, and the hard negotiations began. And there we were, sitting in the Hooded Hood’s throneroom calmly watching them through the mirrored Portal of Pretentiousness. I should have brought popcorn. The Hooded Hood turned away though. He didn’t seem interested in the minutiae of the haggling. Let me tell you a bit about the Hood. For starters, he crackles. Not static cling or anything, just a presence. You know when he’s come into the room behind you by the pricking between your shoulder blades. You know when that massive intellect is turned on you because you can feel his brain boring into yours. Maybe the Hood is human, or at least he started out that way. He looks human enough, under that grey cowl and cape, a pale-faced man with a moustache and goatee, the perfect image of the archvillain he declares himself to be. But I figure that all those years of changing things – retconning the past with his powers to make little changes to what’s gone before – all those times he even changed himself has to have completely detached him from anything like humanity. He’s simultaneously living in all possible variants of the timeline, and he can pick which one prospers and goes on. How can you do that every moment of every day and still be anything like a person? Or sane? Maybe that’s why the Hooded Hood operates out of Herringcarp Asylum, that spooky Victorian mental hospital in upstate Gothametropolis. Maybe he knows what it’s cost him to be who he is. But the man has presence. “So what are you going to do about it?” I asked him. I was his new intern. I was there to learn. “About what, Mr Zelnitz?” he enquired in those rich Latvian tones. He always called me that; never Zach or Hacker Nine or annoying pest or little punk. He was always polite. It was scarier. “About the Hell Lords granting passage to the Parody Master to invade Earth,” I persisted. “Wouldn’t that be, y’know, a bad thing?” “Indeed,” he agreed. “But it will not happen.” I glanced at the Portal’s reflections where the arguing was continuing. “You’re going to do something?” “No.” The Hood was like that. He liked to make people think fast and deep. And maybe sideways. He liked people to have to mentally run to keep up with him. I found it kind of refreshing. “You’ve already done something, ages ago,” I guessed. The Hood inclined his head slightly, the nearest he ever got to a sign of approval. “I arranged for Chronic to be there. I arranged for Nats to be there. I arranged for Regret to be there.” Now Nats I knew. Nats was a member of the Lair Legion before it all went wrong for him and he accidentally absorbed the power of some dead Hell-Lords. And suddenly he’s this major infernal power, down there in the whatever-the-hell-that-place-really-is. He’s cut off from his friends by his new position, and he’s got this hot crimson-skinned demoness babe called Regret cosying up to him to help him become Demon Lord #1. And I thought I was in trouble just skipping the Junior Lair Legion to work for HH. “What about the other thing, then?” I wondered. “The stuff they were watching before, with Dan Drury being tortured. Was that for real? Can’t we do something to rescue him?” “Drury is at a secret government reconditioning facility,” the Hood told me. “Originally established to brainwash criminal metahumans to become government agents, it is now being used as an adjunct of the programme to subordinate all Earth’s paranormal assets and prevent them being used against the Parody Master. It is the sheep destroying their sheepdogs to placate the wolves.” “Yeah. But they were really hurting him. Nobody should have to suffer like that.” The Hood’s eyes seemed to get even colder. “Some should,” he answered, and I couldn’t stop a shudder. “But Drury is not one of them. You should see about releasing him.” “Me?” HH gave me one of those challenging looks of his. “How are you progressing at the task I set you, Mr Zelnitz?” “You mean to break into the SPUD ultra-secure database reserve? I’m working on it, honestly, but I’m up against some physical barriers. They know what I can do, what Hallie can do, what the Librarian can do. So they’ve physically disconnected their secure systems from all outside contact. I can’t hack where there’s no route in.” “So you have failed. Without access to those systems you cannot locate or assist Colonel Drury.” “I didn’t say I’d failed. I just need to arrange a connection on the SPUD helicarrier, that’s all. If I could only find a way to have one of the techs make a little mistake, connect the wrong cable to the wrong machine for just a moment…” “Mr Zelnitz, are you asking for my assistance in this matter?” I hesitated. Was this another one of the Hood’s tests? And if so, what was the right reply? “Yeah,” I said at last. “I need help. Just one little thing.” I pulled up the material on my datapad. “See this technician? Morton Gomez. He’s on shift right now, and he’s the most careless of the secure techs. If I cause a flare in the power bus of the secondary CPU interface he’ll need to switch to back-ups manually. And fast, because nobody enjoys a helicarrier plummeting out of the skies. If he could just make one little error, plug in the wrong cable to the wrong socket for a couple of seconds, then I’m in.” “Very well,” agreed the Hooded Hood. “Proceed.” Kayla Falconcrest preferred to be known by her professional name: Manmangler. She’d earned it at age fourteen when she’d got tired of her stepfather’s attentions and had borrowed her mom’s kitchen knife. That had gained her a new life in a juvenile detention centre, where she’d managed to rack up an impressive three kills and seventeen maimings in three years. Then she was recruited by HERPES, a terrorist group whose Miami cell could find good use for a young woman who so enjoyed offering pain to others. She’s stayed with the Hero Elimination Revenge Project Extermination Squad for five years, working mostly in South America and Asia, learning from the best. She’d not just picked up the physical tricks of interrogation and pain. During that time she also completed her masters in psychology and she was only half a dozen credits short of her doctorate if she could ever find time to complete her thesis. After that she went freelance, working for Factor X and Magenta St Evil and Count Armageddon and a dozen petty dictators across the planet. She was good at what she did, and the work was plentiful. After her encounter with Falcon it took a long time for her to recover from her injuries. It was almost a year before she could properly grip a shock-stick again. But fortunately she’d been diverted from criminal custody into Dr Faustian’s Rehabilitation Programme at Las Animas, Colorado, and there she’d found her true calling again. And of late, she’d fallen in love. His name was Dan Drury, a grizzled, one-eyed former SPUD commander. A war hero, who’d somehow managed to slow his ageing processes so that although he was well into his eighties he seemed like a well-preserved forty. A brave man, a hard man. A man it was so much fun to break. He was Manmangler’s special project, and she spent every moment of her waking life making his existence a living nightmare. Two months in she’d broken him so he’d crawl, but she knew he was still holding back. She knew there was so much more to take from him. Five times a week now, Dr Faustian took Drury and used his mind-machines on the fallen hero. Drury still had data locked into his mind, hidden behind barriers he’d had installed to protect against this very kind of interrogation. He knew names and plans that the government had to learn, and Faustian took it as a professional challenge to find them. But when Drury wasn’t with the doctor, he belonged to Manmangler. And so it was with a light heart, planning today’s atrocities, that Manmangler went to the holding cell to see how her hero had fared with the tortures she’d left for him the night before. Drury lay unmoving in the framework of needles where he was strapped. The heart monitor was kicked over, its warning sirens silenced by the impact of the fall. Drury had worked one foot loose. He’d stopped them from knowing he was dying. He had escaped. Kayla Falconcrest howled her anguish, weeping at the chest of the scarred, seared corpse. Then she wiped away her tears and went to look for the guards who should have been watching the prisoner in his agonies. Somebody had to pay for this. Manmangler was quite prepared to prosecute the debt. Allow me to introduce myself. Nowadays they call me Steve. What’s in a name? These days I look like an electric guitar from Earth, where the angels fell. It’s a living. So there I was, in the Cloister of Orthodoxy in one of the minor hells, listening to three so-called Hell Lords negotiating with a little twist of DNA that served the Parody Master. Grimpenghast, Vesperine, and Belaziel, they called themselves. I knew their true names. They were bargaining to let the Parody Master march his legions through the abyssal wastes and use that as a staging point to bring his troops to Earth. It was quicker and more certain than using the higher dimensions, and cheaper than moving through mortal space. As if it was going to happen. I think maybe Grimpenghast knew it wasn’t possible. He’s a subtle, sneaky little shred of knotted guilt and recrimination, and he’s got the right sort of mind for this stuff. No wonder they call him the master of deceptions. He knew that the Parody Master was big enough to walk right over the so-called hell domains and grind them into dust. But he also knew that the hell domains were just a mask, like the crust that forms on cow shit. He knew, all of them knew, that they were just the surface. The symptom of evil, not the cause. If the Boss really arrived, they’d wet themselves. They run screaming like the souls they gather to score their little games. My Boss. “Help us out here,” said the creature calling itself the Doomherald, “and the Parody Master will be pleased with you. And you really want him pleased with you.” “Because he’s such fun at parties?” asked Chronic. That’s the kid I’m using right now. He’s got a lot of potential, even more than Buddy had. That’s why I’m keeping him around even though he’s dead. “Because you don’t want him to be not pleased with you.” “We are not beings you threaten,” prickled Belaziel. “We are the threateners.” “Yeah, I’m a big fan,” the Doomherald assured him. “Except we all know that you guys are only as powerful as the domains you command, the souls you hold. If my Master decides to come in and take those things from you, you’re nothing. So I’d consider his request very carefully.” “It’s true that the Parody Master might inconvenience us even here in the abyssal realms,” agreed Grimpenghast, “but not without diverting much-needed resources from his campaigns elsewhere.” “He likes a challenge.” “What does he offer us?” asked Vesperine. “For our aid. Apart from his pleasure?” “Well, his priesthood tends to suppress all other religions,” the Doomherald offered. “That’s got to help, right? And you’d be on the right side when we get to the final phase of the Resolution War. Part of the winning team.” The kid raised his hand again. “Yeah, except that the PM’s gonna get his butt kicked by the Lair Legion, isn’t he? That’s why Nats asked me to take in this meeting, to remind you all that this isn’t the first all-powerful bozo who’s tried to conquer the Parodyverse. Heck, even this guy’s tried it a dozen times before and had his head handed to him.” Actually, Nats had sent the kid because he knew that none of the Hell-Lords there would dare to harm him while he was strumming me softly. Let me entertain you. “This is the full manifestation of the Parody Master, at the height of his power,” explained the Doomherald. “Already the guardians of the Parodyverse have fallen. Do you truly believe any group of mortals can stand against him now?” “Hey, don’t underestimate how annoying those heroes can be. I mean we are talking universe-class annoying. Donut, the Dancer chick, the Hat-guy, the mouthy archer…” “Are you saying that you would not support our assistance of the Parody Master?” challenged Grimpenghast. This is what the old bugger had been angling for all along. It denied the Parody Master and it wasn’t his fault. “I’m saying Nats isn’t letting PM or anyone else across his borders, unless they’re delivering pizzas,” said the kid. “And since he does hold all the territory from the Agony Mountains and the Gorge of Regret to the Disharmony Spire and the Yearning Bridge where the Mewlips dance yadda yadda…” “We cannot assent without him,” concluded the master of deceptions. “A pity.” “The Parody Master isn’t going to take this lightly,” the Doomherald warned. Then I spoke though the kid: “The Parody Master doesn’t rule here. All of you know who does. Take it somewhere else” And to make my point I blew apart the Cloister of Orthodoxy, and Grimpenghast’s stronghold, and left a thousand mile wound across the surface of hell that bubbled with molten evil. Just because I could. And the kid and I watched the Doomherald run for his life. Like a bat out of hell. Good evening. I am known as… the Hooded Hood. Zachary Zelnitz was born in another reality, the world of Technopolis where science reigned. He grew tired of his humdrum childhood with humdrum parents, of conformity and order, and devoted his talents to what he considered urban anarchy, making an artform of using his gifts as a computer tinkerer to embarrass the authorities and provoke people to think. Naturally they branded him a criminal and sought to re-educate him through mind control. The Earth-Technopolis war brought Mr Zelnitz to the Parodyverse. Circumstance brought him to the Lair Legion. Ambition to be able to actually change the world brought him to me. Mr Zelnitz re-entered my throne room just as I was reviewing the confrontation between Yo and the Librarian against the forces sent by the Parody Master to destroy them. I wanted him to see the heroes’ ship surrounded, about to be seared to nothingness by plasma cannon fire. “Whoa, that’s nasty!” he said, in that annoying youth patois of his. He jabbed at his datapad. “And way clever, too. What have they got aboard that Galactibus that’s absorbing the weapons energy and using it to power up a dimensional conduit?” “A refurbished Technopolitan dimension-jumper,” I informed him. He’d correctly discerned that the thought being and Lee Bookman are extremely resourceful individuals. “Adapted, I believe, by NTU-150 using a food mixer and a cash register.” “That’s pretty smart though. They’re opening a micro-portal to the Technoverse. It’ll look like they’re all blowed up by the Z’Sox ray guns but instead they’ll be able to recruit the Science Heroes.” “They would have been,” I agreed, “Had I not arranged for them to be… diverted. The people of the Technoverse will not be able to help in this conflict.” “So where did you send them?” I smiled and cradled my fingertips together. That usually serves to distract people from their questions. “How fares your own quest to breach the SPUD database?” I enquired. A big smile washed over the youth’s face. “I’m in! One slip was all it took. And boy, did I get the motherlode! There’s even some kind of encrypted message spread out all across the datefiles. I’ll be cracking that in the next few hours.” That would be the missive from Natalia Romanza to Trickshot of the Lair Legion, explaining her desperate escape plan, seeking his aid. “Then the materials you have gained are certainly worth the cost,” I said. Mr Zelnitz’ face clouded a little. “Cost? What cost? We’re in and out, home and free.” I shifted the portal to play for my young guest the moments when Exemplary and his security team caught up with Technician Gomez. Zelnitz watched in sick horror as the man was held down by the guards while Exemplary questioned him. “What are they doing?” Hacker Nine almost shrieked? “Why are they hurting him?” “He made an error,” I explained. “He let you in. Now he is being punished.” “It wasn’t his fault! You retconned him to do that! I… I asked you to!” “Indeed. This is the consequence of that request. One life is slowly and painfully terminated so that we may save others.” I wondered if the boy would faint. He was trembling. “I didn’t mean for him to… I didn’t think he’d be…” Morton Gomez was screaming now as Exemplary finished any serious quest for information and went on to the punishment part of the exercise. “Come now,” I noted, “this is hardly the first time your actions have had unpleasant, even lethal consequences.” Gomez made a last anguished cry and expired. “No!” howled Zachary Zelnitz, sounding uncannily like the dying technician. “No, I’ve never killed anyone before. Never!” So I showed the young man a few of the results of his previous exploits. In none of those incidents had anyone directly died. But there were the economic crashes that led to suicides and divorces, the broken homes, the failed businesses, the lost dreams. There were the military lapses that allowed drug dealers to gain new victims, poachers to kill rare animals, territorial aggression to burn farms and decimate villages. Every action has consequences. I showed Mr Zelnitz what some of his were. He came to me for education. “No…” he moaned, tears streaming from his eyes. “Oh no…” “Your hands were bloody and you didn’t even realise,” I told him. “Now you know. Next time it will be easier.” He fell to his knees, a lost man, stunned, horrified. Malleable. “I never meant… I was only… Oh no…” “Still, at least you can save Colonel Drury,” I suggested. “Some good will come of this.” “Yes,” he gasped, scrabbling for his discarded datapad. “Yes, I can do that much. I have to!” He stabbed at the keys, scrolling up the secret location of the base at Bareta, Las Animas, Colorado. He found the prisoner files. He found Drury. “Well?” I asked him. “This… this says that Drury died three weeks ago! But I saw him.” “In the Portal? That shows the past as well as the present. We observed him four weeks past.” “He’s… he’s dead. Dead and cremated. They have ovens there, like at Belson. He was tortured to death.” He looked up at me with pain-filled, hate-filled eyes. “It was all for nothing!” But there were many reasons Mr Zelnitz needed to learn this lesson. Am I not… the Hooded Hood? Dr Johann Faustian looked up from his files as Manmangler entered his office. The black woman with the dreadlocks looked remarkably and uncharacteristically uneasy, as well she might given the purpose of the review. “I didn’t mean to kill that many of them,” she blurted before she even sat down. “They’re only guards…!” “Even so,” replied the experimental psychiatrist, “there’ll be paperwork. Sit down.” Kayla Falconcrest perched unhappily on the edge of a chair. “I’ve been reviewing your case logs,” Faustian explained. “Not just the Drury case, which ended so unsatisfactorily before we could completely debrief him, but some others as well.” “I do good work.” “Nobody’s questioning your capacity to interrogate, Kayla. But you often seem to get carried away. You play favourites. Like this.” The doctor held out the folder for Ewan McGore, the Bagpiper. “He tried to escape. We thought he was docile, and then he made a run for the wire. We had to kill him.” “I reviewed the security tapes. You could have brought him back alive. You had him held down and you repeatedly hit him with your shock stick – Mr Shocky, I believe you call it? – until McGore died of a heart attack.” “I gave that little pissant every chance. I thought he was properly broken, and then he goes and betrays me.” “Well new information has come to light,” Faustian noted. “McGore wasn’t who he appeared to be.” Manmangler frowned. “What do you mean, sir?” “I mean we’ve just run our biometric scans through the improved technology loaned us by the Parody Master’s people. And do you know what that told us about the so-called Bagpiper?” “Of course not. What?” “His DNA appears to be Makluan.” “Makluan? Like the dragon Fin Fang Foom?” “Exactly like the dragon Fin Fang Foom. The shapeshifting dragon. The one who can look like anyone.” “But… but I tortured him.” “And while you were breaking him to obedience he was asking you questions. I reviewed the tapes. And he was taking a careful look at you so he could assume your appearance later and break into our secret files.” “But McGore died. I was there. He stopped breathing. He had no pulse.” “The dragon can shift into inanimate objects too. It just takes a little more concentration. He can simulate a corpse. He’s done it before.” “We burned him. I mean McGore. In the furnace.” “Dragons are immune to heat and cold. He could withstand those temperatures for a couple of hours. Uncomfortable maybe, but feasible. And then all he needed to do was transform himself into something small enough to hide in the ash.” Manmangler swallowed hard. “You’re saying… a member of the Lair Legion was here undercover, and compromised our security?” Another unpleasant thought occurred. “Sir, he knows that the real Drury is here! Was here.” “Is here,” Faustian corrected her correction. “You found another corpse in Drury’s chains, didn’t you? And it went into the furnace.” “You mean… that wasn’t Drury? Daniel is alive?” Faustian nodded ruefully. “So now I have to ask you: are you aware of any other information pertinent to this investigation? Anything at all.” The stunned torturer shook her head. “Daniel… he must still be somewhere on this base!” “Yes,” agreed the psychiatrist. “I have yet another shock for you, Kayla. Another skeleton in the closet.” And just then the closet door opened. The first thing Manmangler saw was Dan Drury. Three weeks of secret convalescence had done a lot to help him regain his strength. His grin was wolfish and had no humour in it at all. And tied up at his feet was the bruised and battered form of the real Dr Johann Faustian. Manmangler looked back to the man behind the desk just in time to see him grown wings and claws and a draconic tale. “Surprise,” said Fin Fang Foom. The transformation set off the metahuman power sensors dotted around the facility. Alarm klaxons sounded across the base, causing an automatic lockdown, bringing security guards and Sentinoid patrol robots to the source of the disturbance. “Finish it,” Drury told the dragon. Finny continued to grow, bursting through roof and wall of the psychiatrist’s office, rearing up with a savage joy to face the incoming combatants. Manmangler turned round with Mr Shocky to subdue Drury. The agent from SPUD broke her left arm, then her right arm. And because he was better than her, his next kick broke her neck and killed her clean and quick. Bareta Base on the Purgatoire River was state of the art, so it was equipped with the new Mark Six Sentinoids. The latest models were much larger than the older, manned versions, standing around thirty feet high, equipped with more metahuman countermeasures than any other robot on the planet. I reared up to my natural size, nearly twoe hundred feet long including the tail, and scooped the first pair of them out of the sky. It felt good to be fighting back at last, to be free from those constricting alien bodies. The others came in, bracketing me with particle rippers. Those hurt, and if they play on my armour scales for more than a few seconds they can do some serious damage. So I breathed nuclear fire, maxxing the thermocouple converters on the Sentnoid defence screens, then overloading the whole array and melting them with flame as hot as the sun. It wasn’t like I hadn’t had time to check out the specs. During my months of hell in Bareta Base I’d managed to gather enough stuff to pull down any government: the links to Harmanda Barriere’s S.P.A.M. group, the ties through Turrets Inc to Slaughter’s Heck-Fire Club, the coup within SPUD, the complicit support of Herbert P. Garrick and the House Special Committee for Metahuman Affairs… Enough to keep a Supreme Court investigation running for a year or more. They couldn’t allow Drury and I to get out. We couldn’t afford not to. I took to the air because the Sentinoids did. Some of the security team had Technopolitan-salvage grav-pads too, mounted with field lasers. I scorched the ground to throw up choking black smoke then wafted it towards the incoming enemy with powerful wingbeats. My tail swiped down and toppled the first tank aside like it was a child’s toy. I grabbed the other two with my claws and tossed them. One of them hit a Sentinoid right in the chest, bringing it to earth in a blast of flame. The first of the brainwashed metas came in then, firing his tight-beam scream to disorient me. I’d familiarised myself with all the inmates so it was easy to stagger him with a sonic boom then pick off the other captives quickly and painlessly so they wouldn’t get themselves killed in the crossfire. On the ground Drury was heading for a jeep. He had Faustian slung over his shoulders. Faustian was a key witness to the human rights violations here. We wouldn’t be able to preserve any electronic record, but there was enough physical proof and witness testimony if only we could hold the base. The other Sentinoids had adapted to my attack, amping up their flame defences and changing their assault formation to avoid my tail and wings. Those things are getting troublesomely good. So I shifted combat styles, doing stuff they hadn’t seen before, a combo Xiles and I worked out on Xnylonia a while back. I changed shape as I went, confusing the Sentinoids further, then slipped into the service hatch that looks almost like a mouth slit. I could do serious damage there with some nuclear fire. Then I shifted size again, tearing free from the broken robot and dropping on another to shred it with strength alone. The remaining two bracketed me, their shattercannons impacting with sufficient kinetic force to hammer me down to the ground. Drury took out one of the Sentinoids from behind with a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher he’d just liberated from the ground forces. “Whaaaa-heeee!!!” he shouted. I guess he had some payback to give after the horrors these guys forced onto him. That just left one Sentinoid up close and personal, pounding down on me with force-field enhanced strength. So I rose up and closed my jaws around its face and bit it head off and spat it away. I roared. The other security forces lost interest in the battle. And right on cue I saw the familiar shape of a pair of LairJets barrelling low over the horizon, responding to the emergency call we’d sent a while before. The Lair Legion, my Legion, coming in for the mop up. Turns out they’d brought two LairJets to accommodate all the press that were with them. Heh. He was the base janitor. There was nothing remarkable about him except that he was a fervent member of the Parody Cult, and to him the Parody Master was a god. Now it was all coming apart. The big dragon could bring down the master plan, could incriminate half the government, could unite the world in resistance to the rightful rule of the Parody Master. The janitor couldn’t allow that. He pulled his pocket knife and plunged it into his own chest. The buried devices around the base were tuned to activate if the janitor’s heart stopped beating. They burst out of the ground, black screaming monoliths coruscating with power. The bands of force locked together in a spherical web above and below Bareta base. The approaching LairJets barely jinked aside to avoid hitting the barrier. The monoliths exploded. When the debris cleared, another perfectly smooth hole had appeared on the Earth’s surface. Bareta, the compromising installation, Drury and Faustian and Fin Fang Foom had gone, transported to wherever Wakandaybar and Ausgard and all the other dangerous places had been carved off to. The march of the Parody Master continued. Next Issue: The City of GMY vs Al B. Harper, or I Fought the Law… Shocks, arguments, betrayals, passion, inappropriate touching, media frenzy, all the usual stuff, plus the SR 1066 vote and a twist at the end. Be here. 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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