The PV version of "24" continues, as chronicled by... the Hooded Hood!
Mon Feb 13, 2006 at 07:21:32 pm EST
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#256: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: More Forbidden and More Dangerous| #256: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: More Forbidden and More Dangerous 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. Note: This section follows on from the (mature audiences only) Vizh story Performance Anxiety, but you don't neccessarily nead to have read that to follow the plot here.  Last night: 3.01am The overhead lighting in the Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital Emergency Suite made everyone look like corpses. Even the green-skinned Caphans seemed pasty and wan, and the worry on their faces didn’t help. There was quite a crowd bundled into the visitor’s lounge: Eight Caphan refugees rescued from slavery far from their lush homeworld who had found refuge on Earth’s mythical Lemuria; Prince Kiivan, Emir of All Caph; Sarah Shepherdson, secretly Dancer of the Lair Legion; her younger sister Kerry; Asil Ashling, the Legion’s administrator, Hallie, the computer sentience in hologram form, Fleabot, the micro-robot; Meggan Fox, CSFB!’s mother; the mysterious Tiffy; and Visionary himself, who was pacing the floor like every clichéd father-to-be ever. Everybody turned to the door as Grace O’Mercy, the Night Nurse, arrived with an update. “Well?” Kiivan of Caph demanded. “Dr Whitwell’s still doing tests,” the brunette nurse told the worried party that had assembled for the Caphan Miiri’s birthing ceremonies. “We’ve paged experts from all over.” “But what’s going on?” blurted Asil. “How is Miiri? Is she in pain? Is the baby alright?” “She’s as comfortable as we can make her,” Grace replied in the calm tones she’d learned to use on worried relatives and friends. “She’s having some kind of bad reaction to the final stages of pregnancy. If she was human then Dr Whitwell might consider a caesarean, but given the unknowns about Caphan biology…” “If you need to cut one of us open to see how it is done, then any of us would be willing,” Kaara of Jaaxa offered. “Any of us would give even out lives to save our sister Miiri.” “Of us all, it was she who made it possible for us to be here,” Odoona agreed. “She is our bond-sister and if there is any way we can aid her now, whatever the cost, at the time of her blessing…” He voice choked at the last word, the tears streaming down her face. “We have the files on Caphan physio from when we brought them back from the Transworlds Challenge,” Hallie offered. “I’m downloading them to Dr Whitwell’s e-mail right now.” “Won’t help as much as it might, darling,” Meggan warned the AI. “Miiri was explaining that Caphan biology morphs quite a bit during labour. She’ll be way off baseline by now.” “It is true,” agreed Losiira. “When I had my blessings I felt as if I was an entirely different person.” “You’ve had kids?” Kerry asked. “I have birthed two daughters,” the oldest of the Caphan refugees replied with a shy sad smile. “What’s the cause of the problems with Miiri?” demanded Vizh. “I’ve already sent for Enty and Uhuna. And if Lisa’s got Al B out of custody yet we’ll need him as well…” “About that,” warned Hallie. “Vizh, it’s looking like the Parody Master has taken Lisa and Al. We don’t know where.” The possibly fake man staggered at the new bad news. “We… they need to find them, dammit. Tell Mumphrey to do something.” “Everyone’s working on it,” the AI assured him. Dancer glanced across at the others. “I’d better go see if I can help the boys. We could do with a lucky break or two right now.” “You didn’t answer my question, Grace,” Vizh persisted. “What’s wrong with Miiri?” The Night Nurse shook her head. “We really don’t know yet. Some kind of inappropriate immune system reaction, maybe. It’s, well, it’s a hybrid baby, isn’t it? Caphan and… probably human.” “I’m real, dammit.” “The point is, her biology might not be able to cope with it, might be… well, it might reject the child.” Odoona blinked in disbelief. “But she conceived the child of her affection for Lord Visionary!” Vizh went paler still. Kerry steadied him. “What can you do for her?” Asil demanded of Grace. “She’s not conscious just now,” the Night Nurse admitted. “Her sister Ohanna is with her, of course, but we understand that she’s underage. Who… who is the next of kin who could legally authorise a termination?” Last Night, 3.01am The advanced physics lab aboard the SPUD helicarrier was a treasure trove of confiscated technology. Technopolitan grav generators were stacked beside Skree laser focussing arrays and Skunk biodroids. Sealed metal cabinets held recovered remnants from dozens of super-villain ultimate weapons, from death rays to freeze guns to a machine that turned people’s trousers against them. A stolen ITC dimensional jump engine was partially disassembled across the lab floor for reverse engineering. “This is the place,” announced Hacker Nine as he and Trickshot dropped from one of the ventilation ducts that were now remarkably safe ways of travelling round the stricken flying ship. While the troops not affected by the knockout gas were dealing with a dozen engineered emergencies, he was replaying Natalia Romanza’s last audio message on his datapad. “Your lady friend made her last transmission from that terminal over there.” “Let me hear it again,” Trickshot demanded, stepping over the sleeping bodies of the lab technicians to examine the computer point. H9 obediently thumbed up the volume on the masterspy’s last message before she somehow vanished without trace out of a teleport-shielded lab surrounded by armed and unfriendly security guards: “Carl, this is Natalia. I’m almost out of time. Dan Drury’s been ousted from SPUD, replaced by Exemplary. You can’t trust SPUD any more. I don’t know what they’ve done with Drury, but it won’t be good. If he’s alive, find him. He knows how to shut SPUD down if he has to. I’m out of time, Carl. I need help. I need you to find me, because I won’t get out of this by myself. I’m going to download this message into the mainframe, hidden so well that only Hacker Nine could find it. If he does, and passes it to you… I’ve never asked anyone for help before, ever. I’m asking you, Carl. Talia out.” “They didn’t get her,” Zack Zelnitz assured the arrogant archer who’d dragged him on a two-man assault against the most powerful covert military agency on the planet. “I checked all the secret logs. Their new boss-man Exemplary was plenty ticked that she got away. They launched a full enquiry.” “Well, we go us about thirty minutes ta figure out whut she did before things are going to get mighty interesting around here,” suggested Trickshot. “So any ideas would help right now, brains trust.” Hacker Nine checked his datapad. “Okay, the whole helicarrier’s shielded against teleport and dimensional travel. The few things that could punch through that would have registered on the logs, and nothing did. They also checked at a microscopic level to see she hadn’t used those size-changing particles that Fleabot generates. They scanned for invisibility, got their psi-division to try and locate her – no deal, not even a sniff. They DNA-tested everybody there to make sure she wasn’t somehow disguised as one of them. They were pretty motivated. Exemplary was threatening to rip heads off.” “Talia set up a message she knew you’d get,” Trickshot reasoned. “And she called fer me, wanted it passing on. She knows how my mind works. What was she expectin’ me to do?” “Come here, probably,” H9 agreed. “If this had been Lindy up here, back when I was dumb about things like that, nothing would have stopped me coming.” “Yeah. She knew I’d come. But then what? Whatever she came up with she had to do it fast. She said she was out of time. Said it twice. Said she needed me to come find her…” The archer looked up suddenly. “She said it twice. Crap! She said it twice, and I didn’t realise what she was saying!” “Must be catching,” noted Hacker Nine. But Trickshot was suddenly bristling with energy. “Don’t you get it kid? Check the manifests of all this junk in this lab. Look fer something that could be called a time machine!” “A time machine?” Hacker Nine ran a quick search of the local databases. “There’s something here. Some technology taken after Wang the Conqueror’s mass-impregnation gambit a few years back. But it was code-locked. Nobody could figure out how to use it.” “Talia breaks codes fer fun at breakfast. Nobody’s better at it. She knew they were coming for her and they’d blocked all the usual routes out. She spies out things by second nature, so she’d already know what was in the lab here. Kid, is that Wang thing still here?” Zack found the appropriate storage bin. It was empty. “She time travelled out of here?” H9 boggled. “But it would be a one-way ticket. She couldn’t control when or where the jump was set to take her. She’d have no way back!” “Only me,” answered Carl Bastion. “Now all I gotta do is go find her.” “That would be after I rip you to pieces, of course,” noted Exemplary, stepping from the shadows. Liu Xi tried not to move, tried not to breathe. “What was it?” one of the Parody Cult priests demanded, looking round the barren landscape of the vortex rock. The translation gift that Xander had somehow given to the elementalist was still working. She knew their speech. “Just another rock slamming into us,” answered the second. Spotting the broken masonry that had brought Liu Xi there. “Nothing to worry about.” “There’s plenty to worry about here, Brother Derelict,” snapped the first priest. “And there’s be more when we enter the deep Vortex to find the lost Weapon that the Master desires.” “But there will be glory for him who discovers the legendary Weapon and brings it to the Master for his use.” “Them who bring it, Brother Derelict. Beware personal ambition. The glory for returning so powerful an asset that could change the course of the Crusade will be sufficient for all to share.” Liu Xi remained motionless, but she felt her heart leap. There was a lost weapon that the Parody Master cared enough about to send minions to hunt for it in the dangerous deep Vortex? Weapons could be aimed in two directions. A third priest hurried into view. “Brothers!” he called, “a word from Holy Taur! A Missive, no less!” The other priests immediately assumed postures of submission and supplication. “What is the nature of our high priest’s holy command?” asked Brother Adversity. “We are to extend our search for another target in addition to the Weapon. There is an Earth female, an elementalist, whom the Master desires as his Bride. She is thought to be nearby, here in the space between worlds. We are to use our gifts to track her if we can. The Master is sending his Doomwraiths to bring her back.” “The… the Doomwraiths are coming here?” swallowed Derelict. “We must find her, and quickly,” announced Brother Adversity. “Before doom comes upon us all.” “Set up the location rituals,” agreed Derelict. “If she is within a million concepts of here, we shall discover her.” Last Night, 3.27am Exemplary, the new head of SPUD, was a ruthless, trained killer. He also had the gift of manipulating bio-fields, the organic electrical impulses that operated living organisms. He could use this to make himself amazingly strong, fast, and hard to hurt, or to control others’ muscles or nerve-endings. He liked hurting people. “Once I spotted who it was that had come bumbling into the carrier I thought I might as well let you get to where you were going,” the tall, handsome bastard told Trickshot and Hacker Nine. He glanced at H9’s datapad and it blew into pieces. “After all, who better to solve the mystery of the missing masterspy than the man she once murdered?” “Huh?” puzzled Zack. “Talia once married the version of me native to this timeline then betrayed him ta death before she reformed,” Trickshot footnoted. “Old stuff. Not relevant now. It’s just the villain spouting before the fight starts.” “And you have been very diligent,” Exemplary went on, completely at ease and in control of the situation. There were perhaps a dozen beings on the planet he feared facing in single combat. He could finish the archer and the hacker in a single second. “Who would have thought that the Contessa could manage a time machine? It’s going to require some very exotic resources to track her now.” “From your buddy the Parody Master?” Trickshot sneered. “How far up his butt are you, Benedict Arnold?” Hacker Nine crumpled over, screaming. “I’d like to break every bone in your body, of course,” Exemplary told Trickshot. “Sadly I need you unmarked so that after you’ve been Obedience Branded the Lair Legion won’t suspect anything. But I’ve been looking forward to skinning this little puke for some time now, and there’s nobody left for him to hide behind, and I don’t need him alive any more.” And then the lights went out as the helicarrier systems failed. All of them. The huge vessel tilted to one side as the gravity generators slowly failed, tipping it from the skies. “Programmed a dead man’s switch into my padd,” H9 explained, gasping on the floor. “No code from me every five minutes, total shutdown.” “You don’t kill,” Exemplary sneered. “It’s a ploy.” “I didn’t kill,” H9 answered. “I work for the Hooded Hood now.” “I don’t kill,” Trickshot interrupted, “but I kick plenty of bozos in the pants.” And somehow the archer got three arrows off before Exemplary could lock his muscles. The glue arrow fastened the near-indestructible villain to the titanium steel deck of his helicarrier. The screamer arrow disoriented Exemplary, breaking his bio-lock on his enemies. The adamantine-tipped arrow took the director of SPUD straight through the throat. The helicarrier jerked to an emergency halt as Hacker Nine’s failsafes cut in to prevent the vessel’s destruction and soft land it on top of a tax office in Pennsylvania. By the time Exemplary had recovered, Trickshot and H9 had vanished again into the infrastructure of the carrier. Ten minutes later they had left the ship. Last Night, 3.55am “Danny!” called Kerry Shepherdson, rushing over to her boyfriend and hurling herself into his arms. “You came! Oh thank you! Thank you! This way!” Daniel Lyle was a bit surprised at the young probability arsonist’s agitated greeting, at the red rims round her eyes. He was more worried yet by the roomful of people staring at him. “What is this?” he demanded. “Why send that flea thing to bring me to the hospital?” “Hey, I have a name, buster,” the micro-robot warned. “It’s not flea-thing. It’s, er, Fleabot. Mr Fleabot to you.” Tiffy suppressed a snicker. “It’s Miiri,” Kerry told Denial, grabbing him by the hand and leading him towards the private room where the Caphan woman was in tormented labour. “Something’s gone wrong with her pregnancy and nobody can figure it out. She’s bleeding a lot and since she woke up she’s insisted that they can’t harm the child to save her. Her sister Ohanna’s standing over her protecting her wishes with a knife in her hand.” “Miiri?” Danny glanced at the green-skinned scantily clad women huddled in the waiting area. “She’s one of the Caphan girls, right? The one your Visionary was supposed to have…” “He’s not my Visionary, right?” Kerry snapped. “Look, I just need you to do that thing you do with your powers. When you deny something’s happening, and it stops happening. I want you to do that.” Danny looked down at his new girlfriend’s stricken face. “You want me to try and save Miiri. Firecracker, I don’t know if I can do that.” “Do it, Danny. I mean it. Get in there.” Visionary looked up from his whispered conference with Dr Whitwell as Kerry ushered Denial in. He looked like a dead man walking. “Keep your distance,” warned Ohanna, standing between her agony-ridden sister and the newcomer. “It’s okay, Anna,” Kerry promised. “Danny’s here to help. Go on, Danny.” Denial swallowed hard and gently touched Miiri’s distended stomach. “This won’t hurt,” he promised the Caphan. “Well, not you.” “Do. Not. Harm. My. Child,” hissed Mirri, her eyes blazing with fury through hair plastered over her face. Then she burst into coughing. Grace O’Mercy wiped away the blood that trickled from the Caphan’s lips. “I won’t.” Denial assured her. “I’m going to try and make you and your kid okay. Just relax and… You're not going to d... going to d... to d...” “Danny!” objected Kerry as the leather-jacketed boy seemed to struggle to speak. “Come on!” Denial’s head jerked to the side as if he’d been slapped. “Damn it, there's something pushing back! You are not going to… you are not…” He flinched again, and blood began to trickle from his nose. “You won’t… you’re…” he strained, shivering as if he had a fever. “Danny, are you okay?” Kerry asked, suddenly concerned. “It’s as if there’s a force working against him,” Vizh realised. Grace O’ Mercy looked down at the swab she’d wiped Miiri’s lips with. The blood on it called to her. The vampire nurse surreptitiously touched the red gauze to her tongue. The blood is the life. “Magic,” she realised as the instincts she usually buried deep inside her welled to the fore. “It tastes of magic!” “What?” asked Ohanna, puzzled at the dark-haired woman’s sudden outburst. Dr Whitwell knew of the night nurse’s unfortunate vampiric condition, and just how sensitive his best staff member was to blood issues. “Her blood is infused with magic?” he frowned. “A spell? A curse?” “You…” Danny struggled. “You…” And then he slumped. “I'm sorry. You're not going to feel any more pain.” He looked up at Kerry with guilty haunted eyes. “It’s all I can do.” |
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Last Night, 4.55am “Goddamn piece of crap technology!” shouted Miss Framlicker, hammering the waveform n-folder projector with her clipboard until the unfortunate stack of papers on it disintegrated from the violence. “What’s the point of spending millions of dollars we don’t have on equipment we can’t bloody use!” It was unusual for Amy Aston to be the one calming down her employer. “Don’t hit the expensive dimensional shifting machines,” she said, dragging Miss Framlicker away. “That’s my job. Besides, it’s not the n-folder’s fault. We can’t possibly pull Al back until we can locate him, and there’s a lot of space to search out there, even with the n-folder pushing our probe-beams much faster than light.” “If only this technology was more up to date,” Miss F snarled. “The stuff we had to work with at ITC was much less… spontaneous.” “It’s not a technology problem,” called Glitch, the female Transformer robot from a distant quarter of space. The green and orange visitor was currently strapped into the centre of the lash-up of equipment at the Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises HQ that was trying to lock on to any of the devices that founder Al B. Harper had been carrying. “The stuff you’re routing through my survey array is coming in fine. It’s just that you’re looking for a needle in a haystack. That is the correct colloquialism, right? There’s a lot of space in space. That’s why the call it space.” “And we don’t even know if dad and Ms Waltz are even in normal space any more,” added Cody Harper, Al B.’s suddenly discovered son. “Or whether the equipment you’re tracking has been taken from them, or destroyed.” Miss Framlicker glared at the tanned youngster. “So you think we should just give up and go home, is that it? Is it?” She turned away. “You can go home to your mommy if you want. We are going to keep trying until every last possibility is exhausted.” Cody wondered where all the hostility was coming from. The EEE administrator certainly seemed to be taking things seriously. “I don’t even know who my mother was,” he shot back. “I was raised in an orphanage. I only found out who my father was when I stole my file from Dr Sussex’s office and ran away.” “We can swop secret origins and let out all our relationship angst later,” Amy suggested. “I’m sure we’d all be interested to know how Al came to father a kid when he was about, what, twelve? But first we have to find him and drag his sorry ass back here for interrogation.” Yuki Shiro was still crouched on the transport platform, waiting for the positive signal that would show the EEE team where in the universe to hurl her. “Well keep going,” she urged the others. “No matter how sorry his ass is going to be, it’ll be more sorry if the Parody Master lobotomises him or Obedience Brands him or something.” Dancer kept moving, translating her motions into shifts in probability. “I’m trying everything I know to change the odds of Lisa and Al being found,” she panted, “The problem is, I can’t do it if the chance is zero.” Through the haze of pain Lisa was barely aware of the shift in direction that the Parody Master’s massive dreadnaught vessel had taken. It was moving differently now, vibrating a little as it accelerated. It wouldn’t do that in the vacuum of space. “We’re shifting into the transdimensional vortex,” Correctioner Lorigaz explained to his subject. “We’ll have to finish up with you quickly, Lisa. We’re going to need these facilities for the much more serious job of conditioning a new bride for the Master.” “I’m insulted not to be propositioned,” spat the first lady of the Lair Legion. “Once you have yielded up the Booke of the Law you are nothing,” the Correctioner explained, selecting another of his array of agony wands. “But for now you are an interesting study. You have been conditioned to receive pain before, I think?” “Little Sisters of Discipline Orphanage,” Lisa growled at him. “Right from the first day there, when I sinned by wearing a flowery dress. Pretty much every day after. Days at a time after I tried to escape, and I made over a hundred attempts.” She raised her sweat-drenched head to glare at the torturer. “But eventually I got free, and then I came back for them.” There was an implicit threat in her dark, penetrating eyes. “Amateurs,” dismissed Correctioner Lorigaz. “A proper regime would have broken you within days.” “You don’t have days,” Lisa warned him. “In fact your time is already up.” “Defiance,” shrugged the torturer. “It’s a phase you all go through. Then comes the shattering of will, the begging, the utter surrender. You’re not far from it now, Lisa.” “You’re very good at your job. I admit that. I’ve been tortured by the best, and you’re right up there. You might have been able to break me if you kept going. But you won’t.” “Faith,” smirked Lorigaz. “Some people try to take refuge that way. I enjoy stripping away such naivety.” “Your time is up,” warned the amorous advocatrix with a vicious grin. “It’s past feeding time.” The Correctioner checked his translation implant to get the nuance of the subject’s colloquialism. He didn’t get the reference. “What feeding time?” Lisa nodded over to the darkest corner of the correction lab. “His feeding time,” she answered. Lisa’s ginger cat stalked forward, tail swishing, green eyes glittering with malevolent feline fiendishness. Correctioner Lorigaz sneered. “A cat? Your cat? I tortured cats as a hobby when I was five.” Then he made the error of approaching the scruffy tom with an agony wand. Then there was screaming. Nobody came. After all, that was what was a correction lab was supposed to sound like. Last Night, 5.09am “It’s a curse all right,” confirmed Urthula Underess, party ghoul, joining the crowd in the PMH visitors lounge. The niece of the Necromancer General was still outfitted in the sleek red dress she’d been wearing to the Rakshasa Ball that Ebony and the Shoggoth had dragged her away from. It clashed with the Caphans’ skins. “A curse,” Vizh scowled. “That damned Heart of Darkness…” “Actually, no,” Urhula answered, frowning in puzzlement. “Quite a different flavour really.” Ebony of Nubilia nodded. “I’d be able to tell if this was Nyarlurkhotep or any of the Fairly Great Old Ones. This is something else.” “And it’s eating away at the woman and the child from the inside,” Urthula added. “The curse seems to be that when she gives birth to her firstborn then she will die.” “Who would curse Miiri like that?” gasped Ohanna. “And why?” “More importantly, how do we break it?” demanded Kerry. “Who’s got Xander the Improbable on speed dial?” “Xander’s been missing since Nats’ wedding,” Fleabot pointed out. “I suppose we could risk Vizh’s blood pressure and put out an ad for Con Johnstantine.” “Maybe some of the older, wiser ghouls could help you,” Urthula suggested, “but right now everyone’s busy taking sides with the underwar.” “The what?” asked Hallie. “Don’t we have enough plots going on right now?” “That Parody Master and his acolytes are recruiting shadow creatures,” Urthula explained. “Luminosus and a lot of the more bloodthirsty clans have signed up. Others like the Gothametropolis Scholar-Ghouls ate the messenger. But everybody’s pretty busy.” “We heard there was something happening with the vampires,” Vizh noted, recalling Mumphrey’s meeting with supernatural detective Indiana Gnome. He didn’t see Grace O’Mercy wince. “But we don’t have time for that just now. How long has Mirri got, doc?” “She’s fading fast now,” Dr Whitwell admitted. “She won’t see tomorrow night. Unless we terminate.” “Right,” decided Asil, and pushed her way out of the room, slamming the door behind her. She stalked down the corridor to the payphone and hammered in a number. “It’s me. This is not a drill, you big fat doody-head. We need you.” Liu Xi exploded the ground around the acolytes feet, carving off a massive wedge of the vortex rock and hurling it away from the larger mass she was stood on. That dealt with both the Avawarriors and one of the priests, cast out into the swirling maelstrom of unformed narrative and lost to the currents of plot. “Over here, we’ve got her!” had been their last words. But Brother Adversity and Brother Derelict were still there. Both of them pointed their staffs at the young elementalist, and Liu Xi felt herself jerked from hiding, tugged by whatever psionic or mystical forces the priests commanded through their staves. “Get off me!” she warned, and the wooden staffs shivered to splinters in the acolytes’ hands. “The Crimson Coils of Kascagar will restrain her,” called Brother Derilict, his fingers twisting to conjure the mystical forces. “Why do you people always narrate what you’re going to do?” Liu Xi wondered, distracting the priests by causing their robes to flare into flame. “Is it some part of your training, maybe?” She gestured and hurled the last acolytes into the vortex. Then she dropped to her knees. Her last bout of elemental control had exhausted her. She wanted to be sick but she’d long since vomited up the last food she’d eaten. Then she sensed something coming through the seething narrative beyond. Something big. Something powerful. Something the size of a city. She was already terrified of it just from the way it screamed in her mind before ever the thing was appeared through the whirling streamers of story. She tried to get a grip on it, to control the elements around or within it. It was like trying to grasp slippery ice. She was too weak. It was too defended. A Galactic Dreadnaught from the Parody Fleet glided through the clouds, massive, stately, a nightmare of gunmetal and bronze, the most deadly warship ever created. And it turned and moved straight towards the rock where she knelt. Al B. Harper had paced his featureless cell for an amount of time he estimated to be approximately twelve hours judging by his pulse and allowing for a 30% margin of error. He’d already calculated the volume of the holding cube, the likely composition of the walls, and the best way to override the security lock if only he’d had any tools or equipment to start doing it. The designers of the cell had unhelpfully omitted to include any machinery he could dismantle. They hadn’t even locked him up with an old junker car and some oxyacetylene welding gear. And Al couldn’t help but think that all his cleverness had done so far was get Lisa dragged away to be tortured. “Come on,” he called out for the dozenth time, “I know you must be monitoring me. So talk to me. Let’s deal.” There was no reply. And then the door slid open. “Are you Al B. Harper?” demanded the woman in the doorway. She was a curvy blonde in a blue and purple jumpsuit whose all-the-way-down zipper was most-of-the-way-down. It tool Al a moment to notice she was also carrying some kind to stubby futuristic gun. “I might be,” he agreed. “If you like.” “A five dimensional metasphere has a radial spin of nine parsecs per vibrational cycle, with a nexusward shift of 3.9 percent. If it has an initial narrative mass of 10, at what point does its orbit spin into a counternarrative spiral?” she demanded. “Quickly?” “It doesn’t,” Al shrugged. “Unless it has a rotational flicker of more than pi on the albedo that you didn’t mention.” The blonde reluctantly nodded. “Good point,” she conceded. “So you are Al B. Harper, the twenty-first century Earth scientist and member of the Lair Legion.” “Yes. Now if you could just…” The gun twitched. “Shut up. This is not a negotiation. You will do exactly as I say.” Al put his hands up. “What, then?” “Al B. Harper, you will have sex with me. Right here and now. Or you will die.” This morning, 7.45am: “Dr Moo?” objected Hallie, staring at the blonde woman in the lab coat who stood in the doorway of Miiri’s room with a medical bag in her hands and a talking rat on her shoulder. “We didn’t have enough problems so you called in the diabolical Dr Moo?” “She’s a big cow but she’s the best biochemist in the Parodyverse,” Asil pointed out. “The best mad scientist in the Parodyverse,” corrected Fleabot. “And your point would be?” demanded Daio Waltz, prodding aside Caphans and striding in to examine the pregnant woman. “Okay, give me room to work.” |
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This morning, 8.01am Herbert P. Garrick was getting a little tired of his supposedly-impenetrable security getting breached by the Lair Legion. “So where are my security guards this time?” he snapped as Hatman, CrazySugarFreakBoy! and Mr Epitome stalked into his office. “Donar and the Manga Shoggoth are entertaining them,” answered Hatman tersely. “Force nine gale in your ops room with hailstones the size of a fist and something about a tour of Great K’Martu. They’re not here right now anyhow, in any sense of the word.” “We are, though,” CSFB! warned, bounding up onto Garrick’s desk and leaning over him menacingly. “So are you dumb or are you criminal?” “We don’t have time for guessing games,” Epitome warned the wired wonder. “He’s already triggered his emergency back-up. The FMRC B-Team are being scrambled. We have less than four minutes.” “Did you know that our government liaison Amber St Clare had been Obedience Branded?” Hatman demanded of the Presidential Advisor on Metahuman Affairs. Garrick’s eyes flickered for a moment. “If she has been, then it’s classified.” “It’s not classified when she’s strapped to a gurney in our lab, screaming and trying to kill herself because that’s what she’s been ordered to do if she was caught spying on us!” CSFB! shouted in Garrick’s face. “She’s what?” Bad News Herb asked. Then he shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull here but…” “If you aren’t aware that a key government employee has been enslaved with your metahuman control technology then you’re being deceived,” Mr Epitome told the G-Man. “If you are, then you’re an accessory to a major crime.” “Did you sign off on Lisa and Al B. being handed over to the Parody Master?” Hatman went on. “Is that why you were so smug when you arrested Al yesterday?” “I can’t discuss diplomatic agreements and defence issues with…” “You’re forcing a war, Garrick,” Epitome warned him. “And it’s the wrong war. We know now about the government trying to appease the Parody Master. He’s got you distracting us, crippling our efforts to prepare against his inevitable invasion. You’re not serving the best interests of this nation. You are a collaborator with a foreign power.” “Dancer said she talked to you,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! added. “She asked you to see sense. Now’s the time to make your mind up, Herb.” “Your government has betrayed two heroes to the enemy and has violated one of your own agents,” Hatman accused. “That’s in addition to what you did to Dan Drury and Contessa Romanza. In addition to whatever crimes your No More Metas thugs have done, or the other people you tortured at that secret base we found. Either you’re in this up to your sleazy neck or you’re out of the loop and criminally stupid. Which is it?” There was a disturbing slurping sound and the Manga Shoggoth bubbled under the door. “There are quite a lot of metahumans and those Sentinoid devices arriving,” he pointed out. “I believe that a consequence chain of cascading events will occur if we do not depart forthwith.” “Let the cascading begin for the nonce,” boomed Donar crashing backwards through the wall wrestling with an Obedience-Branded Anvil Man. “Tis a shame to see so many vile villains lined up for the smiting and not to take advantage of the whomping opportunities!” “Pick a side, Garrick!” CSFB! said, prodding the G-Man hard with his finger. “When we come back, we’ll be kicking ass and taking names.” Then the Legion were gone down the corridor, shielded by the globby wedge of Shoggoth that swept their exit clear before them. “I’ve got to improve security,” breathed Garrick. Then he thought again. “Get me Exemplary,” he ordered into the intercom. “Blasphemer! Heretic! Your life is forfeit! No tortures we will wreak on you for the remainder of your life will be sufficient to pay for what you have done.” The High Priest of the Parody Master seemed quite upset. Al B. scrambled into his pants while the blonde squirmed into her jumpsuit again. “Listen,” the archscientist explained, “I was being held at gunpoint. I had no choice but to do what the gorgeous woman said.” “You have defiled her!” Holy Taus screamed as the Avawarriors slammed Al against the wall of his cell. “You have defiled the bride of the Parody Master!” “Hey, we’re not married yet,” the blonde objected. “I never consented to being Mrs PM anyhow.” “You…” warned the High Priest, pointing one wizened trembling finger at the woman, “you have brought absolute destruction down on your father’s kingdom. My Master will destroy everything you hold dear. His vengeance will be terrible. Your infidelity will cost the lives of millions.” “Hey, hold it,” Al called, struggling against the soldiers holding him. “So we did a little pre-nup nasty. That’s no reason to go wiping out millions of people.” “They won’t,” the blonde said defiantly. “I was given to these fools as a diversionary tactic. My father needed them to believe us cowed. By now he will have already shifted Starcross far from its usual timespace co-ordinates, where it will take the Parody Master years, perhaps centuries, to discover it. Whatever happens to me now is irrelevant. My mission is accomplished!” “Starcross?” Al B. recognised that name. “Isn’t that the city where Wang the Conqueror retired and set up some kind of dimensional spaceport in the future? I keep meaning to visit.” “That’s the place,” the blonde replied. “That’s my father.” Al B. swallowed. “You’re the daughter of Wang the Conqueror?” She nodded. “You may call me… Kinki the Conqueress!” “You will scream her name in your confessions for a thousand years,” promised the High Priest. “Take them away!” This morning, 9.22am: “How is she?” asked Hatman, slipping quietly into the Lair Infirmary. “Sedated,” Samantha Bonnington said unhappily, keeping watch over the sleeping, restrained Amber St Clare. “Uhuna called in to check on her before hurrying back to Miiri.” “Heck of a twenty-four hours,” admitted the capped crusader. “What about you? Are you alright Samantha?” Fashion Accessory shuddered. “I’m not the one strapped down to a bed with a psycho-technical whatever branded onto me making me a slave. This time.” “This time?” Jay caught the quaver in her voice. “When I was with the New Battlers, during the Technopolis War… they put those Obedience Chips into us. It’s like having another mind right there with yours, overriding your thoughts and feelings. You can’t imagine what it’s like unless you’ve had it done to you.” “I can glimpse it at least,” Jay offered. “When I wear somebody’s headgear I sometimes take on aspects of their personality. When I was amnesiac on Apocalyspe I did take on their personalities, and that was… not pleasant. But I didn’t know you’d been victimised like that. Or if I did then I didn’t think it through.” “I had to do anything they told me,” Samantha confessed. “At one point it looked like they were going to give me to somebody as a sex toy. And I was terrified they’d make me kill somebody. That seemed like such a big thing back then.” “Killing doesn’t seem to matter now?” “Oh, it matters. But… you heard what I did to Wyrmbait, didn’t you? You must have, you commented on my lack of control at the Juniors review. I skinned her. If she’d not been some kind of hybrid dragonette thing that would have killed her. Instead it disfigured her for life.” FA stared down at the sleeping, tormented Amber. “Maybe it’s me that should have that Brand controlling me?” “I understand that Tina Drummond had been terrorising you for years,” Hatman noted. “I’m not saying that makes it okay, but it was a battle situation and you were trying to stay alive, keep your team-mates alive…” “You don’t think very much of me, do you?” FA asked the Legion’s tactical advisor. “Don’t answer. I know. It’s okay. I don’t think very much of myself either, if the truth be told. That’s why I sometimes wish for the time when I was enslaved to others. It was horrible, but at least it wasn’t my fault.” Hatman took her hand. “Well I’d prefer you free, and responsible for what you do,” he told her. “And I’d like you to think better of yourself because of the things you’re going to achieve and the person you’re going to become. What you’ve done can’t be changed. What you do tomorrow, that can. Just work on that, okay? And together we’ll all take care of Amber.” This morning, 9.45am: CrazySugarFreakBoy! knocked on Sir Mumphrey Wilton’s door and bounded in with one uninterrupted motion. He skidded to a halt perched on the back of the antique chair opposite Mumphrey’s writing desk. “Houston, we have a problem!” The eccentric Englishman’s face was lined, and he had dark shadows under his eyes. “Only one, Mr Foxglove?” he asked. “What is it?” “Well, I heard from my dad. The government’s contesting the First Nations’ assertion that they can ignore SR1066 and grant immunity and honorary citizenship to any metahuman they bring onto the reservations,” the wired wonder said. CSFB!’s father, Louis Laughing Fox, had persuaded the Native Americans to exploit an unexpected loophole in the old legislation that confined them to their territories. “They’re talking about state troopers moving in to quell the riots.” “I see. And you want to go down there and keep the peace?” “Well sure. But the thing is, I was kind of counting on that approach to help out a friend of mine from being Branded. He’s in British government service right now, but he was sent to study in Seattle as my roomie. If this plan gets overturned in the courts, or just ignored by a government that’s acting illegally against Native American interests – again – then…” “You are referring to Mr Kipling, the current holder of the designation Captain Courageous?” Mumphrey surmised. “Yeah, Kit. He’s a good guy. He’s too straight arrow though. If he got ordered to be Obedience Branded he’d do it, even if he hated the idea. So I was thinking…” “Were you now, Mr Foxglove? And what has that fertile mind of yours conceived now, I wonder?” “Well,” grinned CrazySugarFreakBoy!, “You know all the spy-guys and Man from Uncle types over at Universal Exports back in Blighty, right? So you know Kit’s boss-man, yeah?” “We may have chatted from time to time,” conceded the eccentric Englishman, not mentioning the rather detailed conversation he’d has less than two hours ago over a very secure line with Sir Ian Isaac Bradbury, head of Project: Pendragon. That conversation had never taken place. “And you’d never allow the Juniors to get Obedience Branded, would you? And we’ve got some vacant slots right now?” This morning, 10.01am: The diabolical Dr Moo addressed the assembly in the PMH visitors lounge, flanked by NTU-150 and Dr Whitwell. “Okay, we have good news and bad news,” she began. “Never mind the jokes,” snapped Visionary. “What can you do for Miiri?” Moo ignored him. “The good news is that the cause of her affliction is treatable.” “There’s an effective counterspell?” Urthula asked, surprised. “Medically treatable… Egads, it’s a wonder you weren’t resorting to leeches before I got here” the scientist added under her breath. “Her immune system is rejecting the hybrid baby, as well as her own reproductive system which has been altered to gestate it. Once the baby is out, a little gene therapy can reverse this genetic breakdown and save the mother.” “Then what’s the bad news?” Uhuna asked. “The baby is suffering a similar genetic breakdown, and it’s no longer stable enough to be born. It would need to be treated in the womb.” Ohanna swallowed. “For how long?” The diabolical doctor shrugged. “Longer than she has… two weeks. Maybe as much as three or four. It doesn’t matter… the two treatments would conflict. I’m sorry, but I’m the absolute best when it comes to this field, and the best I can do is save the mother.” Silence fell over the crowded hospital room as they absorbed the diagnosis in shock. “No” Visionary said softly, but resolutely. “No. That’s not what we’re going to do.” “Vizh…” Meggan began. “That’s not how this is going to end” the Regular continued firmly. “The people in this room can do the impossible. So that’s what we’re going to do instead.” “We don’t have a suitable incubator for the hybrid child” Moo pointed out. “Right… Give me some time and I could design something,” NTU-150 offered. “Kerry, run and find me three yards of hose and a wet-vac.” Dr. Moo rolled her eyes. “We’d need an organic womb to transfer the foetus into for a week or two to stabilise it… A surrogate mother that can match Miiri’s hybrid womb, simulate her DNA and then modify it to overcome the other problems. But it’d take me weeks to clone one.” “Could I maybe shift the symptoms of this curse into somebody else?” Princess Uhunalura suggested. Her Abhuman gift was to transfer injuries. “Any of us would take them on,” agreed Sayaana of Caph. “The curse would just remanifest on Miiri,” Ebony warned. “When I discern who laid this terrible thing on that poor woman…” “You can’t transfer pregnancies, can you, princess?” checked Danny Lyle. “They’re not an illness,” Uhuna replied. “A baby’s far too complicated to shift anyway.” “Wait…” Hallie suggested. “What if the cloned womb wasn’t biological?” NTU-150 looked up suddenly. “A virtual womb!” he exclaimed. “I could model one to Daio’s specifications and Hallie could generate it in the digital realm.” Moo pondered it. “Naturally, I've studied the digital cloning process that made Virtual Zemo. I suppose it has possibilities… it might even allow for the treatment. But it would only work on a virtual child.” “We dismantled the movie gun,” Hallie pointed out to NTU. “Sure, we could probably digitise the baby like I digitise clothes and things for my files, but how would we get it back afterwards?” “We don’t permanently digitise the baby!” the genius Regular hypothesized. “We have access to matter transporter technology… Al’s been using various devices in his anti-teleportation field studies.” He began sketching out some diagrams on the back of a two-year old issue of Vanity Fair as Dr. Moo and Fleabot looked over his shoulder. “All we have to do is delay the baby from re-energizing on the other side…” he began, launching into a lengthy, math-filled explanation. “Right… what’s happening now?” Urthula asked curiously, sliding up to Ebony’s side. “Judging from my knowledge of Star Trek techno-babble, I believe they’re about to bounce a graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish” the High Priestess offered. “It’s what science types do.” “Do you have any idea of the amount of information a computer would have to juggle to keep the baby’s digitised code intact while operating this virtual womb?” Dr. Moo scoffed. “Fluctuations would have to be countered continuously. No program is that advanced, or that delicate.” “No…” Fleabot argued. “One is.” Everyone in the room stopped and looked at Hallie. The AI blinked and swallowed as she caught up. “Oh.” “That curse says that my sister dies when she births her firstborn,” Ohanna pointed out. “What happens if she doesn’t birth him? What happens if Hallie births him instead?” “Did I have Vizh getting me pregnant on my to do list this morning?” Hallie asked faintly. “Who does?” challenged Fleabot. “All curses of this kind must have a loophole,” admitted Urthula. “I think you may have just found ours.” Visionary nodded, satisfied. “Right.” “So do we still need that wet-vac?” checked Kerry. What now? Lisa meets Kinki, Flapjack’s new job, Donar carries a grudge, Liu Xi vs a Galactic Dreadnaught, those kinds of things. UT#257: Very Forbidden and Very Dangerous coming soon.. Special thanks to my collaborators Visionary and Al B. Harper for their input to this episode. 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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