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Post By The Hooded Hood gets vicious and personal Mon Mar 27, 2006 at 11:30:08 am EST |
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#266: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Special Protocols, Extreme Measures | |
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#266: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Special Protocols, Extreme Measures Content Warning: While containing no more than usual levels of violence, very little bad language, and no sex, this issue is for adults only and should be avoided by those who are easily upset.Previously: The governments of the world clamp down on superhumans through legislation like Special Resolution 1066, the Freedom and Patriot Act, which requires all metahumans to receive a behaviour-controlling Patriot Brand. Plans are afoot to curb the Lair Legion’s resistance to the programme. However, the Legion has learned that the initiative is intended to appease the galactic warlord the Parody Master so he won’t invade the Earth. With a week to go before registration becomes compulsory, the battle lines are drawn. 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. CSFB! image by Visionary.  The Parody Master’s attack on Earth started at midnight. A transnuclear bomb into the heart of the sun nine minutes earlier caused an electromagnetic pulse that took down all unshielded electronics across the globe. Then seventy dreadnaughts dimension-gated in over key cities and military sites and started firing. At one minute past midnight NORAD was no more, the SPUD helicarrier was ashes, and every naval fleet and major airfield globally was in ruins. Then the drop troops arrived, gushing from two hundred and sixty thousand incursion points; first the heavy war machines, the remote combat platforms, the tactical assault robots; then the red and black armoured Avawarriors, each one a sleek well-trained killing machine. By T+3 minutes there were five million invaders across the planet Earth. By T+6 there were thirty million. Some areas came in for special attention. Washington, London, Moscow, Beijing, all of them were seared off the surface of the planet with bombardment from space. Pre-planted micro-bombs took out remaining major military installations and back up infrastructure. Then came the Singularity Riders, wheeling over the Earth on their black beasts, shrieking their death-cries. Whole populations succumbed and died just by their proximity. Crops failed. Forests rotted. At nine minutes past midnight the first of the surrender calls was desperately transmitted to the invading force. It wasn’t ignored. The reply was something like, “You had your chance to yield. That time is now past. This is the consequence.” Now the giant war robots rose up over the cities. The psychic killers were loosed into the countryside to hunt the rural populations. The slave ships and butcher scows dropped down to pick over what was left of humanity. At eleven minutes past midnight the raiders were engaged by the Lair Legion and their allies. The Parody Master gated in to deal with them personally. His first attack seared Hatman, CrazySugarFreakBoy!, Mr Epitome, and Yuki Shiro out of existence. Donar somehow survived the devastating injuries and came back with a blow from Mjalcolm that cracked a tectonic plate. The Parody Master disembowelled him then hurled his carcase to incapacitate the Probability Dancer; he was saving her for later. Liu Xi flared then, her powers blossoming to their full potential. The Parody Master turned after erasing Yo and snuffed out the elementalist’s gifts with a fraction of his will. One by one the others in the combat fell: Gamona, Lara, Pelopia. The Shoggoth burned. Trickshot, ManMan, the Librarian, and Visionary were left to fight to the last. The Parody Master let them live long enough to see him rip through the Juniors then granted them the honour of personal deaths. At seventeen minutes past midnight it all went quiet; across the planet. The Parody Master planted his flag through Lisa’s skull into the scorched earth below. “I claim this planet in my name,” he declared, “by right of conquest,” “And that’s one of the better scenarios,” Rex Regent explained, recovering the simulation from the DVD player. “In that one we get away with only a 70% population loss, and the planet’s still barely habitable afterwards.” Hatman considered what he’d just seen. “Where did you get these?” he asked, looking at the stack of potential attack scenarios in the SPAM mobile control van beside Off-Central Park. “From me, of course,” answered the Doomherald. “But you can run the numbers yourself, of course. All the raw data’s coded on the discs. Check the math.” Jay Boaz eyed the emissary of the Parody Master with dislike. “You expect us to just roll over and surrender? Not going to happen.” “It is going to happen, Hatman,” Rex Regent corrected him, “and I’ll tell you why. We are not going to sacrifice the planet Earth to your heroic ego.” “I beg your pardon?” demanded the capped crusader. “You should,” Regent said. “Look, nobody’s ungrateful for the times you Legion people have put your lives on the line to save the planet. Well, maybe Bad News Herb, but nobody else. But this isn’t about pluckily struggling against impossible odds. It’s about whether the human race survives or doesn’t. And you’re not helping.” “Better a resistance fighter than a collaborator,” Jay Boaz shot back. “Better for who?” drawled the Doomherald. He was slouched in a corner with his legs over the arm of his chair. He seemed mildly amused at the meeting between the acting leader of the Lair Legion and the government’s public face of SR 1066. “Better for the people who suffer and die because of the resistance? Better for the planet that could get cracked apart by my boss’ weapons? Go to Maxel and ask them whether it was better to resist or collaborate. Except you can’t because the planet Maxel is rubble.” “Everybody on Maxel had power levels roughly equivalent to Premiere,” Rex Regent pointed out. “And now they’re almost extinct. Still think you’re going to be able to fight your way out of this one?” “We don’t surrender to tyrants.” “We don’t commit suicide either.” The Doomherald raised a finger for attention. “The Parody Master’s demands are quite modest,” he advised. “He wants Earth to disarm, which really means bringing your metahuman population under control. He wants Earth to acknowledge his sovereignty and contribute to his future war efforts as all the empire does. And he wants some personal tributes in the form of people and objects. Brides, mostly.” “That’s a grotesque suggestion,” Hatman snorted. “Not compared to planetary genocide, it isn’t,” Rex Regent argued. “You’re still thinking about this from a superhero perspective, Mr Boaz. But this is war, or the threat of it. War we can’t win. So we have to deal. We have to make sacrifices.” The Doomherald nodded agreement. “Specifically the Probability Dancer, Pelopia of Order, the Sorceress Whitney Darkness, Princess Uhunalura of the Abhumans, Liu Xi Xian, the Celestian Madonna, and the goddess Zdenka Zarazosa.” Jay Boaz looked up sharply, his face darkening. “No,” he vowed. “I will die first.” “And take a lot of people with you,” complained Rex. “That’s the trouble with heroes. Even if you get the noble choice to die fighting, you also make that decision for five billion people who don’t get to vote in the matter.” Hatman wished that Mumphrey Wilton was there. The eccentric Englishman would have something eloquent and perceptive and quite possibly acerbic to say right now. Instead it was left to Jay Boaz to answer. “I don’t see you putting it to a vote. If you believed people would elect to surrender you’d have made what you’re telling me public. And you’d have got SR 1066 passed legitimately without using blackmail and terrorism.” “If it helps,” the Doomherald noted, “when you surrender my boss will probably torture you to death anyway, Mr Boaz. He tends to make an example of the war leaders of the worlds he conquers. So you’ll die whether you fight or not. The only question is whether you take your planet with you.” “You think we’ve used unpleasant tactics against the Lair Legion so far?” Rex Regent asked. “We’ve not even started.” “You arranged for the torture and murder of Sir Mumphrey’s daughter and son-in-law, and the kidnapping of his grand-daughter,” accused Hatman. Rex had the grace to look a little uncomfortable about that. “That… wasn’t my department. Mumphrey is a special case. He’s being dealt with… separately.” “And you want me to surrender the Legion to people who act like that? To let this world be conquered by people who act like that?” “Oh, the conquest is a given, old thing,” the Doomherald assured. “Seventeen minutes on average, if you don’t make the deadline and give the boss what he wants.” Regent nodded. “And we cannot allow a self-appointed misguided band of metahumans bring about reprisals that would destroy our world.” He handed another DVD over to Hatman. “I don’t really like this material either, but you’d better know what happens if you walk away from this meeting without giving us assurances.” “What is it?” Hatman asked. He dropped it into the player and reviewed the content. Then he went pale and looked sick. Malko Turnovo was near the Bulgarian border, and by night in the rain it lived up to the stereotypes of a bleak concrete ex-Soviet city. Every building seemed shabby and crumbling, and the shadows were cold. “This is Bond,” said Dreamcatcher Foxglove into his Walkie Talkie Watch. “I’m going in.” “If you call me Pussy Galore again, I will kill you,” Yuki Shiro advised him. “I’m on the rooftop. I don’t see any sign of hostile activity or surveillance. Take care.” “Taking care. Over.” CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s usual fluorescent orange and neon green costume was covered by a heavy overcoat and wide-brimmed hat. He slunk down the alley until he found the metal door let into the brickwork, and rapped on it: shave and a haircut. After a few moments a bolt slammed back. CSFB! cautiously stepped inside, setting his Gawker Goggles to infrared. They weren’t any help. Somebody had flooded the entire interior with dazzling IR light. He had to flick back to normal vision, groping into the darkness. “Don’t come any further yet,” a voice called to him. “We need to check you out. Drop your Black Hole Backpack on the floor and take two steps away from it.” “I don’t think so, Katrina,” the wired wonder called back. “Not till I know this isn’t a trap.” “You’re the one with all the ordinance aimed at him, buster,” called another voice: Chuck Brown, Kite Knight. “That means our suspicions take priority over yours.” “Please, Dream. We’re all scared to hell here. Work with us.” That had to be Lisa Snart, Roller Rocket. “Okay,” CSFB! agreed. He shucked his topcoat and carefully placed his carry-all on the ground. “Now how about a little reciprocity? Can I talk to someone face to face, now? After all, you called me.” “Craig?” That had to be the team’s leader, Lesbian Liberator, Katrina van Horn, consulting with Ocular Occultist. He’d be the one using his vision abilities to scan the wired wonder for traps, perhaps even for an Obedience Brand. “He’s clean, except he’s got an open signal to somebody nearby. A back-up.” “Warn your back up that your signal will be going dark,” Katrina told Dream. “We need to talk very privately. We don’t want people we don’t trust listening in.” “And since Book Tower went boom there’s not a lot of people we trust,” added Armoured Amphibian. CSFB! spoke into his comm-link. “Moneypenny, I’m signing off for five minutes. 007 out.” “Blank us,” Lesbian Liberator ordered Spectrum Spectre; and the signal fuzzed to static. Then she walked out to meet Dream. “What happened?” CrazySugarFreakBoy! asked her. “One minute you were all on that earthquake rescue in the Sudan, the next you just vanished.” “They came after us to Patriot Brand us is what happened,” snorted Wombat Woman angrily. “We barely got away.” “We’ve been running ever since,” Katrina van Horn explained. “We took a vote eventually and agreed we’d try and contact you. But we don’t know if we can trust you.” “Same here, Kat,” admitted CSFB!. “Are you all here? Everyone got away? Everyone’s on the run?” “We’re all here,” agreed Prefab Prankster. “Even Lugman.” Now his eyes were becoming accustomed to the gloom, CSFB! could see them, the members of the Globetrotting Gangbusters, the reformed villains he’d helped forge into a team: Roller Rocket, Spectrum Spectre, Armoured Amphibian, Jujitsu Juggler, Kite Knight, Prefab Prankster, Ocular Occultist, Clockwork Craftsman, Wombat Woman, Illusion Illustrator, DJ Druid Druggist, their leader Lesbian Liberator, and Ulysses X. Lugman, Tubby Tachyon, formerly the criminal overlord called the Slug. “I had to run with the others,” Lugman explained. “The deal was that I walked free if I set off the sleeping gas in our safe house then triggered a homing beacon for the government to find and Brand the rest.” “They lied to him, though,” Lesbian Liberator said with satisfaction. “They Branded him as well.” CrazySugarFreakBoy! looked to his left, where Prefab Prankster was guarding his discarded weapons carryall. All around him the Gangbusters were closing in. “And now it’s time for you to rejoin the team,” Clockwork Craftsman said. CSFB! dropped the Combat Candy he’d been concealing in his palms, then used his Walkie Talkie Watch to trigger the Rocket Fuel Soda Pop cans in his Black Hole Backpack. That took down Prankster, Kite Knight, Roller Rocket. He sprayed Jujitsu Juggler and Armoured Amphibian with silly string and leaped up to the girders above. Then the fight proper began. The MetaWatch movement believed that humans could not allow themselves to be corrupted or subordinated by those who had special powers. It believed it was the last defence of humanity, holding the line against enslavement and exploitation by mutates and metahumans. What it didn’t believe in, Dancer decided, was soap. She crowded into baseball court down on the edge of Slumtown along with two or three hundred skinheads, bikers, gang members, and hangers on. But amongst them were also others, who might pass for respectable citizens. MetaWatch was gaining in membership and growing in credibility. It had taken two weeks of diligent and improbable work to locate the next appearance of the vigilante groups’s mysterious leader. But now at last Dancer was going to discover if that leader was a man she feared as much as any in the universe. And Splendiferous Stuart stepped onto the stage, amidst thunderous applause from his followers. It was supposed to be a grass roots movement, but the anti-surveillance tech in the court was state of the art, and the chosen thugs on stage with Stuart all had SPUD-issue anti-metahuman-personnel rifles. Amongst the crowd there were a few men who stood out from the others. Perhaps it was the professional killer look in their eyes. “My friends, thank you!” Stuart grinned. “As always, your welcome for me and your enthusiasm for the cause inspires me. And it’s wonderful to see so many people here this afternoon who are willing to stand up and be counted in the war against metaterror. As the last days before registration of these uncontrolled menaces count down we must be ever vigilant and guard against the enemy within.” Dancer well remembered that dazzling smile, that winning gaze. She remembered how it could turn dark, too, and what Stuart had promised to do to her the last time they’d clashed. Somehow that made it much easier to resist his persuasive arguments. “But before we begin, friends, I think a little demonstration is in order,” Stuart suggested. “I mentioned the enemy within. And that’s what we have here today. You see, we scan the hall for metahumans as a matter of course before our gatherings. And today we found nothing unusual. Except that I have been keeping a special watch out for improbable faults in our sensor equipment, and today we had one of those.” “Uh oh,” Dancer muttered, and began to slip towards the exit. The doors were closed and padlocked. “So come forward, Probability Dancer. We know you’re with us. We want to show you what we think of interfering superheroes.” Sarah Shepherdson found herself surrounded by countless angry vigilantes. The SPUD weapons were turned towards her. She moved to the stage and easily vaulted onto it. “Splendiferous Stuart,” she noted. “Do your followers know that you’re an alien metahuman with mind-influencing powers?” “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Stuart smiled. “Nobody here is going to believe you.” “What are the chances?” Dancer challenged. The rabble-rouser ignored her “And now we’re going to show you what happens to silly little superheroines who stray into MetaWatch meetings,” he announced. “Okay,” Dancer agreed. “Show us.” “Us?” Dancer smiled at him. “I brought a plus one. You didn’t detect him either.” “Oh, two metahumans,” Stuart scorned. “Even better. Two object lessons.” “Or more,” Dancer smiled back at him. “Donar Oldmanson, come on down!” A huge man in biker leathers pulled a horned helmet onto his head and hefted a baseball bat with a nail in it. “Yeah verily,” he agreed, checking that the exit was still securely padlocked. “Let the object lessons begin for the nonce.” “Oh crap,” gibbered Visionary as the communications screen went black. “It’s dead! I’m dead! What happened to the signal?” Hacker Nine looked up crossly from his datapad. “I don’t know. My program’s crashed as well. The whole system has been unreliable since Harlagaz and his father took their little voyage into electrical engineering with Ausgardian battle axes. “Did your program crashing mean that you were going to get assassinated by an angry pink Yakusa warlord?” demanded the possibly-fake man. “You were talking to Akiko Masamune?” Danny asked, entering the room with cokes from the refrigerator. “And then you cut the signal? That’s not a good idea.” “Don’t give Traitor Nine a coke,” Kerry scowled as Danny passed a bottle to Zach Zelnitz. “He’ll only share it with the Hooded Hood.” “I didn’t mean the signal to go down,” Vizh promised. “I was just trying to… to thank Akiko for sending me that antique Japanese stick thing and explain that I can’t get involved in her gang war with the Lynchpin of Crime when everything went off.” “Oh boy,” breathed Danny. “I don’t even want to speculate what you’re going to have to cut off to show your penance about this, Visionary.” H9 plugged another module into his datapad. “Okay, I’ll run a diagnostic, find out what happened to…” “To what?” Kerry demanded. “Come on, if you’re going to take up important couch space in the lighthouse with your turncoat butt you have to finish your geek-gabble when it’s important.” “This isn’t because you UPS-ed that paintballing elf to the Philippines is it?” Danny speculated. “Elven curses and the postal system sound like a recipe for disaster.” “Hallie’s taking up more processing power again,” Zack warned. “She’s just swallowed all our capacity and a bit more. She’s having trouble calculating all the variables of that virtual pregnancy Vizh made her have.” “Hallie?” Vizh blinked, his Akiko-panic forgotten in his more urgent father-to-be panic. “What about Hallie?” The door to the circular lighthouse living room burst open. A breathless Cody Harper rushed in. “Vizh, dad says you’ve got to come right now. Hallie can’t sustain the baby any more. They’ve got to do a transfer. Right now.” “A transfer?” Visionary asked, stunned. “What kind of transfer?” “Congratulations,” Danny Lyle told the possibly-fake man. “You’re about to become a father.” “I met him at the Mission,” the small boy explained. “He did the games there. He was real nice to everybody. And I saw him on television.” “Go on, Barry,” the interviewer coaxed. “Just explain what you told to your mommy.” “Well… s-sometimes afterwards he would come into the showers with us. To help us wash. He said… he said it was very important to wash all our bits.” “Can you show me on the Action Man which bits he helped you wash?” “No. Action Man doesn’t have those bits.” “I see, and then what? “He said… he said I shouldn’t ever tell anybody about those games. He said he has super-powers and he’d know if I told. That he’d get me. That he’d get mommy. He said no matter how much it hurt I had to do what he said or he’d get me.” “It’s alright to tell,” the interviewer promised. “You’re safe now. Tell me what else Hatman did to you.” Rex Regent thumbed the pause control on the DVD. “There’s a lot more, of course. We have thirty-two testimonies in all, from boys and girls aged seven to fifteen. Your friend CrazySugarFreakBoy! joined you in abusing these children on occasion. You took pictures that we recovered from a digital camera at the Mission. Nasty, nasty stuff.” Jay Boaz was as white as parchment. “How did you compel those children to say such vile things? How? And how could you?” “Not Patriot Brands, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Regent advised. “There’s a chance they might be detected. No, I understand the memories were psionically implanted in the children by an associate of ours. The children really do believe that stuff happened to them.” “You forced such horrible memories onto the minds of innocent children?” Hatman’s hand balled into fists. He knew most of the children on the disc. He’d helped them. “I said I didn’t like it,” Rex admitted, “but you have to understand that there is no length to which we will not go to ensure you do not doom our planet, Mr Boaz.” “I’m not the one dooming the planet,” shouted Hatman. “That’d be this jerk here and his jerk boss the Parody Master! And from where I’m standing I don’t know who’s the bigger villains, him or you!” “The Parody Master,” the Doomherald answered. “Really. Trust me on this.” “When this material goes to press, when a warrant is issued for your arrest on charges of child rape, it’ll make Michael Jackson look like Mr Rogers,” Rex Regent pointed out. “That’ll be the end of the legend of Hatman. So I ask you again, Mr Boaz, before thing spiral completely out of control, are you and the Legion ready to stand down and be reasonable?” Yuki’s enhanced audio receptors picked up the sounds of combat despite the sensor blackout. But she never heard the person creep up behind her, muffled from all electronic detection. “Don’t interfere,” a playful voice giggled in her ear. “I w-want to see whether he can win this on his own.” Yuki moved with robotic precision, striking out at the source of the sound. She actually managed to touch the red and grape assassin before PsychoAcidPervGirl! slithered aside. “Ooh, you’re a f-fast one,” admired CSFB!’s psychotic kid sister. “Good job I had my Cheesewire of Sleaze around your n-neck already.” She held up the indestructible thread of metal. Yuki had lost all contact with her robotic body where the wire had neatly sliced clean through the reinforced titanium of her spine. Systems were redlining all across the board. Her remaining life supports were going to critical emergency shutdown. “I bet that s-stings,” PAPG! grinned with only one side of her face. She reached forward and jabbed a Slasher Scalpel into each of Yuki’s eyes. “Ooh, injury to the eye motif!” she cried as the robot P.I.’s body and severed head toppled from the roof. “B-bye!” She twitched a little, screamed at herself for a moment as she made another attempt to shrug off the control of the Obedience Band burned across her face, then settled down to wait for her brother to stagger out of the warehouse all sticky and bloody and too weak to defend himself. Sarah Shepherdson got home and flopped onto her couch with an exhausted sigh. It was going to take her an hour to shower that smoky odour out of her hair from those horrible bars that she’d had to lurk in to pin down Splendiferous Stuart and dent his agency. But when the Apocalyspian manipulator had lost his nerve and Doom Tubed away in front of his followers it had all been worth it. Dancer noticed that the message light was flashing on her answering machine. “Do I really need another lecture from my mother right now?” she asked herself. But she hit the Play button. “Sarah,” came a tearful, desperate voice, “It’s Jenny. Jenny Tolliver. I don’t know if you remember me, I sometimes help out at the Zero Street Mission?” Dancer remembered Jenny very well. She remembered how the runaway girl who’d tried to kill herself in an alley on Christmas had gone on to become a hard-working caring single parent, giving back love and affection despite all the crap that had happened in her life. “Sarah, it’s Debbie. My little girl? We’re in trouble. I need you to… they say you have Dancer’s cel number. I need to talk to Dancer, really urgently. Can you contact Dancer for me? Please? Tell her I’ll be at the Mission. Please.” Sarah pulled herself up from the couch and reached for her jacket. It looked like the shower was going to have to wait. Visionary, Kerry, Danny, and H9 rushed into the maternity suite at the Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital just as Dr Moo and her rat lab assistant had finished hooking up the holodata transfer matrix. Miiri gave a little yelp and hurled herself into Vizh’s arms. “The baby is coming,” she squeaked. “Our baby!” “Somebody tell me what’s going on,” Kerry demanded. She turned to H9. “Fill me in on the techno-nerd stuff.” Hacker Nine looked at the nest of glowing holo-emitters and the teleportation buffer. “Well, it looks like Hallie can’t gestate the baby any longer,” he surmised, “so they’re transferring it back to flesh and blood here where it can get proper medical care like any difficult birth.” “The dimensional rift for the direct data cables is secure,” Davidowicz reported, a finger on her ear to shield her communicator from the chatter in the room. “Al B. is almost ready for the data shunt.” “Everybody who’s not a medical professional back behind the glass please,” Dr Whitwell demanded. “Visionary, Miiri, you can stay if you scrub up and get into those surgical greens. Uhuna, make sure the incubator’s at the right temperature.” “Where’s Asil?” Kerry wondered as they pressed into the observation booth. “I didn’t think she’d miss this for the world.” There was another bustle behind them as Lisa, Yo, Ohanna and Kiivan crowded into the little room. “Yo is not too late to be seeing of cute-Naari to be being born?” the pure thought being asked anxiously. “We got here just in time for the main event,” Lisa assured her. The first lady of the Lair Legion was trying not to smile and failing miserably. “Sterilise the area,” insisted Dr Moo. “The baby will need several months of additional gene therapy to repair the teragenic damage done by whatever that mystic curse was, and she’ll be highly susceptible to infections.” “Sterilise as in get rid of germs or get rid of everybody?” Davidowicz checked for clarification. Moo glanced at Vizh. “Just the germs for now,” she decided. “PMH, this is Al B.,” came the voice over the comm-link. “Are you all set?” “We’re ready,” replied Dr Moo, her face intense with concentration. Suddenly she looked a lot like Lisa. “Is Hallie okay?” Vizh checked. “Is she in pain or anything?” “I want you to die, you bastard!” came back Hallie’s voice. “You and all men everywhere.” “She is fine,” Cleone Swanmay assured them. “Meggan and I are with her.” “Just the traditional birthing cry, that’s all, hon,” Meggan Foxxx assured everybody. Miiri looked unhappy. “Hallie is suffering pain for me,” she declared. “She is hurting so that I may have my blessing.” “She’ll be fine,” Vizh promised. “And a little pain and suffering is worth it to bring a wonderful daughter into the world.” “Says a guy,” snorted Kerry, glaring at Danny. “Hallie,” Dr Whitwell called over the link. “I need you to transmit the child to us now. Push!” The lights dimmed momentarily until the emergency generators caught up with demand. Hallie screamed. Something pink and tiny formed up on the teleport pad. “Is to be a child is born!” cried Yo. S/he tried to do a little dance in the crowded observation booth but s/he only managed to topple Hacker Nine to the floor. Dr Moo moved forward and carefully cut back the placental sac. She pulled the tiny baby free and cupped it in her hands. “Incubator, now!” she snapped. Uhunalura was ready and Naari was placed into the prepared environment. She weighed five pounds two ounces, and she was eight inches long. Her left arm and leg were black and withered, but suddenly she took an almighty gasp of air and cried her existence to the world. Miiri looked down at her child, tears forming in her eyes, her face pale. Then she turned to Visionary and fell to her knees before him, her hands wrapping round his knees. “Please!” she begged, weeping, “Oh please Visionary! Don’t kill her!” “What?” Vizh asked with a sick horror as Miiri tried to hold him back from the incubator. Prince Kiivan was ashen. “The child is sickly and deformed,” he said. “It is your right to terminate it,” he explained. “If… if you would prefer me to do it, I would understand.” “Please,” sobbed Mirri. “It’s my fault! Kill me instead! Please!” “What kind of a planet do you people come from?” demanded Lisa savagely. Visionary wrenched Miiri’s hands from him and pulled her to her feet. “Miiri! Stop it! Calm down. This is my baby as well as yours. My daughter. You think I care what she looks like or whether she’s perfect? You think I won’t love her whatever she is? Whatever she becomes? Miiri, do you think there’s any power on this planet that could hurt our daughter without walking over my dead body first?” Hallie’s hologram image flashed in beside him. “Or mine?” she added fiercely. “Or any of us,” asked Kerry. Miiri looked around her in confusion. Ohanna pressed her hands to the observation room glass in mute support of her sister. “Naari…?” Miiri asked, so vulnerable that Visionary wanted to hug her forever. “Ours,” Visionary promised her, gesturing to himself and the Caphan and Hallie. “She’s going to live. She’s going to have an extraordinary life.” “Nice punch,” approved the Doomherald. “And without even using your powers.” Jay Boaz rubbed his fist and turned away from the unconscious Rex Regent. “Tell your boss that the Lair Legion will never surrender to him, and that no matter how many scenarios he might have where he conquers this planet in seventeen minutes and takes out the Legion without breaking a sweat we will find a way to make him wish he’d never heard of us. Tell him to think twice before he moves against our world, because if he comes here I will see him dead.” “Okay,” agreed the Doomherald. “I’ll be sure and pass that on.” “So now do we fight as well?” demanded the capped crusader. The Doomherald shook his head. “Until such time as the deadline’s up, you and your Legion aren’t on my radar,” he replied. “I just get to watch and report.” “Well watch and report this,” Jay Boaz snarled, scooping up the fake DVD evidence against him. “I’m taking this down to Good Morning Paradopolis and handing it over to them, then giving an on-camera statement refuting these vile charges. And then I’m going after every last bastard who did this to those children.” He glanced at the Parody Master’s emissary, “and then I’m coming after you and your boss.” The Doomherald nodded. “It’s a date,” he replied. The front of the warehouse blew out in splinters of corrugated iron. Armoured Amphibian slithered on his shell across the cobbles, came to a stop, tried to rise, then fell over unconscious. Slowly, CrazySugarFreakBoy! limped from the shattered hideout, clutching his bleeding left arm. The Globetrotting Gangbusters were laid out behind him. “Yuki?” he called. “Annette! Cubby!” called back PsychoAcidPervGirl!, leaping past him, tagging him with a cloud of her Death Meth to set him choking and kicking him in the teeth as she blurred on. CSFB! rolled painfully away and came unsteadily to his feet. His golden-skinned face was covered on one side by the trickles of neon-green blood coming from a head wound. His Impossibilitium costume was torn and scorched. “Wendy?” he called. “Your playmate’s over there,” PAPG! told him. “Except for her head. That’s over there.” The harlot harlequin pouted a little. “N-nobody told me that she was a robot. It’s no fun doing robots.” “Wendy, what’s wrong with you?” Dreamcatcher Foxglove asked, although in his sinking heart he already knew. “Why n-nothing, lover-brother,” the cherry and purple girl answered him, coming out into the light. “I just wanted to s-show you my new t-tattoo, that’s all.” CSFB! gasped as he saw his sister. Her face was scarred where the Obedience Brand had been applied. Usually the livid scorch-mark vanished as the Brand was assimilated into the biometabolism of its victim. PAPG! has resisted enough that the process had never quite been completed, her pixie face distorted and scabbed where her spirit had been violated. She twitched a little as she walked, stammered, drooled, the Chaos inside her conflicting with the orders she had received. The nausea overcame CSFB! He tumbled to his hands and knees and vomited on the cobbles. “So you don’t l-like it?” PAPG! asked in hurt mocking tones. “S-shame, because there’s another one just w-waiting for you, Dreamy.” “Who did this to you, Wendy?” “L-like it matters. Everybody does me, just like our mom. E-even like this.” PAPG! giggled insanely. “You should wait to see what they’ve got p-planned to have you do.” Dream struggled to stay conscious but the fight with his former team had been brutal. He was already sick to the stomach about the combat, about what his friends had been made into. “Wendy, you’ve got to resist this. I know you can overcome that Obedience Brand. Even from here I can feel it enslaving you, making you conform, making you what you’re not.” PsychoAcidPervGirl! kicked her brother in the crotch and pinned him to the ground, her thighs crushing his neck. “You s-still think you can r-reform me?” she mocked him. “Dream on.” “I’m not going to fight you, Wendy. I’m going to help you fight this. Together we can beat this, get you free.” “Hold very still, hunkalove. This is going to hurt you more than it hurts me.” Dream saw she had something the size of a CD in her hand, a metal shape that was beginning to glow orange. It was the same size as the scar across her face. CSFB! lifted his hand and pulled her head down to his and kissed her. “You’re my sister, Wendy,” he said, without even using words. “I’ll save you. I’ll always save you. We’re the agents of Chaos. We’re the tricksters. They can’t chain us. They can’t hold us back. We’ll always do something they don’t expect. That’s what we are.” PsychoAcidPervGirl! shrieked and toppled off him, clutching her face, screaming and cursing. She spasmed, legs kicking epileptically as she lost all control of her bodily functions. Her fingernails dug into her flesh as she tried to gouge the Brand out of her face. “M-m-m-m-” she stuttered. “Wendy!” shouted Dream, struggling up, leaning over her to stop her damaging herself further. “Gwendolyn!” “M-m-m-m-Master!” she shuddered, then curled into a foetal position and slumped catatonic to the ground. If she still had a mind it had hidden far away. Her body still belonged to the Parody Master. “Wendy!” CSFB! screamed again, raging in despair. At the warehouse perimeter special forces realised something had gone wrong and began to move in with metahuman suppression equipment. Dreamcatcher Foxglove wobbled to his feet and realised that he couldn’t fight them all. He couldn’t save all his friends. He pocketed the unused Brand. He picked PAPG! up and hoisted her across one shoulder. He found Yuki’s torso and hefted it across the other. He clutched Yuki’s head to his belly as he started to run. And he wept as he fled. Dancer knew it was a trap as soon as she entered the hall. Jenny Tolliver was there, crouched in a protective huddle around her daughter. She looked to have been crying. She was flanked by men with guns. There were at least two dozen armed mercenaries around the church. “I’m sorry, Dancer,” Jenny said tearfully. “I had to do it.” “That’s okay,” Shep told her. “I can deal with this. You’re safe now.” “Oh really?” Magenta St Evil asked, appearing dramatically from the shadows. “How safe do you feel now?” Dancer regarded the fur-coated villainess with some dislike. “Still pretty confident,” she answered. “At least you’re not somebody competent.” “I discovered your secret identity, Probability Dancer,” Magenta St Evil pointed out. “It’s interesting that even under the influence of a Patriot Brand circumstances still prevent me from giving it away. But for tonight’s exercise it was enough that it was known to me, eh?” “Not really, no.” The villainess smiled, cracking the slab makeup that covered her wrinkles. “Look again, Dancer,” she advised. “We’re not playing by the usual rules of engagement.” “I’m so sorry,” Jenny Tolliver sobbed. Her trembling hand was holding a razor blade at her daughter’s throat. “I don’t want to do this, but I have my orders. If you don’t surrender then I’ll slash Debbie’s jugular.” Dancer felt her stomach churn. “You’ve been Branded!” she realised. “Yes,” Magenta St Evil agreed. “So now you have to decide whether escaping is worth having a mother slaughter her child.” “Please,” begged Jenny. “Surrender. Please!” “I can’t,” Dancer answered, her voice catching. “If they Brand me they’ve got access to all the Legion’s secrets, to our plans, to my probability powers to turn things sour. I…” She turned to Magenta. “Come on. Don’t do this. I thought you were supposed to be classy.” “We’re all under instruction,” Magenta answered honestly. “Hold out your arm so we can sedate you, Dancer. We don’t want your powers interfering with the Brand.” Sarah’s shoulder’s slumped. She held out her arm for the narcotic syringe. The soldiers closed in. Then all the wiring in the place short-circuited with a loud bang, sending showers of sparks out over the church hall, scattering the thugs. Dancer dropped low, landed a gut kick that sent Magenta St Evil wheezing to the floor, and barrel-rolled into Jenny, knocking the mother from her child. “I’m sorry, Jenny!” Dancer called, grabbing Debbie to her and somehow avoiding the bullets from the mercenaries. “Stay down. I can’t save you both, but I’ll get your baby to safety, even from you!” Two year old Debbie clung to Dancer as the guns exploded around her. Then she took the hypodermic needle she’d been given and sank it into Dancer’s leg. Just like she’d been ordered to. Sarah found her left leg was no longer working. She tumbled to the floor, dizzy, unable to co-ordinate. Debbie watched her with worried brown eyes. “You… branded a baby…!” Dancer accused before she passed out. “Yes,” agreed Magenta St Evil. “For the glory of the Parody Master. She turned Dancer over, placed the metal circle on the fallen Legionnaire’s bare midriff, and activated the Obedience Brand. “You’ll understand why when you wake up,” she promised. Miiri woke up from a tangled nightmare and started up from her chair. The room was dim but she could see the walls, the bed, the incubator with its tiny occupant. There was a range of instrumentation attached to the device, but all the lights upon it were out. “Hallie?” she called, pulling out the hologram emitter drone that acted as a remote station for the artificial intelligence. Hallie fuzzed into being, her image far less smooth than usual since she was still reordering her algorithms since her recent ordeal. “Yes?” she asked. “Something’s wrong,” Miiri said, the uneasiness inside her showing in her voice. She moved over to the transparent dome where the baby lay. “Who switched off these monitor feeds?” Hallie demanded. “And how did they do it without me sensing it?” Miiri didn’t stop to discuss it. She pulled away the dome and reached down to the child nestled inside. “Naari!” she called. “Naari!!” But the baby was cold and dead. Next Issue: We turn away from the troubled Lair Legion to look at the more mystical dark corners of the Parodyverse. Behind the flimsy veil we call everyday life lurks another world of occult horrors, and they too have heard the call to arms of the Parody Master. Join us for a journey into mystery where monsters dwell when creatures are on the loose in Untold Tales of the Underwar. Follow-Ups Include: Naari by Visionary Kerry and Danny: Dead by Dancer Parallels by Hatman The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Footnotes: Rex Regent is a businessman, a media tycoon, and the US government front man for the implementation of the Freedom and Patriotism Act. The Doomherald is the Parody Master’s emissary, and is currently liasing with the consortium of power brokers behind Special Resolution 1066. The Maxellians, a race of Superman-like expansionists, was conquered by the Parody Master when he caused their sun to go nova. The leader of the Maxellians was last seen being humiliated and tortured by the Parody Master. Others have been converted to super-powered lobotomised zombies in the Parody Master’s service. The Globetrotting Guardians are a team of reformed villains seeking to redeem themselves under the sponsorship of Gideon Book, and formerly led by CrazySugarFreakBoy!. They are listed by CSFB! as follows: Globetrotting Gangbusters, in their RVs of Rehab and Reform> * Lesbian Liberator (Katrina Luisa Van Horn, a.k.a. Man-Killer) * Roller Rocket (Lisa Snart, a.k.a. Golden Glider) * Spectrum Spectre (Roy G. Bivolo, a.k.a. Rainbow Raider) and his Special Effects Specs * Armored Amphibian (David “Davy” Jones, a.k.a. the Turtle) * Jujitsu Juggler (Elton Healey, a.k.a. Oddball) * Kite Knight (Charles “Chuck” Brown, a.k.a. Kite-Man) * Tubby Tachyon (Ulysses X. Lugman, a.k.a. the Slug) * Prefab Prankster (Earl J. Dukeston, a.k.a. the Duke of Oil) * Ocular Occultist (Craig Z. Quilty, a.k.a. Crazy Quilt) and his Conjurer’s Contacts * Clockwork Craftsman (William Tockman, a.k.a. Clock King) * Wombat Woman (Frances “Frankie” Oliver, a.k.a. Kangaroo) * Illusion Illustrator (Leah Wasserman, a.k.a. Mindboggler) * DJ Druid Druggist (Mark Mandrill, a.k.a. Matter Master) and his Rogues’ Gallery Go-Go Raves The Globetrotting Guardians previously discussed their concerns about SP 1066 in Breaking the Law, Breaking the Law by CSFB! Splendiferous Stuart was formerly one of the ruling cadre of the brutal planet Apocalyspe, using his looks and psionic charming ability to sway hearts and minds to his following. After encountering Dancer and others in Far Away #4, #6 and #8 (by Dancer) he was taken back to Earth for trial, and is now working for the US government as their non-attributable organiser of the vigilante MetaWatch organisation. Visionary and Akiko: Akiko Masamune is the stylish civilised lady boss of the Yakusa controlling Mangatown in Paradopolis. The possibly fake man has owed Akiko a favour since International Incident by Vizh (1999). They have quite a tangled history by now. Hacker Nine, (Zack Zelnitz) former Technopolitian science villain with a genius for computers, dropped out of the Junior Lair Legion to intern with the Hooded Hood, earning the hostility of his peers, but somehow remains resident in Visionary’s lighthouse. Hallie’s Pregnancy: The rescued Caphan slave girl Miiri became pregnant and insists that Visionary is the father. Her pregnancy was threatened by a curse designed to kill her when she gave birth. Dr Moo and others devised a bizarre way round the curse by transferring the damaged foetus to hologram sentience Hallie who could gestate her in a virtual womb. Hallie’s confinement has been chronicled by Vizh in Pregnant Pause #1 and #2. PsychoAcidPervGirl (Gwendolyn “Wendy” Leslie, a.k.a Cinnamon Rain) is CrazySugarFreakBoy’s younger sister, an emotionally disturbed rebel with similar powers to the wired wonder himself. She is usually a student at Book Enterprises’ Hestia House “for girls gifted by the Graces” but also moonlights as lead singer of rock band Seduction of the Innocent. Jenny Tolliver debuted in UT #95: You’d Better Watch Out, wherein she abandoned and then was reunited with her newborn child. She reappeared in UT #209: The Night Hell’s Bathroom Burned, along with her daughter Debbie, when the Legion defended her from the abusive father of her baby. Magenta St Evil, Dancer’s self-proclaimed archvillain, is a furs-wearing millionaires with a penchant for 1990s comics plots. 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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