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Post By The Hooded Hood finally brings in this double-length hitting-things-fest Fri Apr 28, 2006 at 06:28:35 pm EDT |
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#270: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Ninjas vs Fairies vs Robots vs Zombies | |
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| #270: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Ninjas vs Fairies vs Robots vs Zombies Previously: Backed by the consortium of power brokers behind Special Resolution 1066, the Freedom and Patriot Act requiring all superheroes to register and be fitted with mind-controlling Obedience Brands (by next Friday), Lynchpin of Crime Harry Flask extends his criminal empire, eliminating opposition with ruthless excess. His latest targets are the Yakusa crimelord Akiko Masamune and the retro-hoods the Zoot Suit Gang. He is assisted by an alliance with Camellia of the Fey, a dark fairy who has recently abducted Visionary’s newborn daughter. This means war. Tie-ins to this chapter include: Fresh Produce In Season #1, #2, #3 and #4 by AG. 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.  Hatman punched in the window of the Lynchpin of Crime’s Gothametropolis skyscraper office. “Harry Flask, you’re under arrest!” The Lynchpin looked at the capped crusader with mild amusement. He’d thrown Jay Boaz out of that very window less than a year ago. “Go home, little superhero. I’ll send a bill for the glass.” Hatman landed on the expensive carpet and swapped out his Jets hats for his Steelers cap. “You think I’m kidding? I’m arresting you on suspicion of charges of murder, extortion, drug-running, assault, bribing a public official, attempting to pervert the course of justice, and tax evasion. And that’s for starters. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney…” Harry Flask put down the drumstick he’d been about to devour onto the bucket of other drumsticks. “What is this?” he asked. “Some last hurrah before you’re shut down? Some pathetic last-ditch attempt to ‘do good’ before you’re wiped out by the very world you claim to protect and serve?” Hatman produced handcuffs. “…and will be used in evidence against you in a court of law,” he concluded. “Your wrists, please.” “Your authority to act as law enforcement officials was revoked last week,” Flask pointed out. “I saw the memo.” “Contessa Natalia Romanza still has authority to deputise SPUD officers,” Hatman countered. “Here’s my paperwork. Are you coming quietly?” “With you, little man? I think not.” The Lynchpin shifted his bulk in his reinforced chair. “You’re not even worth the trouble of calling the lawyers. Kwatrain!” The assassin from Apocalyspe was dressed in the colourful garments of the pre-Revolutionary French royal court. He moved so fast that the capped crusader barely had time to see him. Kwatrain reached out to whip the cap off Hatman’s head with one hand while bringing up the vibra-knife to slice his throat with the other. Except that instead another fast-moving blur impacted with the assassin and hammered through a wall with him. Mr Epitome really didn’t like Apocalyspians. “You have the right to my fist,” Dominic Clancy told Kwatrain, demonstrating. “You have the right to suffer for all the lives you’ve taken. You have the right to be pounded into jelly for daring to strut across my country as if you were worthy of it…” Hatman stood across from the Lynchpin, replaced his cap, and beckoned with his fingertips. “We heard about how tough you are against ordinary guys in bars and helpless women in brothels,” he sneered. “And we know you’ve got loads of metahuman muscle on call thanks to your bargain with Edward Gramayre. Now let’s see what you’ve got against somebody in your own strength class.” “You?” sneered the Lynchpin, rising. But there was a savage glint of anger in his eyes. “Me,” Hatman told him. “Come on if you dare, you fat, cowardly, cruel, treacherous, murderous, criminal bag of pus!” Behind the quaint ethnic facades of Mangatown, a dozen different shops led into a huge fortified space that few suspected and even fewer could penetrate. From a tastefully-furnished but pastel-coloured audience chamber in this complex’s heart, Akiko Masamune ran the Paradopolis Yakusa, the iron fist in the pink cotton glove. Security was always tight there, but usually discreetly. Today the men in their smart Western business suits openly carried automatic rifles. More serious men in black from head to toe, swathed so that only their eyes showed, carried katanas and sais and, in one case, a stuffed waterfowl (nobody laughed twice at his choice of weapon). And then there were the fit-looking young men and women who weren’t armed at all, and who had faint silver traceries etched like tattoos across their bodies. “You’re expecting trouble,” noted the Psychic Samurai as she dropped from the rafters. “The word is that you are going to war with the Lynchpin and with Camellia of the Fey.” “I promised them an answer,” noted Akiko. “You need more security,” her visitor warned. “If I could get in, an enemy could get in.” “An enemy already has,” the crimelord answered. She pointed at the lithe young woman with the katana. “Deal with her, please.” “What?” the Samurai gasped. “What is this? I came to help.” “You did,” agreed Akiko Masamune. “About an hour ago. Chiaki?” Too late the glamour-disguised faerie breathstealer realised that the real Psychic Samurai was stood beside her former principal’s chair. Chiaki has the gift of not being noticed when she didn’t want to be. And then there was a clash of steel as Chiaki reprised her role as Akiko’s bodyguard. “Things are getting out of control,” Hammerface told the made men. “No respect. And if we don’t have respect, we got nothing. So now we have to teach a little respect, and Mangatown has got to burn.” The three hundred or so thugs gathered in the factory on 81st and Ditko nodded agreement. “But if you burn Mangatown, where will I go to get a decent Dim Sum?” demanded Frankie as the Zoot Suit Gang jumped them. Hoodlums scattered for cover as the retro gangsters seethed into the industrial complex, machine guns chattering. There were quite a lot of them. “Ambush!” yelled Hammerface. “Get us some special support down here!” “Yelling for your mother?” Frankie mocked as the gang boss went down. “You dirty rat.” Then the room filled with combat robots teleported in by Fax Machine. “You picked the wrong day to be coming back from the dead, Frankie,” Mean Machine told him as the robots turned on the victorious Zooters. “Oh, I don’t know,” Frankie shrugged. “I got four words for you, clanky.” “Goodbye, cruel world?” mocked Death Machine, bearing down on the Zoot Suit Gang with his electronic scythe. “That’s three words, moron,” Frankie told him. “Now, the words I was thinking of were ‘Lair Legion, Line Up’.” And then Yuki came in through the roof, took Death’s scythe off him, and planted it in his chest. “Zombies!” complained ManMan in dismay. “I hate Zombies.” “So do I,” agreed the Manga Shoggoth, oozing out of the bandages that confined him in a relatively human form and rising up as an amorphous translucent blob over Off-Central Park. “It’s impossible to get rid of the taste of them.” “Well thanks for helping me with the diet there,” Manny admitted. “Sever the spinal column,” Knifey, the talking weapon, instructed his wielder. “These are you standard Haitian animations, so the necromancy nexus runs along the spine. Once I saw through that they’re just Shoggoth-chow.” “Brigit has already had a word with the person who made these,” the Shoggoth bubbled as he allowed the first wave of undead to shuffle into his biomass. “But she’ll need to speak with her again. This is very shoddy work.” “Yes,” agreed Knifey as ManMan battles for his life against the ravening horde. “Joe and I spent a day fighting Dark Thugos’ techno-zombies a while back and they were much better constructed.” “I’m really not complaining,” ManMan assured them. “Except do you know how hard zombie ichor is to get off white suede?” Over by the bandstand, LeVeau M’Tumbe had seen her enemies approaching. “Oh crap,” she muttered, and reached for her ritual cellphone. “I’ve got an incoming Shoggoth and my zombies aren’t stopping it. He’s rolling over them like a gigantic wad of chewing gum, bringing them with him. What do I do?” “Well, if I was you,” suggested Lady Morgosa at the other end of the line, “I’d kiss your butt goodbye. Farewell.” And she cut the line. Yuki managed to take down X-Ray Machine and Popcorn Machine with Death Machine’s scythe before an artic hurricane blast from Wind Machine knocked it from her grip. But by then Trickshot, CrazySugarFreakBoy!, and Dancer had joined her in the melee. “Odds of ten ta one,” Trickshot noted, bringing Flying Machine down to earth with an EMP arrow. “My kind of rumble.” “Odds of thirty-two to four, eight to one,” corrected Answering Machine primly. He hated imprecision. “Or, if you are talking about the odds of walking out of here alive…” “Ohh, don’t calculate the chances,” Dancer begged him as she kicked his head off by hitting it where the structural faultline happened to be. “It really gives me a headache.” “Take the Probability Dancer down first!” Fitness Machine called out, moving in to intercept the dexterous young woman who was tumbling between the robots. “Done,” said Ghost in the Machine, reaching from the shadows and becoming visible to grab Sarah Shepherdson. But just then Yuki grabbed the now-solid machine’s wrists and hurled him into Kidney Machine. “Don’t take Dancer down,” CSFB! warned, winding Karaoke Machine’s microphone cable round Adding Machine and spinning them both to tangle with Diagnostic Machine. Sex Machine turned her electronically-enhanced wiles on Trickshot, but it didn’t quite work as she’d hoped. “Hey, babe!” called out the irritating archer, “watch this!” And he blew up Threshing Machine. There was a barrage of exploding canisters from Vending Machine. “Come on, robots,” he called out. “We’ve trained for this. Or do you enjoy having your pain circuits activated so much that you want Master Machine mad at us?” “Slot machine, cancel the Dancer’s probability effects,” Mystery Machine growled. “Mean, Sewing, take her. Speed Machine, Copy Machine, hamstring the annoying CrazySugarHero! Time machine, slow down the hybrid abomination. Ice Machine, Smoke Machine, kill the archer. Rest of you, back to murdering gangsters.” “And somebody stop Frankie from chuckling!” added ATM Machine crossly. Slot Machine’s big red arm came down and the icons on his chest flashed rapidly. “They have no chance,” he guaranteed. “The house always wins.” “Well, four of us against all of you?” Yuki scorned. “Of course not. But six of us?” And she pointed upwards. “You got their program codes recorded, Lee?” Al B. checked over the comm-systems. “Logged and analysed,” the Librarian of the Lunar Public Library reported back, feverishly working at his resources desk. “D.D., pass me those security algorithms. I’m sending them to you now, Mr Harper.” “Got ‘em,” Al B. grinned. “Hey, Machine Shop, you know those pain circuits you mentioned your boss activates…?” He flipped a toggle on the transmission apparatus he was carrying. “Was this it?” The Machine Shop robots toppled to the floor screaming and writhing. “Guess it was,” Al noted. “Finish them while they’re down,” Yuki warned. “We don’t know how long…” Then the walls of the factory burst open as the war ogres broke in and started their attack. “We have riots in Mangatown, Little Greece, Tiny Italy, zombies again in Off-Central Park, some kind of big explosions happening in the Shedon warehouse district, and I daredn’t even check the story in Slumtown and Hell’s Bathroom,” Acting Police Commissioner Harold Hogglet complained down the phone to Dr Vicki Farmer of the Commission on Metahuman Affairs. “Then deal with it,” Dr Farmer replied crossly. “That’s why we put you there.” “With what?” Hogglet demanded. “Nearly all the force is off sick with blue flu, protesting against these new regs and what happened to Commish Graham. It’s me and three temp typists right now, and they’re not even the cute ones. I need metahuman back up right now, SPUD or the Sentinoids or some’a them Branded supervillains. Right now.” “SPUD is… out of action just now,” confessed Farmer. “The Sentinoids and Terminus Team are both deployed on other missions. We’re stretched a little thinly today.” “I got a city that’s about to explode here, lady! I got ninjas and robots fighting on the streets! What are you going to do about it!” “I’m going to leave it in your capable hands, Mr Hogglet,” Dr Farmer told him. “I have full confidence in you.” “Garrick said…” “Garrick’s vanished, we think projected into the future. Don’t bother me again.” The acting Commissioner slammed his handset down so hard it broke. “I bet they’ll take that out of your wages,” Lisa Waltz told him. She walked into the room and did her best Sharon Stone impression. “The Lair Legion’s got a lot of nerve sending you here,” Hogglet warned her. “Soon as I find an officer I’m gonna throw your butt in jail for disturbing the peace.” Lisa handed a letter across the desk. “I went to visit Commissioner Graham earlier,” she explained. “He’s conscious again, once Uhuna went to visit him and those unfriendly security guards around him. Now they’re sleeping and the Commissioner is feeling much better.” “You went to the Commish…” “He decided to check out of his ward,” Lisa went on. “He didn’t like the food. He’s convalescing at the Lair Mansion right now. And he’s sent you instructions.” Harold Hogglet read the letter and blanched. “He’s been on the phone ever since he got out,” Lisa smiled wolfishly. “Lots of officers are recovering from their bouts of illness and heading back onto the streets.” “The new regs…” “Graham hasn’t received them yet,” the first lady of the Lair Legion answered. “Right now you’re just arresting villains.” “The Lair Legion is out there fighting crime right now,” pointed out Kid Produce, latest of the heroes to seek refuge at the Lair Mansion. “I don’t see why we shouldn’t be out there helping them.” “That is not the whole picture,” Glory, the mutt of might, insisted, her words translated by her automatic voice transmission box as they moved across to Parody Island’s external landing strip - except that Cody hadn't been seen all day, and looked like he was going to miss the plane. A Bautista Enterprises light passenger jet was loading on thge runway. “We have responsibilities too. Lives are more important than blowing up criminals.” “If we’ve been given a duty we should do it,” Captain Courageous admitted. “What’s the mission?” Kerry flicked a thumb at the refugees being shepherded aboard the plane by Ham-Boy and Glitch. “These guys. All the metas and ex-mutates that came to us for help over the last few days, avoiding SR 1066. The Not-Ready-For-Prime-Time Losers.” “They’re being evacuated,” Fashion Accessory explained. “This is the ninth planeload of people we’ve sent out to spiffy in Badripoor.” “And if they’re secretly working for the government?” Fetish Lad asked. “Then that’s spiffy’s problem,” Ham-Boy grinned. “We know they’re none of them branded, at least. But mostly they’re just frightened, tired, worried people who don’t want some government stomping all over them because they have the power to change the colour of this fingernails or something.” “Except that the government is not at all happy with us shipping all these potential metahuman assets to an unaligned rogue nation state,” Glitch pointed out. “So the plane needs a heavy duty escort. Us.” “Verily,” agreed Harlagaz, harnessing up his father’s goat chariot. “Tis said yon felons may seek to down this plane to sendeth a message to yon coat rack. So we must needs protecteth it from all smiting.” “And this is nothing to do with the Legion expecting all hell to break loose here at the Lair Mansion any time soon and wanting its Junior team out of the way along with the civilians?” Fetish Lad checked. “Of course it is,” Glory told him. “But we are doing something that must be done, and we will do it well.” And like the sheepdog she was she guided the youngsters aboard the plane. “Wait a minute!” cried Kid Produce as the passenger jet screeched off the runway. “Nobody told me this thing was being flown by a monkey!” “Fitz, the Barnstorming Monkey,” Glitch explained with relish. “He comes really cheap.” “Ever wonder why?” “Sentinoid One to Control. The plane is in the air. Over.” “Confirmed. Sentinoid One this is Sentinoid Control. Wait until the aircraft is over international waters and well away from Parody Island. Then bring it down. Repeat, bring it down. Mass casualties are acceptable. Over.” “Sentinoid Control, message received and understood. Over and out.” The prototype Mark I Scorched Earth combat vehicles were an experiment from Obidiah Blott’s Turrets Incorporated to see what happened when Sentinoid technology was made into a forty foot long battle tank. The Lynchpin’s men had acquired all six prototypes and were rumbling along the highway, crushing abandoned cars as they went, straight towards Akiko’s Mangatown stronghold. The young Asian people who came towards the tanks each slapped a band on their wrists and allowed their distinctively-coloured combat armour fold out around them. They managed to break the first of the Scorched Earths before the others adapted to their powers and began to destroy them. “Tell your slant-eyed mistress she’ll need something better than Power Rangers to stop the Scorched Earth Battalion,” boasted the Commander over the PA. Once the battle tanks had analysed the transformer frequencies in the bioborgs morphware it was easy to jam the signals, leaving the remaining warriors helpless under the battle machines’ tracks. One of the last survivors, her leg bleeding profusely from a shrapnel hit, tried vainly to rise and get out of the way of the oncoming juggernaut. Then a lone figure stood over her in the tanks’ path. “Hold!” he called, pulling his antique sword from its scabbard. “I am Sir John de Jaboz, Knight Improbablar, and I have been vested as a keeper of the law in this realm by authority of the Lair Legion. Stand down now from your machines of war and you will be treated honourably and not harmed.” The battle tanks oriented their combat systems towards the Chevalier, but his abnegation abilities meant that their automated tracking systems couldn’t lock on. Meanwhile, Prince Kiivan of Caph dropped onto the lead tank, carved a neat hole to get to turret control mechanisms, and directed it to blow hell out of its neighbour. “I was giving them a chance,” Sir John shouted furiously, leaping forward and slicing through the reinforced titanium shielding around a control cabin to disable another. “You gave them a big enough chance,” the Emir of All Caph told him. “They weren’t surrendering. So I dealt with business.” “You just wanted to rob me of my victory,” complained the Knight Improbablar. “Watch out!” he added as another of the tanks began to hover in the air. “That’s just me,” Princess Lileblanche of Esperine announced. “Once I could fight my way through the choking clouds of macho I decided to see if these things were telekinesis-shielded. They’re not.” She flipped the tank over to land on the one beside it. Ohanna of Raael dropped down onto the remaining tank, overrode the hatch lock, and dropped into the cabin to subdue the occupants. She didn’t bother saying anything. Camellia of the Fey sat in the huge vita-glass arboretum that formed the central cupola of her newly-rebuilt night-club. She was tall and dark-haired, and her eyes glittered like winter frost. “Why Visionary,” she mocked, “What brings such an important famous person to my door?” “He had this with him,” warned Mr Oxalis, twenty-eight stone of faerie enforcer in a tight black bouncer’s suit. “This flying dagger.” “Sjelknuser,” Camellia identified the artefact, “An Ausgardian toy. Keep a tight hold on it and it can do no harm.” She glanced at her visitor. “A little bit like you, really, fake man.” Vizh didn’t rise to the bait. “I’m here for Naari,” he told her. “The real one, not that cruel changeling joke you left behind to break our hearts.” “Naari?” Camellia feigned ignorance. “What would that be, then?” “That would be the child you stole, my daughter,” Visionary told her. “It would be the reason you will be destroyed if you don’t stop playing your clever games and give her back to me right now.” The fey mistress wasn’t impressed. “But playing games is so much more amusing than your tortured impassioned earnestness, little possibly-mortal. And revenge is a wonderful sport. A bloodsport.” “Last chance,” Visionary told her. “Or you’ll set your flying dagger on me? Or call up your soon-to-be enslaved Legion friends? Or the children you pretend to teach?” “Right,” frowned the possibly-fake man. “The hard way it is, then.” Mr Oxalis was holding Sjelknuser very tightly. Not being too familiar with Earth technology he hadn’t even noticed the small Holographic Emitter Drone magnetically locked onto the side of the enchanted weapon. He noticed it when Hallie released sixty thousand volts from her internal storage batteries through the metal of the dagger and into the faerie enforcer. “Hallie?” Vizh asked. “Naari’s not here,” the artificial intelligence replied. “Sensors pick up no human life anywhere in the building. Except maybe you.” Visionary hit the transmitter in his coat button. A hundred foot long flying robotic arm crashed down on top of the Willow, its hand closed into a giant fist. And Robot Arm Zeke II was made of cold iron. Camellia yelped as she rolled aside when the glass cupola came down. For a moment her glamour slipped and she was something older, colder, much nastier than the mesmerising beautiful women she seemed to be. “You dare?” she demanded. “Oxalis, kill him. Keep the soul.” Hallie tried to get in the way but Mr Oxalis was faster then he looked. He punched straight through the force-field defining the AI’s human shape and shattering the HUD that projected it, then came in hard and fast at Visionary. Yo dropped down through the shattered roof, caught the enforcer’s outstretched arm, and flipped him across the arboretum. “The thought being,” snarled Camellia. “So predictable. I’m ready for that one this time.” And she opened the box of nightmares and directed them at Yo. Yo felt them coming in at him/her. S/he skewered the first of them on her rapier, and the second, and the third. But there were a great many of them, flapping and tearing at the hope and joy that made up the pure thought being. They were hungry, and what they ate was happiness. “You have no idea how many spirits I have chained here, waiting for my word to destroy you,” Camellia promised Visionary. “Maybe not,” Vizh answered, “But I bet Cleone does.” In the distance came the pure clear voice of the exiled swanmay, singing to the spirits, calming them, quietening them; setting them free. “Visi,” called the besieged Yo, “Keep to be going. Is to be alright. Yo is to be having to show these uncutenesses that is stronger to be happy than not!” Vizh scrambled towards Camellia. Mr Oxalis rose again and raced towards Visionary. “Not so fast, mortal. You’re too tall by a head to approach the future Faerie Queene! But I can fix that.” From the other side of the battlefield a gate burst open and a half dozen twenty-foot tall were-giants snarled their way into the combat. In the vaults beneath the undead stirred, shambling to fulfil unwise drug deals they had made with their faerie mistress. Miiri of Earth pulled the lever on the overhead crane Hallie had moved into position and dropped nine tons of iron piping onto the giants’ heads from two hundred feet. Then she lowered the wrecking ball and started to give vent to her feelings. The Abyssal Greye and the Ghouls Under Gothametropolis broke up through the graveyard soil of the cellars and fell upon the undead. “But only rip them to pieces,” called Urthula. “I am not putting any of that in my mouth!” Oxalis hurled aside the ironmongery that had downed the other defenders and came straight at Visionary again. “Nobody can stop me!” he roared, and his human mask slipped a little more. “Nothing and nobody!” “I’ll see your Hulk,” Visionary told Camellia, “and raise you a hemigod.” Donar landed on Oxalis harder than the iron bars had fallen from the crane. “Ho, fell svartalfeth!” the Oldmanson called, his face darkened with fury. “Let bloody vengeance be wreaked for the nonce, yea most verily!” Visionary ran in at Camellia. “What he said.” Mr Epitome finished pounding Kwatrain’s face into the floor and reacted to the next attack. Anvil Man and Savagetooth raced in on the man of might. Epitome took out the floor and tumbled with them through the various layers of Flask Tower down to the basements. Then he hit Savagetooth with Anvil Man. Thresh, Atomic Bumpkin, Huntingjustice Deathmarrow and Gromm the Living Flatulence dropped down to join in the fight. “Oh, this is getting silly,” noted Citizen Z from the shadows. “They’re all clearly resisting arrest. Time for some tough love.” She slipped out of the building then thumbed the remote control to the detonators she’d attached to the main support beams of the building. Flask Towers toppled down on itself like a house of cards. “I guess the Lynchpin must have had some kind of tower self-destruct mechanism that got accidentally triggered during the battle,” she rehearsed to herself as she watched the dust settle. The fighting had gone house-to-house in Mangatown and Medium-Sized Italy, with ninjas, robots, ogres, battle-armoured cyborgs, faeries, supervillains, and the occasional stray zombie that hadn’t been sucked up by the Shoggoth brawling across the city. Akiko Masamuna and the Psychic Samurai led a counter-assault from the north, Akiko in her pink body-armour, Chiaki merely relying on precision and discipline to survive an encounter with three dragonriders. Sir John de Jaboz, Princess Lileblanche, Prince Kiivan, and Ohanna of Raael fought their way in from the east, following the trail of slime left by an angry incoming elder being. Their encounter with a squad of Ass-Raping Ninjas of the Ever-Active Hand was brief and unsatisfying for the ninjas. Westwards, towards the river, clouds of debris dust and the sounds of demolition rose over the furore. More explosions boomed over the water from Gothametropolis York. Amidst all the chaos came the skirl of police sirens as Paradopolis’ Finest returned to the field, dealing with the weirdness by handcuffing pretty much anything that was lying unconscious and dragging it into paddy wagons. And at the centre of the conflict, a handful of Legionnaires stood inside a ring of fallen adversaries and continued to fight; outnumbered, outgunned, but never outclassed. “Bring ‘em on,” shouted Trickshot, reaching into one of his harness pods to decompress another quiver of arrows from their size-changing particle container. “Line up in order o’ sleazyness an’ we’ll kick your butt as soon as we get to you.” “Is it too late to come onto your side?” Jean-Pierre, the villain with the combined abilities of the French nation, asked Dancer plaintively as she kicked him in the Cote d’Azurs. “Lee,” called Al B., “are you getting anything from the LL satellite feeds to suggest there’s any end to this in sight?” “Well, the Lynchpin’s tower has just collapsed,” the Librarian reported from his console at the Moon Public Library, “but on the other hand there are some giant mushrooms rampaging towards your position.” “Cool!” enthused CrazySugarFreakBoy!” Do we know if they’re psychotropic? Never mind, I’ll go find out!” Yuki Shiro faced down the latest attack squad, a human mercenary force with illegal Battleworld meta-weapons. “What you have to ask yourselves, boys,” she told them, “is not ‘Am I feeling lucky’ but ‘Is she looking grumpy?’ And right now, you couldn’t measure my patience with an electron microscope.” The thugs dropped their armament and ran. “This isn’t going to stop them,” Dancer worried. “We’re holding the line -barely – but its too confusing, too many people everywhere. Too many civilians. I can’t keep shifting the probabilities of them being hurt forever. We need…” There was a crack of thunder that shattered windows across the city and a bolt of lightning slammed into the ruins of the Willow. Then came a downpour of rain so torrential that it nearly flattened everybody to the pavements. Battle became impossible. Everybody ran for shelter. “We need that,” grinned Dancer. “Thanks, big guy!” Mr Oxalis drew upon the store of souls deep inside him and burned them off to fuel his strength some more. He caught his foe’s incoming baseball bat with one open palm and lashed out with his other fist to shatter the godling’s nose. Donar responded by catching the arm that restrained his weapon and wrenching it out of its socket. “It twas good enough for Grendel tis good enough for thee!” growled the hemigod of thunder. “I eat minor wannabe deities for breakfast,” scorned Oxalis. “Except they catch in my teeth.” “I canst solve that,” offered Donar, headbutting the giant faerie right in the mouth, sending dentistry scattering in all directions. “I’m going to use your skull as my chamberpot!” promised the fey enforcer. “Corspses hath no need of bathroom furniture,” the Ausgardian told him. “And see, thou art a corpse for the nonce!” The Mjalcolm caught Oxalis on the side of the head, sending it clean off the giant’s shoulders and splattering it across the remaining walls of the Willow. Then the arctic winter clamped down on the wounded demigod, encasing him in tons of numbing primal ice until he too failed to take an interest in any more of the battle.” In the Lair Mansion operations room, two terrible old man planned the reclamation of a city. “This technology is amazing,” admitted Commissioner Don Graham. “Far superior to anything we have at police HQ. Maybe better than they have at SPUD.” “Oh, young Bautista supplies SPUD with some good stuff,” Sir Mumphrey Wilton agreed, “but we get to test it out first.” “Yes,” winced Asil. “Can you patch me through with Officer Delaney down in Mangatown?” the Commissioner asked. “I’m pretty sure one of these buttons does it,” agreed Katarina Allen, the newbie on the communications console. “Even with most of the system’s capacity locked up with… other tasks. Yes, here we are. Go ahead.” “Delaney, this is Graham. How’s the policing?” “Sir, there’s a lot of ninjas and robots and things objecting because uniformed cops aren’t supposed to go and arrest them when they’re fighting their private little war. Also quite a few fairies have been shocked to discover they’re not immune to our whitethorn nightsticks.” “I’ve been working the Paradopolis beat all my life,” the Commissioner explained as the others in the Operations Room looked at him. “Carry on, then, Delaney. And make sure everybody who’s arrested gets delivered to the Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises building in Gothametropolis, into the custody of NTU-150.” “Sir?” “There are security issues at the Safe just now,” Graham explained. “The Lair Legion has made alternative arrangements.” “In other words, young Bautista and Miss Framlicker are shuntin’ the prisoners to be held by the Knights Improbablar in Swordrealm,” muttered Mumphrey with satisfaction. “Let’s see Edward Gramayre and his cronies Obedience Brand ‘em there!” Camellia of the Fey towered over Visionary, cold and radiant, as beautiful as death. She flicked Sjelknuser aside with casual ease, encased the battered Yo in the same ice that had captured Donar, caught the incoming wrecking ball that Miiri aimed at her and overturned the giant crane with one deft flick. “Did you imagine you could really stand against me, fake man?” she sneered reaching out for Visionary. “Did you really think he would come in against you without stacking the odds so he would?” demanded the Faerie Queene. She burst over the icescape like the coming spring, as radiant in her greens and golds as Camellia was in her silver-whites. “T-titania!” shuddered the faerie upstart. “But how…” Then her eyes narrowed. “The data-sprite!” She gestured again and Hallie’s back-up HED was also smothered in primal frost. “How dare you try to use your electronic glamours against me? How dare you?”” “How dare you steal our baby?” demanded Visionary, still advancing through the tempest. “How dare you make us think she was dead? How do you think you will ever walk away from what you’ve done?” Camellia sneered at the lone Regular. “You have no power,” she scorned. “Narratively, this is the best possible time,” Quoth the Raven of Destiny observed. “Visionary really has a positive genius for making the villains utter stupid boasts that create wonderful plot pivot points, doesn’t he?” “Nobody can evoke contempt and a feeling of absolute superiority better,” agreed Fleabot. “Are you sure we’ve deactivated all the traps and snares round this thing?” “All I can see,” Quoth replied. “If you die horribly when you break into Camellia’s vault then you’ll know I missed one.” “Thank you. Well here goes.” The micro-robot designed as an espionage tool burrowed through the last of the mirthril-metal shell of the glamour-concealed strongroom in the deep cellars beneath the Willow. Almost all the other attacks had been designed to draw off or neutralise the defences for the place Cleone had known must be concealed there. Xander did his homework. Fleabot burst through into the chamber where Camellia kept the contracts she’d made that bound the souls she’d bought. There was also the shining ice-crystal vase that contained Camellia’s hidden essence. The robot flea looked around the chamber. “Wow,” he said. “Ooh, this is going to be interesting,” anticipated Quoth. “What are you going to do?” “I think I’m going to channel Kerry Shepherdson,” suggested Fleabot with a happy little chuckle. Hatman powered his way out of the wreckage of Flask Towers dragging the furious, struggling Lynchpin behind him. The capped crusader swapped over his Bulldozers hat for his Wildcats cap and dodged the next blow from the enraged crimelord. “What did you do?” demanded Harry Flask amidst the ruins of the symbol of his empire. “I’ll kill you!” Hatman caught the pudgy pugilist’s arm and scored that flabby chest with his claws. “You’re not above the law,” he told the Lynchpin of Crime. “Just beneath contempt.” The Lynchpin hammered another concrete-crumpling fist at Jay Boaz’ nose, but Hatman was too fast for him. “Will you stop playing with the fat man so we can get on?” demanded Mr Epitome, climbing from the wreckage with a supervillain dangling from each arm. “We don’t have time to waste on yesterday’s man.” Hatman balled his fist and slammed it angrily into Flask’s face, channelling weeks of frustration into his blow. He felt his knuckles crack as he fractured the fat man’s skull and dropped the crimelord like a couple of tons of lard. “You both okay?” Citizen Z asked, hovering down on her anti-gravity Z-sled. “I was starting to get worried. I guess the Lynchpin must have had some kind of tower self-destruct mechanism that got accidentally triggered during the battle.” In the distance the Gothametropolis police sirens screamed nearer, bringing the Special Weapons and Tactics troops to arrest the terrorists who had attacked their rich and powerful native son. They were going to be too late. “Step away from my vassel!” demanded Akiko Masamune, power-leaping over the ruins of the Willow nightclub and landing between Visionary and Camellia. The world’s pinkest crimelord carried an ancient katana and was clad from head to toe in pastel combat armour. “Visionary is under the protection of my house.” Camellia glanced at the newcomer. “Another quarter heard from,” she scorned, gesturing to render Akiko immobile in her technological second skin. “You really must be getting desperate, Akiko, to have to rely on creatures such as this.” Akiko’s sigil-warded battle armour shrugged off the faerie magics. Akiko slashed her blade across Camellia’s perfect face, sending the faerie reeling. “Return the child to Visionary and surrender,” the Yakusa clan-lady warned. “Or die.” Camellia screamed her fury, sending lethal spears of ice towards Akiko. The Psychic Samurai leaped from the shadows to drag her principal aside. The two of them somehow twisted away from the razor ice-blades but were captured in the sudden freeze that coalesced around them. Camellia struggled to rise, and then she was beautiful again. Visionary was stood over her. “Where’s Naari?” he demanded. “You’re straining over and over to prevent yourself from being beaten. You can’t hold off everybody forever. Yo, Donar, Urthula, Greye, Miiri, Akiko, Chiaki, Hallie, Cleone… I haven’t even called in Dancer and Johnstantine and Kerry and spiffy and Enty and Hatty and Mumphrey and all the others yet. So where’s my girl?” Camellia’s ice-radiant face twisted into something awful. “Where’s your girl? She’s where you’ll never find her! She’s my girl now, in the Far Land, and when she grows she will bring me all I ever dreamed of. A child of a Chronicler of Stories, of the founder of the Improbable College, born of an alien courtesan, gestated by a ghost of electrons linked to the power of the Celestians? How could such a creature not claim the throne of the Faerie Queene? And I shall be behind her, guiding her steps, until all power is mine!” “So Naari’s in Faerie?” Visionary checked. “And so shall my triumph be, foolish mortal!” “Or not,” answered Visionary. “Fleabot?” “On it,” came back the robot flea’s reply. And down beneath the layers of winter there was a sudden summer flash of flame. And then a small part of Paradopolis’ western shore re-enacted the end of the ice age. Visionary’s last view of Camellia was of the fey creature being dragged out of the mortal realm, her spirit being picked and torn at by the thousands of souls she’d held in bondage. She was screaming. “You have no right to hold me,” complained the Lynchpin of Crime. “This arrest is illegal.” “Tell it to the judge when you’re back from Swordrealm,” Mumphrey told the dishevelled fat man. “What, you thought you could push and the Legion wouldn’t push back? You thought our warnings were meaningless? Well think again, sirrah.” He turned away. “Get this blaggard out of my sight. Nice work, Mr Boaz.” “It is a victory,” Akiko Masamune agreed, “but only a brief one. The Lynchpin of Crime forged powerful allies in these last few months who will not allow him to be assaulted without retribution.” “Bring ‘em on,” shrugged Yuki Shiro. “We’re done with sitting quietly. We’ve drawn the line. If they cross it we’ll meet ‘em.” “In the meantime there are all kinds of opportunities,” twinkled Frankie of the Zoot Suit Gang. “We’re already planning a new speakeasy, and Velma Klein’s not going to like it one little bit.” He looked speculatively at the cyborg P.I. and the Psychic Samurai. “You know there’s always room for two cool dames with the Zooters,” he offered. “If the LL gig ever gets boring I’ll get back to you,” grinned Yuki. “But it’s not looking like it’s going to bore me any time soon.” “I’m sorry,” Ebony of Nubilia spoke down Voodoo Vicaress’ mobile phone, “LeVeau M’Tumbe isn’t able to take your call right now on account of being scolded by a Shoggoth. So perhaps you’d better pass the word, Morgosa, that your little Underwar adventure is over. I mean it. The Shoggoth’s lost all patience and I’m not far behind him. So just tell the forces of the night to back off and spook quietly, because if I have to come after you I won’t be slapping wrists and I won’t be coming alone. Word to the wise. Good night.” “There are ways to get to Faerie, despite the precautions Camellia has laid to prevent anyone finding your child,” Cleone Swanmay told Visionary, Miiri, and Hallie. “Even in this mundane modern age there are gateways for those who look. Some are strange and difficult but…” “I do not care how strange or difficult they are,” interrupted Miiri. “I will go to the ends of the universe to find and rescue Naari.” “We’ll have to go further than that,” Hallie judged. “But that won’t stop us.” “I can open the way for you, I believe,” Cleone told them, “but I am exiled from the Mythlands, and may not guide you beyond that. And you will need a guide.” “No problem,” Flapjack told them as he lurched past. “I’ve temped for a few ogre giants and stuff in my younger days. And there’s a couple of nymphs I could stand to call on again. I’ll go an pack some sandwiches, shall I?” “We knew the Lair Legion would push back at some point,” Edward Gramayre noted as he reviewed the reports on the troubles in Paradopolis. “If push back is a euphemism for taking out the Lynchpin of Crime, shutting down the Underwar, eliminating Camellia of the Fey, sending Garrick weeks into the future, murdering Hector Manchester, and dropping your protégé Black into a cosmic singularity, then yes, we knew that,” snorted Dr Vicki Farmer. “All peripheral,” Gramayre replied. “The Legion’s last hurrah. They’ve shot their bolt now.” He pointed to the timetable that lay before the Committee to Implement Special Resolution 1066. “Tomorrow the Freedom and Patriotism Act becomes law. You know what’s going to happen.” “I know what’s supposed to happen,” Harmanda Barriere objected, “but…” “There are clever ways of stopping clever plans,” Gramayre said, “but brutal overwhelming force will win the day eventually. The lesson of Grant versus Lee.” “And a very high butcher’s bill,” noted Rex Regent. “Let’s hope so,” answered Edward Gramayre. “The word is given. Take the Lair Legion down.” Next Issue: The rogue nation-state of Badripoor needs bringing into line, even if that involves nuking it till it glows. The only thing in the way of some very serious peace-keeping activities are spiffy, Banjoooo, the Idiom, and a bunch of Junior Legionnaires and their amazing superfriends – if they can find a moment away from their bickering and romances to try and save the day. Untold Tales of the Fall of Badripoor, coming soon. And After That: The penultimate act of the SP 1066 storyline begins. Three hundred Obedience-Branded metahumans, four hundred Sentinoids, the Machine Shop, the US armed forces, and Peter von Doom versus the beleaguered Lair Legion. The beginning of the end in Untold Tales of the Siege of the Lair Mansion Our regular footnotes are on holiday and will return refreshed and renewed after a short break. If anyone else wants to try some footnotes I can always edit them in 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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