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Post By The Hooded Hood offers a change of pace and a change of format Sun Jun 04, 2006 at 12:51:14 pm EDT |
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#274: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Dreams and Fantasies - Parts One to Seven COMPLETE! | |
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#274: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Dreams and Fantasies The Hooded Hood's Homepage of DoomWho's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse Previously: The Lair Legion has prevented the implementation of compulsory registration and Obedience Branding of superheroes by exposing the plot to the general public. The cost of victory was high, with Uhuna of the Abhumans sacrificing her life to make it possible for CrazySugarFreakBoy! to break the Obedience Brands. Now the world knows about the Parody Master’s deadline for surrender and how a secret conspiracy tried to neutralise Earth’s metahumans to appease him. Mr Epitome has taken temporary control of the government of the USA. Sir Mumphrey Wilton has been appointed as Commander in Chief of a combined Earth defence force. Meanwhile, Visionary has taken a party of rescuers into Faerie to search for his missing bay daughter Naari. The Librarian has been relieved of his position at the Lunar Public Library and has been summoned before the Governors at the great Central Library in a distant star system. Tie-ins to this chapter include: The Quest for Naari: Disarmed by Visionary The Quest for Naari: The Fellowship by Visionary Badripoor Soap by Dancer Adventures in Parodyverse: The Awakening by Jason Images by Visionary Across the turnstile, sunset England became something stranger; a sweet water meadow leading up to the edge of a forest. The skies were a rich dappled purple orange and far overhead an eagle wheeled. “Well,” Con Johnstantine said to the rest of the travellers, “Welcome to Gramayre.” “Gramayre,” worried Ruby Waver. “I thought we were supposed to be heading into Faerie, to find and rescue Visionary’s kidnapped baby?” “Gramayre’s a fancy name for one aspect of Faerie,” Ruby’s companion growled. “It’s mythic England. Yore.” “Fairyland has lots of names,” Hallie noted, drawing upon her extensive research; the part that hadn’t involved MMRPGs. “The Far Country, the Many Coloured Land, Tir Na Nog, the… what the hell am I wearing?.” “That’s a new one on me, luv,” snorted Johnstantine, reaching for his cigarettes. “Oooh,” grinned Flapjack excitedly. “It was one of those kinds of portals.” “What kind of portals?” asked Vizh. “The kind that translate you into myth,” Tanner grumped. “Like this.” Tanner’s clothing has changed. Instead of the crumpled suit and stained raincoat he was wearing tight pants and various other straps of leather over his weathered hairy pelt. He had blue paint on his face and chest. “Somebody is going to die for this,” the lycanthrope warned. “By Crom,” Ruby added with a grin. It was true. Almost everyone’s outfits had been modified by the gateway to Gramayre. Hallie was still aghast at her own changes. “Why am I in a pixie outfit?” she demanded, trying to get the short pleated and pointed skirt to actually stay down. But pulling it lower raised all kinds of problems at the other end of the strapless outfit. “And how the hell am I supposed to keep this up? Magic?” “No problem keeping things up with that outfit, darling,” letched Flapjack. He hoisted the too-small wrinkled hose that more or less covered his lower portions so they covered almost half his buttocks. “Very traditional, Faerie. Likes its themes, it does.” He sniffed the tunic he was now wearing. “Ah, smells like they haven’t washed it since last time I was here. Happy days.” Ruby Waver tore her gaze away from Tanner to note her own gypsy blouse and peasant skirt. “Well, it could have been a lot worse,” she admitted. “Although I could have used an outfit that included underwear.” “Hey, you can borrow my hose if you like,” Flapjack offered, rummaging inside them. “Just let me get my pack of sandwiches out of here first.” “It could be worse,” agreed Asil in horror. She was wearing a blue gingham dress and ankle socks, and her plaited hair was tied with ribbons. “I always kind of like that movie,” George Gedney admitted, blushing a little. “I always felt sorry for the tin man.” “Shut up, Harry,” snapped Asil, readjusting her age back from twelve to her customary eighteen. That had even more interesting effects on her outfit though. “Harry?” blinked George, adjusting his circular glasses before rummaging under his black school gown to check his temporal chronometer. “What do you mean, Harry?” “What’s happening exactly?” demanded Visionary. “People are changing clothes. Is this some sort of Faerie custom that… where are my pants?” Miiri, who had already chosen her chainmail bikini and red cloak before entering the far realm, looked over at the possibly-fake man and giggled. Visionary still had his trademark yellow coat and green sweater, but now he also had a big furry loincloth covering his otherwise bare lower half. “Ooh,” admired Flapjack, “that could be genuine uncured mountain yeti. Rare and itchy at the same time. I’d have to sniff it more closely to be absolutely certain.” “As a general party rule,” Vizh told him, “no sniffing of anybody’s lower bodywear.” Hallie had another shock coming. “Wait a moment! Oh no! Quick, pinch me! Not you, Flapjack or Johnstantine. Asil, help me out here.” Asil put down her wicker basket and helped the artificial intelligence out as requested. “You’re solid!” “It’s not a force field,” worried Hallie. “I’m human again! Flesh and blood.” “Yeah,” Flapjack approved. “Breath a bit deeper and we’ll all be able to see for ourselves.” “Faerie translates items of technology to their fey counterparts,” Tanner pointed out. “Didn’t Johnstantine warn you about this?” Of all the party, Con Johnstantine was the only one that was completely unchanged, leaning against a tree in his shabby trenchcoat, lighting up a cigarette. “Hey, don’t blame me,” the irritating Englishman shrugged. “I’m not the quester. It’s not my imagination the Land is locking onto to translate travellers into their local counterparts.” “Are you saying this is all Visionary’s fault?” asked Hallie, flushing greenly. “Look on the bright side, Hallie,” Fleabot snickered. “You’ve had plenty of experience of being a sprite even before you got the Tinkerbell outfi…” And then he fell silent as he completely wound down. “Clockwork,” George observed. “You have a clockwork robotic flea.” “So this place isn’t all bad,” Asil noted. “Perhaps we should bury him here until its time for us to leave?” “He just needs winding up,” Tanner said. “Give him to Johnstantine. He’s the expert.” It was Miiri who eventually turned the key on the metal flea’s back and got Fleabot working again. “Well this totally sucks,” he complained. “Not absolutely totally,” Asil decided. “I can carry him in my hose if you like,” Flapjack offered. “Even though it’s pretty packed down there.” Ruby dared a glance at the mis-shapen silhouette, “What have you got down there?” she made the mistake of asking. “Apart from your sandwiches.” “Lunchmeat,” grinned the hunchback. “Want some?” “It’ll be getting dark soon,” Johnstantine pointed out. “Hunting time for quite a lot of bad things. We might want to think about being somewhere else.” “I like the dark,” Tanner pointed out. “I am a bad thing.” “Where should we go?” Visionary asked Johnstantine. The Englishman shook his head. “Nuh-uh. Doesn’t work that way, squire. It’s your quest. You have to decide.” “Me?” fretted Visionary. “Nobody said I had to be the hero. I just want to get Naari back.” “You’re heading into another dimension to rescue your lost child,” Ruby pointed out. “That does kind of meet the definition of hero.” “I thought it just met the definition of dad,” the possibly fake man admitted. Johnstantine shook his head. “You’re the hero and Hallie and Miiri are the eye candy and Asil and George are the innocents and Fleabot and Flapjack are the comic retainers and Ruby’s the witch and Tanner’s the bloody great hairy thing. So it’s your call.” “And what are you, Mr Johnstantine?” Hallie asked coldly. Tanner told her. “Um,” blushed Asil, uncovering her ears, “which way would you like us to go, Visionary?” Vizh thought about all the stories he’d read in preparation for this. “Well, could everybody check their pockets for treasure maps or magic beans or suchlike?” he asked. “Pockets?” challenged Hallie. “You think this thing has pockets?” “No,” Johnstantine grinned. “It’s pretty clear it doesn’t have pockets.” “But there is always somewhere to conceal needle-thin houri daggers on any outfit, however skimpy,” Miiri pointed out. “So really you should remove your hand from there, Mr Johnstantine.” Nobody turned out to have a scroll on them with a big X and ‘Naari is here’ written on it. So that was the end of Plan A. “Okay,” pressed on Visionary, “in that case we’re going to need more information. Directions. Where could we go to get information?” Tanner picked up a knot of acorns that was nailed to the side of the turnstyle they’d crossed. “How about the Faerie Fayre?” he suggested. “This is a waysign, showing there’s going to be one.” “A fayre?” George said. “Surely there’d be lots of chances to get information there.” “And lots of chances to get into trouble,” noted Johnstantine. “Sounds good.” “Right then,” decided Visionary with a look at Hallie and Miiri. “We’ll find somewhere safe to make camp for the night, then we’ll go to this fayre thing. Okay? That’s what we’ll do.” “As you command, o glorious leader,” Fleabot mocked, just before Asil kicked him in the mainspring. The watchers in the woods scampered away to tell the Mother that strangers had come in answer to the prophecy. “Is it my imagination,” asked Dancer, “or did we just take over the planet?” Hatman dropped the last load of mansion debris into the industrial skip and pulled off his garbage man’s cap. “We didn’t take over the planet,” he denied. “It wasn’t like that. We only made sure that people got choices by stopping the out-of-control government types from using unfair tactics.” “Sure, we took over the planet,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! grinned, bouncing past to drop more Sentinoid armour in the trash pile. Then his smile faded. “At a cost.” “Uhuna wus a trooper,” Trickshot agreed, piloting fragments of war robot into the hopper. “As for all those Obedience Branded villains that got set free, we’d clobbered most of ‘em before CSFB! broke control on ‘em. We’ll find the rest.” “And MetaWatch is being dismantled,” Dancer added with satisfaction. “Now Gunther and Indy aren’t branded they’re tracking down the remnants.” “I hope so,” admitted Hatman. “This whole scenario was designed to weaken us and the planet for the Parody Master’s invasion. We have to recognise that it has at least partially succeeded.” “You’re not obsessing about those simulation combats where old PM wipes us all out in less than half an hour are you?” Dreamcatcher Foxglove chided the capped crusader. “The Hellraisers could wipe us in five minutes and we whupped their asses in the end.” “Right,” agreed Dancer. “So chin up, Jay. That’s not the attitude we want in a new glorious leader.” Jay Boaz flushed. “We haven’t taken the vote yet,” he pointed out. “I don’t want to presume and…” “Fashion Accessory would be so upset if you didn’t become boss-man,” Yuki teased. “She’s so looking forward to sitting on your knee and taking dictation.” Hatman crushed a wrecked anti-aircraft cannon into the bin. “But there have to be repercussions to what we were forced to do,” Dancer persisted. “Things can’t ever be the same again. The governments of the world will never forgive us for showing them up like this, even if we somehow survive the Parody Master. Although I was very proud of Mr Papadapoplis and Mac and the others.” “Just so as folks know we’re the good guys, taking names and kickin’ evil in the toucas,” Trickshot declared. “They were cheering us on the streets this morning. I could get used to that!” “Fame is fleeting,” the Shoggoth contributed, slowly secreting the villains he’d swallowed up earlier. “They wrote quite a few books about me, and nobody ever reads them now except when they want to go insane.” “It’s nice to be appreciated,” Hatman admitted, “but we mustn’t let it go to our heads. We do the job whatever. Stop saluting, Dream.” “Just inspired by your words, o glorious soon-to-be-elected leader,” CSFB! retorted. “Mumphrey has his work cut out fer him, alright,” Trickshot conceded. “Less than a week ta pull the planet together, get ‘em to decide ta face up to the Parody Master, then find a way to, you know, not get fried fighting him.” Dancer shuddered as she remembered that she was one of the conqueror’s demanded brides. “I’ve had guys go to extremes to get me on a date before, but nobody’s threatened to destroy my planet. Well, not people with the actual power to do it.” “We need to gather our forces,” Hatman said. “We need the Gangbusters, those FMRC guys that turned out to be heroes, the GloPCrAp…” “Especially Zvesti Zdrugo,” smirked CrazySugarFreakBoy! “The Detonator Hippos,” Dancer added, “and the Sea Monkeys, the Racoon People, the Vesalian Apes…” “We need to recruit from the other side too,” Yuki added. “B.A.L.D., Factor X, HERPES, the Heckfire Club, the Low Evolutionary. Don’t look at me like that, Hatman, you know I’m right.” “Human factions puzzle me,” the Shoggoth commented. “I’m not even sure why you want to go around in discrete cellular blobs inside a bag of dead organic matter anyhow.” “We have to find a way to make this all work, Hatty,” Danger contested. “We’ve come too far and paid too high a price to baulk now.” “All that terror and pain and loss,” agreed CrazySugarFreakBoy!. “And… Uhuna. Always Uhuna.” “Uhuna chose to sacrifice her life to save you,” Yuki Shiro argued. She tossed a battle tank turret overarm onto the pile. “If she hadn’t sucked the Obedience Brand programming into herself then you couldn’t have done whatever the hell it was you did to come back to life and shatter the Brands everywhere. She sacrificed herself to save the world.” “And the kid won’t be forgotten,” Trickshot vowed. “I dunno how she pulled it off, but she was one class act.” Yuki looked thoughtful. “Yes. There are a few mysteries unresolved after all this. Like how Uhuna extended her powers to do what she did, and how Liu Xi got the Celestian defences to work. When that girl wakes up I’ve got a few questions for her.” “Perhaps you should address them to the person standing behind you?” suggested the Manga Shoggoth. “After all, a sorcerer supreme should know a few things. Hello, Xander. Welcome back.”  They made camp in the shelter of a vast twisted tree, a little way back from a crossroads. Visionary wasn’t comforted by the signs on the crooked post where the paths met. “Which way is this faerie fayre?” he asked. “Is it towards Desolation Valley, Ogre’s Swamp, Bloodthorn Forest, or Dragon’s Gorge?”“Ignore the signs,” Tanner told him. “The locals just put those up for fun.” “So there is no Dragon’s Gorge?” George checked. “Oh, sure there is, mate,” Johnstantine assured him. “Just not in the direction that sign says. Probably.” “There’s more of these nuts and acorns,” Fleabot pointed out, trying to suppress his tick. “Either there’s been a squirrel art contest or that’s the path we’ll need tomorrow.” “Can anyone help get a fire lit?” Asil demanded, crouching over the pile of twigs she’d gathered and scraping flints together. “I know now why it took the human race about a hundred thousand years to develop fire.” Flapjack reached into his tights and poured a few drops from some kind of hip flask – or in his case groin flask – onto the wood. It exploded into flame. “A bit of Uncle Mortimer’s home brew,” the hunchback explained to the party. “Anybody want to try some?” There were no takers. “Maybe later when I want to polish my shell,” suggested Fleabot. Tanner vanished into the forest and returned later with a brace of hares to cook over the camp fire. “I hope you avoided the talking ones,” Johnstantine told him. “Those always give you the worst kind of belches. It’s like walking around with Tourette’s Syndrome the next day.” “There was a big angry shadowfetch out there as well,” Tanner reported. “Was.” Miiri took charge of the dinner. She proved remarkably adept at preparing food in the wild. She said it was part of her training. “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” Asil remembered the old proverb. “You’ll have to teach me how to do that, Miiri.” “Actually, that’s not the best way to a man’s heart,” the Caphan love slave told Lisa’s clone. “The very best way is to do this…” Asil blushed furiously as Miiri explained. George blushed furiously and suddenly had to head into the forest for a toilet trip. “Yeah, that’d do it, luv,” Johnstantine approved. “You can take second watch with me.” “I do not think you would wish to take a watch with me, Mr Johnstantine,” Miiri told the irritating Englishman. “Don’t worry, darling. I’ve avoided worse than daggers in my day.” “I don’t think you understand,” Hallie explained maliciously. “Miiri has been trained since infancy to read men’s body language, to get into their minds and understand their needs.” She smiled unpleasantly at the rumpled Cockney. “She’s one of the few people on the planet who can read you like a book, Con.” Johnstantine looked worried. “Um, maybe I’ll keep watch with Asil.” “You can keep watch with me,” Visionary told him. “And Ruby can go first,” Tanner added. “With Hallie.” “With her?” Ruby and Hallie objected together. “Heh. That’s going to be a…” Fleabot began; but then his spring wound down so whatever barb he’d been about to offer was lost to posterity. “This place isn’t so bad,” Hallie noted. Mr Epitome walked out of the White House by the side gate. The press were all gathered on the lawn for Lisa’s Q & A. The only person waiting for Dominic Clancy was a pretty brunette with a 4x4. “Need a lift, Mr ex-President?” Katarina Allen asked the man of might. “I wasn’t President,” Epitome told her. “I was just acting as Commander in Chief for forty-eight hours until we could determine who in the line of succession wasn’t Obedience Branded. “Which was all of them according to the various press statements every politician in the country has put out today,” Kat added. “So how does it feel to not be the most powerful man in the world any more?” “Liberating,” Clancy admitted. “That was a very constitutionally-questionable thing we did. But I couldn’t see any other way.” “You’ll always be the most powerful man in the world to me, Dominic,” Kat teased him. “So what do you do the day after you stop running America?” “Well, first I check in to see if Harper has any more word on what happened to Glory and Badripoor. Then I need to write up everything that happened, submit it to the judicial review that’ll determine the rights and wrongs of what just happened. Governor Rashoman is heading the enquiry and she’s a stickler for detail. Then I need to check on Contessa Natalia’s reactivation of SPUD using the Lazarus Codes that overrode the system kill orders she sent out previously. We’ll need the helicarrier against the Parody Master’s invasion forces. Then…” Kat laid a calming hand on Epitome’s chest. “You know, they say power is a major aphrodisiac,” she noted.  The mist rose up from the tarn and carpeted the forest floor where the travellers were huddled in a ring round the campfire. The faerie forest was at once both familiar and alien. The two women on watch remained vigilant, not speaking to each other until an hour since George Gedney started a rhythmic snoring,“The danger’s out there,” Ruby said at last, pointing round into the darkness of the wild wood. “Really?” Hallie asked coolly. She’d not stopped staring at the former Lair Legion administrator during the whole of her watch. “I know where danger is.” Ruby snorted. “You’re not going to get over that, are you? I make one mistake while my heart’s broken and…” “And then go off and sell a sleazy bunch of lies about the Lair Legion to all the tabloids,” accused the now-human artificial intelligence. “You sued Nats for sexual harassment and betrayed the trust the team had put in you.” “What, you’ve never done anything stupid for love?” Ruby accused. “Apart from the things you make up for your book?” Hallie shot back. “No, of course not. Never. Not at all.” “But you had a kid with Visionary.” “No. Miiri had a kid with Visionary, and I surrogated it when Miiri was cursed by a faerie bitch that… Why the hell am I explaining this to you for your next Enquirer article?” Ruby blanched. “Listen, Tinkerbell, that’s all over. I came clean, did the full confession, signed everything Lisa wanted. I paid out all my savings as compensation and I went away and never came back. Now I live in a cruddy little walk-up apartment in the worst part of Gothametropolis and I pull twelve hour shifts in the world’s most dangerous laundry. What else do you want?” Hallie relented a little. “It’s a start. You caused a lot of trouble.” “It was all going fine until Bill decided he preferred Abhuman sex princesses,” the ex-micro-celebrity complained. “He wasn’t exactly seducing an innocent farmgirl lost in the big bad city though, was he?” Hallie pointed out. “As per chapter three of your kiss and tell biography.” “So what? That makes it okay for him to cheat on me? Just for once I decided to try with a nice guy, a bit of a dweeb but nice. A hero. But because it’s Ruby then its okay to use her then throw her aside like a used Kleenex?” Hallie shuddered at that mental image. “Okay, I accept that sometimes when you’ve given your heart to a hero and then they forget all about you – sometimes literally – it might make you want to pulse forty thousand volts through his genitals and start a little bit of unpatriotic flag burning right there on his All-American hide, but… Er, I mean Nats didn’t treat you like that. He didn’t start his affair with Uhunalura until after you’d dragged him through the mud.” Ruby looked stricken. “He didn’t?” “”No. In fact if it wasn’t for what you did they’d probably never have got drunk and spent the night together anyhow. Well, maybe the Hooded Hood arranged some of that stuff, too.” “The Hooded Hood could have manipulated me too,” Ruby suggested. “It’s easy to blame the Hood,” Hallie retorted. “Although admittedly that’s mostly because he is to blame for stuff if you dig deep enough.” “Nats dumped Uhuna eventually as well,” Ruby pointed out. She stared into the fire. “When we get back I should go talk with her. She’s probably the best friend I have right now, the cheap conniving little tart.” The redhead shuddered at the thought and changed the subject. “So, you and Vizh then. What’s the story there?” “Like I’m going to tell you,” Hallie snapped. “And there is no story anyhow. And even if there was, there’s other stuff in the way. Baggage. But there is no baggage or other stuff because there is no story. Shut up.” “Right,” smirked Ruby. “What about you and Conan the Barbarian then?” challenged the unartificial intelligence. “What’s happening there?” The laundry girl looked over to where the hairy shape of Tanner slept lightly in a half-crouch. “He’s my co-worker. At the laundry. And that’s all. He’s usually a lot more crumpled t-shirt and a lot less leather fetish magazine. And a lot less hairy.” “You know that, then,” Hallie surmised. “Not the way you’re implying. Only because I have a lunar calender.” “Johnstantine said something about him being a werewolf.” “What, now you’re writing a book? Or is this just for your creepy know-all files?” “Oh please,” complained Fleabot from somewhere in Vizh’s bedroll, “Please let us get attacked by trolls sometime soon.” The sleek black Audit Ship alighted on Lunar Public Library Landing Pad Milton and powered down. Senior Auditor Blay-Kee cautiously came down the ramp, regarding the hologram of this station’s somewhat erratic A.L.F.RED major domo with trepidation. “By the authority vested in me by the Interplanetary Order of Librarians (hereinafter referred to as ‘the Order’), as sealed by the High Audit Council under license by the Governors and ratified…” he began. “Yeah, yeah, we got the message,” the image of the robot butler interrupted. “Supervisor Garth was nearly wetting himself from glee. Lee Bookman’s out, called back to headquarters, and you’re acting Librarian here while things get sorted out.” “Exactly,” Blay-Kee smirked, his toothbrush moustache wobbling in triumph. “Exactly. I knew I’d get him. I knew I’d get him in the end.” “This way,” A.L.F.RED told the Auditor. “Do you have any bags? Carry them yourself.” Blay-Kee glared at the retreating robot then sourly followed to the elevator that took him down into the Library itself. A.L.F.RED set the platform to take them straight to the Main Repository, the grand circular feature with its balconies and glass-and-iron dome and thousands of yards of old mahogany bookshelves. “This will all have to go,” the Auditor announced with glee. “Outdated. In need of modernisation.” And he glanced at A.L.F.RED to include him in that comment too. D.D., the Moon Public Library’s own artificial intelligence, was waiting by the stamping desk with four visitors. Blay-Kee ignored the others and launched straight into his speech to D.D. “By the authority vested in me by the Interplanetary Order of Librarians (hereinafter referred to as ‘the Order’), as sealed by the High Audit Council under license by the Governors and ratified under the seal of the Senior Librarian stamped on the seven thousand nine hundred and twelfth cycle of the ninth iteration of the galactic axial rotation since the founding of the said Order, I hereby place the Lunar Branch of the Intergalactic Library Service, Sector 7272, under my control, and assume the rank and titles of…” A.L.F.RED muttered the rank and titles he thought best suited the Senior Auditor. But it was the strangest of the visitors who actually interrupted Blay-Kee. “Excuse me,” Dr Blargelslarch told the would-be Librarian. “I’m the head of the Friends of the Lunar Public Library, and chair of the local management board.” “A Lovetoad,” Blay-Kee noted. “A long way from home, aren’t you?” “I’m a Frammistatian,” the noted scientist and archaeologist told the Auditor in tones he usually reserved for his dullest students. “I’m resident on Earth now. And I called a meeting for the board to discuss Article Two Hundred and Four of the IOL Charter today.” “Article Two Hundred and Four?” frowned Blay-Kee. “Did we bring a copy of this Charter thing?” Arnie J. Armbruster worried to his secretary Snookie. “Please tell me we brought a copy of this Charter.” Snookie Takahashi handed her employer the appropriate file. “We so need this job,” she reminded him. “Ah, yes,” AJA said authoratively, standing beside his clients and putting on his best legal voice, “Article Two Hundred and Four. A classic. Absolutely amazing Article, that one.” “Article Two Hundred and Four is obsolete,” Blay-Kee pointed out. “It hasn’t been invoked for over five thousand galactic axial rotations.” “It’s still in the Charter,” D.D. pointed out quickly. “So it’s still legal.” “It’s right here,” Arnie agreed, waving the document. “Article Two Hundred and Three requires a local indigenous sentient lifeform to give permission for the Interplanetary Order of Librarians to set up operations on a nearby moon,” Dr Blargelslarch lectured. “That permission was retrospectively granted by Earth when this Public Library was retconned in from its previous location due to the interference of the Hooded Hood. Article Two Hundred and Four…” “Which is the good one,” AJA intervened. “…states that the local Board of Friends of the Library may elect to revoke that permission and to declare the Library independent.” Blay-Kee was hopping from one foot to the other in irritation. “But that hasn’t been done for millennia,” he objected. “It’s not done. We don’t even have the forms for it anymore.” “That’s not our problem,” Blargelslarch pointed out. “We took a vote. We don’t want to lose Bookman. We don’t think the IOL has the best interests of this branch at heart. We’re not satisfied with the service. We’re revoking our permissions.” “The locals have voted to sever ties with the IOL,” D.D, reported. “This is no longer a Branch, so it no longer comes under your jurisdiction.” “Can I throw him out for trespassing?” A.L.F.RED checked with anticipation. “I have a whole Audit Fleet behind me,” Blay-Kee warned. “You won’t get away with this! I’ll confiscate everything. It’s IOL property. This robot and this AI are IOL property. These shelves are IOL property…” “We dispute that,” Snookie called. “Don’t we, Arnie?” “Very much,” AJA agreed. “We dispute everything. At a huge hourly rate.” “You won’t get away with this!” “Now now,” the fourth member of the delegation, another of the Friends of the Library intervened. “There’s no need for us all to get so worked up. Let’s all settle down with a drink and discuss this like civilised people, shall we? Auditor Blay-Kee has had a very long and difficult journey, and we’re not treating him with the respect he is due.” The Auditor was slightly mollified when the pretty blonde woman smiled at him. “Well, I have been abused,” he agreed, preening his moustaches. “We’ll see about that shortly,” promised the diabolical Dr Moo. “For now just drink your milk.”  Visionary found it hard to sleep. The forest seemed to be specially designed to place lumps and bumps to stick into him, and his special double-deluxe all-terrain sleeping bag had been translated by Faerie into a somewhat dubious-smelling bearskin. He strongly suspected the fleas from it had migrated to his loin-fur.In the end he gave up and relieved Asil to get some sleep. He joined Miiri on third watch. “Anything?” he asked. “Some rustling a while back. Nothing ate us,” the Caphan answered. “Well that’s always a plus on these expeditions,” Vizh agreed. Miiri was pale and beautiful in the low firelight. She watched with Visionary in silence for a while then asked, “Do you think we’ll find her? Naari, I mean? Do we really have a chance?” Visionary poked the embers. Red sparks shot up. “Of course. We’re here, aren’t we?” “Yes,” agreed Miiri. “But we would have come even if there was no chance.” “There’s a chance. We know Camellia sent our baby to this part of Faerie. We’ll ask around at this fayre. Somebody will know something. That’s the way these stories go.” “What about all the stories where the searchers fail? Where they get eaten by a dragon?” Miiri worried. “Nobody lives to tell those tales.” “We’ll find her, Miiri. We’ll bring her home.” The Caphan fell silent for a while. “What then?” she wondered. “What if… when we find Naari and return to Earth?” Visionary saw the worry in the ex-slave’s beautiful face. “What do you want to happen?” he asked her. “On my world, girl children are raised by the women, taught their skills and duties, until they become women themselves and are sold to a master,” Miiri explained. “But I do not want this for Naari.” “Well good,” Vizh assured her, “because I’m already dreading Naari’s dating years. I mean, having to worry about Kerry has been bad enough...” “There are many opportunities on Earth that would not be available to a girl-child on Caph,” Miiri observed. “Education. Careers. I would like Naari to have the opportunity to choose from them.” “You could move into the Lighthouse with me,” Visionary offered. “You and Naari could live there.” Miiri smiled at her old lover. “I am not going to marry you, Visionary. I have told you, I do not wish to bind myself again to any master, however kind. But for Naari…” “What do you want?” “My choice?” The beautiful green-skinned woman smiled as she savoured the word. “As an infant, I would choose to care for Naari with my slave-sisters. It will be our joy. And good practise, of course.” “Practise?” Vizh frowned. “Prince Kiivan has been securing his dynasty with some of our number,” Miiri smirked. “Ohanna arranged it.” She saw Vizh’s look becoming perplexed and moved on. “That is a Caphan matter. Do not worry about it. Our ways are not yours. You asked what I would choose for Naari. I would like to raise her on Lemuria until she is old enough to be apart from me. Then, when she is perhaps ten or eleven, I would like her to come to your House and be trained there. I have spoken with Hallie about this, and she has agreed to care for our daughter.” Vizh realised that the Caphan beauty really had thought this out. “Well, if that’s what you want. I get visiting rights, right?” “You will be a wonderful father,” Miiri assured him. Then she looked a little ashamed. “I am sorry I could not deliver you a proper son and heir.” Vizh frowned. “What do you mean?” Mirri turned aside. “Only one in five children born on Caph is male, of course, but every father hopes for sons that their House may wax strong. Naari is female, and she was… she was not born well.” Visionary remembered the scarred and withered baby that had resulted from Camellia’s curse on Miiri. “I couldn’t love Naari any more than I do no matter how she might have turned out different,” Vizh assured the Caphan. “Besides, if we find Naari and get her back to Dr Moo fast enough we can fix all that genetic damage. But even if it wasn’t fixed, she was a wonderful little girl, and I wouldn’t swap her for the universe.” “Not even for a son? I know you were hoping for a son.” “Not even for a son. I can buy Naari a train set.” Miiri waited until Visionary was sipping his coffee before adding, “Maybe Hallie will bear you a strong son sometime then.” “Does this seem weird to you?” ManMan asked his shopping companion. “It feels weird to me. Everybody’s just… waiting. Stunned at what they’ve learned. Waiting for something to happen. Wondering what comes next.” Donar looked around the quiet street market in the plaza between Off-Central Park and the Variety Theatre. It was usually a bustling place filled with vendor’s cries and cheap unconventional foodstuffs. Today everything was subdued. “People art shocked that they hath been deceived by their leaders,” the hemigod opined. “They knoweth now of the shadow of yon fell Parody Master, and must girdeth their loins for the struggle to come.” “Exactly how does one gird one’s loins?” ManMan wondered. “No, don’t tell me.” “I don’t recommend you girding you loins, Joe,” knifey, ManMan’s talking blade advised him. “One mis-gird and that’s the end of the Pepper line.” “Not that there seems to be much chance of the Pepper line going any further anyhow,” sighed ManMan. “I tried to talk to Alice now she’s de-branded but she’s not returning my calls. I must have left twenty messages on her answering machine.” “Tis wise to persist if thou dost seek thine true love,” Donar suggested. “Mine own courtship off the fair Princess Annj was indeed an epic tale that I must tell thee the rest of one day soon.” Knifey chuckled. “The answer tape was ‘Leave a message after the beep unless you’re Joe Pepper in which case rot and die!’” “Tis not an encouraging start,” admitted the thunder hemigod. “Mayhap if thou set fire to her thatch?” While ManMan was trying to work out of this was meant metaphorically or literally, the huge Ausgardian suddenly swing round and shouted across the market square: “ANNJ!!!” Before Joe Pepper could react, Donar had lurched forward through a row of trestles and booths, heading in a direct line for the far corner of the plaza. “Donar? Big guy? What is it? Less Hulk, please!” “Annnnjjjj!” cried the hemigod, shrugging aside angry storekeepers and continuing in a single-minded straight line. He sped over to his destination and looked around in puzzlement. “Annj?” ManMan panted up behind him. “Um, Knifey, is there some kind of Ausgardian reset button it would be helpful to know about?” “If only,” sighed the knife. “Talk to him, Joe.” “Annj!!” cried Donar, staring about. He climbed atop a small booth to look over the heads of the crowd until the flimsy frame splintered and topped him down again. “Could I get the footnotes?” ManMan asked him. “Please?” Donar looked around in amazement, and finally focussed on Joe. “Didst thou not see her? Over here in the corner, the beauteous damsel? Twas mine true love Queen Annj. Here, on Middlinggard, in this mortal market. I couldst not mistake her.” “Didn’t Annj disappear with Ausgard when the Parody Master shifted it out of the Mythlands?” Knifey pointed out. “How would she suddenly be shopping in a little street market in the student quarter of Paradopolis? And why?” “Well, they have some really nice unusual stuff here,” Joe pointed out, “and the prices are pretty reasonable if you’re on a budget.” Donar scratched his head. “I know not why she wast here, nor how,” he admitted. “But here she wast. And I wilt find her if I have to reave all Paradopolis to wasteland and storm across Middlingard for an eternity.” “So not a case of mistaken identity?” Knifey checked. Donar shook his head. “Twas mine own true Annj. But where ist she now?”  “We’re surrounded,” George warned. “There must be hundreds of them!”“But they’re very small,” Fleabot pointed out. “Average them out and there’s probably only a hundred human-sized attackers.” Vizh looked at the hordes of little people who had seethed out of the forest as they were packing to leave. “What are they?” he worried. “What do they want?” “Quarterling cutscroats,” Johnstantine answered. “And they want to bugger off and leave us alone, the little gits!” “Wait!” squeaked Boffo. “You are the chosen ones! The ones predicted by ancient prophecy, as written in the Puce Book of Hermingghest!” “Us?” asked Ruby. “We’re famous?” “Probably for Hallie’s dress and Miiri’s bikini,” suggested Flapjack happily. “There’s a prophecy?” Vizh checked. “About us?” “Oh yes,” nodded Boffo. “That is why we have come to offer up to you the Sacred Spoon of Mungo Mogcrawler. You will need its mighty, um spooniness to complete your quest.” “That is very kind of you,” said Miiri. “Thank you.” “Hey, wait a minute,” objected the quarterling. “Nothing’s for nothing. I mean, here we are, having kept the sacred spoon for all this time, we deserve some kind of maintenance fee. And perhaps a damage deposit.” “That does seem fair,” admitted Asil. Tanner snorted. “And how many other prophesies and sacred objects are there?” he asked the little people. “One for every adventuring party coming through?” “There are… a number of predictions in the Puce Book of Hermingghest,” conceded Boffo. “Which brings me back to my original point,” Constantine intervened. “Which is bugger off and leave us alone, you little gits. We’ve got a werewolf and we’re not afraid to use him.” The quarterlings retreated muttering and watched sullenly as the adventurers disappeared over the hilltop. “Mother’s going to be pissed,” Boffo told the others. “She was counting on the cash for a new mathom. Oh well. I guess Visionary and the soul of lightning, the courtesan from another world, the carrier of time, the girl of many ages, the wolf prince, the clockwork insect, the loathsome hunchback, the fallen witch, and the total bastard will have to get on without the spoon. Did the prophecy say anything about what happens if they don’t buy the cutlery?” Al B. Harper plugged the ultrascannerscope through the dimensional relay buffers then vectored in the genetic processor referencers through the primary interface conduit. There was a large bang, a cloud of smoke, and Amy Aston swore at him. “Was that supposed to be happening?” asked Yo cheerfully. “No,” Miss Framlicker told the pure thought being sourly. “The actual idea was not to fry the incredibly expensive transwarp shift buffers.” “The idea,” Al B. explained, “was to map where Kinki got swatted to when her ray beam got bounced back at her. Unfortunately its not as easy as it seems.” “The number of people on this planet who would describe that as easy could be counted on one hand,” snorted Amy. “And there’ll be one less if he keeps on making messes for me to clear up.” “Yo is just calling to be saying that Yo is going to be heading to be visiting cute-Swordrealms and cute-Esperine,” Yo explained. “Yo is to be needing of conduit to be joining cute-Enty and Sir John and Lileblanche in repairing of dimensional dreadnaught to be fighting of uncute Parody Master.” “We heard that you were becoming an associate Legion member with special liaison duties to our war allies,” Miss Framlicker replied. “We’ve prepared a conduit through to the Swordrealms…” “Which wasn’t easy given the mess their dimensional interfaces are in,” chimed in Amy grumpily from under the burned out shift buffers. “And we’ll reopen it at agreed times so you can get messages back to us on how things are going,” Miss F concluded. Yo smiled at the people from Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises. “Yo is also to be wishing you of luck in finding of Badripoor, and of inseminating Kinki the Conqueress.” “It’s on my to-do list,” Al B. agreed, working feverishly to complete each of his projects. “I also need to analyse whatever Liu Xi did to the defences, check out those Caphan jewel things, implement a world-wide Avawarrior dimensional rift detector, find a new way of over-riding dreadnaught control systems, analyse the autopsy results on Uhuna, reset the mansion nanobots to get the repair cycle going, and make sense the readings Yuki and Dream took from the hole where Badripoor used to be. Oh, and invent time travel. Actually, I should really do that last one first.” “Is to be good,” Yo approved. “Yo is hoping you are to be bringing cute-Cody back to being of existence as soon as possibling.” In the shadows of the gantry overhead, a worried teenage girl stared down at the hive of activity. “But if dad finds a way to bring Cody back,” Kara Harper whispered to herself, “then I’ll never exist.”  “This one,” Johnstantine announced, “is for Tanner.”“Oh, is it?” the Irish werewolf growled angrily. “When it’s the dryads challenging us to a singing contest we send in Miiri. When it’s the riddle games with the slimy creature from the ice caves we call on Hallie to decrypt his crossword clues. Ruby does the three card monte with the travelling pedlar. George gets to discuss geological phenomenon when we want information out of the research gnomes. But as soon as we get to a bloody huge troll guarding a high bridge over a bottomless chasm it gets to be my turn!” “Well, you could have done the singing contest if you’d asked,” Ruby pointed out. “Hey, we all have to do out bit,” Flapjack added. “I romanced the mudhag into a blissful stupor didn’t I?” “And now let us never speak of that again,” said Hallie. “So what’s the stupid plan this time?” demanded Tanner. “Well, I’m thinking about the traditional tests of courage game,” Johnstantine grinned. “You’re still immune to weapons that aren’t silver, right?” “Well yes, but they still hurt like hell.” “Excellent. Oi, troll, my mate here says he’s tougher than you. He bets he can jab his dagger right through his hand, he’s that hard, but that you’d be too scared to do the same to your hand.” “I vote we feed Johnstantine to the troll to bribe him to let us past,” suggested Tanner. “Okay,” agreed Visionary. But it was too late. The troll shambled forward, pulled a dagger the size of a shortsword from his belt, and jammed it hard to pin his hand to the parapet of the long stone bridge. “I plenty tough,” the troll snarled. “Your turn, squire,” Con told Tanner. “And after this we’ll do the challenge about sticking it in the chest.” Tanner pulled the sword out from the troll’s hand and sliced off the troll’s head, then embedded the blade right between the monster’s eyes. He threw the headless body over the cliff and sent the head to follow it. “Or you could do that,” Johnstantine conceded as Tanner glared at him. “Perhaps we’d better be getting on,” Asil said briskly. “Come on, everybody!” Liu Xi Xian woke from a brief, troubled sleep and found Xander the Improbable sitting in the armchair opposite reading a copy of What Wand. He pushed it hurriedly away when he saw the young elementalist looking at him. “I only read it for the articles,” he said. Liu Xi half lurched half fell out of the narrow bed in the room she’d been given at the St Jude’s Orphanage in Hell’s Bathroom. “Die!” she shouted, and willed her elemental energies to disintegrate the man who had betrayed her to the Parody Master. Xander looked hurt. And not dead. “What did I ever do to you?” he asked. “You led me to the Skunk Homeworld to befriend Annar then watch as the Parody Master claimed her as his bride and destroyed her. You made me think I was there to help her, when really you were delivering me to that monster so he could do the same thing to me!” Xander nodded. “You know I was under the control of a bio-technical Obedience Brand at the time, don’t you?” “I was chased by Doomwraiths through deep dimensions. I was hunted through the Vortex. I was terrified, terrorised, hurt, exhausted…” “So if I wasn’t making the choices myself, why do you blame me for the actions I was compelled to undertake?” the master of the mystic crafts asked reasonably. Liu Xi willed his chair to explode in a ball of fire. She coated him in ice then crushed it with the force of shifting continents. Except that again nothing happened. “What have you done to me?” she demanded. “Where are my powers?” Xander tapped his forehead. “Locked away for now,” he told her. “Back when I was training you before, when I was compelled to work for the Parody Master, I placed a little posthypnotic block in your mind in case I ever needed to curb you for a while. Don’t worry. Now that I’ve told you about it you’ll be able to concentrate and overcome it in a few minutes. Then you can murder me.” The word washed over Liu Xi like a cold shower. “Murder…” “That’s what it’s called when you attack somebody with intent to kill them and they’re not trying to harm you. It’s a line you can’t cross back from. Some people enjoy it. The Parody Master for example, and his brides.” The elementalist frowned. “I’m not a murderer. But what you did…” “I’m sorry about that,” Xander told her, “but not sorry for it, because it really wasn’t my choice. But you also have to think about what I did for you, not just what I was forced to do to you.” Liu Xi considered this sullenly. “And that was…?” All the time her mind was picking away at that hypnotic tangle that was making her helpless. “I showed you things you needed to see. The Dimensional Vortex. The Multiversal Substratum. What happened to poor Annar. If you hadn’t gained a knowledge of those things then you wouldn’t have survived. If you hadn’t experienced all that then the Mansion defences couldn’t have called you to channel the power needed to repel the Doomherald.” “Is that what happened?” Liu Xi wondered. “When Marie Murcheson, the banshee, led me down beneath the island.” “Yes. The defences can’t call the Celestians now. They’re broken. So they have to make use of the material at hand. All I did was add your name to the list of tools and make sure you could survive it when they used you.” Liu Xi stared across at the crumpled red-robed mage. “And you’re okay with just manipulating people like this?” Xander looked back at her. “If you see a child on a battlefield, surrounded by enemies, holding a gun she doesn’t know how to use, pointing it by mistake at herself, you have three choices. You can run away before she accidentally shoots you. You can take the gun off her and leave her defenceless. Or you can show her how to use the gun properly. Which is the kindest?” “I’m not a child.” Xander shook his head. “Of course not. You’re a brilliant young woman with more potential that she knows – and I’m not talking about power or magic. But your situation is the same. Do you really think the Parody Master wouldn’t have noticed you sooner or later anyway and coveted you for his bride?” Liu Xi considered this. “I guess not. But I just… Watching Annar, facing those things…” “Annar was your friend, I hope,” the sorcerer supreme ventured. “She needed a friend in those last hours. That was the only mercy we could offer her. And now you hold that memory of her, that friendship, like a precious treasure. Just as she wanted.” Liu Xi’s hand strayed to the little amulet she always wore; Princess Annar’s talisman. “I suppose.” Xander stood up. “Well, I’m going to be off,” he announced. “Don’t be cross at Cleone and Lara for letting me in. I’m heading back to my shop now. You know where it is. Tomorrow, when you’ve worked past those hypnotic blocks, I’d like you to come and see me. You can attack me if you want to get revenge for something I only did in the most literal sense. Or you can learn some more, and not be a victim.” “You think I’d ever trust you again?” demanded Liu Xi. “We’ll find out tomorrow, won’t we?” Xander suggested as he closed the door.  “Hello?” called out George Gedney. “Is there anybody here?”“Translation,” snorted Con Johnstantine. “Come out monster, lunch has arrived.” He glared at the new wielder of the Chronometer of Infinity. “Look kid, when we find a deserted village that’s been cleared of all the people, all the animals, all the moveable possessions, with hurried cart tracks heading off down the road, we don’t usually go attracting attention to ourselves.” “Sorry,” the curator of the Willingham Museum of Curiosities said sheepishly. “You can’t help being as dumb as dirt,” Con told him. “Just shut up now while we get Tanner to check things out.” “Well, you know what Selheim of Utrecht said about dirt in his 1448 treatise on the Rights of Man,” George shot back at the irritating Englishman. “Not specially,” Johnstantine said. “I prefer videos myself.” “Well then,” George told him, smiled triumphantly, and turned away. Johstantine snorted, flicked his cigarette end down the village well, and stalked off to see what Tanner had found. “What did Selheim of Utrecht say?” Asil asked curiously. “Nothing,” George admitted. “I just made him up.” “I quite like Selheim of Utrecht,” Asil admitted with a little grin. “He’s a smart man.” “Excuse me,” called a voice from below them, “if I interrupt the tales you have to tell, but really I must quite protest you littering the well.” Asil and George looked around them. The village was still deserted except for the travellers. Hallie and Miiri were checking the storehouses for any abandoned food. Vizh and Ruby were looking in the stables and barns. “Did you hear somebody speaking?” George ventured at last. “Of course you heard some talking if you’re not quite deaf and blind. And now you’d better fish that tab your friend there left behind.” The two young people looked about. “It’s not in my head,” George checked. “I heard it too,” Asil admitted. “From… down the well? Is someone trapped down there?” “Of course I’m trapped. I’m in a bind. My folks have gone, I’m left behind.” George poked a cautious head over the edge of the well. It was a standard storybook well, with a little slate roof to keep out debris and a winder and bucket fixed over the shaft. “I can’t see anybody down there,” he reported. “Hello?” “Please don’t make an echo. My headache’s bad enough that I can do without more. I can’t take all of this stuff!” “He is down there!” Asil agreed. “Can you climb down the rope, George, and pull out whoever’s hiding there?” George shot her an alarmed look. The voice had an irritated edge to it now. “I’m nowhere here in hiding. You’re not bright, I can tell. I’m not somebody fallen down – I am the wishing well!” “Oh,” Asil responded, “That would explain it then.” “A wishing well,” George chuckled. “Really? So if I cast a coin in to you and wish…” “Don’t you dare,” Asil said quickly, “wish for anything, that is, anything inappropriate. Um. I mean, Johnstantine and Tanner said we shouldn’t ask for anything in Faerie, or make any kind of contract… That’s what I mean.” “You find me now in some distress,” the well admitted. “Much more trouble than you think. My village had abandoned me and fled to let the goblins drink.” Asil peered down into the depths of the well. “Goblins? What goblins? Is that why this village is abandoned. They ran away from danger?” “Where have you both been living? Of course there’s threats abroad. This whole wide realm is threatened by the vast hobgoblin horde. The people all flee westward but the goblins march yet faster. They’re claiming all this land to serve their lord Parody Master.” “What?” yelped George. “The Parody Master? All-conquering tyrant with unstoppable armies? He’s here in Faerie?” “Visionary!” Asil called out. She suddenly felt the need for a Great Man. “What is it?” Vizh asked, hurrying out of one of the stables carrying a leaking bag of oats. “What’s wrong?” “Well,” George explained with a straight face, “the wishing well tells us that the hobgoblin armies of the Parody Master are about to sweep down on this village. We thought you should know.” “What?” yelped Visionary. Asil looked into the well again. “If you’re a wishing well, couldn’t your villagers just have wished to be safe?” “Ah well you see, you’ve caught me there, there’s just one little flaw. I can do wishes, honestly. I wish I could do more. I really am a wishing well but only once a year. And this year’s wish has gone by now. They wished a cow, I fear.” “That well is talking,” Vizh noted. “In bad poetry.” “Everyone’s a critic now,” complained the well, “But everybody praised the cow.” “What have we got?” Hallie demanded, as the others returned from their searches. “We found a wishing well,” Asil said proudly. “But Johnstantine threw his cigarette in it.” “Wishing wells?” Flapjack chuckled. “They make a great noise when you piddle in them.” “The bad news is that the Parody Master’s armies are in Faerie,” George warned grimly. “Very near. Goblins, evidently. An army. That’s why everybody here had run.” “Except us,” Ruby pointed out. “But I have a suggestion. Why don’t we run too?” “Goblins,” scowled Tanner. “I’m too old for goblins.” “I know of an escape route that will help avoid their woe,” the wishing well offered, “but the deal has got to be you’ll take me with you when you go.” “Can anybody here… drums?” Miiri worried. “In the distance?” “How can we take a wishing well with us?” George worried. “We didn’t even bring spades.” “Yes,” agreed Hallie. “Lots of drums. And whips.” “Ooh. Traditionalist goblins,” Flapjack admired. “I’d make a great adventurer. I’ve always longed to try. Let me join your party and be with you as you die,” persuaded the well. “We need to get out of here,” Tanner agreed. “And we need some path they won’t have set scouts on. If this wishing well – and I hate myself for saying that - knows some way out, we’d better use it.” “Take me with you and I’ll aid, or else you’re dead meat I’m afraid.” “Okay,” Visionary decided. “We have to either get eaten by goblins or let the wishing well join the party. Any suggestions? Citizen Z waited until the last of the hundred or so people swarming round Sir Mumphrey’s new office in Geneva had finally been dispatched. “I admit that I’m mildly impressed,” she conceded. “That has to be the most bloodless planetary takeover in the history of the planet.” “Hmph,” snorted Sir Mumphrey Wilton. “Just doin’ what I was asked, preparin’ the planet for the coming of the Parody Master.” “That’s the genius of it,” CV admired. “They actually gave you the reigns of power, of their own free will. You have absolute authority to do anything to prepare the world for this Parody War. Absolute power!” “Subject to review,” the eccentric Englishman shrugged. “Besides, not fair to abuse such trust. Not done. Gave my word.” Citizen Z perched on the edge of the desk. “And there’s still the tricky matter of that worldwide vote, isn’t there?” she noted. “Are you intending to fix that, by the way?” Mumphrey raised one eyebrow. “Absolutely not. Two days time we’ll have a referendum, each nation casting votes proportional to their populations, as to whether we surrender or resist this aggression. Majority rules.” “And if the majority turn out to be sheep who’d rather be sheared than slaughtered?” “Then majority rules,” persisted the old man. “We have to get a mandate to either fight or not. If the world prefers to roll over and die, then the Legion will have to decide whether to surrender as demanded or get offplanet fast.” Citizen Z looked sceptical. “If the Legion runs away, taking Dancer and Liu Xi with them, won’t the Parody Master destroy the planet anyhow?” “Yes,” agreed Mumphrey. “Which is why if it’s the majority will this time – in a fair, untainted, informed vote – it’ll be my job to help the UN bring down the Lair Legion and hand over the sacrifices.” “You’d actually do that?” “Don’t want to, of course, but that’s the downside of agreeing to take on this authority. If the world wills it, it’s my job to get it done, dash it all.” Citizen Z leaned over the desk. “If you’re planning ways of taking down the world’s mightiest heroes, why are you telling me? Why shouldn’t I just snick your head off right here and now and save the team from betrayal?” Mumphrey shook his head. “Firstly, I’m hopin’- praying - the people of Earth will show some backbone and fight. I hope there’s still some spirit in the human race, something worth giving everything to preserve. If that’s not the case then I’m hopin’ Dancer and the other victims will obey the will of the people and volunteer to go to their dire fates, because if we have to force it then I’m a damned sight harder to stop than Special Resolution 1066. Hadn’t expected you to nominate me as supreme commander of Earth’s war effort, m’dear, but that’ll help too.” “The Lair Legion have faced lots of enemies,” CV pointed out. “And thirdly, if I have to stop the Legion, well that’s why I asked for you to be my aide when I came to speak to the world governments,” Mumphrey pointed out. “Me? Should I be flattered that of all the possible traitors you picked me?” Mumphrey snorted. “Who else would I need to take down the Lair Legion, Baroness?”  “There they are!” the bottle of water on the string around Miiri’s neck called out. “The treacherous deserting scum! There are all my villagers! Ugly, scared, and dumb!”“Shut up,” Con Johnstantine told the vial of liquid from the wishing well. The enchantment had concentrated itself into the former perfume bottle and had insisted on fleeing the goblin-overrun village with Visionary’s party. “Some people would be bloody grateful to be dangling in that cleavage, I can tell you.” “I volunteer,” Flapjack offered. “There are people up ahead,” Tanner confirmed. “A wagon train. Lots of wagons.” They passed the first stragglers a few minutes later, exhausted refugees with muddy clothes and tear-smeared faces. To the east the horizon was darkened by smoke rising from barns and cottages. “We have to help these people,” Asil protested. “We have to do something.” “Like what?” Ruby Waver demanded. “Go back and fight countless hordes of orcs and hobgoblins and trolls? We forgot to pack any superheroes in case you forgot.” “I suppose we could always write more gossip column stories about the displaced villagers,” Hallie sniped. “I wish we could do something, but we don’t even have anything to give them.” “They’re all heading to the faerie fayre,” Miiri confirmed after chatting with some of the wagoneers. Men were always happy to chat with Miiri. “Some of them are hoping to find family they’ve been separated from. Others hope for travel to safety in one of the deeper lands of Faerie. Yet others are hoping that the Faerie Queene will send her Elfguard to protect the moot. But they are all going to the fayre.” “Bodes ill on the old accommodations front then,” Flapjack complained. “Ah well, there’s plenty of room for two in my sleeping furs.” There were no takers. “Did we know the Parody Master was invading Faerie?” George Gedney asked as they overtook more harried farmers straining with stubborn ox-carts piled high with furniture, goods, and elderly relatives. “When we came here, did we know it was a war zone?” He glanced at Asil. “Only I don’t think I got the full briefing.” “For the best, George old stoat,” Con Johnstantine assured him. “Risky enough slipping the Keeper of the Chronometer of Infinity through the gates, even if it was an old forgotten on that’s gone pretty senile, without bringing an informed, competent Keeper.” “Does that explain my fur posing pouch then?” demanded Visionary. “Only a senile sadist would put me in this.” “That just shows Faerie has a sense of humour,” Con told him. “And remember that most of how we’re perceiving Faerie this time is drawn from your expectations.” “Are you saying Vizh secretly yearned for a smelly fur loincloth?” checked Hallie. “Because if so, eew.” “I didn’t want this fleabitten fur!” Vizh protested. “Hey!” objected Fleabot. “Like I’d bite that thing. I have standards of hygiene, you know. I think that pouch thing was designed to kill the enemy at range by smell alone.” “You’re all making me feel much better,” Visionary told them sarcastically. “It is a Great Pouch,” Asil assured him loyally, glaring at Fleabot. “Shut up or I will hide your key again.” Hallie wasn’t ready to let this go. “I still want to know if Visionary is responsible for me not being able to lift my arms above my shoulders without a major wardrobe malfunction.” “Two major wardrobe malfunctions,” Flapjack corrected her happily. “More, if we’re lucky.” “Maybe we should question more people,” Vizh suggested hastily. “George, we’d heard there was the possibility of the Parody Master trying to conquer Faerie as a way of getting back doors to Earth. Zebulon – our elf technician – got called back to help out. But none of us guessed we were walking right into a Peter Jackson production.” “Peter Jackson,” one of the refugees they were passing sniffed. “Those ultra-realistic political thrillers aren’t my cup of tea at all. Give me a nice epic escapist fantasy like Fahrenheit 9/11.” “You have movies here?” Asil asked. “Magic lantern,” Flapjack supplied. “Everybody here thought Phantom Menace sucked too.” “What do you know about this Parody Master invasion?” Tanner asked a battered, bandaged solider who was limping in the line of retreating creatures. “Only what they told me,” the elf replied. “The rumour of the Parody Master wanting to come through faerie was enough to provoke the giants and demihumans. The dark things joined them and they allied under the Wyrm Ashbane to march against the realms. Baron Bronze counselled negotiation, a settled peace. Lord Erlic argued a strong offence was the best defence and led the Forces of Light to face the Wyrm at Raevenscraag.” “I bet there’s a map involved at the start of this story, isn’t there,” Vizh fretted. “There’s always a map. And sometimes a poem of prophecy.” “I can do poems,” the wishing water offered, “and riddles too. Just ask and I’ll predict for you.” “Maybe later,” Miiri said diplomatically. “Was there a battle?” Hallie asked. “At Raevenscraag?” The soldier held up his stump. “What do you think. We were actually winning until those things arrived, those Singularity Riders, Doomwraiths. Then it went to pot faster than a hobbit at an ogre convention.” “Oh, Doomwraiths too,” George noted, slightly hysterically. “Lovely.” “And now the armies of the Drake Lord are marching forward without pause, and nothing can stop them,” the soldier concluded. “Nothing,” He was so disconsolate that Asil felt obliged to cheer him up. “Don’t worry,” she promised him. “Visionary is here now. He is a Great Man…” “Asil…” Hallie began, but too late. “He will find a way to turn the tide of battle and save the realms,” Asil declared with absolute faith. “He is a hero!” “Vizh?” Ruby called. “Isn’t it kind of muddy down there under that ox cart?” Jay Boaz walked the short corridor between the Lair Legion Meeting Room and the Leader’s Office in a stunned haze. Lisa’s words still echoes in his ears. “By unanimous vote except for one abstention, Hatman is the next Leader of the Lair Legion. Congratulations Hatty.” The capped crusader had been Deputy before, and Tactical and Liaison Officer, and Field Leader. He’d acted as Leader in the absence of the designated hero. But now the chair was his by right. He mentally ran through the new team dispositions: In the field were Donar, Trickshot, Dancer, the Shoggoth, Mr Epitome, Yuki Shiro, ManMan, and Citizen Z, as well as his new deputy CrazySugarFreakBoy! Associates were Vizh, Lisa, the Librarian, Al B., and now Yo, with new interdimensional and interplanetary liaison duties. It was three days before the Parody Master’s deadline for surrender, the day of the international vote about how to respond to that demand. Jay wondered whether the first enemy he faced as Leader would be the Parody Master himself. It wasn’t. The Hooded Hood was waiting in his office, sitting on his chair. “Good evening, Mr Boaz,” the cowled crime czar greeted him, his fingertips touched together to arch his hands. “And congratulations, of course.” “Get out of my chair,” Hatman snapped at the cowled crime czar; but suddenly the Hood had never been in his chair, but was rather seated on his usual granite throne, incongruously positioned across the antique desk from the chair Mumphrey had used. Jay berated himself. He’d made his first slip in losing his cool. His first enemy was more dangerous in his own way than the Parody Master. “I try to keep myself up to date with changes in the Lair Legion,” the Hooded Hood announced. “An archvillain requires good information to plot the downfall of all that is good. Hence I felt we should have our first conversation in your official capacity.” The Hood had saved Hatman from eternal torment in Faerie – but at the cost of his relationship with Sorceress. The Hood had entangled the lives of so many of the Legion, for good or ill. Hatman just wanted to slug him. “I’m not Sir Mumphrey,” he replied. “Or Finny. I have no interest in shouting at you or sparring with you. Do something bad and the Legion will take you down.” “Indeed.” The cowled crime czar did not seem intimidated. “However, in this instance I have come to do something good. I have come to recruit the Lair Legion to my cause, to aid me in protecting this world from the depredations of the Parody Master.” His eyes glittered as they bored into Hatman. “I have come to receive your fealty, Mr Boaz.” Jay Boaz considered this for a minute. He tried to imagine how Mumph of Finny might have responded. Then he decided he couldn’t react as they would have. He had to react like Hatman. He reached for the com-button and at that moment he became the true leader of the Lair Legion. “Everybody, get to my office. We have a Hooded Hood visitation.” The Hood raised one eyebrow. “You do not feel capable of conducting a conversation with me alone?” “I want the team to hear what you’ve got to say,” Jay shot back. “Makes things simpler when we need to deal with you later.” CrazySugarFreakBoy! was first into the room, with a joyous “Hoody!” Yuki, Trickshot and Dancer were not far behind. Soon the entire field team plus Al B. Harper and Lisa were present. “Oh my!” Citizen Z noted. “This is quite a baptism of fire for you, Hatman.” “Hello Ioldobaoth,” called Lisa. “Come to test the newbie? Didn’t you know that Jay is first and foremost a team player?” “Say the word, most glorious leader,” Donar growled, “and I wilt plan Mjalcom into yon hooded caitiff’s skull.” “Whut’s his screwiness want with us now?” demanded Trickshot. “C’mon Hood, fill us in on the plot today.” “Plots,” Dancer corrected the irritating archer. “There’s bound to be more than one.” She grinned over at the archvillain. “Tell us about the plots, Mr Hood.” Hatman perched one hip on his deck, folded his arms across his chest, and looked the Hooded Hood in the eyes. “Yes, tell us about the plots,” he ordered. “Why should we ‘swear fealty’ to you to protect us all from the big bad Parody Master?” “Because you cannot protect the world from him,” the Hood replied. “Not as you are. I know of your dispositions, of the arrangements that Sir Mumphrey has made with his United Nations joint task force. And if I know, the Parody Master will too.” “Xander sent all the Parody Master’s ships off to some black hole somewhere,” ManMan pointed out, before he remembered that the Hood probably still hadn’t forgiven him for killing him with Knifey that one time and took cover behind Donar. “Xander inconvenienced the Parody Master,” the Hood responded. “But even with eighty percent of his forces and materiel currently occupied he has sufficient resource to overwhelm this planet in a matter of hours.” “SPUD is back online,” Al B. Harper pointed out. “We’ve been sorting through the alien tech and Technopolis weapons…” “You currently have no plan for preventing the Avawarriors dimension-shifting onto this world in their millions, no technology that can counter a Dimensional Dreadnaught, no knowledge of how to survive the Singularity Riders. If the Parody Master attacked alone, could you stop him?” “Well I fer one would give it a try,” Trickshot argued. Yuki nodded. “I like a challenge. Bring him on.” “And if we work for you, you can stop those things?” Hatman challenged. “Of course. Am I not… the Hooded Hood?” “He is,” bounced CSFB! joyfully. “Oh, is he ever!” He grinned over at Jay Boaz, knowing what was coming next. “Go on, Hatster. Say it!” “Then if you can do it, there’s a way,” Jay Boaz noted. “And if there’s a way, we’ll find it.” “We’ve just thrown off one tyranny,” Mr Epitome told the cowled crime czar. “We’re not about to invite another.” “There are advantages in being on my side,” the Hood pointed out. “For example, I could assist Mr Harper in his search for the mother of his child. I could return your missing Juniors and the nation state of Badripoor that vanished with them.” “You know where Kerry and the others are?” demanded Dancer, springing forward. “Where? Do you have them?” “I arranged for their survival and rescue, if that is what you mean, my dear,” the Hood told her. “Join me and you may have them back.” Dancer glanced uncertainly at Hatman. “No,” he replied. “The price is too high. We don’t negotiate with hostage-takers.” “Oh, you know the Hood,” Lisa interjected. “Not as well as I do, perhaps, but you know to listen very carefully to what he says.” She tilted her head to peer under the big grey cowl. “You never said you wouldn’t return Badripoor anyway, did you Ioldobaoth? You only said you would return it if we co-operated.” “Indeed,” agreed the Hooded Hood. “But I urge you all to join me, singly or collectively. It is the only way to prevent more death amongst those of you in this room during the Parody War to come.” “That banshee wail for Uhuna…” shuddered Yuki. CSFB! jumped down to face the Hood. “Are you saying that if we don’t join you here and now, some of the Legion are going to die in the Parody War?” “Yes,” the Hood said plainly; and the Hooded Hood did not die. “But then they come back, right? Everybody gets resurrected.” “No.” Citizen Z leaned over to whisper in Hatman’s ear. “Welcome to your first big call.” “I for one art ready to die to quell yon tyrant Parody Master,” proclaimed Donar. “But if I survive, then wilt I merrily and most readily smite thee, Hooded One!” “Our answer is still no,” Hatman told the Hooded Hood. “We won’t surrender to the Parody Master. We won’t surrender to you. We’ll find a way, whatever the cost. Now give us back our missing young people and the city of Badripoor and leave us to our preparations.” The Hooded Hood watched the team for a moment, as if he wouldn’t see all of them again. Then he gestured. There was a familiar ripple of light as the Portal of Pretentiousness shifted the bottle city of Badripoor onto Hatman’s desk. And the Hood was gone. “Wait a minute!” objected ManMan! “This is just a miniature model of… oh crap!” And the first choice was made. By midnight all the nation state delegates had cast their votes, in proportion to the populations of their countries. Many argued that this was not fair, but nobody could find a way that was fairer. Never before had all the human race had to decide between an impossible fight, or slavery, or genocide. “The voting is in,” Sir Mumphrey Wilton announced to the Assembly, and through television monitors across the world. “By a slight majority, 3.4 billion to 3.2 billion, our decision is not to capitulate to the demands of the Parody Master. Therefore it is my duty to tell you that Terra and her united peoples are now in a state of war.” And the last choice was made. The weary travellers crested the last hill and looked down on the valley clearing below. It was already full of tents and makeshift houses, teeming with people and wagons, seething with traders and customers, refugees, soldiers, fairy tale beasts and distant wanders. Visionary and his companions had arrived at the faerie fayre. Next:  Adventures in Parodyverse, Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 by Jason Arnie's First Untold Tales Tie-In by AJA Fairy God-Dancer by Visionary Believe It Or Not, I'm Walking On Air by CrazySugarFreakBoy! And a special acknowledgement for the enthusiastic and copious input from Visionary to this story’s content (and of course his excellent artwork). Long may his loincloth remain free of vermin. 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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