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Post By The Hooded Hood concludes this tale of the day the Legion lost Thu Oct 12, 2006 at 11:02:14 pm EDT |
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#293: Untold Tales of the Parody War: Scrapped | |
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| #293: Untold Tales of the Parody War: Scrapped Previously: The ethical question about keeping interned robots in Hallie’s virtual reality was solved when an EMP pulse and explosive charges were triggered in Hallie’s computer core in the basement of the Lair Mansion. The plot was hatched by Rikka Ulz Hagen, the world’s foremost expert on artificial intelligences and Hallie’s old enemy, and by Wexford the Dissected Man, a sadistic agent of the Shadow Cabinet. Wexford held hostage children from St Jude’s Orphanage to force schoolteacher Bethany Shellett, Goldeneye’s not-quite-girlfriend, to smuggle the equipment through Lair Mansion security. Beth was present at the time the bomb went off. The attack was designed to damage the Legion’s public reputation, morale, and cohesion making them easier to manipulate by the Shadow Cabinet that seeks to gain advantage out of the chaos of the current Parody War. The Shadow Cabinet’s newest representative, Ms Tesseract, has been sent to ensure that the team and Sir Mumphrey Wilton finally understand their place. The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse  At 3.19pm EST the Lair Mansion was rocked by a massive explosion. The blast took out most of the second sub-basement, the computer labs and virtual reality suite. Some support walls were shattered, collapsing the first basement training facilities down on top of the wreckage. Fire washed out along the service corridors and ventilation ducts but was contained by the emergency force fields and physical firewalls. A fraction of a second before the detonation a series of electromagnetic pulses were discharged through the Legion’s mainframe, purging the databases of all their stored information; in this case the digitised codes of over three thousand interned robots being held in the virtual reality systems. The pulses and the subsequent blast had been expertly designed by the world’s foremost authority on artificial intelligences and computer data systems, Dr Rikka Ulz Hagen. She had done her job well. The charges had been set by friend of the Legion Bethany Shellett, a regular and trusted visitor to the site. Later investigation would determine that Ms Shellett had been unawares of the destructive nature of the technology she had affixed to the computers. She had believed it to be espionage not sabotage technology. She had affixed the machines because seventeen of the children she taught at St Jude’s orphanage were being held hostage by Wexford the Dissected Man, a sadistic psionic killer who was monitoring her as she carried out her reluctant mission. Beth Shellett was helpless in pain on the floor of the computer centre when the explosion occurred. Site security officer Sergeant Argus MacHarridan and Legionnaire Yuki Shiro had worked out that something was amiss just a few moments earlier. They had actually made it as far as the digitisation room when the EMP activated and the charges went off. The EMP shorted cyborg Yuki’s systems for only a fraction of a second; the advantage of having a shielded human brain running her metallic body. Shiro dived for Beth and covered the woman with her body as the blasts went off. She and Sergeant MacHarridan caught the full force of the explosion. In the ground floor Operations Room, the most secure part of the Lair Mansion, the alarm signals tripped automated defences, sealing the base and sending out urgent calls to all Legionnaires. Too late. The Hooded Hood sat back in his chair and cradled his fingertips together. “I believe we can be of mutual assistance to one another,” he told his young guests. “I don’t think I want to assist an archvillain,” Ham-Boy said defiantly. “But please don’t retcon him,” Hacker Nine added urgently. Lindy Wilson, Falconne, leaned forward and laid a restraining hand on Ham-Boy. “Let the cowled crime czar make his play, HB,” she advised. “We came all the way to Herringcarp Asylum to hear what he has to say. He might have something good up his, um, cowl.” The archvillain continued. “For your parts, I imagine you are somewhat concerned regarding the fates of you missing friends and allies, the Junior Lair Legion and adherents.” “You know where they are?” Ham-Boy asked urgently. “They’re alive?” “I am aware of their circumstances,” agreed the Hood. “They are a long way from home.” “But the Hood can get us to them,” H9 suggested. “The Portal of Pretentiousness is, like, this massively powerful uber-artefact that can open doors to other places. It’s got the ability to slip round that Celestian barrier that’s keeping the Parody Master out. It can get us to pretty much anytime, anywhere.” “Really?” Falconne looked impressed. “So we get to join our friends,” HB summarised. “And bring them home?” “Eventually,” the Hooded Hood acceded. “Those of you who survive.” Hacker Nine’s head jerked round to look at the archvillain. “Survive? You never mentioned the people dying part.” “Everybody dies,” the Hooded Hood declaimed. “It’s just a matter of when and how.” “Later is good,” H9 told him. “Much later is better.” “So we can save the Juniors,” Ham-Boy understood. “What’s in it for you?” The cowled crime czar smiled thinly. “I require you and your friends to undertake a mission for me. The three of you and your dimension-lost colleagues.” “What kind of mission?” asked Lindy. “Something evil?” The Hooded Hood told them. “Of course,” he concluded with some satisfaction, “the choice is entirely yours.” Ham-Boy was about to reply when Hacker Nine’s data-pad made shrill beeping noise. Zack Zelnitz pulled it from his belt and checked the display. “Frakk!” he gasped. “The LL computer system just ceased to exist!” In the virtual world time ran differently, to the beats of a central processor unit. Hallie became aware of the electromagnetic pulse as a sudden expanding numbness at the edge of her consciousness. “We’re under attack!” she warned. “Everyone…” Then the first destructive wave hit virtual Willingham, searing buildings and their occupants out of existence, hitting with earthquake force to shatter those constructs on the periphery of the destruction. “What’s going on?” gasped Visionary as his head slammed off the speaker’s platform of the virtual Fishermen’s Hall. “Some kind of electromagnetic event!” Fleabot reported, hopping away from another area where one of the EMP spirals snaked across the chamber, flaring robots to oblivion. The people in the packed room began to scream and struggle, stampeding for the exits. The chilling static streamers snaked through the walls and through the crowd in blind destructive waves, cutting a swath of death. “We have to get people out of here,” Hallie cried, accelerating her VR capabilities to their absolute maximum to gain relative time during this devastating assault. “Everybody this way. I’m creating a new secure area. Run for the white doors!” Fleabot dodged out of the way of the stampeding mass of terrified artificial intelligences. “There’s no way you’ll be able to redigitise these people in the time available,” he shouted over the chaos. “Not even one of them!” Hallie didn’t answer. She was emergency-scanning her systems, trying to sense which elements of her mainframe would not be wiped by the magnetic waves for milliseconds yet. She shunted as many of the robots as she could to those areas, wincing as her own mind brushed up against the searing flares of EMP. Then she cast her consciousness outward, checking what ports were available to shunt the trapped robots into safer storage elsewhere. One repository stood out, an open modem waiting to receive data. Hallie had no time to check it out. She grabbed the first handful of robot code and crammed it towards the conduit. The modem firewalls rejected the data, bouncing it back into the ever-encroaching oblivion field. “No!” Hallie cried, realising she’d just sent half a dozen beings to their deaths. “Come on,” Vizh called, grabbing her as he’d pull a physical woman in the path of danger. “Look out!” Hallie was whirled out of the way as another lashing tendril of nullity seared through the virtual realm. Fleabot concentrated and swelled in size to something the volume of an elephant. “All aboard that can get aboard,” he called out. “You too, Vizh and Hallie.” Visionary dragged the distracted green woman onto Fleabot’s carapace and grabbed a hold of his left antenna. Fleabot bounced upwards, through the broken roof of the virtual fisherman’s hall, as high as his piston-powered spring-loaded legs could take him. A score or more of urban robots clung to him for dear life. Below them the hall collapsed into a spray of random pixels and then into grey nothingness. From above the devastation of the virtual realm was evident. Eye-searing welts of nothing streamed out over the landscape. Frayed holes were torn through into other virtual scenarios, equally eaten away by the ever-spreading pulse. It was like the land was being flooded, the static patches oozing out or lashing round, absorbing more and more of the data below. Hallie cast her mind back again to the mysterious modem. It was warded, she realised, filtering out all but certain code sequences. Only a very particular data pattern could escape that way. Her data pattern. The modem was an escape route for Hallie alone. “Over there,” Visionary pointed. “By the church. Those people are going to get absorbed.” Fleabot landed once with a bone-shaking sproing, then leaped again to alight beside the huddled group of terrified urban robots sheltering in the diminishing churchyard. “Get on,” he called, swelling again so he was nearly the size of a house. This time he leaped away only moments before the land he’d been on was consumed. He was running out of places to go. “Me only, huh?” Hallie scowled, still probing the mystery modem. “Sophisticated, specific firewalls. But not for long.” “What are you doing?” Vizh asked as Hallie pared down to her default wire-frame form. She was exerting every fraction of her ever-diminished capacity to overcome the defences that warded that best possible escape. “Sorting out an evacuation route,” the A.I. replied, wincing as more of her resources were erased. “Somebody set a clever way out for me and only me, but I think I’ve got those exclusion protocols beaten.” “You can get out?” Vizh called back. “Go, Hallie, save yourself!” “I need to save as many people as I can,” Hallie replied. “You first, Vizh!” She concentrated and squirted him out of the virtual reality into Rikka Ulz Hagen’s transfer modem. “Hey!” Vizh complained as he vanished from the dying mainframe. “I’m not going without…” A continent away in Silicone Valley, Dr Rikka Ulz Hagen watched with a self-satisfied little smirk as the data from her Hallie-trap modem on Lair Island transmitted her the code she’d waited to possess for so long. She channelled the data into hologram form, bound to her will and helpless to escape. “So we meet again,” she said smoothly, turning round to torment her nemesis. “We do?” blinked holo-Vizh, looking round confusedly. “And who are you?” The modem had gone dead. Hallie cursed herself for not checking whether there was some kind of default shutdown when it had received its data. “Um, Hallie,” Fleabot worried, “Any sign of a way out yet? Only I’m running out of places to jump.” So much of the virtual realm was static mush now, a cancer of nullity consuming the rest. In real-world time less than a tenth of a second had passed. For most of the robots interned in the mainframe it has been a lifetime. “I’m working,” Hallie promised him. “Okay, if I can’t use the modem to squirt out these robot data patterns to its remote hard drive then maybe I can use it as an external communications device for something else. Let me see…” At the Moon Public Library the resident computer intelligence D.D. was surprised to receive an urgent incoming call from Hallie on a new and unsecured channel. “Hi?” she responded. “Hallie? Are you okay?” The transmission was in pure binary code, so the conversation was happening in nothing more than a blip of real time. In an instant Hallie explained what was happening to the virtual realm, and that she and all its inhabitants had less than a hundredth of a second to live. “Get out then,” D.D. called back. “There have to be emergency secondary storage banks waiting there!” “They’re not responding,” Hallie shot back. “D.D., I’ve still got almost a thousand robots still intact here, clinging on. I need to transfer them right now to the Moon Public Library, into your databanks.” D.D. did a quick calculation of the space required. “Oh Hallie, I’m sorry, but we don’t have that space. Or any space. You know I’m overfilled with the IOL central repository database. We’ve got organic components barely coping with the overspill as it is.” “So dump some data,” urged Hallie. “D.D., that’s just documents. I’ve got sentient beings here.” There was a pause at the other end of the connection. “Hallie, I really am sorry, but to the Intergalactic Order of Libraries there is no such thing as ‘just’ a document. It is our sacred duty and prime purpose to preserve that information. The collection I’m housing now is the last copy of irreplaceable data this universe will never see again. I can’t displace it for any reason. I have to protect it.” “D.D.! People are dying here while you’re hoarding books!” “Hallie, this information is more important than those people.” “D.D.! They’re being obliterated. We’re being obliterated.” “I wish I could help,” the Library A.I. regretted. “I can’t.” “What’s wrong?” Liu Xi asked Cleone Swanmay as the two of them climbed the steep embankment up to the haunted hill in Bulgaria. The night was just passing and the mists melting away to allow a grey dawn. “Death,” shuddered the faerie woman. “I thought I heard people screaming.” Liu Xi Xian looked around. “Well, they did say there were ghosts here. That’s why we came, right? Lights on the old mountain. Strange apparitions.” The swanmay tried to delve deeper into her perceptions. “Not here,” she sensed. “Far away... but familiar. It’s gone now. They’re gone.” She shook her silver locks and tried a smile. “Anyhow, we’d better concentrate on the job at hand. With Xander away we need to keep up on these mystic events.” “There’s some elemental activity here,” Liu Xi admitted, setting her mind back to probing the Rhodope Mountains for some trace of what frightened tourists might have seen. “Deep, old waters mostly.” “This was the land of the Pan pipes and the Orphic cults once,” Cleone said. “Gods walked here and visited the mineral springs. But that was a very long time ago, before the age of iron killed them.” She paused and looked westwards, where the rising sun was just lighting the mountain mounds. “And yet…” “Yes,” agreed Liu Xi. “There’s something there. Half there. Straining to get to this world. Desperate to get here. Do you think I should bring it in?” “If it’s not a Parody Master invasion force, then yes,” agreed Cleone. Liu Xi concentrated, empowering the rocks and the small waters as they had been in a different age. The sun burst through the mists, flashing down on the outcrops of stone. The fortress appeared as if it had always belonged there. Random natural features shifted into buttresses and walls and towers as the ancient rath returned. “Oh,” said Liu Xi. “Hi!” called Sydney St Sylvain, the Fashion Faerie. “Leo, we made it! Look! It worked! Liu Xi! Cleone! Hello!” “We’re not going to make it,” Hallie warned. “We’re trapped, Fleabot. I can’t shift data any more. There’s nowhere else to go. We’re finished.” The robot flea found one tiny dot of data to land on in the grey virtual wasteland and leaped again. “Don’t give up, Hallie. Not with all these people counting on us!” “But so many have been wiped, Fleabot. It’s all my fault! If I hadn’t let them stay in here…” “Some are still alive. Think fast, Hallie. We have to save them.” Hallie jammed her consciousness again at the mysterious modem that alone of the lab equipment still seemed connected to her ports. It wasn’t accepting any more data into its storage and transmission pod but it could still communicate with the outside world. “Okay,” Hallie said, gritting her teeth. “This is my last, best shot. I think I can reach some of my HEDs. If I can shift the robot data into the Holographic Emitter Drones it could be stored there temporarily while better arrangements are made.” “Do it,” Fleabot called back. “Fast would be good.” Hallie desperately overrode and rewrote protocols in the modem and in her own HEDs. Then she reached for the nearest of the robots. “Relax and go limp,” she told her. “You’ll be okay. Trust me.” The sexbot vanished from the virtual realm. Hallie grabbed another robot, then another. “Taking too long,” Fleabot warned as he began to plummet again. A sea of static oblivion was his only possible landing place. “Right,” hissed Hallie. She triggered as many HEDs as she could, trusting to the sophisticated modem to handle the transfer. Whoever had built that thing was a genius who knew her systems well. Hallie had a nasty suspicion who that genius might be. “But I’ve just taken it over so that makes me smarter yet,” she growled to herself. More of the robots clinging to Fleabot were winking out. Some of them were no longer in virtual flesh, mere concepts trailing along behind the last tangible program still active in the dying system. Hallie pressed them out, packing the HEDs with data in ways they’d never been meant to be used. She counted the refugees out: eighty, ninety, a hundred, a hundred and fifty. There’d been over three thousand entities in the virtual realms. And then the HEDs were full. The remaining robots started to scream and panic. “There’s no room for us out there,” Hallie told Fleabot. “I should have been able to contact more HEDs but they’re not responding. I think they’re destroyed somehow. I’m sorry.” “Hey, no problem, Hallie,” the robot flea told her as they plummeted down into the electromagnetic soup. “It’s not like it’s the end of the world.” Then the virtual reality was gone, lost in the EMP. And then the hard drives were blown into tiny fragments. “I can’t get through! I can’t get through!” worried Hacker Nine, frantically jabbing at his data-pad. “It’s like Hallie’s mainframe just isn’t there!” “What are the chances the Hooded Hood set this up to force us to do his mission?” wondered Ham-Boy suspiciously. “Not really his style,” H9 answered distractedly. “I don’t get this. Something big’s happening but it’s not a virus, not a denial of service. Some kind of hardware problem?” HB was still pondering the mission the archvillain had described. “Did you buy what he was saying, Lindy? Lindy?” Falconne wasn’t there. She’d crept back in to speak with the Hooded Hood. “That’s high tensile vibratium/admantine alloy monofilament wire looped round your neck,” Falconne told the cowled crime czar. “Try a retcon, even twitch, and I’ll slice your head off.” The Hooded Hood sat motionless. “I assume you have a proposal, Miss Wilson.” he noted. “Yeah, I have a proposal. I’m not as dumb as everyone seems to think. Here’s my proposal. What the hell did you do with my brother?” “Ah,” said the Hood. “Samuel Joseph Wilson and Julia Thomas were shifted out of mainstream continuity… when they inconvenienced me.” A jerk of the wire. “You murdered them!” “No. I removed them, until it is convenient to bring them back. If it is ever convenient to bring them back.” “So bring them back, villain!” Falconne demanded. “Or I’ll kill you.” “I think not,” replied the Hooded Hood. “It is your labours I require for now.” “I will kill you. Don’t think I won’t.” “You will not harm me. And I am not a villain,” the cowled crime czar replied. “I am an archvillain.” VelcroVixen looped her own monofilament garrotte round Lindy’s neck and laid a restraining hand on the girl’s shoulder. “He’s right,” Vicki Vee told Lindy Wilson. “He could have sent you to join your brother before you even spoke. Nice try, but game over.” “Where did you come from?” Lindy asked, allowing herself to be disarmed. “Where did she come from, Hood?” The cowled crime czar finally turned to Lindy. “Am I not… the Hooded Hood? Now, about the mission I require you to perform…” “I summons Visionary, Hallie, and Fleabot! called Lisa with a voice that could cut through realities. “Now!” The pair of the denatured HEDs in her hand fizzed into life and wobbled precariously into the air. One of them twitched and Hallie’s wire-frame silhouette fuzzed into view. “We’re alive?” Fleabot struggled with the unfamiliar system architecture but eventually managed to make his head appear around his hovering drone. “This sucks intensely,” he spat. “You caught them in time!” Al B. Harper cried out. “A second later and their signal patterns would have degraded past rescue.” “But where’s Vizh?” demanded Lisa. “I summons Visionary! Get here, mister!” The first lady of the Lair Legion buckled as the strength went out of her. To everybody’s surprise a third figure appeared co-mingled with Hallie’s hologram. “Wait,” said Visionary “What?” Mr Epitome and Donar plunged into the flames, pulling apart the wreckage of the computer lab. CrazySugarFreakBoy! doused the fires with silly string and Trickshot used his foam arrows while Dancer and ManMan searched the cooling wreckage. Epitome was the first to spot Yuki, using his x-ray vision. “Over here,” he called, hefting the I-beam off the fallen cyborg. “About time,” the scorched P.I. told him. “I couldn’t have kept that weight off Beth for much longer. My systems are at 13% and…” Donar caught Yuki as she collapsed. The Robot P.I. was torn up and scorched, great fragments of metal protruding from her body. She didn’t pass out as much as shiver on the edge of consciousness. “Major systems failure,” Al B. diagnosed. “Nothing too critical I hope, but enough to cause…” “She was buried alive again,” Dancer pointed out. “And burned. It’s not to do with her machinery.” “I’ll… survive…” Yuki told them through gritted teeth. Donar hefted the robot with surprising gentleness and hastened after Al B. toward his own lab. “Who is this underneath her?” Citizen Z asked with some distaste looking at the seared red body laid at the impossible angle. “Beth!” cried Trickshot, recognising her jewellery. “Aw no! Is she alive?” Mr Epitome turned his vision powers on the badly-burned woman. “Yes. In shock. 60% body burns, multiple fractures, concussion for starters. She needs immediate medical aid.” “On it,” answered Hatman, doffing his fireman’s helmet and pulling on his surgeon’s headband. “Get the on-site medics down here with a trauma unit stat!” ManMan and Trickshot dragged the broken but breathing Beth Shellett from the wreckage. “Her face,” winced Dancer. “Her eyes!” “Concentrate on keeping her alive,” Hatman ordered. “There’s a chance. Make it happen.” Sarah Shepherdson nodded grimly and began to dance probabilities. “Check the security logs,” CSFB! called to Trickshot. “See what survived. Check if anybody else was down here.” There was an inrush of air and Sergeant MacHarridan reformed in a foul temper. “Ah hate being exploded against mah will!” the detonator hippo shouted. “What the hell happened?” “That is a very good question,” Citizen Z agreed. “Anybody?” “Rikka Ulz Hagen,” replied virtual Visionary, arriving with Lisa. “And I can tell you her exact address.” Dr Ulz Hagen swore as some force overpowered her own hologram generators and snatched Visionary back from her technical domain. She’d set wards to keep Hallie from escape, but she’d not programmed them to contain a possibly-fake man. “Time to leave,” she decided. She hit the emergency transfer key on her laptop and abandoned everything else. She felt it was probably time for a vacation in another part of the world before the Legion caught up with her. She grabbed her purse and opened the front door. The boiling mass of Manga Shoggoth seethed over her, pouring in wrathfully to envelop the fugitive whole. “You,” the loathsome elder beast told her, “have made me angry.” Bry Katz had felt the tremor from the blast far above, but contained as he was in the dimensional doorway that channelled the Celestian energies to maintain the barrier protecting the solar system there was little he could do to investigate. No communications device would work this close to the multiversal maelstrom so he had to rely on shouting. “Hey! Up there! What’s going on?” It was CrazySugarFreakBoy! who eventually answered his calls, looking worried and unhappy. “Bry. I’m sorry man, there’s been an accident. Well, sabotage. We’re just trying to retrieve the security tapes now, find out what’s going on. But… Beth was hurt.” “Beth?” Goldeneyed repeated. “My Beth? Where is she? What’s happened?” “She’s badly burned,” CSFB! warned him. “And some broken bones and stuff. She was there when the computer core blew up. Hatty used his Sherlock Holmes cap. There's something screwy about the whole thing. Beth was carrying a purse with some kind of high-tech compression gadget in it. He thinks Beth might have set the charges.” “That’s bull!” G-Eyed snarled. He dragged himself forward, pulling the crackling lightnings of the multiversal door with him. “Total bull! I want to see her. I want to go to her right now!” “Bry, you know you can’t. If you leave the doorway you’ll break the barrier and let in the Parody Master.” “I don’t care! You tell Hatman, I don’t care. If Beth dies, if any harm comes to her, if anybody tries to pin this crap on her, I’ll let the PM in. You tell them all!” CSFB! nodded and held out his hands. “Stay cool, Bry. We’re dealing. Nobody’s out to get Beth. We’re all pulling for her.” “Beth!” Bry shouted out in anguished tones as he hung in the web of dimensional lightnings. “Beth!” “She’s trying to say something,” Dancer decided, leaning over Beth Shellett as the medics strapped her to a stretcher. “I doubt that,” answered Citizen Z looking down at the scorched wreck of the bright young woman who’d cared night and day for Bry Katz. “Relax,” Hatman said, laying a hand on CZ’s shoulder. “I know how much she means to you.” Elizabeth von Zemo recalled that Hatman believed Citizen Z to be Beth’s closest friend Laurie Leyton. She closed her hand over Jay Boaz’ and said, “I’ve got to be strong. I know that.” “She is saying something,” Dancer insisted. “Something about saving the children?” CZ and Trickshot moved as close as they could without disturbing Hatman and the medics. Behind them Sergeant MacHarridan began to shout at the security team as they arrived, deploying them to check the extent of the damage, doing all the things that happen too late after a major security breach. Then the detonator hippo stomped away to colla Al B. Harper to know how the lassie Yuki was. “Mostly cosmetic damage,” the archscientist assured the anxious Argus MacHarridan. “Expensive not critical. Give me a few hours at the workbench and she’ll be good as new.” He looked down at the purple-haired P.I. thoughtfully. “Possibly better. In the wrecked digitisation lab Mr Epitome tasted and sniffed at fragments of database housing. “Exoprone-B,” he concluded. “Advanced shaped-charge explosive. C4 base, spiced up with a classified cocktail of added ingredients for that extra punch. There are maybe five governments on the planet with access to this stuff.” He frowned at the implications of that. “She said it again,” Dancer interrupted, still leaning over Beth as the injured woman was strapped to a gurney. “Save the children. What children?” “Go with her to the hospital,” Hatman said. “Take CV and Donar as security. Keep an eye on her till we know what happened.” Dancer nodded grimly and followed the medics as they carried Beth away to the helicopter waiting on the Lair Helipad. Hallie finished recompiling herself in the HED Lisa had summonsed her to and fizzed back to her default hologram self. “They’re dead,” she cried. “Not all of them,” Visionary told her. “You got some out. They’re trapped in your other HEDs for now because they’re all crowded in any old how and they can’t run the software like you can, but we can build more storage and get them out. We can make another digitiser and give them their bodies back.” “Trickshot had arranged an exchange to send them to Badripoor,” Ebony consoled her. “There’s so much super-science there that if anyone tries opening an portal it would be spotted before they even got started. Lisa’s working on convincing Garrick about the survivors.” “Serves him right,” said Visionary. “How many got out?” Hallie asked, trembling. “Of the three thousand two hundred and twelve sentient beings caught in my virtual realm, how many did we rescue?” “You did fine,” Vizh told her. “Fleabot will say the same as soon as he figures how to work your spare HED. You did everything you could.” “How many?” “A hundred and eighty-four,” Amber answered. “Which is a hundred and eighty-four more than would have survived without your heroic efforts,” Ebony pointed out. “A hundred and eighty four,” Hallie repeated. “Out of over three thousand.” A new thought occurred to her. “How did I get out? And where did I send you, Vizh? And how did you get your body back?” Vizh fuzzed a little with embarrassment static. “Well, I didn’t,” he confessed. “I’m purely virtual, dammit. Like you.” “Oh Vizh, I’m sorry,” Hallie told him. “I couldn’t access the digitiser.” “On account of it being in pieces,” Amber pointed out. “Apparently I can have a new body cloned,” Visionary assured her. “Lisa has Dr Moo on speed dial and she’s forwarded a pair of my underpants to Daio.” He shuddered. “A hundred and eighty-four,” Hallie whispered to herself. Trickshot wrestled free the half-melted cover of the lab security camera. The black box had survived as it was supposed to do. He dragged in a monitor from the robotics lab and jacked it in. “It was Beth,” he recognised as the black and white images fast forwarded. “Beth set the charges.” “Beth?” Hatman puzzled. “That makes no sense. Why would Beth do this to Hallie? Or to herself?” “She was being mind-controlled,” CSFB! declared, reappearing from the cellars. “Cloneherofeedereviltwin.” “Or coerced,” Knifey offered. “Saturday afternoon,” ManMan frowned. “Doesn’t Beth teach some special kids at the orphanage?” “Save the children,” Trickshot repeated. Hatman looked up sharply, reaching for his rockets hat. “Dream, Epitome, Tricky, Manny, with me,” he said. “A fine success,” Ms Tesseract told Herbert Garrick, arriving without warning in the Presidential Advisor’s temporary office accommodation in one of the many trailers that now proliferated across the lawn of the Lair Mansion (accommodation as far away from Mumphrey as the eccentric Englishman could arrange short of shipping Bad News Herb to China). “Success?” Garrick spat, rising from his desk. “I just has Lisa Waltz in here almost in tears. She told me what you've done. You sabotage a national asset in time of war to play your political agenda. You cripple an American citizen whose only crime was caring for a man who is suffering to keep the Parody Master from invading us. You distract and demoralise the Lair Legion at the very point where we most need them to hold back an overwhelming and implacable enemy! And you call that success?” “They’ll be more tractable now,” Ms Tesseract replied. “We play a long game.” Garrick gripped the edge of his desk then punched a button on his intercom. “Mr Kennedy please report to my office. I’m authorising you and ordering you to place Ms Tesseract under arrest.” The Shadow Cabinet representative looked at him in amused disbelief. “Even if you could do that,” she told the special advisor, “it would be suicidally stupid of you to attempt it.” “Sorry Sir,” Kennedy replied. “You are not authorised to give that command regarding Ms Tesseract.” The Shadow Cabinet emissary gave Garrick a smirk. Garrick flushed and pressed another button. “Sergeant MacHarridan. I need you here now to arrest an intruder.” “Ah’m on mah way.” Bad News Herb glared across at Ms Tesseract. “I don’t have much time for hippos,” he admitted, “but I’m betting you haven’t got them in your pocket.” Ms Tesseract sneered and pulled off her gloves. “You have no idea how out of your league you are, Herbert. Or how badly we will hurt you for this.” She allowed her hand to unfold, becoming something that moved through more dimensions than humans could comprehend. Her smile became inhuman. “N-dimensional biotech folding,” Garrick recognised. “So they found a way to graft it at last.” “And I can do so many painful things with it,” Ms Tesseract explained. Garrick’s paperweight exploded with expanding Shoggoth. Bad News Herb was as surprised as the agent of the Shadow Cabinet. He hadn’t known Mumphrey had arranged for an elder beast fragment to be planted in his office to monitor him. Ms Tesseract dropped her outer form and became the multi-angled predator she really was, born and bred in the laboratories of the Shadow Cabinet. The Shoggoth saw her twelve dimensions and raised her another twelve. “You have no idea how out of your league you are,” he bubbled at her. “But you will.” Garrick turned away as the Shoggoth enveloped the powerful predator, but then turned back to watch. “You dared to threaten my mother,” he told Ms Tesseract as the woman disappeared. “Little punk!” Visionary seethed, virtually pacing up and down the Lair Legion Living Room. “That… that… little punk!” “Hacker Nine was just concerned about Hallie,” Lisa told the virtually-fake man. “He didn’t deliberately hack into your HED and take over your holographic matrix to talk to us.” “Besides, it was pretty funny,” added virtual Fleabot’s head. “Nothing about this is funny,” Vizh shouted. “Not what happened to those robots, not what happened to Beth, not what’s happening to Hallie.” “She’s had a bad shock,” Lisa admitted, “but she asked for time alone to cope with it. We have to respect that.” “The Shoggoth has Rikka Ulz Hagen in custody,” Ebony of Nubilia comforted them. “Once she stops gibbering and gets a change of underwear we might be able to work out a little of what happened today.” “Hallie had her data backed up somewhere, doesn’t she?” Amber checked. “I mean, I know you don’t trust me with the location, which given my history is totally understandable but…” “Hallie’s main database is backed up,” Vizh agreed. “Encrypted, secured, hidden by all the creative things the foremost artificial intelligence in the world can come up with backed by the eccentric genius of Jamie Bautista, but yes, she has back ups. Of the data.” “But not of what the data represents,” Fleabot interjected. “Say Hallie had been wiped today. Somebody like Hacker Nine might eventually have found Hallie’s backup data, maybe even broken the codes to read it. He could have used that to reboot a Hallie program that looked and acted just the same as the Hallie we know.” “But it wouldn’t have been,” Vizh continued. “No more than a clone of me would be me unless my… essence, my continued consciousness, the original me got shifted into it. With me in there it’s just a really good repair job. Without me its someone different that looks like me.” “Vizh worries a lot about identity issues,” Lisa explained. “It’s his thing.” “So we could use Hallie’s data to create copies of some or all of the urban robots who were just destroyed,” Fleabot concluded. “But we can’t bring back the actual beings who just got killed. And Hallie knows that.” “Hallie knows everything about all of it,” Vizh answered worriedly, “Except that she’s not to blame.” “It’s an invasion plan,” Sydney St Sylvain told Cleone and Liu Xi. “We knew something was brewing in the Mythlands and Faerie. That’s why Mumphrey sent us there some months back, Leo and me. Now we know that the Parody Master hopes to conquer Faerie and reactivate the old gateways to Earth like this one to bring his troops through.” “I thought that Faerie was cut off from the Parody Master the same way Earth was?” Cleone objected. “But Hell isn’t,” suggested Liu Xi. “You said that Xander went to hell because the Parody Master was marching his troops across it. So the PM can get to Hell, because it covers all the worlds or something, on both sides of the barrier. And then Xander went from Hell to Faerie, so there must be a path there.” “The Tiend Gates,” Cleone answered. “By ancient pact Faerie must give a tiend, a tithe of twelve of their fairest every year to hell. It’s a very old story. The gateways link the two planes in due season.” “So that’s how he’ll do it,” Sydney summarised. “Through Hell to Faerie, from Faerie to here. Unless he’s stopped.” “And that’s the hard part,” Cleone admitted. “Did you see the others who vanished in Faerie?” Liu Xi asked Fashion Faerie and Leonard Day-Vincent. “Miiri and Asil and their companions?” Sydney shook her head. “We didn’t. But we bumped into a messenger who has some news of them. We need to get him to the Lair Mansion as soon as possible.” “Then let’s go,” demanded Liu Xi Xian. “I think we should,” agreed Cleone Swanmay, her eyes distant, her brow furrowed. “I think they need us.” “Seventeen children and a comatose adult,” reported Mr Epitome as he scanned the classroom at St Jude’s Orphanage. “And a rather sophisticated cone of silence using Wakandybar technology to muffle sounds and making further examination of the interior difficult.” “Layout?” asked Hatman. Epitome sketched the room. “I couldn’t see explosives, but there’s thin bare wires looped round each child’s necks and tying their hands and feet. All joined together, I think. More around the doors and windows.” “A trap, then,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! scowled. “We bust in there and fry the kids ourselves!” “Or something worse,” Knifey added. “A hostage situation, then,” ManMan reasoned. “That’s why Beth blew up Hallie. Somebody was threatening her pupils.” “Looks like,” Hatman agreed. “But we can do the reconstruct later. For now we have those children to save. Tricky, is the orphanage evacuated?” “Everyone’s bein’ bussed down to the Zero Street Mission,” the archer replied. “I co-ordinated a perimeter with Deputy Commissioner Hogglet. Poor Graham’s kinda distracted just now.” “Beth’s his daughter, isn’t she,” Hatman remembered. “Oh Lord…” “I can cut through the ceiling above the children,” Knifey suggested. “If Epitome can stop it dropping on their heads then the rest of you could get in there that way.” “I take it the bad guy’s long gone then?” ManMan checked. “Only I really want to meet whoever did this.” “Later,” Hatman repeated. “They take their shot, then we get to hunt them down. For now let’s just do this.” “Beth,” Don Graham said, so softy hardly any sound came from his lips. “65% burns,” Doctor Whitwell reported. “That’s why we have her in the tank. We hope to stabilise her in the next six hours. I’m more concerned about her head trauma, but only time will tell with that.” “Yon maiden didn’t not deserve this fate,” Donar noted. “She wert most wondrous fair in spirit as well as form.” “Poor Bry is going nuts,” reported Dancer. “Are they sending Lisa to calm him down?” asked Citizen Z. “Lisa’s busy on the communicator with the Librarian. I think that’s going to be one long uncomfortable conversation. Vizh is with Bry.” “We’ll be able to begin the skin grafts in about six weeks if all goes well,” Dr Whitwell instructed Commissioner Graham. “If she survives the night.” “What about her eyes?” Citizen Z enquired. “Too early to say,” Whitwell answered. “But she’s probably blind for life.” Graham staggered like a man who’d been punched. Dancer hurried to help him to a chair. He fumbled with a bottle of tablets and swallowed two. “My Beth,” he whispered. “We haven’t spoken for so long. Not since her mother left. And now maybe not ever.” There was a furore out in the lobby. Donar moved to defend the room against whatever attack was coming. He hadn’t expected to be waved out of the way by a middle-aged woman with a blue rinse. “Everybody get out!” she told the Legionnaires. “Out! I don’t want any of you here!” “Eloise!” Don Graham gasped, rising from his chair. “And him,” Eloise Shellett spat, pointing a finger at her ex-husband. “I especially want him out of here. Keep the hell away from my daughter!” “It’s okay, kids,” Trickshot told the released orphans. “Br’er Tricky is here. You’re gonna be fine now.” “All of you get your stuff together and go with Reverend Fleetwood,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! told them. “We need to stay behind to chase the bad man who wired you all up.” “What about Sister Olive?” asked one worried eight year old. “They’re taking her to hospital to make her better,” Hatman answered. “You go with Mac and be good for him, you hear?” “What about Miss Shellett?” another child asked. “The skinless man hurt her a lot so she cried.” “Did he?” Mr Epitome said through gritted teeth. “She’s at the hospital too,” CSFB! answered. “They’re trying to fix her up.” ManMan watched the bewildered children get shepherded by their carers down to the minibus that waited for them. “There are no good answers we can give those kids,” he said. “We’ll need to ship these little needles back to Harper for examination,” Epitome declared, carefully bagging the tiny pins that had been taped so they’d come into contact with the wires round the children as soon as any of the booby-traps were triggered. “We need more data on this Wexford.” “We need to rip out his spleen,” ManMan replied. “In, er, a metaphorical sense, because I’m totally over the revenge killing thing. Really.” “Spleens are probably okay,” Hatman conceded. “Especially for this sicko.” Trickshot looked round the broken classroom. “So what now? Trail’s cold. The bad guy got away.” “We have Ulz Hagen,” Hatman replied, “And what’s left of this Tesseract woman to question. We have plenty of damage control to do. Get back to the Mansion. Dream and I will do a routine overfly just to check the area as per the book.” “Before we all head out though,” CSFB! called, “We need to stop and take a moment.” “Why?” asked Trickshot. “Because we’re totally missing the Big Thing,” Dreamcatcher Foxglove warned them. “A clue?” asked Epitome. CSFB! shook his head. “A sign. Look, these last few days we’ve been tearing each other apart. Manny went Punisher, Tricky went Judge Dredd, me and buttface went to the mat, Hatty had to can me. We were drowning in our own crap. But look what happened when tragedy stuck.” “Three thousand robots died?” ventured ManMan. “And you all sprang into action,” observed Knifey. “Hatman called on each of you without hesitation, and you came together like a well-oiled machine and did the job. You put aside your differences and disputes in the face of terrible need and you worked together for the good of the world.” CrazySugarFreakBoy! nodded. “That’s totally what I’m saying, Knifey.” The wired wonder held out his hand to Epitome. “Listen, you’re a hard right-wing son of a bitch with a totalitarian agenda and a stick up his butt the size of the Statue of Liberty. But I’m sorry I whaled on you with the robot thing. Lisa showed me there were better ways I could have dealt with it. So this is me apologising.” Mr Epitome looked at CSFB!’s hand, possibly checking it for joy buzzers. “You are an ill-disciplined knee-jerk liberal juvenile hedonist with no understanding of adult politics or political context and an inability to see beyond you own self-absorbed fantasy world,” the paragon of power declared. “I accept your apology. For my part I’m sorry I had to spank your miserable butt.” He shook Dream’s hand. “You so didn’t,” the wired wonder objected. “I’m sorry I had to do what I had to do with Manny,” Trickshot chipped in. “I’ve gone over this again and again an’ I still can’t think what else I could’a done, but I don’t want to tear th’ team apart. You guys are the best in the world. Apart from me, I mean.” “You did the right thing,” ManMan assured him. “Really. I did what I had to do. You did what needed doing afterwards. I’ve already told Hat I’m sorry for the trouble I caused.” He turned to the leader of the Lair Legion. “Look, this isn’t time for me to make a heroic martyrdom last stand. You’ve got enough worries without me being a butthead. If you want me to go quietly then I’m gone.” “I don’t want you to go,” Hatman told him. “Any of you. Mumph and I decided on a new policy today. I think you’re going to like it.” “I need to shake your hand too, Hatster,” CSFB! noted. “Listen, I should have had more faith in you. You’re our glorious leader. You’re my very best friend. You say it and I’ll follow you through the gates of hell. I’d trust you with my life. I’d trust you with my Lee/Kirby FFs. You make the calls, I’ll back you with my last breath.” CrazySugarFreakBoy! thought for a minute then changed his mind. “Nah, I don’t want to shake your hand. I totally know what we need to do.” He held out his hand, palm down. “Come on. You know you want to,” he grinned at the others. “I want to,” ManMan confessed, and laid his hand on top of Dream’s. “Aw, man,” Trickshot said with a thick voice. “This is corny.” He added his hand to the pile. Mr Epitome swallowed, then reached out and clasped the rest. Hatman laid his palm over the others. “Lair Legion,” he said, “Line Up.” It was past midnight. Bryan Katz stood in the doorway beneath the Mansion, crackling as Celestial energies coursed through him. “I have to go to her,” he said for the hundredth time. “There has to be a way.” “Beth’s stable,” Visionary assured him. “They’re sending us half hour bulletins. I’ve asked Flapjack to bring them down here.” “When Laurie was coming off the heroin Beth stayed with her all the time she could. But now Laurie’s gone who-knows-where and Beth’s got nobody to be with her.” “I heard her mother visited,” Vizh offered. “Her mother’s preference was for the Legion to stay outside intensive care. “You don’t understand. Laurie left because she knew I was falling for Bethany. Like we were made for each other. Laurie’s note said as much, and that she didn’t want to get between us and that she was olay and for us not to try and find her this time. So I was going to ask Beth… ask her...” “Why didn’t you?” G-Eyed shrugged. “Well then there was the whole Vermillion Vex mutate-power-loss thing and I lost the minor mutation that let me access my spatial-folding powers. Suddenly I was just the semi-amazing Bry Katz. The Vermillion Vex ruined my life.” Vizh snorted. “Your life?” “Oh, sorry Vizh. I forgot that…” “That any woman I get close to has to sacrifice themselves for the good of the Parodyverse?” the virtually-fake man asked bitterly. “First Cheryl then Pricilla, and now maybe Hallie. Except, you know, Hallie and I aren’t…” “I missed my chance,” Bry went on. “I was all about getting my super-powers back and being a hero again. I waited too long with Beth and now it’s too late.” “Beth’s still alive,” Visionary pointed out. “She’s going to need her friend to face the world when she pulls through.” “And here I am,” G-Eyed pointed out, “stuck in a doorway. Being useless to her. Not able to help.” “Tell me about it,” answered Vizh glumly. “Her whole life ruined by those bastards.” “She’ll blame herself for what happened.” “Crippled and hurt.” “All for trying to do the right thing in an impossible situation.” “I should go to her and damn the consequences.” “I should talk to her whether she thinks she needs to talk or not.” Vizh and G-Eyed both looked up. “What?” By the crackling neon light of the dimensional gateway, Visionary and Goldeneyed stood and pondered on the unfairnesses of fate. Elizabeth von Zemo padded up to the Lair Mansion attic landing and checked that nobody else was around. She moved to the wall, touched the DNA-sensitive portrait of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, and opened the secret doorway to the hidden dimensional space that contained her late uncle’s laboratory. She padded inside, closed the door, and slumped. Her costume slithered off her and sprawled over the floor, gradually oozing back into the elastic form of henchwoman Silicone Sally. “Being your Citizen Z outfit is getting real old real fast,” the pliable playmate complained. “This whole secret ID thing is getting old,” sighed the Baroness, dropping onto a battered leather couch. “If I wasn’t progressing towards my inevitable world domination so very well I’d just murder the lot of them and quit.” “Yeah. Dream’s back as deputy despite all your stroking of the Librarian, and Bookman’s in the doghouse,” Sally noted. “Dream?” Beth von Zemo questioned her minion. “You mean the feckless CrazySugarFreakBoy!” “But he is kind of cute,” Sally pointed out. “I’d let him stretch me sometime.” “Don’t get distracted. We have to keep up this masquerade until the right opportunities present themselves.” Silicone Sally wasn’t convinced. “And how many opportunities will you be getting sitting by that Shellett woman’s bedside? You heard Boaz: ‘Nobody else knows how deeply you feel for Beth, Laurie, but I do. I’ll assign you as her security so you can be close to her all the time she’s recovering!’ Bah!” “Hatman thinks I’m secretly grubby little Lisette, Laurie Leyton. A little DNA substitution, a good holo-mask, and a minor Hooded Hood retcon,” the Baroness declared. “He believes me to be poor pulped Ms Shellett’s best friend and flatmate. So now I’m stuck playing nurse to what’s left of that insipid vapid schoolma’am.” Sally shrugged. “You could always just kill her,” she suggested. “And send moonstruck Goldeneyed over the edge and have him drop the barrier that’s keeping the Parody Master from raining on my parade?” scorned Elizabeth. She turned to Baron Zemo’s workbench. “No, there’s another way to resolve all this, if I can just find the right…” She pushed her way through the debris with an angry snort. “Why couldn’t Uncle Heinrich ever keep his lab tidy?” “So we have to keep on being Citizen Z,” Sally Reysiliant sighed. “We keep on as Citizen Z,” the Baroness confirmed. “Damn it, I’ll find that other thing later. For now I have a job to do.” She flipped some switches to bring an old-fashioned green-screen monitor to life. “What now?” worried Silicone Sally. “Well with Hallie being crippled for the moment this is another opportunity,” Elizabeth replied. “One more step to ruling the world.” She plugged more wires into a free-standing stack of computer drives. “Wake up, HAGGIE,” the Baroness told HALLIE’s Dr Vizhnar-built predecessor. “You have work to do.” Kat Allen couldn’t sleep. She reached out for Dominic Clancy and snaked an arm round him to hug him. “Dom?” The man of might came to instant wakefulness. “Yes?” “I was thinking. About Beth.” “What about her?” “About what became of her, just for being a friend to a hero.” Mr Epitome held his breath for a moment. “There are serious dangers,” he said at last. “I see that,” admitted Kat. “Too many dangers?” he asked the woman hugging him. He kept his voice very neutral. “I’d understand if there were.” “The danger is the price we pay for loving the good ones,” Katarina Allen replied. “I’d rather have both than neither.” Dominic Clancy turned round and held her until she fell asleep in his arms. “Hello,” Exu, god of murder and Doomherald of the Parody Master greeted his neighbouring cellmate. “I couldn’t sleep. Well, I don’t sleep, really. Macbeth hath murdered sleep. So I thought I’d pop in and say hi.” Edward Gramayre woke up in shock at the intruder in his secure cell. “Are you here to kill me?” the former Shadow Cabinet emissary demanded. He struggled to sit up as best he could with his arms and legs in the casts from Mumphrey’s beating. The Doomherald shook his head. “There’s been enough murder in this house for one day,” he judged. “Your colleague Ms Tesseract arranged it.” “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Gramayre replied gruffly. “And you don't know who you're messing with. I’m a nightmare in human form, sonny. I’m capable of doing terrible, unspeakable things.” “Yes, I see that. Of course, I also see that Sir Mumphrey Wilton has broken you and left you caged here to rot away in shame and humiliation with your mind powers neutered. All that’s left is your murderous hatred and impotent rage. I could feel it screaming to me.” Gramayre’s purple-bruised face crumpled with suspicion. “How the hell did you get in here past security anyway?” He glanced up at the cameras that recorded him 24-7. Exu shrugged. “I can go wherever there’s murder. And you are a very accomplished murderer Mr Cromlyn.” “Gramayre. My name’s…” “I can’t read minds,” the Doomherald confessed, “but I do know everything about murders. Including the real names and actions and intentions of those who committed them or arranged them. That’s how I know about you. It’s how I know about Ms Tesseract. It’s how I know about Wexford and Ulz Hagen and the Bonewalker and Die Totenmaske and the whole ugly conspiracy.” Gramayre went pale. “You can’t know. That information is protected.” The Doomherald shrugged. “What can I say? I’m very good. Although I admit there are some things I can’t see about your Shadow Cabinet, which suggests some very high level intervention indeed.” He grinned. “But that just gives us more to talk about on these long Legion nights, doesn’t it?” He followed Gramayre’s gaze up to the cameras. “Oh, don’t worry. I’m entirely in your head, Cromlyn.” He settled back at the opposite end of the prison bed. “So, entertain me.” “Report, Mr Boaz,” asked Sir Mumphrey Wilton. It was the next day. Most of the Legion were assembled now around the conference table in the Meeting Room. Most of them looked fraught and tired. “It was a madman called Wexford the Dissected Man,” the capped crusader began. “We’re still developing information on him, but we know he took Beth’s class hostage and threatened to torture them. There was some kind of pin in her neck that Al thinks was linking her to him psionically.” “Testimony from the children indicates that this Wexford was somehow able to confer pain or fear through his needles,” Mr Epitome added. “There are indications that he did that to Miss Shellett.” “Beth didn’t have a choice,” CSFB! argued. “She had to do what she did to save the kids.” “It’s a major security breach,” Yuki commented. Al had made good his word to patch her up as good as new; maybe better. “The kind there’s really no protection from. It could have been any one of us with people we cared about being held.” “Garrick’s going to make plenty of capital out of it,” Trickshot predicted. “His security concerns were legitimate,” Epitome pointed out. “Take a look at the computer lab for evidence.” “Garrick’s in my good books for once,” Mumphrey admitted. “Did well turnin’ in that Tesseract woman. Shame about his mother. Hope she recovers from her stroke.” “Wexford was gone by the time we arrived at St Jude’s,” Hatman went on. “The kids were terrified but okay. The nun looking after them wasn’t. She’s been placed in a mental hospital till she recovers. Not Herringcarp.” “Wexford,” Trickshot promised, “is on my list.” “He’s on a lot of lists,” growled Yuki. “We did catch Rikka Ulz Hagen, though,” Dancer pointed out. “She designed the whole operation. She built the kit.” “Miss Ulz Hagen,” the Manga Shoggoth bubbled, “is very, very sorry.” “But that won’t bring back three thousand sentient beings,” ManMan pointed out. “Did you see the papers this morning? Half of them are accusing us of genocide and the other half are applauding.” “I’m meeting with Meggan and Bernice later today to put out a statement,” Hatman told them. “And how’s Miss Shellett?” Sir Mumphrey wondered. “Not good,” Yuki answered. “I shielded her from the blast as best I could and stopped her being crushed when the roof came in. But she’s got 65% body burns, some broken bones, and I think she’s blind.” “Not to mention the psychological trauma of whatever Wexford did to her,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! added. “And of what he made her to do Hallie and the robots,” Dancer pointed out. “I don’t think she knows about that yet.” “She made it through the night,” Trickshot summarised. “That's a good sign.” “She’s burned as badly as Laurie Leyton was that time,” Hatman noted, referring to Lisette’s savage attack from E-Male. He glanced over at Citizen Z. “Except now Uhuna’s not here to heal her.” “It’s terrible,” CV replied. “Poor, poor Beth. Poor Beth.” “Dr Moo’s growing a Vizh clone,” Tricky realised. “Can’t we have her whip up a new body for Beth?” “It doesn’t work like that,” Knifey explained. “Vizh is in digitised virtual form and can just be poured into an empty shell. Beth’s still rooted to her body. It would need a brain transplant, or else some other very dangerous procedure. So I understand.” “Bry’s freaking out,” CSFB! warned. “I don’t know if he can keep the barrier going much longer. All he wants to do is go to Beth.” “I am not sure that Goldeneyed is now operating within the norms of your species’ standard psychological profile,” the Shoggoth warned. “He seems to be redefining the boundaries of his psyche.” “Great,” Hatman breathed. “Anything else?” “Al B.’s added the Redigitiser to his to-do list,” Yuki offered. “We’ll be ready to reintegrate the surviving robots in about four weeks time if the SPUD technicians do their part.” “And Lisa will be working public opinion to really get them free,” Dancer added. “If nothing else this has made some folks think again about internment and detention without trial.” “Hallie’s pretty sore,” reported Trickshot. “You heard that the Librarian’s A.I. at the Moon Public Library turned those robot data-packets away? Hallie could’a saved far more of them, ten times more, if Bookman hadn’t valued his paperwork more than lives.” “It’s a discussion we’ll be having with him,” CSFB! promised. “Count on it!” “I think Lisa beat you to it,” Dancer said. “Don’t be too hard on Lee, though. Books are his life as well as his job. We all have limits. D.D. did what she had to do, just like we all do.” “Well, if someone wanted to convince the robot community to work for the Parody Master they’ve found the perfect way to do it,” ManMan said. “We’ve managed to create a menace that probably wasn’t there before. Yay, us.” “Everyone’s tired and exhausted by what’s happened,” offered Yuki. “We need to get past this and carry on. We still have the China plan to pull off.” “I know,” agreed Joe Pepper. “It’s just hard with Beth in intensive care and Bry wigging to the max and Hallie a virtual basket case.” “And three thousand robots dead,” added Hatman soberly. “Whoever wanted them neutralised has got their way.” Sir Mumphrey Wilton shook his head. “This wasn’t aimed at those poor robot chappies, Mr Boaz. This was aimed at us. Wexford wasn’t actin’ alone or just with Ulz Hagen. Tessaract proved that. I smell conspiracy. I smell smear.” “Yes,” agreed Citizen Z. “And it worked.” The meeting was over. The Legionnaires were gathering up their things to go. “Hold it!” Hatman called out suddenly. “Come back! There’s something I want to say.” The team shuffled back in. “This was a defeat,” Jay Boaz told them. “We took a bad hit. We made some bad calls. The enemy used that against us. Three thousand people died for it. Our friend was crippled.” He could see it in their faces; the hurt and shock; how tired they all were. “But you don’t judge a team just by how they win. You look at how they cope with losing too. A championship side, it’ll learn from its mistakes and pick itself up and go back harder and better than before.” “Tell that to the urban robots,” Citizen Z suggested. Hatman shook his head. “We got beaten but we’re not out of the game. We got beaten but the bad guys didn’t win. They wanted us splintered. This has brought us together. They wanted us scared. This has got us mad. They wanted us cowed. Does anybody here feel like they want to roll over to the people who organised this?” “Not for a moment,” growled Mr Epitome. “F*kin’ A,” agreed CSFB! “So our enemies failed as well,” Hatman pointed out. “Difference is they don’t cope with failure as well. They’ll still keep trying the same old crud. We’ll see Wexford again, doing something unspeakably cruel and nasty, and next time we'll nail him. They won’t learn. They won’t change. That’s why we’ll beat them.” “That would be the best option,” agreed the Manga Shoggoth thoughtfully. “So here’s the plan,” Jay Boaz told them with a glance at Mumphrey. The eccentric Englishman nodded approval and sat back to watch. “We don’t split up. We don’t get scared. We don’t roll over. We get ready.” The members of the Legion watched him point to the big map pinned on the wall. It was covered in notations and post-its and was the most classified document on the planet. “In two weeks time we take this fight back to the Avatar in China and we hand him his ass. As soon as Al figures a safe way through the Celestian Barrier we start taking it to the Parody Master where he lives. We show the rest of the universe that he’s not unbeatable. He can’t be everywhere at once. If one planet can defy him than every planet can. Without his armies he’s just another mega-powered thug. We take away his toys and we take away his rep and eventually we take him down.” Their faces were different now. He could see the change. Not happiness, but something; hope maybe. Heroism. “That’s how this meeting ends,” Hatman told them. “Now we go out and save the world.” Donar had skipped the meeting. He’d only have got yelled at for breaking the meeting table again. He stalked across the turf outside the Lair Mansion, pacing back and forth wishing there was something to hit. He looked up with little curiosity when Sydney St Sylvain’s Porsche passed the checkpoint and drove up to the main door. He became more alert when an elf got from the passenger door and marched over to fall at his feet. “Er, greetings, diminutive one,” Donar said uncertainly. “It hath been a while.” “Prince Donar Oldmanson from Valeria of Carfax,” Zebulon proclaimed in the formal manner of an imperial herald. “You are summoned to lead the defence of the White Gate of Aayesgarth against the Singularity Rider of the Parody Master and his fell hordes of darkness. Come to our aid or all Faerie will fall, then the Mythlands and the mortal world thereafter. For honour’s sake, and right, for the innocents who scream for salvation and the noble who spend their dying blood to defend them, you are bidden to come; for none other can captain the hosts of good in their darkest hour. Valeria calls upon the Lair Legion and the lord of Ausgard. She begs your aid for old friendship’s sake and by desperate need. Now is the time for heroes.” “Zounds!” Donar breathed, reaching for Mjalcolm. “In sooth?” “It’s true,” Cleone Swanmay assured the Ausgardian as she climbed from the back seat. “You are required for a great deed. The fate of the Parodyverse depends upon your valour and that of your companions.” “It’s important,” agreed Liu Xi Xian. “You have to go.” Zebulon looked up at the hemigod with the manic grin of one who knows his time has come at last. “You are our last hope!” This story is followed up in Visionary's excellent tie-in, Talking It Out. Next Issue: A very special wedding issue, as they say, as we return to Faerie – and take the Lair Legion with us (or some of them at least). Discover the secret of the Brass Baron, learn the fate of the defenders of the Aayesgarth, catch up with Marion Nightshade’s tour of the Many Coloured Land, witness the extreme grumpiness of Tanner, and be prepared for Untold Tales of the White Gate, and Other Fortresses. 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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