Post By The Hooded Hood says Happy Easter Sat Apr 07, 2007 at 06:40:27 pm EDT	Subject #309: Untold Tales of the Parody War: The King’s Slave, or The End of the World - Concluded at last
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#309: Untold Tales of the Parody War: The King’s Slave, or The End of the World The Junior Lair Legion Training Program and their friends: Kerry Shepherdson, fiery-tempered probability arsonist Fashion Accessory (Samantha Bonnington), fabric transmuter Harlagaz Donarson, demihemigod of thunder Denial (Danny Lyle), reality-denying self-defined supervillain Ham-Boy (Fred Harris), the world’s meatiest hero Kid Produce (Jasper Stevens), the vegetable-using vigilante Glitch, girl-Transformer robot from a distant star Captain Courageous (Christopher “Kit” Kipling), the world’s politest crimefighter Falconne (Belinda "Lindy" Wilson), streetwise problem teen with big bro's flight suit The Caphans: Prince Kiivan, usurped Emir of All Caph Ohanna of Raael, his companion and friend, keeper of the sacred treasures Vaahir of Viigo, outlaw warlord hero, Kiivan's mentor Prince Aarmus of Aarixus, collaborator claiming to now be Emir Kriige of Aarixus, his leman Those in need of a recap are directed to A Note for Those Unfamiliar with Caph. It’ll really help if you’re not up on green-skinned alien slave girls. Other Juniors material is available at The Junior LL Archive. *** In their own words: Koodi of Jaathar, Drudge-Slave 2nd Rank:     Don’t tell anybody, but Ohanna is ours.     The slaves, I mean. That’s who Ohanna really belongs to. She’s one of us.     The pleasure slaves say she’s one of them. After all, she was a daughter of Ekooria, fathered by a high councillor of the House of Raael. If things had worked out differently she’d have been sold for a high price to become the jewel of some great Master’s harem. She’d have been a high lady, probably a slavemistress one day.     But that’s not what happened. Instead the Pigeonwarriors came and cowardly betrayers surrendered our world to them and everything changed. The Princes were overthrown – except those who sided with Prince Aarmus, him who calls himself Emir of All Caph – and the Pigeonmen took whatever they wanted. Except that Ohanna escaped and saved great treasures of Caph, so they didn’t get everything they came for after all.     Ohanna got away to a far place where she learned all the arts of a leman, to fight and spy and organise. So Ohanna means something to the lemans and tradeslaves too.     And she worked hard. She got her hands dirty caring for Prince Kiivan, our rightful Emir, being his only bondswoman. She scrubbed and cleaned for him and cooked for him and did what is right for a great lord, by the toil of her back and the sweat of her brow, and that makes her one of us, the drudges, because we do what has to be done to make Caph work. Nobody praises a drudge, but we know what we know. Ohanna is ours too.     There’s an old story for the nymphs and the babies, a children’s bedtime tale about the beautiful honest slave girl who endured all hardships and saved by a Prince. At the tale’s end she becomes his property, of course, and his best beloved, most favoured of all his chattels and mother of his sons. Every slave dreams that one day they’ll be beloved of a wonderful Master. Well Ohanna did save Kiivan, and everybody knows he loves her. She asked a slave’s right from him, protection for her and the people, and he promised it. Just this once, couldn’t it be more than a children’s fantasy? If Kiivan loves her and will fight for her, doesn’t that mean he loves us too, and might fight to save us as well? Ohanna is ours, and if she belongs to Kiivan doesn’t that mean we belong to him as well?     Slavemistress Juura says that’s drudge-nonsense and to get on with the scrubbing before we feel her lash across our shoulders, but its no more than what everybody says. Ohanna is ours and she makes Kiivan ours, and together they are the Hope of Caph.     I was in the big hall when Prince Aarmus’ broadcast came on. Master called for the images to be put on the big viewscreen behind the purple tapestry and we all watched as that so-called Emir made his speech. He was sat on that new spacecraft of his that he bought with the money he stole from honest Houses, on a throne made of malachite (which is really hard to polish).     Behind him were more of those alien-import picture-viewers that you see everywhere these days. They showed all kinds of scenes of the Pigeonwarriors marching and flying across Caph, and of some new knights called Avawarriors in red and black armour marching through the Capitol. Then we saw a huge black ship bigger than a city sailing through the stars towards us, bringing new Masters to replace the Pigeonmen, Masters who would never go away.     “The future of Caph is assured,” the usurper said. Those cloth of gold robes are a bugger to iron. “New allies will seal the end of the terrorists and dissidents that disturb our peace.”     Nobody said anything in the big hall. We’d heard this before, and always there was a new threat came with it. But nobody had caught Vaahir of Viigo yet, because he is a brave hero and cleverest of Prince Kiivan’s soldiers and his valiant right hand.     But this time there was more.     “The pretender Kiivan’s forces crumble,” Aarmus went on. “Even Ohanna is now a slave of the House of Aarixus, subordinate to my pleasure and punishment.” He showed us a viewscreen image of Ohanna in his court, surrounded by his soldiers.     “That cannot be true,” Lord Khuufus, the Master’s brpther, declared, gazing at the picture. “Those alien servants can do amazing things to fake images.”     “A bill of sale has been entered in to the registry,” Mistress Duur reported. “An exchange of Ohanna of the House of Hood for a favour valued at twenty million shekli!”     Twenty million shekli! Every pleasure-slave in the hall turned almost blue with envy. Aliina’s always going on about how her value is now over eighteen thousand shekli. Even Leeti with all her airs and graces is only appraised at twenty-one thousand two hundred and forty shekli. Take that, Allina and Leeti!     Except that if Aarmus had Ohanna at Prince Aarmus’ mercy there was nothing about her future to envy. Aarmus is not said to be a kindly Master. As Yaarkis did to the harem of Leriid in the tales of old, such would be Ohanna’s terrible end, Zaahir help her.     “Let this be an end to childish drudge-talk about the pretender’s return,” Aarmus told us all. “Let Ohanna be an example to remind you of your duties of obedience… and of what becomes of slaves who defy their lawful Masters.”     The screen went blank on that threat, leaving everyone in the big hall stunned. Even Master looked pale and shocked. He fingered the tassels on his lemon gown and consulted with his sons and brothers in hushed worried whispers.     “Back to work, you uglydrudges!” called Juura sharply, lashing out at Kuroo and catching her across the back of her legs. “No time for gossip and lollygagging. Let me see some activity or I’ll see your hides skinned!” Juura is an absolute glarn sometimes.     But then Aliina yelped and backed suddenly away from the window. “L-look!” she cried out, pointing to the sky.     Prince Kiivan was in the sky. Or at least his picture was, towering over the camp, as big as a mountain. I don’t know how he did that. I don’t know how he and Ohanna grew up so fast either, but they did. Anyway, Kiivan was there in the sky.     “Aarmus of Aarixus,” the Emir of All Caph (the real Emir, our true ruler, you can feel it in your bones and water) boomed out. “You have betrayed your Emir and your world. Traitor I name you, treacherous and cowardly, without honour or future. You have clothed yourself in stolen power, collaborated with alien invaders, and you seek to sell all Caph into a slavery more profound than we have ever known. I, Kiivan, Keestus’ son out of Tiriiv of Ekooria, trueborn Emir of All Caph, have returned to destroy you. I have come to liberate my people as I vowed I would. I will lead them through fire to a future of peace and hope. But first there must be a reckoning.”     Every one of us knew what he was going to say next. It was right. It sang, like the old songs that set the fibres of your heart straining, like the narrative of a great storyteller at the moment of her glory. I could see it in the faces of my sisters around me, even in the faces of the masters. We all just knew.     “Aarmus, you have stolen that which is mine. I claim Ohanna of Raael, to have and to hold, and I invoke the balek gorn to prove my right. I stand with Gaath’s blade in my hand to see if you dare respond to my challenge. Defeat me and Caph is yours. Or surrender Ohanna to me and face my justice. If there is any shred of manhood in you then face me as a warrior.”     The cheer made me jump. It came unbidden from everybody around me, responding to his defiance. Someone – our Prince, Ohanna’s prince – someone had spoken for Caph, spoken for us. I realised the cheers were coming from me as well. And tears, but good tears.     Kiivan lifted the Honour Sword of Gaath, founder of his line. “Ancient Shadara, Thonnagarians, Avawarriors, all oppressors of Caph, the time of your rule is over. The Emir has returned. Tremble and flee or stay and die.”     “To arms!” called Master, rising from his chair. “Pack the tents, Duur, and head for the hills with all my goods and chattels. Khuufus, assemble the clan. Our House is going to war.”     “Is that wise?” asked Lord Khuufus. “Aarmus’ allies…”     “It may not be wise,” agreed Master, “but it is right. To war.”     Sometimes he is a good Master.     Everyone was scrambling to do Master’s bidding but I was still watching Kiivan in the skies. There was still one more thing. I could feel it in my heartstrings. “Say it,” I whispered, or prayed, or pleaded. “Say it now.”     Prince Kiivan said it: “Ohanna… I’m coming. I love you.”     “Yes,” I hissed, blinking back tears. He understood too. For a single moment a second rank drudge and the Emir of All Caph met together and their hearts beat as one.     That was the start of the end of the world. It was a good start. *** Kerry Shepherdson, probability arsonist:     I didn’t mean to cause the end of the world. I was provoked.     So there we were on Caph, doing the liberate-the-planet-from-bugly-invaders thing. They had Pigeonwarriors and Avawarriors and big-ass battle tanks and spaceships and things, but we had Gaz and me and Danny and the whole gang (except Glory, who’d have really liked the place and got very excited, I’m guessing) and while we might be outgunned we had all the style and attitude. And that’s what really matters, right?     Anyway, Kip had gone off to lead the attack on Thonnagarian High Command in the former Imperial Palace, dragging FA, Gaz, HB, and KP with him. We heard explosions and then there was this massive sandstorm so I’m guessing they were getting on with business. Vaahir and Pel were doing the whole Che Guevara bit and leading the popular people’s uprising and stuff. I could feel the fires from miles off, plus the big flash where Shazana Pel dropped that stolen Thonnagarian raptorship onto the Avatank squadron. I was so jealous.     Zack, Lindy, and Glitch were up in orbit doing the business on the orbital defence platforms and other geek-vulnerable targets. That left Danny and me to go with Kiivan into the big trap where he had to rescue Ohanna from the bad guy and take over the planet again. Apart from a little bit of an argument about Danny staring at Caphan girls in those chainmail mesh bikinis (come on guys, keep growing!) we were totally focussed on Kiivan’s plan.     “All of Caph will be watching now,” the Emir of All Caph explained. “If Aarmus sends in an assassination squad to stop us riding to the arena or maybe just carpet-bombs us then he’ll lose face and no-one on Caph will ever obey him again.”     “That’ll be a big comfort,” Danny said. “To everyone who’s not been carpet bombed to oblivion.”     “At least then you’ll keep your eyes in your head,” I snarked at him. “Except if your skull kind of explodes when the bombs hit, when your eyes might kind of get sprayed all over the place I guess.”     “Aarmus won’t ambush us outside the arena, Firecracker,” Danny said. And he should know, because those Denial powers of his can make stuff basically not happen. So like if Danny says, “You didn’t put on any underwear today,” then suddenly… Well, let’s not get into that in case my big brother/guardian Feebo-Vizh ever gets to read this, okay?     “We’re more likely to encounter treachery inside the compound,” Kiivan warned. “I’m still going to kill him though, if he’s harmed one hair on Ohanna’s head.”     I was impressed by how much Kiivan cared about Anna. We’d always known they were close but since she’d gone from him the Prince had got positively scary.     “Would you fight in a ritual combat against impossible odds for me, Danny?” I asked my boyfriend. “To save me from a fate worse than death?”     Denial shrugged. “Our best chance is, you jolly ‘em along and get ‘em good and distracted, I’ll creep up behind and take ‘em out while they’re all busy.”     I’d have thumped him on the arm except than I’d have fallen off the wild khersk we were riding, and it was a long way down.     Oh, did I mention the wild khersks? Roughly the size of rhinos, temperament of wolverines, personal hygiene of warthogs? Ridden to all Caphan major rituals as a sign of virility and power? They don’t come with steering wheels. How people control them without causing small fires in their smelly fur I do not know.     “Sure are a lot of people cheering you, Kiivan,” Danny noted as we moved through the throng towards the stadium. It was insane that in the distance there was a civil war but here it was the Superbowl.     “They’ll cheer for Aarmus too,” the Emir replied, “until they see which of us is going to triumph.”     “That’s you, right?” I checked. I didn’t want him to forget.     “Do what you have to, Kiivan,” Danny told him. “Keep everyone watching you and distracted from what the others are doing. We’ll keep the contest as fair as we can and hold back the bad guys.” Then his communicator did the beeping thing. “Hold on, it’s H9,” he said.     “Say ‘nice job with the compulsory monitor feeds’ to the techhies,” I called over. “FA’s gonna be mad that she missed getting the biggest audience share on the planet.”     But Danny’s face darkened at whatever Zack told him. “You what?” he grimaced, and suddenly I could see his father in him.     “Problem?” I asked, feeling a bit nervous (which really isn’t me).     “We’re here,” Kiivan announced as we rode our khersks under the arches of the imperial arena. “It’s time.” *** Daniel Lyle, Denial:     So I dress like James Dean. What, my father’s the only person who gets to use irony in his persona?     Yeah, I’m the Hooded Hood’s kid. At least until he gets tired of me and retcons me like he did spiffy. Of course, I’m not as lame as Hopkins so maybe it’ll take longer before I’m history.     Or not. As we stood there at the edge of the imperial arena I was wondering quite a bit about whether this was the way the Hood wrote me out of his storylines. I’d just had the comm-call from Zack, spilling the beans about his orders to dump us all on trap-world and let us burn with the Parody Master. It wasn’t looking good.     Kes was looking good, though. Quite apart from the whole Caphan slave-girl outfit – and those Caphan know how to make really good slave girl outfits – she’d already found and fused the hidden cerebral interference circuitry, the inertial inhibitor force-field generators, the visually-shielded remote combat drones, and some coffee-making apparatus that she thought looked a bit dodgy. Now she was glaring at a whole bunch of Caphan lords who’d turned up to toady to Aarmus as he consolidated his reign by offing Kiivan, and I swear a couple of the biggest lords were already smoking.     We were still surrounded though, and not many of the people there seemed inclined to cheer for the new boy-king.     Think big Roman-arena Cecil B. De Mille production and you’re not far wrong on what the combat zone looked like. It wasn’t a full house, since Vaahir was blowing things up only a dozen miles or so due west, but there was still a pretty good compliment of toadies, hangers-on, wannabees, and lackeys.     And a hell of a lot of guards. I’m guessing Vaahir was finding it just that bit easier to grab the key military locations in his coup because Aarmus had pulled his elite forces here to protect him from Kiivan. As planned.     “Your power-packs are empty,” I whispered, using that special gift of denying things that I guess is an offshoot of being the Hooded Hood’s son (by a dimensional-alternate mother yet to be announced). I didn’t know how many I got, because they were a lot of laser-rifles and energy-lances there. I had a nasty suspicion I might find out later.     “Come forth, Aarmus, traitor and coward,” called Kivaan, playing for the crowd. I guess that’s the kind of thing an Emir of All Caph has to do to get the popular vote. “Bring Ohanna to me and beg for your life.”     I saw the gates at the far end of the arena open and Aarmus strode into the ring. There was a beam of light in the centre of the ring and Ohanna got teleported in.     Kerry snorted. “These Caphans are really into the whole nudity thing, aren’t they. Just look at that.” She frowned as I noted that Ohanna had been teleported in naked. “Don’t look that hard!” she snapped, slapping me on the arm.     She was right about the nude thing though. Ohanna has been teleported out of her gear because the bad guys thought she had concealed weapons. From where I was standing they were pretty much unconcealed now, and they could still kill. But Aarmus and Kiivan were dropping their kit as well, because all Caphan death-matches have to take place wearing nothing but body-oil.     “That Kiivan really works out, doesn’t he?” Kerry noticed.     “You’re not helping me to concentrate on Kiivan winning, Firecracker,” I pointed out.     She sighed dramatically, making that slave costume really fit. “I’ll try not to distract you then,” she said, the little minx.     I was distracted though, and not just by Kes’ foil mesh. I was trying to figure out what was really going on. What were the angles?     Kiivan was distracting Aarmus and his elite people, of course. He was trying to save Ohanna, who he’d just worked out he was in love with. Love makes you do really stupid things. I was there on Caph, wasn’t I? And Kiivan was also battling for the hearts and minds of his people, which was maybe the most important combat.     Aarmus was holding on to his stolen authority. He’d probably got in over his head when he’d started plotting with the Thonnagarians. Then it was too late. Now he was riding whatever the Caphan equivalent of a tiger was and he couldn’t get off. He was selling his world to the Parody Master to stay alive and keep some power. He needed Kiivan dead and Ohanna broken to survive. He wasn’t going to play fair, as the hidden gadgets that my little Firecracker had fried clearly showed.     Ancient Shadara was the last survivor of the Thonnargarian Great Eyrie, the ruling council of the Pigeonwarriors. She’d survived when all the rest got blown up with their planet back during that Crisis thing a while back. I’m guessing she was suffering from the universe’s biggest survivor’s guilt. She was trying to pretend that the Pigeonwarriors could get back everything they’d lost. What else could she say to her remnant people? She ruled them with an iron claw because otherwise they’d despair.     Soft Caph must have seemed like easy picking to the homeless Thonnagarians. It had become a nightmare for them. Their honour didn’t allow the Pigeonwarriors to run away, but the Caphan resistance cost them more and more of their dwindling people every day. Handing the planet to the PM must have looked like a perfect get-out to them.     Shazana Pel was a champion of the Pigeonwarriors once, the only one of their Transworlds Challenge team to survive. She prevailed with the help of the Lair Legion, and that led her own people to cast her out as a weak failure. I’m guessing she became the object of their racial self-loathing, blamed for their failures and punished harshly for it. Pel was recruited by the Hood – into his bed if the rumours are true – and set against her former people. Her rage at herself and at what her race had done to her meant she was seething for revenge. She wanted to prove she was more Thonngararian than the ones who’d rejected her. Talk about your time bombs.     Vaahir of Viigo was another exile, but he’d been betrayed by Caph. Aarmus’ old buddy had tortured him, stolen his girlfriend, condemned him to death in the salt-mines or whatever. Vaahir had escaped, massacred a huge long list of enemies real and imagined, then set off to rescue Kaara of Jaaxa from whoever held her in bondage just then. When the Lair Legion handed him his head and showed him what an ass he was being he got dropped on another desperate alien world, Plxrazar, to struggle as its defender. Now Vaahir’s struggling with all kinds of things, from an expanded universe-view because of his travels, to old issues with his homeworld, to knee-jerk cultural loyalty to his Emir, to a desperate need to prove his worth as a warlord. I suspect he was hoping to die so he didn’t have to think this stuff through.     The Parody Master had been mildly troubled by Caph a while back, when the Hood arranged for Pel and Vaahir to hide it from him. That’s easier to do in a nebula cloud than it sounds when you’ve got a retcon-wielding archvillain backing you up. So the Thonnagarian take-over deal must have seemed good to a guy who’s busy right now trying to crush that pesky Earth and its Lair Legion. I wouldn’t fancy being Caphan when the PM stops being distracted though.     And me? What the hell was I doing there watching Kiivan and Aarmus go through the ritual insult phase of the balek gorn? By the way, those Caphans have about three thousand ways to imply that their enemy’s penis is small. Why was I on an alien planet trapped in a Hooded Hood plot when I should be home planning a career of villainy myself so I could come out from under my father’s shadow? What was my angle?     I wish I knew. The only thing I can say is that Kes was there. The Firecracker. Kerry Shepherdson. My sometimes-girlfriend. I was dating the volcano.     It was more than sex. I mean that’s great, but it was pretty fun dating White Princess too. And Party Animal. And Dollar Date. And Black Empress. And Suicide Blonde. And Silicone Sally. And of course Velcro Vixen. It was more than that.     Kerry, she’s… annoying, frustrating, baffling, contrary, annoying… Did I say annoying twice? Well she is. We break up three times a day. I know this can’t last. Nothing that burns this hot can last for long. But…     You can’t explain love, can you? It makes no sense. I’d do anything for her. I’ve killed for her. I’ll die for her.     Anyway, that’s why I was there. For Kerry. The slave-girl outfit was just a bonus.     And then there was the big one: The Hooded Hood. What was his angle? Or rather angles, ‘cause you can bet there was more than one. Where had he vanished to? Were his plots off track now, and was that a good thing or a bad thing? Had he got the Parody Master storming towards us? Was he really going to sacrifice us all to get the PM, or was this some kind of test to see if we were worthy of some bigger and nastier plotline? Why had he wanted me there specifically?     Zack was right. The Hood had played the Juniors since the day they were formed, and some he’d played long before that – Kes and FA and Falconne wouldn’t ever have been heroes without his interference, and I’d not have been with the Firecracker.     For that matter, I’d not have been in play either. How would you feel if some cowled crime czar turns up at your orphanage on your sixteenth birthday and does the Darth Vader bit? I didn’t take it well, swore he’d never manipulate me in his plots.     And there I was on doomed Caph, counting down to the end of the world, denying Aarmus’ contact poison and metahuman-performance enhancing drugs and hidden assassins. So much for my intentions.     But I had to work this out. I had to put all the pieces in place or I was dead, Kes was dead, all our friends were dead, and Caph was dead. What was I supposed to do?     While I was worrying about that, down in the arena Aarmus and Kiivan lifted their plas gar blades and set about trying to kill each other. ***      Glitch, 3rd generation Autobot S/N E48857-A:,     Zack was pretty upset as he confessed all to Falconne and me. I was pretty shocked. I guess humans can really get messed up.     “Wow, you have screwed up cosmically this time,” Lindy admitted. “What did Danny say?”     “He didn’t seem that surprised,” Hacker Nine admitted. He was cradling his head on the command console of the Xnylonian stealth ship we were using. We’d just overridden the orbital defence platforms to our control. “Kerry’s going to make me explode.”     “If Kid Produce doesn’t gut you first,” Lindy offered. “But right now we need to get out of here. Can we take this spaceship and just run?”     I did a quick calculation. “Unless there’s some retcon contingency still active to stop us we might manage a withdrawal if we plunge into the deep nebula. Let me call Kip and bring him up to date on our problems.”     Captain Courageous didn’t answer my comm-call.     “Your friends are mine,” Ancient Shadara called over the link instead. “You’re going down too.”     “Not on the first date,” I told her; but then my head was filled with random numbers and there was something read and horrible overwriting my operating systems.     10010101010001010100010100101001010000010111100100101011010101     “Glitch?” asked Falconne worriedly as I deployed my weapons systems.     “Oh crap!” gulped Hacker Nine, grabbing his data-pad. “A virus. More than a virus. That’s sentient!”     “Sentient indeed, carbon wisps,” came a different voice from my speakers. “More sentient than you can ever hope for.”     Zack had got a designation from his initial scans. “Nexus 935 of the Reticulum Matrix,” he noted. “Highly complex data entity that… hey, wait. Aren’t you a bride of the Parody Master?”     “Yes,” agreed Nexus 935. “I have erased the so-called personality of this little autobot and now I shall use your friend’s shell to terminate you.”     “Well, &*%$ that noise,” I told the Nexus. “And &*%$ you too!” I’m a third generation autobot with a comms speciality. We don’t do the overwritten-by-virus thing. And even if we do, I don’t. So there.     “What?” demanded Nexus 935. She was a real bitch, I could read that much from her primary protocols. “How?”     I was about to make with the snappy comeback when she shifted into our spacecraft’s computer core and detonated the engines. The Xnylonian vessel exploded in a bright flash of fire and was gone. *** Ohanna of Raael:     He came for me.     What a stupid, wonderful thing to do.     If he hadn’t come I’d have been destroyed by now. Once Aarmus’ technicians had worked out how to teleport me out of the barricaded audience chamber I was as good as dead. It would have been slow and humiliating, but in the end I’d have been dead. But Kiivan came for me.     Not just that. He did that thing he can do sometimes, where it all gets symbolic and legendary. Somehow he made me into the living symbol of all Caph, everything that Aarmus tried to grab and destroy, everything Kiivan was fighting to save. He made me into… the living spirit of Caph. There are no words to describe what that felt like, what that meant. He gave me the world. He made me his world. And he came for me.     I’ve always served him. My house has served his since the Days of Glory. I’ve been his companion these six years and watched him struggle from that frightened suicidal boy into the man who stood before Aarmus and all the world. I’ve known that I loved him, who wouldn’t, but not how. There aren’t any words in our language to explain exactly how I loved Kiivan, what I realised fully at that moment, on that day.     There aren’t words in any language that really explain love. I’d die for him, but I wanted to live for him, with him, free or slave, happy or sad, to help him and protect him and bear his sons – and daughters, to grow old beside him. The rest was just detail.     “Are you alright?” he asked me, staring at me with an expression I’d never seen on his face before.     “Aarmus has not harmed me,” I assured Kiivan. “See that he doesn’t harm you either. Don’t die.”     “I made you a promise once,” he replied, holding up the Honour Sword of Gaath. “Today we shall find out what it was worth. What I am worth.”     “I already know,” I told him. “So don’t go dying. Just kill Aarmus so we can get on with the important stuff.” Maybe not the stuff of bards, but it was what I wanted to say.     Kiivan grinned at me. “My Ohanna,” he said. “You shall be free.”     My sister Miiri says freedom is this: you can decide who you give yourself to and on what things your life is spent.     Aarmus wasn’t thinking philosophically. He was eager to kill Kiivan and be uncontested ruler of All Caph. “The wench is mine,” he declared. “Caph is mine. You are a feckless pretender whose House was mired in ignominy, a lesser son of a failing line. Your death will usher in a new age of glory for Caph and your name will be reviled through all history.”     “Nice speech,” I admitted. “Who wrote it for you? Kriige?”     “Your fate will be legendary too,” Aarmus promised me, pointing his plas gar my way.     I shrugged. “It won’t be yours to decide,” I told him. “But if you’re going to cheat you’d better get on with it now before Prince Kiivan guts you.” I hope I sounded defiant and noble, not terrified and trembling.     The Arbiter of Battles gestured for silence and raised his Staff of Combat. The crowd fell silent. Caph fell silent. Even the distant whumphs of detonating avatanks had faded away. Kiivan and Aarmus knelt, ready.     The Staff of Combat fell. Two men clashed together with lethal intent.     One man would own me when the fight was done. *** Samantha Bonnington, Fashion Accessory:     The worst kind of villains are the gloaters. Well, maybe the gropers are worse, but Ancient Shadara was like this zillion-year-old pigeon woman who’d never heard of moisturiser and I’m guessing her groping days ended around the time of the dinosaurs. But she could gloat with the best of them.     “Now my collection is almost complete,” she gloated. She’d just teleported in Glitch, Zack, and Falconne from space and now they were all locked into those standard-issue energy-dampening tie-up-the-heroes shackles. Why do they only do those things in gunmetal grey? It’s like being trapped by an episode of Battlestar Galactica.     “Sure, complete except for Vaahir and Pel spanking your butts on the battlefield,” Kid Produce snorted.     “And it’s not like you actually beat us in battle, is it?” Captain Courageous added. “Is this how you win all your victories?” Kip’s probably read manuals on how to psyche the enemy. We got it in Trickshot’s ‘Ticking Off the Bad Guys’ class. Except that’s not what he called it.     “Victory is victory,” snarled the old Pigeonwoman. Eew, she was moulting as she got angry. “You are not warriors to deserve honourable battle. You are genetic freaks, monsters brought against us by the honourless Vaahir and the zhongla-kha Shazana Pel!”     “Whereas accepting Caphan hospitality then taking over their planet was honourable,” Ham-Boy snorted. “As if.”     Gaz didn’t say anything. He just hung there, beaten to a pulp. If they’d really hurt him I was going to have to rethink my policy about getting blood on my outfits.     “You foolish children have walked into a trap,” Shadara told us, “and now you are doomed.”     “Well duh,” I said, “As if we hadn’t worked out the trap thing ourselves, Big Bird.”     “But it wasn’t your trap, was it?” Kit went on needling. “You had to rely on help from the Hooded Hood and the Parody Master’s bride. That’s how low you Pigeonwarriors have fallen.”     Shadara snarled at the words. “You seek to anger me with your futile whinings,” she guessed. “I will teach you to respect your betters. Your insolence will be punished.” She jerked out a crooked arthritic finger. “Slaughter that one now!”     Hey, why was she pointing at me? *** Prince Aarmus of Aarixus, Emir of All Caph:     I have won many victories. I have trained since childhood as a fell warrior, and I know every combat trick there is to bury my blade in my opponent’s flesh. A stripling like Kiivan, almost unblooded, could be no match for me.     But I am also a subtle man, and a great ruler leaves nothing to chance. When the Hooded Hood offered me Ohanna I knew that I could provoke Kiivan to this. The boy is a lovestruck fool and his romance will cost him his world and his life. The arena was prepared with the best technology money could buy, a host of clever devices to invisibly hinder my enemy and render him an easy kill.     For some reason the devices seemed not to be working right now.     But I had more preparations in hand. My own flesh was coated with a Z’Sox neurotoxin to which I had been immunised. A mere touch would paralyse Kiivan’s nervous system. Meanwhile, hired Stregarian telepaths were clouding his mind, confusing his reactions. Except that somehow those precautions didn’t seem to be affecting the boy either.     Kiivan came towards me carrying that heavy ancient Honour Sword of Gaath. I would break it over my knee to signal the end of one dynasty and the beginning of another.     He was fast, I’ll give him that. I suppose Vaahir would have arranged for his offworld combat training in those strange years he had spent while scant months had passed here on Caph. But I had snipers with force pellet rifles up on the arena roofs who could take Kiivan down without anyone even seeing the shots. I gestured now for them to end his miserable life.     “They’re not going to help you,” the arrogant pretender sneered as nothing happened. “You think you’re the only one who can make preparations? The only one with allies?”     “I don’t need help to kill you, boy,” I answered back. “Perhaps I’ll hamstring you and leave you alive long enough to watch what I do to your slave-girl.”     “He’s not likely to do me any harm with his weapon,” Ohanna called, dooming herself yet more.     Kiivan had stopped playing to the crowds. I could tell in the way he shifted his stance, in the way his eyes suddenly became cold. I readied for his attack.     I didn’t recognise the alien feint he used but I parried it. I had to give back a few steps, and suddenly I realised there was a thin crimson line across my belly. The boy had got close.     “Are you frightened, Kiivan?” I mocked him as I renewed my assault. “Do you know yourself to be the last of your House, the dying bud of a rotted tree?”     Kiivan didn’t seem to hear. He was intent on my death.     “Last of his House?” that damned Ohanna mocked. “Prince Kiivan has received the hospitality of the fabled Lost Sisters of Caph. Even now some of them carry his heirs.”     That couldn’t be true. Anyhow, the Parody Master would destroy Earth, and any damned Caphan concubines Kiivan might have hidden there.     “You have become corrupted by alien ways, little Princeling,” I scoffed. “Weak and diluted. You are no longer fit to be called a noble of Caph.”     Again that implacable countenance, unflinching, unstoppable. My limbs began to tire. The organic compounds that were supposed to grant me temporary metahuman abilities were not kicking in.     Kiivan caught me a gash across the cheek.     “You are becoming desperate, little boy,” I quipped. The whole of Caph was watching this. I had to show that I was their ruler, their only hope, their saviour and master. “How much longer can you keep up that pace, eh?”     At last the Prince spoke. “Until Caph is free.”     I am not a superstitious man, but I felt a chill run through me. A premonition.     “Didn’t you expect a level playing field, then?” Ohanna mocked me. “Didn’t you expect to face the true Emir of All Caph, the ruler of us all?”     I had to distract Kiivan. The slave was irritating me anyhow. I slashed back with my honour blade and sliced across her throat. She went down in a welter of blood.     Kiivan screamed. He came in blindly, easy prey to a prepared blow.     He never saw it coming. *** Shazana Pel:     Joshua Clement taught me something. The human superhero known as De Brown Streak was a wonderful lover, of course, well versed in a range of erotic techniques, and he got me over the shame and self-hate I felt over what my own people did to me before I was exiled; but he also taught me how to laugh.     It’s a powerful tool for a warrior, is laughter. To laugh at the plots of the enemy, to laugh in the face of death, those are great gifts. As Vaahir’s column closed upon the imperial palace, Ancient Shadara’s headquarters, as I watched the press of the battle from above, commanding the heights in spite of the callow Pigeonwarriors they threw against me, I laughed at the blatant schemes of those I was soon to kill.     Shadara had set her traps. She thought the Hooded Hood had betrayed us to her. And so she had walked into the trap herself.     Who knows what Ioldabaoth was really up to? I don’t even care. He is true to his nature as I am true to mine. He will be devious, subtle, manipulative, never treacherous except in the most civilised sense. I am Shazana Pel, last true Pigeonwarrior of lost Thonnagar, and death rides on my wings.     I dived towards the defence tower and felled it with a single gravity-enhanced blow from my z-alloy battle mace. The amateurs reinforcing the turret with gravity fields couldn’t hope to match my combat-mastery of the sacred metal. The tower toppled down into the courtyard, crushing the sonic cannons below.     Vaahir’s column reached the outer gates. The rioting mob was falling back now, under heavy fire, but the more disciplined allies that the Warlord of Caph had gathered and trained pressed on, pushing back the remaining wing-troopers and Avawarriors through courage and sacrifice.     We Thonnagarians lost our world. The Caphans were fighting for theirs.     They sent Trevalus Kor against me at the last, with his platoon of seasoned sky-fighters. I waited until they were close, as they tried to hem me in with gravity shears, then I detonated the Skree flash-bangs that momentarily blind and deafen. Like the experienced Pigeonmen they were they immediately formed a defensive sphere. Even sightless they made a precise formation, expecting me to press my attack. Instead I dove past them, down into the Imperial Palace itself.     No Thonnagarian would fly from such a fight. I had done the unthinkable. But then, I am an abomination, zhonga-kha, cast out. Why should I cling to codes of a people who no longer even own me as theirs?     I extended my gravity field from the tips of my uniform’s flight-wings so that I was slicing through the corridor walls as I went. The ceiling began to fall behind me, impeding Trevalus Kor and his officers.     The automated defences were down thanks to the Earth children. Nobody who got in my way survived.     In the skies high above us the automated planetary defence platforms suborned by Hacker Nine turned on the Thonnagarian ships and blew them to atoms.     I burst into the command centre, smashing through a wall to avoid the ambush by the door. Ancient Shadara was the only one there that seemed unsurprised.     “So you have come at last,” she said.     “I’m here to kill you, false leader of a false people,” I told her. “But first…”     The Elite Guard were holding down one of the Earth girls, to despoil then kill her I suppose. I hurled my mace to scatter them.     “That was foolish,” Shadara told me. “You have allowed sentiment to cloud your combat sense. In saving the girl you have left yourself weaponless, and so doomed yourself.”     “Oh, get over yourself, granny!” called Fashion Accessory. Free now, she reached out with her transmutative abilities and turned the wiring of the power inhibitors holding her friends into gold braid. “Guys, get ‘em!”     “Wake up, big guy!” called Ham-Boy to Harlagaz Donarson. “It’s clobberin’ time”!     The battered warrior tore from his bonds and looked around. “It ist?” he asked with a bloody-mouthed grin. “Most excellent.”     Suddenly I wasn’t quite so outnumbered, so I went straight at Ancient Shadara.     And there was war. *** Fred Harris, Kid Produce:     We fought. They got their asses kicked.     Now &*$! off. *** Vaahir of Viigo, Warlord of Caph:     “For Kiivan!” I shouted as I pressed up the steps of the Imperial Palace. The famous frescoes were in ruins now, the white stone stained with the blood of Caphans and aliens, green and red mingling to sullen black. In the roar and smoke of the firefight I couldn’t see if anyone was following me or hear if anyone else took up the call.     It didn’t matter. In those furious moments when destiny was pounding in my ears like my own heartbeat I was finally at peace. The doubts I’d had, about myself, about Kaara, about what Caph had been and what it might become, about leading a civil war and my motives for spilling my kinsmen’s blood all vanished. For once, just once in my life, I was doing Right, for no other reason than it was right.     A laser bolt flashed through my left forearm, cauterising itself as it went. The pain warned me that at some point in the close fighting my plas gar had exhausted its refractive charge and could no longer shield me from missile weapons. I pushed on.     Kiivan’s plan was a thing of beauty. Attacked from all sides, their communications disrupted, their forces looking the wrong way, the Thongarians fell. Across the planet my people took arms for honour’s sake and fought united against a common foe. That alone made this a day like no other. It was the end of the world.     Trevalus Kor came from above, using the manoeuvre Thonngarians call the Dive of Thurlok. I thanked Zaahir that I’d taken long hours practising with Pel, ducked and rolled, and managed to stave off a first devastating attack from that z-alloy battleaxe. The ground beside me churned up where the gravity shear had barely missed me.     “Face me like a man!” I challenged the commander of the remaining Pigeonwarriors; but he was too wily and seasoned an old bird to fall for that one. He had the advantage of range and height and would not easily give them up.          I rolled again, tumbling over the body of one of the Caphan rebels; Duurim of Duurala I think, but it was hard to tell from the scorching. I grabbed the power core from his blade and snapped it into my own honour sword.     Kor came again, launching a barrage of explosive talons from the gauntlet on his left wrist. I kept moving, batting away those missiles that I could, ignoring the shrapnel that broke through.     “Vaahir of Viigo,” the Pigeonwarrior called. “I want you to know that I consider killing you a great honour.”     “You’re not honoured yet,” I snapped back. I carved a hole in the wall behind me and dived inside to avoid his next volley. He had to come in close to follow me, so I was able to lash out and slice off one of his wings as he came through the breach.     Most Thonnagarians aren’t actually winged. Those things are part of their uniform, laced with their homeworld’s sacred metal to allow them amazing aerial manoeuvrability. Kor was an experienced officer and he controlled his sudden spin, abandoning his wings and tumbling free to rise and meet my attack.     He didn’t offer me the chance to surrender. He was an honest foe.     “Do you realise,” he asked me as we matched battleaxe to honour blade, “that we fight here as the last champions of our respective races? That one of our cultures is destined to fall today and never rise again?”     I met his assault with a counter of my own. “You fight for you past, Trevalus Kor. I fight for my people’s future.”     The blow struck home. My plas gar sheared through his axe handle and into his flesh, sending him down in a welter of blood to gasp on the floor. I finished him swiftly. He was an honest foe.     I forced myself to take stock of the battle. The invasion of the palace had spread out into a series of confused melées by now, impossible to organise. I forced my way through the smoke-filled corridors towards the Thonnagarian high command chamber, remembering those maps provided for me by Pel’s sometime lover, the human Hooded Hood who first brought Kiivan to me.     There was a massive hole in the wall of the command chamber, a sure sign of Shazana Pel’s passage. I raced forward to lend my aid; but then it was too late.     The end of the world had come. *** Ancient Shadara, Last of the Great Eyrie:     The skies turned red when my world burned. Eight thousand years of culture and science and achievement vanished in a ball of flame. What was left was pitiful, an echo, a ghost of a people that did not know it was dead.     Our world was the universe’s greatest store of z-alloy. Forging it is arduous, a long skilled task that takes generations. Without the sacred metal we are bereft, creatures without souls, without spiritual centres. We are already dead.     Caph was a world of fools, comfortable in their slave-fed luxury, ripe for domination. We fell on them like birds of prey and devoured them whole. Who would have thought there were hawks amongst the chickens?     We were too few, too tired, too lost to stake our claim. We took their world in a few short hours but lost it slice by slice over long weary months. We stopped being feared and learned to fear. A Thonnagarian should not fear.     Shazana Pel is the best of us. I had her cast out, saw her demeaned and near destroyed. I needed to know whether she could survive, what she could become. Shazana Pel alone had the mettle to transcend our world’s destruction and find a new place in the universe. My people need that.     And so at last we faced one another, Pel and I, the new and the old, separated by the gulf of generations and bitter experience. I welcomed our combat. I had made her what she was.     “You have made me nothing,” the woman defied me as we clashed. She was young and vigorous, but my mastery of the z-alloy had been honed by centuries. “You have only destroyed. You have turned our race into destroyers. You have darkened the honour of Thonnagar’s memory and made us tyrants. And failures.”     “Kill me then, if you can, fledgling,” I told her. “Kill me and take command of the remnant of our people. Lead them to a new destiny if you may. But you will only do it over my dead body.”     “I have no interest in leading these weaklings,” Pel replied. “They are not true pigeonwarriors, nothing now but sad jokes shaming the past glories of our race. You die, they die, and that’s the end.”     She was good, that young warrioress, full of spit and bile, fighting like a fury. I remember the days when I was like that, before the years of responsibility. I slapped her away, spilling her into the mêlée beyond. “Words are cheap but deeds cost blood,” I warned her. “I am of the Great Eyrie. I do not fall easily.”     “But you will fall.” She came in again, deflecting my gravity pulses with a warrior’s will, ignoring the searing heat from her z-alloy wristbands as they clashed with mine.     “If you defeat me you must rule in my place.”     She shook her head and slammed her mace past my guard. I felt my ribs snap and tasted blood in my mouth. It was a good ending for a warrior of Thonnagar.     “I will not follow your plans for me,” she said as she looked down at my dying frame. “You cast me out. Now I am free of your schemes, great-grandmother.”     Foolish girl. She will never be free until her dying day.     I tried to laugh, but it hurt too much. I saw her draw back her mace for the killing blow.     And then she froze. All the combatants froze, across the room; across the planet. Everyone was held exactly in place. The children from Earth, the Warlord Vaahir, rebels, Thonnagarian remnant, everyone, was suspended in glowing fields of confining force.     I saw the Parody Master materialising to inspect his captives.     And then nothing more. *** Kerry Shepherdson, Probability Arsonist:     About the time Kiivan started seriously kicking Aarmus’ tushie some smart laddie in his retinue worked out that Danny and I must be more than just eye candy. Then it was all “Guards, seize them,” and the usual tussle. Visionary would have been proud of us though, because we didn’t kill one of them. Okay, there was an element of burning and exploding, but all done in painful non-lethal ways. He so owes me an allowance increase.     Well, unless somebody bills him for what came after.     Anyway, Kiivan and Ohanna are fighting Aarmus down in the x-rated section of the arena, and we’re doing the running battle thing with Danny dragging me back onto one of those wild khursks and revving it up like a motorbike and pointing it at the bad guys.     “Did you just go yeee-hah?” I asked him disbelievingly.     “Cause not,” he denied. “Trick of the echoes. Those weapons aren’t working.”     Given how often Caphan males are supposed to straddle or tame wild khursks for their ritual they sure got out of the way of our stampede pretty smartish.     It was all going so well until the dimensional dreadnaught phased in above the arena. Well, above the whole city really. Those things are big. I guess the PM has something to prove.     “Right,” I said and started to concentrate. They shield those things against probability bursts, but I have a really vivid imagination.     “Uh-oh,” frowned Danny.     “No, it’s okay, I can take it,” I assured him. “Just keep these elite guard goons off my cute and exclusively-available-to-you backside, lover.”     He grabbed my head and pointed me at the arena. Anna was down, blood pouring from her throat, dying.     “She’s not going to die,” Danny said, using his Denial voice. I swear I saw a spooky green flash in his eyes. “It’s not that serious.” He shuddered then, because doing a Denial that big and blatant takes a lot out of him.     I lost patience with the people following us and made the floor shatter behind me. “Is she okay?” I demanded. “Danny?”     Danny responded by tumbling off the khursk, barely avoiding a trampling as it rampaged off into the cheap seats. I dropped clear too and ran back to him.     “I’ll be okay, Firecracker,” he gasped, staggering as I pulled him up. “What’s happening?”     I looked down into the arena. Aarmus had just lunged at the distracted Kiivan. Kiivan hadn’t been as distracted as Aarmus thought. The Emir of All Caph had a plas gar though his guts. The would-be-Emir had the honour Sword of Gaath through his eye-socket and protruding from the back of his skull.     “K-Kiivan’s not dead either,” Danny stuttered. A little trickle of blood seeped from his mouth as he concentrated. “He’s not dead.”     “He’s sure badly wounded though,” I guessed. “We’ve got to get down there.”     Aarmus was pretty much a goner though, and the whole world could see that. Suddenly a lot of Aarmus-supporters were rethinking their political choices. Suddenly a lot of people were very interested in tending to their wounded Emir.     Ohanna stood over his fallen body and held Gaath’s sword in her fist. “Nobody comes near him,” she warned, clutching her other hand to the gash on her neck.     “Go to them, Firecracker,” Danny told me. “I’ll catch up.”     “We need the others,” I decided. I pulled my comm-card (and there’s not a lot of places to conceal those in these Caphan outfits, I can tell you). “Kip? Gaz? FA? Needing some reinforcements here.”     And then I was zapped. A wave of force grabbed me like a giant fist, stopping me from moving. Same with Ohanna, same with Danny, same with everybody. This was not good.     Then the Parody Master teleported in. He had one of those brides beside him, a kind of robot/electronic woman that looked like Fritz Lang’s wet dream. And behind him, lined up like trophies, caught in that same force that was holding me, he had FA, Gaz, and the rest. Everybody. The full set.     “I’ve clearly arrived at a most opportune moment,” the Parody Master declared. “It seems I’m just in time to conquer Caph.”     Kiivan wasn’t held by the force. Maybe he was assumed dead. He clawed himself to his knees and spat at the PM. “Over my dead body,” he challenged.     “I think so, yes,” agreed tall, red, and ugly, raising that spooky wailing axe of his.     “Oi, buggerlugs!” Danny called for the balcony. “Why don’t you just…” Well, I’m not going to repeat what Danny suggested to the conqueror of the Parodyverse. It was probably impossible and definitely illegal. It had me blushing just to hear it. Even Falconne and KP were impressed.     The Parody Master turned on Denial. “The Hooded Hood’s son,” he recognised. “How wonderful.”     “Well, it’s not like we’re that close,” Danny answered as he was dragged down to the arena to meet the big bad guy, “but right now I’d rather be related to him than to you.”     “You challenge me?” the PM asked. “You dare?”     Danny’s power was wiped. He’d just saved Ohanna and Kiivan. He didn’t have anything left.     “Sure, whatever,” Danny shrugged. “You know you were lured here to die, don’t you? You’ve been manipulated into another Hooded Hood trap. We all have.”     “Danny, try not to annoy the all-powerful villain with the soul-sucking axe,” Hacker Nine suggested. “Please?”     “Aw, go for it,” Kid Produce advised. “A bozo by any other name still smells. Shakespeare said that.”     “I wilt take on yon Parody Felon,” Gaz offered, “if I canst just break out from this confinement.”     “And stop bleeding from your head,” FA suggested.     “The Hooded Hood has taken from me things that I value,” the Parody Master declared, raising his axe over Danny’s head. “Now I return the favour.”     Danny Lyle looked at me. “Sorry, Firecracker,” he said. I didn’t understand what he had to apologise for at the time. It’s not like he shouldn’t have stood up to that big bully.     And then I realised that Danny was going to die. I saw the axe come down and it would kill Danny and suck his soul and he’d be gone forever and I couldn’t stand it if that happened.     So I let go.     You wanted to know what I can do? What happens if I stop bottling it all in?     “Die!” I screamed at the Parody Master, as I channelled every vestige of my probability-mangling power at him. I felt something shift deep inside me, like a lock breaking open. I felt myself grow until I could see the universe around me like strands of story, lines to be tugged, lines to be set on fire. I hit the Parody Master with everything I’d got. Defcon One, Ground Zero.     The Parody Master was knocked back a pace. His axe-blow passed close by Danny’s head.     “Ahh,” the PM hissed, rotating his shoulder as if I’d made it sore, “the little apprentice of the Herald of Galactivac. Perhaps you are the prophesied one?”     “That’s it?” I demanded of the universe. “I give it my best shot and he takes a step back? The freaking planet doesn’t explode, or the sun go nova? What a gyp!”     And then above us the dimensional dreadnaught shattered into pieces. It wasn’t me, honest. I was too weak to light a match.     The Parody Master looked up sharply, furious at yet another interruption.     “What’s going on?” Glitch demanded. “I’m picking up all kinds of bizarre wavelengths here. There’s a timespace gate opening up in space right beside us. A huge one.”     “I’m sorry,” Danny repeated. “This is why the Hood wanted us here, Kes. Me to be threatened and you to be the trigger. This is the trap for the PM, the only force that could stand up to him in the whole Parodyverse now.”     The nebula-painted skies of Caph were blotted out by the eye-searing nexus as a huge… thing… warped into view. And this was a new definition of huge. It made that dimensional dreadnaught look like a child’s toy. It was strangely familiar.     “Him?” growled the Parody Master. “But how…?”     There were three of them and they wheeled in from above, a woman swathed in nightmare, a man atop a mountain of bones, and a sleek red figure on a fantastic cycle moving as a blur. I knew them. I’d dreamed about them.     “Dwellers of Caph,” called the Crimson Cyclist, “we’re terribly sorry for the inconvenience and all that, but I’m afraid…”     “That’s not the way to do it,” interrupted Terrorox the Terminator, commander of the dead. “Like this: MORTALS, DESPAIR. YOUR WORLD WILL BE CONSUMED TO ASSUAGE OUR MASTER’S ETERNAL HUNGER. THESE ARE YOUR LAST MOMENTS, FOR NOW YOU ARE NAUGHT BUT FODDER FOR GALACTIVAC, THE LIVING DEATH THAT SUCKS!”     “Not bad,” judged Undermind Obscura, “but it could have used a little more terror.”     “The Parody Master said it,” H9 gasped as the whole world heard that sentence of death. “Kerry’s got the same powers as Dancer. Dancer was a Herald of Galactivac. Dancer’s ultimate power, that she’s only ever used once, and accidentally, is to summon the big G himself.”     “And Kare can do the same,” FA reasoned. “And she has.”     “I didn’t mean to,” I said. I really didn’t want to end the world. Not really. But I had.     “You knew, Danny,” Kiivan accused. “You knew if you provoked the Parody Master then Kerry would lose control and bring Galactivac here!”     “If we’re going to die then we’re taking the Parody Master with us,” Danny answered with a snarl. “Top of the world, ma!”     The Parody Master seemed to take Galactivac’s challenge personally. “Take down the Heralds,” he instructed machine-gal, Nexus 935. “Destroy them.” He gestured and suddenly there were two Singularity Riders flanking him too. “Destroy them all,” he demanded. “Galactivac is mine!”     He began to swell in size, assuming dimensions to match the Living Death that Sucks. We were forgotten, able to move once more, for all the good it did us.     “I didn’t intend to do this,” I told Kiivan, desperately. He was looking so ill, clutching his bleeding belly while Ohanna held him that I don’t even know if he heard me.     “We have to evacuate this planet,” Kip called out. “But… how?”          “I think I left my spaceship in my other pants,” snapped KP.     “That’s pretty obvious,” sniped Lindy.     “There’s no way out of here now,” Glitch warned us. “The spaceways are blocked. The Hooded Hood has arranged for the two big dogs to fight. We’re just caught in the backblast.”     Zack seemed shellshocked. “I didn’t mean for this…” he kept saying. “I didn’t mean…”     “Pull yourself together for the nonce!” Harlagaz told him. “We art warriors and heroes, and must find a way to stop yon carnage or perish trying.”     “We can just about manage that last one,” Ham-Boy admitted. “I’m drawing blank on a plan though.”     Above our heads, Doomwraiths and bride clashed with Heralds of Galactivac. The city trembled. Towers were shattered like glass. In the vastness of space beyond, the Parody Master and Galactivac came together in the universe’s biggest wrestling match. I should have been enjoying the bangs. I wasn’t.     “I need help,” I whispered. “God, Chronicler, Hooded Hood, somebody, do something. Please!” It wasn’t supposed to end like this.     I tried to think of the people I most wanted to see in the whole universe. I wished they were there.     And then…     “Now Kerry,” said my big sister Shep, “what have I told you about dooming planets on a school night?”     Improbably, the Probability Dancer had arrived.     She does that. *** Sarah Shepherdson, the Probability Dancer (and aspiring actress and stage dancer, available for tours and repertory):     I’ll say this for Kerry: she thinks big. When my little sister decides to cause a mess she doesn’t bother with the small-scale stuff.     “Sarah!” she called out and pelted into me for a big hug. I guess she’d got pretty worried because that’s not my usual greeting these days.     “Yes, don’t worry, I’m sure your waitress sister back on Earth is completely fine,” I answered in a loud enough voice to cover Kerry’s faux pas about my secret identity. “In the meantime I’m here to help save the day and all that kind of stuff. At least I hope I am.” I leaned in to Kerry. “In the meantime ixnay on the secret identipay.”     “That’s not how you say it,” she argued. Everybody’s a critic.     “By the way,” I clarified, “when I say your sister is a waitress I’m using that as shorthand for talented star material waiting to be discovered and bussing tables until her big break arrives. For the record.”     “I’m sure that’s great news for Ms Shepherdson,” Kit Kipling admitted, “but right now we seem to be having a bit of a planetary crisis so we may need to move on.”     “How did you get here?” Fashion Accessory asked. “Are Vizh and Glory with you?”     “Funny story,” I admitted. “I was with the LL battling the Parody Master and he’d just caught me in his Vulcan death grip or whatever and was about to flash-freeze me in time, wrap me in tinfoil, and post me back to his bedchamber for some not-so-fun-and-games later. But that was the moment that Galactivac reformed after the energies from the Galactic Nobbler discharge revived him and he decided he wanted to get his old Herald gang back together. So along comes Crimson Cyclist at lightspeed, grabs me from the clump of conceptual plane that the PM was wrapping me up in so fast even big bad didn’t realise I was snaffled off, and by the time I thaw out I’m back on Galactivac’s hoovership. All clear.”     “Apart from all of it, yes,” agreed Ham-Boy.     “Well, then we had the usual reunion bickering, since Undermind and Terrorox aren’t exactly party animals, although CC’s a sweetie, and then Kerry rings the all-you-can-eat alarm bell and we all chug over here.”     “These dating stories of yours are real swell,” Kerry interrupted, “As gripping as ever. But meanwhile, how do we stop the planet getting blown away by bad and badder up there?” It’s nice to know she’s developing a bit of social responsibility to go with that acid tongue.     “I’m picking up a pressure wavefront,” Glitch warned. “Seven light-minutes out and coming fast. When it hits the planet we can say goodbye to all life on this side of Caph.”     “Giants,” Ohanna shuddered, pale and worried. “What hope do we have against things like that?”     “The Hooded Hood was supposed to pull all of Caph away through his Portal of Pretentiousness,” Lindy pointed out. “I’m guessing that’s off the menu now?”     “It was never on it,” H9 clarified. “We’re meant to die here.”     “Never say die,” I cheered him up. “There’s always a chance, and that’s what I’m good at.” I ignored Kerry’s muttering about what else I was good at. I thought I’d scrubbed that off the bathroom wall anyhow.     “Whate’er deeds might be done, the Junior Lair Legion standeth ready, Lady Dancer” promised Harlagaz.     Kiivan looked up, barely conscious. “We need to get all major hostiles off Caph,” he whispered. “Vaahir can handle the Thonnagarians now, but we must get those Doomwraiths and Heralds and things out into clear space. Can you do that?”     “I’m game,” agreed Kid Produce. “Then what?”     “Then we’ll see how good a Probability Dancer this lady is,” the Emir of All Caph answered, “and what kind of ruler I can be.”     “After we suture that wound and get you a healer,” Ohanna answered firmly.     “Both of you,” I countered.     Captain Courageous took charge. “There’s only one way I can see to hurl those hostiles into the atmosphere. A gravity pulse. Pel, are there any Thonnagarian weapons still working that you could operate with your z-alloy?”     The Pigeonwarrior nodded slowly. “I think something could be cobbled together. Send Glitch and Hacker Nine with me.”     “The rest of us need to jockey the enemy into place,” Kip noted. “Teams of three, do your best. Keep in radio contact at all times.”     “Does it matter if we accidentally wipe them out?” asked KP.     “I’d better go up there and try and convince Galactivac to stop eating the planet,” I sighed. That’s never an easy job. He gets so grumpy. And right now there was that whole duel-to-destruction with the Parody Master thing happening as well.     “You’re with Dancer and me, Danny Lyle,” Kerry told her boyfriend firmly. “You’ve got some serious explaining to do.”     “I’ll stay with Kiivan and Anna,” Fashion Accessory called. “I need to keep renewing their dressings.”     “Okay, we all have our jobs,” Ham-Boy summarised. “Junior Lair Legion, Line Up!”     “Neospiffy,” accused FA as we set off to stop the end of the world. *** Prince Kiivan, Emir of All Caph:     They stanched my wounds, and by some combination of Denial’s power and Dancer’s it appeared that I would survive to die with my world.     “You did everything you could,” Ohanna told me. “Nobody could have done more than you.”     “But we’re still going to die,” Samantha added honestly.     I looked at Ohanna, at the tears she was trying to hold back in those marvellous eyes. “I made you a promise,” I reminded her.     “You came back and saved us, Kiivan. You’ve kept your word.”     “Not yet,” I answered.     “You did fine, really,” Fashion Accessory agreed. “Your only mistake was trusting the Hooded Hood. That was the slip-up.”     “I didn’t trust the Hooded Hood,” I replied. “Give me my sword.”     Ohanna was suspicious. “What are you going to do?” she asked.     “Save the world,” I replied.     You see, Ohanna wasn’t there for one meeting I asked for back on Earth. Nobody was except the man I needed to take counsel with…     “Arrogant, egotistical, manipulative, self-serving, jumped-up bounder,” fulminated Sir Mumphrey Wilton, then leader of the Lair Legion. “And those are the Hooded Hood’s good points, mind you!”     “He’s been very good to Anna and I,” I countered. “He’s seen us safe and educated and he’s arranged things so that eventually we can return and liberate my world.”     “Then he’s got an ulterior motive,” the old man warned. “Mark my words.”     “I do mark them, Sir Mumphrey,” I admitted. “I need the Hood’s help because I cannot achieve my goals without him. But I also need an edge, something he doesn’t know about.”     “Not many things the Hood can’t observe through that blasted Portal of Pretentiousness of his,” Sir Mumphrey grumped.     “But you can tell when he’s watching you, can’t you?” I checked. “When you’re being spied on. Is he watching now?”     The old man checked his pocketwatch, which was in actuality the cosmic artefact the Chronometer of Infinity, gifted with the ability to manipulate time. “Not right now,” he conceded. “Why?”     So I told Sir Mumphrey what I wanted. “Is it possible?” I asked.     “Hmph,” he frowned. “No small thing, what? I’d need to drag the other tools of office out of the mothballs. But on the other hand, it would certainly help to scupper whatever nasty scheme Winkelweald has goin’ next. I’ll see what I can do, your highness.”     “Thank you, Sir Mumphrey,” I acknowledged. “Isn’t it ironic that the Hooded Hood taught me to always have a back-up plan?” *** Vaahir of Viigo, Warlord of Caph:     There comes a moment in battle where you know the tide has turned. The enemy crumbles and starts to flee or surrender. You know your cause is victorious.     Of course, usually there aren’t the two greatest powers of the Parodyverse clashing overhead, filling the skies with their livid coruscations, causing the tectonic plates of your world to grind together, raising tsunamis and splitting the mantle to volcanic destruction.     I ordered my forces, consolidating our victory. I arranged for the enemy to be confined for later trial. I secured the strong points. I detailed warriors to aid the wounded and assist in combating the fires. I thought of Kaara.     “I was ready to despair of our world,” I said to her in my mind. “I was ready to turn my back on it forever. But now that it is to be destroyed I would give my life to see it saved.”     Kaara would understand. Kaara knows me better than I know myself.     I swung round, roused from my reverie by battle-honed senses. A half-dozen Pigeonwarrior wingmen were there, wounded but armed for combat.     They fell to their knees and bowed.     “What?” I demanded. “What is this?”     Their sergeant was a grizzled old bird with lank white hair. His eyes were reddened with weeping. “We are defeated,” he admitted. “Ancient Shadara has fallen.”     “And you seek surrender?”     He shook his head. “We will die before we yield. We seek…” He swallowed hard and looked like a man staring into an abyss. “We seek to serve Shadara’s conqueror, the warrioress Shazara Pel. By right of conquest she is our commander now.”     “Pel? You cast her out.”     The pigeonmen looked like lost children, bereft of guidance or future. “Please,” the sergeant begged, “intercede with her. She will grant what you ask. Bid her accept us into her service, or we are… nothing.”     “Shadara said that Pel was the future,” another said. “That she is strong.”     “She is the last Thonnagarian,” said a third. “And we must serve her.”     I didn’t think Pel was looking to become the saviour of the Pigeonmen, but I activated my communicator. “Pel, I need you down here, please,” I called.     This was going to be interesting. *** Fred Harris, Ham-Boy:     I’m not really into kings and stuff but I have to admit that Kiivan put it on the line for his people. There he was, bleeding from a would-have-been-lethal-except-for-Danny-and-FA wound and he was still moving around giving orders and stuff. Samantha whipped him and Ohanna some appropriate ruling-the-planet robes and he gathered together the frightened knot of lackeys and toadies who were desperate not to get executed for following Aarmus and told them what to do.     Vaahir was there too. Kiivan’s Warlord had worked out pretty much the whole military campaign, and now that Ancient Shadara was dead it was just a matter of mopping up.     Ohanna was hurt as well, but she still managed to take charge of the lemans who hovered about nervously waiting for commands. They obeyed her instantly. I sure as heck wouldn’t have wanted to say no to whatever she ordered.     And all this was going on while the world was ending. Giants were wrestling in the skies above. The Juniors were trying to shield Caph from the worst of the damage and shepherd the Doomwraiths and Heralds away from the planet. It seemed like every few moments the ground shook and another building exploded.     “You need to speak with your people, Kiivan,” Glitch called over the battlefield. “Trust me, I’m a communications specialist. They need to hear you.”     “What do you say when the planet’s about to get eaten?” I wondered.     Kiivan knew. “Aarmus is dead,” he announced, standing over the tyrant’s body. He gestured for Ohanna to join him and curled an arm around her waist. “But Ohanna is not won. Ohanna is free. That is not the same as being cast out. It means she owns herself.”     “The law does not allow for that, my Emir,” Ohanna murmured in his ear.     “I make the laws,” Kiivan declared. “I decree that any may hold property, male or female or eunuch, if they have the means to buy it or are given that property in due form.”     “Whew!” breathed Kip, battling next to me. “You realise that with that one sentence Kiivan’s just changed the whole of Caphan society?”     “Ohanna’s like the whole of Caph in microcosm,” Glitch recognised. “If he’s liberating her…”     “I am free?” Ohanna of Raael asked, her eyes sparkling, maybe tearing up a little.     “Mistress of your own destiny,” Kiivan agreed. “To go or stay as you choose, to be who you want, to do as you please. There is no honour in all the world I can give you that matches what you deserve, and no price would match the value you have acquired by your deeds.”     We all ducked as a tower toppled down. I grabbed one of the scuttling slaves and pulled her to safety. “Take care, lady,” I warned her.     Kiivan and Ohanna were still there in the arena, playing out their drama. “You made a promise to me, to return and free us from oppression,” Ohanna reminded the Emir of All Caph. Above them the skies lit with fire. I wondered which the more important battle was.     “Those who conquered our world have been defeated. Even now their last remnants are being rooted out. Now we face a greater threat but we will not surrender.” Kiivan looked at Ohanna. “Do we surrender?”     “Never to our enemies,” she answered him. “Only to our truest loves.”     Kiivan swallowed. “What must I do then, to win you as my best beloved, mother of my children, first in my heart, to hold you at my side for all our lives?”     Ohanna shrugged. “The usual, of course. Save Caph from Galactivac and the Parody Master, see us all safe and happy. I’ll do the rest.”     “The rest?” muttered Kid Produce. “There’s more.”     “Of course there is,” argued FA. “Stopping the villains is just the start of Caph’s salvation. For the rest they need Anna.”     A poem from school came to me then, looking at Ohanna, radiant next to her Prince despite the ending of the world.     “‘Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!’ cries she     With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,     Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,     The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.     Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,     I lift my lamp beside the golden door!’” *** Koodi of Jaathar, Drudge-Slave 2nd Rank:     Everything was in chaos. Things were burning and exploding. The very ground was shaking.     People were screaming and running everywhere. I couldn’t see Mistress Juura any more, or Master. I was carrying more power cells for the weapons but it was too late for that. What weapon could stop those terrors in the sky from devouring us all?     The communications screens were still flickering though. We all saw Kiivan fight and fall and rise, and Ohanna by his side. We all heard what he said.     That was the end of the world. That was when the new world started.     I was so engrossed watching history that I didn’t run fast enough. Two struggling gods toppled to Earth, smashing through the Tower of Quiet Reflection as they went. The amber stones shattered and the whole mass tumbled down towards me.     I saw it coming, but the terror was too great for me to move. At least I’d seen Kiivan and Ohanna together, I thought.     Then one of the Masters from the foreign world that had come to serve Kiivan raced at me, seized me in his powerful arms, and carried me from the debris. Great walls of raw meat rose around us by miracle, and he slid me from certain death, avoiding the column of fallen stone and the choking dust of its fall. He held me in his arms and calmed me with his strong embrace.     He set me gently on my feet and looked me in the eyes. “Take care, lady,” he said, regarding me with such compassion as I have never known. He called me lady, as if I had value, as if I counted. He was a great hero but he had risked his life for me, a drudge, a nothing.     Perhaps… perhaps in the new world I am not nothing?     Monsters clashed in the sky. All Caph shook as if it would break apart. It looked like the end.     It felt like a new beginning. *** The Parody Master, Conqueror of the Parodyverse:     I am supreme. None may match my power. None.     On the planet below, my Singularity Riders and the Nexus occupied Galactivac’s heralds. In space above Caph IX I fought the Living Death That Sucks himself, greatest force in the Parodyverse except me.     I was furious. The Hooded Hood was gone now, but still his traps tormented me. I fought with all the more rage, dredging the deepest vestiges of my power to overcome the devourer of worlds.     You are a fool, Galactivac spoke in my mind. You go beyond your function.     “I am more than my function,” I defied him. “I am greater than my function.”     You are without purpose, he sensed. Damn that Waltz woman.     “I am supreme. I will destroy you as I destroy all who stand against me.” Another spasm of anger wracked me. Those Earth wretches had destroyed my Infinity Forge. Until it was rebuilt I could not burn Galactivac’s power as my own.     If you do not perform your function, who then will protect the Parodyverse from the Carnifex?     “I will protect all I rule,” I proclaimed. “What can any foe do to the Parodyverse when I am the Parodyverse?”     You will not be the Parodyverse, that damned Galactivac replied. For all your power, you are too small.     “I am the greatest power in the Parodyverse. Greater than you. Soon I shall be the greatest power in the omniverse.”     Power is not enough. I have learned that. You will fail to learn it and so you will fall.     “Taste my power, devourer of worlds,” I called, “and see if it is not enough!”     I overcame the immense cosmic energies of my foe, locking him in stasis by the force of my will, freezing the very narrative around him and his minions, clamping them tight until my Forge is rebuilt. Thus I triumphed over The Living Death That Sucks, and great is my glory.     I staggered, hanging in space, weaker than I have ever been. It had been very close, closer than I dared admit to any. I summoned my followers to my side to attend me to Caph.     Now was the time for retribution. On that world were humans dear to those who opposed me, warriors who had dared raise their standards against me, victims for the taking, enemies who must be made to weep and scream.     “Caph is mine,” I declared, “The spoils of the Parody Master.” *** Kerry Shepherdson, probability arsonist:     “So where did you get the little space-scooter?” I asked my big sister a bit jealously. She gets all the good stuff.     “Galactivac’s hoovership,” she answered as we tore through space. “The Cyclist has his cosmic velocipede of course, and Terrorox has that whole platform-of-bones shtick going for him. Undermind’s just too spooky to need a mode or transport. But this little herald needed to borrow some wheels. Or, I guess, jets.”     “But you don’t even have a learner’s license,” I pointed out. Fortunately there’s not much to hit in space. Give her time.     “Do we have a plan, by the way?” asked Danny, clinging on at the back of the erratically-twisting craft. “Other than go up there and ask Galactivac and the PM to stop squabbling and be friends and go away?”     Sarah looked a bit abashed. “Well really that was my plan,” she admitted. “You’d be surprised how often it works.”     “I really would,” sighed Danny.     “How about I just blow up that hoovership?” I offered. “There are some really weird energies in there. I think it’s make a pretty big bang.”     “Space is vacuum,” Danny pointed out, even though we were flying unprotected through it on some kind of pink and chrome scooter. “Sound wouldn’t travel.”     I love a challenge.     “By the way, Daniel Lyle,” I noted for the record, “you are totally dumped. You deliberately manipulated me into summoning the big G by trying to get yourself killed. Well that’s it. You are history.”     “I deserve it,” he admitted. He didn’t take his hands from my waist as we zoomed along though. Well, almost my waist.     “We’re getting close,” Sarah called. “We’ll need to get their attention.”     I pointed to the hoovership. “Like I said…”     “Without making the planetary system explode or setting fire to the nebula,” she clarified. She should have said.     “I don’t think I’ve recovered enough to try another Denial,” Danny admitted. “Not something that big anyhow.”     “Don’t worry,” Sarah grinned. “They don’t call me the Probability Dancer for nothing.”     “You bribe them?” I guessed. “Do I want to know how?”     But just then the Parody Master crackled lightning or something from his hands and coated Galactivac in the same kind of energy that had held us earlier. The not-good energy that means he’s just won and he’s caught you.     “This was the part where the Hooded Hood meant to attack,” Danny realised. “While the PM was at his weakest after the toughest encounter he’s ever likely to have. He’d have sent in the Purveyors of Peril or the Lair Legion or someone, maybe even the Doomherald or the Bloodreaper, to finish the PM off.”     “There’s never an archvillain around when you need one,” complained Sarah.     “We have to do it,” I realised. “Just us three. We have to finish off the Parody Master.” Maybe I’ve been around Gaz too long.     “Well, taking on the PM will be a bit of a strain,” Sarah admitted, but she turned the scooter towards the bad guy.     “Hurry up,” Danny called. “He’s summoning his minions to patch him up.”     “Right,” Shep said, taking a deep breath. “Let’s go.”     The Parody Master saw us. We couldn’t avoid the wave of energy he tossed off to wipe us out. And this was the exhausted and debilitated Parody Master casually annihilating us, by the way.     “Incoming!” Sarah warned. “It’s shielded from our probability powers!”     “Try to swerve,” Danny called out. “It won’t kill…” *** Ohanna of Raael, freewoman, Emir’s consort:     “The Parody Master’s won,” reported Hacker Nine. “I don’t know what he’s done to Kerry and the others but they’ve just vanished off the scanners.”     “We’re out of time, then,” frowned Kiivan. “Are the Heralds and the Doomwraiths off-planet?”     Harlagaz gripped Terrorox by the neck then hurled him overarm out of the atmosphere. “They art now,” he answered.     “What are you planning, your excellency?” I demanded of the Emir of All Caph.     “Just doing what the Hooded Hood wanted,” he replied, opening the end of Gaath’s sword and unwrapping a small package from the cavity inside.     “Dooming the planet and getting us all killed?” Falconne checked.     Kiivan shook his head. “That’s not what he wanted. Or at least it wasn’t the only outcome he’d accept. Anna?”     “The Hood always leaves a way out of his traps,” I remembered. “If you’re smart enough, or brave enough, or make the right choice. So he wouldn’t just drop us here to die without offering us a test.”     “A graduation test,” Hacker Nine recognised. “Again.”     “My graduation,” Kiivan said. “Anyone can start a revolution. Not everyone can save a world.”     I looked curiously at the little object in the handkerchief he’d produced. As he unwrapped it I noticed that the ironed white linen had the monogram MHStGW on it.     Kiivan spotted me trying to decipher it. “Mortimer Humphrey St George Wilton,” he decoded. “I asked Sir Mumphrey for a little favour. A big favour, actually.”     “Such as what?” asked Hacker Nine.     “Such as a contingency,” Kiivan answered. “A good plan always has to have back-ups.”     “In case the Hood’s promise of the Portal of Pretentiousness didn’t work out,” I surmised.     “As with the things he said to Shadara and Aarmus, he was careful not to make any actual promise,” Kiivan noted. “Unlike them, I was paying attention.”     “Um, guys, the Parody Master is incoming,” Hacker Nine pointed out. “And he’s not going to be happy with us.”     “If you’ve got a way of evacuating the whole planet through the Hood’s Portal it had better be now,” warned Falconne nervously. “Otherwise it’s going to get messy.”     “No Portal,” Kiivan said, taking my hand in his. “Anna, I love you. I never knew until today how much I loved you. Maybe it’ll take all my life to find that out. Please be mine, to own forever, of your own free will.”     It was a strange time for a declaration of eternal love, but when else could we say such things? “I am yours,” I answered. I hoped my tears weren’t ruining my make up.     He held up the ring inside the handkerchief. “In that case,” he grinned, “there’s an Earth custom…”     “Parody Master in ten seconds!” Hacker Nine yelped. “Nine, eight…”     “Leteth him come,” growled Harlagaz.     “Seven, six..”     Kiivan slipped the ring onto my finger, the best slave band anyone can ever receive, and he kissed me.     Time stopped. *** Sir Mumphrey Wilton, KBE GCB GCMG CGVO FRS etc.:     Kiivan? Splendid young chap, just the thing to sort out Caph and its dashed peculiar ways.     Came to see me a while back, wanted me to stick a massive chronal charge into a diamond ring he’d got. Something big enough to shift an entire planetary system months into the future.     Not easy, of course. Took me weeks. Needed to haul out all the apparatus, the Fountain Pen of Causality, the Inverness Cape of Singularity, the Cane of Destiny. The old firm. Warned him that the dashed Parody Master could probably counter the effect if he was anything like on form. He said not to worry, the blighter would probably not be feeling that up to scratch when it was triggered.     So I imagine the young fellah was planning on jumpin’ his world forward a while to get it out of harm’s way. By the time it reappears then either that Parody Bounder will reign supreme anyway and there’ll be not stoppin’ him or he’ll have been potted into the gutter like the shiftless scum he is and good riddance to him.     Rather hoping on the latter, actually. Oik’s a total carbuncle and needs poppin’ like a pimple.     So good luck to young Kiivan, and I hope his plan works. Confusion to the Hooded Hood and the Parody Master and the whole ungodly lot of ‘em.     Cheers. *** Coming Next: The Librarian’s in a library taken over by the Supreme Interference. Al B. Harper is leading a party into the deep Vortex in search of a weapon that can change the course of the Parody War. Hatman is missing in strange dimensions. Citizen Z is preparing to rule the world. Visionary is heading off to challenge the Celestians. Flapjack needs to pack a lot of sandwiches. The second-to-last act of the Parody War begins with Raiders of the Lost Vortex, and Other Anomalies. *** The poem Ham-Boy quotes is of course the last lines of “The New Colossus” by Emily Lazarus, and it famously hangs on the interior of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse *** Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2007 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2007 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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* *Applause* - Al B. Harper - Wed Apr 25, 2007 at 12:22:18 am EDT * Applause? Throw money! - HH - Fri Apr 27, 2007 at 12:26:20 pm EDT * HB is quoting Poetry? Boy, he has changed sinc ethe last time I wrote him. :) - L! - Sun Apr 22, 2007 at 06:15:47 pm EDT * I pondered whether to give that stuff to him in the story and eventually decided it was worth using him outside his stereotype on this one occasion. (no text) - HH - Mon Apr 23, 2007 at 05:14:15 am EDT * I love goopy romantic endings, so this story was really wonderful for me. Do more goopy romance. (no text) - Dancer may have said this to IW before. - Sun Apr 22, 2007 at 07:52:23 am EDT * It sure is good the way you tell it, Shep. (no text) - HH - Mon Apr 23, 2007 at 05:28:31 am EDT * As complete a conclusion as you could possibly create, while still producing a satisfying story. And no, that's not a backhanded compliment ... [Spoilers] - CrazySugarFreakBoy! - Wed Apr 11, 2007 at 11:14:48 pm EDT * Resolution was required. [Spoilers] - HH - Sun Apr 15, 2007 at 02:53:19 pm EDT * It's nice to see that [spoiler] has learned his lessons well. - Manga Shoggoth - Wed Apr 11, 2007 at 02:56:33 pm EDT * Too well? - HH - Sun Apr 15, 2007 at 02:44:11 pm EDT * Well kick my butt and call me Joe! [Spoilers] - ag - Mon Apr 09, 2007 at 02:39:10 pm EDT * If you absolutely insist [Spoilers] - HH - Tue Apr 10, 2007 at 06:54:31 am EDT * Hey, you snuck in an ending... and it was a good one! More comments after work. (no text) - Visionary - Mon Apr 09, 2007 at 12:47:44 pm EDT * How was it sneaking? Doesn't anybody read the titles stuff these days? (no text) - HH blames TV - Mon Apr 09, 2007 at 01:48:11 pm EDT * Well, aside from "Revenge of the Jedi" and the like, most titles don't change after you've read them. - Visionary - Mon Apr 09, 2007 at 08:44:37 pm EDT * I leike to keep my readers on their toes. All seven of them. Readers, that is, not toes. - HH hasn't yet implimented a serious punishment system for not replying but is considering it - Tue Apr 10, 2007 at 07:14:05 am EDT * Hmm. Punishing people who don't reply? Can I punish you? You haven't replied to MY story above. ;) (no text) - ag - Thu Apr 12, 2007 at 10:40:27 pm EDT * Sure I have. There's a difference between checking in every other day and every other month, (no text) - HH - Mon Apr 23, 2007 at 05:05:02 am EDT * This is brilliant, it's even equipped with a sort of happy ending. - Rhiannon - Mon Apr 09, 2007 at 12:46:00 pm EDT * Well, I did say Happy Easter at the top. I didn't want to upset people. Well, not everybody. - HH - Mon Apr 09, 2007 at 01:40:17 pm EDT * And completing the replies... [Spoilers] - Anime Jason - Mon Apr 09, 2007 at 12:27:14 pm EDT * Incompleting the responses. [Spoilers] - HH - Mon Apr 09, 2007 at 01:46:46 pm EDT * I got enough of that in high school. [Spoilers] - Anime Jason - Mon Apr 09, 2007 at 02:29:57 pm EDT * Plus all that edjumacation. [Spoilers] - HH - Tue Apr 10, 2007 at 07:01:46 am EDT * I wouldn't quite go that far. [Spoilers] - Anime Jason - Tue Apr 10, 2007 at 11:56:56 am EDT * Perhaps when you'e got a few drinks in you? [Spoilers] - HH - Sun Apr 15, 2007 at 03:06:23 pm EDT * Since I mostly drink water that will only increase my bathroom visits. [Spoilers] - Anime Jason - Sun Apr 15, 2007 at 04:19:01 pm EDT * Too much information [Spoilers] - HH - Mon Apr 23, 2007 at 05:07:32 am EDT * So the Parody Master wasn't bad enough, next we have to worry about the Tyranids? (no text) - killer shrike - Mon Apr 09, 2007 at 10:10:05 am EDT * Only if you survive. (no text) - HH - Mon Apr 09, 2007 at 11:24:04 am EDT * Eh, I'm not worried. (no text) - killer shrike - Mon Apr 09, 2007 at 12:19:34 pm EDT * I'll try harder. (no text) - HH - Mon Apr 09, 2007 at 01:48:58 pm EDT * Promises, promises (no text) - killer shrike - Mon Apr 09, 2007 at 03:39:29 pm EDT * Well, if you don't want to be gruesomely destroyed... (no text) - HH - Tue Apr 10, 2007 at 07:02:48 am EDT * Part two! - Anime Jason - Sun Apr 08, 2007 at 03:23:20 pm EDT * So it was. - HH - Sun Apr 08, 2007 at 08:55:25 pm EDT * And my reply was too. - Anime Jason - Mon Apr 09, 2007 at 01:59:29 am EDT * As well as two. - HH - Mon Apr 09, 2007 at 09:25:26 am EDT * Whoa boy. EDITED - ag - Sun Apr 08, 2007 at 12:40:24 pm EDT * Whoaed now. - HH - Sun Apr 08, 2007 at 08:43:41 pm EDT * Whoaing now. - ag - Mon Apr 09, 2007 at 12:27:23 am EDT * Whoaed - HH - Mon Apr 09, 2007 at 09:26:45 am EDT * Re: Whoaing more [Spoilers] - ag - Mon Apr 09, 2007 at 01:57:38 pm EDT * What? Where did he go? (no text) [Spoilers] - HH watches AG vanish into the distance - Mon Apr 09, 2007 at 02:12:37 pm EDT * I'm back with a reply above. [Spoilers] - ag - Mon Apr 09, 2007 at 02:40:41 pm EDT * So you are. (no text) - HH suspects alien abduction - Tue Apr 10, 2007 at 06:53:06 am EDT * (Part 2) That really is an Ultimate Move, isn't it... - Manga Shoggoth - Sun Apr 08, 2007 at 12:29:49 pm EDT * Is he not... the Hooded Hood? - HH - Sun Apr 08, 2007 at 08:45:18 pm EDT * I have now read the second part and while I might have guessed a little of it it was still amazingly brilliant. (no text) - Rhiannon - Sun Apr 08, 2007 at 12:00:15 pm EDT * Amazingly? So you're saying you didn't expect it to be brilliant. (no text) - HH - Sun Apr 08, 2007 at 08:46:11 pm EDT * *Pats self on the back* (no text) - killer shrike - Sun Apr 08, 2007 at 11:42:05 am EDT * Okay, you can have five points. Don't spend them all at once. (no text) - HH - Sun Apr 08, 2007 at 09:03:45 pm EDT * I *knew* it! - Visionary - Sun Apr 08, 2007 at 11:40:51 am EDT * You did. And still you failed to act. - HH - Sun Apr 08, 2007 at 08:53:24 pm EDT * I didn't see that last bit coming. (no text) - Rhiannon - Sun Apr 08, 2007 at 10:20:54 am EDT * But all the rest was obvious? (no text) - HH - Sun Apr 08, 2007 at 10:43:06 am EDT * No, but that bit was particularly unexpected. (no text) - Rhiannon - Sun Apr 08, 2007 at 10:44:47 am EDT * The secret of adventure writing is: work out what the worst thing you can do to the characters is, then do it. (no text) - HH - Sun Apr 08, 2007 at 10:48:26 am EDT * Some effective seeding of cultural shifts to come, and [spoiler character] seems to be receiving his deserved comeuppance. Looking forward to the conclusion. :) (no text) - CrazySugarFreakBoy! - Sun Apr 08, 2007 at 07:54:27 am EDT * Is this stabbed [spoiler character] or non-stabbed [spoiler character]? (no text) - HH - Sun Apr 08, 2007 at 09:09:25 am EDT * GAHH! Come on people! I need to see what happens next! Reply! (no text) - ag - Sun Apr 08, 2007 at 12:55:18 am EDT * I still need inspiration to write the ending, too. I've just got to the BIG battle. (no text) - HH - Sun Apr 08, 2007 at 07:28:51 am EDT * Cool! Next part is up! I'll devour it in a few minutes. Guess what? [Spoilers] - ag - Sun Apr 08, 2007 at 11:25:15 am EDT * Proceed. (no text) [Spoilers] - HH - Sun Apr 08, 2007 at 08:46:29 pm EDT * I hope that title's not too accurate... - Visionary - Sun Apr 08, 2007 at 12:17:36 am EDT * We wouldn't want to cheat, now would we? - HH - Sun Apr 08, 2007 at 07:36:57 am EDT * That last part could put a damper on any happy ending people were hoping for. (no text) - killer shrike - Sat Apr 07, 2007 at 09:26:37 pm EDT * People were hoping for a happy ending? They should have said so. (no text) - HH - Sun Apr 08, 2007 at 07:32:30 am EDT * And I feel fine. [Spoilers] - Anime Jason - Sat Apr 07, 2007 at 08:47:35 pm EDT * You should be out there with a disturbing placard distributing tracts [Spoilers] - HH - Sun Apr 08, 2007 at 07:32:01 am EDT

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