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Post By The Hooded Hood tries board CPR with this triple-sized double-fisted slam Sun May 27, 2007 at 01:19:50 pm EDT |
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#313: Untold Tales of the Parody War: Out of Bounds | |
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| #313: Untold Tales of the Parody War: Out of Bounds Previously: The war against the Parody Master is going badly. Desperate to turn the course of the war and to revive friends lost in the conflict, Visionary and Asil have journeyed to the sub-dimension of the Celestian Space Robots who can restructure the Parodyverse. There they are each granted a spirit guide, a trusted associate who is now dead. Asil meets her former romance interest George Gedney. Vizh encounters his old lover, the villainous Vermillion Vex. Al B. Harper’s mission to the trans-dimensional vortex to find a mysterious weapon prophesied to change the course of the Parody War has encountered a few problems. Al, Dancer, Kerry, and Denial are currently piloting a rocket-powered mountain towards their goal. ManMan and Liu Xi are in an entirely different bit of the Vortex facing off against the Doomherald, former emissary of the Parody Master who claims only Liu Xi’s love can save him. This story carries on from Untold Tales #311: Raiders of the Lost Vortex and the excellent Untold Unexpected Tie-In Tales by Dancer and De Brown Streak. It occurs during and after Untold Tales #312 and 314. Dramatis Personae: Visionary, a possibly-fake man, a member of the Lair Legion with no discernable super-powers or abilities. Asil, a young enthusiastic clone of deceased Legion founder Lisa Waltz. Vermillion Vex (Priscilla DuBois), formerly a villainous mutate hex-witch and Visionary’s lover before she wiped out all mutate powers and herself . George Gedney, formerly a curator at the Willingham Museum of Curiosities, and Asil’s would-be boyfriend, before he died in combat with the Parody Master. Al B. Harper, archscientist of the Lair Legion Dancer (Sarah Shepherdson), probability-twisting superstar legionnaire waiting to be discovered. Kerry Shepherdson, Dancer’s probability-arsonist teenaged sister. Denial (Danny Lyle), son of the archvillainous Hooded Hood, Kerry’s most-of-the-time boyfriend ManMan (Joe Pepper), Elvis-impersonating legionnaire who carries the mysterious talking knife Knifey. Liu Xi Xian, a young Chinese girl gifted with elemental powers, the object of the Doomherald’s obsession. Exu the Doomherald, former servant of the Parody Master, former god of murder to the Second Oldest Race in the Parodyverse, former aspect of the GatewayTraitorGalaxyTraveller! that unleashed Chaos into the Parodyverse, currently very confused and bitter. E’Koor the Vengeful, Singularity Rider servant of the Parody Master, Doomwraith forged from the tormented souls of a murdered planetary population. Not a nice thing to meet. More character profiles appear in the footnotes at the bottom of the page. Previous chapters at The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom. Descriptions of cast at Who's Who in the Parodyverse. Locations explained in Where's Where in the Parodyverse.  In a far place where the great Space Robots that once maintained the Parodyverse were made, ancient systems sparked to life. Automated beacons began to blink. Cogs the size of planets turned again, sending energies enough to ignite suns to machines that could calculate the probabilities of universes. The Celestian demiplane slowly woke up and began to function again. Intruders had come, past all the safeguards, and they were making their way towards the master control panel. From that single platform the whole of reality could be reordered. The Celestians watched and waited. It would only take one press of one button to change everything. Asil raced over to George Gedney, fell into his arms, and kissed him. “Hello to you too,” said George at last when they came up for air. “I guess… well, it’s really good to see you. And, um, feel you.” “George,” Asil gasped, knuckling away the tears in her eyes. “I’d forgotten that visitors using the formal gate to the demiplane of the Celestians get a guide assigned to them, whoever they need most. When Sir Mumphrey came here he got his Madge. I’ve got you!” “Pretty much,” agreed the hapless young museum curator. “I was more than happy to volunteer for a spot of afterlife duty. And that was before your welcome.” Asil blushed. “I owed you that kiss. That night before the battle of the conceptual plane, back when you asked me to dance and… Well, I should have kissed you then. I should have let you know that… I like you.” George blushed back. “I’m glad to know you do. Did. Do.” He scratched his head while keeping the armful of girl he’d got pressed to him. “I hoped and dreamed you might… like me. I was never exactly sure.” “I like you, George.” Asil confessed. “I didn’t know how much until they told me that you’d gone.” She shivered. “Lisa is gone too, murdered like you by the Parody Master. And Yo, nobody knows where s/he is. And Dancer, and Hatty, and Kerry…” “I’m sorry,” George reassured the Lisa-clone, stroking her hair. “I’m sorry I went and died on you, Asil. I had a duty, and I tried to do what was needed.” “You’re a hero, George. You have a good heart. I know that. Of course you’d do what was needed to save everybody. You’d do what’s right.” She looked around her for the first time. The conceptual plane seemed like a gleaming maze of interlocking glass and circuitry, an infinite tangle of interlocking boxes forming high spires and dizzying walkways. “That’s why we’re here,” she said at last. “To bring you back.” “Back?” George asked, tensing. “Asil…” “What’s it like?” the girl blurted. “Being dead? Is there, I don’t know, heaven, hell? Did you see Lisa, or, or Jarvis? Or Elvis?” George shook his head. “Wherever I was, whatever happened to me after the Parody Master blew me to pieces, that knowledge is denied to me while I’m here with you. I can’t answer any of the eternal questions for you, Asil. I can only help you while you’re here. And I have to explain to you…” “Are you… are you going to make love to me?” “Am I what?” George spluttered, almost choking on his tongue. Asil was blushing all the way to her toes by now. “Making love. With me. Because… when Sir Mumphrey came here and met with Marge, after all that time apart, well… they were glad to see each other. And you… like me… and I never… we didn’t…” She pressed her head against George’s shoulder. “If that’s what you want, we could be together,” she whispered. George kissed her again, softly and tenderly. “Of course I want to,” he told her, “but I’m not going to. It wouldn’t be fair.” Asil bit her lip. “Why not? I owe you…” “It’s not fair because you’re the most special girl in the world, Asil, and I know you’ve never… You’re not ready for that. I couldn’t stay with you, Asil. I couldn’t be your husband. After your time here in the Celestian demiplane you’ll go back to your life and I’ll go back to whatever it is I can’t remember. And then what happens later when you fall in love and you want to have that special time with whoever that lucky fellow is?” He reluctantly released Asil from his arms. “Because it can’t be me.” “But it can be,” Asil protested, blinking back more tears. “That’s why Vizh and I came here, George! There’s a master control panel here that can reactivate and reprogram the Space Robots. We could alter the Parodyverse. We can bring all our lost friends back. We can bring you back to life!” George nodded pensively. “I know. And it would be wonderful, Asil, especially if we were together then. But you mustn’t do it.” “Why… why not?” the Lisa-clone puzzled. “George, it’s why we’re here. We did all these difficult things that nobody thought we could do. We went to Comic-Book Limbo, we faced the Chronicler, all to do something for our lost loved ones. And we can set the Space Robots to battle the Parody Master. We can save the Parodyverse.” George shook his head. “I’ll guide you to the master control if that’s what you want, of course. But Asil, if you interfere with the Space Robots, if you get them to change things even the slightest bit, then you’ll set the whole Parodyverse out of balance. The good you do here will be reflected back a thousand million times worse as evil. There’ll be a horrible price.” Asil looked perplexed. “But… Visionary is a Great Man. If he takes the controls…” “You mustn’t let it happen, Asil,” George said sadly. “You and I, we have to stop Visionary from saving the world.” “Here’s your bustier,” Vizh said, looking away as he handed the tight leather corset back to his own guide. “Thanks, Vizh,” the Vermillion Vex grinned as she accepted her only upper garment. “I have no idea how it just fell off like that while we were battling the circuitwardens.” “I have no idea how we survived that battle with the cogwardens,” Vizh admitted. “Unless you were vexing them at the time.” “Oh, I was,” Priscilla DiBois agreed. “I said I’d help you, and I am helping you. Even if you’re refusing to help yourself.” Visionary and Priscilla had been lovers once. Now Vizh was thinking more and more about Hallie. He’d turned down the offer of a joyous reunion with the coffee-skinned villainess who he’d got as his guide. “We’d better get on,” he suggested, trying not to glance back at rather more coffee-skinned villainess than he felt he should be seeing. “Well okay,” Prisiclla agreed. “Although I’m going to need some help to get back into this clothing. It’s pretty tight. I need to squeeze and squirm, and then I’ll need your help with the laces. Unless you’d rather I just leave it off?” “No, don’t do that,” Vizh almost yelped. “I’ll help. Somehow.” “Thanks,” the Vex grinned at him. “Hey, it’s not like you haven’t had enough practise taking my stuff off. And there was that time you dressed me up as…” “I’m just lacing your costume,” Vizh interrupted hurriedly. The Vex knew exactly how to get to him. In fact he’d had to slap her hand away a few times by now. “We’re here to do a job, that’s all. I just need to make a few minor adjustments to the Celestian master control panel. I’m not going to use it to take over the Parodyverse.” “But why not?” Priscilla pouted. “We’d make a great couple as rulers of the Parodyverse. I’ve planned out the décor of the palace and everything.” “We are not ruling the Parodyverse,” Vizh insisted, tying the corset laces in tight triple-knots . “Just saving it.” “Look, if this is just about your feeling for that little Hallie A.I., I guess I could be open to sharing,” the Vex offered. “She can take on any shape she wants, right? That has possibilities.” “Just. Saving. It,” repeated Visionary through gritted teeth. “Too many good people have died. I’m going to put that right.” “Lisa? It was Lisa’s death that pushed you to actually doing something for once, wasn’t it?” Priscilla challenged. “Why her? Why not mine?” That was a fair question. “Because… this is one too many. The last straw. Losing Cheryl, losing you, all of it contributed.” He turned and took Priscilla’s hand. “I’m going to program the Space Robots to bring you back too, you know,” he promised. “Oh.” The villainess squeezed his hand. “So come on,” Vizh suggested. “Let’s just get this done. I don’t want Mags and Griff worrying.” The Vex followed behind the possibly-fake man, thinking furiously. “If I’m back to life again,” she questioned, “does that mean you’ll be breaking up with me?” “It’s not breaking up,” Vizh explained to her. “We broke up when you went nutso and wiped out pretty much every mutate power in the Parodyverse and dispersed yourself across creation. This is just… I don’t want to leave you like that. I love you, even if we’re not lovers now. I want you to know that…” Fortunately, just then they were attacked by the maintenance beetles. “Oh thank you, God!” cried Visionary. The Transdimensional Vortex was very different from the Celestian demiplane. The Vortex was a seething whirlpool of narrative energies, a vast, possibly endless maelstrom of unused or broken bits of different realities churning in a livid purple tempest between the various dimensions of the Parodyverse. It was a dangerous, deadly place ill-suited for human exploration. Or, as Kerry Shepherdson said: “Wheeeee! Make it go faster!” Archscientist Al B. Harper sighed and tried to stop the cobbled-together propulsion units he’d salvaged from the downed dimensional dreadnaught from exploding in nuclear holocaust. “Faster isn’t the problem,” he noted. “Trying to steer is.” “We’re not going to crash into that planet-sized chunk of metal!” Danny Lyle shouted out. Denial was using his powers to prevent the very worst events in this wild ride into the deepest fathoms of the Vortex. The mountain they were riding caromed off the side of the debris, spinning in a wild axial rotation that made the skies seems to blur. “Or maybe we are,” he sighed, rubbing his forehead. “Ouch.” There was a cracking sound and half the rock that the explorers were standing on crumbled away. The fragments were snatched away by the cosmic riptides and ground into dust. “Don’t worry,” called Sarah Shepherdson, the Probability Dancer, Kerry’s older sister. “I think we’re getting close to what we came to find. It seems as though the probabilities of finding it are especially susceptible to the mambo.” Dancer’s ability to manipulate chance were triggered by movement. “If we do find this mystery weapon that the Parody Master thinks can change the course of the Parody War then I get to fire it, right?” Kerry checked. “That’s only fair.” “If the mystery weapon is the missing killer robot Ultizon then the best we can hope for is that he’s dormant and we can keep him that way,” Al B. Harper shuddered. He had bad memories of the adamantine monster that he’s watched fall into the vortex over a year back. “Do not – and I can’t state this firmly enough – do not push any buttons marked ‘activate’ or similar.” “Not even the interesting ones?” pouted the young probability arsonist. “Kerry, if you activate another lethal killing machine I’m going to show Danny those photos of you at the Dunboggie Talent Fancy Dress Show when you were seven,” Dancer threatened. “Do I need to use the words My Little Pony?” Danny looked interested. “Something you want to tell me, Firecracker? I guess I’m open to roleplay.” “Shut up!” fumed Kerry at her sister. “I don’t go around telling everybody about the time you got handcuffed to Father O’Malley just before your towel…” “Oh look,” Dancer interrupted brightly and quickly. “I think that big carved rock we’re about to crash into must be the place we’re looking for!” “What big carved…” Al B. managed to ask before the mountain he was steering found the rock for him. Out in the battering tempest of the dimensional winds, E’Koor the Vengeful, Singularity Rider, Doomwraith, sensed that the humans he’d been trailing had brought him close to the prize his Master sought. He spurred his dark winged steed through the Vortex and swooped low to claim the weapon. “Sleep with me or I’ll go back to being an evil god of murder serving psychotic Parodyverse conquering villains,” snorted ManMan. “Like nobody’s ever tried that line before!” Liu Xi Xian shot an irritated glare at the young hero dressed in the Elvis suit. “That’s not what Exu is saying,” she argued. “Well, not exactly.” In another part of the tumbling reality soup of the Vortex two more of Al B.’s original expedition clung to as much smaller chunk of debris and faced off against the former herald of the Parodymaster, the conflicted Doomherald. Unlike the spectral Doomwraiths, Exu had not been created whole from the souls of dead planetary populations. Instead he had been refurbished from a former entity the Parody Master had rescued from Comic-Book Limbo. “I know what I am now,” the Doomherald repeated. “I know what I was, I know what I’ll become again if you don’t save me Liu Xi.” “So you were once Exu the GatewayTraitorGalaxyTraveller! whose actions unleashed Chaos on the Parodyverse before the dawn of time,” Knifey, ManMan’s sentient knife summarised. “Then the Hooded Hood carved off a slice of you into its own retconned future, you became the god of murder to the long-erased Second Oldest Race, then later you got restored by the Parody Master to be his henchman as part of one of the Hood’s insanely complicated long-term plots. So what?” “So I’ve met Exu now,” the leather-clad murder-god answered. There was a wild glint in his eye, and he was sweating like an addict suffering withdrawal. “I know what I was supposed to be now. I’m becoming him again. I’m being pulled back to him. We’ll merge.” “So only one psychotic unpredictable traitor rather than two?” ManMan checked. “There’s a downside?” “Stop it!” Liu Xi Xian chided Joe Pepper. “Exu is more than that. More than this other Exu person. He saved my life more than once. He cares about things. He has a chance.” The Doomherald shook his head. “That’s just it, Liu Xi. I thought I had, but now I know different. I can’t resist now I know the truth. My only hope now is to become a new person altogether, with you. If you will be with me forever.” ManMan snorted. “She’s not giving up her life and freedom to be Mrs Doomherald just to stop you whining,” he argued. “Don’t you think Liu Xi’s had enough of being manipulated by men? Don’t you think she deserves some kind of hope as well?” “Stop talking as if I’m not here!” Liu Xi shouted at them. “Joe, I don’t need protecting from Exu. Exu, you don’t have to win an argument with ManMan to claim me. You can’t claim me at all!” “She’s right, boys,” Knifey agreed. “It’s the lady’s call. Exu’s proposing, well, something, and Liu Xi is the only one who can decide if that’s what she wants.” “I could be a better man with you, Liu Xi,” the Doomherald promised. “I think I could. Otherwise…” “Otherwise?” ManMan demanded. “Finish your threats, then.” “Otherwise I think I’ll become a monster.” Liu Xi shook her head. “I can’t be with you by coercion. It can’t work that way. If I’m sleeping with you just to stop you killing people or going back to the Parody Master or something…” “I can’t go back to the Parody Master. He’ll kill me. You know I defied him to get you away.” “You could kill Joe and take Liu Xi back to the PM now,” Knifey suggested. “That might work.” “Hey!” complained ManMan. “Whose side are you on?” “I won’t do that,” Exu decided. “But Liu Xi, I thought you liked me. Maybe you could love me. I thought we might be better together than apart. Won’t you take a chance that we could be happy together?” Liu Xi closed her eyes for a moment and tried to think. Everything was in turmoil. Maybe that was the gift of the Doomherald. “Being married to someone isn’t the same as loving them,” she said at last. “I could love you,” Exu said. “We were almost lovers before, in Comic-Book Limbo. If we’d been there another day, we would have been.” “Exu, I care what happens to you,” the young elementalist answered. “And I admit I’m sometimes just caught up in you, like a leaf in the wind. But I also know I can never truly force myself to love you.” The Doomherald looked as pale as when the Parody Master had punched a hole through his chest. “I’m giving you all I can ever give you now,” Liu Xi confessed. “Either I love you enough at this moment to keep you from dying or merging or whatever you think will happen, or I don’t. But I can’t love you more. If this isn’t enough then I’ll never fill your requirements.” “Ouch,” ManMan winced. “Dumped.” “Shut up Joe,” said Liu Xi and Knifey together. “So you won’t help me?” the Doomherald said to Liu Xi Xian bleakly. “I can’t help you,” the girl replied, tears forming in her eyes. “It’s impossible.” “Sorry, Exu,” Knifey said, genuinely. “But you have your answer. Now you should go.” “Not quite yet,” Exu growled, his face changing from pale to wrath-red. “If I can’t be saved by being a person with Liu Xi then my only other chance is to embrace my other heritage and truly become the god of murder once more.” “Uh-oh,” ManMan breathed. Then the Doomherald came for him. The Master Console of the Celestian Space Robots stood on a transparent platform at the centre of a web of conduits and interlocking moving components of glass and steel. It was a simple screen terminal, requiring nothing more than the touch and the thought of the operator to rewrite the programming of the beings that maintained the Parodyverse. Visionary had been there before. “I’ve been here before,” he said. “Yeah, at the end of that World Tour adventure,” Priscilla agreed. “You got in by a different route then.” “No guide,” Vizh remembered. “Sure you had. It’s just that it was one of the people already with you.” She pointed to the console. “And you wimped out. You didn’t use it.” Vizh shook his head. “I think that was kind of the point. The Celestians had set things up so that if a human – Sir Mumphrey or Zemo first, then me – tried to interfere with the Parodyverse it would set things in motion to wipe humanity out.” “And you believed that?” the Vermillion Vex snorted. “You didn’t think that, for example, the Space Robots were bluffing to keep you from interfering with what they wanted to do?” Vizh paused uncomfortably. “Um, well actually no, that didn’t occur. I’m kind of used to believing portentous cosmic creatures. Or ones that speak in the third person and give me bunnies. “The Vermillion Vex thinks you’re an idiot,” said Priscilla. “But we do need to plan how you’re going to become supreme ruler, Vizh. Those things that were chasing us evidently can’t follow us up here, so we have a little time to work out how to do this right.” “I’m still not intending to conquer the Parodyverse, Priscilla,” Vizh repeated. “I want to get rid of the PM and bring back all my friends safe and well. That’s it. I’m not even going to eradicate male-pattern baldness.” “Really?” asked the Vex, checking Vizh’s hairline. “No way I can make you reconsider? You know this console is kind of flat and wide. If I laid back across it you could…” “I think we need to get on,” the possibly-fake man said hurriedly. “No, not on there! I mean get on with saving people. Please!” “Well just so you know, if you save me I’ll have to save you in turn by slaughtering all those women who’ve confused your life and convincing you to turn rogue and run away with me. Just so you know.” Vizh’s hands paused over the console. “Er, I’d prefer if you didn’t,” he admitted. Priscilla smirked and pointed to the controls. “Fine. So use the panel. Make me not want to do that.” She smoothed her hands down her tight leather bustier. “With that thing you could make me do anything you wanted. Be anything you wanted. Me, Hallie, Asil, Lisa, Dancer…” Vizh pulled his hands away from the controls. “It’s not going to be like that. I’m not… I won’t…” Vex laughed. “You really won’t, will you? You’re hopeless.” She sighed. “Go on then. Save the world and leave it at that. Do it.” “Stop!” shouted Asil, pelting across the space below with half a dozen cogwardens trailing them firing proton pulses. “Don’t do it Vizh! It’s wrong!” “Asil?” Vizh called. “Watch out!” George Gedney grabbed the young Lisa-clone as she tripped and dragged her onto the glass staircase up to the platform. The two of them tumbled into each others arms exhausted on the first steps, but once they were there the cogwardens held their position and ceased firing, just as they had with Vizh and Priscilla. “You can’t do this, Vizh!” Asil called out from below. “Please, Visionary, you are a Great Man. Don’t make us have to kill you!” “Er, what?” asked Vizh. Dancer looked up at the huge eroded carvings at the doorway into a vast dark interior. “Al B., I’m looking for exposition here!” Al B. Harper clamped his bubble pipe between his teeth and examined the artefacts. “Well, we know that various bits of old realities crumble away into the transdimensional vortex,” he reasoned. “There’s all kinds of detritus swirling around, some of it the size of planets. This is some kind of alien structure, probably done by quite a primitive people given the lack of machine tooling signs and the use of bas-relief pictograms rather than a developed linguistic…” “Great work, Sherlock,” Kerry interrupted. “Shame you didn’t detect this planetoid before you crashed our ride into it. What blew the hole in the roof though?” Al blinked. “Hole?” Danny Lyle pointed to the dark interior. A single shaft of purple light lit the dusty hall where something had punched its way through the yards of stone above, bringing down part of the roof. “Another bit of Al’s detritus?” he suggested. “Or is your explosion sense tingling, Firecracker?” “We need to look in there,” Dancer decided. “I was probability dancing us towards the mysterious and possibly Ultizonal weapon the PM wants so badly, then Al drove our mountain into this big rock. So maybe the weapon’s in here?” “I didn’t exactly drive into the big rock,” Al B. complained. “Have you seen the turning circle on a mountain with rockets strapped to it?” Denial picked his way over the rubble and found fragments of crystal. “What’s this stuff?” he wondered. “Is it valuable?” Kerry came to join him. “That won’t burn,” she said disdainfully. “I guess it might fragment nicely if you drilled along a faultline and used a shaped charge.” “Don’t blow anything up and don’t set fire to anything,” her big sister said. “Let’s just take a look round and keep the demolitions to a minimum.” “It’s like we’re back in Ireland and she’s babysitting me again,” Kerry complained. “Trauma flashbacks.” Al B. was studying the debris pattern from the rocks splintered off the roof. “Something very fast and hard come through here,” he admitted, tapping data into a nuclear slide rule of his own design. “The crystals are frozen narrative, accreted substance from one of the very dense streams of vortex matter. It was probably a lump of that stuff that brought the ceiling down.” Danny examined the dull translucent wreckage. “This is story?” he asked. “How do you read it?” “Hammer it into a VCR?” suggested Kerry. “Maybe Vizh’s VCR?” “It’s not just story,” Al B. replied. “This stuff is dense enough to be legend.” “It’d make nice ear-rings,” considered Dancer. “But perhaps really we should be looking down this big hole where the meteor went after it smashed through the roof?” She indicated the gaping maw on the broken ground. “This really is giving me babysitting flashbacks,” complained Kerry. E’Koor the vengeful reigned in his death-field as he alighted at the entrance to the ancient ruin. He didn’t want the explorers dead yet. Not when they were doing such a good job of leading him to his objective. Not when one of them was a bride his Master desired. He consoled himself by planning how to destroy the others when the time came. Soon. “Please, Visionary, don’t use the console,” begged George Gedney. “It’ll doom the Parodyverse, just like before.” Visionary scratched his head as Asil and her guide stamped up the steps to join him and Priscilla on the glass platform. “Tweed jacket with elbow patches?” the Vermillion Vex asked sceptically, looking at George. “Really?” “Her?” Asil asked accusingly, glaring at Vizh and Priscilla. “You could have picked anybody in human history to help you with your quest and you picked that one?” “I didn’t get a menu,” Vizh said weakly. “Hello, George, nice to see you again. If you and Asil don’t kill me, that is.” “Of course we won’t kill you, Vizh!” Asil assured him. “Unless you try to doom the Parodyverse. We were wrong about that panel. We can’t just use it to fix our friends. George says there are always wider-reaching consequences.” “Oh well,” scorned Priscilla, “if George says…” “You know things the same as I do,” George told the Vex. “The same way we can’t remember what happened to us after we died we can remember some stuff we didn’t know before that’s appropriate to us being guides in this place. Including what happens if Visionary or Asil mess with this panel.” “Can’t say I got that,” the Vex sniffed. “Then again, I’m Vizh’s guide not you, so I probably got the stuff he needs to know. You just got the cut-down version for sidekick girl.” Asil went on addressing Visionary. “Is there some part of the quest that has a desperate need for a total skank or what? Or was it just pity? I’m trying to understand.” “Er, perhaps we should concentrate on the issues here?” suggested George placatingly. “Visionary has always seemed like a reasonable sort. I’m sure when I’ve explained properly there’ll be no need for any kind of unpleasantness.” “I’m the only one here with super-powers right now,” the Vermillion Vex pointed out. “Say the word and I can toss curator-boy to the cogwardens.” “Could everybody shop shouting while I’m trying to fix the Parodyverse?” Visionary pleaded. “This thing picks up on subconscious urges as well, I think, and you’re all doing bad things to my hind brain!” “Well I hope so,” moued Priscilla. “I say go with the subconscious urges.” “Vizh, I trust you to do the right thing,” Asil called out. “At least I think I do. But you’ve had so many hard knocks lately. We all have. What if we’re not thinking straight?” Vizh rubbed his forehead with his hands. He had a headache coming on. “Okay, let’s all not kill each other for now and just try to think this through. George, you told Asil that I’d be doing a bad thing if I use the console. Why is that?” “Because he wanted to get into Asil’s pants?” suggested the Vex. “If George wants to get into my pants then he can,” Asil answered fiercely. “I already told him that. But he thinks I should save myself because he can’t come back to life to be with me. So there.” “Umm,” Vizh swallowed. “I mean why does George think I’d be dooming the universe and stuff?” He turned to the former curator of the Willingham Museum of Oddities. “Please tell me quickly.” George tried to cover his blushes. “Well, it all comes down to Earth, you see. At different times in cosmic history there are… well, I suppose you’d call them focus planets. Worlds of destiny. Where the stories gather.” “I think I remember the Chronicler saying something about that,” Vizh admitted. “Or Space Ghost. Or was that about balloons?” “There’s usually only one planet of destiny at a time. The cosmic office holders mostly get recruited from there, or from worlds in contact with it.” “And Earth’s the current focus planet,” Priscilla noted. “Hey, I was there. It makes sense. I always knew it was all about me.” “The Space Robots don’t like Earth, though,” Asil pointed out. “They’d like a different, more sensible planet of destiny. But they can’t just destroy Earth, because its against their rules.” “So they wanted a human to tamper with the rules and give them a loophole for a little galactic slum clearance,” Vizh remembered. “Yes, I got all this in the World Tour adventure. That’s why they set me up to be able to use this panel.” “Every single thing you change will have massive ramifications far beyond the immediate effect,” George warned. “If you were, say, to bring me back to life, that might cause the destruction of all human civilisation.” “Well, maybe if he brought Pricilla back,” muttered Asil. “Might?” asked Vizh, “Or will?” George shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t think anybody knows. Isn’t the risk enough?” “I’m not sure it is,” the possibly-fake man considered. “If I can get Lisa back, and Yo, and make sure Kerry and Dancer are safe, and help Donar recover, then the rest is just a lot of speculation and might bes. The Parodyverse is a better place with those people around. We’ll take what comes after the way we always do.” “As rulers of all creation,” added the Vermillion Vex. “If, y’know, you feel like it.” Asil was unsure. “Vizh, this is the whole future of the Parodyverse we’re talking about. What if you’re wrong? What if this really does destroy everything worse than even the Parody Master could?” “How can you destroy something worse than totally and cruelly?” Prisclla demanded. “That’s the Parody Master’s ultimate plan. After he’s conquered everything and played with it and paid back anyone he’s ever had a grudge against a million times over, he’ll get bored. He’ll want to conquer more, outside the Parodyverse. And since he’s only all-powerful inside the Parodyverse his only choice will be to absorb all the Parodyverse inside him as raw energy, so then he can go anywhere and do the same thing again to other creations.” “And that’s still not the worst thing that could happen,” George shuddered. “You know it too, Priscilla, even though we can’t speak of it. You know what the Parody Master was created to guard against.” “Any chance you could share that with us?” Asil asked tartly. “None at all,” George apologised. “But there is a worse than the Parody Master wins future. And if Visionary uses that panel he’ll be making it come to pass.” “I’m not going to abandon Lisa and Priscilla and everyone just on a horror story,” Vizh decided. “I can’t cope with the big stuff so I’ll stick to what I do know: my friends.” He reached out for the panel. “Wait!” Asil gasped. “Don’t do it yet. Push this button here!” Vizh blinked as he noticed a big yellow button standing on a stem separate from the main console. Had it even been there a few moments before? “What’s that?” he asked. George examined it. “It’s an emergency council summons,” he decided. “It brings the Triumverate here, the great cosmic office-holders. It’s their only way of getting into this place.” “We don’t need more interference,” argued the Vex. “We could use some clarification from Jury though,” Asil decided. “And maybe the Chronicler will bring Quoth and Fleabot?” Vizh thought hard for a moment, then slammed his palm down on the button. “Let’s see then,” he decided. “Bring on the big guys…” The Doomherald came for ManMan with all the accumulated skill of every killer since the dawn of time. He came impossibly fast and he made to tear out Joe Pepper’s throat. Knifey blurred in Joe’s hand and stabbed neatly through Exu’s palm, catching the Doomherald’s incoming assault. Exu span back, spraying blood from his wound, then came in again. ManMan stepped backwards, barely avoiding a second slice from the incoming god of murder. Knifey’s wide arc barely scratched Exu’s shoulder this time. The Doomherald was adjusting. Exu danced in again, ducking low under Knifey’s defence and going for ManMan’s midriff. The Elvis-impersonator reversed his blade deftly and brought it down towards the Doomherald’s exposed back. Liu Xi Xian made the ground explode beneath both of them, sending them flying yards apart in a shower of shrapnel. “Stop it!” she shouted. “Why are you being such kai dei lun tao mah-lan-faahn?” She paused for breath then folded rock over both of the men before she went on shouting. “Hey, I was the one trying to not die!” complained Joe Pepper. “Do you think I’m some kind of prize that gets won by a fight?” the young elementalist demanded. “Do you think you can murder your way to my heart? Do you think I’ll respond to mindless violence and surrender my future to the man with the bloodiest hands? Do you?” The Doomherald smashed through the rock, hammered a fist to the ground to shear off a massive plate of basalt that included where ManMan was imprisoned, and hurled it off the asteroid where they stood. “Keep trying not to die, Pepper,” he advised. Liu Xi diverted her attention to catching the fragment that Joe was bound to as it disappeared off into the vortex currents. Exu came up behind her and dropped her with a nerve pinch. “Now let’s try again,” he told her. “Do you want to come with me so we can be together forever?” There are cosmic offices, roles to maintain the balance of the Parodyverse, and there are officers who carry out the functions of those offices. The greatest of these are the Shaper of Worlds who begins narratives, the Chronicler of Stories who maintains them, and the Destroyer of Tales who ends them. Each of the offices is filled for a time by a being plucked from their own life or death. Of late their power has been challenged and eroded as events have pushed the Parodyverse towards its final conflict, its Resolution War. The Parody Master had captured much of their power, destroyed most of their resources. But by the power of the Celestians the Triumvirate came. “Busted,” said Priscilla DuBois. First came Jury, the most recent Chronicler of Stories. Stripped now of her power Jury could no longer remember where she had hidden the Storyheart, the source of the cosmic office-holders’ power. The young blonde woman had taken refuge on Earth, knowing that she was to be the ultimate bride of the Parody Master if his war of conquest succeeded. “The Celestian demiplane,” she recognised as she was brought there by Visionary’s button-pushing. “This can’t be good.” Then came the Chronicler of Stories, who had taken his fortress of narratives to safety in Comic-Book Limbo and who had reluctantly agreed to send Visionary and Asil to find the Celestian Control Panel. He appeared with a raven on each shoulder and a robot flea sitting atop one raven’s head. “I thought you said you only had one raven now,” Asil objected. “That’s why you needed Quoth back, and Fleabot to help. Not that Fleabot has ever been known to help.” “He was being economical with the truth,” Quoth the Raven answered gloomily. “He just wanted to set up this meeting.” Pallas, the Chronicler’s senior raven, fluttered rainbow-black wings. “Our master’s choices may not all seem clear. There is no season now where we might dwell; without the conversations we’ll have here. Without this confrontation there’ll be hell.” Fleabot made a rude noise. “Hey, I know this wishing well you should date,” he suggested to the rhyming bird of destiny. There was a burst of Celestian power and the third of the Triumverate was restored from death. Dark Thugos, Tyrant of Apocalyspe, rose to his full height and eyed Visionary with a granite countenance. “So the idiot has finally got round to calling us together,” he noted. “It took long enough.” “Hey!” Vizh objected. “I never asked for a mad archvillain. I just wanted the help menu!” “Nobody asks for mad archvillains,” Jury pointed out. “They just come along anyway.” “Look what’s happening!” George worried. “Vizh hasn’t even touched the control panel yet and he’s already resurrected one major bad guy!” “Way to go, lover,” approved Priscilla. “If we could call up the Hooded Hood next we could get some serious juice on our side.” Vizh held his hand half an inch over the control plate. “That’s enough!” he told everybody. “I am literally this close to rewriting the Parodyverse, and let me tell you if I go this way there’ll be an awful lot less portentous and annoying bad guys and all-knowing interference types around. So stand still, answer my questions, and maybe I won’t blow up the Parodyverse. Maybe.” “Vizh?” Asil squeaked, surprised and a little scared. “That’s right,” the Vermillion Vex commented. “All bow to Lord Visionary!” The Chronicler of stories frowned. “What do you want now, Visionary?” he demanded. “You tell me,” Vizh answered. “You evidently let me get this far because it suited some big-ass cosmic purpose of yours. But really I don’t care about that. I just want to know if I can get what I came for done or not. Fill me in.” “You want to bring your friends back?” Jury asked. “You think if it was possible without too many consequences I wouldn’t have resurrected Jarvis?” “I always kind of thought you arranged for him to die,” Fleabot admitted. “After he, y’know, dumped you.” Quoth rapped the micro-robot on the shell with her beak. “You should consider a career as a motivational speaker. Really.” “We could always destroy him where he stands, then use the console ourselves,” suggested Dark Thugos. “This realm has rules that stop such treachery,” pointed out Pallas. “The Triumvirate are bound by ancient law. Here you may but advise on what may be. Your offices forbid that you do more.” “Except that two of us no longer have our offices, do we?” pointed out Jury. “I think Thugos might have spotted a loophole.” “Are you people insane?” demanded George. “Visionary’s right on the blink of setting catastrophe in motion. Somebody has to talk him off the edge.” “Or push him over it,” purred the Vex. “Well, I know you believe what you say, George,” Asil admitted, “and I want to believe you too. But I trust Vizh. He is a Great Man, and he will do what is right. Of all the people here he’s the one I’d trust at that panel to do what’s right.” “Do you want me to use this panel or not?” Vizh asked the Triumverate plainly. “Well?” “I don’t advise it,” answered the Chronicler. “I didn’t before and I don’t now. but as Pallas says, the choice is yours.” “Touch it and die,” agreed Dark Thugos. “That is all.” “I don’t actually remember the detail as to why,” added Jury, “but it would be a monumentally bad idea to fiddle with those controls.” “Looks like the panel have a verdict,” Fleabot pointed out. “So I guess Vizh will go the other way, right?” Visionary kept his hand motionless. Below his palm billions of numbers scrolled endlessly on the touch-screen. “I want to bring Lisa back. And George. And Priscilla. And Yo. And all my friends.” “Only your friends?” challenged Quoth. “The ultimate nepotism.” “Everyone who’s died in this Parody War, then,” Vizh compromised. “The whole of the Astrovid race, everybody. I want it so this war never happened.” The Chronicler sighed. “If you do that you will destroy the Parodyverse. Everything has its purpose, even death.” “Then cut him a deal,” Asil suggested. “Bring back the doody-head yourself. Fix things so Vizh doesn’t have to.” “It doesn’t work like that,” Jury noted. “What, you mean you don’t do stuff that’s actually useful?” challenged Priscilla. Dark Thugos growled. The Chronicler spoke to the other office-holders. “We need to take a position.” “How about bending over and kissing Visionary’s ass?” Fleabot suggested before he was pecked again. “Ow!” “We shall consider what to do,” announced the Chronicler of Stories. “Let there be a scene cut.” “Dancer, please tell Danny Lyle that after this is over he is so toasted that science labs will be competing for little bits of him to analyse to see how a human being can be toasted that bad.” “Dancer, please tell Kerry Shepherdson that I’ve had worse threats from kindergarten kids, and that they had more emotional maturity as well. And some of them had bigger tits.” “Dancer, please tell Danny and Kerry that if they don’t shut up I’m going to invent something to horribly kill the both of them so we can get on with the investigation with some peace and quiet.” “Right,” Dancer said, stamping her foot down. “Danny, apologise to Kerry. I don’t care what for, just do it. Kerry, put away the accelerants and try to rejoin the human race for a few minutes before I break out the baby photos. Al B., ignore the peanut gallery and tell me what this big chunk of crystal meteorite is and why its still glowing. Is there any chance the Parody Master is allergic to kryptonite?” The four explorers had made the long difficult descent through the hole punched in the ancient structure above, down through a dozen layers of former habitation then into the deeper honeycomb of natural passageways that the meteor’s descent had punched through. Now they’d finally found the massive spit of frozen narrative, a house-sized translucent chunk with a dark shape in the centre. “It’s hard to tell what’s in there,” Al B. admitted, “but I’m getting trace elements that suggest its got some connection with our Earth. And it’s not old. This glob of accreted legend formed quite recently.” “What are these holes in it?” Danny wondered. “Strange-shaped bubbles in the ice?” “Those are where Hero Feeders were caught in the thing as it formed,” the archscientist judged. “Eventually they devoured themselves and vanished away.” “Do you want me to crack it open now?” Kerry offered. “Does it matter whether you want me to or not?” “If that is Ultizon in there I don’t want us hatching him out,” Dancer admitted. “Last time that adamantine killing machine was active he damn near wiped out the whole Lair Legion. We need to find a way of getting home with this thing still cocooned. Al?” Dr Harper scratched his beard. “Tricky,” he admitted, “on the grounds that we don’t have much tech to work with, or scanners or navigational kit or means of breaching dimensions or any of the dozens of things we need to get out of here.” “What about the Shoggoth?” suggested Dancer. “He’ll be back, right? Or Liu Xi could void-fold to us, maybe?” “Liu Xi can’t get to us if she doesn’t know where we are,” Al explained. “The vortex isn’t an easy fold anyway. But I guess the Shoggoth could come for us when he’s finished whatever business took him away so suddenly. Maybe we just have to sit it out?” “With him?” Kerry objected, pointing to her currently ex-boyfriend. “With her?” demanded Danny, sizing up the fiery brunette. “It should be perfectly safe,” Al B. judged. “We’re well hidden, we have emergency rations from the vortex flyer, we can…” Then he toppled to the ground as the life force was drained out of him. “What?” Dancer gasped, spinning as the Singularity Rider ghosted into the cavern. Already Danny and Kerry were on their knees, too weak to stand. Now they toppled on their faces to join Al on the rough floor. “My thankssssss, Probability Dansssser,” hissed E’Koor the Vengeful. “You have provided my Masssster, your hussssband, with a fine dowry.” Exu the Doomherald cradled Liu Xi’s unconscious form in his arms. The fragment of rock that carried ManMan on it had already vanished into the purple haze of the transdimensional maelstrom. Exu smoothed his fingers over Liu Xi’s cheek and neck. “Well I think we could have had a future,” he told her. “Right up to the point where I beat up your boyfriend and knocked you unconscious to carry you away.” Liu Xi looked so young and vulnerable sleeping in his arms. She was everything he wanted. “But now,” the Doomherald concluded, “now anything between us would be soiled and nasty and… just plain uncool. I can’t kidnap you any more. I’m not a monster yet.” He leaned down and kissed her one last time. “Goodbye, Liu Xi Xian. Thank you for trying to care for me. Farewell.” He laid her gently on the broken rock, then turned to find someone else with murder in their hearts. He surrendered himself to fury. He embraced revenge as his passion. The Doomherald went to face his destiny. “Alright,” said the Chronicler of Stories, “we don’t want you to activate the Celestian screen, so here is our best offer.” “No deal,” said Priscilla. “I think it’s customary to wait for them to tell you the deal first,” pointed out George Gedney. “She’s a tough negotiator,” admired Fleabot. “I can respect that.” “We can get your friends back,” suggested Jury. “The living ones, I mean. We can bring back Dancer and Kerry and Danny.” “Well,” Vizh noted, “if it’s too much trouble to bring Danny as well…” “We can arrange things so that they all get back to you. We can arrange for Hatman and Whitney and Zdenka to be returned. We can find ManMan and Liu Xi.” “ManMan and Liu Xi are missing?” Vizh frowned. “Those little tinkers,” smirked Priscilla. “What about the Juniors?” asked Quoth. “Are they safe where they are?” “Safer than with Visionary,” noted Dark Thugos. “But we cannot return Yo. There is a deeper purpose to that being’s disappearance that we must not interfere with.” “But Yo will be back, then?” Vizh demanded. “When the time is right,” the Chronicler replied. “When the story demands it.” “And Donar?” “He can be restored,” Jury conceded. “There is a plausible narrative that will allow it.” “Sound okay so far,” admitted Asil. “But what about the doo… about Lisa? And George?” “And me,” added Priscilla. “How do I get back to a starring role in Visionary’s life?” “You do not,” answered Dark Thugos brutally. “Your tales are ended. We will restore the living. The dead stay dead.” “And the Parody Master?” ventured George. “You can’t do anything about him, can you? Or you would have.” “And we’re still asking you to stay away from that control panel,” Jury pointed out. “That’s our best offer, Visionary,” the Chronicler concluded. “We can get the Lair Legion together again, and their playmates. That’s all.” Visionary shook his head. “Like Priscilla said, no deal. Bring back Lisa.” Dark Thugos chuckled. “We could bring the wench back; but if we do then there is no chance that the Parody Master will be defeated. Or we can leave her where she is, and the possibility of his defeat remains. You choose.” “What do you mean?” Vizh demanded. “Explain properly!” “Because cosmic office holders are so good at that,” muttered Quoth. “Lisa was killed by the Parody Master’s soul-sucking axe,” Jury summarised. “Her soul’s still in there, to be tormented with millions of other victims. Except that the Hooded Hood used the stolen power of the Infinity Forge to give Lisa a last gift. Something that she can use at exactly the right moment.” “What?” asked Asil. The Triumvirate looked a little sheepish. “We don’t know,” the Chronicler answered testily. “Like the Hooded Hood e-mails us for plot approval.” “And without Lisa dead and in the axe that gift will never be used,” George understood. “It might be rubbish anyway,” objected Priscilla. “Or it might not work now the Hood’s gone.” “Do not bring back the Hooded Hood,” Visionary told the Triumvirate of cosmic office holders determinedly. “As if,” hissed Chronicler. “What about me, then?” Priscilla demanded. “Don’t I get round two?” Dark Thugos smiled stonily. “Not this way. We have spoken. Visionary, make your decision.” “It’s not the big finish win you were looking for,” Jury admitted, “but it is a gain. It helps your friends. It sets things up for something good to be possible.” Visionary glanced at Asil. “What do you think? What would Lisa advise?” Asil blushed and glanced at George, then realised Vizh meant about the situation. “Lisa chose to die fighting the Parody Master for the team she loved,” she answered tightly. “You know if you bring her back like this she’d kick your ass for throwing away her big chance to make him cry.” “I died fighting the Parody Master,” George added. “Sometimes you have to give up what you dream of so that other people have a chance at what they dream of.” He looked over at Asil. “I wish there was another way, but sometimes that’s what has to happen. It’s not a bad thing to die a hero.” Asil muffled a sob and flung herself into his arms. “Pris?” Vizh prompted. “Not too late for a quickie before you take the deal,” the Vermillion Vex grinned. “I didn’t say I’d go for the Chronicler’s deal.” “You didn’t have to say. You have a yellow coat but you should really have a white hat. Of course you’ll swallow back your own needs and wishes and do the right thing. That’s why you have all these friends to love you. That’s why we love you.” Vizh’s hand wavered over the Celestian control plate. “Dammit,” he said. He hated it when he had to do the right thing. “No deal,” he said, and slammed his hand down onto the control screen. Sarah Shepherdson, the Probability Dancer, faced the personification of the death of a plane, standing over the limp fallen forms of her sister and friends. She decided there was no point being frightened. “Hi there. I don’t suppose we can chat this out over a frappe cappuccino?” she offered. “Your wordssss do not fool me, Dansssser. I can sssmell the fear in your ssssoul.” “So I’m scared? Big deal. Who wouldn’t be scared of being tortured and brainwashed by your nasty boss, or of a big raggedy black undead thingie made from tormented planets and junk? What you have to ask yourself is whether I’m scared enough to surrender, of if I’m going to do the hero thing anyway and kick your tush.” “I can take life from you asss I took from thessse otherssss,” hissed E’koor the Vengeful. “Well sure you can,” agreed Dancer, “No question. But can you do it before I do something so wildly improbable even I don’t know what’s going to happen? Like this!” And the leotard-clad brunette spun around in a graceful ballerina pivot and kicked a faultline in the narrative crystal behind her. “You think the robot lord will aid you?” mocked E’Koor. “Yessss, I ssssee what you know in your mindssss. You think Ultizon will not prefer a placssse at the forefront of my Masssster’s armiessss of conquesssst?” He spread thin talon fingers and the strength to move drained out of Dancer, sending her sprawling before him. The crack in the accreted narrative spread, lacing the whole surface with web-like fissures, causing the ice to fragment off in small chunks then in larger ones. “I don’t know what to think,” Dancer gasped. “I just know I’m got giving in. There’s always a chance. Always. And that chance is mine!” The last of the ice shattered away as the figure at its core awoke and flexed. “Ultizzzzon,” breathed E’Koor, “I greet you in the name of the Parody Masssster!” The form at the centre of the crystal moved towards E’Koor fast enough to surprise the Singularity Rider and punched him through a quarter mile of rock. “I don’t know who this Parody Master of yours is,” he declared, “but anybody who threatens Dancer is no friend of mine!” E’Koor speared necromantic lightnings into his adversary. Premiere shrugged them off, folded his hands into fists, and went in to teach the Doomwraith some manners. “No!” cried almost everyone on the Celestian control platform as Vizh touched the program screen. “Lisa doesn’t die,” Vizh insisted. “If you can’t do that, then…” “There’s now way!” insisted Jury. “You can destroy the Parodyverse but there’s just no way…” “You’re clever people,” the possibly-fake man responded. “Find a way.” “Vizh…” breathed Asil, her eyes terrified at being on the brink of apocalypse. George Gedney held up his hand. “I still vote for not destroying the Parodyverse, please.” “What the hell,” shrugged Priscilla. “It’s not like many people had any use for it any more.” “Think this through, Visionary,” urged Quoth. “Think very carefully.” “Counting down from three,” Vizh announced. “And even he can do that,” added Fleabot. “Two,” Visionary called out. “There is no way to stop him,” the Chronicler warned. “One,” Vizh went on. Dark Thugos chuckled and applauded. “Well played, fake man. Well played indeed. Stop your countdown. You have won.” “I have?” Vizh blinked. “How?” “There is a way to return Lisa to the Parodyverse,” revealed the Destroyer of Tales, “But not to life. There is a cost.” “I don’t think the world’s ready for evil vampire Lisa,” worried Asil. “I mean eviller vampire Lisa.” “There is a way,” Thugos repeated. “It will cost me my office.” Jury’s eyebrows shot up. “Of course. You had to die to get to be Destroyer! But if you resign, go back to being plain old Dark Thugos, reborn tyrant of Apocalyspe, then there’s a vacancy for a new Destroyer of Tales. Someone else who died in a moment of high narrative!” “Lisa could be the new Destroyer of Tales?” Vizh blinked. “Lisa?” “She is evil enough,” admitted Priscilla. “And it does bring her back within the rules.” “But only if her sentience survives her time in Thugos’ axe,” insisted the Chronicler. “Only if the Parody Master falls could we reconstitute the offices anyway.” “Well?” demanded Dark Thugos,” do we have a deal, Master Visionary?” Vizh glanced at his companions, and at the massive clockwork machine around him, and then at his hand on the screen. “Deal,” he agreed. “Lisa as Destroyer and the lost and hurt ones all restored. Promise it.” “If we do this, it’ll be the last thing we can do in this Parody War,” warned the Chronicler of Stories. This is the intervention. The only one.” “Then it’ll be down to the Lair Legion,” observed George. “A last battle.” “You wanted this, didn’t you sir?” Quoth asked the Chronicler. “If Visionary hadn’t forced your hand you couldn’t have set up all the things you’re putting in place, could you? You’ve manipulated all of this to try and level the playing field for the big fight with the Parody Master, haven’t you?” Pallas cawed Quoth to silence. “So be it,” rumbled Dark Thugos. “Let the current Triumvirate work in partnership to make it be, one last time.” The three office holders joined their palms in a pile and the Parodyverse trembled. “Um, there might be a slight delay in getting you back to Earth,” the Chronicler admitted. “It seems that it’s not there any more.” Next Time: While Vizh and the gang are all getting cosmic, Elizabeth von Zemo is getting down and dirty. More head shots, more lies, more betrayal, more revelations, more psychotic vigilantes, more annoying kids, and the end of that pesky Celestian barrier, in The Secret Life of Citizen Z. Follow Up: The next time we see Exu is in the revised version of CrazySugarFreakBoy’s tie-in story "Judging Jury, Fearing Phobia", posted in the thread below. Sit Down You’re Rocking the Footnote: The Celestian Space Robots are miles-high unfathomable beings tasked with maintaining the mechanisms of the Parodyverse. They are currently offline due to major damage. The central control panel in the Celestian demiplane could alter all that. The Triumvirate are the three principal cosmic office holders who regulate the narrative flow of the Parodyverse. Each role is filled by a mortal for a wile then passed to another. Jury, an Earth woman, was the most recent Shaper of Worlds, tasked with beginning narratives. She has lost her power to the Parody Master’s recent conquest, and he still intend to take her as his spoils and make her his bride. The Chronicler of Stories and his ravens of destiny maintain the tangled threads of continuity. The most recent Destroyer of Tales, Dark Thugos of Apocalysps, was destroyed by the Parody Master, but now he’s back. Quoth is an unemployed Raven of Destiny. She is currently acting as governess to Visionary’s children when she’s not filling in with the Chronicler of Stories. Fleabot is a sarcastic flea-sized and shaped micro-robot that usually hangs out with Vish but has most recently been accompanying Quoth with the Chronicler. Pallas is the Chronicler’s wisest and most senior raven of destiny, and as such is allowed to use iambic pentameter. Premiere (Victor Brooke) was the greatest hero of the distant Technoverse and star of the long-running Premiere series. He was last seen falling into the Vortex to sleep until the hour of the Parodyverse’s greatest need. 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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