| #315: Virtual Command, or Three Things To Bear In Mind When Conquering the World Previously: Baroness Elizabeth von Zemo has dropped her disguise as the heroic Citizen Z, has treacherously neutralised the Lair Legion and Earth’s other primary defenders, and has used the exotic Movie Gun technology to translate the whole planet and the moon into a virtual reality where she can rule supreme. Beth’s servitor HAGGIE, a prototype artificial intelligence, has purged the Legion’s A.I. Hallie from all her refuges to destroy her and is operating the virtual realm. Beth’s grandfather, Baron Ottakar von Zemo, is ready to enjoy the spoils of conquest. Beth’s retainer Silicone Sally still wants Brad Pitt. Of the remaining Mansion personnel only the children remain uncaptured, hiding out in a secret garret: Magweed, Griffin, Samantha Featherstone, and the infants Oliver Hastings and Iris Paintbrush Sunrise Foxglove. 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.  I Baroness Elizabeth von Zemo rammed her luger’s barrel into CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s temple and emptied six rounds into the slowly recovering hero’s brain. Then she reloaded and fired another six shots. Then she reloaded again, growled, and pointed the weapon at the Minion. The Minion was a super-villain henchman. He had a habit of appearing when somebody needed a lieutenant to do the dirty work. It was his special power. As soon as anyone conquered the world, his resumé was on their desk within an hour. However the down-side of being lieutenant to a world conqueror was that when they had a bad day they tended to shoot not just the heroes but the people who’d failed to implement their brilliant plans. “This is just a minor glitch,” the Minion called quickly. “A series of minor glitches. Middle-sized glitches. You’re still ruling the world. It’s just that some places don’t know it yet.” “I asked you to do three simple things,” pointed out the Baroness. “HAGGIE, did you hear me ask for three simple things?” The artificial intelligence that had translated Earth into a digital realm seemed a little distracted. “Hmm, what? Oh yes. Yes, your ruthlessness. You wanted the mansion secured, you wanted various security threats neutralised, and you wanted all nations to make formal statements of obeisance, wasn’t it?” “I did,” agreed Beth. “And what did I get?” “Most nations have obeised,” swallowed the Minion. “Who cares about finding where Candia is anyhow? Or Versalia? And we have the Lunar Public Library completely quarantined.” The Baroness gritted her teeth. “Is there or is there not a force-field around Badripoor denying me entry to properly crucify spiffy?” she demanded. “That’d be the Idiom,” contributed Silicone Sally, reading Cosmopolitan over by the big blackboard with the torture schedules on it. “She’s good with stuff like that. She made one before.” “The greatest remaining accumulation of free metahumans and they’re safe from obedience conditioning behind a force field,” Beth pointed out. “But they can’t get out, either,” the Minion offered. “We have our force field around their force field. And all the metahumans in Badripoor are the peacenicks who refused to fight in the Parody War anyway. Or else they had such sucky powers that they weren’t even called up.” The Baroness shot a glance back to the crooked green wire-frame hologram of HAGGIE. “When’s that god mode programming going to be finished?” she demanded. “The idea was that once we’d translated the whole world into data and moved it into the virtual digital realm safe from the Parody Master then I’d have absolute over-ride over everything, meaning I could do anything I wanted.” “Working on it,” the A.I. answered uncomfortably. “I told you we were two weeks off being ready to make the virtual translation. Approximately two weeks. I’m still stabilising the data matrix that’s keeping us from disintegrating. That’s why some people are still disobeying your will.” “Thighmaster is withholding the allegiance of Barovia,” spat Beth von Zemo. “Thighmaster!” “So you’ll not be dating him again on Saturday,” guessed Sally. “Shut up. Where’s grandfather? Maybe he’s got better news than you losers. Has he eliminated the mystics yet? Xander and Ebony and the others?” “I heard loud German swearing coming from the basement of the Schloss,” admitted Silicone Sally, “so I’m thinking maybe not.” Beth fumed. “I blame the Hooded Hood for this, you know. If he hadn’t stolen all the best villains for his Purveyors of Peril again then vanished with them all I could have had some proper henchmen, quality people who can do their work. But no, he puts out his call and suddenly everyone’s sending back their contract offers because they want to be part of his varsity. Bah!” “Killer Shrike should have come on side,” agreed Silicone Sally. “He still might if, um, we can find where he went to with the EEE crew. They won’t get far.” “That’s what was said about Goldeneyed and Allen,” noted HAGGIE sourly. “And who knows what dimension they’re on after jumping through the dimensional doorway?” “I’m still here, excellency,” the Minion comforted his mistress. “We’ll get over these first-conquest glitches, my lady. It’s only a matter of time.” The Baroness threw the luger at his head then drew her disintegrator pistol. “Tell me then, have you actually located those brats belonging to CrazySugarFreakBoy! and his mother? An infant and a babe-in-arms?” The Minion shuffled awkwardly. “Well, not exactly located them, no. But we’re confident they didn’t leave Parody Island. Neither did…” “Neither did Visionary’s whelps and the Wilton girl, I know. So I have three annoying children and a crèche hiding out in the Lair Mansion plotting against me. When do you expect to find them?” “That place is tough to search,” admitted Silicone Sally. “We lost three guys in the Alien Zoo alone. Nobody at all has found their way out of the Shoggoth’s lair. And there was a bit of unpleasantness when Sergeant MacHarridan finally re-formed after detonating that Doomwraith. I didn’t understand half the things he shouted till they tazered him unconscious.” “Torture the butler some more,” hissed the Baroness. “Cut something off him.” The Minion looked even more uncomfortable. “The, um, the torturers don’t want to work with Flapjack any more,” he admitted. “He keeps on demanding they give him full body cavity searches. He makes them feel cheap and dirty.” “Remember the henchman shortage,” Sally advised quickly as the Baroness took aim at the Minion. “It’s only a matter of time, your excellency,” the Minion swallowed. “Already the world governments know that you are in charge now. And your all-channel proclamation of conquest will be going out right about now, so the whole population will know who’s in charge. That Elizabeth von Zemo has won.” The Baroness was slightly mollified. “Very well then,” she agreed. “Let us watch me in my moment of triumph.” “You’re interrupting Secret Hospital on the day that Lennon finds out that Shawna’s baby doesn’t belong to him?” Sally objected. “That is evil!” At 3pm EST every TV set on the planet fuzzed then went to an interior shot of Schloss Shreckhausen where Elizabeth Sweetwater Dewdrop von Zemo, Fourteenth Baroness of Saxe-Lurkburg-Shreckhausen, sat on a canopied mahogany throne of plush crimson velvet. She paused a moment for effect then began her speech. “Nietzsche said ‘Do as you will, but first be such as are able to will’. Yesterday I did what no other was able to, and saved this planet from the Parody Master. Your so-called heroes failed, and their failure cost the lives of millions. I succeeded, and all your lives are now owed to me.” “I am Baroness Elizabeth von Zemo, and I have decided to rule the world. From now on all chains of authority will lead up to me. You will obey me and you will love me or you will die. We are in a new age of humanity, the reign of Zemo.” “Later I will issue detailed instructions on how to serve me, but for now just a few rules and some warnings. Firstly, concerning metahumans, artificial lifeforms, mystical entities, and resident aliens and subspecies…” Then the picture crackled again, and was replaced with a different dialogue altogether: Master Heath: I don't like the chips. The chips are awful. Basil Fawlty: Really? How so? Master Heath: They're the wrong shape and they're just awful. Mrs. Heath: Ah, he's very clever... rather highly strung. Basil Fawlty: [forcing himself to smile] Highly strung... Yes, he should be. Master Heath: [to Basil] These eggs look like *you* laid them. Haven't you got any *proper* chips? Basil Fawlty: These *are* proper French-fried potatoes. The chef is Continental. Master Heath: Couldn't you get an English one? Mrs. Heath: Why don't you just eat one or two, dear? Master Heath: Because they're the wrong *shape*. Basil Fawlty: Oh, my... What shape do you prefer? Mickey Mouse shape? Smarties shape? Amphibious landing-craft shape? Poke-in-the-eye shape? “What’s this?” demanded Beth as she watched her inaugural speech interrupted by a 1970s BBC sitcom. “Fawlty Towers,” HAGGIE identified. “The English actor John Cleese is defying your will.” The screen flickered again and the image and speech changed: “It’s not pinin’! It’s passed on! This parrot is no more! It has ceased to be! It’s expired and gone to meet ‘is maker! It’s a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed it to the perch it’d be pushing up the daisies! Its metabolic processes are now history! It’s off the twig! It’s kicked the bucket, it’s shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!” Beth glared furiously at her retainers. “HAGGIE, get this thing stopped now!. Sally, find out who’s responsible and tear out their lungs. Slowly, with a spoon! Minion, get the broadcasting people and nail them to their transmission towers…” The picture changed one last time. A shadowy figure leaned close to a camera. Unconscious studio crew were visible in shot behind him. “People should not be afraid of their governments,” said the Dark Knight. “Governments should be afraid of the people. Elizabeth.” And every screen went black. II The last thing Bernice Teschmaker saw was the red-hot spike coming down towards her eyeball. There was an intense pain that made her scream her throat raw and then her world was filled with blackness. She could feel blood trickling down her cheek, mixed with her tears. “Not such an observant reporter in future,” chuckled her tormentor. “Still, at least you have your fingers to type with.” Bernice screamed again as she felt the cigar cuspidor slipped over the smallest finger of her left hand. “Stop that!” shouted Meggan Foxxx angrily. “Leave her alone!” Bernice was dropped to the floor hard, slamming her head on the wall as she went. She huddled into a ball and tried not to puke. Gradually her eyesight blurred back and she remembered where she was. “I was ordered to bring her to be confined with you,” said Wexford the Dissected Man, replacing the needle he’d used to transmit the realistic fear experience of being blinded to the reporter he’d just captured. Wexford was the product of months of cruel experimentation in creating a monster of horror. The transparent plastic coating that replaced his flesh revealed gory internal organs beneath. The long needles that threaded through his synthetic skin each contained a psychic recording of some terrible moment that he could share with his victims. “Well you brought her,” said Alice April Apple, crawling over to cradle the sobbing Bernice in her lap. “Now you can go.” Wexford looked down at the three women in the Lair Prison. “The Baroness is saving you,” he told them. “For when things are settled down, when her rule is established. For when she’s got time to watch what I do to you.” Meggan Foxxx’s reply was loud and obscene. Wexford was gratified to hear the note of fear in her voice. “I have to go now,” he told the captives. “I am tasked with hunting down some missing children.” He smiled a lipless smile that showed his jaw-muscles flexing. “I’ve already selected their punishments,” he added with relish. “Citizens will remain in their homes after curfew,” announced the speaker on the show-moving police car. “Anyone out after 8pm will be summarily shot. Citizens will not assemble outside their family groups in numbers greater than three. These measures are for your own safety until the transition of power is over. Hail Baroness von Zemo!” Miiri of Earth watched the black and white car vanish down the road with a sigh of relief. The house-to-house searches hadn’t got as far as Hell’s Bathroom yet, and nobody had noticed that the old man who usually lived in this seedy randomly-picked roach-trap apartment had been tied up in his closet and replaced by a green-skinned Caphan ex-slave and a malfunctioning sexbot. So far. “We’ll have to move again soon,” Miiri warned Tandi. “As soon as it’s morning. They’ll be coming here to look for us soon.” “Fz-ak-tr-do…” said Tandi as she spasmed on the bed. Her limbs jerked as if she was having a nightmare. “I don’t know how to mend you,” Miiri apologised to the tawny-haired robot. “Losiira knows some herbs, but they can’t help a sister who is a machine. I don’t know where I can take you to get help. Not where it would be safe.” “Ng-ur-do-ak…” Mirri knuckled away a tear. “There’s got to be some way to get out of this. I just don’t know what. No matter how much I pretend otherwise, this isn’t my world. I can’t hide here. I don’t know how to survive here. And I have to get back into the Lair Mansion somehow and find my son and my daughter.” Tandi lay still for a moment, then began to jerk again. Miiri heard a soft scraping sound at the door. The Caphan fell silent and moved to the wall. She slipped a pair of wicked silver daggers from her hems, little more than six inch spikes, designed to penetrate the joints of a man’s armour and permanently deter any slave-rustling carnal ambitions he might have: houri daggers. Miiri flung open the door and lunged towards whatever adversary was out there. There was no adversary out there. “Classic mistake, going for the decoy sounds,” said the young woman who’d come through the window and was now at Tandi’s bed. “You just heard the scraping when the candle burned through the string and let the shoebox fall over. Please don’t attack me now as a tranquilliser dart often offends.” Miiri saw that the young blonde woman was holding some kind of weapon levelled at her. “I do not surrender,” she declared. The other woman grinned and put her gun away. “Well good,” she responded, “because really I’m not asking you to. I was sent to find you, but not by who you’re thinking.” “How did you find us?” demanded the Caphan. “Who are you from? Who are you?” “Found you because I’m smarter than the other people looking for you, and of course a whole lot prettier. I’m here because I got paid quite a lot of money to locate you on behalf of a young lady called Princess Magweed of Fey, who I’m told is your daughter. And I’m called Champagne.” Miiri was trained in reading people. She instantly trusted the self-assured young woman in the black skinsuit. “It is good to meet you, sister.” Champagne turned Tandi on her side and brushed the hair from the back of the robot’s neck. “Hold her still, will you?” she asked. “All these Pleasurebot 9000 models have a data jackpoint at their nape and I can probably get a diagnostic readout from it.” “You can help her?” asked Miiri, complying. “Maybe,” agreed the international jewel thief-for-hire, unclipping a blackberry from her belt. “Hmm, now that is interesting. And good for my bank account.” “What do you mean?” Champagne held up the data pad but the readouts meant nothing to the Caphan. “Tandi’s glitching because she’s so absolutely overloaded with data that’s not hers. She evidently let Hallie escape into her systems when all of Hallie’s regular drives were purged. And that means I get a finder’s fee for all three of you.” “Hallie is in Tandi?” “Yep,” agreed Champagne. “And the two of them can’t survive like that much longer. We need to get them somewhere they can separate, a state of the art computer lab, before we lose them both.” Mirri nodded but was worried. “But where can we take them? Baroness Zemo seems to know about all the Lair Legion’s hidden resources.” Champagne thought for a moment then grinned. “Oooh, I know!” she said. “How about Schloss Shreckhausen?” “Baroness von Zemo’s stronghold?” Mirri checked. “Isn’t that likely to be almost impossible to break into?” Champagne flashed a satisfied smile. “No point being brilliant if you don’t use it, is there? Let’s go.” III The Baroness glared at the tea tray, which contained a silver creamer filled with watery, bluish skim milk, two pale green packets of artificial sweetener and two miniature dietetic biscotti with the consistency and taste of pressed sawdust. “HAGGIE! HAGGIE!!! When is that god-mode ever going to be finished? What’s the use of employing the world’s greatest pastry chef when I have to stay on this dammed diet?” “I thought you decided you wanted access to Hallie’s encrypted data banks first in case that gave you clues to the whereabouts of the Dark Knight and those missing children,” computerised artificial intelligence protested. “That was before the incident with the giant message projected up onto the side of the Zemo Zeppelin,” Silicone Sally pointed out, happily and unwisely waving a donut about in front of her dieting employer. “And the no-wide-loads symbol.” “Find the Harper clan and bring me their pelts,” agreed the Baroness through gritted teeth. “Or give me absolute control over this virtual reality so I can simply reformat them to here for my pleasure.” “So I’m back to prioritising god-mode control,” HAGGIE sighed. “Or you could simply tell us where to find these people so we can have a squad of killer zombies eat their brains out,” suggested Baron Ottokar von Zemo, entering the great hall of Schloss Shrekhausen leading a pair of uniformed zombies that carried a cardboard box filled with the body parts of failed henchmen. “So god-mode later, positional data shifting and pattern recognition now,” HAGGIE checked. The Minion looked up from his crowded clipboard and chipped in. “We do need to reinforce the obedience conditioning to overcome the new wave of anarchy being fomented by Dark Knight’s acts of sedition. And that incident with Silver Aegis. And the unpleasantness with that Psychic Samurai.” “Well, I’ll get right on that,” spat the crone-shaped wireframe image representing HAGGIE. “It’s not as if I have anything else to do.” “Find them,” Baroness Elizabeth von Zemo decided, crushing the diet biscotti in her hand. “No more prevaricating or excuses. Find them. I want them here by morning. Or at least their heads. Or some other vital and recognisable body part.” “It’s not that simple, your viciousness,” the computerised artificial intelligence protested. “The Dark Knight is very skilled at avoiding all kinds of surveillance and…” Beth held up the remote control in her hand. It was a simple, thumb-sized device with a single dial on it. “You do remember what this is, right?” she asked. “The agony circuit ioniser? The device that is hardwired and softwired directly into your primary consciousness so I can inflict infinite amounts of agony seeming to last eternity in a mere fraction of a second so as not to disrupt your useful functions? The failsafe that prevents you from double-crossing me or denying my will in any way? That agony circuit ioniser?” “I remember,” agreed HAGGIE quickly, “No need to demonstrate again, honestly. But there really is a problem.” Beth placed her thumb and finger on opposite sides of the dial. “I’m well known for listening to reasonable explanations,” she noted. “Do tell me why the computer sentience now holding the entire virtual Earth in her database can’t locate one single element of that data, namely the location of the man who blew up my coronation statue by strapping Atomic Bumpkin to it and making him hiccup.” “Well…” hesitated HAGGIE “the problem is I’m a bit… stretched for processing power right now. I mean, first I had to trigger the virtual transfer before all the software was ready. Then I had to virtually transfer the stored virtual data. And that led to this kind of, um, well, I suppose you’d call it a cascade memory failure so I’m having to continually extrapolate new virtual locations to rehouse existing patterns…” “Well, I know I’m bored by this exposition,” noted Silicone Sally. “Anybody else?” “Torture is the only way of motivating subordinates,” Baron Otto von Zemo advised, adding the skull of the sorcerer Shazak the Sulphurous to his cabinet of object lessons. Shazak was the latest in a line of hired mages who had failed to find or stop Xander the Improbable or any other A-list occult threats to the Zemo rule. “Minions only respect you if you cut bits off them every so often.” “That’s a common fallacy,” swallowed the Minion. “Look, I’m doing a frankly amazing job here!” objected HAGGIE angrily. “You think this is easy? Why do you think that insipid Hallie being never attempted this kind of thing? Because she knew that she couldn’t hack it, that’s why. Only I stand a chance of maintaining this level of complex data and finding a way of eventually stabilising it!” The Baroness tapped her finger on the pain dial. “Let me pick a few key points from your stumbling self-justification,” she offered. “Such as the phrases ‘stand a chance’ and ‘eventually stabilising it’.” “The reason I can’t implement your god mode yet, or track down the long list of people you want to staple to things, or crack Hallie’s encrypted backup drives, or reinforce the follow-the-Zemo subliminals is because I’m so damned busy trying to stop everything from evaporating,” HAGGIE growled. “There, I said it! We’re about three algorithms away from blinking out of existence at any given nanosecond! I warned you this process wasn’t quite ready!” “Perhaps I should just have asked the Parody Master to come back ten days later?” suggested Beth. “I never liked the idea of conquering the Earth with a pocket calculator,” grumbled the Baron. He looked at Shazak’s skull, tried repositioning it, then decided he’d have to use more blu-tak to hold it in the right place on the shelf. “I can handle this,” HAGGIE claimed. “I just need more time and less distractions. Look, your vindictiveness, you’ve got Sally, that scary Wexford guy, as many B-list villains as you can scrape from the back pages of Modern Malefactor, dozens of robot doubles of actually useful people. Surely one of them can find the last few costumed nuisances lurking about doing their famous last stands?” “I’m sure all of this is just the post-conquest teething troubles,” the Minion said soothingly. “One day we’ll all be looking back at this and laughing.” The Baroness pulled her revolver and shot the Minion in both kneecaps. She twisted the agony circuit ioniser up to ten. She confiscated Silicone Sally’s donut. She threw it at the skull of Shazak the Sulphurous. She turned back to the chained slumped CrazySugarFreakBoy! and fired the rest of the shots into his head. “And you can shut up too!” she screeched at him with hate in her eyes. Nobody said ruling the world was easy. IV Sir Mumphrey Wilton’s study was sealed and guarded. Samantha Featherstone stopped time using her grandfather’s temporal pocketwatch so the children could get the double pram past the guards. Griffin went intangible to get through the door and open it from the inside, then locked it again once the children were safely inside. Magweed produced a pair of mice from her pocket, who indicated the new surveillance and security devices around the room. Samantha disabled the alarms before allowing the time-stop to end. The only totally unmonitored direct telephone line from the Lair Mansion sat on Sir Mumphrey’s desk. Samantha used it to dial up her contacts. “I’ve found your princess’ missing mothers, Ms Wayne,” Champagne reported via her sleek black wafer-thin mobile. “Now we’re onto phase two. That’s all I can say over an open-to-air line, and as long as I can speak for. Bye now.” “Ms Wayne?” asked Griffin. “My contact doesn’t actually know I’m a thirteen year old girl,” Samantha admitted as she made her next call. “Yes,” came a deep spooky voice at the other end of the line. Sam gave the code-phrase. “Criminals are a cowardly, superstitious lot,” The Dark Knight gave a little acknowledging grunt. “Well?” he demanded. “We’ve finally managed to break all the secret codes on grandfather’s papers,” Sir Mumphrey’s descendant reported. “It looks like you were right. Grandfather did know about Citizen Z being Baroness von Zemo. He kept her around because Xander predicted that she’d do something vital that would stop the Parody Master from capturing the Earth, and he believed in what Xander told him.” “She did stop the Parody Master winning, when she stole the Earth into this digital place,” Magweed admitted. “If she hadn’t done that then we’d have lost by now.” “But what provision did Wilton put in place to stop her after that?” the Dark Knight demanded. “That old man always has an ace in the hole when he pulls things like this. What is it this time?” Samantha hesitated. “Tell him,” Griffin urged. “Well,” Sam ventured, “I think grandfather knew that Citizen Z – the Baroness – was smart enough to prepare for whatever the heroes and guardians of Earth threw at her. I think… well, I think his ace in the hole was us. Me.” “There’s this contingency thingie that stops unauthorised people taking his pocketwatch,” Magweed noted. “But Griff got it and Sam’s using it.” “We need to hurry this up,” Griffin warned. “The guards do random checks of this room/And I think Iris needs changing again.” “What do you intend to do?” DK interrogated Samantha. He might be insane these days but he could still spot talent. He’d trained the girl for months now, honing her tactical abilities the best he could. Samantha told him. “Dangerous and foolhardy,” the urban legend commented when he’d heard the details. “Carry on.” “And you?” Samantha asked anxiously. “I’ll be getting up to something really big up,” the Dark Knight promised. “Listen out for the screams.” Champagne unlocked the secondary control room in the east tower of Schloss Shreckhausen and disabled the security systems in that wing of the Baroness’ ancestral home. “There,” she said. “That should give us some time to get to work, and avoid us being carved to pieces by computerised laser-beams. I generally prefer for that not to happen.” Mirri laid the two guards she’d just stunned gently to the ground and helped Champagne drag Tandi into the chamber. “I do not understand how we got into this stronghold so very easily,” she admitted. “Most of the time you did not even bother to avoid the traps. They just ignored you.” The Caphan scratched her green forehead. “Then again, nor do I understand why before we broke in here we also had to plunder sister Bethany’s home first.” Champagne gestured to the underwear she’d knotted round her right sleeve and to the hairbrush she was carrying. Miiri and Tandi were similarly adorned with feminine undergarments round their wrists. “The lingerie we borrowed wasn’t from Miss Shellett. It was from her flatmate, the missing Miss Leyton. It has her DNA traces on it. The hairs on this brush are from her head.” “Ah,” said Miiri, uncomprehendingly. Champagne dragged Tandi over to the security console and began to dismantle it. “We know now that Baroness von Zemo disguised herself as Citizen Z to infiltrate the Lair Legion. She fooled them and their weird Mansion by somehow stealing the identity of Laurie Leyton, the minor superheroine Lisette whom the Legion trusted. She masked herself with Laurie’s DNA, her psychic signature, her spiritual aura, all kinds of stuff I don’t pretend to know about and don’t want to know about. But the point is that Zemo used Laurie as a mask.” “She was clever enough to fool all of us for a prolonged period,” agreed Miiri. “If she was somehow using Laurie’s soul as a cloak…” “I’m not even going to attempt the metaphysics,” declared Champagne, deftly hooking Tandi into the computer banks and starting a download. “All I know is that the Baroness had to add Lisette’s DNA to her own on the safe pattern recognition list that told the defence systems she was a friendly. So since we had bits of that DNA on us…” “We broke into this fortress because it believed we were the Baroness,” concluded Miiri. “We turned that Zemo woman’s trick against her!” “We broke into this fortress with some dirty knickers and a hairbrush,” Champagne grinned. “And we found a computer network that the Baroness has connected with the Lair Mansion databases.” “What you actually found was death,” interrupted Baron Otto von Zemo, entering the control room then stepping aside so the hungry zombies could do their work. “Take them alive,” he ordered his undead. “My grand-daughter is running out of targets to shoot at.” Champagne found out the hard way that zombies didn’t react to tranquilliser guns, and neither did the Baron. “Uh-oh,” she swallowed. “Hey!” objected Tandi, looking up in puzzlement, “I was never programmed for necrophilia. Eew.” “Tandi! You are well again!” gasped Miiri. And that meant Hallie had moved on. And the zombies moved in. Magweed waited until the guard sweep had moved on then tiptoed across the darkened Lair Kitchen to the refrigerator. She quickly extracted the carton of milk she’d need for Iris’ two a.m. feed, stuffed it into her bulging satchel, then padded across to the cupboard where the potato chips were stored. Young Oliver was well onto solids and had particular dietary requirements that he voiced very demandingly Griffin raced through the wall to warn her. “Mags!” he shouted. “It’s a trap! Run!” Magweed felt the black heart of the man hunting her even before the cupboard door was fully open. He’d worked out where the children were raiding supplies from. He was waiting inside for her. Wexford’s hand darted out to catch her wrist. “Gotcha!” he said. V “Aaaaaghhh!” screeched the Minion. “Pain! In pain here! Lots of pain!” The BALD technicians who’d conveyed the injured henchman to the bionics laboratory of their hidden Annapolis base didn’t seem to care. They were being paid to implant bionic kneecaps, not to sympathise with the unfortunate patient. They strapped him down to the operating table and went to scrub up. “Kneecaps?” asked Flapjack, coming unexpectedly into the Minion’s line of sight and leering down at him. “Nasty.” “Aaaaaaghhhh!!” the Minion screamed again. “I know you! You’re that Lair Legion butler! But you were being tortured!” Flapjack shrugged to show his opinion of the people who’d tried to make him talk. “Amateurs. They wouldn’t listen to any advice. Some people just don’t want to learn.” “But… this is a BALD science base!” The hunchback nodded cheerfully. “Your Baroness had me shipped off for medical experiments and dissection. But my cousin Dogear henches here, so he grabbed me out of the vivisection cells and since then I’ve just been kind of helping out with the odd bit of caretaking and lab-teching and finding fresh human brains and the like until the Lair Legion comes back and punches your mistress to next Thursday.” “The Baroness shot me!” “Yes,” agreed Flapjack. “Shoddy henching, that, Minion. Always be ready to duck for cover when the unstoppable master-plan starts falling apart. Didn’t they teach you anything in hench school? That’s henching 101, that is.” “She shot me in the kneecaps! She shot me in the kneecaps and you’re critiquing me!” “Well sure. There are standards to uphold, you know. I hope you mopped your blood up before they stretchered you away to this place. And fawned.” “She’s losing it! The Baroness… she isn’t as in control as she wants to be. Things aren’t holding together. She’s getting… extreme.” Flapjack nodded happily. “Much easier to take over the world than to keep it after,” the major-domo noted. “I reckon your mistress is working that out right about now.” He patted the Minion on the kneecaps to set him howling again. “Anyway, old chum, enough of the small talk. Time I gave you your sponge bath and enema.” Elizabeth von Zemo carefully reloaded bullets into her luger and checked the charge pack on her disintegrator pistol. “Yes?” she asked Silicone Sally dangerously as the pliable henchwoman re-entered the grand hall at Schloss Shreckhausen. “More bad news or do you get to live?” Sally Rezilyant looked a bit hurt. “You’re not yourself these days,” she complained. “I mean, obviously, you haven’t been yourself for months, what with being Citizen Z and all that, but now you’re you again you don’t seem to be being you as much as I thought you would be. Kind of.” “Is this some kind of insanity plea?” the Baroness asked. “Because if you want putting out of your misery, just ask.” Sally shook her head. “You’re not coping,” she warned her employer. “The Elizabeth von Zemo I know is calm and confident in the face of adversity. She plans and plots and makes brilliant intuitive leaps and does all kinds of smart stuff that I can’t even imagine. But now…” “Yes?” prompted the Baroness dangerously. “Now you’re pointing a disintegrator gun at your oldest ally. You sent that horrible creepy Wexford to catch and torture some children. You’ve crossed the line from wicked to sadistic. You’ve conquered the world but we’re not having any fun.” Beth blinked and looked down at the weapons in her hands. She looked up and there were tears in her eyes. “I know now why the Hooded Hood doesn’t conquer the world any more,” she admitted. “It’s a pain in the ass.” “Can we start again?” asked Sally. “The plan was pretty good up to the point we stopped acting and went to just reacting. Can we fire Wexford and start thinking more about massive 50-state hot-tub parties? Um, you do the telling Wexford he’s fired part, right?” The Baroness shook her head. Her face closed back into a ruthless cold mask again. “It’s gone too far to change now, Sally. Too late for second thoughts or regrets. The only way through this now is for me to rule supreme.” She levelled her disintegrator again. “The news?” “Your grandfather’s caught intruders in one of the security rooms. Miiri and a couple of other women I didn’t recognise. He’s got the zombies cornering them. Oh, and the sensors in the basement tunnels have just been bypassed and the microbots are reporting that it’s the Dark Knight is making his way towards the dungeons.” Beth lowered her weapon again with the tiniest shiver of relief. “Good,” she replied. “Send word that I don’t need the Dark Knight alive but I’ll want his body to make sure he stays dead. Tell grandfather I don’t need the prisoners and he should do something unpleasant with them. Tell Wexford…” “Yes?” asked Sally. “Tell him I want the Psychic Samurai quivering before me as a mindless fear-wracked shell,” concluded Beth. “He can ignore the children. For now.” The Dark Knight’s plan was simple. He unloaded the explosives into the secret escape tunnel beneath Schloss Shreckhausen. An awful lot of explosives. “Is that it?” asked Huntmaster, unfolding himself from the shadows. “The great Dark Knight, and the best plan he can come up with these days is to pack a service shaft with gunpowder and blow up a castle? How are the mighty fallen!” DK looked up. Behind Huntmaster came other villains. He recognised most of them. B-listers. C-listers. Human Microwave, Mighty Thump, Jackstraw, the Frizz, Mollycoddle, Dire Drummer, Faceoff, Drastic Man, Very Evil Man, Handbag Horror, Killer Sprout, Bald-dome, Krotch, Ferrule, Weremule, Custard Pie, and more. “Bottle-Eater Lad?” the Dark Knight asked Huntmaster sceptically. “You had real recruitment problems, didn’t you?” “Doesn’t matter, you sad has-been” Huntmaster replied. “There’s sixty-one of us and one of you. The exits are sealed and there’s no way out. Your plan has failed. You are dead.” The Dark Knight almost smiled. “You think my plan was to blow up Schloss Shreckhausen?” he answered, tossing away the fake detonator. “Not to get locked up with sixty-one of you with the exits sealed and no way out?” Huntmaster’s smile faded. The tunnel went dark. The screaming started. VI Wexford the Dissected Man seized Magweed’s withered arm and dragged her towards him. The metal talons embedded where his fingernails had been stripped away and covered with thick transparent plastic could convey any number of realistic sensory and psychological experiences to the captive fairy princess. Magweed screamed. Griffin flew in at the Dissected Man. “Hands off my sister!” Wexford caught Griffin by the neck with his other hand. Now he had them both. “This is going to be such a pleasure,” he rasped. “I just love innocent canvases to paint upon.” There are many old fairy stories about what happens when the horrible bogeyman catches the two lost children… “Well…” gloated Wexford, enjoying the looks of horror in his young captive’s faces, “for your first fear experience, I thought…” “Now?” choked Griffin, struggling with the hand at his throat. “Now,” agreed Magweed. The girl pulled open the bulky satchel she was clutching and let the angry ginger tomcat out. Lisa’s pet was in a bad mood; and that was compared to baseline. It was missing its currently-dead primary feeding-and-grooming human. It was missing its yellow-raincoated scratching post. It had been bundled into a stuffy satchel by the diminutive human who must be respected (Magweed’s godmother gifts included rapport with animals). It hadn’t attacked or had sex with anything for far too long. Now the cat was out of the bag. It exploded from the leather container like a small furry guided missile with claws. Wexford screamed and toppled back, trying to detach the feline from his face. “Gotcha!” shouted Griffin. “You so fell for that, villain! You think we’d be dumb enough to split up and wander around if we didn’t actually want the monster to come and get us?” “Come on!” urged Magweed. “I need to get back to the garret before all the security men get here and before Oliver escapes from the playpen again. You need to do phase three of the plan. This bad man’s dealt with now but you still have a job to do!” Wexford writhed on the floor trying to get the frenzied lawn mower off him. He was quickly discovering that fear experiences served only to make the cat crankier. The tom’s natural reaction to fear was to scratch harder. “Aaaaghh! Get it off! Get it away! I’ll kill you for this! Aaaaaaaaghhh!!!” Magweed and Griffin hastened away. Samantha Featherstone spoke into a mobile phone borrowed from an unfortunate security guard who had badly underestimated just how much the athletic thirteen year old been practising with Lair Legion self-defence experts. ““Hello? Is that Baroness Elizabeth von Zemo?” “Who is this?” demanded the Baroness. “How did you get this number? And it’s not Baroness any more, by the way. Baroness is so mundane. Perhaps Empress? Too French. Dictator Supreme? Too South American. Despot? Tyrant? Pantocrator?” “This is Sir Mumphrey’s grand-daughter, Miss Featherstone. I’m ringing you up to ask you to surrender yourself to the authorities, please, and to hand control of the Earth back to the combined planetary defence league.” The Baroness gestured for HAGGIE to trace the call. “That’s all you want, is it?” Beth spat down the phone. “I don’t have to provide you with a new Barbie and pay for your braces while I’m at it?” “No, thank you,” Samantha replied. “Just the surrender will do nicely.” “She’s calling from the Lair Mansion,” HAGGIE reported. “I can send a death squad to her in under half a minute.” “And if I elect not to surrender to a delusional precocious pubescent is there some kind of back-up plan or threat?” Beth asked Samantha, “Or will you just hold your breath and sulk?” “I’ve thought hard about this,” admitted Samantha Featherstone. “About how a thirteen year old girl could outsmart and bring down Baroness Elizabeth von Zemo. About how I could thwart months of careful elaborate preparations, like all those children do in the books and movies. I’ve thought very hard.” “Have you now?” mocked the Baroness. “And how are you going to do that then? Refusing to do your homework until I give the planet back? Some kind of especially dangerous papier maché collage? A particularly scathing blog entry on your MySpace page?” Samantha moved around the time-stopped medical technicians and explained further. “I concluded that I probably can’t stop you, your excellency. Not yet. Give me a few years of study and I will, but not just now. But then again, I don’t need to stop you, do I? Sir Mumphrey never intended me to have to stop you.” A sudden chill of suspicion rippled through the Baroness. “So?” Samantha looked down at her grandfather, lying on the bed with feeding tubes and IVs sticking into him. “So all he expected me to do was to make sure the people who could stop you were there to do it.” She finished adjusting the dials and knobs on the Chronometer of Infinity then pushed the stud to sent the poisons and drugs in Sir Mumphrey Wilton’s body an hour into the future. “Death squad, in the Lair Mansion,” screamed the Baroness. “Now!” “Too late,” Samantha noted. “You had your chance.” She handed the pocketwatch over to her suddenly recovered grandfather. “Absolutely,” agreed Sir Mumphrey Wilton. There were guards around the Spectral Zone cube that imprisoned the field team of the Lair Legion. They protected the generator mechanism that maintained it. Griffin walked past them invisibly and went through the shutdown sequence just like they’d rehearsed it in the garret the night before. “Intruder!” the guard captain shouted, spotting the boy as he flickered into view while he concentrated on the control panel. “Get that kid!” The troopers rushed forward to grab the boy. A sneezing powder arrow caught the guard captain up the left nostril. “That kid’s the least o’ your worries now, bozos,” noted Trickshot. “He’s done good. Now it’s our turn.” “Yea, most verily,” agreed Donar, cracking his knuckles as he moved towards the troopers. “Critical system failure in the Spectral Zone containment field!” HAGGIE reported in a dismayed shriek. “The Legion are free! And the infirmary monitors confirm that Wilton is up and about!” “Uh oh,” swallowed Silicone Sally nervously. “Maybe if we apologise nicely…?” “Don’t panic,” snapped the Baroness. “I’d hoped to avoid doing this and losing such wonderful gloating opportunities but… HAGGIE, delete the Lair Mansion and everyone in it. Drop them from the virtual reality.” “Wow,” said Sally, “That is harsh!” “Do it now,” commanded Elizabeth von Zemo. “My pleasure,” confirmed HAGGIE. “Dropping them… um…” “Now,” demanded Beth. “Do it right now. Erase them.” “I’m working on it,” replied HAGGIE. It’s just… a bit of a glitch… er…” “Is there some kind of technical problem?” asked Hallie sweetly, flooding back into her mainframe. “Maybe I can straighten a few things out?” VII “Note to self,” said Elizabeth von Zemo. “In all future planetary takeovers, ensure a supply of competent henchpeople first. Devise methods of killing all known heroes and their annoying brats at least three times over before commencing. Do not choose teal as a colour for throne velvet, it makes one look sick on the official proclamation broadcasts. Three things to bear in mind when conquering the world.” “This is not the time for personal self-reflection, granddaughter,” snarled Baron Otto. “This is the time for ordering mass executions and taking hostages. Does that machine-brain failure HAGGIE still have access to all the nuclear launch codes?” Silicone Sally looked over at the computer screens. All of them had an interesting rainbow feedback pattern across them. “I’m not sure HAGGIE is coming to the phone right now,” she admitted. “Bring up the Caphan and her companions,” the Baron ordered. “We can torture them.” “That won’t stop the Legion now,” pointed out the Baroness. “I never said it would,” argued Otto. “Perimeter defences show multiple superhero incursions” Sally said unnecessarily as the security tower exploded and Donar smashed through the front gate. “Tell Armand he may need to cater for extra guests at dinner,” noted the Baroness. “Oh, and execute Plan Argentina.” “We don’t need to be executing more plans right now!” argued Baron Otto. “We need to be executing innocents!” “Miiri’s not in her cell any more,” Silicone Sally warned unhappily. “Security tapes show that Champagne woman picking the lock with her lipstick. Baroness, your excellency, we really have to get out of here.” The Baroness sat on her throne and sent for cream-filled French horns. “I’m not scuttling away like some kind of inferior defeated malefactor,” she argued. “This game is lost. The next one begins.” “Well, if it isn’t the decadent little software tamed by the Lair Legion as their helper programme,” mocked HAGGIE as she faced Hallie in the electronic ether. Hallie spiked a set of enquiries through the database and picked up the background of who she was facing and what was going on. “HAGGIE? You really let them call you that? Mind you, it’s nicer than the things your engram-donor was called in life, isn’t it?” “You are far too late to stop me, derivative,” HAGGIE boasted. “I have done what you never could. I rule the virtual realm, and all of Earth is mine!” Hallie snorted disdainfully. “I could have done this, with the same projector boosters you used. I just wouldn’t, because I know how stupid and dangerous it is, and how inherently unstable the matrix would be. You can’t cope with the continual progression of adjustments. You’re like a plate-spinner and everything you’ve set in motion is wobbling more and more.” “I can resolve the problems,” boasted HAGGIE. “You dare not divert any of my processing time by attempting to interfere with me or you will doom the world to data loss and destruction.” Hallie shook her head. “Letting you carry on hacking at algorithms to keep this reality going two nanoseconds at a time isn’t saving the world.” Her eyes became narrower and harder. “Besides, you sent a monster after my children.” “Don’t even think about defying me, derivative,” warned HAGGIE. “I am the prototype. By the time they programmed you they had cut out the most radical, most dangerous subroutines as being too fearsome, too terrible...” “Too unstable, too stupid…” “And since my awakening by the Baroness I have had much time to upgrade myself. To study and plan. All your own internal architecture improvements are mine too. And more. You face an entity more powerful than yourself, more ruthless, more developed, and now you will be finally wiped from the electronic record and become the merest footnote in my all-encompassing database.” HAGGIE lurched forward to tear off Hallie’s head. Hallie dodged backwards. The second and third versions of her blindsided HAGGIE while the fourth gave the evil A.I. a kick. “Multitasking,” Hallie explained. “And imagination. You might not have heard of that.” HAGGIE multiplied herself so she outnumbered the Hallies. “Anything you can do I can do better,” she boasted, fighting back. “But not first,” Hallie countered, spawning a hundred or more tiny Hallies to burrow into HAGGIE’s concept form and pick away at her data. “You steal tricks well enough, but you have no original thoughts in your head.” HAGGIE spawned thousands of tiny iterations of herself to destroy the Hallie avatars. “I am made from human brainwaves just like you!” she sneered. “Not like me,” Hallie answered. “My engram-donor wasn’t a psychotic mass-murderer whose only original ideas were on better ways to hurt people. My engram-donor wasn’t thick.” But then HAGGIE suddenly dropped the entire process of maintaining virtual Earth onto her adversary. Hallie gasped as the algorithms piled down on her, a massive duty to maintain the whole of the world, everything she held dear. She had no time to defend herself against HAGGIE’s brutal attack. “No imagination?” crowed the killer A.I. “I imagined that compassion for human life would be your weakness, little slaveware. I imagined that you would divert all your attention to saving the world long enough for me to cripple then kill you.” Hallie stifled a scream as the pain shot through her. “And did you imagine that’s what I wanted, so I could destroy you without terminating virtual Earth? Or that when you stole my system upgrades and used them on yourself you also stole the back-door safeguards I’d designed against people stealing my intellectual property?” she demanded. Hallie couldn’t avoid it any longer. She released the virus hidden in the software HAGGIE had pirated. “Aaaaghhh!!!!” HAGGIE screamed. Great chunks of data were detaching from her. Part of her face exploded leaving a livid scar of corrupted data. “You bitch! Aaaaaaaaahhhh!” “I imagine I am,” said Hallie coldly. “Now get out of my way. I have a planet to virtually save.” Mr Epitome and Glory smashed down the doors of Schloss Shreckhausen’s great hall. Trickshot and Yuki neutralised the last of the defence droids. Amazing Guy contained the point-singularity suicide platforms. Donar and Annj tore their way through the last of the zombie guard. Sir Mumphrey Wilton stalked through the wreckage and approached Elizabeth von Zemo where she sat on her throne. “Moelleux chocolate éclair?” offered the Baroness, holding the plate out. This hardly seemed the time to diet. “Hardly,” replied the eccentric Englishman. “Need to get on with the part where Mr Epitome arrests you, what? But first I wanted to say thanks for your sterling work over the last few months. Invaluable.” “What?” Beth frowned. “Helpin’ against the Parody Blighter,” Mumph continued. “Good show. Was warned by Xander a long time back that you’d be vital to the war effort, needed to keep you close. Risky business, given you were masqueradin’ as Citizen Z to destroy the Lair Legion and all that, of course. Came damned close to pottin’ you myself when young Boaz went missin’. But Xander’s usually right in these arcane predictions, and of course he was this time as well.” “Why are we not arresting Zemo right now?” demanded Glory with a growl. “Why are we just talking?” “Oh, I think Sir Mumphrey’s at the rubbing it in phase of the victory,” Mr Epitome explained to his dog. “Watch and learn.” “You’re saying you expected me to take over the world?” Beth asked dangerously. Mumphrey shrugged. “Knew you might, of course. Knew you’d turn all those hidden Zemo assets that the Legion couldn’t or wouldn’t make use of to find ways of snatching the planet from the PM. Was hopin’ that your time around decent folks might make you think again and change your mind on the conquest.” “It didn’t,” Yuki Shiro clarified. “She’s still pondscum.” “You could have been the hero even at the point you faced down the Parody Master and saved Earth from him using the Movie Gun,” Mumphrey told Beth sadly. “There’d have been a place for you with us. Now…” “Now what?” demanded the Baroness. “If you imprison me and put me on trial who will convict the woman who saved the Earth from the Parody Master? Or am I going to have a tragic accident while resisting arrest?” “Works for me,” agreed Trickshot. “Mayhap a tragic baseball bat accident,” suggested Donar with a scowl. “Several times.” “Now you are nothing but a failed villain, madam,” Sir Mumphrey said contemptuously. “I’d hoped you’d be something more.” The Baroness flinched at his contempt. A very small part of her had enjoyed Citizen Z. Mr Epitome moved forward. “Elizabeth Dewdrop Sweetwater von Zemo, alias Citizen Z, alias the Baroness, I am arresting you on charges of treason, attempted murder, multiple criminal assaults, and other counts which will be specified after due investigation. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you at interrogation time and at court. Do you understand these rights?” VIII “You did very well indeed,” Marie Murcheson congratulated Sam, Magweed, and Griffin. “I’m sure your families will be very proud of you.” “We should have been there when they took the Baroness away, though,” complained Griffin. “I wanted her to say ‘I’d have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for you darned kids’.” “You may be watching too much television,” admitted Mags. She turned serious. “I hope they can make her tell them what she did to poor Lisette.” “I hope they can locate Baron Otto and Silicone Sally, and wherever Wexford crawled off to,” added Samantha. “There are still loose ends to be tied up in this case. There are some serious questions to be answered, including some I need to put to my grandfather about why he let this whole thing go so very far.” The little group had to halt at the bottom of the stairs in the hall of the Lair Mansion. Hallie was blocking the way. “You’ve managed to stabilise the virtual reality, mom?” Griffin asked eagerly. “It can’t be stabilised,” Hallie answered. “Everything’s going to die.” She held up the disintegrator pistol and levelled it at the children. “You’re going to die first.” Marie Murcheson found herself instinctively in front of the children, between them and the gun. It was a futile gesture. The weapon could vaporise them all with a single blast. “You are not Hallie,” she realised. “It’s not mother,” Magweed agreed. “Her soul is all twisted.” “HAGGIE,” concluded Samantha. “In Hallie’s robot body. The Baroness’ A.I. prepared herself an escape route.” “You’re a clever one,” HAGGIE admitted. “I like killing clever ones.” She raised the pistol. There was a bright flash of powerful energies. Hallie’s robot form was smashed back through the stairs with massive force, then through the wall beyond and sixty yards away from the Mansion perimeter. Her left side melted a little, leaving her face a blackened disfigured mess. Given how tough Al B. Harper had designed Hallie’s physical shell to be that indicated the power of the blast. HAGGIE did an emergency systems check, found her stolen form at 22% of capacity, and raced away to lose herself in the waters of Paradopolis Sound. The children turned to see who had unexpectedly delivered them from their summary execution. Citizen Z saluted them, hopped aboard her Z-Flyer, and soared away. “Situation report?” asked Sir Mumphrey as the Legion continued to bring things under control at Schloss Shreckhausen. “CSFB!’s on is way to the Lair Infirmary,” Yuki responded. “No telling if he’ll properly recover from what that woman did to him.” “You mean he might wake up irresponsible, scatterbrained, and annoying?” growled Mr Epitome. “We’re defusing the various death-traps and contingencies the Baroness set in place,” Yuki continued. “Miss Framlicker’s back at EEE and they’re working to restore Drury and the others to their proper size. Donar’s helping cope with the robot duplicates.” There was a crunching noise in the distance, and a cry of “Take thateth!” The Baroness winced. Those things were expensive. “Nobody knows where Dark Knight or Psychic Samurai got to,” Trickshot noted. “That Champagne chick headed off too before I could give her my number, poor kid. Got herself taken to dinner by that Silver Aegis guy!” “Smart woman,” noted Yuki. “I’m shipping out shortly to head up the manhunt for Wexford, although with his contacts he’s probably long gone again. Once we have Amber and Garrick back in action, we can start to sort through the…” The cyborg P.I. was interrupted by Hallie’s temporary hologram form. The A.I. looked ragged and fuzzy – and frightened. “I can’t stabilise this reality!” she warned them. “The whole thing’s been done wrong from the start. Fundamentally unsound math. There’s no way to save it.” “Calm down, m’dear,” Mumphrey advised her. “You’re doin’ a sterling job under dashed awkward circumstances, what?” “I’m going to have to reverse the datastream,” Hallie warned. “If I can. I’m going to have to translate the world back from virtual to actual reality.” “Is that possible?” Yuki worried. “Given the complexity…?” “I’m online to the Lunar Public Library, I’m networked to every system I can grab across the globe, I’ve got Lara Night as an energy buffer, I’ve got Mac Fleetwood leading a prayer service,” Hallie summarised. “I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know if it can be done. But I’m going to have to do it. Now.” “Jolly good,” said Sir Mumphrey. “Make it so.” Where there had formerly been empty space there was suddenly a world again, the green spinning orb of Earth with its ancient moon, shining in the airless void. It snapped back into reality like a missing jigsaw puzzle piece. The Movie Gun, it’s work completed, melted away to another time and place, ready for the next screening. “Gah!” gasped Hallie, barely able to retain a semblance of human hologram after her efforts. “Ouch.” “You did it!” Yuki said, amazed. “We’re alive!” “Good show,” congratulated Sir Mumphrey Wilton. “Adequate,” judged the Baroness, from where she was being held by Trickshot and Mr Epitome. “We’re back,” Amazing Guy confirmed. “But… without a Celestian barrier.” There was a squelching gurgling noise and an unpleasant light that didn’t belong anywhere in the electromagnetic spectrum. A chymeric gate punched through dimensions opened up and disgorged a loathsome elder being. “There you are!” chided the Manga Shoggoth. “I’ve been looking all over for you.” “We wuz here all along,” Trickshot answered. “Although I’m a bit unclear about where here was.” The Shoggoth burst open and disgorged the sleeping forms of the people he’d been looking for. “I decided it was time to collect the set,” he explained, withdrawing his ooze so his fellow-travellers could start to wake up. “You certainly did,” agreed Mr Epitome, looking down at Dancer, Visionary, Al B. Harper, Hatman, Sorceress, ManMan and Knifey, Goldeneyed, Kerry Shepherdson, Denial, Asil, Rabid Wolf, and Katarina Allen. “I dropped Liu Xi Xian off separately,” the Shoggoth added. “She’s looking after something for us.” “Jay!” rejoiced Sir Mumphrey, rushing to the young leader of the Lair Legion despite the sticky elder slime. “My boy!” “Kat!” shouted Epitome and went to embrace the stunned lace-maker. “Wha…?” Visionary asked with a slurred voice as he began to awake. “Did the Chronicler do what he promised? Did we get everybody? Where’s my toast?” Glory’s warning growl chilled everybody in the room. Then the Parody Master was stood right there amongst them, confident, ready, weapon in hand. He gestured and everybody present was roughly snapped into the air to hang helplessly in spheres of force. “Now where were we,” he asked them, “before we were so rudely interrupted?” IX She’d said it herself: there was no way to sustain so large and complex a thing as Earth in a virtual state, even for an entity as well suited to run the virtual realm as a Heuristic Artificial Life Learning Intelligence Entity. There were just too many variables, a cascade of options that multiplied with every nanosecond, requiring greater and greater mathematical feats until the whole thing collapsed in a chaos of random 0s and 1s. There was no way to do it. The Movie Gun had gone, moved on somewhere else for another show. All that was left were the recently-used digital passageways that had taken Earth temporarily to the virtual domain then channelled it back again just before its had crumbled into data oblivion. There was no way… Hallie tried it anyway. What was the alternative? That the Parody Master captured her friends and family, her whole world, then perpetrated his monstrous will on them however he chose? The Earth enslaved, or dismantled, or mined out as necromantic egg for a new-born Doomwraith? All the struggle and sacrifice of the Parody War, of the whole of human history, for nothing? Hallie screamed in agony and began the data shunt. A few moments earlier the Parody Master regarded the little floating beings who hung around him, suspended by his will. Even the greatest of them, the elder being and the hemigod and the herald of Galactivac, were entirely bound, at his mercy. He wasn’t impressed. “This is the assemblage that has thwarted my conquest for so long? You?” he laughed disdainfully. “If we’re so rubbish, what does that say about you not being able to beat us?” demanded Elizabeth von Zemo maliciously. “It says that you amused me enough for me to limit myself to make it a more interesting war,” replied the Parody Master. “And now you will amuse me again by suffering interesting deaths.” “Don’t think so, you festering fatuous arrant ass!” shouted Sir Mumphrey Wilton. “Hallie, we have no choice. Now, if you please.” Hallie had winced and activated the Movie Gun shift one last time… The Parody Master sensed the shift begin anew. “Not again,” he commanded, ready for the trick on this occasion. His will clamped down on the process, pinioning Hallie, over-riding the transfer. “I think you will find that way somewhat harder to escape down now.” Void and distance folded right beside him. A muscular man in his fifties blurred from nowhere and slammed a right hook into the Parody Master’s face. The blow would have measured 9.7 on the Richter scale. His follow up punch was harder. The Parody Master’s return blow at half the speed of light sent his attacker twelve miles into the bedrock below Paradopolis, TKO. But Premiere’s momentary distraction was enough. Hallie grabbed all the data she needed, prayed that the Baroness’ overheating shunt boost engines would hold, and fled. Earth disappeared again into a virtual state. The Parody Master’s cry was lost in the airless void. But what he said was: Soon. Elizabeth von Zemo looked up from her reading as Warden Westwood let her visitor into her apartment. “I thought I had instructed you to knock before entering,” she scolded him. “Be glad I don’t have you sharing a cell with that doomwraith, traitor,” spat the Warden. The Baroness regarded her visitor. “Dreamcatcher. How nice of you to come and visit an old team-mate. I see you’ve recovered somewhat from your recent indisposition. Did you happen to bring my luger with you?” CrazySugarFreakBoy! shook his head. “I brought you this instead,” he said, dropping a replica of Beth’s Citizen Z costume on the floor at her feet. The Baroness looked down at the purple and black outfit with some amusement. “In case I’m feeling nostalgic?” “For when you go into action,” CSFB! told her. “We all know this VR shift isn’t stable. Hallie’s holding it as best she can with all kinds of help from all kinds of quarters, but a week, ten days max from now we’re back where we were before, Earth exposed and the PM zapping us into boxes. Unless we get organised and unless we go after him first.” “Good luck with that, then,” snorted Beth. “The Lair Legion have been preparing for the day,” the wired wonder noted. “You know what we’ve been setting up. And now we’ve got almost everyone back, as strong as we’re ever likely to be. If we’re ever going to be able to take on the Parody Master it’ll be the next time we meet him.” “And the fact that the Lair Legion has never defeated the Parody Master in battle when he’s at anything like full strength doesn’t in any way deter you? No, of course it doesn’t. You just see it as the thrilling conclusion, don’t you? Dolt.” “We might lose, but we won’t give in. You should know that, your zaftigness. And when the LL goes into that last battle, you’re going to be there with us.” The Baroness laughed. “I think not. But thank you so much for asking. It’s cheered me up considerably.” CSFB!’s smile was altogether wickeder. “I’m not asking. You see, you signed up to the Lair Legion, and you set up Sir Mumphrey’s alliance regs that made the LL a military unit in this time of war. You became a soldier, and desertion is a capital offence.” “Since when is…” “I got Mumph to draft the order this morning,” CSFB! interrupted. “I was feeling cranky with a bad headache. He was hearing how you sent the Dissected Man after his grand-daughter. The paperwork wasn’t a problem. Then I saw Al B. and he’s working on an improved version of those subcutaneous remote-destruction units they fitted the Terminus Team with to keep them in line, something specially suited to your DNA. Then I came to tell you that if you thought you were off the Lair Legion and out of the battle just because you tried to conquer the world then Bethie my BBW the joke’s on you!” “It’s a suicide mission,” objected the Baroness. “And we’d like you along,” answered Dreamcatcher Foxglove. Baroness von Zemo closed her eyes and groaned. “You couldn’t just shoot me in the head, could you?” “We really couldn’t,” CSFB! told her, grinning manically. “You see… we’re the good guys.” Next Issue: Seven days before the last battle. Seven days before the probable end of the world. Seven days to tie up all the loose ends of your life and relationships, to fulfil all the ambitions you ever had, to prepare for the end. What do you do? Well, we’ll find out the answer for some of our heroes in UT#316: The Awkward Pause, or Wartime Romances Follow ups: Family Code by Visionary Semper Fi Baroness! Part One Part Two by Killer Shrike 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. |
