| #321: Untold Conclusive Tales of the Parody War: The Winner Previously: The Parody Master has summoned the Lair Legion to his flagship, the Inevitable Destiny, to destroy them once and for all. He has used his overwhelming power to capture them, and every being who seeks to oppose him across the whole Parodyverse, in energy shackles depriving them of their powers. Now he is ready to wreak his bloody vengeance on those who opposed him, to claim the Storyheart that will give him supreme power, and to take captured former Shaper of Worlds Jury as his bride. 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.  This is the story of the greatest heroes of a very strange place on the far edge of the probability curve called the Parodyverse. It tells of their great war against a tyrant who sought to rule all reality, and of their last battle against that would-be Parody Master. It contains the ending of an age. It’s a tale of triumph and of tragedy, but like most stories set in the Parodyverse it’s mainly a tale of people, of slightly absurd characters striving to do the impossible just because it’s right. And like all stories it’s hard to know where to end it. But the beginning of the end? That’s easy. The Parody Master’ power spread out from him in waves, to contain the Lair Legion in chains of power as he had done before, radiating out from there to wash over the whole Parodyverse. “Enough!” he shouted, and his voice was heard on every world. His power caught every enemy, every dissident or rebel, every soldier struggling for freedom, every being that harboured a disobedient thought even in his or her heart. Every one was jerked up and wracked in the air, bound by the Parody Master’s almighty will. On distant Astrovidia Meggan Foxxx’s broadcasts fell suddenly silent. On Plyxtrazar the hasty evacuation halted. On Naicluv the citizens found themselves trapped in a web of confining energies. At the Reticulum Matrix every data node ground to an electronic halt. On the warship Bloody Genocide the Purveyors of Peril ceased their bickering and were chained to helplessness. Aboard the SPUD helicarrier Earth’s last defenders jerked to immobility. On New Skree-Lump, on Shankaru, on Chalastis Core, on Apocalyspe, at the Great Repository, on a million worlds in the Parody Master’s empire energy chains flickered into being, shackling all those who harboured resistance to the Master’s rule even in their hearts. “Enough,” proclaimed the conqueror of the Parodyverse, holding a hundred billion beings pinioned by his power. His energies plunged deeper, and now his power caught and immobilised those who plotted against him in the further realms. The psionic Xnylonians screamed as one, then were bound. In the parallel world of Swordrealms/Esperine Earth’s allies were slapped down into bondage. In Faerie even the Queen of the Fey struggled uselessly against her shackles. In the Mythlands mighty Oldman held his own for a moment before being overcome. Yi of the Happy Place and the other being of Yo-Planet resisted before the Parody Master’s will slammed down on the concept realm like a fist on a flea. “Enough,” said the Parody Master as he brought the Parody War to an end with one sweep of his hands. The Chronicler jerked back, spasming. The Observers screamed at their blindness. The Fairly Great Old Ones’ frenzied turmoils halted in frozen time. The conqueror of the Parodyverse grunted as he forced his will over the furthest reaches of his realm but his fury was great and his desire to win was greater still. Then it was over. All his enemies had fallen. The war was won. The Lair Legion hung before him, ready for his punishment. “And now,” he said, in a voice that knew no humour or joy except at the conquest of others, “the reprisals.” Of all the trials and tragedies in Jury’s existence this was the worst. Once she was one of the most powerful beings in the Parodyverse, the Shaper of Worlds who oversaw the origins of the narrative threads. Now she was the betrothed of the Parody Master, the object of an obsessive passion that had inspired him to conquer the Parodyverse to possess her. Jury had once had another name, a different mortal life. The Parody Master had erased them as a gift to her. She had once had friends and lovers. They were all gone. There was only the Parody Master. “Come, my beloved,” he called to her, summoning her onto the wrecked command deck of his flagship. The massive metal structure was melted away and the canopy above was open to the stars, but nobody died in the vacuum of space because the Parody Master willed otherwise. A fundamental horror shivered through the former Shaper. She had known this moment might come. Ever since the Parody Master had captured her fortress, ever since she had desperately fled and hidden the Storyheart that was the power behind the Parodyverse, she had known that the champions might fall leaving her as their enemy’s prize. There were other women dangling from the Parody Master’s energy chains who he intended to take, but none that he desired or would enslave so much as Jury. “I’m here,” she said. “You’ve won.” “I have,” the conqueror of worlds agreed. “I hold the whole of creation in my hands.” Why did she still resist him? Why not surrender to the inevitable and save herself a world of pain, perhaps save some of the people she cared about? And yet some spark of defiance still smouldered beneath her crushing terror. “You can’t hold it for long. Not like this. Even you can’t burn off this level of power forever.” The Parody Master chuckled. “Still clinging to absurd hopes, beloved? That is so like you. Your defenders all hang here as my puppets, awaiting my judgements upon them. Across the Parodyverse every being with ill intentions towards me is similarly confined. You are right in saying that I cannot hold them thus for eternity, of course. But the important point is that I can hold them long enough.” Jury knew what was coming next. “You’re going to claim the Storyheart,” she realised. “With that power within you your chains would hold until the destruction of the universe. Your will would be supreme.” “My will is already supreme. The Storyheart will merely be the final trophy symbolising my victory.” He brushed a steel-gauntleted hand across Jury’s cheek. “I shall take you as I take it,” he promised. Jury’s courage frayed more. She couldn’t hold back her tears now. Of all the Parody Master’s victims she alone had the cosmic understanding to realise exactly how horrific what he would do to her would be; what he would make her become; what he would make of her Parodyverse.. “Surrender,” commanded the Parody Master. “It is over.” “It so isn’t, you smug slimy sonovabitch!” shouted Trickshot. His chains were spiking agony through his body but it took more than that to silence the irritating archer. “Take your hands off the lady an’ face me like a man, an’ then we’ll see whut kind of great conqueror you are!” The Parody Master lanced additional pain through the captured Legion. “It seems as though our nuptials will have to wait for a short while, Jury my beloved,” he noted, “whilst I show our bold heroes that they have indeed been vanquished.” He moved towards them and selected Yo. “W-what are you going to do?” Jury stammered. “Something uncute,” foresaw the pure thought being, trying not to flinch away from the conqueror of the Parodyverse. “Something to demonstrate to your vanquished friends that nobody is getting out of this,” the Parody Master warned. “Something unpleasant and irreparable, to bring home the truth that they have lost. All that remains for them now is pain and shame and an eternity of regret.” He reached out for Yo’s face. “Parody Master!” called Jury, trying to distract him. She saw the energies swirling across his gauntlet, energies that could scar every Yo-being to everlasting agony with a single touch, could literally wipe the smiles from their faces. “Please…!” “You bastard!” shouted Hatman, struggling like the rest of the Legion with his energy chains. “Are you saying,” gasped Dancer, “that nothing can save us now?” The Parody Master chuckled. “I am.” “Right,” snarled CrazySugarFreakBoy!, keying on his wowie-zowie walkie talkie with his tongue. “You asked for this!” “Parody Master,” Sir Mumphey Wilton called, “you blighted buffooning addle-pated blithering jackanapes of a mummy’s-boy!”. His challenge came across the open airwaves, for the Parody Master had usurped all transmissions so that the Parodyverse could see what was going to happen to their champions. “Wilton!” Somehow the eccentric Englishman was not bound by energy chains. The Lair Mansion on Parody Island had Celestian defences still, and somehow the higher powers of the Parodyverse had conspired to shield it from the Parody Master’s will. But only for a moment. “That’s right, you cowardly braggart,” the leader of Earth’s combined defence force sneered at him. “You think usin’ unstoppable force to beat your adversaries makes you a great warrior? You think that wins you respect? All you’re doing is confirming your place as a loser and a cheat before then whole of creation.” “You think you could stop me, old man?” Sir Mumphrey Wilton snorted. “I wouldn’t be leadin’ this resistance if I didn’t, now would I, you lackwitted cad?” The Parody Master felt the gaze of the Parodyverse upon him. He looked around his wrecked flagship, the Inevitable Destiny. It did not have the right majesty at present to convey the message he wished to give. “I accept your challenge, Wilton,” said the Parody Master. “They do say that all life lessons begin at home.” He flicked his hand and suddenly he and his captive Legionnaires were transported across space to appear in the Operations Room of the Lair Mansion before Sir Mumphrey Wilton. The Parody Master loosed a wave of energies and seared every one of the Operations Room staff except Sir Mumphrey into ashes. They burned with an unsatisfying metallic odour. They were Leifield Model Decoys – automata. The eccentric Englishman himself was pinioned in shackles like those of his comrades. “And now, Wilton,” the Parody Master declared, increasing the pain his energy chains emitted, “I will hear you beg.” “Don’t… count on it… you…” “I will hear you beg and I will hear you scream. Then you will crawl on your hands and knees, weeping, and kiss my feet. I will accept your abject formal surrender and decide what punishment is due to you and your pathetic band of heroes.” Sir Mumphrey Wilton blinked back tears and tried to stifle his cries; but not too much. He needed the Parody Master to be enjoying this. Behind them spiffy, Yuki, and Beth von Zemo (wearing Silicone Sally) were the first three Legionnaires to slip from their energy bonds unseen. “Plead, Wilton,” commanded the Parody Master. “Or shall we add to your pain in other ways?” He gestured and three small figures appeared beside the struggling old man. “What?” blinked Magweed. “Uh-oh,” swallowed Griffin. “Run!” shouted Samantha Featherstone. The children had been dragged across the continent back to the place they had been evacuated from to be tortured in front of their protectors. The Parody Master loosed black lightnings of torment to bind Visionary’s twins and Mumph’s grand-daughter. Nanny Greenwood, their protector, had somehow followed unseen and she now caught the energies using the Celestian blessings bestowed upon her and hurled the lightnings back where they had come from. The Parody Master staggered as his own power was reflected at him, then smashed the old woman against a wall. He looked around for the children, but the children had fled. “Oik,” said sir Mumphrey Wilton. The Parody Master turned to seek his victims, to summon them back again for his entertainment. Instead he was seized by an energy-controlling fern, whirled off his feet, and propelled to Yuki Shiro. She rolled onto her back so she could flip the enemy with her feet, tumbling him further to receive a chest shot from a point-singularity disruptor that Baroness von Zemo had especially had constructed from nine months of study of the target for which it was intended. The front of the Parody Master’s black and crimson armour cracked as he was hurled back. A jackhammer fist slammed his head into the ground. Mr Epitome was upon him, delivering blow after blow to keep the conqueror of the Parodyverse occupied while even more Legionnaires slipped free from their shackles. The Parody Master spilled Dominic Clancy off him, swatting him through a reinforced wall without even a thought. “How…?” he began to demand, but then Donar lunged into him, using Mjalcolm like a mad golfer treating his enemy’s head as ball in a bunker. “It’s a good question, though,” Joshua Clement noted, still hanging in his energy chains, trying to figure out how to slip loose as others were doing. “How do we get loose?” Champagne Cacciatori wasn’t a Legionnaire, even a former one like De Brown Streak. She would be speaking to someone later about the administrative mistake that had brought the international jewel thief into the last battle with the most powerful villain in the Parodyverse. But right now she was interested in what was happening. “Well, this is hardly the first time the Parody Master has used this energy-chain trick against your heroes, is it?” she reasoned. “So if the Legion was preparing to face him again it’s only logical to calculate some kind of defence, a kind of immunity. I presume that’s why Sir Mumphrey had to remain shielded from the summons that brought you all together and had to occupy the Parody Master’s attention while the countereffect had time to work and release the heroes.” The beautiful blonde woman looked thoughtful. “At least that’s how I’d do it.” “Very clever indeed,” approved the Dark Knight, slipping from his own chains to join the melee. “Shame we didn’t have time to treat our allies and retired members.” “Hold on!” called dull thud “You mean we’re stuck here?” ~~Don’t worry~~ Cressida, his sentient stomach tapeworm assured him ~~I can use my transmutation powers from here~~ She concentrated and shifted battle to cattle, pelting the Parody Master with a heap of Aberdeen Anguses. “We so need to get out of here and kick that guy’s butt, though,” Exile noted, struggling with his bonds. “We’re working on it,” announced Sersi, her eyes glowing golden and a strange multiple twang in her voice. “Um, you wouldn’t happen to be carrying the entire Austernal omni-mind in there with you?” Exile ventured nervously. “So, we just get to dangle here and watch your Legion dogpiling the Parody Master,” summarised Champagne. “Charming.” “But good company,” grinned Josh Clement. “So what are you doing after the Parody War, pretty lady?” The Earth shattered. More precisely, the holographic globe in the Operations Room that displayed situations worthy of the Legion’s attention fragmented as the Parody Master responded to attack, scattering heroes with casual ease. “Come, then,” he challenged. “It is better like this. Better with blood and broken bones and the screams of the vanquished!” “Like we practised it,” Hatman called to the Legion as they went against the conqueror of the Parodyverse. “Tag team. Change tactics. Keep him busy. Keep him thinking short range. Go!” The Lair Legion knew what to do. Goldeneyed blinked away after teleporting a support bear through the Parody Master’s chest and the Librarian went in to confuse him with The Rights of Man downloaded past his adversary’s defences through the metal bar. CrazySugarFreakBoy coated the enemy’s helmet with silly string, obscuring the Parody Master’s vision just long enough for Dancer to sweep his legs from under him, tumbling him into a pile of Shoggoth. Amazing Guy’s omniversal energy constructs pinioned him there for just a second. That was time for Sorceress to place a curse on the yew arrow Trickshot aimed. The shaft passed through the eye-hole of the Parody Master’s helmet and buried itself in his eye. ManMan took Knifey and began sawing at the force-chains that held the remaining heroes. The Parody Master’s energy burst out in a radiant bubble, slamming the Legion away from him. But spiffy had shielded the heavy hitters so Donar, Epitome, and Premiere were ready, piling on for the next wave, setting up the villain for Visionary to dart in and attach the wires from Al B. Harper’s machine. NTU-150 pulsed energies down the wire, modulated to the frequencies the Librarian had recovered from the Supreme Interference’s calculations weeks before. The Parody Master spasmed. With an angry roar he released pulses of energy that shattered out across the chamber, punching though the reinforced walls of the basement, toppling part of the floor above onto the combatants. “Hey!” complained dull thud, “some of us are still stuck in energy chains here!” The Dark Knight came at the Parody Master from the shadows, managing to lodge a wicked adamantine-edged knightarang into a shoulder joint before being swatted away. Yuki darted in next, setting up the enemy for a rapier-lunge from Yo. Silicone Sally obscured the villain’s gaze for a moment to keep him for spotting Sersi’s molecular ripper-pulse until it was too late. The Parody Master staggered back, recreated his chest and stomach and continued the fight. The battle had raged for one minute. “Where are we going?” demanded Magweed as she followed her brother through the smoke-filled mansion. The whole building trembled every few seconds. Plaster showered down from the ceilings. “We need to get out of the combat zone,” Samantha Featherstone declared. “The PM only wanted us there to distract and hamper the Legion. We need to be somewhere else.” “We’re heading for our garret,” Griffin told them. “Our secret place. It’s defended. If we get there I don’t know if even the PM could teleport us out.” Samantha nodded. “We’re lucky we found it,” she said, uncertainly. “It’s very convenient.” “This way,” Griff called, but Magweed didn’t follow. “No,” she said. “Not yet. We can’t just run away. Daddy wouldn’t just run away.” “He’d want us to be safe,” Griffin pointed out. Magweed shook her head. “He’d rescue people first,” she insisted. “The civilians. He’s get them to the safe place too.” Samantha caught on. “Jury,” she said. “The Parody Master wants to do bad things to her, and she got dragged here when he brought the Legion and came to get grandfather. She needs rescuing.” “She needs a safe place,” Magweed agreed. “We have one.” Griffin grinned as he accepted the mission. “Okay then. Let’s go!” The Parody Master’s struggle with the Lair Legion was being transmitted across the Parodyverse, but there was already a live feed from the Mansion to Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises, the weird science lab where Miss Framlicker and her team watched the proceedings with mounting tension. “Come on!” complained Amy Ashton, EEE’s greasy engineer. “Our guys are getting pounded over there.” “I’m working on it,” snapped Kara Harper as she interpreted the sensor readings coming from the battle. “If you don’t like the way I’m interpreting the energy harmonics of the Parody Master’s power then do it yourself.” “I’ve decoded the frequency package,” Cody Harper reported. Cody’s gift was to understand any language. Kara could solve any equation. “I’m just cross-referencing it with the calculations D.D. got from the Supreme Interference.” “Faster, please,” Miss Framlicker prompted. “The Legion’s done a good job of provoking the whole range of the enemy’s energy phenomena but things are getting brutal now. It’s only a matter of time before there are friendly fatalities.” Amy dodged aside as a bank of sensor apparatus bloomed with flame for a moment. When the spark shower had gone she darted back in to make emergency repairs. “The energy grid we installed in the Operations Room is overloaded by roughly three thousand percent,” she noted. “How damned powerful is that damned Parody Master anyhow?” “Powerful enough to go into a strop and stop the whole Parodyverse,” Miss F answered. “But he’s burning off energies faster than even he can renew them, right?” “Right,” agreed Kara, completing her calculations. “At this level of power expenditure he’ll run out in around two months tops.” “But now we know the exact script of his energy field,” Cody added, finishing his own work. “We’ve refined the Supreme Interference’s theoretical jamming field to a precise harmonic. We can cut the Parody Dude off from getting resupplied from the Parodyverse.” Another set of bangs and flashes sent fragments of molten metal across the EEE firehouse. “Could we do less exposition and more ramping up the jamming field?” demanded Amy, somersaulting aside to grab an extinguisher. “Only the local exclusion field that’s stopping us all from being chained in energy pain shackles isn’t going to last much longer.” Miss Framlicker finished the last work hardwiring the frequencies into the device Al B. and NTU-150 had created earlier. “If we can get this going it should weaken or break the energy shackles on the people of Earth at least. If nothing else it’ll let people run.” “We’re all going to have to run if this fusion wave moderator gets much hotter,” Amy shouted, tightening one steaming feed inlet while two more began to crackle. “Starting up any time now would be just fine.” “Right,” Miss F agreed. “We’re good to go. All we need now is an energy source capable of sending out a precision-specific planetwide standing wave powerful enough to interfere even with the Parody Master. Then the Legion need to keep him busy so he doesn’t notice his batteries aren’t getting recharged.” Lara Night leaned forward and grasped the transfer conduit handles of the field suppressor. “I’m ready,” she said. The Parody Master slammed a heavy fist into Donar’s gut and hurled the semi-conscious hemigod into NTU-150 and spiffy. “Is this the best you can do?” the conqueror of the Parodyverse sneered. “I thought you’d fight harder, do something more memorable in the last battle of the Parody War.” The titanium steel girders that Sir Mumphrey Wilton had time-shifted forward an hour earlier reappeared through the Parody Master’s chest. The Baroness took the opportunity to attach an agony module to the metal. AG grabbed the villain in an energy claw and swung him in a rapid arc towards Premiere’s right hook. The Parody Master caught Premiere’s wrist and shattered his arm. He shrugged away the energy construct, sending feedback through its disintegrating structure to send Amazing Guy twitching to the floor, sparking. He shrugged off the improbable internal injuries directed at him by Dancer and the elemental fury released by Sorceress. “You need more motivation, perhaps,” he suggested to the Legion. He gestured with his palm, and suddenly there were more people in the room. Stood directly before the tyrant were Amber St Clare, Herbert Garrick, Sergeant MacHarridan, Flapjack, Meggan Foxxx, Kenny the Gardener and a dozen more of the regular familiar staff who had occupied the Lair Mansion in the long months of the Parody War. The Parody Master laughed and detonated a fragmentation pulse amongst them. The Manga Shoggoth had seen it coming. The loathsome elder being surged forward even as the lethal fragments burst out amongst the support crew. He flowed over them, trying to temper the fatal velocity of the detonated metal. The nearby people were slashed down in bloody ribbons all the same. “Mom!” screamed CrazySugarFreakBoy! He bounced off a wall, manipulating kinetic energy so that when he slammed into the Parody Master it was with the force of a runaway train. “They killed Kenny!” shouted ManMan. “Again!” “Bry,” called Hatman. “Emergency evac! PMH!” “On it!” called Goldeneyed, beginning the teleportation of the wounded. “What?” gasped Garrick, going into shock as he clutched the bloody ruin of his chest. “I always knew you people would get me killed one day. You’re all…” Then he passed out. “You hurt my mom!” raged CSFB!, still whaling on the Parody Master. “My mom!” He leaped aside to avoid the PM’s return blows and bounced back in clutching the soul axe that the Parody Master had discarded when Lisa had taken it over by gift of the Hooded Hood. As Yuki and Epitome ran interference he swung the blade round to bury the blade right into the villain’s head. And then Lisa led the tormented souls who had been condemned to the agonies of the soul axe directly into the Parody Master’s mind. “Heya, lover,” the amorous advocatrix called to him with a savage delight. “Miss me, you sad shrivelled jumped-up limp*£&$ loser?” Most of the wounded were evacuated as the Parody Master struggled and the Legion kept on hitting him. Yo and Vizh helped G-Eyed with the triage. There was no point evacuating the dead. “Ah’m okay,” Meggan Foxxx insisted as Dancer clamped an emergency dressing to her belly. “Go help my little boy.” “I’m alright too,” Sergeant MacHarridan insisted, all evidence to the contrary. He was oozing blood from a dozen gashes on his face and left side. “Step aside. There’s something ah have tae do.” And he burst in an explosive cone, hammering the Parody Master out through the Ops Room wall. He didn’t reform. Trickshot and Dark Knight were the first ones after the villain, using concussion bombs and epoxy arrows to keep him down. “Hey,” Tricky called to DK, “I thought you were some kind of psycho-murderer these days?” “I thought you were a loudmouthed bowman,” the urban legend replied, “but you’re here.” The Parody Master grunted at the effort of restoring himself again. He seized his treacherous axe and shattered it in his hands, spreading the very molecules across the whole Parodyverse. He snuffed the screaming souls, stuffing them to nether realms where they could trouble him no more. He repaired the rents in his armour and his skull and rose, burning with an aura of power that blackened Yuki’s artificial hands and seared away the pseudopods of Shoggoth that reached for him. They leaped clear as Hatman came in with his Con Ed hardhat. The Parody Master teleported in more bystanders, right is Jay Boaz’ path. Hatman veered away, dragging off his headpiece so as not to sear Marie Murcheson and Katarina Allen to ashes, tumbling along the floor to avoid impact. The Parody Master hurled a javelin of shrapnel right through Hatman’s shoulder. “Such chivalry,” the villain mocked. Mr Epitome burst onto the conqueror of the Parodyverse with a savage fury. “You get off her!” she roared. “Kat, run!” The Parody Master confidently waited for the paragon of power’s wild attack. He was surprised when Epitome feinted, caught the villain’s arms, and almost wrenched it out of its socket. Before the conqueror could respond, Epitome had planted a boot in the back of his target’s heels to drop him to his knees. Dominic Clancy had spent long hours analysing the Parody Master’s fighting style, and when he got mad he got smart. The Parody Master was irritated at his mistake. He shed off a wave of kinetic force that shattered the computer panels and brought down the suspended ceiling in a shower of sparks, then accelerated his movements sufficient to allow him to haul Epitome off him and onto the floor. Then he raised his hand to aim at Kat and Marie. Yuki swept up the lacemaker and somersaulted away from an energy blast that would have seared away the flesh from Kat’s bones. Dancer made for Marie, but the Parody Master grabbed the former banshee and wrenched her to him as a human shield to ward off Epitome. As Dominic Clancy hesitated the Parody Master’s fingers darted out to sear Epitome’s eyes out of his head. The blinded paragon of power fell away, suddenly vulnerable to the Parody Master’s killing blow. Marie screamed. The Celestian power that had suffused her for a hundred and forty years rippled through her, the defences against cosmic intrusion on Parody Island recognising their conduit of old. The Parody Master staggered back, his skin blackened by necromantic energies, gasping for breath, clawing on to life. Visionary caught Marie as she fell. The Victorian girl was parchment pale, barely breathing at all. “Yo, help Epitome. Donar, run interference.” “Right gladly,” snarled the Ausgardian hemigod, whaling in against the staggering Parody Master. “Yon villain probably doth not need his head any more for the nonce.” “I’m okay,” snarled Mr Epitome. “I’ll regenerate. Just give me a moment.” “David Tennant on the Lair Legion would be pretty cool,” dull thud admitted. “Way better than Al B.” “Hey, I’m right here,” the archscientist observed. “Great,” called Trickshot. “Invent a way to whup this guy’s butt willya, big-brain?” “Dominic!” screamed Kat as Yuki dragged her to the emergency evacuation hatch. “You need to get out of here,” Yuki warned her. “You’re going to get him killed.” “Take care of Marie,” Vizh told the young woman, bundling the corpse-white girl next to her. “And get to safety.” He hit the emergency release button dropping the civilians away to the cellars below. The Parody Master rose again, swatting Donar aside, hurling off new assaults by the Shoggoth and NTU-150. “Fight harder,” he challenged the Legion. “Give it your best shot!” He gestured again, pulling more noncombatants into the inferno. Commissioner Don Graham was engulfed in flame the moment he appeared until Cressida transmuted flame to game, leaving the scorched policeman covered in playing cards. Reverend Mac Fleetwood toppled with a great bleeding gash along his thigh and would have died as more roof came in except for a sudden wave of ice from Sorceress. But the Parody Master frowned as he found his will thwarted again by the Celestian defences of Parody Island; the children who had escaped did not reappear at his call. He contented himself for now with calling in the Caphan slave wench who was the mother of the twins and reaching out to rip her in two. He was surprised when Miiri tossed him over her shoulder and danced away leaving a shining mithrum dagger embedded in the groin-joint of his armour. Dancer leaped in with a well-placed salmon kick to drive the blade home. Goldeneyed teleported Miiri to safety but was too slow to avoid the chunk of wall that the Parody Master targeted at him. Bry Katz was being too useful. The battle had raged for two minutes. “Done it!” Knifey said triumphantly as he finally found a way of cutting through the force constructs that shackled Sersi. “I’ve got the trick of it now.” “Thanks, lover,” Sersi grinned, heading into the fray. The Parody Master held his hand forth and recreated the great longblade that was his other weapon of choice, the ultimate avasword which Knifey had somehow shattered before. It formed up, sleek and deadly, and the tyrant raised it to catch Sersi’s oncoming charge, sliding it through her chest right up to the hilt. Sersi laughed. “Gotcha!” she said. And her eyes flared. Long ago the Celestian Space Robots had travelled the Parodyverse on their mysterious mission. Some worlds they ignored. Others they culled. But a few they seeded with genetically modified experiments, taking the base dominant species and transforming representatives into two distinct sub-races, the genetically malleable Deviates and the genetically perfect Austernals. On Earth the Austernals lived in their Antipodean stronghold of Austernia, a hidden city shielded at the peak of Mount Augustus, Australia. The Wadjari aboriginals call the site Burringurrah, which they claim refers to a dreamtime legend of a boy pieced with sticks and beaten to death by women. Actually, burringurrah really translates as ‘bloody weird place where those poncy immortals prance about’. Some time ago the Austernals gathered their genetic and psychic essences together into their unifying omni-mind, a great and powerful gestalt which they could form in times of trial. Their city was left behind, abandoned and unfindable, until it was dragged by the Parody Master into comic-book limbo in an attempt to remove the omni-mind from the Parody War. But now the Austernals had come back, and they had chosen to personify themselves through one member of their race who held all their power on their behalf. That representative was the party Austernal Sersi, sometime easygoing member of the Lair Legion. Always a powerful transmuter and telepath, Sersi’s abilities were currently ramped massively high; and she was somewhat pissed with the Parody Master. Hence the blade through her torso didn’t kill her. Austernals couldn’t die while a single molecule of their essence remained intact. The avasword simply meant that Sersi had good contact when she used her powers to teleport the Parody Master and the Legion back to Austernia where she could really cut loose. “Whoa! Nice time/space shift!” admired Goldeneyed as Champagne helped him up now he was no longer covered with wall. “Great chat-up line, Goldenass,” mocked De Brown Streak. Josh Clement ran forward to Sersi. “Hey, pretty lady, any chance of getting my powers back?” Sersi negligently restored the mutate speedster to his full abilities and DBS joyously streaked forward to try them out on the Parody Master, pausing only to race back and kiss the Austernal good and improper. “You really okay, cuz?” Exile asked G-Eyed. “Sure,” Bry answered uncertainly. “You want your powers back too, Rick?” Exile shook his head. “I’m retired. Just go kick the bad guy. I’ll do the collateral damage control stuff.” The Parody Master realised where he had been brought. “Austernia? You have returned the confiscated cities to their original locations?” Sersi shrugged defiantly. “Hey, I can tidy up occasionally,” she objected. “There’s a first time for everything,” admitted Vizh. “It’s not like you had permission to go stealing big chunks of real estate,” pointed out the Librarian. “Duck!” someone shouted, diving on Lee Bookman and wrestling him out of the way of a huge falling chunk of Austernal masonry. “I’m betting the Austernals don’t have up-to-date damage liabilities.” “Er, who?” asked Champagne, puzzled to find another non-costumed stranger in the midst of battle. “Beats me,” admitted dull thud. “We could ask him,” suggested the Librarian. When he gets off me.”# The young man with the tousled hair climbed up. “I’m Pete,” he introduced himself. “The Legion used to know me as…” “Hey, Banjoooo!” called out spiffy, “Nice save.” “Banjoooo?” puzzled Exile. “That’s the King of the Sea Monkeys. I’ve met Banjoooo.” “I was Banjoooo,” explained Pete. “Then I passed my royal sea monkey DNA on to my heir and evolved into this human shape. “You don’t want the details on that,” spiffy warned them. Pete shot him a dark look, “But I didn’t want to miss out on helping the LL in their hour of need so I kind of… slipped in when Sersi pulled back the places and beings from Comic-Book Limbo.” “Places and beings?” Champagne prompted. “”Yeah,” agreed Banjoooo. He pointed upwards. “Like him.” Fin Fang Foom had been dragged back from Comic-Book Limbo by Sersi’s reversal. Now the great dragon was awake. He uncoiled before the Parody Master, assuming his massive Makluan draconic form. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Next time ask before you touch our stuff!” “Yay, Finny!” cheered ManMan. “Stomp him again! And again!” The Parody Master swung his blade at the dragon. Finny shapeshifted around it and came back with a searing blast of nuclear fire. Sersi concentrated on transmuting the Parody Master to crystal. ~~Let me help~~ Cressida offered now she too had been released by Knifey. ~~I can change ass to glass too~~ The Parody Master focussed and denied their efforts. “You think bringing me here will help you, little Austernal?” he shouted. “You think the power magnification of your pretty white architecture will make the difference? Fool!” Sersi tried to hold back the annihilation wave but the Parody Master’s power was overwhelming. As the Lair Legion scrambled for cover the tall crystalline buildings around them shattered, boiling away to nothingness at the Parody Master’s wrath. Then he turned his attention to Sersi herself. “You’re not a fun date,” she told the conqueror of the Parodyverse. “I can see why Lisa didn’t rate you.” The Parody Master roared and dispersed the last Austernal’s molecules across time and space. “Sersi!” called Finny as his old team-mate exploded. Great flares of undirected teleportational and transmutative energy washed out from where the Austernal head been. Cressida and Goldeneyed tried to control the waves but the whole of the combat was seized and shifted away, leaving the crumbling ruins of once-mighty Austernia deserted and alone to topple down and dissolve into dust. “Where are they?” demanded Amy Aston. “Where did they go?” Miss Framlicker checked the locator beacons in the Lair legion’s comm-cards. “Africa?” she puzzled. “I think there was some link between Austernia and wherever that teleport wave took them. It’s not random.” “Wakandybar,” Lara Night supplied. The California blonde was still struggling past a splitting headache to maintain the interference barrier. The Parody Master’s power was not being renewed, but so far he showed no signs of noticing or needing to notice. “The hidden nation-state of Wakandybar’s back from Comic-Book Limbo. That’s where they are.” The Parody Master shrugged dull thud, ManMan, and De Brown Streak away from him and looked around with interest. “Wakandybar,” he recognised, spotting the looming vibratium mountain in the distant and the techno-ethnic buildings of the urban centre that surrounded him. “There is nothing in this place that is of significant tactical value any more.” “Plenty of civilians, though!” Hatman recognised, ignoring his bleeding shoulder and searing forward with his jets cap. “Mumph, Vizh, Exy, Banjoooo, grab some people for evacuation and rescue. Rest of the team, keep at him!” The African nation-state had been carved away from Earth in the preliminaries of the Parody War and held in temporal stasis ever since. Now the inhabitants of Central Wakandybar woke up to nightmare as their city began to explode around them. “Civilians,” mocked the Parody Master, causing civic buildings to explode all around the battlefield. “Such a wonderful weakness to exploit!” The city went from being a modern urban wonder to a devastated ruin in mere seconds. The greasy black smoke carried the stench of burning flesh. Sorceress and Donar controlled tempests to try and suppress the flames that threatened to engulf the capital while Yo, Epitome, and Yuki cleared rubble for rescue. Silicone Sally squealed as she reflected shrapnel rubble from the Baroness. “Ouch! Okay, I’m rethinking the whole volunteering angle,” she admitted. “If you go AWOL now and leave me naked on this battlefield I swear I shall devise reprisals that will make you plead for the Parody master’s torments,” Elizabeth von Zemo warned her. The city bled and the Parody Master laughed. Beneath the burning metropolis lay the technical jungle, an advanced computer core and command base. At a gesture from the conqueror of worlds the very structure of the underground jungle animated, bursting to the surface with thousands of writhing pipes and snaking power cables to search out the Legion. There was a moment where the Dark Knight had to choose between an attack on the Parody Master and saving an unknown child from certain death as the flailing machinery burst around her. He grabbed her in his arms and hurled her with all his might at Fin Fang Foom. “Manoeuvre seven,” he called to his old crimefighting partner. The dragon caught the girl and winged her away to safety. The Parody Master took advantage of the Dark Knight’s distraction to plunge his sword through the urban legend’s back and neatly core out his heart. “So fall the weak.” For a moment the Legion were overwhelmed trying to stem the slaughter all around them and fend off the animated technology. The Parody Master turned and centred his attention next on ManMan. Then a pair of superbly-designed giant android panthers pounced upon the conqueror of the Parodyverse, each biting down before they exploded in a wave of negative energy. The villain staggered, leaving him open for the Black Pantser to move in with a vibra-blade and slash his throat. “This nation is mine,” said Prince T’Chako, ruler of Wakandybar. “None shall threaten it while I live.” The Parody Master ignored the raw wound of his gashed throat. “Agreed,” he told the wearer of the sacred black mantle. He moved at the speed of light to bring his avasword round and carve off the Pantser’s head. De Brown Streak used his velocity-manipulation to slow the villain down again so his revered swipe to slaughter Sorceress missed. But he missed his footing as the technical jungle seethed up around him and was dragged below. “Do something, Boaz,” the Baroness demanded. “We’re getting slaughtered here. Literally.” “I think I’ve found a way to shift us out of here!” NTU-150 called to Hatman over the chaos. “I can activate the echo of Sersi’s teleport wave again, but I don’t know where it’ll take us.” The capped crusader assessed the risk. Wakandybar was dying around them. “Do it!” he called. Enty plugged a rotary mower attachment into his red and gold battle armour and activated it. Jury looked around her at the small garret room in surprise. The walls were lined with old bookshelves and cabinets filled with whatever small wonders and tiny treasures three scavenging children could find in a rambling old mansion. The room’s only entrance was through a trapdoor in the floor. Light came from two tall thin window-slits that looked out over the Atlantic ocean. “Where is this place?” she asked in surprise. “It’s our secret headquarters,” Griffin told her. “You have to promise you won’t tell anyone about it.” “We’re safe here,” Magweed assured the former Shaper of Worlds. Her faerie sensitivity had long since explored this hidey-hole. “As safe as anywhere, anyhow. The Parody Master can’t whisk you away now to become his bride or anything.” “Not until he’s defeated the Legion and conquered the Parodyverse,” Jury qualified. “I wish we could do more to help,” Samantha Featherstone fretted, “It’s very frustrating, knowing that the ungodly need smiting and not being able to contribute. But really all we can do is hide here and stop the Parody Master using us against my grandfather and the Legion.” Jury examined the tiny chamber more carefully. The walls were of old fitted stone. No mortar was visible. The fireplace was carved from the same heavy granite. “This place predates the Lair Mansion,” the children’s’ guest noted. “Of course, this structure has always had a tendency to save and recycle bits of the various earlier buildings that have existed on this site.” She looked at the crowded shelves and cluttered floor. “Quite a museum you have here.” “The museum’s two floors down and in the west wing,” Griffin answered promptly. “It tends to hide when there’s a battle, to protect itself. This is just our den.” “It’s a good place to come when we want to get away from grown-ups. The mortal world can be very hectic sometimes,” Magweed pointed out. She showed Jury the small treasures of the chamber: an ancient and sinister jack-in-the-box, a wonderful snow-globe, a hand-made shadow theatre, a camera obscura. “There are an awful lot of old story books in here too.” She glanced curiously at the Shaper. “But you probably know all about stories, right?” “I did know, yes.” Jury admitted. “but all my special knowledge, all my power, got burned away when I helped save Earth’s armies from massacre on the conceptual plane. Now I’m just mortal.” “Nothing wrong with being just mortal,” Sam told her. “Just mortals can do amazing things.” “If this was a story,” Magweed said slowly, “then we’d be doing amazing things right now. We’d be finding a way to help daddy and the others.” “But this is a story, right?” Griffin argued, checking with the former Shaper as the expert on such things. “Everything’s a story, isn’t it?” “Everything is cause and effect,” Jury confirmed, “and that’s what a story is. Don’t fret. You kept me safe for a while. I’ll do my best to keep you safe in turn.” Samantha frowned. “It was very convenient,” she admitted, “us stumbling across this room – with the help of Griffin’s explorations and Magweed’s ability to talk to mice – so that when we needed to hide the Parody Master’s bride we had the perfect place waiting for us. That smacks of plotting.” “But why would the story want us hiding in this room with Jury?” puzzled Magweed. The children began to think. Untamed uncontrolled dimensional energies crackled and dropped the Lair Legion and the Parody Master in the Wookiegetlucky Swamps of Louisiana. A mere gesture from the conqueror set the mango swamps ablaze, turning a natural paradise into a roaring inferno. “This is better!” Hatman decided. “Less danger of collateral casualties and space for the big hitters to cut loose.” Premiere tackled the Parody Master, setting him up for a tail swipe from Finny. Instead the villain caught Premiere by the throat then hurled the great dragon round by his tail to bury him in the deep swamp mud. Hatty signalled that Amazing Guy and Trickshot were next in. By sheathing the irritating archer’s arrows in thin envelopes of quantum energy the shafts could pierce the Parody Master’s armour. “This is a hell of a lot of mud,” complained Dancer, trying to wad out of the swamp she’d appeared in. “If you feel the need to wrestle with Sorceress tight now, don’t resist,” Josh Clement urged her. “The villain?” she reminded the distracted Brown Streak, pointing to where Yuki had just set up a distraction so that Enty could let go with the full force of his repulsors. The Parody Master was hammered back into the mudflats of the delta, where Cressida shifted mud to blood, opening up a thousand gashes across the villain’s body. The Parody Master slapped everyone away from him again, sending the Legion flying two hundred yards backwards with savage force so he could gain his feet. With an unpleasant leer he gestured and the skies and swamp around them were filled with shimmering white cracks. “What now?” demanded Champagne. “And who do I see about reporting that I’m really not a member of this team?” “This is the Nexus of Unrealities,” the Librarian reported. “A unique phenomenon that manifests on planets of destiny, a gateway to the strange and mysterious.” “Because we so needed one more of those,” complained spiffy. “The PM’s just hypercharged it,” Al B. warned. “Opened up dimensional rifts all over the area. Watch out, because there’ll be incoming.” A dozen Brainless Ones stormed from the rift nearest to him, their death gazes petrifying the burning trees. As Donar moved in to stop them a cadre of Negativity Zone insectoids leaped from another gap, trying to ambush Yo and Visionary. Across the battlefield a full-grown grimpenghast burst out and clamped its jaws down on NTU-150’s armour before the Manga Shoggoth washed over the beast. “Tastes like chicken,” the loathsome elder creature observed. “Or camper vans.” Fin Fang Foom rose up and blasted the Parody Master again. He went in savagely with tooth and claw, not letting up long enough for the villain to plan a counterattack. The Makluan dragon roared. “DK was my friend. My best friend. He’s had a bad time, and I don’t know if he can resurrect himself any more. If not, that’s another reason you are going down!” The dragon’s jaws chomped down and tore off the Parody Master’s arm. For a moment the villain stared in shock at he bleeding stump. He toppled backwards under the dragon’s raking assault. But then the Parody Master restored himself and responded by blowing out the Makluan’s chest. “Finny’s down!” G-Eyed warned as the massive draconic bulk toppled sideways into the bayou. “And we’re getting overrun with monsters from dimension X.” “Don’t give the bad guy ideas, cuz!” Exile called back. “You have no idea how nasty those Dimension X things can get.” “Can’t be fightin’ here much longer, that’s for sure,” Sir Mumphrey Wilton agreed as he swung his pocketwatch to age a Shadowgrim to death. Behind him the Sorceress and the Baroness were struggling to contain the Choir Menstrual and the Unholy Orifice – and getting very grumpy about it. “Mister Harper, solution please?” “We need to trigger those residual Austernal transportation energies again,” the archscientist calculated, dodging the Clock Wraiths and taking cover behind Mr Epitome. “The energy backwash should close these rifts and return the intruders. Or tear the Earth apart. One or the other.” “Make it the first, please,” Hatty ordered. He and CrazySugarFreakBoy! were fighting back to back against Hero Feeders shaped like Sesame Street characters. “And fast,” Dreamcatcher Foxglove added. “I can’t ever admit to having my butt whupped by Elmo.” NTU-150 hammered down the Flensing Man who’d crawled out of the nightmare realm to core him and he activated the shift. “No!” gasped Amazing Guy as the Legion appeared in the wash of transportation energies. “Get us away from here!” The fight had shifted. Now the Parody Master faced his foes in the main street of a Normal Rockwell Midwest town where good folks lived behind picket fences and met with each other in the local soda shop. At this time of day there were plenty of citizens out shopping and chatting. A collection of moms stood beside the schoolhouse waiting for the children to come out. The Parody Master sliced off Enty’s cyborg arm, destroying the device he’d been using to trigger the jumps and sending searing energies to spill the founding Legionnaire smouldering to the ground. “I don’t think we’ll be leaving yet,” the villain gloated. “I like it fine just here.” “Noo!” shouted AG, encompassing the Parody Master in a thick quantum shell to contain the burst of force that would otherwise have smashed the main street into toothpick shards and stripped the skin off every passer-by. Amazing Guy flinched as if he’s been punched in the gut. Trickshot beside him heard ribs snap. “Get him out of town,” Hatman shouted, gesturing to Premiere and Donar. “Right now!” “Where are we?” Vizh shouted. “Where can we get people away to?” “Littlesmallville,” Lee Bookman answered promptly. “Dimensionally nomadic town that vanished with all those other places the Parody Master kidnapped. Nobody knows why goes wandering, but it’s a good place filled with good folks.” “It just likes to go walkabout,” the Shoggoth answered. “I’m surprised more places don’t.” The villain ignored all attempts by the strongest of the Legionnaires to shift him. He liked it fine just where he was. AG screamed as he contained a second burst from the Parody Master. “How much longer do you think you can contain me, protector of the Parodyverse?” the conqueror mocked. “You’re already bleeding from internal injuries, with a dozen broken bones.” He released a third, more powerful blast. “Let’s find out, shall we?” “Yeow!” yelped Banjoooo as he was nearly fried by the mere backwash of energies. “Somebody do something. AG can’t take much more. Nobody could.” “Al, G-Eyed, we need another way out of here fast,” Hatman shouted. “But perhaps we’d better let these others in on the secret, Amazing Guy?” the Parody Master mocked. “Why you’re so keen to protect this pathetic little place? Perhaps it’s time for your comrades-in-arms to meet your lovely family?” The Parody Master gestured and suddenly AG’s wife and children were transported around him. “Oh look,” the villain laughed at the terrified children, “daddy’s about to die shielding you from harm!” The next blast turned Amazing Guy into a tattered bloody pulp, hanging in midair by sheer willpower with his ragged cape fluttering behind him. “I… am protector…” he gasped through his agony. “Not… let them… down.” The Parody Master still ignored the dogpile around him, the oaths from Donar, Epitome’s attempts to pinion him, spiffy’s fern restraints. He directed his lethal unstoppable blast straight at Amazing Guy’s family. There was a crackle of dimensional energies just in time. The killing beam faded out even as AG’s shields shattered. Parody Master and Legion alike vanished again, leaving a frightened Littlesmallville and a more frightened family to wonder what would happen next. “Fishieonah?” the Parody Master laughed as his enemies appeared in an environment that few of them could survive. The seabed was clear, dappled with green-blue shadows from the surface above. Delicate shaped and carved spires of coral and crystal twisted up from the ocean floor. The ancient city of the Fish People had also returned from Comic-Book Limbo, and it was of course underwater. The Shoggoth expanded quickly to collect the Legion in his oxygenated goo. AG hung limply, barely breathing at all. Finny was in no better condition. Hatman pressed his hand to his wounded shoulder, his t-shirt a sticky red mess. G-Eyed, spiffy, Epitome, Premiere and Donar all carried the wounds of battle. The Dark Knight was already dead. “No one to attack me?” the Parody Master mocked. “Not even when I do this?” Yuki power-dived in to try and divert the villain’s aim but his bolt of force shattered the coral towers of the sacred city. At his gaze each lofty spire detonated in turn, shredding its inhabitants with millions of fragments of their own exploding homes. Premiere came to join Yuki but it was too late. The Parody Master slammed them together with shattering force and tossed them aside. He gestured to wrecked Fishionah. “Sushi,” he laughed. Then by his own will he shifted the battle somewhere far more interesting instead. The Parody Master appeared on the forecourt of the Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital and looked up at the modern white building with a savage glee. The Lair Legion had arrived scattered, spread out over three city blocks so that they were too slow to react to what was coming. The Parody Master spread his hands wide and released a spray of force to destroy the hospital. Hatman was the first to power in to him but it was too late. The lethal energies crackled and stopped an inch away from the walls of the hospital, sizzling around it like angry lightning before diffusing into the vehicles and building nearby. Every streetlight in Paradopolis exploded. “What?” ManMan puzzled. “How?” “There’s a secret under the Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital,” Knifey told his wielder. “But we don’t have time for that now. It can’t protect the place again.” On an upper floor of the besieged building Dr Whitwell demanded calm and began orders for emergency evacuation. “Just like we practised it people. Nurse DuBois, keep them moving there.” Mr Epitome wrestled with the Parody Master, taking body blows knowing that every shattering punch he received was saving lives. Al B. Harper grabbed Exile and Goldeneyed to wire into the device he’d cobbled together. “We need to shift this battle again, with what’s left of Sersi’s energies,” he warned them. “I need you guys to modulate the jump so was can pick a destination this time.” “Another pain chair,” G-Eyed noted. “Why not?” “But I get to pick where we take the PM for his date,” Exile insisted. In the lofty halls of Ausgard, in the golden palace of Glitterjarlholme, the Oldman struggled against the energy bonds that pinned him. “This must be pretty embarrassing for you, dad,” Hoki the Deciever noted from inside similar energy shackles that bound him. “You being the all-powerful all-pappy and that.” “Save your shallow wit for other occasion,” warned the father of the Ausgardian pantheon, “Watch and learneth.” There was an explosion of dimensional transfer discharges and the Parody Master and Lair Legion appeared in the midst of the golden city. “All righteth,” grinned Donar Oldmanson. “Now we art talking!” “Is this… Ausgard?” ventured Champagne, looking around her at the massive golden buildings with thatched roofs. “This started out as such a nice day.” “Ausgard central,” grinned CrazySugarFreakBoy!, doing a quick head-count to see that the wounded heroes had been left behind in that last jump. “The place where Donar’s All-Pappy can ramp up his son’s powers to massively cosmic levels, in fact.” Donar lifted Mjalcolm. The baseball-bat-with-a-nail-in-it glowed like the furnace of creation, drawing in lightnings from all the realm. The skies rolled with stormclouds and somewhere the valkyries were singing; something by Motorhead. “Did you plan this?” Hoki accused the Oldman. “Did you?” The Parody Master gestured to block Donar’s blow. Mjalcolm shattered his shield and smashed into the villain’s skull with the force of a two hundred megaton bomb. The Parody Master was spilled back onto his ass. Donar stomped down on him, kicking his sword away. The conqueror of the Parodyverse smashed his fist into Donar’s gut, winding the hemigod with a blow that could crack planets. Donar responded with a head butt that could break continents. “Go, Donar!” shouted Queen Annj, mostly to annoy Hoki. “Yay!” “While they’re doing that,” Hatman called to his team, “tactical huddle.” It was pointless trying to get between the two combatants just now. Pointless and suicidal. The Parody Master was staggered. He dredged more power from his reserves to ramp himself up to overmatch the Oldman-enhanced Donar. It took more will than he’d expected to summon such force. He compensated by radiating an energy blast to evaporate Ausgard. A few mead-halls lost their roofs and the streets were swept clean of goat-dung. Ausgard was a tough place. Donar kept up the pace, striking with fist and Mjalcolm, raining shattering blows that smashed the villain back pace by pace in the face of such warrior fury. “How ist?” the Ausgardian shouted through gritted teeth. “How ist to take on somebody thy own size, cowardly cur?” The Parody Master summoned his sword back to his hand. “Duck,” Baroness von Zemo advised the Legion. “Why?” asked Visionary. He ducked anyway. It was generally good policy. “Because I just attached a micro-transnuke I happened to find in the Science Elite’s arsenal to the hilt of the Parody master’s sword,” Beth noted with a twisted smile. “That’s all.” Something exploded in the Parody Master’s palm, blowing his hand to pieces, destroying his weapon. Donar went in for the kill. The Parody Master screamed with rage and shifted the battle again. Donar’s blow rang off the Parody Master’s helm, shattering it again. The shockwave blew out every window in Gothametropolis York. “GMY?” blinked spiffy, recognising the familiar shape of the Gothametropolis Squire newspaper building right in front of them. “Crap!” “It was time for a new setting,” the Parody Master suggested, restoring himself again, catching Mjalcolm in his palm and slamming a fist into Donar’s face. Suddenly lacking the Oldmanforce that could not manifest any more in the mortal realm, Donar was stunned and concussed. “I thought we should let people watch the final act of our little battle in person – assuming any of this city survives,” gloated the Parody Master. Hatman went in with his Steelers cap. “Al B, get us out of here again! Stat!” CSFB! and Yuki and Dancer were there to support him as he wrestled with the villain. The Parody Master brushed them all aside and concentrated his attack on Goldeneyed and Exile. The cousins couldn’t avoid the force-ball that came at them. De Brown Streak pushed them aside just enough so that the explosion only pummelled the three of them into unconsciousness rather than slaughtered them outright. “I like it here,” the Parody Master declared. “I don’t want to leave.” He hurled a fireball into the frontage of the Squire offices, blowing off the façade, turning the building into an inferno. “Help them!” shouted spiffy, absorbing as much heat as he could from the flaming building. Mr Epitome dived in to support the crumbling structural supports and found himself hefting half the weight of a building. Dancer somersaulted over him into a spot that had miraculously remained clear of flames. “This way,” she called to Vizh and Champagne. “We can lead people out!” Hatman switched with CSFB! and Yo so he could follow in with his fireman’s helmet while they diverted the Parody Master from worse carnage. “Fast!” grunted Dominic Clancy, straining with all his might, feeling his muscles tear. His half-healed eyes could only perceive smeary blurs but his other senses warned him of blackening flesh, of screams of the dying. ~~Fire to liar~~ Cressida said desperately, shifting a channel through the flames that was strewn with Richard Nixon masks. Sir Mumphrey Wilton froze the crumbling frontage of the building in time to allow precious moments for evacuation. The Parody Master smacked CSFB! and Yo away and turned and pointed at the Mr Epitome’s undefended back. “Oh no you don’t, buddy!” Banjoooo boosted the nearest van and drove it into the villain from behind. The Parody Master crushed the rest of the vehicle to get to the former king of the sea monkeys and hurled the unconscious Pete through the plate glass doors of the First Gothametropolis Bank. Premiere flew in and butted the villain in the midriff, hammering him backwards into the blazing Squire building then out beyond that and up into the skies. For a moment the two of them wrestled high above the city, until the Parody Master hurled Victor Brooke down at devastating velocity into the Clemson Distillery. There was another explosion. “Enough of this!” Sorceress called, her hair whipping wildly in a wind that was not present on the material plane. She gesture at the inferno of a skyscraper and the flames went out as if snuffed like a birthday candle. Dancer and the others dragged the last survivors clear of the wreckage before it tumbled down atop Mr Epitome. “I didn’t know you could just put of fires like that,” Yuki admitted to Whitney Darkness. Whitney’s skin was steaming, blistering. “I can’t,” she said through gritted teeth. “I can only move them.” She pointed upwards and released the fire again in a straight searing lance that seared around the Parody Master. “Gaah!” “A way out of this nightmare, Al,” Hatman called. “Before the casualty counts gets any higher.” Al B. stared at the ruin of his cobbled transfer apparatus. Without the time/space/energy manipulation of Derek and Bry he was back to square one. The Parody Master laughed and blew out another crowded building. “The Parody Master is on Main Street right now, destroying millions of dollars of real estate,” scowled GMY Mayor Velma Klein. “The Lair Legion are provoking him as usual. I want him stopped and out of my city. I want them all stopped. Stopped dead.” Like most of his comrades, the commander of the special weapons and tactics elite police unit had been recruited to the Mayor’s force straight from parole for violence-related crimes. He wore the finest battle armour and carried the most powerful weapons money could buy from the Turrets Inc. urban defence catalogue. He hefted his Mincemaster 3000 multi-particle personal cannon and stared at the Mayor. “Screw you, ma’am.” Yo and Epitome saw what was coming as the Parody Master turned towards the city as he had turned towards Fishieonah. They came in high and low, going for pressure points at the villain’s knees and neck. They distracted him for just a moment so that Trickshot could plaster the villain’s battle armour with shocking pink paint. “Pretty,” mocked the irritating archer. “You should keep that look.” The Parody Master restored his armour with a glance but another few vital seconds had been won for the Librarian and Mumphrey to get the general evacuation underway, accelerated by time distortions from the Chronometer of Infinity. The Parody Master lanced searing energies through the heroes holding him, sending them twitching to the ground with no control of their nervous systems. “Hmm,” he considered, finding the power came ever more slowly to him. “Something is going on here.” Yuki and spiffy went at him while Sorceress raised elementals to overwhelm him but he ignored them all for a moment as he analysed what was happening. It only took his enhanced senses a moment to recognise the standing wave around the planet and its associated dimensions that was cutting him off from the rest of the Parodyverse and denying him the renewal of his reserves. “Keep on him!” Knifey called. “Joe, get me in there. Now!” “Very ingenious,” the Parody Master commended his enemies. “I am not disappointed after all. You are worthy adversaries to mark my final triumph in this Parodyverse.” He smacked his enemies away from him and looked at the distance; towards the firehouse of Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises. “I see the root of the problem,” he noted. “It is easily solved.” Al B. dashed forward with a hastily-assembled protonic wave disassembler but was flung back like the others. “But first,” the villain said. He turned almost negligently and loosed the energy wave that would destroy Gothametropolis York. Then he vanished. “No!” screamed spiffy, reaching out with his energy-absorbing fern stretched to maximum growth. His net of fronds tore and burned as he caught the power intended to incinerate a city. He was blown back, wracked with pain as he captured more force than any human could possibly cope with. He tumbled onto the pavement charred and smouldering at the feet of terrified trapped bystanders. Gothametropolis didn’t die. “Is that the old Mayor?” asked one citizen. “Could be,” said another. “I didn’t vote for him.” “Think he has a wallet?” Dancer pushed her way through. “Get back!” she ordered. “Jay, he’s not breathing.” “Leave that to me,” said Champagne, coming over to start CPR on the burn-blackened fern-wielder. “You people have places to be, don’t you?” “The PM’s going after EEE,” Al B. warned. “He’s teleported over there now.” “Lair Legion line up!” Hatman called. “After him.” “Of course,” agreed the Baroness, “but by then it’ll be too late.” “Uh oh,” said Cody Harper as the extreme emergency klaxon sounded. “That’s not the burned toast alarm, is it?” “Incoming teleportation, cosmic level being,” Miss Framlicker warned, slamming her hand don on the defences activation panel. “I expect a bonus for doing cosmic level beings,” noted Killer Shrike, throwing away his slurpee and reaching for his weaponry. The defences delayed the Parody Master’s appearance for three seconds. Three seconds was long enough for Kara to focus her omni-triode ray and fire it full power at the incoming villain. Shrike frowned because her weapons made a better noise than his, but made up for it by doing a rolling leap and firing two-handed as he span. The Parody Master slammed the twins, Shrike, and Miss F into the walls with bone-splintering force and turned to where Lara Night was strapped into the wave projection apparatus. Amy Aston hurled a spanner at him. He slapped her down too, searing her into a pillar of flame. Lara gathered up the energies around the laboratory and lanced them at her foe. “Is that the best you can do?” teased the Parody Master. “Oh Lara, you have some harsh, painful lessons ahead of you. What I did to you before was only the start.” “You’re nothing but a big overpowered bully,” the strange visitor from another reality told him. “You don’t frighten me any more.” The Parody Master leered. “I enjoy a challenge,” he retorted. “But for now I think I’ll settle for just stripping you of your elemental gifts and leaving you helpless, broken, and naked.” Lara didn’t reply. She just cut loose. The Parody Master grunted as the full force of Lara’s fury hit him. His reserves were lower than he’d thought. He staggered back a step. Lara kept up the pressure. “You’re weakening,” he mocked her, pushing forward again. “So are you.” But even as she spoke Lara could sense how this was going to end. The Parody Master was burning off energies that he could not yet restore, but he could still overwhelm her before he was exhausted. She could already feel his will closing around her, seeking the private patterns of her DNA to violate her into being his helpless slave. She decided that she would die fighting him. Better to burn out than fade away. The Parody Master grunted at the renewed resistance but he seemed to enjoy it. He closed in to wreak his will. Lara Night vanished. She slipped away from the Parodyverse, recalled at the last moment by her mysterious patron rather. Shema wanted Lara for other things, and would not let her be destroyed. The Parody Master stared at the empty space where Lara had been, then laughed. “So that’s your choice, is it? Flee back to your home reality, then. I can follow your trail. Once this Parodyverse no longer amuses me I’ll absorb it and come looking for you again.” He was so absorbed in his planning that he didn’t notice or care that the emergency protocols of the EEE firehouse were activating, shifting building and the people in it to a side dimension where they could be safe. He didn’t care. He could take them any time he liked. Premiere blurred over the cityscape still trailing flames from the burning distillery and slammed into him like a thunderbolt, first of the Legion to arrive. The Parody Master shifted his attention back to the battle. Already he felt his powers welling within him again. He grabbed the paragon of power and translocated the combat yet again. Premiere and the Parody Master appeared at Parody Plaza, the open space before the Twin Parody Tower at the heart of Paradopolis. Citizens ran screaming from the burst of flame and the exploding shrapnel of the pavement as the villain slammed the last science hero down into the dirt. “This is the place,” the villain approved. “The perfect venue for our exciting finale.” Premiere struggled, pinned. “But not yet,” the conqueror of the Parodyverse considered. “Our glorious heroes haven’t suffered enough yet. When they lose they must lose so badly that there is no doubt that they have been destroyed utterly. When they face me they must do so in the darkest of rages and despair for what they have lost, for how they have failed.” At a flick of his fingers the Parody Master surrounded the city with a shimmering shield of force to keep the other Legionnaires at bay. Another gesture brought filled the plaza with a thousand or more badly wounded men shifted from sick-beds and intensive care wards across the planet. “War heroes,” the Parody Master told Premiere. “The wounded who survived, who thought they would live to boast that they fought against the Parody Master.” He spread his hands and cleansed the square of life, burning the veterans slowly so they would feel their deaths. Premiere was as powerful as his will made him. He still couldn’t escape the Parody Master’s grip. The Parody Master gestured again, and the blackened plaza was filled with the joint chiefs of staff and senior officers of each army that had opposed him. “Uh oh,” warned Dan Drury of SPUD. “Everybody down.” Nobody moved as quickly as the trained SPUD agent. The black lightnings that merely seared him to agonised unconsciousness punched through the rest with lethal precision. “Who next?” the Parody Master wondered, surveying his corpse-strewn showcase. “Ah yes.” His next teleport dragged the children of the Zero Street Orphanage into the killing field. “Don’t,” begged Premiere. “Don’t do it.” The Parody Master laughed. “But this is just the beginning,” he promised. “Before I allow the Legion here to face me one last time, many more will die. Your nations’ kings and queens and presidents and prime ministers and popes. The Legion’s friends, lovers, family. All scorched by my vengeance and displayed on spits so our heroes know that I am supreme.” He turned back to the cowering children. “But first…” A bag of rice burst on the back of his helmet. He turned in disbelief and took a pound of flour in the face. “You leave those kids alone!” shouted Mr Papadapoplis. The old proprietor of the Bean and Donut Coffee Bar just off the plaza had faced the Parody Master once before. He’d only just been discharged from the hospital after the encounter that had cost him an arm. He had no powers, and he couldn’t walk now without a stick. He faced off against the most powerful villain in the Parodyverse all the same. The Parody Master laughed at him. “You think you so big?” spat Mr P. “You think you’re big man because you can bully people? You think we frightened by bullies?” He flicked his thumb forwards over his top front teeth, a lethal insult in his native Greece. “Take the cork out,” he advised. The Parody Master’s amusement turned to fury. This mere mortal – this nobody - had defied him once before, robbing him of the chance to slaughter Colonel Drury. Now he dared to stand against the conqueror of the Parodyverse again, unafraid and unbowed? That would change. Spiro Papadapopolis held his ground while the orphans ran. Premiere reached up to the hand that pinioned him and broke the Parody Master’s fingers. As the villain reacted to the pain he hammed a fist into the villain’s solar plexus then washed him with a thermal spray that seared a hole in a chestplate which could withstand the sun’s core. “Thanks, old timer,” the last science hero called to Mr Papadapopolis. “I’ll take it from here.” All it required was will. The Parody Master reached out to evaporate the café proprietor. Premiere instead dislocated his adversary’s arm. “Pay attention, villain. I’m over here.” The conqueror of the Parodyverse shifted his whole will onto Victor Brooke. Premiere didn’t scream as the Parody Master blasted his flesh off, leaving nothing but a raw bloody pulp in human shape. Instead he slammed his fist forward and buried it deep in the Parody Master’s chest. The Parody Master staggered back, winded, surprised by the ferocity of the attack. Premiere was hurting him. “I’m regaining my strength now,” the conqueror warned the last science hero. Or perhaps he was reassuring himself. He slashed out of Premiere again, ripping open the hero’s chest in turn, shattering ribs and pulping internal organs. “You know, I was worried about the prophesies regarding you,” the Parody Master confessed as his enemy bled. Premiere was only standing, only alive, because Victor Brooke willed it so. “My prophets predicted that you could be the element that led to my downfall. But now I see it isn’t so.” Premiere came at him again, blinded, staggering. The Parody Master slammed an unstoppable fist through the hero’s head, shattering his skull to a pulp. As Premiere dropped the Parody Master released a wash of power to sear him into ashes. He disintegrated the remains. “So much for that prophecy then,” he declared, stepping over the place where the last science hero had died. He restored himself back to peak condition and looked around the ruined plaza. “Now where was I?” he speculated. “I don’t think this place needs that Twin Parody Tower any more.” The barrier around Paradopolis burst like a soap bubble, shifted by the Shoggoth’s chymeric gate to another universe entirely. Donar, Yo, and Epitome dropped down from the Lairjet above right onto the Parody Master himself. The battle was renewed; one last time. Half a galaxy away Hallie hung in energy chains like all the Parody Master’s enemies. “Keep transmitting,” she commanded the Reticulum Matrix, the computer civilisation that controlled the communications net that was simultaneously relaying what was happening on Earth to every planet the Parody Master had touched. “The signal is going out by the will of the Parody Master,” the node organisers pointed out. “It is transmitted whether we will it or not.” “For now it is,” Fleabot answered, “while the PM’s winning. But if things turn it’s likely to just go dead. So keep it going when that happens, right?” “But the Parody Master is triumphing,” objected a batch operator. “But he’s going to lose anyway,” Asil Ashling insisted fiercely. “You’ll see!” “This is just embarrassing,” objected Anvil Man as he dangled helplessly in energy restraints aboard the damaged captured avawarrior training ship Bloody Genocide. “Can’t we do something to get out of here instead’a waitin’ to see how the Legion get kakked?” “I think we’re stuck,” VelcroVixen admitted. She was fairly relaxed about being chained up usually. “I think we have to hope that on this occasion the Legion does something that lets it win.” “Now that the PM’s rumbled their energy-blocking trick?” Brass Monkey scorned. “I don’t think so.” Kerry Shepherdson was holding Danny Lyle’s body even though she was energy-shackled like the rest. “They’ll do it,” she hissed. “They’ll make him burn. He’s got to burn.” “There’s got to be some way out of these things,” Liu Xi Xian objected, tugging again at the energy bonds that blocked her powers. “We can’t just hang here while the Legion gets taken down one by one.” On the monitor screen before them dull thud crumpled backwards in a pool of blood with an energy javelin piercing his gut where the telepathic tapeworm Cressida lived. Mumphrey suspended the critically-wounded young man in time until medical aid could arrive. “I have been trying to compose my mind in such a way that I no longer meet the criteria for being confined in this manner,” Pelopia, Priestess of Logos reported. “So far my disciplines have proved inadequate.” In the battle at Paradopolis Plaza Sorceress managed to cultivate a sudden growth of maggots to explode from the Parody Master’s face before the psychic backlash from him dropped her comatose on the heap of the fallen. “But look at us,” Zdenka Zarazoza told her fellow potential brides. “The Parody Master wishes us scared, subservient, tamed. Instead the resistance that our heroes have begun burns fierce within us. You, Liu Xi, were once so shy and passive that you dared not face the world. Now you seek to topple a tyrant. You, Pelopia, once saw all life as obedience and cold duty. Now you struggle for what seems right to you in the face of impossible odds. There is no finer tribute to fallen friends than this: that their heroism has awoken courage in others. In us.” In Paradopolis Yo hurled Rabito into the Parody Master’s ruined face. The pain-wracked villain dispersed thought-rabbit and pure thought being alike in wild reprisal, then staggered from the effort. He seemed to be growing weaker still. And the Parodyverse watched. “You’re running out of heroes,” called the Parody Master. He brought Donar down across his knee and snapped the hemigod’s back. “I think you’re running out of time, too.” “Keep at him,” Hatman ordered, dodging an energy blast and answering with his tornados cap to keep the enemy off balance. “Just keep going at him!” “You’re getting predictable,” the Parody Master warned. “You try to distract me while your lesser members pull the wounded from the battlefield.” He gestured and made the pavement explode around the Librarian, sending Lee Bookman down in a gory heap beside dull thud. He flexed his fingers once more, teleporting back all the members of the Lair Legion that had been left behind in the frantic place-hopping so he could stand on the pile of their fallen bodies. “Hey again!” objected the suddenly-summoned Champagne. “Now that’s quite enough.” Since the Parody Master was standing right astride her she raised the B-300 shoulder-launched anti-tank weapon she’d taken the trouble to acquire since her last teleportation and fired the time-delayed high explosive dual purpose rocket up between his legs. She rolled aside just as the shell detonated. “Ooh!” grinned Dancer. “Nice one!” She probability danced a gas-explosion on the spot where the Parody Master had landed and was curled into a tight ball. The Parody Master willed the pain away, restored himself, and staggered up. It was getting harder, and it shouldn’t be. “I destroyed the standing wave generator,” he told himself. “I eliminated the Night wench.” Yet he was still being blocked from his powers. He slapped CrazySugarFreakBoy! away again and tried to concentrate. He was tired, unable to cope with the diverse and constant assaults of his annoying adversaries. They were using that against him, trying to keep him occupied, wearing him down. But how? A nasty whisper in his mind reminded him that Lisa Waltz had revoked his authority in the Parodyverse. The Keeper of the Booke of the Law’s last act was to take his office from him. Surely that could not prevent him from plundering the Parodyverse for power as he willed? He swatted down Mr Epitome and Yuki Shiro. The standing field was operating again, he was sure of it. But where? How? Elizabeth von Zemo caught him painfully in the chest with that wretched pistol of hers, set to the exact frequency he usually operated his powers upon. He shifted frequencies – slowly, painfully – and caused the weapon to detonate in the treacherous Baroness’ hands. He was surprised when the woman lunged at him again, scattering dimensional mines in his way. She had caught him a good super-strong kick on his sundered chest before he realised that it was the silicone entity that sheathed Elizabeth von Zemo that was still active. A vicious neural pulse was enough to rectify that, sending Silicone Sally oozing off her mistress into the gutters. But he was becoming distracted again. He seared away the latest attack from the Shoggoth and followed his chain of thought. His chest hurt, from more than the Baroness’ attack. It had hurt ever since Premiere’s assault, when he had plunged his fist right at the conqueror’s heart. Ever since the last science hero had buried a localised field transmitter in the Parody Master’s chest to replace the global one that was destroyed. The Parody Master had healed himself up around it. He had been burning away his remaining reserves ever since. At last he understood the Legion’s strategy. They were provoking him, tempting him to use his power arrogantly to take them down, emptying him out until he had nothing left. For the first time ever he could see the limits of his power. And there was more. The Parody Master splashed energies to scatter Trickshot, Harper, Visionary, and kept thinking. There, behind this ploy, subtly lending their influence to coax it to success, were the hidden powers of the Parodyverse. They were making their move at last. The final battle. “Dolts!” the Parody Master announced to his foes, those seen and unseen. “You think you have tricked me? It is my genius that has triumphed over you! Did you not see the trap I set, to tempt you all out, to lure you from your miserable hiding places so I could conquer you one and all? I knew that I must appear weak, must seem capable of being defeated, before you would commit your all. Now you have played your hands and I know you. Now I can triumph with one final step.” “Uh oh,” worried Vizh. “I really don’t like the sound of that.” “I don’t like the sound of his voice at all,” noted Yuki. “Whiney and grating at the same time. Very annoying.” “Whatever he’s doing, stop him!” Hatman called. “Everybody in.” The Parody Master hurled them back, burning off more precious resources. It was time for more distractions. He snarled at the effort and dragged additional victims to the slaughter. Nine surprised Caphans. Alice April Apple. Asil Ashling. Aunt April Pepper. Deana Morris, costumed in her superhero garb as Pretty Bird. Ebony of Nubilia. Kerry Shepherdson. Loved ones all. “Die,” he told them. “He’s done it to them again!” Kat Allen complained, watching the battle on the TV in the PMH Emergency Room waiting lounge where she and the others had been evacuated. Meggan Foxxx, Herbert Garrick, and Amber StClare were in surgery right now. “He’s used that trick too often,” Flapjack disapproved. “He’s running low on ideas. He’s getting desperate.” “He’s slaughtering people to keep the Legion busy. Friends and family.” The hunchback’s horrific facial scars seemed to suit him. “Nah, look. Sir Mumphrey was ready for him this time. He managed to time-shift everyone forward a while and avoid the killer blast.” Kat pointed at the bloody figure sprawled on the ground. “Not everyone,” she said, weeping. “Deanna!” screamed Trickshot, clutching the lifeless corpse in his arms. “Pretty bird!” The Parody Master laughed. Epitome tore into him again, refusing to be deterred by his growing number of broken bones and lesions. Yuki rebooted her systems one more time and went in to back him up. Dancer forced herself to move so that every blow hit with maximum probability. The Shoggoth flowed forward to encompass the villain, seeking orifices so he could take his battle internal. The Parody Master was still amused. “So sentimental,” he scorned. “So righteous and so foolish.” He’s wanted them all this close. He pulsed lightning through them, sending Epitome, Yuki, and the Shoggoth away scorched and burning, then deftly caught Dancer by the wrist and dragged her to him. “You get saved for later, of course,” he promised as she shut down her mind. “That can be in no way good,” observed Champagne. Then the fires turned back on the Parody Master, plaiting together into a raging knot that slammed into his face with the fury of a sun. The ground shook and magma welled from the gratings around the plaza. The Parody Master’s armour began to buckle and melt as the intense heat built up in them. The villain’s skin began to blacken. Kerry Shepherdson stepped forward out of her timeslip. Danny Lyle had been in her arms when she had been transported here. Now his corpse lay at her feet and fuelled her wrath. “You!” she shrieked at the Parody Master responsible for her loss. “You burn!” The Parody Master burned. His internal organs began to explode one after another. But he also turned off Kerry’s mind just as he had her sister’s. Then he restored himself again. “Hmm,” he considered. “She may be worthy of my attention.” “No!” snarled Trickshot, picking up his bow again. “Get offa her, You’re dead! You’re a dead man!” “Because a man with a bow and arrow can cause so much harm to the all-powerful conqueror of the Parodyverse?” mocked the Parody Master. He flicked Hatman and CSFB! away from him and stood with his arms outstretched for the archer’s attack. “Take your best shot.” Carl Bastion selected an arrowhead from his harness, fitted it, and fired with deadly accuracy in one swift movement. The arrow detonated on the Parody Master’s breastplate, right over his heart. The tip exploded into choking black smoke. Trickshot had fired one of his smog arrows. “That’s it?” laughed the Parody Master gleefully. “I slaughter your woman and you reply with fumes?” Under cover of the smoke and while the villain was gloating over Trickshot, Joseph Pepper moved forward and took his shot at last. Knifey flashed in his hand and ManMan buried the talking dagger right between the eyes into the Parody Master’s skull. “Nah,” Knifey told the conqueror of the Parodyverse as the villain screamed. “That was his best shot.” The blade was still in the Parody Master’s head. “He’s hurt!” ManMan called out. “Maybe down. Keep him down!” “On it,” Al B. called, picking up Beth von Zemo’s gun, improving it with a casual fiddle, and firing it point blank at the villain. The Parody Master rallied his will as best he could to resist Knifey’s assault. It hurt so much. That weapon was good at what he did. Knifey had scarred the Parody Master once before. “Aaaaaaaggghhhh!!!” screamed the villain, part in agony part in fury. He flexed what was left of his power to the maximum and cast the knife away from him, as far as he could hurl it, across times and dimensions. He felt the blade’s smugness as it went, tearing huge chunks of him with it. The Parody Master tried to think, tried to rise from his knees, but the damned Lair Legion were upon him again, everywhere. His head pounded and his chest hurt and the object embedded there still sapped his powers so he was weak and vulnerable. Knifey’s wound was slow to heal and kept on coming back. The Parody Master hurled Yuki and Epitome away again – how many times was that? Blasts that were meant to be killing shots merely stunned them from the fight. His energies were too low. Mumphrey swung his pocketwatch round, heavy with time, straight at his skull. The Parody Master flinched away, ducked. Shame mingled with his rage. Shame and fear. These beings, these nothings, were in danger of defeating him. It was time for the endgame. He shook himself clear of his enemies one last time. “Game over,” he announced. “Now I claim the Storyheart. Then we’ll take it up from where we left off.” He reached into his chest cavity, found the device Premiere had buried there, and crumpled it into scrap. He gestured again and half a dozen sleek white cylinders appeared around the plaza, each the size of a refrigerator. They sparkled under the nebula skies. “Uh-oh,” recognised Al B. Harper. “Narrative bombs. I knew there were a few unaccounted for.” “The things that blew Arachknight City out of existence to a happy ending?” Hatman asked. “Yeah, that’s an uh-oh.” “Just one of those things blew Arachknight City away,” Visionary reminded folks. “I’m counting six here. With timers.” “And these are modified versions,” the Parody Master assured them. “They won’t send this misbegotten city and its mewling inhabitants to some idyllic ending where they live in peace, love, and harmony for the rest of their days.” He chuckled. “Actually, quite the reverse.” “He has reversed the narrative direction,” the Shoggoth recognised. “When these devices activate, all around them will be shifted to the most hellish plots possible, to suffer horror after horror forever.” “You mean…” gasped CSFB! “Millar and Meltzer and Leifield and Byrne and Nu-Bendis! Nooooo!” “Save your city if you can,” sneered the Parody Master. And he teleported away. Hatman and CrazySugarFreakBoy! grabbed him and vanished with him. “Crap!” swallowed ManMan. “So what do we do now? No way we can evacuate the city in less than…” he checked the timers, “seven minutes!” “We’ll deal with ‘em,” Sir Mumphrey declared. “Unfortunately they’ve been shielded from temporal interference. We’ll need to defuse them the hard way. Dr Harper?” Al B. had known that was coming. “I don’t know if we can,” he warned. “These things are security sealed in an indestructible casing. It could take me hours, days even to just figure out the lock mechanisms to get inside one of…” “This one’s open,” Champagne noted innocently, slipping a thin roll of tools back into her pocket. “It wasn’t that hard.” “Fine, then next we need the Shoggoth in there so he can alter the pandimensional harmonics.” “That would be a bad idea,” noted the loathsome elder being. “I am contaminated with mortal matter, remember?” “Just do it,” Al told him. “We have less than six minutes to save the world.” The Parody Master knew exactly where the Storyheart had been sent, to the Vault of Waiting Subplots under Parody Island, a storage place of the Celestians. When Jury had hidden the power-source of the Parodyverse from him she’d assumed that the Celestian emanations would mask the Storyheart’s signature, that the Celestian defences would keep it from him. The Parody Master burned out the Celestian defences. Then Hatman in his WWF hat twisted the villain’s neck round a hundred and eighty degrees, shattering his spine, and CSFB! rammed his hand through the head-wound that Knifey had left and began to rip out brain. It was a vicious, brutal combined assault designed to kill the conqueror of the Parodyverse once and for all. The Parody Master caught his foes and slammed them together with satisfying force. He heard the bones snapping as the Leader and Deputy Leader of the Lair Legion crashed together. He forced himself to recover even as he choked the life out of the heroes in his grasp. “Even at my weakest…” he breathed wrathfully, “I am greater than you.” “That’s… why you ran… from the Legion…” gasped Hatman. “Right?” “We kicked your ass good,” spat CrazySugarFreakBoy! “and you’ll always know it, *&£%wad!” The Parody Master tightened his grip to close the windpipes of his mocking foes. “I can suspend your Impossibilityium regeneration abilities,” he told CSFB!. “And I only need your serious-matter-laced brain for my next Doomherald,” he told Hatman. “So there’s no reason why I shouldn’t just tear the limbs off both of you right now.” Hatman stared into his enemy’s eyes, defiant to the last. “But first,” grinned the blood-covered Parody Master, “the Storyheart.” He dragged the battered Legionnaires after him and turned to claim the first relic of the Parodyverse. It wasn’t there. “Heh,” noted Exu, watching the conflict from the ruined splendour of his former temple, now reclaimed from comic-book limbo, “There’s the twist in the tale. You should have expected that if you go looking for the Storyheart, former boss.” The last Doomherald was also confined in the energy chains that encompassed all the Parody Master’s enemies. He amused himself by straining against them, forcing the conqueror to expend ever more power to maintain them. He expected many others were doing the same. “So I wonder where the Storyheart went?” The snow globe was glass, not plastic, and it contained a miniature model of the Lair Mansion itself. Samantha held it in her palm and showed it to Jury. “We found this down in one of the old cellars,” she admitted. “The ones we’re not allowed in,” added Griffin smugly. “Isn’t it beautiful?” Magweed asked. “So detailed. And see how every flake is different, twisting and combining to form new patterns as they spin and fall.” “But that’s how stories form,” Jury said. She looked more closely at the little ornament. “Where did you say you found it?” “Downstairs,” Samantha reported. “In the really old parts of the island, near where that dimensional door is that Goldeneyed was stuck in. Past the whispering gallery and behind the sleeping knights, where the underground waterfall cascades past the stalactite caves. It was in an old sea-trunk with a paining on it.” “What painting?” asked Jury breathlessly. “A goldfish,” Magweed told her. “A rather nice goldfish.” “A symbol of the Shaper of Worlds,” Jury swallowed. “My symbol. My chest.” “Stop laughing at me!” screamed the Parody Master, hurling Hatman and CSFB! away from him like broken puppets. “It’s near here. I can sense it. I can bring it to me! I can bend it to my will!” “No, said Jury, appearing at the cave-mouth cupping the Storyheart in her hands. “I’m afraid you can’t.” “The Storyheart!” the Parody Master recognised, reaching out to his intended bride. “Give it to me!” “Never,” she answered determinedly. “You will never have it. You will never have me. It’s over.” For a moment a look of fear raced over the Parody Master’s face. A cosmic being holding the thing that empowered the greatest artefacts of the Parodyverse, holding the source of the Gah! and the Jarvis cosmic, of the corposant fire and the power arcane, could destroy him forever. Then his horror turned into a gory smirk as he realised: “You cannot use the Storyheart. You are no longer a cosmic being. You traded the last of that to save worthless humans on the conceptual plane.” “I did,” agreed Jury, judging him. “It was worth it. Besides, this story isn’t about me. I only Shaped it, once upon a time. It isn’t about Ioldabaoth, though he set you loose and provoked you to all this. It isn’t even about you, Parody Master, though you have betrayed your calling and abandoned your purpose, to the woe of the Parodyverse. No…” She stepped aside to clear the doorway. “This is about them.” “Lair Legion Line Up!” shouted Trickshot, loosing an arrow with one of the Baroness’ point-singularity negativity bombs strapped to the tip. “Lining up right now,” agreed the Shoggoth (who was also in Parody Plaza defusing narrative bombs). “Although my definition of a line is much more interesting than those things you mortals insist on calling lines.” He demonstrated by oozing around the Parody Master, attacking him from above, below, yesterday, fish, and gloznarak. “Good show!” called Sir Mumphrey, accelerating the Legion’s assaults with his chronometer and slowing the rate that the Parody Master was recovering his power. “Keep at the blighter. We’ve got him on the ropes!” “Leave a space for me to blast him,” ManMan called to the Shoggoth as he fired one of the protonic disassembled cannons from the Legion’s weapons locker in the Mansion above. “It’s not like I’m janitor here. I don’t need to clean up the mess.” “Why are you here, exactly?” Champagne asked the Elvis impersonator. “I mean, you lost Knifey so you lost your powers, but you’re still fighting on.” “Just because I don’t have powers doesn’t mean I’m going to run from the battle. Besides, Sir Mumphrey told me to. Why are you here? You’ve been complaining about being dragged along ever since we all got teleported to the PM’s flagship.” Champagne shrugged and fired the weapon she’d selected from the weapons room. She didn’t like firearms but she was intrigued by something labelled Wang’s Pregnancy Gun. “It seemed rude to leave without thanking the person who invited me,” she noted. “Besides, I love a challenge.” “And takin’ on this bastard is a worthwhile one,” Trickshot promised through gritted teeth as he aimed an adamantine tip at the villain’s throat. “He. Is. Going. Down.” “You think threatening our loved ones, dragging innocents into harm's way will stop us?” snorted Mumphrey, swinging his pocketwatch as a weapon. “You think us caring about human life is a weakness to exploit? It's caring about something greater than ourselves that makes us strong enough to defeat you, you pathetic excuse for a bounder!” “Amen!” called Tricky, transfixing his shaft through the Parody Master's gullet. “Here endeth the lesson!” The Parody Master staggered again, hardly believing how much these fleas were hurting him, how close to the edge he’d been pushed. He released a final wave of shattering force to hammer them all away, slamming them to the sides of the cave, dropping them unconscious and defeated. He vaporised the Shoggoth. He tried to rise but for a moment his legs failed him. Only his rage fuelled him to rise and turn to Jury once more. “And now, my beloved, you will yield the Storyheart to me. You cannot use it. You cannot keep it from me. I am the Winner.” Yuki rebooted to find that Mr Epitome had wired her emergency power pack back in. She had one hell of a headache for a disembodied brain in a cyborg body. “What’s happening?” was her first question. Dominic Clancy hadn’t been awake for long himself, but he’d had time for a tactical overview. “Six narrative bombs going off in about ninety seconds, set to shift the better part of the planet to the worst possible storylines ever. Harper and the Shoggoth trying to find ways of defusing them. Remnants of the team have gone to the Lair Mansion to try and deny the Storyheart to the Parody Master. We can’t get there before the bombs detonate.” “Okay,” nodded Yuki. “Al, chances of defusing all six of these bombs in a minute and a half?” The archscientist didn’t look away from the scope he was using to guide the Shoggoth. “Is Dancer awake?” he asked. “She’s comatose.” “Well then, I’d have to say very very small.” “Okay then,” the cyborg P.I. said. “So we need a different plan. Can we move the bombs?” Epitome tried to shift one of the devices but it was locked in place. The countdown timer said forty seconds. “Goldeneyed could teleport them,” he suggested. “But he’s down.” Yuki located Bry Katz amongst the pile of wounded and dead strewn around the Plaza. “Come on, G-Eyed,” she urged him, shaking him to wakefulness. “We need you.” “B-beth…?” “Yeah, whatever, come on.” “Whatever you are doing must be done quickly,” the Shoggoth reported from inside the bombs. “I am boiling away too quickly here. I am not pure enough to maintain this form in this place. I am… in pain…” Al B. didn’t want to know what could hurt a Shoggoth. “I’m setting co-ordinates, G-Eyed. Think you could shift these there?” Bry Katz passed out. The first of the narrative bombs went off right in his face. “And now, my beloved, you will yield the Storyheart to me. You cannot use it. You cannot keep it from me. I am the Winner.” The Parody Master strode towards Jury, but Jury denied him. “I can’t use it,” she agreed, “but another cosmic office holder could.” “Wilton is down,” the conqueror of the Parodyverse pointed out, “and his is but a minor office anyway.” “Whereas I,” argued Visionary, “was Chronicler for a day.” And he held the Storyheart in his hands. “You cannot use that,” the Parody Master said; but there was a catch of uncertainty in his voice. “I can’t be proved real or fake. I’m a placeholder keeping a cosmic monster from reality. I live in a transdimensional lighthouse. I’ve been a hologram and a teenager and host for an elder being and head of a pantheon and CIC of Earth’s armed forces and husband to the goddess of HTML. My friends are artificial intelligences and pure thought beings and hemigods and probability-twisters and superheroes and aliens. My son’s an imaginary griffin and my daughter’s a faerie princess.” Visionary shook his head. “Of course I can use this. This is the Storyheart. I’m all about the stories.” The Parody Master lunged forward. Visionary caught Goldeneyed’s attempt to shift the narrative bombs as they exploded and moved them all – all but that first one, it was too late for that – all inside the Parody Master. They detonated within him, filling him with hideous futures. The Parody Master screamed. Hatman hit him. CSFB! hit him. Trickshot fired a simple wooden shaft into the villain’s black heart. “This… this isn’t possible…” the Parody Master complained as he fell. “I can’t… I am…” “Loser,” said CrazySugarFreakBoy! “Ha-ha!” The Parody Master died. One narrative bomb had detonated in Parody Plaza, in the heart of Paradopolis. The Shoggoth had given his all to alter it’s narrative flow back to happy ending. Now the Shoggoth had been burned away. The wave of transforming story burst from its capsule, ready to carve two cities out of the Parodyverse. The blast seared outwards, flashing Goldeneyed away in an instant, bursting over the dead and wounded in the plaza, sucking all away to new futures in new worlds. The great shape of Fin Fang Foom vanished, and the Dark Knight beside him, dull thud, NTU-150, De Brown Streak, Banjoooo, Premiere… Amazing Guy caught it. The protector of the Parodyverse was dying of his wounds, but he forced his quantum globe around the bursting narrative and held it in place. “Whoah!” gasped Al B. Harper as he realised what Amazing Guy was doing. “Just… whoah!” Dancer staggered to her feet, shaking debris from her hair. “What’s that?” she demanded. “It’s putting out such a probability signature that it boot-started my brain.” “You might want to keep it around,” suggested Kerry, before she remembered where she was and that Danny was dead. “Amazing Guy’s holding back the narrative rewrite,” Al B. explained. “Just by his heroism. He’s saving us all.” The shimmering bright globe of narrative energy edged outwards despite the best attempts of the protector of the Parodyverse. Now the ball was ten yards across, still expanding, inches from Amazing Guy himself. “We’ve got to help him!” Yuki cried. “How?” Mr Epitome demanded. He looked up at the protector of the Parodyverse and saluted. The shimmering globe expanded more until it had enveloped Amazing Guy himself. The protector of the Parodyverse vanished then. His wife and children vanished with him. Littlesmallville vanished. Only his memory remained. And the narrative globe expanded no more. The Parody Master died. Suddenly the energy shackles across the Parodyverse shattered and vanished. The dark energies that had powered the dimensional dreadnaughts faltered and failed, leaving them floating in space. The unifying will that maintained the avawarriors evaporated, leaving them sick and confused, dying with their master. Avapriests everywhere found their magics gone, leaving them vulnerable to the vengeance of those they had oppressed. “Well,” Xander the Improbable sighed, checking his watch, “I think that’s that.” “It?” asked Cleone Swanmay, standing beside him by a village post box in Derbyshire. “You mean the Resolution War?” “The Parody War,” answered the master of the mystic crafts. “Turns out we managed to avoid it being the Resolution War after all.” He sighed again. “Just as well. The Resolution War will be much more nasty if we ever get there. Though hopefully not as long.” “What now, then?” Cleone asked him. “There’s so much still to do.” “We’ll need to leave that to others for the present,” the sorcerer supreme told her. He dropped a handful of letters into the red pillar box and patted it for luck. “We have to go.” “I’m ready.” “I’m glad.” Xander turned and opened a door that hadn’t been there before and led the swanmay through. After it closed, the door wasn’t there again. Visionary clutched the Storyheart in his palms and watched the little snow globe melt away to somewhere else. “What just happened?” he asked. “You just completed the story,” Jury told him. “The wicked Parody Master is dead.” “He’s dead?” the possibly-fake man asked, a bit stunned by the experience of holding the Storyheart in his hands. “Dead as disco,” Trickshot confirmed, kicking the corpse. “See-the-body dead,” CSFB! added with satisfaction. “It’s over,” Hatman said quietly. “We have a winner.” “So… he’s dead?” Vizh checked. “If you don’t believe me,” Jury asked, “why not ask an expert? The Destroyer of Tales should know.” “Thugos?” Hatman frowned, looking around wearily ready to fight the tyrant of Apocalyspe. “That was the old Destroyer of Tales,” said the new Destroyer. “This is the improved, sexier version.” “Lisa!” gasped CSFB!, breaking into a huge grin as the amorous advocatrix sashayed into the room stroking her smelly ginger cat. “Of course! YouhavetobedeadtobecomeDestoryerandVizhdidthisdeal withChroniclerintheCelestianscontrolroom…” “Wait…” Visionary said, “that worked?” “I’m the new, official Destroyer of Tales,” Lisa confirmed, “charged with bringing stories to a proper ending.” She looked down at the Parody Master. “His is over.” “So… you can bring happy endings fer us?” Trickshot checked. “You can bring back Pretty Bird?” Lisa gave the archer a hug. “I can’t change the past,” she told him. “In fact there’s all kinds of rules that I have to work to – at least until I get a chance to parse the exact wording in the statute books. I can’t resurrect any of our dead or put right any damage.” “What about the Shaper then?” Hatman asked Jury. “You do beginnings, right? Couldn’t you…?” “I’m not Shaper of Worlds any more,” Jury told him. “There’s a new one of them, too. The Space Robots are active again, repairing things. All the offices are being reset. There’s a new Shaper now.” “And you don’t want to meet that stone cold bitch,” Lisa said. “I can’t tell you who she is, by the way, but I’m guessing you’ll find out sooner or later.” “So we fought the PM, saved the Parodyverse, and all we get as rewards are losses and hurts,” Vizh said bitterly. “And new things to fight another day.” “I’m sorry,” Lisa told him, showing a rare moment of affection for the possible-fake man. “If it’s any consolation the Storyheart read your soul to work out a reset for the Earth. At midnight tonight it’ll get put back to where it should be, and all the people who are scattered across the galaxies will be transported to where they belong. That’s something, isn’t it?” “Better than a kick in the teeth,” agreed Hatman. “but…” “I really can’t do anything,” the first lady of the Lair Legion insisted. Then a sly smile crossed her face. “Although…” Deputy Commissioner Harold Hogglet had taken charge of the devastated Parody Plaza. Now emergency services were clearing away the wounded and the dead that hadn’t been consumed by the narrative wave. SPUD officers were arriving to cordon off the shimmering globe of energy and ask Al B. Harper questions they couldn’t possibly understand the answers to. A few of the damaged Legionnaires were back up by now. Paramedics were bandaging Sorceress’ head. Donar was being lifted in an ambulance, insisting that his broken spine was but mere a scratch for the nonce. In fact it would be three days before he was up and walking. spiffy was being tended for his burns and complaining loudly about it. Exile hardly had time to grab a band-aid before he was drawn back to his place in the Mythlands at Valeria’s side. The Librarian was limping round the narrative globe with a fascinated look on his face. The Baroness sat sourly wrapped in a blanket with OPS guards pointing weapons at her. Of her costume there was no sign. Dancer was hugging a sobbing Kerry when the LairJet from the Lair Mansion landed. She did a double take as Lisa walked down the gangplank. Mumphrey, Hatman, CSFB!, Trickshot, ManMan, and Champagne followed her, then Visionary holding the hands of Magweed and Griffin with Sam and Jury behind them. Lisa winked at Shep. “The Parody Master is dead,” announced Sir Mumphrey Wilton to the growing crowd around the plaza, and to the world, and via Hallie’s transmission to the whole Parodyverse. “So die all tyrants. The war is over. Go and live in peace.” His words rippled through the crowd, repeated and magnified as the wonder of it dawned on people. The doom was lifted from their heads. The cheering started slowly but rose to a deafening intensity. “I think they like us,” noted Yuki Shiro. “We are pretty magnificent.” “It’s not every day we save the Parodyverse,” admitted Mr Epitome, hiding his emotions as best he could. “Every other week at the most.” He turned away then. His enhanced vision had already seen Kat Allen pressing her way to him through the throng and there was nothing he wanted to do more in the world right now than held her close forever. “We lost some people,” Al B. reported to Hatman. “When this narrative bomb went off, it caught our wounded. Finny, DK, DBS, thuddy and Cressie, Enty, G-Eyed, Banjoooo…” “They might be back,” Lisa noted. “I’ll see what I can do. It might take some time - days, weeks, months, maybe years – but I can get them back, if they want to come. It’s just a matter of time.” “What about Yo?” Vizh demanded. “He was dispersed or something. We have to help Yo.” “Yo will definitely be back,” Lisa promised. “Sometimes I need my Happy Place.” “And the Shoggoth?” asked Al B. Lisa concentrated. “That’s a different story,” she noted. “Literally. Coming soon.” “Amazing Guy sacrificed himself to stop the bomb consuming the whole of Paradopolis,” Yuki reported. “I hope wherever he went, he’s happy now.” “Now that I can guarantee,” Lisa said. “Happy endings for all who went in there.” She glanced at Trickshot. “For everybody. The way’s still open.” Carl Bastion has found Deanna Morris’ body in the neat row of covered corpses by the medical vans. He looked up sharply at Lisa’s words. “For everybody?” he checked. The first lady of the Lair Legion nodded. “If you want that.” Trickshot hefted Pretty Bird in his arms and walked to the police tape around the glowing sphere. “Guys and gals,” he told the Legion, “It’s been a real blast servin’ with you. You guys are the best, and you deserved me. But now I gotta go.” “This is a real longshot,” Hatman observed. “The kind you do best.” “Hit the bullseye, Carl,” Dancer called. Tricky shot them a blazing grin and leapt into the narrative sphere. “What becomes of him now?” demanded Yuki. “Where does he go?” Lisa beckoned for the Librarian to come over. “Do you have a copy of Wild Legends of the Old West,” she asked him. “Beetman and Harris, 1922?” “Of course,” Lee Bookman answered in offended tones. “The Moon Public Library has a complete history section of nineteenth century Americana.” “Can you show us page 131?” The Legion clustered round to look at the page that appeared on the Librarian’s notebook. A yellowed lithograph showed a man in buckskins and a woman in sequins in front of a striped tent. The banner behind them read Bastion’s Travelling Carny of Wonders – See the Worlds Greatest Archer In Action. “Trickshot’s ancestor?” puzzled Visionary. “And Pretty Bird’s?” “You think?” snorted Lisa, raising one amused eyebrow. CSFB! exploded with laughter. “Trust Tricky to go back in time and become his own ancestor!” “We could travel back in time, bring them forward again,” suggested Al B. “No you couldn’t,” insisted Sir Mumphrey Wilton. “He’s locked there now. Unreachable. Happy ending. Damn good show.” “Yes,” agreed Jury. “A happy ending. I think that’s what I’d like too. Something better.” “Are you certain?” asked Lisa. Jury nodded and stepped into the narrative globe. “Tim,” she said. And was gone. “Oh no you don’t!” Dancer cried out, grabbing her sister as Kerry lunged for the sphere. “You’re not going anywhere!” “Let me go!” screamed the weeping girl. “Get off me! Let me take Danny and go into there as well!” “No.” Sarah Shepherdson struggled till she could pin her sister down. “You’re staying right here, Kerry. You’re not vanishing away. You’re staying here with us.” “He’s dead!” Kerry wailed. “He’s dead and I love him!” “I know,” Dancer told her, tears streaming down her cheeks, “but I can’t let you go. What would Ma say? You’re not thinking straight.” Her face became more determined. “But I am. Yuki, throw Danny in the globe.” “What?” objected Vizh. “Dancer, what?” “Do it,” the Probability Dancer insisted. “Let go of me!” struggled Kerry. “I’ll burn you!” “Are you sure about this, Dancer?” asked Yuki uncertainly. “Do it,” Dancer repeated. “Do it now!” “Danny!” shrieked Kerry as she saw her boyfriend’s corpse get carried towards the globe. “Dannyyyyyyy!!” “Are you really sure about this, Dancer?” Sorceress asked unhappily. Yuki cast Danny Lyle into the seething shimmering narrative ball to try and find a happy ending. “Danny!” sobbed Kerry, reaching out too late to go with her fallen lover. “Get of me. I hate you!” “What’s all this about, Shep?” Vizh muttered quietly to the Probability Dancer. “I trust you but this is…” “This,” said Sarah Shepherdson, “is a test.” “Of Kerry?” “Of me. And him.” “Him who?” “Danny. Of how much he loves my sister. Of how good I am at this probability thing.” She frowned as she concentrated. “Of whether true love conquers all.” She looked up with tears in her eyes. “I so want to believe that it does.” “Dannyyyyy!” shrieked Kerry, now being held by Whitney and Jay. The narrative globe flickered and popped like a soap bubble. Danny Lyle stood where it had been. “Firecracker?” he asked. “What’s up?” “Very nice,” Lisa grinned at Dancer as Kerry flew into Denial’s arms. “You figured that being with Kerry was Danny’s happy ending, that he’d deny everything else to be with her, even death, and that if she wasn’t there in the narrative sphere to be with him…” “He’d have to come out here to be with her,” concluded Shep. “I think I’m going to sleep now.” She folded up into Visionary’s arms. “Well that about ties it up for the drama portion of our adventure,” CSFB! concluded. “Except we have friends and family injured and dying.” “Nobody else dies just now,” Lisa assured him. “I get one free gift when I start out in this job. That’s it. Your mom and Graham and Mac and Amber and all the others will fully recover. Guaranteed.” “And Garrick?” asked Hatman. “I’m afraid so. You can’t have everything.” “So we saved the world,” concluded Visionary. “What do we do now?” Yuki pointed to the wild crowds celebrating Victory in the Parodyverse Day. “Well I’m thinking party.” The Lair Legion stood in Parody Square before the Twin Parody Tower, under the shadow of the Carnifax’s great Iron Tower beyond, and let the people cheer. And finally, next time: The Parody War is over and life goes on. The return of the Juniors. The return of the Manga Shoggoths. Local politics and eccentric Englishmen. Galactic geopolitical issues and how whomping resolves them. Old Chronicler of Stories vs new Destroyer of Tales. And how things are going to be, in Untold Tales of the Lair Legion #322: Ever After A Note for Continuitymancers: The next chapter probably takes place a day or two after this story, so if anybody wants to do a tie-in placed while Earth still orbits Caph, or a night-after-the-battle piece there’s no reason to wait. Earth gets shifted back to Sol and all the Earth cast who are offworld (except the Juniors) get shifted home at midnight. Footnotes Over the White Cliffs Of Dover: Lots of the folks mentioned in the story, and especially the Lair Legion, are described in the Who's Who in the Parodyverse, so I won’t cover them again here. Astrovidia is the alien world of the extinct Astrovidians, a species dedicated to trans-galactic television broadcasting. They were wiped out by the Parody Master but Meggan Foxxx, CSFB!’s mother, was using their equipment for morale-boosting messages to the galaxy-wide resistance movement. Plxtrazar is the alien world selected as a staging ground for an invasion of the Z’Sox homeworld, as shown last issue. Naicluv is an advanced reclusive and somewhat stuffy civilisation on a distant planet. It is home to the exiled Joey Z, who seems to have disappeared from the Parodyverse for now. The Reticulum Matrix is a computer civilisation, recently recruited to help Hallie and the Legion communicate with and co-ordinate the various elements of the rebellion against the Parody master, again as seen last issue. The Bloody Genocide is a somewhat damaged spaceship formerly used by the avawarriors as a training vessel. It is under the control of the villainous Purveyors of Peril until midnight, and when they get returned to Earth it will end up claimed as salvage by former captive Mircandalee Tremensalor, who will eventually refurbish it as a travelling vaudeville theatre. The Xnylonians are a telepathic race who have perfected the art of shaping concepts into reality. They usually conceal their civilisation behind complex concept barriers, and after their adventures against the Parody Master will probably hide away for a good long time. The Swordrealms and Esperine are parallel Earths, one a medieval feudal civilisation, the other a place of magic and psionics, which were crashed together by the Parody master in preparation for their conquest. After warring for a while the two societies formed an uneasy alliance to assist Earth against the Parody Master. The Happy Place is a plane of joy and love, the original source of the Yo-people of Yo-planet, pure thought beings. Yo-planet was moved there recently to avoid the Parody Master, but will presumably get shifted out to the regular universe again when the Yo-people get round to it. Yi is the keeper of the Happy Place. The Observers are an ancient race tasked with witnessing and recording the stories of the Parodyverse. They recently fell to the Parody Master, but some dared rise against him in the final rebellion. Jury formerly held the office of Shaper of Worlds, one of the triumvirate of great cosmic offices (along with the Chronicler of Stories and the Destroyer of Tales) tasked with maintaining the narratives of the Parodyverse. In her mortal life she was once the fiancée of Jarvis, first leader of the Lair Legion. After she died in a car crash she was adopted for the role of Shaper. The Parody Master has had a dark passion for her since the beginning of time. She clashed with the Hooded Hood but eventually accepted his help in escaping the Parody Master. The Storyheart is the driving force underpinning the various manifestations of power in the Parodyverse. The cosmic office holders and Celestian space robots derive their power from it, as do disciples of the Gah!, holders of the Jarvis Cosmic, wielders of magic, beings of myth, and so on. Parody Island, where the Legion’s Lair Mansion stands, was in prehistory the repository of a terrible Celestian secret. The Space Robots laid many defences on the place, many of which are still active today. The island tend to adopt guardians, and one of these was Marie Murcheson, murdered on the site and returned as a banshee. The Parody Master resurrected Marie to neutralise her as a defender of the site, but Marie appears to still have access to some of her abilities in time of crisis. Magweed and Griffin are Visionary’s twin children by the Caphan pleasure slave Miiri. Gestated by Hallie and brought up to the age of eleven in Faerie they are far from normal children. Griffin can turn invisible and intangible at will and Magweed is a faerie princess. Samantha Featherstone is Sir Mumphrey Wilton’s thirteen-year-old grand-daughter. After witnessing the murder of her parents she has dedicated her life to becoming a crimefighter and is training herself for the time when she can begin her war on evildoers everywhere. Nanny Greenwood, Mumphrey’s old nurse, has been suffused with Celestian energies to protect her until she comes of age. De Brown Streak (Josh Clement) was a mutate rights fighter and Legionnaire until he lost his powers in the anti-mutate wave that robbed almost all mutates of their gifts. Champagne Cassiatori is a beautiful international jewel thief, but is known to the world as a beautiful international socialite and detective. This is her first meeting with most of the Lair Legion, her first time off-planet, her first time off-plane, and her first time battling a supervillain. All in all quite a big day. dull thud is a scruffy Scotsman who is host to the sentient telepathic tapeworm Legionnaire Cressida. thuddy has the power of vertical teleportation and falling without harm from any height. Cressida can transmute matter to anything that rhymes with the object to be changed. Exile (Derek Foreman) is a former Legionnaire who retired to the Mythlands to be with his love Valeria of Carfax and her people. He is Goldeneyed’s cousin. Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises is the tabletop weird science company owned by Al B. Harper and Miss Framlicker. Amy Aston is their chief (and only) engineer and Al’s teenaged kids Cody and Kara are helping out for now. Cody can understand any language. Kara can solve any mathematical equation. Lara Night is a visitor from a different multiverse beyond the Parodyverse. She is what is termed in her universe an elemental, able to generate, absorb, channel, and command energies. She was sent to the Parodyverse by Shema, a guardian spirit of her own reality, to keep tabs on the growing threat of the Parody Master and to offer assistance at one critical point. This was it. Sergeant MacHarridan is a Detonator Hippo tasked with the role of security chief at the Lair Mansion. He can explode and reform at will. Detonator Hippos also tend to explode when severely wounded so they can reform later made whole. Kenny the Gardener is an occasional witness to the lives of the Lair Legion. He’s been killed off before. He’ll be killed off again. Lisa L. Waltz a founding Legionnaire, died in combat with the Parody Master in UT#300. Her spirit was absorbed into his soul-tormenting battle axe, but was empowered in UT#301 by the Hooded Hood with the energies he had stolen from the Parody Master’s Infinity Forge. She’s been biding her time since. Visionary did a deal with the Chronicler in UT#313 that Lisa would become the new cosmic office holder the Destroyer of Worlds, tasked with overseeing the end of narratives. This is Lisa’s new Parodyverse job, as approved by poster-Lisa herself. The Dark Knight (Greg Burch) returned from the dead several times to continue his fight against evil as an urban legend vigilante due to the influence of his alternate-timeline self who had become Chronicler of Stories. Of late, due to the malevolent machinations of the first Chronicler, the King of Stories, the Dark Knight’s life has been shattered and he has been driven to the edge of sanity. It remains to be seen whether he will return to fight against his unseen foe again. Sersi D’Aea is a second generation Austernal, one of the subrace genetically engineered by the Celestian Space Robots for their own unfathomable purposes. Formerly a Legionnaire, Sersi possesses molecular manipulation powers and a range of other abilities. In this story she is also housing the Austernal omni-mind, the collective of all Austernals, which ramps her power up to awesome levels. By the end of this story Sersi and her race have been molecularly scattered across the Parodyverse and it will take some time before they can reform. Banjoooo, King of the Sea Monkeys was another old Legionnaire and leader of the undersea brine shrimp race. He underwent his transformation to human Dave Cartwright in UT#269 and #271. His offspring awaits hatching in the underwater grottos of the Sea Monkeys. Comic-Book Limbo is the refuse dimension of the Parodyverse where lost ideas and forgotten characters are imprisoned. Early in his campaign the Parody Master shifted great chunks of real estate into stasis in Comic-book Limbo, including Austernia, Wakandybar, Fishieonah, and a US military base containing Fin Fang Foom. All of the missing cities and areas are now returned. The Black Pantzer (T’Chako) was ruler of the hidden high-tech African nation of Wakandybar, source of the world’s vibratium. It remains to be seen whether a new Pantzer will appear and what will become of the stricken nation after the devastation of the Parody Master’s attack. The Wookiegetlucky Swamp is the current location of the Nexus of Realities that manifests on the prime planet where the narrative of the Parodyverse is focussed in any given age. It is either the cause or effect of Earth being so plagued with aliens, demons, superbeings, deities, mimes, etc. Brainless Ones are crude rampaging fighting machines from the far Mythlands. Negativity Zone Insectoids are shock troop minions of Anihillatus, Lord of the Negativity Zone. Grimpenghasts are fierce Ausgardian monsters, but they make great burgers. Hero Feeders are native predators of Comic-book Limbo, given to taking forms from popular culture and devouring heroes so that they are no longer even remembered. Littlesmallville is a transient Midwestern town that moves from place to place on its own little cycle. It is home to Amazing Guy, his wife, and his Amazing Bunch children. It is now also safe in a happy ending. Fishieonah is the underwater citadel of, well, the fish people. Or it was. Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital is the largest of Paradopolis’ medical facilities. It’s chief surgeon Dr Whitwell knows about a secret hidden beneath the hospital. Ausgard is home to the Norse pantheon who were transported to the Antipodes for defying the Space Robots. The Oldman, father to Donar and to Hoki the Deceiver, has recently returned from walkabout to join the war against the Parody Master. Spiro Papadapopolis, proprietor of the Bean and Donut Coffee Bar where Dancer works as mild-mannered Sarah Shepherdson, faced off against the Parody Master and lost his arm in UT#301. He’s a tough old bird. Pretty Bird (Deanna Morris) is a flower-shop owner and part-time superhero who has recently become romantically involved with Trickshot. Here we see her exit offstage with the irritating archer to their mutual happy ending. Denial (Danny Lyle) is Kerry Shepherdson’s boyfriend and the Hooded Hood’s son. He died last issue rescuing Kerry from captivity and imminent torture on the Bloody Genocide. Now he’s back, because in the Parodyverse true love sometimes conquers all, and because that makes the best story. Narrative Bombs were created by Jury when she was Shaper of Worlds as a weapon of last resort against the Hooded Hood. They are designed to shift large chunks of reality out of the Parodyverse into an ideal happy ending, effectively removing threats in a humane and permanent way. The Parody Master captured them when he took the Shaper’s workshop and used one to eradicate Arachknight City in UT#301. Exu the Doomherald was once the Parody Master’s prime emissary but defected and is now out there solo. Visionary is… well, he’s complicated. All the stuff he talks about has happened to him in various stories. Go read them. They’re good. And the Scoresheet at the End of the Parody War: Current Legionnaires: Hatman, CrazySugarFreakBoy!, Visionary, Donar, Dancer, the Librarian, Mr Epitome, Yuki Shiro, Al B. Harper (but this line-up will change next issue) ManMan’s still around but without Knifey he doesn’t have any powers spiffy’s about but he’ll be returning to Badripoor Sorceress is present, but she’s got problems of her own next time Mumphrey’s future gets covered in UT#322. Elizabeth von Zemo is being indicted for trying to conquer the world Lisa Waltz is back, as Destroyer of Tales! More on that in UT#332 as well. The Manga Shoggoth is boiled away, at least until next issue Sersi is dispersed across the Parodyverse for quite a while Exile is returned to retirement in the Mythlands, where time runs differently Yo is also missing for now, but Lisa says s/he’ll be back (and return Rabito to live) Happy Ending Vanished Legionnaires (but than can change as soon as any poster wants it to): NTU-150, Goldeneyed, Trickshot, Amazing Guy, Dark Knight, Fin Fang Foom, Banjoooo, De Brown Streak, Cressida (and dull thud) Premiere is dead 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. 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