#342: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion Protocols: Darker Than Orange
Previously: CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s controversial leadership of the Lair Legion included an assault on the white supremacist Pogrom of Purity, but the team walked into a trap set by secret government forces that de-powered Dancer and Nats and injured others. Amongst the casualties was Icy the Snowman, who was devastated to have accidentally killed someone.
Meanwhile, the previously-depowered Hatman continues his new life as Director of the Gothametropolis York Benevolent Foundation, Ham-Boy goes home to Goth Haven and encounters a young mutate thief, the MLA, and the mysterious Citizen Z has vanished after arresting Silicone Sally.
The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom
Who's Who in the Parodyverse
Where's Where in the Parodyverse
3. “Scorn and Defiance, Slight Regard, Contempt and Any Thing That May Not Misbecome The Mighty Sender…”
The pentagram in the centre of Herringcarp Asylum’s Manifestation Chamber glowed an eerie green. Amnesia formed up in the ghostly glow. She knelt for a moment, shuddering, as she always did when she returned to the building to which she was bound. Herringcarp greeted her with cold stone and darkness.
The spectre of the young woman rose to her feet and willed herself some clothes. The ragged tabard she’d worn before she died misted in around her, it’s torn edges flicking as if caught by the wind.
“Back again,” said the spirit who had taken the identity of Citizen Z. It was only by the gift of the strange Asylum that she could project herself beyond its physical bounds or cast herself into human flesh to control a borrowed form. As always when she returned the Asylum took its price.
Amnesia padded on bare feet over the worn flagstones into the corridor beyond. To her left the halls vanished off into deeper shadow and darker secrets. To her right a flickering wall-torch lit the way to a flight of stone steps into the inhabited parts of the building. She hurried up to get away from the Manifestation Chamber’s whispering.
She picked her way through the labyrinthine rooms towards the hall where the Hooded Hood’s throne faced his Portal of Pretentiousness. Amnesia was surprised to hear voices. Visitors were infrequent in this aspect of the Asylum.
The Hooded Hood didn’t turn to see her. “Come in, my dear,” he bade anyway. He stood before the Portal, his hands on his lapels, conversing with a man behind a grey desk on the other side of the mirror. “You know the Word of Order?”
“We’ve never dated,” replied Amnesia. “Well, not that I remember.”
Gideon Book regarded the apparition without surprise. “We have never had occasion to speak before, Ms Leyton. During my stay at Herringcarp your spectre was somewhat quiescent.”
“Well, I’m here now. What’s going on, Ioldabaoth?”
“The Word and I are discussing the Lair Legion,” replied the Hooded Hood. “We are speculating on whether CrazySugarFreakBoy! can be provoked into completing their destruction.”
“CSFB!? He loves the Legion.”
“He does,” agreed the Word. “That is a weakness, of course. Passion is his downfall.”
“During the Parody War young Dreamcatcher should have died,” the Hood explained to Amnesia. “Instead he broke the rules, as only an avatar of chaos might, and returned in his current impossibilityium form. The chain of CrazySugarFreakHeroes! was broken, the whole line imprinted with Foxglove’s incarnation. Since then there has been a mounting imbalance of Chaos.”
“Which you don’t like,” Amnesia noted to the Word, “since you’re the Emissary of Order or something.”
The Word shook his head almost imperceptably. “I am very satisfied with the state of affairs, Ms Leyton. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. More Chaos means the opportunity for more Order. Extreme Chaos opens up many possibilities for me to draw down immense power. And through it all CrazySugarFreakBoy! is harming himself, his friends, his cause, and even Chaos itself while doing my work for me. This is what I have been preparing since I first encountered him.”
“The next manifestation of Dreamcatcher’s enhanced chaos state might well be the destruction of the Lair Legion,” noted the Hood. “I anticipate the angry, guilty CrazySugarFreakBoy! will lash out and exacerbate the situation he has provoked. I expect him to gather a line-up of Legionnaires of my choosing, a team especially calculated to destroy themselves and each other. They will ruin the reputation of the Legion for all time and finally end the succession of heroic alliances dating back a thousand years and more.”
“Why would you want that?” challenged Amnesia. She didn’t really recall the team she’d been such close friends with when she’d still lived, but she knew they’d meant something to the lost Laurie Leyton.
The Hood looked at the wraith. “Am I not… the Hooded Hood?”
“The Hood intends to launch his larger undertaking,” explained Book. “For that he needs the Lair Legion – the right Lair Legion – to play their final role. He’s aiming for endgame.”
“I don’t want the Legion destroyed,” Amnesia insisted. “I won’t help with that.”
“Splendid,” replied the cowled crime czar. “That’s why I’ll make certain that you are included in their line-up.”
“I’ll what? I’m dead. A ghost. I can’t join the Lair Legion!”
The Hood turned back to the Word. “We’ll communicate again later when Dreamcatcher has done all he has been set to do; when he has finally and irrevocably led his friends and comrades to the path of their utter destruction. Now if you’ll both excuse me, I have a snowman to interview.”
“I won’t help you to hurt the Legion,” repeated Amnesia. “Once I’ve got vengeance on Elizabeth von Zemo and her people I’ll be able to rest.”
The Hooded Hood did not reply; but he had a vicious smile on his lips as he left the throne room.
***
General Terrence Hodgekiss glared across at the livid CrazySugarFreakBoy! “What’s your problem now, boy? The freak wants a wah-wah? I already had your mommie in here screaming her foul mouth off. You got even more relatives and faggot friends you want to drag in and give jobs to? You wanna start potty training? What the hell thing are you crying for now that’s gonna compromise national security and international justice?”
“You don’t get to talk about justice, Buttkiss!” shouted CSFB! “You let us go off on a mission and you set us up in an ambush that leaves two of us crippled and could have got all of us killed! There’s gonna be a long line of my family and friends want to rip you a new one!”
“Buttkiss. Yeah, not heard that one before. So what are you gonna do, freak boy? You got no chain of evidence that links me or the government to your badly-planned outing to Coeur D’Aline. You got no comeback ‘cept an illegal assault on a senior military officer and you can bet your tight skinny ass that’ll come back and bite ya and all your super-friends. So what the &*£$ do you think you can actually do, you dumb&$£*, loudmouthed, smartass, pencildicked, retard eight year old?”
The new colours of CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s costume glowed sullen and sinister. “What can I do? I can be your worst possible nightmare, medal man. I’m an unstoppable, unkillable, uncontrollable madman and I really don’t have any limits at all. You think I’ll be stopped by your threats of reprisal? By what other people think? You believe I won’t go after you and the people behind you and the people behind them until I’ve got every stinking one of you? I came back from the dead – from the &8$%ing dead – to stop you, Buttkiss. I am leader of the world’s most powerful assembly of superheroes. You attack us then we’ll crush your nuts!”
The General made a derogatory noise with his lips. “We got ways to take you all down, boy. You saw that this morning. We’ve shut down superheroes before, a whole generation after WW2 when they weren’t needed any more. Depowered, discredited, locked in asylums, driven to suicide. Same thing in the 70s. You think we haven’t taken precautions to be able to finish you all if we have to?”
“Anna?” CSFB! asked, referring to the SPUD-sponsored combat android. “She’s not on your team any more, General.”
“We got a dozen ways to take you, moron. We got methods to do you all, even the Shoggoth, even the hemigod. We’ve got deals in place to neutralise Lisa Waltz and the Chronicler of Stories if we have to. You think we haven’t had years to prepare for this?”
“And what happens the next time Galactivac comes calling, or Dark Thugos, or Sage Grimpenghast?” demanded the wired wonder. “You’re gonna to send in Jingo Belle and some policy documents, are you?”
“No. I’ll be sending in the Lair Legion. The official Lair Legion, approved by the government, disciplined, regimented, professional, reliable. Under control. No loose cannons. You won’t be there.”
“Then they won’t win,” CSFB! told him. “Without the loose cannons, without the wacky Plan F’s, without the spitballing and the camaraderie and the inspiration they’ll just get ploughed under.”
“Keep telling yourself that, boy. But tell yourself it far from here. You’re out.”
CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s laugh wasn’t at all pleasant. “You think this is over? This is only just beginning. I’m done with playing nice, playing by the code, playing at all. You want to know what happens when I get serious? You want to experience the destructive power of Chaos unleashed? Keep watching!”
***
The Mutate Liberation Army, in the form of one teenaged super-speedster called R.J. Clement, looked in disbelief at the ham-cowled superhero blocking his exit from the Jet Starscream Experience. “You’re trying to stop me? Really? You?”
“You’re stealing,” Ham-Boy explained to the confident young black man. “Stealing is wrong. Do you see where this is going?”
“It’s going towards you getting an ass-kicking if you don’t get out of my way,” the MLA warned. “Seriously, I’m on a schedule here.”
“Me too,” said the world’s meatiest hero. “So make your move and then I can arrest you and call the police.”
R.J. shot forward to take Ham-Boy down. He skidded on a soft bed of rinds that prevented him gaining traction to run, then he slid hard into a display cabinet. While he was still tangled in life-sized replicas of Interplanet Janet he was pinned down with a heavy wall of moose steaks.
“We covered fighting super-speedy villains in the Juniors class,” Fred Harris pointed out to the entangled mutate.
The MLA vibrated free is a spray of pulped meat. “Yeah, well I got my powers off my cousin De Brown Streak, so pardon me if I’m not impressed, bacon lad.”
Fred used his meat control abilities to wrap R.J.’s legs together with strings of sausages, sending the speedster tumbling again. “It was Josh Clement that trained us in how to do this. First the offal, then the wall of meat, then the sausages, then the wave of mince.”
“Wait, the what?” gasped the MLA just as he was slammed away in a wash of ground beef.
“And then about half a ton of pork bellies. And it’s not bacon lad. It’s Ham-Boy.”
A faint muffled noise came from beneath the pile of meat. “Okay, I’ll try to remember. Ouch.”
***
Icy the Snowman looked uncomfortable in the audience chamber of Herringcarp Asylum. He wasn’t used to feeling cold.
“Good evening,” said the Hooded Hood. It hadn’t been evening when Icy had entered the sinister gothic sanatorium but something in the way that the cowled crime czar said it made the snowman believe that it was now.
“Hello,” ventured Icy. “Thank you for making some time to see me. You have a very lovely home. Well, except for the menacing statuary and the cobwebs and the shadows that move when you’re not watching them. But otherwise lovely.”
“You wished to speak with me about Nicholas Smeaty?” prompted the archvillain. “Proceed.”
Icy shuddered. “Well, he died,” he explained to the waiting Hood. “I wasn’t thinking what I was doing and I made a stupid mistake. And now… he’s dead.”
“Indeed.”
“So I was thinking… they say you can retcon things, make them so they never happened. I called Danny Lyle, your son, but he said a denial this big, so long after the fact, was too big a stretch for him.”
“And he advised you to call upon… the Hooded Hood?”
“He told me not to, under any circumstances. He said the cost would always outweigh the benefit.”
“The youth is learning. And yet here you are, Icy the Snowman, so very far from your home.”
“Yes, sir. I can’t… I can’t just go away and not do anything for Nick Smeaty. I know he wasn’t a very nice person but nobody deserves to die.”
The Hood seemed amused by that. “I agree. Living enemies, wrecked, defeated, impotent to ever rise again, hating every moment of their bitter barren eternal existence are more satisfying. I’m working on one right now, a terrible villain in the making, antithesis of everything he ever admired or valued. Call it a hobby.”
“I don’t mean that. I just don’t want anyone to die. I don’t… I don’t want to have killed Nick.” The snowman dipped his carrot nose and his coaly eyes were moist with frost.
“And you wish to bargain with… the Hooded Hood?”
“If I have to. I don’t see I’ve any choice.”
“I always leave my adversaries choice,” promised the archvillain. “Choice is what hurts.”
“Well then, I choose to help Nick. Tell me what you want.”
The Hooded Hood considered. “It is not that simple, Icy the Snowman. Lives and deaths have consequences. Bringing someone back from the dead, making it so they didn’t die, that has big consequences. Everything is linked together. One change there makes a billion changes elsewhere.”
“I don’t understand. Just make it so it never happened. Please!”
“Suppose I restore this Smeaty. I also restore all the deeds he would have done in his life, for good or ill. All his crimes. Any children he might father and all their deeds, and their descendants. I end any lives any of them might take. I unbalance the future.”
Icy clutched his top hat in his hands and pleaded. “I know you can do it, though. You’ve made changes before. You do it all the time. I’m begging you, Hooded hood…”
“I use my abilities far more rarely than people suppose,” the cowled crime czar told him. “A corollary of my gifts is that I live in many alternate timelines at once. I am all those Hooded Hood variants simultaneously. I can see the consequences of changes I make. I can see how they’d need to be balanced.”
“But you can do it.”
“I can. So what if I told you, Icy the Snowman, that the only way to restore Nicholas Smeaty was if you were removed instead? If you had to be wiped from the timeline from this moment forth, stricken from the record? What then?”
Icy understood. “If that’s the price then I’ll take it,” he agreed. Wipe me out and save Nick. That’s what’s right.”
The Hooded Hood did not reply.
“What are you waiting for?” the snowman asked unhappily. “Do it!”
The Hood turned away. “I shall ask you again tomorrow, Icy the Snowman. In twenty-four hours time I shall give you your choice.”
“I’m ready to decide now,” Icy told him, distressed. “Right now. Do it.”
”If I do as you ask right now then you will no longer exist,” replied the archvillain. “Were you not listening when I explained that a living adversary in torment was better?” He moved to the door. “Dwell on your choice for twenty-four hours. Hold onto your courage for that long. Consider your sacrifice. Then I shall ask you again.”
***
4. “Thou Hast Me, If Thou Hast Me, At The Worst.”
“Hi.”
Al B. Harper put down his spectratoxigraph actualiser and looked up. “G-Eyed. Hello. Welcome back.”
“Thanks. Listen, Doc, I’ve got a question. Have you got a minute?”
“About two point seven minutes before the computers finish with the DNA modelling on Dancer and Nats, actually. What’s on your mind?”
“Well, this is going to sound kind of dumb, but… should I exist?”
“Yes.”
“Whew. That’s a relief.”
“I mean ‘Yes, it sounds dumb’. Why would you ask?”
Bry Katz sighed. “It was something somebody said to me. You know I was sent back from the 40th century when I was a baby, right, to be raised by the Order of the Observing Eye? It turned out that my ancestors around this era were beings called the Celestian Madonna and the Fernbiote. I always worried that might mean spiffy.”
“Yes, I did the temporal math on that once. The blackboard exploded.”
“Right. Anyhow, I heard that the Celestian Madonna turned out to be Samantha Bonnington, Fashion Accessory, and that she was supposed to breed with the Void Scholar, previously known as Wang the Conqueror. And their kids had kids and so on and eventually that line led to Liu Xi Xian. And Liu Xi and Danny Lyle were supposed to breed this mega-uber-being. But all of that changed the previous Fernbiote lineage thing, maybe? And now somehow Samantha isn’t the Madonna any more but it’s passed on to someone else and we don’t know who?” He sat down heavily. “So my ultimate grandparents never met and I can’t exist.”
Al B. considered this for a moment. “Interesting,” he admitted. “I think I’ll need to run a few experiments.”
“Will they be painful?” flinched G-Eyed. They’re usually painful.”
“No.”
“Really? They won’t be painful?”
“Really,” promised Al B. Harper. “They’ll actually be very very painful. Hold still.”
***
The lobby of the Gothametropolis York Civic Relief Foundation was crowded. The queue of people waiting to talk to Ellie Copper and the other volunteers at the trestles had grown long enough that it snaked round into the abandoned reading room. The lecture hall was an impromptu crèche. Some people had brought their whole families so the older children had taken up a spirited chasing game in the abandoned gym.
As Jay Boaz got back from his meeting he was surrounded by a crowd of anxious, mostly impoverished, all excited or concerned, citizens of GMY.
“Hey, hold on a moment, folks. What’s going on here, Judge?”
Judgement Jupiter, the ancient bewhiskered caretaker of the sprawling civic relic on Eecee Street shouldered his way through the throng. “Seems folks have heard that the Foundation’s back in business. I told ‘em all to bugger off but in this town that’s like sayin’ sit down and have a biscuit.”
“Do we have biscuits, by the way?” Ellie called worriedly. “Only some of these people have been waiting since dawn to talk about their problems.”
“We can find biscuits,” Jay promised. “Judge, call this number. Ask for Shep. If she’s not there ask for Mr P. Tell them we need coffee and snacks for, what, three hundred people? Make that four hundred just in case. Tell them I’ll settle up later.”
“And they’ll believe you?” Judge didn’t like in a world with a lot of trust in it.
“I’d be surprised if they don’t come down to deliver personally. But if they’re busy here’s a list of truckers who’ll ship the stuff over from Paradopolis. Um, ignore the stars next to the names. It’s a list I got from Lisa.”
Ellie Copper shook her head in disbelief. “I never thought I’d see this place full again, working again. But what can we do now all these people have come? We’ve got the homeless, the destitute, the desperate, everybody who’s been ignored for so long. What we don’t have yet is any unlocked funds, any way of actually practically helping them except some parachuted-in biscuits.”
Jay pressed his way to the little janitor’s office beneath the main staircase, where three people could just about sit in relative privacy. “Okay, Ellie. Ring this number too. Talk to Reverend Fleetwood. He’ll send you a list of care agencies and charities we can refer on to. Then contact the Zero Street Orphanage, ask them to send over any spare beds or bedding they’ve got so we can start bunking people down in the back rooms for now. Jupiter, if a bunch of teenagers in Hell’s Bathroom gang colours and Zero Street baseball caps turn up looking to work security here make sure you mostly disarm them before you let them go outside.”
Ellie took notes. “We still don’t have any real resources. The Foundation’s cash assets have mostly vanished and the rest will be tied in litigation for months, maybe years. The charity accomodation out back is burned out ruins. The previous trustees let them build a toxic waste recyling plant three feet from the alms houses. As soon as Mayor Klein finds out how many zoning and health and safety laws we’re breaking she’ll shut us down.”
“And when that mob outside finds we can’t help ‘em all they’ll likely crucify us,” added Judge. “Still it’ll be nice to have a break.”
Jay dropped the parcel of old documents he’d brought onto Jupiter’s tiny desk. “This is stuff from the Abyssal Greye,” he told his team. “Old deeds and covenants and stuff that date back hundreds of years.”
Ellie bent over to inspect the parchments; carefully, since many were rather brittle. “That old antiquarian in carpet slippers who’s descended from one of the Foundation founders? How is he able to dig this stuff up?”
“I think he’s really good at digging stuff up,” Jay Boaz replied diplomatically. “He knows where all the corpses are buried. Anyhow, he and his, er, colleagues, they’ve been keeping an eye on GMY for a really long time. And they’ve found some really great stuff about the Foundation’s rights and privileges that will keep Klein’s attack lawyers busy for, well, decades. Possibly centuries.”
A low smile spread over Ellie’s face as the young attorney appreciated some possibilities. “We have the right to a free street festival?” she read at random. “In Hogan? I’m guessing that wasn’t a notorious red light district back in 1874? And we can take a 1% tithe on all trading on Ditch Street? Back when this was granted it was nothing but a few outdoor stalls, long before it became the financial centre of the GMY stock market!”
“Yeah, I guess that would solve our cashflow problem eventually,” grinned Jay. “In the meantime I talked to a few friends and got us some loans to keep us going while the Foundation assets are unlocked.”
Judge picked up a slip of paper “This is a cheque from the Teresa Bautista Trust for one million dollars,” he noted.
“Yeah. The others are just from folks I know. We’ll pay them all back too, but later. Right now the priority’s getting the rest of this place online again. This afternoon we’ll be seeing seven dwarves turn up with a lacemaker. Don’t ask questions. Just show them where the old charity housing used to be and get out of their way.”
Ellie raised her hand. “I have a question.”
“Sure, what is it, Ellie?”
“What are you going to do on your third day on the job, Director Boaz?”
Hatman shrugged. “Let’s go out to talk to those folks in the lobby and find out what they’ll need.” He took a deep breath and pushed his way out into the shouting crowds to begin his work.
Over by the door four men in concealing trenchcoats watched the circus.
“Well, boss?” demanded Marker Man. “Can we start the massacre now?”
“This place is old,” observed Garbage Burner. “It’d burn real easy.”
“I’ve not got enough superhero dentistry in my collection,” noted Dr Teeth. “Don’t kill him till I’ve pulled the best ones.”
English Man looked around the crowded lobby with a cold satisfaction. “It would be bad manners to kill everybody right here and now,” he told the Frightsome Four. “Jolly bad show. Best to come back tomorrow when the crowd’s that much bigger and do the thing properly, what? Take down the whole city block and give these peasants something to cry about.” He took another look around him. “Yes, this is going to be absolutely spiffing.”
***
“You’re going?” asked Visionary. It seemed to be a day for departures.
“Yeah,” said Bill Reed. “It’s time. I don’t have powers now but I do have a spooky ghost cab company that’s relying on me. And it’s tax return time.”
“You’re leaving at a moment like this?”
Nats nodded. “I’m leaving before I lose it big time. I don’t think this can end well. I don’t want to see what comes next.”
“You’ll be back,” said Vizh. “One a Legionnaire always a Legionnaire.”
That rung a snort and a half-smile from Bill Reed. “Yeah, I guess maybe so. Listen, tell G-Eyed that I hope he sticks around on the team. Everybody needs a second chance, even a butt-head like him. Tell him I said so.”
“Even the butt-head bit?”
“Especially the butt-head bit. And tell Dream… tell him I don’t blame him. For Coeur D’Aline. It wasn’t his fault. Wish him good luck. He’s going to need it.”
“Deal,” agreed Visionary, shaking hands with the former flying phenomenon. “Take care. Those accountants can be sharp.”
“And Roswell can be prickly. I’ve got my work cut out for me.” He took a last look around the Lair Mansion. “Goodbye.”
***
“Well?” asked Yuki as Hallie processed the computer readings on the cyborg P.I.’s combat simulation session.
“You’re right. Loss of the Technopolitan mind/body interface has degraded your on-board
reaction times 0.06%,” answered the Legion’s resident A.I. “But you actually did better against the drones that you managed on your most recent evaluation. You’re getting more instinct in your combat manoeuvres and they can’t predict it.”
“Yeah, I know all that,” Yuki dismissed the analysis. “I meant ‘well, have you decided on the job offer?’ Are you going to finally take the plunge and join the Lair Legion as a member?”
Hallie shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. Sir Mumphrey asked me years ago and I said I’d prefer to become me first, to work on becoming a person or whatever I’m evolving into, the world’s most complicated computer sentience-come-art student or something. And it’s not like Dream hasn’t asked just about everybody he knows to join up. Did you see the e-mails to his old D&D buddies and his suggestions for their code-names?”
“You’re at the top of our lists,” Yuki assured the green-skinned hologram. “Although you may want to think carefully about CSFB!’s proposed superhero names for you. And his costume suggestions.”
“I’ll think carefully about all of it,” Hallie promised. “But it’s a big step. I need some time to decide.”
Yuki nodded. She wrapped a towel over her shoulders and headed for the showers. She didn’t sweat during a workout but the shower felt good anyway. “Let me know.”
Hallie waited until the cyborg P.I. had gone. She dissolved the holographic combat testing apparatus and rolled back the hard-tech into the walls. She cross-indexed Yuki’s performance with the overall Legion performance database. She logged in a maintenance cycle for the remote training drones.
She allowed a big happy grin to spread all over her face.
***
5. “But If The Cause Be Not Good, the King Himself Hath A Heavy Reckoning To Make.”
The Sentinoids were slightly delayed because the SPUD battle-suits didn’t include pockets and it was $49.99 to get into the Jet Starscream Experience. When they did arrive they dug out Randy Clement and clapped him in power-dampening shackles.
“Listen, dude,” the MLA told Ham-Boy as he was being led away. “No hard feelings, okay? Could you do a couple of things for me?”
“I’m not sure I could,” admitted Fred Harris, dubiously.
“Well consider them, please. First off, that tribal stone really needs to get back to the Upnashtivi people. It shouldn’t be here. Good things will happen if it gets home. Look into it. See what you can do.”
“I’ll do what I can, then. What else.”
The MLA grinned. “Looks like I’m going to be kind of tied up tonight. I need you to call this number and apologise to a hot mama. Tell her it would have been cosmic. Then get her address and get round there with an Italian dinner.” He winked at the world’s meatiest hero. “The rest’s up to you.”
“The rest?”
“Yeah, the rest.” R.J. winked again and was led off to the van.
There was an argument going on at the back of the hall. A bespectacled man in a SPUD technician’s outfit was arguing with the museum administrator.
“Is there a problem?” Ham-Boy checked.
“None at all, Ham-Boy,” the bespectacled man assured him. “This… person… was objecting to us taking the Upnashtivi Stone as evidence, but we’ll need it and these other trinkets to press the case against the suspect. It’s the law.”
Ham-Boy had to agree. The administrator shook his head unhappily. “Jet won’t like this. All this publicity and he wasn’t here.”
The bespectacled man waited until Ham-Boy and the rest had moved on. He pushed to mask into a pre-paid padded envelope addressed to Africa and dropped it in the nearest post box. He had no interest in it whatsoever. The rest of the confiscated evidence was binned except for one unregarded fragment.
“I’ve got the second fragment of Jarvisite you wanted,” Clockwatcher announced, apparently to no-one. “The Clement distraction worked perfectly.” The Portal of Pretentiousness opened before him and the Hooded Hood’s curator stepped through into the darkness of Herringcarp Asylum.
“Excellent,” intoned the Hooded Hood.
***
Police Lieutenant Farouk bin Shadin sat in front of his keyboard and wondered how to begin his report.
“I’ve been concerned about corruption in the El’Bar police department since I joined three years ago,” he rehearsed his statement. “Bribery is rife and nobody gets promoted unless the Commissioner gets a cut. Half the officers are in the pay of the local cartels and the other half don’t care. Nobody is interested in upholding the law. In fact anyone who tries is penalised, reduced to traffic duty or graveyard shift grunt work. I know this because that’s what I’ve been on for two years.”
It had been frustrating for a young man who’d joined with such high ideals. The Captain had enjoyed disillusioning him. It had been a personal quest to muddy the square-jawed idealist. It had come frighteningly close to working.
“However, today I made a breakthrough,” Farouk continued. “Now I know the whole dirty network. I know about the drugs rings, the sex slavery rackets, the software piracy businesses, the protection gangs, the gambling syndicates, everything. I can trace the corruption all the way up to the royal family. I know the names and addresses of almost every criminal in Immin and from them I can get the rest.”
He had to pause a moment to wipe blood off the monitor screen. “I want there to be justice. Sometimes for there to be justice there has to be a price. I know that now. I can never return to Jasmine and our child. I don’t dare to be near them. The ability to learn all these secrets, to gain all these skills, is a true gift. I will bear the cost, although it damns my soul.”
He looked around the precinct room. The walls were sprayed with red. The corrupt officers were sprawled wherever they’d fallen, their lifeless eyes accusing him. Captain Nariim lay at his feet, the top half off his skull broken in like a hardballed egg, his brain scooped out.
Some of the remnants of it were spilled down Farouk’s police tunic. He’d gagged at first when he’d begun to eat the Captain’s grey matter; but without consuming it he couldn’t know what the Captain knew, couldn’t replicate what the Captain had learned to do.
“I am sorry,” Farouk bin Shaden typed, weeping. Then he turned off the computer. Who could he send his report to? Everyone in his chain of command had to die.
He looked up, suddenly aware of someone else in the room. A young woman was there, dressed in strange garb that was neither Eastern nor Western. She was clad immodestly in form-fitting white and her face was bare; in fact her whole head was bare, shaved of hair entirely.
“Farouk bin Shaden?” she asked, ignoring the gory ruin of the precinct office.
“I am. Who are you?”
“I am Pelopia, Disciple of Order,” she replied. “I serve the Word of Logos. I greet the new Champion of Order. Hail.”
Farouk frowned. “I’m what?”
Pelopia glided across the room, sensuous but disciplined. “The forces of Order ordain a champion to uphold the will of their Emissary, my father the Word. Upon him or her they confer their Serious Matter, which enables a human to absorb the thoughts and abilities of others and discipline them to the cause of Order. Until recently this champion has been the adventurer Hatman.”
“Hatman? The Western superhero? From the Transworlds Challenge, and the Parody War, and that vision we all had against the Carnifex?”
“The same. But now the Serious Matter has moved on, Farouk bin Shaden. To you.”
The young policeman looked around the bloody room. “Is that why I did what I have done? When I felt the light in my mind I… the first criminal I tore open, it was as if I was compelled.”
“Jay Boaz perverted the gift of order,” Pelopia explained. “Previous champions have touched or ingested the brains of our enemies to absorb their powers and knowledge. Hatman… chose another path. You have the pure gift as it was ordained to be.”
“I’ve become a monster.”
“You have become what it is ordained that you become. Already you have accomplished much. With training and discipline you could become a most formidable champion, a true asset in our war upon Chaos.” Pelopia looked almost sad. “It is a shame that you will not fulfil your promise.”
Farouk rubbed his hands across his bloody face. “I don’t understand. Any of this. But I know what I must do. I must bring justice, whatever the cost, whoever must fall. I must…”
The Priestess of Logos shook her head. “My father says that you are the wrong champion for this time,” she revealed, “and his Word is law. Another must have the duty.”
She’d slashed her fingers across Farouk’s throat before he’d even registered that she’d moved. He toppled clutching his severed windpipe and sliced jugular.
“Your family will be cared for,” she told the dying champion of Order. “We are not without compassion. You have served well.”
And then she left.
***
Bad News Herb paid off the cab outside the security gates of the Pierce Heights mansion. He paused a moment to straighten his tie then hit the intercom.
“Herbert P. Garrick here. Is he in? Will he see me? It’s important.”
The gates purred open and the G-man walked up the drive.
***
Dreamcatcher Foxglove looked up from his new desk as Amber St Clare knocked and entered his office. “Yeah? What’s the problem now?” he sighed.
“The problem since you took off your artificial arm and used it to smash every bit for furniture in your room to splinters?” asked the Legion’s liaison officer. “The next problem?”
“Yeah, the next one. Who’s Buttkiss trying to can, depower, or assassinate now?”
Amber held out a note. “Your next problem is this,” she answered.
CrazySugarFreakBoy! read the letter. His eyebrows shot up. “You’re quitting?”
“I’m resigning,” Amber told him. “Effective immediately, please. I have enough leave time due me to cover my notice period and about eight months more.”
“So Buttkiss got to you too, huh?”
Amber shook her head. “This isn’t to do with the General,” she answered, a touch of anger creeping into her voice. “Since I got assigned to this job I’ve been chased by Hellraisers, Obedience Branded and enslaved by Exemplary, dropped into Comic-Book Limbo, attacked by the Parody Master. I’ve been forced to try and seduce Flapjack. I’ve been abused and injured and terrified. You think Terrence Hodgekiss is going to make a difference?”
“Then what, Amber?” Dream forced himself to claw out of his own shroud of rage for a moment as he saw the first tear trickle down the woman’s cheek. “Hey, what’s wrong.”
“It’s you,” the liaison officer confessed. “What you’re doing.”
“Look, I know my press conference made a crapload of work for you…”
Amber shook her head. “It’s where you’re taking the Legion, and how you’re taking it there. You’re out of control, Dreamcatcher, and I don’t know if anybody can stop you now. I can’t see a happy ending.”
“So you’re sticking with the official line that…”
“I’m telling you what I think” Amber told him forcefully. “And then you can scream at me as well, and dismiss what I’m saying because it doesn’t fit your worldview, and go on with wrecking everything with the very best of intentions. But I won’t be here. Nats has gone, Icy has gone, Dancer is going. Who’ll be next?”
CSFB! stopped short in mid-retort. “They’ve all gone?”
“Dream, I know I’m just a government drone in your imagination, a bit-player who doesn’t matter that much…”
“That’s not true.”
“Hear me out then. I absolutely applaud your aims to put the world right. I absolutely abhor your methods. And I don’t think they’ll work. I don’t think they are working. And if you look around for a minute with fresh eyes I think you’ll see that too.” Amber wiped her cheeks and blew her nose. “Anyhow, I resign. Let the problem next liaison deal with the fallout.”
“Amber!”
Amber St Clare closed the door behind her as she left.
“No,” frowned CrazySugarFreakBoy! “No!” He reached for something else to break but there wasn’t much left to break. Rage was replaced by confusion, confusion by despair. He slumped to the ground with his head in his hands. “How can this be going so wrong? How? How?”
“Are you really asking or just mouthing off?” asked the girl in black sitting cross-legged on his desk. “Because if you’re just on another self-pity jag I can just buzz off.”
CSFB! turned and spotted the ghost girl (yet another one!). “Izzy!”
“Yeah, Izzy,” agreed his dead ex-girlfriend. “I’ve not been around much for a while, but I thought you might need a friend right now. Do you?”
CSFB! knuckled a tear from his own wet eye. “I really do,” he confessed.
***
Next: Icy’s deal, Citizen Z’s secret origin, Garrick’s secret, Hatman’s assassination, and CSFB!’s choice in Untold Tales #343: All Change.
***
Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2010 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2010 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
|
