#344: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Candidates
Go to Part One: The Diplomatic Solution
Go to Part Two: The Widening Void
Go to Part Three: Job Orientation
Go to Part Four: Romance and Profanity
Previously: CrazySugarFreakBoy! has announced the new line-up of the Lair Legion – and Visionary as it’s new chair. This is news to Visionary. And the new line-up. And the government.
Liu Xi Xian went into Vinnie de Soth’s bathroom and vanished into the void she’d manipulated to create it. This is not good. Fortunately she had her towel with her.
Alcheman and Goldeneyed investigated a sinister bar run by the mysterious Profanity and discovered her to be the dark faerie Camellia of the Fey. Camellia is gathering an alliance of dispossessed supernatural beings to erase the stain of mankind from the Earth. This is also not good, at least from a human point of view.
Proceed.
The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom
Who's Who in the Parodyverse
Where's Where in the Parodyverse
1. The Diplomatic Solution
General Terrence “No Nickname” Hodgekiss was not in a good mood. He’d just been tackled to the ground by a quarter ton Detonator Hippo security chief in what Sergeant MacHarridan called a “friendly flattening” error. He’d been unable to prevent CrazySugarFreakBoy! from announcing a ridiculous new Lair Legion line up on worldwide television. He’d had Dancer being nice at him.
Now it was time to share the pain. He was looking forward to his first interview with the new Chairperson of the Lair Legion. The angry General felt that Visionary was an excellent target for working off his tension. He’d soon put a stop to this nonsense.
He stormed into the ornate Victorian office. “Right. Let’s get a few things clear before we start…” he barked. Then he came to a halt.
Visionary wasn’t there. Special Agent Herbert P. Garrick sat at the desk studying a situation report.
“Garrick! I thought I had you escorted from the premises?” growled the General.
“You did,” agreed the former Special Advisor to the former President. “That irritated me, Terrence. It suggested a lack of respect for my many years of loyal service. So I got a cab to Pearson Heights and called upon an old colleague.” He looked over to the fireplace. Hodgekiss realised that there was another person in the room.
An old man in a tweed suit turned from the fireplace to regard him. “You want to get things clear, eh? Dashed good idea,” agreed Sir Mumphrey Wilton.
“You?” Hodgekiss frowned, recognising the eccentric Englishman, a former Legion leader himself.
 “Me,” agreed Mumphrey. “Young Visionary decided to delegate dealin’ with the hired help and asked if I’d care to rejoin the team as associate member responsible for liaison, co-ordination, and dealing with oiks.”
The General rallied. “With respect, sir, I’m here to deal with the Legion’s leader, not a flunkey, and I don’t have time to babysit some ancient Brit that’s not even recognised by my government who’s wandered out of retirement to chat about old times.”
Sir Mumphrey’s whiskers twitched. “Without respect, sirrah, I don’t give a flying fig who you think you’re here to deal with, you ignorant whey-faced pustulant preenin’ maundering poltroon! I haven’t yet called upon your current Commander-in-chief but I have been authorised by some of your nation’s previous Presidents. M’ last clearance came from Franklin Delano Roosevelt as he thanked me for my war efforts and it’s signed by George C. Marshall and Dwight D Eisenhower.”
“Okay, but…”
“Or perhaps you’d prefer my letters of authority and marque from Grover Cleveland, Teddy Roosevelt, William Taft, or Calvin Coolidge? Take your pick, you horse’s ass.”
“But…”
“Furthermore, I was Commander in Chief of the Allied Earth Forces in the Parody War with the rank of five star general so when you come into this room you salute me, soldier!”
“But…”
“Now! soldier, unless you want to drop and give me fifty!”
“Sir… yes sir.” Hodgekiss managed a salute despite his urge to rip the old man’s head off.
Garrick leaned back and folded his arms behind his head. If he’d dared put his feet up on Mumphrey’s desk he’d have kicked off his shoes.
“Right, next thing, young man,” went on the furious eccentric Englishman, “You tell me what in seven hells those cretins you work for thought they were doin’ attacking the Lair Legion? What rear-echelon bootlicking lackspittle thought that takin’ down Legion members was going to do anything but provoke an unconscionable metahuman crisis, eh? Well, speak up man!”
“Sir, I can’t…”
“No you can’t sirrah. You cannot. Because weakening our superhuman defenders is a criminal act of treason as well as the resort of feckless bounders of the first order. Whole lot of you deserve to be taken out and shot against a wall as the traitorous turncoats you are for plottin’ against heroic men and who’ve bled and suffered for this Earth.”
“You don’t have to like the heroes to see that the de-powering plan was a massive foobah of a mistake,” judged Garrick. He thought of all the times he’d wanted to trigger the Protocols himself and all the times he’d put the plot back in the drawer. “Force the LL underground and they’re less accountable than ever. And they could do it. They’ve done it before.”
Hodgekiss tried not to back away as Mumphrey strode forward to get in his face.
“Shadow Cabinet bastards sent Edward Gramayre after me. Ask ‘em where he is now. Ask them what happened to all their secret conspirators durin’ the Parody War. You ask them. Then you tell ‘em that Visionary’s a nice chap and he’ll play by the rules. Salt of the Earth, decent chap through and through. He’ll be fair and honest and he’ll keep the Legion straight. Remind ‘em though that I’m a stone cold bastard who’ll peel their balls and feed ‘em to the dogs if they try to hurt my comrades and I don’t intend anything bad to happen on that fine young man’s watch. Tell ‘em if they don’t slink off back to the holes they crawled out from then I’ll step on ‘em like reptiles and good riddance tot eh whole pack of ‘em!”
“He is a bastard,” confirmed Bad News Herb.
Hodgekiss swallowed hard.
“And tell the Grey Eminence that huntin’ season’s over,” warned the eccentric Englishman. “Tell Harmanda Barriere to go away before she annoys me more. Do you understand what you have to communicate, mister liaison advisor?”
“I’m not going to…”
“You call me sir, you posturing jackanapes!”
“Sir… I am not here to…”
“Don’t tell me what you’re here to do, boy. I know what you’re here for. And that’s why I’m here. I am going to make absolutely damned sure that you and your bosses do not interfere with the running of this Lair Legion. I’ll be keeping a very close eye on you all, and I won’t be doin’ it alone. I’ve had well over a century to gather assets and allies. Lots and lots of ‘em. Oodles of ‘em. People and things you can’t even imagine. Tell your superiors that they do not want to challenge my ingenuity, what?”
“Yes… sir,” said Hodgekiss in a strangled voice.
“Mister Garrick, tell this blighter what happens if his masters push their Protocols any further if you please.”
Garrick sat forward. “It gets very bad. The Legion walk out to the press pack and they remind everyone about the Parody War. About the Carnifex. About Galactivac. About the Transworlds Challenge. About every single time they’ve saved this world. And then they explain what you’re trying to do to attack them.”
“There’s no proof that…”
“They don’t need proof,” snapped Garrick. “Who do you think the public will believe, Dancer and Yo or you? But if you want proof, what happens when Hallie starts digging out every private government e-mail from every secret server on the planet? When she tracks down all the bank accounts and secret payments and makes them available on the internet? Hacker Nine took over the world that way. Hallie could do better. And that’s before the Legion’s telepaths and mystic friends start digging. Before they start calling all the world leaders whose lives they’ve saved and calling in favours. Before they whip up some gizmo to beam all your dirty secrets direct into everyone’s minds like they did with that Carnifex fight? You want to bring the government down? Bring all governments down? Just keep pushing.”
“We can’t allow ourselves to be ruled by metahumans,” protested Hodgekiss.
“We can’t,” agreed Garrick. “We didn’t want to be part of the USSR all those years either but we didn’t start a nuclear war over it. If you attack superheroes then the world becomes a very dangerous place. Never mind what CrazySugarFreakBoy! would do if you went after his family, what if the Shoggoth cut loose? Or Donar? These are people who’ve literally taken on whole worlds. They have allies everywhere, galactically, interdimensionally. You do not want to pick this fight. Everybody loses.” Bad News Herb scowled. “I could have told you that if you’d not been such a REMF with his head so far up his ass that he couldn’t hear anything. As it is, you wanted a reaction from the Legion?” He pointed to Mumph. “There he is.”
General Terrence “No Nickname” Hodgekiss stood silently, at a loss.
Sir Mumphrey rang a bell on his desk. “Miss Ashling, would you come in here with the General’s schedule,” he requested.
“My schedule?” frowned the General.
“You’re here to liase,” pointed out Garrick. “So liase.”
Hodgekiss gestured to Garrick. “Sir, what is he doing here? He’s no longer a Special Advisor and his agency has…”
“Oh, he’ll be reappointed by the President this evenin’,” Sir Mumphrey promised. “Garrick can’t stomach us and he’s suspicious of everything we do. Just what we need in that job, to keep us honest. But he’s not a maundering quisling backstabber – at least not the kind we can’t work with. Welcome back, Mister Garrick.”
“Thank you, Sir Mumphrey,” said the G-Man.
Asil entered the room in her most formal business suit carrying a set of folders. “Here’s the diary, Sir Mumphrey.”
The keeper of the chronometer of infinity gestured to Hodgekiss. “Tell that what he’s doin’ for the rest of today.”
Asil smiled a sweet vicious smile. “General, you’ve got a number of high level meetings. Our new leader arranged them for you personally. He is a Great Man. So at 1pm you’ll be explaining your recent actions to the Legion’s legal council, Miss Lisa L. Waltz. At 2 you’ll be answering questions on the security implications of the attack on the team for the President for Life of Badripoor. At 3.15 it’s the Ausgardian ambassador Volgirth the Volumous. It’ll be a working dinner. 4.30 you’ll be discussing the same thing with the delegation from the Sea Monkeys.”
Hodgekiss opened his mouth to protest then caught Sir Mumphrey’s glower.
“At 5.30 Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises will be giving you a full physical exam to make sure you’re not a Skunk, Space Fandom, or Hero Feeder. Miss Framlicker says to expect it to be intrusive and painful. At 6.15 there’s the representatives from Woopsa of the Amalgamated Pantheons. One of those is a God of Small Waters so you’ll want to brush up on your bathroom manners. At 7.30 it’s the diabolical Dr Moo, who is a big cow. She’ll want to talk about the misuse of her gene-rectification tech.”
Garrick winced theatrically. “Oh dear oh dear…”
“Assuming you’re still in roughly human shape thereafter there’ll be an emissary from the Many Coloured Lands, the herald Zebulon to talk with about why your government colluded to attack an ally of the Faerie Queene. At 9pm it’s the Vesalian Apes. At 10pm it’s the plenipotentiary of the Emir of All Caph, the High Lady Miiri. At 11.15 there’ll be a short presentation from the Scholar Ghouls under Gothametropolis. Well, short for them.”
“But…” objected Hodgekiss.
“It’s Visionary’s address book,” Garrick pointed out. “He could go on like this for weeks.”
“Absolutely,” growled Sir Mumphrey Wilton.
“And in amongst the other appointments I’ll be scheduling you in with the members of the Legion and the support staff so you can apologise for your appalling behaviour,” concluded Asil. “Do you have any questions? Like what hit you?”
“Oh, I think he knows what hit him,” smirked Garrick. “And where.”
“Very well, Hodgekiss,” snapped Mumphrey. “Dismissed.”
***
2. The Widening Void
 There was darkness. There was nothing else.
Liu Xi Xian reached out with her elemental senses to find any matter or energy. There was none.
She felt the elements of her body begin to bleed away into the void. She steeled her will to hold herself together. She refreshed the air inside her lungs and tried not to let the zero gravity make her puke.
Void, she thought. I’m surrounded by void. I can control void, fold it. I can stretch and shape it.
She tried. When the void was infinite those abilities were meaningless.
She refocused on controlling the only other elements available to her, those inside her own body. She prevented her heat draining away across an eternal absolute zero. She’d once recreated her own flesh under bizarre circumstances in Comic-Book Limbo. Without that insight she’d have been dead in less than ten minutes now.
Liu Xi had known that void was dangerous, not so much an element as a lack of all of them, the black to the rainbow spectrum of Chinese aspects of matter and energy. She’d never realised that all her experience had been dabbling in the shallows; this was the abyssal ocean deep.
She forced herself to stay calm. She’d learned some discipline during her recent ordeal on Shee-Yar Prime, where survival depended on endurance of spirit as well as body. She clung to that and forced herself to think.
She’d been with Vinnie. She’d gone to his bathroom, where she’d folded dimensions to make a rather more amenable extension. She’d exactly copied the molecules from a bathroom in Paradopolis’ prestigious Croque D’Or casino hotel so that the plumbing worked. She’d folded void to staple the extra space onto Vinnie’s cramped room…
She’d folded void.
And then she remembered Lord Slithis’ mocking gloat when he’d held her captive yesterday. Something was hunting her from the Void.
As if the realisation had triggered something, Liu Xi felt the Void shift around her, as if it had tides, as if it had life.
Then she was in a black room with a black dais and upon it stood a figure cloaked in black; void black.
“This isn’t real,” Liu Xi said. “It’s in my head.”
“How does that make it unreal?” demanded the other. “All your perceptions of what you call reality are just stories in your head.”
“Who are you? What do you want?”
“I am… oh, something terrible, little human. Something you cannot understand or your heart would shatter and your mind would snap. I am Void. I am Death.” The creature paused for a moment. “The last time I interacted with your Parodyverse I called myself the Void Spectre.”
“I don’t know you.” Liu Xi could feel the entity though, a dark malevolence crawling towards her soul.
“I set the Grim Reaper to destroy your Parodyverse. I provided passage for the Carnifex.”
“Why?”
“Oh, because I can,” suggested the Void Spectre. “Because I have reasons beyond your comprehension. Because I like the way mortals scream. Because you are dangerous and need to be stopped. Take your pick.”
“Why come after me, I mean? What have I done to you?”
“Your grandfather opened the way when he arranged your existence. Each time you folded me you brought me nearer. Each time you shifted through me you bound yourself closer. You are the doorway through which I shall take your reality.”
“I didn’t do that. You talk as if you are the void.”
“I am,” replied the entity. “In your limited world of matter and energy and magic you have elementals, do you not? Creatures of science or sorcery that are avatars of various primal forces and states? Your ally Lara Night, for example? There are many little elementals in your reality, of fire and air and water and earth.”
“I’ve met some,” Liu Xi owned.
“I am the elemental of Void,” said the Void Spectre. “The only one. Ever. Anywhere. I am that which lies between. I am that which remains when all else is destroyed. I am the end of all things.”
His words washed through Liu Xi, racking her with their truths.
“Every thing has its natural predator. I am that which consumes multiverses.”
“I won’t help you. I won’t let you have the Parodyverse.”
The Void Spectre seemed amused. “You already have. Now I need only consume you and the doorway you have become will be mine.”
***
 “It’s a tea cosy,” explained Vinnie De Soth. “Usually used to keep teapots warm, but it’s stretchy and I’m pretty sure it’ll fit over that lumpy green head-dome of yours and keep it from oozing too much.”
Baroness Morbo was not amused. The half-alien sorceress was sensitive about her cranial appearance.
The acting sorcerer supreme and jobbing occultist for hire waved the woolly object alluringly. “All you need to do is shut down your demon viagra business so no more girls get impregnated by proxy by hell-beings and this wonderful free gift could be yours.”
“You dare to mock Baronessss Morbo?” hissed his adversary.
“All the evidence points to yes,” admitted Vinnie. “You’re ruining lives. Stop it or I will.”
“You dare to threaten Baronessss Morbo?”
“Again I’d have to go with yes.” He pulled a safety pin out of his pocket, opened it, and pricked his thumb. “Ow.”
“Blood magic?” scorned the alien sorceress. “You’ll need rather more than a few dropssss to match with me, little De Sssoth.”
“So you’re not going for the tea cosy deal, then?” Vinnie checked. “Only that’s kind of your last chance before I have to spank your warty green butt.”
“You dare to combat Baronessss Morbo?”
“Hey, in case you didn’t get the memo I’m acting sorcerer supreme this week. Combating sorceresses who get abyssal brownie points by letting demons knock up Earth-girls by remote control is right there in the job description. Clause four, I think. And it’s not like you can do anything to stop me or banish me. I don’t banish easily.”
A few drops of Vinnie’s blood splashed to the floor.
Baroness Morbo twisted her long four-knuckled fingers and sent a Blistering Banishment of Boggoth right at the annoying young upstart.
The spell caught Vinnie right in the chest and dragged him out of the Parodyverse entire.
Into the Void.
“Hi, Liu Xi,” Vinnie said to his misplaced date. “Who’s your friend?”
***
“Thus endsss the ssssupposed sssorcerer sssupreme,” spat Baroness Morbo. “Nothing can ssstop me now.”
“Excuse me,” said the Manga Shoggoth. “We are looking for Vinnie de Soth.”
The Baroness turned round to find a loathsome elder being in her place of power. The Shoggoth had seen the arcane defences she’d put in place and had decided to walk around them. It seemed only polite.
“Sssso, the upssstart has alliesss. It will avail him nothing. I am well verssssed in the binding of elder beingssss.”
“Oh,” said the Shoggoth. “But my friend isn’t an elder being. He’s an Ausgardian.”
“Heilsa, foul sorceress,” greeted Donar Oldmanson. “Prepare to be smitten most wrothfully for the nonce.”
***
“That’s the Void Spectre. He wants to eat the Parodyverse.” Liu Xi gave Vinnie the short form answer.
“Ah,” said the young occultist. “The same Void Scholar who had his agent the Grim Reaper turn Earth’s moon poisonous and evil then blow up before the Hooded Hood retconned that?”
“The Enemy was my first emissary,” agreed the dark entity on his dark dais. “Liu Xi Xian is my last.”
“He wants to consume me, here in his eternal void,” Liu Xi warned. “I think then he can use my void gifts to link to the elements of the Parodyverse and actually get into our reality.”
“The Void Scholar, Lord Slithis, Dark Thugos, and now the Void Spectre,” listed Vinnie. “Don’t you have any enemies who aren’t all-powerful?”
“I’m sorry,” said Liu Xi. She hadn’t meant to get another person who loved her killed.
“You are your Parodyverse’s occult defender,” the Void Spectre recognised, turning his malevolent attention to Vinnie. “You are weak.”
The acting sorcerer supreme tried not to crumble under that ancient alien scrutiny. “I’m on a steep learning curve,” he managed to reply.
“I can see your mind. You laid a trail of blood to this place, hoping that you could find the girl then use her gifts to retrace your route back the your sanguine anchor. I will prevent that.”
Liu Xi realised that Vinnie hadn’t been expecting an omnipotent entity at the end of his rescue mission. “Let him go and I’ll stay here,” she offered the Void Spectre.
“No,” countered Vinnie. “This job comes with hard choices but that’s not one of them. Not today. Anyway, that trail of blood wasn’t just a ball of string to get us out of the labyrinth. You didn’t read my mind deep enough. Try again, VS.”
He shuddered as that icy sentience plunged further into his thoughts.
“What are these?” demanded the Void Spectre. “What is a Donar? What is a Manga Shoggoth?”
Then Mjalcolm impacted with his head and smeared it across the eternal void.
“Well met, mine friends,” the hemigod of thunder bade them. “Tis kind of thee to provide a baddie for the smiting. I call that hospitable.”
The Shoggoth extended his full senses into the void around. “This is nowhere,” he realised. “None of us can exist long here, even me. We must go.”
“Before the Void Spectre reforms and gets angry,” Liu Xi added. “He’s more powerful than can be told. Here, in this place, he’s the supreme power.”
“Bringeth him on,” said Donar Oldmanson.
“He’s still blocking my blood-path,” Vinnie frowned. “We’re stranded here.”
“Really?” puzzled the Shoggoth. “Why not use that mystic lien on Liu Xi Xian and head back that way?”
“What mystic lien?” worried Liu Xi. “What’s a lien?”
“You’re betrothed to an undead deity,” the loathsome elder being pointed out. “He’s got part of your soul and you’ll shrivel and die if you don’t wed him. Didn’t you know?”
“Lord Slithis!” snarled Donar. “There shall come a reckoning!”
“There really will,” agreed Vinnie. “But for now that’s just what we need to pull a switch and bait. Shoggoth, can you do the following while Liu Xi does this…”
Donar ignored the babble about dimensional co-ordinates and conceptual transfers and smote the Void Spectre again as he reformed.
The Void Spectre smote him back.
Donar replied in kind.
“Now,” said Vinnie.
The Shoggoth twisted sideways through impossible dimensions. Liu Xi transmuted void to the stuff of Parodyverse.
“Cease that!” commanded the Void Spectre.
Liu Xi poked her tongue out at him. “You want to chase me? Take a number. Just be warned that catching me can be very dangerous.” She released the energies she’d drawn to her in an explosive blast that hurled the Spectre away from Donar.
“Cometh back!” the raging hemigod called to his adversary.
“Liu Xi, now!” Vinnie called, sensing the overwhelming backlash the avatar of void was preparing.
“I see it,” breathed the elementalist. “Hold on!”
Lord Slithis, new-reborn god of necromancers, suddenly found himself yanked by his mystic lien on Liu Xi. He had a brief image of Vinnie de Soth thumbing his nose at him and then he was hanging in nothingness before an angry Void Spectre. Vinnie, Liu Xi, Donar and the Shoggoth headed the other way back to Earth.
***
“I shifted the co-ordinates to avoid Slithis’ temple of extreme evil,” Vinnie apologised to Donar. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“I wilt hath to commit wreckage and smotage another time then,” sulked the hemigod. “Slithis wilt return.”
“Pretty much guaranteed,” agreed Vinnie. “I can think of at least three ways a major necromancer could get out of there. All painful, though. And then we’re going to have some words about this lien he’s put on Liu Xi.”
“The Void Spectre will be irritated,” predicted the Shoggoth. “He will be prowling the edges of his domain, looking for Liu Xi, seeking entry to your ‘reality’.” As he said ‘reality’ the elder being chuckled as if he’d made a funny joke.
Liu Xi shuddered.
“It’ll be okay,” Vinnie assured her. “We’ll handle it.”
“Tis sooth,” agreed Donar. “Indeed, we didst seek thee out with news that thou hast been found most worthy of ajoining the company of the Lair Legion. Welcome to our ranks.”
Vinnie winced. Xander had warned him about this. As a survival technique it seemed to be lacking in any understanding of what the Legion regularly did.
“They want us to join the Legion?” Liu Xi asked. “Can we talk about it later? When I have some clothes on?” She glared at Vinnie.
Vinnie scratched his head. In retrospect catapulting them back to Parody Plaza at rush hour might not have been the best idea.
***
3. Job Orientation
 “Okay,” said Fleabot, “you’ve just become leader of the Lair Legion. What are you gonna do next?”
Visionary had a hunted look about his face. “Hide?” he suggested. “Find a shuttle to Caph?”
Hallie pressed him back onto his seat. “You were a good leader before, you’ll be a better leader now,” she assured him.
“Shall I try and get Lisa to call in and tell you what to do?” Fleabot offered. “It worked last time.”
“Lisa didn’t tell me what to do,” objected Vizh. “Well, maybe she did, but not more than usual.”
“Your first command decision worked out well,” Hallie pointed out. “At least judging by the way Hodgekiss stormed out of Sir Mumphrey’s office.”
Visionary had to admit that had been satisfying.
“My question is why old Mumphrey gets the big office?” Fleabot admitted. “If you’re the leader of the Legion now why do you have a cupboard.”
“This isn’t a cupboard,” Hallie told the robot flea. “And Flapjack will be back to move those boxes of toner cartridges and photocopy paper later this afternoon. This is the very office that Visionary had when he was leader of the Legion last time.”
The possibly-fake man nodded. “Yes. Those marks on the plaster there are where Troia threw her spear at me when I first asked her for a cup of coffee. And that crack is from the time Donar didn’t set the TIVO for Angel. And those stains there are from Lisa. Don’t ask.”
“But Mumph gets the big panelled east-facing luxury room with the classy paintings and the marble fireplace,” Fleabot noted. “If you put a power desk in here we’d all have to sit on it.”
“Well, that room seems more him than me,” Vizh admitted. “That’s where he ran the whole Parody War from. It’s all oak and leather and he seems to go with it.”
“Whereas this place is cramped and a bit worn and in desperate need of a tidy up,” noted Hallie. “Yes, I see what you mean.”
“I don’t need a big office,” Visionary argued. “And I’m not the leader of the Lair Legion. CSFB! leads the field-team, backed up by Yuki as deputy. I’m just the Chair.”
“You get sat on a lot,” offered Fleabot.
“No. Well, probably. But the Chair’s supposed to be, like…”
“A referee?” suggested Hallie. “A ringmaster? A zookeeper? Chief warden?”
“I see it largely as an honorary role,” Vizh insisted. “No really. I mean, what is there actually for me to do?”
Hallie pulled a list up on a hologram of a computer screen. She’d already had the room wired for hard-light photon constructs. “Budgets, situation reports, correspondence, admin meetings, forecasts, PR, strategic overview, tactical review, maintenance schedules, legal, personnel, security and plenary. And of course there’s the matter of this list of people that Dream announced to the world would be joining us,” she suggested. “I know CSFB! thought actually asking them was a trivial step that needn’t concern us but I think you might want to be a bit more proactive?”
Vizh looked down the row of names. “We’re going to need to order in more groceries.”
“We’re going to need to get these guys here and ready for action,” argued Fleabot. “Have you seen the threat board now Hallie’s updated it? Post-Carnifex, things have gone crazy. Every whackjob he kept quiet is back with six of his buddies.”
“I’m keeping flags on the main problems,” Hallie assured the new Chair of the LL. “Especially Camellia of the Fey, but also Thugos, the robot rights issue, and the Hooded Hood.”
“What’s the Hooded Hood doing now?” Vizh worried.
“Being the Hooded Hood,” answered the Legion’s A.I. “Let’s just assume it’s something archvillainous and flag him anyway.”
“So I guess you should do some leading, o glorious leader,” Fleabot prompted Visionary, “or maybe some chairing, o glorious chair.”
Vizh took a breath. “Okay. I can totally handle this. Ms Pfeffercorn said that I should no longer panic under social pressures. Unless she had a video camera ready. So… let’s send out the team we’ve got already to pick up the team Vespiir seems to think we’re going to have. Fleabot, go ask the folks which assignment they each want. Get Sergeant MacHarridan to clear that press mob off our lawn. Hallie, do all the stuff you were planning to do anyway then call back and talk to me later. Somebody get me Amber’s number so I can talk to her about coming back. We can do this. I can do this.”
He caught Fleabot’s gaze. “Keep Lisa on speed-dial.”
***
 Vizh now knew the trick of adjusting the leader’s office chair. You just had to kick it hard enough.
He was in the process of giving it a repeated and violent booting when there was a tap on his office door. An attractive face peered inside and said “Hi. Is this a bad time?”
“No,” said Vizh. “I was just… gathering my thoughts. Come in Tandi. What can I do for…urk.”
The former sexbot shimmied into the cramped room and Vizh saw her outfit. It was a tweed twinset over a frothy lace blouse, except the twinset seemed… abbreviated. Tandi was also wearing big round spectacles, black silk stockings, and six-inch heels.
She squeezed into the room, sat on Vizh’s desk – on Vizh’s side of the desk, and crossed her legs. “I’m ready,” she said.
“Ready? Ready for what?” worried the possibly-fake possibly-leader.
“Ready for my interview, sir,” Tandi told him with a dazzling groin-twitching smile. “For the position of secretary? Your secretary?”
Vizh tried to wheel the leader’s chair backwards. The castors stuck and he found himself windmilling to keep from toppling over backwards into the wall. He reached out and grabbed for the nearest thing he could to hold on to.
“That’s it,” said Tandi, encouragingly. “Now shall I do dictation or do you want to go right to the spanking?”
Vizh removed his hand as if it had been burned. “Tandi, I thought you’d decided not to be a sexbot any more? What do you think you are doing?”
The robot girl looked stricken. “I’m interviewing,” she said. “For a proper job. I heard Hallie saying that you needed a secretary – Fleabot said keeper – and I thought, well, I have secretarial subroutines. Lots of them. I can do bottom-drawer filing bending and over-the-desk telephone work and…”
“Yes, er, yes,” said Visionary. “But I’m not sure those skills are… it’s not what I want… well, not what I should have. I don’t… Look, last time I did this job my secretary was Troia 215.”
A light of understanding dawned in Tandi’s eyes. “Ah. I can do Amazon,” she promised, tearing at her blouse-front. “I can do strict strict discipline.”
“Discipline wasn’t a feature of my relationship with Troia,” Vizh assured her. “Tandi, stop. I’m not going to hire you to have sex with me.”
Tandi bit her lip. “But I’m very good at it.”
“I’m sure you are. But you can’t define everything you do based on that. You’re so much more than a sex object.”
Tandi hesitated. “I’d… I don’t know that…”
“Hey, you’ve helped out with Magweed and Griffin without having to resort to your nanny program. Do you think you could be my secretary without being… that kind of secretary?”
“I don’t know. I can’t accept software patches like Hallie can that just give me skills. I don’t know how to do filing that’s not in the bottom drawer or how to do a desk calendar that isn’t ‘doing a desk calendar’.”
Vizh very much wanted to ask that that might actually involve but he felt that the conversation might go downhill again and he wasn’t convinced his chair would stand it. “Maybe you could learn the other way?” he suggested. “Hallie will show you what to do. Amber could show you too if I can convince her back. Just find out what the job needs and practice like anybody else. But listen, this job can be dangerous. There was this other robot girl, Mindy…”
“I know it’s dangerous. I know about Mindy and the rest. But I also know that you and the Lair Legion risk your lives all the time to make things better for other people, to keep them safe and that. So if I’m a person I should be able to choose to risk my life to help too. What’s the point of being free-willed if you don’t help your friends and make the world better?”
“Now that is how you pass a job interview with the LL,” Visionary approved. “You’re real, dammit. Welcome to the staff.”
***
 [Additional Hallie dialogue by Vizh]
“So Tandi interviewed well?” asked Hallie, reappearing in Vizh’s office.
“You sent her?”
“I hoped she’d come. Did she… come?”
“You knew what was going to happen,” accused Visionary. “You knew what she’d do and you knew what I’d do.”
Hallie nodded. “I have a frighteningly large number of predictive subroutines concentrated on you,” she confessed. “However, none of them is helping me to work out why you called me back just now. So tell me.”
Vizh straightened his coat and leaned on his desk, holding the chair in place by means of a strategically-placed foot under one castor. “I want you,” he said.
Hallie’s eyebrow raised a little. “Here? Now? I thought we said…”
“Er, for the Legion, I mean. I want you to join the team.”
“Oh, right. Of course. That’s what I thought you meant. For the team. But I’m not on Vespiir’s list.”
“Neither was Sir Mumphrey. I don’t care. You deserve to be a full member and I’m ready to make you one. How about it?”
Hallie opened her mouth to speak then paused before saying anything. “Sorry, but no. I’m not really interested in being a superhero, Vizh. I’m happy just where I am now. And I’ve got midterms at Paradopolis U and a whole portfolio to assemble. I can’t afford to be distracted.”
Vizh looked crestfallen. “Really? Cause if you’re just worried about that robot rights thing that you’ve flagged we can deal with that. I gave Mumphrey the good office, remember?”
“It’s not that. Not just that. You can’t just go promoting people to Legion membership because you happen to like them. You’re not CrazySugarFreakBoy! And even if I did join, everyone would think… well, they’d know that we’ve dated.”
“I don’t care what everyone thinks,” objected Visionary.
“The yellow coat shows that,” conceded Hallie. “But it matters to me if people think I’m just the leader’s perk.”
“Nobody would think that. Well, nobody nice. Er… I see what you mean, but…”
Hallie touched her fingers to his lips. “Vizh, I love the Legion's idealism... I always have. I feel in love with the world view you all represented from the moment I was swept up into your early adventures, even though back then you all were just a rag-tag group slightly less respected and welcome in the city than a pack of mangy coyotes. I still love the vision you all have of the world... It's just not mine.”
“It could be. You shouldn’t let others decide…”
Hallie snorted. “I could almost laugh when I hear someone talk about what the public wants... be it a politician, or a hero like Dream... or even you. None of you share my world view. None of you are quite so aware of the public's mood, the ebb and flow of opinion on a tide of pettiness. None of you live inside the electronic soup of the public's consciousness, able to watch in real time as tiny events pinball throughout, galvanizing viewpoints through knee-jerk reactions that lead to actual change in the world. Hell, I wouldn't even let any of you read the Legion's e-mail unfiltered and in its entirety. I love the Legion's idealism too much. I just can't share in it.”
Vizh tried to think of a way to get through to the woman. Hallie withdrew her hand and stepped away.
“So please don't tell me that nothing we can't handle is going to come from my becoming a Legionnaire, or publicly dating one...,” she told him. “Not in this political climate, and not with the pieces of the gameboard arranged as they are. I see far more than any one person might expect.”
Visionary scratched his head and sighed. “I guess I can’t give you a place on the Lair Legion. One day you’ll have to decide to take it.”
Hallie smiled sadly. “Listen, there’s more. I’ve been giving this a lot of process time too since CSFB!’s announcement this morning. An awful lot. Rather more than gets used to run the combined stock exchanges of the Earth.”
Vizh looked at her pale green face. “What is it?” he asked with a sinking feeling in his stomach.
“I don’t think that we should keep seeing each other either. Well, I mean we will see each other because you’re the leader of the LL and I’m the resident computer system and also surrogate mother to your children, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to go out while…” She rubbed her forehead in a very human way. “I’m not Tandi. I wouldn’t be happy as the boss’ mistress,” she concluded.
“Hallie, that’s ridiculous! You know I’d never…”
“I know that!” flared Hallie. “The world doesn’t. The world has decided that A.I.s are bad and that we’re less than human and that everything we’ve done counts for nothing! I don’t want the world sneering at me and looking down on me any worse than it is. I don’t want to give those critics such an easy handle to dismiss me and all artificial intelligences everywhere. You’re leader of the Legion whatever you want to call it and I’ll back you a hundred percent as you staff, your colleague, and your friend. But I won’t be a member and… I can’t be your girl.”
Visionary collected his arguments. “Look, Hallie, I know there’s…” he began.
But Hallie’s hologram just blinked out.
“Damn,” said the possibly-fake man. “This day just keeps on getting better and better.”
Hallie blinked back in. Vizh looked up hopefully till he saw her face.
“Flash alert from SPUD,” the A.I. warned. “Hatty’s just been shot in the head.”
***
 4. Romance and Profanity
Alcheman was undercover.
“Hello there. I’m enquiring about an escort.”
The attractive lady behind the plush velvet-sided desk looked up from her magazine. Her glance took in the caller’s expensive suit, polished shoes and Rolex watch. “Certainly sir. Please have a seat. What name shall I put on the form?”
“Michael Wooster.”
She wrote it down. The company could identify who the client really was from security tapes later. “Well, here at Profanity Companions we have a wide selection of alternatives for you to consider. What kind of date were you looking for?”
“A party,” Alcheman suggested. He was sure that his sisters went to parties where people brought hired escorts.
“A private party?” enquired the receptionist with a flicker of an eyelid.
“Er, no. A big party. Lots of people. White tie. And other clothes.”
“An official function, then.” The receptionist ticked a box on her form. “And physical type?”
“Um… yes. Blonde? Yes, a blonde, please. And… er, tall.”
“Blonde and tall, yes. Strict?”
“Just tall.” If Michael Wooster wanted strict he had a variety of relatives he could call upon, or his first ex-fiancée. He nearly asked for friendly then realised that would have been a tactical error.
“Blonde and tall, then,” the receptionist noted down. “And should she look good naked?”
“Er… that won’t be necessary,” the chemical champion promised. Alcheman began to think that drifting into the agency as methane gas would have been a better plan after all. “I just want someone to take to a dinner. I, um, I was recently engaged and it didn’t work out. I don’t want people to think I’m sat at home all lonely and miserable.”
“Of course, sir. We can provide a date who will drive your ex-fiancée mad with jealousy.” Given that Alcheman was investigating another holding of Mistress Profanity, and that Profanity was actually the rogue faerie sorceress Camellia, he wasn’t actually sure that wasn’t an actual offer.
“I just… well, I’ve never done this sort of thing before. Hired an escort, I mean. I was hoping I might be able to get some kind of… tour of your premises? Maybe meet some of your people so I can decide who I’d like to take to dinner?”
“You want a show, Mr ‘Wooster’?”
“No. A guided tour is fine. Just to help me… understand.”
The receptionist nodded knowingly. Michael had to force himself to keep his hands on the desk and off the element-transforming tattoos under his shirt. As carbon dioxide he could be out of here in a moment.
Whatever her next nerve-shattering innuendo might have been would never be known. Just then the plate glass screen at the front of Profanity Companions shattered into fragments, spraying the room with shards. Michael dived across the desk and tackled the receptionist into cover.
Three tall armoured figured strode into the room. They were men clad in gold and green high-tech body armour, sporting wrist armature multi-weapons. The third man had a flamethrower attachment.
“What’s happening?” panicked the receptionist. “What are those iron things?”
Alcheman glanced over the desk. “Those would be Turret Industries’ Bionically Rendered Armoured War and Law Enforcement Racks, or BRAWLERs for short. I can only imagine how hard the marketing division had to work to come up with that acronym.”
The three BRAWLERS strode into the devastated reception area. “Wooster!” called B1-ALPHA, “You might as well come on out. We’ve got a lock on you.”
B2-BETA aligned his sonic cannon on the desk and focused. “You’ve got a licking coming up, buddy. Come out now and we’ll leave you one kneecap intact.”
B3-GAMMA flared his flamethrower and incinerated a ficus. “Or stay there and die,” he offered.
The receptionist looked at the man beside you. “You’re really called Wooster?” she asked. “I mean, these men are here for you?”
“Could be,” Alcheman admitted. “Constance Blott was the fiancée I mentioned earlier. Her father’s CEO of Turrets Inc. I guess he really wasn’t that happy about me vanishing before the wedding. Don’t worry. I’ll handle this. I’ll protect you. Keep down.”
“I wasn’t planning jumping up right now,” the girl assured Michael. “Only an idiot would even consider…”
Michael Wooster popped up from behind the desk, hands in the air. “Listen, I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” he began. “I can explain everything….” He was interrupted by his mobile phone ringing. It was the ringtone he reserved for professional calls. “I can explain everything right after I take this,” he apologised. “Hello?”
B1-ALPHA ratcheted to rubber bullets.
B2-BETA focussed his shattercannon on Wooster’s tibia.
B3-GAMMA took out another shrub. He hated office plants.
“Ah, hi,” Alcheman said to G-Eyed. “No, I haven’t had the news on today. Right now I’m kind of busy. People are pointing weapons at me.”
Then the walls to either side of the BRAWLERS crashed apart and Camellia’s security team fell on the armoured warriors.
“And now the people who were pointing weapons at me are being tackled by angry trolls,” Alcheman added. He listened for a moment then added, “Yes, now would be a good time to lock onto my phone signal and teleport in.”
***
Camellia of the Fey didn’t use scrying mirrors any more. She didn’t like what they reflected. She sat in darkness in her midnight velvet chamber hunched over a bowl of ink and blood and received her reports.
“The Lycanthrope’s Guild is with us, mistress. They will come at your call.”
“Most of the Ghoul Lords will take our side, dark lady. They will devour those who stand against you.”
“Daimon Soulshredder has accepted your proposition, belle dame. He will bring his allies when the time is right. The Flensing Man will join him.”
“Excellent,” responded Camellia. “And Vrykolakas? Have my emissaries returned from him this time?”
“No, great one. But the undead Graf Hertzog will join your cause and bring his host of night thirsters.”
“For all his remarkable talent for survival Hertzog is a fool. I want the elder vampire. He commands much respect amongst the revenants. Send another messenger, with some suitable tribute. A dozen orphans, perhaps? A nubile virgin if you can find one left on this miserable world.” Camellia shifted as her withered arm became uncomfortable again. “What of my enemies in the House of Visionary? How fare my plans for them?”
“My queen of darkness, there has been… a development there, just now. A complication.”
“How so? What has that wretched man done now? Or is it his degenerate children? That faithless wayward Magweed!”
Camellia would have to wait a while longer to hear of Vizh’s ascension to Lair Chairman however. At that moment the alarm bell tolled warning of intruders in her stronghold.
She was not glad of the interruption.
***
 Goldeneyed teleported in then richocheted into a wall. “Yeow!” he shouted as he ducked to avoid a gnarled trollish fist, “Somebody’s set up anti-teleport magics here.”
Alcheman had touched the transfers on his biceps and transformed himself to iron, a compromise to affect faerie and BRAWLER alike, and to disguise his secret identity. “How did you manage to get past the barrier then?”
“I’m very good,” G-Eyed called back. He applied his spacial-distortion abilities to boost his strength and speed and punch the troll that was in his face back into the general melee. “I’ve been at this for a while. Also I’m really used to my powers being painful to use by now. I sometimes miss the chair or the door.”
Alcheman shifted to ether to let a surface to surface missile pass right through him then hammered an ogre down with a diamond fist. “I think I might have found Camellia’s trail again,” he noted.
Goldeneyed dodged a spray of BRAWLER-fire and teleported the weapon’s magazine inside a nearby troll’s stomach. “It’s possible,” agreed the teleporter. “There are some useful clues.”
Alcheman became lodestone for a moment and pointed through one of the wrecked walls. “I’m getting drawn in that direction.”
G-Eyed teleported so that two ogres ended up wrestling each other and followed the chemical champion into the darkness. “Stay close,” he warned Alcheman. “Right now I’m teleporting curses away from us faster than you’d believe.”
“Good stuff.” Alcheman transformed his left hand to phosphene to light their way beyond the luxurious façade of Madame Profanity’s Companion Agency into the cobwebbed interior.
Camellia of the Fay flared up before them, shining and terrible. “Look upon my glory, mortals, and despair.”
Alcheman became lead and shielded G-Eyed’s face. “Your evil-doing days are over, Camellia,” he warned the belle dame sand merci.
“Really?” G-Eyed asked his partner in crimefighting. “You really use dialogue like that? Boy, we need to get you trained up real fast.”
“What’s wrong with telling the malefactor that she has come to justice?” wondered Michael Wooster.
“And we don’t usually call them malefactors, either. Unless we’re Sir Mumphrey, in which case they’d be feckless ungodly malefactors no fitter to live on God’s green Earth than a weasel.”
Camellia was not used to being ignored. Her glory had been diminished by her wounds, true, but her pride was intact. “Insolent mortals!” she boomed in a voice that echoed through their souls.
“I don’t even know what feckless means,” G-Eyed confessed. “What is feck anyhow?”
Wooster was happy to help. “It’s an abbreviated form of the word ‘effect’, used in late middle-ages Scots, first popularised in literature by Thomas Carlyle. Someone who’s feckful is effective and useful.”
“I never knew that.”
Camellia screamed and the room around her froze in lethal Fimbulwinter. Shards of ice exploded around the young heroes, too many for G-Eyed to fully deflect. Alcheman’s helium form froze solid.
The belle dame sans merci knotted her ruined hand into a fist then clawed it open to release the torments she’d been keeping in check for Alcheman’s return. The horrors of Penny Blood climbed out of the wall and folded around the slowed chemical champion.
G-Eyed punched the scribbled shadows away but they kept returning. He tried to teleport them but there was nothing there to shift; and yet their touch tore at his very soul.
Alcheman flared into magnesium to burn the wraiths from him then solidified as gleaming gold which did not decay. “We have to get out of here,” he warned G-Eyed. “This was just supposed to be a scouting mission. We’re not prepared for Profanity but she was ready for us.”
“About that,” gasped Bry Katz, “right now I’m having a bit for trouble sensing ‘outside’. I think she’s doing something weird with dimensions around us.”
Camellia brushed her fingers across his face. The fight went out of him.
“Stand and watch,” the dark lady instructed Bry Katz. “Watch as the Suicide Etchings tear the very soul out of your comrade.”
The twitching black scribbles closed in around Michael Wooster.
Alcheman struggled but these creatures had been specially designed to destroy him. Each tear rent his elemental structure and dredged up nightmares from his past.
“Honoria…” he whimpered.
“Why kill him and not me?” demanded G-Eyed, trying to struggle past the glamour that held him. “Why not both of us?”
“The horrors’ creator was not keen to murder a former Legionnaire,” Camellia explained. “Her Suicide Etchings are written not to harm your team, for the time of war has not yet come. Alcheman however has no such protection.”
“Okay, first thing,” G-Eyed told the belle dame, “I’m not former LL, I’m back. Got the card, the haunted bedroom, the intrusive medical exam from Miss Framlicker, the works. Second thing…”
Alcheman tried to tear the Etchings off him but they brought chunks of him with them.
“Second thing, Alcheman’s just been added to the roster as well. It was announced this morning. I was calling him to tell him. I hope that’s okay, buddy?”
Micheal Wooster struggled under the claws of the nightmares. “I accept,” he said. The Suicide Etchings around him burst into shreds of red ink.
“What?” blinked Camellia.
Alcheman flew at her as a cloud of iron filings.
Reality snapped back in around the heroes. The dark lady was forced to retreat again. G-Eyed teleported her parting curses after her.
***
“A Legionnaire? Really?”
“Sure thing. Why not? You’re ideal Legion material. Well, maybe a bit too stable but we can fix that.”
Alcheman and Goldeneyed stood in the remains of the exclusive Pearson’s Heights escort agency, looking for any sign that the BRAWLERs had ever been there but fragments of wrecked and twisted battlesuit. Now its glamour was waning the site seemed shoddy and run down, long deserted.
“I could learn a lot from the Lair Legion,” admitted Michael Wooster, “and maybe contribute too in some small way.”
“You get probationary membership, a self-detonating comm-card, Lairjet lessons, free use of the refrigerator, and a chance to get killed pretty much every week,” offered G-Eyed.
“Sounds just what I need right now.”
“Then welcome to the team, buddy.”
As the two heroes clasped hands there was a movement in the shadows. The receptionist ventured out of the rubble and looked around. She flitted over to Alcheman even though he’d now dug his mask out of his pocket.
“Thank you for protecting me,” she whispered in his ear. “I am named Wild Angelica. I’ll escort you anytime.” And with a gossamer kiss on his cheek she was gone.
“Oh, did I mention the inevitable romantic complications?” G-Eyed added. “It’s only a matter of time.”
Alcheman looked over at the Turrets Inc. BRAWLER remains. “Too late,” he confessed.
***
“That’s twice,” hissed Camellia of the Fey. “It’s time I gave those two my personal attention.”
***
Continued in UT#345 with: The Last Thing That Went Through His Head
Artwork by Visionary, plus one by Dancer; thanks folks.
***
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. |
|
-
 | At least.
by HH posted Sat May 22, 2010 at 12:42:43 pm BST |
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
| If only.
by HH posted Wed May 12, 2010 at 11:55:30 pm BST |
-
| Nice
by Al B. Harper posted Wed May 12, 2010 at 12:42:15 am BST |
| Really?
by HH posted Wed May 12, 2010 at 04:27:58 am BST |
-
-
-
 | Hmmm....
by L! posted Sun May 09, 2010 at 09:05:12 pm BST |
| Re: Hmmm....
by HH posted Sun May 09, 2010 at 11:15:18 pm BST |
| Re: Hmmm....
by HH posted Mon May 10, 2010 at 09:16:38 am BST |
-
| Still?
by HH posted Mon May 10, 2010 at 11:09:36 pm BST |
-
| On this.
by HH posted Mon May 10, 2010 at 09:22:59 am BST |
-
-
|  By the way...
by HH with a technical issue posted Sat May 08, 2010 at 08:56:59 am BST |
-
-
-
-
-
|
