Untold Tales of the Lair Legion #350: One Of Our Archvillains Is Missing
Previously: Well, it’s a bit hard to say, since Iscanean Went, the new Hooded Hood, has used his retcon powers to mess with plotlines left best untouched. Sir Mumphrey Wilton, Keeper of the Chronometer of Infinity, and his newly-retconned-in wife Baroness Elizabeth Wilton, better known as the supervillainess Elizabeth Sweetwater Dewdrop Zemo von Saxe-Lurkburg-Schreckhausen, have gone to remonstrate with the Hood about this at his sinister Herringcarp Asylum stronghold. Current chairman of the superheroic Lair Legion, Visionary, and the team’s training officer, Hatman, are also heading that way.
The LL’s most experienced members are in the field, tracking down a sudden zombie incursion. At least they were in the field; as of last time’s cliffhanger they had been propelled across the multiverse by a “Doom Tube”, an explosive transdimensional gateway that dropped them on an ominous “planet of the dead”. That is rarely a good sign. The main suspect is Lord Slithis, an Ausgardian necromancer who was definitely dead the last time Donar, hemigod of thunder, finished with him.
Meanwhile, the Legion’s newest inductees are back at the Lair Mansion on Parody Island, where one of their number, the mysterious Citizen Z, has been revealed as a coma patient occupied by a (now absent) ghostly spirit linked to Herringcarp Asylum. This has particularly upset Goldeneyed since he used to date Beth Shellett, said coma victim (before the coma; it wasn’t gross), and Silicone Sally since when she was a minion under the control of the Baroness she helped get Beth into her current state. Elementalist Liu Xi Xian is upset because Lord Slithis has somehow attached a lien on her soul to claim her when she dies, and although this is stopping the outer-dimensional Void Spectre from using her as a conduit to invade the Parodyverse it is still a Bad Thing.
It’s all there in http://www.chillwater.org.uk/HH/hhstories/untold%20tales%20of%20ll%20349.htm ">Untold Tales #349: Change and Decay if you need to catch up. Otherwise, we’ll just get on with the three hundred and fiftieth chapter of our story.
***
“Who the devil are you, sirrah? Where is the proper Hooded Hood, dash it?”
Eccentric Englishman Sir Mumphrey Wilton glared at the unexpected newcomer on the throne. The self-proclaimed new Hooded Hood, Iscanean Went, had just attempted to retrospectively edit him out of continuity but the villain’s power to do so had been thwarted by the cosmic timepiece that the old gentleman wore on his waistcoat.
“You heard him, liebschen,” Baroness Elizabeth told her retconned-in husband. “He’s the new Hood. You can tell by the glowing eyes and the monstrous ego. He may lack the taste and subtlety of the previous one but he has the facial visual effects and the powers.”
“Do not compare me with that failure!” Went hissed angrily.
“There is no comparison,” the Baroness agreed. “Now explain why you felt I needed your assistance in my marital status.”
The Hood frowned. “You were supposed to kill him! You should have murdered him by now!”
Elizabeth Wilton glanced at her husband. “It is annoying when he gets tea in his moustache, I admit. But on the whole I find he is an adequate partner. His has a significant amount of experience in the bedroom and a dogged inability to compromise his views which I occasionally find refreshing. On the whole I am far more likely to slaughter you than him, Nu-Hood.”
“Out with it, you blighter!” Mumphrey shouted at Iscanean Went. “What’s your game, eh? Damn certain it’s not cricket!”
The Hooded Hood settled back on a throne bigger and far more ornate than anything his predecessor ever had. “You think I will explain my plans to you? Do I look that stupid?”
“Yes,” Elizabeth Wilton assured him. “You realise it isn’t the size of your throne, it’s what you do with it?”
Sir Mumphrey waggled a finger at the villain on the throne. “Where’s the real Hooded Hood? Are you another of his jumped-up minions?”
“There is no real Hooded Hood!” Went snapped back. “Or rather, I mean I am the real Hooded Hood. The has-been you refer to no longer exists – has never existed.”
“You mean ‘the has-been to which we refer’,” the Baroness corrected him. “Say what you like about Winkelweald, he never misused his grammar.”
“True,” approved Mumph. “Also had a sight more sense than to try a blatant retcon on the Keeper of the Chronometer of Infinity. So are you going to reverse your changes or am I going to pot you on the snoot?”
A hurt look crossed the Baroness' face. “You want him to undo eight years of often-happy marriage? Is this about what I said about that Lisa clone?”
“Can’t be having second-rate copy Hoods messing about with the timeline,” the eccentric Englishman insisted. “Isn’t done!”
Went leaned forward, his face flushed with irritation. “I am not second rate. I am more powerful than that former Hooded Hood ever was. I am the God of Retcons!” His lips curled into an unpleasant smile. “And I shall prove it!”
***
Hatman flew along the rugged storm-washed shoreline north of Gothametropolis York and dropped down before the main doors of Herringcarp Asylum’s sprawling gothic edifice. He released Visionary from his arms, pulled off his Eagles cap, stowed it in his Hatility Belt, and stepped up to the entrance.
“Has the Hood got a new door?” he asked Vizh. “Didn’t it used to be old and metal-studded? Not uPVC with bat motifs?”
“The Hooded Hood never does anything without several good reasons,” Visionary reminded the capped crusader. “It’s probably part of some devious scheme to overthrow the Parodyverse.”
“Only one way to find out,” suggested Hatman. “There’s a doorbell.”
“You mean an ominous bell-pull that chimes a sonorous tone of doom.”
“No. It’s one of those intercom buttons.”
“An… Intercom of Doom?” Vizh worried. “Do we trust it?”
Hatman pulled out his Steelers cap. The Strange Matter lacing his brain caused him to take on the conceptual properties of whatever headgear he wore. In this case his body became nigh-invulnerable, suitable for pushing an Intercom of Doom.
It chimed bars of Toccata and Fugue.
“Yes?” crackled a voice over the tinny speaker. “Who dares trespass on my domain?”
“We’re here to see the Hooded Hood,” Visionary ventured. “Lair Legion business.”
“I am… the Hooded Hood.”
Vizh and Hatty exchanged looks. “No you’re not,” the capped crusader responded at last. “You didn’t get the ominous pause right.”
“True,” agreed Visionary. “Say what you like, but HH never blows the ominous pause.”
“I am the Hood!” screamed the intercom. “I am the Hooded Hood and you shall… die!”
“Nope. Still not right,” Hatman judged. “There’s something in the beat of the sentence that…”
The uPVC doors slammed open. A three-headed hellhound the size of a truck bounded out, snatched the hero in its jaws, and bit down hard.
Its teeth shattered on Hatman’s steely skin. As it released him, the capped crusader swapped out his headwear for a Lightning Bolts cap and poured a hundred and ten million volts of electricity through the attacking beast. It exploded in a shower of charred meat.
Visionary had been doing the superhero thing for a long time now. He had already ducked. The spray of barbequed Cerberus flew over his head. He smiled in satisfaction, rose, and slipped up on the puddle of dog-grease covering the steps.
Another identical monster, or the same one retconned back, leaped out to snap its triple heads at Hatman. The capped crusader slammed into it, Torpedoes hat first, detonating it despite its newfound lightning resistance.
“You think the Hood’s been getting too many Girl Scouts calling with cookies for sale?” Vizh speculated. “Or Boy Scouts wanting to do jobs? We had a lot of them when the Caphans were at the Condo. But then one time Kerry answered the door.”
Cerberus pounced again, only to be vaporised by the blazing directed heat of Hatty’s Suns cap.
“Keep on fighting,” the new Hooded Hood told his visitors. “How many hats do you have in that pouch of yours, Hatman? I can keep this up all day.”
***
“That’s another thing about the proper Hood,” the Baroness observed to Sir Mumphrey Wilton. “He never repeated the same scheme twice. And he never relied on brute force to win.”
“Unimaginative bully tactics,” the Keeper of the Chronometer of Infinity agreed. “Bad show.”
The Hood’s eyes glowed an eerie unpleasant green. “You want to see brute force and a bad show? Watch this!”
He bent his massive power to rewrite history and erase Visionary and Hatman entirely – and screamed.
“What the f….! If I erase that fake leader of the Lair Legion then every damn timeline gets taken over by some all-powerful cult leader called Apostate! If I cut out the Canadian do-gooder there’s no planet left at all!”
The Baroness nodded. “Yes, I understand that the real Hooded Hood was very careful to tangle his pet heroes’ timelines with essential moments in Parodyverse history. Without these actions, and the people to perform them, the whole narrative structure collapses. The real Hood was clever like that.”
“I AM THE REAL HOOD! I AM…”
Sir Mumphrey swung his Chronometer on its chain. The primal artefact arced around, gathering eons as it moved, and smacked into Iscanean Went’s face with the force of millennia. The new Hooded Hood was propelled back through his throne, shattering it, then crashed through the chamber’s support columns and the wall behind them. The timepiece had channelled around a billion years of accumulated velocity, and nobody’s shielding was good enough to shrug that off.
The Hood retconned being pasted across his stronghold and gasped.
Sir Mumphrey hit him again. And when the Hood re-formed he hit him again.
“Keep going, liebschen” the Baroness approved, “only make it more painful next time.”
A ripple of contingencies went off. Hatman, Visionary, Sir Mumphrey and the Baroness were caught in the tangle of retcons and disappeared.
***
The LairJet systems rebooted one by one, and so did Yuki Shiro’s. She came to at the aircraft’s controls as it plummeted to the dark surface of the dead planet below. Fortunately her own automated systems had already begun the emergency restart sequence on the LairJet’s powerful BautistaMax 5000 fin engines.
Her fingers moved with robotic speed and precision, making the necessary adjustments to power up the choked flight systems in zero atmosphere mode. At 4000 feet the power came on, allowing her to twist the stressed vehicle out of its death-dive with dozens of feet to spare.
“Nice one, Yuki,” CSFB! grinned. “Let’s go again! With more spiralling.”
“What hast occurred?” Donar demanded. “Did this contraption’s hidden goats malfunction for the nonce?”
“We had a system-wide EMP,” Al B. Harper reported. “I think we got dragged through an Apokalyspian Doom Tube.”
“Ruh-oh,” CSFB! said in a Scooby-Doo voice.
Yuki scowled. A while back the entire Legion had been shot across half to universe to be dropped amnesiac on the hell-planet Apocalyspe, ruled by the mad tyrant Dark Thugos. But Thugos was supposed to be gone from that world, his deadly stronghold’s lethal technology neutralised. “Dr Harper’s analysis is consistent with my own internal sensor logs before they went down,” the LairJet’s pilot admitted.
“We heard sounds like thunder when we were investigating the zombie plague,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! remembered. “Donar said it wasn’t his.”
“T’were yon Doom Tubes, dumping vile draugr to trouble Middlinggard!” the hemigod of thunder growled. “But how doth Slithis the Necromancer cometh to have access to such devices?”
“And where are we now?” Al B. questioned. It almost physically hurt him not to know. He slammed a hastily rewired comm-card into the LairJet’s sensor station, compensating for the loss of uplink to the Lair Satellite system and Hallie. The console spluttered to life and began scrolling data.
“No stars above us. A dead world beneath us,” Yuki noted. “Gravity feels almost the same as Earth, down by about three point two percent. Zero atmosphere. I’m having to use our space-envelope capabilities to keep us aloft in the no-air. We can’t do that for long in a planetary grav-field.”
CSFB! turned to the bucket where the Manga Shoggoth oozed. “Any ideas about this, Mr Shmoo?”
The elder beast bubbled faintly. “My cognitive lobes ache,” it groaned.
“That unknown energy that suffused the undead he swallowed,” suggested Al B. “First it had an effect on him like intoxication, and then…”
“Hangover!” CSFB! understood. “Cosmic hangover.”
“I think I am vomiting myself up,” the Shoggoth warned, “in at least eleven dimensions.”
“Aye aye, captain! Initiating Space Ghost protocols now,” CSFB! called out.
“Some readings coming in,” Al B. called out. The Archscientist formatted the raw data and shunted it to a holographic display he’d just improvised. A translucent globe flickered into being, representing the planet the LairJet had scanned.
Yuki frowned at it. “That looks a lot like… Earth,” she worried.
“It does,” admitted Al B. “Identical chemical composition. Similar continental masses, although there’s been significant, catastrophic tectonic activity. But no magnetic field, no atmosphere… no life signs.”
The Archscientist rotated the hologram to show the transverse. A vast divot was missing from where Japan might once have been, leaving a crater half the size of China. “That’s an impact point. This world died in a celestial collision.”
“Not a celestial crash,” the Shoggoth managed. “There are no stars. We are not in your preferred timespace continuum.”
CSFB! gasped. “You mean we’re in the future? You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah damn you! God damn you all to hell!”
“We are not in any of your regular dimensions at any point in what you adorably call your timelines.”
“There’s something weird about the impact damage,” Al B. judged. “This fender-bender wasn’t with another planet or moon. Or if it was it was with one so huge as to match the damage of hitting a flat surface.”
“Like Jupiter?” suggested Yuki, “if Jupiter was solid.”
“A lot bigger than that.”
“You mean, like Yavin-sized?” CrazySugarFreakBoy! ventured. “Or are we talking completely Dyson sphere? Because that would be cool, but a huge insurance claim.”
Donar was staring down at the broken world below. “This wert Earth,” he said quietly, doffing his helmet. “Yet now it art sucked dry of all the Earth-Mother’s goodness. ‘Tis more than just catastrophe. This planet hast been… devoured.”
“I’m going to have to set the plane down while we still have a fuel reserve,” Yuki warned. “I’m heading for where Paradopolis should be.”
CrazySugarFreakBoy! tapped the Shoggoth’s recovery bucket. “If we’re not in regular space, where are we?” he asked.
“On the edge,” the elder being replied. “As far as it is possible to go.”
“You mean the upper blade of hyperspace?” the Archscientist checked.
“If you want to be crude and reductive,” sniffed the Shoggoth, in the tones of one who disapproved of crayon drawings.
“There art going to be a science lecture, ist there not?” Donar dreaded.
“Think of the multiverse like an onion,” Al B. offered.
The hemigod nodded sagely. “Ah, yon Parodyverse art a vegetable that makest thine enemies cry when ‘tis rammed up their…”
“Like a non-offensive onion,” the Archscientist persisted. “Think of our regular universe somewhere in one of the middle layers. Below it is subspace, a quantum realm where distances appear to be less, allowing for fast transit between places – a cosmic short cut. Above is hyperspace, where the speed of light is much greater, allowing ships to slide vast distances in tiny times.”
“We saw some action in these places during the Parody War,” Yuki commented.
“I remember the smiting,” Donar sniffed. “T’were not necessary to do yon thinking.”
“So we’re in hyperspace,” CSFB! summarised.
“No,” Al B. insisted. “If what the Shoggoth says is right then we’re a layer up even from that, on the actual surface of the onion, as far as it’s possible to get.”
CrazySugarFreakBoy! wasn’t really into limits. “So how do we blast off from the surface? What’s out there?”
Yuki brought him back to Earth. “More importantly right now, how did this planet get out here – if out’s the right word. Is it our world? Who did this to it?” She examined the flight instruments. “We’re approaching the site of Paradopolis. I’m dropping down for visual inspection.”
A skeletal framework of shattered steel was a last memorial to a fallen city.
“Tsunami, caused by global volcanic detonation and a massive shockwave from impact on the other side of the globe,” breathed Al B. “But I think Earth had already been ripped from its solar orbit by then and had lost most of its atmospheric sheathe or the combustion would have been far greater. I think the collision, whatever it was, happened out here beyond the regular universe.”
“Head for Parody Island,” CSFB! called. “If anything could withstand a planetary headbang that’s the place.”
Nothing remained of the rock where once the Lair Legion headquarters had stood.
“The Celestian touch is gone,” the Manga Shoggoth reported. “Even the monstrous Shabba’Dhabba’Dho, the Groper Out of Grossness that dwells dead but not gone under the city and island is destroyed. That should not be possible since he does not even have an existence as you know it. Also, I am about to spew myself up again. Recursively.”
“Set us down in the city, Yuki,” advised CSFB! “We need to head out for some EVA and look for clues. A newspaper would be good.”
The cyborg P.I. brought the LairJet down for a vertical landing in the shattered remains of Parody Plaza.
The undead watched from the ruins all around and awaited the moment to strike.
***
In a different, less undead-infested Parody Plaza where the sun still shone, Reverend Mac Fleetwood pushed open the door of the Bean and Donut coffee shop and waved to the waitress behind the counter.
“Hi, Mac!” called back Violet the Part-Time Cat, a vivacious young woman with pink hair and cat ears. “The usual?”
“Please.” Mac sat at the counter while his latté was poured. He waved to the one-armed proprietor who pottered in the back room. “Morning, Mr P!”
“Good morning, Mac!” Mr Papadapopolis answered cheerfully. “How is the Zero Street Mission? You need more left-overs?”
“We can always use food donations but don’t put yourself out of business.” He noticed the pinboard behind the counter had another postcard. “A new one?”
“Yep. This one is from Tasmania. Shep says that she is in love.”
“Didn’t she say that in the cards from Amsterdam, Prague, New Delhi, Taiwan, and whatever the name of that underwater Sea Monkey city is?”
“Well, you know Sarah.”
“How does one hitch-hike to a Sea Monkey city anyway?” Mac wondered.
“Brrr, Water,” Violet shuddered. “Give me a sunny shelf any day. If I had a choice, I’d go…”
She was interrupted by a loud thunk as the latch inside the shop door locked itself. A moment later the security shutters rolled into place.
“What’s this?” worried Mr Papadapopolis. “Who did that?”
“Is it a power cut?” Violet wondered. “I can’t open the cash register.”
“Hey!” came the muffled voice of dull thud from behind the door marked ‘Gents’, “I can’t get out of here! Again.”
Mac hastened to the front entrance and tried to twist open the latch. It would not move. “Someone’s trying to keep us in here,” he reasoned. “What about the back exit?”
“I try it,” Mr P insisted.
Reverend Mac was loathe to argue with a man who had lost his arm in single combat with the Parody Master – and survived to carry on with his catering business – but the minister was a retired special forces chaplain. “Let me. This could be just a prank, but if it’s not…”
The push-bar on the fire escape wouldn’t work. The door to the storeroom wouldn’t budge. Even the knife drawer behind the counter was stuck.
“I can’t open my purse,” Violet reported.
“I can’t get myself free of the hand-dryer!” dull thud chimed in.
“Please tell me it is your hand that is stuck this time,” dreaded Mr P.
“Something’s really strange here,” Mac decided. “I mean more than just dull thud.” He pulled a mobile from his pocket, speed-dialled a number, and called the Lair Legion.
***
Liu Xi Xiang found Sally Rezyliant in the Lair Zoo, staring at the temporal sparrows as they flitted back and forth in time building their quantum nests. “Hey, are you okay?” she asked.
Silicone Sally shrugged and returned a big, brassy, false smile. “I’m always okay, kiddo, and ready to go. Ask anyone.”
“I am asking you,” the elementalist replied. “I have also been trained to wear a mask to please people.”
“I don’t need to wear a mask to please guys. I don’t need to wear anything.”
“You do that a lot.”
“Well, I’m a healthy girl with healthy urges, so…”
“You use your humour and sexuality to deflect people from seeing you,” Liu Xi clarified. “Did you know that I was brought up to be a bought-wife, an obedient trophy for some rich businessman?”
Sally hesitated. “Well, no. I mean, I guessed you hadn’t had a normal upbringing because you’re… I figured cultural differences.”
“He did not find me good enough to keep,” Liu Xi admitted. “Perhaps he never intended to wed me, only to use me while I was innocent. When he rejected me, when he tried to beat me, that was when I discovered my gifts.”
“I sure hope you pounded the hell out of the guy, then!”
“I killed him. Fire.” Liu Xi closed her eyes. “I do not speak of this much. Few know.”
“Then why tell me?”
“You have also been shaped in ways you did not choose, as another pleased. You have killed and regretted it.”
Sally folded her arms defensively. “Bonding, is that it? You share a dark secret with me so I spill mine?”
“If you wish. I am an elementalist. When I see you I can see all the strange things your unique physiology is doing, the billions of chemical exchanges in your silicone biology. But I also see that you are hurting, and my powers cannot help me heal you. So I must offer something else.”
The flexible felon shook her head. “No. You shouldn’t do that. You’ve got all kinds of problems yourself. One bad guy’s got his hooks into your soul, waiting for you to die. Another is queuing up to exploit your void manipulations to… I dunno, something bad, end of the world, yadda yadda. Point is, you don’t have time to nursemaid the murderess.”
“I cannot do anything about my problems just now. Maybe I can assist with yours.”
Sally squeezed herself tighter. Her fingers dug deep into her rubbery arms. “Nobody can help me. Not without time travel to go and put a bullet in me before the accident that gave me these powers. I screwed up after that, pretty much from day one.”
“You helped to harm Bethany Shellett, who now lies in our infirmary in a coma with heavy burns across her whole body.”
“And worse than that. I think… it’s a bit hazy now the treatments have worn off, but I seem to remember helping the Baroness carve somebody’s mind and soul out of their body and trade it so that my boss could pretend to be the victim and pass all then usual authenticity tests.”
“The former Citizen Z was thought to secretly be Laurie Leyton, the superheroine once known as Lisette. She was trusted because of that. But Lisette was gone, her aura and appearance stolen to disguise your Baroness.” Liu Xi blinked. “Why do we associate with Baroness Wilton after that?”
“Beats me. She pumped me with chemicals to stop my silicone form destabilising but it looks like they were really to keep me pliant mentally as well as physically.”
“So you were not in control of yourself when you did the things you regret.”
“Maybe. I still regret them. And Beth Shellett is still in a coma. And Laurie Leyton is still dead.”
***
“Where are we?” Visionary asked.
Hatman pulled on his miner’s helmet and switched on the lamp. “Cellars and dungeons of Herringcarp Asylum, judging by the décor. Quite deep. Nice support prop work, by the way.”
“So the Hood got tired of siccing his dog on us and swept us somewhere else.”
“If it was the Hood. Nothing since we came to Herringcarp this time has felt… Hoody. It didn’t even sound like him.”
“If not the Hooded Hood, then who does retcons?” Vizh nearly named someone, but the young man faded from his memory. There was no Danny Lyle.
“Maybe we find a way out of here and ask?” Hatty suggested. “Let me see what I’ve got in my Hatility Belt’s extradimensional pockets that could help us navigate.”
Vizh tried his comm-card in vain. All it did was blow raspberries at him – and he hadn’t even forgotten Hallie’s birthday this time.
There was a giggling in the shadows of the nearest crypt.
Hatty reached for his Rockets cap, ready for action.
A tide of mud and filth washed down the corridor. Its force knocked the heroes from their feet, pinning them down to drown in liquid faeces.
Hatman reached for his belt; his Rocket’s cap was washed away. A strong hand pinned his wrist. “Ah ah, hero-man. Lie there. Choke. Die!”
Vizh struggled under the thick bubble of sewage to try and help his team-mate. The pungent sludge pressured up his nose and filled his mouth.
Hatman forced himself to acknowledge that his whole head was swathed in sentient toilet waste - and if it touched his head it was almost headgear. He adopted its abilities and transformed himself to mud too.
Except that then he was no longer in contact with the other slime and the power was lost. He reverted back, breathless and close to death.
Ghostly purple energies crackled through the murderous fluid, searing it until it somehow screamed. The whole slimewall drew back into a humanoid, man-sized shape. Another purple crackle scorched it back into formless fluid that slithered away down a flight of steps and was lost in the depths of the asylum.
Vizh threw up; even that tasted better than the stuff that had pushed into his mouth before. Hatman retched beside him, gasping for air.
“Jay…?” the possibly fake leader of the Lair Legion managed to call out.
“Yeah,” replied the capped crusader. When his lungs stopped burning he looked about. He had recognised that strange ethereal energy. “Citizen Z?”
“That thing that attacked? No,” Vizh hadn’t quite caught on. “I think it was Crapsack. He used to be one of Young Heckfire and then he became, I dunno, Guardian of the Nexus of Unreality or something? I’d have to check the files. Hallie will know.”
“The energy that chased him off and saved us,” Hatman clarified. “It’s the stuff CZ has in her knives and battle stave. Some kind of supernatural soul-zap.” He staggered to his feet and looked around.
The ghostly figure watching them was not in a black and purple outfit with luminous highlights. She wore a tattered shift and her wild black hair drifted in a wind the living did not feel.
“It was me,” she said in a distant whisper. “I am Amnesia, the Spirit of Herringcarp.”
Visionary recognised her at once.
“Laurie?”
***
The undead swarmed from the ruins of Paradopolis to overwhelm the living. Donar, Yuki, CSFB! and the Manga Shoggoth were ready for them.
“Well met, foul spawn of the underworld!” the Oldmanson yelled at them, his voice somehow ignoring the vacuum of the broken planet and resounding from the splintered and broken buildings. “Come forth that I might smite thee to the uttermost!”
CrazySugarFreakBoy! lay down a barrage of combat candy, destroying the first wave of shamblers so that Yuki had time to use a plasma cannon on the ones behind. On the other side, the Shoggoth simply rolled over the line of undead, neutralising the primitive atomic bonds that held them together. He was singing the first theme song from Death Note to the words “Tekeli-Li!”
Al B. Harper chimed in over the comm-circuit. “Now they’re stirring I can get a reading on rough numbers of undead in the wreckage around you. Something over three million. Nope, make that four million. Five…”
“The whole city has been transformed?” Yuki asked. The power cells of the plasma cannon emptied so she dropped it and switched to a pair of Tesla rifles.
“Yon whole world hast been transformed,” Donar snarled angrily. “Yon Slithis art going to get a right seeing-to!”
“Did Slithis ever have this much power before?” CSFB! wondered. “I mean, to suck a whole planet and spit it out of the universe? That’s a lot of suck!”
The Shoggoth globbed over the shop nearest to them, a shattered frontage of the Bean and Donut Coffee Shop. “The payment receipts in here have one of your amusing human ‘time notations’,” he noted. “According to this, it was written some three days ago in your preferred linear reference system.” He sighed. “‘Lines’. Heh.”
“Three days?” Yuki boggled. “This all happened just three days ago?”
The zombie force was repelled. Their vampire masters took a direct hand and swooped in.
***
Ham-Boy scrambled into the Lair Mansion Operations Centre in response to the action klaxon. “What’s the alert? Have we found where our missing LairJet went? Have Vizh and Hatty checked in?”
“Neither of the above,” Hallie answered worriedly. “On the other hand, Goldeneyed has just thrown up all over the floor here.”
“Spillage in Aisle One!” HB acknowledged. “I guess I can handle that.”
“It’s not the vomit,” G-Eyed gasped, grateful to have got his full-face mask up in time. “It’s what made me spew.”
Vinnie hastened in, slid a little on the wet floor, and slammed hard into the monitor console. “Is it anything to do with all the dimensional passageways between this plane and all the others suddenly slamming shut?” he asked.
“The what?” Ham-Boy asked.
“Something like that,” G-Eyed answered. “it was – wait, did you say all the passageways? Not just the short-cut quantum routes I use for teleporting?”
“It’s sure looking like that. I can make a few calls to some folks who’d know, but so far it seems there’s no contact with Faerie, or the ectoplasmic realms, the abyssal domains, pocket dimensions, anything. The Mansion is maintaining some geographic anomalies because its powering them itself but even they won’t last forever.”
Silicone Sally led Liu Xi into Ops. “I didn’t do anything to her, honest. We were just talking and she got a migraine.”
“The elemental gates are closed,” Liu Xi reported, clutching her temples.
“That… takes a lot of mojo,” Vinnie admitted.
Goldeneyed picked himself up and rubbed his face. “Okay, whatever did this is powerful. We need to find out what it is and how it’s doing it. And maybe find Asprin.”
“This could be linked to what Sir Mumphrey reported before,” Hallie considered. “He was unable to make contact with the Triumvirate.”
“What is the Hooded Hood up to?” G-Eyed puzzled. “For that matter, how is he up to it?”
Hallie pressed a finger to her ear, even though she didn’t have or need an earpiece to get incoming calls. “Hold on, it’s Mac. He’s at the Bean and Donut. dull thud is trapped in the bathroom.”
“Maybe that crisis can wait?” suggested Sally. “I mean, at least he’s in a bathroom.”
Hallie shook her head. “I’m getting other calls. Thousands of them, from nearly everyone we have direct-line distress systems with. And millions of media reports. Every door in North America just locked and won’t open no matter what force is used. Every locker, every switch, every railroad junction point, every throttle, all sealed in place, closed. It’s chaos out there!”
“It’s a disaster,” Ham-Boy agreed. “C’mon, we have to get out there and help!”
“Oh sure,” agreed Silicone Sally. “Assuming someone can find a way to open the door to this secure Ops Room.”
***
“I thought the Hooded Hood couldn’t retcon you when you were all suited up,” Baroness Wilton complained.
“He didn’t,” explained her husband. “He retconned everything else around us so we were dropped into his cellars. I might have stopped him but at that point he was being such a tick I thought it best to head off elsewhere and find out what is really going on.”
“But we will return and eviscerate the annoyance later? You promise?”
“The ungodly will be duly potted if I have anything to say about it, m’dear.”
“Very well.” Mollified for now, Elizabeth looked about her. “We appear to be in the dreary infinite undercrofts where Ioldabaoth sends those people he feels need to be quietly dropped from the Parodyverse. His players either wipe each other out, are consumed by the labyrinth, or discover some point of character interest that was not previously apparent and are allowed to survive.”
“Who has he imprisoned here, then?”
“Nobody we would remember, kuchen. That’s the point.”
“And you know about this because…?”
“Because I have been a naughty girl, of course. But mostly I heard of this from the diabolical Dr Moo. Maybe she heard of it from her sister of whom we do not speak?”
“Hmph. Any idea of the way out, then? Seems to me as if we need to be out of here toot suite and findin’ ways of getting back to ruining the new Hood’s day.”
“Perhaps. On the other hand, if this nu-Hood has indeed done something to Ioldabaoth, this would be the place he sent him.”
“Ah. Point. So how would one go about locating that in…” The eccentric Englishman paused as his pocketwatch chimed. “The source of the retcon that hit us – our wedding retcon, so to speak – it’s over there.”
“Then let us address it,” instructed Her Excellency Baroness Elizabeth Sweetwater Dewdrop Zemo von Saxe-Lurkburg-Schreckhausen Wilton. “I wish to make my view known on the paucity of decent wedding presents.”
***
“Laurie?” repeated Amnesia. The name sounded vaguely familiar. “That was… a girl that Baroness von… that Baroness Wilton murdered.”
“It was you,” Visionary told her. “At least I think it was.”
“No. I’m just a ghost. The spirit of this Asylum. I have been for centuries.”
“You look a lot like Laurie,” Hatman assured her. “If, you know, she’d gone on a crash diet and got into goth.”
“I think you are her,” Vizh insisted. “Originally you were just a girl who got ret-conned by the Hooded Hood when he needed to give the Legion a bunch of teen sidekicks. You became Lisette, Lisa Jr. Later on you joined a bunch of wannabe new superpunks, but you got over them. Then you dated Bry – Goldeneyed – for a long time before some more business with the Hood and a kid you maybe never had split you up. Then came a bad bit – drugs, some bad guys abusing you, a whole mess. Then you recovered, with the help of your roomie Beth Shellett, who Bry was then dating. Later you were maybe getting back together with him – I sort of blank on the soap opera bits – but the Baroness snatched you so she could steal your bio-signature to pose as you posing as Citizen Z. And then… well, we think you died.”
“I am dead,” Amnesia confirmed.
“Are you the spirit who has been operating as Citizen Z, though?” checked Hatman. “We know Beth was CZ’s corporeal body, but were you the mind inside it?”
“Yes. The Hooded Hood asked it of me. I cannot exist outside these damned walls without mortal flesh to wear. Beth… it seemed to me as if Beth granted permission.”
“She was one of Laurie’s two closest friends,” Vizh agreed. “And one of the kindest people I ever knew.”
“Yes…” Amnesia answered vaguely. “I don’t… it’s more of a feeling than a memory. Outside her flesh, outside her mind, it’s so much harder for me to… to be me.”
Vizh exchanged a confirmatory look with Hatman. “It, um, it so happens that I have Beth’s body with me. In my pocket. Fleabot shrunk her stasis chamber down to the size of a Pez dispenser so I could bring her along.”
The ghost bit her lip. “Ohh. Could I…? Should I…?”
Hatman nodded cautiously. “We’re trying to figure out what’s going on in this place, and apparently you’re its avatar. You’re not able to function on all cylinders without a host body. We’ve brought your regular partner along. I guess right now we need you to be Citizen Z.”
Vizh produced to stasis tube and thumbed the growth particle release button to restore Beth to full size. He managed to get his foot out of the way before it landed on him.
As the device hissed open, the spectral Laurie sighed and flowed down into the unmoving shell of her old friend. A heartbeat later the dull trim of CZ’s costume animated with a luminous glow. Citizen Z sat up and nimbly leaped from the container.
“That is… well, it feels better. It actually feels,” she admitted.
“You still don’t remember being Laurie, though?” Hatty probed. “One of the first things you did was track down Silicone Sally, the Baroness’ accomplice, and toss her in jail. Later you went after the Baroness’ operations like a vendetta.”
Amnesia frowned. “I do not like her. I don’t remember why. But I will bring her down.”
“We’ll help you remember,” Visionary promised. “Thanks for the save against Crapsack, by the way. That was him, right?”
“It was. He’s been exiled here by the new Master of Herringcarp, until he fades away or is destroyed.”
“So there is a new Hooded Hood?” Hatman said.
“So he says. He has the power – and he’s done something to Ioldabaoth. Maybe erased him. Or maybe Ioldabaoth just lost interest in the Parodyverse and… moved on.”
Vizh’s mind was churning over new information. “Wait. Wasn’t Crapsack promoted to some kind of cosmic office? About the time that…” - his voice cracked - “About the time we lost the Juniors.”
“He was the Guardian of the Nexus of Unreality,” Amnesia explained, “the primary crossroads between this universe and the wider dimensions of the Parodyverse. He was a sentinel at the gate – an unpleasant, lethal, villainous sentinel, but a sentry all the same. That he is now here is… troubling.”
“So the gate’s wide open,” Hatman concluded.
“Or closed tight,” the ghost girl added. “I think it is sealed. We are locked in.”
“At Herringcarp?”
“On Earth. There is no escape now.”
***
Ham-Boy wiped the blood from his nostrils and forced himself to stand up. The high security Operations Room door had finally burst from the combined multiple detonations of Parody Island security chief Argus McHarridan on the outside and roughly 1100 lbs of smoked hot dog packed at a pressure of 31 atmospheres inside the door itself.
“Nicely done, HB,” G-Eyed congratulated the rookie. Neither the teleporter not Liu Xi could access their powers right now so alternative methods of escaping their own HQ had been necessary.
“Now I’ll see who can fill us in on this strange embargo,” Vinnie offered. “It’s weird. It wasn’t a lock-down this tight even when Bry was projecting that Celestian bubble round the world during the Parody War.”
“Do we have to mention that?” G-Eyed shuddered.
“Should we be out in the city, doing help-y stuff now?” Silicone Sally suggested. “If every lockable or closable thing is really locking or closing there’s going to be a lot of accidents.”
“That’s what the reports I’m getting seem to indicate,” Hallie admitted. “Even some apparatus like aircraft ailerons and manual train signals have failed. Plus lots of secondary problems like power outages and people stuck in their own homes. Car ignition keys won’t turn and vehicle breaking systems are bound. Emergency exits are jammed. I’m trying to get though the Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises but the phone relays seem locked too.”
“We need to get out there and look around for ourselves,” Ham-Boy asserted. “This is definitely a job for… well, us.”
“Let us go,” Liu Xi Xian insisted. “We do not need uncanny gifts to be able to help people.”
“Hold on!” Hallie called the team back. “I’m getting a live transmission right now, from Parody Plaza! You need to see this!”
The main screen switched to a Channel 9 Broadcast, starting with a close-up shot of their on-the-spot presenter’s tear-stained face. “Hello? Can you hear me? Is this still broadcasting? All my crew are dead. he killed them. Can you hear me?”
The woman was yanked out of view, allowing the camera to show Paradopolis’ main shopping square. The whole area was clogged with thousands of barbed chains strung between buildings. Many of the barbs skewered dead or dying shoppers.
The culprit strode into shot.
“No!” gasped Ham-Boy. “Oh nononononononono!” The villain had almost killed him before.
“He was dead!” Hallie insisted, her own CGI green fading paler as she identified the threat. After all, he had once killed her too.
“Hello, world,” the figure on the screen called out. “You may remember me as Lucian, the Chain Knight, leader of the Hellraisers who once devastated your planet. Now, though, I am the God of Murder, of the New Pantheon that will conquer all reality.”
“He was dead,” Liu Xi confirmed. “As dead as any of us could possibly make him. And he’s not the god of murder, that was Exu, who… He can’t have taken over… ”
“We destroyed the Chain Knight,” G-Eyed agreed. “Twice.”
“He got better,” Silicone Sally pointed out. “Hey is this the guy who...”
“He broke into the Lair Mansion and killed our entire support crew,” Hallie confirmed in a small tight voice. She’d been there.
“Then he went after the Juniors and almost wiped us out too when he destroyed Vizh’s condo,” HB supplied. “That was after he and his buddies had shredded their way through one of the strongest Legion line-ups we ever had.”
Vinnie swallowed hard. “And now he is powered-up. A god, he says.”
“With a pantheon,” Liu Xi added. “And right now Ham-Boy is our heavy-hitter."
The Chain Knight still wore his blackened paladin armour, seeping blood from every joint. The chains that had been threaded through his body as part of the torture that had driven him mad still grew from his torso and snaked like living things.
Hallie profiled the creature who was appearing on every TV set in America. “Sir Lucien was once a champion of light before he was betrayed to countless years of torture and dissection,” the A.I. summarised. “Somewhere along the way he embraced the pain and horror and made it his own. He gained control of the torture devices stuck into him and wiped out everyone who had ever hurt him. He gained an affinity for controlling locks and shackles generally. He gathered together a collection of interdimensional uber-horrors and began ploughing his way through alternate realities until he landed here. He came very, very close to taking us all down too. We stopped him with help from the Hooded Hood, of all people… at a terrible cost.”
The Chain Knight had waited the exact strategic time for shock to set in on his target audience. “I hold Paradopolis in my grasp. Three hours from now I will begin the destruction of every man, woman, and child in the city. Gothametropolis will follow, and so along the Eastern seaboard. I intend to execute every person in North America in reprisal for past events.”
Ham-Boy swore; and Ham-Boy never swore.
“You said it,” Sally breathed. “Maybe this was a bad time for me to decide on a superhero career?”
“I could begin the slaughter now,” the Chain Knight pointed out to camera, “but I would prefer to allow your heroic champions time to try and stop me.” His laugh was an unpleasant thing. “You know where I am, Lair Legion. I am waiting for you. I have hooks and chains ready.”
Something smashed the camera as the reporter started screaming. The Channel 9 ‘Please Stand By’ notice appeared.
And then silence.
***
“There is always a secret passage,” the Baroness insisted as she repeated supervillain mantra #3. She smirked as she triggered the counterweight that caused a stone block to grind aside revealing a new corridor behind.
“Don’t understand how you can find ‘em, though,” grumped Sir Mumphrey Wilton. “Pass me one of those burning torches from a wall brazier and we’ll go investigate.”
“It was brazier emplacement that gave me my first clue. Let’s just say that the Hooded Hood – the real Hooded Hood – is very much a traditionalist when it comes to mechanism placement in his dungeons. And you won’t need to take a light. Wait for it.”
As she spoke a series of lanterns flared up, one by one, illuminating the new passage.
“A traditionalist,” Elizabeth repeated. “Now come on, but avoid every third flagstone.”
“And you know it’s the third because…?”
“Because every second flagstone would be overkill and every fourth flagstone would not be menacing enough. Do keep up, Mumphrey. And don’t open that door at the end until you have thoroughly checked it for traps.”
The eccentric Englishman shifted the whole sealed entrance half an hour forward in time. “Hmph.”
The chamber beyond was like a cathedral crypt, lined with alcoves under a vaulted roof. Candelabras flared into life to reveal a workroom filled with desks and bookcases. Past each archway the smaller spaces were crammed with artefacts.
“Now this looks like the sort of backroom we’ve been looking for,” Mumph approved. “Some sort of library or office annex? Look at all those wall charts with connected strings. And the scrawled diagrams on those blackboards.”
“Look at the packed lunch,” the Baroness observed. “This is the study of the Hood’s secretary, Alwin Hazlewood, sometimes known as the supervillain Clockwatcher. I’d considered taking him on staff but of course Ioldabaoth had to swoop in and grab him for himself.”
“What’s he do, then, this Clockwatcher fellah? Does he have…”
Mumphrey’s question was cut short as three six-inch diameter serrated cogs buried themselves in his chest, killing him instantly.
“He doesn’t do that,” Baroness Elizabeth Wilton admitted.
A monstrous form assembled itself from springs, wires, and clockwork around the room, folding together precisely into a humanoid shape. “My new employer upgraded me somewhat,” Clockwatcher buzzed. “He also drove me insane.”
Time stopped, then reversed until the gory cogs flew back from Mumphrey’s chest, leaving the blood behind them. The Chronometer of Infinity was set to automatically rewind and replay any event that ended in the death of its wielder.
“That was dashed unpleasant,” the eccentric Englishman observed. “Let’s try it again, what?”
The three serrated discs screamed across the study at him. He shifted them forward in time to prevent them harming him.
Except… they were not where they had been before. Their trajectory had changed. They avoided the temporal pocketwatch’s effects and slammed into its keeper again, impacting at throat and forehead. The third disc struck the Baroness in the belly.
Clockwatcher formed up. “I might mention that I have a somewhat special relationship with cause and effect,” he noted.
Mumphrey reversed those effects. The cogs came again. He shifted them using a broader range manipulation.
Steel springs unwound to slash his legs off while diamond fragments ripped through Elizabeth’s armoured corset like indestructible bullets.
“I can remember retcons and time-reverses too,” Alwin Hazlewood explained. “Keep reversing time all you like. I’ll never kill you the same way twice.”
The Chronometer undid the damage. A dozen tiny gears slashed up through the paving slabs at the intruders’ feet and pulped them to shreds.
“We can do this all day,” Clockwatcher promised. “In fact that’s the plan.”
***
“Gah!” objected Donar. “I hast vampire teeth stuck in my knuckles.”
“That third wave was the most intense,” agreed Yuki. She checked her power reserves: 14%. Her internal generator could not keep up with the effort required to fend off so many super-powered undead.
Worst were the ones that resembled heroes they knew. CSFB! was huddled beside the LairJet apologising endlessly to a headless corpse with the same figure as his mother.
“These attacks are being co-ordinated,” observed the Manga Shoggoth. “It has taken me a while to taste where the orders are coming from but I am confident now that I can find the place. It is at this world’s version of Herringcarp Asylum.”
“Slithis is working with yon Hooded Hood?” snarled Donar. He hefted Mjalcolm in his fist and spat. “Canst yon LairJet convey you all after me?”
“It had better,” Al B. chimed in. “I’m running analysis on the numbers of our battles here. We’ve taken down about half a million adversaries so far. I think there’s about four billion more to go.”
CrazySugarFreakBoy! looked up wrathfully. “We find him,” he vowed. “We find whoever did this to our world or one so much like it that the difference doesn’t matter and we make him pay!”
“Let’s go,” Yuki told them. “I’m putting this ship in the air before the next mass attack. Let’s shift the ground. I’m locking course for Herringcarp!”
“I’ve managed to ping a couple of Lair Satellites,” Al B. reported. “I mean the LL satellites this world’s team put up. They have the same access codes I designed. I’m getting some near-Earth sensor intel now. Hold on…”
The holo-image of the broken Earth shrunk down as the scale changed. A second half-demolished world fuzzed into view, then a third and a fourth. Large broken fragments of planets that had not survived impact with a huge flat surface were dotted around them.
“Not one Earth…” the Archscientist whispered, appalled. “Lots of them. Ten? Twenty? A hundred?”
The rising LairJet rocked as something broke through its shields and shredded one wing. As Yuki tried to stabilise the vehicle, something else landed on the other side and ripped off the remaining power plant.
Al B. looked up from his sensor array aghast. “That was… Donar?”
“We’re going down!” Yuki warned. “Vacuum breathing gear and impact positions!”
The Shoggoth swelled up and surrounded the team in his own personal crash foam. The crippled LairJet dropped down into the ruins of Gothametropolis, bulldozing through half a dozen tenement building shells before breaking up and exploding in a ball of rocket fuel.
The Shoggoth burned away, shredded to blazing droplets, leaving four battered survivors in the wreckage.
A ghastly-pale ragged-skinned version of Donar leaped down and kicked the Legion’s Donar in the head – and kept doing it. CSFB! was jumped by a variant edition of himself whose costume was midnight black. Yuki was slammed down by a ruined cyborg copy of herself, although her enemy’s artificial skin was blistered away exposing steel and wire.
Al B. looked about but no undead edition of the Archscientist pounced. He had a moment to survey what was going on.
Three more undead Donars from the other destroyed worlds dropped over the battlefield. They no longer carried Mjalcolms – they were unworthy – but they sprinted forward screaming soulless battle-oaths to pile in on their living counterpart. More broken Yukis and dark CSFB!s charged in, eager to add the latest versions of themselves to their swelling ranks.
The God of Undead was recruiting, and yet another version of the Lair Legion was up for the draft.
***
Goldeneyed looked around the pale, sober faces of his team-mates. “So…”
The Channel 9 broadcast descended to fuzz as the cascade of malfunctions and blackouts claimed the local station.
“We do not stand a chance against that… that!” Silicone Sally commented. “Not a chance.”
“He is goading us out to slaughter,” realised Liu Xi. “He was always a strategist.”
“And cruel,” HB added, “wicked cruel. Oh cr… crickey!”
“So, I’m going out there,” G-Eyed continued. “I’m going to do the job.”
“Without your powers,” Silicone Sally reminded him.
“Yeah. I’ve been doing this LL stuff for a while. After some time you get so it’s in your blood. You can’t stop. You don’t want to.” He breathed hard. “I’ve faced some impossible fights before. Some I didn’t think I’d walk away from. Maybe this one I won’t. But if I go out it is as a Legionnaire.”
“Sounds good,” agreed Ham-Boy. “Just give me a moment to change my underwear and I’ll be with you.”
“I will go too,” Liu Xi decided. “I dislike bullies.”
“You people are completely nuts,” Sally Reziliant complained. “Now I have to goo too. Damn!”
The team looked at Vinnie. “You head off,” he told them. “I’ll join you later, okay?”
“I will try and follow up on our other members,” Hallie promised the LL. “Even if I cannot trace LairJet One I could perhaps get through to Vizh and Hatty at Herringcarp. For that matter, the Hooded Hood has every reason to dislike the Chain Knight too. Perhaps he will help again?”
“Right,” approved G-Eyed. “So I guess, Lair Legion Line-Up, as spiffy used to say. One last time.”
***
Next time: The God of Murder! The God of Undead! The God of Retcons! Banded together to destroy the superheroes no single supervillain could overcome! Now they are… the New Pantheon! And their membership is not limited to three. Don’t miss them finally finish off those pesky good guys in Untold Tales of the New Pantheon #351: The End Of Superheroes, due on 1st January 2016 to cheer your new year.
The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom (for previous stories by HH and others)
Who's Who in the Parodyverse (slightly outdated yet again)
Where's Where in the Parodyverse (for some location guides and a pretty map)
***
Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2015 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2015 to their creators. This is a work of parody. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works are in fair-use parody and do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. Any proceeds from this work are distributed to charity. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
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