Untold Tales of the New Pantheon #351: The End of Superheroes
Previously: All hail the New Pantheon! Mighty are their doings! Great are their plots! Let none resist their all-powerful wills! Herein are the last days of resistance to the rise of the rulers of the Parodyverse.
Even now the vestiges of opposition are being crushed. In Paradopolis on Earth’s primary iteration, the Chain Knight, God of Pain, holds the city in his bonds. Within three hours he will torture to death every person in the city. First he expects the remnants of his old enemies the Lair Legion to die stopping him.
In Herringcarp Asylum, under the inspired genius of the new Hooded Hood Iscanean Went, God of Retcons, Legionnaires Visionary, Hatman, and Citizen Z struggle in the deepest labyrinth of dungeons for their captor’s amusement, while Sir Mumphrey and Baroness Wilton face repeated agonising deaths against the mad mechanical Clockwatcher.
At the very limits of the Parodyverse, beyond even hyperspace, the rest of the superheroes struggle on a dead version of their world against multiple undead iterations of themselves culled from dozens of similarly destroyed realities. They too shall be added as unliving slaves to the armies of Lord Slithis, God of Undead.
Yet all of this is mere sideshow, for the greatest deeds of the New Pantheon have yet to unfold, and their true ambition remains unrevealed – for now. Tremble in awe and worship them, the new masters of all creation!
Witness their rise to glory in:
Untold Tales #339: Going To Extremes
Untold Tales #349: Change and Decay
Untold Tales #350: One Of Our Archvillains Is Missing
Also previously:
Herringcarp Gothic chapters 1 – 8, chapter 9, chapter 10
Choices That Haunt
The Rabbits Are Not What They Seem
Minutes of the Society of Fairly Nasty Supervillains
The Hooded Hood Chronicles volume 3: The Roads Not Taken
The Hood’s Great Organ
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Vinnie de Soth and the War of the Hells
It is possible that this plotline has been set up over quite a while.
***
Dark Thugos clasped his massive hands behind his back and watched the end of the world.
Or of a world. According to his Architects of Destruction this was the three hundred and forty ninth version of Sol Three that had been torn from its own doomed reality to be catapulted beyond the Parodyverse.
Capturing Earths was not easy. The celestial mechanics were complicated by the planet being the current narrative focal point of the huddle of realities at the edge of the probability curve that had been accurately christened ‘the Parodyverse’. That meant that the Nexus of Unreality’s locus resided there, guarded by some local monster. Many current cosmic office holders were recruited from beings of that world. The Celestian Space Robots themselves took an interest in its future. The whole fabric of cause and effect were ravelled about that one ball of rock.
Thugos knew that. He had begun by assembling the right allies who could erode away those defences: a new God of Retcons to ensure the right outcomes for the world’s destruction; a new God of Murder to prepare the sacrifices; a new God of Undead to harness that power to rip Earth from time and space and shift it to the very conceptual rim of the Parodyverse; a new God of Revenge to propel the kidnapped planet out into the Void.
Even sucked of life and sundered from its proper place in the story, Earth remained a potent place with potent plotlines. Thugos cannoned into the outer darkness at close to light-speed, sending it like a bullet through the edge of nothingness; until it hit the Wall.
The Wonderwall was the outer barrier of the Parodyverse. Its origins were obscure, but it served as final perimeter and defence, defining what was inside and what lay beyond. Travel there was almost impossible. Most of those who reached it were absorbed into its fabric, their screaming faces etched forever on its shifting surface. A scant few whose wills or destiny were greatest of all survived and returned, changed and empowered: new new gods, Thugos’ New Pantheon.
Usually such circumstance occurred less than once a millennium. Of late Thugos had been bending the odds. Suitable candidates had been found and sent to the Wonderwall. Their chances had been enhanced by slamming a whole narrative-heavy Earth into the eternal barrier, suffusing it with all that spoiled storyline. In that way Thugos had recruited his allies to accelerate the process. Those deified returnees who had not demonstrated team spirit had contributed in other, more painful ways. Briefly.
Creating members of his New Pantheon was not Thugos’ goal, however, merely a by-product. Each Earth that was shot at the Wonderwall cracked it a little more. The next Earth or the millionth after that would break through, revealing to Thugos at last the secrets of life and death, the very formulas of creation, for which he had long lusted.
Thugos watched as the Architects of Destruction set up the slingweb of electromagnetic forces that would propel this latest victim-world beyond the Rim. Such a plan would not have worked until now, but recent events had made it possible. A chain of cosmic upheavals had shaken the Parodyverse: the Parody War and the fall of the Parody Master; the upheavals of the Moderator; the plots of the Void Scholar to rewrite reality; most of all the incursion from outside the Parodyverse by the executioner Carnifex. There were chinks now that had not been there before, and Thugos knew them.
The cradle of energy straps glowed brighter. Thugos spoke without turning to his chief engineer. “This is the three hundred and forty-ninth world, correct?”
“Yes, Dread Lord,” cowered the scientist. “The Entroopers are securing the slash harnesses now.”
“Those calculations we tore from the minds of the Librarians and from those Observer brains we dissected, they estimated that the three hundred and fiftieth event of this kind could be directed against the Prime Dominant Reality, the Earth of the Lair Legion who destroyed the Parody Master?”
“Yes, Dread Lord. Your allies are there now preparing it for the shift.”
Dark Thugos made a rumbling sound in his throat. It might have been satisfaction. “Launch Earth 349 at the Wonderwall. Perhaps there will be a survivor we can use.”
“Engaging geogravetic rippers now, Dread Lord!”
“Launch!”
***
Five undead Donars from stolen Earths stomped on the head of the living Prince of Ausgard from the Prime Dominant Reality. But head injuries had never really stopped the hemigod of thunder before.
“Ho, rotting semblances of mineself!” Donar roared, swinging his enchanted baseball-bat-with-a-nail-in-it where it would do the most good on his nearest stomper. “Methinks thy draugr selves art lacking in yon fighting spirit. I shalt help three avoid the straw death and send thee in glory to thine proper rest for the nonce!”
His undead alternates dog-piled him and stomped him harder.
“Yeah, these guys are lacking a certain pizzazz!” CrazySugarFreakBoy! agreed as he caroomed between buildings avoiding the growing legion of undead counterparts who sought to tangle him in rotting sober string. “Without the fun they can’t manage the buzz.” His fluorescent green and orange superhero suit contrasted with the CrazySugarDeadBoys!’ tattered jet-black outfits. But there were many of them, each bounding almost as fast as him, each giggling with sadistic bloodthirst to add him to their ranks.
“They’re missing their fighting spirit,” Yuki Shiro called as she tried to fend off three robot-precise rotting versions of her cyborg self. She’d already worked out that their decayed organic components diminished their senses and slowed their reflexes by around six percent and her whole combat strategy was based upon it. That was why she had survived this long. But numbers were telling, her power supply was dwindling, and internal damage control could not keep up with her injuries any more.
“Team-up crossover!” CSFB! yelled. He rolled himself into a ball and slammed like a cannon-shot into the knot of undead Donars, scattering them away covered in sticky toffee.
“In sooth!” agreed the released hemigod of thunder. He hefted Mjalcolm and directed a torrent of lightning at the brawling Yukis. Only the living cyborg P.I. still retained the flesh and plastic coating that insulated her from high-energy electrical contacts. The others spasmed away, crashing. Yuki decapitated one before its systems could reset, set its internal power supply to overload, and hurled it for a CrazySugarDeadBoy! to catch.
None of the team mentioned what the larger plan was. They were experienced veteran superheroes. That all knew what to do.
The Manga Shoggoth had been reduced to random globs by the crash he had shielded them from a half hour before, then burned in the fireball from the exploding LairJet. He needed time to recover. Al B. Harper had not been beset by undead iterations. Lord Slithis, the new God of Undead, was Ausgardian; he did not consider the weakling archscientist to be either a warrior or sorcerer and had therefore dismissed him as no threat.
Donar, Yuki, and CSFB! were keeping all the attention on themselves. Al B. Harper had time, a world full of spare parts, and a bucket of Shoggoth goo.
“Keep heading to Herringcarp!” Yuki called to the others. Sensor readings had determined that the Asylum where the Hooded Hood dwelled in upstate GMY was the focus of the incoming undead. Already the Lair Legion has taken the battle across the river into shattered Gothametropolis and were fighting their way north.
Al B. Harper found the ruined remains of his firehouse laboratory. He shuddered at the charred corpses arrayed around the scorched equipment. “These aren’t my friends and family,” he told himself, but he knew they would have been close enough. It bothered him, so he repaired and fired up a narrative resonance scanner to check he hadn’t been propelled into the near future of his own timeline.
“Okay, somebody’s working his way through a bunch of parallel Earths. Each one is near enough to the next so the same thing happens, the same team of LL gets dispatched and sucked through to the dead world. How many times has that gone on?” The archscientist shook his head. “Not relevant. Point is, each time there’s probably a Shoggoth who gets ripped apart. But while every Donar or CSFB! is unique, on some level all Shoggoths are the same Shoggoth. That’s a lot of globs of elder being scattered round lots of broken Earths.”
He placed the bucket onto Launch Platform One, rewired the quantum resonator to fold recursively through non-Euclidean channels. and jabbed it into the pail of Shoggoth.
“Big guy,” Al B. Harper told the bubbling bucket, “you’re invoked!”
***
“Who the hell was Phantom Potato?” demanded Visionary as he shook crumbs of chips from his stained yellow coat.
“Doesn’t matter,” Hatman replied, folding away his masterchef hat. “He’s done now. Another of those pointless bad guys condemned to retcon in the Hood’s dungeon of oblivion.”
“We’re getting close to the exit now,” Citizen Z told them. “That’s the most dangerous area. Only those characters who suddenly manifest interesting revelations of unexpected plot twists are allowed escape to continue in the Parodyverse.”
“And the rest go to Comic-Book Limbo,” Vizh suggested. He shivered. “That’s not a fun place.”
“No,” CZ denied. He spirit of Herringcarp shook her head sadly. “The best of them are retconned out from a certain point, so they are at least remembered. The rest are retconned so they never existed at all.”
“Why did we ever allow the Hooded Hood to carry on being around for this long?” demanded the capped crusader.
“Because he made sure that taking him out would be worse than keeping him about,” Visionary suggested. “He was always very careful about that.”
“Until he was replaced by Iscanean Went, God of Retcons,” CZ said bitterly.
“Yeah. Do we have some kind of background on that?” Hatman wondered.
“Was there a memo?” Visionary worried. Ever since former sexbot Tandi had become his secretary he had struggled to keep his eyes on paperwork.
“It’s meant to be a surprise,” Citizen Z, the amnesiac ghost of Laurie Leyton explained. “When I asked him about it he just said I’d got it all mixed up. Before he gained his powers he was a betrayed nobody called Audin Jae Error. Now he’s reinvented himself, retconned his past, and he has always been Iscanean Went.”
“He’s got the Hood’s powers alright,” the capped crusader admitted. “So far he’s not demonstrating the subtlety. Maybe he’s so powerful he doesn’t need to.”
“But the nu-Hood has made mistakes. He took over Herringcarp, and the Asylum doesn’t like him. I don’t like him.” She whirled round and discharged her staves’ ectoplasmic energy into the suddenly-charging WereWally, spinning him back into retconned oblivion.
Hatman was uncomfortable with the revelations so far about his supposed teammate. “So Laurie, does that mean you actually… liked the old Hood?”
Citizen Z peeled away her black and purple mask so Jay could see her face. “I’m remembering things while I have a physical mind to possess. Not much of my past life as Laurie Leyton, but I think that’s because a larger retcon has altered that backstory. But I remember being Amnesia, the frightened prisoner who was dragged to this asylum a couple of hundred years ago. I remember there was… there was a monster, a shaggy troll I think, who cared for me. I remember there was… he wasn’t the Hooded Hood then, but he would become him. He cared for me. He saved me. Even though I died, he saved me.”
“That doesn’t make much sense, Laurie,” Vizh cautioned. “How did you end up two hundred years back? How was the Hood there? How can you be saved and die?”
Amnesia wiped her eyes. “I remember… the Marquis of Herringcarp? One of the strands of alternate history that got twisted together into the Hooded Hood. We were… we were lovers.”
“Oh,” breathed Hatman. “This was, um, before you died, right?”
“Herringcarp Asylum. It’s so jealous of the Lair Mansion. So when the Mansion got a banshee, the Asylum wanted a guardian ghost too.”
“You’re saying it wasn’t the Hood who did this to you, it was his house?” boggled Vizh.
“I told you nu-Hood made a mistake in taking over Herringcarp. It doesn’t like it. It doesn’t like the people Went associates with. And it manifests through me.”
“Which is why Marie Murcheson, our Lair Banshee, freaked when you tried to enter the Mansion,” Hatty understood.
“See what happens if she tries to come here,” CZ breathed vengefully. “Look, I don’t know whether Ioldabaoth manipulated me to become this ghost that serves him or whether it was the Asylum. I’m not actually sure where the real Hood ends and the Asylum begins. And now I’m remembering being Laurie a little, and there’s Bry and there’s Beth and a whole complicated set of old feelings. And I’m missing Ioldabaoth like my own heart, and I don’t know whether that’s me or the Asylum feeling it, or even if there’s a difference anymore.”
“So, this is backstory revelation to try and get us out of the dungeon, right?” Visionary checked. “has it worked? Because if I have to explain my relationship with Dancer that could take some time.”
Hatman spotted Vanity Unfair slinking out to challenge them one last time. “You whip up a quick summary just in case, Vizh,” the Canadian crimefighter advised his team leader. “I’ll just deal with the make-up kit of mayhem!”
***
Clockwatcher had been altered by the new Hooded Hood. The formerly scholarly plotter was now a psychotic clockwork creature of razor-sharp cogs and skewering springs, always aware of where he was in time so that Sir Mumphrey Wilton’s abilities to rewind events did not phase him. Whenever the eccentric Englishman used his Chronometer of Infinity to replay his murder, Clockwatcher was aware of what had just been undone and could kill his enemy in some new painful manner the next time.
Revised Alwin Hazlewood thought that was great fun.
This time he managed to twist his mainspring around Mumphrey’s neck, slowly slicing in so that his victim could actually feel his spine being severed.
“R-remember this…” the keeper of the Chronometer choked out as he died.
His temporal pocketwatch did what it had been pre-programmed to do on its wielder’s demise. It halted time and reversed it locally, resetting when one minute had been wound back and leaving its owner with knowledge of what had just been averted so he could now act differently. Usually this gave Mumphrey an advantage, but Clockwatcher’s unique perception meant that the villain knew what had occurred too. He’d known the last thirty-seven times he’d murdered the pocketwatch’s keeper in increasingly painful ways.
This time Mumph had augmented the reset though; this time he had included the Baroness in the loop so she remembered too.
Forewarned, Baroness Elizabeth Wilton hurled the micro-EMP emitter she had commissioned from Rikka Ulz Hagen for when she needed to destroy Hallie, planting the tiny disc directly onto Clockwatcher’s Roman numeral-engraved face. The disruption interfered with his co-ordination long enough for Mumphrey to survive the initial attack.
Mumphrey peered at the dial readouts on his own timepiece. Clockwatcher was shielded from temporal interference in much the same way as the eccentric Englishman was protected from retcons. The same loopholes applied.
The Baroness kicked Hazlewood in the clockwork. “Well?” she demanded.
The Keeper of the Chronometer finish twisting the dials inside the fob-watch’s lid. “Got it, by Jove!”
The effect bypassed Clockwatcher, but not the potential energy that kept his mainspring coiled taut.
“You bast…” the clockwork killer managed before he toppled over inert, wound down.
The Baroness rummaged in her corset and found her best acid capsule to drop into his workings.
“Thanks, m’dear,” Mumphrey appreciated. “Couldn’t have done that without you.”
Elizabeth Wilton frowned. “No, you couldn’t,” she recognised. “If we hadn’t been retconned into matrimony you would have died. Or we would never have come here at all.” She looked around her suspiciously. “We would never have discovered this room.”
Clockwatcher’s study was a cluttered vault filled with tomes and blackboards. Hundreds of index cards were pinned to walls, connected by strings which were themselves annotated with stapled-on post-its. Alcoves were filled with artefacts that were likewise halfway catalogued.
“This chappie’s been busy,” Mumphrey noted.
“The real Hood recruited Hazlewood for his organisational abilities, his skill in classifying and codexing things,” the Baroness replied. “This room, that’s what he was employed to do.”
“And that is?”
Elizabeth’s fingers twitched. “These are the Hooded Hood’s plans. Ioldabaoth’s plots. Oh Mumphrey…!”
***
“Stay calm,” Mac Fleetwood advised the customers trapped in the Bean and Donut Coffee Bar. “We’re safer in here than out there. Stay quiet.”
Outside the little shop the Chain Knight had captured Parody Plaza in a web of barbed chains grown from his own tortured body. Two score shoppers and tourists were skewered on the long snaking metal threads. Many of them were still alive to scream.
By good chance, the gristly God of Murder had not so far turned his attentions to those hiding behind the shutters of the nearby café.
“What is happening?” Violet the Part Time Cat, also part-time waitress, asked the ex-Marine chaplain. “It’s almost an hour since he slaughtered that TV crew after challenging the Lair Legion. Where are they?”
“Not running stupid into ambush,” opined Mr Papadapopolis. “That Chain Knight, he thinks he’s pretty tough standing there hurting people. When the LL get here, they show him different.”
“Yeah, Lair Legion Line Up!” called dull thud from the bathroom where he was locked. The rumpled roadie had never been a member of the team but his sentient stomach parasite Cressida had. Unfortunately her powers to transmute objects into other things that rhymed with their name had only managed to turn ‘door’ to ‘floor’, leaving a solid wall where the toilet exit had been. In a few moments thuddy would remember his ability to teleport vertically and manage to trap himself in absent waitress Sarah’s equally-locked bathroom above.
The Chain Knight’s amplified power had fastened every lock in America. The effect was strongest in Paradopolis, where millions of people were trapped in their own homes. His deadline before he began the systemic slaughter of every citizen was now less than two hours away.
“The Legion a whole sequence of minor events to manipulate the roster of the Lair Legion to be ready for the Hellraisers. And here, he eliminated someone called the Cowled Criminal who had powers similar to his own that had tried to precipitate a Crisis on Infinite Parodyverses…”
“A chap like him?” Mumphrey mused. “You don’t think…?”
“Not sure. But do you remember something thirty years back where you and your first wife helped deliver a baby at Christmas and had to battle the archfiend Mefrothto? A little boy was born named Con, who turned out to be key to some other Hooded Hood schemes, not least of which was the creation of the Probability Dancer.”
“The Hood was behind that? The fiend! But Dancer’s been a great help to the Parodyverse. An absolute force for good.”
“Except that one time she accidentally summoned her boss Galactivac, the Living Death That Sucks, to devour the Skree homeworld. And that evidently allowed the Hood to pick up some ancient alien artefact as their planet was destroyed. Hmm, can’t find a thread to say what it was.”
“Well, there are an awful lot of threads, m’dear. Blasted Hood probably needs thrashing for every one of ‘em!”
“Here’s another strand. It looks like Ioldabaoth has provoked all-out war in the Abyssal realms – using Nats of course. That’s allowed him to get his hands on… something, no mention of what this is either.”
“Two mystery maguffins? Hardly coincidence.”
“Three. It seems he’s been playing intergalactic politics too. I’m not digging into that whole pile of correspondence, but there was evidently something he sent Shazana Pel and her faction to retrieve from Reticula Manor. That gets listed in the inventory as a Nalathi Stone.”
Mumphrey’s interest was piqued and he was scouting blackboards himself now. “Hmph. Any relation to this mystery meteorite that he picked up from something called the Society of Fairly Nasty Supervillains?”
“Four stones,” the Baroness summarised. “What was he up to? And why did Clockwatcher draw strands between that space rock, acquired by the Society from someone called Astrodoom to a bizarre alternate reality bubble called Hood’s End?”
“And why did he manipulate us into finding it all?” grumped Sir Mumphrey. “Are we still sure this marriage retcon that brought us here came from the new blighter? Or did Winkelweald intend us to bust in here and find this lot?”
“I wouldn’t bet against it,” Elizabeth considered, “but for what reasons?
The eccentric Englishman ventured into one of the alcoves where a mass of machinery hung in a complicated cradle of cables. The technology was so advanced as to be nigh incompressible. “I recognise this metal. It’s the stuff the Celestian Space Robots are made from. The same material as their control base is made from, too. The Hood roped me into the Celestians’ forbidden workshop twice, first time to pot your blasted Uncle Heinrich and the Scourge, then again on the Lair Legion World Tour ,”
“Would you say this cavity in the equipment here might once have held a fist-sized rock?” the Baroness wondered. “Why was Ioldabaoth making a geology collection? Why did he want us to know about it?”
“Why hasn’t the blasted nu-Hood found us by now?” Mumphrey wondered. “We potted his guard-monster. He has to know we’ve pokin’ about here.”
The Baroness reflected on that. “Of course! He’s hoping we can work out what Ioldabaoth was doing. Iscanean Went is baffled by it, so he set us up to solve the mystery for him.” She looked up and called out, “Isn’t that right, nu-Hood?”
Suddenly the giant throne was there, intact once more, occupied by the cowled villain with the glowing green eyes. “Exactly right, little Baroness,” the new Hooded Hood assured her. “Your analysis so far has been most gratifying.”
Elizabeth Wilton sneered at him. “So you have all the toys but you don’t know how to use them. Are you the Cowled Criminal refurbished or some new, different loser?”
“Hardly. I am far more deadly, far greater than he. A man of vision, a critic of the mundane, the only one to grasp all possibilities in this dreary limited Parodyverse.”
“Could use another clue,” Mumphrey grumped. “Batter yet, a formal apology and your abject surrender, you miserable blighter.”
“I am now and forever Iscanean Went, God of Retcons who will rule over all. But once I was betrayed and eliminated by the lesser Hood who is fallen, and my name was… Audin Jae Error!”
The Baroness groaned. “No! Oh, please. Not a weary anagram for that annoying long-since retconned A Junior Reader? Weren’t you killed off offscreen or something, you were so disliked and insignificant?”
“No! No I was not. Not now, not ever! It never happened! I am the Hooded Hood! Me! I am!”
“Suits me,” agreed Mumphrey. He was content to thrash either Hood. He moved in on the Hood, preparing his pocketwatch to swing again.
“One step further and I erase your grand-daughter,” the Hood threatened. “Just… don’t move. I need to think about this. I need to work out… Five weird stones…”
“So far,” the Baroness contributed. “There could be more. The real Hood plays long games. There might be six, or ten, of five hundred.”
The self-retconned Iscanean Went’s eyes widened. “Six? No. It can’t be. But six… if it was six…”
“What if it was?” Mumphrey grumped. “At least offer exposition like a proper villain, you feckless oik!”
“Six is the number of fragments of a primal artefact that was supposed to have been used to create the Parodyverse,” the new Hood answered angrily. “One for each major possible origin, from the one with Impossibilitium and Serious Matter to that thing with bunnies. Six Insanity Stones! But they were lost, or never existed at all.”
“As if they had been retconned out of existence?” Baroness Elizabeth asked mock-sweetly.
“Yes! But… if the Hooded Hood erased them then the Hooded Hood can restore them! All power will be mine! Power beyond even the dreams of Dark Thugos and his New Pantheon!”
“Power beyond what now?” Sir Mumphrey demanded. “Ah, never mind. Can’t be doing with all this plot.” He swung his Chronometer of Infinity at the Hooded Hood again. “Shielded Samantha years ago, and that was before she used the pocketwatch herself,” he noted as he whiplashed his instrument into the cowled crime czar’s belly.”
***
Citizen Z perked her head to one side as if listening to something far off.
“What now?” Visionary asked unhappily. He had lost track of time while trudging through the dungeon corridors beneath Herringcarp Asylum. Repeated attacks by a variety of superhumans whom the Hood had determined should be deleted from the Parodyverse had not helped him relax. The Trombone and Irrelevant Authority had probably been worst, although PMT had been a pain.
“Another threat?” Hatman asked. He looked around the gloomy corridor. Only twisted chimerae carved on lintels stared back at him. They were not technically gargoyles since they did not spout water; the Asylum was careful with its terminology.
“An opportunity,” CZ, the spirit of Herringcarp, sensed. “There’s a secret workspace that’s partly retconned-off to prevent it being found. It belongs to Clockwatcher, the Hood’s secretary – or he was before he got horribly mutated. The point is, it’s open now. The new Hood has gone there… with Sir Mumphrey Wilton? And the Baroness?”
“Reinforcements?” Hatman hoped. “Mumph’s about as Hood-proof as it gets.”
“What opportunity?” Vizh worried.
“A chance to get out of here. Revelations are being spilled all over the place. That might allow us to take the emergency exit.” The ghost of Laurie Leyton in the flesh of her comatose friend Beth Shellett gestured her teammates forward. “This way. Hatty, can you get us through the wall right here?”
“I could use my blasting cap,” Hatman offered. “Stand clear. Fire in the hole!”
A swift demolition later, he led the way through a cloud of debris dust into a chamber that was older and cruder than any they had seen before. Vizh shone his comm-card around the space and yelped. “Gah!”
A stone monster loomed over him. Remarkable in Visionary’s experience it was not moving or trying to tear him apart.
Inevitably he recognised it. “I’ve seen this before…”
Amnesia stroked the creature’s granite cheek. “This is my friend Wangmundo,” she whispered. “Trolls turn to stone in daylight. But the Hood promised me, a very long time ago, that this one could be restored when the time was right. I hope it will be soon.”
“And you know a troll because…?”
“I’m his focus object. But mostly I’m his friend. He kept me sane at the worst time of my life. And when you know about my life you realise how worst that must have been. Anyhow, one day I shall restore him – or my friend Valeria of Carfax will. For now, he’s doing what trolls do best. He’s guarding the way.”
“The way to what? You said emergency exit?” asked Hatman.
“Say rather a back door. You know how supervillains love to have a secret way out in case the good guys crush their plans? We’re using one of the Hood’s escape routes, but in reverse.”
“Reverse?” worried Vizh. “As in we’re going into Herringcarp Asylum?”
“Exactly. While Iscanean Went is busy being out of his league with Sir Mumphrey we are heading through… here.”
It wasn’t quite clear what the spirit of Herringcarp did but suddenly the room vanished, leaving the explorers in a circular pillar-lined room under a glass-domed cupola. One side of the chamber was dominated by a single object, an elaborate, dark-glazed mirror.
“The Portal of Pretentiousness!” Hatman gasped. “The Hooded Hood’s primary artefact for spying and shifting between worlds and times!” The capped crusader paused to review what he’d just said and why.
“Yes,” agreed Citizen Z. “The very presence of this device tends to prompt expository dialogue. Even now I’m feeling the urge to explain how it was created by the combined pantheons as part of a trap for the Dread Dormaggadon and then… Wow, it is good!”
“Could you exposition why you felt we needed to head into the very heart of the Hood’s HQ and find the most dangerous thing he possesses?” Visionary requested.
“Oh ,yes. We need to use this to find out what’s going on and then turn the whole situation round to our advantage. Nothing can trump the amped-up retcon power that Iscanean Went has somehow got hold of, but retconning isn’t about power. The best retcons are sneaky and subtle. And that mirror is about the best tool for doing that in the whole damn Parodyverse.”
“How do we use it?” Hatman wondered. “Perhaps if I could get a hold of one of the Hood’s cowls?”
“That wouldn’t be a good idea,” CZ warned. “Anyhow, we don’t need Ioldabaoth. Any cosmic office holder could probably get it working if he stared at it enough.”
After a horrible moment Vizh caught on. “Aw, c’mon. I was Chronicler for a day! A really long time ago. Am I never going to be allowed to forget?”
“Unfinished business, I guess,” Hatty noted. The Portal also tended to provoke metatext.
“No time for recriminations now,” Amnesia insisted. “Vizh, you need to look into the glass. We need the full story.”
“And after I’m driven insane?” the possibly-fake man worried.
“Then we probably need to start using the Portal to shift a few things round.”
“And I have the power to do that?”
Amnesia’s voice had a weird duel timbre to it as she answered. “No. The Asylum does.”
***
“Hold it there, Lucien!” Goldeneyed demanded, appearing at the edge of Parody Plaza. “Let go the newbie and face me!”
The Chain Knight wrapped Ham-Boy even tighter in flesh-piercing chains and turned to confront the veteran Legionnaire. “And why should I heed the words of one whose powers I have thwarted by dimensional seal?” he enquired.
“Because he’s not alone,” Liu Xi explained, appearing from the other side of the chain-choked public space.
“But you are likewise limited since I have also sealed off all access to the elemental demi-states by which an elemental accesses her powers.”
“Yeah,” agreed Fin Fang Foom, rising up from a third direction. “And how are you blocking me?” Beside him other old members of the Lair Legion jumped into battle formation. Jarvis, Dark Knight, Messenger, Trickshot, Troia, Sorceress, Banjoooo, Ziles, Exile, and spiffy stood ready for battle.
“Just imagine I said something hokey and inappropriate at this point,” spiffy suggested to Sir Lucian.
“We always do,” Jarvis assured him.
The Chain Knight’s long cascade of bloody links rattled. “I can sense life. I can smell pain. Did you think your hologram illusions would fool me, computer-woman?”
“I had hopes, yes,” Hallie agreed. “It was spiffy gave it away, right? Not annoying enough. It’s always spiffy’s fault.” She allowed the projections of LL alumni fade again to conserve power in the Holographic Emitter Drone into which she had uploaded her artificial intelligence, her full personality. The little egg-shaped device hovered inside the hard-light body of her preferred green-skinned female form. Last time the Hellraisers had crushed that device, killing her. Only being inside the Lair Mansion and its adoption of her as one of its defences had preserved her life.
This time she wasn’t in the Lair Mansion.
“You get one chance to surrender,” Marie Murcheson called from the fourth cardinal point. The Lair Banshee struggled to keep the fear from her voice. Her death-sense was screaming. “You remember what I did to you last time, Sir Chain Knight.”
“The little avatar of Parody Island?” the villain recognised. “Yes. I’ve been hoping for a rematch. And this time you have human flesh again, so very vulnerable to my areas of expertise. Nor are you empowered by your island’s cosmic defences here. It was foolish of you to leave your home soil, sweet Marie. Foolish and fatal.”
“Like you gave us a choice,” scorned G-Eyed. “You pushed us. We had to push back.”
“By suicidal gestures and petty posturing? Come now, you have a better plan than that. What is it?”
“This,” called Ham-Boy! “Sally, now!”
Ham-Boy’s outer Ham-Cowl peeled away of its own accord, twisting and flowing like the sentient plastic it was. Silicone Sally shimmied along the barbed bonds that held the world’s meatiest hero close to the Chain Knight, then pressed herself right through one of the rents in the villain’s bleeding armour.
“This is very dangerous,” G-Eyed worried as the flexible felon vanished under Sir Lucian’s blackened plates. “I still say we should have tried the Pregnancy Gun.”
“No need,” Marie called out. “She’s momentarily insulated that armour from its wearer. I can feel his death.” The banshee clutched her head and fall to her knees. “So many deaths. He has become death!”
“His power’s disrupted,” Hallie called. “Liu Xi, is it enough?”
The elementalist ran forward, avoiding the writhing chains that lashed around her. “This close? Maybe?”
She couldn’t summon elements extradimensionally whilst the Chain Knight’s lock held. She could still use what extradimensional elements were at hand. The only source was the Chain Knight himself, and the armour that was momentarily severed from him.
She commanded the mail to tear itself apart.
The Chain Knight screamed.
Silicone Sally dropped to the floor, regaining human form, tattered and torn as if she’d been thrown through plate glass.
The Lair Banshee screamed too, and her keen was horror as sound.
Lucian’s tortured flesh was painful even to look at. Beneath his armour his internal organs were exposed and pinned. The chains that extruded from him were knitted and hooked into every part of his tormented body. Marie’s wail called to the souls bound into the monster, calling each to resonate the keening.
Goldeneyed had practiced with his power in interminable torment for many months sustaining a planet-sized barrier using Celestial defences. He knew all about shields that prevented teleportation. He knew how to exploit a chink when he saw it.
He clenched his fists, cried out in agony, and teleported a square foot of the Chain Knight’s stomach three feet to the left.
Thrashing chains slammed him down, weaving about Bry’s limbs and torso to immobilise him. Similar threads captured the other heroes present in the Plaza, confining them painfully in shackles that thwarted any further attack. The heroes were pinned. Even Hallie found herself locked within her hard-light form.
The Chain Knight staggered to his feet unsteadily and scooped his missing flesh back into place. His sundered armour reformed about him.
“That… was quite impressive,” he congratulated the captured Legion. “A very worthy last stand. But a last stand all the same.”
***
The ancient tunnels under Gothametropolis York were mostly burrowed out by the sect of ghouls who had helped found the city. Over long centuries they had laboured to chase off or eliminate the various cultists, mutates, vampires, elder beings, and mad scientists who had attempted to base themselves there. This was mostly because intruders tended to knock over the piles of books the Scholars had amassed in their lightless domain.
The realm of the Ghouls was protected by a variety of methods, magical and mundane. In addition to traps and spells, the passageways themselves twisted in non-Euclidean mazes that would have made Escher proud; indeed, it was possible that the artist’s brain had been devoured by the Scholars to add his personality, skillset, and knowledge to their gestalt personalities. Finally, a loud intruder who foxed rare editions would face the wrath of the razor-clawed undead themselves. Trespassers would be eaten; although not their brains unless they had rare and interesting content.
The Scholar-Ghoul’s Dean was Greye. He had been Abyssal there, the leader of that community, for almost three hundred years in his present psychology. He had watched his city grow from a smudge of pilgrim hovels into the sprawling brooding conurbation that now crouched on the northern shore of Paradopolis Sound. He had put a lot of work into it, so when jumped-up fallen paladins from other dimensions wrapped it through with bloody chains and sealed every door and lock before destroying it, Abyssal Greye tended to get grumpy. When that interference made his own desk drawers sticky he got downright crabby.
He was therefore not pleased when a mortal sauntered through the Ghoul lair’s defences and rapped on his door. “What?” Greye demanded. “I don’t have time to eviscerate interlopers right now!”
“Good to know,” agreed Vinnie de Soth. The jobbing occultist entered the Abyssal’s office, avoiding the precarious book-piles as if his life depended upon it. “I need a consultation.”
“This isn’t a convenient time. Come back in 2047. December 2047.”
“I didn’t say it was with you. I just need you to facilitate.”
“This is not a public library, Mr De Soth. Nor are you safe here.”
“Nor am I asking,” the young mage snapped back. “People I care about are facing the Chain Knight. A lot more people I also care about are going to get slaughtered if we don’t stop him. My girlfriend is taking on one of the biggest sadists ever to appear in the Parodyverse. And I’m not there when it happens. You know why?”
“Because you have finally remembered the first rule of wizardry?”
“Because I have to deal with the bigger issue,” Vinnie warned. “Like I said, I’m not asking for your help. I finally remembered that I’m acting sorcerer supreme as well. You’re drafted.”
“Or what?” the scholar-ghoul enquired.
“Or I shall inconvenience you more. If necessary I shall inconvenience you - and anybody else who gets in my way - to oblivion.”
Greye put down his quill. “Ah,” he noted with satisfaction, “so you have finally accepted your mantle. Good. Very good. How may the Ghouls Under Gothametropolis assist the sorcerer supreme, ipsissimus?”
“Like I said, I need a consultation. A parley.”
“With whom?”
“With an unknown entity outside the boundaries of the Parodyverse. I’ve got a tenuous trail on him via a void connection he left when he tried snatching Liu Xi Xian. Now we need to have words.” Vinnie took a breath before saying it out loud: “I need to talk to the Void Spectre.”
***
That is not dead which can eternal lie. It might get distracted after being shattered into a billion blobs and set fire to, but that’s all.
The language of Aklo, spoken by nameless prehuman beings on the Plateau of Leng and other venues of sanity-sapping horror, is a very precise one. Its word for the protoplasmic servitor race created by the Fairly Great Old Ones which later rebelled and overthrew its masters when the stars were right is ‘Shoggoth’. There is no plural form. All Shoggoths are one.
Now conjecture dozens of alternate Earths being torn out of timespace, each with an iteration of Shoggoth that was reduced to scorched smears as it tried to shield its teammates in the Lair Legion. Infer from that what would happen if an overlooked archscientist with a penchant for stunt mathematics was to invoke that Shoggoth into activity again, if only to add marginal notes to his sheets of calculation.
Apply that manifested Shoggoth-cubed against an eight-figure whole number of rampant undead and divide by an improbable coefficient of squalrgh.
And duck.
“What I want to know,” complained Yuki Shiro shortly thereafter, “is how CSFB! didn’t get goo on his silly suit.”
“Because I’m powered by Awesome Inside!” the wired wonder explained. “Way to eat vampires, Shoggy. But won’t you go all comedy drunk again? Not that I’m complaining because it was pretty funny.”
I have enhanced my metabolism, the Manga Shoggoth told them. His use of telepathy indicated how ramped up he was just now. The little annoyances are being digested over thirty three and a Π different dimensions this time, some of which have not even discovered what a continuum is.”
“That’s fine,” Yuki interrupted. “We don’t need to know more.”
“Actually I wouldn’t mind…” Al B. Harper began before the cyborg P.I. shut him down.
“We needs must hie unto you Herringcarp Asylum,” Donar reminded the battered team. “I hast a smite date with yon Slithis for the nonce.”
I shall escort you there, the Shoggoth announced.
“Yay!” yayed CSFB! “Shoggoth surfing!”
The sky lit up with livid blue flares and purple energy dots.
“What now?” Al B. objected. “Looks like some kind of geogravetic entropic energy web surrounding the planet. Probably a nega-fusion solid-mass kinetic funnel like the one that snatched this Earth here in the first place, only set to catapult the planet on another collision with whatever caused that impact before. The glowing strands are q-neutrino streams paired with para-quantum analogues to conventional n-space topical nodes, only shifted to compensate for the local altered physics and harnessed via a postconceptual driver sheath. At least that would be my first guess.”
“There’s big lights up there about to toss this planet again,” Yuki translated for Donar.
The effect’s locus is Herringcarp Asylum the Shoggoth reported. I should like to go there and remonstrate with them.
“If ‘remonstrate’ art loathsome elder-speak for ramming a baseball bat with a nail upon it where the sun shineth not on Lord Slithis then I doth concur,” responded Donar.
The world lurched. Fresh earthquakes began as tectonic plates ground together.
“Now would be good,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! agreed.
Above them, geogravetic rippers launched the wounded Earth away from the Parodyverse, directly at the Wonderwall.
***
The Hooded Hood blasted Sir Mumphrey Wilton away from him by sheer force of retconning himself massive strength and energy projecting powers. It was a massive drain on even the God of Retcon’s ability to restructure his own past, but it seemed to slow the old man down for a moment.
The Hood refocused his blast and prepared to finish Mumphrey for good. How much chronal charge could that blasted pocketwatch still carry? “You dare to lay hands upon me? Upon the Hooded Hood?”
“Well clearly he does,” Elizabeth Wilton pointed out scornfully. “You do know that dialogue makes you sound like a complete tool, don’t you, Junior Reader? I only mention it because you are not only embarrassing yourself but also me.”
Went send another killing energy blast at the villainess. Mumphrey shifted that into the future also.
“Over here, sirrah! Have ado with a man!”
“Yes, fight Mumphrey,” the Baroness advised. “He won’t cheat.” She bent down and found one of the scattered cogs that had previously been Clockwatcher. Alwin Hazlewood had been retconned into his monstrous mechanical iteration by the nu-Hood’s power, which meant that this serrated fragment formed a part of Iscanean Went’s own past.
“You think you can withstand me, you geriatric fool!” the Hooded Hood screamed at the Keeper of the Chronometer of Infinity. “You will die! Within an hour your team will be dead! Within a day your world will be dead! In less than a week it will be catapulted at the Wonderwall to create new gods for the New Pantheon! And now, because of what I have learned from you, it will not be Dark Thugos who rules supreme… it will be the Hooded Hood!”
“No idea what you’re blithering about and don’t care a fig!” Sir Mumphrey told him. “Clear that you’re a blaggard and a bounder of the first order and no fitter to live on God’s clean Earth than a weasel. Requirement of all right-thinking gentleman to smite you as Saul smote the Girgasites.”
“What? What the hell are you taking about?” demanded the nu-Hood.
“1 Chronicles 10.14, you arrant heathen!” blazed the eccentric Englishman. “If you stopped puffing yourself up with retconned superpowers and cracked a book you’d be a darned sight more interesting to fight, I can tell you that!”
“Shut up! Just stop talking like that and die!”
“Might have done if you weren’t a burbling idiot of consummate inbreeding who transgressed cosmic laws so I could use the full powers of my office,” Mumphrey pointed out. “As it is we’ll just have to see whether your jumped-up retconning lasts longer than my reservoir of temporal energy, what?”
“Boys!” sighed the Baroness.
She stepped up behind Iscanean Went, wielded Clockwatcher’s cog like a razor blade, and cut the Hooded Hood’s throat.
The Hood’s desperate retcon faltered when it tried to erase the very edge that had been crafted by that same power.
A spray of blood covered part of the Hood’s museum collection. Iscanean Went dropped to his knees, his life welling from him. The green light in his eyes flickered and was doused. A Junior Reader’s corpse toppled to the floor.
“Could have handled him,” huffed Sir Mumphrey Wilton.
“I told you I was going to kill him,” the Baroness observed. “He was very annoying.”
The eccentric Englishman couldn’t argue with that. “Seems as though the oik had allies, though. He mentioned Thugos.”
“Yes, he seems to have been part of a consortium. I suspect other things are happening of which we are not yet aware. Also, do you feel the need to narrate complex backstory and intimate motivations?”
“Can’t say as I do, except… perhaps a bit of a lecture on the rules and requirements of wielding the Chronometer as a minor cosmic office holder under the Celestian Conventions of… hmm, see what you mean.”
“As I thought.” Baroness Wilton turned around with a smug expression on her lips. “The Portal of Pretentiousness. Welcome back, Ioldabaoth. It’s about… Visionary?”
***
It was the moon, if the moon was a decaying, mined-out wreck sullenly hanging in nothingness, radiating a miasma of choking evil. Or rather it was an idea of the moon, since it had been excised from the Parodyverse long ago when the Grim Reaper’s initial foray into that cluster of improbable narrative had been thwarted. Now the Void Spectre brooded in the outer darkness and bided his time for another chance.
Vinnie de Soth was glad he was present only as an astral intelligence, since breathing and not exploding by depressurisation would have been challenging otherwise. The lack of any form of normal physics to hold his molecules together might have been problematic too.
“Hey! Entity who’s branded himself Void Spectre! Over here! Message from the Parodyverse!”
An overwhelming presence focussed upon the jobbing occultist, seeking to crush his will and destroy him.
“Yeah. My mother tries that,” Vinnie answered. “I’m here about Liu Xi Xian.”
The Void Spectre recognised that name. The little elementalist wisp had dared to manipulate void. Now she was his.
“Actually, I’m dating her,” the young mage pointed out. “But even if she dumps me, that doesn’t make her yours. You don’t own the void. You just infest it.”
All the Parodyverse would belong to the Void Spectre and every living being would scream in horror as a helpless plaything.
“Or not. Some of those playthings play back rough. Anyhow, today’s not the day for that, right? A dude named Lord Slithis is tangling up your plans to use Liu Xi as a smuggler’s route into the Parodyverse. He’s got a lien on her soul that outranks your hooks on her void-crafting. We both want to break that bond to the necromancer, right?”
The Void Spectre loomed in malevolent expectation.
“Thing is, what I’m hearing is that Slithis and some buddies of his have found themselves a serious power-up. Right now Liu Xi is tackling one of them and all her usual elemental routes are blocked. If she dies then your one-day ticket to ride gets cancelled with no refund.”
Vinnie felt a wash of thwarted ill intent. If he’d had a body he’d have vomited.
“Yeah. So what I’m proposing is that you lend Liu Xi some of your void. You have infinite amounts, right, enough that even a God of Murder with a special penchant for locking stuff couldn’t seal it all away? You loan that to Liu Xi for a short while so she can do a couple of shifts. First she sends you the Chain Knight. Call it a freebie, a bonus for you being a good sport. Don’t feel you need to avoid horribly killing him, it’s okay. Then she transfers the lien between her soul and Slithis so that instead it’s between you and Slithis. And then you have words with Slithis.”
A wave of vicious anticipation emanated from the evil outer-intelligence. It would destroy the upstarts who sought to dominate his Parodyverse, it would overwhelm the tiny elementalist and claim her as the portal it had so long sought, and every corner of the Parodyverse would scream praises to their new overlord.
“Nope. That’s not the deal. You get Sir Lucian, maybe Lord Slithis. You leave Liu Xi alone and you keep out of the Parodyverse this time. I’ll be watching. I’ll be there to back Liu Xi up so she can keep you to the deal.”
Then Vinnie realised that he would not be there. He was not going home. He was never returning to his flesh. He would remain here, in the outer darkness, eternal plaything of the Void Spectre. Perhaps in time he might even be moulded into a new Grim Reaper. But Vinnie de Soth would never escape. Any precaution was now… void.
Without Vinnie, Liu Xi would have to face the Void Spectre’s full attention alone. And so the Parodyverse would end.
***
Clara, Raven of Destiny, had been suffering from a horrid migraine all day. Suddenly she looked up and squawked to the children to whom she played nanny. “Magweed! Griffin! Get up! Get out now, and run to your safe place in the Lair Mansion! Now! Right now!”
Visionary’s children looked up from Super Mario Smash Brothers Brawl and saw that their guardian was not kidding.
A cohort of armed mice appeared to hustle the children to the door.
They made it out of the Lighthouse that stood on one edge of Parody Island (at least it did when the tide was in) before the whole interior was illuminated with a blinding green light.
***
“What?” Visionary moaned, inventorying body parts. “What just happened?”
Hatman picked himself up from behind a somewhat worn sofa. “I think you just crashed the Portal of Pretentiousness,” he told the possibly-fake man. “Into your living room.”
Citizen Z flinched as she realised where she was, but no vengeful banshee appeared this time to exorcise her with extreme prejudice. “You wanted to be home. The Portal picked up on it.”
“That’s not what I was trying to do,” Vizh objected. “Mags and Griff might have been here!”
“What were you trying to do?” Hatman demanded. He checked around for danger but found only a smelly tomcat dozing atop a bookcase; that was dangerous enough.
“I was trying to get everybody together so we could sort things out,” Visionary explained. “I was trying…”
There was another green Portal-flash and Ham-Boy, G-Eyed, Liu Xi, Silicone Sally, Marie, and Hallie toppled on his floor, all looking worse for wear.
“Hallie!” cried Vizh.
Before he could move there was another flash.
Donar, CSFB!, Al B. Harper, Yuki Shiro, sliding on a gelid portion of Shoggoth, impacted into one of the Lighthouse’s curved inner walls.
“Um…” Vizh managed.
Another flash brought Sir Mumphrey and Baroness Wilton into the ever-more-crowded living room. “Visionary!” Elizabeth accused, pointing a hand that carried a blood-crusted serrated cog.
Vinnie de Soth tumbled down onto the couch and bounced to the floor. “…And that’s how you escape inescapable traps,” he concluded a conversation begun outside the Parodyverse.
“The Portal of Pretentiousness brought us here?” CSFB! recognised. “Hoody?”
“Him!” the Baroness snarled, indicating the possibly-fake most recent user. “He somehow managed to convince that device to assemble us all here.”
“He was trying to get everyone together to sort things out,” Hatman explained. “Not a bad idea, and so far…”
There was another flash, coupled with a choking stench of rotting flesh. “Eh?” puzzled Lord Slithis, God of Undead. He clutched his bone-staff and looked around in surprise. “This is not my Palace of Skeletons!”
“Slithis!” shouted Donar joyfully. “Eat Mjalcolm!”
Another flash and explosion of chains sent everybody sprawling.
“Well now,” declared the Chain Knight, “this is more like it!”
***
In a random classroom at Paradopolis University, a particularly unpopular teacher’s desk spontaneously exploded in a gout of flame. Nobody knew why.
***
The Lair Banshee shrieked a soul-rending keen that set the very stones of the old lighthouse shaking. Slithis and Sir Lucian were both slammed back into the tower’s outer shell, but the stonework refused to shatter. The full force of Parody island’s Celestian defences seared through the intruders.
Time stopped.
Sir Mumphrey held his pocketwatch in both hands, suspending events around the cluster of Legionnaires who faced two nigh-indestructible foes. “Sixty seconds grace for a plan,” the eccentric Englishman barked. “Hatman, go.”
“We need them outside,” the capped crusader instructed. “Too much chance of us taking collateral casualties if we fight in here.”
“Where are Mags and Griffin?” Vizh demanded. “They need protection.”
“We have wounded,” G-Eyed reported. “Sally’s damn near shredded. Ham-Boy’s cut up but still operating.”
“Kinetic blast to take the bad guys through the door,” Yuki calculated. “Wide burst energy assault to keep them off-balance while we get out after them.”
“I’m raising the shields round the island,” Hallie briefed. “It’ll protect the mainland and it might interfere with the Chain Knight’s interference too.”
“It will also stop Slithis manifesting undead,” Vinnie added. “It’d be hard enough anyway while his buddy Lucien was blocking gateways but this really limits his recruitment pool. None of the spirits on Parody Island are going to be amenable to joining Team New Pantheon.”
“I need…” Citizen Z ventured haltingly, “Hallie, Marie, I need a link to Herringcarp. If the LL and the Hooded Hood can team up sometimes then so can the Mansion and the Asylum. And the Asylum is pretty mad right now.”
“Well, by definition,” CSFB! pointed out. “Let’s do Super-HQ Team-Up #1!”
“Ten seconds,” Mumphrey called.
“Brace for my Hurricanes hat,” Hatman called. “Shoggoth, ooze them out of here. Don’t hold back for their mental health. Donar, get ready to give them bad weather when they’re outside. Then, Hallie, Marie, Celestian shields. Let’s do this!”
The bubble of suspended time splintered. The Legion attacked.
“Sorry about your living room,” Ham-Boy told Visionary.
The possibly-fake man wasn’t phased. Kerry had done worse than this on a bad time of the month before she’d been tragically… what? What had happened to Kerry and the Juniors? Why did Vizh expect them to have died in the Junior Superteams Challenge? That made no sense. His ward had called from her dorm house at Paradopolis U just yesterday to borrow money for “essential accelerant supplies”.
He shook the concern out of his head. All his worry now was for Magweed and Griffin. Where were they?
“Lair Mansion, boss,” Fleabot told him, springing onto his shoulder and trying to avoid the worst of the stained patches. “Relax. You only have to worry about the Chain Knight and Lord Slithis.”
The villains had been swept outside by a tidal wave of Shoggoth and meat produce. The tower shook again as a massive bolt of lightning krakkka-doooomed from the heavens and lit up the intruding new new gods.
Most of the Legion evacuated the Tower to keep up the fight. Hatman had them attacking in waves, leading the first assault with his Suns cap – always a good call against undead adversaries – and setting the Chain Knight up for Mjalcolm’s kiss.
Then Yuki’s wave went in, the cyborg P.I. smacking Slithis physically, relying on her steel frame to protect her from his life-draining capacities. CSFB! vaulted over Sir Lucian, tangling chains in silly string long enough for G-Eyed to get close and repeat his teleport attack.
In the third group, Citizen Z sprang on the God of Undead and delivered an ectoplasmic charge that would have seared through an army of revenants. Even Slithis gasped and fell to his knees. Ham-Boy’s meat-vision generated layers of cutlets around the Chain Knight’s helmet, obscuring his sight momentarily so that the Baroness could fire off a clip of micro-explosive nega-pellets into the monster’s bleeding joints.
All the attacks blurred in, the team accelerated by the Chronometer of Infinity so that all three assault phases happened in less than two seconds.
In the Lighthouse Vinnie held back Liu Xi from the fray. “Not yet,” he told her. “There’s something you need to try, but it’s deadly dangerous and potentially very bad.” He hastily recapped his visit to the Void Spectre.
“You did what?” the appalled elementalist demanded. “I never asked you to do that for me!”
“Discussion for later. Right now you need to harness void again. Deep void. A lot of void. More void than the Chain Knight can block.”
Silicone Sally stirred painfully as she tried to reassemble her shredded form. “Isn’t that going to be a bit dangerous for her?” she asked.
Vinnie pointed through the Lighthouse door to where most of the Legion were tag-teaming two gods. “We don’t have a whole lot of safe options,” he pointed out.
“Quiet, both of you,” the Oriental elementalist called out. She reached with her senses past the local fabric of reality. She bypassed the weirdly transdimensional walls of the spatially-uncertain tower. She stretched past the singing barrier of Celestian authority that domed the island. She pushed on out, past worlds and time, to the far places past matter and energy.
She tumbled into Void.
Vinnie grasped her hand and somehow she felt it. It helped to anchor her. Liu Xi was surprised when a second hand clasped hers; Sally Rezilyant was with her too.
The Void Spectre surged forward, flowing through her, eager to manifest.
Silicone Sally told the outer entity where it could go and what it could do to itself on the way there. Liu Xi closed off that section of Void but grasped all the rest that she could. It hurt.
“Get me… get me to the Chain Knight…” she gasped.
Outside, the God of Murder had wrapped Donar in unbreakable chains. The enraged Ausgardian was using them to swing his captor in parabolic arcs into the bedrock of Parody Island.
Lord Slithis twisted to stab necromantic energies into his old enemy, enough power to slaughter even a hemigod of thunder and turn him into a minion. It was a spell that had worked on many other iterations of Donar Oldmanson. His aim was spoiled by Yuki Shiro kicking his legs from under him and the Manga Shoggoth flowing down his throat.
The God of Undead gurgled his hate and discovered that Shoggoths did not die in anything but a technical until-the-stars-are-right sense of the word – and that the Shoggoth could multiply his biomass, folding in more of it via strange dimensions uninhibited by any present barrier.
Slithis released pure death to stun the intruding elder being to quiescence but was hammered again by that undeath-rending banshee cry. When he tried to shut down the little ghost she was supported by hundreds, by thousands of spirits who had died in this place. She could not have summoned nor bound them; they came because she asked.
Modern holograph pyrotechnics blinded him. He fought supernatural attacks amidst the high-tech stronghold of the world’s greatest superteam. Slithis managed to mould monsters of undeath whole from the rotten matter of the very ground beneath him but some gigantic kilt-wearing bipedal hippo seemed to tackle them down and explode with them.
“Keep it up!” Hatman called. “Don’t give them a moment’s…”
A massive detonation shattered the Celestian barrier around the mansion. The impact knocked heroes and villains alike off their feet, scattering them across the field of battle.
Then the capped crusader died.
A twin pair of energy beams swerved around the Chain Knight, Ham-Boy and CSFB! and slammed directly into Hatman. He blazed with a light so bright his bones showed through his flesh and then he was evaporated.
The head of the New Pantheon hovered in midair over the barrier he had just sundered, a barrier enforced by the Celestian Space Robots themselves. His entropy eyebeams stabbed out again, twisting through the melee to target Sir Mumphrey Wilton.
The Chronometer of Infinity halted time. The eyebeams slowed but kept coming, orienting on the pocketwatch’s keeper.
“Thugos has harvested and harnessed all the Celestian energies from all those alternate Earth Lair Islands,” Al B. Harper understood. “He’s amped his powers up so much he can smash through Celestian fortifications and over-ride the powers conferred on the cosmic office-holders.”
“Dashed bad form!” Sir Mumphrey snarled, pressing studs on his timepiece to ratchet in the instrument’s reserves.
The entropy beams were almost upon him now. Baroness Wilton grabbed Visionary and hurled him into their path at the very last moment.
“Hey!” objected the possibly-fake man as he vaporised.
“NO!” thundered Dark Thugos as reality began to shift to accommodate the universe according to the Apostate. That did not accord with his plans.
“Your best bet,” the Baroness told him, “is to stop fighting Mumphrey’s watch and let him wind back the fake annoyance’s death. Even Visionary is not as inconvenient as the adversary for whom he is a placeholder in reality.”
The Master of the Entropy Eyebeams relented for an instant. Time unwound as Mumphrey revered Visionary’s destruction, and then Hatman’s.”
“…break. Pour it all on, guys!” the capped crusader bellowed.
“I was head of the Lair Pantheon, you know,” Vizh objected.
Ever the tactician, the Chain Knight used the respite to lash out new shackles, pinioning Mumphrey, the Baroness, Visionary, and Hatman before they could react. He did not kill them yet, to avoid contingencies. That could come later, and slowly.
Slithis extended his own necromantic aura to drain life from the heroes besetting him. Ham-Boy, Yuki, Hallie, Marie, Sergeant MacHarridan and G-Eyed all fell to the ground, fatigued as never before, struggling to rise before they were destroyed.
Dark Thugos released his entropy eyebeams at Donar.
Liu Xi Xian twisted void, twisted space itself, and directed those blasts right into Thugos’ face.
CrazySugarFreakBoy! chugged another bottle of soda like Popeye mainlined spinach. He ignored Lord Slithis’ necromantic drain and caroomed the battered undead master to the ground again. As Slithis rose, the God of Undead realised he had something stuffed down his pants.
The Rocket Pop fizzy drinks that the wired wonder had planted there exploded in unison.
Citizen Z leaped on the Chain Knight’s chest and discharged the full malice of Herringcarp Asylum along those bloody chains. Herringcarp Asylum did not like the Chain Knight. It burrowed into Sir Lucian’s mind, awoke the memories of all those people he had killed, and made him feel their agonies.
“All switch!” called Yuki, the team’s tactical advisor.
Donar ignored his bonds and hurled Mjalcolm at Slithis’ head.
Liu Xi switched her attention to what void could do to a multidimensional Chain Knight.
Al B. Harper e-mailed Hallie the exact control frequencies of the Celestian energy that defended the island. “Thugos has stolen an awful lot of that,” he pointed out. “You’re still the over-ride controller, though.”
The A.I. gasped as she worked through the maths. “I need authorisation from the LL Leader,” she called.
“Do it,” Visionary answered. “Um, maybe explain to me later what ‘it’ is?”
Lord Slithis might have dodged the incoming baseball-bat-with-a-nail-in-it if not for the exploding combat candy, the wave of meat products, and his heart being teleported out of his chest at the same time.
One of the oldest of primal artefacts impacted with the skull of the newest deity. Mjalcolm shattered Slithis’ head into gory pulp. The Shoggoth reanimated and burst the body into a spray of gobbets.
Hatman pressed locksmith’s inspection goggles over his eyes and turned their power on the Chain Knight’s bonds. Released momentarily from his shackles, Sir Mumphrey Wilton charged the enemy knight, calling upon his Chronometer to assume one of its older incarnations. He plunged the Sword of Time right through Sir Lucian’s forehelm and out through the back.
Void clawed at Slithis, shredding a lien that the necromancer had forged with that elementalist who danced that void, attaching it instead between the dying God of Murder and the Void Spectre beyond creation.
“Sir Lucian,” Vinnie announced, “as acting Sorcerer Supreme I am banishing you from the Parodyverse. Your visa is revoked.”
The Void Spectre seized the lien and dragged the Chain Knight away into outer horror. He wasn’t the victim it had hoped for.
“It’s all coming together,” muttered the Baroness suspiciously.
Dark Thugos’ lips peeled back in a snarl of annoyance.
“Now!” Al B. called out. “Hallie, link with G-Eyed for co-ordinates. Use Shoggy as a conduit guide. Activate that stolen Celestial energy and vector it!”
Thugos appreciated the plan. “And catapult me all the way to the rim of creation to slam into the Wonderwall in the same way all those captured Earths did. A clever stratagem. One that might even have worked under other circumstances.” He clenched his fist and remained present by force of will alone. “It seems I must recruit a better class of new god.”
Donar grabbed up Mjalcolm to cast again. The Master of the Entropy Eyebeams opened his palm and all the heroes present were slammed down with irresistible Celestian force.
“I am close,” Thugos declared, “very close to discovering the Parody Formula, the very essence of the multiverse. Breaching the Wonderwall will offer me the final data I require to calculate the sum and to control all. Even the destruction of these new little gods will serve my researches.”
Each Legionnaire on the churned up rocks outside the Lighthouse struggled in his or her own fashion but found themselves pinioned. The Master of the New Pantheon was not new to his power.
“But now, with your defeat, Lair Legion, this Earth will join all the others, cannonballed at the final barrier. The end of superheroes, the beginning of the Age of Thugos. I am confident that this impact will be the one to succeed where all else failed.”
“Hold on. He’s going to throw the world somewhere?” Vizh caught on. “Is that the plot summary?”
“That’s what he thinks he’s going to do,” Vinnie agreed.
“But we have a clever plan to stop him?” Ham-Boy checked. “Right? Guys?”
“Oh, there’s a clever plan,” Baroness Elizabeth breathed. “Just not one of ours.”
“Because…” Yuki caught on, “one of our archvillains is missing.”
Inside the Lighthouse, Silicone Sally limped to look at the world’s most powerful superheroes being pinned helpless by a villain immeasurably out of her league. “Last gal standing. Well, staggering,” she told herself. “Now would be a great time to consider quitting the biz.”
She looked around for inspiration, but all she saw was a scrappy ginger cat that had somehow survived all the destruction in the room. He was cleaning his paws ready for a night on the town.
“A distraction,” the flexible felon told herself. “That’s what they need. Something to stop Thugos from blocking Hallie enacting Al B’s plan. But what?”
“The cat,” she was told. “It was empowered by the Omniversal Facilitator during the Coming of Galactivac. It is indestructible and just as cosmically-charged as anything else out there. And it has claws.”
“And I can be a pretty big rubber band! Here, kitty, kitty!”
Outside, CrazySugarFreakBoy! was stalling. “So you crack your formula and work out the plot?” he called to Thugos. “Big whoop. That’s like turning to the last page of a graphic novel to see how it ends. Read it the way the creators expected you to. Live every scene. It’s not the destination, Thuggy, it’s the journey!”
Dark Thugos was not convinced. “It is dominion. It is power. This Parodyverse shall be a sacrifice of love.”
“So now it’s about dating problems?” Vizh asked, “Because honestly we’ve already had Follies of Youth and Kerry/Danny and Liu Xi/Exu/Vinnie and Kaara/ Vaahir and Exile/Valeria and Hatty/Sorcy/Rabid Wolf and, well, Nats/everybody…”
“Um, Miiri, DBS’ sister, Hallie, Dancer, a Raven maybe…” Hatman interjected, feeling that Visionary was perhaps being a bit unfair to single out Nats as team Lothario.
“Silence!” commanded Dark Thugos. “You have been worthy opponents. Consider your last words carefully.”
“Can think of a few choice phrases,” Sir Mumphrey assured him, “but ladies are present.”
“Don’t mind us,” Yuki Shiro assured him.
“I’ve got some,” Goldeneyed told the tyrant. “We don’t give up. We’ll beat you. We’ll find a way. Lair Legion forever!”
“Yeah,” agreed Ham-Boy. “And Line Up!”
“Neospiffy!” somebody muttered.
“Point is, Thuggy,” CSFB! called out, “Whatever you do…”
“Enough delay,” the Master of the New Pantheon determined. “Die now.”
An angry ballistic cat was sprung through air to impact on Thugos’ face. Its claws shredded the archvillain’s nose.
Hallie claimed control at last over that usurped energy. She reached out to the Shoggoth, G-Eyed, and Liu Xi. “Fire!”
They did.
A reverse Doom Tube blasted open above the Lair Mansion, smashing Thugos away across the many tiers of the Parodyverse. He hurtled helplessly beyond the rim of what was known and smashed with world-breaking force into the Wonderwall.
A tiny crack appeared in its ancient surface.
Thugos was absorbed inside. Soon after his screaming face grew from one of the barrier’s ridges.
***
With the tyrant’s pressure released, the battered Lair Legion staged to their feet.
“Was that Lisa’s cat?” Vizh worried. “Because if so somebody else can explain to Lisa.”
“Assuming the phones are working again,” Al B. amended. “And it isn’t me using them.”
“The locks of America are open once more,” Hallie reported. “I hope that’s not every one of them, through. That would be another mission again.”
“The dimensional passages are back to normal too,” G-Eyed sensed. “Oh, it’s so good to be able to stretch!”
“So we won?” Sally checked. “I can go get a silicone bath and maybe a massage and sauna? And some cabana boys?”
“And I can get back to Shloss Shrekhausen,” agreed the Baroness. “No, wait. I mean Wilton Manor at Wendel’s Hallow… or do I?” She blinked as if to clear her vision. “Mumphrey, the retcon is reversing!”
The eccentric Englishman stared at his pocketwatch. “So it is, m’d… Baroness. But why?”
“Because it’s done it’s job,” Elizabeth von Zemo replied. “Now it is no longer convenient for its originator to maintain it.”
“Someone told me about the cat,” Sally remembered. “Also, Baroness, if you try to kill me I have friends now.”
“She does,” agreed Liu Xi, scowling at the silicone superheroine’s former exploiter.
“Told you about the cat?” CSFB! considered. “His creation was the turning point of pretty much the earliest Hooded Hood plan ever. I think he set it up at the Crossroads of Destiny in The Hooded Hood Chronicles #6. ‘A really minor retcon,’ he said, ‘but sufficient.’”
“Sufficient for what?” Ham-Boy demanded.
“Sufficient to stop Galactivac and the Baron back then. Sufficient to play us into taking down the New Pantheon today - and nearly dying for it,” Hatman worked out. “So where…”
“Good evening,” the Hooded Hood greeted them.
It was not Iscanean Went.
“Now can we kicketh his ass?” enquired Donar.
“That would be somewhat precipitous, Oldmanson,” the cowled crime czar advised. “Best not to.”
“What did you do, you scurrilous Machiavelli!” Sir Mumphrey exploded. “Where were you when we needed you?”
“At the Crossroads of Infinity, several years ago. At a number of points in between, some of which you traced in Mr Hazlewood’s study. Retconned from reality during your recent troubles. Fortunately I had previously arranged some few contingencies to ensure any upstart would encounter opposition.”
“You married me off to Wilton!” the Baroness objected.
“Indeed. But now that is reversed. Is that a problem?”
A succession of expressions played across Elizabeth’s face “I… yes! No, but…”
“I could arrange for you not to recall it anymore, if you should prefer that.”
“No! Mumphrey, we… What do I do?”
The keeper of the Chronometer of Infinity glared at the cowled crime czar as he answered. “Not quite sure what to say, Elizabeth. On the one hand…”
The eccentric Englishman’s reply was cut short by the Baroness adding, “You know, I’ve cut the throat of one Hood today and quite enjoyed it. Think on that, Ioldabaoth.”
Baroness Elizabeth Sweetwater Dewdrop Zemo von Saxe-Lurkburg-Schreckhausen turned and stalked away; one name short.
“You couldn’t just tell us?” Yuki asked the Hooded Hood. “Maybe just make an appointment, sit us down and explain about what Thugos was doing. Give us a heads-up on the stealing Earths thing so we could save some of them? Or wasn’t that twisty enough?”
“I do appreciate a good twist,” agreed the cowled crime czar. “In this case however, the course I took was necessary to complete a number of long-range objectives.”
“Like what?” G-eyed demanded.
“Such as releasing Li Xi Xian from the influence of Slithis and the Void Spectre. She is required for other purposes than to be a conduit of invasion into the Parodyverse. Like addressing some commitments to Citizen Z, whom you now know to be the spirit of Herringcarp in borrowed flesh.”
“And did you just happen to pick up some kind of magic stone from Thugos while he was getting blasted to the edge of the Parodyverse?” demanded Sir Mumphrey.
“Indeed. The sixth of a set.”
“Six stones?” CSFB! frowned. “There’s not any sort of glove involved, right? Because that would be bad. But cool.”
“Not at this point, Mr Foxglove. All I required was a crack in the wall of the Parodyverse and the six fragments of … well, we shall have to see, will we not?”
“Or we could stop you, sirrah, here and now!” Mumphrey offered.
“No, Wilton, you could not. Do not imagine that swinging that instrument at me would be an effective assault. If you would oppose me then pick your time and place very carefully. But not now.”
“Let’s take the win, guys,” Vizh suggested. “With the Hood there’ll always be another twisty crooked plot another day. Let’s deal with him after coffee and crullers at the Bean and Donut.”
“We might even get thuddy out of that hand dryer,” HB considered.
“There are some other issues to consider,” the Hooded Hood intoned. “You may discover some few changes and consequences of your recent adventure by yourselves, but since you have been of use to me I shall reciprocate by directing your attention to certain features of interest.”
“Bringeth it on, archvillain!” Donar told him defiantly.
“He means he’ll do us a favour, big guy,” CSFB! translated. “Which means we’re in big trouble.”
“First, you should be aware that Thugos recruited not three but four successful candidates for his new godhood. Beware the new God of Revenge. He has taken note of you.”
“No chance of profile stats and a full bio?” Yuki asked, already knowing the answer.
“Second, the barrier that has always surrounded the Parodyverse has now been breached several times. The Carnifex went in. Others have gone out. Each time it will be easier. Expect changes. Expect surprises.”
“How can one expect a surprise?” Liu Xi objected.
“Don’t chew at the causal strings,” the Shoggoth advised. “Diet.”
“Finally,” the Hood warned, “I believe that after so many travails the time is close for the final purpose for which the Parodyverse was designed: the Resolution War that will answer the questions which our Creators originally built our reality to answer. It is near.”
“Resolution War, check,” agreed Silicone Sally. “Um, who’s the war with?”
“I do not know. I intend to prevent it happening and to thwart the cruel Creators who set all this in motion and then abandoned us. I intend to track them down and erase them. I intend to replace them. Even as their plans and schemes come to fruition so do mine.”
“Hold on,” objected Vizh. “You plan to take on the guys who set up the cosmic offices and the Space Robots and Comic-Book Limbo and, well, all the rest? How?”
“Am I not… the Hooded Hood?”
“That’s how you do the pause,” Hatman had to admit.
***
The cat sauntered home three days later, looking smug and smelling of sushi.
***
Next time: Okay, there wasn’t supposed to be a next time. This was strictly a three-episode gig, even if the last episode did, um, extend a bit. I was feeling pretty smug that I’d managed to come in on the predicted issue count. But then the short epilogue dealing with one of the consequences of the story topped 5000 words and so qualified as an Untold Tales all by itself. So about a week from now look for Untold Tales of the Lair Legion #352: Bookkeeping, in which it becomes time to settle some scores.
***
The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom
Who's Who in the Parodyverse
Where's Where in the Parodyverse
Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2016 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2016 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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