Untold Tales of the Lair Legion #353: After the Bookkeeping
Previously: Beth Shellett has been healed from her comatose scarred state, at the cost of expelling the indwelling ghost of Laurie Leyton that made her into Citizen Z. Laurie is now condemned to fade away as Amnesia, the spirit of Herringcarp Asylum. In other news, Baroness von Zemo has “employed” ManMan to arrange a conference for her with Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises, and Dan Drury, Director of SPUD, requires a word with Silicone Sally.
Meanwhile, the Epilogue That Would Not Die rampages into its second issue…
Of, um, three.
***
Goldeneyed teleported a wrecked sixteen wheeler from its precarious position hanging off the side of an overpass and turned round to the gathered press pack that were besieging him with questions about the recent national “lock in”. The Chain Knight who had sealed every lockable object in the USA was gone now but the knock-on damage of his actions remained.
“How many ways can I say ‘no comment’?” G-Eyed demanded of them. “I’m trying to do a job here. Go bother someone else. Go cover the other rescue workers, the ones not wearing spandex. They deserve some spotlight.”
“Goldeneyed, why did you come back to the Lair Legion?”
“G-Eyed, is it true you’ve been in psychiatric counselling since the Parody War?”
“Goldeneyed, do you think the proximity of the Lair Legion headquarters to the city has contributed to the body count?”
“Are you concerned that your team has an appalling record of admitting black and ethnic minorities other than yourself?”
“Is it true you’re seeing Jennifer Lawrence?”
Bry clenched his fists and swung round on the press pack. “You know what?” he shouted at them. “You want news? Here’s news. Item One, in Paradopolis alone, three hundred and sixty three people died yesterday because of what the Chain Knight did. And you want to know who I’m dating? Two, we stopped that bastard the hard way, and it cost us one of our own. We’re not telling you the details because it’s none of your goddamned business! We’re allowed to feel miserable when we lose someone we love!”
Across the freeway, CrazySugarFreakBoy! and his wife, the Groovy Gecko-Girl stopped clearing wrecked cars from the brake-lock pile-up and exchanged glances.
“Dream, he’s losing it,” Alice April Apple warned.
“Yeah. I’m on it.”
“Three,” G-Eyed raged on, “I’m not a flaming black icon. I’m not even black! It’s not even a funny misunderstanding any more.” He tore off his full facemask to show his Caucasian complexion. “Anybody gonna be racist enough to complain that I’m too white to save the planet?”
The press raised their cameras even as they backed off from the furious superhero.
“Four, I’ve had it with you hovering jackals feeding on misery and gossip while good people sacrifice themselves to save ungrateful jerks like you. Laurie Leyton was a true hero, and all you cared about were stories about her drug addiction and unwilling porn career. She fought and she died for what mattered, and you just wanted to sell advertising!”
CrazySugarFreakBoy! bounced in to hold G-Eyed back. “Buddy, I think you’d better…” he began, before Goldeneyed teleported him away again.
“C’mon!” Bry screamed at the cameras. “I can’t wait to hear how you spin it this time! I mean, Hallie’s going to take over the world for the robots! Ham-Boy’s encouraging obesity and heart attacks! Visionary’s supposed to be a pervert sleaze unfit to look after his own kids! And yet every single time you people are being slaughtered we come in and bleed and die to keep you safe! Why the hell do we even bother?”
CSFB! somersaulted over the paparazzi, grabbed up G-Eyed, and dropped over the overpass barrier with him. “Yeah, that might have been better co-ordinated with my mom, our press sec,” he suggested. “I know you’re hurting about Laurie, but…”
“Hurting?” G-Eyed gulped. “You know what misery I caused her? Her and Beth? Just by knowing them? You know what doing the right thing cost them?”
CSFB! held on tight to his friend. “Yeah, I know,” he promised. “Everyone that counts knows. Laurie was a good person. She came through for us when it really mattered, every time, no matter what.”
“Then why is she dead? Tell me, Dream. Why is she dead and damned?”
The press reached the edge of the barrier and leaned over to see what was happening below.
CrazySugarFreakBoy! took control of the situation by giving them the bird then bending round and dropping his pants to the camera. Again.
***
Bethany Shellett blinked to consciousness. “I can see,” she said, and then, “I can speak.”
“Two good signs,” agreed Amber St Clare. The Lair Legion’s government liaison officer helped the confused schoolteacher to sit up.
“Where am I? Is this the Lair Infirmary?”
“Yep. You just slept through Dr Whitwell doing a full medical on you. It, um, it appears that you’re cured of all-over third degree burns and no brain function.”
“Again,” Beth breathed. “How long for this time?”
Beth had first been crippled in a plot by Wexford the Dissected Man to destroy the Lair Legion’s computer datacore and the artificial sentiences stored within it. He had first tortured the schoolteacher and then held her pre-school class hostage to force her to plant what she thought were bugs on the hard drives. The devices were actually bombs and Beth had been caught in the blast.
Thereafter she had been seemingly miraculously restored in her hospital bed. In truth she had been revived by an experimental regenerative formula created by the late Baron Zemo as part of a plot by his niece the current Baroness against Sir Mumphrey Wilton. Along with the nanotech that had temporarily repaired Beth’s broken scarred body were obedience imperatives to force her to assassinate the eccentric Englishman.
When that plot was revealed and Beth was finally free from control she had fled to Europe, as far from the Lair Legion and its enemies as she could get. It was there, away from friends and family, that the Zemo formula had failed, reducing her back to her burned, comatose form.
Hence her frightened question.
Amber sighed. “You remember last time I had to do the ‘you’ve been asleep a long time and here’s what you missed talk’ for you?”
“Vividly. Parody War, Legionnaires dead and missing, end of the world, Baroness von Zemo’s treacherous takeover, the whole thing. You were sympathetic because you’d had a similar kind of rude awakening a few weeks before when you’d come out of a Sir Mumphrey timestop to escape Obedience Branding.”
“That’s right. Well this time the talk is going to be a bit weirder.”
“Weirder than Doomheralds and battles on Conceptual Planes?”
“Yep. Are you ready to hear it?”
Beth spotted the calendar on the wall. “I’ve lost a lot of time,” she realised. “My students will have all moved up by now.” She braced herself. “What do I need to know, Amber?”
The administrator took a breath. “So, a new Citizen Z turned up. Not the villain who was really the Baroness wearing Silicone Sally as a costume to infiltrate the Legion. Not, as we thought, a descendant of the World War II hero murdered by Heinrich Zemo out for revenge on the Zemo line. Someone new.”
Beth frowned. “I have the strangest memory of a dream about that. Bry was there…”
“Could be. Anyhow, eventually we inducted this new CZ into the Legion. She had spooky powers and world-class lurking abilities. What we didn’t know was that she was a ghost possessing a human body. She was possessing the body of a coma burn victim.”
The schoolteacher blinked. “You mean me? I was Citizen Z? While I… slept?”
“You were her vehicle, for sure. But in the end she realised it was wrong. She allowed herself to be, I don’t know, exorcised or something. It was part of some wacky occult thing that Vinnie de Soth – another of our new members – got up to. But the upshot was, CZ was gone and you got fixed. Specifically, Sir Mumphrey turned back time to when the nanites that repaired your body before were still working, and then while you were restored they were purged from your system so they couldn’t harm you again. Dr Whitwell and Hallie have confirmed it. And if it’s any comfort, I think they consulted the diabolical Dr Moo.”
“Comfort is such a strong word. So… I’m cured? And I’m not a superhero?”
Amber nodded. “Thing is, Beth, there’s one more wrinkle. This ghost who borrowed you. It was Lisette. Laurie Leyton.”
“Laurie?” The schoolteacher’s eyes went wide. “Laurie’s dead? Wait, Laurie’s a ghost?”
“We’re still patching those pieces together,” the LL liaison admitted. “We know Laurie was captured by Baroness von Zemo, who needed to mask her CZ disguise in Laurie’s aura to fool the Shoggoth and all the other mystic types. We know Laurie was alive when she was traded to the Lower Realms.”
“Lower realms? You mean like…?”
“H-E- double-hockey-sticks, yeah. We think so. I should mention we got this from Silicone Sally who, believe it or not, is also on the LL roster now doing a rehab bit. Turns out she was just a teeny bit mind-controlled too. I can sympathise. Plus she is incredibly hot. Anyhow, it seems that Laurie came out of hell amnesiac and about two hundred years into the past, and got bundled off to what was then Herringcarp Bedlam for Lunatics. It’s just as charming as it sounds.”
“Oh, Laurie…”
“I’m afraid she died there. And her ghost got stuck haunting the place. Evidently the Asylum is a bit like a crazed opposite of the Lair Mansion, also a little bit sentient. We have a banshee, so the Asylum wanted a spirit too. And it took Laurie.”
“Then how did she come to be in me as…” Beth paused as the answer came to her. “The Hooded Hood!”
“Yep. He set Laurie up as CZ – though she didn’t remember she was Laurie until the very end – and he directed her to us. It took us a while to get to what was happening but it got untangled eventually.”
“So… it was Laurie who surrendered her future so I could be restored,” Beth understood. “Oh no.”
“Yeah. The team’s taking it badly. Really badly. I think there’ll be a vote later whether to go after the Baroness or the Hooded Hood.”
“Why choose?” scowled Beth.
“You just need to get some rest,” Amber advised. “Dr Whitwell will visit again in the morning. Hallie will come if you call. I know Bry will want to see you when you’re cleared fit for visitors. Just concentrate on getting used to being back, Beth. Everything else will wait.”
Beth Shellett watched the administrator hurry off to her next duty. She rose from her bed and looked out into the rain-splattered night. She hugged herself.
“Laurie…”
***
Ham-Boy put away his comm-card. “Hallie’s reporting that all the urgent rescues in our sector have been checked off now,” he told Silicone Sally. “I guess we’ve got some downtime.”
“To deal with our Director of SPUD problem,” Sally Rezilyant breathed. The grizzled spymaster had turned up with a whole helicarrier of back-up to speak with the flexible ex-felon. She looked over to where Dan Drury was chatting with community leader Mac Fleetwood while a long line of abashed retasked SPUD agents were hauling damaged furniture out of the street.
“C’mon ya string-spined yellow-striped desk jockeys!” Drury encouraged his co-opted admin team. “Get some spring into ya step before I come over there and put some boot into your backsides!”
“Any idea what he wants with you?” HB wondered.
“He’s not arrested me yet. So that’s a first. Let’s go ask him.”
Drury parted from the pastor of the Zero Street Mission and came over to the new Legionnaires. “Ready now?”
“Before we start,” Ham-Boy interrupted, “and in no way making any kind of negative judgement or criticism, but were you actually black and bald last time we saw you? Only now you kind of look like Samuel L. Jackson.”
“Yeah,” growled Drury. “There was some kind of backlash from that retcon wave yesterday and here I am. No biggie. Meg kind of likes it. As long as I can still rock an eyepatch, who cares? ‘Wa-hoo’, I say.”
“Sure,” agreed Sally. “So what are you after now? Apart from maybe a Hollywood agent?”
The SPUD director regarded her. “Svetlana Rezilyant,” he observed. “Commieslavian mother, Russian dad, emigrated to the US when you were eleven, settled in Blackpool Beach, Paradopolis, where you grew up. Party girl even before you were an undergrad at Paradopolis U or a post-grad at Michigan. Met Beth von Zemo when she was in the psych department at M.U. That was where the Baroness got into your head.”
“Not until after the accident that transformed me into living silicone,” Sally denied. “Didn’t I go over this with about a million interrogators after I was arrested?”
“Yeah, you did. And loads of stuff about why you decided to team up with the good guys while the LL wuz lost in Comic-Book Limbo or somewhere, saving the future. And why you deserved a pardon for your crimes and another chance.”
“So why bring all this up now?” Ham-Boy demanded protectively.
“‘Cause there’s two things she don’t know about that pardon, kid. First off, the panel wuz swayed by one swing-vote that nobody expected ta go for it. Commissioner Don Graham stood up for you. You know why that’s remarkable, Sally?”
The flexible felon nodded, shocked. “Don Graham is Beth Shellett’s father. He should have locked me up and tossed away the key.”
“Well one thing about Graham is, he’s as straight-shooter as they come. He’s ninety-nine kinds of hurting about his kid but he’d never let that cloud his judgement. He saw something in you, Miss Rezilyant. And he convinced me.”
“Convinced you of what?”
“That you might be a good Legionnaire. That you might even be a great Legionnaire one day. And that you might consider a job with SPUD when you’re not saving the world with your super-pals.”
“Me? Work for you?” Sally snorted.
Drury snorted back. “Well, sure, you’d have to put up with the international travel and the regular salary and the thrill of being a top-flight agent for the world’s premiere super-spies, but I hardly ever smoke my stogie in front o’ staff any more and you do seem to get off on this do-gooding. So…” Drury handed over a card. “Give it some thought. Gimme a call. Make a difference.”
“You’re offering her a job,” Ham-Boy understood. He thought about his own subsistence-level DJ work work at Wally World “Is it, like, just her or…”
Drury had gone.
***
The holographic form of Baroness von Zemo stalked around the EEE firehouse conference room, gesturing to holographic representations of blackboards. “This is all of it that I could record. There was a good deal more,” she concluded.
ManMan, released from the trap that had suspended him earlier, perched on a corner of the big table nursing his mug of get-over-it coffee. “These are the Hooded Hood’s plans?” he marvelled. “Boy, he sure writes small.”
“These were Clockwatcher’s deductions about the Hood’s plans,” the Baroness corrected. “Although it looks as though Hazlewood has done a reasonable job in tracing causal connections. I scarcely had time to record images before things started to explode, of course.”
“We didn’t start that,” Al B. objected. “Anyway, I was outside the known universe at the time.”
“The Hooded Hood’s plans are fascinating,” Miss F admitted, “but I’m not sure why you would wish us to comment on them. It seems as though Clockwatcher has already done the homework.”
“He’s done as much as he could from his area of expertise as an archivist and historian,” the Baroness lectured. “But you people have different disciplines. What about the energy readings off those Insanity Stones that Ioldabaoth was gathering? What could he do with those?”
“And we would share this information with you because…?” snarked Amy
“Because the hologram images of the primary data are mine, so if you want to study them at all you collaborate with me. Because otherwise I’ll dissect ManMan’s ineffectual girlfriend. Because I can have your firehouse rezoned as a nuclear waste dumping site with two phone calls. Because we all desperately need to be one step ahead of the Hooded Hood for once, if it’s not too much to ask!”
Miss F’s eyes flashed as she relished the possibility of zoning wars, but Al B. reined her in. “I wouldn’t mind crunching a few numbers,” he admitted. “I ran some preliminary calculations before on the energy levels released by hurling dead versions of Earth at that mystery Wonderwall. I want to model what would happen if the Hood instead used his combined Insanity Stone collection.”
The Baroness looked appalled. “That would not be good. What a waste of excellent Parodyverse-dominating artefacts.”
“They wouldn’t like being used like that,” Knifey objected. “Um, allegedly. I heard, somewhere. Maybe on TV.”
“You know about them?” Joe asked his blade.
“Never heard of them. No idea how they got chopped into six bits in the first place. Can we get back to mocking your Drogo-inadequacies please?” Knifey was not above using his wielder’s latest spat with his treacherous girlfriend over cosplay choices to change the subject
Al B. was already at a computer console, modelling forces. “The energies required to reassemble those things into a single… bullet, let’s call it, they’re cosmic in scale. Celestian. You’d need, let’s see…”
Miss F looked over his shoulder. “Massive energy shunt capacity that redefines the terms,” she posited.
“Vast transmutational abilities to meld the weird atoms,” Amy contributed.
“And a Parodyverse-wide dimensional fold manipulating space at a fundamental level,” the archscientist concluded. “Fortunately, the Hood doesn’t have that kind of power.”
“Next time I’m going to send a hologram that can smack you all upside your head!” the Baroness complained. “Doesn’t have that power? Look at those boards! He’s got it already!”
***
Vinnie de Soth stood at the easternmost promontory of Parody Island and watched the Atlantic waves thrash onto the shingle shoreline. The night was cloudy. Only a smudge of Paradopolis lights glowed off to the north. The jobbing occultist glared out to sea and ignored the rain dripping down his neck.
“One of us isn’t able to ignore the wet,” Liu Xi Xian pointed out as she found him there. Her elemental perceptions had easily located him even on the darkened island.
“You should be resting,” Vinnie told her. “That void transfer earlier was brutal.”
“I don’t need powers to know that you’re unhappy.”
“I don’t need powers to know that you’re incredibly pissed with me.”
Liu Xi joined the young mage on the cliff edge. “Half the time you push me away. The other half you manipulate me. You make decisions ‘for my own good’ without ever giving me a chance to agree or disagree. Every day you get more like Xander. Or Exu.”
“I don’t mean to do that. But now I’m wondering if the only way that Xander survived being sorcerer supreme was to become Xander. Maybe that’s what everybody who tries to do the job ends up like.” Vinnie shrugged.
“You condemned Lisette to oblivion yesterday.”
“Better her than you.”
“Can you hear yourself?”
Vinnie turned to the elementalist. “Look, a short while ago we faced four entities with the power of gods. A fifth entity that could eat gods for breakfast was queuing up to take his turn. You were on the menu, and after that pretty much the whole Parodyverse. It is my job – my responsibility – to see that doesn’t happen on my watch. I only saw one way, once chance, and I took it.”
“I never wanted to trade Laurie’s life for mine.”
The jobbing occultist snorted. “Like you haven’t made exactly the same choice. You once chose to murder a helpless time-frozen victim of Comic-Book Limbo to save the Doomherald. Yes, I know. I can read auras, especially yours. It’s right there in your karmic record. So don’t pretend you haven’t made high-handed choices of life and death when the stakes were important enough.”
Liu Xi paled. “You knew? How long have you known?”
“A while. Don’t worry. Pretty much all my girlfriends have killed someone at some point.” His stare was bleak.
“It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t easy. I’m still paying for it. And it doesn’t make what you did with Laurie okay. If you think I came out here to make you feel better about that then think again.”
“So why did you come? Is this an intervention?”
“If you like. It’s a wake-up call. Don’t start forgetting that when you play the sort of games a sorcerer supreme likes the counters are still real people’s lives.”
“Don’t you forget that every girlfriend I’ve had, every relative, has tried to tell me what to be. None of that advice was good.”
“I’m not Pandemonica Annanké, Liu Xi insisted. “If I was I’d already have incinerated you by now.”
“Go ahead. Do me a favour.”
Liu Xi sensed rather than saw the anguish in his face. The rite earlier had cost him something too. She moved forward. “You’ve always cared about people, Vinnie. That’s one of the things that attracted me to you. You stand up for ordinary men and women. Don’t let being sorcerer supreme change that.”
“Acting sorcerer supreme,” the jobbing occultist corrected her. “All of the duties, none of the authority.” He leaned down to trace one of the old cup and ring markings on a stone that had stood on the old island since prehistory. “You know when the bad guys all turned up in the Lighthouse yesterday, and Vizh’s kids got evacuated by twelve mice and a raven? And afterwards everyone was making sure Magweed and Griffin were okay and not too scared or upset?”
“They were fine. They’re brave children.”
“Sure. But I avoided them anyway.”
“Why? I thought you liked them.”
“I do. But Magweed can see into people’s hearts. She can tell who is good and who is bad.” Vinnie touched his forehead to the rock. “I didn’t want her to see me,” he confessed.
***
Yuki screwed a huge wad of crumpled debris into a ball the size that fitted in her arms and heaved it out of the way. She stood aside so the fire service could enter the burned out office building.
“All these casualties because a gas safety valve locked open,” she grumbled.
The Manga Shoggoth oozed out of the ruins to allow the fire officers access to the site without the need for straight jackets. “No-one is alive in there,” he reported. “There are only organic remains reverting to entropy states.”
“Dead bodies, you mean?” challenged the cyborg P.I.
“I suppose so.”
Yuki scowled at the interminable night. “Bring them back,” she said suddenly.
The Shoggoth had bubbled into vaguely humanoid form and was pulling his raincoat on. “What do you mean?”
“These people. The dead ones. Resurrect them. Bring them back.”
The elder being paused. “I cannot do that, Yuki Shiro.”
“Why not? You’ve come back from being Uncle-Ben-dead. You’re always talking about how time doesn’t matter and death isn’t a big deal and stuff. Spooky, disturbing ideas about illusions of spacetime. So prove it. These people didn’t deserve to die like this. Neither did Laurie Leyton. So fix it.”
“It does not work that way. I am sorry.”
“To hell with that. Why can’t you do it? What’s to stop you?”
“There are techniques for resurrection,” the Shoggoth admitted. “Ways to reanimate corpses, ways to exchange bodies, all kinds of things. But humans are designed to work in linear time. They are strange little hybrids of spirit and matter. When they are gone, they are gone. Bringing them back is never complete, never a good idea.”
“Like Laurie, then? She was a ghost in a human shape. And yesterday she saved the world and then sacrificed herself to save her friend. How is that a bad idea?”
“There are threads across many dimensions, causal connections that may not be disturbed lest the whole of creation tumble into chaos. It is futile resurrecting an individual if she has nowhere to stand afterwards.”
“But…”
“Yuki Shiro,” the Shoggoth bubbled, suddenly taller and more disturbing than usual, “I have been squatting more or less in timespace for a considerable interval now. Many ephemeral humans have come and gone in that duration. Some of them I counted as friends. Do you really believe that if I could have preserved or restored them I would not have?”
“Your High Priestess, Ebony, she’s immortal.”
“She is unageing. That is not the same. Nor does the temporal exception on my Lemurian continent mean that death is not a component of the existence of those mortals who are my guests there. All humans die. You will die, Yuki Shiro, at the proper juncture in your personal timeline. What happens to mortals after that is a mystery even to me – and one I shall not tamper in.”
“We know what happens,” the robot P.I, objected. “We’ve seen Nats’ hell plane, and others.”
“It is now Chronic’s hell plane,” the Shoggoth corrected her. “Nor is that a final destination, although it must seem like it while some souls are trapped in this iteration of infinity. Beyond that is… worse. Or better. There are some calculations that are too big for me, and one or two that are too simple.”
“So you won’t bring Laurie back. Or any of these victims.”
“I would not do such a terrible thing to them,” promised the Shoggoth. “I am not that kind of monster.”
***
The Baroness waved a holographic arm in front of the blackboard images. “Don’t you see? Don’t you see how he did it? How can you not see it?”
“Maybe out minds aren’t as bent and sinister as you’d have to be for follow a Hood plot?” Amy suggested.
“Come on. It’s old scandal. Or it will be in the far future when three mystery men knock up the three lovely Zemo sisters who are around at the time – I can only assume then gene-pool had sadly degraded by then. Two of these baby-daddies turn out to be Starseed and Dirth Vortex, champions of the cosmic Gah! power. The single parents who will burden the state are descendents of the Fernbiote and the Celestian Madonna – or they were before spiffy got retconned not to be the Hooded Hood’s kid in favour of that annoying Daniel Lyle.” The Baroness stopped to clear the bile from her mouth. “The point is, three powerful children were born, each whipped off back to our present time to be brought up in secret.”
“And they became the Insanity Stones!” ManMan concluded.
“They became Exile, Suicide Blonde, and Goldeneyed,” Knifey more accurately revealed. “One shifted energy, the second transformed matter, and the third folds timespace for teleport jumps.”
The Baroness shot the blade a suspicious look. She didn’t like clever household objects. “Yes. In fact the three absolute forces that are required to remould the Insanity Stones.” She returned to the blackboards, desperately tracing strings connecting times and places where the Hooded Hood had interfered. “Look at this. The Hood took Suicide Blonde into his Purveyors of Peril. He had every opportunity to “borrow” her power when he needed it.”
Miss F had traced another link. “There was that whole thing where we got dragged into the Dreary Dimension, back when Exile became its accidental overlord. There was a time when he had to exert his entire power to save it from destruction, a moment where he died before the Grail Maiden healed him – and the Hood was around to channel that energy!”
Al B. supplied the last thread. “It’s buried in retcon now, but there was a time when Lisette was pregnant with G-Eyed’s kid. There was a whole subplot about it, and how the kid eventually got… I dunno, timeswapped out, sent to the happy ending, whatever. Something to do with the Order of the Observing Eye before the LL busted it. Laurie never found the child again after the Hood retconned her. Goldeneyed had a huge quest and during it he maxxed out his powers too – where the Hood needed him to.”
“The last survivor of G-Eyed, Exy, and Suicide Blonde was supposed to get all the Gah! power squared,” Knifey recalled. “The whole Highlander deal, except without the disappointing sequels. Only Exile set his power aside and Suicide Blonde got taken out for a while… and Bry officially died for a few minutes in that Celestian portal protecting the Earth from the Parody Master.”
“And that’s how the Hood was able to grab the power,” the Baroness concluded, triumphant and annoyed at the same time. “He didn’t steal it all at once, in one place and time. He set it up over generations – generations of my descendants! He arranged for the people he needed to hold the power to be conceived! He played with all of them, the Gah! fanatics, the Zemo sisters, the various candidates for Celestian Madonna – was Lisette’s child one, and if so what became of her? No, wait…”
Al B. tapped up a diagram to stop Beth von Zemo’s head exploding. “The Librarian worked this out,” he revealed. “Anything really to be able to stay in the kitchen at Lair social events.”
“Please tell me I’m not on there,” ManMan whispered to Knifey.
“Please tell me I’m not,” Knifey whispered back.
***
Sir Mumphrey Wilton was already up and sitting in the Lair Legion Living Room when Beth found her way there. She hadn’t slept much. She’d had enough sleep.
“Good morning, Miss Shellett,” the eccentric Englishman bade her across the room, waving the muffin of greeting at her. “Delighted to see you up and around again. Good show!” He went back to eating the muffin of greeting.
“I’m not sure how good it was, Sir Mumphrey,” the schoolteacher admitted. “My return seems to have come with a singularly high medical bill.”
Mumph hmphed acceptance of that and gestured that Beth might join him beside the hearth. “Bit of company would do me good, to be honest. Got rather used to havin’ company at breakfast these last eight years that never happened now.” He was referring to the recent temporary timeline alteration that had left him with memories of a marriage to Baroness Elizabeth von Zemo. “Miss having someone to grumble to about the cricket scores and hearing offers to wipe out Australia by biological assault.”
“You still remember the retcons from the New Pantheon attack?”
“Side effect of bein’ Keeper of the Chronometer of Infinity, don’t you know? Can’t have the chap who’s watching the countdown to the end of the Parodyverse getting retconned all the time. Not done. So yes, I do recall those years that never happened.” The old man tugged his side-whiskers as if dragging them into place and stared into the flickering fire.
“Laurie wasn’t yesterday’s only casualty, was she?” Beth recognised.
Mumphrey heard the catch in the young woman’s voice. “You’re no more responsible for what your friend chose to do because she loved you than you were for that blighter Wexford choosin’ you as a way to get at us, or because Elizabeth decided you’d make a good victim for her blasted mind control to try and eliminate me. Told you that before, when you left for England. Telling you again now.”
“My friend proved her friendship by what she did. I know that. It’s still hard.”
“Absolutely. But the rest of your life is a gift given by Laurie because she cared enough to give it to you. Your responsibility to her now is to go out and live it. Or, um, stay here for a while, perhaps have a chat with young Goldeneyed.”
“I don’t know if I can face Bry, Sir Mumphrey.”
“Turn on a news channel and then decide. Your former young man had quite a night.”
Mumphrey drained his cup of Earl Grey and rose to leave. “‘Afraid I’ll need to get on now, m’dear. Plenty of ramifications from the Chain Knight and chums to follow up today. Still not entirely sure the whole retcon’s cleared. Nationwide infrastructure damage to review. Some issues from Hallie and Miss Murcheson that require consideration. Scheduled row to prepare for with the oik Garrick at 11.15am. Need to develop a new batch of names to call him. I’ve got young Foxglove workin’ on it.”
Beth well recalled the kind of busy day that the eccentric Englishman endured. He was currently a consultant to the Lair Legion, and Sir Mumphrey Wilton took his duties seriously. “I hope your - your breakfast concerns resolve themselves,” she offered.
“Nothing to be done, I’m afraid. Enough said.” Mumph paused at the doorway and turned. “Oh, if you see Miss Tandi later on she’ll talk you though the legal and financial details of your resurrection. There’ll be a stipendiary account and suchlike to tide you over, and she’ll want to know your preferred living arrangements and location. And if you have any needs, any concerns at all, I or any member of this team or its support staff will be very happy to be able to help you. You mean a great deal to us, Miss Shellett, and we owe you a debt for what happened to you, for what you’ve done for us and the world before now, and for Miss Leyton’s sake.”
Beth blinked away the tears that pricked her eyes. “Thank you,” she managed, as Sir Mumphrey departed.
She stared at the dying fire for a moment, recognising that she owed a debt too, and gathering the courage to pay it.
***
Five time zones ahead, schoolgirl Samantha Chastity StHilary Featherstone put down her pen as instructed and handed in her examination paper. When the invigilator dismissed the class she ignored the immediate huddles of students discussing what they had just endured and strode off down the corridor to the quadrangle, seemingly by herself.
“Well?” she asked apparently no-one.
“You got two wrong,” Griffin told her. Visionary’s green-hued son could project his invisible, intangible form over vast distances, although he hadn’t yet mastered becoming corporeal at such range.
“Numbers three and nine, yes,” Sam agreed. “If I get perfect scores my tutors get suspicious. They think I’m cheating, not simply that good.”
“Makes sense. Um, how did you know I was here?”
“I wasn’t sure. I do have a vestigial sense of you these days, perhaps because of all the time I spend with you and Mags. For the rest, I just speak confidently as if I knew and you feel obliged to confess.”
“I don’t spy on you. I’m not a creep. Mags sent me to tell you what you wanted to know about your grandfather.”
“I know you’re not a creep, Griff. Someone with your powers to be invisible anywhere could be a class-A voyeur perv, but you never do that. Someone who can walk through databases like you could do all kinds of horrible stuff. You don’t.”
“How do you know?”
Sam grinned. “Like I’m going to tell you. But I know you, Griffin. Anyhow, if you were like that your sister would see it in your heart with her gifts.”
“Oh crap, you’re right! Eeep!”
“So how is grandfather? Does he remember his eight years shackled to Cruella de Zemo?”
“I’m afraid so. I think it’s bothering him, like you thought. But he remembers detail of the retcon timeline along with the real one because of his minor cosmic office. How do you?”
“Same reason, different time. I’m still working hard to become as amazing as future-me seemed when I met her. I’m training every day, trying to improve. It’s… hard.”
“Hey, I’d go all dark vigilante if my parents were murdered by a supervillain,” Griff assured her. “Griffins have a very strong sense of justice.”
“In legend,” Sam responded, “gryphons were keepers of secrets and treasures. Well, you keep my secrets and you look after your sister.” They reached the open courtyard and Samantha took a path down to the central drinking fountain. “So how is Sir Mumphrey?”
“Sad, Mags thinks, more than usual. How could anyone miss Baroness von Evil?”
“That one might be beyond our current experience of the world, Griff. I can still remember her stint as my wicked step-grandmother. Don’t worry, though. Now we’ve confirmed, I’ll tip off Asil and get her back to the States for some Mumphrey-supporting. She’s in New Delhi at the moment with the Caphan Foundation setting up women’s health and literacy programmes, but Miiri, Deeela, and Koodi on site too so she can be spared.”
“I’ll let Mags know so she can tell Fleabot so he can tell Quoth who can tell my mothers,” Griffin promised. Vizh’s children had devised quite elaborate cutouts to screen the useful information they passed into their father’s household. Neither wanted to be grounded again.
Sam perched on the fountain’s base, uncaring of the wrinkles in her pleated school skirt. “I’m sorry about Lisette,” she said. “How’s your father taking it?”
“He’s furious, of course. Last I heard he was trying to find Dancer so they could organise some kind of protest. I’m not entirely sure where you’d lodge something like that.”
“Lisa,” Sam answered promptly. “The present Destroyer of Tales of the greater cosmic Triumvirate of Parodyverse rules-keepers. She’s in charge of endings. Visionary has Lisa on speed-dial, and not her usual pay-per-minute number. But she’s not allowed to break the rules.”
“Can Lisa do anything, then? About her friends dying? Lisette was her sidekick once, wasn’t she?”
The schoolgirl sighed. “As I understand it, she can’t. Cheating like that always ends badly. But Lisa’s sneaky and good with bending rules so… Vizh is right to try anyhow. He wouldn’t be Vizh if he didn’t care for his loved ones. That’s how you know he’s not a fake.”
“Dad’s real, dammit.”
Sam grinned again. “Look, thanks for the update visit, Griff. But those three mean girls closing in on me are the school bullies and they’ve been waiting to catch me on my own for quite some time. I’ll have to deal with this.” She glanced at the fountain, calculating throwing angles.
“Sure. Till next time, Sam.”
“See you soon, Griff. Say hi to Mags.”
***
“So what will you do?” Ham-Boy asked Silicone Sally curiously. “About the job offer, I mean?”
“I don’t know,” the flexible ex-felon admitted. “I’m not used to having… a future, I guess.”
“It sounds nice,” HB admitted.
“Yeah,” agreed Sally. “So when does the other shoe drop?”
***
“Okay,” CSFB! told Goldeneyed. “I’ve been superheroing for a bit now, so I can tell you for sure that your locker is definitely dead.”
G-Eyed stopped pummelling the metal door and caught his breath. “I guess I lost it,” he admitted.
“Yep. Pretty much on schedule. If that had been Alice on the end of that ghost-train thing, or Izzy, well, I guess I’d have killed my locker too.”
“And outed yourself to the press and yelled at them on live TV. Okay, yeah, you did kind of drop the pants of your silly suit at them. And your costume is a one-piece, so…”
“Trade secret,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! whispered. “Point is, Bry, you have every right to feel bad and to get mad. It all sucks.”
“And it’ll keep on sucking, won’t it? Today, tomorrow, for the rest of our lives.”
“And in that sentence, ‘our’ means…?”
“Mine and Beth’s. She was gone and I had no more chance with her. Now she’s back, which is wonderful, but the circumstances of it will poison anything that might possibly have happened between us. And Laurie, she’ll always be a ghost, a real one as well as the spectre that gets between me and Beth.”
“Yeah. Sorry.” CSFB! clapped his hand on G-Eyed’s shoulder. “All I can tell you is, good things do sometimes happen. You’re due for yours. Way overdue. Hang in there.” He took a breath and added, “Hey, now you don’t need to keep that 80’s full-face mask thing we need to talk about costume redesign…!”
***
“Elizabeth von Zemo has left the building,” Amy reported. “Well, we’ve ejected her hologram emitter. Into the Negativity Zone.”
ManMan relaxed at last. “Guys, I’m really sorry about that. She was holding the Widget hostage and…”
“We got paid,” Miss Framlicker pointed out. “It worked out.”
“And I over-rode the Baroness’ anti-copy precautions and took a snapshot of those Hooded Hood plans,” Al B. Harper added. “I’m encrypting them now and shunting a copy into a retcon-resistant quantum state.”
“I’m not ready to relax yet,” Knifey warned EEE. “One can’t be too careful when…”
The disintegration charge under the conference table went off then, to vaporise the building and everyone in it.
***
Hallie and Marie sat illuminated by the monitor-lights of the Lair Mansion operations room. The chamber’s usual holographic threat warning globe was currently replaced by a 3D schematic of the mansion itself. Most of the extradimensional spaces were on it too, outlined in blue.
“Is this everything you know of?” Hallie checked with the Lair Banshee.
“I think so. It’s hard to visualise what I only felt in my lack-of-bones. There may be one or two other spaces that were hidden from me.”
“I suspect Magweed and Griffin know one, but I’m happy for now that they have that advantage,” the A.I. noted. She made an adjustment to add the secret floor that the Baroness’ uncle had once slipped into the building. “So where’s the anomaly?” she puzzled.
“I’m not even sure there is one,” Marie confessed. “Just… a feeling, since I opened up the way to the tomb under the mansion. A discrepancy.”
“Yes. Like a data glitch that doesn’t sum properly. There’s something…”
“Something.”
“The Lair Zoo? The Trophy Room? The Shoggoth’s Citadel? Whatever the hell Liu Xi’s done with her chambers this week?”
Marie shook her head. “Lower down? Can’t you feel it? Somewhere near here.”
The door cycled open and Tandi 3000 slipped into the room. She was still wearing her clothes from yesterday and she gave her colleagues a wicked wink. “Whatcha doing?”
“Anomaly hunt,” Hallie explained. “You’re in early.”
“No point heading home at this hour.” She grinned. “Steve M450 was allowed a visitor.”
“The robot rebel that I talked out of opening a portal for the Parody Master,” Hallie recognised. “How’s he doing?”
“All the better for a conjugal visit,” Tandi promised. “Eighteen months later and still no determination of his legal status, of course. Is he to be tried like a human or scrapped like faulty equipment? Does he get slammed for treason against humanity or let off lightly because he pulled back and prevented his comrades from dooming us all? I managed to get his mind of it all for a little while.” Tandi had been designed and built as a sexbot.
“I’m monitoring it,” Hallie promised. “Steve’s legal situation, I mean, not your conjugal visit. I wouldn’t…”
“I’m happy to share my expertise,” Tandi assured the embarrassed A.I. “Just listen in when I guest on Meggan Foxxx’s radio show sometime.”
Marie was still Victorian enough to blush brightly at such discussion. “We are attempting to discover some strange difference in the Lair Mansion today,” she explained. “Have you noticed anything odd?”
Tandi shook her head. “Not a thing. It all seems pretty normal, assuming normal includes hippo-headed security guys, a gender-bending pure thought being, a hemigod with a hangover, and all the usual level of weirdness round this place. Heck, even the file room has stopped whispering.”
Hallie and Marie exchanged looks. “The file room… was whispering? Before, I mean?” Hallie checked.
“Sure,” Tandi nodded. “Um, wasn’t it supposed to? It’s been doing that ever since I came to work here. I thought that was, y’know, part of the background weird.”
“I know of no such thing,” Marie admitted. “It has ceased now? Since yesterday?”
“I can head down and have another listen, but when I was picking up today’s sit-reps for Vizh it seemed to have gone quiet.” She puzzled for a moment. “It’s so strange having a boss who actually wants me to do filing when I bend over a cabinet.”
“Yeah, but on the other hand he doesn’t have 50,000 volts discharging through him from the mansion’s stunulators,” Hallie pointed out. “About this whispering…”
“What was it staying?” Marie wondered.
“Dunno. Couldn’t hear. Like it was at the edge of my receptor range, you know? I’m not even sure it was coming in through my audio system now I think about it.”
“We need to check this,” Hallie told the Lair Banshee. “I knew I was missing something and this…” She paused, perking her head to one side as she did when she accessed another datafile. “Hold on. I may have missed something else as well. Something completely different. Oh… crap! Crap crap crap crap crap!”
“Hallie? What warrants such language?” worried Marie.
“I have to go. I need to see Visionary now!” the Legion’s resident A.I. declared. Her hologram winked out.
***
LairJet One returned at nine-twenty local time. Hatman stayed to do the post-flight shutdown with the field crew so that Visionary could hasten across to his Lighthouse home on the southern tip of the Lair Legion’s headquarters island. The tide was still in enough for the dimensionally-uncertain tower to be accessible from this location.
He pressed inside the home that had been somewhat disturbed by the incursion of three mad gods yesterday. All things considered it was back in remarkably good repair.
“Hello, cute-Visi!” the chief repairer called out excitedly. He bounced over and wrapped the possibly-fake leader of the Lair Legion in a huge hug. “How is to like your living room? Is to be fixed up good, yes?”
“Um, yeah,” Vizh agreed. “I’m surprised to see it so… like it was.”
“That would be the team of singing mice,” Fleabot muttered in embarrassed tones. “And don’t get me started on the bluebirds?”
Vizh perceived faint squeaky singing coming from upstairs:
“Dust out the attic and mop up the cellar
Block out the leaks with a big red umbrella,
Open the doors so the rugs can be beat,
We'll do the work Mags, you just take a seat.”
“Magweed was supposed to be in bed,” Visionary objected.
“And then we had the elf,” Fleabot grumbled on. “And the Bautista Technohazard Team that stabilised your toaster. And the valkyries. And Odoona, who has really got the hang of that French maid outfit. And the ghouls who came to look at your wall of hidden cogs.”
“Dust all the ornaments, clean up the mat,
Careful don't break things and wake up the cat.
Make up the beds and then bake up the bread,
We'll see it sorted, don't worry your head.”
“Is wonderful to be so many friends of helping Visi to be set up again,” Yo enthused. “Is Visi’s friends to always setting up of cute-Visi!”
Visionary registered the wall of cogs issue. “What about the Lighthouse’s regulation mechanisms?” he worried. “Wait, Enty’s people worked on my toaster?”
Quoth the Raven fluttered down to perch on the somewhat chipped bust of Jarvis that was positioned so that the butler’s faintly disapproving stare didn’t fall on Vizh too often. “There are evidently some eddies resulting from the recent cosmic upheavals,” the bird of destiny lectured. “The Abyssal Greye came to check that the Lighthouse wasn’t going to reposition itself to warn multiversal travellers about them.”
“And the toaster?” Vizh knew how to prioritise.
“Stable for now as far as we can tell,” Fleabot assured him. “Although Kerry was in here briefly tidying up your credit card drawer and she may have helped get some kitchen equipment going again. Maybe avoid the microwave for a while?”
“Now for the painting, the scrubbing, the sewing
Mags wants it fixed and that’s duty we’re owing
Come on and help her and don’t make her wait
Help out our princess to set things all straight!”
“Yeah,” sighed the robot flea on Visionary’s shoulder. “All we need now is you to add a layer of lint, discarded pizza boxes, and general uselessness, and the place is back to normal.
“Any word from Lisa yet?” the leader of the Lair Legion asked.
Yo turned serious. “Is not so far. Yo is to be thinking that the day after uncute cosmic catastrophe is probably busy time in Lisa’s line of work.” The pure thought being cast around for a cheerful thought to console his/her friend. “But, on bright side, Visi did get gift basket from Allied Pantheons, with nice card and some bath salts, ‘to Koor Darson with love’. Also some chocolating liqueurs, but Rabito was being of very naughty with them.”
“The mice cleaned it up,” Fleabot supplied.
Vizh wasn’t going to be distracted. “What happened to Laurie was just plain unfair, dammit,” he growled, fists clenched. “We should… well, I don’t rightly know, but we should damn well do it anyhow!”
A newly-reinstalled holographic projector sparked into life, drawing a 3D image of Hallie’s preferred green-skinned avatar for her to inhabit. “Vizh, we may have a problem.”
“Other than the housekeeping mice and my microwave?”
The Legion’s resident AI nodded. “I think I’ve screwed up.”
Vizh saw that his team-mate-slash-possibly-significant-other was quite upset. “What is it?” he asked. He reached for her but his hands passed through her illusion, a sure sign that she was distressed.
“There were some weird readings in the Mansion last night after that stunt Vinnie pulled with Sir Mumphrey and Liu Xi regarding Citizen Z. Marie and I were pretty occupied tracking them down. Preoccupied, as it turned out.”
“How so?”
Hallie scowled at herself, managing to look cross-eyed. “Bethany Shellett left the Lair Mansion at 7.54 this morning, about an hour ago. Sergeant MacHarridan cleared her because we’d not told him to keep her in. Why should we? I thought she probably needed some air. I was distracted.”
“And?” Vizh felt an unpleasant premonition setting his spine tingling.
“And Beth crossed the bridge over to Paradopolis and hailed a cab and went off in it.”
“Already? I guess she didn’t want to stick around with us any more. Like last time.”
Hallie’s green face went pale as visual subroutines automatically compensated for her state of mind. “I checked the cab company’s database for her destination. It wasn’t the airport or the rail terminal.” She took a breath. “It was upstate Gothametropolis. Stroker’s Island. Herringcarp Asylum.”
“Oh dearing,” breathed Yo.
“What? Why? And what?” Vizh stammered.
“It’s obvious, Visionary,” Quoth cut in. “Miss Shellett is as unsatisfied as the rest of you with Miss Leyton’s fate. She has gone to confront the Hooded Hood.”
The mice stopped singing.
***
Next Time: The world’s most interminable epilogue ends – definitely ends – as the Lair Legion send a diplomatic team to Herringcarp Asylum to retrieve Beth Shellett. Yes, that will end well, with a jolly chat and mutual compliments and a happy concord between all parties present. Or not. Meanwhile, the Baroness consults the Moon Public Library, Hallie and Marie go hunting whispers, the EEE staff try not to disintegrate, and all the things that were promised in our last “next time” actually happen. That’s in Untold Tales #354: Settling Debts, coming soon.
***
Footnotes’ Greatest Hits
Bringing you some important detail from previous episodes…
Some Notes on Silicone Sally (from correspondence with JJJ):
Where and how did she grow up?
Svetlana Rezilyant was born in Commieslavia not too far from the Yurt's village to a local damsel and a visiting Russian engineer. She still speaks Commislavian and presumably will be able to converse with the Yurt. At age 4 her father returned and settled down with her mother, and at age 11 he got permission to emigrate to the U.S. Svetlana, now Sally, spent her adolescence in the famous Russian community of Blackpool Beach, Parodiopolis (a copy of the real Brighton Beach, Brooklyn) (or should it be GMY?) and obtained a scholarship to Parodiopolis Polytechnical University. As one would expect from a daughter of the Blackpool Beach environment, she's somewhat of a party animal, not terribly concerned with conventional ethics and has easily shifting loyalties. She continued with graduate studies in polymer chemistry at the University of Michigan, where she was acquainted with Beth Zemo in the psychology department. Sally, however, did not become well acquainted with Beth until Beth began her career as villain.
What are her powers?
Sally's body has been entirely transformed into a high-tech silicone rubber. She can stretch to about 10 times her normal length, so she can reach her arms about 30 feet. At full stretch, toes to fingertips high above her head, she's about 85 feet long and is capable of stretching upwards almost 10 stories. She has gained strength to be able to support and extend her body, so effectively her muscles are about 50 times as strong as a normal person's, although they are ill-adapted to lifting large weights. Instead, she can stretch and sling herself and moderate weights of about 200 lb. For example, if she were stretched down from the eighth floor to ground level, she could bungee up a 200 lb man and perhaps up to a 250 lb man without danger of snapping.
Sally is highly resilient and can resist high powered rifle bullets. Her melting point is over 500 degrees F. and her freezing point is approximately -60 degrees F. However, she becomes slow and loses stretchiness progressively below 32 degrees F. and becomes seriously impaired at -10 degrees F. She resists most chemicals, including acids other than HF, but can be dissolved easily by acetone. Baron Otto did this once, as you recall, traumatizing her. Sally will shy from any organic solvents, even those she can withstand, such as rubbing alcohol. When it comes to ethyl alcohol, however, she is a true Russian.
Like most comic rubber people, she is undifferentiated internally and thus can be stretched, flattened, and compressed without harm to her organs. Sally's shape, however, is conserved. She can liquefy with the help of benign solvents, but it takes at least a day to do so. She did so shortly after she discovered her powers and changed her somewhat potato-like birth form into the voluptuous siren she now is.
Sally can be inflated but hates it.
Sally is unaffected by nicotine, pot, coke or most other recreational drugs -- or prescriptions either. She's not susceptible to communicable illnesses. Sonics don't affect her except at ultra-high energies.
Sally eats normal food but tries to drink at least a pint of liquid silicone rubber daily and often more to maintain herself. She heals quickly after drinking the rubber and can regenerate lost parts with sufficient intake and some minerals. While fighting, she can't reattach lost body parts; she's vulnerable to monomolecular blades, torches and liquid gases (liquid nitrogen freezes her brittle). She can recover when thawed.
How did she get her powers?
The usual stupid lab accident coinciding with strange radiation emitted from a mad science experiment in the adjoining physics building at U. Mich.
What does she look like?
Unstretched, Sally is 5 feet 9 inches, shoulder-length stretchable hair (although she can't wilfully control it), 35D-22-35. She can switch her coloring from pale blonde hair, pink lips and pale white skin to a translucent state at will, but not otherwise. She has a jaded smile and a saucy wit.
How does she talk?
Mostly standard American English, similar to Janet Van Dyne. Sally is more cynical and less a victim of circumstance than the Wasp; she has few regrets and adores her new life. Perhaps think of a wise-cracking heroine from a movie, but Sally is not a Lisa duplicate (I have to think harder how to differentiate them).
.
When drunk or under high stress, Sally's Slavic heritage comes out and she is variably boisterous, morose, belligerent or seductive, with a pronounced Russian accent when drunk.
Who are her friends/enemies/romances/family etc?
Her father died a few years ago in a drunken brawl in Blackpool Beach, where her mother still lives in a small flat a block from the boardwalk. Sally sends cash regularly and stops by about once a month when she can. I'm leaving siblings open for now. She has family in Commislavia and near St. Petersburg who she's never met.
Blackpool Beach romances tended to be superficial and short-lived and Sally has never committed herself to anyone. Like Lisa, she's promiscuous but unlike Lisa there's no underlying cruelty. Sally's motto is "Girls just want to have fun." Sally has four or five hunky men on her string at a time and generally stays with them rather than doing one night stands, but if she spies someone better, she'll go after him and then drop a guy. She's very straight. Sally flirts, makes jokes and expects ribbing about her libido but won't try to seduce a teammate unless she wants to add him to her string.
What's her life story so far?
See above and The Baroness stories.
Any do’s and don’t’s about writing her?
Sally is very much a situational ethics person. She does what she thinks will benefit her, with some attention to not ruining her relationships with the team (or earlier, Beth). As you've already written, she looks out for herself first. She has no particular qualms about killing if the percentages are in her favor, and doesn't agonize over her decisions. She's impulsive but rarely stupid; she has good intuitions and rarely goes too far.
When she gets drunk, however, inhibitions dissolve and she's any or all of the personas mentioned at "how does she talk?" Let her get drunk occasionally, but I don't want it to become a frequent character trait or a frequent topic of conversation among the team. (An occasional reference is fine.) She's well aware of that vulnerability.
She's suspicious of the new Citizen Z.
Some Notes on Ham-Boy (from correspondence with L!):
First off some background information which may or may not answer some of your questions:
Ham-Boy's real name is Fredrick Hogarth Harris but most of the time is just called Fred Harris. He was born to a Janis & Allan Harris. Fred grew up in the family farm in Piney Oaks, Iowa. Allan Harris is currently assumed Dead. Janis lives on the farm with her second husband, Jordan Smith (Fred's mom is currently known as Janis Harris-Smith). The old barn on the property was the first headquarters of Ham-Boy. Janis knows about her son's heroic activities. I never established if Jordan knew or not (I'm sort of leaning on that he does not). It's been mentioned in a story or two Ham-Boy did become part of a still unnamed team comprising all of Super Heroes who worked within the Iowa state boarders. In my mind I consider this team to be extremely short lived. No members beyond Ham-Boy were ever mentioned. An Agent Johnson has been seen & is come how connected to the team.
In Piney Oaks, there is a Museum devoted to Ham-Boy since his earliest appearance were at in Piney Oaks. It's not a big thing like the Flash Museum, but a small/medium sized building on Piney Oaks's main street. I do think the town would have a billboard at the city limits similar to what Smallville use to have: Welcome to Piney Oaks, Iowa. Home of Ham-Boy!
Fred currently lives in Goth Haven. He has 2 jobs besides being Ham-Boy. Job #1: He is the Lighthouse Keeper of the Blue Steel* Memorial Lighthouse which is on Robinson Island in Goth Haven Harbor. This is also where he lives & under the lighthouse is The Meat Locker, the secret headquarters of Ham-Boy. Job #2: He is the In-Store DJ for the Goth Haven location of the mammoth multinational conglomerate known as Wally World. It was established in a story that Fred came to Goth haven to attend Goth Haven University but I never went into that really in any story & it's a few years since I've said that Fred has either graduated or is about too. Graduate in what? I don't know.
* Blue Steel was a World War II era super hero who during the Mid 1950's died saving the city of Goth Haven from an Alien attack. The Aliens were later identified as being part of the Skunk confederacy.
Ham-Boy's main means of transportation is cherry red Vespa known as The Ham-Scooter.
Nicknames Ham-Boy has picked up: HB, Hammy, The Earth's Meatiest Hero, The Protector of Pork, The Meaty Might & a other nicknames of that sort. A few villain or two has called him Spam-Boy.
What are his powers?
He has 3 main powers:
1. Ham-Sense: This tells him that is danger is his relative area, this could be anywhere from right behind him to a few blocks away. He feels it a slight burning sensation.
2. Meat Vision: When he stares at something a short period of time Meat appears. He does control what type of meat appears.
3. Meat Control: If there is meat that has been butchered/processed in some way he can control the meat to do his biding. Ham-Boy can not control Meat in it's natural form i.e. He can't throw a Cow at someone but he could throw Hamburger patties, Steaks, etc. at someone.
How did he get his powers?
This currently unrevealed as I'm not exactly sure how he came to gain these powers. I'm leaning sort toward him being a Mutant since in the back of my mind I want to connect HB's powers somehow with his Father.
Plus, this fits in with what has already be established in my mind if not at least in a story: Fred's fraternal Grandfather Hogarth Albert "Al" Harris fought in World War II. Here is where the name "Ham-Boy" first appeared. Al's helmet was always covered in mud & with the mesh netting it gave the helmet the look of a Ham. So, Al's commanding officer started to call Al Ham-Boy. The name stuck & Al was called that through the rest of the War. Also, Al lived in Goth Haven after the war. He meet his wife there, they got married. Shortly there after the two of them left the big city to return to Al's hometown of Piney Oaks, Iowa.
What does he look like?
Caucasian Male. 6 ft. tall. 170ish pounds. Brownish Blond
hair. Hazel eyes.
His costume consists of The Ham-Cowl, a brown mask with a diamond pattern on it. The top cut off to show his brown hair. The rest of his uniform is dark grey cargo pants, leather lace up combat boots, a black sweater & a leather jacket with a yellow H on the back. He use to have a jacket with an H on the front & back, but not the H is only on the back. Around his waist is his "Hamtitlity" belt with link sausage lasso.
How does he talk?
Well... I'd say like he's from the Mid-West/Middle America. But I can't since I don't really know what they sound like. If you want to get right down to it: He sounds like me since I don't really know how to right anyone else. :\)
Who are his friends/enemies/romances etc?
A friend from back home in Piney Oaks was Elizabeth "Betty" Stevens, she's his childhood best friend & a cousin of Jasper Stevens (Kid Produce) but I'm not sure that KP is even a usable character in the present day Parodyverse, even in this somewhat tangential way. Other people Fred would count as Friends would be his fellow Lair legion Jr. teammates. Another person that has been established as more of a contact but could be a friend is Detective Jack Squat, who with his "all seeing eye dog" Beauaguard have helped HB out a few times.
As for Villains, there were 2 groups that oppose Ham-Boy:
- The Disgruntles, a team of HB foes who are a bit angry that they keep loosing to Ham-Boy. Their lineup include such villains as The Evil Captain Crunch (Team Leader), Dr. Peacock, Auntie Freeze, Kitty Boom Boom & Grammar.
- Another group is the group known as E.C.O.L.I. who as lead by The Patriarch. With in E.C.O.L.I. there a small group known as The Grave Diggers. Their lineup include such villains as a Russian assassin by the name of The Grey Death, a man who can turn into rocks by the name of Boulder, a Mistress of Magik by the name of Enchantra & a set of triplets known as Threesome.
Other Villains include: The Pilgrim Commando, Abra Cadaver, Timeline, Baron Wasteland, Cliché, Mega Byte, Rolland Stone, To-Fu, The Veggie Nation & Bennifer.
If you want I can offer up further in anyone you want.
As for romances: Ham-Boy's never really had any. Maybe some flirting with a few girls not nothing beyond that.
What's his life story so far?
That's not a lot. I've sort of lost track of Ham-Boy sometime ago, maybe after the Moderator Saga. I don't know where he's been. So, my thought is to write a story to kind of give people & myself a heads up of where Ham-Boy has been since the MS unless I've missed a story appearance or two then the story would fill in the time between then & now. Also, in a story (be it from me or you) I think that Visionary should ask Ham-Boy to be apart of the main team. They have a built up relationship (Teacher/Student) & plus he's the one Legionnaire Ham-Boy actually knows.
Any do’s and don’t’s about writing him?
Ham-Boy doesn't swear, none of my characters swear. With Ham-Boy there harshest words you'd get out his is maybe "Crap".
I'm not sure I've but this is a story or not but I think when HB is talking to people he respects, he'd refer to them as Mr., Miss, Mrs. or by some other title. He'd do this with even with Super Hero Codename. This came about because I think that it was be with in HB's character to call Visionary Mr. Visionary so this would extend to the rest of the Legion: Mr. Librarian/Mr. Bookman, Mr. Hatman, Mr. Harper/Dr. Harper, Miss Shiro, Mr. Shoggoth, etc. I think that Ham-Boy were to meet Mumph he'd first call him Mr. Wilton, then be corrected & call him Sir Mumphrey even if he was told it was ok to him Mumph.
Finally, do you want him to remain Ham-Boy now he's graduated to the LL or is he going to change his name to Ham-Guy or something?
I've written 1 story set in the future & in that future he continues to use the "Ham-Boy" name but he's like in his late 30's. I did that partly because I couldn't come up with another name I liked. Ham-Man didn't really have the same ring as Ham-Boy does. :\) So, until I come up with a better name He will remain Ham-Boy.
If there is anything else you want to know about, just email me back & try to answer to your questions.
Some Material on Citizen Z: (from a reply by HH)
I'm working on the theory that CZ still reacts and feels as she did as Laurie even though she doesn't remember why, but that's all overlaid with what she does remember of her ordeals.
Laurie started life as a trailer park girl with little future. Offered a deal by the Hooded Hood she became one of the generation of "New Battlers", with the attitude and abuse that entailed. Despite an unhealthy relationship with Battler's leader E-Male she "got out" long before Samantha Bonnington and then interned with Lisa. She had a complicated and tempestuous relationship with Goldeneyed that culminated in the birth of a child whom she was convinced to give up to the Order of the Observing Eye and who has never been found since. After her split from G-Eyed because of her choice regarding her child she became very depressed. This led to her drug addiction, to prostitution, and to her exploitation in porn movies. After she was saved from a starring role in a superheroine snuff movie she slowly recovered with the help of her room-mate, Beth Shellett (who was subsequently revealed to be Commissioner Graham's estranged daughter, and who G-Eyed once intended to marry). She confronted E-Male and was horribly disfigured and nearly died; later she was healed by Princess Uhuna and killed E-Male. Laurie was betrayed when she was deceived into a relationship with Blackhearted, an alternate dimension version of G-Eyed whom she assumed to be the real thing. Thereafter she was captured by Baroness von Zemo, who mined her memories to be able to pass as Laurie to infiltrate the Lair Legion as Citizen Z during the Parody War. Laurie herself was sold to demons and her fate was unknown.
As Amnesia she somehow ended up in the past as an inmate of Herringcarp Asylum. There she met various aspects of the Hooded Hood before they came together to form the present archvillain; in particular she became the lover of the cruel Marquis de Herringcarp. She was last seen captured by the sinister Herringcarp inquisition and her fate from that point is still untold (probably until Hallowe'en). A ghost version of Amnesia has haunted Herringcarp since but has only become active, aware, and able to project beyond the boundaries of the site in the last couple of years. Amnesia appears to have an uneasy and unpleasant relationship with the Asylum and a complicated detente with its principal inmate, the Hooded Hood. The cowled crime czar's plans for Amnesia may be different from those the Asylum has.
So Laurie has often been willing to use "new school" methods superheroing from her earliest days. She's certainly been willing to use lethal force against those who have done her wrong. She's learned to be distrustful, to avoid "crutches" be they drugs, teams, or people. Every time she's had a "good" break in her life it's turned sour and hurt her.
I'd suggest that's why she's in some ways the opposite of CSFB!. After all, he's had similar experiences but has ended up with a loving family, many friends, public popularity, respect, self-confidence etc. He's the poster child for bouncing back.
***
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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