Untold Tales of the Lair Legion #354: Settling Debts
 Previously: New Legionnaire Citizen Z was discovered as the ghost of Laurie “Lisette” Leyton, now the spirit of Herringcarp known as Amnesia, possessing the comatose form of her old room-mate Beth Shellett. A complicated exchange of forces in the tomb of Visionatus Improbablus beneath the Lair Mansion has restored Beth, at the cost of reverting Laurie to her damned spectral state in the Hooded Hood’s asylum. Beth has gone to Herringcarp to try and aid her friend.
Meanwhile, Baroness von Zemo is trying to discern the Hood’s masterplans, starting with her visit to Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises with ManMan’s girlfriend the Widget as hostage. The Baroness’ departure was shortly followed by the detonation of a disintegration mine. Silicone Sally, who assisted in events that led to Laurie’s death and ghostly state, has been offered a lucrative position as an agent of SPUD. Hallie and Marie Murcheson are concerned because a strange persistent and unexplained whispering in the Lair Legion File Room has stopped.
Note: This story includes some flashback scenes that follow on from Herringcarp Gothic which are unpleasantly graphic. These flashbacks appear in blue font. The story is designed to read either with or omitting these scenes, depending upon readers’ sensibilities and preferences.
Citizen Z image by Visionary.
***
On the thirteenth day in the oubliette, Dr Morningstar came to speak again with the madman and the victim. He looked down into the deep shaft where the captives lay huddled together against the freezing damp. “Good evening,” he bade them.
The prisoners scarcely stirred. Almost two weeks without food, with only the rancid moisture on the walls to drink, had quietened their banter.
“The experiment continues,” Morningstar announced. “Is today the one where you agree to do disgusting things for me? When one of you will carve the other to live? When your shredded souls finally surrender to the inevitable?”
Neither of the captives replied.
“Look what I have here. Why, if it’s not a piece of bread. It’s rancid, mouldy, smells of urine. But it might keep one of you alive for another day. What am I bid for it? Who will promise obedience first?”
The madman clasped his arm tighter round the victim’s shoulder and held her close.
“What’s that?” scorned Dr Morningstar. “Love? Compassion? Hope, maybe? Haven’t you shivered out the last of that, yet? Or is it pride? I do admire pride. It goes before a fall. You both have so much further to fall.”
He held the bread over the grill that topped the thirty-foot pit. “Of course, if bread isn’t to your taste, there is meat available. Stringy, starved meat, perhaps, raw and uncooked, but still tasty, filled with hot bubbling blood. It’s right there for you. You’re hugging it.”
The victim shivered. The madman smoothed her tousled hair.
“Sell her to me,” Morningstar offered him. “Say the word and I’ll have the wardens on her. And then you’ll eat.”
The madman’s hunger-swollen stomach growled recommendation. The man himself made no reply.
“You then, girl. Child with no memories of joy or comfort, whose whole knowledge of existence is torment in these asylum walls. Turn away from the lunatic who holds you down. Turn to me and survive.”
The victim whimpered, tormented by that soft, smug voice. Her face pressed into the madman’s shoulder, trying to block out everything but him. Only he had been kind. Every memory she had that did not hurt was filled with him.
“You plan to die?” Morningstar mocked them. “You believe that will let you escape these stones? You know it is untrue. Both have you have seen the ghosts of Herringcarp. Both of you have recognised the mad broken spirit that haunts its cells.”
The madman choked back a whimper. The phantom he had seen – thought he had seen – wondered if he had seen in one of his many delusions – had a corpse-pale countenance exactly like the emaciated woman he held close. He had already beheld that innocent victim dead and damned.
“You can still escape,” Dr Morningstar suggested to him. “You could be master of this place. You could rise. She shackles you, not I. She holds you back. All you need to is rid yourself of her, break the bond between you. Come sup with me and be great.”
The madman felt the girl’s tears on his chilled bare chest. She knew how this must end. She knew he must leave her and answer Morningstar’s call.
The very stones of the damned asylum waited for an answer.
***
Flapjack of the Carpathians fawned before the heavy darkwood chair that managed to look like a throne though it technically wasn’t. “There’sth a lot of mess, master,” he lisped formally. “Creatures on the loose, monsters on the prowl, tales to astonish. The whole Whisper Gallery has escaped. The undercells are in the bat loft.”
“You need not sound so pleased about it, Flapjack,” replied the Hooded Hood.
“And the servants are revolting,” the hunchback added with a leer.
“Indeed,” agreed the cowled crime czar. “Continue with the repairs. Inform me of any necessary details. Engage Mr Gnome and Mr Gunther to locate any missing architectural features. I shall take lunch at noon. There will be five guests.”
The sonorous chime of the main entrance pull-bell echoed through the Asylum like a knell of doom. “That will be them now. Escort them here.”
“Yeth, master!”
The repulsive servant limped away and returned shortly with the archvillain’s visitors.
“Good morning,” intoned the Hooded Hood.
“Alright, you arrant knave, where is she?” demanded Sir Mumphrey Wilton, red-faced and furious. “Out with it! What have you done with Miss Shellett?”
“And why do you have Flapjack here?” Visionary puzzled. “I thought he was our disgusting major domo now?”
“I’m on my day off,” the hunchback explained.
“Where’s Miss Shellett?” Sir Mumphrey asked again, louder.
A young dark-skinned woman in the traditional robes of a high priestess of the Shoggoth Cult – i.e. a few feathers – interposed herself between the angry Englishman and the cowled crime czar. “If I may, Sir Mumphrey, you might remember that it was felt best that we not burst in here all guns blazing? That was why I came instead of the Manga Shoggoth? And why we did not, as young Miss Shepherdson posited, ‘drop a freaking nuke on the bad-karma uberlord and just be done with it’?”
“Yet,” Liu Xi Xian qualified Ebony of Nubilia’s statement. And yet she was concerned. Nobody yet realised that she had joined the Lair Legion as part of a bargain with the Hooded Hood to save the life and future of the infant daughter of an alien she had once murdered. The young elementalist knew that one day the consequences of that decision might destroy her as surely as Lord Slithis’ lien or the Void Spectre’s intent.
The Hood steepled his fingers and sat back in his chair. “Bethany Shellett arrived here this morning, as you have doubtless discovered by now,” he admitted to his visitors. “She sought conversation on the topic of Laurie Leyton, whom some of your number recently condemned back to dwindling existence as a drifting, bodiless phantasm.”
“Miss Leyton’s choice, dammit, and a dashed brave one!” Sir Mumphrey insisted.
“Doubtless. Mr De Soth went to ingenious lengths to prevent my observing or interfering. The young man is growing up.”
“He’s getting more like you, you mean,” Liu Xi spat.
“Where is she then?” demanded Vizh. “Both of them. Like Ebony says, we came here to ask nicely first. Next time I dial up Lisa and Dancer, and maybe Yo. I doubt that even Herringcarp could cope with that level of bunnies.”
“Ms Shellett demanded an opportunity to communicate with Ms Leyton. I granted her access to the dungeons.”
“Where Hatty and I were dropped?” the leader of the LL gasped. “A place full of lethal half-forgotten supervillains and monsters?”
“Indeed. I informed Ms Shellett of the danger but she insisted anyway. I argued that Amnesia had sacrificed herself for her friend’s wellbeing and that to die in the dark beneath Herringcarp might somewhat vitiate the gesture. Ms Shellett replied that no true friend would let things rest like that. I can replay the conversation on the Portal of Pretentiousness should you wish.”
“So you allowed that brave vulnerable young woman to venture into horror?” growled Mumphrey.
“Or manipulated her to,” suggested Ebony.
The Hooded Hood crooked his head. “Your point?”
“The point is that Beth’s down there, without super-powers or training, against the sort of horrors that you felt needed excising from the Parodyverse,” Liu Xi accused. “Maybe we should have brought the others. Everybody!”
“Bring her out, Hood,” Visionary ordered. “Pull her to safety, right now!”
“No,” said the Hooded Hood.
“Wasn’t a request,” Sir Mumphrey threatened. “We’re not here to play your games, Winkelweald. Save her.”
“No,” repeated the Hooded Hood.
“Last time I ask nicely, villain!”
“No.”
***
Schloss Shreckhausen loomed over the exclusive Paradopolis real estate of Pierce Heights, a zoning nightmare reducing property values of everywhere it overlooked. Hatman positioned the Lair Legion field team to take it.
“Last summary,” the capped crusader prompted Silicone Sally, who knew the interior intimately from her time working as henchwoman of the fortress’ owner.
“The Baroness’ house is almost as well defended as the Lair Mansion,” the zaftig plastic-girl reported. “It should be, since Elizabeth von Zemo had plenty of time to copy your defences while we were masquerading amongst you as the second Citizen Z.”
She glanced at Donar, hemigod of thunder, who stood ready with his enchanted baseball-bat-with-a-nail-in-it. “Wall-reinforcing force fields to prevent access by physical means,” she warned.
“That hast yet to be determined,” promised the angry Ausgardian.
“Sophisticated anti-teleport shields that could keep out G-Eyed. Nano-bio-screens to prevent microscopic invasion or biological attack, right out of Dr Moo’s winter catalogue. Dimensional wards that could capture even the Shoggoth, courtesy of a contract with Morgosa la Fey. Emergency failsafe doomsday options that even I don’t know about.”
“So standard mega-baddie HQ stuff,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! assessed. “Shark pit and fifteen secret escape exits.”
“That I know of,” Sally confirmed. “Also, I think the sharks might be bionic now. It makes cleaning their pool much easier.”
“We can deal with all of that,” Yuki scoffed. “You’re new to the Legion, Sally, but we’ve been doing this for a long time now.” She turned to consult Hatman. “Attack plan Aardvark?”
“Should do it,” the capped crusader agreed. “But first we have that legal nicety of knocking on the front door…”
“Drawbridge,” Sally amended.
“Front drawbridge and serving the entry warrant.”
“Then we kicketh yon door in and smite yon Baroness and all her minions from hither to yon and thence to the farthest reaches of Miserablegitheim,” suggested Donar.
“And find out once and for all what part Big Liz had to play in Laurie’s loss,” CSFB! agreed.
“Won’t she know that we are coming?” Ham-Boy wondered. “Landing a LairJet on her doorstep isn’t exactly subtle.”
“That’s the point,” replied Hatman. “I don’t believe anyone here is feeling subtle today.”
“I know I art not mine usual diplomatic self,” agreed Donar.
“Deploy,” Yuki called out. “Let’s tick of the nicety and then toss nice in the trash can, okay?”
“But be careful,” Silicone Sally warned. Of all those present, she knew best of what her former employer was capable. As much as Sally Rezilyant yearned for a show-down with the villain who had screwed up her life as much as the accident that had turned her whole form into pliant plastic, she still felt a sense of impending danger heading into Schloss Shreckhausen.
Seven Legionnaires deployed. Hatman headed across the dropped doorbridge to hammer on the castle door.
It opened before he got there. An attractive young woman in an impractical corset came out to meet him. “Hi, Jay,” the former fetishwear model smiled at the Canadian do-gooder. “Long time, no see. You never call.”
“Vicki Vee,” Yuki Shiro recognised. “VelcroVixen! So von Zemo has called in the Purveyors of Peril to back her up.”
“Easy, easy,” VV told the Legion. “It’s just me. And, as you may be aware, I received a full amnesty after many hours of hard, sweaty interrogation by senior members of the Justice Department. There are no outstanding warrants. Indeed, none of the Justice Department could even stand.”
Yuki checked her internal database. The dropped charges and plea-bargain amnesties were matters of record. Either VelcroVixen was as athletic as her files suggested or there had been a suspicious retcon; possibly both.
“Doesn’t matter whether you stand there pointing your weapons at us or not, VV,” CSFB! promised her. “We’re here for the Zemo zeppelin. So head on down to your usual corner on 5th and Englehart and…”
Hatman presented the legal order to the villainess. “We have an entry judgement,” he warned. “Trying to stop us would be illegal.”
Vicki Vee inspected the document. “Signed by Judge Wellinder on a recommendation by Commissioner Graham at 9.12 this morning,” she recognised. She produced a similar paper from her bustier. “Over-ruled by Judge Harkney at the recommendation of the Governor at 9.22.”
A second figure emerged from the castle, an aged man in an expensive suit, leaning on a cane. He slapped another sheet into Hatman’s hand. “Restraining order keeping you 200 yards away from this property and from harassing her Excellency,” he reported.
Silicone Sally recognised the attorney. “Old Mr Grabbit, of Sneek, Grabbit, and Thuggery. They’ve wheeled out a senior partner!”
“Yes they have,” agreed the legal vulture. “And you are trespassing.”
***
Unsurprisingly, all the alarms at the Moon Public Library were silent. That didn’t mean they weren’t effective.
“What is it, D.D.?” demanded A.L.F.RED, the facility’s primary sentry robot. “I’m getting a major jamming field obfuscation around Landing Pad Chaucer.”
The Lunar repository’s organising artificial intelligence rewrote the sensor software, drawing upon a catalogue of technical fixes that numbered into the millions. The survey nodes defuzzed to reveal a woman standing beside a Paradopolis ghost taxi, tapping her foot impatiently. She was dressed in a long dark purple coat with Dalmatian-spotted fur collar.
“Baroness Elizabeth Sweetwater Dewdrop Zemo von Saxe-Lurkburg-Schreckhausen,” D.D. identified. “She’s on Lee’s banned list. She’s not allowed in here.”
“So it’s green for go on nuclear options,” the over-violent security unit checked.
“Wait. The ghost cab might not survive that kind of firepower. And I’m reading life-force inside it, not just the undead cabbie. Let me try and refine the scans past that vehicle’s etheric shell. Yes, there a human in the trunk. And apparently a basket of puppies.”
Baroness von Zemo faced the primary security camera. “Have you discovered my luggage yet?” she demanded. “Allow me access to your collection or the pets get it. Both the dogs and ManMan’s cuddle toy.”
“Okay, that’s Alice White, the former supervillain known as the Widget. She’s gagged and cuffed. Actually, so are the puppies,” D.D. reported. “Um…”
“Come on,” the Baroness called impatiently. “It’s not like Lee Bookman will care, given that he’s dead. You have no Librarian anymore, since you pluckily decided to secede from the Interplanetary Order of Librarians and go your own way. You’re still in legal limbo, so no replacement staff. No help if you are suddenly invaded by Z’Sox mercenaries. No way of preventing portable Negativity Zone gates proliferating around your real estate. You may wish to rethink your former boss’ policies and procedures.”
“Yeah, I can nuke her,” A.L.F.RED decided. “Shame about the puppies, but that’s the price of liberty.”
“Baroness von Zemo,” D.D. warned. “You are trespassing on this facility and we are authorised to defend it with lethal force. Do not mistake us for one of your Earth-based superhero enclaves. Our Libraries have been defending themselves from unauthorised intruders since before your planet coalesced from space dust.”
“That’s how you want to play it?” the unauthorised intruder asked. “Well, if I have to erase your programming and destroy large swathes of your installation just to get more data about the Hooded Hood’s intentions…”
“The Hooded Hood is a subscriber on our list. You are not.”
The Baroness paused. “Wait… Ioldobaoth gets to go in there but not me? How is that fair?”
“Well, he did retcon Lee being not-executed by his IOL superiors that one time, and then help us preserve the entire master database,” D.D. pointed out.
“And he beat the crap outta the Parody Master on intergalactic TV,” snickered A.l.F.RED. “I could just watch that on loop.”
“And he applied for a card in the proper manner. Mr Hazelwood is a member also.”
Elizabeth von Zemo took a breath. “I do not intend to join your book of the month club. I require specific cross-reference data regarding your prestige member the Hooded Hood. I intend to get that information, whether that involves your co-operation or a smoking crater inside the Mare Ingenii. You have now reached the maximum amount of irritation it is possible to cause me without property damage. And the loss of dear little puppies. And whatever the Widget’s actual name turns out to be. You have five seconds.”
“Yeah?” snarled A.L.F.RED. “Then you got three.”
“Two,” counted the Baroness. She reached for her pocket.
“One!”
Then came the explosion.
***
The freighter was registered from the Republic of Spango, held by a Borovian shell company operated out of Badripoor. It docked in Gothametropolis’ old harbour where the customs people understood the cash value of forgetting certain checks. Within three hours the freight was being unloaded, vanishing off to supply some of Boss Antony “Deadeyes” Ventredi’s unsanctioned enterprises.
An hour after that a lone figure slipped down the gangway with a gunny sack over his shoulder and disappeared amongst the warehouses that lined the waterfront.
His name was Rupert Oliver. He sweated a lot where his pain meds didn’t quite compensate for the agony in his unbreakable metallic joints. He shivered because he hadn’t yet scored a hit of illegal metahuman drug Shazam! to temporarily restore his lost mutate powers.
By tonight that would all be fixed, and the savage Jumbuck would be ready to kill the man he’d travelled across half the world to end.
***
“You have to kill me,” the girl said, her hunger-sunken eyes big and dark. “Kill me and live.”
The madman shook his head. “Morningstar does not win. I shall not allow it.”
“We will both die here. I’ve seen what I become. You could still escape. There are… other you’s. I’ve met them: the Marquis, the cowled villain, the scholar… You could become one of them.”
“Indeed. Dr Morningstar hopes that I shall. But which? The cruel nobleman who seduced you? The ranting malefactor with the absurd hubris? The idealist medic who saves no-one? Oh, there are dozens of possibilities. I’ve dreamed them all in my fevered madness. And all of them would serve Morningstar and further his schemes.”
The victim couldn’t press any closer. She clung to the tortured madman as her last anchor on sanity. “When that monster truly conquers this place, when he understands and commands its heart… he will have no limits.”
“All the more reason to stop him.”
“We’re dying here! Don’t you understand it? Our bodies are shutting down with malnutrition. We can’t stand. Soon we won’t be able to speak. Then our minds will go. Go further, I mean.”
“Yes. I see that. I… I know what to do.”
“You have to kill me. You have to take the deal.”
“I will not.”
“I want you to live. I love you.”
The madman had flinched less at the lash. “If you really love me, then you are indeed lost.”
“I don’t understand? I think my mind is going, just as my memory did. Please, tell me what you mean.”
“If you love me, if your love is strong enough, bright enough to carry even across the threshold into death, into that pale wraith that you are condemned to become…”
“It is. It must be.”
“If you can do that, then there is one thing that sad spirit can accomplish.”
“Tell me what.”
“We found the heart of this place in our mad journeys, did we not? The centre of the madness that is Herringcarp? You must go there again. And this is what you must do…”
The madman whispered in her ear, and what he spoke was madness.
“Will you kill me then?” the victim begged. “So I can do it. Don’t leave me to this agony of slow torment, to Morningstar’s amusement. End my life. Let me go. It is the only way you can love me.”
The madman pressed his face into her dark mane so she wouldn’t see him weep. “I will kill you, Amnesia. But I will never take the deal.”
“You must become one of your futures.”
“No,” promised the madman. “None of them could defy and defeat Morningstar. I must become all of them.”
He kissed her, dry scabbed lips on dry scabbed lips. Then he circled his hands around her neck and sent her on her mission.
***
Whatever the Baroness was about to do was interrupted by a sudden screeching dimensional portal that appeared at her feet. The short-frequency shunt gate pinched timespace between the Moon Public Library’s Landing Pad Chaucer and a waste recycling plant’s farm by-products processing tank in Toledo.
For a moment, the Baroness’ anti-teleport wearables resisted the shift. They were state of the art, set to over-ride all current forms of dimension-folding and twin-point space pairing. Unfortunately, Al B. Harper had just developed an entirely new method of fracturing the continuum based upon his recent sojourn beyond the upper shell of hyperspace. Elizabeth vanished with a shriek through the transient portal beneath her.
“Neat,” admitted A.L.F.RED to D.D. “Did you do that?”
D.D. shook her head. “No. It used one of Lee’s exception codes to over-ride our shift suppressors. I’m getting a dimensional shunt connection request from Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises. They want to visit.” She triggered the appropriate connection routines. “I’m granting them access to the main repository.”
A livid square of tortured timespace appeared in one of the wall-archways designated for interface. Dr Al B. Harper, Miss Framlicker, and ManMan hastened through. Still at the EEE firehouse, engineer Amy Aston remained to abuse the transfer equipment. Her encouragement of the technology involved both foul language and large spanners.
“Sorry about the unauthorised villainess,” the archscientist told D.D. and A.L.F.RED. “She just set off a bomb in our conference room.”
“On that subject,” ManMan ventured, “is there a special reason we’re not dead?”
“It was a dimensional shunt bomb,” Miss F noted absently. “If we didn’t contain dimensional flares as a matter of course, Alaric would kill us off about six times a day.”
“You might want to check if that bomb really did come from the Baroness, too,” advised Knifey, ManMan’s talking blade. “She had no means of getting it there past your defences, and it’s not really her style.”
“Have you any idea what she was ranting about when she wanted to come in?” D.D. asked.
“We could have asked that cabbie if he hadn’t just headed home,” A.L.F.RED reported as the ghost taxi shimmered away. “Don’t worry, he let that Widget woman out of the trunk into the back seat for the return trip. I think he liked her small puppies.”
“Hey!” objected ManMan. “Alice might be petite but…”
“The Baroness had brought a basket of dogs as hostages,” D.D. explained hastily. “Now I’m reviewing the scans, I see she’d injected them with a fast-replicated nanovirus so when we brought them in here they could over-run our hardware systems. I’ll e-mail an anti-malware patch after them so they’ll be fine.”
“Can you do anything for his girlfriend’s puppies too?” A.L.F.RED went there.
The alarm fortunately silently chimed again, preventing further dialogue on the topic.
“That von Zemo woman is persistent,” D.D. noted. “She’s back again, in a new costume, and this time she has around three thousand sentient computer entities from the Reticulum Matrix deployed in invasion formation ready to infiltrate our software firewalls.”
Al B. Harper perked up. “Really? ‘Cause Miss F and I were speculating with Hallie how we would deal with an invasion of alien A.I.s after the trouble we had with Nexus 935 during the Parody War. I’ve got some great ideas that…”
“MPL and EEE annoyances,” the Baroness announced, “I am quite ready to move you up my elimination to-do list right now unless you acquiesce to my demands. I have had a very trying twenty-four hours and some light evisceration would help me de-stress.”
“So I’m thinking reverse incursion standing wave and a modified dark matter conversion helix,” the archscientist gabbled to Miss F.
“”Squeeze the whole thing through a calibrating fusion event?” Miss F checked. “I’ll see if Amy has enough paperclips.”
“This is D.D., Baroness. This facility is fully operational and prepared to fragment any incursion from Reticulan intruders. Be warned that I am now setting Protocol Asimov, so use of lethal patches is authorised.”
“Perhaps at this point we should just talk to her?” suggested Knifey, ManMan’s sentient blade. “Joe, get me out there so I can have dialogue with the psychotic megalomaniac please.”
“I thought his girlfriend went home in a ghost taxi,” A.L.F.RED commented.
“The other one, whose cosplay choices do require significant corset reinforcements,” Miss Framlicker clarified.
“So, you want me to go out into the, um, moon vacuum to face down the mad world-conqueror and her army of alien killer computers?” ManMan asked Knifey.
“You wanted me back,” the knife pointed out. “Why else go to all that trouble with…”
“We don’t talk about Fight Club,” Joe Pepper cut in hastily. “Or, y’know-what. Remember what we were told?” The Elvis impersonator sighed. “Let’s just go out there and be eviscerated.”
“The Library’s atmospheric sheath will protect you,” D.D. assured him. “Well, unless she goes nuclear.”
Miss Framlicker approved. “While Mr Pepper is trying not to be evaporated in a nuclear holocaust there are a few references we do need to track down,” she told the Moon Public Library’s operating system. “The Baroness got a peek at the Hood’s long term plans. She was right to be concerned about a few of them.” She handed over a data pad. “Could you cross-check your indexes for these things?”
“What’s wrong with going nuclear?” A.L.F.RED demanded. “If they glow in the dark they’re easier to hit.”
***
“This file room is quite big,” Vinnie de Soth acknowledged. “Was it always so big?”
“Not originally,” Hallie admitted. “First off it was just a cupboard that Lisa used for… recreational purposes. Later on it got expanded when the Librarian joined the LL and we invested in Kool-Whip removal technology. Then when we were fighting the Parody War and the Lair Mansion was effectively co-ordinating the international response, Liu Xi and the Shoggoth did something to expand our records space.”
“It was only a matter of speaking to it strictly,” the Manga Shoggoth explained from behind the bandages that made him look like the Invisible Man, “and scolding it for insisting on those ridiculous rules about the maximum number of dimensions.”
The Lair Legion File Room was now a connected series of near-identical secure storage vaults beneath the Trophy Room. The exception was the first chamber, which was also set up as an office, classification space, and records restoration workshop. That room smelled of book glue and organisation. The whole area was both neat and cluttered at the same time.
“I don’t think there has been much done down here since Mr Bookman died,” Marie Murcheson told Vinnie and the Shoggoth.
“Not much need,” Hallie supplied. “I keep all the records electronically these days, with secure off-site backups that we know the hard way can survive our data core being destroyed. It seemed best to leave this place as-is until D.D. and A.L.F.RED felt able to remove their Library technology back to the Moon.”
Vinnie looked curiously at the little folded Origami parchments and circuit-inlaid index volumes on the Librarian’s reading desk.
“Those are actually similar to my Movie Gun technology,” Hallie explained. “The paper somehow makes 3D copies of any kind of records and saves them so they can be replicated in the Lunar Public Library on the dark side of the Moon. It’s sophisticated stuff, derived by the Intergalactic Order of Librarians from left-over tech from the Second Oldest Race, who I guess got it from the Celestian Space Robots themselves. That’s why D.D. will want to evacuate it at some point.”
“Why isn’t it already gone?” Goldeneyed wondered. He was still feeling sour from not being allowed on the Beth von Zemo raid, but Hatman and Yuki had declared him too emotionally invested to make the team.
Vinnie de Soth, the Legion’s jobbing occultist, answered his question. “Clearing the file room out would acknowledge that Lee is really dead. D.D. is an artificial intelligence but she has real feelings.”
“That can be a complete bummer,” Hallie agreed.
Marie listened to the walls. “I cannot hear any kind of whispering such as Tandi reported there being in here,” she admitted. “Nor am I feeling any kind of anomaly.”
“Same here,” agreed Vinnie de Soth. “Just the baseline occult potential of Parody Island, one of the big five ley nodes of old Parodiopolis and former repository of a Sleeping Celestian. And that was a pretty inaccurate use of the word ‘just’.”
“I think we all understood that when I got plugged into a pain doorway to project a defence shield against the Parody Master around the whole solar system,” G-Eyed shuddered. “Or even before that, when the Celestian protections here brought Marie back as a banshee to guard the site. And then they resurrected Hallie as an avatar too.”
“The house likes them,” the Shoggoth explained. “It likes to have pets.”
Vinnie moved quickly on. “Point is, my initial divinations aren’t picking up any occult activity except what I’d expect. Shoggy?”
“Nothing,” agreed the Shoggoth. “Although the noise from the Resolution War might be drowning out some of my perceptions.”
“The what now?” G-Eyed objected. “You mean the Parody War. We finished that.”
“I do like the colour of these walls,” the Shoggoth rumbled. “They smell lovely.”
“Full range scans of this area aren’t picking up any anomalies,” Hallie checked. “I’ll ask Sir Mumphrey to scan for temporal stuff when he gets back from… when he gets back.”
Marie laid a comforting hand on the A.I.’s hard-light holographic arm. “Do not fear. Visionary and the others will be alright in Herringcarp Asylum.”
***
The walls of the oubliette were of mortared stone. The bones in the madman’s hands gouged holes between the bricks where he could press his tattered fingers. Using his lover’s femurs as climbing tools he scaled the pit and snapped back the cage bolt.
The warders discovered him as he climbed clear of the shaft. The emaciated, starved, scar-laced wretch seemed no match for his torturers. Yet with his lover’s bones he carved them apart, smashed skulls, slit bellies. He continued to tear at his tormentors long after they were dead.
A course grey rag hung over a rack of tools. He swathed himself in it against the bitter dungeon chill. He pinned it at his neck with his lover’s fingerbone, staining the collar with her blood and his own. He drew the folds up around his head, forming a cowl that shadowed his face.
He passed out of the pit chamber into the lowest of the prison levels. He used the jailors’ keys to open cells. “Follow me,” he told what he found inside.
When more wardens came they fell beneath a tide of nightmares, a frenzied tearing, clawing horde whose humanity had been whipped and branded away. Through the corridors the freed horrors went, swelling their numbers, destroying those who had hurt them, taking their time.
When they reached ground level they burst forth like creatures from hell, falling upon the staff of the institution, upon visitors and jailors alike. The man who had loosed them let them run free. He turned his attention to the stairs that led to the Chief Surgeon’s office. He had an appointment with Dr Morningstar.
The master of Herringcarp awaited him. “Very good,” he told the madman. “So who shall you be? So many choices.”
“You think I shall lead you to this place’s heart of mystery,” the hooded monster observed. “Madness cannot be discovered so. It can only be earned, experienced, embraced.”
“Train a hound to hunt and let it run,” sneered the doctor. “There is no other reason for your existence.”
“I disagree. You have made an error. Your experiment is flawed.”
“Indeed? How so? Am I now to be lectured by a lunatic?”
“No. You will be schooled by a genius.”
“A madman and a villain.”
“A madman and an archvillain.”
“That then is your choice? How you define yourself and your world?”
The cowled intruder chuckled unpleasantly. “Why need I define it? Why one choice? Why not, if I do not approve an outcome, rewrite it again? Why not redefine what has passed and shape what is to come? Madness, you think? Yes, now you begin to glimpse the heart of what you sought. You deal me pain and sorrow and malice? I shall own them and make them my own. You steal from me that which I hold dear? My mind is taken but it serves me still. My will is tested but it will destroy you.”
Dr Morningstar watched the display in fascination. “Do pardon me while I take notes. This is remarkable. You are exceeding even my wildest expectations.”
“Oh, Morningstar, I have scarcely even begun,” promised the madman. “You think that my destroying Amnesia has given me to you.” His lips curled into a feral smile. “How little you know about love.”
“Love?” Now the doctor smiled. “That illusion will always destroy you.”
“I think not. There is a place where love and madness meets. Where madness and love discover revelation. That is where I sent Amnesia.”
The skies above Herringcarp darkened. The screams from the slaughter below peaked and then fell silent. Every glass object in Morningstar’s office shattered. A reflective black rectangle swelled behind the madman, framing him. It was almost a portal.
“Fascinating,” judged Dr Morningstar. “You are projecting you own delusions now. This is beyond what I had hoped when I cut apart your brain. More than I dreamed I might achieve as I tore up your soul.”
“It was delusion. It was your doing. I am retrospectively altering the continuity of events, though. Now it is my doing, my own choice. I embrace my wounds. I own them. And it is delusion no more.” The madman turned and plunged his arm through the midnight reflection behind him and called, “Come forth, spirit of Herringcarp. I summon thee!”
The victim came through the portal, her cold translucent fingers wrapped around his own. Her hair was whipped by unseen gales of madness. Her tattered shift flickered with witchfire flecks.
Dr Morningstar took a step back. The first uncertainty splashed over him.
“You have been to Herringcarp’s heart?” the madman in the cowl asked the ghost. “You found it?”
The words were cold and terrible on her lips, dragged from graveyard vigils and ancient torment. “I have found its heart… Ioldabaoth. It is you.”
“No,” denied Morningstar. “Not him. He is merely a tool, a ploy. An experiment that escaped its cage.”
Amnesia kissed the madman that stood at madness’ core. Millions of different endings fluttered round them. Emerald light passed between their lips.
The madman’s eyes glowed green.
***
“Er, hi,” Yeoville Simonise Edric Flapjack ventured cautiously. Getting between the master and his wrath of was huge no-no for a Carpathian lackey, one that evolution has helped engrave upon generations of his ancestors, but right now the hunchbacked retainer had a significant problem. Which master or masters was he supposed to get behind and cackle for? “If I could just suicidally interject for a moment?”
“Not now, man,” Mumphrey snarled.
“Begone, minion,” intoned the Hooded Hood.
“What is it, Flapjack?” Liu Xi asked.
“I was just, well, I’ve got this huge headache and this time it’s nothing to do with hammering nails up my nose for a bet with dull thud. Y’see, I’m kind of the LL’s major domo so I’m all team Legion. But before that I was the Hooded Hood’s main hench, so I’m also ‘go cowled crime czar’. Is there any way you could not annihilate each other? Please?”
“We came to negotiate some kind of settlement,” Ebony pointed out. “Miss Shellett ventured here with the best of intentions, but unwisely, spurred by grief and misplaced guilt.”
“Because she didn’t cause what happened to Laurie,” Liu Xi pointed out. “You did, Hood.”
The priestess of the Shoggoth cult shot the young elementalist a warning glance. “This could all be averted if we could only talk in a civilised manner, retrieve Beth, and go.”
“Except for Laurie being damned as a ghost in this lunatic asylum,” Visionary objected. “That’s not acceptable at all!”
“You believe I could do something to avert that?” the Hood enquired. His voice sounded more raw than usual. “You think I wish that torment upon her?”
“Hardly the first time you’ve let someone suffer for your wider goals, sirrah,” Sir Mumphrey accused. “And now you want Miss Shellett running through your plots. She’s suffered enough, damn you!”
“We’re trying to find a peaceful solution, Mr Winkelweald,” Ebony offered. “Won’t you work with us for once?”
“Please boss, don’t retcon them,” Flapjack begged.
“The Hood can’t affect me with his powers,” Mumphrey warned. “Demonstrated that on his annoying replacement, what?”
“Well not directly, he can’t, no,” the hunchbacked butler agreed. “But that doesn’t stop him shaping the whole world around you. Samantha’s future. Her friends Magweed and Griffin. Harlagaz Donarson. Asil Ashling. The Caphans. The robot and A.I. rights debate. There’s literally millions of nasty things he can do without ever directly affecting you, Sir Mumphrey. That Iscanean Went might not have known how…”
“But Ioldabaoth Winkelweald does,” Liu Xi shuddered. She wondered how much of her life he had already shaped. Her grandfather, the Void Scholar? Exu the Doomherald? Lord Slithis the necromancer? Vinnie de Soth? Would she ever know?
“Doesn’t matter,” Sir Mumphrey insisted. “Don’t back down from archvillains. Isn’t done. If the Hood wants to push it then we’ll push back. Line in the sand. Total war if that’s what’s required, free the world of this scheming knave once and for all. Enough said.”
“No! Not enough said,” Flapjack panicked. “Ebony, say some more!”
“We came here for Beth and Laurie,” Vizh insisted. “We’re not here for your games, Hood. Not this time.”
“They mean it,” Liu Xi amplified. She took a breath. “We mean it.”
“Miss Shellett,” Mumphrey returned to his demand. “Produce her, Winkelweald. Now.”
The Hooded Hood’s eyes narrowed. “No.”
***
Old Mr Grabbit examined the over-ruled warrant that the Legion had brought. “Arnie Armbruster’s work? I’m surprised he was sober enough to hold a pen to sign the application.”
“We know what your ‘client’ has done,” Ham-Boy objected. “We know what she did to Laurie Leyton.”
“Then I trust you will bring evidence and make a case in the proper form at the appropriate time, young man.” Mr Grabbit regarded the huddle of superheroes on the drawbridge. “In the meantime, expect follow-on litigation about the harm caused to my client by your associate Sir Mumphrey Wilton while she was mentally rewritten and subjected to his regular and extensive sexual assaults.”
“You mean when we were all retconned?” Yuki blurted. “Poor old Sir Mumphrey had to be married to that…”
The lawyer held up a restraining finger. “This is all for the courts to settle, young woman. Perhaps you should concentrate upon regularising your own legitimacy in these United States before attacking a survivor of persistent sexual abuse who has been victimised and terrorised by the metahuman lackeys of her notorious abuser?”
“This is all major BS meant to keep us from searching Schloss Schreckhausen!” CSFB! called it.
“I doth hold yon Middlewinter Championships Record for Overarm Casting of Lawyers into the Frothing Foam of Djrowningfjiord,” Donar offered.
“No! Hold on!” Ham-Boy intervened, getting between the Ausgardian and the attorney, then realising where he was. “Er, I mean, please, Mr Donar. Thing is, if those papers are legal then we can’t go in. We’re the good guys. We have to obey the law.”
“Sometimes,” muttered Yuki.
VelcroVixen smirked. “Oh, I like this newbie,” she approved. “So straight. So stiff. I’m a sucker for a straight-shooter.” She winked at HB. “Call me. I’m in the rogues gallery.”
“Get shots first,” CSFB! advised. “I’m the last guy to try slut-shaming, but VV’s not a hot date, she’s a poisonous one.”
“Your slanderous and actionable remarks are noted,” Mr Grabbit replied. He served more papers. “This sets out the Baroness’ rightful patent claim to the key technologies illegally pirated for Ms Shiro’s brain-body cyborg interface, utilised without licence. We will be seeking a shutdown of those systems. Here is notification countersigned by the Mayer of Gothametropolis declaring Mr Hatman’s hostel for odious young people to be structurally unsafe and requiring its closure and immediate demolition. Here is a citation for Mr CrazySugarFreakBoy! for indecent exposure on last night’s television broadcasts. Civil compensation claims for emotional damage will follow.”
“This is the Baroness’ defence?” Ham-Boy asked in outrage. “She tried to hide behind the law? Her?”
“Her Excellency is exercising her legal rights as a citizen and Parody War hero,” Mr Grabbit countered. He served another writ on Silicone Sally while she watched appalled. “This warns of intention to sue regarding breach of non-disclosure agreements signed during your lucrative employment by my client, of your removing proprietary bio-technology from these premises in defiance of contract…”
“You mean the mind-bending cocktail of chemicals that the Baroness injected into me to keep me obedient!” Sally shouted.
VelcroVixen grinned. “We’ll discuss it in court, in the full spotlight of world media. Months of litigation, of dissecting everything you ever did. Probably dissecting of you by the end, since that silicone form of yours has also been patented by the Baroness now.” She shrugged. “You picked a bad time to be a good girl, kid.”
Hatman reached into his hatily belt and produced a moth-eaten 1932 English barrister’s wig. A faded tag inside held a smudged name that may have read H. Rum-. The capped crusader dragged it on, felt from a case of small cigars he did not have, and gripped lapels that were not part of his uniform.
“Objection! If I may interrupt my learned friend for one moment,” he announced, “there are a few matters it may be useful to place on record.”
Grabbit looked suspiciously at Hatman.
Jay settled in for the long haul. “There is a golden thread that runs through British justice…” he began.
“This could take a while,” Yuki warned VelcoVixen. “If you have other urgent skanking to do you might want to slut off and call back later.”
***
The malefic sentient software of the Reticulum Matrix glowered from their mobile weapons platforms at the young man in the white flares and open silk shirt who emerged from air lock Austin. “Before you blast me to atoms,” ManMan called, “my talking knife wants you to know that I have a talking knife.”
The mobile weapons platforms backed off. Wireless communications systems flared into intense activity.
“Oh, come on!” shouted Baroness von Zemo. “This is ManMan. If I wanted less threatening and effective I’d have to kidnap Semi-Transparent Lad or Pudu Lad!”
The Reticulum Matrix shifted further away from the talking knife. They had databases unseen by anyone in this quadrant of the galaxy.
“Baroness, can we talk?” Joe Pepper asked the irritated villainess. “I’m not real happy about you kidnapping and threatening Alice. You’re probably a bit pissed at being gated into a sess pit. Miss F and Al B. are sore about that disintegration bomb you left in their conference room. Can’t we all get along together?”
Elizabeth von Zemo frowned. “What disintegration bomb? That wasn’t me. Why would I go for something as quick and painless as a disintegration bomb?”
“Uh, okay. File that away for another time. But apart from that, you want info about the Hooded Hood’s plans. So does Al B. You need stuff from the Moon Public Library. Al B.’s allowed in there and is looking stuff up right now. Blowing apart the facility is kind of unnecessary.”
“And would require the Matrix to come just a little closer,” Knifey pointed out helpfully.
“So could you, um, take a seat out here and read a magazine or something and we’ll get back to you?” ManMan pleaded.
The Baroness glared at him coldly. “That had better be excellent research,” she conceded through gritted teeth.
“She seems much nicer than Thighmaster, doesn’t she?” Knifey commented to his wielder.
***
“Okay, so here’s something,” Vinnie de Soth called out to the investigators in the Legion File Room. “Look at these open books on Lee’s workbench. Look at this last thing he was working on restoring before he… left.”
Hallie scanned the pages. “Some Renaissance polemical tract,” she summarised. “It’s a crude summary of a fictionalised account of some supposed founder of a secret organisation of scholars and free-thinkers.”
“The Improbable College,” the Shoggoth rumbled. “I rather liked them. There was an Irish barwench who eventually became an Austernal flying vehicle, and that troubled scholar who was devoured by ghouls and turned into…”
“The Confraternity of the Improbable College was rather interesting,” Marie Murcheson mentioned. “They were supposed to be descendants of the suppressed Knights Improbablar – our history’s version of the knights, not the Order that survived in Sir Jaboz’ alternate reality. Some sources claim that the Improbablars even got to the new world, here to America. The Abyssal Greye once claimed they made that tomb we visited yesterday.”
Hallie had bad memories of that place, and knew Marie had too. “So they were evil.”
“I don’t think so,” Vinnie intervened. He carefully leafed through the fragile volume that Lee Bookman had been restoring. “This is one of the volumes that was circulating in the 1700s, one of the editions banned by the Church of Conformity that led the inquisition. It’s an allegorical story about a legendary founder of the Improbable College two hundred or more years earlier still. The so-called Visionatus Improbablus.”
“The recurrence of names similar to those of our Legion through history still disturbs me,” G-Eyed admitted. “I know it’s because there were temporal echoes of use sent up and down the timeline, but it’s still spooky. Anyhow, this Visionatus guy was definitely fake, right?”
“Allegorical isn’t the same as fake,” Vinnie objected.
“The point is,” Hallie pressed on, “there was evidently whispering in this file room until yesterday, when Marie took a party down to the supposed tomb of this supposed founder of this supposed Improbable College. Then it all went quiet.”
“Except both you and I felt a… a flicker. Something happened,” Marie insisted.
The Shoggoth licked a wall. “It is possible that the bit of contingency left by the Celestials that deployed Miss Murcheson and Miss Hallie and tangled them in the island’s continuum was inspected and temporarily replicated,” he offered. “It would be hard to tell without ketchup.”
G-Eyed clenched his fists. “Look, Laurie’s gone. Beth’s with the Hooded Hood. The team is taking on Baroness von Zemo. We’re here in a dusty box-room tasting wallpaper. What is the point?”
“We have done all we can down here for now,” Vinnie agreed. “Let’s head to the Operations Room and try a deep-scan analysis of whatever Celestial energies we can actually track and comprehend, and stack it in a corner for Al B. to go nuts over. And then maybe find Bry some valium.”
“You were the one who set Laurie up with an offer she couldn’t refuse!” G-Eyed accused the acting sorcerer supreme.
Vinnie’s brows furrowed and his face darkened. “Gave Lisette a chance to be the hero she wanted to be and get some closure? Yeah, I did.”
“Maybe we all need a break,” Hallie suggested tactfully.
G-eyed glared at Vinnie. “Maybe we do,” he agreed, then vanished in a golden flash.
“If not ketchup then mustard. And lithium,” added the Shoggoth.
Marie shepherded Vinnie back towards the living room. Hallie returned to monitor the two field ops currently underway. The Shoggoth folded into himself and reappeared in his favourite bucket inside his elder temple. The file room was empty once again.
The origami data replicators fluttered and began to move. They shunted the Celestian data they had borrowed into the index codices on the Librarian’s desk.
There was whispering. Writing moved across the walls and cabinets, flowing onto the reading desk.
Then there was silence.
***
“Here’s the thing,” Al B. rattled off. “The Hood gathered six primal power fragments called Insanity Stones. He stole or borrowed the energies necessary to unite them again as a missile against the Wonderwall around the Parodyverse. How is he going to calculate the trajectory? Where is he getting the velocity to fire the projectile?”
His string of scrawled felt tip calculations on a library table were quietly absorbed and filed as he finished with them. Miss Framlicker pulled more tables over so he could continue his formulae. “The Library has some useful stuff on the Interdimensional Vortex,” she reported, laying the stats beside Al’s scribbles. “Look at the vectors resulting from certain planar upheavals.”
The archscientist frowned. “Okay, so the restoration of the Dreary Dimension affected that disruption in the plane of Corposant Fire. Also the shifting of Amazon Isle to block one back door into the Parodyverse. Some serious fallout from Crisis Across Infinite Parody Earths and the various temporary dimensional hook-ups it caused. The crash of the Esperine reality into the Swordrealms. There’s the upheaval caused by the destruction of hundreds of alternate-Earths. Then there’s the reshaping of the netherworlds because of the current hell-wars. All of that was massively affected by the destruction of the Conceptual Plane fighting the Parody War…” He paused. “There’s quite a bit of missing narrative force here.”
“Enough to fire off an Insanity Bullet?” Miss F speculated.
“Um, exactly that much,” Al B. admitted. “As for calculating the trajectory… do you have those logs from the fall of the Observers?”
D.D. moved forward. “We do. But only because Mr Winkelweald donated them to the collection. He has managed to do a sterling piece of work in salvaging some of that before the Parody Master destroyed them. He even managed to get us a copy of the data that the Order of the Observing Eye took during that last junior teams training contest.”
“Which means the Hood went to trouble to get hold of genetic templates for damn near every superhero and villain that ever existed,” Miss Framlicker pointed out.
“He’d need access to the biggest mainframe in existence to calculate the exact co-ordinates to crack the Wonderwall,” the archscientist pointed out.
“You mean like that time he got into the Celestian Space Robots’ staging area?” A.L.F.RED enquired. He drew surprised stares. “What? I like blowing stuff up. Doesn’t mean I’m dumb.”
“So, to summarise,” Miss F said through gritted teeth, “not only does the Hood have the means to forge the item required to crack the barrier around the Parodyverse and the energies to fire it, but also the exact targeting information to hit the spot. Bother.”
She didn’t actually say bother.
“He’s still not quite there,” Al B. calculated. “Forging together those stones would require a crucible the size of half a galaxy. We’d kind of notice if he did that.”
The speculation was interrupted by a plaintive comm-call from ManMan. “Um, guys, any progress? Only the Baroness has now shown me three of her destroy-me rays and I think she may need a bathroom.”
The archscientist filled in the archvillainess on the discussion so far.
“The Dead Galaxy,” spat Elizabeth von Zemo angrily. “Cross reference it.”
D.D. accessed relevant material from the IOL’s galactic database. Some of it was a bit outdated now since this Library’s current embargo, but there was enough to cover the basics. “We think what we now call the Dead Galaxy was the domain of a people only remembered as the Second Oldest Race. They warred with the primal Hero Feeders from Comic-Book Limbo and were more or less erased. The Space Robots sterilised that whole area of space to prevent the Lurkers Below from spreading across the entire Parodyverse.”
“Yes, we went there with the LL a few years back,” Al B. reported. “Nothing lived there. But…”
“But that makes it an ideal place for forging the Insanity Stones into a single artefact again,” the Baroness suggested acidly. “Hidden from view, ripe with narrative potential, previously tangled in Hooded Hood plots.”
Miss F tapped away at the library information systems, then called D.D. to run much faster deep searches. “Deserted?”, the EEE administrator wondered. “There’s material here to match with stuff we’re getting from Mircandalee Tremensalor’s Travelling Vaudeville and Light Opera Auditorium as it progresses along the galactic rim, and from word coming from Shazana Pel at the Plxtragar Diplomatic Mission.”
“We would appreciate copies of those reports,” D.D. admitted.
“Specially if those Pigeonwarriors are still blowing stuff up,” A.L.F.RED agreed.
“There are… rumours of a new player out there, staging from near or inside the formerly taboo Dead Galaxy,” Miss F revealed.
The Baroness turned and scowled at her allies from the Reticulum Matrix. “You didn’t mention this. Poltroons.”
“Here’s a brief clip from a Naicluv spy satellite that caught a ship heading towards the forbidden area,” D.D. discovered. “From it’s configuration it looks like… a dimensional dreadnaught!”
“The Cruel Deceiver,” Al B. identified it, still scribbling. “The vessel that defected to the Hooded Hood.” EEE had been involved in it’s refit during the Parody War.
D.D. summarised the available data. “Captain Karn’s warship. It has also been seen in many of the contended areas in the quadrant of space, including the graveyard worlds of the Shee-Yar. Someone seems to be gathering up many of the planets that were conquered and devastated by the Parody Master. Someone able to intimidate the Skunks, the Skree, the S’Zox, the Traders, all the big players, to back off.”
“A conqueror?” asked Miss F.
“Sometimes. Other times a diplomatic alliance, an economic partner, a mutual defence agreement. It’s not one size fits all – but it is backed with some serious threat from the forbidden zone.”
“Does this new power happen to wear a cowl?” Knifey enquired.
“Okay,” ManMan reported over the link. “So Hoody’s got the uber-weapons, the uber-battleship, the galactic empire, the databases of doom, and pretty much every ace in the deck. Suddenly the Baroness’ death rays seem pretty cute. Nah, don’t look at me like that, your Excellency. I’m just saying: this is game over.”
***
“That is enough,” Morningstar decided. He reached for a panel of levers beside his desk. “I am shutting this down. Shutting you down, you nameless abomination!”
“I think not.” The madman still held the spectre’s hand, through frost formed there where she absorbed his heat and life. “Your restraints do not work. They have never worked.”
The doctor’s instruments were useless. “Very well,” he snarled. “Let us drop the sham. See what is behind the mask. Behold my true self, and die in that baleful glory!”
“You are nothing more than you seem. You are a petty, limited, small-spirited evil mortal. You always have been. You have tampered with forces beyond your understanding. You have unleashed that which you cannot control.”
“What? No! Guards! Wardens!”
“And I have a name, Dr Morningstar. I have many names. Many pasts. Many characters. You may know me as… the Hooded Hood.”
Morningstar scrambled into the corner, his past shredding from him, his futures folding into one inexorable doom.
“I am the Hooded Hood. Herringcarp Asylum is mine. The world, all of creation, shall follow on.”
“Wait! We can deal. I can give you…”
“The Hooded Hood needs nothing more from you. But the ghosts of this place, the dead and damned whom you have tormented… they require vengeance.”
The doctor’s office walls bulged as the lunatics pressed through, overlapping amongst each other, gibbering and howling, clawing out at their captor. Flesh was shredded first, and then the spirit inside. Morningstar was dragged down, into the fabric of the asylum, past time and space to eternity, where madness and malice dwelled intent upon his never-ending torment.
The Hooded Hood watched. His ragged cloak was now whole and unstained, over a neat grey suit. His eyes scarcely flickered with eerie green.
He turned to Amnesia. Already her thin form was tearing away, streamers of herself being pulled after Morningstar into the asylum’s stones.
Already the Hood knew the limits of his power. “I may not redeem you,” he told the spirit of Herringcarp. “Too much would unravel. Too much would be lost.”
Ethereal tears trickled down the phantom’s cheeks.
“Though you may forget all, I will not forget you,” the Hood promised. “Thank you for loving me.”
He gestured and dismissed her. He drew his mantle about him and turned to the doctor’s desk. Now it and its chair were a dark wooden throne on a pedestal of malachite. He took his rightful place.
He gathered the madness together and began to scheme.
***
“Produce Miss Shellett,” demanded Sir Mumphrey Wilton, his clenched knuckles white.
“No,” refused the Hooded Hood, his arched fingertips pressed tight together.
“Why not?” Ebony asked in her role as averter of apocalypse.
“Because Ms Shellett chose to go there of her own free will, just as you allowed Ms Leyton to make her choice. And because my choice is to be loyal to Amnesia, who has saved my life.” The Hood rose. “You seek to coerce me to help your friend. You feel justified in threatening or using force to do so. I seek to help one of mine. I shall use force if required also.”
Visionary and Mumphrey glared at the cowled crime czar, who glared back.
“Can we at least go get her?” offered Liu Xi. “Go into that dungeon and bring her out?”
Ebony saw the trap. “Those tunnels are part of the Hooded Hood’s system of editing out people from continuity. Anyone who goes in there while the Hood himself isn’t retconned away as he was when Visionary and Hatman passed through yesterday risks being erased themselves. He wants the leader of the LL and Sir Mumphrey Wilton to agree to enter.”
“Then I’ll go alone,” offered Liu Xi. The Hooded Hood still had plans for her, didn’t he? Or was his plan to destroy her to better motivate Vinnie or Lara or some other of her friends into some kind of doom?
“Look, I’ve been around the LL since it was the League of Regulars,” Visionary declared. “I was about when the Hood manipulated Jarvis to sacrifice himself. I was there when he tried to turn Lisa to the dark side. The darker side. We always make the same mistake with him, putting off dealing until another time because right now he’s got the upper hand. Maybe it’s time to draw that line?”
“Well said, that man!” approved Sir Mumphrey. “Well, Winkelweald, what’s it to be? Produce the young lady or prepare for a thrashing!”
“I think not,” purred the Hooded Hood. “Perhaps you should review Ms Shellett’s wardrobe?”
“Her wardrobe?” puzzled Liu Xi. “What she’s wearing?”
Vizh found that his commcard was still allowed to work. “Hallie, check the sensor logs. What was Beth dressed in when she slipped out this morning?”
The Lair Mansion’s resident A.I. had the answer in a minute. “Normal street clothes, Vizh. But underneath she had on Citizen Z’s outfit.”
“A rather effective weave of occult origin,” the Hood footnoted. “You may recall it as the garb worn by the tedious Balefire, who gained the ability to channel corposant fire – soulfire. Ms Bonnington, the Fashion Accessory, reshaped it, in exchange for me retconning her not to birth the Celestian Madonna. She no longer remembers the bargain, of course. It was repurposed by Camellia of the Fey in exchange for… well, there was an exchange of which you may someday become aware. All to equip Citizen Z with a means of channelling Herringcarp’s arcane energies through her host body and various weapons.”
“So what?” demanded Liu Xi.
“That is what Beth’s wearing, her only protection,” Ebony recognised, “for as long as the Hood’s retcon is maintained.”
“Indeed,” said the Hooded Hood.
“Holding Miss Shellett hostage,” sneered Sir Mumphrey. “A coward’s trick, sirrah!”
“A sensible precaution given the immature nature of some of my opponents,” the archvillain countered. “Age does not always bring maturity.”
Visionary clenched his fists in frustration. “First off, stay the hell away from my students. Second, why on Earth do you want Beth to suffer any more? Why condemn her when Laurie wouldn’t want that? If Lisette was really your friend, your lover even, then why go after Beth?” He paused and thought for a moment. “What are we missing? Why did you even let us into your Asylum at all?”
Flapjack winked as he grovelled past with a dinner platter. “Why is the table set for six?” he offered helpfully.
“Now you ask, Visionary,” the Hooded Hood observed. “Very well. See…”
***
Citizen Z’s batons did not glow with ectoplasmic energy while Beth Shellett wore them. Nor did she have the years of combat training that Lisette was able to use when she’d occupied that same body. But the metal rods still crunched into Thermogogue’s arm very nicely, sending him screaming back, swearing.
Beth didn’t bother to stay behind and make a clever superhero jibe. She ran off as fast as she could down the subtly twisting corridor.
The floor twisted as much as the walls. Eventually Beth was running on what had been the side of the tunnel. The torch brackets were now at her feet.
There was a roar from behind. Beth knew it wasn’t Thermogogue because she heard his strangled scream and its abrupt end. She carried on, desperately hoping that one turning or another would bring her to Laurie, or whatever was left of Laurie in these endless mad corridors.
Spineripper leaped from the shadows to grab her. His claws slid off Citizen Z’s short cape, failing to tear it, and he fell on his face. Beth kicked out once and kept running.
A short way ahead was a crossroads. Spineripper’s noisy pursuit ended as the feral villain was consumed by whatever else tracked the fugitive schoolteacher. Whatever it was swathed itself in shadow and sounded huge and hungry. Beth raced to the junction where she had to make a snap choice.
The shuffling half-ghosts shambled up the corridor to her left, each slipping in and out of reality as it struggled to remain real. To the right the corridor dripped with fresh blood, some of it slowly piling up into humanoid form. Beth almost fled straight ahead until she realised that something razor sharp and unseen was scraping across the dust on the tunnel floor.
Behind her the darkness closed in.
Beth had run out of good choices. She lurched left.
The half-ghosts clutched at her. Most of their hands could not find purchase on CZ’s suit but Beth had not donned the mask. Phantom hands scratched her face and clawed her hair. She was pulled down into the mass. Whatever spectre faded from existence was replaced by another intent on her destruction.
Sickly dancing flames gushed down the corridor like fire on oil. The ghosts around Beth were seared away but she felt no heat at all. Indeed, she was colder than before.
A ragged ghost in a ragged shift floated near her, hair moving in a spectral wind. She was gaunt and wild, but Beth recognised her. “Laurie!”
Amnesia looked on her blankly. The darkness reached the crossroads.
“Laurie, it’s me, Beth! Beth Shellett. Your old roomie. Your friend! Laurie!”
Amnesia looked at the black and purple costume the mortal wore, as if it was familiar to her. She looked at Beth hungrily.
“C’mon Laurie. This is the time for you to remember. Please! I came here for you. To try and help you. To set you free or… or to set you to rest.”
The darkness gushed forward, spiking out tendrils of grasping shadow.
Amnesia frowned at it. It fell back a pace.
“Can you speak?” Beth asked the ghost girl. “Can you remember at all? Is there anything left of you?”
“I… I don’t… remember.”
“Your name is Laurie. Laurie Leyton. You were once a hero called Lisette. That was your codename. You were once – you are still – my friend.”
“I don’t remember.”
“You were betrayed so often. You suffered. From what the Hooded Hood told me, even after you vanished you suffered some more. A lot. You were made into a ghost by this place. Its ghost.”
Amnesia looked blankly past Beth at the darkness beyond. The corridor seemed narrower than before.
“The Hooded Hood arranged for you to become Citizen Z, in this outfit. You wore my body while I was comatose. You were… we were in the Lair Legion. Me in body, you in mind. Can’t you remember? And then you gave it all up, so that I could be healed and whole. And I am, Laurie, because of you.”
Still no response.
“Tell me what I can do to help you. I can’t leave you like this, to this! It’s not fair!”
“Life is not fair,” said Amnesia, who had been well taught it.
“Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to make it right. Don’t give up, Laurie. You have friends who love you. You’re not forgotten though you don’t remember us. You’re not alone.”
The darkness edged in again. The spirit of Herringcarp was distracted.
“Beth?” Amnesia asked, uncertainly. “I don’t… I can’t think…”
“You need a body,” the schoolteacher understood. “Laurie, could you possess me again? Like when I was in a coma? Could you do it now?”
The ghost shook her head.
“Not even if I agreed? If I wanted it? I could be like… a lifeboat. I could carry you out of here. Just for a while.”
Amnesia blinked, confused. “I could devour you.”
“Of you could just visit, maybe? A room-share? Only maybe not leave your naughty lingerie hanging over the kitchen sink this time?”
“I could kill you and take your flesh.”
“But you won’t. You’re my friend too. So if you need to and if you can… come in.”
The darkness surged at Beth. Amnesia stepped into her.
A livid, lurid flash of soulfire seared down the corridors, destroying evil wherever it burned.
***
The Widget jumped up as ManMan returned to his caretaker’s flat. “Joe! I was so worried!”
“You sold me to the Baroness in the first place!”
“Doesn’t mean I wasn’t worried, Joe. That’s a mean thing to say. I’m not a monster.” Alice White bit her bottom lip and looked over at the irritated Elvis impersonator. “Do you hate me now?”
ManMan chuckled. He grabbed her and gave her an epic kiss worthy of a Mother of Dragon-Widgets. “Alice, it turns out that the Hooded Hood is going to conquer the Parodyverse. He’s already got the kit and he’s stolen the power and, well, it’s not looking good for the home team. So…” He smooched her again, “I am going to buy you a nice supper for once, and then we are going to play Mal and Inara until we can’t even breathe any more.”
The Widget squeaked a bit as she was grappled, but she did not object.
***
“All I’m saying is, now I want that wig to join the LL,” CSFB! told his team-mates. “Anything that can make Hatty that rude without swearing and wind up a tight-ass lawyer so bad needs a regular slot on the roster. It could team-up with the Sorting Hat and fight crime.”
“I think we’ll probably not do that,” Hatman insisted. He still had an urge for cheap red wine and steak and kidney pie.
“We didn’t get into the Baroness’ mansion,” Yuki pointed out.
“But we did get the whole area designated a potential crime scene and cordoned off with no admission behind police tape,” Ham-Boy countered. “That’s going to seriously disrupt the Baroness’ pastry deliveries.”
“And it wilt rain upon yon domicile for the next forty days and nights without surcease,” added Donar. “With the possibility of rains of toads. And mayhap a whale.”
Yuki thought more carefully about the situation. “Elizabeth von Zemo must be in turmoil,” the cyborg P.I. judged. “Like Sir Mumphrey, she recalls a second set of events for the last eight years. In that history she wasn’t an accessory to Laurie’s death. She didn’t betray the Legion and try to kill Sir Mumphrey. She was almost, if not quite, a hero – accepted if not liked amongst us, respected, useful. Maybe even loved. Now she’s back to being what she was before. That juxtaposition must hurt.”
“That’ll make her more dangerous than ever,” Silicone Sally predicted. I need to talk to her, she thought, but did not say. We are due a conclusion.
“Well, any ending that keeps the baroness from the profiterole trolley for a while is okay in my book,” CSFB! grinned. “Plus HB got VV’s number, and that’ll sell on eBay.”
***
Meanwhile, in the year 2262, a furious conqueress tossed a data slug at the malefactor before her. The poor insect squeaked once as it was spattered across the target’s personal force field.
“A disintegration warhead is missing from Arsenal Four,” the silver-jumpsuited ruler of the temporal crossroads city Kinkicross pointed out. “The alarms were overridden with an imperial code. Only two people have that code. I didn’t use mine. So…?”
“The devisse wasss required,” hissed the metal-masked tyrant in the high-tech body armour.
“Oh, for Zod’s sake, take that flaming mask off, Kyza!” the metal-masked tyrant’s mother scolded him. “It’s not big and it’s not clever.”
Kyza the Sub-Conqueror reluctantly released the hatches and hissed the helmet aside, glowering at the world. “This is a genuine artefact. It belonged to Dirth Vortex, you know. It was retrieved from the Dreary Dimension at immense cost. Many lives…”
“Don’t care,” Empress Kinki snapped. “What I do care about is that a Class 1 Negation Warhead was extracted from the weapons cache, was loaded into a temporal shunt engine that had been programmed over two laborious decades to bypass a certain building’s chronal shields, and was materialised in your father’s conference room!”
“It would have worked,” sulked Kyza. “They would all have been disintegrated and their atoms deleted from the continuum if I’d been allowed access to the main temporal projectors. As it was, I couldn’t shift back enough accompanying tech to distract that firehouse’s primitive systems…”
“You failed, Kyza! Not only did you fail, but you utilised a resource I had been specially saving up for when I wanted your father specially dead.”
“I waited until my brother and sister weren’t there,” the sub-conqueror argued. “Though why you want to preserve those wastes of timelines I do not know. You have me.”
“Yes, that’s probably the reason,” Kinki snapped.
“Look, it was pretty much the last available temporal window to slot an extinction alteration into the timeline of the Radium Age heroes before… well, before you-know-what, when time travel becomes impossible.”
“Do you think I don’t know that? That I hadn’t made preparations? That there was not an appropriate lethal response waiting for the very last instant? And now you’ve gone and set Harper and Framlicker on guard. Really, Kyza, I am very disappointed in you. Go to your punishment frame and don’t come out until I tell you.”
“But empress-mother…”
“Now, Kyza.”
The sub-conqueror jammed his helmet back in place and stomped away. “Nexxxt time I ssshall kill them all,” she promised. “And my ridiculous sssiblings. Oh yesss…”
Of course, that assumed there was a next time after you-know-what.
***
Silicone Sally was watching the coverage of G-Eyed and CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s press conference, with Ham-Boy, Hatman, and CSFB! when Sir Mumphrey’s Rolls Royce glided over the long bridge to Parody Island and pulled up on the Lair Mansion forecourt. “They’re back!” she said unnecessarily. “You think…?”
“Hallie knew they were on their way back,” Yuki reported, appearing from the Operations Room. “If there was a serious problem we’d probably know by now.”
The big car’s door opened and Citizen Z got out. “Uh oh,” Sally breathed
Marie Murcheson raced out of the mansion’s front door and down the steps to confront the spectral superhero. The Lair Banshee ground to an halt a yard from CZ, baffled.
“It’s alright,” Ebony of Nubilia said. “Really,”
“Hey!” called CSFB! “So you got her back from ol’ Hoody then! Lair Legion Line Down, right?”
Citizen Z pulled off her mask to reveal the short brown hair and restored face of Beth Shellett. “Hello again, everyone,” she declared. “Nice to be back. Um, is it nice, Marie?”
Hallie twinkled into holographic presence. “Vizh?” she called for an update.
“Unretconned as far as I know,” the possibly-fake man reported. “Um, I am still seeing you, right? I mean, seeing you seeing you? That’s still a thing?”
“It’s a thing,” Hallie assured him. “A little thing, really. Tiny.”
“You promised to delete those Lisa subroutines.”
Marie Murcheson stared deep into Citizen Z. “Both of you?” she recognised.
“Timeshare,” CZ replied. Suddenly she grinned. “It’s Beth’s body so she’s the boss, but when evil is afoot then she wakes me up and suddenly I’m Laurie Leyton, the supernatural, spooky Citizen Z.”
Silicone Sally blanched.
“Something wrong?” Ham-Boy checked with the flexible ex-felon. “Is this about you helping the Baroness to kill her or similar?”
“Pretty much.” There was the other shoe. “That’s me out of the LL. I’d better try Drury’s offer. I can’t stay around now she knows what I did.”
“Um, she’s coming over here. Right towards you.”
“Can I run?”
“Too late.”
Citizen Z reached them. “Sally Rezilyant. I remember now why I didn’t like you.”
“You sent me to jail,” the flexible felon pointed out.
“I did. So you think that makes us quits?”
Sally shook her head in admission. “I don’t think anything can. Not for what I did. Not for what happened to you – both of you. I’m sorry. I’ll get my stuff and go.”
“Oh no,” Lisette told her. “You don’t get off that easy. Normally you’d have to take me out for a wild night of booze and guys to make it up to me, but since my landlady is a celibate temperancer I guess we’ll have to settle for Plan B.”
“Uh, what?” Sally asked, as baffled as Marie had been earlier.
CZ prodded Sally’s ample chest. “You have to stay on here. You have to be the best damned superhero you can possibly be. Every day, every moment. You have to make it count. Because I’ll be here watching you. You have to prove yourself to me.”
“Er, right.”
“There’s more. When the time comes and I need to move out of Beth, if there’s a big-ass adventure to get me back in my own bod or similar, you’re there, right? Charging along with me into hell or Herringcarp. And if the other Beth, the von Zemo evil bitch variety, hasn’t learned anything from being retcon-married to Sir Mumphrey for eight years and keeps on keeping on like she was before, you’re with me when I take her down. Okay? Deal?”
“Deal. I mean, yes.”
Lisette paused and pondered before adding, “I don’t have all the bits of my life back yet, but I know I made some really bad choices. And then I got second chances. They were like gold. Better than gold. I owe people for my second chances. I’m paying them back to you. Make it good.”
Goldeneyed had appeared at the doorway. He watched the confrontation and reconciliation with wide eyes and open mouth.
“Yes, Bry?” Citizen Z asked him.
“Lisette?” he ventured. “Or Beth? Which one are you?
“Which do you want me to be?” CZ asked dangerously.
“Oh, he is so busted,” Hatman murmured to CSFB!
“Yep,” grinned the wired wonder. “Let me just go get a lawn chair and some cheetos. I want to enjoy this.”
***
Night fell over the damaged city of Paradopolis. The bodies left by the Chain Knight had been cleared from Parody Plaza but it had been a long clean-up for City Police Commissioner Don Graham. He made a last check that everything was under control, stepped under the do-not-cross tapes, and headed off to find his car.
“I’m getting too old for this,” he muttered to himself.
“Not for much longer, pig,” someone close behind him told him.
Graham recognised the Australian tones. “Rupert Oliver. Jumbuck. I heard you’d slipped out of prison in Worralorra a couple of days ago.”
“Yeah. I’ve come a long way to kill you, copper.”
Graham considered this. “Rupert Oliver, I’m arresting you on charges of escaping custody and threatening a police officer. You have the right to remain silent, though I doubt you’re smart enough to use it. You have…”
The adamantine-boned lunatic in the killer rabbit costume reached to drag his claws over the Commissioner’s throat.
Instead the howls of the demented damned surged through Jumbuck’s brain, even as crackling green energy flames surged along his unbreakable bones. When he fell quivering and whimpering to the floor it was a mercy.
Don Graham turned round and saw the dark silhouette of Citizen Z. “Thanks,” he breathed. “I was careless letting a giant rabbit impersonator get the drop on me.”
Citizen Z hesitated. Her body language changed. Her short tattered cape stopped fluttering in winds that were not there. The luminous edges of her costume ceased to glow.
She pulled her mask off to reveal her face. “Dad?” she called quietly.
Don Graham pushed his shock aside and embraced his daughter.
***
The Hooded Hood turned away from his Portal of Pretentiousness and let it fade to black.
“So you let Amnesia go,” observed Alwin Hazlewood.
“It is said to be the thing to do,” replied Ioldabaoth Winkelweald, “with one you love.”
The restored Clockwatcher did not reply. After a suitable pause he changed the subject. “You have acquired the six fragments that you sought,” he noted. “The so-called Insanity Stones.”
“Indeed.”
“And the other things your require, the calculations and so forth.”
“I have,” the cowled crime czar agreed.
“The Baroness will know. Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises and the Moon Public Library…”
“That is so. That is necessary – even essential. They will be required. Now the next phase may begin.”
“Shooting whole Earths did not breach the Wonderwall.”
“No. There are still a few more preparations. Have you discerned what I still need to do?”
“To escape the Parodyverse and eliminate its Creators? No, I’m afraid that is beyond me.”
“Some of the clues are there, if you dig deep enough,” the Hooded Hood promised. “For now, get some rest. Your ordeals have been retconned but I have allowed you memory of them so that you may add that data to your collection.”
“The ability to revert to that clockwork form may prove useful at some point also,” admitted Clockwatcher. “Goodnight, sir.” He hesitated. “For what it’s worth, I think you did a noble thing with Amnesia.”
“Do not repeat that to anyone,” warned the Hood. He did not say whether Mr Hazlewood was right or not.
Then the Hooded Hood sat in his shadowed throne room, staring at a blank dark mirror, quite alone.
***
To be continued…
***
A Note from the Bench for Queer Customers and Circus Judges: Those puzzled by Hatman’s legal wig (and the meaning of the footnote title here) are referred to the body of work on TV and in books of the late Sir John Clifford Mortimer, CBE QC regarding the unstoppable advocate Rumpole of the Bailey. Given that the seedy barrister is a favourite of our currently-ailing poster JJJ, I thought it might cheer JJJ somewhat to insert a brief cameo at a moment of legal tension. There are few litigations that would not be immeasurably enlivened by the intervention of “never plead guilty” Horace Rumpole.
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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