Untold Tales of the Resolutionverse #361: The Moral Choice
Previously: Untold Tales of the Parodyverse #356 #357 #358 #359 #360
Cast descriptions in Who's Who in the Parodyverse
Place descriptions in Where's Where in the Parodyverse
Over 1000 previous stories at The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom
And in summary for the link-phobic:
After an attempt by former cosmic power Wilbur Parody to rewrite the Parodyverse to his liking that ended with the celestial infrastructure in tatters, the Dreaming Celestian Space Robot has awoken unrestricted to fulfil his great intentions. Primarily amongst these is to conduct the Resolution War, the last great conflict of the Parodyverse that will reveal the Answer for which the Parodyverse was created. At midnight tonight, all heroes and all villains will clash without mercy – or choice – in a lethal fight to the finish. All the combatants know what is coming. None can evade it. Thereafter the survivors and the Parodyverse will no longer be required and it can be shut down.
***
34. Danny Lyle at the End of the World
Harlagaz Donarson loomed over Danny Lyle and glowered at him. “Why art mine lady Vespiir weeping?” he demanded in menacing tones.
Denial glared back at the demihemigod of thunder. “Come with me into the kitchen and I’ll tell you.”
“Go,” urged R.J. Clement, the Mutate Liberation Army, as he sat beside the tearful Caphan seeress. “I’ve got this.”
“Kitchen, then,” Gaz agreed, still offering Danny the Ausgardian Whomping Stare.
They entered the cluttered student dormhouse cooking area and closed the door.
“Gaz,” Danny blurted at once, “you’re my friend. You’ve got to kill me.”
“What dids’t thou say to Vesp?”
Danny shook his head. “It’s not that. She sees glimpses of the future, but right now all she’s seeing is hundreds of different ways that all of us die at midnight tonight. But I asked her to focus – made her focus – on me and Kes.”
“Thou wished to knoweth what becamest of yon true love.”
“I wanted to know whether I killed her.”
Harlagaz paused. “What?”
“Think about it, big guy. You’re all heroes. Most of you Juniors are either related to big good guys or you’re patterned on them. And you’ve earned your H-cards the hard way, doing good things. I’m the son of the Hooded Hood. An alternate version of me became the Moderator and almost conquered the Parodyverse – by hunting down and draining the life out of hundreds of alternate-reality versions of Kerry. I once claimed Herringcarp Asylum, the Portal of Pretentiousness, and leadership of the Purveyors of Peril and pointed them all at the Parody Master. You know now that I murdered the leader of Young Heckfire in case he one day threatened Kes again.”
“I hast no problem with that one,” Harlagaz pointed out. “Yon Lord and Master didn’t need crushing like unto a squirmingickcarrion of Ukgard.”
“You might not mind. The law and the Lair Legion would have a different view. But the point is I’m not on the side of the angels. I hang with you guys because you’re my pals. I fight the people who fight you. I sometimes do the right thing because that’s what Kerry would want. But tonight, at midnight, when that imperative we’re all feeling in our brains cuts in and overrides everything, which side of goodies vs. baddies do you think I’ll be on?”
Harlagaz considered it. “‘Tis a difficult one.”
“Not according to Vesp. I’m on Team Evil. And specifically, I’m on Team Evil aimed against the set of white hats who are most narratively interesting for me to fight. That’s the Juniors. That’s Kerry.” Danny gripped the edge of the counter top. “If you don’t kill me first, I will murder Kerry. Just like the bloody Moderator did. Only I’m better than him, so I’ll be more effective.”
“Mayhap you underestimateth Lady Kerry for the nonce?”
“What, you mean she might take me down first? She kills me instead? Yeah, she might. But what does that do to her, huh? Say she survives this fight and the imperative goes away and she remembers burning me up. What do you think that does to her?”
“Naught good.” The demihemigod scratched his dirty blonde locks. “‘Tis a bafflement.”
“I’m probably not the only one going through this pre-Resolution War imperative-anxiety,” Denial admitted. “All those heroes with no-kill policies that they’re going to abandon at twelve. All those villains with long-term plans that will be wrecked by a big brutal final brawl. Heck, Kes and I aren’t the only couple who are or have been that’ll find itself on different sides. What about CSFB! and his baby-mama Pelopia? G-Eyed and Citizen Z? Or families that will fight, siblings versus siblings, parents against children? The Harpers are probably a small war zone just by themselves, assuming anyone can straighten out the family tree enough to decide who’s still in continuity.”
“There must be some means of avoiding such clashes.”
“That’s the whole point. There isn’t. I’ve been probing this imperative. It’s not pushing us to kill the opposition yet but it’s still operating in other ways. Push at it, Gaz, and you’ll see. You can’t sedate yourself, or lock yourself away, or even cripple or kill yourself. It’s not allowed. Anything you do to try and put yourself out of the coming fight is vetoed.”
Gaz was puzzled. “Why would’st I want to miss yon fight? ‘Twill be right glorious for the nonce, the final Ragnarok, wherein all felons art smitten to the uppermost into…” He caught Denial’s expression. “Ah, but other views might vary, I see.”
“Yeah. We vary. I don’t want to fight the Juniors. You guys are really good but I know you, know just where to strike. It would be brief and it would be lethal, and there’s a good chance that I’d end up doing the one thing I swore I would never do in all of time and space: hurting my Kerry.” Danny blinked moisture from his eyes. “So that’s why I need you to kill me now, Gaz. Please.”
“Art that allowed?”
“It’s borderline. There are already some minor hero/villain clashes happening in advance of the main event. Some villains wanted to get a head start. Some heroes like to be proactive. SPUD and HERPES are already more or less at Defcon 1. The League of Righteous Vampires is tackling the Shapeshifter’s Guild. The Xnylonians and the S’Zox are absolutely failing to find each other. So if you attacked me you wouldn’t be inhibited.”
“I art never inhibited when I attacketh.”
“And I’d be forced by the imperative to prevent myself from being taken out of the game early. But I can Deny that for a minute or so; just manage to suspend that tiny part of the overwhelming genetic-psychic-mystic over-ride that’s compelling us all to this insane big clash. I can free myself from the command to resist you snapping my neck long enough for you to do it.”
“And… thou art dead.”
“Can you see another way, big guy? To save Kes?”
“No.”
“Neither can Vesp. This is it. So I’m asking you, as my friend, as Kerry’s friend… end me. Now, while I can still bypass the imperative.”
“And what dost I tell mine lady Kerry when she asketh why I hast slain thee?”
“I’ve left some letters for people, explaining. Good-byes. Thank yous.”
Harlagaz swallowed hard. “This art bravery, Danny Lyle. This art heroism. Tis far from villainy. Mayhap thou hast changed sides now?”
“Vesp says not. That’s why she’s crying. Will you help me, Gaz?”
“Aye.”
Danny’s eyes glowed green. “Make it fast.”
Harlagaz lashed out and snapped Danny’s neck.
***
This section comes after AnimeJason’s tie-in Fair Fight
“Well, that was hardcore,” VelcroVixen approved. “And I’m not talking about that memorable night when I showed a Young Heckfire newbie the difference between Dollar Date or Silicone Sally and a real supervillainess. You must really like that Shepherdson girl you had to marry.”
“It was handfasting,” Danny insisted. His neck hurt. “You did not take my pants.”
“Actually I didn’t, which is why you can’t deny them back. I think Harlagaz’ Aunt Hoki has them, over in the Consequence Tent. There are some clothes over there you can wear. I even provided a Rebel Without a Cause jacket.”
Danny looked around him. He was under canvas, a small striped awning that contained only a single bed and some medical monitoring equipment. “I died,” he insisted. “Did my father retcon it?”
“Not this time,” VV informed him. “This is rather more complex.”
“So the Hooded Hood is involved.” Danny took the complexity as conformation. “Where are we?”
The tent-flap moved aside and a woman in the sluttiest possible version of a nurse’s uniform looked in. “Hello, lover,” Suicide Blonde greeted Danny. “Welcome to the Destiny Carnival.”
“Bambi? I thought you were dead? There were rumours…”
“Yes. The Destiny Carnival is one of the established half-way zones between life and the afterlife. Like the Ghost Taxi Company and the DMV. Some people here are alive. Some of dead. A lot haven’t yet made their minds up. So naturally when I had a spot of bother I ended up back on the payroll.”
Danny knew a little about the dimension-wandering predatory Carnival. “I thought Colonel Destiny was pretty thoroughly stomped by the Lair Legion back in the days before mobile phones.”
“There’s always a Colonel Destiny at the Destiny Carnival, lover,” Bambi Bacall insisted. “This one has had us out on some pretty distant tours. But of course we had to return for tonight’s showdown. One last performance, and a gory time is guaranteed for all!”
Danny decided that trousers were a good idea at present. He got dressed.
“So am I an exhibit now?” he asked the two watching villainesses.
“No. Just a punter,” Suicide Blonde admitted. “We’re doing a favour for the Hooded Hood.”
“Which is why I’m here,” VelcroVixen explained.
“And Hoki, the Ausgardian god-slash-goddess of wrecking people’s days?” Danny asked.
Suicide Blonde shivered. “She’s about the nicest of the people doing their hoodoo in the Consequence Tent. That’s how you were brought back, Danny. Best not to look too closely at the detail.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t work for me, Bambi. Why did the Hood want me back this way? It’s not like I didn’t go to a lot of trouble to avoid tonight’s killing spree. And where’s this Consequence Tent?”
“The Hood wanted you back for a number of reasons, naturally,” Vicki Vee answered. “The tent is across the causeway, the black one with the miasma of evil floating around it. I strongly recommend you don’t look in there.”
Danny pulled his jacket on and left the tent.
“How soon they grow up,” Suicide Blonde said to VelcroVixen sadly.
***
Denial made his way across the Carnival. Night had not yet fallen so the fairway was not open to visitors or victims. The tents and caravans were mostly closed, only their gaudy painted signs promising the wonders and horrors they contained: Mystic Morgosa’s Crystals of Revelation, Enormous Irma’s Pie Challenge, the Maze of the Mirror Murderer, Suicide Blonde’s Sensual Snakes, Hotstuff the Fire Vomiter, the Revolting Reverse-Satyr, Axo the Amputator & His Museum of Limbs, Sado and His Perilous Performing Pygmies, Wexford the Dissected Man, Vasto the Wonder Frog.
Danny frowned especially at Dr Loveray’s House of Enthrallment; Kerry had bad experiences with someone using that technology.
He was able to find the Consequence Tent very easily. Nothing else was pitched near it. Even the vardo wagons seemed to have edged away.
Danny ventured inside.
Three terrible females presided over the complicated techno-mystical diagram that filled the tent. Danny surmised that the one with the improbably horned helm – or possibly it was her head – must be the Ausgardian Hoki. Another matched the painting outside the tent of Mystic Morgosa, although Morgosa Le Fey was much more beautiful and terrible than any mortal image of her. He did not immediately recognise the one with the blaze of blue flames around her head.
“Hi,” he said. “I have questions.”
“He came!” Morgosa snorted. “That’s ten souls you own me, Vesperine.”
At the name, Danny looked more closely at the third woman with the blazing coronet. Although her skin was leached albino white, she might have been an adult version of the Caphan seeress had had left weeping a short while before. “Vesp?”
The entity that turned her attention on him was the worst of the three. She eyed Danny with bleak assessment, reading him and determining which of his possible futures would be the worst to direct him towards.
“Oh, you recognise Vesperine, Lady of Torments,” Hoki exalted. “Oh, this should be good!”
“I’ve moved on a lot since I was the timid Caphan exile,” Vesperine promised Danny. “That was… such a long time ago. Before my damnation. Before hell. Before I clawed my way from supposedly-eternal torment to claim my place as a hell-lord. Before you helpfully removed my principal rival Grimpenghast for me, allowing me so much more opportunity.”
“You are not future-Vesp,” Danny denied; but he felt his power shiver off that future, leaving it unchanged.
“Yes. Let’s leave that one to fester for a while, shall we?” Hoki suggested. “Tell the boy what’s happened and let’s get on to the interesting stuff.”
There was something pinned in the middle of the glowing diagram. Danny couldn’t quite discern what it was.
“What you see here is a collection of three different mystic traditions,” Morgosa revealed. “Each of us owed a service to your father. Hoki for him aiding her escape from the Oldman’s confinement while Ausgard was shifting to Comic-Book Limbo. Vesperine for him initiating the chain of events that led to war in hell and the downfall of her opponent. Me for him destroying the King of Stories, the supposed First Chronicler, and releasing me to be what I was before I served my own term as Chronicler of Stories, a half-fey enchantress of puissant power. So, divine magic, infernal magic, and Faerie magic, each combined to achieve what none might do alone.”
“To bring me back from my escape plan?” Danny objected.
“Your father still has uses for you,” Vesperine gloated.
“I’m not talking to him.”
“You will now,” Hoki snickered.
Danny ignored her. He focussed his attention on the blur in the magic circle. His eyes didn’t want to rest on it. He denied that it was beyond his sight.
First he saw the chains; hundreds of them, barbed and hooked, rusting but unbreakable. He recognised them. “These were part of the Chain Knight. You’ve got his corpse here. You’re using it to bind something.”
“The Heckraiser spent a period as the personification of Death,” Morgosa mentioned. “That and his proclivity for locks and bonds makes his corpse the ideal medium for this operation.”
Danny forced his denial further.
He saw the person laying in the chains. She had been mostly vivisected, her organs trailing from her body to connect to nodes of the magic lattice that surrounded her. She wasn’t dead, because she couldn’t be – at least not for long. So she hung in agony, dying over and over, as her power was bled from her.
“Who’s that? What have you done to her?”
“Oh, she’s the way we brought you here, Daniel,” Vesperine told the shocked young man. “Her power is ideal for this. Unique, even.”
“Right now you are officially dead,” Hoki explained slyly. “Off the roster. Your imperative to fight the Resolution War is cancelled. Deceased villains won’t be invited – although a few that everyone thinks are dead will doubtless make unpleasant surprise returns. Obviously there’ll be undead and unalive in the killing spree, but not the characters who are dead dead because some of those deaths form important grudge-match context for tonight. So you’re the only player in all of this who isn’t currently in the Space Robot’s hand.”
“We are not forbidden from attempting to revive more villains to add to our number when the War begins,” Morgosa went on. “That was wriggle-room enough to allow us this little… experiment.”
“You should be dead, Denial,” Vesperine concluded. “Instead you temporarily died, like so many of the heroes during the recent Normalverse, and were dragged back through the special qualities of our unfortunate guest here: Temporary Death of the Family of the Pointless.”
“They all retired,” Danny knew. “Coincidence, Lusting, Whinging, Glamour, Death, Temporary Death, even Space Ghost. Common Sense had long since abandoned his office.”
“That’s what the Hooded Hood arranged, yes,” Hoki agreed. “Then Temporary Death was invited back by the Triumvirate of Greater Cosmic Offices – primarily to save your life. Remember?”
“This is just the extreme consequence of what she agreed to,” Morgosa declared, with a mirthless vulpine smile. “She should have read the small print.”
“Her sacrifice might allow us to destroy the Space Robot,” Vesperine, Lady of Torments explained. “It is a sacrifice we were quite willing to make.”
Tracy, Temporary Death, writhed in agony between screams.
“We should thank you, Danny,” Morgosa noted. “After all, it was the Moderator who pioneered this kind of technique. We simply improved it with better… materials.”
“I can deny it,” Danny insisted, shocked and horrified. “I can undo what you did, what you made her into for me.”
“And then you’d be back with fiery little Kerry,” Hoki predicted. “Alive. Ready for midnight. And you’d find that the imperative inside you had worked out your Denial trick and would prevent you trying it again.”
“Or you could talk to your father and see what he’s up to,” Morgosa offered.
“That’s what you’ll do,” Vesperine predicted. “Once you chose to come to this Tent of Consequences, that was the Consequence you faced. You will leave poor ‘Tracy’ here to her demolition and destruction and you will face… the Hooded Hood.”
***
Herringcarp Asylum loured on an isthmus above the turbulent cold Atlantic, goading tormented waves to die on its shingle shore. Clouds boiled in the sky, painting its bleak grey walls with shifting shadows.
Danny had seen many moods of the sinister place. He had never known it crowded. Now the half-medieval half-Victorian sanatorium teemed with unpleasant people making unpleasant plans.
He edged around the current roster of New Proctology who were arguing whether they should now be called Deep Proctology. He ignored a salute from Huntmaster and pretended he didn’t hear a call from Argh!Yle, Evillest of Socks. He navigated round the chapel where Sgt. Snail had gathered the sewer-dwelling Outcasts, but so did everyone else. He ducked as HuntingJustice DeathMarrow hurled Krotch across the room.
Clockwatcher was speaking urgently to Gamona, the green-skinned mesh-tattooed interplanetary killer. Danny didn’t care. “Is he in?” he interrupted.
“The Wailing Cloister,” the Hood’s secretary answered. “He’s expecting you.”
“That’s because he retconned this to an instance where I turned up now,” the Hood’s son grumbled. He saw Gamona about to object to his cutting in so he handed her ten dollars. “Here. Buy underwear.”
There was desperate, agonised screaming coming from the open quadrangle where the Hooded Hood waited. The sound echoed round the asylum corridors and made Danny shudder. Despite the tightly packed villains in the other areas, the long passageway to the cloister was entirely deserted.
Danny didn’t knock. He denied the door-bolt and pressed in.
The Hooded Hood was watching Citizen Z. The purple and black clad Legionnaire was floating two feet from the ground. Crackles of swirling purple energy laced through her into the pillars of Herringcarp. She was the source of the mad howling.
“Are you helping her or hurting her?” Danny asked.
“It’s difficult to say,” the Hood replied. “I suspect her different aspects are intending to fight on different sides at midnight. Only one can control the flesh they share.”
“Beth and Laurie?” Danny would have expected both to stay with the heroes.
“And the Spirit of Herringcarp. Never underestimate the evil in this place.”
“So what are you doing to her?”
“Nothing useful, apparently. Any recourse I took would weaken the Asylum at a time when I need it to be at its most deadly.”
Danny stuck his hands in his pockets. “Because of the Resolution War,” he observed sullenly.
“Yes. I believe Herringcarp intends to attack the Lair Mansion. It is the most primitive narrative course and the Dreaming Celestian lacks an appreciation for subtlety.”
“You control Herringcarp.”
“Often. Then there is tonight.”
Citizen Z spasmed some more, reaching out with clawed hands to grasp or fend off something only she could see.
“Can I do anything?” Danny wondered.
“Yes. You could deny Miss Leyton’s ability to overcome the Spirit and Miss Shellett’s capacity to interfere.”
“I mean to help the good parts of your pet ghost,” Denial snarled.
“That would help. The conflict would be resolved. Then those parts of her that were not dormant could sleep. It is mercy.”
“You could do that too, then.”
“Yes. But mercy is not a priority for… the Hooded Hood.”
Something was wrong with that logic. “But if you could interfere and get CZ entirely on-team for tonight…”
The cowled crime czar looked carefully at Danny. “Yes…?”
“But you’re not…”
“Indeed. Proceed.”
“Then… you need Citizen Z in this state. When I asked if you were helping or hurting you didn’t say you don’t know. You said it was difficult to say. Which isn’t the same as ‘can’t say’ or ‘won’t say’.”
“An interesting speculation, Master Lyle.”
The Hood’s son bared his teeth. “Maybe you just like torturing women? I’ve just come from the Destiny Carnival’s Consequence Tent.”
“I’m not sure one could term Temporary Death as a woman. She is more of a universal concept portrayed in human form.”
“You’re perma-torturing her to keep me in the Twilight Zone.”
“Indeed. No thanks are necessary.”
“Or deserved. I’d found my out. Why did you butt in?”
The Hood folded his hands behind his back. “There are a number of reasons. One of my purposes in engendering you on Madame Symmetry of Synchronicity and then arranging for your anonymous upbringing and eventual introduction to the world of superheroes was for an eventuality such as today.”
“The Resolution War? You wanted me to have a get-out-of-it card?”
“The time when I require a Celestian Space Robot to be destroyed.”
“And you expect me to do that?”
“You survived on the occasion I arranged for you to trespass in Galactivac’s World Ship, did you not?”
Danny’s brows rose. “That was… an audition?”
“A dress-rehearsal perhaps.”
“So what have you set me up to do for you this time? Apart from whacking about the most powerful Celestian being there is?”
“There is nothing I can ask of you, Danny. The imperative restricts any such instruction.”
“Except you set me up to be excluded from it,” Denial realised. “So you can’t tell me what you want from me. But you’re made it possible for me to get it.”
“The Space Robot’s imprimatur is both powerful and precise.”
“And you specialise in twisting words and splitting hairs. It’s almost a second super-power. So… you snatch me from my one glorious gesture of self-sacrifice. You carve up the last of the Family of the Pointless still manifesting. You get me de-listed from the Top Trumps bumper pack. And you meet me here in the cheerily-named Cloisters of Wailing.”
The Hooded Hood said nothing.
“And CZ is here,” Danny went on. “I can’t do anything to help Laurie and Beth but I could free the mad Spirit of Herringcarp who empowers the supernatural superhero. Because the avatar of the Asylum has a major grudge-match envy-fest going on with the Lair Legion’s Mansion.”
“There are entire dungeon levels spawned here entirely because the Lair Mansion developed some beneath Parody Isle. Only the ones in Herringcarp are nastier.”
Danny realised that if his father had chosen to respond to that comment then there was good reason. “Just this week ago, Marie Murchison, the Lair Banshee, the Spirit of the Mansion, led the LL under their house and found their way to the Storyheart. So what has Herringcarp packed away deep underground that can rival or top that?”
“It is difficult to say,” replied the Hooded Hood.
“But that screaming wreck hanging there in the creepy visual effects is the Spirit of the Asylum,” Danny reasoned. “If anyone could guide me to whatever-it-is then it’s her.”
The Hooded Hood actually looked as if he pitied Danny. “I’m certain that the Dreaming Celestian would not wish you to pursue such a course. I must advise against it.”
“Of course you must.” Danny snorted. “Right. To be clear: I’m immensely pissed at you. One day there’s going to be reckoning between us. Just not today. Right now I need to… well, I’m not explaining myself to you, you old bastard. I’m just going to deny Laurie and Beth and hope I’m not dooming the Parodyverse. Oh, wait, it’s pre-doomed. So let’s go.”
Denial gasped Citizen Z’s clutching hand. His eyes flashed with eerie green light that seemed to spark through her own shifting purple luminescence.
She became uncannily silent.
“Yeah,” Danny told her. “It’s that time. Take me to the secret under Herringcarp.”
“Goodbye,” said the Hooded Hood.
***
Next time: Aella! Hacker Nine! Covenant Guest House! Exu the Doomherald! The Necromancer General! Gamma Ray Gary! And maybe even some actual cast that usually star in this series! All the bits I thought would be in this issue except the bits that inevitably escape to some other story in Untold Tales of the Aellaverse #362: I Want To Be Where The People Are
***
Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2017 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2017 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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