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Lair Legion: Year One, part 2 – How the League of Regulars got a mansion, how Zemo got a Scourge, and why Visionary managed not to wet his pants Sunday, 05-Mar-2000 05:47:43
THE STORY SO FAR: It is the dawn of the modern age of heroes. After banding together to save Paradopolis from the respective plots of supervillains Peter von Doom and Baron Zemo, the superhero Jarvis, amorous advocatrix Lisa, millionaire technologist Jaime Bautista, and juvenile nonentity spiffy have decided to for a team , tentatively entitled the League of Regulars. This team is still unaware that their former adversary the dragon Fin Fang Foom is now possessed by the mortal Andrew Dean, childhood friend of the mysterious urban legend the Dark Knight. Lisa is so excited by the prospect of a new team that she has completely forgotten to return the strange “Booke of the Law” she discovered in her employers’ offices at attorneys Coot, Coot, Wellfudge, and Coot. The same law firm appears to have been meddling in the lives of several will-be heroes, and has recently mailed a mysterious package to Australia for the attention of one Gavan Carstenson. As for the League of Regulars, they were last seen being approached by an old man offering them a headquarters, who introduced himself as Hollywood V. Those who want to read this account in full can do so by accessing Lair Legion: Year One, part one. Baron Heinrich Zemo laughed the sort of laugh only reserved for archvillains when they’re in the middle of doing something inconceivably evil. Trickshot rolled aside cursing his broken bowstring, wondering how the high-tensile wire he’d checked personally only yesterday could possibly have frayed, reaching for a replacement from his shoulder pouch with one easy movement. The hordes of B.A.L.D. jumped on him and kicked him senseless. When they had ensured that the fight was finally knocked out of him they dragged him back to Zemo. The arrogant archer stifled a groan and spat blood and a tooth and snarled up at the purple-masked criminal genius. “Do your worst, Nazi! It’s too late for your little plan anyway. Help is already on it’s way.” “Is it really, Carl Bastion?” Zemo chuckled. “Have you sent someone you would trust with your life to get help for the poor beleaguered school before us?” he gestured to the shadows where a svelte woman in a black catsuit emerged. “Perhaps your wife, the Contessa Natalia Romanza?” “Talia?” gasped Trickshot. “I’m sorry, Carl,” the lady answered in her seductive Russian accent. “I was Zemo’s agent long before we ever met. He owns me. I never expected this mission to get complicated by falling in love with you.” Carl Bastion felt the stab of a wound worse than any that the B.A.L.D. thugs had inflicted. “T-Talia? You’re a spy? All this time I thought we were tryin’ to find this school and stop Zemo getting’ it, and really you were using me to expose its whereabouts to that bastard?” Natalia Romanza nodded miserably. “Zemo instructed me to go as far as I had to to uncover this location, the Order of the Observing Eye’s training school for neophyte heroes.. I just never expected… you… us.” Then Trickshot knew how his bowstring had failed, and that Zemo had not only triumphed but destroyed the hero’s life as well. A bald man in a more elaborate version of the B.A.L.D. uniform marched up and gave Zemo a Nazi salute. “Our surveys are complete, Herr Baron,” Erskine Blofish reported to the masked monarch. “The first through third year classes are virtually all present in the building, as is their mentor Professor Xalter. They suspect nothing.” Zemo chuckled and made sure he was watching Trickshot as he gave the order. “I need their files,” he told the commander of S.P.U.D., “but nothing else. Kill everyone in there and raze this festering nest of fledgling heroes to the ground.” “Noooo!!” shouted Trickshot. “Yes,” agreed Blofish. He gestured and the attack began, ruthless, sudden, and devastatingly effective. “You have failed, little hero, like so many that have come before you,” Zemo told the captive archer. “and now…” “You promised you wouldn’t harm him,” Natalia reminded Zemo, stepping between her husband and the archvillain. “You promised me.” Zemo backhanded her to the floor with a lightning movement, raised his luger, and shot Trickshot right between the eyes. “I lied,” he told the widow in black. “It’s a villain thing.” An alternate universe away, another Carl Bastion, the one who would one day get to the mainstream Parodyverse and replace the one that had just died, woke up with a blinding headache and didn’t know why. “It’s… big,” considered spiffy. “And old. And dusty.” The four members of the newly formed League of Regulars looked around the darkened hallway of the ramshackle old mansion that Hollywood V had brought them to. “It’d make a good base,” Jarvis admitted, admiring the ornate ceiling plasterwork and the dark wooden wall panelling. “Who does it belong to?” “You, actually,” Hollywood V answered. “It was purchased by one of the golden age heroes back in the late forties, but he never lived here. He left it in his will to the next superhero team like the Golden Age Matadors to be formed. And of course, there never has been another superhero team until now, so that makes you the proud inheritors of… well, let’s call it the Lair Mansion.” “We’re hardly superheroes,” Jaimie Bautista smiled. “Well, except for Jarvis here.” “You will be,” HV replied. He lifted one of the dustsheets, uncovered a Regency writing desk, and pulled a yellowed pad of paper from the interior. “Thought I left some writing stuff here,” he muttered to himself. “This is the address of the attorneys who hold the appropriate deeds and legal documents. They’ll sort it out from here.” “Coot, Coot, Wellfudge, and Coot? That’s where I work!” exclaimed Lisa Waltz. “Is it? What a coincidence,” replied Hollywood V. Lisa looked suspiciously at the wolflike old man with the white beard and the ancient staff. “What are you up to?” she demanded. “Nobody just gives away prime if somewhat rotting real estate like this. How did you know we’d be getting together? What do you want us to become a team for? “Um, Lisa,” spiffy ventured. “He’s gone.” The Regulars looked around. It was true. Only the four of them stood in the dusty darkened hall. “So what do we do next, oh glorious leader?” spiffy asked Jarvis. “We don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” Jarvis decided. “Lisa, can you sort out the legal stuff and see if we can actually use this mansion?” “Sure,” the amorous advocatrix agreed. “I’ll check with Old Man Coot back at the office before close of business and then you can meet with me tonight to debrief me.” And there was an electric smile with that phrase that went straight from her lips to Jarvis’ groin. “We should meet together here in a week,” Jaimie Bautista suggested. “I’ll spend a bit of time seeing about doing this old place up, adding a few modern conveniences, that kind of thing.” “Doing this place up?” spiffy objected. “It’s huge. It’d cost a fortune!” The millionaire owner of Bautista Enterprises smiled. “And you point would be?” Spiffy gave up. “So, uh, do you have any millions that you, like, don’t really need…?” he ventured. Zemo pushed aside the manila folders, sighed, and rubbed his forehead. “How am I supposed to carve and empire of destiny with this kind of dross for materials?” he demanded. Heike Zemo stroked his crowned forehead and soothed her agitated husband. “Nobody said it was going to be easy,” she reminded him. “Are old Professor Xalter’s notes so unreadable that there was no point you seizing them and destroying him and his academy?” “I shall prevail over his horrible scribbly writing,” Zemo vowed. “And it was worth destroying that damned school just to make the Order of the Observing Eye squeal. They must have lost nine tenths of their crop of little heroes in one fell swoop. The only ones that survived were…” (here he referred to the folders) “a little chap called Goldeneyed who’s been moved to another dimension for his safety, some spotty youth named Exile who was off sick that day with a groin injury, Matrix, whom we know about, and those on some field trip to the Savage Park. It’ll be a while before Gomtar and his cronies are able to get back into the game.” Heike browsed through some more of the captured notes. “What about the girls? These misogynists just seem to shuffle them off to some place called Amazon Isle.” “We’ll deal with them later. A low-yield thermonuclear device ought to spoil their day,” growled the masked monarch. “The whole point of the exercise was to get the files on potential recruits for the league I intend to create to destroy Jarvis and his new cronies. They’ve already cost me Fin Fang Foom, and I’m surprised the Grim Reaper’s still here, to be honest.” “Have you noticed that the Reaper seems different today?” the Baroness Zemo wondered. “Somehow… less?” Zemo shrugged. “Perhaps he likes defeat no more than I do.” Neither the Baron or Baroness could know that the extradimensional avenger known as the Grim Reaper, having completed the first phase of his mission in the Parodyverse for the inexplicable Void Spectre, had now abandoned Zemo’s coterie, leaving behind a pale simulacrum of himself, the first of several doppelgangers who would eventually serve in Zemo’s battalion. “So who do we have left to interview?” Heike asked, ignoring the pile of failed interviewees that would presently begin to smell in the corner. The Baron consulted the folders. “Next up is an escapee from the Mythlands, a being of the starry vaults who calls herself Pegasus…” Gavan Carstensen had a clear choice: stop for the sexy blonde hitchhiker whose brief shorts and cut-off top were giving new definition to the words brief and off, or drive by. It wasn’t a hard choice. “G’day!” he bade her, leaning over move the big cardboard box from the other side of the pickup bench. “Where are you heading?” “Depends which way you’re going,” she shrugged, stretching her long tanned legs out in front of her as Gavan started out again along the desert track. “What are you doing so far from anywhere?” Gavan could have asked the same of this tanned vision, but millions of years of successful male genetics told him that when a beautiful hitchhiker poses you a question you just answer it and hope she asks another (“Do you mind if I take this sweaty top off?” is a good one to hope for). “Well I got this mysterious package here, all the way from the U.S.A.,” he began. The girl leaned over to look inside the cardboard box. Donar managed to swerve back onto the road just in time. “It’s a baseball bat,” she frowned. “With a nail in it.” “Yes,” agreed Gavan Carstenson. “And a sticker on it that says ‘Property of Donar’. Are you Donar?” “Only Donar I know is the Norse God of Thunder,” Gavan shrugged. “Not that I know him personally, you understand, but I’ve always had a kind of interest in that stuff.” The girl had found the note that came with the package. “If you wish to reclaim your true inheritance,” she read, “take this token to Worralorracaves and smite it upon the ground.” Gavan looked a bit sheepish. “Well, it was either that or go to work,” he explained. “OK”, the blonde agreed, crossing her arms and sitting back. “Let’s go.” They drove about five miles more before Gavan held out his hand to her. “I’m Gavan, by the way. What do they call you.” “Trouble,” the girl smiled back. The ragged sole survivor of the New Tomorrow Corporation expedition regained consciousness at the bottom of the shaft he had fallen into to find a shimmering golden silhouette squatting down over him. “Gah!” he gasped and scrabbled backwards away from the inhuman manifestation. He reached for his sidearm but that had been lost like all the rest when the people chasing him had rammed his car. “Hello,” the shining silhouette said. “What do you want?” the explorer demanded of it. “Are you the one who’s been following us all the way through Eastern Europe, all the way through the old Ottoman Empire, dogging our heels, picking us off one by one to prevent us finding our goal?” “No,” Yo replied. “That would be being the uncute nasty men in the unpleasant purple pyjamas that tried to attack Yo outside when Yo was looking down the big well you were to have been falling down. Yo has asked them all to go away.” The explored shook his head to clear it. Perhaps he’d banged it on some rocks as he fell or something. “Are you… are you one of the Utopians, then? One of the entities who built these distance-warping underground passageways that network the planet? One of the Secret Illuminated Masters of the World?” “No. Yo is being Yo,” the pure thought being sent from the Yo-planet to investigate the strange goings-on on Earth explained good-naturedly. “Yo is being a strange visitor from another planet.” “You… you are?” the explorer gulped. Things were getting more confusing than ever. Not only were strange pyjama-clad men trying to kill him as they had slaughtered the rest of his expedition, but now shining aliens were trying to shake his hand. Yo nodded happily. “But Yo cannot stay here long like this. Yo is being a cute thought being, and cannot be staying long away from Yo-planet unless Yo bonds with human fleshyform. Yo was wondering if cute Manuel would like to bond?” “You… you want my body?” Manuel frowned, backing further away and preparing to protect himself from invasion of the bodysnatchers – or worse, something that involved probes. “Yo is wanting to find a friend to be one Yo with,” the happy thought being explained, or thought s/he did. Manuel pointed over Yo’s shoulder. “Look! Isn’t that William Shatner?” Yo turned to see but by the time s/he had worked out that no cute Enterprise captains had beamed into the cave, Pittsburgh’s foremost adventurer had pelted off down the strangely-smooth corridor to avoid being assimilated into the Yo. “Hey, come back!” Yo warned the retreating Manuel. “If you are going that way you will be running into a full Gaaaaaahhh! Force event! You will be being transformed into a master of the Gaaaahhh!, a Starseed!” Manuel vanished into the glowing cavern ahead. “Oh well,” You shrugged to him/herself. “At least uncute Dirth Vortex and his nasty purply followers up above ground will be to being miffed now the bright side of the Gaaahhh! has a champion again.” Yo examined the slightly dimming glow of his/her hands and frowned. “Plan B then,” s/he decided. “Yes, it is perfectly legal,” old Ezriah Coot told Lisa Waltz in the stifling mustiness of his oak-panelled lawyers’ office. “The, ah, Lair Mansion is bequeathed to whatever League of heroes comes forward to process a claim. All you have to accomplish now to make it valid is to do something heroic.” “We did stop Peter von Doom and Baron Zemo blowing up Paradopolis,” Lisa pointed out. “You clearly haven’t read J. James Jerkson’s editorial on that in the Daily Trombone” sniffed the ancient lawyer. “However, that notwithstanding, you performed those actions before you elected to incorporate as a team. You need to do something now to establish your bona fides as a genuine band of so-called superheroes. It will require rather more than standing around in scraps of leather with spikes.” “We’re working out ways of taking down Zemo right now,” Lisa assured the senior partner. “Jarvis is out appealing for information.” “I’ll say it again, SG. The League of Regulars is going after Zemo. We want any and all people who know where he is and stuff like that to come forward and tell us,” Jarvis explained. “Okaaaaayyy!” Space Ghost grinned. “We’ll be back after these media moguls brainwash you with their subliminal advertising to hear more about what ol’ Jarv here has to say about kicking Baron Zemsie, and to bring Mother Teresa, Madonna, and forgotten Beatle George Harrison into the debate. Keep tuned to Space Ghost Coast to Coast!” “What?” asked Jarvis as the TV show cut to commercial. “Most impressive,” lied Coot. “You must be very proud of your brother.” Lisa froze. “My what?” In the background a pair of glowing green eyes flashed once before the Hooded Hood vanished back to the storylines he should have been in. This retcon was properly planted, heading off the Lisa and Jarvis hot love scenarios in at least the majority of Parodyverse timelines and establishing them as brother and sister, as revealed in The Hooded Hood Chronicles #14: The Lair Legion vs the Purveyors of Peril. His evil work here was done. “My… my brother.” “Oh yes,” Ezriah Coot assured her, polishing his pebble spectacles with his handkerchief. “I had Mrs Arterychoke do a thorough background check on you before hiring you, Miss Waltz. You and your brother were separated as infants. You and your sister were placed in the care of the Little Sisters of Discipline…” “Don’t mention my sister, that big cow!” scowled Lisa. “…and Jarvis – as he now chooses to be called – was placed in… care elsewhere.” The parchment-pale attorney did not mention then or ever who had made those legal arrangements all those years ago. “Jarvis is my brother?” “Yes, Miss Waltz. Jarvis is your brother. Why? Haven’t you been getting along with him.” That wasn’t Lisa’s problem. “We’re back, chatting with Jarvis, a guy who’s name is just too much like Elvis for it to be a coincidence,” Space Ghost told the airwaves. “But before we ask him about Blue Suede Shoes, I’m just being handed a note to say… that Space Ghost Coast to Coast, my TV show, is being cancelled?! What? What is this crap?” A voice off camera answered placatingly, “Now don’t get all upset, Vision Boy. It’s not the end of the world. It’s just that audiences plummeted after that nude politicians special we did with Dan Quayle, Bob Dole, and Margaret Thatcher, and…” “Cancelled?!” “Er, if I could just appeal for Zemo information once more before the plug is pulled…?” Jarvis enquired. “Cancelled?” Space Ghost wailed. “How can they cancel me?” “It happens to th’ best, foo’,” Mr T told him. “Don’t repress it, dahlink,” Zha-Zha Gabor advised him. “Repress it? Me?! Cancelled? I’ll show them all! Spaaaaaaaannnnnkkkk Raaaaaaaayyyyyyy!” “Now that,” Visionary told Cheryl from the comfort of his sofa in their condo in Dullard’s Corner, “is what I call entertainment.” Cheryl looked up from the engineering job ads to absently “Yes dear” him. “Just what we need in the war on injustice,” the Dark Knight muttered, flicking off the monitor in his Knightcave. “More amateurs bumbling around getting in the way of real crimefighters.” “I think we should give them a chance,” Andrew Dean in his draconic Fin Fang Foom shape suggested. “After all, ‘When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle’.” he quoted. “With respect to Edmund Burke however,” DK replied, “he never said anything about idiots banding together.” “So little sister thinks she’s got what it takes to be a superhero?” Daio Waltz commented to her pet rat Davidowksi as she watched the TV set go to an emergency test card. “We’ll have to see about that.” And the diabolical Doctor Moo chuckled all the way back to her laboratory. “So it begins,” Xander the Improbable told his hamster familiar Harry. “Don’t worry, we don’t have to start manipulating them for years yet.” Meanwhile, fifteen time-zones away, the sun was setting over the high ridge of outback that contained the Worralooracaves. And now Gavan Carstenson had a tough decision to make. “A snakebite?” he asked his sexy blonde companion. “On your inner thigh?” “I’m pretty sure of it,” she told him. “Perhaps you’d take a closer look and check for me?” Gavan’s body was stepping towards the hitchhiker who called herself Trouble before his brain had even processed her request; but strangely the ancient pickaxe handle in his hands refused to budge and go with him. Gavan almost toppled over as it refused, against all logic, to obey the laws of physics. “Gavan? I need help getting my shorts off here,” Trouble pointed out. “Yeah. Just a minute,” the big Australian answered, distracted from the girl for a moment by the sheer strangeness of the baseball bat’s behaviour. He picked it up from where it had fallen and experimentally moved it around. When he took it towards the caves it moved freely. When he tried to take it back towards his pick up and Trouble, it steadfastly refused. “I think I’m managing to peel them off,” the blonde called. “Although it’s taking a lot of squirming and wriggling.” “Great,” Gavan said absently. Suddenly the landscape here seemed almost familiar, and Gavan had a sense of timelessness, of things which were not so much old as everlasting. And he knew which cave he was supposed to enter, and which passage he was supposed to take.” “Gavan!” Trouble called. “Back in a moment,” the big man answered. He still clutched the strange weapon he’d been mailed as he strode into the entrance to the Worralorracaves. He didn’t know what to find down there; but he knew it was his destiny. The blonde girl watched him go with narrowed, hate-filled eyes. “Fine!” she spat. “We tried to do this the easy way but you wouldn’t play! Well don’t think I’m going to let you reclaim your heritage as Donar, Hemigod of Thunder, firstborn of the All Pappy, champion of Ausgard, my dear brother. There’s lots of mishaps that can befall an ignorant mortal before he reaches the Wyrdmootholme. Or my name isn’t Hoki the Deciever!” “This is a moment of destiny, my minions,” Heinrich Zemo told his newly assembled strikeforce. “In moments we will strike at the United States aircraft carrier Incontinent. We shall neutralise its communications and defensive capabilities, disable the crew, and then remove the compliment of nuclear weapons it carries for our later use. Are there any questions?” “Yeah,” Wonderbooster replied. “Do you think this costume is really me? I mean, doesn’t it make me look like a Christmas tree?” “No,” Jam told him. “It makes you look like a p*&%$.” “Silence!” Zemo warned, sighing that he’d been reduced to putting a failed actor though his ionisation process because the not-out-of-work-just-resting Roland Cow had the right quirk in his genetic makeup to mean that he had survived the procedure where the other three hundred subjects hadn’t, and to hiring a mutant whose only power was to stun opponents with his foul language. “Any questions about the mission at hand?” he tried again. “Who’s in charge?” the Late, Great, Donald Blake asked. “When we’re down there in combat, I mean. Who’s field leader?” “I should be,” Venom told the enchanted cane wielder. “I’ve got the best kill rate here, and I can gut an enemy from sternum to, uh, another part of them in no time at all.” Pegasus sniffed at the amalgam of Zemo’s mercenary Gunther Stein and some rubbery alien symbiote the Baron had acquired. “Mass murder isn’t a qualification for leadership – or even a sign of a warrior’s competence. Killing isn’t important. Winning is. I didn’t sign up to slaughter people, I signed up for the challenge of excelling.” “And for the hundred thousand f&£*@$ dollars a month salary,” Jam suggested. “The Man Who Wasn’t There will be in charge in the field,” Zemo answered curtly. “Er, what if he like, isn’t there?” the Late, Great, Donald Blake asked tentatively. “I don’t want to be leader, Zemo,” TMTWT worried. “I don’t work well with other people anyway. I like to be in the shadows, working in the background. It’s what I was made for.” And who made you for it, Zemo wondered but didn’t ask. “Fine,” he snarled in exasperated tones. “Grim Reaper will be in charge.” Frankly, the Baron was surprised that the arrogant scythe-wielding maniac hadn’t demanded that from the first. “Oh yeah,” Tomas muttered. “Can’t let a psycho like Venom lead us when Grim Reaper’s available.” “What about me?” demanded Wonderbooster. “I’ve got the profile for it.” “You’ve never done anything yet,” Pegasus objected. “Your combat dossier’s empty.” Wonderbooster turned to the side and puffed out his chest. “No, I mean, I’ve got the profile,” he explained. “I’m just too good looking not to be leader.” “Would you care for me to change that?” the (substitute if anyone but knew it) Grim Reaper hissed, flexing his scythe-arm. “Heh, stick it up his…” “Silence!” screamed Zemo again. “Reaper will command! This I command!” He glared at his strikeforce. “Any other – sensible – questions?” Pegasus raised her hand. “Yes?” the Baron snapped. “What are we called?” the winged woman from the Mythlands (who, if her teammates but knew it was sometimes the human-looking Penny Christopoulos and other times a flying horse) asked. “I mean, every band of warriors needs a name, a title to be feared by their enemies. What are we to be?” “Blood-Reavers of the Disembowelled Sphincter!” Venom suggested. “Wonderbooster and his Band of Baddies,” Wonderbooster offered. “The %$&*£ of the %*&$+@ %$*&£,” contributed Jam. “The Team That Wastes It’s Time Talking About Its Name When There’s a Mission On,” the Man Who Wasn’t There complained. “The Masters of Evil” Tomas grinned. “Isn’t that taken?” objected the Late Great Donald Blake. “So?” Tomas shrugged. “Silence! Silence! Silence!” bellowed Baron Zemo. “We stand on the brink of destiny…” “You said that already,” Tomas pointed out. “…On the brink of destiny,” shouted Zemo, “and you quibble about a name? You are all people who have been… left out from normal society, excluded simply because you are evil, or psychopathic killers, or creatures of myth, or bad actors, or foulmouthed bores, or bad moderators, or… whatever the hell the Man Who Wasn’t There is. Therefore you shall henceforth be known as… the League of Left-Outs.” The League of Left-Outs looked at one another. “But that is a working title, right?” Pegasus checked. “Are there any more relevant, mission-related questions?” the Baron demanded. “Yeah,” Tomas chimed in. “About the benefits package you mentioned in the recruitment brochure…” Zemo shot Tomas in the head. He could do without one of the group. “Any more questions?” he asked. “No sir,” the team assured him. “Nope. Definitely not.” “Excellent. Then let us proceed.” “Well, you’ve certainly worked wonders with this old place,” spiffy admitted to Jaimie Bautista as he took his seat in the state-of-the-art superhero meeting room at the refurbished Lair Mansion. “Yes, nice job,” Jarvis agreed, his shirt front gently smouldering. “I do have to ask about the stunner gun defences on the front door however.” “Still in the experimental phase at the moment,” Jaimie admitted. “Sorry. Haven’t programmed them to recognise all the team members.” “Or, in fact, to stun,” Jarvis pointed out. “Anybody who hadn’t been infused by the Jarvis cosmic in a mystical cave like I was would have been toast by now.” “Ah yes,” the League of Regulars’ technological expert admitted. “Well the problem is that if I called them Sub-Atomic Particle Disassembly Disintegrator Cannons then the insurance people would have a problem with them.” “Good point,” conceded Jarvis. “Never mind that just now anyway,” Jaimie enthused. “Look at this!” He opened his coat wide flasher-style and spiffy winced before he realised that the young millionaire wore a red and gold metal suit underneath. It was a modified version of the life-supporting armour the technological genius had created to overcome his disability in a recent auto accident. As Jarvis and spiffy watched Jaimie attached a faceplate and shoulder cannons. “May I present the NTU-150 armour,” Jaimie Bautista proudly announced. “The world’s first mobile weapons bodysuit.” “Great!” spiffy agreed, feeling more inadequate than ever. “So, uh, what does the NTU bit stand for?” “Erm, well, this girl I know suggested it…” Jaimie explained a bit uncomfortably. “Go on,” urged Jarvis. “She said I was always playing about with it, tinkering and so on…” “Yes?” “So it stands for New Toy Update.” “Oh,” spiffy answered. “Okay.” The meeting room door opened and Lisa stalked in to demonstrate her new outfit. The amazing this was that there was somehow less of it than the old outfit, and that somehow it managed to stay on her. The whip and razor-affidavits were new as well. “Hi guys,” she called as she breezed in. She spotted NTU-150 in his new armour. “Hey, what a great tool – er, piece of equipment,” she exclaimed. There was a less-than-discreet cough from behind her. “Oh yeah,” the amorous advocatrix remembered, “Guys, this is Dan Drury, a G-Man. He works for this secret government agency called SPUD…” “Super-menace Principal Undercover Directorate,” NTU-150 announced at once. “I, uh, my employer Bautista Enterprises did some design work on this big helicarrier they’ve commissioned.” Drury strode into the room, peered at the heroes through his one good eye, and stroked his stubbly chin. “Awlright, lissen up you yahoos. You’ve stepped forward to be heroes, to stop that Nazi scumlicker Zemo, so now yer gonna get the chance to prove it.” “You know where Zemo is?” Jarvis asked quickly. He’d fought the masked monarch before, and there was bad blood between them. “I know where he’s gonna be,” the director of SPUD answered, “An’ he’s not alone. Whut I need is a few joes whut’s willin’ to go in and stop him.” “You have inside information,” NTU-150 realised. “A spy in Zemo’s camp?” Drury thought there was nothing to gain by telling these neophyte heroes about a shattered young widow who had surrendered to SPUD only hours ago, weeping her repentance at bringing the man she loved to death at Zemo’s hands, spilling everything she knew about the Baron and his plans. “I know where he’s gonna be any time now,” he evaded the question. “An’ I hear that Jarvis here can teleport.” “Let’s go!” enthused spiffy, “League of Regulars, line up!” “That is so not going to be our battle cry,” Jarvis warned as they vanished through the vortex. Warning klaxons sounded aboard the USS Incontinent as Zemo’s great aircraft decloaked above it; but by then it was too late. The Man Who Wasn’t There was already in the comms room, extending his inexplicable aura of not-thereness to black out any transmissions. Jam was by his side and the blistering tirade he sent through the ship’s intercom was enough to stun most of the sailors just through that. Wonderbooster flew down and began to mangle the deck ordinance. The Grim Reaper and Venom made for the bridge to slaughter the watch crew. Pegasus engaged the few defenders who were still staggering about clutching their bleeding ears after Jam’s attack. The Late, Great, Donald Blake headed towards the gunnery deck and the nuclear warheads which were the group’s objectives. “Going somewhere?” NTU-150 asked the cane-carrying villain. Jaimie tried not to get distracted by the high-tech gear around the missile room, even though it was so clearly in need of improving. “Who the hell are you?” Blake demanded, raising his enchanted cane and blowing his adversary through a bulkhead. “NTU-150,” Enty replied. “But you can call me the guy who plastered you across the carrier.” The particle repulsors in Jaimie’s suit whined and sent out charged streams of energy to slam the Late, Great, Donald Blake against the opposite wall. Pegasus was the first to realise something was going wrong with the mission. “Zemo, we have resistance,” she reported over the communications net the Baron had set up. “I appear to be under attack by… a woman in leather underwear?” “We’re here to stop you, sister,” Lisa warned the winged warrior. “Don’t make me get kinky with you.” Pegasus executed a graceful leap over Lisa’s lash but it was a silver-white winged horse that kicked out at the amorous advocatrix as she landed. “Uh-uh,” Lisa grinned, dodging the kick and seizing a handful of Pegasus’ mane to leap onto her back. “I didn’t spend all that time putting down payments on a ranch and not learn how to tame horses. It’s a great trick becoming My Little Pony but it’s not going to help you.” “You’ve had a lot of practise with winged horses then?” asked Pegasus, taking the battle to five hundred feet. “Er…” answered Lisa. Jarvis burst through the glass frontage of the bridge just as Venom was torturing the captain for the command codes to the missiles. “Get it yourself!” the cosmic butler shouted, focussing the narrative energy he knew as the Jarvis Cosmic to hurl the rubber-skinned symbiote away from his victims. “Jarvis,” sneered the Grim Reaper. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.” His scythe spilled black energies across the room, and by the time Jarvis had tuned his invulnerability field to protect himself the nine watch crew were whitened skeletons. “Weren’t we supposed to keep them alive for information?” Venom remembered. “Oops,” the Reaper answered insincerely. “Yeah!” giggled Venom. “Oh well. Hey Jarvis, I read your dossier. You’re not so tough!” The butler was angry about the senseless deaths of these Navy men. “Oh yeah?” he answered. “Does it say I can do this?” and he released a pulse of blistering, searing power that caused the entire command deck to shatter outwards in a great crimson fireball. “Aaaaaaghhhh!” contributed the Reaper, crawling away from the wreckage, his body a mass of flames. He’s die shortly thereafter and be replaced with another identical substitute by the real but absent Grim Reaper. “We didn’t know about that,” a singed and lethally angry Venom admitted. “What else ya got?” “He’s got me!” Wonderbooster laughed, swooping in from behind and powering Jarvis through the decking. “Hey, butler-boy, I’m gonna hammer you into jello!” Jarvis was caught by surprise by the ionic actor, and the stream of powerful and constant blows prevented him from gathering the energies to escape. Wonderbooster kept on laughing and kept on hitting. “I’m gonna beat you to death, little headline-stealing hero,” the villain promised. “Then we’ll see whose name’s right up there in lights.” “What’s going on out there?” the Man Who Wasn’t There asked Jam in the comms centre. “I can’t divert any power to go and check myself while I’m maintaining this shroud of silence.” “Its f$&**^%% heroes sticking their %£$&*^ &^%*s in where they %^*£$ shouldn’t!” the foul-mouthed felon warned. “That’s right,” spiffy warned him. “And I’m here to accept your surrender.” “Who the f%$& are you?” Jam demanded. “spiffy,” spiffy told him. “Now I want you both to put your hands on your heads and sit down over against the wall, okay?” “And why should we do that?” the Man Who Wasn’t There asked. This was the question the unsuperpowered Mark Hopkins had hoped wouldn’t come up. “Er, well you know we’re a team of superheroes right? I mean, Enty’s an armoured battle machine, Jarv’s filled with cosmic powers, Lisa got a really improbable chest. So it stands to reason that I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have some terrible superpower that could blast you into pixie-dust, doesn’t it?” “He has a point,” TMTWT conceded. “F%^*$$ that. I’m going to %*&%$ the little &*%%£ and his mother too!” snarled Jam. “Hey, you leave my mom out of this!” warned spiffy, reddening and taking a step forward with his fists balled. Then seeing Jam take a deep breath he added, “Oh no, please! Don’t use the intercom to magnify your power again. Please!” Jam laughed and did exactly that. The feedback loop that NTU-150 had now installed into the ship’s speakers reflected Jam’s devastating verbage right back at him. The mere backlash was enough to render the Man Who Wasn’t There insensate. Jam didn’t seem bothered. spiffy sighed and hit him anyway. “Sir, the communications blackout on the carrier has ceased,” a technician warned Baron Heinrich Zemo. “What?” the masked monarch snarled. “That means that rescue forces will be on their way. Blofish, send in your B.A.L.D. troopers to expedite the weapons acquisition.” “Bloodthirsty Anarchists Loving Destruction is your ally, not your servant,” Erskine Blofish warned. “We do not leap at your back and call…” He paused because Zemo had gripped him by the throat and pushed him against the wall. “You and your organisation live by my forbearance. Your weapons supply, your prestige in the underworld community, your very lives all depend on me. Be under no illusions as to the nature of our partnership… slave!” Blofish nodded and grovelled and generally turned purple until Zemo kindly took his hand from the B.A.L.D. commander’s windpipe. “Send in our forces,” the bald man gasped; but he decided then that Zemo would have to die. “You’re pretty good at this,” Pegasus conceded as her battle with Lisa carried on. “You too,” Lisa agreed. “When the fight’s over we’ve got to do lunch sometime.” “Ok,” Penny accepted. “If you survive.” “Oh, I will,” Lisa explained. “You see, we know all about your plans and capabilities – well, except for the you secretly being a horse thing. So although you outnumber us, we’ve managed to deploy ourselves to even up the odds.” “Is that why Wonderbooster’s beating Jarvis to death down there?” Pegasus pointed out. “And it looks like Venom’s got your armoured friend on the ropes as well. That rubbery stuff the nasty little chap wears can get under any kind of clothing, even armour if there’s ventilation chinks. It’s very intrusive stuff – believe me, I know!” “Oh yuck!” sympathised Lisa. “Hey, he walked with a limp for two days,” Pegasus assured her proudly. “Anyway, if that wasn’t enough, do you see that secret submarine disgorging the chaps in the silly outfits? That’d be our reinforcements.” “You have reinforcements?” the amorous advocatrix winced, dismayed. Natalia Romanza hadn’t known about that part of the plan, so Drury hadn’t been able to warn the League of Regulars. “Don’t you?” smirked Pegasus. “Zemo thought you had more help than this when you interfered with his Twin Parody Towers plan.” Lisa wondered if Visionary would make that crucial a difference at this point in what was promising to be the first and last battle of the League of Regulars. She wished the people that had been helping her in that battle were her all the same. Things were getting desperate. Lisa Waltz felt a sudden tingle go through her, and she felt so weak that she toppled off Pegasus and plunged forty feet down into the Indian Ocean waters. She wondered what was happening. Her head felt it was going to burst, her stomach wanted to heave itself out of her body. There was a bright flash of summonsing energy. The law provides for a witness to be compelled to appear, and Lisa, whether she understood it or not, had become the guardian of the Booke of Law. When she insisted a person be present, they came. Visionary would have preferred a bit of notice about being instantaneously transported half-way round the world to stop an B.A.L.D. attack squadron. He wouldn’t have been sitting on the toilet at the time, for example. Luckily it meant his pants were down when he saw the assault squad heading towards him. But Lisa had wanted all those who had defended the Twin Parody Towers. That meant that Cheryl was suddenly dropped from thirty feet into the sea right beside the waterlogged advocate. It also meant that a dark-caped figure moved swiftly and silently over the surface of the B.A.L.D. attack sub attaching limpet charges with little red LEDs which were counting down from a hundred. And finally it meant that a very, very large (if confused) dragon suddenly occupied the airspace over the damaged carrier. “Fin Fang Foom’s back!” Pegasus cried. “He’s Zemo’s ally! We’ve won the day for sure!” The Makluan swatted her out of the sky with one giant paw. “I’d like to make a brief announcement,” he told the world in general but the combatants struggling below in particular. “The draconic being from the planet Makulos known as Fin Fang Foom is now under new management – that is, there’s a new person inside the dragon. And this person isn’t terribly impressed with injustice, terrorism, or oppression. So Zemo, I’m going to take your little army apart bit by bit, I’m going to pound your mercenaries so flat they’ll fit under doors, and then I’m coming to do the same to you.” The B.A.L.D. assault sub exploded just then. “I also have a small announcement,” Jarvis added to Wonderbooster. “And that is that it’s not a good idea to get distracted in battle.” Then the butler pounded the ionic actor over the horizon. “That has got to hurt!” NTU-150 considered. “By the way Venom, congratulations. You’ve managed to squirm your way into my waffle-making attachment. Let me give you a demonstration.” The black symbiote squealed and quickly withdrew. “You have a waffle-making attachment in that suit?” Jarvis checked. Enty shrugged. “Hey, you never know.” “Er, excuse me?” Visionary called. “What do I do with all these terrorists who keep surrendering to me?” “First thing, pull your pants up,” Jarvis advised him. Zemo knew when to cut his losses. The odds had just become too variable. “Jam,” he instructed his minion via radio. “Abort the mission. Detonate the warheads as I teleport you out.” “Jam can’t speak to you right now,” spiffy’s voice came back over the headset, “On account of he can’t speak when I’ve got my fist jammed down his throat.” The scoring was done later, when the agents of SPUD had arrived to take the captured B.A.L.D. assault squad into custody, when there had been more casualties amongst the sailors vying to get Lisa out of the water than there had been in the battle (although Lisa thanked them all personally afterwards), when Cheryl had stopped blaming Visionary from propelling her across the planet and plunging her into a cold ocean, and when Finny had taken on the shape of a draconic humanoid and come down to join the party. There was no sign of the Dark Knight. Nobody knew why the sub had exploded, although Foom had a shrewd idea. “I don’t know how I did it,” Lisa was saying to Enty. “You mean summonsing the dragon and the others, yes?” Jaimie Bautista checked hastily. He didn’t want to hear about other fantastic feats Lisa had accomplished since being rescued by the crew of the Incontinent. “Well, according to my readings, you’re manifesting a very specific and controlled aspect of a fundamental force. You could theoretically summons anyone from anywhere in the Parodyverse to your side.” “But how? Why should I be able to do that?” the amorous advocatrix puzzled. A sudden thought brightened up her face. “I can call just anyone I want - anyone and they appear next to me? Wherever I am? Even if I’m in bed, or the shower, or in a bath full of kool-whip or whatever?” Jaimie shuddered. “There’s probably ways of shielding against it,” he considered. There would be by tomorrow if he had anything to do with it. “There’s too much zappin’ about these days. Seems Zemo teleported out his pet villains,” Dan Drury spat, chewing on one of his foul cigars. “But he got his butt handed to him today, an’ he’s not gonna forget that.” “And we have gained a new member,” Jarvis announced. “Fin Fang Foom has agreed to join the League of Regulars.” “Isn’t this the rather large reptilian that was trying to kill us all a week ago?” asked Cheryl tartly. “Actually, no and yes,” Finny explained uncomfortably. “You see, after that fight last week the evil Makluan space-crash survivor dragon got sent to Comics Limbo, and vast amounts of time passed, and when I – that is, the human kid I used to be – accidentally got to Comics Limbo as well I took over the dragon’s body so he could mentally die, and then I got returned as a kid to Earth a few years back and I was able to secretly commute to another dimension called the Silver Age where I got trained to be a crimefighter. But I couldn’t become Finny here until the evil Finny had gone off to Comics Limbo last week. So now he has I can operate as a superhero here. See?” “That’s alright then,” Cheryl answered sotto. “So you’re taking on new members?” Visionary asked Jarvis hopefully. “Only useful ones,” the leader of the League of Regulars warned him. Visionary plunged his hands in his pockets and wandered off dejectedly. “You have spiffy in the team, don’t you?” he muttered, as the triumphant heroes teleported away to the comfort of their Lair Mansion. A cosmic entity with ancient, knowing eyes watched them go. The Chronicler of Stories decided that it was time for him to become involved. In Lair Legion: Year One, part 3: Lots of secret origins, Yo continues to search for a host, Donar spends a lot of time lost in caves, Starseed spends lots of time lost in other caves, Sersi throws a party, Spandex Lass doesn’t join the team, and the Chronicler of Stories appears so things can be properly complicated. But mainly we worry about the Great Sea Monkey Attack and the first superheroes on the moon. The same thing without the irritating HTML error, and still from... the Hooded Hood |
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