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This message Lair Legion: Year One, part 4 – What really happens in the scaffolding behind reality and why spiffy joining the Lair Legion is a sign of the end times was posted by Another section of history so forgotten it had to be made up from... the Hooded Hood on Monday, June 17, 2002 at 12:09.
Other chapters at Lair Legion: Year One Archive
Previously in Lair Legion Year One:
Jarvis, Lisa, NTU-150, spiffy, Fin Fang Foom, Dark Knight, and Banjoooo have teamed together as the League of Regulars, with the, um, assistance of Visionary. The mysterious Hollywood V has got them the ancient Lair Mansion as a headquarters, and Ezriah Coot of Attorneys Coot, Coot, Wellfudge, and Coot seems to know more about what’s happening than he’s telling. Other soon-to-be Legionnaires are also becoming involved without realising it. Starseed has rescued Space Ghost. Gavan Carstensen has entered the Worralorra Caves in the Outback to discover the meaning of his enchanted baseball-bat-with-a-nail-in-it. The pure thought being Yo seeks a permanent host to join with. Meanwhile, more cosmic forces are starting to take an interest in the assembly of heroes, and not all of their interest is benevolent…
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Lair Legion: Year One, part 4 – What really happens in the scaffolding behind reality and why spiffy joining the Lair Legion is a sign of the end times
In a place of ravens and destiny, the Chronicler of Stories sat amidst books older than time and watched the tales of the Parodyverse unravel.
“Anything good on tonight?” asked the Shaper of Worlds, creating himself beside the brooding keeper of narratives. “Hey, I didn’t know you got the playboy channel.”
The Chronicler followed the Shaper’s surprised gaze and saw the scrying pool that was set on the showering brunette. “That’s business,” he scowled.
“Suuure it is,” the origin of fables nodded. “You’re checking she’s using the right bath gel.”
“It is my role to monitor and record significant events at pivotal points in the story of the Parodyverse,” the Chronicler answered gruffly. “This is a significant moment. Watch.”
Shaper settled down and created himself some popcorn. “If you insist,” he shrugged. “But it feels a bit tacky.”
“This. Is. Business,” the Chronicler hissed. “See?”
***
Pilar had survived a hard day working on her doctoral dissertation. She didn’t want to think about micro-organisms or mitosis or Dr Sanchez’ breath any more. She just wanted to relax under the hot stream of the shower and let it wash her cares away.
If only. The steamy shower was refreshing but the sensible student knew that the same situations would face her tomorrow as she’d struggled with today, as she’d suffered from yesterday. “It’s not fair,” she told herself out loud in her native Spanish. “I know my stuff. I work hard. Why should I have to be confident and assertive and popular as well?”
“Is true.”
“Dr Sanchez never even notices my contributions. If I think of anything clever he claims the credit. None of the guys in the lab even notice I’m female.”
“Is no fair.”
“I should just… just tell them. Not that I’m female. They should notice that. Maybe a new hair style or something. But I should… should speak up… and not blush and mumble…”
“Is a good plan.”
“I should… worry about who is speaking to me in my shower,” concluded Pilar. She turned around wishing she’d never watched Psycho. “Aaaaaagggghhh!”
There was a man in the shower with her. He was dressed in a wet black silk shirt, wet black velvet pants, a silk waist sash, and a big black hat with a wet floppy brim. Oh, he had a bullwhip coiled at his waist. It was like every slasher movie ever made. He smiled and bowed politely in the confined space. “Is to be nice to be meeting you.”
“Get out!” screamed Pilar. “I know kung fu!”
“Yo is newly arrived on your planet,” the intruder explained. “Yo is not to be knowing hardly anyone. Well, Yo is to be saying hello to cute Starseed before cure Starseed is becoming suffused with Gaaaah! energy and becoming superinghero. And also is helping cute Gavan to be discovering that he is a hemigod. But is not to be knowing anybody else.”
“You’re not going to ‘know’ me either,” warned Pilar. “Get away from me, you pervert!”
“Yo is not being a pervert,” the pure thought being promised as Pilar rushed past him/her to grab a towel. “Yo is liking rabbits.”
“That’s sick!” gasped Pilar, revulsion on her face. She tried to decide between a dash for the door or a sudden attack with a loofah.
Yo’s cheery face fell. Suddenly s/he looked downcast, smaller and sadder. “Cute Pilar is not liking Yo? Then Yo’s mission is to be failing, and Yo must go home and not be here any more.” And Yo began to cry.
“What?” Pilar puzzled. This bit wasn’t following the traditional slasher script. “What do you mean?”
“Yo is from Yo-Planet,” sniffed the wet Zorro impersonator in the shower. “Yo is here to be monitoring at the interesting things that will be to be happening soon. But Yo is to be having to share a human body to be staying for long away from pure thought being planet, and n-nobody is to be joining with Yo to be making this p-possible.”
“From Yo-Planet,” Pilar noted. “I’ve not heard that one before.” Actually, she realised, she’d not heard many before at all. Yo appearing in her shower was the single most interesting and extraordinary event of her life. “So what’s this… joining entail?”
“Yo and cute Pilar become one person and be happy,” Yo explained, looking up with big brown puppy-dog eyes. “And then we become whatever we think we are.”
“Really?” Pilar asked. “Confident? Assertive? Pretty?”
“Yo thinks Pilar is already these things.”
“And… Yo needs Pilar?” the shy student realised. And just maybe Pilar needs Yo.
“Is important,” Yo promised, still sounding subdued and unhappy. “Will save planet.”
“Okay,” Pilar sighed, dropping her towel and stepping forward. “Let’s go for it.”
***
“Another hero,” Shaper frowned as the two entities became forever one. “You know what this means.”
“That the League of Regulars will need a bigger meeting table? Of course I know what it means,” growled the Chronicler of Stories. “The prophesies are being fulfilled one by one, and the Resolution War is coming.” He pointed to another scrying pool. “Look there.”
***
The cave was full of paintings. Gavan Carstensen had seen aboriginal daubings before, and this wasn’t them. This was more like fifty-foot-high wall sketches done by Gavan’s favourite comic-book artist. “Wow,” he breathed, “these would fetch a fortune on e-bay!”
The explorer held up the mysterious baseball-stick-with-a-nail-in-it that was even more mysteriously giving out light for him to see by. The etchings seemed to be telling a story. “That’s got to be the home of the gods,” Gavan reasoned, looking at the depiction of the city beyond the rainbow bridge. “But what are those giant robots doing surrounding it?” he checked the next image, “And why is the home of the gods now surrounded by kangaroos?”
“An enquiring mind,” one of the two strangers in the shadows noted. “That’s promising.”
Gavan whirled round. “Who are you? Come out where I can see you. I’ve got a bat and I’m not afraid to use it!”
“Now there’s an incentive to approach you. I’m called Hollywood V these days,” the old man with the runestaff introduced himself. “I’m the tour guide, so to speak.”
“Right. Did you send me this bat?” Gavan demanded. “Or are you with that psycho blonde bimbo who tried to get me ripped up by trolls?”
“No, and no,” HV answered. “The bat was sent to you be an attorney’s firm in Parodiopolis, where it had been placed in custody until the appointed time. And the psycho bimbo was your brother, Hoki, god of doing very nasty things to people.”
“Brother?” Gavan frowned.
“He has issues.”
“God?” Gavan frowned deeper ad his brain caught up.
HV pointed to the etchings. “When the Parodyverse was made the mythic gods formed from the raw substance of story. They accreted in a demiplane called the Mythlands and took shapes from the human consciousness. Standard Jungian theology. The gods of the Norsemen, being a little more stroppy than the average pantheon, ended up arguing with a bunch of very powerful entities called the Celestian Space Robots and got themselves exiled – transported – to mythical Australia. Thus they became the Ausgardians, forever changed by their new home. Hoki the bloody-minded is the younger son of the All-Pappy, the Oldman.”
“And Donar’s the older brother,” Gavan remembered. Norse mythology was a passion of his.
“And not the head of Donar’s fan club. Donar broke even more rules than the average Ausgardian and got himself even more exiled,” HV continued. “Shut up in a human body until he learned the basics of warehouse management. Hoki has a vested interest in keeping him there.”
“This sounds suspiciously like a copyrighted comic book story,” Gavan worried.
“Gods are notoriously hard to litigate against,” the other shadowy figure rumbled. He was a very feeble-looking ancient leaning on a much less impressive staff. “That’s why they usually resort to Frosting Giant ambushes and so on.”
Then the icy colossi shattered through the walls, shredding the etchings and filling the cave with their primal cold.
“Ah, that would be a Frosting Giant ambush now,” the second staff-leaner nodded with senile satisfaction. “Hoki never disappoints.”
“What do we do?” Gavan asked HV. HV wasn’t there.
“One of you dies, the other runs away,” the Blizzard Jarl chuckled, leering down at Gavan and the crippled old man. “And I guess you can run faster than yon gimp.”
“Run. Yeah, right,” Gavan snorted. “I’m going to run away and leave this helpless old geezer for you to hurt. Get real.”
The Blizzard Jarl backhanded Gavan across the cavern. “I am as real as death, mortal boy.”
Gavan limped to his feet. “Get out of here,” he urged the feeble old geezer. “I’ll hold them off.”
“I want to see this,” the ancient answered.
The Blizzard Jarl slapped Gavan once more, tumbling him bloody and ragged to the other end of the freezing cave. “This is even better than Hoki promised,” he told his comrades. “Humans squish so pleasingly.”
Above the Worralorra mountains the sky darkened and a distant rumble of thunder disturbed the chilly air.
“Right. Watch this then,” Donar told the old man who watched him through one twinkling eye.
The Blizzard Jarl came in for the kill. Donar smote his baseball bat as he had been told. On the Jarl’s head.
There was a bright flash of lightning that flashed from giant to giant throughout the mighty cavern, hurling them back in singed spasms. Tempest-force winds swept them backwards like chaff. The crack of the thunder sent high stalagmites rattling down onto the intruders. The Oldman remained unmoved and observed with paternal interest.
The hemigod of thunder, Donar Oldmanson, master of the storm, scion of Ausgard, Gail’s offspring of the earth and sky, rose up in the midst of the devastation, his wild red hair writhing in the hurricane, his muscles rippling with the power of the tempest.
“I art back!” he boomed, “Let the smiting to begin forthwith!”
***
“Ouch!” the Shaper of Worlds winced as Donar went in there. “Enthusiastic, isn’t he?”
“And loud,” sighed the Chronicler of Stories. “Very loud.”
“And those two, Yo and Donar, will join the Lair Legion?” Shaper asked.
“League of Regulars,” Chronicler corrected him. “They’re not called the Legion yet. Those two, Starseed and… Space Ghost form the rest of the early membership. Oh, and Visionary, for some reason.”
“Visionary? He’s the one that somehow married the Goddess of HTML, right?”
“Right. I don’t know what she sees in him, but right now Cheryl’s acting as the league’s PR person. And boy do they need her.”
***
“Thank you all for coming,” Cheryl told the press corps and general public. “I’m sorry we had to confiscate your pitchforks and burning torches as the door, but we’ve just had the conference room redecorated.”
“You can pick up your tar and feathers as you leave,” Lisa promised them. “spiffy will be there to hand your stuff back to you,” she added evilly.
The press pack were hardly satisfied.
“What about Banjoooo? Have you really signed up another would-be world conqueror?”
“Who tried to take over France this time?”
“What’s your view on HV’s League of the Forgotten?”
“Does Dark Knight really exist?”
“Have all the Bautista Enterprises rogue toasters been tracked down and neutralised before they spawned?”
“I’ll try to answer all your questions if you’ll just…” Cheryl persisted.
“…public indecency charges against Space Ghost…”
“…accusations made by J. James Jerkson in today’s Daily Trombone…”
“…Starseed is really Michael Jackson…”
“…US Marines suing for sexual harassment…”
A gout of flame shot out across the conference room, roughly three inches above the heads of the reporters. “Shut up!” boomed Fin Fang Foom, the League’s resident alien dragon. “The newly-ennobled Duchess of Lake Superior is speaking!”
“That was by me,” Banjoooo explained with a smirk. “I duchessed her. I happen to be the king of the Sea Monkeys, you know.”
“Thank you, Finny,” smiled Cheryl as the press cowered in silence. “Now we’ll start by explaining what happened with the recent supervillain war, and why Akron needs rebuilding. Then we’ll take questions.”
“Not all of Akron needs rebuilding,” objected Finny in sullen whispers. “Some of the rubble is almost habitable.”
“If you’re a cave-dwelling troglodyte,” murmured Banjooooo.
“They should have let me redesign that place,” complained NTU-150.
Visionary shuddered.
Cheryl explained. “What we faced was basically a power-struggle between two super-criminals…”
“Who will not be named for legal reasons,” Lisa interjected hurriedly.
“Er, yes. Two super-criminals. The first one, Mr… Mr X, was leader of a secret terrorist force called B.A.L.D.”
“Bloodthirsty Anarchists Loving Destruction,” put in Starseed helpfully.
“And he was secretly being backed by the even nastier second one, Mr… er Mr Z,” struggled Cheryl. “Well Mr X decided that Mr Z was throwing his weight around too much, so he hired Mr Y to assassinate him."
“I’m confused,” admitted Visionary. “Was Mr Z throwing Mr Y or the other way round?”
“Mr Y failed to kill Bar… er, Mr Z, but accidentally shot Mr Z’s wife, Baroness, er, Mrs Z.”
“Although she has been placed in cryogenic freeze until a cure can be found for fatal gunshot wounds to the head,” NTU-150 added for technical accuracy.
“Or Mr Z doesn’t pay his power bill,” contributed spiffy.
“So anyway, Mr Z kind of went totally and absolutely insane over this, and sent all his forces led by his League of Left-Outs to annihilate Mr X and B.A.L.D,” struggled Cheryl. “And B.A.L.D.’s primary base was hidden under Akron. And then Mr X’s head got chopped off and placed on an indestructible adamantium body, and there were these killer attack clones, and then Space Ghost turned on this Movie Gun, and…”
“And the League of Regulars solved the problem in such a way as to absolutely avoid all possible lawsuits for excessive force, property damage, or indecent exposure, but collect any reward monies that may be forthcoming,” concluded Lisa. “I think we deserve a round of applause.”
There was stony silence amongst the reporters for almost two seconds.
“So about this battle with Dan Quayle…”
“…truth about having an evil twin…”
“…NTU-150 just being a hologram…”
“…croc and duck incidents…”
“…rumours of hextuplets…”
***
Shaper cupped his head in his hands “The Parodyverse is doomed.”
“You haven’t seen the worst of it yet,” warned Chronicler. “Look.”
***
It was an exclusive little party. Just two hundred or so well chosen guests from the glitterati of Californian society, a sprinkling of European royalty and rock superstars, set on a rooftop garden in downtown LA which had been remodelled to look like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The laser lighting was by Industrial Light and Magic and the live music was from Nerfherder.
And none of it was as dazzling as the hostess. “Enjoying yourself?” Sersi asked her special guest, clinging to his arm and pressing her magnificent bosom up to display Kirby kleavage. “Is there anything you need?”
“No, that’s fine thanks,” Jarvis assured her. “You already sent us the perimeter schematics so we can be fairly sure that if the threatened attack against the Prince of Wakandybar does take place we can get him and your other guests to safety and protect you against anything this side of the Obliterator.”
Sersi glanced uncertainly towards the lounge where a slightly inebriated Space Ghost was treating Donny Osmond and Elton John to a rendition of I lost my pants in San Francisco. “You’re, um, you’re sure the two of you can handle this?” she asked.
Jarvis leaned in close to whisper his answer, and on no account to get a view down that spectacular valley inside Sersi’s green and red designer original. “He’s there to be the obvious one,” he confided. “We have… another member here also. We find it’s best to have a diversion so the real defenders aren’t noticed. So if this unknown diabolical fiend who’s demanding a consignment of Vibratium from the Wakandybar homeworld tries anything, you can be sure that…”
“Eeek!” The first of the cries came from the guests by the canapé table, as the gateaux rose up to attack.
“Invasion of the blancmange monsters!” warned Space Ghost. As the various creamy high-calorie deserts rose up into fearsome shapes he whipped out a strange ray gun from his hip-holster and shouted “Spaaaank Ray!”
“No!” called Jarvis. “Don’t shoo…”
It was too late. The impact splattered the party guests with fondant filling and whipped cream. Jarvis had a Lisa flashback.
“Hey, this doesn’t usually happen until later in Sersi’s parties!” one of the guests called out.
“Climbing up the walls!” a voice from the shadows warned. A knightarang beheaded the first of the biogenetic replicants to scuttle over the parapet. “Some kind of artificial genetic combat drones.” The Dark Knight swung down to drag Britney Spears from harm’s way and drop her with pinpoint accuracy onto Danny DeVito’s head. “We’ve got multiple incursions on all four walls. And… we appear to be under attack by a sentient desert trolley. I hate this job.”
Jarvis heaved two of the replicants together and fried a third. “Find Prince T’Chako and get him to safety, DK. I’ll find the source of these bizarre attacks.”
“Could be a problem,” admitted the urban legend. “We hadn’t factored in an assault from the cheesecake.”
Then all the party guests who had consumed the cheesecake turned round and attacked them. And that gave the replicants enough time to overrun the balconies.
“Aaagh!” screamed Space Ghost. “Pistachio flavour ice-cream! Noooo!”
Sersi watched Prince T’Chako neatly disembowel two attacking replicants with a blunt spoon and then politely showed him to the secret elevator. “I’m sorry about this, your highness,” she told him, “but thanks for agreeing to help flush out the person who dared interrupt one of my little soirees.” Her eyes flashed and lightning surrounded her as she molecularly transformed her clothing first to a spectacular nothing and then into a skin-tight green and black combat costume. “I just hate party poopers,” she warned.
“My pleasure, Lady Sersi,” the prince of Wakandybar assured her.
“Right,” the hostess snarled. “First to sort out whatever it is giving that extra kick to my desert table.” She concentrated, neutralised the mutagenic ingredients in the sentient products and in the stomachs of the possessed party guests. Then she levitated every single replicant and crushed them together into one big ball of wrecked polyplastic. Then she disintegrated it with a flash seen over the entire Western seaboard. Then she looked round for whoever caused this.
Then she remembered that she too had been nibbling at the Black Forest Gateau, but by then she was under its control. “Oh poo!” she swore.
“Problem?” asked Jarvis, just before she hammered him down through nine stories of the skyscraper.
“Sorry about this,” Sersi apologised as she solidified the air around Dark Knight to become a solid block of tempered steel. “I seem to be possessed by the desert I ate!”
“Never fear, my dear. Help is on the way!” came a squeaky but bold voice from above. Everybody swung round to see a jet-pack wearing rodent blazing down on the scene. With practised ease he cut his rockets, tumbled to a landing on Sersi’s ample chest-shelf, and bravely rammed his tongue down the hostess’ throat. The gagging reaction was enough to dislodge the contents of her stomach and thus allow her to neutralise them.
“Rocket Racoon to the rescue!” the furry flier grinned.
Sersi hit him to Denver.
A confused Jarvis flew up from the debris. “I’m guessing you’re not just a society party girl,” he noted.
“No. I’m a successful convention organiser too,” Sersi admitted modestly. “Oh, I’m one of the ancient human offshoot race called the Austernals as well, gifted with amazing psionic metamorphic, telekinetic, and energy conversion powers too, but mainly I like to think of myself as a people person.”
“Y’beautiful,” murmured Space ghost, collapsing happily beneath the piano.
“And I’m guessing you didn’t need us to protect your guests,” the Dark Knight scowled. Somehow he’d freed himself from his steel sheathe prison without assistance.
“Your handsome friend said it best,” Sersi shrugged with a winsome smile, “Sometimes it’s best to have a diversion so the real defenders aren’t noticed.” Then she scowled. “Unfortunately, due to an unscheduled pest control situation whoever was trying to spoil my party just to get some boring magic metal from T’Chako has got away.”
This was true. The Lair Legion would not meet the diabolical Dr Moo, Lisa’s villainous older sister, until later that year.
“Who was that masked racoon anyway?” wondered Jarvis.
“I don’t know,” Sersi frowned. Then she relented and allowed herself a little contented smile, “But he was a great kisser.” She turned back to the surprised party guests, gestured, and repaired all the damage. “Sorry about that little incident, folks, but on the bright side… I’ve just made everyone’s clothing edible. Enjoy!”
***
“Of all the possible Austernals created by the First Host of the Celestians they have to meet that one?” groaned Shaper. “Oh well, at least it’ll be interesting.”
“You think so?” the Chronicler glowered. “The Racoon joins the heroes as well.”
Shaper winced. “You know, I’d been kind of planning to arrange a chance to be with them for a little while myself…”
“Think carefully about that, Carrington,” warned the caretaker of tales. “Every power and principality in the Parodyverse has worked out what’s coming and is trying to either get their agent on the team or have their agent destroy the team. You can’t move for Void Spectres and Dark Mysterious Figures and Living Waffles. Look at these probable futures I’ve been gleaning.”
The Shaper of Worlds considered the images rippling in the scrying pools. “Ouch. So they’re incarnating DarkHwk are they? And is that a Messenger?”
“The last of the Messengers,” the Chronicler noted. “And these teenagers are two-thirds of the Fundamentals. The geeky kid in the alternate reality is Bryan Katz, soon to be Goldeneyed. On the other hand the dork is Derek Foreman, the Exile. They’re being guided by the Order of the Observing Eye.”
“Just what we needed,” Shaper moaned. “Amateurs.”
“Don’t knock them until you’ve seen the rest. See the acne zone there, dreaming about life in the big city? He’s going to end up wielding the Psychostave unless we can find a way to get him killed first. The kid is called Bill Reed, and he thinks Nats is a great superhero name. That loser taking the trash out in the town that doesn’t exist is going to be the next choice for Protector of the Universe. He’ll call himself Amazing Guy. The pubescent Amazon girl failing man-disembowelling 101 is Troia 215. The scabby alien kid on the planet Xnylonia working on the psychoreactive chemistry experiments is Ziles, and she’s going to be big trouble when she grows up a bit. The budding mutant striking out with his math teacher is Joshua Clement, De Brown Streak. And the greasy teenager studying for an exciting career in the fast food service industry? Joseph Pepper, future Knifey stooge, the magnificent ManMan!”
The Shaper was shocked. “I… I thought spiffy and Visionary was as bad as it got,” he admitted.
“Oh no. We’ll skip over looking in on the future Probability Dancer until that car she’s in stops rocking. This is going to be Chaos’ principal champion,” reported Chronicler, showing a shock-haired lanky teenager being pushed inside a locker full of comic books. “The next CrazySugarFreakHero!”
“And his eternal enemy, Order’s incarnation?” Shaper shuddered.
“Ah. This is where it gets a bit tricky…”
***
Whitney Darkness sat on the cliff’s edge and threw pebbles into the restless sea. “I know you’re there,” she called out. “Demon, undead, weirdo cultist. Just come out and I can zap you back to the pit.”
“I’d really prefer you didn’t,” admitted the bespectacled man in the faded red robes. “It’s really hard getting a bus back from the Abyss.”
The Sorceress swung round to stare at the intruder. Since she’d been tiny she had been tutored by her grandmother in the mystic arts and she’d never heard of a supernatural menace that carried a sandwich box before. “Who are you? Speak, I abjure thee, by Samael and…”
“Yes, yes. I’m the chap with the sandwiches. I’m betting you’re a cheese and pickle girl.”
“I’m not telling you that,” Whitney warned her opponent. Maybe it wasn’t exactly her truename but you could never be sure with these malefic beings from beyond.
The challenger unfolded a small tablecloth and sat cross-legged as he poured his tea from a tartan vacuum flask. “You don’t get out much, do you?” he observed. “I’m guessing old Hagatha keeps you safe and bored up in Covenant House, drilling you on the Darkness heritage and your destiny as a witch.”
“We are an ancient line,” the Sorceress admitted.
“And I imagine she has no idea about your plans to run away to the big city.”
Whitney tried to keep her face immobile but failed miserably. “How did you know…?”
“Hard choice,” the strange man admitted, “but I’m sure you’ll feel safer once you’re away from Covenant House.”
Whitney Darkness rose to her feet. “Look, if you’ve come for mystic combat just get on with it, but don’t…”
“Does Jay know?”
Sorceress was silenced in mid shout. She swallowed hard. “Jay?”
“Yes, you know. Jay. Young Canadian chap, you tend to do a lot of unclad swimming with him. There seems to be a lot of skin contact. Straight-arrow dedicated determined hard-working clean-living Jay who is determined to finish school and go on to become a sensible adult person, and may have no idea that you’re going to leave him and live in Gothametropolis York. That Jay.”
“Jay… is none of your business.”
The stranger shrugged. “Things that aren’t my business are my business,” he explained. “I’m sure you’ll encounter him again. Later. When you’ve both grown a bit. You’ve got to claim your birthright and make some hard choices. He’s due for an encounter with destiny and a twist that will surprise even fate if all goes well.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Whitney. “Look, I admit I’m starting to think maybe I need to get away from here, from grandmother, from some bad dreams I’m having about things in attics. Maybe even from Jay. But where do you get off coming here and…”
But Xander the Improbable was gone, and all that remained was a neatly folded sandwich wrapper to mark his passing.
***
“She’s the Demon Lover’s next victim,” the Destroyer of Tales chuckled, intruding uninvited on the meeting between the Shaper and the Chronicler. “And her Jay will become the next Brain Eater, servant of the Emissaries of Order, suffused with the terrible Serious Matter.”
The Chronicler of Stories turned round in irritation at this unwanted intrusion. “You weren’t invited, Samhain. And the stories may yet turn out differently. I think the Demon Lover and Order and even you might all have underestimated this couple.”
“It doesn’t matter,” the Destroyer of Tales shrugged. “I’ve come to secure your agreement for annihilating them all now.”
“After all the trouble I’ve been to in setting this crop of heroes up?” the Shaper of Worlds objected. “I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think at all,” hissed Samhain, his skeletal visage screwed into a mask of contempt. “You don’t think beyond the confines of your petty Office. But together we three are the Triumverate that regulate the narratives of which this Parodyverse is made. The Shaper begins the stories, the Chronicler maintains the stories, and the Destroyer ends them.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” observed the Chronicler.
“Of course it is,” agreed the Destroyer of Tales, “but the fact is that however we interact we have a duty to perform. And without realising it we have almost brought the Resolution War upon us. You have seen the signs. These heroes are the ones who will fulfil the portents. Galactivac will come, and then the Celestians will return. There will be Hell on Earth. Worlds will clash and worlds will merge. The future will return to the present. The gods will war and pass. And the reason for the Parodyverse’s creation, the Question it was made to settle will be resolved.”
“Isn’t that what we’re here to facilitate?” Shaper demanded.
“Yes,” Samhain agreed, “but are you really claiming that this… motley crew of misfits, losers, and imbeciles are the ones who can successfully play out the final conflict?” He pointed his scythe and the Chronicler’s scrying pools boiled to show new images. “Look at them! Dynamite Boy! Chronic! Jack Rabbit! dull thud! Are you telling me that these are the protagonists you would wish to rely upon to settle the fundamental questions of the multiverse?”
“They might do alright,” Shaper argued. “Somehow.”
“Really?” hissed the Destroyer of Tales. “Or perhaps it would be best to eliminate these morons, wipe them from history, and start again with a more promising crop? That is my proposal.”
“We can’t let you do that,” Chronicler objected. “They may be… a little unconventional, but they’re the best we have. Maybe unconventional is what we need.”
Samhain glowered at his counterparts. “You are fools,” he told them. “I see the ends of your own stories before long, and they will both be bitter indeed. Very well then. So be it. We shall settle this in the traditional way, within the bounds of causal narrative.”
“What do you mean?” Shaper asked sharply. “You can’t intend to…?”
“He already has,” Chronicler grimaced as his cosmic senses caught up. “Samhain has loosed the Parody Master on the heroes of the Parodyverse!”
“As is my right. Now we shall see what your little heroes are made of,” the Destroyer of Tales leered. “From the entrails that will be smeared across their world, mainly.”
In our next intermittent chapter: The heroes of the Parodyverse battle to save the not-yet-heroes of the Parodyverse from the most powerful villain in the Parodyverse. Lisa hosts a girls’ night in, Al B. Harper loses his eyebrows, Cobra makes an error of judgement, Gideon Book demonstrates tough love, spiffy turns out to be not nice, and Jarvis thinks of a great new name for the League of Regulars. And someone asks the question that dooms the multiverse.
Footnotes:
Place of Ravens and Destiny, and the people you find there: The Parodyverse is maintained by a number of Office Holders, although who appoints them is unclear. Most of these office holders have previously been human. The three most prominent and usually most powerful of these cosmic office holders are the Triumverate, who at the time of this story are Carrington, the Shaper of Worlds, the Chronicler of Stories, and Samhain, the Destroyer of Tales. The Chronicler’s realm has a somewhat raven-filled motif, hence the poetic allusion to his domain.
Pilar and Yo: There is a fundamental subplane of the Parodyverse known as the Happy Place, from whence proceed the pure thought beings sometimes called the Yo-people. The bunny-filled Yo-planet is somehow projected into “real” space from there. Yo-people living for extended periods of time away from the Happy Place or Yo-planet need to bond with other sentient life-forms to survive. Hence Yo’s unusual proposition to Pilar. It’s more complicated than that, though. Yo is Spanish for “me”.
Starseed: The fundamental narrative force of the Parodyverse moulds itself into many different manifestations (in the same way that electromagnetic energy in our own world takes many forms each with its own character and properties). One of these is Gah! energy, a psionic force activated by the sudden shouting of the world Gah!, studied by orders or acolytes who use it for good or ill. As described in Chapter Three, the explorer Manuel was hunted by Dirth Vortex and his minions, servants of the dark side of the Gah!, discovered a pocked of pure Gah! energy, and was himself transformed into a master of the Gah! He has since rescued Space Ghost and has also trained him in some minor use of the Gah! force.
Ausgardians: The story here summarises the rebellion and downfall of the Norse gods. Their transportation to the Australian section of the mythlands has transformed them somewhat. Their great city now sits beyond Bifrosting, the rainbow bridge, and they feast in the halls of Van Halen. Donar is the son of Oldman and the earth-goddess Gail, And it is this mixed heritage which allows him to act freely on Earth (Middlegard) while other Ausgardians are restricted to occasional visits.
Hollywood V: a mysterious figure who crops up again and again where heroes are gathering. Different versions of the same character, always with the initials HV, have appeared throughout history, Hastings Vernal was a member of the League of Improbable gentlemen who built the 19th century mansion which is now the HQ of the Lair Legion.
Visionary: joined the League of Regulars by accident shortly after this story, following a brief and painful stint with HV’s League of the Forgotten (which also included Banjooo). The league of the Forgotten evolved into the contemporary Abandoned Legion.
Cheryl: is Visionary’s long-suffering and eminently sensible wife (except for the thing with the cat outfit). She was dubbed the Duchess of Lake Superior by Banjoooo for services to the Sea Monkey nation. Her sobriquet as goddess of HTML is yet to be explained.
Mr X, Mr Y, and Mr Z: This refers to the storyline in which Erskine Blofish of S.P.U.D. hired the assassin known as the Confiscator to kill archvillain Baron Zemo. Baroness Heike Zemo was shot instead, and was subsequently placed in cryogenic storage until such time as one of Zemo’s plots could revive her. In the original outline for the Year One series, chapter 4 was devoted to retelling this story. However, given some unpleasantness and the departure of the poster playing the Parodyverse’s Zemo, and his implicit request not to have the character featured any more, this chapter has been subsequently and significantly replotted. Almost all the other incidents referred to at the press conference really happened, or at least were purported to have.
Sersi of the Austernals: is the most gregarious and human-oriented of the offshoot race created by Celestial Space Robot science at the dawn of humankind. Austernals draw upon another aspect of the underlying narrative force to control matter and energy, even to the cells of their own body. This gives them tremendous strength and endurance and many psionic abilities. Sersi’s specialisation is in matter rearrangement. The gregarious Sersi joined the Lair Legion in its second year until she got bored.
Prince T’Chako of Wakandybar: the ruler of a small, scientifically advanced, secret African nation which is the only known source of the miracle metal Vibratium. T’Chako occasionally appears in his ceremonial garb as the Black Pantser.
Rocket Racoon: a talking swashbuckling racoon with a rocket pack on his back. He is quite a ladies’ racoon, and has a special interest in Sersi. Like the Sea Monkeys, the Racoon People were a genetic experiment of the Abhumans, who in turn were a creation of the Austernals, who in turn were created by the Celestians. They were basically made with fourth-hand technology, which explains a lot. Rocket Racoon joined the lair Legion at the same time as Sersi. He is currently eaten.
The diabolical Dr Moo: Lisa’s older, smarter, wickeder, more scientifically advanced, and more cow-loving sister, who uses her biological genius to control all cow products. She’s one of the Parodyverse’s major villains, and we see more of her in Chapter 5.
Future Legionnaires and other heroes: The various heroes and villains seen in the Chronicler’s scrying portals are all future protagonists in the Parodyverse. Look them up in Who's Who in the Parodyverse.
Sorceress and Hatman: Whitney Darkness, the Sorceress, is the latest in an ancient line of witches bred by the Demon Lover with the intention of one day spawning a child through which he could incarnate. Whitney’s mother however ran away from home and became pregnant by the future sorcerer supreme and master of the mystic crafts Xander the Improbable (the same Xander who speaks to Whitney in this story, although neither knows of their familial relationship at this point). Whitney’s grandmother also avoided being impregnated by the Demon Lover, instead choosing English adventurer Sir Mumphrey Wilton to father her offspring. Jay Boaz, Whitney’s childhood sweetheart, was later accidentally infused with Serious Matter, the very essence of Order, but instead of becoming a soulless servitor Brain Eater for the Order of Order he instead gained the power to duplicate the nature of any headgear he wore as the Legionnaire known as Hatman. Jay and Whitney rekindled their romance after meeting through their superhero activities, and the Sorceress eventually left the Abandoned Legion to join the Lair Legion.
Portents of the Resolution War: Many of the things which Samhain lists as signs of the end have now been chronicled in the Parodyverse stories. The end is coming. Be afraid.
The Parody Master: A sinister, cunning, and powerful force and personality which incarnates through possessed creatures as a crimson-armoured warlord commanding an innumerable host. A full incarnation of the Parody Master is almost unstoppable and unspeakably evil. See chapter 5.
Other questions may be answered in the Who's Who in the Parodyverse or the Where's Where in the Parodyverse.
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