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This message Lair Legion: Year One, part 5 – Who stole Birmingham and other bits of questionable real estate and why the League of Regulars had to get a new name was posted by More forgotten trivia for fanboy completists from... the Hooded Hood on Monday, June 24, 2002 at 06:20.
Other chapters at Lair Legion: Year One Archive
Previously in Lair Legion Year One:
The age of heroes has begun. Jarvis the cosmic butler, Lisa the amorous advocatrix, the tech-armoured NTU-150, alien dragon Fin Fang Foom, the shadowy Dark Knight, the master of the Gah! force Starseed, Banjooooo king of the sea-monkeys, the drunken has-been TV hero Space Ghost, spiffy the teenage, um, teenager, and the possibly fake Visionary have banded together as the League of Regulars (actually, Vizh has finally been allowed to join since last time we saw them). Other heroes and villains have also appeared, of whom more in our story. These are signs and portents that the Resolution War for which the Parodyverse in which these characters live was created is finally coming. But not every cosmic power is pleased that this is happening, and one at least is determined to nip the age of heroes in the bud…
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Lair Legion: Year One, part 5 – Who stole Birmingham and other bits of questionable real estate and why the League of Regulars had to get a new name
It was a big hole, and the heroes were looking into it.
“Well?” Jarvis demanded of the red and gold armoured adventurer next to him. “Anything?”
“Nothing at all,” NTU-150 worried. “No energy readings, no heat sources, no radiation. Just a big white ball of non-being where Birmingham, England used to be yesterday.”
“This isn’t looking good,” Starseed admitted. “This is the fourth city we’ve lost in as many weeks. People are going to start saying we’re careless.”
The Dark Knight stared into the brilliant whiteness as if trying to see to the heart of the mystery. “I did some checking,” he admitted. “We might have been coming here anyway if this hadn’t happened. There’s a new mutant terrorist around, some perp called Magnetic Techbird. He was sighted here.”
“Could he be behind this?” Jarvis wondered.
“I don’t think so,” Fin Fang Foom judged, returning from his flight over the glowing nine-mile high sphere. “His powers are sonic and magnetic, aren’t they? This is dimensional stuff.” The alien dragon had found that much out from his contacts at the Interdimensional Transportation Corporation. Mr Limpqvist had even been kind enough to recommend some researchers who could help out on the theoretical physics.
“And there’s not been any mutant sightings in Littlesmallville, Ohio, or in San Fernando, Trinidad, or in Bogall, Ireland, have there?” Starseed admitted. “Why should those places just… disappear?”
“I don’t know,” scowled Jarvis, “but we’ll get to the bottom of this. Lisa and the others will be hard at it even as we speak…”
*****
“More double chocolate chocolate fudge chocolate sundae?” Lisa asked, stretching back on the couch and licking her fingers.
“Not for me,” answered Cheryl. “I’m absolutely stuffed.”
“Me too,” admitted Pegasus of the League of Left-Outs. “Forget all that giving up crime for fruit pies stuff. This chocolate cake is to die for.”
“No, that’s my other recipe,” answered Lisa’s older sister, the diabolical Dr Moo. “This is the one I use when I don’t want to kill people.”
Lisa Waltz nobly saved her guests from danger by eating the last slice of gateau. “You know, sis, at times like this I hardly want to strangle you at all,” she admitted.
“Next time we should meet at my place,” Pegasus offered. “Having a girl’s night in at the supervillain stronghold would make the guys there so nervous.”
Davidowicz, Moo’s genetically modified rat assistant, snickered. Lisa made a mental note to acquire a cat.
“You hero types probably need more relaxation,” Pegasus judged. “It’s been a pretty difficult few months for you. There was that fight against Ego, the Living Beard. Then there was the problem where all those comic-book creators started rewriting the Parodyverse. Then Visionary accidentally became your leader for a while. Then spiffy accidentally conquered France…”
“We must get him to give that back, by the way,” noted Cheryl with a little frown. “People are complaining.”
“Does spiffy seem… different to any of you?” Pegasus wondered. The mythical shapechanger was sensitive to changes in others, and of all them she was the first to suspect the truth that spiffy had been replaced by his sinister double Evil spiffy. “He seems…”
“Growing pains,” Lisa suggested. “Natural for a sixteen year old boy. I can help with his problems.”
“She’s the fourth emergency service,” scowled Diao Waltz, Dr Moo. “By the way, did you ever get round to asking your boss, old Ezriah Coot, about that Booke of the Law you got?”
Lisa guiltily remembered that she hadn’t yet cleaned the Kool-Whip off some of the pages of the ancient and mysterious text. “I kind of broached it, but he just glared at me,” she told her friends. “But he didn’t ask for it back.”
“Do you think the Booke gave you your summonsing power?” Cheryl speculated.
“Could be,” admitted Lisa, “although I’ve always been kind of good at getting men to come to me when I wanted them to.”
“She was the only girl in our convent school to get her phone number listed in the US Servicemen’s Handbook,” Daio revealed. “Weren’t you supposed to be looking up these people that can tell you about transdimensional physics?” she remembered as she finished off the meringue.
Lisa and Cheryl exchanged satisfied smirks and Lisa answered. “Don’t worry. We have that covered,” the first lady of the League of Regulars laughed.
*****
Visionary remembered his own college days with growing nostalgia, so he’s been happy to get talked into coming on campus to find Dr Leonard Day-Vincent, genius founder of Daedelus Developments, the eminent scientific expert on damn near everything. He’d forgotten that this was pledge week, but he was pretty sure the paint stains could be fixed by the simple expedient of throwing away his jacket and buying a new one, and he was used to people looking at his back and kicking him anyway.
“Er, Dr Day-Vincent?” the possibly fake man asked uncertainly, pushing open the lab door and peering into the cluttered gloom. He hadn’t expected the respected scientist to enjoy wearing skintight silk and black sombreros. Or to have breasts.
“Is not to be Dr Day-Vincenting,” the Zorro impersonator told him. “Is to be being Yo. How are you to be doing?”
Visionary was confused, which was baseline. “I’m… pretty much as usual,” he admitted. “Who are you again? And what fraternity?”
“Yo is being a pure thought entity from Yo-planet, sent to cute Earth to be part of exciting things.”
“You… are Yo?” Visionary finally worked out. “And why are you here, exactly? And where’s Dr Day-Vincent?”
“Yo was here to be visiting the cute bunnies in the biology lab and to be taking them to the Happy Place. Uncute lab technician screamed at Yo and is to be calling Yo bad names, so Yo is thinking Yo is very good at kick boxing. Yo is bunny avenger. Then Yo is sensing dimensional anomaly in lab here and Yo comes to be looking.”
“Ah,” nodded Visionary. Another typical day in the League of Regulars then.
“Yo is finding to this,” the pure thought being added, dramatically pointing to a dimensional interface stabiliser platform, where a brilliant white sphere like a miniature of the visual effect that ate Birmingham hung in mid-air.
“What is it? “ Vizh asked before he realised that the number of people who could explain experiments going on in Dr Day-Vincent’s laboratory could be counted on one hand, and two of them were already in straight jackets.
“Yo is thinking Yo knows,” Yo answered. Part of the thought-being’s nature was to become whatever s/he thought s/he was. If Yo believed s/he could work this out, then s/he gained the nature to do so. “Yo is thinking from these computering readouts that somebody is to be setting up dimensional transmission portal round cute Dr Day-Vincent. Cute Dr realises what is to be happening and doesn’t think he is wanting entire University of Paradopolis to be being sucked in, so he is to be quickly rushing to his own apparatus and containing the effect so it is only him to be taking.”
“You’re saying Paradopolis almost became like those other places?”
Yo smiled. “Yo is thinking Dr Day-Vincent is being a big hero.”
Visionary frowned. “Visionary is thinking somebody knows we’re looking for experts and is working to stop us getting them.”
*****
On the other side of the country a hostage situation we getting defused.
“Let the lady go or it’ll be time for 18-level fantasy violence,” Prize Fighter warned the would-be Disneyland robbers. “I’m already disposed to hit anything in a mouse mask, so you don’t want to provoke me.”
“There’s four of us and only one of him,” the leader of the park thieves shouted, in the traditional mantra of the minor thug who’s about to sustain major head injuries. “Get him!”
“Ah,” Prize Fighter sighed, dodging the first swipe to disable the second and third gunmen with a couple of classic boxing uppercuts, “It’s traction time.”
Twenty-one seconds later it was all over except to pick up the frightened Snow White impersonator and wait for the rent-a-cops to arrive. Prize Fighter leaned over with his hands on his knees to catch his breath. “I have got to get a younger partner for this kind of stuff,” he panted.
The uniformed men who arrived did not look like policemen, rented or otherwise. It was the gleaming scientific battle armour, full-face mirror-masks, and the translucent bladed weapons that gave it away.
“Hey, you guys! Help us!” hopeful thug leader called out.
The first of the armoured soldiers neatly sliced his head off. The blood did not cling to frictionless combat armour.
“What the…?” Prize Fighter gasped.
Then Disneyland vanished in a white flash, leaving only a gaping white wound in the heart of Florida.
*****
Banjooooo and spiffy (except it wasn’t spiffy) pounded the defence robots on the Writchards estate into scrap metal and got as far as the doorbell.
“How did you do that?” the King of the Sea Monkeys asked his detective agency partner. “Zap those robots with cosmic power blasts, I mean? I thought you didn’t have any super-powers?”
“I’m resourceful,” spiffy shrugged.
“Only those powers you were using looked a lot like the ones Jarvis used to have – the Jarvis cosmic – before he suddenly and inexplicably lost them.”
“Lots of people can shoot energy blasts and teleport and stuff,” the evil duplicate that had replaced spiffy in a story too complicated to do anything but reference as a footnote answered, pushing the intercom. “Dr Wrichards, it’s spiffy and Banjoooo of the League of Regulars. We called ahead about these big white dimensional bubbles?”
“That’s Banjooooo and spiffy, actually,” Banjooooo added helpfully. “We really did call ahead though. Which is why the killer attack robots kind of worried us. We need to talk to someone about big scientific stuff, and everybody said we should ask you.”
“Well, actually they said go to Dr Day-Vincent, but Visionary’s already screwed up that one,” spiffy added. “But you’re definitely the number two guy.”
The door opened. spiffy and Banjooooo exchanged glances.
“Did the file say anything about Wrichards being twelve feet tall with glowing crimson armour and a really nasty sword?” Banjoooo checked.
“Not that I recall,” admitted spiffy, “although I did kind of skip some of the big words.”
“Dr Writchards is busy just now being may helpless captive,” the armoured giant told them. “May I slay you?”
*****
One kiss. That was all it had taken. She’d been warned, warned from childhood that emotion was fatal, that it was weakness, that it had no part in her life. And still she’d kissed him.
Cobra raced over the ruins of the sacred temple seeking out anybody who was still alive. A couple of ninjas were in the sanctum still destroying the last of the holy texts so she leaped on them and snapped their spines and left them to die slowly on the bloody floor beside her teachers and comrades. The uncontrollable fires that were claiming the whole Floating Isle would probably get to them before the last spark of life was expired.
One kiss. If she hadn’t been with Mehmet when the attack came, if she’d been alert, if she’d been undistracted, then the ninjas would never have breached the defences.
Cobra wiped the tears from her face and vowed they were the last she would ever shed. Something closed over her face, something ancient and serpentine and full of vengeance. She reached up to the shattered altar for the last time and picked up the sacred weapons of the Sect of Buto. No priest blessed them for her this time. No sage briefed her on her mission to rescue an innocent, to aid a child in need, to right a wrong. No choir sang the anthem of the Cobra, the sacred animal of the protector-goddess of the Nile, to speed her on her way. She had been weak and she had betrayed her calling and she had let them all be murdered.
Mehmet raced into the ruined temple, his face pale and guilty. “The Sacred Floating Isle of Chemmis is breaking up… sinking!” he cried. “We have to get away from here!”
Cobra slashed his throat and watched him bleed to death. But she could never take back the kiss.
When the armoured avatars phased in she even managed to kill two of them before they triggered the dimensional mine.
*****
“This is pretty weird,” agreed young Al B. Harper as he examined the reading from Leonard Day-Vincent’s transdimensional apparatus. “The doctor seems to have used his own apparatus to counter the effects of some kind of… of planar hole, something designed to scoop out a portion of our reality and move it somewhere else.”
“Move it, not destroy it,” Visionary asked the Professor’s interns.
“Oh yes, it’s definitely a shunt,” agreed Miss Framlicker. “That’s why we’ve got the white glowing spheres at the interfaces. But I can’t conceive of a power able to put out the energy required to move blocks of time/space out of the continuum like this.”
“Yo is thinking this is not to be a good thing,” Yo admitted, staring at the pale white sphere on the planar platform.
“You can say that again,” Al B. grimaced, jotting down some of the magnitudes on his workpad.
“Yo is thinking this is not to be a good thing.”
*****
Mr. Gideon Book, founder and head of the multinational corporation known as Odyssey Opportunities, washed the calfhide whip in the bowl of salt water to clean the blood off it. “You understand why this is necessary, do you not?” he asked the lash-ribboned young woman who hung from the ceiling before him.
“Of c-course father. With every strike I become stronger. I will not fail you again.”
“See that you do not,” the master of the Order of Order instructed her. “You must work to master your studies even as you master your emotions and desires. Pain, degradation, and horror are merely tools to hone your perfection.” He considered his daughter for a moment and finally conceded, “Very well then. You may release yourself from your shackles and tend to your injuries. But the next time I tell you to memorise a textbook remember that I expect even the footnotes to be word perfect.”
“Yes father. I am ashamed to have disappointed you.”
“One day, you will be more than a mere Priestess of the Order of Order, Pelopia,” he told her. “One day, you will be the emissary and embodiment of Order itself, the Disciple of Logos. The role will fall to you, and you must perform it perfectly, for Order demands no less.”
“Yes, father.”
“It may be that sacrifices must be made. I expect you to submit to them without question or doubt.”
“Yes, father.”
“It may be necessary to breed you with some powerful ally in order to create a yet greater instrument of Order.”
“Yes, father.”
“You may even be required to eliminate one or more of the children of Chaos, the possessors of Impossibilityium who have come to be known as the CrazySugarSuperHeroes! in these relatively recent times. Whatever guises they might appear in, you must recognise them for the Tricksters that they are, and remember that they are more than simply the sum of their Talismans.”
The naked hairless woman nodded painfully, sweating and shivering. “Yes, father. I shall be pleased to undertake such a task. I shall strive to be the best a human can become, to master disciplines both mental and physical. I shall… I shall try not to scream when you teach me.”
“Good. You are a dutiful daughter, Pelopia. Your pain will make you strong. You will… what’s this?”
Gideon Book swung round as the armoured avatars phased right past the significant defences placed upon his Tower of Babel, the Seattle skyscraper that served his base of operations, and surrounded Pelopia. "Stop!" he commanded them, using the Voice of Reason, whose authority was vested in him as the Word of the Order of Order.
They ignored him and triggered the next dimensional rift.
*****
Jarvis paced the Meeting Room as NTU-150 and DarkHwk set up the display screens. “Nothing yet?” the leader of the Lair Legion demanded of Lisa.
The amorous advocatrix shook her head. “I’m trying to summons spiffy and Banjoooo but all I get is static,” she worried.
“Their com-links are down,” Enty added. “Or, possibly, exploded.”
“You don’t think they’re… you know… horribly dead somewhere, do you?” Finny ventured. “Perhaps I should fly out there and…”
“It’s fatal to split our forces any more until we know what’s happening,” Starseed growled. “We now have no less than six dimensional holes, five of them miles across, and we still don’t know why or how.”
“The data sent by Dr Day-Vincent’s interns was pretty helpful,” offered DarkHwk. The newest resident at the Lair mansion wasn’t actually a League member, but he was getting room and board in exchange for helping to moderate NTU-150’s wilder engineering experiments. It was a good job that when DarkHwk activated his enchanted amulet he switched forms to a near-invulnerable armoured android really. “We know some kind of device is being used, probably a weapon. We know the power demand is phenomenal, enough each second to light our sun for around half a billion years.”
“But we still have no idea why these sites are being selected, or who’s behind it,” glowered the Dark Knight. “We need to get a break.”
*****
“No really,” Gavan Carstensen told the pretty nearly-blonde on the next barstool. “Whenever I smite my enchanted baseball bat I get transformed into an Ausgardian hemigod.”
“Pervert!” she replied, throwing her drink into his face and stalking off.
“By the grunting giblets of Gjoblinfiord!” growled the frustrated mortal shell of the Oldmanson. “Why do people keep reacting like that?”
The armoured avatars that smashed through the walls of the corrugated tin hut just then were quite willing to solve Gavan’s problems in a permanent manner. People screamed, panicked, and – this being Australia – grabbed their beers.
Gavan smote his enchanted baseball bat and transformed into the Ausgardian hemigod Donar. “Ho, felons! Right glad am I to have thy sudden attack just when I didst badly need to be kickething some ass!”
The avatars triggered the dimensional mine to suck five miles of terrain around their quarry into a different dimension. Donar ruptured the rift with his weapon Mjalcolm and redirected the energy at the incoming army of bad guys.
“Now let the smiting begin for the nonce!”
*****
“There’s a report just coming in,” NTU-150 reported, looking up from his BautistaSat communications panel (with the built in sandwich toaster). “Another of those dimensional anomalies, in Australia this time. But this one didn’t form properly. And local new reports say there’s some kind of huge battle going on there.”
“If only I still had my teleportation abilities,” Jarvis hissed. “How the hell do we get there in time?”
“There’s always the new LairJet aircraft that Enty designed,” DarkHwk suggested with all the confidence of a non-member who was going to stay behind and look after the shop.
“Any ideas anyone?” Jarvis asked. “Anyone?”
“UPS?” suggested Space Ghost.
“Anyone? Please?”
Silence.
Jarvis sighed. “Alright, dammit. We’ll try the LairJet.”
“I’ll get it fuelled up for you,” DarkHwk promised.
“Great,” Jarvis snarled nastily. “You’re flying it.”
*****
Banjoooo opened one swollen eye. “Where are we?”
Evil spiffy hung upside-down in energy chains next to him in the stygian darkness. Only his swearing lit up the scene. “This shouldn’t happen to me. I’m not a *&%*! &$% little &^$% like the other one!”
“Uh, spiffster, are you okay, dude? I mean, sure, we’re hanging upside down in some creepy black void but you’ve been acting weird for a while now. Are you all right?”
“No. I’m an evil duplicate from a parallel dimension who has replaced the Mark Hopkins you know and will go on to destroy you and your friends and everything you ever held dear. Now shut up and concentrate on getting out of here,” snapped his companion.
“No need to be sarcastic,” Banjoooo said, slightly hurt. “Hey, I think I’m developing a temporary power to glow in the dark.”
Evil spiffy told the King of the Sea Monkeys what he thought of that power.
*****
In what had once been a small Australian town Donar continued his battle with an infinite number of armoured invaders. Somewhere around the third hour of the battle the Australian military had arrived, but the armed forces had been forced back when the avatars brought in their heavy artillery and the defenders’ casualty rate topped 50%. Then Donar had whipped up the storm that accompanied him to hurricane levels and battled harder.
It was in the sixth hour that the master of the avatars lost his patience. “The storm is giving me a headache,” he noted, striding from a dimensional portal and observing the hard-pressed hemigod staggering back to his feet once again. “Be quiet.”
Weather patterns across the southern hemisphere altered and the storm was gone.
“What?” gasped Donar as the psychic backlash of his storm’s destruction hammered into him. “Who the hel are you?”
The crimson-armoured warrior drew a sword that sparkled like death and only existed in two dimensions. “Me?” he grinned from beneath his crimson helm. “I’m the being that wants you dead before you can cause any trouble. I’m the most powerful entity in the cosmos. I’m the one that gives the Family of the Pointless nightmares. I’m the slayer of gods and the doom of heroes.” He pointed his sword at Donar and fired a bolt of energy that blackened the thunder hemigod’s flesh and hurled him to the floor wracked in agony. “I’m the Parody Master.”
“Right,” Donar rumbled, dragging himself up despite the flames that played over his seared body. “And can you guess where I art going to stick thy sword?”
The Parody Master sliced his blade to take off his enemy’s head. “Spunky. I like that in my victims,” he said.
Mjalcolm caught the blade before it reached its target. There was a screech of energies as the blade which could cut through anything met the indestructible weapon. “I dost not do victim, caitiff!” Donar growled.
Then the energies flashed outwards hurling the two combatants apart. Only the Parody Master seemed unhurt afterwards. “It would have been much less painful if you’d just gone into my dimensional rift,” he told the Oldmanson. “Now I’ve decided to kill you slowly.” He hammered Donar in the face with the pommel of his sword. “I’m going to cripple you and leave you to lie bleeding and broken on the battlefield.” He smashed a fist into Donar’s chest that made it hard for the hemigod to breathe afterwards. Then he hit him again. Then leaning over the wounded Ausgardian he whispered, “Then I’m going to leave you to die the Straw Death without honour or hope.”
Donar Mjalcomed him upside his head. “Fjuck you!” he shouted. He tried to struggle to his feet but his legs didn’t want to listen.
The perimeter guards warned about the incoming aircraft.
The Parody Master kicked Donar in the head again to keep him quiet for a while and focussed his attention on the rapidly-closing LairJet. “Another quarter heard from,” he chuckled. “I wondered how long it would take the so-called heroes to get here.”
He pointed his sword and the LairJet exploded in a gout of flame. Only two figures flew free before it died in a burst of jet fuel and cosmic energies.
“I just polished that!” DarkHwk objected, unceremoniously dumping Lisa amidst a horde of avatar soldiers and orienting on the Parody Master. The midnight-armoured automaton’s helmet display was lighting up like a Christmas tree as his battle suit reacted to an old foe it recognised. Energy levels Zane had never suspected suddenly cut in, amping up his armour’s power and speed so he avoided the Parody Master’s blasts with ease and rocketed towards his foe.
Zane just had time to wonder about the mysterious history of his DarkHwk persona before he impacted with the Parody Master at MACH-2.
The Parody Master took a step backwards. “Ouch” he said, looking down at DarkHwk’s crumpled form. “That actually hurt.”
Lisa looked at the avatars surrounding her and discovered that they had been bred not to react to gorgeous skimpily-clad women in any way except to cleave them with their energy blades. “You’re just not party people, are you?” she noticed. “And I bet you think you’re really clever because your boss blew up our plane and DH and I were the only ones to get out?” She avoided the first blow and wrapped her whip around her attacker to hurl him into his comrades. “Well guess what? Only DH and I were aboard because Enty thought the plane would go faster with a lighter load. And, er, everybody thought it was going to crash and burn. So now…” A razor brief caught another armoured warrior in the throat. “Now I summons the League of Regulars!”
*****
Visionary looked guiltily at the monitor board as the transmission information from the LairJet winked out. “I didn’t touch anything, I swear it!” he assured Jarvis.
Jarvis, NTU-150, Dark Knight, Fin Fang Foom, Starseed, and Space Ghost vanished.
“Yo is thinking maybe you were to be upsetting them?” Yo suggested.
Visionary and Yo had got back to the Lair Mansion only a few moments earlier. Vizh had sort of hoped people might be pleased that he’d found them an exciting new ally. Instead Starseed had simply looked at Yo and said “You again,” then Enty had remarked that it was always good to have another guy on the team, and then Jarvis had stuck Visionary with monitor duty again.
“Don’t worry, dear,” Cheryl soothed her husband. “The plan was that Lisa would get to the battlefield and then summons the League there in a surprise manoeuvre.”
“But I’m in the League,” argued Visionary.
“Of course you are, dear.”
There was an explosion as somebody rang the mansion doorbell. When Yo had helped Visionary put the flames out they found a worried-looking man in monkish robes cowering behind a blackened bush.
“Sorry,” apologised Cheryl. “Only our doorbell is… experimental.”
“If you’re a villain could you make an appointment?” Visionary asked him. “Only the LoR’s a little busy just now.”
“I’m not a villain,” Goomtar of the order of the Observing Eye assured the possibly fake man. “I’m here to explain what’s going on.”
“Ah,” smiled Cheryl. “In that case come and have coffee.”
*****
The diabolical Dr Moo looked over the castle lab facilities with a critical disdain. “This needs serious upgrading,” she sniffed. “Oh sure, it looks the part of the evil genius workshop, but it’s hardly state of the art any more. Wooden operating tables on chains are so last year.”
“I’m sure the Baron could set you up with whatever you needed if you chose to associate with us,” Pegasus promised. “Money’s hardly a problem with a percentage of every organised crime on the planet coming through our organisation. And we get a full package including dental and…”
The intruder alert klaxon began, then ended abruptly.
“We’re under attack!” Pegasus warned, shifting to her winged centaur form and preparing her cosmic bolts.
Then five thousand avatar warriors burst through the walls.
*****
“Gaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!!” shouted Starseed, spraying the avatar troops away from him to clear some fighting space. “How many of these things are there?”
“My on-board sensors maxxed out after ninety million,” NTU-150 confessed. He oriented his repulsor cannons at the heavy ordinance and sprayed the Parody Master’s heavy assault weapons as flaming wreckage into his armies.
“Spaaaaank Ray!” Space Ghost yelled, vaulting over the enemy and firing his weapon on wide spank. It would have looked impressive if he’s remembered to put on the bottom half of his costume first.
“There’s a weakness in their armour design at the rear of the collarpiece,” Dark Knight reported as he loomed up from doing something unpleasant to a unit commander. “Exploit it.”
Fin Fang Foom assumed his full draconic size, swept out his three hundred foot wingspan to topple man and equipment alike, and unleashed a gout of nuclear fire that cleared a swathe half a mile long. “They melt real good too,” he added.
“Keep fighting in formation,” Jarvis called. “Buy us some time to work out what’s going on here.” He turned to Lisa. “What’s going on here?”
The amorous advocatrix reluctantly stopped giving the kiss of life to the hemigod in her lap and helped Donar to stagger to his feet. “There’s a big bad guy in red armour who wants to kill this hunky stu…er, stout fellow before he can thwart plans for a dimensional takeover. I think the bad guy’s been trying to take out lots of future heroes with those dimensional mine things.”
“Right,” Jarvis frowned. “So all we have to do is beat his infinite legions and then take him down and we’re done here.”
“I art game,” promised Donar Oldmanson.
*****
“He’s been trying to take out lots of future heroes with dimensional mines,” reported Goomtar.
“He has?” Visionary checked. “That fiend. Er, who? And what’s a dimensional mine?”
“Yo is thinking Yo understands, cute Visi,” Vizh’s new friend told him. “Uncute villain is to be stealing bits of the Parodyverse with people who are to be becoming heroes in the future.”
“There are heroes in Bogall, County Down?” Cheryl asked sceptically.
“A potential hero, evidently,” Goomtar assured her. “And there’s a proto-mutant in Trinidad, and a human who has been marked for a cosmic destiny in the elusive Littlesmallville, and a number of significant players in Seattle and so on.”
“And you know this because you are…?” asked Cheryl.
“Me? Oh, I’m… well, I watch people.”
“There are laws about that, buddy,” Visionary warned.
“Yo is thinking cute monk is to be being shepherd of heroes, yes?” the pure thought being present suggested, focussing his/her insight on the worried agent of the Order of the Observing Eye.
“Er, something like that, yes. Or we were, until most of our young candidates were slaughtered. And now it’s looking like we might lose the rest, plus some others we have no direct interest in. Amazon Isle has been sucked into a dimensional rift, and our sources tell us there have been incidents on Xnylonia and Kree-Lump.”
“I’m not good with those South American countries,” admitted Visionary. “I’d better contact the League.”
Goomtar looked up gravely. “Tell them that while they’re being distracted Down Under the Parody Master is preparing to take the whole of Paradopolis and Gothametropolis and put an end to the Age of Heroes before it starts. And then to make sure it stays stopped he’s going to take over the world.”
Visionary and Cheryl exchanged worried looks.
“Yo has never been distracted down under,” admitted the Zorro impersonator amongst them, “but Yo wouldn’t mind trying it sometime.”
*****
Fin Fang Foom and Starseed bracketed the Parody Master from two sides, washing him in a combination nuclear flame discharge and Gah! event. He shrugged it off and lanced searing force through them, hurling them back twitching and burning onto the blackened battlefield.
“Now!” shouted Jarvis. Lisa caught the Parody Master round the neck with her whip, dragging him backwards while the Dark Knight sliced a killing blow at his crimson armour with a borrowed avasword.
The force blade snapped. The Parody Master turned round and smashed his fist into DK’s face, sending him flying backwards three hundred yards to land in an awkward bloody sprawl. Then he jerked on Lisa’s whip, dragging her into his grasp.
The enchanted baseball bat impacted with his faceplate, causing him to staggered a step backwards. Jarvis rolled in and dragged Lisa out of immediate harm’s way. NTU-150 rose up and discharged a phased photonic pulse into the adversary’s head, momentarily blinding him.
Then Space Ghost popped up from behind, cranked his Spank Ray to full power, and aimed it at the tiny crack DK had made in that crimson warsuit. A concussion force that could crack planets slapped into the Parody Master with enough cuss to render him to a thin smear or paste inside his armour.
The Parody Master toppled to his knees, his mortal host liquified.
Then he laughed.
“Enough of this amusement,” he told the League of Regulars. At a glance all of them were rendered immobile, dragged to float before him pinned by unfathomable forces. He glared at each of them as they hung there: Jarvis, defiant and resourceful, Lisa, trying to straighten her hair before the bondage started, Fin Fang Foom, struggling against the humanoid shape the Parody Master had imposed on him; Donar, refusing to fall unconscious despite massive head wounds, Starseed trying to scream forth the power that could release him, NTU-150 desperately trying to analyse the force that bound them,. the Dark Knight and DarkHwk both hanging limply.
With a second gesture Banjooooo and spiffy were with them, dangling helplessly with the rest. A third gesture and the League of Left Outs floated beside the rest, just as beaten up as the League of Regulars, mostly unconscious. Finally a number of other ragged, beaten-up heroes appeared, of whom the only ones the League recognised was a bleeding Hollywood V, the patriotic but currently comatose Cap, and the bizarre and pulped Paste Pot Pete.
“Pegasus?” Lisa called out to the fallen enemy. “What happened? How did he take down the League of Left Outs?”
“His troops came from nowhere and overwhelmed us at last,” the mythical warrior answered, struggling uselessly with her bonds. “But on the bright side we’re not the Left-Outs any more. Now we’re calling ourselves the Scourge.”
“Damn!” hissed Jarvis. “We have got to find ourselves a proper name. We can’t let the bad guys out-cool us!”
Starseed struggled against the energy field that restrained them all. “Hello? A little perspective here? This enemy is beating all of us, and I hardly think a rename is going to help us.”
“This has been very diverting” the Parody Master told them all, “but I don’t have time to enjoy myself more. I’m about to eliminate Paradopolis and its evil twin Gothametropolis, and then I shall re-order the world so that heroes never occur again amongst its cowed, broken masses. Thus the prophecies shall never be fulfilled and the Resolution War will never happen.”
“Give peace a chance,” agreed Finny dazedly. “What’s he talking about?”
“He’s got dozens of chunks of reality stored away in his secret dimensional place,” Banjoooo warned his comrades. “Bits of islands and lots of city blocks and a farm and a castle and goodness knows what else.” He glowered at Evil spiffy and added “I saw them with my glowing power.”
“You will all die, of course,” the Parody Master continued, “But slowly, as examples to the populace of the futility of resistance and of depending upon heroes. And because it’s more fun that way.”
Lisa squirmed in her bonds and decided it was time to go for the throat. In her short life as a superheroine she’d seen exactly how these stories worked. It was time to unship the big guns, narratively speaking. “And nothing can stop you now?” she mocked him.
“Exactly,” gloated the most powerful villain in the Parodyverse. “Nothing can stop me now.”
Jarvis’ comm-signal crackled into life. “Hello? Hello? Is this thing on? Jarv, can you hear me? It’s Visionary. I think we know how to beat that Parody Master guy. Hello?”
The Parody Master laughed and teleported Vizh, Cheryl, and Yo to join the rest. “Do tell,” he commanded the possibly fake man.
Lisa rolled her eyes. She’d wasted a perfectly good end plot twist – their last, only hope – on Visionary. Now they were going to die.
*****
In a darkened office a third of a planet away Mr Ezriah Coot of Coot, Coot, Coot, Wellfudge and Coot, Attorneys-at-Law, finished a much-deserved cup of Darjeeling tea. “Thank you very much, Mrs Arterychoke” he told his companion. “I always find a cuppa helps to clear my thought processes. I take it that old Goomtar has gone scuttling back for cover to his Order?”
“As soon as the rest of the Lair Legion were dragged away to meet the Parody Master.”
“Splendid. We don’t want the Order interfering too much at these critical moments. I hate amateurs. And it’s not the Lair Legion yet, Mrs Arterychoke. But it will be very soon. Or it will be dead.”
Mrs Arterychoke shrugged. “It would be a lot of work to have to start all over again,” she admitted, “although I’d be more than happy if he skinned that little minx Mizzzzz Waltz.”
“Well, we’ll see what happens in the next few moments.” He leaned back and closed his eyes so he could view the whole event in his mind. “It’s going to be very interesting indeed… or my name isn’t Wilbur Parody.”
*****
“At my command let the League of Regulars, the Scourge, and those other heroes here present be bound in chains of torment!” proclaimed the Parody Master. The energy bonds solidified into glowing spiky shackles that wracked their wearers with exquisite agony.
“No amount of torture will break us!” vowed Starseed. “We’ll.. aaagh!”
“We will never surrender,” called Pegasus. “Though you torment us for a thousand years, we shall..”
“Only a thousand years?” chuckled the Parody Master.
Everyone was screaming and writhing at once.
“Is to be uncute nasty man who is to be needing a big telling off!”
“…Wilt nail thine nadgers to the great World Tree!”
“Doesn’t this make you misty for the Little Sisters of Discipline Orphanage we grew up in, Moo?”
“If I can just adapt my armour’s energy absorbers to pick up on this pain-field…”
“No matter how powerful you are, evil must always be fought!”
“Join me and I shall spare your pitiful life, Parody Master, and allow you to serve me as a minion!”
And in the chaos, Hollywood V slipped free, crept up behind the Parody Master, and clobbered him with his runic staff. “You really need to be a lot clearer with your commands,” HV warned the stunned archvillain. “I’m not with the League or the Scourge, and I’m surely not a hero. So no restraints for me.” And he bludgeoned the villain again.
The Parody Master grunted and pointed his sword at HV. “Good try,” he admitted as he blew the not-hero forty miles due west. Then he teleported the burned wreck of Hollywood V back to join the others in chains.
“Vizh!” Jarvis shouted across the trophy gallery of pain-tormented prisoners. “You said you knew how to stop the Parody Master?”
“We got a complete list of the dimensional rifts and their exact co-ordinates from a visitor we had,” Cheryl called back. “And then Yo calculated the exact way to release their energies and return the real estate to where it was, channelling all the energies through the Parody Master in the process.”
“Yo is liking fireworks.”
“I could probably do it,” NTU-150 admitted, “Given the specific frequencies on the Wrichards Day-Vincent scale that is. And not being lashed with pain by these restraining shackles.”
“Right,” Jarvis nodded. “Okay guys, prepare to bust free. Everybody piles on PM until Enty can set up the energy transfer. Clear?”
“As day, o glorious leader,” answered spiffy. “Except for the little detail of how we get out of these pain chains.”
“Same way HV did,” the battling butler answered. “Through a loophole. Listen up folks. It’s rename time. We’re no longer the League of Regulars. Say hello to… the Lair Legion!”
“What a sucky name!” Lisa criticised.
The chains that were holding the League vanished, setting the LL free.
“I love it,” she concluded.
Jarvis, Banjooooo, Finny, Starseed, Dark Knight, and Space Ghost fell upon the Parody Master. NTU-150 and Visionary set to work on the frequencies.
“Hey, what about me?” demanded Evil spiffy, still writhing in his bonds because technically he wasn’t really a member, just the evil other-dimensional duplicate of one.
“Jarv, we need Yo!” Visionary called across the battlefield.
The butler dodged an energy bolt that could have fried Venezuela and called back, “Okay! As leader of the Lair Legion I hereby appoint Yo as a temporary substitute member. And Donar too.”
Thunder rumbled overhead. “Now thou art talking!” chuckled the cross hemigod. “Tis the smiting hour!”
“Annoyances!” screamed the Parody Master, slapping Finny, Space Ghost, Starseed and Banjoooo into unconsciousness with a single blow. “Do you know just how powerful I am?”
“This powerful?” checked Donar, smashing Mjalcolm into the Parody Master’s faceplate.
“And more!” shouted the Parody Master, lancing his energies through Donar, Lisa, DK, and Jarvis to bring them all down.
“I’d say this powerful,” suggested NTU-150. His red and gold armour was already glowing with the infinite dimensional forces he was tapping. Vizh grabbed Yo and quickly pulled him/her away. NTU cranked up his absorption grid to maximum. “You can resist any force in the universe… except your own power back at you!”
“Wait…!” the Parody Master commanded.
There was a whine of particle weapons discharging. There was a shudder through the fabric of time/space. A billion parsecs away Galactivac the Living Death that Sucks woke up with a headache. Across the planet and beyond the missing pieces of the Parodyverse snapped back into place.
“What on earth was that?” Sarah Shepherdson puzzled, rubbing her forehead. “Oh well, back to dance class.”
*****
There was another big hole. This time it was a steaming crater and the Lair Legion pulled themselves out of it slowly and painfully.
“All those people the Parody Master pulled here using his power are gone,” the Dark Knight reported to the limping Jarvis. “Presumably sent home, since I’ve been able to contact Cheryl back at the Lair Mansion.” He looked askance at the butler for a moment. “Lair Legion? Where did that come from?”
“Enty? Enty? Are you alright?” Lisa cried out as she spotted the melted lump that had been Jamie Bautista’s battle armour.
“Hardly,” croaked the young genius that had channelled the unmeasurable forces through his shattered frame. “But if you can get me back to the mansion I can upload my consciousness into a holographic form while I regenerate my body and then…” He lapsed into unconsciousness.
“We’d better get him back quickly,” worried Starseed.
“Sure,” agreed Jarvis. “DH, where did you park the LairJet?”
“Um,” swallowed the armoured adventurer. “I think the biggest piece is over there.”
“I thinkest I might be able to summon up yon dimensional rift if the need ist pressing,” Donar admitted. “There art only a one in four chance of it taking us instead to the demon-pits of Nifflingheim. Mayhap one in three.”
“You know, big guy” Lisa smiled at the well-muscled Ausgardian. “I think you might be a keeper.”
*****
“…So the threat of the Parody Master was thwarted and all the missing people and property are back in place, we have two new members, we saved the world again,” Jarvis told the TV cameras. “And we are now proud to be called… the Lair Legion!”
“Well, not exactly proud…” Starseed qualified.
“We could be to be naming cute team something else?” Yo suggested. “Something with bunnies in it?”
“Or reaving,” suggested Donar. “Mayhap pillaging and slaying also.”
“Perhaps we could call it ‘Banjoooo’s Lair Legion, by Appointment’?” the King of the Sea Monkeys suggested.
“Complete with the logo of a squashed Sea Monkey?” growled Fin Fang Foom.
“And then there’s the question of team uniforms,” grinned Lisa wickedly. “Everyone’s wearing black leather these days, we can’t be left out.”
“Anybody calling themselves the Lair Legion deserves to die,” warned Evil spiffy.
“We’re going to have to get all the stationary reprinted,” warned Visionary.
“I want my TV show back!” shouted a drunken Space Ghost in the background.
“Who let SG take his pants off again?”
“They chafe.”
“Why is Jarvis banging his head on the podium?”
And in our concluding chapter: Wilbur Parody makes his move, Enty discovers Yo’s gender, Lisa’s induction programme, Gothametropolis’ finest, spiffy, Evil spiffy, Bubba, Abbub, and more fern-boys than you can shake a weed-whacker at, Puppeteers, Lo-Chi, Devil Doctor, Dark Thugos, the inconceivable Yurt, and the Hooded Hood. Oh, and the Secret of the Universe. If we can fit all of that in.
One day.
*****
Footnotes:
Birmingham and Magnetic Techbird and other interesting places and people: Birmingham is a major city in the Midlands of England (and the home of Mike “Xander” Cook as a matter of interest). Magnetic Techbird, the magnetism and sound-controlling mutant rebel, had a curious career as villain, freedom-fighter, teacher, cause celebré, brief probationary Legionnaire, and finally as a shot-through-the-head corpse until somebody retcons it. Littlesmallville is the movable town where Amazing Guy grew up. De Brown Streak hails from San Fernando, Trinidad. Dancer is half-Irish, and for Parodyverse purposes can be assumed to have grown up in Bogall.
Later in the story we have references to Xnylonia, which is the homeworld of Ziles, later the hunted fugitive who joins the LL for protection from the yet-unexplained Gahream, and to Skree-Lump, centre of the Skree Star Empire, then-residing place of the supercomputer Supreme Interference – and maybe more.
Lisa’s girl chat: Ego the Living Beard is a pseudonym for a well-known comic-book writer who featured prominently in the early Parodyverse. “Visionary for Leader” was an early round-robin story, much of which still exists. spiffy conquered France in his early days as Evil spiffy (see below). Lisa received the Booke of the Law in the first chapter of Year One.
Dr Leonardo Day Vincent and his staff: Dr Day-Vincent is one of the Parodyverse’s most brilliant scientists, the retired superhero known as Renaissance Man, ex-husband of the other previous-generation superhero Fashion Fairy. In the words of his creator Kirk (CSFB!) Boxlietner: Day-Vincent is still very much alive. However, by the time that this story is told, he's already well retired from superheroing, as a result of the disastrous final battle of the Valiant Vanguard. Al B. Harper and Miss Framlicker are probably his interns at Renaissance Man Research, Inc., which he continues to maintain, even as he serves as the "Interim CEO" of Daedalus Discoveries. I use the term "Interim CEO" in much the same way that Steve Jobs was referred to as "Interim CEO" of Apple - namely, everybody knows that he's in charge, and that it belongs to him, but they also know that he's terribly commitment-phobic, in the way that many incredibly creative people tend to be, so they've honored his wishes, and are pretending that he's merely Cincinnatus, stepping in temporarily to set things right, when in fact he's actually in it for the long haul. And I don't know if you even need or want to include this, but Day-Vincent is also spending a lot of his time on Schroedinger's Cat, his Buckaroo Banzai-style scientific adventurer rock band.
Al B Harper and Miss Framlicker go on to greater things as the new generation of dangerous genius scientist and principal technician for the Interdimensional Transportation Corporation respectively. Somewhere between then and now they also find time to get engaged and then break each others’ hearts.
Prize Fighter: The street-level crimebuster operated on the West Coast and mentored the young Messenger. Prize Fighter was finally murdered by Messenger’s arch-foe Mailman.
Professor Wrichards: Another brilliant scientist of the older generation. He crops up most often these days advising the JBH.
Cobra: Now a mainstay of the Abandoned Legion, Cobra’s background has always remained somewhat sketchy. We know that the role of Cobra had historically been conferred on a young woman champion by the Egyptian Sect of the Goddess Buto, a religious order operating from the Floating Isle of Chemmis to rescue children of potential and protect mothers in peril. We also know that the Sect was destroyed a few years back by the Thunder-Monkey Worshipping Ass-Raping Ninjas and that Cobra was unable to save her people. Now we know a little more. Cobra has variously served since the destruction of the Sect as a mercenary, a villain, and finally a hero. She has yet to kiss anyone else.
The Word and Pelopia: Gideon Book is CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s mentor and secret arch-enemy. Pelopia is Book’s daughter and the woman bred to destroy CSFB! Book is also the villainous Word, emissary of Order, head of the Order of Order who strive to bring perfect, well, order to the Parodyverse. Again in the words of Kirk Boxleitner: Book's business is known as Odyssey Opportunities (and not Book Industries, as certain chroniclers have stated). Odyssey Opportunities and its subdivisions, Mnemosyne Media and Pantheon Prodigies - the educational program in which Dreamcatcher Foxglove and Gwendolyn Leslie were enrolled, when they became CSFB! and PAPG! - were both created by Book himself. Daedalus Discoveries and Icarus Innovations, on the other hand, were acquired by Book.
The general public of the Parodyverse knows that Book has a daughter, but they do not know that she is the Priestess Pelopia. I see Book as being a public figure who is well-known for preferring to be private about his personal life, much like George Lucas. So, like George, the general public knows that Book was once married, and that he has a daughter (I doubt they even know her first name, to be honest), and that she's probably studying abroad or something (at the time of this narrative), but other than that, he's very much a blank slate.
A few people might know that his gray-tinted glasses are actually his Shades of Gray, a Day-Vincent invention which allows people whose eyes are sensitive to bright colors (like Book) to see the world without pain, but most of the time, it's not anything that anyone gives much thought to, I don't think. So, he sees the entire world through shades of gray (ha ha). Most people probably just think it's a fashion statement or a personal quirk, like Neil Gaiman and Bono's affection for sunglasses at all hours of the day. Unlike flashier or more eccentric moguls, like Ted Turner or Bill Gates, Gideon Book probably wouldn't be seen as all that interesting, since his expressed political leanings are middle-of-the-road enough not to piss anyone off, and his companies actually tend to treat their employees exceptionally well, which never makes for an interesting news story.
Evil spiffy (sigh): A VAST amount of early Parodyverse literature centred upon the various doings of spiffy and his duplicates. The founding teenaged spiffy was replaced by an evil counterpart from another reality, who first stole Jarvis’ powers and then went on to do a number of wicked things and to conquer France. He also acquired a symbiotic fern from the Unhappy Place, a realm of misery and destruction which is the opposite of Yo’s Happy Place. When Evil spiffy was finally killed by Farmer Bob (don’t ask), classic spiffy returned to mop up the mess and pick up the pieces of his life. He later acquired a symbiotic fern of his own, the only nice symbiotic fern in existence. Later still Bubba, another alternate-reality spiffy, arrived to woo and attempt to wed Lisa, and to feud with Jarvis and Donar. For a relatively nice guy he became the most unpopular character in the Parodyverse. Abbub was a demonic version of spiffy. Dark Thugos is another variant spiffy, only competent and dangerous and now the new Destroyer of Tales. Real spiffy was also dead for a while and condemned to Hell, Nebraska. His then-father, the Hooded Hood, arranged for his escape. Hollywood V, who has killed spiffy in the first place, sacrificed his life to give spiffy a new life – although most of the time just then spiffy was in the form of a little girl for reasons never adequately explained. Later, the hood disowned spiffy and retconned him not to have been his son after all. All clear now? spiffy has vowed to explain all this in a forthcoming story. Really.
The Order of the Observing Eye: A mysterious monklike organisation that has somehow gained access to The Second Book of Prophesies of Wilbur Parody, which explains the signs and portents of the fateful forthcoming Resolution War. The Order train suitable gifted youngsters to become heroes (and sometimes villains), and amongst their alumni are Goldeneyed, Exile, Deathspoon, and Exemplary. They also arrange for suitable girl-children to be washed on the shores of Amazon Isle where they can be raised as warrior maidens. The Order’s programme was seriously disrupted when Baron Zemo destroyed their School for Gifted Youngsters and murdered their best tutor Professor Xanter (see LL Year One chapter 2). Most recently they have taken Goldeneyed and Lisette’s child for training (although G-Eyed doesn’t even know he’s a father yet).
The diabolical Dr Moo: Daio Waltz, Lisa’s older, meaner sister, graduated Magna Cum Laude from the Little Sisters of Discipline orphanage (from which Lisa ran away) as a full-fledged archvillainess. Using her amazing biochemical prowess to gain absolute control over dairy products Moo has launched a succession of cruel and unusual experiments in an unsuspecting populace as a member of the Scourge of the BZL, as a partner to the alien Pearson’s Porter, and in her own right. This chapter shows her joining the Scourge as an occasional member. At the time of writing Moo is currently in stasis in the Manga Shoggoth’s icy Antarctic lair.
Parody Master: By far the most powerful and persistent of the early Parodyverse non-poster adversaries, the Parody Master appeared many times in plots ranging from the cosmic to the ridiculous. The Lair Legion eventually discovered that the Parody Master merges with a host body to incarnate, and sometimes the competence or otherwise of the host body affects his character and abilities. However, a fully-manifested PM can do virtually anything and has no love for the heroes of the Parodyverse. It is not clear what place the Parody Master occupies in the Parodyverse’s cosmology, but he holds no real allegiance even to the Celestian Space Robots who maintain the fabric of the multiverse. He is bad, bad news. And he’s still out there.
Avatar warriors: The Parody Master’s infinite footsoldiers, the core of his armies of conquest. His principal commander later gained self-will and went on to become the blue-skinned hero Avatar. Like all his fellows he was equipped with a cuts-through-anything Avasword and other advanced technology.
Wilbur Parody: The founder of Paradopolis and it’s 19th Century Mayor is the only person to have variously occupied all three of the Triumverate offices of Shaper of Worlds, Chronicler of Stories, and Destroyer of Tales. He created Paradopolis as a trap for cosmic powers and a means of furthering his insane ambitions. But more of this next time.
Sarah Shepherdson: The very attractive brunette teenager who makes a brief one-line appearance here is due to emigrate to Paradopolis in about three years time and become the Legionnaire called the Probability Dancer.
Many stories and links to stories can be found at The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom, which features well over 200 Parodyverse tales, more than any sane reader might want.
More information on the main characters in the story and a good deal of obscure ones can be found at the always-out-of-date Who's Who in the Parodyverse. There’s a link there to an older version of the Who’s Who that might be more relevant to reading early stories.
And there’s yet more background in the Where's Where in the Parodyverse if you’re not facted out yet.
HH
This poster posed from 212.159.41.128 when they posted
Message Thread
- Lair Legion: Year One, part 5 – Who stole Birmingham and other bits of questionable real estate and why the League of Regulars had to get a new name - More forgotten trivia for fanboy completists from... the Hooded Hood - 06:20 on June 24, 2002
- Fun. :) - (nt) CrazySugarFreakBoy! - 01:27 on June 25, 2002
- Not for poor Pelopia it wasn't - (nt) HH points out that CSFB! helpfully edited the bit with Gideon Book, so all the nasty things that happen to poor Pelopia are Kirk's doing. - 03:39 on June 25, 2002
- Finished it! Finally! Well worth the wait! - (nt) ag - 23:24 on June 25, 2002
- It could have been much longer. This one cried out to be a multi-part epic, but I managed to restrain myself. - (nt) HH - 02:31 on June 26, 2002
- And just how DID you restrain yourself? - (nt) ag - 06:50 on June 26, 2002
- I cut out the subplots featuring Manga Shoggoth, Dancer, Dynamite Boy, Chronic, Jury, Saint, Gurl, Enemy, Stavenger, and Pierson's Porter, left the romance stuff featuring Tina and Lania out, didn't guest-star Hagatha Darkness, the Scarlet Skier, or Dan Drury, and generally tried to do it all within 6,000 words plus footnotes. - (nt) HH - 08:50 on June 26, 2002
- Oh yes. It was tiny, clocking in at 26 pages at an '8' font. You're all going to make me write That Really Long Story one of these days, aren't you? - (nt) the Dark Knight fears The Really Long Story and its twin, The Coming of the Gods. And so should you. - 16:20 on June 26, 2002
- It really, truly wasn't that long. There have been several longer Untold Tales, even incluidng the footnotes. On the 10 point Times New Roman font I use in Word documents the whole text was just over 13 pages.As for some lengthy writing from the Burch corner, I say go for it. - (nt) HH waits - 17:22 on June 26, 2002
- That was mostly mockery on my point. But, still, on the computer I'm using, it came in at something like a size 14 font, which meant that it was well over 40 some pages long, which was just insanely long. And, I do want to go beyond the usual 3-5 page limit I post here, it's just that my time is going to start being vastly limited here, shortly, and I've so much 'pro' writing to be done on top of 'ZL stuff that I'm not sure how feasible it is. And by 'longer' stories, I'm considering something of a 'Dean' format in that I want to get in the thirty to fifty page realm. - (nt) - 17:49 on June 26, 2002
- So has the responces out numbered the actual story yet? - (nt) ag - 23:44 on June 26, 2002
- These puny few responses? Hah! - (nt) HH has been rereading some old Untold Tales (or reading tjhem for the first time if you don't count actually writing them; they're coming out as a surprise to me) and around the #35 mark we routinely got over 100 responses from all kinds of people (and a set of HUGE ManMan/Troia and DK/Finny squabbles). People just don't feud like that any more. *sigh* - 05:07 on June 27, 2002
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