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This message #106: Untold Tales of the Well-Travelled Lair Legion: Over the Hills and Far Away, the Journeys and Destinations of Our Glorious Heroes (plus spiffy and Vizh) was posted by The Legion vs their most unstoppable foe, yet more unexpected villains, and a plot twist or two to make you go Hmmm; from the Hooded Hood on Saturday, January 18, 2003 at 14:14.
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#106: Untold Tales of the Well-Travelled Lair Legion: Over the Hills and Far Away, the Journeys and Destinations of Our Glorious Heroes (plus spiffy and Vizh)
Creaseface crashed through the plate glass window and sprawled on the pavement. He reached for his firearm, a custom-built Remington .44 Auto-machine Pistol, but Messenger’s boot came down on his hand with a bone-splintering crunch.
The postman was being kind tonight. The building he had just tossed the crimelord out of exploded behind them.
“You’re out of the Metadrug manufacturing business, Creaseface,” Messenger hissed at the bloodied gangster. “And you can tell the Lynchpin that if he tries setting up another factory it’ll go the same way this one did. And make sure he knows I’ve got his notes here, and I’m one step closer to the day I can come for him.” The vigilante hero stepped down hard on Creaseface’s knee and something else went crack. “You listening?”
“Yes… yes…”
Creaseface had paid off the Gothametropolis police and the state DEA. He knew he’d never even get as far as a courtroom. Suddenly he didn’t feel as smug and safe about that with a hard-bitten grizzled lunatic with a profusion of sharp-edged weapons leaning over him with a merciless look in his eyes.
With a final kick to Creaseface’s head Messenger slid away, his black trenchcoat billowing behind him as he glided up the alley.
The Dark Knight was waiting for him, and nodded as Messenger handed over the computer discs and paperwork from Creaseface’s office.
“They’re encrypted, of course,” the postman warned.
“Ten minutes,” shrugged DK. “Like you say, it’s another step closer to taking the Lynchpin down.”
“And while he’s busy chasing me he’s not looking in the shadows behind him,” smiled Messenger grimly.
The Dark Knight’s own lips may have twitched then very slightly. “Exactly. One of these days I’m going to take him down, and his whole corrupt crew from the deputy-mayor to the guys running the municipal dump. It may take a lot of preparation, but every day brings us nearer to…”
Then the urban legend went pale, clutched his stomach, and fell to his knees.”
“DK?” Messenger called as the Dark Knight retched blood onto the pavement. “What the…”
The stricken hero looked up with blood-rimmed eyes, his face parchment white under his leather cowl. “No….” he muttered. “No… no… no…”
It was telling about Messenger that when the Knight had toppled over his first reaction wasn’t to catch him but to draw a gun and a razor letter and prepare for attack. Now he looked around helplessly, trying to work out what and who had taken down DK. “What’s going on?” he demanded.
It was fifteen minutes before his comrade was able to sit up and speak once more. He looked more ill than the postman had ever seen a living being. “Sorry about that,” DK croaked in a painful whisper. “I think… I think someone just murdered the Chronicler of Stories.”
***
Okay, Finny thought, there were a few things to note about the performance of the newest line-up of the Lair Legion. Well, there would have been if any of them were likely to survive this. Foom had brought Ziles, CrazySugarFreakBoy!, Nats, Dancer, dull thud, and Pegasus to the mysterious ruined Turquoise Area of the moon as a team-building field trip. He hadn’t expected to be leading them into their first mortal combat against the most powerful enemy the Lair Legion had ever battled, the Parody Master, and his infinite Avatar Warriors.
On the bright side, the Avatar Warriors were quickly clearing the field of berserker monkeys and renegade robots. Somewhere Evil Monkey must be in a frothing rage, and whoever was behind the androids and combat drones wouldn’t be best pleased either. Unfortunately that just meant there were more of the Parody Master’s forces to concentrate on the Lair Legion now.
First point to note, thought Foom, was to encourage thud not to react to dozens of tech-armoured combat troops by shouting “Aaagh!” and diving for cover under Pegasus. And generally a bit of training about what to do when outnumbered several thousand to one by biocreated soldiers wielding nano-thick energy blades that could slice through anything would probably be good. But mainly it was worth noting for the record that the LL had never beaten a full manifestation of the Parody Master through direct combat and it wasn’t likely to do so now.
The great Makluan dragon unfurled himself to his full size, despite making himself a better target for the heavy combat squads with their mounted proton cannons. He needed a tactical overview so he could worry about just how desperate things were.
Things was pretty desperate. Ziles and Dancer were cornered in the ruins of a crumbling Skree building, its function long since forgotten but perfect as a killing ground for heroes. The girls were somehow fending off the overwhelming odds for now, but it was only a matter of time before Dancer’s probability-enhanced gyrations and Ziles’ ninja arts proved insufficient to the savagery of the attack.
Pegasus had reacted like a warrior born. Finny reminded himself to have another word with her about the Legion’s no-killing policy, but not until after this particular battle. The winged centaur lashed about her with savage fury, combining hoof and cosmic bolt, shifting freely between horse and human, ignoring the dozens of gashes ribboning her flesh in favour of maximising her kills.
Behind her CrazySugarFreakBoy! skimmed over the heads of the ground troops and hopped onto one of the flying armoured platforms. He pressed his nose against the plexisteel window and waited until that vehicle and the one beside it had both oriented their weapons at him before leaping aside so they blasted each other.
Nats deftly threaded through the throng, hammering aside Avatar Warriors with telekinetic pushes. He held his Psychostave before him like a spear, oriented on the Parody Master himself, and released the most powerful pyrokinetic burst he could manage.
Three score Avatar Warriors fell dead on the ground, literally frozen to death as Nats’ alien walking stick sucked heat from them to concentrate on its target. The Parody Master’s crimson armour boiled as its surface temperature rose to 200,000 degrees; but the archvillain didn’t notice the attack.
Nats noticed though. Horrified by the Psychostave’s initiative he ploughed into the ground shuddering in withdrawal.
Foom saw all of this is an instant and had perhaps five seconds to react. He triggered the comm-unit implanted in his neck and barked out terse, urgent orders. CSFB! leaped onto centaur-Pegasus’ back (“Watch those hands, bucko!”) and she streaked away with a doppler blur. At the same time Dancer kicked the crumbling wall above the combat where Ziles struggled, burying the two women beneath falling turquoise granite.
Finny himself moved to protect the shivering Nats. “thud, the picnic hamper,” he called urgently.
~~On it~~ answered Cressida, the Lair Legion’s newest member, who lived in dull thud’s gastro-enterinal system. Her host fumbled with the basket full of rations.
Finny sprayed the Parody Master with nuclear fire, scattering his minions and clearing a swath for thud to drag Nats away. The Parody Master waited until the barrage stopped, then pointed at the dragon and neatly evaporated his head.
Then the Avatar Warriors fell on the carcass to slice it to ribbons.
***
Sorceress dragged herself back to consciousness and realised that she had been placed into some kind of trance by mental domination. It was a long time since anybody had been able to do that to her. She found herself hanging painfully by her wrists, uncomfortably hot, and choking on fumes. With a sick horror she realised that she was dangling over the caldera of a live volcano.
She wasn’t alone. Jay Boaz – her lover Hatman – hung limply beside her. The other people who had been there in her house when the last attack had happened were shackled there too, Art Corben and his friend Randy, and the human-disguised robot Jack Pyrite. Mr Pyrite’s robotic daughter Mindy was missing from the ensemble, though.
“Ah, you’re awake,” Mr Pyrite noted. His voice sounded tinny and fuzzy, probably because of the mass of circuitry hanging from his chest. “I was starting to panic.”
“Where… where are we?”
“Over a volcano somewhere,” Mr Pyrite explained helpfully. “We’re prisoners of somebody called Dirth Vortex.”
“I know,” Sorceress scowled. “The volcano is a bit self-evident, and is making me wish I’d stopped to put some undies on before going to investigate your combined robot - monkey housebreaking. And the Lair Legion’s fought Dirth Vortex before. He’s a master of the dark side of the Gah!, which is a manifestation of the underlying power of the Parodyverse released through vocal methods. I was hoping for a bit more information that I could use to escape.”
“Well, Dirth Vortex has got my Mindy,” worried Mr Pyrite. “I hope he doesn’t damage her extracting the data I hid in her.”
As the robot was speaking, Sorceress was waking Hatman by the expedient of swinging on her chains and kicking him repeatedly on the shins.
“Ow,” the capped crusader complained.
“Wake up, lover,” Whitney told him. “It’s hero time.”
Jay Boaz looked around him. “Oh. A volcano pit scenario, eh?” he noted.
“You’ve had these before?” Mr Pyrite asked. “How did you escape?”
Sorceress looked a little abashed. “Well,” she admitted, “usually I wait until the villain tries to marry or mate with me and then I turn the tables on him.”
“And if he doesn’t wish to do that?”
Whitney shot him a worried glance. “That’s never happened until now,” she confessed.
Jay helpfully kicked Art and Randy back to wakefulness.
“Where’s Mindy?” Art worried.
“Dude, where’s your priorities?” Randy demanded. “Never mind where’s Mindy, where’s the way out of this freaking volcano?”
“Dirth Vortex and his minions have Mindy,” Mr Pyrite answered. “All because you ran away with her…”
“Because you stopped the monkeys protecting her, you mean…” Randy accused.
“Because you hid some funky data in her memory that everybody and his brother wants…” Art joined in.
“Child-molesting pervert…”
“Traitor to the monkey cause…”
“HOLD IT!” thundered Hatman. “Can we blame each other after we escape from the death trap, maybe?”
The others reluctantly agreed that this was a good idea.
“I suppose they took your hatility belt?” Sorceress checked.
“Yep. What about your elemental powers, Whit?”
“Blocked somehow. That Dirth Vortex is far too powerful for my liking.”
Randy turned to Mr Pyrite. “Hey, you’re a robot, dude. Can’t you snap your chains and walk out through the molten lava?”
“I could if they hadn’t disabled my servos,” Mindy’s father answered peevishly. “As it is, I’m crippled from the neck down.”
Then Art made a comment that started the bickering off again until Hatman shouted at them once more.
“Right,” Jay declared. “Mr Pyrite could get out of here if he was in working order and he could free the rest of us. But he’s damaged. Mr P, am I right in thinking that you’re wearing a wig?”
“That’s a very personal question, young man. I don’t…”
“Because if you are, and Whitney can swing her bare feet to grab it off you and then somehow manoeuvre it onto my head, I can duplicate your robotic strength and invulnerability and get us out instead.”
“That,” admired Art, “is brilliant.”
Sorceress wasn’t as impressed. “You only ever come up with these plans when I’m not wearing underwear, don’t you,” she complained to Hatman.
***
There were tunnels beneath the city on the moon.
“Did you know there were tunnels?” Dancer asked Ziles as they sidled away from the combat zone.
“They appeared on my deep resonance scans,” the Xnylonian exile admitted.
“You didn’t mention them.”
“Sorry. I still tend to like to keep a secret escape route in reserve. Old habits.”
A hundred or more Avatar Warriors cut through the lunar rock above to search for them. Ziles extended her invisibility screen to conceal Dancer, and Dancer twisted probabilities so that the hunters’ sophisticated bio-sensors didn’t penetrate the cloaking field.
“What are these tunnels?” Dancer wondered as the first squad moved on.
“They shouldn’t be here,” Ziles worried. “I think these are part of the complex that the Enemy of the World built here. But he was retconned away by the Hooded hood, along with all his works.”
“Oh.” Dancer caught the implication of that. “Hoody’s dead, maybe. Does that mean that his retcons will unwind?”
“Possibly,” considered Ziles. “We know that he had to expend more energy to make a retcon permanent, and that he deliberately made some of his changes require his constant maintenance so as to make the Legion think twice about taking him out.”
“A problem for later,” Dancer decided. “Right now we have to figure out what the Parody Master wants and how he got here.”
“We do?” Ziles checked. “I figured we’d get back to my cloaked spaceship and get the hell out of here.” She thought a bit more and added, “We can pick up Finny and the others too, I guess.”
“Of course we need to work out what he’s up to,” Sarah Shepherdson insisted. “How can we talk him out of it if we don’t know his motivation? How can we beat him if we don’t know what he’s after?”
As they discussed this they had moved through the tunnels until they were more or less beneath the spot where Ziles had landed her vessel. “Okay,” the Xnylonian agreed, “We’ll try it your way, but I still need to get to my ship or to Aunt Sally. That way I can amplify and process the sensory probes I set and we might get some answers.”
Patrols were heavier in this area, and it took the heroines more than ten minutes to reach the surface unseen. Finally they manoeuvred to overlook the plaza where Aunt Sally and the stealth-concealed Xnylonian space cruiser were berthed. Ziles cloaked Dancer again and the two of them picked their way towards the crafts.
Things were going pretty well until they walked into the invisible shock screen bubble that the Parody Master had put up around the vessels to prevent anyone reaching them. Then the day went downhill as they lost consciousness and appeared amidst the uncountable Avatar Warriors that searched for them.
***
spiffy was wrestling with the budget. That is, he was trying to lift the paperwork up onto his desk, but there was roughly one and a half tons of it and it was blocking the water cooler. As he used his symbiotic fern to lever the heavy bound volumes he became aware that he was being watched. A tall man in a grey business suit stood in the doorway.
“Uh, do we have an appointment?” Mayor Hopkins worried.
“We do now, sir,” the visitor told him. he held out a SPUD ID card. “We have a situation, Mister Mayor.”
spiffy winced. He didn’t think he was up to coping with another situation. “I’m kind of busy right now…” he began.
The man in the grey suit turned round to spiffy’s aids and bodyguards. “Get out,” he told them, and they all went. “As I said, sir, we have a situation.”
“And who the hell are you again?” Mark Hopkins demanded, starting to feel peeved.
“I’m the man who needs your co-operation, sir. I’m also the man who can tell you where to find Bone.”
spiffy caught his breath in mid-protest. “The Bone?” he swallowed.
“Yes. The vanished terrorist who murdered your adoptive father, and whom you have significantly failed to track down over these last few years,” the visitor summarised. “or had you forgotten him?”
“No,” glowered spiffy. “I won’t be forgetting that one.”
“Then I’m sure we can count on your co-operation, sir. We have a few questions about your other former father, the Hooded Hood.”
spiffy bristled. “What about him? He retconned me out of being his son. I have no idea what poor bastard he put in my place. I can’t really help.”
“Every detail counts, sir,” the man in grey assured him. And then he spent three quarters of an hour professionally grilling Mark Hopkins on everything he knew about the demised cowled crime czar before concluding “Thank you, sir. You’ve been marginally helpful.”
“Hey,” spiffy objected as the stranger rose to go, “What about the Bone? You said you knew where he was?”
“Indeed I do, sir,” the visitor agreed. “I said I could tell you. But I never said I would.”
“What?”
“Not that it matters, Mayor Hopkins. You’re going to sleep now, and when you awaken you won’t remember any of this ever happening. Good night.”
“Now wait a…” Then spiffy slumped on his desk and began to snore.
***
The Avatar Warriors cut through the rubble where CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s fizz bombs had brought down the roof of the Skree forum and burst out into a wide-arc cosmic bolt that Pegasus had taken time to brew properly.
“That should keep them off our tails for a while,” she smirked, looking at the bubbling protoplasmic masses steaming in the tunnel. “Now we cut back and destroy the Parody Master.”
“That’s not Finny’s plan,” CSFB! reminded her. “Ziles and Dancer break for it to gather more info and maybe get help. Foomy and the others try to sabotage whatever it is ol’ PM is up to this time round. And we…” (here the dayglow green and yellow-clad Peter Pan flashed a brilliant white smile of pure joy) “have to find ways of disrupting and distracting the villain so the others can get on.”
“Ripping the Parody Master’s head off would distract him,” argued Pegasus.
“True, but it’s not really practical,” Dreamcatcher Foxglove pointed out. “If this is a full manifestation of the Parody Master then he’s impossible to stop through fighting. So that means we have to give him the Bugs Bunny routine.”
Pegasus glared at the wired wonder and considered instead ripping his head off.
“I mean we use unauthodox ways of baffling the baddie,” CSFB! translated. “Goad him into doing stupid stuff. Blowing his own head off.”
The winged woman considered this. Hasty confessions from fleeing monkeys she had accosted earlier suggested that the Parody Master was actually possessing the body of their leader, the evil monkey known only as… Evil Monkey. “Very well. Proceed.”
CrazySugarFreaklBoy! led Pegasus to the perimeter of the Turquoise Area crater, to the very edge of the atmosphere bubble. Barren grey lunar rockscape curved off to the horizon. “Sense anything?” he asked her hopefully.
“My irritating fanboy sense is tingling,” she noted. “What am I looking for?”
“The edge we need to really annoy PM. You’ve heard of the Observers, right?”
“The race of cosmic busybodies that monitor galactic events but never interfere. Yes, Uatu was a member of the Scourge before losing interest and going to watch something else. The Voyeur was the Observer assigned to Earth before he was wiped out in one of your earlier adventures.”
“Right. And nobody’s ever found his secret lunar base on the edge of the Turquoise Area.”
Pegasus understood. “Ah. His base packed with impossibly-advanced technology suitable for… Bugsing up the Parody Master.” She concentrated her senses and pointed. “There,” she said confidently, trotted forward, and vanished through an invisible wall.”
“Best field trip ever,” CSFB! repeated to himself and followed her into the home of the Voyeur.
***
The People’s Fraternal Republic of Candia is a very large, muddy nation, renowned for its barren, inhospitable landscape. Its hard-working, sheep-like population of 134 million are kept under strict control by the oppressive administration, which measures its success by the nation's GDP and refers to individual citizens as “human resources.” The enormous, corrupt government - a sprawling, bureaucracy-choked morass – exists only to carry out the absolute commands of the Queen of Candia, Empress of All She Surveys. The private sector is led by the mud export business, followed by voleskin products and uranium mining. Guns are banned, citizens are barcoded to keep track of their movements, and crime is totally unknown, thanks to the all-pervasive police force and progressive social policies in nailing offenders to the doors of public libraries. Candia's national animal is the dung beetle, which is also the nation's favourite main course and which teeters on the brink of extinction due to widespread deforestation. It’s currency is the Looney.
Yesterday Canada was the big country on mainland America’s northern border. Today the US has a new neighbour whether they like it or not.
“I don’t get it,” Goldeneyed worried, looking around the grim city square at the uniformly blocky buildings done out in early grim. “This isn’t where we should be.”
“Could you have misteleported?” Falcon wondered. “Or perhaps got us to a parallel dimension?”
“As soon as I’ve finished throwing up from bringing us here I’ll check. In the meantime why don’t you ask one of the natives?”
Falcon approached one of the random gawpers, a man dressed like all the locals in what appeared to be a massive baggy knee-length jumper knitted out of hairy string. “Excuse me sir, but could you tell us where we are?”
The passer by shied away, dropped his buckets of mud, and fled, yelling, “No! No! I didn’t talk to him! I didn’t! I didn’t have a talking license!”
“Hey, you forgot your… mud,” Falc called after him.
He picked up the bucket to show the retreating Candian, which meant that the Secret Police found him brown-handed with an unlicensed pail. “Do not move!” Officer Grungely ordered, struggling to pull out his nightstick. “Hold still until I can get there and beat you senseless.”
There was a whine as a state of the art combat harness powered up and oriented on Officer Grungely. “Or perhaps you could just let me off with a strict caution?” suggested Falcon.
“What’s going on?” puzzled Goldeneyed, who had an innate sense of place as part of his dimensional powers. “This is where Canada should be, and we’re right in the regular Parodyverse… but Canada’s not.”
“Ah, perhaps I can be of help?” suggested a dapper man in a cheap white suit.
A state of the art combat harness oriented on the newcomer instead. “And you are?” Falcon demanded.
“I know him,” scowled G-Eyed. “The Minion!”
“That’s Prime Minister Minion now, thank you very much,” the professional toady answered primly. “And don’t try anything clever or my employer will simply have a dozen orphans executed each minute until you surrender.”
“So Peter von Doom’s behind this,” hissed Goldeneyed. “Or the Supreme Interference.”
“Er, no. Actually I’m currently minioning for the Queen of Candia, Empress of All She Surveys. And she really doesn’t like to be kept waiting.” The Minion gestured to the dimensional portal that he’d appeared through. “This leads to her castle. If you’d be so good as to follow me, her majesty is eager to sentence you to slow and painful deaths.”
Falcon glanced across at Goldeneyed.
“It’s a straight transfer gate, no tricks” G-Eyed conceded. “And I guess we do need to find out what’s going on.” He strode through the portal, and Falcon followed.
They found themselves in a gold and satin throne room surrounded by courtiers grown wealthy on the slavery of a nation, on mud and voles and depleted uranium weaponry. The Queen of Candia rose from her throne, her elaborately skunk-streaked hair glistening with seed pearls, her ocelot and puma fur coat trailing behind her, a triumphant grin on her mean narrow lips.
“Cruella de Ville?” ventured Falcon.
“Close,” admitted G-Eyed. “This is her meaner older sister: Magenta St Evil.”
***
The Avatar Guard Commander dragged dull thud and Nats before the Parody Master. Bill Reed wasn’t in good shape, shivering and sweating, clutching his staff to his chest. “I didn’t want it to do that I didn’t ask it to do that it killed them it killed them it killed them…”
“Unclench, matey,” dull thud advised the flying phenomenon. “Cressida says these Avatar Warriors are just bioconstructs, extensions of this Parody Master bloke’s powers. Killing them isn’t really killing them. And it wasn’ae you anyway, it was your stick.”
“They could be more,” Nats said through chattering teeth. “Avatar was basically an Avatar guard captain, and he became almost human. Hell, he was a probationary Leaguer, like you.”
“Like Cressida,” thud reminded him. “But even so, you shouldn’t let wiping some of them out affect you so. Don’t feel bad about killing them.”
“I’m not,” Nats answered with a final shiver. “I’m feeling bad about how much I liked it.”
The Parody Master at last noticed them. He willed them to be stood before him beside the purple-glowing radiance of the new power-source buried beneath the Turquoise City. “How did you come to know of this?” he demanded of his prisoners.
“The roof fell in,” dull thud explained. “And there it was, glowing.”
The Parody Master at once knew this to be true. “The androids’ advanced detection equipment alerted them to this manifestation. The simians stole the information from the robots. And my old enemies the Lair Legion simply stumbled across it on a picnic. I sense the hand of the Chronicler of Stories here.” Something seemed to amuse the archvillain in that. “Of course, that’s not likely to be a problem any more.”
Nats shook off his Avatar Warrior guard and levelled the Psychostave at the Parody Master. “Whatever this thing is, it’s not for you,” he warned. “Back off and take your goons with you or I’ll let my cane do its worst.”
The Parody Master looked closely at the Psychostave “Indeed?” he mused. “Now that would be interesting.
Suddenly the Parody Master, Nats, and dull thud stood on the surface of a silent, barren planet. A population in the billions lay sprawled in attitudes of death on the streets. “This is the long-destroyed homeworld of the Second Oldest Race in the Parodyverse, about five billion years ago” the crimson-armoured villain explained casually. “It was these people who seeded carbon-based bipedal lifeform templates through the universe, accounting for the massive biological, linguistic, and psychological similarities between most sentient races. It was they who engineered the wormholes and the Negativity Zone, who established the Observers… and who created the Psychostave you now wield.”
~~They’re all dead~~ Cressida sensed. ~~Not just here. Everywhere in the universe. In the multiverse. All dead~~
“Yes,” smirked the Parody Master. “They unleashed the full power of their newest toy, their Psychostave, without understanding what they were letting free. And thus the Second Oldest Race died.” Suddenly the heroes were back in the cavern beneath the lunar surface. “By all means do your worst, brief mortal.”
Nats lowered the cane and slumped.
“I told you we’d have been better off this weekend on a drinking binge,” dull thud told Cressida.
Any response the psionic tapeworm might have made was interrupted by a shrieking Gaaaaahhhhh! sound as a midnight-black transfer conduit screamed open nearby.
“Dirth Vortex?” moaned Nats. “Oh my day is complete.”
The heavy-breathing Dark Gah! Master strode through the gateway with his loyal tattoo-faced disciples. They dragged with them a somewhat dishevelled Mindy Pyrite.
“Report,” the Parody Master demanded of the villain who had summoned him.
“The information is locked inside this robot,” hissed Vortex. “The androids have spent many months charting the flows of this… energy phenomenon. With the data they have gathered we can calculate the exact amplitudes of power to destroy it.”
“My dad’s going to be really pissed with you,” Mandy warned. “And my boyfriend’s gonna beat you up.”
Nats and dull thud winced as the Parody Master noted her. “Indeed?” he answered mildly. There was a flash of power and Mr Pyrite, Art, Randy, Sorceress, and Hatman stood before him.
“Go one then,” he invited them. “Fight me.”
***
“Urk,” said Visionary.
“Not glad to see me, Vizh?” smiled Lisa sweetly, standing at the slightly-skewed doorway of the possibly-fake man’s Dullard’s Corner condo. She bundled her huge ginger cat into Visionary’s arms and strolled past him into the lounge.
“Aagh!” said Visionary, as the malevolent smelly tabby sank claws deep into his arms before dropping to the floor and going off to hunt Fleabot.
Lisa spread herself across the sofa with the practised ease that only somebody who has known as many sofas as she had could possibly acquire.
“Cheryl’s not here,” Vizh ventured, hoping that the first lady of the Lair Legion would therefore go away.
“I know,” Lisa nodded, still smiling. “Working at NASA again, I hear.”
“And you moved to Wyoming or somewhere. To your ranch. To raise Christopher. Your child.”
“I know that too. But who says I can’t stop by and visit old friends?”
Visionary looked around to see who had come in.
“Old friends who are always happy to do me a favour,” Lisa continued brightly.
Vizh swallowed hard. “I’m not confessing to anything,” he told her quickly. “Or signing any document, even with my rubber stamp.”
“Then you’ve probably got a free afternoon,” Lisa judged. “That’s fortunate. You could run a little errand for me.”
“I’d love to, but I have to… grout the bathroom. Yes, that’s it. Lots of grouting.”
“And what is grouting, exactly?” Lisa wondered.
“It’s… very technical.”
“I see. Well, I’m sure there’ll be time for grouting a-plenty after my little errand. You know where Paradopolis is, don’t you?”
“Er… maybe.”
“Fine. Then I just want you to run down to Xander’s shop, have a word with the sorcerer supreme of the Parodyverse, and find out where the Hooded Hood really is, okay?”
There followed another ten minutes of spirited debate but Visionary already knew that he’d lost.
“I’ll stay here and look after the grouting while you’re gone,” Lisa promised.
She waited until Vizh had dragged his yellow coat on, prised Fleabot from the cat’s jaws, and shuffled out of the door with a note pinned to his cuff to remind him what he was supposed to do. Then she flicked out a mobile phone, speed-dialled a number, and said, “Yo, the decoy is on his way. Go and see Xander now, would you?”
There was a pause for a reply, and then she added, “No, I’m sure the death-squads following me won’t harm Visionary. Well, not for long, anyway.”
***
One minute Hatman had been leading his little party along volcanic tunnels on Dirth Vortex’s island atoll base, Art and Randy dragging along the damaged Mr Pyrite. The next he and his group were beside Nats and thuddy facing the Parody Master.
“Morning,” shrugged dull thud. He pointed to the crimson archvillain. “That one’s the baddie.”
“Best to have the rest here as well,” the Parody Master considered. “My troops have had enough hunting practise.” In a flash Dancer and Ziles appeared in the group, still groggy from their earlier experiences. Then CSFB! and Pegasus joined them.
“I should have known that these people would interfere at this time,” hissed Dirth Vortex. “But now they will die.”
The Avatar Guard Commander who had escorted Nats and thud in was stood at the Parody Master’s left flank. He silently drew not his own but his fellow officer’s Avasword and neatly stabbed the Parody Master in the back. “Lair Legion…” he called out, “Attack!”
“What?” hissed Dirth Vortex as the indestructible Parody Master staggered, skewered by his own power. He breathed in to summon the energies needed to destroy his foes, only to find his lungs and throat clogged with choking black goo. Cressida had converted Gah! to tar.
Hatman had retrieved his hatility belt and slammed into the Parody Master with his Rams hat on. Sorceress scattered nearby Avatar Warriors with an impromptu moonquake. Dancer leaped to her feet and began weaving probabilities as she moved, working against the Parody Master’s own will, striving to keep the battle purely physical. Nats telekinetically seized the Avasword piercing the enemy and twisted it. Ziles faded away and went over to Mindy.
The Parody Master’s response was a wave of pure force that slapped them all back like children, scattering them across the cave and leaving Hatman, Sorceress, Dancer, Nats, and dull thud all stunned and helpless. He turned to his own treacherous lieutenant to see the blue-faced warrior shifting back into true form as a Makluan dragon. His omniscience instantly informed him that the transmuting tapeworm inside the degenerate Scots youth had previously mutated a picnic basket drinking mug – a flagon – into an ersatz Makluan body – a dragon, under cover of the burst of nuclear flame from the real Foom. Thus the decoy had been cut down while the shapeshifting wyrm had taken Avatar Warrior guise to arrest his own people.
He hammered Fin Fang Foom three miles backward through lunar rock to show what he thought of smart-alec heroes.
“Can I just say… ouch,” Randy winced as he watched the dragon vanish.
Somehow the force waves had all missed Pegasus, who was airborne in centaur form, gracefully gliding between Avatar Warrior missile attacks and the Parody Master’s own force bolts. As the archvillain noticed her and turned his will to shatter her to the ground like a swatted fly the colourful hero clinging to her mane and standing on her back somersaulted away and landed on the Parody Master’s own shoulders.
“Fresh from the Voyeur’s house of goodies,” he announced, “a short-life time exchanger.”
A small silver gadget started to hum, and Evil Monkey was grabbed from the near-past a fraction of a second before being possessed by the Parody Master and pulled to the present. Robbed of his host the Parody Master stumbled to his knees.
Art clubbed Evil Monkey to unconsciousness. “Sorry boss,” he cringed.
“C’mon, c’mon,” Ziles was urging robotic runaway Mindy, “Work with me.”
“I’m trying,” the girl promised. “Daddy buried this stuff so deep… ah, here it is.”
“Eureka!” breathed Ziles, examining the data flooding onto her sensor pad. “This explains so much. I’ve got to key this in fast.”
The Parody Master moved literally at the speed of light to grab CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s neck. “A very nice try,” he congratulated the wired wonder. “A worthy last battle for you.”
Then the shining purple glow pulsed, glowing brighter and brighter. The wounded weakened Parody Master looked up in dismay. “What? No! It’s awake?” He hurled Dream from him and smashed Ziles to the ground. “What did you do?”
“I worked out what this energy source is,” she gasped triumphantly. “And I asked for his help.”
“His help?” Art questioned.
“Yes,” Mindy explained. “It’s a Starseed.”
Ziles clarified more. “It’s our Starseed.”
And the brilliant purple glow began to speak, starting in tones so deep as to be felt in the bones not the ears and getting higher and louder as he drew in power from the fundaments of the Parodyverse. And what Starseed said was this: “GaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!”
Great chunks of the Parody Master were literally ripping away. Without a host body he couldn’t draw in enough energies to maintain himself. Dirth Vortex clutched his own throat and shrivelled under the burst of pure Gah! energy.
CrazySugarFreakBoy! propped himself up painfully and smiled a bloody smile, “Wow… the Gah! is strong in this one.”
And still the cry grew louder, the glow brighter, filling the cavern, filling the Turquoise Area, echoing out across the Universe like the birth-cry of a new god. The Parody Master exploded, his countless Warriors swept away in the tide of sound. In the dazzling white light everybody became transparent, minds and souls bared before that awesome radiance.
Only the Psychostave remained a dark smudge.
And then, with a fading echo that filled the heart long after it was gone, the sound passed. The light diminished leaving a smooth purple crystal hanging in midair. And the Starseed had entered the penultimate phase of its life-cycle.
Most of the Lair Legion began to stir painfully. Ziles swallowed and lay flat on her back waiting to recover from the empathic overload of a major Gah! event. Hatman and Nats began to dig down to find the crumpled Fin Fang Foom. Sorceress and Dancer tended to Pegasus but already the immortal’s wounds were fading away. dull thud sat in the corner until his bout of swearing wore off.
“Young lady,” Mr Pyrite said to Mindy, “You’re in a lot of trouble!”
***
Next issue: He’s a hard-bitten post-delivering vigilante, s/he’s a pure thought being with a bunny fixation. Together, they fight crime. Yes, it’s the long-awaited Messenger - Yo team-up as they try to solve the mystery of Who Got the Chronicler. Meanwhile, people try to kill Visionary, Candia gains a new citizen, Amazing Guy meets a man in a grey suit, and the Lair Legion discover what all this Starseed stuff is all about and wish they hadn’t. Be here for Untold Chronicles of the Lair Legion: Plot Developments, coming soon.
Footnotes:
Magenta St Evil is Dancer’s archenemy, a wicked villainess who specialises in making things happen in the way they did in 90’s comic books – such as the time she transformed the LL into the Liefield Legion, a plot so hideous that Dancer had to marry ManMan to stop her. She’s also appeared as a European crimelord and behind-the-scenes financier of various nefarious schemes. It seemed like time to give her a shot at the big leagues as Candia’s Empress.
Dirth Vortex is a dark-side master of the Gah!, a primal force in the Parodyverse released by practitioners shouting “Gah!” very loudly. He and his disciples have attempted a variety of mystical-type conquests. After this little setback he’s going to need to find a new body before trying again. Dirth Vortex bears no possible resemblance to Darth Vader should Lucasfilm lawyers happen to ask.
Starseed was once archaeologist Manuel. He encountered a Gah! event in a hidden cave and was infused with its power to become the first Gah! master for many generations. An early member of the Lair Legion, he was distinguished by his low tolerance for tomfoolery and his linear professionalism. Strangely he was closest to Space Ghost of all the Legionnaires and taught the pantsless paragon some Gah! abilities. After two apparent deaths from which he returned more powerful each time he left Earth to explore his increased abilities on a galactic level. This is the first we’ve seen of him since Untold Tales #38 or so. Not enough people say “gah!” any more.
The Parody Master is one of the Lair Legion’s oldest enemies. In the real old days the LL’s rogues gallery was pretty much Baron Zemo, Peter von Doom, various comic-book creators, Mr T, and the Parody Master, and PM was the one to really watch out for, their first truly serious threat. Something between a renegade primal force and homicidal conqueror, he has pretty much do-anything abilities, limitless endurance and strength, the ability to reorder time and space to his liking, and an infinite army of tough drone Avatar Warriors. His only weakness is that he must manifest by possessing a host body, and sometimes strong-willed hosts have been able to influence his motives and methods and weak hosts have caused him to imperfectly incarnate. The fully-powered Parody Master is a match for really major cosmic forces like the Triumverate (Shaper of Worlds, Chronicler of Stories, Destroyer of Tales), Galactivac, or the Celestian Space Robots. However, his more human motives and sometimes petty villainy leave him more vulnerable to being thwarted than other cosmic beings.
The nation of Candia is a famous board misprint now enshrined in Parodyverse continuity. Players in the Jennifer Nations: Nation States online game may recognise the description format of the realm. The curious may wish to check out The Dominion of Herringcarp, The Free Land of the Happy Place, or The Commonwealth of Candia, the last bastions of the once mighty online Parodyverse region within that game.
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