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This message #108: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Candia, My Candia (and also featuring Trickshot’s Deeply Difficult Day) was posted by International intrigue, forbidden romance, and a four ton monster wanting to rip heroes' heads off, via... the Hooded Hood on Saturday, February 1, 2003 at 12:43.
#108: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Candia, My Candia (and also featuring Trickshot’s Deeply Difficult Day)
She wondered if she was going to die today.
She’d wondered the same thing yesterday, and the day before, and each day before, ever since she’d found herself in this miserable, muddy purgatory that its natives called Candia.
When she’d first arrived she had noted the interested looks of the hairy, brutal guards, seen how they appraised her slim, attractive body when she shepherded the orphans in her care down into the barbed wire compound. She’d seen the hunger in their eyes and shuddered to think she might die to resist their brutal lusts. Later she learned that the guards weren’t hungry for her virginity (she had far too little body hair to appear desirable to them); they were simply hungry, and even her trim form had some good eating on it.
Then she’d wondered if she was going to die from starvation. Even the orphans, used to some hardship, were appalled by the thick gritty gruel that was their staple diet here in the Candian concentration camp. She had passed on as much of her share as she could to the sickest of the children, and every day had made her weaker and weaker.
But now she knew how it was going to end. The orphans were a human shield, hostages for protection against superhuman intervention from overseas. The Minion had explained it quite clearly when the last batch of children had been delivered. If the heroes attacked, ten orphans a minute were to be executed until such time as they surrendered. There were enough orphans in the camp now to keep the threat good for nearly half an hour.
And when the guards came for the orphans, she would defend them, whatever it took. Bethany Shellett wasn’t going to desert them or let them down. Ever. And that was how she would die.
“Back from the wire,” one of the jailors shouted in his thick Candian accent. He touched his shock stick to the metal to encourage anyone touching it to move away.
Beth gathered the children to her. There were too few adults to care for the confused orphans who had come here on the offer of a free holiday courtesy of the People’s Republic. She knew the routine. A head count inspection, perhaps, or another lengthy gloating session from the Minion?
She caught her breath as the anonymous-looking Minion entered the prison with a black-clad superhero at his side.
“Bry,” she breathed, but out loud she called, “Goldeneyed!”
“Beth? Beth Shellett? What are you doing here?” It was a long time since Bry Kotyk had been hurled through time with the woman that in at least one future he ended up wedded to, and he was amazed how seeing her caused his heart to leap.
“Oh, you know. I was just passing,” she tried to quip, but the catch in her voice betrayed her. “I was working at St Jude’s Orphanage in Hell’s Bathroom. The Candians sponsored a free trip here. They didn’t mention the accommodations or the one way ticket.”
“Just ensuring your co-operation, Goldeneyed,” the Minion smirked. “I believe her majesty Magenta St Evil, Empress Supreme of All She Surveys, thinks you need to be a little more co-operative. She will be most interested to learn that you know this young lady.”
“Slightly,” added G-Eyed hastily.
“Don’t worry about me,” Beth told him. “Just do the hero thing and kick them all back to the slime-pits they crawled out of.” She glanced at the guards. “Well, nearly out of.”
“Ah, if only he could,” the Minion mocked. “But the moment dear Goldeneyed teleports out of here, ten pretty little orphans die. And so do you.”
“They mean it,” Bry conceded. “I can’t get away. Falc’s in the dungeons. And they’ve got the UN tied up with diplomatic quibbles, so there’s a ban on any other heroes coming to our rescue, unless word gets out to them somehow.”
Bethany leaned forwards and reached a hand through the wire to clasp Goldeneyed’s fingers. “Just do what you think’s right,” she told him. “I trust you. I’ve been in prison because of you before. This is just another damsel in distress gig, right?”
“I’ll find a way to save you, all of you,” G-Eyed promised.
“I know you will,” Beth agreed. Maybe it was the fear and anxiety that prompted her to lean forward and kiss him through the mesh. Maybe it was compassion that made Bry Kotyk respond with a sudden ardour.
“Sorry,” Bethany blushed, backing off. “I didn’t… I mean, there’s Laurie…”
“Right,” remembered Bry. “Yes. Look, I’ll be back, okay.”
“I’m sure you will,” smirked the Minion, staring at the hero below the waist. “You really do need to get a less tight-fitting spandex outfit, don’t you?”
***
They were all dead. Finny, Nats, Ziles, Sorcy, CSFB!, Dancer lay broken in the bloody ruins of the Lair Mansion – or parts of them did. Newbies Pegasus and Cressida were paste on the walls. Cressida had been inside dull thud’s intestine back when he had got an inside. Amber St Clare and Amy Racecar and Valeria of Carfax and Al B. Harper, even Flapjack were all bloody pulps speared onto the wall as trophies of victory. Onslaughter was crouched over the dying Hatman, who he’d saved till last, and was just now ripping the capped crusader’s limbs off one at a time.
Trickshot moved with lightning speed and launched an adamantine-tipped arrow through Onslaughter’s neck.
“Ouch,” mocked the massive grey monolith, casually ripping the shaft free and tossing it away. “Trickshot. Boy, I’m in trouble now.”
A dozen combat briefings raced through the annoying archer’s mind. Onslaughter was a genetically-engineered alien killing machine, a creation of Dark Thugos. He had the strength to bend Donar in two, and psionic abilities that could fry a brain at close range. He’d once ruled a planet with absolute authority. He’d survived planetary re-entry and atomic blast with mild sunburn. He’d fought toe-to-toe against the Yurt for twenty-four hours before taking the creature down with a psi-attack. His healing factor was such that the minor wound caused by Trickshot’s only adamantine arrow was already closed up.
Trickshot used a spread of blasting arrows and took out the floor beneath the villain’s feet, toppling him into the training areas below. Another skilful shot activated an omega-sequence combat scenario with the safety interlocks off.
“EDWIN, are you online?” he called while Onslaughter was busy wrecking millions of pounds of simulation equipment.
A fuzzy holographic silhouette fizzed into being. “Indeed. I am very hard to terminate,” the computer artificial intelligence boasted.
“Can you send out for help? I need Donar, Banjoooo, Enty as fast as you can get them.”
“Well, I could send out, yes,” EDWIN admitted. “However, I’d need authorisation from an active member of the Lair Legion to utilise the comm-channels.”
“So do it, already, you miserable jumped-up calculator.”
EDWIN shrugged. “My, how I admire your motivational skills. I am completely inspired. Sadly, you have not yet been reinducted onto the active roster list of the Lair Legion, and therefore your commands are meaningless. I mean, officially meaningless now, as opposed to merely inane.”
“So take some initiative, damn it!” Trickshot called, seeing Onslaughter climbing out of the basement by the expedient of carving chunks out of the wall as handholds. “Send for help on your own. Or get that Movie Gun cranked up and help me fight this thing!”
“Oh, I’m afraid I’ve been sadly limited by the commands my programming lays upon me,” EDWIN explained. “And the Movie Gun, well, only your beloved HALLIE, my predecessor and inferior prototype version has the access codes to that nowadays. Thank the late Nats for that development.”
Just then a chunk of masonry passed through EDWIN’s hologram into the projector beyond, and the AI vanished in a fizzle of sparks. “Now I complete my collection of Lair Legion action figures,” Onslaughter promised as the banshee Marie Murcheson keened helplessly in the background. “Trouble is you all break so easily.”
***
Meanwhile, in a storyline where the Legion hadn’t all just died, the LairJet flew at high altitude past air warning systems that never even noticed its passing. Nats was at the control yoke and Ziles was handling the electronic countermeasures. “We’re in Candian airspace,” Nats reported.
“Good,” growled Fin Fang Foom. “Play the tape again, Jay.”
Hatman slotted Goldeneyed’s Lair Legion ID card into the player. The image flickered then resolved to a picture of frightened-looking children behind rusty barbed wire fences. “Ah, if only he could,” the Minion’s voice came over the speakers. “But the moment dear Goldeneyed teleports out of here, ten pretty little orphans die. And so do you.”
“They mean it,” Goldeneyed said off-screen. “I can’t get away. Falc’s in the dungeons. And they’ve got the UN tied up with diplomatic quibbles, so there’s a ban on any other heroes coming to our rescue, unless word gets out to them somehow.” Then the picture was filled with a flash of golden light and suddenly the image was of the ceiling of the kitchen in the Lair Mansion.
“Pretty smart of Bry to teleport out his comm-card with the info recorded on it since he couldn’t escape himself,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! approved. “Now we know there’s hostages to rescue as well as a big baddie to take down.”
“And we can finally act,” Ziles added, with a triumphant look at Fin Fang Foom.
“Hiding behind hostages is cowardly and mean,” Pegasus agreed. She didn’t mention that she had been secretly funding the St Jude’s Orphanage for these last few years on the proceeds of her life of crime. “I shall deal with the jailers most severely.”
“Maybe we should send a couple of people in to save the orphans and Bethany while the rest of us deal with her miserableness?” suggested Dancer.
“Yes, do that.” Sorceress seemed distracted. “There’s something else down there, though. Something close to Magenta. Something worse.”
“Then for goodness sake let’s go an’ kick it to Glasgow an’ back and get it over wi’ before the footie’s on,” dull thud complained.
“That’s the general strategic objective, yes,” Finny admitted. “Now here’s the plan…”
***
“Hello,” the eight foot Negress with the amazon build bade Falcon. She strode to examine the shackled superhero, admiring the old scarwork on his back from previous interrogations in past adventures. “I’m Manmangler, and I’ll be your designated torturer today.”
“So?” shrugged Sam Wilson the best he could considering he was spreadeagled in chains. “I’ve been tortured by the best. The Red Watchman tried to break me for three days.”
“I’ll try and do better,” Manmangler promised. “I have the power of stimulating pain centres and shutting off automatic numbness reflexes, but really it’s all down to training and discipline. The mistress has commanded me to reduce you to an obedient, whimpering poodle-dog eager to carry out her every command, and it’s my pleasure to break you.”
“I’m guessing you don’t get out much,” Falcon answered.
Manmangler reached to her thigh and drew out a shock stick. “This is my personal electric cattle prod,” she told her prisoner. “I call him Mr Shocky.”
Falcon clenched his fists to conceal the remote control he had just thumbed to summon his flight harness and weapons array to him and prepared for the worst.
Just then the flatulent, fat guards sprang to attention. The cell door opened and two newcomers strode in.
“This is part of our extensive detention and punishment facility,” Magenta St Evil told the tall handsome nobleman who strode beside her. “And here’s one of the local superheroes – you’d call them science heroes I suppose – being detained and punished.”
Count Armageddon peered at the captive through his monocle. “The Falcon,” he identified. “Operative of SPUD, this world’s multi-national counter-terrorism organisation. Middle-range flying and weapons technology coupled with a significant skill level. My advice is to dislocate his limbs before he escapes.”
Magenta St Evil smiled wickedly. “Everything in its time,” she promised. “Manmangler here is an expert. She used to work at Disco Hitler’s Death Camps. She knows her business.”
“Armageddon,” Falcon remembered. “I’ve seen your dossier too. Didn’t Premiere wipe you out before?”
Count Belasco Medici turned back to the prisoner. “He cheated,” he answered curtly. “And now he’s gone. There’s nobody to stop me from exploiting your sweet, innocent little planet, so much greener and less capable of protecting itself than my own former world.”
“From us exploiting it, dear Count,” Magenta coaxed him, wrapping her hands around his muscled arm in its well-tailored pinstriped suit. “Remember that we are partners now.”
“Yes, we are partners for now,” the villain agreed. “You wish me to lead your metahuman task force in securing this nation’s place in the world now that it has been retconned into existence by your newfound ally.” He considered Falcon again. “In the interests of our partnership would you like me to allow my kaos energies to feed upon and corrupt this little hero? I imagine I could mine out every shed of decency and goodness inside him in a matter of minutes and have him positively dripping with malice and hate ready to join your coalition.”
Magenta St Evil considered this. “No,” she eventually decided. “Let’s stick to the old fashioned ways. It’s so much better if they know they were broken, slowly and brutally, and some small part of them realises what they have become.”
“Ah,” Count Armageddon noted, “A sentimentalist.”
Magenta led her guest away from the dungeon and off to see the depleted uranium mines. “We’d better get on. We have a lot to cover before we launch our assault on the rest of the planet, and so little time.”
“Indeed,” the Count’s voice receded down the corridor. “Did I mention that I intend to take over the island of Sicily as my personal fiefdom by way of a consultancy fee…?”
Then Falcon was alone again with the paunchy sweating guards and the eager Manmauler. “Where were we?” she wondered. “Oh yes, Mr Shocky. It’s time for us to introduce Mr Shocky to Mr Dangly, I think…”
***
Trickshot was the only member of the Lair Legion without super-powers. That meant that he had to practise a lot. It meant he was good enough to keep up with superheroes just on skill alone. Now he raced through the ruined mansion just a few heartbeats ahead of Onslaughter, avoiding destruction by the barest fractions of seconds. His dwindling supplies of arrows kept him alive for now. Smoke screens, sonics, acids, electro-pulses each served to buy him a few more moments of life. None of them came near to stopping Onslaughter.
“Any time you want to start blubbing, feel free,” the bone-ridged villain told him, shouldering through another supporting wall and dropping the library and map rooms down to block Trickshot’s escape.
“Any time you want to surrender just say so,” Carl Bastion replied, shooting off a flare arrow into the enemy’s eyes. That gave the archer a tiny gap to vault past Onslaughter and escape another way.
Onslaughter moved very quickly and managed to tag Trickshot’s leg, gashing it open from thigh to shin. “Even temporarily blinded I can telepathically see through your eyes,” the villain boasted. “I can even sense some of your combat moves. I know how tired you are, how frightened you are. I know you’re thinking that you have only a dozen shafts left, and that nothing in your arsenal can even hurt me.”
“Actually, I’m thinking that I’d pay good money for you to shut up, gravelly,” Trickshot told him. “Kill me if you can, but don’t bore me ta death with your dialogue.”
Onslaughter pulled a wall out to drop the whole first floor onto the annoying archer. “As you wish,” he answered.
***
The guards smelled the fresh meat even before the dogs did. Grunting and shambling they shouldered past each other to the gatehouse where the first of the rashers of bacon lay temptingly on the ground. From there a trail of meaty goodness led off towards one of the abandoned silos. The guards surged forward, scrambling through the snow to get to the food.
“I can’t believe that worked,” Ziles admitted, decloaking her invisibility field.
“I can’t believe we let them live,” Pegasus argued, using her human form to rip apart the chain holding back the gates which imprisoned the orphans.
“Ziles?” Beth Shellett gasped. “The Lair Legion are here?”
“Well mostly the LL are in that big castle rising up from the middle of Lake Inferior,” the Xnylonian admitted, “but this is Pegasus, our newest member, and we’re here to safeguard the children so they can’t be hurt when the fighting starts.”
“Newest probationary member,” Pegasus corrected. “I’m not yet convinced I wish to be associated with you all in the long term.”
“That’s how I felt at first too, Ziles admitted. “But it kind of grows on you.”
“Like fungus?” Pegasus suggested. “A yeast infection maybe?”
Beth Shellet had a different concern. “How are we going to get three hundred orphans out of here across hundreds of miles of snowbound enemy terrain? Have you ever stolen an orphanage before?”
Ziles considered this. “No, not an orphanage,” she admitted. “I did accidentally abscond with a public art gallery on Plontifex, and there was a degree of public urinal relocation during the Frammisat Seven caper, but no, not an orphanage as such. Yet.”
“We’re not going to try and move the children,” Pegasus explained. “We’re here to protect them until this is over with.” She shifted to centaur form and scowled back at the meat-snuffling security men. “We want them to come and find us,” she added with anticipation.
***
“And of course, being the world’s largest producer of fissionable material gives us a significant advantage in the arms race,” noted Magenta St Evil, sitting back on a stool of peasants and sucking smoke through her cigar holder to swirl around her sharp yellow teeth. “Just the thought of all those weapons of mass destruction makes me hot.”
“Er,” said Goldeneyed, uncomfortably perched on a single peasant next to her, even more uncomfortably aware of the villainess’ hand on his thigh.
“The resources of a whole country have opened up vast new avenues for my genius,” she continued. “My teams of kidnapped scientists are working on some amazing new projects. We’re even quietly reassembling as many of the Technopolitan science villains as possible and improving them. The world won’t know what’s hit it.”
“And don’t you have any worries about the Lair Legion coming and smacking you down in your moment of triumph?” G-Eyed demanded.
“I have no objection to a little smacking and spanking,” Magenta moued coyly, “but by the time those feckless idiots find some feck and work out what’s going on here I’ll have reassembled Thermonuclear Man and they can all kiss my shiny waxed…”
The Empress’ comment was thankfully interrupted by shouts of amazement from the guards. G-Eyed and Magenta peered round to find one of the rare and sacred national beasts, an old and grizzled rabid wolf, stalking into the throne room.
“It’s an omen!” the guard captain gasped.
“Can we eat it?” his hungry lieutenant wondered.
“Who let this thing in here?” demanded the Candian Queen. “Aren’t we having enough problems getting rid of the fleas with just the peasants around?”
“You said the rabid wolf was sacred to our national character and not to be molested,” the guard commander reminded her, “Unless you wanted a fur coat or throw rug.”
“Well get it out before it froths on the carpets,” Magenta demanded. “Or worse.”
“Actually, the wolf was just a distraction,” explained the Probability Dancer, “So I could walk in and by some chance nobody would notice. Then I could tell G-Eyed that the orphans were safe and he could hit you as much as he liked.”
“And the wolf’s not a wolf anyway,” the wolf said, shifting shape to become a seven-foot high humanoid dragon. “And I don’t have fleas. A bit of eczema sometimes, but that’s all.”
“Fools!” shouted Magenta St Evil. “You think saving the orphans will stop me? Servitors… launch the nuclear arsenal.”
“Hatman,” Finny breathed into his comm-link. “Deploy.”
***
With a great grinding of peasant-driven gears, the vast arsenal of Candian nuclear devices rose from Lake Inferior, dozens upon dozens of them, each helpfully labelled with the name of the city and country they would annihilate.
“I hate nuclear weapons,” growled Hatman, who had once nearly died stopping one. “Time for the Hurricanes hat, I think.”
“Time for some water elementals, too,” judged Whitney Darkness, the Sorceress.
~~I can’t think of anything that rhymes with missile~~ Cressida warned, ~~but I can probably do rockets to dockets or pockets~~ she decided, transmuting the first atomic weapon to try and leave the ground.
“Hey, this is easy!” dull thud realised. “I thought stopping a whole country would be a lot harder than this.”
Just then waves of force swept over the four heroes, battering them to the ground.
“You had to say that, didn’t you,” spat Hatman.
Dozens of glowing luminous tendrils burst from the ground around them. Sorceress screamed. “The wrongness I felt…”
Then the strands of eerie light were around them, punching through them, ripping at their minds and souls like psychic barbed wire.
~~What is it?~~ shrieked Cressida as the energies flicked around her mentally and also physically within thud’s intestine. ~~Aaagh!~~
Count Armageddon strode from the silo to look at the heroes writhing in his kaos strands. “Welcome to Candia,” he told them. “And welcome to its metahuman army. I’m looking for a few good men and women to burn away all conscience and love and transform into a few bad men and women. You’re my first recruits.”
***
CrazySugarFreakBoy! and Nats were detailed for the Falcon rescue, but all they had to do was follow the explosions. The found a smouldering cell with an eight foot amazon steaming gently under a pile of wall. Sam Wilson was calmly fastening his wings and flight harness back on.
“She wanted to know the technical design maximums on my technology,” he noted. “I showed her.”
“Wow, a huge muscly Grace Jones torture lady,” CSFB! admired. “You get all the luck, Falcon.”
Sam snapped a large cattle prod over his knee. “Sure,” he answered. “At least the enemy tells you stuff while they’re gloating over your agony. For example, I know where the retcon matrix that’s keeping Candia here and Canada gone is hidden. We’ve got to get to that prominent tower atop St Evil’s castle.”
“And here come the inevitable gun-waving guards to stop us,” Nats noted.
“Good,” growled the Falcon, charging up his suit.
***
Onslaughter pulled aside the wreckage to find Trickshot’s body. He wouldn’t really be satisfied until all the heroes that thwarted him previously had been torn to shreds. Then he could get on with subjugating the planet.
Trickshot wasn’t there. What was there was a narrow hole burned down into the sub-basements, and a little chalk arrow helping the villain find which way the missing hero had gone.
Onslaughter concentrated a moment and looked through Trickshot’s eyes to see where he really was. The archer had set up a killing zone at the entrance to the cave complex beneath Lair Island, dragging half a dozen NTU-150 household appliances into a heap ready for detonation with one of those irritating trick arrows. He was watching now for Onslaughter to follow him so he could set off his trap.
The space tyrant chuckled sinisterly, moved to another part of the house, and tunnelled down to drop behind the bowman. Trickshot yelped in surprise as the roof caved above him and four tons of indestructible grey warrior tumbled on to of him. “Aw,” mocked Onslaughter as Tricky scrambled away clutching his side where one of the villain’s spines had gored him. “Didn’t I play fair?”
Trickshot had not breath for reply. Onslaughter was between him and the exit. There was nowhere to go but down into the caverns.
“I can read your thoughts,” the enemy called after him. “So much grief and pain under that glib exterior, isn’t there? Let’s see..” He probed deeper as he hunted the last Legionnaire into the bowels of the Earth. “A dead father… a dead lover… a woman you care about who once wedded and betrayed your counterpart from this dimension… a lost world…”
“Get outta my head,” screamed the archer. “That’s not stuff fer you to know!”
“Hmm, and it’s not the first time you’ve seen a Lair Legion die. Your own team, from your own version of reality, they were all killed. Only you survived. And now it’s happened again.”
“Nooo,” Trickshot gasped, limping away as the invader stalked behind him, crashing through
solid bedrock to shorten the distance between them.
“All that flippant arrogance, all covering up loss and failure and guilt, and now it’s happened again. I’ll be doing you a mercy just ripping your head off.”
Trickshot invested his last blasting arrow to collapse the cave roof on Onslaughter. The villain just ignored it.
“Keep running, frightened little bowman. You can’t escape me. You can’t stop me. You can’t avenge your friends. You can’t save yourself. Sooner or later you’ll drop from exhaustion, pass out from your wounds. And then I’ll make you die slow and bloody. I promise.”
And Trickshot staggered on.
***
dull thud used his only super-power to teleport vertically out of the kaos tendrils that ripped at his brain. Below him Sorceress used her arts to try and shield Hatman and herself from the intruding, soul-searing energy strands.
“Cressie, are you okay?” thuddy asked anxiously as they began their free-fall.
~~No~~ the worm wonder answered wrathfully ~~And neither will he be~~
Transforming gas into brass she completely enclosed Count Armageddon in shining metal, leaving his luminous emanations without direction or control.
“Thanks,” called Hatman, dragging on an Anglers hat that would help him cope with tangled lines.
“That stuff is evil,” gasped Whitney, shattered by the ordeal of fending off the kaos matter. “Pure evil.”
Belasco Medici laughed in agreement as he shredded the container around him and used it to swat thud.
There was a flash of golden light as Goldeneyed brought in the reinforcements. Dancer appeared leading a bound, gagged, and fuming Magenta St Evil. Fin Fang Foom uncoiled to his full size and swatted Armageddon with his tail.
“Welcome back, villain,” the Makluan snarled. “I know a war crimes tribunal who’ll be very glad to know you.”
“You are all mere fodder!” Count Armageddon sneered. “There is no power on this planet that can match me!”
“Excuse me,” Dancer told Magenta St Evil, “but I just have to go kick his ass right now.”
But Finny was in pole position, and came down hard with a massive draconic stomp.
Hatman smiled wickedly at the Minion until the worried henchman passed out.
***
Trickshot was so deep down that he could feel the pressure on his ears. The blood pounded in them, his heart pumping madly to try and keep his pain-wracked body moving. A single last arrow waited in his quiver.
“I can see what you see,” the gravelly voice of Onslaughter echoed up the corridor. “You’ve come to a dead end. No way out. No more running.”
The archer glanced around the dark chamber once more, his last flare arrowhead burning an actinic blue. He made sure that Onslaughter could see there was no escape. “C’mon then. I got one last shaft ta give you, ya murdering bastard!”
Slowly and deliberately, Onslaughter swaggered into the cave. “Oh no. An arrow pointed right at me. Whatever will I do?”
Trickshot launched his vibro-screamer shot. It passed over his enemy’s head and embedded itself somewhere in the darkened roof of the chamber.
“I thought you never missed, ‘Tricky’,” scorned Onslaughter. “Panicking now? Hands all trembly?”
“I wasn’t aiming at you, bozo. I said I’d got one last shaft fer you. I didn’t mean an arrow.”
Then the roof of the cave stirred.
Onslaughter looked up. Something dark and shiny and writhing flexed above him. A half-dozen tentacles dropped down and groped for his head.
Onslaughter ripped them apart. There was a screech of anger.
“Gotcha!” cried Trickshot, staggering to his knees. “LL History 101. Under th’ Lair Mansion there’s old tunnels, older than man. And deep in ‘em lies the Groper Out of Grossness, the elder beastie Shabba’Dhabba’Dhu. He don’t like being disturbed.”
Onslaughter ripped through the new tentacles, although these were stronger and tougher than the last.
“And he sure as heck don’t like being woken up,” Trickshot concluded, as the Groper gathered its consciousness to focus on the little speck that was disturbing it on one of its lesser tendrils five miles out from its main brainstem.
Onslaughter screamed once. Trickshot laughed as the lethal tentacles rose towards them and the very dimensions of the cave around them twisted with Shabba’Dhabba’Dhu’s coming. “Bullseye,” he gloated.
The Lair Legion were avenged.
Then the Groper out of Grossness rose up and consumed him alongside the enemy he had fought.
***
CSFB! clung to Nats as the flying phenomenon flew behind Falcon up towards the shimming spire of Magenta St Evil’s Imperial Palace.
“Watch out for traps,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! warned. “Old Hoody Hoodnik always has a contingency or two hidden away.”
“We don’t know the Hood did this retcon,” Nats reminded him. “It could always be…”
He fell silent as they swooped through the tower window behind Falcon and saw him staring at the grey-mantled figure that stood waiting for them beside the retcon matrix. Green eyes flashed beneath the darkened cowl.
“Oh,” said Nats, as the figure looked up at them.
“Good evening,” she bade them. “I am the new Hooded Hood.”
Next issue: We catch up on the subplots that got squeezed out of this episode for timing purposes, we consider life after digestion for Trickshot, we see the softer side of Exemplary – not, we learn the fate of Candia, and of Canada if anyone’s really interested, and we find out why the Lair Legion are only partially dead. But mostly we find out what’s happened to the Chronicler as we follow those two wacky detectives, Yo and Messenger, as they try to solve an interdimensional mystery while not being annihilated by Dark Thugos. It’s all there in Untold Chronicles of the Lair Legion: A Chronicler’s Story, coming soonish.
Footnotes:
Bethany Shellett is a cute trainee teacher who got dragged into the time-travelling plots of Madame Symmetry of Synchronicity in the Lair Legion World Tour, where it was revealed that in one future timeline she became Mrs Bry “Goldeneyed” Kotyk, and where she spent the rest of the adventure trying to not tempt Bry away from his girlfriend Laurie “Lisette” Leyton. The problem is that even Laurie believes Bry really deserves Beth rather than her. It’s complicated.
Shabba’Dhabba’Dhu, the Groper Out of Grossness is a loathsome elder thingie that Man Was Notte Meant to Know. Originally attracted in pre-history to the hidden power of the cosmic cube once concealed beneath Parody Island, the thirty-mile wide tentacular being slept when the stars changed (at the time of the Shoggoth uprising) – or at least dozed and watched daytime soaps on cable. It’s worshipped by the albino Morshlock cult, stirs in its sleep occasionally enough to devour the odd sacrifice or redecorate an outlying village with gore and devastation, but mostly just sits there forgotten until some smartass archer shoots alarm clock arrows into it. There aren’t many things on the planet that could swallow Onslaughter and make him feel it, but this is one of them.
The Hooded Hood apparently died during the Premiere series. The version with the developed mammary glands isn’t the same person. No prizes for working out who she is and what she’s up to though. You’ll find out next time anyway. HH is a fun character because he can cause mayhem and plot development even when he’s not in the story.
The remaining background info is in recent previous footnotes, or atThe Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom, Who's Who in the Parodyverse, and Where's Where in the Parodyverse.
This poster posed from 212.159.106.10 when they posted
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