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#111: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Last Run of De Brown Streak - Read this version, please


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Complications, conspiracy, and carnage from that twisted talespinner... the Hooded Hood!
Sun Jun 08, 2003 at 12:06:24 pm EST
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#111: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Last Run of De Brown Streak

Note: A portion of this story continues from the Autobot tale from CrazySugarFreakBoy, Enter: Glitch.

Warning: This episode contains one or two rude words.



The terror had faded from the orphans’ eyes. Beth Shellett could see it as she taught them, the sparkle returning, the mischief building up. Children recover from ordeals quickly, and the pupils at St Jude’s Orphanage were quickly forgetting their ordeal in the prison camps of Candia. Beth wished she could forget too, but the lingering sensation of a kiss kept on haunting her.
“Turn to page three of your Bry’s,” she told the class. “Books. I mean page three of your books.”
The wonders of page three were never to be discovered, for just then the classroom window shattered and a fast-moving speed blur grabbed up the teacher and departed with her as he had come.
Alerted by the screams of the orphans the other staff of St Jude’s ran into the room too late. De Brown Streak had kidnapped Bethany Shellett.

***


Amy Racecar looked up from recalibrating the anti-grav pads on Aunt Sally as Al B. Harper wandered into the workshop carrying two mugs of coffee. “So how’s it going out there?” she wondered.
“Oh, you know. Half the mainframe’s in pieces on the floor, and every three minutes somebody mentions that NTU-bloody-150 would have had this fixed half an hour ago with a teaspoon and a hairdryer. I finally negotiated a ten minute break.”
Amy sipped her coffee. “Oh. So you were hoping it was them would give you a break?”
Al B. choked until Amy slapped his back. “Bad timing, huh?”
“You could say that,” the Lair Legion’s scientific advisor admitted. “Look, today’s the day that I found out an old lover of mine got murdered, maybe on the very night we split up. And I’m a suspect, and so is my former fiancée, who discovered us together that same night. And it looks like Helen Mac Allistair died pretty nastily. Oh, and the Dark Knight is suggesting that her brain patterns were probably used as a template for the HALLIE artificial intelligence you guys used to have in your computer before EDWIN.”
Amy took another sip. “Okay. So a pretty typical day here with the Lair Legion.” She considered what Al had told her. “So why did you cheat on Miss Framlicker, then? Was this Helen girl that hot?”
Al B. looked confused. “I… I don’t know. It seemed… I can’t remember the details. We just did.”
“Hmm. Well look, if Helen became HALLIE, then wasn’t that done by Baron Zemo or one of his science cronies?”
“Dr Ernst Vizhnar, the eminent robotics expert,” Al B. prompted.
“Yeah. Then doesn’t that kind of point the finger at him for the murder?”
“I suppose it does. But it doesn’t explain why EDWIN crashed when we asked him about it. Even if HALLIE went into flashback wiggings, EDWIN has an entirely different template.”
“Whose?” Amy wondered.
“Sorry. What?”
“HALLIE was based on the brainwaves of poor Helen Mac Allistair. Who was EDWIN based on?”
“Some butler, I think. The work was contracted out to Bautista Enterprises.” Al paused and finished his drink. “So do I get one?” he asked.
“One what?”
“A break. Do I get a break?”
Amy Racecar considered this. “Maybe when you can explain why you cheated on your fiancée,” she decided. “I think your ten minutes is up.”

***


A little way outside South Bend, Indiana, De Brown Streak dropped Beth Shellett onto a warm pile of hay inside a storage silo on a lonely farm and said, “Okay, don’t scream.”
“Because this is so a situation for remaining calm,” Beth pointed out. “Full marks for being creepy and menacing, buddy.”
Josh Clement looked a little guilty. “Yeah, sorry about that. But you’re perfectly safe.”
“…Tucked away here on this lonely haystack with you, miles from where anyone can hear me screaming.”
“Hey, I’m not that kind of villain,” DBS protested.
Beth gestured significantly at the dark metal silo and glared accusingly at him.
“No, really. This isn’t how it looks. The metal shell helps confuse the mutate-detecting machinery. I just needed somewhere to bring you where they couldn’t find us.”
“Not helping reassure me,” Beth warned him.
Josh took a deep breath. “Shall we try again? Hi, I’m Josh.”
The alarmed schoolteacher looked at him sceptically. “Oh good. That makes me feel a lot better, knowing the name of my super-powered kidnapper and rapist. Or am I supposed to make with the small talk before you do something vile to me? Hi, Josh. What’s your sign?” She looked around the gloomy hay silo. “Do you come here often?”
De Brown Streak looked genuinely shocked. “No! Hey, I’m not that kind of guy. I kick the ass of that kind of guy. And this isn’t a kidnap, it’s a rescue.”
“Because those orphans were starting to look real mean?”
“Because your dad’s in a lot of trouble.”
Beth looked up sharply. “My father is dead,” she said bluntly.
“Your stepfather is dead,” DBS corrected her. “Your biological father is still very much alive. Or was last night, when he sent word that you needed protecting.”
“Don?” Beth blinked. “Don Graham sent you?”
“Through a third party, yeah. You see he’s got himself into something deep and nasty, and the bad guys were threatening to harm his loved ones, and that’s you, kiddo. So he…”
“How do I know you’re from him, not from these bad guys doing the threatening?” Beth demanded.
“Because I’m not going to hurt you. I just had to get you away from that orphanage.”
“So that those poor traumatised children would be terrified all over again by having their teacher ripped from their sight by a super-powered terrorist?”
“So that the Sentinoid battle-drones that were gathering outside the school ready to break in and take you didn’t attack there,” DBS answered. “Really, I didn’t have a lot of time to explain.”
Beth regarded the earnest-looking athlete more carefully. “So you’re the hero, huh?”
“Well, not the villain this time, anyway. I was just trying to get you to somewhere safe…”
Then the Sentinoids ripped through the silo walls and loosed their anti-kinetic beams and point attack missiles.

***


“Welcome to the wonderful world of working at the Lair Mansion,” Ruby Weaver told Art Corben and Randy Ruiz, clipping ID tags on them as their induction started. “Don’t take these off or you’ll self-destruct.”
“What?” Randy worried. “We what?”
“Dancer argued that you should have your big chance on the youth offenders rehab programme,” Ruby told them, “And you do have useful skills from your time as evil villain’s minions like servicing the laser cannons and operating stealth aircraft and stuff. But that doesn’t mean we have to trust you right off.”
“Some of our best staff used to work for evil villains,” Flapjack added nostalgically. “And still do, on their weekends off, if there’s nothing good on the tube. Er, allegedly.”
“We’re reformed,” Art assured them. “Really. Dancer told us what would happen if we weren’t really reformed.”
“I looked up some of those things in a medical dictionary,” Randy admitted, and shuddered.
“Hey, if it’s in the region of puss, sores, lesions, ruptures, buboes, or sepsis I probably have photos in my collection,” offered Flapjack.
“Head down to the labs for now,” Ruby told the interns. “Ziles and Al are trying to find out what’s wrong with out computer system. They might need help. You picked a good day to start atoning for your misdeeds.”
“Okay,” shugged Art. He and Randy shuffled out to find their way to the laboratory wing.
“Just follow the sounds of swearing,” advised Flapjack.
Ruby stood pointedly by the door of the administrators’ office. “Was there anything else?” she asked pointedly.
“Huh? Oh no,” Flapjack leered. “You want me to get out, right? Probably so Nats can stop hiding under your desk, yeah?”
Ruby winced. Nats crawled out from under the office furniture, buttoning his shirt. “I think those conduits are reconnected now, Ms Weaver,” he proclaimed, unconvincingly.
“What a becoming shade of lipstick you’re wearing today, Master Nats,” Flapjack snickered as he shambled away.

***


Amber St Clare punched the alarms button and the Lair Legion came running. Well, Goldeneyed teleported, Nats, Pegasus, and Hatman flew, CrazySugarFreakBoy! bounced off the walls, Dancer kind of glided, and Cressida the Wonder Worm sloshed forwards inside her human host dull thud; but Fin Fang Foom, Sorceress, Ziles, and the newly-returned Trickshot ran.
“What’s the situation?” Foom demanded as they charged into the monitor room.
“Mutate terrorist attack,” Amber warned them, sliding over a dossier. “You won’t like it.”
“De Brown Streak?” CSFB! noted in surprise as he saw the photo on the cover. “He’s one of the good guys, secretly working to save a world that hates and fears him.”
Hatman snorted. Trickshot smirked.
“Not any more,” Amber answered. The government liaison looked sympathetically at Goldeneyed. “Around nine fifteen this morning he broke into St Jude’s orphanage and absconded with one of the teachers there, a Miss Bethany Shellett.”
“Beth?” G-Eyed gasped. “Why would he want to kidnap Beth?”
“He held Lania hostage once, for mutate liberation rights,” Sorceress remembered.
Amber frowned. “It’s rather more sordid than that. We’ve just heard from SPUD that he took her to some lonely farm in Indiana and, well…”
“What,” growled Pegasus, her eyes cold as deep space.
“They found evidence,” Amber warned them. “Signs of a struggle. Torn clothing. Blood. Traces of semen.”
Sorceress paled. “He wouldn’t,” she denied.
“Right,” hissed Hatman, “because the very first time we met him when he was working with the Enthrallress to set us all up he didn’t demand you as his personal sex slave as a reward for betraying us. And he didn’t threaten to rape Lania on national TV if imprisoned mutates weren’t released.”
“I’m pretty sure those two were bluffs,” Nats argued. “I mean, Finny didn’t eat him when he rescued Lania, right?”
“I don’t eat people,” the leader of the Lair Legion insisted. “Now.”
“This don’t sound like a bluff,” pointed out Trickshot. “Amber darlin’, is there any way this could have some other explanation?”
“The forensics seem pretty conclusive,” admitted Ziles, flicking through the paperwork. “They’ve matched Beth’s blood type, done some DNA work on the… other samples. Plus there are some eyewitness reports from the agents who went in to try and capture Clement.”
Hatman called De Brown Streak a very rude word.
“I dunno. I’ve worked a bit with Josh Clement,” dull thud noted. “Back when you guys were off on world tour.”
“Back when he was one of the Hooded Hood’s Purveyors of Peril?” Hatman suggested.
“Er, yeah. But he betrayed them.”
“A blaggard true to form,” Pegasus muttered
“He seemed alright to me,” thud persisted. “A bit prickly but basically a nice bloke.”
~~But fond of the ladies~~ Cressida added.
“Not like that,” insisted thud. “Popular with them, yeah. But not…”
“Maybe he’s being mind-controlled?” CSFB! suggested. “Or replaced by an evil double?”
“Could be,” considered Dancer. “I know Josh pretty well, although not in the Biblical sense, and I’d have trusted him pretty far to be a gentleman unless invited to be otherwise. So perhaps he’s not in his right mind, suffering from illusions or something?”
“Forget all that comic-book crap,” blurted Goldeneyed. “That bastard’s got Beth! We’ve got to get after him now.”
“In any case, we’ll have to bring him down,” Foom admitted. “Hard.”
“What happened at the farm?” Ziles asked Amber. “I mean, they must have found the farm to know about the… evidence.”
“SPUD sent in a Sentinoid containment force,” the government liaison reported. “Evidently he was ready for them. He broke out of the cordon with Miss Shellett in his arms. He… well SPUD isn’t releasing the casualty numbers, but apparently there were fatalities.”
“So now he’s a kidnapper, rapist, and a murderer,” spat Hatman. “You guys still want him to join the Lair Legion?”
“I’d settle fer havin’ him on a spit right now,” Trickshot admitted.
“That’s not Josh,” Sorceress denied. “There’s something else going on. Possession, maybe, or a mystic geas…”
“I don’t care about that crap,” G-Eyed interrupted. “Let’s go, Finny. We’ve got work to do.”
“We have work to do here, too,” Ziles pointed out. “Or have you forgotten our computer problems and the hologram recording of Helen MacAllistair’s murder?”
“That can wait,” Goldeneyed argued. “Right now, we’ve got to…”
“To calm down,” Finny declared. “We’ll have to deploy a field team to track down De Brown Streak, and still assign some people to the MacAllistair investigation. And Bry, you’re not going on the DBS hunt. You’re far too personally involved.”
“What?” Goldeneyed protested. “Bullshit! I just want to tear the little prick’s head off, is all!”
~~That is just a little personally involved~~ Cressida pointed out.
“If this caitiff has ravaged his woman, he has a blood-right to take vengeance,” Pegasus argued.
At the doorway, Laurie Leyton winced and turned away.
“We don’t operate like that,” Foom answered. “We work professionally, not as…”
“Avengers?” CSFB! offered.
“Maybe it’s time we did start operating like that, then!” Bry Kotyk shouted. “Stick your orders, dragon! I’m going!” And he disappeared in a golden flash.
“So much for having a teleporter ready to ship out from base if any news came in about DBS sighting, then,” Nats sighed.
Fin Fang Foom picked up the dossier and glared at it as if that would set things right. “Hatman, Sorceress, Pegasus, Nats, Cress, er dull thud, CSFB!, Trickshot, get out there and find Beth Shellett and De Brown Streak. Ziles, Dancer, keep on the EDWIN and HALLIE repairs with Al and the technical team.”
“What about you, Finny?” Dancer asked.
“I’ll be doing leader stuff,” the Makluan answered evasively.

***


spiffy peered into the darkened file rooms under the Gothametropolis Town Hall. “Hello?” he called. “Anybody here? I got an internal call to come and sort out some kind of problem down here?”
The vast shadowed halls echoes his enquiry back at him.
The top bulb on the bare staircase behind him went out.
“If this is some kind of prank, I’m not amused,” spiffy warned. “I’m the Mayor, you know. I can’t be dissed like… well, it’s not kind, anyway.”
The next bulb failed.
“That’s it,” spiffy shouted. “I’m out of here.”
The door at the top of the stairs slammed shut with massive force and the rest of the lights went out. spiffy was just trying to remember whether his fern could glow in the dark when he was jumped.
“Now I’m going to kick your asses, whoever you are,” the ferned phenomenon warned; which was a pity, because in breathing to speak the chloroform found its way into his system, and after that the darkness was complete.

***


“Where are we?” Beth asked Josh Clement. “I mean, just now?”
“In the Rocky Mountains above Pueblo, Colorado,” the super-fast mutate answered her. “This is one of Magnetic Techbird’s old secret bases.”
The control panel Beth was examining collapsed with a loud clang.
“Er, he tended to hold his machinery together with pure magnetic energy,” DBS explained. “It’s not too robust now he not around to maintain the fields.”
“How did he hold his ceilings up?” Beth worried.
“Moving on,” Josh changed the subject, “please don’t take this wrong, but would you mind taking all your clothes off?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“No, really. You see, I think you might be bugged. Some kind of transmitter leading them to us. They found us in Indiana, and in North Dakota, and in Idaho. That can’t be coincidence. So I’m thinking they have a tracker concealed somewhere on your stuff. So if you could just please change into…” There was a trademark brown streak as Josh raced to Pueblo’s largest clothing store and back “..this stuff, and I’ll go and dump your gear somewhere nice and far away, okay? You are a size ten, right?”
“Right,” Beth admitted with the first vestiges of a smile that De Brown Streak had seen. “You think you could turn your back?”
“Oh, yeah. Sure. Sorry.”
It occurred to Beth that this was the perfect time to clobber her captor over the head with something large and blunt. But it also occurred to her that it was just possible that he might be telling her the truth. “So if there’s bad guys trying to kill me, why don’t I just call the Lair Legion?” she wondered. “I know some of them. I know… Goldeneyed, for example.” She felt guilty just saying his name while she was undressing.
“From what your old man said, this baddie had somehow got the usual heroes pegged. Maybe bugged, maybe under control, I don’t know. He had to get someone like me to look after you because I was so far outside the pale that I hadn’t yet been ‘processed’. And do you know how distracting it is to have to do exposition while there’s a hot babe popping buttons behind me?”
“All popped now,” Beth assured him. “Could you have found a shorter miniskirt?”
De Brown Streak turned round and appreciated the usually casually dressed schoolteacher in what he felt were proper clothes. “You want me to try and find one?”
“No,” Beth Shellett answered vehemently. “Just dispose of these old clothes like you said. And while you’re out there, try and find me some underwear that doesn’t involve a piece of dental floss, okay?”
“Nobody said you had to wear panties,” grumbled De Brown Streak as he left on his mission.

***


The explosion took Indiana Gnome and his gargoyle sidekick Gunther completely by surprise, making Indy drop his bagel to avoid the debris as the statue of city founder Wilbur Parody fragmented into chunks of fractured shrapnel. Parody’s left hand bounced off Gunther’s chest.
“Damn,” hissed Indy. “What was that? I really wanted the bagel.”
“Somebody blew up that statue,” guessed Gunthar, peering through the debris fog. “We’d better check it out. I disapprove on principal of humanoid-shaped stone objects getting smashed up.”
“Off-Central park has had a rough time lately,” Indy noted, following his friend into the crater that had been the path to the skating bowl. “It gets blown up nearly as often as City Hall.”
“More, I’d say,” argued Gunther, picking up one of the larger fragments of statue. Little crackled of dimensional energy still flickered across it. “And that’s not counting the number of alien and extraplanar invasions that started here.”
“Is that what we’ve got?” Indy wondered. The gnome flapped his hat to clear the smoke a little and peered at the bottom of the hole. “There’s something shiny down there. A bomb?”
“I just knew you were going to ask that question then look expectantly as me.”
“Well, one of us is a big nearly-indestructible walking statue, and one of us is me,” pointed out the gnome.
Gunther hopped down to examine the shining object. “Er, if it’s a bomb, it’s a very sexy one,” he puzzled. Indiana saw the gargoyle pick something up in his arms and then jump out of the crater. He laid what he was carrying on the turf and stared down at it. “Okay, I’m officially puzzled.”
Indy hated showing ignorance. “Well, what it is, obviously, is, um, is a sort of female-shaped cross between a 50’s Detroit automobile and a children’s toy.”
“She’s metallic,” Gunther reported. “And pretty heavy.”
“Actually,” said Glitch, “I’m watching my weight. Urk. Online. Rebooting. Systems diagnostic commence.”
“It talks,” Gunther observed.
“It talks about it’s weight,” Indy pointed out. “It’s really is female.”
“Excuse me,” the female autobot asked from her recumbent position at their feet. “Could you identify this planet for me? Only I just got here by spacebridge past some fairly sophisticated blocking technology and it would help to know.”
“You’re not from round here?” Gunther guessed. “Well, last we looked, this was Earth.”
“I see. Only my sensor data and collection of Miami Vice DVDs suggests that Earth is populated by organics, not silicates, and that the indigenous flesh population is usually about two meters tall, not one point two meters.”
“I’m short for my height,” said Indiana Gnome defensively.
“We’re not typical inhabitants,” Gunther explained.
“Well, I’m not a typical autobot,” the robot replied. Her systems diagnostic complete she pulled herself to her feet. “I’m Glitch.”
“Er, how do you do. I’m Indiana Gnome and this is Gunther. Are you, er, what’s the polite way of asking if you’ve come to kill us all and take over the planet?”
“Oh, no. Nothing like that. Optimu… er, my boss sent me here from our own world because we felt you needed help with the Technopolis incursion.”
Gunther and Indy exchanged glances. “I guess you didn’t hear how that turned out,” the gargoyle said. “It’s over now.”
“But… I was needed here,” Glitch said. “I was told…”
“Your briefing program was incomplete,” a beautiful gold-and-silver metallic woman with art-deco engravings on her said, walking towards them with precision poise. “I am here to give you your necessary additional instructions.”
“Er…” said Indy.
A dozen or more handsome tall men and women with silver robot parts peeking from beneath their skin appeared around her, and from each compass quarter. “And these are the Citizens of Cybernation,” said Deus et Machina, “to make sure you obey them.”

***


“I surrender! I surrender!” ManMan flinched as stunner cannons set to disintegrate oriented round on him as he rang the Lair Mansion doorbell.
The door opened and Flapjack leered down at the cringing Elvis impersonator. “All the computers are down, so the guns won’t recognise you,” he advised.
“So they’ll liquidise me! Turn them off!” Joe Pepper screamed.
“I think he means that the stunners usually only attack people they recognise,” Knifey interpreted. “Right?”
“Right. Mostly the LL use the back door,” the hunchbacked butler admitted.
ManMan quickly skipped into the lobby. “Whew,” he breathed. “And they wonder why I don’t join this bunch.”
“Apart from them not asking,” Knifey noted.
“Yeah, apart from that.”
Fin Fang Foom strode into the lobby, his tail swinging in agitation as he spoke to the team’s legal advisor. “I don’t care how you find him, just do it. I want him back here and I want him under control. Now.”
“Bry’s not answering his comm-card signal,” Laurie Leyton replied. “We can’t trace it. He may not even have it with him.”
“Find him,” the dragon repeated. “We don’t need a loose cannon out there.”
“I know. But what can you do when he’s run off after the woman he loves?” demanded Laurie with a sob. Then she rushed off down the corridor.
“What?” puzzled Finny. Relationships tended to go over his head. “Laurie?”
“Called at a bad time?” Manman asked sympathetically.
“We have women in the mansion,” the big dragon explained. “What can we do for you, ManMan?”
“Oh, it’s just a social call,” Joe Pepper explained. “Knifey wanted to speak to Cressida for some reason, and thud’s place was deserted – well, except for the rats and roaches and a kind of funky smell…”
“There’s something I need to discuss with her, that’s all,” Knifey explained. Who else could he communicate with about Exemplary’s brutal visit without breaching the condition on Joe and Stacy’s continuing health?
“Cressida’s out on a mission right now,” Finny told him. “But if you’re at a loose end, there’s something you could do to help me…”

***


Goldeneyed coughed up some blood and forced himself to open his eyes. He was in a darkened metal chamber surrounded by energy bars.
“Awake?” a voice boomed over hidden speakers. “You dumb-assed turkey-brained bone-headed dumb-suckin’ sonovabitch!”
“Drury?” G-Eyed recognised the gruff growl of the Director of the Super-Menace Principal Undercover Directorate. “So I’m on the helicarrier?”
“Ya think we don’t have gizmos to stop unwanted bozos teleportin’ onto the ship whenever they feel like it? What part of secret spy operation didn’t ya understand, you yahoo?
Goldeneyed scrambled to his feet. “Let me out. I’ve got to find Beth. I need some info from you.”
The energy bars vanished. “What do ya need?” the speakers asked him.
So Bry Katz told the voice he thought was Dan Drury exactly what it was he’d come to find.

***


“They spotted DBS at a clothing store south of Denver,” CrazySugarFreakboy! told Trickshot. “So why are we eight hundred miles away?”
The irritating archer was crouched over the wreckage of the wrecked Indiana farm silo. “Cause I like getting’ my hands dirty,” he answered. “And because if I’m going to take down some dude I’ve worked alongside before and started ta like, I wanna be sure I’m doing it for the right reasons.”
“So you’re buying my mind control / evil double theory,” beamed CSFB! “It makes sense. I mean, De Brown Streak is about the only hero who hasn’t had an evil double yet. Although I’ve got to say we’re waaay overdue for a new Anti-Legion, and…”
“I’m not buying anything just yet,” Tricky replied. “What made me itchy was when Ziles said how conclusive the evidence was. That stuff the St Clare dame gave us. The attack was supposed to have happened, what, an hour before, an’ they had blood samples and DNA evidence and a fully typed-up scene of crime report? SPUD’s efficient, yeah, but not that efficient.”
“Plus, we weren’t able to contact our usual SPUD liaison,” CSFB! admitted. “Falc was on a case, and the Con, er…”
“You can mention Contessa Natalia, kid. I’m not made of glass. Sides, it was my this-world self she married an’ murdered, and that was a long time ago.” He studied the ground more carefully. “I don’t have anyone close enough ta hurt me.”
CSFB! shuffled uncomfortably. “Right,” he agreed. “So what does the tracking tell us?”
“I see all the signs that everything they told us wus true,” Trickshot replied. “Evidence of a real nasty fight over there, and shreds of torn fibre in the hay, and signs of Sentinoids tearin’ through the walls and of a big battle ‘fore DBS got away with the girl.”
CrazySugarFreakBoy! caught the doubt in his companion’s voice. “All the signs?” he noted.
“Yeah. Text-book perfect forensics scene. Even after it’s been stomped by Sentinoids an’ supposedly picked over by SPUD boffins. There’s just one thing missin’.”
“What’s that?”
“Those forensics guys what did the lab report St Clare gave us,” Trickshot concluded. “They didn’t leave no tracks themselves.”

***


Dr Wrichards’ home contained the fruits of his many years of genius, so he guarded it well. Force screens, dimensional barriers, n-space vectors, defence drones, and a host of other devices that only half a dozen people on the planet could understand protected him from intruders.
The Dark Knight came to him in his workshop.
“Oh, you startled me,” the ageing scientist gasped as he turned round to find the black-leather-clad detective behind him.
“That’s the idea,” DK told him.
“How did you get in? The house defences…”
“I’ve been doing this a long time,” the urban legend answered.
“Yes, I noticed that. A lot of people think you might be the second Dark Knight, or maybe more. Of course, some people don’t think you exist at all, and others think you’re some kind of secret society, but I…”
“I know about the robots,” DK said, cutting across the babble.
“The, the robots?” Wrichards swallowed.
“I met the Pyrites,” the urban legend explained. “And I did a little checking. Self-replicating robots, a whole new life form. Living quietly in little communities across the country. Maybe ten thousand androids, playing at being human.”
“Really? That’s fascinating. Quite fascinating. I wonder…”
“And you started them off,” the Dark Knight accused. “Don’t deny it. I traced some of the first robots’ components and found out who purchased them. Some of the other parts came through New Tomorrow, which means they were advanced components from off-plane supplied by Dark Thugos back in his world-conquering days. And others came from some outfit called the Citizens of Cybernation. But they all ended up in your workshop, Doc.”
“Ah. Well then, I guess you’ve found me out.” Wrichards seemed almost relieved. “A decade or so back, I was contracted by… by the government to do some artificial intelligence design work. They asked me to study this remarkable artefact they’d found, a kind of robotic head. It suggested certain design possibilities that I just had to try out practically, so…”
“So you made the first of a new race of humanoid robots.”
“The second, really,” Wrichards admitted. “There was one really crude prototype that was started off in the second world war and was activated again during our study, but my versions were so much better.”
“And creating a bunch of plotting-to-rule-the-world robots didn’t bother you?” DK asked him.
Wrichards looked up in surprise. “Of course not,” he answered. “It’s only logical that machines should be the next step in evolution. Survival of the fittest.”
The heavy assault drones moved forwards from hidden niches in the lab walls.
“That’s why when Dr Wrichards didn’t see it our way we eliminated him and replaced him with a robot double,” Dr Wrichards explained as the drones went in for the kill.

***


“We have a report from SPUD,” Hatman called out. “They’ve got a fix on him. Nuevo Larido, Mexico.”
“Okay,” Nats acknowledged. “Hold on tight.”
The Lairjet was in near-Earth orbit, because the fastest way to reach any given spot on the planet was to power dive down through the Earth-s atmosphere, adding the world’s gravitational pull to the vessel’s powerful engines. All it required was a high-end pyrokinetic handling the heat shield compensation and a powerful telekinetic to cushion the landing at the end. And a lot of asprin for the pyrokinetic and telekinetic afterwards.
Nats clutched his walking stick and took the Lairjet down.
Pegasus streaked before them, leaving a blue trail of cosmic sparkles as she went, flying in winged horse form at speeds near to light.
De Brown Streak was concealing Beth Shellet’s clothing in a dumpster truck on its way to the local landfill when the wrath of the Pegasus descended upon him.
“Ouch!” he yelped as he barely avoided the carefully-bracketed cosmic bolts that tore up the road and truck around him. “What the…”
“Rapist felon!” screamed Pegasus, shifting to winged human form to seize him by the throat and propel him upwards into the air.
De Brown Streak shivered his body, changing his vibrational frequency to slide through his attacker’s fingers. He dropped to the ground, landed in a squat thrust position, and prepared to move away.
He found himself tangled in cannabis plants.
“What?” he gasped, freeing himself from the clutching greenery with a startled panic.
~~Speed changed to weed~~ Cressida explained, as the Lair Legion dropped down from their red-glowing shuttle. ~~Although you’d have to ask thuddie why it was that particular weed.~~
Hatman blurred in with his runners’ cap on, a bizarre contraption with nutrient drink bottles on either side. He slammed into Josh Clement and got in a couple of good punches to gut and jaw. “Where is she, murderer?” he demanded. “Dead in a ditch now you’ve had what you want?”
DBS increased his speed until even Hatman seemed to be moving slowly, reached forward, and flipped the hat off his enemy’s head. Then he took great pleasure in scientifically landing exactly one hundred blows on different parts of Hatman’s body. It took less than a second. “Dude, I know you’re probably under some evil bad guy’s influence,” Clement admitted, “but this is real fine.”
The ground beneath him shook and suddenly dozens of blood-red imps rose up around him. “Get away from Jay!” warned the Sorceress. “Do it now before I rip you to shreds.”
DBS knew he couldn’t fight the summonings, whether they were real or in his mind. Instead he blurred over to Whitney Darkness and apologetically dropped her with a nerve pinch. “Sorry, babe,” he told her. “I’ll make it up to you.”
“Get off her,” the battered and bloody Hatman called, pulling on his Bullets hat and diving forwards.
De Brown Streak hurled himself to one side just in time, only to discover himself in the grip of Pegasus. dull thud rushed up to help restrain the mutate. DBS vibrated free again, only to discover that Pegasus’ cosmic bolts could hurt even his vibrationally-shifted form.
“Agh!” he gasped, going down on hands and knees as the celestial lightnings rippled through his body.
“Stand aside!” Nats called, limping from the now-landed Lairjet and pointing his Psychostave. He caught De Brown Streak in a telekinetic grip and hurled him into the nearest wall. Then across the road into the building opposite. Then back again. “Had enough?” he demanded in a voice as old as time.
Pegasus looked up sharply.
De Brown Streak groaned.
“Hey!” dull thud called, “I’m getting an incoming call from CSFB! and Trickshot! They’re warning us not to go too hard on DBS! This might not be what it seems?”
“Really?” Hatman scowled, dragging himself up from examining the fallen Sorceress to look at the womens’ clothing Josh Clement had been dumping.
“Really. They think the evidence might have been…”
But thud never got to finish his sentence, for just then Goldeneyed appeared in a radiant flash. He oriented the massive complicated gun he was wielding on the staggered Brown Streak, flicked the power switch, and fired it at full force.
Josh Clement screamed.
“G-Eyed! What the…” Nats called. Then he telekinetically flipped the weapon from Bry’s arms. “What do you think you’re doing?”
dull thud raced over to the fallen DBS. ~~He’s alive~~ Cressida reported.
“Dealing with that bastard the way we should have dealt with him long ago,” Goldeneyed argued, shrugging off Hatman’s restraining hand. “That’s a mutate gene suppression rifle, the next generation of the technology the government uses to take away mutate powers.” He kicked Josh Clement in the face as he lay groaning. “I’ve neutralised this piece of shit for good!”
“Whether he deserved it or not,” added dull thud gravely.

***


Next issue: The fake man must die, and only one pure genderless thought being stands between him and destruction – maybe. Josh Clement is down, and there’s plenty of people happy to make sure he’s out. spiffy has the most unpleasant awakening of his life, and that probably includes the awakenings he had back when he was dead too. Amy changes her mind, or perhaps has it changed for her. The LL hear about Commissioner Graham. ManMan runs a nice simple errand for Finny. And Al B. Harper gets the computer systems back up and really, really wishes he hadn’t. Coming soon in Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Ongoing Investigations, or Searching for Apocalypse

***


Notes:

* Sentinoids are mutant-hunting government war machines, usually deployed by secret agency SPUD to contain dangerous superhumans. They can be manned or operated on remote control. Its no wonder the national deficit is so high given the number of these things they go through.

* Ruby Weaver: (or Waver) is the Lair Legion’s new administrator/receptionist, and is Sorceress’ younger cousin. Nepotism, or what?

* Art Corben and Randy Ruiz are former minions of Evil Monkey, brought to justice recently by the Lair Legion, and doing their community service as interns at the Lair Mansion as of this issue.

* Magnetic Techbird was the former champion of mutate-rights who was apparently killed escaping from his trial in Untold Tales Untold Tales of the Lair Legion World Tour #68: The Trial of the Magnetic Techbird and Untold Tales of the Lair Legion World Tour #69: Laws and Outlaws.

* Indiana Gnome and Gunther are mythical creatures who have recently taken up residence in the city. Indy, an adventurer and traveller, befriended the once-human hero Gunther when a curse fell upon him transforming him into a powerful, stony gargoyle.

* Glitch is an Autobot from a distant galaxy where two races of machine lifeforms struggle for supremacy. I’m sure CSFB! will be happy to offer additional copious notes on her and her mission, and probably on her sex life as well if we don’t stop him. Her reasons for travelling to Earth are chronicled in the Coming of Glitch, by CrazySugarFreakBoy!

* Hel Rotwang, known in Nazi Germany as Futura, the Woman of Tomorrow, and known today as Deus Et Machina, was a 1920’s political escapee from the Technoverse who settled in the Reich. A robot-supremacist who believed that mankind’s destiny was to improve itself through transplant cybernetics, Rotwang has founded the Citizens of Cybernation, a cult of humans who have elective surgery to become cyborgs in the quest for physical perfection. More of them in future chapters.

* The Anti-Legion mentioned in passing by CSFB! are old villains (also known as the Anti-League and the League of Irregulars) who are the dark mirror images of their heroic templates. They were last summoned by Dirth Vortex and consumed by the power of Dark Sorceress during the Acts of Ambition around Untold Tales # 27 – 29.

* Dr Weed Wrichards is (or maybe we should say was) one of the greatest geniuses of his era, responsible for massive breakthroughs in rocketry, dimensional physics, computers, and, we must now add, robotics. He has most often appeared as an ally of the JBH at his StarTrekkish Labs.

* Robotic component sources: New Tomorrow Enterprises has previously had truck with the dimension in which Dark Thugos was the tyrant of the Sol Empire, and has traded for technology used by various science-types such as Peter von Doom. The Citizens of Cybernation are a cult dedicated to the teachings of Technopolis refugee Hel Rotwang, the cyborg Deus et Machine.

* Anti-mutate technology: Parody-Earth science has now discovered a genetic “cure” for most mutations, and many countries have made then process compulsory for captured or registered mutates. However, there is roughly a 25% risk of brain damage, physical disability, or death in using the process, and many mutates believe their freedoms are being abrogated by being forced to undergo the operation. The hand-held weapon is new, top-secret, and suspiciously convenient.

* Other information from:

The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom
Who's Who in the Parodyverse
Where's Where in the Parodyverse

Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2003 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2003 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved.


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