#125: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: How the Story Ends

Previous episodes at The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom (this story starts with #104 or #122 depending on how far back you want to go)
Character details in Who's Who in the Parodyverse

Previously: In an attempt to stop the sentient prophecy Ultizon from conquering the Parodyverse, the last free heroes of Earth have voyaged into the faerie realms seeking the villainous Hooded Hood for assistance. Unfortunately, the Many Coloured Land has fallen to the sinister King of Stories, the first Chronicler, who has captured Fin Fang Foom, Ziles, and the Dark Knight. Other heroes have been wounded evading the Wild Hunt that pursues Pegasus, and Messenger has been left behind. Hatman has been replaced by an evil changeling. Yet another group have entered the realms of Death seeking to rescue the supposedly-dissected Visionary. Meanwhile, the Lair Mansion remains on the massive Vacuum Ship of world-eating Galactivac, the Living Death that Sucks, with a very worried support staff inside it.
Confused? You will be…

”The body is a book of blood. Whenever it’s opened it’s red.”
                                                                                    Clive Barker


Prologue: The Belly

    Traditionally, the interns get given all the crappy jobs nobody else wants to do: making the coffee, doing the photocopying, talking to customers with complaints; which might explain why Art Corben and Randy Robinson were crawling up an unpleasantly-plastic pipe conduit filled with lethal energy lines in the belly of Galactivac’s giant Vacuum Ship, trying to attach sensor nodes.
    “Next time, I say we turn down the community service and go for a prison sentence,” Art shouted over the sound of cosmic turbines shifting in the depths of the great machine.
    “Next time? You expect we’re gonna get out of this alive, man?” called back Randy. He swatted away another of the unpleasantly spider-like automated maintenance drones that he suspected was smarter than he was and went back to unscrewing an access hub. At least he hoped it was an access hub. The technology of Galactivac, Hooverer of Worlds, was more advanced and alien than anything he had ever seen.
    The whole vessel rocked. “That wasn’t us!” denied Art hastily, for the benefit of any automated killbots that might be arriving. “What the hell was it, Randy?”
    “I dunno. Probably God thought this job wasn’t difficult enough so he’s rocking the tube to make it more challenging. Look, if we can just connect this last sensor probe, Al can hack into Galactivac’s computer systems and find out how to get us all out of here, right?”
    “And letting Al B. Harper at Galactivac’s computer systems is a good thing, right?”
    Art and Randy looked at each other. “We’re gonna die, dude,” said Randy.”
    Art nodded and rammed home the connection.

Chapter One: The Heart

    The Castle of Bones seethed like a living organism, screaming its creation-agony as the thousands of people fused together to create the faerie castle stronghold of the King of Stories tore at each other in their torment. And that meant there had to be a living heart. And there it was.
    Scott Brunsen, Amazing Guy, hung limply in the middle of a web of fibres that burrowed into his flesh, channelling his incredible energy-construct powers and cosmic awareness in the King’s service. Energy thrummed along the tendrils that held him, maintaining the bloody tangle of torments that formed this stronghold of horror.
    Amazing Guy didn’t know, or care. He smiled.
    The King of Stories had given him a dream. In this lovely dream his family were still alive, not murdered because he wouldn’t obey the Shadow Cabinet. In his mind he talked with them, played with them, enjoyed the trivia of mundane everyday life with them. Why would he want to wake up?
    The escaped Dark Knight plunged deep through organic tubes, swimming through mucus and cutting past sphincter after sphincter as he sought the centre of the structure.
    The defenders of the Castle skittered after him. Here the King of Tales had hampered himself with his own cruelty, for the amputations and limb-grafts on his servants prevented them from following the urban legend fast enough. As the first pursuers swarmed into a pulpy room filled with pustules they ran right into the needle-mines that DK had salvaged from their last attack on him three levels higher. They burst with a sickly smell.
    “If that King of Stories is a fragment of my psyche, I have got to get some counselling after this,” muttered the Dark Knight. He used the bone knife he’d broken off one of his hunters to gash through the last membrane wall and tumbled into the heart chamber.
    “Well, that makes a certain amount of sense,” he conceded as her saw Amazing Guy hanging in his organic cradle. “The King of Stories doesn’t have access to the contemporary Chronicler’s power, only his knowledge. He’s got to have collected another power base.”
    Then the King arrived, growing from the walls and floor and ceiling, rising up into the tall, flaming-skulled night terror he was.
    DK ignored him and ripped AG from the webbing. “Wakey wakey, Protector of the Parodyverse,” he told the hero roughly. “This is your breakfast call.”
    The King of Stories grabbed the Dark Knight and slammed him away with savage, shattering force. “Leave him be, meddler! He wants to stay where I have put him!”
    “That’s true,” agreed Amazing Guy, levitating slowly from the ground, still trailing the dead fibres that had imprisoned him. “That’s exactly where I want to be.”
    The King of Stories gestured and AG was back in his web of dreams. The power thrummed through the castle once more. The control returned.
    The King seized up the battered Dark Knight. “It was a good try,” he admitted, “but you have failed.”

Chapter Two: The Flesh

    Death was more attractive than her plump, frumpy younger sister Temporary Death. She had an allure which sooner or later people found irresistible. And she had come for Visionary.
    “Um, are you quite sure it’s me you want?” the possibly-fake man asked nervously. “Only it’s my experience that most people want someone else, and only call on me as a kind of last resort.”
    “That‘s true,” conceded Nats. Then he shut up as Death noticed him.
    It was an awkward tableau, there in the halls of Temporary Death. A number of the heroes of the Parodyverse who were currently in a state of quantum uncertainty regarding their aliveness or deadness were gathered together, by chance or by design, trying to retrieve Visionary because he would be needed in the ambitious attempt to retcon Ultizon’s rule and save the Parodyverse. When this had been explained to Vizh he’d had to sit down for a while with his head between his legs.
    “You are not to be taking Visi!” Yo said determinedly, standing between Death and her yellow-coated quarry. “Is not to be fair.”
    “Death isn’t fair,” Xander the Improbable noted. “It’s in the rules.”
    “But we came all this way,” the Librarian said. “We can’t just let Death take Visionary. He’s our last hope.”
    Nats winced at that. “We’re doomed, aren’t we?”
    “Fear not, old chap,” Sir Mumphrey Wilton assured him. “All young Visionary has to do is to beat death at a chess game. It’s traditional.”
    “Does it have to be chess?” worried Visionary. “Could it possibly be Snap?”
    “Death is not to be taking cute Visi!” Yo repeated. “If Death is having to be taking anyone, is to be taking Yo instead.”
    “That’s not going to happen,” said Visionary firmly.
    “Is sense. Visi is to be needed to be saving the world, and is to be needed by cute Cheryl too who is to being very sad.” The pure thought being faced off against Death. “Be taking of Yo!”
    “Perhaps a game of Cluedo?” suggested Mumphrey (that’s Clue to our American cousins).
    The Librarian glanced across at Xander. “There’s more going on here than meets the eye, isn’t there?” he asked the master of the mystic crafts. “You let yourself get killed so you could be here, now, didn’t you?”
    “When your job is to guard the borders, sometimes you have to be on the edge,” answered the seedy magician in the rumpled red robes, “Sometimes you have to go over the edge.”
    “That’s a Yes then,” surmised Lee Bookman.
    “Everybody who is here is supposed to be here,” noted Xander the Improbable. “Nats is here because Death needs reminding that the entity we call Ultizon is a threat to every living thing. If everything dies she’s out of a job. Mumphrey’s here because a successful retcon will have to roll back time several days, to the moment that the Lair Legion fought Virtual Zemo in his proto-Ultizon guise. Yo’s here because you’d never have got this far without him/her and the Manga Shoggoth, and because s/he has a very cute puppy-stare. And I’m here to explain it all to you right now.”
    “And me? Am I here to chronicle it all?”
    “You? You’re here as proof that Death lets Visionary go.”
    Death and Temporary Death both turned to look at Lee Bookman. The Librarian gulped.
    “Oh, I see,” said Temporary Death staring closely at L. “He’s supposed to be dead, but he was grabbed out of time at the moment of his execution by the Hooded Hood and retconned to be working in Herringcarp Asylum’s Library. Then he merged with two alternate versions of the Lunar Librarian and returned to his post.”
    “So?” Nats puzzled. “We all have complicated bits of origin we try and skirt over these days. Don’t ask about my father.”
    “So the Hooded Hood hasn’t done that retcon yet, correct?” Mumphrey deduced. “Just as he hasn’t done the retcon that saved Amazing Guy’s kiddies a few months back. The Hood has to get his powers back, has to save the Librarian and AG’s family, and has to beat Ultizon!”
    “I think I need to sit down again,” sighed Visionary. “I used to think life was complicated, but death is much worse.”
    “The Hood doesn’t necessarily beat Ultizon, but the rest is correct,” Xander told Sir Mumphrey. “Or else he fails against his current adversary and the Librarian becomes a very active temporal ghost, and we all go with this young lady here and stay dead.”
    “Visi is not to be dying!” insisted Yo.
    It occurred to Visionary that Death was just listening, and hadn’t actually said anything yet. It seemed a little impolite to cut her out of the discussion. “Um, excuse me?” he asked her cautiously. “Would you mind awfully if I didn’t go with you, but went home instead? Please.”
    Death smiled at him. “At last,” she snorted. “Wizards and office holders and sages and thought beings can get really complicated sometimes, can’t they?” She looked the possibly fake man up and down. “So you’re the guy who’s destined to never do anything of significance, eh? And they think you’re going to save the world.”
    “I’m pretty sure I can get the doing nothing part right.”
    “Well, I could let you go for a while, if my little sister okays it, but there’s still a price to be paid to both of us.”
    “I have had a good run,” admitted Sir Mumphrey. “I’ll stay if I have to.”
    “I… I guess I will too,” agreed Nats.
    Temporary Death flushed.
    “Please, allow me to pay this one,” Xander the Improbable urged the heroes. “You can sacrifice yourselves next time.” The master of the mystic crafts dug into his pocket and pulled out the two biscuits he’d picked up just before he’d been killed. He handed one each to Death and her sister. “There you are, madams. I trust that will suffice.”
    “Chocolate chip,” said Temporary Death happily. “My favourite!”

Chapter Three: The Muscle
    Goldeneyed sweated as he dropped the broken carcass of the last of the Monotony Aunts onto the chequerboard entrance hall. He guiltily did a quick check of his party to see if anyone had died: spiffy, Dancer, Pegasus, Trickshot, the Contessa, Lisa, CrazySugarFreakBoy!, dull thud, Pelopia, all accounted for. And the Hooded Hood was leaning on a wall watching the battle.
    “Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to lead us?” G-Eyed asked Lisa plaintively.
    “No, that’s fine, thanks G-Eyed,” the first lady of the Lair Legion assured him breezily. “I’ll just tag on behind and judge you, okay?”
    “Visionary was right, she is evil,” dull thud observed.
    ~~There’s certainly a lot a girl can learn from her~~ Cressida the Wonder Worm admitted.
    “And a growing boy too, from what I hear,” thuddy admitted.
    “Which way now?” the Contessa asked, staring at the dozen or more passages that wandered off Escher-like at impossible angles in every direction. “We need to get moving before more bizarre monsters find us.”
    “Oh, don’t you have another nuclear device on your person to set off?” asked Pegasus bitchily.
    “I was being controlled by Ultizon when I betrayed everybody,” Natalia Romanza shot back. “What’s your excuse?”
    “Which way, Hoody?” CSFB! asked the cowled crime czar who they were escorting to take on an undefeatable foe.
    “Why’re you askin’ him?” demanded Trickshot, retrieving his arrows from the fallen since his quiver was almost empty. “He’s not got his powers anymore. In fact, come ta think of it there’s no reason not to give ‘im the smacking he’s had coming for so long.”
    “I really don’t think that would be wise,” Dancer advised hastily. “Or safe.”
    “He doesn’t. Have. Any. Freakin’ Powers,” the irritating archer repeated. But he made no threatening move towards the Hooded Hood.
    “I reckon we could go any way we wanted to,” reasoned spiffy. “All we’re waiting for is the bad guy to notice us and spring his trap. Then we find him.”
    “Good point,” agreed Lisa. “Pick a direction, Mark. Then we can blame you when it all goes wrong.”
    spiffy pointed, and Goldeneyed lead the way towards the Razor Clowns.

Chapter Four: The Backside

    “Halt intruder and be destroyed!” called A.L.F.RED, the robotic major domo of the Lunar Public Library, opening his primary weapons ports and focussing them on Flapjack.
    “Er, shouldn’t that be halt OR be destroyed?” checked the Lair Legion’s disgusting butler.
    A.L.F.RED considered this. “No,” he decided. “I’m pretty sure I was right before.”
    Flapjack nodded and scratched an armpit that would have kept a team of NATO biological weapons inspectors busy for months. “Okay. Good job I’m not an intruder, then.”
    “Excuse me, but you are an unauthorised person seeking to enter the Lunar Public Library, which is closed today on account of being teleported halfway across the universe into the interior of Galactivac’s Vacuum Ship. That seems to be the dictionary definition of intruder. And we're not short of a few dictionaries here, I can tell you.”
    “Nah, I’m not intruding because I’m not trying to come in. Really. I got better things to do. The universe is ending and there’s still so much porn to get through. I just called to see if you knew about these.”
    Cybernetic sensors that could analyse objects to the subatomic level focussed on the items in the butler’s hands. “A six-pack of alcohol and a deck of cards?”
    “Sure. I figgered that you get to look after this Library place, I take care of the Lair Mansion what also got brought here, so we’re like… neighbours. Then I wondered if you ever learned how to play stud blackjack, or maybe a little two-handed poker? For money.”
    A.L.F.RED quickly switched to lying mode. “Cards? I, um, I’ve heard of them, but I don’t think I’d be very good. Still, I do have a little money and perhaps I could risk a few dollars in the interests of being neighbourly. If you don't mind teaching me the game. Poker, did you call it?”
    “Great,” grinned Flapjack innocently. “I only ever really play whist with my ailing auntie, but I think I can just about remember the rules for those other games.”
    The two custodians sat down together at the table like a pair of basking sharks circling a drowning sailor. Flapjack fumbled the deck clumsily. “Gee, it’s hard to shuffle so many cards at once,” he noted plaintively.
    “What are these ones with the little shovels on called again?” A.L.F.RED responded.
    And behind them Al. B Harper and Miss Framlicker crept away having attached the feed to the Library’s main translation bank.

Chapter Five: The Hands

    “The King’s gone,” Finny said as they dangled from their fetters of bone. “Time to get us out of here, Ziles.”
    “Me?” The Xnylonian was still pale from the threat their captor had made earlier that he would return her home to the mysterious Gahream.
    “You are the escape artist, aren’t you?” Foom challenged her. “I’d shape-shift out only somehow these chains are stopping me from using my powers.”
    “The King’s managed to remove all of my equipment,” Ziles told him. “I’m as good as naked.”
    Finny blinked hard to lose that mental image. “You’re more than your tools, Ziles. More than your powers. I know you can do it.”
    The alien exile glanced suddenly at the Makluan. “I am, aren’t I? Thanks, Andy.” Half a minute later she was free and releasing the dragon.
    “How did you do that?” Finny asked as he transformed to his humanoid-dragon form.
        Then he noticed that Ziles was cradling her left hand, and it was covered with blood. “Oh, you know, I just shattered the bones to pull my arm free and took it from there,” she said through teary eyes. “Andy, we’ve got to stop this villain.”
    “We will,” the leader of the Lair Legion promised her. For some reason Dancer’s advice to him about kissing Ziles seemed very urgent just now.
    “Use your tongue,” advised the King of Stories. “She’s begging for it.”
    Foom whirled round and loosed a gout of flame at the first Chronicler of Stories. The King tossed the broken Dark Knight into the blast. “Oh, I bet that hurt,” he laughed as the urban legend’s skin seared away.
    Ziles cartwheeled a kick right at that smug, blazing skull.
    The King of Stories caught her ankle and hurled her at the wall. Dozens of tentacles sprouted to catch her. “You’ll have to break a lot of bones to get out of that one,” he told her. The wall swallowed her up.
    Fin Fang Foom growled and hammered the King with his tail, then followed it up with tooth and claw. “Set her free!” demanded the angry Makluan.
    “Why? I’ve granted her wish to go home at last. I’m giving her a glimpse of what she left behind,” the malevolent personification of tales gloated.     “I’ve sent her to the Gahream.”
    “Let her go!” Foom demanded, slashing again with brutal ferocity. Finny had no idea what the Gahream might be, but he’d seen the terror in Ziles’ eyes.
    “Ah, a fight at last,” the King of Stories said, rending through the dragon’s armoured scales with burning fingers. “Greg always knew he’d have to kill you in the end.”
    “You’re not Greg,” hissed Finny. “You’re not even human. Just some pathetic echo of a forgotten past, a belch in causality, a cosmic fart!”
    The King of Stories stopped smiling. “Die then,” he told the dragon.

Chapter Six: The Nerve

    Messenger didn’t scream as the Wilde Huntsman peeled off another four inches of his skin.
    “I’m very good at this, you know,” the antler-browed immortal told his prisoner. “I can get the whole pelt off without killing the prey. And then there are so many amusing things one can do with all those exposed nerve endings.”
    “Go to hell,” snarled the agonised postman.
    “I’m a frequent visitor,” the Huntsman assured him. “The things there avoid me. I frighten them.”
    “I don’t do frightened.”
    “No. You’ve toughened up considerably from the days you and yours were puking whining little angelics, I must admit. That’s why I healed the spear-wound that was killing you. So I could take my time.”
    Messenger gritted his teeth as another strip of sticky flesh tore from his body.
    “Tell me more about this Lair Legion of yours,” the Wilde Huntsman urged him. “I’ve not seen their like for many a year. They’ll make fine prey.”
    “I’ll tell you nothing.”
    “Oh, you will, in the end. And I can’t promise that if you talk now I’ll go any easier on you, because I won’t. I just thought it might pass the time.”
    The Messenger had been tortured by experts, and the Huntsman was right up there with the best. “I thought you could only hunt those who you were summoned to take,” he gasped, trying to take the initiative.
    “Traditionally I have a lot of leeway about collateral damage,” the hunter replied. “I’ve decided to take the Pegasus’ allies along with her. You have a lot of interesting scars that will be very decorative once this skin’s cured, you know.”
    “Who set you on to take Pegasus then, all that time ago? And why?”
    The Huntsman stepped back. “You mean you don’t know? You’ve given your life to defend the creature and you don’t even understand why? How very splendid!”
    “Who?” persisted Messenger. “Why?”
    “Oh, it’s one of the very oldest stories,” the Wilde Huntsman promised. “I was commissioned by the Pegasus’ husband, of course. Because of her infidelity.”
    The postman made a sound between a snort and a sob. “All that you’ve done, because she had an affair?”
    “Oh yes,” said the Huntsman. “The King of Stories did not like his wife betraying him with the Paradox Stranger. Now hold still, because peeling the face is a very delicate matter…”

Chapter Seven: The Appendix

    “So what was that I just nearly got eaten by?” ManMan asked cautiously.
    “I’d have to say that was a Chupacabras,” Knifey said authoritatively. “Sometimes known as a Goat-Sucker.”
    “Do I look like a goat?”
    “Do I have to answer that?”
    “Just tell me how to get Goat-Sucker gore off my Elvis costume.”
    “Are you okay?” asked NTU-150, limping over with a half-repaired battle suit. “By the time I could fire up the Betamax interface you’d already dealt with the whatever-it-is.”
    “Sure,” ManMan assured him. “Knifey knew where this thing’s weak spots were.”
    “The predators are circling,” the changeling they all took to be Hatman warned them. “They can smell blood.”
    “Well I’m trying not to bleed,” De Brown Streak said savagely. “I didn’t ask to get chomped by those hell-hounds.”
    “It’s all right, Josh,” Sorceress assured him from the pile of furs where she lay recovering from her own wounds. “You did fine. You kept us alive.”
    DBS looked through the break in the trees at the distant Castle of Blood. “I just hate not being able to help them, y’know. I feel like I should be doing something.”
    “The best you can do is not get in the way,” faux-Hatman told him curtly. “I’d be in there myself if I hadn’t exhausted my powers escaping from that situation you all left me in.”
    “Hey, you told us to go!” objected De Brown Streak.
    “I’m so sorry, Jay,” Whitney told him yet again. “I never wanted leave you.”
    “Don’t worry,” faux-Hatman told her. “Just you concentrate on getting yourself better, gorgeous. Then we’ll find some fun, personal way for you to make it up to me, I promise you.”

Chapter Eight: The Ear

    “You realise that nobody in the history of the universe has ever attempted to hack the databanks of Galactivac, the Cosmic Hooverer,” Miss Framlicker pointed out as she watched Al B. Harper wiring beneath the main computer bank in the Lair Mansion’s laboratory. “Do you think maybe there was a good reason for that?”
    The lab shook, setting off the NTU-experimentation alarms, but this time it was because the whole Vacuum Ship in which the mansion resided was rocking.
    “We have to know what’s going on out there,” Al B. answered. “We don’t know what’s happening to the LL. We don’t know what’s going on with Ultizon. And we’re stuck in the interior of a creature that’s best known for rendering planets down to particulate matter for energy consumption.”
    “Which is kind of my point about not irritating him, you moron,” Miss F argued.
    “Yeah. But on the other hand we have a chance to find out,” the Legion’s scientific advisor breathed reverentially.
    Miss Framlicker sighed. Nobody was going to stop Al B. Harper when he was in this kind of mood. “So the possibility of Galactivac’s systems frying the Lair computer, the Library, and yourself doesn’t bother you at all?”
    “Science involves risks,” came Al’s happy voice from under the machine. “Ah, that should do it!” he rolled out laid flat on his skateboard. “Hit that big red button, Muffy.”
    “That’s Miss Framlicker to you, Harper. And why does it have to be a big red button? Why not a small, comfortingly-green button?” She shut her eyes and pressed the control.

Chapter Nine: The Heels

    Falcon came in at just over MACH-1, knowing the pressure wave before him would hit the ground like an earthquake. The sonic boom scattered the hell-hounds of the Wish Pack like skittles and tumbled the Wilde Huntsman away from the frame where Messenger was stretched.
    Sam Wilson had no time to be fancy. He grabbed the whole scaffold that held the postman and jetted away at maximum thrust. Even then his gyros almost failed and spun him into the ground.
    A bolt of lightning earthed itself beside him. The Huntsman was angry.
    Falcon dared a look over his shoulder. The Wild Hunt was racing through the skies, on the wings of a roiling storm. And fast as he was travelling, they were gaining on him.
    “Oh crap,” he said to himself as he throttled up to full speed with the Hunt moving ever closer behind him.

Chapter Ten: The Brain

    The King of Dreams raked another blow over the staggering Makluan. Only willpower was keeping Fin Fang Foom upright now, and there was hardly an inch of his body that wasn’t covered in tears and scores.
    The King judged that he was running out of immediate ways to hurt the dragon physically; so he allowed the rest of the heroes to arrive.
    “Put that dragon down!” insisted Dancer, whose probability shifting had allowed them to circumnavigate a score of lethal deathtraps and find the battle. She tumbled forwards and caught a numbing kick on the nerve-cluster that clenched the King’s wrist.
    Then dull thud came in closer, so that Cressida could transmute the flame of the king’s skull into shame for what he’d done. That psionic attack was meant to keep him reeling while Trickshot bracketed him with acid arrows and CrazySugarFreakBoy! tangled him in his yo-yo.
    But it didn’t. Instead the kind caught Dancer, swung her round to render thud and Trickshot unconscious, then released a wide-beam spray of force that was too broad for either CSFB!, the Contessa, or Pelopia to avoid.
    “I hope you’re watching this, Andrew,” the King called out as he seized spiffy and G-Eyed by the throats and slowly squeezed. “I won’t kill them, of course. Just sever their spinal cords so they won’t disturb my amusements with the others.”
    Finny staggered back to his feet. “Let them go.”
    “Or else?”
    The Hooded Hood stalked through the hole that Trickshot and spiffy had made earlier. “Good evening, King of Stories. I really think you should do as the dragon suggests.”
        The King didn't even bother turning. “Ah, so you found the courage to come and face me at last,” he noted.
    “It took a while for you to sufficiently irritate me,” observed the cowled crime czar. “Suffice to say you have finally succeeded.”
    “And you have come to face the big bad bogeyman without a shred of your power. A final error, brief mortal. I am no pale modern Chronicler forbearing to destroy you because of some pale set of rules.”
    “No. The current Chronicler has far more class,” agreed the Hood. “Anyway, power isn’t important. Plotting, dialogue, pacing, those are the things that will defeat you, story parasite.”
    The King dropped the unconscious bodies of spiffy and G-Eyed beside the other fallen heroes. He glanced at Finny and felled him with a gesture; but he kept him awake to watch what happened. This was a whole new way to hurt Andy Dean.
    “I fail to see how anything short of overwhelming force can stop me breaking you now, Ioldobaoth Winkelweald.”
    “Really?,” said the Hooded Hood. “Well, allow me to demonstrate. Here’s a little contingency I plotted.”
    Pegasus flew round the corner and released the most powerful cosmic bolt she’d ever generated. Enough power to rip apart a world surged through the King of Stories, overcoming his defences, shredding his form and scattering it to the winds. The blast burst through the walls of the Castle of Bones and lit up the skies of Faerie from the Dreaming Falls to the Whispering Sea, from the Aeries of the Lighteagles to the borders of the Mythlands marshes.
    “It’s begun,” whispered the Sorceress from the woods outside the fortress. “The last chapter.”
    The King of Stories screamed his wrath and reformed his blazing body. “Penelope!” he thundered. It’s always a shock when one’s ex-wife turns up in a bad mood.,
    Pegasus released another blast. “You were cold, manipulating, and deceitful,” she told the King of Stories. “And you were lousy in bed.”
    The King winced at the second blast, or maybe at the words, but this time he was ready. “Where did you get such ancient chthonic power?” he wondered. “Is that the Constellation I can taste in your aura? Oh Penelope, you trollop, you really will do anything for power, won’t you?”
    Penny launched her final attack, but already the King has its measure. “You set the Wilde bloody Hunt on me, you bastard!” she shouted. “Dox was right about you!”
    The King of Stories released his shout with a gout of flame and pounded the Pegasus into the wall. “You never mention his name to me, you little bitch! I’ll see you never never have another moment in your eternal life that’s not filled with agony. I’ll…”
    The Hooded Hood coughed politely. “Excuse me,” he told the King. “Now it’s time to demonstrate pacing, and my second contingency. This is all a matter of timing.”
    “What do you…” began the King, but just then Falcon rocketed into him at near full speed. The flyer and Messenger were ricocheted away like broken puppets, but the King merely took a step backwards.
    “That’s it?” asked the King of Stories. “That’s your big surprise?”
    Then the Wild Hunt burst through the sundered fortress wall in pursuit of Falcon and intent on claiming Pegasus. That the King had originally summoned them meant nothing to them at all. He was simply stood in their way.
    “I believe they can attack with all the power of the one who commisioned them,” the Hood recalled. “That would be you, wouldn’t it?” he asked the King of Stories as the hounds leaped forwards.
    The Wilde Huntsman and the King joined in gory, savage, unrestrained combat.
    “You know, I think you’re less mean when you do have your retconning powers,” considered Lisa admiringly.
    “The Huntsman won’t hold him for long,” the archvillain judged. “As soon as the King calms down a little from seeing Pegasus again he’ll remember he can shift the whole Hunt to the other end of Faerie. It’ll cost him a lot of power to do it, though, on top of the energy he needed to survive Pegasus’ assault.”
    “So what’s next?” the amorous advocatrix wondered.
    “Next I need to reclaim my abilities,” the Hood told her over the growing cacophony of battle. “Fortunately, the Chroniclers past and present have done my job for me.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “When Kumari had my abilities, the Chronicler of Stories discerned that the King of Tales was manipulating her. So he sent her, and my abilities, to the King. He probably believed that it would be an end to those troublesome gifts, but it’s just possible he was really devious and foresaw all this. Kumari was destroyed, the gifts couldn’t be claimed, and they were lost in the King’s twilight realm.”
    “Until he decided to invade faerie and merge his kingdom into it here with the Castle of Bones,” Lisa realised. “So this is in fact the one place you can get your powers back.”
    “Given a few moments while the King is distracted for me to invoke the Laws of the Parodyverse, yes,” agreed the Hooded Hood. “And that’s why I need you, my dear.”
    “Me?” Lisa puzzled. “But I didn’t bring any kool-whip.”
    “I need the Booke of the Law,” the Hood clarified, “or more precisely, the cosmic office holder that is Keeper of the Booke of Law, the rules of engagement of the Resolution War.”
    “But… I look after the Booke. It gives me my summoning powers!”
    “Indeed,” said the cowled crime czar. “So if you would be so good as to confirm my claim to my retrospective continuity manipulation gifts…?”
    Behind them the battle went quiet. The Wild Hunt was gone.
    “I confirm it,” Lisa gabbled quickly.
    “Excellent,” the Hooded Hood declaimed as he turned to face the King of Stories.
    “You think your puny power can overcome me?” the King sneered. “Even weakened as I am?”
    “No,” answered the Hood. “I think like all plots, this one turns on the smallest details.”
    Then the King saw back a few moments, to the time he arrived at the castle’s heart to stop the Dark Knight, growing from the walls and floor and ceiling, rising up into the tall, flaming-skulled night terror he was.
    DK ignored him and ripped AG from the webbing. “Wakey wakey, Protector of the Parodyverse,” he told the hero roughly. “This is your breakfast call.”
    The King of Stories grabbed the Dark Knight and slammed him away with savage, shattering force. “Leave him be, meddler! He wants to stay where I have put him!”
    “That’s true,” agreed Amazing Guy, levitating slowly from the ground, still trailing the dead fibres that had imprisoned him. “That’s exactly where I want to be.”
    The Hooded Hood’s eyes flashed green.
    “But this… this is where I should be,” added AG with an anguished sob. His quantum powers flared around him and he flew at the King of Stories. “How dare you use my family against me? Again! Well no more! NO MORE!”
    Energy and cosmic awareness coalesced to burn through the King's defences as the Protector of the Parodyverse made his attack.
    “Be so good as to summons ManMan here for me, would you?” the Hooded Hood asked Lisa as they ducked from the debris of the King of Stories’ latest and most vicious fight. “Amazing Guy is powerful and angry, but he’s not going to win this battle without a little help.”
    “From ManMan?” Lisa questioned uncertainly, but she called the Elvis impersonator to her as requested.
    “Ah, Mr Pepper. I don’t believe I’ve had a chance to discuss your assassinating me with you yet, have I?” asked the Hood.
    “Whoops,” said Knifey.
    “Er…” said ManMan.
    “Well, if you’d like to get out of my bad books, I have a little job for you…”
    The King of Stories dredged deep into his stored reserves of power and shut Amazing Guy down. It cost him resources that had taken a millennia to amass. He swayed on his feet, exhausted but triumphant.
    Fin Fang Foom staggered up yet again to face him, swaying as he tried to stay upright. “Evil… doesn’t… win…” he hissed.
    The King had had enough. He moved in on the Makluan for the kill.
    ManMan stabbed Knifey into the King from behind, the exact same move he had used to kill the Hooded Hood. The mysterious blade cut through flesh and plasma, through spirit and mind, and the King of Stories screamed.
    And was gone.
    “The end,” said the Hooded Hood, and sauntered away to get on with business.

Epilogue: The Bladder

    “Wow!” breathed Al B. Harper.
    Miss Framlicker frowned and kept on doing the five-dimensional math in her head. It annoyed her that her ex-fiancée could read the stuff screeding across the screen like a newspaper. “Wow, what?” she asked irritably.
    “Wow, we are in deep, deep trouble,” Al noted. The Vacuum Ship rocked again. “I know where we are now, and why there’s turbulence.”
    “Well?”
    “We’re in the Dead Galaxy, or what’s left of it after our entropy-provoking visit with Nats. Galactivac’s absorbing it.”
    Miss Framlicker checked the math. “All of it? A whole galaxy?”
    “I guess he needs the energy for something,” Al B. noted.
    Miss Framlicker looked at the number of zeroes after the calculation on how much power the disintegrating galaxy would release. “What kind of something?” she asked cautiously.
    Al B. Harper brushed his hair from his face. “You’re not going to like it,” he promised her.

Next Issue: The Hood’s back, and he has a lot to catch up on. Fortunately, we’ve already seen that story, and you can catch it in the archives now, as Untold Tales of the Hooded Hood: Survival. Sure, it was originally intended to be #122. It slipped.

So next week: It’s time to take on Ultizon again, but this time with a more level playing field. Join Visionary, the Lair Legion, the Hooded Hood, and a few chosen friends as they push it to the limit in a tale of triumph and tragedy that concludes the penultimate arc of our seemingly-endless story. That’s in UT #127: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: They Saved Visionary’s Brain, or The Old Shell Game

Meanwhile: You can REPLY TO THIS STORY HERE

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.