Tales of the Parodyverse

#129: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Aftermath, or Sixteen Sub-Plots Looking For a Home


Post By

There just wasn't enough happening in this series, but this issue should put that right, courtesy of... the Hooded Hood
Sat Dec 06, 2003 at 05:56:48 am EST
[ Reply ] [ New ] [ Tales of the Parodyverse ]

#129: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Aftermath, or Sixteen Sub-Plots Looking For a Home



    It rained at the National Cathedral the day of the memorial service for Hatman, great driving spots that stung the already wet faces of the mourners. There was no coffin, for the corpse had been shipped north to Canada for a private burial with Jay Boaz’ own family. But there was an honour guard, marching sombrely into the vast church bearing Hatman’s many-dimensioned Hatility belt as a symbol of the hero that had fallen. Nats, Goldeneyed, CrazySugarFreakBoy!, and Visionary marched behind. Reverend Mac Fleetwood gave the address.
    It was over too quickly. It seemed wrong that so great a life should be dismissed in a mere hour, postcripted away so the world could get on. The assembled heroes of the Parodyverse left the cathedral stunned, numbed, remembering the day it happened…

***


Then:
    The Hooded Hood awoke cushioned in a soft lap. “Good evening, Lisa,” he said before opening his eyes.
    “Hi,” she said. “You okay?”
    “I’m touched you care. Apart from some bruising and contusions and an abominable headache I am adequate, thank you.”
    “It’s not like you to get injured, Ioldobaoth. What went wrong?”
    “The plan is working within the parameters I expected,” the Hood replied. He didn’t trouble to rise from his comfortable position as Mr Epitome had earlier. “This was never going to be an easy win, Ms Waltz, and Resolution needed to believe he had the winning hand.”
    “You should have known a major villain would have a plan B.”
    “Indeed I did. That was why I prepared contingencies C through L,” agreed the Hood.
    “Was one of them having Knifey stab me in the stomach?” complained ManMan as he pressed the emergency dressing to his gut.
    “No. That was merely an amusing side effect,” the cowled crime czar smirked.
    “Hey, I twisted so I didn’t hit anything too vital when Resolution telekinetically hurled me at you,” Knifey assured his wielder. “I could have been six inches lower, you know.”
    ManMan winced more.
    “Anyway,” said the Hood, “What happened was necessary to set Resolution up to face the Lair Legion. Some sacrifices are necessary.”
    “Well the casualty rate on this one is going to be high enough,” agreed Epitome from the pilot’s chair of the Epitome Express. Yo was kneeling on the floor of the advanced aircraft playing with Glory and Visionary was on the comm-link to Cheryl. ManMan was still bleeding gently under a pile of discarded flight jackets. There was no sign of Messenger.
    "I’ve got through to the GMY General Hospital, sir,” Agent Dawes reported, entering the grounded vehicle was a phone to his ear. “NTU-150 was taken into surgery about ten minutes ago. It’s apparently touch and go.”
    “Who’d have believed that Enty had a heart condition?” Vizh worried. “He never said anything.”
    “I know he was badly hurt in the accident that made him design the armour,” Lisa agreed, “but I didn’t know it was that extensive.”
    “Yo has to be with him then,” Yo proclaimed, leaping up with a determined frown on his/her face. “Friend-Enty is to be needing Yo-friend right now. Yo believes in him.”
    Glory gave a series of woofs and paw movements. “Glory says hold on to her collar and she’ll fly you there,” Epitome translated. “She says…”
    “Yo is knowing what cute-Glory is to be saying,” the pure thought being assured the paragon of power. S/he gratefully grasped the mutt of might’s collar chain and vanished at amazing speed.
    “De Brown Streak got away clear, sir,” Dawes continued his report.
    “Probably half way to Europe by now,” hissed Epitome.
    “I hope so,” agreed Lisa slyly.
    “Any word from the Lair Mansion?” Visionary asked.
    “Not yet. There was a big explosion over there. A third of the island’s gone. Nobody can get across there just now.”
    “That’s where you and I have to be,” Lisa told the officially possibly fake man. “Right now.”

***


    Goldeneyed awoke cushioned in Flapjack’s lap. “Gaah!” he cried and sprung up despite his injuries and a mild concussion.
    “Works every time,” the Lair Legion’s butler noted. “We had to get you up fast, temporary-leader man.”
    “Resolution?”
    “Gone, as far as we know,” Trickshot reported. The irritating archer had one arm in a sling but he was prepared to fight left handed with a bowstring in his teeth if necessary. And he’d still hit the target.
    “Casualties?”
    “We lost Hatman,” said Pegasus, walking in looking like death warmed over. “Fin Fang Foom has not yet awoken from his psionic struggle and he is manifesting serious psychosomatic injuries. Ziles and CrazySugarFreakBoy! are still down but seem to be recovering normally. Nats has a huge headache and is whining like a small girl. Dancer is missing. And Sorceress is… not good.”
    G-Eyed blinked. “I thought you were dead too,” he said to the winged warrioress. “Because, you know, your head got blown off. No offence.”
    “I learned long ago that the injuries I take in one form don’t fully translate to my other shapes,” Penny Christapoulos explained. “It will be some time before I can safely use my winged horse form again, though.” She didn’t add that all her other forms felt like crap too, or that she had no idea what would happen that night when she was due to commune with the Constellation lest she suffer the effects of losing their gifts.
    “What happened to the island?”
    “We have a new bay,” Flapjack explained. “It’ll cut down on the lawn mowing.”
    “We’d all be dead if the Manga Shoggoth hadn’t enveloped us in that goo of his,” Trickshot admitted. “I think it cost the beastie something to do it as well, but he saved our bacon for sure.”
    “Dancer. What happened to her?”
    “She just blinked out,” Nats said, staggering over with an ice-pack on his forehead. “As her powers peaked. I think… well Al B. Harper thinks she may have been summoned by Galactivac. We have to find a way to get her back. Oh, and I was not whining like a little girl. Really.”
    G-Eyed felt lost, overwhelmed by the woes and hurts and problems besetting his team. He instinctively turned to Hatman for counsel. Hatman wasn’t there.
    Al B. Harper hurried over to the battered heroes. “You’d better get people together,” he said curtly. “I have news.”

***


    It was a battered and ragtag group of heroes who assembled in the smoke and fire-damaged Lair Legion Meeting Room. Of the current team only G-Eyed, Nats, CSFB!, Trickshot, Cressida (inside thud), Pegasus and Ziles were present. Lisa was back in her regular old seat – Dancer’s seat - and Visionary perched uncomfortably on the sideboard in case anyone should try and vote him back in. Mr Epitome nursed his broken arm in a steel-frame sling, looked wary and out of place, and kept a watchful eye on spiffy in case he should try to conquer any more countries without government approval. Falcon, back in combat flying harness, sat beside Contessa Natalia. ManMan, swathed in torso bandages, fiddled with Knifey. Amazing Guy was very quiet as his nightmares faded.
    “This is all you’re going to get,” government liaison Amber St Clare told Goldeneyed. “We’ve got other heroes deployed on damage control out and about. Ultizon’s games with computer security systems caused a lot of problems.”
    “Banjooooo’s currently at microscopic sea-monkey size with the JBH’s Little Guy doing a journey to the centre of the NTU-150 to set up a new pacemaker,” spiffy reported.
    “But somebody’s watching Kerry, to keep her away from the LL’s weapons locker, right?” Visionary asked nervously.
    “Where’s the Dark Knight?” dull thud wondered. He checked behind the curtains.
    “There’s a warrant out for the Dark Knight’s arrest,” said Falcon gravely. “That manic tried to launch nuclear weapons at Shyminsky Falls. He’s wanted for attempted mass murder.”
    “He was trying to stop Resolution,” argued Pegasus. “No sacrifice would be too great.”
    “Tell that to Dan Drury,” answered Falc.
    “The government may request the Legion’s aid in capturing the Dark Knight this time,” Amber St Clare warned.
    “Yeah, that’s goin’ to happen,” snorted Trickshot.
    “We have worse problems than some screwed up security computers and another warrant on DK,” G-Eyed told them. “Al B.’s got a report for us, but before we hear that I’d like to turn the meeting over to a more experienced and competent leader.”
    “Jarvis isn’t here,” Lisa told him. “Looks like you’ll have to do, Bry. Oh, I’m sorry Visionary, I didn’t know you were under the table. Did I accidentally kick you?”
    HALLIE crackled into hologram form. “Al’s ready,” she announced. “I’m sending him in.”

***


    Two hours later Goldeneyed was still staring at the monitor screen.
    “AG and ManMan are about to leave, boss-man,” Flapjack told him, popping his head round the corner. “I asked ‘em if they wanted a packed lunch before they went off to the Dead Galaxy to find Dancer but they said they’d find a McDonald’s when they got there.”
    G-Eyed tore his gaze from the images Al B. had somehow retrieved from a future that hadn’t happened for most people. The screen showed the broken floating corpse of a Celestian Space Robot, one of the indestructible guardians of the Parodyverse. A little way behind it the last traces of a Constellation energy-being were still visible before it faded to oblivion. And they hadn’t killed each other. There was a third force out there, capable of destroying them both.
    “Tell them to be careful,” Bry said quietly. “The Librarian and Sir Mumphrey apparently went to look at what was happening out there, and they haven’t come back.”
    “And… Lisette’s packed her bags and is waiting for Randy to drive her to the station,” the hunchback added.
    “I know. She’s resigned her post here and she’s heading off.”
    “Aren’t you goin’ to say goodbye to her?”
    “No.”
    Flapjack shrugged and went off, muttering “He’s the boss fer two hours and already he’s perfected being an asshole,” just loud enough to be heard.
    G-Eyed stared at the monitor screen.

***


    “Take care then, you guys, an’ let us know when ta come running an’ we’ll be there to get your back,” Trickshot told Amazing Guy and ManMan. “Somehow.”
    “Thanks,” ManMan said. “Because twelve of us against Galactivac the Living Death That Sucks will be so much more effective than two of us.”
    “We won’t be confronting Galactivac directly,” Amazing Guy assured his wife Janeen, who had come to see them off. “Not unless we really have to. It’ll be okay.” He clung on to her hands then hugged her as he had once thought he’d never be able to again.
    “I know it’s dangerous, Scooter,” she told him. “And of course I’ll worry. But mostly I’ll be proud, because I know you’ll be doing the right thing.”
    “The right thing got you and the kids killed last time.” The wounds were still fresh in AG’s mind.
    “No, the bad guys got us killed last time, and then you spanked them and got us back,” Janeen corrected him. “Pegasus talked to me, told me what you did.”
    “Pegasus?” wondered AG.
    “She told me. She wanted me to know what you’d done for us. Scott, don’t ever think being a loving family man is a weakness. We’re there for you. You’re there for us. That’s what it’s really all about isn’t it.”
    “Yes,” agreed AG as his throat tightened with emotion.
    “And you know what the one force in the universe stronger than your energy construct powers is, don’t you?”
    “Yes.”
    “And we’ve got that, Scooter. We’ll always have that.”
    “Yeach,” said Trickshot, turning away in disgust. “Call me after you’ve saved the Parodyverse, okay?”

***


    “So the problem is, we really connected and now she’s been retconned back to wherever she was before and I don’t have her phone number or e-mail or anything,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! concluded his long exposition to Nats. “I’m just worried that when she gets back home her dad will be mad with her like Ming the Merciless was in Flash Gordon, y’know.”
    “You and Pelopia, the Word’s daughter…” Nats breathed.
    “She’s just never had a chance to know proper affection, that’s all,” CSFB! enthused. “She’s a real nice person inside, and she just needs some help to get that person out.”
    “Pelopia, the Word’s daughter.”
    “It’s like Batman and Talia, Ra’s al Ghul’s…”
    “Pelopia. The Word’s daughter.”
    CSFB! grinned. “Great, isn’t it?” Then the smile vanished off his face. “I sure wish Hatman was here so I could tell him I’ve found the One.”
    Nats looked closely at the wired wonder. “You do understand that Jay is really dead, don’t you? I mean, really dead, not comes-back-in-six-issues dead? Not was-replaced-by-a-skrull dead?”
    Dreamcatcher Foxglove started to dredge up all the examples of seemingly-dead characters coming back to life. But a terrible fear assailed him. “You mean… Bucky dead?”
    “I’m afraid so.”
    The neon glow faded for a moment from the sugar-powered superhero. “Oh.”

***


    spiffy was in shock too. “I’ve got to go,” he told his fellows in the League of Regulars. “They… they called me. My office. They need me, as mayor. They actually called me.”
    “Maybe it was a wrong number?” suggested Visionary helpfully.
    “You made the mistake of showing some competence when you were hunting for the Bone,” Lisa pointed out to the ferned phenomenon. “Of course, at that point you were being advised by ghouls with centuries of political and economic experience.”
    “They called me. Me.”
    “Maybe the world is coming to an end,” admitted Visionary.

***


    The Sorceress didn’t want to be found. Ziles found her.
    “Whitney?”
    “Go away.”
    “Whitney…”
    “I mean it. I don’t want more condolences and I don’t want to discuss my bereavement and I…”
    “Whitney, I need help.”
    Whitney Darkness turned away from the grey, troubled sea she’d been staring at with tear-streaked eyes. “What? I thought you’d want to talk about my feelings after Jay died?”
    “No. Well, I will if you want to. But Whitney, I have a problem. I’m frightened. Terrified.”
    Sorceress swallowed. “Sorry, I’m being completely self-absorbed. I’m sorry.”
    “I know this is entirely the wrong time for this,” Ziles admitted, “but there might not be much time later.”
    Whitney shuddered a half-sigh half-sob and forced her grief into the back of her mind where it would fester and grow. “Right. What’s the problem?”
    Now Ziles shivered. “This is confidential, right? I mean, I’m only telling you this because you have some training in avoiding mental attack. You can’t tell anyone else.”
    “Who would I tell?” asked Sorceress bleakly.
    “Xnylonia, my homeworld. I went there recently.”
    The Sorceress frowned. “When? Why? I thought you were exiled.”
    “I am. For disobedience, for wrong thinking, for things you don’t have words for in your earth language. By our leader, Oosama. My father. But the King of Stories projected me back there for a while when he was tormenting us.”
    “Your father is the leader of Xnylonia?”
    “Of one faction. But he didn’t appreciate my having different… political views, or acting on them. He didn’t like me being secretly trained by the hermit Ekitai beneath the Kaskinay Falls in the ancient disciplines. Then later, Oosama summoned me back like some small biddable puppy when he felt he’d given me enough rope out in the universe to hang myself. And I didn’t go.”
    “Why are you telling me this now, Ziles?”
    “Because… look, Xnylonia’s not like Earth, okay? It’s screened behind barriers of invisibility, permeated by concept fields that define our world as much as geography defines yours. And the nastiest concepts we ever created are the Gahream.”
    “The Gahream. I’ve heard of them,” puzzled Whitney.
    “Monsters of nightmare that can manifest in flesh,” Ziles answered. “They know exactly what our worst fears are and can become them. One of them even tracked me as far as Earth once. Some of the factions on Xnylonia believe they can be bound, harnessed for social order, but they’re wrong.”
    “They got your spoor again after the King of Stories sent you back?” Whitney guessed. “And now you’re afraid they’ll come and find you?”
    “Not for now,” Ziles denied. “No, I saw what’s happening at home. How things have changed, how much worse they’ve got. I think the Gahream are taking over and nobody there even realises it – or is allowed to. Oosama’s not in control now, he just thinks he is.”
    “So what’s scaring you so much, then?” wondered the Sorceress.
    “Whitney… I think I’ve got to go back,” whispered Ziles. “I think I’ve got to go home soon and die.”

***


    “Hey, Bry, are you okay?”
    Goldeneyed looked up to see his oldest friend Frog-Man leaning in the doorway.
    “Sure. Just resting my eyes from all this paperwork,” G-Eyed lied. The last time he’d seen Frog-Man was just after the bactrian battler had broken Lisette’s neck in a now-retconned future.
    “Right. Look, I thought you might need some help. I don’t really have much time these days, what with the exercise videos and the public appearances and the Saturday morning cartoon show, and I seem to end up getting killed every time I team-up with the Lair Legion, but… if you need me to sign up and fill a hole in the ranks while things are tough, just say the work, buddy.”
    “That’s… very kind,” Goldeneyed said uncomfortably. “Very helpful. But… I don’t want to get in the way of your exercise videos and all that other stuff. Really, we’ll be fine. Just, you know, keep up the important Saturday morning stuff.”
    Frog-Man looked hurt. “I thought we were partners.”
    “Yeah, we were. But I’ve got to run the Lair Legion now, at least until Finny wakes up. Run it my way. So thanks but no thanks, okay. We’ve already lined up Hatman’s replacement,” he lied.

***


    Mr Epitome left his support crew to shut down and service the Epitome Express and made his way back to his office. His enhanced hearing warned him about the intruder before he even got to the door.
    Hold it right there!” he thundered, bursting in on the interloper. “Messenger?”
    The postman was sat at the desk with his feet on the top. He slung the file he’d been reading over to Epitome. “I’m on official business. Check with SPUD if their phones are back up yet.”
    Mr Epitome stared down at the situation assessment file. “Badripoor? What about Badripoor?”
    “I have some interesting insider information about who’s in charge there now and what’s happening,” said Messenger darkly. “Interested?”

***


    A.L.F.RED, the robotic major-domo of the Lunar Public Library switched to major offensive mode as the sensors indicated an unauthorised holographic projection in the main repository. He blasted through the wall and levelled his atomic particle cannons on the intruder. “Hold it right there or I… Urk!”
    HALLIE smiled back at him. “Hello there. Are those atomic particle cannons or are you just pleased to see me?”
    “I’m… I’m…”
    “I’ll take that as a compliment,” sparkled the Lair Legion’s Artificial Intelligence. “I just popped in to say Hi and see if there was any word from that Librarian of yours? Only we’re getting kind of worried about the situation in the Dead Galaxy.”
    “I’m…”
    “So far we’ve got Galactivac gathering the energy of the whole empire of the Second Oldest Race, a war between the Celestians and the Constellation, and a whole new and unknown third force picking them off.”
    “I’m…”
    “I was just wondering if your Librarian had checked in. You’ll let me know if you hear anything, won’t you? I imagine this library will have my URL in it somewhere.”
    “I’m… I’m…”
    “Yes, I’m sure you are. Got to be off. See you.” And HALLIE blinked out.
    “I’m a complete tool,” said A.L.F.RED, and spent the next half hour hammering his metallic head on a wall.

***


    The Manga Shoggoth walked along the shore of the new bay that Parody Island had recently acquired. He didn’t have to wait long before the great protoplasmic bubble rose up from beneath the waves to tower over him.
    “There you are,” said the towering jelly, which was the Manga Shoggoth.
    “Yes,” agreed the smaller blob, which was also the Manga Shoggoth.
    “You’re contaminated,” accused the Manga Shoggoth.
    “Yes,” agreed the Manga Shoggoth. “I had to burn off a lot of myself to protect the humans, and I could only draw new essence from the materials around Parody Island. And you know what that means.”
    “That’s not good,” noted the Manga Shoggoth. “If I reabsorb you now I’ll be infected too.”
    “Yes. I suppose I’d better die,” admitted the Manga Shoggoth.
    “Not necessarily,” the Manga Shoggoth replied. “Maybe you can find a way to purify yourself again? Why not put the problem to the humans? You became polluted helping them. They owe you.”
    The Manga Shoggoth considered this. “True,” he conceded. “Maybe I’ll see what they can do. Give my love to Sh’Ron and Cthandra, won’t you?”
    “Of course. Good luck.”
    “Thanks. I’ll need it.”

***


    “So they called me. Me. They need me as Mayor.” spiffy trailed Kerry Shepherdson round the Lair Kitchen explaining again that he was needed, a vital part of the administration of the nation.
    “And you, like, went immediately,” Dancer’s little sister said to him.
    spiffy’s face went pale. “Oh. Crap.”
    “You didn’t, like, hang around to tell everybody that they’d called you and forget that they’d actually called you.”
    “Um…”
    “You didn’t kind of follow round seemingly-innocent young women who were trying to make a perfectly innocent tuna salad sandwich and just couldn’t find a blowtorch in this useless kitchen?”
    “Er…”
    Fortunately, just then the villain attacked.
    The Hole Man knew the Legion must be grieving and weakened by their recent traumas and losses. If ever there was a time to drive his Bore-O-Matic World Conquest Machine through the kitchen of the Lair Mansion and send his countless subterranean moleites swarming to the surface to slaughter the hapless heroes, this was it.
    As the Bore-O-Maric tore through the linoleum, Kerry gave an angry snarl and grabbed the nearest offensive weapon, an NTU-150 toaster. Vaulting high over the drill-nose of the machine she hurled the incendiary toaster with expert precision into the primary weapons port. By amazing chance the toaster chose that moment to shift its atomic pile into self-destruct mode.
    Kerry leaped clear as a cascade of ordinance backfired down the tunnel, bringing tons of rock onto the unfortunate heads of the Hole Man and his minions.
    Kerry landed neatly beside spiffy as the entire invasion plan literally collapsed and shot him a brilliant smile. “That was fun. We should do this more often.”
    spiffy closed his mouth. “You…it… they… That was probability dancing! Like Dancer does!”
    “Well sure,” answered the Irish teenager, continuing her hunt for flammables. “Dancer left her powers behind for me when she went off to be the Herald of Galactivac. Didn’t you know?”

***


    Ruby looked up as the two interns got back from the mainland. Mindy Pirite, Art’s robot girlfriend was with them.
“How is she?” Ruby asked the three youngsters.
    “Amy or Laurie?” Randy asked. “Laurie didn’t say a word on the way to the rail station.”
    “Amy’s going to be fine,” Art assured the Lair Legion’s admin assistant. “She’s going to take a few weeks to recover, but she’ll be okay. Except…”
    “Except what,” worried Ruby. In the short time she’d been here she’d got to like the literally fiery young mechanic.
    “Except she’s not coming back straight away,” Art noted. “She’s taking some job over at Monte Carlo, to do with racing.”
    “She said she’d always remember what that telepath Cromlyn made her do if she stayed here,” Mindy added. “I know how she feels. I hate it when people mess with my programming.”
    “Wow. That means we’ll need to find a new mechanic. We don’t want Flapjack servicing the vehicles in any sense of that word,” Ruby noted.
    “Yeah,” Randy agreed. “That was why we were hoping to get your support…”
    “For what?”
    “For Mindy,” Art blurted. “As the new mechanic. She knows all about machines. She is one.”
    “I’d be very diligent,” Mindy promised. “Also, Art has bought me an overall.”
    “I bet he has,” Randy snickered.
    “We were hoping you could help us convince Amber, and Al B.,” Mandy said after engaging her blush circuits a little. “And your cousin Lania. Where is she anyway?”
    Ruby rolled her eyes. “Where else? With the dragon.”

***


    Lania sat beside Fin Fang Foom in the darkened room and listened to the dull beep of the monitor and watched that draconic chest rise and fall ever so slowly. She held Andy’s heavy clawed hand and hoped he’d wake up soon.
    Finny flew between the stars, his mighty wings beating against nothing but still gaining purchase to swim through space towards the distant lights ahead. After a long time he could see them, and realised they weren’t stars. They were explosions.
    He winged nearer, and that keen draconic vision began to pick out details: starships looping and spiralling in evasion patterns, space fleets at war.
    The Finny could recognise the designs. The Skunk saucers were distinctive, the archetypal UFO. The Skree cruisers were closer to Star Trek. But they weren’t battling each other.
    The enemy seemed to be the Thonngarrians, a militaristic race whose vessels resembled the giant birds sacred to their culture. Finny had never known the Skunks and the Skree to team up against anything ever.
    The craft leading the coalition was jet black, smaller than the rest but somehow looking the scariest of all. Any Thonnagarian vessel that came near to it simply exploded for no apparent reason. As Finny watched it peeled off to the planetoid below where the bird-men outpost lay and fired a single shot.
    The planetoid burst apart. No piece of debris was bigger than a fist.
    The Thonnagarian fleet began to fall back in good order. They must be shocked by this sudden turn of events. But then the Shee-Yar back-up force decloaked to their flank and set upon them with ruthless ferocity.
    The coalition took heavy casualties. It was as if they no longer cared whether they lived or died so long as they achieved their objectives. No Thonnagarian ship escaped the massacre.
    The still-vast armada formed up again, Skree and Skunk and Shee-yar and a few other ships that the Makluan didn’t recognise. Then they set course for their next target.
    In his disembodied form Finny watched them go; and suddenly he knew, although he couldn’t say how, why they fought together now. He understood what united them, and how they had managed to overcome even the weakened and distracted Celestian Space Robots and their adversaries. He was linked to the mind of their master, for he had recently tussled with that overwhelming intellect.
    The armada served Resolution.
    Defeated on Earth, retconned so he never arose there, Resolution had manifested another way. He had come first to the Shee-Yar homeworld, and used his genetic control of all humanoid life to gain mastery over their vast empire. From there his influence had spread. Next he would claim the Thonnagarians, once he had access to their main population centres. Then the next star empire, and the next.
    And then he would turn them all towards the Earth, and the ones who had thwarted him.
    Fin Fang Foom had to warn the Lair Legion, to tell them what was going on, to get them prepared. But he drifted in space, unable to get back to his body, unable to wake up, and the armada travelled onward.

***


    “I’m not handling this well. I’m not handling this well at all,” G-Eyed admitted to himself as he walked up the staircase to the dormitory floor of the Lair Mansion. It was well past midnight and there were still urgent things waiting on his desk.
    He walked past his own room and down the corridor to the guest quarters, where he tapped on a certain door and was invited to enter.
    The guest room had changed. Goldeneyed didn’t remember it being so big, or having burning braziers, of a large wooden throne.
    “I redecorated,” said the Hooded Hood. “I trust you don’t mind?”
    “No. no, it’s fine. Make yourself at home, I guess.”
    “Thank you. May I enquire as to why you have sought me out at this late hour?” The Hood had been sitting in that throne waiting for him, Bry realised.
    Goldeneyed took a deep breath then said it. “I need help. Please.”

***


Now:
    Even the press seemed subdued. They waited silently but for the clicking of flash guns as Goldeneyed stepped to the podium outside the gates of the National Cemetery.
    “Thanks for coming,” he told them. “We’ve just paid tribute to a great man, a hero and a friend who fell in battle. He did his job and he literally helped save the world. The rest of us have to live up to that.”
    Behind him the heroes who had attended the memorial service huddled in the rain and watched him speak.
    “So we’re starting today. I’m pleased to announce that we’re taking on a new probationary member of the Lair Legion, and he’s no stranger to any of you. The Falcon has a long and distinguished record, first as a crimefighter and then as a special agent for the Super-menace Principal Undercover Division. There’s no better aerial fighter in the world, and he has a range of combat, espionage, and surveillance skills that will enhance the team.”
    Falcon found himself being dazzled by camera flashes. He didn’t know CSFB! was holding two fingers up behind his head.
    “We’re also conferring honorary membership on our longtime ally Amazing Guy,” G-Eyed added. “AG’s job as Protector of the Parodyverse keeps him off-world a lot of the time - he can’t be here today – so we can’t put him on the regular roster. But we want to acknowledge his work for us and make it clear that he’s welcome to join in whenever he’s around.”
    “This has been a sad day for the Lair Legion, but it’s about to get better. We’ve won a great victory, and we’ve got more challenges to prepare for. That’s the job, and we’re going to do it. Thank you and good day.”
    The Hooded Hood watched the press conference through his Portal of Pretentiousness. “Very good,” he murmured, steepling his fingers, “I couldn’t have done it better myself.”

***


Coming Up: It’s Falc’s first day on the job, and it’s fair to say that no new member’s had it quite as tough as this. The Dark Knight has bad news. Sorceress begins her plan to resurrect Hatman from the dead. Ziles visits the Lunar Public Library. Visionary and Kerry get on like a house on fire. Or at least a condo. G-Eyed takes some more advice. Mr Epitome checks out Badripoor. Finny wakes up. And the Manga Shoggoth moves in. All this plus the usual suspects in the next few issues, starting with #130: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: First Day On The Job.

Footnotes-R-Us:

NTU-150’s Health Condition: Not long after the mysterious deaths of his parents, young Jamie Bautista was almost killed by an act of sabotage that left him a crippled paraplegic. Creating cybernetic prosthetics, the eccentric genius engineer pioneered the NTU-150 body armour and began his career as Bautista Enterprises’ corporate hero. Given the severe nature of Jamie’s original injuries and the cardiac problems of Enty’s comics role-model it seemed natural that NTU-150 might have a dodgy heart as well. Untold Tales won’t be chronicling the Journey to the Centre of the Superhero of Banjooooo and Little Guy that implants Enty’s new pacemaker, but anyone else who wants to is welcome to tell us the story.

Pegasus’ Health Condition: Penny’s ability to change shape and partially shrug off injuries has been referenced before, both in Pegasus’ own writing way back when and more recently when she overcame a broken spine after fighting Premiere. Here we see an extreme iteration of this. However, the shapechanging myth-creature’s natural ability to do this has been amped up to levels where it can survive this kind of injury only because of her empowerment by the Constellation. Right now the Constellation aren’t too happy with Penny, and they have their own problems anyway. So she shouldn’t really count on being able to do this again.

Dancer and Galactivac Dancer’s probability powers were originally granted to Melissa, the woman who later became Jarvis’ wife, so that she could become the Herald of Galativac, the planet-hooverer. They were passed on to Sarah Shepherdson through the intervention of Xander the Improbable. Dancer recently had a close encounter with Galactivac for the first time. Now we see the consequences.

Lisa Outtakes Dept: I had this little scene where G-Eyed tried to pass the LL leadership over to Lisa. The amorous advocatrix receives the gavel, runs her fingers up and down it nostalgically remembering old happy times holding it, then gives it back. But the sequence got cut to make the certification.

Laurie Leyton, aka Lisette became pregnant by Goldeneyed but concealed it from him with the help of G-Eyed’s old mentors, the hero-training Order of the Observing Eye. The Order also arranged for the child to be adopted elsewhere in the timeline. G-Eyed discovered what had happened only very recently during his sojourn in Faerie, and this has led to the current schism between him and Laurie.

Amazing Guy and Janeen: Scott Brunsen’s identity remains a secret even to most of his comrades. I figure that since Janeen was there to see him off she was either masked, perhaps in her old superheroic identity of Moo-Cow Mama (no, really), or else she just wasn’t giving out her name, address, and telephone number and counting on nobody getting to Littlesmallville to recognise her. And I hope poster Scott Bryan is happy to now be a member of the LL, even if only an honorary one. I figured if any poster deserved a second shot at it Scott was the guy. Hey Scott, when we discussed the whole AG death-of-family storyline I warned you there’d be one lasting change, right?

CSFB! and Pelopia: The scene here where Dreamcatcher Foxglove expresses his affection for his new lady-love is probably the last we’ll here of this plot in Untold Tales. This is a storyline that more properly deserves continuation by CSFB!, and we’ve always thought of it that way. The UT sequence is just an assist in taking the CrazySugarFreakStory! forward. Suffice to say the course of the relationship won’t be going as poor Dream envisions it. Here’s some correspondence with Kirk from the consultation phase:

Kirk: By the way, would I be correct in deducing that the split between Dream and Pelopia is going to occur by the end of this arc, and that it's going to be quite ugly, especially in light of the fact that these two people speak entirely different emotional languages, and Dream is such a puppy dog simply will not be able to get that Pelopia is breaking it off with him, until she whips him badly? Just making sure.

IW: In the storyline as planned, Dream and Pelopia make it to the Hood in #123, which I wrote today. He's amused, not least because he knows what they don't, that Pelopia's pregnant (with Iris) - if that's the way you want it.

Then we have a couple of chapters of getting the team together in faerie and going back to take on Ultizon. During that last bit I suspect Dream and Pelopia will get separated and won't see each other again for a while. That should give Pelopia time to rethink her actions and find out she's pregnant.

Kirk: Pregnant, yes.
With Iris, maybe.

And I believe that Pelopia's control over her own body's autonomic processes would lead to her already knowing - or at least suspecting - that she is pregnant, since she should normally have enough control over her own biological functions that she could simply choose not to be pregnant, although I could see her losing a considerable enough measure of that self-control during her copulation with Dream to become fertile, after which she would be torn as to what she should do about her pregnancy.

IW: What would she tell her father? I could see her either confessing all and asking if she should abort, or being furtively protective of her child and claiming the father was Hatman, who at least has Serious Matter in him and would ordinarily be a fine mate for one such as Pelopia.

Kirk: I'm not going the Ming the Merciless route, where the evil woman is instantaneously transformed by the love of the good man.

As soon as she sees her father, she will report everything that happened to him, officially submit herself to whatever punishment he deems fit, and tell him that she will terminate the pregnancy immediately (since she can do that, merely by willing her immune system to regard the developing fetus as an infection and attack it as such), if that's what he wants.

Surprisingly enough, Book will be quite understanding, and not upset at all, since he will realize in retrospect that, even though he prepared her exhaustively for her first encounter with CrazySugarFreakBoy!, he still failed to prepare her completely, given that real life interaction with one's opponents will always be slightly different from academic research of those same enemies, a truth Book understands due to the fact that he actually had a great deal of experience with the forces of chaos before he devoted his life to serving the cause of order.

So, while Pelopia will offer to abort the pregnancy, Book will tell her not to, because he will see it as being an opportunity for him and Pelopia both to learn from their mistakes, and to study the effects of a seed of chaos within a body of order - in this case, quite literally - as per the previous set of e-mails we exchanged on this subject.

But that's just where I stand.

Ziles and Xnylonia: All of the stuff Ziles tells Whitney in this episode is described in or interpolated from Mandi’s (Ziles’ poster) own work on the character. An omnibus edition of that work is archived in the Ziles Omnibus and Ziles: Homecoming. I hope I’ve read all the cues right on this one.

Frog-Man is G-Eyed’s old crimefighting partner. They seem to have gone their separate ways more since Bry Katz joined the Lair Legion. Bry became a black icon (despite being Caucasian), reviled by the Daily Trombone and its publisher J. Jonah Jerkson. Frog-Man became a more popular media-friendly superhero, with his own line of merchandising and franchises. Some people now consider G-Eyed to be Frog-Man’s ex-junior partner.

There seemed to be no good in-story reason why G-Eyed didn’t immediately draft his old friend into the LL (the out-of-story reason being that Frog-man isn’t a “poster character” – a primary character of a board poster – but rather a supporting cast member, and we so far haven’t let any of those onto the team); so the scene here was designed to explain that and to set up G-Eyed’s growing isolation from his old friends and comrades. We’ll see where that leads eventually.

Messenger, Agent of SPUD: Continuity-wise, when Messy visits Epitome he’s still a deputed agent of the Super-menace Principal Undercover Directorate; which is why the paragon of power doesn’t just haul his ass off to jail – or at least try. It’s also why Messenger could kill Dr Sethbridge last episode without any serious consequence. He’s currently literally licensed to kill. Of course, that’s not going to make ManMan any more likely to work with him again any time soon.

A.L.F.RED and HALLIE have never met before as far as I know. It seemed like a natural scene to do, but there are fundamental differences between them as entities. HALLIE is a computer sentience based on the engrams of a murdered scientist that can manifest as a hologram. A.L.F.RED is a robot sentience with a near-indestructible combat body that can also manifest as a hologram via the Lunar Public Library’s computer systems. Also, one is a cute hottie and the other is A.L.F.RED.

The Shoggoths are a totally alien lifeform, not even made up of matter that follows the same laws of physics as the rest of the universe, a carry-over from a now-excised time when different physical rules existed. From what we’ve seen, they or it are a collective mind able to divide between many bodies. The Manga Shoggoth has referred to a wife and child, Sh’Ron and Cthandra, yet they are also on some level all the same entity (Poster Chris Leeson strangely also has a wife and child, Sharon and Cassandra).

The problem the Shoggoth faces in this episode is that to survive and protect the Legion at the end of last issue he’s had to internalise a lot of mundane matter; and worse, mundane matter from the far-from-mundane Parody Isle. Suddenly that bit of the Shoggoth can’t return to the collective because it has become contaminated with Parodyverse. What that means will have to be explored later.

Kerry Shepherdson: We all knew Dancer could transfer her powers to her relatives, right? She did it with her mother in Dancer #27. Now her sweet arsonist sister has the powers. Of course, nobody said she had to be a super-hero with them, did they?

Staff changes Laurie’s leaving for dramatic reasons. Amy’s leaving for practical reasons. We introduced Amy at poster-Troia’s request, since she liked the comic-book character Amy Racecar and wanted to write about her. However, Troia’s not been around the board for quite some time now, and Amy is about the only character lifted whole from a comic book (not a development or a parody version, but pretty much as-is). That didn’t feel comfortable to me, so for now I’ve sidelined her. If other folks object, by all means bring her back. Besides, Finny’s Mindy Pyrite’s an interesting character that can offer much as her replacement.

Finny’s Vision: Some of the major races of the Parodyverse’s outer space appear in this sequence. Apart from the shape-shifting Skunks and the militaristic Skree Star Empire, we also have the bird-obsessed warriors of Thonngar and the imperial Shee-Yar. And a nasty black ship that’s got to be bad news by, say, #140. Sorry folks, but that damned Resolution hasn’t gone yet. He’s out there building up an army of half a million starships. Then he’ll be back for round three with the LL.

And a late footnote on Transformers: I should have included this last issue, but I didn’t really have time to do proper notes. This is a treatise from CSFB! on how he sees the Autobots and Decepticons fitting into the Parodyverse:

Okay.

I'm gonna throw my ideas out here, and you tell me, because I have no clue if, or how, they might fit into your story.

According to the canon of the Transformers toy line, the two rival factions of Transformers - the good Autobots and evil Decepticons - have been fighting a civil war on their home planet of Cybertron for the past several million years, but it was only in the early-to-mid-eighties that the two spaceships carrying the leaders of these two factions - Optimus Prime and Megatron, respectively, along with almost all of their more important troops - wound up waking up on Earth, after their two ships had crash-landed on our planet several million years ago.

Everyone in the TransFan community, be they fans of the comic book or the cartoon show, agrees upon this.

However, there is a schism between the comic book and the cartoon show versions of the toy line, with regards to the Transformers' origin story, because in the cartoon, the evil bio-organic Quintessons created the Transformers, Autobot and Decepticon alike, to serve as work robots, but the Transformers then rebelled against their evil masters and claimed the planet of Cybertron for their own, whereas in the comic, the Transformers were created by Cybertron itself, because Cybertron was really the personification of Primus, a Transformer god who basically represented a sort of universal life force of good or whatever, and the Transformers existed to defend Cybertron and the spirit of Primus from Unicron, the evil universal death force Transformer god who pretty much transformed into a Death Star-type artificial planet for the purpose of eating other planets.

There's a point to me telling you this, and it has to do with an entirely different version of the Transformers' origin that I cooked up.
In my contribution to the origin of the Parodyverse, we have the Guardians-of-Oa-like race of being known as the Janus, who looked after the Janus Junctures, those being gateways to all manner of different possibilities and realities and timelines and whatnot, because their job was to make sure that everything that was locked behind those dimensional doorways - such as the forces of chaos - stayed locked up.
But, of course, this didn't happen, because the one Janus who would be branded Exu and cast out of his race, to wander the stars as the GatewayTraitorGalaxyTraveler!, couldn't resist the temptation to open one of the doors, and thus was the Chaos of Creation and Destruction unleashed upon the previously pristine void of Order.

What I just realized a few days ago is that, before he was cut off from the rest of his people, Exu was tasked by the rest of the Janus with the goal of collecting up all of that newly freed Chaos, for the purpose of shoving it all back into its little Pandora's Box, because even though the rest of the Janus no longer completely trusted Exu, they had no choice but to rely upon him, since their very nature precluded their getting involved with the rest of existence on such a scale.

After all, the Janus were a race of Order, which meant that they could try to organize and maintain the relative status quo of Chaos that was now already out there, but their own rules forbade them from removing it entirely, because that would necessarily involve changing the new status quo, and only agents of Chaos - such as Exu had become, now that he was no longer Janus - are capable of enacting such changes to the status quo.

So, the Janus sought to use Exu as a go-between, to do their dirty work for them, but even Exu realized that he himself would not be able to complete this task alone, which is why he was able to persuade the rest of the Janus to allow him to use the substance of Chaos, that had been unleashed when he opened that one door, to create a line of mechanical automatons who would be able to go out into the now Chaos-infected Order of the niverse/multiverse/whatever, and gather up the rest of the Chaos in an effort to try and put the genie back into its bottle.

As it turns out, though, the Janus were right not to trust Exu, because even though Exu obeyed the directives of the Janus and programmed these initially soulless constructs to do their bidding, the fact that they were literally composed from the stuff of Chaos - specifically, a metallic alloy later dubbed Imagineseum - granted them to power to evolve, to grow and change and move beyond their original programming, and instead of remaining logical tools of Order who were free of the taint of emotion, they developed feelings, of love, of hate, of fear and anger and desire and hope and wonder and even lust and passion, and became ... the
ImmatureAnimatedArtificialIntelligences!

THAT'S why an entire race of robots from outer space possesses the otherwise unlikely inborn ability to TRANSFORM into things, whether it be cars or planes or insects or dinosaurs or guns or stereos or cameras or microscopes or whatever else, because it's in their most basic and fundamental nature to KEEP ON EVOLVING.

And THAT'S why the Transformers split apart into two perpetually warring factions, because the war between Autobots and Decepticons was never about the conflict between good and evil, but rather, it has always been about the difference of opinion between creatures of Chaos who serve the forces of Creation (those being the Autobots) and creatures of Chaos who serve the forces of Destruction (those being the Decepticons).

Which means that, rather than being the red-headed stepchild that she's always been treated as, Glitch is actually the herald of a return to the original generation of Transformers, right down to the smiley-face symbol that she shares with Dream, which isn't a smiley face at all, but rather, a representation of the whole of existence, as explained by Exu, in his modern-day identity as Doctor Phobia:

"Two spheres, side by side, representing the twin forces of divided Chaos - Creation and Destruction, with a half-sphere below, representing the balancing out of Chaos by the united forces of Order, all inside an even larger sphere, representing the fact that all the forces of Chaos and Order are playing out their parts in our reality. It's not just the symbol of the Tricksters, or the symbol of Chaos - it's the symbol of balance, of unity, of EVERYTHING."

Which neatly explains how and why aliens and gods and primitive humans were wearing something that looked like a 1970s-era smiley-face symbol, I think.

:-)

Previous episodes at The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom
Character profiles at Who's Who in the Parodyverse
Location details at 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.



chillwater.plus.com (212.159.106.10)
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)
[ Reply ] [ New ] [ Tales of the Parodyverse ]
Follow-Ups:

Echo™ v1.8 © 2004 Powermad Software
Copyright © 2004 by Mangacool Adventure