| #138: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Double Jeopardy, or Let's Get This Doppleganger Thing Out Of Our Systems Once And For All, Shall We?
Previously in Untold Tales: Fin Fang Foom, leader of the Lair Legion, has been possessed by the spirit of his undead enemy the Devil Doctor, and seeks to institute a breeding programme of new dragon-bodies he can dominate. He has therefore set plans in motion to impregnate many of the superhero females of the Parodyverse. The LL’s deputy-leader, Goldeneyed, has expelled Nats from the team, and Yo has quarrelled with the team’s house-guest the Manga Shoggoth over the absorption of a bunny gift. Trickshot is still wanted for the assault on Contessa Natalia Romanza and hunts the real perpetrator, his other-reality counterpart, the zombie Deadshot.  Hughlong Dao was a storm-lashed spit of rock jutting out of tormented waters in the South China Sea. The fierce crosswinds made it difficult to land the Lairjet on the cobbled courtyard of the ruined oriental fortress but Visionary managed it with only superficial scratches to the paintwork and his ego. Ragged faded good luck talismans whipped in the wind and seemed to laugh at him. “This is a pretty gloomy spot,” noted Ham Boy, first out of the downed aircraft. He looked over the stone-carved stronghold with its gaping dark windows shadowed in the setting sun. “I wonder if it’s, you know, haunted?” “Fear not any wights, meat-wielder,” Harlagaz assured him, slapping him on the back and nearly toppling him off the high wall onto the sea-drenched rocks below. “I art afraid of no ghosts.” “Couldn’t we have found somewhere a bit brighter to fight crime?” complained Fashion Accessory, parading down from the Lairjet in a fetching hooded mantle of velvet and sable, keeping on the leeward side of Harlagaz to stop her hair being whipped in the gale. “Say the Ginza in Tokyo? Or anywhere there are shops.” “This place was pretty defensible once,” observed Kerry Shepherdson. She gently laid her rucksack out of the wind and away from any naked flames. “It’d take quite a lot of charges placed there there and there to bring this wall down.” spiffy looked around uncomfortably. “Vizh, are you certain this is Birthday Bandit’s new HQ?” he worried. “Only I’ve fought him before, and usually his lairs don’t feel so… villainy.” “Finny said he had pretty solid information,” Visionary assured his team. “And since we’ve established that none of us were born on this day we should be pretty safe taking him in.” “Unless it’s the Yurt’s birthday, or something,” added Fashion Accessory helpfully. The Birthday Bandit had the ability to steal the powers of anyone on the anniversary of their being born. “This place isn’t deserted,” Glory the mutt of might warned the team in a series of barks and paw movements. “I can smell recent activity, but nothing human.” Unfortunately Glory was away from her computer to voice keypad. The Junior Lair Legion looked at each other uncomfortably. “Um… I think that was that she wants walkies,” ventured Ham Boy. “Or maybe that Timmy’s trapped in the well?” “It could be important,” Visionary argued. “What is it, girl? How many words? Film, book, or play?” “Is there any chance we could get our of the wind and rain into the gloomy probably-haunted oriental warlord’s fortress before my backpack… I mean before I get completely soaked?” Kerry demanded. “Look, it’s Birthday Bandit. How bad could it get in there?” “Lead on, fair Probability Arsonist,” bade Harlagaz. “Let us go and smite yon anniversary antagonist for the nonce.” The trainee squad of not-yet-ready-for-prime-time-Legionnaires vanished into the gloom under the fangs of the carved entrance portal. “Anniversary antagonist?” echoed spiffy’s voice from the darkness. “How long have you been working on that one?” It was always important to answer the doorbell at the Lair mansion promptly, before the stunulators could cycle into liquifidation mode. This time they hadn’t even cycled past nuclear coil warmup before CrazySugarFreakBoy! had bounded over Flapjack and pulled the door open wide. “Nats?” he called happily. “You came back! Now we can sort out with G-Eyed about tossing you off the team for being a grumpy old-guard who always argues with his decisions and get back to us all being a lovable bickering world-saving family that sometimes…” It wasn’t Nats. “Don’t mind me,” came Flapjack’s muffled tones from inside the hallway. “I’ll just stay here and struggle to get my head out of this umbrella stand after CSFB! barged me head over backside to answer the bell, shall I? I’ll just start wearing facial umbrellas as a fashion statement that…” then the hunchbacked major-domo shut up too because he also saw the visitor. “Hello,” said CSFB! in awed tones. “Storm?” “Ebony,” answered the sleek regal young woman, watching Flapjack stagger around the hallway bouncing off furniture as he attempted to get the umbrella stand off his cranium. “May I come in?” “I dunno,” Flapjack called as he grunted with the obstinate stand. “Are you a vampire come to suck us dry wanting us to invite you inside?” “It is daytime,” Ebony pointed out. “Then will you just suck us?” Flapjack got out before the just-arriving Amber St Clare drove the furniture back down over his mouth again with a swift but timely blow. “Please come in, your holiness,” the Lair Legion’s liaison officer told the bemused visitor. Amber eyed CSFB! and Flapjack. “Pardon the mess.” Ebony slid past the open-mouthed CSFB! “Thank you. I have some minions down on the docks waiting to deliver the materials we discussed,” she told Amber. “Have you located a suitable venue?” “You can have my room,” came the muffled sounds of Flapjack. “Or maybe Nats’ room?” suggested the Falcon, wandering in from the Monitor Room where he’d been familiarising himself with the Legion’s rogues gallery database. Now he felt the need for a really strong coffee. “It’s not like Nats needs it any more. Hello, I don ‘t think we’ve been introduced?” “That’s not fair!” CSFB! argued. “Natsy’ll be back, you’ll see. We just need to straighten out this whole he-and-G-Eyed hate each others’ guts thing and it’s a done deal.” “Most Holy Ebony, this is Falcon, our newest probationary member,” Amber introduced, trying to keep things in control. “And that’s CrazySugarFreakBoy!, I’m afraid.” She quietly kicked Flapjack into the stairs closet. “Welcome to the Lair Mansion.” “I’m not with the programme yet, Amber,” Falc admitted. “Is, er, Most Holy Ebony here in some kind of trouble?” “Does she want to be?” came a faint cry from the cupboard. “I’m merely here to deliver some things for my deity, the Manga Shoggoth,” the stunning young lady explained. “Since part of him will be staying for a while it seemed only fair to deliver his collection of anime, manga, and maquettes.” There was a yelp of joy from CSFB! Or possibly love. “Ms St Clare was kind enough to offer the use of one of the cave systems as a suitable temple, so I’m here now to consecrate it, install the additional dimensions, hook up the audiovisual kit, and all the other things required of a priestess of the Shoggoth Cult.” “Loathsome obscene blasphemous rituals?” asked the closet. “Count me in, honey!” “Shoggy has a cult?” Falcon worried. “He has a priestess?” “A High Priestess,” Ebony told him with a faint amused smile. “Doesn’t everyone?” “And you’re the Shoggoth’s worshipper?” CSFB! verified. “Well, I do most of his non-DVD shopping for him and handle the libel suits against the Lovecraft estate,” Ebony explained. “Does that count?” “How the hell do you get to be the high priestess of a Cthulic monster?” demanded Falcon. “I started out as a sacrificial victim and worked my way up.” CSFB! and Falc watched the exquisite woman walk down the hallway with Amber St Clare. Flapjack noisily fell out of the broom closet, scattering buckets everywhere. “I have got to get me a cult,” said Falcon wistfully. “Do you know how much I hate spiders?” demanded Fashion Accessory for the fourth time, and with progressively increasing volume. “Do you?” “I think we got a bit of a hint when you hurled that giant one across the room to splat across the opposite wall, then threw spiffy after it,” Kerry admitted to her distraught friend. “I’ve got all web on my hems!” FA complained. “And I think I’ve ruptured my spleen,” spiffy pointed out, crawling from mashed spider remains and limping back. “Fear not,” Harlagaz told him, “Tear out yon spleen and smiteth thine enemies with it!” “That is not medically recommended,” Glory pointed out, but Ham Boy only patted her. “I never knew Birthday Bandit used giant mutated spiders,” worried Visionary, looking around the gloomy dust-layered halls beneath the fortress. “Maybe it was their birthdays or something?” The junior LL pushed further into the trap. “If you ever tell anyone about this then I will have to kill you,” warned Miss Framlicker with an angry warning scowl. “Ever. And you know I can do things with warp-gates and micro-portals that would make a man’s eyes water. Or join their genitalia in the Negativity Zone.” Nats nodded emphatically. “Yes ma’am.” Miss Framlicker turned round and scooped an armful of stuffed fluffy toys off the couch in her little apartment. “This doesn’t mean I like you in any way,” she hastened to tell the flying phenomenon. “I just don’t want your performance at work to suffer by virtue of your being homeless.” “I’m not homeless. I was just… trying not to be a burden on my family and friends.” “The Interdimensional Transportation Corporation doesn’t usually encourage its employees to hide in sleeping bags under the desks,” his supervisor assured him. “Doesn’t the Lair Legion have some kind of severance package when they expel members?” “I think so, yeah,” Nats agreed. “But if I accept it I’ve accepted Goldeneyed’s decision, and I’m not giving him the satisfaction.” Bill Reed expected another barbed remark from Miss Framlicker about his usefulness. Instead she stopped and polished her glasses reflectively. “Hm. Just when I’ve written you off as completely useless yet again…” She sighed and shrugged. “Bathroom’s over there. Towels in the hamper please, and don’t leave the toilet seat up. And that room’s my bedroom. Get within ten feet of it and I’ll translocate your epidermis across the Vortex, okay? Welcome to my place.” Deadshot sprung his trap as the exotic Arab woman entered her suite. His arrow was aimed to miss the major nerves and arteries, merely pinning her sword hand to the door so Desert Rose dropped her sentient weapon Areei onto the floor. As the neurotoxins on the arrowhead did their work the bowman followed up with a sedative gas arrow for good measure. And it was over as quickly as that. “Trickshot?” Desert Rose managed to say before the pain and the darkness overwhelmed her. “In the flesh,” grinned the undead archer. “Even if it is slightly rotting.” “You’re not Trickshot,” Areei argued, unable to do anything as long as she just lay on the floor. “Oh, but I am. That’s how I know what to do to hurt me.” Deadshot carefully picked the sword up using an arrowhead to avoid touching it and dropped it into the case he’d prepared. “We’ll see how much it takes to shatter a talking weapon later,” he promised Areei. “But first we’ve gotta get the lady somewhere she can be tortured in peace. With video cameras. Wouldn’t want Tricky ta miss any of the screamin’.” Humming to himself, Deadshot took Desert Rose and slipped away. “This probably wasn’t a good place to camp after all,” decided Ham Boy ruefully as she shook the radioactive scorpions out of his sleeping bag. As they fell spiffy crushed them with his symbiotic fern and dropped them down the pit shaft. “Creepy crawlies I can handle,” Kerry admitted. “I’ve dated. But what the hell was that sewn-together pig-bear-duck thing that charged us?” “It wert breakable,” Harlagaz noted smugly. “Very breakable.” “I do not think that Birthday Bandit is behind this,” Glory warned everyone. “Nothing here fits his profile or way of working. I think that Fin Fang Foom may have been mistaken.” “I think she needs walkies,” Fashion Accessory judged. “Maybe some bathroom time?” “Something’s not right here,” spiffy frowned as he looked down the long unlit tunnels that whispered in the changing winds. “Right. My sleeping bag has things with pincers in it,” Ham Boy pointed out. “Pinching pincers.” “I mean not right on this whole mission. We should contact the Lair Mansion, get more info?” Visionary nodded worriedly. “Perhaps we could just go home?” he suggested. “I’ll just… uhoh.” “Uhoh there are snakes in my backpack?” Kerry prompted. “Uhoh here come swarms of hungry flesh-eating cockroaches?” “Uhoh, something’s jamming the Lair Legion communicators,” Vizh clarified. “Something that knows our exact communications frequency.” “Ah,” frowned spiffy. “That kind of uhoh. Yep.” Yo wouldn’t answer the door to the Manga Shoggoth so he oozed underneath. “I need to talk with you,” he told the genderless thought being. “Uncute uncuting…” “Yes. I had a talk with Al B. Harper. When he stopped cowering under his desk he explained what was upsetting you.” “You were to be eating cute bunny Yo is giving you as welcoming present!” Al B. had explained the custom on not internalising Yo’s rabbits to examine their protein sequences and long-chain carbohydrates to the Shoggoth. Lisa had given him the address of the pet relocation service the Legion traditionally used to pass on the dozens of unwanted lapines they lovingly received from the innocent visitor from Yo-Planet. “I assure you I did not eat it,” the Shoggoth explained carefully. “I merely separated out some of the more interesting organic structures inside my gelatine-plasma corporeality to better understand…” “Uncute uncuting uncutueness!” “But I had no idea it would bring you such distress and heartache,” went on the Shoggoth hastily. “Would it help make amends if I simply reconstructed the animal for you?” Yo stopped in mid uncuteness. “You can be to be doing that?” “Well, more or less,” the elder beast conceded. “Organic matter isn’t all that complicated. Just fiddly. Hold on a moment…” The Shoggoth gurgled and then disgorged a slime-covered pink rabbit. It wasn’t exactly the one he had absorbed. That one hadn’t had such massive manga-wide eyes or such stylised ears and feet, for example. But it was undoubtedly a bunny. “Oh!” gasped Yo, catching the creature up in her/her arms. “I made a few improvements,” the Manga Shoggoth explained. “For example, when it gets wet it now changes gender. And it can transform into a truck.” “Is to be beautiful,” the pure thought being called out, stickily hugging the Shoggoth. “Also, I would suggest not feeding it after midnight…” Nats walked into the ITC staff room to a round of applause. One of the janitorial staff came forward and handed him a cup of coffee. An intern patted him on the back. “What?” he asked. He was moved and touched that his co-workers were being so supportive about his unfair expulsion from the Lair Legion. “Aw, guys…” “Way to go, hero,” Matterson from accounting grinned. “Really?” Nats hadn’t realised so many people supported his stand against G-Eyed. Bennett from sales even winked. “So tell us, hotshot, what’s she like?” “She?” Matterson made an upward gesture with his thumb. “Miss Framlicker,” he smirked. “We heard you bagged her.” “I what?” Kolchak from engineering leered. “You stayed at her place last night, right? The ice maiden unfrozen at last.” Now Nats understood what was going on at last. He understood that he was going to die. “So give us the details, Bill. She a real blonde or what?” “We all figured she was a lesbian or something.” “We thought nobody from work was ever going to get past good morning.” “Is she a moaner?” “Guys, you’re not…” The intercom announced that Mr Reed was summoned to Miss Framlicker’s office right away. The staff cheered. Nats understood that he was going to die now. “The important thing is not to panic,” Visionary told his class. “Okay, this may be a trap-laden set of tunnels of doom filled with giant rolling boulders, poison darts, zombie pygmies, bionic snakes, strangely-pierced aboriginals and other alarming accessories, but the important thing is not to panic.” “The important thing art to findeth our hidden adversary and smitheth him,” Harlagaz answered firmly. “And then mayhap smitheth him more.” “Admit it,” spiffy said to the demihemigod of thunder sourly, “You only do the Ausgardian-speak to impress the girls, right?” “Oh sure,” Harlagaz grinned back. “Most verily.” “We have to find a way out of this maze,” Fashion Accessory insisted. “I have absolutely nothing in my wardrobe that goes with ichor and mould, or that yucky purply poison stuff on those needles that sprang at Ham Boy.” “Thank goodness for my ability to rapidly generate protective sausages, that’s what I say,” Fred Harris admitted. “And not a lot of people would say that,” admitted Kerry Shepherdson. “Perhaps you could use your probability powers to help us find the way out,” spiffy suggested to her. “You know, just by chance and all that?” Kerry considered this. “I don’t think my powers work that way, spiffster. I could maybe make the exit blow up?” “Woof!” called Glory with increasing frustration. “Will you people pay attention. It’s this way! I can smell the fresher air. Come on!” “Do you think maybe she wants us to follow her?” Ham Boy wondered. “Give the man a biscuit!” the mutt of might growled crossly. “Now come this way!” The old Paradopolis Variety Theatre had been derelict and abandoned for decades. It’s nineteenth century splendour was long faded, and now the vast auditorium was dark and ruined, the stage worm-rotten and littered with squatters’ debris. The literally hundreds of dressing rooms, workshops, props areas, stables, rehearsal rooms, offices, private suites, stores and pulley chambers were deserted and forgotten. People said the place was haunted, and now even the vagrants didn’t like to come here. Beneath the Theatre the cellars and basements descended down to a vast cavern network which joined up with the sewers and undertunnels that burrowed below Paradopolis. There was even an underground lake here, linked via low mouldy passages to a distant and long buried river and thus to the sea. On the tiny stub of rock that formed an island in the lightless lake Deadshot dropped Desert Rose to the floor and made his preparations. “Lessee. Video tapes, toolkit, dentist’s bag, acid flasks, wet wipes, sandwiches…” “You forgot ta mention the bandages,” Trickshot told him, emerging from the shadows with an arrow already nocked at his undead counterpart. “After whut ya did ta Talia and Rose you’re gonna need the bandages.” Deadshot turned round carefully, keeping his hands away from his bow. “Not bad, Fakeshot,” he admitted. “You tracked me almost as quick as I’d have nailed you. Just like I wanted you to.” “Sure. You wanted me to get here in time to stop you hurtin’ Rose like you hurt the Contessa.” “I wanted you to be here to watch,” Deadshot grinned. “You know, helpless-like, begging fer me ta stop.” His smile shut off like a doused light. “You get to die last of all, imposter-guy. After Rose, after Talia, after all your Legion buddies, after everybody you ever cared fer. I’m gonna amputate yer arms and legs now but I’ll keep you alive so you can see whut I’m doin’ to them!” Trickshot loosed the arrow right through Deadshot’s heart. “Already dead,” his evil counterpart grinned. “And not alone.” From beneath the black waters the undead splashed to the surface. Each of them was newly slain. Each of them had one of Deadshot’s necromantic black arrows embedded through their heart. And each one was somebody Trickshot recognised; somebody he had rescued during his heroic career. “That’s right,” gloated Deadshot as the irritating archer understood who he was facing. “I made a little collection.” He watched his victims shuffle forward to grab Trickshot. “Thank your rescuer,” he told them. “Okay,” Fashion Accessory announced. “This is officially gross.” Visionary looked around the laboratory they had discovered at the far end of the maze and he had to agree. “I’ve seen a fair number of mad scientist’s laboratories in time,” he admitted. “Mostly through a haze of panic, but I’ve seen them. This one is certainly up there.” “Anybody understand what this guy in the lab coat is actually gibbering about?” spiffy asked, pointing to the Chinese man that Harlagaz was pinning to the wall one-handedly. “We need to know whose lab this is and what those things in the big bell jars are for. We need to know what’s going on.” “Is it fair to put us up against villains that don’t speak English?” demanded Kerry. “He is speaking Cantonese,” Glory explained. “He’s saying that he works for the Devil Doctor, and that this laboratory is a gestation room for implanting dragon embryos into females of other species.” “I don’t have any Scooby-snacks, Glory,” Ham Boy told the dog. “I’m sorry. Be patient, okay?” “You have to understand! This man is working for the Devil Doctor! The Devil Doctor is not supposed to be around any more!” woofed Glory. “Either this man is sadly mistaken or else the Devil Doctor his back! We have to warn somebody. We have to tell Mr Epitome! We have to watch out, because Devil Doctor is far more dangerous than Birthday Bandit. He is an undead Makluan body-hopper and now he may be wanting to breed more bodies for him to hop! We must do something!” “I think Glory’s trying to tell us something,” Fashion Accessory frowned. “I don’t think she likes this place.” “Maybe it’s all the Si-Fan assassins?” suggested spiffy as the Si-Fan Assassins attacked. Nats found the right house at last and flew down to deliver his package. It hadn’t helped that he didn’t speak Russian, that he had never been to Novgorod before, and that it was pitch black in a raging blizzard. Maybe Miss Framlicker felt she’d been too nice to him by making waffles for breakfast and felt she had to balance the scales with this job. Or maybe she’d already heard about the workplace rumours and needed some alone-time to prepare his slow and painful death. Some days he really earned his minimum wage as a delivery boy for the Interdimensional Transportation Corporation. And that’s all he was now, wasn’t it? Nats turned again to brooding over his recent expulsion from the Lair Legion. He told himself that Finny would sort it when Finny was back from his leave. Maybe G-Eyed would get canned instead? But a little nagging worry warned him that maybe Foom would just back up his deputy’s call so as not to undermine him. Maybe the dragon would agree with Goldeneyed’s approach? Nats swore and rang the doorbell of the sumptuous dacha in the hills. “Package,” he said when a flunkey answered the call. The Russian said something Nats didn’t understand but seemed to indicate he could come in out of the freezing sleet which seemed like a plus to the flying delivery boy. Telekinesis was great but it couldn’t keep the cold off him without continual effort; and then he tended to fly into trees. Nats followed the flunkey into the warm firelight of a log cabin living room. The woman on the couch uncoiled herself and reached out to pour him some vodka. “Come in, Nats,” she told him. “You can toss the package away. That was just a way of getting you here to speak with me.” Bill Reed’s pulse started to race as he recognised the female who was almost in the slinky sheer black nightdress. “VelcroVixen!” “In the flesh,” she agreed. “Well, soon maybe. It depends on whether you take up the job offer.” “Job offer?” Nats dragged his eyes upwards to look the villainess in the face. “What the hell…” “We heard about you being kicked off the Lair Legion,” VV told him. “That must hurt. A man with all your power and potential, eking a living by delivering parcels? Denied opportunity for advancement, respect, personal wealth, personal satisfaction…” “You’re trying to recruit me?” Nats asked incredulously. “Why not? The heroes don’t want you.” Vicki Vee smiled languorously. “Why not try being bad for a while?” “You’re under arrest,” Nats told her. “Really?” VelcroVixen challenged. “How? You’re not a Legionnaire now. You’re in a foreign country with no extradition treaties. No mandate, no authority, no backup.” She shook her head. “Plus, you’re outnumbered.” Only then did Nats realise he wasn’t alone with the svelte siren. He turned suddenly but too late. “Dreamripper, Third Degree, Fleshcrawler, Pain Hook, take him down,” the villainess commanded. “We’ll see if we can change our young hero’s mind about joining us in Badripoor. Literally.” It all went quiet as the last of the man/scorpion hybrids stopped struggling under the collapsed temple floor in the Devil Doctor’s Hughlong Deo fortress. Kerry Shepherdson looked a little bit smug as she walked away from the debris pocketing her cigarette lighter. She didn’t smoke. “Anyone want to tell me what the heck is really going on here?” Ham Boy objected, dragging himself from under a pile of kamikaze cyborgs ninjas. “Was I off sick the day we covered men-scorpions?” “This is certainly proving to be a tougher practical than I expected,” Fashion Accessory admitted. “I think we might be in trouble. Teach? Are we in trouble?” Visionary looked up at the coffin-shaped glass container at the far end of the lab. “Yes,” he answered worriedly. “Yes, I’d say we were in very deep trouble.” “What ist that ails thee, hoary old mentor?” demanded Harlagaz, ripping up his leather jacket to staunch the dozen or so deep gashes across his torso. “Why wax so pale at yon… black crispy blob thing?” spiffy stared up at the tube with sick recognition too. “Aw crap,” he winced. “That’s not…?” “Dark Knight?” Visionary answered. “Looks like. They got DK.” “That is not good,” Glory growled. “The Dark Knight, although currently wanted for attempted mass murder with nuclear weapons, is a very good fighter. Anyone who can catch him off guard and do this to him is very dangerous.” She considered further. “It is probably not Birthday Bandit,” she concluded. “Looks like he was burned,” Kerry judged critically. “Maybe three hundred, three fifty degrees, transversely left to right from below, but he dodged to the right before he was completely overwhelmed by the flames.” She looked round at her shocked teammates. “I just happen to notice things about burn patterns, okay?” “We’ve got to get him out of here,” Visionary told them. “We might need him?” “For charcoal?” suggested Fashion Accessory. “Vizh is right,” spiffy noted. “Although somehow those words just don’t seem to go together. DK’s been known to recover from being dead before.” “It is a glorious thing to fight on e’en though one has been charred to a frazzled crisp,” Harlagaz agreed. “I hope one day to have such a chance myself.” “Keep standing near Kerry then,” suggested Ham Boy. “Can we get out of here with what’s left of the Dark Knight?” demanded Visionary. “I mean before the next wave of psychotic killer monsters arrives to… ah damn.” The next wave of psychotic killer monsters washed over them. Looking very chipper, cuz,” Ruby Waver called to Lania as she saw her passing the Lair Legion admin office. “Hot date?” “Not sure,” the LL’s spokesmodel admitted to her distant relative. “But I’m having dinner with Finny tonight. And he asked.” “Really?” marvelled Ruby. “So did you slip something in his food or what?” “Hey,” objected Lania, “I’m not you. Anyway, tonight could be the night.” “It sure could,” agreed Ruby. “You know Finny’s given half of us support staff the night off, and the rest are going off with Al B. to investigate some situation in Antarctica? Even HALLIE’s going to be spending some time in her virtual world. The Mansion’s going to be pretty much empty tonight except for two people.” Lania considered the implications of this. “I see,” she breathed. “This could turn out to be a very interesting night indeed.” Trickshot rolled to the side as the wave of walking dead shambled towards him. He noticed that each one of them had an arrow straight through the heart. “Yep,” gloated Deadshot. “I got me some zombie-makin’ arrows, Fakeshot. I’m gonna use them on anyone you ever met, an then I’m gonna use them on you.” Tricky fired off an incendiary shaft that turned the lead zombie into a blazing column of flame. “Like you could hit me,” he scorned. “I checked about th’ Bastion o’ this dimension, and word is he wasn’t so hot.” “As my zombie puppet you will dance to my tune, doing whatever disgusting things I command of you. And I hope that inside that rotting corpse some tiny shed of your soul will be clinging on as witness and screaming as you… what do you mean, not so hot?” Trickshot jumped past another pair of Deadshot’s victims, snatching the arrows out of them so they tumbled lifelessly into the muddy lake. “Ah, you know. You got yourself kakked by Zemo pretty easily.” “I was betrayed by Natasha Romanza!” “An’ you didn’t even fight your way outta it. You couldn’t satisfy her enough ta keep her on your side. You couldn’t stop yourself from getting dead. Whatta bozo!” “As if you could have done better.” “Hey, I’m here, right, ploughing through your little zombie pals?” Trickshot pasted another pair up with his adhesive arrow then leaped out of the way as a man he’d saved from a post office holdup came at him with a flamethrower. “You’re right where I want you, useless,” boasted Deadshot. “In my trap.” “In your dreams,” smirked Tricky. “You were okay I guess, but me, I’m magic.” He tumbled past the last of the zombie gauntlet and came up with his bow pointed at his evil self. “Wanna find out how good?” “A duel?” snorted Deadshot. “You can’t hurt me. Even an explosive arrow wouldn’t stop me now.” “I’m game,” Tricky told him. “One shaft each at sixty paces. Winner takes all.” “I could hit you at two hundred, impostor.” “Then I’m makin’ it easy for you, slimo.” And Trickshot swivelled on his heel and marched away, wading into the dark waters to get his distance. Desert Rose fluttered back to consciousness in time to see the two Trickshots marching away from each other to take their positions. “Ready?” her Trickshot called to his enemy. “I’m putting this right through your left eye,” Deadshot warned him. “An I’m triggering the remote detonator I planted on that arrow I stuck in your chest when I first got here,” Tricky grinned. “On account of you standing over the explosives I laid under the water before I hopped out ta trade insults with you.” The combined blast arrowheads from Trickshot’s arsenal detonated around Deadshot. The undead archer staggered but rose triumphant. “I warned you that none of your weapons could hurt me now.” “Right,” agreed Trickshot. “That’s why I needed time to get hold of one of those arrows of yours, from the dead guys.” He released his grip on his taught bowstring. “Here, you miserable piece of woman-abusin’ low-life worm-bait scum. Have it back.” The junior LL were looking a bit ragged. Well, all except Fashion Accessory, who had morphed her clothes into a stunning army-camouflage weave two-piece with matching boots. They had just spent the last seven hours fighting off mutant samurai, giant lizards, bionic alligators, exploding vampire bats, swarms of fire ants, mute oiled sumos, wolf-ape hybrid things with pterodactyl wings, walking slimes, shadow assassins, hopping vampires, killer moths, and what looked suspiciously like the troll from Harry Potter II. Things were getting a bit difficult. “It art but a flesh wound,” Harlagaz assured his concerned teammates as he extracted his arm from the maw of the dead giant rat. “Yon profuse bleeding is just my way of celebrating mine victory.” “It’s a good job those warrior statue things grabbed Kerry’s knapsack though,” Ham Boy pointed out. “If the roof hadn’t come down when it exploded…” “I thought that was a remarkably large detonation for one single travel alarm clock,” Visionary told his ward suspiciously. “I told you. That new battery I put in must have been faulty,” Kerry told him earnestly. “We can’t keep on like this,” spiffy decided, looking round the wounded, exhausted team. At least now they knew who they were up against. Glory had finally got fed up of trying to communicate using her growl-and-paw system and had simply carved the words into the granite floor with her claws. “I’m pretty sure Finny wouldn’t have sent us here to Hughlong Dao if he’d realised who was really here,” Vizh told them. “It’s not like he’s Lisa.” “Hughlong Dao translates as Dragon Island,” Glory told them helpfully“ Nobody really understood, because she was growling it with her mouth closed as she dragged along the Dark Knight’s blackened remains. “I specially liked the part where we fought our way back to the Lairjet and it wasn’t there,” Fashion Accessory scowled. “Our enemy is remarkably well informed,” Ham Boy puzzled. “He seems to have known we were coming, set up a jammer set to block our specific Lair Legion communication frequency…” “Got gestation equipment ready to get us in the family way with his little dragonets,” shuddered Fashion Accessory. “That scientist man said that previous attempts with non-metahuman females had failed due to them not surviving long enough to develop a viable foetus,” Glory growled. “He said that before that large praying mantis bit his head off, of course.” “We have to get a signal to the mainland,” spiffy decided. “Maybe Kerry could set fire to something – notmenotme,” he added quickly. “If we can get to the walls again, it’ll be my pleasure,” the pretty pyromaniac promised him. “Maybe I can raise your temperature other ways?” Visionary hastily moved further down the corridor. Better the chance of attack by mutated scorpion-bugs than having to listen to Kerry flirting with spiffy. The possibly-fake man thought through the situation. And then he thought again. The well-informed trap had specifically jammed the very frequencies used by the LL signal devices. Perhaps their adversary had been too clever in using the precise wavelengths? Vizh fumbled in his yellow trenchcoat pocket and pulled out his mobile phone. He hoped he had enough credit for an international call. And that he could remember his PIN number. “Hello?” he called through the static as a voice at the other end replied. “Cheryl, we need help!” That was when the battery gave up. Vizh wondered if Harlagaz could summon electricity to charge batteries. He wandered back down the corridor to check and didn’t notice the odourless gas that had knocked out the rest of his team until he’d had a change to get a couple of good lungsful. And so the junior LL joined the Devil Doctor’s scientific programme. Next Issue: The Hooded Hood launches Depression Week here on the Parodyverse Board, as we all get gloomy about the future and dread tomorrow in possibly the worst board-activity-stimulating gimmick of all time. So to get things rolling we’re going to have daily postings of chunks of UT#139 that are guaranteed to depress, appal, and otherwise make you cry. It’s the culmination of all the deconstructive, horrible things that have happened to the team of late, where it all goes very badly wrong. So in Untold Depressing Tales of the Lair Legion you can dread the following stories: Tales To Decimate Part One: Bad Breeding Tales To Decimate Part Two: Lost Chances Tales To Decimate Part Three: Burning Loyalties Tales To Decimate Part Four: Programmed Responses Tales To Decimate Part Five: Who Killed Wonder Walrus? Tales To Decimate Part Six: Expendable Heroes Depressed? You will be… Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2004 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2004 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. |