Baron Zemo's Lair. - <font color="lightslategrey" face="Lucida Sans Unicode">Untold Tales of the Lair Legion and Earth Mightiest Heroes</font>

Baron Zemo's Lair

Untold Tales of the Lair Legion and Earth Mightiest Heroes
Sunday, 08-Aug-1999 16:51:31
195.92.197.37 writes:

Untold Tales of the Lair Legion and Earth Mightiest Heroes

Okay. This story’s up to chapter ten now and the dramatis personae is getting a bit lengthy. Probably time for a quick who’s who. No, I don’t mean that interminable project to catalogue the denizens of the Parodyverse. Just a quick update of who’s doing what to who where. Here goes.
The Hooded Hood (a baddie) has escaped from Comic Book Limbo by trapping nearly all the Parodyverse’s heroes there in his place. These heroes include: Jarvis, NTU-150, Fin Fang Foom, Hatman, Starseed, Banjoooooo, CrazySugarFreakBoy!, Goldeneyed, Lisa, and Dark Knight (the current line-up of the Lair Legion), plus spiffy, Cap (not to be confused with the other Cap – we’ll cover that later), Sorceress, Cobra, and Paste Pot Pete (the Abandoned Legion), plus Yo, Cheryl, Tina, Visionary, DarkHwk, Melissa, Frog-Man, Zebulon and Space Ghost (significant others, former members, and hangers-on to the Lair Legion). They also have with them Baron Zemo and Dr Moo, two of the most prominent villains of the Parodyverse.
These heroes have now escaped from Comic Book Limbo as well, but have arrived in the universe usually depicted by Marvel Comics, where they have encountered the Avengers, that Earth’s mightiest heroes. The Avengers current line-up is Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Wonder Man (aka Simon Williams, although the Parodyverse Jarvis has other names for him), the Scarlet Witch (Wanda Maximoff), the Vision, Justice (Vance Astrovik) and Firestar (Angelica Jones). Just to confuse matters they have a butler named Jarvis, who has died a lot less than the leader of the Lair Legion of the same name.
Meanwhile, back in the Parodyverse nearly every other remaining hero has been stuck in stasis fields by the Hood’s machinations. Amongst those remaining unfrozen are the superhero sidekicks he manipulated into exiling the heroes listed above. This group, consisting of L’il Buttie, Lisette, Wormlad, Wormbait, Boy Wonder, Hat Kid, Fashion Accessory, Thunderstroke and E-Male, have all been captured, along with CrazySugarFreakBoy’s mom Action Figure, by Zemo’s treacherous cloned daughter Zemette. Whilst this was going on, Messenger, a former LL’er and now a wanted murderer, coerced the irritatingly mysterious Con Johnstantine into helping him work out what is going on and has made the acquaintance of the Parodyverse’s master of the mystic crafts, Xander the Improbable.
Nobody yet seems to have noticed the two alien invasions except Dan Drury, Agent of SPUD (Super-menace Principal Undercover Directorate), who has recruited the Falcon to single-handedly prevent the alien Skree takeover of Paradopolis. ManMan has been captured by the other aliens, the shape-shifting Skunks (these are green and slimy as opposed to blue and callous) and is currently being, um, horribly tortured. Five times so far. He can’t keep this up much longer.
And while all this is going on, the architect of the whole sequence, the cowled crime-czar the Hooded Hood, has arrived at the Lair Legion’s mansion in order to learn the terrible Secret that has been concealed beneath Parody Isle since the dawn of mankind – a secret he has set the whole plot in motion to gain. Yo-ling, a corrupted thought being, has been left to guard against superhero interference. The Lair’s secretary, the Amazon Troia 215, has been rather foxed in her efforts to prevent the Hood’s ambitions by his revelation that he may be her father.
Now if only we can find a way to work Exile into all of this I think that’s just about covered everybody who wanted to be involved and a few who didn’t.
Confused? You will be…

It was the contest of champions. Donar, scion of Ausgard pitted his abilities against Thor, Thunder God of Asgard. And only one would walk away – possibly neither.
“Go, Donar, go! You can beat that blonde impostor!” Lisa shouted, clinging on to Captain America in sheer excitement. Cap politely remover her hand from his waistband and activated his energy shield for protection.
“Hey! Don’t let that red-bearded phoney win!” Simon Williams called out. “You can do it, goldilocks!”
“Never surrender,” Cobra shared her personal credo with Donar. “Die if you must, but triumph in this challenge.”
“Still taking bets?” Lisa asked Banjoooo, who was watching from a safe distance as the two gods tussled. “I’d like five bucks on them both exploding.”
Jarvis – the Avengers butler Jarvis, not the one who’s motto was “Get It Yourself”, had just brought in two more whole roast oxen. It was a contest of champions, and so far Donar was ahead by a leg.
“Verily, thou art a fell mighty trencherman,” Thor munched, generously. “I have rehearsed ‘gainst the voluminous Volstagg himself, and hath ne’er been found wanting.”
“In truth thou eatest as swiftly as the many-mouthed harpies of Horribleheim,” Donar admitted, “and I am sore pressed to match thee munch for munch.”
What, you thought they were going to hit each other with hammers?
“Yo is glad that Yo thought of this contest,” Yo smiled. “Although Yo is a little bit sorry for those big roasted creatures which Donar and not-Donar are eating, and for the other sixteen they have already to have been swallowing.”
“It is… an unusual sight,” Captain America agreed. “But we did say you were welcome to the hospitality of Avengers Mansion while we found a way to dimensionally portal you back to your own world.”
“I’m just amazed to meet my parallel world self, if that’s what you are,” Cap (the Abandoned Legionnaire) admitted, offering the living legend of world war two a peanut. Actually, Cap was more than amazed. The hero before him led the mightiest assemblage of heroes on his world. He was a legend, the most trusted man on Earth, a man even the villains spoke of with respect. He had really made a difference. Cap wondered if he had not got something to learn here. Where did that man with the wings on his head get all his confidence?
Jarvis had been thinking similar things a few minutes earlier. Specifically, he was wondering how it was that Cap got to lead a proper team with discipline and dedication, and not a sucky power between them. And how he got everyone to take him seriously. And how he got people to like the Avengers. And why life was so unfair.
As the leader of the Lair Legion was sighing he felt a cup of hot strong coffee being pressed into his hand. Somehow the Avengers butler had discerned the exact right moment to place it there and even how Jarvis took his brew. “Thanks, but there was no need,” Tim Jarvis told Edwin Jarvis. “I could have gotten it myself.”
“It is a privilege to be able to help worthy heroes,” the older man answered. “But you know that.”
“Hey, I wouldn’t even help the time spiffy’s fern got stuck down the lavatory after he called Donar ‘Greek Guy’ for the thousandth time.”
“No, your contribution has been of a different nature to mine,” Edwin admitted. “You have served them by bringing them together, giving them direction and purpose, by nurturing them when they fell and encouraging them when they rose again. Surely that too is a kind of service?”
“I hadn’t really thought of it like that,” Tim admitted. “I had seen it more in terms of a terrible migraine that you just can’t get rid of no matter how many times you bang your head on a brick wall.”
Edwin Jarvis smiled, and for a moment the younger butler had a strange memory flash of a similar man leaning over him, tucking him in when he was very small. “We all serve something, whether something good or evil. I am proud that my namesake has chosen to serve the noblest of causes for good,” the Avengers’ retainer proclaimed.
“I… I’d better go and see how the tech people are getting on with a way home,” Tim decided.

Over Paradopolis the ten-mile-wide Skree Assault Vessel observed the latest battle over Hell’s Bathroom. “Send in the Killbots,” War Commander Rox-Hoff ordered, watching the fast-moving avian superhero below somehow avoid the laser pulse cannons of his finest invasion squads. “I want that Budgerigar taken down. Permanently.” (due to a light taxonomic misidentification on the part of the Skree Xenobiology Unit, the place in the Skree Enemies’ Hall of Fame that should have been reserved for Joseph Wilson, the high-flying Falcon, was actually going to be reserved for a hero named after a brightly coloured and inoffensive songbird).
Down in the alleyways of the Paradopolis slums Falcon spotted the odds against him rising from damn near impossible right up to impossible. “Falcon here to SPUD helicarrier,” the hero called into his helmet radio, swerving to line up a shot that took out yet another anti-grav cannon unit. “I feel a bit like Custer on the last day he made a diary entry here.”
“Wilson, is that you?” a gruff voice came in above the static. “This is Dan Drury talkin’ atcha. Look, we got some problems.”
A lucky laser burst ignited the tip of Falcon’s starboard wing. “You got problems? How many of your extremities are on fire, G-Man?”
“Tough it out, turkey-boy,” the Director of SPUD advised him. “You ain’t just gotten a presidential order to nuke that big ship over Paradopolis.”
“To what?” Falcon demanded, banking to avoid the drone missiles from the newly arrived Skree killbots. “Didn’t those opinion polls about his last nuke-Paradopolis attempt back in the Zombie War teach him anything?”
“Yeah, well, let’s just say I’ve got my doubts as to whether the Prez is really the Prez. I sent in one’a my best undercover girls – an’ I mean undercover – and he didn’t even grope ‘er. So I’m guessin he’s a Skunk shapechangin’ impostor. ‘Cause I can’t prove that, so NORAD’s launchin’ the missile in about two minutes.”
Another blast of energy took out Falcon’s primary flight pack. “It’s not going to worry me as far as I can tell,” the avian adventurer considered. Then a desperate plan formed in his mind.
The Falcon crashed down into the Paradopolis central library. He knew it was pretty unlikely that anyone would actually be there – it was a library, after all. As the kill-bots closed on his position the colourful and distinctive flying suit shot through the ceiling on a suicide course for the Skree mothership.
“A brave and futile gesture,” Roxx-Off considered, watching on his video monitor. “I like that in my enemies.” The Skree Commander personally targeted the disintegrator and annihilated the fast-approaching hero. “Their last defender has fallen,” he observed. “Occupy their city and find the source of that powerful energy node we detected earlier. Nothing can stop us now.”

“It’s a very impressive lab you have here, Mr Stark,” the diabolical Dr Moo breathed, moving closer to the metal-mesh clad golden Avenger and ensuring his attention was fully drawn to her spectacular bosom. When millionaire industrialist Antony Stark had worked out that there was no point protecting his secret identity because CrazySugarFreakBoy! had read about it in comics in the Parodyverse, Iron Man had doffed his helmet in the privacy of the Avengers lab; and Dr Moo had shed her own cow-mask and was hoping to get the chance to shed a lot more when she saw how handsome the Avengers’ technical wizard was.
“Impressive…” Stark agreed, staring somewhere below Moo’s neck. He came to his senses as the Kurtzburg generator in the corner of the lab exploded. “What the…?”
“Sorry,” NTU-150 apologised, sheepishly. “I was just trying to integrate my systems with this to make calibration easier.” Jaimie Bautista had also doffed the helmet of him similarly red-and-gold armour, so his blush was obvious. Here he was, finally working with the man who had inspired him to create an armoured hero identity, and all he could do was blow up the man’s labs.
“It’s amazing,” Starseed marvelled. “All he did was turn on the socket switch and boom!,
“That’s our Enty,” Finny snorted. He was still pondering the news that this world’s Fin Fang Foom was a major villain, and that the guy in the armour had somehow managed to take him down.
“I’ll start cleaning it up,” promised Zebulon, with the sigh of one to whom this whole scene has become far too familiar.
Iron Man checked the registers. “Oh, that’s interesting…”
“I really am sorry,” NTU-150 repeated. “I was just trying to scan for the resonant dimensional frequency of the Parodyverse…”
“Hey, it’s OK. No, I mean the difference between our armour systems technology is interesting,” Stark clarified. “Wherever you come from, you seem to be working on a different set of laws of physics than here. No wonder the Kurtzburg generator couldn’t handle your input and exploded.”
“That explains this one,” conceded Starseed, “but what about all the rest back home?”
“Ssssh!” hissed Finny. “I’ve never seen Moo flirt before. It’s confirming all my darkest suspicions about the female of the species.”
“My guess is you’ve never seen anyone flirt before,” muttered Starseed under his breath.
“You are right, Tony,” Moo was saying. “We of the Parodyverse appear to be composed of different sub-atomic particles to you. Everything functions the same at an atomic level and larger, though,” she pointed out. “Everything.”
“Perhaps a few more tests later?” Iron Man suggested, smiling at the zoftig villainess.
“Perhaps,” she answered.
Enty was entirely unaware of the underplay going on around him. “I’ve managed to compensate for the dimensional differences and get the Leiber scanner operating,” he reported. “Now if only we knew which of the infinite number of parallel worlds we came from we could get ourselves home.”

“How can one lone human endure so much torture?” Imperiator P’Rawn of the Skunk Infiltration Fleet demanded, looking over the reports of ManMan’s torment at the hands and other body parts of Candi, Barbi, and Lukki. The three Californian beach babes had been working on the captured superhero endlessly, pressing their bare flesh against his own in a Skunk’s worst nightmare scenario. Somehow, ManMan had managed to survive the horror.
“He did look a little glazed the last time I observed him,” Administrator S’Shee offered. “And he was telling his torturers that he couldn’t hold on much longer.”
“Show me this human,” snarled P’Rawn.
An observation bubble blistered from the disturbingly organic wall of the Skunk Infiltration Vessel. It showed the three girls lying unconscious across the silken cushions, still covered in fresh yoghurt ready for their next devious torment. But ManMan was gone.
“Escaped! How?” screeched the Imperiator. “Play back the recording. Find what happened.”
The monitor filled with the unfamiliar and homely face of Pearson’s Porter, exiled former emissary of the alien Puppeteers, former world conqueror, and currently expatriate illegal alien enjoying the sights and sensations of the planet he had failed to rule. “Hello there, P’Rawn. Pearson’s Porter here. I’m afraid I can’t let you conquer this planet just now. I’m enjoying it too much. So my advice is go home before something nasty happens to you. Good day.”
In the background the Imperiator could hear ManMan’s voice calling out, “You bastard, you rescued me!”
“More interference!” the Skunk leader snarled. “That does it! No more Mr Nice-Skunk. Find that Porter and the escaped human, and invade Earth.”
“Yessir. Um, which bit of Earth shall be invade?”
“The bit with the omnipotent power source that Baroness Zemette told us about,” P’Rawn shouted. “Invade Paradopolis.”

“Any luck on working out which parallel world we came from, then?” DarkHwk asked the yellow-and-green clad synthezoid at the monitor screens. As he spoke Zane noticed the higher level of George Perez detail on the Avengers’ panelling and wished that the Legion could afford a proper designer for their mansion.
“It is going to be most difficult to locate without some additional parameters to help define the search,” the Vision answered.
“I’ve been feeding him all the stuff I could remember about the Parodyverse that I could remember,” Visionary chipped in helpfully, sucking a slurpee with his feet on the console. Monitor rooms felt like home to him. “Uh, do we have a moon or not at the moment?”
DarkHwk looked at the information which the possibly fake man had given the definitely fake man. “A big planet with a lot of cornfields,” he read. “And a big hole where my condo should be because it’s out on your lawn.”
“What else is there to say?” the possible fake man asked the fake-in-one-sense man.
“I’ll tell Enty we have a long way to go,” sighed the amulet-powered hero.
As he left he heard Visionary toss aside the soft drink and start to ask, “So what’s this deal with you and the Scarlet Witch not being together now, Vizh?”

“Nice underoos,” Con Jonstantine commented, creeping up on Joe Wilson as the battered superhero crept out of the Paradopolis library. In proper armoured superhero fashion, Wilson had sent his Falcon suit on remote control to its destruction and was now heading home to build a new and improved version. And providing Roxx-Off didn’t mind delaying his invasion for ten weeks or so, the Skree were going to be in a lot of trouble.
“Who th’ hell…?”
“Don’t mind him,” a second voice surprised Wilson. He recognised the much-publicised uniform of the fallen Legionnaire Messenger from all those wanted for murder posters. “We’re here to save Paradopolis and we thought you might as well come along for the ride. We need someone who knows Hell’s Bathroom.”
“Don’t get alarmed when people creep up and surprise you,” a third mystery voice made Wilson startle for the third time. “By the way, you can probably call me Xander the Improbable. How do you do?”
Wilson found himself shaking hands with the strange man in the red academic gown. “You… you guys are going to save Paradopolis? Against a zillion blue aliens, an incoming nuke from the green aliens, and all those kill-bots?”
“I’ll take them on myself if I have to,” breathed Messenger. “But just now we have a better plan. Do you know a superhero named Exile?”
“Yeah. Works South Hell’s Bathroom, down by the river. Seen him a couple of times.”
“His real name’s Derek Foreman,” Johnstantine revealed, without the least care for the preservation of supposedly secret identities. “We need to find him.”
“He’ll be trapped in a stasis field somewhere,” Xander added helpfully. “Like all the other remaining heroes.”
Joe Wilson was unconvinced. “And we need him of all the possible heroes we could rescue because…?”
“Because he is the toilet brush needed to unblock the lavatory of causality,” the red-robed master of the mystic crafts revealed.

“Nobody in your team seems to like me,” Wonder Man complained. “When I was talking to Melissa earlier Jarvis just came along, snatched her away, and threatened to use my testicles as slingshots.”
“I like you,” Space Ghost told him, breathing a haze of alcohol that made the ionically powered Avenger glad he didn’t need to breathe. “I looooooovvvveeee you!”
Cheryl gently prised the bottle out of SG’s hand, helped him to snuggle down in a quiet corner where Paste Pot Pete was already curled, and covered him up with his pants before returning to Simon Williams. “I think people have a somewhat prejudiced view of you because you murdered some people and got away with it, then swiped your brother’s wife in front of his eyes, and then behave as if none of this ever mattered, dear,” she told him gently.
“I loooooovvvvveeeee you too, Cheryl,” Space Ghost called from his corner. “You’re going to be in my next story. I prommmmmmise!”
Wonder Man looked shocked at Cheryl’s words. “I… nobody said anything.”
“Sometimes it hard to find words expressive enough to tell somebody what a jerk they’re being, dear,” the Lair Legion’s publicist gently explained.

Contessa Imke Ilsa Zemo was feeling pleased with herself, and the fact that she therefore chose to boast about her cleverness to her vanquished enemies goes a long way to indicating that such traits may well be genetic after all. “Everybody thinks they’re being so clever, manipulating each other,” she crowed. “But I am manipulating them all.”
Chained in power-dampening shackles before her were the membership of the New Lair Legion, the former sidekicks raised up by the Hooded Hood as a ploy to send the heroes of the Parodyverse into Comic-Book Limbo. With them, although currently sedated as being the only way to still the long and never-repeated list of invectives and sexual threats that came from her lips, was Meggan Foxxx, a.k.a. Action Figure, a.k.a. CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s mom.
“You’re a traitor,” Boy Wonder accused Zemette. “Nothing but a stinking traitor!”
“Because I aided you in eliminating the world’s heroes – and my ineffectual father – before taking you down as well? Hardly. And you can not really claim to be pure of heart yourselves, can you?”
“We seized the chance the Hood offered us,” Wormbait argued, “because we could see how to make the world a better place…”
“You wanted power and influence, however you wrap it up,” Zemette scorned. “You were willing to plot against the heroes who had defended this world again and again, and exile them into oblivion. But at least they would have protected the world against the twin invasions which it now suffers.”
“We didn’t know it was going to be that serious,” Wormlad admitted. “Alien invasions are so uncool.”
“Release us now and we’ll take on the invaders,” Thunderstroke promised.
“I think not,” Zemette smiled. “I have forged alliances with the Skree and the Skunks, revealing to each the location of the hidden chamber beneath the Lair Mansion which is the key to the Secret it conceals.”
“Excuse me,” L’il Buttie interjected (politely), “but aren’t the Skree and the Skunks mortal enemies, each invading the world to prevent the other from having it?”
“As I say, I am manipulating them all,” Imke smirked. “The Hooded Hood is down there now, seeking the Secret. I imagine he might be quite distracted by the sudden appearance of the Skree/Skunk war around him.”
“The Hood was the one who retconned you into existence,” Fashion Accessory remembered. “He wanted someone to keep his old adversary Zemo off balance.”
“He made me to be treacherous, devious, and ruthless,” Zemette shrugged. “He can’t blame me if I ruthlessly betray him as part of my devious plan, can he?”
“You are such a blowhole, you skank bimbo,” Lisette spat.
“That’s Empress skank bimbo to you, boytoy,” Zemette shot back. In less than a day she would be Queen of the Universe.

“This town is great!” CrazySugarFreakBoy! shouted as he bounced along behind Hatman, spiffy, Goldeneyed, and Frog-Man. “It’s got all the great sights. Where else can you bounce up through the Daily Bugle offices and pants J. Jonah Jameson? Or see where Four Freedoms Plaza was before it blew up and went to the moon? Or make spooky noises through Dr Strange’s letterbox? Or get a Thing action figure designed by Alicia Masters herself?”
“Yeah, it’s wonderful,” huffed spiffy, still nursing the red cheek which he’d got after making his move on Firestar. At the time the line, ‘Hey, I think we shagged once in a parallel universe’ had seemed like such a good one.
“I don’t know why I’m amazed that CSFB! knows his way round this place better than Justice and Firestar who have lived here all their lives,” Hatman admitted. He’s splashed out and got himself a ‘I [heart] NY’ hat and was feeling pretty benevolent towards the Big Apple. “After all, he’s read every issue of every comic-book adventure that ever happened here.”
“Never mind that,” G-Eyed warned. “The opposition has arrived.” And he gestured across the park to where the New Warriors – Nova, Namorita, and Rage, waited with their former members Justice and Firestar.
“Okay,” Justice told them. “Let the superhero volleyball begin.”

What do you say when an archvillain has just admitted paternity to you? That was the particular problem which was currently facing Troia 215. What to say next? Who are you really? Why did you abandon me on Amazon Isle? Can I call you daddy? Do you love me? In the end she settled for, “So, I guess you owe me a lot of back-allowance then?”
“We stand at the threshold of a great Secret, daughter. Consider yourself fortunate to be here at the defining moment of the age.”
A thought crossed the Amazon administrator’s mind. “Hey, if you’re really my father, then who’s my mother?”
The Hooded Hood swirled round upon her, his green eyes burning in narrow slits. “You will NEVER speak of your mother again, on penalty of eternal suffering, do you understand? She is gone forever, and no all the weeping in the world shall bring her back. Neither she nor your brother are of any concern at the moment. Do you understand?”
“Um, yes.” What Troia wanted to ask was, “What brother?”; but she decided she wanted to live.
By the time the young Amazon had gathered her wits the cowled crime czar had unsealed the hidden room and strode into the interior. A pale yellow-green light illuminated the bas-reliefs on the walls. Each picture depicted one of the adventures in which the Lair Legion had participated. Troia was disturbed to find one of her holding off the Hooded Hood with her spear outside this very room. The last image of all showed the Lair Legion – the real deal, not the sidekicks – battling Skree and Skunks. Then the walls were blank except for images of giant robot-types crackling with cosmic energies.
“I don’t think I should be letting you in here,” Troia considered. “I mean, you’re not exactly parent of the year, are you?”
The Hood looked around the chamber, quickly taking in the information he required. “You are correct. To uphold your duty you should attempt to stop me, Troia 215. Otherwise you are no Amazon and no daughter of mine.”
Troia gulped and hefted her spear. “Alright,” she said. “Hold it there, Hooded Hood. Come quietly or I’ll be forced to take you in.” And she screwed her face up waiting for the energy blast.
“Very well,” the cowled crime czar told her. “I surrender.”
Troia knew she was in real trouble then.

Baron Zemo waited for the moment that Edwin Jarvis reset the defence grid and used the split second to penetrate the secure areas below Avengers Mansion. “I have no idea how the – achoo – little… fellow… managed to get through a security system which has kept out – achoo – the Masters of Evil before now,” Jarvis was telling Lisa as he handed the adamantium cat-box over to her. “I had to summon Master Thor to – achoo – get him out of the larder, because I’m allergic to – achooo – cats. Master Thor is bathing – achoo – his scratches…”
“I’ll make it up to Thor in a few moments,” Lisa promised. “Well, maybe more than a few moments, but I’ll definitely offer him some… compensation. It’s the only fair thing to do. Sorry about the trouble, Mr Jarvis. My widdle pussy doesn’t mean any harm.”
“Of course, Madame.” Jarvis agreed, even through he was privately thinking that in that case Ultron was a wind-up toy.
Zemo left the domestic scene behind and applied himself to thwarting the technological security of Avengers Mansion. Every facility like this required a power source; and every power source had the potential for going wrong. Where else was Zemo going to get the chance to wipe out so many heroes in one single blast?
“Going somewhere, Zemo?”
The Baron swung around, already firing a pistol blast as he turned. The shot spanged off a red and white shield. “Nice try, Heinrich,” Captain America commented. “I wondered how long it would take you to make your move. A Zemo is a Zemo in whatever timeline you come from.”
Some strange cross-dimensional imperative made Zemo fall in hate with this tall, noble, perfect hero. “You have encountered my this-reality self then, Captain?” he demanded.
“The twelfth Baron died in combat against me,” Cap told him. “The thirteenth has crossed paths with me once or twice, never to his liking. But then, it hasn’t been my favourite pastime either. I’ve never liked Nazi murderers.”
“And I have never liked insipid do-gooders, patriot. Therefore it is clearly time…”
“…for dinner,” Edwin Jarvis suggested, gliding out of nowhere to announce the meal.
“And to cool off,” added Tim Jarvis, levelling a finger which could pound Zemo through the wall at the enraged Baron.
“Hope there’s apple pie,” Cap anticipated.

“What a horrible way to get trapped in a stasis barrier,” Joe Wilson commented, looking at the frozen form of Derek Foreman aka Exile. “A booby-trapped lavatory.”
“He just pulled on the paper roll here and the suspension field was triggered,” judged Messenger. “And there he sits… enthroned forever.
“I’ve been stuck to the bog myself after a night on the curry,” Con Johnstantine remembered, “But never quite like that.”
“I still don’t understand why freeing this one rather than any of the other super-powered object’s d’art should help get all the missing heroes back,” Messenger objected. “Or even how this sink plunger you gave me will make it possible.”
“Sink plunger!” Xander the Improbable exclaimed. “This is a bit of prime Dalek! That it, it’s a bit of a nasty piece of work which is a blob of pure hatred in bonded polycarbide armour – and more importantly for our purposes it’s a bit of non-Parodyverse matter. So it can slide through the stasis field in a way that even the most powerful things inside this universe can’t. Now get on with it, because I’m charging by the hour here.”
“Yeah, and another thing” Falcon noticed, “Hear that high-pitched whine? That’s the sound of a Skree assault vehicle landing outside the building.”
“And that other sound is the locals trying to sell drugs to them,” Johnstantine added. This was Hell’s Bathroom, after all.
Messenger tried the sink plunger. There was a splatting sound as the rubber suction cup attached to Exile’s face. On the third attempt he was able to pull the toilet-bound Foreman out of the stasis bubble, which collapsed with a pop.
From Exile’s point of view three strangers had just appeared in his bathroom as he was enjoying a quiet ponder on the porcelain and there was a sink plunger sucked onto his face. “What the hell…?” he gasped, scrabbling for his trousers.
“It’s not your pants you require,” Xander told him. “It’s your IDECDs.”
“And some bog roll,” added Johnstantine, practically.
“His what?” Falcon asked.
“Inter-Dimensional Energy Controlling Devices,” Xander explained impatiently. “The bits of technology that the order of the Observing Eye gave him to prevent him finding out about his true powers. They can channel dimensional energies in a way that his cousin Goldeneyed can detect even across a massive reality void if he sets them to the right frequencies.”
Messenger slipped back into the apartment. Nobody had noticed he had gone. “They’re on to us,” the Postman reported. “About fifteen hundred assault troops and killbots assembled right outside. Guess they worked out your trick with the Budgie suit, Wilson.”
“Who’s outside?” asked Exile helplessly as Johnstantine pushed his IDECDs into his hands.
“Just set up the frequency and leave the recaps for the next episode, eh?” the Englishman suggested.
“But what he said… how can my IDECDs hold back my power? They’re really useful.”
“We’ll carve that on your gravestone, man. Just use the fricking things!” Falcon advised him.
Exile sent the signal.
Fifteen hundred Skree warriors came in through the walls.

“This doesn’t seem to be working,” the Sorceress admitted as she allowed her senses to settle back inside her own body. “There are so many different realities out there, and the Parodyverse is such a distant one, that we are never going to be able to find it without some kind of beacon.”
“Don’t give up,” urged Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch. “We’ll take five minutes and then try probing again.”
“And I suppose Asprin is out of the question?” Tina asked. The Lair Legion’s resident guest telepath was getting a lot of backwash from the people around her. Lisa, and surprisingly Moo, were both pushing out waves of lust. Cobra was admiring Captain America’s combat skills. NTU-150 was wistfully envying Iron Man’s… well everything, really. And Melissa…
Melissa was desperately worried about something. “Do you need Asprin too, Melissa?” Tina asked carefully.
Wanda and the Sorceress turned to look at Jarvis’ (the younger) new wife. “No. No I’m fine. I don’t know exactly what I’m doing here, though,” she answered. “It’s not as if I can do any good, is it?”
“You have some latent probability-altering gifts,” the Scarlet Witch sensed. “I can’t quite work out how. You’re not a mutant like me…”
“I once almost became the herald of Galactivac, the Living Death that Sucks,” Melissa admitted. “He was going to change me. But nothing came of it.” And yet the quiet woman had once gone into battle against the legions of hell dressed in a costume rather similar to the scarlet bustier and tiara that Wanda Maximoff now wore.
“Your powers remain latent for the nonce,” Sorceress discerned. “Perhaps forever, unless some suitable stimulus occurs.”
“That was all the Hooded Hood’s manipulation as well,” remembered Tina.
“I have a question,” Melissa blurted, suddenly making her mind up to address what was bothering her. “A.. a hypothetical question. If you had the chance to save somebody you loved, loved more than life itself, but only by doing something that he would hate, and maybe hate you for… would you do it?”
The other women present exchanged where-did-this-come-from glances. “It would depend upon the circumstances,” Wanda answered. “But I would always remain true to myself. Anybody worthy of my love would not want me to compromise myself for them.”
“I would do it,” Tina admitted. “I would do anything to save Jaimie. Anything. If I had to.”
“I would find another way,” the Sorceress offered. “There is always a third path, but sometimes it is concealed.”
“Is there something you want to tell us?” Tina asked Melissa.
“No,” the young woman answered. “It was just hypothetical.”
Suddenly there was a burst of teleportational energies and Goldeneyed jumped in with spiffy. “I’ve got a signal!” exclaimed the glowing-eyed dimension hopper. “From my cousin. It’s from Exile. It was really brief – dunno why – but I got a fix. I know where we should be going!”
“We were winning that ball game, dammit,” Spiffy objected. “Firestar was lookin’ at me, you know.”
“You have the co-ordinates?” Tina asked, reaching into Goldeneyed’s mind to verify them and transmit them to Enty.
“Now they’ll say we defaulted,” spiffy sulked.
“What’s happening?” Banjooooo asked, looking in to find out what the noise was about.
“We blew the game, man,” spiffy told him.
“We’re going home,” Goldeneyed announced.

Roxx-Off, supreme commander of the Kree Invasion Fleet, had taken the time out of his busy schedule of being a fascist bastard to come and personally be in at the kill of the notorious Budgerigar. He wanted to have his skin made into a throw rug. The first wave of the assault had taken the side off the building, spilling Jo Wilson and his companions down into a pile of rubble and incidentally into the kill-zone.
“It has been a splendid hunt,” Roxx-Off told them. “I’m deeply, deeply impressed. Really. Kill them.”
Of the five people who had been in the room when the explosions had happened there now appeared to be only three. Somehow Xander and Johnstantine had departed in obedience to the wizards’ code of not being there when it happened. Exile and Falcon lay half-stunned, pinned under the debris of Foreman’s former apartment. Only Messenger had somehow managed to land on his feet and stood ready, a parcel-bomb in one hand and a razor-letter in the other. “Come on then,” the last of the Lair Legion bade them. “I’ve got a last message to deliver to you!”
Behind Roxx-Off, the Skree assault vehicle exploded in a ball of flames.
“Excuse me,” Jarvis declared, striding from the blast area. “Do you have a permit to park there?”
“Or indeed, on our planet?” Lisa asked, striding out to join him.
“Who the hell are you?” Roxx-Off demanded, ready to adjust his kill-list.
“Us?” a scary voice right by his shoulder said. It belonged to the Dark Knight in case you hadn’t worked it out. “We’re the Lair Legion.”
“Defenders of the planet and all that,” added the next appearing hero in the Sigourney Weaver bald skin cap.
“Yeah,” the two hundred foot dragon agreed, rising up from behind the ruined tenements. “We’re back!”

In our possibly penultimate (but you never know) next episode: The Lair Legion and friends (and in fact two enemies as well) address a few issues regarding the Skree/Skunk War, the sidekick situation, the history of the Parodyverse and all of that stuff. Meanwhile the Hooded Hood does… nothing? That’s scary. Anyway, all the visual effects and big battle sequences you ever wanted, and hopefully a few important last minute plot twists as well. Due sometime next weekend.

OK. here's attempt THREE at a HTML-corrected version of this damned chapter. Read this one, please.