| #140: Untold Tales of the Reunited Lair Legion: The Return of Fin Fang Foom and Other Events We Can’t Describe In the Title Because of Spoilers Previously, in the ever-complicated Untold Tales: After thwarting Lord Resolution the sentient prophecy of doom, Fin Fang Foom the last of the dragons found his astral essence separated from his comatose body. His empty shell was instead possessed by the Devil Doctor, an ancient undead enemy of the wyrms of Makluos. The Devil Doctor posed as the Lair Legion’s leader to further his plans to impregnate the Parodyverse’s super-powered women and thus breed a host of new dragonets that could act as vessels for his consciousness. This plan is now in motion. After sending the Mansion support crew to investigate a mystery in Antarctica where they were captured by the villainous Balefire, imprisoning the junior LL on his research island Hughlong Dao, and drugging and capturing Yo, Devil Doctor detonated the LairJet carrying the remaining male component of the Lair Legion after first ensuring they could not use their powers to escape. However, Goldeneyed was not on the vessel at the time and so avoided the explosion. Meanwhile expelled Legionnaires Nats and Messenger face overwhelming odds in the criminal-run Pacific basin city-state of Badripoor, while Trickshot is still wanted by the law for his supposed assault on superspy Natalia Romanza. Sorceress grieves for her lost lover Hatman at her grandmother’s home, Covenant House. The Dark Knight was last seen dead and burned on Hughlong Dao, and is still causing considerable concern amongst the villainous minions there. On the far side of the universe, Lord Resolution has raised an armada of followers from a thousand space-faring worlds and seeks to claim dominion over the Parodyverse to enable the Resolution War for which it was created. He is currently being opposed by Galactivac, the Living Death That Sucks. While the Librarian, Xander, Mumphrey, Ziles, and ManMan were able to escape the conflict and are now returning to Luna, Pegasus and Amazing Guy had to be left behind and are now prisoners of Lord Resolution. Pegasus’ connection with the Constellation, the cosmic beings who grant her powers and immortality, has been changed so that in less than seven hours her next communing with them will lead to their mutual destruction. However, Dancer has just arrived to save the day, and her rescue plan appears to be to unleash the Wilde Hunt, a supernatural phenomenon set on catching and slaying Pegasus, against the alien armada. All we have to do is tie this up in around 8,000 words or so then sit back and have a cup of tea. So let’s begin…  A century and a half earlier, Marie Murcheson had died in the house that was now the Lair Mansion, home of the Parodyverse’s greatest heroes. Her banshee ghost still lingered in the shadows of the strange ancient building, and when one of its residents died or was going to die she knew it, and keened her grief. And Marie Murcheson was wailing. A thousand years earlier or more, the last Makluan spacecraft fleeing from the destruction of the dragons’ homeworld crashed on Earth. Galactivac. The Living Death That Sucks, had claimed Makluos, and the being who had brought him there, the undead enemy of the great wyrms, was to have been carried into perpetual imprisonment. Instead he escaped, possessing body of a Makluan corpse, and became the whispered horror known as the Devil Doctor. The sole surviving dragon, corrupted Fin Fang Foom, was brought low and exiled to Comic-Book Limbo, a misty realms of forgotten characters. Untold years later he despaired and gave up his sentience, passing his body to be merged with the human Andrew Dean, who turned Fin Fang Foom into one of the heroes of the modern age, leader of the Lair Legion. Before the Parodyverse accreted into its familiar form, when the stars were different, the Fairly Great Old Ones intruded from other realities, like maggots burrowing into living flesh. They warped the universe around them, reshaping physical laws as easily as a man might twist bed-blankets around him. They ruled countless worlds, dominating the indigenous humanoid lifeforms through their slave-race the Shoggoths. Then the Celestian Space Robots, set as guardians by the creators of the Parodyverse, created a sentient thought, an idea that the Elder Gods could be overthrown. With the help of the rebellious Shoggoths they planted this idea of what the Parodyverse was truly about in the ideas of those humanoid races, and so there was revolution. The stars changed, and the Fairly Great Old Ones slept in death; but they too left traces, an opposing prophecy of their return when the stars were once again right, a race of energy-beings called the Constellation. The Celestians’ sentient thought endured. It became personified as Lord Resolution, so-called because the creators of the Parodyverse had apparently forged that bizarre place to answer some deep question that would be resolved by the culmination of all the Parodyverse’s stories: the Resolution War. Lord Resolution saw his role as facilitating that outcome, and using the genetic obedience implanted in all humanoid lifeforms by the Celestian Space Robots he was able to command vast armies to help his ambition. The Constellation recruited an unwitting agent, the mythological Pegasus, and imbued her with cosmic powers to extend her life and enhance her abilities. The last of the Shoggoths dwelled on Earth in his many-angled lost city but sometimes sent forth shards of himself to walk the world of men. In time both of them came to dwell in the Lair Mansion amongst the Lair Legion. And before even that, when reality was raw and pliable to belief, when living creatures first began to imagine and to dream, the first of the gods were carved from the stuff of narrative. And so that even gods could be brought to check at need, a part of their power was vested into a cruel force that could be summoned by one who was mighty enough and had just cause for vengeance. After a time it came to be called the Wilde Hunt, and it rode with all the strength of whichever entity had set it loose to drag its quarry to eternal pain. Guardians were appointed over the tales that made up the Parodyverse, office-holders such as the Chronicler of Stories; except in those days he was the King of Tales, and long after his office had been superseded by others holding the post that first power endured and wandered the new worlds. He even took to him a wife, the Pegasus, until she betrayed him with infidelity and her lover stole something of terrible value from him. Thus the King of Stories called out and loosed the hounds of the Wilde Hunt to destroy his errant bride, and they hunt her to this day. Pegasus took refuge in the service of the Constellation, but there came a time when they could no longer protect her and the Wild Huntsman prepared to take his due. Resolution, Devil Doctor, Constellation, Wilde Hunt, and more were tangled together in the great story-skein of the Parodyverse, and now the knot had to be unravelled, even if a few of the threads must be broken to set it free. And right now, Goldeneyed leaped feet-first over the table and planted a double-lick into Fin Fang Foom’s reptilian eye. “Lania, run!” he shouted as the big dragon shook off his attack. “This isn’t the Finny we know!” Foom’s tail snaked round and smacked G-Eyed away from him. “Oh really, Goldeneyed, are you so desperate to lead the Lair Legion that it comes to this now?” he asked. Lania heaved the soup tureen at the back of the dragon’s head. “I’d be a lot more convinced if you hadn’t just announced your intention to rape me,” she shouted at him. “What have you done with the real Andy?” Fin Fang Foom moved with remarkable speed, grabbing her by the hair and dragging her to him. “This is the real Andy. Take a good look.” Goldeneyed grabbed Lania and teleported her out of the Makluan’s grasp. He rolled with her as they landed a floor below in the main hall of the Lair Mansion. “Get out of here,” Bry told the frightened spokescelebrity. “Warn the JBH or someone that Finny’s gone mad.” “Why not the Legion?” Lania asked breathlessly. “Where are they?” “I think he killed them, Falc and CSFB! anyway. Just run.” The familiar figure of Yo appeared on the landing looking confused. “What is to be going on?” s/he asked, scampering down to join them. “Finny’s definitely not himself,” Lania answered. Yo reached out, grabbed Goldeneyed, and slammed his head against a wall. “Who is?” the Devil Doctor demanded, shapeshifting back to his draconic form. But Goldeneyed wasn’t done yet. Using his gift for moving matter and energy across dimensions he realigned the vector forces at play around him with instinctive ease. The practical effect was to make him stronger, faster, harder to hurt. And then he punched Fin Fang Foom through the other wall. Foom responded with a breath of nuclear fire. G-Eyed teleported it back into the dragon’s own face. Then he made a tough decision. “You killed the Legion!” he accused. “And the only way I can take you down is to kill you too.” He blinked onto the great wyrm’s neck and reached out, trying to get a sense of where the brain-stem was so he could teleport it away. The Devil Doctor moved too fast for him, draconic spine ridges and claws raking the Legion’s deputy-leader from shoulder to knee. “Gaah!” G-Eyed gasped, rolling away and barely avoiding another tail-lash. He could have teleported out then but he was keeping his enemy distracted while Lania made good her getaway. The dragon accepted his enhanced blows then gripped him hard in an unyielding claw. G-Eyed tried to shake off his injuries and gather his will to teleport away but the pain was too great. “Should have run off while you could,” snarled the Devil Doctor. “As leader of the Lair Legion, I have to tell you that you’re expelled.” “You’d have to be the leader of the Lair Legion for that,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! called out as he bounced off the nerve-cluster in the dragon’s wrist, forcing Foom to drop Goldeneyed, “and you are in no way our Finny!” “Right,” agreed Falcon, bursting through the skylight and flipping a pair of tear-gas projectiles right down the Makluan’s throat. “Finny’s got lots more class. And he doesn’t fight like a pussy.” “You’re alive!” panted Goldeneyed, clutching the rends on his side. “I saw your plane go up in flames.” “And there was a screechy thing keeping us from escaping,” admitted CSFB! He bounded off the wall and snagged the dragon’s head with silly string. “But fortunately our stowaway isn’t really bothered by that stuff, not having ears at all.” Suddenly Foom’s legs were enveloped in a slimy gelatinous goo, something faintly caustic and wriggling. “I was very concerned not to be paying for my keep,” the Manga Shoggoth explained. “I would not wish to enslave you all into maintaining me. So I appended myself to your vehicle to see if I could be of service, and when I apprehended that there was treachery afoot I waited until you humans were unconscious then folded timespace back to avoid the vicinity of the explosion.” Falcon kept the Devil Doctor off balance with small arms fire. The undead scientist did not have the real Finny’s combat experience to cope with multiple and varied attacks. “Couldn’t you have saved us before we got knocked out and got headaches like an elephant sat on us?” Sam Wilson demanded. “Not without driving you insane,” the Shoggoth answered placidly. “I believe we are about to be attacked again, by the way.” “Teleport gates!” G-Eyed warned. “Lots of them.” “Oh yes,” hissed the Devil Doctor wrathfully. “I believe my reinforcements have arrived.” Through the teleportals from Hughlong Dao came the Devil Doctors minions; the mutate spiders, the necro-cyborgs, the si-fan undead, the manscorpions, the shadow assassins, the dog soldiers, the needlemen, the acid walkers, a dozen lifetimesworth of cruel experiments and brutal conditioning unleashed with a single purpose. “Kill them,” the Devil Doctor told them. “Kill the Lair Legion.” “Something’s definitely going on,” Ham Boy noted from the large bell jar he’d been imprisoned in. He peered past the rows of unpleasant looking electrode needles that dotted the side of the huge glass vessel. “Everyone’s running around like mad.” “They’ve been doing that ever since the first scouts they sent looking for DK didn’t come back,” spiffy pointed out. He was hanging from a cat’s cradle of steel cable and plastic tubes ready for his first dip into the mutation pool. Fortunately the full-head helm he wore meant he couldn’t see what they were about to do to him. “Or the second scouts. Or the third.” “This is different,” argued Fashion Accessory, strapped ready on the Impregnation Table for the Devil Doctor’s arrival. “That last set of guards hadn’t even laced their boots up properly.” “They smell frightened,” yapped Glory, although no-one could understand her. “And they are talking about gating people to the Lair Mansion for some great battle.” She sighed when everybody ignored what she was saying and went back to trying to chew through the reinforced cable that bound her. “No reason for you to get your hopes up,” Manmangler told them. The torturess finished making sure nobody was getting out of their designated torment device then took a moment for some psychological pain. “That’s just the sound of our forces here being mobilised through our teleportals, pouring into the Lair mansion to take control of it now the Lair Legion are dead.” “The Lair Legion aren’t dead,” spiffy told her with certainty. Manmangler took a moment to introduce him to her electric cattle prod. “Because?” she demanded. “Because if they were then the Dark Knight would be even more pissed than he is now. And you haven’t found him yet, have you? Isn’t it time for the, what, fifth set of guards to get sent out searching?” Manmangler applied the electrode again, tossed it down, and stalked to the door. “This time I lead the troop myself,” she announced. “I have a very special programme worked out for a man who cannot die.” Across the laboratory Dr Wun Lung Chop was still strapping Visionary onto a treatment table, ready for his first dose of female hormones in his long treatment to become another of the Devil Dcotor’s brides. “I didn’t fill out a consent form, you know,” Vizh assured him. “Hey, doc, you can’t turn dweebo into a girlie,” Kerry Shepherdson called out from her own table. “Well, more of one. He’s fake.” “I’m real dammit,” Visionary argued, “and secure in my masculinity.” “Only a man who art thus secure wouldst wear yon coat of lemon hue,” agreed Harlagaz from the pain chair. Wun Lung gave a nasty cackle. “Well it’s easy enough to determine. We have the dissection tools right here.” “Wait!” cried Visionary, who’d had quite enough of being dissected recently. Then he thought again. “Aw, what the hell. Go on then. Find out. We all want to know.” “What?” cried Kerry, appalled. “No, we don’t. Get away from him! Back off!” “What’s happening?” spiffy demanded from inside his helmet. “They’re dissecting Vizh!” Ham Boy shouted. spiffy nodded to himself. “Excellent!” Ham Boy couldn’t believe the fern-wielder’s callousness in the face of a man’s destruction. “Are you kidding? I thought this dude was your friend.” “Yep,” agreed spiff. “Who’d have thought he had this in him?” “He’s not going to have anything in him soon,” worried Fashion Accessory. “It’ll be all tubes and things in little dishes.” “Get off him!” shouted Kerry, struggling with her chains. “I mean it! If you touch him I’ll turn you into a roman candle!” “Fight back, aged mentor!” Harlagaz urged Visionary. “Let not yon caitiff slaughter thee like a… a thing that is slaughtered.” “No, you don’t get it,” spiffy called to them. “Vizh knows what he’s doing! For once.” Dr Wun Lung Chow ignored the cacophony and made his first diagnostic incision into Visionary’s chest. All power to the lab failed. That included the power keeping the super-power dampners working. And the restraints. Visionary sat up and punched him on the nose. “Aaaagh!” cried out the evil scientist, somewhat nasally. “Ow! Guards!” The remaining guards that had not been diverted to the Lair Island rushed forwards. There was a crumpling of steel as Harlagaz walked out of his prison. “Let the smiting commence for the nonce,” he said with a wintery grin and a cracking of knuckles. “What’s happening?” demanded Ham Boy. “Why did the power short?” “Nobody knows whether Vizh is fake or not,” spiffy explained as his fern burst out of the helmet as if it were a cramped plant pot. “And as of the Ultizon thing nobody’s allowed to know. Ever. If they try to find out then the universe will stop them.” “And Vizh figured this out?” Kerry asked incredulously. She dragged herself loose just as the equipment round the walls exploded in showers of sparks. “Our Vizh?” Fashion Accessory transmuted her own collar into a rather nice diamante necklace with matching earrings, then thoughtfully threw a necro-cyborg through the wall. Glory snapped her own bonds and blurred forward to wreak mayhem on the dog soldiers. “Manmangler! Manmangler!” Wun Lung screamed into the intercom. “Get back here! We need help!” But the torturer did not answer. Instead a different voice came over the radio. “Manmangler can’t come to the phone right now, but if you leave a message she’ll get back to you when she’s out of traction. And when you are, evildoer.” And the Dark Knight cut the link. And tossed the communicator from the shadows to clatter at Dr Lung’s feet. And reached forward. Sufficiently far away that no birth-light from the dying stars there had yet reached Earth, the fate of the Parodyverse was being decided as two galactic beings clashed. On the one side was Galactivac, the Living Death that Sucked, bloated up with the consumed energies of the Dead Galaxy, harnessed through his massive Hoover-Ship. Tall, many-nozzled, he rippled with power as he towered over the scattering armada of spacecrafts that had tried to get in his way. On the other side was the Obliterator, an ancient mechanical being of phenomenal power now possessed by the spirit of Lord Resolution, the sentient concept tasked with ensuring that the Parodyverse ended in the Resolution War its creators had planned. They grappled together and force sufficient to blink out nebulae clashed. On the edge of the conflict the remaining vestiges of Resolution’s multi-world conquest fleet tried to ride out the shockwaves. The command vessel, Fist of Abuse was a Skree battle carrier, commanded by Admiral Rox-Hoff – except that right now Rox-Hoff was also filled with the glory of Lord Resolution, to take a direct hand in the disposal of two special prisoners. He had been in mid-gloat when the Probability Dancer, surely the least predictable of Galactivac’s heralds, burst in and arranged for another unexpected incursion. Hence the Resolution Fleet found itself under siege from an antler-headed Hunstsman and his snarling brutal devil-dogs. The ancient Wilde Hunt had arrived for the prisoner Pegasus, and they had no problem whatsoever about peripheral casualties. “Sorry about this, Penny,” Shep told her teammate as Dancer avoided the first lightning strike from the Huntsman’s staff and improbably managed to short out the cuffs holding the Pegasus. “There wasn’t much else I could use to cause an intervention big enough.” “I shall kill you later,” Pegasus assured her. “For now let us attempt to withdraw and leave all these maniacs to slaughter each other.” Dancer finagled the locks holding Amazing Guy too. “Could you cosmically sense the fire exit?” she asked him anxiously. “Actually, no,” AG shook his head. “Resolution managed to send Eggo into his hibernation cycle. Without Eggo it takes much longer to sift cosmic awareness to useful outputs.” “My suggestion is to not be here,” growled Pegasus, hammering away a hell hound with a starlight-blue cosmic bolt. “My urgent suggestion.” “Ah, the fair Pegasus!” noted the Huntsman. “I can smell your terror from here.” “Anything you can smell is coming from that bull you’re spouting,” the winged warrioress assured him. She laid down covering fire for Dancer to help the stumbling Amazing Guy off the command deck. “You interfere in what you do not comprehend!” Rox-Hoff warned the Wilde Hunt, unleashing his massive psionic potential against them. “You’d be amazed how much I don’t care,” the Huntmsan grinned back wolfishly. “Oh, and I have the gift of conscripting mortals to the hunt as well, so let’s see how many of your slaves will turn and be mine.” Dancer hurried the others down the corridor. “Hurry up. The testosterone levels are getting lethal back there.” “Not that way,” Amazing Guy prompted them. “This way. They’re sending the Impetuous Guard out to get us.” “Let them come,” Pegasus snarled. “I’m getting very tired of running away from people.” “Later,” advised Dancer. “Don’t you have a little problem we have to figure out?” “You mean Resolution planting a psychic time-bomb in my mind to destroy the Constellation when next I have to assume energy form to commune with them?” Pegasus noted. “I still have over six hours to live yet.” “There’s got to be some way round that,” AG assured her as they burst their way through bulkhead after bulkhead. The Protector of the Parodyverse shielded them from attack with his energy constructs while Pegasus blew aside any resistance with her cosmic bolts. “Give me a few moments to think on it…” He didn’t get a few moments. Instead, Gladeater of the Impetuous Guard burst up from beneath him and slammed him through the seven intervening bulkheads of the Fist of Abuse and out into deep space. “Oh, I hate explosive decompression,” complained Dancer as she grabbed a broken spar to keep from being whipped into the void. Pegasus realised that for all her gifts the Probability Dancer was only human. Dancer could not survive the rigours of space. Pegasus shifted to winged horse form and slammed into the ship’s heaving infrastructure, toppling it down to block the gap and seal Dancer behind it with some oxygen.. Unfortunately that left Dancer on the opposite side of the barrier to her. “There she is. Take her down!” shouted Meantor of the Impetuous Guard. Pegasus swung round in winged woman form. “Oh please,” she spat, her dark eyes burning. “Die, traitor to the cause of Resolution!” Gladeater, the immensely powerful first warrior of the She-Yar empire, shouted at AMG outside, managing to completely overcome the usual lack of sound transmission in space. “Get a life!” retorted Amazing Guy, forming an energy construct round his adversary’s head and flicking him off into a nearby sun to cool off. Dancer picked herself up and looked at her tactical situation. It did not improve as the door behind her split and the Wilde Huntsman carved his way through. “Hi,” Dancer waved at him, cartwheeling back as the first of the hell-dogs leaped at her. “Sarah Shepherdson, the Probability Dancer,” the Huntsman leered. “You’ve been my prey before.” “Yeah. I remember Donar spanking you,” Shep called back. “And then there was that thing with the exploding reactor coil and the nuclear flare.” “What thing with the exploding…” began the Huntsman; but just then Dancer backflipped away as the rector coil at the Hunt’s feet detonated and a directed atomic discharge hurled her pursuers out through another rent in the ship’s side. “That could have been a misstep,” Shep admitted to herself as all the atmosphere emptied from the room. Amazing Guy’s cosmic awareness finally assembled the pieces he needed to understand what was going on. “Ooow!” he cried as the information burned through his brain. And then, “Oh, shoot…!” Galactivac and Lord Resolution were amping up their power. The framework of the Parodyverse couldn’t take much more. Soon the walls between realities would collapse. The Hero Feeders would spill from the Vortex. The laws of the multiverse would rip and break. Amazing Guy did a quick tally of Parodyverse powers now in a position to step in and stop this. He couldn’t find any. Everything would come tumbling down, the end of all the stories. And there was only one way to stop it. Pegasus caught her breath and shifted to fully human form for a moment to mitigate her battle injuries. She needed a bath and a cappuccino in the worst possible way. She didn’t get them. “Good evening, Pegasus,” said the Hooded Hood. The battle at the Lair Mansion was going badly for the heroes. Surrounded by literally hundreds of bizarre monsters and mutated warriors, CSFB!, Falcon, and Goldeneyed had little room to manoeuvre, and every moment saw them more worn down. Even the late arrival of the real Yo into the conflict, bleary from his/her earlier drugging, didn’t come close to stemming the tide. Fin Fang Foom himself battled the Manga Shoggoth, nuclear fire evaporating the seared bubbling surface of the elder being as it sought to envelop the struggling dragon. “We’re getting cornered in,” Falcon called, “and I’m getting low on ammo.” “Yo is not thinking we are to be winning this just now!” CSFB! turned to G-Eyed. “So what do we do, oh glorious leader?” he demanded with a big grin. “I already did it,” G-Eyed told them, struggling to stay conscious even as a part of him marvelled that CSFB! was actually enjoying the battle. “Before I ever went to confront evil Finny I teleported off to get some back-up.” “Who?” Falc demanded, fending a giant preying mantis away with the last of his air to surface rocketry. “And where are they?” “She’s been preparing. But now it’s time. It has to be.” He spoke into his com-link. “Lisa, go!” The first lady of the Lair Legion appeared on the balcony above the battle. “I summons Nats!” she announced. Half a world away, under the Badripoor dawn, Nats and Messenger struggled in a valiant, losing battle against Count Armaggedon’s metahuman forces. The running battle had been going on for nearly an hour and a half now, and both heroes were winded, bleeding, and exhausted. “Here!” called Brokenface. “I found them!” Messenger loosed his last razor letter into the villain’s guts. “Bad luck!” he told the power-jawed mercenary. But it was too late. From the sewers below burst Pain Hook and Razorbarb. From the skies came Dreamripper and Dimensionweaver. Further back, Third Degree and Spinoid raced to join the slaughter. Nats froze. “Aw Messenger, I’m sorry about this.” “Everyone has to die sometime,” the postman shrugged. “I’ve done it before. It’s no biggie.” “No, I mean I’ve gotta go…” Nats said, then vanished as the reality of the Parodyverse was reordered to place him somewhere else. Then he was in the Lair mansion, surrounded by grey-clad assassins with katanas. It felt like home. Nats flicked the attackers aside with his psychokinetic gifts and flew into the air. “Lisa!” he called, spotting the amorous advocatrix above the fray. “Summons Messenger. Right now!” The amorous advocatrix didn’t waste time asking why. “I summons Messenger.” “Hold him down while I hurt him,” Spinoid demanded, flexing his razor-sharp bone extensions over the pinned postman. The Messenger felt the familiar pull of Lisa’s deposition call. “Another day,” he promised the science villain. “See you then.” And he was gone. “What the hell is going on?” Messenger demanded as he arrived in the Lair Mansion to be attacked by necro-cyborgs. He ducked low and split one in two with a tight burst of gunfire. Lisa Waltz blew him a wicked kiss. “When I give a party everyone comes,” she promised. “Now I summons Trickshot!” “So I used one’a Deadshot’s gimmicky dead-makin’ arrows ta pin him to the wall, and he got hisself wiped by some freaky corpsifying feedback,” Trickshot explained to Dan Drury as Agents of SPUD crawled over the detritus of recent battle beneath the Paradopolis Variety Theatre. “I will testify to the whole thing,” agreed Desert Rose. “Despite all the odds being against him, this man did what he came to do.” “You believe me?” Tricky asked Drury. “You’ll tell Talia?” Drury chomped on his cigar. “Yeah, I believe ya,” he sighed. “Undead versions of yer variant self makes a lot more sense ta me than you hurtin’ the Contessa.. And we got the evidence pinned right there on the wall if anyone doubts it. “Great,” smirked the irritating archer. “Cause I gotta go.” “We still got a lotta red tape to wade through first, hotshot,” Drury warned Trickshot’s cheesy grin split even wider. “Too bad, spy-guy,” he answered. “See ya around Rose.” And he literally vanished. Drury spat out his cigar butt. “I hate it when the heroes do that,” he growled. Trickshot dodged back so the manscorpion’s tale skewered a shadow assassin instead of him. “Whoa!” he called. “Did we send out for villains?” “They just came uninvited,” Nats called back. “That’s so rude.” “Superhero banter!” exalted CrazySugarFreakBoy! as he pounded a giant radioactive spider with the proportionate strength of a man. “Yaaay!” Lisa still watched the battle with concern, and reached out further. “I summons Sorceress. And thud and Cressida!” “How much longer are you going to sulk in your room?” Hagatha Darkness demanded of her grieving granddaughter. “Fate has taken your lover and your foolishness has bartered your future but moping in gothic despair is hardly an appropriate solution for a woman of our blood. You must get out and face your woes and your foes, child!” Sorceress looked up. “You really think so?” she asked cautiously. “Stop thinking about yourself and help someone else,” Hagatha suggested. “Right,” agreed the Sorceress. “I will.” “You will?” Hagatha frowned at Whitney’s sudden conversion. “Sure,” said Sorceress with a flicker of her former humour. “Watch this.” And she vanished. In the arctic blizzard dull thud trekked over the icefield aiming for home. A thousand miles would get him to the open sea. ~~Keep going~~ Cressida encouraged him. ~~We need to get help for the others that were kidnapped~~ She went on using her transmutative abilities to chance sleet to heat to keep her host alive. “I could’ve been in the pub listening to indy bands right now,” dull thud objected, trudging onwards. “Getting a few pints down me, chatting up some slapper that turns out to be a coatstand when I’m sober. But nooo, you wanted to join the Lair Legion.” ~~I’ve got to admit, Davie, that wandering lost in the Antactic is actually preferable to me than a night out at the Fatal Toilet~~ Cressida confessed. “That’s cause you’re th’ one on the inside, Cressie.” Then they felt the summons. ~~Ah well, it’s all moot now~~ the wonder worm telepathed as they were dragged off to the fight. Falcon was dragged down under a pile of needlemen, each seeking to stab through his flight armour with their pulsing plastic probes, to fill him with the unholy fluids that powered their own protracted and agonised existence. He struggled but there were too many. And then the needlemen burst like overinflated balloons, screaming as their unnatural lives were terminated. And the Sorceress stood over them. “Welcome to the team,” Whitney Darkness told the stunned flyer. Behind her, dull thud tackled a bunch of suddenly-peaceable and rather floppy acid walkers (Cressida has turned acid to placid and flaccid) and relieved his tensions by headbutting a shadow assassin. “Fatal Toilet!” he screeched angrily, to the incomprehension of his martial arts adversaries. “Flint Mitchigan and the Violated Barbies!” Some of the cybermidgets backed away from thud. He was just too weird for them. Overhead Lisa dodged a calculated tail-swipe from the Devil Doctor and went on evening the odds. She couldn’t get echoes from Dancer, or Pegasus, or Amazing Guy, but for the first time in days she could sense… “I summons Ziles!” As soon as the Galactibus alighted on Landing Pad Boccacio Lee Bookman was out and running for the Main Repository. “Secure the Library,” he called to D.D., the Lunar facility’s artificial intelligence. “With special reference to erasing any IOL over-ride codes. The Intergalactic Order of Librarians has been compromised by Resolution. We have to take steps.” “On it,” agreed D.D. hastily. “What now?” demanded ManMan. “We still haven’t found Dancer, and we’ve lost AG and Pegasus.” “Now we find more intelligence about what’s goin’ on in the battle between Galactivac an’ Resolution,” Sir Mumphrey Wilton told him, “then we go back and get our friends. We’re not going to abandon them.” “You won’t be able to help them now,” Xander told them all sadly. “It’s too late. It’s gone too far.” “What do you mean?” questioned Ziles. “I don’t like the sound of that.” Xander opened his mouth to speak, but explanation or evasion Ziles would never hear. She was gone, whisked to a battle on the world below. “Lisa? What’s going on?” the Xnylonian demanded as she appeared beside the amorous advocatrix above the raging carnage. “You tell me,” the first lady of the Lair Legion invited. “With particular detail on why Finny’s trying to kill us all.” Ziles pointed a quick sensor probe at the Makluan who was now breaking free of the last shreds of Shoggoth and turning on the Legionaires. “Uh-oh. His brain patterns are all wrong for that to be Finny in there,” she warned. “Devil Doctor,” hissed Lisa. “It has to be. Damn!” She felt cross at herself for not figuring the clues sooner, and took it out on other people. “I summons De Brown Streak and Mr Epitome,” she hissed sourly. The named heroes appeared over the battle by the authority vested in Lisa by the Booke of the Law and toppled down into the fray. Mr Epitome ripped the tail off a manscorpion and used it to knock back the transplant mutates. “Chaos, felons, massive property damage, and gratuitous violence,” he noted. “I’m at the Lair Mansion.” “Lair Legion,” sighed Josh Clement as he geared up to speeds that made the dog soldiers around him seem to be moving in slow motion. “Figures.” “Yes, the Lair Legion!” shouted Nats, incinerating the last of the giant spiders, ignoring his wounds in the thrill of the moment. “Lair Legion, Line Up!” “Holy Perez scene!” rejoined CSFB! joyously. But Devil Doctor rejoining the fray had tipped the scales again, and the heroes became more and more hard-pressed as the casualties began to mount. Nats went down to a head wound and G-Eyed to his previous injuries. Falcon took a nasty blast of nuclear fire that spilled him down beneath the throng of cyber-mutates. Ziles brought down twelve of the undead ninjas before the poisons from their weapons became systemic. Cressida fell out of the fight when dull thud vanished under a collapsed wall. “I’m glad we were able to have this little soiree in the end,” the dragon confessed, flexing his wings and knocking CSFB! and Trickshot to the ground. “This is much more personal and visceral.” He almost laughed as he opened the teleportals again to bring in his reserves. “But now it’s time to end this.” The transportation gates shimmered into being. An angry hemidemigod jumped out and whacked the wyrm on the nose. “Greetings, foul drakkenbeast!” thundered Harlagaz. “Prepare to meet thy kidneys!” The other members of the junior LL leaped through behind him. “Hey guys, what’s black and white and goes boom?” Kerry asked the monochrone shadow assassins as she hurled a package towards them. None of them had time to answer before the explosion. “Lair Legion, Line Up!” shouted spiffy, seeing the melee. “Nats already said that, Neo-spiffy that he is,” called Trickshot. “And it was lame then.” “Not the easy win you were looking for, Devil Doctor?” the Dark Knight demanded, dropping down on Fin Fang Foom’s snout to release the tear gas right before his eyes. “You get one last chance to come quietly.” The Devil Doctor blinked away from the spray of gas and shook DK loose. The majority of the minions were down now, and the others would fall soon. “Quietly?” mocked the undead Makluan from Foom’s throat. “Try to stop me now and I’ll kill your precious leader from within before you can save him.” “Uh-oh, hostage scenario,” scowled Whitney. “What do we do?” DBS demanded, glancing at Lisa and Visionary. “We can’t do anything,” the first lady of the Lair Legion admitted. “Not as long as he’s in that body. So I summons Fin Fang Foom… the real one!” The Devil Doctor stared at her. “What?” he growled. And then the astral dragon hammered into him from nowhere, scorching into his mind and lashing out with tooth and claw. Hello, Devil Doctor seethed Andy Dean, I’m back! The undead Makluan twisted round and gripped his attacker by the metaphorical throat. “So?” he demanded. “This body is mine now. You’re the newcomer. The outsider. You’re the one who can be disembodied forever.” Finny matched his enemy grip for grip. “I’m the good guy,” he replied. “I’m the Last Makluan. I’m the leader of the lair Legion.” “I have been a nightmare to your race since before even your body was spawned, Fin Fang Foom. I was great amongst the first wyrms. My experimentation first unlocked our genetic potential to morph our shapes. And when they would not acknowledge my genius, would not bow to my reign, I arranged for my return even from death to be the plague that saw them all in their graves.” “Not all,” Foom vowed. “I stand in their place to accuse you and to avenge them. I stand ready to face the nightmare and to destroy it forever.” The Devil Doctor laughed. “You cannot destroy me. I am the stronger, the older, the greater. I am on my home ground now, not yours. I shall snuff your intellect but leave sufficient for you to dwell whimpering and bodiless through all eternity knowing what you have become.” “You really think that an undead echo of a minor Makluan scientist can beat me?” Finny demanded. “Me? I have fought gods and Celestians, seen worlds end and universes die. I have faced faerie and friend and doubt and death, and I still stand before you. You think you are the Makluan legend?” He pushed deep into his enemy’s mind and lanced a chilling, unstoppable thought, “Yesterday’s creature, you are nothing more than food for the wyrm!” And such was the intensity of Fin Fang Foom’s conviction that for one tiny moment a flicker if doubt troubled the Devil Doctor’s mind. And Foom was on it, pressing, shredding, burning, destroying. The Devil Doctor had felt Andrew Dean’s mind before, but not like this, not as implacable, as deadly, as assuredly centred as if he could destroy a thousand undead dragon-spirits. The Devil Doctor abandoned Foom’s body and fled. Finny dragged him back. “Not this time,” he told the villain. “No more hiding and plotting and waiting for a weakness to exploit. No more gloating over past sins or nursing new hatreds. No more Makluan bogeyman!” “No!” screeched the Devil Doctor as Foom began picking at him anew. “Yes,” promised the last Makluan as he took his time dismantling his foe. In the end the searing nuclear fire was a mercy to the undead wyrm. Dancer choked in the freezing vacuum. A cold blackness rose before her eyes. And then she was warm again, and somehow she didn’t need to breathe. She realised she was grasping shining white hair, a mane, and she was travelling so fast the stars around her were a blur. “Pegasus?” “Who else?” demanded Penny Christadopolous. “How far behind us are they?” A glance behind revealed who ‘they’ were. The Wild Huntsman and his Wish Pack were close on their tail, and getting nearer. “No matter how fast you are, they can always go a little bit faster,” Pegasus explained. “That’s their magic, old magic from the dawn of time. I can’t escape them.” “So we fight,” swallowed Dancer. “It’s not over.” “It certainly isn’t,” agreed the flying horse. “There’s your boss down there.” Dancer realised they were riding straight at Galactivac and Resolution into a hurricane of forces, a chaos of lashing energies that could shatter planets. “He’s not my boss,” she called over the scream of realities colliding. “I quit. I prefer waitressing.” Pegasus threaded her way through the lethal maze as only thousands of years of experience would allow. Still the Huntsman followed, although a few of his hounds miscalculated their vectors and were incinerated by the forces they vaulted. “There’s Amazing Guy, in the centre of it all.” Dancer spotted. “He’s trying to reason with Galactivac and Resolution.” “Of course he is,” snorted Pegasus. “He doesn’t want them to keep fighting and destroy the Parodyverse, which is what will happen if they’re not stopped.” “So we help him,” Dancer shrugged. “I didn’t have much planned for this afternoon except a bit of shopping anyway.” The first of the hell-hounds caught up with them. Pegasus kicked back with hooves shining with glittering force and the creature’s face exploded. It shook it’s neck then took up the chase again. “Do we have a plan?” Dancer asked as they seared through the maelstrom. “There is a plan,” admitted Pegasus as they closed on AG. “We go in there, stop Resolution, and save the universe.” “And afterwards?” “There is no after.” Finny blinked once then fell over. Mr Epitome jumped aside just in time. “What the heck…?” the paragon of power demanded as he looked at the fallen dragon. “Is there any chance anybody could explain to me what’s happening here. And where did the Dark Knight go? There’s a warrant out for him.” “What Dark Knight?” asked Ziles innocently, smiling sweetly at the law. Messenger snickered. De Brown Streak was also mysteriously absent. Glory did not offer to track them; but she did romp over to nuzzle a wet comforting nose into Mr Epitome’s hand. “Finny?” asked Lania cautiously, staring at the fallen dragon. “Yes,” agreed Andrew Dean, painfully shifting back to his human form. “Really?” checked Goldeneyed, being helped forward by CSFB! Sorceress concentrated a moment. “Really,” she agreed. “The real Fing.” “Was that a joke?” marvelled Nats. “Did Whitney Darkness just make a joke?” “Anybody want to brief me?” Fin Fang Foom demanded pointedly. “On everything?” G-Eyed hastily took the leader of the Lair Legion aside and spoke in urgent, hushed tones. Andy listened carefully and rubbed his aching forehead. At last he returned to check that everyone had been recovered and their wounds were being treated. ~~We’ve got a situation in the Antarctic~~ Cressida warned him. “I can’t summons Al B. or the others,” Lisa added. “I think they’re still alive though.” “Let’s get on it, then,” Finny demanded. “Dream, Whitney, Yo, Nats, Manga Shoggoth get down there now with Cressie and see what’s happening.” Nats held up one hand. “Um… I think I got expelled,” he noted. “You’re hired again. Get going.” “You think I’m just going to…?” “Get. Going.” Nats sighed. “Right. Getting going, o glorious leader.” “What about the partly-cute Shoggoth?” Yo asked curiously. “Why are you being to sending him along?” Finny enumerated the points. “One, he’s just save your lives already. Two, he knows the Antarctic, Three, he knows weird science. And four, I’m drafting him as a probationary member of the Lair Legion. Okay?” “How interesting,” considered the Manga Shoggoth. He did not seem unhappy. “Welcome back, Finster,” grinned Trickshot. “There’s just one thing still bothering me,” admitted the Sorceress, shuddering in the post-battle chill. “Marie Murcheson. Our banshee. She only wails like that if someone has died.” “The Devil Doctor’s gone for good,” suggested Finny. “That wouldn’t do it. She senses a death in the family. But we all survived. We’re all here.” Ziles looked through the sundered ceiling into the skies. “Not all of us,” she said in a small voice. Amazing Guy’s powers were maxxed just surviving in the proximity of Resolution and Galactivac. He wasn’t even sure they were listening to him. He knew he couldn’t survive there much longer. But what was the point in leaving, since the Parodyverse was going to collapse anyway? There was a rainbow streak and suddenly Pegasus and Dancer were beside him. “Take Dancer into your force bubble,” Pegasus demanded. “I’m shifting form and she won’t be covered by my enchantments if she’s not on my back.” AG slipped the quantum force sheath round Shep. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “I just thought I’d have one last nag at Galactivac,” Dancer answered. “For old times’ sake.” “And we brought company,” Penny added as the Wilde Hunt appeared all around them. “Bad company.” The hounds ranged around Pegasus as she hung there in her winged human form, ensuring there was no escape. “The hunt ends here,” the Huntsman assured her. “Our longest, finest chase. Now your eternity of pain begins.” They swarmed around Pegasus, AG, and Dancer, between the vast implacable figures of the Obliterator and the Hooverer of Worlds, as star systems boiled around them on the edge of the universe. “Resolution,” called Pegasus, “this is your last chance to back off.” She glanced at the Huntsman, “Same for you, bucko.” “You think Resolution snuffing you will save you from me?” the Master of the Hunt snorted. “Well that’s the thing of it, see,” Penny answered him. “The Obliterator can’t fry me to oblivion right now. Not if he wants me to merge with the Constellation in a couple of hours as Resolution planned. I’m the only one here who’s safe.” “Except for the psychotic guy with a deer on his head,” prompted Dancer. “Well yes,” agreed Pegasus. “Antler heads are so seventh century.” “If you don’t help us stop Resolution now there won’t be an eternity,” Amazing Guy shouted at the Huntsman over the cacophony of destruction. “As if I care!” called back the Master. “I can make a fraction of a second become eternity for my prey.” Pegasus looked around her, her long hair swirling in the tides of chaos. “AG, I need you to get Dancer out of here now,” she said. “I know you can’t maintain that energy bubble much longer. Go.” “Nobody escapes,” the Huntsman promised. “You,” Pegasus told him, “ are the minor enemy here.” “We’re not abandoning you,” Dancer told Pegasus. “I know,” Penny replied with a faint smile, “but you are leaving. It’s not the same. There’s a plan. Go.” She hesitated then asked, “Do you trust me?” Dancer considered this. “Yeah,” she conceded, “I guess I do.” She turned to AG. “Get us outta here.” Pegasus broke left, distracting the hounds. Amazing Guy projected wicked spikes from his energy construct and cut through the Wish Pack for open space. The Wilde Huntsman surged forward and caught Pegasus by her slender throat. “Now,” Pegasus told him, “I want you to look very carefully.” And she held up a stubby, vaguely obscene-looking black device about the size of a banana. “Know what this is?” The Huntsman was momentarily nonplussed. The prey wasn’t playing right. “No,” he conceded. “Galactivac is fighting Resolution personally to avoid using this weapon,” she explained. “It’s from Galactivac’s Hoover-Ship, taken from there and given to me by the Hooded Hood. It’s the failsafe in case the Living Death that Sucks ever goes completely out of control and has to be taken down. It’s called the Universal Discombobulator, or the Galactic Nobbler. Or The End.” Suddenly the Wild Huntsman realised his danger. “You wouldn’t use it,” he denied. “In two hours I die with the Constellation, if these guys here haven’t destroyed the Parodyverse and you haven’t dragged me to Hades by then,” Pegasus replied. “What do you think?” Suddenly the battle between the Obliterator and Galactivac ended. Penny Christadopolous had their full attention. The Huntsman actually backed away. “I think you’re too selfish to sacrifice your life for any reason,” he adjudged. “Once I was maybe,” Pegasus smiled at him, radiant like an angel with the furnace of creation at her back. “Now I am a member of the Lair Legion.” And she thumbed the button on the Galactic Nobbler. A segment of the universe three billion miles across ceased to exist. And the banshee howled. Coming Next: Okay, we’ve sorted out Deadshot and the Devil Doctor, the Impetuous Guard, the Skree, the Skunks, the Thonnagarians and all kinds of other prosthetically-challenged alien races, the Badripoor escape, thud in Antarctica, and Yo’s bunny gift to the Shoggoth. What’s left is Balefire’s attempt at world conquest, Blackhurt’s deal with Sorceress, G-Eyed, Laurie, DBS, Beth, Nats, Cubby, Annette and the gang, and Ziles’ imminent departure. But first there’s the matter of the Hooded Hood’s plans for the Lair Legion, and what he’ll have to do to Fin Fang Foom to make them work. So join us next time for some of that, for Flapjack’s finest hour, for more sleaze than you can throw a Slimy Slaver Lovetoad at, and for more angst than an episode of Melrose Place in the story we had to call The Destruction of Laurie Leyton Oh, and in case you were wondering about our story’s real title, I guess it’s Untold Tales of the Reunited Lair Legion: The Return of Fin Fang Foom and the Death of Pegasus.  Shocked and Grieving Footnotes: Marie Murcheson, the banshee of the Lair Mansion first appeared in Untold Hallowe’en Tales of the Lair Legion: The Bride of Shabba’dhabba’Dhu and Other Tragedies: Hallowe'en I - The Shower Scene. Murdered on the site a century and a half ago by city founder Wilbur Parody in an attempt to raise dark elder gods, she remains as a supernatural guardian of Parody Island, protecting it against certain kinds of occult incursion. It is not usually easy to communicate with her. The Origin of Fin Fang Foom is complicated by never having all appeared in one single story. Young Andy Dean stumbled into Comic Book Limbo, merged with the brain-dead Fin Fang Foom, was sent to an alternate dimension to be trained as a superhero, returned to be brought up alongside a reincarnated Greg “Dark Knight” Burch, and eventually was able to openly operate in the Parodyverse as the great wyrm. The closest we’ve got to detailing all of this coherently is probably The Wilde Hunt first debuted in Dancer/Donar Special Edition #7, where they were unleashed after Dancer when Donar’s father believed she had seduced the Prince of Ausgard. The Huntsman seems to have an unlimited number of hounds, immunity to most forms of harm, an ability to track over cosmic distances, and the gioft of demanding those who he encounters to join his pack and battle at his side against his quarry. He’s not nice. The Manga Shoggoth operates under a different set of physical laws to those prevalent now in the Parodyverse. This allows him to do things with mass and dimension that are impossible for others, and which will drive mortals who witness them insane. The Shoggoth is usually quite polite about showing his true dimensions. The Shoggoth’s comments in this story about not wishing to enslave the Lair Legion to maintain him refer back to the Shoogoth-race’s own origins as slave servitors to the Fairly Great old Ones and their eventual rebellion. The Devil Doctor and Hughlong Dao: the Devil Doctor first debuted in The Journal of Sir Mumphrey Wilton, Extract Seven: In which the insidious Devil Doctor reveals his true colours, and nobody is quite who they seem to be , where it seemed he was a sinister oriental mastermind in the Fu Manchu tradition. He had lived for centuries in his Eastern fortresses, plotting, brooding, and experimenting to create the range of bizarre creatures we see in our story today. It was only at the very end of his debut that his Makluan origins were betrayed. This arc is the first time we’ve seen his principal base at Dragon Island. Manmangler last appeared torturing Falcon in #108: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Candia, My Candia (and also featuring Trickshot’s Deeply Difficult Day) Visionary’s fakeness became a matter of cosmic importance in Lisa’s summonsing powers: As revealed in So Is Penny Really Truly Dead? I don’t know. I’ll be treating her as such until poster-Penny asks me otherwise, but I did write myself a little wriggle-room in case we ever need to revive her. I’m guessing that her passing won’t come as a shock to those of you who have participated in discussion on the future of the LL in chats, e-mail, and on the board. I hope none of you are too upset at her leaving the team. I just felt we need some slots for members whose posters do regularly contribute these days. As with the late great Magnetic Techbird I felt it was better to have a good last story with Peggy than to fade her into oblivion, and Pegasus’ last story has driven a good part of the previous thirty-odd chapters of Untold Tales. I know she’s also slated to appear in some other people’s stories, and we’ll have to sort the continuity concerns out later for those who are concerned. I really hope I haven’t ruined anyone’s work. And the Shoggoth? He’s Really on the Team? That seems like a very popular wish right now, and I spoke at New Year with Chris Leeson, the Manga Shoggoth’s real-life avatar, when he confirmed that he’d like to be in the Legion. That makes the current line-up to be Finny, G-Eyed, Yo, CSFB!, Nats, Sorceress, Ziles, Trickshot, Dancer, and Cressida, with probationers Falcon and the Manga Shoggoth; but see next issue before you print that out for keeps. Oh, and About Next Issue’s Numbering… I think we’ll probably slot the “Valeria’s Story” special in the list as number 141, so we’ll be covering the consequences of this episode in #142. And that inevitably means that all my previous estimates about when various events happen will be at least one issue number out. That’s my excuse, anyway. 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. |