Baron Zemo's Lair. - <font color="lightslategrey" face="Lucida Sans Unicode">Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: The Last Night of the Parodyverse

Baron Zemo's Lair

Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: The Last Night of the Parodyverse
Friday, 20-Aug-1999 13:08:09
195.92.194.103 writes:

Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: The Last Night of the Parodyverse

When dawn swept around the globe, the capitals of major countries across the Earth awoke to find new additions to their civic layout. As the sun broke over the horizon the quarter-mile high Space Robots descended to take their station mere inches above the highest buildings of the cities. In Tokyo, Beijing, Sydney, Moscow, Brussels, Berlin, London, Paris, and finally in alien-slime-covered Washington the massive Celestians hovered, unmoving, inscrutable, bringing down property values like the Yurt buying a bungalow next door.
Out across Paradopolis Sound, on the island once owned by city father Wilbur Parody and now occupied by this world’s premiere superheroes, the last five of the vast entities formed a wide circle, seeming to stare down on the sprawling and unkempt mansion where the fate of the Parodyverse was being decided.
“They are soooo creeping me out,” complained Troia. She tried saying it again, twice, but since no one gave her a paid vacation she eventually shut up and kept on minuting the meeting.
It took her quite a while just to record who was there. All the regular current Legionnaires were present: Jarvis, Lisa, Dark Knight, Banjooooo, Starseed, Donar, NTU-150, CrazySugarFreakBoy!, Hatman, and Goldeneyed. G-Eyed had recovered somewhat from his stunned stupor (caused by his prodigious efforts in returning the Legion from the Marvel Universe) through Donar’s use of Ausgardian healing techniques, which involved heaving the injured into the freezing bay and seeing if they were alive enough to swim. Also present were spiffy, newly returned from his triumphant defeat of the alien-impostor President but also from the federal security forces’ thank-you full body cavity examination, DarkHwk, still holding on to the video camera he had used in the recent Skree/Skunk war and occasionally judging dramatic shot angles in his mind, Space Ghost, who had currently slumped under the table but no-one had noticed, Cheryl, still smouldering after discovering that her house was now without mains plumbing, electricity, or gas since it had been teleported here to Parody Isle, Visionary, still suffering since Cheryl had discovered that her house was now without mains plumbing, electricity, or gas since it had been teleported here to Parody Isle, Fleabot, fully repaired after his adventures in housekeeping, Melissa, Jarvis’ wife, very pale and quiet, Tina, watching her and frowning, Zebulon and Frog-Man, surreptitiously playing battleships, Yo, happily enjoying having so many friends together in one room and trying to detach Lisa’s cat from his purple thought bunny, and ManMan and Exile, both of whose costumes had been adorned with substances not customarily used on leather or spandex, both looking uncomfortable in the pretty lacy pink and sheer black dressing gowns thoughtfully loaned them by Tina and Lisa respectively while their outfits were on spin cycle.
“This is so humiliating,” Exile hissed to his befrilled companion.
“Hey, don’t complain. You might be pink and frilly but at least yours doesn’t have… cut out bits,” ManMan snarled back.
And then there was the Hood. Swathed in grey, sitting back at the far end of the table on a chair that was more like a throne (and hadn’t been until he sat on it), the cowled crime-czar was watching the meeting with a detached amusement.
“Is this everyone?” Jarvis asked. “What about Moo and that alien who blows up moons?”
“They vanished last night,” Lisa reported. “Walked over the hill hand in hand to admire a sunset or something. I have no idea where they are now. Good riddance I say.”
“The Abandoned Legion are still in Washington,” spiffy admitted. “Cap is eager to question the captured Skunk leader about alien infiltrators. Cobra is eager to question him when Cap’s looking the other way. And Sorceress can sense impostors, so Dan Drury has her checking every Senator and Congressman he’s never really liked. According to the Director of SPUD, Sorceress’ powers work best if the test subject is standing a bucket of salted porridge, so that’s what Drury’s arranging.”
“I never heard that about Sorceress’ powers,” Tina objected.
Spiffy shrugged, “Hey, if we can’t trust the word of an ultra-secret, unaccountable, high-tech quasi-government agency who can we trust?”
“I noticed the Abandoned Legion were down on manpower,” Troia chipped in, “so I shipped Paste Pot Pete out to boost their strength.”
“Pete?” spiffy asked. “Pete as in I-was-damn-near-killed-by-baddies, got-dragged-away-from-my-intensive-care-ward-drip-and-catapulted-into-Comic-Book-Limbo-and-then-into-the-Skree/Skunk-War Pete?”
“You have a problem with me using my initiative?” Troia frowned, unconsciously reaching for her six-foot spear.”
“Um, no,” spiffy assured her. “Well done.”
“Magnetic Techbird?” Lisa wondered. After all, the magnetic-manipulating antihero had saved Paradopolis from nuclear death yesterday.
Fin Fang Foom answered. “Made himself scare as soon as the threat was over. I think the government want to bill him for the missiles he downed.”
“Well, they tried to stick us with that,” Cheryl explained, “but I just told ‘em that MT did it. That’ll teach him to swan off just after I’d finished the press pack announcing his joining the Legion all those months ago.”
“I believe Garrick’s term was ‘notorious mutant techno-terrorist,” Dark Knight reported. “Oh, the man in boxers who we fished out from the ruins with Exile left as soon as he could steal Exile’s drying uniform.”
“What?!” gasped Exile. He really wasn’t happy about the pink housecoat. He slyly wondered what kind of uniform ManMan wore.
“He was apparently afraid that some of us might deduce his secret identity as the Falcon,” DK shrugged. “As if it wasn’t blatantly obvious from the first.”
“Of course,” Banjooooo agreed. “Blatant.”
“Blatant” echoed spiffy. The two had a detective agency. They were supposed to detect things. Not working it out would be bad for business.
“What about this guy who turned up to exorcise the house when Hallie was possessed?” Jarvis checked.
“He vanished after getting me out of my lavat… out of my stasis field,” Exile reported. “So did that weird guy in the red coat who was with him. He did say his name, but…”
“And Messenger vanished after Starseed stopped me from apprehending him,” Hatman complained.
“I’m sorry,” Starseed responded. “I said I was sorry. I am sorry. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do and all that. I couldn’t just let him go to the chair.”
“We’ll deal with that later,” Jarvis promised darkly. “For now I’m just compiling the missing persons list.”
“Well, my mom’s not home,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! considered, “and her producer called to say they’d had to put on The Best of Melanie Hastings On Premature Ejaculation to cover for her talk show and her other producer called to ask where she was for the debut of War of the Giant Jugs so I was wondering if perhaps she’d been whisked off like when Ma and Pa Kent and the Bizarro Superman were…”
“She was here,” Troia remembered. “Looking for you. She asked the sidekicks. Then they all just… vanished.”
“Like in Poltergeist?” CSFB! enthused. “Was the TV on?”
The Hooded Hood spoke for the first time in the meeting, his rich Latvian tones cutting across the speculation. “Melanie Hastings was captured by Imke Ilsa Zemo, as were the Association of Superhero Sidekicks,” he exposited. “Zemette was instrumental in placing the traps which captured the various super-powered individuals of the planet who were not lost into Comic-Book Limbo. She arranged the stasis fields around Castle Zemo and…” (with a glance at Exile) “…elsewhere.”
“Zemette’s got mom?” CSFB! gasped. “We gotta go save her, like when the Poison Memories got the Warriors’ folks and started to chop their fingers off…”
“I have a few scores to settle with those sidekicks,” Banjoooo admitted.
“And a huge fridge bill to stick Hat Kid with,” Hatman added.
“By the way, does anyone care that that old hobo who wandered into our kitchen back in Hell’s Bathroom is now raiding the Mansion kitchen freezer?” Cheryl asked conversationally. The hairy old vagrant had been in Visionary’s condo at the point that G-Eyed had transported it.
“M’ friend,” Space Ghost murmured and slowly crawled across the floor towards the kitchen. “I looooooove that old hobo.”
“I have got to get a security system on that refrigerator,” NTU-150 considered.
“Um, do we know exactly where Zemette took her prisoners?” Fin Fang Foom asked, desperately trying to keep the meeting from becoming… well, a typical Lair Legion meeting, really.
“Oh yes,” the Hooded Hood replied. “Herringcarp Asylum, my home. She is watching us from there now, through my Portal of Pretentiousness.”

“Oh, s$*%!” Zemette swore, as the cowled crime czar turned straight towards her mirror perspective and fixed his glowing green eyes on her.
“She sought to betray everybody, even me, but her plans were thwarted by the heroic efforts of the Lair Legion in escaping their exile and by the presence of Yo-ling, the overlooked sidekick, who prevented the incursion of the Skree and Skunks that Zemette intended to thwart me.”
“Poor Yo-ling,” puzzled Yo. “You are being a very uncute bad man, Hooded Hooding Person.”
“What do you mean?” Zemette shouted at the mirror. “You can’t know about all this! I tricked you! I tricked you all!”
“Then Imke moved in to Herringcarp and believed she had mastered it and the Portal. The Portal showed her what she wanted to see; what I wanted her to see,” the Hood continued.
“No! You’re lying!” screamed the Contessa. “You’re making this up!”
“No,” the Hooded Hood directly answered her. “I am not.”
Then suddenly Zemette realised that she was alone in the stronghold of a dangerous adversary, and he was holding the remote control.
“We’ve got to get over there, Hoody Hoodpecker, and do the rescue thing,” CSFB! demanded, “like when Kang and the Avengers teamed up to take on Baltag and rescue Ravonna or when Supes and Luthor…”
“There is no need,” interrupted the cowled crime czar. “I have already arranged access for yet another of Jarvis’ missing persons. After all, who should discipline a wayward, lost child… but their own father.”
“Zemo!” Goldeneyed gasped.
“Zemo!” Zemette gasped at the other side of the mirror.
“Zemo,” Zemo agreed, stepping out of the shadows and pointing a pistol at his daughter.
“Oh, so you’re Zemo,” Meggan Foxxx realised, finally matching up the four-coloured descriptions her son had rambled endlessly on about with the satanically-precise and controlled presence beside her.
“Father! You’re alive!” Imke cried, moving forward to embrace him.
“I think not,” the Baron said, chambering a bullet in his luger. “If my daughter hugs me, I prefer it to be without the neural palm disruptor, nein?”
Zemette looked slightly embarrassed. “I was only doing it all to please you, daddy. I thought if I could show you that I was a true Zemo, capable of accomplishing anything I set my will to, it might bring us a little closer together.”
“Really?” asked the masked monarch.
“Wow, she’s real good, ain’t she?” Meggan admired. “As one pro to another, hon, you’ve got what it takes.”
“You lie like a Zemo,” the Baron admitted to Zemette. “And you have done well in your first attempts at world conquest. It was an error for you to seek to control the Hood’s place of power. Never underestimate an enemy, Imke.”
“Yes, father,” the Contessa answered penitently.
“I have released your prisoners,” Zemo told her. “I was going to kill the whole annoying rabble, but then it occurred to me that they were actually even more annoying to the Lair Legion, so I let them go.”
“They’ll take a while before they stop limpin’, through,” Meggan added with some satisfaction.
“And so to you,” Zemo told his errant daughter. “You have proved that you have what it takes to be a true woman of the Zemo line.”
Zemette looked up in joyous surprise. The old fool was actually going to forgive her. The situation was suddenly filled with many possibilities. “Thank you, father. Then my efforts have been worthwhile.”
“You need but one thing more to take your place in the Zemo family,” the Baron reflected.
“What’s that?” Zemette asked.
Zemo shot her three times in the stomach. She screamed as she crumpled up, crippled with pain. “Why, you need to be encased in ice, like your mother, my beloved Heike,” he told the writhing girl. Heinrich Zemo had his own ideas on parental discipline.
Meggan Foxxx was horrified. “You just shot your own little girl!”
“That’s right, madame. And next I am going to destroy the so-called heroes of the Lair Legion, then claim the Secret which is hidden beneath their mansion.” He stood over his bleeding daughter, admired himself in the swirling glass of the Portal of Pretentiousness and laughed. “Yes, I know you’re monitoring this, Hood. It doesn’t matter. I’ll get you anyway. I have a small neutron bomb secreted in one of Lisa’s bedside… devices, and by triggering it I can eliminate you all and leave the treasure below the island intact.”
Zemo drew a trigger device from the fur of his collar.
“Hey, my l’il boy Dream is on that island!” Meggan Foxxx complained.
“Only for about three seconds,” Zemo advised her.
Melanie Hastings acted with the finest-honed motherhood instincts on the planet. Before Zemo had counted down to two she gathered all her strength and pushed Zemo.
Through the Portal.
The Baron teetered on the edge for a moment, the rainbow swirl of the Hood’s multi-dimensional gateway pulsing around him. Then he toppled in and vanished.
Zemo was gone forever.
No, really. How could he possibly come back from that?
Face it, that’s the last we’ll ever see of him.

The Hooded Hood turned aside with a small, satisfied smile. The loose ends were knotting themselves off nicely. As the butler leading the Lair Legion droned on the cowled crime-czar allowed himself to check up on a couple of other dangling plotlines…

Falcon’s flat was a mess. It looked like the very worst of the fighting in the Skree/Skunk was had taken place right in his living room. Unfortunately the battle hadn’t touched Falcon’s home, and this was just it’s natural state. Even the cigar-chomping one-eyed intelligence agent sitting on the sprung end of the sofa was starting to be a regular feature.
“Dan Drury! What are you doin’ here? I fixed your alien invasion for you.”
“You did, didn’t you,” the Director of SPUD (Super-menace Prinipal Undercover Directorate) agreed. “And I damned fine job it wuz too, Wilson. I’d have had a man like you in my platoon back in the Big One. I wuz so impressed I stopped the full IRS audit you were gonna have.”
“I wasn’t getting an IRS audit,” Falson objected. He gestured to his ramshackle apartment. “Do I look like I’m holding out on the IRS?”
“Oh,” Drury frowned, inspecting his cigar. “Then I guess it must have been that we wuz gonna sic the IRS onta you if you didn’t join up full time as a special SPUD operative. Yeah, now I remember. Welcome to the team, son.”
“Hold it,” Joe Wilson objected. “I ain’t joining your chicken SPUD outfit. I helped when the world was getting invaded, that’s one thing, but…”
“Join now and we won’t make you rename yourself the Battling Budgie,” Drury haggled. “Best offer, take it.”
“And why exactly do you want me? I mean, I haven’t even rebuilt my costume yet, and there’s lots of more powerful super-guys out there.”
Drury took a long draw on his stogie. “Sure there are. But compared to most you’re honest, you’re a straight-shooter, you’re professional, you care, an - this is the big one – we got you by the short hairs, Wilson.”
“What exactly is the job?”
“Oh, you know, hunt down super-powered criminals, bring ‘em into the US criminal justice system so shyster lawyers like Lisa can let ‘em get off scott free, that kinda stuff. I mean right now we got a most wanted list that includes Messenger, VelcroVixen, Magnetic Techbird, Grim Reaper, Deathspoon, the Yurt…”
“You want me to take these guys on? Me?”
“Well, not all at once,” Drury smirked, holding his hand out to welcome the newest Agent of SPUD. “You get weekends free.”

“C’mon,” Cap demanded. “We know you were behind the whole Lewinsky thing. I mean, we know the real President wouldn’t do anything that tacky.”
The shapechanging Skunk infiltrator G’Ump shook his head desperately. “I’m sorry. I really am. But I’ve only been duplicating your supreme leader since after the Hooded Hood took over your planet briefly a few months back. I never inhaled! I never inhaled!”
“Give the poor guy a break, Cap” Sorceress advised the agitated shield-slinger. “We’ve got what we needed from these guys. The Hooded Hood set up the sidekicks to set up the Legion and the, ah, the Abandoned Legion…”
“We have got to get a cool new name,” Cobra frowned.
“We all get dropped into Comic-Book Limbo so that the Hood can get out,” continued Sorceress, “And the Skree and the Skunks got roped in as distractions to keep everybody looking the wrong way while he sneaked in to peek at the terrible whatever-it-is hidden under the Lair Mansion.”
“Space Ghost’s socks?” Cobra speculated.
“We’ve just about rounded up all the Skree infiltrators and the Skunk assault troops now, anyway,” Cap considered. “now all we have to worry about are the Giant Space Robots.”

“Enough of this wrangling and petty bickering,” the Hood finally said, cutting through the chatter in the meeting room. “You speak as if you had choices. There are none. I have won. There are now only two courses available to you: join me on a mission to discern the Secret at the Heart of the Parodyverse by entering the hidden door within the chamber of images beneath this mansion, or wait until dawn tomorrow when the Celestians will undo this planet to protect the Secret they planted here back at the dawn of mankind.”
“Or we could kick your butt and then take on the Celestians,” Starseed offered the third course.
The cowled crime czar turned upon the threatening Gah! Master. “Do you know what a Candiru is?” he asked the hero.
“It’s a two-inch long South American parasite catfish,” Fleabot chimed in happily. “It homes in on uric acid in other fish’s gills, burrows in, uses it’s neck spikes to lodge itself, then devours it’s prey from within.”
“This is true,” the Hood agreed. “It is also notorious for mistakenly making it’s way through the excretory orifices of humans, boring it’s way along the male or female urethral passageways, lodging and then digesting. Sometimes amputation can save a male victim if it is done quickly enough, but otherwise it is eventually fatal.”
“What exactly has this got to do with me beating the snot out of you?” Starseed demanded.
“It would have been very nasty if there had happened to be one of them in your bath the last time you were in it,” the cowled crime czar suggested. “And there might have been, if you don’t sit down and stop breathing on me.”
“He’s got you, man,” Hatman cringed.
“I’ve got to get me some of those,” Troia mused.
“I need to know more about this book of Wilbur Parody’s,” Lisa progressed the discussion quickly. “We know that Parody was a former holder of the office of Shaper of Worlds, and that he resigned to seek and master the secrets hidden under this island, which became named after him. He built the city of Paradopolis over the hiding place of Shab’addaba’Dhu, the oldest guardian placed by the Celestians, to keep it amused and entertained while he went on with his researches. He suborned the second guardian, the fiendish demon Oddhorn, using loathsome unspeakable sacrifices through his cult. And he certainly found out some of the truth of this place.”
“Somehow Wilbur Parody was just able to shut our powers off as if he had a switch,” Goldeneyed remembered with a shudder.
“Oddhorn demonstrated that ability as well,” Dark Knight remembered. “Not just our powers, our.… uniquenesses.”
“Since all super-powers eventually proceed from the same source in the Parodyverse, no matter whether they be packaged through Ausgardian enchantments, the Gah! Force, the Jarvis Cosmic, a… fern, or whatever else, one only has to understand how to control the faucet,” the Hooded Hood suggested. “But Wilbur Parody failed to understand one thing.”
“That the voice in his head instructing him what to do was yours?” Fin Fang Foom accused the cowled crime-czar.
“That having been Shaper of Worlds, part of what he gave up was the ability to ever perceive that chamber below Parody Island,” the Hood answered.
“Nothing that powerful should have access to the chamber,” Exile realised. “So they aren’t allowed to even see it.”
The Dark Knight considered this. In some part he had once been the Chronicler of Stories, but his own evolution had been protracted and complicated; sufficiently so that he could see the chamber now.
“Wilbur Parody gleaned certain truths which he recorded in a book,” the Hood continued.
“At your suggestion,” Tina prompted.
“At my suggestion.” The Hood reached out into the air and drew (via his Portal of Pretentiousness) an old bound volume which he passed to Lisa.
“The Unexpurgated Laws and Ordinances of New Paradopolis,” the lawyer read. “This has all the legislation in it that made the sidekicks possible.”
“It brought them into being in the first place,” the Hooded Hood expounded. “Wilbur used the same force which empowers all of you to empower and authorise them. How else could so many very irritating young people gain super-powers all at once?”
“I am so going to kick Wilbur Parody’s ass!” Banjooooo promised. “I am so…” the sea monkey stopped in mid-sentence as if a thought had struck him. “I, uh, I gotta go.” And he did.
“Too much chilli or what?” puzzled spiffy.
“It is most unseemly of yon salty primate to depart when we are in the midst of discussing which of us shall die for the nonce on the morrow,” objected Donar. “Verily, I was about to say that the hemigod of Augard doth look forward to some hot monkey love with ye valkyries and wilt…” A rumble of thunder in the distance distracted Donar. “Nay,” he whispered, “this cannot be!”
The thunder boomed again, a long, drawn-out echo of a distant storm. Donar seemed to understand it’s message. “But daaad,” he wheedled, “I art about to go and die with mine friends.”
A third peal shook the mansion. Donar swallowed. “I needs must go,” he told the Legion. “Mine All-pappy dost require mine presence on a matter of passing urgency. I… I am truly sorry.” And before the heroes could react the Ausgardian had reached over to Lisa for Mjalcolm, whirled it round his head, and vanished with a décor-ruining lightning flash.
“I want it noting in the minutes that nothing I did made those electricity burns,” NTU-150 demanded of Troia.
“Anyone else got any urgent business elsewhere before we get on to discussing the suicide squad?” Jarvis demanded.
“Not if ol’ Hoody’s right and my mom’s been safely rescued by Baron Zemo,” CSFB! answered. “And weren’t those Ostrander issues underrated, because I really liked Flying Tiger and Deadshot, ever since Deddy’s appearance in that classic Rogers/Englehart batman issue where…”
Lisa laid a restraining hand on the wired wonder. “He meant who is going to enter the chamber and uncover the secret, Freaky. This book does contain that prophesy, here in Wilbur Parody’s own handwriting: Of all the heroes who enter the door, none shall return. So I guess little Lisa’s going on a one-way trip with seven good friends.”
“But who?” Hatman asked the question on everyone’s lips.

A dull drizzle had begun late in the evening and continued as the heroes assembled at the Lair Mansion took their third break from the interminable matter of deciding who should be eight – or rather the seven, since Lisa was a given – to accompany the Hooded Hood through the portal.
“I’ll go if I have to,” DarkHwk admitted to Starseed and spiffy, “but I don’t want to go. Who wants to die?”
“Not me,” shuddered spiffy. “I know what’s going to happen when I bite the bullet. There’s a lot of demons in Hell, Nebraska with scores to settle.”
“That could just have been a clerical mishap,” Starseed considered. “You should e-mail the Chronicler and see if you can’t get that sorted out.”

“Thanks so much for driving us to pick mom up from the bus terminal only no taxis will drive anywhere near those big Space Robots surrounding the island at least not without a really huge tip so it’s great that you’ve got a learners permit and it’s really cool that you can come with me because this might be out last outing out of costume before we both die spectacularly in the Origin Wars, huh?” CrazySugarFreakBoy! enthused to Hatman.
“You’re actually looking forward to going if you’re picked, aren’t you?” the capped crusader said in wonder. “I should have guessed when you followed Jarvis around all evening shouting, ‘Pick me! Pick me! Pick me!’”
“Yeah, it’ll be like Onslaught only not sucky!” CSFB! enthused. “I wonder what sort of alternate me I’ll be in the new universe we get sucked into? I hope I’m not Liefieldised.”
“You… you have a very comics-oriented view of death, don’t you?” Hatman asked gently.

“So what are you saying, Tina?” Jaimie Bautista asked, pale and worried.
“I’m saying that I don’t want you to go,” she answered, biting back her tears. “I’m saying that I sneaked a look into Jarvis’ mind and I know who he’s planning to draft, unless that horrible carving says otherwise. He thinks that for a threat of this magnitude he’s got to go with his oldest, most trusted allies. That means Lisa, Dark Knight, Foom, spiffy, Visionary, Banjooooo… and you.”
“You shouldn’t be peeking like that, Tina. It’s not like you.”
“I shouldn’t be begging you not to go either, Jaimie, but I am. Don’t go. If I mean anything to you, don’t leave me. Promise.”
NTU-150 didn’t know what to say.

“Hey,” ManMan growled, “Has anyone seen my Elvis outfit? It was on the line just a minute ago. I went to check if the yoghurt stains from my, my torture had come out, and now it’s gone.”
“Perhaps the Space Robots took it?” Exile asked, looking carefully at a spot on the wall.
Goldeneyed looked suspiciously at the hump under his cousin’s borrowed dressing gown. He’d better ask about Exile’s sudden weight increase as soon as ManMan was out of earshot.
“Well I think that pink thing really suits you,” giggled Troia. “Hee hee.”
“Great! Now I gotta go battle Celestians to get my clothes back!” ManMan growled and stalked out of the room.
“I’ll battle Celestians,” Space Ghost slurred happily from the corner where he was getting to know the hobo from the kitchen. “They’re not so tough once you get past the impenetrable energy shields, the adamantium armour, the cosmic energy and all that crap. I don’t mind dying. It’ll keep the weekends free.”

“Yo is going to have a word with these Celestial world-destroying people,” Yo considered. “Yo thinks they should be doing to be more bunny-conservation programmes and less world-destroying. Yo doesn’t want Yo’s friends to go with uncute Hooded Person into nasty Secret-place never to be returning.”
“I don’t think it’s gonna do you any good,” DarkHwk advised the irate thought being hastily. “I don’t think they’d even notice you. At least, I hope they wouldn’t notice you. Look, Yo, just… enjoy the last evening we’re all going to be together, OK. In fact, it might just be the last evening, period.

“Wow! A sex scene! I can’t remember us ever having a sex scene before, ever!” Visionary gasped as he rolled over onto the sweaty sheets.
“Well, it seemed an appropriate time, dear,” Cheryl smiled, catching her breath. “After all, the world might end tomorrow and that’s a really serious form of contraception.”
The possibly fake man grinned. “What did I ever do to deserve a Cheryl?” he wondered.
The Duchess of Lake Superior tried to smooth his tangled hair. “I guess you must have hidden depths,” she suggested.
“I do?” her husband asked, surprised. “Where?”
“No,” explained Cheryl, “I said I guess you have hidden depths. There must be more to you than meets the eye.” But she prodded him playfully as she spoke.
“Fin Fang Foom is arguing that none of the men with womenfolk should be picked for the mission,” Visionary remembered.
“Finny needs reminding that the little ladies don’t always stay home themselves,” Cheryl scowled.
“I told him that!” Vizh reported. “And I also told him… um…”
“Told him what?” Cheryl questioned, pushing her hair from her face.
“I told him that you wouldn’t let me go if you didn’t come too. And that if you went I wasn’t staying behind,” Visionary confessed quietly.
Cheryl considered this. “Seems about right,” she suddenly smiled. “So tell me, before the world ends, do you think we can make it move again…?”

Dark Knight glared down at the fateful bas relief which showed nine figures inside the very room where he stood. They were entering a circular doorway to the mystery beyond. One of the carvings was undoubtedly the Hooded Hood – at least it was now since the Hood had been successful in performing his retcon on it – and Lisa’s figure and outfit were unmistakable; but the others seven characters were still indistinct and undefined.
“Pick anything else out yet?” Fin Fang Foom asked his old partner.
“No. It may be that it won’t actually show the line-up until the squad is picked,” DK replied. “I’m really here to stop the Hooded Hood from coming back and having another go at it. He might decide he wants to pick the heroes who are destroyed himself.”
“You have a really, deeply, suspicious mind, don’t you?” Finny approved.
“I know that I intend to be amongst the eight heroes who discover the secret,” the urban legend answered.
The Makluan dragon nodded. “Me too, buddy. Innocent lives in danger? Comrades depending on us? Certain death? Oh yeah, that's our thing.”
“That’s our thing,” DK agreed. “I took on this form to fight against evil, to defend the world against those that would threaten it. This is just the ultimate manifestation of that decision.”
“Hey, if your bod’s destroyed, mightn’t you survive as the sort of energy you were back when you did the Chronicler stuff?” Finny suddenly speculated.
“I might,” agreed Dark Knight, “but I suspect that if I’m un-Chroniclered enough to perceive the portal than I won’t be able to play the Chronicler card to escape doom inside the doorway. It doesn’t matter. It’s not as if I have any family or friends to worry about back here.”
“Yeah.” Fin Fang Foom realised that the same was more or less true for him. “Perhaps we should have taken the time to develop a supporting cast? Ah well, too late now.”
Their conversation was interrupted by the footsteps of Jarvis approaching. “Thought I’d find you down here, DK,” the butler remarked. “Can we go somewhere and talk?”

The Hooded Hood remained in his throne in the conference chamber, his fingertips pressed together, his green eyes staring into the darkness of the room. “Enter,” he bade the silent young woman who hesitated in the doorway behind him.
Melissa came to stand before the archvillain. “I need to speak with you,” she began.
“Proceed,” the cowled crime-czar bade her.
“You offered me a deal,” she remembered. “Back in Comic-Book Limbo, where you pointed out that I was only with Tim for as long as he was interested in me, that you could undo the continuity changes you made to bring us together in the Parodyverse in the first place.”
“I told you that I could ensure your future with Jarvis by making a change to the timelines, yes,” the Hood remembered.
“You could stop him going potty with this Sivraj thing,” Melissa recalled.
“I could have diverted things so that the consequences of the Sivraj subplot were avoided, had you chosen to pay my price.”
“But I didn’t,” Melissa remembered. “You wanted me to use my influence upon Jarvis, to convince him to make you a member of the Legion. You wanted me to do anything, seduce him, row with him, even threaten to divorce him, to make him offer you membership. Why?”
“Because the Lair Legion has access to the chamber below us without any fear of the remaining guardians set by the Celestians,” the Hood replied. “As it was, I had to use other means of gaining the chamber. In a sense, the entire Skree/Skunk invasion is a consequence of your moral scruples.”
“You wanted me to betray my relationship with Tim, to use it to further one of your dirty little plans,” Melissa argued. “You wanted to use me to get to the Leader of the Lair Legion. You maybe even set up my whole romance with Tim just to get at Jarvis through me. I couldn’t let you do that. I love him. I love him so much that I’d rather lose him than let him down.”
“So you said most eloquently at the time,” the Hooded Hood answered. “You preferred to face losing him, to throw away everything you had, than to make it – how did you put it – grubby and soiled by doing my bidding. You made your choice.”
Melissa swallowed. “It wasn’t an easy choice,” she admitted. “And I have come to… reconsider it.”
“Indeed.”
“Jarvis is going to die tomorrow!” Melissa blurted. “We talked about it. I pleaded with him not to go if it wasn’t necessary. But he’s so into this leader of the Legion thing that he’s convinced that it is necessary that he goes. He says the Parodyverse started with him so he’s responsible. He won’t send his people to their deaths without him!”
“So what are you saying?” the Hood demanded.
“I’m saying…” Melissa admitted, falling to her knees, “that I want you to save him. I want him to be with me. I will do whatever you want, anything at all, if only I can keep Jarvis safe and with me. I love him.” She looked up at the Hood with tearful eyes. “I surrender, damn it. Just save him.”
The Hooded Hood snorted. “Young woman, the time when you could have done anything that was remotely of use to me has passed. I have employed other contingencies. You have nothing to bargain with now. What is to be with Jarvis will be, untouched by my interference. But as you weep alone and cold in your empty bed, take comfort from the memory that your relationship was unsullied by betrayal. Let that thought support you through the dreary, long, desperate nights ahead of you.” And the archvillain laughed.
“You bastard!” Jarvis’ wife swore. “At least you die tomorrow with him!”
“Me?” the cowled crime czar queried. “Oh no. Wilbur’s prophesy is most precise. ‘Of all the heroes who enter…’ it says. Now I… I am most definitely a villain. And I thank you for serving the purpose of enabling me to re-establish that even on the eve of our entrance. You see, my dear, you have been of some use to me after all, even in your pure and tragic defiance. Remember that in the dark days that lie before you as well.”
Melissa fled with the Hooded Hood’s laughter tormenting her.

“I need to talk to the Chronicler of Stories,” Jarvis told the Dark Knight. “I need to talk to him now.”
“Why are you telling this to me?” DK asked, drawing his cape around him.
“You know why,” Jarvis replied. “I’m not stupid. I’ve pieced together the Dark Knight / Chronicler of Stories stuff. You seemed to want to keep it quiet so I didn’t make an issue of it. But now I have to. I need to talk to the Chronicler and the Shaper. And I need you to summon them for me.”
“Why would you need…”
“Dammit, DK, stop playing games! Tomorrow I’m going to be leading seven Legionnaires to their deaths, and the Hooded Hood’s going to have some clever plan to profit from that and grab this Secret that’s so big and important that mile-high Space Robots will blast the planet to keep us from working it out. We die and he wins. That’s not the way things are going to work. So I need to talk to people who can do something about it. I need an edge, however slight. Otherwise,” Jarvis warned, grasping the Dark Knight by his cloak, “ otherwise, evil triumphs!”
The Dark Knight was silent for a moment. “Neither the Chronicler nor the Shaper can aid us,” he admitted. “The story has already been shaped, and the Chronicler can do nothing to interfere with the Celestians. Only the end of the story remains.”
“And that means?”
“And that means it is in the domain of Samhain, the Destroyer of Tales.”
Jarvis gritted his teeth. He had faced that mad tyrant before. “Then get me his fax number,” he instructed the Dark Knight.

It was after midnight when Banjoooo returned with three unexpected visitors. “Hello!” Yo called, the first to see who DarkHwk had admitted to the still-shattered Legion reception area. “Yo is so pleased to see cute Yo-friends again at this time of most dire doings! Yo knew that all true Legionnaires would be to be coming to the aid of the Legion!”
“Hello, Yo,” Sersi smiled in spite of herself. “I don’t think you should be so glad to see me.”
“Summon the Legion,” Banjooooo commended gravely. “Get them here now.”
“HALLIE?” DarkHwk prompted.
“On it,” the contrite and no-longer-possessed Mansion computer reported.
The team assembled from all different directions. Starseed emerged rapidly from Lisa’s temporary quarters looking relieved that some emergency had saved him. Visionary and Cheryl looked annoyed. Tina had been crying. There was a scuffle in the side-corridor as Man Man spotted his costume. Goldeneyed and Fin Fang Foom pulled Exile and ManMan apart. Meggan Foxxx emerged from the kitchen.
Conspicuous by their absence were Jarvis, Dark Knight, Melissa, and CrazySugarFreakBoy!
“Hey guys! Look who it is!” Hatman called out joyously. “Looks like the reserves have turned out!” He pointed to the newcomers. Alongside the king of the Sea Monkeys was the beautiful Austernal Sersi and the ever-swashbuckling Rocket Racoon. A fourth figure stood sourly in the background.
“I thought DK had wasted you, dude,” Starseed admitted to the rodent of adventure.
“He might wish he did,” RR replied. “You see, we’re not here to join you guys. We’re here to stop you.”
“What?” NTU-150 gasped, glancing at Tina.
“They mean it,” she replied. “There’s something very wrong here.”
“I warned you once before, a long time ago, not to get into this Secret business,” Sersi reminded Lisa.
“Oh, yeth!” snorted G-Eyed. “I remember.”
“What’s this all about, Banjoooo?” Fin Fang Foom demanded.
“Well, it’s like this as far as I know,” the sea monkey answered. “When the Celestians buried their secret under Parody Island back at the dawn of time and all that, they also did some other stuff.”
“They created the first Austernals and the Devoids,” Sersi explained.
“And they went to war with the ancient gods, like the Ausgardians,” Rocket Racoon added. “And won. That’s how the ancient Norse gods got, um, transported…”
“Bad choice of words, RR,” Banjooooo judged, “They got… exiled, down under. In punishment for arguing with the Space Robots.”
“And the Greek Guy did it all over again later and got sentenced to Earth as a confused human,” spiffy remembered Donar’s origin.
“The Celestians left their mighty machines behind on the moon,” Sersi continued. “That was where the Skree found them and tried to duplicate the Austernal process. But all they could manage was to breed a race of Abhumans who turned on them and slaughtered the lot of them.”
“There were the people who were fighting against HairyHoneyBerserkerBarbarian!” Lisa remembered.
“And the people who went on the produce the princess who became Spandex Lass, the Legion member the Hood retconned out of existence,” spiffy added. spiffy and Spandex Lass had once possessed Visionary together.
“I am an Abhuman,” the fourth visitor admitted. “I am here to represent the peoples of the Great Relief. You may know me as Maximess.”
“Well, it seems as though the Abhumans got into a big fight with the Devoids,” explained Banjoooo. “We’ve met one of the Devoid survivors who was too powerful to kill and had to be imprisoned instead: Gromm, the Living Flatulence."
“That big smell?” Space Ghost objected. “He was stinkkkkkkeeeeeee!” And prompted to wonder where his new hobo friend was, the pantlsess wonder wandered away to find him.
“The Abhumans created servitor species to act as wardens for the six remaining Devoids,” Maximess told the Legion.
“Hey, less of the servitor species, buddy!” Banjooooo warned the Abhuman. “Your people might have created the sea monkeys…”
“…and the Racoon people…” added RR
“…but we could still kick your scrawny Abhuman butt across the planet!”
“The Sea Monkeys were a great success,” Sersi admitted, carefully avoiding mentioning the Racoon people. “They were created to have a hierarchy, with a powerful king at the top served by all the others, who could battle Gromm and the other Devoids if ever there was a need. He would evolve whatever powers were necessary to do the job.”
“And I thought Banjooooo’s temporary super-powers were just sloppy continuity!” spiffy shrugged. “Way to go, big guy.”
“This is all fascinating history,” Lisa interrupted, “but why should any of that make you want to stop us from preventing the Space Robots destroying the planet?”
“Ah, well…” Sersi began, looking uncomfortable.
“All of our respective races have been altered using the Celestians’ machines,” Maximess boasted. “And as such, we have all been touched by them. Deep within us, within the very genetic makeup which gives us our unique abilities, is an imperative that we must obey the Space Robots when they command.”
“And dudes, they have commanded,” Rocket Racoon apologised.
“Aw no!” Visionary objected. “We’ve gotta fight Sersi, Banjooooo and RR?”
“Plus that Maximess loser,” Exile added from the scrum at the back.
“Not just us,” Sersi explained. “If you don’t vacate the mansion now, you will have to take on the entire races of the Austernals, the Abhumans, and the Sea Monkeys.”
“And the Racoons!”
“And the Racoons,” she sighed.
“It gets worse as well,” Banjooooo told them. “Guys, when the Celestians beat the Ausgardians they tagged them as well. They’ll be here soon too. You’ll have to fight them as well.”
NTU-150 gulped. “Us versus the Austernals, the Ausgardians, the Abhumans, and the Sea Monkeys?”
“And the Racoons!”
“And the Racoons. That’s not good odds.”
“Thanks for the warnings,” Lisa told the visitors. “We’ll think it over. Now get out.”
“You’ve got quarter of an hour before they make us come in,” the king of the Sea Monkeys warned his former friends. “They can make us really cut loose.”
There was a long silence as the four minions of the Celestians departed.
“So what do we do now?” Hatman asked at last.
“We make this guy give me my Elvis suit back,” ManMan shouted, leaping at Exile again. “You better be wearing underwear under those pants!”
“Take it off! Hooted Troia. “Take it all off!”
“We need to go through the doorway now,” Lisa decided.
“Jarvis isn’t back yet!” NTU-150 objected. “We don’t even know where he went with Dark Knight.”
“There’s no time,” Lisa answered. “Foomy, Goldeneyed, Visionary, spiffy, Enty, you’re with me. Someone round up CrazySugarfreakBoy! and Space Ghost and tell them they’ve made the cut as well. Let’s go!”
“Dream won’t be coming with you,” Meggan announced suddenly. As all eyes turned to her she almost broke down and cried. “I couldn’t let my little boy go off and die like that!” she told them. “He doesn’t understand, thinks he’ll come back like some guy called Reed Richards always does, or this Warlock character. I couldn’t let him go. So I… I slugged him. Hit my own l’il Dream, knocked him out. I’m so sorry…”
“You decked CSFB?” Hatman checked.
“Uh-uh! And I’d do it again in an instant to keep him alive, even though it’s the hardest thing I’ve evuh had to do.” Meggan took a deep breath (which was always spectacular) and then said, “So I guess it’s only fair that I come on this little journey with you instead, huh? One Action Figure, raring to go.”
“There’s no need to take Dreamcatcher’s place, Mrs Foxxx,” Cheryl called out. “I’ll go.” The Legion’s PR agent walked forward to twine her arm around Visionary. “Do you really think I’d let him go without me?”
“You could take my place if you want,” spiffy offered. “I don’t mind,”
“I could go instead of him if you need me,” Starseed offered.
“Oh no,” Lisa told the fern-wielder. “You’re going. It’s all your fault.”
“Bry, are you really going?” Exile asked, suddenly aware that his cousin was about to die.
“With great power and all that,” shrugged Goldeneyed, trying not to show his terror.
“Yo doesn’t want any of you to be going,” mourned Yo.
“OK, the rest of you are going to have to hold off the combined forces of the Celestians long enough for us to do what we have to,” Lisa warned the remaining heroes. “Let’s go.”
“If Jaimie’s going then I’m going,” Tina said determinedly, looking across at Cheryl and Visionary, reaching her decision.
“That’s too many,” NTU-150 objected. “We can’t…”
“No more arguing,” Lisa snapped. “There’s no time. It’s decided.”
“Except for us,” Jarvis called out, suddenly striding into the room with the Dark Knight at his back. He looked exhausted, as if he had just faced down the entire forces gathered outside by himself – or worse. “Enty, Foomy, you’re off the team. DK and I are going instead.”
“Hey, you can’t boot me,” the dragon objected, “You might need…”
“In about five minutes gods, Austernals, and a really large Sea Monkey are going to come through that wall,” Jarvis pointed. “Can you think of many Legionnaires that have a chance in that sort of fight? I need you and Enty here now to hold the fort. And… well, someone’s got to start a new team afterwards.”
“If there is an afterwards,” Dark Knight offered.
“Two minutes!” Lisa called. “Go!”
The Hooded Hood waited as Jarvis, Lisa, spiffy, Dark Knight, Visionary, Cheryl, Goldeneyed and Space Ghost assembled for the mission. The others watched with pale, stricken faces.
“Get that defence grid up, Enty,” Jarvis ordered.
“What do we do?” Lisa asked the Hooded Hood.
“Merely touch the bas relief which now so clearly depicts our little band,” the cowled crime-czar instructed.
The Legionnaires reached forwards and touched the carving.
There was a bright flash of light.

The Celestians’ minions began their attack.

Hunter Victorious found himself once more in an alley with a sink plunger on his forehead. “We’ll need that back,” Xander the Improbable warned him. “We have lots of other people to get out of stasis before we’re finished.”
“Don’t look so puzzled, squire,” Con Johnstantine told the young hero. “We’re just doing our part to make sure everyone’s awake and happy for the end of the world. At least you weren’t tinkering on the khazi.”
“I’m not puzzled about that,” HV told him, surprisingly unsurpisied about what was going on. “The sight of this plane’s master of the mystic crafts and a trouble-making Heckraiser wandering about allied, whilst disturbing on many levels, seems an appropriate response to the situation. No, I am more concerned as to why I have been… ignored by recent events. I feel as though I have been… missed.”
“Or rather not missed,” Xander told him. The odd sorcerer supreme was clutching a brown-paper parcel package. “Everybody has forgotten about you, Mr Bloom. Your teammates in the Abandoned Legion, the commission for superhuman interference, even the Association of Superhero Sidekicks. Even the stasis bubble you were in, although similar to those provided by the Hooded Hood for the sidekicks to use as traps, is of a different manufacture.”
Johnstantine took another Players’ cigarette from his packet and felt his pocket for a light. “Must ‘ave left my lighter back at Exile’s place,” he muttered. “I’d better get a light from that monster what’s hiding in the shadows over there.”
Hunter Victorious couldn’t help but turn round to see if the shabby Englishman was serious. He was. Johnstantine sauntered into the darkness at the back of the alleyway and held out his cigarette end. “Got a light, Samhain. You was named after a festival of fire, weren’t you?”
The grim figure loomed out of the shadows where it had been waiting. “You may thank whatever gods you grovel before that I require your aid in bringing this narrative strand to an end,” the Destroyer of Stories told the three men. “At the request of a mortal supplicant I have suspended knowledge of the one you term Hunter Victorious, knowing that only thus can he strike at the exact moment required to bring down the Hooded Hood. Hunter Victorious plays no part in the Hood’s plan, and as such can destroy him. This is the gift of Samhain. Use it well.”
Others like the Shaper of Worlds or the Chronicler of Stories might be willing to watch and do nothing while one arrogant human brought about the universe’s end; but, as Jarvis and DK had pointed out, was not the ending which Samhain desired.
When the Destroyer of Stories left it was like a heavy pall being lifted. “Not got a light then?” Johnstantine called after him.
“Is what he said true?” Hunter Victorious demanded. “Am I forgotten? Has he somehow suspended knowledge of me so that I can become a weapon against what is happening?”
“Not forgotten exactly,” Xander replied, handing the brown paper parcel he was carrying over to the young hero. “More… misplaced. There’s something rather interesting about your nature which I’m going to have to examine further another time, HV – may I call you HV? That nature makes it possible for Samhain to play this memory tricks. As soon as people see you or hear your name, they’ll recall you.”
Hunter Victorious unwrapped the parcel to find a long dark trenchcoat.
“Welcome to the brigade, old chum,” Johnstantine told him.
“Put it on quickly and come with me,” Xander instructed the mysterious young hero. “You have work to do.”

In our honestly-almost-definitely-final episode: Well, basically everything’s got to get tied up, hasn’t it? Be here for the rampage of the King of the Sea Monkeys, the charge of the Racoon Brigade, Foomy’s last stand, Space Ghost’s finest hour, the intervention of Hunter Victorious, and the plot twist which only Lisa has anticipated. Also find out why it really is all spiffy’s fault. It’s the Judgement of the Celestians, due sometime before next weekend

The Hooded Hood