#161: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: The Return of Hatman, or Hopes, Dreams, and Wishes Previously: Having defeated the plans of Balefire to usurp the Interdimensional Transportation Corporation and become one with the realm of Corposant Fire, the Lair Legion have returned home for a well earned break and some much-needed downtime. Nats is back from escorting Abhuman Princess Uhunalura to the Great Relief for her wedding to Maximess. G-Eyed and Laurie Leyton have seen their child’s first steps. The Manga Shoggoth and Yo are more or less speaking again. But the Lair Legion has one more shock in store for them, from a betrayal they never expected… Jay Boaz awoke to a kiss. The naked blonde next to him smiled down at him dreamily, then trailed her nipples down his chest, kissing him as she went. She disappeared under the bedclothes to continue her explorations. “W-whitney?,” Hatman asked, blinking the sleep from his eyes. “You better hope so, lover,” came the muffled voice from below the sheets. “Otherwise you’re gonna be in a lot of trouble.” “I had the strangest dream,” Jay told her. “About the Hooded Hood and this wolfman…” “Jay, darling” Sorceress murmured, Try not to get distracted when I’m distracting you.” Hatman surrendered to the moment and let Whitney have her way with him. Who wouldn’t? “I’m confused,” Hatman admitted, a sweaty thirty minutes later. “Still?” Whitney smiled, curling herself into a little ball in the nook of his arm. “When a mummy and daddy love each other very much…” “Heh. I got that part straight,” Jay snorted. “I think I proved that.” The Sorceress shot him a heart-stopping smile. “I think you did… daddy.” Hatman blinked again. “What?” “Still sound strange to you?” Whitney grinned. “Hey, you have seven more months to get used to it. We both have.” Jay looked down at his lover’s belly. “Whit, are you saying…?” “I’m saying Yes, Jay. You were so sweet, the way you couldn’t stop grinning when I told you about the baby. So yes, if it’s that important to you, I’ll be your wife. Wed me.” “My… my wife?” “Unless you intend to abandon me after knocking me up.” “I… no, it’s not that. Whitney… I can’t remember how I got here!” “Okay, I’ve done all the brain scanning I can without cutting parts of his frontal lobes out,” Al B. Harper reported to the Lair Legion. “I can’t find any signs of tampering or mind control, nothing out of the ordinary at all.” “And no black magic influences on him?” Pegasus asked suspiciously. “No sign that he’s a clone or a shapeshifter or an evil double of some kind?” “It’s Jay all right,” Sorceress promised. “I can vouch for that at first hand. And he’s not under any mystic influences.” “We’ve conducted about every test known to man, and a few I’ve made up on the spur of the moment,” Al B. admitted. “There’s no scientific reason I can find why he should be having memory lapses.” “Except that his brain is suffused with Serious Matter,” noted NTU-150, reluctantly coiling his electro-pulse jumper-clips away. “So that kind of messes up some of the encephalograph readings. We really need to study that substance in Hat’s head some day.” “Some study that doesn’t involve slicing bits of his brain off,” added Whitney fiercely. “And perhaps ,.after we’ve worked out why our glorious leader has big holes in his memory?” Goldeneyed suggested. Hatman looked up sharply. “Leader? I’m leader of the Lair Legion? What happened to Finny?” Everyone in the room looked abashed. Nats was the one who leaned forward and placed a hand on the capped crusader’s shoulder. “Dude,” he explained, “Finny’s dead.” “It was during that whole deal with Ultimate Ultizon,” Goldeneyed explained when Hatman had gathered the Legion in the Meeting Room. “You remember that, right?” “Big indestructible robot filled with the personification of a prophecy about the upcoming Resolution War?” Hatman checked. “Sure, that I remember.” “And we were all to be being sent into cute Faerie?” Yo added anxiously. “Yeah. I’m not about to forget being hunted across the Far Realms for days by that psychotic Wilde Huntsman and his Devil Dogs.” “Do you remember what happened in that hunt?” Whitney asked cautiously. “You remember Falcon died?” Hatman’s heart missed a beat. “Falc? No, I… How could I forget something like that?” “Stress reaction, maybe?” Tricky speculated. “Could be you’re just going nutso, boss man.” Sorceress shot the irritating archer a murderous glare. “Falcon came in just as the Huntsman was about to kill you, Jay,” G-Eyed explained. “He saved you, saved us all. But…” “But the Huntsman got him,” Hatman scowled. Then he noticed the other missing team-mates. “What about…?” “Let’s do this in order,” NTU-150 suggested. “It’s the only way to make sense of what memory gaps you’ve got. So the first thing we know you not remembering is when Falcon fell.” “I can’t believe it,” Jay admitted. He probed deeper. “My memories of the big battle with Ultizon when we all got back from Faerie is pretty fuzzy too.” Another of those awkward silences. “What?” Hatman demanded. “C’mon, tell me!” “That was our toughest battle,” Nats swallowed. “Worst ever.” “What happened?” Sorceress took her lover’s hand. “Honey, that was when Dream and Dancer got killed. And then Finny stopped Resolution, but at the cost of his own life.” “D-dancer? And… and Dream? CrazySugarFreakBoy!? No…!” “We all mourned, man,” Goldeneyed assured his leader. “You too. You carried the coffins in to the National Cathedral. You spoke the eulogies.” “Yo thought you said what was to be being in the hearts of all of us,” Yo sniffed. Hatman searched his mind for any recollection of these tragedies. The memories were there when he probed for them, dormant, strangely flat. But the grief was real enough, and it flensed him like a knife. “It could be post-traumatic stress thingie,” Trickshot suggested. “He’s been, like, big strong rock guy fer all of us all these months, and now… pow! Basket case city!” Hatman ignored him. “Tell me the rest then. Who’s the line-up now?” “Well, us, of course,” G-Eyed answered promptly. “You’re the leader, and I’m deputy. Whitney, Jamie, Nats, Tricky, Yo, Cressie, Peggy. We can call on Lisa and Vizh when we’re desperate.” “Are we ever desperate enough to call the fake man?” snorted Trickshot. “And we are considering inducting that strange person with the African totem magics and the individual with the elemental tattoos, if they pass the screening process,” Pegasus noted with mild distaste. “Assuming they survive induction.” “Ziles? DK?” Hatman had to know. “Ziles slipped off and went home to Xnylonia a couple of months ago,” Nats explained. “Told Sorcy that there was family trouble and that she didn’t expect to be coming back. DK vanished soon after, and we figure he followed her.” “Yo is thinking that is to be being very romantic.” “Okay,” Hatman breathed. “Threat board? Are we investigating anything that could be related to my memory gaps?” “We just smacked Balefire to kingdom come,” G-Eyed reported. “He was trying to do bad stuff over at the Interdimensional Transportation Corporation.” “He kidnapped some of our support minions,” explained Pegasus. “He hadn’t counted on your Sherlock Holmes Deerstalker and the detective abilities it gave you.” “Boy was he surprised when we busted into his lame-ass floatin’ castle,” grinned Trickshot. “He won’t be bothering anybody again for ten-to-twenty-five years,” smirked Goldeneyed. “Then is to be thing with uncute sterility ray and Low Evolutioningary,” recalled Yo. “And there was that trouble with Hacker Nine,” Pegasus scowled. “I still say we should have ripped his head off his shoulders, the pestilent little nerd.” “What about that Mr Epitome?” asked Nats suddenly. “Everyone knows there’s Black Ops people in the government that try mind control stuff. Epitome and that OPS outfit of his have been trying to shut us down for months. What if they’re firing microwaves into Hatty’s brain to try and fry him?” The flying phenomenon looked around nervously. “’Scuse me. I gotta wrap my head in baking foil.” “I’d detect any projected radiation,” NTU-150 noted seriously. Then he lightened up. “Hey, if we have baking foil around, I’ve got a great idea for a new protonic tin opener.” “No,” said almost everyone by reflex, and in unison. “Okay,” Jay Boaz decided. “If we’re not in a crisis I’m taking myself off the active roster for a few days. I’m no good as leader if I can’t trust my mind. G-Eyed will fill in for me while I take some time to figure out what’s going on.” He stared hard at the wall and tried to concentrate. “I think I’m missing something.” “Thanks for coming with me,” Hatman said to dull thud. “I always get lost in these Hell’s Bathroom back alleys.” “No biggie,” shrugged the rumpled roadie. “Anyway, I think the only way to find Xander’s Plumbing and Watch Repair Shop is to give up all hope of ever finding it. It’s really zen.” ~~It’s just over there, actually~~ Cressida, thud’s symbiotic tapeworm interjected. ~~Under the sign that says ‘Xander’s Plumbing and Watch Repairs, Extradimensional Leaks a Speciality’~~ It took the visitors a moment to get inside the shop. For some reason the doorhandle was on the side of the door by the hinges. “That was weird,” admitted dull thud when they finally levered the shop door open. The bell above the entrance swung, but the tinkling came from a back room behind a 60’s bead curtain. An attractive young woman with calf-length silver hair appeared at the counter. “May I help you?” she asked politely. Her irises were silver too. “Um…” Hatman said uncertainly. “We were looking for Xander?” “Ah, I’m afraid the sorcerer supreme is out,” the girl apologised. “He says he refuses to appear in temporary alternate realities unless he gets paid double time with teabreaks. And chocolate biscuits.” “Temporary alternate realities?” dull thud repeated. “Does that mean if I run up bar tabs now they won’t exist when things snap back?” “What temporary alternate reality?” Hatman demanded. “Who are you? What’s going on?” The silver-haired girl smiled kindly. “This alternate reality. I’m Cleone. And you’re being tested. Any other questions?” “An alternate reality?” Whitney frowned. She looked around her as if looking for marks of forgery. But the sunset over the bay was spectacular, the skyline of Paradopolis was the same as ever, the calm Atlantic waters stretched to the far horizon. “What kind of alternate reality?” “She didn’t say. She just said this wasn’t the ‘core reality’ of the Parodyverse. Yet. She said it would be soon.” Sorceress fretted over that. “It sounds like somebody has been tampering with the way of things,” she admitted. “I thought I had wards that would warn me if anything like that happened without my consent.” “You can stop that?” Hatman asked. “No. But I should at least be able to detect it.” Whitney smoothed her hands over her stomach. “Then again, the life quickening inside me is causing all kinds of changes. I feel closer to Mother Earth than ever before, as if I’m part of the very cycle of life.” Jay kissed her. “I guess you are. We are. Wow.” Then his brow furrowed and his face fell. “I wish Dream was here to share all of this with us. He’d make a wonderful uncle.” “And Dancer would have been a marvellous Aunt,” Sorcy added. “And Finny… well, it would have been kind of fun to see how he reacted if we invited him to the birth.” Hatman snorted. “I love you, Whitney. Marrying you, having a baby with you, that’s the best things in my life. Everything I ever dreamed of.” “You dreamed of leading the Lair Legion too,” Sorceress pointed out. “Yeah. Shame it had to be through such loss.” Whitney lay her head on Jay’s shoulder. “You pulled us through. All of us. I don’t know how we’d have coped without you there for us.” Hatman stroked her hair. “I can do anything with you beside me, Whit.” But the worry was nagging him. “I wish I knew what this alternate reality stuff was all about though.” “Well,” suggested the Sorceress, “you could go to the expert I suppose. I mean, if we have to have the Hooded Hood living in the Lair Mansion we might as well get some use out of him.” “The what?” yelped the capped crusader. “The Hood? In the Mansion?” “Another memory gap?” Whitney sighed. “After he helped us defeat Resolution we let him stay on while Herringcarp Asylum was being reformed. He’s in one of the guest suites on the third story…” “I was weirded out that we had that Shoggoth as a guest. Now you’re saying we have a flaming archvillain under our roof?” “But Jay… you agreed. You’ve known about it for months.” “An archvillain that specialises in retrospective continuity changes,” Hatman argued. “C’mon Whit. We need to see a cowled crime czar.” “Yes,” agreed the Hooded Hood, “I have undertaken a retcon to bring you safe back to your beloved Lair Legion.” “Why?” demanded Jay Boaz. “How?” “You require access to the memories of the reality I altered?” the reality-modifying mastermind suggested. “Are you certain you want to remember?” “Of course I do,” Hatman insisted. “Why wouldn’t I?” The Sorceress was a step ahead of him. “Because knowing about that other future might hurt you, or change something,” she guessed. “Very perceptive, Ms Darkness,” the cowled crime czar acknowledged. “Or would you prefer Mrs Boaz?” “We’re not married yet,” Hatman answered. “Return my damned memories to me, Hood, before I forget we’re supposed to have a truce.” “As you require,” the Hood conceded. He raised one hand from then arm of his throne and gestured towards the capped crusader. “Focus your thoughts on the legend of the Sleeping Hero.” “Sleeping…?” Suddenly a wave of sensations washed over Jay. “The Sleeping Hero! I was trapped, tormented in ice, for, for hundreds of years. Time beyond count. Imprisoned in Faerie!” “Jay, what are you talking about?” Sorceress puzzled. “Hood, what did you do to him?” “He asked to remember. I warned him it may not be pleasant.” “There was… a shapeshifter. Some kind of evil fay thing. It caught me when I was wounded by the Wilde Huntsman… It took my shape, was going to pretend to be me in the Lair Legion… to have you Whit!” “That never happened,” Sorceress denied. “Falcon saved you from the Huntsman.” “No,” the Hooded Hood corrected her. “He didn’t. Not until I performed a minor alteration to the timeline to save your intended husband.” Jay staggered. “What happened? In that core reality before you changed everything?” “You were imprisoned, lost,” the Hood revealed. “The changeling with your shape was killed, and your comrades thought it was you. Whitney mourned for you, almost went insane, almost doomed the world with her necromantic attempts to revive you.” “No,” denied the Sorceress. “I wouldn’t do that! I…” Then she fell silent as she searched her deepest feelings and darkest passions. “Would I…?” The memories clicked back in Hatman’s head with every new question. “So if I was dead, who lead the Lair Legion when Finny died?” He answered his own enquiry. “Finny… in the core reality he didn’t die. And neither did Dream, or Dancer. Or Falcon!” “Or Ziles or the Dark Knight,” added the Hood. “Oh, hadn’t you heard they are gone yet in this iteration, slaughtered on Xnylonia?” “All of them, they survived in the other reality,” Jay realised. “They are alive?” Sorceress gasped. She rounded on the Hooded Hood. “You! You changed things so they were dead, you murderer!” “Indeed,” agreed the cowled crime czar. “But then again, in that reality Pegasus is dead. And without your lover you are a cold, shrivelled thing, my dear Whitney, a pale shadow of the lovely woman you are here. And of course, there is no child.” The Sorceress clutched her belly. “My baby?” “How could such a one be conceived when Hatman is lost, believed dead?” the Hooded Hood asked. “Oh, that is a cruel, bitter future, Ms Darkness, full of pain and trials.” “But one where our friends are alive,” Jay argued. “Until you decided to destroy them.” “One where most of your comrades still live at the current time,” the Hood agreed, “at the prince of Pegasus’ life, and Goldeneyed’s happiness… and your baby.” “You’re telling us that we’re in a reality you altered,” Hatman understood. “A place where things are better for us, but at the cost of our friends’ lives? You have to change it back.” Whitney Darkness shook her head. “No,” she denied. “Nothing will harm my child.” Jay looked stricken. “Whit, we have to. This isn’t the way things are supposed to be. It’s not right…” “It is the way things are now!” shouted Sorceress. “And if we leave things be, soon this will become the core reality and that other horrible place will be nothing, not even a memory.” “And CSFB! and Finny and Dancer and Falc will stay dead!” Jay argued. “And our child will be alive. And we’ll be together. And the future… Jay, love, please… the future will be good.” Hatman swallowed hard to keep back the tears. “But it’s not the real future. It’s only something the Hooded Hood decided to do, one of his machiavellian games.” “Oh, I didn’t decide to undertake this retcon,” the cowled crime-czar noted earnestly. “I was asked.” “Asked?” “Pleaded with, really. Begged. It was very heart-wrenching.” “What are you talking about?” demanded Whitney; but she was beginning to understand why she hadn’t sensed the alteration to reality. “Why, it was you, Ms Darkness, who sought me out in your distress, and beseeched me to arrange for Mr Boaz’ return. You had learned of his survival and yet had not the resources to find or release him from the depths of Faerie. So you came to me.” Now the memories began to cascade back for Whitney Darkness as well. She fell to her knees. “Oh…” she moaned. “Oh Jay… I did!” “You had bargained with the devil for Jay’s restoration to no avail. I gave you my word that I would do better for you.” “She did what?” Jay looked at his lover with horror. “You did what?” “There was a pact with Blackhurt, I understand,” the Hood supplied. “Oh, it involved allowing a few thousand malevolent undead back into the world and opened the way for the revival of a long-bound evil under Flanagan Island, and it nearly killed her team-mates, but it was all for love.” “Please don’t look at me that way, Jay,” Whitney winced. “I missed you… so much. So… so I went to the Hooded Hood.” “He was around when I was woken from the ice,” Hatman remembered. “And when we’d helped Jack, he took me away. And I woke up this morning, here.” “Indeed. As Ms Darkness requested.” “I didn’t know it was going to be like this, Jay,” Whitney vowed. “I didn’t know the retcon would mean people would die.” “I know, Whit,” Hatman said in a broken voice. “But we have to stop it now. We have to have the Hood undo what he did.” “No!” Sorceress insisted. “Whatever it was, however we got here, we’re here now. We’re together Jay, and you have it all. Please, don’t throw it aside. Don’t throw me away, or our baby!” “I don’t want to,” Jay promised her. “You must know I don’t want to! But Whit… It’s people’s lives, maybe the future of the world. It’s the hardest thing I’ll ever have to do, but… it is the right thing.” “Damn the right thing!” hissed the Sorceress. “I will not allow it. By all the power that flows through me, by root and branch, by stock and stone, by heavens and the abyssal deep I will not allow it!” A sudden storm broke around the Lair Mansion, lashing the windows with sleet. “I will maintain this altered continuity until it becomes permanent,” said the Hooded Hood. “As long as both of you will it.” “No,” Hatman told him in a voice laced with agony. “I don’t will it. I’m sorry, Whitney, but we can’t. Hood… change it back!” “No!” screamed the Sorceress. “I won’t allow…” The Hooded Hood’s eyes flashed with a green glow and the world rippled. “So be it,” said the archvillain. Jay Boaz awoke to a kiss. The naked blonde next to him froze as their lips touched, then pulled away. “No,” whispered Whitney Darkness, scrabbling away from her lover, her eyes wide with horror, wet with tears. “Oh Jay, what have we done?” “Whit…” Hatman called, reaching out for her, but the Sorceress retreated more, until she was a tiny miserable huddle in the corner of the bed. “Not there,” she keened. “Not there. Never there. Never happened. Never mine. Nevermore.” “Whitney!” called Jay, but she wasn’t hearing him. In the skies above the Lair Mansion the clouds burst open and cried down upon the old slate roofs. Marie Murcheson, the house’s pale banshee, awoke from the miasma of her dreams and howled out for the loss of someone in the household, though that life had never been. The legionnaires were woken by the vibrating wail and stumbled from their rooms to learn what had happened, what tragedy had befallen. Hatman, the capped crusader, had returned to the Lair Legion. It was much later; after the tears, and the recriminations, and the soul-searching, after the reunions and reconciliations, even after the shattering exhaustion that comes when there is nothing more to pour out. And although she had company, Whitney was alone. “Good evening, Ms Darkness,” said the Hooded Hood. “No,” she answered quietly. “Not good at all. But you know that.” “I know that,” the cowled crime czar agreed, almost gently. “You knew in your heart of hearts that he would never accept your solution.” “Yes. But I had to try. I had to hope.” “And now.” The Sorceress shuddered. “Now I don’t hope any more.” The Hood held out a hand. “You will recall, Ms Darkness, the terms of our agreement. If the hero accepted the world we gave him then all was well, but should he reject it…” “Then I’m yours. Yes. I remember.” She looked up with tear-reddened eyes. “I know how these deals work. I had one with Blackhurt.” “Hardly the same, Ms Darkness. I am not a demon bent on your destruction.” “No,” agreed Whitney. “I might have escaped from the demon.” She reached out and took the archvillain’s hand. And the Hooded Hood smiled. Coming Next: A follow up to this story by Hatman, that fits between the penultimate and final scenes of our tale above. Don't miss Hatman's epic story What Once Was Old Is New Again". Breaking Up Is Very Hard to Footnote: How Did it Come to This? As mentioned in the story, during the Lair Legion’s adventures in the Many Coloured Realms of Faerie, a group of them were chased by the brutal Wilde Huntsman and his Devil Dogs. To save his team-mates, Hatman remained behind to cover their retreat. Badly wounded, he was subsequently captured by a cruel faerie changeling who stole Hatman’s appearance and locked him in eternal torment within a block of ice. The changeling’s planned mischief was thwarted when he was killed in battle with Ultimate Ultizon. The Lair Legion believed it was the real Jay Boaz who had fallen. Whitney Darkness, Jay’s lover, did not take this well. Against the warnings of her grandmother Hagatha Darkness, she made a pact with the demonic Blackhurt, Prince of Fibs, to borrow the power needed to drag a spirit back from the realms of death. Unfortunately, the side effects of this necromancy raised a horde of undead that nearly destroyed the Lair Legion, and the spirit she recalled was that of the evil changeling. De Brown Streak intervened and sent the changeling back to death, and the other undead crumbled. The only lasting side effects were the awakening of the Chain Knight imprisoned beneath the Safe on Flanagan Island and Whitney’s indebtedness to Blackhurt. Whitney had not traded her soul. However, she consented to allow Blackhurt control of her body for twenty-four hours, provided he did not use it to harm anybody. Of course, the demon lord chose the exact moment to assert his control when Lair Legion lives depended upon the Sorceress, and has worked out strategies to ensure that Whitney would never be free of him after her servitude was officially done. However, the intervention of sorcerer supreme Xander the Improbable, eccentric Englishman Sir Mumphrey Wilton (Sorceress’ father and grandfather respectively), and mutate rights fighter De Brown Streak turned Blackhurt’s trap back on him and led to his apparent destruction. Shortly thereafter, Hagatha revealed to Whitney where Hatman truly was. Unable to recover him by her own means, the Sorceress resorted to the extreme measures described in our tale. Meanwhile, Hatman was released from his fey imprisonment by local hero Jack, and the two of them resolved a problem in Faerie against the Wolf King. The villainous Hooded Hood, who had prompted Jack to find and release Hatman, undertook to return the capped crusader to his own world. And as we see, that is exactly what he did. Vive La Difference So what is different in the reality Hatman found himself in compared to the “core reality” to which he has now returned? Since Hatman’s departure the “core reality” Lair Legion has undergone traumatic changes. During the period where leader Fin Fang Foom was first comatose then later possessed by the evil Devil Doctor the team was led by Goldeneyed. This controversial period culminated in the temporary expulsion of Nats from the team. G-Eyed later took time away from the Legion to nurse Laurie Layton from the abuse and drug addiction she had suffered after splitting from him when he discovered she had concealed her pregnancy and given away her baby – and his! Pegasus prevented the second rising of Resolution at the cost of her own life. Ziles returned to Xnylonia expecting to face martyrdom, and Finny and the Dark Knight pursued her to prevent this. In Foom’s absence, and to baffle the Hooded Hood’s plans to manipulate the Lair Legion, Finny appointed a non-member as leader of the team. Sir Mumphrey Wilton continued to expand the group, establishing membership in both a field team and through associates. The team as it stands next issue is: Acting Leader: Sir Mumphrey Wilton (still non member) Field Team Members: Yo (Deputy Leader), Hatman, CrazySugarFreakBoy!, Nats, Trickshot, Dancer, Cressida, Falcon (probationary), Manga Shoggoth (probationary), Mr Epitome (probationary) Associate Members: Lisa, Visionary, the Librarian (probationary) Al B. Harper (probationary) The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse 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. |
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