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Post By The Hooded Hood's Machiavellian preparations entrap yet more characters in his tangled web Sat Jul 31, 2004 at 09:58:51 am EDT |
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#162: Untold Tales of Garden City: There’s No Place Like Home | |
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| #162: Untold Tales of Garden City: There’s No Place Like Home Background information on Keiko Chinato Background information on Killer Shrike  The overheads lights were out in the parking garage, and that gave Keiko her first warning. She had time to throw her hand up before the razor-sharp cord whipped round her neck. The steely strand sliced into her forearm but she wasn’t debilitated. Keiko threw her weight backwards, toppling her assailant over. Normally that would put her in the ascendant, sprawled over her would-be killer and ready to take the offensive. But this attacker knew her business and rolled aside, breaking away and coming to her feet as smoothly as Keiko did herself. “Good,” the unknown woman told the assassin-turned-cop. “It’s better like this.” Keiko assessed her opponent. Five ten with a wiry, muscular build and a great mane of loose shaggy hair. Wearing some kind of green body stocking that… no, no body stocking. She was nude, and the black mesh of lines that laced her body like fishnet were some kind of tattoos, even over her face. And no weapons either. The garrotte that had sliced into Keiko’s forearm was the woman’s hair. “Do I get an introduction?” Keiko challenged. No normal strands of hair could slice through flesh like that. “Did you ever give one?” Gamona replied. Then she lurched forward with a combination crane kick and elbow jerk in a style Keiko didn’t recognise. The Asian-American blocked and gave back a few paces, then swung round and caught the green-skinned killer in the gut. The kick that should have sent Gamona hurling back ten feet instead made her back up a pace. Damn, thought Keiko, stronger than me and trained. Who the hell is this? Whoever it was she wasn’t much of a talker, coming back with a series of attacks designed not so much to damage as to assess Keiko’s skill level and style. Keiko herself tried to get some idea of the rhythms that her enemy used, but the naked killer’s motions were just slightly off, as if the green woman was differently-jointed. And her flesh was tough, like punching a chain-link fence. Those weren’t tattoos even. They were armour, surgically laced into the skin. Realising it was time for plan B, Keiko chose her moment and allowed one of Gamona’s punches through. She used the momentum to hurl herself backwards over the nearest vehicle in the darkened police garage. She wondered for a moment how the security cameras had been fixed to blind the system from this death-struggle. She thought for a moment how she might have done it. Keiko slipped into the shadows and waited for her enemy to make a wrong move. There was no sign of Gamona. Keiko strained her senses as she’s been taught, relying on hearing more than sight, trying to feel movements, smell sweat, anything to locate her opponent before her opponent located her. She wondered how she’d suddenly gone from worrying about filing the case reports on her latest investigation with her partner Sean to fighting for her life, and why it was happening. Then she put those speculations away for another time and focussed all her attention on the darkness around her. Gamona came silently from the shadows, leaping feet first straight at Keiko’s face. Keiko jerked aside and took the blow on her shoulder, but Gamona’s lashing fingernails tore a raw red strip on neck and chest as she blurred by. Keiko lashed back, grabbing a handful of that luxuriant raven hair, jerking Gamona’s head sharply backwards and gouging two fingers into the killer’s eye sockets. The green woman brought her fists up to smash into the side of Keiko’s head like jackhammers. Keiko rolled with the blow but still toppled aside stunned for a moment. Gamona picked herself up, blinked to recover her vision, and turned to finish it. Keiko came at her with the fire-axe from the emergency station by the elevator, and planted a hard downward blow into Gamona’s chest. The axe scraped over the metal mesh skin but couldn’t penetrate it. Gamona grinned wolfishly and punched Keiko halfway across the parking lot. Keiko rolled under a 4x4, trying to catch her breath. It hurt to breathe. “You did well,” Gamona noted, lifting the vehicle on one side and toppling it over. “I’m impressed.” Keiko told the unknown assassin what she could do with her impressedness and lurched for cover as the rag she’d lit burned down into the vehicle’s gas tank. The explosion truly was impressive, sending fragments of burning SUV across the underground garage, taking out half the vehicles present. Secondary fires caught from ruptured fuel hoses and for a moment Keiko felt the hot roses of flame wash over her as she huddled behind a solid Volkswagon. Gamona rose up from the explosion, flames licking over her fuel-soaked body. She didn’t seem to notice the fire. Then the automatic sprinklers cut in and the fire sirens went off. Emergency lights painted the garage orange. “Another time then,” Gamona told Keiko. “Count on it.” People were running down into the garage now. Keiko dragged herself to her feet, clutching her ribcage. She was scorched, bleeding and torn, and she was in a foul mood. And that was the best part of her day. “Well?” asked Whitney Darkness as she finished dinner and laid her silver cutlery together at the edge of her still-full plate. “When do I find out?” “Find out what?” enquired the Hooded Hood from the other end of the dining table. “Find out what you’re going to do with me,” Sorceress replied. “You didn’t go to all that trouble with alternate realties and Jay coming back just to have me to dinner.” “Of course not,” the cowled crime czar assured her. “I value you very highly.” “Please tell me your plans don’t involve impregnating me.” “I can assure you that you are quite safe from that, Ms Darkness. You are remarkably beautiful but your heart belongs to another.” Whitney frowned. “My heart belongs to no-one,” she answered. “I have no heart.” The Hooded Hood poured her some more wine, a rich Burgundy from his impressive collection. “All I require from you for now is your company, my dear,” he assured the Sorceress. “I hope that as you come to better understand me and my motivations you will also come to realise that I am not who and what you have assumed me to be.” “Not an megalomaniac archvillain then?” Whitney challenged. “Only in the broadest and most ironic sense,” the Hood assured her. “Many of history’s greatest men have been accused of those things.” “Caligula, Attila the Hun, Ghenis Khan, Adolf Hitler…” “Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Napoleon Bonaparte…” “You have a high opinion of yourself.” “I’m confident of my abilities and capacity. To pretend to be less than I am would be mock-humility. I make no apologies for myself and I seek no-one’s approval for what I do.” Suddenly the Sorceress doubted that. “Then why am I having dinner with you?” “You are my guest. It would be inhospitable of me not to spend some time enjoying your presence.” “I am your slave, by agreement when you brought back Jay. And you couldn’t hold me for a minute if I cared enough to seek escape.” The Hooded Hood savoured his wine. “You’ll keep your word to me. That’s one of the things that makes you such a remarkable young woman, my dear.” “I’m not your dear,” Whitney told him. “It seems somehow politer than calling you my slave. Please permit me to indulge in the basic courtesies; it will make out time together so much more pleasant.” His voice was almost hypnotic, and Whitney knew she was so vulnerable just then. “What do you want with me, Hood?” she demanded roughly. “Enough games. What do you really want?” The Hooded Hood told her. Keiko had worked a long shift, and the inevitable debrief about the fire-washed garage made the day even longer. Keiko’s ribs were hurting and the questions were irritating and she gritted her teeth and endured it all. Sean called, having heard about the trouble, and she had to assure him she was alright. “I can drive home. It’s just some superficial burns and a bit of bruising. Really. I’ll be fine.” And somebody was following her. As Keiko turned her bike at the junction of Third and Park she glimpsed him, a tall man in a dark windcheater and darker glasses. She gunned her vehicle forwards, not liking the prickling sensation she was getting between her shoulder blades. He was there again at the next stop light three blocks on, ahead of her, pretending to look at the magazines on the corner news-stand. If it wasn’t the same guy it was his identical twin. At the next intersection he was still waiting, casually standing at the kerbside for the crossing light. Six-one maybe, with an athlete’s physique. Twenties, Caucasian, with close-cropped brown hair. Nobody she recognised from the mug books. Nobody she remembered. And somehow he’d covered the distance that Keiko’s bike had taken at thirty miles an hour and got there before her. That wasn’t good. Keiko veered her bike across traffic, cutting left despite the blaring horns of protest, deviating from her usual route and heading west along the outskirts of the park. She was heading in the opposite direction to most of the home traffic now, and she weaved between the cars and taxis making the best time she could. And there was the watcher, sitting on a bench near the park gates, apparently studying the pigeons. Keiko had had enough. She twisted the handlebars of her motorbike, cut across an outraged limo, and aimed her vehicle straight at the stranger. He looked up from the pigeons, saw her coming… and vanished. Keiko scattered the flock as she veered the bike round to a squealing stop. Nobody could just disappear like that, in broad daylight, while he was being watched. But the man in the windcheater was gone. There had been a flash. Perhaps he’d had a prepared exit and the bright light had covered him for the moment he needed to hide? But the bench was set in solid concrete on the public footpath by the park entrance. And Keiko had chosen this route entirely at random only a moment ago, allowing for no previous installation of tricks or trapdoors. She thought of some of the strange things she’s seen out east, some of the powers claimed by sensei who had mastered levels of discipline she had yet to attain. Something made her whirl around. There, across the street, was another man, scruffily dressed and carrying a rolled up paper. And he was lifting the paper and pointing it as her. Gun he senses warned her, and even before she was able to properly understand the threat her body was reacting, hurling her sideways to the pavement and rolling towards cover. There was another flash. The guy in the dark glasses was suddenly behind the killer that had the automatic pistol in his newspaper. The would-be assassin jerked once and tumbled over to the floor. And then, right before Keiko’s eyes, the man who’d been following her grinned across at her, gave her a jaunty wave… and vanished again. The forensics team arrived around half an hour later. Nobody could identify the hit man, and nobody could explain why his chest was a cavity with no vital organs to fill it. Herringcarp Asylum was a labyrinth, a twisting maze of shadowed corridors and darker rooms. The subterranean levels were mostly stone-clad cells, but some of the upper floors were surprisingly sumptuous, furnished in a classical style. There were no electric lights, but elegant oil lamps illuminated the residential wing. There was a large man sprawled out on a Louis XV couch swearing at a remote control in front of a 36” flat screen TV. When he saw Whitney enter he tossed the device aside and swung to his feet. “Well hel-lo,” he bade her. The Sorceress stared down her nose at the man. He was perhaps in his late forties, tall and muscular, with some old faded scars on face and hands. His manner seemed over-familiar to her. “Who are you?” she asked him. “I’m the new talent round this place, is who I am,” Simon Maddicks told her punching a fist into his chest. “Villaining talent, that is,” he added, looking the newcomer curvy blonde up and down. “You’re talent of an entirely different kind.” “That’s right,” Sorceress told him, raising one eyebrow. “I’m the new superhero talent round here. I’m the Sorceress.” “Aw crap,” objected Killer Shrike. “I hate this place. The TV reception’s crud, all the beers are foreign, and the only good-looking woman around is a superheroine who’s the Hood’s own squeeze.” “I beg your pardon?” Whitney said coldly. “I am not anybody’s squeeze.” She tried to keep the quaver out of her voice as she remembered Hatman. “Oh sure,” Maddicks nodded insincerely. “Cause if I had a do-anything contract on you like the boss has, I’d sure not think about…” “You are not the Hooded Hood,” the Sorceress told him. “He has class.” “Is he gay, maybe?” Killer Shrike speculated. “Only I heard that he and Lisa and he and Dancer…” “I’m not here to be the Hooded Hood’s mistress,” Whitney said emphatically. “Yet,” grinned Maddicks. “Ah well, if you’re feeling lonely any time you can always call on me and I’ll…” “If you want to keep your current shape I recommend you don’t finish that sentence,” warned Whitney Darkness. “Okay, okay,” Killer Shrike declared, backing off with his hands up in mock surrender. “But it can get pretty boring round here waiting for the big payoff. Flapjack’s hardly ever here now, and Blackhearted’s too into his grim-n-gritty antihero stuff to…” “Blackhearted?” Whitney didn’t recognise the name. “Yeah. Big moody sonofabitch with teleporting powers. Real name’s Bry Katz.” “Bryan?” Sorceress recognised the real identity of her former team-mate Goldeneyed. “Bryan’s here?” “Blackhearted’s off on a mission right now,” Shrike shrugged. “Dogging some other chick the Hood’s hot for I guess. But yeah, he’s part of the big caper. The boss pulled him in from some alternate reality where the hero went majorly postal when his girlfriend got slaughtered and his team booted him. He’s not a laugh-fest.” “Another displaced character,” Whitney noted to herself. “You’re not originally from the Parodyverse, are you?” “Whoa, you are a witch,” Killer Shrike admitted. “Nope, I’m originally from Earth 616, got conned into coming here a while back. Why?” “This big caper,” the Sorceress answered. “The Hood needs people from outside the Parodyverse – and me. That’s why he’s gathering you all together.” She pointed a demanding finger at Simon Maddicks. “Tell me about this other woman the Hood is interested in.” The shower was nice but strapping the ribs was painful. Keiko noted the rows of mottled bruises now ribboning her body. She winced again when she thought about the board of enquiry tomorrow regarding the damage to the parking garage. There was a knock at the door. Keiko threw on a robe, picked up a katana, and answered it. “Good evening,” said the Hooded Hood. Keiko swung the weapon and sliced his head off. Or didn’t, because suddenly the blade was across the room, and she remembered now that she’d never actually picked it up. Keiko reached out, grabbed the visitor’s hood, and twisted it right round so he couldn’t breath; or would have done had the crippling arthritis in her fingers not prevented her hands from closing. She barely kept in a cry of agony as her legs gave way as the muscular cramps overcame her. “That may work in your imagination, Ms Takashi,” the Hooded Hood told her, “but in real life I prefer a modicum of respect.” The name he called her by was her real one, the one few people now living should know. Keiko struggled to get up but her body betrayed her. One by one she felt her fingers snapping, and she remembered now that she’d taken such injuries in her battle with Gamona earlier. She stifled a sob as her pelvis shattered. “My abilities to retrospectively change what has happened offer me a somewhat unfair advantage,” the Hooded Hood told her, looking down dispassionately as he inflicted wound after wound. “What should it be? Leprosy? Breast Cancer? Blindness? Alzheimer’s? Or shall we talk like civilised people for a while, and you restrain that juvenile urge to apply physical solutions to every problem?” Keiko tried to spit her defiance from a throat that suddenly tasted like rotting meat. And then she was fine. Even the aches and pains of her earlier encounter were gone. Unbruised and unweary she pulled herself up from the floor. “May I come in?” asked the Hooded Hood. Keiko nodded and gestured him towards a seat. She took up position between her visitor and the window. That left him staring into the light and her with an escape route if all else failed. She wondered why Sean hadn’t heard the noise and come to see what was happening, before she remembered that Steve and Sean had gone for a drink; or at least now they had. The grey-cowled intruder leaned back and began. “I am known as…” “The Hooded Hood,” Keiko interrupted. “I’ve dreamed about you. Nightmares, really.” “Yes. I imagine your strange voyages to the Parodyverse would seem something akin to dreams in your everyday state,” the Hood mused. Keiko wondered if perhaps she had taken a concussion earlier. Was she hallucinating now? “This must seem very strange to you,” the Hooded Hood conceded. “That is why I have come to explain.” “In my dreams you don’t come across as Mr Helpful Information,” Keiko scowled. “Would you have preferred me to send Nats? CrazySugarFreakBoy?” Those names seemed familiar to Keiko too. The strange visions cascaded back. “I’ve… met those people. Or seemed to.” “Yes, annoyances like those are hard to forget, even once one is back in a lucid state,” sighed the cowled crime czar. “However, your world has no city named Paradopolis. No Gothametropolis York.” “Of course not,” Keiko scowled. “What kind of lame names are those?” “No superheroes with capes and masks, fighting alien invasions and demonic incursions.” Keiko frowned deeper. “A world with… superheroes?” she remembered. “Everything all mixed up. Even me, acting like some caricature of myself…” “That’s the Parodyverse alright. There are many different realities, Ms Serano, and the Parodyverse exists at the very far end of the probability curve. All of that ridiculous, improbable, lame stuff happens there to spare more respectable realities such as your own.” “Keiko,” the young woman told him. “Don’t use those other names. I’m just Keiko now.” “Very well,” agreed the Hooded Hood. “Keiko.” “My dreams were real?” “Your dreams were… preparations,” the Hood explained. “I was rather impressed by the way you kept diverting them to your own agenda, but they were designed to make it possible to project you entirely into the Parodyverse proper – if proper is a term one can use for that place.” Keiko wanted to tell her visitor that he was insane; but she remembered the Alzheimer’s and bided her time. “Does this have anything to do with my exercise down at the parking garage?” she speculated. “Gamona? Yes. In one of your more… real episodes in the Parodyverse you managed to rather upset the legal gentlemen at Sneek, Grabbitt, and Thuggery, a law firm of ill-repute who represent a number of powerful and sinister clients. Chief amongst these is the Lynchpin of Crime Harry Flask, who responded to their complaints by dispatching his principal assassin, the alien killer known as Gamona.” “That’s green nudist girl?” “Indeed. There are not many baseline humans who could survive a combat with her. She has been trained since infancy in killing and enhanced with all kinds of biogenetic technology.” “She’s got weak spots. I just need to find them.” “You have weak spots too,” the Hooded Hood pointed out. “If I hadn’t intervened she would have come after you here, not at your workplace. And she would have sought out Lisa, and then Sean, and she would have left their bodies lying in the hall as a distraction for you.” “So you’re saying you’re the good guy?” The Hooded Hood chuckled and steepled his finger. “No, Keiko, I am the archvillain. I even enjoy being something of a cliché. I am the archvillain who wants to hire you for a single mission – in the Parodyverse.” “I don’t take commissions any more,” declared Keiko “And I never took them from evil scum.” The Hood lifted one eyebrow. “Really? I do my research thoroughly, Keiko.” “Okay, so you’re tougher now than when I was dreaming you, but I don’t give in to threats.” “Splendid. That’s the sort of person I like to recruit.” The self-proclaimed archvillain rose and stalked to the window. “Don’t,” he suggested as Keiko prepared to spring. “I’m not interested,” Keiko said. “You and your green pal and your whole damn crazy universe can go and…” “I can prevent Gamona from having access to your reality again,” the Hooded Hood promised. “I can prevent Garden City slipping into the Parodyverse more and more, until it is forever mired there.” “Garden City… in the Parodyverse?” Keiko didn’t like the sound of that, even as another part of her was denying that a conversation this bizarre could ever take place. “Yes. It happens sometimes. Look at Arachknight City. Or Earth Ranchburger. A universe’s creator gets tempted, then sucked in, and their whole creation gets warped into the tangle of narratives we call the Parodyverse. All that potential, wasted on a universe filled with creatures like Galactivac, the Living Death that Sucks.” “That’s how I’ve been able to get to Gothametropolis and Paradopolis and piss off this Lynchpin, and how his assassin could track me back here?” “The worlds have been moving closer together for some time. You’ve rationalised your experience in your somewhat self-absorbed fantasies. You may want to consider counselling for those violent tendencies, by the way,” the Hooded Hood advised. Keiko stifled a quick comeback. Every enemy had a vulnerability. It was just a matter of waiting and watching. And in the meantime there was still intelligence to gather. “I can arrange to keep Garden City in its own, rather more sensible universe. I can keep it free from contamination by the absurd,” offered the Hood. “You have that kind of power?” “No. But I know… pressure points,” smirked the cowled crime czar. “What you do to bodies I do to continuities. But of course, there is a price for my assistance.” He leered at Keiko. “I don’t sleep with the enemy to save worlds,” the bathrobe-clad ex-assassin warned him. “And I am not that kind of archvillain, Keiko,” the Hood assured her. “I wonder why so many young women seem to assume I am. No, I require you to undertake a mission for which your training, talents, and disposition well suit you.” “I don’t kill people now.” Again the Hood’s face quirked. “I don’t commit assassinations.” “However,” warned the Hooded Hood, “I must warn you that should you proceed and enter the Parodyverse proper you may find yourself unable to fully depart again. While you might have no conscious memory of your time there – and I have smoothed out those little Gamona and street assassin incidents you suffered earlier already, as your lack of bruising and a pristine police station attests – you may find yourself trapped there in your dreams, unable to leave. I mention this because I believe you should know the risks I demand of you, and because you have a martyr complex to which this sacrifice will appeal.” “And if I say no?” challenged Keiko. “Then I shall recruit your colleague Sean,” answered the Hooded Hood, simply. “Or Steve. Or perhaps another of your acquaintances?” Keiko considered for a moment. In a hundred possible futures she turned to offer down. “What’s the mission?” she asked at last. More of this in our upcoming “Transworlds Challenge” story arc, but next week we’re keeping on with the “Villainous Intentions” theme as we see what the Lair Legion does when the Supreme Interference conquers the planet. And the answer is – apparently nothing. Lisa and Dancer, Falc and Pigeon, Hatman and CSFB!, Vizh and spiffy, Trickshot and the Librarian, and an awfully large amount of Terminoid battle robots in #163: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Together Again For the First Time. Down in the Valley of the Jolly Green Footnote: Garden City and its cast, including Keiko and the mentioned-but-not-seen Sean, Steve, and Lisa, are from the World Class series by Jason (MangaCool) Froikin. As our tale here makes clear, that’s in a completely different universe to the one where the Lair Legion usually adventure. Of late the two worlds have been intersecting, with a number of stories where characters from each cross over to meet people from the other. However, Garden City’s world is so sharply drawn that I fear it would be damaged and trivialised by being absorbed into the Parodyverse; hence the rationale presented in this chapter. It lets me have my cake – using Keiko in a multi-part storyline alongside PV characters – and eat it – making the point of the story arc about stopping the two worlds merging together. More on all of this in the “Transworlds Challenge” arc that begins around UT#170ish. Gamona was raised by Dark Thugos as an assassin and aide. After the destruction of her entire world (by Thugos) she was raised and enhanced to be the perfect killing machine. Discarded by Thugos after his resurrection as the Destroyer of Tales Gamona has survived on Earth by leasing her skills to various crimelords and now has ongoing employment as the enforcer of the Lynchpin of Crime. As well as being versed in various offworld martial arts, Gamona has enhanced strength and reflexes. Her tattoo-mesh skin protects her from most energy discharges, piercing, and bludgeoning attacks. Her super-strong hair makes fine garrotting material. She is not known for her sunny personality. Blackhearted is an alternate-reality version of Bry Katz, the Lair Legion’s Goldeneyed, and possessed of the same abilities to manipulate special relations and to teleport.. The divergence point came around UT#142: the Destruction of Laurie Leyton. This is what would have happened to Bry if the Hooded Hood hadn’t altered his plans so that G-Eyed found out about Lisette’s troubles in time. The shocked and horrified hero went on a killing spree of revenge, the already-growing schism between G-Eyed and his team became irreparable, and the Hood was waiting to welcome Blackhearted into the fold. Killer Shrike came to the Parodyverse in Killer Shrike Flies Again #1. There’s a hint in our chapter here that the Hooded Hood may have had something to do with it because he needed agents from outside the Parodyverse for an upcoming mission. I guess we’ll never really know. Arachknight City and Earth Ranchburger were once independent fictional universes, both of which have slipped into the Parodyverse multiversal cluster. Arachknight City is now a west-coast metropolis in the Parodyverse-USA. Although Universe Ranchburger was effectively destroyed, many components of it have slipped into the Parodyverse itself, including the Interplanetary Organisation of Librarians, who have now always been present in Parodyverse continuity. This is the horrible fate that awaits Keiko’s world unless she can prevent it. And for those doubting that the Hooded Hood has been planning this for a while I suggest a perusal of The Hooded Hood Responds , posted after an early Keiko-in-Parodyverse story by Jason. 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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