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Post By The Hooded Hood posts one of his favourite chapters for a while and trusts you'll talk amongst yourselves while he's away for the weekend Fri Nov 12, 2004 at 06:10:06 am EST |
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#188: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Secret Origins and Unknown Destinations | |
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#188: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Secret Origins and Unknown Destinations This story takes place after the events in Killer Shrike's The Transporter and Josh Clements' Intermittent Adventures of De Brown Streak #8 - Now With Added Slave Girls of Various Colours “It was a dark and soggy night.” “Excuse me,” said the diabolical Dr Moo, “but don’t you mean a dark and stormy night,” “Ach no,” snorted dull thud. “You clearly don’t know Carluke, Lanarkshire.” “I see. Well then, next question. Why aren’t I just killing you now for the good of humanity?” thuddy shifted uncomfortably on the fresian-leather sofa, but the sentient telepathic tapeworm in his gut had a good answer. ~~Because of the frozen peas~~ Cressida explained. Diao Waltz had been taking life fairly easy since her release from temporal stasis in the lair of the Manga Shoggoth. She’d taken over a small South American beef ranch, genetically modified the neighbours to ignore her, and conducted a minor series of highly illegal recombinant DNA experiments on some of her livestock, but really she was becoming bored. That’s probably why she unwarily accepted the heavy packet of freeze-dried garden peas from dull thud without considering the consequences. The peas vanished from her hands as she touched them. ~~There~~ said Cressida with some satisfaction. ~~Now you can’t harm us.~~ Dr Moo glanced over at Davidowicz, her rodent companion. Today Davidowicz was configured as female (it had been known to vary according to Ms Waltz’ current genetic research and the views of whoever was writing the story at the time). “Do you still have the death ray trained on them?” Daio asked the rodent. “Since they came through the gates. Also the incendiary cows and the heavy duty battle bovines are standing by.” “The what?” dull thud asked uncomfortably. ~~It doesn’t matter~~ Cressida explained to him. ~~Dr Moo would have to be not only the Parodyverse’s greatest mad scientist geneticist, but also its fastest to find a cure for the illness that’s going to kill her in less than three hours.~~ “The what? Moo echoed. She grabbed up a portable bioscanner and ran it over her torso. A fast-acting systemic infection was replicating through her system. ~~Peas to disease~~ Cressie explained helpfully. ~~I’ll be happy to reverse the effect as we’re walking safely out of here with the information we came for.~~ “Ooh, not bad!” admired Davidowictz. “You might have a future as a villain yourself.” “Apparently Cressie has a future as a nude butterfly-girl hottie,” thud corrected the talking rat, referring to the strange events of the Follies of Youth incident. “Add that in with some weird stuff th’ Abhumans were cracking on about with Cressie being made by Plot-Altering Mists…” ~~I’m here looking for an origin, Doctor,~~ the wonder worm explained to Daio Waltz. ~~I’m hoping that you can help me find one. For both our sakes.~~ “Well, I can’t resist a challenge any more than my little sister can resist an X chromosome,” Dr Moo admitted. “And you have come all this way and infected me and everything. Carry on.” “Tracking you from the Shoggoth’s lair was the worst part. The sanity-mangling stuff we had to see there…” ~~Hundreds of maquettes of cute Manga girls in sailor outfits,~~ shuddered Cressie. “Things that man was never meant to know,” agreed thuddy “So anyway, it was a dark and muddy night…” Elizabeth Dewdrop Sweetwater von Zemo had had enough. She was reasonably sure that the yellow blur flapping his arms wildly who had just bounced off the screen door of his own kitchen and then raced inside was Visionary. If this one was fake it was a genuine kind of fakeness, not the Liefield Model Decoy who’d been supposedly been babysitting that pyromaniac pubescent that was alleged to be Visionary’s ward. The Baroness picked up her list of complaints and damages costs in one hand, and casually slipped an omno-wave negaton projector into her other pocket. Just in case Visionary didn’t have his wallet with him. As Elizabeth van Zemo had originally promised Kerry Shepherdson: “Somebody is going to pay for this.” She stroke through one of the charred areas of the lawn fence and made for the door. She was rudely cut up by a man dressed as a raptor flying past her at three feet from ground level, his onboard weapons systems hot. “Falcon,” the Baroness recognised. “Well, that Visionary’s going to need a bodyguard.” When she finally got to the back door it was opened by a zaftig young woman wearing what appeared to be a gauze-mesh bikini and tassels. “This… is Visionary’s house?” Elizabeth von Zemo checked. “Oh yes,” agreed the green-skinned slave girl. “Has your Master sent you with a message for him?” There were at least half a dozen similarly dressed emerald-hued supermodels strutting round Visionary’s kitchen. One of them was looking in horror at the sink, where a trail of slime dribbled across the counter and down the cupboard front. “Does anybody know how to get Shoggoth off of work surfaces?” Sayaana asked despairingly. The Baroness’ hand twitched instinctively towards the omno-wave negaton projector, but she held her temper. “I do not have a master,” she pointed out through gritted teeth. “Also, Shoggoth goo is usually dissolved by vinegar and ammonia.” “No master!” the girl at the door repeated aghast. “You poor thing! Would you like a piece of bread or something?” “Bread?” “You must be starving!” another (Losiira) sympathised. “You poor, abused creature.” “Not so fast,” Philaana warned. “We don’t know what she’s done. She might have been disobedient or undutiful. She might not have accepted her floggings. She might have deserved being cast out. We don’t know!” “No, remember,” Miiri, the girl at the door interrupted. “The women on this planet don’t all have owners. Some of them do not benefit from the corrective floggings of a Master. It is a very strange world we have been brought to.” “On this planet?” The Baroness was starting to think she’d called at a bad time. “Where are you from?” “We were born on Caph IX,” Miiri told her. “It’s a hot planet in the constellation you call Cassiopeia, much hotter than here. You poor people have hardly any sunlight, I swear I don’t know how you photosynthesise at all.” “Photosynthesise?” Elizabeth regarded the green-skinned women who weren’t wearing a lot. “We were sold to the Slimy Slaver Lovetoad of Frammistat Eight,” the Shoggoth-goo-scrubber explained. “He was not a kind master. He liked to hear us scream.” “Miiri wanted us to kill him,” Odoona said in whispered tones of confession, pointing to the slave girl by the door. “But that would have been Wrong.” “We were rescued anyway,” sniffed Miiri rebelliously. “We were captured as prizes of the Lair Legion and became the legal property of Master Visionary. Now we are his to command to his pleasure.” The Baroness considered that the genuine Visionary was clearly very different from that defective LMD. “So you seven… eight… nine… are Visionary’s slaves?” “Oh yes,” they agreed happily. “And… he manages to… to occupy you all?” “Yes. He has given us more than we can easily handle,” agreed Miiri, who has seen the pile of laundry that had come back from the Transworlds Challenge. “We will be up half the night.” “Perhaps I should have accepted that date,” Beth van Zemo reconsidered. Just then something exploded in the living room. “Perhaps I’ll come back later,” the Baroness decided. It was clearly a bad time to call. “So anyway, it was a dark and muddy night…” Davidowitz objected. “Soggy. You said before it was soggy.” “It was soggy before I fell into the gutter,” dull thud clarified. “After that it was muddy.” ~~Davie had been drinking~~ Cressida confided. ~~Shocking, I know, but I see it as an indictment of modern society.~~ “Aye, and also the off-licenses were open,” thud agreed. Dr Moo flicked open a spiral-bound notebook and poised her pen. “This was some years ago?” she checked. “In Scotland.” ~~Where else would a young man set out to find sixteen cans of lager and a deep-fried Mars bar?”~~ Cressie sighed. “Deep fried what?” Davidowicz checked. “Is that legal?” “Ye can get them in every chippie in Lanarkshire,” thud assured her. “It’s a cultural delicacy.” “And they called me mad,” muttered Moo. “Go on.” “Anyway, I was no’ just after the booze and the Mars bar. And I’d already recycled quite a bit of the lager anyhow, one way or another. I was also away for haddock an’ chips.” He looked at his audience and added, “I wouldn’a hae a Mars bar on an empty stomach. I’m not a complete barbarian.” “So one evening you undertook a series of outdoor leisure pursuits that included ingesting alcohol, potato products, fish, and proprietary-brand confectionary coated in…” “Batter,” thud explained with nostalgic relish. ~~We believe the haddock was the relevant item,~~ Cressida explained. ~~I have some very vague earliest memories of being inside some kind of fish.~~ “Yes, you do have some surface resemblances to Diphyllobothrium Latum,” Dr Moo agreed, scanning the lower parts of thud’s torso. She filed away the secondary readings on his underwear for later bio-weapons research. “But the fish tapeworm is usually found in freshwater species.” “She’s a fish tapeworm?” Davidowicz asked. “They typically grow to seven feet and can get as big as thirty-footers with four thousand segments.” ~~I don’t like to boast~~ Cressida demurred. “The main body of the worm is virtually filled with male and female reproductive organs allowing it to produce an incredible number of eggs, often more than 1,000,000 a day,” Davidowicz rattled on to thud’s discomfort. “Yes, quite,” interrupted Daio impatiently. “But whatever Cressida might have been, she’s seriously modified now.” “She gave me the screaming gutrots, I’ll say that much,” thuddy complained. “I was hardly done wi’ my Mars bar when I was bent over double with the cramps.” ~~I’m sorry Davie. I didn’t know what I was doing, or who I was or anything.~~ “It was the headaches as well,” thud went on. “Made me a bit cranky. That’s how the random fighting with the neds started.” ~~Nothing to do with the copious alcohol in your system or having the personality of a border terrier?~~ “No, I don’t see why…” ~~Or the fact that every other night in your adult life you’d gone out, got drunk, and ended up in some gutter-brawl with other products of a million years of Homo sapiens evolution?~~ “Anyway, it was all violent outbursts and mental static, and it all came to seem too much for me,” dull thud explained. “So I decided tae end it all, and that’s how I came to be on the bridge on the Glenafeoch Road in the middle of the night in the driving rain.” ~~Except that when he threw himself off the bridge his own super-powers kicked in, the ability to teleport straight upwards and fall any distance without harm.~~ “No wonder you teamed up with Captain Amazing whose ability is to hold his hand out vertical from his shoulder for protracted lengths of time,” Davidowicz snickered. “So Cressida’s introduction to your biosystem appears to have had a mutative effect upon you too,” Moo mused. “Interesting.” “I always thought I got mah powers by zen, myself,” dull thud admitted. ~~After that I came to consciousness and got to know Davie, and eventually we came to America and I joined the Lair Legion~~ the wonder worm summarised. ~~But I sometimes have flashes of memory of other things and times, as if that’s not all I’ve done.~~ “Like dating Knifey,” thud suggested. ~~Yes.~~ Knifey had warned her not to go seeking her origins. The diabolical Dr Moo grabbed up a bunch of other scanner probes as her interest was piqued. “So now we need to work out how you got into that haddock, Cressida,” she reasoned. “I asked the chip shop owner about that,” reported thuddy. “He said some’a the fish he got were a bit odd on account of them bein’ trawled in the Irish Sea off’a Sellafield.” “Sellafield, the nuclear plant?” Davidowicz noted. “Ah, now this is making more sense,” Daio declared. “Yes, there’s radioactive traces in Cressida, and a genetic imprint left by the use of Plot-Altering Mists, and there’s been some fascinating interactions between the two.” “The Abhumans said Cressie had never been in their Plot-Altering Mists,” thud pointed out. “Well of course not,” Moo said scornfully. “Cressida has been exposed to my Plot-Altering Mists.” Now it was the telepathic tapeworm’s turn to go ~~What?~~ “Okay, time out!” Kerry shouted, and to illustrate her point the coffee pot exploded sending showers of hot liquid across the room. “Everybody just chill, okay. There are minors present, you know.” “That’s kind of the point,” snarled Falcon, brandishing a finger at Hacker Nine who was currently sheltering behind the sofa. “This little, little…” “Punk,” Visionary supplied. “Little punk.” “Yeah, this little punk’s been skulking around with my sweet fourteen-year old sister…” “Skulking’s a very harsh word,” Zack Zelnitz suggested. “Perhaps creeping? Or sneaking?” “Who I see is none of your business, Samuel Wilson!” Lindy Wilson screamed. “He is your brother,” Visionary pointed out. “He has to take care of you.” “I’m not his green-skinned alien slave girl, thank you very much!” Lindy shot back. “Oh, Visionary has quite enough green-skinned alien slave girls,” Hallie pointed out archly. “And on that very point…” the Manga Shoggoth rumbled ominously. “I mean it. Time out or things are going to get unnecessarily volcanic!” Kerry warned. “Er, Kerry can’t really do that, can she?” Hacker Nine worried. “No,” Vizh denied. “I mean, she hasn’t done it yet.” He looked at his young ward uncertainly. “Perhaps a cooling off period is best?” admitted Hallie. “Vizh can have all his green-skinned alien slave girls bring us some fresh coffee.” The Manga Shoggoth rumbled again, and Vizh joined Hacker Nine behind the sofa. “Right,” insisted Kerry, folding her arms petulantly. “I am so not the voice of reason here.” “I don’t think the voice of reason would have smuggled Hacker Nine into Visionary’s house and kept him here secretly for weeks,” agreed Hallie. “Well, he could have hid at our flat,” Lindy pointed out defiantly, “but then he’d have had to sleep in my room.” Falcon bristled again, and weapons systems that could sink a warship oriented on Zack Zelnitz. Vizh yelped and did a spectacular barrel roll away from the sofa. H9 held his hands up in panicked surrender “Look man, I never touched her. Well hardly. I’m not like that. Really. I’m playing nice. I haven’t even hacked into your weapons systems to disable it, even though there’s only a crummy eleven thousand bit encryption on the security overlocks. So please don’t vaporise me!” “I really don’t approve of slavers,” the Manga Shoggoth pointed out. “Don’t eat me!” Vizh panicked. “I have tests to grade for the morning.” “Oh yeah,” remembered Kerry. “Eat him.” “I do not eat people,” the Shoggoth gurgled testily. “I merely break down their molecular structures and recycle them back into the matter pool of what you generally term your universe in a random and unstructured manner.” “Eeep,” eeped Visionary. “So you didn’t know this weasel was stayin’ in your own house?” Falcon demanded angrily of the possibly-fake man. “How dumb can you be?” “Technically we usually reserve the weasel analogies for Visionary himself,” Hallie interjected. “And also, Vizh’s sister hasn’t been seeing a super-villain behind his back while he knew nothing about it.” She checked back on her case files archive. “Now we know who was Hacker Nine’s accomplice in that SPUD data theft, and where Lindy ran off to during the Badripoor incident.” “Aw man, I am so grounded,” whimpered Falcon’s sister. “You’re gonna be grounded when you’re sixty!” promised the angry Sam Wilson. “And by then they’ll still be thinking up new charges to nail Hacker Nine’s skinny butt to the wall.” “H9 helped with the Badripoor thing,” Kerry interjected. “Saved lives and all kinds of good stuff. And if you take him into custody he’ll either get murdered or he’ll end up having to work for some secret mega-evil government conspiracy.” “Like Mr Epitome,” suggested Visionary. He didn’t make clear whether he thought Epitome was forced to work for such a cause or was the mega-evil conspiracy. “All of this can be worked out when the slaves here are liberated and their oppressor punished,” declared the Manga Shoggoth. His tendrils dripped with outrage. “Excuse me,” came a quiet voice from the door. “But has anybody thought of asking the poor oppressed green-skinned alien slave girls for their opinions?” Everybody turned to look at Miiri. “What, we can’t have an opinion?” she asked defensively. Then, to check, she turned to Vizh. “May we have an opinion please, Master?” “Er yes,” the possibly-fake man winced. “If that doesn’t get me dissolved by the Shoggoth.” “They have opinions?” Kerry asked worriedly. “Why did nobody tell me they had opinions?” “I think you are all being rather unfair to the M… to Visionary,” Miiri pointed out. “We have been in his household awaiting his return from his deeds of heroism, and we have had some time to observe what things are like on your strange and baffling planet.” She turned to Falcon. “We have seen this young man interact with your sister. He is not skilled in the arts of communicating with the opposite sex.” Lindy snorted in agreement. “He has however shown genuine affection and attachment to her, and she seems to have appreciated him giving her the attention she needs to cope with her own strange and baffling situation of having appeared a decade later than she previously lived in a very different family.” “I did?” beamed Hacker Nine. “I mean, I did.” Miiri turned to Kerry. “This young woman tries hard to conceal her caring nature, but she offered the sanctuary of Visionary’s household to a young man who might otherwise be prey to many evils, knowing that her mentor would care for and mould him as he has done the other youths placed in his charge.” “I so do not have a caring nature,” Kerry Shepherdson spat. “You take that back.” “Vizh would do as well with Hacker Nine as he did with the juniors?” Hallie worried. “But Kerry never warned me that little punk was here!” Visionary objected. “Hey, now I know where all my lasagne went, and why all my remote presets kept changing!” H9 raised his hands again. “Hey, I’ll cop to the lasagne but Fleabot changes your presets just to irritate you.” Kerry placed her hands on her hips and confronted Visionary. “Look, fake-o, we just offered H9 secret membership of the junior LL training programme and didn’t bother telling you. Deal with it.” “I think SPUD’ll have something to say about that,” suggested Falcon. “After I drag his scrawny ass back to the helicarrier and…” “No!” Lindy cried. “You leave him alone if you care for me even the slightest little bit! Look Sam, you say you’re a good guy now, that you care about me. So why don’t you care that I feel something for Zack?” “You do?” Hacker Nine perked up. “Lindy…?” “Don’t push it,” the teenager warned her potential boyfriend. “So Sammy, please…?” Vizh saw Kerry’s expectant stare and threw his hands up into the air in surrender. “Alright dammit! The little punk’s on the junior LL programme, and he’s covered by whatever-the-hell immunity Mumphrey gets for people he wants associated with the team when he goes all British and exploits his old boy network. But he keeps his hands off my lasagne.” “I’m… I’m free?” Hacker Nine blinked. “Oh no,” Kerry warned him. “Now you have to go to classes with fakeman droning at you for days on end. Your nightmare is just beginning.” Miiri went on to address the Shoggoth and Hallie. “As for we Caphans, your Lair Legion rescued us from dire and vile servitude, and Yo awarded us to the care and ownership of Visionary. He has been a very kind Master.” “I bet he has,” snorted Falcon, eyeing the buxom space-wench. “We may have failed him,” Miiri admitted, “for so far he has not allowed us to pleasure him, although we have trained since childhood in the myriad arts of drawing a man to the endless depths of carnal bliss.” She flashed Vizh a smile that made him look even more stricken and baffled than ever. “But he has fed us, clothed us, housed us, comforted us in our fears, treated us with respect, and protected us from all harm.” Hallie looked a little disconcerted too. “You’re saying he never…?” “No,” sighed Vizh. “It didn’t seem right. Dammit.” “You are making yourself very difficult for me to dissolve,” admitted the Manga Shoggoth. “Yeah, what a dweeb,” added Kerry. “Yes” agreed Hallie, glancing at Visionary with a little secret smile. Miiri looked worried for the first time as she came to the conclusion of her intervention. “We… we do not seem to fit well into this world,” she admitted. “Nobody here understands our point of view, and some people – or, or whatever you are Mr Shoggoth – some… things and people don’t understand that slavery is our way of life. It scares us, the idea of not having a Master to depend on, to have to depend upon ourselves alone.” “Yeah,” admitted Lindy Wilson quietly. “Depending on yourself, that can be real scary alright.” “But we know we cannot stay with our Ma… with Visionary. Your world would misunderstand, and we do not want any harm to come to him.” “Dammit, who said these bimbos could have brains and class as well,” objected Kerry. She glared down the front of her t-shirt and compared herself to Miiri. “Life is so unfair.” “Sometimes she sounds just like Visionary,” H9 whispered to Lindy. Kerry shut up. “I think I have the solution,” the Manga Shoggoth bubbled. “Is it a non-me-swallowing solution?” Vizh asked cautiously. “Visionary, you will sell me your slave-girls,” the Shoggoth announced. “I will take them to my Lemurian sanctuary, where there are many who were slaves from all times and shores. They will not be out of place there. Ebony will look after them and help them settle in. It is a tropical paradise by human terms, and I am sure it would suit their bio-organic and psychological requirements well. Then in their own times they can decide whom they wish to belong to, even if it is to themselves.” “You own your own beach resort?” Falcon asked. “It is a refuge for those that life has not treated well, and a place where they can find new purpose to the betterment of all.” “Miiri, do you want to go there?” Vizh asked. “Would you check with your friends?” “It is not a slave’s place to desire where she should go.” “But would you check with your friends anyway?” Visionary said. “With Deeela, Sayaana, Philaana, Noona, Odoola, Losiira, Luuma, and Kaara? If that’s what they’d like to do then that’s what I want to happen.” He glanced back at the Shoggoth. “And, preferably, not to be eaten.” “Okay,” grumbled Kerry reluctantly, “I’m slightly impressed he remembered all their names. But he’s still lame.” “Well, that’s that then,” Hallie declared, looking round the coffee-stained living room. “All done bar the paperwork, and no volcanoes.” “Yet,” smouldered Kerry, and bided her time. After all, non LMD-Vizh hadn’t met her highness next door yet. ~~What?~~ gasped Cressida the wonder worm. “Oh, I cracked the Abhuman’s big genetic secret years ago,” the mad scientist said dismissively. “They use vestigial radiations from some Celestian device to create their Plot-Altering Mists that give them all their powers and purposes. I just whipped up a substitute one afternoon when there was nothing good on cable. As good as the real thing, and 15% less fat.” “You made Cressie?” thud gasped. “Oh no. I just came up with the biotech. According to the readings I’m getting Cressida was modified by batch seventeen, which went to… who, Davidowicz?” The rat hacked away at a computer keyboard. “ZOXXON oil,” she read. “Some project they were trying to gestate mind-controlling bio-parasites.” ~~I’m a company girl?~~ asked Cressida. “ZOXXON was obviously working with the British Nuclear Regulatory Authority to get the radioactive isotopes needed to activate my pseudo-Mists,” Moo concluded. “And then when the experiment didn’t work, they flushed it.” “And it got eaten by a fishie!” thud deduced. “And then by me!” But Dr Moo wasn’t satisfied. “There’s more to it than that. Cressida’s transmutative abilities might be a mutation of the original biotelegenetic interface compounds, but that doesn’t explain her future-coleopteran form, nor the personality traits she’s developed independent of her Cro-Magnon host, nor any past-life experiences she believes she’s had.” ~~It’s a lot more than I knew before~~ Cressida pointed out. ~~Thank you.~~ “There’s still a lot more to fathom though,” Moo replied. “Don’t bother thanking me. We’ll know a lot more once I’ve dissected you.” Davidowicz ducked beneath the desk. “Here it comes!” “Dissected?” thud frowned. “Now wait a minute…” Dr Moo picked up her udder guns. “While we’ve been talking I’ve isolated the infection you introduced into my system and derived a complete cure. Now it’s time for me to render you both helpless and slice you into tiny slivers for diagnostic purposes. Moo-hah-hah-hah-hah!” ~~She really laughs like that?~~ Cressie wondered. “Seems like,” thud admitted. ~~Look, Doctor, I’ve gone easy on you until now. Don’t make me transmute your disease answer into cancer.~~ Moo held up her bioscanner. “You can’t. I’ve isolated your transmutative signature and I’m screening myself from it. I really am disgustingly brilliant. Sorry.” “Ach!” spat thud “You villains always think ye’re so clever, but we still have one final card to play.” And he handed over his mobile phone. “What now?” sighed Daio. “Speed dial one, ye culeen.” Moo thumbed the button. “Hello? Who is this?” “Daio?” came back the familiar voice of Dr Moo’s little sister. “Daio? “Lisa?” Dr Moo’s face darkened with rage. “You had me call her?” “I summons dull thud and Cressida” called the first Lady of the Lair Legion, and Moo’s captives vanished back to the Lair Mansion. “You are so going to wish you had never been born for that,” Moo warned Lisa. “I’m regretting it already now I’ve seen thud’s latest t-shirt,” the amorous advocatrix admitted. “So, how have you been?” The diabolical Dr Moo terminated the call and glowered round her lab. After a while Davidowicz ventured her head above the desk-top. “So the good guys get away again, huh, boss?” the rat lab assistant shrugged. “Not this time,” hissed Daio Waltz. She dialled another number into the phone. “Not this time. Hello, ZOXXON? I wish to report the location of some missing proprietary intellectual material of yours. The current holder is clearly in breach of copyright and trademark infringements, and is illegally withholding the rightful material of your fine corporation…. Yes, I’ll hold for your legal department. Moo-hah-hah-hah-hah!” Coming Next: The Intergalactic Order of Librarians acts at last to deal with its heretic member. Last time this happened they executed Lee Bookman. This time the case is complicated because the Librarian’s friends wish to object. Literary and legal shenanigans in UT#189: The Trial of Lee Bookman To find out what happens next with the Cephan refugees read Visionary's Untold Vignettes of the Transworld Challenge #3: Pure Thoughts.  Ye Tak’ the Highroad and I’ll take the Footnotes: The Origin of Cressida: Here’s the text of a chat I had with poster-thud back in July 2003: HH> So what can I do to complicate thud's life in Untold Tales? dull_thud> Good question. Could explore the nature of Cressida's consciousness. HH> In what way? Does Cressida even have a real origin by the way? dull_thud> Always wondered how, as a tapeworm, she could have met Knifey previously. HH> Good point. Damn these throwaway jokes. dull_thud> I did write one, but it turned into a Messenger story. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I'm just not comfortable with the really darkside stuff. dull_thud> No, I had a plan. HH> So what's the short form? I recall something about thud jumping off a bridge? dull_thud> In summary? HH> After some epic drinking session dull_thud> Okay. Scene one: the Irish Sea. HH> Begorrah dull_thud> Radioactive particles irresponsibly released from Sellafield enter the food chain. HH> Yes, probably. But back to the story. dull_thud> Heh. Mutates a tapeworm larva inside a haddock. HH> Ah, a tragic haddock story. Now we're getting somewhere dull_thud> Scene two: thud moping around Carluke, miserable Lanarkshire town. Sets him up as a gloomy type. Random fighting with neds. dull_thud> Eats haddock and chips. HH> Should have stuck to the deep-fried mars bars dull_thud> Remaining scenes: over constantly intensifying abdominal pains, violent outbursts and mental static, finally a colossal fight. HH> Wouldn't want to clean that toilet. dull_thud> Gets all too much - darkside, see - and hurls self over bridge. Irritated to find self alive. Repeats to fade. HH> Remind me how thud got the falling power dull_thud> Not a scoob. Zen, probably. dull_thud> Or some manifestation of inner turmoil. HH> Okay, I've figured out the complication now. dull_thud> Yeah? HH> Cressida is clearly the joint intellectual property of the Nuclear Power Regulatory Authority and ZOXXON Power Solutions International HH> thud is clearly in breach of copyright and trademark infringements, and is illegally withholding the rightful material of these fine corporations HH> I can see the subpoenas now dull_thud> Hmmm. Interesting. I had it down she was tapping into some manner of nebulous personality/intelligence that gives sentience to various... dull_thud> ...normally inanimate/mindless things throughout history. HH> On the personality stuff, yeah, no problem. I can work with that. dull_thud> Hmm. I like that. HH> It gives thud another reason to shaft authority. It gives Finny a good headache. It gives Cressida a platform to talk about sentient rights HH> It gives everybody a chance to do wicked things to corporate lawyers dull_thud> Nice. Assuming he doesn't have to reveal his true identity... HH> He has a true identity? HH> I thought dull thud was his real name dull_thud> Actually, skip the true identity part. It was a silly idea. HH> there on the birth certificate: Name - dull thud Gender - male Species - probably human dull_thud> Heh. Wondered whether it might be amusing at some point to puncture his scuzz-rockness by making him heir to a jam-making fortune. HH> Well, him and his long-lost twin sister, yeah. dull_thud> Hence corporate thugs on his trail. dull_thud> Ssh! Don't mention the sister! dull_thud> *buries notebook* HH> You might have to do a story about thud's brief millionaireship dull_thud> I'm thinking so. HH> You can borrow VelcroVixen if you like. Everyone else has. dull_thud> Heh. HH> Hey, she dated MODEM. thud's not much worse than a massive bloated floating head And so on… Green-Skinned Slave Girls Here’s some correspondence I had with Vizh on the subject of Miiri and friends: Vizh: What the hell am I going to do with 9... You know, I'm not even going to finish that one. But still, 9?! HH: But you were complaining about Nats and his sex princess getting all the fun, and commenting about the need to work green-skinned slave girls into the plot. I'm just reacting to reader feedback. Vizh: Okay... okay... I can deal with this. HH: Good man. Vizh: I just need to take it slow and figure things out a bit. So... any ideas about who these women are? What species? What planet they're from? HH: They're from Caph IX, in the constellation Cassiopeia (from Earth the stars form an inverted W, and Caph is the one at the bottom left), so I guess they're Caphean. Caph was named by the ancient Arabs (who knows how they got the right name for it) and it is also known in modern astronomy as Beta Cassiopeiae. Caph is the Arabic word for a hand stained with henna, the woman's hair dye. The star is 54 light years from Earth, an F-Class giant 4 times larger and 28 times brighter than Sol, so Caph IX is probably an arid desert planet, and its inhabitants can photosynthesise to supplement their nutrient intake (hence the green skin). Vizh: They like being slaves (or at least don't know any better), but hated the toads enough to look forward to fighting them with CSFB? HH: They come from a culture based upon slavery and ownership, where a slave takes their social status from the master they are owned by. A king's slave girl is accorded much more status and authority than a poor man's slave girl. Not to be owned at all would be a terrible fate, to be an outcast with no protection in law, no means of support, and prey to any who might want to harm or exploit them. Only very bad slaves would be cast out in that manner, after flogging and torture failed to reform them, and they would deserve everything that happened to them thereafter. And of course, being fantasy slave women, they're proficient at knife-fighting and face-clawing. Slaves sold offworld, for example those acquired by the Slavers of Frammistat Eight, often expect their new masters to understand the mutual bond of obedience and protection that is implicit on Caph IX, and are horrified to learn that this is not always the case in the big bad universe. These nine Caphans have had a bad time of late. Vizh: Are they related? Clones? Do they have names? They need names... HH: Some may be related, and others will have trained together. They do indeed have names. I can supply them if you don't want to create some. Of course, should you wish to rename them they will be amenable. Vizh: Who's idea was it to put them in my room? Who told them I was in charge? HH: I'm guessing the chain of events went like this: The Librarian finds that these nine rescued girls can't be returned home. They were legally sold, and now under Caphan law they're owned by the LL by right of conquest. So he sends them to Deputy-Leader Yo. Yo is setting up the big gods-battle thing, so of course s/he says “Go to be seeing of cute-Visi. He is to be knowing what to doing with you.” Factor in that Vizh wears the yellow coat of a high-status Cephan master denoting that he is very important indeed and probably owns favoured-slave Yo and the others of the team and your doom is sealed. There's no reason you can't put any or all of this into any scene you elect to write, by the way. Vizh: Seriously, is the Shoggoth going to eat me when he finds out about the whole slave thing? Cause I hear that's a sore point with him... HH: It is indeed. I imagine the Shoggoth will be wanting a word with you at some point. And Dancer. Vizh: I'll definitely try to find time for a scene if you let me know what the answers are to some of these questions, or if I should just make it up wholesale. I guess I wouldn't need to know what's going to happen (I like the surprise, after all), but... what's their motivation? HH: They want to be owned by a nice master who will treat them kindly. Perhaps they could settle down and some of them might gain favoured slave status by bearing him strong sons. Some of them are quite bright but Caphean women are not allowed to read or write and are not really encouraged to show initiative or original thinking. They are probably terrified and desperate, knowing that their new master commands forces mighty enough to destroy the Slaver Lovetoad. And Yo is far from stupid in sending these unhappy young women to see Vizh, now is s/he? Good luck. ___ Since then, further correspondence has established the nine Cephans as #1 Deeela, #2 Sayaana, #3 Philaana, #4 Noona, #5 Miiri, #6 Odoola, #7 Losiira, #8 Luuma, and #9 Kaara. The numbers denote their sale value from highest to lowest, based on the standard annual assessments of proficiencies, obedience, experience, and looks (Miiri would be worth rather more if she could overcome her obedience problems). Deeela, Sayaana, and Philaana are triplets. Losiira is the eldest, Luuma the youngest. And their names are not as random as they might seem, and so far CSFB! hasn’t worked out that this is a Kirk trivia question. The Diabolical Dr Moo, a.k.a. Daio Waltz, which is coincidentally the name of Lisa’s real-life big sister too, and also the name of a much-missed poster on the board, is the Parodyverse’s greatest genetic scientist. Dr Moo is a cow-masked bio-engineer villainess with the ability to control dairy products. She has a pet female rat called Davidowicz who has manifested a number of human-like traits including the ability to take photographs and talk. Asil was cloned by Moo from some of Lisa’s dandruff. Of Davidowicz, poster-Moo has this to say: “Davidowicz is my lab assistant not my pet. And as for manifesting human-like traits... let's just say that Davidowicz didn't begin life as a rat and that even the best planned experiments sometimes go awry.” Both Moo and her assistant were frozen in shards of null-time in the storage of the Manga Shoggoth until recently, when it was revealed in one of Killer Shrike’s stories that the Shoggoth had elected to “release them from slavery” and set them free. Since this coincided with poster-Moo paying a visit to the PV board I outrageously assumed my Moo-license had been at least temporarily renewed and gleefully dragged her in to this chapter. Those curious to see the debut of the character, in Daio’s own prose, are referred to The Diabolical Dr Moo, first posted in November 1998. And here's Moo in her own words from the earliest version of a PV character list: Real name: Daio Waltz Other aliases: The Diabolical Dr. Moo Group affiliation: Independent Base of Operations: Unknown History: Moo is Lisa's older sister who invaded the Parodyverse and decided to become a villainess because Lisa had been so busy at Baron Zemo's Lair, she hadn't had time to edit a story Moo had sent her. She is a truly cruel and evil person and will stop at nothing my my quest to get Lisa to edit my prose. She has even shown an appetite for bunnies, something which has bothered Lair Legion member, Yo, since Moo's arrival. Recently, Moo managed to obtain Lisa's Parodyverse linking device, which allows Lisa to access the Parodyverse. With it, she captured Lisa and blackmailed her into editing Moo's prose. Powers and abilities: Moo has control of the power of the digestive end-product of an uncastrated male ruminant of the species bos taurus - i.e. B.S. Also more of that - i.e. M.S. and pile it higher and deeper - i.e. Ph.D. Moo also has the ability to give anyone a sudden and overpowering desire for real dairy products - i.e. "Got Milk?" Appearance: Moo is about 5'8" tall, voluptous (otherwise known as slightly zaftig) with either the head of a Jersey cow or dark blonde shoulder-length curls and dark hazel eyes. Baroness Elizabeth Sweetwater Dewdrop von Zemo of Saxe-Lurkburg-Schreckhausen - notes from her poster: Citizenship: U.S.A. (for now); Childhood home: Hoople, North Dakota; Age: 26 Nickname: When in villainous mood, only “Elizabeth.” As a grad student, “Beth.” Prior occupation: Psychology graduate student at the University of Michigan, preparing to write her thesis on the psychology of obesity. Current occupation: Eager but inexperienced supervillain. Superpowers: none Appearance: height – 5”8” (172 cm); weight 140 lb. (63.6 kg); measurements 34C-29-35 (86C-73-89); hair golden blonde and curly; voice pleasing alto; eyes pale blue. No disfigurements. Attractive though slightly dumpy girl-next-door. Clothing: Grad student jeans and blouses (she rarely wears T-shirts), but she is moving toward business suits and dresses. On the job, black leather. Personality: As grad student, hard working, reliable, dull, loves children. As a von Zemo, developing arrogance toward the criminal element and heroes, but very consciously hiding her feelings from the world at large. Loves to keep others in the dark. Can be surprised or caught flat-footed because she knows much less about what is going on than she thinks, which makes her all the more reserved about her own plans. Still trying to develop an evil laugh or other trademark, and working hard to master the Zemo tradition of betrayal. Baron Otto is quite disappointed by all this. Abilities and advantages: Above-average intelligence; excellent organizational abilities; access to the encrypted Zemo papers; $30 million net proceeds from gold heist; Teutonic tenacity; able at keeping secrets; imaginative plans to counter PVB heroes; Compound XX (hyper-lubricant) and counteragent; Zemo personal force field; rivalry between Office of Paranormal Security (Mr. Epitome) and Presidential Adviser on Metahuman Affairs (Herbert P. Garrick) Weaknesses: General obliviousness to Parodyverse history; Teutonic tenacity; arrogance; inability to see ramifications of plots Current residence: Avisia Townhouses, Dullard’s Corner, Parodiopolis. They adjoin a condo complex including a semi-underground condo owned by Visionary. Art Credits Dept: Miiri and Hallie come from the fevered laptop of Visionary (or maybe from his PC, I suppose). dull thud, Cressie, and Moo are courtesy of Dancer. 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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