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Post By Double-length gloom and doom from the Hooded Hood Sat Dec 04, 2004 at 05:45:50 am EST |
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#193: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion vs the Hellraisers: The Worst Five Minutes | |
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| #193: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion vs the Hellraisers: The Worst Five Minutes What Has Gone Before: The Hellraisers’ offensive has begun. After capturing Herringcarp Asylum and blinding the powerless Hooded Hood when he surrendered to save the lives of Lisa and Dancer, the extradimensional villains went on to unleash plague in Paradopolis, to murder Princess Uhunalura when she tried to cure it, and to force vampire Night Nurse Grace O’ Mercy to attempt converting Hatman to an undead. The Lair Legion have learned that the Hellraisers now hold Lisa, Dancer, and Sorceress in Herringcarp and must decide whether to surrender, walk into a trap to save the hostages, or abandon the captives and seek another and surer way of stopping the enemy. This chapter is the fourth part of the Hellraisers Ascendant arc that includes UT#190: Heart's Blood, or Weird Romance, UT#191: The Siege of Herringcarp, and UT#192: Full of Sound and Fury. This issue features some graphic violence and is unsuitable for minors and those of a nervous disposition.  Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. "Forward, the Light Brigade! "Charge for the guns!" he said: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Charge of the Light Brigade “I calculate that the Legion would all die against them in a little under five minutes.” The Hooded Hood, Untold Tales #191 8.32am Reality twisted inside out, and the invading Legionnaires were in the Hooded Hood’s throne room, staring at the battered and bloody shape of the archvillain stretched out in chains across his Portal of Pretentiousness. And the Hooded Hood shifted his head at the noise and said: “Beware.” “Well well,” called the Chain Knight as the Hellraisers poised for attack. “The Lair Legion at last. Can we get your autographs before we slaughter every last one of you? “Reality shift,” Hatman called out. “Plan seven everybody!” He dragged on his sun hat and lunged towards Nosferos the Undying. “And c’mere you. We’re going to have words.” Plan seven unfolded. The Manga Shoggoth rolled forward in a low-level wave to entangle the five Hellraisers to the waist in his goo. Falcon took to the air, hovering near the vaulted ceiling and using long-range attacks to keep them disoriented. thud and Al B. hung back, one because his transmuting tapeworm was psionically shifting skins to pins and stabbing the enemy with their own epidermis, the other because he had a half-assembled force field projector that would imprison at least half the Hellraisers; Al was thinking the upper half. The close-range Legionnaires went in fast. CrazySugarFreakboy! avoided a dozen writhing chains to land a blow on Sir Lucian’s helmet. Epitome drove his fist elbow deep into Phleglethor’s gut. The Librarian downloaded the entire concerts of Heyden and Bach into the Bloodreaper’s mind. Yo engaged Maladomini, rapiering aside her dimension-slashing whip and landing a good solid head-butt on her nose. Trickshot fired a spray of arrows that Mumphrey shifted in time as the flew. Nats simply concentrated on trying to screw Phleglethor’s head off. For a moment the fight was going well, and then the Bloodreaper laughed. His alien mind easily absorbed the disgusting sounds Lee Bookman had intruded into it. He swept his scythe round and sliced it into the Librarian’s chest, then pulled it free severing half his enemy’s torso. Phleglethor broke wind, his caustic emissions searing through the Shoggoth that enveloped him. The surprised elder creature burst into flame as it exploded from within. At the same time Phleglethor hocked up a green glowing wad of bile that he let fly at Nats. Bill Reed psionically deflected it only to find he couldn’t get a mental hold on it. It splatted onto his face, caustic and deadly, eating away at skin and eyes and down towards the bone. Maladomini toppled backwards into the burning Shoggoth-goo but performed an impossibly-dexterous flip and came up fighting. Yo leaped in to follow before realising there was a sticky red patch on his/her silk tunic. A ridged ebony dagger was protruding from his/her chest, legacy of the dark mistresses’ first attack. Visionary skirted round the combat to where the Hooded Hood hung in chains. He could hardly recognise the raw carcase of a prisoner as the cowled crime czar. “How do we stop them?” he demanded of Ioldobaoth Winkelweald. The Hood made no reply. Nosferos shied away from the searing brilliance of Hatman’s sun hat; but he gestured and suddenly swarms of biting insects, of locusts and spiders and things with too many legs to have ever been spawned on Earth were dropping and flying onto the capped crusader, biting and burrowing. The hat was devoured in an instant, and Jay tumbled naked to the slimy floor. There the rats came in too, hungry and ambitious for human meat. The Chain Knight accepted CSFB!’s blows with equanimity, and then flailed his chain appendages in a well practised pattern designed to intercept any fast-moving agile opponent. Dream Foxglove managed to avoid almost all of them, and it was the final barbed chain that hammered him to the ceiling. Before he could slither free or vibrate through it a second set of links pounded through his stomach, pinioning him. The others that came after were then impossible to avoid. A dozen arrows appeared all at one in front of the Hellraisers as Mumphrey’s time manipulation ended. The combination of explosions, epilepsy-inducing magnesium flares, ear-splitting flashbangs, and even a shining silver shaft at Nosferos’ heart disorganised the villains for a moment and let the heroes get a second chance. Falcon power-dived down towards the Bloodreaper, his wing-edges now pared back to reveal a razor-sharp ridge of adamantine. He came in on the marauder at neck height. Epitome couldn’t get his arm free from the folds of Phleglethor’s stomach so he flexed his muscles and swung the whole bulk of the plague-lord overarm, smashing him down into the fuming remnants of the Shoggoth. Al B. completed the force field generator and concentrated on setting up a series of tiny bubbles of impenetrable force somewhere around the Chain Knight’s heart. Vizh raced over to Nats as the young man screamed on the floor. In his pain Bill Reed was using his telekinesis to literally rip the flesh from his own skull. Mumphrey jumped in front of Yo as the pure thought being faltered. He swung his temporal pocketwatch at Maladomini, ageing the dark mistress a thousand years in a second; she was unchanged. Cressida tried again, shifting chain to pain on Sir Lucian so that he stopped tearing CSFB! to pulp. The Chain Knight ignored her. He was used to agony. Trickshot loosed his holy water arrow right into Nosferos’ eye. Suddenly the ground shook. The flagstones of the Hood’s throne room shattered as dozens of chains broke up from beneath. The Chain Knight’s burrowing appendages scattered the Lair Legion, grabbing the fallen Librarian and the writhing Nats and dragging them underground. Visionary tried to seize Nats and prevent his loss but the gory links turned on him too, grabbing both his arms and legs then savagely ripping him in two. thud was sprayed with gore and paused for a fatal moment as the chains punched up through his back to tear out his stomach, Cressida and all. Phleglethor rolled over Mr Epitome coating him with flesh-eating sweat as he shifted, and caught Trickshot from behind with another gobbet of phlegm. Nosferos wrenched the arrow from his eye, hissing with the agony of the blessed fluid, and in his rage hurled it with deadly accuracy to skewer the pain-wracked archer through the throat. Maldomini clawed Sir Mumphrey’s waistcoat, shredding the flesh beneath and sending him reeling away. Yo staggered backwards as the poison in the dagger did its work. S/he tried to avoid the incoming lash but the dark mistress’ whip cut straight through his/her uplifted protective arm and severed it as easily as it took off his/her head. The Bloodreaper caught Falcon’s wings head on, ignoring the gashes caused by the adamantine razors on his own nigh-invulnerable flesh. He opened his massive hinged jaw and bit Falcon’s head off. Hatman rose, bloody and battered, and pulled on his Donar helmet. Nosferos moved with preternatural speed, seized the shining helm from Jay Boaz’ head, and crumpled it onto a ball. His left hand casually swung back and it was only when he felt the blood at his neck that Hatman realised his throat had been clawed out. Al B. readjusted his force field matrix to slice the Chain Knight in two. It was clear that the being had no internal organs to attack but surely severing him… Unfortunately the Blooodreaper had exactly the same plan for Al B. Harper. There was a sudden spray of blood and two halves of a brilliant scientific device toppled beside the parts of its creator. Mr Epitome rose despite the flesh-eating necrosis that threatened to cripple him and crumpled Phleglethor’s face in. Maladomini’s lash caught him be surprise and lurched him backwards, and the last thing he saw was Bloodreaper’s scythe descending towards his skull. The throne room went quiet as the Hellraisers turned on the last living member of the team that had assaulted them. The battle had taken a little under five minutes. Mumphrey fumbled with bloody fingers for the stud on his Chronometer of Infinity that would allow him to rewind time by that much and grant his team another chance. A brutal chain wrapped round his wrist, preventing him from operating his pocketwatch, hoisting him up to dangle before Sir Lucian and him companions. “Game over, Sir Mumphrey,” said the Chain Knight. Previously, at 6.53am: Sir Lucian, the Chain Knight, sat on the Hooded Hood’s throne and sipped a cup of wine from his enemy’s cellar. “Report.” Phleglethor the Pestilent spoke first. The huge bloated red-skinned disease-personification was still in an ebullient mood from his earlier foray. “My little disease is still spreading across the human population centre where the Lair Legion dwell. So far the deaths are only in the hundreds, but I have great hopes. And I have eliminated the Abhuman healer-girl, slowly and painfully, so that should provoke an immediate response.” “The humans are concentrating their efforts on containing the disease,” Nosferos the Undying added. “They are diverting their troops to contain the areas of Paradopolis and Gothametropolis, their whole national attention focussed on those spectacularly ugly deaths our corpulent colleague has arranged. Nobody has discerned the gathering of undead in Washington, nor the judicious recruitment of key security figures at the White House. Two nights from now there’ll be no-one to stop us from bringing the President into the ranks of the vampyr – and after that anyone we so choose.” “The intelligence agencies are in disarray,” Maladomini contributed. “It seems as though some of their key agents have turned up dead, and each organisation is blaming the others. And of course I’ve penetrated the SPUD halicarrier security fields so I can dimension-lash in there when its time to destroy it. Meanwhile I’ve been working on Harlagaz Donarson as my pet project, and later on I’ve promised to introduce him to my friends.” The Bloodreaper was unimpressed. “Bah! This is wasting time! When do we rip into that Lair Legion? When do we get somebody worth hurting? I’ve been cooped up a long time and I’m very very bored. And when I get bored I get irritable.” “Oh, don’t worry,” the Chain Knight assured the scythe-wielding mass-murderer. “I expect Sir Mumphrey will be thinking of a clever way to break into the Asylum any time now.” 6.55am: “Yes?” barked Sir Mumphrey Wilton. Asil opened the door to let Visionary into his office. “You have to do an assault on Herringcarp Asylum,” Vizh said bluntly. “Really?” breathed the eccentric Englishman. “And why is that?” “Because our friends will be slaughtered,” the possibly-fake man replied. “These Hellraisers are playing for keeps, and we can’t risk what they’ll do to Lisa, Dancer, and Sorceress if we don’t rescue them. Or else we have to give in at least for now so the hostages aren't hurt.” “What do you suggest then?” Mumphrey demanded. “Walking straight into their trap so we can all die and lose Earth’s last hope of freedom from these tyrants? Giving them the planet to play with? Or somebody else’s planet?” “I’d be willing to try for a hostage exchange, to be substituted for the girls.” “And you think the Chain Knight would agree to that? We can’t show weakness now, or they’ll tear our throats out.” “We can’t oppose them either, or they’ll murder our friends!” Sir Mumphrey shrugged. “Well that’s a risk we’ll just have to take. All of our team-mates knew the risk when they signed up for the job.” “You’re saying the Legion won’t be going in to rescue the girls?” “I’m saying we won’t be undertaking any suicide missions. We can’t think only of Lisa and Whitney and Dancer. We have to think of the planet as a whole. We have to conserve our strength till it will do the most good, and we have to think of the benefit of the most people.” Asil blinked in alarm as her two mentors rounded off at each other. “Sir Mumphrey!” she squeaked, “You and Lisa… I mean surely you can’t just… And Whitney’s your grand-daughter!” “And how many other lovers and grand-daughters, mothers, fathers, beloved children, how many others will perish who weren’t fortunate enough to be associated with a Legionnaire if we do not intervene?” Mumphrey demanded. “How can we be so selfish when the world depends on us?” Visionary intervened to stand between Asil and Sir Mumphrey. “There’s no way I’m leaving Lisa, Dancer, and Whitney as prisoners.” he insisted. "And there's no way I'm leading the Lair Legion straight into an obvious trap that'll get them killed just to satify your knee-jerk sentimentality, without having some kind of edge to give us a chance!" “We’re not an army or some kind of super-police regiment, whatever you might think. We’re family, and family sticks together!” “Really?” exploded the eccentric Englishman, “Well that’s a shame, Mr Visionary, because there was a time when you might well have been able to make that call, back when you sat at this desk and made the big decisions. But as I recall you elected to resign and retire to live a comfortable life with your friends and leave the hard choices to others. To me. So don’t presume to whine to me about the decisions I have to make because you elected to shirk your duties, mister!” Asil fled from the room sobbing as the argument raged. 7.13am: “I’m so sorry, Bill,” Hatman said to Nats as he found the stricken young man at the crime scene. The forensics people hadn’t yet been able to get into the children’s ward because the SPUD biohazard people were still at work. Nats stared straight ahead into the wrecked hospital rooms with stark disbelief. “She’s dead,” he said at last. “Uhuna. They murdered her.” “I know,” Jay told him. He laid a comforting hand on his team-mate’s shoulder. “Now I’m scared to death for Whitney and Dancer and Lisa too. These villains are hardcore.” “These villains are dead!” hissed Nats. “No mercy. They die!” “Hold it together, Bill,” Hatman warned him. “Don’t let your anger get the better of you.” “Are you kidding? The anger’s all that’s keeping me going right now,” Nats growled. “That fat plague-demon-thing dropped a wall on Temporary Death as well. Tricia. She’s in a coma right now, severe head trauma.” “I thought she was a conceptual entity, beyond harm.” “Was is the right tense,” Nats reported. “She’s in critical condition, cranial bleeding, broken limbs. She’s too ill for them to even operate.” He slammed his fist into the wall. “Dammit!” Jay Boaz didn’t know what to say. “I, um, I brought Mac Fleetwood and Laurie Leyton in,” he ventured. “They both have the plague too. And they’re both advanced cases. Sorry.” “You told G-Eyed? Uhuna… she healed him and Beth before…” “Yeah. He’s weak as a kitten but he’s over at Laurie’s bedside.” Belatedly Nats noticed Hatman’s condition. “Hey, what happened to you? You look half dead!” “Which is 50% better than a couple of hours ago,” Hatman confessed. “Really. I was… well Grace O’Mercy and I got attacked by a vampire called Nosferos. I think now he might be part of the same outfit as the Chain Knight and that big fat plague demon. And I… well I got my blood sucked to turn me into a vampire. Grace saved me with a blood donor’s hat.” “That’s one smart girl,” Nats admitted. “Uhuna was a smart girl,” he added with a broken sob. “Yeah. Look man, I’ve got to talk with Grace before we go, okay? Will you be alright?” Nats face was set in stone. “I’m prepared,” he replied. 7.21am “No,” the Librarian said firmly. “I won’t do it.” “Really?” the Leader of the Lair Legion scowled. “And what makes you think you can ignore a direct order at a time of crisis, sirrah?” Lee Bookman swallowed hard and held his ground. “You may all dislike the Hooded Hood, but I have every reason to respect him,” he argued. “When I was as good as dead he intervened and kept me alive. He gave me a job classifying his own literary collections, kept me going until I was able to get back my position at the Moon Public Library…” “Yeah, he’s a real humanitarian,” Trickshot interrupted. “Excepting for the times he’s taken over the planet or tried ta delete the Parodyverse and all.” ~~It’s because you’ve actually lived in Herringcarp Asylum that we need your help,~~ Cressida telepathed. ~~The whole place has to be riddled with anti-Legion traps. Only you might know of some way in that could give us the advantage we need.~~ “No, that’s not fair,” the Librarian persisted. “That’s confidential information I learned while I was in Ioldobaoth’s employ. I can’t divulge that any more than I could give away the things I’ve learned about you to others.” “This isn’t covered by those limits of action in your rule-book,” Mumphrey pointed out. “Anything you might have learned about the Hood – our archenemy the Hooded Hood – is in no way protected by your Librarian’s oath. So spit it out, man. There’s lives at stake. We need an edge!” “I won’t,” Lee Bookman declared. “I can’t.” “By thunder you can and will!” roared Sir Mumphrey. “You can damned well pull your weight in this moment of crisis with the lives of three young women at stake and the lives of thousands of civilians behind them, or you can get out of this building and never darken out doors again!” “Lee,” Yo intervened. “Yo is to be thinking that maybe is Hoody needing of help too, yes? So perhaps he is not to be minding of you taking us to be secret into Herringcarp of this one time? Maybe is one of uncute-Hood’s reasons for to be saving of Librarian in first place?” The Librarian considered this as the Lair Legion stared at him. “Well, you might have a point,” he conceded to the pure thought being. “I’ll try and get you in. Under protest.” “How?” demanded Mr Epitome. “The Hood’s library is transdimensional. I might be able to calculate a way to link it to the Moon Public Library for a short-term data shunt if nobody’s paying attention to stop me. Then we slip the team in the other way before the conduit closes.” Lee Bookman looked serious. “It’s one time and one way,” he warned. “Then get to it,” snapped Sir Mumphrey Wilton. 7.33am: “Grace?” The Night Nurse jumped, startled by Jay Boaz approach. When she saw it was him she went even paler than usual. “You frightened me,” she confessed. “Do vampires get frightened?” Hatman asked her. “This one’s terrified,” Grace confessed. “Jay, what are you going to do with me? Why did you bring me back here?” Hatman looked around the Emergency Room. As the plague took hold and the raging storm outside claimed more victims the already-crowded place was packed beyond capacity. “They need you here,” he suggested to the Night Nurse. “Plus, you know, it’s an indoor job, our of the sunlight.” “But you know what I am,” Grace pointed out. “You know what I did to you. I’ve… I’ve tasted blood now, the way it was meant to be taken, and it felt so very, very good!” Jay pointed to the sick and wounded lying on gurneys in the corridors. “Well, there’s plenty here to choose from,” he pointed out. “Why not drink one of these?” Grace shuddered like an addict. “Don’t,” she pleaded. “I so want to. But I can’t.” “Why not?” “Because these are my patients,” the Night Nurse answered. “Oh Jay. What have I become? What happens now?” Grace O’Mercy had obviously found a clean uniform to replace the blood-soaked dress Hatman had brought her here in. He pointed to the crowded casualty ward. “Right now, you save lives like you always do. The rest… we figure that later.” He glanced at the trembling young woman. “Can you do that?” Grace reached for her cap, the white one with the red cross on it, and with trembling fingers fixed it over her hair. “Oh,” she grimaced. “It hurts.” “Take it off, then,” suggested Jay. The Night Nurse shook her head. “It goes with the job. My job.” And she glided away into the Emergency Room to save lives. 7.41am Killer Shrike looked up at the bleeding limp body of the Hooded Hood. “Aw, what did they do to you?” he wondered. The Hood hung in his chains, twitching occasionally at the nightmare pulses that were being fed into his body, but otherwise made no reply. His cheeks were stained with gore from his sightless eyes. “He refused to play victim,” Chronic answered, coming on the dead mercenary and the fallen cowled crime czar unexpectedly. “You gotta admire a guy who’s being tortured to death and can still find ways of annoying the Chain Knight.” Killer Shrike bristled. “Hey, I’m dead. That Chain Knight’s the new Death or something. He can do anything he wants to me. I had to tell him what he wanted to know.” “Or that would have been you up there in the chains?” snorted Chronic. “Right. Except I couldn’t die from my tortures, only hurt forever.” The top-knitted killer looked back at the musician who’d tried to kill him a few days ago. “Listen, about when you die…” “What happens when you’re dead?” Chronic anticipated. “Nobody knows. After a short while most people slip beyond this sort of threshold. Some souls are grabbed by specific powers and entities, put into little heavens and hells, but even that’s probably not their final final destination if you know what I mean.” Shrike shuddered. “This is so not me. I’d just made it big. I was going places.” “Yeah,” agreed Chronic. “And I was giving up the crack and buyin’ my own guitar.” He patted the devil’s instrument. “Meet Steve. He gloats when souls vanish over that last threshold. I think he knows something we don’t.” “I don’t like being dead.” “Well, at least you avoided the rush. When Lucian and his homeboys get their act together it’s going to get a lot more crowded.” “I… I met this girl. After I died, I mean. A kid in black, who told me…” “You met Izzy Shapiro. She used to be CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s squeeze.” “Really?” Killer Shrike asked. “She never mentioned…” “Coincidentally, I did his sister once,” Chronic remembered. “PsychoAcidPervGirl! That one’s nasty. But Izzy, I bet she gave you the angel speech, right? One last chance and all that?” “She does that a lot?” Simon Maddicks wondered, not sure whether he wanted to hear that it was all some kind of scam or that he had a rare precious opportunity to avoid Steve’s gloating. “Some. But if she said it she meant it,” the undead musician replied. “And in this case she’s on our side.” “Working for the Chain Knight?” Chronic blew through his lips. “We’re not working for Lucian and the Hellraisers, we’re their victims. More than Hooded Oozing Boy there. They command us because we’re their slaves, man. But we can make them regret it.” “We can? How?” Chronic told him. 7.49am The Manga Shoggoth bubbled from the drains at the Zero Street Mission then took the time to squeeze his bandages and human clothes from the middle of his protomass and wrap them in place before proceeding into the church where the stricken lay. Ebony looked up from the man she was tending and came over to meet him. “Do you need something?” she asked. “I was coming to ask you that,” the elder creature answered. “I was surprised to find you here rather than at the Refuge.” “Really? Well Mac Fleetwood’s critical in the PMH and he had a whole churchful of sick people who haven’t any health insurance and nobody to organise things, so I thought…” “You are doing the right thing,” the Shoggoth approved. “I will reserve the right to worry about you, however.” “I’ll be fine,” his high priestess assured him. “You go save the world and stuff.” She managed to wait until the Shoggoth had oozed away before breaking into that rasping cough and bringing up the clots of blood. 7.51am “Just got word from Sir Mumphrey,” Epitome told Nats and Falcon. “He’s made his decision and we’re going in to Herringcarp to take down those Hellraisers. Get ready to pull out of the hospital in ten minutes and head back to the Mansion.” The man of might nodded to them and went off to find CrazySugarFreakBoy! Electronic communications had become unreliable across Paradopolis. “Going in!” Falcon scowled. “What the hell’s wrong with carpet bombing the damn place?” Nats blinked. “Because, doofus,” he answered angrily, “we got three of our own in there, and who knows how many other hostages.” “Three or three hundred it’s an acceptable loss to take down those bad guys,” Sam Wilson warned him. “The mission…” Bill Reed told him what he could do to the mission. “Look, SPUD-head, in case you didn’t figure it the LL takes care of its own. We don’t write off three of our friends because it’s expedient!” “No, we walk into some stupid trap and we all get massacred,” Falcon shouted back. “That’s real good planning. That’ll save the damn planet!” Nats’ temper flared. “Hey, I’ve got the love of my life back there dead in a pile of goo! I want these guys stomped to dust as much as anybody, really I do. But I’m not going after them over a pile of dead hostages!” “Yeah, I’m real sorry Uhuna got herself killed, And that you’re all heart-broken about it,” Falcon retorted. “But there’s more at stake than one Abhuman girl and your blind grief. Those bad guys are playing us, forcing us to take unwise actions, herding us to a killing ground…” “Those bad guys have crossed the line so far that if we don’t pound them worse than anything we’ve ever met we’ll never be safe and our loved ones will never be safe again!” Nats yelled back. “So we all follow Sir Mumphrey Wilton into the machine-gun fire, like the command he held at the Somme in World War One? Yeah, I up read some reports. Good little soldiers to the slaughter because that’s the honourable Legion was of doing things? Well &%$£ the Legion way of doin’ things and &%$£ the Legion for doing ‘em that way. What we need is…” “What you need is someone to get that ‘I’m a pro’ four foot pole out of your ass!” Nats declared. “Maybe by kicking your butt so bad you don’t know what day of the week it is.” “You can try, ‘flying phenomenon’, but don’t think I’ll go soft on you because you’re displacing your dead-girlfriend grief.” Nats snarled and telekinetically punched Falcon out of the window. Falcon snared Nats with his grapple line and pulled him after, discharging electricity through the delivery man. Nats hammered Falc from all sides, shifting them both upwards at extreme velocity. Falcon distracted Nats with a spread of air to air missiles then followed with a gut punch that sent the red-headed hero reeling. Nats grabbed hold of Falcon’s neck and twisted… Hatman pounded into him and swept him away from the combat zone. At the same time CrazySugarFreakBoy! dropped down onto Falcon’s back and covered his faceplate with silly string. “You guys sure picked a bad time for your %&*#head convention,” CSFB! told them. “Awesomely.” 8.14am Keiko put down the binoculars and slithered back down to the camouflaged canvas lean-to where Cleone and Messenger huddled from the driving rain. “They’re still inside,” she reported of her observation of Herringcarp Asylum. “There’s OPS troops taking station along the promontory road but no sign of any movement.” “That’s to be expected,” Cleone reasoned. “When this world’s league of heroes attacks they are unlikely to make a frontal assault anyway, but they may arrange a diversionary foray by those soldiers to give them a moment’s distraction.” “And you want us to slip inside the Hooded Hood’s stronghold while the LL’s making a diversion for us,” Messenger noted. “Why am I here again?” “Because I have a great butt?” Keiko suggested. “Because Xander needs you with him,” Cleone told the postman. “I don’t know why. He’s so far away now that all I get are feelings of him. I can sense horror, and nightmare, and terrible evil. But I know he needs you. Keiko and I have to deliver you.” “To take down these Hellraisers who are planning right now to massacre the whole Lair Legion,” Messenger asked sceptically. “No, to take down the much more powerful beings who are behind the Hellraisers,” Keiko explained. “Blackheart, Prince of Fibs and whoever else is with him.” “Blackheart was destroyed,” noted Cleone. “He should not still exist. Some terrible power is being harnessed to keep him clinging on. We must help Xander to find and neutralise that power.” “And we do that by creeping into Herringcarp Asylum?” the postman checked. “None of this makes sense. Except the part where Keiko’s butt is great.” “I’ve explored the interior of that fortress,” Keiko reported. “I noticed a few weak spots, vulnerabilities where a trained agent could slip in if nobody was watching. I can get us inside.” Cleone noticed that the Garden City assassin seemed more comfortable working with Messenger than at any other time since she’d met the woman who called herself Keiko Chinato. Was the ex-police officer used to being backed up by a rough, fit, aggressive male partner? “The Hellraisers have opened another portal to their own stronghold inside the Asylum,” the swanmay continued. “And from their dimensional vortex stronghold we can get to wherever Xander and ManMan went.” Messenger sighed as he realised he was being dragged into a mission that was almost certain to end in his slow bloody death. Again. “Your butt better be world class,” he told Keiko. 8.21am Al B. Harper invented a whole new branch of standing field generation math and finished wiring up D.D. to the modified information transfer conduit. “This should work,” he judged. “For something around fifteen seconds.” “That’s all you’ll need,” the Lunar Public Library’s resident artificial intelligence calculated. “Usually we project duplication drones into threatened libraries to take molecular copies of volumes in danger of destruction. Then we reassemble those copies here and add them to the repository. In this case we send the Lair Legion instead of the drones, in via the back door Lee worked out while he was working as the Herringcarp Asylum librarian.” “It’s a legitimate mission,” the Librarian argued. “The Hood’s collection is in genuine danger from those Hellraisers.” “Are we ready then, Mr Harper?” Sir Mumphrey Wilton demanded. “As soon as the transfer matrix is established and calibrated in a few moments’ time we should be ready to go die horribly,” the Lair Legion’s scientist agreed. “And he isn’t kidding,” complained Falcon. “And yet you’re here,” dull thud noted. “Sure, like I’m going to walk out when the going gets tough,” the SPUD agent scorned. “I think this is a really dumb move but I’m not walking until this mission’s done. But after that I’m out of this turkey outfit! “You really don’t want to be talking about turkey outfits dressed like that," dull thud advised him. “Just saying.” “I don’t care what you plan to do after the mission,” Nats said grimly. “I don’t think I’ll be making it back. I don’t want to make it back.” “Yo is to be telling you again, is not allowed for poor-Nats to be dying, yes? Yo is unhappy about cute-Uhuna and cute-Tricia but is to be still to be planning to be fighting of the baddies.” “Oh, I’ll fight ‘em,” Bill Reed scowled. “I don’t intend to die without taking those bastards with me.” ~~How did you convince Sir Mumphrey to mount a rescue, Visionary?~~ Cressida wondered. “I don’t think I did,” the possibly-fake man replied. “I know Asil talked with him after me, though.” “If we’re going in to stop these Hellraisers we might as well save Dancer and Lisa and Whit as well,” Trickshot pointed out. “It’s not like it was a good night on the TV or anything.” “I’ve sent the signal for the diversion,” Mr Epitome reported. “The OPS assault squad’s going in.” “Right,” called Mumphrey. “Then pay attention chaps.” The Lair Legion gathered round, tense, wary, angry, maybe even frightened. “I know this is isn’t what all of you would choose,” the eccentric Englishman told them. “I know some of you think of this team as a squadron, and some as a club, and some as a family. But right now we’re called to be heroes, and that’s the hardest thing of all. Heroes sometimes have to give up what they’ve got so other people can enjoy freedom and justice.” “Now a while ago some of you folks went to considerable trouble to persuade me to stay on as Leader of the Lair Legion,” he went on. “A few of you might be havin’ second thoughts now. But the reason we have a Leader is because when the crisis hits somebody’s got to make the call. If we don’t keep ranks we get picked off separately. So I’m thankin’ you all for your input and opinions, and telling you that now we’re going to war, and what I say goes. You can throw me out afterwards if we live, but for now you do what I say, when I say it, is that clear?” “We know the drill, Sir Mumphrey,” Nats protested. “Good. Then let me add this. I’m damned proud to have had a chance to work with each one of you. A great privilege. Now we go to fight an uphill battle on a prepared enemy at a battlefield of their choosin’. They may think this is going to be an easy win. I think it’ll be their hardest test. I think it’ll be our finest hour.” The old man shifted and broke the spell. “Time’s up, ladies and gentlemen. Let’s fight the good fight.” 8.22am: The Bloodreaper screeched in delight as he gnawed upon the severed leg of one of the attackers from outside the Asylum. “More!” he shouted. “Send me more things to kill!” “Oh grow up,” growled the Chain Knight. “This has got to be a diversion. But where are the Lair Legion?” 8.23am: “We’re in!” Lee Bookman exclaimed, staring round the dark eclectic library of Herringcarp Asylum. “Try not to touch anything.” “First team to be with Visi, looking to be rescuing of our friends,” Yo called out urgently. “Seconding team with Hat to be finding of uncute Hellraisers. And be to remembering that if we are to losing of contact then…” And then the Hooded hood’s contingencies hit them. 8.24am: “What, you were thinking I was just an abandoned storyline?” Yerk demanded, falling upon Yo. “You have no idea who I am really to be being, do you?” 8.24am: “Whadda you mean you’re my kid?” Trickshot demanded, dodging the arrow that almost pinned him to the wall. “Th’ Contessa and me never had no kids!” 8.24am: “Mad at you?” Miss Framlicker asked, holding a piece of her wedding cake in one hand and a bloody carving knife in the other. “What makes you think I’m mad, Alaric, my love?” 8.24am: “Bridget, you are dead,” the Manga Shoggoth gurgled as his former high priestess bound him with a searing elder sign. “How could you turn against me like this?” 8.24am: “By order of the Supreme Court of the Unites States, we find the bioengineered tapeworm Cressida to be the property of ZOXXON International, and order that she be surgically extracted from the thief who stole her forthwith…” 8.24am: “You know what?” demanded Lindy Wilson with hate in her eyes, “I wish I was back with Falco. He was a sister-beating hood who tried to sell me for crack cocaine but at least he never let me down as bad as you have!” 8.24am: “Dead?” Hatman asked Hagatha Darkness. “H-how can Whitney be dead? She had everything to live for. Why would she do something like that?” 8.24am: “So Uhuna’s gone,” shrugged Temporary Death with a sickly pale grin. “I had to get rid of her so we can be together forever, Bill. You know I did it all for you…!” 8.24am: “It isn’t a malfunction, boss,” A.L.F.RED reported as he hurled the severed head of Dr Blargelslarch at the Librarian. “I just decided it was time to tear the heads off everybody I know. Nothing personal, okay?” 8.24am: “I don’t want to be like you, grandpa,” Samantha Featherstone told Sir Mumphrey Wilton. “I think maybe my dad was right about you all along. But at least we’ll get your money when you’re dead, right?” 8.24am: “Best as we can figure,” Dan Drury explained, holding Visionary back from the wreckage of his Condo, “the Hellraisers finished off the LL then came after the Juniors. The kids never stood a chance.” 8.24am: “That’s not her,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! told Epitome, grabbing him by the arm and dragging him aside from Artemis’ torn crucified body. “I mean it, big guy. That’s not who you think it is and right now we’re both inside one huge Hooded Hood retcon trap being hit with our worst nightmares. So snap out of it and let’s do the hero thing, okay? This way.” 8.25: “Hell’s teeth,” gasped dull thud “If that’s the stuff the Hood set up as incidental defences again’ us if we happened to wander in I’d hate tae think what he’s stored away for if he really wanted ta get us!” “Suck it in and keep moving,” Sir Mumphrey Wilton barked fiercely. “Every second counts.” 8.27am: “This place is a labyrinth,” Mr Epitome complained, rubbing his forehead. “These corridors keep moving while we’re not watching them.” The paragon of power’s x-ray vision was proving less than useful in Herringcarp’s eccentric layouts. On some occasions he could even see the back of his own head. “Yo is thinking that Yo can find the way to our friends,” Yo asserted. “Be to be following Yo!” 8.31am: “We’re being followed,” Trickshot warned. “They’re very good at being stealthy.” Hatman knew better than to question Trickshot’s hunter instincts. “Get ready,” he warned his team. “They’re onto us.” 8.32am And then reality twisted inside out, and the invading Legionnaires were in the Hooded Hood’s throne room, staring at the battered and bloody shape of the archvillain stretched out in chains across his Portal of Pretentiousness. And the Hooded Hood shifted his head at the noise and said: “Beware.” “Well well,” called the Chain Knight as the Hellraisers poised for attack. “The Lair Legion at last. Can we get your autographs before we slaughter every last one of you? 8.37am: “Game over, Sir Mumphrey,” said the Chain Knight. He tightened the links around the old man’s wrists until the shattered bones ground together. “Beg.” “Go to hell,” snarled the eccentric Englishman through his tears. “Been there. Got sponsorship,” answered Sir Lucian. “Might does not make right.” “And you defeated us so badly,” mocked Maladomini, “because your hearts are pure.” She held up Epitome’s severed head and kissed it. With tongues. “Next time will be different,” promised Mumphrey Wilton. “Next time?” snorted Phleglethor. He was chewing on a chunk of Yo’s leg as he laughed. “When your leader here lets me rewind time so the Legion can have another chance,” Mumph grimaced. “That is what you’re intending, isn’t it? To prove that last time wasn’t a fluke of misfortune, but that you can kill us all kinds of ways, however and whenever you like?” “To break the heroic ideal, yesss,” agreed Nosferos. “Perhapsss next time we will keep some of you alive as amusements?” The Chain Knight released Mumphrey so the last of the Lair Legion tumbled to the floor. “Summon them then, old man. Wind back time with the last of your strength and let us be at them again.” “More killing?” the Bloodreaper exalted, wiping Falcon’s blood from his chin. “We slaughter them anew?” He turned on Phleglethor, “And next time keep Yo’s corpse intact until I’ve finished with it!” “Time running out, Sir Mumphrey,” mocked the Chain Knight. “Or are you afraid that your Legion will lie less cleanly next time?” Sir Mumphrey Wilton picked up his pocketwatch in his one good hand, and tried not to tremble as he dialled events back as far as he could take them. 8.32am And then reality twisted inside out, and the invading Legionnaires were in the Hooded Hood’s throne room, staring at the battered and bloody shape of the archvillain stretched out in chains across his Portal of Pretentiousness. And the Hooded Hood shifted his head at the noise and said: “Beware.” “Well well,” called the Chain Knight as the Hellraisers poised for attack. “The Lair Legion at last. Can we get your autographs before we slaughter every last one of you? “Reality shift,” Hatman called out. “Plan seven everybody!” “Belay that,” Mumphrey barked as the Legion prepared for combat. “Defence Pattern Sherman!” “What?” objected Trickshot. “But we…” “I said Sherman, dammit!” Mumphrey thundered. The Lair Legion scatted out in a broad defensive pattern, changing trajectories and tactics to confuse the enemy and buy them time. Nobody understood why. “You sirrah!” Mumphrey called to the Hooded Hood. “You know what you have to do!” The cowled crime czar did not move in his chains. “What’s the point of this?” Visionary demanded of the eccentric Englishman as he nearly lost a limb to the Bloodreaper’s scythe before CSFB! bounced the marauder away. “We can’t last more than half a minute like this!” “Fifteen seconds is all I can give you,” the keeper of the Chronometer of Infinity answered, expending the last vestige of chronal charge from his pocketwatch to freese the Hellraisers in time for a few vital seconds. “Everybody!” Mumph called out. “Through the Portal of Pretentiousness. Now!” “What?” objected Falcon. “but they’re helpless now and we could…” The Chain Knight ignored the time-stop and lunged at the Legion. “Now!” shouted Mumphrey. There was an emergency evacuation through the shimmering full-length mirror that stood at one end of the Hooded Hood’s throne room. Mumphrey and Yo were the last through. Then the Chain Knight snaked a chin around Sir Mumphrey’s ankle and dragged him back. “No!” yelled Yo, and turned to save the eccentric Englishman. “Go!” Mumphrey ordered. “Take care of ‘em. Make me proud!” The pure thought being shot him a look of absolute anguish and leaped through the Portal. It clouded and went black. The Hellraisers began to move once more “Everyone got out safely except you, Sir Mumphrey,” the Chain Knight noted. “How heroic. And unexpected. I didn’t think we’d break the heroes that easily.” “You didn’t break them. They followed orders. Good chaps the lot of ‘em. And they’ll be back, and next time it’ll be a different story.” “We can go after them now,” Maladomini pointed out, stroking her nails over the half-healed scabs on the Hooded Hood’s chest.. “Wherever they have fled, he can send us after.” “Hmph,” snorted Mumphrey. “That’s why I had absolutely no intention of goin’ through the portal anyway. Needed to do this.” And he flung his temporal pocketwatch at the Portal of Pretentiousness, shattering its dark glass into a million shards. “No!” screeched Nosferos. “We needed that!” “Too bad,” scorned Sir Mumphrey Wilton. Sir Lucian chuckled. “He’s a sneaky adversary, I’ll give him that,” the Chain Knight admitted. “Unfortunately all your bravery has been for nothing, old man. I can undo it and return your dear team to the here and now for their very last stand.” “Oh yes,” grinned Maladomini. “The contingency!” Mumphrey looked uncertainly at the enemies that surrounded him. “Contingency?” The Chain Knight produced a dark green crystal. “Your old enemy here, the Hooded Hood captured a timeline in which you died over fifty years ago,” Sir Lucian explained, showing the gem. “In case you ever proved too troublesome. And if you died so long since, then you were not here to save your team-mates now, were you? And since you have exhausted the chronal charge that might protect you, there is no way you can prevent me erasing you from the present.” Sir Mumphrey stood upright and glared at his enemies. “You bounders.” “As I said, Sir Mumphrey, game over,” the Chain Knight gloated. And he activated the crystal. Sir Mumphrey Wilton vanished, a hero long dead, and his pocketwatch was nowhere to be found; but the Portal remained smashed and the Lair Legion did not reappear. “Well damn,” complained Phleglethor. “That was a squib.” “No matter,” the Chain Knight replied, hiding his chagrin. “We easily defeated the heroes once, and we can do it again. The victory is ours. The spoils are ours.” His eyes glowed redly beneath his bloody helm. “Let us go and share the news with those the Lair Legion loves.” And the Hooded Hood hung in his chains and said nothing. Next issue: The Lair Legion are lost, so it’s the Hellraisers vs the Juniors, the Hellraisers vs the Lair Mansion, and the Hellraisers vs the world. Time to take the kid gloves off and give the fans something to cry about, eh? Very bad things coming in UT#194: Body Count.  Revenge is a Dish Best Served Footnoted The Portal of Pretentiousness is a cosmic artefact originally created by the combined powers of the various pantheons of deities as part of their trap for the Dread Dormaggadon. After millennia of use as his only window from the prison it had trapped him in, the mirror was captured by his enemy the Hooded Hood and has been resident in Herringcarp Asylum ever since. It is both a scrying tool, able to see almost any time, place, and reality, and a means of transportation to the scene it reflects. Or it was. Lee Bookman worked for the Hood as Librarian at Herringcarp Asylum in and after UT#126: Survival. Izzy Shapiro debuted as CrazySugarfreakBoy!’s dead girlfriend in The Sun Always Shines On TV: CrazySugarFreakBoy! Deals With His Greatest Loss Ever, and Chronic got to know PsychoAcidPervGirl in UT#71: A Few Random Scenes Setting Up the Chapter Following. Actually, Izzy may have been mentioned before “The Sun Always Shines” (which tied in with the Hooded Hood Chronicles #14, December 1999), but I always think of this as her real first appearance and one of the finest bits of prose CSFB! has ever offered to the board. Xander and ManMan escaped from the Hellraisers’ extradimensional vortex stronghold in UT#185: The Finishing Line by leaping through the secret conduit that led to the villains’ sponsors. We haven’t heard from them since. The Lunar Public Library book retrieval system has previously been demonstrated in Tales of the Parodyverse #5: Lost Poetry The Hood’s Retcon Traps: The various scenarios presented in this chapter feature: · Yerk, the evil Yo-being from A New Villain in the Parodyverse by Yo (which she needs to finish sometime); · An alternate reality in which irritating archer Carl Bastion and superspy Contessa Natalia Romanza had a child; · An alternate reality (or future?) in which extraplanar physicist Miss Framlicker marries Al B. Harper and goes totally Glenn Close; · An alternate reality in which Bridget, the Manga Shoggoth’s beloved former High Priestess, turns upon and betrays him; · A possible future in which ZOXXON oil legally claim custody of the bioenginnered telepathic tapeworm Cressida, who was recently discovered in UT#188: Secret Origins to have been made with their proprietary technology; · A possible future in which Lindy Wilson, Falcon’s younger sister, bitterly denounces her brother in favour of his previous abusive gangsta persona for reasons not yet revealed; · An alternate reality or possible future in which the Sorceress takes her own life; · A possible future in which Temporary Death explains to Nats why Uhuna has to be killed by Phleglethor the Pestilent; · A possible future in which the Librarian’s robotic major-domo, A.L.F.RED malfunctions and lives up to the reputation of his model and class by slaughtering everyone he can find; · A possible future in which Mumphrey’s beloved young grand-daughter (and in some futures his successor as Keeper of Chronometer of Infinity) decides to grow up to be like her worthless father instead; · A glimpse into Untold Tales #195; · An interrupted possible future in which Mr Epitome finds the mangled corpse of his former ward Artemis and CrazySugarFreakBoy! shows him the way out; · The revised future where Sir Mumphrey died in 1951, as depicted when the Hooded Hood harvested it in UT#185: The Finishing Line. 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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