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By The Hooded Hood promises that this concluding chapter is not a musical Mon Dec 20, 2004 at 05:28:39 am EST |
Subject #198: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion vs the Hellraisers: Once
More With Feeling
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| #198: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion vs the Hellraisers: Once
More With Feeling What Has Gone Before: The Hellraisers, a powerful group of extraplanar marauders, have caused devastation in Paradopolis, slaughtering the Lair Mansion support crew, injuring the Junior Lair Legion, infecting many citizens with the Black Death, and raising an undead army. Their march on the Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital has been slowed but not stopped by the sacrifices of a number of heroes who have now fallen. Latterly Visionary and a mysteriously-human Hallie have made a last stand against the attackers. Meanwhile, Xander the Improbable and his ad-hoc team of associates remain on a spit of dream-rock on the edge of the Nightmare Realms. They have yet more unfinished business to attend to. Unsurprisingly, there are violent bits in this story.  Hallie’s Statement "You ask, What is our policy? I will say; ‘It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.’ You ask, What is our aim? I can answer with one word: Victory - victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival." Winston Churchill I guess you could say I was born in death. My first real memories are of flickering into existence on some creaking old mainframe in Baron Zemo’s castle, as Ernst Vizhnar activated my core personality matrix. At that time I had no idea I was more than a Heuristic Artificial Life Learning Intelligence Entity, that I’d been built around the brain engrams of a murdered computer scientist, that there was more in the future for me than as a sophisticated weapons delivery system for a Nazi madman. All I knew was that I’d been created to kill by men who enjoyed causing death. And then I met the Lair Legion, and my life began. They thwarted Zemo’s plans for using the Movie Gun to dominate the planet, and somewhere along the way I fell in love with them. Not in a romantic sense, you understand, but I fell in love with the idea that there were people who were silly and fallible and kindly and odd but who somehow found ways of using all of that to be genuine heroes, saving the world not for gain or power but just because that’s what somebody needed to do. So I dumped Zemo and Vizhnar like the losers they were; and don’t tell me that anybody in the Legion is a loser, because I know different. I’ve seen them at their worst and at their best, and nobody who stands between our world and destruction like they do, against terrifying odds and even more terrifying evils will ever be a loser to me. I became the artificial intelligence running their computer systems, and over time I hope I became their friend too. I have some vague memories of the moment my engram-donor Helen MacAllistair died, but I still wasn’t prepared for it when I was murdered too, when those Hellraisers invaded the mansion and slaughtered everyone they could find. I was trapped and helpless in my Holographic Emitter Drone while they wiped my backups in the computer core, killed my fellow support crew members in gruesome cruel ways, then crushed the last piece of technology that contained my personality. And that should have been it for Hallie. Except that the Lair Mansion’s an odd place. Eons ago the island was used by the Celestian Space Robots who maintain the Parodyverse to hide a great Secret, and even today the place tends to adopt ‘guardians’ who prevent cosmic-level threats from intruding. The last one was poor Marie Murcheson, a Victorian-era girl who was murdered on the site then was transformed into a banshee. She fought for us when the Hellraisers came, but Sir Lucian the Chain Knight had somehow co-opted the power of Death and he was able to survive and defeat her, maybe destroy her. So the mansion was looking for a new guardian, and I was murdered just at the right time for it to adopt. I don’t know whether the mansion learned from Marie’s defeat or whether my long experience in shaping virtual reality bodies for myself affected the process or whatever, but I suddenly found myself literally alive in a flesh-and-blood copy of the body I usually make for myself with holograms and force fields. And that kind of sucks. What I mean is I’m so limited now. I can’t see the data streams or access my extended memory. I can’t fly, or jump into the virtual realm, or multi-task. And don’t get me on about the absurd internal plumbing of these human biological forms. It was a good job I had Visionary around to talk me through my first toilet trip, the poor man! But none of that really matters, since I expect to die again very soon anyway. The Hellraisers were still raising Cain down in Paradopolis centre, menacing the hospital where many of the sick (from the diseases caused by their member Phleglethor the Pestilent) were confined. Some of my friends had gone in to try and stop them but they never had a chance. Donar, spiffy, Banjooooo and some others all fell one by one, and Donar was the last man standing, being literally beaten to death by those terrible things. Visionary strapped on about half the weapons locker and went to try and save him. Yes, Visionary on his own, the one without any super-powers. The one that needed me to guide him through the tunnels under the mansion and safely past the keep-away wards the Hellraisers has woven round the site. At least we were able to locate poor distressed Amber St Clare down there and get her to the relative safety of the Bean and Donut Coffee Bar. And then Vizh had the temerity to say “Stay here, Hallie, while I try to help Donar. You’ll be safe here, okay?” Sure Visionary, I’ll just sit here and get a coffee while you go sacrifice your life to save our mutual friends. That’s exactly what I’ve learned from five years around the Lair Legion. So Vizh runs off to try a desperate bluff on the Hellraisers, and of course it doesn’t work. They’re going to kill him and he’s all alone and that’s just not how it’s supposed to be. So I go in there too, and he and I make our last stand over our wounded friends Goldeneyed and Banjoooo and Donar, back to back as the Hellraisers surround us. And I think about all the things I’d have liked to do before this happened, and that now I won’t get a chance to try. And I wonder what it’ll be like to die this time, and whether it will hurt a lot. And then the Lair Legion arrives, and I want to cheer, because if there are impossible odds to face and terrible evil to overcome then your absolute first choice, top of your list of things you really want to happen, is the sudden arrival of Lisa, Dancer, and Sir Mumphrey Wilton backed by a very very cross line-up of Earth’s greatest heroes. Even if we all die here, this is how it should be. I was born in death, but however briefly, I’m going to experience life. The Testimony of Laurie Leyton "It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time." Winston Churchill I’ll tell you about heroes. Here’s what a hero is: When there’s five bloodthirsty sadistic creatures who’ve ravaged whole dimensions lined up outside a hospital of sick and dying people, and the bad guys are here to slaughter everybody, and so far nobody’s been able to do more than scratch them, and when you’ve already been beaten by these guys once so badly they had to rewind time to undo your gory deaths, and you still turn up again to pitch in against them and somehow save the day, then you’re a hero. I always dreamed of being a hero, since I was a little kid surviving on the trailer park reading stolen comic books about four colour crimefighters. So when the Hooded Hood offered to change my past so I’d been trained as a crimefighter and could become sidekick to Lisa Waltz, the first lady of the Lair Legion, I never looked too closely at the small print. That’s how I became Lisette, one of the New Battlers, and Lisa’s intern at her law firm, and how I met Bry, and how I got to go on some missions with the Lair Legion. But I guess I wasn’t really a hero inside, just the same weak stupid worthless trailer trash I was before I was retconned. Guys sure sensed that in me, and E-Male and all the others treated me as if that’s what I was. Only Bry was different, and that’s because he is a real hero, Goldeneyed of the Lair Legion, although it was a long time before I figured that out. And like a fool by then I’d fallen in love with him. Dumb, huh? I mean, what had I to offer a guy like him? But I loved him, and I loved being with him, and I loved the person I became when I was with him. It was the best time in my life, the only time I’ve ever really been happy. Then things went wrong, of course. It wasn’t Bry’s fault I got pregnant, though he was the father. On one adventure we got zapped by Dr Loveray’s machines, and that was the first time we made love, and neither of us were thinking about the consequences. For a long time I didn’t dare tell Bry, because I knew he wasn’t ready, because I was afraid it would destroy what we had, because I was stupid and frightened and didn’t known how to cope. So instead I let Bry’s mentors in the Order of the Observing Eye help me hide my pregnancy and gave the child over to them to rear in another time and place, and never told Bry anything about it. Until he found out anyway. And that was the end of it. Bry went crazy at me, and I deserved it. I ran away and kept away, and that was when my new boyfriend trapped me on drugs and whored me and nearly killed me before Bry came to rescue the poor pathetic wretch who’d let him down so badly. And then he and Beth Shellett helped me get over my addiction (except you never get over an addiction, you just get past another day without the heroin), because that’s the kind of guy Bry is. For one wild moment I thought it was going to be okay. Bry came to me and it was just like it had always been, and we made love for hours on the bed where a few weeks before I’d been sweating out the drugs while he held me. But that wasn’t the real Bry, or at least not the Bry we knew. He was some alternate-reality Bry the Hood had dragged in to confuse everybody during the Transworlds Challenge, and after he bagged me he went after Beth (who has more sense and more class and turned him down flat) and it turned out stupid Laurie had been wrong again, and the last little pieces of my heart got tromped into the dust. So I ran away again, like I always do. And Bry and Beth went to look for me, but it was Hatman that found me and brought me to the hospital when the Hellraisers’ plague got me, and it was Uhunalura who used her Abhuman gifts on Beth and Bry to cure them of the same illness so their bodies contained the antibodies that could save my life. Heroes, every one of them. Then the Hellraisers came for the hospital. I knew then that this was how I was going to die. It had a right feel to it, the proper ending to my sad story. I’d die a hero if I couldn’t live like one, and then Bry could be with Beth – Beth loves him you know, and she’s so right for him, even I can see that. So I found my clothes, because it didn’t feel right to go out fighting in a robe that was open down the back, and I staggered down to reception to try and fend off the undead that were swarming round the building. And there was Beth, and Bry, and Mac (that’s Rev Fleetwood from the Zero Street Mission), and they’re all there with some nurse I didn’t know facing down the Hellraiser Nosferos. I should have known. So I ignore how crap I’m feeling because they all look pretty much as wiped out and on their last legs as me and I hurry over and support Mac as he holds his cross out to keep the big vampire at bay. And for one second I see Bry and he gives me that smile of his and I know this is how I want to go out. With heroes. I’ve always liked heroes. It would be nice to die as a hero. dull thud’s Tale Lady Astor: "Winston, if I were your wife I'd put poison in your coffee." Winston Churchill: "Nancy, if I were your husband I'd drink it." ~~I want to join the Lair Legion~~ says Cressida, my telepathic intestinal parasite. “Why?” I ask, slightly slurry like, because this is quite late on at the Fatal Toilet, and I’m on free beer that night because I’m techie for the band. “Why would you want tae do anything as dumb as that?” Then a new thought hits me. “Does it pay?” ~~I want to do some good with my transmutative abilities, Davie~~ I don’t know why Cressie calls me Davie, it’s not like it’s my name. My name’s dull thud in italics. Says so on m’birth certificate. Name: dull thud Male. Probably human. ~~We could travel,~~ Cress suggests. ~~Meet new people.~~ “And hit ‘em? Didn’t we travel already when we moved here to America to live in borderline poverty in Paradopolis? And haven’t we already got a super-team with Captain Amazing and the gang from Malmo’s?” ~~When was the last time you even saw then, Davie? And Nun More Black scares you and Granny Fang makes you hide behind furniture. No, I’m thinking of trying out for the Lair Legion. Nats suggested it, you know.~~ “I’ll get him for that, though,” I promised. But Cressida’s a determined tapeworm, so the next week we were in the new line-up of the Lair Legion. Then people started to try and kill us. Serious people. In our first adventure we got nearly killed by Dirth Vortex, Evil Monkey, some robot dudes, and the flaming Parody Master! And that was a fairly light little adventure compared to the rest. Ultizon! Cromlyn! The Constellation! The King of Stories! The Wild Hunt! Devil Doctor! Balefire! The Supreme Interference! Maximess! Amber St Clare! I needed an appointment book just to fit them all in. ~~We’re doing good,~~ Cressida encouraged me. “We’re not doing any good to my underpants collection,” I told her. “Look Cressie, this is getting far too heavy for us. We have to get out.” But then Dancer and Lisa and Sorcy get themselves kidnapped by these Hellraiser gommerils so we have to go and walk into the bad guys’ death traps to save ‘em. And then we get ripped to pieces, and then Sir Mumphrey winds time around to bring us back but remembering we got ripped to pieces. And then we fight some hellish demons that nobody can beat (but we beat ‘em), and then Sir Mumph turns up and drags us all back to Paradopolis to fight the very bastards what ripped us to pieces last time. I’ve had better days. So for a moment we all stand there like you have to before the battle starts, kind of lined up in dramatic poses so the bad guys know you’re a top-class hero act. And then we’re onto the main event. One thing about only having the power to vertically teleport and fall from any distance without harm, it gives you a fine overview of the battle from time to time. And having little to do but carry a powerful telepathic tapeworm in your belly and try not to have your head ripped off by the Chain Knight or chopped off by the Bloodreaper or farted off by Phleglethor is it gives you a moment to appreciate the battle. For starters, this was a battle we were motivated over. These bastards had murdered our lads and lasses back home, and we knew it now from Mumph. They’d laid waste to Paradopolis, slaughtering schoolkids and grannies and now they were out to take down the hospital. They were exactly the kind of threat the world needed a superhero team to fight, and they’d pushed all the right buttons to bring a world of hurt down on themselves with all the force we could drop on ‘em. And then we’d had a kind of dress rehearsal before. We knew what they could do now, and Hatman had spent a lot of time while the Shoggoth enveloped us in goo and kept us from falling over the brink of oblivion goin’ over different tactics to have at ‘em. So in round two we did stuff a wee bit differently, and we really took off the kid gloves. If we had anything to do wi’ it this was going to be the worst day in Hellraisers history. I liked the bit where Lisa caught Pheleglethor across the nose with her lash. The big fat plague demon (kind of like a red Robert Maxwell, but maybe not as fat and evil) turned round and gobbed a huge wad of caustic phlegm at her, but she never winced. “I summons the Bloodreaper,” she says, pointing to the ground in front of her. “Just there.” So the Reaper gets the hock of spew right on the back of his horned noggin and that must have hurt because he was trying to claw it off at the point where Trickshot (who’d been retconned some more arrows by an archvillain who shall remain the Hooded Hood) whacked some shafts into the bad guy’s eyes, nose, throat and groin. Explosive arrows, as it turned out. I don’t know how Dancer and CSFB! managed to twist the Chain Knight round so he actually got his chains tangled for a moment, but they set him up beautifully for an armour-crumpling punch from Epitome. Say what you like about the fascist bully (Epitome, that is, not the Chain Knight), but when he grabbed those chains and started swinging the Knight over his head in big semicircles slamming the baddie into the ground again and again I wanted to cheer. Maladomini saw Al B. Harper fiddling with the gadget and looking towards her, so she used her dimensional whip to flick it out of his hands and slice it in two. That was great, since that’s just what Al wanted to happen. The dimensional feedbacks pulsed along her lash and knocked her flying back into the Manga Shoggoth. Falcon and Hatman came in low and hard against Nosferos, powering through the vermin and minor undead that surrounded him. Hatman head-butted into him, changing from his Jets cap to his Saints cap at the last minute, and Falc sliced in with his razor-edged wingtips to take off the vampire’s head. Nosferos shifted into some sort of black cloud of smoke that enveloped them, but Cressie turned smoke back to bloke, making him form up so Hatty could take another swipe. Nats went straight for Phleglethor, the Hellraiser that murdered Uhuna, and really I wouldn’ae have wanted to be in the way as he telekinesed forward shrouded in a shell of flame. The fat monster still slapped Nats down, but then Yo dropped the Librarian onto his back, and Lee unloaded damn near every medical textbook ever written right into the plague demon’s brain. Nats span away, twisted round, and plunged right into Phelglethor’s huge belly, ripping in and doing his worst. For a moment it looked like we’d got them and we were all goin’ to survive to see another day. “Now can we retire?” I asked Cressie. And then the Chain Knight pulled his trick. The Chain Knight’s Account "A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." Winston Churchill They were fine foes. I was disappointed when they fled that first time, of course. I thought perhaps they were cowards after all, that Wilton and his company were broken, or pretenders to the mantle of heroes. But theirs was a tactical retreat, part of a greater plan to cut our supply lines, damage our infrastructure, and eliminate our sponsors. Masterful. I realised I had made an error as soon as the Hooded Hood reappeared, restored and free. There’s a foe worth hating, and he had clearly foreseen the inevitability of our capture of him and had laid plans to undo the harm we caused him and neutralise what advantages of ours he could. He had worked with the sorcerer supreme Xander to slay the Dead Hell Lords, and with the wench Keiko to destroy our Fortress of Darkness. He had suborned our minions Chronic and Killer Shrike, turning them against us in acts of treachery. He had fooled me into not eliminating Wilton when I had the chance. All in all, a splendid performance. And that left Wilton free to act, of course. So he gathered together his adventuring band and led them against us at the moment we thought to have triumphed. Others had held the line long enough for his main force to return. Now our narrative advantage was neutralised, our external sponsors eliminated, our retreat blocked, and our hostage-dimensions saved. All in all, a stirring performance from the forces of good. For a rain-soaked moment the Lair Legion and the Hellraisers glared at each other across the wreckage of battle; and then the war began. The Lair Legion came in hard and fast, with a minimum of banter and a maximum of passion. They caught us in disarray, and used tactics to divide and conquer us, relying upon their superior numbers and teamwork to overcome their enemies. I was beset by CrazySugarFreakBoy!, Epitome, and the superb Probability Dancer, that infinitely-ravagable raven-haired temptress of immense potential. For a moment the Legion must have thought they were going to win. Then I used my gift with locks to bind our heroes’ muscles for a moment. I could sustain the hold no longer, and Yo and the Shoggoth were unaffected, but it was enough to break their team’s momentum. I uncoiled a new array of chains and punched through Epitome and CrazySugarFreakBoy!, hurling their carcasses to bludgeon down Yo and Trickshot, then turned to aid my colleagues. It’s not enough to win, you see. Unless you allow your enemies hope then there is nothing inside them to crush. There is no joy in an easy win. Cruelty is an art. The Bloodreaper was first on his feet, shearing his scythe through Falcon and Hatman (as if a transformation to steel would aid the Serious Matter wielder against that blade). Then Phelglethor’s stomach closed on Nats, trapping his upper torso inside where our corpulent comrade’s belly bile could sear the flesh from his face in moments. Maladomini literally tore the Shoggoth apart from inside out. Nosferos seized hypnotic control over Lisa and dull thud and tore out their throats. Once again the battle had turned, so I shifted my attention to Sir Mumphrey Wilton. Sure enough, the old man was rewinding events again with his temporal pocketwatch; but I knew he wouldn’t have the chronal charge to do that more than once. I waited until he’d completed his reset back to battle’s start then hammered a chain through his chest to make sure he never did it again. “Now let the slaughter begin anew,” I told the Hellraisers, and we fell upon the Lair Legion. The Swanmay’s Story "Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. " Winston Churchill In the Halls of the Mountain King there are many songs and stories, and of a winter’s night when he was in ebullient mood my father would gather us around him and tell us chilling tales of the things that lurk in the darkness beyond. We would listen, my sisters and I, and shiver at the frisson of the horrors, yet knowing that none of us would ever suffer those terrors truly, or face such evils; for no power reigns beneath the Mountain but our father’s, and he is terror sufficient for any. I never dreamed that it would be my fate to be exiled, lost in the mortal world, or to face demons and worse with no father’s protection or mother’s comfort. It was my choice though. I want to make that clear. No fault but mine, and perhaps the evil of the sorcerer who came upon me bathing in the mountain lake and captured my mantle and bound me as his captive. But it was my decision to venture out and risk such capture, and when I was free it was my choice to give my life’s kiss to save the mortal who had saved me. If that bound me to Xander for the duration of our lives then that was my choice too, for choice must have consequences, and we accept them when we choose. In the weeks since my life changed, since my mind touched his, since I became his familiar, there has been no pattern to predict or time to mourn what I have lost. Xander is the sorcerer supreme of the Parodyverse, the master of the mystic crafts tasked with protecting and arbitrating between the mortal and immaterial realms, and he was under attack by Hellraisers who sought to eliminate him before he bound them as his predecessor had done before. So I followed him and helped him assemble the people he foresaw he would need to fight the demons who supported these Hellraisers, and when the time was right I became decoy and agent while he infiltrated their defences and prepared his assault. At the last I brought Messenger and Sorceress to him, and Chronic brought Keiko. Knifey and ManMan were already at his side. And there we stood with the Lair Legion, and there we fought and destroyed the Dead Hell Lords, creatures of horror from my father’s stories, manifest in malice before us. But evil must ever be fought, and we must not complain if the battle falls to us. This is what happened after that though, when the Hell-Lords were defeated and Sir Mumphrey Wilton appeared through the Hooded Hood’s Portal of Pretentiousness to guide his Lair Legion of champions back to the mortal world to clash with the Hellraisers one final time. “And why aren’t we going back with Sir Mumphrey and the LL to kick some Hellraiser butt?” demanded Messenger, still bruised and bloody from his confrontation with the fallen angel Mr Lucifer. “Apart from the fact that we’ll probably die alongside them,” ManMan added thoughtfully. Xander looked sad and distant, as he often does. “They have their fight, we have ours. It’s not over here yet.” Whitney Darkness looked up sharply. “It’s not?” “No.” Xander is her father. I can see the same darkness brooding behind their eyes, yoked to the same hidden compassion. “Nobody destroys four Hell-Lords then just walks away this easily. There are consequences. Repercussions. Responsibilities.” “Five,” ManMan told him. “There were five Dead Hell-Lords.” Dear sweet Joe! “When this amount of power is overthrown,” I explained to the mortals, “there’s a void. A vacuum. And vacuums tend to be filled.” Keiko is always looking for danger, for the next threat. “You’re saying there’s a new bad guy already?” she demanded. “That Resolution Prophecy…?” “I released him and let him go,” I explained to her. “I think he understands now. When the time comes for the Resolution War it won’t need his manipulation. I hope he’ll be at peace now.” “But back to the major bad guy thing,” Messenger insisted. “What are you…” But Xander just pointed over to the dark mist curling together to coalesce into a tattered blood-hued form. “The first of the emissaries has arrived.” Orgulanus the Livid oozed up the little shred of nightmare rock to where we waited. ~~I am the first of the emissaries and the last~~ he spoke into our minds, and his mental touch made us squirm with disgust, although I could hardly hear him. ~~I come on behalf of my master, the great Belazieal, Emperor of the Moral Wastes, to claim what is rightfully his.~~ Xander shook his head, and ManMan, Messenger, and Keiko intervened and prevented the sorcerer supreme from being shredded by the emissary. I think it was a razor-letter that finally sliced the life from Orgulanus, but in any case his dying essence bled blood-rivers down the black rock of the Hell-Lord’s gathering place. “This is going to get crowded, isn’t it?” Knifey suggested as the second of the messengers arrived. Umerylle the Maiden of Torments was an unearthly wisp of beauty drifting like a phantasm from the eternal night above us. “In Pale Vesperene’s name I am here,” she breathed, and every sorrow we had ever experienced twisted anew in our hearts. “For pale Vesperine’s sake I shall take the ruined essences of those who have fallen here, that their power may be hers and her queendom increase.” Joe and Zauriel and Keiko tried to raise their weapons against her, but no force can defeat the Maiden of Torments. But Whitney knows torment full well, and she is a Sorceress coming into her fullest flower. She raised a commanding hand and stayed Umerylle with a gesture, glaring hard into pain’s heart and yielding nothing. And I sang of joy that I had once known, and of home, and of love yet unfound, and of hope despite disaster, and I sang of courage that overcame despair though all seemed lost. Then the maiden of Torments was forced to shed one crystal tear of compassion, and weeping thus was destroyed. “This… is becoming a problem,” Keiko gasped as Umerylle’s spell passed. “There’s got to be a better way than this to…” But then the third of the visitors came, and Sage Grimpenhast had come himself, from his throne of secrets, from his heart of darkness, the Master of Ignorance and the Teacher of Deceptions. No pale emissary he, but a Hell-Lord in his full might, equal of any of those we had fought this day. “Xander,” he said calmly and quietly, rising up with serpentine motion to stand before the sorcerer supreme. “Let us contest.” Dr Whitwell’s Account "The price of greatness is responsibility." Winston Churchill Every so often public opinion turns against superheroes, and some bright politician or media-hungry personality tries to whip up support for legislation or organise some public outcry against the metahumans in our midst. Then somebody on the PMH board challenges our policy of treating “these metahumans” in our hospital, endangering patients and property, disrupting “normal” lives with their abhorrent behaviour. And then I take great pleasure in ripping their arguments to shreds and publicly humiliating whatever little worm has dared to show such colossal ignorance of the debt we owe to our heroes, and the Board shuts up again until the next time. Why do I speak up like that? Well, because I’m the best bloody surgeon on the planet today, and have brought Phantomhawk Memorial prestige and grants beyond their wettest dreams, of course, and because I don’t suffer fools gladly, either as patients or colleagues. But also because if we don’t value our heroes then we don’t deserve them, and that’s something we sometimes lose sight of in this dreary media age. Case in point, the assault of the extradimensional Hellraisers on Paradopolis. Some may mewl that these villains would not have singled out our city for assault if it was not the home of the Lair Legion. Do you really imagine the sadistic marauders would have left us to get on with our petty small-minded affairs forever, with or without heroes to protect us? And do you believe things would have been better without those who fought the undead, who found the cure for the plague that beset us, who struggled against the storms, and who ultimately stood at the doors of this very hospital battling to preserve the lives of those who cowered inside, and not counting the cost? Well I was there in Laboratory One as the young outlaw mutate known as De Brown Streak suffered and shivered and accelerated his metabolism to donate pint after pint of blood for us to use in creating counteragents to battle the plague that threatened to become pandemic. I watched as he also speeded up his companion, the former Mayor of GMY, spiffy, who likewise curled in agony and endured so that we could have a chance to save people. Mark Hopkins knew his friends were suffering outside, maybe dying, but he stayed and saved the lives of hundreds of people he would never know. De Brown Streak is reviled as a terrorist by some, yet that night he gave all he could to preserve the very people who condemned him. If that is not the essence of heroism, and is not something we should appreciate and celebrate, I do not know what is. We knew very little of what was going on outside. The storm was at its worst, blowing in windows so we had to shift patients to the corridors. The emergency generations were failing. A few of my staff had panicked and fled, but most of them performed superbly, as I knew they would. Not all heroes have to have super-powers. There was chaos and confusion but I understood from Nurse DuBois that Grace O’Mercy was in the lobby dealing with business. Given that the building was under siege by undead – again – it was comforting to know that we had at least one creature of the night pulling for us. Grace may doubt herself sometimes, but I have never had anything but confidence in our Night Nurse. There is a special virtue in taking a curse and making it a blessing. And of course the hospital itself is somewhat protected by the little secret buried in our foundations; but we do not speak of that. We knew when the Lair Legion arrived though, from the ragged cheer that came up from frightened spectators looking down on the carnage. And thus the battle was fought, first Legionnaires then Hellraisers gaining the ascendant, while the tempest raged and we fought our own battles against disease and death. After all, what is the purpose of life if not to struggle against death? And what is the struggle against an inevitable enemy except an act of heroism? The Statement of… the Hooded Hood "Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy." Winston Churchill Good evening. There comes a point in one’s machinations when there is no more that can be done to assist in delivering the outcomes one requires. One must simply watch and see whether the manipulations and arrangements formerly undertaken will be sufficient to succeed. It is both an unnerving and satisfying moment. “Aren’t you going to do anything else?” young Asil Ashling demanded of me as we watched the Lair Legion struggle in the reflections of the Portal of Pretentiousness. “I think not,” I told her, cradling my fingers together and sitting back on my restored throne to watch the final battle. “They’re getting cut to pieces out there!” she cried. “Literally!” “I imagine that your employer Sir Mumphrey Wilton will shortly discharge a significant proportion of the chronal capacity of his temporal pocketwatch to reverse that condition for the moment,” I suggested, and sure enough the irritable old colonialist did exactly that, resetting the battle for the last time. The Chain Knight obviously felt that trick had been played once too often too, since he pounded one of the myriad chains that were embedded into his nervous system through Sir Mumphrey’s chest, skewering the Keeper of the Chronometer of Infinity very handily I thought. Good tactics, too. “Mumphrey!” my guest shrieked. “Do something!” she demanded. “Now!” In truth my retrospective continuity manipulation abilities were currently exhausted. It had taken some rather extreme alterations to ensure that the Lair Legion were this evenly matched against the Hellraisers, and even I could not foresee all the ramifications of things I had set in motion. “There is nothing further I can do,” I told young Asil. “Then send me there!” she urged. “You can send me through time with your magic mirror, right? I can jump in front of Sir Mumphrey and take the blow instead!” I reminded her that I had given the old bastard my word to keep her safe from harm. “I don’t care!” she shouted. “They need me!” “There is sufficient blood amongst them for the Hellraisers to spill,” I told her. “If we are marked to die, we are enough to do our country loss; and if to live, the fewer men, the greater share of honour…” “Don’t sit there quoting bloody Shakespeare at me like this is some stupid game!” Asil shrieked. “It’s not! Mumphrey’s dying and he’s the Legion’s best chance and I am NOT allowing this to happen!” I can only suggest that my debilitation prevented me from foreseeing or preventing her hurling herself at the Portal of Pretentiousness. Her will must be particularly strong to be able to penetrate its mirrored depths and to demand it send her to the exact time and place she wanted to appear. Hence it was Asil Ashling who was skewered by the Chain Knight and who died in Sir Mumphrey’s place. Very noble and foolish, an a genuine act of heroism. And I had given my word. Hence I reset the Portal once more, and arranged to appear in the melee a fraction of a second before Asil’s glorious self-sacrifice. I barrelled into the Chain Knight with main force, pushing him off balance so his plunging links pierced neither Asil nor Wilton. Lucian reacted at once, of course, and the next chains he spawned hammered straight through me. Then Dancer and Epitome pressed in on him and the battle moved on. Lying bleeding on the edge of the combat I had an excellent view of it, better and more immediate than that I would have had through the Portal. Fascinating. The Chain Knight barrelled through Dancer and Epitome, pinning them both down with his chains, holding them immobile and helpless. “Phleglethor, Domini, threaten some innocents,” Lucian called. The plague demon chuckled and expelled a wad of burning napalm from his nether regions. Nats swerved aside by reflex and the emission slammed into the front of the insurance company opposite the Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital. The frontage of the structure exploded then crumbled, trapping dozens of employees under the blazing rubble. The Manga Shoggoth rapidly replicated his biomass and enveloped the inferno, struggling on as portions of himself were seared away. Maladomini concentrated then lashed a rip to one of the parallel universes where the Earth is still a cloud of molten gases. The high pressure cloud of plasma washed out over the cap park, exploding vehicles as it went, scattering Legionnaires and spraying them with shrapnel. The Bloodreaper seized up one of the burning automobiles and hefted it to hurl into the hospital. Laurie Leyton came from nowhere and tackled him, hacking at the pressure points behind his knees to fold his legs from under him. The vehicle slipped from his grip and landed on both of them. When the killer angrily hurled it aside he was the only one to rise. The Hellraisers pushed their advantage, with Falcon surrounded by clouds of bats that picked and clawed at him, Nats pinned beneath Phleglethor’s blubbery buttocks, CrazySugarFreakBoy! running ahead of the scythe-wielding Bloodreaper, and Lisa being hard pressed by Maladomini. Around them the flames ran out of control, jumping from building to building in spite of the tempest. I observed the first flickers of flame catch on the superstructure of the hospital itself. The Legion was failing again, disoriented, injured, distracted by multiple threats to innocents around them. Such is the price of compassion. “I’m going to do to you what I should have done to those minions of yours I captured,” the Chain Knight promised Dancer, and I could see the terror in her eyes as he loomed above her. Then Visionary ran in and hit him square in the face. With Mjalcolm. And then Visionary hit him again, and again, stoving in Sir Lucian’s helmet while his chains flailed around him. Donar’s weapon is not lightly bestowed, but at need the hemigod can pass it to one he trusts. The Oldmanson couldn’t rise because of his injuries and Visionary had a lot of unresolved rage he wished to express just then so it was clearly a good match. Maladomini saw her lover was in trouble and turned to assist him. But Lisa leaped in and grabbed her by her topknot. “I summons Phleglethor” she called, rolling away before the multi-ton plague demon dropped onto the dark mistress. This in turn freed Nats to pound the Bloodreaper into the pavement before he got back to his original intention of eviscerating the lord of pestilence. Reverend Fleetwood and Miss Shellett took the opportunity to dash through the melee and drag Lisette’s unmoving body back to the Emergency Room. Nosferos was still winning though. He grabbed dull thud, clubbed him with a cruel backhand so he was too stunned to teleport, then laid bare his neck to suck him dry. Cressida reacted urgently, and presumably used one of her conceptual shifts to alter slaughter to holy water, given that gallons of liquid sprayed down on the Undying and his negative reaction to it. The Librarian slipped in and tagged Nosferos with a sudden cortical influx of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The vampire screeched, shattering windows in the hospital beyond, then turned and dropped the Librarian and thud with a single backhand blow before racing off to find relief from the searing blessed water that ate into him. He raced into the shadows that were his home, and that was where he found the Night Nurse waiting for him. “Not so fast, ‘master’,” she told him. “Now I have something to teach you!” Phleglethor rolled away from Maladomini, his bowels erupting in a baleful emission of explosive gases that blew Falcon out of the skies even as he delivered Al B. Harper to the position he needed to be in. Harper triggered his electrolyte stimulator and the caustic vapours from the plague demon all detonated simultaneously, the trail of flame rolling back to the source of the emissions and causing an internal eruption that knocked Pheglethor from his feet. Harper didn’t get out of the way in time as the plague demon rolled over him. Maladomini lashed four of Trickshot’s arrows from the air but the fifth caught her painfully in the shoulder. She swore in some alien tongue and used her lash to cut another gash in the fabric of timespace, dropping Carl Bastion into the Negativity Zone before the rift sealed itself up. But as she turned CSFB! bounced into her, planting a kiss on her lips before flipping her over to Hatman who was wearing his Con Ed helmet to electrify her. Meanwhile Visionary was still pounding at the Chain Knight, aided by Epitome and Dancer. Yo, who had been checking on the fallen Banjoooo and Goldeneyed and dragging wounded from the burning buildings now vaulted in and pressed a rapier through Lucian’s body. It hurt him because Yo thought it would. I foresaw the Chain Knight’s reaction but had no time to warn the Legion. Dozens of chains burst up from the ground below, and in conjunction with a momentary lock on his opponents’ nervous systems allowed Sir Lucian to grasp each of his attackers. The Bloodreaper took the opportunity to slash at Lisa from behind, and Hatman’s intervention and partial blocking meant both Boaz and Miss Waltz tumbled to the floor with serious wounds rather than one of them falling dead. Poor planning there. The Shoggoth, clearly groggy from overextending himself to quench the fires (for this iteration of the elder beast cannot replicate so prolifically as his progenitor biomass), slurped in to distract the Bloodreaper and was sliced to shreds. Again the battle turned, as Nosferos and Grace O’Mercy struggled for control of the storm. Whereupon Donar, still too injured to move, clenched one meaty fist. “Tis mine,” he whispered through gritted teeth, and caused the maelstrom to discharge itself into the Bloodreaper. Sir Mumphrey rounded on the Chain Knight and swung his pocketwatch square into the gory hole that was Sir Lucian’s face. The Knight went down as if poleaxed, and then Visionary and Epitome were back on him, giving him no time to recover. And amazingly the battered hulk of Donar rose behind them and at some point claimed Mjalcolm back from the possibly-fake man to smite the Chain Knight the better. Maladomini came up behind the heroes and lashed out to slice them in two. But she was now facing the Probability Dancer, and somehow her lash became tangled, allowing Asil to tackle her high and Lisa to tackled her low. Then Lisa was the one holding the dimensional lash and there was one brief crack while she severed Maladomini’s head from her shoulders. “Bitch,” said the first lady of the Lair Legion, and to whom she referred will never be known. The Bloodreaper saw this and charged in rage, hurling a vehicle before him that knocked down Lisa and Asil alike then went on to stun Visionary and Hallie too as it exploded. Dancer avoided the blast and rolled away with the two stricken Waltzes before the flames could touch them. Epitome turned round and planted a punch full-square into the Bloodreaper’s face, stopping him dead for a moment, Then that scythe came down and raked Epitome from shoulder to hip, spilling him backwards in a welter of blood. Dreamcatcher Foxglove jumped in and managed to hold the Bloodreaper at bay, bounding around him as the scythe came ever closer. Then the Shoggoth welled up again around the psychotic Hellraiser, enveloping him in a thick goo that suspended him struggling but unable to escape. Phleglethor rose painfully and angrily and directed a great vomit of acid onto the elder being. Nats caught it and hurled it back, coating the plague demon with the searing belch. Then Bill Reed came in close, his face scarlet with rage and concentration, and used his telekinesis to twist Phleglethor’s head round a dozen or so times until it simply tore off. Grace O’ Mercy strode from the alleyway looking healthy and full of colour; and she wiped her chin as she walked. The Chain Knight still struggled, and there was one obvious move. Sir Mumphrey made it. He reached down into the broken armour of the stricken sadist and tugged free a tiny white glimmer of light. “You’re free,” he told the spirit of Marie Murcheson. “Sing.” And the banshee of the Lair Mansion burst out into her wailing lament, focussing all her grief and anger at the Chain Knight who had oppressed her and brought destructioh to her house. Before the Chain Knight had been sponsored by the Dead Hell Lords to claim the power of Death. No longer. Sir Lucian screamed along with the banshee as he was liquefied by the banshee’s scream. And then Marie Murcheson was gone. The Chain Knight’s crushed armour was coated with pulp, all that remained of the dread warrior. His chain links toppled to the floor, shattering like glass. The Bloodreaper stopped struggling within the Manga Shoggoth as he realised what had just happened. The storm erupted in one final clap of thunder and then fell silent. A few of the heroes stood dazed but triumphant, holding each other up for support. Others did not rise. My plan had worked after all, it seemed. Never underestimate the Lair Legion’s ability to do or die. It is a capital mistake. Ask the Chain Knight. And then the darkness claimed me, and I saw no more. "It is no use saying, ‘We are doing our best.’ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary." Winston Churchill Next Time: The aftermath. We Shall Fight Them In the Footnotes: Hallie was introduced in a story that is lost, so far as I know, but her revised and expanded history was covered fairly comprehensively in UT#113: untold Tales of the Parodyverse Ancient and Modern Revised and thereabouts. Visionary may wish to amplify Hallie’s history and point to some of her key appearances, such as in International Incident. Marie Murcheson, the Lair Mansion’s banshee, was murdered by city founder Wilbur Parody. Her death is chronicled in UT#63: I Married an Elder Blasphemy – Hallowe’en IV: The Gory Bit, and her most substantive appearance was perhaps in Follies of Youth #23: Flapjack’s Folly. Lisette (Laurie Leyton) debuted in UT#5: Sidekick Day, hooked up with Bry Katz in UT#40 Valentine Special, was saved by him after her addiction in UT#142: The Destruction of Laurie Leyton, and fell prey to the other-Bry in UT#176: Interval, or Home Comforts. Cressida joined the Lair Legion in LL: The New Underground #3: Entropical Paradise by Fin Fang Foom. Cleone debuted in UT#166: Fall of the Sorcerer Supreme, which includes accounts of her capture, rescue, and self-sacrifice. Sage Grimpenghast, Master of Ignorance and Teacher of Depeptions appears for the first time in this issue, along with some other nasty netherworld types such as Belaziel, Lord of the Moral Wastes, and Vesperine, Lady of Torments. Having so thoroughly cleaned out the demonic cupboard I thought it only fair to do some restocking. We’ll be hearing more from Grimpenghast shortly. Dr Whitwell, senior consultant and surgeon at the Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital was first mentioned in Night Nurse #2: Blood Will Tell and has made a few bit part appearances since. This is his first feature role. As for the thing buried under PMH, we don’t talk about that. Dr Whitwell is aware of Grace’s vampiric problems. I’m Still Standing: On their feet at the end of that battle by my reckoning are Mumphrey, Yo, Hatman (just), CSFB!, Dancer, and Nats (barely). And Grace is looking quite healthy. Those seeking more back issues are referred to The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom. Our current ac begins in earnest around #190. Those requiring more information on the many characters running round this monstrous story need to check Who's Who in the Parodyverse, and those who are geographically challenged require 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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