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Re: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion’s Greatest Battles Continued: Visionary Triumphant, and Other Unlikely Events Sunday, 14-Nov-1999 10:06:05
Note: Previous chapters of this story may be found at The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom. Note I say "may". #27 is as good a place to jump on as any. #29: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion’s Greatest Battles Continued: Visionary Triumphant, and Other Unlikely Events Prologue: On his throne of skulls, Dark Thugos, Tyrant of the Sol Empire turned his craggy face down towards the technopriest who brought news of far events. “Speak, minion. Tell what has happened in the living lands which my sister rules.” “Revolution and disaster, mighty slayer of all life,” the techno-organic creation reported. Beneath it’s mottled violet robes transparent tubes throbbed with the liquids which gave it the vestige of life. “Queen Kumari has left her domain to take a new world, as she has done so many times before. But this time news of her leaving has been leaked to her people, by two of her most trusted consorts.” “ManMan and Amazing Guy,” Dark Thugos mused. “So father has finally caught on to the Shaper of Worlds’ little trick and made his move. He has replaced this worlds’ consorts with their otherplanar counterparts, heroes from the world Kumari even now reaches out to grasp. Most amusing.” “Once word reached the living masses which your sister yet allows to proliferate, the resistance movement of that pernicious archer rose en masse to reclaim their freedom. Kumari has not yet returned to grant them annihilation.” The Tyrant of the Sol Empire seemed to derive some sinister amusement from this. “That is because my sister is testing herself against a greater challenge. She seeks to take father’s world from him, under his nose. She has allied herself with Baron Zemo, the indigenous master-criminal of that realm, and revealed to him much that father would prefer hidden. When finally she meets the Hooded Hood, it will be a most interesting encounter.” The technopriest no longer had any sense of humour, but he nodded in obedience. “And the revolting masses?” he asked. “Destroy them,” Thugos smiled. “And the otherworld heroes who assist them?” “Destroy them all.” Part One: The Siege of Paradopolis First School “Time is up,” English Man noted, observing the time from a watch fob set to Greenwich Mean Time. Looks like we’re going to have to execute some of you jolly little kiddies to prove that we’re serious.” “Perhaps all the heroes are already dead?” Dr Teeth wondered, carefully examining the mouths of the terrified children, deciding whose dentistry he wanted to add to his souvenir collection. “There goes our bonus,” worried Marker Man. He was peering out of the window, sketching a lifelike picture of the police commissioner on the wall of the classroom where the hostages were being held. The terrorists had agreed that English Man would put a bullet through the Commissioner’s head just to add to the confusion when the napalm charges destroyed the area to cover their escape. Garbage Burner was fiddling with the trap control board even now. “Time for a few kiddie Roman candles then?” he grinned unpleasantly. Everyone had to have hobbies. There was a bright flash of teleportation energies and four new figures appeared. The villains reacted quickly, orienting weapons on the intruders; but they were surprised at what they saw. Central to the montage was the familiar masked shape of Baron Heinrich Zemo, arms folded, standing as tall as if he already ruled the world. To his side stood two unfamiliar henchman, hefting the fallen shape of NTU-150. “Good afternoon, League of Losers,” the archvillain bade them. English Man glanced at the scanners. He noticed that for some reason one of the minions at the Baron’s side did not register at all. He wondered if it could be the Man Who Wasn’t There in a new uniform. None of the four terrorists had ever met the primary archvillain of the Parodyverse this close before. “We’re not called the League of Losers anymore,” English Man finally answered. “Now we’re the Frightsome Four. We’ve come a long way from our early defeats.” “Indeed you have,” the masked monarch agreed. “That is why I have come to recruit you. The Scourge has proved less than effective of late. I have decided that I need new enforcers.” “Us?” Marker Man gasped. There was a lot of prestige in being a Zemo henchman, not to mention the best salary and bonuses package in supervillaindom. “Oh wow,” breathed Dr Teeth. “Exit, Reptor, take these insignificant children from here,” Zemo commanded his companions. “I wish to speak with these operatives alone. You may disarm the traps, Garbage Burner. They are no longer required. “ Such was Zemo’s authority that the man in the municipal overalls found himself disengaging the traps board without even glancing at English Man. Exit dropped NTU-150 to the floor with a heavy metal clang and joined Reptor in shepherded the wailing, terrified infants from the classroom. The masked monarch waited until the classroom was clear. “And now, I have a secret to share with you,” Zemo confided, reaching up and peeling off that purple mask. The Four leaned forward, curious as all the supervillain community was at the dreadful ruin said to be Zemo’s face. Underneath was another mask. A black one. And the eyes were glowing golden. “Suckers!” the disguised G-Eyed called at them, before teleporting out to aid Exile and Frog-Man with the rescued children. “Losers,” NTU-150 declared. The time of the dialogue had given his armour’s on-board systems time to lock onto the four terrorists. Now he unleashed his repulsor rays, lightning strikes, pulse beams and everything else upon them. Count Wolfgang Fokker couldn’t believe what his video screens were showing him. The Supreme Commander of the Hero Elimination Revenge Project Extermination Squad (HERPES) had considered himself a front-runner in the race to become godfather of the world crime syndicate. After all, he had managed to hire the Frightsome Four and set them up in a scenario that would eliminate at least three or four of the troublesome Lair Legion (and hero deaths meant points in the contest that Deathspoon the Assassin had proposed). Now it appeared that his carefully-laid plans were being blown out of the water by a high-tech tin can. He was so distracted that he was completely ignoring the other screen, where the powerless Visionary was counting down to some sort of impotent ultimatum. It was marginally impressive that the possibly fake man had managed to take temporary control of Yakusa leader Akiko Masamune’s computer system by means of his micro-robot Fleabot, but Fokker had more important things to worry about just now. Then the bulkhead of his giant underwater octopus-craft shattered under the impact of a massive joint attack from a huge underwater simian, a dragon, and an enchanted hammer. The whole vessel rocked, the main engines went down, and the Lair Legion invaded through the ruptured hull. “That’s not possible!” Fokker gasped as the heroes leaped in to the rapidly-flooding mobile base. “You’re all busy dying elsewhere!” “Oh yes?” Jarvis challenged the HERPES Supreme Commander. “Then this punch shouldn’t hurt at all!” Part Two: The Deadly Death-Traps of Erskine Blofish The adamantium walls which had just slammed together on Starseed and Space Ghost rumbled apart to reveal the destroyed forms of two of the three heroes who had been trapped in Blofeld’s Deathworld. The Captor watched the screens expectantly. The old fake-control-room-with-robot-simulacrum-of-the-villain trick had worked perfectly. There was no blood. There were the wrecked pieces of the robots and equipment flattened by the trap, but none of the organic debris of a human facing a fifty-ton press that should have been there. “Something’s wrong here,” the hunter who had secured Starseed, Avatar, and the Space Ghost at the City Hall explosion earlier frowned. “I’m going down there.” “Sir, Avatar is still active in the complex,” a B.A.L.D. technician warned. “I can take one noseless alien,” the man in the tropical gear snarled back. In the trapped chamber Captor looked down at the wreckage. Most of it had the spoor of the B.A.L.D. Life Model Decoys, but one of the robots was clearly of a more exotic design. The hunter smelled then tasted one of the metal fragments. “Space Ghost?” he puzzled. “Space Ghost was… a robot? A robot constructed of materials from another planet?” Avatar was as surprised as the Captor by this revelation, but he took the opportunity to spring out of his place of concealment and attack. The Captor had known that the blue-faced former minion of the Parody-Master was there all along. With a calm smile he spun upon the leaping alien, unleashing a silvery-mesh weighted net to tangle Avatar. “A dimensional scrambler net,” the Captor explained as the hero fell twitching at his feet. “Not one of my regular tools, I admit, but one adapts the hunting weapons to the quarry. In the case of a multi-dimensional former minion of the Parody-Master, one uses something which turns his very nature against him.” He picked up Avatar’s Avasword. “I believe it has been established that this weapon can cut through virtually anything, including you,” he told his prisoner. “Farewell. It has been a fine hunt, but my employer wants you dead, so I’ll settle for keeping you after you’ve been stuffed and mounted.” The hunter’s acute senses warned him of a low hum, down in the frequency-range that humans sense by the vibration of their bones rather than through their ears, in the sort of cycle that triggers terror responses in small animals. The Captor glanced around for the source. The whole death-trap complex seemed to be vibrating. The sound became louder, audible now, and increasing in volume. One by one the complicated electronic death devices fizzed and shattered, then the larger physical traps cracked and crumbled. Girders began to fall as the sound increased, and the light bulbs fizzed and fell dark. And still the sound increased in intensity: “Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhh!” Somewhere in the back of the Captor’s mind he remembered Starseed’s dossier. The hero had apparently died once, only to return with the ability to assume a form of pure Gah! energy which made him more powerful than ever. He had become one with the Gah! force, one of the manifestations of the energies which bound the Parodyverse together. “Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh” Still the sound increased, splintering walls, sending B.A.L.D. technicians screaming in turn down self-destructing corridors. Avatar struggled free of his trap and watched with interest. Now purple energy was dancing over the surfaces, the only light in the ruined complex. Then it coalesced into a transparent, humanoid form. The transparent humanoid form pointed at the Captor and blew him backwards through a wall. The Captor was not wall-proof. “You have survived the apparent destruction of your Gah!-energy form and moved on to another level of Gah! mastery,” Avatar observed to Starseed. The superhero’s name had never seemed more appropriate. Tiny shimmers of light played across his body, as if it was somehow reflecting the very birth and death of stellar objects. “I had to take the chance,” the Gah! Master answered, in a multiple voice which echoed as he spoke. “Space Ghost was replaced with a duplicate. The real one is bound in his closet back at the mansion, still waiting for Lo-Chi to have sex with him. Lo-Chi was working for the Nebulus, extradimensional beings who wanted to use first Jarvis and then me as a means of subjugating the superhuman population of the Parodyverse as their war toys. They had the technology to cause my Gah! energies to overload and destroy half the planet. So I needed to progress to a greater mastery.” “And now?” asked Avatar. “And now I must find these Nebulus and stop them,” the Gah! Master vowed. “These petty Acts of Ambition are as nothing to the plans and menace of the Nebulus. Tell the Lair Legion that I have pressing business across time and space.” “You will have to warn them by postcard,” Avatar advised. “I am aware of the Nebulus and the threat they pose. You will require the aid of a multidimensional being familiar with the dimensional pathways – a being such as I – to achieve your objectives. I must accompany you.” “We face an entire race of hero-manipulating supergods,” Starseed warned. “It will be a most interesting encounter,” Avatar considered. The two heroes departed earth in a bright purple flash before the entire B.A.L.D. complex catastrophically self-destructed. And here’s why. Even before Starseed’s resurrection, Erskine Blofish of B.A.L.D. was already having a bad day. One moment he was gloating over what he believed were the deaths of two Legionnaires, then he was mocking the stupid little man who was threatening him over the video link, and then his entire computer panel exploded around him and eleven colourful heroes climbed out of it and began to attack. “Surprised to see us, Fishie?” CrazySugarFreakBoy grinned, tangling some security guards in a wadge of silly string and kicking Blofish’s death ray right out of his hand. “You’ll never guess how Vizh sent us here!” “Ah, ah, evil-doer!” Rocket Raccoon warned, jetting past and tearing the doomsday device out of the villain’s grasp. “Time for you to be smited!” “Fools! I don’t know how you penetrated B.A.L.D. Mountain but you will never leave alive,” Blofish managed, recovering from his horror. “”You cannot stop a man with an admanantium body.” “That’s true,” Sersi agreed. “We’ll have to do something about that. Is there a molecular rearranger in the house? Oh yes… me! You know, you really don’t look too much like a blowfish, do you? But I can fix all that…” Interlude One: The Grudge-Match of the Century “Alright,” Xander the Improbable sighed. “It had to come eventually. Who is challenging me for the right to become Sorcerer Supreme? Morganwy Morfesson? Esperanto the Effervescent? The Mighty Conjuro and Doris? G’f’th’sk of K’lgr’gar? Who?” “Nah,” Johnstantine shrugged. “Somebody wants you taken out big style. The challenge is from Heironymous Hellbane… the Astral Khan!” “The Astral Khan?” Xander snorted. “Big chap, wears a metal helmet, shouts his name a lot to impress people?” “Fries whole villages with fireballs, can make meteors land on people he doesn’t like, binds half-a-dozen demons before breakfast,” added Johnstantine. “Yes. Obnoxious and powerful,” sighed Xander. “What a combination. I’d better start packing.” “You’re running away? You’re not going to answer his challenge? Xander gave Johnstantine an odd look. “No. Not time to run away yet. We’ve got to get over to the Reichenback Falls for a week from today. That is where he’s challenged me to take him on, isn’t it?” Con Johnstantine watched his red-robed colleague shuffle off to find a suitcase and wondered just how much Xander actually knew about what was behind the Astral Khan’s challenge. It was going to be interesting to watch from a distance and find out. Part Three: The Battle of Gothametropolis The greatest hit-man in the Parodyverse had just killed the Dark Knight. Now the Confiscator changed weapons to something armour-piercing that could kill dragons. Fin Fang Foom tried to move. He had just managed to survive attacks by Anvil Man, Hämmerblade, Partycrasher, and Gromm, the Living Flatulence. However he was badly hurt, especially from the caustic internal searing from the gaseous Living Flatulence. Still the Makluan tried to stir. He had to avenge his friend the Dark Knight. He had to protect his companion Moira. The first armour-piercing round caught him in the temple and only fractured his great draconic skull. The Confiscator noted the problem and targeted the second at the great wyrm’s eye-socket. A hail of bullets bounced down around the Confiscator from the ledge above him. “What the..?” he demanded, orienting round and destroying the top of the building with the shell he had intended for Finny. That stilled the sniper-fire from that quarter, but now he was under small-arms fire from the alleyway. Now he understood. The Lynchpin of Crime had put out a bounty on the Lair Legion. Every petty criminal in the Gothametropolis was out hunting with a Saturday Night Special. Now that the Confiscator had downed one of the heroes the jackals sought to steal the lion’s prey. The master-assassin picked up his rifle and began to demonstrate the difference between being a street-thug and the Confiscator. Each lesson was short, sharp, and of .33 calibre. When the Confiscator had dealt with the opposition with clinical precision he turned back to finish off the dragon. Fin Fang Foom was gone. “I’m here,” a voice behind him rasped. The Confiscator turned into a roundhouse left hook; not from a great dragon, not even from the human-sized dragon that Foom turned into sometimes when dealing with mortals, but from the wyrm in completely human shape, as Andrew Dean. Dean followed that with a punch into the assassin’s stomach and a right jab to his nose. The Confiscator felt something break where his cartilage should be. The Confiscator was a professional. He knew when the factors were stacking up against him. He didn’t know that this blood-drenched human was a shapeshifted Fin Fang Foom. He didn’t know that the dragon was almost dead on his feet. All he knew was that the wyrm had gone, that he was under attack by an unknown assailant whom there was no profit in fighting, and that he was surrounded by ignorant street-criminals who might just get in a lucky shot. The Confiscator leaped over the parapet from his vantage point and disappeared into the maze of Gothametropolis alleyways. Fin Fang Foom toppled to the floor. Moira covered him in the bloody cape she had been so careful to retrieve from the fallen Dark Knight. After all, that cape was the whole reason for her coming to the world of men and iron. Foom wondered how she had managed to shift him into his Andrew Dean form with only a whispered word. He tried to get up, to continue the battle; but his limbs seemed too heavy to move. He tried to tell Moira not to weep but the words wouldn’t come out of his raw throat. All he could hear was the Lhiannon Shee’s keen: “Stay with me! Stay with me!” “The Dark Knight has fallen. Retrieve his body for my trophy case,” the massive white-suited Lynchpin of Crime commanded his lieutenant. “Double the reward for the dragon. He is injured now and has doubtless taken a different shape to try and avoid capture. Perhaps a threat to some innocents will force him to come out of hiding. Alert the drug gangs.” “On it, boss.” An efficient-looking secretary spun around on her office chair. “Sir, we’ve got a very strange signal coming into the communications array.” “The bizarre message from the grief-stricken Visionary?” the Lynchpin asked. “I am aware of it.” “No, not that, sir. There’s some other frequency and it’s…” “Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!” Starseed lead the point as the Lair Legion appeared to arrest the crimelord of Gothametropolis. Behind him Donar and Messenger ploughed through the ranks of bodyguards. The Lynchpin wasted none of the time Fokker or Blofish had with futile questions. He simply turned and opened his concealed escape exit. Time for interrogations later, for now he simply needed to be away from the nine heroes who were dismantling his operations skyscraper. The Man Who Wasn‘t There was there on the other side of the secret door, waiting for him. Part Four: The Battle of Paradopolis Major head-wounds were in fashion amongst the Lair Legion just now. DarkHwk, for example, stripped of his armour by the technological wizardry of the Devil Doctor’s devices employed by VelcroVixen, had just taken a gunshot to the temple. His vestigial force-field had managed to divert it to a serious graze but it was enough to put the amulet-powered hero out. And even in his dreams his symbiotic amulet was screaming to him to get up and deal with the terrible menace of the Obliterator. VelcroVixen was prevented from finishing off her work by the sudden appearance of the high-flying falcon, who shouted his challenge to the supervillains ripping up the waterfront before he fully appreciated that he was not only up against the svelte and deadly suede-clad VelcroVixen but also the sixty-foot high organotechnic off-world robot known as the Obliterator and the multi-powered man from the future Quake. Quake turned aside from giving Donar the second major pounding he had inflicted on the hemigod to release a barrage of energy-blasts at the flying hero. The Falcon swooped round them with arrogant ease and hammered into the VecroVixen, knocking her away from the fallen DarkHwk. “How many of these insignificant costumed annoyances are there on this world?” the Obliterator demanded, hurling a warehouse at the Falcon. That was rather harder to avoid. “There are plenty of them,” Banjooooo answered, restoring himself to his seventy-five foot form after recuperating as a half-inch sea monkey from his earlier bout. “And there’s also me, Banjooooo, King of the Sea Monkeys!” And he hauled off and pounded the Obliterator in the face. The Obliterator hit him full in the chest with a maximum power Obliteration Blast. “Evolved to be immune to that,” Banjoooooo grinned, hitting the giant monster again. Against cosmic menaces he sometime found himself manifesting bizarre temporary powers, a legacy of the Celestian technology which had been used to found his race. And the Obliterator was pretty cosmic. Quake was also surprised that Donar picked himself up and came back into the battle. He didn’t know that Donar fought best with major head injuries. “Oh please,” he sneered, force-blasting the Ausgardian back into the bay again. “I know, let’s change the game.” Seizing the Port Authority Controller, Quake held one of his hands to the unfortunate man’s head. “Donar, either you blow your own head off or I blow this fellow’s head off. How about that one?” The Ausgardian frowned in puzzlement. Quake was cheating in making him think. “Vile felon. I shall make thee rue the day when I wast forced to blow mine own head from my necketh.” “Hey, hostages! Excellent!” the orange and green neon streak enthused, bouncing down and extracting the Port Official from Quake’s surprised grasp. “This is sooo much better than the Birthday Bandit!” The future-villain tired to target the fast-moving CrazySugarFreakBoy! but somehow his best efforts did nothing more but add to the property damage. “Say you’ll be in my rogues gallery, Quakey,” CSFB! begged him. “Please please please please please!” “You are under arrest, perps,” Hatman called to the three villains from under his Judge Dredd helmet. He quickly switched to his Co-Ed hardhat as the Obliterator oriented on him, and the capped crusader unleashed eight million volts of electricity into the giant. “Perhaps you weren’t listenin’ bub, eh?” he demanded of the stunned monster. “One swallow doesn’t make a summer,” VelcroVixen snarled at the Falcon as the flying crimefighter swooped round for another pass. “And I know all about swallowing.” She unleashed a barrage of ninja stars and was sufficiently good that one of them actually clipped Falcon on a wing. “Imbecile!” the tartan sock that suddenly leapt from the shadows and toted a gun screamed at CSFB! “Did you believe that you had truly escaped the wrath of Argh!Yle, Evillest of Socks?!” “Thou art looking in the wrong way, Quake,” Donar advised the future-enemy. “Gawp not at yon CrazySugarFreakStripling and his errant footwear. Thy pounding is over here.” The Ausgardian impacted on Quake with a force that would certainly have taken his own head off. CSFB! deftly leaped over the fast-incoming Quake, all the while doing that special trick that dextrous superheroes do when they have two villains on either side of them. It was classic Spidey. “Leap all you like, CrazySugarFreakBoy! my ancient enemy, but this day shall Argh!Yle, evillest of socks, be your… uuurk!” “Way to go, Donar-guy. I don’t know why people say you’re a second-hand Thor knockoff,” CSFB! told the Ausgardian who had managed to knock Quake unconscious. Donar fell onto him with a crash. “Er, Donar… could you possibly get off me now? Donar? Donar?” “Falcon, go buzz Obliterator. I’ll deal with VecroVixen!” Hatman called, rapidly switching hats. The sultry brunette swung round and unleashed a volley of explosive discs in his direction. “Oh really?” she asked. “By turning me into a hat, perhaps?” Hatman pulled his Lakers hat on. The tidal wave he became washed the bedraggled and unconscious villainess up somewhere on the Gothametropolis shore. Falcon swooped round to where Banjooooo and the Obliterator were still trading increasingly painful blows, staggering knee deep in the harbour. A movement nearby caught his eye and he swooped down to see Zane, DarkHwk’s human host, crawling along the shattered pier. “What the hell are you doing, man?” the winged hero demanded. “You want to die or something?” “There’s something odd… about the Obliterator…” DarkHwk croaked. “Sure. He’s a sixty foot high metal guy with death rays,” Falcon answered. “Not just that… He’s counting down…” “Counting down as in big explosion end-of-civilisation do-not-pass-go hello-last-judgement counting down?” “Maybe.” “What’s he down to?” “Seven.” “And what the hell am I supposed to do about that? I mean, the guy is beating the crap out of Banjooooo, one of the Legion’s heavy hitters. He don’t even notice my missiles.” “But that box on his shoulder… it’s of a different metal, a different design…” Zane pointed out. “You’ve gotta…” Then he slumped down onto the concrete. Falcon trained his sensors onto the metal framework that DarkHwk had indicated. Sure enough it was of a different composition. It didn’t look anything like as missile-proof for one thing. The Falcon took to the wing and oriented his most powerful weapons on it. As soon as the missiles impacted the Obliterator turned on the flying crimefighter. “You have destroyed the control box!” the giant boomed. “I am free!” “Free?” Banjoooooo worried. “You weren’t before?” “This is not my fight,” the Obliterator said dismissively. “But now I am no longer tied to this puny planet, bound to the orders of petty mortals. Now I can return and fulfil my destiny!” “That can’t be good,” the king of the Sea Monkeys worried as the Obliterator launched itself out of the bay and rocketed off into the skies. “He’s stopped whatever countdown he was doing and he’s left the planet,” Falcon pointed out. “I’d chalk that one up as a win.” Hatman rocketed over to them in his Jets hat. “Time to go,” he called. “We got other Legionnaires down and in need of assistance!” “Hello? Getting me out from under the heavy Ausgardian?” CSFB! called after them as they went. The Lair Legion were in a tough battle against the Devil Doctor’s army of mutations. Donar and NTU-150 were cutting a wedge for the rest of the team. spiffy and Banjooooo were acting as rearguard as more and more of the spider-scorpion-monkey-vulture creatures poured out at them. Behind the wave of mutant monsters came the si-fan and the dacoits and the suicide ninjas and all the other minions loyal to the Devil Doctor. And they came smack into the Dark Knight and DarkHwk and Goldeneyed. Everybody was kung-fu fighting and those cats were fast as lightning. The Devil Doctor waited until the whole of the team of heroes was engaged before he launched his own, definitive attack. After all, Lisa was alone and armed only with a whip, and even if dragons prefer to devour virgins he wasn’t going to be fussy under combat conditions. But the first lady of the Lair Legion neither screamed not fled. She smiled a quirky kind of smile and said, “I summons Fin Fang Foom! I’ll see your dragon and raise you another one.” The Makluan Legionnaire fell upon the draconic Devil Doctor with a savage joy. Interlude Two: In a Galaxy Far, Far Away “You’re the leader of the underground resistance to Kumari’s tyrannous rule?” ManMan objected. “You? You’re just a guy with a bow and arrow!” Trickshot smirked at the Elvis impersonator. “An’ you’re just a guy with a talkin’ knife. Fact is I’m the most experienced good guy on the planet these days whut hasn’t been subverted to work for one or other of the wonder twins. But it sounds to me like Kumari an’ Thugos’ daddy has finally caught on to whut’s happen’ here.” “The Hooded Hood definitely sent me here,” Amazing Guy admitted. “But I had no idea I’d be dropping in to fight a galactic empire in a full-scale war.” “It’s war alright,” the aggravating archer agreed. “Thugos is takin’ advantage of his sister’s absence to put down the rebellion in his own inimitable style. Kumari might get back to find that she’s rulin’ a land as dead as Thugos’ if we don’t do something to stop ‘im.” “I can assume the powers of any superhero I’ve ever read about, one at a time,” Amazing Guy admitted. “I don’t know if the power’s permanent or not, but I believe I’ve been given it for a purpose. Taking on Thugos seems like a good way to use my abilities.” “How come you’ve never taken on a cosmic bad guy to liberate a galactic empire, Joe?” Knifey muttered to ManMan. “Shut up,” ManMan whispered back. “The Hood only sent me here to keep me away from Troia. But I’ll find a way back, you’ll see.” “I’d love to get you into a position to take on ol’ Thuggie,” Trickshot told the heroes, “but it’s not that easy. See, you guys have been sort of projected into the bodies of your counterparts on this world. Me, I got dropped here when my own reality got creamed in the recent interdimensional crisis. So this is my home plane now, but you guys’re just guest stars. Go up against Thugos and he’ll use his entropy eyebeams to just cancel the power that keeps you here an’ I’ll be on a solo mission again.” “But that’s what I need!” ManMan enthused. “I need to get back home before Kumari can murder Troia so she can permanently exist in my home universe.” “Meanwhile, Thugos is murdering millions here,” Amazing Guy reminded him. “We can’t turn our backs on that.” “Hey, cut the kid some slack,” Knifey urged. “He’s thinking with his hormones here. Besides, it’s pretty obvious what the answer to all of this is anyway.” “It is?” Trickshot frowned. Knifey explained. Part Five: Political Wranglings of an Alien Mayoral Candidate Pierson’s Porter and his campaign team stood amidst the rubble which had been City Hall and gave a press conference. “In the last three years Paradopolis has lost seventeen Mayors to the depredations of supervillains, terrorists, alien attacks, and natural disasters,” the new mayoral candidate told the media. “Even now our city is in chaos as monsters wreck our harbour and kidnappers hold our schoolchildren hostage. I stand for bringing an end to these things, to uniting this primitive… this troubled planet under firm, safe leadership. My leadership.” The suave alien turned to the red-headed girl behind him. “My PA will now distribute our campaign packs, prepared by the famous telecommunications pioneer Roni Y. Avis who has elected to be my campaign manager.” “You’re the PA.,” the diabolical Dr Moo prompted Troia, nudging her out of her nail-polishing. “Give out the leaflets.” “Geez, I never had this sort of slave labour with the Lair Legion, the daughter whom the Hooded Hood had entrusted to Pierson’s Porter for her protection complained. The press, as always, had questions. “Mr Porter! Is your running mate, Ms Daio Waltz, any relation to the infamous Legionnaire Lisa?” “Do you favour the death sentence?” “What kind of taxes are you intending to impose?” “Are you dating Pamela Anderson?” The alien raised his hand for silence. “Daio is her own woman, and has a distinguished career of her own whose record most definitely speaks for itself. I favour the death penalty for pushy journalists. The kind of taxes I impose will be definitive ones. And Pamela Anderson is of supreme indifference to me, having nothing to recommend her other than mammalian protruberances which could be genetically engineered onto any brood animal, and possibly have been.” “It wasn’t me,” muttered Moo. “I’m not that evil.” The press baying was interrupted by the energy blast which scattered the crowd. A woman in shimmering golden battle armour hovered over the debris of City Hall. Her flaming red hair blew in the wind from the dimensional portal she was generating. “Troia!” she called. “I have come to slay you. Step forward.” Moo exchanged a puzzled glance with Pierson’s Porter. “Never seen her before in my life,” the diabolical geneticist told PP. “Troia?” “She looks kind of familiar,” the Amazon administrator shrugged, “but I can’t remember everybody I’ve put on hold.” Moo raised her udder gun and released some lactose death fluid at the intruder… except that Moo now recalled that she had not brought the gun with her this morning. “Interesting,” Pierson’s Porter commented. “She retconned that assault in the same way the Hooded Hood might have done.” Kumari, Troia’s alternate-universe evil self, scattered plasma mines down towards her victims. An Amazon spear splintered off her chestplate. Pierson’s Porter adjusted one of his alien devices and flicked it towards Kumari’s head with amazing accuracy. Then it malfunctioned and went off course, disappearing into the dimensional void behind her. “Nothing you can do can defeat the Queen of Probabilities,” the red-haired world-conqueror boasted. “What a good job you told us that,” Pierson’s Porter answered. “Otherwise I would have pointed out that I wanted that dimensional destabiliser to go into the vortex behind you, and that your retconning it there was playing right into my hands.” But by then the dimensional portal had collapsed, dragging the raging golden-armoured Kumari in with it. “She’ll be back,” PP explained. “But not for a little while.” He turned to the cowering pressmen. “As I was saying, I am against this breakdown in law and order. A vote for me is a vote for a safer, better disciplined Paradopolis.” The press went wild. “Mindless pap,” snorted Zemo, shutting off the TV. “Why go to the bother of being elected in the so-called democratic process when one can simply seize the moment and do what one wants having broken all resistance and crushed the opposition to annihilation?” “That’s what I always say,” spiffy agreed from his energy-draining shackles. “Can I go now?” “Silence, ferned fool! Be grateful that I have delayed Kumari in her plans to adjust your physiology with a carving knife. But I have to plot a suitable scenario which will set ret-conning father against ret-conning daughter to save the life of useless fern-wielding son.” “About that Hooded Hood thing,” spiffy worried. “Are you absolutely sure about that, because it’s a pretty awful thing to find out. I mean, it’d make Troia my sister, and she can’t be my sister. She’s hot. And she’s two years older than me, so how can I be her twin? And even if the Hood did have us sent through time and space to different years to grow up from, I still can’t be his son. That’s make me spiffy Winkelweald!” The Baron’s reply was interrupted by a warning from Millennium Bug. “Something’s happening, father! We’re getting a strange kind of interference over the computer divert we put on Deathspoon’s com-signal.” “Not as stupid a name as Millennium Bug Zemo, I suppose,” spiffy shrugged. “Silence weed-host! What do you mean, a strange signal, Bug?” “Well, you got me to route all Deathspoon’s telecoms through our systems in the hopes of finding what sort of edge he’s arranged to win the Acts of Ambitions, right? And somehow Visionary’s sending out a weird sub-carrier signal that’s…” The main computer core shattered and the Lair Legion charged out. “Now that’s what I call a rescue!” spiffy laughed. He was a bit confused when spiffy came over to set him free a few minutes later. Part Six: The Trial of Lisa Waltz “Lisa Waltz, since the day you were brought to this orphanage in a shameful flowered dress you have been disobedient, wayward, insolent, lustful, sinful, and deserving of punishment. How do you plead?” Mother Whiplash demanded of the captured first lady of the Lair Legion. The assembled Little Sister of Discipline, the caged Yo, Cheryl, and Tina, the silent orphans themselves all waited for Lisa’s answer. Lisa was hurt, and she was frightened. The Little Sisters had raised her from childhood, groomed her to be one of them. She had fought them and rebelled and been punished every day of her adolescence, and when she had finally escaped she had thought herself free of them forever. Now all the old terrors had returned and all the old wounds were reopened. The Little Sisters knew exactly how to hurt her. “Hey, I thought those were my good points,” the advocatrix answered. Mother Whiplash’s eyes narrowed. “You have denied yourself the salvation of the Little Sisters. Now you and your friends will pay the price.” “You’d better let us go,” Tina warned. “You might have found ways to neutralise our powers but it’s only a matter of time before the Lair Legion comes busting through the walls. And NTU-150 is going to want a word with you.” “The Legion?” Mother Whiplash laughed. “The Legion is dying. Hunted like animals. Already Starseed, Space Ghost, Dark Knight, and DarkHwk are dead.” “What?” Yo gasped, going pale. S/he almost flicked out to the Happy Place, but the anti-teleportation fields restrained her. “That can’t be,” Cheryl denied; but the video evidence seemed very convincing. “You b*stards!” Lisa shouted. “You…” Mother Whiplash brought her lash down on the advocatrix in the way that a comics code book is not allowed to portray. Crack! “We have destroyed your team, Lisa,” Mother Whiplash went on. Crack! “You have lost everything – again.” Crack! “Your friends – gone.” Crack! “Your cause – lost.” Crack! “Your children – never existed.” Crack! “Stop it! You’re killing her!” screamed Tina. “Not yet,” Mother Whiplash promised. “Little Lisa will live long enough to see you three flayed alive first, to beg for your deaths to release you from your agonies, to recant every sin she has ever committed, to grovel brokenly before the assembly so that no-one else will ever, ever dare to disobey us as she has. And then, only then, will we finally, mercifully, kill her.” Lisa picked her head up. “My children…” “Gone as if they never were,” Mother Whiplash reminded her. “Retconned away.” Lisa couldn’t summon the effort to save herself. She couldn’t even summon the effort to save her friends. But one thought stirred her will. “I… I… I summons… I summons the anti-teleportation generator!” One woman’s indomitable will fought against the technologies of the Little Sisters. With a scream the generator dropped onto the courtroom floor, searing hot and useless as it scudded before them. “Appendage Man! Rottweiler! Terrier! Slay her!” Mother Whiplash screamed. “And I summons Yo, Tina, and Cheryl!” Lisa gasped. “Yo can be dealing with nasty villainings,” Yo promised, now teleported out of the power-draining cage. With a deft flick the thought being propelled Rottweiler and the Terrier into the flailing arms of Appendage Man and stunned the entire group with some kind of energy bolt. Little Sisters pulled their nunchakas and approached. Tina glared hard at them and they fell over. A nun with a bazooka took aim. “I don’t think so, dear,” Cheryl advised, decking her. Mother Whiplash raised her electro-prod. “And I summon my sweet little cat!” Lisa called. Twenty pounds of angry indestructible ginger tom fell onto Mother Whiplash’s face. Cheryl got Lisa out of her bonds and supported her down to the floor. “Are you alright?” she asked her friend anxiously. “I am now,” the first lady of the Lair Legion replied. “They almost got me. She almost broke me. Then she mentioned my children, and I couldn’t let her win.” “What does cute Lisa mean?” Yo puzzled. “Cute Lisalings are gone now, retconned by uncute Hooded Hooding Hood.” “All but one,” Tina answered. Some thoughts were too powerful to block out. “Lisa’s pregnant!” “Christopher Waltz, February 6th,” Lisa confirmed to her dearest friends. “No way was I going to let the Little Sisters get their hands on this one.” It was a wonderful, warm moment, spoiled only by the screaming of Mother Whiplash trying to detach a cat from her head. “Alright Visionary, how did you do it?” demanded Akiko Masamune, watching as the full Lair Legion trashed the Little Sisters of Discipline orphanage and rescued the children who had been captive there. Yo (the former prisoner) and Yo (the one who had just appeared) were entertaining the rescued infants with rabbit stories while Lisa and Lisa made short work of the sisters themselves. “Do it?” the possibly fake man shrugged disingenuously. “What do you mean?” “I mean, how did you manage to arrange for the whole Lair Legion to simultaneously appear in the strongholds of all the villains participating in the Acts of Ambition? And let me warn you before you answer that your micro-robot might be hotwiring my primary communications computer at the moment but there are around eleven hundred and thirty ways I could cripple or kill you without even getting up from this chair if you don’t give me a proper answer.” There was a smell of burning circuit-boards from under the table, then a nasty crack, then a bright flash as something important shattered into about a thousand tiny burning fragments. Fleabot was propelled away from the blast and bounced off the wall before spinning to a halt in front of the now-blank video monitor array. “The engines wouldn’ae stand it,” he told Visionary. “Did HALLIE get out of the system in time?” Vizh asked the little robot anxiously. “Oh sure, she’s safely stored in the back up unit I’ve miniaturised in my internal holding bay. But the Movie Gun’s had it. Completely overloaded.” “Movie gun?” Akiko frowned. “You mean that device which was once used by Virtual Zemo to bring film to life, and which was later captured by the Lair Legion and given into your sentient computer’s guardianship?” “Maybe,” Visionary answered guiltily. “And you had Fleabot download HALLIE into my systems to communicate with the other crimelords so that you could use the Movie Gun to project virtual Lair Legions from old newsreels into their strongholds to get them?” “Well… yes,” admitted Vizh. “I had to do something.” Akiko Masamune glared at the rather dishevelled man who had just defeated half a dozen of the most powerful men on the planet. Finally she couldn’t hold the laughter back any more. “Oh Visionary, if this doesn’t reawaken Zemo’s vendetta with the Lair Legion then nothing will. Have a drink!” Part Seven: The Deathspoon Gambit “Virtual Legionnaires,” Zemo snarled over the ruins of his castle command centre. When the Movie Gun had burned out and the celluloid heroes had vanished he had quickly discerned the nature of the signal he had intercepted. “They used virtual Legionnaires.” The masked monarch considered this stratagem for a moment. It was quite original. It had even caught him off guard, since spiffy had escaped in the confusion; but that was merely a temporary setback that could be easily rectified another day. “Send out word,” he told Pegasus. “The Acts of Ambition are cancelled. I want the Lair Legion alive. They are still worthy foes, worthy of struggling against me, and none shall destroy them but Baron Heinrich Zemo himself. I have spoken.” “Cancelled? My Acts of Ambition?” Maximillian Deathspoon answered his dwarf advisor when the message came through. “I think not. I have gone to too much trouble to rule the world cartels to give up now. And the Acts have worked far better than I had ever thought possible. Not only are the world’s heroes in disarray but they have broken the power-bases of most of my rivals also. Even Zemo, for all his posturing, took significant losses when the virtual Lair Legion attacked his castle. No, I believe the time has come for me to end this plot in exactly the way I always knew it would end.” “How’s dat, boss?” the retainer asked dutifully. A dwarf companion was there to get all the exposition from their brilliant and ruthless master. “Long before I set the Acts of Ambition in motion I took the liberty of preparing a nanovirus which could be triggered remotely at a time of my choosing. Since I provide almost every major villain in the world with minions it was simple matter to infect those minions with the virus. They in turn infected their masters. Then, when those masters battled the heroes, it was easy to programme the nanovirus to transfer to the good guys also.” “You got dem all infected, boss?” Deathspoon nodded. “Almost all by now, I imagine. Certainly all the crimelords who would oppose me as grand-master of the crime cartels, and all the Lair Legion. With a single touch of this button I can make the virus activate, and all my rivals, heroes and villains alike, will be dead in less than five minutes. We agreed that whoever killed the most Legionnaires before the end of the week would be the winner of our little contest. Now I shall prove myself the supreme crimelord of the planet!” The little dwarf made no reply. Deathspoon turned round irritably. He didn’t pay the little cretin good money to miss the important admiring-the-boss speech. The dwarf lay unconscious on the expensive rug. The man in the postal worker’s garb stood over him. “You got the heroes and the villains all sewn up,” Messenger told the assassin. “What about me?” Deathspoon wasted no time in dialogue. He leaped to the attack, unleashing a half-dozen of the toxin-laden eating implements that were his trademark. Messenger cartwheeeled aside, avoiding them and launching his own barrage of razor-letters. For fully five minutes the room was filled with lethal ballet as two of the finest fighters in the Parodyverse bent all their efforts to killing each other. “You’re as good as your reputation,” Deathspoon grudgingly admitted. “But you have delivered your final message today.” And he triggered the secret button which opened the wall where his munitions were concealed. “Additional weaponry betokens a lack of confidence in your abilities,” the postman told him. A parcel bomb shattered the additional weapons console. Deathspoon replied with his micro-rocket launcher, sending Messenger leaping for his life as large parts of the opulent room exploded around him. Deathspoon took the opportunity to hammer his hand down upon the activation button for the nanovirus. The countdown clock began at sixty seconds. Messenger noticed Deathspoon going for the button, and took advantage of the villain’s momentary distraction to get in close where the rocket launcher was useless. Then it was a matter of leverage, skill, and endurance as the two combatants traded painful blow after blow on each other. “Time’s… running… out… for your… friends,” Deathspoon gloated as the countdown clock reached single figures. “Neither rain… nor sleet…” snarled Messenger. He allowed Deathspoon to plunge the sharpened spoon right into his stomach. After all, that meant one of the villain’s arms was occupied impaling him. Then Messenger reached out and snapped his enemy’s neck. Three… two… one… Messenger halted the countdown. The room went dark for a moment and he realised that he would have to get out of there before he passed out from blood-loss. But there was still one more thing to do. Before the Messenger were two buttons. One cancelled the nano-virus, sending harmess self-destruct pulses to the nanobots in the infected heroes and villains. The other could cleanse the world of the greatest evils that corrupted it, could destroy Zemo and Masumane and the Lynchpin and the Devil Doctor and all the others. All it would cost were the lives of Messengers’ former friends. Another wave of weakness rippled through the Postman. He had to decide quickly. He punched the neutralisation button. It was far more satisfying to destroy his enemies one by one. Yes, that was the reason, he told himself. What other reason could there be? The Messenger vanished, pausing only to trigger Deathspoon Island’s self-destruct codes. Epilogue: “I’m delirious,” Fin Fang Foom decided, after he had woken up in the Lair Mansion’s medical wing. “That’s the only possible answer. Grief-stricken by DK’s death I’ve gone into a hallucinatory world of self-delusion.” “It’s not like that,” Tina promised him. “It’s just that a lot of things have happened, and some of them are… unexpected.” “So… Lisa’s pregnant?” “Uh-huh,” the mommy-to-be confirmed. “Little Christopher, with all the powers of my six retconned babies from before.” “And who’s the father?” the confused Makluan asked. Lisa looked around at the anxious male faces in the sick room. “I think I’ll keep that little revelation to myself for now,” she smiled sweetly. “And Starseed’s gone.” “He and Avatar have left the planet to deal with the Nebulus threat,” Hatty explained. “And Lo-Chi never kept our date,” the real Space Ghost mourned. He was miffed that it had taken three days before anyone realised they hadn’t got round to untying him and releasing him from his closet. “And… and we took down most of the bad guys in the Parodyverse?” “It was awesome,” CSFB! enthused. “They’re talking about building this really big super-powered villain complex so that there can be this one big breakout for us to have to deal with and then…” “And Sorceress killed the entire Anti-League single-handed?” “We don’t know if they’re actually dead,” Cheryl admitted. “Sorceress won’t talk about it, and Cap’s pretty worried about her.” “I suggested a trip to Xander’s place to chat about it,” G-Eyed explained. “Exile will take them, ‘cause he wants to ask about why he doesn’t appear on scanners and stuff anymore.” “My Bulbasaur attacked me yesterday because he didn’t recognise me,” Exile complained. “I’ve got to get to the bottom of this.” Fin Fang Foom took a deep breath. “And… (I don’t believe I’m saying this) and Visionary saved the day?” There was an awkward pause. “Well… yes,” Donar admitted. “It seemeth that the all-pappy was right in proclaiming him the true inheritor of Jarvis’ mantle as leader of the Lair Legion.” “I don’t have any super-powers, guys,” Visionary pointed out for the thousandth time. “I don’t even want the job.” “Congratulations, glorious leader. Some have greatness thrust upon them,” Lisa told him. Visionary gave Cheryl a helpless glance. She was trying not to laugh. “But with great power comes great responsibility,” the possibly fake man objected. “I don’t have great power, so I shouldn’t be responsible!” “Captain America doesn’t have any powers, and he’s brilliant in the Avengers,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! pointed out. “I. Am. Not. Captain. America,” Visionary pointed out. “Of course not,” Lisa replied with perfect circular logic. “He doesn’t lead the Lair Legion.” “I am still dreaming,” Finny told himself, desperately. “It’s a dream. It’s a dream. It’s a dream…” Next issue: It’s time for a new line-up for the Lair Legion. Join the intrepid Visionary as he tries to assemble a revised team. Watch as Xander prepares to defend his title in the grudge match of the century. Thrill to the fates of ManMan, Trickshot, and Amazing Guy. Learn the Sorceress’ darkest secret. All this plus more on the Hooded Hood’s complicated family tree. Due next weekend. An even better version of the story above, in that it's not in wide-screen format. |
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