Baron Zemo's Lair. - Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: World’s Greatest Superhero Screw-Ups

Baron Zemo's Lair

Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: World’s Greatest Superhero Screw-Ups
Friday, 18-Jun-1999 08:59:49
195.92.194.101 writes:

Visionary trudged up the well-remembered path and opened his own front door. At long last he was home from the corn.
He was rather surprised to hear the familiar sound of his wife Cheryl thumping her head on the kitchen wall. He was a little hurt. He had thought that was something special, between the two of them. Cheryl always thumped her head because of him.
“Hi, honey! I’m home,” he called plaintively.
Cheryl looked over to see that her husband had returned. Then she thumped her head on the wall again. This time it was for Visionary and he felt reaffirmed.
“I brought a friend,” Visionary smiled, gesturing at his companion spiffy. “He was dead, but he’s better now.”
“Aren’t you the one who possessed my husband’s body, teleported him to Hell, teleported me to Hell, and then ran off?” Cheryl frowned at her houseguest.
“No ma’am,” spiffy lied. “That was evil spiffy. I’m good spiffy. You can tell the difference because although I have an energy controlling fern and he has an energy controlling fern, his energy controlling fern is… eviller.”
Cheryl’s headache got worse. Remarkably it was not caused by repeated forehead impacts with the kitchen tiles. She picked up a video-cassette and hurled it over to (or possibly at) Visionary. “Look at that! Just look at it!” she demanded.
Visionary and spiffy shrugged at each other and opened the Flapjack Enterprises case to read the label on the tape inside. “A Day in the Life of the Lair Legion,” Visionary read. “A candid fly-on-the-wall documentary insight into the lives and work of earth’s foremost superhero team.”
“It was a perfectly good PR opportunity,” Cheryl, the Legion’s Public Relations Officer objected. “It was a chance to put a positive spin on this whole LL thing. Really.”
Spiffy gingerly slotted the cassette into the VCR. A brash and blaring theme tune similar to the Starsky and Hutch music burst forth. The shimmering titles announced The World’s Greatest Superhero Cock-Ups!
“That can’t be good,” Visionary admitted.
The screen depicted the Lair Legion’s mansion. A commentator stepped on camera. “Hello, viewers, and welcome to a special insight into the lives of the so-called Lair Legion. I’m Troy McClure. You may remember me from such superhero videos as X-Men, the X-purgated Highlights, How Can they Still be Calling Them the New Teen Titants?, and Little Tommy Spends a Day with Doom Patrol and a Lifetime in Therapy. Today we are privileged to see the Legionnaires at work and play…”
“That can’t be good either,” Visionary agreed.
“I told them the camera-crew was coming,” Cheryl complained. “I told them.”
“Lisa was prepared for it,” spiffy noticed. “Is that a new costume?”
“That is the world’s first superhero outfit to consist entirely of dental floss and three paper-clips,” Cheryl snarled. “Lisa felt she needed to, how did she put it, to get back into action.”
“The camera loves her,” Visionary noticed.
Cheryl fast-forwarded.
“…So what you’re saying is I’m getting thrown out of the Legion?” Messenger demanded on screen. “Just because I massacred Mailman in cold blood?”
“Well… Yes,” answered Jarvis, doing his best Chandler impression. “In case you didn’t notice, the Lair Legion spends quite a lot of its time catching people who go around massacring people.”
“Uh huh,” the postman nodded, folding his arms. “That is when it’s not conquering France or blowing up the moon or killing ninjas or carving up demons or resisting arrest or…”
“That’s different,” Jarvis answered.
“Why?”
“Because…because I’m leader and I say it is,” he retorted.
Cheryl fast-forwarded again.
“…It ist our trophy room,” Donar explained to the camera. “Herein are all the treasures gleaned by the Legion during our glorious history. See yonder the very bowling trophy which wast wonneth by mine team in the Contest of Champions. It wert a most terrible struggle. A thousand barbarian hordes approached from the Hot Dog stand, screaming their threats of death. Noble and unafraid mine comrades and I raided one single finger in battle salute at them before we commencethed to kick their butteths…”
“This is my favourite,” Hatman admitted. “It’s Jarvis’ really, but it’s on loan.”
“It looks like a purple lump of sparkly putty,” a voice behind the hand-cam objected, focussing on the small indestructible orb beneath the glass dome.
“Oh no,” Hatman smiled happily. “It’s absolutely Wonderful.”
“And what about your favourite memento, Mr Racoon?” the interviewer asked.
The rodent contingent of the Lair Legion did not answer.
“Don’t mind him,” Hatman explained. “He’s just saluting the flag.”
Fast Forward.
“So why do you want to join the Lair Legion, Mr… Mr Tempest, is it?” Starseed asked the new applicant.
The newcomer sat straight in his chair, didn’t fidget, and took the time to make eye contact with all the interviewing panel except Space Ghost, who had gone to sleep and was snoring noisily. His comrades had helpfully pinned a “Please Shave My Head While I Am Sleeping” notice on Space Ghost’s back.
“Well,” Tempest answered. “I have useful super-powers. I want to fight for truth and justice. And all the other groups suck even worse than yours does. I mean, really, do I want to be part of the Belgian Waffle Five?”
Fin Fang Foom make a mark on his score sheet and referred to the resume. “According to this you have telekinetic powers and so forth. Are you aware that we already have a member, Jarvis, who has similar abilities to your won when he will admit to them?”
“Um, well, yeah. But Jarvis has just got married, right, and he’ll need some time off to, um, to be married, right? So I can fill in for him, do the stuff he usually does.”
Starseed and Foomy exchanged glances. “It might be possible,” Starseed considered. “Do you heal quickly?”
Tempest was a little bit baffled by this. “I guess I’m pretty healthy, buy why…?”
“Well, if Jarv’s out of the loop for a while then we need somebody to be killed or crippled in every adventure,” FFF explained. “I say we give him a try.”
Starseed’s Gaaaaahhhhhh! blast sent the neophyte superhero through the back wall as the audition continued.
Moving forward…
“There’s a guy here with a summons. Says he’s from the Environmental Protection Agency. Something to do with abuse of animals?” DarkHwk called out.
There was a thud as Banjooooo attempted to shoehorn his massive sea-monkey ass behind a sofa. “It’s not me he wants to see,” he promised. “I never helped the Sea-Chubb Liberation Movement release those fish into the Paradopolis sewers. Besides, I thought one of them was a reincarnation of my grandfather.”
“What did you do this time?” Lisa asked, sensing a lucrative brief.
“Actually he’s here to see you,” DarkHwk warned her. “You know your stinky ginger cat?”
“Yes.”
“And you know the endangered Grey-Crested Greebing Eagle, of which there is only one breeding pair left on the planet…?”
And further forward…
“This is so cool this is the coolest thing since limited series were invented!” CrazySugarFreakBoy! told the cameraman. “I mean, superhero documentaries are pretty hot, like when the Avengers went on Letterman and that fat kid tried to run them over with that crazy roller and the Beast just bounced all over the place like this and then there was that MASH episode where they did this sort of documentary and Hawkeye told them… actually there were two Hawkeyes there was the one with Radar O’Reilly in Korea and the one on the Letterman show with Wonder Man, and have you ever wondered if they aren’t like, related, and maybe Clint Barton is like the orphaned love child of Alan Alda and Hotlips Hoolihan? Sorry, what was the question again?”
“I said,” repeated the cameraman,” where’s the bathroom?”
And still further forward…
“We’re here in the Lair Legion crime labs to interview the infamous Dark Knight, who has up till now been notoriously difficult to get to answer questions about his past and motivations for crimefighting. Mr Dark Knight, is it true that… hey, where’d he go?”
“Heh. This is good stuff, Cheryl,” Visionary snorted. “This’ll sell.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” his wife answered.
“Isn’t there a clause that allows you to cut out the worst bits and just leave in the parts that show the Legion in the most favourable light?” spiffy wondered.
“Oh yes,” Cheryl ground her teeth. “We used it. That is the edited version that’s left!”
“Hey, spiff, watch the screen!” Visionary called. “They’re crawling over the mansion rooftop to see if they can get a shot of Sersi sunbathing in the nude on the upper patio. Now they’re looking over the ridge tiles. Now they have a candid tell all shot. Now there’s a close up of Sersi’s face. Now they’re travelling up into the stratosphere. Now we see a fine view of the Great Wall of China for space…”
The scene changed to the cluttered lab of NTU-150. There was a small pointy-eared lab assistant under the spotlight. “So, Mr Zebulon, is it true that you’re an elf?” the interviewer asked.
“Nah. I’m a vampire,” the annoyed elf replied.
“But, um, we can see you on camera.”
“I’m on a break.”
“So, Mr Zebulon. What is it like working with one of the greatest technological geniuses of the age?”
“How the hell should I know? I work with NTU-150. He’s the ideas man. I’m the explain-to-Tina-what-happened-to-her-Ladyshave man. He’s the one who can cobble together a stardrive out of Lisa’s new costume. I’m the one who has to clear up the mess when it explodes and takes out the Paradopolis power grid.”
“But NTU-150 is a certified genius, isn’t he?”
“He should certainly be certified,” answered the elf. “Look, you want to see how good he is? See that coffee pot over there. He repaired it. He improved it. Plug it in and have yourself a cup.”
“Well, viewers, it appears as though we are going to be privileged to try out on of the great NTU-150’s new inventions for ourselves, live on screen for the first time. I’ll just flip this switch here and then we’ll AAAAAAGGGHHHHHH!” Crackle. Pop.
Do not adjust your sets.
“Yo is happy to talk about Yo’s cute friends, happy camera people. Yo knows all about them. Yo was visiting Jarvis and Melissa just last night to be see how they liked the million happy purple thought bunnies Yo gave them and they were very happy. Yo thinks that they liked the thought bunnies very much and want many more thought bunnies. Yo noticed that Jarvis and Melissa were demonstrating to the thought bunnies how to make more thought bunnies…”
And still the tape played on:
“Hello. I’m Goldeneyed. I’ve been training with the Legion recently, and am thinking of joining. I hail from Arachknight City, where I…”
Voice behind camera: You ever heard of this bozo?
Second voice behind camera: Nope.
First voice again: Hey, kid, you ever done anything heroic?
“Well” answered Goldeneyed, “there was the time that I was with Frog Man and…”
“Cut.”
“And now we are privileged to witness an actual committee meeting of the Lair Legion in session. Lisa is acting chairwoman for this event as Jarvis is on leave with his new wife. In fact, it seems as though Jarvis is the first item of business...”
“Next up,” Lisa announced, “the Legion pool for Melissa’s first words to Jarvis on their wedding night. I just need to check what people have got down for.”
Hatman checked his notebook. “Mine was, ‘Now I understand why you insist on having such a large Lairjet.’”
“I had ‘You know they have surgery to fix that’,” Starseed remembered.
“And I had, “At least this won’t take long,” Foom smirked.
“You are all extremely mean” Sersi scolded them. “I have my money on, ‘It’s a good thing you have so many other talents.’”
Rocket Racoon snorted. “I still say I’m gonna win with ‘”I wish I was here with Rocket Racoon.”
Lisa looked at her papers. “Next item of business, disciplinary action regarding Banjoooo’s indecent behaviour in the fishtank…”
Voice-over: “And now we hear the reactions of some the Lair’s opponents in this candid series of interviews:
Magnetic Techbird: Hey, I wasn’t even invited to the wedding. I mean, they invited the Man Who Wasn’t There, for f*ck’s sake. They had Jam there. And I didn’t even get sent a slice of cake.”
Pegasus: They’re all very nice people. Except for Jarvis. And Foom. Oh, and Dark Knight, of course. And Banjooooo. And…”
Pearson’s Porter: I think they take things too seriously. Sure, the moon got a little bit destroyed, but from the fuss they made you’d think there weren’t any other celestial bodies out there. By the way, do you like this sunset that Moo gave me?”
Hollywood V: Hey, I don’t exist any more, so sod off.
Cut to an old clip of Baron Zemo, the diabolical Dr Moo, and the Hooded Hood sitting in the tower room of Herringcarp Asylum and discussing their adversaries.
“I like the way you can always count on them to do the predictable, noble, stupid thing,” Zemo considered. “I mean, put a hostage in a dungeon, flood it, and just watch them bumble right in there to fish her out.”
“That’s what makes them great,” Moo suggested. “It’s that simple-minded, pig-headed moronicity that makes them what they are. You and I might shoot the hostage to put her out of her misery and save the gene pool from being further polluted by an idiot who let herself get trussed up like that, but they will risk life and limb just because it’s the right thing to do.”
“We need them, though,” the Hooded Hood admitted. “Let’s face it, if there were no insipid heroes to mock and confound, the business of conquering all reality would be a very dull affair indeed. Where is the pleasure in winning unless one has some opposition who must lose?”
“I will have to destroy them all someday,” Zemo reflected. “But not while I can still bring them misery and suffering.”
“I will have to destroy them someday as well,” Moo agreed. “But not until Lisa’s given me my birthday present.”
“And I will have to destroy you all,” the Hood concluded. “But I will miss you all terribly. Except for CrazySugarFreakBoy! of course.”
There was general agreement.
“OK, so there are a few embarrassing bits,” Visionary conceded to Cheryl. “But on the whole it’s not too bad. People get to see that there’s a human side to us. And that clip with Sersi should boost sales by about three million units.”
“You haven’t got to the end yet,” Cheryl snarled. “Look, we’re just coming to the bit where NTU-150 detects the weapons grids under the camera-crew’s clothes, and the Legion works out that they are being filmed by a crack assault team of agents from HERPES.
“HERPES?” Visionary had been amongst the corn for an awfully long time.
“Hero Elimination Revenge Project Extermination Squad,” Fleabot helpfully contributed. He’s been in the corn a long time too, but at least he’d kept up with his e-mail. “Wear green buckets on their heads and shout things like “Hail HERPES! Apply Penicillin and another rash shall come forth within six weeks!”
Indeed, the screen now showed the ambush being sprung and the combined might of the Lair Legion overreacting live on camera.
“HERPES shock troops! How excellent!” CrazySugarFreakBoy! shouted. “It’s like that Roger Stern Dr Strange ep where these guys got Doc to recall his origins on film and then…”
“I don’t even have an origin yet,” Hatman complained, whipping out his RedSox hat and gassing the opposition.
“No Messenger!” Lisa called out. “No! Don’t kill them!”
“Hey, I was canned, lawyer lady! I don’t have to play by your rules any more! Eat razor-letter, HERPES scum!”
“And mine expense account was most cruelly and untimely withdrawn!” Donar complained. “Therefore let them eat Mjalcolm forsoothly!”
And finally the voice of a desperate cameraman begging Banjooooo: “No, no, please. Don’t stick that camera theeeerrrrreeee!”
Then static.
“It could have been worse,” spiffy said at last. “I could have been in it.”
“That would undoubtedly have made it worse,” Cheryl admitted. She sighed. “So much for the big PR video coup. Ah well, at least I managed to secure the only copy from the mangled felons.”
Visionary has the TV remote in his hand. “Um, darling?” he called really gently, “Have you seen PBS just at this moment?”

The Hooded Hood (still not here, honest, but best regards and all that; thanks to CSFB's orgy ring for the Jarvis jokes; welcome back LLW, bye Sersi; assume British slang for Lisa included but not enough room in text box)