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#33: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: True, Dare, Kiss, Promise Saturday, 18-Dec-1999 09:22:00
#33: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: True, Dare, Kiss, Promise Like all good conjurer’s tricks, the one that the Hooded Hood is about to perform depends on two things: the quickness of the hand deceives the eye, and the audience is looking the wrong way when the switch occurs. So we’ll have to watch this carefully and in slow motion to see how he pulls it off. There he is, the cowled crime czar, in destiny’s parlour, a place of darkness, ravens, and infinity, kissing the Shaper of Worlds, one of three cosmic beings charged with upholding the fabric of the Parodyverse the Hood seeks to conquer. The Shaper’s a bit overwhelmed at the moment. After all, the demon lord Mefrothto is pouring all his power into awakening and supercharging every evil on Earth as a preliminary to taking over the plane. There’s a secondary and quite independent invasion about to begin from Kumari, the Hooded Hood’s daughter from a parallel universe which started out as the Shaper’s own attempt to annoy the Hood and has gone badly wrong. The Shaper has agreed to this kiss as the price of the Hood helping her sort things out, and she’s desperately baffled as to how she can hate the kisser and like the kiss at the same time; which goes to show that even cosmic beings don’t really understand how man and women interact sometimes. “Erm, what’s going on?” spiffy asked plaintively. He had gone to the Hood to find out how he could turn out to be the cowled crime czar’s son and had somehow been dragged along on the Hood’s final manoeuvre for multiversal domination. Right now he badly felt the need for a guide book. “We have really got to find you a girlfriend,” his companion Banjoooo, King of the Sea Monkeys answered. “You see, that’s called kissing, and when a mummy and daddy…” “That’s not what I mean,” spiffy scowled. “I know about kissing. Theoretically anyway. I mean why is the Hooded Hood stood there snogging the Shaper of Worlds while my alternate-reality twin sister, having flayed to death my this-reality sister Troia, is swarming twenty million invading shock-troops onto Earth to conquer our planet?” The third of the men who had accompanied the Hood strode forward to watch the invasion in one of the Shaper’s scrying pools. “You mean you haven’t worked it out yet?” Baron Zemo sneered. “Watch.” Part One: True “He said true things, but called them by wrong names.” Bishop Bloughram’s Apology, i.541.61, Robert Browning “Truth and roses have thorns about them” Old proverb The dimensional gateway opened up directly into the honeymoon suite of the Paradopolis Grand Hotel, which was currently the Mayoral Campaign Headquarters of the alien Pierson’s Porter’s bid to take over the city. It was to PP that the Hooded Hood had entrusted the care of his daughter Troia, and the alien conqueror took it personally that the upstart Kumari would interfere with his own plots and dare to match her reality-reordering abilities against his own technological genius. The usual campaign staff had been dismissed for the night. After all, Pierson’s Porter had every intention of winning this encounter, and Herbert Garrick and Roni. Y. Avis and others might come in useful later on. Even the Dark Mite was gone, battling crime by guarding a donut shop. Only the diabolical Dr Moo, a first-rank villainess in her own right anyway, stood beside PP to greet the incoming legions. Kumari knew even as she emerged from the portal that someone had set up a multi-dimensional distortion feedback. Her twenty million strong army was being held back from appearing on the helpless planet because the only entrance currently permissible was the small gateway guarded by these two interlopers. On the other hand, all the Queen of Probabilities had to do was to crush this pair as they so richly deserved, shatter their futile technology, and then proceed with her conquest. If the Hooded Hood had entrusted the defence of his world to these two as he had entrusted the care of Troia to them he had most surely miscalculated. “It took you long enough to locate the source of the dimensional barrier,” Pierson’s Porter commented as Kumari emerged from a vast visual effect. His probability stabiliser withstood the first retcon wave directed at him, but to his dismay shattered at only the second assault. Suddenly his love-inducing TASP device, his Variable Sword, his Laser Flashlight were all gone. How powerful were this woman’s powers anyway? “Fool! Did you not think my own universe had your race of alien Puppeteers also? I slew them all! I know how to overcome their vaunted technology!” “Ah,” Pierson’s Porter considered. “Then it’s as well I’ve got a backup plan. Take her, Moo my love.” “Alright, Kumari,” the lactose-manipulating archvillainess announced. “Surrender and die.” That wasn’t an accidental variation from the more common phrase, by the way. “You have dared stand between the Death-Goddess and her conquests,” Kumari declared. “But I have ripped out and devoured the living heart from the pale lesser version of myself who once dwelled on this plane, and I claim for myself her right to be considered a native of this realm of reality. Thus may I stay as long as I please, to bring all the nations of the Earth, all the empires of space, under my iron boot.” “You ate uncooked heart?” Moo frowned. “That could give you terrible indigestion, you know. Right about… now.” And Kumari doubled up in pain just as the cow-masked geneticist had predicted. “Aagh! How…” “Maybe you ate someone who disagreed with you?” the fourth protagonist suggested, appearing from a side room. Kumari looked up to see her identical double, Troia. “You?! You’re dead! I flayed you myself.” “I can’t say I noticed,” the Amazon administrator admitted. “Meggan Foxxx just took me into hiding for a day or so.” “What you kidnapped, tortured, and rather foolishly ingested part of was a clone,” Dr Moo explained to the pain-wracked Kumari. “I made one of my sister once as well. But since you seemed so keen on having a Troia to kidnap and torture we provided you with one.” Pierson’s Porter picked up a remote control. “We also equipped the clone with a self-destruct mechanism. A rather powerful one.” He thumbed a red button. “Ooops. There goes your otherdimensional empire.” “I will kill you all for this,” snarled the Death-Queen. Troia 215 rolled her sleeves up. “Oh yeah?” she asked, striding forwards. Part Two: Dare “What man dare, I dare.” Macbeth, III,iv.99, William Shakespeare “Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.” Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton “Think of this as a test of your ability to displace kinetic energy,” Exile told himself as the Yurt hit him. It was nice to know the exact limits of his energy-shifting powers he told himself as he was slammed with bone-splintering force back into the jagged cliff-face and slumped into a small bloody pile. But the set-up had worked, because now Exile’s cousin Goldeneyed had been able to creep up on the radioactive Russian peasant hut that walked like a man and get close enough to grab it and teleport. Goldeneyed had once managed, with the extreme motivation of imminent death to plane-shift an entire shuttlecraft. All he had to do here was teleport a significant enough bit of the Yurt to hurt him. Of course, the Yurt was composed of super-dense gamma-irradiated cosmic materiel. “Aaaaaaagggghhhh!” Bry Katz commented as he felt himself losing control of the dimension-shifting. He worked very hard to keep most of his major organs appearing in the same place and roughly the right order. It wasn’t easy. The Yurt appeared not to notice that twenty-five percent of its mass had been separated. It merely picked up a boulder the size of a house and hurled it at G-Eyed. Yo intervened, impossibly skewering the boulder on his/her rapier and deftly tossing it aside. “Ah, ah, naughty Yurt monster!” the thought being admonished. “Yo is to be making sure that you are not menacing innocent villaging villagers down below.” And that was how the three heroes had got into this mess, of course. The inconceivable Yurt had somehow been tossed into the Realm of Exile called the Dreary Dimension, which for reasons that we won’t examine too closely just now had adopted the aptly-named Exile as it’s Lord. The Grand Vizier, who had his own private opinions about who should be the next Lord of the Dread Dimension and how soon that should happen had therefore made sure that Exile and his companions knew about the native village in the path of the Yurt’s destruction. “Yurt smash puny sword boy. Girl. Boy.” The Yurt promised Yo uncertainly. Unfortunately the dumber the Yurt got the stronger he got. As a thought being Yo could be whatever he believed himself to be, but it was becoming increasingly hard to convince him/herself that those mountain-shattering blows from the Yurt weren’t able to hurt him/her. “Yo is wondering if we cannot be to be talking all of this over with cappuchino and biscuits?” the genderless thought being suggested. The Yurt was unreceptive to this alternative, preferring to stick with the tried and tested smashing option he did so well. Exile painfully dragged himself out from under the heap of rubble the Yurt had buried him in. Gentle hands helped him free and wrapped bandages round the worst of his abrasions. “Valeria?” he remembered. The slave girl had been a tribute offering from one of the outlying vassal states and had insisted on coming along in case she was needed. Right now, given Exile’s mangled state, she was clearly needed. “Yo is holding her own for a few moments, dread lord,” Valeria assured him. “Now hold still while I try and get this suture attached.” “Bryan?” “Your cousin is a little way down the mountain catching his breath and trying to teleport his digestive tract back to its proper place. He’ll be alright eventually, but he’s taken as a bad a beating as you have.” Exile winced as he tried to stand up. “You’ve got to get out of here, Valeria. Things are turning nasty.” “Are you going to run away, dread lord?” Derek Foreman ran a hand through his blood-matted hair. “No, I can’t. Somebody’s got to hold the Yurt off long enough for the villagers to run away, and since I appear to be in charge round here that makes it my responsibility.” Valeria smiled sadly. “Well then, if our dread lord is willing to fight for us, surely we should stand by him.” As she saw Exile about to protest she added, “Master… Derek… we have never, in ten thousand years, had a ruler who would lift a finger for us. Do you really think we’re going to turn our backs on one who will risk his life for people who have always been told they’re worth nothing? And me… you know what I am, what you could demand of me, yet you’ve been… you’ve been so very kind. Did you expect me to leave you to die alone?” There were tears in the slave girls eyes as she spoke, because even as she told the truth with her lips she was slipping the Talisman of Neutralisation from her pyjama-trouser waistband as the Grand Vizier had commanded her, ready to plunge the wand into Exile, hurling him from the Dreary Dimension, destroying him since he was one with it. The Grand Vizier knew where Valeria’s family lived, and he had been very specific in all his instructions to her. All it took was the courage to make one stab. Just as Yo was pounded into the bedrock Goldeneyed limped back into the fray. “Hold it there, rocky,” he demanded. “That teleport trick’s got to have weakened you a little bit. See how you like this.” And G-Eyed gated in molten bedrock from the mountain’s searing heart. The air was black with gaseous rock, and from the centre of the fumes came the scream of the Yurt; but it was hard to tell if it was from pain or rage. Then a slate-edged wall loomed fast out of the fog, slamming into G-Eyed with cruel force. Bry felt the ribs on his left side snapping as he toppled backwards onto the churned-up mountainside. The Yurt shambled forwards and raised a foot the size of an outhouse to squash to fallen hero. Exile intervened with a power blast which shattered the earth under the Yurt’s other foot The monster roared with rage as it toppled backwards down the cliff, only to rise again more furious and powerful than ever. “You okay?” Exile asked G-Eyed. “Sure, cuz,” Bry gasped. “Only hurts when I breathe.” Then the Yurt was back upon them. Valeria watched the battle wide-eyed, still clutching the Talisman of Neutralisation she hadn’t had the courage to use yet. She knew she had to. She knew her family were lost to her anyway, since the day the council of elders of her village had elected her as their due tithe to the Dark Tower; she could never return, because to do so would be to doom them. She knew that the Grand Vizier would hurt them in ways she couldn’t even imagine if she didn’t fulfil his every whim, as his assassin and later as his bed-toy. She knew she had no choice. So why was it so hard to decide? “Yo is thinking that cute-Valeria has to be worrying about something,” Yo suggested, appearing unexpectedly at the slave-girl’s shoulder. “Yo!” Valeria gasped. “Shouldn’t you be down there helping the dread lord and Bryan?” “Yo thinks Yo is,” the thought being replied, pointing to where a black-silk clad Zorro impersonator was dancing around the hut-monster distracting it from the stricken G-Eyed. “But Yo also thinks this is where it is important for Yo to be.” Valeria looked frightened now. “What do you mean?” she trembled. “Yo is to be thinking that cute-Valeria has to be making of hard choices, and is be needing a friend to be helping with the thinking out, yes?” “I don’t know what… I don’t have a choice,” Valeria despaired. “Is not true,” Yo told the weeping girl. “Is always important to be deciding what is right to do, and always important to be doing it.” “I love my family, Yo. I don’t want any harm to come to them, even though I can’t ever see them again.” “Yo thinks that cute-Valeria doesn’t want any harm to come to anybody cute-Valeria loves, yes?” Yo asked perceptively. Then s/he added, “Yo wonders who should to be trusted most with seeing cute-Valeria’s family is safe, Exile or the Grand Vizier.” “It’s not that simple, Yo,” Valeria argued. “It’s all about greed, and envy, and betrayal, and shameful things done for mean and evil reasons.” Yo cupped her chin with his/her hand and smiled. “No,” s/he told the maiden. “It is all about love.” Then advisor-Yo vanished at the same time as combatant-Yo caught a particularly nasty cornice from the Yurt. That left Exile in lone combat with the creature. Almost all the villagers had fled to safety now. Only one old woman, unable to run, cowered in the hut-monster’s path, futilely cradling a screaming baby from the wrath of the Yurt. Exile had always wondered when and how he was going to die, and now he knew it was to defend two helpless people that didn’t seem such a bad way to go. At least he would stop hurting. “Back off, Yurt, they’re not for you,” he warned, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth as he spoke. “Yurt smash!” The Hut that Walks Like a Man drew back one mighty wing to smear the hero into oblivion. “Nooo!” screamed Valeria, and stabbed with the sharpened crystal spike which was the Talisman of Neutralisation. But she didn’t stab Exile. The wand somehow slid through the granite carapace of the monstrous Yurt. The Grand Vizier’s magics burst into action, spewing the victim out of the Dreary Dimension in a rainbow flash. The Yurt was gone. Exile discovered that he was still alive. “I had to do it I had to do it I had to do it,” Valeria babbled. “I couldn’t kill you while you were fighting for us.” She clasped herself to Exile’s battered body and sobbed, but somehow the fact it hurt like hell to be squeezed didn’t bother Derek Foreman at all. “Well, that’s settled then,” Xander the Improbable commented, emerging from behind a pile of rubble with the Manga Shoggoth. “Now we can get down to business.” Part Three: Kiss “I kissed thee ere I killed thee.” Othello, V.ii.357, William Shakespeare “You must remember this, A kiss is just a kiss, A sigh is just a sigh.” Sam, playing it again in Casablanca The parade of dead witches processed through the tangled research greenhouse at the Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital to watch Hatman die. The first of the women, wrapped only in uncured animal furs, was the Sorceress’ ultimate ancestor, the one who had reached out with her occult gifts and first dredged a Demon Lover from the darkness. Etched on her face was the pain and betrayal of a brutal Neolithic world where life was cheap and her only value was in her ability to predict the running of the herds. Her daughter followed her, the first of the line to have taken the spirit of shadow and passion as her intimate, the first to shape the Love-Talker into all those things which the brutal savages around her were not. That woman’s child was born of a caveman’s rape, but her grandchild was conceived of the Demon Lover himself; and the majority of the line which followed through long centuries were also raised of his cold, immortal seed. They passed before Jay Boaz’ fading eyesight like an army of the damned, each one slightly more powerful than the last, each one bred by her Demon Lover to birth a child yet more suited for his purposes, yet more attuned to the twilight world of magic. Each one seemed to scorn the dying hero for daring to intervene between Whitney and her destiny. Hatman hadn’t known about any destiny, only about a spontaneous affection to a wonderful girl that had somehow become a barbed-wire tangle of lethal emotions. Now that wonderful girl was watching her Demon Lover strangle the life out of him. There are two kinds of males. There are the ones that make women cry and the ones those women cry on. The men in the latter category have often had to learn the hard lesson that after they have stopped crying, the women often creep back to the ones that made them cry anyway. Jay had been there for Whitney, and his current situation as soul-linked to the Demon Lover was entirely because he had opened a puzzle-box which the Sorceress seemed to be having trouble with and so fallen into a spiritual trap designed for her. Now he had to die so that the soul-trap could be used to fully and irrevocably bind Whitney to her Love-Talker. And the eternal line of the Sorceress’ forebears passed to scorn him for believing that friendship could ever be more important than lust. There were other witnesses as well. Dreamcatcher Foxglove, the CrazySugarFreakBoy was tangled in diabolically strong vines just a few feet from where the handsome naked Lover was throttling his best friend. He was shouting something about cosmic laws and diabolical interference always allowing celestial intervention as well, but the higher forces all appeared to be out for a take-away just at the moment. Sorceress’ three Abandoned Legion teammates struggled inside a murderous black mist which seemed to be leaching the life out of them by it’s very contact. Cap fought with diminishing strength, and the cold tendrils clawed his mind as well as his body with the knowledge that he had failed his comrades, and that would be his dying realisation. Cobra writhed as the black coils dragged her back to the past, stripping off layers of memory to remind her of the terrible secret moment when Christine McBurney had chosen to surrender and allowed the Cobra to take over and survive. And Hunter Victorious wrestled with a chill darkness that seemed strangely, almost comfortingly familiar, and awaited his moment. The line of witches finally reached its end as the last of the Love-Talker’s lovers before Whitney came to lay their final contempt on Jay Boaz. But this witch had a different object for her scorn. “Wasn’t man enough to take on the competition, eh?” Hagatha Darkness mocked the Demon Lover. “So scared that you had to manoeuvre this situation where he had to die for her to be with you? How weak and insecure you really must be!” “Hagatha,” the Demon Lover sneered. “What have you become? My beautiful nymph has become a sour crone, bitter and manipulative and withered in her hate. How much you must regret betraying me. I hardly think you would have enjoyed such dark raptures as we had with your little knight. Did you ever even bother to tell him he had fertilised you?” “This isn’t about my choices,” Hagatha snarled. “It’s about hers.” She gestured to Sorceress. “She has made her choice, Hagatha,” the Love-Talker smirked. “She gave herself to me freely, body and soul. She knows the truth about me, and about what you did to me. She’s spoken with her mother, you see, the one you told her was dead, the one you forced away into a life of misery and self-destruction. She knows why you’re really tutoring that little probability-twisting widow. She’s compared this choking mortal fool to me and she’s decided who she wants. You have lost, Hagatha. She’s mine now. Beg me and perhaps I’ll take you one last time for old time’s sake before I kill you.” And then there was Whitney, the unmoving centre of the tableau, the pivot around which all the events were spinning, the culmination of millennia of seduction and plotting, the small package of flesh and emotions which was struggling in a moment of destiny. “Wait a minute,” the Sorceress heard herself say. Events seemed to freeze as she stepped past the line of her ancestors to face the Demon Lover. “Everyone is saying what I want, what I’ve decided,” she protested. “Don’t I get a voice?” “Sure you do,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! exalted. “Now’s your chance. Tell us what you want, what you really really want!” So Sorceress did. “I want lots of things,” she breathed. “Not just one thing, lots. I want to understand the magics that run through my blood. And I want wild nights of passion with my Demon Lover. And I want to watch the sun set over the sea, with the gulls wheeling in an orange and purple sky. And I want to put it all down in words which will burn the page and make the mind’s eye go wide.” She glanced across at the struggling Abandoned Legion. “And I want to sit down with my friends and eat hot buttered toast on a cold winter’s night, and know I have people I can absolutely, absolutely depend upon. I want to have a really long talk with Hagatha for the first time, because there’s so much we have to say to each other, so little we’ve understood, because it’s time for me to stop being scared of her and for her to stop being scared for me and for us both to be together. And I want Jay to be alive, so that I know that there’s one absolutely honest, truly good person in the world. And… and I want him to be alive because he… because… because I think I love him.” “I see,” Hagatha said softly. “Well, a Sorceress is one who shapes and foretells the future, child. So what is going to happen next?” “The future is decided,” the Demon Lover proclaimed, tightening his grip on Hatman’s throat once more. “Whitney is mine.” “Whitney is Whitney’s,” Whitney shouted back. “If I choose to share my body or my life with you or anybody else that’s my choice, but it doesn’t make me your property. I’ve said what I want, but like everybody else I can’t have it all, so I’ve got to choose the things that are really important to me. And frankly, Love-Talker, the sex was good but not so good I’d lose my friends and Jay for it.” Suddenly the black mists were gone and the restraining vines were slack and an aura of power mantled the Sorceress. “So back off from the man I love of I’ll rend you apart and send you screaming to the bowels of hell,” she told the Demon Lover. The Demon Lover chuckled. “I like a wench with spirit,” he told her. “Do you really think that anything you decide now makes the slightest bit of difference? One way or another you will be one with me, and then this world will be mine to play with and you can join the queue of your grandmothers before you in being my immortal slave. You gave yourself to me. Now I own you, and you cannot free yourself.” “She doesn’t need to,” Cap proclaimed, spanging his shield off the Demon-Lover’s face. “That’s why she has friends!” “Friends with knives,” Cobra contributed, demonstrating. “Friends with silly string!” CSFB! shouted excitedly. “Not only does she have friends,” snarled the Demon Lover, “She has relatives.” And countless witches moved forward to impose their master’s will. Hunter Victorious understood instinctively what was happening. He didn’t know or comprehend the bond between himself and other, earlier heroes whose initials had been HV. All he knew just now was that the Demon Lover had used the wave of power washing the world to peel back the usual rules of linear time and draw all those witches to his service; and since the rules were currently revoked… Hollywood V pounded the first witch back into history. Hastings Vernal and Havelock of Verdun followed him in dealing with the next rank. And one by one the men who had been HV engaged the parade of witches. Hagatha decked her own grandmother. She’d never liked the sour old biddy. The Demon Lover seized Whitney and dragged her to him. “Too little, too late, sweetheart,” he spat at her. “Let’s consummate our bond here and now.” “Let’s not!” Hatman suggested, and punched the Love-Talker right on the nose. “Get behind me, Whitney. He won’t get you while I’m alive, I swear it.” “That is literally true,” Sorceress warned him. “I’ll do my best,” Jay promised. “But… I don’t have any hats right now.” “You don’t need any right now,” Whitney explained. “You just need to be you, and you need me to believe in you. And I do, Jay. I do. I know what’s important now, and I know what I want, and I want…” “Die, mortal!” the Demon Lover screamed, rising up wrathfully with his handsome face covered in blood from his shattered nose. Jay hit him again. And again. And again. The black mists rose to surround the combatants and the Sorceress. The black mists that Whitney couldn’t really control. The black mists that were meant to absorb and destroy Hatman. Whitney claimed her inheritance and commanded the mists. The Demon Lover, after all, was just a man, or a demon in the shape of a man, and she was the Sorceress. The Demon Lover had once moment to call out her name in a hurt, puzzled, betrayed way before the mists closed upon him and he was devoured. Suddenly the tempest passed. The witches, the HV spectres, were all gone. The tide of evil had washed on elsewhere to its final harbour. Whitney cradled Hatman’s body and wept whilst Cap performed CPR on him. Part Four: Promise “The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep.” Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Robert Frost “It is not the oath that makes us believe the man, but the man the oath.” Fragments no 385, Aeschylus Fin Fang Foom was the last to return to the Liar Mansion that night that Meforthto pumped all his evil influence out across the world to awaken every ember of smouldering wickedness into a blazing inferno. However, Fin Fang Foom had an excuse. The events chased through his mind even as he winged down towards the old estate on Parody Island. During his sojourn in the Mythlands he had met and become attached to Moira, a woman of the Faerie. More specifically, Moira was by nature a Lhiannon Shee, a creature who fed upon the genius of artists, who fanned their own sparks of genius much as Mefrothto was doing to the embers of evil, searing her lovers to new heights of self-destructive genius. Moira loved Finny’s writings, and her constant attention and critical encouragement had forced him to be more prolific and more poetic than ever before. Moira was a Lhiannon Shee by nature, but a Washer-by-the-Ford by vocation. In ancient Celtic myth, great heroes on their way to battle sometimes met young women weeping as they laundered the bloody clothing of some fallen warrior – only to recognise their own clothing in the maid’s hands and thus learn of their coming doom. When Finny had first met Moira she had been scrubbing a bloody cloak which the dragon now realised was identical to that worn by the now-fallen Dark Knight. Finny hadn’t mourned the Dark Knight’s loss. He wasn’t even sure that the Dark Knight was dead, and less sure that he was gone. “Neither of us are that lucky,” he’s muttered when he’s had chance to think on it. But a big chunk of Finny’s life was missing after the urban legend had caught three bullets to head and chest, and the loss of DK’s corpse had grieved and upset the Makluan. Then Hell on Earth had begun, and Moira had made her offer. Using the power which now permeated the world the Faerie lass could grant Foom his desire to write, alone from the world, safe in the womb-like peace of an isolated attic, with only Moira beside him in a place where the ideas which screamed in his head could pour out. He could turn his back on the tormented and tormenting so-called real world and be free to do what he really wanted to do. All he had to do was go with the Lhiannon Shee now, and forever. It had almost worked. Then Moira had suggested that Finny write an epitaph for his fallen friend, a verbal monument for the Dark Knight. And suddenly Finny knew what kind of epitaph his “fallen friend” would demand. DK would prefer Finny out there saving lives rather than composing a eulogy. Being a hero was sometimes about sacrificing one’s own good for a world that really needed help. She had wept, the faerie woman when he told her his decision. She’s warned him that leaving her now would destroy her, that without his talent she could not endure in a world of cold iron and colder hearts. Finny had been torn again, between duty and compassion. And then Lania had come. Lania knew more of life than Fin Fang Foom did, and certainly more about the ways that women bind men to them. And Lania had been watching the Lhiannon Shee. And Lania wanted to try a little experiment about adding holy water and Lhiannon Shees together. Finny had shielded Lania from the explosion. Moira had gone, perhaps back to the Mythlands. But she had taken a little bit of Finny’s heart along as a souvenir. And now the dragon was descending upon the Lair Mansion because duty demanded it, and because it was the right thing to do, and dragons do not cry. Dragons do have very keen senses however, and so the Makluan smelled the miasma of sin before he could even see the burning skull motif which the mansion now appeared to be sporting, before he realised that the whole island had been reshaped into the Abyssal version of a wedding chapel. “Ah, you’re just in time,” the usher bade him as he winged down ready for trouble. “Are you on the groom’s side or one of the brides?” “For the last time,” an angry male voice boomed from the smoky interior, “I am not a bloody bride. I’m a man. And I don’t care what the contract says, I’m not marrying any demon lord.” Fin Fang Foom recalled that ManMan and Troia had thwarted Roni Y Avis’ takeover of Amazon Isle by signing an unwise contract with the Prince of Fibs, and that he was therefore entitled to claim them both as his brides. He further recalled Sorceress’ speculation that when the ceremony was complete Mefrothto would somehow be entitled to consolidate his temporary claim upon the Parodyverse into a permanent holding. That had been the whole point of some strange tic-tac-toe game played out between the Demon Lord and Xander the Improbable back at the end of that Dormaggadon incident. “Don’t worry!” Finny called back to ManMan. “I’ll get you out of this.” But then he found his massive draconic limbs would do nothing but propel him towards his seat beside the other Legionnaires present. “It’s some kind of magic,” Lisa warned the Makluan. “It prevents us from using our powers and all we can do is behave like normal wedding guests.” “Normal?” Trickshot objected. “If those guys over there eating the hymnbooks are normal then we’re all in deeeep trouble.” He indicated across the aisle, where the hordes of the Abyss crouched in the pews in foetid rows, awaiting the dawn when they could claim their pieces of this world by right of marriage contract. “I don’t remember getting an invitation to this bash,” Falcon objected. “I didn’t RSVP. Why the hell am I here surrounded by demons waiting to see a gay wedding?” “Weddings are sooooo beautiful,” Space Ghost sobbed. “And look, ManMan’s even wearin’ white.” “This is not a gay wedding, and I always wear white,” argued ManMan. “It doesn’t, uh, you know, mean anything.” “Troia’s not here yet,” Cheryl pointed out. “If there’s no bride, there’s no wedding.” “Hey, he could just do ManMan twice,” Trickshot suggested. “Do you mind! I’m here!” ManMan objected. “I still don’t see why I had to come though,” Knifey objected. “I suppose I’d count as something old.” “The groom doth probably have to raid yon bride’s farm, burn her fortifications, slaughter her kinfolk, steal her cattle, and ride off with her,” Donar suggested. “Er, not that that is how Ausgardians doth do it, of course.” “My niece will be here,” Queen Titania of the Amazons promised. “She made this sacrifice for us, and she will honour her word.” “It’s not as simple as that,” Visionary worried. “If she weds the big Froth, then he gets our plane as a dowry. Someone’s got to come up with a plan to stop that… why is everyone looking at me?” “Work it out, O glorious leader,” Enty suggested. “Hey, look who’s just turned up for the ceremony!” Everybody turned round to see who the usher was pointing over to their seats. “spiffy and Banjoooo and Zemo and the Hooded Hood!” Trickshot gasped. “Baron Zemo!” Finny frowned. “That’s bad news.” “The Hooded Hood,” Lisa smiled. “Yum!” “He’s already got a date by the looks of it,” NTU-150 warned the amorous advocatrix. “Isn’t that Jury, the Shaper of Worlds, on his arm?” “Are they here to stop the ceremony?” Cheryl wondered. “They art sitting down behind us,” Donar observed. “Why doth we not just ask them?” “Hi guys,” spiffy greeted the Legion. “Are you as baffled as we are or do you have some kind of dunning plan?” “Where have you been? What are they doing here?” Lisa demanded, gesturing to the Hood, Zemo, and the Shaper. “Oh, fern-boy here decided on a family visit,” Banjooooo explained. “So we got dragged off to the Shaper’s place with HH and the Baron where Hoody cut a deal to sort out Kumari’s invasion and this Mefrothto thing in exchange for a snog. And here we are.” “The Hood sorts thing out in exchange for amorous favours, does he?” Lisa calculated. She could be empress of the universe by this time tomorrow. “What are you up to, Hood?” NTU-150 demanded of the cowled crime czar. “Isn’t it obvious?” Baron Zemo answered. “Er, Hood, do you think you could possibly get me out of this now?” ManMan asked politely. “I mean, please?” The Hood turned his green eyes upon Mefrothto’s bride. “Are you prepared to vow never to see or associate with my daughter ever again, Joseph Pepper?” he demanded. “Err…” ManMan prevaricated, swallowing hard. “Of course he isn’t,” Knifey answered for him. “Geez, grow some backbone, kid. Standing up to their old man is all part of goin’ out with a girl – even if the old man can retcon your ass to make you WomanWoman if you diss him.” “What Knifey said,” ManMan managed to spit out. He hadn’t been this scared up against a Celestian Space Robot. “Good,” the Hooded Hood replied. “Then you may be worthy to court my daughter. After you have completed the tests of worthiness.” “You… you mean you dropping me into Kumari’s world, and me having to overthrow a cosmic dictator and fight my way through fifteen hours worth of undead minions and cross a dimensional vortex and stuff?” Joe Pepper suggested. “That and the Age of Thighmaster incident and the upcoming Arena of Doom scenario on the Skree Homeworld and so forth, yes,” the Hood agreed. “Next time try a dating agency,” Trickshot suggested to the Elvis impersonator. A fanfare of screams from the choir of the damned interrupted the guests’ conversations. The diabolic choir screamed it’s way through a most unique arrangement of Feelings, rescored for toasting fork and disembowelling rack. Then the Prince of Fibs, Mefrothto himself, paraded down the aisle attended by the most senior of his Dukes of Pain. Blackhurt, Mefrothto’s son and heir apparent, actually stopped to nod to the Hooded Hood. Of course, immortal demons aren’t the easiest people to inherit things from, but there are ways. Mefrothto tuned to the congregation. “Ladies and Gentlemen, Dukes of Pain, Hordes of Hell by Rank and Degree, Cosmic Observers, Celestial Office Holders, Doomed Mortals, and spiffy, we are gathered here today to witness my domination of the Parodyverse through my taking of two symbolic brides, the hero known as ManMan and the heroine known as Troia 215. Let all tremble at my puissance.” Trickshot managed to make a rude farting noise before the wracking pains willed on him by Mefrothto crippled him on the floor. “Note to self,” muttered Falcon, “Don’t eat the finger food.” “Let my other bride be brought forth!” Mefrothto commanded, and a half-dozen winged demons descended through the bone-vaulted roof carrying the familiar red-headed form of the Hooded Hood’s daughter, clad in a white wedding gown and utterly unconscious. Mefrothto didn’t really mind. “This isn’t going well,” Cheryl muttered. “I’m thinking,” Visionary promised her. He was thinking about the conversation he’d had with Xander the Improbable back before the possibly fake man had become leader of the Lair Legion, and what he’d found out back then. “Hey, how can she throw the bouquet when she’s all unconscious like that?” Space Ghost complained. “I was sure I was going to catch it this time. Me and Lo-Chi, we’re naturals.” “Lo-Chi was an assassin for the aliens that killed Jarvis. She beat you up and locked you in a cupboard while she tried to destroy Starseed,” Cheryl pointed out. “Yeah,” Space Ghost smiled nostalgically. “Does anyone here present have any challenge to my taking these two as mine, to have and rend body and soul?” Mefrothto challenged, holding his two victims like marionettes from his massive clawed hands. ManMan found his throat closed so he couldn’t speak. Mefrothto was staring directly at the Shaper of Worlds and the Hooded Hood. “I could perhaps hold him back for a while,” Shaper told the Hood and Zemo. “Give me back the power I lent you. You didn’t use it against Kumari in the end, she was defeated by other means. Now I need it to take on Mefrothto.” “I’m afraid that isn’t possible just at the present,” the Hooded Hood smiled at her. “I suggest you sit back and enjoy the ceremony.” He looked up at the Prince of Fibs and gestured. “Do proceed. We’re waiting.” “We’ve got to do something,” spiffy hissed. “No,” the cowled crime-czar told him firmly. “This is not the time for action. It is too late to interfere with events now. Watch.” Zemo caught the nuance in that sentence. The key word was now. “I bind these two to me now and for eternity!” Mefrothto boomed; and somehow his voice was heard across the whole Parodyverse, from the throneworld of the Skunks to the heart of the Skree Empire, to the meeting place of the Observers who pulled their earphones off their bald heads in agony at the volume, to the hidden realm of the Enemy and the secret dwelling of the Nebulus (where Starseed and Avatar were so surprised at the words that they almost didn’t clobber the sentries they were working on). The echoes went out across the Mythlands, passing fabled Ausgard and out across the Elven Forests and the Dwarven Mountains, and even as far as the Dreary Dimensions and the nearer reaches of comic-book limbo. “It is done! The world is mine!” “Er, excuse me?” The Demon Lord turned round to glare at the reluctant leader of the Lair Legion. “What?” “I don’t think the world is yours. Sorry. Technicality really.” Cheryl wondered what it was going to be like being a widow. “What do you mean, pathetic mortal?” the Prince of Fibs demanded. Visionary pointed to the rear of the hall where some newcomers were slipping through the doorway: Meggan Foxxx and Troia 215. “Hi folks,” the Amazon administrator waved to everybody. “Sorry I’m late. I sent Kumari ahead with apologies.” “You only got the planet if you wed both Troia and ManMan!” Lisa caught on and explained to Mefrothto. “You got confused and married her alternate-reality self instead…” “He was confused because Kumari had previously claimed Troia’s citizenship of this plane,” the Shaper understood. “She had the spoor of this realm upon her.” “So the deal’s off,” suggested Finny. “And now we’re not bound by your covenant!” The dragon tested this by tail-swiping three Dukes of Pain into the wall. “Yup,” he reported happily. “It is not yet dawn!” Mefrothto warned. “And in the minutes before the sun rises I shall wed Troia and rule supreme!” “Ooops!” the Amazon responded. “Hey, Mefrothto!” ManMan called, also released from inactivity by this unexpected reinterpretation of the contract he had signed. He stabbed Knifey into Mefrothto’s stomach as the Prince of Fibs turned to him. “I want a divorce!” “We’re allowed to hit things!” Banjoooo realised suddenly, and demonstrated by belly-flopping onto some Sixth-Level Horned Tormentors. “We art?” Donar checked. “Most excellent. Let the demon-smearing begin for the nonce!” “Lair Legion line-up!” spiffy shouted, fronding the nearest enemy as he did so. “Is he still trying to get that as our official battle-cry?” Enty sighed, spraying the groom’s side of the hall with high-frequency sonics which at least shut up the choir. “Call that a whip?” Lisa challenged the Demon Mistresses. “This is a whip!” All the combatants in that corner were in black leather fetishwear and completely without inhibition when it came to fighting each other. It was CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s perfect wet dream. At least up to the point where the pantsless Space Ghost leapt in to help. “Troia! You will be mine, wench!” Mefrothto vowed, striding across what was now a battle-filled hall towards the Amazon administrator. ManMan still hung on to his neck and worked away with Knifey. Four demons lunged down towards Baron Zemo. He turned round to them and said, “Go away.” They did. The dimensional chaos had reached the point where the otherwise-occupied Chronicler of Stories could not ignore it. He phased in ready to lend his power to containing what promised to otherwise become a reality-shredding fracas. “Shaper? What’s going on here?” he demanded just before the Hooded Hood loosed the full power lent him by the Shaper of Worlds upon him. “It’s the big fight for who rules the multiverse,” the Hood told him. “I vote me.” “What are you doing?” Shaper screamed, trying to pull the cowled crime-czar away from the writhing Chronicler. “Killing him,” the Hood answered. “He’s a fake anyway, a hollow memory of the Chronicler who abandoned his role to play Dark Knight. And he’s been weakened and distracted by the Dark Knight’s death and resurrection, which is why I arranged for Moira to get involved in the first place. And now, hollow and soulless, he is at an end.” There was a burst of energy as the Chronicler of Worlds was discorporated and the Hooded Hood claimed his office and power. The Shaper of Worlds realised that this was why the Hood had arranged things so that she would have to lend him her own strength. Now the cowled crime-czar controlled two-thirds of the might of the Triumverate. “That’s right,” the Hood acknowledged, reading the horror in her face. “Now if you’ll excuse me I have an unscheduled appointment with Samhain, Destroyer of Tales.” “Somebody stop him!” Shaper called. “Somebody’s got to stop him!” The Dark Knight watched from the rafters but did nothing. In the Hood’s own words, now was not the time for action. The Hooded Hood vanished leaving one bloody battle for another one. “Back off, demon-boy!” Meggan warned Mefrothto as the demon reached out for Troia. Mefrotho hardly regarded her. “So many sins to choose from. So many old pains,” he noted absently. “Relive them all.” Meggan went down sobbing. “That’s cheatin’ man!” Falcon intervened, flying in close so his micro-missiles would have maximum impact. “Another sinner,” the Demon Lord snarled. “Remember!” And Falcon caroomed into the ground beset by parts of himself that he never wanted to admit existed. Mefrotho took a spear to the groin. “Leave them alone. And while you’re at it, leave me alone as well, pus-bag!” the Amazon administrator suggested. ManMan thought she’d never looked better. spiffy and Banjoooo were trying to protect the currently-powerless shaper from the worst of the fray. Baron Zemo strangely shielded her from the other flank. “Madame,” he said to her softly, “A word…” Blackhurt dragged a battered Visionary from under a pile of demons. “Well, you did specify that you wanted to be in your mansion when the team went into combat,” he pointed out to the dishevelled possibly fake man. “You’re Mefrotho’s son, aren’t you?” Vizh realised. “Are you going to kill me?” “Why should I?” the razor-haired nightmare holding Visionary up by the ankle wondered. “What do I gain if dad wins?” “This art splendid, Visionary!” Donar called out as he flew past. “Since thou didst become our leader there hast been naught but bloody meaningless battle after battle. Thou art turning out to be most satisfactory!” “Yeah,” agreed Trickshot, who had recovered from his demon-spawned malaise by precision vomiting (he never misses), “I thought you’d be really sucky!” The Hooded Hood reappeared where he had been a few moments before and dropped a broken scythe on the floor. Then he reached beneath his grey cloak and drew forth his most potent weapon. “spiffy, get this to ManMan at all costs. Tell him to kill it.” The fern-wielder stared down in puzzlement at the threadbare stuffed teddy-bear that the cowled crime-czar had bestowed upon him. “What is this?” “No time for questions,” the Hood boomed, his green eyes blazing. “It is merely something I had extracted from Mefrothto’s realm while he was preoccupied with stalking my daughter. Get it to ManMan!” Troia actually screamed as Mefrothto got his hands on her. The next few moments were not going to be pleasant for the Amazon administrator. “Let her go!” shouted ManMan, hacking away to no avail with his sentient knife. spiffy vaulted over the battle, his energy-oblating fern steaming at the amounts of hellfire it was having to divert. Only somebody who had experienced the actual depths of hell would have been able to navigate the chaos which surrounded Mefrothto; but spiffy had been allowed to die once for a reason. “ManMan! Catch!” Joe Pepper grasped Pooty the teddy by reflex but held on to it when he saw Mefrothto’s reaction. “What do I do with it?” he shouted back to spiffy. “The Hood says…” spiffy answered before vanishing under three tons of demon. “The Hood says what?” ManMan screamed at the fallen fern-weilder. “Cuddle it? Kiss it? Give it to Mefrothto? What?” Kumari stirred from her unconsciousness and wondered where she was. “Stay down!” Cheryl advised her, hitting her on the head with a pew-end. “You do realise these demons are in fact by definition infinite?” NTU-150 warned his comrades as the tide of horror pushed them backwards. “Yea,” Donar acknowledged happily. “We never give in!” Finny growled, spraying nuclear fire at the incoming adversaries. “Never!” “How fascinating,” Blackhurt commented to Visionary. “However did you get hold of father’s eternal soul object?” “I’m sorry?” Vizh puzzled. Perhaps dangling upside down from a demon’s grasp was disorienting him. “Inside that stuffed animal is father’s eternal soul object,” Blackhurt noticed. “The thing which makes us immortal, or gives humans the power to command us, or which when destroyed destroys us. A shame they don’t know what to do with it.” “You could let me go and I could tell them?” Visionary suggested. “No, that would be too blatantly siding against dad,” Blackhurt considered. “Shame.” “Pity I don’t have any kind of minute micro-robot message deliverer about my person,” Vizh said carefully to his left shoulder. “isn’t it?” “A pity,” agreed Blackhurt, as Fleabot leaped away to do his duty. “What have you done to Samhain?” the Shaper of Worlds demanded of the Hooded Hood. “He’s retired,” the Hood answered her. “He asked me to fill in for him while a new office-holder can be appointed.” “So now you have the power of the entire Triumvirate at your command,” Zemo noted, almost impressed. “This had got to have been your most convoluted plot yet, reaching right back to your seduction of Queen Rigantona and her birthing of twins, through the cosmic cube incident, the invasion of Dormaggadon, the Acts of Ambition, Kumari’s conquests, and even this Hell of Earth scenario. Mefrothto made the same miscalculation I did in that chess game we played and concentrated on taking your queen when he should have been concerned about the pawn that would become queen.” “You have always been astute, Zemo,” the Hood admitted. “I am encouraged that you will understand and savour every nuance of the awful destruction I have planned for you.” And now it’s time to really show you the last act in slow motion. Ready? Fleabot spoke to ManMan. Mefrothto sensed what was to come and turned his attention too late on the most dangerous thing in the universe: an Elvis impersonator with a teddy. ManMan plunged Knifey into the cold dark thing concealed in the centre of the Hood’s childhood toy. The cold dark thing inside it popped like a soap bubble. Mefrothto screamed once, a scream which echoed in all the places his challenge had previously rung. Mefrothto was destroyed. Troia looked up to find it was Joe Pepper standing over her, and any designs he had on her virtue could wait for later. Blackhurt laughed as he became the new Prince of Fibs by right of inheritance. His demon hordes melted back to the Abyss to await his first command. Space Ghost waved goodbye. Visionary rubbed his head where Blackhurt had dropped him. The Lair Legion began to think they might have won. The Hooded Hood gathered all his stolen power about him. He laughed in triumph. His green eyes flashed once. The whole of the Parodyverse changed. Coming next: “The World According to the Hooded Hood, or Zemo Alone,” in which the world’s last hope is its greatest adversary, and the cowled crime-czar has his revenge upon the Legion for all the times they’ve thwarted him. It’s gruesome, grisly, and desperate, and it might not get written until the next century, but it’s coming. A double-sized Untold Tale to make up for being tardy, from the Hooded Hood who hopes for some intelligent or at least interesting conversation in response since he's missed it in his absence |
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