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Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: The World According to the Hooded Hood, or Zemo Alone Saturday, 25-Dec-1999 20:01:24
#34: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: The World According to the Hooded Hood, or Zemo Alone Heinrich Zemo awoke naked in the dirty snow of a Hell's Bathroom alleyway as the New Year chimes rang across Pardopolis. He remembered what had happened at once. The Hooded Hood's long-laid plan to gain the power to restructure the Parodyverse to his liking had finally come to fruition. The cowled crime-czar had usurped the power of the Shaper of Worlds, the Chronicler of Stories, and the Destroyer of Tales, the triumverate of guardians of the reality called the Parodyverse. In one dazzling flash the whole of multiverse had been rewritten to the order of the Hood. The Hooded Hood could have destroyed Zemo then, of course, in vengeance for the Baron's inadvertent thwarting of so many of the cowled crime-czar's early masterplans, for carving the Hood out of reality all together for a while. But he hadn't. He had stripped Zemo of all his power, his wealth, his equipment and property, everything except the scarred body which shivered now in the slushy snowdrift, and had left him like that. It was the Hood's punishment. Or perhaps his challenge. All that Zemo had to do was to stop an archvillain with the power to reshape reality like clay, who had written the rules of the game etched on the very laws of causality and probability of this world, and who had reserved for himself every advantage. Heinrich Zemo rose up from the shadows and started to laugh. It would be good to destroy the Hood like this. Troia stared out of her cabin window at the alien stars and realised what a long way from home she was. She tried to remember what her life had been like before, back when she'd been the Amazon administrator of the Lair Legion, back when her biggest problems were working out how to operate the answering machine and how to keep Joe Pepper's hands out of her blouse (but not for too long); but that seemed like a while lifetime away. Indeed, it was. The Amazon princess felt the slight shudder as the Skree starship she was travelling in docked with the bizarre crystal vessel of the Nebulus. Fleet Commander Roxx-Hoff himself came to inform her that the delegation was coming aboard. Troia found her heartbeat racing even though she knew this encounter had to come. It wasn't the extradimensional conquerors who worried her - she knew that they came as plaintiffs to seek peace with her father the Hooded Hood - it was the thought of her first meeting with the person the Hood had sent to them with his demands. It was the idea of seeing her brother. She had seen spiffy many times before, of course. The little nuisance had spent months after his return form Hell, Nebraska freeloading off the Lair Legion. He'd managed to crash her NTU-Mac computer once by just looking at it. But now they both knew the truth, that they were the children of the Hooded Hood and the late amazon Queen Rigantona, a part of the complicated mechanism of the Hood's ascent to his current levels of power. That the Hood's mysterious minion Deathwalker had transported them to different adoption situations two years apart in time, so that Troia was actually two years older than her twin brother, was merely an added complication. "The Nebulus ambassador, your highness, and Lord spiffy," Roxx-Hoff announced. First into the reception bay was the exotic and terrible master-spy of the Nebulus Lo-Chi. She strode in with an arrogant air which immediately had Troia's fingers tightening on her spear. Her new-found brother shambled in last after the various robe-wearing Nebulus bodyguards, his hand raised to smooth the symbiotic fern on his head into a semblance of order. "Er, hi sis, I guess," he greeted her. Troia developed the look which all older sisters instinctively, genetically, reserve for younger brothers, part disapproval, part annoyance, and part a resigned kind of dutiful care. "Hi," she replied. "Weird having a sister," spiffy shrugged awkwardly. "Especially a hot one." "Weird having a brother," admitted Troia. "Especially a lame one." Lo-Chi was unimpressed with the Hooded Hood's emissaries. "Turn this vessel around and take me to your master," she instructed the High Commander of the Skree Fifth Legion. "I need to talk to the Hooded Hood, not his imbecile children." "I'm going to kill her," Troia decided, glaring at Jarvis' psychotic first wife; but she spoke to spiffy under her breath. "Ah, never mind her," spiffy whispered back. "We've got to find a way to take down dad." Zemo felt better masked. The scream of horror that the young woman who had been accompanying the man he had killed for these clothes when she had seen the Baron's scarred countenance was gratifying, but now he had been able to acquire a facsimile of his usual purple mask he felt ready to conquer the world. Literally. Adequately clothed and financed, Heinrich Zemo next went in search of information. "Well now," the Grand Vizier to the Lord of the Dreary Dimension said with a sigh, "This is an unexpected complication." He looked down the rocky incline to where Exile, Goldeneyed and Yo had just survived their battle with the inconceivable Yurt. "I can see that little Valeria is going to have to learn her lessons the hard way." Valeria the slave girl shuddered as the gaunt manipulator turned his narrowed eyes upon her, but didn't regret the choise she had made in defying his orders. Exile, nominally Lord of the Dread Dimension (the post which the Grand Vizier was in fact applying for in the traditional way that grand Viziers apply for it), was still on his feet, but only because the lithe slave in the borrowed pyjamas was supporting his arm round her neck. "I thought you said you couldn't get heavy weaponry to this spot so we had to go in and battle the Yurt physically?" "I found a way," shrugged the Vizier. "I would appreciate knowing exactly how you did manage to defeat the creature." And why you're still here, not destroyed by that wand of extraplanar exiling that Valeria was supposed to stab you with, he didn't add. Goldeneyed tried to get up but the stabbing pains in his chest warned him that it wouldn't be a good idea. On the other hand the thousand or so of the Vizier's private guards and the heavy arcane cannon ordinance they were dragging with them suggested staying put might not be such a smart move either. "Do not be moving, brave G-Eyed being," Yo suggested. "Yo is being proficient in medicine and can be helping you to be not dying and things like that. Did Yo ever tell you about human identity Pilar's thesis?" "We've got to do something," Goldeneyed gasped. "That Vizier wants Derek dead, and he's got the people and the kit to do it." "Perhaps I can be of some assistance?" Xander the Improbable suggested, drawing attention to his presence for the first time. "I believe I can make the proper explanations." The Grand Vizier drew closer to the mage in the faded red robes. He was starting to worry that this might be the chap who had previously hammered on the doors of the Dark Tower to announce the forthcoming demise of the previous Lord of the Dreary Dimension. "Who are you?" he demanded. "Wrong question," Xander shot back. "Why am I is a far better one. I'm present at the moment, for example, to help my young friends here to prepare this dimension as a refuge for their worlds' heroes, a staging point for one final battle with the Hooded Hood who has just managed to annex reality. That's why I arranged for Exile to become Lord of this place first off." "You arranged it?" Bry, Derek, Yo, and the Vizier all replied more or less together. The Vizier took a few more steps forward, as if ready to wring the improbable mage's neck. He squelched through the thick transparent goo which covered the battlefield where the Yurt had been vanquished but forced himself to wait for the rest of the irritating magic-worker's explanation. "As for the rest, Valeria here decided that you were a grade-A nasty and that it was better to use your dimensional exiling magics to send the Yurt away from the Dreary Dimension rather than to destroy young Derek here. She's screwed up all her courage to do the right thing because she's seen that Exile and his friends do the same, and now she's praying that somehow they will be able to stop you from massacring them all, claiming the mantle of Dimensional Lord, and perpetrating the horror on her family that you threatened her with." "You slime," spat Exile. He hoped he could prolong the conversation for enough time to build up another energy blast inside him. He had an uncomfortable feeling that the Vizier knew exactly how long that would be. "You don't have the right qualities to rule this place 'Dread Derek'," the Grand Vizier told him. "I'm doing you a favour annihilating you." He raised his rune-carved staff. "Excusing me?" Yo interrupted. "Wasn't uncute-Vizier listening to mysterious-Xander? Is this place to be needed as where heroes gather to be stopping Hoodily Hooded Hood, so is not to be for you to take over!" "And who's going to stop me?" the Grand Vizier sneered. "You? Your crippled friends? That cowering concubine? A powerless mage?" "My guess would be the Manga Shoggoth I brought," shrugged Xander the Improbable. The translucent ooze around their feet suddenly reared up into a vast, glutinous, growing mass. Before the Vizier could even scream it had oozed up indside his clothing and was finding its way into his various orifices. Then the Manga Shoggoth resumed his usual mass. There was a sound something like a peanut bag popping. "Now, to plan this campaign against the Hood…" Xander continued. "…By 1997, even the last of the nations of the world had voted to cede complete political, judicial, and military control to the Hooded Hood, and world peace was complete," the saccharine-toned tour guide recited. "Now if you move on to the next gallery we shall hear about how in 1998 the Hooded Hood defeated the Skree and Skunk intergalactic empires and annexed them to his own…" Zemo waited until the late-night tour crowd had shambled onwards before emerging from the shadows. He carved the animatronic head off the spiffy robot on the royal family display simply because he wanted to. The Lair Legion's headquarters, the old Parody Mansion, had been converted into a museum. The whole display was a tribute to the lifetime rulership of the Hooded Hood, who had apparently in this version of reality taken control of the planet a decade ago and ushered in a new era of peace, harmony, and beauty. Poverty had been largely eliminated, crime reduced to a tiny percentage of sick (and always captured) individuals confined to an inescapable prison called the Safe. The Baron inspected the display cases in the next room. Here the gawping crowds could see the stuffed, embalmed corpses of those enemies of the state that the Hooded Hood had eliminated. Zemo surprised a shudder as he recognised the equine form of Pegasus. In fact all the members of Zemo's Scourge of the BZL were collected, all dead, posed like mannequins as a tribute to the power of their conqueror. It was clear to Zemo that he was getting nowhere here. He knew what the scenario he was playing in was. He would have to go elsewhere for weapons and allies. "Good morning, my dear," the Hooded Hood greeted Lisa Waltz, the first lady of the galaxy. "Have you had a chance to rethink your position?" The advocatrix tossed her reddish-brown hair and flashed her hazel eyes at the cowled crime-czar. "Absolutely not, Ioldobaoth. How can I change my mind when I'm right and you're wrong?" The Hood took a bite of toast and looked out across the White House lawn. "You have always been stubborn, Lisa. Once before you decided to see the world my way, but then you changed your mind." "You arranged for my entire life to be ripped from me," Lisa remembered. "I thought all my friends had deserted me just when I needed them the most. But I learned later just how much they cared for me and how much they would do to keep me safe." "And from that single situation you believe you can argue for allowing humankind to control its own destiny? That the chaotic, self-destructive, stupid things that people do to themselves and each other is better than the near-perfect state I've constructed?" Lisa allowed herself a small coffee. The coming baby wouldn't mind at this time of day. "I'm not going to defend robbery, rape, murder - well actually that was my job before you wiped out crime, but you know what I mean - but I do assert that humanity is more good than evil, and that if you rob it of its chance to find that out once and for all through the rest of history then you really are the biggest villain I've ever met." The Hooded Hood remembered again that Lisa Waltz was a dangerous adversary, clever enough to usually hide her acumen behind a mask of hedonistic debauchery. "Then we shall put that to the test, my dear. We shall discover once and for all whether you or I have the correct perspective. We shall conduct a little field test. In fact, I have already set events in motion…" Zemo knew that there were old passages under the Lair Mansion. He knew that the old Parody house was intimately tied up with the heroes and stories of the Parodyverse, and that it would take quite a major and complicated usage of the Hood's retconning abilities to undo that - and why should he bother? The Baron also knew that throughout the history of Parody Isle, one particular character had been drawn back to this place again and again, incarnation after incarnation. The character that had been quietly trailing him through the old tunnels for five minutes now. "Hello, HV," Zemo called. "Come out and speak with me." Hermes Vesper shuffled forwards, a look of bafflement on his wizened old face. "How did you know about me? I haven't left these tunnels for fifty years." "Never mind that," the masked monarch snarled, hiding his surprise that the HV incarnation here was a different one to the brash young hero who had recently begun to run with the Abandoned Legion. "I will ask the questions. To begin with, who are the current office-holders of the posts of Shaper, Chronicler, and Destroyer?" HV frowned a little. "You're a very rude young man…" "I am the one hope of the world to put right a reality alteration which should never have happened. A reality alteration which might well interfere with whatever your mysterious prime purpose is. So answer my questions, old wolf." The ancient hermit deflated. "The Hooded Hood is the Chronicler of Stories. Lisa is the Shaper of Worlds, but only under his veto. A being called Deathwalker is Samhain, the Destroyer of Tales." "And what became of the previous office-holders?" Zemo demanded. Hermes Vesper shrugged. "Jury, the once-Shaper, is imprisoned and insane in Herringcarp Asylum. The previous Samhain is dead, slaughtered by the Hood. And the Chronicler was destroyed in the same way." Zemo's fanatical eyes narrowed. "Not quite," he hissed. "There was something rather unusual about the latter arrangement of the Chronicler. Something to do with the Dark Knight, who was rumoured to be slain and then returned. Where is the urban legend at the moment?" HV concentrated. "He is in a place of ravens and destiny," he answered with some disbelief." "Open a passageway, a mystic channel there so that I can speak to him," Zemo ordered. "I'm not as young as I used to be, you know," HV complained as he completed the dimensional window. "This sort of thing exhausts my powers for weeks nowadays." "I know," Zemo told him, pausing before he passed through the glowing rectangle only long enough to draw his knife across Hermes Vesper's throat. "You may die now." Finny was awoken by the screaming. He looked around him in the darkness but in human form his night-vision was poor. He could make out a number of other people huddled under rags of blankets from the freezing ground-frost inside the ruined house, but little else. Spurred by the sound of a very frightened woman he pulled himself up and picked his way over the slumbering bodies to find out what was happening. He tripped over a couple wrapped together like spoons, waking them. He was shocked to find they were Hatman and Sorceress. He was relieved to see they were fully dressed under the ragged faded rugs. "Whatsamatter?" moaned Hatty, stretching stiffly and then freezing dead as he realised first that he was curled around a soft, sweet-smelling member of the opposite sex, and then who it was. "Trouble," Foom growled. "Outside." "What's going on?" Sorceress whispered, alert now. "Jay, you're alive!" But the Makluan had already left Hatman behind and was following the shrieking sound. He was almost at the doorway before the gunshots rang out and ceased the screaming. In the grey pre-dawn light a dozen grey-uniformed soldiers were standing around in the main square of the ruined town. They had rounded up twenty or so terrified refugees and were searching them for any valuables they might have saved from the war-zone. They had separated two younger women for a closer search afterwards. Two corpses already littered the cobblestones to indicate that they intended to get everything they wanted. Fin Fang Foom stepped into the open. "You have exactly five seconds to put your weapons down, surrender, and hope I'm in a good mood," he told them. Five seconds was the exact transformation time for the dragon to assume his true form. "I've got your back, Finny," Hatman muttered from behind him. The capped crusader was pulling on a Jets cap ready for action. "Well well, we've got ourselves another hero!" one of the soldiers laughed and brought his weapon up. Fin Fang Foom triggered the change. Nothing happened. Hatman barrelled Andrew Dean out of the way as a spray of automatic weapons fire filled the doorway. Finny heard the gasp as Hatty caught three of the rounds personally. Jay's super-powers were also gone. "Hatty!" Sorceress cried out, gesturing to staunch the blood welling from Hatman's arm and side; but she felt none of the usual arcane forces flow through her. The three heroes were up against a dozen sadistic and well-armed soldiers with no special abilities whatsoever. The score of refugees watched with terrified certainty as to how this would end as the soldiers stalked towards the house. "Think we should call this in?" one of the mercenaries wondered. "Nah, we can deal with this. It'll be fun," another answered, shooting right into the room where other formerly-sleeping refugees were now awake and screaming. "Besides, Captain DarkHwk gets mightily pissed if he's disturbed for no good reason." Fin Fang Foom tried to position himself to attack the first man through the door. There were more casualties in the burned out house shall now, screaming flailing people at the mercy of the gunfire. He worked out too late that he wasn't going to be fast enough, and found himself looking into the muzzle of two AK-47s. The razor letter caught the first man in the throat and he died without a sound. Then an arrow-tip emerged from the front of the second soldier's chest, killing him outright. Messenger dropped down amongst the soldiers like the wrath of God. Trickshot rose from behind a shattered wall and sent the remaining troopers scattering for cover with a flight of arrows. But these troops were at least smart enough to leave some of their number back in case of trouble. Fully half a dozen of them were free to approach from outside to subdue the intruding postman and the irritating archer. They were ambushed as the came. ManMan and Donar dropped down from the shattered wall above them, bringing the fight to close quarters where their automatic rifles were of no use. There was a third guy with them and it took Finny a while to realise that this is what Banjoooo would look like if he was human rather than a Sea Monkey. And that meant that none of the three rescuing Legionnaires had their powers either. Finny was moving before he had even completed the thought. Messenger needed his help, and the Legion were still outnumbered two to one. But suddenly the fight looked winnable. Two bloody minutes later it had been won. The former dragon took stock of the cost. All but two of the soldiers were dead. Of the others, one would not survive the hour. Eleven of the refugees in the house were as dead as the two in the square. Another seven were wounded, as was Hatman. "I'll be okay," Hatty promised. "Nothing that major surgery can't sort out." "You will be alright," Sorceress told him. "You've got to be." "Yeah," Jay answered, looking to his left where a son was weeping over a slaughtered mother. "And these people?" There was an incongruous creaking sound, and ManMan reappeared wheeling a huge perambulator. NTU-150 was bundled into it. The mechanical parts of the Lair Legion inventor's body were not working, effectively making him a cripple. "These people need out help," Enty announced to his friends. "I don't know where we are exactly, although it's a fair bet that the Hooded Hood's behind it. But we are in the middle of genocide, with an overwhelming armed force wiping out a helpless civilian population." "We don't have any of our powers," ManMan felt obliged to point out. "Even Knifey's not speaking to me." "But since when did powers make a hero?" Messenger demanded roughly. "There art felons to be smited forsooth, and babes and innocents to succour. There art no finer thing to die in the striving for," Donar offered. "The point is," Banjoooo continued, "that these people need help, and those bad guys have to be stopped. And the bottom line is that this is what the Lair Legion's all about, powers or not." "We've got to do it," Finny agreed. "We're going to fight." "Um, do we need to all put our hands into a pile right now?" Trickshot asked. The Dark Knight stood at destiny's door and pondered what to do next. The Chronicler of Stories was dead, and he had once been the Chronicler of Stories. More precisely, he had taken up the role of Chronicler, but had then abandoned it to return to mortal crimefighting. Rather than entrust another with the enormous power of the Keeper of Narratives he had chosen to create a simulacrum, a duplicate of himself to continue the continuity of the office. It had proved sufficient in every crisis until it had fallen prey to the Hooded Hood. The Hood had been very clever. When DK had set up the Chronicler clone he had prepared for certain contingencies, such as if the Dark Knight chose to reassume the identity, and what to do if the Dark Knight died. The cowled crime-czar had engineered DK's death knowing that the Chronicler would act upon those contingencies, ignoring situations which his normal good judgement would alert him to. And so the Dark Knight lived again and the Chronicler of Stories was destroyed. But there was more than one kind of crime to fight, and more than one way to uphold justice, and most importantly, more than one contingency laid down by the paranoid and devious Dark Knight. And so the urban legend stood on the threshold and considered which path he should take. "You have to do it," Baron Zemo told him. As the Dark Knight swung around the masked monarch stalked through the shimmering dimensional gate. "You must reclaim the office of Chronicler and assist me in defeating the Hooded Hood." "Because a murderous Nazi criminal tells me to?" sneered DK. "Because you know you intend to do it, so why waste time? You are a detective, nein, and you worked out at the time of your death why the Hood wanted you gone and the Chronicler distracted. You have worked your way up the criminal hierarchies seeking more information about the Acts of Ambition until you were sure why the Hooded Hood needed you dead. Then you allowed your simulacrum to walk into a trap so that the post would become vacant again for you to claim." The Dark Knight tried not to be impressed at the Baron's acumen. "I didn't realise that the Hood would take the office himself," he warned the Teutonic archvillain. "There are ways of challenging for the office, but I would need to be far more powerful than I am now." "You would need to reclaim the power that you packaged away into the pseudo-Chronicler," Zemo understood. "You would need to merge and become one being again, indivisible and forever changed. So what are you waiting for? We have enemies to conquer." The Dark Knight sighed once and let his will go. The shadows shifted about him as he recalled the missing piece of him. The Dark Chronicler rose in his place. "Let us conquer," he told Zemo. Visionary got all the awful jobs because his boss hated him. He got to unblock the urinals. He got to scrub up the blood from the interrogation rooms. And he got to feed the nastier prisoners in the super-villain penitentiary known only as the Safe. "I'm sorry," Lady Cheryl told him as she handed him the work orders. "Somehow you always seem to end up on psycho duty. I'll have a word with… with the administrator and see if he can do something about it." "With you fiancée, you mean?" Vizh asked miserably. That was partly because he had a pretty shrewd idea who always stacked up the horrible jobs for him anyway, and partly because he couldn't believe that a nice girl like Cheryl was actually going to marry a slime like that tomorrow. "Yes, my fiancée." There were more of Cheryl's doubts apparent in her face than she would have been comfortable showing. "Anyway, take care of yourself down there. And don't go talking to them this time. It's dangerous." "I know," Visionary admitted, "But the prisoners are all so lonely. Some of them shouldn't really be here. They should be in an asylum somewhere. That Space Ghost character, for example, he's no danger to anyone. All he wants to do is make up bizarre stories about people he knows…" "I know," shuddered Cheryl. "But the stories…" "And Magnetic Techbird. His only crime was speaking against the genocide of the mutants." "Be careful what you're saying," Cheryl warned. "Remember that there are also some very scary characters down here. You're not going to tell me that the Grim Reaper is merely misunderstood, are you?" Visionary flinched involuntarily. "I guess not. But I don't see him. No-one does. He's walled up, we don't feed him or anything. The only way we know he's alive in there is because we sometimes hear… scratching." He checked the work order the administrator's assistant had brought him. "Anyway, today I'm taking food down to the Dreamkiller." Cheryl made a face. "That pervert? He's the worst of the lot! Just watch yourself, Visionary. You know he loves to play mind games, to twist people's heads inside out." "I know he's got that kind of reputation," Vizh admitted, "but with me he just wants to talk about old TV shows and comic books. You'd be amazed, Lady Cheryl. You'd never think he was the same guy who did all those bloody, terrible, sick things to his mother and sister." "You can never trust a killer. You're too kind and naïve to work in a place like this, Visionary." The janitor reluctantly picked up the tray and made his goodbyes to Cheryl. As he did he accidentally spilled the papers he's been working on before she'd arrived. The administrator's assistant picked them up and looked at them before he could stop her. "I didn't know you could draw," she remarked. "Are these… are these all of me?" "I needed a subject," Visionary blushed. "I'm sorry." "May I keep one?" Cheryl asked. "A wedding present?" "Have them all," the secret artist cringed. "But not as a wedding gift. Just a present to you, if you want them." Cheryl looked again at the gentle man who even found good in murderers like Dreamkiller Foxglove. "You don't approve of me marrying the administrator?" she surmised. "Not for me to say, is it?" Vizh answered miserably. "He's a powerful man, and he'll go far in the Hooded Hood's service. He'll keep you safe and comfortable." "But he's not right for me?" "That's… not for me to say. But I think you could do better than marrying Apostate." Cheryl's mouth twitched. "Really? Who?" "I've got to go," Visionary said hurriedly. "If Dreamkiller doesn't get his meals on time he starts making up erotic stories about cartoon characters. And that usually upsets Cobra, and then she starts shredding the padding on her cell walls." He scuttled off, tray in hand, to seek refuge in the company of a mass-murderer. He was almost outside the cell of the Dreamkiller when the gauntleted hand grasped him by the neck and dragged him into the shadows. "Hello Visionary," Baron Zemo hissed to him. "I've come to offer you exciting employment opportunities in the world of multidimensional tyrant-killing." Next time in the traumatic world of the Hooded Hood: A non-powered Lair Legion and friends strive for truth and justice on a cold and cruel battlefield, Visionary leads the scariest criminals of the age in the jailbreak of the century, and spiffy and Troia take on the might of the Nebulus. All this plus not one but two old super-villain teams return, a glance at the Hooded Hood's Gallery of Pain (featuring those characters conspicuous by the absence this episode), and more on Zemo and the Dark Chronicler. Due next year, but probably later than Sunday 2nd January so don't panic. The Hooded Hood's bleak antidote to all this festive Christmas cheer that's clogging everyone's synapses; read, suffer, and die |
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