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Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: The Very Very Long Goodbye Friday, 04-Feb-2000 08:27:06
#38: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: The Very Very Long Goodbye Gradually the cosmic vastness of the Parodyverse unravelled into oblivion. Worlds, suns, whole galaxies which had never yet been included in any of the stories winked out as if snuffed by a sinister hand – which wasn’t too far from the truth. Stories yet unformed died stillborn while ancient tales from the dawn of time ended abruptly. The very large and the very small things faded the most quickly as the whole of creation came to The End. Here’s how to picture it: Think of a landscape with a village where the dam has burst. First there a great destructive rush of water, sweeping away the minor things and shattering the major buildings. Then as more liquid pours in there comes an eerie stillness as more and more houses vanish under the dark waters. The land is broken up into little islands where natural rises or man-made structures are yet above the level of the flood; but those islands grow ever smaller as the waters continue to rise. Now just substitute oblivion for water and you won’t be far wrong. Of course, in the Parodyverse it wasn’t altitude which dictated how long an area survived, it was importance to the stories. Hence places like Baron Zemo’s castle and the Lair Mansion would probably be the last places in existence, while whole towns like Podunk, Philadelphia were already off the map. One of the naturally high places was the bit of cosmic real estate known as the Dreary Dimension, a place of exile created by the gods for the now-destroyed Dread Dormaggadon, which had naturally adopted a new master to take his place in the form of Dread Derek, a.k.a. the superhero known (for this reason, had be but realised it) as Exile. It was quite useful having Exile in charge there just at the moment, since it was acting as a kind of an ark to gather up the various superheroes who were the last chance of reversing the destruction of the Parodyverse. Let’s do a roll-call, like they used to do back in those 70’s Justice Leagues: Well, starting with the premiere super-team of the Parodyverse (to give you some indication of how much trouble everybody was in), the entire current membership of the Lair Legion bar one was present. Some of them were just recovering their full memories after being trapped in a set of bizarre alternate realities ret-conned by the Hooded Hood. Visionary, for example, was learning with regret that he wasn’t a janitor, he was leader of the LL. He rather missed the janitor’s job. Cheryl was discovering that she was in fact married to Visionary. We won’t explore her feelings just now. Beside the possibly-fake Visionary were the other Legionnaires. NTU-150 was repairing his armour, which explains why everyone was giving him a wide birth. Fin Fang Foom regained the draconic form which had been denied him in the Hood’s trap and took to the skies for a moment just because he could. Hatman sat patiently while the healers in the Dark Tower of the Dimension of Exile repaired the gunshot wounds from a time and place that now never happened. Goldeneyed led the hundred-odd refugees from that nonexistent reality to halls where their own injuries could be dealt with. The thought being Yo, acting Grand Vizier of the Dreary Dimension just now, made arrangements for their permanent settlement in one of the outlying areas which were soon to be developed according to the economic plan s/he and the slave-girl Valeria had come up with. CrazySugarFreakBoy! executed wild leaps while whooping because he now knew for sure that he wasn’t the mother-killer the Hood had retconned him to be and proclaimed to all that now the good guys were assembled they could kick some villain butt. Donar, hemigod of thunder, hefted his enchanted war pick-hammer and agreed. The big Ausgardian still took the time to make sure that the new-born babe among the refugees was safe and well cared for - when he thought nobody was looking. Trickshot arranged for the Dark Tower fletchers to provide him with a new set of arrows then sat brooding in a corner over the information Messenger had given him about the widow of his mainstream-Parodyverse-timeline self. And Troia 215, once Tina had helped her get the Manga Shoggoth goo out of her hair (don’t ask) hurled herself at ManMan, gave him a swift kiss, slapped him across the face for worrying her sick, and then ignored him and fawned over Donar. There were other heroes present as well, of course. Sorceress and Cobra, the two members of the Abandoned Legion present, were appalled to find out that Cap and Hunter Victorious formed one half of the Hooded Hood’s Gallery of Pain (along with the diabolical Dr Moo and Pierson’s Porter). They immediately began plotting a rescue, and coerced Magnetic Techbird to assist. Magnetic Techbird was more interested in kicking DarkHwk’s ass since at their last meeting DarkHwk had captured him and handed him over for trial, but he conceded to the ladies on the grounds that here were two hot girls who were willing to talk to him at least. Space Ghost and Starseed renewed their acquaintance, and Starseed believed fully a quarter of what his old friend told him. Avatar watched the throng with a detached interest and tried to keep the Pokemon from fighting. Of all the heroes Banjooooo was the only one who dared to go near the crimson-armoured form of the Parody Master. “Um, spiff? Is that really you?” “Sometimes,” the potentially most powerful being in the Parodyverse answered. “It’s pretty weird, Banjooooo. Sometimes I want to conquer the universe, and other times I just want pizza.” “Yeah, I have days like that,” Banjooooo admitted. Visionary finished kissing Cheryl and realised it was probably time to save the Parodyverse. “Where’s Xander?” he asked. “I need to speak to Xander the Improbable.” After all, it was Xander who had answered the possible fake man’s question about how to defeat the Hooded Hood back before Vizh had even become leader of the Lair Legion. Xander sighed and explained the problem. Then he faded into the background while the heroes stumbled their way towards formulating the plan. In one of the remaining pockets of what the Parodyverse laughingly calls reality, the former Chronicler of Stories and the current Destroyer of Tales clashed in deadly combat. We’ll turn the narrative over to the only observer of this terrible confrontation, Sir Mumphrey Wilton: The worst thing about it was that they attacked each other right in the middle of my begonias. Ruined this year’s crop, and any chance I might have had at the Chelsea Flower Show! The bloke who’d come to kill me was a children’s nightmare given form by the Hooded Hood. His name was Deathwalker, but he’d currently got hold of the supernatural office of Destroyer of Tales, which is bad news given that it’s generally considered one of the Big Three and the Hood was currently another of them. Mz Waltz was the third, but her power as Shaper of Worlds (the one who starts the stories this Destroyer of Tales chappie ends) had been circumscribed by the Hood. The other fellow was a strange sort of mixture of that Dark Knight fellow I met in the dragon business a while back and the Chronicler of Stories himself, the cosmic office that the nefarious Hood had usurped. Turn out that this was the former office-holder chappie, keen to get it back. This was all jolly confusing for a chap who was having trouble with 11 down in the Times crossword. Recognised the Deathwalker horror, of course, been in a nursery myself a long time ago, and heard all about Rawhead-and-Bloody-Bones from nursie. Remember planning a rather elaborate trap involving a bowl of semolina, a door, and a tigerskin rug, but never managed to catch the blighter. Got nursie though. Anyway it was clear that this oik was currently rather far out of my league and not a bowl of semolina in sight. Checked the old temporal pocketwatch to see what was going on. That’s why Deathwalker came to scrobble me, by the way. His boss the Hood evidently wanted the minor cosmic office-holders eliminated, and I’m about as minor as they come (Holder of the Chronometer of Infinity and all that, don’t y’know). Apparently the Hood’s retcon of all reality was now undone, but instead he was actually unpicking the fabric of the Parodyverse to doom us all. Bad form. Poor loser. Not cricket. Anyway, the Dark Chronicler and Deathwalker were going at each other like hammer and tongs, but all the pocketwatch readings indicated that DC was a magnitude of power short of the Destroyer of Tales – after all he was really a former Chronicler, using up some store of power he’d squirreled away for a rainy day. However, what Deathwalker hadn’t worked out, but what was evident to me sitting on the sidelines and cheering DC on, was that this wasn’t really a contest of power. The Dark Chronicler was taking the baddie on on his own turf. It was a war to see who could scare who. Makes sense when you think about it. Deathwalker was pretty much made up of fear. Get him to be scared instead of scary and you have nothing left, not matter how much Celestian power he’s wielding. So the Dark Knight was going for the metaphorical jugular because, frankly, he scares the heck out of me and I’m on his side. So the war of nerves raged. All the time the Dark Chronicler was getting more and more battered, because as I say physically he didn’t have a chance. Don’t know what kept him going really. As raw a display of guts as I’ve seen. He’s got the Stuff, that laddie. But as he took his licking and just didn’t fall over, didn’t give in, kept coming back, I could see the doubts beginning to well up in old Deathwalker. And at last something must have cracked, because at a final feeble claw from DC the Destroyer of Tales fell apart into a mass of sticky black strands and then into nothingness. “Jolly good show, old boy!” I congratulated the victor. Also grabbed him to stop him falling onto the ground. Rarely seen a chappie so wasted. “Claim the office,” he snarled. I blustered a bit, pretended not to understand. Of course I knew what he wanted. Only way to stop the Hood from doing the deed on the Parodyverse was to take on enough power to oppose him directly, but I’ve never been a seeker after power. It’s all a bit scary, to be honest. And there’s something specially nasty about being a Destroyer of Stories. “Claim… the… office!” Dark Chronicler snarled. Well, as that American fellow said, a chap’s got to do what a chap’s got to do… As the dimensional barriers burned away along with the rest of the Parodyverse, one being was ready to take advantage of the chaos. Dark Thugos, Tyrant of the Sol Empire, worshipper of Death, really big nasty with universal domination plans, penetrated the sundered defences of the great worldship of Galactivac the Living Death that Sucks and began his search for the Universal Nobbler. With that weapon in his grasp, whole worlds would perish. Even if the Parodyverse did not prevail over the coming crisis, the Nobbler could transport Dark Thugos to other, saner universes where he could begin his reign of conquest and destruction anew. “Not so fast, Thugos!” Amazing Guy called out. He immediately wished he hadn’t. An opening line that that was straight form the ‘60’s TV Batman. Thugos didn’t even turn round. He just unleashed a blast of cosmic energies which pounded the protector of the universe out through the side of Galactivac’s ship. Amazing Guy opened his eyes and discovered that (a) his quantum-shields had held and that therefore (b) he was still alive. Thugos didn’t have time for this. He brought forward another of his contingencies and gated in the undead former protector of the universe, Captain Marbles. “You have had more experience manipulating those quantum bands he wears than he has,” the tyrant of the Sol Empire commanded his minion. “Take command of them and destroy him.” That was when Amazing Guy discovered (c) that he was in more trouble than he’d ever been in his life. “Gaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” Starseed shouted, his voice impossibly travelling through the vacuum of space in defiance of physics but in accordance with comic-book science everywhere. The rescue squad from the Dreary Dimension had arrived. The rotted Captain Marbles reeled back from the Gah! energy, then concentrated and used AG’s quantum bands to propel the current protector of the universe into the Gah! Master. Hard. An unbreakable monofilament line coiled around Captain Marbles’ neck and neatly sliced his head off. “Got him!” DarkHwk reported. The headless body raised its arms and released an energy blast right into the amulet-powered hero, sending him sprawling backwards onto the power-dampening hull of Galactivac’s worldship. Then Captain Marbles rounded off for the kill while DarkHwk’s armour was trying to cope with the energy-drain. A tear in reality not unlike the sort of burn that happens when old celluloid film gets stuck in the projector suddenly burst open at the far end of the worldship. The end of the Parodyverse had caught up with this location. Then a vast ameboid form enveloped Captain Marbles, preventing him from delivering the death-shot at DarkHwk. The Manga Shoggoth had arrived. “Thanks,” DarkHwk gasped. “Did… did we get out final member inside in time to stop Thugos?” “He went in there,” the Shoggoth admitted. “But whether he got to the tyrant before the entropy got him, of what, I don’t know.” Inside the worldship Thugos ignored the actinic proximity of the wave of destruction that ate through the walls of the great vessel. He concentrated on shattering the final defences around the Ultimate Nobbler, and finally the tiny, phallic-shaped weapon floated in front of him. He reached out for it even as the wave of negation surged down at him, knowing that the front of destruction was too slow to stop him. “Spaaaaaaannnnkkk Raaaaayyyyy!” Space Ghost shouted, using his infamous pistol to propel the Ultimate Nobbler away from Dark Thugos’ clutches and into the nothingness. “You dare!” snarled the Tyrant as the weapon he sought dissolved into oblivion, swinging round to face his enemy. His eyes widened. “So, the Pointless have finally decided to get involved, have they?” he recognised. “They will regret that.” Then the destruction of the Parodyverse rendered any further narration meaningless. The Day of Judgement had come to Paradopolis, but nobody except those guys with the end of the world placards had every seriously expected a blood-red rift to open in the sky and a horde of demons to descend and physically drag people up into the flame-filled maw. In fact that wasn’t really supposed to be happening even now, but with so many of the usual guardians and rules already lost to the incipient decimation of reality the Prince of Fibs Blackhurt figured that nobody could really stop him doing what he liked. Before he blew off this popsicle-stand Parodyverse he intended to grab a few thousand relatively-innocent souls for trading purposes in whatever other-reality hell he decided to set up home in. Robbed of most of its usual protectors, Paradopolis seemed wide open to the marauders. Falcon was starting to feel it was getting a bit of a habit that he was the last hero to defend Hell’s Bathroom against overwhelming odds. Every time he did that he also ended up getting pounded into much, and up against an infinite number of demons this wasn’t going to end any differently. Half a dozen brighter-than-average hellspawn had the clever idea of raiding St Aloysius’ Orphanage, on the grounds that children had lovely, tasty souls. What they hadn’t realised was that the secret sponsor of the orphanage’s rebuilding programme was visiting right then, and that it was probably not a good idea to say “And how is a toothsome little mortal wench like you going to stop us, demonmeat?” to Pegasus of the Scourge of the BZL. Others chose to assault the rooftop End of the World party on the Twin Parody Tower, on the grounds that people there were having a pretty good time and were generally not terrified enough. That only served to irritate the hostess of the party, who glared at them and turned them into angelfish. Sersi hated rude partycrashers. Down at street level, in the alleyways of Mangatown, the Hounds of Hell hunted unlawful prey right up to the point where they corned the guy in the khaki oriental pyjamas. The Green Ninja was prey that hunted back. Meanwhile, across in Gothametropolis, a bunch of stockbrokers had been possessed and had managed to corner that cute secretary who never succumbed at office parties. Bad things were about to happen in the photocopier room when a polite feminine cough interrupted things. The possessed stockbrokers suddenly forget their plans for little Trixie when they saw the woman in the tight red corset, high red boots, and cape. Then the Scarlet Melissa pointed one innocent finger towards them and the probabilities of their survival dropped to zero. Printers devils rampaged over the offices of the Daily Trombone without collecting building access passes and interrupting the publishing schedules meticulously set down by J. James Jerkson in his latest round of screwing-the-unions meetings. Jerkson was particularly irritated to be rescued by the fabulous Frog-Man, and sat down immediately to pen an exposé of the whole thing. Frog-man might be too popular to attack directly in the press, but his less famous sidekick Goldeneyed was ripe to become public enemy number one… The alien Paris Stavenger stepped off the boat to Paradopolis and watched the crowd screaming with a puzzled bemusement. It was only when the demon tried to rip his head off that he got the idea of the local customs and did the same for the pit fiend. When in Rome… Lynx rose up from the alleyway and wiped the flecks of demon-ichor from his costume. Muggers with horns and tails got the same treatment as the muggers without them. Nats came to the conclusion that he needed to get a superhero costume just about the time the harpies shredded the last bit of his currently clothing in the aerial battle he seemed to be losing. The whole flying melee crashed through a picture window into one of the posh Paradopolis skyscrapers and Nats scrambled out from under the hissing mass of bat-winged man-eaters. Then there was a high hum, a golden flash, and the harpies were teleported to Pluto. The stunned superhero realised he had smashed into the offices of the Interdimensional Transportation Corporation. “Nice to see you again,” Miss Framlicker smiled, looking down at the unclad Nats. But despite all of this resistance, Blackhurt’s plan seemed to be working pretty well. The spike-maned demon lord stood atop the Phantomhawk memorial Hospital and watched as the carnage below continued. Then a seventy-foot tall sea monkey hit him from behind. “Hey man, I think you’re trespassing!” Banjooooo warned the Prince of Fibs. Blackhurt snarled, gestured, and every thing that the king of the sea monkeys had ever feared coalesced into one shadowy shape and went for Banjooooo’s throat. “Noooo! Not the cuisinart!” the hero had time to gasp before he was engulfed. Then ManMan stabbed Blackhurt in the back. It hurt. “Aaaaggghhhh!” objected the Prince of Fibs. He was immune to mortal weapons, of course, but that blade the Elvis impersonator wielded was far from mortal. And unlike really serious enchanted sentient weapons like Stormbringer or Mournblade, this one refused to scream or hum eerily. This one chuckled and sang showtunes. It was humiliating to be stabbed by something that kept on crooning about ol’ man river. “You will be dragged to the vilest pit of hell to howl your apologies beyond the end of time,” Blackhurt promised ManMan, “and even then your suffering will be only beginning.” “Hey, I took your dad, I can take – urk!” Joe Pepper replied. It was all going so well until Blackhurt gestured and six blood-soaked demons appeared around ManMan – one for each limb, one for the head. Don’t ask about the sixth. “You haven’t a chance, little mortal,” Blackhurt laughed. “It’s the end, and I can do what I – urk!” This time it was the Prince of Fibs’ turn to be cut off in mid boast as a razor letter sliced his windpipe. Messenger leaped down and followed up with a parcel bomb to the side of the demon’s head and a wicked groin kick to the nether parts of the lord of the netherworld. “Guess what, Blackhurt?” the fallen angel turned vigilante asked, “It’s the end, and the usual rules don’t count. Like the one that makes you immune to mortal weapons. See?” Something squelchy happened to the Prince of Fibs. Blackhurt retreated, and Paradopolis was suddenly and amazingly demon-free. “Ouch,” ManMan groaned, scrambling to his feet somewhat unsteadily. “Did we win?” “We chased off the demon-guy,” Banjooooo conceded. “On the other hand, I’m a bit baffled about how we stop that white wall of nothingness tearing across the sky towards the city…” “Aaaaaaaggggghhhhhh!” shouted Goldeneyed. “Aaaaaaaaaaggggghhhhhhhh!” replied Exile. “Jolly good,” added Xander. “Keep it up.” “You’re killing them!” Valeria objected, pummelling on the mage with the duty red robes. “Stop it.” “They’re heroes,” the master of the mystic crafts answered. “They enjoy being hurt. It’s their hobby. And just now they’re being hurt in a very good cause. How are the calculations going, Avatar?” “My ability to sense and navigate interdimensional pathways is operating within acceptable parameters,” the artificial being replied, staring intently into the middle distance. “I am in full communication with Goldeneyed and Avatar thanks to the telepathic linking off Miss Tina, and am able to direct them in how to focus Goldeneyed’s dimension-spanning power fuelled by Exile’s energy shifting abilities.” “But it’s hurting them quite a lot,” Tina added. “I’m getting a headache just standing nearby and maintaining the link.” “It’s not fair,” Valeria complained to Xander. “You set Dread Derek up for all this long ago, back when you arranged for him to become our master in the Dreary Dimension.” “Oh, long before that,” the improbable mage assured her. “But I’m sorry they have to suffer to transport the Lair Legion and the Abandoned Legion to where the Hood is. It wouldn’t be hurting them so badly if everything had gone according to plan. If only the third cousin had turned up…” “Third… cousin?” grimaced G-Eyed. “Hmmm. No idea where he or she got to. Three of you covering distance, energy, and matter. Without the third one there’s bound to be a bit of a strain. Sorry.” There was a bright flash which hurled G-Eyed, Exile, and Avatar away from each other across the floor of the Dark Tower. Tina cried out and crumpled like a house of cards. “What’s going on?” screamed Valeria. Avatar picked himself up and checked the two fallen and lightly steaming heroes. “Goldeneyed appears to have been rendered unconscious by the shock of breaching the Hooded Hood’s Herringcarp Asylum defences,” he reported. Then he looked at Valeria. “I am sorry to say that Exile is dead.” The doors of Herringcarp Asylum had burst open and the nightmares had escaped. Apart from the gothic, ancient stone asylum which the Hooded Hood used as a base of operations there was also a rather modern sanatorium which coexisted with it thanks to the Hood’s retconning powers. This modern facility enjoyed the best psychiatric recovery rate in the world. Now it can be revealed how: the nightmares and insanity were leached out of the one asylum and locked away behind rusty iron doors in the other one. Until now. The lunatics had taken over the asylum. “This is extremely and immensely bad,” Magnetic Techbird assessed as he used another solid-sound construct wedge to force his way through the gibbering shades that beset the four adventurers as they fought their way towards the Gallery of Pain. “spiffy, can’t you use some of that most-powerful-being-in-the-universe power to get us out of this?” “Actually no,” the Parody Master boomed back. “What I’m trying to do just now is constrain my power so that I don’t annihilate you. There’s a kind of imperative about being the Parody Master which is hard to resist. Right now it’s telling me to decimate you pathetic mortals – I mean you Abandoned Legion people, sorry, sorry, and I’m trying to think about pink elephants.” “We don’t need the Parody Master,” Cobra shouted, leaping into the squealing mass of nightmare flesh before them. “All we need is…” “Love,” Sorceress answered. “All we need is love.” “Aaagh! Sixties flashbackl!” Magnetic Techbird called. “I mean it,” Sorceress answered. “What’s attacking us are manifestations of fear and horror drawn from the twisted dark sides of hurt-maddened psyches. Fighting them will only make them stronger. That’s not the way to get past them.” “So how do we beat them?” argued Cobra, breaking another pale body’s spine over her knee. “Snog them to death?” “We don’t beat them,” Sorceress answered. “We teach them what love is.” “Now we’re into fifties sci-fi B movies,” Maggie commented. “Love Slaves of the Planet Venus.” “Hey, I saw that with CSFB! and Donar once,” spiffy remembered. “Shut up!” Cobra shouted. “We’re losing here. Sorceress, do whatever it is you need to do to sort these things out, because I swear if we’re going to die here I’m going to kill Techbird and spiffy myself.” “Finally a woman notices me,” sighed Magnetic Techbird. “Be quiet all of you,” the Sorceress instructed. “I’ve got to weave a spell of sympathy, draw out our own memories of care, love, and affection and channel them into these lunacy shades…” But even as the young magic-worker began her spell she realised how difficult that was going to be. spiffy’s own happy childhood was intermixed with vile memories of death and torture from the Parody Master’s mind. Cobra resisted the probe with all her might, hiding something traumatic which had shattered her own early memories – a floating island and a sneak attack by ass-raping ninjas? And Magnetic Techbird appeared to have had a long and horrible life of betrayal, misery, and victimisation. Sorceress even found her own unhappiness about the Demon Lover and her grandmother souring her personal recollections. The spell faltered then failed. The lunacy shades backed off. “You did it?” Magnetic Techbird was amazed. “No,” Sorceress admitted. “I failed. They just recognise us as some of their own now. The lost. The abandoned.” “Then let’s go,” the Parody spiffy demanded. He raised a hand and evaporated a wall into the Gallery of Pain. “We rescue Cap and HV and destroy Moo and Pierson’s Porter.” “That’s not the plan,” Sorceress objected. “And who’s going to stop me?” demanded the Parody Master. “Save him,” Valeria demanded of the Court Healer. “Use my life force. Just save him!” She cradled the corpse of Exile to her and wept. “But not yet,” Xander added. “Avatar, come here and touch young Derek, would you.” “I do not see the purpose in this,” the former minion of the Parody Master admitted; but he obeyed the eccentric mage. “There has to be a Lord of the Dreary Dimension,” Xander explained. “At the death of one lord another is claimed. And who better to rule this world than one who understands the dimensional highways and can harness every nuance of its unique cosmic positioning like yourself.” “You wish me to take responsibility for this realm?” the blue-faced artificial being questioned. Xander grinned and relaxed. “You just have,” he told him. He looked up at the court healer. “Now you can restart Exile’s heart,” he conceded. Goldeneyed dragged himself back to consciousness at about the same time that Exile regained a pulse. “What’s going on?” Bry Katz asked blearily. “We need you to open one more portal, back to my shop,” Xander explained to the dimension-hopping hero. “The Dreary Dimension will shortly become closed for renovation, and if we wish to leave we must do it now. Avatar has the plans that Yo and Valeria drew up, now it is up to him to make them a reality.” “I shall do my best in this strange new circumstance,” Avatar promised. Exile staggered to his feet, pale and weak. Valeria supported him. “So, you’re going back,” she whispered to him. Derek Freeman nodded. “Well, I gotta really. Worlds to save and stuff, you know? You’ll be safe in the palace here with Avatar.” “Probably,” qualified G-Eyed. “You’re forgetting that Val is responsible for the destruction of the old Vizier, and there’s plenty of his friends still lurking about with sharp pointy objects in dark corridors in this place. She can’t ever go home and she’s in danger here. So she’d be much safer back in the Parodyverse with us.” Exile looked at the pyjama-clad tribute. She looked away. “I can’t take a slave back with me,” he objected. “Heroes don’t have slaves. It’s not done.” “Then hire her as your housekeeper,” Tina suggested, just as Yo had primed her. “You need someone to keep your dump tidy and she needs a job and some protection.” Valeria looked up suspiciously. “What is a... a housekeeper?” G-Eyed tried to explain in terms the slave girl could understand. “It’s, um, it’s like Daphne with Frasier.” “Ah,” Valeria understood now. “I see.” She turned to Exile and said, “Well come on then, you old sod, let's get cracking.” “Perhaps not so exactly like Daphne,” G-Eyed conceded. “Farewell,” Avatar bade them, and Xander, Goldeneyed, Exile, and Valeria vanished back to a Parodyverse which had less than an hour to live. Despite all leaving the Dreary Dimension via Goldeneyed’s Portal together, each legionnaire appeared separately in Herringcarp Asylum. NTU-150 used his sensor scans to try and detect the others, but all he found was a confusion of rebounding signals which short-circuited his sensory array. “I believe you were looking for me?” the cowled crime czar suggested to him. The Hooded Hood stood in his laboratory, playing with two bubbling vials of green and blue chemicals. Enty targeted his repulsors on the archvillain. “You have a count of five to surrender and stop the destruction of the Parodyverse, Hood.” “And what statistical chances do your on-board battle computers give you against me, Jaimie Bautista?” the Hooded Hood asked. “That’s… that’s not the point,” NTU-150 prevaricated. “Four, Three, Two, One…” The wave of retconning hit him even as he triggered his weaponry; and suddenly there was no weaponry there. Jaimie Bautista was no longer the armoured cyborg NTU-150. He was whole. “The accident never happened,” the Hood explained. “You never became a quadriplegic needing artificial limbs to allow you to move. You can marry Tina, have a family, enjoy a life of wealth and ease, even if I have to shunt all of you to another dimension far from this poor ruined Parodyverse. Or you can ask me to undo my retcon, go back to being a corpse clad in metal, and try for that infinitesimally small chance your battle computers estimate you have of stopping me.” The cowled crime-czar’s eyes flashed green. “Which is it to be?” “You know,” the Hooded Hood said to Fin Fang Foom, “You’ve always been one of my favourite Legionnaires. I think it was your absolute single-mindedness.” The giant Makluan breathed at the archvillain, but the flames evaporated before touching him. “That’s what I mean,” the Hood indicated. “No small talk, no messing. Deal with the threat. That’s what makes you interesting. I’ve often wondered how much of that comes from Andrew Dean and how much comes from the original Fin Fang Foom.” Finny didn’t waste time responding. If the Hood was stupid enough to meet him in a vast vault high enough for even a full-sized dragon to fly then the Hood was going to get tail-hammered into jam. “That’s why I brought the original here to compare,” the cowled crime-czar continued. Suddenly there was an identical Fin Fang Foom between him and the Legionnaire. “You may have caught me at a low point some time in the future,” the true Makluan Foom hissed as he spied what he had become. “But the Hood can allow me to avoid those mistakes if I deal with you here and now. I have thousands of years of battle experience and the training of the Makluan high command on my side. What have you got, little wyrm?” Finny hauled off and belted his predecessor. “I’ve got right on my side,” he bellowed. The Hooded Hood watched with interest as the twin dragons fought to the death. If the original Foom won, the legionnaire would be slaughtered. If Dean’s dragon was victorious, in slaying his former self he would cease to exist. The Hood loved a good night’s entertainment. Trickshot encountered the Hooded Hood in the reading room. The bowman was unsurprised to find that he had failed to pack any arrows today, and charged forward wielding his bow like a club. “Is that any way to thank me?” the cowled crime-czar asked the arrogant archer. He gestured to a newspaper on the polished oak table. Despite himself, Trickshot glanced at the headline: MURDERING ARCHER GETS THE CHAIR. LAIR LEGION DISBANDED BY ORDER OF HE SENATE. “What th…?” “It’s from the future that isn’t going to happen now, since your original timeline is no more,” the Hood explained. “Check the date. If I didn’t arrange for things to be different then you’d be a disgraced, dead man in your own reality, and your actions would have led to the destruction of the Lair Legion.” “I don’t believe you,” Trickshot replied. But he knew that the Hooded Hood did not lie. “The day after you left you would have met a woman,” the Hood replied. “She was a spy for Zemo, but you didn’t know that. She died under… unpleasant circumstances, and since you had become fond of her you betrayed your team and your principals and brought death to those responsible. The trail of complicity led all the way to the Oval office, and even there you avenged your lover’s death. Since the Lair Legion failed to stop you, they were held partially responsible for your Presidential assassination. And further investigation proved that the President was innocent, that the whole thing had been an elaborate masquerade prepared by Baron Zemo. So you had become a mass-murderer for nothing.” “No…” Trickshot breathed. Then he leaped at the Hood. “Anyway, that doesn’t matter. I’m taking you down!” The Hood wasn’t there. The archer tumbled into a pile of books. “It matters,” the villain disputed. “As I said, if I did not arrange these things, they will happen. In other words, I have not yet made that alteration to your timeline. Stop me now and I never will.” he smiled at the baffled bowman. “Your call,” he said. Donar met the Hooded Hood on the highest parapet of Herringcarp. “Now, miscreant, thou shalt facest the wrath of the hemigod of thunder!” “Fair enough,” the Hooded Hood agreed. “I’ll find somewhere safe to lay this baby down first, shall I? I assume you don’t want to strike me with lightning while I’m cradling the infant in my arms?” “What?” Donar frowned. But it was true that the cowled crime-czar was holding a new-born babe in the folds of his grey cloak. “Give yon bairn unto me, lest I smite thee most wrathfully.” The Hood held the child out for the Ausgardian to take. Donar alighted beside the archvillain and received the infant suspiciously. “I have an interesting question for you, Donar,” the Hood told him. “The innocent babe you are now holding will grow up to become a mass murderer, one of the most reviled villains in history. You can prevent all of that happening by crushing him in your mighty hands now. Will you do it?” “I art not about to harm any child, evil Hooded One,” Donar snarled. “E’en if this babe groweth to be of evil mien, I wilt not curtail his choices for he might yet make other use of his life. The son of Oldman doth not war on the newborn.” “I see. Then you have a problem, Donar,” the Hood explained. “You see, that baby is me. If you kill it, I won’t be able to bring about the end of the Parodyverse. If you stick to your code of honour, then you doom everybody and everything you have even known – your father and mother, your Legion comrades, your lover and her son, everything. Looks like you have some hard thinking to do.” Then the adult Hood vanished, leaving a perplexed god clutching a screaming baby and wrestling with a choice of life and death. “Terrible to see all of this suffering, isn’t it?” the Hooded Hood asked Hatman, gesturing to the sick and dying people arrayed in the sanatorium sick ward. “Take Gilbert here, for example. A random drive-by shooting as he led his bride out of the wedding chapel, a machine gun spray that killed the entire wedding party except him. Is it any wonder he wants to die himself now? Or Clarissa there, who entered a life of crime to pay for her boyfriend’s drug habit because she loved him, and ended up a victim of the world he sucked her into. Shouldn’t we do something about that?” “Sure we should, Hood,” the capped crusader agreed. “But right now you’ve got to stop destroying the Parodyverse.” “Really?” questioned the Hood. “So that Gilbert can take his own life, and Clarissa can be condemned to a living death for another two or three decades? And so that all these other people can go on suffering?” “I know they need help,” Hatty conceded. “But there’s lots of good out there too. Happy people, with futures, families. People who care…” “And who eventually have all they care about stripped from them,” the cowled crime-czar interrupted. “Who age and die, losing everything. I thought that you of all people would understand the need to do something about the big problems. It’s surely not enough to treat the symptoms like crime and disasters. Shouldn’t we be addressing the cause?” Hatman looked at the sad, desperate people in the casualty ward. “You say you care, Hood, but it’s not long since the LL saved a train of refugees not much different to this from your soldiers.” “I wanted you to have time to think through the human condition, Jay,” the Hooded Hood explained. “I want you to understand what I’m doing. I tried to fix the universe and it didn’t want fixing. I can hardly leave it as it is, like a dumb animal too wounded to survive and simply lying there in pain. So I have to put it out of its misery.” “Not while I can stop you, Hood,” Hatty warned. “Even if you could, you won’t,” the archvillain shrugged. “Not when you’ve got a chance to help me in putting it all right once and for all.” “What do you mean?” The Hooded Hood gestured to the clouds of entropy which were gathering now around the walls of Herringcarp Asylum. “When the Parodyverse is destroyed, whoever or whatever was responsible for its creation is going to come and investigate, perhaps even intervene,” the Hood suggested. “When they do, when we can identify them, we can hold them responsible for creating a place where things such as what you see here can happen.” “You want to put God on trial?” whispered Hatman. “No,” the Hooded Hood told him. “I want you to put God on trial.” “Hello, thought being,” the Hooded Hood bade Yo as s/he appeared in the courtyard of Herringcarp Asylum. “I take it you have come to stop me from destroying the universe?” Yo looked around the grisly asylum operating theatre and shuddered. “I am here to be stopping you, uncute Hooded Nasty,” s/he replied, “And I am thinking that all your retconning ability will not be to working on Yo.” “Why should I need to use it?” the cowled crime-czar wondered. “After all, we should be able to strike a bargain like civilised people, shouldn’t we? You give me what I want and I stop destroying the universe. That seems fair, doesn’t it?” “What do you want, suspicious villain?” Yo demanded. The Hooded Hood leaned on the rough wooden arm of the electric shock therapy chair and considered this. “I want to be happy,” he answered. “Is that too much to ask?” “No,” conceded Yo worriedly. “Every person should be being happy.” “Then we have a deal,” the Hood smiled. “I shall cease to destroy the Parodyverse if you send me to the Happy Place.” The thought being saw where this was going. “You are seeking to be using me to get to the one place you cannot conquer otherwise, deviously uncute Hoodling! You will make the Happy Place into the Not-Happy Place, and all the universe will stop being happy!” The Hood looked sad. “So you don’t trust me, and thus you are going to deny me the right to happiness you cede to every other being who ever lived. And you wonder why I want to destroy this creation?” “Yo did not say that,” stammered the thought being. “Uncertain about what to do?” the Hood asked. “Unsure what to think, what to believe? I believe that makes you vulnerable, little thought being. So you’d better decide whether to pay my price and save the Parodyverse, or deny me happiness and doom all that is.” The Hooded Hood laughed. “I can’t believe you had all of this planned from the start,” Cheryl repeated to her husband for the seventh time. “I didn’t have it all planned,” Visionary replied for the seventh time. “Honest, Cheryl. I didn’t know you’d end up engaged to some ersatz Apostate or that the Hood would go completely potty and try and wipe out the Parodyverse. I just asked Xander what the Hood was up to and how we could have a chance of stopping him.” He didn’t say how hard it had been to decide between asking that and the other question; the one about fakeness. “And he told you about Troia’s quest for her brother, and the invasion from the Dreary Dimension, and the Acts of Ambition, and Mefrotho’s Hell on Earth, and the Hood taking over reality?” Cheryl checked. “Well, he sort of fudged some of the details,” answered Vizh. “But he did sort of give me a few pointers about where to deploy the team and so on.” That was why Starseed’s group had been there to stop Dark Thugos and Banjooooo’s group had thwarted Blackhurt. “But Xander didn’t know how it all ended. He said he had his eyes closed for that bit.” Cheryl noticed their surrounding for the first time. They were in a room of old stone. A heavy throne-like chair faced away from them towards a blazing fireplace. There was someone sitting in the chair. “Good evening,” the Hooded Hood bade them. “Oh crap,” Visionary responded. “Where the hell are Finny and Lisa and Enty when you really need them? Hell, I’d settle for Rocket Racoon right now.” “There is one thing that Xander the Improbable omitted to mention to you,” the Hood told the Lair Legion’s reluctant leader. “And that was that before he spoke to you he spoke to me. We arranged certain… concordances which were of mutual benefit. You becoming leader of the Lair legion was one of them.” “You manipulated them into electing me?” Vizh grasped. “You?” “Of course,” the cowled crime-czar answered. “Why else should I arrange for Jarvis to die?” “Oh very good, Mr Winkelweald,” Cheryl applauded. “Full marks for style, timing, and dramatic revelation. But it’s not going to work this time. You want us amazed by the detail of your past manipulations, distracted from the case in point. And the case in point is that you seem to be destroying the Parodyverse with your stolen power because you’re in a hissy-fit because nobody wants you or likes you. Deal with it.” “Er, Cheryl…” Visionary cautioned as the archvillain’s green eyes flashed. “What’s he going to do?” the Duchess of Lake Superior snapped back. “Destroy me? He’s about the wipe the whole Parodyverse. So before it goes he might as well hear a few home truths!” “Very good,” the Hooded Hood approved. “I always thought you were one of the dangerous ones, my dear.” He gestured then at Visionary. “So is he, but that’s because he seems so harmless. That’s why I needed him busy running his little team and trying to outsmart me based on incomplete information from that second-rate magician. Now both of you can bluster, but you are effectively powerless- defeated.” Visionary fumbled in his pocket. “Except for this,” he warned. “Of course the universe needs a Hooded Hood!” CrazySugarFreakBoy! protested to the cowled crime-czar. The two had met in a padded cell suspiciously reminiscent of the one which Dreamcatcher Foxglove had so recently been confined as CrazySugarFreakKiller!, but as so often with confrontations between the Hood and CSFB!, the scenario wasn’t going according to plan. “I can't imagine what my life would have been like if we hadn't met up and gotten to know each other, but I do know that there would be less of me to know if I'd never met you.” “I have attempted to destroy you simply out of curiosity about how much it would take to “break you,” the Hooded Hood pointed out. “I have assaulted your very sanity, sent you to hell, and reaved your soul with old wounds from your past.” “Yeah,” CSFB enthused. “You set the standard for all other supervillains, and for all of us good guys, too - you forced us to become better heroes, because otherwise, we never would have been table to beat you, and that means that we're better people for having you in our lives.” “What?” the archvillain objected to this CrazySugarFreakLogic! “And because you've helped us become better people, and better heroes, since we met you, we've also been able the make the world a better place than would probably would have done otherwise. We need you ... to challenge us, to keep us on our toes, to make sure we're always ready to save life, the universe, and everything, from guys like you. Despite all the awful things you've done to us, it's almost always ended up being to our benefit in the long run; I mean, sure, you've tried to kill me and torture me and drive me insane, but thanks to you, I found out about my kid sister, my dad came back, my mom met someone new to make her happy, and I got to say goodbye to Izzy.” “How can you be happy that I hurt you?!” the Hooded Hood shouted. He retconned a wave of force which slammed the bouncing wired wonder into one of the corners of the cell. “Simple,” CSFB! continued. “I never thought I'd get to hold Izzy again, but thanks to you, I did.” The Hooded Hood savagely hurled him into the other corner. “Besides which, you can't go away,” Dream continued. “You're my friend.” The Hooded Hood growled and released his full power at the crumpled CrazySugarFreakBoy, carving him from existence ahead of the rest of the universe. Nothing happened. The retcon boiled away off the surface of CSFB!’s silly suit. “Impossibilityium,” CSFB! explained, pulling himself up. “I wondered if you would be able to erase that from existence. Guess you can’t affect me while I’m wearing it, Hoody!” Then the roof fell in on CrazySugarFreakBoy. [Author’s Note: The CSFB! dialogue in the preceding section comes straight from the keyboard of CrazySugarKirkBoxlietner himself; for which my thanks and acknowledgement.] It was a nursery. There were twin cots lovingly preserved just as they had been eighteen years ago, stuffed toys as pristine as they day they were bought because they had never been used. There was a loving mother’s touch about the decorations, the little preparations that a woman makes for someone new and special coming into their life. And the nursery was, and had always been, empty. “It still hurts to come back here,” the Hooded Hood admitted to Troia 215. “This was for me?” his daughter understood. “For me and spiffy?” “This was the start of your inheritance, yes. But things don’t always work out the way we plan them, do they?” The Amazon administrator picked up a teddy bear that might have been hers if life had unfolded differently. “I sure never expected to have a dad who was destroying the universe,” she admitted. “It’s nothing personal,” the Hood assured her. “I’m actually quite proud of what you’ve become, and of what you would have been had I not brought things to a premature close.” “I have a bright future?” Troia questioned, “Or at least, if you hadn’t wrecked it,” she added bitterly. “In some timelines, yes,” the Hood revealed. “Even Mark does quite well in some of them.” Troia turned away from the cowled crime-czar. “Why are you always so horrible?” she wondered. “You set me up so you could get to the Dreaming Celestian, and then you used me to doom Amazon Isle and trigger Dormaggadon’s invasion, and then you let me bargain my soul away to Mefrothto, and then you sent me to fight Lo-Chi and the Parody Master. Why can’t you be… well, nice to me?” She bit back a sob and asked the question she’d always wanted, needed to ask. “D-don’t you love me?” And suddenly the Hood was holding her closely, even tenderly, and stroking her shining red hair while she sobbed onto his chest. “Of course I love you, Troia,” he replied. “You survived all those things, didn’t you? You’re here with me at the end. Had the future not been destroyed, there’s even one of the strands where I come to your rescue against your greatest enemy.” “You know the future?” Troia wondered. “Certain aspects and probabilities are apparent as an aspect of my powers,” the Hood explained. “And I took the trouble to slip forwards and set one or two things in motion before I realised that I have been wasting my time trying to save this Parodyverse. All my sacrifices, your mother, you and spiffy, Lisa, all that pain, and it was for nothing.” “It wasn’t for nothing, daddy,” Troia pleaded with him. “You tried to make things better, you just got it wrong. You could try again! You could… you could join the Lair Legion! You could be a hero.” “Amusing as it might be to see Visionary’s face when I applied and Zemo’s expression if I was accepted, it is too late for that now,” the Hood replied. “Now stay with me, look out of the window of your beautiful room, and let us watch the universe end together.” “You’re winning, aren’t you?” Lisa asked the Hooded Hood in her chamber at Herringcarp Asylum. “I can tell you’re encountering the Legion right now by the concentration on your face. You’re taking them all on, aren’t you?” “Most of them,” the Hood admitted. “I must admit that they are putting up rather more resistance than I had anticipated, but I am confident that I will prevail in the end.” Lisa looked out of her window to the cloud of entropy that rolled ever nearer the bleak sanatorium. “You know that I’m using the Shaper of Worlds power you lent me to hold back your wave of destruction as best I can, don’t you?” the first lady of the Lair Legion assumed. “Of course. We all have to do what we have to do, Lisa.” The cowled crime-czar paused to consider. “Besides, it is… dramatically correct that the heroes should survive destruction long enough for one final confrontation with the villain.” “You could just use that stolen Chronicler power and wipe them out,” Lisa pointed out. “So why aren’t you?” “That would only be a win,” the Hooded Hood told her. “Not a victory.” “And you always have to have a victory?” The Hood considered this. “This isn’t about who’s most powerful. There’s always somebody more powerful. This is about who’s right.” And, Lisa thought sadly, it’s about who is shattered because they’re wrong. The first lady of the Lair Legion began to plan. The Abandoned Legion was coming second against the Parody Master. Even with spiffy tempering the Parody Master’s lethal blows Cap, Cobra, HV, and Sorceress (and guest starring Magnetic Techbird) were having a difficult time even surviving, let alone stopping the most powerful creature in the Parodyverse from destroying the still-restrained Dr Moo and Pierson’s Porter. “This is ridiculous,” Hunter Victorious complained as he was hurled backwards into a granite support pillar, “Even when spiffy’s the most powerful being in the universe he’s still a liability. Can’t someone get him under control?” “I… am… under… control,” spiffy growled beneath the Parody Master’s armour. His fern was boosting his ability to resist the otherwise overwhelming imperatives that came with the Parody Master’s power by absorbing some of that same power and redirecting it. “Otherwise you’d be dead by now.” “Someone just kill him”” Dr Moo advised. “It is only spiffy, after all. It’d probably be the kindest thing.” “We’ll beat him,” Cap assured her. “There’s always a way… if I can just get this quarter ton of rubble off me.” Cobra was fighting dirty. “Isn’t that Sarah Michelle Gellar?” she asked spiffy, pointing over his shoulder and then applying her banana gun where it would do the most harm as he turned to look. Some imperatives overrode even those that came with the Parody Master when you were a sixteen year old male. Unfortunately the blood-red armour shielded the fern-wielder from damage. “Oh just let me free,” Pierson’s Porter sighed. “I’ll deal with him.” “You’re not to kill him,” Sorceress warned the alien puppeteer. “Oh, very will. I’ll deal with him in a non-lethal manner. Distract him, Magnetic Techbird.” “Yeah. Okay. Fine,” the magnetic mutant agreed as the Parody Master shrugged off the bands of metal closing around him and hammered Techbird through the floor. “I’ll just bleed on his armour to catch his attention, shall I?” “That would be fine,” PP assured him. He rummaged around amongst the bag of implements that had been taken off him when he was captured by the Hood. “Ah, this should do. Oh spiffy…?” As the Parody Master turned round Pierson’s Porter hit him with a neural dampner. “That won’t work,” Moo warned. “The armour’s proof against you shutting down the host’s mind.” The Parody Master faltered and stopped fighting. “The armour can be proof against it,” PP corrected. “But I suspected that the Parody Master was getting a bit sick of being restrained by weed-boy and would welcome a chance to be free of his neurotic repressions. After all, with spiffy out of the mental picture, the Parody Master is his true self. And the true Parody Master has no desire to kill us. Only to kill heroes like the Abandoned Legion.” “What?!” Cap gasped. “Oh crap,” HV frowned. “Did I mention I was really a villain?” Magnetic Techbird checked. “I’m not a member of the AL or anything.” The Parody Master released his power. Dimensions twisted and realigned themselves around the heroes and villains in the Gallery of Pain as the most powerful being in the Parodyverse structured reality to bring him together with the Hooded Hood. The Parody Master was cross. “Did you plan all along for him to really go after the Hood?” Cobra checked as she spiralled into the void with the others. “Of course,” PP answered slickly. “How could you ever doubt it?” Then the characters were consumed by the vortex between worlds. Somewhere in a place of ravens and destiny the new Destroyer of Tales sneezed from a feather allergy. “This really isn’t me,” Sir Mumphrey Wilton warned. “I like jolly, happy endings, with the boy kissin’ the girl and buttered crumpets for tea.” “Just do it,” the Dark Chronicler ordered him. “Only you can bring all the strands together now to make this thing close.” “But we don’t know if it will close with our side winning of the baddie being triumphant!” The Dark Chronicler’s eyes shone redly in the darkness. “Then lets find out.” Visionary pulled the tiny mirror from his pocket and held it up to the Hood. The light reflected from it, shining across the cowled crime-czar’s usually shadowed face. “Recognise this?” Vizh asked. “The Portal of Pretentiousness,” the Hood frowned. “How did you get…?” “Oh you know Zemo. Anything that’s not nailed down.” “See the great thing about Visionary,” Cheryl explained to the archvillain, “is that anybody can manipulate him.” The Portal flashed, and suddenly the Lair Legion were assembled in the Hooded Hood’s throne room. “No deal,” NTU-150 breathed remorsefully. “No deal, damn you to hell for offering.” “You might be better trained but I’ll win because my heart is pure… hey, what happened to the me I was fighting?” a battered Finny asked. “You can’t fix wrong things using wrong,” Hatty declared, “so give it up, Hood, because I’m taking you in even if I have to die to do it.” “I wilt not slay yon infant, for within it is the potential for great good as well as great ill. Let me rather insert mine hammer in thine adult form to teach thee the error of being a malefactor!” Donar roared. “Yo is saying no to blackmailing. Hoody Hooding is not ready to be in the Happy Place until he wants to be happy, not conquesty. Do your worst, uncute villain!” “I don’t matter in all of this. Even the Legion don’t matter. The mission, the carin’ for people, that’s what it’s all about,” Trickshot shouted. “So take yer offer, Hood, and shove it!” “I love you, Hoody!” CSFB! called out. Then he noticed the situation had changed. “In a guy/guy friend bonding way,” he added glancing at his teammates, “Not that there’s anything wrong with the other kind,”he added. “I’m sorry,” whispered Troia, “ but I have to stop you, daddy.” “What the hell am I doing here?” Exile worried. “Can’t a guy even die in..” Then he saw where he was. “Oh sh…” “What the hell am I doing here?” Goldeneyed also worried. “Was a that a dimensional portal effect? Who could… oh boy. We’re screwed.” Lisa Waltz hugged her big ginger cat and said nothing at all. Then the Parody Master attacked the Hooded Hood. Visionary made one of his rare command decisions. “Take cover!” he shouted, just before Herringcarp Asylum exploded. At least one inmate survived. “Allow me to assist you, madame,” Mumphrey said to Jury, the erstwhile Shaper of Worlds. “I believe if you go along with the gentleman in the impossibly long black cape he’ll take you to chat with some ravens until we can restore you to your former state.” “This way,” the Dark Chronicler told her brusquely. Jury could return to her former state as the Shaper if the heroes prevailed, but DK knew he couldn’t split himself as he had before. That weakness had been exposed now. And that meant he had to make a hard decision. Very little was left of the Parodyverse now. The Lair Mansion, the Twin Parody Tower, Castle Zemo, the Happy Place, that impossible to describe bit covered in raven crap, and the ruins of Herringcarp were about it. Even the Celestians had gone, and the Observers had found to their cost that watching what happened from far away wasn’t far away enough. But just as a single human cell contains the DNA blueprint for the whole body, so any one of those tattered shreds retained the pattern to restore the whole. One by one they were winking out. The Hood knew this. The Hood knew that the Parody Master drew his power from the fabric of the Parodyverse itself. He knew that the Parody Master would never be weaker. So the cowled crime-czar channelled his remaining energies into shrugging off the Parody Master’s increasingly futile assaults, clutched his fingers round his enemy’s throat, and squeezed. A whole gamut of emotions ran through the Parody Master: shock that somebody should try to throttle the most powerful being in the Parodyverse; amusement; surprise when his breathing became harder; anger that this Hood should attempt such a thing and dare to inconvenience him; horror as he realised he couldn’t detach those clutching fingers from his throat, that his indestructible armour was somehow buckling under his adversary’s grasp; fear as he realised he was going to die if he didn’t surrender this body. But the Hood was ready for that ploy. Retcon energies nailed the ancient archetype into this form, so that when it died so too would the last guardian of the Parodyverse. The Parody Master choked as the world became darker. The crimson armour melted away. The Hood saw who the host body was for the first time. “Nice touch,” Jury told the Dark Chronicler. “Nasty.” “We’re playing hardball now,” DC promised. The Hood flung spiffy’s fallen form away from him with a snarl. He couldn’t kill his own son, and so he couldn’t kill the Parody Master. It was one thing to allow a wave of entropy to do the job for him, but another to wring the life out of his child with his own hands. Mjalcolm slammed into the Hood, shattering his ribcage and spreading him across the floor like a puddle. The Hood made it never happen. Donar fumbled his swing, accidentally slamming the hammer into the side of his own head and going down with a thump. Fin Fang Foom’s nuclear breath stripped the flesh from the villain’s bones with temperatures which blistered even the stones where he had been standing. The Hood made it never happen. Finny fell to his side clutching his chest. Why should he have a heart attack now, of all times? NTU-150 hammered pulse bolts through the Hood’s chest, plastering innards across the ruined back wall of the throne room. The Hood made it never happen. The rotted corpse of Jaimie Bautista toppled over, stripped of its armour because this Bautista had never survived that terrible car accident that had prompted him to first create the battlesuit. “Teamwork!” Lisa called, “Every retcon this major costs him big style. Give him too much to keep track of.” “No problem, boss lady,” Trickshot promised, loosing three arrows in rapid succession. The Hood arranged for Troia to get in the way and take them in her back. “Yo thinks you are being a very bad man!” the pure thought being warned the Hood, tears streaming down his/her face as she unleashed his/her power at the cowled crime-czar. The Hood strained and arranged for Yo to have been caught in the entropy wave earlier. He staggered as Yo vanished. Exile caught the Hood with an energy blast, searing his face and arm before the Hood arranged for Derek Foreman’s parents to have never even met. CrazySugarFreakBoy! bounced in, catching the Hood on the chin with a high kick and sending him toppling to the shattered ground. “Don’t worry guys, he can’t affect me directly when I’m in the silly suit.” The Hood growled a denial, concentrated, and gestured at the wired wonder. Suddenly it was PsychoAcidPervGirl! who was present in the familiar costume of CSFB! Lisa took the somewhat confused bad girl down with her whip, saying, “Oh, no, this is a muddle enough as it is without any loose cannons.” Meanwhile Goldeneyed and Hatman were up close and personal, pounding at the Hooded Hood with all their might. The Hood was undoing each painful blow as it landed, but each time it was harder. “Keep going!” Lisa cried. The Hood refused to surrender. He focussed on Hatman, and suddenly the capped crusader’s terrible drug addiction kicked in with excruciating withdrawal pains. Hatty curled up into a tiny ball of suffering and dropped from the fight. Trickshot got his next arrow right through the Hood’s neck. The Hood arranged for a freak gas explosion three days earlier, and a charred archer toppled to the floor quite dead. Goldeneyed grabbed the Hood’s chest and concentrated his teleporting power on the Hood’s heart – if he had one. As Bry’s eyes glowed golden the Hood’s glowed green, the weak blood vessel in G-Eyed’s brain burst quite suddenly under the tension, and the hero fell dead. “Get in there,” Lisa told Visionary. “It’s up to us now.” “They’re trying to kill him,” Vizh stammered. “I can’t do that.” Then Cheryl fell dead beside him and a fury he never thought was possible made him choke on his former words. The Hood slew him before he ever reached his target. “It… appears I am going… to triumph… anyway, my dear,” the blood-flecked Hood told the last lady of the lair Legion. “It was close there… for a moment…” Troia had completed her slow painful crawl across the battlefield. She wrenched one of the arrows from her back and plunged it into the Hood’s as she fell dead. The Hood made it never happen – or he tried. It was one retcon too many. He had attempted too many fundamental changes to stories which he was previously involved in, and even his augmented power could not sustain them forever. As he toppled over bleeding from his back wound all the other recent revisions he had made unpicked themselves. The various legionaries lay strewn over the battle zone, stunned but alive. “Troia…” murmured the wounded Hood. “Of course. How proper.” Donar was the first to recover. He picked up Mjolcom, staggered over to the Hooded Hood, and dragged him up by his collar. “Now I shall slay thee, miscreant!” he told the villain. “Donar, no!” Lisa called out. “Don’t kill him. Please!” “My lady?” the Ausgardian frowned. “He mayest recover his power any moment for the nonce, and I must rend him now ere he maketh mulch of us all.” “Don’t kill him,” repeated Lisa. “It’s a final test.” “What?” asked Finny, the next to heave himself to his feet. “What test?” “A test of us. If we were playing for all the marbles, if the chips were really down, what would we do? Would we be willing to die to save the Parodyverse? Would we become like the Hood to stop the Hood? Or would our way, the heroes way, prevail?” “A battle not twixt heroes and vaillain but twixt heroism and villainy,” Donar understood. “As always, you remain the heart, soul and wisdom of the Lair Legion, milady. Except on the matter of sleeping arrangements,” he added quickly. Lisa knelt down next to the bloody and fallen villain. “So what now, Ioldobaoth? Will you give up the Chronicler’s power and let us reset the Parodyverse, warts and all? The game’s over. There had been a victory. It might even be one you can appreciate.” “I wanted to accuse the creator…” the Hood coughed. “But that’s not going to happen now,” Lisa answered softly. “It’s over. End it.” The Hood reached out and kissed Lisa, and released the power he had stolen to where it truly belonged. The clouds on entropy halted then billowed in reverse, undoing their havok as they went. The tapestry of the Parodyverse rethreaded itself as before, and one by one the great themes and vast stories underlying the foundations of that improbable little multiverse resettled themselves for the long haul. “All is as it should be,” promised the Hooded Hood, and slumped to the ground. The Chronicler of Stories strode from the shadows, flanked by the Shaper of Worlds and the (temporary) Destroyer of Tales. “Now he dies,” the Chronicler promised. “No,” Lisa objected. “That misses the point of the whole thing.” “I don’t care,” the Chronicler replied. “This is a matter for the Triumverate, not for you or any mortal, Lisa Waltz. Do not meddle in our affairs.” “Affairs are my business,” Lisa proclaimed. “Er, I mean defending people is my business. You only harm him over my dead body.” “Although I have no affection whate’er for this pestilent rogue,” Donar announced, “verily if thou dissest Lisa I shall join her in smiting thy scrawny ass.” “And me,” Hatty agreed. “And me,” Enty added. “And me,” spiffy joined in. “Although I should warn you guys that I think the Parody Master’s slunk off somewhere to lick his wounds and plot horrible vengeance.” “Oh good,” breathed Visionary. “Well, we’ll just finish off this showdown with the Chronicler, Shaper, and Destroyer and then we’ll get right on that.” “Give it up, DK,” Finny advised the Chronicler of Stories. “You can’t win this. You can’t beat Lisa.” “The Hood has murdered Samhain, usurped cosmic office, damn near destroyed the Parodyverse. He’s got to die,” insisted the Chronicler. “If we don’t uphold the law then there’s no point to having it.” Meanwhile the Destroyer of Tales was chatting with Yo. Yo concentrated and created a dozen warm crumpets with cream and jam, and a cookie for Exile. “Hmp. Excuse me,” Sir Mumphrey interrupted. “Sorry to butt in and all of that, but I gather I’m acting in loco parentis or something for the Destroyer role until the universe can find a more suitable candidate,” (why did he keep picturing a circus clown crying?) “and as such that rather leaves the endings down to me, doesn’t it?” “No,” Chronicler declared. “Well, yes,” Shaper corrected him. “Yes it does, really.” The eccentric Englishman shrugged. “Well, as I said, my preferred sort of ending involves a kiss and tea and crumpets. We’ve had the kiss, so here’s the crumpets.” “You can’t leave it like this!” the Chronicler objected. “Well, yes I can old chap. My discretion,” Mumph said with a mouth full of crumpet. “Sorry.” “No,” Baron Heinrich Zemo agreed. “You can’t.” He strode from the ruins of Herringcarp asylum, raised his luger, and shot six rounds into the Hood’s head at point black range. “Retcon that,” he challenged. The Epilogue: “What’re you doing?” spiffy asked, poking his hear round the door of Troia’s office. “Updating HALLIE’s files on the whole Hooded Hood thing,” the Amazon administrator sighed. “I’ve had to retype all of Exile’s file in again now that he can be noticed by machines once more. And update the Avatar file now he’s Lord of the Dreary Dimension. And add in an extra entry for Exy’s ‘slave girl’.” “Aw, don’t worry about that, sis. Yo has taken Valeria under his or her wing. He’s lined up meeting with Cheryl, Lisa, Whitney, even CSFB!’s mom. She’s going to go far, that girl. I think Exile’s in more trouble than he knows.” Troia checked another file. “What about Tricky? Is he still trying to find out about that Natalia woman he was supposed to have married in his previous life or whatever?” “Yeah,” spiffy admitted. “But Messy may have just been pullin’ his chain. There’s no reference to a Trickshot in our world at all before this one turned up, an’ there’s certainly no widow. Even SPUD’s checked that out for us.” “Well, if SPUD says so…” spiffy perched on a corner of the desk, helpfully knocking a pile of paperwork off into the waste bin. Troia didn’t bother to retrieve it. “What about Whitney and Jay?” the ferned phenomenon wondered. “Are they, you know, or just, you know?” “Oh, you know,” Troia smiled wickedly. “I think they’re going for dinner sometime as soon as they can figure out a way to stop CSFB! and Cobra finding out. And then they’ll have to figure things out from there. Is Finny over Moira?” “I suspect Lania’s working on a therapy programme,” grinned spiffy. “And the ol’ Makluan’s been a lot happier since he found out that DK’s still about out there scaring the hell out of people even if he is undead or something.” Oh good,” Troia remarked drily. “Nothing like an undead crimefighter to help you get over your dead faerie muse, is there?” “And you and ManMan?” spiffy enquired. “Do I have to go and break his kneecaps like a good brother should?” “Let him keep walking for a bit longer,” Troia suggested. “I can make him suffer quite enough without help just now, thank you. Tee hee.” Then there was an awkward silence. “About the Hooded Hood,” said spiffy at last. “He didn’t kill you,” Troia answered. “but I stabbed him.” “He cared about us both in some weird, twisted kind of way I guess,” the fern-wielder reflected. “And Lisa. Even CSFB! Hell, in some way I think he cared for all of us, if only as worthy adversaries.” “But now he’s gone,” Troia 215 said softly. “Yeah,” spiffy replied, folding his arms round his sister. “He’s gone.” Lisa walked silently away from the door, stroking her purring ginger cat. At long last, the epic conclusion to the Hooded Hood's storyline. Yes! Yes! Free at last! Freeeee!!! |
| Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: The Very Very Long Goodbye (At long last, the epic conclusion to the Hooded Hood's storyline. Yes! Yes! Free at last! Freeeee!!!) (04-Feb-2000 08:27:06) |
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