Baron Zemo's Lair. - <font color="lightslategrey" face="Lucida Sans Unicode"><b>Untold Tales of the Lair Legion and their Amazing Super-Friends: Down Among the Dead Men</b></font>

Baron Zemo's Lair

Untold Tales of the Lair Legion and their Amazing Super-Friends: Down Among the Dead Men
Saturday, 27-May-2000 13:40:24
207.140.138.195 writes:

#49: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion and their Amazing Super-Friends: Down Among the Dead Men

Paradopolis used to be the largest city on the planet Earth. Now, thanks to a teleportation mix-up during an attempt to kidnap the Lair Legion and other prominent superheroes it’s the largest city on an alien planet at the other side of the galaxy. This has come as a shock not only to the six million inhabitants of the big banana but also to the aliens who were trying to kidnap our heroes, since Paradopolis is, as we said, a big city, and happened to land on top of the Skree detainment complex designed to hold a much smaller target.
In actual fact the teleportation effect gouged a perfect sphere of land and air some six miles in diameter from beside Parody Bay, which meant that all the interesting stuff below Paradopolis got transported as well. Underneath the city streets are not only the sewers and underground tunnels, but other, more secret passageways. The complex ecosystem which keeps the sewer alligator population under control, for example, includes the albino mutate race known as the Morshlocks, who reign in the old tunnels which were carved by one of the other forgotten sub-species of the human race, the Deviates. Preying on the Morshlocks are the Outcasts, subterranean raiders who sometimes venture to the surface world for food. Below those dangerous passageways is the labyrinthine realm of Shab’addaba’Dhu, the Groper out of Grossness, That Which Must Not be Woken Lest Lovecraftian Things Happen. Just think about all those dodgy Japanese cartoons featuring schoolgirls and tentacles. Most of Shab’addaba’Dhu has been teleported with Paradopolis, and things like that tend to make elder entities a bit grumpy.
All of this stuff is mixed in with the remains of the alien Skree detainment complex previously mentioned, which unknown to the Lair Legion and friends was modified from even older ruins covered with mysterious icons and stuff like that, which every SF and fantasy reader knows has got to be bad news. In fact the first detachment of superheroes – the New Battlers - sent to check these tunnels in the hopes of finding a control panel with a clearly marked button reading ‘press here to return Paradopolis to its proper location’ has significantly failed to return.
Here comes the second team right now, wading down that waist-deep tunnel of faeces. The guy in the green and purple circus outfit is Trickshot the Archer, taking the point because he’s supposed to be the tracker of the group. Of course, there aren’t that may footprints left in substances as gooey as the stuff he’s squelching through.
Behind him in the trenchcoat and postal worker’s tunic is Messenger, a former Legionnaire now wanted to face the death penalty for the serial murder of a range of criminals. Since the nearest legal electric chair is about a hundred million light-years away the LL aren’t rushing to arrest him while he’s proving so useful here. Messenger’s looking even grimmer than usual just now. Against his better judgement he went on a date with a rather nice young woman called Sarah Shepherdon, and he’s still remembering the repulsion on her face as she realised who he was and what he did.
The girl in the green-blue dress that’s going to get burned once all this is over is Whitney Darkness, the Sorceress. She’s on the team because her mystic senses might be able to pick up what happened to the previous team or something. She’s wrinkling her nose because of the smell. That’s not the sewage she’s scenting though, it’s the reek of death that is wrapping ever closer around some of her companions. She’s got a nasty feeling that one or more of them won’t survive the chapter.
The pair who look like sisters and are bickering like siblings too are actually Lisa and Lisette. Lisette is really legal trainee Laurie Leyton, who was retconned into being Lisa’s sidekick a while back, and who is feeling guilty just now that she wasn’t with the team she quit, the New Battlers, when they faced whatever it was that they didn’t come back from. Lisa is really, uh, Lisa, the first lady of the Lair Legion, the amorous advocatrix who is hoping to get all this stolen city business concluded in time to tuck her son back home on Earth into bed tonight and read him a story. Also, she’s paying Asil by the hour to babysit, and it’s getting pretty expensive right now.
Bringing up the rear are Goldeneyed and spiffy. spiffy’s the one with the energy-controlling symbiotic fern growing out of his head. Goldeneyed is the one with the golden eyes. Actually, they’re only really golden when he’s using his teleportation abilities or other temporal/spacial control powers, but he’s too busy hanging back so that Lisette doesn’t recognise him as Bry Katz, the boyfriend she’s dating because he’s not a superhero to be bothered by anything else just now. spiffy’s just wondering how grateful the attractive and female New Battlers Wormbait and Fashion Accessory are going to be if he can manage to rescue them. Some people never learn.
The strange creatures who have been watching and stalking the Lair Legion and company are the aforementioned tunnel-lurking Outcasts. They’re just biding their time and waiting their moment.
All up-to-date? Then let’s see what Trickshot and Messy have just discovered.

“Here’s another bit, Lisa,” the annoying archer announced, pointing over to where a strange green-silver metal structure was growing out of the wall. It had the appearance of a ruined building, or possibly part of a giant machine. The dirt-rimed surface wiped clean at the first touch, and underneath there were strange engravings etched on the material.
“It’s very odd,” Lisa commented. “It’s almost as if Paradopolis teleported in around this stuff. Some of it was destroyed but the bits that were in open space survived.”
“This isn’t Skree architecture,” guessed G-Eyed. He’s fought the Skree before and he would have recognised their preferred chunky blue-steel technology. “But those plug ins on it are. I think this has been drilled to loop a power cable along.”
“The Skree probably found these structures already on the planet,” Messenger deduced. “They may have just adapted a complex that was here.”
“Well that explains how they managed to zap a whole city right across space,” spiffy replied. “We haven’t seen them do that before. Maybe they found the gizmos here.” He nodded his symbiotic fern, wiped his hands on his t-shirt, and turned round. “Well. now that we’ve clear on that, let’s be heading back, shall we?”
“What, just when we’re getting’ to the mysterious stuff?” Trickshot snorted. “We gotta get to the bottom of this.”
Lisatte looked at the sludge she was wading through. “I thought we pretty much had,” she growled.
“I agree with spiffy,” Sorceress said unexpectedly. “I can sense death all around us. A great many people died here.”
“Well that’s what happens when you teleport a big-ass city right onto a previous complex and squash the baddies who are waiting to get you,” Goldeneyed noted. “Colonel Destiny boasted that there were seventy thousand assault troops waiting to get us. So far the nearest we’ve got was that poor guy sticking half out of the wall a while back.”
“Colonel Destiny also claims that Suicide Blonde is your cousin, and that you, Exy and her are all from the future,” spiffy reminded Bry. “And Blondie says you’re related as well. I’m not sure how much we can actually rely on those two to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
“It’s the truth as the Suicide Blonde believes it,” Messenger contributed. “I’m sure of that. She also believes that if one of you dies your power will pass to the others, until just one of you remains, all-powerful as some obscure prophesy has predicted.”
“Yeah. Good isn’t it?” G-Eyed answered weakly.
“Could all the dead Skree and Skunk personnel account for the death you sense, Minxie?” Lisa asked Sorceress. “Seventy thousand squished baddies is a fair bit of death.”
“Not just seventy thousand,” the Sorceress shuddered. “A lot of people.”
The heroes regarded each other in the light of their X-Files-style torches. “We’d… better press on,” Lisa decided at last. She shepherded the party on, muttering her manta under her breath, “DamnVisionarydamnVisionary…”
“Wait a minute,” Trickshot warned. “I thought I heard…” Then a rock the size of a car battery hit him on the forehead.
“Ambush!” warned Messenger. The razor-letters he threw by reflex spanged off the rocky hide of the Unpossible Man, so he followed up with a parcel bomb that sent the monster reeling.
The Outcasts poured out from the cross-pipes around the Legion. Mole Pirate, Demon-Fish, and Man Hamster rose up from the sewage and dragged Sorceress and Lisette beneath the waters. Well, Mole Pirate and Demon-Fish did. Man Hamster can’t see very well, so he accidentally dragged the Human Grenade under the water instead.
“They’re everywhere!” spiffy exposited unnecessarily, whacking Oaf with his fern and taking a near-fatal wedgie from Pantie-Man.
“Laurie!” G-Eyed shouted as he saw Lisa’s sidekick vanish beneath the slime. With a golden flash he was beside her, hammering aside Double Decker and the Man with Two Chins to pull her free of Mole Pirate’s clutches. “Lisette, are you okay?” he asked the choking, slime-soaked girl.
“Get off me!” the leather-clad legal secretary screeched, more angry with the hero who had rescued her than the mutates that had attacked her. “I was doing okay! I don’t need saving like some pathetic weedy comic-book girlfriend! You bloody macho superheroes are all the same!”
“Er…” G-Eyed gulped, but was relieved just then by Man Hamster raking him with his claws then stuffing him into one giant cheek pouch. Goldeneyed teleported away to the relative safety of struggling with Devo at the other end of the tunnel.
“Somebody rescue Whitney!” Lisa shouted as she literally lashed out at the Gunsman, proving once and for all that it isn’t the size of your weapon, it’s what you do with it. But just then Demon Fish broke to the surface screaming as if all the hordes of hell were after him, followed by a very brown Sorceress in a very black mood. “How DARE you pull me into that stuff!” the scion of the house of Darkness demanded. “See how you feel about being pursued by faeces elemental saaiitaaii ripping and clawing at you forever and ever and ever.”
“Way to over-react,” gulped spiffy. Then he caught the look on Whitney’s face. “But quite justified under the circumstances,” he added hastily.
“Watch out,” Messenger called, stepping over Pantie-Man’s bleeding body and looking into the darkness. “There’s more of them. Lots more.”
And from both ends of the tunnel they came, and slithering out of the smaller pipes that interconnected with the main drain, and from below the foetid sludge where the heroes trod, a dozen, fifty, a hundred more mutant Outcasts, ready to shred the flesh of the Parodyverse’s heroes.
“Time for a truce agreement, maybe?” Lisa suggested.
“And why should we agree to let you go when we so obviously outnumber you?” Sgt Snail, leader of the outcasts, demanded from the safety of the back of the mob.
“Because we’re extremely powerful and we might still be able to nail your butt despite your numbers?” Goldeneyed suggested, dropping a senseless Oaf into the sewage.
Dung Beetle whispered something into his leader’s ear. “Hmm,” scowled Sgt Snail. “Seems my people aren’t too keen on dying in combat with you. So we’ll cut a deal. You hand over one of your number as tribute to us, and the rest can go.”
“No way,” Trickshot answered. He was still nursing a mild concussion, but he was ready to fight to the last man – preferably their last man. “We don’t leave our people in there. We all walk out or we fight to the end.”
“Actually, I’m leading this mission,” Lisa reminded the archer. “And I think the snail has a reasonable compromise.”
“What?” G-Eyed gasped. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”
“We are questing for the survival of six million people,” Messenger reminded Bry Katz. “One life doesn’t matter if we can fulfil our mission.”
“One life does matter,” Sorceress corrected him, “but not as much as finding a way to save the city.”
“You guys can’t be serious,” chipped in spiffy. “We can’t just hand one of us over to the Outcasts. They’re cannibals! They’re perverted cannibals! They’re perverted cannibal sadists!” He put his head in his hands,” You’re going to suggest giving them me, aren’t you?” he moaned.
“Meat and veg,” snorted Trickshot with his usual sensitivity.
“No, we might need your energy-sensitivity later in our mission,” Lisa assured him after a suitably cruel pause. “We need to let them have somebody who doesn’t really serve any useful purpose, and who we could easily do without.”
“Visionary’s back on Earth,” Messenger reminded her.
“I wasn’t thinking of Vish,” Lisa assured the postman. “Anyway, he’s quite useful as a scapegoat. I was thinking of Lisette here.”
“What?” Laurie Lee and Goldeneyed both objected simultaneously.
“Oh yes, she’ll do fine,” Devo approved, licking his lips. The other Outcasts were in general agreement. Lisette would be a fun captive.
“No way,” G-Eyed insisted. “Lisa, I won’t let you do this.”
“It wasn’t a vote,” the first lady of the Lair Legion warned G-Eyed. “Messy, take him down.”
Before Bry Katz could react the postman wad hit him on a nerve cluster on his neck and he crumpled unconscious onto spiffy.
“Good call, Lisa,” Lisette approved. “Leave the Goldenfeeb and let’s get on.”
“I don’t think so,” the amorous advocatrix (senior) smiled evilly. “The deal was for you. If they want Goldeneyed as well then they’ll have to offer something extra, like the way down into the Morshlock caves below.”
“We know the way,” the man with two chins wobbled. “We could show you in exchange for a second tribute.”
“You’re not getting’ anyone,” Trickshot warned. “I’m not going to let you…” he paused as Lisa whispered something to him. “Ah, what the hell. Have ‘em,.” he decided.
Sergeant Snail clapped his hands together in anticipation. “Done!” he agreed.

Goldeneyed woke up to find himself shackled in some kind of metal cage suspended over a vast, seemingly-bottomless chasm. After one bleary moment of panic he struggled up and looked for Lisette.
“Morning, useless,” the legal secretary greeted him. She was clearly still off male superheroes then.
Bry Katz tried to get up further, but the Skree power-dampening shackles the Outcasts had clad him in restrained him. “Where are we? What’s going on? Are you…?”
“Don’t go there, Clark Kent,” warned Lisette. “I can see through you superguys like you were wearing Lisa’s costume. You’re all ‘let me rescue you’ at first, and then it’s ‘hey honey, show a bit of gratitude to the guy who saved that sweet li’l butt’, and then it’s ‘struggle all you like, bitch, but I’m super-strong and you’re not!’”
“That’s not it at all,” Bry gasped. “I was just…”
“Yeah, well just keep on movin’ buster. I can rescue myself. I don’t need anybody. I don’t.”
It was hard to see in the gloom of the imprisonment cavern, but Goldeneyed thought he detected the faintest hint of a sob. “Laurie…” he called to her. “Laurie, I’ve got something you really need to know. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before.”
“What?” Lisette demanded savagely. “I’m prisoner of a debauched, degenerate underground tribe who want to do unspeakable things to me then eat me afterwards, after being royally stitched up by the bitch-feeb Lisa – for which you gotta admire her, I admit – and right now I’m struggling to deal with it all, ‘kay? What could you tell me that I really need to know just at this time, huh?”
“It’s about your co-worker, Bryan Katz,” G-Eyed explained.
“You leave him out of this!” Lisette shouted. “He’s a nice kid, He’s not learnt to be cruel and deceitful like the rest of you men yet – or if he has he’s really, really good at it, I suppose. Just leave him alone.” She paused and faltered a little. “I – I’ll have sex with you if you promise not to hurt him.”
“What?” This one had come rather out of left field for Bry.
“Whatever you say,” Lisette promised miserably. “Just leave him alone.”
“What are you talking about?” Goldeneyed demanded. “I’m not threatening Bry. I am…”
“Yeah, yeah. You’re looking out for him. I know the score. I heard it all before from your pal E-Male.”
A tight cold fist closed round Goldeneyed’s heart. “Wait a minute. Are you saying that E-Male demanded sex with you by threatening to do violence to Bry Katz?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know,” Lisette spat. “You’re probably all in on it, laughing at stupid Laurie who’ll cave like a wimp because some kid who was nice to her might get roughed up a little.”
“You actually went through with this?” G-Eyed asked in a white fury.
“Not yet,” she admitted, “because luckily Paradopolis got kidnapped an’ then E-Male went missing with the Battlers…”
“But the deal’s still good darlin’,” came a mocking voice from the other cage which was hanging unseen a few yards away. “Talk to me nice, G-Eyed and I’ll deal you in.”
“E-Male!” Lisette gulped. “You’re here?”
“Yeah. Can you believe the Battlers listened to Zemette and gave me up as the toll to get past into the Morshlock caves?” he asked angrily. “We should never have let that little psychopath bitch back onto the team…”
“E-Male, can you hear me?” G-Eyed called. “I just need you to know that if we get out of here then you’re going to be spending an amazingly long time in the hospital. There are no words for the sort of bastard you are, and it’s going to be my pleasure to beat the living s--- out of you and put you out of business permanently.”
“Oh there are words,” Lisette told him. “You just don’t know them ‘cause you’re so square and straight. Kind of like Br…”
Laurie Leyton fell suddenly silent.

“It’s a trap!” Trickshot warned as the dark lake’s surface was suddenly churned up by the massive heaving tentacles of the dweller below. “They’ve led us into the lair of the Groper out of Grossness!”
spiffy cast a look behind them over the long bone causeway, but sure enough the Morshlocks who had agreed to guide them had vanished. That was five bucks he wasn’t going to see again.
“Watch out,” Sorceress called, fending off the amorous questing tendrils with some difficulty. She looked pretty good in the fur bikini the Morshlock people had provided her with to replace her sewer-drenched dress. Hatty would later kick himself greatly for missing out on this trip.
In fact all the underground team had bartered for new outfits except Messenger, who didn’t seem to mind the stench and preferred somewhere to store his parcel bombs and razor-letters. He was currently demonstrating his equipment to the monster rising from the waters.
spiffy was in a fetching lizardskin loincloth with matching accessories. Right now he was trying to keep probing tentacles from inside the fetching loincloth.
Tricky was basically dressed as Davy Crockett, except that instead of a coonskin hat he was wearing something that had eight legs which plopped round his ears as he rolled to avoid being crushed flat by a massive claw.
Lisa had chosen something that made the ladies on the covers of Conan novels look dressed for winter, that consisted mainly of gold chains and imagination. The first lady of the Lair Legion had been seized by the tentacle-beast and was being dragged away.
“Save Lisa!” spiffy shouted. “That thing’s got her!”
“No rush though,” Lisa answered happily as the many-digited monster mauled her. “Really. Sort out other stuff first.”
Messenger found an orifice on the entity and hurled his entire satchel of parcel bombs into it. “Duck!” he warned.
A moment later the cavern was filled with sushi.
“You managed to destroy Shab’adda’Dhu?” Sorceress whistled, impressed.
“Nah, that was just one tiny part of the whole thing,” warned spiffy. The ferned phenomenon was trying to pick bits of tentacle from his symbiotic plant. “That’ll just have alerted the rest of it to the fact that there’s something here to eat.”
“Perhaps we should get movin’ then?” Trickshot demanded urgently. “Lisa?”
“I was only looking to see if there was perhaps a little one of these critters I could take home with me. As a pet,” the amorous advocatrix shrugged. “Oh well, let’s keep going.”
“There’s some kind of doorway ahead, carved out of that same silver-green metal we saw up above,” Sorceress noticed. “That must be the Temple of Darkness the Morshlocks were talking about, the one that ‘wasn’t here before yesterday’.”
“Stand back,” Tricky advised, “and let brother Trickshot knock for ya!” He notched a blast arrow and fired it at the doors. The shaft exploded harmlessly against the alien metal.
There was a pause as long as five heartbeats.
Then the doors drifted open.
There was a bubbling in the dark waters of the lake. The heroes hurried through the portal into the dark, echoing interior.
“This whole place is some kind of giant machine!” spiffy guessed. The engravings on the wall here seemed less like writing and more like some bizarre circuit diagram.
“Or a shrine,” added Sorceress. The place also had the aura of a cathedral.
In the centre of the room a metal dais contained a single glowing button of green crystal. The whole set-up said: push me.
“Can this be what we are looking for?” Messenger speculated. “Is this the transportation mechanism that brought us to this world?”
“That’s one for the tech-boys to figure,” Lisa shrugged. “All we had to do was find it. Now let’s see what G-Eyed and Lisette have found out from the Outcasts.” As she had intended all along she concentrated and used her gift. “I summons Lisette and Goldeneyed.”
There was a ripple across the fabric of space/time, and the two missing party members burst into view before the advocatrix.
“I’d forgotten you could do that, zimmer-gal,” Lisette admitted. “Gotta admit that you had me worried for a while.”
“I wasn’t sure it would work down here,” Lisa sniffed. “It happens that it did.”
Trickshot picked the lock on Goldeneyed’s power-restraint while Messenger similarly freed Laurie. “Lisette…” G-Eyed began.
“Mister Goldeneyed, there is nothing you could say that I want to hear. Nothing!” Lisette spat back.
“Uh oh,” spiffy shuddered. “Does she…?”
“Looks like a fun date,” smirked Trickshot.
Sorceress’ gasp suddenly drew everyone’s attention from the tension between Laurie and Bry. “What’s wrong?” Lisa asked.
“Can’t you sense it?” Whitney winced. “A psychic assault… massive… terrible…”
“No, I can’t say I… aaaagggghh!” Lisa replied, as the mental attack suddenly hit her. The rest of the heroes were simultaneously affected.
“It’s magical in nature,” Sorceress recognised, “If I can only craft a defence…” She struggled against the necromantic energies washing over her. They were powerful but crude. Suddenly she found herself grateful for all those years of boring psychic exercises that her grandmother had put her through as a child. The sorceries came to her by rote, and she neutralised the psychic possession strand by strand, freeing first herself and then all the others.
“What the hell was that?” Trickshot demanded.
“Possession attempt,” Whitney panted, falling to her knees with exhaustion. “Some sort of automatic defence on this place. But beware. I think it has already worked on some folks who came here before.”
Then the New Battlers attacked. Sorceress was the first to go down to a well-hurled tea tray from L’il Buttie (Jarvis’ polite sidekick). He apologised for the rudeness of his assault and went on to attack Lisa.
spiffy found himself up against Fashion Accessory and Wormbait, two of the female members of the teen group. “Hi, spiffy!” Wormbait smiled sexily at him. “Want to play with us?”
“Um…” the fern-wielder gulped. Fortunately his fern was less susceptible to female wiles than he was and rendered the women unconscious before Fashion Accessory could transform him into a slug using her matter-rearranging abilities.
Messenger was disappointed that E-Male wasn’t present. He had been meaning to have a serious discussion with his juvenile imitator ever since he had first learned that someone was purporting to be his updated version. He contended himself with squaring off against Zemette and was surprised when she was fast enough to nail him three times with her needle-gun. “Probably won’t kill you,” she assured him as he slumped at her feet. “I’ll do that myself.”
“Not so fast, Miss Purply!” Lisa intervened. The advocatrix’s whip coiled round the neck of Zemo’s daughter and spun her away from the fallen postman. “He’s a psychopathic serial-killer but he’s our psychopathic serial killer. You, on the other hand, are a very promising little bitch but you’ve still got things to learn. Let me show you…”
“Zemette!” Thunderstroke called. “I’ll save you!”
“Hey, I know the real Donar,” Goldeneyed told him, “You can’t even get the speech right.” It felt good to be able to punch someone through the wall at full strength. Especially when Thunderstroke came back for more.
Over by the portal Trickshot and Boy Wonder were having a contest of hurling missiles at each other, each dodging by the merest fraction. Spiffy was trying to stop Hat Kid biting him. That left Worm Lad for Lisette to deal with. “Hey, Dragon Boy, you and me, one on one,” she called to him.
A nasty sneer came over Worm Lad’s face. “Hey, I know your boyfriend’s name as well,” he reminded Laurie.
“Wrong answer,” Lisette replied, breaking his jaw with a swinging crane kick.
Lisa dropped Zemette to the floor and looked around to see who needed help. Sorceress and Messenger were still down, but spiffy had just subdued Hat Kid by the expedient of grabbing him with his fronds and hurling him into the ceiling. He’d already taken out Fashion Accessory and Wormbait in the only way he was ever likely to. Lisette had Worm Lad on the ground and was kicking him to make sure he stayed unconscious. Splashing from the dark waters denoted Goldeneyed having just introduced Thunderstroke to Shabba’dhabba’Dhu. Lisa absently dropped her whip and clobbered L’il Buttie as he bent to pick it up for her, then summonsed Boy Wonder to her right into the path of Trickshot’s vomiting arrow.
“Not bad,” spiffy gloated, leaning back and admiring his work. “I managed to bag three of them all by myself.”
There was an ominous click as his elbow rested on the green crystal button.
“Uh oh,” Lisette had time to say.
Then the ancient mechanisms activated, tearing open a portal to the most terrible of realms. The dark chasm of the Void of Death yawned open beside spiffy.
“What’s happening?” Trickshot demanded as an icy wind whipped round him, dragging him towards the dark hole that had appeared by the dais. But he didn’t need an answer. He knew, as every mortal thing that ever lived knows, what that Void was and where it led.
spiffy was hanging on to the metal pillar to prevent being dragged into the maw. His feet dangled at ninety degrees from the floor, sucked by the all-consuming realm where he had once briefly visited before.
Everyone knew – instinctively knew in the deepest, oldest part of their brain – that the void was seeking a victim. Everyone knew why this place reeked of death, why this device had never been used, why this civilisation had been erased rather than let them use the mechanism the fern-wielder had just activated.
“G-Eyed, get everybody out of here. Now!” Lisa ordered.
“I can’t teleport so many people very far,” Bry warned.
“Do it!”
Bry managed to struggle over to Messy and Sorceress. Trickshot dragged the fallen New Battlers and Lisette to join them. “No, I don’t want to be rescued by him!” she screamed.
Bry’s eyes flashed and he staggered as the fallen New Battlers were spatially shifted to what he hoped was the surface of the city. That just left his own team to worry about. “I can’t get to spiffy,” G-Eyed shouted over the terrible silence.
“I’ll see to him,” Lisa promised. “Go!”
Goldeneyed strained, teleporting blindly, relying on his instinct to take them to somewhere that wasn’t filled with solid rock.
The Morshlocks were in for a treat.
That just left spiffy, teetering on the edge of oblivion, and Lisa to save him. “I summons spiffy to me!” she called.
There was a strong resistance but Lisa was determined not to surrender the youngest of the heroes into the grip of Death. In the end, spiffy vanished from the dais and appeared beside the first lady of the Lair Legion.
But the void was not so easily escaped. With a vicious twist it lashed out, wheeling across the ancient room, seeking its sacrifice.
When spiffy looked up again the great maw had gone. So had Lisa Waltz.

Next time: Nothing about the fate of Lisa! Not one world about what happens to Goldeneyed and his passengers! Sweet zip on the events back on Earth! And no information about how things are getting on in spacelost Paradopolis! So I guess that leaves us with Finny, Donar, CSFB! and friends exploring an alien planet and finding more than they bargained for. Yeah, that’ll be it.

Come back next week for our normal-sized, non-anniversary fiftieth Untold Tale. We will have a 50th anniversary blow-out story, honest. Just not yet.

The Hooded Hood twists the knife a bit more as the heroes of the BZL struggle to save six million possibly innocent Paradopolitans, and death claims a Legionairre!