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| #50: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion Lost in Space:
Digging Deep Sunday, 04-Jun-2000 18:26:33
#50: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion Lost in Space: Digging Deep Joe Pepper knew that if he lived to be a hundred years old he would remember this morning as clear and fresh as he was experiencing it now. A quarter-mile waterfall thundered down into the lagoon beyond, sending rainbow plumes through the mist spray. The tropical alien wilderness was lush and green, punctuated in clusters by huge purple flowers like giant orchids. The dawn sun reflected off the lake, turning the rippled waters fiery red. And perched on a rock overlooking the panorama, Troia 215, unaware that anybody else was up, offered up her song of welcome to the coming day. She hadn’t seem him. She was alone with the morning and her music, lost in a special world of her own, her upturned face shining in the dawn’s light. Joe felt a tightness in his throat and a shortness in his breath. She was the most beautiful, perfect thing he had ever seen. “Tell her,” a voice from his waist advised him. “Don’t just think it. Tell her.” “Now?” ManMan asked his sentient knife. “Well lessee…” Knifey answered. “Romantic deserted tropical setting, girl breathtakingly beautiful in the shimmering dawn, life as we know it about to come to an end… yeah, I’d suggest that this was a good time.” “Right,” resolved Joe, brushing down his white Elvis costume. “I’ll tell her.” Over at the great cliff where Troia sang her hymn of adoration, Donar the hemigod of thunder swooped down from the skies to greet her. “Heilsa, fair Amazon!” he called. “Thy song doth make the whole world pause to list to thy sweet voice!” ManMan kicked a rock and hurt his foot. “Tee hee,” giggled Troia 215. “Thanks Donar. It just felt right this morning.” The Ausgardian doffed his helm and breathed in the clear air. “This place ist most pleasant. There art great mountains, deep forests, many vast creatures to be fought with, and adventures awaiting at every new horizon.” “But…?” Troia sensed there was more. “But I do miss mine mother,” Donar admitted. “This is not the realm of Gail, and I art not able to discern what lady of creation doth rule herein. There art something… strange about this world.” The thunder hemigod was referring to the fact that he, the majority of the other heroes of the Parodyverse, and the whole city and population of Paradopolis had been transported across the galaxy as a preliminary to the invasion and destruction of Earth by the death-worshipping Dark Thugos. Donar, Troia, and Man-Man were part of a team sent out to explore the planet they had been shanghaied to, seeking the presumed alien devices which prevented even the teleporters amongst them from leaving this place. ManMan stuck his hands into his pockets and wandered back down to the camp. If the noises coming from Space Ghost’s tent were to be believed the team’s most unconventional member was still asleep. “Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzl! Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzl! *snort* but Brittany this is so sudden… Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzl!” There was no sign of Fin Fang Foom, Cobra, or CrazySugarFreakBoy!, but Dancer was present, doing some kind of very distracting wake-up stretching exercises. “Hi ManMan!” she greeted him. “What’s the matter? You look like you lost your favourite rhinestone.” “It’s nothing,” Joe answered. “Where are the others.” “Finny took Cobra for a scouting trip over that Eastern mountain range,” Shep replied, “and CSFB! insisted on tagging along. I don’t know where Donar is.” “I know where Donar is!” spat ManMan. “Er, I mean, I think he’s up at the cliff with Troia.” “Oh,” Dancer suddenly understood. “Sorry. I’m still getting the hang of all this superhero relationships stuff. CSFB! and Cobra, for example…” “I can’t understand why he’s still chasing her,” ManMan admitted. “She told him that she’d only consider going out with him if he had some kind of circumcision and hacked one of his nuts off. Some kind of religious thing.” “Yuck!” Dancer shuddered. “And will he?” “I dunno. Dream’s real big on religious tolerance and respecting other people’s customs. Hatty’s worried be might go for it.” “She’s just pullin’ his plonker, so to speak,” chimed in Knifey. “There is no such custom in the Sect of Buto.” Dancer was looking somewhat askance at ManMan’s apparently talking groin, so he produced Knifey to assure her that it was only a sentient blade of uncertain origin. “And you’d know about the Order of Buto that Cobra belongs to because…?” “I been around,” the knife answered with an enigmatic little chuckle. “Then why didn’t you tell all of this to CSFB! and save him agonising about self-mutilation?” Dancer wondered. “Because it’s more fun this way,” Knifey replied. The Mother of All Starcruisers dropped out of emergency spacewarp and took up geostationary orbit over the planet. Its commander strode up to the posing deck, planted his feet wide apart, folded his arms, and glared down at this functionaries. “Well?” he demanded. “It is difficult to get a proper reading, most honourable Dronin,” the not-long-left-for-this-world Senior Communications Officer reported. “The same ancient alien devices which we utilised to cause the matter transference on the heroes from Sol III causes a low-level interference with our victim scanners.” There was a brief flash of energy, a truncated scream, and a vacant, steaming console seat. “See what you can do to improve the reception, new Senior Communications Officer,” Dronin, the Public Accoster of the Skree Empire advised the next technician in the firing line. The new Senior Communications Officer was very motivated. From the sky it had been pretty obvious that beneath the great grassy plain there had once been some kind of vast building. From the ground it was considerably more difficult to locate under the thick turf. The Makluan shapechanging dragon Fin Fang Foom had therefore transformed into some kind of giant vole and was sending massive spadefuls of soil high into the air as he excavated down to the presumed structure long buried beneath the surface. “About another ten yards down, according to this device NTU-150 provided us with,” Cobra advised him. “Although I’m still not getting any energy readings.” “Christine..” CrazySugarFreakBoy! interrupted. “I’m getting quite a few fragments of melted, shattered rock here,” Finny reported. “It’s almost as if the whole structure was destroyed by some massive holocaust.” “This could be the signs of an earlier civilisation on this world,” Cobra speculated. “Christine,” CSFB! persisted. “We need to talk.” “Now I’m getting down to the outlines of structures,” the dragon reported. “It looks like everything here had been destroyed.” “I’m working, Dreamcatcher,” Cobra told the wired wonder. “We have a mission to fulfil.” “This isn’t what we’re looking for anyway,” CSFB! opined. “And we have to talk about that stuff you said to me back at the fairground.” “I can’t imagine the forces at work here,” Finny continued, oblivious of the forces at work back on the surface above him. “I talked over what you said with Hatty,” Dream began. “And what did Sorceress’ Mister Perfect have to say on the subject?” Cobra challenged. “Even a nuclear blast wouldn’t do this much damage,” considered Foom. “He was worried that I might do what you asked and mutilate myself,” CSFB! reported. “Then when I said there was no way I was going to hack off one of my balls he couldn’t handle it because I was being so sensible. Then he said you weren’t the right type for me anyway, and how any guy would hesitate to submit to that kind of disfigurement below the belt. Then I said no that wasn’t it, it was that I could understand religious observance, even though I was already circumcised as a standard medical thing rather than a tribal religious observance or anything, but that…” “You won’t do it,” Cobra cut him off – verbally, if not in the way she had previously suggested. “Hell, no, I won’t.” Dream answered. “And I don’t think you should have asked.” “Then there is nothing more to say between us,” Cobra answered with a concealed satisfaction. “I’ve no idea what the hell happened here,” Fin Fang Foom concluded, lifting his draconic head from the tunnel he’d created. He was a bit puzzled by what had happened on the surface as well. Aboard the Mother of All Starcruisers, and three Senior Communications Officers later, Dronon the Public Accoster glared down at some satellite photos of the city of Paradopolis in its new position on the Bay of Dinosaurs in the shadow of Spectre Volcano and downcoast from the Mutate Zone. “So you are telling me that somehow the entire city was transported here by that alien transporter mechanism rather than merely the Destiny Carnival?” he snarled. “Yes, worshipful one!” cringed the latest Senior Comms Officer. “And being such a large mass it has crushed our entire confinement installation underneath it.” “I see,” Dronon scowled. There was a long pause as he glared at the pictures as if challenging them not to change into some image more to his liking. “Um, what shall we do now, sir?” Senior Tactics Officer asked. “Only we don’t have the cargo space to restrain six million prisoners.” “Shall we contact the Supreme Interference for orders, sir?” Senior Comms asked, referring to the great computerised sentience which traditionally commanded the Skree star empire. Dronon vaporised another Senior Communciations Officer. “The Interference no longer rules on Skree-Lump,” he reminded the steaming pile of ashes. “We shall capture a handful of metahumans to take back to our homeworld for questioning, then launch a Terminiser to deal with the rest of them. Make it so.” Space Ghost awoke from a very satisfying dream in which he and Baron Zemo had managed to sink the Titanic and wandered out to see what was for breakfast (apart from the fifth of bourbon that he’d packed for the occasion). Donar and Troia had returned from their morning swim bringing some kind of lizard-like creature that Donar had then roasted, and Dancer was handing out spurious-lizard burgers for breakfast. “We found some evidence that this world was previously civilised but later decimated,” Finny reported. “But it wasn’t the equipment we’re looking for.” “Great!” ManMan muttered unenthusiatically. “What about you, Troia? Did you and Donar find anything interesting?” “Way to not show envy,” Knifey congratulated his wielder. “I discovered that My Heart Will Go On,” Space Ghost offered helpfully. “We also discovered that CrazySugarFreakBoy! isn’t serious about a relationship with me,” Cobra contributed, with a smug glance at the subdued Dreamcatcher. “I just don’t feel it’s right for me to modify my own body in any way that doesn’t resonate with my inner self or spirit of whatever you want to call it, although I’d never impose or superimpose my own belief system on anyone else,” CSFB! answered in uncharacteristically sober tones. “This is about the nuts thing, isn’t it?” Dancer checked under her breath to ManMan. “Yeah,” answered Knifey, “And Joe thought he had romantic problems.” “As far as I’m concerned, what works for Christine is perfectly fine for her,” Dream continued, trying to honestly explain to Cobra’s back. “The only problem would be if I had to follow the same set of rules as you do. So no, I won’t do what you wanted, and no, I can’t be your suitor then, but I won’t try and talk you out of following your beliefs.” “That’s a very easy answer,” Cobra replied with feigned indignance, enjoying twisting the knife even if CSFB! wasn’t getting anything like as upset as she’d hoped. “If your love for me meant anything at all, you wouldn’t have hesitated.” “What?” gasped CSFB!, suddenly paling. “That is absolute bullshit!” “Oh excellent,” Space Ghost commented, munching his burger and sitting down on a rock to watch the drama. “This is even better than that bit where Lisa fell off the Titanic.” Dreamcatcher Kokopelli Foxglove reddened as he spoke. “I have never judged you, even though we all know about your dubious past. I never looked down at you or thought less of you because of it, because I saw what a good person you were on the inside, what you have the potential to be, but I’d never once have tried to change or ‘reform’ you or force you into anything you don’t believe in, because I knew that it wouldn’t mean anything unless it was your choice that you freely made…” “I hast never seen yon CrazySugarFreakLad! ere lose his temper before,” Donar whispered to Troia. “It art most disconcerting.” “…and because I respect your right and capability to follow your own road!” CSFB! shouted. “All I wanted to do was help you to lighten up a bit and offer you some emotional support if and when you ever needed it, but apparently that isn’t enough for you! I don’t meet your standards? Fine. I accept that. You deserve to be with someone who's everything you want. If that's not me, then don't sell yourself short by settling for less. But I refuse to lie to you, or myself, by pretending to be something that I'm not, and I will NOT stand for you trying to force me to live a lie like that. Since you can't deal with that, I'll make this easy. From now on, you don't have to deal with it, or ME, ever again.” “Er…” Finny interrupted. He was comfortable leading superheroes on cosmic quests. This relationships stuff was well beyond him. “Even if we couldn't work things out between us, I would have liked for us to stay friends, but I guess that's not going to happen now, is it?” Dream challenged Cobra. “Have a nice life, Christine.” And he stalked off towards the lake. “That… that did not just happen,” Troia gasped. “Good riddance to the little punk,” Cobra snorted, turning away and walking off in the opposite direction. “I’m not so sure, Cobra,” Dancer warned the serpent-woman’s receding back. “I think you might just have made the biggest mistake of your life.” So,” Space Ghost asked, “how are we going to find this alien machine then?” “What do you mean, you don’t know how to operate the sensory apparatus?” the Public Accoster screamed at the new Senior Communications Officer. “Well, s-sir, you see, it’s only my third week in the Glorious Imperial Fifth Skree Interstellar Assault Fleet, and I haven’t done sensory apparatus yet, and you killed all the officers who do know…” Dronon vaporised him anyway. “Right,” he sighed. “We know the location of the ancient alien machinery, right? It’s logical that some of the Sol III metahumans will be looking for it as well. We’ll send an assault force down to wait there for them, capture them for questioning back home, then eliminate all life on this miserable ball of mud and get back to the glories of Skree-Lump. Any questions?” Nobody else wanted to be vaporised just then, so that was the plan they went with. “Why didn’t you mention this earlier, Space Ghost?” Finny challenged the man who traditionally squatted in the Lair Legion’s broom cupboard. “I mean, we have been traversing the planet for two days looking for the damn machinery.” “We were all having such fun with our campouts and all,” SG sniffed. “It seemed a shame to spoil it all by mentioning that the machinery was phased out of reality.” “So all we have to do to get it out is find the right dimensional frequency to bring it to where we are now,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! grinned, his previous ill-humour forgotten; except that he and Cobra were avoiding each other. “Boy, where’s the Flash when we really need him?” “Donar has some dimension-spanning properties in Mjalcolm, doesn’t he?” Troia suggested. “Well Donar would have,” ManMan growled. The hemigod looked at his baseball-bat-with-a-nail-in-the-end doubtfully. “I dost have some such ability, ‘tis true,” he admitted, “but to find yon correct vibrational frequency ist an incredible longshot.” “And that’s my speciality,” Dancer reminded them all. “I’ll do my Flashdance special, you wave your big stick about, and we’ll see if we can’t bring this device that’s keeping us on the planet right here to us.” “She’s going to dance?” ManMan smiled. “Do I have time to go back to Paradopolis for my videocam?” The combination probability-dance and hefting of big enchanted stick worked after only an hour or so of exertion. A vast shining engine of a similar size to Paradopolis itself shimmered into view, hovering over the ocean. “Uh-oh,” worried Knifey. “Uh-oh?” Joe Pepper prompted. “Uh-oh I recognise the metal that thing’s made of,” Knifey answered. “It does look somewhat like the material those Celestian Space Robots were constructed from,” Cobra admitted, staring up at the monolithic structure. “That would make this a Celestian artefact, right?” “No wonder it had the power to transport a city across the universe and to inhibit Lisa’s summonsing power,” Finny realised. “I wonder if Thugos knows what he’s tampering with here?” “Thou canst bet he does,” Donar growled. “And thou canst bet he’s going to wisheth he had ne’er started when I rammeth yon artefact up his…” “We’d better get up there and find a way in,” suggested Dancer hastily. Then the neural paralysis ray caught her in the back and toppled her to the ground. “An attack!” Cobra warned, spinning round and nailing three of the assault-armoured Skree shocktroopers with her banana gun. “Ah, this is better!” Finny approved. He could handle things like this. “Hold it, Finny, you’re in charge!” ManMan called to the massive dragon as he prepared to launch himself into action. “Remember the mission objective. We’ll hold off these Skree guys, you take half the team and break into that big Celestian whatzit. Go!” “You’re right, dammit!” snarled the Makluan, spraying the Skree assault canon emplacement with nuclear fire. “Donar, with me. And you two.” Seizing up the nearest pair of Legionnaires he winged his way through the hover-platforms and approached the artefact. It was only then that he realised he had CrazySugarFreakBoy! and Cobra in his draconic claws. “Brilliant strategy, Joe!” Troia shouted at ManMan as the three remaining Legionnaires struggled to hold off the ground assault troops. “Send all the useful heroes off to deal with the Celestian thingie and leave me battling alongside you and Space Ghost.” “I’ll have you know that I’m at my best fighting against impossible odds,” ManMan replied huffily, cutting through an attacker’s energy-hoses with Knifey. “And I have a super-powerful grip.” Troia pulled her spear out from one assault trooper and introduced it to another while deflecting neural disruption pulses with her wristband. “Not a super-powerful grip on reality,” she replied. “Have you seen how many bad guys there are here. And all we have is a talking knife, an Amazon war spear, and a…” “Spaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnkkkkkkkkkk Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy!” Space Ghost contributed. “Uh, you’re pointing your gun straight upwards,” ManMan pointed out. “You’re not actually going to hit anything.” “What the hell was that?” Security Operations Officer asked as the entire ship was rocked by a powerful impact.” “Umm, something nasty?” Acting Senior Communications Officer answered. “All these red light thingies have come on, and I don’t think we have decks eight to eleven anymore.” Then, reverting to her basic training for her usual function she asked, “Would you like fries with that?” “Here it comes again!” Senior Navigation Officer warned. “It’s some kind of cosmic-level impellor beam! Our shields can’t deflect it! Brace for collision!” “Sure I am,” Space Ghost smiled happily. “It’s just a long way off.” “That is quite enough!” Dronon the Public Accoster commanded, pointing his Rod of Importance at the remaining heroes. There was a sound like a fat guy after a bad curry, a smell of ozone, and ManMan, Troia, and Space Ghost were hurled to the floor. “Better,” he considered. The remaining Skree stormtroopers moved in to check that the four prisoners were properly subdued. “Hands off the goods, buddy,” Knifey warned as one of them picked him up. The man of the Skree dropped the knife as if it was red hot. “Your worshipfulness!” he screeched. “Your worshipfulness!!!” “What is it, minion?” Dronon demanded, striding over Troia and Dancer to look down at the fallen ManMan. “That… that blade…!” the trooper stuttered. “What about it?” the Public Accoster asked, crossly. “It… it… sir, I think it is the Blade of Fonn-Duu!” “Of course I’m not,” Knifey answered gruffly. “You have no idea how many people make that same silly mistake.” Even Dronon had taken a step back. “The Blade of Fonn-Duu, founder of the glorious Skree star empire,” he breathed. “This changes everything.” “How dost we get into yon box of tricks?” Donar demanded as Mjalcolm bounced harmlessly off the surface of the Space Robot artefact for the eleventh time. “It’s impervious to heat and force, that much is obvious,” Fin Fang Foom considered. “We need another approach. Cobra, can you gimmick that lock?” “What makes you think I’m some kind of thief?” the serpent-woman demanded sulkily. “Cobra, open the damn lock!” Finny roared. Cobra produced some long thin tools from various parts of her costume and fiddled with the mechanism. In less than two minutes there was a twang, a massive hatchway sprang open, and an energy blast powered Cobra off the side of the device. “I’ve got ‘er!” CSFB! called, hurling himself away from the artefact as well, grasping the prone snake-assassin, then hurling his yo-yo to wrap around a Kirbyeque power nodule before swinging them both to safety. He gave her a reluctant glance before dumping her onto the decking. Donar was looking at the complicated mechanisms before them. “Er, I art somewhat unsure as to which lever to be pullingeth,” he admitted. “Mayhap some of this equipment didst teleport us here, and more couldst return us, but I art unsure which it which.” “I don’t think it matters what you twist or pull,” CSFB! advised him. “This stuff is so complex that it can probably work out what we think we want to happen anyway. Just flick some switches and hope.” A blistering energy bolt seared Fin Fang Foom’s hide. “It’s the Skree again,” he snarled, annoyed and hurt. “Excuse me a moment.” He rose to the air to have words with the Skree flying wing. “There’s an awful lot of ships out there,” CSFB! warned. “Do something fast Donar.” “Aye!” the hemigod of thunder agreed. “Rise tempests! Let the clouds crack! Come forth, winds from the four corners of the world. Be loosed, lightnings all! Release thy wrath ‘pon the cowardly scum who attacketh us like jackals. Let Mjalcolm sing the doom-song of the Skree!” Suddenly the sky was black with a tropical storm and the Skree craft were slapped out of the sky by hurricane winds. “I, er, I meant with the control panel,” CSFB! clarified. “But this is good too.” Finny fought his was down to join them. “Even this won’t hold them off forever,” he warned. “Let’s take a risk and hope that Lisa and the others found the command mechanism under Paradopolis.” He flipped a switch. There was a release of energies which rippled across the galaxy. Other Celestian machines elsewhere on the planet hummed into life even as this one evaporated. Every circuit in every piece of equipment of the Skree assault team simultaneously fried. In space the damaged Mother of All Starships rocked and bucked and survived with the emergency back up systems to the emergency back up systems only functioning. Four heroes were teleported far from the world they came from or had currently been. Dronon the Accoster knew when he’d had enough. “Get those four prisoners secured,” he ordered this troops once a second team had been sent to rescue the first. “Get us off this miserable planet. Launch the Terminizer to deal with the rest. Then limp us home at best speed we can manage. We have a lot to report.” Wherever Finny, Donar, CSFB! and Cobra had gone, Troia, ManMan, Space Ghost and Dancer were going to Skree-Lump. Next episode: It’s back to Paradopolis to see how Enty, DK, Hatty, Yo and friends are coping with the city’s biggest crisis. See the political machinations of Pierson’s Porter. Learn what bargain Exile must make to save Valeria. Thrill as more superheroes than could fit in a George Perez panel assemble to deal with the crisis. Oh, and remember that Terminizer thingie? All this and the history of the mysterious planet in Untold Tales of Paradopolis: It Just Feels Like there are Five Million Stories in the Big City with a Cast This Huge Slightly corrected version |
| #50: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion Lost in Space: Digging Deep (The Hooded Hood ) (04-Jun-2000 17:01:38) |
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