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#56: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Home is Where the Alien Invasion Fleet Is Sunday, 23-Jul-2000 08:06:22
#56: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Home is Where the Alien Invasion Fleet Is NOTE: Those who feel the need to catch up with their Untold Tales reading can find the previous chapters of this story at The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom. This particular story begins at #45. Those who are baffled by the vast number of characters wandering around can find most (but not all) of them at The Who’s Who of the Parodyverse, although I’ll be very disappointed with my efforts if you actually need to go and look people up because I’m not giving you the necessary and proper information in the story. Those wondering how Goldeneyed is doing since he vanished into his sub-plot a couple of issues ago should take a look at Kirk Boxleitner’s epic Tie-In to Untold Tales Of The Lair Legion: Take It To The Rush Hour … Three Cousins, Three Dimensionally Displaced Good Guys, An Infinite Line of CrazySugarSuperHeroes!, And The Obligatory Team-up , which I guess is #55½, and will continue with sections from Amazing Guy and Goldeneyed before culminating in the final part of the Untold Tale going on here. And so, on with the show… The giant rat loomed over the city. It was easily fifty times taller than the Twin Paradopolis Tower and it cast a shadow from Off-Centre Park and the Pierce Heights to the suburbs of Shelton and Carrington. And, as they had to any number of bizarre menaces which had threatened the Big Banana over the last few days, the ragged, weary heroes of the city reacted. Jack Rabbit, the Green Ninja, Lynx, Captain Astounding, Dynamite Boy, and Frog Man – the Paradopolis Irregulars – jetted their skycycles towards the menace. “It’s too big for conventional explosives,” Green Ninja worried. “How the hell can something be that big?” “I’m not a conventional explosive,” boasted Dynamite Boy. “We’ve got to stop it,” Frog-Man told them. “We have to. All the other heroes are dead now. We’re the last hope of the city, the last hope of mankind.” Then his skycycle impacted with the invisible barrier between the city and the rat, exploding and killing him instantly. “Wheel round!” Lynx warned, twisting his own vehicle to barely avoid the same unseen obstruction. “I’m wheeling! I’m wheeling!” Captain Astounding promised, struggling not to stall his own flier. “Who designed these damn things?” “The Superhuman Principle Undercover Directorate,” Green Ninja answered, “but they’re designed for competent pilots.” “I think Froggie landed somewhere down in the Boxleitner Sewage Works,” Jack Rabbit reported. “It’ll be a while before he comes back to life from this one.” The man in the rabbit suit was referring to Frog Man’s superhuman power of self-resurrection. “In the meantime, what do we do about that thing?” Dynamite Boy demanded, gesturing to the giant rodent. “We… we can take it,” Jack Rabbit assumed him, unconfidently. “In your dreams, microcephalic overevolved simianform,” the two mile high rat answered them. Davidowitz turned away from examining the bottled city. “What a bunch of losers,” the genetically-modified rat snickered. “Do they even know that their city has been shrunk to the size of a Lego model and placed in a dimensional confinement bottle?” “I imagine not,” the diabolical Dr Moo replied, looking up from the work she was inspecting. “After all, none of the heroes are the brightest of light bulbs, and the few that seem to be left active inside the city are definitely the shallow end of the gene pool.” “Why did you do it?” Miss Framlicker asked, hovering behind the archvillainesses’ shoulder as her calculations were checked. “Why put the whole city in some kind of container?” “We had to get off the planet where Paradopolis had been transported to,” Pierson’s Porter cut in, striding back into the room to add another component to the device he was constructing. “We didn’t have the time to build up an energy transfer sufficient to move a full-sized city, so this was the expedient next step.” “And are you intending to let the city out again any time soon?” the flying messenger boy Nats challenged. Nats and Miss Framlicker had deserted the ranks of the heroes preparing to defend Earth from the invasion fleet which had originally stolen Paradopolis, to join in Pierson’s Porter’s plan. Of course, PP and Dr Moo didn’t know that Nats’ brain was currently also carrying the mind of Baron Heinrich Zemo, and was therefore up to something nefarious. “Of course not,” PP replied. “I’m going to need to move it again before the Earth is destroyed.” “I… I thought you said you were going to save everybody,” Miss Framlicker ventured. “Everybody important, yes,” Pierson’s Porter answered. “That’s why I have allowed you and your… flunkey to assist in the preparation of another dimensional transportation portal. When Dark Thugos’ Skree invasion fleet lands we shall simply step over to Mars, lie low while the slaughter is carried out here, do a bit of terraforming to keep us occupied, then release Paradopolis there in its new permanent location.” “There should be a viable breeding population,” Dr Moo assured the newcomers. “There’s about fifty million people in that bottle.” “With a combined IQ of about seventy-five million,” snickered Davidowicz. “It’s good to have a plan,” Nats agreed. “What are you doing Visionary.” The reluctant leader of the Lair Legion - and currently of the besieged planet - looked up and saw Asil Ashling, Lisa’s nicer, younger clone, watching him curiously from the doorway of his office. “I was… inputting data into the computer,” Vizh answered. “I was not aware that hammering the keyboard with your shoe and shouting ‘boot, dammit’ was an effective way of doing that,” Asil noted. “I have so much to learn.” “Er, yes,” the possibly fake man evaded. “I was just trying to get HALLIE back online. She’s somewhere off in the virtual world with Fleabot, but frankly given the prevalence of alarmingly huge Deathworlds hovering over our planet, and the spearhead invasion forces being tackled by our rag-tag assembly of remaining heroes in all the world’s major capitals, this isn’t a good time for her vacation.” Asil deftly hit three keys and the virtual face of the Lair Legion’s semi-resident computer consciousness flickered into life. “I’m sure that’s not as good as the way you were doing it,” Asil admitted to Vizh, anxious not to displease him.” “That’s… that’s quite alright, Asil. Well done.” “External sensors are detecting radiation bursts, explosions across the planet, people screaming, buildings collapsing,” HALLIE noted. “What’s NTU-150 done now?” “It’s not Enty,” Vizh explained it’s…” “spiffy?” Fleabot guessed, shimmering out of nano-size now his consciousness was no longer in virtual space. “Hey, who redecorated your wall with that human silhouette?” “Not spiffy. Alien invaders. Again,” Visionary told them, his scowl intensifying. “The mark on the wall is what’s left of Zemo’s body, except for the bits Nats scraped off it, since of course naturally Zemo is now sharing Nats’ body. And the Lair Legion are apparently dead or lost in space or something which leaves Fetish Lad as our heavy hitter in the struggle against being slaughtered by Dark Thugos and his band of pointlessly homicidal psychopaths. And once we’ve dealt with DorkWorld or whatever it’s called then there’s a bigger, nastier, Skree/Skunk combined invasion force right after it. And frankly you have no idea how much the hell this is pissing me off right now!” Fleabot had seen Visionary in many moods, but not this one. “Er, okay. So what do we do?” Visionary told them. “Why are we here?” Lynx asked the Green Ninja as they trudged over the festering mountains of the Paradopolis Municipal Dump. An occasional refugee giant reptile or serpent warrior from the Prison Planet was still hiding out in the wasteland of debris and had to be taken care of, but that wasn’t the objective of the visit. “I want to check something,” the Ninja explained. “And this urge is more important than trying to keep a lid on what’s happening in the City? Since we lost the Mayor and the Lair Legion, and in fact apparently the planet we were on, it’s getting harder and harder to control the riots and keep the foodstuff distributions safe and orderly. We don’t exactly have a lot of material to work with in Jack Rabbit and Dynamite Boy and friends.” “Rabbit’s infernal unrealistic optimism will keep things going for a while longer,” judged the Ninja. “I’m more interested in what got us in this position. I’m looking for Hunter Victorious.” “HV? What has he got to do with it?” “He went missing somewhere round here just before the city gained that strange energy wall and the planet around us vanished,” Green Ninja noted. “He’s the only hero in the city who’s unaccounted for, unless there really is a Saint, and I want to find out what he knows, and why he was here at the very border of our lost City just when things went to maximum weirdness.” “I think the Saint programme was discontinued,” Lynx answered. “They knew it was too… What’s this?” He paused to look over a stale pool of milk puddled on the ground. A ring of dead vermin had clearly been trying to drink from it. “The trademark of Pierson’s Porter’s first lady, the mad geneticist Dr Moo,” Green Ninja noted. “Somebody fired an udder gun round here.” “That pile of garbage over there seems somewhat contrived,” Lynx observed. He leapt nimbly atop the structure and kicked one of the sides over. Within was a cage or genetically-modified bone. It was still growing, but growing inwards, its razor sharp tines extending a few inches each hour and pressing ever nearer the two restrained heroes trapped inside the box. “About time you got here,” Hunter Victorious told the rescuers. “My tactile control over organic matter is being blocked by these spikes, and something in the nature of the box prevents our traitorous comrade Saint from shifting out in his smoke form.” “I’m not traitor,” Saint growled. “I did what was necessary to save Paradopolis. I planted and activated the devices that would shrink us to our current size and bottle us. It was the only way to get us off that planet before those Celestians destroyed it. I’m the one who was betrayed, by Moo.” Lynx managed to break his way through to drag the two bickering heroes to freedom. “Well whatever you did, we have to… did you just say Paradopolis was shrunk into a bottle?” “The city really is Pierson’s Porter’s toy now,” snarled HV. Zemo and Nats were having an argument. “No!” Nats told the intruder in his brain. “We’ve gotta save Earth as well. I won’t do it unless you save Earth.” “You truly believe you can prevent me from doing anything I like with this body?” Zemo challenged. “I admit to having to overcome some of your more intemperate urges, such as the desire to consume that Italian savoury dish with the anchovies atop it…” “Only a really evil villain wouldn’t like pizza!” “Or the urge to just reach out and snap Porter’s annoying alien neck…” “I thought that one was your urge and I was resisting it,” admitted Nats. “On the other hand…” “But never forget that you are a sad failure of a flying delivery boy and I am Heinrich, twelfth Baron Zemo…” “Who’s been trying to take over the world for sixty years and still hasn’t got it right,” Nats shot back. “I am biding my moment, you nonentity,” the archvillain growled. “But I assure you that once I have reconstituted my true body destroyed by Thugos’ Entropy Eyebeams and do take my place as supreme dictator of this miserable planet then you will be the first to suffer my wrath!” “Well in the meantime you’re only a guest here in Bill Reed, so behave,” Nats warned. Miss Framlicker noticed the strange expressions playing over Nats’ face as the internal dialogue too place. “Are you alright?” she wondered. “I still haven’t worked out why you forced us to come here in the first place. Or why the heroes let us go.” “I will show you who is master here,” Zemo told Nats. “I beg your pardon?” Miss Framlicker responded, one perfect eyebrow raised. “Uh-uh. You’re gonna learn your place!” Nats told the archvillain. “Am I now?” Miss Framlicker answered dangerously. “I shall crush all resistance and reign supreme!” boasted Zemo. “Indeed?” scowled Miss Framlicker. “Forget it,” Nats shouted. “This body’s mine!” Miss Framlicker’s knee impacted with Nats’ groin. Hard. “Take this, you sleazebucket!” she told him. Then she spun on her heels and marched away as the hero crumpled to the floor. “I win!” Zemo crowed. “You may notice Nats that I arranged so that you occupied the part of the brain where the pain centre is.” “Tactical reports show that so far we’ve managed to keep these bozos contained,” Dan Drury reported to the War Cabinet in the Lair Mansion’s Meeting Room. “The attacks on th’ various world capitals were more designed to scare us than hurt us and we repelled the last of them about an hour ago.” “If they were meant to scare me, they worked,” Cheryl admitted. “Blighters needed to be shown we wouldn’t fold just because they have planet-destroyin’ weaponry and an overwhelmin’ military superiority,” Mumphrey noted. “The forces on Deathworld are rather more dangerous,” the Director of SPUD continued. “We haven’t heard from the taskforce we sent in there for almost an hour, although we’ve registered some pretty big explosions.” “They’re surviving,” the Manga Shoggoth reported from the corner where he was bundled up in an old duffel coat. “But given there’s millions of battle-trained mercenary warriors there with advanced killing technology they’re having a hard time of it. And then there’s Onslaughter. Hard to stop nine tons of genetically-bred psionic killing machine.” “I thought you were going with them?” Cheryl ventured to ask the Elder being from the Dawn of Time. “I am,” bubbled the Shoggoth. “But I wanted to be here too, in case something goes badly wrong up there. I can always generate more protoplasm.” “I see,” Cheryl lied. “And has anybody come up with a way to overcome the laws of physics that say that when something the size of a moon gets blown up less than five thousand miles from Earth and its gravitational nullifiers are no longer stopping us being pulled out of orbit and cracked like an egg we aren’t all going to die?” she wondered. “I believe Xander said something about dealin’ with it,” recalled Sir Mumphrey Wilton. “With the Manga Shoggoth.” “We are,” the Shoggoth reported enigmatically. “Even as we speak.” “Bottled?” Jack Rabbit worried. “We’re in a bottle?” “That’s right,” Hunter Victorious repeated again. “We have been captured in a bottle, and are currently back on Earth in Pierson’s Porter’s laboratory. I image he will be making plans to take us off-world again soon if the heroes cannot prevent the Skree invasion.” “I’m only a few inches high?” “You’re smaller than a mote of dust,” HV replied, in tones which suggested he felt that Jack’s intellect was even smaller. “So what do we do?” Saint had the answer. “We shatter the bottle.” “I’ve been watching you,” Miss Framlicker told the diabolical Dr Moo. Moo looked up from her microscopic studies of the bottled Paradopolis. “I trust it was instructional,” she shrugged. “I think it was,” Miss Framlicker replied. “He thinks you’re following him, doesn’t he?” The scientist from the Interdimensional Transportation Corporation flicked a thumb over to where Pierson’s Porter was calibrating the dimensional jump point. “And aren’t I?” the archvillainess challenged. “I don’t think so,” Miss Framlicker answered. “I think you’re studying him.” “Heh, this one’s observant,” chuckled Davidowicz. “Better dissect her early.” “After all,” Miss Framlicker continued, “he is an alien lifeform and you are the world’s foremost geneticist. And I imagine he has access to a lot of equipment and scientific knowledge that our world has never even seen yet.” “An interesting theory,” Dr Moo noted. “Now get back to your work.” “We all have our studies,” Miss Framlicker concluded, returning to help Nats with the last connections on the transmat device. Xander the Improbable floated inside the Manga Shoggoth in deep space and flicked beads on his abacus. “I hate non-Euclidean mathematics,” he admitted. “Seven and thirty-one make yellow.” “Well if you want to divert the whole gravity phenomenon and the debris from Doomworld from shattering the Earth then you’d better get over your distaste,” the Shoggoth advised. “Although at the moment Amazing Guy and his team are pretty much stalled fighting Onslaughter.” The Shoggoth winced as his other self watched the battle. “Ouch. Another limb snapped.” “They don’t need to destroy Deathworld,” Xander noted. “All they have to do…(square root of negative one into cherry pi)… is defeat Onslaughter enough to provoke Dark Thugos into losing his temper. Thugos will probably destroy Deathworld himself in a fit of pique.” The master of the mystic crafts looked up at the distant black metal spacestation. “At least I’m hoping so.” “What are the chances?” the Shoggoth wondered. “One in Teletubbies,” Xander answered honestly. “I still don’t understand where you’re going to get the energies to transfer something into this plane to balance the energies and debris you’re trying to send the other way,” questioned the Manga Shoggoth. “I mean, and don’t take this personally, I have never actually seen you work magic of any kind, and a planet-sized dimensional rift transfer seems just a little ambitious.” “I have some retcon-stuff loaned me by the Hooded Hood for my help in his Dreary Dimension gambit,” Xander explained. [You DID catch that point from Untold Tales #22, didn’t you?] “And that should be enough to encourage the person I’m calling on to enable the rest of the transfer by returning themselves to this dimension.” “And that would be?” the Shoggoth wondered. “Shabba’Dhabba’Dhu, the Groper out of Grossness? The Ausgardian All-Pappy? The Austernal Uni-Brain? Blackhurt? Galactivac the Living Death that Sucks? I know the Chronicler of Stories won’t help you in a situation like this…” Xander told him. “Aw no!” the Manga Shoggoth protested. “Not him again! You can’t set him free. Let’s go with the Groper out of Grossness. Please!” “Well, he is one of the Signs and Portents,” the eccentric mage conceded. “He has to appear sometime before the Resolution War starts.” “But he’s so bloody irritating!” the Shoggoth protested. “Can’t we go with Blackhurt? That’s only hell on Earth?” “Too late,” the newcomer told them. “You called. I’m back. And not before time, if I may say so.” “Just what we needed to complicate the universe,” muttered the Manga Shoggoth. “The return of the Paradox Stranger!” Natalia Romanza, the finest spy in the world, had deactivated the defences around Pierson’s Porter’s temporary headquarters in the downstate Paradopolis foothills with an efficient ease. After all, Moo and PP had usurped one of Baron Zemo’s many hidden bases, and the espionage agent had worked for Zemo long ago. Zemo was a man of habit, and once you knew the patterns to his deathtraps it was fairly easy to avoid them – assuming you were Natalia Romanza. Now she looked down from the traditional ducting as the Framlicker woman from the Interdimensional Development Corporation argued with Zemo, or perhaps with Zemo’s host body. “I’m confused, Nats. First you insist we join Mayor Porter and assist in his…evacuation plans, and now you want to sabotage the dimensional portal so he can’t get Paradopolis to safety?” “I needed the alien to construct the dimensional gateway, but I have a very different use for it than the one Porter has planned for it,” Nats/Zemo replied. “However, the alien has now outlived his usefulness, and I require your assistance in destroying him.” “Destroying him? Nats, that doesn’t sound like your style at all.” “Well, perhaps I should have said whup his tush, but today I just feel like destroying somebody,” Nats/Zemo snarled. “Right?” “And how do you plan to destroy Pierson’s Porter, exactly?” Pierson’s Porter demanded, appearing at the doorway, flashlight laser and variable sword in hand. The former already had its red sighting dot shone on Nats’ chest, while the latter consisted only of a handle, a shining point three feet away, and a monofilament that could slash through virtually anything between them. “Did you not imagine that I would set the sensors of this primitive fortress to keep a watch on two such sudden converts to my cause?” “Of course,” Nats/Zemo sneered. “Did you not imagine that we would realise that, and choose to make our declaration to the Framlicker woman now to bring you out of hiding to our chosen execution zone?” “That is self-evident,” scorned Pierson’s Porter. “Had you no thought to how I have suborned Zemo’s lair’s internal defence systems and can now utilise them as well as my own supreme Puppeteer technology to accomplish your doom?” “Indeed I have,” replied Zemo/Nats, “Did it not occur to you that I might possess override codes for those defences, and be able to seize control of them while making it appear to you that you still had command of them?” “I plan for all contingencies, however remote,” PP shot back. “Were you truly hoping that in all that time I spent examining Zemo’s control systems I did not install a back-door into his back door, thus allowing me to override your override?” “Exactly what I would have done,” Zemo/Nats admitted, “but surely you knew that Zemo would expect you to place a back-door in his back-door and thus have prepared another back-door into your back door, thus overriding your override to his override?” “I knew it well,” the alien glowered, “ and thus prepared methods of eradicating Zemo’s override to my override, meaning that when he attempted to use his back door into my back door he would find instead a mock back-door, giving him only the illusion of having control over his control systems. How could you expect differently?” Zemo opened Nats’ mouth to reply to the latest retort, but Bill Reed had a different way of doing things, and so arced the body up into the air away from the laser-target spot, barrel-rolled over the distance between himself and PP, and planted a boot into the alien’s face. Pierson’s Porter replied with a variable sword slash that was just fast enough to cut a thin gash across Nats’ chest. Then the battle began in earnest. Pierson’s Porter activated his Tasp, the pleasure-centre controlling brain-modifier which had once enslaved Lisa. Nats suddenly found himself very, very happy; but the part of his mind that controlled Zemo was much less contented, and the Baron kicked out, twisting the variable sword from Pierson’s Porter’s hand and using it to slice the Tasp device in two. Miss Framlicker took shelter under a control desk as both men began shouting commands at the base’s automated defence systems at once. The confused systems, riddled with so many backdoors as to have virtually no other structures left, responded in the interim by firing off random plasma blasts across the room, electrifying all the doors, and dialling 911 to the Guatemalan central police station. It then sought assistance in deciding what to do next by referring to the person who was sitting in its core ducting hardwiring new commands into it. “Kill both of them,” Natalia Romanova told it. Zemo/Nats manoeuvred through the suddenly-lethal laboratory, avoiding the plasma cannon blasts and the searing sheets of laser-fire from Pierson’s Porter. The Nats part handled the flying, while the Zemo part deflected laser-fire with the purloined variable sword – until Pierson’s Porter depressed a micro-switch on his wristwatch and the tiny ball at the sword’s end went black, fell off, and rolled across the floor. “My toys,” PP smirked. “You can’t play with them.” The alien’s pleasure as Nats took a laser-shot through the shoulder when his defence failed was somewhat marred when the control panel behind him exploded at Zemo’s command, showering him with molten fragments of metal and hurling him to the floor. There he was easy prey for the plasma cannons and his personal energy-deflectors began to buckle under the strain. “Perfect,” Natalia Romanza smiled to herself. “This one’s for you, Carl.” Then she slithered off up the duct to the holding bay to retrieve the bottled city of Paradopolis. She could be out of there with it and back on the SPUD helicarrier within thirty minutes. The lights went out all across the hidden base. Emergency back-ups flickered on and then likewise failed. “What?” Zemo demanded, his professional pride dented by this failure. “What have you done to my systems, Porter?” “Your systems?” the alien answered back, in the darkness. “Of course! You must house the intellect of the late, friend Baron. No wonder you were able to survive combat with me for almost ten minutes.” “Hey, I don’t need no Zemo to kick your mayoral butt!” Nats shouted out. “Electronics don’t work too well when they’re clogged with fluids,” a cool, female voice explained from the darkness. “Such as milk.” “Doctor Moo?” Nats recognised. “Indeed. I’m afraid I’ve concluded my studies here, and it’s time to tidy up the research area and go home.” “Darling, what do you mean?” Pierson’s Porter called into the darkness. “I mean, my dear, that the honeymoon is over. You were an interesting case study, but you didn’t ever seriously believe I would subordinate my own goals to your near-sighted little power fantasies, did you?” “Ouch!” Nats winced. “Way to be dumped by your girlfriend dude.” “Moo!” Zemo called, using the same voice as Nats but very different tones. “It is I, Heinrich Zemo, in this body. You will now assist me in the destruction of Pierson’s Porter.” “Ah yes, Zemo. I spotted you earlier, of course. Something about the walk, and the Teutonic arrogance, I think. You were also an interesting case study, but like PP here you seem to forget that I am an accomplished plotter in my own right, and have my own agendas to pursue. As I no longer require Pierson’s Porter, I no longer require you for that.” “Moo!” PP called, “Daio…!” “Don’t worry, darling,” she told him, “I won’t let you pine for me. I’ve incorporated a parasitic micro-organism into both of your intestinal tracts which will be activating about now, so after about thirty minutes you will both die in appalling agony. Fortunately I have set the base to explode in five minutes. Don’t let anyone say I’m not an old soppy. In the meantime you can writhe there and think of me. Goodbye.” Nats and Pierson’s Porter both suddenly doubled over as the cramps began. “But I have an advanced alien physiology,” PP protested as he clutched his stomach. “Yeah,” Davidowicz agreed, “Moo found that a real challenge. Have a nice squirm, sucker!” All in all it was a very effective plan. The only bit that went slightly wrong from the diabolical Dr Moo’s point of view was that when she went to abscond with the Bottled Paradopolis it had already gone. She watched the muted underground explosions as the secret base destructed with a professional detachment. “What’s next on the schedule, Davidowicz?” she asked her rat lab assistant. Epilogue 1: Onslaughter raked his indestructible bone-ridges across Amazing Guy’s chest and hurled him backwards towards the other battered heroes who had dared assault his Deathworld. Plumes of flame burst up around him as the nuclear generators exploded down in the vast interior of the battle planet. His world was wounded but not defeated. He could still bring things back under control. All he had to do was rip off the head of the annoying little energy-construct-making hero who bled in front of him. Then there was the boom of a Doom Tube opening, with a force sufficient even to stagger Onslaughter, and Dark Thugos himself stood amidst the chaos, surveying the scene with his hands behind his back. Onslaughter sensed his ruler’s dispeasure. He attempted to explain, only to be seared by his master’s wrath. It seemed that Onslaughter was not completely indestructible after all; and the word for something which is not completely indestructible is ‘destructible’. The Dark Thugos unleashed his awesome Entropy Eyebeams, the legacy of his investigations into the Sauce, the fundamental medium of the Parodyverse. Those brilliant beams, shining like tears in the fabric of reality, stabbed down into the heart of the Deathworld, splitting it asunder, rupturing it like a rotten sack of maggots. “We’ve got to get out of here!” LightningJarvis realised as the whole structure began to fail. “We must activate the return mechanism and go back to the future (heroes of the Lair Legion of Superheroes of the thirty-third century had returned to participate in this crucial struggle, without ever asking how this had been made possible, or seeing a certain cowled crime-czar’s hand behind it). “Get everyone together.” “Go with them,” Amazing Guy told Multiple Woman. “Get them to drop you in the near future, if there is one. Take Swift and Jackie Rabbit and Kid Produce and anyone else you can find. I’ll… I’ll try and join you later.” “Scott…” she began. “No time, love,” Amazing Guy told her, grabbing her for one last, desperate, passionate kiss. “I’ve got to stop Thugos and you’ve gotta go. So go!” “It’s now or never!” LightningJarvis warned. Amazing Guy just had time to see his wife and friends vanish before the planet exploded around him. Epilogue 2: “There goes Deathworld,” Xander noted. “Right on time. Thugos does have a nasty temper, doesn’t he.” “The dimensional transfer is complete,” the Paradox Stranger reported. “All that nasty gravitational pulse and the radioactive debris is tidied away, and I’m back.” “Oh good,” grumbled the Manga Shoggoth. “Now if you’ll excuse me I’ve got to rendezvous with a somewhat mangled bit of me from that wreckage, which contains a rather charred Pigeonman.” “Hmm,” Xander considered, as he watched a single blazing comet burst down through Earth’s atmosphere and impact somewhere in Canada. “Looks like we haven’t seen the last of Onslaughter yet either.” He turned to ask the Paradox Stranger’s opinion on the villain’s survival chances; but the Paradox Stranger was gone. For now. Epilogue 3: “Keep battering away!” Jack Rabbit encouraged the others. “HV says if we can breach this interstitial forcefield we should be free of the shrinking effect and return the city to its normal size.” “What I actually said,” Hunter Victorious corrected the enthusiastic new hero, “was that if we breached the barrier and were not destroyed by the spacial vortex differentials, then we might return to our proper size.” “Yeah, whatever,” Dynamite Boy shrugged. “Now stand back while I give this my best shot. It’ll take me about half an hour to reform from this one.” “Yeah, that’s one plus,” muttered Saint. Perhaps it was the nuclear-level force of Dynamite Boy’s shaped detonation, or perhaps it was simply that separated from Pierson’s Porter’s power source the Bottle no longer had the energy to maintain its reduction field. Whatever the case, the glassy barrier around Paradopolis shattered, the whole city lurched and reeled for a moment, and everyone toppled over with nausea at their sudden return to true size. When the heroes dragged themselves to their feet they were under a normal sky, on their home world. “Nice going, you yahoos,” Dan Drury, agent of SPUD, told them from his aero-car. “But couldn’t ya wait like five minutes more till we’d gotten ya back where you came from? How the hell are we gonna explain a Paradopolis that’s shifted a mile down th’ coast from where it used ta be?” “Oops,” Saint winced. “Termites?” Jack Rabbit suggested. Epilogue 4: “Visionary, it’s over! They’ve done it! We’ve won!” Asil danced, dragging the leader of the Lair Legion away from HALLIE’s computer screen and outside where people where jumping up and down and celebrating; apart from a small crowd of teenage boys who were happier watching Meggan Foxxx jumping up and down and celebrating. “And Paradopolis is back!” Fetish Lad reported. “Er, almost.” “Reports just in,” Cheryl announced, “All the invasion forces have been contained or repelled. After Deathworld went up they folded like an NTU-150 deckchair.” “Stop it!” Visionary warned them all. “Stop being happy. You’re just setting things up for something even worse to happen.” The Skree/Skunk invasion fleet dropped out of warp and filled the skies. “Like that,” he concluded. Epilogue 5: “We have arrived, dread master,” Dronon the Public Accoster announced to the tyrant of the Sol Empire. “What shall we do with the people of Earth now?” “Kill them,” Dark Thugos commended. “Kill them all.” And still to come: Well, there’s probably an intermediate piece filling in the bits of the G-Eyed/Glitch story started by Kirk and continued by Bryan to be sorted out, which might see light as an Untold Tales episode, and then… …join us for the finale, the last, big, blowout battle at he end of the story, the resolution of Dark Thugos’ plans for the Earth and its remaining heroes,. the return of the Lair Legion with a few scores to settle, Onslaugter, Suicide Blonde, the Public Accoster, HuntingJustice DeathMarrow, and lots, lots more, in our Untold Tales Somewhat Belated Fiftieth Issue Celebration Special, which will also be my 100th BZL story (if you don’t count a few of them). Coming as soon as it’s written, but not before. The Hooded Hood continues the touching homefront story of the girls and guys the Lair Legion left behind |
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