#57: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Past Tense, Present Articles, Future Imperfect
Explanatory Note: In the original Great Plan for this story, the Goldeneyed adventure which ties in here somewhat was to be written in three parts by Kirk Boxleitner (CrazySugarFreakBoy), Scott Bryan (Amazing Guy), and Bry Kotyk (Goldeneyed). Kirk has already done his section, 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 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, but that tome, epic as it is, doesn’t feature the characters from the future mentioned later in this episode – yet..
, which I guess is #55½. Unfortunately, Scott has lost internet access at the crucial moment and is therefore unable to complete his piece. Hence the latter part of this additional chapter of Untold Tales continues that narrative, and hopefully sets things up for the next section by G-Eyed. The whole thing gets tied up in the concluding part of this Untold Tales arc. However, Scott has also written part of a variant version which he has been unable to get to us, so this account here may be a draft rather than the final story. If we get Scott’s stuff, we’ll post it.
The Paradopolis Municipal Library was designed in 1856 by Leyland Reed, the same architect responsible for the Sheldon Bay Bridge, the Old Paradopolis Variety Theatre, and the Gothametropolis City Hall. That meant it was heavy on gargoyles and chimerae, with high slate roof-turrets, weird garrets, and small leaded-glass windows. Inside the teak-panelled main rotunda Reed’s graceful marble columns rose the full height of the building, right up to the great glass dome through which the stars could be seen wheeling in their courses. The creature of wrath and destruction rose from the half-mile wide impact crater he had left when he had tumbled from space. He raised his bone-ridged head and sniffed the psychic spoor of the planet. He sensed a major habitation nearby, and his psionics abilities snatched the name out of the sheep-like consciousnesses of its mortal inhabitants: Manitoba. “I don’t like this,” Fin Fang Foom worried. “I don’t like this at all. Herringcarp Asylum isn’t supposed to be floating in space. It isn’t supposed to be anywhere at all now. And we shouldn’t just be sitting around having dinner with an archvillain.” ---------------------------- The death-grip closed tighter on Bryan Katz's throat, cutting off the last of his breath. Even as Goldeneyed scrabbled ineffectually to break free and wondered where his super-powers had gone, his assailant carved into his mind to drag out the information that interested the shadowy figure. The Hooded Hood smiled. Things were going very well indeed. In our honestly, definitely concluding chapter: The Lair Legion versus Dark Thugos, what else? Lots of baddies, things blow up, heartache and triumph, yadda yadda. All the stuff we promised in the last next issue box. And a celebratory 50th Anniversary special for Untold Tales, albeit a bit late. So come dressed up, bring a bottle and some cake, and don’t plan much for the following morning as we conclude the longest-running single story to date in the Parodyverse. Be there or you won’t know what we do to your character. Oh, and as an added extra bonus, here's the latest draft of the map of Paradopolis:
The Past:
Leyland Reed died screaming and insane in another of his greatest edifices, upstate Gothametropolis’ Herringcarp Asylum.
That was all long ago, of course. Reed was all but forgotten, a dusty unpolished plaque by the refurbished and modern steel and concrete entrance hall that a more contemporary architect had argued would strike a dynamic contract with the old heavy stone building. And the last man who had seriously understood the genius of Reed’s design, the senior librarian emeritus, had not been in to work since 1963. If and when Lucius Faust ever turned up again there would be trouble about the new foyer.
Since the cutbacks in library service budgets (the Mayor currently required funds to finance the demolition of the of the unsafe southern Twin Metropolis Tower) the public hours had been shortened, and the last librarian locked the door at 9.15pm sharp, leaving the library to its shadows and its silence. If the books whispered to one another in the darkness it was in tongues which human ears could never hear.
The Library Tower bell was striking the hour of ten when the dark-cloaked figure strode across the mosaic floor of the central rotunda. He carried an old-fashioned oil lantern, but the light that came from within it was brighter and bluer than would be expected from normal combustion. He moved past the entrance turnstyles and the blank-screened computer systems and made his way to the old paper card index, the hundreds of little drawers filled with yellowed rectangles written by hundreds of librarians outlining the hundreds of thousands of books which were deposited here. After a few minutes of flicking through the files with expert fingers he noted down a few index numbers and returned the cards to their proper places.
The intruder then strode off towards the metal spiral staircase which led to the upper floors. On the second balcony he took the archway into the Map Room. The cabinet he needed had been uncharacteristically left unlocked that night, so it was easy for him to pull out the rail of hanging maps and carefully examine the delicate parchments that dangled from it. He selected the drawing of his choice, an old street plan of Paradiopolis as it had been almost a century and a half ago, when the place had first taken its name from its refounder and benefactor Wilbur Parody, and carefully laid it on the table. Then he went back into the darkened storage areas beyond the Map Room, which again had been unaccountably left unsecured on this night alone.
The other shadowy figure watched him go, and satisfied that the intruder would be some time searching for whatever it was he required, swung himself down from the gallery above to look at the street plan laid on the reading table. Wangmundo had adopted the Paradopolis Municipal Library as his home, and felt he had a duty to protect the building and its contents from midnight invaders.
The map was an old ink drawing on canvas. Done in the old style where key buildings were shown in picture rather than floor outline, it depicted the gradually-growing city on the south bank of the river. Back then Gothemetropolis had been the larger and more important town. The map clearly indicated the reclaimed marshes which would one day become Carrington and Mangatown and Snyder Hollow, but which back then were mere farms and meadows and rank woodland. The main buildings were the City Hall, Parody Mansion on Parody Island (nowadays the headquarters of the superheroic Lair Legion), Paradopolis Cathedral, and the old Central Railway Station, long gone to make way for the shining new Parody Plaza and its Twin Parody Tower.
Wangmundo’s sensitive ears warned him that the intruder was returning, so he quickly slipped back into the shadows and watched to see what the invader would do next.
The man in the dark mantle laid a series of oilskin-wrapped packages on the reading desk. He examined the labels of each one by the light of his lantern, and finally found the one that interested him. He unpicked the string which bound it and unfolded a series of thin architects’ plans. Wangmundo caught his breath as he realised they were plans to this very building – plans which showed his secret crawlways and hidden chambers, which could reveal everything, which could leave him trapped and helpless, his fortress turned into a cage.
Without any sound, the beast leaped forward for the intruder’s throat.
Wangmundo fell hard onto the floor, sliding across its polished surface to slam into a bookcase. His target simply wasn’t where he had been. Instead he was watching the monster with a certain detached interest. Wangmundo charged again, more carefully this time, only to find himself crippled by an arthritis he had forgotten he had.
A bestial snarl rose in the creature’s throat, a snarl driven by agony, a snarl that far surpassed the usual vocal range he used. The scream from his cursed vocal chords raked out at the soul of the intruder, searing and shrivelling it.
And then that had never happened. The agony inside Wangmundo had closed his throat, and he had never been able to use his final, terrible defence.
As quickly as it came the pain and paralysis went. “I assure you that next time the change to your history will be permanent,” a European voice said to him. The tones were… Latvian? “On the other hand, if you are willing to behave like a civilised creature I would be pleased to discuss these drawings with you.”
Wangmundo sniffed the air, but whatever the intruder was using was not quite sorcery. He regarded the stranger suspiciously.
The man in the grey cowl looked back at him. “I am known as… the Hooded Hood,” he announced. “You are…?”
“A guardian of this place,” growled Wangmundo.
“I did not know that any of your kind yet endured beyond the far mythlands,” the cowled crime-czar admitted.
“As far as I know I’m the last,” Wangmundo replied. “What do you want with my library?”
“Your library?” the Hood smiled. “Maybe it is nowadays, at least once darkness has fallen and the doors are locked. But once it was Leyland Reed’s library. Or perhaps his sponsor’s, Wilbur Parody. And Wilbur Parody interests me.”
The beast knew his weakness for mystery was going to get the better of him. “Why?” he couldn’t resist asking.
“Parody occupied three rather unique cosmic offices during his somewhat tortuous career,” the Hooded Hood explained. “And that gave him an insight that no holder of any single one of those offices could have, and understanding about the true nature of the Parodyverse. Knowing that such knowledge would slip away from him once those offices were surrendered, he embodied his perceptions while he could into three Books of Prophesy. The first was the Book of the Past. It foresaw the coming of the Celestians, which will take place a few years from now, but no further.
“Go on,” Wangmundo prompted, despite himself.
“The second was the Book of the Present. It described the final battle, the Resolution War for which this Parodyverse was apparently set up. Somehow that volume has got into the hands of the Order of the Observing Eye, with fragmentary copies passing between villains like pictures of Lisa Waltz in a schoolyard.”
“And the third?” Wangmundo asked.
“The third is the Book of the Future,” the Hood replied. “It tells not of what, but why. And it is the why that interests me just now. The why and the who. I am here to find the Third Book of Prophesy.”
Wangmundo looked at the map. “You conclude that Parody would conceal it in one of the structures he ordained, and that of the major works he commissioned there is no better place than a library in which to conceal a book.”
“Exactly,” the cowled crime-czar agreed. “Since you are the self-appointed custodian of this place you must assist me in my search.”
“Why should I agree to help you?” Wangmundo demanded. “You have the stench of villainy about you and it is not my custom to assist thieves.”
The Hooded Hood’s green eyes flashed for a moment but then he untensed. “Mutual self-interest,” he replied. “If you find the book for me, and allow me one night’s study of its contents, then I will leave the volume here under your guardianship, and I will furthermore guarantee you peace from danger or discovery in this place up to the time that the events of the Second Volume begin.”
“I do not trust you. I will not assist you.” Wangmundo realised that he would have to flee this place unless he could find some way of killing this intruder. He had been hunted too long and too well to allow any other outcome.
“If you choose not to aid me then I will certainly alert those who seek you as to not only your current whereabouts but to whatever location you flee also. Be assured that I can do such a thing, and that I will if I have to. Surely a little co-operation is better?”
Wangmundo considered this. “It may require many nights of detective work,” he warned. And on any one of those nights a swift claw might end this blackmail.
“Then it is as well I have an erudite companion with whom to while away the time,” the Hood answered. “We quest within a repository of the world’s finest thoughts, mythling, and that will surely be an adventure of the mind as well as a search for a mere tome.”
“What will you do with the knowledge that the Book carries?” Wangmundo demanded.
“I shall save the world,” the Hooded Hood replied.
Wangmundo was silent for a moment as he considered his options. “Then let us begin,” he agreed.
The guardian of the library knew that he would not allow the Hooded Hood to leave alive; but the Hooded Hood knew that once he had seen the book he desired he would arrange for none of this to have ever happened, leaving the monster in blissful ignorance and security until the events leading to the Resolution War began.
It was going to be an interesting association.
The Present:
“Ouch,” said Joe Pepper. “That really, really hurt.”
“Being eviscerated by Dark Thugos and having your spine broken will do that,” Knifey pointed out.
Suddenly it all came back to him. “Dark Thugos… Galactivac… Skree-Lump…!”
“You lasted a lot longer than anyone could have expected you to against Thugos,” Dancer told him. “As for the Skree homeworld, well… Galactivac got it.” Sarah Shepherdson shuddered as she remembered how the Supreme Interference had activated her link with the Living Death that Sucks from whom her powers had proceeded, and how the mighty Galactivac had arrived and claimed the lives of a hundred billion Skree.
“Where are we now?” ManMan wondered, stirring uncomfortably on his stolen Skree bio-regeneration bed. The device had saved his life, but now its energy was exhausted it chafed his remaining bruises and grazes.
“Ziles… that alien you befriended when you tried to kill each other in the Skree combat arena?… Ziles had a spaceship hidden away. She’s giving us a lift back to earth. But it’ll take some time…”
“Eleven days, nine hours, thirty-nine minutes in Earth calculations,” Roboti, Ziles’ robot companion, chipped in helpfully.
“That’s gonna be too late to save Earth from Dark Thugos and his Skree attack fleet,” ManMan noted miserably. Then a new thought assailed him. “Troia…?”
“She’s asleep,” Dancer told him, pointing to one of the little bunk-holes in the spacecraft bulkhead. Shep decided not to mention the long hours the Amazon administrator had spent curled around the fallen Joe Pepper as if in the belief that her hugging him would keep him alive during the time when nobody knew if ManMan would live or die.
“Typical,” groaned Joe. “Where are Ziles and Space Ghost?”
“Up in the cockpit or whatever it’s called,” Dancer explained. “Er, I’m afraid Space Ghost is navigating us home.”
“Space Ghost?” frowned ManMan. “What are the chances of him getting us back to Earth?”
“Better than you might think,” promised the Probability Dancer. “Anyway, he seems to have a homing instinct for his broom closet.”
Suddenly Ziles shouted an urgent warning from the forward cabin. “Brace yourselves. We’re caught in some kind of dimensional energy that I don’t understand!”
“Hey, I know these kinds of tingly silhouette effects!” Space Ghost beamed. “I’ve seen them on Star Trek. Welcome Captain Kirk! Help us eradicate all cling-ons! We come in peace, shoot to kill!”
“Watch out!” ManMan called, lurching to his feet and grabbing up Knifey. “SG’s right. Invaders are teleporting onto the ship!”
The intruders became solid, and ManMan’s hand was caught in a steel-hard grip before he could use his weapon against them. “Be at ease, thou who wouldst be a leather-clad pelvis-swinging minstrel. The hemigod of thunder hast returned, with mine boon comrades. Let the mead of rejoicing flow, and let the forces of evil look to their asses, for yea verily shalt they be cannéd!”
Troia woke up to find the small space-craft crammed with Legionnaires, Abandoned legionnaires, and other super-types. “Huh?” she puzzled, trying to wipe the sleep out of her eyes and work out what was going on. “We heard you were dead! How did all you guys get here?”
“How do you think, daughter?” a green-eyed cowled figure demanded of Troia 215.
Good, thought Onslaughter. I need to kill something. Lots of somethings. Let’s start with Manitoba.
The genetically-engineered killing machine had lost almost everything. His Deathworld had fallen, his shock-troops were destroyed. All he had left was his boundless rage, immeasurable strength, and a carapace which could shrug off a nuclear attack. All he wanted to do right now was to show how incredibly pissed he was with the turn of events by causing a body count in the high seven figure region.
“Excuse me,” the bespectacled fellow in the seedy red robes who was leaning over the ridge of the crater called down to him, “but I’m afraid destroying cities is frowned upon in the local culture. I’m sure you understand.”
Onlsaughter looked up at Xander the Improbable and laughed an unpleasant, throaty laugh. “And you are going to stop me, little human?”
“Oh no,” Xander admitted. “I don’t think I could match your psionic and physical abilities.”
“A wise understanding,” Onslaughter sneered.
“That’s why I brought him along,” the eccentric mage continued, indicating the other figure who stood with him. “Onslaughter, meet the inconceivable Yurt.”
“No, I absolutely agree,” Hatman nodded, trying to chew faster to empty his mouth before he spoke. He caught Sorceress’ glance. “It’s nice food,” he protested.
“I’ve had dinner with the Hooded Hood before,” Lisa assured them, “and he keeps a very good table. Look on the bright side. While we’re his guests his sense of hospitality will keep him from killing us.”
“And what keeps us from killing him?” Messenger demanded.
“Our sense of self-preservation,” NTU-150 answered honestly.
“Yeah,” agreed CSFB! “Old Hoodily wouldn’t have brought Ziles’ ship here and had us all to dinner unless he was prepared for us to try and take him down. He’s got to have some kind of brilliant, wicked plan for when we try that stuff.”
“Bah!” grunted Trickshot. “Common sense should never get in th’ way of a superhero fight.”
“Besides, we need him to get us back to Earth in time to stop Thugos,” the Dark Knight glowered. “Focus on the mission objective. We can destroy the Hood later.”
spiffy and Troia sat together in one corner of the Breakfast Room and nibbled on the buffet. “So… he’s back,” the Hooded Hood’s son started.
“Yeah,” the Hood’s daughter agreed. “After I stabbed him.”
ManMan joined them looking distinctly pale. “He’s back alright,” Joe Pepper admitted. “He’s just had a word with me.”
“And the word was…” Knifey snickered.
“Shut up!” ManMan said quickly. “He was just congratulating me on doing these three tests of worthiness he set me.”
“Worthiness to… go out with Troia?” spiffy checked.
“To, um, to father his grandson,” ManMan winced. “Troiapleasedon’tkillmewithyourspear!”
“What!?” the Amazon administrator frowned.
“You’ve won the Princess’ hand in marriage,” Knifey snickered. “What are you going to do next?”
“He’s going to die!” Troia promised.
“Hey, she’s my sister! Don’t I get a say in this?” spiffy protested.
“No!” ManMan and Troia 215 shouted together.
“You’re going to be busy with the Hood’s plans for a grand-daughter,” Knifey chuckled.
“Urk!” the ferned phenomenon urked.
In another part of the ornate chamber Yo was engaging in a little therapy work. “Now be sitting down here and be explaining to Yo why is to be you friends are not being friends,” s/he demanded of Exile and Lisette.
“It’s my fault,” interrupted Valeria of Carfax. “My kidnappers demanded that Derek kill his cousin, Bryan…”
“Who, it turns out, was playing me for a complete fool by not telling me he was the superhero Goldeneyed,” Lisette spat.
“Yo is thinking that he was just not knowing the right moment to be telling you, and was to be enjoying being with you so much that he was be fraiding to spoil it if you knew too soon,” the pure thought being suggested. “Is that people to be in love are sometimes doing stupid things.”
“Oh.” That brought Laurie Leyton up short in mid fume.
“Derek and Bry concocted a plot to fake G-Eyed’s murder by Exile as part of a rescue plan,” Valeria went on, “but it went wrong and… well… I think Bry got killed.”
“Yo is thinking not,” Yo assured them. “Yo is not knowing where is to be cute Goldeneyed, but Yo does not be feeling that cute G-Eyed is being dead. So Yo is waiting for Bryan to come home and be kissing cute Lisette and then is everybody being happy, yes?”
“I hope you’re right,” Exile answered fervently. “I swear I’d never harm him deliberately.”
“I guess I don’t want him dead,” Laurie admitted, “but that kissing part sure isn’t going to happen.”
“Yo is thinking differently,” smiled the thought being. “But is to be Lisette and Exy not being enemies now, yes? Both are being nice peoples who are liking cute-Bryan, so is to be friends and wait for him to be coming back.”
“You should be running the United Nations, Yo my friend,” Valeria of Carfax smiled. “Assuming there’s still anyone alive on Earth, of course.”
“Yo will think about that,” Yo promised seriously.
The Hooded Hood rose from the breakfast table. “I trust you have all supped adequately,” he said graciously. “Now I think the time has come to deal with my recalcitrant and wayward son.”
“You… you mean Thugos, right?” spiffy checked nervously.
“My competent recalcitrant and wayward son,” clarified the Hooded Hood. “It is time for the return of the Lair Legion.”
Visionary sat behind his desk and waited to be attacked.
It made perfect sense. After all, Dark Thugos knew who was supposedly in charge of the planet. He knew were to find the leader of the Lair Legion. He’s teleported into this very room before, as the Zemo-shaped smear on the wall attested. The Lair Mansion, and its main occupant, would be the first things to be destroyed when the Skree assault began.
Even an idiot could see that.
The scream of the Doom Tube opening still made Visionary duck under his desk. That reflex saved his life as the shockwave of the portal opening sprayed the furniture of the room into fragments. Only the reinforced table stayed in one piece.
“Fake man!” Dark Thugos, Tyrant of the Sol Empire, Death’s suitor, the death of worlds called out. “Face me. It is time to die.”
Visionary crawled out from under the wreckage to start the final showdown.
The Future:
A flash of memory: Bryan and his new ally GlitchedGadgetRiotGrrlRobot meeting at the dimensional nexus where Goldeneyed had been tossed after his attempts to fake his death had gone seriously wrong. Another flash: Their escape from the Hero-Feeders and a wild caper through history on their slingshot route to the far future, where apparently there were things that G-Eyed had to do. A third flash: Arriving in the City of Tomorrow only to see it being shredded by the earthquakes that rocked the world at the coming of the dreaded Sun-Muncher, and joining in the desperate struggle to save lives while this future-Earth's heroes, the Lair Legion of Superheroes, struggled to turn back the vast cosmic being that had somehow been drawn towards Sol as it's next meal.
“This does not interest me,” Deathwalker hissed in the dying hero's ear. “What of the old man?”
Again the bursts of memory were dragged from Goldeneyed's unwilling mind: Glitch and G-Eyed meeting LightningJarvis, SaturnLisa, CosmicCap and all the other members of the LLSH after Visionary5's hastily-deployed electromagnetic diverters had temporarily sent the Sun-Muncher off course, giving the team a much-needed respite to attend to things on Earth; a return to the LLSH Clubhutch to speak with the mysterious old man who had arrived just before the Sun-Muncher had first sent every alarm system in the building into overload; then the discovery of the two mystery intruders, the shadowy Deathwalker and the feral Savagetooth, torturing that same old man while the heroes were distracted with the crisis.
Across the room, Glitch and the remainder of the already-battered Lair Legion of Superheroes tried to restrain the blood-frenzied berserker villain. Already Colossal Banjee, Chameleon Dragon, Bouncingspiffy, and InvisibleHat had fallen to his poisoned fangs and claws. Even now his indestructible nails scored lines across GlitchedGadgetRiotgrrlRobot!'s bodywork.
“Hey, this stuff costs money to repair, you know,” Glitch warned, allowing herself to be knocked aside to assess the damage and review the battleplan. Savagetooth's enhanced senses, speed, healing factor, growliness, and grizzledness were bad enough, but his ability to win against all odds as long as juvenile fanboys thought he was cool made him almost impossible to beat. “Keep your hands off my headlights.”
“You all die!” Savagetooth howled back, sending Starseedboy reeling back in a spray of blood. “I'm the best there is at what I do, and what I do is pointless violence.”
“Accessing superhero strategy database,” Glitch announced to herself. “When heroes face losing battle against powerful villains, switch enemies to confuse the bad guys. Reference: every comic book ever published. Implementing.”
The GlitchedGadgetRiotgrrlRobot! sung round towards the dark corner where Deathwalker was rummaging though the dying Goldeneyes' mind. “Hey, shadowy villain!” Glitch called. “Have a light.” And the sabotage Autobot turned the full beam of her headlamps onto him.
“Aaaagh!” screeched Deathwalker, phasing himself out to avoid the searing brilliant light.
Bryan slumped to the floor, choking and coughing.
“Your turn,” Glitch prompted him. “Do something about that big bully with the indestructible claws. And quickly. He's killing the old man.”
“Right,” G-Eyed determined. His eyed flashed as he activated the powers which were no longer denied him.
Savagetooth had just sent CosmicCap, LightningJarvis and ShrinkingCobra spinning away and was about to finish off the evisceration of the ancient visitor in the faded brown robes. “One chance, Savagetooth, before I get nasty with you,” Goldeneyed warned the killer.
Savagetooth lashed out to carve Bry's face off. G-Eyed activated his teleportation abilities, not to shift himself to but remove the psycho. “See if a trip to the moon doesn't cool you off,” he told Savagetooth.
There was a shimmering golden light characteristic of the teleport effect, but Savagetooth's natural resistance to teleportation cut in, protecting him from vanishing. “Hah. I'm a mutate with at least three conflictin' origins, sucker!” Savagetooth boasted.
“Watch out,” PhantomGhostGirl warned Bryan. “He plans to kill you!”
“I don't die that easily!” G-Eyed snarled, focussing more, all of his ability to overcome Savagetooth's undefeatability factor.
There was a yet brighter golden glow and Savagetooth toppled to the floor like a creature whose strings had been cut.
Bry toppled too, exhausted by his efforts. Glitch caught him as he fell.
“Did…did I win?” G-Eyed asked, looking down at the bizarre pile of flesh that was all that remained of Savagetooth.
“Oh yes,” GlitchedGadgetRiotgrrlRobot! Reported. “You seem to have partially overcome his anti-teleportation defence. You have teleported his indestructible skeleton to the moon.”
“Eeew,” SaturnLisa shuddered. “I'll go get a bucket.”
“Never mind that,” Fashion Triad warned. “Get over here quickly, folks. This old man is dying.”
“We never did find out what he wanted with us,” Heroic Von-El noted. “Sun-Muncher attacked as soon as this fellow called at out door.”
“Hmm, suspicious, that,” LightningJarvis frowned. “Weren't you hypothesising that some signalling beam attracted the Sun-Muncher to our solar system, Enty4k?”
“Well yes, “NTU-4000 admitted, “Although there are very few people with the technology to do it, and less still with the actual will to doom the whole planetary cluster.”
But Bry Katz wasn't listening to the conversation. “I… I know this old man,” he gulped. “He's… well he's a lot older now, but he's my… my mentor, Guumar, of the Order of the Observing Eye.”
“The Observing Eye: A secret organisation with alleged access to the hidden prophesies of Wilbur Parody concerning the Resolution War of the early 21st century, which in turn is the pivotal testing point upon which mine and this future depend, and the purpose for which the Parodyverse was created,” Glitch dredged from her memory banks. “The Eye rescued and trained gifted young people in preparation for the then-coming conflict. Although their principal school was destroyed by Heinrich, Twelfth Baron Zemo, at least two of their prodigies grew to become established heroes, designated Exile and Goldeneyed.”
“Guumar… what happened?” Bry asked brokenly, pulling off his black mask so his old tutor could see his face one last time. “What brought you here? Who sent those villains to kill you?”
“Who sent the Sun-Muncher itself as a mere distraction to keep us busy while you were murdered?” CosmicCap added.
“Bryan…” the dying old man almost smiled. “It…” He coughed blood and could speak no more.
“Can you read his mind, PhantomGhostGirl?” Collosal Banjeee wondered. “Can you find out what someone was going to such great lengths to keep from us?”
“I'll try,” the telepath agreed. “But I'll need a touchstone.” She glanced at Bryan.
“Me? Do what you need to,” G-Eyed agreed.
PhantomGhostGirl (who gave an entirely new meaning to the tem pantsless wonder, by the way) brushed her fingers against Goldeneyed's cheek and then laid her other hand on the blood-flecked Guumar. “We have contact,” she announced.
And another burst of memory assailed Bry. But this time it wasn't his own, it was the Observing Eye Mentor's thoughts he was seeing. He found himself looking down at a tiny wriggling baby, and realised he was looking at the newborn Bryan Katz. Then there came a succession of other images, faster and faster, which G-Eyed had to struggle to keep up with.
“It's about… about the Parody prophesies,” G-Eyed gasped. “This future and all others depend on the choices and events of the Resolution War. Everything that comes after it only really matters because some of the futures affect the past which affects the War. All of the stuff with heroes through history was just… preparation for that one event, which the Parodyverse was set up to host!”
“So the Resolutionists would have us believe,” Glitch snorted. “All I know is that in my time, a few years after the War was ended, we were still rebuilding civilisation and mourning our lost. It was the end of an era, the last stand of the classic Lair Legion and their allies. Ragnarok.”
“One of the prophesies is about a powerful being from the future, wielding the fundamental forces of time, space, energy, and matter. So powerful were these gifts that they had to be bestowed in three parts so as not to trigger the Celestians into vetoing them when they were given; so they were placed latently in three babies of this era… cousins.”
“That's a huge coincidence,” Glitch considered, “given that according to my historical database you wield time/space energies and you have two cousins, Exile and Suicide Blonde, and… oh.”
“Three babies, two male one female, all cousins, from our era?” Shadow Zemette worried. “No, it can't be…”
“This is all starting to make a grim sort of sense,” Visionary5 scowled.
“Why?” wondered GlitchedGadgetRiotgrrlRobot!
“Because our old foe, my f ather Thugos, has three nieces,” Shadow Zemette explained.
“Er…” Glitch was confused, “I admit to not having human reproductive cycles completely down pat, but aren’t you called Shadow Zemette? Wouldn’t that make your father…?”
“My mother was a Zemo, my father was Thugos. The three nieces are children of Thugos’ alternate-reality counterpart the Fernbiote and the Celestian Madonna.”
“The lovely Kumari triplets,” Bouncingspiffy grinned. “Er, not that I have any holograms of them or anything.”
“The scandal and gossip is that somehow, at the same time, on Earth, the Moon, and Thugos’ orbiting Death Fortress, the three girls all got pregnant nine months ago,” SaturnLisa reported. “And that their children have just been born.”
Another burst of understanding surged into Bryan through the telepathic link. “Thugos knows the prophesy!” he realised. “He knows that the power passes from each child to the surviving children until only one remains, with the devastating joint abilities of all three and much, much more!”
“And he had to stop Guumar coming here and warning us of his plans to raise these babies himself and so change the outcome of the Resolution War!” Glitch deduced.
“By siccing the Sun-Muncher on the solar system?” LightningJarvette demanded incredulously. “What a sleaze!”
Guumar cast one final, personal thought into Bryan's mind that brought tears to the young hero's eyes. Then the last of the order of the Observing Eye died in Goldeneyed's arms.
The alarms sounded again in the Lair Legion of SuperHeroes' Clubhutch.
“What now?” demanded Chameleon Dragon. “Can't we get five minutes to bandage our wounds and catch our breath?
“The Sun Muncher has overcome the electromagnetic spoofing system I set up,” NTU-4000 reported urgently. “He's heading back this way.”
“The we have to stop him” LightningJarvis determined. “Whatever it costs.”
“What about Thugos?” demanded ShadowZemette. “If all of this really is a diversion then we're just playing into his hands by ignoring his intentions for the babies.”
“We can't spare the manpower to launch an attack on two fronts,” CosmicCap decided. “We only have seventeen members as it is.”
“I'm going after Thugos anyway,” Goldeneyed warned them. “I don’t care if it’s the bad guy who was bothering us back in the twentieth century or some wacky descendant. Whatever it takes, I'm going to avenger Guumar's murder.”
“And you have to rescue yourself as well,” GlitchedGadgetRiotgrrlRobot reminded him. “I think that's probably why we were sent to the future - to stop Thugos interfering with the past.”
“You'll still need a couple of people to help you get into Thugos’ orbiting Death Fortress,” judged PhantomGhostGirl. “I'm not going to be much help against the Sun-Muncher, so I'll come. And maybe ShadowZemette wants to visit her new cousins?”
“If it'll kick Thugos’ butt, I'm there,” ShadowZemette promised.
“Sounds like a plan to me,” CosmicJarvis approved. “Nice to meet you Goldeneyed. Always nice to meet a legend.”
“A… a legend? Me?”
“Only if you can stop Thugos’ plan,” Glitch prompted. “Otherwise you'll never have existed.”
High in the sky, the massive Sun-Muncher moved towards Earth's sun. The LLSH raced to their remaining rocketships - the bill to R.L. Garrick would be high on this one. PhantomGhostGirl led Bry and Glitch to the remaining sky-flier. “Four of us are going up against the worst villain of the thirty-second century,” she warned. “The odds aren't very good.”
“That is the case in approximately 99.8% of the superhero literature in my database,” Glitch pointed out.
“I don't care about the odds,” Bry Kotz said, pulling on his mask once more. “I have an appointment with 'uncle' Thugos.”
Everywhere: