Posted by Being a tale of resolutions, wherein our heroes (quite a lot of them) take on all kinds of baddies and then take on an archbaddie or two; featuring several and diverse life or death struggles, mass death, destruction, and property damage, a couple of last stands, and a major pizza delivery, all purveyed to you by... the Hooded Hood on August 07, 2000 at 19:26:25:
Previous chapters of this story are located at The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom.
Many of the characters are thumbnailed in The Who's Who of the Parodyverse.
A draft map of Paradopolis is available at Streets of Paradopolis.
And so to the conclusion of the longest continuous story I've done (or are ever likely to do) in the Parodyverse, which also serves to mark my hundredth BZL (or whatever we call it now) fiction, as long as we don't count some of them.
Oh, and this is also my longest single chapter, roughly three times the length of a typical Untold Tales episode, so be warned it will take a long time to read if you don't skip every other page. Since this will probably be the last story about the current Lair Legion lineup I wanted to give them a proper send-off.
HH
#58: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion Somewhat Belated Double-Sized Fiftieth Anniversary Extravaganza, or Dark Thugos Conquers the Parodyverse
Mild-mannered potato factory worker Vlastimock Bogoff was caught at the heart of a nuclear blast and gained the strength, indestructibility, and proportional intelligence of a small Russian peasant hut, and thus became… the inconceivable Yurt. And the great secret of the Yurt was this: that the stupider he got, the stronger he got. "Now that was downright mean," commented Death, a pale young woman in black who was currently picking at a complicated tapestry with a pair of scissors. Dronon, the Public Accoster, was selected in infancy for his tendency to tell tales on other children of the Skree to enter the Accoster programme, being trained and shaped to carry one of the Omniversal Hammers which were the unique weapon of the Accoster Corps that kept the blue-skinned alien conquerors ideologically pure. In Skree culture, a man was considered innocent until accused by a Public Accoster. Dronon had risen to his high rank as High Accoster through a dedicated campaign of betrayal and fabrication of evidence, having personally accused his predecessor of crimes against the Empire. When the leadership of the Skree peoples had changed from the tyranny of the Supreme Interference organic computer to the tyranny of Dark Thugos the death-worshipper, Dronon had seen no reason not to continue with business as usual. "The joy of this is, even if the Abandoned Legion win, they'll get blamed for the property damage, with lawsuits and warrants for their arrest for use of excessive force and so on. That is how Gothametropolis York rewards its defenders," the Hooded Hood noted. HuntingJustice DeathMarrow has never been given an origin. Perhaps that explains her obsession with very large guns, very small costume to barely cover her implausibly-proportioned body, and desire to hurt things to show what a tough girl she is. She is at her best heading a band of grizzled, semi-bionic mercenaries, and that is exactly what she was doing as she lead the assault on the SPUD helicarrier. Behind her the advanced technologies of the alien army easily neutralised the most sophisticated defences of the Super-menace Principle Undercover Directorate's flagship, and her seasoned space-pirates, all gathered sensing booty and rapine as the Earth was overcome, seethed along the corridors slaughtering anybody they could find. "Only two of them to stop an entire ragtag army of alien sociopaths?" Death questioned the Hood. "Another suicide mission." The Terminizers were Skree combat robots designed as heavy assault weapons in wars of terror. Twenty feet or so tall, and shaped as humanoids for maximum psychological impact, they were generally used to inflict heavy ground casualties and break infantry resistance before the Skree Imperial Armies landed and took control of a combat theatre. If all else failed a Terminizer could detonate itself in a multi-megaton nuclear self-destruction, which usually discouraged local opposition. "They certainly have a flair for dramatic timing," Death admitted. She had a professional appreciation of such things. The Skree stormtroopers landed on the dark side of the moon and prepared to launch their cruisers to go and occupy the long-abandoned Skree watchpost known as the Turquoise Area. Pierson's Porter was the last of the alien Puppeteers who had once been feared throughout the galaxy. And right now, after being dumped by his girlfriend, almost blown up in an exploding secret base, having his city stolen and dropped a mile from its proper location, and finding it full of invading stormtroopers he was in a very bad mood. Bambi Bacall, the Suicide Blonde, was one of three children born in the far future who carried within her the potential to hold one of the fundamental powers of the Parodyverse. Her two cousins, who were rescued from an uncertain fate and sent back in time to the care of the Order of the Observing Eye, grew up to be the Legionnaires Goldeneyed and Exile. Where G-Eyed's fragment allowed him to control time/space and Exile's gave him mastery over energy, the Suicide Blonde had an absolute command of matter. However, unlike the other candidates who might become holder of the massive accumulation of all three of those powers (after the demise of the other wielders), she had been raised by none other than Dark Thugos himself, her somewhat-removed Uncle, and her heart was as black and cruel as was his own. "So how many of those heroes actually died just now?" the Hooded Hood challenged Death, "and how many did you pass on to your younger, fatter, sister?" Gamona was the galaxy's deadliest assassin. She was a svelte, bottle-green hued female with long black hair and could kill men in no less than nine hundred and forty different ways using that alone. She appeared to wear nothing but a fishnet body stocking, and one of her greatest weapons was that when her enemies got closer they realised that it was actually tattooed to her flesh. As they coped with that little bit of information the next thing they usually processed was that, by the way, they were dead. "You realise that those heroes of yours face overwhelming odds?" Death challenged the Hooded Hood. "Even if they defeat Dronon and the Suicide Blonde and HuntingJustice Deathmarrow's mercenary brigade and Granny Gleeful and Gamona and Onslaughter there are three million others ready to take their place." Dark Thugos was as alternative-reality offspring of the Hooded Hood, brought into existence in a misguided attempt by the Shaper of Worlds to bring the cowled crime czar to book. Unfortunately Thugos had murdered his foster parents by the time he was six, had raised his first mercenary army by his fourteenth birthday, was ruling exactly one half of his home planet by the time he was sixteen, and had a galactic empire by the time he was twenty. Amongst his other achievements he had cracked some of the secrets of Celestian technology, bestowing upon himself the Entropy Eyebeams which could destroy almost anything in existence and gaining him the knowledge to escape the overthrow of his otherdimensional empire and start again in the core Parodyverse. In a little under a year Thugos had conquered the Skree and Skunk empires and a considerable portion of the rest of the galaxy. In orbit around the target world, the Commander of the Skree Fifth Armada heard Dark Thugos' words with relish. Ever since news had reached the fleet of how the creatures from this planet had brought the wrath of Galactivac the Living Death that Sucks upon Skree-Lump, the homeland of the men of the Skree, he and every soldier aboard the fleet had been waiting for the chance to strike back. "Oops," Death winced. "Looks like another busy day. And I suppose I'd better go and get some make-up on for that date with Thugos." Hatman dragged his Steelers hat on in mid-flight before he impacted with the abandoned gas tanker. Then he used his fireman's hat to cool down the worst of the flames, and once he could handle it he used his crane driver's helmet to heave the entire blazing mess at Onslaughter. "Very impressive," the Hooded Hood conceded as he watched Jay Boaz's bleeding body. "I suppose I'll have to find a way of taking him out of the picture properly some other day. It would be petty to slay him now after such an effort." The thirteenth Knightarang momentarily short-circuited Dronon's battlesuit and enabled the Abandoned Legions to get their shots in at the Public Accoster; or would have done had they not been rather busy just then. Cap and HV were engaging the killbots who were following their prime directive to seek out new life and new civilisations and annihilate them. The young Hunter Victorious was struggling to keep the metal creatures away from the fleeing mobs. Cap, bleeding from an earlier encounter with Skree Shrapnel Troopers, still continued to manoeuvre the machines into position for his team-mate to destroy; but it was a fight they could hardly be said to be winning. "Nice timing on that one, I admit," Death told the cowled crime czar, "but none of that group are going to be a lot of use against Thugos just now, are they? Or those planetbuster destruction rays?" Savagetooth and CrazySugarFreakBoy! were blurs of fast-moving colour, and had the ballet they were performing not involved indestructible claws and sudden death it would have been quite beautiful. Savagetooth moved like the big cat he resembled, sleek and fast and fluid, perfectly balanced and alert to danger. CSFB! moved in strange, jerky movements, shimmying unpredictably from side to side as he stayed just one step, sometime just a fraction of an inch, ahead of his enemy's talons. "The planet-busters?" Death prompted. The Hooded Hood caught Death's impatient gaze and gestured yet again at the Portal of Pretentiousness. This time there was a strange swirling effect in it that Death recognised as the dimensional nexus in it's time travel aspect. Neither Exile nor the Suicide Blonde could affect each other directly with their powers. Hence the Blonde reverted to dropping buildings on her hated cousin and Exile used his rippling energy control to superheat the air around his enemy, sending her blistering backwards until he could gain his breath. "That was a nasty twist," Death admitted. "You drop in Goldeneyed, having sent him on his origin quest in the first place, and then you have him use the bitchiest Austernal of all. But the planet's still going to die in about half a minute. I can feel massive casualties about to happen." "You're quite good," Gamona admitted to Messenger as they both caught their breaths for a moment after the savage fighting. The deadliest woman in the galaxy took the chance to pop her dislocated arm back in place, while Messenger tightened the tourniquet around his slashed leg. "You compensate quite well for monocular vision and you have a good offensive fighting style. You rely too much on those missiles of yours though, and when you've emptied that bag I'll be able to kill you." "What's in there?" Death asked curiously. "It's impossible!" the captain of the Essence of Devastation objected as the alarm klaxons sounded all over his disintegrating starship. "We're an airtight space vessel. That protoplasmic thing can't have got in here." "What do you mean I can't do it. I'm doing it, aren't I?" Banjoooooo, King of the Sea Monkeys, objected to the Swift Carrion-Bird of Carnage as he battered it with his tail and used his temporary ability to make things intangible on the hull of the starship. Starships generally don't do well with immaterial outer sheaths. "It's your own fault for bringing pirated Celestian technology this near to Earth. I have a sort of allergic reaction to that, and it spawns all kinds of short-term abilities. Like the ability to make everyone's flight-suits suddenly teleport three feet to the left – like that. Hmm, nice underoos, Captain!" "Come hither, fell raiding ships of the Skree!" Donar Oldmanson shouted impossibly through the celestial void. "On mine head! Let sing Mjalcolm, and verily let cosmic tempest rage across the heavens." The hemigod of thunder had relatively few chances to really cut loose with his power, but this was one of them. Corposcant lightening arced from ship to ship, disrupting defence screens, crippling systems. Mjalcolm hammered into hulls like, well, like the enchanted weapon of a really miffed deity, and while it was certain that Donar was going to end up in VanHalen simply because he was outnumbered about three thousand heavily armed starships to one goat chariot, it was going to be a battle the Skreemen wouldn't soon forget. Rox-Hoff cut short the argument by firing his planet-buster main beam right at Parody Island. The particle stream was almost two miles wide by the time it impacted, and it carried enough energy to shatter the tectonic plate and sink the continent of North America. "A massive influx of casualties?" asked the Hooded Hood. "I'm so pleased you aren't dead," Dark Thugos told the Lair Legion. "That means I can finish you properly myself. He aimed one hand at Fin Fang Foom and released an energy blast which seared right through the dragon's chest and burst out between his wings at the back. "Like that." "Excuse me," the Hooded Hood said politely to Death. "I'm afraid I have to step out for a moment." "Yes, Ms Waltz?" the cowled crime czar asked, responding to Lisa's summons. "Hadn't you better go and collect your admirer?" the Hooded Hood asked Death. Dark Thugos looked around the Halls of Meeting in the realms of the dead. And in the End: Dan Drury struck a match on the statue of Jack Rabbit that was doubling as a coatstand in the Lair mansion's currently al-fresco entrance hall, ignoring the glare he got from Tina. He strolled out to watch Visionary extinguishing the fire in the crater where NTU-150's experimental barbecue had definitively settled the scientific question: how high can a gas bottle be blown straight upwards? Cheryl was ringing for pizza. Messenger merely watched the party with a wistful disdain from a vantage point in a blind-spot on the sensor grid. If he suspected he had been spotted by at least one of the party's guests when Dancer came and left a plate of sandwiches and a can of beer six feet away from his hide and then sauntered back to the party he never admitted it.
Onslaughter was genetically bread in the flame-holes of Apocrapits, hell-world of Dark Thugos tyrant of the Sol Empire (of whom, substantially more later). Inhumanly strong, psionically augmented, Onslaughter gouged, crushed, slaughtered, cannibalised, and generally illegal-wrestling-moved his way up Thugos' hierarchy and eventually gained the coveted position of ruler of Deathworld, Thugos' mobile battle planet. On that world's destruction in an assault upon Earth, Onslaughter plummeted down to redecorate Manitoba and woke up with a strong desire to personally eviscerate every inhabitant of the planet he had been castaway on.
Xander the Improbable was sorcerer supreme of the Parodyverse, and had a vested interest in the people of Earth not being eviscerated – where else would he get his sandwiches from? – and therefore took the liberty of introducing the Yurt to Onslaughter. Having lit the blue touchpaper he then retired immediately.
That was ninety miles of devastation ago, of course, and seven hundred million Canadian dollars worth of property damage back. The battle raged with no sign of surcease across the Keystone Province's lowlands, destroying forest and farmland with nothing but the occasional, "Yurt is the strongest one there is, Yurt will smash!" or "Insignificant flea! You will be crushed before the power of Onslaughter!" or other third person proclamations to punctuate the destruction. Then the battle crossed the Trans-Canadian Highway, and Onslaughter at least was smart enough to know that if he followed a major road it would eventually lead him to large numbers of people to kill. The road signs promised a place called Winnipeg.
The Yurt was a tough opponent, however, and even the supreme arrogance of the offworld killing machine was beginning to fray under the hut-that-walks-like-a-man's devastating attack. Each opponent had gouged vast chunks from the other, each had shattered the supposedly impervious carcass of their enemy; but Onslaught preferred softer, less painful prey, and as the battle entered its fifth hour he no longer sought to overcome his enemy physically, but turned to other means of the Yurt's destruction.
"Let me ransack the depths of that vestigial thing you call your mind," Onslaughter mocked his vast enemy, bringing his devastating psionic talents into play. "Let me learn your secret weaknesses, your hidden flaws."
"Puny bone man thinks he can beat Yurt," the enraged monster told the psychopathic (and psychic) monster, "but Yurt is the strongest one there is."
"But only as long as you are stupid," Onslaughter noted. "Very interesting. I am now placing in your mind a full understanding of quantum mechanics."
"Yurt does not care about quantum mechanics. Yurt does not care that energy can be absorbed into matter only in small discrete units. Yurt cares nothing for Planck or Rutherford or Bohr or Einstein or… No! What is happening to Yurt?"
"Well well well," Onslaughter chuckled evilly as the massive edifice dwindled into a ragged purple-trousered human. "This looks significantly easier to kill."
The alien murder machine was somewhat distracted as a coach travelling the highway failed to stop in time and slammed into him from behind. The vehicle crumpled and fell to its side only to be swatted away into the flax field by an irritated Onslaughter. "What now?" he asked, hurling the now unconscious Vlastimock Bogoff away to impact against a tree with bone-shattering force. "Are the doomed weaklings of this world now sending hatchlings to attack me?"
The sign on the side of the coach read "Ottowa Schools Board." The overturned bus was filled with injured and screaming children.
"This is more like it," leered the murderous alien. "Time for some R and R."
The figure in the Torpedos hat blurred down from the skies and propelled the Yurt away from the burning bus. "Not today, villain!" Hatman promised Onslaughter. "You've done enough harm. Now you're going down. Right, Legion?"
But the rest of the Lair Legion weren't there.
"Resource management, my dear," the Hooded Hood replied. "We only need to keep Onslaughter busy so he can't join up with any of Thugos' other principal operatives. Killing Hatman will occupy him for some time."
In fact Thugos had set Dronon an interesting new task, the subdual of the Terran peoples ready for their orderly murder by slow torture in Thugos' gambit to impress Death and possibly get a date with her. In order to get in good with his new boss, Dronon had spent the entire journey to Earth with the Skree Fifth Armada working out new ways of debasing and humiliating his prisoners so as to demonstrate his utter loyalty to the cause. He called it the Family Plan.
Hence Dronon, his Accoster Corps, some now-subordinated Skunk shape-shifting torture experts, and of course Dark Thugos' personal Necro-Priesthood had disembarked outside Gothametropolis City Hall to begin their subjugation of a leaderless and terrified rabble.
"People of Earth, I, Dronon, Public Accoster, have judged you and found you wanting. Therefore, it is my sentence that you…"
The people of Gothametropolis were unimpressed with slick green battle armour or glowing weaponry. They had seen it before, and they didn't like figures of authority anyway. They booed, questioned Dronon's sexuality, and threw garbage.
"You brutes!" Dronon snarled, wiping pizza from his dress killing outfit. "You shall pay for your effrontery. Guards, destroy every one of them!"
But the guards were staring into the middle distance and starting to twitch and clutch at things which only they could see.
"What? Automated drones, destroy the humans present!"
But the killbots seemed confused, each circling round in continual self-diagnostic cycles, while even the great hovering Skree judgement ship seemed to wobble and react strangely.
Dronon pointed his own Omniversal Hammer and sent forth a spray of energies at the nearest human.
The force blast blistered off a shield, and Cap glared back at the Public Accoster ready for the next attack. "Did you really believe the people of Earth were without their protectors?" the hero asked. "Did you really thing they would simply allow themselves to be slaughtered? We are free men and women, and free men and women will fight for their freedoms!"
Dronon turned to order the Skunk shapeshifters forwards, but they were enveloped in some kind of sticky adhesive which bound them no matter what form they metamorphed into.
"Yep," Cobra proclaimed, dropping from the roof of the City Hall into the midst of the surprised Necro-Priests. "The Abandoned Legion is back on duty."
"Aw crap!" a voice from the crowd complained. "I thought they was dead. I'd prefer the crummy aliens!"
Dronon spotted them all now, the Sorceress affecting the minds of his guards, Hunter Victorious using some kind of tactile control of matter to affect the command centres of the killbots, Paste Pot Pete gumming down the shapeshifting Skunk scum.
"What are you waiting for, citizens?" Mayor spiffy called from the steps of the City Hall. "You're always quick enough to try and off me when I'm stood there. Get 'im!"
Dronon activated his personal force field to hold back the enraged Gothametropolis mob. It would take only a few moments to get this situation back under control. He engaged the battlesuit over-rides in the assault forces' helmets, taking freedom of will from the Skree ground-troops, overcoming their weakness to Sorceress' illusions. He changed the command patterns of the killbots, neutralising HV's tentative interference. He set his Omniversal destructor on wide beam and fired through his defensive field with a swathe wide enough to anihilate every protester in the square.
"Ouch!" said spiffy as his fern absorbed the blast. "Somebody stop him before he does that again."
"You cannot penetrate my personal shields," crowed the Public Accoster. "And so you die!"
The shadowy form of the Dark Knight rode up unseen behind Dronon, inside the glimmering barrier that protected him.
Then things got violent and bloody in the streets of Gothametropolis.
"Then why do they do it?" Death wondered. "Why risk their lives for a town that hates and fears them?"
The Hooded Hood considered this. "Martyr complex? Compulsive self-destructive behaviour? Suicide wish? Sheer blatant stupidity?"
"Maybe," Death agreed. "Or maybe something more. Maybe if you really understood why they were doing it, you too would be a hero, Ioldobaoth Winkelweald."
The Hood brooded. "Maybe," he conceded.
Savagetooth on the other hand had so many origins as to make any other feral, indestructible-skeletoned, claw-popping berserker go green with envy. Today he was a mutate kidnapped from Earth during the Depression, genetically modified by Dark Thugos to become a bestial berserker who was the best he was at what he did, and granted the power of being impossible to defeat as long as the fanboys thought he was cool. Savagetooth's particular delight in this mission (apart from watching HuntingJustice DeathMarrow's tightly-bikinied backside running ahead of him in the assault) was to slaughter as many representatives of law and order as possible before the Earth ran out of them. Tomorrow he would have a different origin, but he'd still want to kill people.
The agents of SPUD were at a disadvantage in that they were also trying not to have their flagship plummet to the ground with the loss of all hands. Additionally, the vessel was under heavy fire from Skunk saucers which were orbiting it like flies around a sleeping Space Ghost. It is therefore perhaps unsurprising that HuntingJustice DeathMarrow and Savagetooth were able to gain the command deck and confront Dan Drury, Director of SPUD himself.
"Ah, Director. I have been commanded to terminate your existence," HuntingJustice DeathMarrow proclaimed, heaving her chest and a destructor cannon in his direction.
"Over my dead body, you inflatable bitch," promised Natalia Romanza, Drury's number one agent.
"My pleasure, darlin'" snarled Savagetooth. "This is going to be good."
Natalia crouched to receive Savagetooth's first spring but the feral berserker was knocked aside in mid-leap by a green-and-orange blur that bounced him off the wall, disoriented him with a burst of exploding confectionary, and laced him in silly-string as much to annoy him as in the hopes of restraining him. "Sorry, Savvy," the wired wonder grinned as he sidestepped a savage slash. "But first you've gotta be the best there is at what you do versus the best there is at what I do, and that means a turn in the ring with your friendly neighbourhood CraaaazySugarFreakBoy!!"
"We do not have time for this," HuntingJustice DeathMarrow decided. She oriented her cannon on Drury but before she could pull the trigger an explosive arrow had detonated it in her arms, sending her flying backwards into the bulkhead with an even more shredded costume.
"I'm sure ya can find time for your old dancing partner, Trickshot the Marksman," the green and purple clad irritating archer smirked. "Hey, Hunty, nice equipment!"
"Kill him! Kill him now!" HuntingJustice DeathMarrow demanded of her mercenary team.
"Now this is more like it," Dan Drury grinned, chomping down on his cigar, scattering his paperwork, and pulling out a SPUD issue laser blaster. "Wa-hooo!"
"The CrazySugarFreakBoy! and Trickshot," the Hooded Hood mused. "Think of it more by way of an experiment."
As per their programming, the Terminizers impacted in the nearest open ground to the urban centre and rose up ready to fulfil their mission. They were the same machines as the one which had previously appeared in Off-Central Park, and so it was unsurprising that their programming led them to the same landing site in the green space on the western edge of Central Paradopolis. They rose from the ground ready for trouble and found it almost immediately.
"Hi," ManMan told the killing machines. "I'm here to ask you politely to go away and stop bugging my planet. You get one chance to go away. After that, my friend, who you guys seem to think is the legendary Blade of Fonn-Dhu, founder of the Skree Star Empire, is going to hack you into more pieces than an Airfix model kit. Your call."
The Terminizers activated their intimidation circuits. "Fools! A mere one of our number almost annihilated the defenders of this city a short while ago. There are no less than nine of us here now. What hope do you have of preventing our primary mission, knife-wielding mortal?"
"Well, for one thing, we've got…"
But Joe Pepper's rejoinder was interrupted by an impact beam hammering the lead Terminizer back into the triangular formation of robots behind him. "Spaaaaaaaannnnnkkkkk Raaaaaaayyyyyy!" shouted Space Ghost. "And strrrrriiiiike!"
"…a Spank Ray," ManMan continued.
"Alert! Sensors indicate cosmic level attack!" crackled the lead Terminizer.
"Heh, thanks guys, but I'm just a bad girl with a mean whip," Lisette told them, lashing two of the Terminizers together so that Ziles could attach a small instrument to them.
"And I'm a good girl who got into bad company and just happens to have a remote electromagnetic scrambler handy," Ziles explained as the two tangled Terminizers shuddered and exploded.
"This is impossible!" the lead Terminizer proclaimed, orienting his battle cannon on the man in the Elvis costume. "No-one can defeat two Skree terminizers with such ease."
"Three," Joe Pepper corrected the lead Terminizer again, plunging Knifey through its supposedly invulnerable hide.
"Hah, if I can do Celestians, you bozos are easy," the sentient blade boasted.
"And it's not impossible," corrected the young woman called Dancer who vaulted over the fallen robots, leading two of them to destroy each other in classic make-the-baddies-shoot-each-other mode. "Just tremendously improbable."
"See, we don't like people invading our planet," ManMan went on. "It's got to stop."
"Spaaaaaannnnnnkkkk Raaaaaayyyyyyyyyy!"
"We're here to discourage it," Dancer told the four remaining Terminizers.
"Thugos has inadvertently made their work simpler by concentrating his forces into just a few key initial assaults," the Hooded Hood opined. "The whole idea of Visionary's – probably Drury's really – strategy was to promote the importance of neutralising the command chain before an all-out invasion. That was the remaining heroes could concentrate their defences on one area, and from their perspective fighting three million invaders all at once is really no worse than fighting ten thousand. Thugos didn't know that reinforcements were on their way."
"So now its fifty heroes versus three million invaders?" Death calculated.
"Against fifty heroes and several archvillains," the Hood corrected her. "Don't underestimate the archvillains."
"Don't bother unpacking," a voice that sounded like a week-interred corpse warned them. "I don't like trespassers."
They barely had time to scream before the Enemy was upon them.
"You!" he called to one of the blue-skinned soldiers. "Come over here!"
"The soldier oriented his weapon at PP, so PP used his bliss-invoking TASP device to drop the trooper into a little writhing mess on the floor. Pierson's porter took his helmet.
"As I thought," the Puppeteer mused. "Encoded self-destruct circuits in their battle armour to prevent mutiny. I imagine they thought their codes unbreakable as well, so that nobody could transmit a fake signal and destroy all their soldiers in range." He scanned the mechanism again. "Should take me about fifteen minutes," he mused to himself.
Pierson's Porter took the helmet and wandered off along the deserted streets toward the Parodopolis TV studios, humming a little tune.
Since Paradopolis was now returned to Earth (albeit about a mile off its proper location, which might cause a little bit of concern at a future date), Suicide Blonde had been dispatched to ensure its destruction, and that of the few heroes still active in its defence.
"Come out, come out wherever you are!" she called, dropping the glass-transformed body of Captain Astounding over the side of the statue of Wilbur Parody she rode as a platform. Dynamite Boy raced forwards to try and catch it but was only near enough to be sprayed by splintering fragments. Suicide Blonde gestured and transformed Dynamite Boy to mud.
"No!" the Green Ninja shouted, swinging down toward the Blonde. She pointed at him but he was no longer there when the wave of energy to transform him to water occurred. As the mistress of matter reoriented on him, Lynx dropped down behind her and released a burst of machine-gun fire into her back.
"Hmm, very good," the Suicide Blonde admitted, unhurt since the bullets had turned to oxygen on contact with her. The only effect was to leave a series of holes along the back of her costume which she knitted closed with scarcely a thought. "It might have worked if I wasn't insanely powerful."
With a gesture she toppled Lynx from the platform to fall (on his feet) where the Ninja had dropped. As the two of them separated and ran for cover she caused the whole of the street to rise in a tidal wave of tarmac and paving stones, catching the two refugee heroes up and sweeping them along. The wave crashed into the Surelife Insurance building, and the whole edifice toppled down on top of the two heroes. "Now that will be an interesting claim," the Suicide Blonde chuckled.
"Murderess!" accused Frog-Man, bouncing in and trying to get within grappling distance. The Suicide Blonde transformed him to phosphorus and sent him burning down into the ruined street below.
A fast-moving blur hit her feet first and toppled her from the statue. She tumbled downwards but landed on a street she transformed into a feather bed. Jack Rabbit dropped down towards her and the two of them rolled into the mists that had risen over the sunset streets.
"You may have killed the others but it stops here!" Jack Rabbit promised. This was the last stand of the Paradopolis Irregulars. He could not allow it to fail. He beat harder on the Suicide Blonde, wondering if his efforts would keep him alive long enough for Saint to get in position.
"Alright," the Blonde gasped, actually winded by this assault. "I surrender."
"What?" Jack asked, somewhat taken aback by this.
"I said, 'die sucker'," the Suicide Blonde laughed, taking advantage of the Rabbit's momentary hesitation to transform him to marble.
Saint formed up from the mist and sliced her head cleanly off with his sabre.
"Ouch," the Suicide Blonde replied, using her matter control to restore her injured body. "Now that has really pissed me off."
Saint's life was saved by the explosion behind them as Dynamite Boy ignited himself and reformed in his proper shape. "I knew I could do it!" he exalted.
The Suicide Blonde dropped the Paradopolis Stock Exchange on him.
Saint moved forwards again to try and run the matter mistress through, but she was ready for him this time. "Ah-ah!" she told him. Commanding the matter of Saint's body she tossed him in a high parabola that sent him spinning roughly sixty miles away to land far out in the Atlantic Wash.
"Next?" she challenged, looking round for more of the City's defenders. "No-one? Well then, I guess we'll commence with the serious destruction of property and loss of life."
A blistering wave on energy melted the very ground around her and seared her with the ambient heat of vaporised tarmac. "Next?" Exile challenged. "I guess that would be me."
"That is between Temporary Death and me," Death sniffed. "And she's not fat, just big-boned."
"Then there's no point rescue crews digging beneath the debris of those fallen buildings or calling air-sea rescue or putting that statue of Jack Roberts somewhere in the Lair Mansion as a hatstand until someone can work out a way to reverse the transmutation effect then?"
"I didn't say that," Death protested. "But there are some things that are beyond mortal ken. And that includes you, Hood. You may have set all of this in motion as an unnecessarily complicated way of sorting out your return from my realm after plundering the secrets of the dead, but that doesn't mean you know everything."
"Yet." The Hooded Hood answered.
The image on the Portal of Pretentiousness shifted again, to one of the scenes the cowled crime czar was particularly anxious to see.
At the moment, Gamona was feeling unloved and unwanted. She had been left in charge of Thugos' personal battleship, the Sanctifier, but that left her far from the action and with nobody to kill.
When the sensors indicated an intruder in the restricted corridors outside Thugos' personal quarters she felt as if a benevolent universe had conspired to rescue her from boredom.
She sent no shock troops or mercenaries to investigate. The only guards aboard the Sanctifier were undead anyway, and were of little use doing anything that required more than two sentences to explain. But suddenly Gamona's hunting instincts cut in and she faded into the gloom of the half-lit starship. Less than a minute later she was examining the sensor relay that had been deliberately tripped to bring her to the killing zone.
She whirled round and caught the razor letter as it hurtled to her throat.
"Nice," she told Messenger. "Nice trap, nice weapon." Then she hurled it back, trimming a sliver from the postman's trenchcoat as he rolled to avoid his own missile.
"One chance," Messenger told the assassin. "Out of my way. I have a delivery to make."
Gamona's white teeth flashed as she grinned in bliss. "Let's dance," she challenged.
"Of course," the Hooded Hood replied. "But if surrealist Kafkaeqsue black and white films are to be believed you have an understanding of how chess is played."
"Ah," the lithe girl in black understood. "You can sacrifice all the pieces you have to, so long as you take your opponent's king to win the game."
The cowled crime czar nodded. "Thugos understands this too," he noted, gesturing at the Portal of Pretentiousness. "Behold."
Right now though, Thugos was finishing off old business, the destruction of this dimension's version of Earth. Done right, the omnicide of his almost native world's biosphere in a sufficiently slow and brutal manner would require a personal appearance by the personification of Death; and Thugos had plans for her when she appeared.
The usual leaders of the planet were disabled in an early part of Thugos' campaign against the planet. Now the ragged desperate remnants of Earth's defence forces were being co-ordinated from the Lair Mansion on Parody Island, and gathered together under the alleged leadership of the Lair Legion's chairman, Visionary. Dark Thugos had duly doom-tubed himself into the very stronghold of his enemy to personally grant him a painful death.
"I resigned, dammit," complained his enemy.
"Then see this as your pension," Dark Thugos replied in his deep gravelly voice. His eyes flashed and the Entropy Eyebeams seared over towards Visionary.
Then the dimensional anomaly occurred. From seemingly nowhere, Nats, the flying delivery boy appeared between Thugos and the leader of the Lair Legion. He carried the device created by Pierson's Porter and Dr Moo and salvaged from the destruction of Zemo's hidden laboratory (in fact it was this device which had allowed Miss Framlicker and the striken Nats and PP to escape the laboratory's destruction). "Uh-uh!" Nats told the tyrant of the Sol Empire. "I'm re-addressing those Eyebeams."
The Entropy Eyebeams burned into the micro-portal designed originally to take Pierson's Porter and his retinue to safety on Mars. Baron Zemo had adapted the device to operate somewhat differently.
The lethal beams emerged from the other end of the micro-portal six inches from Thugos' face and hit him with their full force. The energy washed over the villain and splashed further across the back wall of Visionary's office; over the silhouette of the previously vaporised Heinrich Zemo.
Nats fumbled with the modulating controls Miss Framlicker had designed at Zemo's behest. The Entropy Effect was converted, and in a bizarre reverse-video effect Baron Zemo was reconstituted as he had previously been. Bill Reed felt the malevolent presence of the Baron lift from his mind as the archvillain returned to his own mortal flesh. Nats suddenly felt very stupid and ordinary; but on the other hand he no longer wanted to crush the world beneath his jackboots.
"I am back!" Zemo proclaimed, before crumpling unconscious to the floor.
"It worked!" Nats cheered. "I'm me again!" He slammed into Thugos and actually toppled the giant to the floor. "And I rule!" Nats added.
Thugos picked himself up from the floor where he had been tossed, the blistered fragments of skin across face and chest cracking off like flaking stone, and backhanded Nats through the reinforced window. "Gnat!" the conqueror snarled, staggering painfully to his feet.
"That's Nats…" a voice came back weakly from the Lair lawn before Bill Reed surrendered to his concussion.
"Hokay," Visionary worried. "So much for plan A. He's tough enough to survive his own eyebeams. Damn. Plan B please, Fleabot."
The micro-robot clinging to Visionary's shoulder twitched tiny antennae. "HALLIE, stupid plan one's done with. It's time for stupid plan two."
In a sub-basement of the Lair Mansion, Asil Ashling followed the Lair's occasional computer's instructions and attached electrodes to the temple of consulting telepath Tina Cabañez. "Are you sure this will work?" Asil asked anxiously. "Visionary is in very great danger and is being very brave."
Cheryl, Vizh's wife, opened her mouth for a reflexive put-down quip, then paused. "He is, isn't he?" she noted thoughtfully.
"I'm ready," Tina declared, her knuckles white on the arms of her chair. "Put me in contact with the House."
That job involved pulling a big dramatic lever. Flapjack was well versed in pulling big dramatic levers. "The house is alive?" he asked, uncertainly.
"Not exactly, dear," Cheryl told him. "But we discovered a while back that Parody Island was enhanced thousands of years ago when the Celestians buried a secret here, made this place a Lair. The island, and the various versions of the house which have been built here, are… protected in various ways.
"That's right," Tina agreed, in a distant, distracted voice, "Somehow we've got to… oh!"
Thugos was too smart to use his Entropy Eyebeams on Visionary again. In any case, he had enough physical strength to rend the possibly fake man limb from limb. That might even be more satisfying.
"Hold it, malefactor!" Fetish Lad warned. "The Substitute Lair Legion won't let you hurt that man!"
Thugos turned to see Fetish Lad, Elsqueevio, Caveguy, and Amazing Guy ranged beside the smouldering doorway.
"Over your dead bodies?" Thugos asked grimly, gesturing and dropping the wall onto them and the fallen Zemo.
A glowing energy construct protected them from the rubble. "Not that easy, tyrant," Amazing Guy told the villain. "And we have unfinished business." A second energy assault bowled Thugos through the fall wall of Vizh's office into the Mansion's training room. "Sorry about the wall!" he called to the leader of the Lair Legion.
"S'okay," Vizh replied weakly. "It needed dusting anyway."
"Hooga!" Caveguy agreed, lumbering after the fight.
"So how's the plan going, do you think?" Fetish Lad asked the pale and trembling Visionary.
"Did we have a Plan C at all?" the leader of the Lair Legion worried, "because I think we might need one."
"Amazing Guy," Dark Thugos recognised, shaking off a barrage of attacks from the protector of the universe. "That hurt, you little insolent worm. I was hoping for an excuse to break you personally, and now you've given it to me." His Entropy Eyebeams flashed again, slamming into the defensive screen of quantum energy that Tom Irving had hastily thrown up to defend himself. As the screens shattered Thugos reached out and seized her hero, hammering him to the Earth with a rib-shattering force.
"Hooga!" objected Caveguy, but was shrugged away with the same swipe that also too Elsqueevio out of the fight.
Fetish Lad hurled some self-connecting nipple clamps at the villain but realised he was way out of his depth. Thugos collapsed the ceiling onto him and returned to finish off the wounded Amazing Guy.
Amazing Guy was gone.
"Eggo!" hissed Dark Thugos, rightly guessing that the Living Waffle who had appointed Amazing Guy to his cosmic role had once again repossessed his agent. "You're on my list too," he promised. "Everyone dies. But starting with Visionary."
He cast around to look for the insignificant man who symbolised the fragile last defence of humanity. But take the king and the game was won.
"I'm over here," Vizh admitted, waving from the far end of the hallway. "But I think I should warn you that Plan C has arrived."
Thugos actually laughed, despite his wounds from his own eyebeams, despite the lesions from Amazing Guy's assaults. "And what desperate gambit is this?" he demanded.
"That would be us," the huge Makluan dragon hissed, releasing nuclear fire to envelop the Tyrant of the Sol Empire.
NTU-150 checked that the generator cables were firmly attached to his armoured battlesuit and let rip with his particle accelerators. "The Lair Legion," he added helpfully in case it wasn't evident to the staggered villain.
"The real thing," Troia explained, hammering her spear into the surprised Thugos' chest. "Accept no substitutes."
"And we are being most vexed with uncute Thugos-nasty!" Yo added, spearing him through the throat with his/her rapier (because s/he believed it would penetrate the enemy's rock-hard carcass).
Thugos growled in pain and anger, and released a pulse of energy which spilled the Legion away from him long enough for him to regain his balance. "Skree battlefleet, this is your supreme commander," he hissed through his wounded throat. "All vessels will converge on my location and release their full firepower at these co-ordinates. Vaporise this island and the continental landmass nearby. Now!"
"Oh crap!" Lisa commented.
"All batteries, target Parody Island. Maximum burst, fire at will. Crack their bloody planet apart!" Rox-Hoff snarled.
"Commander, we may destroy Dark Thugos also!" the weapons officer warned.
"So much the better," scowled the Commander. "Do it."
The starship next to the flag vessel burst asunder in a plume of flame.
"What?" Rox-Hoff demanded. "Tactical?"
"Incoming message!" the Comms officer interrupted. "It's from… er, it's from a hairy man breathing and speaking in space without a pressure suit, who's riding a… a spiky metal chariot pulled by two goats."
"A what?" Rox-Hoff thundered.
"Harken, fell vessels of war! This art Donar, hemigod of the storm, who doth speaketh to thee. Thou hast tresspassed where thou wert not invited, and yea verily thou hast mightily vexed me unto sore wroth. Depart from this place right readily or I shalt smite thy asses all the way back to yon Skree quadrant and get ice age upon thy behinds."
"He appears to have destroyed The Spirit of Oppression by throwing some kind of wooden bat at it," Tactical warned.
"A wooden bat?" Rox-Hoff questioned unbelievingly.
"It… it had a nail in the end, sir," Tactical added lamely.
"All weapons, obliterate that annoying little barbarian," Rox-Hoff ordered.
Continent-shattering mass driver charges pounded at Donar.
"Cease thy tickling," the hemigod demanded as he was battered from all directions with searing nuclear energies. He hadn't needed that topskin anyway.
A second starship crumpled up and shattered into fragments.
"What now?" Rox-Hoff demanded.
"Sir, it appears we are also under attack by some sort of… massive crustacean."
"A crustacean?"
"Databanks report it as Artemia nyos, sir… a sea monkey… only… it's not a quarter of an inch long."
"I happen to be King of the Sea Monkeys!" a voice boomed over the communications channels.
"Destroy it!" Rox-Hoff commanded.
A third vessel at the rear of the fleet suddenly veered from formation and slammed into its neighbour.
A glance from the reddening Rox-Hoff was sufficient for the Tactical officer to hasten with a report. "Some kind of transparent goo covering the whole ship, sir," he reported. "And from the messages coming from their onboard communications, the whole crew has gone completely insane."
"Of course," interrupted the Manga Shoggoth over the abused bandwidths. "I'm not an amateur, you know."
"Blow them apart," Rox-Hoff demanded. "All of them. Destroy these freaks! We are the Imperial Skree Armada. We are the force the galaxy trembles before! We are not going to be stopped by a goatherder, a brine shrimp, and glob of snot! Destroy them all." Then he reconsidered his strategy. "All except this vessel. Target Parody Island, deploy the planetbusters, and give these buggers something to cry about. All weapons, fire!"
"It's not over yet," the Hooded Hood promised her. "Never say die."
The alien killing machine swatted the pantechnican aside and marched relentlessly forward into the outskirts of Ottowa. He knew that as long as he moved towards innocent victims his enemy would get back within killing range. He could sense Hatman's growing desperation with every step the monster took towards the rapidly-evacuating town.
Jay Boaz braced himself and pulled on his Giants cap. Physical transformation took the most out of him, and this one was one of the more radical. Fifty feet tall he came at Onslaughter with a perfect drop-kick. Onslaughter reached out to grab and snap an ankle but at the last moment Hatty changed tactics, swinging that leg wide and kicking with his other foot, in the manner of a soccer player kicking off and seeking to misguide his opponent. The bone-ridged nightmare was caught with his weight shifted wrongly and propelled thirty feet backwards.
As he picked himself up Onslaughter probed again into his enemy's brain. It wasn't easy. There was some shining presence there (the Serious Matter that gave Hatman his powers, had Onslaughter but known it) which made it hard to penetrate his enemy's thoughts, and there was a good deal of pain in there too; Hatman had changed caps around three hundred times in rapid succession and it was taking its toll. All Onslaughter could get from his opponent was a desperate determination to hold the line no matter what the cost.
Another physical transformation, and a wall of water swept Onslaughter further back. Hatty staggered out of his Lakers hat and pulled on his lumberjack's cap. His chainsaw arms screeched onto Onslaughter's head, and he felt the pain of his diamond-tipped rotating blades blunting and crumpling on the alien's bone-ridges.
Onslaughter reached out and caught Hatman, shaking the lumberjack's cap from his head. "Too close, little hero," the gravelly voice of doom told him.
Jay reached down with practised fingers to his Hatility Belt and dragged his next hard-hat out. He noticed that his arms were shredded and bleeding. It felt like three fingers in his left hand were broken, but he still dragged his Con Ed hat on. Enough energy to power the Prairie Provinces arced through Onslaughter to earth.
The villain's hands convulsed, dropping Hatman to the floor. Jay fumbled and dragged on his Eagles cap just in time, wobbling out of reach before Onslaughter could seize him again. But Jay knew he didn't have much left in him to give, and if he was going to end this it had to be soon. The pain in his chest from an earlier blow, what would prove to be a fractured femur after later examination, first degree burns across his back, all were nothing compared to the pain he now felt in his head every time he applied his power to a new hat.
Onslaughter seemed battered also. The bio-genetic killing instrument had fought the invaders of Deathworld, had survived that planetoid's destruction, had plummeted like a meteor to the mudball Earth, had endured hours of battle with the improbable Yurt, and now faced this irritating but adaptable little defender. If not for his fatigue and earlier injuries, Onslaughter would have ripped Hatman apart long ago, either physically or psionically. As it was, he wanted to end the hero quickly, kill some bystanders to calm his nerves, and then rest and heal.
But he still had strength and endurance aplenty to finish off a trick-powered human.
Hatman gambled everything on a final play. Dragging on his Rams hat, he lowered his head and charged the faltering marauder. He aimed specifically for his enemy's head.
"You'll need to be a good deal tougher to win that way," snorted Onslaughter, bringing his own craggy forehead down in a headbutt which met Hatty's charge with a force greater still.
Jay picked himself up and noted that his right arm wasn't working any more. I only need one arm for this, he thought, as he dragged on his surgeon's rubber cap. Onslaughter loomed over him, reaching down and grabbing him by his broken arm and hoisting him in the air.
"This is going to be slow and nasty," Onslaughter promised, snapping the Hatility Belt off his captive with one clawed finger.
Hatman reached out with surgical precision towards Onslaughter's head, to the skull-ridge which he had attacked again and again, with charge after charge, each time seeking to widen and deepen the crack from the Yurt's earlier battering. Now the whole exo-skull wrenched free, leaving a livid, gory network of capillaries over the inner skull.
And Hatman put on the exo-skull.
Suddenly, he was huge, he was strong, he was unbeatable. He could conquer this pitiful planet right after dealing with this upstart Onlsaughter before him. His wounds meant nothing. What did the scrapings of a few broken bones on each other mean when there was an enemy to slay?
Onslaughter staggered back at the first blow, then returned its equal. The battle had become much more even, and it would only end in one or other opponent falling.
The forty minutes that followed were brutal and bloody, with neither adversary giving of asking quarter; but in the end one was fighting for sheer villainy alone, the other had within him a burning flame of heroism, and bit by bit Onslaughter gave way. The final punch shattered Onslaughter's chest carapace and sent him tumbling to the ground, more ruin than living being.
For fully five minutes after the villain had fallen Jay had to battle with himself not to rip out his enemy's living heart. At last he managed instead to drag the exo-skull off his head and hurl it away, where it shattered into useless fragments.
Then Jay fell over on top of his enemy and watched the blood from his head and arms and chest form interesting pools on the ground below him before he fell into unconsciousness.
"You want him dead in particular," Death noted.
The Hood shrugged. "He has limited uses to me, and it would be more difficult to breed the Sorceress with the proper stock while he remains around. But that is a scenario for another day."
Sorceress and Cobra were confronting the Necro-Priests, who were now commanding even the fallen soldiers of the Skree and Skunk attack force back into battle. Cobra's role was to defend her friend from attack by the shambling zombies. The Sorceress was busy analysing the necromantic pathways the Necro-Priests were using and eliminating them one by one. A cold fury ran through Whitney Darkness as she learned of the cruel magicks these techno-mages were using. None of these vile comjurers were leaving here without facing the darkness she would dredge from their own souls, she vowed; if only there were not so many of them.
Paste Pot Pete would have died earlier in the battle as he continued to spray and glue the opposition heedless of his own safety. spiffy had plunged into the bloodiest part of the melee to drag him free, and now shielded him from heavy-weapons fire as he fought back with the powerful fronds which his symbiote fern possessed; but the Accoster corps was pressing in on them and it was only a matter of time.
The Dark Knight leaped to one side as Dronon oriented his Omniversal Hammer at the urban legend. In the growing gloom of evening, in the shadows of Gothametropolis, he was in his own territory, a realm invaded by these evildoers. Despite the odds stacked against him he was not going to surrender.
But it was clear the battle couldn't be won without a sacrifice play.
"spiffy, I need some help here," the Dark Knight lied. "Use your fern to get you through this force field.
spiffy nearly dropped dead of shock. "DK? Did you say you needed me? Me?"
"Just get in here," the Dark Knight growled, barely evading another body-melting stream of fundamental energies.
"One or many, all shall fall before the Public Accoster," Dronon vowed.
"You gonna be okay here, Pete?" the fern-wielder checked with his gluey partner. Since PPP happily ignored him and went on gungeing undead shocktroops spiffy assumed he was at liberty to go and assist the urban legend.
"Here I am, DK," spiff grinned as he used his fern's energy-handling abilities to phase through the Public Accoster's forcefield. "What do you want?"
But the Dark Knight was not there any more.
"Your friend has fled," Dronon crowed, turning the full force of his Omniversal Hammer upon the ferned phenomenon. "He has left you to die."
"Aagh!" spiffy screeched as he felt the blistering energy overcome his fern's power to protect himself. So this was what it felt like to be betrayed to death, he thought to himself.
"You destroy even the rest of the dead," Sorceress was accusing the Necro-Priests, "Even they are not allowed to rest in peace."
"Your indignation can only take you so far, little hedge-sorceress," the Necro-Priests intoned as one. Two dozen of their weaker brethren lay inert on the ground, but the remaining thirty sensed they had Whitney on the ropes now, even as their near-limitless undead were pressing in on Cobra. "Soon you will fall, and what pleasure we shall take from having your own dead form perform our every desire."
"Eew," Cobra grimaced from beneath the mask of gore she was covered in. "I'd go back to villains that want to impregnate you when you're still alive, Whit."
"They… won't… win…" Sorceress insisted, wiping the blood from her nose and eyes and continuing her uneven contest.
"Had you not eschewed your Demon Lover, witchling, it might have been a different contest, but mortal and weak as you are you cannot resist us," the Necro-Priests chorused. "It is only a matter of time, little hedge-sorceress.
"But you don't have time," the Dark Knight pointed out, looming in the midst of the enclave and lashing out with calculated precision to sever the bio-technical links which joined the wills of the Priesthood. Separated from each other they were momentarily disoriented. As their undead slaves hesitated, Cobra vaulted in a high somersault over the shambling zombies and descended upon their masters to wreak carnage on the Techno-Priests.
The Sorceress marshalled her remaining strength (she had resorted to using her own life-force and body mass an hour since, and had little of either left just now, but even now her will shone fierce and determined) and turned her power on the disarrayed undead. "Rest!" she commanded them, and they fell like a house of cards.
Whitney toppled to the ground, barely breathing but victorious.
"Never mind revenge," the Dark Knight told Cobra. "I can massacre Techno-Priests. Assist HV and Cap."
For a moments Cobra's twin natures warred within her, but then she used her banana gun to clear a way towards the Skree teleport gate where her comrades were struggling to stem the influx of Skree shocktroopers from the hovering vessel above.
"Glad to see you, Christine," HV admitted. His coat and shirt were shredded, and both he and Cap looked like they had fought mincing machines. "Hold the portal while I have a go at this machinery. I think I can find a way to interfere with the feedback signal and stop it from operate… ah, there we are! At last!
There was a satisfyingly loud explosion, and the minor sears that the three heroes sustained were worth it to stop off the constant stream of new invaders coming through the portal. There were still killbots and stormtroopers and the occasional Skree shapeshifter fighting on the ground, but suddenly the problem had become containable.
"Help spiffy!" HV warned Cap. "He's alone against Dronon."
"I'm on it," Cap replied, leaping towards one of the blotchy areas around Dronon that indicated his forcefield was fraying in some quarters. spiffy was still lashing out at the Public Accoster, refusing to surrender despite the beating he was taking.
"Not so fast, little hero," Dronon told the shield-bearer. "I'm busy killing your friend right now. Here, sit in this anti-force bubble until I'm ready to execute you." And suddenly Cap was in a glowing sphere similar to the one that had protected the Skree Accoster.
spiffy tried to get up to face the Accoster again as Dronon bore down on him for the kill. "You won't get away with this!" the weeded wonder warned.
"Why?" snorted the Man of the Skree. "Because the underdog always wins?"
"Not the underdog," the battered hero replied. "The Hounddog." At which point Hounddog, spiffy's superpowered canine chum, who had heard his master's whistle from twenty blocks away and raced thorough the wall of the Abandoned Legion's headquarters to respond, smacked into Dronon's defence shields at something like MACH 2.
Dronon staggered as his whole energy construct was rocked by this insanely powerful animal. "I'll get you," he promised spiffy, "and your little dog too." He focussed his Omniversal Hammer and released a full concussion charge at Hounddog. The mutt of power yelped once; when he came to later, he would be in California.
"One other thing," spiffy warned. "I don't like people kicking my dog." He still lay on the ground, head flat on the broken pavement. He couldn't get up just now because his fern had buried deep taproots into the soil. Just as Dronon turned to finish him those tendrils burst up around the villain's feet, the foliage growing up inside his battle armour.
From that moment on, Dronon the Public Accoster was beaten. Dronon was ticklish.
spiffy stopped him giggling with a blast of stored energy from the fern.
The Dark Knight glided up to make certain that Dronon was subdued. "This battlefield is ours," he told the ferned phenomenon.
"You left me to die, DK," spiffy accused. "You deliberately sacrificed me to win the battle."
"Yes," agreed the urban legend. "So…?"
"So it'll be a while before I trust you again, you cold-blooded manipulator," spiffy shot back, angrily. "Now get us some medical help here, will you. Cobra and Sorceress need hospitalisation, HV;s not much better, Pete's a glob of paste just now. And get someone to cut through that energy thing Cap's in, will you?"
The Dark Knight looked round at the shattered street. The few Skree stragglers had run off into the Gothametropolis slums; they would never be seen again. That just left the Skree battleship hovering overhead which was cycling its heavy weapons and pointing down at them.
"And get me a topiarist, for goodness sake," the rooted spiffy demanded.
The Hooded Hood cradled his fingers, sat back in his throne, and pointed at the next image in the Portal of Pretentiousness.
"This is incredibly cool," he told Savagetooth as he led the villain to almost claw himself through an external bulkhead. "I mean, you're definitely going to get a big picture in my rogues gallery. I needed a really physical foe, and you're an excellent one given that you have all kinds of strength and healing factors and stuff and can just cut though my silly string and shake off my sugar bombs and stuff. I just wish you had a bit more snappy dialogue, 'cause growls aren't that interesting and unless it's a really good action artist then people might get a bit bored with just panel after panel of hacking and slashing."
"I don't need to yammer, boy," Savagetooth promised. "I only need to catch you but once."
"That's better," CSFB! encouraged. "More pointless threats. I'm pretty sure you'll get the hang of it. Then I can have HH as my manipulator-plannery type foe, PsychoAcidPervGirl! as my psychotic-unpredictable foe, the Thunder-Monkey Worshipping Ass-Raping Ninjas as my evil group foe, Argh!Yle, Evillist of Socks as my off-the-wall humorous foe, and you as my big savage physical foe!"
"Shut up!" the feral berserker shouted, slashing towards Dreamcatcher Foxglove like a rabid combine harvester.
"Yeah," Trickshot called from the other side of the room where he was firing flare arrows to misguide HuntingJustice DeathMarrow's tracer bullets, "Shut up! If I had Argh!Yle in my rogues gallery I wouldn't be boasting about it!"
"You will boast no more about anything!" HuntingJustice DeathMarrow promised him. "This is where you die." She fired off a series of mini-bomblets from her wrist launcher and uncoiled her electro-whips.
The irritating archer rolled beneath the blasts and fired off a screamer arrow to keep his enemy off balance. "I call villainess with the biggest chest measurements, though," Trickshot called to CSFB!
"OK!" Dream agreed, "but I get sidekick with the biggest chest measurements."
"No argument from here kid," Tricky called back. "Though I might need to do a close comparison. How about it, Hunty?"
"This vaudeville routing is very amusing for juvenile males, I'm sure," Natalia Romanza interrupted, high-kicking her way amongst the alien mercenaries, "but if you two boys could stop comparing the sizes of your rogues galleries, it might be helpful to put down your playmates and help us recapture the helicarrier."
"Oops, sorry darlin'" Trickshot grinned. "Manoeuvre thirty-seven, kid?"
"Excellent!" CSFB! enthused.
"You guys have worked out battle manouvres?" Dan Drury wondered, from the rift in the bulk head where he was picking of Skunk saucers with one of DeathMarrow's abandoned canons. It was news to him.
"Nah, he means Tales to Infuriate #37, where the heroes double-teamed to take out villains who were fighting one on one," Dreamcatcher explained with a happy grin. "Like this." He hurled his yo-yo far wide from Savagetooth, but Trickshot's arrow missed HuntingJustice DeathMarrow and diverted the spinning disc to wrap around the feral berserker. "It's unbreakable," CSFB! told Savagetooth, "just like you're unbeatable. Let's see which people believe in the most, shall we? I bet I believe in comics more than your fans do."
"And now, Hunty…" Trickshot promied.
But Natalia Romanza had just taken the well-endowed wrongdoer down with a single scissor-kick to the jaw. "Oh do get on and stop these invaders," she told Carl bastion impatiently.
"Yeah," Dan Drury agreed, locking another ammunition belt into his weapon. "These yahoos are trespassin' on Uncle Sam's property. Let's go read 'em their rights."
"We're getting there," the Hooded Hood promised.
ManMan, Dancer, Ziles, and Lisette all heaved a sigh of exhausted relief as the last of the Skree Terminizers fell. Space Ghost didn't seem to mind.
"Is it over?" Ziles asked hopefully.
Then the Skree stormtroopers surrounded them.
"Maybe not," she conceded.
Just then something flared and arced over the Paradopolis TV transmission tower as Pierson's Porter commandeered the airwaves in the name of the city. Every single trooper exploded in hot, grisly fragments.
"I think I'm going to be sick," Dancer grimaced.
"Do you need a hand?" Space Ghost checked with her. "I think I saw one over there."
"Is it over now?" Ziles checked cautiously.
Then Granny Gleeful and her Orphanage of Horrors doom-tubed in.
"Will you stop asking that!" shouted ManMan.
"Aw crap!" Lisette scowled. "I'm not fighting pimply adolescents again. I got enough of that in high school."
"Those poor children, trained to be psychopathic kill-warriors," Dancer sympathised.
"You don't have kids, do you?" Knifey noted. "Very little training is usually needed."
"Let's stop them," ManMan suggested. "Please?"
"These children have been naughty?" Space Ghost noted. "That means it's time for… SpaaaaaaaaNNNNKK RaaaaaayyyYYYYY!"
"You've been a bad boy yourself!" Granny Gleeful retorted. "Where are your pants?"
"They… they chafed…" Space Ghost said feebly, succumbing to the icy stare of disapproving grandmothers everywhere.
"Like we don't all have that problem," ManMan pointed out, "but you don't see all the other super-guys pulling their trousers off in combat, do you?"
"No," Ziles admitted sadly.
"And what happens to bad boys, Space Ghost?" Grany Gleeful demanded.
"They… they get spanked?" Space Ghost gulped. The self-inflicted impact from his own spank ray buried him a quarter of a mile below Paradopolis.
Ziles sprayed Granny Gleeful with relaxor crème. "This should chill you out, you old mind-witch," she taunted. "I never was very fond of authority figures."
Granny Gleeful backhanded Ziles away to drop her in a crumpled heap on the other side of the Not-So-Great Lawn. "And I was never that fond of insolent little waifs who are no better than they should be," the craggy old lady snarled. "And that goes for you too, Laurie Leyton!" Granny seized the whip that had just coiled around her throat and dragged Lisette in a parabola over her head to slam her hard into the turf. "Both of you will make excellent candidates for Granny's school given the right training and discipline."
"Not so fast, Granny!" the Probability Dancer warned.
"Your little chance effects won't work on me, Sarah Shepherdson. I know the slutty little secrets you're keeping."
"Hey, you don't judge me, I won't comment on your fashion sense," Dancer shot back. "Besides, I wasn't working my powers on you." She gestured at the Orphanage of Horror. "I was working on them."
"Granny!" the lead orphan-trooper called urgently. "I… I gotta go!"
"Me too Granny!" a second, then a third, then a fourth added.
"Granny, I made number twos in my combat armour!"
"I don't imagine that combat armour is easy to get out of in a hurry," ManMan noted.
"Granny!"
"Granny!"
"Granny!"
"Five hundred super-stinky orphans and one Granny," chuckled Knifey.
"This isn't over," Granny Gleeful warned. "I'll be back, with redesigned diapers. Count on it."
"I'll be holding my breath," Dancer told her with a cheery smile.
The doom-tube blast knocked Joe Pepper and Shep from their feet as the Orphanage of Horrors retreated.
"We survived?" ManMan asked incredulously, looking round at the Terminizer wreckage.
"Looks that way, Manny. I'll see to Ziles and Lisette. You'd better see if you can, er, dig Space Ghost out."
"OK," Joe Pepper agreed. "And then maybe we could…"
"And then we can worry about that big starship hanging overhead charging its weapons array," Knifey suggested.
"Or we could do that," ManMan agreed.
"Is it over yet?" asked a stunned Ziles weakly.
As he powered his way out of the rubble for the tenth time, ignoring the abrasions and minor cuts he had sustained, he found that Bambi Bacall had chosen a new gambit. She stood astride the floating stature of Wilbur Parody and dangled a limp figure from her outstretched arm.
"Valeria!" Exile breathed.
"The little slave girl? The one you'd die to save?" the Blonde mocked. "Here's your chance."
"Don't hurt her," Derek Foreman pleaded. "Leave her out of this."
"Derek!" a familiar voice echoes across the battered street. "It's a trick! Don't believe her! I'm here!"
And suddenly Exile remembered that the Suicide Blonde had created lifelike simulacra of Valeria of Carfax before now. "Nice try, Bambi!" he snarled. "You almost had me."
"The ploy was completely effective," the Suicide Blonde reported, dropping the glob of meat she had created to splatter on the pavement far below her. "After all, it identified the location of your real chattel." And with a gesture she dragged Valeria out of her hiding place and hauled her high into the air.
Exile stopped in mid-charge.
"You really are too stupid to live," the Blonde told him. "To die for love." At her gesture, two dozen razor-sharp paling rose up like spears and hurtled towards Exile.
"Derek!" Valeria screamed. "I lo…"
Valeria vanished in a flash of golden light. "I got her, cuz!" Goldeneyed reported. "She's safe."
Exile melted the metal spears to vapour and destroyed the statue Bambi Bacall was standing on. Goldeneyed appeared right in front of the Suicide Blonde and let her have it in the jaw with his full strength.
"Ouch," she said, and swatted both heroes away with a wall of stone she solidified out of air for the purpose.
"Bry?" Derek gasped, tossing aside the masonry before the Blonde could follow up her attack. "You're not dead?"
"Back from the future," Goldeneyed grinned. "And I know where we came from now, who our parents were – well, our moms anyway – why we were sent back to be brought up in this timeline and why she followed us. Everything."
"So she is our cousin?" Exile checked, blowing apart the wall of lava that threatened to engulf them.
G-Eyed teleported the molten gobbets around the Blonde. "Oh yeah. But we got raised by the order of the Observing Eye. She got fostered by Thugos."
"Yuck! How do we take her down?"
"We don't," Bry answered. "Not today, anyway. One day there'll be a showdown, but if we get tied up fighting the Suicide Blonde here we can't help out where we're really needed. That's why when I got brought back to this time I went straight over to talk it through with Xander, find out how get out of this."
The Suicide Blonde surrounded them with a high steel dome and turned all the air inside it into cyanide gas. Exile converted energy into oxygen for long enough that G-Eyed could teleport them out of there. "And what did Xander have to say?" Exile gasped.
"He told me to teleport in a specialist," Goldeneyed replied.
"A specialist?" the Suicide Blonde mocked. "And who is going to be able to save you from me?"
"Hello," Sersi the Austernal smiled nastily. "I understand you think of yourself as something of a matter manipulator…"
"We shall see," replied the Hooded Hood. His eyes were glowing very brightly green.
"You're good too. You have some combat moves I've not seen on Earth before, and being double-jointed gives you a useful tactical advantage. And I like the way you turn your long hair into an offensive weapon rather than a defensive liability," replied Messenger.
"I noticed you noting that," Gamona grinned elfishly. "Shame I have to kill you now. We could have had a good time together."
"I don't have good times these days."
"You would have had with me."
Two pairs of eyes met for a moment.
"Back to the fight then," Messenger said at last. He circled sideways, trying to get a route so he could get to the door of Thugos' personal quarters.
"Back to the fight," Gamona agreed.
But as he moved to block the postman, the parcel bomb he had missed her with earlier and which had been counting down on timer exploded right beneath her. Gamona was thrown like a rag doll into Messenger's arms.
Instinctively he grasped her head and prepared to jerk it round to snap her spine. Then he realised that she was already unconscious. He hesitated a moment and then laid her bloody form gently on the deck. "I warned you I don't have good times these days," he told her. "Or friends."
Then he made his way to Dark Thugos' sanctum.
"You could have visited any time you wanted and found out," the Hooded Hood pointed out.
"And have him undressing me with his eyes? Eew," Death shuddered. "So what is it?"
"A pirated Celestian module which taps an aspect of the Sauce which surrounds the Parodyverse," the Hood answered. "It's the conduit which powers Thugos' endless energies and his Entropy Eyebeams."
"Without that he'll be helpless?" Death asked.
"No," the Hood replied. "He'll be insanely powerful. But he won't be recharging."
"It's a start," Death acceded.
"Well, not if you're going to be all Euclidean about geometry," the Manga Shoggoth admitted, oozing out of the control surfaces and looming up before him. "But I found a new angle on how to get in."
"You… you may have got us, but we shall die with honour!" the captain shouted. And he fingered the destruct button.
"I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Dave," the Manga Shoggoth bubbled.
"I'm afraid there are back-ups you failed to neutralise," the captain snarled back, just as the Essence of Devastation erupted into nuclear fire.
"Cthulhu on a crutch!," the Manga Shoggoth swore as he began the slow process of rejoining all the free-spinning gelatinous globules that were now spread over three thousand miles of vacuum. It was going to take a long time.
"Hit him with everything we've got," the commanding officer - clad now in oxygen mask and cheeky high-cut silver-foil bikini briefs - demanded. "I want him dead."
"I want to be home with Elyse and a burger," Banjoooooo complained, "but we don't all get what we want, and I wasn't the one who set out to commit genocide on your people,. Uh-oh, here comes another power. It think, yes, the ability to fill any volume with soap bubbles! Let's go for it."
Just then, Messenger finally managed to sever the cosmic conduit aboard Thugos' personal cruiser.
"Oops!" Banjoooooo gulped. The Swift Carrion-Bird of Carnage was pretty much disabled – washed up, in fact – but lots of other ships were orienting weapons on him, and his evolutionary temporary power abilities had just vanished.
This was going to hurt.
"Uh-oh," Tina breathed to the others in the subterranean research lab at the Lair Mansion.
"Uh-oh we're going to get wiped out by a big sparkly energy beam?" Meggan Foxxx gulped.
"Uh-oh, the Island's annoyed," Tina clarified.
"Ah," Cheryl noted, "that would explain the glowing walls then."
Parody Island's long-dormant Celestian-laid defences had finally found a challenge worth waking up for. They caught the planetbuster beam as it descended, grappled onto it like a bad-tempered arm-wrestler, and sent a pulse roughly a thousand times more powerful back the way it had come.
Rox-Hoff saw it coming but had no time even to speak. His flagship was the first to be absolutely eradicated, but the force locked on to comms signals and intership communications and anything else that would lead it on and leapt from vessel to vessel like some lethal spark, detonating each one in turn all the way back through the fleet. The sky was full of fireworks.
"They… they art all gone," Donar said weakly as he toppled from the skies and impacted somewhere in Idaho.
"Yes," breathed Death. "Very clever. I wonder if the Lair Legion realise what they've awoken there?"
"I hope not," the cowled crime czar answered. "They're powerful enough to be extremely irritating as it is, without learning the full potential of their Lair."
Death looked distant for a moment. "I notice Messenger is not amongst the dead," she mentioned.
The Hooded Hood shrugged. "He has another role to play before the Resolution War comes. I saved Gamona too. She may well prove a useful asset at some point."
"And so to the endgame of Thugos' little chess match?" Death wondered as the Portal of Pretentiousness again focussed on the Lair mansion.
"Only Thugos is playing chess," the Hood replied darkly. "I'm playing dominoes. The sort of game where you stack them all in rows and knock just one of them over."
"Finny!" Enty shouted, flying between Thugos and the wounded dragon and using his armour's refractive coating to deflect the blast which would otherwise have taken the Makluan's head off.
"I'm alright, dammit," Finny growled, lying on one side and shapeshifting his internal organs around to keep himself alive. "Just bring down the bad guy."
"Y'know, I thought having spiffy as a bro was a pill," Troia told Thugos as she tripped him with her spear, "but you're much worse."
"Ah, almost-sister," hissed Thugos, "I am saving you for last." Instead he reached up suddenly and seized NTU-150's chestplate. "Does this preserve your life, half-man?" he mocked as he crumpled it with his fingers.
"Does this make your ears ring?" Enty countered, raising both hands and releasing full-charge repulsor blasts right into Thugos' already wounded face. The tyrant of the sol empire gasped and staggered back.
Lisa hooked her whip around his neck and lodged a razor-brief right in the ridge where his eyebrows met. "Does that give you a headache?" she asked.
"Yo is thinking bad man should fall down now," Yo advised Thugos, impossibly thumping him on the jaw without shattering his/her wrist.
Thugos snarled his defiance, caught Yo's arm on the second blow, snapped it, and hurled the surprised thought being right at Troia.
"Yo is thinking this doesn't hurt," Yo said weakly before s/he and the Amazon administrator both crumpled into a heap.
"Nobody does that to Yo!" thundered Fin Fang Foom. "Nobody!" The ichor-stained dragon caught Thugos in one massive claw and slammed him down hard onto the reinforced floor of the Lair mansion. And again. And again.
Thugos released a charge of energy that seared the dragon's talons and rendered his whole arm numb and useless. Then he tossed the vast bulk of the wyrm through the front wall of the Lair's headquarters.
"We needed to redecorate again," Visionary sighed. He was over by Yo and Troia, making them as comfortable as possible.
Lisa checked the tactical situation. Finny was having trouble rising and Thugos was pounding on the injured dragon more and more. Enty was out of the game for a few moments while he hotwired that electric cheese-grater into his damaged life-support systems. Vizh was, well, Vizh. The Irregulars were all well out of the battle.
"Down to me, huh?" she scowled. "Well in that case, I summons Goldeneyed and Exile!" There was a flash of subpoena power, and the two tattered heroes appeared. "Big fight's that way, boys," the first lady of the Lair Legion indicated.
Lisa concentrated again while Goldeneyed and Exile raced in to distract Thugos. Exile diverted one energy blast while Goldeneyed got in a couple of good solid punches. Then Thugos released his Entropy Eyebeams at them. G-Eyed teleported the majority of the lethal energies away, and Exile modulated most of the rest, so the backwash was sufficient only to send the pair tumbling like broken marionettes to crash in heaps by the amorous advocatrix's feet.
"I summons CSFB! and Tricky and Hatty!" Lisa called.
"Hey, it's the big fight at the end of the epic!" Dreamcatcher grinned. "Only one of us will walk out of this fight… and it won't be me!"
"Screen of smoke arrows to stop him orientin' that zap vision of his, then a screamer to disorient him, then a couple of energy scramblers to stop him throwing those power blasts around," estimated Trickshot, following through with a half-dozen perfectly targeted shafts. "Now let's try old fashioned pointy arrows and see how invulnerable his eyeballs are."
Lisa looked down at Hatman. "Er, I summons Asil and Cheryl and a stretcher," she added.
"Don't waste all your power," Visionary warned her. "I just got word from HALLIE via Fleabot. Messenger has done his mission, so Thugos hasn't got any way of replenishing his energy reserves. And that Skree fleet ain't there any more."
"In that case it's time for my penultimate act," the first lady of the Lair Legion breathed. "I summons the hunk of thunder, Donar!"
Across the lawn Thugos loosed his Entropy Eyebeams at CSFB! The wired wonder dodged beneath them only to see the radiant parallel streaks twist to follow him. He inevitably somersaulted over Thugos' head, using the villain as a vaulting horse. One of the twin beams seared right into the villain, tumbling him over into a new crater would one day become a new ornamental pond on the Mansion's lawn. The other flicked past and hammered into Dreamchaser Foxglove. Fortunately the weakened beams only bounced him over the grass to land in a tangled limp heap by the shore.
Trickshot sprayed a cover of blast arrows, but Thugos hammered the ground, putting the irritating archer off-balance, and then swatted him aside with a negligent backhand. "You are the dangerous one," he told Lisa. "So you die next."
"That art most unlikely, maundering recreant!" the hemigod of thunder warned him. "For here stand I, the Oldmanson, to say thee nay!"
"And me," hissed Finny, dragging himself up again painfully, trying to rejoin the battle.
"And I," added Jaimie Bautista. "Keep him busy guys," he added in a low whisper. "He's burning off a lot of power and he's not stocking up again."
"Whass goin' on?" Hatty asked blearily from his world of hurt.
"Oh don't worry," Cheryl assured him, "The LL are just kicking a cosmic tyrant's butt."
"Visionary is leading them," Asil explained proudly.
"But we're still doin' okay," Flapjack qualified.
"They're taking down the scuzzball who hurt my l'il Dream," Meggan added from her unique perspective.
Then NTU-150 was smashed through the reinforced floor to land beside them in a tangle of broken metal and fused wires.
"Fleabot! HALLIE! In here stat!" called Cheryl.
"He's alive!" Tina told them. "Thank God, he's alive."
"Fin Fang Foom is down also," Asil worried. "Donar is taking a terrible pounding."
Vizh edged over the battlefield to where Lisa was squatting. "Lisa, you said you'd done your penultimate summoning? Who's the final one? Starseed? The Yurt? Superman?"
"Nope," the amorous advocatrix grinned wickedly. "I summons the Hooded Hood."
"Ah, there you are," the first lady of the Lair Legion proclaimed. "I thought it was time to face off against the mastermind behind the invasion of Earth."
The Hooded Hood looked over to the wreckage where Donar was resolutely continuing in spite of an appalling beating. "Are you not already doing that?"
"We're fighting the villain who thinks he's behind it," Lisa shot back. "But so far he's achieved none of his objectives. He's lost his Deathworld, the Skree empire, his conduit to the Sauce, his major henchpeople, and all he's got are some lumps and bruises from AG and the Legion. You, on the other hand, have come back from the dead, having learned of some mysterious arcane source of knowledge that you need to further your ambitions…"
"The Third Book of Wilbur Parody," the Hood footnoted. "Yes, I have had sight of such a tome."
"So you caused the kidnapping of Paradiopolis, the takeover of Earth by the Devil-Doctor, the attack of Deathworld, the destruction of Skree-Lump, and the invasion of Thugos all to further your own ends," spat Visionary. "You manipulated Thugos, Galactivac, even the Celestians to further your ambitions, and you caused the death of billions."
"Thugos precipitated those things," the Hood shrugged. "All I did was talk with the Shaper of Worlds.
"You lined them up as well though," Lisa added. "You manipulated Melissa into giving up her powers to Dancer, for example. And you arranged for the whole of Paradopolis to be 'accidentally' taken to the prison world. And for me to be sucked into a portal of death."
"This art most enlightening exposition, milady," Donar interrupted from the field of conflict, "but I art bleeding most profusely herein for the nonce, and wonder if thou wouldst be intending to do anything regarding yon Thugos felon that ist smiting me most mightily?"
Lisa and the Hood exchanged glances. "I'll talk to my son," the cowled crime czar agreed. "For the first time. But nothing more than that. I won't use my power against him."
"Right," Vizh said, "we've got to get some Legionnaires up and ready to fight." He looked around him. "Well, up anyway," he added.
"Good evening, Thugos," the Hooded Hood bade his twisted alternate reality son. "I am disappointed."
"And why would that be, father?" Dark Thugos spat. "Because I saw your hand in this long ago and pressed on, choosing to conquer by brute force where you mince and play shadow-games? Because I haven't relented and run away to regroup and try again as you do whenever your plans meet the slightest opposition? Because even now, after all my wounds and losses, I am going to triumph and there is nothing you can do to stop me?"
"Because," the Hooded Hood answered coldly, "it turns out that spiffy was the smart one."
The Hood vanished.
"Oh no," snarled Thugos, "you don't escape that easily. Anywhere your pretty little Portal can take you my doom tube can follow. I walked this road knowing you would come, and now we shall not part until one of us is dead!"
He summoned a dimensional rip and slammed himself into it with immense effort. For the first time he realised how weak he had become.
And also for the first time he realised that now they were active, the Island's defences were preventing him from leaving via a Doom Tube. The shattered tube spat him out, burning and bleeding, to tumble onto the Legion's mansion doorstep.
The Lair Legion were waiting for him. Behind Visionary were Lisa, Donar, Goldeneyed, Exile, Yo, and Troia. Most of them looked as bad as he did, but they were not going to back off.
"It's over," Vizh told the Tyrant of the Sol Galaxy. "There's no escape. You might as well give up."
"I shall destroy you all, and everybody in this manse," Dark Thugos promised. "Then I shall take this world and render it a bloody sacrifice to Death. With Death in my grasp I shall be a god to gods, and none shall stand against me. And it begins here, fake man, with the splintering of your bones and the wailing of your loved ones."
Mjalcolm hit Thugos square between the eyes. Exile loosed a blast that scorched the ground right down to the sea and raised a wall of steam for nearly a mile. G-Eyed teleported Troia in close so that the Amazon administrator could catch Thugos as he charged forward in response, impaling himself on her spear. Yo, believing him/herself more or less recovered, snatched Troia out of the way as Thugos reached to eviscerate her. And rising one last time like a wrathful mountain, Fin Fang Foom fell insensate over Thugos, driving the archvillain down onto the spear with the weight of his inert bulk.
Thugos crawled nine paces towards Visionary. He died with hate on his lips, snarling his threats of destruction at the heroes who had defeated him.
The final burst of his energies manifested as a release of lighting that fried almost every electrical system in the house.
"Ouch!" HALLIE complained to Flapjack. "The next time Con Johnstantine tries to sell you a lightning rod, bloody well buy it."
"Oh no," she responded with a little shudder. "I didn't feel up to it. I sent one of my Family to do it for me."
"My Lady Death?" he asked.
"She couldn't make it," another voice told her. "And you've been too nasty to deserve her anyway. All you deserve is a… Spaaaaaaaannnnnnnkkkkkkkkkkkkkk Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!"
"Well, th' good news is most everyone's gettin' back to normal," he told the LL and their guests. "Bad news is, the government's getting' back to normal too. By tomorrow all you Abandoned Legion folks will be back on the wanted for questionin' list, I'm guessin'."
"You could join the LL, get some immunity," Hatman suggested, his un-plaster-casted arm around a pale but smiling Sorceress.
"We won't be bound by society's rules in doing what's right," Hunter Victorious answered.
"But you can try and convince me later," Whitney whispered to the capped crusader, "In private."
"Oh, thanks so much for introducing me to an outlaw super-team, spiffy," Banjoooo scowled at his friend while Elyse was chatting to Cheryl.
spiffy shrugged. "Eh, I'm mayor. I can pardon you. I think."
"You think?"
"Well, no-one's actually let me into City Hall yet.
"We still have a few heroes on the missing in action list," Natalia Romanza continued. "If there ever was a hero named Saint and he's still alive he's apparently gone to ground. Dynamite Boy seems to have vanished, as have most of those so-called Paradopolis Irregulars, and, um, Fetish Lad.. We didn't find any bodies."
"Except mine," added the self-resurrecting Frog Man.
"And some heroes have gone to the future, and some are off-plane," Miss Framlicker added. "We'll probably see Amazing Guy and his retinue again when we most need them."
"I have GOT to meet a chick called Multiple Woman," CSFB and Flapjack both said together.
"And we've got Suicide Blonde, Savagetooth, HuntingJustice DeathMarrow, and Dronon in the Safe," NTU-150 added. "I designed a few precautions to hold them in, and once that wing's rebuilt after the test run they'll never get out."
"Once the fires have been finally extinguished," added HALLIE.
Then Meggan brought baby Christopher out to see Lisa and people forgot about their wounds and losses and the problems of tomorrow (like a Paradopolis that was still a mile away from home and what Mayor Porter was going to do about it) and just shared in the Kodak moment.
"It art pain from mine wounds that doth cause mine eyes to water slightly," Donar assured everyone.
"Kiddo, the day I throw a party that doesn't make people's eyes water is the day I retire," Sersi assured the hunky hemigod. "But I've got to admit, the little spud is awfully cute."
"Hey guys, pizza!" came a voice from above, and Nats swooped down to join the heroes on the lawn.
"Hooga!" shouted Caveguy joyfully, wrestling the top box from Nats and getting into a fight for it under the table with Hounddog and Lisa's cat.
"Now that's what I call delivery," ManMan approved. "Um, you're not still evil Zemo or stuff are you?"
"Only one way to find out," grinned the red-haired super-delivery man. "Hey, Miss Framlicker!"
The ITC scientist peered over her spectacles at him. "What is it Nats?"
"Silence woman, and obey my will!" he declaimed, grabbing her and kissing her right on the lips.
She floored him with a knee right into his groin.
"Yup," Nats wheezed. "It's me alright. Zemo's got far more charisma."
"Welcome back, Nats," Miss Framlicker bade him, with a little smile.
"Who knows where Zemo is now, or what nefarious deeds he's up to," scowled Cap.
"That was terribly unladylike," Valeria worried with wide, surprised eyes as Nats limped to his feet. "Do you think I could learn to do that?"
"It's an essential technique if you're courting a guy on this planet," Lisette assured her. "I'll give you some pointers."
"What about you and, well, you and Bryan?" Valeria asked, casting a glance over to Goldeneyed.
"Sure, I'll happily knee him in the groin," Laurie Leyton admitted.
"I mean, what about giving him a chance to talk to you?" Valeria persisted.
"I do need to speak with you, Laurie," G-Eyed tried, but was cut off by the angry Lisette.
"Let me make this clear, Mr Katz. I never want to speak with you, or see you, or hear about you, ever again. Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes," Bryan mumbled miserably.
"Never?" Yo asked brightly, cuddling Rabito and watching intensely.
"Never."
"Never ever?" Yo smiled.
"Well…" Lisette considered, "Not if he's late to pick me up on Saturday night."
G-Eyed closed his jaw and simply said, "Where are we going?"
"Partying," Lisette told him. "I've always wanted to party in Rio de Janeiro."
"But, that's thousands of miles away."
Laurie Leyton tapped him on the skull, "Then I guess I'd better date a teleporter instead of boring old Bryan Katz, huh?"
"Oh… yeah."
"Not bad, Yo-ster," Exile grinned, "but I thought you said their story ended with a kiss?"
"Is not ending of story though, is it, cute Derek?" the pure thought being asked mischievously. "Is not the end at all."
"Anyway," Xander the Improbable said in Exile's ear, "you're going to have enough to worry about once you find out the secret Valeria's not allowed to tell you about herself, and find out what you have to do to free her from her curse."
"Huh?" Derek puzzled, turning round to see the red-robed mage shuffling off. "What do you mean?"
"Sorry, no time," Xander called back. "I've a lot of Shoggoth to so scrape up."
"Xander? Xander!"
"So, Mister Visionary, how did it feel to be the most powerful man in the world?" Cheryl asked her husband playfully.
Vizh shuddered. "I'm having more nightmares about it than Dancer is about summoning Galactivac to blow up a planet."
Cheryl's blonde eyebrow arched. "And how do you know that Dancer is having troubled sleeps, may I ask?" she challenged.
Visionary's puzzled look turned to one of shock, then horror, then misplaced guilt, then bafflement, then helplessness. "I…" he attempted. "She told me. Honest, Cheryl, I…"
The Duchess of Lake Superior couldn't help but laugh. "I know that, silly. I'm glad saving the universe hasn't changed you. C'mon, let's dance. To me you'll always be the most powerful man in the world."
"You see," Asil said to Fleabot. "He is a great man."
Fleabot's reply would not get past an auto-censor.
"So Troia," CSFB! called out, "didya hear what G-Eyed said about my cool autobot successor to the CrazySugarLine? And how it confirmed all my theories about the gender issues of transforming robots, with hidden…"
He paused as the business end of a spear introduced itself to his sternum. "I. Do. Not. Wish. To. Discuss. Transformer. Sex." Troia enunciated very clearly. "Now don't make me waste my bad mood on you. I'm going to talk to the man my father thinks he's bestowed me on to breed with."
"Hey, breeding's cool," CSFB! assured her.
"Not breeding with Mr bloody ManMan it isn't," the amazon administrator warned him, and stalked off.
"Nice spear technique with the Sugar-Boy," Cobra admired; but just for a moment she looked a little wistful as she watched Dreamcatcher Foxglove laughing with his friends.
Fin Fang Foom and the Dark Knight watched from the shadows of the house. "You've got to admit, they pulled through when the chips were down," Finny urged his best friend.
"This time," DK grudgingly admitted. "They're soft and undisciplined and immoral and stupid… but I suppose their hearts are in the right place."
"That more or less sums up the Lair Legion in a single sentence," mused the dragon.
"Was it just as predicted in the Third Book of Wilbur Parody's prophesies?" the Paradox Stranger challenged the Hooded Hood as the cowled crime czar sat in his throne and stared into the infinite reflections of the Portal of Pretentiousness.
"Actually, no," the Hood admitted. "We've had the Coming of Galactivac, and the Judgement of the Celestians, and the Invasion of the Mythlands, and Hell on Earth, and of course just now the Death Quest, so the signs and portents are all stacking up as they should. But these people are so… unpredictable. They don't stay where you put them. Where they should be."
"Isn't that the joy of the game?" the Paradox Stranger questioned.
"Actually no," the Hooded Hood answered, "The joy of the game is in winning."
They were nice sandwiches though.