Posted by The Hooded Hood presents the first stop on the Lair Legion's tour around the world in eighty days on March 18, 2001 at 05:02:18:
Untold Tales of the Lair Legion World Tour: Excusez-Moi Monseur, Qui est les Villains s’il vouz plait?
NOTE: The author apologises in advance for all bad French (the language, that is; the author does not feel responsible for the people themselves) and for all appalling racial generalisations and slurs committed in the cause of humour. It has nothing to do with his country being at war with the Gallic peoples for over four hundred years out of the last millennium. Honestly.
The high-speed racing boar sped along the Seine, sending a high spray of water across the west bank as it swerved to avoid the rocket grenades from the pursuing gunboats. The dark star-mirroring waters around the Ile de la Cité were churned up by the blasts. The ancient cathedral of Notre Dame du Paris frowned down on the latest disturbance in its long sombre vigil. “They hate us!” Exile observed. “The French absolutely hate us!” “They’re in France,” the Minion warned his shadow-swathed master. “Paris. They’re going to interfere with the Plan!” “This is my favourite part of Paris,” Dancer told Ziles and Sorceress. It was much later, and the café crowd were coming out for an evening on the boulevards. The hardcore shoppers still had Valeria (and Exile’s credit card) in their clutches but Dancer never had much money anyway, Ziles had already “acquired” what she wanted, and Whitney Darkness wasn’t too bothered by material possessions anyway. So the three of them had gravitated to the artist’s quarter where a number of unshaven but genial young men had been more than happy to have the ladies pose for them. “But I rescued you,” Trickshot protested for the one hundred and eleventh time. “Hold it there, Monseur Beret!” Hatman called out to his evil French counterpart. “Your days of terrorising garlic salesmen are over. We’re here to take down you and your whole gang.” “Is it my imagination,” Bry Kotyk asked Laurie Leyton, “or is every third shop around here a souvenir stall?” The cellars were packed full of boxes of stuffed toy animals, little snow-globes with plastic famous buildings in them, T-shirts which said “I came to France and all I got was this lousy T-shirt” and a million other sorts of tourist trap merchandise. Beyond the French rooms were other chambers full of bullfight posters and little straw donkey wine-holders, wooly bobble hats with miniature ski logos on them, plastic pizzas, Tower of Piza keyrings, paper national flags, and a whole international catalogue of things people would only buy while away from home and seriously jetlagged. “How goes the situation in Paris, Minion?” the dark shadowy figure enquired, leaning back on his throne. They were being too nice to him, Chronic realised. They had smuggled him back to their hotel, given him some of Visionary’s clothes, ordered him some food. It had to be a trap. “I don’t understand why we’re hurrying,” objected CrazySugarFreakBoy! “We haven’t done anything wrong.” Next time on the Lair Legion’s World Tour: There’s some kind of ghostly animal loose on the bleak moors, there’s a stately home with a dead man at the bottom of the stairs at teatime. There’s a list of suspects that might have dunnit – but who? There’s an awfully decent chap with a temporal pocketwatch who might actually be a mass murderer and a young lady of indeterminate age who might be loyal enough to visionary to kill for him. And it’s raining. Guess which country comes next? All due in good time, or whenever.
Natalia Romanza throttled back a little, afraid that she might have lost the vessels following her. She glanced at the panel of extras that SPUD’s Z-division had added to her jet black launch and prepared to make those goons in dinner jackets wish they had never gone up against her.
A purple-and-green clad man in spandex and polycarbide chainmail swung down from the Pont du Neuf, grabbed her by the waist, and swung her out of her boat. “Relax, babe,” Trickshot assured her, “You’re safe now.”
Natalia winced at the sound of her nine million dollar motorboat splintering into the side of the bridge and anticipated what Dan Drury was going to say to her about it. “You idiot!” she told her rescuer, thumping him on the chest. “I needed to let them catch up to me! You absolute, stupid, nekulturny… ohhh!”
Trickshot decided this was not the best time to ask her out to dinner.
“Not necessarily,” Valeria of Carfax comforted him. “Perhaps throwing coke bottles is a way of showing affection in Europe?”
“You can hardly blame them,” Sorceress pointed out reasonably. “I mean first spiffy conquered the country, then Jarvis blew it up, then Membrain trashed it, then Grim Reaper blew it up, then Space Ghost visited…”
“No, no!” Finny corrected her. “I think Jarvis blew it up before spiffy conquered it but after…”
“Didn’t Grim Reaper blow it up first, then Pierson’s Porter…?” offered Cheryl.
“In any case,” Sorceress said emphatically, “the French haven’t had a very good experience of superheroes.”
“They didn’t object to Space Ghost visiting,” Hatman remembered. “They thought he was Jerry Lewis.”
“That still doesn’t explain why we are here,” the Dark Knight scowled.
“Yo thought that cute Darking Knightly was to be ‘splaining why we are here?” Yo smiled. S/he was lining up the snails s/he had liberated from a street café a while back, in the hopes that they could tell him/her where the legless frogs were who might need the donations the pure thought being had confiscated.
“I am explaining,” DK growled.
“But you said that didn’t explain,” Lisette objected.
“What I mean is that we still don’t understand why there should be a France here at all. Paris has been reduced to a smoking crater time and time again. There is absolutely no reason for it to somehow… heal up.”
“It could be the Hoodily Hood?” CrazySugarFreakBoy! suggested. “After all, bringing back France is a pretty evil thing to do.”
“I don’t see my father doing that,” Troia admitted. “His plans always make sense. Eventually.”
“Yeah, and the Brits don’t get on with the French anyway,” G-Eyed remembered. “Which brings me to another question. If HH is British, why does he speak with a Latvian accent?”
“Because Lisa doth like Latvian accents?” suggested Donar. “That ist one of the prime reasons why I doth speak not speaketh in one, electething to speak in a propereth Austernal accent most verily. Zounds. Etc.”
“You boys might be here to play superhero detectives,” Ziles smiled lazily, “but we thought we’d start by investigating the boutiques and stuff. Coming Dancer, Troia, Val, Whitney?”
“I would be pleased to,” Valeria agreed. “And thank you again Dancer for showing me how to use Rick’s Mastercard.”
“Yes. Thank. You.” Exile agreed. “So. Much.”
“Why don’t you come with us, Exy?” Dancer suggested brightly. “You can help us shop for clothes.”
“I have to, um, get my pants pressed,” Exile answered desperately, knowing as all men have done since the dawn of time that there is nothing more horrid in all male experience than clothes-shopping with a group of women. “Yeah. Urgently. That’s it. Gotta go. Bye!”
“I thought he had a psychoreactive costume?” Dancer puzzled.
“It reacted to his psyche by leavin’ with him, didn’t it, hon?” Meggan Foxxx chuckled. “Anyhows, I’m poppin down to the Moulin Rouge to look up a few old buddies and spy on the competition. I’ll leave you kiddies to enjoy the City of Love.”
“The City of Love,” breathed Lisette, hugging Bry Kotck’s arm. Goldeneyed glared at ManMan and Knifey as they hummed the wedding march.
“I’ve got the City of Love broken down into thirty-six basic combat zones,” Dark Knight grumbled.
“I’m going to get some of that French cuisine we hear so much about,” Nats boasted. “Lisette taught me how to order French food: Un Big Mac avec fries s’il vous plait, garcon. See?”
“Er…” Cheryl tried to warn him, but Nats was gone. “You do realise that was like giving him a death sentence, don’t you?” she asked the Lair Legion’s legal advocate accusingly.
“He wouldn’t be happy if somebody wasn’t beating him up,” shrugged Lisette. “C’mon Bry, I want to make insulting remarks about the architecture of the Pompideau Centre.”
“Yo is going to cheer up sad lady in painting in big Louvre art gallery,” Yo announced to the art world.
“Cheryl is taking me to show me how to go on the Metro,” Visionary explained. “I am not allowed to go out by myself in foreign cities. Or to try and fix Cheryl’s curling tongs.”
“Don’t any of you want to fight crime?” Finny demanded as the Lair Legion and their hangers on went their separate ways.
“I’d love to battle for truth and justice,” ManMan told them, “but Knifey wants to visit some of the places he remembers from his war service here, and Exy and I need to find the Folies Bergére and meet up with Tricky. But if I get into trouble, I’ll, uh, fire a Legion flare into the sky or something, okay?”
“We don’t have Legion flares,” Hatman said sullenly; but he noticed Finny scribbling into a notebook.
“So who does that leave us with?” fretted Finny. “We’re down to the real hardcore, serious heroes now. me, DK, Hatty…”
“And CrazySugarFreakBoy!” Dreamcatcher Foxglove enthused. “Let’s go fight some French supervillains! Silly string vs savate! Yeah!”
“Very well then,” scowled the villain. “Send in the Mimes.”
“I think for once I’d like a drawing of me with my clothes on, though,” Sarah Shepherdson told them kindly.
“This side of town isn’t like the tourist books at all,” Sorceress noted, looking down the old cobbled streets at the high 1900s tenement buildings. “But it seems to have all kinds of interesting little restaurants and things. I like it.”
“And you seem to know them all,” Ziles noted to Dancer. “As if you had, I don’t know, worked in them or something.”
But Sarah wasn’t listening. She’d noticed a smelly, seedy man slumped in a doorway and had gone over to see if he was alright.
“How has she survived living in Paradopolis for so long?” Whitney wondered, but went over to join in.
“What’s the matter with him?” Ziles asked. “Has he been at the caffeine?”
“We have nastier drugs than that on this planet,” Dancer said grimly. “I’d say this poor guy is hooked on… Chronic!”
“Chronic?” puzzled Sorceress. “I don’t think I’ve heard of that one.”
“No. This is Chronic. The villain. You remember, he tried to kill Troia. He had some kind of magic guitar or something.”
“He is a villain?” Ziles checked. “He smells like a villain.”
“Shall I call Hatty to come and kick nine kinds of hell out of him?” the Sorceress asked, “Or just turn him into a lower life form?”
“Is there a lower lifeform than that?” Ziles asked doubtfully, looking at the twitching insensible mass.
“We have to help him,” Dancer decided. “He’s a human being. We can’t just turn our backs on him.”
“Well, we could,” Sorceress answered, “but he’d probably try and stab us in them.”
“Oh please,” Sarah pleaded with her friends. “Can we keep him?”
“You blew another carefully constructed plan which would have let me infiltrate the Parisian underworld and find out what Dan Drury and SPUD desperately need to know,” Natalia Romanza accused the other-dimensional double of the husband she once betrayed to his death. “And now you have to help me get back in there.”
“I thought we were going to see the sights,” Exile protested, looking down at the brightly illuminated world-famous Moulin Rouge (where Meggan Foxxx was already involved in some kind of contest of endurance with her European rivals that would only make a certain kind of newspaper the following day).
“Aw c’mon,” Knifey chuckled. “Watching Trickshot squirm is more interesting than any show in town.”
“Thanks,” the irritating archer scowled. “What do you want us to do, ‘Talia?”
“Us?” ManMan checked. “What us? Exy and I only met up with you to see a show.”
“But now you have a chance to be heroes,” Natalia told them sweetly. “You remember how, don’t you?”
“Is this going to involve people trying to kill us?” Exile checked.
“And rescuing incredibly hot women from their evil captors?” ManMan asked hopefully.
“Well,” answered the Contessa Romanza, “I can pretty much guarantee it will involve wading through sewers.”
Fin Fang Foom burst through the frontage of the wine shop and smacked the villain known only as La Plume De Ma Tante clean across the Arc de Triumph. “And don’t try any of those trick pen gimmicks. We’re the Lair Legion!”
“This is great!” CrazySugarFreakBoy! called as he battled Frog’s Legs in a hyperkinetic tumbling match over the rooftops. “We should do more of these world tours. Wheeeeee!”
Suddenly a man in a black and white striped t-shirt, black gloves, and a lidless top-hat with a flower in it rose from nowhere. He made a gesture as of defining a wall and Fin Fang Foom bounced off an unseen barrier. A second whitefaced artiste appeared to cast an invisible net over CrazySugarFreakBoy! The third mimicked a high wind, blew at Hatman and send the capped crusader spinning into the late rush hour traffic.
“It’s a trap!” Finny realised. “A set up. Time for the strategic back-up.”
The Dark Knight loomed up behind the first mime and dislocated the silent man’s fourth and fifth vertebrae.
Another three mimes appeared, each defining one of the walls of the shrinking box around the urban legend.
“So much for the strategic backup,” moaned Hatman, pulling himself from under a truck and reaching for his Steelers cap; but the six mimes that had appeared around him seemed to have already placed an invisible cap on his head, rendering his ability to take on the properties of whatever headgear he wore useless. Then they started hitting him with imaginary baseball bats.
“Not that strategic backup,” the Makluan growled, coughing from the mimicked pepper cloud he was surrounded in.
The clear evening was suddenly filled with thunder and bright lightning arced between two dozen mime artists. Donar descended from the heavens.
“That strategic back-up,” Foom clarified.
“Tourism is very important in France,” the Lair Legion’s legal advisor shrugged. “It’s about their third biggest industry.”
“But who would by all these little models of the Eiffel Tower or Notre Dame? Or any of that other cheap souvenir tat?”
“Hey, I bought some,” Flapjack, the Lair Legion’s hunchbacked butler, announced, appearing unexpectedly between the two lovebirds. “From that guy in the grubby raincoat over there.”
“Let me guess,” Lisette surmised. “Filthy postcards.”
“Artistic erotic poses,” Flapjack leered. “But I felt obliged to get ‘em seeing as they were so… artistic.”
“Of course,” G-Eyed sighed.
“And of people I knew,” Flapjack added.
“What?” Laurie gasped. “Who?”
“Um, you mean you guys didn’t actually pose for these?” gulped the disgusting hunchback. “Excuse me, I gotta go.”
Flapjack found himself teleported into Goldeneyed’s grasp. “The cards. Now.”
Lisette looked at the postcards. It took her a while to work out which way was up on them. “It… Bry, do you remember the Tunnel of Love, when we got hit by that inhibition inhibitor ray?”
Bry stared at the cards. “But… how did that guy in the grubby mac get these shots?”
“Yeah,” agreed Flapjack, “and how did you manage to get into that position where she… er… He’s over there. That’s the guy you want.”
Goldeneyed was already racing towards the postcard vendor. Suddenly the grubby man whirled round and hurled half a dozen cards at the approaching Goldeneyed. Bry Kotyk disappeared in a flash, reappearing in sepia in a Turkish harem in 1922.
“We’ve stumbled across an international souvenir-pushing ring,” Trickshot realised.
“There’s nothing criminal about selling holiday souvenirs,” ManMan protested; but then, he wore a rhinestone-studded Elvis costume with a belt of cubic zirconium.
“These things are evil,” Exile shuddered. “Innocent tourists take them home then give them to their loved ones. And then you can’t give the damn cheap tatty thing away because it’s come all the way from France or wherever, so it gets stuck on some shelf cluttering up your house forever, laughing at you. Laughing and laughing and…” He became aware that the others were staring at him. “I just don’t like cheap souvenirs, that’s all,” he said defensively.
“Cheap souvenirs are more serious than they seem,” Natalia Romanza warned. “First it’s one, then it’s a whole mantelpieceful of nodding dogs, and then it’s a back windshield covered with ‘I heart wherever’ stickers. But Drury is worried that somebody is pushing these things for a reason. Someone wants to get these things prominently displayed in every home across the planet. Why?”
ManMan was puzzled (and still squelching from the sewers) “So you’re saying we’re up against…?”
“The French Tourist Association, yes!” the French Tourist Association laughed, emerging from behind the piles of merchandise. “Americans go home!”
“I’m Canadian,” Exile objected.
“Feu! You’re dead,” the French Tourist Association answered. “Release the Eiffelbots.”
“Quite well, your evilness,” the Minion replied. “Donar gave the mimes some trouble at first but we have over eight hundred of our artistes in there now hiding from him behind invisible doors and throwing unseen custard pies at him. The FTA have found the infiltrators in their warehouse. Postcard Man has dealt with Goldeneyed and Lisette, although he is still haggling with Flapjack for some kind of franchise. Cheryl is bailing out Visionary after the fake man had those… problems with the French public portaloo doors and his trousers. Yo has joined most of the girls in ordering a French meal, and they will all be baffled by the menu for hours to come. We will be able to do whatever we want with them by the time they discover that French restaurants use a language unlike any other French in the world.”
“Then my brilliant plan remains undiscovered?”
“Yes, master. Nothing can stop you now.”
The nice lady who had brought him to Paris had warned him they might try something like this. She had told him that if the worst came to the worst he still had once chance to destroy his nemesis Troia 215. Now he knew he had to do it now.
“What’s that you’ve got?” Dancer asked brightly, returning to the room with a cold fruit drink for him. “Some kind of football?”
“It says Weapon Atomique on the side,” Sorceress noticed rather worriedly.
“Weapon Atomique?” Ziles puzzled, checking her language translation database. “That means…”
The football-shaped object had a big shiny red button in the middle.
Chronic pushed the big shiny red button.
France erupted in nuclear fire.
“Think of it like all those time your Spider-Man got accused of a crime he didn’t commit, hon,” his mother advised him, bundling him onto the big red double-decker bus.
“I’m sure all of this can be straightened out,” Cheryl assured everybody. “From a different continent.”
“What happened?” Troia 215 demanded. “One minute we were trying to figure out the menu in this street café and then…”
“It appears that someone had seeded France with around eight hundred nuclear warheads,” Fin Fang Foom explained, “and simultaneously detonated all of them, rendering the whole nation to radioactive rubble.”
“Er…” Visionary ventured, staring out at the Gare du Nord as Hatman put his foot down on the accelerator. “I’d have expected more…”
“More crispy fried Frog,” snickered Trickshot.
“Except that this has happened to France before, and it always gets… reset,” the Dark Knight noted. He was still pleased that he’d finally found a way to defeat the mimes. None of their powers shielded them from people who threw money, and DK could take an eye out with a centime piece at thirty paces.
“And when Chronic blew up the country it happened again,” G-Eyed realised. He still smelled of exotic Eastern perfumes and, for some reason, turkey grease.
“Oh yes,” Yo agreed, “and then Yo is seeing how is to be done this thing. Yo is watching as uncute nasty-man Blackhurt is restoring whole place as to be was not sploded.”
“Blackhurt,” ManMan scowled. “The Prince of Fibs, Lord of the Underworld?”
“That explains a lot about France,” Exile considered.
“It was the French Tourist Association,” Natalia Romanza explained. “It seems they made a pact with the Devil to be able to peddle their wares no matter what. And so whenever the country was devastated it got put back just the way it was.”
“But wasn’t it just a recreation by a super-evil entity?” Dancer objected.
“Did anyone notice?” Nats challenged back.
“The key to all of this was in the original destruction of France, by the mysterious entity known only as the Enemy, or the Grim Reaper,” Sorceress explained. “The Underworld was interested in finding out more about what the Enemy was up to, whether he was a threat or an opportunity for them.”
“So Blackhurt recreated France to see if the Enemy would investigate, and used the FTA’s merchandise as spies in every home and in the hopes that the Grim Reaper might even take some souvenir back with him to wherever he’s based,” Knifey surmised. He’d been doing this a long time. “I still think it was just Blackhurt’s little joke on the planet Earth.”
“Well, the visit wasn’t a total loss,” Hatman suggested. “We brought down the FTA, at least for now. We stopped the Mimes, and Monsieur Beret and Co won’t be doing any evil deeds till the casts come off. And we discovered why France is, um, is there.”
“And we bought some nice clothes,” Valeria added happily. Exile choked on his coke.
“An’ some postcards,” Flapjack chuckled under his breath.
“But we didn’t bring anything else with us, really,” Dancer said loudly, sitting innocently on a large wooded crate with air-holes in it.
“I’m ready to strap Goldeneyed into the pain ch… er, the control chair,” Miss Framlicker announced from the front of the bus.
“Then we art ready for the next stoppeth on our tour for the nonce,” Donar noted.
“Yo is looking forward to be going there. Where are we to be going?”
The red double-decker dopplered off to its next destination.
CrazySugarFreakBoy! Um ... is the next country India? Or Greece? Or is it that country of wusses, that think they're speaking English, but are, like, speaking that fucked-up In-Gland speech, or whatever, where people spell things like "centre" and say shit like, "I say, old bean, it's time for tea and spank my monkey!" :) 12:35:47 3/18/2001
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