Posted by The Hooded Hood presents the latest set of complications in the lives of the Parodyverse's heroes on April 27, 2001 at 15:50:41:
#71: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion World Tour: A Few Random Scenes Setting Up the Chapter Following
The two waifs the street-urchins brought to Fat Altaf were just perfect, the evil man thought. The older of the two had a pale skin which was always popular with customers conditioned by Western pornographic magazines. The younger one could be no more than seven and was the perfect age to be trained. “The rules are quite simple,” Penny Christopoulos, the Pegasus, told the Lair Legion, referring to the Challenge of the Rakshasas. “There will be six challenges and a final ritual combat.” Amy Racecar, the Lair Legion’s resident mechanic, got back to the Lair Mansion from India around 4pm Paradopolis Standard Time. She docked the Lairjet, shut down the engines, and allowed herself a huge stretch. Derek Foreman woke up in the middle of the night to find a girl’s soft shape curled up against him in his bed. From the fragrant scent and flowing blonde hair he knew who it was at once. “Valeria?” “Alone in town, sailor?” “It’s like a dream come true,” Sarah Shepherdson beamed as she was ushered into the offices of Chapachandranashpateem studios. “I’ve always wanted to be on the stage or the screen. It looks like all those dancing lessons are finally paying off. Years of sarcasm from the sinister Mrs Pellegrino! Years of waiting tables waiting for my big break! Oh this is wonderful!” “Where is he?” The Knightjet touched down on the surface of the Moon and the Dark Knight checked his sensors. They didn’t freeze over and explode so he concluded that the sensor jamming field had gone. “Good evening,” the Hooded Hood bade Laurie Leyton as she prepared for her day with the Lair Legion. “I suppose that would be good morning, local time.” The Moustache’s summer residence was a fortified house up on the cool high cliffs away from the smell and bustle of overcrowded Calcutta. Vengeance flew towards it on dragonwing. The transdimensional double-decker bus came to a halt by the Black Pagoda of Kanarak, high on the hills above the Bay of Bengal. One by one the heroes disembarked blinking into the sunlight to meet the Challenge of the Rakshasas. Kuvera, the Rakshasa Emperor, sat in his throneroom of skulls and watched all that was happening with interest. The Contest proper was about to begin, but all had been prepared for that. The dragon was about to die. The musician was no longer of any concern. Next issue: the Game of the Rakshasas, a contest for sports fans everywhere. Our heroes take to the field in a grudge-match against their powerful and tricky opponents. Hatman captains his team, Nats races an elephant, G-Eyed gains a concussion, Sorceress recites poetry, Degenerus wrestles with Troia, Donar commits a foul, and Visionary does nothing. Also introducing the villainess known only as… Karma Sutra! Also coming up, more on DK and AG on the moon, more on Chronic’s one-night stand, more naked Amy Racecar, that sort of thing. Oh, and Finny fights for his life.
Fat Altaf led them into the cellars beneath his shop where he kept his stock. He chained the older one to a ring on the wall and turned his attentions to the small one first.
The smaller one changed shape. Her face became reptilian, nose becoming muzzle and eyes growing yellow and angry. And there were claws and wings, and a flick of flame through a mouth filled with jagged teeth.
“Don’t cry out,” a voice in his ear warned him. Something painful jabbed into his spine. “We don’t want to wake the children.” Ziles has slipped out of her bonds and had injected him with Confession Serum.
“We want to know who you’re working for,” Fin Fang Foom warned him. “Names, places, dates, bank accounts. We want to know who’s in charge. And then I am going to explain to you why I think you are a bad person, and you will wish I had never been born.”
Ziles shepherded the children aside, although some of them seemed quite keen to see what the big dragon was doing to their former master. “Hi,” Ziles said into her communicard. “Tina Cabañez, Bautista Foundation? I’m afraid we’ve got some more children for you.”
“No problem,” the young Filipino woman at the other end of the line assured her. “We can make all the room you need, even if it takes our last penny.” Since her telepathic powers had faded a while back Tina had found a new vocation helping people in need.
“Thanks. It looks like we might have a few more before we’ve finished. Look, gotta go. Finny gets a bit enthusiastic when he’s questioning child pornographers.”
“Well, I only have seven hours left to prove that the Lair Legion does things worth doing,” the Makluan growled, dropping Fat Altaf like a soiled lump of meat. “It was the same name again: the Moustache. But this time I got an address.”
“Let us just cut to the ritual combat for the nonce,” suggested Donar, Ausgardian hemigod of thunder.
“What kind of challenges?” Visionary asked uncertainly. Ever since he has been declared a god his life was getting even more complex and confusing than usual.
“Things that gods are supposed to be good at,” Pegasus explained.
“What, lightning bolt target practise, that kind of thing?” Exile checked.
“The actual challenges will be agreed with the panel of judges. So far we’ve settled on wrestling, warcraft, and storytelling.”
“Storytelling?” Hatman objected. “That’s not a challenge.”
“Then when’s the next Tales of the Hat coming out?” Whitney asked him.
Hatman shut up.
“We’ll settle on the rest by morning,” Pegasus told them. “The Rakshasas will prepare a team of twelve and you will do the same.”
“We don’t have twelve Legionnaires at the moment,” Hatman worried. “DK is still in Geneva. Finny and Ziles vanished somewhere…”
CrazySugarFreakBoy! snickered.
“Even possible subs like ManMan and Dancer aren’t here just now,” concluded the capped crusader. It bothered him to have anything like a sporting event happening and not to be able to field a squad.
“We have enough, Hatty” Goldeneyed argued. “We’ve got you, me, Donar, Whitney, Yo, Nats, Exy, Tricky, CSFB!, Troia… er… I suppose we should count Visionary”
The possibly fake man choked on his coffee.
“Aw c’mon,” Trickshot argued, thumping him on the back. “You are supposed to be the god here, after all.”
“I think I have to sort of, um, watch. From a distance,” Vizh explained. “It’s a god thing.”
“Ten of our boon companions art enough,” Donar declared. “I shalt do the work of three gods in yon Rakshasa arse-kicking contest.”
“The rules say twelve” Pegasus insisted.
“You gotta include my mom, Action Figure,” Dreamcatcher Foxglove enthused. “Every pantheon has to have a goddess of love.”
“What about Lisette then?” Sorceress suggested. “She was a superhero sidekick, even if she is semi-retired now.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Valeria quickly. “I don’t think she’s been too well lately.”
“What?” Bry Kotyk asked. “That’s the first of I’ve heard of it. Laurie?”
“It’s nothing, Bry,” she answered just as quickly. “Probably nothing.”
“Heh. Womens’ troubles I bet,” snorted Trickshot. “What are you all glaring at me?”
In the corner Chronic stirred from the shadows. “I suppose I could help out,” he said.
“The other side doesn’t need any help,” Nats shot back at him.
“Be thou silent, Chronic, lest I smite thee to Miserableheim. Again,” Donar warned the semi-reformed supervillain. “Thou art only here on sufferance since thou didst some small favour gainst the deplorable Degenererus, but we hast not forgotten thy former attack upon our beauteous comrade Troia. Not forgiveneth.”
“I don’t know why you’re still here anyway,” Troia 215 told the malevolent musician. “It’s not like any of us wants you here. Why don’t you just go and crawl off under whatever stone you came from?”
“Yo is thinking that this is not…”
“Hey, far be it from me to want to stay where you’re stinking up the place,” snarled Chronic back at Troia.
“That’s enough from you!” Hatman shouted.
“What, she can insult me but I can’t defend myself? You people are such hypocrites! I am so outta here!”
“Good riddance,” Troia 215 said as the door slammed behind Chronic.
“Yo is thinking that poor Chronic will be to be being sad now.”
“Goodeth,” scowled Donar.
“To the selection?” prompted Cheryl diplomatically. “The twelfth team-mate. And don’t look in my direction. I didn’t bring my cat suit.”
“You did,” Visionary corrected her. “Don’t you remember that night in the hotel in Paris, where you…”
“I. Did. Not. Bring. The. Cat. Suit.”
“Right,” Visionary nodded sheepishly. Then in a whisper he added, “Will you not-wear-it again tonight?”
“I can only think of one other person who could round out the twelve,” Nats suggested. “We don’t have a science geek in the team. What about Miss Framlicker.”
“What?” Miss Framlicker cried in surprise and horror.
The meeting adjourned to get the pencil out of Nats’ nose.
One of the great joys of being alone in the Lair Mansion while everyone was on tour was the privacy, so Amy peeled off her sweaty flight suit overall and padded nude from the underground hangar bay up to the ground floor bathroom shower.
There was a man in the lavatory.
“Eeek!”, cried Amy, instinctively reaching for the toilet brush and ramming the superheated object into the intruder’s gut.
Somehow he had got past all the security systems but had failed to defend himself against boiling plastic to the midriff. “Urk!” he burbled as he went down.
Al. B Harper’s last thoughts were that it wasn’t really possible for a girl to preserve her modesty with a wet hand-flannel, and that this was a good thing.
The slave-girl’s eyes opened wide in horror and she scrabbled away and fell out of the bed. “I’m sorry, master!” she gabbled quickly. “Oh I’m so sorry, Really. Please don’t be angry!”
The half-awake Exile looked at the pyjama-clad girl from the Dreary Dimension with incomprehension. “Sorry for what? Why should I be angry? I almost never get angry at the idea of beautiful girls in my bed. You were probably… cold or something.”
By the spell of enslavement that bound Valeria of Carfax to Derek Foreman she was unable to lie to him. “I just wanted to see what it would be like to lie in your arms,” she was forced to confess. “Just once. I’m sorry.”
“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with a cuddle, Val,” Exile assured her. “You’re really upset. What’s wrong?”
Now a second set of enchantments came into play and Valeria evaded the question. “I guess I was just feeling a little homesick and lonely,” she confessed. “You have been a perfect master since I was sent in tribute to you and my life here has been exciting and interesting, but sometimes…”
“We all think about home,” Derek understood. He wrapped Valeria in a blanket and sat her down on the bed. “So what were you remembering?”
Valeria looked out of the keyhole-shaped window at the starry Indian night. “I was thinking about my family,” she admitted. “They’re probably all dead now. Time runs differently in the Dread Dimension and hundreds of years have probably gone by there while I’ve just been here a few months. I was wondering what happened to them, what my brothers and sisters grew up like. I was remembering my mother singing to me.”
“Oh Val,” Derek sympathised, pulling her close and holding her tight. “I’ve got to find a way of breaking this curse on you.”
Exile didn’t see the wild expression that crossed Valeria’s face at that. “You… you don’t want to keep me, Rick?”
“Not as a slave,” the young man answered. “If you weren’t bound to me by those cruel magics then I’d probably have to wade my way through guys a lot better than me to get you to give me the time of day. But hey, I’d love to call you up sometime and say, ‘hi, wanna go dancing or to catch a movie?’, and to take you out and romance you like two people who like each other should. And then we’d take it from there.”
Valeria was very close and very feminine there in Derek’s bed, under the Indian stars. “You could have me, you know that Rick. I wouldn’t mind now. I’d do anything if you want me to. You only have to command it.”
“It was going great up to the ‘command’ bit,” Exile sighed. “But I want you to be free, not under any compulsion, when you decide you wanna be with me. I want to set you free.”
“Oh Rick,” Valeria gulped Valeria. “if only… Never mind.”
“No, what?”
Valeria shook her golden locks. “It doesn’t matter. Can I ask something of you, Rick? A favour.”
“You know you can, Val. Anything.”
Valeria blinked back tears. “Can I… can I sing to you? There are some old songs, songs my mother taught me when I was very small, songs of my people. I’m probably the last person who even remembers them now. Once I’d thought that I would teach them to my own… to other people, but that isn’t going to happen now. So can I sing them to you, Rick? So somebody remembers? Please.”
“I would be honoured,” Exile promised her. “Sing for me.”
Alone together in the night Derek and Valeria held each other and Valeria sang him the songs of her people.
Chronic turned round from staring out over the city from the ancient walls and saw a young purple-haired girl in a goth-punk outfit. She was watching him. She looked familiar.
“Do I know you?” he asked.
“Would you like to?” she asked back.
Chronic was sure he had seen her somewhere before. “Who are you?”
“Wrong question, studley. The right question is, ‘Hey, wanna have hot nasty sex with me, no holds barred, right here, right now?’”
“Is is? Er, I mean, do you?”
“Sure,” Cinnamon Rain grinned at her new boyfriend. “Let’s do it.”
“I am so pleased to offer you this opportunity, my dear, Mr Chapachandranashpateem told her. “Would you be so kind as to sign your contract.”
Dancer picked up the pen and looked for the dotted line. The paper was whipped away from her before she could write her name.
“Hold it a minute,” ManMan suggested. “Don’t you think you should read the small print?”
“Manny!” Shep proclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
“Yes,” said Mr Chapachandranashpateem, less pleased. “What are you doing here? How did you get past security?”
“He owes you for a wall I cut through on your backlot,” Knifey snickered.
“I’m here…er… I figured you needed an agent, Dancer,” ManMan finally answered with a sudden inspiration.
“Agent? You said nothing about an agent,” Mr Chapachandranashpateem frowned.
“Well she has one. And it’s me,” ManMan insisted. “I’m here to read the small print for her.”
“Can you actually read Hindi then?” asked Knifey.
Manman looked at the incomprehensible script. “This is incomprehensible script,” he said.
“That’s par for the course for most movies,” smiled Dancer. “You are such a suspicious person, Joe!”
“That’s the thanks I get for crawling out of my wheelchair and coming here to make sure you get a fair deal?”
Dancer considered this. “I suppose Manny does sort of sound like an agent’s name. ‘Hi, Solly, it’s Manny… let’s do lunch!’”
Mr Chapachandranashpateem brought them both Turkish coffees and shook his head. “This will not do. We are not like Hollywood here, Mr… ManMan… We are not crippled by actors unions and agents and minimum rates. We create epic films, usually in about six days, and people will do anything to become a star.”
“That’s right, Manny. We’d do anything,” Shep agreed. “As long as it’s not wrong, of course.”
“Well I don’t like it,” Joe Pepper frowned.
“We can talk about that,” Mr Chapachandranashpateem promised them with a cold smile. “Drink your coffeee.”
“We…we don’t know,” stammered the Minion. “We tracked him from Geneva to Calais, and then to Montevideo. He picked up the Halama connection and he took out some of our infrastructure in Taiwan – nothing serious. Then he showed up in Montevideo as we expected, but after that… nothing.”
“Call off your searches,” the mysterious archvillain instructed. “He has clearly found the clues I have been leaving for him and has blundered off into my trap.”
“Then where on Earth is he?” the Minion puzzled.
“Nowhere,” his master answered. “Nowhere on Earth at all.”
A bleeping from the console warned him that his guest had arrived. He opened an air lock for the man. “Thanks for coming,” he said tersely, and led him to the small laboratory in the rear of the craft.
“Hey, when the Dark Knight calls you up, you come,” Amazing Guy answered. “It must be pretty serious if you need my help.”
“I don’t need anybody’s help,” snapped DK. “However this is an area which falls under your remit as Protector of the Universe. Look at these photographs.”
“They’re… very nice,” Scott Brunsen said carefully. “Nicely composed. I didn’t know you had taken up…”
“They’re not just landscapes,” the urban legend hissed. “That is the exact site of Baron Zemo’s castle.”
“This?”
“Yes. It looks as if it’s untouched virgin rainforest, doesn’t it? My scans located some evidence that there might have been foundation work there once, but that’s all. The whole thing is just erased.”
“Oh,” Amazing Guy replied. “Well good riddance to…”
“Now look at these shots.”
“Central Paradopolis, and a nice aerial view of the bay and Paradopolis Sound.”
“And hasn’t it occurred to you,” DK scowled, “that given recent events and the machinations of Mayor Porter this island should be five miles out to sea, with a bloody huge high-tech City Hall towering over it a hundred and fifty stories high?”
“It… hadn’t,” AG admitted. “I just… forgot.”
“Everyone forgot,” the Dark Knight answered. “We all just overlooked the fact that one morning Paradopolis was back the way it was before, that Porter didn’t turn up for work, and that business continued as usual with the new Acting Deputy Mayor. And no-one even noticed.”
“That makes no sense at all,” Amazing Guy worried, hastily consulting his cosmic awareness.
“It only makes sense when you’re this far away from the Earth,” his grim companion explained. “Head back there and you start to overlook it all again.”
“But how? And who…?”
“Now look out there,” the Dark Knight commanded, gesturing to the moonscape beyond the Knightjet. “What do you see?”
“Nothing,” shrugged AG. “Well, moonrocks, but nothing else. You’re too far towards the dark-side of Luna to see the Turquoise Area.”
“And on the wrong moon to see anything else,” DK growled, “Use your cosmic senses. How many moons does the Earth have?”
“One, of course.”
“Look again. How many did it have?”
“One… no, wait. Three?”
“One moon, three aspects,” the Dark Knight explained. “Three different histories. On one the Celestians abandoned their machines and the Skree founded the Turquoise Area around them. In a second Pierson’s Porter destroyed and then restored a moon of sinister aspect. In the third an entity calling itself the Enemy hosted a vast army of purification designed to overcome all life on Earth.”
“I can’t sense either of those last two,” AG puzzled. “They were here but now they’ve…”
“Vanished like Zemo’s castle?”
“Yes. But how?”
“I have my suspicions. The obvious candidate is…”
A huge shadow moved over the Knightjet blotting out the stars.
“The Hood! What do you want?”
“You know what I require, Lisette. I require an answer from you as to whether we have a bargain.”
“I’m not betraying Bryan,” she answered.
“Of course not,” the Hood agreed. “But life is never quite that simple, for all the heroes would like to pretend it is. Come with me.”
“I’m not…” Laurie started to protest but suddenly the world changed around her. She was in a fresh meadow, with tall waving grass sweeping as far as the distant mountains. Down below there was a white farm. Children played in the yard. “What?” Lisette yelped.
“Welcome to the future,” the Hood told her. “A future, anyway. In this one the Resolution War turned out alright, so it’s one of the rarer futures. And down there is the Katz house.”
Laurie looked down at the children tumbling with their dog on the lawn. “Those…?” she asked.
“The Katz family? What of them?”
“Are they…?” she didn’t manage to finish the words.
A beautiful blonde-haired woman came from the house to call the children for dinner. She was bright and kind with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes and her offspring raced towards her happily. She snatched up the smallest and swung her round as she shepherded her brood into the farmhouse. Lisette knew at one that this was Mrs Katz. There was a lot about the woman to love, and Bry would love her.
“Bethany Shellett Katz is a teacher at the local infants school,” the Hooded Hood explained. “She is especially good with the slow children. She has a degree in education and home economics, she enjoys dancing and travel, and Bry says her apple pie is the best thing he’s ever had in his mouth except her.”
“Why are you showing me this?” Laurie gulped. “What’s the point?”
“I thought it might help if you saw for yourself why things aren’t black and white. You agree that Bethany is a far better partner for Bryan Katz than you would ever be? She doesn’t have such a… colourful past as you. She was a virgin on her wedding night, and she loves her husband with a bright, fierce passion that overcomes all boundaries.”
“She’s perfect,” spat Lisette.
“Nobody is perfect,” the Hood conceded, “but she is a good woman.” The Hood led his companion away from the farm and let the scene behind them blur. Laurie never saw Bethany turn to push her husband’s wheelchair towards the dinner table or stoop to tenderly wipe away the drool from the corner of his mouth.
“What is the point of showing me that?” Lisette asked angrily, knuckling away a tear and directing her rage at the archvillain who had showed her that the future wasn’t hers.
“I didn’t want there to be any doubt in your mind if you agreed to my proposal that you were doing it for anything other than entirely selfish reasons,” the cowled crime-czar answered. “You have seen the sort of fate that Bryan might embrace without you. If you choose to have me thwart that future it will be for your own sake, not Bryan’s, will it not?”
“And where am I?” Laurie asked bitterly. “In this possible future you’re spinning for me, where’s little Laurie?”
Suddenly they were in a cold wet alley in Gothametropolis. “I believe you’re over there,” the Hood answered. “Under the garbage bags.”
Lisette caught her breath as she saw a pair of stick-thin legs in cheap laddered stockings protruding from the rubbish pile. She rushed over and dragged the black sacks away from her future self then recoiled at what she saw. “What… what happened to me?”
“The drugs took their toll,” the Hood shrugged. “And the things you chose to do to pay for the drugs I suppose. As you lost your looks it became harder and harder to fund your addiction, and I imagine food was not a priority.” He looked down at the sad bundle of slack flesh in Lisette’s arms. “You could call 911,” he suggested. “She’s still just barely alive. They could probably keep her going for another week of so on welfare medical aid.”
“How far in the future is this?” Laurie choked. “How old am… am I? Thirty-five? Forty?”
“Twenty-four, I believe,” the Hood replied. “Well, almost twenty-four.”
“And this is another of your alternate futures, is it?” she glowered.
“No,” the Hood replied. “This is the same alternate future.” He looked down at Lisette. “If you accept my bargain this will never happen. It will rob Bryan of Bethany but it will save you from this alley. It will be an ignoble act on your part, a pact made solely because of your own weakness and jealousy. But you will be with Bryan for the rest of your lives.”
Lisette touched her hands to her belly. She still hadn’t had the courage to take that test to see if she really was carrying Goldeneyed’s baby. There has only been one possible time for it to happen, when they had both been crazed with passion by Dr Loveray’s machines and had no thought of precautions; but once was enough. Before she had been afraid of what her being pregnant might do to the only healthy relationship she’d ever had with a man, that it would bring things to a level of commitment she and Bry were not ready for. Now the Hood had raised the stakes a hundredfold and was talking about their whole futures, of what might be and what might never happen.
“You bastard,” she told the Hooded Hood. Then she gave him her answer.
“I’m sensing some passive radar stuff and a few infra-red and hypersonic scans that are fairly state-of-the-art for this planet,” Ziles reported from the Makluan’s back. “They’re linked to some ground-to-air missiles to prevent helicopter attack and the like. I’m masking us from them.”
“Are the missile turrets manned?” Fin Fang Foom demanded.
“Automated. Why?”
The huge dragon opened his jaws and spewed nuclear fire over first one then the other weapons towers. Each exploded with a mushroom of smoke and a resounding boom.
“Not a stealth approach, then/” Ziles surmised.
Fin Fang Foom demolished the cable-car entrance to the estate with one sweep of his claws. “Sending a message,” he answered. “What’s the back way out? Where is this guy going to try and sneak off to?”
Ziles somersaulted from the dragon and landed lithely on the balcony of the complex. Sticking a sensor peg into the alarm system and another into the rock from which the fortress was carved she consulted her wrist-readout. “There are three secret exits. Tunnels. I can block off two of them by jamming the security doors.”
“Do it. Where’s the third?”
“About twelve point three metres behind that cliff face,” the Xnylonian fugitive reported.
“Watch out, Ziles.” A slam from the dragon’s massive tail cracked the cliff-face and sent a shower of rocks toppling down. Then Foom inserted his claws in the cracks and literally ripped his way through the stone.
“Andy, I’m getting movement not far from you,” Ziles reported.
“Please, it’s Finny while I have the dragon-suit on,” the Makluan grinned. He shrunk down to his half-dragon humanoid form and ripped his way into the secret passage. “Oh Moustache…!”
The explosion sent Fin Fang Foom flying away from the cliff like a swatted fly. As he landed the ground around him detonated as if he had fallen on a minefield. Ziles saw Finny struggle, hurt, as explosion after explosion tossed his body about.
She had no way of getting down to help him.
Someone jumped from the shattered hole in the cliff, dropping like a stone the seven hundred feet to the ground below. Then he picked himself from the crater he had made and strode over to the struggling dragon.
Ziles fumbled to interface with the Lair Legion database. Rusted orange and brown armour? Ability to control detonations?
“Anvil Man?” she read.
Meanwhile, Anvil Man had reached the reeling Makluan, grabbed the dragon in an unbreakable grip, and brought Finny’s neck down over his knee with an audible snap.
“Ah, there you are,” Xander the Improbable noted. “The Rakshasas were starting to worry that you might forfeit.”
“Worry?” Goldeneyed checked. “I thought they’d be glad to have us default.”
“Oh no,” Pegasus told him. “They’re looking forward to the sport, you see. They like the sound of humans screaming and the taste of blood. And they’re looking forward to claiming the survivors as spoils of war as well, to enslave and torment for their pleasure.”
“Er, could you just go over that spoils of war thing again?” frowned Sorceress.
“The other meaning of the word ‘Rakshasa’ is as a term for a form of marriage with a girl carried off as a prize of war,” Pegasus explained. “I think that’s why they were able to get the wringer to join their team.”
“What ringer?” Hatman frowned, looking over at the tiger-headed opposition as they limbered up.
Troia spotted him immediately. “Degenerus!”
“Truly?” Donar asked. “This ist turning into the most splendid of dayeths.”
“What are you doing here, Xander?” Visionary asked sourly. “Last time I owe you a favour, by the way.”
“No, no I don’t think it will be,” the master of the mystic crafts advised the possibly fake man. “I’m here as one of the three judges and referees. It was felt that there should be one person you could trust, one the opposition could trust, and a neutral person.”
“And Pegasus is the neutral?”
“No,” Xander told him with a little smile. “Pegasus is the one you can trust.”
“Who’s the third judge?” asked Cheryl. She had brought her knitting along to keep her occupied during the Challenge. Christopher needed a cardigan.
But Sorceress had already discerned that. “Blackhurt!” she hissed. “Prince of Fibs!”
“Well if all the introductions have been done,” Xander called, “perhaps it’s time for the games to begin?”
He looked down at the unconscious forms of Dancer and ManMan at his feet and planned his next move.
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