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Previous chapters of this story are available online at The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom
Those wanting a guide to the various characters may wish to check the Who's Who in the Parodyverse
And let's not forget the Where's Where in the Parodyverse
All clear? Now read on...
#73: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion World Tour: Winners and Losers – the Challenge of the Rakshasas Continues
Normally the Surya Deula, the temple on the coast of the Bengal Bay known as the Black Pagoda, was a ruined remnant of an lost, pre-Mohammedan past. Tonight it rose up sensuous, splendid, and renewed by the magic of the Rakshahsas, the flesh-eating demons of Indian myth. Cheryl stood on one of its stately terraces and looked out over the moonlit sea. “They’re wonnerful, of course,” Flapjack slurred. “Aps’lutely wonnerful.” “What do you mean the fifth challenge has already started?” Whitney Darkness demanded of her lover Jay Boaz. “It’s the middle of the night!” “Hello Degenerus,” Melanie Hastings, a.k.a. Meggan Foxxx purred at the Greek god of debauchery. “I was feeling a bit blue and tender about a recent relationship split, but then I had the chance to show a supposed deity that there’s some dirty stuff he’s not heard about yet. C’mere!” “Hiya Karma Sutra! I want you to know that I’m going to add you right at the top of my list of villainesses (well, after PsychoacidPervGirl! of course since she’s my evil incestuous sister but the very next slot and with a picture as well) cause it is so cool to have a bad girl Although I think you should have a costume even though you’re pretty nice with no costume but have you thought of perhaps a Supergirl kind of motif? I’ve got some pix from the internet if you’d like to see a few really risqué variant costume designs and by the way did I mention that I’ve got a five inch tongue?” “So how did it go,” Vizh was almost afraid to ask Hatman in the morning. “Are we all slaves to the Rakshasas?” Interval Five “Oh man, I just hate being probed,” Amazing Guy worried as he hung in the web of wires and electrical equipment in a room full of bright lights. Challenge the Sixth: the Feat of Hunting: “The rules of the hunt,” Pegasus announced. “The prey will be released into the jungle. Each of your hunting parties will be six members strong. To win you must survive the rigours of the environment and capture or slay your quarry.” “I am going to have words with Xander over this when it’s all over,” Nats fumed as he returned from his first sweep across the tropical forest. “Letting them use Valeria as prey! He’s gone too far.” “Why don’t you just give in and die?” the rakshasa asked Goldeneyed. “You know it’s only a matter of time before we kill you?” Valeria of Carfax knew her enemies were near as she fled through the jungle. Several times they had got close enough for her to hear them, once for her to see them. Now she felt as if they were playing some kind of sick game with her, enjoying her fear. Interlude Six: “Well this is turning into quite a challenge,” Kuvera the Bloody, Emperor of the Rakshasas, noted to the prisoners chained at his feet. “Three tests apiece and everything to play for in the final. I see that like myself this Visionary keeps his own strength hidden and relies upon his minions to fulfil his work. I have yet to see any evidence that he has done anything to influence the outcome of the contest.” Challenge the Seventh: Freestyle Bloody Carnage “I’m sorry it has come to this,” Xander the Improbable told the two teams. “Pure no-holds barred battle is always a stupid way to resolve disputes, but at a three-three draw the rules are quite specific.” “They fight well,” Emperor Kuvera remarked to his opponent Visionary. “The use of that Sonics Hat to emit a frequency which only felines can hear was quite ingenious. It gave you an early advantage but you wasted it by not slaughtered my warriors at once.” After the Match: “The bus is ready,” Miss Framlicker reported. “We can go.” Next time: None of the characters in this episode are in the next episode at all. Sorry. Don’t worry because most of them will be back in the issue following, which picks up the trail of the sinister Moustache at the slave markets of Marrakesh. Next time however it’s a break from the World Tour as we return to Paradopolis to see what the Hooded Hood has been up to these past few months. You didn’t expect him to have been sitting at home quietly, did you? So be here for Untold Tales of the Enemies of the Lair Legion: New World Orders, due in one short week.
Interval Four
“Hello,” Devadasi of the Rakshasa support team said quietly. “May we talk?”
“What is it?” the Lair Legion’s PR woman asked. “If you need to discuss contest arrangements I think Hatman’s gone to bed. He was pretty exhausted by that marathon.”
“No, no, nothing like that,” Devadasi explained. “I just thought, with us both having the same job…”
“We do?” Cheryl was surprised. “I didn’t know the Rakshasas used PR.”
“I don’t know what PR is,” Devadasi admitted, “but I’m sure the Rakshasas would use it and cast it away laughing of they chose to.”
Cheryl could see that there were communication gaps opening. “What job do you think I do?” she asked patiently.
“You are like me,” Devadasi said, “A handmaiden of the gods. You attend to the needs of the Visionary, carry out his commands, ensure his proper worship, provide to his needs in bed…”
“Vizh is my husband, if that’s what confusing you,” Cheryl smiled. “As for the rest, I think you and I need to have a little talk…”
“Wonnerful,” echoed Woopsa, the elephant-headed Rakshasa towel boy.
“All of ‘em wonnerful,” the hunchbacked henchman of the Lair Legion continued, taking another swig of mead. “Specally Troai. Troia. An Sorceress. An Ziles. An, an Yo. All wonnerful.”
“All wonnerful,” Woopsa agreed, happily spilling drink down his tunic. “Wonnerful. The masters will be proud to have them as slave-chattels.”
“Yeah, proud… er, what?”
“Oh yes. Lots of plansh. Plansh for all of them. An, an torture.”
“Bit premature, isn’t it - I mean, ishn’t it?” Flapjack asked. “Still three challenges to go to determine who rules the Indian theological realms and is enslaved to who. Okay, the LL’s down three to one but there’s everything to play for. Literally.” He took another swig. “Wonnerful.”
“But they can’t win, can they?” slurred Woopsa. “It’s… it’s fixed, innit? That Emperor Kuvera, he’sh a cunning one. Captain Ravada, he knowsh what to do.”
“Doesh he?” Flapjack hiccuped, continuing to feign intoxication. “Tell me more.”
“Wonnerful,” agreed the pantsless reveller under the table, and went back to sleep.
Challenge the Fifth - the Feat of Lovecraft
“When else are they going to do the test of lovecraft?” Hatman shrugged.
“I suppose,” conceded the Sorceress, “but I’m very hurt that you didn’t pick me for this one.”
“You are?”
“Of course I am. Don’t you think I’m good enough for it?”
Hatty swallowed. “Oh sure, love. You’re… you’re really good. I just figured you’d not want to do it.”
“Of course I want to do it, Jay. It’s what I was trained for as a child.”
“You were? I knew your grandmother was sick, but…”
“Jay, what are we talking about?”
“The feat of lovecraft.”
“But you’re not referring to the elder beasts from the time when the Stars Were Right, are you?”
“No,” Hatman clarified. “Not Lovecraft, H.P… Lovecraft, the craft of making love.”
They both mentally reviewed their conversation so far. “Ah,” they both said together, then laughed.
“I had to nominate a male and a female to go up against the Rakshasa champions of the opposite sex,” Hatman explained. “I’d have skipped this round but we can’t afford to lose a single test now.”
“So who did you use?” Sorceress wondered.
“Well, CSFB! did kind of beg me on bended knees to have a chance at this one,” Jay admitted, “So I sent in him and Meggan Foxxx.”
“It was one-all,” Hatman reported neutrally. “Meggan had Degenerus begging for mercy at the end, but Dream had to retire with two dislocated legs.”
“So we didn’t win!” Cheryl was dismayed. Even a draw could spell doom for their team now.
“Actually we did,” Hatty answered. “There was apparently a… a playoff, Meggan vs Karma Sutra. We won. Now let us never speak of this again.”
“It’s our own fault,” the Dark Knight snarled. “I was stupid. It was a trap.”
“What was?” The last Scott Brunsen remembered was discussing retcons on the moon before a huge shadow had warned them of attack and the supposedly indestructible Knightjet had been shredded like paper. Since the Knightjet was immune to harm by the will of the Chronicler of Stories that was somewhat worrying.
“I was on the trail of whoever freed Magnetic Techbird and set him up for his last stand. That same person managed to get the Mutate Registration Act through Congress, and is probably behind the so-called Mysterioso Protocols that explain how to avoid or take out superheroes. I was getting too close so he diverted me to the moon.”
“Would it help if I confessed that I hadn’t a clue what you’re talking about?” AG offered.
“We have two different plots going on here,” DK reasoned. “The thing with the vanishing Pierson’s Porter and the Grim Reaper and so on is one, and then there’s whatever the guy behind the Mutate Registration Act is after.”
“Garrick?”
“Nah. The manipulator. He’s the one who set up the trail of breadcrumbs to divert me onto the retcon mystery instead, knowing that an investigation on the moon would attract the attention of the Celestian Space Robots and get us taken out by them.”
“Er… taken out?”
“We’re inside one now, kid,” the Dark Knight warned. “Listen real close with your mind and you can hear their massive thoughts. And right now what are they thinking about?”
Amazing Guy concentrated. “Oh crap!” he said. “The Celestians… they’re thinking about how they’re going to dissect us.”
The mysterious hidden villain had found a way to permanently dispose of the Dark Knight after all.
“We’re both hunting the same animal?” Nats checked.
“Of course,” Ravada snarled. “And very interesting prey it is too.”
“Yo does not want any animal to be hurted in this silly game,” Yo warned,. “What is being the prey? Is not bunny?”
“Oh no. This is unique and exquisite game.” gloated the Rakshasa. “I believe you call her Valeria.”
“What?!” Exile exploded. “My Valeria! You can’t hunt her. It’s immoral!”
“The judges agreed,” smirked Ravada. “It should be a good hunt. I’m looking forward to mounting her afterwards.”
“You agreed to this?” Exile raged at the Pegasus.
“Actually, no,” the warrioress admitted, glancing across to Blackhurt and Xander. “I was outvoted.”
“Xander, you agreed to this barbarity?” Sorceress demanded of her father.
The master of the mystic crafts shrugged. “It seemed appropriate,” was his only answer.
“Hat, I’ve gotta be on the team,” Exile told his captain.
“We have Yo thinking hunter, Nats our best flyer, Tricky the marksman, G-Eyed as teleporter, Miss Framlicker on the sensory apparatus, and me in my big game hunter’s hat,” Hatman replied. “Who do you have the specialisation to replace, Derek?”
“That’s not the point. She’s Valeria! I l… I have to look after her.”
“I’m sorry, Exile,” Hatman answered, “but I…”
“Yo is thinking that Exile would be better in team than Yo,” the pure thought being chimed in. “Cute-Exy is to be having my place.”
“Best listen to him, Jay,” Visionary advised. “If Yo thinks that’s the case you can bet it will be so.”
“Alright,” Hatman breathed. “Exile, you’re in.”
“I suggest you people get going now though,” Troia 215 pointed out. “The Rakshasa hunting party left five minutes ago.”
“Oh don’t be silly, Bill,” Miss Framlicker scolded him. “He did us all a big favour.”
“What?” shouted Exile, returning from his scan of the second direction even as Hatman flew in from the third.
Miss Framlicker ignored the energy-controlling mutant’s angry outburst and connected the last pins in her scanning array. “There,” she said to herself in satisfaction. “That should do it. I now have a fully-functioning extraplanar anomaly sensor grid.”
“Oh goodie!” Trickshot snarled. “And that’s a plus, is it?”
“It is if you want to track people who aren’t native to this universe,” the ITC scientist told him. “People from the Dreary Dimension, for example.”
“You can track Val with that?” Exile realised. “That’s why Xander allowed her to be the prey? Because we could detect her and get to her easily?””
“I knew you’d catch on eventually,” Miss Framlicker assured him.
“Wait a moment,” reasoned Hatman. “Rakshasas are from the mythlands or somewhere aren’t they? Can you track them too?”
“Of course,” Miss Framlicker replied. “Just let me tune into their frequency… there. We have two about a mile north of us, three heading south-west and closing on Valeria, and one… oh my!”
Goldeneyed reached forward, crushed the tracking device, and backhanded Miss Framlicker into a tree. She went down hard.
“One here in disguise!” Trickshot realised, loosing three arrows at the fast-moving shape that rippled from being Goldeneyed to being some kind of great jungle cat.
“After him!” Nats shouted. “He’s hurt Miss Framlicker!”
“Hold it!” Hatman called. “We have to be organised.”
“Damn organisation!” shouted Nats. “I’m…”
“You’re playing in a team or you’re off the team!” Hatman shouted, grabbing the flying phenomenon and dragging him to the ground. “This is no time for ego. Tricky, get after the fake G-Eyed. Only you could track him in this undergrowth. Nats, see to Miss F and then carry her with you to that point where the two rakshasas were. I’m betting that’s where they ambushed the real G-Eyed. Exy with me to beat the main hunting party to Valeria. Go!”
Goldeneyed tried to shrug off the dimensional-inhibitor net that prevented him from teleporting or using any of his other powers but his two tormentors wouldn’t give him a moment to get free. The came at him again and again with claws and feet and teeth, playing a game of cat and mouse.
“Never… got the hang of… giving in,” Bry Katz snarled at his enemies. “Why don’t you show me how?”
“Does he really need that tongue?” the second rakshasa wondered. “Or both eyes?”
“Better ask the tongue question to Valeria,” Nats suggested, streaking out of the sky at close to terminal velocity, impacting a rakshasa into a tree and veering up into the blue once more.
The second rakshasa was fast, aiming a crossbow at the fast-receding hero which still came within inches of his head. The first rakshasa staggered up rather shakily. “Don’t fool with him,” he snarled at his comrade. “Use magic.”
Nats was coming in for a second attack when he found himself surrounded by the illusion of total darkness. This was not helpful during a power dive. He managed to tag the second rakshasa but flying blind he also managed to impact himself into the jungle.
“See if he can fly without a spine,” the first rakshasa suggested.
Then they both noticed the empty dimensional-inhibitor net.
“Here, kitty-kitties,” Goldeneyed called to them.
As they leaped at him he caught them and there was a golden flash. G-Eyed reappeared alone, having severely complicated the day of the administrator of the Arachknight City Zoo’s tiger cage.
“You look about how I feel,” moaned Nats, picking himself painfully from the Nats-shaped indentation in the indigenous foliage. “I wonder how Tricky’s doing.”
“Tricky?” asked the third rakshasa, the one emerging from the undergrowth carrying the inert form of Miss Framlicker from where Nats had hidden it. “Tricky’s dead. And so is this wench unless both of you surrender to me immediately.” Already his claws were biting into the unconscious woman’s throat.
“I am getting really sick of hostage situations,” scowled Goldeneyed.
“But what choice do we have?” Nats worried.
“They’re such nice, honourable people they probably would surrender an’ die, too,” Trickshot admitted, allowing the point of a silver-tipped arrow held at full stretch on a hundred and twenty pound pull bow to press into the back of the rakshasa’s neck. “On the other hand I’m a bastard.”
“You? I saw you topple over a cliff.”
“Yeah well,” grinned the irritating archer, “I just love making longshots.”
It was the oldest human survival instinct: run or die.
The rakshasas were successful predators, and had been doing this for a very long time. They boxed the prey and cornered her by the waterfall, with wet rock to her back and a hunter approaching form each of the remaining three sides. Now the fun part started.
The first rakshasa seized the slave girl and reached out to slash at her face. She turned on him, shouted something, and stepped back as he burst into flames.
What she said was, “My death is not from you!”
As the first rakshasa plunged into the water screaming the other two leaped. The same miraculous intervention did not occur a second time and they pinned their prey to the rock wall. “Well now…” one of them began.
That was all he said as the rock wall boiled away and Exile shattered out to take him by the throat and pound him into the earth. Exile was not in a good mood.
Hatman rounded on the second with his lion-tamer’s helmet and flipped the rakshasa into the waterfall.
Valeria hurled herself at Exile and proclaimed. “The hunt is over! I am caught!”
She did not add that she was captured forever.
“And you won’t,” Dancer assured the tiger-headed demon on the throne of skulls. “That’s how good he is.”
“It hardly matters anyway,” Kuvera purred. “It was a clever ploy of his to send that dragon to destroy our drugs and porn infrastructure while our attention was diverted on these contests, but we Rakshasas invented cunning. It was a simple matter to hire one of those so-called super-villains to eradicate Fin Fang Foom.”
“Did you see the body?” ManMan smirked.
Kuvera was lost in the recitation of his own merits. “And not only had I anticipated the wyrm ploy but I had also set in motion plots of my own to deal with your Visionary’s reserve force.”
“Using Mr Chapachandranashpateem to get Dancer’s hopes up of a movie contract was pretty mean and slimy,” Joe Pepper snarled.
The Rakshasa tapped his claw upon an antique silver box that lay on the arm of his throne. “But without that little ploy I would have no guarantee of winning the final contest and gaining the right to do as I please with Visionary and his servitors,” Kuvera pointed out. “Now all I need do to assure victory is to give my team what is in this box.”
“You’d be having your stitches put in if I had Knifey and was free,” struggled ManMan. “Where is Knifey anway?”
“Currently?” the Rakshasa emperor asked. “Enclosed in twelve tons of concrete and being dropped in the Pacific Ocean. I could hardly take risks with a cosmic weapon of that calibre. I believe you will find that you are powerless this distant from it.”
“Oh yeah?” Dancer grinned. “Well what would you say the chances were of a twelve ton block of concrete with a magic knife in it falling through the roof right now and crushing you to bits?”
Kuvera looked up mockingly, and remained uncrushed. “Small,” he answered, fingering the silver box. “Unless I command it.”
“What does he mean?” Joe Pepper asked as Dancer looked pale.
“He’s somehow taken my probability power from me,” Sarah Shepherdson realised. “It was delivered to me in a box, and he’s transferred it away into a box. I… I’m powerless.”
The Emperor grinned a feral smile that had no humour in it at all. “That’s right,” he explained. He gestured to a minion. “Take this package to Karma Sutra and tell her to make good use of her newfound skills,” he ordered.
“No!” gasped Dancer, struggling with her shackles. Now she understood how the Lair Legion were going to close their final challenge. They literally had no chance of winning.
Kuvera leaned forward and picked his prisoners up by their chains. “That just leaves the question of what to do with two entirely-non-superpowered nuisances who are utterly at my non-existent mercy,” he noted.
ManMan waited for the usual snappy comeback from Dancer, but all he saw was waitress Sarah Shepherdson, wide-eyed and terrified in the grip of an emperor of killers. “Hey, if… if you’re so tough why not pick on someone your own size?” Joe Pepper snarled.
Kuvera regarded the bruised Elvis impersonator who had not yet recovered from his battle with Degenerus. “I could kill you both, of course, but that would be far, far too easy,” he decided. He dumped them unceremoniously onto the flagstones of his royal chamber once more and considered this. “Take them away,” he ordered. “Transport them to Marrakesh, to the Moustache’s slave auction. Ensure that the man goes to the radium mines and works out his life in painful hard labour. The woman should fetch a fair price on the block, but be certain she goes to a… suitable owner.” He grinned down at his captives. “Have a nice day,” he told them.
“It has been a good contest,” Ravada proclaimed. “It is fitting that it should end in blood. There will be epic tales sun of this battle, I promise you, Lair Legion, and of the terrible fates you endured once it was over.”
“It’d be nice to have a bit of positive PR,” admitted Cheryl.
“There are no rules,” Blackhurt, Prince of Fibs explained with relish. “No terms, no quarter, no illegal manoeuvres. The only restriction is that only the two teams may fight, and that I shall enforce. The winners are the group who can still stand at the end, and any survivors or prisoners of the losing team are theirs to do with as they wish,. As are all their property and chattels.”
“That is us,” Valeria explained to Cheryl. Cheryl snorted sceptically.
“I don’t like this at all,” Visionary worried. “Do I really have to go and sit with the Rakshasa Emperor?”
“Yes you do,” Cheryl told him. “And don’t fidget up on that throne.”
“Is there no other way?” Devadasi asked the Pegasus. “It seems terrible to have so much noble life snuffed out in so vicious a confrontation.”
“Nay. Tis the round we hast been waiting for,” Donar contradicted cheerfully. “Degenerus, thy ass ist mine, and thou wilt get it back in a sling.”
“What the hemigod said,” agreed Troia.
“I hate this kind of fight,” Woopsa the towel-rakshasa confessed to Flapjack. “It takes ages to get the blood off the mosaics.”
“I still wish you’d let me join in, Jay,” Meggan Foxxx repeated for the eleventh time. “I don’t like my li’l boy’s team going into the fight two members light.”
“You and Miss Framlicker are noncombatants,” Hatman insisted. “Nats, Exy, and G-Eyed might be beaten up but they’re trained for that.”
“That explains a lot,” Miss Framlicked noted. “I thought Nats couldn’t have got that good at being beaten up without some kind of formal instruction.”
“Just stay with Cheryl, Val, and Flapjack,” Hatty instructed them. “And remember what we’re doing, okay?”
Valeria tied her scarf around Exile’s neck. “It’s an old custom with my people,” she told him. “It… it doesn’t mean anything really.”
Miss Framlicker caught Nats’ glance. “You’re not borrowing my filofax,” she told him firmly.
“Shall we get started?” Karma Sutra enquired. “Only I’ve got a hot date later.”
“Yeah, with all of Karachi probably,” muttered Sorceress.
“The Knights of the Rakshasas are ready,” Ravada announced.
“The Lair Legion is always ready to fight evil,” Hatman responded.
“Then begin,” commended the Prince of Fibs.
“Oh I dunno,” Vizh shrugged. “That one who CSFB! pantsed won’t be back in the fight for a while.”
“I think, however, that the tide of battle turns away from your comrades,” the Emperor smirked. “Your lack of numbers tells upon you. See how two of the knights are teaming against your thought being, and another two have cornered the archer.”
“Yeah, but see how Yo thinks he or she can handle both of them and becomes two Y-beings each with their own Zorro cape and sword,” the possibly-fake former leader of the Lair Legion pointed out. “And notice how Trickshot set his two guys up to be bounced by Exile and G-Eyed.”
Kuvera noted this. “Most ingenious. You have the rakshasas beaten for teamwork, but as for raw power…”
Donar hammered Ravada through a wall.
“Thou art kitty litter, most vile demonling!” the Ausgardian shouted. “By Bifrosting’s brilliant bands I shalt smite thee most vigorously for the nonce!”
“Oh please,” Degenerus replied. “As if you’re the only god around.” He turned and gestured and Troia 215 was transformed into a statue of gold. “Much prettier,” he considered, “And accepted anywhere. The ideal travel companion.”
“Degenerus!” roared the thunder god.
“Got to go,” the god of debauchery smirked. “Hot date.” And he and Troia vanished.
“Donar, no!” Hatty intervened as the Ausgardian began to swing Mjalcolm to create a space-warp to follow. “We need you here first.”
Whilst Donar was distracted Ravada hit him from behind, hard. Everybody heard the rending of immortal flesh and saw Donar slashed to the floor.
Ravada moved in for the kill. A green and orange blur intervened and tripped the rakshasa commander with his yo-yo. “Hi!” CSFB! grinned. “I’m here to irritate and distract you for a few panels while you… try to rip me to bits like that but find I’m as fast and dextrous as you. And then, just when you’ve got me cornered…”
“Ravada!” roared Donar, rising from the ground on hurricane winds, lightning flickering around his body. “I would have words with thee!”
“And we would have words back!” called one of the three hundred additional rakshasas who suddenly filled the combat arena.
“Foul!” cried Hatty to the referees. “They’re bringing in reserves!”
“No foul,” Pegasus ruled. “Play on!”
“That means they’re not real, Jay,” Sorceress sensed. “Hold on a moment.” She flexed her fingers, strained hard, and the new rakshasas flickered and blinked out. “There,” she declared with satisfaction. “Shoddy illusion-making anyway.”
Across the room Yo watched Troia’s kidnapping with concern and sudden inspiration. “Yo knows why uncute rakshasas are being so mean!” the pure thought being suddenly realised, speaking in unison from two separate bodies. “Uncute rakshasas are not to be knowing niceness and how to pet bunnies. “Yo will fix this. Come with Yo to the Happy Place!” Before they could object two hapless rakshasa warriors were transported to the conceptual realm of joy and bunnies, and shortly thereafter discovered that they couldn’t exist there.
They could exist in the Not-So-Happy Place though. Briefly.
“I believe that it is time for our luck to change,” Emperor Kuvera decided, watching the battle with a scowl. “Karma Sutra, it is time for your dance!”
The lithe, fascinating woman dropped her robe and vaulted into the fray. Every male present stopped their combat for a moment as the high-priestess of sex worked her magic. Then she spun around and willed the tides of destiny to work against the Lair Legion.
Then Sorceress turned her into a pumpkin.
“Ratfinkles!” Whitney Darkness complained. “I was going for a turnip.”
“What?” Kuvera growled as his secret ploy was so easily foiled. “How?”
“Dancer’s power wasn’t in that box any more,” Visionary told the Emperor. “We heard about your plot,” (he didn’t mention Flapjack’s midnight chat with Woopsa) “and arranged for another temporary custodian.”
“None of you could possibly get near my throne,” Kuvera argued.
“But I could,” interrupted Devadasi. “I have decided to be a servant of other gods, Emperor of the Rakshasas.”
“You?” snarled Kuvera. “Then I shall punish you later. For now pass your power to Karma Sutra, to any of my warriors.”
“The battle will be resolved unhindered,” Devadasi said. “I have learned from Visionary’s wife a most important lesson.”
“Er, what?” Vizh asked nervously.
“That Kuvera is full of crap,” the handmaiden of the gods answered with a big rude grin.
“I wouldn’t raise your hand against her,” Cheryl advised as the Emperor rose in his wrath. “She has the power of the Probability Dancer right now. And if you twitch one whisker I shall tell my husband to destroy you.”
“You just sit there and watch the battle, Kuvera, and tell us where you’ve sent Dancer and ManMan,” Visionary advised the stricken Emperor. “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”
“Kill them!” Kuvera demanded of his warriors. “Kill them all!”
“Like that’s gonna happen,” sneered Trickshot, pinning a rakshasa to the wall so that Exile could spray it with an energy blast. Behind him G-Eyed teleported two more rakshasa to be facing each other as they struck with their poisoned weapons.
“You’re the guy who attacked Miss F.,” Nats noted, dodging away from the claws of another opponent. “Hey, Hatty, you in position?”
Jay Boaz, flying right above the rakshasa, nodded grimly and pulled on his Anvils hat.
There was an explosion as half the Black Pagoda erupted in a shower of stonework. The delicately restored shikaras (spires) toppled and the magics restoring the building failed. Donar Oldmanson dragged himself from the rubble, ragged but victorious. “Ravada wast a most mighty adversary,” he announced. “He wilt make a splendid throw rug.”
Visionary and Cheryl were making a final check that Devadasi was properly installed as the new leader of the Indian gods. “This is going to cause quite a theological upheaval,” Pegasus noted. “I think I’ll stick around for a while and watch.”
“We are blessed beyond measure,” the venerable old priest who had appealed to Visionary in the first place proclaimed. “I think.”
“Thanks for everything,” Devadasi smiled. “I’ll keep the rakshshas in check now. They’re wicked but they keep their promises. I’ll close down their nasty businesses although I suppose humans will be more than happy to step in. I’ll just do my best.”
“Thank you for this,” Visionary told her, pocketing the silver box with Dancer’s powers in it. “We’ll do our best to return them to their rightful owner.”
“All aboard that’s goin’ aboard!” Trickshot called from the doorway of the red double-decker bus. “And that don’t mean you, towel-boy!”
“Aw!” complained the elephant-headed rakshasa. “Somebody’s got to want a comic assistant.”
“Donar, Yo, and CSFB! have gone off to the mythlands to rescue Troia,” Hatman reported. “Whitney and I are staying on here to look for Finny. I don’t know where G-Eyed and Lisette are.”
“Bry found a note from Laurie in his room,” Exile reported. “He took off right after that, said not to wait for him.”
“Just the eight of us for Marrakesh then,” Nats calculated, cranking up the transdimensional warp engines that were still suffused with Goldeneyed’s surplus teleportation energies. “Time to go.”
The double decker stretched out and catapulted away in an expensive visual effect, and the Lair Legion went on to their next adventures.