Posted by The Hooded Hood makes his move at last... on May 19, 2001 at 09:14:15:
#74: Untold Tales of the Enemies of the Lair Legion: New World Orders
Prologue: Six Months Ago Pegasus was at combat practice in the War Room when the alarm claxon went off. More alarmingly still, a moment later the claxon fell silent, then dematerialised. Act one: Four months ago “I wish to complain,” Victoria Vee told the warden at the Gothametropolis Enhanced-Powers Correctional Facility colloquially known as the Safe. “According to all the movies on this subject I’ve even seen you should have strapped me to a chair and molested me by now. And I should have had at least one attack-in-the-showers scene, and possibly an intimate strip-search by a sadistic perverted guard. What kind of establishment are you running here?” “Same old Herringcarp Asylum,” VelcroVixen sniffed, prowling around the gothic cell room which the Hood used as his commend centre. “Damp, dark, dank, dreary, and lots of other uncool stuff beginning with a D.” Act Two: Three Months Ago “We have to do something, Erskine Blofish, leader of B.A.L.D., insisted, hammering his metal hand on the conference table. “Every since Zemo vanished there’s been so containing that cowled bastard!” Act Three: One Month Ago “Oh Jimmy!” Mrs Wick called in the sort of voice that mothers use when they think they know what their teenage sons are up to. “There’s a girl here for you!” Act Four: Now The red-headed man in the three piece black suit hammered on the door of the church until Reverend Fleetwood answered. “Are you here about the…” the old preacher began to ask, before he saw the two ten-foot battle-armoured Sentinoids looming behind the G-Man. “So who broke up the church?” Joshua Clement asked as he chewed his way through his fifth bacon sandwich. “And why?” “You don’t want to mess with me,” De Brown Streak told the hired guns lounging outside the crack-house. “I am completely insane.” The Voodoo Vicar lay back in his jacuzzi and watched one of his girls pick the fragments of stained glass out of his zuvembie’s knuckles. “And the minister said nothing to Graham?” The Voodoo Vicar appeared outside the mission church in his ceremonial regalia and prepared for battle. And then the lights of the helicarrier faded, and the crowds on the streets vanished, and a strange silence came upon Joshua Clement and Josiah M’Tumbe. “I believe that you have been defeated,” the Hooded Hood told the Voodoo Vicar. “And very neatly if I may say so.” Next issue, in just a couple of days time: We follow up the Purveyors of Peril with a Who’s Who index of the new membership describing the crème de la crème of Parodyverse problem-causers. Discover the identity of the twenty-five villains who will soon be pitted against our unfortunate heroes. Then worry. And then next week, in the following regular issue: We return to the plight of Sarah Shepherdson and Joe Pepper, two entirely-un-superpowered people in deep, deep trouble. We also consider the incredibly deep trouble Finny and Ziles are in, and the inconceivably deep trouble DK and AG face on the Celestian dissection tables. Oh, and guess what Lisette, Chronic, Dynamite Boy, and De Brown Streak are in? The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom
The mythlands warrior shifted to her equine form, retaining a human torso so she could continue to carry the weapons she held. As she ran she remembered her employers’ recent wrath, the last words she had heard him say: “It is time!” he had fumed. “I have been betrayed and thwarted too often! Now the alien Pierson’s Porter dares oppose me and Moo turns traitor! Well I shall endure it no more. Dr Vizhnar! Prepare to use the energies I leached off Dark Thugos in our final confrontation! Millennium Bug, engage the Free-Will Eradication Unit. Release the robot swarm. Let fly the nuclear arsenal. This world will now bow to me!”
On the edge of world domination after so long what could have possibly gone wrong?
Other members of the Scourge of the BZL were converging on the laboratory also. “What the %&*£’s happening,” demanded Jam, his super-powered profanities shredding the titanium door to the research area.
“Where are Dr Vizhnar and Millenium Bug?” Wonderbooster asked. “Aren’t they supposed to be tending to that world conquering equipment that… isn’t… there…”
“Neither your war-criminal scientist nor your master’s cloned son are there to answer you any more.” the Hooded Hood warned. “I have removed them from the timeline.”
Pegasus spun round, weapon in hand. “Hood! So you are back from the dead!”
“Indeed,” the cowled crime czar agreed. “Nor have I forgotten who killed me. I cannot allow the Baron to conquer the world today. It would inconvenience me.”
“Fool! Do you not think that long ago Zemo devised himself a protection from your retconning abilities. Hood?” the Man Who Wasn’t There didn’t say.
“What I think,” the Hooded Hood replied, “is that he attacked the wrong person at last.”
“Where is he?” Pegagsus demanded. “What have you done with him?”
“You are too late,” the Hood told the motley crew of super-villains. “I have erased him.”
The Late, Great Donald Blake levelled his cane at the cowled crime czar, “Then you’d better un-erase him fast,” he warned.
“I think not,” the Hooded Hood replied. He gestured, and Blake faded also. The enchanted cane rattled onto the floor. “Interesting,” the Hood mused, “the psychostave protected itself.”
“Get him!” shouted the substitute Grim Reaper.
“A cheap copy,” the Hood scorned, erasing him.
“Die, you %^&*! &%$$* &^**$£!!” screamed Jam.
“A case for censorship,” the Hood noted, fading Jam from the Parodyverse.
“For that I eviscerate you,” hissed Venom.
“A case for capital punishment,” mused the Hood, deleting both the alien symbiote and its wearer.
“You may have stopped the others, Hood, but you can’t beat me!” boasted Wonderbooster.
“A case for strangling some children at birth,” the Hood noted, removing the ionic icon.
Pegasus made no boasts or threats. She merely manoeuvred with blinding speed and planted her hooves right in the cowled crime-czar’s chest – or would have done had he not made that never happen.
“Very good,” the Hood admired, “A case for letting one of you people live to bear the tale. Just lie there and suffer from recurrent paralysis for a moment, Penny. There’s still one more Scourger left since Uatu returned to his people. This will require a little concentration. Ah, there. The Man Who Wasn’t There really and truly isn’t now.”
Zemo’s castle went deadly quiet.
The Hooded Hood concentrated again, his green eyes flashing. Then the very structure of the Baron’s South American fortress began to fade, until the Hood and Pegasus stood atop a natural outcropping in the middle of a rainforest.
“You may move now,” the Hood assured the winged warrioress.
“What did you do to them, to the castle?” Pegasus demanded.
“I put them all somewhere safe, where they can’t meddle or be meddled with,” the cowled crime czar promised.
Pegasus shuddered. “Are they… will they be back?”
“Only under some very specific circumstances,” replied the Hood.
“You’ve retconned things so they never were?”
“No,” the Hood explained. “Zemo had protected himself from that. I have removed them from now. The past is unchanged, except for a fraction of a second as they all vanished.”
“And what about me?” Penny Christopoulos asked.
“You can do whatever you choose, my dear,” the Hood told the Pegasus. “Reform a new Scourge or rejoin the Constellation or return to the Mythlands and face that which you fled, whichever you elect. Join the Lair Legion if you insist. But you must bear the burden of witness, and you must remember them.”
“And what are you going to do now you’ve finished your dastardly work?”
The Hooded Hood shook his head. “Finished. My dear Pegasus, I have only just begun…”
“It won’t work, Prisoner 9177394,” the Warden told the incarcerated villainess. “Dr Valium warned us in his psychological profile of you that you would attempt mind games with both inmates and staff. But as you are discovering, we at the Safe are experienced at keeping all kinds of prisoners confined, including many with actual super-powers, unlike yourself.”
“Okay,” prisoner 9177394 shrugged. “Then how about the scene where the prisoner finds that her cuffs have come undone, picks up a biro off the Warden’s desk, and cripples him with it? Like this.”
There was a brief, 18-rated violence bit.
“See, you really would have been better strapping me to a chair and molesting me,” VelcroVixen told the bleeding mound on the floor.
“Good evening,” the Hooded Hood bade her, emerging from the shadows.
“Hey, Hood,” grinned Vicki, “I should have guessed it was you when the manacles hadn’t been locked properly. So what’s the deal?”
“I have employment for you.”
“Well it just so happens I’m looking for a job.”
“I did not seek out your talents as an interior decorator,” the Hooded Hood assured her. VelcroVixen had now changed back into her customary tight-fitting black suede outfit with the dozens of impossibly-concealed weapons in it.
“So what did you want, then?” she asked.
The Hooded Hood laid a series of photographs on the desk. “These are the heroes who have been most active and annoying of late,” he told the former fetishwear model. “CrazySugarFreakBoy!, Fin Fang Foom, the Dark Knight, Hatman, Donar, Visionary, Lisa, NTU-150, Goldeneyed, Yo, ManMan, Exile, Troia, Trickshot, Dancer, spiffy, the Sorceress, Ziles, Nats, and Space Ghost.” The photograph of Space Ghost featured a large backside mooning at the camera.
“Same old faces,” VelcroVixen noted, “and a couple new ones. So what’s the plan?”
“There is likely to be something of a shift in the balance of power within the underworld with the removal of Zemo,” the Hood explained. “Already a number of ambitious players are seeking to fill the void that his departure has left. I suspect these little heroes are going to be having a turbulent few weeks. And from that crucible of chaos we shall shape a new menace which will co-ordinate the superhuman underworld as ever before.”
“Ok,” agreed Vicki, “And that would be…?”
“I require you to reform the Purveyors of Peril,” the cowled crime-czar instructed. “Recruit at least one foe who is the match for each one of these heroes. Ensure that there is a personal enmity. Inform these candidates that I will judge them and determine if they are worthy. The successful applicants will form part of the new cartel that will control all aspects of super-powered lawbreaking, backed up by resources and infrastructure the superior of anything these heroes have to use.”
“You want me to put a team together capable of taking down these heroes?” VelcroVixen checked.
“I want you to forge an organisation greater than any of its members, where villains can band together to battle the heroes no single villain could defeat.”
VelcroVixen strutted over to the Portal of Pretentiousness. “I’ll go now, then,” she agreed.
“I don’t mind,” Roni Y Avis admitted, sitting back and playing with an executive toy. “Ever since Pierson’s Porter also mysteriously disappeared in the middle of his term as Mayor of Paradopolis and the citizens there woke up one morning to find the city was back in its old place across the river from Gothametropolis York I’ve been able to regain my business empire, larger than ever.” He snickered the snicker of a man who had just invented cookies with .exe programmes buried in them.
“You might not mind,” the Lynchpin of Crime growled from his reinforced armchair, “but if Zemo and Porter are gone where is the Hooded Hood going to stop?”
“A man who has tried to take over the universe?” Akiko Masamune questioned. “Why should he feel he has to stop anywhere?”
“Doesn’t anyone think that so… useful a man should be our ally rather than our enemy?” asked Magenta St Evil, today representing her European crime interests.
“How much of what happened during the Acts of Ambition was manipulated by him?” Count Fokker of H.E.R.P.E.S. worried. “Of the people we had around the table then there is more than one Baron and one arrogant alien gone. The Devil Doctor? Disembodied in space. Dirth Vortex? Fallen. Mother Whipcord? Prison. Doctor Moo? Vanished. The Ass-Raping Ninjas – under new management. Deathspoon the Assassin? Messengered. Where will it end?”
“It ends with his elimination,” Blofish promised. “The day of the single eccentric archvillain is passed. The modern era belong to a consortium of profit and power-minded... why are you all looking behind me?”
“I imagine it’s my daring outfit in black velvet,” VelcroVixen suggested modestly. “You surely can’t be surprised that we penetrated your security.”
“Ex-security,” Savagetooth smirked, licking something wet and sticky off his claws.
“What is the meaning of this?” the Lynchpin demanded of the five criminals who had interrupted the enclave. “This could mean underworld war.”
“Not if we eliminate all of you here and now,” Professor Manyarmed suggested. “Which we could do. I think you’ll find that emergency escape button is disconnected, fat man.” He turned to Fokker, “Likewise your teleportation beam,” and to St Evil, “And your dimensional slide and its three back-ups,” and to Masamune, “And your cloaked ninjas, my dear. We didn’t wish to be disturbed.”
“Who are you?” Roni Y Avis stammered. He wished now that he had thought of an emergency escape route to be neutralised.
“You all know me,” Vicki Vee, the VelcroVixen smiled sexily. “Some of you in the biblical sense. My associates are Suicide Blonde, Professor Manyarms, Savagetooth, and the gentleman who dimensions-gated us in here, Spacewarped. We represent the new Purveyors of Peril. Good evening.”
Akiko recognised the name. “The Purveyors. They were servitors of the Hooded Hood.”
“We are allied with him, yes,” Manyarms told them. “And we have come to make sure that you are all allies as well.”
“A takeover?” the Lynchpin sneered. “I don’t fold that easily.”
“Or get up,” suggested VelcroVixen.
“I don’t recognise Spacewarped, but I understood the rest of you were still in the Safe,” Count Fokker noted. “Even you, my former henchwoman,” he added to Vicki.
“The Hood released a number of useful associates,” Professsor Manyarms admitted. “One day soon the authorities are bound to notice they are missing, but you know how plausible the Hood’s retcons can be.”
“Yeah. We got lotsa guys in the Purveyors now.” grinned Savagetooth. “We got…” Here he paused, puzzled by a mathematical conundrum.
“Lots,” suggested Suicide Blonde.
“Yeah. Lots. Maybe even many.”
“The point is,” VelcroVixen explained, “the Hood has a plan, and it calls for there to be only two sides in the confrontation. The people with him and the people being crushed by him. You guys have gotta decide which side you’re on.”
“We have traditionally been neutral in confrontations between high profile heroes and villains,” Akiko Masamune explained.
“It seems that the rules have changed,” suggested Magenta St Evil.
“The rules have indeed changed,” Suicide Blonde answered. “The Hooded Hood expects your utter loyalty and co-operation, or he expects your elimination.”
“I have been appointed to take a chair at your board and co-ordinate the Hood’s criminal activities,” announced Professor Manyarms.
“Faugh!” Blofish snarled. “I have had enough of this. There is no place at this table for an octopus-limbed joke like you, Manyarms! The rest of you so-called crimelords may cave but I am made of sterner stuff.”
“Yes,” Suicide Blonde agreed. “You’re made of adamantium, aren’t you? Strongest metal of all, utterly invulnerable to physical force.”
“Exactly,” Blofish crowed. “And if I have to I could kill every one of you, right here, right now.”
Bambi Bacall smiled and gestured. The adamantium body of the leader of B.A.L.D. shimmered and melted into tapioca. Blofish hadn’t even got time to scream as he oozed off his chair. “I think you have a spare seat now for Professor Manyarms,” the Suicide Blonde noted, “You’ll have to wipe it down of course.”
“Any others of you got problems?” snarled Savagetooth.
The remaining cartel leaders regarded each other in silence for a moment.
“I believe we could do well under the vigorous leadership of the Hooded Hood,” Fokker of HERPES said at last. “He has vision, immense power, and he is a man of honour. I will pledge my allegiance and expect my star to rise with his.”
“Count me in,” Roni Y Avis added hurriedly. “Better taken over than tapioca.”
“I can think of many advantages in a liaison with the cowled crime-czar,” smiled Magenta St Evil.
“What about you two?” VelcroVixen asked of Akiko Masamune and the Lynchpin of Crime.
“I don’t give in to threats,” the pink-clad woman answered. “However, given a reasonable offer of a business alliance with the Hood I would consider a formal agreement between us.”
“That’s right,” the fat man agreed. “If the Hood suggest areas of mutual benefit, especially regarding the destruction of those annoying superheroes, then we have the basis of doing business.”
“I knew you’d see it our way,” Professor Manyarmed smiled.
“There is?” Jeremy Wick abandoned the Nintendo and moved down the stairs at a close approximation of light speed. “Tara?”
“Nope,” Joan Wick answered. “Don’t keep her waiting.”
“Hi, Jimmy,” Jenny Frasier smiled at him from the doorway. “I hope you don’t mind me calling.”
“Mind?” the boy stammered. “Er nope. No. That is, absolutely not. No. No I don’t… Er, no. Not at all.” After all, it wasn’t every day that a nerdy fifteen year old had a home visit from the head of the cheerleading section.
“Can we take a walk, Jimmy?” she breathed. “There’s something I need to ask you.”
“Oh sure. Yeah. A walk is good. I like to walk. Walking is my life. Well, not my life, but it’s very… yeah. I’ll get my coat.”
“Got the girls chasing you, huh, son?” Jeremy’s dad smiled as he watched his flustered son get himself tangled in his jacket and race out.
Jenny had a car waiting with some other people in it. “Hop in, Jimmy,” she invited him. “We’ve got places to go and people to see.”
Jimmy looked at the other passengers of the open topped sports car. He didn’t know who they were, but they were incredibly hot. “Please don’t let me wake up,” he prayed as he climbed in and Jenny sped away.
Things got even better. Jenny drove the car up past Pierce Heights over to the South Shore and parked on the deserted strand. “Now, Jimmy,” she smiled. “I have something to show you.”
Stay cool, Jimmy told himself. Act like this happens every day. “Wurg,” he said.
Jenny smiled at him and let her features melt until they looked like a purple plastic mannequin. At the same time the second hot girl shimmered and became a middle-aged man with needles sticking out from his skull. The third girl remained unchanged.
“Aaaagh!” cried Jimmy, scrabbling for the car door. He found his fingers wouldn’t move properly.
“Neuroleptic drug I brushed you with when you got in,” the third girl, the one with the purple hair, explained to him. “Didn’t want you doing anything… explosive.”
With a sick realisation, Jeremy Wick understood that they knew he was secretly Dynamite Boy. “Who... who are you?”
“Your very worst nightmare,” Hellfrasier promised him. “Or Dr Hellfrasier Crane of HellBC’s top-rates sitcom. Take your pick.”
“You can call me PsychoAcidPervGirl! for now, lover,” the purple-haired teen told him. “Later on you can call me for breakfast.”
“And I’m the Indigo Impostor,” the thing that had been Jenny explained. “Forgive the ruse, but it seemed quicker than massacring your family to have a quiet word with you.”
“You stay away from my family,” Dynamite Boy warned them.
“But they would scream so nicely,” Hellfrasier considered. “And then there are all your friends at school. Neighbours. Grandparents. Oh, you have so many great toys to play with.”
“Parents Donald and Joan. Little brother Henry. Schoolmates Tara, Milo, Joe…” the Indigo Impostor recited.
“You stay away from them all!”
“We just wanted to talk to you about your career choices,” Indigo Impostor told Jeremy. “We are terribly worried that you might have ambitions to use those wonderful self-explosive gifts of yours to become a superhero. We think that would be a terrible waste.”
“I dunno,” PAPG! philosophised. “Lotsa superheroes are motivated by the tragic deaths of their families. And by their schools being napalmed. And by their friends and gal-pals being crucified.”
“You…” Dynamite Boy couldn’t think of a threat bad enough to stop these people.
“On the other hand, our employer could offer you a high-paying salary track with chances for promotion and a good future,” the Impostor suggested. “You would be trained in the proper use of your wonderful gifts, given a chance to make a difference in the world, and your friends and family need never know how close they came to painful annihilation.”
“You want me to become a supervillain?”
“That’s such an outdated term,” PsychoAcidPervGirl! scorned. “Let’s just say we want to turn you to the dark side of the Force. Hey, you might find you like it.”
“We have a lot of things planned, Jimbo,” Hellfrasier promised him. “All you’ve got to do is decide which set of plans we use. Me, I’m hoping that you turn us down. That was we get to use the giant moulinex.”
“You want me… to join you?” Dynamite Boy understood.
Indigo Impostor patted Jimmy’s cheek. “We want you to think about it. We’ll be back later for a decision. In the meantime I’d advise you not to discuss this with anybody. And if you even approach another super-type…”
“Your family dies in a freak industrial vacuum cleaner accident,” PAPG! interjected. “At least that way all the mess is inside the bag.”
Dynamite Boy had run out of options.
PsychoAcidPervGirl! pushed a card into his hand. “And call me,” she offered. “We could have fun together.”
“I’m Special Agent Garrick, in charge of Mutant Registration Affairs,” the red-headed man told him. “We’re looking for a fugitive.”
The Reverend didn’t step aside from the doorway. “So?”
“So we traced him to this area of Slumtown, and we need to search your church.”
“It’s not my church,” Fleetwood answered, “I just caretake for the owner. And he takes in fugitives.”
Herbert P. Garrick sighed. It was going to be one of those confrontations. “Look, father…”
“Reverend.”
“Reverend, we’re on the trail of a dangerous mutant terrorist, and we have special powers to do what we have to to find him” The G-Man peered into the church and saw the broken glass and overturned pews “Now it looks like you’ve had enough trouble for one day, so step aside.”
“Just a few local punks,” Commissioner Kenneth Graham chipped in, making his way over the debris. “If the Reverend would tell me who they are I could have them off the streets by morning.”
Garrick was surprised. “Graham! Since when does the Paradopolis Commissioner of Police come out to a normal burglary in Hell’s Kitchen?”
“Are you saying that Hell’s Kitchen doesn’t warrant proper police protection?” Ken Graham challenged the G-Man. “Or that the Commissioner’s too out of touch to be able to help out the minister in his old neighbourhood?”
“I don’t particularly care,” Garrick admitted. “I’m looking for De Brown Streak. We nearly nailed him over in Seedytown but he broke through the vibra-nets and headed this way. He was wounded though, and if he uses his mutate powers we’ll be able to get a fix on him with the new tracking kit from Red Turret Industries.”
“There’s nobody here who shouldn’t be,” Reverend Fleetwood promised. “I swear to God. Now get out of my way and let me get this mess cleaned up.”
“Come on,” Commissioner Graham told the Sentinoids. “I’ll show you the usual street search patterns and you can explain why you’re on my patch without informing my office.” He turned round to the minister. “And you can give some thought to telling me what punks did this to your chapel. You can’t protect everybody, you know, Mac.”
“But I know a guy who can,” joked Fleetwood.
The minister waited until Ken Graham had done his usual grumbling and had led Garrick and the SPUD agents away from the church. “You can come out from under the alter-table now,” he called.
De Brown Streak crawled painfully from under the white cloth. “How did you know I was there?” he demanded.
“Where else is there to hide?”
“Then why didn’t you give me away? I’m a wanted mutie.”
“Perhaps you’re wanted here?” Fleetwood smiled. “Not everybody buys into that message of hate Garrick and his cronies are preaching, you know. And some of us specialise in seeing the… possibilities for good in people.”
“But you’re a human!” objected DBS.
Fleetwood checked. “Yep,” he admitted. “Just like you.”
“Eat slower,” Reverend Fleetwood advised. It was obvious that De Brown Streak had been on the run for a long time and hadn’t had a meal or a bath for days. Now his minor laser burns were tended the young mutant’s appetite was returning.
“I have a super-fast metabolism,” DBS assured his host.
“Don’t use it. Garrick and his men are sure to be somewhere in the neighbourhood with their probing devices. Just swallow the food slowly, enjoy the taste, smell the coffee.”
“The church?”
Fleetwood’s face clouded. “Ah yes. We often have problems in the area with winos and druggies looking for easy cash. The place has been burglarised a dozen times so far this year. But this one was different.”
“Different so you didn’t want that police guy involved?”
“Different because if I had involved him I’ve been warned that people in this parish will suffer cruelly,” Fleetwood replied. “And different because it wasn’t just money they were after.”
DBS reached for another sandwich. “Then what?” he asked.
“It has been… put to me that the church would make an excellent money-laundering cover for a drugs racket,” the minister explained. “Lots of ‘donations’ into the collecting plate, tax-exempt of course, a good distribution centre…”
“And they’re threatening the neighbourhood if you don’t go along with it?” Clement understood.
“Their leader is a satanic man who calls himself the Voodoo Vicar. He has a couple of big enforcers who never speak that he calls his Zuvembies. They say he has… demonic powers.”
“Well that’s supposed to be your department to deal with, isn’t it?” DBS noted. “So what did you do about it?”
“I prayed for help,” Reverend Fleetwood replied, looking straight at De Brown Streak.
“You against four of us?” snorted a thug with a match sticking from his mouth. “Oh yeah.”
“Not because of that,” DBS said hitting him square on the nose and ducking a blow from the next punk. “Because I’m a wanted criminal, hated and feared by the world I’m protecting.” He elbowed the guy creeping up on him in the grin and kicked him in the head as he bent over. “Because I’m having to do this without super-powers so that SPUD don’t track me down,” he added, disarming the fourth man of his baseball bat and putting it to good use on the second. “And because I’m taking on four armed goons simply because I got fed some bacon sandwiches.”
By the time he had got the worst of his temper tantrum over with the four guards were sprawled on the pavement.
“Those must have been bad bacon sandwiches,” a hooker remarked.
“They were pretty good, actually,” grinned DBS. “Any of you girls into S&M?”
“Sure honey. What’cha got in mind?”
“Got your handcuffs with you?”
“Got your wallet with you, stud?”
DBS proffered a handful of banknotes. “Take these four guys, keep ‘em locked up, and flagellate them without mercy till this cash runs out.” He instructed the pros. “And don’t forget the piercings.”
“Nothing, bossman,” his police informant told him. “Graham’s ordered an extra patrol or two down to the Zero Street Mission, but in Hell’s Bathroom that’s like tryin’ to put a fire out with a bottle of Cherryade.”
“Good. I have plans for that place. I rather like the idea of converting it into a drug warehouse and brothel. And I like the idea of the good Reverend having to stand by and watch for the sake of the neighbourhood’s grannies and children. Perhaps I’ll let him collect the whores’ fees at the door.”
“Hey, Voodoo Vicar,” a voice said in his ear. “I got a question. Are you immune to electricity?”
Josiah M’Tumbe turned round to find a black man in a brown runner’s outfit leaning over his shoulder. “What? Who are you?”
“Only I could always drop this hairdryer into your jacuzzi to find out,” DBS offered. “If you don’t ask your zombie guards and your… ladyfriends to go away right now that is.” He held the dryer out over the water.
“Get out,” the Voodoo Vicar ordered his followers. Then he turned to DBS. “What do you want?” he demanded. “A slice of the action?”
“A piece of you,” the sepia speedster answered. “A duel. One on one. You versus me. Voodoo Vicar versus De Brown Streak with everyone watching. I’m going to kick your ass.”
“Nice feathers,” snickered De Brown Streak. “Chicken is in this year, I see.”
M’Tumbe jabbed a six inch needle into a small brown doll and DBS fell to the floor in agony. “It’s an old trick, but it always works,” the Voodoo Vicar grinned. His teeth were filed to points.
“Stop this deviltry! You’re hurting him!” Reverend Fleetwood called out, but the zuvembies held him back from interfering.
“That’s rather the point,” the Voodoo Vicar boasted. “Hurting him, breaking him, for all to see, for all to know who puts the Hell in Hell’s Bathroom.” He jabbed another needle into the doll’s other leg. “Can’t run? Can’t do anything but beg?” he mocked DBS.
There was a sepia blur and suddenly De Brown Streak was holding the doll instead. “Can crawl at super-speed,” he answered, pulling the pins free. “Stay there while I deal with your zuvembies… there, finished. Now for you.”
“Fool! I shall show you fear in a handful of dust!”
De Brown Streak recoiled from the red powder. His eyes went wide. He screamed. Then he picked himself up. “Nasty stuff. Super-fast metabolism to deal with it. Next?”
“The serpents of Damballah!” gestured the Voodoo Vicar, conjuring a dozen fast-moving poisonous snakes.
“The snakeskin belts of De Brown Streak,” answered DBS, moving faster to eliminate them.
“The fatigues of Erzulie!” shouted the Voodoo Vicar.
“The endurance of the long-distance runner!” replied DBS, struggling through the lethargy. “Is that the best you’ve got?”
“No,” Josiah M’Tumbe promised. “I have far worse. Come forth, my inner self!”
De Brown Streak froze as he raced forward to strike his enemy. What?”
“It’s called possession,” the Voodoo Vicar explained, drawing a very sharp obsidian knife from his tunic. “I carry the spirit of my dead familiar within me. I sent him out to occupy your body. And while you are occupied…” He pressed the blade into the flesh above DBS’ heart.
“Excuse me,” Reverend Fleetwood interrupted. He swung the Voodoo Vicar round and punched him in the gut. All those years of teaching teenaged boys to box weren’t wasted.
The Voodoo Vicar laughed incredulously. “You dare attack me, little priest? Here? While all my followers are gathered around me?”
“Sure,” the Reverend answered. “Right here, on the street where we live and work and worship, where we bring up our kids and hope for a better tomorrow. Right here where all the people of the neighbourhood are gathered round you as well.”
And surely enough, one by one they came out into the streetlights, carrying hammers and stocks of wood and baseball bats, eyeing the thugs who came with Voodoo Vicar with a cold, furious contempt.
“Very good, holy man,” M’Tumba sneered. “The only difference is my people have automatic weapons.”
“Carrying automatic weapons is an offence!” Dan Drury of SPUD shouted as the SPUD helicarrier beamed its spotlight onto the confrontation. “Stand where you are and don’t even think about movin’ slimebags, cus this thing’s got targeting systems so good I kin blow a fly’s nadgers off at sixty miles. You’re under arrest!”
“They were just waiting for me to use my mutate gifts to track me,” DBS grinned at the surprised Voodoo Vicar. “I figured if they were going to take me, they might as well get you too, sucker.”
“The Hood! What do you want?” DBS demanded. “Where did everyone go?”
“I thought we might have some privacy for our chat, Mr Clement,” the cowled crime-czar replied. “The two of you have two possible futures. In one of them, M’Tumbe serves a lengthy and somewhat difficult prison term for his crimes and De Brown Streak unfortunately dies under Dr Moo’s device to rectify mutant genes. In the other you both accept my offer to join a little alliance I am assembling called the Purveyors of Peril, and we work together to meet our diverse but complimentary ambitions.”
“I am no man’s minion, Hood!” the Voodoo Vicar declared.
“Bull!” snorted DBS. “You have mid-level flunky written all over you. One flick from Hoody here and you’re toast. Man, you’re so far out of your class you’re not in the same school.” He turned to the cowled crime-czar. “I just want to help my people, Hood. I’m not interested in being a supervillain.”
“Well,” the Hooded Hood replied, his eyes glowing greenly, “I believe we have the basis for a conversation.”
Who's Who in the Parodyverse
Where's Where in the Parodyverse
And finally, some comments from the author: You may notice that this story writes a number of long-established BZL characters out of future mainstream use. This isn’t intended to cause offence or stop any of the posters they belong to from bringing them back. However, I’m told that Zemo doesn’t want the board to even bear his name, so I’m trying to be sensitive to what I presume are his wishes in sidelining his main characters for now. It has also been pointed out that all but Pegasus and the Man Who Wasn’t There of the Scourge are named after posters who have never given their permission to have their names taken in vain in Parodyverse stories. I therefore thought that I could take the opportunity of the upheavals to put right that slightly uncomfortable situation also. The Man Who Wasn’t There went on to become the (Carrington) Shaper of Worlds, and in his oft-regretted absence it seemed best to put that one away in the cupboard as well.
If people want a new Scourge, I’d refer them to the New Scourge entry in the Who’s Who to the Parodyverse, which includes some additional characters who aren’t posters that (I think it was) Enemy created. I have ignored Dr Enormoidstein’s presence on the Scourge line-up for the same reason I’ve ignored the revised New Scourge line-up; none of them needed to be put on hold. They were all out buying lottery tickets at the time Castle Zemo vanished, okay?
As to the situation with Pierson’s Porter, I’ve corresponded with PP regarding the “gap” in the narrative caused by his protracted absence from posting. The continuity problem here is that PP’s Mayor storyline was quite strongly tied in with events shown to have happened six months or so back in Untold Tales, and the PP storyline doesn’t easily reconcile with other people’s stories since. Poster PP left (and has now picked up again) Pierson’s Porter’s mayordom at the point where the alien Puppeteer had separated Paradopolis ten miles offshore and had built a vast and high-tech new city hall in the civic centre. I have established in the current Untold Tales arc that this was all mysteriously undone overnight six months ago and that PP hasn’t been seen since. As I understand it, PP will explain how that mysterious undoing is itself undone in modern continuity (after the events of the Lair Legion World Tour) and continue his storyline from that point. After all, Pierson’s Porter has worked on machines to protect against retconning.
Although it doesn’t feature in this particular chapter I have also assumed that Grim Reaper/the Enemy and his plots have likewise vanished for the moment. It is a very long time since GR wrote about them, but they are too cosmic to ignore and too interesting to just dismiss, so I suggest that while we’re cleaning house we add GR and his lunar arsenal to the list of the mysteriously vanished until the poster returns or some other writer (such as PP) wants to address this.
HH