Baron Zemo's Lair. - <font color="lightslategrey" face="Lucida Sans Unicode">The Secret History of the Parodyverse: The Most Untold Tale of the Lair Legion of All</font>

Baron Zemo's Lair

The Secret History of the Parodyverse: The Most Untold Tale of the Lair Legion of All
Sunday, 11-Jul-1999 07:39:21
195.92.194.72 writes:

“Greetings, butler. May I congratulate you on your recent nuptials?”
Jarvis recognised the dark Latvian tones at once and dragged himself up from the grey soil to peer through the grey mists. The Hooded Hood emerged from the swirling fog, his cloak billowing out in an unfelt breeze, his eyes glowing green slits beneath the shadows of his cowl.
“Hood!” the leader of the Lair Legion spat. “So you weren’t wiped out when we beat you last time?”
“As I recall the incident, on our previous encounter I laid aside my own plans for universal domination in order to preserve the world from destruction at the nozzles of Galactivac, the Living Death that Sucks,” the cowled crime-czar answered.
“Yeah, whatever,” Jarvis shrugged. Time to get back on script. “Where am I? What have you done with Melissa?”
“Tim?” The sound of his new wife’s voice coming from the mists caused the knot in Jarvis’ stomach to unclench. “Over here, Lissie,” he called back.
Once Melissa was safely beside him, the leader of the Lair Legion felt confident in swinging round to face off against the Hooded Hood once more. The villain still stood wreathed in mist, secure in his confidence that Jarvis was going to lose this encounter. That was because the cowled crime-czar knew that Jarvis was cut off from the source of his powers here; a fact the butler had yet to discover.
“I presume you will be wanting the customary adversary-fills-in-the-plot-for-the-baffled-hero speech about now?” the Hood suggested.
“Who is this?” Melissa hissed in her husband’s ear.
“Ah, how remiss of me, my dear. I should have introduced myself. I am… the Hooded Hood.”
“Stay away from her, Hood,” Jarvis warned the cowled crime-czar as he kissed Melissa’s fingertips.
“You made no such request when I made alterations in the continuity flux to enable you to have been having a relationship with this young lady in the first place,” the Hood pointed out. “Perhaps you would prefer me to put those changes back the way they were, to restore you to your beloved Lisa, and to erase Melissa here entirely?”
The brunette looked a little worried. “Can he do that?” she asked Jarvis.
“Of course I can,” the cowled crime-czar promised. “But I won’t. Not unless Jarvis asks me to. I presume that as long as you serve and please him he will allow you to continue.”
The butler had forgotten how well the Hood could twist people and relationships. “Lissie isn’t my slave. We’re together forever and not by your leave…”
“How utterly romantic,” the Hood sneered. “In answer to your other question as to your current location, you are in Comic-Book Limbo.”
“Where?” Melissa puzzled.
“The place where forgotten heroes go,” Jarvis shuddered. “Sometimes they escape, but often when they return they are… horribly changed. Sometimes they come back only to die.”
“How could we be in this place?” his wife went on.
“I had to use the Jarvis Cosmic power,” Jarv remembered. “We were being absorbed, devoured by those Lurkers Beneath, those parasites of the Parodyverse who do nothing but consume the adventures of our heroes. I had to do something, anything…”
“And the clash of your power and their absorption opened the rift which brought you here to my place of exile,” the Hooded Hood explained. “As I had intended.”
“You wanted us here?” Jarvis frowned. “What malevolent scheme have you set in motion this time, Hood?”
The cowled crime-czar gestured to the barren infinity of the comics wasteland. “In my last plot I came dangerously close to conquering the Parodyverse. When I failed, the greater powers were angered at what I had almost accomplished. Therefore they took their revenge. I was exiled here.”
Somewhere in the distance a half-transparent man with a robot hawk staggered blindly away, forgotten after his single sole appearance in the Marvel Universe [AUTHOR’S CHALLENGE: who is this, and what comic did they appear in? Here’s a clue. Howard Chaykin was one of the creators].
“So why are we here?” Melissa challenged. “Is it just that misery loves company?”
“Of course not,” the Hood replied. “That would be petty, and a true villain is never that. No, since the Chronicler of Stories has condemned me to this prison the only way I can be free is to provide suitable substitutes to remain here in my stead. And it seemed an apposite revenge upon the Chronicler and the Shaper to accomplish that by revealing to you heroes what they have long sought to keep hidden from you, the true purpose of the Parodyverse, the reason why Jarvis – and others – were involved at the point of its creation, and why so many strange and improbably things happen there.”
The butler was intrigued in spite of himself. “What is the true purpose of the Parodyverse then?” he heard himself ask.
Melissa was more concerned about something else. “Are we trapped here forever?” she worried. Comic-Book Limbo had a notable lack of bathroom facilities.
“Where does Wilbur Parody come into all this?” Jarvis persisted. “Those Lurkers Below seemed to think he was something special, that the founder of Paradopolis had something to do with this true purpose you’re speaking of. But Parody wasn’t a Lurker; they had just been attracted to a source of sustenance that he’d set up.”
“Correct,” the Hooded Hood admitted. “In fact, poor Professor Franklydont and his whole macabre crew were little more than a retcon designed to bring you here to me. In the same way, the Sidekick Epidemic and the Cultists of the Temple of Lugosa are merely means of entrapping more of the Lair Legion in Limbo. The more of you who are here, the more chance I will be set free. Of course, the others may not be too glad to see you, butler.”
“Why not?” Jarv demanded.
“The Cultists of Lugosa whom Hatman and CrazySugarFreakBoy! have encountered are the descendants of the group led up by Wilbur Parody whom Lisa and Goldeneyed encountered. I ensured that Parody had all the information he needed to draft The Laws and Ordinances of New Paradopolis to enable the Sidekick Epidemic, and also warned him of a visit to Arkham by Hatman and that irritating CrazySugarFreakPerson! over a century later so he could prophesy it in his cult’s scriptures. At my suggestion, he instructed his cultists to indicate to the heroes that you, Jarvis, had betrayed them. Given your recent uncharacteristic meanness it won’t be too hard for them to believe.”
“Oh, Tim!” Melissa gasped. “They’ll blame you for everything.”
“No change there then,” scowled the butler. “So you were behind that Sivraj thing as well, Hood?”
The cowled crime-czar chuckled. “On the contrary, my enemy, I am the one currently suspending that plotline. If anything happens to me, you are back where you were with it – and worse. What a dilemma for a little hero.” The Hood turned away from the enraged butler and seemed to peer into the middle distance. “Ah, you must excuse me a moment. Lisa and Goldeneyed have just encountered a semi-familiar face. I want to hear this…”

It was over a century ago. Lisa had travelled back in time with Goldeneyed to interview the founding father of Paradopolis, Wilbur Parody, and learn how he had so accurately anticipated not only the coming of the Lair Legion but also how to screw them up so expertly with the sidekick legislation. The two heroes had discovered several things: (a) Wilbur Parody was the leader of the Cult of Lugosa, worshippers of Shab’adabba’Dhu, and wanted victims to feed to his tenebrous deity; (b) Wilbur Parody knew who Lisa and G-Eyed were and was expecting their coming to the extent of raising the demon Oddhorn to deal with them; and (c) Wilbur Parody had the power to somehow shut down the heroes’ powers. The first lady of the Lair Legion and her companion had dealt with this by (a) throwing Lisa’s indestructible ginger cat at the demon’s sensitive bits; (b) running like hell away through the tunnels beneath Parody Mansion (what would become the HQ of the Lair Legion); and (c) encountering a white-haired, staff-wielding rescuer who bore an uncanny resemblance to some-time legionnaire Hollywood V.
Now read on.
“You know this guy?” Goldeneyed whispered to Lisa as the two heroes followed their rescuer through long dark tunnels beneath the house that would one day be their home.
“Not exactly. But I will do,” the lawyer hissed back. “In my day he was called Hollywood V, and he was sort of a hero. We knew he was old, but who could have guessed he’d be around in 1890?”
“Sort of a hero?” G-eyed worried.
“Well, he did kill spiffy, for example, so he can’t be considered 100% good,” Lisa admitted. “On the other hand, according to the spiffster, it was HV that got him back again at the cost of his own existence. But this past version of HV won’t know anything about that, and we can’t change the future by telling him.”
“Yeah. Like the prime directive. We let him know, we go back and the future’s all different and Captain Picard goes berserk with us,” Goldeneyed reasoned.
The HV lookalike paused in an archway before the tunnel opened out into a large cavern. At first glance it appeared natural, but under the centuries of liming and decay there was evidence of machine shaping. “We must wait here a moment,” the old man warned the heroes.
“Why?” asked Lisa.
In answer their guide touched each of them on the forehead and concentrated. Lisa and Goldeneyed felt a wrench and when they looked they saw themselves wandering out across the cavern. “Simple parallel dimension metaphysics,” grumped the old man as G-eyed opened his mouth to ask how these apparitions had come about. “Watch.”
There was a flash of brilliant golden light and a majestic figure burned into view in the centre of the cave. Lisa swore as she recognised the interloper.
“Who is it?” Goldeneyed whispered, but before he got any answer the glowing newcomer turned upon the duplicate heroes who were crossing the cavern and annihilated them with a single gesture. All that remained were steaming skeletons.
“Eeeew!” shuddered Lisa. “That could have been us.”
“It was you,” the white-haired stranger warned them. “The Parody Master would not have been fooled by mere illusions. I had to split off a divergent time stream to fool him.”
“Who is this Parody Master?” Goldeneyed wanted to know. He was starting to feel very much out of his depth. He was missing Dr Enormoidstein.
“He’s the most powerful being in the Parodyverse,” Lisa explained. “He’s battled the Lair Legion many times and sometimes he seems like just another villain and other times he’s god.”
“The Parody Master is a vehicle,” the white haired man said dismissively. “He is only as effective as that which is driving him. Look, he has already lost interest in this place now he thinks his quarries destroyed. We can cross the cavern safely now.”
“But… but why would the Parody Master be here just to… to kill us?” Lisa worried as she stepped over her own steaming remains.
“Because you are trying to discover a secret which the higher powers of the Parodyverse do not wish revealed. Having begun your mission you must either find the truth or be destroyed. There is no other course.”
“And why are you helping us?” Goldeneyed asked him.
“Because I have made something of a career out of annoying higher powers,” the old man with the staff admitted with a small inner smile.
The white-haired man pushed a shifting stone in the wall and a secret door ground open to reveal a small but comfortably appointed cell. “Please come inside,” he invited the legionnaires. “We will be perfectly safe here. This chamber was old when Wilbur Parody first built his mansion and he knows nothing of it.”
“We’d love to stay,” Lisa smiled weakly, “but we’re on a mission, and we’ve got to get back to where we started from. People will worry, you know.”
“Lisa, I don’t, um, I don’t seem to have my powers back just yet,” G-Eyed whispered.
“Sit down,” their host commanded, and his words bypassed their ears and went right to their leg muscles. “Allow me to introduce myself. You may know me as Hastings Vernal. I am… a scholar of the unusual. I am here to set you on the correct path for your investigation.”
“Mr… Mr Vernal,” Lisa began, “I have only one question.”
“State it.”
“What is going on here, how did you come to be waiting for us under the mansion, why is Wilbur Parody’s mansion now the Legion’s HQ and always has been despite us once having it in a different location, how could he know we were coming, how did he turn off our powers, and why has there been a chamber here since before long the mansion above was built?
There was a scratching at the secret door. Vernal opened it to allow Lisa’s cat entry. The sinister ginger feline had pieces of demon-hide protruding from the side of its mouth. Continuity buffs may wish to speculate on this being the reason that the demon Oddhorn was without a body and had to possess Visionary many years later in a previous story.
“There is more going on here than you recognise,” HV advised the legionnaires. “There is only so much I can reveal. Let’s begin by restoring your powers. There. That should do it.”
As if a faucet had been turned Goldeneyed felt his energies flaring again. “How did you do that?”
“This chamber was built to monitor the great Secret beneath Parody Island, which amongst other things is the ultimate source of all super-powers in the Parodyverse. Parody built his mansion here to seek to harness that Secret, and what little he has mastered enabled him to block off your own access to the source. From this room it was a simple matter to undo his meddling.”
“But I’m not from the Parodyverse,” objected G-eyed. “How can my powers come from here?”
“Lisa was once… active … elsewhere too,” HV replied. “In one sense the Parodyverse was born whole from cosmic ructions in other planes, other realities such as the AMB. It was spawned from one point in time and space and unfolded past and future from there. And in another sense all of that happened merely to create a backdrop wherein the Secret could be placed.”
“Oh. That makes perfect sense, then,” Goldeneyed shrugged. Perhaps Lisa would explain it to him later.
“So who is Wilbur Parody?” Lisa wondered. “Why did he want to harness this secret? How did he learn of it in the first place? And what does he want with the Lair Legion?”
“Parody was a great man once,” Hastings Vernal considered. “Before he fell from grace he was… well, you must discover that for yourselves. Suffice to say that he now receives instructions from one who has every reason to want to manipulate the future, and the ability to change the past to do it.”
“I knew it!” Lisa exalted. “The Hooded Hood is back. Isn’t he?”
“As usual he chooses to play dangerous games with fundamental forces,” frowned HV, who believed that playing such games was his own job.
“The mansion was moved to its location on Parody Island – or rather made to have always been there – in a massive retcon done by the Yo people,” Lisa remembered.
“No, it happened at the same time as a massive retcon by the Yo-people,” corrected HV. “It was the Hood who needed the mansion to have always been above this place. He wants the secret that is buried here, and having the Lair Legion based here has protected it from discovery by other, more serious, hunters.” The old man shifted, as if listening to something. “But enough of this idle chatter. It is time that you were on your way. You have a number of visits to make before you will really understand the Secret History of the Parodyverse.”
“I just want to get back home,” admitted Goldeneyed.
“Your mortal desires are completely irrelevant, Bryan,” Hastings Vernal told him. As the old man gestured Goldeneyed felt the time-shifting power stirring within him unbidden and beyond his control.
“Hey, what…?” G-eyed objected.
“Farewell, Lisa. Give my regards to Jarvis and the others.”
“You know? But how…?”
Then the two legionnaires were gone.
HV allowed himself a small smile. Deep down he had a certain fondness for the fumbling, ignorant Lair Legion. At least enough to make it worth his time to come and tweak an already complicated situation.
Hastings Vernal stood up and straightened himself. Enough of this. It was time to get back to his own affairs. He had important work to do, and higher powers to annoy.

The Envoy could feel his lungs filling with blood as he dragged his broken carcass over the rocks down to the shore. Every movement was agony. His tormented muscles screamed for release, and some part of his mind was urging him to let go of the pain and die. But he wouldn’t.
The Envoy had a message to deliver, and the Envoy had never yet failed in his charge.
Down on the shore he could just see two strangers, a man and a woman. There seemed puzzled. The man was leaning over, hands on knees, as if he was badly winded. They had to be the two. The Envoy dragged himself to the edge of the steep bank and pulled himself over.
Lisa spotted the man tumbling down the rocky hillside like a broken puppet. “I summon that man to me!” she proclaimed quickly. Half way down the cliff the Envoy vanished, appearing as a bloody and broken heap at Lisa’s feet. But he was alive.
“He’s hurt bad,” Goldeneyed warned, amazed that anybody could have sustained such wounds and still live.
“Energy scoring, clawmarks, impact crushing,” Lisa noticed. She felt helpless because she knew that nothing she could do would save this man’s life.
The Envoy shuddered and forced his eyes open. “I have… a message,” he gasped.
For the first time Lisa noticed the satchel that the Envoy carried, and the Silver Greyhound pin which denoted a courier. Then she realised that the colours of this man’s uniform were remarkably similar to those of the former legionnaire Messenger. Hadn’t Messenger once intimated that he was the last in a long line of heralds, that an order of message-carriers had existed throughout history?
Goldeneyed carefully eased the satchel open. Apart from some razor-tipped metal rectangles it was empty.”
“The demon took… the letter,” the Envoy breathed. “But not the message… There has been a betrayal… the Shaper of Worlds has renounced his office… to be human once again… and he intends to harness the… the secret of this island…”
“We’re still on Parody island?” Lisa understood. “We’ve travelled in time but not in space.”
“The Shaper of Worlds? Wasn’t she that nice girl at Jarvis’ wedding? The one with the ravens?” Goldeneyed remembered. The ravens had been rude to him.
“That was the new shaper. Before that it was Carrington…” the first lady of the Lair Legion explained.
“He was far from… the first,” gasped the Envoy. “And this Shaper… the one from 1790… has renounced his office to seek personal power… taken up again his human name…”
A nasty link occurred to Lisa. “Not… Wilbur Parody?” she asked. That explained at least in part how the old man knew so much and how he was able to find ways of tapping the forces hidden beneath Paradopolis.
The Envoy gasped out the last of his message. “Yes.” Then he died, his mission accomplished.
Before Goldeneyed could even speculate on what it might all mean the two heroes were swept away again by G-eyed’s uncontrolled power, backwards even further into the history of the Parodyverse.

It was the same sea-shore on the same wooded island, but it was night, amidst torrential rain and a mighty thunderstorm. Lisa and Goldeneyed were drenched to the skin in just a few seconds, but were not so wet that they couldn’t spot the fires from the burning longboats.
“Longboats?” G-eyed puzzled. “When did the Vikings come to Parody Island?”
Lisa led the way down to the shoreline. Around them lightning repeatedly smashed into the tall timbers, creating a blazing line of trees along the shore.
“There was a theory that the Norsemen had sailed as far as America,” the lawyer remembered. “Some very serious people from a historical society came to interview Donar about it, but Donar couldn’t remember very much about anything that happened before his return to Ausgard in the last few years.”
“Return to Ausgard?” G-eyed asked. He was starting to feel like the companion on Dr Who.
Lisa sighed. “We have got to get Enty to update those archives. Donar has quite a complicated little origin. Suffice to say that he eventually worked out that he was the Ausgardian Thunder God, who for a long time had been wandering around in exile, not remembering who or what he was. And he still doesn’t talk about, and to be fair probably doesn’t remember, what he did to get that way. Whenever you talk to him about it he starts breaking things.”
“Before his exile, then,” Goldeneyed asked, “was he still as powerful?”
“As far as I know,” Lisa answered. “Why do you ask?”
“It’s just that a hairy Norse deity has just appeared from behind that longboat and is hurling his hammer at us.”
Lisa turned just in time to see Mjalcolm doing literally terminal velocity at her head. “I summon Donar,” she garbled quickly. “To just here,” she added, pointing.
The hemi-god’s head was perfectly positioned to deflect Mjalcolm as he appeared before the first lady of the Lair Legion. There was a sound effect. It was something like SKRAKKKA-TOOOM-ouch.
Donar shook his head and tried to swat the ravens fling in little circles around it. “By my father’s breath…” he oathed.
“We’re not here to fight,” Goldeneyed told him quickly before he could get up. “We’re not really sure why we’re here at all.”
Donar rose. “Then thou art not part of this foul deed? You are not minions of the fiend Oddhorn? T’was not thee who didst massacre mine people here?” he asked. For the first time Lisa and G-eyed realised there were settlers in the blazing boats.
“We just got here,” Lisa assured him. “We haven’t massacred anybody. What happened?”
“These brave travellers journeyed far over sea seeking a place they could’st call home. On this fair isle they sought to settle, knowing not that this place is reserved by the greater powers for some purpose of their own.”
“Is it just me,” G-eyed whispered to Lisa, “or does Donar’s speech make more grammatical sense in this era?”
“The guardian of this place, a fell demon, therefore came upon them unawares and slaughtered every man, woman and child of their company,” growled the hemi-god. “And when I answer their pleas for succour, I am told that I mayst not attend them. Well here I am anyway, and danmed be he who tries to come twixt Donar and his duties. I vow upon sacred Mjalcolm that there shall come a reckoning between me and the demon Oddhorn.”
“You’re going to fight him, then,” Lisa understood. “Even though the greater powers might punish you terribly for it. Maybe even… exile you?”
Donar looked at the time-travellers with perfect simplicity. “Of course. Is’t not the right thing to do?”
Lisa and Goldeneyed were swept into the timestream even as Donar started calling for Oddhorn to come and have a hammer placed in his skull…

This was a longer and more jerky ride. Goldeneyed arrived so weak he hardly had the strength to puke. He managed it somehow.
“Hello,” a young child’s voice greeted them. “Did you bring me presenths?”
Lisa looked up to see a girl of perhaps nine looking down at them. She was dressed in a two piece green outfit from the Kirby casuals collection. “I’m afraid we didn’t have time to shop,” she told the child.
The girl blew a raspberry. “This suckths so bad it blowths!” she lisped. “I come all this way to warn you about not going near the thecret chamber, and I don’t even get presenths.”
Lisa picked herself up and helpfully nudged Goldeneyed with her toe. “I’m so sorry… er, what was your name, little girl?”
“I’m not a little girl,” the little girl argued. “I am almost nine. My name is Therthi.”
“Therthi?” Lisa asked
“NO!” the child shouted. “Not Therthi. Therthi!”
This was going to get more and more confusing, so G-Eyed came to the rescue. “Your name is… Sersi?”
Sersi nodded. “That’s right. Therthi.”
“Who sent you here to meet us, Sersi?” asked Lisa kindly.
“The Austernals,” the nearly nine year old answered. “They thaid, I am tho annoying that if I get thquished by the Parody Master then nobody would mind, so I thaid I was going to thcream if they didn’t take that back, and they thaid…”
“Why did they send you?” Lisa hurriedly interrupted.
“Oh, to tell you that you have to go back where you came from. Here,” (the child touched G-eyed and the hero felt a little twist inside as the changes made by Hastings Vernal were undone and his time-shifting powers came back under his own control), “that thould do it.”
“Why shouldn’t we go back further?” Lisa asked.
“I don’t knowth,” Sersi shrugged. “But the Austernals were all very thcared about it. They had a visit from the Chronicler of Thories about it and everything.”
Lisa and Goldeneyed exchanged glances. “Which way do I go, then?” G-eyed asked lawyer.
“Back,” Lisa decided. “We’re going to find out.”
“Oucth!” Sersi complained. “You cat scratcthed me!”

The Ab-Men finally managed to breach the wooden palisade at its weakest point and swarmed over the warriors, chittering with delight as their claws rended human flesh. The whole of the encampment would have fallen then had it not been for the intervention of the tribe’s leader, the massive-thewed warrior with the smiley-face painted across his own grim countenance in orange and green. With a terrible war cry he leapt into the fray, smiting Ab-Men with his great war axe to the left and to the right. He didn’t think it too many.
HairyHoneyBerserkerBarbarian! had arrived.
“It is pleasing to me to see the blood of my enemies,” he told his enemies as the battle-tide changed. “I am reminded of the bard’s tale wherein the hero seeks out the haunted glade only to discover the princess is lost in a mystic trance and can only be rescued by the recovery of certain arcane tools whereupon he ventures forth to discover which, if any, of these tools can be won by might of thews or dint of courage, and…”
“If I didn’t know better,” Lisa told Goldeneyed, “I’d say that was a Robert E. Howard version of CrazySugarFreakBoy!”
“He did once explain that there were variant version of himself scattered through history,” Goldeneyed reminded her. He had not yet learned the art of tuning out CSFB!’s stream of consciousness chatter and therefore occasionally listened to Dreamchaser Foxglove.
HairyHoneyBerserkerBarbarian! looked around and found that he had run out of enemies. The people of the encampment cheered. He looked over to where Lisa and Goldeneyed were approaching over the crow-strewn battlefield. “Are you the evil enchantress, come to seduce me to dark ways and ancient rituals of erotic pleasure?” he asked the first lady of the Lair Legion hopefully.
“Later,” Lisa promised, mindful of the rather mighty thews of this version of CSFB! She was willing to do a swap between the two models any day. “For now we’re trying to find a few things out.”
“What sort of things?” HHBB! asked, just before the skies went dark.
“Never mind,” Goldeneyed told him. “I think we’ve found what we’re looking for.”
The Space Giants were huge. Each a mile high they floated high above the barbarian encampment, coruscating cosmic energies. Everyone who saw them knew that they were the most powerful things they had ever beheld.
“What are those?” G-eyed panicked. “What do they want?”
“Perhaps they are here about that elder temple below this island that we desecrated?” HairyHoneyBerserkerBarbarian! wondered. “If so I shall fight them to the last. Come and have a go, giants. I can take you all with one arm behind my back!”
“Listen,” Lisa urged them. “You can hear their thoughts. They’re thinking such large thoughts you can actually pick them up!”
The first lady of the Lair Legion was right. The Celestian Space Giants were pondering the situation, and transmitting their mighty thoughts to each other loud enough even for mortals to hear.
The images were the most potent: the Giants coming to this island, the spot at which the Parodyverse was created by the actions of Jarvis and others, selecting it to bury the Secret for which the Parodyverse had been designed in the first place… the placing of a watchman of power, the terrible elder creature Shab’adabba’Dhu, to ensure that none could ever gain the secret without the universe being destroyed… the creation of powers to regulate this Parodyverse, the appointment of Chroniclers and Shapers, the forming of Ausgardians, and Austernals, and Abhumans each to play their part… the rise of the cult of Lugosa here on the isle, and its temporary overthrow by the hordes of the HairyHoneyBerserkerBarbarian!…
“What the hell is down there beneath where our mansion will be that requires all these precautions?” Goldeneyed wondered as the cosmic energies of the Space Giants linked between the massive mile-high titans to form a complicated lattice.
“I don’t know,” Lisa worried, “but it’s time for us to get out of here. I don’t like that energy build-up.”
“I’m almost completely drained,” G-eyed admitted. “I think it was only HV’s interference that let us get this far.”
Now the Celestians were looking to the future: the setting of other, more active guardians such as the demon Oddhorn… the punishment of the Ausgardian Donar for daring to battle the appointed watchdog… the deal that the Shaper Wilbur Parody had cut, his own cosmic office in exchange for access to the barest shreds of the Secret… the building of Paradopolis as a means of controlling that power… the age of the heroes… the age when all the heroes vanished… the invasion of Earth by the Gree and the Skunks, seeking the Secret… the destruction of the Parodyverse, and the ripple effect moving through all other realities until nothing was left…”
One overwhelming thought was clear in everybody’s mind. Goldeneyed said it out loud. “It’s all spiffy’s fault!”
Then the energy matrix was complete and thundered down to eradicate the humans who had interfered with the Celestian plan. Energies powerful enough to destroy a pantheon sizzled across what would one day be known as Parody Island, wiping out all it came into contact with, setting down a curse so powerful that it would be triggered off millennia hence when the Lair Legion started asking questions they shouldn’t have about Wilbur Parody.
Then all that was left was a smooth, barren island in a boiling sea, and a Secret so potent that it could crack the multiverse.

“Now that is what I call a visual effect,” the Hooded Hood commented. Somehow he had enable Jarvis and Melissa to see what he had seen, following the epic journey of Lisa and Goldeneyed through time.
“What became of them?” Jarvis demanded. “What happened to Goldeneyed and Lisa?”
“And what is the Secret that is hidden beneath the mansion?” Melissa asked.
“I could explain it all to you now,” the Hooded Hood conceded, “I could tell you how the Sidekicks intend to make the world a better place. I could outline the nature of the curse which the Celestians left on the island, and which has been repackaged now to destroy the Lair Legion. I could even tell you the nature of Wilbur Parody’s greatest work which he left hidden under the spot which is now Visionary’s house. But to do so would be to spoil the cliffhanger ending, wouldn’t it?”
And the Hooded Hood ended the chapter.

In our sister chapter coming very soon: The other half of the story, in which we discover the fate of the Legionnaires in the possessed mansion, we see the return of Oddhorn with specific intentions about doing a modicum of rending and tearing, we learn what is happening in Visionary’s basement, we see how stupid Foomy can be about a woman, we see DarkHwk swallowed and Hatman waist-high in sewage, and Con Johnstantine raises up the guardian spirit of the Lair Legion. That should be enough for one episode.

The Hooded Hood, with the HTML corrected. Kindly read this version.