Posted by The Hooded Hood offers up this Magical Mystery Tour, with a little help from his friends on July 01, 2001 at 06:12:12:
#81: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Laurie Leyton’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, or All You Need Is Love
Once upon a time, there was a girl called Laurie Leyton, who fell in with bad
company and found herself living a strange life as the superheroine Lisette.
Almost by accident she found herself on a date with a young man who worked at
the same law firm she did, and almost by accident she found that although he was
possibly the least cool person she had ever dated he was also the kindest,
noblest, and most decent. And also by accident, she found she was in love with
him. “I said, how can I help you?” Bethany Shellett smiled and the world became a
sunnier, happier place. “You’re… you’re hurting me!” Teresa Kendal squealed. “What happened?” spiffy groaned as the medics splinted his fern. “Why… why are we here?” Dynamite Boy asked De Brown Streak. “I thought you
were taking us back to Herringcarp Asylum to report back to the Hooded
Hood.” “Goldeneyed? Goldeneyed, wake up!” “Mine head hurteth,” Donar complained. “What wast in that potion thou didst
maketh me drink before I opened yon latest dimensional portal?” It was the battle of the century, dull thud versus Chronic, the one
trying to bring to justice the t-shirt thieves that had just apparently murdered
Goldeneyed and Beth Shellett, the other trying to escape and get back as ordered
to the Purveyors of Peril. “I am not a witch!” screamed Amy Racecar as she was hurled into a dank dark
cell by the Spanish Inquisition. “The not being burned by pokers thing is just a
natural power!” “Quite touching, isn’t it?” the Hooded Hood asked Goldeneyed as they watched
Laurie and Amy through the Portal of Pretentiousness. “Me? Join the Lair Legion?” Dancer clasped her hands together and beamed. “I
don’t know what to say.” “Dirth Vortex,” breathed Visionary. “He’s one of those cosmic archbaddie
types, right?” “So let me get this straight,” dull thud checked as he crept through
the ornamental shrubbery outside New Tomorrow Enterprises. “You got drafted into
joining this supervillain bunch called the Purveyors of Peril because they’re
threatening to wipe out your whole family, your friends, and anyone who ever
knew you or met you, and they told you to blow up G-Eyed.” “Al? Al are you OK?” Amy asked with concern as the inquisitors dropped the
theoretical physicist back into the dungeon cell. Many times I’ve been alone, and many times I’ve cried Coming up soon: DBS, Chronic, DB, and thuddy vs the entire
Purveyors of Peril – place your bets, since you can get really long odds on the
good guys. The Lair Legion visit the Savage Park and fight even more giant-sized
monsters while getting a nice suntan. Revelations and romance in the Dreary
Dimension as Exile and Dirth Vortex plot the downfall of all that is good.
Goldeneyed, Al B., Lisette, Amy, and Beth meet the Keeper of the Chronometer of
Infinity in the dungeons of the Inquisition – and it’s not (a) Mumphrey or even
(b) a nice person. The Hooded Hood pays visits to the JBH and the Abandoned
Legion. But mostly we join Donar, Sorcy, Ziles, and DK as they find out where
gods go when they’re no longer required and spend some time with the new
Chairman of the Board and supreme conceptual deity of Combined Pantheons Inc.
This was going to be such a simple little six-part series originally, it
really was.
Additional reading material includes:
Back issues at The
Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom
CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s Tie-in Stories: Amazing Guy’s World Tour Crossover Stories: Character descriptions at Who's Who in
the Parodyverse
All about a girl who came to stay?
She’s the
kind of girl you want do much it makes you sorry,
But still you don’t regret
a single day…
There was one more accident, which happened when Lisette and this young
man, one Bryan Katz, fell under the influence of the sinister Dr Loveray’s
passion machines and the natural eventual consequence of boy meets girl stories
happened several times in rapid succession.
There were a few things these two
young people didn’t know about each other. Lisette didn’t know that this rather
square young man was actually the teleporting superhero Goldeneyed, for example,
and that caused much confusion until she discovered the truth in an unfortunate
way. Bry didn’t know that Lisette had been feeling sick in the mornings recently
and has missed her last period. Neither knew that they were being dragged once
again into the byzantine machinations of the archvillain known as the Hooded
Hood.
There were also some things that they did know. Lisette knew that her
relationship with Bryan would probably be ruined if she told him she thought she
was pregnant with his child. After the Hooded Hood showed her some possible
futures in which Bryan seemed deliriously happy with a pretty and sweet
schoolteacher named Bethany Shellett and where Laurie died young as a
heroine-addicted prostitute she had to decide whether to have the Hood alter the
future for her or not. There was, of course, a cost to the Hood’s help. Bry knew
that he loved Lisette, and it was only after she had left him and run away that
he learned she might be pregnant. He also knew he was going to find her, and so
he journeyed back to Paradopolis and recruited some help in tracking down Laurie
Leyton’s movements.
Finally, there were some things that only the Hooded Hood
knew. The Hood knew, for example, that the Lisette who had recently been
involved with the arrangements for the Save the Paradopolis Variety Theatre
benefit concert in the park wasn’t actually Laurie Leyton at all, but his
shape-shifting minion the Indigo Impostor. He knew that this would draw
Goldeneyed into investigating the theft of half a million concert t-shirts,
since Lisette had apparently betrayed information to the thieves about how to
gain access to the merchandise. He knew that this quest would lead Bryan to meet
and team up with Bethany Shellett, the great love of one of his futures. He knew
that Dynamite Boy, a young hero whose family was being threatened with
destruction by the Purveyors of Peril, had orders from the Hood himself to
assassinate G-Eyed at the appropriate moment. And he alone knew where the real
Laurie Leyton actually was, and what kind of trouble she was in.
This is the
story of how boy loses girl, boy meets other girl, boy looks for first girl,
girl loses boy, and all sorts of other variations. Now read on.
But when I get home to you I find the things that you do make me feel
alright.
“I’m looking for a woman,” Goldenyed
stammered.
“Really.”
“Er, I mean…”
“He means,” dull thud
interrupted with a glower, “that Mr Big-Name Superhero here is helpin’ me to
track down those stolen concert shirts, Beth, and we’re trying to find out more
about the part one of your committee might have played in the thieves knowing
where the goods were stored. We’re trying to get hold of Laurie
Leyton.”
“Ah.” Ms Shellett smiled again. “That explains why Commissioner
Graham and his men were asking about her as well. She came in to the campaign
office here in the old Paradopolis Variety Theatre late on the night when the
theft took place, you see, and she was hanging around the keybox to the
warehouse. Nobody has seen her since.”
“She wouldn’t do it!” blurted Bry
Katz. “Laurie’s not like that.”
“I didn’t think so either,” Beth admitted. “I
didn’t think she would do it unless she was in some kind of trouble…”
G-Eyed
winced as he remembered the kind of trouble he might have got Laurie into. “We
have to find her,” he urged. “Is there anywhere you can think of that we might
try, Ms Shellett? Anywhere at all?”
“You seem very passionate about your
crimefighting,” Beth noted.
“He’s really committed,” dull thud
answered. “Or he should be.
It’s the dirty story of a dirty man…
“Relax, honey”
E-Male, electricity-controlling leader of the radical heroes known as the New
Battlers told her. “You wanna have fun with the superhero crowd you’ve gotta
expect a few bruises.”
“I’m not sure…”
“That’s okay. I’m sure. Hey, I
rescued you from those goons, right? So you owe me.”
Then the trailer front
exploded around E-Male and a black-costumed blur with glowing golden eyes
grabbed him by the throat and threw him through the nearest wall.
“That had
to hurt,” flinched dull thud as he watched G-Eyed break a few rules in
the superhero do-gooding manual.
“It seems that this E-Mail was Lisette’s
former boyfriend,” Cressida, the telepathic giant tapeworm in thud’s
intestine sensed. “He wasn’t kind to her, and G-Eyed’s just been looking for an
excuse. There’s only one problem…”
E-Mail pumped a hundred thousand volts of
charge through Goldeneyed, sending him twitching backwards, his skin blackened
as his costume.
“E-Mail is probably the more powerful of the two,” Cressida
concluded.
Goldeneyed teleported in so that his fist was already moving
before he appeared and slammed it into the sleazy superteen. E-Mail fell down
then rose in a smooth roll to hurl a series of charged plasmoids at his enemy.
Goldeneyed teleported them to Neptune and hit at E-Mail again. But E-Mail wasn’t
there. Instead he had touched the metal siding of the wrecked trailer,
translated himself into energy, and reappeared behind G-Eyed to grab G-Eyed in a
neck-lock.
“Shame you don’t have unbreakable bones,” he sneered as he
twisted Bry’s head.
G-Eyed teleported with the attacker who held him. “Shame
you can’t fly,” he answered as the two of them appeared at 40,000 feet over
Paradopolis. “You have five seconds to tell me where Laurie is. Four. Three.
Two...”
“Lisette? I don’t know! I DON’T KNOW!”
G-Eyed grabbed the
terrified New Battler and teleported again, appearing just a few feet above
Paradopolis Sound. They both hit the water at near terminal velocity, but
Goldeneyed had made sure he was on top.
He left E-Mail gasping on the oily
shore. “If I find you’re lying, or in fact ever see you again, next time I’ll be
teleporting you to outer space,” Goldeneyed warned his enemy.
“I think it
would be best if you went home now, miss,” Bethany Shellett advised Teresa
Kendal. “I think your date is feeling a little sick.”
“Hey, are you okay?”
dull thud asked the charred and exhausted D-Eyed.
“Let’s keep
looking,” Bry Katz answered, wiping the blood from his face. “Wasn’t there a
lead from Cressida about the people who manufactured the shirts?”
Help me if you can I’m feeling down
“Ah,” the
current Gothametropolis PR officer answered carefully. “On or about Tuesday
last, individuals operating under the codenames of Goldeneyed, dull thud,
and Dynamite Boy approached organisers of the Save the Paradopolis Variety
Theatre campaign with enquiries about a consignment of promotional…”
“Save
the press release for the rubes,” the fern-wielding Mayor growled. The PR boys
interpreted this as official permission to distribute their sanitised version of
incidents to the public [as seen last issue]. “Last I remember there was a
three-way battle going in the warehouse where the stolen t-shirts was. There was
G-Eyed and Dynamite Boy with some girl and a grubby guy who kept teleporting
into the air and landing on people’s heads, and there was the League of Losers,
and there was that Brown Streak creep and some bozo with a sonic guitar weapon
all fighting. And then there was an explosion…”
“I’ll handle the briefing
from here,” Cap of the Abandoned Legion promised the Mayoral staff. “It’s
superhero stuff.”
The assembled police and city hall officials weren’t too
sure about this. “Isn’t there a warrant out for you guys?” one of them asked
uncertainly.
“It would be more healthy if there wasn’t,” snarled Cobra at the
trembling officer as she played with her banana gun.
“Don’t worry,” Banjooooo
told the forces of the law. “I happen to be King of the Sea Monkeys. We all have
diplomatic immunity. Really.”
“Let’s move out before somebody works out that
there isn’t actually any valid diplomatic treaty between humans and brine
shrimp, shall we?” HV suggested. “Brief spiffy and let’s go.”
“Well it’s a
little early to say without recruiting NTU-150 for some analysis work,” Cap
summarised, “but it seems Dynamite Boy may have lost control of his power and
destroyed the warehouse, and perhaps Goldeneyed and a woman called Bethany
Shellett with it DB seems to have gone into hiding, although we caught the
League of Losers.”
“We are the Fearsome Four!” came a muffled shout from one
of the police vans. “Not the League of Losers. The Fearsome Four!!”
Cap
continued. “A quick examination of these detonated t-shirt fragments reveals the
vestiges of a sophisticated bio-organic control mechanism.”
spiffy struggled
with the concept. “So G-Eyed is dead and these concert t-shirts were… rigged?”
“People would have gone home wearing their very own DNA-rewriters,” HV
suggested. “Whoever stole those shirts may have saved Paradopolis from a
dreadful fate.”
“And murdered a hero and an innocent,” spiffy added.
You say you want a revolution? Well, you know… we all want to change
the world.
“When you’re as fast as I am, you don’t need to hurry, kid,” the sepia
speedster answered. “I just wanted to have a quiet chat with you, okay?” He
vibrated himself through the door of the Zero Street Mission, unbolted it from
the inside, and let DB in. “I know the minister here okay? It’s cool.”
“What
do you want to chat about?” asked Jeremy Wick, the shaken young man with the
explosive powers.
“I need to get a few things clear in my head about what
went down tonight,” DBS told him. “First let me tell you why I did what I
did.”
Dynamite Boy perched on a pew.
“I’m a mutate, right?” Josh Clement
started. “Ability manifested a puberty to move at incredible speed, with some
nifty secondary adaptations so the main power makes sense. But because the world
is a pretty crappy place mutates are about as welcome as yeast infection, and
recently some bad guy has manipulated things so a law got passed outlawing the
possession and use of unregistered mutant powers, and making it compulsory to
have genetic modification to ‘cure’ us if those powers are deemed
dangerous.”
“With a sixty percent success chance and a high casualty failure
rate,” Dynamite Boy remembered. “Yeah, I saw Ninety Minutes.”
“And those who
complain or resist are outlaws,” DBS scowled. “Like me. Anyway, there’s a lot of
people getting real rich on mutant hysteria, and first in line are the tech
companies that manufacture the genetic modification stuff. Like New Tomorrow
Industries.”
“That’s the firm who made the t-shirts that Chronic ripped off,”
recognised DB. “Was that really the best way to get back at them?”
“You’re
missing the big picture here, kid,” De Brown Streak warned. “The Lair Legion
disrupted some scam in France to get cheap souvenirs into every home on the
planet. That system had to be replaced with some others that could get people to
bring something into their houses. Concert t-shirts are just one of the
replacement methods.”
“Why go to all the trouble just to clutter up folks’
homes?” Jeremy objected. “That makes no sense.”
“The clutter is the delivery
system,” DBS explained. “Imprinted in all that crud is a tiny broadcasting
microcircuit which can be linked to the genetic modification machines which are
suddenly so popular all over the globe. And then if those modification devices
are linked to something even bigger, say an abandoned Celestian genetic unit
powered by radium and vibratium and controlled by a massive psionic charge, then
you can mutate the whole world in one sudden pulse, and create a super-powered
slave race obedient to the puppeteer who set it all up.”
“So those t-shirts
were part of a plot for the Hooded Hood to rule the world!” gasped Dynamite
Boy.
DBS rapped his knuckles on Jimmy Wick’s forehead. “Hello? The Hood had
us steal the t-shirts, and he set up Goldeneyed to investigate. Then
G-Eyed dies to get the other heroes’ attention. That way the heroes work out
what the scam is and put a stop to Peter von Doom’s little game. And that keeps
everybody busy while the Hood makes his own move, naturally.”
“But
Goldeneyed… I had to…”
“That’s why we need to talk, kid, cause I need to know
whether you really offed Goldeneyed when he and that thud guy tracked
down the stolen t-shirts. I know you made a pretty big boom. What I don’t know
is whether you tipped off G-Eyed to teleport out of there with the girl first or
if you really have become a cold-blooded murderer to save your family.”
“Of
course I killed him,” DB answered sharply. “What choice did I have?”
“Wrong
answer,” De Brown Streak told him. “You had to make a choice then, and you have
to make a choice now. Choice then was whether to become a killer. Choice now is
whether to trust me by telling me truthfully what choice you made then. And
believe me, this is a life decision.”
Who knows how long I’ve loved you?
Who knows how long I
will?
Must I wait a lonely lifetime?
If you want me to I will.
“Ouch.”
“Well it’s a start. Now if
you could just progress from ‘ouch’ through ‘where are we’, then on to, ‘ah, I
recognise this misty place with the deeply nasty silhouettes lurking in the fog
and getting bolder by the minute’, and so to ‘now to get you home, Ms Shellett,’
then I’d be a happy girl.”
G-Eyed opened his eyes, sat up, and wished he
hadn’t as pain lanced through his body. “Ouch,” he said again.
“And the next
bit?” Beth Shellett asked hopefully.
“I think I know where we are,”
Goldeneyed worried. “This looks like a manifestation of the interdimensional
vortex - the sort of, well, scaffolding on which the Parodyverse is built.
Backstage. Which would make those shadowy things circling us in the fog Hero
Feeders.”
And I take it they don’t feed us in the sense of providing a three
course breakfast with fresh juice?”
“Not in my experience, no,” G-Eyed
admitted. “I’ll need to concentrate so I can find a safe way to teleport us out
of here.”
“I thought you could just zap yourself?”
“I have to know where I
am and where I want to be,” the hero admitted. “If I shift blind then I could
end up anywhere, and given the ratio of habitable places in the universe to cold
deep airless space the odds aren’t that good. “
“I see. Only you’ve been
unconscious for about half a day and my scream-loudly-at-anything-that-moves
technique is getting less effective.” Even in adversity she had a mischievous
dimple in her cheeks as she covered her terror with humour, Bry noticed. He
liked that about her.
“Half a day?” he worried. “Last thing I remember was
Dynamite Boy warning me to ‘port out of the warehouse with you before he
exploded. But it happened so fast that I didn’t have time to focus properly, and
there was some other force present interfering with my time/space
perception…”
“That would be Spacewarped,” suggested the Hooded
Hood.
“Ouch,” G-Eyed winced again. Up to now he had just been trapped in an
area where his powers were limited, fighting for his very existence against the
parasitic Hero Feeders while protecting the life of the innocent student teacher
he had dragged with him in search of his missing girlfriend; now things were
serious. “What do you want, cowled crime czar?”
The Hood considered this.
“Universal domination, answers to cosmic mysteries, revenge over my enemies, and
a nice glass of Chablis,” he answered. “Oh, and to strike a bargain with you to
save your life, that of Miss Shellett, and of course that of Miss Leyton.”
Roll up, roll up for the mystery tour.
The magical mystery tour is
waiting to take you away
Dying to take you away, take you today.
“Poison,”
Xander told the hemigod of thunder.
“What?” gasped Sorceress.
“How else do
you expect us to get to the realm where gods go when they die if we don’t have a
dead god to follow?” the master of the mystic crafts asked reasonably.
“When
Ausgardians die they go to VanHalen,” Donar answered woozily. “or
Miserablegitheim, of course.”
“Where they wait for the great battle at the
world’s end,” the Dark Knight noted.
“Aye,” the hemigod agreed.
“And once
Ausgard and the nine worlds have all been destroyed…?”
“Erm…” Donar was never
very good at theology. Most gods weren’t.
“Where is this place?” Ziles
worried. “I’m not getting any reading from this place at all. It’s as if my
sensor power batteries were…”
“Dead,” Sorceress noted. “This is a place of
death.”
“More than death,” Xander told them. “This is a place of oblivion.
Come on, we’ve not got much time before our souls discorporate. Let’s get to the
bottom of all this disappearing god business once and for all. This way.”
“I
art dead?” Donar worried.
“After a while you get used to it,” the Dark Knight
assured him.
The heroes followed the sorcerer supreme into the silent
darkness.
It’s got a backbeat, you can’t lose it
Any old time you choose
it
S’gotta be rock and roll music
If you wanna dance with me
“Alright,” dull thud warned. “you asked for
it. ‘She is like a cat in the dark/ and then she is the darkness/ she rules her
life like a fine skylark/ and when the sky is starless’.”
Chronic considered
for only a moment. “Fleetwood Mac. Rhiannon. Easy. ‘One light/one mind, flashin
in the dark/ lighted by the silence of a thousand broken hearts’.”
“Minority
by Green Day,” shot back the roadie. “‘I may appear to be free/ but I'm just a
prisoner of your love/ And I may seem alright and smile when you
leave’.”
“Macy Grey. I try,” Chronic replied. “‘My anaconda don't want none/
unless you got buns, hun’”
“Fash!” snarled thud. “Resorting to Sir Mix
A Lot, Baby Got Back.”
“It’s a legitimate rock quote,” protested Chronic,
“and it was you that said this was a better way of battling than blowing up more
of Gothametropolis.”
“Alright, so it is. Try this then: ‘So I confess my sins
to the preacher/ about the love I've been prayin to find/ Is there a brown-eyed
boy in my future?’”
“It’s… it’s…”
“Come on.”
“It’s…”
“Born to Fly,
Sara Evans. You’re under arrest, Chronic.”
“No he isn’t,” De Brown Streak
warned dull thud, blurring into the abandoned studio where the two had
been locked in such mighty combat.
“Aw crap. I’m much less good at sports
trivia,” the roadie complained.
“It’s not like that at all,” Dynamite Boy
answered, running in behind the sepia speedster. “You know those stories where
the heroes and the baddies team up against a greater threat…?”
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these lonely wings and
learn to fly
All your life.
You were only waiting for this moment to
arise
The guards didn’t seem impressed, and slammed the door shut.
“Let’s see if she’s immune to the rack, the pincers, and the lash tomorrow,” one
of them suggested.
“And where is Al B. Harper?” she shouted after them.
“You’ll never get him to recant about the world being round, you know!”
“They
won’t listen to you, Amy,” the quiet voice in the shadows of the cell told her.
“They’re trained not to listen.”
Amy recognised the voice at once. “Lisette?
Laurie? What are you doing in the fifteen century?”
Laurie Leyton swallowed
hard and indicated her shackles. “Oh, you know, just being slowly tortured to
death by these religious fanatics. They think I’m a demoness.”
“That’s
ridiculous!”
“Well, I did emerge from the Portal of Pretentiousness in front
of them all, appearing out of nowhere so to speak, while they were all taking
mass in the high cathedral. The Hooded Hood fixed it for me to speak the local
lingo so I could confess and be burned, but so far they haven’t hurt me so bad
that I’ve signed their statements.”
Amy heard the waver in Lisette’s voice.
“How… how badly have they hurt you?” she asked.
“I’m used to being hurt,”
Laurie Leyton answered. “I… I suppose I chose it, really.”
“How? By not
confessing to things you didn’t do?”
“By refusing the Hooded Hood’s deal,”
Lisette answered. “I guess you didn’t know, but I might be pregnant – by Bry.
And I knew that would ruin everything. I… I don’t deserve him anyway, and the
Hood showed me this future where he was so… so happy with this teacher he’d met,
but I was this dying junkie whore. And then the Hood offered to fix things so
that future never happened. I’d be with Bry for the rest of our lives, and… and
all it would cost was a little favour… and Bry’s future happiness with that girl
who is right for him!”
“So you turned the Hood down?” Amy gasped. “Knowing
that you would be destroyed but that Bry would be happy?”
“How could I do
anything else?” Laurie sobbed. “I deserve all of this. I deserve to be tortured
to death. I’m cheap and slutty and not worth anything, but he’s… he’s a
hero!”
“Laurie…!”
“And…” confessed Lisette with a truthfulness that all
the inquisition hadn’t been able to wring for her, “and more than anything I
want him to rescue me.”
Let me tell you how it will be…
There’s one for you, nineteen for
me
“You bastard!” G-Eyed
flared. “If you don’t…!”
“Oh please, Mr Katz,” the Hood interrupted, with a
complete disdain for Bry Katz’s secret identity, “Since I understand that your
mentors have inhibited your own time-travelling powers for the nonce after a
little gambit I devised regarding Woodstock you can hardly afford to attack the
only person who can send you to save poor, forlorn, desperate Lisette, can
you?”
“Laurie Leyton is… Lisette?” Bethany Shellett pieced together, “And she
loves someone called Bry… but this Bry is going to meet a teacher… like
me…”
“I’m Bry, Beth” G-Eyed confessed. “I don’t know about any teacher.
You’re the only teacher I… I’ve met… recently…”
“I do so love self-fulfilling
prophesies,” mused the Hooded Hood.
The curious Hero Feeders, sensing
important narrative developments, snuffled hungrily closer.
“Laurie had her
chance to make a deal, and she turned me down,” the cowled crime czar warned.
“Now Bry has met Beth, and I’m afraid you will find yourselves perfectly suited
for each other.”
“I love Laurie!” snapped G-Eyed.
“And I’m not coming
between them!” answered Bethany in perfect accord.
The Hood chuckled. “Now it
is time for you to decide whether to make a deal with me, Mr Katz. Knowing a
little about time-travel, you will understand that now I have shown you this
segment of the past, every minute you spend here limits you to arriving a minute
later there. The two times are now relatively fixed for you. So any hesitation
on your part not only endangers yourself and Miss Shellett here in the vortex
with the Hero Feeders but leaves Lisette – and Miss Racecar - in the hands of
torturers who will soon start getting creative.”
“What do you want Hood?
What’s your angle?”
“Acute, of course,” the cowled crime czar quipped. “I can
send you and Miss Shellett to join poor Laurie if you give me what I want. I’ll
have to leave it to your own ingenuity to make your way back to the twenty-first
century, of course, but I have been so kind as to exile Miss Racecar and an
irritatingly perceptive scientist named Harper in the same time and place, so
you can at least all address your difficulties together.”
“And if he doesn’t
deal?” Beth challenged.
“Why then you might be very happy with him if the two
of you can work out an escape from this dimensional nexus you seem to have been
stranded in,” the Hood replied, “and Lisette dies slowly and painfully with the
satisfaction that her beloved Goldeneyed has the right women at his
side.”
“And what do I have to give you, Hood?” demanded G-Eyed.
“I require
the use of your powers for a period of twenty-four hours at a time of my
choosing,” the archvillain promptly replied.
“I can’t do that,” Bry answered.
“I don’t trust you, and you’ll do evil with them.”
“Ah. Then we have nothing
further to discuss. Farewell, Goldeneyed. I trust you and Ms Shellett will find
comfort in each others presence as the Hero Feeders close in.”
“Goldeneyed –
Bry!” Beth urged him. “He’s going to win either way. You can’t abandon that poor
girl, and maybe your own unborn baby. He’s set all this up, but you know you
can’t leave Laurie to die.”
“I can’t drag you back to inquisition Spain with
no way of returning, Beth!”
“You can’t leave Laurie and those others to die
there without trying to help, Bry. We have to go.”
“I won’t forget this,
Hood,” vowed Goldeneyed. “Never.”
“Then we have a bargain, Mr Katz,” the Hood
suggested.
“Yes,” winced G-Eyed as he shook hands with the cowled crime-czar.
“We have a deal.”
…And the way she looked was way beyond compare
I’ll never dance
with another
Since I saw her standing there.
“Say yes,” advised CrazySugarFreakBoy!, newly back
from his mission to Seattle. “You’re a natural, probably the most popular choice
for the team ever.”
“I don’t know though,” Sarah Shepherdson, the Probability
Dancer worried. “I have a secret identity and a day job…”
“We respect the
right of our members to privacy and personal lives,” Fin Fang Foom assured her,
“if they choose to have personal lives,” he added disapprovingly.
“Besides,”
added Hatman, “with Goldeneyed missing in action and Exile off goodness knows
where with Nats we’re pretty shorthanded. And ManMan has already turned us
down.”
“Hey, I enjoy being a solo operator,” Joe Pepper objected. “So sue
me!”
“C’mon Dancer, join,” urged Trickshot. “You can have Nats’ slot.”
And
we need more girls on the team,” added Troia, glaring at the irritating archer,
“to bring down the putz ratios.”
Dancer gave in to the inevitable. “Okay
then,” she laughed. “Let’s call it a trial period.”
“I’ll arrange the
induction,” Hatman said quickly, before Trickshot or CSFB! could
offer.
Cheryl entered the room with a pile of dossiers. “Well if you’ve all
sorted that out then you might want to go on your first official mission with
your new member. Here are the list of Peter von Doom’s operatives in Capetown,
courtesy of the Contessa Romanza and the SPUD data archive.”
“Let’s go talk
nicely to them and see what they will tell us,” Dancer suggested with a happy
smile.
Finny and Hatman exchanged stricken glances.
Get back, get back, get back to where you once belonged…
“He is to be being most uncute man of to be serving dark side
of the Gaaah!” Yo explained. “Is not to be nice man.”
“Oh come on,” Miss
Framlicker urged, “Dirth Vortex has his… eccentricities, but I’m sure we can
work something out with him. He’s always been a good customer of ITC.”
“And I
bet that’s how he got here, before the dimensional barriers went up, right Miss
F?” demanded Nats.
“I don’t care how he got here or what he wants,” Exile
warned. “He’s got five seconds to get out of my way so I can find Valeria or
he’s going to be eating dirt.”
“Er, in case you hadn’t noticed, we aren’t the
expected shipment of minions,” Visionary warned the tattoo-faced villain.
The
Dark-Gah! Master smiled cruelly, showing his filed teeth. “Oh, but you are.
After all, you have come in company with my son.”
“Uh, dude,” Nats warned
Exile, “He’s looking at you.”
“Yes, Rick,” Dirth Vortex hissed at Derek
Foreman. “I am your father.”
He’s a real nowhere man, living in his nowhere land,
Making all his
nowhere plans for nobody
“Pretty much,
yeah. But I couldn’t do it. Then I, uh… well.”
“Go on,” De Brown Streak
urged. “Tell him.”
“I got voices in my head.”
“Nothing wrong with that,”
Cressida thought at dull thud.
“Nothing wrong with that,” Chronic said
guiltily, caressing the smooth curve of his demonic guitar Steve.
“Well, one
voice,” DB explained. “It said it could help me out of my mess. It suggested
that I try and convince the Hood not to kill G-Eyed but instead to tip him off
so he could teleport away as the explosion went off.”
“Into a trap prepared
by Spacewarped,” Chronic added.
“I, uh, I didn’t get told about that bit by
the Hood.”
“Or the voice,” dull thud noted.
“Or, um, or the voice.
But I don’t think the voice was the Hood, or even working for the Hood. So I
carried out the Hood’s orders, I think, and he’s got no reason to like this New
Tomorrow Industries place, so I guess we could just…”
“Not move, given the
paralyzer ray I have just fired at you?” suggested the Minion, moving out of the
shadows. He was flanked by a dozen next-generation Sentinoids manufactured by
New Tomorrow for the new government campaign against unregistered
mutates.
Dynamite Boy didn’t need to move to explode. He concentrated,
shifting the concussive force away from his companions and straight at the
armoured cyborgs. When he reformed he was free of the paralysis.
dull
thud used his ability to teleport straight upwards and fall without being
hurt. He landed right where he had been, missing the Minion a good twenty feet.
“Ha!” Peter von Doom’s agent mocked, walking over to kick thud in the
groin, “I think you missed.”
That brought his paralysis device into the
matter-transmutation range of Cressida. It suddenly became a small raspberry
jelly with custard and oozed up the Minion’s sleeve. dull thud took
advantage of his enemy’s surprise to roll into a tight ball and moan. De Brown
Streak on the other hand moved in a blur, hammering the Minion to the wall with
a thousand blows per second.
“Tracking two mutates and three enhanced
metahumans,” the Sentinoid commander warned. “Identifax flags the fast one as De
Brown Streak, a class-A menace. Switch to automated fire control and sanction
him.”
“I’m insulted,” Chronic complained. “Why aren’t I a class-A menace?
After all, I can do this.” He strummed a few bars of bring your
daughter to the slaughter and hurled the Sentinoids fifty feet backwards
with the sonic wake. Then he brought his fingers to the bridge and several of
the suits began to shake apart.
“Keep them dancing,” DBS urged him. “DB, with
me!” In a, well, in a brown streak, the sepia speedster grabbed up Dynamite Boy
and vanished into the plant. “We need to find out what’s really going on here,”
he said.
“Everything’s moving so slowly,” Dynamite Boy wondered as Josh
Clement wove his way around people and vibrated through security doors.
“I’m
accelerating you along with me,” DBS explained. “It’s amazing the tricks you
learn when half the planet’s trying to kill you. Now what we need are the
offices where there might be… yeah, a huge sinister vault protected by
anti-vibrational force fields. That’ll do it.”
“My turn then,” Jeremy Wick
decided. “You might want to hide behind the desk for a moment.” He concentrated,
trying to use the lessons he had learned whilst being trained as a reluctant
super-villain to focus his explosive force. He wanted a tight beam in the one
megaton range about six inches across, directed straight at the lock around the
vault door forcefield.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMM!
The metal
vault shell was pushed out of the back wall of the New Tomorrow building and
landed somewhere in Off-Central Park.
“Wow! Let’s go!” DBS suggested,
blurring them away to find the clues they needed. In the forecourt Chronic was
treating more Sentinoids to Black Betty and dull thud was treating
the Minion to a steel toecap. DBS generated a vortex to drag them behind
him.
The twenty-foot square vault lay partly submerged in the lake in
Off-Central Park. Cassandra transmuted the wall into glass and Chronic shattered
it. “I love the sound of breaking glass,” he admitted.
DBS streaked inside
and checked through the paperwork at frightening speed. “Distribution networks
for genetic manipulators in every home, disguised as bric-a-brac?” he worried.
“Shipping of radium to power an alien DNA rewriter? A deal with Deviates to add
a psionic imprint to the mutation carrier wave to make everybody on Earth a
mutate under the command of one villain? This is big stuff, confirming
everything the Hood told us. We’ve got to warn somebody.”
“Um, didn’t the
Hood say we couldn’t tell the heroes?” Chronic reminded his fellow Purveyor of
Peril. “On pain of… pain.”
“We’ve still gotta tell the Lair Legion,” Dynamite
Boy decided. “I don’t care how much Hellfrasier and PsychoAcidPervGirl! threaten
my family. I’m a hero, and with great power comes great responsibility. We’ve
got to save the world.”
“I was really only hoping to save the t-shirts,”
dull thud admitted, “but they got blown up because they had some of these
genetic modifiers woven into the fabric. I hope they don’t take it out of my
wages.”
“Does it have to be the Lair Legion?” Chronic argued. “Couldn’t we
call… oh crap, there isn’t anyone else to call, is there?”
“There’s a few
groups around,” DBS answered, “including the Abandoned Legion who turned up last
night. But when you really need to save the world, I guess you’ve got to call in
the LL. I’ll just…”
“Well done, De Brown Streak,” VelcroVixen called out,
appearing from Spacewarped’s teleportal. “You managed to capture Peter von
Doom’s notes and records, which will be invaluable to us, and also to bring us
one of the few remaining superheroes around Paradopolis for execution. I’ll
recommend you for a bonus for this.”
“Hero execution?” dull thud
worried. “Who is she talking about?”
Cressida told him
gently.
“Crap.”
“No way!” Dynamite Boy shouted at VelcroVixen. “I quit!
We’re not playing your stupid games any longer. You hurt my family, I take out
your entire team. I mean it! Now back off, because we have a world to
save.”
“I’d just like to say that ‘we’ does not necessarily include me,”
Chronic footnoted. “Given that I can count.”
“What do you mean?” DB
frowned.
De Brown Streak looked around the darkened treeline of Off-Central
Park. “I think he means that there are four of us, and twenty-odd of the most
powerful supervillains ever assembled. VV’s brought the entire Purveyors of
Peril along on this one.”
Vicki Vee smiled sweetly at the sepia speedster’s
analysis. “Take them down,” she ordered.
I once had a girl, or should I say she once had me?
“They flayed me with whips,
but I absolutely gashed them with Occam’s razor,” Al B. Harper promised his
cellmates before passing out.
“He’s half dead,” Lisette gasped. “We’ve got to
get out of here before they kill us all.”
“I’ve tried,” Amy promised. “I can
make my skin temperature pretty hot, but these walls are stone and that door is
steel, and they’d spot me long before I burned my way through that.” She tore
some more of her overall up to dab at the worst of Al’s wounds. “Also I’m
running out of clothing to rip up,” she added.
There was a bright flash of
interdimensional light and two figures toppled into the cell. One was an
unfamiliar and slightly worried looking young blonde woman. The other
was…
“Bry!” gasped Laurie Leyton, and her whole heart was in the name she
spoke.
Goldeneyed clasped Lisette to him as if he would never let her go. He
had entered purgatory to be with her, possibly doomed himself and a world, but
just now he didn’t care. All he wanted to do was hold her.
The Hood allowed
himself a little sentimental smile. Admittedly, he had manipulated the
conception and birth of Exile and Goldeneyed in preparation for the moment he
could borrow their powers, and now each of them had made a bargain to enable him
to do exactly that; but it was nice to see that some relationships were sincere
and loving, even if such things were denied to… the Hooded Hood.
Then he
turned his attentions to the universe which needed bringing under his
domination.
“You came,” Laurie whispered to Bry. “I can’t believe you came.
You fool!”
“Time to get us all out of here,” G-Eyed decided. “Everyone join
hands and I’ll teleport us outside the cell, and then we… uh oh.”
“Uh oh
what?” Beth asked anxiously.
“Uh uh, remember how I agreed the Hood could
borrow my powers for twenty four hours? It looks like the clock starts
now.”
“You mean…?”
“I mean that right now, I have no powers.”
The Grand
Inquisitor was going to be very interested in the new appearances indeed.
Anyway you’ll
never know the many ways I’ve tried
And still they lead me back,
To the
long and winding road
Untold
Tales of the Lair Legion World Tour Interlude: The Order of Order Makes Its Move
Saving
Gwen Stacy, Part One: An Untold Tales of the Lair Legion World Tour Interlude
Amazing
Tales #31: Attack of the Guys with Gills, or What’s New Pantzer-Cat?
UnAmazing
Tales #32: Time of Rest
and especially Amazing
Tales #32: Battle of the Parodyverse All-Stars – the LL vs the JBH!
Cartographic data from Where's
Where in the Parodyverse