Posted by The Hooded Hood presents an account of theological wranglings and philosophical schisms on July 08, 2001 at 07:59:51:
#82: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion Tour of the Realms Beyond Death and Other Spooky Places: Life Sentences
With a sound quite
literally like time/space rending to allow the passage of a large multiphased
object, a red London double-decker bus screamed into existence amongst the
primeval jungle. Fortunately the vehicle’s plasmic shields lasted long enough to
allow it to cut a swathe through the dense forest before shuddering to a halt at
a precarious angle against a vast tree whose trunk was wider than the bus
itself. Then there was only the hot pinging of the radiator and the puzzled
sounds of small lizards wondering what had just happened to their
habitat. First there was darkness, a darkness so deep that it could only be
accomplished by the heat death of the universe. Donar, Sorceress, the Dark
Knight, and Ziles could no longer even see each other, let alone their guide
Xander the Improbable who had led them into the place where gods go when they
die. “Welcome home!” the JBH called as Kid Produce led Jackie Roberts through the
door of their temporary headquarters. Swift flicked on the light to reveal the
formerly-hospitalised heroine’s friends waiting with their surprise
party. The sign on the office said new Chairman of the Board and supreme conceptual
deity of Combined Pantheons Inc. Once they were inside, the heroes gave a little
gasp as they recognised the creature in the power chair. “You?” Ziles gasped.
“How…?” “The Hooded Hood stole my power,” Goldeneyed told the sceptical inquisitors.
“Or rather, I traded it for twenty-four hours in exchange for being sent back
here to the fifteenth century to rescue my girlfriend Laurie, who was exiled
here along with Al. B. Harper and Amy Racecar by this same Hooded Hood. Beth
Shellett came with me, but she’s just an innocent caught up in all of this who
is destined to be my future wife if I can’t do something to change the future
the Hooded Hood has plotted for me… Why are you looking at me like
that? “I say thee nay!” Donar shouted, hammering his enchanted baseball bat Mjalcom
onto the desk of Chairman of the Board and supreme conceptual deity of Combined
Pantheons Inc. “It wilt not be so. I shalt not allow yon hooded felon to steal
the power of the gods, nor to condemn so many deities to the fate of becoming
media entertainment! Unless it be in Xena or Buffy.” “Hello! Anyone here? Lapine superhero housecall!” shouted Jack Rabbit as he
bounced into the Abandoned Legion’s abandoned firestation hideout. “Hey, it’s
me! You said you wanted to discuss something about the recent warehouse
explosion?” “Hey! You can’t just take over Amalgamated pantheons like that,” the
Chairmouse objected. “This is getting seriously weird,” Bill Reed complained to Miss Framlicker as
the two of them stood on a rocky cliff-edge and looked down into the Valley of
Despair over the nine million assembled shock troops of the villainous
black-Gah! master Dirth Vortex. Sir Mumphrey Wilton came in from the greenhouse pulling off his gardening
gloves to shake hands with his visitor. “My dear Fin Fang Foom, what a surprise
to see you here!” he greeted the leader of the Lair Legion. “I thought all of
you chaps were on the other side of the world now, what?” Next episode: It’s Valeria of Carfax’s wedding day. The man she
loves is not invited, but he’s planning to gatecrash with nine million shock
troops. Dark Thugos pursues the destruction of a hero. Peter von Doom pursues
his devious scheme to conquer the planet Earth. The Deviate Lords pursue their
devious scheme to destroy the planet Earth. Dirth Vortex pursues his devious
scheme to conquer and destroy the Dreary Dimension. Symmetry of Synchronicity
pursues her devious scheme to conquer time and space. The Hooded Hood pursues
his devious scheme to conquer the Parodyverse entire and go on to bigger things.
Roni Y. Avis pursues a decent cup of coffee. And yet another criminal mastermind
who has been manipulating all the rest (remember that voice in DB’s head?)
observes and bides their time. The scheming archvillains just mount up, don’t
they?
Back issues at The
Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom
Link to Jack
Rabbit #10, which leads in to the scene in the chapter above.
Character descriptions at Who's Who in
the Parodyverse
“That does it!” ManMan shouted at Trickshot. “You are never
going to sit behind that wheel again, even if I have to break every bone in your
legs to ensure it!”
“Oh like you could do any better warping blind into a
jungle when there should be arctic snowfields,” retorted the irritating archer.
“You’d have had us over a cliff or in a swamp by now. Besides, the power just
cut out when we got here.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Hatman, moving
forward to separate the bickering travellers. “How could it just cut
out?”
“It’s some kind of dampening field,” Cheryl reported, examining the
instruments pack on the somewhat complicated bus control console. “It seems to
be draining our batteries and preventing pretty much all higher technology from
functioning.”
“Really?” CrazySugarFreakBoy! enthused. “Cool!”
“I don’t
think any of this addresses the principal issue, boys,” Dancer pointed out.
“Which is how we got here from South Africa when we should actually be somewhere
in the Antarctic. Not that this isn’t much nicer. I can work on my tan
here.”
“Great idea, honey,” Meggan Foxxx agreed. “That boy Woopsa has a real
touch when it comes to applying the lotion, and it’s not just his head that’s
like an elephant.”
Flapjack glared at the Rakshasa towel boy who had stowed
away on the bus a while back. “I thought we had agreed that I get the
lotion-rubbing duties.”
“Sorry. She said you were too warty,” shrugged Woopsa
apologetically.
“How can anyone be too warty?”
“I don’t know how we
got here,” Hatman frowned. “We were supposed to be at the Pensacola Mountains
overlooking the Filchner Ice Shelf in the British Antarctic Territory, looking
for the place that Peter von Doom sent the escaped Deviate Lord, Psicho the
Murderous Thought. Could the bus have malfunctioned somehow?”
“Hard to tell
without Miss Framlicker aboard,” admitted ManMan. As Hatty frowned as he
remembered Exile’s unauthorised departure to other dimensions with four of the
team Manny hastily changed the subject. “Perhaps we should take a look around
outside?”
“I’m not sure I like this place,” Troia admitted, knotting her
blouse around her midriff (which certainly enhanced her male colleagues’ liking
of the environment). “It’s too quiet.”
“Yay! Exploring! I get to climb to the
treetops!” shouted CSFB!, bouncing out of the stranded vehicle.
“Except for
him of course,” she sighed.
“Do you know where we are?” Meggan challenged the
Manga Shoggoth as the heroes disembarked to explore the jungle around
them.
“Oh yes,” gurgled the amoeboid mass of protoplasm.
“Where then?” Meg
demanded.
“In deep trouble,” came the answer.
A few moments later the
raptors attacked
“Why do we get all the giant monsters these days?”
complained Troia, spearing the first one.
“The curse of Busiek?” suggested
Dancer, dodging a second but failing to take it down with a counterkick.
“And
we allowed our resident dragon to go off on his own line of investigation,”
complained Trickshot, nailing a third creature through the throat with a
well-placed arrow.
“We don’t need Finny for these beasties,” Hatman assured
everybody. “These aren’t cosmically powered like the Monstrous Island entities
or the Ape God. We just…”
That was when the Lair Legion discovered that their
powers did not seem to be working.
“Told you,” bubbled the Manga Shoggoth.
“Art thou here, mine comrades?” Donar called; but there was no sound,
because sound only works when there are molecules and things to pass vibration
along.
Then there was light.
And the light was from a little illuminated
plaque above a doorbell, and it read The Retired Pantheons Rest Home (Service
Entrance). Underneath was a little hand-written card that said “We do not buy
from trickster-gods at the door”.
Donar rang the bell.
Reality tolled, and
the darkness was rent asunder as a portal opened to reveal a small kitchen
covered with linoleum. A goat-headed woman in a maid’s outfit stood aside to let
the visitors enter. “What is it?” she asked.
“What the vzlonky is this
place?” Ziles demanded, her translation circuits quite unable to cope with how
she felt right now.
“And who are you?” the Dark Knight suspiciously demanded
of the goat-headed maid.
“I’m Mammitu,” the maid curtseyed. “And you are in
the Retired Gods’ Home.” She eyed Donar sympathetically. “Is this the loved one
who needs caring for?”
The Lair Legion’s hemigod flared angrily. “I art
Donar, son of Oldman, scion of the Ausgardians, wrench, and I dost
not…!”
“That’s right,” Xander interrupted. “Poor old Donar. Used to be a
storm god, you know. Now he can’t do anything but wet his pants.”
“What?”
raged the Ausgardian.
“So we’d like to see the, um, the person in charge.
About finding a nice place for Donar,” Ziles suggested, catching on fast.
“I
dost not wet mine pants. I have godly bladder control,” Donar shouted. “I canst
drown a fly at twenty paces when I hast quaffed sufficiently!”
“Remind me not
to invite you to my dinner parties,” Sorceress asked. She looked curiously at
the maid who was leading them through a rich house of infinite dimensions.
“Mammitu, huh?” she said conversationally. “You were named after the old
Mesopotamian goddess of oaths, the judge of the underworld, Nergal’s wife,
huh?”
Mammitu stopped on the stairway. “No,” she answered. “I am the old
Mesopotamian goddess of oaths, former judge of the underworld and Nergal’s
wife.”
“What?” gasped Donar. “But mine lady, thou wert a great Akkadian
goddess. Who hast forced thee into this servile drudgery?”
Mammitu turned
away and led the heroes up to the office level. “It’s amazing the things we will
do in order to survive,” she answered quietly.
“Oh!” Jackie Rabbit gasped, but it was the sudden light that startled
her. She had already guessed her friends were waiting for her. Somehow she had
sensed their life-forces beyond the door.
“It’s good to have you back,”
Plantgirl smiled. “Maybe now we can convince Little Guy to take his turn at the
washing up.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Jackie admitted. “You did all this
just for me. And you all came… Kid, PhantomGhostGirl, AG, MacyMom, PigeonMan,
PigeonWoman, the older version of PigeonMan, Little Guy, Swift, mysterious
hooded guy... huh?”
Everyone turned to stare at the mysterious hooded
guy.
“Good evening,” said the Hooded Hood.
Little Guy launched an attack
on the invading archvillain but somehow found himself tangled up in
Pigeonwoman’s knitting. PhantomGhostGirl would have joined the assault but for a
sudden stomach cramp from the fourteen bad tacos she now remembered eating
earlier.
“What do you want, Hood?” demanded Amazing Guy, surrounding the
cowled crime-czar with a force-barrier he had no confidence would hold the
retconning villain. “You’ve never dared attack the JBH before!”
“Dared?” the
Hood snorted. “I’ve never found them important enough to attack. In fact even
now I’m not sure whether to simply snuff you out or bother keeping you alive to
manipulate later.”
“We don’t manipulate that easily, mister!” Plantgirl
shouted.
“Tell that to the Mental Midget,” sneered the archvillain, reminding
them of how easily the girl had come under the enemy’s control. “Anyway, I have
decided to set you all a little test.”
“We don’t play your sick, twisted
games, Hooded Hood!” PigeonMan (the older) declared.
“That is always your
option, of course,” the cowled crime czar agreed. “However, I think you should
hear what the consequences of your actions might be before deciding.”
“Hold
it guys,” MacyMom suggested. “From what I here this fella wouldn’t just walk in
here unless he had an edge. Let’s see what he’s trying.”
“Then we beat him to
a pulp,” Kid Produce agreed.
“There was once a happy, peaceful planet known
as Transvalonia,” the Hooded Hood told them. “Which sadly suffered an invasion
from interdimensional narrative parasites known as the Hero Feeders.”
“Hero
Feeders!” gasped Amazing Guy, who had nearly been killed by them once.
“In
this instance, the Hero Feeders elected to manifest on Transvalonia as undead.
As the blood-thirsters of the night. As vampires.”
“V-vampires?” stammered
Jackie Rabbit.
“The heroes of Transvalonia were the first to fall, of course,
either slaughtered or bitten and transformed into servitors of the Nosferatu.
Then, with all the world’s defenders slain, the undead settled down to farm
their new planet, instituting a new feudal dark age where humans were bred like
cattle for their masters’ feasts.”
“Pretty nasty if true,” PigeonWoman
agreed. “But what has that to do with us?”
“Why everything, of course,” the
Hood replied. “Whilst we have been speaking I have transported your headquarters
there.”
“Whaaat?” gasped Swift, diving to the window. “The city! It’s gone.
And…”
“The stars are different,” Pigeonman (the younger) noted. “I don’t
recognise the constellations.”
“I thought that as heroes you would be more
than willing to strive to save Transvalonia from its horrible fate,” the Hooded
Hood shrugged, “but as I said you have a choice. This shimmering rectangle is a
portal back to Earth. It will activate and transport you there in an instant;
but only if all of you who are still alive are in physical contact at the time
and all consent to return.”
“So we could get back right now?”
PhantomGhostGirl checked.
“If that is your collective wish, yes,” the Hood
agreed. “Or you could remain and investigate that screaming.”
“What
screaming?” Macymom started to ask; but then the noise outside interrupted
her.
“No! My baby! Don’t take my baby!”
“What’s going on, Hood?” Amazing
Guy demanded. The cowled crime-czar had gone.
“No! Please! Don’t!”
“Aw,
crap,” sighed Kid Produce, looking at the door.
“Gee, I dunno,” shrugged the supreme conceptual deity in his squeaky
little voice. “I guess I’m just lucky, huh?”
“What ist this madness?”
demanded Donar. “This art not a god! This art a…”
“…large cartoon mouse who
is loved by millions, and constantly depicted in icons, statues, portraits, and
stories?” Xander the Improbable suggested. “Supported by a loyal host working on
his behalf to promote his glory, and that of his pantheon, the duck, the dog,
and so on?”
“Belief defines gods,” the Sorceress understood, glancing across
at her father for confirmation. “At least the sort that grow in the
Mythlands.”
“Mayhap,” conceded the vexed Ausgardian. “I dost understand that
in the olden days certain gods didst have different names and aspects than those
they later became better known under.”
“Sort of like a rock band taking on a
different name,” Ziles suggested, “and sacking the drummer.”
“All of this is
irrelevant,” growled the Dark Knight. “We’re here to find out where all the
pantheons went to after they had visits from a mysterious hooded stranger, and I
guess we have to ask about that to Mr… Mouse here.”
“Oh boy! So somebody
finally noticed all of that, huh?” the Chairman of Combined Pantheons Inc.
whistled. “He said it was only a matter of time.”
“He who?” Sorceress
demanded.
“Why, the Hooded Hood. He visited the various waning pantheons and
suggested that by combining their forces they might have enough belief energy to
remanifest in a whole new generation of icons – radioactive turtles and computer
generated adventuresses and so on.”
“The alternative was to slowly fade away,
worse than the half-remembered caricatures they’d already become,” Xander
understood. He glanced at the Chairmen. “Not that there’s anything wrong with
caricatures, of course.”
Donar snorted disbelievingly “You art suggesting
that mighty Zeus dids’t give up his omnipotence to be reborn as
some…”
“Muppet,” the Chairman explained helpfully. “Kermit is Zeusie, Miss
Piggy’s Hera. The whole major pantheon’s in there if you look
carefully.”
“How could the Hood force such a thing on gods?” Ziles
puzzled.
“He didn’t,” the Dark Knight surmised. “He talked them into it, and
retconned things so that he got the outcome he wanted. So the pantheons marched
off into oblivion, leaving him to reinvest their power for them…”
“After
making some use of it himself for some nefarious scheme, no doubt,” Sorceress
frowned.
“And leaving the remnant gods hiding out in their former
strongholds, or picking up casual work here where the old memories of the old
gods dost still linger in their twilight eons,” Donar snarled.
“But where did
he get the power to retcon the gods?” puzzled DK.
“Demonic possession?” asked the first inquisitor.
“Most definitely,”
agreed the second inquisitor.
“Scourging and holy
salt?”
“Absolutely.”
The other captives watched in horror as the Grand
Inquisitor interrogated Bry Katz. “Don’t hurt him!” Lisette begged.
“Don’t
worry,” Al B. Harper assured her. “That so-called holy salt is hardly pure
sodium chloride. I suggested to them an electrolytic process that could improve
the quality and quantity of yield by around twenty percent but they held my head
underwater until I passed out. I don’t think they can have properly understood
my instructions.”
“I can’t believe this,” sobbed Bethany Shellett. “Yesterday
my biggest worry was saving the Paradopolis Variety Theatre from being pulled
down. Now I’m about to be tortured to death by the Spanish Inquisition”
“On
the bright side the Hooded Hood isn’t going to allow the Theatre to get torn
down,” Lisette assured the assistant teacher. “He forced me to help him stop the
t-shirts scam because he wants to thwart Peter von Doom’s world takeover, but he
needs the Theatre because it’s one of the key telluric landmarks in Wilbur
Parody’s Paradopolis-wide cosmic control mechanism.”
“It seems that the whole
of Paradopolis was built to a certain plan,” Al. B. explained. “Certain
buildings are key to the design – the Municipal Library, the Cathedral, Parody
Mansion, the Variety Theatre. The old Central Railway Terminal was too. That’s
gone now, but the building put up on its foundations, the Twin Parody Tower, has
taken over its function. The Hood is trying to activate the system that Parody
never effectively used. That’s what I was trying to warn the Lair Legion
about.”
Amy glared at Al. B. “He broke into the Lair Mansion and hid in the
toilet,” she accused.
“Hey, I’d been in a timewarp for over a year. You’d
need the bathroom too,” Al complained. “I never expected a naked mechanic chick
to prance in on me. I mean, sure, a guy hopes, but…”
“Does nobody care that
Bry is getting beaten to death over there?” Lisette demanded. “Stop it!
Stop!”
The Grand Inquisitor chuckled. “Don’t worry. We will deal with the
sorcerer’s familiars when we have wrung the truth for him.”
“I am not
his familiar,” Beth argued. “We never even dated. I don’t want to come between
Bry and his girl.”
With a sick churn of the stomach Laurie Leyton recognised
the blonde girl she had glimpsed in the future-vision the Hooded Hood had given
her; the one who was to be Bry Katz’s wife. “No,” she whispered. “Oh
no…”
Then time stopped. The inquisitor’s ship froze in mid-air. The heavy
wooden door to the torture chamber rotted visibly and crumbled into ancient
shards. A tall, elegant dark-haired woman dressed in sleek black silk strode
into the room, flanked by two even taller, gaunt, pale servants.
“Huh?”
G-Eyed puzzled at this unexpected turn of events.
The woman fingered a design
on the hourglass she was holding and Bry’s chains were shifted half a minute
into the future. Goldeneyed slumped to the floor.
“Some sort of
time-manipulation effect,” Al B. Harper judged. “Somehow controlled by that
timepiece she is carrying.”
“The Chronometer of Infinity,” the lady
instructed, gesturing that one of her servitors should buffet Al about the head
for speaking without permission. “I am it’s Keeper. You may all consider
yourselves my slaves.”
“Like hell,” growled Amy, then screamed and bent over
vomiting.
“I have just aged the contents of your stomach by one year,” the
lady in black explained. “Next time you speak out of turn or displease me in any
way I shall age your body by fifty years. I trust I make myself perfectly
clear.”
Everybody nodded.
“Good. As I say, you can consider yourselves my
slaves. When you address me you can call me Madame. Madame Symmetry of
Synchronicity.”
“Calm down, big guy,”
Ziles advised him. “Sounds to me like the Hood’s already got away with the loot.
All we can do at this end is damage control.”
“Then we take the Hood down
afterwards,” growled the Dark Knight.
“Gee, there’s no need to get all angry
about it,” the Chairman squeaked.
“I think there probably is,” the Sorceress
suggested. “Myths are sacred, important pieces of who we humans are. We can’t
debase them into mere entertainment or we will lose our cultural identity, our
collective race-soul. Stories are important – too important to be turned into
mere children’s tales.”
“Except for those truths too terrible to be trusted
to grown-ups, of course,” added Xander.
“Except for those,” Whitney allowed.
“But we aren’t going to just leave Olympus and the Celestial Bureaucracy and
Mount Shasta and all those other places deserted and vulnerable for whatever
psychic predator happens along. We have to do something. We have to get the gods
to go back.”
“Can’t be done,” the Chairman answered, a bit smugly. “We have
them all under contract.”
Ziles read the name on the documents. “Roni Y.
Avis? Oh no.”
“This organisation of thine art holding the power and essence
of the old pantheons in thy grasp?” Donar reasoned.
“We are the, uh,
legitimate disposal method of outworn belief systems, yeah,” the mouse agreed.
“We recycle the reusable bits and leave the rest here to, uh, fade
away.”
“And they can’st not do ought about it for thou holdest these
contracts?”
“Donar…” the Dark Knight warned, seeing where this was
going.
“Absolutely,” the Chairman agreed, slightly smugly.
The hemigod of
thunder reached the point of his argument. “But thou has no such contract
bindething me?”
The mouse flicked big worried eyes at the spray of paperwork
on his mangled desk. “Uh, there might be a small oversight there.”
“We came
in by the back door,” Xander explained helpfully. “Death owed me a
favour.”
“Then thou wilt render all thy contracts and thy company to me,
rodent felon,” Donar shouted. Lightning played across Mjalcolm. “Thou wilt
surrender Combined Pantheons Inc. to mine rulership. This art a hostile
takeover.”
“I’m afraid the Abandoned Legion have stepped out,” the Hooded
Hood told the startled superhero. “They may be some time.”
“You’re the Hooded
Hood!”
“Why so I am. And I am here to send you where you cannot interfere
with my coming machinations, as I did with the Abandoned Legion and the
JBH.”
“Where are they, you mantled maniac?”
“The Abandoned Legion have
already proved themselves to be of marginal usefulness to future scenarios I
might envisage. I have therefore deemed it sufficient to teleport them to the
Skunk homeworld and rely upon their own ingenuity to get back. By the time they
manage to convince the Emperor that they are not an invasion force and traverse
a galaxy to get home they will be too late to stop me. You will be following
them off-world shortly.”
“Like hell!” Jack called, bounding for a window,
only to find that no window had ever been built there. “Ouch!”
“I was less
sure about the JBH, so I have devised a little test for them. It involves them
choosing whether to save a planet or return to Earth through a portal I
provided. Of course they have yet to discern that I shifted them roughly a
million years back in time as well, and that the portal transports them to the
molten core of the young planet where they will be instantly vaporised, but I’m
sure worthy heroes would find a way round that. If they avoid that trap, and
deal with the Hero Feeders, the approach of Galactivac, the destruction of the
Pigeon Homeworld, and a few other little distractions, I believe they will have
earned the right to exist and be properly tormented by me another time.”
This
time Jack lurched at the Hood, but he wasn’t where he had been.
“The JBH are
my friends, you…!” the rabbit of righteousness warned, picking himself from the
wall-plaster.
“And one more than friend, as I understand it, Mr Roberts. I
believe you called her Jackie.”
“My… my sister! You know where she
is?”
“Where… and when.”
Jack sprang at the Hood again. “What have you done
with my sister, you…”
Then the Hood gestured and Jack was a quarter of a
million light years away on a distant world without so much as a passport.
“I
believe that tidies up the playing field a little bit,” the cowled crime czar
considered. “I wonder how my Purveyors of Peril are getting on with the other
bit players?”
“As if I’d make a rookie mistake like sending twenty-odd
supervillains after you four,” VelcroVixen snorted. “You’d be at an advantage,
able to use our powers against us. Oh no. Gamona, Onslaughter, Huntmaster,
HuntingJustice Deathmarrow – take them down.”
dull thud, Dynamite Boy,
De Brown Streak, and Chronic were in off-central park where they had just
effectively closed the case of the stolen t-shirts and were now surrounded by
twenty-two members of the Purveyors of Peril. As VelcroVixen issued her orders,
De Brown Streak blurred past her, snatching her up and throwing her into the
entangling arms of Appendage Man. Then he bounced Savagetooth into the Razor
Ballerina, starting a small war there and grabbed Dr Loveray’s Love Cannon and
turned it on Voodoo Vicar and Professor Manyarms. “Forget fighting fair,” he
advised his comrades. “Take ‘em all down!”
Voodoo Vicar and Professor
Manyarms agreed
Huntmaster watched the sepia speedster dodge amongst him
comrades for a moment, put a blowdart to his lips, and sank a tranquilliser into
De Brown Streak’s neck. “No matter how fast a prey might be, the superior hunter
can always anticipate,” he boasted. “Spacewarped, please prevent Mr Clement’s
accelerated immune system from shaking off the tranquilliser’s effect for a
while if you would be so kind.”
Dynamite Boy’s explosion blew him off his
legs and sent him sprawling. PsychoAcidPervGirl! and Gamona the Assassin both
landed on their feet. Onslaughter hardy noticed the blast.
Huntingjustice
Deathmarrow consulted the sensory apparatus on her blast bazookas (that’s her
sidearm weaponry, not any other prominent features of the character’s visual
appearance, by the way), calculated the exact spot where Jeremy Wick was going
to reappear, and shot him as he reformed.
dull thud let Gamona get
near enough to him so that Cressida, the telepathic matter-changing tapeworm in
his stomach could change the assassin into something horrible. “Won’t work,”
Gamona warned him, hitting him three times on three pressure points, paralysing
both arms and his lower torso. “I’m immune to telepathy and to matter
rearrangement. I’ve read your file.”
“That’s… that’s not a costume you’re
wearing, is it?” thud noticed as he fell to the grass. “That green
fishnet is… tattooed skin? Hey, after you’ve finished kicking my butt can we
have a date?”
“This is stupid!” complained Chronic. “I didn’t even say I was
with these guys and you’re attacking me! It’s so not fair!” Then he dropped to
his knees, seized up his demonic Stratocaster, and broke into a riff of
Nativity in Black which sent the ring of enemies around him sprawling
away, along with trees, rocks, water, and some surprised park ducks. Car alarms
went off all over central Paradopolis, and a thousand innocent teenagers
suddenly decided to go an wear black t-shirts.
“Where did that clown get
power like that?” demanded Headcase, reaching for a skull-cap suitable for
dealing with sonic attack.
“You do not want to know,” Hellfrasier warned.
“Question is, what does it want with him?”
“No, the question is how to take
him down,” Rottweiler snarled, “and rip his bloody throat out.”
Onslaughter
stood unmoved in the sonic chaos. “Long-haired freak,” he snarled, reaching out
and hitting Chronic with a park bench. “Get a haircut.”
Then it went quiet in
the park. The Purveyors of Peril regrouped and looked at the four fallen
would-be heroes. They secured the vault filled with Peter von Doom’s
plans.
“What do we do with the prisoners?” exiled Amazon Polypheme-1
wondered. “I say we geld them.”
“I say we pay a visit to DB’s gals and pals
and have some fun,” Appendage Man snickered.
Velcro Vixen knew their
captives’ fate, though. “We do what the Hood said,” she pronounced.
There was
a general chorus of villainous laughter.
“Tis true,” admitted Donar. “There must be more
smiting.” He slammed his opponent in the stomach with Mjalcolm and propelled him
through the back wall. “Tis better,” he decided.
“Donar, you do realise this
whole place is full of dead gods who work for him, don’t you?” Sorceress pointed
out as the ruckus stirred the alarm. “And that they’re all going to come to his
defence?”
“Bring them oneth,” smiled the Ausgardian. Then Beg-Tse, the
Tibetan god of war, Hedammu, the Hurrian snake-demon, Ningirsu, the Sumerian
military god, Tu, the Polynesian warmaker, and Yu, the Chinese priapic Earth
spirit all jumped him.
The Dark Knight glanced round for Xander. He wasn’t
there. “Ziles, check that wrecked desk while the distraction is going on. I want
papers, contracts, anything we could use against Amalgamated
Pantheons.”
“There’s a deal here about some shared afterlife arrangements,”
Ziles suggested.
“That’s the kind of thing,” DK agreed. “Keep
looting.”
Donar hammered Xipe Totec, the Mexican god of Spring, into Fudo
Myoo, the Japanese god with the sword of knowledge, and slipped in a low
horn-butt with his horny helmet against Securitas, Roman personification of
security. The personification of security should really have thought to wear a
cup.
This had suddenly become Donar’s kind of investigation.
“You’re telling me,” the scientist from the
Interdimensional Transportation Corporation, and Bill’s occasional boss,
answered. “I thought we came to save this Dreary Dimension and rescue Exile’s
friend Valeria of Carfax, not to cosy up with some guest-villain and inspect his
troops before they set off to conquer the place.”
“Exile just feels he had to
take an interest in the old man,” Visionary guessed. “I still don’t understand
how Dirth Vortex can be his father.”
“Ah,” Yo beamed. “Is to be simple. When
is that mummy and daddy is to be loving each other very much…”
Miss
Framlicker felt it best to interrupt. “From what I can gather, somewhere
centuries ahead of our own point in the timeline there were three women of
destiny, descendants somehow of one of spiffy’s line and the Celestian
Madonna…”
“You see that’s the flaw in this right there,” complained Vizh.
“Descendants of spiffy’s line. That would suggest that one day…”
“It’s
possible he could procreate,” reasoned Nats. “Well, probably possible. There’s
an outside chance.” He thought harder. “His father can do retcons. And the girl
could be drugged or something.”
“These three girls, the lovely Kumari
sisters, all became pregnant on the same night, and each gave birth to a child
who held a third of a massive cosmic power which when combined could shake the
universe and would be used in some terrible war to resolve everything.”
“Is
the Resolution War,” Yo explained. “But is Yo to be thinking is better maybe
have to be a Resolution Party, with games, yes? And jelly?”
“And rabbits?”
suggested Nats.
“Is always to be important to have bunnies,” agreed Yo. He
stroked Rabito and then let the purple thought bunny to the floor so it could
hop lopsidedly into a wall.
Miss Framlicker persevered with her exposition.
“Dirth Vortex now claims that he was the one who fathered Exile, and that it was
his hated rival Starseed who fathered Exile’s cousin Goldeneyed.”
“Starseed
is G-Eyed’s dad!” Visionary gasped. “Gah!”
“In the future he will be,” Miss
F. corrected the possible fake man. “He hasn’t done the deed yet in your
timeline.”
“Yo is thinking that cute Manuel will be to be surprised to hear
this,”
“Not as surprised as cute G-Eyed,” Nats suggested, “Uh, I mean just
G-Eyed. Not cute. So who was Suicide Blonde’s father?”
Miss Framlicker
coloured a little. “According to Vortex, it could have been him or Starseed, or
a number of other possible candidates.”
“Oh.”
“Then the Order of the
Observing Eye arranged to save the children from the forces that would have
seized and manipulated them by taking G-Eyed and Exile back to the twentieth
century to be raised as orphans. Suicide Blonde was found by Dark Thugos and
raised by him. And as the children grew, they each learned they had a different
way of accessing the massive power which was their inheritance.”
“Gah power,”
Visionary surmised.
“No,” Dirth Vortex hissed, arriving on the balcony unseen
and scaring the hell out of everyone.
“Eeep,” eeeped Yo.
“The Gah
techniques are merely ways of manifesting a universal and fundamental force
which underpins all things,” whispered the villain. “There are other outlets for
this same energy – the Jarvis Cosmic, the plasmoid manifestations of the
protector of the Universe, the power-cosmic of the Crimson Cyclist, the Spank
Ray, and many others. The hated Starseed and I merely acted in accordance with
the instructions of the Gah! in facilitating the Resolution of the Parodyverse.
Our work is done and out interests have moved on elsewhere.”
“Well don’t look
at me,” Miss Framlicker warned, moving behind Nats.
“Dirth Vortex – dad – is
here on a mission of mercy,” Exile explained. “I know it doesn’t look like it,
what with the nine million shock-troops and so one, but really, he is. You see,
he’s trying to save the Earth.”
“By… pointing his nine million shock troops
elsewhere?” ventured Visionary. “That’s what I’d do.”
“The Hooded Hood has
been using the belief-energies of the gods for some devious plan of his own to
conquer the world again. Now the gods are pretty weak, fading out. Soon most of
them will be gone, except the Ausgardians who were left out of the deal. So to
revive them there has to be a massive amount of godly power released, so they
can rebuild themselves. And if you remember, all the pantheons combined their
powers to create the Dreary Dimension as a prison for the late, unlamented
Dormaggadon. So all that energy can now be recycled to save the gods!”
“Won’t
that, um, destroy the Dreary Dimension, dude?” Natas checked.
“Of course not.
It’ll just drop it back in the Mythlands. Right, dad? Dad? Dad…?”
“Let the
assault begin!” commanded Dirth Vortex, and at his work nine million shock
troops moved in formation against Prince Magaddor and the Legions of
Light.
“Do you know how much paperwork this is going to cause?” the
Chronicler of Stories complained as Xander led him through the devastated old
folks’ home of the gods to where Donar was slamming Nubian Mandulis’ head
repeatedly onto the floor while sitting on top of a struggling early Chinese god
of judgement Gao Yao.
“I know who isn’t going to have to do it,” the master
of the mystic crafts answered smugly. “I never told Donar to reorder the
celestial hierarchies. It was his own idea.”
“Sure. Donar and ideas. A
natural combination. You realise I’m going to have to take a hard line against
you people on this?”
“As you wish,” agreed Xander. “The others responsible
are Ziles the Xnylonian, Whitney Darkness, and of course the Dark Knight, whom I
think you know?”
The Chronicler of Stories flashed the sorcerer supreme a
murderous look. A murder of ravens wheeled in the air around him. He sighed.
“Very well, meddling mage. Make your case.”
Xander pointed to the nearest
patch of shadows.
“It’s simple enough,” the Dark Knight answered, melting out
from the shadows and scaring the ravens. “We now hold the contracts of the
various recycled gods. Ziles has located most of the local contracts also, which
means we’re freeing more and more ‘retired’ deities too, some of whom are taking
a Donar-like stand on the scam played on them. We’re calling a Epochal General
Meeting of the Board of Directors of Amalgamated Pantheons Inc. and appointing a
new Chairman. And then we’re going to somehow restore the gods to their former…
godness. Then we shall get some coffee.”
“It’s original, anyway,” the
Chronicler of Stories admitted. “I can only see one major problem with your
plan.”
“What?” DK demanded.
“Good evening,” said the Hooded Hood.
“The rest are,”
Andrew Dean told the eccentric Englishman, “but things are getting a bit hectic
and confusing and I don’t like being manipulated. So I thought you might be able
to help me prepare a little ace in the hole…”
Cartographic data from Where's
Where in the Parodyverse