Posted by Into the modern comics age of cutting-edge, relevant, issue-based innovation, the Hooded Hood contributes a tale that tackles one of the hot topics of our era: gardening. on August 27, 2001 at 11:23:35:
#88: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion World Tour Gardening Special
Previous chapters at The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom
Character profiles at Who's Who in the Parodyverse
Other useful things in Where's Where in the Parodyverse
We begin our tour in the Carapundy Swamp, near Pinaroo Lake in the Fort Grey Basin. This dunefields area of Slurt National Park in New South Wales, Australia, is inland wetlands on the Simpson-Strezelecki biogeographical classification. It is a clay soil (cracking brown and crusty brown) over deep unconsolidated sedimentary layers from the Cretaceous to Quaternary periods. The average rainfall is 223cm (88in) and in summer the temperatures rise to 35.9 degrees Celsius, (97 degrees Fahrenheit).
Although there is very little vegetation on the shores of the muddy swamps near Warraplonka Falls (forty miles south-east of Tibooburra), Neverfail (Eragrostis setifolia) is the dominant plant species, with Coolibah (Eucalyptus coolibah) growing in high ground by the lake margins. The surrounding sand dune country is vegetated with Hopbush (Dodonaea attenuata), Turpentine (Eremophila sturtii), Saltbush (Atriplex spp.), Budda (Ermophila mitchellii), and Whitewood (Atalaya hemiglauca).
All of which is irrelevant given that all fauna and flora on the planet are now twenty-four hours from being mutated by a genetic wave generated by stolen Celestian technology from a secret base out in the swamp.
“Worraplonka Falls!” screamed Nats at the man in the drug store. “You must have heard of it! You live here!”
“Sorry mate,” the fat clerk told him, spitting tobacco as he answered. “I don’t speak English.”
“Okay,” Exile shouted. “That’s it. I’m taking this guy outside and…”
“You can’t do that,” Hatman told him. “Unfortunately. We should have sent Dancer in in the first place. People talk to her.”
“Look,” Nats tried again. “We are the Lair Legion. We have about six hours to save the world. We have to find the Worraplonka Falls laboratory of the New Tomorrow Corporation, which is somewhere round here, or the whole world goes blooey. What part of that don’t you understand?”
“The part where you clutter up my store and shout in m’face?” the store clerk answered. “Look, you plonkers can do what the hell you like, prancing around like drag queen in spandex, but you can do it out of my shop, sonny.”
Hatman dragged Nats and Exile from the drug store before they could do the man violence.
“Maybe we should have bought some condoms or something?” CrazySugarFreakBoy! suggested as they met up again in the dusty crossroads that served as town square.
“Something is very wrong here,” Sorceress suggested. “Ziles and I spoke to the schoolteacher, and she wouldn’t let us into the building. Said it was Education Board regulations.”
“Or we could drop another shrimp on the barbie?” CSFB! added helpfully.
“These people are frightened,” Danger guessed. “They just want us to leave town.”
“Didn’t we used to have a detective on the team?” Trickshot asked. “Where the hell are DK and Finny anyway?”
“They’re dealing with the Hood,” Hatman answered. “We have to find Warraplonka Falls before they get back.”
“I’m not really a detective,” Ziles admitted, “but I’d have thought these ‘Welcome to Warraplonka Falls’ signs were a clue.”
“We asked about that,” said Goldeneyed. “They claimed they were a misprint.”
“It ist a mystery most vexing,” Donar admitted. “Howe’er, since yon mortals doth seem so keen for us to leaveth, I suggest we doth seem to go. Then one of us wilt slip back into town to befriend the locals.”
“But the bus is gone,” Troia pointed out. “They’re taking Al B. Harper back to Paradopolis to try and stop the Hood’s Celestian-binding.”
“So we walk,” Hatman suggested. “Then I shall come back and…”
“Nay, mine capped comrade,” Donar told him. “Twill be mine role to do this. I canst speak the lingo. Tis time to introduce thee to Gavan Carstensen.”
Jacob’s Ladder (Polemonium Caeruleum) has been grown in our gardens for many hundreds of years. It has also lived on our hillsides as a wild flower for many thousands of years. The bright blue flowers studded with golden stamens first appear in late may or June and then continue through the summer. The leaves are deeply divided into a series of rung-like leaflets, hence the common name. There are no problems with cultivation. Add peat or compost at planting time, provide some from of support, dead-head regularly to prolong the flowering season, and cut down the stems in autumn.
Jacob’s Ladder thrives in sun or partial shade, so it was doing very nicely in the windowbox outside Xander’s back room. Sadly, it play no further part in the story of the master of the mystic craft’s meeting with three of the most powerful and dangerous entities in the Parodyverse.
“You’re probably wondering why I brought you here today,” Xander the Improbable said whilst pouring tea for his guests.
“You didn’t bring us,” growled the Destroyer of Tales, Dark Thugos, grinding his porcelain teacup into dust. “You begged out attendance. And we came out of regard for the rank you hold as sorcerer supreme of the Parodyverse, even though you are a powerless sham and a cosmic joke.”
“Sugar?” Xander asked the granite-faced tyrant. “Rich tea biscuit?”
“Just get to the point,” the Chronicler of Stories demanded. “It’s somewhat of a busy time for us right now.”
“And that is the point,” the master of the mystic crafts explained, passing Jury, the Shaper of Worlds, a slice of upside-down cake. “The Triumverate have to make some hard decisions about which futures to allow happening. Pick wrong and… well, we can literally write off the Parodyverse, can’t we?”
“We do not need interference from some jumped up watch repairer to do our jobs,” Thugos growled. “
“Really?” Xander shot back. “So tell me, which ending do you favour, the one where the Hood wins or the one where Mr Lucifer wins or the one where the Resolution War ends everything?”
“It’s not as simple as that,” complained the Shaper of Worlds.
“Really?” sighed the sorcerer supreme. “Let’s just look at the situation, shall we? We have Peter von Doom making his bid for world domination.. Von Doom and his Minion have assembled a mutation bomb from old abandoned Celestian tech, modulated by psionic energy from a Deviate Lord, and channelled through bric-á-brac infiltrated into almost every home in the world. Von Doom expects that when his device detonates in less than…” (Xander checked the various clocks ticking away in his shop and took an average) “six hours the sixty percent of the population that survives mass mutation and becomes metahuman will fall under his absolute mental domination. That in itself would be enough to trigger the Resolution War, correct?”
“Perhaps,” Jury admitted. “We don’t – can’t – understand all the conditions that have to be met before the Final Test is upon us.”
“But it’s not that simple anyway,” Xander pressed on. “The activation of the Celestial technology has drawn the attention of the Space Robots themselves. Once before, when the Abhumans used that machinery to create new races like the Sea Monkeys and the Vesalians, the Celestians intervened and the Abhumans paid a terrible price. Already they are returning to our planet.”
“It isn’t their Fourth Host,” the Chronicler argued nervously. “Probably.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Xander shrugged. “The Hooded Hood has reconstructed Wilbur Parody’s old plans to use Paradopolis as a giant Celestial trap. He’s gone to a lot of trouble to divert divine energies enough to affect even the Celestians temporarily, and he has combined the powers of the Three Children of Destiny, Goldeneyed, Exile, and the Suicide Blonde so he can operate on a cosmic level and rewrite the Space Robots’ programming to make them loyal to him.”
“We should not allow the Hooded Hood an opportunity to control the entities which maintain the framework of the Parodyverse,” Thugos conceded.
“It is beyond our remit to interfere,” snapped the Chronicler. “The Celestians are supposed to look after themselves.”
“It doesn’t end there either,” Xander pointed out. “The Minion isn’t really serving von Doom anyway. He is working on behalf of the Supreme Interference, the composite brain-computer of the currently-decimated Skree Star Empire. He has altered the composition of the genetic bomb to transmute all life on Earth into men of the Skree, thus regenerating the Empire.”
“He’d better transmute some women of the Skree too or it’ll be a short-lived empire,” pointed out the Shaper.
“If he succeeds then there will be no human race, and the conditions of the Resolution War will never be met,” Xander argued. “But if he’s stopped…”
“Then we face the future,” the Chronicler acknowledged.
A thought struck Jury. “You seem to know a lot about all of this, Xander. How?”
“Tealeaves,” the master of the mystic crafts shrugged. “Mr Lucifer is hardly keeping his theological ambitions quiet, is he? Two months from now he will make his move. The Lair Legion will be as good as dead, the last of the Messengers will make his stand, and we will undergo the End of Days.”
“That is a good ending,” Dark Thugos almost smiled. “A proper apocalypse.”
“There is a chance Lucifer will be stopped,” the Shaper indicated. “The future can be saved. There are all kinds of parallel futures which prove it.”
“If that end is averted,” Xander went on, “we have a host of other crisis cascading after it. Do your colleagues know about your deal with Exile by the way, Thugos?”
The Chronicler and the Shaper regarded the tyrant suspiciously. “It is personal business,” Dark Thugos told them. “None of your concern. I am allowed to take a champion.”
“Then there’s the thing with the final wielder of the Psychostave,” Xander listed. “The Gahream Host. That sentient vessel business. The challenge of the Fay. The ascension of the Probability Dancer. Event after event, tumbling faster and faster, towards…”
“The Resolution War,” the Chronicler conceded. “The conflict for which the Parodyverse was designed, the Last Battle. And then nobody knows what happens.”
“Which brings me back to my original point,” Xander concluded. “Are you going to interfere or not? And which future do you select? Von Doom’s mastery of the planet? The triumph of a new Skree Empire? The Hooded Hood in charge of the Celestian Space Robots? Lucifer’s End of Days? The Enemy’s cosmic surgery?”
“That is none of your business,” the Chronicler answered. “For all your uncanny knowledge you are but a mortal. We are the principal office-holders of the Parodyverse. It is time for us to go and fulfil those offices.”
“But thanks for the cake,” Shaper added as the Triumverate vanished.
“Actually,” Xander noted, picking up the fragments of the broken teacup, “I think you’ll find that it’s just a tiny bit after time for you to go an interfere. Just too late. I think you’ll find the delay in talking to me was just enough to make it impossible for you to alter what’s about to happen.”
“That’s the way it should be,” the Paradox Stranger grinned from the kitchen doorway. “I’m a big believer in humans controlling their own destiny, and the forces that created the Parodyverse and set up guardians and keepers and checks and balances can bugger off.”
The source of the future-knowledge which had so astonished the Triumverate wandered back to the cupboard over the sink to find more biscuits.
There weren’t many plants in the fifteenth century dungeon cell where schoolteacher Bethany Shellet lay chained awaiting her fate, but there were some interesting lichen growing upon the walls. A lichen is an association between a fungus and an alga that results in a form distinct from either symbiont. Although lichens appear to be single plants, under a microscope the association is seen to consist of millions of cells of algae (called the phycobiont) woven into a matrix formed of the filaments of the fungus (called the mycobiont). The majority of mycobionts are placed in a single group of Ascomycetes called the Lecanorales, which are characterised by an open, often button-shaped fruit called an apothecium.
Bethany was taking a remarkable and regrettable lack of interest in this given that she was a student schoolteacher, but that was possibly because of the archvillainess who had her strapped to the rack preparing to torture her.
“I was tricked,” Madame Symmetry of Synchronicity told her. “Goldeneyed may not have realised what was going to happen, but that Harper man certainly did. He realised that powerful cosmic artefacts like my tools of office could not exist in two places at the same time, and that I would therefore be bounced out of time/space to protect the fabric of the Parodyverse.”
“You’re saying they got back?” Beth checked. “Safely?”
“I think they were hurled into the interdimensional vortex,” Symmetry sniffed. “I hope the Hero Feeders get them all.” Her eyes narrowed and bored in Bethany. “However, you were left behind as hostage for them fulfilling their bargain to bring me to the future, and they have not kept their part of the bargain.”
“That… that wasn’t my fault,” the girl trembled, for there was a world of malice in Symmetry’s stare. “Like you said, Bry probably didn’t even realise it would happen.”
“Ignorance is no excuse. If it was I wouldn’t have had to release the Black Death in Europe,” the mistress of time answered. “However, I wouldn’t want to rush this revenge-taking. Using my Hourglass of Infinity I can replay your torture again and again and again, leaving you with the memories of a thousand terrible deaths. I can destroy you in as many ways as my mind can conceive – and my mind can conceive quite a few, I assure you. And then I will send you to Goldeneyed so he can see what his treachery has wrought.”
“P-please…”
“Oh, don’t worry. By then the creature you will have become will be more than eager to slay him and his friends for me/”
“No. Oh no!”
“We shall begin with a little pain,” Symmetry considered. “Everything needs to be done just so, stripping you of your dignity and hope, pushing back your pain thresholds, dissecting you physically and morally as…”
“I think not,” the Hooded Hood suggested.
Symmetry swung round and almost froze the cowled intruder with her Chronometer before she realised she had put it down on the rack to better gesture at Bethany.
“Good evening,” the Hood bade her. “Good evening, Ms Shellett. Am I intruding?”
“I know who you are,” Symmetry scowled. “You’re from the future.”
“Indeed,” the cowled crime czar agreed, bowing slightly. “I’m from the future, and you hold Ms Shellett. I am prepared to make a trade.”
“Say your piece,” Madame Symmetry commended. The Hood did.
Bethany was begging to be left to the torture when the exchange was finally made.
The coolibah (Eucalyptus microtheca) us an Australian native gum tree which grows beside billabongs, flowing rivers, and creeks. It is often found surrounded by Mitchell grass and other low-growing vegetation in savannah woodland on dark grey cracking clays. Usually pinkish, some gray-brown, some Ringed or Fiddleback. Most have fine texture.Burls are very beautiful with wild, cloud-like patterns in tones of pink and brown and cream sapwood.
The Lair Legion were currently enjoying the shade of such a native Eucalyptus as they made a temporary camp beside a small local stream. Trickshot was eyeing a stray sheep and wondering if he could fit it into his knapsack.
“G’day,” Gavan Carsetensen bade the team as he returned from Warraplonka Falls. Then, in case they hadn’t caught on, he added in a conspiratorial whisper. “It ist me-eth.”
“You know, he’s kind of cute even in human form,” Dancer admitted.
“Uh-h… I mean, I can’t say I’d noticed,” Troia answered haughtily, and stalked away.
“What did you get?” Hatman demanded.
“I went in while they were all heaving a sigh of relief that we’d gone,” Donar’s mortal host replied. “Mingled with the crowd. What they were saying doesn’t make any sense though. They were talking about roboroos.”
“What?” Trickshot puzzled. “What the hell is a…”
“Could it possibly be a robotic kangaroo?” Ziles asked, checking her sensors worriedly. “A sort of guard machine disguised as local fauna?”
“Oh boy! I’ve never tussled with robotic marsupials before,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! cried. “Well, that one time in college, but…”
“They’re holding the town hostage?” Goldeneyed guesed. “Threatening it with mecha-kangaroo destruction if the folks help us find the New Tomorrow complex?”
“Could be,” Gavan admitted. “They were just keen to get us out of town before the attack began.”
“Attack?” Nats asked nervously. “As in attack by the roboroos? On the superheroes? That’s us.”
“I am detecting around six thousand independent energy sources closing on our position,” Ziles admitted.
“Alright,” Hatman shouted as Donar assumed his godly shape again. “Defensive perimeter. We’re facing an incoming army or robotic kangaroos.”
But he was wrong. The first wave was the Suicide Koalas.
A proper supervillain flower is really the orchid, but in the modern hectic world of international terrorism who can find the time to care for such delicate and high-maintenance plants? A suitable alternative is of course the Schizanthus, or Poor Man’s Orchid (Schizanthus Pinnatus). The petals are streaked and spotted in a wide variety of patterns. This popular pot plant can also be used as a summer bedder outdoors. The ambitious villain should use the half hardy annual technique in any well drained garden, although the plant will thrive best in full sun.
Peter von Doom had chosen an unfortunate corner to display his own Schizanthus, given that it was mainly illuminated by artificial lighting in the secure tier of the new Tomorrow Enterprises shielded and cloaked Warraplonka Falls headquarters. It can be no coincidence that his plan was therefore falling apart.
“How did they find me?” von Doom shouted at his Minion. “How? How did they get so close?”
“I suppose they used the psychic residue trail on Psicho, master,” the nondescript flunky replied. “They already had the shipping trail from the South African connection, the mineral purchase records from Wakandybar, plus the route we extracted the Celestian components from Monstrous Isle. All they had to do was put them all together to discover our general location.”
“It’s not fair! It’s cheating! Heroes aren’t supposed to think! They always cheat.”
“It is most regrettable, master.”
“That Lair Legion has cheated ever since we first met. I was their first villain, but do I ever get respect? Do they tremble at my name? No, it’s all Baron Zemo this and Hooded Hood that, and all I get is a footnote in the trophy room. Well not this time! This time my plot will rule the world, and then we’ll see who gets voted most popular villain in the annual poll. Oh yes.”
The Minion noted a warning bleep from the command console. “The Knightjet is approaching,” he advised his master. “Shall I launch the flying squirrels?”
Peter von Doom stopped sulking and cackled evilly. “Yes! Set them free. Let them fly, my pretties! Let’s see how even the Dark Knight’s indestructible plane can stay in the air with intakes clogged by hundreds of mutated tree-rats! Bwa-hah-hah-hah-hah!”
The Minion continued to look at the monitor. “The Lair Legion seem to have survived the first wave of Cyborg Wombats and Suicide Koalas. Now they’re moving in to protect the town from the Roboroos and their laser cannon. Shall I activate the reserves?”
“No!” von Doom answered, striking a dramatic pose. “No, I think it’s time to show the Lair Legion just who is the ultimate criminal genius once and for all. Release… the Syntha-Bunyips!”
Of course, many people regard rhubarb (rheum. rhaponticum) as a fruit, which is doing an injustice to the acidulous leaf stalks so much used in cookery and cathartic medicine (although the leaves are poisonous). Given a sunny spot, and annual dressing with well rotted compost or manure, and division of the roots every five years or so, it will provide a rich full crop to make any allotment gardener proud.
So it was a shame that Exile had just done his last stand against the Suicide Koalas in the middle of it, really.
“Ouch,” the energy-wielder complained as he steamed slightly. “This is getting a bit much.”
“The Knightjet’s down in the swamp,” Hatman reported. “It can’t be harmed but it can’t fly if its jets are clogged with bits of squirrel. You can’t change the laws of physics.”
Dancer vaulted past as no less than fifteen roboroos accidentally shot each other. One marsupial head shot high in the sky and landed on a carelessly-balanced plank catapulting an exploding kookaburra straight into a waiting squad of mutated funnelweb spiders.
“Unless you’re the Probability Dancer, of course,” Hatman added.
“Netfo erom etad a no em ekat ot sdeen namtah!” called the Sorceress, tangling a pair or roboroos in the already-unfriendly vegetation on the fringes of town.
“Help! Help!” the drug store clerk called as yet more murderous robotic animals smashed through the plate glass front of his store.
“Oh, so now you want to talk to us,” smirked Nats, grabbing the roos by handy pockets they came equipped with and smashing them together.
“Vile mechanical contrivances of otherwise inoffensive fauna!” yelled Donar, smashing a giant bionic platypus with Mjalcolm and turning to engage the next. “Verily I shalt smite thee for so besmirtching the honour of mine native adoptive realm!”
“Uh, dude, this is Australia,” Trickshot called, pinning a jumbuck to the nearest tucker bag. “How can it’s honour be besmirtched?”
Then the ground shook and three massive techno-organic nightmares rose from the soil. The Syntha-Bunyips had arrived.
“Damn!” snarled Hatman. “And there’s the signal from Finny too. He’s found the base.”
“Finny?” noted Ziles. “I thought you said the Knightjet was down in the swamp?”
“I never said Finny and DK were in it though,” the capped crusader pointed out. “Looks like their decoy worked. Alright, Donar and Exy with me to fight these… whatever the heck they ares, rest of you get to Finny’s locationas ASAP.”
“We have about an hour ten to save the world!” CSFB! mentioned happily.
The secret research base of the New Tomorrow Corporation was camouflaged with Hopbush (Dodonaea attenuata), a fine ground-covering growth often used to provide soil cover in the area around Pinaroo Lake, and a fine choice to blend with the overall local flora. There was also a sophisticated cloaking field but we don’t really need to know about that.
Besides, the Dark Knight spotted the empty milk bottles left outside the cloaked front door. Then Fin Fang Foom ripped the roof off.
“Aaaagh!” commented Peter von Doom. It wasn’t the first time this Makluan dragon had ripped through his plans. In fact he was still in therapy from the last time. “Minion!”
“Never fear, master,” the Minion replied, “Activating reserves.”
The Dark Knight had time to notice that von Doom was using leased Interdimensional Transportation Corporation technology before the personal hump portals opened all around them, gating in the villain’s back-up servitors.
There were a lot of them. The French Mimes went straight for their old enemy DK wielding imaginary lacrosse sticks. The temporarily super-powered prison guards left over from Marrakesh went straight for the dragon but were mostly stepped on by the six giant mutated creatures from Monstrous Isle. As DK struggled with the French who were hooking unseen lassos over his person the transformer-ninjas shifted to heavy weapons assault mode in the form of ice-cream trucks.
“Wow! Holy world tour adventures flashback!” Nats quipped as he dropped Troia onto the lead autoninja. The Amazon administrator did something to her adversary’s paintwork which was going to cost a fortune in the body shop.
“Now this is what the last big adventure at the end of the series should look like,” CSFB! approved, grabbing an imaginary machine gun from a mime and taking down half a dozen mutated guards. “Big, confusing, and drawn by George Pérez!”
Goldeneyed teleported a pair of transformer-ninja’s energy burst so they slammed into each other, sending steaming chassis-fragments across the battlefield. “Let’s just take this fruitcake down so we can get on with the important stuff like saving Beth,” he grumped.
“Shall I use the localised mutation effects of the Celestian device to transform these enemies now, master?” suggested the Minion. “There is no reason to believe that we can’t ultramutate superheroes, and then they will be your loyal slaves.”
“I’m sorry about this,” Ziles told him, “but you leave me no choice. I’m afraid I used too much Relaxor Crème in our battle earlier.” She stepped aside and allowed the eighteen very happy but rather horny roboroos she had brought along loose upon the Minion.
“No! Noooooo” screamed the flunky as he vanished under a pile of sexually-crazed cyborg marsupials.
“I think that might be against the Geneva convention,” Dancer worried, but that didn’t stop her arranging for the Monstrous Isle denizens to slip on the seeping oil from the ninja-trnasformers and fall backwards onto the mimes. Dark Knight tumbled aside and came up with knightarang in hand to catch the heavy weapons samuri.
“Forty minutes and counting” Trickshot noted, nailing a cluster of slavers with his skunk-spray arrow. “We still need to even up the odds a bit, Finny.”
“Send the signal then,” the dragon agreed. “Now!”
Sorceress gestured and the sky burned red. “C’mon in boys,” she breathed.
There were more trademark flashes of Interdimensional Transportation Corporation personal teleportation shifts and the crowded battlefield was suddenly more crowded yet.
“Planet of the Apes!” howled CrazySugarFreakBoy! as the monkey armies gated in.
“You called, we came,” answered Galor of Vesalia. “Where is the one who released our captive?”
“I think he’s hiding under that console over there,” pointed Troia.
“We shall deal with the one who made us betray our sacred trust,” General Ukko promised. “This one is for Sock Monkey!”
The arrival of two hundred angry higher primates on the battlefield turned the tide so that when Donar, Hatman, and Exile rejoined the team after the battle of Worraplonka Falls the Legion had pressed into the very heart of von Doom’s secret laboratory.
“No! I won’t be beaten again! I won’t” screamed the would-be archvillain.
“Status, Ziles,” called Fin Fang Foom. “Is there any chance that the energy signature from that bomb won’t have attracted the Celestians?”
“Not even if they’re long ago in a galaxy far, far away,” warned the Xnylonian. “And we have thirteen minutes to defuse it.”
“Can’t be done,” the Dark Knight warned. “Have Goldeneyed teleport it away from here. To Jupiter.”
“No! No, if necessary I shall use premature detonation!” screamed von Doom.
“Where have I heard that before?” Dancer wondered, kicking him into a control panel which electrocuted the villain just enough to render him unconscious and scramble his personal teleportation escape field so that only his pants were shifted to a place of safety on the other side of the planet.
Sorceress gestured at the main control console and there was a shower of purple-green sparks. Across the battlefield von Doom’s creatures fell like stringless puppets.
“Nay!” protested Donar. “Waketh up, fell monsters, and be rightly smitten for the nonce! Thou cheateth!”
“It’s over, big guy,” Exile told him gently. “But I’m sure there’ll be more pointless big monsters another day.”
“Alright,” Goldeneyed announced. “I’m going to need to build up power for a couple of minutes to shift this Celestian artefact where it can’t do any harm.
“Just so’as it’s not more than eleven minutes, kiddo,” Trickshot noted.
“Something is wrong,” Ziles reported. “Whitney shorted the computers in this place, but I’m still picking up electromagnetic signals.”
“Could it be the bomb itself/” Hatman suggested.
“No, that’s off the scale. This is more like another computer still running, but incredibly complex.”
The cracked viewscreen burst into life and flooded the room with a green light. “That would be me,” suggested the Supreme Interference.
“You!” hissed Dancer. Last time they had met, the master-computer of the Skree Empire had tricked her into summoning Galactivac the Living Death that Sucks and decimating a planet.
“Me,” agreed the Interference. “You human champions have done well to locate and neutralise von Doom, but I am afraid I cannot allow you to interrupt the detonation of the bomb which I have modified to alter your planet into New Skree-Lump”
“Oh yeah?” Nats snarled. “I’m taking you down, spud-head.” But he found he couldn’t move.
One by one all the Lair Legion and their Vesalian allies found themselves paralysed.
“You may find that you have been rendered immobile by my menta-rays. Do not fear. This is a purely temporary phenomenon whilst the countdown to the end of your civilisation takes place.” The holographic representation of a giant cabbage-headed genius laughed in glee. “Let’s count down together, shall we? Ten minutes. Nine minutes fifty. Nine minutes forty…”
Of course all of this had been foreseen by the other indigenous race from the world of the Skree, the sentient coleslaw know as the Cellari, long-time opponents of the Supreme Interference. Cellari (Cellarius Skeelumpus) enjoy a south-facing cellar with plenty of nitrates and an occasional phosphate bath. They are also interested in music, knitting, macrame, and world peace. Water well during dry spells. They had anticipated their enemy’s gambit and had sent agents to Earth to thwart him just at this moment.
So it was truly a shame that the roboroos had been really hungry earlier, and that Cellari taste really nice.
“Nine minutes thirty, nine minutes twenty, nine minutes ten, nine minutes…”
In our next exciting episode: The Lair Legion has nine minutes, uh, eight minutes fifty, to save the planet from becoming the new Skree Homeworld, and not one of them can move a muscle. Meanwhile, Al. B Harper accompanies Vizh, Cheryl, ManMan, Yo, and the gang back to Paradopolis to stop the Hooded Hood snaring Celestians, and finds out what the cowled crime-czar was proposing to Madame Symmetry of Synchronicity. That leaves Messenger, De Brown Streak, and spiffy as Paradopolis’ last hope. Also packed in are the results of Lisette’s pregnancy test, Chronic’s teenage rebellion, dull thud’s music criticism, and Dynamite Boy’s big bang. The curtain goes up on the penultimate arc of the World Tour with Untold Tales of the Save the Paradopolis Variety Theatre Benefit Concert. Start queuing for your tickets now.