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Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: The Skeletons in the Closet Sunday, 11-Jul-1999 18:01:55
Note: If you haven't read the previous chapter, "The Secret History of the Parodyverse" just a few entries down the board I suggest you do so first. For the first time in his life Hatman had a true understanding of the phrase ‘feculent slime’. The tunnels into which he and CrazySugarFreakBoy! had been cast were waist-deep in the aforementioned material and smelled worse than Space Ghost after a night out at a curry house. What made matters worse was that CSFB! was without his usual silly suit and was therefore far less able to cope with climbing the walls; there was the period squelch of Dreamglove Foxchaser slipping back beneath the crusted surface of the ooze. Hatman was also powerless without his trademark hats to draw power upon. Right now he’d have settled for a gas mask. So there they were, groping along the tunnels by touch and able to see only by the light of that eerie green fungus which grows only to allow passing victims to see just how dire their situation is. Fortunately Hatman had developed a little mantra which he repeated to himself over and over again. Somehow it helped. “I’m going to kill Jarvis. I’m going to kill Jarvis…” “This is great!” CrazySugarFreakBoy proclaimed. “I mean, we’re trapped beneath an actual evil temple, travelling down tunnels in search of That Which Manne Was Notte Meant to Know, about to have our sanity blasted by a Beast of the Nether Pitte and all that. Wow!” “I’m going to kill Jarvis and CSFB! I’m going to kill Jarvis and CSFB!…” There was an echoing twanging noise and something moved in the shadows. Hatman swung around to face his doom. Something orange and green sank beneath the ooze. “Awlriiight!” CrazySugarFreakBoy! awlrighted. “We’re saved.” “”We are?” Hatman answered, hoping for a previously undescribed member of the Lovecraft lexicon, the sort that helpfully gave one a cup of coffee and led one out of tunnels to a nice warm bath and perhaps served brandy on the way. It wasn’t a very big hope. CSFB! waded over to the corner where the disturbance was and dove beneath the surface. He rose again clinging to his missing silly suit. It was still fluorescent despite having been dropped down the same shaft into the same stuff as the heroes had. In fact it seemed to glow more now that it had bounced to its master. “We’re back in business, old buddy,” Dream told Hatty. He tossed a sewage-encrusted hatility belt over to his friend. “Thank you,” Hatman replied neutrally, holding the brown slimy object with finger and thumb at arms length. He wasn’t relishing the idea of putting any of the things from that belt on to his head. A bizarre echo rumbled up the sewer from one of the deeper passages. It wasn’t a sound made by anything remotely human. Then it was followed by a distorted zaaaappp-ing sound. “It was this way!” CSFB! announced, and bounced away happily to investigate further in his retrieved silly suit. “And we are not going in the opposite direction because…?” Hatman asked himself as he set out after the glowing juvenile. With a wince he pulled on a random hat and squelched it down over his hair. From the strengthening effect he felt it was probably a Bulls hat. Which made the stuff tricking down his face… When spiffy woke up he found himself bundled between a Barbie doll house and a set of mouldering college textbooks. His fern was groaning from the effects of the weedkiller that the sidekicks had ambushed him with. And he was being dusted. “What the heck?” he demanded, opening his eyes to see a Lisa-lookalike flicking him with a feather duster. “They do that about every half hour,” Frog-Man warned him. Spiffy strained against his bonds to see that Goldeneyed’s own sidekick was equally trussed up beside a broken tumble-dryer and a more broken Zebulon. “Where the hell are we?” the fern-wielder demanded. “And what is going on?” “We’ve been captured,” Frog-Man admitted. “My own team did it, the New Battlers. They think all the old guard heroes should be put out of their misery. When I tried to stop them they beat me up. Same with Zebulon here. As for where we are… I think this is Visionary’s basement.” The conversation came to a halt as the Asils arrived to hoover them so the place would look nice for their master’s return. DarkHwk channelled the full power of his artillery upon the pulsing green tentacle wrapped wound his waist and hoped for the best. The massive cilia burst apart into hundreds of tiny but perfectly viable crawling creatures which swarmed over the armoured hero, each seeking that vital way into Zane’s costume. “This is a terribly not good situation!” Yo the thought being thought as he too was dragged down towards the maw of the creature. As usual in times of crisis, Yo had manifested a swirling black cape, brimmed pillbox hat, and eye mask. DarkHwk felt it would take more than carving a few Z’s on the monster to defeat this beastie. “That mirror we came through,” the amulet-armoured avenger realised as his mind caught up with the plot, “The one we found in the mansion. It matched Lisa’s description…” “No,” Yo disagreed, struggling not to go into the many-toothed and salivating jaws of the creature, “Lisa is being a cute and black-leathered girl who is being kind to Yo and bunnies except when she lets her kitty at them. She looks nothing like big mirror of silver with carvings round it.” “I mean,” corrected DarkHwk, “that it matches the mirror that Lisa described from Herringcarp Asylum. The Hooded Hood’s Portal of Pretentiousness. The one that could shift people and things from reality to reality.” “Stop being eating of Yo, uncute tentacled uncuteness,” Yo instructed the horror. “How could nasty uncute Hoody’s mirror come into nice Lair Mansion?” Unfortunately DarkHwk, having been swallowed, couldn’t answer. “Oh dear,” Yo considered, using the last of his through energies to resist being consumed for just a few moments longer. A youthful voice echoed over the sunless cavern. “Oh boy, I know that one. That’s got to be Shab’adabba’Dhu, the Groper out of Grossness, That Which Writhes Beneath!” “Sounds like a Lair Legion induction from Lisa,” Hatman remembered. “But you’re right, I’d recognise those tentacles anywhere. And me without my mixmaster’s cap.” Then his puzzlement caught up with him, “Wait a minute. How can you recognise that thing?” “My First Big Book of Things Manne Was Notte Meant to Knowwe,” CSFB! smiled happily. “Hello, Yo-friends!” Yo called across to the two arriving legionnaires. “Yo would come over and give you both to be big hugs but Yo is being eaten just right now.” “We’ve got to do something,” Hatman shouted. “You fill up my senses/ Like a night in the forest…” “What are you doing?” CSFB! puzzled. “Like a mountain in springtime… music put it to sleep last time. We got Space Ghost drunk… like a walk in the rain…” “It doesn’t look sleepy just now,” CSFB! noticed. “Please do not to be eating Yo, big gross monstrosity,” Yo asked the Groper out of Grossness. The flailing tentacles stopped. “Why not?” a voice bubbled out of an orifice somewhere below the surface of the dark waters. “Because we need to talk to you,” CSFB! called, bouncing forward and smiling as broadly as the faces on his costume. “About regurgitating DarkHwk” suggested Yo. “Wait a minute,” objected Hatman, “This is Shabb’adabba’Dhu. It’s a formless monster from before time. We can’t just stop battle and have a chat with him. It’s not done.” “Well thank you very much for lumping me with every other formless monster from before time,” Shabb’adhabba’Dhu complained. It crossed two of its tentacles into a sort of cross-arms-folded position and glared at Hatman with six of its eyes. “Um, sorry,” the capped crusader answered sheepishly. “As a matter of fact, I’ve been bound down here for so long that I’d enjoy a decent chat and a bit of news before I devour you,” That Which Writhes Below admitted. “I’d enjoy being let out of your stomach,” came a muffled voice. Shab’adabba’Dhu obligingly belched, propelling Darkhwk out of what the hero fervently hoped was a mouth. “I thought you slept under Paradopolis,” Hatman ventured to ask the Elder Thing. “And that if you woke up it would herald the destruction of all that is by the Cosmic Outer Orbit Tenacities, which were ancient before the Parodyverse was born?” “I do sleep ‘neath the city you now call Paradopolis,” Shab’adabba’Dhu admitted. “I’m just really, really big.” It turned to Yo. “Be truthful now, do you think my tentacles are getting fat?” “Yo thinks you are the cutest monster Yo is being ever to have met,” smiled the thought being. “In fact I am the reason that grubby little Wilbur Parody man built his city there in the first place,” the Groper boasted. “Well, the thing I was put there to guard was the reason anyway.” “Wilbur Parody deliberately built a city of ten million people over a creature from elder myth?” complained DarkHwk . “No reason to make me walk to get the sacrifices when it’s breakfast time, is there?” Shab’adabba’Dhu pointed out. “You are, however, I feel I must point out,” declared Hatman, “awake. And I don’t see any Cosmic Outer Orbit Tenacities returning now the stars are right.” “Bless you, I’m not awake,” the Groper chuckled, flicking Hatty with a playful tentacle. “I’m vast, I am. And most of me’s peacefully snoozing. This is just me sleepwalking, this is. You’d soon know if the COOTs awakened in their elder wrath.” “Yeah,” snorted CSFB! “There’s be hundreds of many-angled thingies tottering about saying how sacrifices weren’t as tasty as they were when they were a pouchling.” Shab’adabba’Dhu sighed and then suddenly sprang into action, seizing each of the Legionnaires before they could do anything about it. “Well, thanks for the chat, chaps. Back to the devouring now, I suppose.” “Waitaminnit!” Hatman called desperately. “Isn’t there more news you want form us? What has happened in the world above after all this time, sort of thing?” The Groper considered this. “We-e-ell… there is one thing you could tell me. After all, I’ve been trapped down here for a very long time.” “What?” DarkHwk desperately asked. “What do you need to know?” Shab’addaba’Dhu told him. “Who was it that shot JR?” Curiously, DarkHwk, Yo, CSFB! and Hatman weren’t the legionnaires in the most trouble. No, honestly. You see, it turns out that the Legion’s mansion was built by old Wilbur Parody, himself a former Shaper of Worlds gone bad, to tap into the power of the great Secret concealed on Parody Island by the Celestian Space Giants back in pre-prehistory. And the Celestians had placed a few guardians and a rather nasty curse there to stop meddlers from, well, meddling. So when the Hooded Hood had set off the great Sidekick Plague and Lisa and Goldeneyed had gone off in time to investigate Wilbur parody the whole curse thing set into motion. Now you’re all very busy people, so we’d better remind you just what was going on in the mansion last time we looked. It was Hallowe’en Night and therefore things were getting spooky. The Paradopolis power grid was down, and the Legion’s backup generators were sulking. The mysterious and irritating Englishman Con Johnstantine had turned up to announce that something evil was loose in the mansion and somebody there was possessed. The Legion, convinced by the blood oozing from the walls, the unidentified boy parts, and so forth, searched their home and found it larger and with rather more stygian cellars than last time they looked. That was how Yo and DarkHwk came to fall through the Hooded Hood’s Portal of Pretentiousness – left there by Wilbur Parody all those years ago and unnoticed until now – and end up talking soap operas with the Groper out of Grossness. Meanwhile, Dark Knight, Starseed, and Space Ghost have uncovered a bricked-up attic chimney where they have found the long-dead corpses of Lisa and Goldeneyed. Fin Fang Foom and Banjooooo have found Baron Zemo’s genetically-manufactured daughter Zemette in a cellar chamber which is remarkably similar to the one where HV was over a century back in the last episode. And Visionary, Cheryl, Tina, and NTU-150 have discovered that the mansion’s computer HALLIE is the possessed individual, which is bad since HALLIE controls all the Lair’s automated defence systems and is in charge of Enty’s newest innovation, the micro-servo-nonobots which now repair and redesign the mansion. Is that all pretty clear now? Well then, let’s see how the Dark Knight detective is getting on with an examination of Lisa and Goldeneyes’ mummified remains shall we? “They didn’t die in that chimney. They were put there later,” SK told Starseed. “Who did it?” Space Ghost demanded, shocked suddenly sober for the first time in a long time. People sometimes forgot how focussed and effective SG could be when he wasn’t in la-la land. “There is charring on the bones on one side. I’d suggest an energy blast of some kind, fairly close range, maybe ten feet? They died instantly, never had a chance.” “But who was it?” SG persisted. “Because I’m going to kill them.” Goldeneyed had been a decent enough chap, but the pantsless wonder had really liked Lisa. “Still can’t get through to the others,” Starseed reported, disgustedly hurling his radio away. “We’d better get back and tell the team there’s a murderer on the loose.” “The murderer, as you put it, has probably had a century or more to make his getaway,” Dark Knight commented. “Remember that Lisa and G-Eyed were travelling back in time to visit Wilbur Parody. Clearly they died in that time-frame.” “What are all these daubs of paint on the brickwork?” Starseed wondered. “It’s like some sort of diagram or inscription.” DK examined the marking and tapped into his encyclopaedic knowledge. “Inscription of demonic binding by the looks of it,” he judged. “Sort of like an occult mousetrap.” “And you trigger it by breaking down the wall,” Starseed wondered. “I suppose so.” “Sort of like this wall is broken down?” The demon Oddhorn rose up through the floor, splintering the boards and toppling Starseed and Space Ghost. Somehow DK wasn’t there when it happened. “Well well well, three more little heroesssss to chew up,” the fiend mocked them. “Gaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!” shouted Starseed, ploughing Oddhorn back into the fireplace where the remains had been found and collapsing it on him. The demon rose angrily, shaking off bricks and timbers and looking for his enemies. “That hurt, little mortal. Just for that I’m shutting down your power.” “Gaaahhh***!” Starseed found that his mastery of the Gah! Force was lost, just like that. In fact, at the moment there was no Gah! Force to master. Oddhorn reached out a claw to disembowel him. Dark Knight swung the surprised Starseed out of the way just in time. Starseed found his new super-power was to void his bladder at the moment of greatest danger. “Another one! Sssssay goodbye to whatever makessss you sssspecial, flappy-caped mortal!” sneered Oddhorn. And suddenly Dark Knight tripped up and got tangled in his cloak. “Now for the kill,” the demon told them. Then Oddhorn was propelled back across the room, taking out the wall as he went and falling down into Lisa’s bedroom. “Run,” Space Ghost advised his powerless colleagues. “I’ve still got my Spank Ray. I’ll hold him off. Go get help.” The demon roared and tried to disentangle itself from Lisa’s lingerie collection. “We can’t leave you here to fight a major demon on your own,” Starseed objected. “You’re…” “Only Space Ghost?” Space Ghost smiled. “I’m the guy who’s going to beat some sense into that horned bastard and find out what happened to Lisa. Now go!” A flick of the Spank Ray activated Lisa’s bedside toy box and sent them spraying at Oddhorn. “We’ve got to retreat,” DK admitted. “Without your Gah powers or my athletic prowess we wouldn’t stand a chance against that thing. I’m sorry to say it, but… we’ve got to leave it to the professional.” Oddhorn swelled, doubled his size and came for Space Ghost. Starseed and Dark Knight ran. “Let me get this straight. You’re saying that you are Zemo’s daughter?” In a concealed chamber lined with strange statues deep beneath the Lair Mansion, Banjoooo was trying to catch up with the plot. “She is Zemo’s daughter,” Fin Fan Foom argued defensively, still clutching the petite blonde to him protectively. Imke Ilse Zemo seemed quite content to remain in his arms. “She was genetically created from the cells of Heinrich and his frozen wife Heike and sleep-educated to adulthood.” The king of the Sea Monkeys was still suspicious. “By who?” he demanded. “You can’t just accidentally drop cells together and carelessly blend them into an archvillain’s daughter, you know.” “You mean ‘by whom’,” Zemette corrected him. “Father has the same concerns. He hasn’t entirely adjusted to being a parent yet. I’m afraid I’m something of a shock for him.” “Neither you or Zemo knows where you came from?” Foomy checked. “For all we know the stork brought me,” the girl in pink and purple shrugged. “But I do know that dad’s not exactly happy that I don’t want to follow him into the family business.” “Villaining?” FFF suggested. “Exactly. He’s going to put me back in the mind machines and make me more… well, more villainous. And I don’t want him to. That’s why I came here to get someone from the Lair Legion to rescue me.” Banjoooo looked around the darkened room. “And you just happened to stumble across a chamber we’ve never seen before in a cavern we’ve never noticed beneath our own mansion?” “Of course not,” Zemette pouted. Finny thought she had a rather cute pout. “I came to the main door of the mansion, found it open, and followed the strange sounds until I found myself here.” “Strange sounds? What strange sounds?” The Makluan dragon’s sensitive hearing couldn’t detect anything. “Somebody calling my name,” Imke admitted. “They had an accent, and a really deep spooky voice.” “Japanese?” Banjooooo suggested, remembering the Manga Wars. “Or French?” Foom wondered, digging up an old prejudice. “No…” Zemette frowned, straining to remember. “More… more Latvian.” Banjooooo and Foomy exchanged worried looks. “He’s dead,” the king of the sea monkeys assured them both. “It is Hallowe’en night,” Fin Fang Foom noted. “Who’s dead?” Zemette demanded. “Who lured me down here into this…” she looked around for a more adequate description of her environment now that people with torches to play over it had arrived, “…this strange room covered in bas-reliefs of members of the Lair Legion but apparently thousands of years old?” Banjooooo and the dragon realised that she had noticed a rather significant architectural feature. “She’s right, you know,” the giant sea monkey admitted. “These carving are of us. I don’t think they caught your good side, Foomy. But my own depiction is pretty regal and majestic, wouldn’t you say?” “These carvings appear to be of our battles,” Foom recognised, walking along the walls and tracing the history of the Lair Legion. Somehow his arm was still around Zemette’s shoulder and he didn’t really object to that. “Look, there’s the League of Regulars battling the Left-Outs, and the International Incident, and our first encounter with Dr Moo…” “These are more recent,” Banjooooo noticed. “See, there’s the Zombie Plague with Disco Hitler, and… and here is a picture of the three of us shining torches round a spooky carved room!” Foom came over to look at the carving. It showed a Makluan with his arm around a young woman and beside a sea-monkey, looking up at carvings of themselves. It made his eyes hurt to look at the recursion. “I take it this isn’t the Lair Legion art project, then,” Zemette considered, looking at the pale shocked faces of her companions. “I don’t recognise these carvings,” Banjooooo admitted, shining his torch further along. “NTU-150, Starseed, DK, and Space Ghost fighting some sort of horned monster. Some sort of an alien shapeshifter invasion? Some really big Space Giants surrounding the Earth. And then… blank wall.” “I think we’d better get out of here,” Foom suggested. “We need to get the whole Legion in on this. Maybe Enty or Jarvis or Tina or Cheryl can make some sense of it? But right now I’m just creeped out.” He glanced down at Zemette. “I mean, I think for the lady’s sake we should get her to safety.” “Are you going to save me from my father, Finny?” Imke asked him, turning her big blue eyes on the Makluan. “We can’t allow any innocent to be dragged into the ways of evil,” FFF replied, leading her out of the chamber and back up to the mansion. Even as he spoke he realised that he probably sounded like a tool. Foomy hated talking to women. He could feel Banjoooo’s smirk right through his back. Then Zemette began to become transparent. “What’s happening?” the dragon gasped. “I’m out after curfew,” the girl replied. “Father must be using the teleport return beam.” “I’ll save you,” FFF promised. “Really?” Zemette reached out and grabbed Foom, planting a passionate kiss on the surprised dragon’s lips. “Nooo!” Banjooooo warned as both Imke and Fin Fang Foom began to fade out in the teleport ray together. He had just enough time to leap into the transporter beam himself before all three vanished back to Castle Zemo. The Abandoned Legion arrived to find Visionary’s house in total darkness. Cap kicked the door in just to be on the safe side. For the continuity-conscious amongst you, please note that this story takes place before the arrival of Hunter Victorious to provide new levels of confusion within the team. The respondents to the distress call (apparently) from spiffy were Cap, Sorceress, Paste pot Pete, and Cobra. These days that was pretty much it for the ol’ AL. “Lair Legion bastards,” Cobra growled as she stalked into the darkened home. “First they take Sersi from us and lose her, now they won’t let spiffy leave and are trying to brainwash him into being a good little legionnaire.” “Be careful,” Sorceress sensed. “There’s more here than meets the eye.” “Some kind of mind-control device, I shouldn’t wonder,” Cap suggested. “I knew that Visionary character couldn’t be as bland and innocuous as he pretended. Nobody’s that dim and pointless.” The Abandoned Legion checked the house with a suspicious efficiency and found nothing. “I did like their hot tub, though,” Pete admitted. “That just leaves the cellar,” Cap frowned. He didn’t think the condos here should have cellars. “Be careful,” Sorceress warned. “I can… I think spiffy’s down there. But he’s not alone.” “I’m ready to take on the entire Lair Legion,” Cobra promised, checking her venom levels. As usual they were alarmingly high. Cap kicked the door in and the Abandoned Legion made a spectacular entry into the darkened cellar. They found spiffy, Frog-Man, and Zebulon trussed like turkeys and gagged. spiffy was truing to say something. Paste Pot Pete hurried across the cellar to release the fern-wielder. “What are you saying?” he asked the spiffster. “I said, ‘it’s a trap!’” spiffy shouted as the gag was removed. But it was too late. The cellar twisted and folded and ceased to exist. Everyone in it was gone. Then the cellar unfolded again just the way it had been; except, that is, for the notable lack of its previous occupants and the appearance of seventeen Lisa-clones. “It works,” Asil-21 danced happily. “It gets rid of people!” “It will help us get rid of the Lair Legion,” agreed Asil-9. “It will help us get rid of Her,” chimed in Asil-14. “Then there will just be us and Visionary,” calculated Asil-2 “Mr Bojangles told the truth then,” Asil-1 smiled. “It was a good bargain.” It was an interesting contest, the mansion’s security systems versus the man who had designed them. Unfortunately, the nanobots that had been released as maintenance drones into the ducts of the mansion had extensively revamped the defence grids, turning protective devices which had previously only been accidentally lethal into engines of murder. And as the only legionnaire present with the sort of powers to combat the drone-bombs, the energy lashes, the stasis-pods, and the laser cannons, NTU-150 was badly hampered by the need to keep his girlfriend and his other companions alive. “Why is it,” complained Visionary, ducking behind an overturned coffee table and trying to shield his wife from death-rays, “that whenever Baron Zemo attacks the mansion the defences just sit there and ignore him, whereas when HALLIE gets possessed and turns them against us it’s suddenly Star Wars?” “The Legion must DIE!” the mansion’s intercom system explained. “NTU-150 can’t keep this up for long,” Cheryl judged. She was cradling the still-hypnotised Tina in her arms and wondering how long the coffee table would prove resistant to lasers. “We’ve got to exorcise your computer,” Con Johnstantine judged. “It’s the only way to stop this.” “Anytime soon would be good,” Enty suggested, checking the gauges on his battle-suit and worrying about how many of the nanites might be inside his armour redesigning his systems even now. “We’ve got to find some of the good spirits, the protective guardians of the household, and get them to fight back,” Johnstantine shouted. He crawled over to Tina and started giving the telepath instructions about what to scan for. A particularly nasty death-drone caught NTU-150 from behind, and would have finished him then and there had Visionary not snatched the toaster and hurled it at the kil-bot. The toaster exploded, as the possibly fake man had known it would. After all, Enty had designed it. “You will all die,” HALLIE’s speaker-voice promised them, over and over. “You will all die and then SKRAAAWWWK! Hello, hello, is anybody hearing this SQREEL! This is Fleabot and I need help now!” “Fleabot!” Vizh gasped. “He want off into the ducts to sulk and to find the maintenance microbots! He’s in trouble.” “They’re after me! They’re right behind me. And they’re shepherding me towards the main power core!” “He must be tapping into the comms system,” NTU-150 reasoned. “But if they herd him into the power core he’ll be annihilated, and possibly take the mansion with it.” “I’ve got to get to him, to rescue him!” declared Visionary. “With the mansion defence systems trying to kill us all?” Cheryl argued. “It would be suicide.” “He’s my friend,” Visionary answered. Cheryl restrained a sigh and gave her husband what might very well prove to be a farewell kiss. On the other hand, if he wasn’t such a self-sacrificing idiot he wouldn’t be Visionary, would he? “Go save your friend,” she told him. Using a coffee table as a defensive weapon the fake man leaped across the room and vanished down the corridor. Half a dozen anti-grav attack platforms peeled off in pursuit. More energy-beamed lanced into NTU-150. He could have avoided them but then they would have targeted Tina and Johnstantine. His armour started to bubble. “We need help now!” he warned the Englishman. The door burst open and Starseed and Dark Knight burst in. “Thank God!” cried Cheryl. “Rescue!” Starseed pushed the rather clumsy-footed Dark knight down behind the table. “Lostpowerschasedbydemonrightbehindusworkingwithpossessedhouseallgoing todie!” the Gah! Master hurriedly explained. Cheryl had very little time to wonder at Starseed’s suddenly squeaky high voice, or where the Dark Knight had come from, nor why he seemed to different and unshadowed, before the demon Oddhorn took out the west wall of the lounge and swatted NTU-150 out of the air like a bug. “Watch out!” Starseed squeaked in his best Mickey Mouse impression. “Somehow he can stop our powers!” but NTU-150 had just found out the hard way that the laws of comic-book physics had been revoked at the monster’s command. His life-sustaining battle armour crashed in a series of terminal short circuits. “C’mon, Tina,” Jonstantine warned the Lair Legion’s resident telepath, “Either make contact with some benevolent spirit that we can manifest or else start planning on finding a new boyfriend, luv.” “There… there is something…” Tina strained. “Something old… angry… almost primal… yet familiar… with a desire to manifest, and an old grudge to settle…” “We need to be able to give it a link to get here physically,” Johnstantine said urgently. “Think, what might that link be?” “That thing’s going to kill Enty!” Cheryl shouted, watching as Oddhorn seized the armoured legionnaire’s head and prepared to tug. “Not while I have a chance to stop it,” Dark Knight promised. He was noticeably slower in running over to the scene but he managed to divert the demon’s attack on NTU by taking a massive slash to the stomach himself. “He’ll be massacred!” Cheryl cried. “He’s powerless.” “Gah! I hate this!” squeaked Starseed and dived in after his comrade. Dark Knight had survived the clawing by dint of the metal tea tray stuffed up his shirt (but it would never be good enough for the best china again). The Gah! Master had run out of crockery to defend himself with; it was going to hurt. “Any time now, Tina,” Johnstantine urged. Oddhorn had NTU-150 in one claw and Starseed in the other. “It’sssss a long time since I got to really pulp a hero,” the demon snarled. “Not ssssince I killed that Messssenger centuries ago. I’ll make thissss nissse and ssssslow and extra painful.” At that point a Spank Ray brought the ceiling down on Oddhorn. Starseed was stunned but the demon merely laughed and hurled NTU-150 up to collide with Space Ghost in Lisa’s room above. Then the last of the items from Lisa’s toy box fell down through the broken roof, just as Space Ghost had planned it. Mjalcolm teetered over the broken edge of the floor above and dropped straight onto Oddhorn’s head with a painful-sounding thunk. But it wasn’t enough. Oddhorn was pissed. “Now, you all die!” Visionary reached the power core with only minor lesions and first degree burns. HALLIE’s possessed battle computers were able to calculate just how a trained warrior would move and anticipate where he would be at any given microsecond; which explained why they were having so much trouble tracking Visionary. “Help! Over here!” came a desperate and robot-tinny voice from one of the duct. “Die, older model, die,” the micro-repairbots chanted as they attacked the badly outnumbered Fleabot, pushing him ever backwards towards the coruscating energy core. Visionary backed up against the wall with Fleabot behind it. “Alright, I surrender,” he told the anti-grav weapons platforms. “No surrender, mortal scum,” the possessed drones screeched, firing their cannons full power at the possibly fake man. Fortunately Visionary had ducked even as he spoke. Long experience had taught him that to a certain type of villain, ‘I surrender’ translates as ‘Please shoot me now’. The duct wall boiled away. Fleabot hopped out of the nanites grasp. “There is no escape, older model,” the micro-robot assured him, pursuing across the floor where Visionary was crawling out from the wreckage. “We are newer, faster, more efficient. “Oh yeah?” Fleabot snarled, aware that he had one more option now he was out of the confining conduits. “And can you change size like this?” One of Fleabot’s less commonly used abilities manifested. Then there was a sort of crunching sound as of tiny machines being ground under a metallic foot. Then Fleabot turned on the anti-grav weapons platforms. “The human’s with me,” he warned them. “And just exactly who might you be, traitor machine?” the platforms challenged. Fleabot glanced down at the charred and grimy possibly fake man who was such an unlikely hero, and who had risked his life to rescue the little robot. “I’m his sidekick,” he told them proudly. Baron Zemo was in a foul mood as he operated the recall teleport device to bring his wayward daughter home. He arranged for her to appear in her bedroom and stalked up the castle’s master staircase determined to give her a piece of his mind and a lecture on the standards of being a Zemo. Zemette met him halfway there, waiting for him at the top of the staircase. “What have you to say for yourself, young lady?” the archvillain demanded, resorting to the rhetoric of frustrated fathers everywhere. “I’m in trouble, daddy.” “You certainly are. I distinctly told you when you had to be home for, and…” “No, daddy. I mean I’m late.” “By more than three hours beyond the agreed curfew. If I can’t trust you to…” “Daddy” Zemette shouted, “You’re not listening to me! You never listen. What I mean is that I’m late with, well, you know, my time of the month. And I think I’m in trouble. I think I might be pregnant.” There was a deathly pause. Zemo almost toppled back down the stairs. “Pregnant?” he hissed. “How? Who?” It was probably unfortunate that the door to Zemette’s room opened just then and a draconic head popped out. “Has Zemo gone get, Imke?” Fin Fang Foom asked. Things went downhill from there. The demon Oddhorn had neutralised the powers of NTU-150, effectively crippling him and leaving Jaime clinging to life by a thread. Space Ghost now found his Spank Ray inoperative and was trapped beneath Enty’s useless battle armour. Starseed, Gahhless and desperate, was being slowly choked in the fiend’s right claw. Dark Knight was struggling helplessly as Oddhorn closed his other fist over the urban legend’s face. And Oddhorn was saving Cheryl and Tina for last. “C’mon luv, if there’s any guardian spirit wantin’ to help out now is the time to manifest them,” Johnstantine urged the straining telepath. He was also calculating the odds on him sloping away while the demon was working on the rest of them just in cast this didn’t pan out. Of course, he’d still probably get cut to pieces by the possessed mansion. Tina felt she could do it now, though. The focus item was there. She concentrated all her thoughts upon it, creating a channel from some realm of belief to allow the return to Earth of the one whose essence she had contacted. Oddhorn seemed to understand what she was doing. He tossed Starseed and Dark Knight aside, swept away Cheryl and reached down towards the trembling telepath. Con Johnstantine declined to interpose himself; that wasn’t in his job description. “Who isss going to sssave you now, little telepath?” Oddhorn smirked. And then the storm lit up the entire building. Ripples of lightning played over the walls, temporarily knocking the mansion systems offline. And something with roughly the velocity of a steam train and roughly the size of a pickaxe screamed into Oddhorn’s midriff sending him searing backwards away from Tina. A guardian spirit had been summoned alright. “Foul demoneth, to mess with mine friends is to seek an eternity of dental work!” the newly arrived protector shouted. “For time beyond reckoning I hast been looking to kick thy ass from here to Miserableheim, and by the bowels of Wodin I hereby proclaimeth that this night one of us shall be taking their bollocks home in a sack. Thus let it be!” So Donar, the hemigod of thunder, returned to make good on an old and now-remembered oath. And the heavens shook. And next time: The resolution of the mansion possession! Donar vs Oddhorn! At the mercy of the Groper out of Grossness! Zemo reacts to impending grandfatherhood! The sidekicks make their move! And the mystery of Visionary’s basement is revealed! Don’t miss it. The Hooded Hood; announcing a poll to decide which character is currently in the biggest trouble |
| Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: The Skeletons in the Closet (The Hooded Hood; announcing a poll to decide which character is currently in the biggest trouble) (11-Jul-1999 18:01:55) |
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