Posted by The Hooded Hood brings together this omnibus compilation for those who just can't bear all that scrolling down the board on October 26, 2001 at 11:19:42:
#91: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion vs the New Purveyors of Peril – This Time It’s Too Important to be Personal
Previous chapters at
The Hooded Hood's Homepage
of Doom
Character profiles at Who's Who in
the Parodyverse
Villain profiles for Purveyors of Peril in #75:
Untold Tales of the Lair Legion Who's Who Special Edition: The New Purveyors of
Peril
Other useful things in Where's
Where in the Parodyverse
The Fixtures
List:
LONDON: VelcroVixen, Headcase, Polypheme 1, Spacewarped, and Rottweiler and
the Terrier vs the Dark Knight and Ziles, the girl wonder.
LOS ANGELES: Suicide Blonde, Gromm the Living Flatulence, Spacewarped, and
PsychoAcidPervGirl! vs Exile and Troia 215.
SYDNEY: Professor Manyarms, Gamona the Assassin, Huntmaster, and Spacewarped
vs Goldeneyed and Trickshot.
RIO: Dr Loveray, Appendage Man, Hellfrasier, Voodoo Vicar, and Spacewarped vs
CrazySugarFreakBoy! and the Sorceress.
BEIJING: Commander Rox-Hoff, Anvil Man, HuntingJustice DeathMarrow,
Savagetooth, and Spacewarped vs Hatman and Nats.
MOSCOW: Indigo Impostor, Onslaughter, Razor Ballerina, and Spacewarped vs Fin
Fang Foom, Donar, and the Probability Dancer.
CELESTIAN CITY: Visionary, Cheryl, Sir Mumphrey Wilton, Al B.Harper, ManMan,
Cheryl, Yo, Meggan Foxxx, Miss Framlicker, Flapjack, Valeria of Carfax, Lisette,
and Amy Racecar vs the Celestian Space Robots
PARADOPOLIS: Messenger, spiffy, De Brown Streak, dull thud, Dynamite
Boy, and Chronic vs Dr Moo, the Paradox Stranger, and… the Hooded Hood.
Place your bets, and then read on…
“So how do you think it’s going?” the Paradox Stranger asked, drinking his
extra-caffeine Jolt Cola. Coming next: Beth Shellett faces a fate worse than death but G-Eyed
and Trickshot object.
Herringcarp Asylum, Upstate Gothamtropolis:
“Within acceptable parameters,” the Hooded Hood
replied. “Forty percent of the planet has surrendered and is begging for new
rulership. The remainder of the world is in anarchic disarray. The so-called
deities are still in disarray from the Amalgamated Pantheons gambit. The
Abhumans are dealing with the consequences of the escape of two of their ancient
Deviate enemies. Fearwalker has managed to introduce the first-stage virus
culled from the lamented Sersi’s last mortal shell to neutralise the
Abhumans.”
“That was one of my very best virii,” smirked the diabolical Dr
Moo.
“The majority of the world’s ‘superheroes’ are either sidelined or dead.
The Abandoned Legion and the JBH are both offworld, and by the time they
struggle back they will be too late to affect the outcome of our little gambit.
So far there have been thirty-one confirmed kills in the superheroic community,
mostly of single heroes working overseas.”
“That bounty on all
law-enforcement agents was nasty,” the Paradox Stranger frowned. “Did you have
to do that?”
“What part of ‘villain’ didn’t you understand?” the cowled crime
czar scowled. He continued his summary. “The plots of the Supreme Interference
and Peter von Doom have both been thwarted, their plans subverted into my own
long-term scheme. Soon the Space Robots will be reprogrammed to obey only me,
and thus we will have our platform to interrogate and ultimately make war upon
the mysterious forces who created the Parodyverse.”
“That’s the bit I signed
on for,” admitted the Stranger. “They have a lot to answer for.”
“I just
wanted the technical challenge,” Moo explained.
“Various allies have chosen
to offer their services for various reasons,” the Hood noted. “Even now Magenta
St Evil is using the opportunity to store up certain equipment she will be able
to use in her subsequent attempts to overthrow whoever ends up in authority at
the conclusion of our exercise. Count Fokker is seeking to settle scores with
his old adversary Dan Drury, which in nicely keeping both SPUD and HERPES out of
our hair. The Lynchpin is wise enough to sit out the storm and take advantage of
what comes after. Roni Y Avis is trying to sell insurance policies through the
internet.”
“And Akiko Masamune has closed Hong Kong to hero and villain alike
and taken charge of it with an iron rule,” Dr Moo noted.
“Indeed,” the cowled
crime czar agreed. “I feel the Purveyors of Peril may wish to discuss that with
her if their world takeover succeeds.”
“If?” the Paradox Stranger checked.
“They’ve devastated the planet, thrown every nation into anarchy, murdered
indiscriminately, set half a million howling criminals lose to do whatever they
want, and you still think the outcome’s in doubt?”
“It is always best to
allow for a few last minute, unexpected improvisations from the protagonists of
good,” the grey-clad archvillain observed. “The entire Lair Legion is still
active, for example. I have arranged it thus. There must always be a chance for
the heroes, one tiny opportunity for them to grasp salvation and deliver the
world, or what pleasure can crushing them bring?”
“And you expect them to do
the unexpected?” the Stranger checked.
“The unexpected must always be
factored in,” the Hood replied.
“Like somebody shooting your son?” the
diabolical Dr Moo suggested carefully.
“That kind of thing, yes. I admit that
drew my attention for a few moments, until I discovered that it was a ruse
perpetrated by the Abyssal Greye and his Gothametropolis Ghoul
Clan.”
“Question is, what did it draw your attention from?” speculated the
Paradox Stranger.
“That, perhaps?” Dr Moo wondered, gesturing to the images
flickering across the Portal of Pretentiousness. “Chronic has just blown a
Celestian to Pennsylvania.”
“What!?” snarled the Hooded Hood.
“You won’t get away with this,” Bethany Shellett told the Purveyors of Peril,
against all evidence to the contrary. Coming next: Rio de Janeiro is sexing itself to death, and only the
Sorceress and CrazySugarFreakBoy! can throw on the bucket of cold
water.
Sydney,
Australia:
Professor Manyarms dangled her above
the howling mob by two of his cybernetic limbs, holding her just our of reach as
they tried to drag her down to them. “Oh, I think I will, Miss Shellett. I win
whatever happens. Either I drop you amongst these gentlemen we have released
from a number of facilities for the incurably nasty, let them reacquaint
themselves with the joys of dating, and watch the expression on the face of my
old enemy Goldeneyed when he finds your sad, broken corpse, or else I force the
heroes to launch a premature attack and die in the trap I have set for them.
Either way, it should be entertaining.”
Bethany Shellet had suffered a bad
few days since she had agreed to help Bry Katz find his missing girlfriend. She
had survived the super-villain battle, the time-travel to the Spanish
Inquisition, even her encounter with the Hooded Hood when he had retrieved her
from Madame Symmetry of Synchronicity only to entrust her to the questionable
mercies of the Purveyors of Peril. Now it seemed as though her luck had run out.
She screamed. She felt she deserved to have on moment of blind, utter
terror.
Professor Manyarms dropped her to the lusting mob.
A woman in a
black leather catsuit swung down and grabbed her before she fell.
“Ah,
another quarter heard from,” Professor Manyarms observed as SPUD agent Natalia
Romanza rescued his hostage.
The Huntmaster shot the spy in the leg as she
landed on a ledge.
“Two for the mob,” smirked Manyarms.
Suddenly the
Sydney Opera House fell on him. Literally. It has taken quite a long time for
Goldeneyed to build up the teleportation energies to do it, but right now Bry
Katz was feeling quite cross.
“Hey, Mixmaster!” Trickshot called out, since
the world’s deadliest hunter had been so good as to give his position away when
he attacked Natalia. “Eat hot glue arrow.”
The Huntmaster shot the three
shafts out of the air with a negligent competence.
“Alright then, eat hot
electroshock arrow!”
The Huntmaster likewise eliminated those
shafts.
“Alright then, eat hot scramblenet arrow!”
The Huntmaster shot
these too. Unfortunately they weren’t scramblenet arrows. The first one
exploded, hurling Huntmaster from his perch and sending him sprawling. The
second hammered out a hypersonic pulse as it was shattered, flooring the escaped
convicts who were even now grabbing their heavy weapons to join in the battle.
The third released choking CS gas, blurring Huntmaster’s vision and making him
fight for breath.
“Oops,” Trickshot called, “Must classify these things more
carefully. Sorry.”
Gamona the Assassin blurred into the arrogant archer,
crushing his bow with one hand and breaking four of his ribs with the
other.
“Ah,” gasped Trickshot as he fell off his ledge and toppled towards
the plaza below. “Another one of these dates.”
Goldeneyed was preoccupied
across the square trying to catch the space/time-shifting Spacewarped. “Hold
still and be pounded,” he called after the starry black
silhouette.
Spacewarped didn’t speak. Instead he opened a rift to the heart
of a nuclear reactor just outside Delhi, spewing a beam of lethal radiation
right at Bry Katz.
G-Eyed could have teleported away but then Sydney would
have become a radioactive desert – well, more of one. Instead he had to strain
his already-overused teleportation powers, isolating the hard radiation and
shifting it where it couldn’t do any harm.
Spacewarped waited until the hero
was committed and then blinked in to get G-Eyed in a lethal
stranglehold.
Goldeneyed hurled them both forward into the rift to the heart
of the nuclear furnace.
Trickshot toppled towards the hard marble paving, and
as he fell he wound a thin cord to one of the daggers he kept in his bandanna.
He gave it an almost negligent toss and hooked the line to the side of another
building, swinging down and through one of the glass sides to the office suite.
“Ouch,” he complained.
The lightest of sounds behind him warned him that
Gamona was already with him. The green alien assassin with the tattoed-mesh body
was frighteningly fast.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got some kind of code that
says if I kick your ass you have to sleep with me?” Tricky asked
hopefully
Gamona broke his left arm and hurled him out of the window once
more.
She had already anticipated his next move of course. He would use his
good arm to thread and hurl another dagger at the opposite building. Then she
would intercept him in mid-swing and snap his neck.
Trickshot hurled the
dagger without bothering with any cord, and he hurled it right into her chest.
She caught it before it fully penetrated, of course, but even so the wound was
deep and serious. Meanwhile the irritating archer plummeted to his
death.
“C’mon c’mon, c’mon!” he chanted as he fell. “Teamwork, Goldie!
Teamwork!”
There was a flash of golden light as a singed G-Eyed grabbed him
from the air and moved both of them to the ground.
“So you nailed the bugger,
eh?” Trickshot asked as he passed out.
“He can open timespace rifts, I can
teleport. Similar powers but different,” Bry footnoted. “In a nuclear reactor I
can shift the radiation away from me if I concentrate really hard. He can only
do it from whatever direction he opens the rift. Easy.” Then Goldeneyed
staggered and toppled over Trickshot.
Gamona ignored the blood oozing from
her now almost-healed wound and went in for the kill.
“Wow!” grinned CrazySugarFreakBoy! “I haven’t seen scenes like this since my
mom’s last movie!” “Hey, Appendage Man! I’ve seen pencils bigger than some of that stuff you’re
manifesting, and they probably made a bigger mark as well. Catch me if you can!”
“You realise that manifesting a necrotic portal is forbidden, and that I take
a dim view of human sacrifice?” the Sorceress told Voodoo Vicar and his
acolytes. “Now I am going to have to reprimand you.” Coming next: VelcroVixen messes with forces she doesn’t understand,
and the Dark Knight and Ziles follow ancient tradition.
Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil:
“Don’t get distracted,” Sorceress told him sternly,
dragging him away from the street orgy that was occupying every single resident
of Rio due to the psionic beamings of the villainous sex-researcher Dr Loveray.
“We have to concentrate on the job… I mean, on getting what we want… I mean… oh
damn that inhibition neutraliser. I’m having to really concentrate not to tear
my clothes off and join in.”
Dreamcatcher Foxglove shrugged and stepped over
a tableau that would have got it’s participants ten to twenty in Alabama, plus
them shooting the chicken. “I’m okay,” he noted. “I think that’s because I don’t
really have any inhibitions to suppress.”
“That’s why we two got sent here,”
Whitney Darkness reminded him. “Finny would have been dead with a heart attack
by now if he saw the uses they were putting fettuccini to.”
“Yeah. Wish I’d
brought a camera.”
“The other reason I’m glad we’re teamed up is… well Dream,
I need to ask you something.”
“You do? Er. Whitney, you’re a nice girl and
all that but I don’t want to get into a kind of Casey Scott/Logan/Jean
thing…”
“What are you talking about? I just wanted to know if you think Jay
and I have a future together.”
“Oh. Right. Well sure, you’re in love aren’t
you?”
“Like stoats,” Sorceress confided. “But I just don’t see where this is
going. Hat’s so… Hatty. He’s a superhero to the core, and he’s got everything he
wants. I just can’t see a time when he won’t be taking on responsibilities,
putting other people before himself – and me. I can’t see a time when he’ll ever
just relax and unwind and we can be together.”
“He needs to lighten up a bit,
that’s all,” Dream suggested. “And who wouldn’t want to be a
superhero?”
Whitney winced. “It’s just that I’d hoped for a bit… more to my
life than that. I can’t subordinate my whole self to somebody else. I can’t just
be a cheerleader while Jay goes out and saves the world all the time. Is that
selfish?”
“I… I guess not,” admitted CSFB! “I’ve never really thought about
it like that. I mean, Lois and Clark, they…” he paused again. “I don’t know,
Whit. True love conquers all. Doesn’t it?”
“So what did your scouting
discover?” Sorceress asked curtly. “Apart from that nasty insectoid-colony
sex-scientist Dr Loveray, who else are we up against here?”
“Well I spotted
Appendage Man having the time of his life down by the beach,” CSFB! reported.
“And there’s something else nasty happening…”
“Over there,” Whitney agreed.
“Yes, I can sense it. Black magic. Voudau I think. There’s certainly some
diabolical element to it. So which do we deal with
first?”
CrazySugarFreakBoy! grinned broadly. “Ah, comic book villain-fighting
strategies. My speciality!”
“Ah, an intruder!”
grinned Josiah M’Tumbe, showing his point-filed teeth. He looked up from his
latest virgin and hurled a bunch of chicken feathers at the intruding mage, but
they burst into flames as soon as he let go of them.
“I wasn’t kidding,”
Whitney told him.
“Neither am I, honey-chile.” The Voodoo Vicar grasped a
small straw doll and made a few changes to it. Suddenly it was a green-clad
woman with lustrous blonde hair much like Whitney. “Go ahead, l’il witch,” he
grinned with point-filed teeth. “Make my night.”
“Very well.” The Sorceress
was in no mood to kid around. Suddenly the doll head that M’Tumbe was twisting
wasn’t a fair-headed girl but black and tattooed and studded with a gold ring
through the nose – much like the Voodoo Vicar himself. “Aagh!” he screeched as
he wrenched his own neck 180 degrees.
The Voudou cult scattered as they
realised that the intruder had just broken their leader without breaking
sweat.
“Oooh, I liked that,” Hellfrasier giggled, stalking out of the shadows
and tossing away the copy of Entertainment Today he had been sticking
pins in. “You’re going to be a lot of fun to know, I can see that.”
Suddenly
Whitney found that reality had ceased to matter around her. Her control over
nature was useless, because the normal order of the world had no place here. her
limbs floated away from her torso and the needles growing from the demonic
hybrid of a TV comedy psychiatrist and a demon from hell were skewering her
eyeballs. She would have screamed but her tongue was drifting off towards the
horizon.
“Not easy to use sorcery when the natural laws are given the night
off, is it?” Hellfrasier gloated. “You know, you have just oodles of dark things
in your psyche for me to let free. I’m spoilt for choice.”
The restructured
reality shattered as twenty-two hundred pounds of flailing, yo-yo tangled
Appendage Man crashed through the wall of the voodoo temple and fell onto
Hellfrasier.
“Yes!” shouted CrazySugarFreakBoy!” “The old
use-the-two-villains-against-each-other-trick!”
Appendage Man tried to rise
but the more he struggled the more his parts got caught up in the infinitely
extensible, infinitely strong impossibilitium-altered children’s toy; and some
of those loops were starting to get very painful.
Then CSFB! felt himself
being turned inside out like a glove.
“Oops,” Hellfrasier said insincerely.
“I think I broke him.”
“Hey, cool!” he grinned as Hellfrasier turned
reality-warping powers upon him. He waved to himself with one of his detached
hands. “Do you know any more?”
“How about this one?” Hellfrasier snarled,
wrenching the memory of every bully that had ever hurt Dreamcatcher Foxglove
through his lonely, unpopular childhood from CSFB!’s mind and hurling them at
him.
“Aw, they did this to me when I visited Hell,” the wired wonder
shrugged. “Got anything a bit different?”
Hellfrasier paused for a moment,
stymied by an enemy he could not terrorise.
Behind him, Whitney Darkness rose
from the ashes of herself and loosed her wrath at the creature of the abyss. A
thousand generations of Darkness women had suffered at the hands of demons, and
they spoke through her as she said a very, very rude word. Hellfrasier was blown
apart physically and psychically, his ectoplasm dispersed across ten thousand
conceptual planes. “You’re cancelled!” snarled the Sorceress.
Then Dr Loveray
sprayed them with his passion-beam at full power and started to laugh.
Right now, the Tower of London was the safest place on Earth; therefore
Inspector William Gallowglass had left it and gone back into the streets of the
city to do his job as an officer of the law. “So what’s going on?” Ziles demanded. “Why are the streets so
foggy?” Polypheme-1 held Mr Prune in the air by the throat and shook him like a rat.
“Are you telling us that people are ignoring our orders? Disobeying us?” Coming next: Exile and Troia meet the new head of SPUD, and it’s
really big.
London,
England:
That didn’t mean he had to like
it of course. “Damn, blast, and double-buggeration!” he snarled as he finally
found Rottweiler and the Terrier where they had cornered some yuppies in a
little alley just of Piccadilly Square. “Why can’t you appalling bloody
Americans keep your world conquest plots at home? Oh and by the way, you’re
under arrest for the murder of Miss Asil Ashling.”
The genetically-altered
canine killing machines swung round on the man from Scotland Yard. As soon as
they were far enough away from their intended victims, Gallowglass let the duo
have it with his flame thrower. “You have the right to fry,” he told them as
they howled at the burst of fire that engulfed them.
The Terrier shot from
the inferno like a blazing demon and went straight for his throat.
The
Knightarang lodged right in the killer’s windpipe, and the burning creature was
pinned to a wall with a final startled yelp.
“I suggest you come this way,
Inspector,” Ziles suggested to the startled Inspector Gallowglass. “The Dark
Knight has been getting darker ever since we came here, and I think he’s about
to demonstrate why criminals are a cowardly, superstitious lot.”
“Because of
him?” the policeman ventured.
Ziles pointed to where a charred, furious
Rottweiler was rising from the flames, frothing rabidly and clawing up the
pavement. “You decide,” she suggested.
The Dark Knight let Rottweiler get
very close before hammering a nerve-punch into his stomach. “Sit!” he
commanded.
As the canine killer doubled up the Dark Knight grasped those
titanium-reinforced jaws and wrenched them open. “Stay!” What he dropped down
Rottweiler’s throat wasn’t a Scooby-snack.
“Play dead!” DK ordered, rolling
away as the thermite and semtex package detonated inside Rottweiler, taking out
the creature’s stomach and lower chest.
Even after that Rottweiler and the
Terrier twitched until they had met Mr Flame Thrower a few more times.
“Ah,.” Con Johnstantine answered. “That’d be the old defences of
Albion.” He shot an unfriendly glare at Inspector Gallowglass. “Wouldn’t
it?”
“What, when things get bad the country makes the weather miserable?”
Dark Knight suggested caustically.
“If only,” snarled Johnstantine. “Nah,
what’s happening is that your merry playmates trying to take over the land have
set off some very ancient contingencies, mate. And Gallowglass and his fellow
establishment tools have let it happen, as if whatever VelcroVixen and her
amazing superfriends might do could be worse than what is going to awaken to
stop ‘em.”
“Order has to be maintained, Johnstantine,” argued the Inspector.
“You know the rulers of Britain won’t allow this sort of thing. I’m not saying I
like it.”
“Am I missing something here?” worried Ziles. “I thought we were
here to stop the Purveyors of Peril.”
“You are,” Johnstantine assured her.
“Because the Purveyors are children playing with matches in a gunpowder factory.
You don’t do what they’re trying to do for the same reason you don’t open up the
sealed basements of the Pentagon, or hit a beehive with a big stick.”
“The
mists are just the start,” Gallowglass admitted. “It really would be helpful if
you could make the Purveyors desist before anything too terrible wakes up to
deal with them.”
And far below London, something stirred.
“I
don’t think he can answer while you’re cutting off his oxygen,” VelcroVixen
pointed out. “Not that that is a bad thing.”
The Amazon exile reluctantly
dropped the weak little man in a choking heap on the floor.
“It’s not my
fault,” gasped Mr Prune. In every conquest there is a Mr Prune, a small-spirited
vicious little man who is more than happy to welcome the new regime and do
whatever he can to exercise power in their name in exchange for a chance to pay
back some old scores. “Even after your declaration of anarchy, about
three-quarters of the population turned up for work this morning. That’s
actually more than usual.”
Headcase glared murderously at Mr Prune, and
especially at the ferrety little man’s head.
“We ordered the destruction of
the police and armed forces, but instead… well, the public seem to be making
them cups of tea,” Mr Prune trembled.
“What about the legion of criminals and
lunatics we released?” demanded VelcroVixen. “Surely some of them are able to
enforce our will?”
“They… appear to have vanished in the mists, madame,”
trembled Mr Prune. Mr Prune was learning the other inevitable lesson of
conquest: that it was a wonderful thing to be a Mr Prune while things were going
well, but that when tribulation hit then the first person to be blamed was Mr
Prune as well.
VelcroVixen was not having a good time. In fact she was coming
to the conclusion that ruling the world was considerably more bother than she
wanted to go to, and that it was far more fun bucking authority than being
authority. It had taken a considerable amount of time and effort to drop a roof
on the sarcastic little man that Con Johnstantine had introduced them to, and
even now some of the things that Rodney the Patronising Git had said to her
still stung. “Right,” she breathed. “I suppose we can’t allow this…”
“I could
rip off his annoying little head…” Polypheme offered, striding towards Mr Prune
again.
“She doesn’t mean this trivial inconsequence,” Headcase clarified. He
rummaged in his collection of skullcaps and pulled out the rotting pate of an
army general. “She is suggesting a lesson in manners – or lack of them – to the
general populace. I would propose launching a strategic nuclear bombardment to
wipe out… Birmingham. Yes, Birmingham. The irradiation of around a million
people might impart an important lesson.”
VelcroVixen paled as Headcase
announced mass murder in his usual quiet tones, but she had signed up to lead
this assault and now she had to follow through the consequences. “Y-yes,” she
agreed. “Make it so.”
Headcase strode across the deserted floor of the House
of Commons to the laptop which could launch the world’s nuclear and biological
arsenals.
“Sixteen-forty-nine!” a voice boomed around the empty
hall.
“Who?” Polypheme-1 demanded, staring around the halls. “I thought
Spacewarped erected a force-field around this place?”
“Yeah, right,” snorted
Ziles too quietly for her to hear. “As if that amateur effort was going to keep
me out.”
“1649: the people of this country decided they didn’t like the way
they were being governed and beheaded their king.”
“Who is that?” VelcroVixen
demanded.
Headcase was already pulling on a new and scholarly head to deal
with it. “Somebody with an understanding of historical precedent,” he
replied.
“1587: Mary, Queen of Scots was executed for trying to impose
religious restrictions on the nation.”
“What has this history stuff to do
with anything?” demanded Polypheme.
“His point is that this nation has dealt
with bad rulers before,” Headcase reported tartly, switching skulls again, “It’s
the Dark Knight but even with this telepath’s head I can’t quite get a fix on
him or what he’s thinking.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” snarled VelcroVixen
impatiently, “He’ll be somewhere near the alien girl hiding in the gallery over
there!”
Ziles really hadn’t expected VelcroVixen to be that good. The Amazon
war spear from Polypheme smashed through the wood panelling of the balcony and
came within six inches of the Xnylonian’s invisible head.
“Eep,” Ziles
commented. On the assumption that attack was better than defence in the current
situation she hurled herself in a spectacular somersault off the gallery and
landed feet first on Polypheme’s head.
Meanwhile, Headcase had dragged on yet
another head. “This person was a real blowhard,” he warned, and breathed
hurricane-force winds across the roof of the chamber. The Dark Knight tried to
leap from his hiding place but was caught in the tempest and bounced off ceiling
and wall. “And this chap had a fiery temper.” The section of seating where DK
had fallen erupted into inferno. “And this one was an electrician.” Fifty
thousand volts arced down into the blazing wreckage.
VelcroVixen hit Ziles so
smoothly that the first the alien knew she was on her back, the Relaxor crčme
knocked from her grasp. The svelte supervillain stamped down hard on Ziles’
knuckles. “You’ve come a long way to die, alien,” she assured the
Xnylonian.
Ziles hooked the legs out from under Vicki Vee, but somehow
VelcroVixen wasn’t there and a nerve punch hit the alien that would have
paralysed a human from the waist down. Ziles wasn’t human, and managed to get a
savage kick into VelcroVixen’s stomach. As the villainess doubled over Ziles
grabbed her hair and used it as a handle to bring VelcroVixen’s jaw into contact
with a Xnylonian kneecap. Just then Spacewarped phased in and teleported Ziles
out of the combat.
“I thought you’d never get here,” panted VelcroVixen,
“Where did you send her?”
“Geostationary orbit around Mercury,” the
time/space weaver replied. “I have to go, I’m in trouble in
Australia.”
“1605,” the Dark Knight hissed from the blazing wreckage.
“The
Gunpowder Plot,” Headcase recognised. “A plot to blow up the Houses of
Parliament failed…”
The explosive charges laid by Ziles and DK earlier went
off then, and what Guy Fawkes and Robert Catesby had once failed to do happened
now. The Palace of Westminster vanished in a brilliant flash, and they were
picking bits of Big Ben out of buildings for months afterwards.
Coming next: Trouble at the Lair Mansion, and not a hero left
standing at the end of it. That’s bad news for Messenger, spiffy, DBS, DB,
dull thud and Chronic. We’ll call it Untold Tales #92a, and we’ll post it
day after tomorrow.
Los Angeles,
the United States of America:
“The most annoying thing about being
the conquerors of the West Coast of the United States,” opined Bambi Bacall, the
Suicide Blonde, “is that rather than fleeing in terror from you people keep
trying to interview you for CNN.”
“Oh, I dunno,” PsychoAcidPervGirl!
shrugged, dropping the corpses of the latest two reporters to try for an
exclusive, “I sort of like the publicity.”
“That is the building there,”
Spacewarped indicated. The former astronaut seldom spoke since his cosmic ray
accident, mainly because he could really only concentrate on one of his
corporeal forms at once. “The genetic engineers of B.A.L.D, should have done
their second-stage work by now.”
Suicide Blonde led the way into an exclusive
Beverly Hills beauty parlour. Unlike the row of shops which surrounded it, this
place was still intact. The steaming pile of dead looters outside the door had
deterred others. “We’re here on business,” Suicide Blonde told the receptionist
and took her place on one of the black leather chairs where the pampered came to
be pampered some more. PAPG! slouched in the seat next to her and the two chairs
were lowered through the floor into the secret scientific base beneath.
“Well
that was kind of cool in a retro Man-from-Uncle way,” admitted
PsychoAcidPervGirl! “Where’s Blofish?”
“Blofish isn’t in charge of B.A.L.D.
any more,” Bambi reminded her. “We killed him if you recall. I hear they have a
new CEO.”
“That is correct,” the corpulent massive-headed organic computer in
the floating bathchair agreed. “I am the Machine Organism Designed for
Exterminating Meddlers, MODEM. I rule here.”
“Oh, we’re trembling at the
might potty,” PAPG! sneered.
“It doesn’t matter who is in charge, as long as
you have fulfilled your contract,” Suicide Blonde told him. “We sent you some
mortal remains of an Austernal a few hours ago. Have you been able to find a way
of neutralising the entire Austernal race as you promised?”
“Of course,”
MODEM told them with a little edge of pique in his voice. “We are geniuses. We
have already introduced the first stage virus into the Abhuman genome, which is
taking up all of their attention. Soon they will do what they always do in these
situations, which is to form a Uni-Brain where they pool their genetic and
intellectual potential. What is the point of having a big floating brain, I ask
you?”
“Yeah, when you could have a weedy little body in a floating high chair
instead,” snorted PAPG!
MODEM ignored her. “At that stage we will trigger the
second part of the virus, a neuroleptic neutraliser, which will effectively
destroy all self-consciousness within the Uni-Brain. The Abhumans will no longer
know themselves to be alive, and since only their molecular manipulations
maintain their existence they will effectively will themselves into
oblivion.”
“Splendid,” approved Suicide Blonde. “Then all that remains is to
set off the virus and… MODEM, why are you steaming?”
“Alert!” MODEM screamed
as smoke started to rise from his orifices. “This unit is under attack! This
complex is under attack! Alert! Alert! Alerrrrrr….” Then the creature exploded
into gory fragments, along with every other electrical device in the entire
base.
“What the f…” demanded PAPG! as part of the roof came down on top of
them.
Suicide Blonde transmuted it into oxygen with her matter-manipulation
powers. “He’s here,” she breathed. “I wonder where the other one got
to?”
“Hello? Exposition check, please!”
“My cousin Exile,” Suicide Blonde
grinned nastily in the darkness. “He used his energy-manipulation abilities to
take down the B.A.L.D. complex. Very nasty. And now he’s waiting for us to make
our move.”
PsychoAcidPervGirl! considered this. “Okay. I say we get
Spacewarped to port in the entire Purveyors of Peril. Then we grab say two dozen
innocent hostages and rip their heads off every thirty seconds until Exy and his
pals surrender to us.”
“And I say you surrender now or I fry you like Colonel
Sanders Special Recipe,” came a voice from the darkness.
“Let there be
light,” commanded Suicide Blonde, and the ravaged halls were filled with
phosphorescence.
“Okay,” Exile agreed, revealed in the shimmering green glow.
“How about this?” and he let loose a broad-spectrum pulse across the entire
electromagnetic range. The remaining support pillars around PAPG! and Suicide
Blonde melted, so Bambi Bacall had to work at evaporating the tons of matter
that spilled down towards them.
That was when Troia’s spear caught her
through the torso. “Bullseye!” the Amazon administrator called. “Or at least
cow’s chest.”
“Ooh, that was sneaky. I like that,” PAPG! congratulated Troia
as she bounded towards her. “For that I’m going to keep your hair after I’ve
finished with you and wear it as trim on one of my stage costumes.”
Troia
dodged a cueball full of acid but found how hard it was to hit
CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s little sister.
“We need assistance,” Suicide Blonde
called. “Gromm… now!”
Exile smelled the potent presence of the Living
Flatulence too late. “Aaaw, no!” he shouted as Gromm detonated himself.
Troia
rolled aside as the methane flames washed over her. PsychoAcidPervGirl! took the
opportunity to loop her indestructible garrotting wire round the Amazon’s
throat. Troia got her hand in the noose too and only her Amazon wristband
prevented it from getting sliced off as PAPG! tightened the knot.
As the
heroes gasped from the gas attack, Gromm reformed and billowed down Exile’s
throat. Suicide Blonde vaporised the spear which transfixed her, but she had to
maintain all her concentration to prevent her injured body from shutting
down.
“By the time I’ve finished with you you’re going to be going
adventuring with a sack over your head so nobody sees your face,” PAPG! promised
Troia.
Years of bullying in the Amazon school showers suddenly flashed before
Troia’s mind’s eye. She squirmed and dug an elbow into her enemy’s midriff,
caught her by her candy-pink hair, and pulled her down to meet a rising knee in
the nose. “Stuff you!” the Amazon shouted.
PAPG! wiped the trickle of blood
from her chin and rose up grinning. “Let’s finish this.”
Exile could feel
Gromm shifting around inside him, expanding, filling him. “I’m going to die in
the biggest fart in history,” he realised.
There was only one chance. Exile
vaguely understood that matter had four, not three, states of being. A gas could
be cooled to a liquid and then a solid. Or it could be heated to plasma, a
special state usually only found in the heart of stars.
Exile concentrated,
refining his abilities as carefully as Bambi Bacall was utilising hers just now.
He had to pour thermal energy into the gaseous Gromm inside him while
neutralising that massive heat from frying his own insides; and he had to do it
all in less than ten seconds.
“Valeria…” he breathed.
Troia couldn’t
resist it. PsychoAcidPervGirl! was hurling her acid-bombs again, and this was
such a comic-book superhero manoeuvre. She rolled across the rubble-strewn floor
and ducked at the last minute. A pair of acid bombs hurled past her and sprayed
across the Suicide Blonde.
There was a light as bright as creation from
Exile, and a brief insubstantial scream from Gromm. Then Exile toppled over,
smoking.
There was a cry of pain from Bambi Bacall, and her distraction meant
that she could no longer keep the damaged roof in place.
There was a shriek
of metal and the whole complex collapsed.