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This message #98: Untold Tales of the Parodyverse: Tooth
and Claw, or Never Let a Monkey Have a Nuclear Weapon was posted
by The Hooded Hood is just passing though, apologises
for his prolonged absence, and leaves behind this little tale of nuclear
blackmail making the fur fly on Friday, April 26, 2002 at
21:21.
#98:
Untold Tales of the Parodyverse: Tooth and Claw, or Never Let a Monkey Have a
Nuclear Weapon
Previous stories 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
The Cat woke from a pleasant doze, stretched,
and stropped his claws lazily. Since he was sitting on Donar’s lap at that
moment the Ausgardian hemigod yelped in surprise, leaped four feet into the air,
and accidentally lightning bolted the DVD player.
“So the X-Men Evolution
cartoon is two thumbs down then?” NTU-150 asked from behind his latest issue of
Dangerous Mechanic.
“I art grievously wounded in mine godly wedding
tackle,” complained Donar. “I wast going to hie me to Amazon Island tonight for
a tryst with the fair Troia, but there art no point now.” Then the hemigod of
thunder looked round cautiously and added loudly, “Not that there wouldst have
been any funny stuff anyhap. Nay. Noneth.” Well, one never knew when the Amazon
administrator’s father the Hooded Hood might be spying through his Portal of
Pretentiousness.
“Yo was to be thinking that cute Donar was invulnerable to
scratches,” Yo pointed out from behind a large tub of popcorn which s/he was
feeding to his/her rabbit.
“Not when tis yon cat, which hast been rendered
indestructible by the power of the Celestial Space Robots,” complained Donar,
glaring at the mangy and disreputable ginger tom which was eyeing Rabito with a
malicious interest. “And cometh to think of it, twas yon Hooded Hood who dids’t
award it to Milady Lisa in the first place. Now I perceive that twas all a
long-range plan of the archfiend to shred mine divine happy-equipment.”
“Oh
don’t be such a baby,” Lisa pouted, uncoiling herself from her sofa and reaching
down to pick up the malevolent bag of fur and claws under discussion. “He’s just
a big softy really.”
“Tell that to mine groinal region!” complained the
Ausgardian.
“Do you want me to kiss it all better?” the amorous advocatrix
offered.
“Yo is thinking that everybody should play with their
happy-equipment.” the pure thought being suggested.
There was the sound of
NTU-150 spraying the coke he was sucking through his faceplate over the inside
of his helmet.
“Perhaps a yo-yo, or some kind of skateboard,” the pure
thought being continued thoughtfully.
“I think he wants to go out,” Lisa
noted, referring to the cat not to Yo. “He wants to go walkies.” She dropped the
disgusting creature into Visionary’s arms. “Take my little sweetums to the park,
will you?”
“Ack!” acked the possibly-fake man as fourteen pounds of
indestructible feline bad temper dropped into his own lap. “Why me?”
“That
is a very good question,” Lisa considered. “Would you prefer to babysit
Christopher while I do it?”
“You are evil,” Visionary muttered, but quietly
so the first lady of the Lair Legion didn’t hear him. “Why does this cat need to
be taken for walkies anyway? Cats don’t need to be escorted.”
“You’re
forgetting the restraining order after that bald eagle incident, dear,” Cheryl
reminded her husband. “Just try not to lose him this time.”
*
Fifteen minutes later the Cat was sauntering happily
through central Paradopolis, ignoring the frantic receding cries of the
strange-smelling feeding creature that his mistress had detailed to open the
door for him. The city was full of exciting smells and sounds for a vigorous
tom-cat, and any lady cats he happened to encounter would not be treated to a
shared plate of spaghetti and meatballs at the back of Luigis as any part of the
date.
He sauntered down Fifth Avenue and cut through one of the dark
sinister alleys that crouched between the shining modern buildings. Nothing was
going to molest the Cat down here. There were Morshlock food-gathering parties
still regrowing skin from before they hastily rescheduled their
surface-scavenging parties to a new rota which could be summed up as ‘any time
that bloody animal wasn’t about’.
Then the Cat was one busy street away from
Off-Central Park, with the prospect of chasing some dogs, and possibly some
police horses. The clever animal noticed that the lights had stopped the
traffic, making it safe to cross. So he stopped by the pavement edge and cleaned
his paws until the traffic was rolling again before starting to saunter across.
The Cat was rather pleased with the effect. A seven car pile-up was very
nearly his personal best.
In the park there was an unshaven human in a coat
of dead cow playing some kind of musical instrument. The Cat vaguely remembered
having scratched Chronic before at one of those
all-the-heroes-team-up-to-save-the-universe shindigs so he sauntered over to see
what the human was doing, and whether he had any fish in his pockets. The man
was making some noises with his guitar and holding a cap out to passers by. The
Cat concluded that he was trying to attract a mate, judging by the anguished
sounds he was making.
The Cat watched for a few moments to see if any of the
other humans might start a fight with Chronic, but nothing interesting happened.
The best they could do was throw little silver stones at him, and even then most
of them missed the human and went into the cap by his side. Nor did Chronic
attract the desired female companionship. The Cat decided to help out before
moving on, then sauntered back past the car wrecks to find some lunch.
Chronic would never understand why his cap smelled so pungent for weeks
afterwards, not why he kept being followed by sleek adoring tabby queens.
At
Parody Plaza the Cat changed his stride from a confident
I-can-lick-you-with-one-paw swagger to a slow, dispirited limp. He managed to
drag himself as far as the entrance to the Bean and Donut Coffee Bar
before collapsing of exhaustion and starvation. It took less than a minute for
one of the humans to take pity on him and draw his plight to the attention of
the waitress. Then it was just a matter of sitting quietly in the back room
until the required tuna arrived.
There was another of the Cat’s pet projects
sitting in one of the booths, chatting to his fellow humans. dull thud
was part way though his explanation of the hidden symbolism of one of Flint
Mitchigan and the Rampant Emus album covers to the disinterest of Nats, Amazing
Guy, and Captain Astounding. The Cat had considered a number of ways to get at
the psionic tapeworm infesting the human’s stomach, but his best plan still
involved a sudden lunge at the stomach with claws extended.
~~ Go ahead,
feline. Make my day. ~~ a telepathic voice said in his mind, but replete with
tuna and goodwill (relatively speaking) the Cat slipped away on his patrol,
allowing thuddy to live for another day.
“I could have sworn I had a
cream donut on my plate,” puzzled Nats.
From there it was a few blocks prowl
down to the interesting-smelling Hell’s Bathroom. There was always so much to do
down there.
*
“Is everything in readyness?” the mystery villain
demanded with a sinister cackle.
“Oook,” his minions replied.
“Ook-ook-eeek-eekoak-ak-ak-oook!”
“Oh great,” Evil Monkey scowled. “Just
give the whole story away, why don’t you? Why can’t I get good help? Why won’t
VelcroVixen by my henchperson? I mean, there aren’t many evil masterminds she
hasn’t been the right hand woman to, are there? Only me and Birthday Bandit I
guess. But no, you call her up and it’s all, ‘Gotta hold, got Balefire on line
one’. Pah!”
“Oook oook,” Evil Monkey’s non-VelcroVixen hench-beings gibbered
sympathetically, trying to calm him by picking fleas of the master criminal.
“No, I don’t think shaving one of you and putting you in a leather basque
would do the trick,” Evil Monkey snarled. “I’m not Trickshot! Just tell me if
everything is in readiness for Operation Big Cat.”
“Oook!”
“Then deploy
the combat units. Hahahahahahahahaeekeekhahahaha!”
*
The Cat had not read Untold
Tales of the Lair Legion #43. Otherwise he would have recognised the three
shimmering metallic lions that burst free from the UPS van that was shipping
them and sprang over the terrified people on the sidewalk outside the
Parodopolis Central Post Office to lope off down the street. He would have known
they were ancient artefacts created for unspecified plot purposes by the
Abhumans, controlled by stone tablets slotted into their necks. He would also
have known that the Abhumans created these defenders millennia ago using left
over technology abandoned by the Celestian Space Robots. Finally, he would have
known that each one was powerful enough to stop an army.
But the Cat wasn’t
a big Untold Tales fan, and all the cat knew was that three really, really big
felines were trespassing on his turf.
And that meant war.
He strode
across Seventh Street with a slow, steady walk, making damn sure the three big
metallic intruders could see him. Then he paused and raised his tail fully and
sprayed the wheel of one of the abandoned cars. The tyre started to
disintegrate. Then he continued his slow, deliberate march towards the three
giant lions.
The three lions had their orders. Somewhere down the road in
this blocked traffic, the Super-Menace Principal Undercover Division (SPUD), the
UN’s special operations force, was delicately removing one of the last
unexploded smartbombs from the city. Their new master had acquired them and
their control slabs from the state repository (with no traceable help from State
Governor George Ronald Wilson Milhous Ape in exchange for Anna Paquin’s phone
number, really) and had commanded them to bring the device to him – preferably
after it had been temporarily disarmed by the SPUD scientists.
But deep
inside their liquid metal hearts they were cats. And that small ragged ginger
rag ahead of them had just done the cat equivalent of walking into a Hells’
Angels convention and shouting “All bikers are gay!”
Orders for the
domination of the planet could wait.
The pack leader went in first, snarling
a warning that had subvocals deep enough to set windows rattling. It slashed
forward with a metal paw and nearly swiped the challenger.
The challenger
bit it, catching the paw, digging in with its claws, and holding on.
The
pack leader growled again and tried to wipe off this annoying dwarf, smearing it
on the pavement. The pavement broke and the Cat sprang up again, scraping three
deep gashes across a nose that could have withstood a bazooka without even
sneezing. The lion gave back a little, trying to get a good swipe at the smaller
beast. One good bite should do it.
The Cat wasn’t hanging about. It objected
to trespassing males on it’s territory – which in the Cat’s view was defined
pretty much as anything on the planet – so it went straight for the source of
the problem. The source of the problem was prominent and almost as large as the
Cat itself, handing poudly underneath the shining metal war machine. The Cat
went at the source of the problem with all four claws and a set of teeth that
could bite through Celestian armour.
The Lion howled and jumped roughly
fifteen feet straight upwards.
*
“What’s going on?” demanded Evil Monkey. “Where’s my
smart weapon? No, I don’t mean that smart weapon,” he specified, slapping away
helpful monkey hands. “I want my nuclear device. How am I expected to make it
into the major ranks of villaindom without holding the world hostage with a
nuclear device?”
“Eeek!” a servitor monkey offered. “Eeek ook akk!”
“Yes, patch in to local news feeds. My lions must have reached the device by
now. Show me the…what is happening there? What is that ginger furball doing to
my lions. And what is he running away with in his mouth?”
Just then the pack
leader exploded in mortification. The other two lions sprang after the Cat and
began a deadly chase through the streets of Paradopolis.
“Gah!” Evil Monkey
snarled. “If you want something doing… Right, prepare the Monkey Wagon. We’ll go
steal that atomic device ourselves.”
*
“’Ello m’darling,” Flapjack letched down the Lair
Legion hotline. “Which were you wanting, the LL emergency phone or Sexy Olivia’s
Spanking line? Oh, Commissioner Graham. Yes, just my little joke. No pay per
minute stuff going on here, I can assure you of that. Or if there is, it was
Nats that set it up.”
“Just get me the Lair Legion,” Graham demanded. “It’s
an emergency.”
“Well, it’s only a few personal telephone services, nothing
too nasty apart from…”
“An emergency in the city. A twenty-one seventeen:
giant lions rampaging uptown.”
“I thought that was a twenty-one nineteen.
Isn’t a twenty-one seventeen love-crazed women from the future demanding mass
impregnation?”
“Get. Me. The. Legion.”
“Ah, right. Sorry, but they’re
out on a case just now. Magenta St Evil has stolen Belgium and is threatening to
send it back if the world doesn’t pay ten billion dollars. I could get you
ManMan’s e-mail. Hello? Commissioner?”
*
Al B. Harper looked up from the innards of the quantum
phase nuclear weapon and asked, “Why am I doing this?”
“Because we don’t
have a manual so you just have to guess which wires to go for?” suggested
Falcon.
“No, I mean why am I kneeling hear with my arms inside a thirty
megaton nuclear weapon based on technology so advanced that we don’t even have
science fiction stories about it yet, working for SPUD when I’m not even on the
payroll?”
“I dunno,” shrugged Falcon. “Because you’re a soft touch?”
At
that moment there was a loud crash as the Monkey Wagon burst through the sound
barrier and plunged down towards the device. A hundred and sixty combat-trained
ninja monkeys leapt out to engage the SPUD troopers.
“This is a job for
Falco…” Falcon almost shouted before he was buried under a pile of simians.
“Aw, you’re not changing your name again, are you?” Al B. frowned.
Falcon flexed his strength-enhancing exo-skeleton and the sky was filled
with flying apes. “Falcon refuses to be pantsed by a horde of hairy monkeys!”
the high-flying hero shouted.
“Isn’t it a whoop of hairy monkeys? Or a
flange?” Al B. suggested.
“Step away from the nuclear weapon and raise your
hands,” Evil Monkey demanded, making the requisite dramatic entrance.
“I
don’t think we should,” Al B. Harper suggested as diplomatically as possible,
“Seeing that this thing has just started to tick.”
*
“Right,” breathed Commissioner Graham. “We need a
superhero team to stop central Paradopolis becoming a heap of rubble. The Lair
Legion is out looking for Belgium. The League of Regulars isn’t answering their
phone. The Abandoned Legion’s phone has been cut off. The JBH aren’t even
listed. At this stage I’d even settle for the Belgium Waffle Five, but guess
which country they’re based in?” He sighed and started to compose an e-mail to
ManMan.
*
The catfight went on, tumbling down past the Daily
Trombone building as crowds scattered and property damage mounted. The two
remaining lions were flanking the Cat and it was clear that the whole thing was
drawing to a stalemate. Then the Cat slipped as it scrambled up the side of the
Trombone, and the second lion took advantage of that to catch the smaller
animal in its jaws, bite down hard, and swallow him whole.
Just like the Cat
had planned.
Now there was nothing to do but fight his way back out. The Cat
chose a different exit to the one he had entered by and started clawing.
*
“Uh-oh!” Hatman warned the Lair Legion. “Time out.
We’ve got an incoming emergency call from base. Lisette says there’s a
twenty-seventeen going on right now in Paradopolis.”
CrazuSugarFreakBoy
stopped hammering a minion’s head on the floor and looked up with interest. “An
invasion of inflatable women?” he checked.
“No, that’s a twenty-one
seventeen,” Goldeneyed remembered. “A twenty-seventeen is Space ghost locked in
a public lavatory, right?”
“I thought it was a suspected treacle volcano,”
offered Sorceress.
“Isn’t it an attack of sentient laundry?” Ziles
suggested.
“Will you all shut up,” Fin Fang Foom, the Legion’s leader,
roared. “It’s giant lions, alright? Giant lions. Probably those Abhuman war
machines from the Devil Doctor’s collection that Dancer fought once. We’d better
get back right away. Let’s go.”
“Hey!” objected Magenta St Evil. “You can’t
just walk out in the middle of a battle!”
“Sorry,” Foom told her, “but this
is a twenty sevnteen. It takes precedence over Belgium.”
“I’ll send it
back,” the villainess threatened.
“We don’t give in to terrorism,” warned
Hatman. “Do your worst. It’s not like it was France.”
“Curse you, Lair
Legion! I’ll make you pay for this!!”
*
“What do you mean, ticking?” Evil Monkey demanded,
worriedly. Suddenly the frantic scrambling battle between SPUD operatives and
ninja simians stopped and Al B. Harper had everyone’s attention.
“You
know. A sort of rhythmic clicking sound caused by a timepiece,” the scientist
explained helpfully. “I think you should steal this bomb now. Please.”
“No,
that’s alright,” Evil Monkey decided. “Best if we leave it for now. I’m thinking
of reforming. I might become Nice Monkey. Cheer Chimp, perhaps.”
He backed
away gently towards the Monkey Wagon. There was a crunching sound as Falcon
ripped it into little shreds. “It was parked by a hydrant,” he explained to the
appalled ape of abomination.
“I still had nine payments left on that!”
shouted Evil Monkey. Then he remembered the countdown. “But I shall let you live
– for now,” he said hurriedly. “Excuse me. I have to go commit evil on a
different continent.”
Falcon watched the monkeys flee across Off-Central
Park. “They’ll never get out of the blast radius in time,” he said pityingly. “I
don’t suppose you can stop the timer, Al?”
“Nope,” the scientist answered
cheerily. “But then again, the timer’s not going.” He held up his wristwatch. “I
only said I this thing was ticking, not what thing I was talking about. Pass me
a number three left-handed grommet-clutch will you?”
*
When the Cat had clawed his way out of the second
metallic lion war machine there was only one left to face him. With a wicked
leap he sprang at the final contender.
*
“So let me get this straight,” Finny said to the Dark
Knight as they lurked atop the roofscape of Paradopolis. “You’re saying that
Lisa’s cat took out three Abhuman war machines – because they looked like they
were challengers for his territory?”
“The cat took out two of them, yes,” DK
admitted. “The third was… pacified, and is now back in SPUD custody.”
“Pacified? How?” Foom demanded.
“You don’t want to know,” shuddered the
urban legend.
“I do,” the Makluan dragon assured him. “I need to record it
for the files.”
“Let’s just say that the third lion was a lady lion, shall
we, and leave it at that.”
*
“There’s my ickle sweetums!” cooed Lisa as the Cat
stalked back into Visionary’s half-subterranean condo at Dullard’s Corner. “Did
ee have a nice walkies, den?”
The Cat relaxed like an evil-smelling cushion
over Lisa’s arm and purred happily. It had been a good day. And when Visionary
finally got back from looking for him the possibly fake man would have a lovely
surprise when he found what the Cat had left for him under his pillow…
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