My name? Oh, I’m Sarah. Sarah Shepherdson. My friends call me Shep. I’m a waitress at the Bean and Donut Coffee Bar in Paradopolis Plaza. Where the big Twin Parody Tower is? Yes, I know there’s only one Twin Parody Tower now. It’s a long story. C’mon, we can walk from the Metrotrak to the coffee bar, and I’ll treat you to a java.

Of course, Paradopolis is famous as the world super-hero capital. I’ve lost count of the supervillain attacks, giant monsters, alien invasions, and demonic infestations we’ve had here. About three a week it seems. But the locals are used to it. If a big scary space warlord lands here people will be trying to sell him postcards and hotdogs before he’s had a chance to proclaim his new rulership of Earth.

Look down the hill over the bay. That little island there in the Paradopolis Sound, linked by the long bridge? That’s the home of the world-famous Lair Legion, the superhero team. We get them in the diner sometimes. Fin Fang Foom, the big shapechanging dragon who leads the team, and Dark Knight, who some people think is just an urban legend, take their coffee black and extra-strong. Ziles, the telepathic alien invisible girl, comes from a race for which chocolate is an aphrodisiac but she always orders cocoa anyway. That makes Finny really nervous.

The rest of the Lair Legion? They’re really nice people, although some of them can be a little weird. CrazySugarFreakBoy! gets his powers from his silly suit of Impossibilitium. He’s a really restless, hyperkinetic comics nut, but he’s a real sweetie. It’s like he’s eight years old inside. Trickshot the archer can be a bit grabby and a bit mouthy, so you have to keep an eye on him, but his heart’s in the right place. And Donar… well, he’s the Ausgardian hemigod of thunder, keeper of Mjalcolm the sacred baseball-bat-with-a-nail-in-it, so you’d expect him to be a bit unusual. You know that the mythical Norse gods fell foul of some cosmic enemies called the Celestian Space Robots and got transported to Australia to become the Ausgardians, right? But don’t confuse them with the Austernals. That really annoys them.

Here’s the coffee shop. And look, there’s some of the LL in here right now. C’mon, I’ll introduce you. This is Troia 215, she’s from Amazon Isle, and she’s also the Legion’s secretary. She has the world record for number of days of compassionate leave, but with her spear technique who’s going to argue with her? This is Goldeneyed, who can teleport and do clever stuff with time/space. This is Exile, his cousin, who can manipulate energy. The other girls aren’t LL members, but Lisette here – Laurie Leyton’s her real name – is the team’s legal advisor and is G-Eyed’s sometimes girlfriend. And Valeria is, um, well she’s Exile’s slave, magically bound to him from another dimension. It’s not as kinky as it sounds. Really.

I thought Nats would be with the guys. He said he’d be here after he finished off work at ITC, but I guess he had a late delivery or something. Or maybe Miss Framlicker his boss finally broke down and admitted she liked him? Nah, you’re right. Not gonna happen.

ITC? Sorry, I keep forgetting you’re new. The Interdimensional Transportation Corporation runs out of a secret skyscraper in Paradopolis. You can’t find it unless you’re supposed to. ITC handle deliveries to all kinds of weird places, from the mythlands where Ausgard and Faerie and stuff are, to the Vortex between worlds, to outer space places like the Skree Empire or the homeworld of the shape-mimicking Skunks, even to really difficult-to-get-to places like the Happy Place where pure genderless thought beings like the superhero (or heroine) Yo originally come from. Nats is their delivery boy.

Of course, the Lair Legion aren’t the only team around. Across the river into Gothermatropolis York you’ll find the Abandoned Legion operating out of a disused firehouse. Gothametropolis is different to Paradopolis. Sure, we have seedy areas like Hell’s Bathroom, but on the whole the place is really nice. Over there organised crime has its grip on the city and things always seem that much grimmer and grittier. Mayor spiffy, who was accidentally elected omni-mayor of everywhere on mainland America but Paradopolis, is trying to sort it out, but what can one teenager with a symbiotic energy-channelling fern on his head do? Well, with a little help he can dodge most of the bullets, actually.

And then there’s the League of Regulars, which is sort of a retirement place for Lair Legion superheroes who want to get out of the public eye. NTU-150, Bautista Enterprises’ sponsored armoured hero, and Lisa the Advocatrix, G-Eyed and Lisette’s law-firm boss, and Yo the thought being are all in it. Donar hangs out there as well as with the LL – whoever has the biggest widescreen TV at the moment, I guess. Their reluctant leader is the really sweet possibly-fake man Visionary, and his wife Cheryl is their PR agent. The LoR doesn’t answer the phone much, so we don’t see too much of them in action these days.

There’s a few other teams as well, plus a few independent superheroes around too. People see quite a lot of ManMan, the guy with the proportionate powers of a man who goes around with his talking knife, Knifey. I, um, I accidentally married him once, but it’s all sorted out now. Dynamite Boy is getting known. He can explode himself at will. There’s a probability-changing superheroine called Dancer who does the best she can to fight injustice. Then there’s Falcon and Captain Astounding, and dull thud and lots more. It’s hard to keep up with all the new heroes.

And that’s just the guys n’ gals in costume. If you factor in wacky mad scientists like Al. B. Harper and eccentric old codgers like Sir Mumphrey Wilton and the cast of thousands you’d have to check out the Who's Who in the Parodyverse to follow you’re probably caught up in a Hooded Hood plot.

Oh, wait a minute. Looks like the LL’s got to leave in a hurry. What this time, guys? Emergency call or just forgot your wallets?

Hear that? A call from Hatman and the Sorceress over that the Daily Trombone newspaper building! That’s not far from here. C’mon, we’ll follow them and see what’s happening.

Hatman’s deputy leader of the team, who has the power to take on the properties of any hat he wears. Sorceress, she’s an, um, well, a sorceress I suppose. Rumour has it that they’re an item. Hatty’s a brave man, because Sorceress’ grandmother, the witch Hagatha Darkness, is really, really scary.

Well I think she’s scary. I’ve met Xander the Improbable, the master of the mystic crafts who operates out of a plumbing and watch-repairing shop in Hell’s Bathroom, and his non-Euclidean pal the amoeboid Manga Shoggoth, and that Bog-Thing that goes around with Con Johnstantine. And I still think she’s scary.

Wonder what the crisis is? Could be anything from a rogue supervillain to the next coming of Galactivac, the Living Death that Sucks. There are all kinds of super-menaces at work in Paradopolis, from the scheming archvillain the Hooded Hood and the evil geneticist Dr Moo to misunderstood mutants like the super-fast De Brown Streak and grungy guitarists with possessed guitars like Chronic. And there are sinister organisations like the Hero Extermination Revenge Project Elimination Squad (HERPES), or the sewer-dwelling Morshlocks and Outcasts, or the legit but cruel Heckfire Club up in posh Pierce Heights. We even had an alien would-be world conqueror as mayor here, Pierson’s Porter.

Hmm, looks like they’re not letting people any nearer. The old guy with the white moustache is Police Commissioner Graham. Those guys in blue are Agents of S.P.U.D. That’s Super-menace Principal Undercover Division, led by a guy called Colonel Dan Drury. They’re the government agents who get to handle the weird stuff. I see they’re even keeping J James Jerkson out of his own newspaper offices. We’ll be reading all about that tomorrow. He’ll probably blame Goldeneyed. C’mon, we can dodge round the barriers if we cut through Off-Central Park.

I really like the Park- you can see as far as the Cathedral and Municipal Library one way and the old Variety Theatre the other - although they say it’s not safe to walk here after dark. It used to be safe back when Messenger was around, the vigilante postman, but he’s dead now. They should put up a statue to him like they did for Jarvis, the founding superhero of the Lair Legion who died battling extradimensional aliens. But Messy wasn’t all that popular because of his brutal methods. I kind of miss him though. People keep claiming to have seen him around, but then they also see Elvis…

Don’t mind me. Something in my eye.