Tales of the Parodyverse

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J. Jonah Jerkson
Wed Sep 28, 2005 at 02:22:35 pm EDT
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The Baroness, Part 38
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The Baroness, Part 38

Somewhere high above Ohio in the Zemo Zeppelin – 7:30 a.m.

“This may be slow,” Silicone Sally sighed, “but I love the bed. I should have brought Lance along.”

“Maybe next time, but I need the weight now, Sally,” the Baroness replied. “But I agree with you, zeppelins are the only way to travel. Some more pomegranate juice, please, Franz?”

“How come we’re going to Michigan? Are you going to start some sort of fresh water shortage to take over the world?”

“Nothing like that, Sally,” Elizabeth Zemo snapped back. “Think of this as a personal joyride of sorts.”

“Does that have anything to do with your visit to the hospital last night?” Sally probed.

“You’ll see.”

Baron Ottokar Zemo was also waking – sort of. After a long night of psychedelic terror, he had finally achieved entrance to the astral plane on which Killer Shrike was resident. He had the sensation of walking over a grey plain shrouded in grey fog with smoky grey trees and animals dotting the landscape. Noting a small, grey, dilapidated shack far ahead, seemingly identical to Madame Dessalines’, he altered course for it, hoping for directions, or even better, an encounter with the Shrike.

At the Days Inn motel, outside Houma, Fred and Shaggy were already awake. Roger Wilton had, by his lights, graciously insisted that if they were going to let him stay in their room, he’d sleep in the armchair. Unfortunately, Roger’s snores when sleeping in anything less elegant than a bed at the Ritz-Carlton were comparable to the roar of an 18-wheeler tractor-trailer’s engine. The two teen detectives were red-eyed and bleary. To add to their agony, the alarm rang. Fred mashed down the off button with homicidal intent.

“No, no, mummy, I don’t want to wake up,” the English superspy moaned. “I want to stay here with you, in your bed.”

Fred and Shaggy both noticed that Roger was grasping two small pillows in his hands. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Fred muttered.

“Like, I’m too tired to think, Fred.”

“Ree rooo,” came a canine voice from the floor. Even Screwy-Doo hadn’t slept through Roger’s racket.

“No, mumsy. I don’t like any of those other birds. Only you.”

“Ick,” said Fred. “You wake him up, Shag. I’ll take dibs on the bathroom.”

Shaggy stumbled over to Roger’s chair and began yanking on Roger’s right arm. “Hey, like come on, Roger, man. It’s that beautiful dawn time, you know?”

“Go away.”

“O.K., Screwy, it’s up to you.”

The massive quasi-Great Dane rose, slouched over to Roger’s chair, and halted, looking at Shaggy expectantly.

“All right, Screwb, I got one for you.” Shaggy reached over to a paper bag, withdrew a couple of Milk-Bones and tossed them in the general direction of the dog’s head. The canine caught each in mid-air and wolfed them down.

“Rank roo,” Screwy-Doo finally wurfed. He then turned to Roger and extended his head to just in front of the sleeping Englishman.

“Last chance to wake up,” Shaggy called.

Moments later, Screwy-Doo extended his broad, long tongue and gave Roger Wilton’s nose a long lick, followed by long, sloppy washes up and down the visitor’s cheeks.

“Aaagh, ughh, blech! Stop it! Call your dog off, Zemo, you bounder!”

“Zemo? Shaggy pondered.

“Pttt-see mo?” the dog mouthed, lifting his head from the sputtering freeloader. “Rrrr-ooh!” He bounded over to the door and scratched.

“Hey, Fred! Screwb’s on to something!”

“Go tell the girls. You know it takes me at least 45 minutes to get my blond hair into place.”

“I knew there was something Zemo-ey about this place,” Roger explained to Shaggy. “The Baroness must have infiltrated that dog to track me. I’ll just follow the dog back to her lair and crack the case.”

“Zemo-ey? Baroness? Screwy’s mixed up with a baroness? Wow,” Shaggy mumbled. “But it doesn’t make sense.”

“Point. Screwy-Doo was seen eating biscuits from Velma’s hand last night. Then he licked it. Clear evidence of faithful service. Point. Velma’s been acting strangely around me. Point. Velma’s not in the room next door, according to the tracker I placed on her last night. Conclusion. Something strange is going on, and I know how to get to the bottom of it.”

“Like, wow. I’d never figure that out,” Shaggy mumbled.

About an hour later the three teen detectives and Roger Wilton were pacing down another soggy dirt road toward Bayou LePiou, led by an ebullient Screwy-Doo. Oddly enough, in the astral analogue to that watery landscape, Baron Ottokar Zemo was trudging the same road just ahead of them. The shack was in sight, and he could now detect a blue and gold aura lighting several of the windows. In true supervillain style, the Baron paused for a moment, pasted a sneer on his face, and intoned, “I have you now, Shrike. You cannot possibly escape me—ee- urk!”

Screwy-Doo stumbled for a moment and then tripped, crashing chin-first to the ground. “What happened, Screwb?” Shaggy asked unnecessarily.

“Ooof,” came a cultured European voice. “Bloeder Teufelhund.”

“That sounds like the professor,” Daphne ventured.

“Hey, Screwb, did you see him?”

“He may still be lost out here. But this is the other side of town,” Fred noted.

“I don’t see anybody.” Daphne complained.

“Maybe he’s a ghost,” Shaggy ventured.

“I know, I know!” Roger Wilton burbled. “He’s one of the Baroness’s minions with a HERPES cloaking device!

“Eeew,” Daphne groaned.

“That makes less sense than the ghost theory,” Fred groused. "Let’s spread out and see what we can find. But don’t take too long. I think Screwby’s on Velma’s trail.”

“Rats rite, wort of,” wurfed the dog, swiveling his head, looking for the body. But Otto, who was now high-tailing it for the shack and who now wasn’t occupying the same volume as Screwy-Doo, was undiscernable.

About the same time, in the Lair Mansion, Visionary’s NTU-150 alarm clock went off. Literally. Shards of high-impact plastic and a trans-sonic spray of nuts and bolts spattered against the Kevlar blanket covering the possibly-fake man from head to toe. “Ouch. It got me in the ribs this time,” he moaned from under the blanket. Extending an exploratory arm from underneath, he waved it a few times to confirm that the alarm clock was done and not primed for a second detonation, and then poked his head out.

“Do I have to get up?” he whispered to Fleabot.

“No, unless you don’t want the sheriff’s deputies outside to drag you to Zemo’s lawyer in your p.j.’s. She was very insistent that you show up today,” Fleabot chirped.

“Drat.”

9:35 a.m. – The Psychology Building, University of Michigan

Professor Van Cathexis: This departmental meeting will come to order.

A faculty voice: Louder, I can’t hear you over the airplane out there!

Van Cathexis: I said come to order! We will now read the minutes of the last meeting, where we tried to agree on the allocation of faculty offices for the next term.

Many, many professors: Groan.

Many, many other professors: I object!

9:35 a.m. – The offices of Sneek, Grabbit and Thuggery, Parodiopolis

“Let the record show that I am Arthur Narr, counsel for plaintiff, Baroness Elizabeth Zemo, in Zemo v. Visionary, and that I am about to question the deponent. Now sir, your name is ‘Visionary.’”

“That’s right.” Visionary replied in a calm voice. This is going to be easy.

“And your first name?”

“I don’t have one. I’m just Visionary.”

“And that’s your real name?”

“I’m real, dammit.”

“No profanity from the witness. Do you have a birth certificate?”

“Well, sure, I must have.”

“Would it surprise you that there is no record in any of the 50 states of any person born with the name ’Visionary’?”

“Er, yes. I mean no. I mean there should be one.”

“Would it surprise you that there is no record of anyone entering the United States with the name ‘Visionary’ or your fingerprints? What are you, Mr. Visionary? A fake man? An illegal alien? An identity forger? Answer yes or no.”

Meanwhile, Baroness Zemo had alighted from the Zemo Zeppelin in the middle of the quad and was now standing on a well-equipped stage placed directly in frot of the Psych Building.

“What’s all this about?” Sally asked, bewildered by the multiple sound setup and the elaborate backgrounds and lighting. Several thousand students were milling around, drawn by posters advertising a rap concert and a free breakfast.

“I have something to say, Sally. Sound check complete, Franz?”

“Just so, Your Excellency.”

“A rap concert, Baroness?”

“Sally, every movie now has to have a rap scene, otherwise it’s not hip. If I’m going to be the supervillain of the oughties, I’ve got to speak the language." She grabbed a microphone from the stand. "Hey, Ann Arbor, are you there?"

A few reflexive cheers came from the crowd.

"All right down there,” she shouted to the instrumentalists in the pit, “HIT IT!” The music came up and the Baroness took center stage.

I’m Elizabeth Zemo, the Baroness
I’ve got a beef I have to express
A rat psych grad student was my daily grind
Then one day a lawyer caught me from behind

I found I was the granddaughter
Of an evil dude
Whose name was Otto with a major ‘tude
And the other big name on my family blotter
Was Zemo, Baron Zemo

*backup singers* Woo hoo, woo hoo

Old Heinrich got vanished by the Hooded Hood
His wife Heike’s all frozen like icy wood
Zemette his daughter’s zapped out of the place
And Virtual Zemo’s now Ultizon way, way out in space

So I’m creepy Heinrich’s only heiress
I got three grand in cash and his mad scientist plans
I crank up his Scientific Concept-Trans
Mitter machine and I get total awareness
Of the Big Time, the Big Time

*backup singers* Thass rite, thass rite

I start off small with a couple of capers
Akiko and Monty know but I stay out of the papers
But it’s a struggle finding a decent palace
And Kerry Shepardson gives me nothing but malice

Her guardian’s Visionary who I thought exploded
The Fake-o’s amiable but in my way
Then I get swept up in the Hellraisers’ play
And decide it’s time the outmoded
Villains like the Hood get out for good

*backup singers* Get the Hood, out for good

So watch me Ann Arbor as I take my revenge
On a bunch of professors; I’m going to avenge
All that grad-student, boot-licking servitude
By shrinking them to the size of their ineptitude

Let me just pull this lever here,
And watch the professors tremble in fear
The faculty’s scaling down to sub-ant size
And I’m taking the building with all of them inside

They’ll serve me now as my tiny slaves
The size of beetles for the rest of their days
Now remember folks, what you are seeing
This world is mine and you better be believing.

BWA-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH!

*Cheering from slacker student crowd*

The Baroness and Sally strode off the stage, down the aisle to the Psychology Building, which was now the size of a shoe box. Picking it up, she waved and blew a kiss to the cheering crowd. They then popped into a waiting limo, and drove off.


Playing the part of Elizabeth Zemo

J. Jonah Jerkson
VOICE OF THE PEOPLE



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