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Post By Espionage and intrigue from... the Hooded Hood Thu Aug 25, 2005 at 07:57:33 am EDT |
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#231: Untold Undercover Tales of the Lair Legion: Plots and Ruses | |
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| #231: Untold Undercover Tales of the Lair Legion: Plots and Ruses The UH60L Black Hawk helicopter with the stealth modifications played its powerful search lights over the dark Colombian jungle clearing and set down in the middle of the ring of flares that had been cracked for it. The pilot didn’t power down the engines, preferring to keep the rotors turning while his onboard threat warning systems were flashing red. At least one pair of shoulder-mounted heat-seeking missiles were already locked on to his signature. The side door opened and a lithe young woman jumped to the ground. She moved across the clearing to the waiting men as if she was on a catwalk, her long blonde hair tossed by the helicopter’s wind. “General Palanquez,” she acknowledged the leader of the bandits who were waiting for her. “Miss Vee,” smiled the man in the general’s uniform, although he had served in no recognised armed force. He kissed his visitor’s hand with fervent courtesy that bespoke the hope of more intimate favours later. “I’m so pleased to meet with you at last. We were desolate to hear of your imprisonment by the Americanos, my dear VelcroVixen.” “A minor difficulty,” the young woman smiled at him. “I have many friends in high places in the US. It wasn’t too hard to arrange a complete pardon.” She switched back to business. “I’m here to verify the merchandise your employer has on offer.” “Of course. We are encamped a few miles from here. Please join me in my jeep.” The svelte visitor waved a hand to the Black Hawk crew and watched as it rose and vanished into the night. “Lead on,” the disguised Contessa Natalia Katarina Romanza told the weapons smuggler. “I can’t wait to see what you’ve got.” “A little more wine?” Simonides Slaughter asked his dinner guest. “The ‘88 Corton Charlemagne Domaine Bonneau du Martray is far too good to be ignored.” “Are you trying to get me tipsy?” asked Baroness Elizabeth Sweetwater Dewdrop Zemo von Saxe-Lurkburg-Schreckhausen. “Fine, full-bodied, white, and quite dry,” the Chairman of the Heck-Fire Club replied, holding the bottle but looking at the lady. “And best taken seriously, lest one makes a fool of oneself,” suggested Elizabeth. Slaughter snorted and replaced the wine in the ice bucket. “Touché, your excellency. I can see I’ve come to the right woman for what I need.” “And what are you hoping to have from me?” asked the Baroness. She had files on Slaughter and his associates that warned her to be on her guard. The White King of the Order of Heck-Fire had been old when her grandfather Otto was born. But she had to admit that Slaughter had a winning way with the ladies. “A mutually satisfying exchange, of course. I have a proposition.” “Indeed? Should I be shocked?” “I doubt if I’ll be expecting anything you haven’t done before.” “My reputation precedes me?” “I wouldn’t have sought you out otherwise, my dear. A business associate of mine needs access to some specialised mineral refining processes. Very special processes requiring unique equipment, held by only one company on this planet. And Montiver Hole at ZOXXON Oil is being tedious. It came to our attention that you managed to blackmail him quite effectively recently.” The Baroness considered this. “You wish me to convince ZOXXON to undertake your specialised process?” “Hole is asking half a billion dollars for access to some Technopolitan machinery he salvaged after the Technopolis War. We’d be willing to pay you a twenty percent commission on whatever discount you can negotiate for us.” “This equipment, what will it be processing?” Simonides Slaughter sipped his wine. “Uranium,” he told her. “High grade Candian uranium.” “Twenty percent, you say?” the Baroness replied. “Perhaps I will have another glass, dear Simonides.” “New arrivals proceed to the processing area. Follow the red line.” The tannoy boomed out over the landing pad, almost drowned out by the sound of the VTOL jet pulling away from the tropical paradise. The nine men and five women hoisted their bags and rucksacks and did as they were told, entering the bleak anonymous compound building. A few of the more perceptive of them glanced at the high electrified chain link fence, the guard towers, and the windowless central buildings as they walked out of the sunlight. The interior of the main block was clean but utilitarian. Four alert-looking guards in dark green jumpsuits watched the newcomers, hefting advanced Turrets Inc. Blackhand DV-11 Particle Projection Rifles. The arrivals were herded one at a time through the weapons sensor arch, then past the genetic scanners. Nobody carrying weapons or metahuman modifications was going to make it through that scan. White-coated B.A.L.D. scientists matched each of the new recruits with their known DNA pattern and checked them with their Interpol case files. “Brendan Gabriel,” an attractive techie with big round-rimmed spectacles noted, checking the readings on her console with the personnel dossier on screen two. “Ex-IRA explosives specialist, wanted in the UK and mainland Europe on terrorist offences after breaking out from the Maze Prison.” She looked over at the man the security detail were frisking. “You have some interesting scar tissue, Mr Gabriel.” “I’m an interesting fellow all round, so I am,” he replied with a roguish smile for the lady technician. “Any time you want to inspect my old wounds more carefully you only have to ask.” “Where’d you get the scars?” Security Captain Brady demanded, looking at the bioscanners that showed heavy clots of rough tissue on the new recruit’s back, chest, shoulders, wrists… everywhere.” “I’ve got a few miles on me,” Gabriel admitted. “But I could take down any one of these puppies you’re recruiting.” “Oh yeah?” demanded the scruffy blonde guy behind him. “If you’re so good why are you a walking scab, Murphy?” Gabriel turned on the stubble-jawed bigmouth. “You want to see what it’s like to have some major traumas, slackjaw?” Captain Brady was between them, his power baton charged up for trouble. “Break it up. Save your aggression for training. You’ll need all the energy you can get just to survive.” “I got energy ta survive and to mop the floor with patchwork man here,” the troublemaker replied. Brady pointed his shock stick right at the guy, checking his nametag. “Give me any more grief, Castle, and you won’t have the energy to call your mother for an ambulance.” Gabriel glowered alike at Jack Castle behind him and at Captain Brady. “Messenger,” he told them. “It was Messenger that did this to me.” “I hear he’s over-rated,” the scruffy guy scoffed. At the other side of the process room, the lithe brunette who was currently being bioscanned watched with mild contempt. “Do we get masks to keep out the testosterone clouds?” she asked her own medtech. The technician didn’t bother replying. Tanya Turner’s file showed she’d once been a novice of the Little Sisters of Discipline. It made sense that she didn’t like men. “This way,” Brady called when all fourteen newcomers had been checked in. “Welcome to your new career as super-villain henchpeople, courtesy of your new employer Jethro Screwdriver.” Sir Mumphrey Wilton frowned. “Drat,” he said. If Asil Ashling, his amanuensis hadn’t been at the crime scene watching him he’d have used a rather stronger word. “We got here too late?” Asil guessed. “The murder happened too long ago for your temporal pocketwatch to give us an action replay of what happened?” “I’m afraid so,” the eccentric Englishman replied. “General Vincento was killed exactly seventeen hours, fifty-one minutes, and thirty-four seconds ago, but I can’t wind back events that far to give us a visual re-enactment. Drat.” Asil looked around the wrecked study where the NATO officer had been attacked. The outer castle wall was crumbled to rubble, even though it had been eight feet thick. “Perhaps there are other clues?” she suggested. “Hmph. Half of NATO has been crawlin’ over the wreckage before they thought to mention the problem to us,” he frowned. “Don’t imagine we’ll see much those forensic johnnies have missed, even if they are damned Dag … valued European partners.” Sometime after retiring last night, General Carlos Vincento of the Exército Português had been stomped to death by an intruder who crashed through the outer wall of a 15th century castle as if it wasn’t there – and made no noise doing it. The General and the property damage hadn’t been discovered until this morning. “Gather together whatever papers you can get. Attach that device of the Librarian’s to suck out whatever’s in his computer files,” Sir Mumphrey told his assistant. “We’ll see if Hallie or Bookman can make any sense out of what’s left of these documents. Maybe we’ll find out why somebody wanted a key member of the international security forces dead so urgently and prominently.” Asil started to pick her way over the rubble. She paused to look at Vincento’s fallen spectacles, their lenses opaquely starred. “There are all kinds of super-villains who could do this…” she began. “And most of ‘em are for hire,” Mumphrey responded. “Question is by whom.” The mercenary camp was set up under the jungle canopy, invisible to eyeball detection from overhead reconnaissance. The Contessa also noted the perimeter was ringed with rather sophisticated anti-emission shielding, preventing thermal or electronic imaging from locating the site. That kind of kit was well beyond the usual equipment of drug smuggling terrorists, and was a definite clue that the SPUD undercover agent was on the right track. “Welcome to our humble abode,” Ernesto Palanquez told the woman he assumed to be the Nortamericano supervillainess VelcroVixen. “My tent is your tent.” “Perhaps later,” Natalia Romanza purred, keeping in character. There wouldn’t be a later, since her homing signal had just been cut off by the anti-emission field. That meant she had to work fast. “The equipment?” she prompted the ersatz general. “Business before pleasure.” Palanquez seemed disappointed, but he led her towards a guarded tent at the centre of the compound. Inside its shaded darkness a severe-looking woman stood in the background behind a trestle containing three large boxes. The Contessa recognised her at once. “Nadezhda Prokofiev.” This mission had just gone seriously wrong. “Natalia Romanza,” replied the telepath known as the Mind’s Eye. “General, you have a spy in your camp.” “And a traitorous bitch,” added the Contessa, leaping to one side as she hurled the thermite charges in her belt-links. She felt the sudden tug of telepathic commands but shrugged them off with practised discipline. Chaos erupted in the tent. The two armed guards accompanying Palanquez burst into violence, levelling their weapons. Natalia Romanza rolled beneath their spray of lead and performed some balletic movement that ended with both of the men crumpled on the floor. Nadya Prokofiev reached out and shut down the portion of the spy’s mind that interpreted sensory information. The Contessa suddenly found herself deaf and blind, unable even to feel the ground beneath her feet. “You always were out of your depth with me, Tasha,” she told her old acquaintance. “Even before I could do this to you. General, do something unpleasant to our little impostor.” “She’s not VelcroVixen?” Ernesto Palanquez wasn’t keeping up with the plot. “She’s an agent of SPUD these days. I imagine she’s here to try and interfere with the weapons sale, and to… wait, she’s hiding something in the back of her mind. She’s expecting…” That was when Mr Epitome and Glory dropped in through the canvas, collapsing the tent. The man of might caught Palanquez hand and crushed it and the gun it held. The Lair Legion’s Lairjet dropped down to hover over the camp, its brilliant searchlights dazzling the guards on the ground. A sudden crackle of lightning from an enchanted baseball bat arced into the surface to air missile array. De Brown Streak blurred down and carried every rifle he could see over the horizon. The Mind’s Eye triggered the psychic failsafes she’d installed in these mercenaries over the last few days. Each of them bit down on their capsule of concentrated Shazam, boosting their physical abilities by a hundredfold for the remaining fifteen minutes of their life. “You guys have no idea how to be good supervillains!” CrazySugarFreakBoy! complained as he dropped into the mêlée. “I mean, not only don’t you have funky matching costumes, but you’re totally lacking in the banter department, and you have no sense of dramatic timing.” He dodged to allow two of the newly empowered giants lumber into each other. “Come on. When are the bad guys gonna get new tricks?” “These people have been effectively murdered,” scowled Dancer, avoiding another of the bruisers and kicking back to put him on the floor. Even superbeings have vulnerable bits. “Somehow I don’t think they volunteered for a super-drug overdose.” “They art most tragic,” agreed Donar, catching a punch in his palm and casually pummelling his assailant wit Mjalcolm, “but they dost crumple most satisfyingly.” Nadya Prokofiev reached out and hammered white noise into the superheroes’ brains. Glory whimpered and fell over. Dancer, Donar, DBS, and CSFB! fell to their knees, struggling and clutching their heads. Mr Epitome pressed forwards, step by step as he tried to battle through the psychic chaff. Yo came up behind the Mind’s Eye and caught her in a tight armlock. “You are being to be very naughty,” the Deputy-Leader of the Lair Legion warned the psychic. “Yo is telling you to be stopping of it before Yo is to be uncute to you.” “You don’t get to arrest me,” Nadya warned the pure thought being who seemed able to shrug off telepathic domination with no effort at all. “Not if you want these worthless wretches to live.” Yo followed the Mind’s Eye’s gaze and saw the camp cooks, three skinny peasants drafted to do the domestic work of Palanquez’ private army. They each stood zombie-like, holding a sharp kitchen knife at their own throats. Yo released his/her captive. “You are being to be a bad person,” the genderless alien accused Nadya. “And you don’t get out of here,” Epitome vowed, struggling forward and reaching out with hands that could crush steel. “Not this time.” “Are you sure?” the Mind’s Eye asked, thumbing her recall teleporter. Sure, it cost a fortune, but it saved so many difficult conversations. The telepathic pressure eased up, and the Lair Legion was able to bring the camp under control. It was too late for most of the terrorists. The Shazam dose was too much for their cardiovascular systems to cope with. “Has she really gone?” Dancer asked Yo, “or is she just making us think she’s gone?” “She is gone,” Yo frowned. “Yo is not to be seeing her, and Glory is not to be smelling of her. Cute Al B. Harper, can you be to be tracing of the teleportation signal?” “I got it,” the Legion’s scientist answered from behind the controls of the LairJet. “Around thirty miles southwest.” He saw De Brown Streak rise to give chase so he continued quickly, “But I’ll bet my favourite spanner that’s just a relay station. This was cut-down Ivorean tech, probably salvaged after Vorrow’s little invasion attempt got squashed that time.” “Prokofiev works for Dr Gregor Vassilych, Factor X,” Mr Epitome briefed them. “She’s his right hand in his international arms trading. I guess now we know who’s supplying the missiles that HERPES just ordered.” “And we can get more from this Generalissimo guy when he wakes up,” De Brown Streak suggested, leaning over the fallen Ernesto Palanquez. “No, I don’t think we will,” Al B. Harper warned his team-mates, running a scanner over the fallen mercenary. “Looks like the Mind’s Eye mindwiped him as she left the building.” “Is very uncute lady,” Yo agreed. “Yo is sorry Yo is to be letting her go but…” “She had the hostages,” Dancer agreed. “We didn’t expect a high-level telepath to be involved in this operation. It seems the supply chain we’ve stumbled on was bigger than we thought.” “Bigger than HERPES trying to become a nuclear power?” DBS said. “Ouch.” “Damn,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! spat. “I hate it when the bad guys leave a huge body count then just teleport away. There should be a law to stop that. It’s not fair.” “I’ll see what I can do,” agreed Al B. thoughtfully. Donar looked gloomily around the battlefield. For a moment he’d managed to forget his missing Ausgard in the heat of battle, but now that was over. “We need to findeth yon Mind’s Eye woman and her employereth and smite them forsoothly,” he grumbled. The Contessa had just spent three months undercover tracking the arms deal. She waited until Al B. and Dancer had disarmed the traps on the captured boxes then looked at the missile cases inside. “These are missing their payloads,” she said. “We’ve intercepted the delivery systems, but the warheads are elsewhere.” “That was always going to be likely,” Mr Epitome noted. “That’s why we set Plan B in motion.” The new recruits had been split up into smaller groups to test their aptitudes. Brendan Gabriel was in the unit spending time with the training facility’s administrator. “I am the Captor,” the man with the short greying hair told his audience. He wore khaki hunting gear and a pith helmet, but nobody was laughing. “In my time I have overcome Jarvis, NTU-150, Donar, Yo, CrazySugarFreakBoy!, Starseed… more heroes than I can easily remember. I have never served time in prison, and if I retired today I would have enough wealth to live at ease for the rest of my life. I tell you this not to boast but to establish my credentials as a suitable trainer. If you listen and learn I can put you on the highest-paying career track in the world, and the opportunities are endless.” The newcomers didn’t believe the old man was credible. They never did. There had to be a demonstration. “You!” the captor pointed at Gabriel. “Show me what you can do. Take me down.” Gabriel stepped out of line and watched his opponent. The Captor indicated with his fingertips that the Irishman should come at him. Gabriel moved forwards. The Captor’s first blow hammered into his rubs, forcing out all the air there. The second doubled him over. Two second later he was lying on the floor in plastic handcuffs, unable to move. “Here endeth the first lesson,” said the Captor. He unlocked the manacles that bound Gabriel and let him up. “You did well,” he encouraged the trainee. “You might not think it, but you did. I’ve seen the best. You could be very good.” “I intend to be,” the vanquished man replied. Because next time Messenger thought to himself, I won’t be holding back. It looked like a seedy truck stop off interstate 666. A flickering neon sign flashed erratically, proclaiming Grill and Beer. It took a computer-interfaced mind like Yuki Shiro’s to discern that the seemingly-random flickering were complex binary code. The sign said: “Robo-Sapiens welcome here. No fleshlings allowed.” There were a couple of bouncers on the door, dressed in Hell’s Angel leathers, and they looked Yuki up and down appraisingly as she jumped off her Harley. She ignored them and strode through the door. She was aware that the lintel was laced with bio and electronic scanners. Her organic brain was well shielded, and she was confident Al B’s technical wizardry could spoof anything these hicks might rig up. To the sensors she’d look like any other urban robot out for a night on the rough side of the highway. The interior was crowded and smoky. Many of the robots adopted human habits like drinking and smoking. A cluster of men were playing pool, a few couples were smooch-dancing by the jukebox. Yuki found a barstool, hurled its occupant across the room, and sat down. That was enough to start the fight, and after that things took on a momentum of their own. “So what’ll it be?” the bartender asked her ten minutes later when considerably more of the clientele were sprawled on the floor in diagnostic/repair mode. “Whisky sour,” the cyborg P.I, said, slipping a hundred dollar bill across the counter. “And a way to contact the Machine Shop.” “I’m in Grand Cayman right now,” the Librarian complained to Sir Mumphrey Wilton over the commlink. “It’s sunny, healthy, and full of tanned people who want nothing but sunbathing and watersports. There isn’t a decent bookshop on the whole island.” “My condolences,” said the eccentric Englishman. “But did you get the account information?” “It wouldn’t stand up in court,” Lee Bookman reported, “but it’s looking like your General Vincento received a number of large payments to an undeclared numbered account here. I had to get Hallie into the system to find out from who the money came.” “And?” prompted Mumphrey impatiently. “A firm called Everyday Eugenics,” the Librarian revealed. “And the SPUD database says that they’re a front organisation for Count Fokker’s HERPES organisation.” “Vincento was on the take from Fokker, what?” Sir Mumphrey mused. “So why was he taken out so spectacularly? To set an example, obviously. But to whom? By whom?” The leader of the Lair Legion thanked Lee Bookman for his work, assured him that he was allowed indoors out of the sun now, and turned back to Asil. He crunched across the broken glass all over the floor. There was a lot of it. Even Vincento’s trophy case and the glasses within had been shattered during the attack. “Vincento was on the NATO commission that examined the Technopolis technology left behind after the war,” the girl suggested. “All the diagnostic reports, the reverse engineering results came across his desk.” “So he might have been passin’ that on to HERPES or whoever was the highest bidder, the blaggard,” Mumphrey noted. “Somebody got hold of the technical specification on that equipment young Harper modified to create the Wastelands forcefield. Somebody knew enough about it to take it down.” He looked over the papers Asil had carefully laid out over their temporary office one floor up from where the General had died. “I wonder whether he died because he got too greedy or if he failed to come up with the goods, or what?” Asil and Mumphrey were both alerted to danger by the sound of a gun-hammer clicking into place. The assassin in the high-tech body suit was crouched on the windowsill, his wrist-rifle laser-spot aimed directly at Asil’s forehead. “That’s what my employer wishes to know as well,” Crosshairs told the quarries he had at his mercy. “You’re coming with me to tell Wolfgang Fokker exactly what you know.” “Th’ guy’s a bozo,” Jack Castle told his bunkmates at the end of a second gruelling day of training. “That Captor guy, at least he’s got a rep. All this Apollo guy’s got is a big mouth.” “He seems pretty good at weapons to me,” Sven Larsen admitted, rubbing the bruises where their mêlée weapons training officer had slammed a lead golfball into him. “I wouldn’t want to go up against that guy without an Uzi in my hand.” “So he can throw knives and marbles around,” Castle shrugged. “Big whoop. And what kind of supervillain names hisself after a rocket ship? He might as well call himself Enterprise-D.” Gabriel looked up from his newspaper. “Apollo was the god of archers,” he threw in. “It’s our training officer’s way of letting us know he’s the best there is at archery and throwing stuff.” That shut Trickshot up long enough for Messenger to finish the crossword puzzle. “The uranium?” the Baroness said, helping herself to a second éclair, “It’s coming from Candia, of course. Who else has such high-grade product and is able to slip their exports past US customs by exploiting geographical dimensional anomalies?” “Geo-what?” Visionary blinked. He’d thought all this talking with the archvillain stuff was behind him when he’d resigned from leadership of the LL long ago. He hated how the various nefarious baddies of the Parodyverse seemed to feel they had a right to saunter down to the Lair Mansion for a chat every now and then. “Candia,” the Baroness sighed. “An alternate landmass that occupies the same geographical space as Canada, due to a major retcon released by the Hooded Hood’s alternate reality daughter Kumari. There are a dozen or so weak points in reality along the Canadian border where you actually travel to Candia instead. And Candia is cash poor but rich in uranium-laced mud.” “But Hatman and the Shoggoth are in Candia now, on a cultural exchange,” Vizh protested. “Amazing. And yet still those wily Candians are able to sneak out their weapons grade radioactive materials.” Visionary watched as Elizabeth von Zemo conquered the last of the cream cakes. He hadn’t got any at all. “So why are you telling us in the Lair Legion about the Candians selling uranium?” “Because I can’t conquer the world if it’s become a radioactive cinder,” the Baroness replied scathingly. “Because I’ve already been paid my commission for facilitating the materials transfer out of Candia. And because I don’t like the idea of Wolfgang Fokker using ZOXXON’s advanced technology to create his very own Transnuclear Weapon.” “Transnuke…? As in those things that Vaahir was using?” Vizh worried. “The Technopolitans had them too. You do remember that radioactive wasteland inland from Gothametropolis York? Anyway, Fokker wants a big phallic weapon that goes megaboom, and I’d really prefer he was neutered. Think of me as a concerned citizen doing my bit for law and order.” “Must I?” “Just tell Mumphrey or Hatman or somebody competent,” the Baroness sighed. “By the way, have my new process servers found you yet…?” “I said, ‘Why should you need all that body armour given the cellulite padding in your thighs and buttocks?’” Tanya Turner repeated at the request of her combat tutor. “Don’t you have enhanced hearing to go with all your other implants?” The females of the rookie class watched with interest to see how HuntingJustice DeathMarrow would deal with the challenge. They’d all had a hard morning of gruelling exercise and any one of them would have cheerfully murdered their drill instructor if they thought they’d survive the attempt. The Little Sisters of Discipline had clearly been sticklers for early morning runs with sixty pounds of baggage too, because the only recruit not panting on the ground at the end of the route march was Turner. She did have to freshen up her lipstick though. “There’s always one,” HJDM smiled viciously. “One smart cookie who thinks they’re something special. And sometimes they even make something of themselves, after the plastic surgery.” “You don’t have the first clue about combat,” Turner accused. “Your whole technique is striking poses and pointing impossibly big guns. I don’t even know how you don’t fall over with those tiny feet and that deformed chest.” Suddenly a six-barrelled protonic shattercannon was in Huntingjustice Deathmarrow’s hand and aimed right at the rookie. “Then let me demonstrate,” the tutor declared. Turner ducked low and somersaulted aside. The shattercannon locked on with tracker missiles. The rest of the class scattered as bits of classroom disintegrated around them. “Nothing clever to say now?” gloated HJDM as her object lesson scuttled ahead of the field of fire. “You wouldn’t understand me if I said something clever,” answered Lisa Waltz, running up the wall then backflipping to plant her feet in the villainess’ face. She landed with her thighs around Deathmarrow’s neck. The Captor sauntered round the corner to see what the noise was and shot the insubordinate student in the back of the head. “Hatman, Manga Shoggoth,” the Candian cultural attaché and political officer welcomed the visiting Legionnaires. “Welcome to Candia. We hope you will have a pleasant stay.” Next Week: Hatman and the Shoggoth go north and discover adventure, mystery, political intrigue, and romance (but not with each other; relax) in the Land of the Rabid Wolf. Mumphrey exchanges viewpoints with Count Fokker. There’s a problem at Jethro Screwdriver’s Caribbean training camp; well three problems actually. Yuki goes slumming. The secret mastermind (there always has to be a secret mastermind, right?) is revealed. A Legionnaire falls. That’s in the long-delayed Untold Tales of the Glorious People’s Republic of Candia: Flesh and Mud, coming soon. And since I’ll be away from tomorrow for a week, your comments on this story will instead get replies from not one but two of our greatest poster debater – or most debatable posters. This time I’m hoping to prevail upon (Manga)Jason Froikin and Chris (Shoggoth) Leeson to keep a good level of banter and discussion going. The bar has been set high by previous guest-respondents, but I’m convinced these two can maintain a level of controversy and weirdness to match anything that has gone before. So comment soon and comment often, secure in the knowledge that you will probably get not one but two replies to your pithy remarks. Tinker, Tailor, Footnote, Spy: VelcroVixen, (Vicki Vee), fetishwear model turned supervillain henchwoman, has served under a variety of nefarious baddies including the Hooded Hood, Count Fokker, and Count Armageddon. She was last seen being extradited from Badripoor. In this chapter the part of VelcroVixen was being played by Natalia Romanza, agent of SPUD. Simonides Slaughter is “Black King” and Chairman of the Heck-Fire Club, an ancient society of self-interested and conscienceless power brokers. He and the majority of the Club’s Inner Circle are secretly extraplanar parasite Hero Feeders. He has a taste for wicked, devious, sophisticated women, so Baroness von Zemo is exactly his type. Montiver Hole is the corporate villain CEO of ZOXXON Oil, the big business that gives big business a bad name. The Baroness recently intimidated him into helping her with an oil-to-water scam, as detailed in the Baroness’ own series. More of Montiver next time. Candia is an alternate version of Canada, coexisting in a slightly different reality as described in the story itself. Lots more on Candia next time. The Mind’s Eye (Nadezhda “Nadya” Prokofiev) is a powerful telepath working for international arms dealer Factor X. She has previously done unpleasant things to Mr Epitome. This chapter reveals a previous association with Natalia Romanza also. Shazam is the street name for the latest black market meta-drug, a biogenetic compound that grants to user temporary super-powers at the cost of their sanity and with considerable risk of permanent injury or death. The Machine Shop are a collection of criminal robot mercenaries who recently heisted a major radioactive source from the Gothametropolis Wastelands to sell the Factor X. Jethro Screwdriver is an underworld financier, although so far nobody has been able to pin any criminal charges on him. He is subcontracting his electronic security to the scientific terrorist group B.A.L.D. The Captor is one of the Parodyverse’s longest-established villains, a specialist in trapping superheroes. He’s not boasting about his track record. Huntingjustice Deathmarrow is a kewl killer from a dystopic and confused alternate future, or possibly past. She can do improbable things with her massive guns. We haven’t seen Apollo before, but doubtless he’ll get a chance to be unpleasant next issue. Count Wolfgang Fokker is another of those tedious Nazi types that has survived from World War Two. Now he’s the supreme commander of the terrorist organisation HERPES. He and Mumphrey have not had a strong history of getting along. Crosshairs is an up and coming assassin-for-hire, out to prove himself the best in the world. The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2005 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2005 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
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