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Post By The Hooded Hood strikes with more triple-sized trauma Fri Jun 30, 2006 at 06:40:36 pm EDT |
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#276: Untold Tales of the Parody War: Ground Zero | |
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#276: Untold Tales of the Parody War: Ground Zero Amber St Clare arrived with a scream, struggling so hard that she almost fell off the bed. One moment she wasn’t there, the next the Lair Legion’s government liaison had popped into existence in a full-blown panic. Dancer caught her. “You’re okay,” Sarah Shepherdson told the hysterical woman. “It’s okay. It’s okay now.” “The Obedience Brand!” Amber cried out. Weeks earlier she had been forced to receive a techno-organic implant that over-rode her own will and turned her into an agent against the Lair Legion. “Gone,” Shep promised her, holding the woman in her arms. “They’re all gone, even yours. The Obedience Brands are broken. All the people who were Branded are back to normal. We can’t even tell they were infected.” Amber looked around the familiar surroundings of the Lair Infirmary and tried to calm down. She’d been fighting before, trying to follow the Brand’s orders to destroy herself. Then Sir Mumphrey Wilton had approached her with his temporal pocketwatch… “You sent me into the future,” Amber realised. “Sir Mumphrey, that is. I’ve jumped forward in time.” “Well, there was nothing good on TV while you were gone,” Dancer reassured her. “Welcome back.” More memories came flooding in. “I betrayed you all,” Amber confessed. “Access codes, personnel data, performance stats…” “Amber, it’s okay. Really. We dealt with it.” “And… oh no! Did I try and seduce Flapjack?” Dancer joined in Amber’s shudder at the thought of getting close to the Legion’s disgusting hunchbacked butler. “Amber, we all know by now what those Obedience Brands could make people do. A friend of mine was going to murder her own baby if I didn’t let them Brand me. She’s still in therapy. But the Legion dealt with it.” Amber forced herself to breathe more slowly. “So… things are okay now? What about Special Resolution 1066?” “Revoked. Discredited. But that’s about it for the good news.” The liaison noted the dark circles under Dancer’s eyes. “What about the bad news?” she asked with mounting dread. “Uhuna. She died. And just yesterday, the day before the Parody Master’s surrender deadline, there was a surprise attack. We lost Miss Framlicker and D.D. and A.L.F.RED and Dr Blargelslarch. And, you know, most of Earth’s defences.” Amber swallowed. She realised her hands were trembling. “So… where are we now? With the Parody Master, I mean?” Dancer shrugged. “Six hours to the deadline, one desperate final plan to save the world. Business as usual, really. But I wanted to be here to see you safely back.” Amber looked at her sceptically. “Safely?” Dancer nodded. “I’m afraid it’s all relative.” Amber tried to hold back her tears. It was all too much. “I’m done,” she told Sarah. “That’s it. The Hellraisers were bad, but this… I can’t cope.” “Amber, you have to,” the Probability Dancer replied gravely. “We’re at war. Mumphrey says you can have two hours off to get a shower and a change of clothes and he expects you in the Operations Room by eight a.m.” Shep managed a lopsided grin. “So like I said, welcome back.” Amber picked her way over the rubble in the hallway of the Lair Mansion. The adamantine front doors were laid to one side. Uniformed technicians were resetting the reinforced steel frame that would allow the gaping hole in the front of the Legion’s headquarters to be refilled. In fact there were people everywhere. Most of them were soldiers but there were civilian administrators too. Through the gap in the wall Amber could see a small forest of tents and trailers out on the shell-pocked lawn. While she’d been gone the Lair Mansion had become a seat of government. “Excuse me, Ms St Clare,” a voice called to her. She turned round to find Dawson from Treasury handing her a stack of folders. “These budget estimates will need your initials before we can make the war loans,” he told her. “I also need to schedule a meet with you about the resource transportation issues,” a handsome Spanish man told her. “We’d counted on additional logistical support from the Interdimensional Transportation Corporation, but that’s gone now.” “I’ve left this morning’s communiqués on your desk, Ms St Clare,” an efficient secretary told her. “We’re onto your sixth in-tray now, by the way. I’ll add these files to the pile. “Thank you,” Amber told her weakly. “Excuse me. I’m due to meet Sir Mumphrey.” She wandered on through the damaged building. Everywhere there were hasty signs of repair and adaptation. SPUD technicians were ribboning cables out to the temporary offices on the lawn. A catering truck was negotiating at the hastily-restored mainland bridge for access with the thirteen hundred pizzas that ManMan had dialled out for. There was an aircraft carrier moored a hundred yards off the Lair Jetty. “Hey, Amber,” Trickshot called to the administrator. “Welcome back, darlin’” “What have you done to this place?” she gasped. “Redecorated,” grinned the irritating archer. “We’re expecting guests.” “Would these be serious guests in red and black combat armour with molecule-thick Avaswords?” Amber suggested. “Well them too,” agreed Tricky. “But mostly its U.N. diplomats and U.S. state officials and suchlike. Citizen Z had ta draft in the Kitchen of Doom just to feed everybody. Oh, you’re supposed ta be sorting out the shower rotas.” Amber started to wish for the good old days of Hellraisers and Obedience Brands. “I can see I have a lot to catch up with,” she agreed. “Are the rest of the Legion with Sir Mumphrey?” “Well, Vizh is in Faerie looking for his stolen kid, Yo’s in the Swordrealms workin’ on Plan F, Yuki’s out back feeding her Skunk flying saucer, Epitome’s drilling the new ground troops on Lair Island security protocols, Al B.’s out at the EEE Firehouse tryin’ ta find a way fer stopping dimensional attacks on Earth, Lisa’s making the armed forces comfortable in their billets, and Dancer and CSFB! are heading off to try Plan A,” Trickshot summarised. “You are coming with me to the Lair Kitchen and I’m making’ you breakfast.” “I have to meet Sir Mumphrey…” “Aw, Mumph’s busy meeting with Hatty. You knew Hat was the new leader of the LL, right? Yeah, and CSFB!’s his deputy. Yuki’s training and tactical, Epitome’s military and emergency services liaison. I’m still the heart-throb an’ idol of millions. Anyhow, Mumph’s going to be tied up fer a good quarter hour yet, so you’ve got time for old Bre’r Trickshot’s world-famous breakfast chilli on toast…” “This is as far as I can take you,” the Abyssal Greye told Xander the Improbable. “Any deeper and the defences beneath Lair Island would notice me and smear me across the Parodyverse,” “We’ll take it from here, thanks,” Dancer told the Dean of the Scholar-Ghouls Under Gothametropolis. “We’d never have made it this far through these twisty complicated tunnels without your help.” “Just be careful,” the Abyssal warned the explorers. “The tunnels aren’t always the same, and there’s a price to pay for walking them. They’re laced with narrative potential. Nobody gets out unscathed.” CrazySugarFreakBoy! was glowing dayglow green and neon orange in the semi-darkness. “Hey, we’re plenty used to being scathed,” the avatar of chaos promised. “But we just have to find this Celestian power that Liu Xi managed to tap into before.” “I didn’t get here by this route,” Liu Xi Xian advised him. “I just followed Marie Murcheson, the banshee, when she called to me. I didn’t know where I was going.” Xander hoisted his old-fashioned oil storm lantern and gestured for them to move down he old carved tunnel. “The defences on Parody Island were set long ago, before the human age,” the sorcerer supreme warned them. “The Space Robots hid their Dreaming Celestian and his Cosmic Cube down here,” “Tell me about it,” Goldeneyed interrupted. “I saw it. On one of my first adventures with the Lair Legion, Lisa and me jumped back in time to when this place was some kind of inhuman cult temple and stuff. Thousands, maybe millions of years ago.” “There has always been a house here,” Xander agreed. “We brought you along because you’ve been down here before.” “The Dreaming Celestian has gone, though,” G-Eyed explained. “It moved on when the Hooded Hood manipulated us into discovering it.” “Boy, that was a major epic,” CSFB! grinned nostalgically. “The Coming of the Celestians!” “But the defences remained,” Liu Xi insisted. “They had already adopted the spirit of Marie Murcheson as one of their agents. When she wasn’t available the co-opted Hallie as well.” “And when the Doomherald of the Parody Master tried to slip in through back doors under the Island, the defences reached out to you,” Dancer concluded. “They used you as the conduit to create that impenetrable barrier around the Mansion,” Xander stopped to inspect some carved initials on the wall: HV. “Hmm,” he pondered. “If an analogy helps, think of the Mansion defences as being a big shaggy guard dog. Its owner had gone away, so it has no real direction. It can only do so much to keep the property safe. It needs other people to let it off the chain occasionally.” “Yes,” agreed Liu Xi. “It was like there was some kind of… of basic consciousness there. Not sentient but… aware.” “The Celestians are gone,” Dancer said, “but their power remains. If we can harness that it could be the last force in the Parodyverse strong enough to counter the Parody Master.” And they plunged deeper into the island. “I just threw the Italian ambassador to the UN out on his ear,” Amber breathed. “The Italian ambassador.” “Chap was an oik,” Sir Mumphrey Wilton told Amber, “and speaking of such…” The Lair Legion’s liaison officer trailed after the eccentric Englishman as he left the leader’s office and stormed into the meeting room. The chamber wasn’t full of Legionnaires as it usually was but of delegates from the nations that had had second thoughts about resisting the Parody Master. Every one of them jumped up with their complaint as the Commander of the Combined World Forces appeared. “You feckless, spineless, maundering yellow-striped blithering paltroons!” Sir Mumphrey Wilton thundered at them. “Sit down before I knock you down and get this into your thick addled syphilitic excuses for brains…” Amber thought it was an approach to the United Nations that was long overdue. “It wasn’t your fault,” Amy Aston told Al B. Harper, filling up another shot glass and pushing it in front of the archscientist. “She should have been here,” Al told the glass, remaining otherwise motionless at his cluttered desk as he had done for three hours now. “With us, at the EEE Firehouse.” “Miss Framlicker was very happy to go back and take over ITC,” Amy reminded Al. “You know she was. We needed somebody to take charge of all the equipment at the Interdimensional Transportation Corporation and she was the best choice. She helped run that place for the better part of a decade.” “Well her memorial now is a pile of burning building rubble blocking the Parkway,” Al said bitterly. “Amy, I don’t know if I can keep doing this. First Cody now Muffy…” “I don’t know if I can believe that Miss Framlicker was really called Muffy.” Al downed the shot. It didn’t help. That was Amy’s way of avoiding the pain, not his. He picked up his pencil. “You should have seen her at college,” he told the EEE engineer. “She shone. I’ve never known a mind like hers. Never. Everybody else wanted her for her body, but I always wanted that mind.” “Until the two of you got brainwashed to believe you’d split up by the same bastard that later mentally controlled me to slash my wrists to distract the Lair Legion,” Amy noted. “The man who co-ordinated Special Resolution 1066, Edward Gramayre, and who got away scot free.” Al B. sighed. “The scores and missions are mounting up. I have to find Kinki to save Cody. I have to avenge Muffy. I have to work out what the Hooded Hood was hinting at when he told us he had a way of saving the planet from the Parody Master. I have to figure out what the Celestians did to Parody Island when they came there back in pre-history.” Amy shrugged. “So do it.” Al snapped his pencil in half. “I don’t know how.” “Is it a good idea having the entire world’s command and control centred on one place?” Amber St Clare asked Hatman as they checked troop readiness reports with Mr Epitome. “It’s a really bad idea,” Mr Epitome admitted, “but all the other alternatives are worse.” “We tried the multiple centre option first,” Hatman explained to Amber. “It took just one of the Parody Master’s dreadnaughts less than half an hour to destroy the Helicarrier, NORAD, ITC, the Moon Public Library, and every single security watchtower. So the new plan is we put all our eggs in just one basket and do everything we can to guard that basket.” “Psyche profiles of the Parody Master suggest he’s not one to back away from a challenge,” Mr Epitome explained. “We’re provoking him. If he attacks anywhere, we want him to attack here first.” “So we die quickly?” Amber ventured. “So we can smack him down,” answered Hatman with a hard-set jaw. “This feels deep,” Dancer admitted as they descended a flight of carved stone stairs that had been old when humanity worked out how to crawl from the oceans. “Very deep.” “You should see the energy interactions in the walls and floors and ceilings,” Liu Xi told her. “Spectacular. Like the heartbeat of the universe.” “I don’t need to see them,” Shep admitted. “I can feel the probabilities zinging round me. What is this, Xander?” “Hey, I recognise that door!” CrazySugarFreakBoy! called out. “I’ve seen that door before. That’s where the Dreaming Celestian lived!” “Not any more,” Liu Xi told him. “Now it’s the gateway to the deeper realities, the foundations of the Parodyverse.” “When the Celestians withdrew they took that module with them,” Xander explained. “Think of it as an open computer port, waiting to send or accept traffic.” “Sounds like a security risk,” Goldeneyed worried. “Hey, why do I get queasy when I get near it?” “Because of your timespace manipulation powers,” the master of the mystic crafts told him impatiently. “Keep up. This is a conduit plugged in to the very dimensions you manipulate when you use your teleportation effects.” “But I don’t have my powers any more,” Bry Katz pointed out. “Pricilla DuBois saw to that.” “Of course you have them,” Xander snorted. “All the Vermillion Vex did was erase the minor mutation you used to access them. Like taking away the key to the cupboard. Everything else is there. You only need another key.” “So if we toss Bry in there he might get unlocked?” Dancer asked brightly. “Or die,” Xander added. “It’s all down to chance.” And he patted the Probability Dancer on the shoulder. “So I’d really concentrate on this one if I was you. Roasted superhero smells awful.” Liu Xi was starting to work out what the mage and Al B. Harper had been plotting. “You’re not serious,” she said. “Hey,” objected CrazySugarFreakBoy! with a grin, “We’re not going to win this war by being serious. Let’s play to our strengths.” Solomon Finkel had only just opened up his shop when the two young women came in. He was a little bit alarmed by the pink hair on the one with the leather jacket, but the blonde girl looked respectable enough. “Hello,” he said. “What can I do for you today?” “You’re Solly Finkel, right?” Yuki Shiro asked him. “You make spectacles.” Solly usually made spectacles for respectable old men who’d used his shop for forty years. He didn’t make gimmick glasses with tinted or reflected lenses, with gaudy plastic frames. He just made good honest spectacles, using traditional lens-grinding techniques. “Yes,” he agreed. “It’s written right up there over the door.” It was a quiet day. Nobody bought spectacles at the end of the world. “Mr Finkel,” we need you to come with us,” Amber St Clare told the old man. “We need you to help save the Earth.” The marketplace was deserted. Nobody wanted to buy and sell things the day the Parody Master invaded the Earth. “But she wast here,” Donar assured Lisa. “Over by yon booths I didst see mine beloved Annj.” “If you say so I believe you, big guy,” the first lady of the Lair Legion assured the stricken hemigod. “I don’t know how Annj wasn’t in whatever place the Parody Master snaffled Ausgard to but here across from Off-Central Park.” “Tis sooth.” Donar looked around. “I wast hoping that she might returneth here for the nonce.” “You miss your wife,” Lisa summarised, “and you want me to help you out.” “Er, inasmuch as I wouldst have thee use thine summonsing abilities,” Donar clarified carefully. Lisa pouted mischievously. “Well, that too. Okay, here goes. I summons Queen Annj!” Nothing happened. “Annj?” Donar asked unhappily. “Nothing, big guy,” Lisa apologised. “Sorry Donar. I can’t get a clear grip on her, wherever she is. She’s hidden.” “But alive,” the hemigod asked anxiously. “Definitely alive,” the amorous advocatrix assured him. “For now that’s going to have to do.” “For now,” agreed Donar Oldmanson. The Manga Shoggoth looked up from his calculations. They ran over three sides of the paper he’d been working on. Some of them had crawled away onto the tablecloth and a few had escaped onto the walls where they fidgeted and gossiped. “Er, thank you,” Amber said, cautiously picking up the pad with the very end of two fingertips. “I’ll get this to Mr Finkel right away.” “It’s nice to have some complicated sums to do,” the Shoggoth bubbled happily. “Careful, some of the quadratics are dribbling up your arm.” D.D., the electronic intelligence in the databanks of the Lunar Public Library, rebooted and flickered to life. “Ouch,” she said. “I always have a splitting headache after crashing.” Doctor Blargelslarch pulled himself up off Snookie Takahashi. “Sorry about that, m’dear,” the vast frog-alien told Arnie J. Armbruster’s secretary. He smiled at the pillowy Asiatic woman. “But see me later about a job offer if you like.” “Hey,” AJA objected. “And by the way, could somebody tell me why we just went all Moon Base Alpha and tipped forty-five degrees to Kirk?” “Automated defence condition,” A.L.F.RED declared, dragging his metallic form up from a pile of Home Economics journals. “If the Library’s about to be destroyed it tries to shift itself elsewhere. Not the most reliable of escape systems, but when you’ve got a dozen incoming trans-nukes it’s sometimes your best offer.” “What?” a muffled voice from under the robotic majo domo objected. “Are you telling me that not only have you the temerity to attempt to disfranchise this miserable branch from the Intergalactic Order of Libraries but that you also illegally dimension-jumped it?” “It was that or be vaporised by the Parody Master’s dreadnaught,” D.D. pointed out. “Then you should have been vaporised,” Blay-Kee, Auditor of the IOL chastised her. “Regulations are very clear that no parallel-Earth emergency jump should be initiated without prior written consent of…” “Oops,” said A.L.F.RED. “My rotor arm slipped.” “So let’s get this straight,” Snookie checked. “We were on the Moon, at this previously unsuspected intergalactic public library. But now we’re in an alternate reality.” “Let’s hope its one where the entire planet is populated by love-starved supermodels,” Arnie suggested hopefully. “Just saying.” He sighed. “But with my luck it’ll all be pre-operative transsexuals that look like Ann Coulter.” “Where did we jump exactly?” Dr Blargelslarch asked interestedly. “I guess the level of jamming that Dreadnaught was putting out will have confused any pre-programmed navigation.” “I’m having trouble with my outside sensors,” D.D. admitted. “Maybe we should just find a window?” The nearest bay window was in the Military History Room. A.L.F.RED swept back the curtains and looked out. “Ah, hell…” he said in his gravely mechanical voice. “Oh mighty lord and master,” Regret told Bill Reed as he tried to get his infernal scrying pool to get HBO, “we have intruders on the Plains of Mourning. I know you’re all tied up being miserable about the death of your sex princess. Would you like me to arrange for them to be utterly destroyed?” “Neither of you have been cleared by the U.S. government,” Amber St Clare pointed out to ManMan and Citizen Z. “To be fair, the U.S. government hasn’t been cleared by us, either,” Knifey, ManMan’s sentient blade, pointed out. “Why should we need U.S. permission to save the world?” Citizen Z demanded of the liaison officer. “In fact why are you still here at all? Don’t you have some hole to go cower in somewhere?” “The Lair Legion has a charter,” Amber persisted. “If the law has been reset to what it was before Special Resolution 1066 then new members need security clearance from the Pentagon. I need to arrange that.” “It doesn’t involve exams, does it,” ManMan asked worriedly. “Just some basic questions,” Amber assured him. She found herself quite liking the good-natured Elvis impersonator. She couldn’t say the same for Citizen Z. “I don’t trust the government,” the masked vigilante declared. “If you hadn’t been skipping through time these last few weeks you’d understand why.” “Well, I’m catching up now,” Amber answered. “For example, I’ve now found the tape that SPUD confiscated from Baroness von Zemo’s mansion that seems to show you murdering the Baroness and her minions in cold blood.” “A fabrication,” CZ shrugged. “Or are you going to pretend that there’s anything like a proper chain of evidence on that tape? The only question is whether Elizabeth von Zemo forged it or whether it was Exemplary and the government.” “So you didn’t kill the Baroness?” ManMan asked Citizen Z straight out. “Only I heard that von Zemo murdered your parents.” “My background, my identity, remains a closely guarded secret,” CZ snapped. “Amber’s Lair Charter guarantees my anonymity if I wish it. Nobody questions Dancer’s choice to conceal her real name.” “That would be because people like Dancer,” Knifey pointed out dryly. “We need to get to the bottom of this incident with Elizabeth von Zemo,” Amber went on. “You have to see that. We can’t let a dangerous killer loose as a Legionnaire.” “Crap!” spat Citizen Z. “Jarvis, Lisa, Messenger, Starseed, Fin Fang Foom, they all killed people when they had to. The Dark Knight murdered a man on national television. spiffy conquered France. Pegasus was actually in the Scourge of the BZL. Do you think Donar has never slain an enemy? Or Sir Mumphrey Wilton? How many men do you think the Manga Shoggoth has slain in his eons?” “I executed a man once,” ManMan admitted gravely. “But it was to save two lives.” “And aren’t we at war?” Citizen Z went on. “If there are occasions where we have to use lethal force even in peacetime, don’t you think the rules of engagement are going to be different when we’re fighting for the very future of humanity?” “The incident with the Baroness took place before war broke out,” Knifey pointed out. “And was clearly faked,” Citizen Z shot back. “Von Zemo and I fought, and yes, I killed her in battle. But not like that video footage showed. Not against a helpless prisoner.” “So you’ve seen the video footage?” Amber St Clare remarked. “How?” In the darkened throne room of Herringcarp Asylum the Portal of Pretentiousness flashed and the Hooded Hood fell through it and dropped to the floor. His grey mantle was scorched and steaming. Green energies crackled round him for a moment as he rose. “Are you alright?” Jury, former Shaper of Worlds, asked the cowled crime czar worriedly. She came forward to help him rise unsteadily to his feet. “No,” replied the Hooded Hood. “Once you would have known that without asking. Once you would have engineered it.” “That was then,” Jury replied. “When I was the Shaper of Worlds it was my job to stop you doing things that contravened the rules of the Parodyverse. Now I’ve lost the role – had it stolen from me by the Parody Master – I can’t actually remember why it was so important to smack you down.” The Hood staggered to his throne and slumped back into its stony depths. “Doubtless you will seek my destruction again when you are restored to your office.” Jury shook her head. “I won’t be restored to my office. I have enough left of the Shaper’s perceptions to know I’ll never be Shaper of Worlds again.” She paused for a moment, trying to decide if that was a curse or a blessing. “Then we may not need to contend to the death,” considered the Hooded Hood. Jury snorted. “I was pretty mad with you back then. I was new to my job as Shaper and you were always there pushing, manipulating, subverting the rules. You were laughing at me. Humiliating me. And then you set me up in that cruel encounter with the Paradox Stranger.” “It was necessary,” the master of retcons told her. “But… I am sorry it was necessary.” He brushed his hand across his forehead, wiping away a trickle of blood. “I’m sorry for a lot of things these days.” Jury traced a long slender finger over the line of his face. “What happened out there, Ioldobaoth?” The Hooded Hood brushed her hand away. “I won, of course,” he replied bitterly. “Am I not… the Hooded Hood?” “You don’t look like you won.” The cowled crime czar stared into the dark depths of the Portal of Pretentiousness. “If I’d lost I wouldn’t be here,” he replied. “I achieved our objective. The way is closed.” Jury looked puzzled. “Then that’s a good thing, isn’t it. The dimensional conduit that connected Parody Earth Prime to the former Dreary Dimensions is an obvious choice for the Parody Master’s invasion route, by far the best way for him to bring billions of shock troops to overwhelm this planet. If you managed to deny that to him…” “Amazon Isle defends that portal,” the Hood interrupted. “It sits on the gateway, held in place by the Chimes of Honour, maintained by the Amazon Queen.” “The former Legionnaire Troia 215, your daughter by Rigantonia.” “Yes. But even the Amazons would not have held out long against the armies of the Parody Master. The dimensional tunnel itself needed to be collapsed.” “This would be the tunnel ordained by the collective will of the gods of the Earth pantheons,” Jury pointed out. “Indeed.” The Hood gestured to his battered state. “It was not easy, but it was required.” “So now the Parody Master will have to take the long route through conventional space, or else waste time carving new dimensional tunnels with that infinite power of his.” Jury tried to cheer the Hood. “That’s good, right?” “Closing the tunnel required that Amazon Island be severed from the rest of our reality,” the Hooded Hood said; and his tones were like those of a dead man. “The Amazons had to remain behind to use the chimes of Honour to accomplish this. So the Amazons are lost to us. And Troia… is lost to me.” “Oh…” breathed Jury, understanding at last her secret lover’s mood. “Oh Ioldoboath!” The Hooded Hood turned away from her. “There is much more must be accomplished,” he announced. “Let us proceed.” “So you’ve changed your mind?” Jury asked him. “You’re going to help the Lair Legion after all.” “No,” the Hood denied. “That would be an error. We must depend upon them accomplishing the impossible without our aid.” He turned back to meet Jury’s gaze with haunted eyes. “I have faith that the Lair Legion can accomplish the impossible.” Amber joined the others in the Operations Room beneath the Lair Mansion in watching the clock count down towards noon, the Parody Master’s deadline for surrender. She took special note of the grave faces illuminated by the glow from the giant hologram of the Earth and its defences that spun over the central table. Sir Mumphrey Wilton was intense, his expression closed, giving little away. He had seen war before, but never like this. He’d never been responsible for the fate of the universe. Katarina Allen, Mr Epitome’s friend, was operating the situation board that Asil customarily manned. The young woman was tense but quiet. Amber envied her courage. Contessa Natalia Romanza sat behind the communications desk, leaning forward over it like some arachnid predator. It was the SPUD spy’s weapon, a tool that could be as lethal to her enemy as any dagger. She was waiting with an assassin’s patience to use it. There were people she didn’t know in the room too, technicians and security guards and half a dozen five star generals and admirals. All of them had that same sick look of grim determination on their face as the numbers counted down. “Any word from young Foxglove and his party?” Sir Mumphrey asked tersely. “Not yet,” Kat answered. And the clock ticked on towards noon. “Aaaaaaghhhh!!” screamed Goldeneyed as the unfamiliar energies seared through him. “Why does every plan we have involve me being wracked with unbearable pain?” “It’s probably karmic,” Dancer comforted him. “You were probably Genghis Khan in your past life. Or the guy who thought up income tax. Or Michael Flaherty.” “Hold on,” Liu Xi told the agony-wracked dimension-manipulator. “I’m trying to filter as much of this power as I can, but its not like anything I’ve ever done before. Only part of it is elemental, and that’s the only bit I can grasp.” She didn’t mention the blisters forming on her own palms and soles, or the livid scorch marks appearing under her clothes across her back and chest. “Channel the elemental energies and the rest will go with their friends,” Xander advised her. “You are doing well, all of you. Dancer, can you ensure that they manage to hit the right frequencies?” Goldeneyed was stood in the mysterious doorway. The portal was now open, and vast waves of pure energy slammed into him like stormy seas breaking on the rocks. Liu Xi Xian was filtering aside the parts that he couldn’t use, the excess that would otherwise kill Bry Katz in an instant. Dancer was trying to change the chances that the tides of energy that washed beyond the door would contain the right elements for what Xander wanted to do. “Tell me this isn’t going to go on much longer,” Shep panted as she gyrated more to stimulate her Probability Dancer powers. “It’s not going to go on much longer,” Xander told her. “Except in the sense that it is. We’ve only just started. Bryan will keep on struggling to make the dimensional portal we need until it forms or he explodes.” “I vote for the first one,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! admitted. “But hey, look at the special effects budget here. Spielberg would go home crying.” “Even if we do manage to provoke the defences to reform the energy bubble around the Mansion,” Liu Xi objected, “how will that stop the rest of the Parody Master’s attack? What did you and Sir Mumphrey and Hatman intend to do next?” “Can we do… the exposition… after…?” G-Eyed begged as he hung speadeagled in the doorway to the Celestian’s energy store. “If I blow up I won’t have to pretend to understand it.” “Contact, contact!” Natalia Romanza called out as the clock hit noon. “We have a Dimensional Dreadnaught warping in right over Parody Island!” Amber felt her heart almost leap from her chest. So they’d come. It was here. She was at ground zero at the start of the Parody War. “Mr Boaz,” Sir Mumphrey called into his comm-card. “Be so kind as to engage the baddies if you would.” “Affirmative,” came back the answer. “Lair Legion, Line Up!” The Dimensional Dreadnaught dropped from transwarp two hundred feet above the target, knowing that the massive air displacement would create a sonic boom of shattering force on the island below. Ground emplacements were pounded by the wave of pure sound, taking down the soldiers who manned the batteries. A secondary electromagnetic pulse neutralised the automated systems. A dozen troop transport pods dropped down onto the target, free falling until the last half second then splitting open to reveal bio-engineered Ravener shock soldiers fitted with aggression enhancers. The Raveners were captured enemies who had been surgically enhanced to make them perfect suicide troops. Pumped up on biochemical cocktails that temporarily enhanced their strength, speed, and stamina a hundredfold for the fifteen minutes before the effects killed them, the Raveners fell upon the stunned ground defenders and the slaughter began. Then a goat chariot travelling at half the speed of light slammed into the top of the Dreadnaught, pounding through fifteen feet of armour plating and penetrating the interior. “Intruder alert!” the commander called out. “Get Avawarrior counter-invasion teams to deck 315 right now. Somebody tell me what we’ve got messing with my ship.” The main screen split so that one half followed the Ravener attack below while the other focussed on the hairy hemigod with an enchanted baseball bat who was pressing forward through hordes of avawarriors, screaming curses in some archaic Earth language and frothing at the lips. “It’s a mythological manifestation,” Tactics reported. “A particularly active one.” “Get some clerics over there with their disbelievers,” the commander ordered. “In the meantime pen it with the heavy field war drones.” “Foul invaders!” the voice boomed over the PA system. “Now wilt thou hear Mjalcolm’s song, and everybody shalt be joining in at the chorus!” “Goat Chariot One is in,” the Contessa remarked with an amazingly straight face. “We have invaders on the ground.” “On it,” Hatman called back. He fell on the Ravengers with his Hurricanes cap, battering them about like so much chaff. “Amber, have the SPUD people contain these things while they’re down.” “Okay,” Amber agreed, passing on the command, “but I’m not going to feed and water them.” “Well, I think it’s fair to say that the big guy has them distracted,” ManMan noted from the shadows as the Avawarrors tried to dogpile the hemigod of thunder. “Boy, Donar sure knows how to take a licking and keep on ticking.” “That’s what he’s supposed to do,” Yuki Shiro approved, watching as the Parody Master’s troops were swatted in all directions. “But he won’t last forever. The PM will have prepared countermeasures for all of us. So let’s get on with the real mission.” The cyborg P.I. gestured to a service conduit. “Can Knifey slice through this?” she asked. “Kids stuff,” the sentient blade assured her as ManMan went to work. “There. Does this Dreadnaught conform to the layout of the one the Legion captured?” “Identical so far,” Yuki confirmed, slithering into the tunnel. “After me, Manny.” “My pleasure,” Joe Pepper assured her as he watched her leather-clad backside squirm down the conduit. “Security node to your left,” Knifey advised ManMan. “Poke me into the little red tube and flick out the silver chip.” Yuki checked the schematic she’d downloaded to her onboard computer and traced a path through the narrow service ducts to the nearest computer maintenance hub. “Ohh…” she murmured. “I just love the military mind. Everything has to be uniform. Conduit on the last one, conduit here on this one.” She pulled a cable from a compartment in her forearm, jacked it into the back of her neck, then pressed it into the data slot. “Feel free to hurry,” ManMan advised her. “Only there’s quite a lot of these defencebot things. More than quite a lot.” “Relax. I’m uploading AlFrack1 right now,” Yuki assured the beleaguered Elvis impersonator. Better activate your Dimensional Anchor.” “Hey,” Amy pointed out to Al B. Harper as the control board at the EEE firehouse lit up like a Christmas tree. “The virus is in! Turns out you do know what you’re talking about sometimes after all.” “Great stuff,” the archscientist declared, reaching for his bubble pipe to chew. “Now, if the program works right it avoids all those well defended control systems and weapons packages and does one little thing.” Amy Aston stuck her greasy fists on her hips and glared at Al until he explained. “It sets the dimensional jump engines off,” Al B. revealed. “Jumps them straight to the co-ordinates of Azafroth, that Fairly Great Old One the boys nearly got eaten by in the Transworlds Challenge.” Above their heads the vast Dimensional Dreadnaught made a kind of hiccupping noise and blinked out. The there was only ManMan and Yuki parachuting down, having resisted the timespace jump because of Al’s Dimensional Anchor belts, and Donar, disdaining the use of a parachute on the grounds that they were for cissies. And there were some slightly stunned goats. “We’ve contained the first wave,” Citizen Z reported over her comm-card. “The ground troops have taken some heavy casualties though.” “The Contessa’s picking up getting more disturbances,” Amber warned. “Like that Dimensional Dreadnaught signature only…” “Only what?” CZ demanded irritatedly. “Only three of them.” The Might Makes Right, the Challenge of Genocide and the Anvil of Destruction were the next vessels in. Onboard analysis had already worked out how the Triumph of the Conqueror had been defeated and new firewalls were in place to prevent a recurrence. “I gets dibs on the first one,” Trickshot announced, perching on the apex of the Lair Mansion’s solitary tower. He pulled back his bow and loosed a lone adamantine arrow three hundred feet straight upwards into an open weapons port on the Might Makes Right. The heavy plasma cannon exploded with a satisfying whumph of flame, but the city-sized vessel was unmoved. “Is that it?” Citizen Z demanded. “Watch,” Tricky said smugly. Aboard the slightly damaged ship, inside the protective warding screens, the adamantine arrow split apart and a tiny gelatin blob splashed out. Replicating over and over again, the Manga Shoggoth seethed and swelled. An awful “Tekke-li” sound, the hunting call of the elder beast, echoed round the ship. Panicked clerics of the Parody Master forgot their carefully rehearsed rituals as the expanding mass of loathsome protoplasm split bulkhead doors and dissolved structural steel, twisting through more dimensions that mortals could comprehend to attack from all angles at once. The Dreadnaught veered to the side as control systems faded, caroming into the Challenge of Genocide to starboard. “Heh,” Trickshot smirked as the vessels caught fire and toppled down into the ocean. “That counts as two.” “Reports are coming in from all over the world,” Amber warned, routing the tactical data over to Katarina to put up on the hologram globe. “There must be a dozen Dreadnaughts around the planet, and up to sixty more closing from space. We have Avawarriors on the ground in China, the Middle East, Canada, and Europe. Maybe Africa too, but they’ve gone silent.” “He’s not confining his attack to just here,” the Contessa noted. “The joint Atlantic fleet is taking heavy fire. The Pacific fleet’s not responding.” The Mansion shook as the Anvil of Destruction began its ranging calibration. “Mr Boaz,” Sir Mumphrey prompted. “On it,” Hatman assured him. “CZ, Yuki, ManMan, Tricky, ground counterassault. Lisa, Epitome, with me.” He dragged on his jets hat and grabbed the people he needed as he rocketed past. “Get us near one of those hangar hatches,” Mr Epitome told him. “It’ll be easier to get in that way.” Hatman grunted and tried to outmanoeuvre the counterattack systems around the Dreadnaught. They were fast and he was encumbered by two passengers. The capped crusader was suddenly glad of every long hour he’d ever spent practising with his powers. “We’re over the target,” Lisa called. “Drop us and get out, Jay.” Hatman made his calculation in a split second, trusting to his team-mates ability to somehow cope if he abandoned them in mid-air above a city-sized spaceship intend on destroying humankind. Lisa wrapped her arms round Mr Epitome as they fell. “Impress me,” she told him. The paragon of power reached out and scraped the side of the Dreadnaught, slithering painfully over the thick metal shell until his fingers found the slightest purchase. He and his passenger hung in midair by his nails. “Now you impress me,” he challenged the first lady of the Lair Legion. Lisa shot him a smouldering glace by sheer reflex, then uncoiled the dimensional whip from her hip. She lashed out, searing through the metal of the wall by carving it into another plane. “I found a door,” she reported. Mr Epitome climbed through onto a vehicle bay. The flight technicians spotted the intrusion immediately. Klaxons sounded and heavily armoured marines moved to bring Dominic Clancy down. Except he didn’t go down. “Get this straight,” he told the horde of defenders trying to crush him. “You don’t threaten my country.” Lisa sniffed the testosterone. “I summons Donar she called out, then stepped back to watch the carnage double. There was a hammering on the door of the old firehouse in the Sixways district of Gothametropolis York. Until recently the building had been protected from visitors by a dimensional screen, but all power was needed now to track and try and disrupt the Parody Master’s incoming invasion conduits. The place was still secured by more of Al’s inventions though, and intruders had a hard time. “Who on Earth could that be?” Al B. asked as he feverishly fiddled with the harmonic countervibration modulator to compensate for the latest modification from the enemy’s tech-slaves. He flicked on the external camera, hammered the side of the monitor, then peered at the security picture. A scorched and ragged but familiar figure was slumped against the shutters. “Muffy!” called Al. “Amy, it’s Miss F! Get the door!” There were over a hundred Avawarriors on Parody Island now, and the Legionnaires on the ground were being pushed back. Hatman had the team reform in the hallway of the Mansion itself. A glance at his watch surprised him. It was less than fifteen minutes past noon. He felt as if he’d been fighting for the better part of the day. “Keep fighting,” he called to his team. “We have to buy Dream some time.” “And if that mad plan doesn’t work?” Citizen Z demanded, carving an Avawarrior up with a blade that seemed to have grown out of her costume. “Then we fight ‘em tooth and nail till we die,” Trickshot answered. “They aren’t trying to kill us yet,” Knifey analysed. “Just to pen us in. They’re waiting for something else.” The temperature across the island dropped by five degrees. The light dimmed. The Singularity Riders had arrived. Amber felt like she was in a nightmare. The casualty reports were coming in. The hologram globe was filling up with tell-tale red warning lights indicating new areas of incursion. There were over a thousand now. She was going to die. And suddenly she felt liberated. She found a wild grin spreading across her face. She looked up to find Natalia Romanza looking at her. “Now you get it,” the Contessa smiled, and went back to her job. The heaving currents of energy that filled the space beyond the doorway and coursed through Goldeneyed and Liu Xi suddenly changed colour and pattern. The livid reds and oranges that burned like molten gold transmuted into dazzling violet, and suddenly there was a swirling tunnel spiralling wildly down into the heart of the maelstrom. “Nothing human could survive in there,” Liu Xi warned. Her eyes were the same glowing violet. “Dreamcatcher,” Xander prompted. “I believe that’s your cue.” “You want him to… to go in there?” Dancer gasped. “That whirlpool?” “I’m introducing a little chaos into the mix,” the sorcerer supreme noted. CrazySugarFreakBoy! looked down into the cauldron of Celestian energies. There was power there to sear gods to dust and undo realities. He grinned. “Surf’s up,” he called as he leaped through the door. The crumpled blonde EEE administrator was scarcely breathing. Al B and Amy pulled open the firehouse concertina door and dragged the battered bloody shape inside. “What happened to her?” Amy asked, looking with horror at the scars and burn marks on blistered flesh. “Somehow she survived the destruction of the ITC building,” Al B said, rushing for the first aid kit. “But not by much.” He heard a crash from behind him. Amy was sprawled unconscious where she’d been thrown into a rack of components. The intruder was on her feet and swelling out of her borrowed shape. “You’re a clever man, Dr Harper,” she said as she approached, stretching with impossibly long arms, forming her hands into pincers, grabbing Al before he could reach a weapon. “So you’ve probably figured that I’m not your lost comrade.” “A shapeshifter,” Al surmised before the breath was choked from his throat. “Maybe a Skunk?” He referred to the alien race of metamorphs that the Lair Legion has clashed with before. “Not just a Skunk,” Annar told him. “The Skunk. The Princess of the Skunks, a Bride of the Parody Master.” “Urrk…” Al gasped, his feet kicking wildly where he was held six inches from the floor. The world started to go dark. “This is a great privilege you’re being accorded, Dr Harper,” Annar assured him. “My Master and husband is very impressed with your deeds in overcoming his Dreadnaught. He has ordered you be awarded a personal execution.” Al didn’t feel that honoured. He fumbled in his pocket for something could modify into a transmorphic gene inhibitor. Annar grew an extra limb and slapped his hands away. “Best you die now,” she advised him. “Avoid the rush.” The heavy acetylene tank stored on the ledge above toppled down and struck Annar on the back of her skull. A teenage girl dropped down after it, landing feet first on the fallen Skunk’s head. Annar didn’t move. Al B. dropped to the floor coughing and gasping for air. Then he looked up at the coffee-skinned girl who’d saved his life. She gave him a sheepish grin and straightened her cut-off t-shirt. “Er, hi dad,” Kara Harper said. “I can explain everything.” The Avawarriors and combat drones fell back as the Singularity Riders closed in around the Lair Mansion. Not even the fanatics amongst the Parody Master’s forces wanted to get in the way of the Doomwraiths. Great B’Rath led them, oldest and most terrible of the Riders, a crisp black silhouette on a fell four-legged mount, trailing malice so strong it left dark streaks in the air as he moved. The grass died where he passed. Flanking him were S’Chen the Empty, T’Vorkh the Cancerous, M’Rak the Vicious, and T’Tharn the Lurid. Any one of them could depopulate worlds. “Stand firm,” Hatman told the Lair Legion as the team closed ranks around him. “Just… just stand.” Overhead, the Anvil of Destruction rocked slightly as Donar and Epitome continued their impossible battle against mounting odds. Out to sea the damaged Challenge of Genocide rose again from the waters to join the attack. “If you get the chance, throw me,” Knifey told ManMan. “Those Doomwraiths need putting out of their misery.” “Don’t get close to them,” Yuki warned. “They can suck the energy and life right out of you. Maybe the soul as well.” “How theologically challenging,” Citizen Z remarked. “I’m assuming we have a plan, o glorious leader?” Jay Boaz ran through two dozen strategies in his head. None of them had a hope in hell. “We hold the line,” he told the team. “We knew when we started this that we couldn’t win. We’re holding out for the cavalry. Hold the line.” “You’re relying on CrazySugarFreakBoy!, Dancer, the child, the sorcerer and the nonentity to save us?” Citizen Z accused. “Hey, I’d trust those guys with my life,” Trickshot objected. “Well, except Xander. And being tricksy’s in his job description.” The Singularity Riders’ mounts screeched their battle cry. Marie Murcheson’s banshee scream echoed back, holding them at bay for a few seconds more. Then they charged. Amber knew the Doomwraiths were coming before she even saw it on the monitors. She felt it like a shadow on her heart, like the promise of approaching death. She felt it by the hairs rising on her neck and by the coffee in her cup souring then turning to ice. She knew the Singularity Riders did worse than kill their victims. “Brave heart,” Sir Mumphrey told her, sensing her fear. “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil.” Amber’s hand found his and grasped it for comfort. The Doomwraiths fell upon the Lair Legion. “Waaah-hoooooooo!!!!” screamed CrazySugarFreakBoy! as he slid into the Celestian maelstrom as if it was the universe’s largest helter-skelter. He could feel himself fraying, unravelling as he fell, but he didn’t care. “Hold it together, Dreamy,” Dancer called to him. Improbably he heard her, just as he could feel Bry pinning down the end of the conduit by sheer will alone and sense Liu Xi shunting incredible forces aside at incredible cost. And Dreamcatcher Kokopelli Foxglove held it together. Suddenly the forces around him were still and he realised that he was at the nexus, the quiet centre; the heart of the Celestian power that defended the Lair Island. He rummaged in his backpack and pulled out the strange lenses that Mr Finkel had made at the Shoggoth’s instruction. He slotted in the Caphans’ Markab crystals, some of the very few artefacts the Parody Master had demanded be surrendered to him, the jewels that had come to the escaped slave girls through the manipulations of the Hooded Hood. Al B. said they were a projection device. The Legion needed to project the power of this place. “Ready?” CSFB! asked the others. “Get on with it,” Goldeneyed told him impatiently. “Before I wise up.” “I can do it,” Liu Xi said, more to herself than to anyone else. “I will do it.” “It’s a million to one chance,” Dancer said, flashing that dazzling smile, “but it might just work.” Xander shrugged. “Let’s find out,” he suggested. “I’ve never broken a multiverse before, so one way or another it’s going to be interesting.” CrazySugarFreakBoy! held the lenses to focus the whole of the Celestian power nexus through them into the Markab crystals. He was vaporised immediately. The Celestian bubble swelled out from beneath the mansion, moving ever faster, up to then beyond the speed of light. It passed harmlessly through the fabric of the island, through the old house, through all its occupants. It slammed into the Doomwraiths and all the other minions of the Parody master like the wrath of God. The two Dreadnaughts hovering above were smeared like flies on a windscreen as the sphere expanded. The Singularity Riders were pounded away from their prey, screeching their anger and hunger but unable to resist. The Avawarriors on the ground were seared to ash at the barrier’s passing. “It worked,” Sir Mumphrey murmured. “Oh bravo! Well played! It actually worked.” “The island is clear of invading forces,” Kat Allen confirmed. “We’re safe.” Amber was relieved but cautious. “Okay, so we kept them off the Mansion and saved ourselves for now,” she argued, “but what about the rest of the planet?” Mumphrey chuckled. The protective bubble was still growing. Now it covered Paradopolis, then Gothametropolis too; and still it spread. “That’s why you needed those Markab crystals,” the Contessa surmised. “To somehow extend the area protected by the Space Robots’ defences.” The eccentric Englishman chuckled happily. “How far?” demanded Amber. “How far will be protected? The whole planet?” “Protectin’ the planet’s no good,” Sir Mumphrey told her. “We know the Parody Bounder won’t baulk at exploding stars.” The bubble kept expanding. Now it shimmered round the whole of Earth, and out past Luna’s orbit. “How far?” the Contessa asked again. “Far as we can,” Sir Mumphrey replied. “Out past Pluto at the least. A whole light year if we can manage it.” “A safety zone,” Kat realised. “A screen to keep the Parody Master out.” “The defences on the mansion,” the Contessa reported, “when they’re fully active they prevent dimensional invasion, teleporting…” “Even time travel if you know the trick of settin’ ‘em,” Sir Mumphrey added. “So happens I do.” “Then we’re saved!” Amber gasped. “We’ve won.” “Hardly,” answered sir Mumphrey. “Now we’re under siege. But we have time to catch our breath. To plan. To prepare.” Somewhere so far from Earth that the sun’s rays took more than a year to reach there, the Singularity Riders found themselves cast out in the airless void. An invisible barrier of force prevented their return to their prey. The first attack of the Parody Master had been repulsed. The tyrant was not going to be happy. There was a swirl of orange and green light and CrazySugarFreakBoy! reformed from the raw stuff of chaos beside Dancer and Liu Xi. “That was a rush!” he grinned before he collapsed at their feet. “Hey, what about me?” Goldeneyed demanded. He was still hung in the doorway, passing energies through him. “Ah, yes,” Xander said mournfully. “About that. Liu Xi?” Prompted for an explanation, the Asian girl looked carefully at the new and elaborate patterns formed by the refractions of lenses and Markab crystals. “Oh, that’s not good,” she frowned. “Looks like you’re a part of the circuit, Bryan. We’ve established that barrier to keep out the Parody Master, but only so long as you stay there.” “What?” gasped G-Eyed. “I have to do what?” “Quite a day,” Lisa said to Amber as the last of the Legionnaires left the sick bay, bandaged up and ready to crawl into bed. “Yes,” agreed the liaison officer. “Not what I expected when I was assigned here back in the day.” Lisa smiled. “If everything goes as we expect life gets very boring. Ask the Parody Master.” “Or Al B.,” Amber suggested. “Or poor Bry.” “His powers will keep him alive now they’re awoken again,” the first lady of the Lair Legion assured her. “He’s a hero. He’ll tough it out.” “They say the barrier won’t last forever either,” Amber recalled. “That the Parody Master will be able to break through in a few months time.” “Right. So we’ve got that long to fight him some other way.” “And you really think we can?” Lisa glanced at the liaison officer. “Did you really expect to still be alive tonight, looking out over the city watching celebration fireworks?” “No,” Amber admitted. “Well, if we can survive today, there’s hope for tomorrow, right?” Amber realised she was looking forward to coming to work in the morning. “You know,” she agreed, “I think there is.” Coming Up Next: Thwarted of a quick conquest through conventional routes, the Parody Master accelerates his plans for invasion through the Mythlands. Luckily, the quest for Miiri has led Visionary and his comrades right into the path of the war at The Faerie Fayre. And Then… We take a look at what’s going on further afield, on other fronts of the Parody War. Catch up with the Librarian, Nats, Kinki, AJA, Cody Harper and more in Marginal Notes, or Do and Die And Then… Back to the homefront with the mystery of Annj, the plottings of Citizen Z, an update on the Candian situation, and the Parody Master’s new gambit in The Lights Are Going Out Footnote the Alamo: Amber St Clare is the Legion’s US Government Liaison. It’s been a difficult job for her, often leaving her torn between her loyalty to her country and her sympathy for the heroes she monitors. She was deeply traumatised after nearly being slaughtered by the Hellraisers and almost quit. More recently she was assaulted and Obedience Branded by Exemplary as part of the government attack on the Lair Legion. Enslaved by the Brand she betrayed Legion secrets and even tried to seduce Lair butler Flapjack into helping her discover more information about Legion plans. Exposed by Flapjack she was captured and shifted four weeks into the future by Sir Mumphrey’s Wilton’s temporal chronometer; she appears again in this chapter. The Abyssal Greye is the Dean (the leader) of the Scholar-Ghouls Under Gothametropolis, an ancient undead band of flesh-eating academics who nonetheless retain a mostly benevolent interest in the wellbeing of their city. The Abyssal has worked before with Xander, Sir Mumphrey, and the Shoggoth in particular. The Tunnels Under Parody Island were first explored by the Legion in Untold Tales #5-17, the Coming of the Celestians. Lisa and Bry travelled back to ancient times in UT#8. Edward Gramayre used his psychic persuasion abilities on Al B. and Miss Framlicker in UT#113. He ordered Amy to commit suicide in #114. Whether he has got away scot free remains to be seen, given that the man whose daughter he arranged to murder has just become leader of the Combined Forces of Earth. Nats (Bill Reed) left the Lair Legion and his fiancée Uhuna in UT #227 when he accidentally became ruler of a vast tract of Hell. He is currently served and supported by the demon temptress Regret, who recently informed him of Uhuna’s death. Citizen Z apparently killed villainess Baroness Elizabeth von Zemo in UT #260, but clearly didn’t actually do so since she really is Baroness Elizabeth von Zemo. She prepared the disc herself to fake her own death and avoid the unpleasantness of Special Resolution 1066. Jury was once the fiancée of Legion founder Jarvis before she died in a car accident. Plucked by destiny from her eternal fate she served as one of the Triumverate, the three principle cosmic office holders, in the role of Shaper of Worlds (responsible for the start of stories in the Parodyverse). She clashed repeatedly with the Hooded Hood but he continually thwarted her despite her superior power. After her attempts to destroy him by importing his alternate-reality children Dark Thugos and Kumari, the Hooded Hood insisted on being paid by a kiss from the Shaper to set matters right. He manipulated her into being seduced and betrayed by the Paradox Stranger in UT #84 and saved her from a fate worse than death as a Bride of the Parody Master in UT #228. Troia 215 was a Legionnaire before returning to her native Amazon Isle and becoming Queen as her mother had once been. She is the Hood’s daughter, but now he has sealed her away from him forever as part of his campaign against the Parody Master. 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 © 2006 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2006 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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