| #109: Untold Chronicles of the Lair Legion: A Chronicler’s Tale |
Post By The Hooded Hood launches Story Week Sun May 25, 2003 at 08:02:19 am EST |
#109: Untold Chronicles of the Lair Legion: A Chronicler’s Tale
by Dancer
Note: This story takes place after (or perhaps during) the Untold Tales of the Broken Parodyverse Special
I am the Chronicler of Stories; and a Chronicler of Stories can refer to himself in the third person if he wishes.
The Chronicler of Stories is set over all the tales of the Parodyverse. All the stories are mine. The Chronicler is not concerned with endings, because endings are illusory. Each is merely another plot point, at best a chapter break in the ongoing saga of eternity. Another is set over the Endings, the holder of the cosmic office of Destroyer of Tales. The current incumbent is a bulky granite-skinned self-mutated giant of a brute called Dark Thugos, former tyrant of the Sol Empire in one of the many divergent possible timelines of Earth. You’ll be hearing more about him later.
Nor does the Chronicler care about beginnings, because every story has many beginnings each seeded from other parts of the tale. This current narrative, for example, could be said to begin when the Lair Legion, the champions of the Earth which by mutual consensus is the current core reality of the Parodyverse, revised their line-up again and went for a simple camping trip on the Moon. But it could equally be said to have its origins with the Technopolis War, and the treacherous assassination of the reality-bending nuisance known as the Hooded Hood. Or with the ascension of Starseed into pure Gah! energy that will one day soon hatch and trigger the Resolution War which will determine the destiny of the Parodyverse. Or with the defeat and destruction of the villain called Maximillian Deathspoon. Or with the destruction of Professor Xalter’s School for Talented Youngsters and the murder of all but three of the Order of the Observing Eye’s crop of neophyte heroes. Or with a meeting of sinister men in a smoke-filled room at the end of World War Two. Or with Visionary buying a beef sandwich with extra mustard.
In any case, beginnings are the forte of the Shaper of Worlds, the third part of the Triumverate of principal cosmic office holders who maintain the tangled web of stories we call the multiverse. That would be the young woman who now calls herself Jury, and who is arguing over the Chronicler’s unmoving body with Dark Thugos.
All stories are the Chronicler’s; but this is the Chronicler’s story.
“What did you ask?” Dark Thugos demanded, a rumble of scornful laughter bubbling in his throat.
“I said kill him,” the Shaper of Worlds repeated, swallowing hard and pointing down to the fallen Chronicler of Stories. “Please.”
The massive giant looked down at the unbreathing form. “But that would be wrong,” he mocked.
Jury tried not to cry. “I know it’s wrong. But we have to do it.” She gestured round the devastated Hall of Narratives, stronghold of the Chronicler. “We don’t know how this happened. We don’t know how somebody or something broke in here and wiped out all of the Chronicler’s higher brain functions. But we have to kill him.”
“No, we don’t have to,” Dark Thugos pointed out. “That’s why we’re arguing about it.”
The Shaper breathed and tried to stay calm. “When a Chronicler dies or steps down, the power and knowledge passes on to another. A new Chronicler is appointed. But while he’s like… like this, then the power is confused, trapped inside a useless brain-dead shell. There’s nobody to maintain the tale-web and things go… wrong.”
“Kill him, then,” Thugos shrugged. “He’s your friend. I never liked him.”
“I can’t kill him,” Jury snarled. “You know that. I’m the Shaper, I do beginnings. I can’t end his story now. Only you can. Then I can initiate a new Chronicler to take his place. Come on, you just said you didn’t like him.”
“I like him better now,” the Destroyer of Tales leered wickedly. “Like this.”
“If you don’t free the power then the timelines will tangle and fray and chaos and misery will befall the whole Parodyverse!”
Dark Thugos smiled. “Yes.”
Jury looked at him in disbelief. “You’re really going to do nothing?” she demanded.
“Of course not,” the giant replied. “There are many interesting secrets and hidden powers still in this broken fortress which I intend to plunder.”
The Shaper of Worlds looked up at him sharply. “No. You are not.”
“And who is going to stop me, Shaper? You? Our cosmic offices cancel each other out, and in a matter of personal power I could snap your neck like a twig. No, I shall do what I wish here, take whatever interests me and use it for my own purposes. And you can either get out of my way or you can die.” The Tyrant of the Sol Empire glared down at her with brutal malice. “Go on, Shaper,” he challenged confidently, “Start something.”
Jury glared and swallowed hard and stood her ground.
“Hellooo!” a happy cry echoed around the vaulted, damaged hall. “Is there to be being anybody at the home?”
Dark Thugos glared at Shaper. “A pure thought being?” he growled. “That’s your best effort?”
A razor-sharp metal envelope appeared under Thugos’ nose. “A pure thought being and me,” snarled Messenger. “What the hell’s going on here?”
Dark Thugos gestured around to the devastated hall. “The Chronicler of Stories is having a bad day. Somebody mugged him.”
“You?” the postman scowled.
“Is not to be being uncute nasty-Thugos,” Yo deduced. “Is not he is to be allowed to attack other Offices directly. Is to only be trying to profit from it.”
“That’s true,” Jury confirmed. “He can refuse to sort out the damage by helping this Chronicler die, but he can’t act directly against one of us. That’s why he’s going to back off.”
“Very well,” Dark Thugos agreed. “If Shaper here departs then I too shall go. For now. You have one perceptual hour to solve this problem. Thereafter I shall return and nothing will stay me from my course. It will give me exquisite pleasure to terminate your own narratives, for example, if you have failed to resolve the situation here. Clear?”
Shaper looked worriedly at the postman and the Zorro impersonator. “Leave it to them? But…”
“Clear?”
“Yes,” Shaper swallowed. There was a shifting of reality and the two beings were gone.
“Can I help you find anything?” the Librarian asked Amazing Guy as the protector of the Parodyverse rifled through the card index at the Lunar Public Library.
“Huh? Oh, no thanks,” Scott Brunsen thanked him. “I’m just looking for… stuff.”
“The pornography’s in the West Annex,” A.L.F.RED offered cynically.
“I’m not after that kind of stuff,” flushed AG. “I’m just trying to find out about something.”
“Something that you can’t discern with your cosmic awareness?” puzzled the Librarian.
“Yes. But I don’t need your help. Or at least I can’t have it.”
The Librarian caught the desperate look in the hero’s eyes and backed off. “Of course. The reference section is always open to browsing from card holders.” He moved off to his desk. “I’ll just be over here if you need me,” he added significantly.
“I appreciate it,” AG thanked him, and went back to looking up references of the name Exemplary. After all, he’d been forbidden from speaking about his midnight visitor or from using his cosmic awareness to find out more, but he had other resources and wasn’t under any orders about using them.
Exemplary had assumed Scott Brunsen would cave because his family was threatened, that they were a weakness to be exploited. He had underestimated the determination of Amazing Guy to fight for what he held dear – to do whatever he had to for their safety and happiness. Threatening the family was the last thing Exemplary should have done.
It took Scott almost twelve hours to find the last ever yearbook for Professor Xalter’s Academy.
“Right,” Messenger worried, “we have an hour to solve a mystery that baffled the great powers of the Parodyverse. Let’s get to work.”
“Yo is not being able to wake up cute Chronicler,” Yo reported. “Or any of cute-Chronicler’s cute crows.”
“Ravens,” Messenger answered absently. “Okay, physical evidence. Something very large smashed down the indestructible doors to this place, defeated the undefeatable guardians, and clobbered the Chronicler. Must have happened about the time Dark Knight collapsed, because the two are somehow linked.
“Is that cute DK is being same person on different reality track to cute Chroniclinger, but is to be one becomes urban vigilante and other is to be taken as for cosmic office-holder. Is like to be twins but not.”
“Well that clears that up then,” breathed Messenger. “Anyway, somebody, presumably the perpetrator, smashed up all these mirrors that the Chronicler uses to watch things. I guess he could have killed his victim but instead he made him comatose. All of that suggests a deliberate attempt to sideline not just this Chronicler but the office as a whole. Yo, why are you waving at that broken mirror?”
“Yo is just waving at Yo’s friend,” the thought being explained happily. “Hello there! Hello Visi!”
“Did you hear something?” Visionary asked the new improved Sentinoids that had just surrounded him and Chronic in a dark and lonely quarter of Hell’s Bathroom. “A kind of happy voice?”
“Dude, this is not the time to admit to hearing voices,” Chronic advised. “Hey look, these guys have sonic bafflers ready for my guitar, Steve.”
“If the fake man should be ixnaying the voices you should be editing out the naming your guitar references,” Fleabot advised. The micro-robot perched on Visionary’s shoulder and wondered whether it was too late to apply to be affiliated with spiffy. Perhaps he could infest HoundDog?
“Aw, they used sonic bafflers to try and get me before,” Chronic noted. “I just crank up the feedback dial like this, and then go…”
There was a shriek of white noise and a shower of sparks as various expensive electronic battlesuit components shorted out. For a moment there was enough din and confusion for a Metallica concert.
“Run!” advised Chronic, swatting a Sentinoid aside with Steve and breaking for the nearest alley.
Visionary would have followed him but just then he vanished.
“Wha…?” the drug-fuelled felon puzzled.
Then a super-strong fist caught him in the stomach and knocked all the breath out of him. As he bent over, Steve was ripped from his grip and hurled across the pavement.
“That disappearing act was a good trick,” Exemplary admitted, grabbing Chronic by the throat and hurling him into the wall. “I’m rather hoping you can explain it to me, because I really intended to break all Visionary’s arms and legs here, as a warning to Ms Waltz not to meddle in affairs that are too deep for her to comprehend. If he wasn’t so important to my organisation I’d have just killed him for being irritating.”
“Ack! Who the hell are you?” Chronic gasped, eyeing the tall man in the grey suit and trying to figure how to get to his guitar.
Exemplary hit him again, so fast he never saw the man move. “I do the questions. You do the bleeding. How did Visionary do that?”
“I don’t know. I… acck!”
“How did Visionary do that?”
“I don’t… aaagh!”
“How did he do that?”
“I don’t… ooof! Ugh!”
“Don’t get vomit on my shoes. How did he do that?”
“Go fu…. Urk!”
This went on for some time until Chronic slumped to the floor. Exemplary sighed. “I suppose he really didn’t know. Ah well. At least he’s infected now and we can add him to the safe list.”
He turned back to look at the black electric guitar that was lying in the road. It seemed to purr seductively. “I don’t think so,” Exemplary told it. “I know about Rome, and about Hamlyn, and the other times. I’m nobody’s puppet. Stick with stupid.”
And he gathered up his Sentinoids and left.
“What did you just do?” Messenger asked Yo as the thought being pressed two broken mirror shards together with explosive consequences.
“Yo isn’t quite sure,” s/he answered, dragging him/herself to his/her feet and picking fragments of glass from his/her black silk clothing. “Yo is thinking that Yo is to be transferring Visi from one mirror to another.”
“And where did you send him?” Messenger demanded.
They began to hunt for another shattered fragment of the same looking glass.
“It wasn’t my idea for you to come along,” Al B. Harper argued, his teeth chattering in the Arctic gale.
“It was your idea to undertake this stupid mission in the first place,” Miss Framlicker argued back, “and I was hardly about to leave you to bungle it by yourself, was I?”
“So you decided to tag along and help me bungle it?”
“No. I let you accompany me. Whose dimensional transfer grid did we use to warp timespace in a fractal gate to get here?”
“Whose original design work was the entire fractal gate technology based upon?”
“Who had to correct your polynomial calculations because you couldn’t do simple nine-dimensional integration?”
“Who put me off while I was doing the calculations in the first place by padding around the dorm in that micro T-shirt and bunny slippers and nothing else?”
“Well I suppose that could have been me,” Miss Framlicker conceded, “But then again it could have been any of your harem.”
“What harem? I told you there was never anything between me and Helen MacAllistair.”
“Not even underclothing, from what I saw, you two-timing swine.”
“This is very fascinating,” the Manga Shoggoth admitted, bubbling up all around them from beneath the Antarctic ice. “I’m almost tempted not to absorb you just to hear how this all turns out.”
“Aaagh!” contributed Al B. as the multidimensional elder beast slimed into humanoid form. That hadn’t been his planned opening conversational gambit but the Shoggoth was somewhat disconcerting. He would have totally panicked had not some far off part of his brain been fascinated by the mathematical trans-Euclidean curvature of the creature’s plasmic substance.
“Urk!” agreed Miss Framlicker. “We, er, we come in peace.”
“We met before,” Al B. explained hastily.
“Yes, I just heard. You were part of a human bonding unit along with another component and there was a disharmonious integration of your respective biological packages.”
“I mean, we met you before,” Al B. answered, backing away from the bubbling tentacles that crept towards them. “In the Technopolis War. And before that? You don’t want to eat us.”
“I wouldn’t eat you,” the Manga Shoggoth assured them. Al B. and Miss Framlicker relaxed. “Just break down your long-chain molecules into useful reusable elements and recycle your cellular matter into something more interesting.”
“We’re here on official Lair Legion business,” Miss F. added quickly. “You can’t eat us on Lair Legion business.”
The elder being considered this. “I must have missed the memo,” he told them.
“We need your help working out a dimensional anomaly regarding the replacement of Canada,” Al B. explained hastily. “How somebody could just swap half a continent for a different one.”
The Shoggoth paused. “Interesting,” he admitted. “Intriguing. Very well, I’ll help you with some calculations and I won’t consume you body and soul – as long as you’ve brought me a nice present.”
“Present?” Al B. Harper worried. “What present? I’m kind of new on the LL staff and I haven’t had time to read all the files and so I didn’t know…”
“YOU HAVE DARED ENTER THE LAIR OF THE MANGA SHOGGOTH WITHOUT BRINGING TRIBUTE?”
“Al, do something!” shrieked Miss Framlicker, clinging the to baffled scientist.
Then Visionary appeared.
“Um,” he said as he found himself in a polar blizzard on the other hemisphere to where he’d just been running for his life.
“A fake man,” the Shoggoth bubbled. “Just what I wanted.”
Visionary looked around him in a perplexed manner. “I’m real dammit.”
“That’s significant,” Messenger considered. “Something dimensionally screwy’s happening in Canada at the same time as there’s this trouble with the Chronicler.”
“Is more than that, too,” Yo added. S/he had been staring at another shard that showed the Turquoise Zone adventures of the new Lair Legion. “Looking! Is retcon of Starseed, and to be many villains trying to be getting of cute Manuel.”
The postman peered into the shard. “The Parody Master! And he even boasted about the Chronicler not being a problem any more. Could he have done this?”
“Is to be possible he might be being able to,” Yo conceded. “But Yo is not to be seeing lots of slicing and dicing like uncute PM likes. Is to be possible that nasty archingvillain is to be co-ordinating something with other nasty archingvillains?”
Messenger didn’t like the sound of this, “Whatever’s going on, the LL are in the thick of it. Where are they now?”
Count Armageddon seared a neat hole right through Fin Fang Foom’s foot, lancing kaos energies into the dragon so he spasmed and toppled back into Lake Inferior. The weather above the missile silos worsened, the pervasive sleet hardening into thick hail. Armageddon laughed.
“Fools! As if any of you could stop me! Now you all become followers of mine!”
“Watch those tentacles!” called Hatman, but even he was too slow to prevent the green lightning crackles from the body of Belasco Medici lancing out and burning through his frame. Sorceress, dull thud, Dancer, G-Eyed, and Finny were similarly transfixed.
“Let them go!” Pegasus thundered, smashing a massive meteor-like cosmic bolt right through Armageddon’s chest. The lightnings ceased as the villain toppled back with a gaping hole in his torso. Then green energies crackled within him and he rose up whole.
“Not good,” Ziles noted, diving close to try and get a sensor probe on the enemy. “I’m not sure he’s anything but kaos energy!”
“What I am,” Count Armageddon promised the heroes, “is your doom! Come to me, science heroes. Come and fall!”
Then he blinked in surprise. The Lair Legion were all gone.
“What?” Messenger also blinked. “Did you do that, Yo?”
“No,” the pure thought being promised. “Yo is to be not sure what is to be happening to Yo’s friends.”
“Find out,” the postman told him. “Fast.”
“You’re not the Hooded Hood,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! accused the cowled woman with the glowing green eyes who stood beside the retcon matrix that had replaced Canada with Candia. “At least, not unless you did a really huge retcon on yourself.”
“Two huge retcons,” Falcon corrected him, staring at the new cowled crime czar.
“Okay,” Nats reasoned. “If you really are the Hooded hood – or a Hooded Hood anyway – then you’re sure not going to kill us without explaining how clever you’ve been first. Tell us the plot.”
The Hoodette glared at the insolent telekinetic. “I shall grant your last plea for understanding,” she decided. “Thus may you die in greater despair.”
“How about we just shoot her now?” Falcon suggested; but suddenly he had forgotten his flight suit and weapons harness. And underwear.
“I shall begin by revealing who I really am – was – before ascending to my current power,” the grey-mantled villainess announced.
“I know! I know!” bounced CSFB! “I bet you’re really Kumari, right? The alternate-reality Troia, Dark Thugos’ sister, Hoody’s little girl? Major HH wannabe? When your last plot to take out this dimension’s Troia 215 and conquer reality failed you got zapped into oblivion, but your wickedy brother became Destroyer of Tales and refused to let your villainy end so you sort of hung around limbo or somewhere until Troia left this dimension to become Queen of the Amazons and then you could come back and then HH got stabbed and you stepped in and grabbed all his power. Right?”
Kumari began to understand why CrazySugarFreakBoy! had so annoyed her father. “No,” she answered petulantly.
“If you’re going to be the new Hooded Hood you can’t tell fibs,” CSFB! chided her. “It’s not classy.”
“Wait a minute,” Nats frowned as two and two started to come together. “You took over the Hood’s power – and all his plots! All the stuff he’s been setting up for goodness knows how long?”
“Of course,” Kumari agreed. “Things he was too timid to try. Things he ill-advisedly held in reserve for occasions that may never have come. I have no such compunctions.”
“You sold the Candia retcon to Magenta St Evil!” Falcon accused. “You set up all this misery!”
“I bet the Hood was sitting on a plot about Starseed on the moon too, right?” Nats persisted. “And you let that one go to Dirth Vortex.”
“Boy, that Hoody sure knew his stuff, didn’t he?” admired CSFB!
“No!” shouted Kumari. “He didn’t. It wasn’t him that set these things in motion. It was me! Me! I’m the one who achieved schemes he never dared accomplish! Nothing can stand against me! Even the Chronicler of Stories has been eliminated by my intervention.”
“Uh oh,” breathed Falc.
“Meh,” scorned CrazySugarFreakBoy! “Hoody just didn’t launch this stuff cause he had a sense of dramatic timing. And he always kept a few cards up his sleeve. You’re just like a little kid eating all the chocolates at once.”
Kumari turned upon Dreamcatcher Foxglove, her eyes glowing. “That is not true! I am a greater Hood than my father ever was. I have triumphed! Triumphed!”
“Nah,” CSFB! told her. “For example, Ioldabaoth wouldn’t have got all distracted yelling at me while Nats was concentrating his walking stick on your retcon matrix.”
“What? No!”
“Yep,” smiled Nats, and unleashed his will.
With a snap of reality, Candia was gone and Canada was back. Only the new Hood’s will maintained the chamber around them. “You think you have won?” she snarled angrily. “Proud of thwarting me? Imbeciles! Here is the destruction that my father was always too soft to mete upon you.”
“Watch out!” warned Falcon, too late. Kumari’s eyes flashed brightly, and CSFB! and Nats were gone. At the same moment Count Armageddon found himself threatening empty air.
“What did you do to them,” Sam Wilson demanded, rounding on the villainess. Even unarmed he reckoned he could take her in a fair fight.
Kumari didn’t fight fair. Even as she retconned him back to SPUD HQ to tell the tale of the heroes failure, she laughed her triumph. “One small change in the past,” she told him. “I arranged so this morning Onslaughter escaped from his Safe detention cell. He came to the Lair Mansion looking for vengeance on the Lair Legion – and he killed them all. Farewell, fool! Let the world know of my victory.”
“That is not being nice!” objected the shocked and worried Yo.
“At least now we know who was behind the attack on the Chronicler,” Messenger spat. “We know some retcon happened here, something the Hood had planned as a contingency if he ever needed to take down the office holder. That bitch Kumari used the plan to take out Chronicler so she could unleash her other retcons without interference.”
“Is uncute plan,” Yo agreed. “Now we must be to be stopping it and saving cute now-dead friends and bringing back Chronicler, yes?”
“We still don’t know the exact mechanism the retcon used, though, what actually broke in here.”
“Yo is thinking is way to be finding out and to be stopping of nasty Kumari-lady,” the pure thought being calculated. S/he grabbed another broken mirror shard and angled it to the light. “Look!”
“Damn them,” fumed Kumari as she wrestled to get the Portal of Pretentiousness to do her bidding. “Damn them all. Let’s see what kind of damage they’ve done.”
The massive black mirror flickered and rippled and began to show the state of the realities. “Candia’s a ruin,” the new Hood hissed. “Count Armageddon’s withdrawn with most of the metahuman army to set up somewhere on his own. And what’s this? Magenta St Evil gets punched out by some orphans’ schoolteacher? I’ve got to reverse all of that.”
She concentrated again. “Show me my Starseed then,” she commanded. “That at least I can make use of to… what? What’s this?”
The Lair Mansion was gone. Paradopolis was gone. As Kumari watched the neighbouring city of Gothametropolis heaved and bucked as vast alien tentacles rose from beneath it. Whole streets crumbled as Shabba’Dhabba’Dhu awake and crawled to the surface of a planet it would shortly devastate back to the stone age.
“How…?” gasped the Hoodette. “I only loosed Onslaughter to kill the Legion. I never ordered an apocalypse.”
“Now, while she’s off-balance,” Messenger shouted. “Go!”
One minute Trickshot was in one of the terrible maws of the Groper Out of Grossness, his last arrow spent on wakening the creature that could destroy Onslaughter. The next he found himself in the tower chamber maintained by the will of the new Hooded Hood, thanks to some deft mirror-work by a certain genderless thought being.
Some heroes would have taken a moment to think things through. Trickshot saw the grey robes of the Hooded Hood and smashed his bow over the back of the villain’s head.
Kumari retconned this so the bow was elsewhere, but the memory of the attack still stung. “What now?” she demanded irritably.
“A chick?” Trickshot gasped. “Wow, sorry, babe. Br’er Tricky thought you were a major villain.”
“I am a major villain, you miserable insignificance. Prepare to be disembowelled.”
“Did I attack you at the wrong time of the month?” the irritating archer apologised.
Kumari snarled, and her eyed flashed.
“One hour,” declared Dark Thugos, appearing beside Yo and the fallen Chronicler. “Your time is up. Now you die, little Yo-being.”
Meanwhile Kumari had completely missed the second appearance a moment after the first. The late Nats had already disrupted the glowing lattice of retcon matrix that had maintained Candia. Now Messenger deftly hurled pinpoint-accurate razor-letters through all the others he could see.
A number of things happened at once.
Paradopolis stopped being an elder-beast-filled crater.
The Lair Legion stopped being murdered smears in the ruins of their mansion and reappeared in Canada.
The Manga Shoggoth’s calculations suddenly became irrelevant so he kindly handed back his payment-fee of Visionary in exchange for a beef sandwich with extra mustard.
Starseed vanished from the Lair Mansion laboratory to reappear wherever he would have waited out his transmutation phase had be not have been retconned to the Turquoise Area.
And the massive space-faring killing machine known as the Obliterator never sensed the object of its cosmic quest inside the Hall of Narratives and thus never burst in to destroy all it found there in an effort to carry out its prime directive from the dawn of the Parodyverse.
Which meant that the Chronicler of Stories never got brain-wiped or fell comatose and helpless.
Which basically meant that as Thugos was looming over Yo, I sat up.
“Yes?” the Chronicler asked politely as the Destroyer of Tales reached for the pure thought being. “Was there something I can do for you?”
Suddenly the shattered hall was renewed, the mirrors were intact and the darkness was filled with the cawing of ravens. And one raven crowing “Kick his head in, boss.”
“No,” Dark Thugos answered with dignity. “I believe my business here is concluded for the present.”
“Shut the door on your way out,” the Chronicler told him.
When the Tyrant of the Sol Empire was gone, Yo leapt onto the Chronicler and hugged him. “Yo is so very happy to be seeing Chronicler is to be alright again once more.”
“Urk,” gasped the Chronicler of Stories, managing to detach himself from the genderless thought being with some difficulty. “Excuse me. I have work to do.”
Now, the offices of reality each come with immense powers circumscribed by massive limitations on when they can be used. But a Chronicler of Stories with a duty to set right problems in the narrative web that is the reality of the Parodyverse has abilities that are virtually endless. Watch.
There’s the Lair Legion, battling this Hooded Hood pretender. She does have all the Hood’s powers, but hasn’t yet got his levels of cunning and experience. For one thing, she hasn’t worked out how to play within the rules just enough to stop the Chronicler from being able to act to stamp her out like the real Hood has. When somebody starts shifting continents in favour of other continents I basically get a free hand, and I can use it to slap somebody with.
First things first, then. Simplest fix is to put Canada back where it was. I don’t really want to wipe out the new population of Candia so I won’t delete the nation. I’ll arrange for it to occupy the same space as Canada but only be accessible by one or two tiny backroads. Take the wrong route north and you’ll end up in rabid wolf territory. Sure, it’s another strange glitch in the patchwork geography of parody Earth, but who’s counting? Put it on my tab. Magenta St Evil’s going to jail, though, and the orphans get a free trip home with their perky little schoolteacher via the theme park of their choice.
I don’t have a problem with Dirth Vortex being discorporated. Let’s move on.
The Parody Master’s outside my remit, but I can send the Obliterator to the other side of the universe on a wild good chase for the object of its desire. I’ll have to adjust the defences of the Hall in case of future incursions from Celestian-built technology.
I could wipe out the robots and the monkeys, but they’re pretty harmless just now. Besides, the Lair Legion will need the robots clue later when they finally decide to go stomp on Exemplary and his Shadow Cabinet.
And that just leaves Ms Hood Wannabe. Time for the Chronicler to have a word with her. Let’s rock…
“What now?” Kumari hissed in irritation as time stopped around her battle with the Lair Legion. dull thud had just gone down to the vole attack, and the new Hood felt she had her enemies on the ropes.
“Now me,” the Chronicler of Stories told her. “I’m not very happy with you.”
The Hoodette turned pale then turned her retcon powers on the Chronicler.
“I don’t think so,” he responded, cancelling her abilities with a mental shrug. “I hate to say it, but you’re much easier to stop than your father would be. He’d have all kinds of contingencies ready to causes havoc if his powers were turned off. But you’ve pretty much triggered them all in one big go, and now I can identify them and undo them.”
“I beat you once, I can do it again,” Kumari spat.
The Chronicler showed the first signs of irritation. “Actually, no,” he barked. “Look. Look with the inner sight your retcon gifts give you. See that skull lit by flickering red hellfire watching us from outside time and space, plotting and scheming? That’s the King of Tales. My enemy. My nemesis. He’s the one that attacked me. You were just the tool.”
The Hood turned away from the glaring baleful entity that she could glimpse at the every edge of her perception. “What do you mean?” she asked, her confidence waning.
It was time for the Chronicler to explain. “He’s coming for me. My great battle, maybe my last. You and all of this were just an opening gambit. You thought you had arranged all the playing pieces, Evil Monkey, Dirth Vortex, Magenta St Evil, Parody Master, the Obliterator, even your brother Dark Thugos all dancing your dance. You used your father’s plans without understanding their subtlety and context. But all along you were just a pawn as well, a way of testing me and my abilities.”
“No,” Kumari denied. “I am a greater Hooded Hood than my father ever was!”
“Really?” the Chronicler demanded implacably. “Then here’s your chance to prove it.” he turned not physically but in some dimension beyond time and space to stare at that distant red-washed skull. “Your stooge failed, King of Stories. I’m sending her to you now to explain it in person. I’m sure the Hooded Hood would be smart enough to find a way of surviving the experience.”
“No!” Kumari screamed, bending her will to resist the Chronicler’s power. “No, you can’t! you can’t.”
“I can.”
And that was it for the new Hooded Hood.
A few minor adjustments to make sure the Legion was alright, to pop Trickshot in a more convenient bit of the timeline for his return, and to jumpstart the Dark Knight back at Xander’s shop, and then the Chronicler returned to his home. There was a lot to catch up on.
“Yo is to be going soon,” Yo announced from under a happy pile of ravens, “but before Yo is gone Yo is to be finding out question for cute-Lisa from Chronicler. Cute but sneaky Xander is saying Chronicler is to be able to answer and will be happy to help because Yo is to be helping cute-Chronicler.”
“I thought I sensed the meddling of that blasted hedge-wizard in this,” Chronicler muttered. “Lisa wants to know where the real Hooded Hood is, doesn’t she, alive or dead?”
“Is right,” Yo nodded.
Against his better judgement, and despite knowing the trouble this was going to cause, the Chronicler told sexy Yo what s/he wanted to know. It’s hard to say no to that innocent smiling face. Damn it.
Now I imagine you’re all waiting for a conclusion at this point. You weren’t listening very well, were you? The Chronicler doesn’t do endings. Yes, the first adventure of the Lair Legion is in some ways concluded, with the villains mostly punished and the day pretty much saved. But Starseed’s still out there gestating, waiting for the day when he’ll become harbinger of the Resolution War. Count Armageddon is reassembling a team of science villains and worse for the day when he’s ready to make his move. The Lair Legion know little of the Constellation and the real reason that Pegasus has joined their ranks. The Psychostave is growing in power and waking to its old purposes. Goldeneyed has kissed the fair Beth Shellett, and does not yet know he fathered a child on the sultry Laurie Leyton. Hatman and Sorceress have yet to receive the guests sent them by Hagatha Darkness. EDWIN has not yet revealed his secret. ManMan, spiffy, Amazing Guy, and Chronic have not yet settled their scores with Exemplary. Ultizon has not yet arisen. And the expedition to find the Hooded Hood to save the Parodyverse has not yet even been planned.
From each story grows the next, and the one after that, and the one after that, until all the stories are told and the whole saga is complete. But for now the Chronicle is ended.
You may go.
by Dancer
Footnotes:
Chronicler of Stories, Shaper of Worlds, and Destroyer of Tales are the Triumverate of cosmic offices who maintain the balance of the Parodyverse. Each once-mortal office holder becomes the role, gaining immense powers constrained by specific rules of engagement. The current Chronicler of Stories is Gregory Burch, who would otherwise have gone on to become the Dark Knight. Through the power of the Chronicler Greg also continues to live that timeline too. The Shaper of Worlds is Jury, an impetuous young woman whose previous existence has been erased from history. The Destroyer is Dark Thugos, former Tyrant of the Sol Empire, master of the Entropy Eyeblasts, and in one set of realities the son of the Hooded Hood.
Origins of the Story: The Chronicler refers to the lunar expedition begun earlier in this story arc (Untold Tales of the Lair Legion #105: Moonstruck), to the Technopolis War detailed in the Premiere series, to the Hooded Hood’s assassination in Premiere #22, to the Deathspoon saga (concluded in Untold Tales of the Lair Legion’s Greatest Battles Continued: Visionary Triumphant, and Other Unlikely Events), and to the destruction of the Order of the Observing Eye’s school in Lair Legion: Year One #2. The Resolution War is the predicted coming conflict for which the Parodyverse was allegedly created. We have yet to learn of sinister men in smoke filled post-war rooms.
The Lunar Public Library has recently arrived from another strand of reality and offers a literary archive and lending service from the dark side of the moon. At this point in the timeline it is still under the watchful eye of its Librarian Lee Bookman and his artificial intelligence assistant A.L.F.RED.
Kumari, named after an Indian death-goddess, is from the same alternate-reality Earth as Dark Thugos , where both were children of the Hooded Hood. Kumari inherited her father’s ability to retroactively change continuity. Her previous plot culminated in Untold Tales of the Lair Legion #33: True, Dare, Kiss, Promise. CrazySugarFreakBoy! adequately summarised how she came back from the brink of oblivion to threaten the Lair Legion again.
The King of Tales is a major baddie first glimpsed in Chronicler’s omnibus story “You Know You Want It.” Since then he has briefly interacted with the Hooded Hood in “The Hooded Hood Catches Up On the Parodyverse.” One hopes that the (poster) Chronicler will be inspired to do some more with this villain in the future.
Helen MacAllistair More on her next time. Oh yes.
The remaining background info is in recent previous footnotes, or at The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom, Who's Who in the Parodyverse, and Where's Where in the Parodyverse. The Homepage of Doom also features the rest of the Untold Tales stories, and at the time of writing this is for once remarkably up to date.
Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2003 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2003 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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