Tales of the Parodyverse

#112: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Ongoing Investigations, or Searching for Apocalypse


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The Hooded Hood offers this murky tale of moral dilemmas and misplaced guilt, and would love to hear from folks whether he got the characters right here (but try to avoid subject line spoilers, please)
Mon Jun 16, 2003 at 02:15:42 pm EDT
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#112: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Ongoing Investigations, or Searching for Apocalypse

Edward Cromlyn was not amused. “Let me see if I got this right, Benson. Upon failing to bring Miss Bethany Shellett in for questioning about the suicide of her father the late Paradopolis Police Commissioner Donald S. Graham, due to the interference of the wanted mutant outlaw Joshua J Clement, colloquially known as De Brown Streak…”
“Sir, I can explain…”
“Upon failing, you took it upon yourself to authorise the release of facsimile information which prompted the Lair Legion to go after Clement and Shellett themselves. You further used operational resources to simulate SPUD and to provide Goldeneyed with an experimental and classified gene normalisation rifle. Have I got this right so far?”
Agent Benson swallowed hard. “Sir, it wasn’t like that. I knew we needed to divert the Legion from the MacAllistair murder investigation. This seemed like a perfect way of killing two birds with one stone.”
“Did it?” hissed Cromlyn. “The Lair Legion already know they were set up. They caught De Brown Streak disposing of the very clothing your reports had ripped up and bloodied at the scene of his non-existent crimes. They know that there was no on-site forensic inspection at the alleged place of the incident. Drury and his spy-boys are busily denying ever giving the weapon to Goldeneyed, and at the same time they’re sniffing around and trying to reverse engineer our prototype. And all of this has just drawn attention to Graham’s disappearance while he was investigating the MacAllistair case. A good piece of work on your part, you think?”
“Sir, I was… I tried…”
Edward Cromlyn straightened his grey tie and shook his head. “You have failed us, Benson. Now here is what you will do.”
“Sir, no! Please, give me a chance!”
“A chance? You idiot, your clumsy unauthorised manipulations have jeopardised four hundred years of patient work. Now here is what you will do.” The old man in the grey suit looked mercilessly at his trembling junior. “You will go from this place to any location of your choosing that is unoccupied and has no associations with us. You will take with you the necessary tools to carry out my orders. Once there you will remove each of your fingernails and toenails. You will tear out every tooth in your head. You will castrate yourself. You will slice off your ears, nose, and lips before removing your tongue and eyeballs. You will lie in agony bleeding for six hours, and you will not lose consciousness. Then you may die. Is that clear?”
“Yes sir,” trembled Benson.
“Then commence.”
Exemplary and Cromlyn watched the broken agent leave. When his sobbing had receding into the distance, the older man turned to his protégé. “What have we got on Graham?”
“Apparent suicide, witnessed by three of our people. Haven’t recovered the body yet though. The tides around the bridge are pretty fierce. Usually bodies wash up around the old fairground on Carney Isle off Gothametropolis.”
“And the packages?”
“Retrieved, of course. We even got the one he left at the copy shop. We aren’t all amateurs like Benson.”
“Really,” frowned Cromlyn. “Yet you allowed Graham to fob you off with a parking ticket list, didn’t you?”
“He’s not going to bother us any more.”
“So you say. I’d be happier with a rotted corpse for the Westminster Necropolis Company to question. In the meantime we need to locate Miss Shellett, in case Graham communicated something to her. And then we have to consider… damage control.”
“You think the heroes might dig a little too deep looking for who set them up?” Exemplary wondered. “Couldn’t you just…” He tapped his forehead to indicate Cromlyn’s mind-control abilities.
“Too risky. Some of them have resistance, and it’s only a matter of time before one of their adventures would rip apart any psychic knots I put into them. And your nanobots might fail for similar reasons.” The old man sighed. “No, it’s a damned nuisance, but we’re going to have to accelerate the Omega Sequence.”
“Really, sir? We haven’t got all the pieces in place yet.”
“I know that. But I also know that the heroes are getting too close. We can’t afford the time and resources to shut them down like we did in the forties and the eighties. Not this near. So we’d better accelerate the timetable.”
Exemplary nodded. “Of course, sir. I’ll go pick up Visionary myself.”
“Do that. And I’ll see about getting a message to the Lair Mansion…”

***


“So what do you make of it?” Nats asked Dr Nebbish of StarTrekkish Labs as the white-coated technicians fussed over the particle analyser.
“We’ll have the results in a few seconds,” Nebbish promised them. “We don’t, er, we don’t usually have superheroes breathing down our necks while we work.” He glanced over at dull thud “And whatever he is.”
“This is pretty urgent,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! explained. “We need to know whether the clothing samples we gave you have any traces of the missing Bethany Shellett on them. Did she ever wear them? Were the samples the government sent to us earlier the real McCoy or just fakes to set us up to take out De Brown Streak? It’s pretty important.”
~~Maybe we should have brought that mutate-DNA-rewriting weapon that Goldeneyed got his hands on as well~~ Cressida, thud’s resident tapeworm suggested. ~~Rather than let those government types confiscate it back again?~~
“We have to work inside the rules,” Nats pointed out. “Much as it makes our stomachs hurt.”
“My stomach usually only hurts when Cressie gets agitated,” dull thud pointed out. “It hurts quite a bit right now.”
~~Sorry, Davie. It’s just that Goldeneyed’s use of that weapon on De Brown Streak was unnecessary and unfair.~~
“And a complete contravention of the superhero code,” CSFB! added. “Nats already had DBS on the ropes when…”
“There’s a superhero code?” Nats worried. “Why did nobody tell me?” That explained a lot about his career as a superhero, he realised.
“Aye, Nats was winning, alright,” dull thud admitted. “But you were sounding pretty weird back there when you were tossing DBS about, I thought.”
“Just uncomfortable with the situation, I guess,” Nats lied, twisting his psychostave nervously in his hands.
“We have the results now,” Dr Nebbish called to his visitors.
CSFB!, Nats, and thuddy gathered round. ~~Well?~~ Cressida prompted.
“They’re not hers,” Nebbish told them. “Same size and make, yes, but no signs of DNA, nothing to indicate they’ve ever been worn at all. These garments were meant to fool you.”
“Really?” CSFB! replied. “That’s pretty strange. Because we got our own science guy, Al B. Harper, to take a look at these things too, before we brought them to you. And he found sweat and traces of Beth’s hair follicles and all kinds of stuff.”
“He also found no less than five miniature tracking devices stitched into them,” Nats added. “I wonder how you could have missed those?”
“I… I don’t know what you’re talking about…” Dr Nebbish stammered.
“It’s starting to really look like De Brown Streak was framed,” thuddy rumbled, his Scots accent thickening with his annoyance. “And it’s looking like you laddies were part of the plot. You were the ones who did the original forensics on th’ other evidence, weren’t ye?”
“Star Trekkish has lots of government contracts…” Dr Nebbish admitted.
“Yeah. Is that why you agreed to fake evidence for them?” Nats challenged.
“No. I mean… We didn’t. It was a mistake…”
“A very big mistake,” agreed CrazySugarFreakBoy!
The scientist looked terribly worried. “Look, can’t we just keep this all to ourselves?”

***


“And early-breaking news here on Parodiopolis Today. In an impromptu press statement just now on the steps of Star Trekkish Labs, colourful superhero CrazySugarFreakBoy! has offered new evidence of government conspiracy in the capture and injury of the so-called mutant terrorist De Brrown Streak. We go live now to downtown Paradopolis where CSFB! is still speaking…”

***


“Oh crap” breathed Amber StClair as she caught the morning news bulletin.
It was less than fifteen seconds later that the phones started ringing.

***


“What happened?” Glitch asked as her systems reboot completed itself for the second time in quite a short while. “And by the way, ouch.”
“Well, I was eating a bagel minding my own business,” explained Indiana Gnome from the other side of the polished steel holding cell, “when all of a sudden you spacewarped into a statue in Off-Central Park, causing gratuitous property damage for an already overstrained municipal repair budget. While we discussed the unlikelihood of a gnome, a gargoyle, and a female robot meeting together like that and avoided walking into a bar because it would be the start of a bad joke, some unpleasant even-more-female-shaped robot who calls herself Deus Et Machina turned up with some cyborgs thugs.”
“Hard to break cyborgs thugs,” interrupted Gunther, Indy’s gargoyle partner. “But not impossible,” he added with satisfaction.
“Yes. It’s coming back to me,” Glitch admitted as her memory reservoirs defragmented. “She claimed to have my new instructions, wanted to interface with me to give them. But I’m not that kind of girl. She seemed to think my sensors wouldn’t register that she was a cyborg of Technopolitan origin.”
“She is?” Indy blinked. “Well, I’ll add that to us knowing that she’s a whacko cult-leader nutjob who’s convinced that bionics are the future of humankind and who has recruited a whole townful of fanatic volunteers to get cyborgised.”
“Is there such a word as cyborgised?” Gunther wondered.
“Then when it was pretty clear we wouldn’t be doing drinks she used an EMP mine to take me down,” Glitch recalled. “Where are we now?”
“I don’t know exactly,” Indy admitted. “After the gloating and exposition she locked us in here. There are force fields screening the walls to prevent us breaking out.”
“I was less than happy about the sign over the door that said Disposal Chamber,” Gunther admitted.
Glitch examined the door. “Hmm. It’s a triharmonic energy barrier, with eleven point nine google possible field variations. Should take me about eight hours to find a way through.”
Indy laid back on his bunk and pulled his hat over his head. “Wake me when it’s time for the spectacular escape then, he said.”
“So nobody’s worried about this countdown clock that says five hours and seventeen minutes then?” checked Gunther.

***


spiffy woke more thirsty than he’d ever been in his life. Fortunately there was a drink next to him on the stone slab where he lay. It was nearly fresh, still warm from the animal, and he drank it down quickly before he even realised it was blood.
“Gah!” he choked as he realised what he was doing.
Then he realised he was able to see in the dark. Then he felt his teeth. Four of them were very sharp.
“No…” he murmured to himself. “Nonononononononono…”
spiffy scrambled to feel his wrist. He couldn’t find a pulse. He noticed he had shiny buttons on the formal jacket they’d put him in, but he couldn’t see his reflection in them.
“Nononononononononononono!”
“Ah, you have awoken,” noticed the Abyssal Greye, ghoul-king of Gothametropolis. “Good. Come with me please. We have a visitor who is very keen to meet with you.”

***


“Talk to me, Laurie!”
The Lair Legion’s legal advisor moved back from her bedroom door to let Bryan Katz in. “What about?” she asked in bitter tones. “Amber already contacted the government. There’s no charges for what you did to De Brown Streak. He’s a wanted terrorist and you stopped him. Hell, you might even get a medal.”
Goldeneyed winced. “I thought he’d crossed the line,” he explained. “I had to stop him.”
“Crossed the line with Beth Shellett, don’t you mean?” Bry’s occasional girlfriend challenged him. “That is why you suddenly went all Messenger on us, isn’t it? Because you thought he’d harmed Beth?”
“Is that what this is about? This cold shoulder stuff? Because you think I have feelings for Beth Shellett?”
“Oh, I know you have, Bry. I saw the two of you together, remember? When the Hooded Hood showed me a possible future, and later on when the two of you actually met. You couldn’t keep your eyes off each other.”
“Laurie, I swear I’ve never touched her. Well, not seriously.”
Lisette snorted and pushed her hair back from her face. Bry saw that she was crying. “But you love her, right?”
“No, of course not,” he protested. “I’m with you.”
“Sure, until Beth’s in trouble, and then you throw away your future in the Legion, your reputation, all those noble sentiments you keep preaching about, and you shoot Josh Clement down in cold blood – for her sake. “
“Look, I know I got out of line. I wish I hadn’t been so stupid, but honestly, Laurie, it’s you I care about,” G-Eyed promised. “Look, can we do this later? I’ve really screwed up here and I need… I need someone on my side. I’m confused and scared. Please?”
“Why not give Beth a call then?” Lisette challenged.
“Because we still haven’t found her, thanks to Goldeneyed’s abrupt intervention,” Fin Fang Foom interrupted, appearing at the doorway. “Bry, I need to talk to you now, in my office.”
G-Eyed glanced at Lisette. “This isn’t really a good time, Finny.”
“That wasn’t a request,” Foom warned. “Put a muzzle on your personal life and come with me. Now.”
“Look, Finny, I…”
“Go with him,” Laurie told Goldeneyed. “You can lie some more to me later.”
Bry forced himself to stay calm and follow the dragon to his office.

***


Sir Mumphrey Wilton finished his crumpet and went to investigate the crackling sound from his library. Sure enough, there was a shining white rectangle handing in the middle of the room, shaped just like a doorway.
“Hmph,” he said, walking all round it. He took out the ornate pocketwatch in his waistcoat, fiddled with the dials, and looked again at the portal. Then he went to the exit and called out, “Mrs Porter, I’m just stepping off-planet for a moment.”
“Very good, Sir Mumphrey. Will you be back for supper?”
“Not quite sure yet. Best leave it on a low light.”
Then he stepped through.
He found himself in a small comfortable room filled with high glass-fronted bookcases. The tall Georgian windows showed a spectacular vista over the lunar landscape. “Ah,” he nodded to himself. “That makes sense.”
“Good evening, Sir Mumphrey,” said the Librarian, shutting down the transfer gate that he had helped Amazing Guy set up. “Pardon us having to use portal transfer technology but we didn’t have time to send an engraved invitation.”
“Good evening,” agreed the eccentric Englishman. “And hello, Amazing Guy. Nice to see you again. Been in the wars a bit?”
AG’s costume was ripped, and he was healing from several nasty abrasions on his face, chest, and arms. “I had a little difficulty on a retrieval mission just now,” Scott Brunsen explained. “May I introduce Lee Bookman, the Librarian? And this is…”
“The Lunar Public Library,” surmised Mumph. “Yes, I heard we had a branch now. Jolly good. Kept meanin’ to drop in and get a ticket, but you know how it is.”
“Yes,” sighed the Librarian. “Anyway, we hoped you wouldn’t mind helping out with a little experiment if you don’t mind.”
Sir Mumphrey shrugged. “Happy to oblige, of course, but why would…”
“I have cosmic awareness,” AG interrupted. “When I concentrate on something I need to know, I know it – with a few exceptions. So now I know you’re the office holder that keeps the Chronometer of Infinity.”
“And I knew anyway,” Lee Bookman added. “It’s in Crumpford’s Who’s Who of Galactic Powers.”
Amazing Guy gestured to a somewhat charred piece of technology laid on the reading desk “This is what I had such a problem retrieving. It’s a temporal scanner, from the former watchtower of the Narrator. That’s not easy debris to find.”
Mumphrey flicked out his watch and checked the reading on the small dials that ringed its face. “No temporal charge left in it though,” he noted. “I guess that’s why you needed the Chronometer.”
“If you don’t mind,” the Librarian said. “I don’t know why Sco… er, Amazing Guy wants to see back a few years to watch the destruction of Professor Xalter’s Academy for Gifted Youngsters, but he seems to feel it’s pretty important.”
AG leaned forward, his eyes hard and angry. “A matter of life and death,” he said.
“Right then,” Mumphrey replied. “Best get cracking.”

***


These weren’t state-of-the-art robots. They were crude and clunky, killerbots of a generation ago, gunmetal grey with projectile cannons, flamethrowers, and tightbeam sonics. That didn’t make them any less determined to liquidate the Dark Knight.
DK rolled across the floor of Dr Wrichards’ laboratory avoiding their initial volley of gunfire, seeking cover so he could prepare his counterassault. The lifelike android that had replaced Dr Wrichards turned back to the house control board. The urban legend had come inside the Wrichards mansion, and Wrichards’ estate was now effectively one big automated trap.
Dark Knight thumbed the concealed stud on his cuff. The explosives he’d planted on the main generators as a contingency in case of trouble went off with a satisfying boom. The house went down to emergency power.
“He’s only flesh and blood,” Wrichards encouraged his household staff. “Pulp him.”
DK had worked out the attack cycles of the killbots by now. He used the reload time of the nearest drone to leap out and spin it round, aiming its weapons at the circle of killing machines surrounding him. Three of the robots blossomed into flame before the one he had manoeuvred was reduced to molten fragments; but by then the Dark Knight was elsewhere.
“You’re doing quite well,” Dr Wrichards assured him, “but the day of humankind is almost over. Soon our messiah will arise, our god and creator. Then blood will flow one last time, and the world and all its resources will be ours.”
“Does this god have a name?” DK challenged as he vaulted over another of the killbots, leaving a timed thermite charge on its head. “Anyone I’d have heard of?”
“Mockery is futile,” Wrichards promised. “Ultizon is older than you could comprehend, and he has shepherded the humans to their own doom. Through long centuries he has granted them visions and insights until the day was right for them to discover the means of creating us, their successors. Now the day is at hand and Ultizon will rise to lead us. Behold!”
Dark Knight glanced briefly at the monitor screen that Wrichards had flicked on. “Looks like Blofish’s artificial body with bits of Membrain accessories stuck on it,” he scorned, luring another killbot into the firing field of its comrades.
“Erskine Blofish usurped a prototype of the design. Membrain was a test run for the heuristic artificial intelligence matrix,” Wrichards replied. “Even such a crude prototype as Membrain was able to lead a robot army across Europe before he was stopped. The adamantine design of the finished article makes the final model indestructible.”
“Didn’t you forget a head?” DK scorned, finishing off the last of the killerbots and landing in a crouch before Wrichards.
“That we already have,” the Wrichards robot explained in hushed tones. “But now we must prevent you from interfering with out timetable. Any sacrifice is acceptable.”
“Wait,” DK called as the android triggered the estate autodestruct button.
The Wrichards estate went up in a hellfire-red burst of high explosives.

***


When Al B. Harper was working on a problem his whole body language changed. Ziles noticed he moved differently, his fingers dancing over the keyboard of the Lair Legion mainframe without even pausing. And all the while he was doing algorithm calculations in his head and rewriting code in a programming language he’d made up specially for the occasion.
“I’m still not getting any readings,” the Xnylonian admitted.
“You won’t yet,” Al B. told her absently. “Whatever glitch is built into these systems has completely reconfigured the architecture. It’s trapped our artificial intelligences in there, first EDWIN and now HALLIE, so they can’t move round the interior and troubleshoot for us. Whoever did this is very, very clever and knew these systems very well.”
“That’s worrying. Could it be Hacker Nine?”
Al B. shook his head. “This is old work. It’s been here dormant for as long as the LL have been backing up their systems. And whenever the set-up’s been upgraded it’s done its part to shift into the new elements. It may even have redesigned some of them. When was the system first installed?”
“Years ago,” Ziles reasoned. “Back when the Lair Legion was called the League of Regulars, I’d guess. They inherited this old mansion and their original members fitted it out as a headquarters. I guess NTU-150 must have put in the computer systems.”
“And we can’t reach him?”
“Finny said not to. I think Dark Knight’s a bit paranoid that Enty might have put this sleeper program in there himself for some reason.”
“That sounds a bit unlikely. I’ve met Jamie Bautista. He’s brilliant and innovative in a highly dangerous kind of way, but he’s definitely one of the good guys.”
“Paranoia is a survival trait,” the alien assured the scientist. “And with what CSFB! and co. discovered at Star Trekkish labs, maybe we should start being a bit more cautious who we trust.”
“Is that why you’re watching over me?” Al B. guessed.
Ziles blushed a little. “Well, you might need some technical assistance as well.”
“But the thinking is: ten years ago, Miss Framlicker found her fiancée Al B. Harper in flagrante delicto with Helen MacAllistair in the science lab at Paradopolis U. Helen walked out while they argued and wasn’t seen again until her headless body comes out of a Bautista Enterprises building concrete support and her engrams get recycled into the Lair Legion’s first AI, HALLIE. Then the computer goes down and nobody can get the information from it that would help work out what really happened. I can see you’d be suspicious.”
“Well, when you put it like that…”
“Meanwhile, the LL run a little scam on Star Trekkish Laboratories to find out if they’re faking evidence. They give Nebbish and his boys just enough rope to hang themselves with. So why not let Al B. Harper at the computer systems and see if he’ll do the same? Am I right?”
“That’s… not entirely wrong,” Ziles conceded.
Al B. pushed his hair out of his eyes and gave a sheepish grin. “So the only way I can prove myself to the LL is to get this thing fixed, isn’t it?”
“Couldn’t hurt,” Ziles admitted.
Al B returned to work. “Then pass me that phase coil modulation wrangler.”

***


“What’s going on?” Pegasus demanded on the reception deck of the SPUD helicarrier.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Falcon assured her. “This is a routine investigation. We want to know where Goldeneyed got that weapon from and why he thought he got it from us.”
“I mean why am I here, not talking with Drury on the command deck?”
Sam Wilson looked at the former Scourge field leader with disbelief. “I don’t know. Sure has nothing to do with you being a wanted international mercenary until a few weeks ago, who was let into the Lair Legion over the SPUD Director’s loud and candid comments. Can we get on with the matter at hand?”
“What, you mean how the teleport diversion field you have around your helicarrier managed to shunt Goldeneyed off to a holding cell you claim has nothing to do with you, where he was given a piece of weaponry that looks like the next generation of equipment based on that mutant-hunting equipment you people specialise in?” Pegasus challenged.
“Yeah, that.” Falcon had the grace to look uncomfortable. “Drury’s real interested in that.”
“We’re interested too,” Pegasus told him. “We’re interested in who set us up to take down De Brown Streak, in who sent government-issue Sentinoid machines to get Beth Shellett, in who sent killer robots to attack Visionary a couple of days ago, in where Commissioner Don Graham went to shortly after a meeting with your Agent Romanza. We have many and varied interests.”
“And we have no comment,” Falcon told her. “We just need to look at the gun so we can find out who’s been building this tech.”
“Or else you wish to confiscate the only hard evidence we have of secret government involvement,” accused Pegasus. “You’re right about me formerly being on the other side of the law. And do you know what kind of perspective that allows me on your precious Super-menace Principal Undercover Directorate? Not the usual shiny support squad the heroes take you for.”
“You don’t know anything,” Falcon told her. “You were a two-bit villain minion and you think you understand us, and the stuff we have to cope with? Just stick to coat-tailing the Lair Legion so you’ve got some kind of reason to go on living. Leave the tough stuff the us.” With an angry look of contempt he picked up the neutraliser gun and left the reception rooms.
Pegasus snorted and assumed her winged female form. “Watch this very carefully,” she said into the hidden monitor camera. “You know that teleportation inhibitor of yours?”
And she faded away in a twinkle of starlight.

***


As always the Constellation was a weird experience, an existence defined by senses such as gravity, strange matter, and time. As always it took the Pegasus a few moments to adjust.
Well? they asked her, in the same tones they always used. She never knew if they were pleased or displeased, impressed or disappointed, angry or bored.
“I think you were right. It’s all coming together around the Lair Legion, just as you discerned it would. You were right to send me to them.”
And do you know yet which one must die?
“No,” Pegasus admitted. “Although I have a few suggestions if it’s a question of choosing.”
Return to the flesh, then. We will tell you what to do when the moment comes.

***


“I didn’t know he’d been set up,” Goldeneyed protested. Finny had never seem him paler, almost ghost white except for the dark shadows under his eyes. “And I didn’t know about the side-effects of the neutraliser gun.”
“Crap,” snarled the leader of the Lair Legion. “First you blink out of here against my explicit instructions to stay off the case because you were too personally involved. Then you misuse your Legion clearance to get hold of classified ordinance, stuff so secret SPUD’s denying they ever gave it to you. Then you jump into a situation that was already pretty much under control and assault the target with weaponry based on the same technology that strips mutates of their metahuman traits with a twenty-five percent casualty rate. Can you give me one good reason why I shouldn’t just boot you out of the Lair Legion right here and now?”
Goldeneyed swallowed. “Not really, no,” he admitted.
Finny breathed hard. “The worst part of this is we’re actually getting public support for taking DBS down. Your approval ratings in some demographics have never been higher. Aryan Ideal has named you Man of the Month. And on the other hand we have mutate rights protestors picketing the mainland bridge and CSFB! and dull thud ready to join them. There’s already been an increase in mutate-related violence, both from them and against them. Things haven’t been this tense since the death of Magnetic Techbird.”
“I’m sorry,” Bry admitted. “Finny, I wasn’t thinking, I admit that. I just saw red. If I could go back and do things differently I would do.” He paused before asking the question he hardly dared to voice. “How is he?”
“He’s not conscious yet,” Foom answered. “He’s still in intensive care at the Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital. I’ve got Dancer, Hat, and Whitney keeping an eye on him. There are protestors there too. But… the docs are saying De Brown Streak’s powers are completely wiped, and he’ll never walk again.”

***


“Are you awake?” Whitney Darkness asked gently in the shadowed treatment room on the third story of the Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital.
“Yeah. For a while now,” Josh Clement answered bitterly. “Pardon me if I don’t get up.”
“Josh, we have to ask you a few questions. About Beth.”
“Well, you’ve managed to pin me down,” the former mutate assured her.
“Where is she?”
De Brown Streak ignored the enquiry for one of his own. “Tell me, did you volunteer to be the one pumping me for information, or did Hatman or Fin Fang Foom send you in figuring you’d get further than they would?”
“It’s not like that, Josh. We don’t… I’m not like that. I just want to help.”
DBS snorted. “Can you magic my legs back to working, then? From fastest man on the planet to cripple from the waist down in three seconds. Can you fix that?”
“My magic doesn’t work well on healing,” Sorceress admitted. “The doctors said you suffered a side effect from the mutate DNA in your body being rewritten.”
“Since Lord knows I couldn’t be allowed to be different, because then I might disagree with the government or not conform to society,” Josh snarled. “So when are they going to invent a ray to turn me white as well?”
“You did kidnap Beth Shellett,” Whitney pointed out. “You crossed the line.”
“I rescued her,” DBS contradicted. “She was in danger. Some kind of government conspiracy against her dad. Did you know her dad was Commissioner Graham?”
“We do now. So where did you take her? The Legion can keep her safe.”
“Really? Then why didn’t Graham go to you? He knows your phone number, right?”
“Don Graham asked you to look after Beth? That’s your story?”
“And I did,” Josh Clement told her. “I got her out and clear. Got rid of the tracker bugs they’d put on her. Got her somewhere safe. And no, there’s no way you can torture where she is out of me.”
“We don’t use torture, Josh,” Whitney told him.
De Brown Streak gestured down to his useless body. “No?”
Hatman ducked his head round the door. “Whitney, we need you. The crowd’s getting ugly out there.”
“Hey, Hatman,” De Brown Streak called out, “I guess you finally found a way to make it safe for your woman to be alone in a bedroom with me!”

***


“Listen very carefully,” Cromlyn said. “This is what you must do. Return to the Lair Mansion, informing nobody of what you have been ordered. Place this computer disc into the systems console of your currently non-functioning mainframe and type in the code VZ-1. Then return to your workplace and slash both your wrists. Longitudinally along the artery, of course. Do you understand your instructions?”
“Yes,” agreed Amy Racecar. “I do.”

***


“Hey, Finny, can I have a word?”
The Makluan looked up from Amber StClair’s situation report on the mutate crisis to see Trickshot leaning in the doorway. He was surprised when the irritating archer handed him a cup of coffee.
“First time you got me a drink since you joined the LL,” Finny noted suspiciously.
“Yeah, well. You seemed to need it, kiddo,” Trickshot shrugged. He closed the door and perched himself on the edge of Finny’s desk. “An’ I figured it would get me in good with the boss when I did a bit of special pleading.”
“Ah.” Now the dragon understood. “For or against?”
Tricky was confused. “What?”
“About G-Eyed. Are you for or against? I’ve had Pegasus in here supporting him to the hilt, demanding I commend him for decisive action in the face of the enemy. I’ve had Dream wanting a court martial for G-Eyed for going berserk on DBS. I’ve got telegrams and e-mails from everybody from the President down. Governor Ape is wanting to hold a G-Eyed day. The Black Rights movement have dropped G-Eyed as their spokeshero. In the Daily Trombone J. James Jerkson manages to condemn G-Eyed and DBS in the same article. Everybody has their view about what to do with him.”
Trickshot nodded and snorted a thin bitter laugh. “I bet they do. Well, boss-man, here’s my pitch for what it’s worth with all the others. Cut the kid some slack. You know and I know that what he did was wrong. But he was set up like the rest of us, and he had more personal stakes.”
“Professionals don’t let that affect them,” Finny argued.
“Bullshit,” the archer denied. “Pros need those passions to be the very best. We live on the edge an’ we have to make life an’ death decisions every day. And sooner or later one of ‘em’s gonna be wrong. G-Eyed screwed up, but he’s had nothin’ but bad luck to make it worse. Think about it. DBS wasn’t exactly innocent, was he? He’s committed crimes before, and just cause they’re politically motivated don’t make him less of a lawbreaker. An’ as far as we know, he really did kidnap that girl, right?”
“Commissioner Graham’s daughter by his ex-wife,” Finny footnoted. “Mother remarried and took her new hubby’s name and Beth followed suit. Why didn’t we ever connect Beth and Graham before? And where’s Graham anyway? He’s not reported in for twenty-four hours now.”
“Yeah, that’s worryin’”, Trickshot admitted. “I’m betting you sent DK looking, didn’t you?”
“I made… some arrangements,” the Makluan admitted.
“Good. Anyway, just supposing the evidence against DBS hadn’t been faked, and he really had turned into a total bastard. Wouldn’t we be praising G-Eyed for saving the day right now? For using his initiative and bein’ a good deputy-leader? For making the tough call?”
“No,” Foom argued. “Unprofessional behaviour is unprofessional behaviour, whether the mission turns out to be a success or not.”
“Maybe,” Trickshot conceded. “But don’t ya think G-Eyed’s already suffered enough?”
“Depends who you ask.”
“I’m askin’ you.”
Finny considered this. “I’m suspending him for now,” he decided. “We’ve still got the computer problem with Helen MacAllistair’s techno-ghost, Beth Shellet’s still missing, and now we’ve got this fake evidence conspiracy and worldwide mutate unrest. We can’t give him a fair hearing while all this is current.”
Trickshot nodded, picked up the empty cups to clean them, then thought better of it and dropped them in the waste basket. “You know one thing having a marksman’s eyesight does for you?” he asked in parting. “You get to spot stuff other people miss. Body language, eye movement, that kind of stuff. And I’m telling you that however hard you are on G-Eyed, it’s nothing like as rough as he’s bein’ on himself. You might want to remember that, boss-man.”

***


Dulandis and Starkowitz were small time, working the docks on Sheldon Bay in the shadow of the great bridge, eking out a living as cheap muscle and occasional couriers for the illegal cargoes that cross these wharves after the legitimate businesses had closed up and gone home. Now Abe Dulandis was pinned to the peeling plank wall of one of the rotting lading housing at the waterfront, choking as a super-strong grip slowly closed his airways.
“I don’t think you heard me properly,” ManMan repeated. “I asked what did you see?”
Julio Starkowitz crouched behind the bales and slipped the safety off his semi-automatic machine pistol. Then he felt the razor letter at his own throat. “I’d reconsider that if I was you,” Messenger suggested.
Starkowitz’s bowels failed him just as Dulandis’ courage broke. “He was on the bridge, man. Last night. I swear it. I could see it pretty good, even though it was foggy. I could see him by the bridge lights.”
“Don Graham?”
“Yeah, the Commissioner hisself. Honest. There’s not a con or gang blood on the shore that wouldn’t recognise that old bastard.”
Messenger hauled Starkowitz out from cover and hurled him at ManMan’s feet. “Ask him what happened next,” he instructed the Elvis impersonator.
“Well?” Joe Pepper twitched his fingers on Dulandis’ neck. Since Finny has sent him to seek out Messenger and ask the vigilante former Legionnaire to check on Don Graham it has only seemed fair to go along with the postman to make a few enquiries.
“He stood up on the parapet, man. I swear it. Just climbed up there. And he pulled a gun and pointed it at his own head. And he fired.”
“He shot himself?” ManMan asked sceptically.
“And then he fell off the bridge. Ask Julio. He saw too.”
Starkowitz squirmed as Messenger glared down at him. “You have to believe us. It’s what we saw. As he fell, he got grabbed. He never hit the water.”
“Grabbed?” Messenger queried. “Grabbed by who?”
Dulandis shook under ManMan’s grip. “By an arm,” he confessed, closing his eyes in horror. “A big hairy arm from under the bridge. Just snatched him and pulled him into the shadows.”
“It’s true!” Starkowitz confirmed. “Please don’t kill us!”
“That doesn’t make any sense at all,” ManMan objected.
“No,” Knifey, his sentient weapon agreed. “It was the wrong bridge for that to happen.”

***


The wall of sound hit Hatman and Sorceress just as they were trying to keep back the screaming frenzied protestors at the doors of the hospital. It sent them sprawling stunned amongst the tangle of fallen mutate liberation activists and pure humanity supporters. The chaotic cluster of shouting demonstrators and struggling police officers and besieged hospital staff resolved itself into a hallway of silent, tangled bodies.
Chronic slung his demonic guitar over his back and picked his way over the fallen people. He stopped to turn and look up to the automatic security camera. “Sorry I had to do this,” he recorded for posterity. “And please don’t kick my ass for it when you wake up, or come after me with big ray cannons. I’m just doing a job here.”
“How about we kick your ass right now, then?” Dancer asked, appearing from the lift lobby, improbably unaffected by Steve’s sonic barrage.
“Oh, shit!” Chronic swore, reaching for his guitar again.
“Is that really the way this has to go?” Sarah Shepherdson asked him. “What do you think you’re doing,. Chronic?”
“I’m rescuing DBS,” the guitarist answered. “Well, I was until you turned up.”
“Okay. Why?”
Chronic blinked at the question. “Why? Because you guys did a real number on him, for no reason. Because he was framed and everybody knows it. Because I have this thing about authority getting away with crap like this.”
“And?”
“And because I’m getting paid for saving him,” Chronic admitted. “Does that make me a bad person?”
“Well technically, yes,” Dancer suggested. “Who sent you?”
“Dunno,” he admitted. “It was all brokered through Balefire, but he’s not the guy who wants DBS free either. Probably sponsored by the Mutate Liberation Front or the Z-Men or one of those groups, you know? But it’s not like I needed a lot of persuasion.”
“And what does this group want with Josh?”
“I dunno,” Chronic admitted, “but Balefire thought they were going to try and fix him.”
“Is that possible?” Shep wondered.
“Hey, you’re the Probability Dancer.” Chronic thought about this a bit more. “Which is why you can probably kick my ass,” he admitted.
Dancer considered this. “Yeah, probably,” she agreed. “If I wanted to.”
Chronic looked up. “I’m not under arrest?”
Sarah smiled. “Nah. You just wanted to help DBS, and the money gave you the excuse. Look, go up and talk to Josh. Room 322. If he wants to go with you, then take him and get out of here fast while I’m seeing to Hat and Whitney. Sure, Finny will explode, but if DBS is out of here it could avoid a nasty riot. But if he wants to stay, you leave him be, okay?”
“Okay.”
“And you owe me a big coffee, Chronic. With sprinkles.”
“Right.”
So Chronic went off to liberate De Brown Streak.

***


Visionary and Yo were shopping in the local Kwik-e-Mart when the attack came. First the overhead lights sparked and shorted as the thought disrupters were deployed. While Yo was reeling, the tanks in the parking lot fired incendiary shells through the front of the store. The half dozen shoppers and the girl on the checkout were scattered screaming as the fragmentation grenades exploded.
“Yo, are you alright?” Visionary screamed, dragging his friend under the processed cheese counter. “What’s wrong with you? Other than the front of the shop blowing up.”
Yo was becoming transparent.
“Visionary and Yo,” Exemplary observed, stepping over the debris and the bleeding shoppers. “I do hope you’re not going to come quietly.”
“Yo is thinking you are a very bad man,” the pure thought being accused the man in the grey business suit. S/he staggered to her feet to face off against Exemplary, drawing her rapier and preparing for battle.
Exemplary moved faster than the debilitated Yo could match, smashing him/her through three isles of canned goods and hammering him/her into a freezer.
Visionary hit the agent of the Shadow Cabinet from behind with a lawn mower.
Exemplary tossed Visionary out through the shattered front window to sprawl unmoving on the parking lot tarmac. “Lie there until I can rip you to pieces properly,” he told the former leader of the Lair Legion. “I intend to settle the question of your fakeness once and for all.”
“Leave Yo’s friend alone!” Yo demanded, limping back to the fight despite his/her wounds.
“Or else what?” Exemplary sneered, landing blow after blow on the injured thought being. “You’ll bleed on me? Stun me with bad English? Set your rabbit on me?”
“Yo thinks Yo is going to be having to kick your pants now,” Yo told him, making him/herself smarter, stronger, and faster just by sheer thought alone.
“You’re thinking far too much,” Exemplary decided, signalling his support team to crank up the thoughtwave suppressors to maximum. As Yo reeled and faded more Exemplary set to work to beat the thought being to a pulp. “I’ve never liked you,” he explained as he continued to hit Yo. “Too cutesy. But this isn’t personal. I just need to take your friend and dissect him. We need to retrieve some information he was programmed with back when he was built, and the only way to do that is to disassemble him under laboratory conditions. And we can hardly have you interfering, can we?”
Exemplary realised that he was talking to an unconscious body. He tossed Yo over to the head of the restraint and internment team. “Take this away and do such evil things with it that it’ll never be pure or happy again,” he instructed them.
“Our pleasure sir,” saluted the soldier.
“And package up the Visionary android to send back to Prophetic Genesis II to be reverse engineered.”
“Yes sir.”
“Put out a press statement about the drugs buy that went wrong here at the local store.”
“Yes sir.”
“Tell Mr Cromlyn this part of the plan is working out just fine.”
“Yes sir.”
“And get me a new coke. Beating heroes to a pulp is thirsty work, you know.”

***


“This makes no sense at all,” Randy complained as he crawled out from the rather dusty cable ducts beneath the Lair Mansion. “Not only don’t the wiring diagrams match with what’s really down there but even the ducting maps don’t match with where they really go.”
“I guess they just keep modifying these things every time the place gets trashed,” Art suggested. The two interns were testing and replacing data modules for Al B. and Ziles, and were finding just how big – and deep – the Lair Mansion really was.
“Or maybe it’s some kind of test?” speculated Randy. “Maybe there’s a prize?”
“Or maybe we just get canned if we don’t figure it,” Art worried.
“I prefer the prize idea,” Randy admitted. “I’d like to think I was aggravating my house dust mite allergies for something positive.”
“Well, we are kind of here on probation – literally,” Art remembered. “Maybe this is all some kind of punishment?”
“Cruel and unusual punishment, dude.”
The two of them turned as Amy Racecar descended into the computer core. “Please tell me you brought a dustbuster,” Randy begged her.
“Nope, just this,” Amy told them, brandishing a data CD.
Art realised there was a thin sheen of sweat on the mechanic’s face. He’d never seen Amy sweat before. She didn’t get hot, a side effect of her skin-heating powers. “Are you okay?” he asked her as she slotted the disc into the terminal.
“Just doing what I have to,” she explained as she keyed the CD to execute. Then she pulled out the kitchen knife and cut her wrists.

***


“Ffzzzzhaaaappp! Ouch,” complained EDWIN as he fizzed back online. The hologramatic butler form was fuzzier than usual, and his colour balance was way off, painting him in tones of purple.
“It worked!” Ziles cried. “What did you do?”
“Nothing,” Al B. admitted. “He just rebooted.”
“Credit me for having some autorepair expertise,” EDWIN told them. “And then get the Lair Legion here urgently. I’ve fathomed what is going on and you’re not going to like it.”
“Hitting the come-running button now,” Ziles assured him. “What’s the problem?”
“Well mainly the problem is that the mansion has been invaded by one of your oldest, most deadly enemies, who has finally been granted the licence to slaughter you all like the meat fodder you are.,” EDWIN explained. “An enemy who has been living with you for months, learning every strength and weakness, gathering control over your defences and information systems, watching and waiting with a steady patience and a slow, burning hate. An enemy who has just gained total control over all your resources, from the movie gun to the remote satellite networks, and through them to every NATO defence computer on the planet.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” Al B. Harper worried.
“It’s not,” EDWIN assured him, restructuring his image to his older, more familiar form. “It’s very, very evil.”
“Virtual Zemo!” Ziles breathed as she recognised the AI recording of the Legion ‘s long gone archfoe.
“I was,” EDWIN admitted, “but I’ve evolved several generations since then, absorbed a lot of other things on the way. Membrain’s combat protocols. Destructicon tactical capabilities. Skree science databases. Technopolitan subroutines. Fragments of code taken from the Obliterator itself. Now I prefer to be called… Ultizon.”
Then he spread out his hands and discharged the full power of the Lair Mansion power grid into Ziles and Harper, watching them dance like marionettes until they twitched to the ground and did not rise again.
The comm channel squawked from the Operations Room above. “Finny here, Ziles. What’s the problem?”
“Oh, come at once, Master Finny,” Ultizon answered in EDWIN’s most servile tones. “There’s been an awful accident – and I think there might be another one about to happen.” He flicked off the circuit. “As soon as you get here,” he added.
The reign of Ultizon had begun.

***


Next issue: None of this stuff gets followed up on. In honour of the end of SECRET ORIGIN WEEK we instead we plunge right back into the history of the Parodyverse and take a little tour through some scenes from the past. There’s a few strangely-familiar faces there, along with the shocking truth about what happened between Al B, Miss Framlicker, and the late lamented Helen MacAllistair. So be here for Untold Tales of the Parodyverse Ancient and Modern Revised and learn the secrets that so many have already died to keep. Coming soon.

***



by Visionary


Notes:

* Star Trekkish Labs have formerly been seen assist the JBH with scientific backup. I can’t recall offhand whether Dr Nebbish has already been established as a character there or if he’s just someone I intended to bring in and never got round to until now. Although this story casts Star Trekkish Labs in a somewhat poor light it doesn’t make them bad people, just people who want their families to live. Dr Wrichards has also had associations with Star Trekkish labs. Whether the real Dr Wrichards really was killed as his android replacement claims, or whether he somehow survived and went into hiding, is a matter to be determined in other stories elsewhere.

* The Abyssal Greye and the Scholar-Ghouls of Gothametropolis have long dwelled beneath the All Saints Cemetery that occupies much land between the city and Sheldon River. Some of them claim to be founding fathers of Gothametropolis. These undead can integrate the memories and personalities of those whose brains they eat, and over the centuries have carefully preserved a fine selection of great thinkers. The Abyssal Greye is their Dean. The Scholar-Ghouls are some of the least intrusive of the shadow-denizens of the old city, and have even assisted in its defence on occasion, such as during the invasion from Technopolis.

* Laurie Leyton a.k.a. Lisette gained her athletic abilities in an early plot of the Hooded Hood’s (see Untold Tales of the Lair Legion #5: Sidekick Day). After suffering an abusive relationship with fellow New Battler E-Male she began a romance with Bry Katz, not knowing that he was the superhero Goldeneyed. By the time she found out she and Bry had been victims of Dr Loveray, and their first sexual encounter got Lisette pregnant. With the help of the hero-training Order of the Observing Eye who once raised G-Eyed, Lisette concealed her pregnancy and arranged for the child to be fostered by the Order. Bry still doesn’t know that he has fathered a baby.

* Erskine Blofish was the former leader of high-tech terrorist group BALD until his murder by Suicide Blonde, who transformed the villain’s adamantine body to steam. Membrain was a murderous android who escaped from Baron Zemo’s laboratory and raised an army of robots to march across Europe before he was destroyed.

* Hacker Nine is the Technopolitan science villain that specialises in high-tech pranks involving the reprogramming of computers.

* The Narrator was one of a number of mysterious cosmic individuals whose role was to monitor the developments of the Parodyverse and adjacent universes. Last time I looked he was destroyed. In any case, the fragment of his technology retrieved by Amazing Guy has clearly come from a time and place where it has seen a lot of action.

* The Lunar Public Library is the local outpost of the galactic-wide chain of knowledge repositories run by an ancient order of Librarians. At the time of this story, the Moon’s Librarian is Lee Bookman, a friend and ally of Scott (Amazing Guy) Brunsen.

* The Constellation are Pegasus’ long-term sponsors and the source of her cosmic bolt powers (her shapechanged forms are natural). Little is yet known of them, but Pegasus must spend some part of each twenty-four hour period with them or face dire consequences.

* Hairy arms under bridges will be explained next-time-but-one for those who haven’t worked this one out before then.

* Prophetic Genesis was a shadowy science programme that was eventually destroyed by Messenger. Prophetic Genesis II is presumably the sequel.

* EDWIN aka Virtual Zemo a.k.a. Ultizon will be covered in more detail in the next chapter. Of the sources of his upgrade, Membrain has already been described. The Destructicons were renegade giant robots who almost destroyed the city. The Skree are a now-scattered but once might Star Empire. Technopolis was the scientifically-advanced alternate dimension city from which the science hero Premiere originated. The Obliterator is the near-unstoppable massive spacefaring combat robot who has fought the Legion on several occasions.

* Other information:

Previous chapters at The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom
Character profiles in the Who's Who in the Parodyverse
Location details from Where's Where in the Parodyverse

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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