Tales of the Parodyverse

#122: Untold Tales of the Hooded Hood: Survival


Post By

Since the board's so quiet, the Hooded Hood leaps a few chapters ahead with this timely tale of archvillainous arrogance and superhero survival struggles. Take your seats and cast your votes.
Tue Jun 24, 2003 at 06:48:29 pm EDT
[ Reply ] [ New ] [ Tales of the Parodyverse ]

#122: Untold Tales of the Hooded Hood: Survival – Part One: “You’re Probably Wondering Why I Brought You Here Today”



“You’re probably wondering why I brought you here today,” the Hooded Hood declared, leaning back on his throne and cradling the tips of his fingers together.
“You brought us here so you could die,” declared Imke, Fourteenth Contessa Zemo, raising her disintegrator pistol in a smooth fluid arc and pumping six shots into the cowled crime czar’s heart.
“No, that’s not it,” the Hood answered, retconning events so that her power pack was exhausted before she ever fired. “Anyone else?”
“Clearly it’s something devious,” scowled Mr Epitome, scowling as he took in the gothic woodwork, the flickering gas lighting, and the Victorian furnishings of the study around him. . “Something we’re not expecting.”
“It would be hard for even the Hooded Hood to come up with something I can’t anticipate,” boasted Pierson’s Porter. “Except for the way he reconned my anti-retcon field, I suppose,” the Mayor of Paradopolis conceded.
“I thought it was a rescue operation,” admitted Lee Bookman, erstwhile Librarian of the Lunar Public Library. “I was just being, er, well kind of executed. By my bosses.” He saw everyone looking at him. “They don’t have much of a retirement plan.”
“I was trapped in the dimension of the Hero Feeders,” Contessa Zemo admitted, “but I would have survived. I always do.”
“I wasn’t in trouble at all,” Mr Epitome considered. “I was in a briefing with my support team, being updated on…”
“Oh, just ask him!” snorted the red-haired young woman in the t-shirt and jeans who carried an Amazon battle-spear. “What are you up to this time, father?”
Mr Epitome checked his knowledge of super-types. The spectacular redhead had to be Troia 215, former Legionnaire and currently rumoured to be off-plane ruling the transdimensional isle of the Amazons. Porter was a self-proclaimed alien conqueror and Mayor of Paradopolis until his disappearance a few months back. He was the last of the race of Puppeteers that had tried to enslave Earth a couple of years ago before being wiped out. Not one of the good guys, but legal. The angry-looking Teutonic woman must be Zemette, only daughter of the now-vanished Baron Zemo, and a formidable killer in her own right. He hadn’t seen the Librarian before. A strange and dangerous bunch to be gathered by the master of ret-cons.
The Hooded Hood sat back and made an elaborate gesture. “Flapjack drew my attention to a television entertainment a little while ago,” he explained. “Apparently a half dozen young people are shipped off to some remote location and are expected to survive.”
“Your Earth media is merely a form of mind-control,” Pierson’s Porter snorted dismissively. “Besides, it’s almost all repeats.”
“What made this programme of marginal interest – apart from the young women wearing increasingly skimpy bikinis which appeared to transfix Flapjack to the screen – was that from time to time, one of the young people was eliminated from the experiment. It was not merely survival, but the survival of the fittest.”
“I’ve seen those programmes, father,” the Amazon administrator snorted. “Fittest is used in the more modern sense of ‘she who has the biggest breasts’.”
Zemette shot her a murderous look.
“Indeed. However, you will be pleased to hear that in the experiment I am proposing we will be taking a more traditional approach,” the Hooded Hood declared. “I have done away with the voting jury and will rely upon a simple series of lethal traps and adversaries to eliminate all but one of you. He or she is the winner and may return from whence they came.”
Pierson’s Porter looked up angrily, having just discovered the empty pocket where his transphasic recall modulator should have been. It appeared he was trapped here. “You never do anything with just one reason, Hood,” he snarled. “Why should you want to eliminate all but one of us? And what makes you think I won’t destroy you for it when I leave here triumphant?”
The cowled crime czar considered this. “Each of you comes from a slightly different set of reality strands. Each of you could go on to cause considerable grief and harm if not deterred.”
“Considerable grief and harm to who?” Mr Epitome challenged. “The world – or you?”
“Ah, now there’s the question,” conceded the Hood. “In some cases the one, in some the other, and in some both. So it is better that I eradicate you all from history now. In deference to your former struggles I won’t retcon everything you’ve done so far, merely remove you from all possible futures.”
“That’s very generous, father. Not. I can’t believe you’re doing this!”
“Fathers are like that, Troia,” Imke Ilse Zemo declared. “They pretend to care for you, but they are cold, manipulative things on the inside, ever plotting your doom.”
“Actually, I, um, believe you were retconned into existence as part of the Hooded Hood's Sidekick Day plot some time back,” the Librarian ventured before the purple-clad killer silenced him with a hostile glance.
“I imagine the Hood’s plans for you changed when you became Queen of the Amazons, my dear Troia,” Pierson’s Porter reasoned. “Before that he was trying to mate you with the Ausgardian hemigod Donar, When that plan was delayed through the interference of the Probability Dancer and all those hilarious consequences, and then Donar became acting All-Pappy of far-off Ausgard I suppose the window of opportunity was lost.”
“You’re saying that I’m… out of dad’s plans now?”
“You are very much in my plans, my dear,” The Hooded Hood assured her. “You’re here, aren’t you?”
“To die?” Troia scowled. “I was kind of hoping my parent would give me a car.”
“You don't have a license.” The Librarian was supposed to know these things.
“Don't annoy the nice Amazon with the seven foot war-spear,” Mr Epitome advised Lee Bookman.
“I must have worried you very much,” Pierson’s Porter challenged his host. “To use so much energy to drag me and my plans for Paradopolis entirely out of the timeline like that.”
“You were certainly about to cause a big mess,” the Hood agreed. “You were about to go to war with the Enemy of the World, were you not? He was prepared to invade from his lunar stronghold with a quarter of a million combat drones, you were gearing up Paradopolis into a technological war machine to counter him.”
“I’d factored all of that into my plans,” PP replied. “Given my previous work on lunar reconstruction, I calculated a 68% chance of victory, 46% chance of victory with losses no worse than 50% of Paradopolis’ population.”
“The Enemy?” Mr Epitome didn’t like not having all the facts before him.
“The Grim Reaper,” supplied Zemette impatiently. “Extradimensional psycho-killer sent to the Parodyverse to destroy it by some interferer called the Void Spectre. Worked with my father as part of the Scourge for a while then left his clone behind to monitor things and went off the breed an army of intergalactic destruction. He was an interesting man.”
“A lunar stronghold?” puzzled the Librarian. “Are you sure, Mr, uh, Pierson’s? Only I know the moon pretty well, and unless he was hiding out in the old Skree ruins of the Turquoise Zone…”
“Quite clearly this wasn’t your version of the moon,” scorned the last Puppeteer. “This was on the version I destroyed and recreated, and also on the one infected with the Enemy’s evil and turned into a symbol of terror hanging over a doomed Earth.”
“I hate alternate timelines,” hissed Troia 215.
“Clearly there are some significant ones that need resolving,” worried Mr Epitome. The paragon of power chased his line of reasoning further. “And I imagine each of us here represents one mutually exclusive future; right, Ioldobaoth?”
“Very good,” the Hood congratulated him. “Yes, as a matter of fact I have brought the six of you here because none of you can survive in the future of the others.”
“Six of us?” The Librarian might be confused by his sudden change of circumstances but he could count. “Me, Troia, Pierson’s Porter, the Contessa, and er, big cape guy…”
“Mr Epitome. How do you do.”
“Mr Epitome, that makes five. Where’s the sixth?” Lee Bookman asked.
“The Grim Reaper is elsewhere in the complex,” the Hooded Hood explained. “I felt his presence in this briefing would not be conducive to reasoned debate.”
Mr Epitome considered the sketchy information he had on the Reaper. “I concur,” he admitted. The Enemy was not known for low body counts.
“And how many retcons have you had to pull so far to prevent this turning into a bloodbath?” demanded Zemette.
“Several,” admitted the cowled crime czar. “And almost all of the conflicts were begun by you.”
Contessa Zemo seemed somewhat smug at that.
“We’re all pulled from slightly different times and places,” Mr Epitome reasoned. “Each from a slightly different version of reality. And you expect to eliminate all but one of us from the future?”
“That’s right,” the Hooded Hood agreed. “The rules of the contest are simple. You will wander the halls of Herringcarp Asylum as you will, seeking one of several exits that are concealed herein. A number of threats and challenges may present themselves. A number of attempts may be made on your lives. And of course, some of you may choose to thin down the competition by… direct intervention.”
“You mean killing each other,” considered Zemette. She didn’t look unhappy at the prospect.
“Bring it on, mask girl,” hissed Troia 215.
“The first entity to depart from the Asylum will return and discover their reality and future has prevailed.” The Hood explained. “The rest of you will find yourselves trapped here for eternity, or until you die of unnatural causes, unless I ever elect to release you. That is all.”
“And why shouldn’t we just team up and take you down, Ioldobaoth?” Mr Epitome demanded.
The Hooded Hood smiled. His eyes flashed green. And he was gone.

Coming Next: Six desperate characters in a struggle to survive. Which can be trusted? Which know the truth? Which will be the first to die? Answers tomorrow in Part Two: “I Have Worthwhile People To Slaughter”

***


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 © 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.


chillwater.plus.com (212.159.106.10)
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)
[ Reply ] [ New ] [ Tales of the Parodyverse ]
Follow-Ups:

#122: Untold Tales of the Hooded Hood: Survival – Part Two: “I Have Worthwhile People To Slaughter”

“So, er, what do we do?” Troia asked after Mr Epitome had prevented Zemette’s pre-emptive attack on them all and had tied her to a chair with her own strangling cord.
“We don’t play the Hood’s game, that’s for sure,” fumed Pierson’s Porter. “We change the rules and find a way of turning this little death trap back on that miserable worm!”
“We need to gather more information,” reasoned Mr Epitome. “Map the terrain, prepare defences, assess what this Grim Reaper’s doing and where he is…”
Lee Bookman interrupted him. “We need to go to the library.”
“What?” Troia stared at him.
“The, er, the library. I can sense them. The Hood’s library is near here. We can… look things up?”
“That’s a good start,” agreed Mr Epitome. “Can you lead us there, Librarian?”
“It’s a false start,” snapped Pierson’s Porter. “The Hood’s not going to leave anything useful where we can find it. We need to locate the Enemy and suborn him so we can use his pan-dimensional connections to override the forces the Hood uses to keep us here. The Enemy may not have the skill to harness his abilities that way, but under my guidance he could.”
“You do that then,” Mr Epitome answered. “I’m going to the library.”
“You’re seriously not going to avail yourself of my genius to command you?”
“I’ll have to forgo the experience.”
“Very well. We shall part here,” announced PP with a disdainful sniff. “Troia, this way.”
The Amazon administrator looked torn between the two parties. “Er…”
“He’s a villain, Troia 215,” Mr Epitome warned her.
“Yeah, I get that. But… I kind of know him and I don’t really know you two. Plus, libraries, kind of reminds me of filing and stuff? Take care, though, okay?”
“I’m loosening your bonds now, Zemette,” Mr Epitome told the purple-garbed villainess after Pierson’s Porter and Troia had departed. “You should be able to get free in a few moments. I can’t leave you helpless in this place. But I strongly suggest you don’t try and harm us again.”
“The library’s this way,” Bookman told the exemplary man. “And I don’t agree with Pierson’s Porter about the Hood not leaving information there, by the way. I think that’s just what the Hood would do, to be able to laugh at us missing vital clues because he’s concealed it so cunningly.”
“Then let’s go get the last laugh,” answered Mr Epitome.

***


“I can’t believe this,” said Troia 215.
Pierson’s Porter looked at the steaming remains of the great spider-thing he had just fried and at the web-strewn walls of its nest-hall. “It’s a fairly standard mutation,” he replied. “Looks like some old work of the Devil Doctor’s.”
“I don’t mean that,” the Amazon replied. “I mean I can’t believe my own father is trying to kill me!”
“Perhaps it’s tough love?” PP suggested, carefully checking the gory human remains on the walls with his sensor equipment. “You know, I rather think we aren’t the first group to play the Hooded Hood’s little survival game. This corpse is costumed like Captain Canuck, and that one over there looks like Visible Boy.”
“Perhaps it’s a joke,” Troia went on hopefully. “Perhaps when I find the exit dad’ll loom out from the shadows and give me my car?”
“Perhaps he thought you would tag along behind me and distract me with your random babbling?” hissed the ex-mayor of Paradopolis. “As if any distraction could prevent me from carrying out my grand design to rule your world for it’s own good.”
“Perhaps it’s a fix?” Troia reasoned. “Perhaps he knows I’m the one who’ll survive. Perhaps he’s arranged it that way?”
“That has also occurred to me,” the alien Puppeteer agreed. “That was why I used my technology to convince you to come along with me rather than go with the lantern-jawed squad.”
Troia shifted her spear nervously. “You… used mind-control on me?”
“Hello? Puppeteer? Of course I manipulated you. I used the same emotion-altering gear that once had Lisa become my drooling love-slave. In fact I’m using it on you right now to make you my obedient chattel.” He shrugged and operated the alien machine. “This should even the odds a little.”

***


Mr Epitome wiped the blood from his lips and rose from the ground. “Thank you,” he told Lee Bookman. “That was close.”
The Librarian looked down at the fallen forms of Bloodwroth and Dischordia. Bloodwroth’s psychotronic weaponry had almost killed both the heroes, rendering them helpless while Dischordia shredded their molecular structures with her sonic barrage. Had they not been in a library Lee Bookman would have died then and there. As it was, he had toppled a bookcase onto the lost Technopolitan science villains who had arrived at Herringcarp Asylum to arrest the Hooded Hood in the first days of the Technopolis War and had never escaped. That gave Mr Epitome enough time to take them down.
“I don’t feel well,” Bookman admitted, coughing up blood. “But I guess I’m feeling better than them,” he added, looking down at Dischordia and Bloodwroth.
“I’m feeling confused,” Mr Epitome admitted. “I’ve been checking my memories, and I seem to have two sets of them.”
The Librarian searched in vain for a library index. He should have known that an archvillain wouldn’t use the Dewey Decimal system.
“I can clearly remember my life as a crimefighter in the Parodyverse,” noted Epitome, “but I can also remember another timeline where I’m not in the Parodyverse too, but battling evil on another Earth.”
“That was puzzling me a bit,” admitted Lee Bookman. “I’m fairly new to Parody Earth myself, but I’ve not come across you. You seem like a pretty major player, but you’re not in the records of any of the big events, like the Coming of the Celestians or the Acts of Ambition.”
“During the Acts of Ambition I was battling Blackbird in Arachknight City,” Epitome reported, “and… I was hunting down some Factor X leads for the OPS in Mombassa,” he added confusedly.
“I keep trying to connect with my Library,” the Librarian sympathised. “I should be able to link to it from any other library anywhere, but I keep getting this… busy tone. As if it’s not my Library any more. As if there’s another Librarian – and always has been.”
“Sounds like a typical Hooded Hood confusion then,” scowled the man of might. “Come on, let’s find something in this place to confuse him back.”.

***


The lunatics barrelled down the corridor towards Zemette. She drew a pair of miniature disintegrator pistols from her thigh pouches and took a series of carefully-aimed shots that punched neat three-inch holes through their foreheads. The last oncomer stopped abruptly, dropped to the floor, and wrapped his hands round his skull as if that would protect it from a particle disruptor beam.
“No!” he gibbered. “Nononononononononononononono!”
“If you don’t start making sense I’m putting you down,” Imke Zemo warned him.
“Right. Sense it is. Yes. Totally sane now, ma’am.”
Zemette noticed that all the ragged men were identical in appearance, except that one of them still had an intact brain-pan. For now. “Who are you, and why are you taking up my valuable time?” she demanded.
“Good questions. Ma’am. I’m, er, well as best I can remember, I’m Deathstar Druid,” answered the lunatic.
“And these others?”
“Alternate Deathstar Druids. We were all part of this… well the Hood brought a bunch of us here and said we were too lame and undefined to exist any longer. So we competed to get out, but…”
“Another Deathstar Druid won?” surmised Zemette.
“No. Falcon did,” Deathstar Druid answered. He was the most nondescript person the Contessa had ever seen. “He and Ocean Guy and Spandex Lass all tried to get out together, but only one of them could win.”
“I see. And you’ve been here ever since.”
“Yes. All of us. Fading. Losing ourselves…”
“And now there is no way out for you, correct?”
“Only if you kill us,” Deathstar Druid answered, looking enviously at his fallen alternates.
“I see. Thank you. You may go.”
“What? Aren’t you going to shoot me too?”
Zemette shook her head and smiled nastily. “I’m not a charity. Now get out of my way. I have worthwhile people to slaughter.”

***


Coming Next: Our survival contest reaches it’s shocking finale with blood, betrayal, and a nasty twist in the tail. Who will be the last man, woman, or incarnation of evil standing? The conclusion tomorrow in Part Three: “I’ll Fight You To My Last Breath”

***


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 © 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.


chillwater.plus.com (212.159.106.10)
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)
[ Reply ] [ New ] [ Tales of the Parodyverse ]
Follow-Ups:


#122: Untold Tales of the Hooded Hood: Survival – Part Three: “I’ll Fight You To My Last Breath”

The Enemy crouched in the shadows of the torture pits and waited for his prey to come to him. There were two of them, and he knew them both. Pierson’s Porter was the greatest current threat, the alien whose ambitions of conquest might thwart the Grim Reaper’s own agenda for the destruction of the Parodyverse to prevent the Resolution War. The girl with him had a little potential to disrupt his long-term plans too. Best they both died.
“Enemy!” called Pierson’s Porter, shining a light into the dank vaulted chambers. The shadows cast by the instruments of pain made interesting patterns on the slimy walls. “I know you’re down here. My sensors have you pegged. Come out and we can talk.”
“And why shouldn’t I just slice your head off?” the Enemy hissed from the shadows. There was the metallic sound of a scythe being dragged across stone.
“Because I can get you out of here, of course,” answered the alien. “You have senses that extend beyond this place. I can exploit them to find a way to get at the Hooded Hood.”
“What makes you think I need your help for that?” the Reaper demanded. “The Hood has underestimated me. He always has. All the dead things of this place hate him, and they shall serve me against him.”
“Because as brilliant as you are, I am more brilliant,” Pierson’s Porter explained to him.
“So your brilliance wants to exploit my powers? And you exploit so well,” hissed his Enemy. “Ah yes. As you exploit the one with you?”
Pierson’s Porter glanced casually at the Amazon who stood protecting his back with her war spear. “Never mind her just now,” PP replied. “She’s the Hood’s daughter and we’ll need her later. This is between us.”
“If I ally with you, will you give her to me?”
That surprised Pearson’s Porter. He hadn’t thought the Enemy capable of desire. “If it closes the deal, then yes I suppose so,” he agreed. “She’s not important.”
The Enemy of the World chuckled. It was a laugh from the grave. “Did you hear that?” he asked the girl.
“Yes,” she answered, and stabbed her spear through Pierson’s Porter’s back and up through his heart.
The Puppeteer mouthed “No…” and then tumbled to the floor.
The Grim Reaper loomed out of the shadows. “Very nice,” he admitted. “He really thought he had you under his control.”
“He had to believe it,” the Amazon answered. “Otherwise he wouldn’t have set this up.” Then she dropped down beside the fallen Pearson’s Porter and thumbed the control device he had prepared for the Enemy.
The Grim Reaper struggled as force fields formed to bind him, but he had come out of the shadows. He too had been overconfident.
“I’m not too good at technology,” Troia admitted, “but I can be a real bitch.”
“Yes,” agreed the Enemy. “No wonder the Hooded Hood brought you here to die.”
“He didn’t bring me here for that!” snarled the Amazon. “It’s just a test.”
“No. I’m fairly confident he wants you to die. I’m very good at sensing things like that.”
Troia fumbled with the technology that would tap into the Enemy’s extended senses and show her the way out. She tried to ignore what he was saying.
“Do you know why he wants you dead so very much, little one?” the Reaper asked.
“No. Shut up,” she replied. “Why?”
“Because you will kill his daughter and lead the Amazon race to war with Earth.”
Troia looked up. “I am his daughter,” she said sharply. “Unless.. he’s not retconned me like he did spiffy?”
“No,” mocked the Enemy. “Troia is still his daughter. But you are not Troia. Why do you think you could resist the Puppeteer’s control, when Troia would not? Oh, you may think you are her, you may look and act like her on the surface; but look deeper as I can and you will see the truth.”
The girl took an uncertain step back. The Reaper saw the first traces of fear in her eyes. Good. “You are a mask, a shell, an feeble attempt against the Hood that he saw through in an instant and snatched here before it could do any harm,” he continued. “You are nothing but a Hero Feeder, child, shaped by her peers to believe herself a villain’s daughter.”
“No! That’s not true!”
“Nothing more than a gambit to replace the Amazon queen and lead them in war against the world of mortal men, that the hero Feeders may feast,” persisted the Enemy.
“No! Take it back! I’m not!”
“I see it. I see the Hood’s purpose. I see why you had to be eliminated before your plans could progress. And I also see you have allowed yourself to become distracted.”
Then the Grim Reaper broke free from his confinement, sliced apart the spear that the faux-Troia thrust at him, and then sliced apart the girl as well.

***


“This place is amazing,” Mr Epitome admitted as they descended to the third library vault.”
“It’s disgusting, is what it is,” frowned Lee Bookman. “I mean, yes, the Lunar Public Library keeps records of very nearly every book ever written on this and neighbouring planets, but the Hood has collected books from realities that never existed, works that were never written.”
“And that’s disgusting?”
“No. But they’re not catalogued! They’re not cared for. They’re just stuffed on shelves any old how and left to moulder.” The Librarian shuddered. “Now I truly understand archvillainy.”
“Er, yes,” Epitome said comfortingly. “But have we found anything yet that tells us why the Hood brought us all here. Anything in the history section maybe?”
The Librarian checked his notes. “Well, we have the Pierson’s Porter / Enemy clash,” he considered. “In some realities is seems one won and in some the other. Plus a few mutual-annihilation-blow-up-the-world endings. There weren’t a lot of good outcomes.”
“So that’s why the Hood needed to carve them from history. You can’t conquer a planet that’s already been reduced to space debris. Zemette?”
“Nuclear winter, I think. She did – or will do – something with the world’s nuclear arsenal. She sets of a nuke at the Lair Mansion and goes on from there.”
“Not the most original plan, is it?” Mr Epitome sighed. “I suppose that’s because it would be so effective.”
“Troia leads an Amazon invasion of Earth,” the Librarian added, flicking though a scroll marked with Greek lettering. “Apparently it leads to the return of the pantheons and a big war of the gods with Paradopolis as ground zero.”
“And then?”
“Ragnarok.”
“Ah,” said Mr Epitome. “I can see that wouldn’t be good. But I’d have expected the Hood could divert that some other way. What about us? What terrible things do we do?”
Lee Bookman swallowed hard. He held up a charred diary nervously. “Well, apparently I overthrow the Order of Librarians,” he confessed. “A million year old institution, destroyed. Because of me.”
“They were about to execute you, you said,” Mr Epitome reminded him. “There could be extenuating circumstances.”
“I suppose. And you apparently go on to cause peace on Earth.”
“I do?”
“Yep. Peace, prosperity, and a golden age of justice.”
“And the Hooded Hood couldn’t allow that?”
“None of us want that,” Zemette answered, appearing from behind a bookcase. “Get him, boys!”
“What?” the Librarian gasped, just before debris from the first assault hit him on the side of his head.
Mr Epitome dodged the first massive slam of Anvil Man’s fist. Only the row of bookshelves behind him suffered. There was a spray of paper.
Then Quake moved in to try and take off Epitome’s head. The paragon of power deflected the shot and hammered the future-villain through the opposite wall.
He thought he was doing well right up to when the Yurt hit him.
“Ouch,” winced Zemette theatrically. “That had to hurt. Stomp him flat, boys.”
“Leave that to me,” leered Onslaughter, extending his razor-sharp arm-ridges. “I love carving heroes.
The Librarian looked up in horror as four of the strongest thugs in the Parodyverse dogpiled onto Mr Epitome. Zemette leaned down and drew her knife up to Bookman’s left eye. “Best guess, Mister Librarian, and it had better be a very good guess indeed unless you want to read Braille from now on. Where’s the nearest doorway out of here? I’m sure you must have found something in all those books.”
“Don’t kill him,” the Librarian pleaded. “There’s a portal hidden in the Hood’s throne room. Where we started out. You just sit on his throne. Obvious when you think about it. He had to be able to exit himself. Just take it and go.”
“Kill them both, boys!” Zemette ordered.
Mr Epitome snarled and broke off one of Onslaughter’s titanium-hard spines. He hurled it past Zemette at nothing in particular.
Onslaughter, the Yurt, Quake, and Anvil Man vanished. The Psychic Mastermind clutched at his throat, scrabbling at the spine embedded in it, before toppling dead on the floor.
“Illusions?” the Librarian gasped. The knife now at his throat still felt real.
“Psychic Mastermind is able to alter the way we perceive reality,” Mr Epitome noted, wiping the all-too real blood from his nose. Despite knowing it had all been in his head his body felt like it had been pounded by four heavyweights. “He caused considerable trouble a few years back then vanished. Now we know why. I presume Zemette found him wandering these halls, another failed survivor, and recruited him to her service.”
“I don’t need him now, though,” the Contessa argued. “Now I have a hostage. And I know how to leave here. I win.”

***


The Throne Room was dark now, the great braziers cold and empty. Zemette hurried over to the chair. She’d already hurled Bookman away in the corridor beyond and applied a few well-placed blows to keep him down. She would have killed him but if he was lying about the throne she’d want to hurt him some more.
The Grim Reaper sat on the stone chair and waited for her. “Very good,” he said. “I thought it would be you.”
“Epitome’s buried under the library that my charges just brought down. The Librarian’s a waste of space. That just leaves the two of us,” Zemette said, pointing her disruptors and smiling coldly.
“Yes,” agreed the Enemy. He moved so fast that Imke Ilke Zemo didn’t even know he’d shifted until she felt the coldness at her wrists where the scythe had severed her hands.
“And now there’s one,” the Reaper replied. “I’ll be back for you later, Hooded Hood.”
Mr Epitome scrambled into the chamber, ragged and limping. “No!” he shouted as the Enemy of the World triggered the portal.
“Too late,” gasped Lee Bookman, staggered in behind the man or might. “He’s gone. He’s won!”
“No,” Mr Epitome frowned. “He’s lost.”

***


The Grim Reaper hung in nothingness before the Void Spectre. He didn’t know where he’d come from, but he knew what he was; death personified, malice without end. The Void Spectre spoke to him then. He gave the Reaper purpose, made him the Enemy of the World, sent him spiralling down to the little knot of stories called the Parodyverse to bring about it’s ending…

***


“That portal sent him back to the beginning,” Mr Epitome explained to the Librarian as they peered through the closing dimensional rift. “To his origin. He’s trapped now, in the same loop of events forever, reliving it over and over and over. And the Hood has managed to drag in that other entity too, that Void Spectre. Two menaces neutralised with one simple trap!”
The Librarian looked at the sticky mess on the floor where Contessa Zemo lay dead. “More than two,” he answered. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what I’d reasoned about the throne portal.”
“Oh, I knew about the throne,” Mr Epitome answered. “But I knew we couldn’t win anyway.”
The Librarian looked up. “What?” he mouthed. “Why? Nobody has escaped yet. One of us could do it.”
Mr Epitome shook his head. “You have to listen to the Hooded Hood very closely. He told us that the first entity to depart from the Asylum would return home and discover their reality and future has prevailed.”
“Yes?”
“And then he departed,” Epitome pointed out, “The Hood returned home, and true to his word his reality and future had prevailed.”
Lee Bookman gaped. “That… he… the bastard!”
“Why thank you,” said the Hooded Hood. The cowled crime czar stood behind them, his grey mantle pulled around him so it wouldn’t trail in Zemette’s gore.
“This isn’t over, Iolobaoth,” Mr Epitome warned him. “I’ll fight you to my last breath.”
“Yes,” agreed the Hood. “But not today. Today I’m sending you back to the Parodyverse.”
“Of course,” frowned the hero. “Because in that other reality I’d have brought in an era of peace and contentment. Better to retcon me into a chaotic world of alien invasions and demonic incursions and constant war with evil.”
“Because that is where you are needed,” answered the Hooded Hood simply.
Mr Epitome glanced at the Librarian. “What about him?” he asked the archvillain.
“Mr Bookman? He can return too, if he’ll accept the consequences.”
“You mean the destruction of the Libraries?” the Librarian demanded. “I’d rather die.”
“Even after what they did to you?” the Hood urged. “A little villainy can be very satisfying on occasion.”
“Not for me,” answered Lee Bookman. “I won’t do it, even if I have to stay trapped here for eternity.”
The Hood seemed rather pleased for some reason. “Trapped here you shall be then, Librarian, until such time as you change your mind. In the meantime, feel free to see what you can do about cataloguing the books round here. They’re in a dreadful mess.”
Bookman looked up. “What? You want me to… to be a librarian here?”
“Every library needs a keeper,” the Hooded Hood replied. “It’s far too dangerous otherwise.”
“A library of books that don’t even exist…” mused the Librarian happily. “Never catalogued, never read…”
Mr Epitome shook Bookman’s hand and then turned to face the cowled crime czar. “I imagine you think you’ve won now, Ioldobaoth,” he declared. “But you’ve brought me to your backyard, set me loose in a world you’re trying to manipulate. Don’t expect me to make it easy for you. You’re a villain, and bringing villains down is what I do.”
“Good,” answered the Hooded Hood. He gestured and Epitome felt himself falling back into the Parodyverse, the bizarre double-memories resolving themselves into a single whole. “I enjoy a challenge.”
Then the Hooded Hood allowed himself a small, reserved smile. He drew his cape around him and summoned the Portal of Pretentiousness to stare into its night-black mirrors. “Now, who shall we play the game with next?”



***


How Could You Kill Off ____ Dept: The nice thing about the Hooded Hood is that you can never be certain of his retcons – or his motives. You can never be sure if a certain character is really gone or just sidelined until their poster comes back and writes them in again. So no offence is intended to those mentioned in the story, the posters who created the characters shouldn’t feel excluded, and nobody should be afraid to alter events from the story if they need the characters to be doing something else. It was just a way of tidying up, and it felt like a fun story to write. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. I hope you enjoyed it. Otherwise, next time, it could be YOU…

HH

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 © 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.

chillwater.plus.com (212.159.106.10)
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)
[ Reply ] [ New ] [ Tales of the Parodyverse ]
Follow-Ups:


Echo™ v1.1 © 2003 Powermad Software
Copyright © 2003 by Mangacool Adventure