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Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: The Children if the Night (best read in a Transylvanian accent) Sunday, 05-Dec-1999 15:53:10
#32: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: The Children if the Night (best read in a Transylvanian accent) Unfocus your eyes. Let them get a bit blurry, and stop concentrating on trying to make sense out of what you see. Once you've overcome the instinctive programming to make that light into things you can eat, run from, and sleep with, you'll start to get an inkling of something else behind it. You'll discover that matter and energy are the colours on a tapestry which has a different framework. And the threads on that cosmic scaffold are stories. Well, either that or you'll need taking away by men with white coats and a handy rubber room. But it's true at least in the Parodyverse, that strange dimension created by some presumably Higher Power to satisfy the laws of probability that all the stupid, embarrassing, weird stuff has to happen somewhere. Like landfills and homelessness hostels nobody wants them in their neighbourhood, but they've got to go somewhere. And to maintain that unlikely universe of interconnecting, sometimes conflicting strands of narrative the presumably Higher Power created Offices – not the little cubicles where people go to pretend to work while they're surfing the internet, but rather jobs which come with varying degrees of power and responsibility. The Shaper of Worlds gets to start off stories, to unloose new and improbable plots into the Parodyverse. She's the most enthusiastic of all – as witnessed by the massive amount of unfinished stories trailing about. The Chronicler of Stories is responsible for maintaining these threads, for keeping them fresh and interesting (or a pain and a nuisance if you happen to be having them happen to you). The Destroyer of Tales is in charge of endings, and he has a penchant for the sort at the end of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid or Hamlet, where nobody gets out alive. Above them and a bit to the side are the family of the Pointless, eternal beings personifying cosmic truths. There's Coincidence, Death, Temporary Death (a very busy young woman in the Parodyverse), Glamour, Wingeing, Lusting, and Space Ghost. Nobody has seen Common Sense for many years, and it is rumoured that he has abandoned his office. There's also a natural phenomenon, a bit like that whirlpool you get when you let out the bathwater, which sometimes manifests and calls itself the Parody-Master, and is damned powerful and a huge nuisance. If the Parody-Master has a proper use nobody's ever worked it out, but he can tap into the fundamental bits of the Parodyverse if he wants to toast people. Beyond that we have the Giant Space Robots, the unspeaking Celestians, who are the cosmic equivalent of the mechanic who looks at your engine, whistles through his teeth and goes, "This'll be expensive. What 'ave you being doing to 'er mate?" Except that the Celestians' bill often includes the compulsory deletion of your planet. The Celestians have been rather peeved with the Earth recently, and they're looking for an excuse. And beyond that? Too big to know. Things made of theology and infinity. Don't confuse them with the indigenous gods of Earth like the Ausgardians, who sort of accrued round unused piles of belief and now refuse to go away. Out and far beyond there are the Serious Players, or in the probable case of whoever's responsible for the Parodyverse, a Frivolous Player. And here we have the non-cosmic being who's managed to annoy every single one of the above, a villain swathed in a grey cloak, whose glowing green eyes and shadowed face are obscured by a sinister hood. Here's how he managed to annoy them: 1. He somehow managed to slide his son spiffy (also present in the montage we're currently looking at, along with his friend Banjoooo king of the sea monkeys, and the villainous Baron Zemo) into the coming of the Cosmic Cube into the Parodyverse. The Cosmic Cube is an ultimate power source, sort of like Duracell without the bunny (sorry Yo), and spiffy corrupted it. Hence spiffy is responsible for all the bad things that have ever happened in the Parodyverse. At the last minute the Lair Legion stopped the Hooded Hood from gaining the cube and becoming unstoppable. Go back and read Untold Tales #5-17 to see how. Go on. We'll wait. 2. He somehow manipulated his daughter Troia into unwittingly unbalancing the planar order. This led to the already-wobbly interdimensional structures of the Parodyverse giving up and going home, with the subsequent invasions from the Lord of the Dreary Dimension, Dormaggadon – now the late Dormaggadon. By the time that was dealt with, the Demon-Lord Mefrothto had positioned himself for a hostile takeover of the Parodyverse through his Hell on Earth plot. 3. In the meantime, the cosmic powers who usually referee this sort of thing were being distracted by whether the assassin Deathspoon was actually the Hood's son (he wasn't, so they were watching the wrong person to prevent the damage), and by the death of the Dark Knight, whose resurrection was currently occupying the Chronicler of Stories to the exclusion of wider events. From the Hood's point of view, that's why he prompted the Acts of Ambition in the first place. 4. Back to Mefrothto. He's currently pumping his power into the world, magnifying everything that's evil and supernatural. The Lair Legion is quite busy with it. Donar and Lisa have just faced the Hamster of Horror. NTU-150 and Trickshot, bickering all the way, have survived the possessed school lunches at Gothametropolis High. Finny has faced off against an Abyssal Duke in the form of a giant rodent, which tasted like chicken. CrazySugarFreakBoy! and Hatman have dealt with the escape of the Colour Yellow, which was rampaging in downtown Paradopolis, and then they have faced the ghosts of eleven million McDonalds meals. Space Ghost is having an animated discussion with a bunch of goblins who were trying to raid pizza from Guiseppe's Italian, but are now discussing the ethics of putting anchovies on pasta. Oh, and Visionary and Cheryl have a vampire nobleman visiting them at the Lair Mansion, but more on that later. Suffice to say that Mefrothto's pretty confident this time, and his victory conditions require him only to marry the Hooded Hood's daughter Troia and place his Soul Ring, the repository of his immortal essence, on her finger, to win the game. He's wedding ManMan at the same time because he fancies him. No accounting for taste. 5. And indirectly other things are happening because of the surge in supernatural power. The Lhiannon Shee Moira (a Lhiannon Shee's a Celtic faerie that latches onto a great artist and inspires them to ever greater brilliance even while burning them out) has been able to come and stay with Finny, carrying out her part-time moonlighting job as a Washer-at-the-Ford in triggering off the Dark Knight's resurrection. She's going to be really upset when she describes the Chronicler of Stories who gave her the task – a tall man with glowing green eyes in a grey robe – to somebody who knows what the Chronicler and the Hooded Hood actually look like. Then there's the escape from ancient bonds of the Demon Lover who's completing his plan to seduce the Abandoned Legion's Sorceress. All he has to do to be free in the waking world is to become as one with love (or lust) struck Whitney, and all she has to do to make that possible is to kill Hatman. More on that later as well. Then there's the challenge to Xander for the role of sorcerer supreme from Heironymous Hellbane, the Astral Khan, the occult equivalent of the guy with the biggest sports car in production who wakes you up by revving it as he tunes it at 7am on a Sunday morning. Mefrothto wanted a way of keeping the Master of the Mystic Crafts busy, so he gave the Khan the nod to make his play. Mefrothto has forgotten that this suggestion originated with the Hooded Hood. 6. Lots of other stuff. But if we gave it all away now there'd be no point reading on a couple of chapters to "The Ultimate Triumph of the Hooded Hood," now would there? But it's not all the Hooded Hood's doing. Take Exile becoming Lord of the Dreary Dimension, and being trapped there with Goldeneyed, Yo, and his newly-acquired slave-girl Valeria. Although the Hood's aware of what happened, he hasn't bothered to wonder why Xander the Improbable arranged it. And then there's the manipulations of the Shaper of Worlds. In an attempt to get back at the Hood for previous slights, she peeled off a continuity strand and hid it from him. In that alternate world spiffy grew to become the Tyrant of the Sol Empire, Dark Thugos, who is currently misplaced in the dimensional void. Dark Thugos is sort of what spiffy would be like if he wasn't a wet, useless, fern-wielding imbecile, and had developed a taste for genocide. Troia grew up as the self-proclaimed goddess Kumari, and is currently in the middle of planning her own invasion of the regular Parodyverse. The Shaper isn't too proud of how her manipulations have turned out, actually, and she could do without the Kumari distraction just now. For one thing, since it was the Shaper's power that started Kumari's story, the Shaper can't now interfere to stop the invasion, because she would need to use more-than-full-power to divert a strand she invested with her full power in the first place. Hence the Hooded Hood has arrived to gloat, and to offer her a deal. "A deal? I'm the Shaper of Worlds. I don't deal with continuity-twisting nonentities." "What's going on here?" spiffy whispered to Banjooooo. "Why are we here? What's the Hood up to? How am I going to get this raven cack off my fern?" "I think the Hood wants witnesses to this confrontation for some reason," the king of the sea monkeys reasoned. "I guess that's why Hoody brought him as well," And he gestured to Zemo. "Of course that's why I was brought," the masked monarch agreed. But not why I came he didn't say. "Now we will watch how the Hooded Hood defeats the Shaper." "So you do not require my help, my dear?" the Hood asked the cosmic entity before him. He gestured towards one of her reality-pools. "Look." "Still alive?" Kumari, Queen of Darkness, Mistress of the Myriad Realities asked as she returned to her in-home torture pit. "I'm impressed. Not many people survive flaying for this long." She regarded the bloody lump of meat in the chains before her, running her electrodes over it to check that it was still truly alive. It screamed, so it must have been. "Well, Troia, I have bad news and good news. The bad news is that I'm afraid ManMan didn't make it out of our date alive. The good news is that he died a happy man. And he never guessed that it was me there with him instead of you. In fact none of them guessed we'd swapped places a day ago. Not that smarmy alien Pierson's Porter, not that cow-woman, not that rancid tart you have bodyguarding you. So I stabbed poor dear Joey through the heart three times. It was so easy." The unrecognisable pulp in the shackles made some kind of sound. Of course, without a tongue or teeth it wouldn't have sounded coherent anyway. "Anyway, it's time to conclude our business, my alternate-dimensional counterpart. Once you have died I can claim my rightful place on your world, and then use my own reality-restructuring powers to take our beloved father's conquest from under his nose. Your friends' feeble interference here in my world against Thugos have only made it simpler for me to rule my territories and his. Already I have consolidated my holdings, and now no less than twenty million shock troops are ready to return with me when I go to your world again." Another sound. The barest attempt at dragging a hand free of it's fetter. "I think not," Kumari smiled. "Goodbye, Troia." Kumari held her captive's head up so she could take a good look at the heart that the dimensional queen had just ripped from her chest. "You're not of the opinion that twenty million invaders might make a negative impact on the Parodyverse that you're seeking to protect?" the Hooded Hood asked the Shaper. "And it is, of course, all your fault since you set the strand in motion merely to take out some sort of juvenile revenge upon someone who had annoyed you." "It's not like that…" the Shaper argued. "Hey, did you hear that?" spifffy demanded. "He said it was her fault. Hers. Not mine!" "Shut up and come over here while they're bickering," Banjooooo instructed. "Take a look in this scrying pool at what the Lair Legion are up to." "This getting' ridiculous!" Trickshot complained. "I could deal with the walkin' freezer products, we sorted the sauna parlour werewolves, I was okay about the hail of giant peaches…" "And I was able to deal with those animated fire trucks," sneezed Fin Fang Foom. "…but this is getting' ridiculous. "Where the hell did these little furry gremlins come from?" "I don't know," NTU-150 admitted, checking his scanners and trying to detach half-a-dozen of the creatures from his helmet where they had chewing-ginned themselves on. "But they're terrorising people in that swimming pool complex." "They're apparently called Mogwai," Lisa reported, dropping a happy but exhausted gremlin in a trash can. "We've got to stop them proliferating before they eat up the whole city." "Fear not, fair maiden," the demigod of thunder boomed out from above. "Donar shall summons forth a tempest to drown yon creatures where they stand…!" "So you're Count Craladu," gulped Visionary, who was an able man with anagrams. He had a nasty feeling that the urbane nobleman with the piercing red eyes had been a bad choice to welcome into the Lair Mansion. He seemed like the sort of person who would be inviting Cheryl to go slip on a floaty white nightie any minute and then want to discuss with her how the blood was the life; and from the unusually passive stare on his wife's face, Vizh was rather worried that she'd accede. "HALLIE?" the new leader of the Lair Legion checked. "Our, um, defence perimeter?" "I turned HALLIE off, as the master commanded" Cheryl reported. "Oh. I see. In that case… get him, fleabot!" "I will not attack the master," the little robot flea announced. Vampires have control over the lesser lifeforms such as insects, after all, and the wave of darkness emanating from Mefrothto had extended the undead nobleman's power far beyond it's usual boundaries. Visionary wracked his brains for every bit of vampire lore all those late-night Christopher Lee / Peter Cushing films had taught him. He came to one firm conclusion. "You're going to suck our blood, aren't you?" "You and all your super-heroes, yes," the Count agreed. "You vill make most useful and powerful servants in three nights' time." "Do I get a last request?" The vampire lord considered this. "If it does not involve stakes, or garlic, or escape I vill consider it." "May I have a last slice of toast?" Visionary asked plaintively. "Oh man, he's completely lost it," Banjoooooo worried, observing the scene via scrying pool. "I knew we shouldn't have let Vizh do that job, I should have let them pick me to be leader, but nooo…" "Quiet, man," spiffy urged. "I want to see this." "To see Vizh and Cheryl get killed by a bloodsucker?" The fern wielder smiled. "Nah. To see what happens with the sprinkler system when Enty's toaster explodes this time, and how a vampire likes running water." "This guy's a damn sight tougher and stronger than that were-portaloo we battled earlier," Hatman commented as the Prosthetics Man hurled him through the wall of the hospital. "We'll get him," CSFB! assured the capped crusader, bounding past and covering the amalgam of artificial limbs with silly string. Each one of the constituent parts of the self-made horror was ripped from a different donor. All he needed now was one more eye – and a brain. "My dad the shaman says there's this massive tide of evil swelling so little bad things get to be big bad things and big ones get to be enormous but like all tides it can't keep this high forever and we've just got to keep plugging on like with the mutant Inferno crossover and the red skies in Crisis on Infinite Earths." "Wouldn't mid a crossover right now," Hatty admitted. "With the emphasis on another dozen heroes or so appearing. Ah well. Let's try this." He pulled on his fireman's hat and sent a gout of flame over to melt the plastic monstrosity. The heroes pursued the blazing torso out into the hospital research wing's greenhouse, where it plunged itself into the central fountain. "It… it's still moving!" Hatman gasped as the melted, twisted monstrosity struggled to rise from the water. He fumbled for his lumberjack's cap. Chainsaw time. "Wait! Look!" CSFB! called out. Water-vines from the fountain's surface had suddenly begun to grow at a fantastic rate, wrapping themselves around and even inside the Prosthetic Man's patchwork body. As the heroes watched the creature was ripped apart, shrieking as it died. "Cool," CSFB breathed. Hatman looked around to see what had caused the sudden demise of the powerful monster. The attractive red-clad form of the Sorceress emerged from the greenhouse entrance. "Whitney, am I glad to see you!" he called. "If ever we needed a magic-worker…" Then the vines and branches of the trees and bushes beside Hatman and CrazySugarFreakBoy seized them and gripped them as tight as they had previously enveloped the Prosthetic Man. "Hey what…?" shouted Hatty. But CSFB! had seen this in too many comics to be surprised. "She's not on our side, Jay," he warned his partner. "Look at her, man! See how she's controlling those plants. It's like Terra in the Teen Titans all over again, 'cept that Whitney has breasts and no retainer. She's gone over to the dark side of the force! She's mmmphhh!" Then the privet gagged him to silence. Hatman chainsawed his way free of the vegetation. "Whitney, what's going on? If there's something bad affecting you, tell me and I'll find a way to free you. All you have to do is…urk!" The Demon Lover had closed his fist, and Hatman fell to the floor. After all, the Love-Talker did have a lien on the young hero's soul. "I never could understand what you saw in him," the demon shrugged. "After all, if one wants puppy-like devotion, why not get a puppy? All that power and look what he does with it. What a loser!" "Yes," agreed Sorceress. "Well, let's kill him now and make love over his bloody corpse, " the Demon Lover grinned. "Then you and I shall be one forever, and the Earth our playground in a brave new world." "Hold it right there, Sorceress!" Cap called, shattering the glass panel above with his sudden entry. In other corners of the room, Hunter Victorious and Cobra made similar dramatic entrances. "Back away from Hatman or face your old partners in the Abandoned Legion." Sorceress looked up, her face twisted into a mask of hate, power coruscating around her. "I choose the latter," she grinned. "Not relevant!" Exile screamed. "I'm boss of a dimension where people are getting executed in my name for not bowing properly, and you think it's not relevant to tell me?" The Grand Vizier bowed. "Your predecessor preferred to leave the minutiae of daily rulership to others, dread lord. People who understood the nuances." "You mean you," Goldeneyed suggested, leaning on one of the black pillars that ringed the great throne room and frowning. "We'd never even of got to hear what was going on if it wasn't for Yo." The thought being nodded. People talked to Yo. Yo thought to chat to folks nobody else bothered with, the serfs and drabs and drudges of the lower courts. And people trusted Yo with things they'd never dare tell the new Lord of the Dreary Dimension or his brother. "Yo is not being impressed, uncute Vizier-nasty! Yo does not like the guards with whips, and the too big tithes, and the elven cleansing, and the bullying bullies who can do whatever they are wanting to people because they are working for you…" "I can see that your… simple friend has failed to understand our complex socio-economic environment here," the Vizier smiled coldly. "We can hardly expect people to adjust to a change of leadership style in a few days after millennia of tyranny under Dread Dormaggadon, now can we? They wouldn't understand. But I am, of course, fully seized of Dread Derek's innovative and fascinating agenda, and am bending every effort towards delivering it in a feasible timescale." "Bend more," Exile scowled. "No more executions. No more bribes. No more torture. Plain enough, Vizier?" "As day, Dread Lord," the devious administrator acknowledged. "Then I suppose there is another matter that I should draw to my liege lord's attention. A security issue, really, and one which I had not thought would interest you until now." "Go on," Exile allowed. "An intruder in the Dreary Dimension," the Grand Vizier reported. "From your own world. He is terrorising the outlands, destroying farms, crushing villagers, that kind of thing. I believe he calls himself the Yurt." G-Eyed and Exile exchanged worried glances. "The Yurt?" Goldeneyed worried. "So this is where he got to." The inconceivable Yurt was a gamma-radiation spawned cross between a man and a Russian peasant hut. He had been defeated once, and that had taken the entire Lair Legion and a clever device which syphoned gamma-rays. Exile, G-Eyed, and Yo had not been present. "The Yurt is threatening my people?" Exile breathed. He stifled a bad word. "You need not worry, Dread Lord," the Grand Vizier smirked. "Have no fear. I have arranged an ambush of war machines, arcane cannons, and Brainless Ones to destroy him once he reaches this pass here on the map. You need never face this terrible creature." "What about this village here, though?" G-Eyed pointed out. "Surely if the Yurt's heading that way he'll get to that little place before he walks into your ambush?" "I believe he will," the Vizier admitted. "Unfortunately there is no ambush site before that settlement. And it is only one village. The Dread Lord has thousands more." "That doesn't mean I'm going to let those people die!" Exile declared. "Bry, Yo, I know we need to work on a way to get out of here, but right now we're needed to save some lives. Are you with me?" "Yo is happy to be helping with people who are to be in trouble." "You got it, cuz. Let's go kick some radioactive hut!" G-Eyed checked the co-ordinates so he could teleport them there. "I… I'm coming too," Valeria decided. She was hurriedly piling bandages into a carrier. "You can't come," Exile objected. "This is the Yurt. It's too dangerous." Valeria looked at him with desperate eyes. "Please?" she begged. "I think she'd be useful on the team, Derek," Goldeneyed suggested, spotting the slave-girl's terrified glance over at the Grand Vizier. "She might be safer with us after all." "Yes," Yo agreed. "Cute Valeria should be being with us." Yo had seen far more than Exile or Goldeneyed, and knew that there was far more than self-preservation at play here in the slave-girl's decision. People underestimated Yo because Yo talked strangely and had a childlike simplicity. But Yo loved to watch people, and Yo was far from being stupid; and Yo had shared long talks with Valeria on the subject of being Exile's slave. The Grand Vizier beckoned Valeria over to him to provide her with more medical equipment and supplies that the adventurers would need. That gave him the opportunity to hand over a six-inch glass wand which tapered to a cruel spike. "Here is the Talisman of Neutralisation of which I spoke, wench. Tell me what you are to do with it." Valeria lowered her eyes. "I am to wait until the Dread Lord is distracted in combat and then plunge it into him. The magics upon it will cast him from the Dimension of Exile, destroying him since he is now integral to it, and allowing another to become Dread Lord in his stead." "Very good," the Vizier told her, knowing full well which senior administrator was lined up to be next supreme ruler. "And then?" "A-and then I will return to you and report for service, Grand Vizier." "Keep the Earth clothes on. They're delightfully kinky," the Grand Vizier advised. "But bring your manacles." "Let's go, Valeria," Exile called from across the room. The girl concealed the Talisman of Neutralisation in the waistband of her pyjama trousers. "Remember," the Vizier hissed at her, "I know where your family lives!" The heroes departed in a flash of golden light to battle the unstoppable Yurt. ManMan woke in a stinking darkened hellhole. Lights were flashing across a stained wall and there was a howling outside. "Oh no, this can't be happening," he denied, remembering the three knife-plunges into his back from the woman he had assumed to be Troia. "I'm dead and in hell. And this time there's no swimming pool." The door from the kitchen opened and Falcon brought in a cup of coffee. "Not hell," he clarified. "Hell's Bathroom. My place." Joe Pepper recalled that the Falcon lived somewhere in the worst Paradopolis slums. That explained the sirens and neon flashes, but the strange odours were entirely due to the underwear and sweat-socks strewn around the furniture. "How did I…?" "Get here?" the familiar voice of Knifey, ManMan's sentient blade interrupted from it's resting place atop the TV. "When you died I got the psychic flash, so I phoned for some help." "You telephoned? But how…?" "Don't ask," Knifey countered. "By the way, you need a new phone. And phone table." "Yeah, it's not every day I get a rescue call from a big tin opener," Falcon admitted, "but it sounded pretty urgent, so I videoed Letterman and flew over to look for you. Boy, you were a mess." "Why him?" ManMan wondered. "Nobody else was home," Knifey explained, undiplomatically. "He was a last resort." "Hey, I'd kick both your asses if I wasn't waiting for the big why-you're-not-dead explanation," Falcon frowned. "Yes, I was waiting for that as well," admitted Knifey. ManMan looked at the bloody rag that had been his jacket, with three clear knife-slices in it. There were three little scabs on his back too. "So this, uh, this isn't some kind of amazing power you grant me?" he asked hopefully. "Get real," the knife said. There was an overpowering stench of brimstone and the room was suddenly filled with Mefrothto, Prince of Fibs. "Perhaps I can give a hint or two?" the demon lord suggested. "After all, I didn't want my investment damaging before our wedding night, did I?" "You're hurt," Moira noted, looking at the exhausted Fin Fang Foom. "Again." "It's turning into one hell of a night, possibly literally," the Makluan answered, catching his breath. Those Mogwai had proved to be difficult little buggers. "You'd better come with me then," the faerie woman told him. "I've got a little garret prepared for you where nobody will ever disturb you. You can sit there and write your wonderful stories, you need never be bothered by the outside world again. You and me and the stories, for as long as you can keep them coming." In the distance the sirens sounded again. NTU-150 called for the dragon over the Legion's comm-system. "They need me," Finny explained to the Lhiannon Shee. "They have lots of heroes. Only you can write your stories," Moira argued. "And you'd be happy. So happy. No world, no Bad Thing, no irritating people. Just you and me and the words. I can grant that wish now, with the power flooding the planet." "I…" "You could write an eulogy to your friend the Dark Knight, an epitaph that would light him in legend for a millennium. Your words could inspire, soothe, enrage…" "I…" "Finny, my love, my bard, you can do whatever you want to do, but I can only offer you your heart's desire once, and now. You have to choose between the world and the garret, between the Lair Legion and me. Which is it to be?" Heinrich Zemo was not interested just now in the struggles of the Lair Legion. He was more interested in the darker side of what was happening on Earth, so his own meandering amongst the destiny pools of the Shaper's sanctum led him to those parts of the world where the machinations of the villains were unfolding: The Confiscator was worried. He'd never been worried before. After all, he was the finest assassin in the Parodyverse, the man who had killed the Dark Knight. He should have been set for life. But that was before people who had been involved in that death had started talking. Had started disappearing. Before the rumours started that the Dark Knight was back, nastier than ever, back from the dead and seeking justice. Before people close to the Confiscator, key men in his organisation, has started vanishing. So the Confiscator used one of his long-prepared contingency plans, the ones prepared for if the world's heroes ever started to close in on him too much. It cost him his chateau in Normandy, and thirty million dollars in set-up costs. He had to erase a decade's worth of files and contact information. But within twenty-four hours the Confiscator was presumed dead, and an unassuming businessman was sitting at a hotel in New Zealand reading about it all in the newspapers. The poolside phone was brought over to him. That had to be some mistake. "Hello Confiscator," the Dark Knight said over the handset. "I thought you should know that it wasn't you I was looking for. I want the one who ordered the Acts of Ambition, not the punks who pulled the triggers. I want the Hooded Hood. So you can relax for now. After all, you're so well hidden I'll never find you." Then the phone went dead. In ten minutes the Confiscator's hand stopped shaking enough to pick up his drink. The Astral Khan watched in disbelief as the Manga Shoggoth that Xander had produced polished of his own Dark Weed of Shab-addaba-Dhu and burped happily. Hieronymous' own spells had detached this battlefield above the Reichenback Falls from the other dimensions to prevent Xander gating in further assistance, but now those magics also prevented the Astral Khan himself from summoning assistance. "You believe you have been very CLEVER, mage!" the Khan boomed. "But behold as I now SEVER the binding sorceries which are all that prevent your minion form TURNING upon you and DESTROYING you!" With a flourish he released the heliotrope energies of the dysjunction necromancies. "What binding sorceries?" Xander wondered. "I rather think you're misinterpreting the basis of our relationship, actually," the thirty foot high gelatinous blob that was the Manga Shoggoth explained. "I'm only here helping out because Xander fixed my VCR and chipped my DVD player so it could run Singaporean discs." "What?" puzzled the Astral Khan. "My video recorder?" the Shoggoth expounded. "Got a first-generation copy of All-Purpose Cultural Cat-Girl Nuku Nuku stuck in there which I didn't want screwing up worse than it was already. Xander got it out. This is his fee." "Whatever that INSIGNIFICANT master of the mystic crafts has offered you, the ASTRAL KHAN will offer you more!" "So you do know what a DVD player is then?" the improbable mage checked. "Of… of course. I have SEVERAL on my staff already, and many more at my command should I wish to SUMMON them." "That's alright then. So tell me, what do you think about the idea of a warrior who turns into a schoolgirl when he gets wet?" Xander challenged. [For the animé-uninitiated, this is basically the plot of the long-running Ranmaa animated series] "It sounds very STUPID indeed," the Astral Khan began, "Now, elder-beast, I can offer you…" "Stupid?" the Manga Shoggoth growled. "You think my stories are stupid?" "Keep back, shambler! The ASTRAL KHAN has the power to sear you from existence. The ASTRAL KHAN can…" There was a sucking noise followed by the sound someone would make falling into a bathful of jelly. Then the Astral Khan shut up for good. "So die all movie critics," muttered the Shoggoth. "Elder creatures are pretty much immune to normal magics," Xander the improbable pointed out helpfully, if somewhat too late. "The winner and still sorcerer supreme," announced Con Johnstantine, "Xander the Improbable. Amazing!" The Astral Khan's army watched in baffled confusion after the ingestion of their leader. Xander clapped his hands together to get their attention. "I'm only going to say this once," he told them. "Go home." One of the winged demonesses looked at the innumerable hordes of the Astral Khan and then at the two humans and the shoggoth. "And you think you can take all of us?" she sneered. Con Johnstantine turned his trenchcoat collar up and cracked his knuckles. "That's not the question," he suggested. "Question is if we're goin' to let you get away." The black mists that had recently consumed the Anti-Legion spilled again from Sorceress' pores and twisted towards Cap, Cobra, and HV. "Whitney, what the hell do you think you're doing?" Cobra demanded, launching several, um, bananas from her banana gun at the witch who was sending the deathly-cold black streamers towards them. "Has that Demon Lover that you family's been keeping all those generations completely possessed you?" Sorceress ignored the missiles and caught the serpent-woman in the freezing mists. "It's not like that," she explained. "You can't understand the passion we have. It's beyond anything on Earth, beyond physical sensation, beyond morality, beyond everything. It lets me cast off that straightjacket that Hagatha always kept me in, that little shroud that made me small and ineffectual. It makes me alive and free and able to do wonders. Nothing can be better than that. Nothing!" "Not even friendship?" Cap demanded, dodging his own strands and rolling himself towards Whitney. "Not even love?" CrazySugarFreakBoy worked at his vegetable bonds. His infallible sense of comic book timing told him that right about now he was supposed to wake up Hatman so that Jay could talk the Sorceress round. "What is love?" demanded Whitney, enveloping Cap in the pall of darkness. "Some things are so important you have to sacrifice everything else for them." "And is this really one of them?" Hunter Victorious demanded, the last of the Abandoned Legion still standing. "He's manipulating you, Whitney. He only wants to be free on Earth, and he's been working on your family, using you like brood-mares for millennia, to make that happen. And you're about to hand him his victory by destroying the people who care about you, the ones who love you." The Demon Lover saw the Sorceress falter. "Is that really what you think, Whitney?" he challenged. "HV cares for you? HV cares for nothing but his own immortal purpose, for which you will serve as an admirable pawn. This stripling may not yet know why he is trying to manipulate you, but I do. Cap? Seeking to address his own inadequacies by commanding his betters. Cobra? Hiding her own guilty secrets by mingling with those almost as flawed as she. Hagatha cares for you? Then why has she replaced you with another apprentice, the young and lovely Melissa? Could it be that now you are no longer around to be prepared as a vessel for her to pour her old soul into for a new body she requires some other victim?" Sorceress found herself considering the Love-Talker's words and finding they might just possibly be true. "Now you understand the venal, sad world that you have been born into," the Demon Lover told her. "Nobody truly cares. Love is a word used to wrap up our baser emotions in lies and sentiment. Only our sex is pure, raw, elemental. Only we should be one. Destroy them all." HV was entangled by the mists now as well, but still able to speak. "What about Hatman then, Whitney?" he challenged. "If there's no such thing as love, what about how you feel about Jay?" The Demon Lover was by Jay's side right then, his now-taloned hands at the young man's throat. "Jay is ours to kill," he promised the Sorceress. "Now." It was time for Whitney to decide. "What do you want, Daio? The city's going to hell in a handbasket, we've got about half an hour to save the world, so this had better be pretty damned important," Lisa pointed out. "Yes. Pierson's Porter isn't mayor of Paradopolis yet," NTU-150 pointed out. "We're not at his beck and call." "And we won't be even if he gets hisself elected," Trickshot added. "The LL don't work from skuzzbags!" The diabolical Dr Moo nodded over to the worried figure of Meggan Foxxx, CrazySugarFreakBoy's mom and the current bodyguard of the princess Troia. "Your little Amazon administrator has disappeared. We've got the Dark Mite out hunting for her, but Hastings here thought it might be worth calling you in for some reason." "Hast that dire Mefrothto come early to claim her as his bride?" worried Donar. "Or wuz it Kumari, her alternative-reality self that needs 'er dead to claim her place in this dimension?" speculated Trickshot. "It was Kumari," Pierson's Porter answered, looking up from his alien scientific equipment for the first time. "The dimensional disturbance patterns are very distinctive. That's why I sent for you." Trickshot suddenly wished there were more than four of the Legion assembled. Where were Foom, CrazySugarFreakBoy, Hatman, Goldeyed, Yo and Exile? "Ta tell us that you blew it looking after the kid?" "To warn you that Kumari is even now opening up a new trans-dimensional nexus, intent on bringing several million invasion troops to your benighted planet. I wouldn't bother to mention it only she has managed to irritate me," PP answered. "Troia went on a hot date with ManMan," Meggan Foxxx reported. "We found a bloody car – and some other stains, I'm pleased to say – but neither of the kiddies. We've got to do something. Where's Dream?" "Porter has managed to modulate the dimensional wave to open here first," Moo explained to the Lair Legion. "If you can contain it here it'll stop millions of shock-troopers springing in around the world. If you can't, well, I've got a teleport mechanism to the Crab Nebula and you're all toast." "What are we supposed to do now?" NTU-150 demanded of Lisa. "Do we save Troia from Kumari so that Mefrothto can have her? Do we pick one of the two dimensional invasions to counter? Do we keep saving lives against the weirdness loose in the city? What?" "How should I know?" the advocatrix shrugged irritably. "It wasn't my idea to be field leader. Radio Visionary, he gets the nice chair." "Kumari's dimensional gate is opening over there behind Lisa," Pierson's Porter reported calmly. "Now." "Still convinced that you don't need my help?" the Hooded Hood challenged the Shaper of Worlds. "Minuscule as my power is, it could add to yours sufficiently to overthrow your previous protection of Kumari's realm. Either lend me your power and I will resolve this, or watch as you fail in your office and bring the Parodyverse in your charge to premature destruction. Your choice." "You set this up, you hooded b@stard," Shaper accused the cowled crime-czar. "You did this so that I'd have to come to you and ask for your help." "No," the Hood replied. "I did it so that you'd have to beg for my help. And you haven't yet heard my price." "Ah," Zemo nodded. This was the interesting part.. "Immunity from further interference from the Triumverate, perhaps?" he suggested. "Oh no," spiffy worried. "He's going to want another shot at the cosmic cube." "Rulership of Earth, for sure," Banjoooo suggested. "What price?" asked Shaper, her eyes closed. This couldn't be happening. "A kiss, my Lady Shaper. A kiss from you. With tongues, I think." "What?" the cosmic keeper of starting narratives couldn't believe her ears. "You set all this up just to get a snog with me?" "Are you saying your kisses aren't worth that much?" the Hood asked. "And if I don't… kiss you, then the Parodyverse falls to Kumari or Mefrothto." "It appears that way." "But if I do, then you'll help me get it all sorted out?" "Only lend your power to my own and I shall resolve both situations to the best of my ability." The Shaper of Worlds had to make a choice, just as Sorceress, and Fin Fang Foom, and Valeria and so many others had to. Stories are made up of choices. And her choice would decide what choices other people got, and what the consequences of their decisions would be. Whitney watched as the Demon Lover wrung the life out of her old love Jay. Fin Fang Foom struggled between the dream of peace and the reality of strife while a faerie watched to see if she would live or die. Goldeneyed, Exile, and Yo, went into combat against the Yurt, while Valeria clutched the wand which would kill her master. Xander explained the plot to Visionary while Cheryl made the Manga Shoggoth a cup of tea. Kumari broke through the dimensional void to face the Lair Legion and claimed this plane as her own. The Dark Knight travelled the void between worlds on a mission of justice and vengeance. The Shaper of Worlds embraced the Hooded Hood and kissed him. Next Issue: Well, I don't really know. It all depends on what the e-mails or board replies from the owners of the characters in the story are – especially Sorceress. Feel free to tell me what your characters would like to do, and I'll see if I can't work them in. Other than that, be here for a wedding, a death, a betrayal, a heartbreak, and the most cunningly devious dénouement of a plan that the Hooded Hood has ever pulled off – but you all expected that anyway, didn't you? It's the conclusion of our penultimate story arc in the series, and we're going to call it Truth, Dare, Kiss, Promise. Just go to the future and ask HyperKineticLunaticLass!, CSFB!'s not-yet-conceived daughter how good it was. A chronicle of choices and chances from... the Hooded Hood |
| Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: The Children if the Night (best read in a Transylvanian accent) (A chronicle of choices and chances from... the Hooded Hood) (05-Dec-1999 15:53:10) |
And for the discussion on Lisa's baby and writing a story about it, click here.
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