Posted by The Hooded Hood presents the first half of a tale of the Lair Legion in merrie olde England, full of dodgy geysers and sharp blokes with trenchcoats, but not a glimpse of Mary Poppins in sight, cor blimey! on March 25, 2001 at 05:29:03:
#66: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion World Tour: London Calling, or A Very British Superhero
”This is very irritating,” Fin Fang Foom complained as he stalked along Oxford Street at his full draconic size. “Where are the supervillains?” “Where am I?” Chronic asked, looking around him in panic. Last time he had killed himself to destroy Troia he had ended up in some bizarre polythieistic netherworld. He could still feel the nipple clamps. The Hemigod of Thunder gave his definitive judgement on the Millennium Wheel, the world’s biggest fairground attraction on the Greenwich quayside by the river Thames. “It sucketh not.” “Dull Thud?” CrazySugarFreakBoy checked. “You’re a superhero called Dull Thud?” Troia 215 was starting to think that the others were keeping something from her. For example, when she had asked about the four foot wide box that Dancer had made Donar carry from the bus up to her suite, Shep had made some feeble excuse about needing a lot of warm clothing in London. “This appears to be a public house,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! noted, pushing his way into the smoky saloon of the Queen Vic on Albert Square. “And everyone is admiring my costume.” Laurie Leyton and Bry Kotyk raised their heads from studying the legal document presented to Donar by Sneek, Grabbit, and Thuggery. It was an hour into the combat and Fin Fang Foom hadn’t got a lick in yet. “Never mind, keep on trying,” Rodney the Patronising Git mocked him, “The laws of probability suggest you’ll get it right by accident eventually. If monkeys can write Shakespeare you can probably co-ordinate your limbs enough to stand upright like a vertebrate sooner or later.” “You are looking as if you don’t believe me,” Chronic noticed. “So you admit these charges, Prince Donar?” the Right Honourable Judge Graverly asked in vinegar tones. “We have some kind of Lair Legion immunity to arrest,” Hatman told the police officer. “Er, we do, don’t we Finny?” Next Episode: the English sojourn continues as we discover what Nats, DK, Visionary, Cheryl, Meggan, Flapjack, and Miss Framlicker have been doing while all of this is going on. Join our seven heroes with special guest stars Sir Mumphrey Wilton and Asil Ashling as they spend a weekend in a quiet country house and endure “The Curse of the Blathervilles, or One of the People Gathered Here… is a Murderer”. Coming soon to an Untold Tale near you.
“Yeah. I was looking forward to making fun of that screwed-up Ing-Land spelling these British baddies use,” complained CrazySugarFreakBoy, bouncing along with the seven plastic bags full of Judge Dredd back issues which he felt were essential to understanding the English criminal mind.
“And I went to the trouble of getting this guardsman’s busby hat specially,” Hatman added, marching behind them and ignoring the tourists who took photos of him.
“There’s got to be some metahuman crime here,” Exile argued. “I mean, it’s one of the biggest cities in the world. Superpowered criminals should be…”
“Laughing themselves silly at the Yanks in spandex,” Con Johnstantine chuckled, emerging from a sidestreet and lighting one of his cigarettes. “You blokes just don’t get this, do you?”
The four world-touring Legionnaires scowled at their sometimes-ally, the annoying Englishman who seemed so well informed. “What do you mean?” Finny demanded.
Johnstantine shrugged and beckoned for them to follow him into a Greek restaurant off Waldour Street. “Let’s get you off the street before people start throwing money at the circus act,” he suggested.
“Must we?” Exile asked, “Only I’m expecting a kind of high Mastercard bill this time and…”
But the trenchcoated troublemaker had already ordered the calamari. “Look, this is the UK. People dressed in spandex aren’t called superheroes or supervillains here. They’re called pillocks.”
“But you have Beefeaters,” Hatty objected, “and policemen with really stupid helmets.”
“And you say stuff like ‘centre’. Hur hur.” added CSFB!
“Nah. We say stuff like ‘don’t be such a bloody wanker and grow up,’” Johnstantine explained. “Look, if some guy finds he’s got some embarrassing superhuman power in Paradopolis his first instinct is to put his underpants over his trousers and lurk in an alley waiting to kick shit out of a wrongdoer.”
“Or go on Springer,” added Exile.
“Whereas here he just goes and makes a fortune on the stock market, or quietly sets up some underworld network in Newcastle upon Tyne or somewhere, something that doesn’t involve costumes at all, only making huge sums of money.”
“You’re saying that they’re… post-supervillains?” Finny tried to understand.
“I’m saying that if you have the ability to make people do what you command, or to become invisible, or to control computers, the very last thing you want to do is dress up in a colourful outfit with ‘Please arrange for me to be smacked around by a bloody big dragon’ printed on the t-shirt.”
Hatman was appalled at how the villains were cheating. “But… we’re here to fight crime.”
Johnstantine sighed. “Well, if you absolutely insist on making plonkers of yourselves, I suppose I can introduce you to a local superhero and put you on the trail of Rodney the Patronising Git.”
“He’s a supervillain?” Finny checked eagerly.
“He’s a post-post-supervillain at least,” the irritating Englishman assured him.
“Harrods,” Ziles explained to him. “We thought it was best to burn that stuff you were wearing.”
“It was so soaked in booze it nearly set fire to the hotel,” Sorceress complained.
“But today is being the first day of the rest of your life,” Yo told him cheerily.
“You… you burned my clothes!” Chronic realised, noticing for the first time that he was in a very fetching danskin donated by Sarah Shepherdson until they could find him something less revealing. “But I had my stash in there!”
“Oh, don’t worry. We found and removed your stash,” Dancer reassured him.
“Oh, thank…”
“We flushed that down the toilet.”
“Yo is thinking it is not to be good to be screaming at the top of voice in cute-Harrods, nasty-Chronic.”
Even as the pure thought-being spoke discreet security guards were convening on the group.
“I have a gold Mastercard, and American Express,” Valeria of Carfax explained to them. She was a fast learner.
“How… how did I get here?” the confused Chronic eventually asked.
“Ah, now that,” the Sorceress smiled unpleasantly at the baffled baddie, “is what we were hoping to ask you.”
“I still don’t see why we had to queue,” Trickshot complained. “We’re celebrities. We should have got on free.”
“This is Britain,” Goldeneyed pointed out. “Queuing is like a national sport here. They probably have Olympic queuing teams.”
Three gentlemen in conservative black three-piece suits were awaiting the heroes as they disembarked. “Excuse me,” one of them asked politely, “but would one of you gentleman happen to be Donar Oldmanson?”
“Sure,” Trickshot admitted. “And if the furry horny hat with the I love Ausgard sticker aint a clue you might as well give in on the guessing games.”
The three gentlemen bowed. “Your highness Prince Donar,” one of them bade him, “I have the distinct pleasure of presenting you with this summons, and look forward to seeing you in court forthwith.”
“What?” frowned G-Eyed. “Hey, who are you guys?”
“We represent Sneek, Grabbit, and Thuggery, Solicitors. We are suing Prince Donar on behalf of our clients on sample cases of theft, arson, trespass, actual bodily harm, property damage, incitement to manslaughter, incitement to murder…”
“I hast n’eer done these things!” Donar protested. “Thou hast mixed me up with some other hemigod!”
“You are the Ausgardian thunder god?” Mr Sneek checked.
“Aye, right verily. But…”
“Then it was at your instructions that your worshippers ravaged and invaded the realm between roughly AD 470 and 1066.”
“You’re suing the guy for what some Viking raiders did fifteen hundred years ago?” Trickshot objected.
“The law is the law,” Mr Sneek replied. “We look forward to a large compensation settlement, Prince Donar.”
Suddenly it began to rain.
“Nay, laddie. I’m dull thud, and dinnae y’forget it,” the diminutive crimefighter snarled at his colonial counterparts. Somehow he was able to enunciate his name without the capitals.
“I thought only spiffy could do that,” Exile admired.
“But you know the supervillain underworld,” Finny checked. “You can help us to find Rodney the Patronising Git and his evil minions?”
“Oh aye!” dull thud promised. “So long as you’d be buying me a pint.”
“I promise it’ll be flat and warm,” Hatman assured him. “Or rather, it would be if I was legally old enough to buy you a drink here.”
“But… I thought sixteen was the age of consent here?” a stricken CSFB! checked.
Finny shuddered.
“Age of consent for sex, yes,” dull thud explained, “but you have to be eighteen to buy beer or drive a car. And sixty to listen to the Archers radio programme.”
“Please take us to the supervillain,” Finny whined.
“If it was Yo, I’d expect it to be smuggled bunnies,” the Amazon administrator pondered as she stealthily made her way into Dancer’s rooms, “but what would Dancer want to smuggle in a big box with air-holes?”
She was no wiser having inspected the big empty box, except that it smelled as if some kind of animal had been sleeping in there and the whole thing had been disinfected with stale alcohol.
She was about to leave when she heard the noise from the bathroom. Spear at the ready she stealthily crept towards the door.
It opened. Laurie Leyton came out.
“Ah, ” said Lisette.
“Ah,” said Troia.
“You’re probably wondering what I’m doing in Dancer’s room,” they both said together. “There’s a perfectly natural explanation.”
“I was just using her bathroom,” Laurie explained.
“I was just, um… what were you using her bathroom for?” Troia replied. “Isn’t yours working?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t want Bry to worry about me feeling sick,” Lisette explained. “So I crept up here.”
“You’ve been feeling sick a lot recently,” the Amazon noted with concern.
“Not all the time,” Laurie answered defensively. “Only in the mornings.”
Troia 215 had come from Amazon Isle, where babies are indeed found under cabbage bushes. “We’d better ask somebody what could be causing this morning sickness of yours,” she suggested naively.
Exile had used his own outfit’s psychoreactive outfit to assume more conventional clothes. “I’m not sure if admiring is the right word, Dream,” he noted.
Hatman and Finny were likewise looking like normal customers, although there were some beer-gutted men here who could seriously challenge Jay Boaz as a source of natural gas. “We’re looking for someone,” Finny told the faded blonde barmaid. “Ronald the Patronising Git?”
“That’s be Rodney, actually,” a thin man in a cheap tweed suit corrected him, “but not bad name-retention for an American.” He glanced at CSFB! “I assume you’re here collecting for charity for colourblind spandex fetishists, yes?”
The battle had begun.
“Well,” Troia demanded, “is it legal?”
“That depends,” Lisette answered, “on whether Donar ever told his Vikings to go and ravage England.”
“That’s not how Lisa would have answered,” Trickshot objected. “Lisa would’a had a false confession outta somebody by now and be suing the pants of someone – literally.”
“Tis best not to disturb the fair Lisa whilst she is teaching yon infant Christopher to prey upon the weak,” Donar suggested. “Besides, methinks I couldst not pay the fee of you amorous advocatrix.”
“So did you?” G-Eyed asked the worried hemigod, “Order an invasion, I mean?”
“Nay, of course not. Mine people have been grossly misrepresented by history. I didst merely tell them to be brave, adventurous, valorous, unstoppable… er, it is possible that they didst taketh me out of context.”
“How much compensation are they wanting?” Troia asked nervously.
Lisette checked the documentation. “Half of Donar’s treasury and all his estates in Ausgard,” she replied.
“How’s he doing this?” winced Hatman, painfully dragging himself free from a barbed comment that left him bloody and ragged. “He’s just beating us with words.”
“It’s called wit,” the Patronising Git explained. “You wouldn’t have heard of it.”
Exile focussed his power and poured out a massive energy blast across the pub towards their adversary. “This’ll stop the irritating bastard!”
“I’m sure it will,” Rodney patronised, swiping the bolt aside into the juke box (which started playing American Pie). “Isn’t it time you went home now? What will your own enemies be doing for laughs while you’re making fools of yourselves here?”
CrazySugarFreakBoy! dragged himself from the pile of coats shed from the hatstand he’d been propelled into, but didn’t re-enter the fray. Instead he stood thoughtfully for a moment. “Hey, Ronald!” he called at last.
“Hey, eidetically-challeneged generic American!” Rodney retorted, “It’s Rodney. Shall I spell it for you? I know you Yanks have problems with spelling.”
“Hey, Ronald!” CSFB! called again.
“Forgotten already? Would it help if I got it printed on some chewing gum for you?”
“Hey, Ronald!”
Each time Rodney the Patronising Git came back with another caustic remark, staggering CSFB! with his verbal skills; but each time CSFB! came back with the same wrong name.
Fin Fang Foom realised what Dreamcatcher Foxglove was doing. Each time the wired wonder made the same retort the patronising Git had to strain harder for a new and original comeback. And that weakened his hold on the other heroes.
“Hey, Rodney!” Finny called, getting the name right.
The Patronising Git turned round. “Ah, so you are capable of…”
The dragon’s tail hammered him through the wall.
“You get convinced by, and I quote, a hot-looking chick in velvet to go and kill Troia even if you have to die in the process. You die in the process and go to some kind of joint Ausgardian-Greek afterlife. You get a visit from Donar and the Hooded Hood. You get bailed out by a Hood lookalike that isn’t him. You get some kind of, um, Power Thimble and get sent on a mission…” Sorceress recapped. “What’s not to believe?”
“I’m more interested in this woman in velvet’s role. You say she approached you again, took you to France, and gave you the nuclear trigger that destroyed the country,” Ziles checked.
“Yo is thinking that Yo knows that uncute-cutie. Yo is thinking it might be the villainingous VelcroVixen.”
“Isn’t she one of the hordes that just vanished out of the Safe about three months back?” Valeria remembered. “Finny’s going to want to know about that.”
“We can’t tell Finny,” Dancer said firmly. “He’ll want to lock Chronic up or sit on him or something. We have to reform Chronic first.”
“Reform?” mocked Chronic. “Me?”
“Oh yes,” smiled the Probability Dancer. “The chances are good.”
“My client agrees that he is indeed the legendary hemigod of thunder who was worshipped by the Vikings,” Lisette conceded, “and also that they misinterpreted some casual remarks he may once have made and conquered parts of England in his name.”
“Then you surrender the case!” Mr Sneek cried, sensing a heavy fee coming his way.
“However,” Lisette added, “my client further points out that if he is held responsible for damaging the land and the actions of his worshippers, then he also has legal claim to those selfsame lands. And that brings up the question of fifteen hundred years of back rents.”
“Aye verily,” chuckled the Ausgardian. “Plus interest.”
The legal team of Sneek, Grabbit, and Thuggery had a hasty conference with their clients. The compensation claims mysteriously vanished like cookies around Exile.
Donar went over to the principal plaintiff, an attractive young woman in a widow’s veil. “A nice try, Hoki,” he whispered to her. “But thou must get up much earlier in the morning ere thou defeatest the legal brilliance of the hemigod of thunder’s boon allies.”
“Next time, brother,” the goddess of bloody-mindedness and lots of other unpleasant things promised. “I only have to win once.”
“What’s the matter, big guy?” Trickshot asked as Donar watched his evil sister melt away. “I thought you’d be happy to win the case.”
“I art,” the hemigod assured him. “Tis only that now I must ring up yon coat rack and tell spiffy that his plan hath actually worked. Now he wilt be e’en more unbearable. Damn Hoki to Miserableheim!”
“In the US, yes,” the Makluan assured his deputy-leader.
“But we stopped the super-villain!” Exile complained to the arresting officers. “We buried him in the wall.”
“Stopped him from having a quiet drink in his local, yes,” the constable pointed out.
“Ah, but you see he spoke to us,” CSFB! said lamely. “I mean, he…”
“Different round here, isn’t it?” Con Johnstantine sniffed, finishing Rodney’s pint for him. “Don’t worry lads, I’m sure they won’t press charges against you.”
This was too much for Hatman. “But that Patronising Git… he’s the supervillain!”
“Prove it,” Johnstantine shrugged.
“But you said we should take him out!” shouted Finny. “If he’s not a wanted criminal, why did you…?”
“Well he is an annoying little bastard,” Johnstantine shrugged as the Legionnaires were led away. “But at least you shut him up for a bit.”