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This message #94: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion World Tour: Homecoming was posted by On 12th March 2001 the Hooded Hood presented the first part of the Lair Legion's World Tour. Now, thirty-one episodes, a hundred and sixty thousand words, and eight months later, he presents the conclusion. Now he can sleep. on Sunday, December 9, 2001 at 08:33.
#94: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion World Tour: Homecoming
Previous chapters at The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom
Character profiles at Who's Who in the Parodyverse
Other useful things in Where's Where in the Parodyverse
Once upon a time there was a little bundle of realities called the Parodyverse. Although the Parodyverse had an embarrassing profusion of origins, nobody really knew who or what had brought it into being, and nobody really understood why.
Some said the Parodyverse was a joke of the gods, or a statistical necessity of the probability curve, or a means of containing ideas that more respectable universes wouldn’t consider. One old wicked man called Wilbur Parody believed that the whole thing was designed to resolve one important question or conflict, and that the whole time/space continuum existed merely to provide a proper framework for a coming event he called the Resolution War.
And Parody should have known. The Parodyverse is maintained by three distinct metaphysical hierarchies, and Parody was intimate with them. First there are the Family of the Pointless, key concepts given anthropomorphic personification - Coincidence, Lusting, Whinging, Glamour, Death, Temporary Death, and Space Ghost. Common Sense has abandoned his office. Ancient and terrible, they play little part in our current story, with one important exception.
Then there are the Offices. Parody was most familiar with these, for these are cosmic roles played by mortals or former mortals. At different times Wilbur Parody held all three of the principal roles – Shaper of Worlds, Chronicler of Stories, and Destroyer of Tales – the only person ever to experince all three. Since certain knowledge available to these office-holders is too important for the incumbent to retain after they have retired, Parody cheated and recorded his insights into three books of prophesy which continue to cause a good deal of trouble.
Finally there are the Celestian Space Robots. Think of them as the engineers maintaining reality. A quarter mile high and as indestructible as the Parodyverse can make them, these massive cosmic machines are vast and unknowable, appearing without warning from their hidden city to destroy planets, change physical laws, or do whatever is necessary to maintain the unknown purpose of the universe that is their charge.
Wilbur Parody realised that whoever controls the Celestians controls the Parodyverse, and long since set out to gain that control. Finding a site which the Space Robots had a special interest in, Parody founded a city which he named after himself. For over a century he guided New Parodiopolis (later Paradopolis) into becoming the greatest metropolis on Earth. And through all that time he was growing it, architecture and population, into an arcane trap that could capture and reprogram the Space Robots.
Parody made but one mistake, and that was in heeding the advice of a hooded stranger who whispered to him in secret. Thus when the trap was finally triggered and the plan to take command of the Space Robots finally implemented Wilbur Parody was long gone, and the triumph belonged to the cowled crime-czar known as… the Hooded Hood.
The reality-rewriting Hood had prepared well. He had ensured that the defenders of Earth were preoccupied with their own challenges. Hence the Abandoned Legion and the JBH both found themselves fighting for their life off-planet, and a host of other heroes faced destruction nearer to home. The Lair Legion, the Parodyverse’s premiere team of superheroes, was occupied by a World Tour, by planetary domination attempts from other villains, and by the threat of the most powerful assemblage of super-powered criminals ever gathered, the Purveyors of Peril. Of which more anon.
The key to the Hooded Hood’s control of the Celestians was control over Paradopolis, so while the rest of the world descended into anarchy and chaos in the Purveyors’ takeover, the Big Banana was preserved behind a force-field and became a single massive tool to reorder the Parodyverse. The few heroes remaining in the city fought valiantly, but have apparently been defeated. Another group who sought to use a dimension-jumping London double-decker bus (don’t ask) to breach the barrier found that the Hood had cut a deal with time-mistress Symmetry of Synchronicity to set a trap for them.
But here Coincidence of the Endless comes into play. By perverse chance the occupants of the bus were not smeared across timespace, but instead found themselves translated to the city of the Celestians itself. And there they broke stuff.
This is their story…
“I didn’t do it,” said Visionary, by reflex. “Er, whatever it was, that is.” His head hurt. Cheryl, under the domination of the emotion-bending Apostate, had just clobbered the possibly fake man.
But the Apostate had suddenly vanished in mid gloat. “Not this time, dear,” Cheryl conceded. “But somebody appears to have broken Celestial City.
One by one they reunited in the eerily silent vastness of the unmoving machine. Many of them were battered or shaken. Meggan Foxxx was pale and gaunt. Miss Framlicker was shivering. Amy Racecar had a tiny flush of triumph on her pale cheeks. Flapjack was limping happily.
“The city brought our worst nightmares to kill us,” surmised Al. B. Harper. “And since it is one of the control mechanisms of the entire Parodyverse continuum it was able to do so literally.”
“Not any more,” Valeria of Carfax shuddered. “It seems… dead.”
“That quiet sure is spooky,” Flapjack admitted. “But hey, imagine the waterfall we could make piddling over the side of this balcony right now.”
“Yo is wondering where cute ManMan is being.”
“Hmph, you’re right,” Sir Mumphrey Wilton agreed. “Should have noticed we were a chap down. Bad form. Best go find him.”
“There’s a sort of yelping noise coming from that tower,” noticed Lisette. “Is that a clue?”
The SPUD helicarrier lurched to the side and almost fell onto the Andes mountain range.
“Sorry,” Jamie Bautista apologised as SPUD director Dan Drury swore at him in a long stream of hyphenated invectives. “Just a little mismatch with the power grids. Er, could somebody damp down those fires?”
“Next redesign, this costume gets a fire extinguisher attachment,” grumbled Falcon. “What is this lash-up supposed to do, anyway?”
Jamie pulled himself (in his spare NTU-150 armour) from under the remains of the helicarrier’s secondary reactor core and pushed aside the array of borrowed culinary implements. “While I was being tortured by the Purveyors of Peril they explained how they had taken out lots of other heroes too. One of their plans involved infecting the Austernals with a fast-acting psycho-virus which would make them think they were dead as they combined into their Uni-Brain.”
“Ah,” Falc nodded sagely. “And assuming I didn’t have the first clue what you were taking about…?”
“The Austernals are this ageless society of super-types made by them Celestian Space Robots,” Dan Drury footnoted. “They kin control their whole molecular structure with their minds, makin’ ‘em indestructible an’ immortal – as long as they think they are. And in times of danger they all combine into this one, massively powerful organism called a Uni-Brain.”
“Which the Purveyors sabotaged,” Falcon recognised.
“Right,” Enty agreed. “So we have to rescue the Uni-Brain and then harness its energies as a way of stopping the Celestians. OK?”
“Okay,” agreed Falc. “And the sandwich toaster…?”
“The choice is simple,” the Hooded Hood told spiffy. “Join me now, forever, or be disinherited and die. Assist me in my quest to bring the creators of the Parodyverse to justice or I will undo you.”
“Can I have five minutes to think about it?”
“No. The moment of decision is upon you. Swear eternal allegiance as my son and heir to my dominions or die as your friends in the Abandoned Legion will.”
spiffy looked up sharply. “Huh? What about the AL? You said you’d shifted them off-planet.”
“Yes. And they have valiantly struggled for truth and justice etcetera in the alien environment to which I dispatched them. Sadly they do not realise that the sun around which the world they currently occupy is due to go supernova in something under an hour. I am intrigued to discover if even HV will be able to come back from that one.”
“Bring them back. Now.”
“Or?”
“Or I’ll take you down, damn you! Bring them back.”
“So I take it that you would prefer me to retcon a different brother for Troia and inheritor of my empire?”
“Do what you damned well please to me, but save them. I mean it.”
The Hood did not look entirely displeased. “I see. Very well. So be it.”
spiffy found himself enveloped by the green light from the Hooded Hood’s eyes. He felt some part of him wrenched away, and some strange new part added. He tried to shout out but for a moment he had no form with which to shout.
He found himself crawling on burning hot sand.
“spiffy?” Cap gasped. “How did you get here?”
“Even better question,” Cobra suggested, “did he bring a way out of here?”
“And a more important question yet,” Hunter Victorious noted, “did he have anything to do with the sun suddenly reverting from supernova status to normalcy?”
Paste Pot Pete watched glueily as the Abandoned Legion picked up the fern wielder and dusted him down. spiffy was two hundred light years from Earth but he suddenly felt as if he had come home.
“Dear Diary,” muttered dull thud, “after spending the last week being mind-boggled by the Purveyors of Peril into working undercover at the Save the Paradopolis Variety Theatre Concert, I have been awakened from my hypnotism by a psychotic mail-delivery courier who led me and a number of other idiots on an attack on the Lair Mansion. Having been hurled halfway across the state during that assault, I have been subsequently picked up by the aforementioned other idiots with clear orders to keep a dozen quarter-mile high cosmic robots busy. Dynamite Boy keeps calling our spontaneous grouping the Paradopolis Irregulars. I think we’re the Suicide Squad.”
“The really annoying thing about all of this,” De Brown Streak complained as the team climbed the Twin Parody Tower, “is that everybody in the city is in some kind of trance. I’m doing all this heroic stuff and nobody is seeing how a mutate is risking his life to save them. Not even the hot girls.”
“I can see my house from here,” noted Dynamite Boy.
“This is stupid,” Chronic complained for the nineteenth time. “This is soooo stupid.”
“Than why are ye here?” thuddy challenged him. “nobody’s making you be here. Except the scare guy with the razor letters, o’ cause.”
The rebel with a guitar shrugged. “I dunno. I guess… well, what’s happening to the city. It’s just not right.”
“What do you mean?” DBS asked.
“I can’t say it well. It’s… well, the city might have been designed as a big architectural and organic trap for these Celestians, but that’s not what it is now, right? It’s a living, thriving thing, made up of millions of people who live here, working and playing and growing and dying and hoping and dreaming and loving and… all that stuff. To reduce all of that to be just a trap in some stupid super-villain’s plot…”
“I know what you mean,” Dynamite Boy admitted. “That’s why we need to stop these Celestians.”
“And we’re going to stop these things that wipe out planets, are we?” thud demanded sceptically. He didn’t pass on what his telepathic tapeworm Cressida was saying about this.
“We don’t actually need to stop them though, do we?” De Brown Streak suddenly realised. “They’re already stopped. Trapped.”
“So?” Chronic shrugged.
“So all we need to do is set them free.”
dul thud did a quick calculation which included the fact they were on the tallest building in Paradopolis, the availability of a guitar which could belt out music that sent Space Robots reeling, and a nearby open-air venue with the loudest sound system in the world sitting and doing nothing. “Oh,” he breathed with a sudden inspiration.”
“What?” DB puzzled.
“That instrument of yours, Chronic,” thuddy checked. “Does it have a speaker jack?”
The Lairjet that picked up the battered Lair Legion from China was an older model from one of the team’s reserve bases, since Parody Island and the equipment hangared there was still encompassed by the force-screen over Paradopolis created by the Hooded Hood. It still made good time but the journey allowed a brief pause for the heroes to try and deal with the worst of their wounds.
“Hold still,” Dancer warned Nats. “I’m trying to push all those wriggly tubes back inside your stomach.”
“Thanks,” replied the flying phenomenon through gritted teeth. His telekinetic abilities were keeping him alive for now, but he wondered how long they could keep doing so. “Appreciate it. How is it that of all the heroes here you’re the one that’s hardly scratched?”
“She’s the Probability Dancer,” snarled Goldeneyed, busily strapping up Trickshot’s broken limbs. “You work it out.”
“Don’t count me out just because I can’t move my arms and legs,” the irritating archer warned his teammates. “Nobody’s kicking the Hood’s butt without me having a turn.”
“I suppose we might hold the Hood down and drop you on him?” suggested Hatman, allowing Ziles to use the last of her Relaxor Crème on the king-sized headache he was nursing.
“Nay, I need not tending, fair Dancer,” Donar assured Shep. “I art already begginething to grow back mine outer skin. Seeth to mine lady Troia, who art hast a building droppethed upon her.”
“We’ve all had buildings dropped on us,” the Dark Knight hissed. “It’s an occupational hazard.”
“Not wanting to be the voice of despondency or anything,” Sorceress chipped in, “but does anybody really think that we’re in any state to take on the Hooded Hood just now?” I mean Finny and Exile and Troia are barely conscious, I’m mystically drained for about the next month, Jay’s burned out his power for now, and the rest of you look like you’ve just been dug up from the morgue.”
“I’m okay!” CrazySugarFreakBoy! grinned happily. “Besides, the big confrontation with the baddie is supposed to be desperate. We’ll find a way to trick him and beat his wickedy plans at the last minute. You’ll see!”
“Yeah,” Trickshot agreed. “We’ll jump forward an’ ooze on the bastard!”
Ziles leaned quietly over the fallen from of Fin Fang Foom and whispered in his ear. “I don’t know if you can hear me Andy, but I need you to know this: I understand now why your team is so important. I know why you do this. Some things are worth fighting for, worth dying for. So I’m… I’m in… okay?”
The dragon shuddered in his fitful sleep.
“Getting through the barrier around Paradopolis is going to be our first concern,” Hatman judged. “We’ll need to try something unexpected.”
“The Purveyors said that they’d destroyed the bus and everybody on it,” Nats reported unhappily.
“They’d better pray they were wrong,” G-Eyed answered bleakly.
“So how do we get through?” Sorceress asked.
Just then there was a ripple of reality and the whole Legion vanished from the Lairjet and reappeared facing the Hooded Hood.
“Owowowowowowowowowow!” Joe Pepper shouted, dancing up and down and cradling his burned hand. Knifey had got rather hot when ManMan had plunged the sentient knife into the Celestian control mechanism.
“Oh my,” Miss Framicker gasped. “You appear to have interrupted a Space Robot control node and created a logic feedback.”
“You’re saying that the reason the Parodyverse doesn’t make any sense is because of him?” Cheryl checked. “I thought it was spiffy.”
“Is the damage permanent?” Valeria worried. “I mean, we haven’t… broken the Parodyverse have we?”
“I don’t think so,” judged Al, looking at the gleaming control surfaces with the stare of a starving orphan in a sweet shop. “Just take Knifey out of the panel and it’ll repair itself.”
“Anytime soon would be good,” the talking blade urged them. “Only I’m getting hot flushes and that can’t be good. What a rush though!”
“Also, there are immeasurable energies pulsing through him – er, it,” Miss Framlicker noted. “Anyone touching him would be instantly vaporised.”
“Dashed inconvenient, that,” Mumphrey admitted.
“It’s your knife, Manny,” Amy pointed out sweetly.
ManMan thanked Amy for pointing this out.
“Yo can do it,” Yo offered cheerfully. “Yo is thinking that it can not be to hurting Yo.” Before anybody could object the pure thought being whipped the weapon from the injured console and dropped it into Joe Pepper’s hands.
“Owowowowowowowow!” ManMan yelped again.
“Yeah, nice to see you too pal,” Knifey retorted.
Meggan looked at the wrecked Celestian device. “I can see the console kind of… healing up” she said.
“Doesn’t that mean the defences will start working again?” asked Lisette worriedly.
“Not of we work fast enough, Ms Hastings,” Sir Mumphrey judged. “What we have to do is get someone controlling these doo-dah programming thingies and override the defence commands. As I recall all one has to do is touch the panel and think stern thoughts.”
“And whoever does that,” Al B. Harper pointed out, “controls the Parodyverse.”
There was an awkward pause.
“I’ll do it,” Flapjack volunteered.
Lisette and Amy Racecar bludgeoned him into unconsciousness. It was to save the universe.
“Who can we trust enough not to be corrupted by absolute power?” worried Miss Framlicker.
“Sir Mumphrey?” suggested Valeria. “You’ve been here before, and you’re always honest and kind.”
“No, no m’dear,” snorted the eccentric Englishman, backing away nervously. “I know my limits. The temptation to fiddle, to make things better, would be too much. And if things should be better, they would be. I’m not your man.”
“What about you, Val?” wondered Lisette. “You’ve already been the saviour of the Dreary Dimension, and I’ve never known you do anything nasty or shameful or shoddy.”
“Oh no,” the slave girl shuddered, her eyes widening in fear. “You don’t know what I’m like inside, all the resentments and revenges I’ve had to cram down and bottle up. Please, don’t make me.”
“Yo thinks is to be easy to be to pick who does this.” Yo beamed. “Is obvious person to be good Yo-friend Visi.”
“Me?” choked Visionary. “I can’t do it. Cheryl…”
“Not me, dear,” Vizh’s long-suffering wife answered. “Actually, I think Yo has hit on the solution. We need somebody who is honest and kind, who doesn’t want command of the Parodyverse, and who is basically harmless and ineffectual.”
Everybody was looking at Visionary.
“This is the most stupid plan to save Paradopolis that I have ever seen,” De Brown Streak noted, clutching his saxophone.
“What, even more stupid than that thing with the giant purple thought rabbit?” asked Dynamite Boy, on keyboards.
“Alright. The second most stupid plan,” conceded DBS.
“Or the time Finny and Ziles had to…”
“Look, it’s a stupid plan, alright. It doesn’t matter how many even more stupid plans there have been. It’s stupid!”
“Whereas fighting the Space Robots head on would be sensible?” dull thud checked. “Beides, look!” The master of the falling arts pointed down to the Plaza where a couple of tiny figures had brought camp chairs and were pouring drinks ready for the concert. “An audience.”
The Chronicler of Stories passed a bottle over to the Shaper of Worlds and gestured for them to carry on.
“We have to wake up the city,” Chronic repeated, hoisting Steve to his shoulder and cranking the volume dial to Revelations. He strode up to the microphone that thuddy had set up, strummed the opening bars to Bat out of Hell and shouted, “Good evening, Paradopolis!
Once the sex-ray had worn off in Rio there were a lot of very embarrassed and surprised people. There were also a small minority who didn’t know when enough was enough, and weren’t about to let a little thing like a lady screaming “No” stop their good time.
And then there was a blood-splattered, very angry giant brine shrimp with a rather sore newly regenerated heard and a bad temper looking for somewhere to happen.
Banjooooo, King of the Sea Monkeys, was back.
“Thanks for the pickup, Daniel,” Contessa Natalia Romanza told the Director of SPUD. As she was wheeled onto the smoke-filled command deck of the helicarrier by a bemused-looking Bethany Shellett. “What’s the situation?”
“The situation is that you took a serious shot to the legs n’ yer supposed ta rest up,” snarled Dan Drury.
“And how many times have you allowed major gunshot trauma to get in your way?” the Contessa challenged. “What is going on?”
“Ah, we got NTU-150 aboard again,” Drury admitted. “And he’s tryin’ to contact the Austernal Uni-Brain an’ get it to temporarily shut down the minds of all those escaped criminals and stuff.”
“There are quite a few back in Sydney he doesn’t need to bother about,” shuddered Beth. She would never look at a koala the same way again.
“I’m ready!” Jamie Bautista shouted, pressing the last wad of chewing gum into place.
“Oh crap!” winced Falcon.
Below them the massive glowing mind was swirling unsteadily and screaming to itself as it slowly died. The helicarrier lurched downwards and impacted right into its centre.
“Good evening,” the Hooded Hood bade the Lair Legion as he used his Portal of Pretentiousness to transport them all to the living room of the Lair Mansion.
“What have you don’t to them?” the horrified Messenger demanded as his vigil ended with the sudden appearance of thirteen battered heroes and a cowled crime czar.
“Ah, yes,” the Hood noted, looking at his chewed-up adversaries. “This won’t do at all.” His green eyes glowed and the Legion were restored to health. He even arranged for the mansion to be repaired and dusted. “I should warn you that this is a temporary retcon,” he explained. “If I am distracted from maintaining it for any reason, such as say, by a sudden attack, your health states will revert to what they previously were. Several of your number will die immediately. Your restoration is merely a courtesy to enable a proper dialogue between us.”
“Yay, it’s the part where we trade banter with the archvillain!” cheered CSFB!
“We don’t surrender to threats,” Fin Fang Foom growled, rising up in his humanoid-dragon shape.
“Of course not,” the Hood agreed. “You’re heroes, which means you have no common sense or survival instinct at all. “Let’s just say that we need to parley for a few moments before attempting mutual annihilation, shall we?”
“Don’t trust him,” Messenger scowled. “I think he’s done something to spiffy.”
The Hood snorted.
“What is it?” Troia challenged him. “Father? What have you done?”
“I’ve demoted him,” the cowled crime-czar explained. “He now has never been your twin brother. I have conferred that honour on another. Young Mark Hopkins has… another background.”
“You can do that?” Troia asked uncertainly.
“Oh yes,” the Hood answered darkly. “I can.”
“Where is spiffy now?” Hatman demanded.
“He has joined a number of trivial and inconsequential minor players in different quadrants of the galaxy,” the Hooded Hood reported. “I believe several of the JBH are already dead, but the Abandoned Legion have been doing this kind of thing a little longer and have so far survived the various layers of dooms I have prepared for them. Given time they might even make it home.”
“Murderer!” accused Sorceress, herself a former member of the Abandoned Legion.
“Mass murderer,” accused Hatman, thinking of the worldwide atrocities of the Purveyors of Peril whom the Hood has released.
“Murdering bastard,” Exile snarled, thinking of those lost on the dimension-hopping ITC bus, including his own lady-love Valeria.
“You can afford sentiments, little heroes, since you do not face the larger picture,” the Hood replied contemptuously. “I am dealing with fundamental questions, and I cannot be swayed by morality or family fealty or anything else. Or do you think that what happens in the Parodyverse is just?”
“What do you mean?” Nats asked. “There’s all kinds of good stuff happens all the time.”
“And lots of wickedness,” admitted Ziles. “Bad things happen to good people who don’t deserve it.”
“Hey, I’m not here for a religious conversation,” Trickshot interrupted. “I’m here to take this bad guy down.”
“Yeah, but on the other hand, don’t we all want to bring justice to the Parodyverse?” demanded Dark Knight. “To bring order and law, and peace?”
“Sure,” agreed Fin Fang Foom. “But not his law, order, and peace.”
“Perhaps it might be best of you experienced a little of the future then,” the Hooded Hood smirked. And his glowing green eyes flashed again.
“Engines at one hundred and eighty percent maximum tolerance!” a SPUD engineer shrieked, “And rising!”
“I can fly,” pointed out Falcon. “All the other folks on this tub are just going to plummet to their dooms.”
“Another doom?” shrugged Bethany Shellet, who had seen a whole menu of them in the last few days. “Eh.”
“Don’t let them discourage you, NTU-150,” Natalia Romanza chipped in. “I think the Uni-Brain is all around us now. And rallying.”
“I’d say so,” agreed Xander the Improbable, looking over Dan Drury’s shoulder at the erratic sensor readouts from the usually-shielded Austernal city below.
“Whut the blasted ding-dong is this intruder doin’ on my command deck?” the SPUD commander shouted, gnawing through his cigar in surprise.
“That’s what I want to know,” Space Ghost agreed, popping up from Drury’s blind side. “Hey, Enty! And Metal-Super-Falc-Visible-Buffalo-Man!”
“Waiting for a cup of tea?” the master of the mystic crafts suggested. “White with one sugar, please,” he told the advancing security forces.
“You want him here, Drury,” Natalia advised. “Think of his as a consultant.”
“A consultant who charges,” Xander specified.
“I love you alll!”” Space Ghost contributed.
“You may not want him here however,” Natalia considered.
“Mr Space Ghost was kind enough to offer me a lift,” explained the master of the mystic crafts. “Now if our armoured friend her would just modulate the wavelength to a slightly shorter… ah, perfect. I think you’re disrupting the Uni-Mind now.”
“This is NTU-150 to the Austernals. We need you to do something for us. Can you hear me? Or do we need to wire in another hairdryer?”
Then Drury’s security people were distracted by a bubble of black energy dots and a bright light there on the command deck, followed by the appearance of a rather cross, naked Austernal who was literally smouldering. “We hear you,” answered Sersi.
The psionic wave rippled round the planet, and suddenly every felon with criminal intent fell screaming to the floor with a terrible headache. In compensation they all found their personal wardrobes redesigned into much more aesthetically-pleasing combinations.
“Well?” Al B Harper asked the possibly fake man in the yellow overcoat, “What does it feel like to have absolute power?”
Visionary shuddered. “It’s worse than in Pizza Hut when they ask you which toppings you want and everybody else at the table is staring at you.”
“Poor lamb,” smiled Cheryl. “Do you think you could possibly make a little decision now before the defences of the Space Robot City grind us all to mulch?”
Vizh closed his eyes, screwed up his forehead, and touched the control panel.
It almost worked. Defences of near-infinite power didn’t exactly shut down, but they did all go our for pizza,
“Yo is hoping they get extra anchovies,” Yo proclaimed as the adventurers heaved a sigh of relief.
“That’s going to be one very surprised franchise restaurant,” Knifey observed.
“What do we do next?” Meggan wondered. “Can we find out what that Hooded Hood is up to? Or how my little b… the Lair Legion are doin’?”
Vizh shrugged. “I dunno.” He looked at Al B. and Miss Framlicker. “Can we?”
“What part of doing anything don’t you understand?” Miss Framlicker demanded coldly.
“Ack,” shivered Hatman. That can’t… can’t be the future.”
“A future,” the Hooded Hood answered. “You have all glimpsed something different.”
“And I bet they were all horrible,” Sorceress accused. “I know I’d never do a thing like that to Jay, to the world.”
“You may not do it,” the Hood agreed, “But at least now you know you could.”
“I won’t become that thing,” Exile vowed, shuddering at his own vision of things that might come. “I won’t be like that,” And he glanced anxiously at Messenger.
“But you sold your future to Dark Thugos,” the cowled crime-czar pointed out. “If that is what he chooses to make of it, that is what will be.”
Finny glanced up worriedly as he absorbed that nugget of information about how Derek Foreman has managed to recover from permanently-crippling injuries a short while back.
“I can trust the Order of the Observing Eye,” Goldeneyed argued. “I can.”
Troia just turned round and slapped Donar across the face.
Fin Fang Foom glanced around his badly-shaken team to see who he could rely on to try and turn this around. “DK…”
“How can she be alive?” the Dark Knight whispered, his mind still burning with visions of his dead wife. “And like that…?”
“Ziles?”
“The Gahreams… the hunters… oh no… no!”
“Dancer?”
“I won’t allow myself to do that,” Shep answered. “I will never be the Herald of Galactivac!”
“Nats??”
“The stick…”
“Messy???”
“Not again… not like that…” the postman shuddered. “Lucifer… Courier… Poisyn…”
The Hooded Hood observed that he had managed to break through the complacency of his enemies. That was surely the first victory in his battle to turn them to his side.
“Wow!” beamed CrazySugarFreakBoy!, “that was great!”
“What?” checked the Hooded Hood.
“What?” checked Finny.
“Better than a movie any day,” grinned Dreamcatcher Foxglove. “I really liked the bit where I had to betray everything I ever believed in and go to hell to bring back Izzy. That was brilliant!”
“Many of the futures you have seen are not mutually exclusive,” the Hooded Hood warned the team, with an odd look at CSFB!. “At least some of them will happen, and soon, unless the Resolution War is averted. And my studies in the Portal of Pretentiousness indicate that this is the last junction point where such an aversion can occur. If I do not succeed now the War is inevitable.”
“You think just because we’ve seen some… horrible futures we’re gonna roll over and let you win?” Hatman challenged.
“Or because you could blink your eyes and send most of us to the casualty ward or the morticians that’s going to stop us?” demanded Nats.
“You murdered Val and Lisette and the others,” Exile remembered.
“Maybe we want the Parodyverse to serve its purpose anyway?” Troia suggested. “Maybe some of us believe that after the struggle we can make things better.”
“Maybe we’re ready to die for what we believe in,” argued Messenger.
“Or for thou to diest for what we believe in, Hooded One” added Donar nastily.
“Like any transformation journey, we’ve been around the world and come home and we’ve found what we were looking for,” Sorceress pointed out. “I don’t think we’ve found what you hoped we’d find. Instead we found that we were right to fight against people like you. The future doesn’t change that, hon.”
“We don’t fight for a happy ending for us,” Dancer pointed out, “We don’t even fight for a happy ending for the world. We fight so the folks out there can fight for their own happy endings, without you or anybody else taking that chance and choice away from them.”
“And the key point about that sentiment,” Fin Fang Foom noted, turning his multi-faceted draconic gaze upon the cowled crime czar, “Is that we fight”
Then the room was rattled by Bat out of Hell, the city vibrated to a backbeat that couldn’t be lost, and the Space Robots broke free.
“What’s happening?” Amy Racecar shrieked as the probabilities whipped around them.
“Happens whenever there’s a change of power anywhere,” Sir Mumphrey assured her, holding onto the guard rail around the control port so as not to be swept away by the conceptual gale. “Lots of chaps swarm round to see if they can’t get something from the new order.”
Yo glared out at the maelstrom of possibilities that tore at the tower. “Yo does not think we are to be wanting to give some of these things anything they are to be wanting!”
“Come on, Vizh!” Lisette urged. “Do something fast before those things start getting aggressive.”
“I’m trying,” Visionary bleated. “Honestly, I’m just… oops.”
“What has he done?” Miss Framlicker demanded almost hysterically.
“Don’t worry,” Cheryl assured her, trying to interpret the readouts on the alien machinery. “He just slipped and created a Nexus of Realities in a Florida swamp. It’s generating a Bog Thing champion.”
“But there already is one of those,” protested Valeria.
“And now we know why,” Al B. Harper noted grimly.
“Ooops again,” Vizh apologised.
“What now?” Miss F shrieked.
“Something to do with a dead World War Two superhero coming back, I think,” Cheryl shrugged. “Do try to concentrate, darling.”
“Oops.”
“I’m going to kill him,” Miss Framlicker snarled.
“What the heck is a Balefire?” Al B. Harper puzzled, frowning at the panel.
“Never mind that. What’s an Omike?” asked Amy Racecar.
“Concentrate, Vizh!” ManMan urged the possibly fake man. “All you gotta do is cancel out whatever programming the Hooded Hood’s put into the Celestians to help him take over the Parodyverse.”
“I’m trying,” Visionary promised, “But I can’t find any. I don’t think he’s programmed them for that.”
“What?” Lisette scowled, her hair whipping in the rising gale of possibilities. “Why not?”
“He’s been there and done that, hasn’t he?” Meggan Foxxx pointed out. “Why bother again?”
“There!” Cheryl pointed out, stabbing her finger at part of the complicated logic diagram on the console before them. “That bit’s not as neat as all the rest. That’s where he did something!”
“He’s not added programming,” Miss Framlicker understood. “He’s deleted some.”
“The stuff that makes the Space Robots trigger the Resolution War,” deduced Al B. Harper. “He’s making it so it will never happen, part future-retcon using all the power he borrowed while you were world touring, part software editing using Paradopolis as his terminal.”
“What do we do, then?” ManMan puzzled. “I mean, do we let the Hood get away with it or do we stop him and cause the final war in the Parodyverse?”
It was a damned good question.
“Those idiots!” the Hooded Hood hissed as Chronic, dull thud, Dynamite Boy, and De Brown Streak literally rocked the world. “The first thing the Space Robots will do is destroy Paradopolis so they can never be trapped again. Then the planet, just to be certain!”
“He’s right,” the Dark Knight agreed, snapped from whatever terrible vision of things to come had shocked him to his core. “We have around a minute and a half to find some way of stopping unstoppable Celestians.”
“And then some lunch,” Trickshot suggested. “I’m starving.”
“You can stop them though, can’t you, Hood?” Ziles challenged. “Isn’t all of this set-up so that you can rewrite their programming to do what you command them?”
“Of course not,” snorted the Hood. “Think about my plots. I used the gods as a power source, the city as a trap, the Supreme Interference as a compiler and so on, but I never found any way to actually add to those fantastically-complex algorithms the Space Robots operate through. No, I merely deleted a few key commands. They can no longer affect me or thwart me, but I have no way of stopping them.” The cowled crime czar smirked and looked at the Lair Legion, “Except one.”
“You want us to stop them for you?” Nats surmised.
“Why else would I bring you here and explain the plot to you?”
“I figured it was good super-baddie etiquette,” shrugged CSFB! “All the greats do it.”
Fin Fang Foom understood what the Hood was getting at. “You mean that if we join you – really join you – then we’re covered by the same protection you’ve just set up for yourself. The Celestians would be vulnerable to us as never before, and we could save the city, save the world. And all we would have to do is become your agents – for good.”
“I’ve got to admit,” G-Eyed confessed, “that is a damned good trap.”
“It art diabolical,” Donar scowled. “Yon hooded felon art always too clever for his own goodeth.”
“And ours,” Troia added. “So what do we do, boss-man?”
“In the next thirty seconds,” Exile prompted.
“Reports comin’ in from across the planet,” Dan Drury told the people assembled in the battered command centre of the SPUD helicarrier. “Military and law-enforcement personnel kicking the hell outta the bad guys. Trouble contained in almost every country.”
“And normal, everyday people pulling together to make it work,” added Beth Shellet. “Don’t forget that. That’s why the Purveyors’ plan would never have worked. They thought people were like sheep, kill off the sheepdogs and then they’re helpless. But people will stand up for themselves, and for what’s right.”
“Too true,” admitted Natalia Romanza, thinking of the Australian people’s army. With a shudder.
“One or two puzzlin’ reports,” Drury admitted. “A bunch of talking gorillas takin’ down murderers in Bulawayo. Some tiger-headed critters stopping a border-war in Pakistan. A ninja in pink terrorising Hong Kong. Complaints about illegal use of sarcasm on recovered escaped convicts in the UK.”
“Well my work here is done,” declared Sersi, now in a charming green and black bodysuit with elegant tailoring. “I’m heading back to the Austernal City. We’re relocating again, and we’ll need a good while to regenerate from the damage that virus did us. After that, I expect a big welcome back party, okay?”
“Deal,” grinned Falcon. “I’ll bring the dip.”
“I’ll do the fireworks,” NTU-150 promised, inevitably.
“The question it all comes down to,” Mumphrey considered, “is whether we’ve been set up by whoever created the Parodyverse. If we have, if the Resolution War isn’t needed, then we should be on the Hood’s side, and frankly be helping him spank their bottoms. If the thing’s a necessity…”
“War is evil,” Valeria pointed out.
“I was there when some of us felt we had to make war to stop a nasty little man with a toothbrush moustache killin’ millions,” Mumphrey noted. “And yes, war is evil, but sometimes it’s what we do to make sure good prevails. And if this Resolution War is that kind of deal, we’d be doin’ the world a profound disservice by preventin’ it.”
“But how can we know?” worried Miss Framlicker.
“It’s not our choice,” Cheryl reminded her. “Visionary, dear, do what’s right.”
“Me?”
“Yes dear. Do it now.”
“Really?”
“Now.”
Visionary gulped and touched the panel. “Now,” he told it.
“That’s it!” shrieked the Chronicler of Stories. “I’m going to dissect him personally! I’m going to evaporate him and anyone he ever knew! I’m going to…”
“Calm down,” advised the Shaper of Worlds. “This is out of our hands. It’s too big for us. We have to rely on Visionary.”
The Chronicler’s screams echoed across the multiverse and back again.
Chronic laid back in the debris of the Off-Centre Park concert clutching his guitar and watching his shirt softly smoulder. “Wow,” he breathed. “Was it good for you too?”
“No deal,” Finny told the Hooded Hood. “We don’t compromise. Right is right and wrong is wrong.”
“Then the world dies,” the Hood said.
“Then we go down fighting,” Foom declared. “Hatty, get the team out to battle those Celestians. Do your best.”
“You heard the dragon. Let’s go, people!” Hatman shouted, pulling on his jets cap.
“Yay! Impossible odds!” shouted CrazySugarFreakBoy!
“This wilt be one for the Halls of Van Halen All Time Great Entries,” promised Donar.
“Lair Legion, line up!” cried Nats. “Sorry, it just slipped out.”
“*cough*Neospiffy*cough*” muttered Exile.
“You are all insane,” marvelled the Hooded Hood.
“Yep,” beamed Dancer. “Wanna join?”
Above Paradopolis, the Space Robots raised their annihilation visors and looked down.
Then the Space Robots stopped.
Then the Space Robots closed their visors and floated upwards into the skies, and were gone.
“What did you do?” whispered Al B. Harper.
“What Cheryl said,” Visionary answered. “I told the Space Robots to do what was right.”
“And they did?” Lisette asked.
“Yes.”
“And what was that?” queried Miss Framlicker.
Visionary shrugged. “I don’t know,” he answered helplessly. “I just told them to do what’s right.”
“Incredible,” marvelled the Hooded Hood. “My congratulations on once again surprising me.”
“Thanks,” Goldeneyed answered as the Lair Legion watched the Celestians depart. “What did we do?”
“It appears that the people in your transdimensional bus, rather than being destroyed, rode the modulation wave to the Space Robot City,” the cowled crime czar discerned. “They should be back soon – ah yes, I believe that is your bus materialising on the front lawn now. In the City they overcame the guardians and gained control of the Space Robots, commanding them to do what was right.”
“Really? And what was right?” demanded Sorceress.
“That’s the interesting bit,” the Hood admitted. “If you Legionnaires had elected to join me as you should have by all logic and reason, the right thing would have been to avert the Resolution War and allow me access to those who set it up, the Creators of the Parodyverse, so that I could accuse them. However, in rejecting that offer for some ridiculous noble ideal, what was right became something entirely different.”
“So the Resolution War is still on?” worried Hatman. “And all those things we saw about the future…?”
“The War is on,” the Hooded Hood confirmed, “Inevitably now. Inexorably. But the rules of engagement have been changed, and that is interesting. That will require further study, and raises… possibilities. As for the future, some of what you saw must come to pass, some might be avoided, and some may not be what it seemed.”
“In other words, we won!” CSFB! pointed out. “We faced impossible odds and triumphed because we stand for truth and justice. The Purveyors got beat, the city got saved, you got stopped, and we got all our friends home. Yay us!”
“Yes. It rather appears that you have,” conceded the cowled crime czar.
“So what now?” Dancer challenged him. “Are you going to undo your retcon and let half of us die?”
“No,” the Hood conceded. “That would be… petty. The Hooded Hood may be evil but never small. I shall ordain it to wear off gradually, allowing you due time for medical attention. I shall arrange for the return of the Abandoned Legion and the remains of the JBH.”
“What about spiffy?” Troia asked. “Is he really… disinherited?”
“Ask your new twin brother,” replied the archvillain. “I have other uses for spiffy now.”
“He art a useful coatrack,” offered Donar.
“And my new twin is…?” the Amazon administrator asked nervously.
The Hooded Hood vanished in a green flash.
“Hey! Come back! I haven’t kicked your butt yet!” Trickshot called out.
“I rather suspect we did,” Finny comforted him.
And in the End:
There are always a few details to take care of after getting back from a long journey, and even more after a world tour. Troia swore Finny had never told her to cancel the milk. Enty swore at the state of the mansion and set about completely redesigning the defence grids. Trickshot insisted on a long phone call to check that Natalia Romanza was alright, but he called Dan Drury collect. Goldeneyed teleported over to escort Beth Shellet home. dull thud failed to collect a music award for his music production of The Last Days of Paradopolis, but all those things are fixed anyway.
Fin Fang Foom, Ziles, and DK took the time to ensure that the remaining Purveyors of Peril and other escaped felons were safely ensconced once more in the Safe, the world’s premiere superhero prison offshore from Gothametropolis York. VelcroVizen, Headcase, Polypheme 1, Suicide Blonde, Gromm, Professor manyarms, Gamona, Huntmaster, Appendage Man, Rox-Hoff, HuntingJustice DeathMarrow, Savagetooth, Razor Ballerina, Indigo Impostor, and Onslaughter were all present and accounted for. Hellfrasier, Voodoo Vicar, Rottweiler and the Terrier were assumed dead. Spacewarped and Anvil Man were missing in battle. PsychoAcidPervGirl! escaped. Of the various other felons who had been released, the most worrying omission from the recaptured list was the scheming Blackbird.
The day after the Legion’s return, Laurie (Lisette) Leyton and her friend Valeria of Carfax took a journey with Xander the Improbable and a gentleman in the robes of the Order of the Observing Eye. They returned later that day having acquired nine-months’worth of suntan, and Lisette had birthed G-Eyed’s child. The infant was not with the returning ladies, and Valeria was sworn to secrecy. Bry Katz suspected nothing, and was perhaps relieved and perhaps disappointed that his girlfriend was not pregnant after all.
Sir Mumphrey Wilton was delighted to see such a happy conclusion to the various villains’ plans to do unpleasant things to the world, but he remained concerned about what the Hooded Hood might have offered to Symmetry of Synchronicity in exchange for the temporal trap she had laid for him. He sensed there might be more story forthcoming one day.
Al B. Harper and Miss Framlicker made their very obvious separate goodbyes to the Legion. Al B. returned to his upstate Gothametropolis lab cabin to try and explain why he hadn’t paid any rent on it for over a year. Miss F. took the London bus with the prototype dimensional drive back to her Interdimensional Transportation Corporation employers to report on its performance and put in a claim for saving-the-universe overtime. She was disappointed not to be allowed to bring one of G-Eyed’s limbs back for further examination.
Donar Oldmanson happily settled back in front of his range of televisual apparatus to enjoy the final new instalments of the fair adventuress Xena, but found himself becoming increasing more distracted by the Amazon in his own living room. Valeria of Carfax settled comfortably back into her role as Exile’s housekeeper and did not feel it necessary to mention to him that the only restraints which enslaved her to him now had nothing to do with black magic. Sorceress was rather less comfortable back in her rooms at the Lair Mansion, and determined that one day soon she and Jay (Hatman) Boaz would be having a long conversation about the future.
CrazySugarFreakBoy! took the opportunity of his return home to spend more time with the Goofball Gauntlet, his Seattle-based, Book Industry-sponsored reformed villains team. protected by Gideon Book from the worst depredations of the recent troubles the team still needed CSFB!’s support in their difficult transitions. As Meggan Foxxx’s own pregnancy progressed she made a private arrangement with Sydney St Sylvain, the Fashion fairy, to temp as CSFB!’s sidekick. And hilarity ensued.
Nats’ dreams about a strange stick – the Psychostave – continued. This was a source of some amusement for his teammates during his convalescence, until the day when he turned up carrying that same ancient and arcane artefact.
When the SPUD helicarrier limped back to Bautista Enterprises for a refit Dan Drury very kindly gave De Brown Streak a count of ten before sicking Sentinoid mutate-hunters on him. Ten seconds was really all DBS needed. Dynamite Boy returned to school, curtailing his superheroing career for a few months while he collected his remaining exploded body parts from locations around the city. What does a spleen do anyway? Chronic slunk away to cause trouble another day. Messenger went on to his appointment with legend.
If Visionary was altered by having restructured the Parodyverse it wasn’t immediately obvious. He, Cheryl, and Yo retreated back to the League of Regulars’ headquarters in Vizh’s condo at Dullard’s Corner, dropping ManMan off somewhere at his slum in Hell’s Bathroom en route. Dancer had wickedly tipped off Lisa that Vizh had done something useful, so the amorous advocatrix had a long list of other useful chores waiting for the possibly fake man as he returned home.
spiffy and the Abandoned Legion found their way back to Earth within a week. That was just long enough for the AL to decide that they perhaps weren’t as glad to see the fern wielder as they had initially thought, and for Banjooooo to completely cover the floor of their firehouse HQ with fast food wrappers. spiffy found that nobody at the mayor’s office had noticed he was missing.
The JBH (Just a Bunch of Heroes) took rather longer to return, and their ranks were considerably thinner when they made it home. Their nightmares were just beginning.
But ultimately it came down, as these holiday things always do, to sitting around in a darkened room with a bunch of friends, drinking beer, and watching the slide show…
“Ah, now this is the bit where the mimes actually explode…”
“The love contest was going her way until I remembered the peanut-butter, and after that…”
“Being digested is the most unpleasant feeling, really…”
“Boy was the Black Pantzer surprised to find out why his power didn’t work on me!”
“The look on their faces when my dancing brought the house down…”
“Burst into the cathedral and just basically stopped the wedding…”
“Do you know just how bad dungeon-slime tastes even when you haven’t eaten for three days…?”
“Never liked that cartoon mouse as much as the rabbit anyway…”
“We are not showing you the nudist beach shots, Flapjack…”
“Olympus art a nice place to visit, but I wouldst not want to live there…”
“So I said, ‘hey, I didn’t make the giant monster step on your Subaru’…”
“Basic design flaw with the Sentinoid power grid that means you can…”
“And this spanking machine is now in our museum, hmm…?”
“With a dozen live koalas, I swear it…”
“I’ve been to Rio before. Can’t say I noticed it any different under Loveray’s influence…”
“Don’t want to know how he washed the milk off…”
“Blew himself up just to get out of the bonds and I got sprayed with bits of Dark Knight…”
“But I’ve never seen an elephant fly. Until Nats got at one, of course…”
“Spaaaaaaaannnnk Raaaayyy!!!!!”
“DB’s mom makes pretty good toast, actually…”
“Yo is thinking cute Vesalian-monkeys are to be liking to have some rabbits for to be happy-making.”
“No, I swear. Napalm from it’s sphincter. I wouldn’t kid you on this…”
“There’s no place like home.”
The End
This poster posed from 212.159.1.4 when they posted
Message Thread
- #94: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion World Tour: Homecoming - On 12th March 2001 the Hooded Hood presented the first part of the Lair Legion's World Tour. Now, thirty-one episodes, a hundred and sixty thousand words, and eight months later, he presents the conclusion. Now he can sleep. - 08:33 on December 9, 2001
- It was worth it. - (nt) Nats...where do we go from here? And HH, by the way, send me an e-mail, for I have a plotline to discuss with you that I've been meaning to talk to you about - 15:42 on December 9, 2001
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