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This message #99: Untold Tales of Nearly Everybody but the Lair Legion: Fragments was posted by The Hooded Hood apologises for his current scarcity, which may continue for a while longer, wishes to assure posters that he is storing their literary efforts for later perusal, and offers by compensation this grab-bag of scenes designed to prepare the world for the coming of Untold Tales #100 after a suitably dramatic interval. on Friday, July 19, 2002 at 03:47.
#99: Untold Tales of Nearly Everybody but the Lair Legion: Fragments
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
This episode is dedicated to the enthusiastic new posters whom I haven’t been able to work into a story yet. I’m sure your time will come.
Fragment the First: Perfect Symmetry
Dr Franz Weizel was a very clever man. Alone amongst the archaeological community he was able to piece together the jigsaw-like clues scattered across the globe and locate the lost Shrine of Chronos on the tiny Greek island of Bita. Using his considerable public-speaking ability he was able to secure the funding to mount a proper expedition to the inhospitable rock where no plant grows and no bird rests. Applying the kind of expertise that only thirty years experience in the field can hone he led his little band of researchers and students to unearth the collapsed entrance to the Hall of Mysteries that had lain undiscovered for over a century.
Weizel was clever, but not clever enough. He was so excited by the discovery of ruins which were ancient when the Greeks were first discovering the principles of mud-hut building that he failed to note more contemporary data, such as the entrance that he had just reopened being previously closed with gunpowder, or the spent Lee-Enfield cartridges gathering dust amongst the shards of forgotten civilisation.
His students may not have noticed at first how tired they were at the end of those long hot Mediterranean days. Unused to work in the scorching climate they probably ascribed the aches and pains, the creaking bones and complaining joints to their enthusiastic mappings and excavations. None of them recognised the crows’ feet and greying hair as signs of premature ageing until the process was far too advanced. When the stampede to escape the Hall of Mysteries began it was too late; the last of them aged to death before they reached the cave-mouth.
Dr Weizel himself was in his camp with two of his confederates, the last living beings on the island except myself when I approached,. They stared as they saw an exquisite, pale, nude woman with floor length black hair approaching them, but even as I walked forward those bulging eyes of theirs grew rheumy and blurred. I spared Weizel for last. I wanted to congratulate him on his academic prowess; the man was undoubtedly very clever, and I owed my resurrection to his diligence in uncovering the Shrine. Then I reached out and stole his years, as I had his colleagues. It was a long time since I had refreshed myself, and I was very hungry.
I gather from the diaries and newspapers of the dead research team that I have been gone for over a hundred and thirty years. That is a long time for my schemes to have laid fallow, a long time to have been forgotten.
Tonight I shall rest and plan. Tomorrow I shall see which of my enemies are now dead, and which I will need to bring death to personally. I shall begin with a trip to New Parodiopolis, to the mansion of the League of Improbable Gentlemen, and see where the trail of vengeance leads from there.
It is good to be back.
My name? Symmetry. Madame Symmetry of Synchronicity. Remember it.
Fragment the Second: Improper Conduct
Mrs Lethbridge called Samantha into the head teacher’s office after morning play. “Now don’t be afraid, Samantha. There are two nice people who just want to ask you a few nice questions, alright?”
The seven year old nodded and followed the teacher more puzzled than alarmed. In the office a pair of strangers watched for her. The man was dressed in a rather old red sweater over an open-collared shirt, and he was leaned forward in the sort of posture that grown ups adopt to tell children that they are really interested in what the wee one has to say. The woman was in a formal two-piece tweed business suit, and her round bifocals made her eyes seem very odd.
“This is Miss Pratchett and Mr Clarke,” Mrs Lethbridge said kindly. “Say hello, Samantha.”
“’Lo,” the girl said obediently.
“Please, call me Clive,” the man in the unravelling red sweater smiled ingratiatingly.
“We just need to ask you a few things, Samantha,” Miss Pratchett explained in saccharine-sweet caring tones. “Just a few little questions.”
Samantha Featherstone settled on a chair (her legs didn’t reach the ground) and waited cautiously.
“About your grandfather,” Miss Pratchett went on. “He comes to visit you, doesn’t he?”
Samantha admitted he did. Gramps was a kindly old man who knew better than to try and patronise a seven year old by treating them as if they were seven.
“And when he comes to visit,” Call-me-Clive asked carefully, “does he ever… touch you?”
“Yes,” answered Samantha. She was puzzled by the looks that Miss Pratchett exchanged with Mrs Lethbridge.
“I see. And does he take your clothes off, Samantha?”
The girl frowned, sensing something was wrong here. “Why do you want to know?” she demanded. What was wrong with Grampa putting her to bed anyway?
“We’re here to help you, Samantha,” Clive promised.
“That’s right,” Miss Pratchett agreed. “To help you. You’re not in trouble.”
Samantha was starting to think differently. “Where’s my mummy?” she asked.
“Mummy will be coming,” Mrs Lethbridge promised. “In the meantime, you can just help Miss Pratchett by answering her questions, alright?”
“Why has he got a tape recorder?”
“Why, we’re just interested in what you have to say, Samantha, that’s all,” Clive assured her.
“About my Grampa?”
“That’s right. About Grampa.”
“I don’t want to talk to you,” Samantha decided.
“Really, Samantha…” Mrs Lethbridge started, but Miss Pratchett held up a hand to silence her.
“It’s alright,” the woman in the tweeds assured the teacher. “We often encounter this in abuse cases. Resistance, misplaced guilt, denial. We’ll get to the bottom of it all eventually.”
“Abuse?” Samantha repeated sharply. “I know what that is. That’s hurting people. My Grampa never hurt me.”
“Don’t be afraid, Samantha,” Clive urged her. “It’s all for the best that we know, and all you have to do is tell us…”
“My Grampa never hurt me!” shouted Samantha. “If you say different, you’re poo-headed liars!”
“Samantha Featherstone!” scolded Mrs Lethbridge, “How dare you say such things to these nice people from Social Services?”
“Because they’re accurate?” the young woman leaning in the doorway suggested. She was tall and dark-haired and she wore a leather jacket over a vest and denim jeans with holes in the knees; but she didn’t look poor. These were the sort of denim jeans that managed to look classy because they had holes in them. She took off a pair of reflective black shades and looked at the surprised tableau in the room. “Hi, Sam.”
Samantha had absolutely no idea who she was, but she felt an instant affection for somebody who could be that rude to Mrs Lethbridge just by looking at her. “Hi,” she beamed back.
“Who on Earth…?” began the teacher, but the newcomer waved her to silence with the exact same gesture that Miss Prentiss had used earlier.
“Are you insane or just criminally stupid to allow a seven year old child to be interrogated on tape without any relative or independent person present?” the woman in the doorway demanded.
“What are you doing here?” Clive demanded, rising to his feet.
“I might ask you the same,” the newcomer retorted. “But I can take a pretty fair guess. I bet you’ve got Social Services ID and everything, right?”
“We are here to take the child into custody for her own safety,” Miss Prentiss announced, also rising.
The woman in the leather jacket said a word which Samantha wasn’t supposed to know. “You might be trying to take her, but I’m pretty damn sure it’s not for her safety. C’mere Sam.”
Samantha was at the woman’s side before anyone could stop her.
“Samantha!” Mrs Lethbridge cried out.
“Don’t worry,” Miss Prentice promised, her tones completely stripped of their false kindness and as icy as the devil’s heart. “She’s not going anywhere.”
“Oh, I rather think she is,” the woman answered. “Now..” And the three adults in the head’s office froze as time around them stopped.
“What?” Samantha panicked. “What did you do to them?”
“Localised temporal stasis, reversed amplitude field for about five minutes our time,” the newcomer answered. “Couldn’t manage more, because those two had been protected. We’d better scoot.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Samantha answered firmly, pulling away from the mystery woman.
“Sam, please. If you can’t trust me you can’t trust anyone.”
“Trust you? I don’t even know you,” objected the girl.
The woman grinned. “Course you do, Sam. You know me pretty well. I’m you in fifteen years time.”
Samantha the younger’s eyes widened. “You can’t be!”
“That’s what I said when I met me,” laughed Samantha the elder. “But something told me I could trust me, and we ran for it. Please do the same or the time/space fabric will go into spin-cycle.”
Samantha the younger decided. “Let’s go!”
She really hoped that this woman was in fact her future self. Apart from anything else it would be great to grow up to be so damn cool.
The car was a black top range MG sports model. Samantha the elder vaulted behind the wheel and had the engine gunning even as her younger self leaped in. “Where are we going?” the girl asked as the vehicle accelerated out of the playground. Far behind them Miss Prentiss and Mr Clarke ran from the school too late to halt them.
“Where do you think?” Samantha the elder answered with a little laugh. “We’re in trouble. Do you really want me to take you to your mum and dad?”
Samantha the younger shook her black-maned head. “No way. Take me to Grampa Mumphrey.”
Fragment the Third: Alleys and Crossroads
The last attacker saw what had happened to his three Zero Street Wrecker buddies, dropped the knife, and fled for his life.
“Why didn’t you drop him?” De Brown Streak asked the Dark Knight, stooping to help the frightened girl that had been the drug-gang’s prey.
“Because I know what’s down that alley,” the urban legend answered grimly. “Hello Messenger.”
The Messenger stalked out of the darkness wiping the blood off a razor letter. “Dark Knight. Clement. I take it you’re looking for the same thing I am.”
“Kirsten Dunst’s phone number?” DBS checked.
“The reason so many street people are vanishing,” Messenger answered without the slightest bit of humour.
“Reverend Fleetwood at the Zero Street Mission called in all the help he could get, I see,” DK noted. “Well these punks were opportunists, nothing to do with the case. Just slime trying to hurt a girl getting late night medicine for a sick mother.”
“She’ll be fine,” De Brown Streak assured them. “I’ll see her safe home and then I’ll be right back…. There, done it. What next?”
“We could question Con Johnstantine if we dragged him out of the shadows where he’s watching us?” the Dark Knight suggested.
There was a flare of match as the trench-coated Englishman lit up a coffin nail. “Ooh, I’m spooked,” he said. “What is this, the Gritty Urban Antiheroes convention?”
Messenger lifted the annoying occultist by the throat. “It’s the Beat-the-crap-out-of-the-Cockney-git Society. Want to give me a reason to postpone it?”
“And they say I’m the terrorist,” sighed DBS.
“Well, I was going to show you something that might interest you all,” Johnstantine admitted.
“If you open that trenchcoat and flash us you’re dead,” warned DK.
“But now you’ve hurt my feelings,” scowled Johnstantine.
“I’ll hurt more than that if you don’t tell us what you know about these vagrant vanishings,” threatened Messenger.
Then the ground shook and tendrils of thorn rose up to entwine around the heroes’ legs. “No,” said the Bog Thing, rising up from the weeds of the alleyway, “You… will… not.”
It was time for one of those pointless hero vs hero fights.
Fragment the Fourth: Critical Information
It has been a busy two weeks. The world has changed much in the one hundred and thirty-odd years since I last walked it, and not always for the better. Technology has advanced considerably, further in the areas of logic machines but less far in medicine and space exploration than my peoples’ reports expected. The world’s population has grown prodigiously – a problem for me to resolve another day. And as expected the metahuman presence has accumulated significantly as the Judgement Day draws near and each power and principality seeks to manoeuvre its agent into position.
The League of Improbable Gentlemen is gone, in name at least. Their Mansion is now occupied by a team of metahumans – the modern term coined is superheroes – some of whom even have links to their eccentric forebears. These include some of the time-traversing prisoners I questioned back in the thirteenth century. I begin to see the fascination that the Hooded Hood, who arranged my return as per our bargain, has for these fools. But I am unlikely to commit the same error of sentiment and allow them to live.
Clearly my first priority was re-establishing my power base. Much of my former infrastructure was intact, and two weeks has proved sufficient to restore most of my network. The Westminster Necropolis Company was held in trust for my return in any case, and it has followed my instructions in gaining significant shares of key corporations such as Turrets Inc, the Interdimensional Transportation Corporation, and Baustista Enterprises. A brief meeting with Mara Musashi, who currently leads the Ass-Raping Ninjas, was sufficient to remind them of old alliances and debts. A visit to Akiko Masamune of the Yakusa has reconnected me with the criminal underworld and familiarised me with players of dubious acronym such as BALD and HERPES. The Heckfire Club was much the same as I remembered it and I was pleased to renew my membership and finally get a civilised meal in the colonies. Camellia of the Fay was reluctant to co-operate at first but we eventually found acceptable terms for an exchange of services. My short meeting with the so-called supervillain known as Balefire has helped me to understand the state of the modern world. He is the living proof that Darwin was wrong.
The Shoggoth was hardly pleased to see me, but clad as I was in borrowed time there was little even he could do to thwart my will. I sought him out to determine whether the imprisoned Paradox Stranger in his care could be of use to me again, but the Stranger and some cow-headed scientist woman named Moo have been wrapped carefully in chains of causality. I am not yet ready to murder the Triumverate. Such an act will require at least a months’ additional planning.
My studies have helped me to determine what must be done. My main short-term goals must be the removal of the current superhero population, the neutralisation of the Hooded Hood, the destruction of Mumphrey Wilton, and the consequent return of my Chronometer. It would be inadvisable for me to confront Wilton directly while I am using borrowed chronal energy, including that pulled from the future timelines in which I am triumphant and regain the Chronometer of Infinity, so I must recruit a suitable ally. A conversation with a rather strident female villain known as Magenta St Evil has helped me to determine the perfect candidate.
Fragment the Fifth: Allies and Enemies
The Abandoned Legion arrived at Wilton Manor just around teatime. “My dear chaps and chapess, won’t you come in?” the whiskered warrior bade them. “What on Earth brings you all the way over here on a cold blustery night like this? Asil, ring for Blenkinsop and tell him to bring some extra cups, please. And some scones, I think.”
Cap, Paste Pot Pete, Cobra, HV, and Banjoooo filed in. “We don’t really need any tea,” Cap explained. “This is pretty urgent.”
Sir Mumphrey immediately became all business. “What’s the problem?”
Paste Pot Pete sprayed Asil and Mumph with glue, sticking them to their chairs.
“The problem is we have to kill you,” Hunter Victorious apologised.
Mumphrey reached for his chronal pocketwatch to reverse what had just happened and deal with the unwelcome guests. Cobra was briefed for that and sliced his hand off at the wrist.
“What?” gasped Asil, ripping herself free from the adhesive too slowly to stop Banjooooo grabbing her and twisting her head through three-hundred and sixty degrees.
“Nothing personal,” Cap explained as he killed Sir Mumphrey.
“Not true,” Cobra contradicted as she removed the heads for transit. “I never liked you.”
Fragment the Sixth: Sign of the Times
The flames rose from paradise. Most of the structures on Amazon Island were ablaze by now and there was nobody to spare to stop them. And still the skeletal warriors kept coming.
These weren’t Ray Harryhausen skeletons, animated bones that could be knocked down by a conquering swordsman – or woman – and scattered. These were armoured in bronze and fought with discipline. They showed no fear and gave no quarter, hacking and slaying until fully half the population of the Isle of Amazons lay dead on the field. And then they kissed the dead and the fallen Amazons rose to fight their sisters.
“I don’t understand this,” Troia 215 frowned for the hundredth time. “How did they get past the defences? The gods themselves put a barrier around this place. The Chimes of Honour might no longer hold us in the middle of a dimensional bottleneck to guard against ancient evil but they do still keep out uninvited visitors.”
And still the warriors came, pushing ever forward towards the Temple of the Oracle where the dimensional mechanism that maintained the island counted down.
A ragged cheer rose from the ranks as Queen Titania returned with her bodyguard from the latest foray.
“What news, my queen?” the aged Oracle asked.
“Nothing good for the Amazons, aged one.” Titania turned her blood-smeared face towards the blind crone to display the sword-wound that had shattered her brain-pan. Then she and her bodyguard raised their swords.
“No!” shrieked Troia, launching herself forward and catching the blow that would have slaughtered the Oracle on the haft of her spear. “This can’t be happening!”
But it was. The Amazon Queen, the finest warrior of a warrior race, turned her undead eyes upon her wayward niece and tried to slaughter her. Titania was dead but she was fast, and Troia found herself being spilled backwards. Around her the undead bodyguard wreaked havoc amongst the remaining shocked defenders.
“No!” Troia called again, but this time there was determination as well as horror in her voice. Titania was the finest warrior on Amazon Isle, but Troia had fought in places no other Amazon had ever been, had trained in ways no Amazon had ever fought. She’d even dated ManMan. And she had to win, or everything was lost.
And beneath the indolent administrator, the self-absorbed princess, the insecure misfit, there was a core of steel and passion that would not let people down.
“No!” she screamed, actually pushing Titania backwards and hammering her down. “We won’t fall and we won’t fail. For thousands of years we have defended out island against evil, and we won’t stop now. My mother never failed and neither will I!”
Titania’s sword hacked into Troia’s shoulder and sent her hack spraying blood. “Your mother failed and betrayed us all,” the undead queen hissed, “and you are just the same. I rule here, and I command you to die.”
“NO!” Troia shouted, hurling her spear with deadly accuracy to skewer Titania’s skull to the wall. Her enemy’s undead body shivered to dust.
Troia picked herself up and helped her sisters overcome the bodyguard and return to their defence against the skeletal warriors besieging the walls. Somebody made her sit down so her wound could be attended to. Then she was up again, her eyes cold as ice, because the Amazons were falling, and that must never happen.
“No indeed,” the Oracle said softly to herself. “Titania does not rule here now. We have a new queen.”
“Keep fighting,” Troia shouted. “Keep going! We have to hold out until help comes. Donar and the Lair Legion, or ITC, or the Chronicler. Even my father, the Hooded Hood. Just keep fighting!”
Then as one the skeletal warriors ceased their attacks and stood ready. A silence fell over the battlefield. The man commanding the skeletal legions strode forward, his long wine-red mantle billowing around him, his eyes glowing redly inside his shadowed hood. “Greetings, daughter,” he bade Troia 215. “I shall accept your surrender now.”
Fragment the Eighth: False Witness
“I don’t see why I have to be the one that does this,” dull thud complained as he was forced into the vomit-odoured sleeping bag.
“Because you’re the one that looks most like a homeless person,” ManMan answered testily. “Now shut up and look pathetic.”
“More pathetic, that is,” added Knifey, ManMan’s sentient knife, helpfully.
“I mean,. I don’t see why Dancer couldn’t be tracking down these homeless people that vanished from the Seaman’s Mission instead of making poor, defenceless minor superheroes like us do it,” dull thud clarified. “I think it’s going to rain.”
“I’m not a minor superhero,” Chronic objected. “I’m bad.”
“Yes, I’ve heard you play,” thud agreed. “So why are you here?”
“Because… it’s… well, why are you here?”
ManMan sighed. “Look, let’s all just admit that we’ve once again been sucked into one of Dancer’s do-gooding schemes that seem so reasonable when she suggests them…”
“Overlooking the fact that she is codenamed the Probability Dancer,” added Knifey.
“And just get on with the ambush. Somebody is coming along taking homeless people for doubtless nefarious purposes. We have to find out who and where and rescue whoever we can.”
“And for this I have to lie in a gutter in a vomit-soaked rag and get rained on?” objected thuddy
~~ It’s not like that isn’t what you do most nights, Davie ~~ contributed Cressida, the telepathic tapeworm that lodged in dull thud’s intestine.
“But not professionally,” thud sulked.
“Look, can we just leave the bait here and get under shelter somewhere?” Chronic suggested. “Steve doesn’t like the rain.”
“Good,” Knifey contributed. “I hope he warps.”
The devil’s guitar made a discordant twang.
“We should form a stroppy power source support group, we really should,” ManMan shuddered. Knifey seemed to have history with Chronic’s possessed guitar. He also claimed to have dated Cressida, which seemed unlikely. And Joe Pepper was pretty sure that Knifey hadn’t co-authored Cats.
Leaving dull thud to fester in the gutter, ManMan and Chronic took their bickering tools into the shadows of a burned-out tenement and passed the time by sniping at each other.
And finally, somebody came to take the bait.
“Hello, young man. You look like you need somewhere a bit better to stay than this,” Reverend Mac Fleetwood smiled down at dull thud. “Why not come with me and I’ll find you a nice dry bed?”
“It’s me, Rev,” dull thud hissed. “I’m lying undercover to find out who’s stealing the homeless people.”
“Oh, I see,” the clergyman smiled. “In that case you’ll probably need this.” He leaned over and pressed the chloroform-soaked handkerchief over thuddy’s face. “I imagine this will probably put your parasitic tapeworm out as well,” he noted in passing.
“Reverend Fleetwood!” Chronic gasped, playing a chord that hammed the minister back down the alley. “I knew your nice act was too good to be true!”
“More of you!” Fleetwood hissed. “I’ve got to go!”
There was a bright flash of light and then the Reverend was… not gone.
“What?” he gasped. “What the…?”
ManMan flattened him with a single punch while he was still surprised. “What was all that about?” he wondered. “Why would the Rev be going about chloroforming bums?”
“Don’t ask me,” shrugged Chronic. “I don’t know-ow-ow.”
Fragment the Ninth: Heartstrings
“I know not what to do, Coat Rack,” the morose hemigod told spiffy as the ferned phenomenon helped his friend back towards the Lair Mansion. “She art not answering mine pigeons. She art not acknowledging mine gifts. Did I not send her an entire brace of grjinpenwallowers?”
“Love is cruel, Greek guy,” Mark Hopkins consoled the Ausgardian. “Or so I’m told. My own experience is that love is embarrassing, occasionally painful in a knee-to-the-privates type scenario, and mostly one-way.”
“I hadst bethought me that Troia wert the one. Why then hast she retreated to Amazon Isle and forsaken all contact with me?”
“Well, there was the accident with the Amazon Olympics and the failed groin restrainer,” shuddered spiffy. “But that could happen to anyone.”
“Mayhap she hast found another. I needst must locate him and hammer him into pulpeth!”
spiffy kept hold of Donar by the barest of margins and prevented them veering off the causeway that connected Lair island to the mainland. “Sure, big fella. After a little sleep, huh? Let’s get up to the Mansion. They’ve got computers and stuff to help you figure it out. And industrial-strength asprin.”
“I feel I must needs go to her,” Donar confessed. “Yet I know not if this be mere heart’s yearning or a true presentiment of need. I must discover the truth of this.”
“You could always see what Xander the Improbable has to say on the matter,” suggested spiffy. “If you, y’know, feel like paying more than you can afford.”
Donar approved, and slapped spiffy on the back propelling him into the sea. “Tis a good plan, Coat-Rack, and thou are a good companion, albeit somewhat fragile and breakable, and with a tendency to scream like unto a girlie. I shall hie me to Xander and learn what I must do.”
“But first,” the hemigod announced, “projectile vomiting.”
Fragment the Tenth: Ghost Theatre
The Paradopolis Variety Theatre had not been saved.
When the benefit concert had ended in a Celestian attack, followed by a world take-over by the Purveyors of Peril, followed by the devastation of Off-Centre Park by the Mailman, people had somehow lost interest in restoring the old landmark. Now it remained, a vast hollow rotting shell brooding on the perimeter of the wounded city park, tangled in a mire of legal claims and recriminations.
Its sinister reputation was about to increase as Dark Knight, Messenger, and De Brown Streak discovered the bodies there.
“There… there must be a hundred people here,” gasped Joshua Clement, De Brown Streak.
“At least,” agreed Dark Knight. As he bent to inspect a corpse it crumbled to dust. “They’ve been drained.”
“How? Why?” Messenger demanded. Once again the need to take vengeance on the unrighteous flamed inside him. “They may only have been homeless people but they were people. Who did this?”
“I’ll need to do some forensic analysis,” DK warned. “Perhaps call in Ziles or Harper or somebody. I don’t know what killed them or how, or what converted them to this… condition.”
“Yeah,” Johnstantine shrugged, striking a match on the wall. “It’s as if they saw a ghost.”
“This is what you wanted us to see?” Messenger growled.
“You wanted to know where your missing people were going,” the Englishman shrugged. “Now you know.”
“And how did you know?” DBS demanded.
“A little ghoul told me. And then I saw the ghosts.”
De Brown Streak looked round nervously. “What ghosts?”
The Dark Knight took a step back towards the shadows. “Those! Look there!”
The heroes scrambled for cover as some blurry lights moved over the body-strewn auditorium. Gradually the shining coalesced into transparent human forms. The first of them glided over the corpses as if sensing something nearby.
It was a handsome man in a black suit and vest, dressed as if for a night on the town. Or as if he was a butler.
“Jarvis…” Messenger whispered.
Fragment the Eleventh: Timetable
“Don’t do in there,” Samantha Featherstone told her younger self. ”Just… don’t.”
Young Sam was starting to think that the future she could cope with anything, so she was surprised to see tears in the woman’s eyes. “What’s wrong?” she asked, looking round the deserted hall of the manor. “Where’s Grampa Mumphrey?”
“It’s all going wrong,” Samantha frowned. “Everything’s screwed up. I thought Grandpa could help but he’s… not around. Neither is grand… Asil. Damn. Symmetry must have got her people here first.”
“I don’t understand,” young Sam said, starting to pick up some of her older self’s fear. “Who’s Symmetry? Where is Grampa?”
“Symmetry’s what we in the future technically call an evil she-bitch from hell who needs kicking from here to Northallerton,” Samantha answered. “She was the holder of… well, there’s this magic pocketwatch, right, and whoever has it has to do certain jobs. They can do these in a nice way or a nasty way.”
“And she did it nasty?” young Sam guessed.
“As they come,” Samantha agreed. “For hundreds of years. Then Grandpa Mumphrey beat her and took the magic watch and did the job instead.”
“In a nice way.”
“The best. And in the future he gave this watch to me.” Samantha held up the sleek black wristwatch that complimented her leather outfit. “See?”
“Nice,” admired younger Sam. “Does it play tunes?”
“It plays merry hell with time,” Samantha answered. “And Symmetry wants it back. In fact I think she’s got it back right now, the version Grandpa had. Which means she won’t need to drain chronal energy from people’s life forces to live – just as a hobby. And she won’t have to pull her temporal power from one of the futures where she wins, which was how she created the disturbance that let me come back here to supposedly balance the scales.” Samantha glanced at the seven year old in front of her. “Are you following any of this?”
Sam shrugged. “Bad woman, wants to hurt grampa, took his watch, tried to get me taken away and get grampa in trouble, needs kicking,” she summarised.
The leather-clad time traveller beamed through her tears. “Spot on. I can see where I get it from.” She stood up. “Right,” she announced. “Plan B. The Lair Legion.” She reached out a communication card and dialled in its oldest code. “Time to call in my teammates.”
Fragment the Twelfth: Assembling the Pieces
I relax back behind my desk with the satisfaction of a job well done. The Chronometer, reformed to its hourglass incarnation, is returned to me. I have dispatched minions to recover the other instruments of office and then I shall have the necessary tools to implement my masterstroke.
My ally’s own machinations continue apace. Already Amazon Isle stands on the brink of destruction. His followers are moving into place ready for the cull of superheroes that is necessary to control the outcome of the Resolution War. My traps are laid for the Hooded Hood when he is no longer of use to me.
All I need to secure my victory is time, and time is my weapon. Time is on my side.
My time has come.
And in our 100th issue of Untold Tales: All of our fragments assemble into a terrifying (and possibly coherent) whole. Symmetry’s masterplan unfolds. Her secret ally is revealed. Samantha and Samantha contact the LL. Donar looks for Troia but finds trouble. Nats is dissed. AG is stomped. Dancer takes her top off. Ghostbusters. Oscars. League of Losers. Skeleton Warriors. The nature of heroes. Big explosions in a “cinematic” style. The reboot. Don’t miss Ultimate Untold Tales of the Ultimate Lair Legion
All encouragement to actually write the damned thing gratefully received.
This poster posed from 212.159.32.176 when they posted
Message Thread
- #99: Untold Tales of Nearly Everybody but the Lair Legion: Fragments - The Hooded Hood apologises for his current scarcity, which may continue for a while longer, wishes to assure posters that he is storing their literary efforts for later perusal, and offers by compensation this grab-bag of scenes designed to prepare the world for the coming of Untold Tales #100 after a suitably dramatic interval. - 03:47 on July 19, 2002
- - 08:39 on July 19, 2002
- Encore! - (nt) Manga Shoggoth - 17:04 on July 19, 2002
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