Saving the Future – Part 26: The Long and Winding Gloat Previously: The Void Scholar’s plans near fruition. The entire population of Earth had been replaced by shape-shifting Space Fandoms that have unleashed nuclear destruction o the Lair Legion. The Juniors have been taken to the Void Scholar’s limbo fortress where Fashion Accessory (Samantha Bonnington) is to become his bride and where Danny Lyle is being manipulated into breeding with Liu Xi Xian. It’s all over bar the monologues. Previous Chapters The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse *** 1. The Destruction of Samantha Bonnington     The Void Scholar stood on a terrace overlooking the black blistered surface of the wall of nothingness that was the heart of his domain. Others might see mere darkness, the absence of light or mass or anything at all. He saw beauty and mystery and the secrets of mastering the endings of all things: the final conquest.     He turned to the chair where Samantha Bonnington sat in her attractive wedding gown and matching chains of obedience. “There’s something particularly attractive about a pretty girl sobbing,” he noted to her. “Sorrow becomes you.”     Fashion Accessory shot him a venomous look and tried to control herself. Since her whole metahuman gift was about tactile matter manipulation she should have been able to fix her makeup and be-blotch her face with a mere thought. Now she couldn’t.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But the very best thing of all,” the Void Scholar continued, “the absolutely best thing about finally reaching the culmination of my plans is that I can finally tell somebody how brilliant I have been to achieve this moment of triumph.”     FA looked appalled. “Before you rape me you’re going to do the gloating moment?” she shivered in disgust.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not rape, Samantha. I can provoke desire within you that you have never known. Whole eons have been devoted to preparing the moment when you and I conjoin our flesh. Epic tales have been mere foreplay subplots.”     Samantha sneered. “So, it’s a choice between getting knocked up by a mind-controlling time-creep monk-nerd who’s zillions of years old or hearing a really boring exposition about stuff I’ve no intention of trying to understand because it’s bound to be boring, self-congratulatory, and mired in trivia. Tough decision.”     The Void Scholar seemed to enjoy her defiance with all the relish of a villain having pinned the heroine to railway tracks. He pointed to the void that filled the skies of their honeymoon terrace. “Look at it. That is the mere beginning of an infinite realm, where time and space are but the first dimensions to be crushed to nothingness. That is the dark shadow cast by the Parodyverse. That is the realm of which I shall be master. Comic-Book Limbo is the mere crust, but the first of my dominances.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Okay, I’ve decided,” FA told him. “I’ll take the molestation now.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But mastering it,” the Scholar went on, “ah, that’s the trick. It took me millennia of study before I understood the key to opening the void wall and claiming my inheritance.” He stabbed a finger at Samantha. “You. You see…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I was conceived at an astral conjunction that you set up over trillions of years,” FA cut in. “There’s these big Space Robot things called Celestians who pick up litter and stuff all round the Parodyverse and they seed planets with Deviates and Austernals to see what happens next for reasons nobody’s ever bothered to figure out till now. I got my powers because this astral event gig somehow triggered latent Deviate and Austernal genes in my parents and made me the awaited result of all those millions of experiment worlds, the perfect combo of Deviate matter-morphin’ and Austernal bootyliciousness. I thought it was just the Hooded Hood doing a retcon for his Sidekick Day plot but it turns out I was what the Parodyverse had been waiting for all along, which pretty much makes it all about me, as it should be.” She looked up at the Void Scholar. “What, I can;t be drop dead gorgeous and pay attention once in a while as well?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s… a very gross generalisation,” the ancient master of Comic-book Limbo answered.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well you’d know from gross,” Samantha shot back. “So I’m carrying the uber-DNA or whatever and you only want me for my chromosomes.”     The Void Scholar recovered his equilibrium. “The Celestian Madonna carries in her genetic lineage the potential to master all those forces which the Space Robots manipulate: matter, energy, distance were all manifest in the future through human vehicles.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, Suicide Blonde, Exile and G-Eyed. I lost a whole half hour of my life having to hear about them from Visionary.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But the fourth and greatest of those forces was not incarnated. Control of the void occurred in another line, not in the future but in the past.”     Samantha surreptitiously tested whether she could move her finger from the arm of her chair. She couldn’t. The Celestians had once built obedience bioware into all sentient things and the Void Scholar had somehow hacked into it to place her absolutely under his control.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The child you will bear me shall be sent back in time to a moment when your world was still populated by humans,” explained the Void Scholar. “Under my guidance she shall grow and wed, and so will her child, and so will later generations. Each will refine their elemental control, until after many centuries one infant will be born in which the void manipulation skills are manifest.” He leered across at his captive. “I know this is so because I have already accomplished that part. You yourself have met Liu Xi Xian.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Liu Xi’s meant to be my grandkid?” FA snorted sceptically. “With that hair?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A thousand generations removed, she is of your stock, yes. And she is the key to penetrating the void wall. Her skills, or perhaps those of her child by the right father, will grant me mastery over all.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Eew. And you’d want mastery over all because…?”     The Void Scholar looked up. “Because I am saving the future, Samantha my bride. All those sad trailing possibilities of unfulfilled promise are swept away. I become the beginning and end of the Parodyverse, and all shall be as I ordain.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And you know that no sane person uses the word ordain in actual English, right?”     The Void Scholar brushed his fingers against Samantha’s tear-wetted cheek. She wasn’t allowed to shy away. “And when you have served your purposes to me,” he told her, “I have promised you to your enemy Wyrmfood. You are to be her obedience-slave for all eternity. I understand that she has many, many plans for you.”     There were all kinds of clever, defiant things Samantha Bonnington wanted to say to the Void Scholar. She just couldn’t think of any right now. *** 2. The Destruction of Ham-Boy and Harlagaz     The Void Scholar stood in the dark dungeons beneath his eternal castle of recursion and watched as his Space Fandom minions tightened the chains on the racks where Ham-Boy and Harlagaz were stretched. As expected the Ausgardian was still swearing and shouting his defiance. The Earth-boy was tougher than he looked but he seemed close to breaking now.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Stop it, Gaz!” Fred Harris almost screamed at his fellow Junior. “You’re doing what he wants, playing the role. He wants us to shout defiance at him. He’s into it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He shalt be into mine fist in his spleen ere…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I mean it, Gaz. Look at him. He’s enjoying winning, and you’re giving him everything he wants. He’s been preparing this torture chamber for us for millions of years, planning out a programme that keeps us alive for millions more years of punishment, just like that head torturer said.”     The Void Scholar nodded. “Very perceptive, Mister Harris,” he agreed. “The Fandoms I have here are those I have had replace some of the finest sadists in history. Their combined expertise in bringing pain to sentient beings is quite extraordinary. But that is not the best part.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Bite off thine…” muttered Harlagaz. He was bleeding more than usual and healing slower.     A pair of torturers shuffled forward, their scarred wrinkled grey skins saggy on their emaciated frames. They leaned over and looked into the faces of HB and Harlagaz until the captives finally recognised them.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Space Fandoms that look just like us!” Ham-Boy gasped. “Or at least look like us if we’d been tortured for half of time and turned into Space Fandoms.”     Harlagaz was a little more versed with eternity. “They dost not look like unto us,” he groaned. “They art us. That ist what yon felon wilt turn us into in the end! He hast brought them back to our moments now to play their part in tormenting us.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s… our future?” HB shuddered. He was trying to hold onto his courage but there was no part of his body that didn’t hurt now.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Tis not a fate we shalt surrender to lightly,” the Ausgardian promised.     The Void Scholar decided it was time for a little more mental torture. Harlagaz appeared to have no defence against that at all. “I have no wish for you to surrender lightly,” he told them. “If I wanted your easy surrender I would have enforced your obedience as I have your friend Samantha.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You stay way from her!” shrieked Ham-Boy. “I mean it, you just…” His warning became a scream as his future self cranked the agony wrack another notch, stretching his nervous system through the fourth dimension while leaving his physical self where it was.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Where art mine ladies Samantha and Kerry?” demanded Gaz. “When we are free we shalt…”     He too was halted by a turn of the screw. “Samantha awaits me in our boudoir,” confided the Void Scholar. “Kerry faces… another end. But you two are not going to rescue anybody. Not your friends. Not your mentors. Not the Earth.”     Ham-Boy forced himself not to scream. “When the Lair Legion get here you’re going to be so toast,” he promised. “Even if we can’t stop you, they will.”     The Void Scholar was amused. “That would be the Lair Legion who died by nuclear holocaust twenty minutes ago in your subjective time reference, would it?” he suggested. He gestured and images of the timeframe he’d monitored appeared on the dungeon wall. “Behold, the final moments of your wonderful heroes. Thirty incoming nuclear weapons from various nations and enemies. A last minute defence in the best traditions of such seasoned warriors.”     The pictures showed the Shoggoth’s massive gel wall, Al B. and the Librarian frantically hacking over-ride codes for individual missiles, Nats and Hatman deflecting bombs with telekinetics and a torpedoes hat, Dancer shifting probabilities to cause mass malfunctions, Yuki and CSFB! piloting LairJets on suicide missions to take down the lethal devices before their bursts could obliterate Paradopolis.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“As if the Legion’s enemies had not learned from their defence of Parody Island during the implementation of Special Resolution 1066,” scorned the Void Scholar. “Non-cosmic attack means that Celestian defences do not activate. Magically warded missiles make the devices as lethal to the Shoggoth as to mortals. Probability stabilisation generators protect them from the Dancer. And so many attacks, so fast, from so many quarters.”     On the screen Paradopolis vanished in a blister of nuclear fire. The horrific mushroom cloud rose up over a devastation that had been the city and its neighbour Gothametropolis York. The next blasts destroyed Parody Island entirely.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Tis not so,” breathed Harlagaz. “A deception…”     The smoke rose and cleared, leaving a boiling sea washing into a scarred wasteland. Only the Carnifex’s tower stood black and unscathed amidst the devastation.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You bastard!” shouted Ham-Boy, forgetting his own advice and even the pain in his screaming limbs as he railed at the Void Scholar. “Those people… all those… you…”     The Scholar smiled thinly. “Oh, nobody died except the heroes. And they were disappointingly easy to kill in the end. As a former admirer of the Lair Legion I was rather let down that they went out so mundanely, but then who can argue with a good old nuclear blast? Except me?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nobody died? What about the populations of Paradopolis and GMY? What about the radiation clouds spreading as far as Goth haven and Washington? What about nuclear winter?”     The Void Scholar was happy to correct him. “Nobody else died because nobody else was on the planet at the time – except for my Space Fandoms, and of them I have unlimited numbers, drawn from all those souls who have fallen to Comic-Book Limbo over the eons. Think of the Fandoms as what the Hero Feeders excrete after they have devoured the last scrap of a life’s narrative.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Space Fandoms art crapped out by Hero Feeders,” Gaz noted. “I canst believe it.”     The Void Scholar was enjoying he pre-nuptial exposition. “I have had my Fandoms replace all developed life on Earth,” he continued. “Thus the Legion faced their destruction in the guise of those they loved and trusted. The real population of your world was transported through the void-gate technology I salvaged and buried in your cooling planet eons ago. They have come to my domain in Comic-Book Limbo, where they wait in stasis until I have use for them.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What use?” demanded Harlagaz. “Confess, felon!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Why, if I am to open the void wall and become master of the heart of nothingness then I will need a very large, very sudden burst of oblivion. The sudden extinction of a whole species. Of a whole planet’s higher biosystem. Preferably the nexus planet’s higher biosystem.” The Scholar shrugged. “And if that leaves me with an empty nexus planet ruled by my Fandoms then that only confirms my triumph, the validation of all my research.”     Ham-Boy was appalled. “You’re planning to kill every man, woman, and child on Earth? Or, er, not on Earth any more?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Kill is perhaps the wrong word,” the Void Scholar considered. “I intend to reduce them to nothingness. The way a Hero Feeder might, only more efficiently and to a specific end.”     He gestured and the image on the wall changed. Now it showed only dark rubble hanging in space. “Oh, this is your Earth one year from now, in every timeline,” he added. “Once I have stripped it of its nexus it is more trouble than it’s worth. Destroying it destroyed its mythlands and faerie realms and occult connections and hidden alien bases and so on. I only mention this so you children can know how complete your defeat is and how absolute my victory.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Caitiff!” yelled Harlagaz, trying to tear his limbs loose from the agony wrack. “Foul felon! Dire villain! When I escape from here I wilt…”     Ham-Boy didn’t bother to stop Harlagaz giving the enemy what he wanted. The Void Scholar had won, and there was nothing else to do. *** 3. The Destruction of Kerry Shepherdson     The Void Scholar walked into the nursery and found Kerry Shepherdson waiting for him with a shard of broken vase and a home-made accelerant brewed from the fertiliser in a plant pot. He dissolved the threat with a mere thought – everything in the Scholar’s home was merely created by his will anyhow – and slapped the probability arsonist away from him with some relish. He’d been looking forward to hitting Kerry for some time now.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So you have worked out the nature of your imprisonment?” he observed as Kerry rolled away from him and assumed a defensive crouch but did not use her pyrokinetic gifts.     Kerry was pale but her eyes were reddened where she’d been crying. “All these babes in tubes round the walls,” she hissed. “When I use my powers they get burned.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That is correct,” agreed the Void Scholar. “But since you are a thoughtless, self-absorbed, selfish little girl at heart it is only a matter of time before you place your needs above theirs and begin to incinerate them.”     Kerry didn’t mention how she’d discovered the truth of her trap. “I don’t need my powers to take down a time-nerd like you, Wang,” she snorted. “And I owe you big time for what you did to me with Dr Loveray.”     A smirk of amusement crossed the Scholar’s face. “Don’t confuse me with that strutting preening chrono-tyrant,” he advised. “I’ve erased my own past as I’ve eliminated any time-traveller that might have opposed me. To master the void one must have no past, no future, no ties at all. And don’t confuse your moments of guilty ecstasy with De Soth under Dr Loveray’s influence as any kind of suffering. As you will learn, there are far, far worse things can befall a young woman who is surplus to destiny.”     Kerry looked around the dark room filled with stolen infants. “So who are these kids anyhow?” she demanded. “This is the part where you jaw on about how clever you are, right? So talk while I’m figuring how to make you explode without hurting the babies.”     The Scholar slowed Kerry’s reactions enough that he could avoid her defences and hit her again. She tumbled back most satisfyingly, clutching a bleeding lip. “You know, I find you the most irritating of the Junior Lair Legion,” the master of Comic-Book Limbo told the probability arsonist. “Somebody should have beaten you long, long ago. It will be my pleasure to put that right.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Who are the babies?” Kerry persisted, snarling.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“These are unwanted by-products of my selective breeding programme,” the Void Scholar told her. “All descendents of your friend Samantha Bonnington and me. The fruits of our loins. But the fruit that fell too far from the tree to be useful to me, fruits I therefore gathered from time so as not to distract my brood mares with motherhood of unsuitable offspring. Use your powers and fry them if you please. They’re of no value to anyone.”     Kerry shuddered. “You know that’s not true. They’re of value to me, or you’d be dead right now. That makes them of value to you too.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And if you did kill me you’d prevent any of these children from ever existing. You’d erase them from history. You’d erase Liu Xi Xian too.” The Scholar smiled thinly. “You see, Kerry, I’ve arranged things so that if I don’t impregnate the Celestian Madonna the whole of your history unwinds. All of time and space tumble into the void. Think of it as my backup plan.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You keep your hands off FA,” Kerry warned. “She’s had a bad enough time in the past with E-Male and the Battlers, when she was a kid. She doesn’t need more older guys pawing at her.”     The Void Scholar slapped his victim down again. “Oh, so selfless these days,” he mocked her. “And I was expecting you’d be whining ‘what have you done to my Danny?’”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey, Danny can take care of himself,” Kerry answered. “And of you, if he wants to. You think I’d want him if I didn’t love playing with fire?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, your time with Danny Lyle is done,” the Void Scholar told her. “Your whole association with him was merely a result of one of the Hooded Hood’s manipulations anyhow. Winkelweald pushed the two of you together as part of one of his unnecessarily Byzantine schemes to set a trap for the Parody Master and Galactivac. And possibly to prevent my own plans to unite Danny with my ultimate grand-daughter Liu Xi Xian and breed the ultimate Celestian Child.”          Ã¢â‚¬Å“Wait, Liu Xi’s your grand-daughter? I thought Wang’s kid was Kinki, and his grand-kids were Cody and Kara?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Those old associations are irrelevant. As Void Scholar I am above them. Continuity is irrelevant these days. Even Liu-Xi is but a means to an end, the biological tool for my accession to all power. But for her to be with Danny I first had to remove you, Kerry Shepherdson, Denial’s dirty little vice. And it was so simple.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Except that Danny loves me,” Kerry pointed out. “He wouldn’t have been so hurt at what you made me do if he didn’t.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He loved you,” agreed the Void Scholar. “But that was such a long time ago.” He gestured and images appeared on the wall: Kerry and Danny making love.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey, that’s private!” objected the girl.     The Void Scholar sneered. Now the images showed Kerry and Vinnie in bed together. “Noisy, aren’t you?” he scorned.     Kerry flew at him. He caught her with a kidney punch then folded her into a painful half-nelson. “Without your powers you’re just a juvenile delinquent,” he told her, “a rather pathetic, slutty, worthless nobody. A footnote. Not even worth a footnote. Now watch.”     Kerry had no choice but to observe as the images on the wall flickered forward. She saw Danny’s interaction with the Portal of Pretentiousness, those long one-sided conversations as he slipped ever further from reality. She saw his brief rallying at the battle against the Purveyors of Peril, where he had drawn together Earth’s last defenders and turned the tide, where he had stood again at Kerry’s side to face a seemingly-inevitable death. And then…     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What’s happening now?” Kerry had no choice but to ask as the images flickered more and more; things she didn’t recognise.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That is your final row with Danny Lyle,” the Void Scholar told her. “You weren’t there for it, of course, but the Space Fandom who took your role was very convincing. That was when you screamed at Denial that Vinnie was ten times the lover he was, and so were Harlagaz and Ham-Boy. Things exploded. Your relationship with Lyle was one of them.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Danny would know the truth,” Kerry insisted. “He’d know it wasn’t me.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, he believed when he found you and Harlagaz together,” the Scholar assured her. “And look, here’s your Ausgardian friend beating Danny to a pulp.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Space Fandoms,” winced Kerry as she saw that Danny wasn’t even defending himself.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And here’s Danny back at Herringcarp, back with his Portal, peering into the future. He’s seeing the world destroyed. This is him trying to Save the Future, all alone, with no friends or allies to back him up, nothing but pain and bleakness in his heart, looking to die as the price for rescuing a world that wants him dead.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Danny!” shrieked Kerry, struggling against the arms that pinioned her as if she could leap through the image and comfort her lover.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And here’s where Danny so nearly reversed what the Space Fandoms had done, only to find that the cosmic office-holders who feared his power had laid limits to prevent him from interfering at a cosmic level. He might have saved your world from destruction except for the traps against him set by the Chronicler of Stories and the Destroyer of Worlds. Oh dear!”     Kerry watched her world die on the screen before her. She saw Danny ripped open by cruel contingencies left by Lisa and the Chronicler, events meant to prevent Danny from ever assuming the role of the Parodyverse-conquering Moderator, events that instead curtailed him from rescuing the Earth from the Void Scholar.     She saw Danny floating alone in the void, dying, his last strength gone, his heart broken, betrayed by everything held ever known, having failed at everything he’d ever attempted.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You destroyed him!” she accused the Void Scholar, tears running down her cheeks. “You set him up and you destroyed him!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I remade him,” the Scholar corrected her. “Watch.”     On the screen Liu Xi Xian reached far into the void, straining to the limits of her capacity to shift that mysterious nothingness. She discovered Denial’s shattered frame and drew him back with her to the Scholar’s Limbo Garden. She coaxed Danny back to life over long, patient months.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“She makes a more patient nurse than you, I think,” the Void Scholar told Kerry. “She speaks to Danny’s heart in ways you never could. She is patient and gentle. She does not drive him to new wilds of excess, constantly tormenting and pushing him. She listens. She speaks her heart. She loves. It is not the fires of destruction that Daniel Lyle needs now but the humble calm of a quiet beautiful soul.”     The screen showed the first tentative kiss between Danny and Liu Xi Xian, then a blossoming passion. Kerry shut her eyes.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You were never his true love,” the Void Scholar said, hurling Kerry brutally to the floor. “You were only… rough trade.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And you are dead!” Kerry promised. Some of the babies began to wail. She forced herself to control her temper. It cost her almost more than she had.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Last chance to defend yourself,” the Scholar mocked, ignoring Kerry’s self-defence training and enjoying the beating he was inflicting on his victim. “Last chance to burn some babies and get your revenge.”     Kerry allowed herself to be knocked down again and lay there in a battered mass, breathing hard. “Whatever you do, you’ll never get that victory,” she promised.     The Void Scholar shrugged. He intended to terminate the children anyhow as part of his great sacrifice to the void but there was no point telling that to the Shepherdson girl. “On to the next phase of your punishment then,” he suggested. “I’ve been examining your timeline to find out just when you were the most terrified about your future, Kerry. There are quite a few possibilities… but I think this one is my favourite.”     The screen on the wall changed to show the dark interior of a military spaceship. The mesh walls formed tiny prison cubicles and dark instruments of discipline hung from overhead gantries. Kerry recognised the place instantly.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes, the Avawarrior training ship,” the Void Scholar noted. “You were sent there one as a pleasure toy of the Avawarriors, to be broken to their punishments then to serve as their whore. I think this was the future that frightened you worst of all. But Danny rescued you and you avoided your nightmare.”     Kerry looked up at the screen in bleak despair.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think sending you back there would be an appropriate next phase for your destruction,” the Void Scholar decided. “Say, six months earlier than your last visit, so as not to tangle the timelines.” He paused to allow Kerry some time to beg.     Kerry said nothing.     The Void Scholar gestured and sent her to her fate. *** 4. The Destruction of Danny Lyle     The Void Scholar appeared in the golden pavilion at the heart of his garden of reflection, the Oriental-themed estate of bonsai topiary and sculpted waterways where he wrote and studied. On the padded rolls before him knelt his grand-daughter Liu Xi Xian, traditionally dressed in a kimono of blue silk with peacock patterns, her hair tied up and pinned with an elegant silver fan. Next to her sprawled the jeans-clad Danny Lyle, casual with a t-shirt under a red cloth jacket.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I understand that you two young people wish to speak with me?” he asked them. He noticed that the couple were clutching hands.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Grandfather, there are things we have to tell you,” Liu Xi admitted. “Ask you.”     Danny shifted a little uncomfortably. “This is a weird place,” he began, “but it’s your place, so I figure for once we better do things by the rules. So we wanted to talk to you about, well, Liu Xi and me.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You may speak,” granted the Void Scholar.     Danny began. “Well, we’ve talked a lot these last few… I guess it was months but time is really hard to track here. Feels like months. But we’ve talked. We’ve shared secrets.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Danny knows about my lineage now,” Liu Xi butted in. “He knows how I came to be an elementalist, of the line you began with the Celestian Madonna. I had not realised until then that you were speaking of Samantha Bonnington.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, that one was a bit of a stumper,” admitted Danny. “At least until I made the Vex Vortex connection. Way to bag FA, becoming a multi-millionaire movie mogul.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I did what was necessary,” replied the Void Scholar. “I am Saving the Future.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, I tried that once,” snorted Denial. “Didn’t take.”     Liu Xi went on. “Danny knows all about what it is you desire me to do, to breech the void wall beyond Comic-Book Limbo so that you can master what you find there and so master the Parodyverse.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sounds kind of dangerous for Liu Xi though,” Danny pointed out. “She’d stand a lot better chance if I was using my denial powers to shield her while she went in there.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You are offering your assistance?” the Void Scholar asked. Perhaps it would not be necessary to await on offspring that combined the powers of the two young people before him after all.     Denial shrugged. “It’s not like I have a busy schedule. But we’ve not finished talking yet. See, Liu Xi told me her secrets, and I told her mine.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I know about Danny’s father, the Hooded Hood,” Liu Xi confided. “And I know of Kerry Shepherdson’s great betrayal. I know how Danny tried to save the Earth and was stabbed in the back by the powers of the Parodyverse.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No big,” said Danny Lyle. “That’s my life.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I know that Danny looked too deep into the Portal of Pretentiousness and saw things he should not have seen,” went on Liu Xi Xian. “And that he was seen by those things, so that now they must happen.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I was trying to help folks,” Danny snorted. “Catch me making that mistake again.”     Liu Xi held up her hand to show it was enclosed in Danny’s. “But grandfather, Danny will help. Help me to do what you want of me. Only not for nothing.”     The Void Scholar turned his gaze to Danny. “And what is it you wish, Daniel Lyle?”     Danny met the Scholar’s eyes. “You’re not dumb. You’ve gotta have been chaperoning Liu Xi without her knowing about it. You’ve gotta know that we like each other.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So what is it that you wish, in exchange for helping Liu Xi to breach the void wall for me?”     Denial pointed to the clasped hands. “Liu Xi, of course. I’m not much on asking permission but your blessing is important to her. I guess you’re the only family she’s got now and this family stuff really matters in her book. She was once sent off to an arranged marriage for money by parents who didn’t care about her and that turned out really bad. This time we want… well, we want you to be happy for us to be together.”     Liu Xi looked up with liquid eyes. “Please, grandfather.”     The Void Scholar suppressed a smile. “Daniel’s terms are acceptable. If you and he can breach the void wall you may be united.”     Danny seemed to relax. “There’s one more thing, then,” he added. “I know you can’t travel into other times any more since whatever the hell that De Soth guy did to you, but do you think you could open up a really tiny little time-door and bring something here for me? Something from my past?”     The Void Scholar spread out his fingers to indicate that he was willing to listen.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There’s this ring,” Danny confided. “I kind of bought it for Kerry, a while back. Hid it away because there’s no way we were ready for that. Bottom dresser drawer, in a gum packet, under my underwear. Never got to give it to her. But now, with Liu Xi… it’s kind of symbolic, see? I’d like Liu Xi to have it.”     The Void Scholar allowed a small smile to cross his face. He gestured and the ring tinkled down before them onto the marquetry floor of the pagoda.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Thanks,” said Danny, picking it up and admiring it before flipping it to the girl next to him.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I have one request too, grandfather,” admitted Liu Xi Xian shyly.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And what is that, grand-daughter?” asked the Void Scholar magnanimously.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’d like to know why you stole the whole population of Earth and what you intend to do with them?” Suddenly Liu Xi didn’t seem meek or mild at all. “I’d like to know why you stole the Lair Island and dropped all its heroes into Comic-book Limbo. I’d like to know why you tricked me into rescuing Wyrmbait to use against Danny and Kerry and why you kidnapped Fashion Accessory to force her to be your bride. And I’d like to know what you’ve done with the Juniors right now!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What?” demanded the Void Scholar. “What insolence is this?”     Danny snapped his fingers and a screen appeared filling one open wall of the pagoda. “Here’s a few scenes you didn’t spy on,” he noted. “On account of you being Denied access.”     The images showed Liu Xi and Danny cuddling together, whispering. They were plotting. They were planning. Then they flickered back, to Danny encountering the Space Fandoms in the shape of Kerry and Harlagaz, to Danny acting. And back again, the Danny staring deep into the Portal of Pretentiousness; to the Hooded Hood staring back.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Danny knew what you were doing to him!” Liu Xi shouted at her grandfather. “He knew even before he tried to save the Earth that he was destined to be stopped, to be hurt. But he did it anyway, because that got him here to me, to warn me, to answer the questions that you wouldn’t!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Liu Xi, be silent!” snapped the Scholar. “This is disobedience, and I will not…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You do not tell me what to do!” raged the elementalist. The winds around the garden whipped up. The small waters frothed and boiled.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There are no elements here for you to control,” the Void Scholar warned Liu Xi Xian.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There are,” denied Danny.     Suddenly the quiet garden erupted, torn by earthquake and tempest. The Void Scholar sought to retreat but found his voidspace exits abruptly blocked.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You betrayed me!” Liu Xi Xian shrieked at the old man. “You used me, like everybody always does! You used me whole life!”     The Void Scholar still had absolute control over this realm. He overrode Liu Xi’s commend of the matter of his garden, squashed her void manipulation with the experience of millennia. “I see I have been too lenient with you children,” he spat, angry and slightly frightened by what had just happened. “I see I am going to have to make the two of you breed the hard way. Your child will be raised in obedience.”     There was one piece of matter in the garden that had not been created by the Scholar’s will. Liu Xi bent her power on Danny’s ring. It melted to molten gold and spat through the air into the Void Scholar’s eye.     The Void Scholar fell back screaming, clutching his face, half-blinded. He lashed out with his power to skewer Danny and Liu Xi on pylons of agony.     Liu Xi saw it coming, She desperately wrapped her body around Denial and dropped them both from the garden into the void below; into the deep void; tumbling inexorably towards the void wall.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No!” cried the Void Scholar, reaching out as if to catch them. There went his future. He had to save it.     Behind him Danny’s screen continued to display images. Kerry Shepherdson stood confused and bruised, intercepted to Herringcarp Asylum, aided to her feet by the Hooded Hood. Hallie dropped the hologram of nuclear devastation that she had crafted over Paradopolis and Gothametropolis. Miss Framlicker in the Lair Mansion operations room pinpointed a tiny hole to the Void Scholar’s realm through which he had drawn Danny’s ring. Urthula Underess and Danny De Soth prepared soundings using Visionary’s lighthouse.     The screen turned to a silvery sheen, reflecting the Void Scholar himself; but behind the glass a man mantled in grey robes sat on a dark throne, his fingertips cradled, his green-eyed gaze intense.     The Void Scholar prepared to drag the escaping children from the Void.     Visionary punched him on the nose.     The Lair Legion faded into the ruined garden at the edge of nothingness, Al B’s dimensional transit module quietly dissolving away under the internal pressure of steaming Shoggoth goo.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Void Scholar,” said CSFB! “We would have words with thee.” *** And in our senses-shattering conclusion: More on the Lair Legion vs the Void Scholar! Somebody gets to Save the Future. But who, and which future? More on the void barrier. More on the Carnifex. More on Kerry’s love life. More on Samantha’s wedding. More on a world without heroes or anyone else. Probably some Bob Dylan quotes. And it’s not too late to chip in and say how you think everything should be resolves, because not one word of it is written yet! Coming… soon? Oh, and the management cannot be held responsible for any senses which are shattered. *** Previous Chapters: #1: “And just when did Danny find time to take over the Parodyverse?” by Dancer #2: "Sometime you have to turn flammable again!" by Visionary #3: That’s the Way the Story Goes by the Hooded Hood #4: See No Evil by the Hooded Hood #5: Whodunnit by the Hooded Hood, Visionary, Killer Shrike, and Jason #6: Suspicious Behaviour by the Hooded Hood, Jason, Hatman, and CrazySugarFreakBoy! #7: Accusation and Denial by the Hooded Hood, JJJ, Jason and L! #8: The Final Solution by the Hooded Hood and Dancer #9: The Land That Common Sense Forgot by the Hooded Hood #9.1: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #9.2: Chad and Ronnie by L! #9.3: “In addition to cappuccino and personal hygiene these tribespeople have not yet invented underwear.” by Dancer #9.4: Lone Lost Boy & Heroines Hanging Together by CrazySugarFreakBoy! #9.5: From Dross into Gold by Killer Shrike #9.6: Old Friends and New Allies by Visionary #9.7: Taking a Swim by L! #9.8: A Post-Swim Chat by L! #9.9: Champagne and the Land That Common Sense Forgot by Champagne #10: The Age of Villains by the Hooded Hood #10.1: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #10.2: The Baroness #55 by JJJ #10.3: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #10.4: Ewe Gotta Have Hart 1 by Killer Shrike #10.5: Ewe Gotta Have Hart 2 by Killer Shrike #11: An Age Undreamed Of by the Hooded Hood #12: The New Lair Legions (And Other Heroes) by the Hooded Hood #12.1: I Hate You by Visionary #12.2: Champagne and the Tower of Laments by Champagne #12.3: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #12.4: The Hearing by Visionary #12.5: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #13: Exploring the Forbidden Valley, or Samantha Featherstone and the Crystal Goddess by the Hooded Hood #14: Real Heroes by the Hooded Hood #14.1: “I’d like to be clear that I’m a no-skewer zone, and have been since college.” by Dancer #14.2: Catherine & the Danger Zone by L! #14.3: “Do you know how much shaving I had to do to put this thing on?” by Visionary #14.4: “Well we can’t just wait here till we find a use for Visionary. We’ll starve to death.” by Dancer #15: Change and Decay by the Hooded Hood #15.1: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #15.2: Hazardous Chemicals by Killer Shrike #16: One Moment In Time by the Hooded Hood #17: Slaves of the Brain Eaters, Thralls of the Blood-Drinkers by the Hooded Hood #18: Now Get Out Of That by the Hooded Hood #18.1: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #18.2: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #18.3 Crossing Lines by CrazySugarFreakBoy! #18.4 Shooting You With My Smile by CrazySugarFreakBoy! #18.5: Funeral For a Friend by L! #18.6: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #18.7 Playing Both Ends by CrazySugarFreakBoy! #18.8: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #18.9: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #18.10: Valued Employee by Visionary #19: Probable Cause by the Hooded Hood #20: Good Intentions by the Hooded Hood #20.1: Very Special Guest Star by Hatman #21: Points of View by the Hooded Hood #22: Plot Points by the Hooded Hood #22.1: Potholes In Memory Lane by Visionary #22.2: Dancer’s Saving the Future Amnesiac Hallie Tie-in Special: “I’m pretty sure there’s two tongues involved in that. That is serious stunt kissing.” by Dancer #22.3: Amnesiac Hallie Tie-in Special #2: "Don't get me started on how recursive the title and storyline is getting". by the Manga Shoggoth #22.4: Potholes In Memory Lane Continues by Visionary #22.5: Potholes In Memory Lane: You Can Call Him Al by Visionary #22.7: Bridging the Gap by Jason #22.8: Oh That Joey Z! parts 1-3 by Spaztic Child and the Hooded Hood #22.9: Oh That Joey Z! part 4 by L! #22.10: Oh That Joey Z! part 5 by the Hooded Hood #22.11: Locks by Rhiannon #22.12: Shining by Dancer #22.13: Hard Knocks by Killer Shrike #22.14 A Groovy Gal’s Upcoming Upgrade by CrazySugarFreakBoy! #23: Don’t Give Up Now, It’s the Blockbuster Summer Action Episode by the Hooded Hood #24: There Can Be Only One by the Hooded Hood #24.1: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #24.2: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #24.3: Chad & Ronnie vs the World by L! #24.5: Le Voyage dans la Lune Bibliothèque publique, Part 1 by L! #24.6: Le Voyage dans la Lune Bibliothèque publique, Part 2 by L! #24.7: Le Voyage dans la Lune Bibliothèque publique, Part 3 by L! #24.8: Le Voyage dans la Lune Bibliothèque publique, Conclusion by L! #25: Invasion of the Booty Snatchers by the Hooded Hood #25.1: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #25.2: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #26: The Long and Winding Gloat by the Hooded Hood *** Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2008 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2008 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved.