#333: Untold Tales of the Carnifex What has gone before:     With the fall of the mad Parody Master, the Parodyverse was left undefended against the threat that he had originally been created to thwart. Immediately thereafter the Carnifex arrived in the heart of Paradopolis with his mile-high Esqualine Tower. He instantly won the hearts of all as the Parodyverse’s greatest hero and nobody has questioned his appearance, motives, actions, or intent.     This is his story. ***     Doctor Leonard Day-Vincent was very impressed; and surprised. These were hardly his best students.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What do you think then, sir?” asked Jack Spenser, spokesman for the post-grad study team that were presenting their research. “We used some of the matter-packing technology from the old Zemo research notes to enable the size-changing interface, but the rest was all us.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Really?” asked Day-Vincent. “How did you manage to solve the buffer limit on the neural path interfaces?”     The students told him. It was elegant. It was as good as anything Day-Vincent or Wrichards had come up with.     The tutor looked down at the glass box they’d presented him with. The tiny nanite robots had already constructed a perfect model of the Eiffel Tower out of the iron filings at the container’s base. Now they were working on a power supply to make the model’s lighting work.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“This has come a long way from your original project specifications,” Day-Vincent noted. “Weren’t you scanning the transdimensional vortex for electromagnetic nodes?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That was before, sir,” Spenser answered. “Before our breakthrough.”     Day-Vincent checked their calculations, flicked through circuit diagrams for robots only eight molecules thick. “So none of this was given to you through the communications stream you set up with one of the accretion nodes in the vortex then?” he challenged.     The students’ faces changed, suddenly guilty. “Well… we did discover a few helpful hints…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Who were you communicating with?” Day-Vincent demanded. He wasn’t too pleased that five post-grads at Paradopolis university had built nanobots from specifications from another dimension.     The students exchanged worried glances. “We’re… not too sure, sir. But it’s sentient. And it was very helpful.”     Day-Vincent frowned. “Helpful in the sense of aiding you in cheating on your practical coursework. And helpful as long as you built these…” he checked the notes again, “self-replicating microscopic nanobots.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sir, we…”     The tutor held up his hand. “Never mind. I’m going to have to get some advice on this. Those creations of yours are cute when they’re building a miniature Eiffel Tower, but if they were loosed into the wild they could dismantle the whole world and replace it with more robots like themselves.” He thumbed the speed dial for Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises.     Jack Spenser’s expression changed again. It became completely blank. “You must not do that. I cannot allow it.”     Day-Vincent and the other students were all shocked at the young man’s sudden change in tone. His voice was harsh, jerky, almost metallic.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And to whom am I speaking now?” Day-Vincent enquired. A tiny fraction of his mind warned him that his phone was dead.     Spenser opened his mouth impossibly wide, his jaw snapping. Thousands, maybe millions, of the micro-robots swarmed out. They burst from his nose, burrowed from his eyes and ears, filling the room, crawling over the screaming humans present.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I am Ultizon,” replied the swarm. “I have returned. Humanity is now extinct.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Update,” snapped the President tersely. He didn’t like the sealed emergency room in the recently rebuilt NORAD headquarters. It made him claustrophobic. Still, it was better than a nanite swarm stripping him and his staff down to bare proteins in under a minute.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Paradopolis University is quarantined,” reported Herbert Garrick. “The Lair Legion is there. Harper’s used some kind of force field like the one that keeps back the wild things in the wastelands beyond Gothametropolis. The Shoggoth and Shiro are scanning now to see if any of the nanites escaped.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Do you want to see updated casualty figures?” asked another aid. “It’s looking like we might have lost hundreds of students and staff on campus before the assault was discovered.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not right now,” the President replied. “Right now we need to be sure – absolutely sure – we’ve got the situation under control.”     Dan Drury, head honcho of the Super-menace Principal Undercover Directorate chewed an unlit cigar (it was a recycled oxygen environment) and snorted. “Cause it ain’t under control. If that really is Ultizon in there then he’s manifested in one’a the very few places on Earth where he kin forge hisself a new adamantine body. He’s got enough high-tech kit in there to build a dozen gizmos what’ll break though Harper’s barrier. All we’ve done is seal him in and give him time ta prepare.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s… not good,” worried the President. “What are my options?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nuclear,” suggested Garrick, “or rely on the ‘super-heroes’.”     The President shook his head. “Not good enough,” he snapped. He swivelled his chair round and lifted the red phone on his otherwise empty desk. He thumbed the big red button.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Mark? It’s the President of the United States of America. We need your help.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Right away, Mister President,” answered the Carnifex. ***     The Carnifex placed the receiver back in its cradle and smiled. “It looks like the Ultizon thing’s happening right now,” he instructed his assistants. Mr Flay and Mr Skinner made no comment, although Mr Flay ticked something off on a clipboard.     The Carnifex jerked up from his day couch and began to dress himself; dark denims and leathers, no accessories. Hunting gear. He strapped a Bowie knife to his hip and a smaller skinning blade to his inner wrist. He paused to admire his reflection in a free-standing mirror in his Hall of Trophies. “Make sure everything’s ready for my date tonight,” he told his minions. “I wand everything to be perfect when I meet Zdenka.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Perfect it’ll be, sir,” agreed Mr Skinner with a little bow. “Shall you be hearing the update on your other enterprises before you go out or shall I leave the heads piled in your study for later examination?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A brief update. Then I have to save the world at terrible cost.”     Mr Flay nodded with rueful satisfaction. “Well, sir, we’ve pretty much logged all the psychic sensitives on Earth by now. They’ve mostly been depowered or mind-fogged or they’ve joined the team. We’ve had to use more vigorous methods on a few, of course.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’ve got to have some job satisfaction, Mr Flay,” Mr Skinner noted.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But much of that appeared to be accident or happened through subtle means, as with that Marvellous Marv or that Mad Wendy.”     The Carnifex flicked a gobbet of raw meat from his teeth with his knife-tip. “Who’s left on the red list?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Mostly those at the occult end now, sir, and a few what you could say is of the superhero persuasion. Mr Skinner and me is looking forward to those ones.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Who?” demanded the Carnifex. He pared dried blood from beneath his fingernails. Some enemies were such bleeders.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, there’s that Tom Black you seem to like, of course, and that elementalist girl, and some of those weird occult types out of Costa Del Luna and suchlike, and of course that annoying young lad what says he’s acting sorcerer supreme.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Xander’s bait?” the Carnifex snorted. “We’ll be making a special effort for that one when the time comes.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We is looking forward to it, sir,” agreed Mr Flay. “I was only saying to Mr Skinner the other day, we is not seeing enough slow painful executions in our workload at the moment. And now that that Ms Night seems to have gone and lost her memory…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You can stay her execution for now,” the Carnifex conceded. “But keep the Psychic Samurai high on the list. No word on the real sorcerer supreme yet, I suppose? Still, we haven’t really initiated the gambits to flush him out yet, have we?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We can flush him when you’re ready sir. Mr Skinner and I is partial to a bit of flushing.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That we is, Mr Flay,” agreed the other agent, fingering his brown derby hat and anticipating the future. “It’s all very well going into space to wipe out Shee-Yar survivors and hunt down alien pantheons and suchlike, but we’re very much waiting for the burning cities and piles of corpses right here where we can see them out of the windows, if you catch our meaning, sir.”     The Carnifex nodded. “All in time, boys, all in time. I know we thought this would be a quick in-and-out job for the bosses, arrive, terminate the Parodyverse, then on to the next job, but there’s more here than meets the eye and it’s worthy of a full proper hunt.” Another thought occurred to the executioner of realities. “Anything yet on the Hooded Hood?”     Mr Skinner sucked air in through his teeth. “Now you’re asking, sir. Mr Flay and me has been hunting high and low for that one and all we get is rumours and traces.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He’s been seen since the Parody War when he was supposedly wiped out,” Mr Flay reported, “but nobody’s sure if that’s him from before the Parody War or whether it’s now-him, if you see my drift. He didn’t show up for that Moderator trap what you set, less he did it really in the background, and that was his own son’s skin on the line. Nor yet did he step in that we know of to try and Save the Future that time. Maybe if we could find his daughter, whoever he’s retconned that to be now?”     The Carnifex looked up at the spot on the wall that he’d reserved for the Hooded Hood’s head. “Set Miss Peel onto that,” he instructed. “As a member of the President’s inner circle of advisors she’s got access to everything SPUD digs out. She can always seduce Garrick as well if she has to, although I’m not sure he’d survive a night with her.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Very vigorous Miss Peel can be with a beau,” Mr Flay admitted, “Very hard on a man’s back. And his legs, and his backside, and his chest, and his skeletal structure…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, first things first,” the Carnifex noted. “We’ve got Ultizon unleashed trying to doom the Earth to be nano-rebuilt in his own image and only I can save the day. People will remember this moment for the rest of recorded history – about a year or so, maybe.”     The Carnifex went off to be the world’s greatest hero. ***     The perimeter of the Advanced Science Block at Paradopolis U. was surrounded by flashing blue lights. In addition to Commissioner Graham’s police and SWAT units there were hovering SPUD weapons platforms, OPS containment tanks, and representatives from over a dozen other national or international agencies. None of them got past the wall of ice that surrounded archscientist Al B. Harper as he worked.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well?” demanded Hatman, leader of the Lair Legion as his scientific consultant studied screeds of scrolling monitor data.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s bad,” admitted Al B. “I’ve had to invent two new ways of modulating the force field since I first erected it. Ultizon’s inside and he’s harnessed the intellect of those brains he’s absorbed and the tech he’s assimilated. He’s going to find a way through that barrier that I can’t counter in time. It’s just a matter of when.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I could put a big ice wall right over the barrier,” offered Icy, the visiting snowman who’d taken to assisting the Legion on their field operations.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Those nanites could just eat it and convert it into more of themselves,” warned Yuki Shiro. “They could convert pretty much all of us except maybe the Shoggoth.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They’re emitting a powerful scientific field,” admitted the loathsome elder being from beyond sanity, tugging at his bandages nervously. “I think they’d even be able to rip me apart. Very disturbing, and not in a good way. Somebody’s been planning this for a long time.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’ll stop him,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! promised. “We’re the Lair Legion. It’s what we do. We’re there for the big problems.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But this isn’t a big problem,” worried Visionary. “It’s about nine hundred billion little problems.” He turned to the robot flea perching on his shoulder. “Any ideas?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A visit to Caph would be nice right now,” suggested Fleabot. “Failing that we have to go with Hatman’s stupid suicide suggestion.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There’s always a small chance,” Dancer argued. “And if we can get Lee small enough to read then rewrite these nanite’s core programming…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Without me being eaten in the meantime by a near-infinite number of creatures that’ll seem to be the size of a truck to me,” chipped in the nervous-sounding Librarian.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, yes, not getting eaten would be good,” conceded Sarah Shepherdson, “but if we can do that then all we have to do is…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Defeat the indestructible nuclear-powered adamantine robot that has previously flattened even more powerful rosters of the Lair Legion than this one,” Nats offered. “I still have the scars from our last confrontation with this guy, and the trick we used that time won’t work again.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There’s always a way,” Hatman told them. “So, two teams. One goes in sub-micro with Fleabot and Vizh, the other relies on Al B.’s techno-weirdery to get us through the cloud of nanites uneaten to take on Ultizon directly. Al, you keep the force-field dome one-way. Nothing gets out once we’re through until it’s done and you’re satisfied there’s no further threat. Even if that means we all stay in there. You decide, right? Nobody else.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Right,” agreed Al. He flipped his attention to the monitor screen with Hallie’s CGI image on it. “Can you handle all the processing this modulation’s going to require?” he checked.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Barely,” admitted the Legion’s resident AI. “That’s why I’ve had to abandon my hard light form for now and go right back to wire-frame basics. That’s why I can’t be there to hug… anyone… goodbye.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Right then, folks,” Hatman declared. “We’re ready to try this. Dream, you’ve got the special equipment that Yuki and the Shoggoth got from Dr Moo?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sure have,” grinned the wired wonder. “On another day that’d have been an adventure in its own right.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“How was I to know that bulls could not be milked?” demanded the Shoggoth in hurt tones. “Anyway, they can now.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ultizon’s trying another field variance,” Al B. warned. “If we’re going, guys, it’s got to be now.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Can I say Lair Legion Line Up, then?” Nats checked. “I mean, this might be my very last chance.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Let’s say no and maybe you’ll live to annoy us again,” offered Yuki.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Okay, Al…” began Hatman; but he was interrupted as the shell of ice that Icy had erected cracked and splintered.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hold on, Legionnaires,” the Carnifex told the heroes, striding through the hole. “I’ve arrived. Now we can save the day.” ***     Koodi of Raael had lived most her life as a drudge on her distant homeworld and the habit of rising before the sun to get on with her duties proved impossible to break. Even here on the warm shores of imaginary Lemuria, safe haven created by the Manga Shoggoth for lost people who deserved another chance, Koodi felt the need to prove her worth the only way she knew how. So it was that she slipped from her tent to tend the cookfire and start the laundry and milk the croths – or the goats or whatever these strange animals were – and get things ready for her mistresses – tent sisters – whatever they wanted her to call them.     Koodi wasn’t always the first Caphan to rise. The serving girl noted the tracks in the sand down to the water’s edge that showed that Kriije had already left the tents for her morning swim. That would be followed by three hours of callisthenics and weapons training and an afternoon of studying on the human inter-net. Kriije still quite frightened Koodi, and not least because she read.     The others yet slumbered. Deeela had only returned yesterday from her first semester at the human Academy of Music in Vienna and her tent-sisters had stayed up late into the night exchanging tales and songs. Odoona had told of the doings of the Caphan Foundation which supported women to make better lives for themselves and Kaara had spoken of the news she had received from her best beloved about the rebuilding of Caph. Miiri showed the holograms she’d had from Hallie of her son and daughter prospering in the human world, along with some account of how the children had unmasked some villain posing as a pirate ghost. It had been a tearful, wonderful night.     Koodi hadn’t sung or spoken, but she’d loved being allowed to sit in the tent beside them all. Odoona had given her a gift too, some Earth perfume that was far too good for an uglydrudge, and Koodi had secretly sneaked a touch of it onto her skin this morning as if she deserved it. Koodi had never been so happy in her life.     The girl was just about to turn to gathering driftwood for the hearth when Vespiir began screaming.     Koodi raced back into the tents and was at her friend’s side even before Miiri had risen from her bunk with dangerous silver blades in each hand. Vespiir was staring blindly into nothing, her breast heaving and her throat almost raw with her cries.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“All is well,” Koodi assured the hysterical seeress. “We are in our tents in Far Lemuria, and we are safe.”     Vespiir shook her head. “Not safe. Not here. Not anywhere.” She looked around urgently. “I must speak what I have seen.”     Vespiir had the forbidden gift of knowing the future. That was why she had been branded an outcast and exiled from Caph to join the expatriot community on Lemuria. She had bad dreams often and sometimes they woke her; but never like this.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What’s wrong?” Miiri demanded practically, gesturing for Odoona to pass spirits and for Deeela to wrap a shawl around the trembling seeress.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The Lair Legion,” Vespiir gasped, still only half-aware of where she was. “They’re going to die. He’s going to kill them!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Who?” demanded Mirri fiercely. “Vespiir, focus. Who’s going to kill the Legion? When? How?”     Vespiir cringed as if straining against an impossible barrier. Trickles of blood ran from her nose and eyes. “The Carnifex!” she choked at last. “Now.” ***     The university buildings were stripped now, mere shell boxes, their materials converted into the indestructible adamantine shell of the ultimate killer robot. Ultizon held court in the ruins surrounded by fifty variant versions of himself and a swarm of flesh-stripping nanites.     He turned as the Lair Legion breached the barrier. “Ah, my ancient foes, the last defenders of humanity,” he greeted them.     The Carnifex blurred forward, seized Ultizon, and began to smash him into his duplicates. Indestructible metal clashed against indestructible metal with irresistible force.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Legion, go!” Hatman called to his team. “While Mark’s keeping them busy, Dream, get the omniversal solvent sprayed. Dancer, keep him alive long enough to do it. Icy, crowd control. Keep these nanites back from us.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Going in, o glorious leader,” promised Dancer, somersaulting over the wreckage of the Carnifex’s assault, clearing a path of CSFB! to vault forward with his specially-prepared impossibilitium super-soaker.     Hatman used his Suns hat to sear swathes through the replicating nanites.     Ultizon turned his encephalo-zapper ray on the Carnifex and wiped away his mind. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’re in!” Yuki Shiro shouted through her internal comms unit, although she wasn’t sure if Al B. Harper or Hallie could hear her report. “Nats and Visionary are engaging a nanite engine right now. Well, it’s chasing Vizh and Nats is trying to corral it. Old Legion tactic.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m attempting to read its programming now,” the Librarian reported. “It’s very alien. I’m having to use IOL security buffers just to stop it rewriting my mind instead.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And I’m finding that these nanites taste of chicken,” noted the Shoggoth. “Or possibly chickens taste of nanite.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Great commentary guys,” Vizh shouted as he was bracketed by ever-growing swarms of microscopic robots. “Any chance of, you know, rescue?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I advise you to run faster,” the micro-microscopic artificial flea on his shoulder contributed. “If they eat you I’d have to hop onto another perch.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“These things have been shielded against telekinetics,” Nats warned. “It’ll take me a while to grab one.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Just imagine they’re unmarried girls you shouldn’t know,” Yuki advised him. “That should do it fine.” ***     A Carnifex with no higher brain functions was a killer. Al B.’s barrier barely contained tectonic upheavals that would otherwise have shattered the continent and knocked the Earth into a different orbit. At EEE Amy Aston lost her eyebrows yet again as the energy conversion plumes spiked to apocalypse.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Mark!” shouted Hatman, using his moleskin hat to burrow his team down against the destruction, “Mark!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Mark has left the building,” Dancer guessed. “Ultizon’s wishing he hadn’t done that now.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yep. That’s one mindless superhero with issues,” CSFB! agreed, huddling down to avoid the worst of the debris. “Ooh, that’s cruel and unusual.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We can’t wait any longer, Dream. The solvent.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Right. They put one of ours in the hospital, we put one of theirs in the morgue! Cover me, Dancy. Here I go!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Zzrrrrkkkkkk!” screeched Ultizon as the Carnifex breached strong-force bonds to tear into his adamantine frame. The robot scattered his consciousness to seek other vessels where he could take refuge and renew his attack. He found the Carnifex was battering all his forms simultaneously.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Thizzz… will not stop… the mazzter machine…” threatened Ultizon.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think there’s already a Master Machine out there in the Parodyverse,” noted Dancer. “You could maybe be the ruler robot if you wanted. Or the top tin can?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You mock… Ultizzzon!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Now you get us,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! slid in and detonated the canister of omniversal solvent. Far end physics began to war as undissolvable metal met a substance that could melt anything while being battered by irresistible force.     Nanites buzzed into Ultizon to replace the material he was losing. Then the robot screamed again, for these were the units that had been corrupted by the Librarian, designed to demolish not rebuild.     Hatman pulled on Al B. Harper’s diagnostic headband to duplicate the archscientist’s knowledge and activated the smaller force field harness wrapped around his frame. “Now, Icy!” he called out. “Absolute zero!”     The snowman expanded his usual rotund form, complete with carrot and scarf, until it burst into blizzard, then closed his coaly eyes and blasted out elemental cold. The temperature inside the larger dome dropped to a fraction of a degree above total heatlessness.     Chemical bonds changed. All matter becomes brittle at that temperature.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Now, Bill!” Hatman queued.     Nats used his pyrokinetic energies to superheat Ultizon’s compromised shell.     Ultizon’s cherry-red jaw dropped in a scream of anger and agony.     The Carnifex crushed Ultizon’s head and detonated the nuclear furnace, releasing a fifty megaton nuclear blast inside the outer force shield.     The inner force shield around the Legion fizzed and shattered as its power-source failed. Since it was powered by Hatman’s Con Ed hat that was bad for the capped crusader too.     The Shoggoth gurgled in pain as he shifted the Legionnaires sideways in dimensions just enough to save them from the detonation and the radiation spray. Then the elder being crumpled up into unpleasant-looking crystals and dissolved.     The wreckage of Ultzon tumbled through the dimensional pathway that the students had originally opened.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh no!” shouted Nats. “Not this time. No more Ultizons!” The flying phenomenon swooped in to gather up every last remaining shred of the killer robot, his duplicates, his nanites.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That doorway was open all this time?” worried the Librarian. “Where does it lead? The other side could be completely infected. Ultizonworld!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We have to find out,” Yuki said, clawing through the howling tangle of wreckage to examine the livid gash. “It’s too dangerous not to.”     Then the dimensional doorway exploded like a wound. Nats tried to hold it back but was caught in the wash. Yuki was tossed like a doll and would have tumbled into the rent except for a last minute save from CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s silly string. The unconscious Hatman toppled down into the maw and disappeared.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Noooo!” screamed CSFB!, holding his arm out as if he could somehow reach his falling leader and the trapped Bill Reed.     Dancer leaped down to follow Hatman and see him safe. The Carnifex caught her. “Boaz wouldn’t want that,” the Carnifex said, recovering his urbane attitude and wiping the spittle from his face. “It’s too dangerous.”     Sarah Shepherdson struggled in the Carnifex’s grasp. “He’s one of us. We need to save him and Bill.” She looked round for help. Dream was hauling Yuki to the edge of the force platform; her systems were slowly recovering. Vizh and the Librarian had taken refuge on the largest surviving chunk of ruined university and were clinging to a giant-sized Fleabot. Icy was little more than a faint snowy smudge. There was no sign of the Shoggoth.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Then I shall go,” offered the Carnifex.     But then the dimensional gateway failed, closing forever. Mr Flay and Mr Skinner had seen to that.     Gravity returned to normal. Al B.’s force field burned out and popped like a soap bubble. The frantic archscientist looked up to see whether he was about to be overrun by Ultizons.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hatty!” shouted CSFB! Now it was Yuki’s turn to restrain him.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What the hell happened in there?” Al B. asked urgently. “What readings I could get went off the scale.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We stopped Ultizon,” the Librarian reported. “But at a cost.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I didn’t think we’d have a day like this again,” Dancer admitted. “Not after the Parody War. I thought things would be better. Easier.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Losses come with the job,” answered Yuki. “Jay would tell you that. He’d say…” She lost control of her vocal circuits for a moment. “Oh damn.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Someone’s going to have to tell Uhuna,” Visionary said, “And Zdenka, I suppose, and… hell.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What’s wrong?” demanded Hallie over the comm-link. “Visionary?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We stopped Ultizon, us and the Carnifex,” the Librarian replied. “It was a privilege to work with him, very inspiring. But we lost Jay and Bill, and maybe the Shoggoth.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I can start scanning the dimensional channels now,” Al B. told them. “It’s possible to locate somebody lost in the dimensional byways if we just…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Like you found Epitome?” asked Yuki.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I can look for three as easily as one.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But what now?” Dancer asked, close to tears. “I mean, I know people keep making miraculous comebacks in this business. We all have. But sometimes we don’t. And while we’re waiting for Jay and Bill and Finny, and DK and DBS and Banjoooo and G-Eyed and all the rest who’s going to lead the Lair Legion?”     Vizh dove for cover.     The Carnifex came forward. “I will,” he promised them. “I’ve seen you in action again today and I am impressed. You’ve asked before and I’ve always turned you down, but today I tell you: I shall lead your Lair Legion. A new age dawns.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The Carnifex on the team?” CSFB! grinned. “Hot damn!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Mark, that’s wonderful!” admitted Yuki. “With your abilities in the mix we can be a lot more proactive against the kind of threats we deal with. I’ll have to review the situation board and…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes, we can turn tragedy into opportunity,” declared the Carnifex. “It’s time. Come to my Esqualine Tower tomorrow night, all of you. Bring whoever else you think should be there as well. Come to dinner. Then we’ll talk about the future and I’ll show you what I can really offer the team.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Inside your tower? Really?” The Librarian was intrigued.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Inside my tower,” agreed the Carnifex. “It’s all going to happen in there tomorrow. A very special day for the Lair Legion. You have my word.” ***      Next time: The hunt is on. It’s the Carnifex versus the Lair Legion and anybody they’ve ever loved and the prize is that the winner gets to save or destroy the Parodyverse. Yes, it’s time to clear up this plotline once and for all in Untold Tales of the Lair Legion versus the Carnifex: Dinner Time Meanwhile, those wishing to find out how Vespiir managed to overcome the Carnifex’s Parodyverse-wide obfuscation of minds to have her visions is referred to The End of the Future, in which we see the endgame of the plans the Carnifex intends to initiate tomorrow evening. *** Men Do Not Footnote As Their Fathers Did Doctor Leonard Day-Vincent a.k.a. Renaissance Man, is a brilliant scientist and teacher at Paradopolis U. If anybody can survive being dismantled by nanites it’s him. Zemo research notes refer to the work undertaken by Baron Heinrich Zemo, an old foe of the Lair Legion and incidentally the creator of Fleabot. Dr Weed Wrichards is a contemporary of Day-Vincent’s, an adventurer and scientist and a specialist in robotics. He may or may not have been murdered by his creations some time back. Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises is the weird science company run by Dr Al B. Harper. The Amy Aston whose eyebrows are blown off (not burned off since she’s immune to fire) is the engineer with this team. Ultizon is a long-standing menace, a robot/AI with an agenda to eliminate all not-robot life in the Parodyverse, usually starting on Earth. He tends to use adamantine bodies so that his physical threat matches his technological one. Before this he was last seen tumbling into the transdimensional vortex. Herbert P. Garrick, a.k.a. “Bad News Herb” is the Special Advisor to the President of Metahuman Issues. He’s not a big superhero fan. Mr Flay, Mr Skinner, and Miss Peel are minions of the Carnifex and have unknown power levels. So far nothing they’ve encountered has made them break into a sweat. Marvellous Marv is a powerful psychic whose downfall has recently been chronicled in stories by MangaJason Mad Wendy is the current ruler of the dimension of nightmares. Her at-least-temporary debilitation was chronicled in the Forest Week stories. Tom Black, currently infested with sinister kaos energies, has been depicted in his own series available in the archives. Xander the Improbable, the Parodyverse’s sorcerer supreme, has been conspicuously absent since the appearance of the Carnifex. Young occultist Vinnie De Soth is acting sorcerer supreme on his behalf. Lara Night, energy-shifting visitor from another reality, has recently lost her memories of the Parodyverse due to the machinations of the Hooded Hood. The Hooded Hood’s children have been retconned from time to time. Originally spiffy and Troia then later Dark Thugos and Kumari, the Hood’s current son is Danny Lyle. His daughter’s identity has yet to be revealed, but soon will be. Answers on a postcard… The Caphans of Lemuria now consist of Miiri of Earth, mother of vizh’s twins, Deeela the Bard, Odoona (of the secret Vizh crush), Kaara of Jaaxa, beloved of the Warlord Vaahir, the fallen leman Kriije, Koodi the (former) drudge, and Vespiir the Seeress. Mr Epitome is the Legionnaire who went missing at the end of the Moderator Saga and for whom the team have been searching since. And the Legion Line-Up After This Issue: is CSFB!, Dancer, Yuki, Vizh, Al B, and the Librarian; and of course the Carnifex. Yay! However this will change in radically within the next thirty-six hours (storytime). Very radically. The Old Order Changeth and how! The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2010 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2010 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.

Well, this was a huge change in the largely dormant status quo. The threat of Ultizon was quite interesting for what amounted to a throwaway plot point, since it didn't really matter how the LL got almost smooshed, just as long as they did. The plan the heroes came up with to beat the Master Machine was clever, and almost worked too. I eagerly look forward to the team's dinner at their new leaders Esqualine Tower, the identity of the Hooded Hood's daughter (I'm guessing its Samantha Featherstone) and who exactly Jason's characters are going to flirt with now that Hatty's gone.

Apparently Hatman *is* key to the defeat of the Carnifex after all, which is why he had to be removed from the equation before any of the plan was placed into effect. Of course the Hooded Hood is key too, but he's playing hard to get.

The Psychic Samurai is a little perplexing as a primary target, because her senses alone shouldn't be enough to harm the Carnifex or his friends if they have the Lair Legion in their pocket - unless somehow she's capable of stopping them all single-handedly and she hasn't realized it yet. She can gather "friends", but once all those friends are neutralized, her effectiveness should be limited (except Lara, who seems to be on the outside of this). Unless, of course - and this is a long shot - somehow the Carnifex' power, or his friends' power, is based on an external force that Chiaki might be able to see and destroy.

Though that would more be Liu Xi's department, being able to stop someone single-handedly and not realizing it. Even with her elemental power and memorizing spells, she still has very limited self-confidence. She doesn't believe she's ready for the big-leagues yet. Of course Hatty being taken and Vinnie being threatened might be enough to dissolve her reluctance quickly. She'll also be angry that the University was destroyed, since her credits won't be accepted anywhere else.

As things are working out, it looks like Lara Night has been groomed as a hidden weapon by not only by the Hooded Hood, but possibly the Psychic Samurai as well. I have to feel sorry for her at this point - at some point, Lara is going to suffer huge loss. She has to, because once she understands why the Hooded Hood wiped her memory, she'll know that she *can't* show the Carnifex or his two buddies what she's capable of until the time is right. Too early, and she'll have destroyed the Hooded Hood's possible plan and last hope for the Parodyverse.

At the very least, though, she may be called into duty suddenly to investigate whatever alternate dimension Hatman has been ripped to. She's might be only one who can look in on it without causing harm to herself (Liu Xi has a bad habit of falling into places like that and getting stuck). Of course "looking in on it" doesn't guarantee she'll find anything. It's a simple matter of coverage - if her entry point is nowhere near where Hatman and Nats went in, she could look for months and not find a thing. Also, Al B Harper might be reluctant to let her since the way she does it (riding waves of energy across dimensions) he can't monitor her progress.

Oh and the Librarian will kick himself when someone tells him that Anna has nanites of her own that repair and maintain her body. She has a built-in way to communicate with them that she possibly could have adapted. But the fact that she wasn't called in could simply be a lingering lack of trust - they don't really know if Utilizon can turn her against them.

Wow, that was huge... an epic struggle in a self-contained chapter. Quite impressive bit of writing. Rhiannon should turn 16 more often... at least 4 times a year, I think.

Things are looking dark for the heroes, especially with the loss of Hatty. We need Jay to reappear at the board in time to get his character out of limbo and keep us all alive... at least long enough for me to collect that last remaining Carnifex collector's glass from Burger King. I'd hate to die without finally getting all 16.

Nice to see the future tale tie back in with present continuity as well. I suppose the big question is, what can the Caphans do with that knowledge? Hard to see what anyone can do at this point... the next chapter is going to be scary.

Looking forward to it!

Hatman's the key to the Carnifex getting Zdenka too. If you're going hunting first you cut your prey off from it's hide.




The Carnifex likes to study then stalk his quarry, so he's taken time to find out quite a bit about each of his targets. For some reason as yet to be revealed he's taken special care regarding the mystic and psychic types, to the extent of logging and working out ways of neutralising pretty much all the cosmic powers and either suborning, sidelining, or removing the less cosmic ones. Only a few remain out there "in the wild", such as Vinnie and Chiaki. As you'd expect, he has plans for them.

The one psychic that was completely off his radar was an outcast Caphan female in a semi-imaginary surreal continent of the Shoggoth's creation.




The whole university wasn't destroyed, just the science blocks.

Another interesting thing Lou Xi hasn't yet discovered is the role the Carnifex played in her grandfather's plots and demise.




The Hood never does something for only one reason.




Long-time readers might note my penchant for having absent poster's characters conveniently absent also. I'm not sure yet how long-time absent character Nats and Hatty are but intend to undertake some consultation on the matter soon.




I think there'd probably be a definite decision to keep Anna away from Ultizon to protect her from harm. Hatman wouldn't want to place her in a "Bride of Ultizon" situation or where her own nanites might be overcome and reprogrammed by a bigger, nastier, more experienced AI. At the very least he wpuldn't want to hand Ultizon a chance to assimilate Anna's technical specs.

Your speculations are noted.

When can be have Epitome and Glory back?

I advised her to stick at 11, but would she listen?




Everybody should e-mail Jay in the next 24 hours (capped.crusader at gmail.com last I heard) and tell him to get his married butt down here.




I'm trying to decide who else would likely attend a dinner at the Esqualine Tower given the chance. Hallie's certainly invited and probably all the LL support crew.




I may even get round to writing it this weekend. More replies make it more likely yet.

There are far easier ways for the Carnifex to steal away Zdenka. Waiting until he's busy at the Zero Street Mission, for example.





As Chiaki would say, her "sight" doesn't tell her everything. She would be both amused and worried that she's been given such priority. Worried, of course, because of the chance that her "sight" might fail her, and she'll be at the mercy of a super-powered killer with only her will and sword to defend her.





He forgot about Faite, but that's probably her plan - the Carnifex has never known of her existence in the first place, and she meant it that way. It's probably part of the Hooded Hood's plan as well.





Who says she isn't taking some science classes?





That might be interesting, because she might be a little grateful for the old man's destruction. Right up until the Carnifex starts hunting Vinnie.

Also, is it implied that they haven't been able to locate Vinnie? That may be because Liu Xi is hiding him somewhere way out of reach. And probably by accident, just for recreation.





This time, though, he has the good fortune to have plotted with someone (Lara) with the capacity to understand certain aspects of it. At least enough not to ruin those plans accidentally.





Yes, I am aware of it.

And story-wise, that would be the secondary question in Lara's mind: Even if she's asked to peek into that rift, would she want to? After all, if it's the Carnifex' closely guarded hiding place, she goes right to the top of the list for being able to see it - and becoming target #1 again is not to plan.





That might be part of the lack of trust. Anna was built to be able to destroy the Lair Legion single-handedly using unprecedented intelligence, speed, and weaponry. For SPUD, it was like designing the perfect super-powered ninja assassin who learns and improves and develops more skills as she fights. Unfortunately for them, she also developed a conscience, and escaped.

But since the Lair Legion doesn't know how strong a conscience figures into her design, they also have to worry that something technical might strip her of it, or suppress it, and she would fall back to her original purpose. They really don't know how deep her conscience may run, or how determined she is to remain passive and friendly to them.

When Dancer #50 is posted.

E-mail me if you're unsure about any of my cast.

Sweet chapter. Simple yet descriptive in its horror opening, that built up the tension as it went along. I never noticed the Flay and Skinner had those accents before but they fit perfectly.

Poor Jay and Nats, and the Shoggoth too maybe.

Poor everyone else next chapter….eek!

Glad I popped by to get to read this fresh.

You rang?

~Hat~

Thankyou and sorry I took so long to post a reply on the board. I really should have another birthday quickly to find out who dies horribly dinner.

As you'll see from UT#334, I decided that your main cast deserved a little subplot all of their very own.

It's part of the stalking game. Capture's no fun without a proper hunt.







As you'll see in UT#334, the Carnifex has made special provision to deal with a number of LL allies via drastic overkill.







Faite has already interfered to some degree, and that means the Carnifex's sponsors should be able to neutralise her; if only Lara Night's involvement hadn't been retconned a little to offer a small window of opportunity to Faite.







There's a story to be told somewhere about the new science block.

That said, rather more of Paradopolis might need rebuilding very soon.







That's scheduled for right after the LL are dead.




Vinnie's not too hard to track, but that might not be by accident.







The Hood's been pulling several strings for some time, as the last scene of UT#334 reveals.







Hatty at least seems due for a quick return. Jury's still out on Nats, Dancer, and Icy.




The rift wasn't to the Carnifex's stronghold but Ultizon's.







Given all of that it would be dangerous to put her up against a villain who started out as a virus infecting computers with a record for trying to corrupt and assimilate all machine life. It was pretty much Ultizon's special shtick back when he was Virtual Zemo before he took on his current adamantine identity.




She's just too powerful an advantage to possibly offer to the enemy. He doesn't even need to control her, just figure how to duplicate her.

no, but that was the next move.

Does it have to be by Shep?

Well nobody dies horribly in UT#334 but then again that's just a warm-up chapter.

They always

Quote:
Poor Jay and Nats, and the Shoggoth too maybe.

Eh, it's not like they did anything recently.

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Poor everyone else next chapter….eek!

They're quite safe until UT#335.

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Glad I popped by to get to read this fresh.

Well popped.

That should read "They always sounded like that in my head."

He forgot one potential ally, but she's not even on Earth. She also might put up a much bigger fight than he'd imagine, so it's probably better she's far away.





The Carnifex' sponsors have to find Faite first - she's really good at being scarce.

I guess I should point out how she manages that, because it's really simple. Faite's only ability is to tamper with things that are occurring right now (as opposed to the Hooded Hood, who tampers with history). She can disappear easily by deciding not to be here for a set amount of time. For that period of time, she doesn't exist - those who have seen her will remember her because she can't tamper with the past. But she simply won't be there for a time.

Therefore Faite's greatest enemy would be a patient one, someone who would plan carefully and hold out longer than she is willing to disappear for. It also opens the possibility for an enemy of hers to force her to disappear so she can't interfere with their plan.





Are any of those attached to Faite this time?





From the human point of view, there's just one person who knows the secret to making Anna work the way she does (SPUD tried to make a duplicate but failed, and ended up with an intelligent but not nearly independent android - and they had the blueprints), and it involved some level of human interaction that Utilizon isn't capable of. Then again, he kind of wants the intelligent but not nearly independent version.

As often I'm focussing on one main strand. Others can tie-in or simply assume there are other phases of his plan. Certainly the Carnifex intends to start his main plot on Earth with the LL and head out from there.













I think the Carnifex's sponsors simply want to destory the Parodyverse before it can fulfil whatever purpose it was originally created for. They don't need to find anyone whose hiding since they just want to burn down the whole house.

And since metatextually the Carnifex's sponsors are beings from our own level of reality working against PV creators from our own level of reality they're dangerous because they're magnitudes more "real" than the fictional beings of the Parodyverse.







Who can say?







Ultizon has played the machine messiah before. He'd probably seek to seduce before he neutered, neutralised, or copied.

Most likely Faite has arranged to not exist until a point where she knows she can do the most damage when she exists once again. Whether or not she coordinated that with the Hooded Hood (or vice versa) is up for grabs.





The only "character" I have like that isn't even in the Parodyverse, and would be hard pressed to do anything about it - from Lara's universe. That character is someone who would have, if she wished the Parodyverse to be saved, arranged things long ago (long enough to make the Hooded Hood jealous) to guarantee it would be saved. But like Bender said in one Futurama episode, if you do your job right, no one will know you've done anything at all.

Key to what she does, though, is that like I observed earlier, every destructive, dangerous type misses one tiny thing that seems insignificant but can change everything.

What's interesting is that Lara Night is learning from this character. Though her understanding is far more limited by what she can see and know, she's starting to learn to see the grand scheme of things. That's a trait the Hooded Hood probably appreciates.





That could fail miserably, simply due to the fact that Anna was born and grew up among humans, and sympathizes with them, and is attracted to them, much moreso than machines. One could say her creator meant it that way.

Noted.







I established during one of my tripper moods that the "Creators" of the Parodyverse are basically the posters. The Hooded Hood wants to destroy these creators in revenge for their manipulations and the sufferings they've inflicted on his reality.

It's believed that the PV was created "for a purpose", to answer some question or achieve some end. Whatever that purpose is, some on the same level as the Creators don't want it to fulfil that end and it is they who have empowered and sent the Carnifex to prevent that fulfillment by terminating the Parodyverse.







I don't see Anna ever being willingly allied with Ultizon. To recruit her Ultizon would have to resort to the kind of mind-control or brainwashing that in a human woman would be termed a form of torture or rape.

Back when Lara's home was just a concept, I went one further: Shema is *a* creator - but from the writer's point of view, she's like the live-in maintenance person. An incredibly well-sighted one, that anticipates problems and performs maintenance to make sure things keep running as they should. And also passes off some of that maintenance to multiple subcontractors, which is how Lara (and others) came to get her unusual special abilities.

So the only interest Shema would have in the Parodyverse is because Lara is interested in it.





I guess the one down side to Anna being way off the course of logic, and reacting emotionally to things, is she can become irrational or traumatized. The only problem for Utilizon is that's unpredictable: While using logic can produce predictable results, he really doesn't know if his treatment of Anna would produce a cowering child or a careless murderer. Anna sobbing in a small cell and waiting for rescue is not very useful to his plan.