Untold Tales of the Lair Legion #354: Settling Debts Previously: New Legionnaire Citizen Z was discovered as the ghost of Laurie “Lisette” Leyton, now the spirit of Herringcarp known as Amnesia, possessing the comatose form of her old room-mate Beth Shellett. A complicated exchange of forces in the tomb of Visionatus Improbablus beneath the Lair Mansion has restored Beth, at the cost of reverting Laurie to her damned spectral state in the Hooded Hood’s asylum. Beth has gone to Herringcarp to try and aid her friend. Meanwhile, Baroness von Zemo is trying to discern the Hood’s masterplans, starting with her visit to Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises with ManMan’s girlfriend the Widget as hostage. The Baroness’ departure was shortly followed by the detonation of a disintegration mine. Silicone Sally, who assisted in events that led to Laurie’s death and ghostly state, has been offered a lucrative position as an agent of SPUD. Hallie and Marie Murcheson are concerned because a strange persistent and unexplained whispering in the Lair Legion File Room has stopped. Note: This story includes some flashback scenes that follow on from Herringcarp Gothic which are unpleasantly graphic. These flashbacks appear in blue font. The story is designed to read either with or omitting these scenes, depending upon readers’ sensibilities and preferences. Citizen Z image by Visionary. ***     On the thirteenth day in the oubliette, Dr Morningstar came to speak again with the madman and the victim. He looked down into the deep shaft where the captives lay huddled together against the freezing damp. “Good evening,” he bade them.     The prisoners scarcely stirred. Almost two weeks without food, with only the rancid moisture on the walls to drink, had quietened their banter.     â€œThe experiment continues,” Morningstar announced. “Is today the one where you agree to do disgusting things for me? When one of you will carve the other to live? When your shredded souls finally surrender to the inevitable?”     Neither of the captives replied.     â€œLook what I have here. Why, if it’s not a piece of bread. It’s rancid, mouldy, smells of urine. But it might keep one of you alive for another day. What am I bid for it? Who will promise obedience first?”     The madman clasped his arm tighter round the victim’s shoulder and held her close.     â€œWhat’s that?” scorned Dr Morningstar. “Love? Compassion? Hope, maybe? Haven’t you shivered out the last of that, yet? Or is it pride? I do admire pride. It goes before a fall. You both have so much further to fall.”     He held the bread over the grill that topped the thirty-foot pit. “Of course, if bread isn’t to your taste, there is meat available. Stringy, starved meat, perhaps, raw and uncooked, but still tasty, filled with hot bubbling blood. It’s right there for you. You’re hugging it.”     The victim shivered. The madman smoothed her tousled hair.     â€œSell her to me,” Morningstar offered him. “Say the word and I’ll have the wardens on her. And then you’ll eat.”     The madman’s hunger-swollen stomach growled recommendation. The man himself made no reply.     â€œYou then, girl. Child with no memories of joy or comfort, whose whole knowledge of existence is torment in these asylum walls. Turn away from the lunatic who holds you down. Turn to me and survive.”     The victim whimpered, tormented by that soft, smug voice. Her face pressed into the madman’s shoulder, trying to block out everything but him. Only he had been kind. Every memory she had that did not hurt was filled with him.     â€œYou plan to die?” Morningstar mocked them. “You believe that will let you escape these stones? You know it is untrue. Both have you have seen the ghosts of Herringcarp. Both of you have recognised the mad broken spirit that haunts its cells.”     The madman choked back a whimper. The phantom he had seen – thought he had seen – wondered if he had seen in one of his many delusions – had a corpse-pale countenance exactly like the emaciated woman he held close. He had already beheld that innocent victim dead and damned.     â€œYou can still escape,” Dr Morningstar suggested to him. “You could be master of this place. You could rise. She shackles you, not I. She holds you back. All you need to is rid yourself of her, break the bond between you. Come sup with me and be great.”     The madman felt the girl’s tears on his chilled bare chest. She knew how this must end. She knew he must leave her and answer Morningstar’s call.     The very stones of the damned asylum waited for an answer. ***     Flapjack of the Carpathians fawned before the heavy darkwood chair that managed to look like a throne though it technically wasn’t. “There’sth a lot of mess, master,” he lisped formally. “Creatures on the loose, monsters on the prowl, tales to astonish. The whole Whisper Gallery has escaped. The undercells are in the bat loft.”     â€œYou need not sound so pleased about it, Flapjack,” replied the Hooded Hood.     â€œAnd the servants are revolting,” the hunchback added with a leer.     â€œIndeed,” agreed the cowled crime czar. “Continue with the repairs. Inform me of any necessary details. Engage Mr Gnome and Mr Gunther to locate any missing architectural features. I shall take lunch at noon. There will be five guests.”     The sonorous chime of the main entrance pull-bell echoed through the Asylum like a knell of doom. “That will be them now. Escort them here.”     â€œYeth, master!”     The repulsive servant limped away and returned shortly with the archvillain’s visitors.     â€œGood morning,” intoned the Hooded Hood.     â€œAlright, you arrant knave, where is she?” demanded Sir Mumphrey Wilton, red-faced and furious. “Out with it! What have you done with Miss Shellett?”     â€œAnd why do you have Flapjack here?” Visionary puzzled. “I thought he was our disgusting major domo now?”     â€œI’m on my day off,” the hunchback explained.     â€œWhere’s Miss Shellett?” Sir Mumphrey asked again, louder.     A young dark-skinned woman in the traditional robes of a high priestess of the Shoggoth Cult – i.e. a few feathers – interposed herself between the angry Englishman and the cowled crime czar. “If I may, Sir Mumphrey, you might remember that it was felt best that we not burst in here all guns blazing? That was why I came instead of the Manga Shoggoth? And why we did not, as young Miss Shepherdson posited, ‘drop a freaking nuke on the bad-karma uberlord and just be done with it’?”     â€œYet,” Liu Xi Xian qualified Ebony of Nubilia’s statement. And yet she was concerned. Nobody yet realised that she had joined the Lair Legion as part of a bargain with the Hooded Hood to save the life and future of the infant daughter of an alien she had once murdered. The young elementalist knew that one day the consequences of that decision might destroy her as surely as Lord Slithis’ lien or the Void Spectre’s intent.     The Hood steepled his fingers and sat back in his chair. “Bethany Shellett arrived here this morning, as you have doubtless discovered by now,” he admitted to his visitors. “She sought conversation on the topic of Laurie Leyton, whom some of your number recently condemned back to dwindling existence as a drifting, bodiless phantasm.”     â€œMiss Leyton’s choice, dammit, and a dashed brave one!” Sir Mumphrey insisted.     â€œDoubtless. Mr De Soth went to ingenious lengths to prevent my observing or interfering. The young man is growing up.”     â€œHe’s getting more like you, you mean,” Liu Xi spat.     â€œWhere is she then?” demanded Vizh. “Both of them. Like Ebony says, we came here to ask nicely first. Next time I dial up Lisa and Dancer, and maybe Yo. I doubt that even Herringcarp could cope with that level of bunnies.”     â€œMs Shellett demanded an opportunity to communicate with Ms Leyton. I granted her access to the dungeons.”     â€œWhere Hatty and I were dropped?” the leader of the LL gasped. “A place full of lethal half-forgotten supervillains and monsters?”     â€œIndeed. I informed Ms Shellett of the danger but she insisted anyway. I argued that Amnesia had sacrificed herself for her friend’s wellbeing and that to die in the dark beneath Herringcarp might somewhat vitiate the gesture. Ms Shellett replied that no true friend would let things rest like that. I can replay the conversation on the Portal of Pretentiousness should you wish.”     â€œSo you allowed that brave vulnerable young woman to venture into horror?” growled Mumphrey.     â€œOr manipulated her to,” suggested Ebony.     The Hooded Hood crooked his head. “Your point?”     â€œThe point is that Beth’s down there, without super-powers or training, against the sort of horrors that you felt needed excising from the Parodyverse,” Liu Xi accused. “Maybe we should have brought the others. Everybody!”     â€œBring her out, Hood,” Visionary ordered. “Pull her to safety, right now!”     â€œNo,” said the Hooded Hood.     â€œWasn’t a request,” Sir Mumphrey threatened. “We’re not here to play your games, Winkelweald. Save her.”     â€œNo,” repeated the Hooded Hood.     â€œLast time I ask nicely, villain!”     â€œNo.” ***     Schloss Shreckhausen loomed over the exclusive Paradopolis real estate of Pierce Heights, a zoning nightmare reducing property values of everywhere it overlooked. Hatman positioned the Lair Legion field team to take it.     â€œLast summary,” the capped crusader prompted Silicone Sally, who knew the interior intimately from her time working as henchwoman of the fortress’ owner.     â€œThe Baroness’ house is almost as well defended as the Lair Mansion,” the zaftig plastic-girl reported. “It should be, since Elizabeth von Zemo had plenty of time to copy your defences while we were masquerading amongst you as the second Citizen Z.”     She glanced at Donar, hemigod of thunder, who stood ready with his enchanted baseball-bat-with-a-nail-in-it. “Wall-reinforcing force fields to prevent access by physical means,” she warned.     â€œThat hast yet to be determined,” promised the angry Ausgardian.     â€œSophisticated anti-teleport shields that could keep out G-Eyed. Nano-bio-screens to prevent microscopic invasion or biological attack, right out of Dr Moo’s winter catalogue. Dimensional wards that could capture even the Shoggoth, courtesy of a contract with Morgosa la Fey. Emergency failsafe doomsday options that even I don’t know about.”     â€œSo standard mega-baddie HQ stuff,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! assessed. “Shark pit and fifteen secret escape exits.”     â€œThat I know of,” Sally confirmed. “Also, I think the sharks might be bionic now. It makes cleaning their pool much easier.”     â€œWe can deal with all of that,” Yuki scoffed. “You’re new to the Legion, Sally, but we’ve been doing this for a long time now.” She turned to consult Hatman. “Attack plan Aardvark?”     â€œShould do it,” the capped crusader agreed. “But first we have that legal nicety of knocking on the front door…”     â€œDrawbridge,” Sally amended.     â€œFront drawbridge and serving the entry warrant.”     â€œThen we kicketh yon door in and smite yon Baroness and all her minions from hither to yon and thence to the farthest reaches of Miserablegitheim,” suggested Donar.     â€œAnd find out once and for all what part Big Liz had to play in Laurie’s loss,” CSFB! agreed.     â€œWon’t she know that we are coming?” Ham-Boy wondered. “Landing a LairJet on her doorstep isn’t exactly subtle.”     â€œThat’s the point,” replied Hatman. “I don’t believe anyone here is feeling subtle today.”     â€œI know I art not mine usual diplomatic self,” agreed Donar.     â€œDeploy,” Yuki called out. “Let’s tick of the nicety and then toss nice in the trash can, okay?”     â€œBut be careful,” Silicone Sally warned. Of all those present, she knew best of what her former employer was capable. As much as Sally Rezilyant yearned for a show-down with the villain who had screwed up her life as much as the accident that had turned her whole form into pliant plastic, she still felt a sense of impending danger heading into Schloss Shreckhausen.     Seven Legionnaires deployed. Hatman headed across the dropped doorbridge to hammer on the castle door.     It opened before he got there. An attractive young woman in an impractical corset came out to meet him. “Hi, Jay,” the former fetishwear model smiled at the Canadian do-gooder. “Long time, no see. You never call.”     â€œVicki Vee,” Yuki Shiro recognised. “VelcroVixen! So von Zemo has called in the Purveyors of Peril to back her up.”     â€œEasy, easy,” VV told the Legion. “It’s just me. And, as you may be aware, I received a full amnesty after many hours of hard, sweaty interrogation by senior members of the Justice Department. There are no outstanding warrants. Indeed, none of the Justice Department could even stand.”     Yuki checked her internal database. The dropped charges and plea-bargain amnesties were matters of record. Either VelcroVixen was as athletic as her files suggested or there had been a suspicious retcon; possibly both.     â€œDoesn’t matter whether you stand there pointing your weapons at us or not, VV,” CSFB! promised her. “We’re here for the Zemo zeppelin. So head on down to your usual corner on 5th and Englehart and…”     Hatman presented the legal order to the villainess. “We have an entry judgement,” he warned. “Trying to stop us would be illegal.”     Vicki Vee inspected the document. “Signed by Judge Wellinder on a recommendation by Commissioner Graham at 9.12 this morning,” she recognised. She produced a similar paper from her bustier. “Over-ruled by Judge Harkney at the recommendation of the Governor at 9.22.”     A second figure emerged from the castle, an aged man in an expensive suit, leaning on a cane. He slapped another sheet into Hatman’s hand. “Restraining order keeping you 200 yards away from this property and from harassing her Excellency,” he reported.     Silicone Sally recognised the attorney. “Old Mr Grabbit, of Sneek, Grabbit, and Thuggery. They’ve wheeled out a senior partner!”     â€œYes they have,” agreed the legal vulture. “And you are trespassing.” ***     Unsurprisingly, all the alarms at the Moon Public Library were silent. That didn’t mean they weren’t effective.     â€œWhat is it, D.D.?” demanded A.L.F.RED, the facility’s primary sentry robot. “I’m getting a major jamming field obfuscation around Landing Pad Chaucer.”     The Lunar repository’s organising artificial intelligence rewrote the sensor software, drawing upon a catalogue of technical fixes that numbered into the millions. The survey nodes defuzzed to reveal a woman standing beside a Paradopolis ghost taxi, tapping her foot impatiently. She was dressed in a long dark purple coat with Dalmatian-spotted fur collar.     â€œBaroness Elizabeth Sweetwater Dewdrop Zemo von Saxe-Lurkburg-Schreckhausen,” D.D. identified. “She’s on Lee’s banned list. She’s not allowed in here.”     â€œSo it’s green for go on nuclear options,” the over-violent security unit checked.     â€œWait. The ghost cab might not survive that kind of firepower. And I’m reading life-force inside it, not just the undead cabbie. Let me try and refine the scans past that vehicle’s etheric shell. Yes, there a human in the trunk. And apparently a basket of puppies.”     Baroness von Zemo faced the primary security camera. “Have you discovered my luggage yet?” she demanded. “Allow me access to your collection or the pets get it. Both the dogs and ManMan’s cuddle toy.”     â€œOkay, that’s Alice White, the former supervillain known as the Widget. She’s gagged and cuffed. Actually, so are the puppies,” D.D. reported. “Um…”     â€œCome on,” the Baroness called impatiently. “It’s not like Lee Bookman will care, given that he’s dead. You have no Librarian anymore, since you pluckily decided to secede from the Interplanetary Order of Librarians and go your own way. You’re still in legal limbo, so no replacement staff. No help if you are suddenly invaded by Z’Sox mercenaries. No way of preventing portable Negativity Zone gates proliferating around your real estate. You may wish to rethink your former boss’ policies and procedures.”     â€œYeah, I can nuke her,” A.L.F.RED decided. “Shame about the puppies, but that’s the price of liberty.”     â€œBaroness von Zemo,” D.D. warned. “You are trespassing on this facility and we are authorised to defend it with lethal force. Do not mistake us for one of your Earth-based superhero enclaves. Our Libraries have been defending themselves from unauthorised intruders since before your planet coalesced from space dust.”     â€œThat’s how you want to play it?” the unauthorised intruder asked. “Well, if I have to erase your programming and destroy large swathes of your installation just to get more data about the Hooded Hood’s intentions…”     â€œThe Hooded Hood is a subscriber on our list. You are not.”     The Baroness paused. “Wait… Ioldobaoth gets to go in there but not me? How is that fair?”     â€œWell, he did retcon Lee being not-executed by his IOL superiors that one time, and then help us preserve the entire master database,” D.D. pointed out.     â€œAnd he beat the crap outta the Parody Master on intergalactic TV,” snickered A.l.F.RED. “I could just watch that on loop.”     â€œAnd he applied for a card in the proper manner. Mr Hazelwood is a member also.”     Elizabeth von Zemo took a breath. “I do not intend to join your book of the month club. I require specific cross-reference data regarding your prestige member the Hooded Hood. I intend to get that information, whether that involves your co-operation or a smoking crater inside the Mare Ingenii. You have now reached the maximum amount of irritation it is possible to cause me without property damage. And the loss of dear little puppies. And whatever the Widget’s actual name turns out to be. You have five seconds.”     â€œYeah?” snarled A.L.F.RED. “Then you got three.”     â€œTwo,” counted the Baroness. She reached for her pocket.     â€œOne!”     Then came the explosion. ***     The freighter was registered from the Republic of Spango, held by a Borovian shell company operated out of Badripoor. It docked in Gothametropolis’ old harbour where the customs people understood the cash value of forgetting certain checks. Within three hours the freight was being unloaded, vanishing off to supply some of Boss Antony “Deadeyes” Ventredi’s unsanctioned enterprises.     An hour after that a lone figure slipped down the gangway with a gunny sack over his shoulder and disappeared amongst the warehouses that lined the waterfront.     His name was Rupert Oliver. He sweated a lot where his pain meds didn’t quite compensate for the agony in his unbreakable metallic joints. He shivered because he hadn’t yet scored a hit of illegal metahuman drug Shazam! to temporarily restore his lost mutate powers.     By tonight that would all be fixed, and the savage Jumbuck would be ready to kill the man he’d travelled across half the world to end. ***     â€œYou have to kill me,” the girl said, her hunger-sunken eyes big and dark. “Kill me and live.”     The madman shook his head. “Morningstar does not win. I shall not allow it.”     â€œWe will both die here. I’ve seen what I become. You could still escape. There are… other you’s. I’ve met them: the Marquis, the cowled villain, the scholar… You could become one of them.”         â€œIndeed. Dr Morningstar hopes that I shall. But which? The cruel nobleman who seduced you? The ranting malefactor with the absurd hubris? The idealist medic who saves no-one? Oh, there are dozens of possibilities. I’ve dreamed them all in my fevered madness. And all of them would serve Morningstar and further his schemes.”     The victim couldn’t press any closer. She clung to the tortured madman as her last anchor on sanity. “When that monster truly conquers this place, when he understands and commands its heart… he will have no limits.”     â€œAll the more reason to stop him.”     â€œWe’re dying here! Don’t you understand it? Our bodies are shutting down with malnutrition. We can’t stand. Soon we won’t be able to speak. Then our minds will go. Go further, I mean.”     â€œYes. I see that. I… I know what to do.”     â€œYou have to kill me. You have to take the deal.”     â€œI will not.”     â€œI want you to live. I love you.”     The madman had flinched less at the lash. “If you really love me, then you are indeed lost.”     â€œI don’t understand? I think my mind is going, just as my memory did. Please, tell me what you mean.”     â€œIf you love me, if your love is strong enough, bright enough to carry even across the threshold into death, into that pale wraith that you are condemned to become…”     â€œIt is. It must be.”     â€œIf you can do that, then there is one thing that sad spirit can accomplish.”     â€œTell me what.”     â€œWe found the heart of this place in our mad journeys, did we not? The centre of the madness that is Herringcarp? You must go there again. And this is what you must do…”     The madman whispered in her ear, and what he spoke was madness.     â€œWill you kill me then?” the victim begged. “So I can do it. Don’t leave me to this agony of slow torment, to Morningstar’s amusement. End my life. Let me go. It is the only way you can love me.”     The madman pressed his face into her dark mane so she wouldn’t see him weep. “I will kill you, Amnesia. But I will never take the deal.”     â€œYou must become one of your futures.”     â€œNo,” promised the madman. “None of them could defy and defeat Morningstar. I must become all of them.”     He kissed her, dry scabbed lips on dry scabbed lips. Then he circled his hands around her neck and sent her on her mission. ***     Whatever the Baroness was about to do was interrupted by a sudden screeching dimensional portal that appeared at her feet. The short-frequency shunt gate pinched timespace between the Moon Public Library’s Landing Pad Chaucer and a waste recycling plant’s farm by-products processing tank in Toledo.     For a moment, the Baroness’ anti-teleport wearables resisted the shift. They were state of the art, set to over-ride all current forms of dimension-folding and twin-point space pairing. Unfortunately, Al B. Harper had just developed an entirely new method of fracturing the continuum based upon his recent sojourn beyond the upper shell of hyperspace. Elizabeth vanished with a shriek through the transient portal beneath her.     â€œNeat,” admitted A.L.F.RED to D.D. “Did you do that?”     D.D. shook her head. “No. It used one of Lee’s exception codes to over-ride our shift suppressors. I’m getting a dimensional shunt connection request from Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises. They want to visit.” She triggered the appropriate connection routines. “I’m granting them access to the main repository.”     A livid square of tortured timespace appeared in one of the wall-archways designated for interface. Dr Al B. Harper, Miss Framlicker, and ManMan hastened through. Still at the EEE firehouse, engineer Amy Aston remained to abuse the transfer equipment. Her encouragement of the technology involved both foul language and large spanners.     â€œSorry about the unauthorised villainess,” the archscientist told D.D. and A.L.F.RED. “She just set off a bomb in our conference room.”     â€œOn that subject,” ManMan ventured, “is there a special reason we’re not dead?”     â€œIt was a dimensional shunt bomb,” Miss F noted absently. “If we didn’t contain dimensional flares as a matter of course, Alaric would kill us off about six times a day.”     â€œYou might want to check if that bomb really did come from the Baroness, too,” advised Knifey, ManMan’s talking blade. “She had no means of getting it there past your defences, and it’s not really her style.”     â€œHave you any idea what she was ranting about when she wanted to come in?” D.D. asked.     â€œWe could have asked that cabbie if he hadn’t just headed home,” A.L.F.RED reported as the ghost taxi shimmered away. “Don’t worry, he let that Widget woman out of the trunk into the back seat for the return trip. I think he liked her small puppies.”     â€œHey!” objected ManMan. “Alice might be petite but…”     â€œThe Baroness had brought a basket of dogs as hostages,” D.D. explained hastily. “Now I’m reviewing the scans, I see she’d injected them with a fast-replicated nanovirus so when we brought them in here they could over-run our hardware systems. I’ll e-mail an anti-malware patch after them so they’ll be fine.”     â€œCan you do anything for his girlfriend’s puppies too?” A.L.F.RED went there.     The alarm fortunately silently chimed again, preventing further dialogue on the topic.     â€œThat von Zemo woman is persistent,” D.D. noted. “She’s back again, in a new costume, and this time she has around three thousand sentient computer entities from the Reticulum Matrix deployed in invasion formation ready to infiltrate our software firewalls.”     Al B. Harper perked up. “Really? ‘Cause Miss F and I were speculating with Hallie how we would deal with an invasion of alien A.I.s after the trouble we had with Nexus 935 during the Parody War. I’ve got some great ideas that…”     â€œMPL and EEE annoyances,” the Baroness announced, “I am quite ready to move you up my elimination to-do list right now unless you acquiesce to my demands. I have had a very trying twenty-four hours and some light evisceration would help me de-stress.”     â€œSo I’m thinking reverse incursion standing wave and a modified dark matter conversion helix,” the archscientist gabbled to Miss F.     â€œâ€Squeeze the whole thing through a calibrating fusion event?” Miss F checked. “I’ll see if Amy has enough paperclips.”     â€œThis is D.D., Baroness. This facility is fully operational and prepared to fragment any incursion from Reticulan intruders. Be warned that I am now setting Protocol Asimov, so use of lethal patches is authorised.”     â€œPerhaps at this point we should just talk to her?” suggested Knifey, ManMan’s sentient blade. “Joe, get me out there so I can have dialogue with the psychotic megalomaniac please.”     â€œI thought his girlfriend went home in a ghost taxi,” A.L.F.RED commented.     â€œThe other one, whose cosplay choices do require significant corset reinforcements,” Miss Framlicker clarified.     â€œSo, you want me to go out into the, um, moon vacuum to face down the mad world-conqueror and her army of alien killer computers?” ManMan asked Knifey.     â€œYou wanted me back,” the knife pointed out. “Why else go to all that trouble with…”     â€œWe don’t talk about Fight Club,” Joe Pepper cut in hastily. “Or, y’know-what. Remember what we were told?” The Elvis impersonator sighed. “Let’s just go out there and be eviscerated.”     â€œThe Library’s atmospheric sheath will protect you,” D.D. assured him. “Well, unless she goes nuclear.”     Miss Framlicker approved. “While Mr Pepper is trying not to be evaporated in a nuclear holocaust there are a few references we do need to track down,” she told the Moon Public Library’s operating system. “The Baroness got a peek at the Hood’s long term plans. She was right to be concerned about a few of them.” She handed over a data pad. “Could you cross-check your indexes for these things?”     â€œWhat’s wrong with going nuclear?” A.L.F.RED demanded. “If they glow in the dark they’re easier to hit.” ***     â€œThis file room is quite big,” Vinnie de Soth acknowledged. “Was it always so big?”     â€œNot originally,” Hallie admitted. “First off it was just a cupboard that Lisa used for… recreational purposes. Later on it got expanded when the Librarian joined the LL and we invested in Kool-Whip removal technology. Then when we were fighting the Parody War and the Lair Mansion was effectively co-ordinating the international response, Liu Xi and the Shoggoth did something to expand our records space.”     â€œIt was only a matter of speaking to it strictly,” the Manga Shoggoth explained from behind the bandages that made him look like the Invisible Man, “and scolding it for insisting on those ridiculous rules about the maximum number of dimensions.”     The Lair Legion File Room was now a connected series of near-identical secure storage vaults beneath the Trophy Room. The exception was the first chamber, which was also set up as an office, classification space, and records restoration workshop. That room smelled of book glue and organisation. The whole area was both neat and cluttered at the same time.     â€œI don’t think there has been much done down here since Mr Bookman died,” Marie Murcheson told Vinnie and the Shoggoth.     â€œNot much need,” Hallie supplied. “I keep all the records electronically these days, with secure off-site backups that we know the hard way can survive our data core being destroyed. It seemed best to leave this place as-is until D.D. and A.L.F.RED felt able to remove their Library technology back to the Moon.”     Vinnie looked curiously at the little folded Origami parchments and circuit-inlaid index volumes on the Librarian’s reading desk.     â€œThose are actually similar to my Movie Gun technology,” Hallie explained. “The paper somehow makes 3D copies of any kind of records and saves them so they can be replicated in the Lunar Public Library on the dark side of the Moon. It’s sophisticated stuff, derived by the Intergalactic Order of Librarians from left-over tech from the Second Oldest Race, who I guess got it from the Celestian Space Robots themselves. That’s why D.D. will want to evacuate it at some point.”     â€œWhy isn’t it already gone?” Goldeneyed wondered. He was still feeling sour from not being allowed on the Beth von Zemo raid, but Hatman and Yuki had declared him too emotionally invested to make the team.     Vinnie de Soth, the Legion’s jobbing occultist, answered his question. “Clearing the file room out would acknowledge that Lee is really dead. D.D. is an artificial intelligence but she has real feelings.”     â€œThat can be a complete bummer,” Hallie agreed.     Marie listened to the walls. “I cannot hear any kind of whispering such as Tandi reported there being in here,” she admitted. “Nor am I feeling any kind of anomaly.”     â€œSame here,” agreed Vinnie de Soth. “Just the baseline occult potential of Parody Island, one of the big five ley nodes of old Parodiopolis and former repository of a Sleeping Celestian. And that was a pretty inaccurate use of the word ‘just’.”     â€œI think we all understood that when I got plugged into a pain doorway to project a defence shield against the Parody Master around the whole solar system,” G-Eyed shuddered. “Or even before that, when the Celestian protections here brought Marie back as a banshee to guard the site. And then they resurrected Hallie as an avatar too.”     â€œThe house likes them,” the Shoggoth explained. “It likes to have pets.”     Vinnie moved quickly on. “Point is, my initial divinations aren’t picking up any occult activity except what I’d expect. Shoggy?”     â€œNothing,” agreed the Shoggoth. “Although the noise from the Resolution War might be drowning out some of my perceptions.”     â€œThe what now?” G-Eyed objected. “You mean the Parody War. We finished that.”     â€œI do like the colour of these walls,” the Shoggoth rumbled. “They smell lovely.”     â€œFull range scans of this area aren’t picking up any anomalies,” Hallie checked. “I’ll ask Sir Mumphrey to scan for temporal stuff when he gets back from… when he gets back.”     Marie laid a comforting hand on the A.I.’s hard-light holographic arm. “Do not fear. Visionary and the others will be alright in Herringcarp Asylum.” ***     The walls of the oubliette were of mortared stone. The bones in the madman’s hands gouged holes between the bricks where he could press his tattered fingers. Using his lover’s femurs as climbing tools he scaled the pit and snapped back the cage bolt.     The warders discovered him as he climbed clear of the shaft. The emaciated, starved, scar-laced wretch seemed no match for his torturers. Yet with his lover’s bones he carved them apart, smashed skulls, slit bellies. He continued to tear at his tormentors long after they were dead.     A course grey rag hung over a rack of tools. He swathed himself in it against the bitter dungeon chill. He pinned it at his neck with his lover’s fingerbone, staining the collar with her blood and his own. He drew the folds up around his head, forming a cowl that shadowed his face.     He passed out of the pit chamber into the lowest of the prison levels. He used the jailors’ keys to open cells. “Follow me,” he told what he found inside.     When more wardens came they fell beneath a tide of nightmares, a frenzied tearing, clawing horde whose humanity had been whipped and branded away. Through the corridors the freed horrors went, swelling their numbers, destroying those who had hurt them, taking their time.     When they reached ground level they burst forth like creatures from hell, falling upon the staff of the institution, upon visitors and jailors alike. The man who had loosed them let them run free. He turned his attention to the stairs that led to the Chief Surgeon’s office. He had an appointment with Dr Morningstar.     The master of Herringcarp awaited him. “Very good,” he told the madman. “So who shall you be? So many choices.”     â€œYou think I shall lead you to this place’s heart of mystery,” the hooded monster observed. “Madness cannot be discovered so. It can only be earned, experienced, embraced.”     â€œTrain a hound to hunt and let it run,” sneered the doctor. “There is no other reason for your existence.”     â€œI disagree. You have made an error. Your experiment is flawed.”     â€œIndeed? How so? Am I now to be lectured by a lunatic?”     â€œNo. You will be schooled by a genius.”     â€œA madman and a villain.”     â€œA madman and an archvillain.”     â€œThat then is your choice? How you define yourself and your world?”     The cowled intruder chuckled unpleasantly. “Why need I define it? Why one choice? Why not, if I do not approve an outcome, rewrite it again? Why not redefine what has passed and shape what is to come? Madness, you think? Yes, now you begin to glimpse the heart of what you sought. You deal me pain and sorrow and malice? I shall own them and make them my own. You steal from me that which I hold dear? My mind is taken but it serves me still. My will is tested but it will destroy you.”     Dr Morningstar watched the display in fascination. “Do pardon me while I take notes. This is remarkable. You are exceeding even my wildest expectations.”     â€œOh, Morningstar, I have scarcely even begun,” promised the madman. “You think that my destroying Amnesia has given me to you.” His lips curled into a feral smile. “How little you know about love.”     â€œLove?” Now the doctor smiled. “That illusion will always destroy you.”     â€œI think not. There is a place where love and madness meets. Where madness and love discover revelation. That is where I sent Amnesia.”     The skies above Herringcarp darkened. The screams from the slaughter below peaked and then fell silent. Every glass object in Morningstar’s office shattered. A reflective black rectangle swelled behind the madman, framing him. It was almost a portal.     â€œFascinating,” judged Dr Morningstar. “You are projecting you own delusions now. This is beyond what I had hoped when I cut apart your brain. More than I dreamed I might achieve as I tore up your soul.”     â€œIt was delusion. It was your doing. I am retrospectively altering the continuity of events, though. Now it is my doing, my own choice. I embrace my wounds. I own them. And it is delusion no more.” The madman turned and plunged his arm through the midnight reflection behind him and called, “Come forth, spirit of Herringcarp. I summon thee!”     The victim came through the portal, her cold translucent fingers wrapped around his own. Her hair was whipped by unseen gales of madness. Her tattered shift flickered with witchfire flecks.     Dr Morningstar took a step back. The first uncertainty splashed over him.     â€œYou have been to Herringcarp’s heart?” the madman in the cowl asked the ghost. “You found it?”     The words were cold and terrible on her lips, dragged from graveyard vigils and ancient torment. “I have found its heart… Ioldabaoth. It is you.”     â€œNo,” denied Morningstar. “Not him. He is merely a tool, a ploy. An experiment that escaped its cage.”     Amnesia kissed the madman that stood at madness’ core. Millions of different endings fluttered round them. Emerald light passed between their lips.     The madman’s eyes glowed green. ***     â€œEr, hi,” Yeoville Simonise Edric Flapjack ventured cautiously. Getting between the master and his wrath of was huge no-no for a Carpathian lackey, one that evolution has helped engrave upon generations of his ancestors, but right now the hunchbacked retainer had a significant problem. Which master or masters was he supposed to get behind and cackle for? “If I could just suicidally interject for a moment?”     â€œNot now, man,” Mumphrey snarled.     â€œBegone, minion,” intoned the Hooded Hood.     â€œWhat is it, Flapjack?” Liu Xi asked.     â€œI was just, well, I’ve got this huge headache and this time it’s nothing to do with hammering nails up my nose for a bet with dull thud. Y’see, I’m kind of the LL’s major domo so I’m all team Legion. But before that I was the Hooded Hood’s main hench, so I’m also ‘go cowled crime czar’. Is there any way you could not annihilate each other? Please?”     â€œWe came to negotiate some kind of settlement,” Ebony pointed out. “Miss Shellett ventured here with the best of intentions, but unwisely, spurred by grief and misplaced guilt.”     â€œBecause she didn’t cause what happened to Laurie,” Liu Xi pointed out. “You did, Hood.”     The priestess of the Shoggoth cult shot the young elementalist a warning glance. “This could all be averted if we could only talk in a civilised manner, retrieve Beth, and go.”     â€œExcept for Laurie being damned as a ghost in this lunatic asylum,” Visionary objected. “That’s not acceptable at all!”     â€œYou believe I could do something to avert that?” the Hood enquired. His voice sounded more raw than usual. “You think I wish that torment upon her?”     â€œHardly the first time you’ve let someone suffer for your wider goals, sirrah,” Sir Mumphrey accused. “And now you want Miss Shellett running through your plots. She’s suffered enough, damn you!”     â€œWe’re trying to find a peaceful solution, Mr Winkelweald,” Ebony offered. “Won’t you work with us for once?”     â€œPlease boss, don’t retcon them,” Flapjack begged.     â€œThe Hood can’t affect me with his powers,” Mumphrey warned. “Demonstrated that on his annoying replacement, what?”     â€œWell not directly, he can’t, no,” the hunchbacked butler agreed. “But that doesn’t stop him shaping the whole world around you. Samantha’s future. Her friends Magweed and Griffin. Harlagaz Donarson. Asil Ashling. The Caphans. The robot and A.I. rights debate. There’s literally millions of nasty things he can do without ever directly affecting you, Sir Mumphrey. That Iscanean Went might not have known how…”     â€œBut Ioldabaoth Winkelweald does,” Liu Xi shuddered. She wondered how much of her life he had already shaped. Her grandfather, the Void Scholar? Exu the Doomherald? Lord Slithis the necromancer? Vinnie de Soth? Would she ever know?     â€œDoesn’t matter,” Sir Mumphrey insisted. “Don’t back down from archvillains. Isn’t done. If the Hood wants to push it then we’ll push back. Line in the sand. Total war if that’s what’s required, free the world of this scheming knave once and for all. Enough said.”     â€œNo! Not enough said,” Flapjack panicked. “Ebony, say some more!”     â€œWe came here for Beth and Laurie,” Vizh insisted. “We’re not here for your games, Hood. Not this time.”     â€œThey mean it,” Liu Xi amplified. She took a breath. “We mean it.”     â€œMiss Shellett,” Mumphrey returned to his demand. “Produce her, Winkelweald. Now.”     The Hooded Hood’s eyes narrowed. “No.” ***     Old Mr Grabbit examined the over-ruled warrant that the Legion had brought. “Arnie Armbruster’s work? I’m surprised he was sober enough to hold a pen to sign the application.”     â€œWe know what your ‘client’ has done,” Ham-Boy objected. “We know what she did to Laurie Leyton.”     â€œThen I trust you will bring evidence and make a case in the proper form at the appropriate time, young man.” Mr Grabbit regarded the huddle of superheroes on the drawbridge. “In the meantime, expect follow-on litigation about the harm caused to my client by your associate Sir Mumphrey Wilton while she was mentally rewritten and subjected to his regular and extensive sexual assaults.”     â€œYou mean when we were all retconned?” Yuki blurted. “Poor old Sir Mumphrey had to be married to that…”     The lawyer held up a restraining finger. “This is all for the courts to settle, young woman. Perhaps you should concentrate upon regularising your own legitimacy in these United States before attacking a survivor of persistent sexual abuse who has been victimised and terrorised by the metahuman lackeys of her notorious abuser?”     â€œThis is all major BS meant to keep us from searching Schloss Schreckhausen!” CSFB! called it.     â€œI doth hold yon Middlewinter Championships Record for Overarm Casting of Lawyers into the Frothing Foam of Djrowningfjiord,” Donar offered.     â€œNo! Hold on!” Ham-Boy intervened, getting between the Ausgardian and the attorney, then realising where he was. “Er, I mean, please, Mr Donar. Thing is, if those papers are legal then we can’t go in. We’re the good guys. We have to obey the law.”     â€œSometimes,” muttered Yuki.     VelcroVixen smirked. “Oh, I like this newbie,” she approved. “So straight. So stiff. I’m a sucker for a straight-shooter.” She winked at HB. “Call me. I’m in the rogues gallery.”     â€œGet shots first,” CSFB! advised. “I’m the last guy to try slut-shaming, but VV’s not a hot date, she’s a poisonous one.”     â€œYour slanderous and actionable remarks are noted,” Mr Grabbit replied. He served more papers. “This sets out the Baroness’ rightful patent claim to the key technologies illegally pirated for Ms Shiro’s brain-body cyborg interface, utilised without licence. We will be seeking a shutdown of those systems. Here is notification countersigned by the Mayer of Gothametropolis declaring Mr Hatman’s hostel for odious young people to be structurally unsafe and requiring its closure and immediate demolition. Here is a citation for Mr CrazySugarFreakBoy! for indecent exposure on last night’s television broadcasts. Civil compensation claims for emotional damage will follow.”     â€œThis is the Baroness’ defence?” Ham-Boy asked in outrage. “She tried to hide behind the law? Her?”     â€œHer Excellency is exercising her legal rights as a citizen and Parody War hero,” Mr Grabbit countered. He served another writ on Silicone Sally while she watched appalled. “This warns of intention to sue regarding breach of non-disclosure agreements signed during your lucrative employment by my client, of your removing proprietary bio-technology from these premises in defiance of contract…”     â€œYou mean the mind-bending cocktail of chemicals that the Baroness injected into me to keep me obedient!” Sally shouted.     VelcroVixen grinned. “We’ll discuss it in court, in the full spotlight of world media. Months of litigation, of dissecting everything you ever did. Probably dissecting of you by the end, since that silicone form of yours has also been patented by the Baroness now.” She shrugged. “You picked a bad time to be a good girl, kid.”     Hatman reached into his hatily belt and produced a moth-eaten 1932 English barrister’s wig. A faded tag inside held a smudged name that may have read H. Rum-. The capped crusader dragged it on, felt from a case of small cigars he did not have, and gripped lapels that were not part of his uniform.     â€œObjection! If I may interrupt my learned friend for one moment,” he announced, “there are a few matters it may be useful to place on record.”     Grabbit looked suspiciously at Hatman.     Jay settled in for the long haul. “There is a golden thread that runs through British justice…” he began.     â€œThis could take a while,” Yuki warned VelcoVixen. “If you have other urgent skanking to do you might want to slut off and call back later.” ***     The malefic sentient software of the Reticulum Matrix glowered from their mobile weapons platforms at the young man in the white flares and open silk shirt who emerged from air lock Austin. “Before you blast me to atoms,” ManMan called, “my talking knife wants you to know that I have a talking knife.”     The mobile weapons platforms backed off. Wireless communications systems flared into intense activity.     â€œOh, come on!” shouted Baroness von Zemo. “This is ManMan. If I wanted less threatening and effective I’d have to kidnap Semi-Transparent Lad or Pudu Lad!”     The Reticulum Matrix shifted further away from the talking knife. They had databases unseen by anyone in this quadrant of the galaxy.     â€œBaroness, can we talk?” Joe Pepper asked the irritated villainess. “I’m not real happy about you kidnapping and threatening Alice. You’re probably a bit pissed at being gated into a sess pit. Miss F and Al B. are sore about that disintegration bomb you left in their conference room. Can’t we all get along together?”     Elizabeth von Zemo frowned. “What disintegration bomb? That wasn’t me. Why would I go for something as quick and painless as a disintegration bomb?”     â€œUh, okay. File that away for another time. But apart from that, you want info about the Hooded Hood’s plans. So does Al B. You need stuff from the Moon Public Library. Al B.’s allowed in there and is looking stuff up right now. Blowing apart the facility is kind of unnecessary.”     â€œAnd would require the Matrix to come just a little closer,” Knifey pointed out helpfully.     â€œSo could you, um, take a seat out here and read a magazine or something and we’ll get back to you?” ManMan pleaded.     The Baroness glared at him coldly. “That had better be excellent research,” she conceded through gritted teeth.     â€œShe seems much nicer than Thighmaster, doesn’t she?” Knifey commented to his wielder. ***     â€œOkay, so here’s something,” Vinnie de Soth called out to the investigators in the Legion File Room. “Look at these open books on Lee’s workbench. Look at this last thing he was working on restoring before he… left.”     Hallie scanned the pages. “Some Renaissance polemical tract,” she summarised. “It’s a crude summary of a fictionalised account of some supposed founder of a secret organisation of scholars and free-thinkers.”     â€œThe Improbable College,” the Shoggoth rumbled. “I rather liked them. There was an Irish barwench who eventually became an Austernal flying vehicle, and that troubled scholar who was devoured by ghouls and turned into…”     â€œThe Confraternity of the Improbable College was rather interesting,” Marie Murcheson mentioned. “They were supposed to be descendants of the suppressed Knights Improbablar – our history’s version of the knights, not the Order that survived in Sir Jaboz’ alternate reality. Some sources claim that the Improbablars even got to the new world, here to America. The Abyssal Greye once claimed they made that tomb we visited yesterday.”     Hallie had bad memories of that place, and knew Marie had too. “So they were evil.”     â€œI don’t think so,” Vinnie intervened. He carefully leafed through the fragile volume that Lee Bookman had been restoring. “This is one of the volumes that was circulating in the 1700s, one of the editions banned by the Church of Conformity that led the inquisition. It’s an allegorical story about a legendary founder of the Improbable College two hundred or more years earlier still. The so-called Visionatus Improbablus.”     â€œThe recurrence of names similar to those of our Legion through history still disturbs me,” G-Eyed admitted. “I know it’s because there were temporal echoes of use sent up and down the timeline, but it’s still spooky. Anyhow, this Visionatus guy was definitely fake, right?”     â€œAllegorical isn’t the same as fake,” Vinnie objected.     â€œThe point is,” Hallie pressed on, “there was evidently whispering in this file room until yesterday, when Marie took a party down to the supposed tomb of this supposed founder of this supposed Improbable College. Then it all went quiet.”     â€œExcept both you and I felt a… a flicker. Something happened,” Marie insisted.     The Shoggoth licked a wall. “It is possible that the bit of contingency left by the Celestials that deployed Miss Murcheson and Miss Hallie and tangled them in the island’s continuum was inspected and temporarily replicated,” he offered. “It would be hard to tell without ketchup.”     G-Eyed clenched his fists. “Look, Laurie’s gone. Beth’s with the Hooded Hood. The team is taking on Baroness von Zemo. We’re here in a dusty box-room tasting wallpaper. What is the point?”     â€œWe have done all we can down here for now,” Vinnie agreed. “Let’s head to the Operations Room and try a deep-scan analysis of whatever Celestial energies we can actually track and comprehend, and stack it in a corner for Al B. to go nuts over. And then maybe find Bry some valium.”     â€œYou were the one who set Laurie up with an offer she couldn’t refuse!” G-Eyed accused the acting sorcerer supreme.     Vinnie’s brows furrowed and his face darkened. “Gave Lisette a chance to be the hero she wanted to be and get some closure? Yeah, I did.”     â€œMaybe we all need a break,” Hallie suggested tactfully.     G-eyed glared at Vinnie. “Maybe we do,” he agreed, then vanished in a golden flash.     â€œIf not ketchup then mustard. And lithium,” added the Shoggoth.     Marie shepherded Vinnie back towards the living room. Hallie returned to monitor the two field ops currently underway. The Shoggoth folded into himself and reappeared in his favourite bucket inside his elder temple. The file room was empty once again.     The origami data replicators fluttered and began to move. They shunted the Celestian data they had borrowed into the index codices on the Librarian’s desk.     There was whispering. Writing moved across the walls and cabinets, flowing onto the reading desk.     Then there was silence. ***     â€œHere’s the thing,” Al B. rattled off. “The Hood gathered six primal power fragments called Insanity Stones. He stole or borrowed the energies necessary to unite them again as a missile against the Wonderwall around the Parodyverse. How is he going to calculate the trajectory? Where is he getting the velocity to fire the projectile?”     His string of scrawled felt tip calculations on a library table were quietly absorbed and filed as he finished with them. Miss Framlicker pulled more tables over so he could continue his formulae. “The Library has some useful stuff on the Interdimensional Vortex,” she reported, laying the stats beside Al’s scribbles. “Look at the vectors resulting from certain planar upheavals.”     The archscientist frowned. “Okay, so the restoration of the Dreary Dimension affected that disruption in the plane of Corposant Fire. Also the shifting of Amazon Isle to block one back door into the Parodyverse. Some serious fallout from Crisis Across Infinite Parody Earths and the various temporary dimensional hook-ups it caused. The crash of the Esperine reality into the Swordrealms. There’s the upheaval caused by the destruction of hundreds of alternate-Earths. Then there’s the reshaping of the netherworlds because of the current hell-wars. All of that was massively affected by the destruction of the Conceptual Plane fighting the Parody War…” He paused. “There’s quite a bit of missing narrative force here.”     â€œEnough to fire off an Insanity Bullet?” Miss F speculated.     â€œUm, exactly that much,” Al B. admitted. “As for calculating the trajectory… do you have those logs from the fall of the Observers?”     D.D. moved forward. “We do. But only because Mr Winkelweald donated them to the collection. He has managed to do a sterling piece of work in salvaging some of that before the Parody Master destroyed them. He even managed to get us a copy of the data that the Order of the Observing Eye took during that last junior teams training contest.”     â€œWhich means the Hood went to trouble to get hold of genetic templates for damn near every superhero and villain that ever existed,” Miss Framlicker pointed out.     â€œHe’d need access to the biggest mainframe in existence to calculate the exact co-ordinates to crack the Wonderwall,” the archscientist pointed out.     â€œYou mean like that time he got into the Celestian Space Robots’ staging area?” A.L.F.RED enquired. He drew surprised stares. “What? I like blowing stuff up. Doesn’t mean I’m dumb.”     â€œSo, to summarise,” Miss F said through gritted teeth, “not only does the Hood have the means to forge the item required to crack the barrier around the Parodyverse and the energies to fire it, but also the exact targeting information to hit the spot. Bother.”     She didn’t actually say bother.     â€œHe’s still not quite there,” Al B. calculated. “Forging together those stones would require a crucible the size of half a galaxy. We’d kind of notice if he did that.”     The speculation was interrupted by a plaintive comm-call from ManMan. “Um, guys, any progress? Only the Baroness has now shown me three of her destroy-me rays and I think she may need a bathroom.”     The archscientist filled in the archvillainess on the discussion so far.     â€œThe Dead Galaxy,” spat Elizabeth von Zemo angrily. “Cross reference it.”     D.D. accessed relevant material from the IOL’s galactic database. Some of it was a bit outdated now since this Library’s current embargo, but there was enough to cover the basics. “We think what we now call the Dead Galaxy was the domain of a people only remembered as the Second Oldest Race. They warred with the primal Hero Feeders from Comic-Book Limbo and were more or less erased. The Space Robots sterilised that whole area of space to prevent the Lurkers Below from spreading across the entire Parodyverse.”     â€œYes, we went there with the LL a few years back,” Al B. reported. “Nothing lived there. But…”     â€œBut that makes it an ideal place for forging the Insanity Stones into a single artefact again,” the Baroness suggested acidly. “Hidden from view, ripe with narrative potential, previously tangled in Hooded Hood plots.”     Miss F tapped away at the library information systems, then called D.D. to run much faster deep searches. “Deserted?”, the EEE administrator wondered. “There’s material here to match with stuff we’re getting from Mircandalee Tremensalor’s Travelling Vaudeville and Light Opera Auditorium as it progresses along the galactic rim, and from word coming from Shazana Pel at the Plxtragar Diplomatic Mission.”     â€œWe would appreciate copies of those reports,” D.D. admitted.     â€œSpecially if those Pigeonwarriors are still blowing stuff up,” A.L.F.RED agreed.     â€œThere are… rumours of a new player out there, staging from near or inside the formerly taboo Dead Galaxy,” Miss F revealed.     The Baroness turned and scowled at her allies from the Reticulum Matrix. “You didn’t mention this. Poltroons.”     â€œHere’s a brief clip from a Naicluv spy satellite that caught a ship heading towards the forbidden area,” D.D. discovered. “From it’s configuration it looks like… a dimensional dreadnaught!”     â€œThe Cruel Deceiver,” Al B. identified it, still scribbling. “The vessel that defected to the Hooded Hood.” EEE had been involved in it’s refit during the Parody War.     D.D. summarised the available data. “Captain Karn’s warship. It has also been seen in many of the contended areas in the quadrant of space, including the graveyard worlds of the Shee-Yar. Someone seems to be gathering up many of the planets that were conquered and devastated by the Parody Master. Someone able to intimidate the Skunks, the Skree, the S’Zox, the Traders, all the big players, to back off.”     â€œA conqueror?” asked Miss F.     â€œSometimes. Other times a diplomatic alliance, an economic partner, a mutual defence agreement. It’s not one size fits all – but it is backed with some serious threat from the forbidden zone.”     â€œDoes this new power happen to wear a cowl?” Knifey enquired.     â€œOkay,” ManMan reported over the link. “So Hoody’s got the uber-weapons, the uber-battleship, the galactic empire, the databases of doom, and pretty much every ace in the deck. Suddenly the Baroness’ death rays seem pretty cute. Nah, don’t look at me like that, your Excellency. I’m just saying: this is game over.” ***     â€œThat is enough,” Morningstar decided. He reached for a panel of levers beside his desk. “I am shutting this down. Shutting you down, you nameless abomination!”     â€œI think not.” The madman still held the spectre’s hand, through frost formed there where she absorbed his heat and life. “Your restraints do not work. They have never worked.”     The doctor’s instruments were useless. “Very well,” he snarled. “Let us drop the sham. See what is behind the mask. Behold my true self, and die in that baleful glory!”     â€œYou are nothing more than you seem. You are a petty, limited, small-spirited evil mortal. You always have been. You have tampered with forces beyond your understanding. You have unleashed that which you cannot control.”     â€œWhat? No! Guards! Wardens!”     â€œAnd I have a name, Dr Morningstar. I have many names. Many pasts. Many characters. You may know me as… the Hooded Hood.”     Morningstar scrambled into the corner, his past shredding from him, his futures folding into one inexorable doom.     â€œI am the Hooded Hood. Herringcarp Asylum is mine. The world, all of creation, shall follow on.”     â€œWait! We can deal. I can give you…”     â€œThe Hooded Hood needs nothing more from you. But the ghosts of this place, the dead and damned whom you have tormented… they require vengeance.”     The doctor’s office walls bulged as the lunatics pressed through, overlapping amongst each other, gibbering and howling, clawing out at their captor. Flesh was shredded first, and then the spirit inside. Morningstar was dragged down, into the fabric of the asylum, past time and space to eternity, where madness and malice dwelled intent upon his never-ending torment.     The Hooded Hood watched. His ragged cloak was now whole and unstained, over a neat grey suit. His eyes scarcely flickered with eerie green.     He turned to Amnesia. Already her thin form was tearing away, streamers of herself being pulled after Morningstar into the asylum’s stones.     Already the Hood knew the limits of his power. “I may not redeem you,” he told the spirit of Herringcarp. “Too much would unravel. Too much would be lost.”     Ethereal tears trickled down the phantom’s cheeks.     â€œThough you may forget all, I will not forget you,” the Hood promised. “Thank you for loving me.”     He gestured and dismissed her. He drew his mantle about him and turned to the doctor’s desk. Now it and its chair were a dark wooden throne on a pedestal of malachite. He took his rightful place.     He gathered the madness together and began to scheme. ***     â€œProduce Miss Shellett,” demanded Sir Mumphrey Wilton, his clenched knuckles white.     â€œNo,” refused the Hooded Hood, his arched fingertips pressed tight together.     â€œWhy not?” Ebony asked in her role as averter of apocalypse.     â€œBecause Ms Shellett chose to go there of her own free will, just as you allowed Ms Leyton to make her choice. And because my choice is to be loyal to Amnesia, who has saved my life.” The Hood rose. “You seek to coerce me to help your friend. You feel justified in threatening or using force to do so. I seek to help one of mine. I shall use force if required also.”     Visionary and Mumphrey glared at the cowled crime czar, who glared back.     â€œCan we at least go get her?” offered Liu Xi. “Go into that dungeon and bring her out?”     Ebony saw the trap. “Those tunnels are part of the Hooded Hood’s system of editing out people from continuity. Anyone who goes in there while the Hood himself isn’t retconned away as he was when Visionary and Hatman passed through yesterday risks being erased themselves. He wants the leader of the LL and Sir Mumphrey Wilton to agree to enter.”     â€œThen I’ll go alone,” offered Liu Xi. The Hooded Hood still had plans for her, didn’t he? Or was his plan to destroy her to better motivate Vinnie or Lara or some other of her friends into some kind of doom?     â€œLook, I’ve been around the LL since it was the League of Regulars,” Visionary declared. “I was about when the Hood manipulated Jarvis to sacrifice himself. I was there when he tried to turn Lisa to the dark side. The darker side. We always make the same mistake with him, putting off dealing until another time because right now he’s got the upper hand. Maybe it’s time to draw that line?”     â€œWell said, that man!” approved Sir Mumphrey. “Well, Winkelweald, what’s it to be? Produce the young lady or prepare for a thrashing!”     â€œI think not,” purred the Hooded Hood. “Perhaps you should review Ms Shellett’s wardrobe?”     â€œHer wardrobe?” puzzled Liu Xi. “What she’s wearing?”     Vizh found that his commcard was still allowed to work. “Hallie, check the sensor logs. What was Beth dressed in when she slipped out this morning?”     The Lair Mansion’s resident A.I. had the answer in a minute. “Normal street clothes, Vizh. But underneath she had on Citizen Z’s outfit.”     â€œA rather effective weave of occult origin,” the Hood footnoted. “You may recall it as the garb worn by the tedious Balefire, who gained the ability to channel corposant fire – soulfire. Ms Bonnington, the Fashion Accessory, reshaped it, in exchange for me retconning her not to birth the Celestian Madonna. She no longer remembers the bargain, of course. It was repurposed by Camellia of the Fey in exchange for… well, there was an exchange of which you may someday become aware. All to equip Citizen Z with a means of channelling Herringcarp’s arcane energies through her host body and various weapons.”     â€œSo what?” demanded Liu Xi.     â€œThat is what Beth’s wearing, her only protection,” Ebony recognised, “for as long as the Hood’s retcon is maintained.”     â€œIndeed,” said the Hooded Hood.     â€œHolding Miss Shellett hostage,” sneered Sir Mumphrey. “A coward’s trick, sirrah!”     â€œA sensible precaution given the immature nature of some of my opponents,” the archvillain countered. “Age does not always bring maturity.”     Visionary clenched his fists in frustration. “First off, stay the hell away from my students. Second, why on Earth do you want Beth to suffer any more? Why condemn her when Laurie wouldn’t want that? If Lisette was really your friend, your lover even, then why go after Beth?” He paused and thought for a moment. “What are we missing? Why did you even let us into your Asylum at all?”     Flapjack winked as he grovelled past with a dinner platter. “Why is the table set for six?” he offered helpfully.     â€œNow you ask, Visionary,” the Hooded Hood observed. “Very well. See…” ***     Citizen Z’s batons did not glow with ectoplasmic energy while Beth Shellett wore them. Nor did she have the years of combat training that Lisette was able to use when she’d occupied that same body. But the metal rods still crunched into Thermogogue’s arm very nicely, sending him screaming back, swearing.     Beth didn’t bother to stay behind and make a clever superhero jibe. She ran off as fast as she could down the subtly twisting corridor.     The floor twisted as much as the walls. Eventually Beth was running on what had been the side of the tunnel. The torch brackets were now at her feet.     There was a roar from behind. Beth knew it wasn’t Thermogogue because she heard his strangled scream and its abrupt end. She carried on, desperately hoping that one turning or another would bring her to Laurie, or whatever was left of Laurie in these endless mad corridors.     Spineripper leaped from the shadows to grab her. His claws slid off Citizen Z’s short cape, failing to tear it, and he fell on his face. Beth kicked out once and kept running.     A short way ahead was a crossroads. Spineripper’s noisy pursuit ended as the feral villain was consumed by whatever else tracked the fugitive schoolteacher. Whatever it was swathed itself in shadow and sounded huge and hungry. Beth raced to the junction where she had to make a snap choice.     The shuffling half-ghosts shambled up the corridor to her left, each slipping in and out of reality as it struggled to remain real. To the right the corridor dripped with fresh blood, some of it slowly piling up into humanoid form. Beth almost fled straight ahead until she realised that something razor sharp and unseen was scraping across the dust on the tunnel floor.     Behind her the darkness closed in.     Beth had run out of good choices. She lurched left.     The half-ghosts clutched at her. Most of their hands could not find purchase on CZ’s suit but Beth had not donned the mask. Phantom hands scratched her face and clawed her hair. She was pulled down into the mass. Whatever spectre faded from existence was replaced by another intent on her destruction.     Sickly dancing flames gushed down the corridor like fire on oil. The ghosts around Beth were seared away but she felt no heat at all. Indeed, she was colder than before.     A ragged ghost in a ragged shift floated near her, hair moving in a spectral wind. She was gaunt and wild, but Beth recognised her. “Laurie!”     Amnesia looked on her blankly. The darkness reached the crossroads.     â€œLaurie, it’s me, Beth! Beth Shellett. Your old roomie. Your friend! Laurie!”     Amnesia looked at the black and purple costume the mortal wore, as if it was familiar to her. She looked at Beth hungrily.     â€œC’mon Laurie. This is the time for you to remember. Please! I came here for you. To try and help you. To set you free or… or to set you to rest.”     The darkness gushed forward, spiking out tendrils of grasping shadow.     Amnesia frowned at it. It fell back a pace.     â€œCan you speak?” Beth asked the ghost girl. “Can you remember at all? Is there anything left of you?”     â€œI… I don’t… remember.”     â€œYour name is Laurie. Laurie Leyton. You were once a hero called Lisette. That was your codename. You were once – you are still – my friend.”     â€œI don’t remember.”     â€œYou were betrayed so often. You suffered. From what the Hooded Hood told me, even after you vanished you suffered some more. A lot. You were made into a ghost by this place. Its ghost.”     Amnesia looked blankly past Beth at the darkness beyond. The corridor seemed narrower than before.     â€œThe Hooded Hood arranged for you to become Citizen Z, in this outfit. You wore my body while I was comatose. You were… we were in the Lair Legion. Me in body, you in mind. Can’t you remember? And then you gave it all up, so that I could be healed and whole. And I am, Laurie, because of you.”     Still no response.     â€œTell me what I can do to help you. I can’t leave you like this, to this! It’s not fair!”     â€œLife is not fair,” said Amnesia, who had been well taught it.     â€œDoesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to make it right. Don’t give up, Laurie. You have friends who love you. You’re not forgotten though you don’t remember us. You’re not alone.”     The darkness edged in again. The spirit of Herringcarp was distracted.     â€œBeth?” Amnesia asked, uncertainly. “I don’t… I can’t think…”     â€œYou need a body,” the schoolteacher understood. “Laurie, could you possess me again? Like when I was in a coma? Could you do it now?”     The ghost shook her head.     â€œNot even if I agreed? If I wanted it? I could be like… a lifeboat. I could carry you out of here. Just for a while.”     Amnesia blinked, confused. “I could devour you.”     â€œOf you could just visit, maybe? A room-share? Only maybe not leave your naughty lingerie hanging over the kitchen sink this time?”     â€œI could kill you and take your flesh.”     â€œBut you won’t. You’re my friend too. So if you need to and if you can… come in.”     The darkness surged at Beth. Amnesia stepped into her.     A livid, lurid flash of soulfire seared down the corridors, destroying evil wherever it burned. ***     The Widget jumped up as ManMan returned to his caretaker’s flat. “Joe! I was so worried!”     â€œYou sold me to the Baroness in the first place!”     â€œDoesn’t mean I wasn’t worried, Joe. That’s a mean thing to say. I’m not a monster.” Alice White bit her bottom lip and looked over at the irritated Elvis impersonator. “Do you hate me now?”     ManMan chuckled. He grabbed her and gave her an epic kiss worthy of a Mother of Dragon-Widgets. “Alice, it turns out that the Hooded Hood is going to conquer the Parodyverse. He’s already got the kit and he’s stolen the power and, well, it’s not looking good for the home team. So…” He smooched her again, “I am going to buy you a nice supper for once, and then we are going to play Mal and Inara until we can’t even breathe any more.”     The Widget squeaked a bit as she was grappled, but she did not object. ***     â€œAll I’m saying is, now I want that wig to join the LL,” CSFB! told his team-mates. “Anything that can make Hatty that rude without swearing and wind up a tight-ass lawyer so bad needs a regular slot on the roster. It could team-up with the Sorting Hat and fight crime.”     â€œI think we’ll probably not do that,” Hatman insisted. He still had an urge for cheap red wine and steak and kidney pie.     â€œWe didn’t get into the Baroness’ mansion,” Yuki pointed out.     â€œBut we did get the whole area designated a potential crime scene and cordoned off with no admission behind police tape,” Ham-Boy countered. “That’s going to seriously disrupt the Baroness’ pastry deliveries.”     â€œAnd it wilt rain upon yon domicile for the next forty days and nights without surcease,” added Donar. “With the possibility of rains of toads. And mayhap a whale.”     Yuki thought more carefully about the situation. “Elizabeth von Zemo must be in turmoil,” the cyborg P.I. judged. “Like Sir Mumphrey, she recalls a second set of events for the last eight years. In that history she wasn’t an accessory to Laurie’s death. She didn’t betray the Legion and try to kill Sir Mumphrey. She was almost, if not quite, a hero – accepted if not liked amongst us, respected, useful. Maybe even loved. Now she’s back to being what she was before. That juxtaposition must hurt.”     â€œThat’ll make her more dangerous than ever,” Silicone Sally predicted. I need to talk to her, she thought, but did not say. We are due a conclusion.     â€œWell, any ending that keeps the baroness from the profiterole trolley for a while is okay in my book,” CSFB! grinned. “Plus HB got VV’s number, and that’ll sell on eBay.” ***     Meanwhile, in the year 2262, a furious conqueress tossed a data slug at the malefactor before her. The poor insect squeaked once as it was spattered across the target’s personal force field.     â€œA disintegration warhead is missing from Arsenal Four,” the silver-jumpsuited ruler of the temporal crossroads city Kinkicross pointed out. “The alarms were overridden with an imperial code. Only two people have that code. I didn’t use mine. So…?”     â€œThe devisse wasss required,” hissed the metal-masked tyrant in the high-tech body armour.     â€œOh, for Zod’s sake, take that flaming mask off, Kyza!” the metal-masked tyrant’s mother scolded him. “It’s not big and it’s not clever.”     Kyza the Sub-Conqueror reluctantly released the hatches and hissed his helmet aside. “This is a genuine artefact,” he declared, glowering at the world. “It belonged to Dirth Vortex, you know. It was retrieved from the Dreary Dimension at immense cost. Many lives…”     â€œDon’t care,” Empress Kinki snapped. “What I do care about is that a Class 1 Negation Warhead was extracted from the weapons cache, was loaded into a temporal shunt engine that had been programmed over two laborious decades to bypass a certain building’s chronal shields, and was materialised in your father’s conference room!”     â€œIt would have worked,” sulked Kyza. “They would all have been disintegrated and their atoms deleted from the continuum if I’d been allowed access to the main temporal projectors. As it was, I couldn’t shift back enough accompanying tech to distract that firehouse’s primitive systems…”     â€œYou failed, Kyza! Not only did you fail, but you utilised a resource I had been specially saving up for when I wanted your father specially dead.”     â€œI waited until my brother and sister weren’t there,” the sub-conqueror argued. “Though why you want to preserve those wastes of timelines I do not know. You have me.”     â€œYes, that’s probably the reason,” Kinki snapped.     â€œLook, it was pretty much the last available temporal window to slot an extinction alteration into the timeline of the Radium Age heroes before… well, before you-know-what, when time travel becomes impossible.”     â€œDo you think I don’t know that? That I hadn’t made preparations? That there was not an appropriate lethal response waiting for the very last instant? And now you’ve gone and set Harper and Framlicker on guard. Really, Kyza, I am very disappointed in you. Go to your punishment frame and don’t come out until I tell you.”     â€œBut empress-mother…”     â€œNow, Kyzo.”     The sub-conqueror jammed his helmet back in place and stomped away. “Nexxxt time I ssshall kill them all,” he promised. “And my ridiculous sssiblings. Oh yesss…”     Of course, that assumed there was a next time after you-know-what. ***     Silicone Sally was watching the coverage of G-Eyed and CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s press conference, with Ham-Boy, Hatman, and CSFB! when Sir Mumphrey’s Rolls Royce glided over the long bridge to Parody Island and pulled up on the Lair Mansion forecourt. “They’re back!” she said unnecessarily. “You think…?”     â€œHallie knew they were on their way back,” Yuki reported, appearing from the Operations Room. “If there was a serious problem we’d probably know by now.”     The big car’s door opened and Citizen Z got out. “Uh oh,” Sally breathed     Marie Murcheson raced out of the mansion’s front door and down the steps to confront the spectral superhero. The Lair Banshee ground to an halt a yard from CZ, baffled.     â€œIt’s alright,” Ebony of Nubilia said. “Really,”     â€œHey!” called CSFB! “So you got her back from ol’ Hoody then! Lair Legion Line Down, right?”     Citizen Z pulled off her mask to reveal the short brown hair and restored face of Beth Shellett. “Hello again, everyone,” she declared. “Nice to be back. Um, is it nice, Marie?”     Hallie twinkled into holographic presence. “Vizh?” she called for an update.     â€œUnretconned as far as I know,” the possibly-fake man reported. “Um, I am still seeing you, right? I mean, seeing you seeing you? That’s still a thing?”     â€œIt’s a thing,” Hallie assured him. “A little thing, really. Tiny.”     â€œYou promised to delete those Lisa subroutines.”     Marie Murcheson stared deep into Citizen Z. “Both of you?” she recognised.     â€œTimeshare,” CZ replied. Suddenly she grinned. “It’s Beth’s body so she’s the boss, but when evil is afoot then she wakes me up and suddenly I’m Laurie Leyton, the supernatural, spooky Citizen Z.”     Silicone Sally blanched.     â€œSomething wrong?” Ham-Boy checked with the flexible ex-felon. “Is this about you helping the Baroness to kill her or similar?”     â€œPretty much.” There was the other shoe. “That’s me out of the LL. I’d better try Drury’s offer. I can’t stay around now she knows what I did.”     â€œUm, she’s coming over here. Right towards you.”     â€œCan I run?”     â€œToo late.”     Citizen Z reached them. “Sally Rezilyant. I remember now why I didn’t like you.”     â€œYou sent me to jail,” the flexible felon pointed out.     â€œI did. So you think that makes us quits?”     Sally shook her head in admission. “I don’t think anything can. Not for what I did. Not for what happened to you – both of you. I’m sorry. I’ll get my stuff and go.”     â€œOh no,” Lisette told her. “You don’t get off that easy. Normally you’d have to take me out for a wild night of booze and guys to make it up to me, but since my landlady is a celibate temperancer I guess we’ll have to settle for Plan B.”     â€œUh, what?” Sally asked, as baffled as Marie had been earlier.     CZ prodded Sally’s ample chest. “You have to stay on here. You have to be the best damned superhero you can possibly be. Every day, every moment. You have to make it count. Because I’ll be here watching you. You have to prove yourself to me.”     â€œEr, right.”     â€œThere’s more. When the time comes and I need to move out of Beth, if there’s a big-ass adventure to get me back in my own bod or similar, you’re there, right? Charging along with me into hell or Herringcarp. And if the other Beth, the von Zemo evil bitch variety, hasn’t learned anything from being retcon-married to Sir Mumphrey for eight years and keeps on keeping on like she was before, you’re with me when I take her down. Okay? Deal?”     â€œDeal. I mean, yes.”     Lisette paused and pondered before adding, “I don’t have all the bits of my life back yet, but I know I made some really bad choices. And then I got second chances. They were like gold. Better than gold. I owe people for my second chances. I’m paying them back to you. Make it good.”     Goldeneyed had appeared at the doorway. He watched the confrontation and reconciliation with wide eyes and open mouth.     â€œYes, Bry?” Citizen Z asked him.     â€œLisette?” he ventured. “Or Beth? Which one are you?     â€œWhich do you want me to be?” CZ asked dangerously.     â€œOh, he is so busted,” Hatman murmured to CSFB!     â€œYep,” grinned the wired wonder. “Let me just go get a lawn chair and some cheetos. I want to enjoy this.” ***     Night fell over the damaged city of Paradopolis. The bodies left by the Chain Knight had been cleared from Parody Plaza but it had been a long clean-up for City Police Commissioner Don Graham. He made a last check that everything was under control, stepped under the do-not-cross tapes, and headed off to find his car.     â€œI’m getting too old for this,” he muttered to himself.     â€œNot for much longer, pig,” someone close behind him told him.     Graham recognised the Australian tones. “Rupert Oliver. Jumbuck. I heard you’d slipped out of prison in Worralorra a couple of days ago.”     â€œYeah. I’ve come a long way to kill you, copper.”     Graham considered this. “Rupert Oliver, I’m arresting you on charges of escaping custody and threatening a police officer. You have the right to remain silent, though I doubt you’re smart enough to use it. You have…”     The adamantine-boned lunatic in the killer rabbit costume reached to drag his claws over the Commissioner’s throat.     Instead the howls of the demented damned surged through Jumbuck’s brain, even as crackling green energy flames surged along his unbreakable bones. When he fell quivering and whimpering to the floor it was a mercy.     Don Graham turned round and saw the dark silhouette of Citizen Z. “Thanks,” he breathed. “I was careless letting a giant rabbit impersonator get the drop on me.”     Citizen Z hesitated. Her body language changed. Her short tattered cape stopped fluttering in winds that were not there. The luminous edges of her costume ceased to glow.     She pulled her mask off to reveal her face. “Dad?” she called quietly.     Don Graham pushed his shock aside and embraced his daughter. ***     The Hooded Hood turned away from his Portal of Pretentiousness and let it fade to black.     â€œSo you let Amnesia go,” observed Alwin Hazlewood.     â€œIt is said to be the thing to do,” replied Ioldabaoth Winkelweald, “with one you love.”     The restored Clockwatcher did not reply. After a suitable pause he changed the subject. “You have acquired the six fragments that you sought,” he noted. “The so-called Insanity Stones.”     â€œIndeed.”     â€œAnd the other things your require, the calculations and so forth.”     â€œI have,” the cowled crime czar agreed.     â€œThe Baroness will know. Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises and the Moon Public Library…”     â€œThat is so. That is necessary – even essential. They will be required. Now the next phase may begin.”     â€œShooting whole Earths did not breach the Wonderwall.”     â€œNo. There are still a few more preparations. Have you discerned what I still need to do?”     â€œTo escape the Parodyverse and eliminate its Creators? No, I’m afraid that is beyond me.”     â€œSome of the clues are there, if you dig deep enough,” the Hooded Hood promised. “For now, get some rest. Your ordeals have been retconned but I have allowed you memory of them so that you may add that data to your collection.”     â€œThe ability to revert to that clockwork form may prove useful at some point also,” admitted Clockwatcher. “Goodnight, sir.” He hesitated. “For what it’s worth, I think you did a noble thing with Amnesia.”     â€œDo not repeat that to anyone,” warned the Hood. He did not say whether Mr Hazlewood was right or not.     Then the Hooded Hood sat in his shadowed throne room, staring at a blank dark mirror, quite alone. *** To be continued… *** JJJ's tie in: The Making of an Editorial A Note from the Bench for Queer Customers and Circus Judges: Those puzzled by Hatman’s legal wig (and the meaning of the footnote title here) are referred to the body of work on TV and in books of the late Sir John Clifford Mortimer, CBE QC regarding the unstoppable advocate Rumpole of the Bailey. Given that the seedy barrister is a favourite of our currently-ailing poster JJJ, I thought it might cheer JJJ somewhat to insert a brief cameo at a moment of legal tension. There are few litigations that would not be immeasurably enlivened by the intervention of “never plead guilty” Horace Rumpole. 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 © 2016 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2016 to their creators. This is a work of parody. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works are in fair-use parody and do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. Any proceeds from this work are distributed to charity. 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.

Great settling! I do feel like I need to sit, absorb, and perhaps re-read before replying, but I'll press on anyway.

Some great character bits, Ham-Boy has really come into how own and grown as a Legionnaire hasn't he?

Goldeneyed's reaction was well portrayed, as was his anger and none-to-subtle threat to Vinnie.

Can we drag Bry from his real-life domestic bliss to come here and give us more on G'eyed's take on this? (For that matter, let's drag Hatty here as well - because why not?).

On to the other bits: Did insane Ioldobaoth really eat the flesh and drink the blood from Amnesia's corpse in order to gain the strength he needed to escape? Because that's all sorts of nasty and makes me look at the Hood in a totally different light.

Well, all that aside the Herrigcarp Gothic story was a very good insight into both what had happened to Amnesia, but more importantly, a very good insight into the Hood himself. A brutal origin years in the making.

The way I see it there are two ways you can read his farewell to Amnesia:




I'm not certain which way is the correct way, or maybe I am certain, and I just don't want to accept it.

So, Beth/Laurie are both somewhat better off than before. Presumably that's a win of sorts. Time will tell. The Don/Beth hug at the end was a nice touch.

Vicki Vee was an entertaining problem but did I mention how much lawyers annoy me? I'm so glad Hatman Rumpoled that guy. So. Glad.

ManMan was enjoyable and handled the Baroness well, though there is still the mystery Knifey was told not to talk about to yet be talked about. I do want to see a ManMan, STL and Pudu-Boy team up one day now.

Speaking of mysteries, we never did find out what the weird whispering and writing in the file room was all about. Are you sure this is a conclusion?

It was enjoyable to see our friends on the moon. The reference to D.D.'s emotions being behind the delay in cleaning out the Librarian's stuff was very perceptive of Vinnie.

Lots of hyperlinks here Ian. Thank you (and Rhiannon) for providing them. You may want to check one of the links in this paragraph and edit in the missing HTML:




Corposant Fire. it all comes back to Corposant Fire. Return Moonraker to Life!

Can anyone please give me a reminder of what the six fragments of the Insanity Stones were again? (Yeah, yeah, I know we just read through it last issue).

The obscure references (return of obscure villain the savage Jumbuck (who I really enjoyed by the by) as but one small example) is a reflection of just how deep and rich the lore of the Parodyverse is. It's really epic what has been written here over the years, isn't it?

I do feel compelled to point out that a jumbuck is a sheep, not a rabbit - are we certain he doesn't just have a bad tailor?

So what did the Hood exchange with Camellia le Fey? It was bodily fluids, wasn't it?



Alright, I can put it off no longer. Kyza...

Son of Harper is a Kylo Ren wannabe. Oh joy. Son, I am disappoint. At least he's not into Ponies, I suppose that's something.

Good thing that you-know-what is about to occur and time travel will become impossible!

Yeah, fun to romp though this world again, I'm, as usual, in awe of your ability to weave and plot all these things together. It leaves me wanting more.

Well done, and bravo!

...Perhaps you may avoid a serious talking-to after all with that conclusion. It was nice to see a new status quo for Laurie and Beth both that seems equitable, and really would be a lot of fun to read if the adventures were to continue. Certainly it would make for a most complex love triangle were Goldeneyed around to explore it... I quite liked the scene of Beth finally reuniting with her father as well.

So in your mind, how does the time-share thing work? Do they each fully remember what the other did and experienced? Or is it a bit of a mystery every time they come back?

And is Laurie now no longer Herringcarp's own ghost? Won't the place be jealous and more than a bit peeved that the Lair Mansion gets all the flashy accouterments like ghosts and lighthouses and such, and it didn't even get to keep Amnesia?

The grim flashbacks were super dark, but I survived them all the same. Which is more than I can say about the majority of characters involved in them. I do eventually need to retrieve Wangmundo though... He shares an enemy with someone who will be needing his help one day.

The subplots were all entertaining, although like Al I'm still not clear on the Whispering thing. A set up for the future, I take it?

The EEE/Baroness standoff at the MPL was fun, and did a nice job of laying out the basis for your Resolution War, I thought. The little tag at the end was especially fun, with the third Harper being revealed. Al better not try to reunite with him on any railingless bridges. Although now I want Muffy to have an energy crossbow.

The legal showdown was fun too, despite my never having seen the show it referenced. You always do such a good job with the kind of sleazy legal challenges that could be thrown at the team...

In any event, it was a delightful return to the Parodyverse, wrapped up in some solid resolution and nice character insight into the Hooded Hood with the completion of his origin story at last! Thank you so much for sharing it all with the board!

That set of scenes with Dr. Morningstar finally made me understand the Hood's obsession with taking control of the universe. It gives a new opinion Re: our earlier discussion about it.

And here is where it goes now: If Faite were to happen to speak to the Hood about his plans, she might still mention that control is an illusion. She would tell him that what lies beyond that wall is another prison, where he will be powerless like he was before; and that if he really wants to be there, then he's still not freed himself from Dr. Morningstar. But, she would also note that there is hope for him to reconsider, since he freed Amnesia to make her own choice.

Speaking of Faite, she would approve of Beth's choice as being brave and intelligent. She would also caution Beth that their bond is their lifeline, and not to give it up for anything.

And speaking of the Hood's plans, I know Elizabeth Zemo would have some kind of excuse like not liking being upstaged, but it's starting to sound like she knows the Hood's plan and genuinely wants to stop it. Could even lead to an alliance of sorts.

If Yuki wouldn't have had Hatman there, she probably would have made that lawyer eat both pieces of paper, and gone in anyway. She knows the police will probably just shrug and roll their eyes at yet another person calling to complain about her behavior.

I noticed you mentioned the Trading Alliance (Traders), though they've only been mentioned a few times briefly. But I'll throw in a little reference anyhow:

They'd be very easy to keep at bay - they'd probably stay away voluntarily, because they're basically greedy corporate types who wouldn't see any money in broken and destroyed planets with no resources. They can't sell them anything, they can't mine, and there's not much of value that won't be expensive to locate and obtain.

They also don't trade with aggressive empires/regimes because wars are expensive, and generally those types only value advanced weaponry, which is forbidden to be sold (the Alliance doesn't want their own weapons turned against them).

The last bit I wrote about them, but didn't publish, was that they had a trading dispute among their worlds that escalated until the formerly weak Galactic Government centralized and built a ridiculously powerful fleet to enforce the rules. Secretly, they also built it because they worried about what happens when the next Parody Master comes along with a fleet of Dimensional Dreadnaughts. Even in death, he still sparks an arms race.

Remember, they need a ridiculously powerful fleet because the civilian trading ships are heavily armed enough to fight off a wandering S'Zox fleet alone. They have to be, because trading at the edges of the territory is both highly profitable and risky. To fight their own, the Galactic Government ships are equipped with unknown secret weapons that keep those battles *very* short. And another secret weapon that left one particularly rebellious world a lifeless, still smoking husk.

So why aren't they conquerers with all of that firepower? Easy - because that fleet was unbelievably expensive, and the Galactic Government can't really afford to lose a single one of those ships. So they use them only decisively and sparingly. They try not to even piss off too many of their member worlds, because a lot of combined Trader firepower can probably destroy their expensive fleet.

As interesting and convoluted as ever - and I appreciated the Rumpole reference (although I was never all that fond of the series).

I have made two attempts at emailing the Caphan package - hopefully the second one will succeed...

First impressions and considered opinions are both valuable feedback.




The team really needs a young idealist.




G-Eyed's very much a spontaneous physical-response guy. Vinnie's a planner think-it-out fellow. They're never going to mesh.




I e-mailed round as many folks as I still had addresses for when I first posted this arc. Hatman didn't respond and I think G-Eyed's message was one of those that bounced. But by all means, go prod them.




As far as we know he only used her corpse as a toolkit. So that's alright.




Herringcarp Gothic might possibly make it as a novel one day. Apart from Wangmundo, there are no other people's cast in it at all.










With archvillains it is always best to leave little something up to reader interpretation.




In my original brief epilogue, the Beth-Graham reunion was the first addtion after the Tomb and Asylum scenes.




If I'd still been regularly posting weekly UTs then there would probably have been a courtroom-based issue to resolve all this.




Explaining how Knifey got back seemed like one mystery too many for what was already an absurdly long issue.




That was a sub-plot seeded in consultation with another poster for another time, and the opening act of the Da Visionary Code and the no-time-travel peiod that Kyzo mentioned.




It took me four years to clear out my mother's house after she died, and nine months after finishing it I still have a pile of unstored boxes blocking my hall.




I told you that link was difficult.




Dr Moo has previously posited in Saving the Future that the plane of Corposant Fire is also the origin-point of things like generated meat products, FA's generated clothing, size-changing particle matter, and all the other weird stuff that metahumans can pull from seemingly nowhere.




I don;t readily recall, but I know some of them were "offscreen". They don't appear to have had any special power-giving properties, which may be why the avoided the Parody Master's Forge.




We may have almost as many characters as a real comic book universe.




DBS wrote him in a rabbit costume, so who am I to change that? Perhaps nobody wants to tell him?




Nope, because 1. The Hood dated the Faerie Queene, and he wouldn't cheat with her rivall 2. Camellia's not looking her best since her encounter with Magweed, and the rotting flesh, exposed bone, and burrowing maggots can be a turn-off, and 3. Camellia, even with her glamour, is shallow and vain and really not that interesting after an Amazon Queen, two Shapers of Worlds, an amorous advocatrix, a Shee-Yar warrior, and Dancer.







Not that you're judging.




I suspect that if the Da Visionary Code storyline did happen, Kyza and his siblings would be amongst those deeply involved in it.




It was a fun return. I had to figure out what things I'd want to concentrate into Just One More Parodyverse story, since this might be my last chance, and get some resolutions and pay-offs on record.




Thank you for your feedback. Much appreciated. Don't be a stranger.

That's a relief. Although it's saddening to know that people would think I would ever do anything bad to a character in one of my stories.




There are a few wrinkled to G-Eyed's romantic life right now. It would be fun to have a scene where he gets dating advice from his team-mates, especially CSFB!, the Shoggoth, Vinnie, Yo, and Flapjack. It's times like this when we really need a complicating story to suddenly arrive in yellow font.




I haven't really thought it through too much, but if I'd been continuing with weekly UTs I would probably have played it along the Banner-Hulk arc, with their personalities very seperate at first, then sharing knowledge and finally even being able to bicker internally.




CZ is still drawing her power from Herringcarp but while she's with Beth she's not dependent on it. Beth is to Laurie what a HED is to Hallie.




He's sitting in a room in Harringcarp just waiting to be de-stoned. Laurie knows he's there and now she's coherent and in possession of her memories she has all the resource of the LL to do something about it. Proceed.




It's the first sign of the Da Visionary Code. It's what happens when the Hooded Hood is retconned for a short while and is unable to maintain his embargo of an event that he's been holding back for around three hundred years.

But yes, a sub-plot for a next issue.




We're certainly seeing one of the sides form up, but there will be others. The Eternal Armies of the Apostate, perhaps?




There may need to be a Harper family reunion at some stage.




You just know that if there really was a superhero team this is the kind of crap they would het tossed at them.




You are welcome.

A request: I know you described the end-of-war picture of Vizh and Hallie's kiss but did you ever post a version or was I imagining that? If you did one, please repost it. If not, please do one and post it now.

I kept it brief and light so as not to confuse our colonial readers.




I have receieved it and forwarded it to Al B., thanks.

The whole Herringcarp Gothic storyline made clear that the Hood has now so thoroughly retconned his origins that he is effectively a gestalt entity, compounded of madman, visionary, murderer, humanitarian, scholar, De Sade-style nobleman, comic-book villain and many others. He also remembers everything that has happened to all the "variant" Hooded Hoods in different versions of reality; they are all the same man. So in several ways the Hood is very far removed from "normal" perspectives and morals, and from humanity.




The Hood has technically conquered the Earth twice and the Parodyverse once. So he's been there and done that, and could probably do it again if required. Now, like Alexander the Great, he seeks "new worlds to conquer"; except that conquest isn't an end in itself for the Hood, but rather a mechanism used to establish what he would consider a more just and reasonable creation.

Great archvillains require great hubris.




Laurie can leave Beth for a short whole and could even possess someone else who was unconcious or brain-dead for a few minutes. She can also exist in her ectoplasmic intanginle form for a short while remote from Beth. The danger is that if she can't return in time she would be destroyed.

And as noted in our previous conversation, the Beth/Laurie co-residency is a middle-term fix. Eventually it will have negative consequences on both of them. So there's still a final solution to be found at some stage. Unfortuately, just cloning or otherwise creating a new body for Laurie wouldn't work because she's still entangled in Herringcarp curse.




Indeed. The Baroness knows enough to know how bad it could get.

And even she doesn't know the half of it.




The Baroness is very rich with very good connections. The police wouldn't shrug when they got successive calls from the Governor, the Supreme Court, and the White House, followed by directed attention from half the legal firms in the US and all of the media outlets.

Hatty would be smart enough to warn Yuki that breaking into Schloss Schreckausen riight then would be a gift to von Zemo. Yuki would be smart enough to see it.







I suspect the dead worlds of the former Shee-Yar Imperium depopulated by the Carnifex are sources of significant interest to many interstellar races. Those worlds still have mineral assets, for example. There is a wealth of salvage, including jewels, art, and technology. And there are still-habitable plaetary systems with repairable infreastructure suitable for colonisation.

Imagine what would happen in our world if, say, Russia was suddenly depopulated of every living thing. Think of the mad scramble to claim bits of it that would follow after. That's the situation in Shee-Yar space about nine months after it died.




Here's where the Hood and his consortium are being smart. They are using the minimum neccessary agrression. If there are diplomatic dels to be done, that's how they do it. if there are economic routes, that's the deal. Only when they are met with force are they responsing with greater force. I haven't written yet about how they manage it, but right now the New Empire has about a quarter billion metahumans fighting in its front lines. The LL are seriously outnumbered.




It's a good story driver that should add some drama to the Traders ongoing plotlines.




The parallel model might be 17th and 18th century British trading fleets which were backed only when neccessary with the Royal Navy's ability to bring overwhelming force to bear if pushed to it.




Also, a society that really believes that trade is the way to success probably looks down on force as a crude and unsatisfying short-term solution. There are better, more profitable, more satisfying ways to win.

That's the funny thing, Faite's message to him isn't based on morals because she has none. She sees only that he's throwing himself willingly into a trap, putting in a lot of resources to get there, and that he insists on it. She knows he's not stupid, so she's convinced he just doesn't see it because his mind is warped and he needs guidance.

What would really be strange is if the Hooded Hood asks Lara Night for help or advice, since she does have the ability to know what's on the other side of that wall. Her answer would be hope-crushingly disappointing, but at least he'll know the truth.





It's still the best option *right now*, and remember, Faite tends to think in the right now because she can adjust it.





She would still make the lawyer eat both pieces of paper, even if she leaves right after.

But Yuki *is* likely to come back when no one is watching.





That's probably true, but it's also highly contested. The Alliance members generally aren't willing to fight wars over resources, but only because they have so many worlds to source them from.





The Alliance approach would be to explore the section the part that's unguarded, and take possession of it briefly, and then leave before conflict becomes part of it. Saves a lot of money that way. If no part is unguarded, they're unlikely to fight for it.





It's quite possible that the Hood's consortium is currently trading peacefully with the Alliance. That would be smart too, since, like I mentioned, they're reluctant to fight when trade is at stake. If the LL and its allies attack the Hood's consortium, the Alliance is most likely to defend their trade route and ignore the rest of it.





Note by the way that the "Traders" novel is actually not related to the Trade Alliance, though they have a similar name. The Traders referred to in the novel name are Abe, April, etc.





That's pretty much it. Essentially the Trading Alliance was a bunch of well-behaved pirates operating under a code and generally cooperating for the sake of profit. Once they started breaking the rules and fighting, the "navy" had to step in.





They have a very solid belief, even taught in schools, that the Trading Alliance would be nothing if it resorted to war and aggression. That their prevalent technology and comfort everywhere would have never been possible.

Of course, they also learn that most other societies in the galaxy are savages who fight over resources and neither profit from it nor advance.

Funnily enough I was reading a back issue last night where you indicated Alex had found the restore key on your computer and wiped half of the story so you had to do it all again.

This time, we can blame the Replicant. See, that villain lives.




Well, now you get both!




Yes indeed. So what is the current line-up as at the conclusion of this tale? It looks like Sally will stay, will Beth/Laurie? G'Eyed? A roll call would be useful.




And therein lies the good bits.




I suspect you would have been more successful than I anyway, if it were possible. I don't really have contact and avoid social media.




As far as we know is not definitive is it. *shudder* I wonder if he kept her bones? GAH! Why am I even thinking this?




Would it work without the context of who the lunatic is? Or would you plan to introduce him first, and then release it later as an origin story?






Well, I'm interpreting it as the Hood could have redeemed her, but he found himself quite liking the limits of his new power, and did not want it to unravel or lose those. He was talking about what he had gained there.

Perhaps he became what Morningstar wanted after all.

I'm also convinced Morningstar was more than just what he seemed to be, possibly a conduit setting all this up anyway (by whom? A mystery), but then I'd really need to go back and re-read all the earlier Herringcarp Gothic chapters (which I haven't since their original posting) to be sure on that.




They have a lot of catching up to do. Out of interest, who is Beth's mother?




I think you did that once with Lisa early on, didn't you? It would have been frustratingly enjoyable in this case though, I am sure.




Some mysteries aren't meant to be solved.




Stories that you tell us you're never going to write!




*nods* I understand only too well, my mother's presence is still scattered around the place, and I don't mean her ashes. I kept her fridge and washing machine. The fridge had a stick of copha in it I just couldn't bring myself to throw out for the longest time. I never used it, but she used to make rum balls for Christmas and that was one of the ingredients. It just sat there happily in the fridge door shelf for the longest time. There is absolutely no logical explanation why I never chucked it, or why I was upset when the washing machine finally bought the bullet (it was very old - twist-knob operated - but worked a lot better than these new fangled ones with buttons and fancy screens). I eventually chucked it - and said goodbye. Makes me smile now.

There are still some bits of my father here and there too, and he's been a long time gone. When I moved into my own place I deliberately brought things out to remind me of them. If you can muster up the courage to tackle the boxes I do find it's nice to have some little bits out and around rather than hidden away.




The Amazons are trying to get free.




See, Corposant Fire is the key.




Ah, that's good. I thought I'd missed something. (Wouldn't be the first time).




And better quality ones for a lot of them too!





Jumbuck: "Are you sure this is a Jumbuck costume?"
The Tailor: "Yeth thir, I'm thure."
Jumbuck: "Looks like a rabbit to me mate."
The Tailor: "You inthult me!"
Jumbuck: *shrugs, and takes it anyway*




LOL, stop gloating. And don't forget Amnesia.

Anyway, if I've learnt one thing from reading the stories here it's that making deals with the Fey is treacherous. I hope the Hood gets to experience that.






Well, not much. I mean who wouldn't want to have an emo kid with grandfather worshiping delusions of grandeur?

Luckily, we know that time-travel and future scenarios are often just insights into "possibilities" rather than "actualities".

Yeah, that's what I'm clinging to.

To be fair, I've forgotten what I had planned for him, or if indeed I every had anything planned.




Good good, proceed.




I think resolving the Citizen Z/Laurie/Beth sup-plot was probably the most urgent in terms of needing a resolution.




I shall endeavour to not be!

Really. How did Ioldabaoth get out of that pit again?




Soliciting dating advice from the Shoggoth? Brave man indeed. it would indeed be a fun follow-up though, especially with Dancer's brand of chaos setting things in motion.

I wonder who Beth/Laurie would turn to on the team? Would they each turn to different people?




It would be a fun set-up to explore... and then later to subvert as well, with Beth unexpectedly coming to during the action, or Laurie coming out in awkward social situations.




Aha... terms I can understand, which would confuse general audiences mightily.




One does not just retrieve large stone trolls from the depths of Herringcarp... Perhaps someday, however. Or I'll just wimp out and do that time skip and put him where I need him ultimately.




I'll put in my pre-order now!




Oh, indeed. I liked that they used just that idea for "The Incredibles", in fact... but even then it wasn't done in such a ruthlessly vile manner. I'd say "beware an evil lawyer" but it seems redundant. And yes, I miss being able to make that comment to Lisa.




Did I do such a thing? I confess, I have searched two portable hard drives and have failed utterly to turn up any stories at all. I'm getting concerned that I may have lost all of my PV work that isn't accessable online somewhere.

In any event, I don't think I ever drew an actual image... Perhaps Dancer made one? In describing it, did I just rip-off the classic Nurse/Sailor kiss celebrating the end of WWII? I could draw that, I suppose. Posting attachments still seems to be a problem, but I could probably figure out something.

There are many examples of stories where the protagonist knowingly enters a trap, often with plans to turn it against the enemy.

But ultimately, yes, the Hood is flawed. He is, after all, a murderous archvillain who has caused a great deal of misery and suffering in service to his lofty goals.




I'm not sure Lara or anybody in the PV knows much about the other side of the particular barrier that the Wonderwall defines. Lara has come from (in our terms) another fictional reality to the fictional reality known as the Parodyverse. Other visitors have appeared from time to time, including superhroes from fictional realities we know as the Marvel and DC comics universes; there has literally been an Avengers-LL team up. Some characters have "escaped" from the Parodyverse into fictional realities of their own, for example AG's vampire children.

What none of them has done, and as far as we know cannot do, is escape from the Parodyverse to the real world, our world. We, the posters, will never encounter Al B. Harper or Yuki Shiro.

But because of the odd position of the PV at the end of the probability curve, some metatext creeps into their reality. Hence a concern amongst many of the "in the know" entities there that they are in a multiverse which has been created by and from stories, that narrative is as important a force there as the laws of physics. A few refer to "creators", those cruel beings from beyond who set up the Parodyverse as a place where heroes are tortured or ridiculed for these creators' perverse purposes. Some suspect that many of these creators have abandoned their creation, leaving the beings they placed in torment in that position forever.

The Hooded Hood has become obsessed with this. His grand folly is to try and breach the Wonderwall, but really to breach the barrier between fiction and what we define as reality, so that he can seek out the Parodyverse's creators and wreak vengeance for what they have done to him and others. You and I know that is impossible - we hope - but from the Hood's side of the storybook it seems like a grand and glorious objective.

Elsewhere on the board I was discussing the Tower of Babel with Al B. The very brief Genesis story of humanity's attempt to build a great tower that rouses God's ire and is cast down has since had all kinds of theological explanations. The one that makes most sense to me is based upon the then-current view of heaven and earth, that heaven was literally in the sky hidden behind a canvas where the stars twinkled. The builders of Babel thought that a high enough tower could reach that barrier and allow them access to the realm of God direct, perhaps even allow invasion and conquest. From our end of time we see that as being absolutely ridiculous, but to the builders of the tower it must have been a noble and lofty goal.

In Jewish legend, the Tower is destroyed by fire, flood and eathquake. In the Biblical enesis myth it is destroyed by words, or rather by lack of them. God removes from humanity the ability to communicate freely. One language becomes many, causing factions and nations, leading to distrust and war. Mankind's unified enterprise ends with mankind's fragmentation into groups who canot or will not speak to each other. The story gives us the word "babble". It is interesting that even in the real world we recognise that it is words and the stories they tell that define reality.

Quote:



Quote:
And as noted in our previous conversation, the Beth/Laurie co-residency is a middle-term fix.

Quote:
It's still the best option *right now*, and remember, Faite tends to think in the right now because she can adjust it.

It's certainly a rest point for the characters for a while, as the plot focus shifts elsewhere. Next we have "where did the whispering go?" and "what prevents time travel to the time period abuout the begin?" and "what was it that the Hooded Hood was preventing up to the brief time when he was retconned away?" But those revelations must wait for another time.

Quote:



Quote:
Hatty would be smart enough to warn Yuki that breaking into Schloss Schreckausen riight then would be a gift to von Zemo. Yuki would be smart enough to see it.

Quote:
She would still make the lawyer eat both pieces of paper, even if she leaves right after.

That would open her up to assault charges, to litigation about illegal use of allegedly stolen technology, to questions about her brain's mental fitness, and to demands for her expulsion from a government-sanctioned crimefighting group for actions in contravention to proper legal process. And so on. Anything she did right then would have been of value to the opposition. They were looking for grounds to launch a legal attack.

Quote:
But Yuki *is* likely to come back when no one is watching.

You have to figure that the Baroness has defences roughly equivalent to those on the Lair Mansion (minus the cosmic elements). She also knows Yuki's specs and character. By now she's probably upgraded her stronghold to exclude ghosts and Griffin, androids with light-distorting tech, micro-sized intruders, plane-shifting, and all the other stuff that Yuki amongst others has worked out to shield the LL's base.

However, what she hasn't and probably can't stop is Yuki's other skillset: asking questions. Like all criminals, the Baroness relies upon keeping her dealings somewhat secret. More, she's still on bail for a number of tied-up-in-the-courts offnces dating as far back as her takeover of the planet during the Parody War. What Yuki can do (with the enthusiastic support of Citizen Z and the less-enthusiastic input of Silicone Sally) is start shining a light on every corner of the Baroness' enterprises.

This is a long game, but it will have some effects. Von Zemo's allies will be less happy to do business with her while the spotlight is on her. Her power relies upon her criminal business holdings, so as they are crossed off one by one she is diminished. Every time she has to stifle a news story or tangle a law case she is using hard-to-replace resources. Citizen Z is literally haunting her. In this scenario Yuki investigating (and maybe hired-in help like Champagne) are the nightmare scenario.

From Yuki's POV, the best part is that there are probably people out there who would pay her to conduct that kind of case.

Of course, that kind of detective work almost inevitably leads to the villain putting out a kill order on the detective. So that's another plus from Yuki's perspective, because there's another thread to pull in the unravelling von Zemo enterprises.

Quote:



Quote:
I suspect the dead worlds of the former Shee-Yar Imperium depopulated by the Carnifex are sources of significant interest to many interstellar races.

Quote:
That's probably true, but it's also highly contested. The Alliance members generally aren't willing to fight wars over resources, but only because they have so many worlds to source them from.

There's the other side of trade, buying the salvage from the scavengers. In a "find" of that magnitude it is probably a buyer's market, which is what the Traders would exploit.

Quote:
The Alliance approach would be to explore the section the part that's unguarded, and take possession of it briefly, and then leave before conflict becomes part of it. Saves a lot of money that way. If no part is unguarded, they're unlikely to fight for it.

It's also possible that they would sub-contract specific salvage collection missions, possibly even "to order" for identified clients. That's got to be a story hook for some characters.

Quote:
It's quite possible that the Hood's consortium is currently trading peacefully with the Alliance. That would be smart too, since, like I mentioned, they're reluctant to fight when trade is at stake. If the LL and its allies attack the Hood's consortium, the Alliance is most likely to defend their trade route and ignore the rest of it.

The Hood may even be, through some cutout intermediaries, one of those clients with "to order" requirements.

Quote:
Note by the way that the "Traders" novel is actually not related to the Trade Alliance, though they have a similar name. The Traders referred to in the novel name are Abe, April, etc.

Indeed. Both are useful fictional scenarios.

Quote:
Essentially the Trading Alliance was a bunch of well-behaved pirates operating under a code and generally cooperating for the sake of profit. Once they started breaking the rules and fighting, the "navy" had to step in.

Licenced pirates operating under a code with authority from a government are technically "privateers".

In the early days of British sea supremancy, Queen Elizabeth I licenced such sailors as Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake in this way. Their licence specified that she got a 10% cut of whatever goods they "legitimately" liberated from Spanish gold ships.

Quote:
They have a very solid belief, even taught in schools, that the Trading Alliance would be nothing if it resorted to war and aggression. That their prevalent technology and comfort everywhere would have never been possible.

That makes perfect cultural sense.

Quote:
Of course, they also learn that most other societies in the galaxy are savages who fight over resources and neither profit from it nor advance.

Almost every dominant culture has its prejudices and opinions on why its society is superior to others. We all do it. It's only natural.

Literary critics can be so harsh.




I blame my typing. Also weird Microsoft keyboard shortcuts I've never heard of.







Proceed.







I imagine the team will remain the same if I write it again, with possible additional Yo since he/she turned up for the clean-up and the poster was active too. That said, if the next storyline is the Da Visionary Code, that plot calls for certain characters to be in certain places and seperated from the main team anyhow, so line-up isn't as relevant.







CSFB! evidently has Fscebook contact or similar with a number of old posters, including Whitney I think.







I'm sure he has her bones, if that helps.







I hadn't planned to shift the Hooded Hood across to my novels at all. And then the Epilogue to The Transdimensional Travel Company just happened.

For certain, Herringcarp Gothic would not be as strong if it was the Hood's first appearance.




The Hood is always about the big picture.




The devil is in the details.




We have an origin of sorts for the Hood, but none yet for Herringcarp.




Her mother is Eloise, Graham's ex-wife. She appeared a few times in Untold Tales while Beth was comatose in hospital, blaming the LL for her daughter's condition. She was last seen being tazered by the Baroness/Citizen Z prior to Beth being restored.







We're probably due for another one.







What I need to go back and check sometime is whether I made a continuity error with Marie. She became human during the Parody War but was murdered again during Saving the Future and returned as a more sentient banshee at that time. I'm not sure I've been consistent in the stories I just posted in remembering whether she was phantom or human.







More like stories I have no planned start-by date for. Stories I do not guarantee to write.







I also found some books she'd filled with poems and stories that i never knew she wrote.




I discovered my paternal grandfather's World War I bayonet.







That should be interesting.

I'd certainly include one if I was doing a 2015 version of the Juniors.




Only if used by a superhuman with the ability to create lock-related paraphanalia from seeingly nowhere.







Hmm. Some.

And bear in mind that since I created about half the characters in the Who's Who and all the ones in the Technopolis Who's Who it's me I'm being critical of.







Indeed.







There were a few others too, but I'm not going to go an look them up. And neither is the Hood.




He did a deal with Queen Mab. Treachery was indeed factored in. She got him to do what she needed to restore her to her throne, he set in motion events that led to Magweed.









I don't think Dirth Vortex was his grandfather. Just a beloved role model. But it does mean that Kyza may have or be seeking to develop Gah! powers. the Gah! may be with him.










If you need to do a different 3rd child then go for it. I'm happy to eliminate Kyza as a temporal anomaly.







"When Kyza Met Vespiir..."




Yes. I also wanted to lay out much of the Hood's scheming interconnectedness in-continuity.

That was all for the best, really, wasn't it? I mean, he escaped and everything, to go bring joy to the Parodyverse.

Quote:
Soliciting dating advice from the Shoggoth? Brave man indeed. it would indeed be a fun follow-up though, especially with Dancer's brand of chaos setting things in motion.

But would then require a multi-part crossover to untangle again. How quickly we forget the Vizh-is-sleeping-with-Lisa incident.

Quote:
I wonder who Beth/Laurie would turn to on the team? Would they each turn to different people?

Interesting question, possibly best answered in-story sometime.

Quote:
It would be a fun set-up to explore... and then later to subvert as well, with Beth unexpectedly coming to during the action, or Laurie coming out in awkward social situations.

And there you have the nub of the fun.

Quote:


Quote:
CZ is still drawing her power from Herringcarp but while she's with Beth she's not dependent on it. Beth is to Laurie what a HED is to Hallie.

Quote:
Aha... terms I can understand, which would confuse general audiences mightily.

Worrying, isn't it?

Quote:
[Wangmundo is] sitting in a room in Harringcarp just waiting to be de-stoned. Laurie knows he's there and now she's coherent and in possession of her memories she has all the resource of the LL to do something about it. Proceed.

That's where I have to clarify that Faite refuses to accept that excuse. She believes the Hood is smart enough not to be a slave to his madness, and he only needs his thoughts provoked enough to understand his own slavery.

Of course with any deep enough obsession, what finally does it is usually one particularly humiliating failure, barring any sudden moments of clarity. But the danger to it happening *that* way is he then becomes obsessed with making someone pay.





Lara has two pieces of information, though: She *has* left the Parodyverse, and returned, and therefore has the best chance of making an educated guess at what's behind the wall, and she had someone more knowledgeable than her give her a hint.

She *has* heard something about artifacts similar to the Wonderwall from Shema. She was told never to violate protective artifact barriers like that, because they don't protect what's outside, they protect what's *inside*. On the outside of that barrier, she was told, she has no substance, and would simply disappear forever. That's about as close to the 4th wall as she gets.

She was also told that it's very insistent on protecting from that, so it's also possible she'd just mock the Hood and dare him to try breaking through it. He might be very suspicious of that dare, because he probably knows she's a little bit devious, and maybe she wants him to disappear.





I wonder how he would react though, if residents of the Parodyverse, including Faite, would keep urging him to stop, but the one person who *has* travelled through universes dares him to go ahead and see what happens. Would that make him start questioning whether his planning is enough?





The irony is that when an alien civilization comes here to investigate long-dead Earth, they'll probably find that story, see some of our massive skyscrapers, and then believe we never stopped trying to reach god.





So many people use "assault" incorrectly these days on TV and Youtube. Actually, Yuki would be open to battery charges. The entire group, including Hatman, are already guilty of assault by standing on the doorstep and making threats.





Yes, Yuki would know that, and while she is kind of an action junkie, years of working as a P.I. have taught her that sometimes the light touch works better. During the conversation with Mr. Sneek, she would have already figured out who the weak link is on the property - perhaps a gardner or a maid - and then visited again with some excuse of why she needs to come in and check something. The action part would be escaping once the staff figures the ruse out.





She also knows (part of the story I'm gradually posting) that the Psychic Samurai still has a lot of criminal underworld connections, and can seriously poison the Baroness' entire business model by making sure no one wants to touch anything from her.





Pretty much *everyone*, from that point of view.





It wouldn't be the first time. She probably still has active kill orders out there for her.








They do tend to buy up large quantities of resources and cornering the market when the opportunity comes up.








They might sub-contract, as long as it's not from someone too aggressive who can turn against them or hold the product hostage and cost more money. The Alliance Traders generally like to keep the upper hand.








If he pays enough and gives them a clear enough path to get it, sure.











The Galactic Government does that through taxing commerce among the Trading Alliance worlds. They've been piling up this tax money for eons, which is how they could afford to build a fleet so suddenly.








It's also something of a falsehood, because they then obliterated one of their own worlds over a trading dispute.








That kind of learning also creates a sort of cohesive bond, powered by fear - which is dangerous. If some faction boldly attacks a bunch of Trading Alliance civilian ships, the fear sets in among the Alliance that the savages have turned on them. The Galactic Government sends a fleet to completely crush them before they ever have a chance to fight back.

It does take a while to reach that point, though. If some faction attacks one or two Trader ships, generally the company that owns them will try to solve the problem themselves first - because it's worth a lot of money to show potential customers that they won't take that kind of crap on their trading routes. They'll send a dozen heavily armed civilian ships to crush the interference decisively. If *that* fails, then they'd give in and ask the government for assistance.

That reflects well on Faite. However, the Hood is a genuine, if sometimes charming, evil man, and his sympathetic qualities and life traumas do not excuse his behaviour. As with all fictional archvillains in traditional comic-book universes he must one day face justice for what he has done - and his downfall must be epic.




I have no doubt that if we ever see the Hood finally take his big shot there would be a last major conflict with the Lair Legion and all the resources they can pull in. And there would finally be a definitive winner.

Remarkably, the Hooded Hood has only really gone all out against the LL twice, and each time he was only stopped by someone close to him (and behind him). The first time it was Lisa and the second time his then-daughter Troia. A third confrontation might be decisive.










That is part of overcoming the barrier. Cracking the interface is only the first part. Surviving and achieving an agenda beyond that is also required.

The Hood likes to think big.




the Hood has gathered intelligence from all kind of weird places now, including the database of the Celestian Space Robots, the combined observations of the Observers (the PV's Watchers), the entire database of the Intergalactic Order of Librarians, Wilbur Parody (the only man to hold all three Triumverate offices and the only one to set them aside and still keep the forbidden information that was supposed to be erased from him), the Resolution Prophecy personified, the Faerie Queene, the Allied Pantheons, and of course his Portal of Pretentiousness.

There are still some bits of knowledge he's missing, though. For example, only a few people have been exposed to the Storyheart, and he hasn;t yet gleaned what they got from that. Since Trickshot is now gone from the PV, top of the list would be Yuki Shiro, Knifey, and Visionary. Plans are afoot.




The Hood does tend to adapt based upon information gathered, so he's always ready to add more variations and contingencies to his planning. After all, he can literally be trying a thousand different ways all at once and then select which one really happened.

Right now the Hood probably knows he hasn't got the whole plan. But he has plans to get it.




If you want to see the Babel story as a parable or kinds, and one that even reflects on the modern day, consider this.

Somewhere about the time the Tower of Babel story is set, the most technologically advanced people on Earth lived in the river valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, modern-day Iran and Iraq. They had agriculture, pottery, mathematics, building, literature, and medicine; we have archeology to demonstate this.

Then some unknown genius worked out how science could overcome nature's limit. Civilisation was dependent upon the annual river floods to sustain a farming belt roughly half a mile inland all along the Tigris and Euphrates Valleys. Beyond that was dustbowl. But somebody invented the canal, to channel river-water for miles, and suddenly fertile land grew by a magnitude. Population soared. More people with more food led to rapid expansion, including more specialisation of labour and more technical advancements. No need to pray to the gods for water and food now. Science had conquered the need for religion.

Except... if you break down the natural river wall defences and allow water onto the plains beyond, when you have atypical bad weather what you get is a flood. Or a Flood. It's a man-made eco-disaster, perhaps the first ever. And it's happening to a culture where the best buildings are made out of baked bricks of mud and straw, that don't react well to ten feet of overflowing river.

And that seems to have been the downfall of that civilisation and all their amazing buildings and towers.

If that doesn't translate into Bible stories about God sending floods and casting down an impertinent tower I don't know what will. If it doesn't have something to say to us about our choices for science and technology today than I don't know what does.




You are quite correct, as verified by my son who is now preparing for his law exam but paused to give me a lecture.







Wouldn't she also be signing that staff member's death warrant?




It's a time of upheavals in the criminal underworld that the Baroness might hope to exploit. That said, she is very distracted right now by what she's learned that the Hood is doing. He's much nearer to the finishing line than she is - and that can't happen!







It would likely be someone outside Paradopolis or GMY that she has pissed off. Maybe ZOXXON or HERPES or BALD using dummy shells, or somebody like Thighmaster in Borovia - or spiffy in Badripoor!







The challenge comes because a Beth von Zemo kill order (probably contracted out via a pro middle-man like Screwdriver) would specify some assassin she assessed had a good chance of beating Yuki. It might make for an interesting fight.

I know it sounds strange, but Faite really doesn't want to see his downfall. She knows what it will do to him, and that it will make him even more unmanageable in the future. Unless he's dead, in which case there will be a lot of cleanup work to do.





Sounds like Amnesia will be his weakness this time.





He might still feel like it's all lacking, though, because the one piece that would be missing is someone with experience with not being in the Parodyverse.





Poor Visionary.





What happens when they all meet the same inevitable conclusion? Or when Lara mocks him in every single one of them?





It's also because humans don't have the capability to see every possible scenario on equal ground. We can't, because quite a lot of the time, that would lead to the conclusion that every kind of technology will lead to disaster, simply because it *could*.





It's always funny to watch those videos where someone is picking a fight with cops, and when the cops try to arrest them, they start screaming "this is assault!" It's not, it's battery. They already passed assault when the cop yelled "Get out of the car, now!"





Yuki wouldn't be around them any longer than necessary.





That would more likely be the Zoot Suit Gang that would take advantage of someone who's distracted.





Yuki now has a lot of motivation. She needs a lot of dirt to blackmail Zemo's lawyer next time he starts threatening to have her brain removed.





She would also know that if the assassin is anything like her, she's going to need backup. And probably someone the assassin doesn't know to stay away from, like Nena.








I once had a story planned where Mac Fleetwood was killed by the Hooded Hood, and a distraught Hatman asked Lara Night to seize control of the Parodyverse and put a stop to the Hooded Hood once and for all.

Never wrote up the story, but it had some interesting moments. The short version is she actually won, but gave it up once she realized the horrible thing she'd done to the Hooded Hood by putting him at the mercy of very powerful enemies who wanted nothing better than to capture and torture him forever.








I had a few partial plots in storage, but never wrote them up because they're too far from the PV-regulars, and people therefore don't read them.

Particularly if they're related right?




Yes, but who put them there? And who was replicating your fingers to type that way? You know who.




I am rather partial to this line up. Yo is always nice to have for the...nice.





But where? In a special chest hidden in a secret chamber? Ground down into dust and put in a vase on the mantle? Under his pillow? (wait - does he even sleep?) Please don't feel you need to answer any of these questions.




Excellent!




Indian burial ground. Or pre-cataclysmic serpent-men burial ground, or alter to Set.




Maybe she got un-bansheed in all the retconning and it stuck.




You're not the only writer in the family?




That's awesome, you can frame things like that along with his photo if you have one, and any medals, and stick it up on the wall. I love that kind of thing.

Next time she needs to bring him a thermos of liquor-laced black coffee.







It certainly seems in character, which makes for an odd good but juxtaposition with her fighting prowess.







Would creating a new person justify destorying two previous ones?




That takes us back to why Vinnie wouldn't ever rely 100% on any other entity. He's got to make his own judgements and mistakes.




A part of the Hood is actually willing to make any sacrifice for what he deems the greater good; except that good is defined by him.




The Hood is willing to accept that price.




Noted.







Actually, I looked up vespiir's last scene in the last Untold Tales Caphan story, where she has some new visions of her life on Earth, and Chiaki is in the montage:

“Honestly, Vesp,” promised Fashion Accessory, “with that figure the last thing the boys’ll be looking at is a mark on your forehead. Now hold still while I find you something to wear that says ‘Look upon my perfection Earthmen and despair!’”

“I will see you troublemakers off this campus if it is the last thing that I do!” thundered the Dean as he doused a jug of water over his smouldering trousers.

“You can control this. You can discipline yourself. You can become more than you believe you are. I am Chiaki Bushido and I will show you.”

“Thou wilt show respect to mine lady Vespiir or I wilt be doing likewise to thine other hand for the nonce.”

“It’s snow, Vesp. It’s for stuffing down boys’ shirts. Or maybe their pants. It’s an Earth tradition.”

“Hold it, Violet-Eyes. You’re saying the future of pretty much everything depends on you and me doing something not even the greatest heroes of Earth ever managed? Us?”

Of these visions, the only unidentifiable speaker was the last one.

If ever I do a big final PV story, I assure you the Hood is going down big time.







He's taken some measures to get her away from him now.







He's already conducted some experiments along those lines, with Mr Epitome, Keiko, and a few others. That's not to diminish his interest in exploiting Lara but she's one in a succession.







Indeed. Also, Knifey is mysteriously back with ManMan after being missing for a time.







I don't think that has happened or he would have reacted differently.




That's because the common usuage of assault and the term's legal usage are quite different. Nobody thinks that assaulting a fortress means speaking to it nastily.







If that person was discovered as responsible for allowing an incursion then something bad would happen to them.




I'm not sure you;ve ever detailed the exact mechanics by which a brain-ready shell came to be available when Yuki needed it - and why it isn't a standard prosthetic for everybody else who would otherwise die or be crippled for life.







I mentioned before how I think Yuki's rogues' gallery needs expansion. There's an opportunity there. Great heroes need great villains.




I thought you managed a good tie-in by guest-starring Lara.

I am constanctly braced by my family's general apathy to my writing.







That's the start of a horror film. Or a police pyschiatric report.







The other characters I'd add in like a shot if the posters turned up to say "yes" would be Dancer and Trickshot.







Noted.







Well, it was on the east coast of England about three centuries ago.







Even that should have been referenced. If I come back to UT again I'll need to check and address it.







Evidently not. Rhiannon and Alex have both been known to write too.







There's tons of family memorabilia in boxes in the maids' attic, including a genuine, bullet-hole riddled nazi flag my dad brought home from the Battle of Monte Cassino, a snakeskin he got the hard way in Burma, my great uncle's assassin knife from his pre-WWI Egyptian tour, and a proper life-sized Victorian china doll and crib complete with doll's hospital repair mark. Cluttering the entrance hall right now is a 4" high Victorian grand-daughter clock.




It's every gentleman's right.

So as not to get my pocket picked?







Well, sunken villages. And my farm.

Actually, some of the most interesting British archaeology happening today is off the east coast, under the North Sea. Up to the end of the last ice age around 25,000 years ago, that was all dry land joining Britain to Holland, the most fertile bit of north Europe. It's possible to still map where there were once rivers and forests. And of course it is there, rather than in what were then uninviting highlands that we now call coastal regions, where earliest man lived. Salt water and silt can be remarkably good at preserving wood and pottery remains, so as out ability for underwater excavation develops, more and more revelations about paleolithic history are coming to light.







Well, in my head the Juniors are university age, Sam is around 15, and Mags and Griff are about 13.

Quote:
Ha, that does indeed sound cool, I haven't seen it. I did enjoy the Five(ish) Doctors Reboot directed by Peter Davison from a few years ago.

There was an insane amount of special content produced for the 50th anniversary in 2013, of which that was one piece. I think there were over 30 Who-related broadcasts on BBC TV and radio that week.

One to specially look out for is "An Adventure in Time and Space", a one off drama based upon the behind-the-scenes story of how the BBC came to greenlight and make Doctor Who back in 1963. It won awards and the ending is heart-wrenching.

Quote:


Quote:
It was natural progression, really. The story as it developed seemed to demand it. And it wasn't so much shunting [Hacker9] off as setting up his next storyline.

Quote:
Apologies Ian, i forget what happened to him after that, I may have missed it?

Um, nothing. Yet. His next storyline is... in the queue.

Quote:


Quote:
Duanna shar Ibbish is one of my favourite characters (and would probably hit Vizh's sweet spot too). She raises the narrative question of what does an ex-sacrificial virgin do next? Apart from crimefighting, of course?

Quote:
That is a very interesting question. And she does sound like an interesting character.

Well, since the main male character is a Conan-style barbarian, from scene two the question is really what does an ex-sacrifical ex-virgin do, since he rescues her in the traditional manner.

Quote:


Quote:


Quote:
Bunyips are notoriously difficult to trap.


Quote:


Quote:
That's what makes them taste so good.

Quote:
You don't eat bunyip. Bunyip eats you!

Pro bunyipist propoganda!

One of my older stories, "Sinbad and the Sapphire of the Djinn", forms part of the collection transferred to audiobook in The New Adventures of Sinbad volume 1

Here's the official radio promo.

I strongly suspect he'll go full circle and end up back helpless in an asylum with a cruel doctor watching over him again, only this time he'll feel like he deserves it for overlooking something that led him there.





She has to come back eventually, though.





If he has more than one import to investigate, I can see why he'd either avoid Lara or leave her for last. No, not because of the power she has - because she's the only one who might be aware of what he's doing.

Hell, she might even help him, if she believes what she heard about the Wonderwall, that he'd be powerless, useless, and stranded on the other side. It would be a great way to get rid of him permanently.

Then again, maybe he might take pleasure in explaining to her exactly what he's doing, if he realizes that she won't really stop him, she'll just mock him for doing something she feels is ridiculous.





Hasn't Knifey mysteriously disappeared and re-appeared before?

It does remind me of Faite's tendency to disappear when she might be in jeopardy, and re-appear when it's most convenient to her, though.





If she thought that was a danger she might make a point to stop on the way out and tell them to take a long vacation.





There aren't any strong details. While she was in the hospital with severe burns, Al B. Harper custom made her entire body, and the brain case, and it was unbelievably expensive, which is why he hasn't made another one.

Interestingly enough, Nena and Anna were built similarly by a reclusive robotics expert who holds the patents on a lot of their construction. They both call her "Dr. Lia". She does not hold a patent on the design of Yuki's brain case or the support systems that keep the brain alive. I would speculate that Al B. Harper is a huge fan of hers.





What's kind of funny about that is Yuki made enemies of nearly the entire criminal underworld in Paradopolis and GMY, which is why she had to join the Lair Legion to hide from them. The Psychic Samurai immerses herself in the criminal underworld, and occasionally carefully manipulates it, but she hasn't done anything to dissolve the hatred they have for Yuki. And yet the two of them are friends.








But I could always do better.

I'm sure what how I feel about all this.

For one the whole "you have no Librarian anymore" thing. I know that The Baroness likes to be up to date on all things but she apparently missed the fact that the Moon Public Library does in fact have a Librarian on duty: Me! I got my own snazzy blue jumpsuit with black leather accents, my own non IOL compliant trench coat. I also got brown hair, glasses & the last name of Bookman! I am The Librarian! At least for the time being.

You'd think that The Baroness would have known that we couldn't be open for business without one. That just simple math: No Librarian, No Library. It's like also right there in our charter on page 495, subsection 29, paragraph 65, sentence 6. Right there near the section on the Phoenix Protocols. We go nuclear & nothing of importance is lost!

Also, I'm not sure what's up with all this naming things after authors from Earth that A.L.F.RED & D.D. kept on going about. Sure, it's a cute idea but really that's lost on most of our patrons. They are not from around here.

About the File Room: much like Hallie, all of our records are kept electronically. We just make hardcopies of our collection because it's kind of what you when your a Library. 1 upside with our books: they are self updating! Unlike Hallie: the data core is not kept offsite... well... it's kind of is. if you consider being in "another dimension that exists in the same time & place as the Library" as being "offsite". All that gobbledygook about the Data Core is listed in the charter. In a few places actually. You got the section about the Data Core itself, the Phoenix Protocols, anytime that transferring of data is mentioned, any mention of the Litteraria Wormza (the Bookworms) are mentioned.

Another odd bit as far as we can tell Lee never had any of MPL's tech in the File Room. Xi Jai 8, the XJ Model 8 personal floating assistant/portable MPL directory (which Lee called "Shawn"), preformed a tech sweep shortly after Lee's death for tech that would require any of us to take back. Xi Jai 8 found nothing. We did come down to pick up Lee's personal belongs. We choose to not make a big deal out if it. We just used the portal system that Lee always used. It was really simple. All of Lee's stuff was already boxed up for us. A simple five minute jaunt down to the planet's surface. Didn't think it would have smelled that bad but A.L.F.RED said that was jus the smell of the File Room & not the planet as a whole.

I don't know what the deal with the Origami thing is. It's not a MPL thing, It might be an old out dated form of tech from the IOL but it's nothing that they use now. Could be something from the time of the Material Centurians or older. They did try a few different methods of information gathering before getting to the Librarians. My knowledge on the history of the IOL is not the best.

And Yes: D.D. has excepted that Lee has died. This is not the first time he's past on & will most likely will not be the last time. As I have stated earlier: we did clear out the file room of the stuff that belongs to us. The rest of the stuff as far as we know belongs to the Lair Legion.

Picking pockets is for London orphans. With Scots and a highway robber blood running through my veins I think I can come up with something more substantial than that.

Or I could call on the aristocratic side. Care to come round for a cup of tea? Just do make sure to use the trades entrance won't you? There's a good chap.




Ah yes Doggerland. Fascinating isn't it?




Got it.





I'll look that up. It sounds familiar, but we know what my memory is like.





*chuckle* Fair enough.




Gives birth, gains weight, and nags a lot? *ducks from the wrath of all the female posters*




The pro bunyip lobby would be better than a lot of other lobbies.

Well, isn't one of them your editor? Can't be all that apathetic.

The Baroness: "I was referring to the absence of proper Librarians old enough to shave and to wear big-boy pants."