Saving the Future – Part 23: Don’t Give Up Now, It’s the Blockbuster Summer Action Episode Previously: The Lair Legion, their guests, Parody Island, and the SPUD helicarrier have been shanghaied to the Land That Common Sense Forgot by the sinister Void Scholar. There they have been reunited with missing friends Nats, Uhuna, and Yo, and now they join Yo in defending the Free City of Golgomoria against the undead hordes of the Eternal Empress and her evil allies. Meanwhile, Champagne, Night Nurse, and the newly-murdered Marie Murcheson have discovered Visionary’s lighthouse in an unusual location and the staff and visitors of Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises have also been hurled into exile. Previous Chapters The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse ***     Griffin keyed the lock override code into the Lair Mansion Operations Room (somehow he always knew it) and Sam Featherstone strode into the darkened chamber as if she was coming come. “It’s great to be back,” she grinned at Magweed and Griffin.     Magweed placed the floppy rag of ginger cat she was cradling down on a worksurface, where he proceeded to stop his claws on thirty million dollars of high-tech sensor array. She looked around thoughtfully. “I think the Mansion is glad to have us back,” she perceived. “It’s missed us. It’s been lonely without a purpose.”     Samantha began the start-up procedure to bring the main systems back online. Most of it had been hastily shut down when the squid-headed mind-controlling invaders from earlier had taken control of Mansion personnel. Now the large central status hologram fuzzed into life, a representation of Earth with red and amber dots indicating known crisis points. It was out of date.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think the Mansion has been lonely without its heroes,” Magweed continued, developing her theme. “I think it likes fighting for truth and justice with us. It makes the Mansion happy.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s bricks and mortar, Mags,” Sam pointed out; but not too strongly, since she recognised that her friend had faerie sensitivities that gave her vivid insights into truths hidden from others.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, well so’s the Yurt and he can feel,” Griffin pointed out. “And CSFB!’s pure impossibilitium these days, and Yo’s pure thought. And the Shoggoth is walking snot. You can’t be fleshist.”     Sam modified the central hologram to reflect the intel streaming through the SPUD helicarrier. The image changed to a flat battleground around the undead-besieged city of Golgamoria, where the Lair Legion were facing the assembled might of the Children of the Darkness, the Raptor Supremacists, the Spawn of Umsharr and their many allies. Blue coded blobs indicated where the Legion might be active amongst the great red swathes.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ooh, I think Nats just cleared a path to the war engines,” Griffin guessed as a V-shaped wedge suddenly appeared in the display. “And now Hatty and Sally are going in to destroy them.”     Another hologram blinked in, but this was the green-toned human shape of the Legion’s artificial intelligence Hallie. “What are you children doing in my Ops room?” she demanded.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We were evacuated from the Helicarrier when it went to combat mode,” Samantha answered her. “It was considered too dangerous to have children standing there near Colonel Drury’s cigar.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They tried to have Bad News Herb and Flapjack babysit us,” Griffin added. “But we ditched them after they got accidentally handcuffed to a radiator. There’s no court on the planet would convict us.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And we thought we’d be able to watch the fight from here,” Magweed explained with an apologetic little smile. “If we’re not safe in the Lair Mansion Ops Room where are we safe?” Her smile wavered. “You’re not mad at us, are you mom?”     Hallie’s missing years of memory were still not fully restored. Her green skin paled. “Mom?” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Okay,” snarled Yuki Shiro as she ripped the head off a vampire lord and threw his decaying body at his zombie hordes. “If Nats shouts ‘Lair Legion Line Up!’ one more time then I am going over to the undead’s side.”     The press of monsters around the main gates of Golgamoria was thick and ferocious. CrazySugarFreakBoy! somersaulted over them, spraying fast-setting silly string in impossible quantities, glowing luminescently, grinning wildly. “Aw, Bill’s just jazzed to be back on the team. With Nats and Dancer and Yo filling out the roster it’s kind of like old times! And we so need Silicone Sally on side as well.”     Killer Shrike disarmed a Nazi raptor and borrowed a sub-machine gun from its corpse. “Hey, there’s only two reasons why anyone would fight alongside you losers,” the butcher bird growled. “One, who wouldn’t want to put fighting dino-Nazis on their resume. Two, Wilton’s really rich and I won’t we getting a paycheck from evil Al for a while till he escapes SPUD custody.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, Al will be back,” Yuki promised. “It’s taken a while to pull the team together, but now we are there’s pretty much nothing we can’t do!” ***     Uhunalura, Princess of the Abhumans, slipped into the holding cell where Shadow Cabinet agent Edward Cromlyn was once again confined. “Hello,” she said. Her bodyguards flanked her beside the exit and led in Dr Al B. Harper.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Why this is a pleasant surprise,” Cromlyn mocked his four visitors. “Abhuman royalty, a Presidential aide, and my favourite mad scientist recreation.” Cromlyn had recently used psionic surgery on Dr Harper to turn the archscientist evil. Cromlyn’s eyes flickered over the fourth figure, whom he did not recognise. “And some nonentity,” he added dismissively.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sloppy thinking,” scolded evil Al. “This is why you always end up getting beaten by the heroes, Ed.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t call me that,” snapped Cromlyn. “Besides, I disposed of a generation of so-called heroes after the second world war. You couldn’t even hold a helicarrier against a robot and a half-boy.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’re not here to trade banter,” interjected Herbert Garrick, still rubbing his wrist from the handcuff marks from earlier. “We’re here to fix Harper.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nobody’s interested in talking to you, murderer,” Uhuna told the Shadow Cabinet operative who had arranged the killing of Marie Murcheson earlier. “I’m just here to sort out what you did to poor Al.”     Harper shrugged. “Speaking as poor Al can I say that I’m fine with the way I am now. All those moral quandaries were holding back my genius. Now there’s nothing I can’t achieve.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Which is why we want you back the way you were before,” shuddered Garrick.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hello, little girl,” glowered Cromlyn as the princess approached him. “Come to link your mind to mine and use your powers on me, have you?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’ve got something that belongs to you, yes,” agreed the Abhuman royalty. “I can transfer injuries from one person to another. I’m going to transfer the changes you made to Al’s mind back onto you. I really don’t care what it’ll do to you.”     Cromlyn chuckled. “Whatever happened to do no harm? You used to be such a sweet little thing.” He held out his hand for her to take. “Link with me, then. After all, I’m wearing a Lair Legion power dampener.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Careful,” warned Al B. “Once you’re locked to him he can still get to your mind despite the dampener. I don’t want that bastard rampaging around inside my head again.”     Cromlyn continued to stare at Uhuna. “Oh, but the princess will prevail over both your will and mine, Harper. After all, her heart is pure.”     The Abhuman shuddered and looked uncertain. Then she reached out for Al and Cromlyn and made the link.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well now,” chuckled Edward Cromlyn as he felt the girl’s mind touch his.     The fourth person present moved an unfamiliar human hand and laid it on Uhuna’s shoulder. “’Now’ is a very over-rated description,” offered the Manga Shoggoth. “By the way, I am not a nonentity. I am certainly an entity. I ent. Would you like to see who I am?”     And then there was a Shoggoth in the psionic mix, and Cromlyn started screaming.     Uhuna clung onto her sanity and made the transfer as quickly as she could.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Done,” gasped Al. B. “Now get out of there, fast!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not quite yet,” the Shoggoth chimed in. “Uhuna, Al B. is very clever for a transient mortal. You’ve only dealt with the false personality he hypnoprogrammed into himself earlier to protect from your powers. Dig further. I’ll just peel this layer of him away so you can get deeper.”     Then the archscientist started screaming again; but a small part of him was taking notes.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Done now?” Uhuna asked desperately. She’d dug her nails into the palms of her hands and she was bleeding.     The Shoggoth looked again. “All done. Although I don’t think Cromlyn is in a very good state after having his botched mind-patches pressed back on himself.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Good,” said Garrick.     Uhuna broke the link and toppled backwards into the Shoggoth’s arms. He dropped her.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think I’ll take it from here,” offered Al, rubbing his forehead then tending to the princess. “Wow, so that was what evil was like.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But you’re not evil now?” Garrick checked cautiously.     Al B. clamped down on his bubble pipe and smiled up at Bad News Herb. “Of course not. Don’t worry about it any more, Herbert.” Then he winked at Uhuna.     The Shoggoth and Al took Uhuna to rest, but Garrick remained behind with Cromlyn. “Not feeling so good?” the G-Man asked the rogue Shadow Cabinet operative when the others had gone.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I have nothing to say to a dead man,” Cromlyn muttered sourly. “And you are dead now, Garrick. It’s only a matter of time before I make it happen. You, your mother, anyone you ever cared about, every single member of this stinking Lair Legion…”     Garrick nodded. “So you are a clear and present danger to the United States of America,” he noted. “I’m so glad.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew a Glock .22 handgun.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What are you doing?” sneered Cromlyn.     Garrick shot him in the head, at point blank range, five times. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“How can we still be alive?” demanded Navali, Steward of Golgamoria. “We’re surrounded by blood-thirsters and plaguemorts and raptors and Umsharrspawn and we’re still fighting!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Is to be Yo’s friends have come!” the pure genderless thought being in the Zorro costume explained as s/he skewered a gallowshound that had somehow made it all the way to the Guildhall Meeting Room. “Is to be the cute Lair Legioning!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The champions of which Lady Magweed spoke,” remembered Chelema, stepping back to grab another quiver of Yo-blessed arrows. “I believed… but I never believed…”     A lithe young woman in a danskin dropped down through a charred hole in the roof to join them. “Yep, that’s pretty much my reaction to the LL too,” Dancer agreed. “Especially round breakfast-time. Hiya, Yo!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Dancer!” squealed Yo, hurling him/herself at the probability altering waitress/star-in-waiting.     There was growling above as Glory found the other lurking gallowshound, and then the pooch of power jumped down to join the happy reunion.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“How is to be battle going?” Yo demanded. “Yo is to be thinking all of our people are to be being very brave.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes, that’s how the waves of horror the monsters are emanating aren’t affecting your armies,” Glory barked.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s still as tough fight,” Dancer answered. “Could go either way. That’s why we came for reinforcements.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You can’t take the Wise One out there!” objected Navali. “The Eternal Empress has vowed to destroy her!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, way to keep that quiet,” hissed Chelema as Yo heard this news for the first time.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Eternal uncute-Empress is wanting to be fighting of Yo?” the pure thought being realised. “Is to be okay with Yo.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“If you fall then so does the free city,” Navali objected.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But if she doesn’t then we might really be free,” Chelema pointed out. “Grow a spine, Navali. You could be okay running this place one day, but you’ve got to start believing.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I believe in the Wise One,” the steward objected. “I do, but…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’ve got to believe in yourself,” Dancer told her.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We need to go!” Glory barked. “Things are still in the balance. People are dying!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We go to be of fighting!” agreed Yo. “How are we to be getting to uncute Empress?”     Visionary brought the LairJet right down to the charred Guildhall roof. “Anybody need a ride?” he called down. “Regular passengers travel free.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Visiiiiiii!!!” shrieked the pure thought being. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Tactical update,” barked Colonel Dan Drury on the helicarrier commend deck. “From anybody but Agent Beesleyhuxtoy,” he added cautiously.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“This is my friend Chad,” Ronnie said, introducing his silent friend to everybody. “He’s okay, but he’s had to have his accordion amputated.”     Chad waved sadly and fingered his black armband.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’ve cleared a landing zone for ground forces,” Contessa Romanza reported. “Friendly casualties are moderate. We’ve lost nine flying cars and we’re getting low on surface to ground ordinance but we’re still ahead of the game. Sergeant MacAllistair and his troll irregulars have played havoc with enemy supply chains. The opposition still have no idea how to deal with a detonator hippo.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Join the club,” muttered Drury.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’ve just heard in from Al B.,” contributed Amber St Clare. “It seems he’s back on team, and he sent us the exact frequencies we need to broadcast to counter the psionic attacks of those squid-headed entities. In fact it should give them serious tentacle-ache.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ooh,” winced Ronnie. “That’s a lot of tentacles as well.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And the enemy are bringing up airships to engage us,” the Contessa concluded.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Now that’s good news,” Drury said with satisfaction. “Amount’a money the free world spent on this helicarrier bucket it’s about time we got ta show whut we can do when we cut loose.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“One other thing,” Natalia Romanza added. “Anna. Your rogue destruction android. She’s on the ground, fighting, separated from the others. Separated from those pirates she’s been leading. Surrounded by war elementals and undead giants. Things she’s never been taught about so she can’t properly risk assess. Even she could be in trouble.”     Drury turned to the Contessa. “Whut are you saying?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m saying we could help her. Or there could be a friendly fire accident.”     Drury considered this for a moment. “Help her out,” he ordered. “She’s on our side an’ we don’t stab her in the back. We might have to take her down one day, but today we do what’s right.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Incoming airships,” tactical station reported. “Swastikas on the sides.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well now,” breathed the head honcho of SPUD, “Who says there’s no rewards fer doing the right things?” ***     Drury wasn’t the only one doing tactical assessments. Ophelo of Golgamoria was also counting costs and risks as he held the south pass against a rising tide of plaguemorts and their rot-zombies.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey, will you stop with the gloomy calculations?” his friend Koom objected. “Here we are, fighting the good fight, protecting all we hold dear, doing all kinds of cool top-of-the-battlements stuff and you’re just doing risk/benefit analyses. Swipe the heads of a few monsters and loosen up.”     Ophelo swiped the head off a rot-zombie that had reached the parapet. “We’re not winning this, Koom. This is a siege on many fronts, and those champions that the Wise One brought can’t be everywhere. It only takes one front to fail, one defence to break, and the nightwalkers are into the city amongst the helpless population. And then we’re done.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So let’s make sure it’s not this front,” Koom argued. A cloud of choking poison topped the battlements, betraying the advance of plaguemorts themselves.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We won’t give in,” Ophelo promised, “but we’ve lost too many people. We can’t hold without reinforcements.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So we do the hero thing and hope helps gets here in time,” Koom shrugged. “It’s what we have…”     A pair of rot zombies caught him and dragged him down while a third rammed a spear through him.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Koom!” shouted Ophelo, forgetting his calculations and running in to help his wounded friend. More rot-zombies topped the wall, and then there was the foul plaguemort itself, pestilent and rotting, grinning through fleshless lips as it approached for the kill.     A dagger whirled through the air, caught it in the forehead, and toppled it back off the battlements into the press below.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Fear not!” called Thungore the Barbarian, unsheathing his massive broadword and cleaving his way forward. “Rescue is at hand. But damn, that dagger I threw was a present from my mother! Well, from somebody’s mother. I think.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes, we’re here,” sighed Glumkeep, companion of loud mighty-thewed heroes. “And if you’re not very careful we’ll save the day.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I don’t suppose you brought a medical kit with you, did you?” asked Koom hopefully. “Only lying here bleeding on a battlefield full of vampires isn’t really something I want to take up as a hobby.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sorry, no,” Thungore admitted. “I’ll just stick to cleaving, if you don’t mind.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Best he stays with what he knows,” Glumkeep admitted.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Your aid is timely,” Ophelo told the newcomers. “But we are still in danger of being overwhelmed.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Thungore can be like that,” agreed Glumkeep. “Oh, you mean the plaguemorts?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Fear not!” shouted Thungore. He had a limited dialogue repertoire.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes, really. Fear not,” agreed Nats, skimming along the battlements telekinetically pushing the undead with him as he went. “We’re pretty good at this stuff. For example…”     As soon as the undead were crowded into one space Hatman dragged on his fireman’s helmet and incinerated the host. “Next terrace,” he called to his team-mates. “Raptor incursion.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ooh, I like the raptor incursions,” Silicone Sally admitted, bouncing down to get there first. “They catapult real good.”     Thungore watched in awe as the flexible felon wrapped herself around the Zazi dinosaurs. “Now there is someone I just have to rescue,” he swore. “So… bendy.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m not sure she needs rescuing,” Ophelo pointed out. But Thungore had already hurled himself off the balcony. There was, after all, a perfectly adequate crash mattress down below. ***     Amy Aston picked herself up painfully from the debris-strewn floor of the Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises firehouse. “Ouch. Usually when I wake up aching and bruised, flat out on my back at least I’ve had two bottles of tequila and a heavy date to thank.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Thank you for that insight,” Miss Framlicker told her. “Has anyone else got too much information they want to share with us, or could somebody please tell me what the hell just happened?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Didn’t we just do an infallible master plan?” objected Kara Harper. “We’d spotted the Space Fandom, crippled him and all his cronies, got back Dr Weed Wrichards Classic and were on the way to delivering a spanking to the bad guys.”     Cody was checking the video playbacks of the moments he and the others had been caught in time. “Bad guy’s called the Void Scholar,” he announced. “And he’s the one who got to do the spanking.”     Dr Wrichards was checking the remaining EEE instrumentation that hadn’t burned out. “We’ve been catapulted into Comic-Book Limbo,” he confirmed. “Although there’s some very peculiar features about this current configuration of it. If I could only get this Heisenburg Repressor module working again…”     The front doors of the firehouse were blown in and the ground floor was occupied by bipedal dinosaurs in Gestapo uniforms.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think I hit my head,” admitted Cody.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nobody move,” the lab’s built in translators interpreted for the machine-gun wielding lizards. “We are the masters now!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So the automatic defences are down,” surmised Amy.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I don’t know how Al is to blame for this,” Miss F declared, “but I’ll find a way if it’s the last thing I do.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hands in the air! You are our prisoners!” screamed the raptors.     The hand grenade rolled right to the intruders’ feet before it detonated. “Hey, I happen to be on retainer protecting these people,” objected Killer Shrike, the grenade’s donor.     Nats blurred in and took down the remainder of the dinosaurs. “And I still haven’t gotten the cheque for that trip I made to the Dreary Dimension back in ’02,” he complained. “Stain remover was so a legitimate business expense.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Bill?” gasped Amy. “Simon?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Heya!” grinned CrazySugarFreakBoy!, peering his head through the hole in the outer doors that showed a war going on outside. “You guys are totally owed a really big recap.” ***     Up on the peaks above the stitch-lands that floated atop Comic-Book Limbo was a lighthouse. Its clear bright beam warned dimensional travellers of the navigational dangers ahead, of the chance of slipping through some plot hole and being lost forever in the garbage and recycle bin of the Parodyverse. Inside that lighthouse were one international jewel thief detective, one vampire turned ER nurse, and one dead Victorian who had been kept on this plane of existence as a banshee ghost.     It was a typical day for the lighthouse.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think I’m getting it now,” Marie Murcheson confessed as she looked at the engravings that Champagne had pointed out. “It’s like I’m… linked in to this place.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s probably a symptom of being killed in the Lair Mansion then rescued by the Mansion’s links to the Lighthouse and retained as a banshee,” guessed Grace O’Mercy, the Night Nurse.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Although timelinewise this lighthouse hasn’t yet linked to the Mansion and the Celestian defences on Parody Island,” Champagne pointed out. “It was evidently enough that one day it will.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Can you interpret these symbols though?” Grace asked the banshee. “Is there a clue here to what’s going on?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I know them, somehow,” Marie admitted. “But it’s like… I don’t understand what I’m seeing. Like when people in the twenty-first century tried to describe television to me, or the e-mail.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Tell us what you can,” urged Champagne. “We’ll provide the analysis.”     Marie turned back to the ancient carvings. Many of these were obscured by the time the Lighthouse had become Visionary’s home, hidden behind wood panels and plaster. “I think this is about how the Lighthouse came to be,” she ventured. “There was a big accident, and a… a hole was formed. Far away. If things fell into that hole they were lost forever. No way out unless they were… rescued?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Is this the hole?” wondered Grace. “Did we fall in it?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So they made this Lighthouse,” Marie went on. “To warn people, travellers. But then something else happened.” She pointed to a complicated rune that showed a vast bulk towering over a smaller one. “Some powerful entities, unimaginably powerful, blocked the hole. They scoured the whole area, wiping it clear. Only the Lighthouse survived, but then it was useless.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And so it came here?” Grace guessed. “It fell in as the hole was blocked?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think so. It’s useless too now.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But it won’t always be,” considered Champagne. “We know that this building, a much much older version of this building, ends up on Earth and eventually ends up on Parody Island. That means there’s a way out of here, and that means we can send a message to the future so that people there can come find us.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But we don’t understand anything,” complained Marie. “I don’t understand why I’m still… here, as an insubstantial spirit yet able to think and speak. When I was a banshee before I was… hardly conscious. I felt but didn’t think. This is like being alive but… isn’t.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes, that can be bad,” admitted the Night Nurse.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We know plenty,” Champagne contradicted Marie. “Your story is the final clue to solving the history of this place.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It is?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Of course.” The detective tapped the runes on the wall again. “The Second-Oldest Race in the Parodyverse, in their hubris and arrogance, explored too far. They broke down the walls to the transdimensional Vortex and released the reality-devouring Hero-Feeders. The resultant conflict erased the Second-Oldest Race from history. And it left… a hole.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A hole needing a lighthouse,” Grace supplied.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But then came the Judgement of the Celestians,” Champagne went on. “Those giant Space Robot policemen.” She shuddered. “They erased even the planets and suns where all this had happened, causing the so-called Black Galaxy. Anything that was left was brushed away into the cosmic trash can we call Comic-Book Limbo.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s horrible,” frowned Marie.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s… suggesting we’ve been thrown in there too,” reasoned the Night Nurse worriedly.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“These lands don’t really match previous descriptions of that place,” Champagne admitted. “But then again, the place is supposed to be infinite. Besides, the stitch-gates and the stories of somebody living here in the Lighthouse a long time ago suggest that these lands were accreted here for a planned purpose.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That Architect who the Eternal Empress mentioned,” Grace remembered. “Did he create the Lighthouse?”     Champagne thought not. “If this is Comic-Book Limbo then everything here is salvage,” she reasoned. “Including this tower. But he could maybe have used it to draw all the lands in and stitch them together.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There used to be far more of them,” Marie sensed. “But that was long ago. Now decay weakens them and they vanish one by one. The Grey Marchers arrive and devour… devour everything.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We usually call them Hero Feeders,” Champagne suggested. “Whatever the Architect wanted these lands for he’s already got it now. He doesn’t need this place any more. What’s left is just an experiment he couldn’t be bothered to tidy up, abandoned to rot.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But there are thousands of people living in these realms,” objected Grace. “These dying realms, under a dying sun.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Can we help them?” wondered Marie. “Can we save them?”     Champagne turned back to the runes. “The only escape from Comic-Book Limbo is with help from outside. You have to be pulled out.” She thought a bit further. “But there might be a way to send a message in a bottle…” ***     The Eternal Empress was an elder vampire of immense power, grown greater from consuming the blood of her rivals and of humans alike. She commanded close to a million lesser undead, each one soul-bound to her or someone tied to her, and when she willed it they moved as one. If the Empress’s form was destroyed, as it had been at the start of the night’s conflict, then she could remake it from the dark strength she drew from all her minions. That was why she was Eternal.     Now she could sense the shape of the battle, feel the forces arrayed against her. She could feel the defence that prevented her will from overcoming the transient mortals that opposed her, stopped her from overwhelming their courage and sending them scuttling weeping into the night. Her foes had a shield.     And the shield was smiling.     The Empress turned her rage upon that intelligence, that shining soul that radiated happiness like she radiated fear. She sent in the ur-shadows and the gothenmanders, the plaguemorts and frightrags, the beastskins and the breathstealers.     Her enemies guarded their shield. Strands of improbably cause and effect defused cunning traps. Telekinetic force scattered overwhelming odds. Sheer chaos bounded unchecked through the ranks of her followers. With machines of steel and minds of Serious Matter and an arrogance only short-lived humans can attain they fended the Empress’ attacks, and the thought being came closer.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Let it come,” hissed the Empress. Close up she could overwhelm it. Close up she could destroy it.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yo is to be here.”     It had come sooner than she’d expected, and now she saw the dull human form it affected the Empress had to laugh. She could manipulate men. She made herself beautiful.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yo is still to be here.” Now the handsome man facing her was a beautiful woman, and the thought being’s rapier was still pointing towards the Empress’ heart.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Happiness,” spat the Eternal Empress, “happiness is transitory.” She reached out to crush the being that opposed her.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It really is,” agreed Dancer, kicking the queen of the vampires aside. “I always think it’s kind of like a performance art, where you have to keep on doing the show and working at it all the time so it doesn’t get stale. Happiness has to be felt and done and shared. It works best with friends.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And we’re Yo’s friends,” added Visionary, warding off the shaggy guards with a super-powered border collie. “She called, we came. She didn’t need to drink our blood or anything.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And now Yo is to be making of uncute Empress to stop of this attacking,” Yo announced, ignoring the vampire’s attempt to dominate him/her.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You think I didn’t plan this?” sneered the Empress. “You think I didn’t lure you here?”     A dozen death knights broke up through the ground of the Empress’ tent, each one prepared to maim and kill the intruders that threatened their mistress.     Yo laughed. “You think these are all of Yo’s friends?”     Hatman cannonballed through the side of the marquee and straight through the first of the knights. Behind him were CrazySugarFreakBoy!, Yuki, Anna, Killer Shrike, Nats, Silicone Sally, and Sergeant MacHarridan, each ready to fall upon the undead that had been the Empress’ trap.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Didn’t sense them?” wondered Dancer. “What are the chances?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s over,” Hatman called to the Empress. “Stand down.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s not over,” promised the Eternal Empress of the Empire of the Night. She opened her mouth and released the cloud of death. Nothing within ten thousand miles would survive.     Nats telepathically contained the spray for three seconds. Yo’s rapier skewered the Empress through the heart. Anna, Yuki, Shrike and MacHarridan seared the cloud to oblivion as she evaporated.     The will went out of the armies of the undead. For nine heartbeats. ***     The Eternal Empress woke in her sarcophagus, chilled and angry. She rose with vengeance.     Sir Mumphrey Wilton cleared his throat. He wasn’t entirely comfortable sneaking into a lady’s bedchamber, even if that lady was one of the ungodly undead.     The Eternal Empress turned her glare on him. He tipped his hat.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Your hidden chamber in your forbidden place in your secret city of the dead wasn’t that hard to find,” the Librarian told her. “Not once you look at the ancient texts and start putting everything together. Sorry.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And you two are…?” demanded the Empress.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’re the chaps here to finish you off, madam,” replied Sir Mumphrey. “known a few bloodsuckers in my time. Come across the old back-to-the-coffin trick. That’s why we sauntered down here to wait for you.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“When I was doing my researches I found about all the things you’re responsible for,” Lee Bookman told the Empress coldly. “All the things you’ve done through the ages to hold your power here.”     The Eternal Empress sneered. “And still you dared come here, to my place of power? You dare to confront me here?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Absolutely,” confirmed Mumph. “And now…”     The Eternal Empress was on him in an instant, ready to tear out his throat and have him drained to a husk before his heart had beaten even once again.     The last charge of Sir Mumphrey’s Chronometer of Infinity held her motionless as she touched him, cut off momentarily from the vast horde that empowered her.     Lee Bookman downloaded the accounts of her crimes into her brain.     Sir Mumphrey Wilton wrapped his pocketwatch chain around a stake of whitethorn and plunged it into her heart. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Like these boots?” Killer Shrike asked Silicone Sally. “I got them off this bloodsucker prince. I got me a werewolf pelt for a rug too.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t expect me to go rolling on it,” Sally Rezilyant warned him. “Anyhow, I only got this diamond tiara and that bag of jewellery over there. Nothing as good as boots.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You got what?” demanded Shrike, horrified. A sly look came over his face. “Say, Sally, do you like a game of cards?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I don’t mind the occasional hand, Mr Maddicks” Champagne told him, returning with Sir Mumphrey and the Librarian. “You might have to remind me of the rules.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re okay!” Hatman called happily, spotting the kidnapped detective whole and unblood-drained. “Champagne, we were really worried.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’d have been back sooner,” the Librarian explained, “but Sir Mumphrey wanted us to find Champagne and the people who’d absconded from the Peru camp. And then we found Visionary’s lighthouse.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Wait, what?” Vizh spluttered, choking on his coffee. “Er, did you bring any clean underwear from there?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We brought a possible way home,” Champagne admitted. “Oh, and it’s also got a not-quite-as-gone-as-you-feared-it Lair Banshee squatting as well. I really think you’ll need to apply Dr Harper and a Shoggoth to that place as soon as possible.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A way home would be wonderful,” Dancer agreed, “but we can’t just leave all these people in this Realm That Common Sense Forgot to die. Even with the undead all re-deaded and the Nazi dinos on the run and the Spawn of Umsharr having all been Shoggothed there’s a million other problems the people here face.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Like the Grey Walkers,” noted Yuki, who did her homework.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, nobody gets left behind,” agreed CSFB!     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Except maybe Garrick,” added Flapjack, who’d had to do the clean-up of Cromlyn’s body.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But how are we supposed to get that many people home?” worried Amber St Clare. “And what would be the protocol for coping with hundreds of thousands of pulp novel savages seeking asylum?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yo is to be thinking is to be place for them somewhere,” Yo assured everybody. “When Yo is able to be getting out of uncute Comic-Book Limbo Yo is to be taking them for now to the Happy Place, all the stitching lands and their people. And then Yo is to be finding good place to be putting them for live.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Such as…?” ventured Miss Framlicker, who could foresee an EEE charity case in the offing.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, Yo is not knowing of that,” Yo admitted candidly. “Yo is to be leaving of that to Yo-friend Visi.”     Hallie laughed at the possibly-fake man’s expression. “Well, he is an ambassador now, they tell me.”     Al B. Harper began to chalk on the nearest surface. “I’ll need to do a few calculations and then find ways to slave all the stitch-gates together as interface boosters,” he muttered, “then match with the vibrational frequencies of each of the thirty-two realms and a nominal return point via the Happy Place portal…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’re not all going to become animals again are we?” worried Hatman.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We become animals?” asked Sally, interested.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not if we regress the interface harmonic through a reality validation spiral,” suggested Dr Wrichards, joining Al B. at the chalkface. “Now if we…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We need to know more about this Architect and this Void Scholar,” said CSFB!, who could spot plot leads when he saw them. “Lee?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“On it,” agreed the Librarian. “Some time spent in Vizh’s lighthouse with those runes should be fascinating.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I can read runes,” volunteered Cody Harper. “I can read anything.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Mostly porn,” offered Kara Harper acerbically.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And we need to get home fast,” Hatman warned them. “From what Miss F and the others tell us we’re really needed back there right now.”     Nats clapped his hands together. “So what’s the plan,” he said with relish,” O glorious leader?” *** Next Time For Sure: Purveyors vs Juniors vs Citizen Z vs the Baroness vs Onslaughter vs Danny Lyle… and more. Saving the Future #24: There Shall Be Only One *** Previous Chapters: #1: “And just when did Danny find time to take over the Parodyverse?” by Dancer #2: "Sometime you have to turn flammable again!" by Visionary #3: That’s the Way the Story Goes by the Hooded Hood #4: See No Evil by the Hooded Hood #5: Whodunnit by the Hooded Hood, Visionary, Killer Shrike, and Jason #6: Suspicious Behaviour by the Hooded Hood, Jason, Hatman, and CrazySugarFreakBoy! #7: Accusation and Denial by the Hooded Hood, JJJ, Jason and L! #8: The Final Solution by the Hooded Hood and Dancer #9: The Land That Common Sense Forgot by the Hooded Hood #9.1: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #9.2: Chad and Ronnie by L! #9.3: “In addition to cappuccino and personal hygiene these tribespeople have not yet invented underwear.” by Dancer #9.4: Lone Lost Boy & Heroines Hanging Together by CrazySugarFreakBoy! #9.5: From Dross into Gold by Killer Shrike #9.6: Old Friends and New Allies by Visionary #9.7: Taking a Swim by L! #9.8: A Post-Swim Chat by L! #9.9: Champagne and the Land That Common Sense Forgot by Champagne #10: The Age of Villains by the Hooded Hood #10.1: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #10.2: The Baroness #55 by JJJ #10.3: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #10.4: Ewe Gotta Have Hart 1 by Killer Shrike #10.5: Ewe Gotta Have Hart 2 by Killer Shrike #11: An Age Undreamed Of by the Hooded Hood #12: The New Lair Legions (And Other Heroes) by the Hooded Hood #12.1: I Hate You by Visionary #12.2: Champagne and the Tower of Laments by Champagne #12.3: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #12.4: The Hearing by Visionary #12.5: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #13: Exploring the Forbidden Valley, or Samantha Featherstone and the Crystal Goddess by the Hooded Hood #14: Real Heroes by the Hooded Hood #14.1: “I’d like to be clear that I’m a no-skewer zone, and have been since college.” by Dancer #14.2: Catherine & the Danger Zone by L! #14.3: “Do you know how much shaving I had to do to put this thing on?” by Visionary #14.4: “Well we can’t just wait here till we find a use for Visionary. We’ll starve to death.” by Dancer #15: Change and Decay by the Hooded Hood #15.1: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #15.2: Hazardous Chemicals by Killer Shrike #16: One Moment In Time by the Hooded Hood #17: Slaves of the Brain Eaters, Thralls of the Blood-Drinkers by the Hooded Hood #18: Now Get Out Of That by the Hooded Hood #18.1: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #18.2: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #18.3 Crossing Lines by CrazySugarFreakBoy! #18.4 Shooting You With My Smile by CrazySugarFreakBoy! #18.5: Funeral For a Friend by L! #18.6: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #18.7 Playing Both Ends by CrazySugarFreakBoy! #18.8: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #18.9: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #18.10: Valued Employee by Visionary #19: Probable Cause by the Hooded Hood #20: Good Intentions by the Hooded Hood #20.1: Very Special Guest Star by Hatman #21: Points of View by the Hooded Hood #22: Plot Points by the Hooded Hood #22.1: Potholes In Memory Lane by Visionary #22.2: Dancer’s Saving the Future Amnesiac Hallie Tie-in Special: “I’m pretty sure there’s two tongues involved in that. That is serious stunt kissing.” by Dancer #22.3: Amnesiac Hallie Tie-in Special #2: "Don't get me started on how recursive the title and storyline is getting". by the Manga Shoggoth #22.4: Bridging the Gap by Jason #22.5: Oh That Joey Z! parts 1-3 by Spaztic Child and the Hooded Hood #22.6: Oh That Joey Z! part 4 by L! #22.7: Oh That Joey Z! part 5 by the Hooded Hood #23: Don’t Give Up Now, It’s the Blockbuster Summer Action Episode by the Hooded Hood *** Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2008 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2008 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved.

Interesting that Anna became the topic of conversation once again. Especially because I've started writing something about her. It's an interesting way of digging into her history.

Still, it was interesting to see Drury's reaction. Maybe he's finally impressed with how she's grown too. That might cause some nasty conflicts with Garrick later.

They might have to make multiple trips of they want to rescue everyone from the Limbo place. Maybe they can put all of them on Shee-Yar, since nobody is using that planet right now. Of course someone would have to negotiate with the Trading Alliance first.

No rest for the Lair Legion though - once they get home, then they have to figure out how to get Liu Xi and then locate the Void Scholar.

The threads all seem to becoming together, which is good since were getting near the end.

Garrick's solution for Cromlyn was a bit unexpected, but I guess when I think about it was in character. But I'm also think that Cromlyn might not be as solved as Garrick would like.

I missed the where Chad & Ronnie met back up or has that not been shown yet (i.e. I need to write that)?

In the "previous chapters" section you forgot to add that Vish did a chapter of the Joey Z. round robin. (Spaztic Chyld started it off, you did parts 2 & 5, Vish did part 3 & I did part 4).

> Saving the Future – Part 23: Don’t Give Up Now, It’s the Blockbuster Summer Action Episode > > Previously: The Lair Legion, their guests, Parody Island, and the SPUD helicarrier have been shanghaied to the Land That Common Sense Forgot by the sinister Void Scholar. There they have been reunited with missing friends Nats, Uhuna, and Yo, and now they join Yo in defending the Free City of Golgomoria against the undead hordes of the Eternal Empress and her evil allies. > > Meanwhile, Champagne, Night Nurse, and the newly-murdered Marie Murcheson have discovered Visionary’s lighthouse in an unusual location and the staff and visitors of Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises have also been hurled into exile. > > Previous Chapters > The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom > Who's Who in the Parodyverse > > *** > >     Griffin keyed the lock override code into the Lair Mansion Operations Room (somehow he always knew it) and Sam Featherstone strode into the darkened chamber as if she was coming come. “It’s great to be back,” she grinned at Magweed and Griffin. > >     Magweed placed the floppy rag of ginger cat she was cradling down on a worksurface, where he proceeded to stop his claws on thirty million dollars of high-tech sensor array. She looked around thoughtfully. “I think the Mansion is glad to have us back,” she perceived. “It’s missed us. It’s been lonely without a purpose.” > >     Samantha began the start-up procedure to bring the main systems back online. Most of it had been hastily shut down when the squid-headed mind-controlling invaders from earlier had taken control of Mansion personnel. Now the large central status hologram fuzzed into life, a representation of Earth with red and amber dots indicating known crisis points. It was out of date. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think the Mansion has been lonely without its heroes,” Magweed continued, developing her theme. “I think it likes fighting for truth and justice with us. It makes the Mansion happy.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s bricks and mortar, Mags,” Sam pointed out; but not too strongly, since she recognised that her friend had faerie sensitivities that gave her vivid insights into truths hidden from others. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, well so’s the Yurt and he can feel,” Griffin pointed out. “And CSFB!’s pure impossibilitium these days, and Yo’s pure thought. And the Shoggoth is walking snot. You can’t be fleshist.” > >     Sam modified the central hologram to reflect the intel streaming through the SPUD helicarrier. The image changed to a flat battleground around the undead-besieged city of Golgamoria, where the Lair Legion were facing the assembled might of the Children of the Darkness, the Raptor Supremacists, the Spawn of Umsharr and their many allies. Blue coded blobs indicated where the Legion might be active amongst the great red swathes. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ooh, I think Nats just cleared a path to the war engines,” Griffin guessed as a V-shaped wedge suddenly appeared in the display. “And now Hatty and Sally are going in to destroy them.” > >     Another hologram blinked in, but this was the green-toned human shape of the Legion’s artificial intelligence Hallie. “What are you children doing in my Ops room?” she demanded. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We were evacuated from the Helicarrier when it went to combat mode,” Samantha answered her. “It was considered too dangerous to have children standing there near Colonel Drury’s cigar.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They tried to have Bad News Herb and Flapjack babysit us,” Griffin added. “But we ditched them after they got accidentally handcuffed to a radiator. There’s no court on the planet would convict us.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And we thought we’d be able to watch the fight from here,” Magweed explained with an apologetic little smile. “If we’re not safe in the Lair Mansion Ops Room where are we safe?” Her smile wavered. “You’re not mad at us, are you mom?” > >     Hallie’s missing years of memory were still not fully restored. Her green skin paled. “Mom?” > > *** > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Okay,” snarled Yuki Shiro as she ripped the head off a vampire lord and threw his decaying body at his zombie hordes. “If Nats shouts ‘Lair Legion Line Up!’ one more time then I am going over to the undead’s side.” > >     The press of monsters around the main gates of Golgamoria was thick and ferocious. CrazySugarFreakBoy! somersaulted over them, spraying fast-setting silly string in impossible quantities, glowing luminescently, grinning wildly. “Aw, Bill’s just jazzed to be back on the team. With Nats and Dancer and Yo filling out the roster it’s kind of like old times! And we so need Silicone Sally on side as well.” > >     Killer Shrike disarmed a Nazi raptor and borrowed a sub-machine gun from its corpse. “Hey, there’s only two reasons why anyone would fight alongside you losers,” the butcher bird growled. “One, who wouldn’t want to put fighting dino-Nazis on their resume. Two, Wilton’s really rich and I won’t we getting a paycheck from evil Al for a while till he escapes SPUD custody.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, Al will be back,” Yuki promised. “It’s taken a while to pull the team together, but now we are there’s pretty much nothing we can’t do!” > > *** > >     Uhunalura, Princess of the Abhumans, slipped into the holding cell where Shadow Cabinet agent Edward Cromlyn was once again confined. “Hello,” she said. Her bodyguards flanked her beside the exit and led in Dr Al B. Harper. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Why this is a pleasant surprise,” Cromlyn mocked his four visitors. “Abhuman royalty, a Presidential aide, and my favourite mad scientist recreation.” Cromlyn had recently used psionic surgery on Dr Harper to turn the archscientist evil. Cromlyn’s eyes flickered over the fourth figure, whom he did not recognise. “And some nonentity,” he added dismissively. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sloppy thinking,” scolded evil Al. “This is why you always end up getting beaten by the heroes, Ed.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t call me that,” snapped Cromlyn. “Besides, I disposed of a generation of so-called heroes after the second world war. You couldn’t even hold a helicarrier against a robot and a half-boy.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’re not here to trade banter,” interjected Herbert Garrick, still rubbing his wrist from the handcuff marks from earlier. “We’re here to fix Harper.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nobody’s interested in talking to you, murderer,” Uhuna told the Shadow Cabinet operative who had arranged the killing of Marie Murcheson earlier. “I’m just here to sort out what you did to poor Al.” > >     Harper shrugged. “Speaking as poor Al can I say that I’m fine with the way I am now. All those moral quandaries were holding back my genius. Now there’s nothing I can’t achieve.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Which is why we want you back the way you were before,” shuddered Garrick. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hello, little girl,” glowered Garrick as the princess approached him. “Come to link your mind to mine and use your powers on me, have you?” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’ve got something that belongs to you, yes,” agreed the Abhuman royalty. “I can transfer injuries from one person to another. I’m going to transfer the changes you made to Al’s mind back onto you. I really don’t care what it’ll do to you.” > >     Garrick chuckled. “Whatever happened to do no harm? You used to be such a sweet little thing.” He held out his hand for her to take. “Link with me, then. After all, I’m wearing a Lair Legion power dampener.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Careful,” warned Al B. “Once you’re locked to him he can still get to your mind despite the dampener. I don’t want that bastard rampaging around inside my head again.” > >     Cromlyn continued to stare at Uhuna. “Oh, but the princess will prevail over both your will and mine, Harper. After all, her heart is pure.” > >     The Abhuman shuddered and looked uncertain. Then she reached out for Al and Cromlyn and made the link. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well now,” chuckled Edward Cromlyn as he felt the girl’s mind touch his. > >     The fourth person present moved an unfamiliar human hand and laid it on Uhuna’s shoulder. “’Now’ is a very over-rated description,” offered the Manga Shoggoth. “By the way, I am not a nonentity. I am certainly an entity. I ent. Would you like to see who I am?” > >     And then there was a Shoggoth in the psionic mix, and Cromlyn started screaming. > >     Uhuna clung onto her sanity and made the transfer as quickly as she could. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Done,” gasped Al. B. “Now get out of there, fast!” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not quite yet,” the Shoggoth chimed in. “Uhuna, Al B. is very clever for a transient mortal. You’ve only dealt with the false personality he hypnoprogrammed into himself earlier to protect from your powers. Dig further. I’ll just peel this layer of him away so you can get deeper.” > >     Then the archscientist started screaming again; but a small part of him was taking notes. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Done now?” Uhuna asked desperately. She’d dug her nails into the palms of her hands and she was bleeding. > >     The Shoggoth looked again. “All done. Although I don’t think Cromlyn is in a very good state after having his botched mind-patches pressed back on himself.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Good,” said Garrick. > >     Uhuna broke the link and toppled backwards into the Shoggoth’s arms. He dropped her. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think I’ll take it from here,” offered Al, rubbing his forehead then tending to the princess. “Wow, so that was what evil was like.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But you’re not evil now?” Garrick checked cautiously. > >     Al B. clamped down on his bubble pipe and smiled up at Bad News Herb. “Of course not. Don’t worry about it any more, Herbert.” Then he winked at Uhuna. > >     The Shoggoth and Al took Uhuna to rest, but Garrick remained behind with Cromlyn. “Not feeling so good?” the G-Man asked the rogue Shadow Cabinet operative when the others had gone. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I have nothing to say to a dead man,” Cromlyn muttered sourly. “And you are dead now, Garrick. It’s only a matter of time before I make it happen. You, your mother, anyone you ever cared about, every single member of this stinking Lair Legion…” > >     Garrick nodded. “So you are a clear and present danger to the United States of America,” he noted. “I’m so glad.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew a Glock .22 handgun. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What are you doing?” sneered Cromlyn. > >     Garrick shot him in the head, at point blank range, five times. > > *** > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“How can we still be alive?” demanded Navali, Steward of Golgamoria. “We’re surrounded by blood-thirsters and plaguemorts and raptors and Umsharrspawn and we’re still fighting!” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Is to be Yo’s friends have come!” the pure genderless thought being in the Zorro costume explained as s/he skewered a gallowshound that had somehow made it all the way to the Guildhall Meeting Room. “Is to be the cute Lair Legioning!” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The champions of which Lady Magweed spoke,” remembered Chelema, stepping back to grab another quiver of Yo-blessed arrows. “I believed… but I never believed…” > >     A lithe young woman in a danskin dropped down through a charred hole in the roof to join them. “Yep, that’s pretty much my reaction to the LL too,” Dancer agreed. “Especially round breakfast-time. Hiya, Yo!” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Dancer!” squealed Yo, hurling him/herself at the probability altering waitress/star-in-waiting. > >     There was growling above as Glory found the other lurking gallowshound, and then the pooch of power jumped down to join the happy reunion. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“How is to be battle going?” Yo demanded. “Yo is to be thinking all of our people are to be being very brave.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes, that’s how the waves of horror the monsters are emanating aren’t affecting your armies,” Glory barked. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s still as tough fight,” Dancer answered. “Could go either way. That’s why we came for reinforcements.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You can’t take the Wise One out there!” objected Navali. “The Eternal Empress has vowed to destroy her!” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, way to keep that quiet,” hissed Chelema as Yo heard this news for the first time. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Eternal uncute-Empress is wanting to be fighting of Yo?” the pure thought being realised. “Is to be okay with Yo.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“If you fall then so does the free city,” Navali objected. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But if she doesn’t then we might really be free,” Chelema pointed out. “Grow a spine, Navali. You could be okay running this place one day, but you’ve got to start believing.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I believe in the Wise One,” the steward objected. “I do, but…” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’ve got to believe in yourself,” Dancer told her. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We need to go!” Glory barked. “Things are still in the balance. People are dying!” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We go to be of fighting!” agreed Yo. “How are we to be getting to uncute Empress?” > >     Visionary brought the LairJet right down to the charred Guildhall roof. “Anybody need a ride?” he called down. “Regular passengers travel free.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Visiiiiiii!!!” shrieked the pure thought being. > > *** > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Tactical update,” barked Colonel Dan Drury on the helicarrier commend deck. “From anybody but Agent Beesleyhuxtoy,” he added cautiously. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“This is my friend Chad,” Ronnie said, introducing his silent friend to everybody. “He’s okay, but he’s had to have his accordion amputated.” > >     Chad waved sadly and fingered his black armband. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’ve cleared a landing zone for ground forces,” Contessa Romanza reported. “Friendly casualties are moderate. We’ve lost nine flying cars and we’re getting low on surface to ground ordinance but we’re still ahead of the game. Sergeant MacAllistair and his troll irregulars have played havoc with enemy supply chains. The opposition still have no idea how to deal with a detonator hippo.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Join the club,” muttered Drury. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’ve just heard in from Al B.,” contributed Amber St Clare. “It seems he’s back on team, and he sent us the exact frequencies we need to broadcast to counter the psionic attacks of those squid-headed entities. In fact it should give them serious tentacle-ache.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ooh,” winced Ronnie. “That’s a lot of tentacles as well.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And the enemy are bringing up airships to engage us,” the Contessa concluded. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Now that’s good news,” Drury said with satisfaction. “Amount’a money the free world spent on this helicarrier bucket it’s about time we got ta show whut we can do when we cut loose.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“One other thing,” Natalia Romanza added. “Anna. Your rogue destruction android. She’s on the ground, fighting, separated from the others. Separated from those pirates she’s been leading. Surrounded by war elementals and undead giants. Things she’s never been taught about so she can’t properly risk assess. Even she could be in trouble.” > >     Drury turned to the Contessa. “Whut are you saying?” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m saying we could help her. Or there could be a friendly fire accident.” > >     Drury considered this for a moment. “Help her out,” he ordered. “She’s on our side an’ we don’t stab her in the back. We might have to take her down one day, but today we do what’s right.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Incoming airships,” tactical station reported. “Swastikas on the sides.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well now,” breathed the head honcho of SPUD, “Who says there’s no rewards fer doing the right things?” > > *** > >     Drury wasn’t the only one doing tactical assessments. Ophelo of Golgamoria was also counting costs and risks as he held the south pass against a rising tide of plaguemorts and their rot-zombies. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey, will you stop with the gloomy calculations?” his friend Koom objected. “Here we are, fighting the good fight, protecting all we hold dear, doing all kinds of cool top-of-the-battlements stuff and you’re just doing risk/benefit analyses. Swipe the heads of a few monsters and loosen up.” > >     Ophelo swiped the head off a rot-zombie that had reached the parapet. “We’re not winning this, Koom. This is a siege on many fronts, and those champions that the Wise One brought can’t be everywhere. It only takes one front to fail, one defence to break, and the nightwalkers are into the city amongst the helpless population. And then we’re done.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So let’s make sure it’s not this front,” Koom argued. A cloud of choking poison topped the battlements, betraying the advance of plaguemorts themselves. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We won’t give in,” Ophelo promised, “but we’ve lost too many people. We can’t hold without reinforcements.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So we do the hero thing and hope helps gets here in time,” Koom shrugged. “It’s what we have…” > >     A pair of rot zombies caught him and dragged him down while a third rammed a spear through him. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Koom!” shouted Ophelo, forgetting his calculations and running in to help his wounded friend. More rot-zombies topped the wall, and then there was the foul plaguemort itself, pestilent and rotting, grinning through fleshless lips as it approached for the kill. > >     A dagger whirled through the air, caught it in the forehead, and toppled it back off the battlements into the press below. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Fear not!” called Thungore the Barbarian, unsheathing his massive broadword and cleaving his way forward. “Rescue is at hand. But damn, that dagger I threw was a present from my mother! Well, from somebody’s mother. I think.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes, we’re here,” sighed Glumkeep, companion of loud mighty-thewed heroes. “And if you’re not very careful we’ll save the day.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I don’t suppose you brought a medical kit with you, did you?” asked Koom hopefully. “Only lying here bleeding on a battlefield full of vampires isn’t really something I want to take up as a hobby.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sorry, no,” Thungore admitted. “I’ll just stick to cleaving, if you don’t mind.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Best he stays with what he knows,” Glumkeep admitted. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Your aid is timely,” Ophelo told the newcomers. “But we are still in danger of being overwhelmed.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Thungore can be like that,” agreed Glumkeep. “Oh, you mean the plaguemorts?” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Fear not!” shouted Thungore. He had a limited dialogue repertoire. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes, really. Fear not,” agreed Nats, skimming along the battlements telekinetically pushing the undead with him as he went. “We’re pretty good at this stuff. For example…” > >     As soon as the undead were crowded into one space Hatman dragged on his fireman’s helmet and incinerated the host. “Next terrace,” he called to his team-mates. “Raptor incursion.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ooh, I like the raptor incursions,” Silicone Sally admitted, bouncing down to get there first. “They catapult real good.” > >     Thungore watched in awe as the flexible felon wrapped herself around the Zazi dinosaurs. “Now there is someone I just have to rescue,” he swore. “So… bendy.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m not sure she needs rescuing,” Ophelo pointed out. But Thungore had already hurled himself off the balcony. There was, after all, a perfectly adequate crash mattress down below. > > *** > >     Amy Aston picked herself up painfully from the debris-strewn floor of the Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises firehouse. “Ouch. Usually when I wake up aching and bruised, flat out on my back at least I’ve had two bottles of tequila and a heavy date to thank.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Thank you for that insight,” Miss Framlicker told her. “Has anyone else got too much information they want to share with us, or could somebody please tell me what the hell just happened?” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Didn’t we just do an infallible master plan?” objected Kara Harper. “We’d spotted the Space Fandom, crippled him and all his cronies, got back Dr Weed Wrichards Classic and were on the way to delivering a spanking to the bad guys.” > >     Cody was checking the video playbacks of the moments he and the others had been caught in time. “Bad guy’s called the Void Scholar,” he announced. “And he’s the one who got to do the spanking.” > >     Dr Wrichards was checking the remaining EEE instrumentation that hadn’t burned out. “We’ve been catapulted into Comic-Book Limbo,” he confirmed. “Although there’s some very peculiar features about this current configuration of it. If I could only get this Heisenburg Repressor module working again…” > >     The front doors of the firehouse were blown in and the ground floor was occupied by bipedal dinosaurs in Gestapo uniforms. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think I hit my head,” admitted Cody. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nobody move,” the lab’s built in translators interpreted for the machine-gun wielding lizards. “We are the masters now!” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So the automatic defences are down,” surmised Amy. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I don’t know how Al is to blame for this,” Miss F declared, “but I’ll find a way if it’s the last thing I do.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hands in the air! You are our prisoners!” screamed the raptors. > >     The hand grenade rolled right to the intruders’ feet before it detonated. “Hey, I happen to be on retainer protecting these people,” objected Killer Shrike, the grenade’s donor. > >     Nats blurred in and took down the remainder of the dinosaurs. “And I still haven’t gotten the cheque for that trip I made to the Dreary Dimension back in ’02,” he complained. “Stain remover was so a legitimate business expense.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Bill?” gasped Amy. “Simon?” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Heya!” grinned CrazySugarFreakBoy!, peering his head through the hole in the outer doors that showed a war going on outside. “You guys are totally owed a really big recap.” > > *** > >     Up on the peaks above the stitch-lands that floated atop Comic-Book Limbo was a lighthouse. Its clear bright beam warned dimensional travellers of the navigational dangers ahead, of the chance of slipping through some plot hole and being lost forever in the garbage and recycle bin of the Parodyverse. Inside that lighthouse were one international jewel thief detective, one vampire turned ER nurse, and one dead Victorian who had been kept on this plane of existence as a banshee ghost. > >     It was a typical day for the lighthouse. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think I’m getting it now,” Marie Murcheson confessed as she looked at the engravings that Champagne had pointed out. “It’s like I’m… linked in to this place.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s probably a symptom of being killed in the Lair Mansion then rescued by the Mansion’s links to the Lighthouse and retained as a banshee,” guessed Grace O’Mercy, the Night Nurse. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Although timelinewise this lighthouse hasn’t yet linked to the Mansion and the Celestian defences on Parody Island,” Champagne pointed out. “It was evidently enough that one day it will.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Can you interpret these symbols though?” Grace asked the banshee. “Is there a clue here to what’s going on?” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I know them, somehow,” Marie admitted. “But it’s like… I don’t understand what I’m seeing. Like when people in the twenty-first century tried to describe television to me, or the e-mail.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Tell us what you can,” urged Champagne. “We’ll provide the analysis.” > >     Marie turned back to the ancient carvings. Many of these were obscured by the time the Lighthouse had become Visionary’s home, hidden behind wood panels and plaster. “I think this is about how the Lighthouse came to be,” she ventured. “There was a big accident, and a… a hole was formed. Far away. If things fell into that hole they were lost forever. No way out unless they were… rescued?” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Is this the hole?” wondered Grace. “Did we fall in it?” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So they made this Lighthouse,” Marie went on. “To warn people, travellers. But then something else happened.” She pointed to a complicated rune that showed a vast bulk towering over a smaller one. “Some powerful entities, unimaginably powerful, blocked the hole. They scoured the whole area, wiping it clear. Only the Lighthouse survived, but then it was useless.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And so it came here?” Grace guessed. “It fell in as the hole was blocked?” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think so. It’s useless too now.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But it won’t always be,” considered Champagne. “We know that this building, a much much older version of this building, ends up on Earth and eventually ends up on Parody Island. That means there’s a way out of here, and that means we can send a message to the future so that people there can come find us.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But we don’t understand anything,” complained Marie. “I don’t understand why I’m still… here, as an insubstantial spirit yet able to think and speak. When I was a banshee before I was… hardly conscious. I felt but didn’t think. This is like being alive but… isn’t.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes, that can be bad,” admitted the Night Nurse. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We know plenty,” Champagne contradicted Marie. “Your story is the final clue to solving the history of this place.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It is?” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Of course.” The detective tapped the runes on the wall again. “The Second-Oldest Race in the Parodyverse, in their hubris and arrogance, explored too far. They broke down the walls to the transdimensional Vortex and released the reality-devouring Hero-Feeders. The resultant conflict erased the Second-Oldest Race from history. And it left… a hole.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A hole needing a lighthouse,” Grace supplied. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But then came the Judgement of the Celestians,” Champagne went on. “Those giant Space Robot policemen.” She shuddered. “They erased even the planets and suns where all this had happened, causing the so-called Black Galaxy. Anything that was left was brushed away into the cosmic trash can we call Comic-Book Limbo.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s horrible,” frowned Marie. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s… suggesting we’ve been thrown in there too,” reasoned the Night Nurse worriedly. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“These lands don’t really match previous descriptions of that place,” Champagne admitted. “But then again, the place is supposed to be infinite. Besides, the stitch-gates and the stories of somebody living here in the Lighthouse a long time ago suggest that these lands were accreted here for a planned purpose.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That Architect who the Eternal Empress mentioned,” Grace remembered. “Did he create the Lighthouse?” > >     Champagne thought not. “If this is Comic-Book Limbo then everything here is salvage,” she reasoned. “Including this tower. But he could maybe have used it to draw all the lands in and stitch them together.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There used to be far more of them,” Marie sensed. “But that was long ago. Now decay weakens them and they vanish one by one. The Grey Marchers arrive and devour… devour everything.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We usually call them Hero Feeders,” Champagne suggested. “Whatever the Architect wanted these lands for he’s already got it now. He doesn’t need this place any more. What’s left is just an experiment he couldn’t be bothered to tidy up, abandoned to rot.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But there are thousands of people living in these realms,” objected Grace. “These dying realms, under a dying sun.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Can we help them?” wondered Marie. “Can we save them?” > >     Champagne turned back to the runes. “The only escape from Comic-Book Limbo is with help from outside. You have to be pulled out.” She thought a bit further. “But there might be a way to send a message in a bottle…” > > *** > >     The Eternal Empress was an elder vampire of immense power, grown greater from consuming the blood of her rivals and of humans alike. She commanded close to a million lesser undead, each one soul-bound to her or someone tied to her, and when she willed it they moved as one. If the Empress’s form was destroyed, as it had been at the start of the night’s conflict, then she could remake it from the dark strength she drew from all her minions. That was why she was Eternal. > >     Now she could sense the shape of the battle, feel the forces arrayed against her. She could feel the defence that prevented her will from overcoming the transient mortals that opposed her, stopped her from overwhelming their courage and sending them scuttling weeping into the night. Her foes had a shield. > >     And the shield was smiling. > >     The Empress turned her rage upon that intelligence, that shining soul that radiated happiness like she radiated fear. She sent in the ur-shadows and the gothenmanders, the plaguemorts and frightrags, the beastskins and the breathstealers. > >     Her enemies guarded their shield. Strands of improbably cause and effect defused cunning traps. Telekinetic force scattered overwhelming odds. Sheer chaos bounded unchecked through the ranks of her followers. With machines of steel and minds of Serious Matter and an arrogance only short-lived humans can attain they fended the Empress’ attacks, and the thought being came closer. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Let it come,” hissed the Empress. Close up she could overwhelm it. Close up she could destroy it. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yo is to be here.” > >     It had come sooner than she’d expected, and now she saw the dull human form it affected the Empress had to laugh. She could manipulate men. She made herself beautiful. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yo is still to be here.” Now the handsome man facing her was a beautiful woman, and the thought being’s rapier was still pointing towards the Empress’ heart. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Happiness,” spat the Eternal Empress, “happiness is transitory.” She reached out to crush the being that opposed her. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It really is,” agreed Dancer, kicking the queen of the vampires aside. “I always think it’s kind of like a performance art, where you have to keep on doing the show and working at it all the time so it doesn’t get stale. Happiness has to be felt and done and shared. It works best with friends.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And we’re Yo’s friends,” added Visionary, warding off the shaggy guards with a super-powered border collie. “She called, we came. She didn’t need to drink our blood or anything.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And now Yo is to be making of uncute Empress to stop of this attacking,” Yo announced, ignoring the vampire’s attempt to dominate him/her. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You think I didn’t plan this?” sneered the Empress. “You think I didn’t lure you here?” > >     A dozen death knights broke up through the ground of the Empress’ tent, each one prepared to maim and kill the intruders that threatened their mistress. > >     Yo laughed. “You think these are all of Yo’s friends?” > >     Hatman cannonballed through the side of the marquee and straight through the first of the knights. Behind him were CrazySugarFreakBoy!, Yuki, Anna, Killer Shrike, Nats, Silicone Sally, and Sergeant MacHarridan, each ready to fall upon the undead that had been the Empress’ trap. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Didn’t sense them?” wondered Dancer. “What are the chances?” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s over,” Hatman called to the Empress. “Stand down.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s not over,” promised the Eternal Empress of the Empire of the Night. She opened her mouth and released the cloud of death. Nothing within ten thousand miles would survive. > >     Nats telepathically contained the spray for three seconds. Yo’s rapier skewered the Empress through the heart. Anna, Yuki, Shrike and MacHarridan seared the cloud to oblivion as she evaporated. > >     The will went out of the armies of the undead. For nine heartbeats. > > *** > >     The Eternal Empress woke in her sarcophagus, chilled and angry. She rose with vengeance. > >     Sir Mumphrey Wilton cleared his throat. He wasn’t entirely comfortable sneaking into a lady’s bedchamber, even if that lady was one of the ungodly undead. > >     The Eternal Empress turned her glare on him. He tipped his hat. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Your hidden chamber in your forbidden place in your secret city of the dead wasn’t that hard to find,” the Librarian told her. “Not once you look at the ancient texts and start putting everything together. Sorry.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And you two are…?” demanded the Empress. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’re the chaps here to finish you off, madam,” replied Sir Mumphrey. “known a few bloodsuckers in my time. Come across the old back-to-the-coffin trick. That’s why we sauntered down here to wait for you.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“When I was doing my researches I found about all the things you’re responsible for,” Lee Bookman told the Empress coldly. “All the things you’ve done through the ages to hold your power here.” > >     The Eternal Empress sneered. “And still you dared come here, to my place of power? You dare to confront me here?” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Absolutely,” confirmed Mumph. “And now…” > >     The Eternal Empress was on him in an instant, ready to tear out his throat and have him drained to a husk before his heart had beaten even once again. > >     The last charge of Sir Mumphrey’s Chronometer of Infinity held her motionless as she touched him, cut off momentarily from the vast horde that empowered her. > >     Lee Bookman downloaded the accounts of her crimes into her brain. > >     Sir Mumphrey Wilton wrapped his pocketwatch chain around a stake of whitethorn and plunged it into her heart. > > *** > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Like these boots?” Killer Shrike asked Silicone Sally. “I got them off this bloodsucker prince. I got me a werewolf pelt for a rug too.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t expect me to go rolling on it,” Sally Rezilyant warned him. “Anyhow, I only got this diamond tiara and that bag of jewellery over there. Nothing as good as boots.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You got what?” demanded Shrike, horrified. A sly look came over his face. “Say, Sally, do you like a game of cards?” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I don’t mind the occasional hand, Mr Maddicks” Champagne told him, returning with Sir Mumphrey and the Librarian. “You might have to remind me of the rules.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re okay!” Hatman called happily, spotting the kidnapped detective whole and unblood-drained. “Champagne, we were really worried.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’d have been back sooner,” the Librarian explained, “but Sir Mumphrey wanted us to find Champagne and the people who’d absconded from the Peru camp. And then we found Visionary’s lighthouse. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Wait, what?” Vizh spluttered, choking on his coffee. “Er, did you bring any clean underwear from there?” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We brought a possible way home,” Champagne admitted. “Oh, and it’s also got a not-quite-as-gone-as-you-feared-it Lair Banshee squatting as well. I really think you’ll need to apply Dr Harper and a Shoggoth to that place as soon as possible.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A way home would be wonderful,” Dancer agreed, “but we can’t just leave all these people in this Realm That Common Sense Forgot to die. Even with the undead all re-deaded and the Nazi dinos on the run and the Spawn of Umsharr having all been Shoggothed there’s a million other problems the people here face.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Like the Grey Walkers,” noted Yuki, who did her homework. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, nobody gets left behind,” agreed CSFB! > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Except maybe Garrick,” added Flapjack, who’d had to do the clean-up of Cromlyn’s body. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But how are we supposed to get that many people home?” worried Amber St Clare. “And what would be the protocol for coping with hundreds of thousands of pulp novel savages seeking asylum?” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yo is to be thinking is to be place for them somewhere,” Yo assured everybody. “When Yo is able to be getting out of uncute Comic-Book Limbo Yo is to be taking them for now to the Happy Place, all the stitching lands and their people. And then Yo is to be finding good place to be putting them for live.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Such as…?” ventured Miss Framlicker, who could foresee an EEE charity case in the offing. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, Yo is not knowing of that,” Yo admitted candidly. “Yo is to be leaving of that to Yo-friend Visi.” > >     Hallie laughed at the possibly-fake man’s expression. “Well, he is an ambassador now, they tell me.” > >     Al B. Harper began to chalk on the nearest surface. “I’ll need to do a few calculations and then find ways to slave all the stitch-gates together as interface boosters,” he muttered, “then match with the vibrational frequencies of each of the thirty-two realms and a nominal return point via the Happy Place portal…” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’re not all going to become animals again are we?” worried Hatman. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We become animals?” asked Sally, interested. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not if we regress the interface harmonic through a reality validation spiral,” suggested Dr Wrichards, joining Al B. at the chalkface. “Now if we…” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We need to know more about this Architect and this Void Scholar,” said CSFB!, who could spot plot leads when he saw them. “Lee?” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“On it,” agreed the Librarian. “Some time spent in Vizh’s lighthouse with those runes should be fascinating.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I can read runes,” volunteered Cody Harper. “I can read anything.” > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Mostly porn,” offered Kara Harper acerbically. > >     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And we need to get home fast,” Hatman warned them. “From what Miss F and the others tell us we’re really needed back there right now.” > >     Nats clapped his hands together. “So what’s the plan,” he said with relish,” O glorious leader?” > > *** > > Next Time For Sure: Purveyors vs Juniors vs Citizen Z vs the Baroness vs Onslaughter vs Danny Lyle… and more. Saving the Future #24: There Shall Be Only One > > *** > > Previous Chapters: > > #1: “And just when did Danny find time to take over the Parodyverse?” by Dancer > #2: "Sometime you have to turn flammable again!" by Visionary > #3: That’s the Way the Story Goes by the Hooded Hood > #4: See No Evil by the Hooded Hood > > #5: Whodunnit by the Hooded Hood, Visionary, Killer Shrike, and Jason > #6: Suspicious Behaviour by the Hooded Hood, Jason, Hatman, and CrazySugarFreakBoy! > #7: Accusation and Denial by the Hooded Hood, JJJ, Jason and L! > #8: The Final Solution by the Hooded Hood and Dancer > #9: The Land That Common Sense Forgot by the Hooded Hood > > #9.1: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason > #9.2: Chad and Ronnie by L! > #9.3: “In addition to cappuccino and personal hygiene these tribespeople have not yet invented underwear.” by Dancer > #9.4: Lone Lost Boy & Heroines Hanging Together by CrazySugarFreakBoy! > #9.5: From Dross into Gold by Killer Shrike > #9.6: Old Friends and New Allies by Visionary > #9.7: Taking a Swim by L! > #9.8: A Post-Swim Chat by L! > #9.9: Champagne and the Land That Common Sense Forgot by Champagne > > #10: The Age of Villains by the Hooded Hood > > #10.1: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason > #10.2: The Baroness #55 by JJJ > #10.3: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason > #10.4: Ewe Gotta Have Hart 1 by Killer Shrike > #10.5: Ewe Gotta Have Hart 2 by Killer Shrike > > #11: An Age Undreamed Of by the Hooded Hood > > #12: The New Lair Legions (And Other Heroes) by the Hooded Hood > > #12.1: I Hate You by Visionary > #12.2: Champagne and the Tower of Laments by Champagne > #12.3: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason > #12.4: The Hearing by Visionary > #12.5: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason > > #13: Exploring the Forbidden Valley, or Samantha Featherstone and the Crystal Goddess by the Hooded Hood > > #14: Real Heroes by the Hooded Hood > > #14.1: “I’d like to be clear that I’m a no-skewer zone, and have been since college.” by Dancer > #14.2: Catherine & the Danger Zone by L! > #14.3: “Do you know how much shaving I had to do to put this thing on?” by Visionary > #14.4: “Well we can’t just wait here till we find a use for Visionary. We’ll starve to death.” by Dancer > > #15: Change and Decay by the Hooded Hood > > #15.1: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason > #15.2: Hazardous Chemicals by Killer Shrike > > #16: One Moment In Time by the Hooded Hood > #17: Slaves of the Brain Eaters, Thralls of the Blood-Drinkers by the Hooded Hood > #18: Now Get Out Of That by the Hooded Hood > > #18.1: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason > #18.2: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason > #18.3 Crossing Lines by CrazySugarFreakBoy! > #18.4 Shooting You With My Smile by CrazySugarFreakBoy! > #18.5: Funeral For a Friend by L! > #18.6: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason > #18.7 Playing Both Ends by CrazySugarFreakBoy! > #18.8: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason > #18.9: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason > #18.10: Valued Employee by Visionary > > #19: Probable Cause by the Hooded Hood > #20: Good Intentions by the Hooded Hood > > #20.1: Very Special Guest Star by Hatman > > #21: Points of View by the Hooded Hood > #22: Plot Points by the Hooded Hood > > #22.1: Potholes In Memory Lane by Visionary > #22.2: Dancer’s Saving the Future Amnesiac Hallie Tie-in Special: “I’m pretty sure there’s two tongues involved in that. That is serious stunt kissing.” by Dancer > #22.3: Amnesiac Hallie Tie-in Special #2: "Don't get me started on how recursive the title and storyline is getting". by the Manga Shoggoth > #22.4: Bridging the Gap by Jason > #22.5: Oh That Joey Z! parts 1-3 by Spaztic Child and the Hooded Hood > #22.6: Oh That Joey Z! part 4 by L! > #22.7: Oh That Joey Z! part 5 by the Hooded Hood > > #23: Don’t Give Up Now, It’s the Blockbuster Summer Action Episode by the Hooded Hood > > *** > > Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2008 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2008 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. >