Tom Black #12: The Judgement of Badripoor In which lots of very powerful people butt heads in the cause of random property damage and things get excessively green. Previously: Tom Black #9: Badripoor Scheming Tom Black #10: Eggs In One Basket Tom Black #11: Last Man Standing Tom Black, new possessor of the evil Kaos energies that allow him to “possess” things electronic, mechanical, and arcane, has travelled to the corrupt Pacific-rim city state of Badripoor to learn more about his Kaos-wielding predecessor Count Armageddon. This has not pleased Mark Hopkins, aka spiffy, aka Badripoor’s President for Life. While attempting to question various major crimelords on the neutral territory of the Charity Club, Black was attacked by occult adversaries set on by Vlastimock Bogoff, the Necromancer General. Tom has hired Squibb, alien bounty-hunter, to track Bogoff down. Baroness von Zemo, the Fokker Twins who rule HERPES, MODEM, chief scientist of BALD, Justus Screwdriver, the Lycanthropes Guild, the Cult of the Apostate, worshippers of the Fairly Great Old Ones, Anvil Man, Dreamripper, Genetwist, and Baroness Morbo all became embroiled in the battle. Increasingly deadly conflict has just come to an uncomfortable halt as heroes and villains alike witness the arrival of the Carnifex, the Parodyverse’s mightiest hero, who has proclaimed that everyone in Badripoor must die for their crimes – except for those whom Tom Black asks him to spare. At least that’s how things seem. ***     The Carnifex hovered in the air just outside the broken frontage of Badripoor’s colonial Charity Club. He wore a leather jacket and jeans and he looked in at the collection of metahuman combatants then down at the teeming city below. The whole Pacific city-state was glowing with an eerie green light now, proof that Tom Black’s possessing kaos orbs had infiltrated every electrical and electronic device in Badripoor.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“When you say you’re going to kill everybody in the city…” Greta Fokker swallowed nervously and looked up at the Carnifex, “you’re not including us, right?”     The mighty hunter nodded. “It’s time to clean up Badripoor and there’s only one way to do it. Depopulation.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“E-everybody?” swallowed Justus Screwdriver. “You can’t just… well, I suppose you can, but why…?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You concealed Shee-Yar refugees from me. You plotted crime on the world I’ve chosen for my base of operations. You allowed this… wallow of corruption to exist right on my doorstep.” The rugged man in the hunting leathers grinned. “I’m the world’s greatest hero. It’s my job to destroy evil.”     spiffy crawled out from under a pile of rubble. His symbiotic fern was still trailing tendrils of shredded Dark Shrub and twitching angrily. “Hey, Carnifex,” Badripoor’s President for Life called out, “You can’t just go killing people without trial, just because they live someplace.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He’s the Carnifex,” warned Baroness von Zemo. “I think you’ll find he can.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The Shee-Yar empire has been destroyed,” MODEM noted, desperately trying to reboot the hover-jets on his gravity chair. Right now his control console just glowed greenly and giggled at him. “Nobody knows what happened to all those billions of people in a single day.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, I think we could make a pretty good guess,” Beth von Zemo observed, eyeing the hovering green-lit figure over the ruins of the Charity Club. “The only Shee-Yar still alive were the ones who hitched a ride back to Earth with Badripoor.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They’re not Shee-Yar citizens any more,” spiffy argued. “They’re political refugees granted asylum here.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Then they die with everybody else in Badripoor,” declared the Carnifex.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey, I’m a hero!” objected spiffy.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You are running the most wicked state on Earth, a rogue nation outlawed by the civilised powers,” observed the Carnifex. “How are you different from Koo Koo Ka Choo or Thighmaster or the Chairman of Candia or Emperor Scorpion?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Because, well, I try hard,” Mark Hopkins offered. “Look, we’re trying to make things better here. It’s a work in progress.” He turned to Tom Black. “And you can stop doing whatever it is you’re doing to my city as well. Don’t think my fern can’t divert kaos energy.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m sure we can come to some agreement with Mr Black,” Screwdriver suggested. “Some kind of deal. After all, it seems he has the Carnifex’s ear.”     Tom Black folded his arms and smiled thinly. “Well, I do have a few things I need,” he admitted. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What’s happening now?” Beth Shellett worried as Champagne watched the confrontations in the city as best she could using an old entirely-non-electronic telescope. “Is Mark dead yet?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not yet,” the international jewel thief conceded. “But something’s very wrong. We need to get down there fast. Let’s go!” ***     Lairjet One skimmed over the Pacific ocean then veered suddenly aside from its arrow-straight course for Badripoor.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What’s going on?” CrazySugarFreakBoy! asked as he bounced from wall to wall without harm. “Why are we suddenly on an E-ticket attraction?”     Hatman was piloting the Lair Legion’s aircraft, his airman’s goggles and cap on his head lending him the skills of an expert aviator. “There’s something strange glowing on the horizon ahead. Al B?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Checking,” the Legion’s archscientist promised, swivelling round to the Lairjet’s sensor banks.     The Manga Shoggoth shifted in his chair, roused from whatever reveries he’d been in. He scooped handfuls of his biomatter that had dripped onto the carpet back into his bandages and said, “Tastes like kaos energy. Sour and ambitious.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Kaos energy signature confirmed,” agreed Al B. Harper. “We’d probably have lost LairJet control by now except that we’re shielded.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And also those kaos orbs are scared of me,” noted the Shoggoth. “They taste like chicken.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Badripoor’s been kaosed?” Dancer asked, worried for the people. “We need to get in there and give Tom Black a serious telling off.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“With a sledgehammer,” suggested Yuki Shiro. “Okay, quick review. Tom Black is known to manipulate kaos energy, a weird corrupted form of chaos…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Chaos is good,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! hastened to tell them. “In fact I have this elaborate theory about creative and destructive kaos based upon analogies from several comic books and pron movies…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Please don’t write it up,” shuddered the Librarian, who was still recovering from filing CSFB!’s fan-fictions.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Black is reputed to be able to create little quasi-sentient balls of kaos – his so-called will-o’-th’-wisps – which can possess and control electrical and magical devices,” Yuki persisted. “That makes Black dangerous at range but vulnerable to physical assault up close.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m with the sledgehammer plan,” Visionary admitted. “Black tried to date Asil, remember.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well,” Dancer reflected on this, “Tom is kind of hot. I mean, dateable. He’d prolly make a pretty good boyfriend.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sledgehammer,” Vizh said again, grinding his teeth.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m getting more data now,” Al B. called out. “It’s tough to interpret, but it’s looking like the whole damn city’s possessed by kaos orbs. Every computer, every circuit, every household gadget. Black could cause havoc if he made all of those go berserk.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So what’s the plan?” Nats wondered. “Apart from Dancer dating Tom Black, I mean? Do we go in and risk him using the people of Badripoor as hostages? Or do we hold back and risk him having the juice to extend this mean green anti-karma right across then planet?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There’s no account of Black being able to do anything like this,” worried the Librarian. “He’s been deliberately falsifying the record.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well now we get to set the record straight,” Hatman told his team. “We’ll land the LairJet on the ocean and go in under our own power. We come in low and fast and we take Black down before he even knows we’re there. Anyone he’s got working with him goes down too. Black’s crossed the line. Now he gets Legioned.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“See, that’s why he’s our glorious leader,” grinned CSFB!     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Lair Legion, Line umphh!” called Nats as Yuki tackled him. ***     The Necromancer General took off his shoe and used it to hit his crystal ball. “Useless piece of crap!” he shouted at it. “Last time I buy anything off Alto Tumour! It can’t even see through the eyes of my zombies to tell me how my master-plan is going.” He sacrificed another gerbil and squeezed the blood onto the orb. “No, wait, I’m getting something now. The green mists are clearing and I can see… the back of my head?”     He turned round and found three of his zombies staring at him.     The Abyssal Crucius sat down on a handy coffin. “I have bad news about your undead,” he told the master who’d bound him to service. “First off, they’ve been zapped with that Kaos energy that Tom Black uses, so I think now they might be under his control. Second, that means he knows about your little plots to sell him and his energies off to the highest bidder so you don’t have to take that job in Gothametropolis York to finance whatever it is you’re planning to do next. And third, that means if they wreck your lab like they’re about to do it’ll break the binding incantations that make me do what you tell me. Then I’m going to eat you.”     The Necromancer General looked at the zombies with their eerie green eyes. “What do you mean?” he asked nervously. “How can they be…?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I am controlling them,” one of the zombies said. It’s body language changed from slouching shuffle to confident obsessive. “It seemed like the easiest way to get to you, Vlastivock. You have some information I require about Kaos energies and the Judas Box.”     The other two zombies moved to flank the Necromancer General, grabbing his arms and pinning him down.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t just stand there, Crucius!” shouted the master of undeath. “Help!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“As you demand, master,” agreed the Ghoul-King beneath Badripoor. He picked up a heavy scalpel and jammed it through the Necromancer General’s hand, pinning it to a desk.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Aaagh! I mean help me get these things off me!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, sorry. You need to be more specific with the creatures you’ve bound, master. It can lead to misunderstandings.” The Abyssal Crucius pulled the control amulets from round the Necromancer’s throat. “Like this.”     The Necromancer General lost his temper. “You think you can mock me? Me?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think I can,” noted Tom Black’s voice through a dead creature’s throat. “Now indicate the research notes I’m after or I’ll feed you to your ghoul.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And if I do? What then?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Then I’ll give you a count of ten to start running before I blow up your laboratory.” ***     Squibb, intergalactic mercenary, scrambled out of the Badripoor sewers and slammed the grating down on the horde of hungry zombies that were chasing him. At least he hoped they were only hungry. He welded the cover in place with his blaster and heaved a sigh.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I have got to get off this planet,” he told himself. “As soon as I’ve borrowed all the money I can off the guys at the bar.”     Then he noticed that the whole city seemed to be glowing that unpleasant green he’d heard described as Kaos energy.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’ve got to get off this planet now,” he corrected himself. “Before anything bad happens.”     He dived to the ground as Hatman powered past him towing CSFB! and Yuki.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Before anything else bad happens.”     The sewers exploded. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You needn’t worry, Tom,” Elizabeth von Zemo told the Kaos wielder. “I shall act on your behalf to hammer out whatever deal you require from Screwdriver and the others.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey,” objected Greta Fokker, “since when have you been on Team Black? Last I heard you were right up there with the flatten-him-with-Anvil-Man plan.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Probably since the Carnifex appeared in the sky to wipe you all out?” hazarded Tom himself. “Keep on bickering and backstabbing amongst yourselves for a minute. I’m just detonating Badripoor’s sewers.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey!” spiffy objected, “we don’t have an unlimited civil engineering budget here you know!”     There was a squelchy whumph in the distance.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’ve got a thriving bathroom decoration industry now, though,” Tom promised him.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You can’t just let the Carnifex wipe us out,” MODEM shouted. “We’re important characters in the Parodyverse!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well,” admitted spiffy, “I am, but most of you guys are B-listers at best. Sorry to say but it’s true.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But we have things to trade that Mr Black is interested in,” pointed out Justus Screwdriver, “whereas you have a fern.”     A small huddle of mercenary supervillains for hire huddled in the corner. “You think we should just try and take the big C now?” Baroness Morbo asked her comrades. “I mean, if we’re going to die I’d like to go down fighting?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I can’t even get a lock on his genetic code yet,” warned Genetwist. “It’s like it’s constantly shifting, renewing itself.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And I can’t reach his mind,” warned Dreamripper. “I keep getting these horrible feedback images of… torment and utter pain…!”     Anvil Man shook his head. “Nah, wait. I’ve been doing this kind o’ stuff for a long time now. When the ultimate power characters show up you just keep quiet till the major leaguers arrive, and then you duck.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But you’re indestructible,” Baroness Morbo pointed out. “That’s your whole power.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, and how do you think I stayed indestructible this long? Just wait till… ah!”     Hatman powered through the gap in the wall of the Charity Club and came straight for Tom Black. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Anything yet?” Amber St Claire, Lair Legion liaison officer asked Hallie, the team’s resident artificial intelligence back at the Lair Mansion.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’ve got LairSat Nine moving into position in high altitude orbit but there’s a lot of interference,” Hallie responded. “That Kaos energy signature that Al B. sent us looks to be covering the entire nation-state but I can’t get any clearer readings.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Any contact with the team since they went in there?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s not easy through that noise unless the Shoggoth bilocates to tell us what’s happening. I guess he’s busy. Hold on, that’s interesting.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What?” demanded Amber.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’re getting satellite imagery of a conflict on the ground at a place called… the Charity Club. We’re getting long-distance recognition of…” Hallie looked up at Amber. “Oh.” ***     Hatman came straight for Tom Black. He was caught by spiffy’s prehensile plant fronds and dragged aside before he could grab the tormentor of Badripoor. Jay Boaz instead crashed into the fern-wielder himself, tumbling down in a jumble of limbs, hats, and leaves.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What the…?” demanded the leader of the Lair Legion.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sorry!” spiffy told him hastily. “It’s just that if you annoy Black at the moment Badripoor gets executed.”     CrazySugarFreakBoy! was next through the breach. “We can take Black down. Yuki has a sledgehammer.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Black has a partner,” spiffy pointed out, gesturing at the hovering Carnifex.     Dancer and Yuki slid to a halt. “Mark,” smiled Dancer. “Hi.” She checked her hair. “What’s a nice hero like you doing in a place like this?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m here to eradicate the population of Badripoor,” the world’s greatest hero. “Why haven’t you thought of this before?”     Nats was powering in for another pass at Black until he noticed the Carnifex. Then he jinked aside to bury himself in a pile of trash cans. “Ouch,” complained the flying phenomenon. “But a good question.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Because heroes don’t kill,” Dancer answered the Carnifex.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Except in the Parody War,” Yuki corrected her.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Except in the Parody War,” conceded Dancer. “Or if they get tricked into summoning Galactivac to eat a planet.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Or if there’s no other way to save a life,” Al B. Harper added.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Or that,” admitted Dancer.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Or if they’re hungry,” offered the Shoggoth.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The point is, Carnifex,” Hatman summarised, “that we can’t just let you execute the whole of Badripoor for the crimes of the few.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, the most,” admitted Visionary, “but I’m with Hatty on this. Um, standing behind him preferably.”     Baroness von Zemo rose up wrathfully. “Hold on. No. I refuse to be rescued by the Lair Legion. I won’t have it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Who do you want to save you?” CSFB! asked her angrily. “Citizen Z?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m okay with being rescued by the Lair Legion, just this once,” ventured MODEM.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’ll sleep with the Carnifex if it helps,” offered Greta Fokker.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Could we at least pound Tom Black while we’re debating?” checked Yuki Shiro. “I mean he is kind of holding the whole city in his Kaos power.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hostage,” Tom Black clarified for the cyborg P.I. “I’m holding the whole city hostage in my Kaos power.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Tom decides,” replied the Carnifex. “Tom Black decides who lives and dies here today. That was our bargain.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I kind of helped with a situation in Egypt that interested the Carnifex,” Tom explained to the glaring collection of metahumans around him. “He owed me a favour.”     spiffy snorted. “Okay, I say we take down Black and then if we have to we take down the Carnifex too. Sorry, Carnifex, but I can’t just let you…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah!” agreed Nats. “Lair Legion Line Up!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey,” objected spiffy, “I say that. Anyway…” He was distracted by the urgent arrival of Champagne and Bev Campbell.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Mark, there must be some other way to thank Tom for whatever he did than this,” Hatman reasoned with the Carnifex. “We’re all on the same side here.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Except for the villains,” Nats qualified.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And maybe the Shoggoth,” the Librarian felt compelled the footnote.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I have quite a lot of sides,” the Shoggoth bubbled. “And many angles.”     Champagne was whispering into spiffy’s ear. The President for Life of Badripoor glanced over at the Carnifex, then at Tom, then back again. He frowned. “Okay then Black. You came to my city, met with all these villains, set up all this chaos for a reason. What was it?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Kaos,” CSFB! corrected. “With a kicking K. Chaos is great.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Now someone asks?” Tom sighed. “I just want to know more about this energy I’ve been stuck with. I need to learn how to control it and what it’s for and even why I received it. What’s so wrong with that?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Taking over a city to do it,” answered Visionary promptly.     The Baroness stepped in front of the possibly-fake man and took the floor. “He wanted certain information about Count Armageddon who used to rule here and who was likewise… infected… with Kaos energies. He sought to trade for that information with senior figures in the criminal underworld – and with me.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’ve never been convicted of anything,” argued Screwdriver.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yet,” snapped Yuki.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, I’ve got that information now,” Tom Black assured them. “My Kaos orbs possessed your various communications devices and downloaded most of the stuff from your shielded computer systems. The Legion systems are a bit more… resistant.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Damn straight they are,” hissed Al B. Harper. “You want our data you ask for it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes, ask for it,” spiffy instructed Tom Black. “Say please. You can have what you want about Armageddon but then you stop possessing Badripoor, you send your hovering friend away without anybody getting executed, and you get the hell out of my city!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Wait…” objected Nats. “We can’t just…”     spiffy waved him to silence and got in Black’s face. “Or else.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Or else what?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Or else I’ll share what Champagne’s just told me with everybody here. Everybody.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What shall I do, Tom?” asked the Carnifex.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’ll also want immunity from prosecution for whatever happened today,” Tom told the fern-wielder.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“By the powers vested in me as President for Life of the nation-state of Badripoor you’ve got it,” said spiffy through gritted teeth. “Unless I ever see you again.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes,” Vizh contributed. “spiffy knows Donar. And Lisa.”     Al B. looked from Champagne to Tom Black to the Carnifex, checked his sensor panels, then hauled the Librarian and Yuki away into a corner.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Fine, Black can have the Armageddon file,” Hatman conceded. “But next time you try this, Black, the Legion will take you down.”     Tom shrugged. “Nice to know where we stand. I hope you’d have some kind of charge against me first though.”     Beth von Zemo nodded in appreciation.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Here’s the Armageddon file,” offered the Librarian. “Now drop the Kaos corona over the city.”     Tom snapped his fingers. Thousands of Kaos orbs rose from the systems they’d occupied and swirled back into his body. For a moment he seemed overwhelmed by the influx but when he looked up again he had his usual sardonic smile. “Deal done,” he agreed.     Suddenly a number of villainous teleport escape devices were operative again. There was a general evacuation.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Call me,” Greta told the Carnifex before she vanished.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Call me,” the Baroness told Tom Black. “But not for a date.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Now tell Mark that you don’t want anyone at all executed in Badripoor,” Dancer insisted of Tom.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, there won’t be any executions,” Champagne promised, smiling. “I’m sure the Carnifex must have owed Tom a favour to let him pull this stunt, but not a favour that big. Not enough for a personal appearance.”     Vizh pointed to the hovering hero. “Um…”     CrazySugarFreakBoy! slapped his forehead. “Of course! It was right there in his security file. We knew she was hooked up with Black now!”     Nats’ jaw dropped. “Regret?” he demanded of the hovering superhero. “Is that you?”     Regret of the Damned, demon temptress, had the ability to assume any shape that humans around her desired. She’d had no problem impersonating the Carnifex as long as she wasn’t required to duplicate his powers. Now she shifted back to her regular form, a red-skinned woman with bat wings. “Hello, Bill,” she smiled at him. “Been dreaming of me?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No,” said Nats.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You will now.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It was simple when one looked at the clues,” Champagne explained. “So I told spiffy and he defused the situation.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“After the major property damage, of course,” scowled Bev Campbell.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Very good,” Tom Black told the blonde detective (and international jewel thief) and the President’s right hand woman. “I’d have gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for you darned kids.” He grinned. “Well, I’d better be going. I sense a bit of hostility in the room.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, that’ll be happening,” Hatman agreed. “Right after the expressing-our-opinion-of-you phase of the meeting gets done. In about six to twelve hours?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Or the Lair Legion could do something about the sewer zombie/ghoul war that’s happening right now,” Tom suggested, “before it spills out onto the streets. Or the bar-fight in Alien Town over some mercenary trying to borrow money before skipping the planet. Or Anvil Man and his gang trying to slip away from the ruins of the Charity Club and knock over a bank to finance their getaway. Or the big fight between the Guild of Lycanthropes and the Cult of the Apostate that’s just about to wreck Shantytown. Your choice.”     Hatman decked him. *** Previous chapters at The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Character descriptions in Who's Who in the Parodyverse Place descriptions in Where's Where in the Parodyverse Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2009 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2009 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.

    

This may be a new record. This chapter definately shows Tom in a less sympathetic than normal light, mostly you at least show his side of the story.

Well, when you're holding a whole city hostage to meet your own goals you're not really deserving of that much sympathy; but I take your point that a Tom-centric view at least offers some explanation. I'll try and make sure we get that when we eventially progress to #13. First Tom has a date with an issue or two of Boss Deadeyes.

Too bad Yuki didn't get to use the sledgehammer...I guess she can keep it for later.

Once I considered that the Carnifex might be a fake (though I didn't know who) I wondered why nobody was sent to the Esqualine Tower to see if he's still there - though I guess that might be just what Champagne did. It's just the kind of mini-mission the Psychic Samurai might engage in, since she can hold a civil conversation with the most scary people.

Once Tom regains consciousness, where could they even put him? Those Kaos orbs will make it difficult to hold him in any kind of cell, and extradition to an alien race that *can* create a cell to hold him would be difficult to do legally (especially because nobody can guarantee they won't kill him).

I'm interested in the way things played out that Yuki's quite pissed that international supervillain sponsor Justus Screwdriver hasn't ever really been caught. I'll need to remember that minor irritation on her part for future plots.





I tried to play fair regarding the Carnifex's fakeness. In the course of the four part story I reminded people of Regret's ability then had her completely disappear from the plot.

As for Champagne, she'd been established as just being great at spotting this kind of thing so I thought I'd let her run with it. At the time this four part story started poster-Champagne was still popping in occasionally.




The Legion won't be trying to detain Tom. He's in a nation that doesn't have an extradition treaty with the US and he's been declared free of all charges there so they don't have any legal claim to him. Hatman thumped him because Tom can be a prick and deserved it. When he wakes up he's free to go.

Next time we see Tom some time will have passed and he'll be in GMY.

Yuki tends to take up a side project when she's been made angry like that. But her biggest flaw in that regard is that she's bound to try and take it on herself instead of doing the smart thing and having Champagne or the Psychic Samurai locate and trap him.





I think back when this story started I said he either had to be fake or under the influence of something.





I was just entertaining thoughts in the background of her trying to verify her suspicions first, and her sending someone to ring the Carnifex' doorbell and ask if he's home.





That's kind of a weighty conclusion, considering the number of people who will hurt him badly if they encounter him now. He's going to have to hire a bodyguard, and count himself fortunate there's no one like Keiko who would be paid to execute him without him seeing it coming.

Well, Josh's creation Screwdriver (just about the last surviving Josh cast member still in play - that lad did tidy up after himself) is homage to and fills the niche of Justin Hammer, supervillain broker, and as such would make a good adversary for any hero. He's more of a James Bond mastervillain than a combat type, so if he was annoyed by Yuki or Chiaki he'd likely contract agents to go and take them down (or rather try); but only if it made sound business sense - if it was cheaper to give Chiaki a million dollar cheque to make her go away he'd probably do that.

The problem is that he doesn't really break the law in many detectable ways. He's got too many middle men. We've seen one of his training islands in the Carribean (it had an unfortunate Legion experience) but there's no direct link back to him. Screwdriver keeps his hands clean. What makes him dangerous is his underworld connections.







Have some points then.







She'd have some difficulty because Black was tying up the entire Badripoor comms net at the time (deliberately). Even the LL couldn't get signals out, as attested by Hallie.







Tom doesn't really care who he pisses off. He's got something of a death wish due to circumstances from before his series started, including some of his service in the Parody War. He relies on his training as an intelligence officer, his ability to plan and anticipate, and his growing power in that order to keep him ahead of the game.

As for assassin attack, Tom might not spot an assailant but if he or she has a life aura his will o'th wisps would, even if Tom was sleeping.

Preparing for every eventuality except for being punched out by Hatman,that is. Unless that was part of his plan too.

The Carnifex being Regret was a surprise. I seem to recall a scene in an earlier chapter where he/she demonstrated some kind of power towards a villain, but I suppose a demon temptress could have pulled the stunt off just as well.

Tom's off to GMY for a throwdown with Boss Deadeyes next? I thought the US cancelled his passport?

He might run into trouble with trying to have Chiaki assassinated anyhow - most of the higher-class assassins know her through Akiko and would refuse to take the job (and the lower-end ones would never make it alive). She would probably also turn down a million dollars to go away.





Chiaki has the unique position of being someone who's pretty well connected herself. She's also really difficult to break down or have killed. But because she's not law enforcement or Lair Legion, she really doesn't have much motivation to bother Screwdriver until he becomes particularly annoying to her somehow.

What might really be interesting is to see what happens if the Lair Legion has problems with Screwdriver...but Chiaki is asked by Akiko as a personal favor to stay out of it. She would have some tough choices to make.





I'm sure Champagne had something to resort to, maybe carrier pidgeons?





As an interesting aside I thought of while reading this, have you seen any of the Dexter series? The way he tracks down his "victims" and verifies that they're the right one is one of the sources I draw on for how Keiko used to do her job.





To be honest, in Tom Black's case, Keiko probably would not take that kind of job unless she was really heavily paid for it, and even then maybe not. She wouldn't consider any job with so many variables to be routine at all. If she faces any personal danger (aside from being caught) the price goes way up, and she still may turn it down. It's likely if she saw those orbs as dangerous to her she would abort and turn down the job entirely.

If they were just there to alert him, though, she would use their presence against him and turn them into a trap. That would actually make her job easier.

Chiaki, of course, isn't an assassin for hire, but if she had reason to go after Tom those orbs would not deter her the least bit. She wouldn't care at all that they alert Tom of her presence, because she believes he doesn't have a reason to run from her. She has a calming demeanor and quiet attitude that makes her seem non-offensive and non-dangerous most of the time, and she uses that to disarm many enemies by seeming not to be a threat.

One interesting angle on this is that the Legion was actually considering fighting the Carnifex... something that would apparently be unthinkable to them under normal circumstances. I wonder if any of them will notice that and give it any thought... whether the absence of that adoration of him will draw attention to the fact that it's there other times and make any of them question it.

In any event, a fun conclusion to a wild free-for-all in Badripoor. Always good to see spiffy and company. Oh, and special thanks for that last line... that was so needed.

I can pretty much guarantee that Tom was perhaps the only person who didn't see that coming.




I'll have to go back and check what that was. Since I knew at the time that the Carnifex was Regret I must have had some idea how the thing was fudged.




Villainous, eh?

Screwdriver might well look to a team like the one he sent against Black: Anvil Man because he's literally indestuctible and can detonate things (even people) on line of sight, Dreamripper for the psionic attacks to distract, Genetwist because he can mutate people just by touch making close physical combat with him very dangerous, and Baroness Morbo because magic is such a cheat against primarily physical combatants.

I'd say that Chiaki would still probably hold out against that lot and at least escape; she might inflict casualties; but in any case it would be a serious fight that could well go the other way.

Every hero has certain villians whom their power set doesn't offer them much protection against. For the Psychic Samurai it's probably energy projectors like the sentient atomic radiation being Dr Roentgen.







He'd probably be quite willing to hire her or to broker her hire to a client.




I imagine the circumstances would dictate her response.

I'm not really planning anything regarding Screwdriver just now but I'm certain that one day he'll either make a mistake, cross over the line, or simply get to the top of the LL's to-do list and then it's superhero wrestlemania for a while.







Wouldn't that require her to be carrying pigeons specifically bred in Chaiki's loft? And wouldn't it take weeks for them to fly halfway round the globe to Paradopolis? And wouldn't Chiaki have to have return pigeons that home to spiffy's palace?

Semaphore flags are clearly the way to go.




I'm afraid I don't know the series. I'm not sure it's shown here.







I think Chiaki could likely sense the wrongness of the will o'th wisps as well as the energies inside Black himself.




The best way for an assassin to take Tom down would be via long range high-powered rifle or through poison/




Noted.

Good point. I'm one Carnifex Untold Tales off finally shifting that damn sub-plot towards resolution.




I couldn't see any way that the LL could or should just let Tom walk away smirking at his success. This seemed a good way to prick his ego.

Chiaki cheats too.

Her most popular strategy in this case is simply not to be where she was expected to be. It'd be a super-powered mob hitting a lot of empty buildings. This is where the Psychic part of her nickname comes strongly into play.

The second strategy, which she employed during the Moderator Saga, is to counter the super-powered mob with a super-powered posse of her own (hence the she has a lot of powerful friends part), only smaller and either very powerful or very clever. Possibly even ask them to harass the super-powered assassination mob while she goes after Screwdriver himself.

What's ironic about that is, it's not even her own strategy. She learned a lot from the Lair Legion.





The good news for her is she knows her weaknesses, and tries her best to avoid letting herself get into a situation where someone can exploit it. She knows it might happen someday, but she tries her best.

Also another weakness she has is something simple: Someone who's more of a wrestler type fighter, who moves in close very fast and uses their body weight and strength against her. She'll fight back against that violently, but it places her at a huge disadvantage because of her small size.





Chiaki is highly unlikely to take jobs from him. Unless it involves some sort of blackmail perhaps, and even then she'll find a way to make him pay for it later.








It would.





It doesn't have to be the whole way. The pigeons would only have to leave Badripoor and meet a friendly with a phone who can call Paradopolis.








Dexter is a serial killer who's also a blood spatter tech for the Miami police. He kills those who escape justice. The fun part, though, is watching how he manages to track them down and make sure they're the right one first.





That much evil might trigger a fight-or-flight kind of reaction in her. She might even try to leave quickly or badly hurt him to escape the interference.





That's what separates Keiko and Chiaki. Keiko is trained with rifles and willing to use one. Chiaki finds them cold and impersonal.

The scary one, though, is the one you don't see coming. If she were properly motivated, Lara Night is perfectly able to turning him into a charcoal fossil at close or long range, and she's capable of it. The trick to that, of course, is she would need a lot of motivation, much more than Chiaki, and especially Keiko. Lara has had to kill before, and isn't eager to do it again - but she's not dead set against it like Hatman, either.

Agreed.




It'd be a good story but it's moving towards DEFCON 1 on the superhero wars.










This is common for superheroes. It's why no story ever pits Batman vs Darkseid in one to one combat unless Bats has been given an absolutely awesome amount of preparation time.




I think she's probably well versed in how to avoid that particular strategy though.







Screwdriver tends not to get into revenge scenarios. They're bad for business. He prefers gathering favours then calling them in.







That would require a precognitive ability to know that Black was about to launch a citywide takeover.







Indeed.




There's lots of ways to kill any character if the story requires it. The skill comes in avoiding the situation where that's the logical outcome.

There is a point where Chiaki is really unwilling to escalate to. She's willing to call in a posse to teach another posse a lesson; but if it's going to be a battle that will cause a lot of collateral damage and put innocent lives at risk she'll find a different way to do things.

For instance if someone sent the Carnifex after her, rather than involve the entire Lair Legion and possibly a few alien races to beat him, she probably would just try to negotiate with him, and appeal to either his sense of honor or pity. She's not above using big, sad puppy dog eyes in situations like that.








She's been cornered before, and was badly hurt. She won the fight, though.





This is an interesting spot to point out an interesting contrast between two characters.

Chiaki particularly hates people who think they have superior intelligence and therefore have the innate right exploit other people, especially those they feel contempt for. Chiaki will manipulate people sometimes, but usually on genuinely friendly terms. In other words, she would make a terrible Hollywood agent. Note that this also means she would have a particular dislike for the Hooded Hood. Screwdriver sounds like he's in that same category.

Lara Night, on the other hand, thinks its fun to match wits with the super-smart and super-powerful types - but not so much to battle them physically. She can be quite sneaky in her own right, but tries to keep honest so she can sleep at night. She believes the Hooded Hood to be occasionally interesting, sometimes a fun opponent. Screwdriver, she might make as angry as she made the Chronicler.





She might have passed a carrier pidgeon vendor somewhere in Badripoor. And they might be fairly common among people who don't trust their communications not to be intercepted.








It's kind of like if you have something in the room with you making a high-pitched cricket noise, only very loud. You might be highly tempted to bash it into dust with a stapler.

In Chiaki's case, Tom might produce a lot less psychic noise if he's unconscious.








Lara hates being the "bad guy" if she can avoid it. Note how much abuse she's taken while in the Parodyverse simply because she's unwilling to use extremely deadly force. She's a lot like a cop who's been shot several times because he's afraid to draw his weapon.

But, if she feels sufficiently threatened - or if her friends are threatened enough to force her to lose her temper - she's not going to freeze up and allow herself or her friends to be killed to preserve her white-hat status.