Previous Post #322: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Ever After - Part Three Go to Part 1 Go to Part 2 ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“All of these?” Director Soames looked up from the report on the desk with a surprised stare.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I didn’t set the terms of their pardons,” Mr Epitome answered. “But that’s what the U.S. government promised these felons, convicted and unconvicted. If they served in the Terminus Teams with honour for the duration of the Parody War then they got amnesty for crimes previously committed.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There must be a hundred names on this list,” the Director of the Office for Paranormal Security pointed out. “How many of these are truly reformed?”     Dominic Clancy looked uneasy. “Hard to say,” he admitted. “But the worst cases aren’t on that list. Harmanda Barriere’s already cherry-picked some for her Deathwatch Detail.” He dropped another dossier that covered the hard-core redemption programme on Soames’ desk. “I’ve done my best to be fair to the men and women who had committed metahuman crimes in the past but who risked their lives to fight for this country in the recent war.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And if they’re not reformed?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s why there’s an Office of Paranormal Security.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So you’re coming back, Dominic?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s not the topic of discussion for today.” Mr Epitome laid a third dossier on the table. “These are the metahuman criminals supposedly killed in the Terminus Team programme. Two thousand three hundred and sixty-four of them, not counting the one thousand eleven who were crippled in battle.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Supposedly?”     Epitome frowned. “We have reports from the Shepherdson girl, additional indications from other sources, that the Hooded Hood grabbed some of his cronies from the battlefield at the point of their apparent deaths, substituting versions of them from other possible futures using his ret-conning abilities. He assembled his Purveyors of Peril to use as a strikeforce against the Parody Master. Characters we assumed dead in battle like Anvil Man, Appendage Man, VelcroVixen, Razor Ballerina, all turned up on his latest roster.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So the Hooded Hood is back?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Unknown. The Purveyors were last deployed by the Hood’s alleged son, Denial. We need to regrade that young man’s threat rating.”     Soames looked down at the papers before him and rubbed his forehead. “So we have to release a hundred supervillains into the wild to keep our word. But that’s okay, because there’s worse out there that we thought were already dead?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Stinks to be the good guys, doesn’t it?” Epitome said.     Soames nodded. “I’ll warn the president, and Mr Carnifax,” he said, reaching for the phone. ***     Danny Lyle wandered down the echoing corridor of Herringcarp Asylum and ended up back in the brooding vastness of the Throne Room. VelcroVixen was there, gathering together the shards of the shattered Portal of Pretentiousness.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“How pissed do you think my dad’s going to be?” Denial wondered. The Portal had been destroyed by the Parody Master as Danny had used it against him in the final conflict of the Parody War.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Depends on whether he’s got a devious Byzantine plan to fix the thing,” Vicki Vee replied. “And whether he intended you to do what you did all along.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He arranged for me to meet Kerry,” Danny considered. “I wouldn’t have done what I did against the PM without that. I’m not the martyr type.”     VelcroVixen flashed him a killer smile. “Hey, we all die and get resurrected again in this profession. Occupational hazard.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m not complaining about the resurrection part, although it is a bit spooky to think that my happy ending is back on plain old Parody Earth with Kes. That feels like an awful big commitment.”     VV shrugged, knowing that her costume made that act spectacular. “Hey, if you’re having second thoughts on the whole being faithful to the little probability arsonist thing, well, you are the boss and I have this standard clause in my contracts…”     Denial shook his head. “I’ve just paid off the Purveyors. They’ve done their job for now.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You didn’t mind debriefing me before you met the Shepherdson girl,” Vicki reminded him.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’ve kept everyone on retainer though,” Danny went on. “Just in case.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“In case things don’t work out with you and Kerry?” VelcroVixen asked with a little moue.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“In case I need to take over the planet. You never know.”     VelcroVixen sighed and reached for her travel bag. “Well then, I’ll be on my way. I’ve decided not to apply for the Borovia job. I don’t want to have to wear the padded suit and the purple mask. And I think I’ll avoid the Factor X recruitment drive. That could turn nasty, and anyhow I don’t see Vassily as being much fun in the sack.” She looked thoughtful. “Is Koo Koo Ka Chu seeing anyone right now?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Take care, Vicky,” Danny said to her. “Thanks for your help.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey,” VV replied, “I didn’t bring you back from the dead.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nope. That was Dancer,” agreed Denial. “And maybe Lisa.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Actually it wasn’t,” interrupted a cold female voice from behind them. “It was me.”     Danny swivelled round to face the newcomer. VelcroVixen didn’t, since she was now frozen in time.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s generally considered a bad idea to break into Herringcarp Asylum,” Danny warned the intruder.     Madame Symmetry of Synchronicity showed him the object in her palm. “I have a key.”     Denial tried to play for time while he considered his options. “And are you a Babe Neuwirth wannabe or is Christina Ricci your idol?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I was the one who brought you back, Daniel,” Symmetry told him. “Dancer was my chosen tool for the job, and Lisa is always obliging, of course – notoriously so – but her new role is about endings.” The former keeper of the Chronometer of Infinity smiled coldly. “Beginnings are mine.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Is this going to get anywhere near a coherent account of what the hell you’re talking about soon?” Danny asked. “Only I have things to do.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I am Symmetry of Synchronicity,” the intruder told him. “I was dead, smeared across the timelines after an unfortunate misplay against Sir Mumphrey Wilton. Now I’m back, appointed as Shaper of Worlds to initiate interesting new plotlines across the Parodyverse.”     Danny knew about the Triumvirate of great cosmic office holders who maintained the narrative weft that made up the Parodyverse. “Uh oh. I’m guessing that means I’m back for some probably unpleasant reason.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Both of us are, Daniel,” agreed Symmetry. “Your father didn’t care enough to arrange for your return.” She reached out and touched painted black fingernails to his cheek. “How fortunate for you that your mother did.” ***     The living lightning seared though the cluster of escaped avawarriors on the landing outside the maximum security cell block then reformed into a human shape. Jay Boaz staggered a little as he pulled off his Con Ed hat. Radical physical transformations always took a lot out of him.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s cleared the way,” he panted. “What’s happening beyond the hallway, Dream?”     CrazySugarFreakBoy pushed his finger into his ear like a deranged folk-singer, picking up audio and video communications on his wowie-zowie walkie-talkie and filtering them through his eerie ear-stud. “I can’t get a full picture because a lot of the security cameras are down” he noted, “but it looks like everybody’s loose. A total security shutdown has released every captive Avawarrior. The few metahuman criminals still lodged here are being massacred, along with whatever guards they can find.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Warden Westwood?” asked Beth von Zemo, pickling her way over steaming fallen Parody Soldiers. “It would be a terrible shame if he had been chopped to pieces by these aliens.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Westwood and Security Chief Flaherty are in the secure zone at the Warden’s office,” CSFB! reported. “Holy Shawshank Redemption, Batman! They’re under siege, trying to get the last resort self-destruct mechanisms to activate.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’d best get out of here then,” the Baroness advised. “First priority is to alert people to the threat of thousands of escaped Avawarriors. Even without their swords and shields and stripped of what armour could be prised off them they’re insanely powerful and well trained. We’ll need the entire Lair Legion to cope with them. You’ll need it, I mean. What’s left of it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We need to get to Westwood and Flaherty,” argued CrazySugarFreakBoy!. He rounded a corner and slammed his fist into the first of the avasoldiers lying in wait there, then tangled the rest in wads of gooey sticky string. “Then we need to get those failsafes failsafing so the bad guys have no choice but to surrender or go boom.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We need to think this through properly,” Hatman decided. “How did these Avawarriors get free? Why now? What do they intend to do? What’s the worst case scen…” He went pale. “The last Singularity Rider!” he realised. “M’Rak the Vicious. He’s imprisoned here, in Vault Zero, deep under the Safe.”     Beth blinked. “In the Parody Master’s absence, that Doomwraith is top of the chain of command.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“If that Doomwraith gets free then he can suck the life out of everybody on this hemisphere is under ten seconds,” CSFB! noted. “Suck it worse than the new Flash Gordon series. That’s what they’ll be doing first – freeing M’Rak.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Right,” Hatman decided. “Dream, go stop them getting into Vault Zero. Citi… Baroness, get to the roof and signal the Lair Legion for help with my comm-card. I’ll try to save Westwood and Flaherty.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Since when am I back on the team, Jay?” Elizabeth von Zemo demanded with an arched eyebrow.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re helping out because you want to live,” the capped crusader snapped back. “Now everybody move!” ***     In a nameless dimension of high strangeness Visionary faced off against Nyarlurkhotep, prime agent of the Fairy Great Old Ones, the invading Elder Gods who slept until the stars were right. On two other occasions the possibly-fake man had been nearly destroyed by the malevolent being.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“This time I shall do it right,” the man in black promised. “It will only take a second to shred your soul, Visionary, but you will feel the agony as an eternity.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I don’t recommend that,” Vizh warned. “You might just want to look at previous trends of you trying to shred bits of me and see if there’s a pattern.”     The two creatures faced each other across the rotting gelid surface of the biomass they’d arrived on. Visionary hopefully thumbed the fast return button of his harness only to find that Nyarlurkhotep has erased it from existence.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It seems I’m going to owe my informant two favours now,” the man in black admitted. “Not only did he tell me where there was a little broken Shoggoth to devour but I also get a new meat toy to avenge myself upon.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Wait,” Vizh frowned. “Did I miss a plot point? There’s a mystery informant? And he told you where to find our lost Shoggoth.” He looked down at the sticky good that was ruining his trousers. “Is this him?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There is a conspiracy,” Nyarlurkhotep smirked. “A plan to eradicate the heroes of Earth once and for all, beginning with your Lair Legion. A number of entities of cosmic significance have been recruited to play their parts. You can be assured as you die that your friends and loved ones will not long survive you.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ohhh,” grumbled the foetid biomass beneath their feet, bubbling a little as it regenerated. “You two aren’t going to let me be dead in peace, are you?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Shoggoth?” Vizh checked, recognising the unearthly tones that always sounded as if they’d been fluted down a long drainpipe.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Here I was, eternally lying after my labours were done, seared out of existence when I reordered that narrative bomb, perfectly content to stay entirely in the past tense, and then you come along and have all this drama right where I can’t help but pick up the causal strands.”     Nyarlurkhotep wasn’t at all concerned that the Shoggoth was awakened. He was much further up the Lovecraftian food chain than a mere slave construct with ideas above its station. “Oh, you’re back are you? Saves me the bother of resurrecting you to dismantle you properly.” He glanced across at Visionary. “Don’t look to this little wisp to save you, fake man. On his best day ever his main biomass couldn’t even scratch me.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I don’t need to scratch you,” the Shoggoth countered. “All I need to do is this.”     Then he ate Visionary. ***     The tomb would have been dark but for the hundreds of tallow candles on every shelf and surface. Sir John de Jaboz looked a littler nervous as the ghouls shuffled in to surround him.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Doesn’t this bother you at all?” he murmured to his companion in adventure, the Princess Liliblanche of Salem.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Esperine is much more relaxed on the question of undeadness than your humourless knights of the Swordrealms,” the blonde-haired psionic replied. “We’ve had worse things than this to our dinner table at home. Some of their table manners can be a bit lacking though.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“As long as it’s not dinner they’re looking for now.”     The Abyssal Greye was the last to enter the chamber, holding the door open for Urthula Underess to come in before him. “Do you have it?” he asked anxiously.     Sir John showed him a package wrapped in black silk. He carefully unfolded it to reveal an old leather-bound volume, its pages yellowed and its cover scarred. “The Whispering Monks weren’t happy about parting with this,” the Knight Improbablar mentioned. “Then again, I wasn’t happy about what they intended to do with those babies they’d taken. It was a loud negotiation.”     The Abyssal Greye nodded, his corpse-grey face showing perhaps the slightest sign of satisfaction. He carefully took the volume in long hands with sharp-pointed yellow nails and examined the folio. “A first edition of The New Atlantis, by Sir Francis Bacon,” he breathed (although he didn’t usually need to breathe).     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s right,” agreed Sir John. “Just as we bargained.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“This book means a lot to us,” Greye explained. “The Scholar-Ghouls Under Gothametropolis were inspired by this writing. Bacon’s idea of a colonial haven where the arts and sciences were nurtured and preserved, where rational thought reigned supreme in a scholarly paradise…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sounds really boring,” interrupted Urthula with a mock yawn. “Anyway, in Bacon’s New Atlantis, his Bensalem, the whole society was based around family and marriage.” She looked around. “I don’t see any of you Scholar-Ghouls getting any.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You didn’t just want the book though, did you?” Lileblanche asked them. “You knew that once we saw what the Whispering Monks were doing we’d be obliged to stop them. To deal with them permanently.”     The Abyssal bowed his head in acknowledgement. “You have truly paid your end of our bargain,” he acknowledged.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not quite,” pointed out Urthula. She turned to the princess. “Did you get it?”     Lili drew a folded slip of paper from her waistband. “This was harder then the monks. In the end we had to ask Contessa Natalia Romanza of the Super-menace Principal Undercover Directorate for help.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What is it?” Greye asked curiously as Urthula crammed the note into her cleavage. “Some rare alchemical formula?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Orlando Bloom’s phone number,” replied the party ghoul. “But don’t worry. It’s for research purposes.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“If you are satisfied that our part of the work is done,” Sir John suggested, “may we proceed with out quest? Liliblanche’s this-world-counterpart of her grandmother has revealed certain information to us that…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We may proceed,” the Abyssal Greye promised. “The dimensional turbulence of the recent Parody Was prevents us from opening a tunnel through to your conjoined worlds for now, probably for the better part of a year, but we have been able to locate the other thing for which you searched.”     Urthula shuddered. “I still say going up the Black Passage sounds like a prison euphemism,” she insisted. “Look guys, we found an entrance like you wanted, conjured a way past the guardians. But this is dangerous stuff, very dangerous. Time travel is bad for your health. Are you sure you want to do this?”     Sir John and Lili exchanged glances. “We must discover the truth of what we have been told,” Sir John replied at last.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And it might be interesting,” Liliblanche added with a little dimpled grin. “Coming to Earth is probably the adventure of our lifetimes. We don’t want it to end just yet.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Because then you wouldn’t have an excuse to hang around with the stud?” asked Urthula perceptively.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Of course not. We’re just co-operating – barely co-operating – to solve an ancient mystery.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Co-operate this way then, if you please,” instructed the Abyssal Greye. “The Black Passage awaits.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Remember when my worst problem was trying to co-ordinate international intelligence reports?” Hallie groaned as she received the new slab of data from Reticulum Locus on galactic security conditions. “Now I’ve got terabytes of material on what’s happening in the former Skree empire, on the Shee-yar succession wars, on the war crimes trials on Frammistat Eight, on events on thousands of worlds that I’d never even heard of a year ago.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I have every sympathy,” D.D., artificial intelligence at the Lunar Public Library replied. “The days when I just had to maintain a back catalogue of ninety billion billion documents and manage a branch that received visitors from a thousand light years around seem very long ago.”     That prompted Hallie’s next question. “Have you heard from Lee since he went to meet the Governors?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not yet,” worried D.D. “Since we declared ourselves independent from the IOL we’re off their infonet. ALF.R.E.D.’s tooling up and threatening to pay them a visit of we don’t hear anything soon.” The A.I. leaned forward confidentially. “I think he’s hoping we don’t hear anything soon. He’s never really forgiven the Governors for disassembling him that time.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, some things are hard to forgive,” Hallie admitted. “Disassembly is one of them.” She was multi-tasking as she spoke, of course. “Still no word on whether the Yellow Flashlights survived,” she noted. “D’Ur Acell must be going crazy with worry. Gamona’s disappeared – no surprise there. Massive legal battles over the ownership of the former Astrovidian territory that – oh!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh what?” D.D. asked.     Hallie squirted the data over to her. “Rather than have another war the locals are all appealing for the Lair Legion to go there and arbitrate. That’s new.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Send CrazySugarFreakBoy!” recommended D.D. with a giggle. “See what happens.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hmm. Here’s another request, from Chalastis Core, wanting us to mediate in their dispute with the Weaponmakers of Skelvis. And a plea for help to sort out the depredations of the Shankaru pirate monkeys. Earth’s being cited as expert witness in a compensation claim from the Prospectii for the citizens who were eaten in the Parody War by the Draumid gastronomes. And here’s an offer from Plxytrazar asking if we’ll send one of the LL to go and rule them.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sounds like the team’s going to be busy in the aftermath of the Parody War,” noted D.D. “I hope there’s no Earth crime any more, because they’re not going to have time to deal with it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I don’t think the Legion is likely to start interfering in galactic politics, no matter how much Garrick might like it. It’s not like we have regular interstellar travel technology or the resources to colonise other worlds yet. Once things are settled Sir Mumphrey expects us to go back to being a bit of an interplanetary backwater.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Somebody has to do something in the short term, though,” D.D. argued. “If you don’t want to see more unnecessary bloodshed. Winning the peace is as hard as winning the war.”     Hallie thought that through, even as she e-mailed her collated situation report to the United Nations and the G-9 powers. “Well, maybe the Legion could look at a little bit of diplomacy,” she judged. “Things do seem to be very quiet right now here on planet Earth.”     And as she said that the top of the Safe exploded. ***     Yuki handed the suitcase of DVDs up into the goat chariot. “We’re really going to miss you, big guy,” she told Donar Oldmanson, hemigod of thunder, as he laid his Xena collection next to his Buffy collection and his X-box. “You too of course, Annj.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s been nice that we were able to stay a few days while things settled down,” the Queen of Ausgard replied, “For one thing, I had friends as Marion Nightshade, a life that needed tying up properly, people to say goodbye to.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What did you tell them?” Yuki wondered.     Donar put a huge arm around his wife. “Just that she hadst met a man and wast running away with him to a life of unremitting bliss.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I didn’t quite use those words, though,” Annj admitted. “I am looking forward to the unremitting bliss, however.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Things are yet unsettled in the far realms of the Mythland,” Donar said more seriously. “Mine father the Oldman intends to resume his walkabout so needs must I return to provide the proper whompage of malefactors, ne’er-do-wells, recreants, trolls, ur-trolls, ab-trolls, demi-ab-trolls, demi-ab-ur-trolls…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“My hubby has a fixed idea about foreign policy,” Annj explained, clinging onto the hemigod’s arm. “And strong views on law and order.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And a zero-tolerance policy for mine half-sibling Hoki,” added Donar with a growl. “When I see him I shalt smite him most wrothfully forthwith.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Before he does anything?” asked Yuki.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, he wilt have done something,” Donar answered with certainty. “Best to smite first and asketh questions later.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sorry to slip off like this, but when the Oldman calls you don’t hang about,” Annj told Yuki. “Please pass on our love to the others. It’s been really great hanging out with you all at the Lair Mansion. You’ve all got to come for a long visit at Emoh Sranod when you can.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It wilt be good to be home,” Donar confessed, “but I wilt miss mine boon companions in yon Lair Legion.” He looked around nostalgically. “It wouldst have been good to have something to smitheth ere the journey, also,” he admitted.     The explosion as Beth von Zemo triggered the failsafe explosives on the roof of the Safe lit up the sky.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’ll hold your Xena collection, shall I dear?” sighed Annj. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What did you just do?” demanded the horrified Parody Priest as he looked back at the hole in the high security building that was still steaming with the heat of the failsafe blast. The squad of escaped avawarriors that had been racing along behind him were now cooked pulp across half of Flanagan Island.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There are failsafe explosives laced all over this building,” Beth von Zemo explained. “In case of a mass breakout they can be triggered as an emergency last resort. I just used an override that the security staff here didn’t know about to set some of them off.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But you’re a prisoner here!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I prefer to think of myself as a voluntary guest,” the Baroness sniffed. “It suits me to await trial, and now I’ve brought my own staff in to cook and clean for me the place is quite palatable. The anti-teleport defences here were contracted out to the Interdimensional Transportation Company and I owned that for a while so obviously I’d know about the security back doors they installed. The Legion found those of course, but by then I’d had time to get HAGGIE to install some of my own.”     The Parody Priest glared at her. “Then you must die,” he decided, “but not until you reveal these codes to me.”     The Baroness wasn’t intimidated. “Tell me,” she said, “how much do you think your absurd and burning faith in an overpowered megalomaniac I helped to destroy is going to help you resist a wide-burst cellular disruptor pistol?”     A moment later she re-holstered her weapon. “Not that much then,” she concluded. ***     Hatman burned along the corridor in his Rockets hat, slamming aside avawarriors and jinking round the bulkier masses of the enhanced-strength combat clones. When he saw the enemies in front had anticipated him he switched briefly to his Tornados hat, then followed up with an old-fashioned Bedcap to send them to sleep.     He had to duck behind one of the fallen combat clones as a new party of escapees rounded the corridor carrying automatic weapons captured from the slaughtered guards. He quickly dragged on his Steelers cap again and powered towards them down the corridor. Any ricochets could only hurt the opposition.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hatman!” called an ava-commander. “Take him down!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, that’ll happen,” snorted the capped crusader. He dropped low, swapping out his current headgear for a Suns hat to blind his enemies with a sudden flare, then went in close up with his Giants hat to stomp them into the ground with a Fe-Fi-Fo-Fum.     More of the escapees were attracted by the melee. Numbers became overwhelming. Hatman powered though them with his Jets cap and made the secure landing where a dozen ava-army tech guys were trying to burn their way in to the secure panic room box where Westwood and Flaherty had taken refuge.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s a no-no,” Hatman warned the prisoners, taking them and their equipment out with his blasting cap. He pulled on his CalTech beanie for a moment and got the damaged intercom to work. “Warden, this is Hatman of the Lair Legion. Hang in there. We’re on the job.”     And then they came, dozens of them, hundreds, seething down the corridor intent on the death of the leader of the Lair Legion, and the destruction of the men he protected. ***     Sharon Cortiss and her four year old son Dwayne had been in the Safe to visit Martin Cortiss, her husband, better known as the metahuman bank robber King Cockroach. Cockroach had been an inmate ever since he’d made the mistake of pulling a post office job when Fin Fang Foom was buying stamps. Now he was dead, torn apart by the same avawarrors that had taken Sharon and Dwayne hostage to force prison guard Duncan Malley to open the sealed basement area known as Vault Zero.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I… I can’t open it,” the terrified warder stammered as a Parody Priest prepared to neatly slice one of the screaming boy’s ears off. “I don’t have keys. Nobody does except the Governor. Please, you have to believe me!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Open it!” shrieked the hysterical Sharon. “For God’s sake, please! He’s just a little boy! Do what they say!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I can’t do anything!” Malley shouted back. “Don’t you understand, there’s no way I can get in there!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, I think there is,” the escaped acolyte assured him. “We have been provided with the technology required to overcome the electronic and physical barriers to the cell below. We merely require your word – the word of a duly appointed warden of this gaol – to vitiate the mystical defences.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Mommeeee!” shrieked Dwayne.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Alright!” Malley pleaded. “Don’t do it! I’ll do what you want. What do I have to do?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Simply say that we may enter,” the priest noted. “Then your troubles are over.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You can enter, alright!” blurted Malley. “Just let the boy and the woman go, will you? You can enter!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Good,” noted the cleric. “You may now slaughter the man and woman,” he told his avatroops. “We will retain the boy for the Rider to devour.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Noooo!” screamed Sharon.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No is right,” agreed CrazySugarFreakBoy!, dragging her from the clutches of an avawarrior as he spun past and dropping her safely behind him in a corner. “This is a no-slaughter zone. Don’t you people have any manners?”     Another avawarrior held his blade against the throat of the child. “You will surrender.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sure. Catch.” CSFB! tossed the rocket fuel soda pop in an easy-to-intercept parabola. The fugitive released the boy and caught the missile by pure reflex. It exploded in a shaped charge that embedded him in the wall. The wired wonder scooped up Dwayne and bounced off the ceiling to avoid the influx of angry avatroops.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Kill him!” ordered an Avacommander, pointing to the intruding superhero.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Wow,” admired CSFB, tangling the first line of attackers as he tumbled between them, keeping them away from the potential hostages, “I can see that you went to Avacommander school. How else would you have thought up that amazing original plan? And the way you gave the order, so butch and manly… it gave me the shudders. I’m so totally dead now.”     A dozen Avawarriors piled on top of him, each with enhanced strength and reflexes and years of training in combat. CSFB! squirmed out from beneath them, leaving some flash-bang whiz-bangs behind him as a consolation prize, then covered the whole scrum in silly string.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I said kill him!” the Avacommander called as the Impossibilitium-suited superhero made fools of his elite forces. “Kill them all!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Okay, you’re not funny anymore,” Dream decided, bouncing off the face of the trooper that still held Warder Malley then powering in to take down the Avacommander himself. “In fact I think it’s time somebody showed you guys that your stupid Parody War is over. You lost. Deal with it.”     He’d saved the hostages and was holding his own against overwhelming odds of escaped avawarriors. The only thing he’d missed was the parody priest retreating through the doorway to Vault Zero.     Then a wave of weakness came over CrazySugarFreakBoy!, sapping all the energy from his limbs, dropping him to his knees with exhaustion. The adamantite doorway was torn off its hinges with casual force. In the doorway the parody priest staggered and mouthed something which might have been “My lord…” before he decayed to a skeleton and tumbled to the floor.     M’Rak the Vicious stood behind him, his ragged black cloak trailing in a wind that wasn’t there, streamers of midnight malice fluttering around him.     The last of the Doomwraiths was free. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There go the Lair Legion, Mr Skinner,” commented Mr Flay as they watched the LairJet from Parody Island make an emergency landing in the Safe courtyard. “Off to save the day.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“An inspiring sight indeed, Mr Flay. I’m quite overcome with emotion.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s good to know that the heroes have arrived, Mr Skinner. It’s good to know they are committed to battling the terrible evil that has been unleashed from Vault Zero.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That it is, Mr Flay. It’s particularly good because now there’s no-one else who can help with the second outbreak over at Bareta Base, where there are even more avaforces imprisoned just now.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s going to become a very messy afternoon, is it not, Mr Skinner?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We can but hope, Mr Flay. We can but hope.” ***     All power went down across Bareta Base. Emergency back-up systems did not cut in. Their batteries were dead.     The first prisoners broke loose from their cells less than thirty seconds later.     Panic spread across the camp. Soldiers found their taser weapons and energy rifles to be useless. Only those that still had old-style percussion guns were able to defend themselves, and they were too few.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Something’s wrong,” warned Sir Mumphrey Wilton as he heard the first gunfire. The old warhorse perked up and looked around him. He grabbed Governor Rashamon by the wrist and pulled her into cover. “Looks like we might have an escape attempt, what?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What?” Roslyn Rashamon looked around her in dismay. “My security people…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Best stay under cover for now, Governor,” Sir Mumphrey advised her. “I’ll see what I can whip up in the way of reinforcements.” He reached into his waistcoat pocket and withdrew a Legion comm-card. It was dead too.     The first explosions started as the serious offender cells were blown open.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hmph,” frowned the eccentric Englishman. “Looks like I’m going to have to settle this myself, by Jove. Very well.” He reached for his temporal pocketwatch and twisted a dial. “Don’t be alarmed, Governor, but I’m sending you six hours into the future, to keep you out of harm’s way.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The future?” Governor Rashamon frowned as she tried to remember security briefings on rumours about the former leader of Earth’s defence coalition. Something about time-travelling powers?     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nothing to fear, madam,” Sir Mumphrey assured her as he thumbed his watch’s activation stud.     Nothing happened. His pocketwatch was drained of power also.     Then the first of the escaped avatroopers found where they were hiding. *** To be concluded… *** Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2007 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2007 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.