Previous Post Saving the Future – Part 8: The Final Solution Previously: Sorry, this is one of those stories where you really need to have read the previous chapters. Otherwise it’s literally like turning to the last chapter of a whodunit and just reading that. If you’re impatient you could probably get along by picking the narrative up at chapter five. Part One by Dancer Part Two by Visionary Part Three by the Hooded Hood Part Four by the Hooded Hood Part Five by the Hooded Hood, Visionary, Killer Shrike, and Jason Part Six by the Hooded Hood, Jason, Hatman, and CrazySugarFreakBoy! Part Seven by the Hooded Hood, JJJ, Jason and L! *** Thirty minutes before the destruction of Paradopolis:     Everybody crowded into the Lair Library. Lee Bookman hurried around moving tomes before people sat on them or creased the pages. The Lair Legion, their guests and staff perched on chairs or tables and waited for Champagne to explain her solution to the disappearance of Danny Lyle.     Almost all the suspects were there: CrazySugarFreakBoy!, Visionary, Al B. Harper, Yuki Shiro, the Manga Shoggoth, the Librarian, Hallie, Glory, Flapjack, Amber St Clare, Anna, Sergeant MacHarridan, even Magweed and Griffin. Hatman was absent, confined in the SPUD helicarrier, Marie Murcheson was in the Sick Bay, and Liu Xi Xian and Lara Night had both left the building; but Herbert P. Garrick was present, glowering and in an even fouler mood than usual, and Grace O’Mercy and Killer Shrike were also around.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I love this part,” confided Champagne Cacciatore. “The big library scene.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Did you have some information to share with us?” asked Garrick in acid tones.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“First we need to consider the evidence,” began the international jewel thief. “Point One: Damage to the Celestian defences of the Lair Mansion, to arcane measures which protect against cosmic incursions. This includes an assault upon the health of the former Lair Banshee Marie Murcheson, who’s passed out in the sanatorium right now.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m monitoring her,” Hallie promised.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And so am I,” added Anna. “It is nothing personal, Hallie, but Yuki said we were all suspects and we needed to watch over each other.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well I know which of the two of you I’d trust,” muttered Amber St Clare.     Champagne continued. “The point about this evidence, and perhaps the strange stones growing around the house which have proved impossible to scan or damage, is that these actions appear to be malicious in nature. To be an attack or a preliminary to attack.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’ll crack a way to scan them before tomorrow morning,” promised Al B. “It’s a shame we don’t have Knifey to carve a slice off for us.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Let’s nae forget that we’s actually saw Liu Xi Xian damaging th’ defences last night, on yon monitor,” Sergeant MacHarridan reminded the room.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We saw somebody who looked like Liu Xi,” Yuki clarified. “It could have been anybody.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Somebody who got into the cellars by folding void,” Al B. added. “Sorry, but I finished analysing the sensor logs just now. How many people do we know who can manipulate void? I’m thinking somewhere around one.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’ll come back to that,” Champagne promised. “Point two: The cell door was opened, using a top-security over-ride known only to active Legionnaires and to Hallie. Another high security over-ride altered the video and sensor logs.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We have several people who could do that,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! admitted. “And a whole bunch of enemies.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“At this stage I’d actually prefer it to turn out to be Ultizon or someone,” Vizh admitted. “Assaulting Marie was just plain mean.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re assuming the two things were done by the same people,” Champagne responded. “But look at the styles. Whoever drugged the Sergeant used exactly the right dose not to harm him. They sprinkled the area with the scent of chocolate, which thwarts Glory’s super-nose without the unpleasant side-effects of pepper or aniseed.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That was very thoughtful of them,” admitted the wonder dog.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“On the other hand the attacks on the Celestian defences were brutish and brutal, with no care at all for what happened to Marie,” considered Yuki thoughtfully. “Very different M.O.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Anyway,” went on Champagne, “the significance of the codes, and the fact they were physically inputted into the key pad is twofold. Firstly, it suggests someone who couldn’t just control the system through a remote computer link like Hallie or Anna or Al…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Or somebody clever enough not to do it that to hide their identity,” contributed the Shoggoth.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Or that. And secondly we can infer that somebody needed to actually get Danny out of the cell to abscond with him. Why do that if they could just teleport or dimension-shift or void fold or whatever straight from the cell itself?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Again, it could have been a ruse, a red herring,” Hallie mused. “But it’s an added complication, an additional risk of being noticed. Why take the chance if you didn’t need to?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But that also suggests that Danny was physically removed from the site,” Yuki noted. “But even if somebody had the codes to spoof the sensors and cameras, how did they get him out of a door or window once the mansion went to high alert? Even a nanobot-sized particle of living matter or any kind of tech couldn’t get out without us knowing then.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What about those wet track marks on my carpet?” demanded Flapjack. “Who was dumping lumps of ice along the corridor if it wasn’t the people busting Danny out?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes, that’s the key point of the mystery,” agreed Champagne. “The culprits made a mistake there. Three mistakes, really.”     Garrick yawned obviously and looked at his watch.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“On to Point Four, then,” Champagne responded. “Drugging Sergeant MacHarridan’s drink. We know the coffee was laced at the point it splashed on Amber’s blouse.”     Amber glared over at Flapjack. He leered back.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I checked and found that Marie and Flapjack had both drunk from the same carafe. Now Al B. tells me there’s no way the drug would have worked if the coffee cup had been pre-coated, and anyhow Flapjack randomly picked one of the LL mugs from the cupboard. So the sedative got into the coffee either while it was cooling in the kitchen and Flapjack was pottering, or as he took it through the building and before he bumped into Amber.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, I hear she’s very bumpable,” Killer Shrike chuckled. “At least if you’ve got bumpers as well.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So the prime candidate for doctoring the drink is Flapjack,” Amber St Clare pointed out, flushing. “He’s always snooping about everywhere, so he could have stolen the potion, spotted someone using their over-ride code, hidden Danny in some forgotten secret crevice in the Mansion that nobody else knows about, and dropped the ice as a red herring.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And also frosted the walls of the cellar?” Grace O’Mercy enquired. “Don’t forget we had ice down there too.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The thing is,” frowned Visionary, “that you’d have to have very particular super-powers to sneak that drug into the cup without Flapjack or Marie seeing it. You’d have to be able to hide in plain sight in a well-lit open-plan kitchen, or time-stop or mind-freeze Flapjack in the corridor, or be able to do a pinpoint-specific teleport of the sedative, or something like that.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Unless Marie did it,” Grace offered unexpectedly. “No, think about it. She’s linked to the defences. The house if being attacked. Maybe someone’s taking control of the Celestian systems, and they used the mansion itself to take Danny – Marie included.”     CSFB! shot a glance at Al B. and the Librarian. “Is that possible?” he asked in a worried tone.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Is this where the Mansion eats us?” Amber said nervously.     Nobody was eaten.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s theoretically possible,” Lee Bookman considered. “We don’t fully understand the link between the Celestian defences on this island, the protections on this house which is, frankly, almost sentient, and the bond to the defenders it empowers.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But if it can control Marie, what about Hallie?” Yuki said.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“If the Mansion was doing the controlling, then Hallie wouldn’t have spotted the disappearance and sounded the alarm so fast,” argued Visionary.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Anyhow, those are the salient facts of the case,” Champagne concluded. “The damage on the defences before Danny was even apprehended, the need to unlock the cell door and the knowledge to do so, the ice around the house, and the difficulty of how the drug got in the coffee.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And also the weird timing of the Purveyors’ incursion,” added CrazySugarFreakBoy!, “Only two minutes after Danny was removed from his cell. I don’t buy that coincidence.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And the statements of all three of the cosmic Triumvirate that none of them can locate Danny now,” bubbled the Shoggoth. “Lara and I are with Lisa at this moment.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They could be lying,” Yuki argued. “They want Danny dead, or at least the Chronicler and Lisa apparently do.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Apparently,” agreed the loathsome elder being. “But unless one of the Triumverate has the power to obscure things from the other two they do not know where Danny is. That is suggestive.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, it is Lisa,” pointed out Vizh. “Suggestive is her life.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, we’ve sat through the Champagne show,” snapped Herbert P. Garrick. “Can we skip to the part where we hear who illegally removed Denial in defiance of US and UN orders and committed treason? Only I have a squad of Sentinoids ready outside and a special cell waiting at FMRC headquarters.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, I’ll suggest a scenario to you,” Champagne offered. “Something that fits the facts.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Let’s hear it, Colombo,” CSFB! grinned.     Champagne keyed an image up onto the library monitor. “Madame Symmetry of Synchronicity, rumoured to be the mother of Danny Lyle. She’s also the Shaper of Worlds, the cosmic office-holder responsible for the beginnings of events. So if something bad was going to happen the Danny she’d know. Know in advance.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“In time to send an emissary to damage our defences so he could be teleported out?” wondered the Librarian.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No,” said the Shoggoth. “The cosmic office holders must maintain their duties. She could not act to thwart the direct responsibilities of the Chronicler of Stories. If she acted at all it would have to be far more circumspectly than that.”     Now the monitor image changed to show Baron Elizabeth von Zemo.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oink!” went CSFB!     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The Baroness admits off the record to taking a commission from Symmetry to extract Danny from our custody. Shrike confirms that word was out in the criminal underworld about Denial’s incarceration.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s not surprising given the number of world governments threatening us if we didn’t hand him over to their jurisdiction,” Hallie observed.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A Purveyors team went in through a dimensional back-door left behind from the Baroness’ days on the team masquerading as Citizen Z.,” Champagne continued. “We can now identify them with reasonable certainty as VelcroVixen, Brass Monkey, Grit the Granulated Man, Suicide Blonde, and HAGGIE.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“HAGGIE!” Hallie hissed, hearing the name of her insane prototype counterpart. “She was here? Near my systems?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The sensor logs showed they arrived two minutes after the doors were opened,” noted Champagne, “but HAGGIE could falsify that. She knows the Mansion computers almost as well as Hallie herself.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And the Purveyors had to emerge where the Baroness’ back door let them in,” Al B. realised. “The upper balcony of the main hall – the Shoggoth blocked up the hole an hour ago. The bad guys had to trail through the house and manually open the cell to get Danny out.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Suicide Blonde can change the chemical composition of matter,” exclaimed Yuki. “She could create the drug in the coffee if she only knew the formula of Al’s potion.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Which the Baroness would, because she was one of us,” added the Librarian.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Brass Monkey would know how to mask scents,” Glory yapped. “He might choose some substance that would not affect him adversely too!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And they got yon Lyle out the way they got in,” Sergeant MacHarridan concluded.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But that doesn’t explain the damage the night before,” objected Grace O’ Mercy. “Nor the strange stone growths, nor the ice.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Or why someone felt the need to inflict Chad and Ronnie on us,” added Al B.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ah,” responded Champagne, raising a finger. “What if… what if there were two different people after Danny? Symmetry to save him, and the Chronicler to delete him? Possibly three, if the Chronicler wasn’t behind the assault on the defences. In that case, Danny disappearing at 9.26 actually saved him from being taken by the adversary planning to storm your house by force, the one setting up the stones and so on.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You mean… if Danny hadn’t vanished then we’d have had something worse coming for him?” Griffin squeaked. “Danny disappearing when he did saved everything?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Maybe,” smiled Champagne. The boy was going to be a charmer when he was a little older.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And von Zemo lied when she said the Purveyor’s mission was a failure,” Yuki scowled.     CrazySugarFreakBoy! was putting things together. “So someone planned to assault the Mansion on a cosmic level, and set things going to take apart the Celestian defences that shield us here, but then someone else slipped off with Danny and spoiled the master-plan?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Looks like that,” Champagne agreed.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And you’re saying we have the Purveyors of Peril to thank for that, and the Baroness got Danny to his mother?” the Librarian checked.     Garrick snorted. “I’m saying it’s a very convenient cover up! Nobody here is to blame for anything and Denial is gone without any proof of guilt. I don’t think so.”     The room began to break into random debated and arguments until the Night Nurse asked, “And what about the ice tracks?”     Champagne winced. “Ah yes,” she said. “Them. The big mistake.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Really?” Anna asked wonderingly. “What about them?”     Champagne’s eyes met with the people she knew to really be responsible. “Well, like I said, what I just described was how it could have happened. That was the solution I was hired to come up with for you.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I knew it!” Garrick hissed. “This is a Lair Legion cover up!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We didn’t bring Champagne in,” Visionary objected. “That was Drury’s idea!”     Champagne held her hands up for silence. “I’m sorry, folks. I hope when you know the real truth you’ll see why I was trying to give you a different solution. And it would have worked too if I hadn’t discovered those ice tracks before I understood exactly what happened this morning.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Okay,” said CSFB! “So can we have the real story now, huh?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Very well,” agreed Champagne. The con trick had almost worked, but things were getting too out of hand to cover up. And if she was right about the malevolent intentions of whoever had assaulted the defences…     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So whodunit?” demanded Flapjack. “And I’m not just asking because I’m running a book.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey, can I get some of that?” Killer Shrike hissed. “Twenty on the Hallie chick and a ten-spot on Harper?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Who took Danny Lyle?” asked Herbert Garrick. “Tell us now!”     Champagne pointed at the two guilty parties. “They did.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What?” gasped Vizh. “But…”     Then a blazing radioactive helicarrier crashed onto the Lair Mansion and exploded in a nuclear blast. ***     From his hidden room Danny felt the shocks. Plaster fell from the ceiling and cracks appeared in the walls. There was a bright flash as the second helicarrier reactor exploded, searing the Lair Mansion to atoms.     Even Danny’s sanctuary began to burn. “This… this didn’t happen!” gasped Denial. Everybody was dead, the Legion, the Juniors, the city, Kerry… “This didn’t happen!”     But it was a nuclear explosion, and a million deaths, and the end of an age of heroes, and Danny’s power just wasn’t enough.     He died trying, though. *** Twenty minutes before the destruction of Paradopolis: [This section incorporating material from Dancer]     Chiaki Bushido opened the door of her apartment very cautiously, with the chain on. “Yes?” she said.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hi!” beamed the danskin-clad brunette in the hallway. “I’m Dancer. Remember me?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Of course. What do you want?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’d like to talk with Liu Xi Xian, please.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What makes you think Liu Xi is here?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Because she said so when I texted her from the airport. Can I come in? I promise I’m not going to arrest her or anything. I’m no longer empowered to even do strip-searches on hunky security guards.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You had that authority when you were in the Lair Legion?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sure. Lisa told me so. Besides, nobody ever complained.”     The Psychic Samurai opened the door and cautiously allowed Sarah Shepherdson to enter her private space.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nice place,” Shep admired. “I think your bathroom’s bigger than my whole apartment in Montmartre.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Liu Xi is sleeping,” Chiaki told her guest. “Or at least pretending to. She was rather upset when she heard that Hatman had been arrested for letting her escape.”     Dancer tossed her head and made a noise like ‘ppft’. “Tell her not to worry. Hatty’s in custody, not under arrest, and it was his idea. This way he’s drawn Garrick’s teeth, got Drury’s sympathy, and got himself where he can sneak a look at SPUD intel on the investigation. Hatty’s a smart guy.”     There was a stirring from the guest bedroom. A tousled Liu Xi came out. It was clear from her reddened eyes that she’d been crying. “Dancer?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey, kid,” Sarah greeted her, and gave her a much-needed hug.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Dancer, I think I screwed everything up,” Liu Xi admitted.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Then welcome to Planet Earth,” Dancer told her. “But look, whatever’s wrong we can fix it. You’ve got some great friends and we’re not going to let you down. Right Chiaki?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Right,” agreed the Psychic Samurai. She couldn’t help but smile a little every time she ‘read’ Dancer. It was clear that here at least was one person Liu Xi could trust. But…     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There’s something we need to know, isn’t there?” Chiaki guessed. “Something we’re not going to like.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There is,” Dancer admitted. “That’s why I hopped on a plane and came right out here. Hatty called me.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“From the SPUD helicarrier?” Liu Xi objected.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sure. Since the team’s all quarantined he asked me to look you up and check something out with you. Don’t worry, he didn’t tell me where you were. He knew SPUD would be monitoring his channel. That’s why I had to call you when I got off the plane.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What don’t we know?” Chiaki asked. It felt urgent.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You don’t know that there’s a security feed from the Mansion sub-cellar-caverns, showing that last night Liu Xi void-folded down there and somehow wrecked a bunch of Celestian defences,”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What?” Liu Xi objected. “I never… I didn’t!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Why would Liu Xi do that?” demanded Chiaki. “In fact how could she?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Good points both,” Dancer agreed. “Although if anybody’s going to do something mysterious, occult, elemental, and impossible it’s probably her. Anyhow, I’m taking it you didn’t do that, Liu Xi?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Never!” the elementalist promised. “I swear it!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well good,” Shep told her, “because whoever actually did it didn’t just compromise the house protections, they hurt Marie too. She’s ill in the sick bay right now. And there’s some kind of mysterious stones growing up out of the ground round the Mansion.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’d never do anything to hurt Marie either. We’re good friends. You have to believe me!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There are many ways to fool sensors and cameras,” the Psychic Samurai reflected. “The Lair Legion has faced numerous foes who can shape-shift, for example.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh sure,” Dancer agreed. “Not many of them can duplicate void-folding, of course, and the logs indicate that’s how the intruder got down to the Celestian basements.”     Chiaki frowned at that.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“This isn’t an interrogation,” Dancer promised Liu Xi, “but we do need to find out what happened last night. We’ve not just encountered shapeshifters before, we’ve also faced villains who can possess us. Obedience Brands. Hero Feeders. Psionic puppeteers. All kinds of ways that it could have been you in those cellars without you even knowing it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I need my will to fold the elements,” Liu Xi insisted. “I couldn’t do it if I was under another’s control.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I didn’t sense anything like that,” Chiaki reported. “I’m not sensing it now. Just a lot of anxiety and hurt.”     Dancer’s questioning revealed that Liu Xi Xian had been asleep in her room last night. “In a pocket dimension folded from the Mansion,” the elementalist added.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And just possibly vulnerable because of that,” worried Chiaki. “If somebody knew what they were looking for.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The chances of finding me in a void-folded space are a billion to one,” Liu Xi protested. “Ten billion to one.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You know how often those chances come up?” asked the former Probability Dancer. “Look, you need to come back to the Mansion with me. Come voluntarily, to show you’ve nothing to hide. Let Al B. run some tests. We’ll call Whitney in to check you over. Maybe Con if we’re absolutely desperate. And we can mend whatever fences you think are broken while we’re at it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They’ll take me away!” Liu Xi objected. “They’ll lock me up and study me, dissect me to see how I work. Or they’ll try to take away my powers and leave me lobotomised. Or kill me, like they want to kill Danny!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not while I’m there,” Dancer promised her.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But you lost your powers.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But not my friends.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’ll come along as well,” Chiaki offered. “As a bodyguard. This is the most sensible solution, Liu Xi. And you need to know the truth as much as anybody.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well…” considered the tearful elementalist. Then she winced, clutching her head.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What’s wrong?” asked Dancer alarmed. She was more alarmed still when Chiaki rose in one fluid movement and drew her sword.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The elemental pathways are being shut off,” Liu Xi whimpered. “It hurts!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We are under attack,” warned the Psychic Samurai. “Stand ready.”     There was a polite tap on the door.     Chiaki ghosted to the side of it, gesturing for Dancer to get Liu Xi to the other end of the apartment.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ms Bushido?” came a voice from the hall. “We know you are in there. This is the Federal Metahuman Resource Centre. We have a warrant to enter and search your apartment for a suspect named Liu Xi Xian.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I can’t void-shift away!” Liu Xi gasped, trying not to panic. “How can they block me doing that?”     Dancer has a comm-card in her hand, but it was likewise jammed.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ms Bushido, if you do not answer the door we are legally authorised to enter by force.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t fight them,” Dancer warned the Psychic Samurai. “So far there’s nothing we can’t repair.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t let them take me,” whimpered Liu Xi. She tried to summon the elements to her, but they wouldn’t come. This was more than a standard dimensional jamming field. This was specialised.     Chiaki made some rapid odds calculations then opened the door. “What do you want?” she asked, sheathing her sword across her back.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Special Agent Harvey,” the man in the front of the crowd identified himself. “These men and women are metahuman operatives of the FMRC. This is a judge’s warrant for search.”     The Psychic Samurai had faced police intrusion before. She’d assumed that if they called then Liu Xi would have been able to shift herself away. “Miss Xian requires an attorney,” she told them.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Of course,” Harvey agreed affably. “We won’t even be arresting her if she’ll come along voluntarily. We’ve been instructed to do this as softly as possible.”     Liu Xi stood up and faced her persecutors. She refused to quiver and weep before them.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’ll be accompanying her as well,” Chiaki told them. “Voluntarily.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’ll be accompanying her,” Dancer corrected the Samurai. “After all, one of use has to know that the others of us have gone somewhere.” She and Chiaki exchanged significant glances.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Right,” agreed the Psychic Samurai. Nobody was going to disappear into the system without a trace. And Chiaki was slightly concerned that she couldn’t get a sense of these agents at all. It wasn’t jamming; there was nothing to read.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Where are we going?” Liu Xi wanted to know.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“In the first instance to FMRC Paradopolis headquarters,” Harvey answered. “You can call your lawyer from there.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And call back here,” Chiaki added. “Just so I’m not worrying.”     Dancer nodded. She followed Liu Xi as the girl was led out by the officers.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“How did you know where she was?” Chiaki asked Harvey.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Her mobile phone,” the agent replied. “She checked her texts. We traced the cell. Rookie mistake.” He nodded politely again to Chiaki and closed the door after himself.     Chiaki picked up the phone and dialled the Lair Mansion. Her outside line was still blocked.     There was another polite tap at her door.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ms Bushido? We know you are in there. This is the Federal Metahuman Resource Centre. We have a warrant to enter and search your apartment for a suspect named Liu Xi Xian.”     The Psychic Samurai just had time to realise that something had gone very, very wrong, when a nuclear explosion took out her windows and then the aftershock toppled the building she was in. *** Ten minutes before the destruction of Paradopolis:     Hatman tumbled through the old trilithon, rolled once, and came to his feet ready for combat. He swapped out his Bulls cap for his Steelers hat, a good general purpose choice that was both defensive and offensive.     Then he looked around. He was in dense jungle, a sub-tropical forest under a dense tree canopy. The air felt thick and musty. A few huge insects played in the shafts of light sliding down between the leaf-roof.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Teleport?” Hatman puzzled. “Was that a Hero Feeder taking my shape? Or a new Super-Skunk? Or is this just an illusion?” He touched a tree. It felt slightly damp and very real.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I really don’t have time for this,” Jay Boaz fretted. He needed to get back to the SPUD helicarrier. He needed to get back to his team.     He pulled on his Eagles cap and swept up through the trees with powerful strokes of the wings he’d grown.     Hovering above the canopy he could understand the layout better. The forest went on as far as the eye could see in three directions, stretching to a blurred purple horizon under a setting red sun. In the fourth cardinal the light glinted off a vast lake. Beyond that was a volcano cone.     Jay’s commcard couldn’t pick up a signal. Any signal.     Hatman worked out some landmark co-ordinates and began a grid search, looking for any signs of civilisation. So far all he’d seen was the ancient trilithon gate, and that had clearly been erected thousands of years before.     He spotted movement to his left, a rustling in the treeline, and flew over to take a closer look.     Below him the forest broke into an open clearing, and in the clearing was a woman. She wore a Raquel Welsh rag bikini and she was running as fast as she could. Behind her a huge bipedal dinosaur was rapidly closing on her.     Hatman didn’t stop to question it. He swooped down and grabbed the fleeing girl into his arms, then power-winged up beyond the monster’s snapping jaws. The beast howled in rage at being robbed of its prey. Hatman put some distance between them.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t be afraid,” he told the soft shapely woman he was holding. “Can you understand me? You’re safe now.”     The woman thumped him round the ear and swore at him. “Safe?” she cried out. “You idiot! Do you know how long I’d been trying to get that thing to follow me? There’s good eating on a allosaurus! And you let it get away.”     Hatman blinked as he recognised the female in his arms. “Silicone Sally?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah,” agreed Sally Rezilyant. “I’m surprised you recognised me when I’m not wrapped round Beth von Zemo. What are you doing in the Land That Time Forgot?”     Elsewhere a helicarrier crashed and died, taking a city with it; but that was in a different time and place. *** Five minutes before the destruction of Paradopolis:     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Grandfather, I have a favour to ask.”     Sir Mumphrey Wilton looked across the back of the Rolls Royce at Samantha Featherstone’s earnest young face as the chauffeur navigated his way through Paradopolis’ rush hour evening traffic. “What’s that then, m’dear?” he asked affectionately.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, thanks awfully for bringing me over with you to visit my friends,” Sam told him, “but I was hoping I might learn a little something while I’m out here too.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m sure Yuki will be happy to throw you around the training area again,” Mumph promised. “Better her than me.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not that, although that would be useful too.” Samantha looked reticent. “You’re here because Hatman asked you to check for temporal anomalies where Danny disappeared, right? Well I was wondering… I’ve used your Chronometer of Infinity before, and in at least one timeline I end up as its Keeper. So could I borrow the pocketwatch and try my hand at what I can do with it instead?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hmph,” considered the eccentric Englishman.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’ll need to learn if I’m supposed to wield it one day,” Samantha wheedled.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, alright then. But no reconfiguring it into one of those digital things. And see you keep it polished.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes grandfather.” Sam seemed relieved. “Now promise you won’t be looking over my shoulder, making me nervous.”     The car slowed down as it cleared security at the gate on the bridge across the Parody Island. The guards seemed distracted.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Something amiss?” Mumphrey asked the gate hippo.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Some kind’a security alert, sah,” the gatekeeper reported. “Up on yon helicarrier beastie. That’s all we knoos.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’ll enquire further from the Mansion,” the former leader of the Lair Legion replied. “Carry on, driver.”     Then the side of the helicarrier blossomed out in nuclear flame, cracking the hull of the vast ship. It keeled on its side. Blazing chunks peelied off and fell into the sea. The main bulk was obscured for a moment in an expanding cloud of radioactive steam, but then it toppled sidewards and crashed down atop the Lair Mansion, crushing the structure beneath it. Its second engine detonated, blowing away all life for five miles around, eradicating the city of Paradopolis from the map.     Mumphrey’s car was hurled away like a child’s toy, rolling and crumpling, then was evaporated by the second blast.     Then time stopped. The Chronometer of Infinity was programmed to do that on the death of its wielder. It dutifully wound back events to one second before Sir Mumphrey’s death, using the variant that meant that the old man would recall the events that had been reversed. Then it paused everything for as long as its chronal charge held.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“By George…” gasped the eccentric Englishman.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What happened?” asked Samantha, similarly protected by the temporal pocketwatch.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Dashed big explosion,” Mumphrey told her. “Looks like things are busy at the Lair Mansion as usual.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Can you reverse time and stop it?” Sam asked.     Her grandfather frowned. “Got just enough charge left to run things back to a moment before the helicarrier blew, but no way of preventin’ the events that made it go up,” he worried. “Da – drat.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I do know the d-word you know,” Samantha could help smiling despite the crisis.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’re going to have to get away from here,” Mumphrey decided. “No way we could get up to that carrier and locate and prevent the problem while the chronal charge lasts. Possible we can shift some of the Legion into the future, but that’ll be tricky and it doesn’t save the city.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think… I know how to stop it, grandfather,” Sam considered. “If you can wind us back to just before the explosion, that is.”     Mumphrey didn’t question his grand-daughter. He burned away most of the remaining power in his pocketwatch. Around them the mansion pushed the helicarrier off it, and then the burning behemoth rose into the air, dragging its sundered pieces back in until it hung motionless in the clouds.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Now what?” Mumphrey asked.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Come with me.” ***     Danny Lyle nearly fell off his sofa as Sir Mumphrey Wilton blinked in before him. Samantha was there too, but Sir Mumphrey was very prominent. “Gah!” he gasped.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No time to explain fully,” Sam told Denial. “You’re in a temporal bubble about one second before the SPUD helicarrier detonates and takes everybody with it. You have to deny that explosion. And you have to do it fast, before we run out of chronal charge.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What the young lady said,” agreed Mumphrey. “Everybody’s counting on you, lad.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“All the people who want me executed?” Danny asked.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The same,” agreed Sir Mumphrey. “So?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The helicarrier won’t explode!” Danny called out, almost falling to his knees with the effort. That had been a bigger denial than he’d expected. “What was about to happen?” he gasped.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Bad things,” Sam assured him. “Well done.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Indeed,” agreed Sir Mumphrey Wilton. “Now come along with me. Explanations are in order, what?” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The helicarrier nearly went boom, alright,” Dan Drury assured the crowded group in the Lair Library over the monitor comm-link. “The video evidence here shows Hatman goin’ crazy and killing guards, then murdering a bunch of people on the mess deck, then somehow triggering a massive cascade in the nuclear generators. A cascade that got suddenly… denied.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’d be me, then,” agreed Danny Lyle, aware that he was the centre of attention of everybody in the room and not really caring.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“This is a no-smoking Library,” Lee Bookman told him sharply. “Don’t try to deny it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hatman would never do something like that,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! asserted. “Clonerobotdoubleevilmirroruniverseselfherofeederskunkhologramtulpapodbeast.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Just like Liu Xi would never have sabotaged the Parody Island defences,” argued Yuki.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It was a near miss, anyhow,” Drury concluded. “And Hatman’s vanished fer now. I’ll tidy things up on the carrier then be down there in an hour or so. Don’t lose Lyle again.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“In fact you could cuff him now,” demanded Garrick. “Why isn’t he in power-dampeners?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Because we’re not *&%$£*&,” Al B. Harper suggested.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sorry about before,” CSFB! told Danny. “The Chronicler kind of scared us.”     Denial shrugged. “It happens.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well I for one would really, really like an explanation,” insisted Amber St Clare. “What really went on? I thought Champagne said it was the Purveyors of Peril?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I said it could have been the Purveyors,” Champagne corrected her. “It wasn’t.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So who was it?” demanded Garrick.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re not awake,” Danny told him. Anna caught the G-Man as he slumped into slumber.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“This is getting better and better,” grinned CSFB!     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Apart from whatever’s happened with Hatman,” noted Visionary. “But Champagne, you made a mistake before. When you indicated whodunit you pointed to Magweed and Griffin.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well yes,” agreed Champagne, “but that’s because Samantha wasn’t here as well back then.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ah,” said Sir Mumphrey’s grand-daughter. “I see the plan hasn’t quite worked out as expected.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s because someone forgot to mop the carpets,” Magweed accused her brother.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“When was I put in charge of carpets?” Griffin objected. “I was in charge of sneaking the potion into the coffee and knowing the over-ride codes. I did my bit. Anyhow, you screwed up when the mouse guard spotted Champagne finding the wet patches and told Danny to deny the evidence!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Um, perhaps we could have all of this in order?” demanded Hallie. “That way we’ll know what century you’ll be able to watch TV again and not be grounded.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It was a neat little plot,” Champagne suggested. “Mags and Griffin knew that Danny had been locked up, because they were there with Visionary when he came upon the scene. They knew Kerry would be upset.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And also the LL were put in a really bad position about having to hand Danny over,” added Griffin. “They were all arguing and stuff. We knew they couldn’t just make him disappear.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But we could,” Magweed took up the story. “So we called Samantha.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“At seven in the morning GMT,” Sam added. “The House Mother was not impressed.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I made the call,” explained Griffin, “That way I could make sure that only Sam perceived me, not anyone listening in. Sam came up with the plan on how to extract Danny and get him to our secret hideout in the Lair Mansion.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The garret where I found him,” Sir Mumphrey concluded, “a place so hidden by Celestian fiat that even the Triumvirate couldn’t spot him there.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You drugged Sergeant MacHarridan,” Vizh scolded.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We did it as carefully as possible,” Griffin said. “I checked the data to get the right dose for his bodyweight like Samantha said.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And the mice have left a bottle of Scotch in his bed to say sorry,” Magweed added, smiling hopefully at the detonator hippo.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Aye, that may be al’right,” MacHarridan admitted thoughtfully. Visionary’s daughter didn’t explain where the twelve year old single malt had come from.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And thank you for using the chocolate small,” added Glory, wagging her tail. “That was very considerate.” She spoke in hopes of future bribes.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So we went down to the cells, using the codes I happened to know to fool the monitors,” Griffin went on. “We had, um, outside help to do the heavy lifting, because I can’t carry Danny on my own and Mags has a bad leg.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Outside help?” puzzled Yuki. Then the penny dropped. “Icy! You used that snowman you befriended. He came in via the basement tunnels, leaving frost behind. Leaving snowy footprints that slowly melted into the carpet!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We remembered to thank him,” Magweed promised.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Then they called me again,” Samantha explained. “This time not hiding the call. Colonel Drury monitored it and he took up the idea we fed him to bring in Champagne.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’d already been hired by then,” Champagne added, “by an old client of mine, asking me to help the children. My job was to come in here, investigate, and suggest a way Danny could have escaped to close off any further investigation.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’d have bought that answer, too,” admitted Amber.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I was distracted just watching her,” admitted Flapjack. “She was speaking as well?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Keep going,” Killer Shrike insisted. “I love hearing about how three kids and a snowman made monkeys out of SPUD and the Lair Legion.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That wasn’t the intention,” Samantha insisted. “The idea was to take Danny out of the situation, to give the team some space to sort out the Chronicler.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not a bad plan,” CSFB! admitted. “It might have worked if the helicarrier hadn’t gone nuclear.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s not all of the plan, is it?” Sir Mumphrey observed. “There was getting Danny clean away as well, wasn’t there. That’s why somebody wanted to borrow my pocketwatch.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sorry, grandfather,” said Sam, looking downcast.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Was Kerry a part of this?” asked Visionary. “Because she seemed pretty upset.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We knew she would be,” Magweed admitted. “That’s why I got Lisa’s cat to take her a message when he could.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I can follow most of this,” Grace O’Mercy agreed, “but why harm Marie?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That wasn’t us!” Griffin promised. “We’d never do that.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Never,” echoed Magweed.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“As I said,” Champagne intervened, “there’s more than one plot here. Danny’s abduction was actually Danny’s rescue.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Thanks, kids,” Denial told Magweed, Griffin, and Sam. “I owe you one.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But the assault on the defences, the strange growing rocks, Marie’s illness… that’s something altogether more malicious.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“One mystery closes, another begins,” noted Al B. “And this one feels more dangerous.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Okay,” called CrazySugarFreakBoy!, bounding forward. “We got ourselves a second chance with Danny thanks to the Vizhlings and Sam. We’ve got weird garden problems. Something screwy’s happened with Hat up on the helicarrier. Epitome’s still missing and we’ve nobody to fill the brickhead niche. There’s a whole bunch of stuff that L says we’ve been distracted from outside the Mansion…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t call me L,” chided the Librarian.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“…so let’s get going and do some more detecting, people!”     Then, down in the Lair Infirmary, Marie screamed.     The growing monoliths around the island broke out, rising from the ground as they swelled, shifting and glowing.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Watch out!” called the Shoggoth. “The universe seems to be twisting anticlockwise and a little to the left!”     A blinding glow burst across Parody Island, bright enough to make the murky evening into noon.     When the flash cleared Parody Island wasn’t there any more.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Uh oh,” said Danny, treading water in the turbulent waves left by the sudden disappearance of the landmass. “Maybe that was a bad time to deny I was affected.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes!” said Baroness von Zemo, watching across the waters with powerful binoculars. “They’ve gone! All of them, even the helicarrier.” She turned to VelcroVixen triumphantly. “The age of heroes is over. Now begins the age of villains!” *** Coming Next: Okay, I admit this isn’t the best stopping point to expect other people to slot in a chapter. Pretty much the whole cast except the villains and Chiaki have disappeared, Lara’s in the Caribbean sipping cocktails, and Danny’s treading water. But the next chapter will set up the next part of the round robin and leave people some space to tell some stories of their own, I promise. Coming soon, in The Land That Common Sense Forgot ***              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.

Chiaki cleans up her mistakes. Whoever took Liu Xi can expect Chiaki to search for her tirelessly, and when she catches up they can expect serious injuries or death. It could be an interesting misunderstanding if she was actually taken by the real Dancer and a few friends to protect her.

Of course whoever took Liu Xi, if it's not Dancer and friends, also may not know that she's been learning since her last major kidnapping. She may prove to be more trouble than she's worth. Or maybe they'll treat her well because they want to convince her to help them.

It looks like Lara's side trip will be cut short. The Shoggoth will likely know his other biomass at the Lair Mansion is gone and inform her of what's going on. She'll have to go and find them...though...

...I suspect that this is all much less than a coincidence. I'm starting to believe that the Shoggoth understands the Chronicler's plan already - and with Lisa backing it 100%, the point is to keep Lara there and away from an attempt at locating the Lair Legion. I think the Chronicler's original idea was to banish Lara from the Parodyverse for a time to accomplish that, but Lisa has other ideas. That also makes it possible that the kidnapping of Liu Xi is directly related.

The question then is, do they convince Lara to cooperate or do they treat her as a prisoner?

As a side note, the Chronometer of Infinity sounds like something Faite may have had a part in designing. It's just like her to design something to stop time just at the moment of its bearer's death and rewind a bit, preserving the memory of it.

Anyway, is there anything you're waiting for me to attempt to contribute? I haven't set up any tie-in things yet.