Previous Post Minutes of the Society of Fairly Nasty Supervillains Members Present: Dr Mean (Chair), Clockwatcher (Hon. Secretary), Frigid Lass, Shadowslide, Dangerzone     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Right,” said Doctor Mean. “This meeting of the Society of Fairly Nasty Supervillains will come to order.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We have got to work on that new organisation branding,” sighed Dangerzone. “Unless this is some cunning secret plan for us to be able to defeat our enemies while they’re snickering at us.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’ll schedule the committee,” Clockwatcher answered petulantly. “It’s just that we’ve got a very long agendum at the moment. There’s the whole lawsuit from B.A.L.D. thing to work out, that mystery meteor that Astrodoom sent us to analyse, and the post-mortem on the Paradopolis Post Office job…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It damn near was a post mortem,” complained Shadowslide from inside a cocoon of bandages. “Who knew superheroes buy stamps? You’d think the damned Lair Legion would have a franking machine.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, guys,” interrupted Doctor Mean. “Thing is, when I say we come to order, that’s kind of the cue for you all to stop bickering and actually, y’know, start the meeting.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“This isn’t bickering,” complained Frigid Lass. “This is background noise for this group.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well okay, granted,” Doctor Mean admitted, “but we’re supposed to be major supervillains. A force to be reckoned with. And we have a guest speaker today. I don’t want us to look like bumbling amateurs.”     Suddenly everyone looked up, interested. “She came?” asked Clockwatcher in an awed half-whisper. “You actually got the diabolical Dr Moo?”     Doctor Mean looked a little evasive. “Well, not Dr Moo herself,” he conceded. “But Davidowicz was pretty interested, only she had to wash out some lab tubes. And Oiad would have committed except she apparently had to, um, take a shower. She’s pretty much Dr Moo’s clone so that would have been major if she’d been available.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So who have we got?” asked Shadowslide in the tones of a supervillain who knows he’s not going to like what he hears next.     Doctor Mean swallowed hard. “Well, um, you’ve all heard of the Captor?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The Captor?” Frigid Lass actually smiled. “He’s, like, a legend. He’s like been around catching superheroes for years and years. He fought Jarvis, and Fin Fang Foom, and Dark Knight, and Starseed! He’s trained generations of bad guys and girls! Our guest speaker is the Captor?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He has done all that, yes. A real pro. Well, I managed to get his neighbour to come talk to us about him. Melvin Temsalen shared a lawn and driveway with him back in 98/99 and…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s it!” snapped Dangerzone. “As soon as I reassemble my atomic particle randomiser…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You got us a supervillain’s neighbour to speak with us?” Frigid Lass objected. “A neighbour?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, he’s come quite a long way,” Doctor Mean pleaded. “Er, I may have promised him his bus fare.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Can we kill him?” demanded Shadowslide, straining in his plaster casts. “Can we kill Mean too?”     The door opened and the guest speaker stepped into the Fortress of Horror. “I’m afraid Mister Temselen has departed,” the visitor told them in sinister, measured tones. “I have undertaken to substitute for him and offer a keynote address to your enclave.     The room went silent, except for the clattering as Dangerzone dropped the pieces of his atomic particle randomiser onto the floor. At last Frigid Lass managed to close her jaw and stammer, “Y-y-you. You’re…”     The guest speaker swathed his cloak about him and leaned forward. “I am… the Hooded Hood!” he told them. “Good evening.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Aaaaaaaahhhhh!” Dangerzone screamed, diving under the table.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The… the Hooded…” Dr Mean mouthed, but no actual sounds came out of his lips.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Dammit! Where did we leave the guestbook?” fretted Clockwatcher, scrabbling through the duffel bag of old Society minutes. “We need the guestbook.”     Dr Mean had gone very, very pale. He leaped off his stool and backed away respectfully. “Sir. If you’d like a seat… Anything… Um, a drink? A biscuit? We could get you a biscuit. A whole packet of biscuits.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We don’t have any biscuits,” Frigid Lass hissed at him. “Shadowslide finished them. He said it took his mind off the pain.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We could steal some biscuits,” Dangerzone offered from under the table. “We’re villains. We can do stuff like that. Nobody can stop us.”     There was a slight movement as Clockwatcher kicked something underneath the meeting table, followed by an “ow” and a thump as a head hit the underside of the wood.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Okay, no biscuits,” agreed Dr Mean. “Sorry about that, Mr Hood. I mean Mr Hooded Hood. Sir. Your lordship. Your archvillainship.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You could have Frigid Lass,” Shadowslide offered helpfully. “”She’s cute.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Shut up!” hissed Frigid Lass, superfreezing the metal pins holding Shadowslide’s cast in place. “I’m not that kind of villainess.” She glanced at the Hooded Hood and assayed a tentative smile. “Although, you know, on a really special occasion…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I believe you were just bringing your meeting to order, Doctor Mean,” the Hooded Hood noted. He somehow filled the room just standing by the table. If thunder wasn’t rumbling in the distance it seemed like it should be.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I was,” agreed Dr Mean hastily. “Yes. That’s right. The, um, Society of, er, the Society will now come to order.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Which means out from under the table,” snapped Clockwatcher.     Dangerzone crawled out trying to regain his dignity. “I was just… locating pieces of advanced villainous technology essential to my next master plan,” he explained. “And then someone kicked me in the head.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You were already squealing like a girly before that, though,” Shadowslide pointed out.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Guys, ixnay of the bickering,” Frigid Lass hissed. “If we don’t pull this together we might as well just ask for the retcon now.”     Dangerzone looked like he was about to head back under the table. Clockwatcher grabbed him and pushed him to his seat.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well,” Dr Mean pressed on, trying not to fumble his papers, “I’d like to welcome our, er, special guest speaker today, the, er, the famous cowled crime czar. Patron of the Purveyors of Peril. Master of Herringcarp Asylum. Twice conqueror of planet Earth. Once conqueror of the Parodyverse. Archenemy of the Lair Legion and… well, pretty much everybody. This is a really unexpected surprise.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Indeed,” replied the Hooded Hood. “Dr Waltz informed me of your invitation to her and I undertook to fulfil the obligation.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t kill us all!” blurted Dangerzone. “Sir.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You could kill Dangerzone if you liked though,” offered Shadowslide, trying to massage some warmth back into his shattered arm.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The Hooded Hood rarely kills,” the archvillain declaimed. “It is a very wasteful practice, preventing the full exploitation of available resources. A dead foe cannot know the humiliation of eternal defeat, and cannot be manipulated in the future.”     Clockwatcher swallowed hard. “Wow, I am so minuting this!” he told the others.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We don’t kill much either,” admitted Dr Mean. “Partly because we can’t get the death ray to operate properly. I think they sent up the wrong manual. None of us even speak Taiwanese.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I ate in a Thai restaurant once,” offered Frigid Lass, eager to do her part to prevent the Society looking like total amateurs.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Splendid,” replied the Hooded Hood. “Now you are probably all speculating on the reasons why I have come to speak with you tonight.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Are you recruiting?” wondered Shadowslide. “Because I am so ready to dump these losers and join the Purveyors of Peril…”     That triggered an association for Dangerzone. “Hey, I was crippled by VelcroVixen once,” he reminisced. “I guess she goes for more leader-type guys. Or maybe she just didn’t want another drink.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes, your Hoodship, we are wondering,” Dr Mean agreed, trying to paper over the little cracks in his team’s collective efforts. “We’d be very interested to hear why you’ve come to talk to us.”     The Hood settled back on the stool he’d been given; except that now it looked rather more like a throne. “I have advice for you all,” he explained. “And this is it: quit now.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Quit?” Clockwatcher puzzled. “What do you mean, quit now? You mean stop being supervillains? Stop being the Society of… the Society?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Indeed.” The cowled crime czar cradled his fingertips and looked at them. “You have not achieved the objectives which you set for your villainy. Indeed, you appear not to have defined many objectives beyond some immediate gratification and petty power plays. You do not have the killer instincts required of major players. You do not have a future in the ranks of infamy.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re… you’re shutting us down?” Dr Mean asked disbelievingly.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Of course not,” replied the archvillain. “This is more by way of an intervention. My speciality. You may proceed with your ventures. Of course, all but one of you will die horribly tomorrow, but let that in no way deter your eagerness to continue the inept and ill-motivated course you have chosen to pursue.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hold on!” Dangerzone objected. “Say that again without all the long words and thinking stuff!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He says we’re losers and we’re going to die,” Frigid Lass translated.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But we’ve made progress…” Dr Mean objected. “I mean, real progress. That post office job would have worked fine except for an accidental rain of Nats. We have meetings…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The Hooded Hood thinks we’ve failed,” Clockwatcher mourned, throwing down his pencil disconsolately and putting his head in his hands.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You have failed as villains,” agreed the cowled crime czar. “Whether you have failed as people now depends upon you.” He gestured and his eyes flashed green.     Frigid Lass disappeared.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey!” objected Dr Mean. “What’d you do with Lizzie?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I removed her,” replied the Hooded Hood. “She was offered to me, you may recall. I have therefore retconned her to a… different situation of my choosing.”     Dr Mean balled his fists and faced up to the Hood. “You bring her back! I mean it! She’s… she’s part of my team and you can’t do that to her.” He thought again. “Well, obviously you can, but I won’t let you.”     Dangerzone headed under the table again. Shadowslide tried to follow him but only managed to fall off his chair.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, obviously I can’t actually stop you,” conceded Dr Mean, pinned by the Hood’s gaze, “but I still intend to try.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I see,” replied the cowled crime czar. “So you would rescue Elizabeth Colney from… the Hooded Hood?”     Dr Mean bit his top lip and nodded, his hands still raised in a fisticuffs stance.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Very well,” agreed the Hooded Hood. His eyes flashed again. Dr Mean vanished.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What did you do with him?” demanded Clockwatcher. “Er, for the minutes?”     The Hood turned to him. “For the minutes,” he replied in his Latverian tones. “For the minutes, I sent Eric Dansen to the retconned life I have placed Ms Colney in. She is now aware that he was willing to face the Hooded Hood for her sake. This in turn will overcome the awkward barriers those two young people have placed between themselves in their supervillainous personae. They will find happiness in a lifetime’s relationship, and will cease to be either Mean or Frigid.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Eric and Lizzie?” came a voice from under the table. “Damn!”     Clockwatcher looked over at the Hooded Hood. “Is that the choice you’ve come to us with?” he wondered. “We avoid death tomorrow and you set us up with different lives, where we’re not supervillains any more? Good lives.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I already have a good life,” Shadowslide objected from the ground where his broken limbs weren’t allowing him to get up. “Except for the immense pain,” he added. “Ouch.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That is my offer to each of you,” agreed the Hooded Hood. “Your decisions, please.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Dead or happy?” Dangerzone considered. “Gee, lemme think…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I get to be more happy than Dangerzone, right?” demanded Shadowslide.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think those are yeses,” Clockwatcher interpreted. “They say you can be trusted, Hooded Hood.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They say I do not break my word,” the archvillain replied. “That is not the same thing.” His eyes flashed again, and Dangerzone and Shadowslide departed for careers in teaching and lawn manicure.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And this death tomorrow,” Clockwatcher went on. “This would have happened to us if we didn’t take the deal. Is that because you’d have killed us?”     The Hooded Hood’s mouth twitched a little in appreciation. “I rarely do things for just one reason,” he replied. “And death is, as I asserted, always a poor resort.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What do I get then, if I don’t do this?” Clockwatcher demanded. “I don’t want to go back to being an ignored timepiece salesman in a soulless department store.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That would indeed be a waste, Mr Hazlewood,” the Hood agreed. “No, if you agree to retconning you would find yourself working for me. I shall have need of a good minutes secretary in due time.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Then I agree,” Clockwatcher assented with a little smile of his own. “But couldn’t you have retconned us all like this anyway, whether we’d agreed or not?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Of course,” the archvillain admitted. “But where is the satisfaction in that? Even the Hooded Hood takes a lunch break occasionally and needs diversion. Dr Moo was kind enough to offer some.” He gestured and the last of the Society rippled away to a different place and time.     Then the Hooded Hood picked up the mystery meteor that Astrodoom had sent along, carefully wrapped it in a fold of his cloak, chuckled for a moment, and vanished. 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.

Even taking his ulterior motives into account, this might be as pleasant as I've ever seen the Hood behave. Has death softened his temperament?
And the asteroid is clearly a Chekhov's Gun, but to what end, I can't even guess. A fun story.