Previous Post #336: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion vs the Carnifex: Winner Takes All Go to Part One: The Dancer's Story Go to Part Two: The Seeress' Story Go to Part Three: The Acting Sorcerer Supreme's Story Go to Part Four: The Detonator Hippo's Story Go to Part Five: The Goddess of the North's Story Go to Part Six: The Librarian's Story Go to Part Seven: The Carnifex's Story What has gone before:     With the fall of the mad Parody Master, the Parodyverse was left undefended against the threat that he had originally been created to thwart. Immediately thereafter the Carnifex arrived in the heart of Paradopolis with his mile-high Esqualine Tower. He instantly won the hearts of all as the Parodyverse’s greatest hero and nobody has questioned his appearance, motives, actions, or intent.     The Carnifax invited the team to dinner at the Esqualine Tower where he revealed his true purpose and announced their destruction. His agents carried out simultaneous cruel attacks on friends and family of the Legion. Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises has been catapulted to the maw of Azafroth the elder god. Liu Xi, Lara Night, Anna, and the Psychic Samurai are trapped on a distant alien world of undead.     Attempts to warn the Legion have been delayed. Vespiir and Ebony have been diverted to the ancient tunnels beneath Paradopolis to face the Necromancer General. The Librarian has remained silent because of the Library’s rules of confidentiality. But Mr Flay and Mr Skinner’s assault on Parody Island has been delayed and their attempt on CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s family has been blocked by the sudden appearance of heroes thought lost.     The hunt continues and the winner takes all. The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom features previous chapters of our story Who's Who in the Parodyverse lists details of the cast Where's Where in the Parodyverse covers locations and situations *** The Dancer’s Story:     There’s a moment in performance – not every performance but in all the ones that just click and go really, really right – when you know everything. I don’t mean you know the secrets of the universe, or who stole your cherry-red legwarmers from the locker room, or why Gary hasn’t called you back after that wonderful weekend together – but you know your role, and you can sense the other performers all around you, and you can feel the audience interacting as you move. You own the stage and it loves you.     It’s a great feeling, better than sex in its own way, although just as sweaty and exhausting and unexpected. And likely to leave with odd aches and really out of breath.     Anyway, there’s a moment. And when you’re Probability Dancing, using your gifts to tug on the various causal stands to tweak what happens, when you’re shifting chance about like you’d dance with a partner, flirting and teasing and seducing it to do what you wish, then that’s the best performance of all. The whole world is your stage and time and space become your audience and it’s a rush like opening night on Broadway.     Well, at least I expect it’s like opening night on Broadway, and when I’m finally discovered I’ll be able to tell you for sure. But it’s how opening night on Broadway should feel.     Since I became the herald of Galactivac I’ve faced some scary situations, not least of which was meeting Galactivac. I’ve also been chased by Demon Lords, captured by the Hellraisers, nearly been the bride of the Parody Master. I’m not really that brave and all of those and plenty of others really scare me. Fighting the Carnifex – who isn’t as cute when he’s trying to impale your friends on long steel poles that he’s prepared for the purpose and whose dating intentions for me start with chains and dislocated limbs and get gruesomely gynaecological after that – is the latest in a long line of nightmares I don’t want to face.     But when I dance… especially then, when the performance really matters, when all my friends are on the stage with me and the audience is the whole Parodyverse, when I dance that dance, that’s when the performance rush pushes out the fear and the pain and the horror and… I rule.     So the Carnifex springs his dinner trap on us and he’s worked out how to surprise us and rip us to bits. He’d got this whole big thing worked out where he’ll hurt us, crippled us just enough so we can’t escape, then drop us into his endless labyrinth in his black metal tower and track us down as we flee. He’d spent a lot of time thinking it through, like a hunter that prefers to trap his prey alive so he can carve it up alive.     Thing is, as soon as I began to dance I could see why that wasn’t going to happen, at least not the way he’d got it planned. There was Zdenka for a start, Zdenka Zarazoza who he’d wanted to seduce as his trophy from the Parodyverse. You know how some guys like to rip up your heart and your life to make them feel good? The Carnifex had concentrated a lot of mojo on Rabid Wolf, the same kind he’d used to keep everybody from thinking logical thoughts about who he was and what he wanted for all these months we’d called him the Parodyverse’s greatest hero.     Zdenka was supposed to be his puppet, but as soon as I started moving I could see the improbabilities gathered round her. Thick tangled braids of retcon were unravelling, which means that the Hooded Hood had been as smart as the Hooded Hood is and he’d set things up for Zvesti Zdrugo to know who she really was when his manipulations were sundered by the Carnifex. Mark set Zdenka free when he tightened his grip on her during his attack on us.     I could see how Rabid Wolf was going to turn on him even before she announced herself as the long-sought daughter of the Hooded Hood. I twisted my left elbow a little so her claws caught Mark just right to shred through his armour and tear down his chest.     The Hood wasn’t the only one that’d set the Carnifex up like that, though. Sir Mumphrey Wilton was there behind me, as solid as the White Cliffs of Dover, back with the Legion when we so needed that implacable soldierly direction. He’d warned us all about the Carnifex earlier that day, planned strategies with us, then time-shifted our memories of it so that only when Mark shattered whatever time-contingencies Mumph had worked on us we immediately got full battle knowledge and came up to speed instantly. Strange how Mumph and the Hood think so alike in some ways. They’d both hate me saying that.     Anyway, even as Zdenka scratched Mark the rest of us were in business with the plan. Silicone Sally flexed her elastic body and catapulted Icy at the Carnifex like a miniature ice age. That caught Mark while he was shocked by Rabid Wolf – I made sure of that – then Yuki and CSFB! were in there taking advantage of a suddenly brittle hunter. Hallie broke out her holograms to confuse the Carnifex with sudden attacks from Finny and Enty and Banjooo! (her Mr Epitome was particularly good, I thought, and very nicely coconut-oiled).     But all of that was diversion, and I made sure it diverted, because Fleabot was in there too with Al B’s miniaturised energy converters. I didn’t follow the techno-briefing earlier because I had a chip on my nail polish but it was something like what we did with the Parody Master, to limit the power he could draw down for a while so we could whup him properly.     The Carnifex can move really fast, but that was why Fashion Accessory used her fabrics to haul Mumph’s pocketwatch back to him. Mumph can do stuff with time with that Chronometer of Infinity, and though the Carnifex had shielded himself from being affected he hadn’t prevented Mumph from speeding up the rest of us to match him.     The Librarian scanned the building and absorbed the floor plans of the labyrinth below. Donar and Harlagaz took their cue from him. They shattered a floor that was designed to withstand nuclear blasts, Donar with his enchanted baseball-bat-with-a-nail-in-it Mjalcolm, Gaz with his head. Ham-Boy generated this absurd tidal wave of rump-steaks that slammed right into Mark and the Carnifex was dropped into the same tangle of chambers and traps that he’d prepared for us. And then my little sister Kerry made the whole place blow up good.     That would have ended most fights, but this was the Carnifex.     Mark flew up and began to rip us to pieces – I could see it in the way the probabilities tangled, there was no way to divert it – but then Danny Lyle, Denial, said something like “You did not do that,” and suddenly the whole attack got reset and instead Dream has tangled Mark in silly string and Mark’s doing an unexpected parabola through a support wall and spiffy becomes visible and rams his fern right down the Carnifex’s throat and Donar’s getting up close to play baseball with Mark’s head.     I could feel the audience resistance melting. The Parodyverse was getting into the show. Maybe the big powers couldn’t directly affect what was going on but they sure could throw flowers and money, and applause improves nearly every performance, no matter what Vizh said that time we… Anyhow, the Carnifex fell down and our heavy hitters went after him. Mumph time-shifted Amber, Asil, and Flapjack out of there. Vizh and Lee pelted away into the Carnifex’s inner sanctum just like we’d planned it earlier.     I twisted my whole body, dragging the strands of probability exactly where they wanted to be, knowing that one false move, one tiny error would mean my friends got ripped to shreds and the Parodyverse got doomed. Mark fought back, ripping through probability strands no matter what Kerry and I did to him, closing off avenues of escape, fighting a battle that was physical and temporal and psychic and mystical all at the same time and getting some kind of savage buzz out of it all.     I gave the performance of my life on the biggest stage in the Parodyverse and I wasn’t scared. I loved it. CSFB! said something to the Carnifex made Mark utterly furious and spiffy called that the Lair Legion should Line Up and Yuki shouted back something terribly rude and in real time maybe three seconds had passed since the first attack and even in our Mumph-concertina-d chronology we’d been fighting for less than two minutes.     It wouldn’t be a long fight. It would be short and brutal and it would decide the fate of the Parodyverse. So I danced. I knew what time it really was.     Showtime. ***     Above the frozen sunless world a red star loomed ever nearer, moving at impossible speeds. Nobody was alive on Shee-Yar Prime to see it, except for four women fighting for their lives against overwhelming odds and the servant of the Carnifex who hunted them for sport.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What do you mean, die?” Liu XI Xian demanded of Chaiki Bushido, the Psychic Samurai who’d just announced that her own death was the only way of escape. “We’ve been fighting for… it feels like days. You can’t give up now!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s the only way,” Chiaki said. “Trust me.”     The murdered people of Shee-Yar pressed forward. The soldiers and law enforcers amongst them still carried their energy weapons and grenade launchers. Chiaki gestured for Anna to hold back the next horde of zombies so that Lara Night and Liu Xi could scramble out of the overrun science hall and make their way towards the Imperium Palace.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Every time we go in that direction we get stronger resistance,” Anna analysed. “The attacks become more frequent, using larger weapons of destruction and more co-ordination. Somebody does not want us to reach the palace.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sounds like a good reason to go there then,” Lara said through gritted teeth. The energy manipulator had been burning her abilities to keep herself and her comrades alive for a day and a night. Every muscle in her body ached. Movement was a torment. Still she fought.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But we can’t,” Chiaki said. “Somebody knows when we’re coming. Somebody’s prepared.” She shot Lara a brief, significant look: somebody’s watching us closely and listening to what we way.     The building behind them exploded. Anna cannonballed out at the last minute and rolled to douse the flames on her back. “They have brought up more of their remote justice drones,” she warned. “Their technology is more advanced than mine but their tactical combat capacities are not.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They’re throwing the whole planet at us,” Liu Xi said, trying to hold back sobs. She too was bone weary, hurt, and ready to drop. “Why? Why do this to us?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Because it amuses someone,” Chiaki sensed. She led the way into a trail of odorous alleys in the rats nest of slum dwellings beneath the shadow of the palace. “Because someone wants to see how much it takes to break us, to make just turn on each other and betray ourselves. Someone wants to see our courage snap. Someone wants to see us lay down and die, or abandon our comrades and our honour and flee.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There are good tactical reasons for me leaving the rest of you,” Anna admitted. “Alone I could probably use my stealth capacities to make it to a spaceport and acquire transport off this dead world. However, the rest of you would die in less than five minutes.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And Lara could stop heating the atmosphere above absolute zero and we’d be dead in five seconds,” Liu Xi pointed out. “And I could stop holding back those microscopic undead bacteria that are swarming everywhere and we’d be dead in three seconds. We’re all stuck here together.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Till we die,” said the Psychic Samurai.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Then we need to consider final sanctions,” Anna reasoned. “If we have an enemy on this world directing our attacks and using some means to prevent our escape through teleportation or dimensional travel then let us trap them here too and destroy the world to kill them with us.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Mutual assured destruction?” snorted Lara. “It’s not come to that yet. Quite. I can… I can keep going a little while longer.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Me too,” agreed Liu Xi uncertainly. “I’m not… I don’t want to die.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nobody wants to die,” agreed Chiaki. “But nobody…”     Suddenly the wall beside them bellied out as a vast energy-main explosion enveloped them. The zombies tampering with the main were the first to burn, but the searing plasma gel sprayed out across the women too.     For a moment the sheer livid brightness made the scene a confusing chaos. Lara sucked the heat out of the superheated spray that enveloped her, leaving her with mere second degree burns to her arm and leg. Liu Xi instinctively transmuted the fire into water, dousing herself but using up that reserve of power she’d been so carefully hoarding during their long ordeal. Anna deliberately rolled out of the zone of controlled temperature that Lara was maintaining, using the desolate atmosphereless void beyond to quench the fires that seared her.     The Psychic Samurai went down beneath the exploding building and did not emerge.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Chiaki!” screamed Liu Xi, hurling aside the rubble with her elemental gifts regardless of squandering the last of her reservoir of power. Anna raced back and lifted aside the sheet of wall to reach the body underneath.     A charred blackened corpse still clutched Chiaki’s samurai sword. The blade glowed cherry red.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What is it?” Lara demanded, rising painfully and limping over.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s Chiaki,” Anna called back. “Chiaki is dead.” *** The Seeress’ Story:     We had to get to the Tower of Lord Viisionary to warn him and his House of his secret enemy and the treachery he brought.     It is an honour for a slave to die protecting the House of her master, but I think it must be a greater honour still to die not for duty but for love, to give one’s life for those one cherishes and respects.     I am Vespiir, branded and outcast from Caph IX for the crime of seeing the future. Lord Viisionary and the heroes of Earth saved my former world and rescued my tent-sisters and I from shame and horror. There is no means of repaying so great a debt; certainly my death is a small thing to offer.     I do not have Lady Deeela’s storytelling gifts, nor the experience to fascinate a Master for one thousand and one nights as the great heroine of the Earth ballad did, but I will try to tell what happened after I dreamed of the Lair Legion’s deaths.     I had not seen Lord Shoggoth so close before Mistress Eboony led me into his presence. Lady Miiri says that a Caphan woman should not cower before any master, but I think a little cowering should be permitted when one gazes into the gelid depths of a giant transdimensional entity that stretches beyond time and space. It was disturbing to be so near to Lord Shoggoth because my curse let me see enough to know that what I was looking at was more like a fingerprint than the whole being; and the whorls squirmed and seared reality about it.     Mistress Eboony explained that travel through the Shoggoth and the paths he takes can sear out a mind. Those who have been trained can sometimes survive the experience conscious. Those like me who have the curse of Higher Sight, who sometimes glimpse futures and hidden knowledge, are usually driven insane. I had a momentary flash of me years later, a grey-haired crone gibbering in restraints, spitting out gruel prepared by diligent tent-sisters.     And yet I knew – absolutely knew – that I had to take the paths of the Shoggoth and seek Lord Viisionary and his clan. I had to choose between preserving my life and saving theirs. I thought about what Lady Miiri would do, was offering to do in my place; about what brave Lady Kaara would do; about what Queen Ohanna would do. They are great ladies of immense value, best beloved and glorious where I am a branded outcast so if they would pay that price how could I not?     The Shoggoth seemed to understand. He had placed his collection of dolls and stories in a pattern of mourning; how could the others around him not see their meaning? When his protoplasm enveloped me it was warm and soft and gentle.     And I went insane.     My mind wandered strange paths and I saw terrible things. My curse stabbed at me like needles of fire, showing me worlds and places and people I did not understand. I saw myself as an infant in my mother’s womb and understood that I had received my power of prophecy because I now observed myself then. This journey was my ending and it was my origin.     Dark things squirmed just beyond my vision. I knew that if I saw them they would see me. I prayed to Zaahir that they would not.     Voices spoke to me that I would never have heard protected by the veil of sanity. “You are the detail,” said a terrible force guised as a woman called Faite. “The overlooked detail. Do not forget.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The Devil is in the details,” said Sage Grimpenghast, Teacher of Deceits. “Always recall who you are, outcast, and what has been done to you. The worst by far is yet to come. I can hardly wait.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ignore the man behind the curtain,” advised the Trickster. “Or else find a custard pie. But for now just remember that you were cast out of being a slave. That makes you free.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The Carnifex thought me helpless, did he?” demanded the Shaper of Worlds, terrible and dark and beautiful. “Me? It’s all a matter of timing. I arranged for you to enter the story, didn’t I?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Be yourself,” advised the Chronicler of Stories. “If you don’t know who that is yet then be who you want to be.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And always get the guy’s name and address in case of little accidents,” advised the Destroyer of Tales with a cheeky grin. “Oh, and try kool-whip. You’ll like it. I can’t believe that Caph hasn’t discovered kool-whip.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It isn’t whether you kill your enemies,” warned the Doomherald. “It’s how much you make them suffer first.”     A hesitant young man with a datapad blushed before speaking to me. “Hi. Listen, my boss wants you to know it’s okay to go crazy for a while, but it doesn’t have to be forever. He taught me that too. And, um, do you have like an e-mail address or a Facebook account or something? I’m zackhack@worldeater.com. Text me.”     You have been judged boomed a presence too vast for me to see even with my second sight, and you have been sentenced to be sane.     At least that’s what I think I heard. Sequence and narrative don’t always make sense inside the paths of the Shoggoth.     I’m fairly sure I forgot a bit, though, but at the end I distinctly remember glowing green eyes and an accented voice that said, “A bargain, then, Vaahir, daughter of Luxxan out of Vaanoor of Vaaness, evok-hai exile of Caph, farseer, guardian of hope, Zaahir’s voice, Raathi's heir, worldshaper hereafter. Proceed.”     And then I was screaming and Ebony was holding me and speaking to me calmly and making me focus on the world around us. That world was strange, a livid network of tunnels like bladders, but it was grounded in proper matter and true laws of physics. Time was running again, and cause interacted with effect.     I could feel my forehead was bloody beneath my scarf, where my outcast brand has never fully healed.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Where are we?” I asked. Terrified as I was it was a joy to close my mind and not know. “This does not look like the House of Viisionary.”     And then there was Shadda’Dhabba’Dhu, the Groper Out Of Grossness, and the Necromancer General’s dimensional conjuring to destroy Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises, and Vinnie De Soth walking into his trap, and all that came on after.     The future. ***     Mr Flay and Mr Skinner were the Carnifex’s favourite henchmen, and they shared his nature and power. Over countless years they had carried forward his duties; the torture, degradation, and horror they brought to their victims were at their own discretion. Mr Flay and Mr Skinner loved their jobs. They were connoisseurs.     Right now they had a very clear objective in mind. Tonight was the time when their master moved against the primary heroes of Earth, and that called for simultaneous strikes against the heroes’ infrastructure and support. The objectives weren’t military; the SPUD battle was reserved for another day’s sport, for example. Not was the crucifixion of the President of the Unites States on national television yet scheduled, although Miss Peel had reserved some network time for later. Tonight it was the heroes’ emotional resources that must be destroyed.     Mr Flay and Mr Skinner had come to Seattle, to the home of CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s mother, where Meggan Foxx and April Apple guarded two infants, one CSFB!’s brother and the other his daughter. Other assays against Visionary’s twins at Parody Island had so far been thwarted. The Carnifex’s men were keen to get back on schedule with a proper bit of atrocity at the Hastings home.     Yet here too there was a distraction. Even after the SPUD Sentinoid troopers had been easily gutted, the supposedly-lost heroes Hatman and Nats stood between Mr Flay and Mr Skinner and their pleasant duties. As Mr Flay put down his collection of rare and antique branding irons and Mr Skinner laid aside the clamps and maggots the two missing Legionnaires were joined by others.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well now, Mr Skinner,” remarked Mr Flay as he looked at the assemblage, “this is quite a turn out.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Quite a turn out indeed, Mr Flay,” agreed the other. “The evening is definitely looking up.”     Ranged around them with Hatman and Nats were the Manga Shoggoth – also assumed destroyed in the Carnifex’s last gambit but clearly pulled from oblivion at the last moment – the Sorceress Whitney Darkness, the pure thought being Yo, dull thud with his sentient gut-tapeworm Cressida, Goldeneyed glowing with teleportation energies, and the Elvis-suited ManMan. Apart from Legion alumni the tattooed Alcheman and the mysterious Citizen Z also protected the house.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yo is to be thinking that the evening is to be looking down for uncute villainings that are to be threating of CrazySugarFreakFamily!” warned Yo. S/he pulled a rapier that could slice up even conceptual beings and took a Zorro stance.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What she said,” agreed thud “Or he said. Whichever. You’re going down like a bad taco. Except you’re not gonna get vomited over the pavement afterwards. Probably.”     You can stop talking now, Davie, recommended Cressida the Wonder Worm.     The Manga Shoggoth stirred in his bandages and oozed a little. “Time distortions so you can pass by us then return to assault us with limbs sliced from those we would protect?” he guessed, tasting the air. “I think not. I won’t allow it. Besides, human limbs are never the same once they’ve been detached, even when you graft them back on in interesting places. It’s a design flaw.”     Mr Skinner and Mr Flay exchanged glances. This was going to be harder than they imagined.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“While you are all here making your clever dialogue,” Mr Skinner said, “do you know what is happening to your friends at the Carnifex’s feast?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Would you like to find out?” offered Mr Flay.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, I’d guess that by now they’ve got past the pretending-not-to-know-it’s-a-trap part of the evening and they’ll have moved on to the Operation Kicking-Your-Boss’-Ass part of the event,” suggested Nats. “How many bad guys are going to make the mistake of thinking that we’re bumbling amateurs?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah,” agreed ManMan. “We’re bumbling professionals.”     The Sorceress muttered something and made a series of arcane gestures. Joe Pepper winced and held up the fork he was carrying in lieu of his missing Knifey in a defensive gesture, but Whitney wasn’t directing her ire at him. “Arcane-borne malice nodes?” she challenged the Carnifex’s men. “You seed the area you’re operating in with those little magical twists of cruelty to make everything go as nastily as possible? I wonder how you’ll do without that advantage?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh dear, Mr Skinner,” mocked Mr Flay. “The big bad witch has discovered our little ruse. Whatever shall we do now?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I suppose we shall just have to dismember these shiny heroes the old fashioned way, Mr Flay. I do so love the classics.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Can we hurry up and smack down the trash-talking minions, Hatty?” Goldeneyed called, “Only I've just got back and I want to work my way past the small fry and take on a big baddie.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You get one chance to stand down and surrender,” Hatman told the Carnifex's servants. “You work for a guy who has massive perception-altering abilities. Maybe you don’t realise all the bad stuff he’s made you do.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, we remember,” Mr Skinner. “Where’s the fun otherwise?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We were made to do bad stuff,” agreed Mr Flay. “Literally made to do it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So you don’t surrender?” Hatman asked. “I want to be absolutely clear.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We do not surrender, pretty boy,” Mr Skinner clarified. “You should have attacked when you had the element of surprise.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Now we are going to tear your little friends to pieces and take your head back to stick on a spike on the boss’ bed so your girlfriend can look at it while the boss f&*$s her,” Mr Flay promised.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We did attack when we had the element of surprise,” answered Alcheman. He changed back from the oxygen form he’d taken to enter the villains’ lungs into a fine combination of coprecipitated aluminium salts of napthenic and palmitic acids. Suddenly Mr Flay and Mr Skinner belched napalm.     Sorceress gathered all the spites she’d just captured and hurled them straight at their originators. Cressida transformed foe to slow, neutralising the enemy’s massive speed advantages. The Shoggoth oozed out of his suit and washed over their feet, meshing their movements in strange dimensions, making escape impossible. Citizen Z spiralled over and planted psychic darts into each villain’s chest. Nats used his pyrokinetic abilities to detonate parts of Mr Skinner’s brain. Yo stabbed Mr Peel through the chest. G-Eyed teleported a steel bar through Mr Peel's head. ManMan rammed a table fork into Mr Peel’s hand. Hatman stole Mr Peel’s hat.     Mr Flay and Mr Skinner shook off the attacks and lost their tempers. *** The Acting Sorcerer Supreme’s Story     For the record, I never asked to be sorcerer supreme. I never asked to be an occultist. When I was seven I rather hoped that I could become a crane driver. Or an astronaut. Or a Mighty Morphing Power Ranger.     Unfortunately, when you’re born into the De Soth clan, sorcerers and magic brokers for the last four thousand years plus (and some of our ancestors still rattle about the cellar to tell us all about it) you don’t really get a vast amount of career choice.     Sorry. Introductions. I’m Vinnie. My parents named me Vincent Arcanus Greymalkin De Soth. Promise not to tell anybody. Especially Liu Xi Xian.     A few months back I got framed into being the acting sorcerer supreme of the Parodyverse. By the real sorcerer supreme of the Parodyverse.     You might not know, but every multiverse that tends to sentience and organisation generally has a sorcerer supreme. He’s kind of a mix between a sheriff and a referee, a natural consequence of having uber-powerful magical creatures and uber-ambitious magic-using scholars in a fragile little stack of realities. He’s a necessity if you want your multiverse to last more than five minutes. And the sorcerer supreme is generally about as welcome and loved as a meter cop.     Xander the Improbable has been sorcerer supreme of the Parodyverse pretty much all the time (unless is suited him differently) since he took over from his mentor Lucius Faust somewhere in the ‘60s. He’s somehow got a knack of making the job look easy. So when he decided it was too dangerous to be the sorcerer supreme right now and vanished from the Parodyverse nobody else was rushing forward to claim the lack-of-stipend.     Then it came to light that Xander had nominated me as his deputy. Suddenly it wasn’t just my family and the loan companies that wanted me dead. I was making really major kill-lists like the Sage Grimpenghast to-damn-for-eternity rolls and every cultist looking to get a notch on his wand was after me so they could be the guy who killed a sorcerer supreme.     As you can imagine, this made me even later with the rent.     Anyhow, that’s why I was in the deep tunnels beneath Paradopolis, the ones that twine around – and sometimes through – the ancient sleeping elder being called Shabba’Dhabba’Dhu. Nobody know how big he really is because he packs rather more dimensions than most of us are comfortable with, but last time he woke up, in a timeline that we managed to get revoked, his first stretch and yawn sent Paradopolis and Gothametropolis York flying like building blocks.     It’s not a good idea to prod The Groper Out of Grossness (note capitals – he’s definitely a capitals kind of entity). Not that this stops a constant horde of cultists, mystic wannabees, deformed Morshlocks, albino meercats, temporal echoes, etc from trying it about every other Thursday. When that happens it’s the sorcerer supreme’s job to stop it. When the sorcerer supreme’s smart enough to not be there when it happens then it’s my job.     Did I mention that some of those tunnels dissolve boot leather?     On this particular occasion some idiot had attached dimensional knots to various of the Groper’s energy chakras. Elder beings work to different physics than the rest of the Parodyverse, nasty stuff, but if you really don’t value your sanity you can harness that energy to do stuff. I’d tracked down around thirty of these mystic knots around the tunnels and figured there were dozens more. They seemed designed to catapult something roughly the size of a house somewhere nasty but I was more bothered that they shouldn’t wake up Shabba’Dhabba’Dhu. This kind of arcane engineering’s the equivalent of sticking his hand in a bowl of water while he sleeps.     I’m still new at this, so every case is full of surprises. This case was full of surprises in the form of Ebony of Nubilia in her full feathered high-priestess-of-the-Manga Shoggoth regalia (which isn’t that full feathered, I’ve got to tell you. Maybe around half a peacock and a couple of surprised birds of paradise, and half of that’s on her head-dress) and Vespiir of, well, exiled-from-Caph IX, I guess (and she was wearing one of those Caphan leisurewear outfits that consists of around a yard of gold wire, some coins, and half a gauze handkerchief – it’s not all downsides being acting sorcerer supreme).     So, there I was almost literally in the Devil’s ass with a couple of shipwrecked half-naked dimensional travellers and some occult nutjob who thought it was a good idea to use Shabba’Dhabba’Dhu as a travel agent.     And then the villain did his big loom-out-of-the-shadows: “You have walked into my trap, Vincent De Soth, and brought me Ebony of Nubilia and her acolyte as bonuses. Now you shall know the terrible vengeance of… the Necromancer General.”     The Necromancer General. Bogdan Vlastivock, a Russian magus who prolongs his life by whatever nasty deals he can come up with; and he’s been successful enough to rack up a fair few centuries. I saw him occasionally back when I dated his niece.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Really?” I asked him. “That’s your big menacing entrance line?”     Bogdan looked offended. It occurred to me that maybe it wasn’t a good idea to offend him since he’d brought shambling flesh golem bodyguards with him, stitched together out of bits of Morshlock and albino meercat. “You fail to understand, De Soth. It was I who sent you the information about my working here. It was I who laid this trail to capture the last sorcerer supreme of this Parodyverse. You are my ticket from this dying multiverse.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t worry,” Ebony assured Vespiir. “It’s the Necromancer General. We’ll just let him talk until he does something stupid and then we’ll make him wish he’d never been born.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Empty words, priestess of a lesser entity,” sneered Bogdan. “You dare not summon your Shoggoth here, so close to the Groper, for fear his presence will awaken the sleeper. Your only defence is denied you. You are helpless… in my clutches.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You go clutch yourself,” I warned. “Listen, Bogdan, I really think you need to take another look at this one. You’re playing with matches in a powder-keg here.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And not just because you’re threatening me,” added Ebony of Nubilia dangerously.     The Necromancer General preened. “I have already succeeded. I have used the energies of this place to lay a trap that will catapulted my enemies to the centre of the universe – to the maw of great Azafroth himself. Their cunning sciences will avail them naught in that place where the very laws of their reality fail. They will be consumed by the Lord of the Fairly Great Old Ones! Ia!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, don’t start Ia-ing!” snapped Ebony. “We’re in a hurry. We’ve got important things to do, a vital message to deliver. Get out of our way.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It is true,” Vespiir agreed, falling to her knees to plead before Bogdan. “Lord Carnifex is not the good man he seems. He plots to destroy the Lair Legion themselves!”     The Necromancer General sputtered with laugher. “You think I do not know this? You think I have not already pledged him my aid? At his behest I have sent those feeble EEE scientists to their doom! In his service I have captured the sorcerer supreme! For his glory I have raised the dead of the Shee-Yar Imperium in an unstoppable army!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He has,” confirmed Vespiir, clutching her forehead.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You cannot resist my shamblers who even now surround you. My triumph is complete!”     We were all surprised by the scornful voice from the other side of the corridor. “Nothing can stop you now?” asked Xander the Improbable.     Bogdan’s jaw dropped. “You were gone from the Parodyverse!” he stammered.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I was,” agreed the sorcerer supreme. “And yet.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But now I shall capture you too. The Carnifex will reward me beyond all comprehension!”     Ebony looked between me and Xander. “Will one of you please shut him up?” she insisted, “And deal with those grotesque golems.”     Xander waved a hand over at me. “Don’t mind me. I’m just passing through. You carry on, young Vinnie.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Me? Why me?” I protested.     Xander smiled.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You are all my captives!” Bogdan screamed, angry at being ignored. “Seize them, my servants.”     Well, you don’t survive to adulthood in the House De Soth without being able to cope with a few flesh golems. My sister Threnody went through a phase of collecting them once, until they escaped and ate a gardener. I grabbed the Groper nexus knot I was standing next to and rechannelled the dimensional shift energies to grab up the various monsters and toss them away to the centre of the universe as well. I tried to leave a clear enough transport trail that anybody at the far end (who wasn’t Azafroth or one of his mad violinists) would get a clue about how to return.     That distracted Bogdan, of course, and I was kind of expecting that Xander would do… well something. He just watched with his arms folded, leaning on the wall.     Vespiir pulled a needle-thin dagger from somewhere and jabbed it up at the man she was kneeling before. Right up.     Bogdan screamed.     Ebony hit him with her ceremonial staff until he shut up.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Very good,” approved Xander. The master of the mystic crafts gestured for us to follow him. “I trust you arranged for all those transfer nodes to get tossed away along with the golems?” he checked with me.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“As many as I could,” I excused myself. That was a tricky bit of emergency arcane adaptation. I really felt I needed a pat on the back. “Why didn’t you do it now you’re back as sorcerer supreme?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Why should I?” the little man enquired. “You’re the one who needs the practise. Anyway, lots of people are trying to kill the sorcerer supreme right now, not least the all-powerful Carnifex. If I was sorcerer supreme he’d be dropping everything to come and get me. So I’m going to keep a low profile for a while longer.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“How did you avoid him?” Ebony wondered.     Round the corner was came upon the shimmering silver frame of the Portal of Pretentiousness.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Go through, Vespiir,” Xander told the seeress. “There’s people inside you need to tell what you’ve seen. Hatman especially. And of course the Hooded Hood.”     Vespiir looked to Ebony. The priestess reluctantly nodded and the Caphan girl stepped through the rippling black surface of the mirror to Herringcarp Asylum. Xander moved to follow her.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Wait a minute,” I objected. “If you’re back I don’t have to be acting sorcerer supreme any more. People can stop trying to kill me!”     The master of the mystic crafts patted me on the shoulder. “You’re going to have to act a little while longer, Vinnie. Don’t worry about it. I’ll be fine.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’ll be fine,” Ebony agreed. “What about Vinnie? How will he stay alive now the Carnifex is exposed?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There is a way,” Xander told us. “You’re not going to like it, Vinnie…” ***     At the gravitational centre of the Parodyverse a blasphemous cancer the size of a galaxy twisted and gibbered in anticipation of the day that the stars would be right and it would awake. Ringed around it were billions of other beings of its kind, constantly mutating and reinventing themselves for the time when history would be rewritten and they would always have ruled. Beyond them mad inhuman creatures capered, scratching at violins that sent music of madness through the airless void. This was Azafroth, lord of the Fairly Great Old Ones and inside the well of his power no other could prevail.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Good idea not to go in there then,” suggested Amy Aston, flicking off the external video screens before anything could crawl out of them into the EEE firehouse that had been propelled across space into the orbit of the elder god. She cranked some Thin Lizzie into the sound system to drown out the muted violins. The Boys were Back In Town.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’ll be beyond the reality threshold in about one and a half minutes,” calculated Kara Harper. “After that our matter and minds become chew-toys for Azafroth. Didn’t anyone think of attaching rockets to this place?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Al did, actually,” Miss Framlicker admitted. “I vetoed them for budget reasons. And because it was dumb.”     Amy gestured to the tumbling firehouse falling towards the centre of the universe. “And yet.”     Cody Harper spun in free-fall towards the main workfloor. “I realise that this place only has two settings, bicker and bicker more, but could we please find a way to not all get eaten by an elder thing?” he asked. “Apart from anything else we have a houseguest.” He pointed back up to the balcony where Annastassia the Bonsai Kitten was experimenting with how small bits of rolled up chocolate wrapper batted round in zero-G.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sure, Cody” agreed his sister. “Go ahead and tell us how to fix this, you furry.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey, at least I’m not showering off the grease stink of WWE wrestling droid. Was it the piston combat action, Kara, or did he have a really great personality?”     Amy floated between the squabbling siblings. “We’re going to die – hopefully die – in less than a minute but I still have time to cave your skulls in,” she warned them.     Miss Framlicker looked up from the control board. “Whoever did this to us took the time to find out what we can do and come up with a counter for all of it. We have to factor in that they assessed our abilities and came up with a threat we couldn’t possibly solve in time.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re saying it’s hopeless?” Amy frowned. “Game over? We’re giving in? Is that wrestling droid still around?”     Miss F gave one of her best administrator snorts. “We’re not giving in, just defining the problem. We need to use something that our adversary doesn’t know we’ve got, an unexpected advantage they’ve not calculated in.”     Kara pointed at Annastassia. “We’ve got Cody’s little throw rug,” she suggested. “Maybe we toss her out first and hope Azafroth gets hairballs?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Actually my hair is beautifully conditioned,” the Bonzai Kitten promised. “I shower and lick four times a day.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Stasi, is there something you can suggest?” Cody asked urgently. “Anything you can think of at all?”     Annastassia frowned cutely. “These little silver wads of foil,” she said happily.     Kara snorted. Amy reached for her wrench.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You bat them one way and they just keep going. You have to catch them and bat them the other way to turn them round. We need to get batted away.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Makes sense,” admitted Amy Aston. “But how do we get batted?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Bitter pill,” calculated Miss Framlicker. “We make Azafroth spit us out.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We feed him Kara?” wondered Cody.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Words!” shouted Kara. “We use words. Cody, you said you’d read some of that Necronastycon. Translating and remembering it are your only useful talents in an otherwise quite pointless existence. So, you recall what you saw. I convert that into a binary algorithm and calculate the exact opposite – because I am a genius and can do that kind of thing while eating my breakfast – and…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And I shunt it through the transmitters right down Azafroth’s throat!” concluded Amy triumphantly. “At least I hope that’s his throat.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Did someone mention breakfast?” wondered Annastassia. “Is there any cream?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Twenty seconds to implement this plan,” Miss Framlicker pointed out. “Could somebody please start typing?” *** The Detonator Hippo’s Story          This is the account of Argus MacHarridan, Sergeant-Major of the Loyal Order of Her Majesty’s Detonator Hippo Corps, currently deployed as Security Officer to the Lair Legion on Parody Island, and also acting Public Relations Officer in the absence of Ms Meggan Foxxx.     I has orders to report the occurrences on the night of the 22nd, what was the night when the Carnifex invited the Lair Legion and support staff to dinner at his Esqualine Tower so as he could kill them all to bits and such like. I had to decline going to the big fight because it is my duty to guard the island and also the wee ones that Mr Visionary has in his lighthouse. Besides, Detonator Hippos have a tiny weakness for strong drink and if the dinner had included alcohol there might have been a problem with premature singing of “The Bonny Banks of Loch Lomond” and “Will Ye No Come Back Again?” or other declarations of warfare forbidden by the Geneva convention.     None of us remembered that we’d been briefed by Sir Mumphrey Wilton that morning. He’d time-shifted the knowledge forward from our ken so the Carnifex wouldn’t know we knew that he was a spalleen of the first order not fit to clean a Gallowsgate privy with his tongue. Sir Mumphrey did caution me to be ready while the Legion was away to the dinner though. There’s plenty a lairy no-good who’d wait until the Legion was off to make their attack on Parody Island.     So I did my routine with special care. I checked the stunulators were set on maximum disintegration. I put the nanobot defence microbes on setting two. I activated Dr Harper’s dimensional intruder diversion defence lateral extirpator, placing the DIDDLE on wide spread. I engaged yon Bautistamatic aerial assault cannons and hairdryers and retired immediately. A very fine piece of work those, and totally unstable. I did a physical check round the island but only found those escaped rabbits that are overrunning the place. Finally I went to talk to Miss Murcheson.     I don’t know how security ever worked before the Lair Banshee could communicate. I know it’s an awfy shame that Miss Murcheson was murdered a second time to go back to being the senior resident ghostie at the Lair Mansion, but she’s a big boon to any honest security guard. Just like Miss Hallie can monitor about thirty billion different scientific signals and alarms and the like, Miss Murcheson alus knows about supernatural threats that might menace Parody Island.     I found her in the secure computer room on the spot where she’d been killed that second time.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, good day Sergeant MacHarridan,” she said, with a little courtesy as always. They brought young women up to value politeness in the 1800s.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And good day to ye, Missie Murcheson,” I told her. She’s a nice lassie and deserves a drop o’ kindness even if she wasn’t a Washer at the Ford who can sense the doom of those she loves. “What’s bringing you down here the noo?”     She didn’t look happy. She always looks pale. This was paler.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m starting to get that feeling,” she confessed. “You know the one. Death is hovering.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I check the sensors, missie, but the DIDDLE’s on wide spread and if we were about to have any o’ the Family o’ the Pointless calling…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No, not here,” Marie whispered. “Out there. With our family.”     I would have tried to comfort her, although there’s no comforting of a keening banshee, but just then the alarms began their brangling.     Marie looked up. “Two beings,” she reported. “Malevolent. Powerful. Little bit mystical. Just under cosmic power levels so as not to trigger the island’s Celestian defences. Clever.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’ll be away to speak wi’ em,” I promised.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Watch out,” Marie warned. “They’re waiting for you.” Her head jerked sideways. “Another presence. Not with those. Much more… oh!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Aye?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You can let that one through. Sir Mumphrey’s sent his nanny. She’s heading for the children in the Lighthouse. She’s here to look after them.”     I straightened my uniform medals. Nanny’s Greenwood’s not one to go easy on a kit inspection. I hurried towards the door, picking up a proton disassembler and a class eleven shattercannon for good measure. They make rare wonderful noises when they fire.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They’re waiting to kill you, Sergeant MacHarridan,” Marie called after me. “They know how to kill Detonator Hippos.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Aye well, there’s many has tried of a Friday night in the Gorbals, Missie Murcheson,” I shouted back. Even if she was right and my weird had come there’s no shame in falling in the line of duty. I just wished I’d had a wee dram to warm me on my way to the Eternal Parade Ground.     There were two intruders all right, a tall bastard and a short bastard, strutting through the defences like they weren’t bothered. And yes, they were ready for me. That’s why I detonated underground, tossing them away like girls petticoats of a May Day in Kilmarnock, before I formed up to Glasgow kiss the big one and kick him into the path of the other. A fine rare blast it was, bell-shaped at 1500 psi with a thermal bloom that would have made my grandma proud.     They were fast too. They had the guts out of me before I even saw them move, and that was my best parade jacket. I defensively exploded again so I could reform whole, but they were ready for that as well and had some kind of counterblast to scramble my vibrations.     I reformed bloody and gasping with them standing over me.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Looks like it’s ready to be put down, Mr Skinner,” said the one.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Seems a shame to let it out of its misery so soon, Mr Flay,” said the other.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Perhaps it’ll be more interesting if we cut its eyes out, Mr Skinner?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’d like to hear a Detonator Hippo scream, Mr Flay.”     But the scream they heard was Miss Murcheson, letting loose with that banshee voice, and it was amplified because she could sense a death coming and because she cared.     I thought for a minute that her death-song was going to shred the scunners where they stood. There’s not many as can face the full fury of a bean shith when she wants to do ye harm. But they’d come prepared for her too.     I don’t understand what they loosed. Some kind of malevolent flapping spirits from inside their seeming mortal shells. I couldn’t see clearly even with my death close to me. I heard Marie shriek again and saw her fighting for her existence.     What she shrieked was “Stay away from the children!”     Very canny. Mr Flay and Mr Skinner remembered what they’d come for. “Ah yes, the children,” said the one. “Stay here and bleed and we’ll bring parts of them back to join you.”     And just like that they were on the other side of the island at the Lighthouse.     I struggled to follow them, but the dark things were picking away at Marie and I couldn’ae leave her like that. You dinnae leave your people behind. I decided on my last detonation, the big one that’s every Hippo’s death-right, and I aimed it into the death-dimensions to blast those scratching flapping buggers away from the girlie.     Of course, that Miss Murcheson, she’s the clever one. That scream of hers earlier had killed whatever Skinner and Flay had used against me and the blast that rescued her restored me too. A week or two in the hospital and I’ll be walking again. Till then I’ll be doing mah rounds in this chair an’ I’ll be having to do my daily press-ups with mah tongue.     But back then we both hurried after the intruders before they could breach the Lighthouse.     Flay and Skinner had got to the door and they’d met with Nanny Greenwood. Wonderful woman, the Nanny. Two hundred years o’ rigid authority and deadly mercy. I’m a Detonator hippo fighting beside a banshee and the Nanny was the scary one.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What do you persons want?” she asked the intruders.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What Mr Flay and I wants, old lady…” began Mr Skinner.     Nanny interrupted him. “What you want, not wants. What kind of grammar do you think that is? And how rude to refer to a lady’s age. You are clearly ruffians of little worth, who require severe discipline.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Listen, grandma…” interrupted Mr Flay.     I believe that’s when she hit them with her umbrella. Using the power of the Celestians. ***     Miss Peel was slightly annoyed that Chiaki Bushido had died. Rather, she was annoyed that the Psychic Samurai had died so easily.     The whole point was to break her prey. Lara Night and Liu Xi Xian and the little robot girl Anna had to find the limits of their courage and exceed them. They had to break, to turn on each other, to beg for their lives. They had to be hounded to the limits of their endurance then pushed beyond into despair and surrender.     It was no fun if they just died in an explosion.     A half mile away across the frozen surface of Shee-Yar Prime the woman were cornered now, embattled and exhausted after twenty-four hours of unremitting combat. Miss Peel mentally directed more Shee-Yar zombies to launch aerial attacks, using the personal flyer vehicles they’d possessed in life to mount suicide runs on their targets. Or was it a suicide run if the driver was already dead, Miss Peel mused.     The two remaining humans were definitely fading now, their resources almost used up. They stumbled as they fought, each bleeding from a score of wounds, each battling with fatigue as much as with the waves of undead. They’d neutralised hundreds of thousands of adversaries by now; Miss Peel had billions to replace them.     The android was still fighting well. She’d taken only cosmetic damage and her power cells would be good for weeks more combat before they began to seriously deplete. Miss Peel was far more interested in the psychological degradation that Anna was suffering. Since the Samurai had fallen the android was barely able to contain her untutored emotions. Her skin might be of high-tensile polycarbide mesh and her bones might be titanium steel but the damage was in her spirit. Miss Peel could tell that Anna, a child in so many way despite her deadly form, was close to breaking.     Now that the energy-controllers were at the end of their strength it amused the Carnifex’s agent to have a thousand or so undead douse themselves in accelerant and ignite their bodies before shambling into battle. The stench and sight of the dead immolating themselves as they attacked was as potent as the burns they inflicted by their assault. A few carried petrochemical drums to explode close to their quarry.     Miss Peel monitored that gambit with interest. The battle looked especially spectacular under the angry crimson light of the approaching star. The wandering sunless Shee-Yar Prime was drawing ever nearer to the livid red object.     Once the women had found ways of coping with the burning dead – using up yet more of Liu Xi’s elemental resources to command water so that the girl was now sacrificing her body mass with every effect – she switched from a physical threat to a psychological one. She sent in the undead children, armed with knives and broken glass. She sent forth the infants crawling forward to bite and pick at the beleaguered women.     That had an interesting result. Now the young elementalist was fraying too. Lara Night was trying to hold things together but she was only delaying the inevitable.     Miss Peel switched to a physical threat again, commanding the dead avian population of Shee-Yar Prime to cluster in their millions and attack from above, instructing them to pick at the faces of their prey. Maybe that would distract the women so that the undead maggots could burrow through their feet and into their bodies before they had time to notice? A carnivorous worm suddenly bursting out through one’s eyeball was always guaranteed to have an effect.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re really missing out, Chiaki,” Miss Peel told the charred corpse at her feet. “I expected you to hold out the longest, even more than Lara. I wanted to see how badly you’d debase yourself to save the others when they’d yielded to me. I wanted to see your reserve crumble as you begged. I wanted to see what you’d chop off. I had quite a list.”     She bent down and prodded the blackened flesh with her toecap. “Don’t worry,” she told the dead thing. “I’m about to animate you too. Then you can go back and meet your friends again. I shouldn’t wonder if that’s what pushes Anna over the edge.”     Miss Peel admired the fine Masamune sword that Chiaki had carried and set it aside as a trophy for later. She reached down and pressed one red-nailed finger to the fire-shrivelled skull. “Rise,” she commanded. “You have comrades to slaughter.”     The body didn’t move.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Rise,” repeated Miss Peel. When there was no response she examined the corpse more thoroughly. “This has already been animated,” she discovered. “The vestigial animus has already been spent.”     That meant… this corpse was one of her own minions, elementally altered to resemble…     Chiaki Bushido came up from behind with her retrieved samurai blade and stabbed it through Miss Peel’s back.     The Carnifex’s servant turned round. “Well played,” she said. “And clever of your friends to act grief so well and to maintain their atmospheric sheathe around you at such a distance. Definitely a last gambit, but a worthy one.”     The Psychic Samurai deflected Miss Peel’s lightning-fast attack and embedded her blade in Miss Peel’s belly.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The only problem with your plan is that you can’t actually harm me,” Miss Peel pointed out. “What are you going to do now?”     Chiaki Bushido spoke to her enemy for the first time. “I’m going to show you what I’ll chop off,” she answered, and sliced her blade through Miss Peel’s neck.     It took only a moment for the Carnifex’s agent to retrieve and replace her head, another second to track and catch up with the Psychic Samurai. She dislocated Chiaki’s left shoulder and right leg with clinical precision. “I think that’s enough free chances now, Chiaki. Game over.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, I’ve one last trick,” promised the samurai, forcing herself to stand despite the pain.     Miss Peel held out her arms invitingly. “Show me.”     Lara Night blasted her from behind with a burst of energy that lit up the hemisphere. “Diversion,” she revealed.     Anna blurred in to entangle Miss Peel in a flurry of wrestling holds. Chiaki attacked left-handed with her blade, seeking painful pressure points, carving at eyes. Lara dragged the excess energies from the enemy, bringing her down to mortal levels of strength and stamina, preventing her from repairing the great seared hole in her torso.     Miss Peel tore off Anna’s arm with a sudden wrench and paralysed Chiaki with a precise nerve-cluster punch. She spun round and caught Lara in a chokehold, lifting her up to snarl into her face.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Next?” Miss Peel gloated, drawing one fingernail down Lara’s cheek in a bloody trail.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Got… her…?” Lara gasped at Liu Xi Xian.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Took a while because she’s not quite of this Parodyverse,” the young elementalist admitted, “but yes. I have her now.”     Then Liu Xi Xian took command of the elements that made up Miss Peel and pulled her apart; at a molecular level.     The undead across the planet shambled to a halt.     Miss Peel tried to reform. Liu Xi toppled to her knees but prevented it.     Lara superheated the random molecules until they were reduced to free-form plasma. She could sense the moment when they no longer struggled against her and Miss Peel was truly gone.     Lara too fell to the scorched ground, heedless of how it burned. Anna rushed to attend her. “Don’t pass out,” the android warned her. “Not now. Not when we’ve won.”     Chiaki flexed one finger and began the intense bodily control disciplines that would return her mobility. “We need to locate the technology she used to keep us here and neutralise it,” she said once she could get her tongue working again.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“In a moment,” Liu Xi begged. “Just a moment’s rest.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t sleep,” Anna insisted. “If you do you’ll die. I can track that tech now. Stay here and I’ll deal with it. Then you can get us home.”     The psychic Samurai winced. No,” she said. “She can’t. We’re not going…”     Above them the red star – actually a red world - burst into flame from ten thousand Blister Pits across its scarred surface. There was a deafening boom as a Doom Tube opened beside the exhausted women.     Dark Thugos, Master of Apocalyspe, strode through the dimensional tear, his arms folded behind his back, and looked down upon them.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I claim this world of the dead,” he announced in deep gravely tones. “I claim this empire of the dead.” *** The Goddess of the North’s Story     First I remember was the dawn, the sunrise on the day I was born. I was birthed of the gods of the north, their child and gift to the land of Candia. I was sent amongst mortals as an infant. I tried many shapes, wolf, bear, eagle, otter, salmon, dung beetle, but when I was found by humans I had taken what would be my natural form, a human babe.     Candia is strange place, another timeline where geology worked differently and Canada never was but became Candia. We had our own history, our own evolution, our own migrations and colonisations. For humans main change was that people of Rus escaped over great land bridge and settled across the continent. When imperial Candia fell to revolution then the People’s Fraternal Republic of Candia took its place.     As an infant I was placed in the People’s Orphanage. They named me Zdenka Zarazoza and raised me to believe in Republic and its Chairman. When I grew older and manifested my full powers to change shape to any species native to my homeland I was taken from school and educated by the government. They called me Zvezti Zdrugo, the Rabid Wolf, after the first animal form I took, symbol of our nation. When I was older I was inducted to Glorious People’s Crimefighting Apparachik and fought against regressive elements as member of GloPCrAp. The Party decided it would be good to breed new generation of metahumans and ordered that I marry Dmitri, Captain Mud, but we had no children.     I remember first meeting Jay Boaz too, the decadent Southern Hatman of the Lair Legion. He came on cultural exchange and he smelled of heroism and loyalty and honesty – and kindness. He did not smell like enemy of the revolution at all. I loved him and wanted him but it could not be. We had duties and oaths. Even later, when Candia sent me to decadent Paradopolis hoping I would be seducing Jay and so have metahuman child by enemy superhero we were faithful to ourselves. This too is love for each other, and respect and integrity. But cold and lonely too, I say.     In great Parody War, when Candia closed its borders to protect against mad Parody Master, I could not help Jay as he led Earth’s heroes in terrible struggle. The Chairman annulled my marriage to Dmitiri and decided I would marry him. This was great honour whatever Party Animal said about his wrinkles and paunch when she got me drunk night before wedding, but now I think maybe Chairman knew I was more than metahuman.     I am goddess of the north. I am Candia. The crops grow because I tell them. The animals breed with my permission. The sunrise comes because I will it. When my people of Candia bleed or weep or despair I know it. If Chairman possessed me he truly possessed all Candia and would do forever.     Who knows what would happen then? Nothing good, I am thinking. But then I sensed Jay. He was in torment, in despair, in terrible pain. He was prisoner of the Parody Master and they were killing him, slowly and terribly. So I spurned the Party Chairman at altar, fought my way past GloPCrAp, waved goodbye to Masha Maleova – my good friend Party Animal – and escaped Candia to go rescue him.     That is long story to tell. Short story is I found him and saved him and he saved me. But only escape was into a dream world where we forgot all our duties, literally forgot them. Then we were together. We had little house on the snows and we hunted and fished and loved and laughed and it was happiest time I ever knew, and for us it seemed like many months, years, and we were right, so right, as ever woman and her man ever were. I think it was like heaven for me.     But it was dream, and ugly war was happening in real life and Jay was needed to win it. Jay’s first love came to us, the Sorceress Whitney of the Darkness Clan, and she woke us and showed us the truth. We woke to war and we lost our moment and after that we could not be together any more. This was second time Jay has been in perfect place with girl he loved and it was not real. Even Jay is not perfect; he is hurt by this and he could not be with me after.     I returned to the north alone, to Candia, to the snowy peaks and secret valleys, to vast plains and cold lakes where eagles fly. I did not return to GloPCrAp or to the Chairman but to the high mountains where I could watch the sun rise and try to sooth my wounded Candia and try to forget heaven.     That was where I met Mark Carnifex, greatest hero of the Parodyverse. He smelled of blood and passion and adventure and dedication and he wanted me. He hunted me for his bed and I led him a great chase; but he is a good hunter, I think, and he would catch me in the end. The animal part of me wanted it.     He had almost won me by time he invited heroes to dinner at his Esqualine Tower, his mile-high black needle over Paradopolis. He was so close. I was so close. But as I watched sun rise over Candia and anticipated night to follow I was visited by Jay, who I had been told was dead, and by the one who had snatched him from destruction at the last moment and who called himself my father.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Good evening,” said the Hooded Hood. “There are matters we must discuss, my daughter.”     I looked uncertainly. I have met others masquerading as Hatman before, but this one smelled right, felt right. My heart surged at his presence. Flowers opened their petals to the sun. “Jay?” I checked.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“’Fraid so,” he said with that shy grin of his, scratching his neck and looking sheepish. “I kind of got pulled out of that death dimension through the Portal of Pretentiousness. So did Nats. And the Hood had already rescued the Shoggoth’s essence from the battle earlier, which is why there was nothing but dry salts left of his bioplasm.”     It is just like Jay to talk about superheroes and combat when he should be hugging. I hugged him. My heart had not allowed me to mourn him, I think, and now he was alive! “You are stupid-head,” I told him. “I am very glad you are not dead.”     Jay was more nervous than usual. He squirmed out of my arms after a while. “Zdenka,” he hissed, “your dad is watching us. And he’s the Hooded Hood.”     I looked over at the grim man in the grey mantle and cowl. “He says he is my father. How can this be? He is archvillain? Why believe him?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I give my word,” the Hooded Hood answered. “The rest is mere detail.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Uh, Z, the Hood is pretty much the definition of archvillain but the thing is he never actually lies. If he says he’s your father then I’m guessing he is. Makes a lot of sense, really.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“How so?” I challenged. I do not want an archvillain father.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, for one thing it was the Hood’s stolen retcons that created Candia in the first place. The Hood let them get stolen by his then-daughter Kumari, who he later retconned, and she sliced off Candia to be her personal fiefdom. So you’re the goddess of a place that exists because of his manipulations.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Indeed,” agreed the Hooded Hood.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Second, we know the Hood has a thing for, er, powerful possibly-extradimensional chicks. We saw him dating the Fairy Queene, for crying out loud. He fathered your half-brother Danny Lyle on Madame Symmetry of Synchronicity, the Shaper of Worlds! He’s romanced Lisa too, although statistically speaking that’s not remarkable, and maybe the Probability Dancer as well. So why not a deity of the north?”     I looked over at the cowled crime czar (as people seem to not be able to help calling him). “Why?” I demanded.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Because I needed a daughter,” he answered in his sinister accented voice. “I needed a daughter who would attract Mr Boaz and who would fascinate the Carnifex.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Mark? What does Mark have to do with this?”     Jay told me. “Listen, Zdenka, there’s this Caphan refugee girl called Vespiir. She can see the future. Xander’s been hiding out with the Hood’s help and he pulled her through the Portal of Pretentiousness from… when, Hood?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“This afternoon,” supplied my father the archvillain.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“She’s seen things. The Carnifex isn’t the hero that everyone thinks he is. The hero that he’s making everyone think he is.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“My son made a casual denial,” the Hood explained. “He said ‘The Carnifex isn’t all that great’. Daniel’s powers are to change reality to conform to his denials. That was the first crack in the Carnifex’s plausibility field.”     I shook my head. “Mark? Mark is hero. Jay, you are jealous…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Maybe a little of whatever guy you’re into, Z, but this is serious. He’s been sent by some force far outside the Parodyverse to destroy us all, the whole place. He’s done it a hundred times before in other multiverses. He’s an executioner. A torturer and an executioner. And tonight he’s going to start with the Lair Legion.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It is not possible.”     The Hooded Hood snorted. “On the contrary, it is almost inevitable. He has prepared long and well and overlooked almost nothing.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What then has he overlooked?” I asked.     The Hood pointed at me. “You are not his prey, Zdenka Zarazoza. The wolf is a hunter too. And a rabid wolf is the most dangerous and unpredictable of all. Come with me.”     There is something about the Hooded Hood that makes his commands hard to deny, and I do not think it is any super-power. He expects to be obeyed and it is so. Whatever it was I followed him through the mirror of his Portal of Pretentiousness. Jay walked close beside me, caring for me. I did not mind his closeness.     We stepped into the chill gloom of Herringcarp Asylum, the Hood’s place of power. He strode through his throneroom and led us across huge dark hall and into smaller granite antechamber. Here was long fireplace with burning logs, and tapestries on wall and thick old carpet over flagstone floor. Here was group of people bickering.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Look, I don’t know you!” a tall young man in a black superhero costume and jacket was shouting as he paced up and down. His cowl was pulled back so I could recognise the lost hero Goldeneyed. At end of Parody War he was supposed to have been sent to a happy ending like Jay and I. “I have no idea who you are but I have no reason to trust anybody wearing that costume!”     He was shouting at lithe young woman in dark purple full-body outfit and facemask. I knew this to be costume of Citizen Z, but Citizen Z turned out to be wicked Baroness von Zemo in disguise to infiltrate and destroy Lair Legion and take over world. “Well, I know exactly who you are, Bryan Katz,” the secret superhero retorted, “so I know exactly why I shouldn’t trust you. Assuming it is you.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s him, alright,” Nats argued. “Nobody else could be that annoying so well for so long.”     G-Eyed turned on Bill Reed. “Hey, don’t you have to go back and run hell or something, delivery boy?”     A dishevelled man in a grimy Flint Mitchigan and the Electric Teapots t-shirt rubbed his forehead. “Yeah, this is just how I remembered it,” he admitted. “Now I recall why I ran away.”     ~~You went into hiding to avoid a ZOXXON lawsuit to have me surgically removed from your stomach as their proprietary patented biotech~~ his telepathic tapeworm Cressida reminded him. ~~Sweet but dumb.~~     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And you let the Hooded Hood find us and drag us back here to die against the Carnifex,” dull thud objected. “I wasn’t even in the Lair Legion. It was you. Like Manny wasn’t a member but his knife was.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey!” objected the man next to the rumpled thud working his way through a big mac “I was so a member. Well a probationary member. But I had a comm-card and everything. I got chewed out by Sir Mumphrey Wilton. Knifie refused to join. Said he’d been in enough teams in his time.”     ~~That is true~~ telepathed Cressida.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I don’t know why I even came,” ManMan continued. “Knifey’s been missing since he killed the Parody Master. I don’t have any powers now. I’m just cannon fodder.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And how is that different to usual?” wondered Citizen Z.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Do not be picking on cute ManMan!” objected Yo, the sleek thought being in a silk Zorro costume. S/he rose from conversation with the convalescing Shoggoth in his bucket and dumped a large purple thought bunny in Nats’ arms. “Here, to be soothed by Rabito,” s/he ordered. She turned and scolded G-Eyed and CZ too. “Do not be making of Yo to be sending out for more bunnies! Is to be friends now.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Please don’t make Yo summon more lapines,” came a deep bubbling rumble from the Shoggoth-bucket. “I have enough Rabito-hairs caught in my goo already. And Yo gets quite upset whether I spit the rabbits out or not.”     Near the back of the room there was a man I didn’t recognise. He was tall and quite muscular and he had the symbols of the elements tattooed on his arms. Later he was introduced to me as Alcheman, a hero from Paradopolis. “I don’t wish to interfere,” this Alcheman said in polite, reasonable tones, “but to be fair Goldeneyed hasn’t actually explained how he got back from a supposedly-final destination. He won’t answer any questions about his time away at all. That does appear a little bit peculiar.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Welcome to the superhero community, mask boy,” G-Eyed shot back. “I notice you’ve not made big with your secret identity. CZ here’s not unmasking. thud won’t say where he’s been all these months since he did a midnight runner from Mumph’s Christmas bash. Nats won’t say why he’s still so lame.”     Yo scooped Rabito out of Nats’ arms and dumped him on Goldeneyed.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I need this mask to protect me from my loved ones,” Alcheman replied. “I mean, to protect my loved ones.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I heard that you went to the Hooded Hood for a retcon to protect your secret identity after it was revealed,” Citizen Z noted. “The last person who did that was Mr Epitome, and where’s he now?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What I asked the Hooded Hood for is my business,” Alcheman insisted.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But there’s always a price,” said Whitney Darkness, bleakly. I hadn’t realised that Jay’s first love was in the room. She must have been masking her aura. I felt the hairs on my arms raising.     Yo noticed us at the doorway. “Look! Cute Hat is to be back with even-cuter Zdenka! And uncute Hooded Hoodily! Now is we can start to be planning of mission!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hello, Rabid Wolf,” Whitney said to me.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hello Sorceress,” I said to Whitney.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hello Hood,” said ManMan nervously. “Listen, about that time I killed you with Knifey…”     ~~ About my origin… ~~ began Cressida.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“About Fashion Accessory turning out to be the Celestian Madonna, my great-great etc. grandmother…” asked G-Eyed.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“About that deal we made where I wasn’t married to Uhuna…” asked Nats.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“About more beer…” chimed in dull thud.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“About stopping the Carnifex and saving the world,” prompted Jay.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We are assembled,” declaimed the Hooded Hood. “Listen now to the prophecy of Vespiir. And then let us lay some plans.” ***     Mr Flay and Mr Skinner fought back. The terrible punctures and lesions on the two men’s flesh closed up as if they’d never been hurt. It was the work of a moment to shred the Shoggoth into minute droplet particles sprayed over most of Seattle. Mr Skinner hammered Hatman down into the ground while Mr Flay waved his hand at Sorceress to beset her with spites.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Do you know what I think, Mr Flay?” asked the taller of the Carnifex’s favourite agents as he grabbed Yo and casually twisted his/her neck 180 degrees round. “I think we should make this city burn.”     Mr Flay crushed ManMan’s hand, fork and all, hurling him aside with hardly a glance and turned his attention to the hydrogen blast that Alcheman attempted. “I think you may be right, Mr Skinner. No reason not to enjoy a handsome body count, now is there?”     Nats flew into them, shielded by a telekinetic screen. He bounced away having knocked them pack half a pace. Goldeneyed got close enough to touch Mr Skinner to teleport his guts out but in return Mr Skinner punched a fist right through the hero’s ribs.     Mr Flay reached down and sunk his hand to the city gas main. “That’s no explosion, sonny boy,” he told Alcheman. “This here is an explosion.” He detonated the city gas supply; all of it. The pipes for a two mile radius around blossomed with flame, right through into the centre of Seattle, shattering pavements and beginning an inferno that would claim the lives of thousands.     ~~Flame to shame~~ called out Cressida the Wonder Worm, using her gift to transmute things to something that rhymed with it. In this case she channelled the remorse right back at the Carnifex’s lieutenants.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh dearie, dearie me,” said Mr Skinner. “Oh woe.” He stepped down hard on the crawling ManMan, snapping a leg, then grabbed dull thud. Cressida’s host and partner tried to use his only superpower to teleport vertically upwards and fall without harm but Skinner prevented it, stabbed fingers into thud’s belly, and tore Cressida use before pulping her.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We need to control the flames before the city becomes a holocaust!” Alcheman called. “We need to…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, but we wants a holocaust, my lad,” Mr Flay explained. He caught the element-changing hero in his steel form and prevented him touching any more combinations of the chemicals tattooed on upper arms by tearing Michael Wooster’s limbs off. “Where’s the fun without the mass slaughter, eh? Answer me that when you stop screaming.”     Citizen Z slid in beneath Skinner’s guard and planted a pair of psionic disruptor devices on the marauder. Mr Skinner chuckled and snatched CZ up. “You’ll have to do better than that, missie ghost,” he warned the crimefighter. “Here, let’s see what these little buggers can do to you, spirit and host forms alike.” He breathed a spray of flapping black soul-spites to tear at CZ’s essence and watched with satisfaction as they began to pick her apart slowly and cruelly.     Hatman came back with his Donar helmet on. “Now fiends thou shalt…”     Mr Flay crumpled the helm and tore off the top of Hatman’s scalp; enough to cripple the capped crusader but not kill him. The Carnifex would want Jay Boaz alive for later.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I don’t think you’re understanding this, little hero,” Mr Flay explained to the stunned, crippled Hatman. “This isn’t where you come in at the last minute and save the day. This is where you watch us tear apart your friends then torture and slaughter the people you came to save.”     Nats channelled a thermokinetic blast at Flay’s face. Mr Skinner caught the flying phenomenon with deceptive speed and closed his fingers around Bill Reed’s groin; closed his fist shut. “This is where you find out that heroes don’t win in the end,” Mr Skinner announced as he dropped Nats in a bloody puddle. “Now lie there and sob, girlie, while you sees what we does to that CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s womenfolk.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Explode the sides of the house, Mr Skinner,” advised Mr Flay as he reached down to pull strips of the Sorceress’ face off. “We’ll catch the ladies as they run out burning trying to cradle their little ones.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Good idea, Mr Flay. And wicked cruel if we can nail ‘em down here surrounded by the remains of their heroes to work on ‘em.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m thinking we tear off fingers from that Alcheman’s arms and use them as nails to hold ‘em down with, Mr Skinner.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Recycling is very socially responsible, Mr Flay. Why don’t we just pin up this Hatman here so he can watch us torture Sorceress and Citizen Z and then we…” He turned impatiently as ManMan launched a one-armed assault against him with Yo’s abandoned rapier. “What is it with you, idiot? You don’t have any super-powers any more and you were useless even when you did. Does I need to tear your other hand off or will you just go whimpering away and die quietly in a corner somewhere?”     Joe Pepper could hardly stand but he sliced the pure thought rapier into Mr Skinner. “I don’t need powers to do what’s right,” ManMan said through gritted teeth.     Mr Skinner caught the Elvis impersonator up by pressing fingers through his chest and lifting. “What do you need then, boy? Hope? Faith? Dreams? Love?”     The thought rapier morphed in ManMan’s hand into the thing he really needed most. “I need Knifey,” he replied. Then he jammed the Parodyverse’s deadliest weapon into Mr Skinner’s eye.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hello, Joe,” said Knifey. “In trouble again?” Then to the screaming Mr Skinner he added, “I think you’ll find that not all wounds can be instantly healed, by the way. I bet this hurts like hell, doesn’t it?”     Skinner battered ManMan away but he couldn’t pull Knifey free. “Stop it!” he bellowed.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What did you do?” Mr Flay demanded of the bloody wreck of Joe Pepper. “What did you do to him?”     Flay’s fist was intercepted by Hatman’s palm. The capped crusader was uninjured and he wore his bishop’s mitre. “Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus,” began the capped crusader, intoning the words of the Latin exorcism mass, “omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica, in nomine et virtute Domini Nostri Jesu Christi, eradicare et effugare a Dei Ecclesia…”     Mr Flay’s fist began to smoulder where Hatman held it.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Interesting,” said the Shoggoth, looming up in a gelid tidal wave. “Let’s try something different.” He folded over Mr Skinner in a frothing multi-dimensional blanket. Ia! Ia! F’taghn hrthulmus kosh tan d’vindus, ch’hothin e gruth…     Mr Skinner squirmed and cried out as alien concepts burrowed into his mind like worms. It seemed he didn’t like the elder race version of Mary had a little lamb…; mind you it had some plot twists not usually included in the human text.     In unison the pair opened the mouths to breath out spites to tear apart their tormentors.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not this time,” said the Sorceress. She flexed her long fingers and gestured from sky to earth. Her hair moved in a wind that didn’t blow in any known world and she whispered something terrible and the spites were shredded like confetti as they emerged from their masters. “I’ve seen that trick now,” Whitney proclaimed darkly. “What else have you got?”     Mr Skinner and Mr Flay struggled against their restraints. Alcheman had turned to diamond inside Skinner and was constantly reforming his structure every time the villain managed to move. Cressida had transmuted Flay’s nerves to swerves, leaving him a quivering uncontrollable mass of trembling flesh.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Right,” called Nats. He pointed to a spot between the enemies. “There!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There,” agreed G-Eyed. He concentrated, knowing this would hurt. Teleporting two beings to co-locate in the same space wasn’t strictly possible under normal conditions, but these weren’t normal circumstances. He gritted his teeth and shifted Skinner and Flay to jumble them together where Nats held them confined in a telekinetic sheath.     The Carnifex’s agents screamed. They weren’t used to receiving pain.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“This isn’t right…” Flay gasped, his voice sounding double as Skinner tried to say something else.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You got that part right,” agreed Citizen Z, supplementing the psionic transmitter coins she’d attached to the villains’ necks at the beginning of the fight with more to make sure they did their job. “We ready, guys?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Is to be time,” agreed Yo. “Is not good to be keeping of these uncute nastyings in the Happy Place for very long.”     Too late Flay and Skinner realised what had happened. The slaughter of the Legionnaires, the destruction of Seattle, all of it… they’d been in their Happy Place. Citizen Z’s psionic amplifiers had made it possible. Cressida had transmuted reaming to dreaming. Yo had shifted them away to his/her pure thought plane. And the heroes had used that time to confine the harm they could cause and to get their measure.     And now the heroes were in their Happy Place instead; and the pure thought being that was native to the Happy Place was sustaining them.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, the dime’s dropped,” guessed dull thud as he saw the combined villains’ face change into a snarl of realisation. “Time to go.”     Yo waved his/her friends goodbye and released them back to where the battle had begun. Seattle reformed around them and Flay and Skinner struggled in Nats’ grip. G-Eyed kept up the pressure to keep them combined despite the growing mental backlash.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You managing, Bry?” checked Whitney.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hurts like hell, but not as bad as months in that pain door against the Parody Master,” replied Goldeneyed. “Hell, I think the practice paid off.”     ManMan looked sadly down at his empty hand. “I’ll find you, old friend,” he promised the missing Knifey.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hurry, Hatman,” called Alcheman from inside the combined being. Now he was shifting every few seconds to prevent them adapting to him: caustic, acidic, combustible, razor sharp, hallucinogenic, narcotic, radioactive, whatever he could imagine. It was a long time since Michael Wooster had used his powers this extensively and he had a horrible feeling he’d have a world-class migraine in the morning, but he wasn’t about to let the Lair Legion down. “I think they’re drawing power from the Carnifex again.”     Hatman pulled on the hat he’d seized off Mr Flay at the start of the fight. The Serious Matter in his cranium gifted him to adopt the nature of whatever headgear he wore. Flay and Skinner weren’t the only ones who could pull in the Carnifex’s power. “We’d best be getting rid of this rubbish then, hadn’t we, Mr Alcheman?” the capped crusader replied in sinister tones.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Jay…” said Whitney uncertainly.     Hatman’s face twisted into a nasty grin as he reached down and killed the Carnifex’s lieutenants. *** The Librarian’s Story     Herringcarp Asylum is a grim, dark place. It’s full of echoes, and they’re not all echoes of things from this timeline. It’s wrapped in shadows and some are more than the mere absence of guttering candlelight. Back when I worked here for a while, when I was classifying that eclectic library of books from worlds that now never existed, I always tried to avoid the hallways.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Spooky, isn’t it?” I asked Terrence Hazlewood, the former supervillain known as Clockwatcher. I’d asked to accompany him back to his employer, the Hooded Hood.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Psychologically queasy, emotionally disturbing, and spiritually draining,” answered the precise fussy man. He makes me look disorganised and spontaneous. “The Hood is this way.”     I followed him through the twisting grey corridors of the ancient lunatic prison, past rusting iron gates and cobweb-choked cells, then up into the grand hall with its frayed tapestries and worm-eaten wainscoting. I passed the library door with a strange twinge, sensing that some other hand had ordered the volumes in my absence. Clockwatcher led me down the familiar vaulted passage to the black double doors of the Hood’s audience chamber.     The door was slightly ajar. We could hear the conversation within.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But why?” asked a woman in distress. Her accent was Candian. I placed her at last as Zdenka Zarazoza, the Rabid Wolf. “Why go to all of this trouble to have a daughter, to make your daughter… me, and then abandon me?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He abandoned his other kids too.” That was the familiar Canadian tones of Hatman, leader of the Lair Legion; except Hatman was supposed to be dead, or at least lost forever in dark dimensions. “His original offspring, spiffy was brought up by his mom. Troia was raised by Amazons. When he retconned them it was Dark Thugos and Kumari, and I’m guessing they hardly had happy childhoods. Then he phased them out too and Danny Lyle got brought up in an orphanage, just like you, Z.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The Hooded Hood has many reasons for the things he does.” That was the rich Latvian voice of Ioloboath Winkelweald, the Hood himself. Somehow his sonorous diction managed to command attention, as if every utterance was of vital importance.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Never mind that third person crap!” snapped Jay Boaz. “Answer Zdenka’s question. Why did you arrange for her to be born? Why leave her to such a horrid life? Why come to trouble her now?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Mr Boaz,” replied the Hood, “had the Carnifex known of Zdenka’s origins he would have directed plots against her as he did against Denial; or have you forgotten the Moderator Saga? The Carnifex sought to flush me out by harming my son. What would he have done to my daughter?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And if Mark had known I was archvillain’s child he would never have wanted me,” Rabid Wolf guessed. “He would have known I was enemy, or pawn of enemy.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Indeed. As it is, you are the only person he will allow close enough to him to touch without activating his defences. He believes he is close to seducing you. He has concentrated all his aura of credibility upon you to enslave you to his desires. He believes that you will become his creature, his pet. I trust that you will now elect a different course, Zvesti Zdrugo.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Wait a minute!” Hatman objected. “You’ve just told us all that about Vespiir’s vision, that the Carnifex is a stone-cold mass-murderer on a galactic scale, an inter-multiversal torturer and executioner, and you’re wanting to send Zdenka back to him? You want to let her anywhere near that fiend?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I do not want that, no,” replied the Hooded Hood. “But I intend to do it anyhow.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Over my dead body!” growled Jay Boaz.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Jay,” interrupted Zdenka. “Is not your choice. Is my choice. And I do not want anything to happen over your dead body. I thought you dead. I do not want you to be truly dead.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But Z…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You are good man, Jay Boaz, and I am wishing things could be different with us, but this is important. This Carnifex seeks to harm Candia, my people. He seeks to hurt my friends and those I love. He seeks to end everything, all of Parodyverse. My… father is right. I am having to stop Mark.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We will have to continue this fascinating discussion another time,” intoned the Hood. “I perceive that my next appointment has arrived. Come in, Mr Bookman.”     I ventured through the door. “How did you know I’d be here?” I asked.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Am I not… the Hooded Hood?”     That was how it started. So to a little background:     I am Lenard H. Bookman. I was trained from the age of six to be a Librarian of the Intergalactic Order of Libraries. I was assigned to Sector 7272, the Lunar Public Library in the Mare Ingenii of Earth’s moon. Even after the branch withdrew from the IOL using legislation not considered for ten thousand years I’ve always remained true to the core ideals of the Library service.     But what happens when those ideals conflict?     Libraries are for people, repositories of thoughts and experiences and knowledge. Libraries are a necessary tool of civilisation, of ethical development, of sentient aspiration. Libraries should be open and free to all. The Moon Public Library is available to any sentient advanced enough to make his, her, or it’s way there and willing to obey the rules of membership.     But libraries are also places where precious information is kept safe, properly preserved for future generations, protected against misuse in the current age. We cannot allow races access to technological information that would distort their own natural scientific development. The IOL receives donations from thousands of cultures, almost the whole mass of universal literature, but much of it is given under time or copyright seal, not to be read and certainly not to be disseminated until long after its contemporary political, military, or economic relevance has passed. Without that trust in the IOL our resources would be diminished and our mission failed.     As Librarian of the Moon Public Library I’ve justified my membership of the Lair Legion – Earth’s most significant superhero team – as a means of interacting with potential library members, of gathering unique (time sealed) data that would otherwise be lost, and of proactively protecting my Library since it’s so close to the current nexus planet of the Parodyverse. In truth I’ve come to enjoy the fellowship of the Legionnaires and the thrill of discovery of unknown places and situations.     It’s not a Librarian’s true role, though, and there was always going to be a price.     The dilemma came when I classified materials acquired from the suddenly-extinct Shee-Yar Imperium. The Imperium was a vast and ancient galactic empire, upwards of ten thousand worlds covering five billion light years of space (from Earth look towards Zeta Reticuli then up and left past the Gliase cluster and Kappa Fornacis). It died in a single day and night and nobody knew why. I found out.     Careful gleaning of time-sealed data (sealed because it’s standard IOL rules for extinct high-tech worlds and because it was part of our agreement in purchasing salvaged documentation from the Galactic Trade Alliance) for index purposes led me to conclude that the Shee-Yar had been killed by a single entity. Seventeen billion billion of them, and every living creature on every one of their planets, killed by one man, in one day.     Some frankly brilliant research collation on my behalf led me to learn what nobody else had worked out at that point: the murderer was the Carnifex. The Carnifex who was the Parodyverse’s greatest hero. The same Carnifex who had just joined the Legion in saving the world from Ultizon at disastrous cost. The same who had invited us all to his Esqualine Tower that evening to take on leadership of the team.     I asked my Library trustees for guidance about whether I could breach IOL regulations and reveal my suspicions about the Carnifex. They told me I could not. I considered going against a lifetime’s training and breaking faith with the code I’ve lived my whole life by. I’ve opposed the IOL before and even been executed for it – that’s how I came to work for the Hooded Hood for a while before my execution was revoked and my position restored. But I’ve never broken the IOL’s regulations when the IOL was right.     Later in the day Sir Mumphrey Wilton gathered the Legion in one of his pockets of stopped time and revealed what he knew about the Carnifex’s agenda. He proposed to shift our knowledge of the Carnifex’s treachery forward in time so as to avoid arousing our adversary’s suspicions and thus survive a surprise attack.     I had additional specific knowledge gleaned from my Shee-Yar data studies, secrets of the Carnifex’s abilities and methods, things that might make the difference in battle between life and death. I said nothing.     I shunted the minutes of the meeting into my archive though, so that I’d be able to consult them later whatever the memory-shift. Always the Librarian.     But not a good friend. Not a true team-mate, a comrade in arms for men and women who’ve fought and bled beside me and for me. Not a true Legionnaire.     I returned to the Library and checked the urgent archive note I’d left myself. I talked with D.D. and A.L.F.RED and asked what I should do. I walked the stacks. I read a little:     "O hard, when love and duty clash." - Alfred, Lord Tennyson     "We are all in the same boat in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty." - G.K. Chesterton     "Loyalty means nothing unless it has at its heart the absolute principle of self-sacrifice." - Woodrow T. Wilson     Ã¢â‚¬Å“If all my friends were to jump off a bridge, I wouldn't follow. I'd be at the bottom to catch them when they fall.” – Anonymous     "Promise you won't forget me, because if I thought you would, I'd never leave." - Winnie the Pooh     Then I closed my books and asked Clockwatcher to take me to the Hooded Hood.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What have you come to ask me, Mr Bookman?” asked the cowled crime czar.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I need you to tell me that,” I replied. “If you don’t know why I’m here then I’m not allowed to say.”     The Hood dismissed the others so we were alone. “You have come because of your concerns regarding the Carnifex’s actions in the Shee-Yar Imperium and the links you are beginning to make with the events of the Moderator Saga and the Saving the Future incidents.” He cradled his fingers and sat back on his throne. “You may speak freely with me without violating your Librarian’s oath.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I can’t tell the Legion. I’m even going to have to erase the knowledge from my own mind before I go with them to the dinner tonight.”     The Hood regarded me with those piercing green eyes and cradled his fingers. “So you know that your friends and allies go to their doom, and your principles prevent you from warning them, yet you elect to accompany them to die beside them.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I suppose. I have lots of duties.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But you have sought out the Hooded Hood. Now you may ask your question, Mr Bookman.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well… what I need to know is… is there any way to stop this? To stop the Carnifex. I see you’ve got Jay back somehow. You’ve set up Zdenka. So if you’ve got some easy clever fix that’s going to…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Easy?” The Hood sprang from his chair and for a moment I thought he would strike me. “You think what I’m doing today is easy? You have no idea what this has cost me, will cost me. No concept of what I’ve endured and what I’ve agreed to endure to defeat this Carnifex – to have a chance to defeat this Carnifex. What I had to sacrifice! What I’ve had to become! None! None at all!”     I took a step back. I’ve not seen the Hood like this before – angry.     He forced himself back to his usual reserve. “What would you sacrifice, Mr Bookman, to save your friends? To save the Parodyverse? What?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Anything that’s mine, I guess.” I considered. “Not the Library, because that’s a trust, a sacred trust. Or the IOL code. But anything that’s mine to give, I’d give that.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Your future? Your life?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Are you sure? Because I’ve had this conversation with heroes before. With Jarvis. Pegasus.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes.”     The Hooded Hood cradled his fingers again. “Then you have come to the right place, Lenard H. Bookman.” ***     The Carnifex toppled through the shattered floor of his feasting hall and vanished into the darkness, Rabid Wolf at his throat. Donar, Harlagaz, Yuki, spiffy, CSFB!, Dancer, Ham-Boy and Asil fell with him, spiralling down to combat. Fashion Accessory lowered Kerry and Danny on a tablecloth she controlled. Al B. Harper parachuted down on Silicone Sally.     Sir Mumphrey Wilton looked over at the two remaining Legionnaires remaining on the shattered level. “Go on then, you chaps!” he barked at Visionary and the Librarian. “Get on with it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Getting on, sir,” gulped Vizh, making haste towards the staircase that led up into the heights of the Esqualine Tower. There was no time to lose. Every moment was bought with Legionnaire blood. “L!, is this the way?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t call me L, fake man!” snapped Lee Bookman. “Yes, behind those doors and about six floors up I can sense the Carnifex’s study. That’s where we’ll find what he’s really been up to.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t call me fake,” Visionary answered. “I’m real, dammit! Hallie, can you get these doors open?”     The spare Holographic Display Emitter that had been shifted in time until the Carnifex had disrupted Mumphrey’s temporal displacements buzzed to life. The Legion’s resident A.I. formed into her standard green-skinned image. “It’s not electronic,” she told Vizh. “I don’t think I can do anything to help with it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hallie,” called Sir Mumphrey from below. “We’re going to require your assistance right now if you please.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Go,” Vizh told her. “Don’t die.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Same to you. I love you.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Wait! You what?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Later,” growled the Librarian. “We need this door opened, now.”     Visionary pulled himself together. “Well I happen to have brought along a lockpick.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out a tiny winged letter-opener. “This is Sjelknuser. He’s a present from Ausgard.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Of course.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Pick the lock, boy. There’s a good winged Ausgardian letter-opener.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Of course.”     There was a heavy thunk and the portal opened. Visionary and the Librarian raced up the spiral stair.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“This way,” Lee Bookman sensed. “We’re close.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hold it,” Vizh called after him. “I’ve done this stuff lots. There’s going to be…”     There was a horrid growl and something hammered the Librarian back down the stairs.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“…a guard of some sort,” concluded Visionary.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I noticed,” spat the Librarian. He seemed in a very cranky mood today. “Could you set your letter-opener on it, please?”     A vast hairy shaped loped over them, stitched together from dozens of creatures that the Carnifex had hunted in a dozen universes.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’ll take more than Sjelknuser,” Vizh judged. “Fleabot?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, this once, since it’s a crisis,” agreed the minutes search and destroy robot. He leaped from Vizh’s shoulder, growing as he jumped. He crashed into the hairy guardian at the size of a minivan.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“How many more friends do you have in your pants pocket?” demanded the Librarian.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s a personal question,” objected Visionary.     The tower shook. A blast of hot air shot up the stairwell.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Let’s go,” Lee Bookman said. “This is the study. We need to find who sent the Carnifex here and why. We need to find out how to stop him.”     Visionary pushed open the iron-shod door and peered into the tiny crowded study. “Wow. Who knew you could fit so many stuffed animal heads into such a little room?” he wondered. Then he spotted that not all the heads were of animals. “Urk.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Never mind them,” the Librarian insisted. “Help me get this desk open.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think we’ve found what happens when the Carnifex dumps his girlfriends,” Vizh said faintly.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The desk. There’s documents inside and I can feel their importance from six feet away.”     Vizh opened the desk with the help of a poker.     There was a crash from the landing outside. “Don’t mind me,” called Fleabot. “I’ll just carry on fighting the crazed patchwork quilt taxidermy monster on my own, shall I?”     Lee lifted out a roll of parchment sheets and used his Librarian gift to absorb their content. He winced and staggered.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Bad?” asked Vizh.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes. There’s a bunch of… of beings… I can’t… it’s too big to explain. But they don’t want the Parodyverse to survive long enough for… to answer what it was made to… it’s not…”     Vizh snatched the papers from the Librarian’s fingers. “You’re saying there’s these big baddies who want to destroy us before we all get destroyed in the Resolution War,” the possibly-fake man summarised. “And they sent the Carnifex as their hatchet man. And they gave him uber-mega-power to do the job, and now he’s trying to do it?” He caught Bookman’s stare. “Yeah, I’ve been doing this a while.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s the layman’s version, I suppose,” agreed the Librarian.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And the expert way of using this information to stop the Carnifex?” Visionary prompted. “Preferably before all our friends get stomped to jam.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, that’s easy,” said Lee. “As soon as I read those papers the Carnifex knew where we were and what we were doing, so now he’ll be…”     He didn’t finish his sentence because the Carnifex was suddenly there, gripping his throat, holding him high.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’ll be here,” said the Carnifex.     Visionary hefted the documents. “Surrender or the scrolls get it.”     The Carnifex shrugged. “Fine. They’re only letters. Burn them.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ah.”     The Carnifex grinned. “Yeah. And now the painful part.”     Lee Bookman released the literary works he’d held in his mind direct through the Carnifex’s palm into the Carnifex’s brain.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I know that trick,” the Carnifex said, unruffled. “I studied you. I prepared for it.”     But did you know how much raw information I can pack into my head using the multi-reality foldings of the Portal of Pretentiousness? Lee thought back at him. Did you know it could amplify my abilities a billion billion times? That then I could retain the entire literature of every world in the murdered Shee-Yar empire and ram it straight into your mind?”     And he did.     The Carnifex screamed. He hurled Lee away from him into the mantelpiece with bone-shattering force and crashed out through the side of the Esqualine Tower to tumble upon the city beyond.     The Carnifex stood in the crater he’d made in Parody Plaza. “Right then,” he said, spitting blood, sweating like a junkie, twitching and foaming at the mouth, “We’ll do it the hard way then. Come down here, Lair Legion. Face me while I end your city, while I shatter your buildings and make your people bleed. Let everybody see what I’m going to do to you, little heroes. Let your dying people see you die! Let’s do this the hard way!” *** The Carnifex’s Story     I knew what they had done. I knew it. I could feel the little particles which that micro-robot flea had introduced into my body when Zdenka ripped me open. Tiny energy inhibitors designed to weaken me, to make me soft. I could feel Wilton pumping time, reducing my speed advantages. I could feel the Probability Dancer neutralising my narrative webs. Little people. Little people using little ploys to try and bring me down to their level.     I am the Carnifex! The Carnifex! Whatever I was before I was elected to that office is long burned away. Now I am fear, and pain in the night, and the end of your hopes! I am torment, and bitter remorse, and I am laughter at your grief. I will come to your universe and I will shred it piece by piece, slowly to savour your horror, publicly to demonstrate your degradation, and I will enjoy it!     Hide if you wish! Hide behind your cosmic guardians and ancient beings and subtle plottings. I will shatter your defences and overwhelm your defenders and crucify and rape your greatest powers and then I shall come for you! I am the Carnifex!     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Wow, it’s good that you know who you are,” mocked CrazySugarFreakBoy! “I’m guessing your momma sewed your name into your clothes in case you forgot.”     I moved to decapitate the champion of chaos. He moved unexpectedly, bouncing away as a wall toppled on me. He is fast. Impossibly fast.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Maybe not so much then,” he went on. “I guess your mom probably didn’t have time to do much sewing when she was out suck…”     I tangled that annoyance in strands of soul-spites, the spiritual predators I breed from the dark death-loam of the shattered universes. He went down covered in things that tore away at his physical and psychic essences and finally he shut up.     Another flare of fire. That probability arsonist has only one trick. She tries to ignite me while cowering under the protection of her denial-powered boyfriend. I smacked aside the fabric-controlling wench who is of no interest now that the role of Celestian Madonna has passed from her except possibly as a bed amusement afterwards and grasped Kerry Shepherdson by the throat.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Deny this!” I told Lyle as I tore off his lover’s face. “Now deny it again. And again. How long do you think you can keep it up? I’m making sure she feels it every time even though you reverse it.”     Harlagaz Donarson tried to intervene by barrelling me from behind. So predictable. Of course he’d come if I hurt Shepherdson and Bonnington. I hurled the girl into Denial while Lyle was still correcting my last surgical exercise on his wench, putting them both out of the fight. I’ll be continuing that little contest later though when I’ve got them in chains. I caught Harlagaz and dislocated his arms.     Mjalcolm came down across my right wrist. It’s an elder weapon for all its absurd form struck with the wrath of a pantheon and ishattered my bone. “Vile felon!” screeched Donar, hemigod of thunder, as he coursed lightnings through the nail at the end of his baseball bat to sear my flesh. Of course the Ausgard boy would allow himself to be harmed to set up his father’s attack! And that attack hurt.     Donar said other things but I didn’t hear them. I grasped his skull and shattered it against that of Harlagaz and sent their bleeding bodies falling into the darkness of my labyrinth. I hoped I’d not killed them because my wrist pained me and I wanted to pay them back over long harsh months. I will reave their loved ones before them and sew their families’ sundered hearts into Donar’s living chest.     spiffy grabbed me with his energy-spitting fern and spun me towards Yuki Shiro. The cyborg tried to blind me but I channelled my spites through the fern’s fronds to pick at Hopkins’ mind. I broke free to seize Shiro as spiffy faltered. “You like living on the edge, little girl,” I told Yuki, snapping the connections between her head and body. “Let’s see what happens when I push you over it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Predictable,” she spat at me and dissolved. I realised then that I’d been facing a hard-light hologram generated by Visionary’s pathetic pet data-sprite Hallie. It was a set up because a great wall of raw meat tumbled on me from Ham-Boy, distracting me so that Silicone Sally could scoop spiffy out of my reach. Asil to tossed the real Shiro an energy-spike and the cyborg jabbed it into my wounded chest. Harper activated the dimension-tearing machine at the other end of the cable, opening up a Negativity Zone portal inside my body.     It hurt. Pain doesn’t matter. I am the Carnifex. I torture worlds.     I crushed Harper’s machine, battered Shiro back into Ham-Boy, pegged Sally’s elastic form with a half-dozen hunting knives, smacked Shiro down into one of the monofilament blade traps I’d prepared for the Legion earlier, and paused to decide who to cripple next.     CrazySugarFreakBoy! slammed into me again, spraying me with that ridiculous string of his. So the decision was made.     Then he hit me again, but this time he was swinging Wilton’s Chronometer of Infinity. It crashed into my face with the weight of all of time.     In a million multiverses where Rome raised an empire there was a Carnifex. He did what others would not for the preservation of civilisation. He executed slaves and foreigners. He used vile torture on them, that slaves and foreigners might fear the power of Rome. And yet he was reviled by his own people, exiled to do his work beyond the Esqualine Gate that his evil would not besmirch the honour and dignity of the capitol. Still he hung the tools of his trade, dripping with blood, at the entrance to the Suburbia, the most populated part of Rome, so that all would remember him.     They called him the man in the blood red hat.     I am all of those men, concentrated, distilled, refined, tempered to perfection. Hunter. Avenger. Executioner.     The battle moved on. I forced myself to control my temper. They were trying to make me angry. I forced myself to think. They strove to keep me distracted. They came at me in co-ordinated waves, using previously calculated ploys. Asil and Shiro engaged me so Dancer could entangle me in my own traps. Harper and Hallie combined illusion and dimension-twisting to turn my own blows back upon myself. The Ausgardians staggered back to the fray, bloody, stunned, yet still belligerent. My own Zdenka, the Rabid Wolf, stalked the darkness attacking me as beast after beast.     They were keeping me occupied. Wilton is a master of timing.     A stab of red pain lanced through my mind. Miss Peel was gone, destroyed on a far-away world. How could that be? She was…     Another stab. Flay and Skinner, likewise fallen. We have hunted deities and universal principles and brought them low for our pleasure. How could the mere mortal beings of this one planet accomplish what a thousand multiverses had failed to do?     This Parodyverse… this pathetic tiny corner of absurdity and narrative wishful thinking… this blot on good taste and reasoned interaction… It magnifies its heroes. It places them in the centre, packs stories around them. This time the battle was not to be with universal powers and cosmic principalities. This loathsome Parodyverse plays out its greatest moments on the mortal scale.     That’s how my minions died.     Then I sensed it, Bookman and Visionary in my study, seeking weaknesses. How like the Lair Legion to imagine that I would have some, and that their weakest most pathetic members might be the ones to find and use them.     I released another contingent of spites, this time amplifying them to human size to wrestle down the Parodyverse’s would-be champions. I gave my creations the form of dark worms to crawl into the heroes hearts. Then I moved to confront the Librarian and the fake man.     It was another trap. It was the Hooded Hood’s doing. He had packed Bookman’s mind with the literature of the fallen Shee-Yar. All of it, a billion times more than any Librarian could possibly hold. I sensed it burning Bookman’s mind out even as he channelled it all into mine.     Madness! Why would he do that? Why make that sacrifice!     Madness… overcame me.     Enough! I am the Carnifex. My masters send me to destroy multiverses. I have done so again and again, picking apart the remnants for amusement and to inspire the fear of others. I will take everything you value and dirty it and destroy it while you watch and I will make you beg for death then die regretting you ever existed. I will do such things that the powers that sent me will shudder and turn away in shame. Exiled I am, too dark to ever be allowed in decent places again, never to go home, so black I shall be and blacker will be your fates! I am the Carnifex!     I was outside my tower. I was in Parody Plaza. I was screaming at my enemies. “Come down here, Lair Legion. Face me while I end your city, while I shatter your buildings and make your people bleed. Let everybody see what I’m going to do to you, little heroes. Let your dying people see you die! Let’s do this the hard way!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It was the easy way before?” asked spiffy as he contained the blast I’d intended to set the city aflame. “Sheesh.”     I redoubled my efforts until he spasmed to the ground, his fern burning.     Shiro dropped Silicone Sally over me like a rubber sheet to envelop me while Donar and Harlagaz got into position; but my senses are keen. I shredded the plastic wench and she screamed very satisfyingly. It will be good to discover how quickly she grows back from abuse. I look forward to it. I slapped aside the Ausgardians and seized Mjalcolm to stave in Harlagaz’ skull.     I could not lift the bat. I toppled to the ground trying to hold it and Harlagaz punted my head.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ha! Ha!” laughed Ham-Boy.     I rose and moved to him but bounced off a bubble of frozen time from Wilton. My brain was reeling from the ghosts of murdered Shee-Yar rattling about me. I tried to shout but Bonnington was cramming yards of slithering fabric down my throat. Shepherdson was igniting it. Lyle was denying my immunity to it. Harper had the nanobots in my bloodstream joining up now, forming into combat platforms. Hallie populated the battlefield with images of Shee-Yar warriors – or was that in my mind?     The words of that dying Shee-Yar seeress echoed through my mind: “But you can be destroyed. Enemies you can’t see and enemies you don’t want to see and enemies who’ll finally see you for what you are.”     My chaotic mind could see the strands now, just as Dancer must, just as the Hooded Hood does. I could see the echoes of the future, resistance years from now, rippling back to… a Caphan nobody? I could see a pointless toady spying on a minor meeting and… Wilton believed him. I could see my Zdenka, set up from her very conception as a trap for me by an enemy I had never been able to find.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Why won’t you face me, Hooded Hood?” I shouted into the winds of narrative.     And finally the Hood gave me an answer: “The Hooded Hood does not concern himself with the doings of minions.”     I am the Carnfex! My rage is boundless! My malice is infinite.     I turned upon those Legionnaires, those trivial heroes that dared to oppose me. I took down Dancer, for all her probability wrangling, for all that Asil and Shiro and Kerry and Visionary - Visionary! tried to stop me. I left them all fallen in the dust. I took down Harper and Hallie; technology is so fragile.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Watch,” I told the Parodyverse, and made sure every living being on Earth knew what I was doing to their heroes.     I seized that irritating CrazySugarFreakBoy! and began to dismantle him.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Let the lad go,” Sir Mumphrey Wilton told me.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So, the old man dares to face me at last,” I mocked. I crushed bones in Foxglove’s hand as I spoke. I intended to do all of them and leave the chaos avatar alive as a kind of helpless jellyfish. Perhaps he’d make a good toilet? “Have you run out of heroes to hide behind?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not hiding,” replied the insignificant office holder. “Just bein’ polite, what? Waiting my turn.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, there’s you and there’s Donar twitching over there and I think I saw Denial breathing,” I told him. “I’d say it was time to take your shot.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Absolutely,” he replied and fumbled with his pocketwatch.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’ve made myself immune to any effects of that little toy,” I warned him. “I think now I’m going to take it and ram it up…”     Hatman cannoned into my head and slammed me to the pavement.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You didn’t make yourself immune to that effect, you arrant bounder,” Wilton said. He’d manipulated time and allowed the teleporter Goldeneyed – where had he come from – to bring in reinforcements.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Here we go again!” called Nats. He hammered me back down as I rose and set me up for Alcheman’s caustic burst then Cressida’s transmutation of stain to pain then Citizen Z’s psychic daggers. Behind me the Esqualine Tower creaked and folded then vanished as the Manga Shoggoth swallowed it whole. And all of that was to keep me reeling while Whitney Darkness magnified the Shee-Yar voices in my brain so they filled every corner of it with their screeching and how did she know to do that except…     The Sorcerer Supreme! Her father is Xander the Improbable! I was warned about the Sorcerer Supreme!     Hatman hit me. Mumphrey hit me. I ignored them.     I lashed out blindly. I heard bones splinter and I felt heroes fall. I took them all down, one by one, in a rage, in an instant, trying to silence then voices. Damn Bookman! Damn Darkness! Damn all those turgid insignificant heroes that try to…     I forced myself to focus. There were all down and I was standing. Only one still moved and he was the one I wanted most.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Boaz,” I snarled. “I have a special spike for your head.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah?” he answered. “Well I’ve got your minion’s cap.” He pulled Mr Flay’s bowler on and came for me with my own power.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Fool!” I yelled and used that link to sear the Serious Matter from his brain. I slapped the hap off him and held him helpless in my grasp at last. “I’ve caught you,” I told him as I choked him. “The hunt is over. Now comes the blooding.” I looked up and shouted through the urban canyons of a city that could count its future in minutes. “Do you hear me, powers of the Parodyverse? Do you hear me, Hooded Hood? With Boaz’ death the end of your creation has come!”     I never even saw Rabid Wolf until her claw was in my chest. Then she was close against me, intimate as a lover.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Jay Boaz will not die,” she told me. “I love him.”     Her fist closed and crushed my heart.     Knifey is an elder artefact. Mjalcolm is an elder artefact. Neither can be denied. Who knew that Zvesti Zdrugo was one too?     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Zdenka…” I whispered.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It is not possible,” she told me. “You have to die now, Mark.”     I reached forward and tore her heart out as well.     And then I died. ***     There were flashing squad car lights and screaming sirens. There were teeming packs of shouting press teams. There were crowds by the thousand responding to that strange vision that had been hammered into the minds of every man, woman, and child on the planet.     There was Commissioner Don Graham striding over the shattered terrain of Parody Plaza. “Are you okay?” he checked with Yuki Shiro.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Okay is a relative term,” the cyborg P.I. said. “Most of us are just beaten up some. Hatty’s had his Serious Matter burned from his brain so he’s lost all his powers, but he’s too busy weeping over Zdenka’s body to even think about that. Donar and Gaz both have major head injuries but they seem kind of happy about that. The Shoggoth has somehow put Sally together again but…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“About that,” Graham said apologetically. He pointed over to the bench where Silicone Sally was sitting. A pair of SPUD troopers were arresting her.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What?” objected CSFB!, swatting away a medic. “That gal’s just helped save the Parodyverse. What kind of bull…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The charges are treason, murder, and attempted nuclear terrorism,” Graham replied. “Deal with it tomorrow.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Those charges can’t be right,” objected Dancer. “I mean, sure Sally’s been a bit bad but…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They found the evidence,” said Graham. “Ask Drury.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’ll get her a lawyer, Dream,” Nats assured the wired wonder. “Arnie J. Armbruster. Or someone good. It’ll all get cleared up. The courts won’t convince an innocent woman.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Wow, you have been away a long time,” noted Sorceress. “Hey, where’s Citizen Z? I was sensing something pretty strange about her?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“She’s not Beth von Zemo in another guise, is she?” winced spiffy. “Because I’ve had enough villains for one day. For the year. Forever.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“She’s a pain in the ass is what she is, wherever she’s gone” noted Goldeneyed. “Oh, and by the way, hey, I’m back!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah,” agreed Nats. “But much more importantly, where did thud and Cressie go to? Don’t say they’ve just slipped off again?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And pleased we are to see you, young Katz,” Sir Mumphrey promised him. “But as you’ll see, we’ve got a deuced lot of things happening just now. Poor Miss Zdrugo, very bad show. Lovely girl. Went out like a hero.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“She died,” Alcheman said, in shock. “I know sometimes that happens in superhero battles but… she died.”     Dancer hugged him.     Ham-Boy looked upward. “Looks weird on the skyline without the Esqualine Tower,” he noted. “Did the Shoggoth really eat it?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Let’s just hope it doesn’t give him indigestion,” said Hallie. “Hold it, I’m getting a call from Sergeant MacHarridan. Hello, yes Argus, it’s true. Zdenka’s gone. That’s what Marie sensed.”          Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey, I think we need a doctor over here,” Visionary called. “The Librarian’s none too steady on his feet.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“After what he pulled I’m surprised he’s on his feet at all,” Al B. Harper admitted. “That trick with the Shee-Yar data was far beyond…”     Lee Bookman looked at him then collapsed where he stood.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Medic!” called G-Eyed. “Now!”     The Manga Shoggoth got there first. “There is no need to hurry,” he said in a dark rasp. “This mortal is brain dead. He is gone.”     The cheering crows fell silent as the news passed through them.     Paradopolis still stood.     Paradopolis stood silent. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Was that it, Hood?” demanded Citizen Z. She stepped out of her host body and assumed the translucent form of Laurie Leyton’s ghost. “Was that your big plan to stop the Carnifex? Sacrifice your daughter for it?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes,” replied the Hooded Hood. “That was my plan.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And you admit it? Her whole life, everything that beautiful, loving, wonderful woman was, and you always meant it…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Her life,” snarled the cowled crime czar, “and yours, and mine if it comes to that, and the manipulation of worlds. Who arranged for the creation of Candia in the first place? Who let you die so that you’d be here like this to play the role you must? Who do you think provoked the Shee-Yar assault on Earth that ended with the Carnifex annihilating their Imperium? Who came back to this weary Parodyverse at such cost to take up the duty of destroying those who created it? Who?”     Amnesia backed away. “You,” she said in a small frightened voice.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I scare you? I haven’t begun to be scary, my dear. My schemes and gambits are barely begun. When my plans unfold then, then you may tremble. Until then…”     The ghost moved towards him again. “Until then I’m with you, Ioldabaoth. You know that. I’m your penance and your companion and I hold your secrets.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You are,” agreed the Hooded Hood. He regarded the ghost woman for a moment. He forced himself to turn away. He sat on his throne before his Portal of Pretentiousness and made a dramatic gesture at the blackened glass. “And now to the matter of the new line-up of my old adversaries the Lair Legion…” *** Coming Next: What now for Jay Boaz, Hatman no more? What happens when a goddess dies? Will Silicone Sally face the death penalty? Who’ll be on the Legion line-up? Will the Hooded Hood triumph again – and at what cost? All – well most of - the answers in Untold Tales of CrazySugarFreakBoy! and His Amazing Super-Friends, coming soon to a Parodyverse near you! *** And after that… Images variously by Dancer, Visionary, and HH. *** Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2010 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2010 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.

Quite a surprise to see Xander in this. The showdown with the Necromancer General was all right, though I think maybe its time for the current holder of that title to be replaced, given how easily he was taken down.

As always, the interplay among the EEE staff was quite entertaining, and their method of (possible) escape quite inspired.

All this and a third pic: another lady, from the looks of it.

Bring on Part Four!