Previous Post #341: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion Protocols: No More Heroes Any More Warning: This episode includes some unpleasant violence. Go to Part One: "Once More Into The Breach, Dear Friends, Once More" Go to Part Two: "We Would not Seek A Battle As We Are" Previously: CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s leadership of the Lair Legion has caused controversy. His public proposals to expand the team to include every superhero across the world and to begin an aggressive campaign of tackling injustice despite international boundaries and laws has prompted secret powers-that-be to launch “the Lair Legion Protocols” to deal with this. General Terrence “No Nickname” Hodgekiss has been dispatched to the Lair Mansion to bring the heroes under control – or else.     Meanwhile, CSFB!’s new agenda has begun with an announced assault upon the headquarters of the racist Pogroms of Purity and their leader, the super-strong Aryan Ideal. While Icy maintains a blizzard outside, CSFB!, Vizh, Dancer, Donar, and Nats sought to rescue child hostages in the Pogrom’s compound. However, a sophisticated Metahuman Ability Eraser had been concealed to destroy the heroes’ powers. Now triggered it has left the Legion helpless before their brutal and sadistic foe. The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse *** 1. “Once More Into the Breach, Dear Friends, Once More”     CrazySugarFreakBoy! hung limp and bleeding in Aryan Ideal's grip. His depowered silly suit's colours had faded to muddy browns.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, my whole body is one giant bruise, I can't feel one or more of my limbs, and I can taste my own blood in my mouth, on account of swallowing nearly a pint of it so far, so give me a swirly, and I might as well be back in high school. Did Quesada finally get the rights to regress my character too?”     Aryan Ideal kicked CrazySugarFreakBoy! in the balls with testes-crushing super-strength. “Well, not to $%&£ clever now, are you?” he asked the de-powered wired wonder.     The special equipment embedded in the walls of the hostage room stood silent now it had done its work and erased the special abilities of CSFB!, Dancer, Nats, Donar and Yuki. Billions of dollars of careful research had finally paid off and brought the rogue Lair Legion to book.     Donar struggled unsteadily to his feet, trying to keep his balance and focus his vision “Leaveth him alone,”. The Metahuman Ability Eraser destroyed the DNA coding that allowed superheroes to access their uncanny abilities and ‘corrected’ any biological anomalies it could find. Donar wasn’t human and he didn’t have DNA in the strictest sense of the word. The MAE had hurt him but already his strength was returning. “Come and face one who can smacketh thine heinie, base coward.”     Aryan Ideal unholstered the pistol at his hip. “Yeah, like a gay Australian hippie god’s gonna stand up to a real man,” he scorned. He fired a single shot into Donar’s chest.     Donar went down, clutching the wound. Blood pumped between his hands.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They call it an akeldama round,” Karl Braun told him. “It’s just your basic silver bullet, but minted from one of those coins they paid Judas with. It’s a godkiller bullet. How’s that working out for you, bigmouth?”     He chambered his second round and aimed at Donar’s head.     Visionary interposed himself between the gun and the dying hemigod. “Hold it,” the possibly-fake man warned Aryan Ideal, “You leave him alone.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“This is a .45 shot, useless. It’ll go right through your fake chest and blow away your pretend god.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No it won’t,” Nats shouted, He jumped forward and grabbed Braun’s gun arm. It was like trying to move a truck.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You were lame even when you had powers,” Aryan Ideal told him. Braun slapped him off and hurled him into Visionary, sending both of them caroming back into the wall beside the gaggle of terrified hostage children. “Without powers you’re not even worth the air you suck. But I guess you know that.”     Dancer kicked the back of Braun’s knee on a key pressure point then flipped him over. She kicked the gun away and made to follow through with a nerve punch. Aryan Ideal caught her easily then and pinned her to the ground.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You know I’ve been looking forward to you, babe,” he promised the captured woman. “Scream for me.”     On the floor beside them Yuki Shiro struggled and tried to get her Technopolitan interface to operate. That was the technology that allowed her human brain to control her robot body with such precision. Without the irreplaceable component she was just a quadraplegic with clumsy bionic limbs. What sensors she did have working told her that the vital part had been utterly fried.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Braun, you lousy piece of crap,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! called, limping to his feet again despite two broken arms and his fractured pelvis, “You know what? For all your power you still needed to use some cheating machine to be able to take me. Even now I’m gonna find a way to shaft you so bad you’ll have a pole sticking out of the top of your head.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Still conscious, half-breed?” sneered Aryan Ideal. “Then you get to watch me date Dancer.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You wouldn’t know what to do,” hissed Sarah Shepherdson.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You… leaveth.., her…” gasped Donar, trying to rise despite his sucking chest wound. He toppled back and passed out. The blood welling from his chest was poisoned black.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You caused all this, Foxglove,” Aryan Ideal told CrazySugarFreakBoy! “You scared the government with your big talk, all the governments I guess, so bad that they actually loaned this stuff to us to take you out. You even announced you’d be coming here. All I had to do was plant a few kiddies to get your bleeding-heart heroes to the killing zone. You’ve managed to get all your little super-friends hurt and tortured and then dead.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Over my dead body,” CSFB! vowed. And then he began to shout at Braun, every insult, every filthy thing he could dredge out of his pain-fevered mind.     Braun looked down at Dancer. “Yeah, over his dead body. How about it, honey? It’s a date!”     He dragged Dancer by the hair and caught up CrazySugarFreakBoy! by the other hand. He pinned Sarah down with a foot so he could work on Dream properly. “You can both start begging now,” he told them.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You piece of…” CSFB! managed before Braun ripped his jaw off. Then Aryan Ideal tore the wired wonders limbs away one by one before crushing his skull to pulp. ***     Icy the Snowman was tired of the blizzard. It took a lot out of him to make the snow be that violent. He wondered if people wouldn’t prefer a skating pond.     The BRAWLER-equipped base security people came at him with flamethrowers.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ow!” he complained. “What on Earth do you people think you’re doing? First you tie bombs to your own children, then you come out with all the guns and the fighting and things, and now this. You’re not nice!”     Teflon point high calibre bullets tore through the snowman’s frame.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Stop it now! I mean it. What is wrong with you folks?”     Half a dozen grenades blew the snowman into powdery fragments. A burning top hat smouldered on the icefield.     Icy reformed beneath it, regrowing his carrot nose and coal eyes. He gestured out with twig hands and all the guards running in were coated to the neck with thin sheets of ice. “Knock it off. You have to calm down. There’s really no…”     The grenade frozen in one of the Pogrom defenders’ hands exploded, turning the man into ribbons of meat.     Icy stared at the bloody pulp that had been a person. “NO!” he screamed, horrified, bereft. “Oh nonononononononono!”     The snowman fell down beside the body and began to sob. ***     Aryan Ideal murdered CrazySugarFreakBoy! as painfully as he could manage. He looked down to see Dancer’s reaction. She smiled back viciously.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I just killed him,” Aryan Ideal pointed out, “and now I’m gonna…”     Yuki Shiro hit him. She came in smart and fast with her full speed and dexterity. She’d observed Braun’s fighting style and calculated the best techniques to counter it and she went in to cause maximum pain in minimum time.     She didn’t say anything.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We fried your doohickey,” Aryan Ideal complained. The blows stung but they couldn’t really harm him. “You should be a gimp.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, that Technopolitan interface is fried for good,” Yuki agreed. “And I really needed it back when I first became a cyborg. Nobody could learn to make all those mental adjustments to control a top-range combat-ready robot body without one of those things. But I’ve been in here for a while now. And I’m a fast learner.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re a freak wind up toy that should’ve died years ago. I aim to put that right.”     Yuki shifted to the side so Dancer could plant a kick in Braun’s face to knock him a fraction off balance. Then Yuki pinned him to the ground in a full nelson. “I’m still here,” she told him.     Aryan Ideal broke the lockhold by sheer strength then hammered a fist into Yuki’s power pack. The cyborg P.I. went down. He smacked Dancer away again, sending her sprawling down beside Nats and Vizh amongst the children.     Visionary crawled to cover her. “Why doesn’t anybody believe me when I warn them, Braun?” he wondered. “I told you to leave my family alone.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Or what?” smirked Aryan Ideal. “You’ll throw a tizzie-fit? I just killed your pansyass boss. Want to guess who’s gonna die next?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Killed him?” Vizh scorned. “You used your machine to normalise CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s impossibilitium body and then you tore him to pieces so that body was destroyed? Don’t you even watch Star Wars or Doctor Who?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What?”     CrazySugarFreakBoy!s sundered corpse had disappeared.     If you strike me down came a mocking voice from everywhere, then I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Dream’s been able to regenerate new bodies for a while now,” Vizh explained. “You just hit his reset button.”     Green and orange streamers coalesced together and became the champion of chaos. Dreamcatcher Kokpelli Foxglove barrelled into Aryan Ideal and began to whale on him with renewed vigour. “Heya, douchewad! Didya miss me?”     Dancer and Nats stirred.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Quickly,” Vizh called to them. “Bill, try and connect Yuki’s secondary power up somehow. We need her back in the fight. Dancer, I’m sorry but you’ve got to get your hand into Donar’s chest. Pull that silver bullet thing out.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“On it,” Nats promised, dragging himself over to the fallen cyborg.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“This isn’t the worst thing I’ve had to do for a guy,” Dancer admitted, pushing her fingers into the fallen hemigod’s bloody wound.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey, you’re nearly fast enough to catch me,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! told Aryan Ideal. “I guess you must be feeling like a complete dick by now.”     Karl Braun sped across the room, stamped down on Nats, and caught Yuki’s head up in one massive fist. “How about this for fast? You let me get my hands on you or I crumble her brain to mush,” he smirked. “What’ll it be, hero-boy?”     CSFB!’s face flickered with a range of swift emotions, and finally showed resignation. “No more Gwen Stacies,” he admitted. “Go on then, hurt me.”     Aryan Ideal caught the wired wonder in a crushing grip. “I’m thinking squashing her brain would hurt you plenty bad,” he considered.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey, Braun,” called Visionary, “you know the best thing about being a team? It’s the teamwork. For example…”     Aryan Ideal saw that while Dancer had tended Donar and Nats had worked on Yuki, the yellow-coated possibly-fake man had been at the sleek black MAE machinery. He’d located the on button again.     He pushed it. And Aryan Ideal was in the room.     The room was once more ribboned with eerie green laser-light.     Karl Braun staggered as his powers were wiped away. Yuki burned off her remaining power to shrug him away from her. Dancer dropped him with an arabesque to the thorax.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Deal with him, Dream,” she told the re-depowered CrazySugarFreakBoy! “I don’t want to hurt him. But I really don’t mind of you do.”     CSFB! cracked his knuckles and dragged Braun from the floor. “Hey, Karlie, how do you feel about a fair fight? Punkass.” ***     The remaining Pogrom guards came after the Lair Legion with assault weapons. Without powers four battered intruders with a fifth suffering gunshot trauma were no match for thugs with big guns.     Yuki was operating at 30% capacity. That was quite enough to take down the first wave through the door, but she knew she couldn’t stop them all. “Take cover with the kids,” she warned her team-mates. “Go now.”     Nats dragged Donar while Dancer shepherded the children. CrazySugarFreakBoy stayed behind to hit Aryan Ideal some more. By now Karl Braun was begging him to stop.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Vizh, Dream!” Nats called. “Time to go. Really.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not yet,” Visionary said. “We haven’t stopped these bad guys yet.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And we don’t have powers,” the former flying phenomenon pointed out. “We’re useless!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’ve never had powers,” Vizh pointed out. “Don’t make the obvious comeback. I’ve never had powers so I’ve had to rely on other things. Like this.” He pulled his mobile phone out of his pocket.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They’re getting past me,” warned Yuki.     Vizh thumbed a button. “Bry, it’s me. We’re in really serious trouble under fire right now. We have casualties. Can you lock onto this signal and teleport here? We need back-up fast.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’re on our way,” agreed Goldeneyed. A second later there was a burst of bright golden light and G-Eyed and Alcheman were beside Visionary.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I hope you don’t mind,” Michael Wooster apologised. “Goldeneyed and I were just following up on a case we’d been on when your call came through and I thought I might come and assist.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Those are the bad guys,” Nats pointed.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And their guns have just gone away,” proclaimed G-Eyed, using his teleportation powers.     Alcheman turned to tempered steel and went in. Yuki she stayed in the middle of the fray. She already was tempered steel.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You can stop hitting Braun now,” Vizh told CrazySugarFreakBoy!     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, I can,” agreed CSFB! “If I wanted to.” *** 2. “We Would Not Seek A Battle As We Are.”     The SPUD helicarrier reappeared from its galactic travels right over the spot where it needed to tractor down the EEE firehouse. From there it limped out over Paradopolis bay to Parody Island to drop off Al B., Hallie, and the Shoggoth.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nice to take a road trip with you,” Hallie told Lara, Anna, Chiaki, Vinnie and Liu Xi. “I’d stay and socialise but I’m guessing there’s about ninety gig of paperwork stacked up while I’ve been…” She paused as her Holographic Emitter Drone received the latest updates from the Lair mansion servers. Her face changed. “Al, we’re got to get down there now,” she told her archscientist companion. “Now.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Twenty-four hours,” said Velma Klein, Mayor of Gothametropolis York. “Just twenty-four hours. That’s how long it’s taken that man to organise half the civil liberties bleeding hearts of my city against me.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not half of them. Not yet,” Mr Sneek of the exclusive law firm Sneek, Grabbitt, and Thuggery tried to sooth her. “Mr Boaz is just trying to make his presence felt. To establish a negotiating position.”     Klein hammered her fist onto the table, “No he isn’t. He’s not looking to make trouble to up the bribe he can ask for. He’s not manoeuvring to cut a deal. He’s genuinely trying to make this a better place, and we can’t allow that.”     Yesterday, former superhero Jay Boaz had taken directorship of the Gothametropolis York Civic Relief Foundation on Eecee Street. It seemed he was taking his new job seriously.     Melissa van de Luce, who ran the vice rackets in GMY, looked shocked. “He’s got to have a weakness. Girls. Boys. Furry animals.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Maybe wolf women or witches,” snorted Rupert Joad who ran the protection businesses north of Sixways. “But this is Hatman of the Lair Legion we’re talking about. He’s clean.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nobody’s clean,” Melissa frowned. “We’ve got to be able to get something on him.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Why are we still talking about this?” demanded Oliver Scranton of Scranton Waste Recyling. “If he’s pissing on our turf we take him down. Make it so he’s never seen again. His future is as landfill.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Except he’s a superhero,” pointed out Mr Sneek. “Technically a former superhero since we’re getting confidential reports that his powers were lost in that final fight with the Carnifex; but if we – I mean you – were to eliminate him it would certainly draw unwanted attention from other metahuman elements.”     Vera Klein looked smug. “I’m hearing that there may be rather fewer metahuman elements this morning,” she noted. “If we are going to use radical and permanent solutions on the Boaz problem now would be the time.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So we hire some guys from out of town,” suggested Scranton. “No trail back. Old grudge, maybe. Someone who Hatman’s fought before. Headcase. Anvil Man. Suicide Blonde. The League of Losers.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The Frightsome Four,” Joad corrected him. “Yeah, they’d do. Especially if we let them leave a body count when they have their fun. English Man, Marker Man, Garbage Burner and Dr Teeth. Old school sadistic killers. Leave Boaz in the rubble of his Foundation.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Could be a solution,” Klein considered. She turned to the end of the table. “What do you think, Boss Deadeyes?”     Antony Vendredi took a pull at his Cuban cigar. “I say give it a try,” he answered. “Could be interesting.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So what’s the verdict,” asked Dancer as she jumped up off the medical scanner in the Lair Infirmary.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re perfectly healthy,” Dr Al B. Harper told her, “and normal. Baseline human.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“If you can call humans normal,” bubbled the Manga Shoggoth behind his bandages. “I mean, really, what were you people thinking about when you decided on four dimensions? Seriously.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That we enjoyed not hurling?” suggested Goldeneyed.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“People don’t usually complain about my dimensions,” Dancer admitted. “Unless… are you saying I’m getting fat? Eek. Okay, never mind the power restorations. I need diets.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That MAE machine seems to have been specially targeted at us,” Yuki Shiro noted. “You and Nats are completely depowered. I’d have been finished too if I hadn’t learned to adapt without needing my Technopolitian interface any more. And Donar would have been dead if that godkiller bullet if you hadn’t dug it out of him in time.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But he’s going to be okay?” Dancer checked.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He’s already up and shouting about things,” Vizh assured her. “We’re far more worried about you.”     Sarah Shepherdson shrugged. “It’s not like I haven’t lost my powers before. I’ll be fine. They’ll prolly be back when I’m most needed.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I notice that CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s got his powers back,” Nats grumbled.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah. All he had to do was blow his head off again,” noted Al B.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He didn’t,” gasped Visionary, dismayed.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think he was feeling pretty guilty about everything,” G-Eyed suggested. “And you know how he feels about being a superhero. He’s 100% superhero 100% of the time. So yeah, he shot himself on the chance it’d get his powers back.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I could take all of your heads off if you like,” offered the Manga Shoggoth helpfully.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nobody else tears anything off anybody or shoots any part of themselves until I’m done with my diagnostics,” Al B. Harper shouted. “Clear?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“How about getting Uhuna to help?” wondered Nats. “She can shift injuries. She could transfer the genetic wipe. Unless… would that neutralise her power then?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s not damage,” answered the Shoggoth. “In some ways it’s a kind of healing back to what you humans insist on calling baseline. Really its more of a base toroid moebius strip. A purple one. Anyhow, Princess Uhunalura would not be able to help.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“How about Sir Mumphrey?” speculated Vizh. “He can shift things in time, rewind things so they never happened.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I already checked it with him,” Yuki replied. “He could have suspended the effects for a very short time straight after they happened or even done one of his replays, but by the time we’d rescued those children and got them to St Jude’s orphanage it was already too late.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We were right to prioritise the children,” approved Dancer.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But we need to get our powers back,” insisted Nats. He glared at G-Eyed. “This is as bad as the time somebody shot Josh Clement with a mutate elimination ray.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah,” agreed Bry Katz, who’d mistakenly fired that shot. “He whined like a little girl about it as well.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Okay, additional rule,” called Al B. “No dismembering, no shooting yourselves, and no pointless bickering while I’m doing DNA splice calculations. Hallie, how’s the scan of that machine going?”     Hallie examined the remains of the Metahuman Ability Eraser. It had been programmed to self-destruct when opened with so there was very little to examine. She’d still done quite well. “This is what you’d get if you had a multi-billion dollar project to take Dr Moo’s initial mutate correction treatment, filtered it through Apocalyspian genetech and Skree DNA manipulation, pirated the Idiom’s gene-regression software, added in protocols from Rikka Ulz Hagen and Peter von Doom, channelled it through refurbished Technopolitan particle emitters, and had the whole thing specifically set for the exact biosignatures of the Lair Legion,” she reported.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Work of quite a lot of geniuses,” agreed Al B.. “That’s why we should be able to find loopholes if we look long enough.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So you can fix me,” Nats demanded. “Get us back in the game?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, theoretically. Eventually. I hope.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’d better get on with that recruitment drive,” Yuki muttered. “So we have more targets for secret government shut-down protocols.” ***     The Jet Starscream Experience rose in stainless steel and reflective glass to dominate the skyline of southern Goth Haven. In front of the museum and conference centre stood a forty-foot high image of Jet himself, leader of the Wonderful Seven, Goth haven’s favourite son. He held out his hand to the skies and gazed over the city with a perfect chiselled jawline.     On payment of $49.99 visitors were allowed inside the JSX to admire the interactive displays about Jet himself. They could learn about his greatest superhero exploits, see the animatronic gallery of women whose lives he’d blessed, take a psychological test to see how close to measuring up to jet they actually came. At the extensive gift shop they could buy Jet’s albums and movies, enjoy a selection of Jet’s favourite meals, and even buy personally signed items by the great man himself.     The MLA paid his entrance fee reluctantly, took his free souvenir lapel sticker, and moved inside the building. The interior walls were “Jet” black, interspersed with strobing neon light strips. Jet’s theme tune played on a continuous loop:     He reigns, he reigns, he reigns supreme!     Jet Starscream!     He’s like, he’s like, a living dream!     Jet Starscream!     The best, the best, there’s ever been!     Jet Starscream!     Jet Starscream!     Jet Starscream!     Goooooooo…. Jet Starscream! (Yeah!)     The MLA turned his collar up to avoid being too easily identified from security cameras. He purchased a guide programme ($14.99 with a fold-out poster of Jet himself) and checked the floor plan on the back. The trophy gallery was on the third floor mezzanine below the outer space artefact display. He made his way up the escalator, being careful not to move too fast and attract attention.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Excuse me,” he asked a cute young tour guide in a Jet Rulez t-shirt, “ could I ask a few questions?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sure,” she answered. “What do you want to know?”     The MLA pointed to the display cabinets. “There’s a chunk of carving I’m looking for. It was the sacred stone of the Upnashtivi tribe in Borneo. The Wonderful Seven brought it back here when they got involved with some kind of mad witch doctor during their African tour back in ‘97?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sure. The thing all those protest groups keep writing letters about? It’s down there. That ugly grey thing carved like a mask. Anything else?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah. Why doesn’t the museum just give it back? It’s pretty important to those people in Africa. They think it makes the rains come.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I don’t know. I guess Jet says not to.”     The MLA nodded. “Okay, next question. Do you really like that t-shirt?”     The guide looked down at her chest. “Um…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sorry, unfair question. Here’s a better one. What time do you finish work? And when I pick you up can I help you lose the t-shirt? You’d sure look better without it.”     The tour guide blushed. “I really don’t… I’m not supposed to… that is… Er, five o’clock?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Great. Listen, give me your number and I’ll call you. But first I have to steal this sacred stone and give it back to the Upnashtivi, okay? I totally understand that you’ll need to call security and all that. You do what you need to to keep your job. I’ll make it all up to you later. Post t-shirt.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re going to what?”     The handsome young man pressed a finger to her lips. “It’s okay. I’m the Mutate Liberation Army. I’m fighting for your freedoms. Hold on a moment.” He twisted round then turned back to the girl. Suddenly the Jet Starscream theme tune had gone off. He had an umbrella in his hand that hadn’t been there before and he handed it over to the pretty guide. Then the fire alarms set off the sprinkler system.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That t-shirt’s definitely better wet,” the MLA approved. He twitched again and the security glass screen protecting the artefacts shattered.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What are you doing?” the guide objected. “You can’t just come in here and… steal things… and date people! And how can you liberate mutates? There aren’t any mutates now. They all got de-mutated.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not me,” shrugged the young man. “I only got my mutate powers after all that happened, and now I’m setting out to liberate me. Magnetic Techbird lives and all that. Except he doesn’t, probably. But my cousin always said that, before he vanished and I inherited his powers.” He picked up the stone mask and put it in his backpack.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Who are you?” demanded the guide.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I told you. I’m the Mutate Liberation Army.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re the whole army?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’re an exclusive group. A tight unit. Elite. But I’m also called Randolph Jerome Clement.” The young mutate smiled winningly. “R.J. Randy. Hi!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And why are you doing this?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Because you’re cute and you’re worth it. Oh, the robbery? Because I’m working outside the law to bring natural justice to society and stuff. And I’ve got a backer who’ll help me get the ZOXXON mining licenses in the Gambia tied up in red tape for years if I get this mask back to its rightful owners. So I guess I’d better go do that now. But I’ll see you later and bring Italian.”     He turned to leave but found the doorway blocked by a determined young man in a brown and tan uniform and a ham cowl. “Not so fast, thief,” said Ham-Boy. “You’re under arrest.” ***     Herbert P. Garrick was packing document boxes when an angry hemigod of thunder splintered his door. “Garrick! Thou foul, treacherous worm, come forth and be smote!” yelled Donar.     The G-Man put down his stapler as six-foot four of livid Ausgardian stamped up to him trailing four security guards about his person.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No cake?” asked Bad News Herb acidicly. “I’ve worked here intermittently for, what, eight years or more and I all I get by way of a farewell is one spitting-mad deity?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You knowest what thine government hath done to mine boon friends with their base machineries!”     Garrick noticed that the bandages shrouding Donar’s chest wound were still dark red; but he was more concerned with what the demigod was saying. “What? That device that depowered the Legion wasn’t something Aryan Ideal bought off BALD or something?”     Donar hefted his baseball bat. “Prepare to journey into the under-realms of Gdammit, where Lady Gdaya ruleth over the cold dead with a bone-white fist!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re saying somebody in authority was stupid enough to attempt an assault on the world’s only effective strategic asset against interplanetary and extradimensional incursion?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Prepare to… you claim that you knowest not of this base attack?” Donar almost overbalanced as he stopped in mid-smite.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m out of the loop. General Hodgekiss is running the show now.” Garrick looked thoughtful. “But what show, I wonder?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Donar, stop it!” Marie Murcheson, the Lair Banshee hurried through the door. She picked her way over the trail of damaged security people and interposed herself between the Ausgardian and the G-Man.     Donar glowered at Garrick past the diminutive young ghost in the Victorian dress. “If thou art responsible in any way for this outrage I shalt see thee in thy grave,” the hemigod warned him.     Garrick’s face was bleak. “Excuse me. I have some calls to make and a meeting to set up.” He picked up his stapler and stalked out of the room.     Donar clutched his chest and perched on the edge of the cleared desk.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You shouldn’t be up and about yet,” Marie chided him. “I felt how close you were to death when they shot that godkiller bullet into you. You’ve never been closer.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Mine Lady Dancer didst remove yon foul projectile in time. If only the Oldman wert allowed to affect this mortal plane any more I shouldst petition him to restore her and yon Nats.”     Marie nodded. “It’s a very bad business, Prince Donar, but hitting poor Special Agent Garrick won’t help. I think in his own way he’s as shocked and upset as the rest of us.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“As you say, milady. I shalt forebear for the moment and return to mine Xena therapy. Or mayhap yon Call of Duty. I am sorry I didst trouble thee by mine near untimely ending.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s quite alright, Prince Donar. It’s my job to watch out for these things. Please take care of yourself.”     Marie watched the hemigod hoist the guards over his shoulder and retreat with them to the Lair Infirmary. Then she turned to the other person in the room, the one only she could perceive.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You see, he’s going to be just fine. It looks like you’ve had a wasted journey, Lady Gdaya. You’re not needed here today.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Soon then,” the Ausgardian death-goddess said. “If not for him then…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Good day, your Ladyship,” said Marie Murcheson firmly. “Do remember to call ahead next time.” ***     Icy opened his suitcase. He packed his spare woolly scarf, his sprig of holly, his grandfather’s old pipe.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Icy, where are you going?”     The snowman turned round when he heard Magweed and Griffin in the doorway of his guest room. He tried to wipe away the frozen rears on his big round face. “I have to go away, children,” he told them.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Why?” asked Griffin. “We know about the fight with those BRAWLERS, by the way. I happened to hear dad talking on the secure channel to Dan Drury.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’ve done a terrible, terrible thing,” Icy explained. “I can’t stay now.”     Magweed jumped onto the bed and sat on Icy’s suitcase to stop him picking it up. “You didn’t mean it. It was an accident. You were trying to help people. You saved children.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nick Smeaty was somebody’s child. Mother Smeaty will miss him.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He was a three time convicted felon with a record of violence,” Griffin argued. “And he was throwing a grenade at you.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I already had this talk with CrazySugarFreakBoy!” the snowman said. “I’m not supposed to fight people. I’m supposed to make people happy. I got all carried away playing with the Lair Legion and somebody else paid for it.” He shook his head. “I’ve got to go away. If I stay here there’ll come a time when I have to fight again, and I can’t do that.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Where will you go?” asked Magweed sadly.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Back home, maybe,” Icy thought. “I will miss you all very much. Goodbye.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We can’t change you mind?” checked Griffin. “Please? First Glory and now you.”     Icy shook his head. Then he considered and unwrapped his best scarf from round his neck. He gave it to Magweed. “Take care, children,” he said as he gently retrieved his suitcase.     He walked down the long road from the Lair Mansion to the bridge that connected Parody Island with the mainland. Once in Paradopolis he found a bus stop. When the bus finally came he got on board.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I would like a ticket, please,” he told the driver.     It takes more than a talking walking snowman to phase Paradopolis bus drivers. “Where to, mac?”     Icy would have taken a deep breath if he breathed. “Herringcarp Asylum, please.” ***     CrazySugarFreakBoy! slammed into General Terrence Hodgekiss’ new Lair Mansion office, almost embedding the door in the wall behind.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hodgekiss!” he shouted, his fluorescent costume glowing livid grape and purple. “You wanted a war. You got one!” *** Next Up: Citizen Z unmasked. Archvillains confer. All the stuff from this chapter continued. The Hodgekiss ultimatum. Things like that. Untold Tales #342: All Change *** The Jet Starscream Experience: Notes from L! himself: So far there are no details for the said museum since it has yet to appear in a story. It only recently came into to being after you made a passing comment about such a thing existing in a previous e-mail. Really it's pretty much much what ever you or I want it to be. I'm thinking that in passing it could be called the JSX & that abbreviation would also maybe be on flyers, ads, in commercials for the museum. Where it might be the city I'd say downtown, probably not all that far from The Seven Freedoms Tower which is the headquarters to The Wonderful Seven, the team Jet leads. I bet Jet's penthouse office even faces towards the Museum so he can see it from there. I think the Museum would be a more garish version of the Flash Museum, it would not so much devoted to Jet's accomplishments but to just how awesome & better then you he is. The building itself would probably look all modern, all stainless steel & stuff like that. There would probably be a large bronze statue of Jet would stand out front. The statue would be him standing in a triumphant pose. For some reason I have this image of the Museum having a roller coaster but I'm not sure why or if that would even be possible. On the inside I'm thinking every surface (walls, floor, ceiling, doors, etc.) is pitch black with lots of Neon lights, speakers would be blasting Jet's theme music (He's that full of himself that he would have one). On almost every wall would be giant oversized posters of Jet's face, probably a few of the posters you could tell someone was cropped out of the picture. It's almost like the Museum is trying too hard to be cool, hip & trendy. The museum would basically be just be one big ego stroke to Jet & he loves it. I've hinted in a to be posted story that the admission prices might be a bit high & a large chunk of that money probably goes to Jet directly while some of the money is going to the City. *** 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.

That ending surprised me - I expected Yuki to crash into Hodgekiss' office before CSFB! got around to it. But I guess she *is* kind of busy...

And this is where I have to start one of those grey area discussions. CSFB! threatens a war with Hodgekiss, but the General already knows he's not all that serious since he's still alive. He probably knows CSFB! is a hero to the core, and won't kill him. He also knows the Lair Legion is about the same, so he'll probably go on torturing them until he's dead. In other words, Hodgekiss knows if his torturings gets one of the Lair Legion killed (and it almost did already) they'll do nothing about it and he'll still have his job. It's a win-win situation for him. So the big risk of CSFB! threatening him with war is...he'll take it seriously, and start killing Legionnaires - because to a General, that's what a war is.

If someone dies, though, that motivates one associate of theirs who lives in that grey area to take action. Lara Night may be tempted to kill him both in revenge and to stop him from continuing the war (if someone else doesn't get there first). Then again, maybe she won't, depending on the circumstances - while she's not set against killing (this is the "grey area") she also wouldn't want to make things worse for the Legion - killing the General is risky in that it may force the President to activate final neutralization protocol and hunt down and finish off the LL.

Remember when I was talking about the Paradopolis PD and jurisdiction? Well hiring assassins to kill Hatman is pretty much all the motivation Commissioner Graham needs to give Vicky Cameron and Jack Burns the thumbs-up to investigate Velma Klein and haul her away in handcuffs. That's going to be really bad for her re-election chances.

Meanwhile, though, Hat's going to need some serious bodyguarding. I would take a guess that's what Jupiter is for. Chiaki may know something is wrong by now, but she knows how hard-headed Jay can be, and that he wouldn't want her following him around everywhere. Plus after returning from her adventure even she knows she's not in her peak condition at the moment. So her kind of more immediate solution might be to use some clever connections to keep an eye on him and make sure nobody kills him.

I'd say Garrick is the one taking the fall for Drury's "failure" since he was packing up his office. He may have been on the edge of removal since Anna escaped, though. He's also my second candidate for "grey area" - he may be the one who kills Hodgekiss before Lara manages it.