Previous Post #343: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion Protocols: All Change Go to Part 6: “As Cold a Night As 'Tis, He Could Wish Himself In Thames Up To The Neck.” Go to Part 7: “Is Not Their Climate Foggy, Raw, and Dull?” Go to Part 8: “I Know Not If The Day Be Ours Or No.” Go to Part 9. “We Band of Brothers.” Previously: CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s controversial leadership of the Lair Legion included an assault on the white supremacist Pogroms of Purity, but the team walked into a trap set by secret government forces that de-powered Dancer and Nats and injured others. Now the Hooded Hood and the Word of Logos plot to push CSFB! over the edge and have him take the Legion with him. Meanwhile, corrupt Gothametropolis York Mayor Velma Klein has ordered the death of the previously-depowered Hatman and Icy the Snowman considers a lethal deal with the Hooded Hood. The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse 6. “As Cold a Night As 'Tis, He Could Wish Himself In Thames Up To The Neck”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Garbage Burner, old chap. This is English Man. Do you read me on this telecommunications whatsit, over?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, I’ve got you. Tell Marker Man that his signal block’s up and running. No transmission in or out of the kill zone except ours.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Jolly good show. And you’re in position at the rear of the Foundation building.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yep. I hate fire exits. Spoils the whole point of the fire. Anyway, I’m ready to fry the crowds as they rush out here after the detonations go off.”     Marker Man chimed in over the same channel. “I’ve got my explosive markers in place now. Say the word and the whole block comes down.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Could you possibly not say the word until we’re clear, this time?” interrupted Dr Teeth. “We’ll be ready to go in a couple of minutes. The last of the visitors is crowding into the Foundation right now.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We were right to wait until today, English Man,” admitted Marker Man. “There must be twice as many people crushed together this time. Boaz will have plenty of company when we blow him to hell.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Remember I’ll need his head as proof for the client,” English Man cautioned. “We don’t want him shredded in the blast. That’s just a way of getting him where we can kill him personally.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And I’ve dibs on his dental work afterwards,” insisted Dr Teeth.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Whatever,” shrugged Garbage Burner. The orange boiler-suited pyromaniac shouldered the enhanced flamethrower he carried and locked the target finder on the main escape door. “Just say the word and I’ll start the body count.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“In your own time, then,” English Man told him, “begin the slaughter.”     Garbage Burner put away the communicator and hefted his weapon. Someone tapped him on the shoulder.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Excuse me. This is a no-smoking area.”     As Garbage Burner turned round Jay Boaz hit him with a trash can and kept punching as the villain went down.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Right,” growled Hatman. “This just reinforces the need for safety checks to make sure no garbage gets stacked up by the fire escapes. Glad I looked. And if this guy’s here the rest of the League of Losers can’t be far behind.”     He reached down and reluctantly began to strip the fallen felon. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Al, when are you going to invent a machine to deal with these membership applications?” demanded Yuki Shiro. “How many are there anyway?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A hundred and eleven thousand, nine hundred, and sixty-one,” said Hallie. She concentrated a moment. “And four more came in while I was totting that up.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I did invent a machine,” pointed out the archscientist. “It’s called a shredder.” He held up the résumé in front of him between the tips of his forefinger and thumb. “Do we really want Septic Boy on the team? He has sent samples of the fluids his body can generate.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Put him on the Too Disgusting To Think About Much pile,” Vizh told him. “Cover up Self-Exposure Man and the Intimate Function. It’s the stack next to the girls offering sex to be on the team stack.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I don’t see that pile,” Al B. admitted.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I, um, tidied that one away,” Flapjack explained. “No point having those photos and numbers cluttering up the table. I’ll see to them, er, I mean I’ll dispose of those.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Six hundred and two girls offering to body paint up and be Caphans for Vizh alone,” wondered Dancer. “Well, mostly girls.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes,” said Hallie icily. “Imagine that.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I was,” leered Flapjack.     Donar screwed another paper into a ball and hurled it into the bin. “So few of these applications hath the appropriate whompage abilities,” he complained. “Of what combat use ist the power to change the colour of people’s toenails?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He could help the pseudo-Caphans accessorise?” suggested Dancer.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I couldst mayhap arrange an audition?” Donar brightened. “Putteth them all in a stadium with me and whoe’er art standething at the end mayest join us? And the valkyries can sort through the rest.”     Yuki put the application from Domestic Violence on a special to-visit pile all of her own. “You’re going to have to keep ploughing through these things without me for a while,” she explained. “I’ve a meeting with Anna. Try not to induct anyone too lame.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“More than 1.2 on the Nats scale, say?” offered Goldeneyed. “Sorry, bad taste. Bill irritated the hell out of me but I’m sorry he’s gone. I mean, without him who will I diss?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Many of these letters taste rather insubstantial,” rumbled the Manga Shoggoth. “Would it help if I swallowed several of these applicants and reassembled them into a disgorged useful one?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Maybe later,” Vizh said quickly. “Although if we don’t get a move on picking the line-up we want…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’re more likely to have Hodgekiss’ line-up imposed upon us,” concluded Yuki. “So yeah, let’s find some people.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But not Polygamy, Ferrethands, or Personal Hygiene Girl,” shuddered Dancer.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Maybe I could invent a really good shredder?” offered Al B. ***     Silicone Sally Resilyant struggled with her power-dampening collar and SPUD-issue manacles. “You can’t put me in here! This is the Safe.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s the Flanagan Island Metahuman Penal Containment and Detention Facility, yes,” agreed Warden Morgansten. He sneered over Sally’s security dossier at the woman herself. “It’s designed to hold scum like you.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I didn’t do what they say I did,” Sally told him. “A fair trial would prove that.” Even as she spoke she knew what the chances of a fair trail were. Baroness Elizabeth von Zemo had made sure that wasn’t likely to happen. “But you can’t hold me here till then! This is the Safe!”     Morgansten wasn’t impressed with the struggling inmate. “And it’s designed especially to hold murderous cop-killing terrorist scum with superpowers such as yourself, Resilyant. I’ve got not time for bitches who sell out their country and plot to slaughter children.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I was framed – by Baroness von Zemo. And she was confined in this same prison. She had months to get people here onto her payroll, prisoners and guards! If I’m locked in here, without my powers, I won’t last a week. I might not last a day.”     The warden closed her file and tossed it into the trash bin. “Shame,” he said insincerely. “Tell it to the federal officers you tortured to death.” He leaned forward and smiled nastily. “My predecessor, Westwood, he tried to do things the nice way. He tried to do it by the book. Me, I know you are all vicious, worthless scum who deserve living hell for the crimes you have committed. So listen carefully, Rezilyant…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Please, you have to understand…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re going to have a very unpleasant time here. There are staff queuing up to make sure. There’s plenty of inmates waiting for a piece of you as well. Don’t count on anybody coming to help when you scream.” Morgansten leaned back in his chair. “You probably won’t last the week,” he agreed with his new prisoner, “but while you do survive your life’s going to be pretty damn bad.”     Silicone Sally fell silent.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Now you get it,” Morgansten chuckled. “Take her to the cells, boys.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Look at you,” said Izzy Shapiro, pointing to her old boyfriend from before she’d died. “Look how much you’ve changed.”     CrazySugarFreakBoy! remained defiant. “Of course I’ve changed. Change is what I do. I’m all about change.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But not all change is for the better,” the goth ghost-girl replied. “I don’t like your new colour scheme, for example.”     For the first time Dreamcatcher Foxglove realised that his usual neon orange and green silly suit was glowing a sullen purple and grape. “These aren’t my colours!” He concentrated to try and shift them back. The impossibilityium suit resisted him.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Maybe they are now,” Izzy warned him. “How many times have you died and come back from the dead now? Twenty? Thirty? Did you think there wasn’t going to be a toll?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m a being of pure impossibilityium now, Iz. I can do anything.”     Izzy shook her head. “No, you can’t. Someone can do anything, sure. Someone can come back a thousand times, a million. But it won’t be you.”     CSFB! stopped in mid retort. “It won’t?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Look at you. You’re acting just like the bullies we used to hate. You’re throwing your weight around, threatening people, scaring people. When you fight now it’s all about how much stronger you are than them, not how much smarter of funnier or cooler or even righter. Sure, that’s what a champion of chaos can do, but is it what you want to do?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m not the same as I was when we were kids together, Iz. I’m married now, with a daughter and a little brother. I’ve got responsibilities. I’ve got a whole world that’s wrong and needs fixing. I’ve been hunted by my own country I’ve and I fought a Parody War. There’s a lot I know now that I didn’t know back then.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Of course you do. But have you forgotten stuff as well?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Have I?”     Izzy prodded him on the chest. “You’ve got a wife and a kid and a baby brother? Okay. Great. Where are they now?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I sent them into hiding. I think Hodgekiss and his secret government types are gunning for me and they might go after…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“In other words, you can’t even be with April and your folks because of what you’ve become. And what’s with using the Lair Legion as your personal attack dogs? What were Nats and Dancer, acceptable casualties?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No, not at all, I just…”     There weren’t many people who could successfully interrupt Dream. Izzy was one of them. “Hey, there’s plenty more where they came from, right? Now that everyone can become a Legionnaire and that. But you know what? If everyone’s special then no-one is special.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Everyone is special.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But not everyone’s a Legionnaire, or meant to be. What about Icy?”     The eye-bruising colours of CSFB!’s silly suit pulsed. “Yeah… Icy…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Amber called it right, Dreamy. You did all the right stuff but you did it in the wrong way. They were never going to let you save the world like this. And no matter how many times you die, no matter how dark you go, you’ll never win like this.” She prodded the champion of chaos again. “That’s your cue to say ‘what do I do, Izzy?’”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What do I do, Izzy?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What you do is you go say sorry to Amber. You make sure that your friends are okay. Maybe call Hatty and ask his advice. I mean, I’m good but I might just be a product of your overactive left brain. You make sure you don’t die again, because honestly next time what comes back isn’t going to be you any more and I’m scared of what he might be. And then you drop all this darker than orange crap and you think up some wonderful, brilliant, absolutely genius fabulous trick to sort it all out and save the day. And you make us all feel better, not worse, and the baddies you can’t beat you make us laugh at. Because that’s who CrazySugarFreakBoy! is.” She knocked on his head. “Got it?”     A slow grin blossomed across the wired wonder’s face. “Yeah… okay… I think I have a cunning plan…” *** 7. “Is Not Their Climate Foggy, Raw, and Dull?”     The penitential cell was left over from when Herringcarp Asylum had been an abbey. It’s bare damp walls rose to a high vaulted ceiling. The only light came through a narrow slit on the outer wall. The ghost of Amnesia knelt on the cold stone floor and did nothing. What was there for her to do?     She tried to remember happy times. She’d been told there had been some. She’d been loved. She’s been a person. She’d had views and opinions and tastes and dreams. All gone now.     When she tried hard, or sometimes when she let her guard down, she remembered the men with the ropes and the hot iron.     Amnesia shuddered.     Amnesia alone.     There was a muffled knock on the metal-studded cell door. Nobody knocked like that in Herringcarp Asylum.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hello? Is there someone in here?” asked a fluffy white head that poked into the room. Coal-lump eyes seemed to sparkle with more than frost. “I thought I heard someone crying,” said Icy the Snowman.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It was me,” Amnesia confessed. “Only me.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well that’s no good,” declared Icy, bustling into the room and offering the end of his scarf to wipe away the girl’s tears.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I can’t touch that,” the ghost told him. “I’m not corporeal here in the Asylum.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m sure you can,” promised the Snowman, dabbing at Amnesia’s cheeks. “Now what’s the matter with you?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“With me? What’s wrong with you? Aren’t you here to sacrifice your life in some horrible deal with Ioldabaoth or something? What are you doing here with me?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You needed me,” answered Icy. “I was made to make people happy.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re going to die!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But until then I’m going to look after you. Now what’s the problem?”     Amnesia wondered if Laurie, her former self, would have ended up talking to a snowman. She suspected that she might. “I’m bound to this place, to haunt it. I died here a long time ago, and it wasn’t very nice.”     Icy looked around. “Couldn’t the Hooded Hood give you a nice room? I saw some with four-poster beds and everything.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Every room I have ends up like this,” answered Amnesia. “I’m the Asylum’s ghost, not the Hooded Hood’s.” She heaved a sigh. “Anyhow, it’s better than what would happen to me if I was unbound. That’s going to be very unpleasant. So I take what I can. Half a life – or half a death, I suppose. And then the Hood tempts me to go and play superhero with the Lair Legion.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That can be very tempting,” admitted Icy. “But you should do it.”     Amnesia shook her head. “If the Hood wants me there then it’s not for anything good. Not good for people who used to be my friends. Not good for the world. I don’t remember what I did to deserve this fate but I’m not going to take other people down with me. With a few notable exceptions.”     Icy looked down at the trembling phantom. “Would you like an ice-cone?” he offered. “I’ve searched all over Herringcarp Asylum and I can’t find where the Hooded Hood keeps his sprinkles and chocolate sauce, but I have a small supply in my suitcase.”     Amnesia snorted a half-laugh half-sob. “Herringcarp’s not really a sprinkles place.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Then it’s lucky I’m around. Here. How about a slushee? Or if you know where the Hood keeps his supply of bananas I could maybe make a sundae?”     Amnesia closed her eyes and began to cry properly.     The twig hands of the snowman that closed around her to cuddle her were the warmest thing she remembered. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Okay, I think I’m dead now. You’ve finally killed me.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Dead?” giggled Liu Xi Xian. “Then what’s this down here? Rigor mortis?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I know having a regular boyfriend’s a new experience for you and that you were glad to see me on Shee Yar Prime,” Vinnie de Soth told her, “but after twenty-four hours of you being glad I really need some liquids and possibly CPR.”     The Oriental elementalist stretched out across Vinnie’s narrow single bed. She made his windowless room beneath the stairs of Alto Tumour’s Occult Bookshop and Tarot Store look far more decorative, especially in her current state of dress. “I’m just glad to be alive and not, well, being forced to marry anyone right now.”     Vinnie looked worried. “I didn’t propose, did I? I mean, I know I wasn’t paying too much attention to anything I was doing with my above-waist parts for a while there but I didn’t mean to… I mean not that I wouldn’t if… well, some day but… you see my family has…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Relax, lover. I just needed to feel… well, to feel.” She squirmed on them mattress. “And to have you doing the feeling.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m glad to be of service,” promised the young occultist. “Although I really need maybe half an hour and some high calorie food before I’m of service again.”     Liu Xi’s nose wrinkled as she laughed. Then her face became serious. “It’s really sweet of you to take all this time to look after me after… well, I don’t think any of us thought we were going to survive either of our visits to that Shee-Yar homeworld. I’ve never had an ordeal quite like it. I’m still fighting off the shivers.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes, that was a spooky place,” agreed Vinnie. “When I can pluck up the courage I’ll need to talk to the elder undead Vrykolakas about what the hell happened there.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And then there was Exu.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes. There’s more to that than meets the eye too. I’ll need to get to that as well when I can find my pants.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Lord Slithis said things,” Liu Xi admitted. “He talked about something watching me from the darkness. And he expected me to be his undead bride for eternity. And there was something about my timeline having not existed now so I’m not supposed to be in the Parodyverse now.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I can pretty much verify that you are in the Parodyverse,” Vinnie assured her. “Either that or this is the best erotic dream ever. But I imagine as acting sorcerer supreme I’ll have to take a view on Slithis and on Dark Thugos’ planetful of undead. And there’s something Xander told me that’s been bothering me that I really need to talk to you about.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Does it all have to be now, though?” asked the elementalist plaintively. “Can’t we just hide from the world with each other for a little bit longer? It’s such a new sensation to me, really, being blissfully happy with a boy.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Who?” wondered Vinnie before he caught on. “Oh. Me. Heh.”     Liu Xi slipped off the bed and padded across the floor. “I’m going to take a shower,” she told him. “You just sit there gasping and decide whether I might need someone to soap my back. And the rest of me.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’d love to once you’ve conjured me up some oxygen,” Vinnie assured her. “But I’m afraid there’s not really room for even one person in that cupboard Alto calls a shower room. You have to kind of tuck your head on your shoulder and keep one leg on the floor outside.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t worry about that,” Liu Xi called from beyond the door. “I’ve solved your space problems.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You what?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I solved them. I used void to mess with the dimensions here a bit. Your shower room now has all the space two people might need who want to soap and scrub themselves very, very thoroughly.”     Vinnie scrambled up from the mattress. “Liu Xi, I warned you not to manipulate dimensions here in my rooms,” he said. “There’s things you don’t understand that…”     The shower door slammed shut.     Vinnie raced over there. When he opened it again, Liu Xi Xian and the bathroom she’d created were gone.      ***     Denial answered the door. “CrazySugarFreakBoy!? Isn’t it your turn to go insane and take over the planet this week? What are you doing at Omega House?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“If he wants to take over things he can start with FA’s dishwashing rota,” called Kerry Shepherdson. “She always complains about my way of disposing of dirty plates.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Firecracker, the city fire department complains about your way of disposing of dirty plates.”     Dreamcatcher Foxglove grinned and entered the student fraternity that the Juniors had set up on the campus of Paradopolis U. “Sorry I haven’t had chance to get out and check up on my old students till now. I’ve been busy.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You have,” agreed Kerry. The probability arsonist was sprawled along a sofa in front of the TV with cotton balls wedging her toes apart while Vespiir applied nail varnish. “We could hear the screams from your press conference from here.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m wondering now if maybe I should have polished my speech a bit beforehand.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We watched the ceremony on the television viewer, Lord Fooxglove,” Vespiir confessed. “Lord Daanny and Lady Saamantha helped to explain the customs and traditions of your protocols. And how to calculate what odds one should use to bet upon your survival to the end of the week.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think you’d have to define survival, Vesp,” CSFB! admitted. “There seem to be different views on when I’d still be me.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Twas a disappointing broadcast,” Harlagaz Donarson complained, emerging from the kitchen with a horn of mead and an epic stack of pancakes. He flipped one to CSFB! then passed the plate to his housemates. “The shouting and dismay wast most promising but then the whomping and reaving did not begin.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think it might just have been postponed,” the wired wonder assured the demihemigod.     Fashion Accessory descended the main staircase. She wrinkled her nose at Dream’s colour scheme. “Eew. I’m so not with that look, C-Boy! It was okay when the Wicked Pixies did their album cover but it just doesn’t go with your image.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So I’m told,” admitted CSFB! “I’m working on it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hast thou come because thou needest extra smiting power?” wondered Harlagaz hopefully. “I canst cut mine classes with no difficulty. In fact I thinketh mine grades doth improve when I do.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nothing like that, big fella,” Dream apologised. “I just needed a bit of help on a problem I’m wrestling with.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I canst wrestle,” offered Gaz.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And so can Kerry and Danny,” teased FA. “Although Lyle denied that the bed ever caught fire and exploded.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And I so wasn’t even using my powers,” smirked Kerry.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What’s the problem, CrazySugarFreakBoy!?” asked Denial firmly.     Dream dropped down on a large comfortable bean-bag, syruped his pancake, and scarfed it in one. “Everyone wants to sort out a new line-up for the LL. I’ve got the guys on my back about it, and the press, and General Buttkiss, and half the governments of the world. I even got a snotty e-mail from HERPES demanding we make our minds up so they know who to slaughter.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And you wantest us to join?” enthused Harlagaz. “Um, mine father art not going to be there, ist he?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s the problem. I don’t know who to pick or how to pick ‘em. Whatever I do it seems like it’ll be the wrong play. That’s why I’m here.” CSFB! winked. “To cheat.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“To cheat?” puzzled Fashion Accessory.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Cheating is good,” approved Denial.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Cheat how?” demanded Kerry.     CrazySugarFreakBoy! leaned over to the Caphan seeress kneeling by the hearth. “Vespiir,” he asked her. “You can see the future. So who do I pick? Who’s on the next team of Lair Legion?” ***     Marker Man was at the front of the old stone Foundation, replacing the local graffiti with doodles of his own. He was a lank greasy-haired artist with a tool-belt of indelible ink pens. Some of his drawings could explode. He was sketching obscene pictures on the walls of his target building but his preferred canvas was human flesh.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey, what are you doing here?” he demanded as he spotted the orange coveralls and breathing hood of his comrade Garbage Burner. “You’re supposed to be round back.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Take a look at this,” said Hatman, holding out Garbage Burner’s flamethrower for inspection. As Marker Man leaned forward to peer at it, Jay Boaz pistol-whipped him and laid him out.     It occurred to the disguised capped crusader that he was still using headgear to fight supervillains.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Two down, two to go,” he breathed. From the screams then sudden silence inside the building he guessed that English Man and Dr Teeth had begun their hostage taking.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hatman!” called Dr Teeth. He held a child in a headlock and was applying jaw-stretchers to wedge the boy’s mouth open for unaesthetised extraction. “Come on out before the kid gets his cavities drilled!”     English Man grabbed Ellie Copper and brandished a razor sharp toasting fork to her neck. “Better appear, old chap,” he told Jay Boaz. “And without headgear, if you’d be so kind. Damsel in distress and all that, wot?”     The horrified crowd looked around to see if the Foundation Director would come as called.     Dr Teeth’s commlink beeped with an incoming signal.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What?” he demanded. “I’m just preparing for some major molar extractions here.”     The feedback caused when Garbage Burner’s transmitted was held end-to-end with Marker Man’s was enough to make English Man and Dr Teeth wince and scramble to pull out their earpieces.     Hatman was still in Garbage Burner’s coverall. He gut-punched Dr Teeth then kicked the back of the villain’s knees to bring him down.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Boaz!” snarled English Man, his veneer of calm dropping for a moment. “Cor blimey!” He reached for his poison gas umbrella.     Ellie Copper planted an elbow in English Man’s gut then tossed him over her shoulder. She was a GMY girl. She had to know how to look after herself.     Hatman took a flying leap and landed on top of English Man to prevent him using any of the various lethal gimmicks he wore. He dragged English Man’s jacket off, removing his killer rose and exploding cigar case and laser monocle. He crushed the hypno-bow tie and the sonic cufflinks. He punched him quite a lot.     Dr Teeth staggered vengefully to his feet. Judge Jones hit him in the face with a baseball bat.     The League of Losers suddenly realised that they were in the middle of a crowd of annoyed Gothametropolitians.     Hatman had to save them. ***     Vespiir of Viisionary retreated into the private harem quarters she shared with her tent-sister Lady Saamantha. She’d had a home here for two days now and the strangeness was wearing off. She was starting to love her room and her new place in the House of Oomega.     The seeress checked herself in Fashion Accessory’s full-length mirror. She made sure that her forehead was properly covered with a silken scarf and adjusted her hair and makeup so that she would look her best. She polished the links of her formal chain-mesh bikini. She added powder to her cheeks because terror made them too pale. Finally she knelt beside her bed (her bed and no-one else’s; she could sleep there without permission whenever she chose and nobody need join her if she did not wish it) and opened the small silver puzzle-box box she’d been given.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“My lord?” she called, trying not to tremble.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes, Lady Vespiir?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I… I have done as you commanded, my lord. I have revealed the future you desired to Lord Dreamcatcher. He will recruit the heroes you desire of him.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Very good,” approved the Hooded Hood. “Then the madness I agreed to retcon from you will stay gone and our bargain is done – for now.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Thank you, Lord Hood,” shivered the Caphan girl.     And then she wept. *** 8. “I Know Not If The Day Be Ours Or No.” Tie-ins to this section include: Adventures in Parodyverse: Precision Instrument #1 by Jason Bombshells and Fallout by Vizh An Open Letter from Senator Maxwell To the Nation A Public Statement from Congresswoman Alma Marshall on the Robot Issue Commentary by Judge Nancy Connor by Jason Whooooooooo! by ‘The Natural Boy’ Dick Spark Adventures in Parodyverse: Precision Instrument #2 by Jason     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Have you calmed down yet?” retired sexbot Tandi 9000 asked Hallie, the Lair Legion’s resident A.I.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Over what?” asked the green-skinned hologram woman. “Over Yuki fighting back for title of Least Predictable Loose Cannon by getting some judge to grant Anna American citizenship pending judicial review? Over Anna suddenly becoming the poster child for every extremist pro-and anti artificial sentience rights campaign ever? Over the announcement of major new legislation to turn all robots and living computer programs back into toasters and video games? Over months and years of careful viral marketing and delicate bridgebuilding getting blown away by one bad hair day?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, yeah,” agreed Tandi.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Of course not. I remain calm and positive,” said Hallie through gritted teeth.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, that’s okay then. I was worried.”     Hallie realised that Tandi hadn’t been programmed much in sarcasm. “I’m just a bit disappointed, that’s all,” she confessed. “I’d been planning… something, to do something, and now I don’t think that’s going to be possible.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A trip to Aruba?” ventured Tandi, who’d been secretly nursing similar dreams.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not exactly.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Something nice from the new Fredericks catalogue?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A hot tub? Visionary would really like a hot tub. Even Special Agent Garrick said that Vizh should be boiled alive.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No, Tandi. I wasn’t planning any of that. Can we drop it now?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Drop the Fredericks lingerie? Check.”     Hallie wondered if the sexbot was really as simple as she seemed. “You’re going to keep doing this till I tell you, aren’t you?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Doing what?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Fine. I was planning on joining the Lair Legion. As a member. Now I can’t.”     Tandi frowned “Why not? You’d make a wonderful Legionnaire! I mean, you’re already sleeping with Visionary.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I am not sl… why should that have anything to do with it?”     The sexbot shrugged as if it was self-evident. “Well, that’s how we get places, right? I mean, you did copy and modify my slutware TM programs so you could…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I wasn’t invited to join the Legion because I could… service… Visionary,” insisted Hallie. “People wouldn’t think that, would they?”     Tandi smiled weakly. “He’s a very nice man. Good boyfriend material. I bet you’d hardly even need your pain submission subroutines.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I am not… I mean, he wouldn’t… I wouldn’t ever… I am so not having this conversation.”     The sexbot moved on. “So if it’s not about you spectacularly failing to enjoy yourself with another Legionnaire then what’s the problem with you joining the team?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Because the Legion’s in enough trouble right now. The governments of the world are looking for excuses to shut us down or regulate us to death. If the LL sign up an A.I. who once went on national TV and proclaimed how easily she could take over the Earth how do you think that’s going to play while the Sentient Life Rights Bill – designed to deny robots the right to be anything but property - is getting drafted? The minute Anna got citizenship my membership of the Legion was dead.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But that’s not fair!” Tandi protested.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And your point would be?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The Lair Legion won’t keep you out just because the world’s governments will come after them. They’ll stick by you no matter what happens.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They will,” agreed Hallie, “and it’ll destroy them. So as far as the Legion knows, as far as anyone knows, I’ve decided I don’t want to be a member, okay. I’ve turned then down again. Why should I limit myself to one little superhero group? I’m a Heuristic Artificial Life Learning Intelligence Entity, a unique and amazing being. I don’t do spandex.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But you could if you dated him more often,” suggested Tandi. Tandi had a special and specialised worldview. ***     At the Herringcarp Sanctuary for Mental Wellbeing there was a well-lit room with a lovely picture-window view over the rugged shore where the gulls flew. The walls were an eggshell blue. The ceilings and doorframes were classically moulded. The paintings on the walls were tasteful Turner watercolour prints. A vase of orchids stood on a Greek pedestal.     Against the wall opposite the window was a freshly-made hospital bed with the sides up. The patient in it was connected to a bank of monitors that reported her vital signs. The brain function machinery showed a flat horizontal line with only the faintest occasional wobble.     Icy the Snowman sat in a chair beside the bed and waited and watched.     Amnesia was surprised to find the snowman in the room. “Why are you here?” she demanded. “How did you even find your way into this aspect of the Asylum?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I was just wandering about,” the snowman replied. “I thought maybe this young lady might need me.”     Amnesia looked down at the coma patient. “She needs something, but I don’t think this is something you can solve. Not even with an ice-cream.”     Icy nodded sadly. “I know. I wish I could help but I can’t. She’s very far away. Who is she?”     Amnesia touched ghost-fingers to the patient’s bandaged cheek. “Her name was Bethany Shellett. They tell me she was my friend.”     Icy looked at the pus-stained dressings across the girl’s face and body. “What happened to her?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There was an explosion. It burned her face off and left her blind and crippled.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s terrible.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It was terrible. Especially because she’d been tortured and coerced by a villain into setting the explosion anyway. She’s not realised what she was doing. She thought she was setting spying advices. Instead lots of people were killed.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The poor girl.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah. Evidently she only met the superheroes because of me. We were roomies. My ex-boyfriend even wanted to marry her.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Before this happened to her.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Actually, no. There was a seeming miracle. She somehow regenerated, fully recovered.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That is a miracle,” agreed Icy.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No it wasn’t. You see, there was this… person called Baroness von Zemo. She wanted to use Beth in one of her cruel plots, to programme my friend to be a secret assassination tool against Sir Mumphrey Wilton. So the Baroness used some formula cooked up by her mad scientist uncle to make Beth whole again – but only so she could hurt people.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Then that’s nasty,” agreed the snowman. “But if she was restored then why…?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A while later, after all the plots and stuff, when the Baroness had been defeated and poor Beth Shellett had run away from everything ashamed of how she’d been used, it amused the Baroness to neutralise the formula she’d administered,” said Amnesia bleakly. “That’s how my old friend, a sweet, caring, loving woman who never willingly harmed even a fly, a girl who chose to spend her life teaching orphaned children, a woman who sat long months with Goldeneyed keeping him sane while he was in agony in a dimensional doorway defending Earth, that’s how she ended up here like this.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ohh…” sympathised Icy.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah. And that’s why, when I go after Baroness von Zemo as Citizen Z nowadays, I put on Beth’s body to do it. When I possess Beth her wounds aren’t so bad and together we fight for justice.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That sounds… well, I suppose your friend would be okay with it,” considered the snowman. “As long as it is justice you’re fighting for. I don’t think she’d want to be part of some nasty revenge plot.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes, well… Anyhow, the Hooded Hood and his Portal of Pretentiousness allow me to go out there and do this stuff, and meanwhile Beth gets the best attention possible here at Dr Valium’s clinic. And Ioldabaoth has given his word that one day I’ll get the chance to restore Bethany Shellett to how she was before.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So you made a bargain with the Hooded Hood too!” realised Icy. ***     Hatman didn’t call the GMY police department to collect the Frightsome Four. He knew better than that. The good people of the city sat on the villains until the vast bulk of the SPUD helicarrier loomed overhead.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So you still kept the carrier codes, Hatman,” surmised Contessa Romanza as she watched the sentinoids march the felons away.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Seems like I still need them,” answered Jay Boaz. “Can I get a transcript of their questioning?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not officially,” replied the glamorous Russian spy with a little wink. “I think we both know what they’re going to eventually tell us, nyet? And we both know there won’t be a chain of evidence back to the source.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not yet. But I’ll keep pushing.” ***     The garret was dark and full of cobwebs. Ancient books lined the walls, some on shelves, many just standing in piles on the floor. Atop them all were yellowed pulp magazines, old periodicals, and page after page of hand-scrawled manuscript.     A woman in dark gothic clothing knelt on the faded carpet and stared at a quarto. Every so often her hand twitched towards an old quill pen in a glass inpot then stopped.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I know you’re there,” she warned without looking round. “Come out.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Is this a bad time to call?” asked the newcomer. “I am…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Camellia of the Fey,” supplied the gothic writer. “That’s what you call yourself, anyway. Your real name is hidden. Hidden and… burned?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I had an accident,” hissed the belle dame sans merci. As she limped from the shadows the scars on her left arm and face were more visible. Her half-mask gleamed bone white in the candlelight. “Those who caused it will spend eternity screaming their apologies. Soon.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Why are you bothering me then?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Why? Because you have been wronged too. I know you have.” Camellia pointed to the black-red ink in the well. “You have been wronged and stolen from.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He stole some of my ink, yes, though it is mine and it is me. Some he sold to his sponsors and some he used and some he kept.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So you seek revenge on him, that Ivan Strode?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That is the name he uses, yes. That is his mask. His masters are the Census brothers, and they sold on my essence to others. It went into the Ghost Writer’s typewriter ribbon.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And Strode used it for his tattoos. For example, those elemental symbols he placed on the arms of the hero Alcheman.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes. Stolen from me, all of it. Mine, lost to me. Weakening me. Depleting my creativity.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Then we have common cause,” suggested Camellia of the Fey. “I am assembling an alliance to change the worlds. We can both find reason to collaborate on the downfall of Alcheman.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I suppose we can,” agreed the writer in black.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Then what shall I call you?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Call me Penny Blood.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So you made a bargain with the Hooded Hood too!” realised Icy     Amnesia backed away a step. Her ragged tabard twitched in an invisible breeze. “I suppose I did. But I’m already dead. You’re not.”     Beth Shellett lay comatose on the bed, her burned face motionless beneath the pus-stained bandages.     Icy fiddled with his scarf nervously. “I don’t mind dying, or oblivion,” he said. “Well, obviously I do. But that’s the price for bringing back Nick Smeaty, and I’m the one who should pay it.”     Amnesia shook her head. “You’d do that? Die to save that scumbag?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nobody should have to die. Nobody at all. I don’t want to kill anyone. I have to do what’s right, Amnesia. Laurie.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And doing what’s right includes bringing back a guy who was a complete waste of space and will probably spend the rest of his life hurting other people?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, Nick deserves a chance to change, doesn’t he? He deserves another chance to make good. Everybody deserves that. You deserve that too, Laurie.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Me? Did you hear the part where I’m dead?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I did. And I saw the part where you came to look after your hurt friend, and you told me about how you still want justice, and you explained how you weren’t going to let your friends be hurt even though you can’t really remember them just now.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What’s your point?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There are worse things than being dead.” The snowman smiled his coaly smile. “I don’t know much but I do know Christmas. It’s about wonderful second chances, Laurie Leyton. Whatever your condition, I think that while you can choose you can be a person. And what you choose decided what sort of person you are.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There’s no escape for me, Icy. You don’t know what…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s not about escape. It is about being a good person. It is about doing the right thing no matter what the cost.” Icy sighed. “This is why I must do what the Hooded Hood wants so that I can put right what I did to poor Nick Smeaty.”     The ghost of Herringcarp paused, thinking. Then she said, “Yeah, well, that’s why I was looking for you, Icy. About your deal with the Hooded Hood.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Is he ready to see me now?” asked the snowman. “He said he would ask me again, because that would make it harder for me. And it has. It has.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The Hood sent me to find you. He’s changed his mind. He said to tell you that he’s found a way of restoring that Smeaty guy without you having to die. And he’s changing Smeaty’s life so he’ll be a better man. So you’re off the hook.”     Icy’s twig eyebrows raised in surprise. “Really? I thought the Hooded Hood wasn’t able to do anything without my sacrifice.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, well, he’s a really clever archvillain. Anyhow, Smeaty’s fine now, back home with his folks,” lied Amnesia. “You have no reason to make a bargain with Ioldabaoth any more.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Why… that’s wonderful! I must go and thank the Hooded Hood right now!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, Ioldabaoth’s kind of busy, which is why he sent me. But really, Icy, it’s all fixed now. Nothing left to do. Only you have to go. Go away from Herringcarp right now. Go far away. Go back to whatever place it was you came from and stay away from us, from the Hood, from the Lair Legion. Go back where you belong and keep making people happy.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Thank you!” beamed the relieved snowman. “Oh, goodness! This is marvellous. I should go right away. Mom will be watching and worrying for me.” He glanced at Beth Shellett. “I’m sorry about your friend. I hope the Hooded Hood will be able to help her like he helped me. He’s a very kind man!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’ll make sure he knows that,” said Amnesia insincerely. “Now off you go, Icy. Goodbye!”     Amnesia helped the snowman pack his suitcase and watched him vanish over the causeway from Herringcarp and disappear into the snow.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Goodbye,” said the ghost, softly. “Better you go home. Let Smeaty rot in hell.”     She turned back to tell the Hooded Hood that his bargain had gone sour. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They failed!” snarled Velma Klein. “They couldn’t take down one unarmed, unpowered bleeding-heart do-gooder! And now I’ve got a SPUD helicarrier looming over my city! And Boss Deadeyes will be laughing at me, eroding my authority, weakening me for the coming elections…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It doesn’t matter,” said her guest. “It’s not the big picture. You have to work on the big picture.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And you’d know big,” the Mayor replied before she stuffed her hands over her mouth to edit herself.     The Lynchpin of Crime levered his massive bulk out of his chair and smiled unpleasantly. “Yes. I know big,” Harry Flask agreed. “And now I’m back.” *** 9. “We Band of Brothers”     General Terrence “No Nickname” Hodgekiss looked up from his desk to see who the latest interruption was from.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hi. I’m Dancer,” said Sarah Shepherdson.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, I saw your file. What is it you want to scream, bitch, and whine about, honey?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Why would I want to do those things? I’ve brought you a coffee mug. A collectable Lair Legion coffee mug.”     The General eyed the young terpsichore suspiciously. “You brought me a mug? Didn’t you get zapped by a depowering ray this morning?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I did. But don’t worry, that stuff happens to superheroes all the time. It just means I can work on my career as an upcoming superstar for a while before my powers come back at some dramatically appropriate moment. I could use the vacation time.” She saw Hodgekiss’ expression. “I am still sort of cross with you. That’s why I didn’t wash the mug before I brought it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So what’s your angle, honey? I don’t take bribes and I don’t get sweet-talked and as far as I’m concerned while your powers are gone you don’t have any reason to even be here in this building.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Me? I just came to let you know that Dream’s having another press conference. He’s going to announce the new Lair Legion line-up. We’re all very excited.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He’s what?” bellowed Hodgekiss.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He’s talking to the press. He does that sometimes. Ratings spike.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“When?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, all the time. There was that one when he mooned the President, and that one where he showed the paparazzi why they’d need wide angle lenses to get naked photos of him and…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I mean when’s that moron talking to the cameras?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, that. The line-up announcement?” Sarah checked her watch. “I guess that would be two minutes ago.”     She stepped aside just in time as the General ran from the room at full pelt.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’ll just leave your mug here by your briefcase,” Dancer called after him. “It’ll be a nice souvenir for you after you’ve left us.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Let’s get this straight,” checked Visionary. “Dream’s making another broadcast and we don’t know what he’s going to say and we’re not wearing body armour and we don’t have a taser gun to hand?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, I‘m armoured,” pointed out Yuki. “But I say let him go for it. It could be a wild ride.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The level of interest in his statement is quite high,” Al B. Harper admitted. “I’m getting patch-through requests from the Reticulum Matrix for broadcast across the galaxy.”     Goldeneyed winced. “Wow. So now we can screw up on a galactic level. I really rejoined at just the right moment.”     The Shoggoth looked up from a classic edition of Rurouni Kenshin. “What are all these people doing here?” he wondered. “Ah well…” He went back to the Meiji period.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Dream’s making another press statement and we’re all going to die,” Yuki summarised for the loathsome elder creature.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Himura Kenshin has found Kamiya Kaoru in the middle of a fight with a murderer who claims to be the Hitokiri Battōsai from her swordmanship school and he is about to help her defeat the impostor,” the Shoggoth updated her back.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, that’s some good news, I guess,” breathed Visionary.     Dreamcatcher Kokopelli Foxglove emerged through the French windows of the Lair Mansion and strode out onto the lawn. He held out his hand and Al B. tossed him a mike.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Okay folks,” said the leader of the Lair Legion, “Listen up, because I’ve a few things to say…”     In the background there was the sound of a Detonator Hippo accidentally sitting on a four star general. ***     Gideon Book watched on a black and white plasma screen in his Seattle penthouse office. “This is the moment,” he said to his daughter Pelopia, priestess of Order. “This is the fall of CrazySugarFreakBoy!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Everything is in place, father,” Pelopia replied. “I obey the Word of Logos.” *** [Dream’s speech provided by CSFB! himself]     CrazySugarFreakBoy! looked out over the expectant sea of media people and to the general public lining the bridge to Paradopolis beyond. He glanced over at his mother then over to where Izzy Shapiro was chatting with Marie Murcheson. He looked over at his team-mates. Donar gave him the thumbs-up.     He began. “Well, this has been one hell of a week, huh? Okay, fine. Let's us do this thing, then.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ain't none of you all that are gonna tell me that my goals for the world were wrong. Everything I did, I did because I believed, and I still believe, that it was the right thing to do.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hallie, what are the statistical chances of Dream surviving to the end of this speech?” Vizh wondered.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There’s not enough processing power on the planet to deal with numbers that big,” the A.I. replied.     Dream went on. “That being said ... maybe, just maybe, I didn't go about doing everything entirely in the best way that I could have done. Or, you know, maybe you all are just a bunch of assholes who didn't appreciate a good thing while you had it, but that's totally beside the point by now.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Whether it was me or the world who was right, I wasn't solving any problems by beating my head against the same damn wall, over and over again, and expecting a different result.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Would have been good to figure that before the whole leading us into a trap at Coeur D’Aline,” said Nats, watching the broadcast on a fuzzy TV in the Ghost Taxi Rank drivers room. “All well, better late than never.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“If there's one mistake I did make, it was letting the bastards get under my skin and make me act dumb,” said CSFB! “Believe it or not, I actually can be smarter than I've been acting lately, and it took some friends to wake me up to that.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“To that end, and because there's one hell of a lot of people out there - AIs, cyborgs, aliens, mutates and all manner of other people - who are staring down the double-barrels of being denied both citizenship and personhood, I'm gonna put my money where my mouth is on this issue…” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What’s he doing now?” Amnesia asked the Hooded Hood as the cowled crime czar glared into the black depths of the Portal of Pretentiousness.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He is making an impassioned plea for the right of all sentients,” replied the archvillain. “At length.” He gestured so that the ghost of Herringcarp Asylum could hear the wired wonder’s voice.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It's not just that I think, and therefore I am; it's that I feel, and that makes me real. And the same goes for everyone else out there who's just looking to not get legislated out of existence…” said CrazySugarFreakBoy!     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What are you planning, Iodobaoth?” demanded Amnesia. “How is Dream making a speech going to destroy the Legion?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It will set the shape of things to come,” replied the Hood. “Once this particular team with this particular leader is set in place then my plans are secure.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I stopped you from destroying Icy. I can stop you again.”     The Hooded Hood looked amused. “You think I wanted the snowman destroyed? Are you certain I didn’t want to know for certain whether you were still Laurie Leyton?” ***     Back on the Lair Lawn, CrazySugarFreakBoy! walked amongst the reporters again. “Before I move on, I'd like to briefly address the small matter of the Pogroms of Purity, and how some dipshit outfit of knuckle-dragging assclowns based outta Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, got a hold of enough ordinance to wage war against Sauron. Now, far be it from me to make any accusations, but speaking as someone who took half a semester of journalism, I would simply point out that the public might possibly have some questions about how Karl Braun and company came into the possession of an arsenal of such suspiciously specialized weaponry, whose development and disposition would have necessarily required the input of some of the highest IQs and government clearances from across the globe.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“If you, too, are curious as to the niggling details of this minor discrepancy, I would welcome you to contact General Terrence Hodgekiss, whose office, cell and home phone numbers are running on a repeating crawl across your television screens as we speak.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What? How’s he doing that?” demanded Vizh.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Um well,” said Hallie, evasively, “somebody may have hacked the TV satellites I suppose.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well okay then,” approved the possibly-fake man.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I would ask, however,” Dream urged the press, “that you understand if the General is a bit short with you. After all, he is a proud patriot who has stood up to serve his country, in spite of our military's shameful restrictions on allowing homosexuals, such as himself, to come out of the closet. I sympathize so much with the strain that he must be under, living the lie of pretending to be a straight man for all these decades, that I wasn't even offended when he offered to waive his objections to me if I would let him suck my dick. I only hope that all of you show the General the same amount - exactly the same amount - of kindness, sensitivity and tolerance that he's shown to so many others over the years.”     Goldeneyed sprayed the mouthful of coke he’d just taken over the nearest pressmen. “We’re all so going to die!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But what a way to go,” admired Yuki. ***     Watching the speech on a public screen on rail platform 11 of the Paradopolis Interchange Amber St Clare turned to the good looking woman standing next to her and gave her a big, passionate kiss.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What was that for?” the startled girl asked the former LL liaison officer.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Because I don’t have to clean up what Dream just did,” Amber laughed. “Life is so good sometimes.” ***     CrazySugarFreakBoy! had made the circuit of journalists now and was back with the team; that portion of them that weren’t sheltering behind the bulletproof podium.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So, yeah,” he concluded, “maybe we can't fix all the world's problems in 22 pages, plus ads, but you know what? There are still concrete steps we can take right now, however small they might seem, to make the lives of others just a little bit better.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Um, yay?” ventured Visionary.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And so, without any more delay, I’m proud to announce the next line-up of the world’s greatest, coolest, full-of-win, collectable, in-continuity, never-Bendised all-awesome superhero team, our very own Lair Legion. Our new roster’s gonna be…”     And CSFB! announced his list.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s going to be who?” exploded General Terrence “No Nickname” Hodgekiss as he heard the names.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Never mind the who,” responded Al B. “Let’s start with the how?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You asked all these people and they said yes?” G-Eyed marvelled. “Even…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Asked them?” Dream replied. “Why? Who wouldn’t want to join the LL?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh yeah, this is going to be good,” sighed Visionary. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It is done,” said the Word. “Congratulations, Hood, on a campaign well executed. Dreamcatcher’s fall is now assured.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, one other thing,” CSFB! announced. He grinned at the audience and held out his arms wide. His silly suit crackled with light, burning away the sullen muted purples to return to neon green and orange. The vicious sneers on his costume logos became beaming smileys again. “I got the line-up from this Caphan seeress girl who can see the future. But I’m not real big on inevitable destinies and all that noise. So I’m making one more change, just because I can. I won’t be leading the new line-up. I’ll run the field-team with Yuki as my deputy. We’ll promote someone else as Chair to be in charge of the whole show, like back when Mumph ran things in the war. So boys and girls of all ages, gender choices, colours, and e-browsers, I give you the new glorious leader of the Lair Legion: Visionary!”     The wired wonder kicked the podium aside to reveal the crouching possibly-fake man.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Congratulations, Vizh!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Wait… what?” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Visionary? Can we work with that?” Harmanda Barriere asked the Grey Eminence.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They say he’s harmless,” Aldrich Grey considered. “I’m not so sure.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So we watch.” ***     Amnesia looked over at the cowled crime czar. The Hooded Hood sat with his fingertips cradled staring into the Portal of Pretentiousness. “What just happened there?” she ventured at last.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“CrazySugarFreakBoy! proved to be the embodiment of chaos,” the archvillain replied. “This will require more consideration.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So the Legion’s not doomed after all.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not… yet.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Your plan only worked if CSFB! led them into some kind of global robot rights war?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“My plan worked quickest that way. There are other possibilities.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Are you mad at them?”     The Hooded Hood did not reply; but if anything he looked like a man who was enjoying a proper challenge for once. ***     Hatman and Natalia Romanza weren’t watching the big speech. They were still doing the big clear-up, watching SPUD technicians carefully clearing Marker Man’s incendiary graffiti from the sides of the Foundation.     Ellie Copper skipped down the steps outside the old building, excited and elated in the post-trauma adrenaline rush. “Jay was amazing!” she told the Contessa. “I mean, you had to see him. I didn’t really believe he was a superhero – well, I knew he’d been a superhero, the Hatman from the Parody War, but until I saw him I didn’t truly make the connection to believe…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It was only the Losers,” Hatman said, slightly embarrassed. “Mayor Klein could have hired someone far, far worse.”     Atop the Foundation rooftop, cloaked by technology good enough to mask her from the helicarrier above, HuntingJustice DeathMarrow adjusted the sights of her special rifle. “She could have,” the killer agreed as she listened by long-range mic to the conversation below. “Someone else did.”     She fired just one shot, dead centre into Jay Boaz’ forehead, right through the skull. That was all it took. *** To be continued as we reveal who is on the new team, how their new Glorious Leader reacts to his sudden return to power, how General Hodgekiss reacts to the new Glorious Leader, what happens in GMY after the Boaz shooting, whatever happened to Liu Xi Xian, and why Saturday nights at Paradopolis U will never be dull again. That’s coming next in Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Candidates Tie-Ins: The Paradox of Growing Up a Mixed-Race Kid by CrazySugarFreakBoy! Adventures in Parodyverse: Precision Instrument #3 by Jason Adventures in Parodyverse: Precision Instrument #4 by Jason *** And for the record, here’s the full text of CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s speech as chronicled by Mr Kirk Boxleitner: Well, this has been one hell of a week, huh? Okay, fine. Let's us do this thing, then. Ain't none of you all that are gonna tell me that my goals for the world were wrong. Everything I did, I did because I believed, and I still believe, that it was the right thing to do. That being said ... maybe, just maybe, I didn't go about doing everything entirely in the best way that I could have done. Or, you know, maybe you all are just a bunch of assholes who didn't appreciate a good thing while you had it, but that's totally beside the point by now. Whether it was me or the world who was right, I wasn't solving any problems by beating my head against the same damn wall, over and over again, and expecting a different result. If there's one mistake I did make, it was letting the bastards get under my skin and make me act dumb. Believe it or not, I actually can be smarter than I've been acting lately, and it took some friends to wake me up to that. I ain't given up on trying to change things, but I'm gonna go about it a lot smarter than I've been doing lately, and step one of that means no more collateral damage. Ain't nobody else who should have to suffer the consequences of my actions except for me. To that end, and because there's one hell of a lot of people out there - AIs, cyborgs, aliens, mutates and all manner of other people - who are staring down the double-barrels of being denied both citizenship and personhood, I'm gonna put my money where my mouth is on this issue, to a degree that nobody else can. If our lawmakers see fit to nullify the rights and identities of any person who happens to fall outside the baseline parameters of biological humanity, then I ain't gonna stand on the sidelines like some damned dilettante and passively let it happen, because this is about my rights and identity, too. I was born 100-percent baseline human, but after I died and came back to life - the first time - my physical form was transformed into pure Impossibilitium, and for those who don't grasp the implications of that, Impossibilitium is so named because it's a substance that every known law of science, magic, logic and God says shouldn't be able to even exist in reality ... and yet, here I am. The biggest brains on the planet can't even verify whether I still have DNA. Heh ... half the time, I feel like Swamp Thing in "The Anatomy Lesson" anymore, but that doesn't even matter, because I still feel. It's not just that I think, and therefore I am; it's that I feel, and that makes me real. And the same goes for everyone else out there who's just looking to not get legislated out of existence. So, this is me, making myself a Wikus Van De Merwe man without a country, so that even the most cynical among you will have absolutely no doubt that I will do everything I can to make this a country for all, even if you're convinced that I'm nothing but a self-serving jerk-off, because now that I've burned my bridges behind me, I'm stuck in the same leaky life-raft as everyone else who's faced with the prospect of impending unpersonhood. Before I move on, I'd like to briefly address the small matter of the Pogroms of Purity, and how some dipshit outfit of knuckle-dragging assclowns based outta Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, got a hold of enough ordinance to wage war against Sauron. Now, far be it from me to make any accusations, but speaking as someone who took half a semester of journalism, I would simply point out that the public might possibly have some questions about how Karl Braun and company came into the possession of an arsenal of such suspiciously specialized weaponry, whose development and disposition would have necessarily required the input of some of the highest IQs and government clearances from across the globe. If you, too, are curious as to the niggling details of this minor discrepancy, I would welcome you to contact General Terrence Hodgekiss, whose office, cell and home phone numbers are running on a repeating crawl across your television screens as we speak. I would ask, however, that you understand if the General is a bit short with you. After all, he is a proud patriot who has stood up to serve his country, in spite of our military's shameful restrictions on allowing homosexuals, such as himself, to come out of the closet. I sympathize so much with the strain that he must be under, living the lie of pretending to be a straight man for all these decades, that I wasn't even offended when he offered to waive his objections to me if I would let him suck my dick. I only hope that all of you show the General the same amount - exactly the same amount - of kindness, sensitivity and tolerance that he's shown to so many others over the years. Heh ... you know, I should have expected to catch at least this much hell, when I decided to try and change things. I mean, we're debating the rights to life and liberty of people who, in many cases, aren't even biological at all, let alone biologically human, but at the same time, we're so small-minded that we can't even see fit to afford the pursuit of happiness to plenty of people who are fully baseline human. All across the country, there are kids who aren't being allowed to attend their own high school proms, just because they're boys who want to bring other boys as their dates, or girls who want to bring other girls as their dates. Love can be so rare sometimes, and yet, we're telling kids who still have enough heart to believe in it that they don't deserve it? I mean, for real; what the fuck is wrong with us? So, yeah, maybe we can't fix all the world's problems in 22 pages, plus ads, but you know what? There are still concrete steps we can take right now, however small they might seem, to make the lives of others just a little bit better. As such, as my final official act as leader of the Lair Legion ... *** 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.

From the Hooded Hood's comments it sounds like Yuki may have nearly destroyed the universe by getting Anna citizenship. I think she wouldn't be sad about it though, more like she would think that's kind of cool, to have so much power.

There are going to be an awful lot of shootings once I post "A Random Shooting" someday.

Now I wait to see who the new lineup is, where Liu Xi is, and how the General will react.