Previous Post #345: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: More Candidates Go to Part Five: The Last Thing That Went Through His Head Go to Part Six: Prisoner: Cell Block X Previously: CrazySugarFreakBoy! has announced the new line-up of the Lair Legion – and Visionary as it’s new chair. This is news to Visionary. And the new line-up. And the government.5     Meanwhile, in Gothametropolis York, depowered former Legion leader Hatman survived an assassination attempt by Mayor Vera Klein’s hired Frightsome Four only to be shot in the head by HuntingJustice DeathMarrow.     Proceed. The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse *** 5. The Last Thing That Went Through His Head     The bullet hit Hatman right in the middle of his temple and sent him toppling back onto Elli Copper. The GMY Foundation’s young pro-bono lawyer fell backwards with the bulk of Jay Boaz on top of her, covered in his blood.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Shooter!” shouted Natalia Romanza, Agent of SPUD, into her ear-ring comm-link to the helicarrier above. “Protocol Kennedy. Now now now!” She dived at the side of the old Foundation building and ran up it using her particle-attraction gloves and boots. The shot had come from up there.     On board the high-tech flying aircraft carrier technicians lit up the ground below with concentrated particle scans, high intensity cameras with face recognition software, anti-teleportation fields and a host of other diagnostics and countermeasures.     The crowd that had gathered at the Foundation scattered screaming. Judgement Jones, the building janitor, jostled his way to where armoured SPUD agents were lifting Hatman off Eli. “As you alright, Miss Copper?” he demanded urgently.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They shot Jay! They shot Jay!”     Contessa Natalia vaulted over the lip of the roof and landed in a cat-crouch to look for enemies. “Talk to me, boys,” she told the helicarrier.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Cloaking field active at your five o’clock,” came the reply over her ear-ring. “Retreating fast.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Kill the field.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s a tricky one.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Be trickier.”     There was a fizzing of static and HuntingJustice Deathmarrow crackled into view.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not bad,” noted the assassin-for-hire. “I’m going to have to ask Factor X for my money back.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Maybe in twenty-to-twenty-five years,” suggested the Contessa. She somersaulted away from the rapid-fire proton gun that HJDM manifested – the biomorphed killer could generate weaponry at will – then returned fire with her own wrist-mounted taser darts.     Judge helped the SPUD operatives keep the crowd back while a medic examined Hatman. Elli had the capped crusader’s blood all over her white blouse. “Is he going to be all right?” she demanded in a terrified whisper.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He’s dead,” replied the medic. “I’m sorry. The shot penetrated the skull and mashed the brain. Death was instantaneous.”     On the carrier new problems were appearing on the threat board. “Sir!” the chief diagnostics technician called to watch command, “we’ve identified half a dozen other high-technology signatures that were concealed with masking technology. The nearest one is twenty feet from Hatman.”     Watch command called it in to security on the ground. Two SPUD troopers turned their weapons to the crowd. “Excuse me, sir. You in the big coat. Hold it there!”     The big coat turned round and the big hat came off. What was underneath wasn’t even shaped very much like a human. Black metal and sharp edges tore out of the concealing clothing and Mean Machine flexed his razor blades. “You got me, fleshies,” he grated at them with metallic menace. “I guess it’s a fair cop.”     The helicarrier threat board lit up red. “Sir, we have a confirmed rogue robot from the Machine Shop down there! We’re reading Mean Machine, and that means the other five signatures are likely Machine Shop too. We’re…”     Then all the signals from the ground went dead. Media Machine could control broadcasts.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I want troops on the ground and cars in the air now!” shouted watch command. “Scramble everything!”     Mean Machine was still in communication with his team. “They made me, boys,” he reported with anticipation. “I was just confirming that Boaz was a kill so’s we could all go home when they spotted me in the crowd.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So now we get out of here the wet way,” replied Fitness Machine. “Let’s give these fleshies something to cry about.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What about the heroes?” worried Sewing Machine, ratcheting her needle guns to wide-spread.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They’re too busy fighting their government,” replied Karaoke Machine with a giggle, “Besides, Media’s imposing a blackout. Right lover? Yeah yeah yeah!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Right,” the slick telegenic communications robot confirmed. “I’d say we have time to send humanity a real message. And then we still pick up a participation fee as the Losers’ backup from Mayor Klein.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sounds good,” approved Weighing Machine. “I’ll start by bringing that helicarrier down onto the city with an ultra-gravitic pulse. And then I’ll squaaarrrrkkk!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Weighing?” called Fitness Machine. “Your signal’s dropped out.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, so’s his CPU,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! told the Machine Shop over their private frequency. “And I have bad news about the heroes all being tied up. Wanna guess what it is?” ***         The mission had gone wrong. A simple assassination had turned into a full-scale war with SPUD. Now CrazySugarFreakBoy! was on the scene as well, adding to the chaos.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Get out of there,” called Fitness Machine. “Nobody’s paying us to off that geek today.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“This one’s a freebie,” promised Mean Machine, slashing at the wired wonder with his multi-jointed steel blades. “I can’t stand this guy.”     CSFB! bounced away, dumped Sewing Machine into Karaoke Machine to blunt both their assaults, then caromed back into Mean. “Is that why you never call, never write?” he asked the killer robot. “I thought it was just that you were so busy at the office.”     Mean Machine hacked away at where the champion of chaos had been. “You can bounce around as much as you like,” he warned CSFB!. “I only need to tag you once.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Once is the problem, though,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! grinned. “I mean, Mean, every time I jump away I pound some of your guys. Ooops, that’s me dropping Answerphone Machine into the sewers.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Media Machine,” came the annoyed clarification from below the pavement.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And now I’m silly-stringing Karaoke to you so if he uses his sonic attack he’ll blow your arm off first.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Kill you!” shouted Mean Machine, going into a frenzy.     Fitness Machine kicked Dream into a wall and caught him with a straight-arm punch as he rebounded back. “I just got word from Master Machine,” the dexterous athletedroid announced. “He says we can kill this one to send a message.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Better call for reinforcements then,” Dream warned them.     Fax Machine teleported in with Adding Machine, Popcorn Machine, and Smoke Machine.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We did,” said Fitness.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s CrazySugarFreakBoy! He has known weaknesses,” Adding noted dispassionately. “Popcorn, fire on the crowd.” ***     The SPUD stretcher-bearers had retreated into their shuttle to help protect the incarcerated League of Losers. The perimeter guards were scattered trying to evacuate the crowd. It was left to Judge and Elli to drag Hatman’s body back to the shelter of the Foundation lobby.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It felt wrong to just leave him lying out there,” Elli explained to the puffing janitor.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes, well, before this is over there’ll be a sight more lying like him,” predicted Judge. “Look, they’ve forced CrazySugarFreakBoy! to protect the crowd so now they’ve caught him with sonic blasts and exploding cornballs. They’ve got that one that belches fumes pushing the SPUD soldiers away. Everybody else is piled on to the hero.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Where’s reinforcements?” cried Elli. “The lair Legion? Why don’t they come?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They’ve blocked all calls fer help,” Judge guessed. “Even that big flying ship up there’s in trouble after whatever that Adding Machine did to it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They’re going to kill CrazySugarFreakBoy!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Looks like.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We have to do something!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’d be dead the minute we stepped into that.”     Elli looked down at Hatman, his forehead bloody and sundered, his face corpse pale. The wound was ugly and raw. Elli plucked Jay Boaz’ traditional Hatman cap out of his waistband, shook it out, and laid it gently upon his head.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We so need a hero now,” she wept.     Hatman’s eyes snapped open. ***     The battle between HuntingJustice DeathMarrow and Natalia Romanza had been fast and furious, but finally a gut-kick and a nerve punch had taken HJDM down. The Contessa ruthlessly dislocated her target’s neck to keep her pacified.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re going to pay for what you did to Jay,” the vengeful spy promised the assassin. “So is your employer. And you are going to tell me who hired you to do this, comrade, I promise you that.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It was Pelopia of Order,” answered HuntingJustice DeathMarrow without hesitation. “On behalf of the Word of Logos. They wanted that known.”     Natalia frowned. “Jay Boaz was formerly the champion of Order,” she objected. “Why would the Emissary of Order arrange his murder?”     HJDM laughed. “Murder? Who said it was murder?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The bullet you put into his brain was the clue.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Of course I put a bullet in his brain. How else could I deliver back the Serious Matter that he’d lost? The Serious Matter that makes him Hatman.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Jay?” Elli Copper scrabbled away from the former corpse on her backside.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yep,” agreed the capped crusader. He sat up. “Explanations later, I think. Right now it looks like Dream needs my help. The brave and the bold.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You wus dead,” objected Judgement Jupiter.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I was laced with Serious Matter that makes me take on the aspect of whatever cap I wear, and then Elli put my Hatman hat on me. So now I’m restored and I have to go kick some Machine Shop butt. Back soon.” Jay Boaz pulled off his regular hat; his forehead was unscarred. He selected his Dynamos hat and jumped into the fray with an electromagnetic pulse for openers. ***     Sewing Machine hammered a series of toxic needles to pin CrazySugarFreakBoy!’s arm to the pavement so that the wired wonder couldn’t avoid the incoming blade barrage that was Mean Machine. Dream made an impossible twist aside, disorienting Mean with a series of fizz-bang explosions, but his escape attempt was thwarted by a series of popcorn blasts right in his face.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Any last words, fleshy?” mocked Media Machine as Karaoke turned her mixmaster array to liquefy.     CSFB! blinked up through the smoke, gasping for breath. “Oh yeah…” the sucrose-powered superhero told the Machine Shop. “Always. How about… hi Hatty?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hi H…?” Karoke Machine puzzled right before Hatman scrapped her.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hi Dream,” called back the capped crusader. He pulled off his ear-muffs and switched to his Hurricanes cap to clear Mean and Sewing away from his partner in crimefighting, then went in close with his Steelers hat.     CSFB! tore his arm loose and bounded after his friend to ram rocket fuel soda pop down Media Machine’s throat.     Natalia Romanza dropped down on Smoke Machine from above and attached something small and metallic from her hip-pouches. The fume-generating robot crackled once then fell over.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“This has gone bad!” Fitness Machine recognised. “Fax, get us out of here.”     But Fax Machine had been Hatman’s next target. “What, you think we haven’t practiced this before?” asked Jay Boaz.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And also that we aren’t the coolest baddie-bashers in the history of the Parodyverse,” jazzed CrazySugarFreakBoy!. He leaped towards Hatman. Jay donned his genuine Babe Ruth cap and batted his friend right into Fitness and Popcorn. “Yeeeeh-hah!” commented the wired wonder.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You can’t stop us, fleshy heroes!” warned Adding Machine. “The odds are so much against you that… urrrrrrrrkkkzzzzz!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Check your sums again,” advised Hatman, pulling off his Dancer headband. “Nice shoes though.”     Sewing Machine turned towards the injured SPUD men and the remaining trapped crowd. “Back off or they all die!” warned the angry robot.     The sudden spray of combat candy and silly string knocked the machine off balance. Hatman literally flew through the assailant in his Torpedoes hat.     That left Mean Machine at bay. The sadistic instrument of mass murder turned and pounded up the steps of the Foundation towards Elli and Judge, either to make them hostages or simply to kill them for pleasure.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Manoeuvre Nine!” called Hatman to CSFB, pulling on his Jerry Coleman hat to anchor his partner. Dream hurled himself forward leaving a ribbon of silly string attached to Hatty and looped himself round Mean Machine. Hatman slipped into his Uganda Cranes cap and hoisted the robot up and away from its victims with inches to spare.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You think that’ll stop me?” shouted the livid Mean Machine, spitting oil, struggling loose. “You think anything you two fleshies have got can stop me?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hard to say,” Hatman shrugged, whiplashing the robot high into the air. “Guess we’ll leave it to the helicarrier then.”     The SPUD helicarrier systems were back online without interference from Weighing Machine and Adding Machine. Weapons designed to battle a dimensional dreadnaught auto-locked on the airborne Mean Machine and fired.     CSFB! and Hatman high-fived as the robot was blown to a scatter of machine parts.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s sent a message all right,” agreed Natalia Romanza. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So you weren’t dead?” checked Elli as the clean-up continued. “This ruined blood-soaked blouse was just an illusion?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think I was,” Jay Boaz judged, “right up to the point where you put my Hatman cap back on me. But then the Serious Matter I’d been shot with activated and transformed me to what I usually am.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s a superhero thing,” CSFB! explained to the boggled lawyer. “We do this sometimes.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s not a trick I could pull off again,” Hatman warned.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Who’d think I’d have to thank the Word of Logos for getting my buddy back?” Dreamcatcher grinned. “Of course, I’ll still have to defeat Wordy and all his nefarious plans.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Why does the Word want me back, I wonder?” speculated Jay worriedly.     Judge looked at the restored capped crusader with equal concern. “Now that you’re all superheroey again does that mean you’ll be goin’ back to the Lair Legion and abandoning the Foundation, Mr Boaz?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hatster, you have to come back,” CSFB! told Jay. “I totally already announced it and Vizh is gonna need someone to be Training Officer for the six newbies. It’ll be great!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’ll be there for the Legion,” agreed Hatman. “But I’ll be there for the Foundation too, Judge, Elli. I don’t take my commitments lightly. I’ll even move in here when we’ve got a room sorted out. We’re going to clean up the mess and make things better than ever so the world’s a safe, fair place.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s… good,” smiled Elli Copper. “Are you talking about the Foundation or the Lair Legion?”     Hatman just grinned.      *** 6. Prisoner: Cell Block X     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No?” said Yuki. “What do you mean, no?”     Chief Warden Randolph Morgensten tossed the sheaf of paperwork back across the desk at the purple-haired cyborg P.I. The sheets scattered over the floor. “I mean no, you can’t withdraw the prisoner. Not gonna happen.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Can you actually read? Did you see the government stamps on the Terminus Team discharge forms?”     Morgensten sneered. “Any of Barriere’s liberal rehab scheme that touches on this Federal Metahuman Containment Facility is at the Governor’s discretion. The Safe’s got all kinds of special exemptions to allow us to properly incarcerate the supervillain scum we have to hole up here. We don’t need due process. We’re allowed cruel and unusual. Civil rights stop outside the door but the dregs of society stay locked inside.”     That sounded suspiciously well rehearsed. Yuki glared at the corpulent new warden of the world’s foremost supervillain prison. “You’re subject to checks and balances same as anyone else. Except me. I’ve got papers here for the release of Svetlana Rezilyant and I’m not leaving without her.”     Now Morgensten shrugged. “Then enjoy your stay. We got plenty of guys down in the locks and racks who’d be happy to shack up with a cute wind-up bed toy – when they’re tired of Silicone Sally, I guess. But all my prisoners stay put. Every one.”     Yuki frowned. “You’ve put her in general population? In mixed gen pop?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“First concern here at the Safe is how to keep nine hundred metahuman freaks from walking across the water to GMY or Paradopolis and murdering folks. Everything’s designed with that in mind first. Power neutralisers, energy dampeners, teleport blockers, the works. Mundane security’s better than any max security jail on Earth and that’s before we use the esoteric stuff. Whether a perpetrator has a pee-pee or not comes way down on my list of concerns.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But not on hers,” growled Yuki. “You can’t just throw her in there with those bastards and…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Listen, pinkie, that murderess tortured and slaughtered good agents and left their kids fatherless. She plotted nuclear terrorism on a school – a school – in our nation’s capital. She took money from one of the worst terrorists on the planet to do it. As far as I’m concerned she can rot in here and I hope every con in the place violates her… civil rights.”     Yuki got back in Morgensten’s face. “That person is accused but not convicted of those crimes. She’s not been to trial. The evidence against her hasn’t been tested – and everything about it is ringing alarm bells in my head. And to lock her up here – in Baroness von Zemo’s prison, given the history between Silicone Sally and Big Bad Beth – might as well be a death sentence.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“She had a presidential pardon and she still plotted against her country. Far as I’m concerned a death sentence is too good for her.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well you don’t get to decide that, Warden Morgensten, and I’m here to take her away from your pathetic little empire so she can get some proper justice.”     Morgensten snorted. “What, because your fruity Technicolor hero friend had a spazzy-fit on TV and announced Silicone Sally on the Lair Legion line-up? Why not add Elvis and Mickey Mouse while he’s at it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We already had ManMan and we don’t have a good history with Big M,” Yuki answered. “But the paperwork you need’s across your floor. I’m taking Sally out of here now and you can cry about it all you want later.”     Morgensten touched a button on his desk and four fully-primed Sentinoid battle-drones glided into the room. “Nobody tells me what to do in my prison, pinkie. Get out now or stay and wish you hadn’t. Last warning.”     Yuki looked at the four top-range metahuman suppression systems. She was in a facility designed to defeat and restrain any super-powered combatant, amidst a whole array of devices intended to de-power and confine or even kill aggressor metahumans. The odds of winning were next to nothing.     Yuki loved a challenge. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No?” said Officer Kedgley. “Are you sure?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes,” glared Svetlana Rezilyant. “I won’t do that. Go do it to yourself and all your buddies here.”     The prison staff seemed amused by her resistance. “Your choice, fresh meat,” Kedgely told her. “But we’re your only protection against the inmates out in gen pop. It’d have been nice to know you while you still looked like your centrefold spread. While you’ve got teeth and no facial cuts and stuff.” He leaned over the security-shackled prisoner. “Last chance.”     Silicone Sally told him about his mother’s habits and got a cuff across the face.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Give her to the scum,” hissed Kedgely.     Sally was roughly hauled to her feet and marched through a series of security gates. The last opened up onto the ground floor of a massive hall with caged balconies. Twenty bolted-down trestle tables along centre of the room were just being cleared of the evening meal. Three hundred inmates noted the new prisoner’s arrival with interest.     Silicone Sally suppressed a shudder. Beth von Zemo’s revenge was a cruel thing indeed.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Get to know your fellow cons,” chuckled Kedgely. “When you’ve had enough come begging to us at the gate.”     Silicone Sally tried to think of a snappy comeback. The sick feeling in her stomach choked off her words.     The gate slammed shut behind her. The guards hadn’t even removed her wrist restraints.     A dozen cons peeled away from a larger group and ranged around Sally like wolves. “Well now…” began Sledgehammer.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t,” Sally warned him. “Don’t even start. Get away from me before I kill you.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah,” snorted the Drooler. “Like you aren’t wearing that power-dampening collar same as all of us. Like you won’t look good wearing only that power-dampening collar.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I might not be able to kill you right away,” admitted Sally, “but I’ll still kill you.”     Cro-Magnum leaned in close. He smelled of five-to-twenty of not showering. “I like a feisty one,” he leered. “I like…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh please! Please tell me you didn’t just call her feisty!”     The convicts looked round to see the previous latest inmate shaking his head. “Butt out, Clement,” warned Sledgehammer, “While you still got a butt.”     Randolph J Clement slipped in under Cro-Magnum’s armpit, waving his hand to keep the smell at bay as he ducked past. He planted himself between the cons and Sally. “Hi, Sally. I’m the Mutate Liberation Army, also known as RJ or Randy. Welcome to the Safe. These are the guys who beat me up earlier and are about to do it again.”     Sally couldn’t help but return his outrageous smile. Even covered in bruises and contusions he was better to look at that the cons cornering her. “Good to meet you, RJ. Next time let’s pick a better nightclub.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah,” agreed the MLA. “They let anybody in here. You don’t even need a shirt.” He gestured to Cro-Magnum. “I don’t think he can actually operate a shirt.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Get the hell out of here, mutate,” warned Sledgehammer. “before I have the Drooler bite your pecker off and eat it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I don’t think he could manage it all in one sitting,” Randy answered. “And it’d still be three times the size of yours.”     Sledgehammer punched the MLA in the face. The MLA ducked aside so the bully’s fist smashed into the concrete wall behind.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I wasn’t kidding,” Silicone Sally warned the cons. “Walk away now or you are all dead men.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, listen,” RJ talked fast. “All of this, this cliché, you think this isn’t just what the Warden wants? Morgensten likes to make us into animals, worse than beasts. He wants us to fight and rut and hurt each other for his amusement. You wanna give him that satisfaction?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No,” said the Drooler, looking at Sally’s ample form and her straining prison shirt, “I wanna…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We don’t have to play his game. We can be better than that, man. You can be better than that.”     Just then the prison video systems burst into life. It was a repeat of the day’s news.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And in a startling conference this morning CrazySugarFreakBoy! announced his proposed new line-up of the Lair Legion,” said the commentator. “Here’s the footage from the lawn of the Lair Mansion.”     The picture focussed on the wired wonder. “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 me, Yuki, Donar, Vizh, G-Eyed, Al B. Harper, Manga Shoggoth, Liu Xi Xian, Vinnie de Soth, Silicone Sally…”     The rest was drowned out by the roar of the whole general population turning towards the new inmate.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Crap,” said the MLA. ***     The Sentinoids towered over Yuki.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Know what I suspect?” the cyborg P.I. told Morgensten. “I think you’re a shape-shifting Skunk. A big ol’ green alien spudly disguised as the real prison governor.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What?” blinked the fat chief warden.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sure, all the signs are there. Lack of proper procedure. Less-than-able intellectual capacity. Blubbery jowls where the shape-shifting was a bit sloppy. I’m afraid I’m going to have to confine you till I can call in experts with anal probes, Morgensten.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re insane!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, a Skunk would say that, wouldn’t he? Or are you a Hero Feeder? Or a Space Fandom? Either way I’m going to have to take you down.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The Safe is equipped with sensors able to detect all of those things,” growled the Chief Warden. “You’re just making this up in some pathetic attempt to cause trouble.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m telling you for the record why I’m going to have to take you down,” Yuki Shiro explained. “It’s Vizh’s first day on the job as leader of the LL. This’ll make the paperwork slightly less difficult for him.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What paperwork?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The paperwork about what I’m about to do now.” Yuki shifted suddenly and tossed the first Sentinoid into the second. “This stuff.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Take her!” shouted Morgensten. “Take her now!”     Yuki kicked his desk across the room to send the governor crashing down.     The two fallen sentinoids began to rise. Yuki triggered a cross-communication between their command-and-control systems sending them twitching back to the floor as each pilot’s mental interface suddenly operated both suits. The other two enforcer exo-skeletons lurched forward.     Yuki knew that their on-board response computers would have adapted already to prevent that trick working again. She back-flipped over to where Morgansten was gasping to his feet, seized the fat chief warden, and hurled him into the arms of another sentinoid.     It was as she’d hoped. The sentinoid’s over-ride programming prevented it from inadvertently harming prison staff, and especially the governor. The system froze for a moment as the automated systems warred with its pilot’s commands. Yuki toppled it forwards to pin Morgansten beneath it and further confuse its logic circuits.     The final sentinoid adapted to Yuki’s speed and dexterity and caught her by the neck. Yuki increased her speed and dexterity by the 5% she’d been holding back and snapped off one of the machine’s fingers before it was able to immobilise her.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hold still now or I’ll EMP you to death,” warned the Sentinoid’s pilot.     Yuki hurled the severed finger across the room with absolute precision. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“This was a bad time for you to make a new friend, wasn’t it?” Silicone Sally admitted. She and the MLA were backed up to the wall as half the inmates of general population clustered round them.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey, Lair Legion,” called Sledgehammer, “we got some payback for ya.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“This isn’t really how I expected my day to go,” admitted Randy Clement, “but on the bright side they were going to hospitalise me for something sooner or later anyhow. I’d rather it was this than an argument over soap.”     Sally launched a kick at the first inmate to lunge at her. She caught Drooler right in the groin and he folded over with a satisfying whimper. “I’m a total bitch when I’m cornered,” she warned gen pop. “Last chance.”     From the gateway she could hear Officer Kedgley snickering.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Okay, this is going to hurt,” admitted the MLA.     Sledgehammer’s fist caught him in the belly and folded him over. Cro-Magnum slapped Sally backwards and Brutacus and Massacre pinned her down.     Sally felt her collar click as the power-suppression device turned off. Three floors above a Sentinoid’s finger had been hurled with precision accuracy at the Governor’s defence control board.     And the best thing was, only Sally’s collar had been deactivated.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Alright,” Silicone Sally grinned. “Game on!”     She swelled like a balloon, hurling back her attackers long enough to morph her plastic shape out of her wrist-cuffs, then flexed her fingers so each one wrapped round the throat of one of her adversaries.     In the background Kedgely raced for the escape alarm.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I warned you all what would happen,” Sally announced as other inmates fled away from the angry morphing villainess. She hoisted Sledgehammer, CroMagnum, Massacre, Brutacus and the others in fingers become nooses. “I told you I’d kill you!”     Sledgehammer and the others were turning purple.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Maybe not kill you right off, though,” Sally hissed. “I could slither inside you and do quite a bit of damage. Tear you up from the inside out. Seems like turnaround to me.”     The doors at the far end of the hall opened and half a dozen Sentinoids appeared to subdue the escaping prisoner.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything!” shouted Silicone Sally. At the quote for Nietzsche’s ‘The Antichrist’ the hidden programming introduced by Baroness von Zemo kicked in and toppled the armoured guards to uselessness. Sally only pretended to be a brainless bimbo around the Baroness. “Now where were we, boys?”     Cro-Magnum lost bowel control as he was asphyxiated.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sally, wait!” The MLA limped to his feet, clutching his belly. “Don’t kill them. Don’t let the Man win! Don’t play Morgensten’s game and become the animal he wants to make you!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You know what he was going to let these bastards do to me!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Even that’s not as bad as making you do it to yourself,” R.J. pleaded. “You said you weren’t guilty of what they put you here for. You’re not murderer – yet. So don’t become one. Don’t let them make you one.”     Silicone Sally relaxed her grip on the choked felons.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Of course, I don’t mind of you beat the crap out of them,” the MLA amended.     Officer Kedgely and his colleagues burst into gen pop with their power suppression rifles. Sally hurled the prisoners at them.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Time you ran,” suggested Randy.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Time we both got out of here,” agreed Silicone Sally.     The MLA indicated his collar. “My powers are still shut down. A flexible chick can maybe escape somehow through ducts and stuff, but if you try and take me you’ve no chance. Just get out of here, Sally. At least I’ve done my good deed for the day, okay?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re dead if you stay here,” judged the flexible felon. “Hold on. Do each of these collars get set for our individual powers?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah. It’s state of the art. Why?”     Sally slipped her hand down between Randy’s collar and his skin, insulating him from its effect.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Okay, that’s pretty cool,” admitted the MLA, shifting both of them to super-speed. “Let’s go.”     Office Kedgely almost had enough time to draw in breath before Sally and the MLA were over him. Automated defences set to react to escape were too slow to stop a flexible felon moving as fast as the speed of sound.     Sally and the MLA got almost to the outer perimeter before Yuki caught them. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No,” said Yuki Shiro. “That’s as far as you go.”     Silicone Sally assumed a defensive posture, ready for attack from the cyborg P.I. “I can take you if I have to,” she warned.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You really can’t,” Yuki promised. “Maybe if I trained you for a while, but…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey, if anybody has to take the pretty babe in the leather jacket I volunteer,” R.J. enthused. “Hi, I’m the Mutate Liberation Army. Call me Randy.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Call me in five years when you’ve started shaving,” retorted Yuki. “Let me guess, related to Josh Clement?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“His cousin. And I’ve inherited all his powers. How did you know?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m a fabulous detective. Stand down, R.J. I can’t let you escape from the Safe.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m not going back there,” Sally warned Yuki. “I was framed. They’ll kill me – eventually.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, I agree,” said Yuki. “But there’s an alternative. Pending a proper independent review of the evidence and a fair trial you could sign onto the Terminus Team programme and act in the public good as a licensed superhero.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Terminus Team?” snorted Silicone Sally. “The Deathwatch Detail? Those losers?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Lair Legion,” offered the team’s deputy field leader. “The big leagues. We take on the major stuff the rest can’t handle. The Parody Master. The Hooded Hood. Dark Thugos.” She glanced over at Sally. “Baroness von Zemo.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Or I could go back to the Safe and get to replay every bad prison-girl movie since 1971,” considered Sally. “Suicide missions with the LL or snuff movies here. Like I even get a choice.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You already made a choice,” Randy told her. “Back there, when you didn’t kill those guys. Although you could maybe have chosen to pound them just a little harder. You did the right thing, and that makes you Legion.” He looked over to Yuki and attempted a charming split-lipped smile. “I don’t suppose there’s room for another member on your team, is there? Or maybe some space in your diary for dinner and a club?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Down, kid,” Yuki advised him. “Sally’s ready for the big leagues. You’re strictly jun…” She caught her breath. “Yeah, I know just where to put you,” she chuckled. “You ever thought about a college education?”     The siren sounds changed to warn that the nerve-gases were being released and the Safe remote confinement drones were weapons free. Nano-proofed pressure seals and force fields slammed into place. “I don’t think any of us are going anywhere,” worried Silicone Sally.     Yuki raised an eyebrow. “Like the Legion didn’t make sure when this place was refitted that we couldn’t get out of here if we had to. After SR 1066? With Harper, Hallie and me around? You think Beth von Zemo’s got overrides? Try this: Initiate Protocol Wotta Revolting Development! Clearcode: With great power must come great responsibility.”     The Safe section where Yuki stood cycled down to passive mode. A wall-hatch opened and delivered three steaming-hot lattés.     Yuki sipped hers. “So, you in?”     Silicone Sally took the proffered paper cup. “I’m in.” *** Coming Next: Ghost in the Machine Images by Visionary (thanks) *** 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.

...Yuki wasn't there. She loves smashing the Machine Shop to bits. She'll be sad she didn't get a chance.

Good thing Hatty is alive, but I'm wondering just when the Word will collect the debt, claiming that without them he'd be dead. In a way I guess that means it's good Hat is branching out to the Foundation, because if that debt involves the Lair Legion, he has the capability to distance himself from it to protect it.

And Hat never said he'd return to *leading* the LL, did he?

I wonder if anyone heard that comment about Klein. All it takes is one screw-up like that from the bad guys, and the Feds would be raiding the GMY mayor's offices. That could hurt her re-election chances.