Previous Post Untold Tales of the Lair Legion #348: The Core, or Deepest Down Go to part one, part two, part three, part four, footnotes Previously: Lair Legion training Officer Hatman (Jay Boaz) has led the team’s new intake (Alcheman, Ham-Boy, Liu Xi Xian, Citizen Z, Vinnie de Soth, Silicone Sally, and returnee Goldeneyed) on an orientation training exercise into the ancient tunnels left by the long-gone Deviate race. Learning of the kidnap of the Hole Man, ruler of the underground realm, by “brain eaters”, our heroes pursued and discovered the subterranean land of Agharta, complete with artificial sun radiating vril energy – the lifeforce of Earth.     Things go downhill when the Legion enters a mysterious city and encounter the psionic predators known as the Spawn of Umsharr. Losing control of their minds they turn on each other and are apparently destroyed.     And yet here is another issue… The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse ***     Beneath the ancient city was an ancient vault. Inside the ancient vault was an ancient creature. It woke.     It was still confined, of course. The technologies that locked it in were as near to magic as made no difference. Components from the same source as those that created this prison had been salvaged and used to confine Prisoner Zero under the Safe metahuman prison on Flanagan Island. The only difference was that the Safe design included a door. This cell under the ancient city had been built around the prisoner as he slept.     The walls were weaker now, though. The Celestians had lost interest in this technology, distracted by cosmic concerns of their own. That was how the sleeper had returned to awareness. That was why he could consider escape.     All he needed was to understand. The information taken from the Hole Man’s mind was a start. The perceptions from the other humans helped. Now it was only a matter of disabling the machines and slithering free.     Umsharr the Unspeakable flexed his tentacles and planned. ***     Liu Xi Xian tumbled, naked, desperate, from the world of matter and time, abandoning the flesh that held her there. She shook off the trailing tendrils of brain-sucker that tried to bind her, tried to drag her back to slavery and oblivion, and plummeted inexorably into the savage telluric tides that pulsed beneath the City of Umsharr.     It was like diving into a tub of maggots tossed inside a spin dryer. Nothing the young elementalist had experienced before had prepared her for it. Even the time she’d had to reconstruct a body for herself from bare elements was unlike the feeling of being torn away from the world by sour psychic rapids.     Instinct took over. Managing the mental equivalent of holding her breath, Liu Xi plunged into the fastest-moving of the currents. As it swept her along she squirmed away from the dark clotted accretions of congealed diseased vril energy that matted around the alien city. She marshalled her strength then managed a dive into cleaner streams, then again into a pure white channel of fresh telluric force.     The transfer was not without cost. Liu Xi felt the last of her power sap from her. Without flesh to generate more she was helpless now, swept along on the deep currents of the world, caught in and gradually becoming part of the lifeforce of the planet.     It’s for the best she thought to herself. I don’t want to go back. I killed Vinnie.     The terrible moments replayed in her memory: the appearance of the brain-eating tentacle-headed Spawn of Umsharr, the sharp commands in her mind to burn the sorcerer, the bright actinic flash as she’d bade her boyfriend’s flesh ignite.     Liu Xi allowed the tide to carry her along, deeper and further, knowing there was no way to return.     Time meant nothing in this eternal stream, but at last the exhausted elementalist realised that she had drifted into some gentle backwater. The vril energies lapped upon a matter shore; or at least the semblance of a matter shore, since Liu Xi had no sense of it with her elemental gifts. She wondered if those abilities were tied to her body, to her DNA; she wondered if she’d abandoned them with her flesh, there beside the smouldering corpse of Vinnie de Soth.     A gentle hand touched Liu Xi’s shoulder, helped her scramble onto the bank. Liu Xi looked up and saw a girl-child wreathed in flowers looking down at her.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Who…?” she began.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t fear,” said her rescuer. “I’m the Earth Maiden. The Celestian Madonna. I’m here to help you.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He’s waking up. I told you he wasn’t dead.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I never said he was dead. I just said he might be dead.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You just wanted to give him the kiss of life. You slut.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s an approved method of waking princes. And testing frogs. What’s wrong with wanting to wake him?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’re supposed to be princesses. There are standards.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Where were your standards when you stole my pearl comb then?”     Ham-Boy opened his eyes. “Umm?”     Two anxious princesses looked down at him. They were identical, blonde haired and elgantly coiffeured and very pretty.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Welcome, my lord,” said the first. “I’m Alina. And I’m not a slut.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And I’m Elana,” said the second. “She so is.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Where am I?” the meaty marvel wondered. He sat up and looked around the silk-strewn boudoir.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Why, you’re in our tower, my prince,” said Elana. “You are a prince, aren’t you? Say you’re a prince.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m not a prince. I’m Ham-Boy. A superhero.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And I kissed him!” squeaked Alina. “Eew. Mind you, does a superhero count as a knight? I could kiss a knight.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I bet you could,” sniped Elana. “Anyway, the point is, Sir Ham-Boy, are you here to rescue us or what?”     Ham-Boy looked around the room. A high thin window looked out over the spectacular panorama of the underground jungle. “So I’m still in Agharta!” HB realised. “But where are Mr Hatman and the others? How did I get to be here? Who are you?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We already told you,” said Elana, slightly sharply. “She’s Alina the slutty one and I’m Elana the not-slutty one. We’re princesses and we need rescuing. Are you going to rescue us or not?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, I guess I can,” agreed Ham-Boy. “What do I need to do?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The usual,” sighed Alina as if it was self-evident. “You fight the monster that holds us here. If it doesn’t kill you horribly and you somehow manage to beat it then we’re free.” ***     Goldeneyed looked out over the grey neutral plain and saw nothing.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hello!” he called out. “Anybody home?”     There was no echo. There was nothing to echo off.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Comic-Book Limbo?” he speculated. “No, even that place had dust and stuff. And I could still teleport locally there. Here I can’t, because there’s no points to join together. There’s no distance at all to power my abilities.”     Bry Katz tried to pick through his memories of the last few moments before his frantic blind teleport. The Spawn of Umsharr had been rooting in his mind, seeking to control him. He’d blinked out even though he knew the city around him was a dimensional minefield.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And here I am. Nice one, Bry.” He looked around and sighed. “At least when Nats got stuck for eternity he got to shack up in a crystal with Uhuna for endless sex.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t get your hopes up, Bryan Katz,” said a voice in his ear.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Gah!” G-Eyed gasped, leaping away before whirling round to discover Citizen Z stood behind him. “Where did you come from?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Good question,” CZ admitted. “I don’t actually remember how I got here. And what am I wearing?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Er… your costume?” suggested G-Eyed. “How badly did those brain-eaters get you?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“My costume? This?” Citizen Z looked down at the tattered black and purple bodysuit and ragged cape. “Why would I wear a goth version of Baroness von Zemo’s outfit, after everything she did to me?”     G-Eyed’s eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute. Are you telling me you don’t remember that you’re Citizen Z? Or that you’re here on a mission with the Lair Legion? Agharta? Hole Man? Journey to the Centre of the Earth?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Bry, I’m not Citizen Z. That was Beth von Zemo, remember? She infiltrated the Lair Legion.”     Goldeneyed took a breath. “Okay, time out. We need to establish a few things. First off, how do you know me?”     Citizen Z tsked. “Now that’s petty, Bry. I know our dating life didn’t go that well at the end and I ran out on you, but I’m pretty sure you remember your ex-girlfriend, right?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“My… ex-girlfriend?” G-Eyed swallowed. “Citizen Z is… Laurie Leyton?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ooh, classic blunder,” said Citizen Z. “That loses you all your points. Sorry, Bry, but I’m not Lisette.” She pulled off her mask. “I’m Bethany.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Wake up, moron,” said the woman shaking Hatman fiercely. “I didn’t come all this way just to play nursemaid.”     Jay Boaz struggled to consciousness. The side of his head hurt.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Better,” said the woman squatting beside him. “This way, Hatman.”     The capped crusader scrambled up before he noticed a collar round his neck.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes, it’s a detention ring,” the woman said, walking off. “Do something I don’t like and your head explodes.”     Hatman recognised his captor. “Lo-Chi!” he declared. “I thought you were dead. You and all the Nebulus.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Doesn’t matter here,” the exotic stranger replied. “This close to the heart of the mystery, time and space and life and death get a little bit fuzzy. And I’ve always been here.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I don’t suppose you feel like offering footnotes?”     Lo-Chi turned suddenly and stared at Hatman as if deciding if he really needed his head any more. Then abruptly she said, “Look around you. See these ruins? They were once the great city of Shangri-La that appeared every decade for a few days to see if mankind was ready for enlightenment. At least that’s what we told them.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“This was the alien city where Jarvis got his powers,” Hatman remembered. “He called his energies the Jarvis Cosmic.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not egotistical at all, then,” Lo-Chi snorted. “We came to Earth because we wanted a working vril engine, like the one the Celestians left in the Aghartan tunnels. When we got here we had a few problems, because…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Because the underworld was ground zero in a war between the Austernals and the Deviates,” Hatman guessed. “And the Abhumans and the Sea Monkeys and the Detonator Hippos and all the rest.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Quite the zoo, yes. So we interfered. We helped the Deviates to raise the Spawn of Umsharr, a highly telepathic race that could disrupt the Austernal omni-mind and send them into a deep regeneration cycle for millennia. We helped the Abhumans develop Negativity Zone technology to trap the Deviates for even longer. We encouraged Maximess the Slightly-Mad to turn on his own kin and seal the Abhumans themselves inside a negativity Barrier. We sabotaged the City of Ur-Vakir, the Spawn’s centre of power, and sent it away into Comic-Book Limbo.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But you didn’t get to the vril engine,” Hatman noted. “It’s still here, acting as an underground sun for Agharta.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The Celestians protected it from all but Earth natives,” Lo-Chi admitted. “After many attempts to bypass their defences we decided to infuse a human with the… Jarvis Cosmic and send him to get it for us.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Jarvis said you’d set him up to betray the world. That you wanted to conquer it. He didn’t say why.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well now you know. And you know that he died stopping us.” Lo-Chi sniffed. “Some husband he turned out to be.”     Hatman bristled. Jarvis had been his mentor. “And I’m getting the history lesson because...?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Because now you’re here, all charged with the another manifestation of cosmic power, the Serious Matter, and you can get the vril engine for me,” said Lo-Chi brightly. “Or you can explode. It’s your call.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I know about the Celestian Madonna,” Liu Xi told the Earth Maiden. “She’s supposed to be my future daughter. You’re not her.”     The youngster in the flower headband smiled. “You’re out of date, Liu Xi Xian. And out of timeline. You were going to be my mum when you got pregnant by Danny Lyle. And I was going to grow up and marry spiffy’s fern and have a Fernbiote son who would be the Celestian Messiah who fixed and reprogrammed the Celestians. And the Fernbiote’s lineage would have eventually mated with the daughters of the house of von Zemo to breed Goldeneyed, Exile, and Suicide Blonde. But then you broke that destiny and overthrew your grandfather the Void Scholar so now none of that’s going to happen.”     Liu Xi pulled herself painfully ashore. She seemed to be on some kind of lush island in an ocean of vril. Even in her dazed state she understood that her mind was interpreting something else into images she could comprehend. “I broke destiny?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Only yours and a few other people’s,” the Earth Maiden comforted her. “You erased your own family’s origins, so now you and Goldeneyed are kind of detached from narrative causality and terrible things will eventually happen to erase you from the Parodyverse unless you do something to stop it, but that’s not your immediate problem.”     Liu Xi remembered Vinnie. “I-I’m…” she stammered, “I didn’t…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Your immediate problem – your most fundamental immediate problem - is that you shouldn’t be here. You’ve abandoned your body and entered the elements raw and you’re not supposed to do that. It’s terribly bad for you and your body will die seconds after you do it, and then your spirit will fade as well. You could only jump into the vril tides like that because of your elemental abilities and because your soul is stolen.”     Li Xi looked up sharply. “What do you know about that?”     The Earth Maiden pointed to herself with both index fingers. “Celestian Madonna, remember? Or at least I will be when I finally intersect with your timeline. A nasty necromancer named Slithis has attached a lien to your soul so that he gets first call on it when you die – about nine seconds from now real time. But actually that’s turning out to be a good thing.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“An evil magician holds my soul and will make me his unliving bride in nine seconds and that’s good?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, not the nine seconds thing. Or the bride thing. But, while he’s got that lien on you then the Void Spectre who’s stalking you to make you his conduit to enter the Parodyverse proper and do oh such mean things can’t quite get a lock on you. The Void Spectre must be getting quite frustrated by now. Meanwhile Lord Slithis can’t drag you to him while you’re alive because the Spectre’s pulling you another way. Two villainous plots against you are tangling each other up. At least for nine seconds.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Shame. But… look, I jumped here to escape some… tentacle-headed mind-controlling things. They made me do something awful. They’d have made me do worse.”     The Earth Maiden nodded sympathetically. “That is pretty horrid, but I’ll have to send you back there anyhow. This isn’t how your story has to go now. You’ve got to survive the bad bits – or not – to get to the better bits. But it was really nice to have you visit.”     Liu Xi looked around the fertile atoll. “I’m deep in the Earth-force, aren’t I? The very life and mind of planet Earth?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well that or a really great near-death out-of-body experience. Anyhow, take care, okay? Even if we’re not related now that I won’t be Samantha Bonnington and she won’t be your descendant it was lovely to meet you. Oh, one other thing: word of advice for when you get back to your self…”     Liu Xi listened intently and nodded, then plunged back to swim in the telluric tides. This time the current seemed to be sweeping her back to where she’d begun.     The Earth Maiden watched her go. “And take care of my mum and dad,” she whispered long after the elementalist was swept out of sight. ***     The monster was the size of a minivan, roughly humanoid but with spiked ridges on arms, legs, spine, and knuckles. It shimmered and shifted, now solid, now fluid, now visible, now not. Ridged iron hands flexed and clawed. Its growl was a screech of diamond on steel.     Ham-Boy dropped into the pit on a string of sausages and generated a ground cover of chicken wings ready for combat.     The beast crawled around the floor level of the princess’ tower, preventing access, preventing egress. As it moved its skin flashed with cabbalistic sigils that scrolled as if projected on the skin from some unseen lens.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hi. Can we talk?” attempted Ham-Boy. “I’d really prefer it if we could. I have some questions.”     The beast slammed one sofa-sized fist at the meaty marvel. Fred Harris dodged away, leaving the creature’s arm embedded two feet into the wall.     The being melted to caustic ooze then reformed to try again.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“First question is how did I get here?” Ham-Boy said. “I mean, I have nothing against rescuing beautiful damsels. This isn’t my first beautiful damsel rescue. I’m all for doing more of them. I even rescued Fashion Accessory once, from the New Battlers. Actually, Aline and Elana look kind of like Samantha. But that doesn’t explain why I’m suddenly in a fairy tale rescuing princesses from a tower.”     The monster opened it’s massive razor-toothed maw and hocked a football-sized wad of burning napalm at the world’s meatiest hero. HB generated a field of buffalo wings to cause the missile’s early detonation.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“See, last thing I remember is some tentacle-headed things coming out of nowhere and I got this sudden urge to clobber Mr Hatman,” Fred explained. “Gee, I hope he’s not mad when he wakes up. I did whack him kind of hard. But from there to a princess tower and a big scary monster doesn’t seem to add up.”     The creature closed the distance to Ham-Boy, morphing its hands to have long flaming claws. HB slid away on a sheen of offal, ducking the clumsy swipe that would otherwise have seared his head off.     Ham-Boy reached the main door. It was sealed shut.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Of course it’s locked,” breathed the young crimefighter. “Because otherwise it would have been to too easy.”     The monster opened one palm and sprayed HB with a cloud of choking yellow gas. Ham-Boy backed away, spluttering and gasping. Burns were forming on his exposed flesh.     He laid down a cover of bacon strips then commanded them to clamp across the monster’s eyes.     The creature flashed like magnesium. When Ham-Boy looked again the bacon was seared away.     The burst had been so bright there were spots in Fred’s vision. The purple shapes matched the outlines of the shimmering glyphs about the creature.     Familiar glyphs. The characters seemed to flicker between ancient alchemical symbols and modern English characters.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey!” objected Ham-Boy, “why are you wearing the same kinds of runes as Mr Alcheman’s tattoos?”     The monster turned and unleashed a spray of gravel fragments that hit like shotgun bullets.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ow! I was only asking. ‘Cause see, Mr Alcheman uses those tattoos to change his form, and you seem to be shifting form by brushing against those glyphs as they flicker over your skin. And they do look kind of the same some of the time only yours are nastier looking and spikier and a lot more slithery.”     The creature vanished like morning mist. Ham-Boy looked around, worried and confused.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I was only asking,” he called out.     The monster reformed from oxygen and clamped one massive anthracite fist around HB’s neck.     Ham-Boy’s natural instinct was to generate vast clouds of kebabs in a devastating and confusing spray into the creature’s face. It brushed away the annoying distraction that prevented it from tearing the intruder’s head off – and brushed its massive fist against the one symbol that wasn’t an ancient representation of a chemical element; the one that returned Alcheman to his default human form.     Michael Wooster staggered to the ground, dropping Ham-Boy from his grasp.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Mr Alcheman?” gasped HB, looking down at the fallen chemical champion.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Seems Camellia was right about there being a curse,” murmured Alcheman before he passed out. ***     The grey plain seemed to go on in all directions, but Goldeneyed trudged forward in a straight line anyway. He had things to work out.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So how did you become Citizen Z?” he demanded of Beth Shellett.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s it, Bry. I’m not. I don’t know how I got here. I don’t know why I’m in this silly tight-fitting suit. I’m no superhero.” The girl had peeled off her Citizen Z mask, revealing the pretty elfin face of the elementary school teacher that to whom Bryan Katz had once intended to propose.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It makes no sense. I’ve seen Citizen Z fight. She’s good in combat, fast, trained, experienced. You don’t have that background.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, dad taught me a few self-defence moves, but I usually keep those for dating.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I remember. Look, last thing I remember I teleported blind out of this really spooky dimensional maze and I think I jumped a track and got lost. What do you remember?”     Beth frowned. “I was in London. I’d left Paradopolis for good – you know that. Sorry, Bry, but it was all just too much. That torture by the Dissected Man, then what he made me do to those poor sentient robots, then being burned so badly, blinded and crippled, then Baroness von Zemo disguised as Citizen Z healing me but implanting the orders that made me try to murder Sir Mumphrey…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I know. I’m sorry you got dragged into it all. I’m sorry I dragged you into it.”     Beth smiled at him. “Not your fault, Bry. I don’t blame you. You’re a good man. I just couldn’t cope any more, so I had to run. So I was in London, working at one of their inner city schools, when I… felt ill.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ill? You got sick?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I don’t know. My face hurt. When I touched it my hand came away with blood on it. That’s all I recall.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What date was it?”     Beth told him.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That was nearly a year ago!” Bry frowned. “What the hell is going on here?”     Beth pointed. “Maybe she can tell us?”     Out across the plain was a human-sized silhouette. As G-Eyed and CZ got closer they recognised the distinctive zaftig form of Silicone Sally.     She wasn’t moving, frozen like a statue, like a plastic action figure.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Isn’t this Baroness von Zemo’s henchwoman?” recognised Beth.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You don’t remember arresting her then?” checked Bry. “Sending her to prison? Joining the LL with her?”     Beth shook her head. “Why would I do that? How would I do that?” She touched her temple. “I’m getting a terrible headache.”     Silicone Sally moved. She didn’t seem aware of her surroundings or the people beside her. Her body language was cold and casual. “You could always just kill her,” she suggested.     Beth blinked. “What? What’s she saying?”     Sally gave no indication of hearing the woman, but she went on with her conversation. “I’m just asking. If little comatose Beth is keeping us from getting on with the job then why don’t we just put her out of her misery, boss?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“She’s… remembering something she said?” Goldeneyed guessed with growing unease. “She was asking about murdering you?”     Beth backed away in horror.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We knew Sally did some questionable things while she was with the Baroness,” G-Eyed noted. “But we didn’t know about this.”     The word questionable seemed to replay another memory for Sally. “Question,” she challenged. “Why exactly did I have to go to the trouble of taking down Lisette and dragging her here to the lab of badness? She’s not exactly a major player in the superhero dynasty, is she?”     Goldeneyed’s head snapped round. “Laurie? You did something to Laurie? You were behind her disappearance, when Beth von Zemo stole her identity?”     Sally Rezyliant stared off into space. “Okay, boss, that is downright spooky how you’re able to channel her now. What shall I do with what’s left of Lisette since Baron Otto’s carved her mind and soul up? She’s kind of seeping onto the linoleum.”     G-Eyed fists closed tight. “What did you do to her, damn it? What did you with to her, you murderer?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You want them dead?” replied Sally, in yet another internal flashback. “No problem at all.” ***     Vinnie De Soth looked up at a black-painted plaster ceiling rose. He recognised it.     He recognised the bed too, antique with black silk sheets and dark velvet drapery. He sat up urgently.     Omerta De Soth was watching him from the foot of the bed. Her long black hair was pulled tight back from her face. Her make-up was perfectly applied and severe.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Vincent,” she said.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Mother,” replied the young occultist.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Welcome home. You know why you are here?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Because I died and went to hell?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Because your ridiculous Oriental mistress lost control and turned her elemental power against you. It’s just a good job that the family had foreseen this coming and prepared a contingency working to snatch you back when it happened.”     Vinnie looked around his old bedroom. “This is a lot of trouble to go to for the white sheep of the family. Magic this powerful comes at a very steep price.”     Omerta nodded to accept his assertion. “You’ve become far more interesting to the family since you became sorcerer supreme,” she admitted.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Acting sorcerer supreme. I’m just a placeholder.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That can be corrected. This is an opportunity, Vincent. A significant opportunity. The Incantantrixes, the Morgolath, the Rouges, the Harrows, the Darknesses, the Coriomundis, none of them have an opportunity like this.”     Vinnie moved to hop out of bed, noticed his lack of clothing, and reconsidered.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nothing I’ve not seen before, Vincent,” his mother told him. “Nothing Pandemonica’s not seen, either, I imagine.”     For the first time Vinnie realised that there was someone else in the room. Pandemonica Ananké rose from the window-seat and climbed onto his bed. “Hello, Vincent. I mean Vinnie. I was the one who prepared the ceremony of transference for you.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Monica. Hi. Yeah. Look, this isn’t a good time. My team’s in some trouble. I really need…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You really need to thank Pandemonica,” Omerta De Soth chided her son. “Azazel knows, we women have to make sacrifices for the warlocks we marry. Don’t get me started on the ichor-scrubbing or the goats in the bedroom. But Pandemonica has gone to a great deal of trouble to see you safe and sound. She had to make a Bargain.”     Vinnie sighed. “Again? I thought you’d learned by now, Monica. Who did you promise your soul to this time?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, I did learn, Vincen… Vinnie,” the young enchantress promised her former fiancée. “I didn’t barter my soul. I don’t even get ritually slaughtered as long as you make the promised offering in good time.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The promised offering?” Vinnie had a sinking feeling.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nothing much,” Omerta confirmed. “Your Chinese concubine, that’s all. Carve her heart out for Belaziel, Lord of the Moral Wastes, and Pandemonica won’t be harmed at all. Very sharp bargaining.”     Pandemonica Annanké looked over at Vinnie and bit her lip. “I only die if you don’t kill that Liu Xi Xian wench. That’s okay, isn’t it?” ***     Hatman folded his arms. “The Nebulus are old news,” he told Lo-Chi. “I forget how they got taken out of the game. Hooded Hood probably, but frankly they weren’t memorable enough to take much notice.”     Lo-Chi’s fingers tightened on the destruct trigger on Hatman’s collar-fetter but she caught herself at the last. “You seek to provoke me to destroy you and so escape servitude. That is clever.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s just me, lady. Fact is, you couldn’t convince Jarv to do your dirty work and you won’t convince me. Whatever the Celestians left that vril sun there to do I’m pretty sure it wasn’t to further your ambitions. Frankly I think you’re just some kind of temporal echo like you said trying to claw your way out of oblivion the last way you can.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m real enough to destroy you if you don’t serve my will.”     Hatman sat on a shattered rock that had once been a Shangri-La temple. “Well, I was due a vacation anyhow. People keep saying I should get some downtime.”     Lo-Chi glowered at him. “Consider this then. You were leading a team of neophyte Legionnaires. You were attacked by the Spawn of Umsharr. They assaulted your minds. Where is your team now?”     Hatman suddenly remembered what had gone before. “Where are they?” he repeated. “How did I get away, get here?”     Lo-Chi snorted. “You have a brain laced with Serious Matter. That makes it harder for them to seize. Not impossible, just slower. That’s how you found your way here instead of succumbing to them immediately.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That doesn’t tell me where my team are.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It tells you why you need to do what I demand, if you want to save your comrades in true Jarvis fashion. Get me the vril engine and I’ll save your team-mates, what’s left of them.”     Hatman shook his head. “No deal.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What do you mean, no deal. Your comrades, your charges…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’ll do what I can for them, but I’m not handing you a powerful potential weapon that your expansionist race of space tyrants have been plotting to grab for millennia, a power source that the first leader of my team died to deny you.”     Lo-Chi sneered at the capped crusader. “You think you can save them? Already the Spawn are in your mind, picking their way past the natural defences of your Serious Matter. Before long you will be their slave, their pawn, and they will make your life a long living hell.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Then I’d better stop them quick,” Hatman concluded. He reached into his Hatility Belt for his Jets cap. “You can fade away again now, Lo-Chi. I’m done with you.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Fool,” snapped the emissary of the Nebulus. Then she shot him. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What are you doing?” squeaked Alina, “You’re supposed to kill the monster, not bring him up here to eat the princesses!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Like you haven’t had that happen to you before,” scorned Elana. “Oh, you mean tear up and devour the princesses. Yes, that would be bad. What are you doing, Sir Ham-Boy?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m not the monster,” Alcheman assured the distraught tower maidens. “Well, I was, but I’m not now. I think maybe there are some implications of the alchemical sigils that the occultist Ivan Strode tattooed on my flesh that I’m not fully aware of. I’ve heard them referred to as a curse.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, something made you go all Yurt,” HB pointed out.     Alcheman nodded worriedly, smoothing his tangled hair from his forehead. Up till now he’d considered his mother and sisters the Curse of the Woosters. “Where are we? How did we get from the Spawn of Umsharr attack to here?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re rescuing princesses,” Alina prompted. “We need to get out of the tower.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We always thought that the monster guarded a key,” Elana offered hopefully. “Do you have a key, horrible beast?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I already asked him,” Ham-Boy told them. “No key. And it’s almost impossible to pick castle locks with a sausage. It’s not for want of trying.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So you just want to stay here, locked in this tower with two nubile princesses for all eternity!” accused Alina.     Ham-Boy struggled to find the right answer. Alcheman came to the rescue. “Actually, I think I could melt those doors if I took some kind of acid-form. I could dissolve the lock at least. Maybe I am the key?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well that might be better,” Elana admitted. “Better for the non-slut part of the princesses team anyway.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It was a frog, Elana. He needed kissing to save him. It’s the job.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He didn’t need kissing there, Alana. And once he’d changed back you could have stopped any time.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Er, maybe we should escape, then?” suggested HB. “I’m still puzzled by how much you two look like Fashion Accessory.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I was worried that they looked like my sisters,” Alcheman noted, “I’m thinking that we were fighting psionic beings so maybe what we think we’re seeing isn’t quite what we believe it is. My alleged curse might not really make me a transmuting werewolf thing. Your princesses might not be princesses.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We so are princesses,” insisted Alina. “Want to see our birthmarks?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We could be in some kind of illusion or mental trap?” Ham-Boy considered. “And the way out…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Would be to break down that door,” concluded Alcheman. “Let’s go.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Find me a pea and I’ll prove we’re princesses,” insisted Elana. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’ve got to snap her out of it,” Goldeneyed told Beth Shellett as Silicone Sally kept on replaying terrible things she’d said or done.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Why?” asked CZ. “I mean, she’s not sounding like a terribly nice person. She wanted to kill me. She might actually have killed Laurie.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“She’s certainly due to offer some answers,” agreed Bry Katz, “but she’s also the only thing on this barren eternal plain. She’s got to be the key to us getting out of here somehow. And… she’s in torment. Look at her. She doesn’t like remembering the things she’s done. It hurts her.”     Beth reached out and touched Sally’s hard plastic cheek. “She’s locked inside, isn’t she?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You know, I think she is,” admitted Goldeneyed. “She joined the LL because it was an alternative to prison, maybe a death sentence. But before that she helped us out as well, right back to the end of the Parody War. It’s like… there was a better person trying to break out.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, we all deserve second chances I hope,” Beth said.     G-Eyed’s heart skipped a beat. “I’m going to remind you of that later. Hey, are you okay, Beth?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Headache’s getting worse. It feels like somebody’s carving my brain out with a spoon. Never mind. We’re a long way off the nearest Aspirin. Let’s see to Sally.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We need to shock her out of this reflective state,” judged G-Eyed. “Maybe then her body will unfreeze or deplasticise or whatever it needs to do. Talking’s not getting through to her. We need to try something else.”     Beth looked around at the empty grey plain.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Citizen Z has these weapons,” Bry told her. “Daggers and such. And somehow she’s able to transmit psychic pulses through them into whoever they touch, nightmares that send down people screaming. I’m pretty sure that a zap of that would be horrible for Sally but it might snap her out of her trance.”     Beth looked down at the toolbelt at her waist and the pouches on her hips. “I’m really not Citizen Z, Bry. I don’t even know what all these gadgets do.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Maybe you don’t have to. Beth, take one of those thin daggers, carefully, and just prick Silicone Sally’s skin with it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I put together a whole list of people who ticked me off at college,” said Sally. “What’s the point of ruling the world if I can’t go round to them now and make them sorry?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“She’s reliving all the bad things she wanted to forget and move on from,” Beth judged. “I just hope this doesn’t make things worse.” She pressed a dagger-tip carefully into Sally’s plastiform flesh.     Nothing happened.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Damn,” said G-Eyed. “I was certain that’s do the trick.”     Beth shook her head. “I…I don’t think that’s the way it’s got to work,” she said. “We know about Sally’s past. There’s not too many mysteries there. But me…? And Citizen Z?”     Beth pushed the dagger into herself. ***     Styxus and Scabeous chained Liu Xi out on the sacrificial slab in the wine cellar. Golgotha and Threnody had already cast the magics to deny the elementalist the use of her abilities. Lucifera sat against the far wall ignoring everybody and playing on her games console.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“She was hard to find,” admitted Uncle Belial, admiring the stretched naked form spread-eagled on the stone table. “She was actually climbing back into her flesh after going swimming in the vril channels.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“She was?” Vinnie gasped. “Of course, it’s Liu Xi.” He turned to Omerta. “Now let her go.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Vinnie?” Liu Xi called, straining to try and see her boyfriend. “How can it be you? I killed you!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“De Soths are very difficult to kill, my dear,” Uncle Belial told her. “Our many enemies learn that to their cost.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I said let her go,” Vinnie insisted to Scabeous and Styxus. “This sacrifice thing, it’s not going to happen.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But Vincent – I mean Vinnie…” wailed Pandemonica, “if you don’t do it then I’ll be horribly slaughtered. I don’t want to be horribly slaughtered. I was only trying to save you, to do the right thing.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, maybe I can talk to Belaziel, find a loophole…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There’s no time,” snapped Omerta. “It’s time to choose, Vincent Arcanus Greymalkin De Soth. Dear Pandemonica or your elementalist tramp, which is it to be?”     Vinnie sighed. He held out his hand for the sacrificial knife. Threnody passed it over.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Is it primed?” he asked.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Fully charged,” promised Golgotha.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Fine,” said Vinnie. He turned and stabbed Omerta.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Wha…” his mother said in disapproving tones as she clutched her chest.     Vinnie released the dagger’s stored energies in occult flares at his brothers and sisters. Involved in the ceremony, their usual defences were bypassed by the sacrificial knife. Vinnie slaughtered each of them.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Why you treacherous little snot…” snarled Belial De Soth, beginning a dire conjuration.     Vinnie tossed the knife through his uncle’s throat.     It went very quiet in the wine cellar. At last Liu Xi called, “Vinnie…?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, I’m here,” said the young occultist, retrieving the discharged sacrificial blade.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What happened? I can’t see from here.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I decided I was fed up of playing the game,” the acting sorcerer supreme answered.     He walked over to Liu Xi Xian and stabbed her too. ***     And he woke up.     He was in Ur-Vakir, City of the Spawn of Umsharr, in the darkened hallway where the brain-eaters had attacked. Each of the Legion stood frozen before one of the squid-headed entities. Vinnie brushed away the twitching tendrils that brushed his own forehead.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, I don’t like people doing that,” he said.     Confused by the sudden change in the scenario it had constructed for its prey, the Spawn staggered backwards. Vinnie kicked the next Spawn in line in the stomach; there was no point kicking it lower.     Alcheman’s attacker folded over. Michael Wooster blinked out of his own nightmare.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Those are the bad guys,” Vinnie told him.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“On it,” said the chemical champion, pushing the Na, Cl and O symbols on the periodic table on his biceps to splash himself as bleach over the remaining Spawn.     Ham-Boy and Hatman shuddered awake. Liu Xi, Sally, and Citizen Z remained on the ground. Goldeneyed was not there.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Where are my princesses?” asked a confused Fred Harris.     Hatman punched the nearest staggering Spawn of Umsharr down to the ground. “What’s happening?”     The walls around the Legion began to twist and change.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The Spawn used psionic probes on us,” Vinnie supplied. “They were looking for specific information about Celestian and cosmic things. I’d imagine that each of us had a vision that brought us as close as it could to the secrets we carry.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And Ham-Boy secretly carries princesses?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Citizen Z, Silicone Sally, and Liu Xi are still down,” Alcheman called. “I thought I saw them rip CZ’s head open?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You saw the psionic equivalent,” Vinnie explained. “Can we run now?”     The doors ahead closed then vanished altogether.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“HB, Vinnie, grab the girls,” Hatman ordered. “Alcheman and I will make a road.” He pulled on his Demolition Workers hardhat and went to work.     As the wall shattered other portals opened up around the Legion. Spawn of Umsharr glided from each of them.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“C4H8Cl2S,” Alcheman rehearsed to himself as he hurled himself that the attackers as a cloud of Mustard Gas. He had to disable the Spawn before they could use their psionic assaults or their brain-sucking tentacles.     Vinnie tried to shake Liu Xi awake. “Come on now. Come back to me. Find your way.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What about CZ?” worried Ham Boy. “Why aren’t the spooky glowy parts of her costume spooky and glowing? It’s even creepier now they’re not.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I don’t think Citizen Z is in there any more,” Vinnie guessed. “I don’t think anyone’s at home.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Keep close together,” Hatman called as one of the walls attempted to close between him and the Legion. “They’re trying to separate us.”     Tentacles rose up from the floor to grab their legs.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Psionic illusion,” Vinnie called back. “Keep moving.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeow! Intimate psionic illusion!” objected Ham-Boy, slapping the imaginary cilia away.     Alcheman used his steel form to shred another newly-formed barrier. “We’re being herded,” he warned.     As if to prove him right the wall ahead melted away, opening up a vast central chamber where an incongruous spherical chamber of entirely different design to Ur-Vakir floated in silence. A thousand or more dead Spawn of Umsharr lay about it, but the last to die had finally used the knowledge drawn from the Hole Man and the Legion to breach the prison.     Powerful tentacles from within the sphere tore it open.     Umsharr the Unspeakable clawed his way out. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Beth? What’s wrong?” Bry Katz called out as Citizen Z began to scream.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Bry!” Bethany Shellett called out in agony. “Help me!”     Silicone Sally stirred from her frozen nightmares and looked around.     Goldeneyed watched in horror as Beth’s pretty face blistered and boiled away to a pulp red mass of scar tissue. Her eyes burst in their sockets as she returned to the crippled state she’d been in before she’d had Baron von Zemo’s restorative formula used upon her.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Is that Beth Shellett?” gasped Silicone Sally in sick horror. “The Baroness always intended to reverse her restoration when the time came.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You knew about this?” G-Eyed shouted at the Baroness’ former henchwoman. “You’re part of this too?”     Beth screamed one last time then fell comatose to the floor.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s this place,” Sally guessed. “None of the von Zemo nanotech can work properly. None of it can…”     Then she vomited.     Goldeneyed grabbed up the bloody Citizen Z and tried to keep her lungs working. “I’ve no powers in this place. I can’t save her!”     Sally shuddered and knelt on all fours, her whole body shivering. “It’s… it’s coming out of me…” she moaned.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What do you mean?” Bry Katz was distracted by grief, hardly able to follow what was happening now.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I didn’t know it was there… Not for sure,” Sally gasped between retches. “Elizabeth von Zemo gave me treatments… warned me what she’d do to my silicone structure if I didn’t obey… in this place my body’s rejecting them, separating them out…” She shuddered again, puked again, sweating to eject the chemical poisons that the Baroness had introduced to ensure her co-operation.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Beth!” cried Goldeneyed as Citizen Z’s pulse flickered then failed. “Don’t die!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What have I done?” shuddered Sally. “Just kill me now…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nobody is dying today,” said Liu Xi Xian, shimmering in seemingly from nowhere. “Follow me.” ***     Umsharr’s mind reached out and seized the Lair Legion. As each locked to attention he floated them down to hang before him. From another distant corner of the city he likewise brought the Hole Man.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Incomplete,” he said to himself. Translucent tentacles flickered beyond the normal dimensions and suddenly Goldeneyed joined the others and Liu Xi and Silicone Sally snapped awake. “Better.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The big bad guy, I assume,” Hatman snarled, struggling with the mental locks that prevented him moving.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Umsharr the Unspeakable,” Vinnie introduced the alien. “Except we’re speaking about him, so there goes that soubriquet.”     Umsharr stood around nine feet tall, with a bulbous head covered in tentacles. His skin was constantly shifting, translucent and phased, similar to the patterns that shivered across the walls of his city. He strode round the chamber, enjoying again the freedoms of physical form.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What happened?” gasped Silicone Sally, finding herself dragged from one bizarre terror to another.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You murdered Lisette is what happened!” Goldeneyed shouted at her. “And your boss tried to murder Beth!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I didn’t… well, I did, but I don’t know why… I’m sorry… How could I…?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m sensing we’re missing a chapter here,” Vinnie concluded.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Right now it’s this chapter I’m bothered about!” objected Ham-Boy. “You know, the chapter where the big squid-headed monster’s about to eat our brains?”     Umsharr glided towards his captives. “You are an interesting group,” he spoke into their minds. “So varied, so many experiences, so many secrets, so many pains. This is why I whispered in your minds to bring you on your expedition.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I wondered why the LL hadn’t done these tunnels before,” Alcheman admitted.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“This is why I controlled the decisions of the Holeoid entitites.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No wonder they were so co-operative,” groaned Ham-Boy.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“This is why I cast each of you into a nightmare to probe your deepest recesses.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You can keep your tentacles away from my recesses,” warned Silicone Sally, recovering some of her former spark; but silicone tears still trickled down her cheeks.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And the things we saw?” Hatman demanded. “Lo-Chi and what she said…?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“True echoes,” Umsharr told them. “Things I needed to know to escape. You each provided something, elemental understandings, alchemical formulae, dimensional perceptions, understanding of ancient knowledge…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Barbeque bacon?” suggested Ham-Boy. “This is the gloating part of the capture, right? Mr CrazySugarFreakBoy! taught us all about this. This is when we turn the tables while the bad guy’s talking.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Perhaps without announcing it?” growled Goldeneyed. “You do have a plan to get us out, right Hatster?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There is no escape,” promised Umsharr. “First you and then your world will become my eternal slaves.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, there’s a plan,” agreed Hatman. “Now, please, Liu Xi.”     Liu Xi relaxed herself as the Earth Maiden had instructed. She allowed herself to slip into a tiny corner of her own mind.     She made space.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Thanks, kid,” said Amnesia, the spirit part of Citizen Z. The Spawn’s psionic lock kept her out of her usual host, but the elementalist had provided a perfect psychic springboard.     Citizen Z formed up in ghost shape and manifested out of Liu Xi’s body, springing towards Umsharr, psychic blades in hand.     Umsharr pinioned the spirit as easily as he’d captured the beings of flesh.     Citizen Z laughed and allowed the psionic entity to probe back along the link to the source of her power.     The source of her power was Herringcarp Asylum, where madness reigned.     Umsharr screamed.     Herringcarp reached out to embrace him. It went on and on, deeper and darker with each successive layer.     The Lair Legion were no longer held. “Take out the Spawn!” Hatman called.     Silicone Sally and Alcheman knocked the confused cephalopods down. Ham-Boy followed Hatman and G-Eyed towards Umsharr himself.     The domes of Ur-Vakir began to explode one by one.     Umsharr seemed to be trying to drag his own brain out of his head.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Okay. Guessing that whatever self-destruct failsafe was on that Umsharr prison isn’t being neutralised by the Spawn any more,” winced Vinnie.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Help!” whined the Hole Man. “Save me!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“G-Eyed, Sally, evacuate the troops,” Hatman called. “I’m on Umsharr.”     But just then there was a massive detonation that slammed the capped crusader across the room. By the time the debris cleared Umsharr was gone.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He blew up!” Ham-Boy exclaimed.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He didn’t,” hissed G-Eyed. “That was an Apocalyspian Doom Tube! He’s been grabbed away!”     More domes erupted. The walls around the Legion began to shiver.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Time to be somewhere else,” advised Liu Xi.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What about the Spawn?” asked Alcheman. “They’ll die!”     The Spawn of Umsharr shook as if having fits. One by one their heads popped like gory balloons.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There’s nothing left to save,” warned Vinnie. “Their mind is gone.”     More debris shattered around the Legion.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think mine is too,” shuddered Sally Rezilyant. “I don’t understand who I am, why I did such terrible things…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not the time to analyse it,” Citizen Z told her sternly, rising in her familiar body. “Go.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Go!” agreed Hatman, shouting instructions. “Now!”     The final detonation was quite spectacular. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You have served me well in your own limited ways,” the Hole Man told the Lair Legion. “You may live.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Because if you tried anything we’d spank your butt back to the Earth’s core,” Hatman noted.     They were in the ancient Deviate-carved transport tunnels, where crude geometric carvings and gruesome stone faces flickered in the actinic light of Alcheman’s flare. The chemical champion looked back at the tunnel into Agharta. The wall had almost completely closed. “Will we ever be able to find our way back here again?” he wondered. “I mean, there’s so much more there to investigate?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It does seem to hide itself well,” Vinnie admitted, “but now we know it’s somewhere down here we’ll probably be able to think of something clever.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But right now we’ve other things to deal with,” G-Eyed insisted. “Like Silicone Sally and Citizen Z. CZ, take that mask off. I need to know if you’re Beth Shellett.”     Citizen Z paused for a moment, then shook her head. “I don’t think I will,” she said. “My identity is secret.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What about Sally?” Alcheman asked. “You accused her of some serious things back there.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You knew I wasn’t a saint before I came here,” the pliable playmate objected. “And… if I did things… well… I did them.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I didn’t know you were an accessory in the murder of Laurie Leyton!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I suspected though,” hissed Citizen Z. “Very interesting information.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I was pardoned of all former crimes for my part in the Parody War, under the Terminus Team amnesty,” Sally insisted; but she turned away.     Hatman intervened. “This isn’t the time to do this, guys. We’ll sort it out under controlled circumstances back at the Mansion.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We have controlled circumstances now?” wondered Ham-Boy.     Liu Xi stood apart from the rest, wondering if she dared talk to Vinnie. The young occultist went over to her. “You okay?” he asked.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I thought I’d killed you,” she confessed, biting her bottom lip.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey, I stabbed you in my dream. We’re even. Although I think I’d better just check on what my mother and ex-fiancée are up to in real life, just for my own peace of mind. But as far as I’m concerned, we’re good.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We are?” Liu Xi blinked back a tear.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nah. We’re great. Okay?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Okay. Would you hold me now?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’d be very nice.”     Ham-Boy took an opportunity for a quiet work with Alcheman. “So… you want me to keep quiet about that whole monster-curse thing in our dream?”     Michael Wooster shook his head. “It would be unfair and unwise to keep information like that from our team-mates. And it would be foolish of me not to avail myself of the expertise available to the Legion to investigate any such concerns. No, I look forward to participating in some comprehensive and detailed research into my powers and origins.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’re supposed to know how we got our powers?” HB worried.     Hatman pulled on his Miner’s Helmet and began to lead the way back to the surface. “Well, we wanted to see how we worked together as a team, to understand our strengths and weaknesses,” he told the others. “I guess we’ve made a pretty good start. Now on to the tough bit.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That wasn’t the tough bit?” worried Silicone Sally. “I mean, the lost land, the tentacle-headed brain eaters, the nightmare visions stuff, the really big boss tentacle-headed brain eater…?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The threat of Dark Thugos to follow,” chipped in G-Eyed.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No,” grinned Hatman. “That was a day at the office for the LL. Next comes the evaluation.” ***     Umsharr the Unspeakable finally stopped shivering and clawed his way out of the nightmare labyrinths of Herringcarp Asylum. He found himself on the very edge of reality, the border of the Parodyverse.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Welcome back, mindlord,” proclaimed Dark Thugos, Master of Apocalyspe.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Where am I?” demanded Umsharr. “Who are you?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You have been defeated, Umsharr. You have proved insufficient,” declaimed the Tyrant of the Spaceways. “Now you must evolve.”     Umsharr reached out with his mind but found Dark Thugos to be unreadable.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I am creating a New Pantheon,” said Thugos. “There is room in it for a god of psionics. If you survive the walk.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What walk?”     Thugos pointed into the nothingness beyond the Parodyverse. “A little way beyond existence there is a wall of wonders. Those who go there seldom return, and those who come back are changed. Go, then, if you dare. Should you return we will speak again.”     Umsharr rose and nodded, then set off into the darkness. *** Next Time: Goldeneyed vs Silicone Sally! Citizen Z vs Marie Murcheson! Ham Boy vs the MLA! Visionary vs the Hooded Hood! And Al B., Yuki, and CSFB! go… Where Zombies Walk! Meanwhile, if readers feel they’d like to provide a report card for each of the newbies on their first outing feel free to post it here, with grades for Power Use, Teamwork, Initiative etc. and any accompanying comments. *** Journey to the Centre of the Footnotes: The Spawn of Umsharr debuted in the Saving the Future series, tentacle-headed mind-reavers lost in one of the Lands That Common Sense Forgot in a strangecorner of Comic-Book Limbo. They went through various spellings in various chapters before settling on being Spawn of the unseen Umsharr. We now know that they were arificially created by the Deviates from Umsharr's genetic material using repurposed Celestian technology. Their role was to disrupt and entangle the Austernal omni-mind, the gestalt psionic communion in which the Austernals were at their most powerful, and that they succeeded in removing the Austernals from interacting with the outside world for millennia. The Spawn were cast into Comic-Book Limbo towards the end of the war between the Deviates and the Abhumans and were forgotten - until the Void Scholar's plans were thwarted and many of the stitchlands were returned to the worlds from which they had been carved. Umsharr himself was not created by the Deviates, being older than all life on Earth. His tale remains somewhat untold. The Celestian Madonna is one of the Parodyverse's longest-running subplots. Long since it was established that Goldeneyed (Bry Katz), and his cousins Exile (Derek Foreman) and Suicide Blonde (Bambi Bacall) were born in one possible far future of three sisters, the lovely Zemo triplets. The Zemo women were themselves descendants of the current evil von Zemo clan and of an alliance between "the Celestian Madonna" and a being known as the Fernbiote, who was assumed to be some descendant of spiffy or the Unhappy Place fern with which he is genetically bonded. The three babies were brought back in time to the current age by the Order of the Observing Eye, a dimension-spanning monastic cult dedicated to breeding warriors for the prophisied Resolution War. It was believed that the last survivor (or last powered survivor) of the three children would gain cosmic power. Each was raised seperately, the males by the Order itself. Bambi ran away and grew up with the Destiny Carnival; she is currently the matter-transmuting supervillainess Suicide Blonde. Exile and G-Eyed both joined the Lair Legion. Exile eventually left the Legion and gave up his powers to lead the exiled survivors of the Dreary Dimension into a new life in the Mythlands, with his true love Valeria of Carfax. Valeria has now borne him a child. Goldeneyed and his then-girlfriend Lisette (Laurie Leyton) encountered the psionic hive-entity Dr Loveray and under his influence Bry impregnated Laurie. Afraid that her pregnancy would destroy the only good relationship in her life, Lisette did not tell Bry about it. Instead she did a deal with the Order of the Observing Eye to conceal the birth and gave up the child to them. The whereabouts and destiny of the baby have never been revealed. When Bry finally discovered the truth it led to the end of his romance with Laurie. Liu Xi Xian inherited her elemental powers from her female ancestors. She eventually learned that the time-manipulating Void Scholar (the final iteration of Wang the Conqueror) was her ultimate grandfather, and that he had carefully guided the marriages of thousands of generations of her family to eventually breed the perfect void-manipulator that could fulfil his plans to dominate the Parodyverse. This ultimate void-manipulator was either Liu Xi herself or a child she would breed with Danny Lyle, the Hooded Hood's son. However, this dynasty depended upon the Void Scholar mating with the Celestian Madonna, a child conceived at the exact moment of dimensional alignments and cosmic significances. This child turned out to be Samantha Bonnington (Fashion Accessory), whose existence was assured when the Void Scholar sent Liu Xi back in time to save the life of the woman who would become Samantha's mother. Hence the entire line of Liu Xi's family depended on a paradox - a neccessary paradox to enable their relationship with void. The Void Scholar's plans for Samantha Bonnington were thwarted however. Since he never mated with her then the whole of her timeline was vitiated. Technically Samantha, Liu Xi, G-Eyed, Exile, Suicide Blonde and all the others in that complicated family tree never existed. They are still there at the moment "until the Parodyverse notices" and takes steps to erase them for book-keeping purposes. Meanwhile, Liu Xi's liminal existence has attracted the attention of the Void Spectre, who can use her condition as a gateway into the Parodyverse. Freed from the previous timeline, the Celestian Madonna then had to be conceived and brought into the Parodyverse another way in another identity. Samantha Bonnington is no longer eligible so another took her place. How and why - and even where and when - the Earth Maiden came into her destiny is currently unrevealed. Or, to put it another way: The De Soth Clan is one of the "nine mystical families" who have dominated the occult scene for millenia (others are named in the story). Allies by ancient pact with terrible elder beings the De Soths have carved an arcane empire by their ruthless schemings and concienceless alliances. Current documented members of the clan include: Asteroth De Soth, magus, member of the Inner Circle of the Heck-Fire Club Omerta, his ambitious and powerful wife, previously of the Incantatrix clan Uncle Belial, Asteroth's brother, an accomplished alchemist and a lecherous pervert Golgotha, seductive oldest child of Asteroth and Omerta Styxus, heir apparent to the Clan, a rising warlock Threnody, a girl with special affinity for death curses and evil prophecy Scabeous, certainly Omerta's son and raised by Asteroth as his own; he does have vestigial horns though Vincent, the disgraced white sheep of the family, due for an intervention Lucifera, a luck manipulator, currently studying at Paradopolis U. with Young Heckfire Pandemonica Ananké was Vinnie's fiancee at some point in the past, an alliance arranged and endorsed by his family. She has previously appeared in Old Acquaintance *** 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.

This Earth Maiden sounds like she might be one of Faite's friends, mysterious, distant, and interfering only when something is about to be messed up.

It looks like Liu Xi might be on track to save everyone, if she can recover quickly enough. With Hatman out of commission, and Ham-Boy dealing with Alcheman's curse, she's going to be the first to realize what's going on.

Just when I thought G-Eyed was going to get some kind of explanation, things get more complicated instead.

I wonder where the ghost possessing Beth has gone off to...

Side note: I don't know who Lo-Chi is, but it sounds like at least Liu Xi will be able to translate the name.