Previous Post #322: Untold Tales of the Lair Legion: Ever After - Part One Previously: There was a Parody War. The Lair Legion defeated the Parody Master, but at a cost. A number of their members were caught in a wave of Narrative Energy and transported away to happy endings. The Manga Shoggoth was lost between dimensions, possibly destroyed. Danny Lyle was brought back from certain death only by Dancer maxxing out her powers.     And now the follow up. Tie-ins to this story include: Let’s Get Things Started by Visionary Dance Dance Revolution by CrazySugarFreakBoy! Winner and Losers Part 1 and Part 2 by Jason Survivor’s Guilt Part 1 by Hatman Winners and Losers Part 3 by Jason Survivor’s Guilt Part 2 by Hatman Winners and Losers Part 4 by Jason *** In the days after the Parody War… ***     The high-tech defence system of Bautista Industries’ Paradopolis lab had been shredded by the damage the plant had taken during the Parody War. It was easy for Morphea to send the SPUD security patrols to sleep with her dream field, and then the Human Tractor just took down a wall so that Ghostface could sneak inside to find the equipment they’d been contracted to steal.     None of the three super-villains had any clue what the device they were after did, but they knew that Justus Screwdriver had a client who would pay each of them two million dollars for delivering it.     Ghostface used his neutraliser stare on the complicated safe lock and wrenched open the door. “This is too easy,” he smirked to Morphea. “With NTU-150 gone and since Jamie Bautista himself vanished in the last battle of the Parody War this company is wide open.”     Morphea shrugged. Little wisps of sleep-smoke coiled from her as she moved. “Bad for them, good for us.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Can we just get on with it?” growled the Human Tractor. “Remember the Captor’s training? We don’t stop and gloat on the job. Besides, I want to be home to see Grey’s Anatomy. I am so going to pay Katherine Heigl an unscheduled home visit one of these days.”     Ghostface lifted the Quantum Signature Resonator from its harness. “A few more jobs like this and you could just buy her outright,” he smirked. “Buy anyone you want. This town is wide open now. Wide open.”     Yuki Shiro chose that moment to flick on her torch. “Except for the Lair Legion,” she pointed out.     Ghostface dropped the Resonator on his foot and yelped.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sleep!” Morphea cried quickly, gesturing at the cyborg P.I.; but powers that affected human nervous systems weren’t much help against a shielded human brain in a robot body.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh please,” snorted Yuki, stepping forward and carefully folding her jacket over the back of a chair so it wouldn’t get damaged. “Like you said, this is too easy.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re all alone,” argued Ghostface. “And we have devastating super-powers.”     Yuki didn’t seem that threatened.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I can crush you into paste,” warned the Human Tractor, stepping forward with his fists clenched.     The cyborg P.I. glared at him. “Really?” She grinned nastily. “The last villain I had a fight with was called the Parody Master. Now he’s a nasty chapter in the history books. I’m still standing.” She leaned forward and asked confidentially. “Are you really sure you want to piss me off right now?”     Ghostface, Morphea, and Human Tractor exchanged nervous glances.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We surrender?” suggested Ghostface, as the villains put their hands up. ***     In the adjoining computer laboratory, Mr Flay finished extracting encoded schematic data from the Bautistamax mainframe. Mr Skinner came back to join him.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The young robot lady with the purple hair has just apprehended the hired felons, Mr Flay,” he reported.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Only to be expected, Mr Skinner. She is, by all accounts, a very good detective, and they are rather stupid criminals.” He glanced up from his work. “That’s why we contracted them, Mr Skinner.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“She has some very impressive sensory capacities as well, Mr Flay. If we were not shielding ourselves from her comprehension she would have also located us.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s why we needed those amateurs, Mr Skinner. Forensic investigation will begin in the adjoining vault. By the time anybody thinks to check this isolated database it will be too late.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But now we have the schematics, Mr Flay? We have the security blueprints for the Safe Metahuman Detention Facility?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We do indeed, Mr Skinner. The jail break can commence.” ***     Hatman tapped on the open door of Mr Epitome’s Lair Mansion office and passed inside. “I’ve finished annotating the sitrep reports,” the leader of the Lair Legion told the star-spangled splendour. “We paid a heavy butcher’s bill.”     Epitome had been finishing off the casualty lists and was speed-reading through a couple of dozen security briefings from the Office for Paranormal Security. He put down his strong Navy coffee and looked at the documents Jay Boaz had laid on his desk. “I’ve been liaising with the vets welfare associations and the Bautista Foundation. Nobody gets forgotten. Not this time.” He didn’t glance up as he added, “So you decided to stay.”     Hatman noticed that Mr Epitome was drinking out of a chipped Lair Legion mug. The handle had been broken off in the recent attack on the mansion and had been carefully reconstructed as only somebody with microscopic vision and computer-precise hand control could manage. “We could get you a new one of those,” Jay pointed out.     Mr Epitome took a sip. “I like the old one,” he responded. “I’m used to it, and there’s nothing wrong with it that couldn’t be fixed.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So you’re staying on with the Legion, then?” Hatman checked. “I know there was a time you had some problems…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nothing wrong that couldn’t be fixed,” Dominic Clancy repeated. “Besides, we’re kind of short-handed here right now. An active field roster of you, me, Foxglove, and Yuki. Dancer?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Still no sign of her powers returning after she brought back Danny,” Hatman reported. “Al B’s on it, but we’ve also got him looking for the Shoggoth and Knifey and scanning for remaining Parody Master tech and a dozen other things.”     Mr Epitome frowned. “It’s bad news when we send for back-up and the best powerhouse we can field is Visionary.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We took some losses to save the universe,” Hatman acknowledged. “I thought this place felt quiet because all the top brass had moved out now the war’s over, but I realise now it’s because we don’t have Tricky bawling up and down the corridors.”     Epitome nudged another folder over. “Some advance reading for you from the Librarian, from before he headed off to IOL headquarters. Summary of the legal wranglings over Jamie Bautista naming the President-for-Life of a rogue nation-state as his legal executor of he vanished. Briefing on ZOXXON’s lawsuit against us for losing their proprietary Cressida biotech. Update on the prosecution’s case against Elizabeth von Zemo. And an extraordinary bunch of security documents that Bookman should not have access to regarding some top-secret debate about the shape of interplanetary diplomacy in the wake of the Parody War.”     Hatman sighed and picked up the documents. “Who’d have thought there would be so much paperwork to do after winning a war?”     Epitome shrugged. “Who’d have thought we’d win?” ***     Sir Mumphrey Wilton scooped up the pile of box files on his desk and dropped them into the waste-paper basket beside it. “There,” he approved. “Done all the necessary paperwork.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You can’t do that!” protested the Deputy Secretary to the United Nations. “There are procedures. Details.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hmph,” snorted the eccentric Englishman. “Well, good luck with those, old chap.” He smiled over at Samantha Featherstone. “I’m takin’ my grand-daughter out for an ice-cream.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re what?” protested the Deputy Secretary.     The leader of the combined Earth defence force turned to the five-star general who was hovering in the doorway. “Oh, and you can tell all those chaps that have been having the secret meetings about how to get me to stand down now the crisis is over that they were wastin’ their time. I’ve just done it.”      ***     Sarah Shepherdson smiled to herself as she pushed open the door of the Bean and Donut Coffee Bar and smelled the familiar aromas of home. “Hi guys!” she called to the regulars she recognised. “Miss me?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Shep!” everybody called out, milling round to great their favourite and long absent waitress. “How was the emergency waitressing mission this time?” “The double mocha whips aren’t the same without you!” “You have no idea how great it is to have you back!” “Sarah, you were right. She said yes. We’re engaged!”     The currently-depowered Probability Dancer grinned at her friends. “It’s wonderful to see you all again too. I missed you!” She spotted the cat-girl behind the counter. “Hi Violet! I see you got promoted to the day shift. Good for you!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yep,” agreed the last of the feline-people. “I got seniority when Tandi lost her temper with Michael and…”     She fell silent as Michael Papadapopolis shouldered his way through the crowd to see what all the commotion was about. “What’s happening?” he demanded. He saw Sarah and his face darkened. “Oh, you.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hello,” Sarah smiled at him. “How’s Mr P doing? I heard he took on the Parody Master again single-handed, just like he said he would.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“My father’s not running things here anymore,” Michael answered roughly. “I am. He’s not in charge now.”     Sarah’s smile faded into a mild frown. “And?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And you don’t work here any more either. You vanished without a word for weeks on end, leaving me short-staffed. Apparently it’s not the first time you’ve pulled this kind of crap either. Then you just swan back in one day and expect everyone to welcome you back with open arms.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And we do,” one of the customers interrupted.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes,” agreed another. “It’s great that Sarah’s here again.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well I’m not a soft touch like my dad,” Michael snapped. “And I say she’s history. Fired. Terminated. Sacked. Out of here.”     Sarah had gone pale. “What?” she asked in disbelief. “Michael…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re history, bimbo,” the manager sneered at her. “Bye bye.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“If she’s history, then so am I,” noted a customer, putting down his plate and walking out.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Me too,” said another, throwing his napkin down and following.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And me,” agreed a third, glaring at Michael as she left.     The acting manager watched in disbelieving horror as his diner pretty much emptied.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I can see today’s going to be bad for tips,” Violet sighed.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You…” Michael gasped, shaking a finger at Shep, “You emptied the place!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No, Micheal,” Violet replied. “She fills the place. You emptied it. Oh, and I quit.”     The proprietor stared as Violet helped herself to her due wages from the till, vaulted lithely over the counter, pulled on her coat, and left.     Sarah looked sympathetically at the acting manager. “Michael, you know Mr P wouldn’t want this. Don’t upset him and wreck his business. It’s not too late to fix this. I’m sorry I ran off like that. Just hire me again and we’ll soon get things back to normal.”     Michael was about to launch into a torrent of angry abuse when he caught himself. Instead he ran an appraising eye over Sarah’s ample curves. “Well, maybe you could convince me,” he offered, leering. “In the back room.”     Sarah’s frown returned. “I don’t think so,” she answered coldly.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Then I don’t think you have a job, sweetheart.”     Sarah blinked back tears. “I’ll… go get my things from my flat then,” she said.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Fine. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”     The last customer in the bar stood up. He was a fairly average-looking stranger with curly shoulder-length hair. “Could I just add something to the conversation?” he asked Michael.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What?” demanded the acting manager.     The stranger punched Micheal in the face, sending him down between the booths clutching at his spurting nose. “That,” he said. “You shit.”     Dancer didn’t comment other than to drop a first aid kit onto Michael’s groin.     The stranger grabbed some napkins so Sarah could dry her face. “I’m Harry. Have dinner with me?” he asked. “Please?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I don’t think so,” Sarah told him. “Sorry. But the thing is I’ve just lost somebody who was… well my boyfriend I suppose and he died, in the war, and if I go out with you you’ll take me out and make me forget him for a minute and I don’t want to do that and then you’ll be all charming and I’ll go all melty and one thing will lead to another and then I’ll feel awful in the morning like I’ve betrayed his memory and that I’m exactly what people think I am and it’ll all be horrible and…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey,” Harry interrupted. “No pressure. I was just asking. I thought maybe you’d like something to eat. And if you need a shoulder to cry on, I have a choice of two.” He smiled haplessly. “So what do you think? Could you risk a burger without descending into debauchery and self-recrimination?”     Dancer considered the question carefully. “Maybe.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Only one way to find out,” Harry pointed out, holding the door for her. “And if you change your mind on the debauchery thing later, I’m totally fine with that too.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There are a whole bunch of advantages to my new job,” Lisa Waltz admitted to Hallie as the two of them checked the repair work to the Operations Room beneath the Lair Mansion. “I get to be more than one place at once if I want to, so I can visit with Christopher much more often. And I get to pick what kind of animals my emissaries are.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Jury liked goldfish for that,” Hallie noted.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I was thinking of bodybuilders,” Lisa winked. “Of course, I’d have to take time to oil them properly, but I’m going to be one hundred percent dedicated to doing my job right.”     Hallie grinned back at her. “Of course. So will you be rebuilding the conceptual plane or what?”     The first lady of the Lair Legion shrugged. “That’ll be decided later. For now I’m going to lease some offices in St Tropez. At least for the honeymoon period.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The honeymoon period with the oiled bodybuilders.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Right. I think I’m going to like being the Destroyer of Tales. So far there’s only one downside.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Which is?”     The Chronicler of Stories loomed out of the shadows. “That would be me,” he said grimly. “Lisa, would you please keep that bloody cat of your under control. He’s eaten another of my ravens of destiny. Pallas is livid.”     Lisa moued. “He was just playing, probably, and your raven misunderstood.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Misunderstood being eaten and digested?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He’s a big softy really.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He’s a feral killing machine backed by the conjoined powers of the Celestian Space Robots and the Destroyer of Tales,” complained Chronicler. “Keep him the hell away from my ravens.” The guardian of chronologies caught his breath. “Lisa, there’s all kinds of things you need to know about your role. Things you have to understand before you do something disastrous. You can’t just carry on as you did before.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But I like carrying on, Greg.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Lisa, there’s more going on than you realise. The Parody War wasn’t the end of things. It was the beginning.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I only do ends,” Lisa said with a wink to Hallie.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Just come with me,” the Chronicler growled. “There’s things we need to do.”     Lisa bit back the double entendre, waved goodbye to Hallie, and vanished from the ken of mortal man. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So explain what you do again, Mr Sinclair,” urged Mr Flay calmly.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I… Once I was a technology designer in Silicone Valley,” gasped the undead supervillain. “I helped design Betamax.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Very impressive that, Mr Sinclair,” commented Mr Skinner.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Then I kind of… died.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Suicide is a very ugly thing, Mr Sinclair,” noted Mr Flay.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And… the Hooded Hood brought me back as a supervillain to join his Purveyors of Peril,” Expired Warranty gabbled. “I battled NTU-150. I have the power to make technology go wrong. Any technology.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s what your advert said,” Mr Skinner agreed. “We subscribe regularly to Modern Malefactor, Mr Flay and I.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We only get it for the articles, of course,” Mr Flay qualified that.     Mr Skinner leaned over the prone supervillain. “So this little box you have given us, Mr Sinclair, this box is guaranteed to disrupt every technological alarm system on the Safe Metahuman Detainment Complex on Flanagan island?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“On my life,” swore Expired Warranty. “On my unlife, that is.”     Skinner smiled thinly. “It’s a pleasure to see people standing behind their workmanship, is it not Mr Flay?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not exactly standing, Mr Skinner. Not with those two shattered kneecaps. But I take your point.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Can I… you said you’d let me go if I did what you wanted,” begged Z.X. Sinclair.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Why so we did, Mr Sinclair,” agreed Mr Skinner. He snapped the last of Extended Warranty’s fingers and dropped his hand down onto his bloody chest. “You can go now.”     Mr Flay snapped the supervillain’s neck and shredded the curse keeping him in unlife. “You can go rest in peace, Mr Sinclair. Thank you for your assistance.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Morning Vizh,” called Al B. Harper over his morning crossword as the possibly fake man came in rubbing the red mark on his forehead. “What happened?”     The possibly-fake man slid up to the breakfast table and groped for crullers. “Amber threw a stapler at me,” he objected. “I was just welcoming her back to her job after her stay in Phantomhawk Memorial and I suggested that what she needed was a vacation of some type away with the other support staff.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Amber is still recovering from her injuries from the Parody Master,” Asil considered, “but she should not damage a Great Man.”     Al B. put down his paper as Asil handed out the day’s schedules. There was a lot of mopping-up to do after the fall of the Parody Master.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think seven down is CLOSET,” Vizh offered helpfully, looking at the puzzle.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Only in the original version,” Al noted absently as he checked the to-do list. “I tend to translate the letters into higher math, then use a Fourier code to shift them to conceptual strings and try to find a DeVoor acrostic that fits the original grid. It makes crosswords a little more challenging.”     Vizh shuddered. “At least you don’t make the squares kind of shuffle up to make space for whatever words you write in there,” he admitted. “Any word on finding the Shoggoth yet?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The main biomass is coming to see us at eleven today,” Asil pointed out, tapping the schedule. “He might have news.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There’s every chance that our version of the Shoggoth burned out when he stopped the Narrative Bombs,” Al B. warned. “He was contaminated by mundane matter, weaker than the main, um, blob.”     He glanced over to the counter where Marie Murcheson was cautiously coaxing the toaster not to explode. The former banshee looked up and blushed at the attention. “I didn’t feel him die,” she reported. “I don’t know if I would, him being a produce of Fairly Great Old One technology. I didn’t feel any of the people who went into the Happy Ending die.”     Under Asil’s stare, Vizh finally glanced down at the schedule. “Okay, so we’re reviewing liasing with the UN about Badripoor, then we look at the Terminus Team lists with Garrick to see who gets pardoned, then we see the Shoggoth,” he saw. “Then we…” he went pale. “A new intake of Juniors?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Never mind that,” Al B. said urgently. “Who thought it would be a good idea to send CrazySugarFreakBoy! to accept this commendation from the President?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“CSFB! is deputy leader of the Lair Legion,” Asil blinked. “He volunteered to…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Get on the comm-card at once!” Vizh called urgently, springing up and spilling his coffee. “Pull Dream out of there before it’s…”     Al B. had flicked on CNN. The live broadcast from the rose garden showed CrazySugarFreakBoy! meeting the President of the United States. “And now,” said the presenter doing the voiceover, “CrazySugarFreakBoy! will make a few remarks to the President.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Mister President,” grinned the wired wonder vengefully. “You are the world’s biggest…”     It was too late. ***     Dancer jumped aside as Mr Epitome slammed through the doors of the Operations Room and headed for the LairJet hanger threatening to tear his team-mate’s head off and kick it to the moon.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What’s wrong?” Sarah Shepherdson asked Glory as the paragon of power fumed away down the hallway.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Dominic saw something on television that upset him,” Mr Epitome’s dog replied, using her usual paw to voice translator unit to communicate with humans. She sniffed again at Sarah Shepherdson. “You smell happy.”     Dancer broke into a big beaming grin and did a little pirouette. “Something odd happened last night,” she admitted. “Well, this morning really.”     Glory’s enhanced senses were able to pick up pretty much what the young woman had been doing over the last fourteen hours.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There was this guy,” Shep confided. “Harry. He plays the sax. We met in the Bean and Donut and he kind of asked me out.”     So far this wasn’t a particularly unusual Sarah Shepherdson story.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Thing was, when I woke up this morning…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I can help you track down whatever is missing from your apartment,” Glory offered.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“When I woke up this morning, Harry made me breakfast in bed.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Harry was there?” Glory yelped.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He’d slipped out early, of course, but to buy me a rose from Mad Molly on the corner of 5th and Ditko. To put on the tray.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That sounds very romantic,” agreed Glory.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He wants to see me again,” Sarah confided. “He gave me his phone number, and when I rang it… he answered. He’s taking me out again tonight. To dinner and a show. And dancing.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He sounds very brave,” approved the mutt of might.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He’s wonderful,” Dancer giggled. “I think he might be the One!” ***     The Grand Repository was a mess. When the rebellion against the Parody Master had flared at the central headquarters of the Intergalactic Order of Librarians the fighting had gone from stack to stack.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’re tidying it up,” Selindra Saxmendham assured Lee Bookman as she led to Librarian of Sector 7272 to see the remaining Governors. “It’s just taking some time, what with the transfinite spaces in the deep repositories and all.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m just glad the Library is free once again,” the Librarian admitted. “For a while there I was worried for the future of the whole operation.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The Governors are in deep denial mode,” Selinda warned her mentor. “None of them ever collaborated with the Parody Master, and it was all a big misunderstanding.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Precipitated by me escaping with the full data core of the grand archive,” Bookman frowned. “Yes, I picked up the index chatter on the way in. Inquisitor Blay-Kee was practically dancing with joy at the idea of another trial for me.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It won’t come to that,” Selinda answered firmly. “Not this time. Too many of us know what you did, what you saved for us. We’re not letting the hero of the IOL be blamed for rescuing us all.”     The high doors to the central hall swung open and library enforcers indicated that Lee should walk into the presence of the Library Governors. Bookman adjusted his robes on his shoulders, took a deep breath, and strode inside. ***     The crew at Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises hadn’t had chance to rebuild any of the wrecked dimensional jump gate engines that littered their crowded firehouse workspace yet, so Al B. Harper had been forced to invent an entirely new method of quantum pair matching to punch holes through timespace and transport people across interstellar distances. The mark III version managed to cycle all the way through its fold and spin cycle before the strange matter accelerator exploded in a spray of shrapnel. Fortunately most of it lodged in the protoplasm of the Manga Shoggoth’s main biomass.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Okay,” Miss Framlicker announced, coming out of cover behind her steel-plate-reinforced desk, “so now we know how Apocalyspian doom tube technology operates.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Noisily,” complained Amy Aston, picking herself off the floor behind a disassembled dimensional shunt accelerator. “And now with added detonations.”     One half of the pair that had just been pulled back across the galaxies by the experimental new method pulled off his Steelers cap and checked that all his parts were still attached. The other half bounced up and down excitedly, clapping. “Encore!” called Kerry Shepherdson. “Can I go again? I have just got to get me one of those.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No,” Visionary shuddered. “I’m adding whatever the name of this device is to the proscribed items list of things that aren’t allowed in the lighthouse. Right next to Skree hover mines, Z’Sox zero-point negativity drones, and Danny Lyle.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I told you,” sulked Kerry, “Danny was just helping me find an earring I’d lost down my…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Idon’twanttoknow.” Vizh gabbled quickly. “Lalalalalala.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“How did it go aboard the Parody Master’s warship Bloody Vengeance?” Al B. asked Hatman. “Any trouble?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The Purveyors of Peril had pretty much wiped out the opposition before they were pulled back to Earth by the Storyheart,” Jay Boaz reported. “And it’s not called the Bloody Vengeance any more, by the way. And it’s not a warship.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Intergalactic laws of salvage,” smirked Kerry. “Now it belongs to my friend Mircandalee, and it’s renamed Tremansalor’s Travelling Intergalactic Vaudeville Emporium.”     That is a better name for a ship, approved the Manga Shoggoth. The loathsome elder being was wobbling in a corner waiting for the transport pad to be cleared. Ships should be called things like Howl’s Moving Castle or Baba Yaga’s Tiny Hut.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Your friend was okay, then, Kerry?” Vizh checked.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Better now she’s free,” the probability arsonist replied. “And she was happy to take on whatever prisoners wanted to stay on with her, especially the ones that can hold a tune. Or take a pie in the face.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“She was happy to take D’Rothy under her wing as well,” Hatman reported. “That’s what the girl wanted, and Mircandalee hasn’t any family now so… well, it all fitted nicely. Aunt Sally’s arrived with the Klayhogs to help sort things out, but it looks like our work there is done.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We get front row seats on opening night, though,” promised Kerry. “I’m going to bring the fireworks.”     Vizh looked at the steaming equipment. “What a shame the machinery’s busted and we can’t use it again,” he noted insincerely.     Amy fired another blast of CO2 on the remaining fires. “Aw, we have worse explosions than this using the kitchen appliances,” she scorned. “Al will have this up and running in ten minutes tops.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It has multiple redundancies, Vizh,” the archscientist comforted the possibly fake man. “There’s no need for any delay. Kick those fragments off the transport pad and climb into your survival harness and we can get started.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Survival harness?” Vizh asked nervously as Miss Framlicker started fastening him into something that was the cross between a parachute and a straight jacket.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’d prefer certain death harness?” she asked coolly.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Why me?” Vizh asked desperately. “I mean, I want to find the other bit of Shoggoth if he’s lost out there spread between dimensions, sure, but isn’t this the kind of thing we keep ManMan for? Or spiffy?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Manny’s retired,” Amy pointed out. “And spiffy fled the country.”     Besides, you are the one that had a fragment of me lodged instead of a heart for a while, pointed out the Shoggoth comfortingly. And you have already been exposed and contaminated to many other frames of existence and non-existence, so the additional damage should be negligible.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Wait… what?”     If it would comfort you, I could retain one of your limbs so that you can regrow yourself should anything go wrong in this interdimensional fishing trip.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Good luck, Vizh,” Hatman said, patting the regular on the shoulder. “Take care out there.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“This harness is a bit tight. It’s really pinching in… some places.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“If you die, that stupid list of yours doesn’t count any more, right?” Kerry checked urgently.     Before Visionary could answer there was another loud crack, a shriek like the destruction of universes, and a kind of swirly purple light. And then he was gone. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Seventeen thousand, seven hundred and forty-three of them,” Governor Roshamon told Sir Mumphrey Wilton as they completed their inspection of Bareta Base.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s a fair number,” conceded the eccentric Englishman. “Can we contain that many here?”     The detention centre had formerly been a covert torture camp run as the blackest of US Government black ops, until it had been exposed by Fin Fang Foom then transported to Comic-Book Limbo by the Parody Master. Now it was back, and SPUD Director Dan Drury, a former inmate, had personally arrested former camp commander Dr Faustian and escorted him to the prison hospital to have his multiple arrest fractures treated. The site was now being used to contain prisoners of war after the conflict with the Parody Master.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We have the three thousand most dangerous captives, the Avawarriors and suchlike, under wraps in the Safe,” Governor Roshaman told the eccentric Englishman. “The ones here are the next most dangerous prisoners. The low risk prisoners and the dying are housed elsewhere in a range of facilities across the world.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The dying?” Sir Mumphrey scowled.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A lot of the cyborgs and some of the Avawarriors were only maintained by the direct influence of the Parody Master’s power. Without his support their cellular decay is massively increased, their bionic implants are being rejected, their biological functions are shutting down. We’ve already lost almost ten thousand of them and there’ll be more than that before we’re done. We can’t do anything for them but make them comfortable.”     Mumphrey snorted. “It’ll look to the rest of the Parodyverse that we’re cavin’ to those worlds demanding bloody vengeance on the prisoners of war and letting them die – or hastening their demises.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But we’re not,” Roshamon insisted. “Their Master did this to them, not us. We’re just left holding the can.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Fair trials,” Sir Mumphrey insisted. “It was agreed before I stepped down. A war crimes commission, just like we had at Nurenburg after the last war.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I agree,” the Governor told him. “But lots of these prisoners aren’t going to live to see trial unless we can conjure up am medical miracle.”     Mr Flay and Mr Skinner watched them as they walked out of earshot.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Passionate for fair play, aren’t they, Mr Skinner?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m touched by their humanity, Mr Flay. I feel we’re all a little bit better for it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Do you think they’ll die when the escape occurs, Mr Skinner?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We can but hope, can we not, Mr Flay? We can but hope.” *** More to follow… *** Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2007 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2007 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.

I look forword to what happens in the future.