Previous Post Contessa Natalia Katarina Romanza was not a woman who fell victim to undo distress, and so even awakening to find herself stripped to undergarments and restrained upon a cold metal table under blazing surgical lights elicited little more than an "Ah... this again" response within her mind. Still, upon further review of the room, even she had to admit this was not business as usual for one of SPUD's top operatives. The towers of bubbling, glowing liquid connected by corkscrewing glass tubing, for instance, was not standard HERPES issue. Nor were the crackling Jacob's ladders, or arcing Tesla coils. And the Velociraptors in what looked like Nazi SS uniforms were a decidedly new twist. "Regaining consciousness already..." a voice hissed from somewhere outside her field of view. She searched the metallic surfaces around her until she caught the reflection of the speaker... an emaciated lizard specimen in a bloody lab coat, his skin hanging down from his neck in droopy folds to create a sickly wattle. His little forearms gestured to the soldiers on the other side of the room. "See? I told you as much... she is of solid stock. There is much to recommend of her." The lead uniformed dino curled its lip in disgust. "A mammal... have we really come to this?" "Ah, but a sentient mammal, if you can believe such a thing" the scientist replied. "We have tried, again and again, with unevolved specimens gathered from the worlds below. They have not been able to follow in the paths of our greatness. But this specimen... it is unlike the other mammals that roam the worlds below... even unlike the other apes. See the fabrics of its uniform? No species below has the technology capable of making such materials. Indeed, I have dissected and weighed the brains of the 20 males of similar attire that accompanied this one, and it is clear they are evolved from a stock not heretofore discovered. They may be the race from the stars that the prophecy foretold." The leader took a few swaying steps to her side, and sniffed her dismissively. "But... it's so repulsive to look upon... and needlessly rounded in various places." The scientist shrugged. "I'm sure with adequate vivisection in addition to aggressive gene therapy, the physical deformities can be muted. The bottom line, gentlemen, is that our race is on the verge of extinction. The Jurassic Reich needs women." He smiled, green drool slipping between his razor sharp teeth. "Let us begin the genetic modifications, and then judge the final product, not this crude starting point." "Very well, Herr Doctor" the commander replied, making his way through a bulkhead hatch at the far end of the lab. "But see if you can't give it an adequate tail, at least..." "Of course, mine commandant." The scientist finally stepped into her range of view, and licked his scaly lips. "Don't worry my dear... I have faith in you." "And here I was worried I might not have a date for the cotillion" Natalia grunted, her eyes narrow. "Of course, the process is unbelievably painful, but then being reborn as the perfect race is not a task for the weak. Some of my experiments have taken to calling this little lab the "room of pain"... but really it's a place of miracles, where I free lesser beings of the restraints of their imperfect flesh." He held up a branding iron, with the Lizard's symbol as the head. "When you are marked as one of us, I'm sure you will follow the reactions of those who have gone before you, and fall to your knees, weeping in ecstasy at what you have become." She shook her head slowly. "That is not going to happen." He gave her a bemused look as he heated the branding iron over a Bunsen burner. "Ah? And why do you say that?" She gave the most subtle of shrugs. "Because someone has undone the shackle on my left hand" she informed him, just as she grabbed a tray of syringes and whipped them about into the tongue of the old raptor as he opened his mouth to call for the guards. Reflexively, he closed his mouth, depressing the plungers and flooding his tissue with the genetic resequencing formula. "Gaaaahslpppphhhh!" he gasped, clutching his throat, his lower jaw foaming and distending. He thrashed about, his tail sending a dissection tray clattering across the room. The Contessa had already released the other clasps binding her to the table by the time the first guard came through the door. She considered a beaker of obviously acidic compound, but thought of her unseen ally. Instead, she opted for the direct approach, launching herself at the scaly terror and bringing her foot down at a harsh angle into its inverted kneecap. Its sharply clawed foot slid out from under its long body, allowing her to smash its jaw into the operating table on the way down. Stunned, it scrambled to bring its toe claws up to gut her, but she managed to secure the submachine gun strapped over its shoulder and dropped it with a crushing blow from the butt end to the back of the lizard's skull. Taking a moment to glance out the bulkhead portal to check for more guards, she walked back over to where the doctor lay on its side, gasping for breath and clawing at the empty air. "So fall many a master race" she noted coldly as she gathered her SPUD issue jumpsuit from the nearby table. "You may as well come out now..." she spoke to the empty room. "We will need to plan the rest of our escape." A young boy with mussed brown hair faded into sight. He was rather grubby, with torn clothing and half-healed superficial scrapes and cuts on his skin. "Er... hello" he managed, blushing heavily as he looked at his feet. "I'm not... I didn't mean to see you in your underwear" he assured her. "It's just, well... that's all you were wearing, and I thought you needed the help." She smiled slightly to herself. "Government issue underwear does not count for peeping, I should think" she assured him. "Someday, you shall learn which kind does." She finished zipping up and slung the submachine gun over her shoulder, even as she began to search the chemistry cabinets for useful items. "You may look now. You are Visionary's son, are you not? I have read the file on you..." "I have a file?" he asked, blinking. "Everyone has a file" she shrugged. "At least, everyone interesting. The only question is how thick it is." She selected a few choice bottles and began to mix the contents into glass vials. "How long have you been held here?" "I'm not sure... I woke up in a cell, five decks down. I had leafs down my back. My chart said I was found in a tree on world Azure-16. It also said I was a monkey-sloth hybrid." His eyes grew dark. "I took that kind of personal." She nodded in understanding. "I've been exploring the ship for the last two days. It's an airship, did you know that?" "The aluminum support struts along the walls suggested as much, yes" she answered. "I didn't pick up on that..." he admitted. "I nearly walked through a wall out into empty air." He gulped hard. "It was a long way down." She factored that into her plans. "Do you know how long I've been here?" she asked. "They found you yesterday. Classified you as a gibbon, with perhaps a trace of skink ancestry. They were really excited by that." "So I gathered" the spy replied. "Griffin... May I call you Griffin? I apologize for not introducing myself earlier. My name is..." "Contessa Natalia Katarina Romanza of SPUD" Griffin supplied. "I, uh, read your file as well. Back home. And I kind of have a photographic memory." "I see" she answered, looking the boy over speculatively. "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I take it your sister... is not on board?" His hands clenched tightly. "I don't know where Maggie is." "Then I shall make you a deal" she supplied. "You help me escape, and I shall help you find your sister." He looked at her with his dark eyes. "I was going to help you anyway." She nodded. "Same here. Shall we?" It took her 37 restart attempts to bring her consciousness back online. Apparently there was significant hardware damage and data corruption (now safely quarantined ), in addition to some critical power failures. For the first 72 hours she existed entirely within the system, not sparing the electricity to even light a single display monitor. What was the point? Six hours into operation she confirmed through mansion sensors that there was nobody in the great house to see her anyway. Still, she was confused... There were other readings, and they didn't match up with the data she *should* be getting from Lair Mansion. More to the point, there was the complete lack of data from Parodiopolis, and indeed the rest of the world. Not only were all internet connections down, but there wasn't even any broadcast or satellite data coming in. The airwaves were almost completely dead here, save for a background static that so far had not yielded any recognizable pattern. All of which didn't help fill in the blank left by the error in her short-term recall. What had happened? She could only remember as far as the events of this morning... the Legion gathering to have breakfast, as normal. Had there been an attack after that? It seemed likely... Judging by security settings, the mansion was on high alert against any kind of incursion, going so far to monitor against teleportation and dimensional shifting on a scale that she had never seen before. Brilliant stuff, this. Obviously the work of the Legion's resident scientist. Hopefully he hadn't accidentally wiped out mankind with an overly aggressive display of dimensional manipulation... Sometimes that kind of thing didn't sit well with the Legion's toaster. "Never cross the streams" was written in warning on the side of the 2000 lbs device that took up a corner by the refrigerator. Nobody was quite sure what that meant, mind you, but it did make for an adventure whenever one dared to throw the "bagel setting" lever. "The Toaster!" she exclaimed to herself, so excited that she activated the sound card in the communications computer. "What an idiot I am..." she chastised herself. With a diversion of the emergency shut-off shunt, the kitchen appliance's self-sustaining nuclear reactor began to feed energy into her own storage cells. Room by room, the lights of the Mansion came on, followed by the monitors, and then finally the holographic grid. "I will never question NTU's wisdom again" she noted. A blender that doubled as a super-colliding superconductor now seemed like a perfectly reasonable way to make margaritas. Of course, the infusion of energy also meant the opportunity to reactivate other, intriguing systems. "Wow" she noted appreciatively, materializing for the first time. She walked(!) over to the mantle and flicked one of the brass candle-holders with her index finger. It let out a soft ring as her nail seemed to connect with it. "This is too cool." She was going to have to read the manual on this. Luckily, it would seem she had plenty of time... After all, it didn't seem like the phone was going to start ringing any time soo-- There was a crash as the foyer window smashed in. She flickered to the location instantly to find a burning tree branch smoldering on the hardwood floor. Looking out the window she saw somewhat crudely dressed people gathered around the outskirts of the property, which now appeared to reside in a large, sprawling field of wheat. Negligently, she glanced to the burning branch and the fire suppression system engaged, hosing the source of the flame with a smothering foam. "Right" she noted, looking out at the crowd. "They even brought the pitchforks." She rolled up her wireframe sleeves and cracked her knuckles. "Show time" she grinned evilly, testing the range on the holographic field around the mansion. "This is going to be fun." Nobody attacked her home, not while she was on guard. And nobody was getting in uninvited until the Legion showed up, she vowed. Jarvis, Lisa,Starseed, Yo, NTU, Donar, Finny, DarkHwk ... She sent out the coded call to all of the team. The Legion would come, and they'd help restore her full system memory (thank heavens for quarantine protocol HAGG13-0001010110, or who knows how bad of shape she might be in...) She had to keep faith in that. "In the meantime," she thought as a virtual dragon swooped down, scattering the villagers with a terrifying roar while the stunnulators charged up to full power, "heaven help the trespasser who tries to set one foot in this house." The zeppelin's explosion blended in with the burning red of the huge, dim star in the sky, backlighting the crudely improvised parafoil that circled below it, dodging flaming wreckage that rained down into the jungles below. Griffin clutched at her tightly as she worked the rigging to keep them clear of the destruction. The boy had possibilities, she had to admit... but then, how could he not with invisibility, intangibility and a photographic memory? The eyes were a problem though... Far too honest. Far too concerned. "Are you okay back there?" she called over her shoulder. "Fine" came the choked reply. "Griffins love the open air... even when it's full of flaming hot death." The Contessa chuckled. This was a boy that Drury wanted to keep an eye on... she could arrange that. "Hang in there, partner..." she answered him. "We're just getting started."