It occurs to me that poison is probably the way to quietly eliminate Lara.







I suspect that if we got into that kind of plotline it would be difficult to reach a satisfactory resolution. Either Chiaki succeeds, which eliminates "evil goverment" influence, stretches credibility that goverment will be nice now, and takes away a key story driver, or she fails and looks weak and ineffectual.




That's why I make a reasonable living out of telling companies what they can REALLY afford and how to make things work.







The Hood and Thugos are really moving to opposite sides of the game. Thugos' new ally the Chain Knight did once blind and torture the Hooded Hood in Herringcarp, and even if that was part of the Hood's plan he's likely to hold a grudge.




The Hood often shows not tells. For example, if he revealed the plight of a starving alien population who are about to be ethnically cleansed in the next 24 hours he can pretty much guarantee to distract most heroes for a similar period of time.







He'd do this by setting up a "lesser of two evils" situation. Say the only way to save the starving aliens was to have to choose which half of them live and which have to get left behind to die horribly. And then the hero has to decide whether to mercifully kill them or leave them alive for slow torture. Or with a little more manipulation he could find an issue that set outsider-Lara at odds with Earth's heroes and shattered the trust between them forever as Lara had to unilaterally act on her conscience and damn the consequences.







He wouldn't lie although he might decieve. But going back to the previous example, if the conquering aliens doing the ethnic cleansing possessed the Jarvisite fragment then the Hood might well put Lara in a position to save the oppressed aliens just as a distraction for his agent to extract the Jarvisite. He's just used exactly the same plan with the MLA and Ham-Boy at the Jet Starscream Experience.







The Hood has a taste for cosmic women, c.f. Lisa, Dancer, Jury, the Faerie Queene, the Amazon Queen, Shazana Pel, Symmetry of Synchronicity. And while he often has ulterior motives for his seductions that doesn't mean he's not attracted.

I suspect that one reason the Hood is effective in his romances is that he can speak to the cosmic in his partners and "get" where they're coming from; an aspect of his enhanced multi-reality worldview. More practically, he can know the outcome of most romantic gambits before he elects to try them.

And of course he's educated, erudite, sophisticated, experienced, confident, suave, and when he wishes to be, charming. And a bastard.

What he doesn't do - could, but doesn't - is use his retcon powers to arrange a seduction. He'd see that as tacky and unworthy.