("a) Wilbur Parody was the leader of the Cult of Lugosa, worshippers of Shab’adabba’Dhu, and wanted victims to feed to his tenebrous deity; (b) Wilbur Parody knew who Lisa and G-Eyed were and was expecting their coming to the extent of raising the demon Oddhorn to deal with them; and (c) Wilbur Parody had the power to somehow shut down the heroes’ powers. The first lady of the Lair Legion and her companion had dealt with this by (a) throwing Lisa’s indestructible ginger cat at the demon’s sensitive bits; (b) running like hell away through the tunnels beneath Parody Mansion (what would become the HQ of the Lair Legion); and (c) encountering a white-haired, staff-wielding rescuer who bore an uncanny resemblance to some-time legionnaire Hollywood V."

"This chamber was built to monitor the great Secret beneath Parody Island, which amongst other things is the ultimate source of all super-powers in the Parodyverse. Parody built his mansion here to seek to harness that Secret, and what little he has mastered enabled him to block off your own access to the source. From this room it was a simple matter to undo his meddling.”

“But I’m not from the Parodyverse,” objected G-eyed. “How can my powers come from here?”

“Lisa was once… active … elsewhere too,” HV replied. “In one sense the Parodyverse was born whole from cosmic ructions in other planes, other realities such as the AMB. It was spawned from one point in time and space and unfolded past and future from there. And in another sense all of that happened merely to create a backdrop wherein the Secret could be placed.”

"It was Hallowe’en Night and therefore things were getting spooky. The Paradopolis power grid was down, and the Legion’s backup generators were sulking. The mysterious and irritating Englishman Con Johnstantine had turned up to announce that something evil was loose in the mansion and somebody there was possessed. The Legion, convinced by the blood oozing from the walls, the unidentified boy parts, and so forth, searched their home and found it larger and with rather more stygian cellars than last time they looked. That was how Yo and DarkHwk came to fall through the Hooded Hood’s Portal of Pretentiousness – left there by Wilbur Parody all those years ago and unnoticed until now – and end up talking soap operas with the Groper out of Grossness.

"Meanwhile, Dark Knight, Starseed, and Space Ghost have uncovered a bricked-up attic chimney where they have found the long-dead corpses of Lisa and Goldeneyed. Fin Fang Foom and Banjooooo have found Baron Zemo’s genetically-manufactured daughter Zemette in a cellar chamber which is remarkably similar to the one where HV was over a century back in the last episode. And Visionary, Cheryl, Tina, and NTU-150 have discovered that the mansion’s computer HALLIE is the possessed individual, which is bad since HALLIE controls all the Lair’s automated defence systems and is in charge of Enty’s newest innovation, the micro-servo-nanobots which now repair and redesign the mansion."

“That is the pathway to the Secret upon which the Parodyverse is built,” the cowled crime-czar told the Amazon administrator. “The path is described in the writings of Wilbur Parody, a former Shaper of Worlds who for many years sought to master the Secret but could never find this room from which the path begins. And even if he had it would have availed him little, for none but those of the fellowship who guard this place can enter that strange doorway.”

“You mean the Legion?” Troia checked. She liked to be current with the plot.” The Legion are the guardians?”

“Of course. Why do you think they are called the Lair Legion?”

“I need to know more about this book of Wilbur Parody’s,” Lisa progressed the discussion quickly. “We know that Parody was a former holder of the office of Shaper of Worlds, and that he resigned to seek and master the secrets hidden under this island, which became named after him. He built the city of Paradopolis over the hiding place of Shab’addaba’Dhu, the oldest guardian placed by the Celestians, to keep it amused and entertained while he went on with his researches. He suborned the second guardian, the fiendish demon Oddhorn, using loathsome unspeakable sacrifices through his cult. And he certainly found out some of the truth of this place.”

“Somehow Wilbur Parody was just able to shut our powers off as if he had a switch,” Goldeneyed remembered with a shudder.

“Oddhorn demonstrated that ability as well,” Dark Knight remembered. “Not just our powers, our.… uniquenesses.”

“Since all super-powers eventually proceed from the same source in the Parodyverse, no matter whether they be packaged through Ausgardian enchantments, the Gah! Force, the Jarvis Cosmic, a… fern, or whatever else, one only has to understand how to control the faucet,” the Hooded Hood suggested. “But Wilbur Parody failed to understand one thing.”
“That the voice in his head instructing him what to do was yours?” Fin Fang Foom accused the cowled crime-czar.

“That having been Shaper of Worlds, part of what he gave up was the ability to ever perceive that chamber below Parody Island,” the Hood answered.

“Nothing that powerful should have access to the chamber,” Exile realised. “So they aren’t allowed to even see it.”

“Your book, Mayor Parody,” HV said, handing over a large volume called The Laws and Ordinances of New Paradopolis and closing it shut before Wilbur could work out the new paragraph Hastings Vernal had just added.

“Thank you.” Wilbur Parody was almost sorry that he was going to have to disband this group now. However, they had come too close to discovering what he was really up to, his long-range plans for Paradopolis and its heroes, perhaps even the persuasive, velvety, Latvian-accented voice that sometimes spoke in his head. Besides, the time was coming when Parody would again need the Mansion of the Lair of the Parodyverse’s Secret and it would be best if these adventurers were dead or disbanded by then. He would see to it. “Thank you for everything,” the Mayor of New Paradopolis told them.

“What’s worrying me is that if the Universe is trying this hard to destroy us then the Final Trial that Wilbur Parody prophesied can’t be too far off. All of this Thugos thing is just an attempt to eliminate us before the big problems start.

Nats nearly choked on his coffee. “Big problems? You’re saying this one is minor?”

“It’s all relative,” the sorcerer supreme of the Parodyverse shrugged.

“And all of Paradopolis being dragged off to an alien planet with my l’il Dream on it and everything doesn’t matter?” Meggan Foxxx demanded.

“Everything matters,” Xander told her. “I’m just worrying about the perspectives.”

"We're fighting the villain who thinks he's behind it," Lisa shot back. "But so far he's achieved none of his objectives. He's lost his Deathworld, the Skree empire, his conduit to the Sauce, his major henchpeople, and all he's got are some lumps and bruises from AG and the Legion. You, on the other hand, have come back from the dead, having learned of some mysterious arcane source of knowledge that you need to further your ambitions…"

"The Third Book of Wilbur Parody," the Hood footnoted. "Yes, I have had sight of such a tome."

"So you caused the kidnapping of Paradiopolis, the takeover of Earth by the Devil-Doctor, the attack of Deathworld, the destruction of Skree-Lump, and the invasion of Thugos all to further your own ends," spat Visionary. "You manipulated Thugos, Galactivac, even the Celestians to further your ambitions, and you caused the death of billions."

"Thugos precipitated those things," the Hood shrugged. "All I did was talk with the Shaper of Worlds. [See The Hooded Hood and the Anniversary of the BZL, or Untold Tales of the Lair Legion #0] If she chose to respond by creating Dark Thugos and Kumari I cannot be responsible. I toppled only the first domino."

"You lined them up as well though," Lisa added. "You manipulated Melissa into giving up her powers to Dancer, for example. And you arranged for the whole of Paradopolis to be 'accidentally' taken to the prison world. And for me to be sucked into a portal of death."

“Wilbur Parody is a dangerous man... Nobody knows where he originally came from, but he has transformed the place we now call Paradiopolis in his honour from a collection of bog-moated villages to a commercial centre to rival Gothametropolis York itself. He’s transformed our civic centre, adding a Cathedral, a railway, an opera house, a library. He’s quite literally put this city on the map.”

“I’ve met Wilbur,” Lisa admitted. “Well, not yet, but I will do in about twenty years time, back in my past when I was time travelling to your future, but…”

“I understand,” Faust told her. He actually did, which was why he was the master of the mystic crafts.

The man who called himself Wilbur Parody in this day and age had previously and uniquely been the only person to hold all three of the principal cosmic offices – Shaper of Worlds, Chronicler of Stories, and Destroyer of Tales –at different times. And on each occasion he had found ways to sequester knowledge known only to that office, so that he alone had access to secrets that were never meant to be understood by one person alone.”

“His Book of Prophecy,” spiffy remembered.

“His three books of Prophecy,” the Hood corrected.

“Aw crap!” spiffy commented.

“So he worked out the secrets of the Parodyverse, and he retired to Paradopolis to build railway stations,” ManMan frowned. “That makes no sense at all.”

“Except that he knew the Secret of the Parodyverse, or the key to it at least, was concealed on Parody Island,” answered the cowled crime-czar.
“Don’t remind me,” spiffy shuddered. “The Dreaming Celestian with my cosmic cube. I still get flashbacks.” [If the reader also wants flashbacks, they are referred to Untold Tales #17, The Final Untold Tale of the Lair Legion: The Judgement of the Celestians. Final in this sense is used in the contextual meaning of “not final”.]

“You get flashbacks,” ManMan objected. “I went one-on-one with a Celestian and I was holding a knife!”

“Parody had worked out that the final battle of the Parodyverse, what he termed the Resolution War, the conflict that the Parodyverse was ordained to determine the outcome of, would centre here in Paradopolis,” the Hood continued.

“More good news for house-owners,” spiffy noted.

“He therefore shaped a second future, in which he prepared all of Paradopolis as a big trap.”

“To control the elder thingie guardian Shabba’Dhabba’Dhu that was one of the protectors of the Secret,” spiffy remembered.

“To capture and control every single power that would focus its attention here when the Resolution War began,” the Hooded Hood corrected him. “Chaos, Order, Life, Death, Weirdness, Celestians, Pointless, Gods and Gods of Gods, Time, Space, and Relative Dimensions. Everything. By turning their own power against them he intended to trap them all in Paradopolis where he could command them.”

“That would be… a not good thing,” ManMan admitted.

“But that was the second future,” spiffy remembered. “Something changed that one as well.”

“In the third future, Parody’s gambit was thwarted, and he had to fall back on another plan. A voice in his head led him to probe out the Secret at the Centre of the Parodyverse, and he began his long plotting to gain power by suborning the Dreaming Celestian.”

“Er, wasn’t that voice, well… you, Hood?” spiffy hesitated to ask.
“Of course. I could hardly allow somebody as dangerous as Parody to wander about unsupervised. Anyway, that plan was thwarted by the Lair Legion and Jarvis’ sacrifice. I achieved my long-term objectives but was denied a short-cut to ruling the Parodyverse.”

ManMan sat down, accidentally crushing the Paradiopolis Opera House. “Ooops. Sorry. But since Parody’s big plan in future two got stopped, why are we here in 1860?” he asked.

The Hooded Hood almost smiled.

“We’re still in future two here, aren’t we?” Joe Pepper suddenly knew. “And if we don’t do something to change it to future three, Parody’s gonna win, right? You want us to go and change the future so that we have to fight all those Celestians and stuff? And we have to do it because this is worse.”

In the background spiffy was saying very un-mayoral words.

Once upon a time there was a little bundle of realities called the Parodyverse. Although the Parodyverse had an embarrassing profusion of origins, nobody really knew who or what had brought it into being, and nobody really understood why.

Some said the Parodyverse was a joke of the gods, or a statistical necessity of the probability curve, or a means of containing ideas that more respectable universes wouldn’t consider. One old wicked man called Wilbur Parody believed that the whole thing was designed to resolve one important question or conflict, and that the whole time/space continuum existed merely to provide a proper framework for a coming event he called the Resolution War.

And Parody should have known. The Parodyverse is maintained by three distinct metaphysical hierarchies, and Parody was intimate with them. First there are the Family of the Pointless, key concepts given anthropomorphic personification - Coincidence, Lusting, Whinging, Glamour, Death, Temporary Death, and Space Ghost. Common Sense has abandoned his office. Ancient and terrible, they play little part in our current story, with one important exception.

Then there are the Offices. Parody was most familiar with these, for these are cosmic roles played by mortals or former mortals. At different times Wilbur Parody held all three of the principal roles – Shaper of Worlds, Chronicler of Stories, and Destroyer of Tales – the only person ever to experince all three. Since certain knowledge available to these office-holders is too important for the incumbent to retain after they have retired, Parody cheated and recorded his insights into three books of prophesy which continue to cause a good deal of trouble.

Finally there are the Celestian Space Robots. Think of them as the engineers maintaining reality. A quarter mile high and as indestructible as the Parodyverse can make them, these massive cosmic machines are vast and unknowable, appearing without warning from their hidden city to destroy planets, change physical laws, or do whatever is necessary to maintain the unknown purpose of the universe that is their charge.

Wilbur Parody realised that whoever controls the Celestians controls the Parodyverse, and long since set out to gain that control. Finding a site which the Space Robots had a special interest in, Parody founded a city which he named after himself. For over a century he guided New Parodiopolis (later Paradopolis) into becoming the greatest metropolis on Earth. And through all that time he was growing it, architecture and population, into an arcane trap that could capture and reprogram the Space Robots.

Parody made but one mistake, and that was in heeding the advice of a hooded stranger who whispered to him in secret. Thus when the trap was finally triggered and the plan to take command of the Space Robots finally implemented Wilbur Parody was long gone, and the triumph belonged to the cowled crime-czar known as… the Hooded Hood.

The reality-rewriting Hood had prepared well. He had ensured that the defenders of Earth were preoccupied with their own challenges. Hence the Abandoned Legion and the JBH both found themselves fighting for their life off-planet, and a host of other heroes faced destruction nearer to home. The Lair Legion, the Parodyverse’s premiere team of superheroes, was occupied by a World Tour, by planetary domination attempts from other villains, and by the threat of the most powerful assemblage of super-powered criminals ever gathered, the Purveyors of Peril. Of which more anon.

The key to the Hooded Hood’s control of the Celestians was control over Paradopolis, so while the rest of the world descended into anarchy and chaos in the Purveyors’ takeover, the Big Banana was preserved behind a force-field and became a single massive tool to reorder the Parodyverse. The few heroes remaining in the city fought valiantly, but have apparently been defeated. Another group who sought to use a dimension-jumping London double-decker bus (don’t ask) to breach the barrier found that the Hood had cut a deal with time-mistress Symmetry of Synchronicity to set a trap for them.

But here Coincidence of the Endless comes into play. By perverse chance the occupants of the bus were not smeared across timespace, but instead found themselves translated to the city of the Celestians itself. And there they broke stuff.

This is their story…