To Be Continued...

Pardon my dust. 

https://itsdavidvc.blogspot.com/2020/10/five-years-later.html#more

Season's Greetings

Some time ago, the Mayor of a certain steampunk city asked me to contribute some material for the next edition of Tales of New Babbage, worthy of print and possibly even a radio play. I told him I was retired. He told me there was lucre involved. I pulled out the typewriter. After some lively discussion back and forth, I came up with a narrative to his liking.

Sadly, he came back later and told me it almost made the cut. Not enough urchins in it, apparently.

No matter. My loss is your gain.

Here is the prequel. The fad is to read this afterwards, apparently, but it's your choice.

Here is the tale itself.

My Yuletide gift to all of my friends still in Second Life. I miss you all.

Be Well.

Farewell

My Fellow Steamlanders,

Steelhead is gone. Yes, a slice of it has been saved with a new sign over Nevermoor, but the land of the Weird West, Gaslamp Fantasy and Steampunk Nouveau has passed into legend. It was my home for nine years. Fifty-four years if you count SL's sun rotations, but I digress. 

I wandered in because a friend needed a dance partner for the ball. I never left. I became their Demon Sheriff. Then I became their doctor and the resident Mad Scientist. I invited friends into the world who are still with us, and still entertain you. I made the first clumsy design for Steelhead's flag. I might have even been their Mayor for a day, just before Lunar-san took the oath...the lines of succession were murky back then. I made more than my share of mistakes I admit. But I acted out of love for my home and my neighbors. I pray that my exploits have entertained you more than they have agonized you.

And as that wonderfully bohemian harbor of eccentricity fades into memory, so must I. Please consider me retired and in seclusion. My kin are scattered about the continuum of time and space on one heroic campaign or another, but out of reach. As for the Demon? He continues to weave through the shadows of our dreams. I pray he leaves us alone for another seven generations before his ghostly countenance seizes the mind and body of yet another unsuspecting soul and claims it as his own. 

Thank G_d. I am Free. Be Well, My Friends. 

Sincerely and Bittersweet,

Dr. Darien James Mason

P.S. Please forward any remaining concerns to my attorney, Mr. David Littman, Esq., in New Palermo.

coronation

Seraph was a busy place, full of businessmen running to meetings and housewives running to buy the latest fashions and musicians running to the next gig. But when those horrible air-raid started wailing, it all changed. Businessmen started running to their housewives and the musicians tried to run away from the housewives before the businessmen caught them. Me? I ran for the nearest back alley to keep from getting trampled.

I heard a roar overhead like on of those new-fangled jet engines and then...fire. The whole sky was lit up.

You know how when you're real lonely you hear a voice in your head? Or when something really dangerous is going on it tells you how to get out of it? Well maybe you don't but I got one. But this one's a real pain usually. And half the time he doesn't make any sense. Except this time I really needed him.

Say my name, Child! Even once! It is your only chance to live!

I hated saying his name. It always got me in trouble. Especially with Old Koen. But he wasn't here and even if he popped up right in front of me we wouldn't have enough time.

"Okay!" I screamed. "BLOODWING!"

Through the screaming and explosions I could hear the name echo off the bricks and metal of this beautiful city. Bloodwing. Bloodwing. Bloodwing...

I was actually flying this time. I have no idea how but I was. I rose up past that metal statue of Seraph herself, that shining beauty with the six wings that He liked so much. I could swear she was crying...

No. She was melting. And my city was crumbling around me. Louder than than I could scream. And I screamed until my throat was raw.

Nothing but a sea of glowing metal and shattered rocks. FOUNDER DAMN YOU ALL THERE WAS NOTHING! I didn't ask much of you, Seraph. You taught me to jump over across building and dodge the freeway traffic. You mass-produced enough food that I could always find enough scraps. I never went without a hot manhole cover when it cold. Seraph raised me! She was the only mother I knew! WHO DID THIS TO YOU? WHY?

At the edge of where my city once was, I saw a clunky old robot tapping away at some machinery. He looked up at me with one glowing eye for a moment, like he was sorry. Then he went back to work.

It started raining and it seemed like the whole planet lifted me up higher on my wings with a thick blanket of steam. I fought the current and touched the ground. I couldn't see a damn thing from the steam.

"Brian?"

Somebody was still alive!

"Yes! Hello! HELLO! Over here!"

I didn't see him until he was a few feet in front of me. A neko with red and black tiger stripes wearing scraps.

"Wait," I said. "I know your voice! You're Koen! But you're not the old Regent with gray fur and you're not the new guy with white fur!"

"You got a good ear. I was a kid in black fur but...we diverged at some point, but I AM Koen. You're right about that. Listen, kid..."

He started telling me about Neo and the Wastelands. About how anything that's left of a city or world that gets wiped out ends up in some never-never-land where nothing works unless you build it yourself and you gotta fight and rummage for every scrap of food.

"The good news is, kid...you don't have to stay here. As a matter of fact, Neo says you're not allowed here. There's rules against demons. And that's definitely what you are now."

"So that means I'm gonna be stuck in Old Koen's time box forever?"

I heard the same voice behind me. "No, Brian. I know a place where you'll be safe."

I felt his white paw on my shoulder. "And inside the TARDIS..."

"The voices stop. Right." It was something about there could only one Founder in one time, and his box was out of time. But it was true. I was a normal kid in the box even if nothing inside the box was normal.

---

That was a while ago. Now it's different. I am hearing that voice again, but it's from the guy's head. Which I rested on a table in the Zero Chamber because I don't like carrying around heads even if they're not dead yet.

So you've already felt my presence. That will make things much easier. I apologize, child. I was ready to pass into Oblivion, but...

"I know. I'm a seventh son of a seventh son. I don't know who this huge family of mine is because I never met them in my life...and I sure as Hades won't ever find them now."

Stranger things have happened. I am tired of manipulations. I will allow you to make your own decisions...

"Unless they put us both in danger. Yeah, that's what you said the first time. Can we just get on with it?'

Impatient...just like...

He closed his eyes and dried up into a skull. Then the bone and horn turned to powder and powder to dust that blew into nothing. It didn't even hurt this time. Then that feeling, like when someone's injecting medicine in you and it burns up your arm all the way to your heart and from there it flashes everywhere else inside you. Those damn wings and the horns. And even the clown face. I was the Founder again.

The walls of the Zero Chamber all mirrored. I took a long look at myself. Something was different. This wasn't exactly the same Founder that took over after that big black hole swallowed Seraph the first time. That guy was tired. Lonely. Too depressed to barely do anything. Almost... senile? I could feel this time, the Founder wasn't slipping into the back of my mind. He cared about me and what was happening to his family outside this box in the big crater.

"Alright...it's the only family I have now. Let's save them."

I felt a surge of confidence. I think that's what it was.

"OPEN THIS DOOR!"

The TARDIS computer didn't recognize me with confidence I guess.

"Vocal Identification not recognized. Please identify."

"I am Brian Mason! I am BLOODWING!"

reinforcements

I grimly gazed towards the sooty night sky as the shoggoth raised its pulsating mass in a faltering column, blocking my view of the smudged, crimson moon. The abomination that just hours ago took human form now loomed over me like a tidal wave drawing its power to crush and consume all that lay its path. Its deafening roar shook the wasted earth so strongly that I could not hear the sonic boom that accompanied the globe of electricity that blossomed between the monster and myself.

I knew that energy signature well. It was a galvanic tesseraction.

Qlippothic heard my distress call. My daughter was back. Maybe there weren't enough of us left to stop Yagi. Or perhaps...we now have half a chance.

The monster's roar stifled into a piercing shriek as Qli invoked a Voorish Sign.

[Darien. Help me. My life is ebbing...]

I felt the Founder's mental tap. But wasn't he just...?

[Here, fool!]

Yes, there he was. A mop of crimson hair interrupted by a pair of broken horns rolled to a stop against a boulder.

"Yes, new priority," I grumbled. "Rescue the Founder's head."

I dashed like a drunken sailor and tripped again. The heat of the conflagration had apparently melted the rubber soles of my old army boots and they ripped clean off my feet. I hurriedly scrambled back up, slowed further by the pain of the jagged terrain jabbing at my wool socks. I was perhaps five strides away when Koen leaped down on all fours lifting Bloodwing's head by the hair.

[Must you?]

I someone else shout "I'm open!" and he swung the head and hurled it up towards the crater rim.

[MUST YOU?]

Another neko caught what was left the Ancestor. From the energy flaring from the battle I was escaping I could see it was a white-furred neko in...a rather garish outfit.

[Koen? Two at once?]

"Yes. I'll explain later. Brian! Catch!" He tossed the head to a young boy in a student's uniform.

[After all this I am carried by a child like a piece of sports equipment?]

"Oh stop kvetching, Grandfather!" He pressed a medallion connected by a chain to his watchpocket to a golden obelisk with the Founder's symbol engraved in the side. The metal began to ripple like water.
"Get him to the Zero Chamber!" The boy ran through the shimming metal. The obelisk was so narrow, I thought the boy must be cramped inside with the Founder. What a hopeless place to hide!

Then this other Koen slipped through the surface of the structure himself just as his assistant did. I cocked a brow.

"No. It can't be..."

I could barely make it a familiar pneumatic wheezing as the obelisk faded into nothing.

"Well I'll be. I guess Koen did finally make something of himself."

"I heard that!"

The scruffy red-furred Koen lifted me over his shoulder like a sack of fish and hurried after his young compatriots.

"Oh yes, Koen!" I grunted as my ribs smacked against his improvised metal shoulder plates with each step. "Carry me back to the Apocalypse where its safe!"

"At least we've seen the worst of it!"

It's times like these I seriously consider retiring.

priority

By some miracle, I had survived death by ice and fire. The children I had fell upon to shield them from the explosion survived as well. They fared much better than I, however. I was helpless as I watched what transpired next.

Ash had found Bloodwing. The android lifted the demon off the ground by his throat. Ash's web of emerald circuitry was clearly damaged, flickering menacingly in random locations like distant thunder. The demon's mighty wings sagged under their own weight as he struggled in his grip. Koen was trying in vain to pry Ash's fingers from the Founder's pallid throat.

"I was just beginning to understand what love was!", thundered Ash with a rage I had never imagined he would possess. "Even before she evolved, Yagi was already more than a pet!"

He grabbed Koen by the scruff of the neck and threw him away with a yelp and a loud crash into a pile of debris.

"I loved her like she was my child!" he continued, "And your carelessness has destroyed her! YOU SHALL PAY!"

"You...were not programmed for vengeance..." choked the demon.

Ash froze in place as his aura flared and faded several times before he responded. "THIS IS JUSTICE!"

"She...she fulfilled her promise to me, and I to her...you know as well as I that..."

I would never hear the rest of the founder's argument. There was a deafening roar, and...

Must I commit this to the page? Must I describe the carnage as the demon's body was ripped from Ash's grip by the shapeless mass of eyes and teeth? What was going through Ash's short-circuiting brain as he realized Yagi had stolen his kill?

Ash never relented his grip from the Bloodwing's neck. Mechanical irises dialed wide as he stared at the horned disembodied head. He stared back at the demon's face as the abomination rose upwards in a fluid column, expanding from the unholy power it had just absorbed.

"TEKELI-LI! TEKELI-LI!"

Ash dropped the head with a thump and a trail of crimson hair (I could swear I heard the demon still mumbling) and took several steps back.

"YAGI!" he shouted with authority. "STOP!"

He was trying to make her obey like when they were stationed at the Steeltopia embassy. Even then, I'm told, she rarely listened.

Yagi  roared again. I believe speaking to her like a pet was absolutely the last thing she wanted. A pseudopod spun around her several times, building up force until it crashed down on her would-be father, kicking up a great plume of dust and more rock shrapnel.

No, I thought. This can't be happening. What was supposed to have been a simple duel between mad scientists had rapidly escalated out of control. No matter how we responded, New Babbage seemed to keep edging closer to the same destruction that claimed its predecessor that had once occupied this godforsaken crater.

My protective gear, as damaged as it was, had finally thawed enough to allow movement. Likewise, the serum injection had run its course inside me, restoring my energy and mobility. I rose to my feet and pulled my communication device from my belt clip. I turned the dial to a frequency reserved dire emergencies.

"CQD...CQD...Babbage Crater...Priority: MYTHOS...MYTHOS..."

The shoggoth drew its mass together in a vaguely pyramidal shape, and began oozing in my direction...

burn the skies

Were this another battle, the Founder would have torn the airship pilot open to make an example of him, but time was of the essence. The look of terror on the mortal's face as he grabbed him by his lapels, and his pitiful scream and the demon threw him out into the subzero mists would have to suffice.

The machines of this age frustrated him. The ship's wheel was familiar enough. The levers and switches, however...

"One flying beast to another...how do you dive?" A pallid hand tapped a series of levers until he wrapped it around the black knob closest to the wheel.

"Down, beast!" He pushed with such force that the lever snapped. He felt the vibrations in the floor rattle clear up his spine as gears shattered against the paneling below deck. The dirigible lurched forward, and its nose tipped into the mists. The cabin windows clouded over with maddening spiderwebs of frost. Like an army of ghosts the icy vapors howled as they rushed into the cabin where the door had been, encircling the demon.

"The fury of the sun...trapped in an orb of a thousand winters, now shattered..."

He was interrupted by the uncontrolled chattering of his own teeth. He felt a tingling, a sickness hanging in the mists. A sickness that wilted the powers waiting just beyond the veil.

"The bomb that Darien warned me about. Yes...it poisons the air..." He frowned. He had once been entombed in ice as punishment for squandering love. He had once lost his wings and his might when his dying organs were replaced with those grown for his human progeny, to the point that he was in all respects mortal...and helpless. Now he stood to suffer both catastrophes at once...and then be destroyed by the Fires of Apollo in another crater.

He glanced at one of the dials, wiping the frost off the glass cover. It seemed to say they were already below the ground level before the glass shattered.

"This is the end of enough! I saw this city fall the first time and I'll not see it fall again! The fools know not what is still buried beneath this pit waiting to arise and again consume this world!"

To Bloodwing, the fallout from the Reality Enforcement Device seemed like a thickening layer of grime that obscured the glowing runes engraved in his psyche, the ancient Ereb'ai script that when uttered with proper diction and force of will unleashes the chaos of the underworld. He fought the growing numbness to curl his fingers in an arcane gesture. It was the first spell he had learned as a child...it should not be this heard, he thought...

"FIRE!"

He smiled as blue flame danced around his arm. All turned bright in a deafening roar.

---

Koen clutched Ash's emerald disc so tightly the blade dug into the palm of his hand. The muscles in that hand itched as he heard Ash's voice in his mind, attempting to calm him as the ice crystal surrounding their force bubble gave way to billowing flames. Koen's young battalion clustered even tighter around him, to the point where he battled to draw every breath.

[[It is most fortunate for you and your companions that hydrogen flames are orange, and not yellow.]]

---

As the sky over the crater blossomed in orange flames, Darien fell back as the ice fell from his clothes in huge chunks. When the ice from his goggles evaporated he saw Yagi was already on her tip-toes reaching into the circuitry of Hans' massive suit of powered armor.

Of course, he thought. This whole time no one had realized she was a shoggoth when they brought her (in her previously amorphous shape) to the Steamlands from Antarctica. She was the only organic in the entire crater who didn't need some form of protection from the inhospitable temperatures.

He immediately realized that the blanket of flames that stretched across the dome of the crater was descending. It had already engulfed the spot of high ground where Koen and his child soldiers had sought shelter. The flames were rolling down in his direction.

"Oh dear G-d, no..."

He sprinted to where the two girls, Sprog and Blue, had just been thawed by the searing heat. He gathered them close and fell over them, using his own body as a shield as the inferno claimed everything.

taken to task

Everything was still in the crater, where the temperature had fallen to levels only seen on the polar ice caps. Everything, that is, except the robotic spider climbing over a dome of ice that softly radiated an emerald light, within which Koen and his feral pack of young survivors huddled for protection from the elements.

The spider leaped off the dome and landed on the rocks below. The brain floating in the cylinder mounted on the spider swirled about when it landed, and the spindly metallic legs meandered back and forth as the jar tilted this way and that.

"ACH!" shouted Hans' voice through a hissing speaker. "I can feel the cold even through this thing! I've got to get out of here!" The pair of eyes connected to the brain aimed downwards towards a small bulb on the spider's frame.

"The compass is frozen!"

Hans skittered one way in one direction, and then the other. He stopped to look up at Dr. Mason where he was frozen in place, reaching for the control panel of the villain's former exoskeleton.

"Obviously I've been here before..."

Hans scrambled closer to Dr. Mason and lifted a needle-like limb to tap at the weapon fused to Darien's hand.

"Bastard! He used it all! I'll have to steal his formula at the Consulate!"

Dr. Mason would have roared in outrage if his mouth was not sealed shut. But Hans scrambled away, humming some half-remembered Yuletide carols horribly out of tune. He paused for a moment to wonder at the faint golden aura in the haze before him.

"Is that sunlight? I must be closer to the rim than I..."

He was interrupted by the emaciated and jaundiced boy wrapped in tatters that lunged at him with bestial hunger, clutching a radiant yellow disk in his hand.

"AHHHHH!" Hans screamed as Ryan wrapped his free arm around Hans' brain jar. Elongated and narrowed teeth snapped at the glass.

"GET OFF ME!" The thing's metallic limbs flexed and stabbed at the boy, piercing the flesh and even poking through the over side of his body in several places. The boy did not seem to notice. A scornful voice pierced the villain's brain.

((What was that about hurting children, Cold Dead Hans?))

Ryan raised the disc and swiped downwards, shearing off one of the limbs. Hans screamed pitifully as the boy scraped off more pieces of what Hans had dubbed his Cerebral Escape Unit.

((You've ruined EVERYTHING, Hans! You were supposed to CAPTURE the city, not DESTROY it!))

"MARCUS! But I never INTENDED to..."

((That only makes it WORSE! That proves it. Darien was right for once, wasn't he? You DIDN'T invent that reactor! You STOLE it out of the timestream. A DEFECTIVE one at that!))

Ryan began slamming the disc against the jar, creating a shower of sparks with each strike.

"STOP THAT!!!" Disembodied eyes refocused at the faint scratches left in the glass.

((Oh don't worry Hans. You won't freeze solid when this undead child opens your container. He's going to gulp you down like a fresh Babbage oyster. Not that I've ever eaten any myself...but I digress. I'm going to LOVE reading your thoughts and memories as your brain is torn apart and digested. I might even find something USEFUL in your skills-RNA.  Starting of course with the combination to shutting down that accursed reactor...))

"NOOOO!!!" he screamed. "It's FIVE ONE NINE SIX! Five one nine six I tell you! PLEASE! Please don't let him eat me! I'm begging..."

((Did you get that, Darien?))

((Yes,)) His brother silently signaled back. ((Thank you. I owe you one. That is if you can melt this ice...))

((Oh, that won't be necessary. BOY. You need to pick the jar up with both hands and smash it on the ground to open it up. You want that juicy brain don't you? Now just put me down...))

Ryan hurriedly dropped the disk and hefted the damaged Escape Unit over his head. Before he could hurl the device, both the boy and the brain froze in place.

((Things are going to get warm soon enough, dear brother.))

The disk wobbled back onto its side and began rolling away.

((Soon enough...))

---

Above the freezing mists of the crater, a figure with great crimson wings ripped the metal door off the cab of the dirigible. The pilot screamed as he was hurled out of the craft.

---

The faint droning sound of the airship overhead that was a constant presence before grew quickly louder.

Koen looked up in alarm as a plummeting metal door smashed against the ice dome. Even as his companions squeezed him tightly in panic, the energy of Ash's disc caused the jagged shards and the mutilated door itself to bounce effortlessly off the shimmering sphere surrounding them.

Darien tried to raise an eyebrow as a thoroughly frozen body fell several yards away and shattered. Such a waste, he thought.

Koen tried his best to calm down his companions.

"We're gonna be alright guys! We're gonna be..." His feline eyes narrowed as the nose cone of the dirigible emerged from the fog of ice. flames danced across the surface of the fabric.

"Hans, you hack!" thought Darien. "You didn't even use a cavorite airship, did you? You probably filled it with helium or..."

"OH HOLY SHIT TAKE COVER!" screamed Koen as the airship burst into flames with a deafening roar.

"...hydrogen. Of course it would have to be hydrogen..."

entombed

The Founder's order rattled my brain within its skull, granting me a few more seconds of consciousness in this freezing hell. He was right, of course. I can't forget what happened the last time one of us smashed a reactor core. I lowered Blue's axe. There had to be another way to stop the reactor in Hans' abandoned chassis from detonating.

I had to wait for one of the young tribals to capture what was left of Hans and somehow extract the code. But the ice crystals were so thick in the air now that I could only see a few yards in any direction. I was certain to freeze to death. Unless...

I drew my inoculation gun from its holster and pressed the nozzle to my left arm. I swore I would never use the reanimation serum on myself again. Not after I nearly turned into...something like Yoggy. But the serum prevents the blood from freezing. I remembered that very well from reanimating Wren.

A kick like a mule. The burn of reverse-frostbite. I quickly turned and fired the last two doses into Sprog and Blue. I heard them wail, but at least it meant they were still alive. My movement abruptly slowed to a crawl as my clothing grew heavy from accumulating layers of ice. My fingers were inches away from the digital keypad of Hans' stolen invention. But it may as well have been on the other side of the galaxy. I would not freeze for several hours with the reanimation serum in my veins. But nonetheless I was powerless, as the crystals that had gathered on my clothing grew so heavy and thick I could no longer break them off with the flat of Blue's weapon. First my legs were pinned. Then my arms. Soon I was reduced to viewing the world past my goggles in a thick and unyielding layer of ice!

deep freeze

My foe, a cybernetic madman you called himself Cold Dead Hans, faced me down in this crater where the civilization that preceded New Babbage met its end. Now, after several interruptions, Hans had me in a death grip...just as the power core that moves his massive frame suffered a breach.

The blue orb spewing a fountain of frost into the air was a cold fusion reactor. It is something alien to this time and place where Steam works miracles. My son Koen escaped from the Wastelands, where the remains of dead cities are laid to rest, to tell me that this is the very event that would wipe the smog-shrouded metropolis of New Babbage off the map if we do not stop it. If we did not freeze to death first.

Hans had a backup plan should his juggernaut frame have just this sort of failure. Koen's young companions were desperately chasing down Hans's brain jar that grew spidery legs and scuttled away. I stared at the blinking device that controlled the core. Not a gear in sight.

Blue and Sprog were still following me closely as Koen had ordered. But a white fog was blurring away the landscape. The Wastelands they came from was a radioactive desert. The poor girls had never known even a mild day in their short and desperate lives, much less the glacial temperatures that were expanding out from where we stood. Before I even turned to check on them they had already collapsed from the cold.

I was sweating profusely in my old army uniform before all this madness took place. It bore me perhaps a few precious moments of insulation before I would freeze solid. I reached down and lifted Blue's rust-pitted axe from where she had dropped it. I raised it high, preparing to smash the controls. Cut the wires. Something.

Just as I prepared to strike, a shadow passed over me. I felt a chill in my soul that not even absolute zero could inflict upon me. I knew that feeling before, several times. A feeling like you're a marionette and a puppeteer is not manipulating you, but brutishly seizing your strings to rip you away from the script you had planned.  Yes, it was the Founder of the Mason line. Bloodwing had shouted an order in my brain that made me drop the axe and scream in agony.

"STOP!"

before hell freezes over

Cold Dead Hans gloated as I dangled helplessly several feet from the ground in his iron grip. The haze of cold that poured out of him onto the ground grew even thicker.

"I will not turn the screamer machine on again, Doctor Mason...because I want to hear you plead for your life before I CRUSH it out of you! And if your little friends think they can swarm me again..."

As I was noticing a thin web of frost stretch up the struts of his arm, a sword blade sprung from the wrist in his other hand. One of those wavy two-handed models.

"Hans. Listen to me carefully..." I struggled to keep my head up and not pass out as I fought for every ragged breath that exhaled as a white cloud. "Your reactor is faulty. If you don't power down immediately this entire region..."

"SILENCE!"  He shook me so hard my neck nearly snapped. My goggles were beginning to frost over as well.

"Even now you try to ferret your way out of you doom!"

I think he meant "weasel".

"Look up!" He lifted me high into the air as I heard a pop and a hiss below me.  "Look up so my airship crew can capture your face one last time before..."

His diatribe was drowned out by the rush of white gas blossoming from his back. His grip relaxed and I fell to the ground.

"Damn you, Hans! I warned you! Somebody help me up!"

Koen reached under my shoulders and scooped me back to my feet, ushering me to the flashing blue orb in the chest cavity of Hans' great failing frame. Recalling what I read of his blueprints, I flipped open the hinged black metal box under which the knife switch to shut down the reactor was meant to reside. However...

"What the hell is this?" I squinted at the squares of off-white plastic inlayed on chrome, and the blinking red lines in a small glass bar above them.

"That's a digital keypad, Dad..."

"DIGITAL?!? HANS! This isn't Steamlands technology! Is this reactor even from..."

As I shouted at his brain-jar, the cylinder suddenly spun in its casing. An array of long, thin spikes of metal expanded from the collar and bent on smooth joints downward until they latched onto the beams where the neck met the shoulders. The joints flexed and smoothly lifted the brain jar from its housing.

"Now how come I never thought of that...?"

I heard the rip of a needle digging into a wax disc that began to spin in the base of the jar, and a tinny echo of his previously booming voice hissed through static. "We shall meet again, Doctor. If you survive, that is."

With slightly less coordination than I would expect, the jar - brain and all - scuttled like a crab off his shoulders until it dropped to the ground.

"CATCH HIM!" I screamed. "We need the code to power down this reactor or New Babbage is DOOMED!"

Koen bolted after him, leaving me to fall to the now-frozen ground as his small army rushed behind.

"Ouch..."

clash of the lanterns

I expected something dramatic when I invoked the power of the disc. A sudden change of costume, verdant explosion of fireworks, anything really. But no, I was just standing there using all my strength to keep my son's very heavy mechanical hand lifted towards my brother, who floated in in aura of sickly yellow fear.

Marcus scoffed. "You? A Green Lantern? Ludicrous! You think any fool can just pick up a power ring and..."

Somehow I found the strength to raise my arm and fire an emerald bolt from my power disc. It went a bit wide, missing him by inches.

Some cautious applause rose from the young savages behind me.

"You were saying?"

He grit his teeth as he hovered closer.

"Perhaps you have a drop of Will, but your skills are poor. Not that your green ring could even effect..."

My arm jerked to the side. The disc spread an arc of light and a duplicate of the mechanical claw Ash had used solidified again. With a shriek of simulated hinges the claw rotated and clamped down on a fallen column massive enough to support the Babbage Town Hall. My arm flailed back in Marcus' direction, slamming down where Marcus was levitating with such force that the ground trembled and threw up clouds of dust.

I pushed the opening to my gas mask over my face with my free hand as I heard the young ones coughing behind me.

"Yes, the green light can't affect the yellow light. I know this. We have a Justice League in Steelhead, you know! But you're still susceptible to very large blocks of stone, as you can see!"

I heard one of the tykes calling out between coughs. "E' went poof! Jus' like when he trew 'is frisbee at th' green bot! All was lef' was his..."

I stared in disbelief at the gauntlet as I held it to my chest. Whatever just happened, it was not my doing. Either my subconscious is a force in itself or...

The index finger of the gauntlet began stretching and contracting by itself. It tapped the disc it held tightly. Morse code...?

With a deafening crack the column snapped in half. The section further from us slowly rolled away into a ravine. His glowing outline was visible through the settling dust.

"Nice try, Darien."

"Oh SHUT UP you lunatic!" With a mighty spin of my arm (which I am certain strained every muscle I had on the right side of my body) I hurled the emerald disc at Marcus. He flinched, and blinked to the other side of his own golden disc. We both watched the bright green artifact crash on the other side of the ravine. I thorough down the gauntlet (literally and figuratively in this case) and threw down my gas mask as well.

"I don't even NEED a radioactive pie tin to deal with YOU, Marcus!"

A chorus of "DAY-UM!" giggled behind me.

"I refuse to be a pawn in some extraterrestrial wargame!" I continued. I tried to point at him, but my right arm aching and slow to respond. I used my left finger instead.

"Put down that PISS-STAINED TOILET SEAT and fight like a MAN!"

I heard collective gasps, followed by laughter. I turned around grinning to see the feral tykes clutching their sides, rolling in the dirt with beet-red faces and screaming incomprehensible things like "LAWL" and "ROFFLE-MAU". They seemed to have dropped Koen, but from what I could see of the rise and fall of his chest, his breath was strong, but irregular.

"Oh Bast...It hurts when I laugh! Oh! Oh! Hee-hee! You owned him Dad!"

"DARIEN!!!"

I cast Marcus a sidelong glance. Indeed, his body seemed to be flickering. Even transparent.

"Oh, I forgot," I interrupted, "you CAN'T fight man-to-man because you're just a GHOST! You trapped your OWN SOUL in that disc, didn't you? You're not even really HERE! You're just projecting an ILLUSION of yourself from the disc! YOU ARE THE DISC! YOU'RE A PISS-STAINED TOILET SEAT!"

That's when the taunting started. "Toilet seat! Toilet seat! Marcus is a toilet seat!"

He seemed to having even worse trouble keeping his posture than I did. The disc was wobbling and inverting Marcus' image for a few instants. "STOP! STOP THIS! I'LL DESTROY..."

"Your nursery rhymes won't scare anyone! No one here is even AFRAID of you! Did you hear me you BAT-SHIT BELHAVEN BUFFOON?"

With that, the figure in yellow circuitry popped with a with a flash, like one of Mr. Edison's failed light-bulb experiments. His disc clattered down the ridges of the column he had sliced open and finally lodged in the gravel below.

Koen rose slowly to his feet. "Nice job...how'd you do it?"

"Well, the Yellow Lantern Corps, as I understood it, draw their power from the fear in others around them. We have demons in the family tree, so you know how these emotion-eaters work... I just used our instinctual sibling rivalry to degrade him to the point where even the children weren't afraid of him anymore. No fear, no power."

Miss Lacroix raised her rusted axe, pointing upwards and behind me.

"Are we still s'posed t'be afraid of HIM?"

A huge metal claw wrapped around my torso, pinning my arms to my sides. Cold Dead Hans bent his wrist inwards to pull me up and stare at me with widening metal irises through his brain-jar.

"Yeeees...yes you should..."

Mason vs. Mason

Marcus Gabriel Mason. The brother I had grown up never knowing about. Like myself, a clone of my father Jeremiah. As bizarre as my upbringing was, I was the control for my father's unspeakable experiments upon him. Like myself, he had the Spark to build powerful devices by instinct, as well as the occult know-how to unleash dangerous magic.

The results of my father's experiments were truly terrifying. He had the ability to possess any living thing or machine. And unlike me, he was completely devoid of conscience. Even my father in his madness sought fit to destroy him for being too powerful for him to control. In my brother's twisted yet brilliant mind the world - and especially his family - had betrayed him, and revenge was his to take.

The Wastelands children crowded behind me. A few of them carried Koen on their backs, using his hoverboard as a stretcher. They were terrified, yes, and I could feel Marcus drawing power from their fear. However, they also kept the will to stand together.

"So you've met Cold Dead Hans, I see? I recognize him from the roster. There's an exception for family grudges in the Guild rules, so they'll probably give him a mulligan. Maybe he can take on Baron Wulfenbach or the Caledon Catgirl Air Corps..."

Yagi rose up behind the crumbling wall holding the dimensional conduit above her head. She aimed it towards us, using the medusa-like alteration of her hair to keep it balanced.

"YAGI! No! That won't..."

She flipped the switch and the brilliance of a searchlight shone on Marcus. He screamed! He was fighting the pull of the conduit switched in reverse! But that shouldn't have worked. He was native to the Steamlands, so there would be no attraction back to the Digital Grid unless...

A stream of light spread from Marcus's disc to create a massive floating tool composed of solid yellow light. I could swear it was a giant spatula!

"You want to send someone home? Here! One short stack of Green Lantern SCRAP!"

The tool ground deep into the gravel under where Ash's unpowered form lay. The child-army behind me covered their faces and I dove for cover as a shower of small sharp rocks went flying everywhere.

"ORDER UP!"

Yagi screamed Ash's name as she released her tentacled hold on the conduit. I could not tell if the device was powered down as it was facing the ground, but Ash smashed into it and shattered it like a huge mirror.

"Well that was easy!" he chuckled. He floated back towards the children as the shining implement faded to nothingness behind him.

"Alright, where's Darien? Cough him up! Is he hiding under that board?"

"No you fool! I'm right here!"

I had thrust my own arm into the shell of Ash's severed forearm, wearing it as a gauntlet. I had seen enough to recognize how the disc worked. I held the alien artifact high as I improvised an Oath of my own:

Emerald Disc of shining force

By Will I tap your power source

To vanquish foes without remorse

By GREEN LANTERN'S LIGHT, of course!

the third wave

"You wretched little scamps! I warned you!"

And at that moment a sound like a thousand fingernails scraping across a chalkboard ripped through the air. Oh dear Lord, I thought. Please don't let Hans have a Deadly Ringer weapon! Even as far away as we were, poor Sprog curled up on the gravel beneath us covering her ears and screaming.

"Sprog? Surely you've heard a siren before...?" The boy whose wounds I was dressing began convulsing.

"Red Fire!" I luckily had some small wax globes stashed away in my bandolier. A must for anyone who works near artillery. I pushed a pair of the globes into Ryan's ears and the convulsing stopped. Then I struggled to pull Sprog's hands away from her ears long enough to give her healing protection as well.

These screamer weapons are loathsome. At best they're adequate for crowd control at the very lowest settings. At worst their vibrations rattle the brain in its skull and rip through flesh. They should be banned, I tell you!

I stood up to watch the tribes of Wasteland youth scatter as Hans rose to his feet. What was left of him, actually. Somehow those children managed to pry most the armor off that metal colossus! His reactor core, pulsing a deep blue and spilling with icy mist, was exposed in the construct's chest. But still none of the tykes had ripped that stupid semblance of a beard off his face.

I shouted for Koen, even though I knew it was useless. I dove for cover just as I saw my son careening towards me in his hover board. He sped over me and crashed into the hill, rolling end over end. The poor boy, his neko ears must be even more susceptible to the audible onslaught than the other children.

I glanced to the other side of the crater by the fallen column where Yagi had lay wounded. She, and the chain gun, were gone. What the blazes...?

And that's when she tapped on my elbow. I spun and there she was, with the massive empty weapon in her hands, looking up at me with the utmost concern. Concern, but no pain...

Yes, of course! Shapechangers were immune to Deadly Ringer effect because their inner ears would always bounce back, and never shatter, from the force of the vibration.  I pulled another blueprint from my chest pocket.

"Build this!" I said. She nodded and took the plans.  She bounded over another crumbled wall and threw down the chain gun, and literally leapt onto it! I stood in amazement. Her features blurred as she molded herself around the gun. No wonder she could build so fast!  I give her a blueprint with an exploded view and she pulls the original object apart inside her and reassembles it!

It was time for another old Capper Brigade trick.  I stood at the top of the hill and tossed a rock at him. It bounced off his head, sadly not breaking the filthy red plumage on his helmet. His neck rotated at an unlikely angle. I pantomimed screaming at him. I wasn't going to wreck my vocal chords over the racket he was generating. His false jaw flapped up and down in response but since there was no read his lips (he had none) I didn't even try to guess what he was saying. I continued to silently castigate him like a preacher in one of those flickering penny-booths. (The arcades always install it in one machine as a prank to non-frequent customers. Don't ask me how I know this.) I began rattling off imaginary points of order on my fingers when he finally turned the screamer off.

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT MASON?"

I smirked. The trick works every time.

"Why don't you try picking on someone your own size?"

Gravel crunched beneath his massive metal feet as he started up the hill towards me. I noted a flash of green light followed by a momentary flicker of yellow from where Yagi was hiding with her newest project.

"You're the closest thing to that, Mason. You have time for a quick prayer before I pulverize you!"

I kept my composure when I felt the chill of his cold fusion reactor core as he stopped within reach of me.

"With all due respect, Hans, I strongly urge you to look behind you."

"HA! I am not falling for such an immature-"

"TARGET SIGHTED."

"WHAT?"

A figure in a black bodysuit radiating an emerald light landed behind him with such force it made the broken ground shake.

He outstretched his arm which held a brilliantly shining disc. The light emanating from it congealed like molten lead into a mold, forming a huge mechanical claw. The claw slammed tight around Hans. With a quick spin of the disc with his wrist, Hans was raised in a powerful arc and slammed cranium-first into the ground.

A roar echoed through the crater as Koen's ragtag army of savage children crawled from their hiding places and scrambled closer to witness the triumph of the Green Lantern.

"Greetings, Father."

"Nice to see you, Ash. Did you kill him?"

"Kill? Subject is a User?"

"User? I would use the term Cyborg."

"Analyzing subject."

He drew the arm upwards again. Hans' head...by which I mean the ridiculous freon tank bucket with a feather decoration and the hinged metal jaw crudely decorated with a merkin false beard was gone. Only the clear cylinder with a floating brain and connected ocular sensors that was underneath remained.

"Life-sustaining equipment is still functional. Subject..."

He was interrupted by a blinding flash. I heard a rush of wind inches from my face followed by a heavy thud. My eyes recovered. Hans lay on the ground where he had been previously suspended. The circuitry on Ash's armor flickered out and he collapsed at my feet.

"Ash! What?"

That was when I saw Ash's arm a few feet away, severed below the elbow. It was still clutching his power disc. Handfuls of gears and springs spilled over the ground from where the limb was cut away. The edge of the cut was still glowing from the heat of the deadly instrument.

The crowd of children began to back away slowly. Their attention was focused on something behind and above me. This could not possibly be good. I spun around to see a floating silhouette wreathed in golden circuitry, brandishing a yellow disc. I could sense an aura of dread pulsing from his weapon.

"Hello dear brother. I see it's story time. Would your little friends like to hear a nursery rhyme?"

"In brightest day, in blackest night

See Terror forged in circuits bright!

All ye flee before the sight

of MARCUS MASON'S LANTERN LIGHT!"

Goodbye Shanghai

Velvel sighed as he stood at the edge of the pier, watching the sun set over the bay. He would miss the incessant chug-chug-chugging of Miss Thoughtwerk's vending robot. It did a wonderful job of scaring the rats away. He'd miss the lovely little shop Mayor Lunar built for him. He's even miss the squalid slums of...oh wait. That's an aqueduct. They already evicted the slums and built an aqueduct? He really should have gotten out more, he thought. No wonder business was dead. Come to think of it, all the other stores in his row on the pier were gone as well. Within a week everything else would be torn down, he was told. Even the aqueduct.

He felt guilty about being such a poor tenant. He was a poor businessman too, he was ready to admit. He couldn't even make a profit smuggling! But Lunar in debtor's prison? Such madness! Maybe it was that new Mayor's doing, Jobias Bottlemess or something. He was one of those villainous types he was told, the kind that snuck around in a tall black hat and cloak and twirled his mustache while laughing. They were an embarrassment to criminals like himself who were just trying to make a living without getting noticed by the Law.

He drew a pen knife from his pocket and pressed the point to his hand. He heard a rush of air and a thump behind him that made the pier shake.

"VELVEL! What are you doing?"

A rotting board near the merchant's feet snapped and fell into dark waters of the bay. He glanced back at the demon.

"Calm down...calm down...is just a tradition from my village." He bit his lip as he felt a hot rivulet trail down his thumb. "I did the same after I buried my family in the Old Country. When you are going to leave a place and never return, you leave seven drops of blood behind. It confuses the evil spirits into not following you. No offense."

"What will become of you, Velvel?"

Drops of crimson left small circles on the decaying planks. One drop fell between the wood and hissed imperceptibly when it struck the water.

He shrug. "Who knows? I camp out in the woods, I suppose."

The demon snapped his wings as he craned his neck. "Did you feel that?"

Velvel didn't look back. "The angel did. The mystic link is cut, he said."

"Another one of those wretched bombs they use in New Babbage to flush out the supernaturals. I thought they spent the last one years ago...."

"Koen is back." The angel was speaking through him again. "You cannot approach, but you must help how you can."

"I will. Xavael, I..."

"Later, Bloodwing. Later. He has much work left to do."

"I understand." A rush of mighty wings, and then the demon was gone.

Velvel wrapped a bandage around his hand,  then slowly shut the sliding metal door to the loading entrance for the last time. He would spend last fitful night sleeping in a bedroll on the second floor.

The glow of the oil lamp in the window of Shanghai Bazaar 's tower faded out. Under the pier where he had recently stood, the water bubbled and churned. A gaunt and pallid arm stretched from the depths and wrapped a bony hand around one of the sturdier boards. A silhouette pulled itself onto the pier and rose to its feet, but not fully erect, for it remained hunched over from weakness and hunger. Crimson eyes shone into the darkness, searching for a living vessel to feed upon.

It is said that the tears of an angel can heal the living. A similar adage not shared by mortals is that the blood of an angel can restore the undead. The ashes of Aliester Louis Mason had been drawn into the workings of his airship, the Bloodwing's Revenge, when he was caught by the rays of the sun. Those ashes had scattered into Steelhead Bay when that same ship was wrecked in the battle with the Illumiautilus. 

One drop in the bay was all it took.

the patient

As I attempted to crawl to a safe hiding place I heard the scrape of metal underneath me. I looked down to see the end of the neko's vehicle, painted faded yellow and black stripes and lit with red signals blinking commands unknown to me.

"Upsie-daisy!"

I was unceremoniously flipped upwards. I spun head over heels like a pancake and landed on the red tiger's shoulder.

"OOF! You're heavy with all this crap on! For Bast's sake, why do ya keep trotting out that old uniform? It smells like mothballs and bandages!"

"It's nice to see you too, Koen..." I tried my best not to flail about as he skimmed through the jagged terrain. "I assume you have an explanation?"

"Okay, in a nutshell, that guy's reactor is gonna explode big enough to take all of New Babbage with him!" I caught sight of the feral horde of children surrounding Cold Dead Hans like a pack of wolves before the flight unceremoniously jerked to a stop. The inertia threw me off my son's shoulder, and I was again introduced to the dusty gravel that made up the floor of the crater.

"Whoops!"

"Koen, really..." I methodically rose to my feet and made a vain gesture at brushing my uniform clean. "I'm quite alright..."

"Yeah you are, but this kid isn't. We need your help with this one."

"Wounded?" I rushed to where two scruffy urchins were crouching over a third. I realized they were both girls when they raised their grubby faces to me. I froze in my tracks. They were both strikingly familiar!

One of them had only recently completed her internship at my New Babbage laboratory. "Why Bleue! Miss Bleue Lacroix! I thought you moved to Steelhead!"

"I've been doing a lot of traveling, Doctor." She rose to her feet, drawing a corroded axe from her belt. "And believe it or not I can fend for myself in places even harder than the Wastelands!"

"I'll take your word for it..." I remarked as she rushed past me to join her brethren. I could hear Hans protesting from the other side of the hill of debris.

"Stop this at once! The Guild hands out demerits for killing children!" *KLANG!* "You! Put some clothes on!" *KLANG!* "Get off me! Stop soiling my uniform!" *KLANG!*" Put that crowbar away this instant! Go find some PARENTS to run home to!"

I turned to the other girl...

"Kira? But...you're younger...?"

"She reincarnated. We call her Sprog now. Ryan here is in her tribe."

Sprog turned back to the boy, who was horribly jaundiced. He was gasping for air, but his mouth gagged with a stretch of cloth.

"He got bit by a ghoul. We thought it was dead after we shot it but it jumped up..."

I knelt next to the boy and reached for my medical kit.

"Well first of all he needs to breathe..." I snipped the cloth away with a pair of scissors. The boy's wound was at the base of the neck. It was already starting to fester. I opened his eyelid, his eye was already turning into a featureless silver orb. "If he can't breathe that hastens death, which leads straight to undeath." The boy screamed pitifully as I swabbed the wound with alcohol.

"Do your best, Dad. I gotta join the others." I shielded Ryan from the cloud of dust as Koen's board lifted again into the air and sped off.

I prepared a syringe of reanimation serum and injected directly into the wound. I counted the seconds quietly, as I felt for a pulse on the other side of his neck. I did my best to ignore the continued outrages of Hans as the child-warriors were shouting heave-ho and ripping the plating from his chassis.

Thirty seconds. I reexamined the wound. I glanced back up at Sprog.

"No change. Whatever this is, my serum has no effect."

I shook my head and began to dress the wound.

"I can't save him..."

 

neverending

He could not measure how long he tumbled through the void between time and space. He took solace in the certainty that he had sealed the hull breach before he was torn away. Wherever and whenever Qlippothic and Koen would land, he surmised, they would at least land intact.

"Our construct integrities are compromised!" Qli shouted, her voice distorted in the Paradox around them. "Redoubling Probability Shield Strength!"

He was certain he heard Qlippothic's voice. For barely a nanosecond he saw two wrecked constructs latched onto each other as they careened through the infinite in a trajectory only a Time Lord could possibly chart. He telescoped his limbs in the fruitless hope of finding someone or something. If only he could get some sort of bearing...there. A pinpoint of light in the visible spectrum, on a three-dimensional vector no less. It was following him like a spotlight, even as he flipped himself inside out a few times while trying to stabilize his course. It appeared to be getting larger, or closer. He began postulate if he was falling into a trap until he identified the exact frequency of the light.

"Ryder?"

"He is not here, Ash Mason."

There was gravity again. He rose from the smooth marble floor. The tall semicircle of stone before him was likewise flawless and the same deep shade of green. At the top of arc, several wizened blue humanoids in orange robes peered down at him. One of them spoke.

"Only you can bring him back." An orb of energy slowly descended to the floor beside him and dissipated, leaving a device behind. "The ring must be recharged so you may both return."

---

Ash quickly adjusted to the darkness of the Digital Grid. As the Guardians taught him, he held the lantern forward, letting it guide him towards wherever like emanations remained. The terrain was unformatted and treacherous, jagged rocks as sharp and brittle as obsidian. He followed the trail of carnage - ghost images of destroyed machine parts that floated where their controllers were disintegrated, still too radioactive from the destructive blasts to de-rez. Very rarely did programs linger in such a state. The Grid was all too eager to absorb their living energies back into the realm's essence.

But Ryder was not a program. He was human. Ash rested the lantern and fell to his knees when found his comrade's remains.

---

Ash's eyes cast a red glow on the shimmering identification disc in his hand.

"You did find a workaround...the Guardians told me that the ring will always adjust to fit its wearer. You reformatted your ring into an identification disc and drew energy directly from this plane. But is it still compatible with Oan power batt..."

His modulated voice trailed off as his irises clicked wider. He watched the sparks spiral within the circuitry embedded in the disc. A disc recorded a program's thoughts and feelings. Ash had learned to read the code of the discs. His grip trembled and his voice began to crack.

"Ryder? You...you loved me too? And just like me, you were too afraid...?"

He cradled the disc against his chest. His sobs echoed across the smooth stones.

In a flash he rose to his feet and assumed a combat stance, raising the disc in preparation to throw even as oily tears fell to the ground where he stood. Was that laughter he heard? Or phantoms from the entirety of another man's life that he held in his hand?

---

He lay the battery at Ryder's feet. Ash turned away, still too shaken to watch as the battery's aura engulfed Ryder's body.

"I have made this same mistake before." He spoke to the disc despite his certainty that nothing inside it could respond. "I swear to you, Ryder. I will never make that mistake again."

Hesitantly he turned to face the power battery again. Nothing remained of his former companion.

"Let me be worthy to continue your duties in your place, Ryder. Like you, I shall craft my own Oath."

He extended his arm until the rim of the disc touched the core of the battery. Sparks danced throughout the circuitry of the disc and traveled through to the lines of his own uniform, green light overwhelming its red hue and even washing over his own disc that was still fastened to his back.

"The Blackest Night where evil spawns

Trembles from the emerald dawn

By my Will I'll set things right

Let there be - there will always be

THE GREEN LANTERN'S LIGHT!"

Hovering near the roof of this dark world, Ash aimed the brilliant arc of the battery at an obsidian cliff face that resembled a tidal wave frozen a moment before the strike. The outline of the symbol of his new charge scorched into the glass. A perfect circle in the center dissolved away, and Ash leaned forward and vanished into the tunnel. Unbeknownst to him, a wildly spinning comet crackling with yellow lightning hurled straight through the portal moments before both the insignia and the tunnel vanished from the cliff's face.

The second wave

I was hard pressed by this moral dilemma. My sworn enemy was being destroyed before my eyes by my new assistant. But this assistant had only recently assumed the form of a little girl. Only now that she has entered her first combat and flown into a battle rage do I see the full extent of her powers.

An explosion of tendrils from her hair continued to toss the massive robotic shell of Cold Dead Hans about like a pewter mug in a tavern brawl. Her petite form was rapidly melting away. Extra sets of eyes and a huge mouth expanded from her torso. Despite my injuries I pulled myself up from behind the crumbled wall where I had sought cover.

"Oh Good Lord! She's going to EAT him! YAGI! STOP!"

But it was too late. She launched herself into the breaking light of day with one gracefully fluid pounce, fully intent on swallowing him whole upon landing!

I was not prepared for what happened next. Hans stretched out a slightly dented arm. His hand appeared to twitch in a sign of disrepair. But when Yagi made contact with his hand there was a flash of light, and she was blown backwards across the basin of the Crater with an inhuman scream. By the time she landed her mass had snapped back into her petite form. She rolled several times before stopping, face down in front of a collapsed column.

"I always suspected that learning the Voorish Sign might someday come in handy..." With the groan and strain of metal and the crumbling of more artifacts as he came to his feet, Hans rose again. His armor was pocked with bullets and the ludicrous decorations he adorned it worth were mostly ripped away. Somehow that unspeakable roll of...what was that, felt? Whatever that was he was using as a mustache remained glued to his face. Perhaps even worse, that audacious mass of red feathers was still dancing on top of his head, taunting like a rude sock puppet every time he spoke!

"You truly ARE, mad, Mason! Only YOU would try putting a shoggoth in a dress!"

He lumbered unsteadily towards me, and I, refusing to forfeit this challenge, rolled over the edge of the wall and miraculously landed on my feet. I stared up at his crude approximation of a face again.

"I am more than willing to continue this battle, Hans."

"So be it!" He reached for his massive jagged blade to find it had been torn away in his misadventure with Yagi. Being faster on the draw by default then, I raked my diamond-encrusted bonesaw across his breastplate. He looked back to me as his hollow chuckle echoed across the crater.

"Is that the best you can do, Mason? Why don't you surrender right now. I might even let you continue to live as my personal..."

Mercifully his gloating was drowned out by the roar of a great cat, immediately followed by the shouts of children. I haven't heard such uncouth raucousness since the end of my three-hour lecture on hygiene to the scamps at Steelhead Elementary!

"MORE children, Mason?"

"Those aren't mine!"

From the edge of the canyon I saw a red neko brandishing a blade on some sort of personal hovercraft.

As he dipped the nose of his conveyance and dove towards us, dozens of screaming, feral children rushed down from behind him, bounding over the jagged rocks and piles of rubble like it was their playground.

"You've made your opinions known, Hans. Like you, I'm in no mood to fight with children today." I drew my opera glasses and focused on the mob.

"Oh good heavens! That one's wearing blonde dreadlocks as a blouse! They might even be..." I cleared my throat. "Cannibals!"

"We'll reschedule," he mumbled as he started lumbering off. I nodded good day to him and started to limp away as fast as I could towards the ornithopter. Which was not far, as I suddenly remembered the ornithopter had been reconfigured as a chain gun by Yagi. Despite my grave reservations, I ran towards Yagi to see what state she was in. I tripped over a rock and went sprawling, turning over just as the screaming reached a deafening pitch...

Not going as planned

When the shimmering arc of my aether-sword reflected off of the iron carapace of my current nemesis known as Cold Dead Hans and shorted itself out on the first stroke, I should have known things were not going to go my way.

After smacking him in his fists with my helmet several times, I'd forgotten about the sword. I fell upon his massive iron hands again, catapulting myself backwards against a crumbling stone column at the expense of several ribs. But it did give me a few vital seconds to come up with a new plan.

Such as little Yagi climbing over a nearby boulder and emptying the contents of a chain gun at my foe.

Splendid work! Such strength for such a small frame to carry a weapon of that caliber and fire off the entire belt without suffering from the recoil!

"Erm...Yagi..." I asked as I sat up and examined the dents in my helmet. "I don't remember mounting a chain gun on the ornithopter...."

She dropped the smoking weapon with a clatter and jumped down from the boulder. She cheerfully ran over to me.

"That WAS the ornithopter! I rebuilt it just like the blueprints you gave me!"

I was at a loss for words. I took the moment to wipe some blood from my face with a handkerchief.

"Just like....? Oh Red Fire! I gave you the WRONG blueprints! You rebuilt our ornithopter into a chain gun! My, what raw Spark talent you must..."

I was summarily booted high into the air by that scoundrel Hans, landing in a nearby pile of rubble.

"IMPUDENT CHILD!" he bellowed, towering over Yagi and crouching to snap his steel jaws at her. "I consider it beneath me to attack one as small as yourself, but since you do seem to be yet another drone in the doctor's arsenal..." and at that very moment with a rusty screech he wrapped his gigantic metal claw around Yagi's torso and lifter her up, shaking her like a rag doll!

"HANS! You COWARD! You unhand that little girl this instant!" I drew my bonesaw from its sheath and raised it level in a direct challenge.

"THIS is no little girl, Doctor! She has proved as much! Scream all you like as I crush one of your mechanical...toys?"

Indeed, even as he tightened his grip, instead of exploding in a mass of gears and sprigs as Hand would have expected, his steel fingers flowed through her, and she oozed out of his fist like mud, landing in a pink shapeless mass on the ground and reforming into her pretty diminutive self!

With an inarticulate roar the metal giant raised his fists and slammed down on her. Again, he form was displaced but not destroyed, and reformed again.

"No, Sir." She looked up at him with dead calm on her face. "I am not metal. I am something else."

And with that, the locks of her pink hair began to writhe like snakes and expand to frightening proportions!

I stood agape as the tentacles of her hair lashed at Hans, wrapping around the his massive ankles. In defiance of all laws of physics she turned the tables and effortlessly lifted Hans in the air! Her writhing limbs proceeded to thrash him against the stone remnants of the ruins around us, smashing thousands of years worth of forgotten history. But in just this one case I was more than willing to forgive this loss to Archaeology. Hans for all his previous boasting could barely get a word in edgewise.

"What..how...NO...stop!"

I had to dive behind the remains of a wall nearby to avoid the shrapnel of steel smashing against rock. I was almost ready to gloat when I heard Yagi utter a battle-cry that chilled my very soul!

"Take THAT! And THAT! Take...take...TEKELI-LI! TEKELI-LI!"

I shook my head in horror and disbelief. No. No. This cannot be! Where did she learn those words? Where...

And that is when the awful truth dawned on me. This little girl not long ago was but a amoebic creature with only a rudimentary intelligence. The Baron had found it in the laboratory of another scientist who, like many of our ilk, had met an unfortunate demise. An Antarctic laboratory. Since the creature posed neither threat nor resistance, they brought it back to the Steeltopian Embassy, where my son Ash who was stationed there took responsibility for it as a pet. The creature reminded him of something from the Cthulhu mythos, and as such named it Yoggy, after Y*G-S*TH*TH, the entity beyond space and time whose name I dare not fully transcribe here.

What horrid mistake have we committed by adopting this once-benign being? How has my demonic ancestor compounded it a thousand times by granting it intelligence and an affinity for a human form? The threat of one malevolent cyborg paled in comparison to the newly revealed danger before me, even as my nemesis was being defeated. I feared what havoc my small champion would do next.

"Founder preserve us..." I whispered, "Yagi really is a SHOGGOTH!"

The Challenge

It was foolish to try and scale the cliffs of the Crater. I decided to take Yagi with me in the ornithopter. I equipped myself in my old Dominion uniform with an array of equipment. Aether sabre. Bonesaw. Shears. Reanimation serum. Inoculation pistol. Yagi had...a pink dress and matching colored katana with sheath. I’m not even going to ask.

Just before daybreak we hovered from the roof of the Consulate in our aircraft and rose towards the smog-smudged morning. As we soared over the edge of the crater we were greeted with an array of flashes from below. I took some evasive maneuvers but soon realized this was not the first weapon in Hans’s arsenal. They were cameras. Mr. Hans invited the press.

They were lined up all along the edge of the crater. Adding to the chaos was a spotlight blinding me from above. A dirigible! Hans wanted to make a public spectacle of this. Such a glory hog! Fine then. So much for the element of surprise.

As I struggled to maintain control of the ornithopter the tip of my right wing clipped a spire of melted steel. I made an abrupt landing, bouncing a few times before spinning to a halt. I climbed out of the cockpit and passed Yagi the blueprints.

“You seemed to show some Spark talent on the tests...see if you can fix this.”

She unfolded  the paper until it covered her completely.

“But Doctor...?”

“Just see what you can do, my dear.” I slid down the wing and  

Ah yes, there he was. Just as described. If not uglier. It looked like he's welded on more boilerplate than...Boilerplate! And yes, he was leaking liquid nitrogen. It was like he brought his own fog machine. Well, lets get this over with, I thought. The zeppelin had arclights aimed at both Hans and myself, so the challenge was navigating the ruins instead of actually finding him.

"Cold Dead Hans, I presume?"

"None other! Oh and you brought one of your little DOLLS with you! How pathetic!"

"What's pathetic is you being so hopelessly insane that you can't admit the limitations of your own invention, even after it kills you! Look at yourself! You're a one trick pony...just like the Deadly Ringer! And the same way I smashed his Sonic Neuron Disruptor I’ll leave you in a pile of useless scrap!”

“Now THAT sounds like a challenge! Now, just to make things fair...”

A detonation. A flash. A crushing pain in my skull.

“It’s just a Reality Enforcement Device, Doctor. I’m sure you’re quite familiar with them. This will be purely a battle of our Sparks, not muddled by your demon-worshipping sorcery!”

“I’ll have all the time in the world to lecture you on the false dichotomy between Science and Magic after I extricate your cortex from that walking junkpile you call an exoskeleton! And by the way...why the HELL did you invite the media?”

He pointed his elongated gauntlet at me. “I want the ENTIRE Steamlands to witness your defeat! Once I rid the world of you, the rest of your family will fall one by one! Even the mighty Bloodwing!”

“You really ARE a narcissist aren’t you? Are you trying to make this into one of those dreadful so-called ‘reality shows’ that the mainlanders...”

“ENOUGH!” he bellowed. It’s time...to RUMBLE!

The sounds of drums and horns echoed through the crater. It was coming from the zeppelin.

“You’ve got to be kidding me...”

Another voice boomed from the airship.

“EPIC MAD SCIENTIST BATTLES OF HISTORYYYY!”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh for the love of...COPYRIGHTS, man! COPYRIGHTS!”

“DARIEN MASON!”

“VERSUS...COOOOLD DEAAAAD HAAAAAANS!”

“READY...BEGIN!”