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!"