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howtohero · 2 years

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#300.2: Saving the World Part 2

Cue the music.

We arrived in a flash of light so bright that it would’ve blinded us, had Glassesman not been able to provide all with some—and I am admitting this very begrudgingly, because that man is a tool—very cool sunglasses. Glassesman, as it turned out, was actually a secret superhuman. Though with the power to spontaneously generate any kind of eyewear, it was unsurprising that he presented as a non-powered hero. It may very well be that this had been the only time he’d seen fit to use his abilities while acting as a superhero. And man was it working for us. The only way we could’ve looked cooler strolling out of our jury-rigged portal is if Rockblock hadn’t been wearing a bright red t-shirt that read “I GOT EATEN BY A GIANT MONSTER AND LEARNED ALL ABOUT THE DIGESTIVE SYSTEM” over a picture of a cartoonish stomach giving a thumbs up. It also might have helped if anybody had actually been looking at us. But nooooo our grand entrance was wasted because everybody else was fighting for the fate of the Earth. Oh well.

We were surrounded on all sides by an all-out brawl of biblical proportions. All around me I could see every manner of superhuman, monster, and even dozens of civilians, waging war against a garishly-clad gaggly of supervillains who were aided by a much smaller coterie of monsters, but a large contingent of ghosts, zombies, and skeleton warriors.

“I need to go find Ultiman,” Cowboy Rockstar said before charging directly into the center of the fray. As he ran I saw two glowing six-shooters manifest in his hands and he began firing expertly at the evil army ahead of him. In the blink of an eye, the rest of my compatriots sprung into action as well. Helm Lady and Glassesman expertly disarmed the nearest supervillains, and stole their weapons, giving them the firepower they needed to charge into battle alongside the rest of the assembled resistance. Rockblock instinctively threw his prodigious bulk in front of Professor Flay and I to protect us from any stray bullets, snakes, or explosive fish.

“Thanks,” I said. “Now do you think you can get rid of that shirt? I don’t want one of my guys to see it.”

“Absolutely not,” Rockblock said sternly. “You heard those guys, they have zero advertising budget on account of the fact that they don’t have any money at all. Word of mouth is the only way they can get more people to come see their show.”

Professor Flay shuddered, “It’s definitely by mouth, but I’m not sure if words have anything to do with it.”

I looked at him sympathetically, my Plan B hadn’t been the safest way to get out of Smuggles’ clutches. Or the sanest. Or the most sanitary. But hey, I’d done it hadn’t I? And I bet you’ve all been sitting on the edge of your seats for what feels like a year waiting for me to explain how we managed it. So here goes: Long time readers of my world-famous, highly successful blog, How To Hero, might recall that in my guide to being eaten by a monster I wisely suggested being swallowed whole. If you’re swallowed in one go, you don’t have to worry about trying to escape the belly of a beast while bleeding out or not having limbs. Thankfully Smuggles’ big, scary monster obliged us. But then, it had been well trained to do exactly that. If you’ve checked out that post on being eaten by monsters, you might also recall that I have been eaten by a monster before. A monstrosity sometimes called Dr. Brainwave’s Greatest Shame, so named because Dr. Brainwave, our supervillain correspondent/unwelcome tenant, was trying to create a living weapon of mass destruction but ended up creating a monster who acted like an overactive and overeager puppy. She is also known as Sprinkles, so named because she loves sprinkle donuts. But who doesn’t. Anyhow, the monster also had a healthy appetite for just about everything else, which proved…interesting when she broke into Dr. Brainwave’s lab and ate just about everything in there, including a vial of sentientum, which—you guessed it—grants things a heightened degree of sentience and intelligence. Unfortunately for Sprinkles, the substance is supposed to be applied topically, not internally, and while Sprinkles did not get an intelligence boost, all of her internal organs did. And it turns out they’re all theater kids and they spend their time writing musicals about monster biology and what they imagine the world is like outside of the giant monster they’re trapped in. Having now watched two of their shows, I’ve gotta say, they’re not great.

Now, when I’d goaded Smuggles into feeding us to a giant monster, I was reasonably certain that there was somebody inside of Smuggles’ Consortium of Crime who was looking out for me. An assumption that was proven correct when Sprinkles turned out to be the giant monster selected to devour us. There are some that might say that that was far too big of a risk to take in pursuit of freedom, many of them were inside the monster with me, but we made it didn’t we? All we needed to do was navigate through Sprinkles’ digestive system, sit through a two hour musical called How the Hell Does A Digestive System Work When All of the Organs Involved in it are Alive? Also, What Does the Sky Look Like? and then commandeer a short-range teleporter that the organs used to get around inside of Smuggles that they had patched together from random tech Sprinkles had eaten. Were there better ways to escape our predicament? Hard to say, but I did what I had to do.

“I don’t suppose you’re ready to tell us who your supposed inside man is, are you?” Professor Flay asked.

“I… I’m not actually sure who they are,” I admitted.

(“Zach?”)

I whipped around. I’d know that voice anywhere of course, but there were a fair few villains out there who could mimic a voice. Sure enough though, a gangly, goateed man was running toward me. He was dressed in an ill-fitting red jumpsuit with a matching red domino mask that appeared to have been made out of cardboard. Excellent disguise notwithstanding, I recognized Parenthetical Guy immediately.

“Hey—” I started to say before being wrapped up in a bear hug.

“Hey, buddy. It’s good to see you too,” I said as I returned the embrace.

(“Er, hello, citizen. It is I, a superhero…named…Random Civilian Hugger—”)

“Sure.”

(“Yes, that’s it! Secret identity intact for sure.”)

“Random Civilian Hugger really isn’t the great superhero name you think it is,” Professor Flay said.

(“Who the heck is this guy?”)

“This is Professor Lucius Flay—”

(“Oh! The dude with that book, Big Book of Fake Science!”)

“It turns out it’s not actually called that,” I said, interjecting quickly before Flay could respond.

“Hey, do you guys wanna maybe take this somewhere else?” Rockblock said. “I’ve been shot like fifty times since I started sheltering you guys. I’m fine, obviously, but I don’t want this shirt to get torn to shreds before everyone else gets a chance to see it.”

(“Oh, hello, fellow superhero Rockblock. Didn’t see you there. Legit thought you were a big wall. You’re just so large…and…chiseled.”)

“Focus,” I said, snapping my fingers in front of his face.

(“Right, right. Gael Obstrovesky and his people have set up a command center in that building over there.”)

A fifty-foot tall neon-green stegosaurus with a widow’s peak and vampire fangs crashed into the street in front of us, leaving a large crater where he’d impacted.

“Yeah, that seems like as good a place as any to wait this all out,” I said.

Professor Flay vigorously nodded his assent and Rockblock wished us luck as he charged off to deal with the vampiric dinosaur, who was beginning to come to his senses.

“Put ‘em up, Chives!” Rockblock bellowed.

“Ah, Rockblock, ve meet again. Remind me, vhat does your blood taste like?” the dinosaur replied, licking his lips.

“It tastes like molten %$#& lava, big boy!” Rockblock shouted as he slammed into the villain.

Parenthetical Guy, Professor Flay and I kept our heads down and ran off in the direction of the makeshift command center.

“Bring us up to speed PG,” I said as we skirted past two dueling swordsmen. One of them, the hero Goodknight, was clad in navy armor and wielded a gleaming crystal sword and was possessed of both perfect form and poise. The other, the villainous Stabulous Sven, hacked away furiously with two swords that were covered in psychedelic swirls and bursts. His matching tunic and…shorts were an eye-searing purple and yellow. Their fight was interrupted when a werewolf and the handful of zombies he was wrestling with fell off a passing double-decker bus and landed directly between them. As we passed, I saw Goodknight extend a hand down toward the werewolf, help him up, and then wordlessly trade opponents. Each easily taking down the other’s former sparring partner.

“This is incredible,” Professor Flay said. “Heroes and monsters, fighting side by side.

I had to agree with him, for too long the superheroes of our world had held themselves above and aloof from many of the magical and mythical creatures that populated the world. Too often, heroes tended to misunderstand or assume the worst of monsters and the ensuing fights had done seemingly irreparable damage to interspecies relations. It was nice to see so many superheroes and monsters fighting alongside one another for the greater good. And to think it was all because of me and my blog post about monsters who buck conventional stereotypes. I wonder if they’ll give me a metal or something. Two metals. One from the superheroes and one from the monsters. That seems fair.

When we reached the command center, Parenthetical Guy performed several increasingly complex knocks on the front door. Eventually, the door swung open and a stern-faced man in a lab coat stood in the entryway.

“For cripes’ sake would you just come in already?” Professor Mitch Fueller said.

(“Sorry about all that. I couldn’t remember the secret knock,”) Parenthetical Guy said, shooting me a wink, earning him a frown.

“There is no secret knock. What are you talking abou—ah, Professor Flay, good to see you!”

“Good to see you too, Professor Fueller,” Professor Flay said as Fueller ushered us into

the building.

“Where have you been? When I didn’t see you at the Haberdashery, I’d feared the worst,” Fueller said as he led us up the stairs to where Gael and the other support-types had set up shop.

“Yes, well, it’s actually quite a story. Smuggles had us held in a prison he’d set up…in Atomspace.”

Fueller whistled, “Atomspace. That’s no joke, I’m sure Gael and Professor Von Iguanadon are going to want a full debrief on that. But how did you escape? Are there still others there?”

“We escaped by goading Smuggles into feeding us to a giant monster and then borrowing a teleporter that had been built by some sentient monster organs,” I said.

(“Oh hey! You found Sprinkles?”)

Professor Fueler frowned and then looked at the two of us as though he was just noticing we were there.

“Ah, Parenthetical Guy, why is it that I always find you in the company of my esteemed friends and colleagues?”

(“It’s because I’m basically a smart-brain professor myself.”)

Professor Fueller wrinkled his nose as though he’d smelled something foul. And since Flay and I had just wended our way through a monster’s digestive system, it was quite possible that he had. Then he turned his withering gaze upon me and I did my best to look as scholarly as possible. Which is no easy task when you’re wearing jeans and a hoodie and, as I’ve mentioned, just popped out of a monster’s stomach after spending a month or so in prison.

“And you are?”

“My name is Zach, and I’m the one who got your esteemed friend and colleague along with half a dozen other superheroes out of a microscopic prison.”

Professor Fueller turned his nose up as we reached the top of the stairs. “Oh, you’re the blogger.”

(“He’s not a fan,”) Parenthetical Guy whispered to me.

“People who meet you first rarely are,” I replied.

We stepped onto a ramshackle, poorly-lit floor filled with all manner of hustle and bustle. Dozens of people ran around clutching clipboards, electronic tablets, and stacks of paper, ferrying them between different computer stations that had been set up around the room. The wall opposite where we were standing was taken up by a massive viewscreen that had been split up to show feeds from multiple different cameras drones that were apparently flying around the battle going on outside. People were barking orders and suggestions into radios all around us, directing troops or summoning aid or alerting the heroes outside to weak points that had been noticed among the enemy forces. Gael Obstrovesky stood in the center calling out orders and typing furiously into a floating keyboard that followed him wherever he went. At first, I couldn’t tell where any of his typing was actually going until I noticed that the lenses in his glasses were actually small transparent screens. It was Gael’s glasses that reminded me that I was still wearing my cool “product of Glassesman’s body but don’t think about that for too long” sunglasses. I quickly slipped them off and put them in my pocket, and suddenly the room wasn’t poorly lit any longer.

“Where’re Curly and Lawyer Guy?” I asked after surveying the room and ascertaining that they weren’t there. A moment of panic washed over me. Had I accidentally left two of my own men in Atomspace while rescuing the likes of Glassesman, secreter of glasses? But Parenthetical Guy put me at ease, sort of.

(“Oh, them? They’re big time heroes now. Curly’s teamed up with Hatman—”)

“What? Again?”

(“Yeah, turns out Hatman doesn’t even remember the first time. But they’ve been making quite a team, they blew up a train earlier this week.”)

“Huh, you don’t say.”

(“Yeah, and Lawyer Guy and Murk actually got the monsters and a bunch of the civilians you see in here on the side of the resistance. They were actually pretty inspiring. Oh, hey there’s LG now.”)

Parenthetical Guy pointed to one of the screens where video of our very own lawyer coldcocking the actual supervillain Literal Devil, who should not be confused with the actual devil, who presumably was locked up somewhere in Hell along with the other warlords of that realm thanks to Greg the Skeleton King’s hostile takeover.

“Whoa, what happened to him?”

(“Apparently one of the partners at his firm turned out to be Perry the Pirate—”)

“I’d heard he’d gone straight.”

(“Turns out he was just waiting for Chuck the Fish Whisperer’s grand return. Lawyer Guy ended up going toe to toe with him on the table of their fancy lawyer conference room. He got a cool swordfish out of it and everything.”)

“He won?”

(“Hard to say, LG disarmed him but then Perry threw himself out a window and nobody’s seen him since. Our best guess is he’s in our office with the rest of Smuggles’ inner circle.”)

On one of the screens, I saw a school bus bust through a barricade, sending a couple of supervillains diving for cover. I couldn’t see who was driving the bus but I noticed Super-Sonic-Plasma-Ultra-Cannon Man, arm cannons akimbo, perched on top of the bus firing off super-sonic-plasma blasts at the fleeing supervillains.

Gael walked by us spewing orders rapidfire into his earpiece. “Flaming Head Guy, Jhonny McBarnburner just set a barn on fire about two blocks from here. No, I don’t know where the barn came from. Hold on—” Gael stopped short in front of us. “Somebody figure out where that barn came from! If it’s a reality warper, Chester I want you to come up with a response plan. If it’s a teleporter, Christine, that’s yours.”

“Yes sir!” came a chorus of voices from around the room.

“My people are on it, you still with me? Good, get to the barn and absorb the fire. Show Jhonny what a real pyrokinetic looks like. Don’t make a big thing about it, I don’t want anybody else diverting attention to this thing. The villains are just trying to pull our focus away from the main battle. Over and out.”

Gael typed something on his keyboard and then looked in our direction.

“The blogger,” he said coldly.

I nodded, Parenthetical Guy did finger guns. I’m not going to lie, Gael Obstrovesky was one of my personal heroes. He commanded a worldwide network of information gatherers, and made sure it got to the heroes who needed it most when they needed it. If How To Hero was a guide to being a superhero, Gael’s organization, G.U.Y. I.N. T.H.E. C.H.A.I.R. was a continuous course on how to actually do the most good. He had literally thousands of heroes in his network, all of whom respected him and his team and took his advice without question. Gael was my hero, and the fact that he knew who we were was no small honor. Presumably, our blog was one of the many places he got data and information from. I can only imagine how many heroes he’d directed to our small corner of the internet so that they could best serve the world. I stood up a little straighter, smoothened out my hoodie, and stuck out my hand.

“Welcome to the Hub, I understand this is entirely your fault.”

Ouch, that’s not how I expected that to go. He didn’t even shake my hand.

“That seems like an oversimplification,” I stammered.

But Gael was already preoccupied with some new crisis.

“Hurricane Hank, we need you to manipulate air currents in sector B13, Gaskid just unleashed a bevy of stink bombs. It won’t be fatal but we’re estimating that our people in that area will operate with 30% less efficiency if that’s not cleared away soon. Thank you.”

On a screen, I saw the super-hearing superhero ’Earo stationed on a rooftop next to the hero Arrow Man, it appeared as though Arrow Man was firing blindly into the fray, until I noticed ’Earo’s lips moving, he must’ve been using his super-hearing to identify targets for Arrow Man. Saving the archer time and allowing him to focus on making all twenty-three of the arrows in his quiver count.

Gael turned back to us.

“Normally, I might agree with you. I find it hard to believe that your blog could inspire so much ire in a person that they would make deals with every single supervillain on the planet along with two gods but, unfortunately for you, Smuggles basically left us a signed note on your blog explaining that that was indeed the case.”

“He did what?”

That was just unacceptable. It was bad enough that Smuggles had taken over our headquarters. It was pretty rude that he’d shrunken me down and placed me in a prison of my own design. And you know what? Yeah, I’ll say it: It was uncool of him to take over the Earth. But taking over my blog? Using my carefully, painstakingly cultivated platform to espouse whatever nonsense megalomaniacs espouse? Unacceptable.

(“Oh, yeah. He laid out exactly how we drove him from small-potatoes villainy to big-potatoes villainy. And there’s more—”)

“What could be worse than that?” I bemoaned.

Parenthetical Guy looked down at the ground for a moment and when he looked up there was an expression I didn’t recognize etched across his features. For the moment, the carefree slacker was gone, the eternal smirk had been wiped away and in its place, an expression of genuine pain.

(“He… He admitted to killing Dr. Brainwave.”)

“Ah,” I said. “All right, let’s take this guy down.” I turned to Gael to ask him something but he was already deep in conversation with Professor Flay. After a moment he whipped around and started barking orders again.

“All right people, Professor Flay just briefed me on his daring jailbreak. I’ve inputted any information you need to know on your monitors. You can read about the rest in the tell-all book I’m sure he’ll be writing once this is all done. Or perhaps an inane blog post that our other new guest here is probably writing as we speak—”

“Um, you can see me, right? You know I’m not writing a blog post,” I said, holding out my hands.

“Rockblock, Glassesman, Helm Lady and Cowboy Rockstar have joined the fray. Power like that is sure to shift the balance of this war in our favor. It’s up to us to make sure that the power is placed where we need it to do the most good.”

On one of the screens I saw Glassesman staring down the Cyber-Giants Nuke-Borg, Murdertron, and 01001000 01110101 01100111 01101111 01110100 01110010 01101111 01101110. To say he was out of her depth was an understatement. I was about to say something to Gael when a flurry of motion left the three robots in pieces. Standing above their dismantled remains stood an older looking man with a flowy white beard holding a high-tech looking wrench and wearing old-looking clothes, and what appeared to be a robot duplicate of him. The robot hurried over to Nuke-Borg, extracting the nuclear reactor from what remained of the giant robot’s chest, and…assimilated it into its own body.

(“That’s Leonardo da Vinci and his robot clone from the future,”) Parenthetical Guy whispered to me. (“I recruited them.”)

Well, that’s certainly not something I expected to hear, but all right! I was about to respond when, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a flurry of movement. I turned to see a couple of Gael’s people posting up a few sticky notes on one of the rare portions of wall that wasn’t covered in screens.

“What’s going on over there?” I asked.

“We’re keeping track of who’s out there,” Professor Fueller said.

“By hand?” I asked.

“We’re not wasting a screen on something that could be done by hand,” Professor Fueller said disdainfully.

(“Computer hardware has been pretty hard to come by since the takeover,”) Parenthetical Guy explained.

“Positive ID on Mecha Mouth confirmed,” somebody called out, rushing over to the wall of sticky notes. I was shocked to see that the person was wearing a mask…and a furry cape draped over an open lab coat…and a glowing red stone on a pendant hanging from his neck.

“Oh god, what’s he doing here?” I said.

Professor Paleontologist stood up straight and turned in our direction.

“Ah, hello, gentlemen. To what do we owe the pleasure?” Professor Paleontologist said, his expression inscrutable beneath his dinosaur mask.

(“I brought Zach up here because I figured he’d get killed instantly if he was outside for a second longer.”) Parenthetical Guy explained quickly as, behind him, a screen depicted Ultiman running straight into a horde of zombies, leading a group of young-looking heroes behind him.

“I would’ve been fine!” I protested. I wasn’t about to let Parenthetical Guy embarrass me in front of Professor Paleontologist of all people.

(“You know, kind of like why you’re up here,”) Parenthetical Guy added, smirking at Professor Paleontologist.

Professor Paleontologist rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to the wall of sticky notes.

“Wait, why isn’t he flying?” I said suddenly, pointing at the screen where Ultiman was fighting off zombies.

“We learned very early on in this thing that flying was out of the question,” Professor Paleontologist said. “Anybody who tries it gets struck down by lightning.” “What’s that about?”

(“Apparently Zeus thinks that its hilarious that his brother Hades was dethroned by Greg the Skeleton King, he’s thrown his weight—and his lightning—behind Smuggles.”)

“Damn,” I said. How were we supposed to deal with the king of the Olympians on top of everything else?

On the screen with Ultiman and his young allies—whom Professor Fueller somberly explained were some of his students from the Superhero School—I saw Cowboy Rockstar enter the fray, riding a glowing skateboard and blasting at zombies with his enchanted six-shooters.

“Cowboy Rockstar identified, I need an earpiece and a runner!” someone shouted. With a practiced smoothness, I saw somebody across the room dash over to a box of earpieces on a nearby table and toss one to the technician who’d requested. At the same time a blur streaked through the room, snatched the earpiece out of the air, and then dashed back outside. Back on the screen, I saw the superhero speedster, Really Really Fast Guy materialize next to Cowboy Rockstar and hand him the earpiece. Cowboy Rockstar nodded and the speedster dashed off to deal with some other emergency as Cowboy Rockstar popped the earpiece into his ear.

“Mission control, this is Cowboy Rockstar, do you read me?” Cowboy Rockstar’s voice crackled over a speaker system somewhere in the room.

“We read you,” Gael said in his clipped manner. Apparently, identifying himself would have been inefficient. But letting me know that I drove Smuggles into becoming a megalomaniac was plenty worthy of his time,

“Excellent,” Cowboy Rockstar said, as he continued firing off bursts of energy from his guns at the zombie horde. “I’m about to do something that’s going to look very bad, but I just want to let you all know that it may very well help us turn the tide here. So…I’m sorry I guess, best of luck.”

Gael’s eyebrows shot up and he turned to Professor Flay. “What’s he talking about?”

Professor Flay was wide-eyed as he shrugged, “I have no idea.”

Not that anybody had asked me, but I also didn’t have a clue as to what Cowboy Rockstar was talking about. Luckily, I guess, we didn’t have to wait long. We all watched, mouths agape as Cowboy Rockstar kickflipped over some fallen zombies, fired off a few more shots and then grabbed Ultiman by the shoulder. We watched as they said a few inaudible words to one another, apparently they’d silenced their communicators, and then we watched, helplessly, as they both vanished in a flash of light.

For a moment, we were all speechless.

And then things kicked back into gear.

“Get a hold of Captain Patriot, tell him he needs to make himself as visible as possible. He’s got charisma people can rally around.” Gael barked.

Professor Fueller was all business as well, speaking rapidly into his own communicator, gripping it so tightly that his knuckles were whitening.

“We need an experienced hero in A-1-7, there are untested students in over their heads. I repeat, students in danger, A-1-7. Now.”

He let out a breath of relief and I inhaled sharply as Hatman and frikkin’ Curly who once got mugged and was so rattled that he slept for like two weeks afterward, Curly who once spilled a glass of milk on his shirt and took the rest of the day as a sick day, which we don’t even give to employees at his level, Curly who once sneezed so hard that he smacked his head against a table and gave himself a concussion, charged into battle to assist the Superhero School students.

“This is the most implausible thing I have ever seen in my life,” I said and one time, I went to the moon to watch a monster truck, no wait, moonster truck show and accidentally took the only extant picture of Floon, the moon’s invisible twin who controls the lava tides while trying to take a picture of the moonster trucks and accidentally taking a selfie instead.

(“It’s pretty wild, yeah.”)

Curly and Hatman stood back to back, tossing flat cap shaped hat-arangs and firing off grapnel lines, cutting down zombies with such ease that I honestly thought some of the Superhero School students were going to start applauding.

With that particular crisis handled, Gael rounded on me once more.

“Where did they go?” he demanded.

I shrugged, “How should I know?”

“Did he mention anything about kidnapping Ultiman when you were in prison together?” Gael asked.

“Not to me…” I said looking to Professor Flay for help, but he’d already wandered off to help some technicians identify weapons or some such crucially vital nonsense.

“Okay… I can’t spare any of my people for this, do you think the two of you can make yourselves useful and do some research to figure out what Cowboy Rockstar could be playing at,” Gael asked, though I noted that his voice had the cadence of an order rather than a question. And he was a bit too condescending for my liking as well.

I was about to respond when a technician to our left shouted for Gael’s attention and he zipped off in a flash to see what the situation was.

After exchanging a look with Parenthetical Guy, we followed him to take a look as well.

“We’ve just intercepted a transmission,” a dark-haired woman explained to us as we crowded around her station. “Smuggles has just ordered the mad scientist Bald Brain to ‘rain death and destruction by the bucketload’ down on our people. Apparently he’s worked something out with Greg the Skeleton King so that the reapers under Greg’s control won’t claim the souls of Smuggles’ forces.”

“Great, now they can’t even die!” I heard a technician bemoan.

“Irrelevant, our people weren’t taking killshots anyway,” Gael said. “But, I suppose I can’t say the same for our enemies. If Smuggles is going to start handing out wholesale death, that’s a big problem. Not only for the obvious reason, but every one our people that gets cut down will probably be back as a zombie fighting for the other side. This could be disastrous—we need solutions, people!”

(“Hey, wait, look over there,”) Parenthetical Guy pointed at a nearby screen where a large zeppelin shaped like Bald Brain’s head was emerging out of an underground lair.

“Why didn’t we know about that lair!” Gael shouted at nobody. Nobody answered.

“Wait…it looks like somebody did,” Professor Flay said.

Sure enough, I caught a glimpse of a figure in beige body armor, silver boots, and a beige helmet. Then I noticed the distinct lab coat of a mad scientist, and a glint of light reflected off of a strikingly bald head. Bald Brain was fighting one of the superheroes on top of the zeppelin. Somebody was already there. Maybe all hope wasn’t lost after all.

“Who is that?” I asked. I couldn’t make out the finer details of the heroes costume from the grainy drone footage.

Gael narrowed his eyes. “It’s…Gumball Man.”

Oh, great. Never mind what I said before about hope not being lost. Don’t get me wrong, Gumball Man is an all right dude, he’s no Professor Paleontologist or anything. But he’s also no Ultiman either. His powers consist of shooting globs of sticky goo out of his hands that he call gum-bombs. He used to lead a team of superheroes called the Super Fools. The jury is still out on whether or not the name was ironic or not. They saved the world a few times, but who hasn’t at this point. All that’s to say that he wouldn’t be any of our number-one picks for heroes to be the only person standing between us and total annihilation.

But somehow, he’d managed to get onto Bald Brain’s zeppelin and make it into the sky with him. Which was unfortunate for him, since Bald Brain and the rest were allied with Zeus, lord of the skies. All of this meant that Gumball Man was fighting a battle on two fronts. Front one: mad scientist armed with inane weaponry capable of killing us all and/or turning us into zombies under the control of Greg the Skeleton King for all eternite. Front two: the king of the Olympains. Gumball Man had somehow successfully goaded Bald Brain onto the zeppelin’s roof, which seemed to have at least stopped Zeus from hurling lightning bolts indiscriminately. And I guess that was kind of nice of Zeus? To care about Bald Brain enough to ease up a little on the lightning bolts. Either way, Gumball Man seemed to have coated his helmet and some of his armor armor with the sticky, rubbery substance that filled his gum-bombs, which hopefully would protect him from any lightnig Zeus did throw his way. Bald Brain was aiming a ludicrously large gun at him that looked like it had been smuggled off the set of a science fiction b-movie

“He’s going to need help!” I shouted, unable to help myself.

Gael nodded, “We can’t get anybody airborne with Zeus in play…Lorna, are there any teleporters available?

“Negative,” the dark-haired technician responded, “We’ve got all of them posted at high-value locations keeping enemy combatants away.”

“Right,” Gael said. “And I assume Bald Brain’s vessel is made from non-ferrous materials?”

“Scans indicate yes,” another nearby technician said.

On the screen, Gumball Man dove to the side as Bald Brain fired his weapon at him. The sticky polymer he’d applied to parts of the costume prevented him from falling off the zeppelin entirely, but things were not looking good for him.

“Dammit,” Gael muttered, “We can’t risk shooting it down with Gumball Man still on there, not to mention the fact that we don’t know what kind of payload that airship is carrying, and nobody can fly up there until we’ve figured out a solution to the whole Zeus thing.”

With that Gael turned hopefully toward a group of scientists and technicians that were huddled around a nearby monitor.

“Mike, how we doing?”

“Nothing yet, boss. If we had access to another god maybe we’d be able to begin negotiations or something. But anybody who we know with that kind of access is either too injured to help, missing and presumed captured, or waiting this whole thing out in the Magirealm,” Francesca said.

“What about the drones?” I asked.

“The what?” Gael said.

“The camera drones, the ones that are recording this for our viewing pleasure,” I said gesturing to the banks of screens and monitors. “Maybe we can use them to take down Bald Brain and rescue Gumball Man.”

“Negative,” Gael said. “We don’t control the camera drones, Smuggles does. He wants the whole world to see the heroes fall.”

“Oh… What a creep,” I said as I struggled to come up with a way out of our current predicament.

Gael nodded and turned back to the monitor depicting Gumball Man’s fight with Bald Brain. The hero had managed to disarm the supervillain and they were now sparring hand-to-hand. Bald Brain was proving to be incredibly spry for a mad scientist and was matching Gumball Man blow for blow. Gael allowed his gaze to linger on the screen for a moment longer. He opened his mouth to say something, but it was drowned out by a loud thump.

“What was that?” he said, his eyes hungrily running across the bank of screens in search of some sort of explanation as the rhythmic thumping continued.

Parenthetical Guy and I looked at each other, there was something familiar about that thump, but neither of us was quite ready to announce that to the group yet. What would we even say? “Oh yeah, that’s a real familiar sounding thump, do with that what you will”? I had a feeling the big brains around us would find that supremely unhelpful.

(“Hey, Lorna, what’s going on with your water?”) Parenthetical Guy asked, pointing at a paper cup filled with water that was sitting on Lorna’s desk. The water was shaking tumultuously, threatening to spill over the side of the cup.

“Oh hell,” Professor Paleontologist muttered to himself. His hand flung up to grasp the red gemstone that hung from his neck and an impossibly loud roar emanated out of it, grinding everything in the densely packed room to a halt and drawing all eyes to him.

“Good god!” I shouted, pressing my hands against my ears.

“Everybody needs to evacuate this building now!” he shouted. “Something big is coming this way,” he said by way of explanation when he was met with the confused stares of a couple dozen scientists and technicians.

Something big…? Coming for us? Yikes, didn’t see that coming. The varied scientists and technicians started meticulously but efficiently packing up anything that was essential and then making their way toward the door to the room.

“Estimated time ’till arrival?” Gael asked us.

(“Estimate—? I don’t know! Soon probably! Let’s move!”) Parenthetical Guy shouted before grabbing me and Professor Paleontologist by the arms and pulling us toward the door.

We’d nearly made it to the door to the stairwell when the screens of every monitor in the room exploded outward, showering the room, and us, unfortunately, in a hail of glass. Professor Paleontologist, dauntless superhero and showoff that he was, shoved me and Parenthetical Guy to the floor and shielded us with his body.

“What the hell was that?” Lorna asked from beneath a nearby desk.

“It doesn’t matter, we need to get outside now!” Gael called from across the room, where he was already starting to crawl slowly toward the door, taking care to avoid any pieces of glass.

Thankfully, a much closer entrance than the door to the stairwell soon presented itself. Unthankfully, that’s because two huge claws ripped through the northern wall of the room and pried a massive opening in it.

“Holy #$%&!” Gael shouted, uncharacteristically losing his cool in the face of the ginormous monster looking through the new hole in the wall at the few of us who were still trapped in the commander center.

“Please tell me this is your doing,” Professor Flay called to me from the middle of the room.

Huh? Why would I have anything to do with—oh… Oh no.

(“Sprinkles?”) Parenthetical Guy asked, slowly rising to his feet.

And he was right, the monster towering over us, slowly dismantling our only shelter around us, was Sprinkles. Dr. Brainwave’s Greatest Shame. Our monster. The very same monster who had helped me and Professor Flay and the others escape from Atomspace just an hour earlier. Only now she wasn’t looking nearly as friendly. Now she was all sharp teeth and spikes and claws with a dead look in her eyes that could only mean one thing…

“Get down! She’s not with us!” I shouted as I grabbed at Parenthetical Guy’s pant leg, pulling him back to the ground.

(“What are you talking about? It’s Sprinkles, of course she’s with us.”)

“Look at her eyes, she’s being controlled somehow,” I whispered.

“That’s right, Zachary,” an electronic voice cackled from a titanium collar that was strapped around Sprinkles’ neck. “I figured out your little trick, I should’ve realized you’d use Brainwave’s monster as a conduit for your escape. But that won’t work again. I’ve had the Nemesystem design this control collar for your beloved team mascot, and now we’re going to use her to ensure that even if your pathetic superhero army prevails today, you won’t be alive to see it.”

(“Ha! Like the mighty How To Hero will ever be taken out by frikkin’ Smuggles!”) Parenthetical Guy said before flipping Sprinkles the double bird.

“Charming, I’m glad to see I’ll be able to take out two of you in one fell swoop. Nemesystem, she’s all yours.”

\\”Hello, all. My name is Nemesystem and I’m in control of his behemoth now. Please feel free to scream and cry to your heart’s content. I don’t mind.”//

“Where are the heroes?” I heard Professor Flay whisper to Gael. “Surely someone must’ve seen this titan stomping around.”

“We didn’t see it coming on the screens, she must’ve… Ah, she must’ve stayed shrunken until just now. It’s…it’s going to take anybody who can do something about this some time to get here,” Gael said, a look of defeat spreading across his features as he looked around the room for something that he might be able to use to get us out of this alive. The other fleeing scientists had taken any weapons and communications devices with them when they evacuated, and anything that was left here had been destroyed in the shockwave that had occurred when Sprinkles was returned to her full, gargantuan height.

“That’s not quite right,” Professor Paleontologist said before standing up and striding over to the widening gap in the wall.

“How do you mean?” Gael called after him.

“You said that any hero who could face this monster is too far away or otherwise engaged. But that’s not true.” Professor Paleontologist looked back over his shoulder at us and winked, “I’m right here.”

\\”Poor, little PP, thinking he stands a chance against the mighty Nemesystem. You couldn’t hold a candle to me when I was inhabiting a computer, but now that I’m finally in a form that with a physical might to match my intellectual—”//

Professor Paleontologist grabbed his gemstone again and the roof exploded right off the building as a brilliant light blinded the rest of us. Once I’d blinked away the stars I was seeing, I was sure that something must’ve hit me in the head. On the street in front of the command center big, bad, hulking Sprinkles was locked in combat with a feathered Tyrannosaurus rex with a beautiful, lustrous head of bright, pink hair.

(“Oh my goodness, its hair…it’s magnificent,”) Parenthetical Guy said, mouth agape as sunlight poured into the room.

Professor Paleontologist, still gripping his gemstone, stood at the edge of the wreckage of the command center. His eyes were glowing red and he had become surrounded by an aura of red energy. He was staring intently at the titanic battle below as he rapidly muttered instructions to the time-displaced T. rex he had summoned.

“Are any of you carrying any sort of weapons?” Gael asked the motley crew of us who were just standing around dumbfounded at the epic battle occurring just a few feet away from us.

“No, sir,” Lorna said, her eyes locked on the fight as the T. rex slammed its tail into Sprinkles’ chest sending her toppling back into a nearby building.

“Oh my god!” Professor Flay said, “We need to get down there—there could be people or—”

“This entire neighborhood has been evacuated,” Gael said. “Our main priority here is to protect Professor Paleontologist. He’s doing everything he can to exert his will over that T. rex, if he loses focus, there’s nothing stopping Nemesystem from using that monster to kill us all. Not to mention the fact that we’d have a confused, scared, rampaging T. rex to deal with on top of everything else.

That got our attention. Quickly, me, Professor Flay, Parenthetical Guy, Lorna, and Gael made a defensive wall around Professor Paleontologist, making sure to leave him a clear line of sight to the monster mash below.

“With any luck, anybody who could come to Nemesystem’s aid is being kept busy by our forces,” Gael said, but he didn’t seem confident.

Nemesystem, having recovered from the T. rex’s strike, bounded toward the beast, screeching insults that would surely have devastated the T. rex and its self-esteem had it been one of those thinking, sentient T. rexes you sometimes hear about and now a mindless beast being mentally piloted by a superhero/professor/huge dork.

\\And another thing! Who died and made you king of the lizards? You’re nothing but a Tyrannosaurus plebius!// Nemesystem’s robotic voice crackled from Sprinkles’ control-collar as the monster clawed and kicked at the T. rex.

I don’t think I imagined Professor Paleontologist wincing a little at that remark, but it might have just been the strain of the battle.

“He’s not going to be able to keep this up for much longer,” I said.

“My earpiece still isn’t working,” Gael muttered. “Nemesystem must be jamming the signal.”

At that moment, a small chime rang out from Professor Flay’s pocket.

“Is that a phone?” Lorna asked, as Professor Flay drew a small, rectangular device from his pocket.

“Sort of… I mean, it’s a communication device that was given to me by—”

“The Chorus of Organs,” I said, as something dawned on me.

(“Oh crap, I forgot Sprinkles is full of people!”)

“Full of what???” Lorna asked.

“The monsters’ internal organs were granted sentience during an accident that occurred in the late Dr. Brainwave’s lab,” Gael explained quickly.

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“It’s my job to know that,” Gael said.

Well, I didn’t love that. What other How to Hero secrets did Gael know? Who am I kidding, he probably knows what songs I like to sing in the shower… But I’m getting off track. Gael was right of course, Professor Paleontologist wasn’t just waging battle with Nemesystem, or even our dear pet/mascot. Dozens of lives were at risk as well if this battle kept up. Now Professor Flay’s communicator was ringing and it wasn’t hard to guess why: Below us, the T. rex was clamping down on Sprinkles’ neck with its mighty jaws, though Sprinkles still seemed to be doing all right. I guess Dr. Brainwave had built a sturdy, if not particularly useful, living weapon of mass destruction. Still, there was only so long this could go on for before either us or the inhabitants of Sprinkles suffered some sort of loss.

“Answer it, we need to explain to them what’s going on,” I said.

“How is it even possible that they can call?” Lorna asked as Professor Flay pressed a button on the device and held it up to his ear.

“Nemesystem isn’t going to jam any signals coming to or from the monster,” Gael reasoned, “Otherwise he’d risk losing his own connection to the monster’s control collar.”

Professor Flay spoke into the communicator in hushed tones for a few minutes and then replaced it in his pocket. He turned to us and opened his mouth to speak before being cut off.

(“What’s the deal?”) Parenthetical Guy blurted out.

“I was just about to… They say we’re in trouble,” Professor Flay said.

(“Well thank god they called to let us know, we’d be totally clueless otherwise,”) Parenthetical Guy snarked as Sprinkles shook the T. rex off of her and bodychecked it into a nearby building.

Nearby, various supervillains and undead legions were rallying around Nemesystem and Sprinkles. Directing their fights with our guys into the paths of these two warring titans. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like the heroes would be much help while they were fighting this battle on two fronts.

“No, I mean, yes. But they’re saying it's only going to get worse. Apparently, they’ve been doing their best to fight Nemesystem from within, but it’s a losing battle. They don’t know how much longer they’re going to be able to hold out before Nemesystem has complete control over all of them. They said…they said we should try to kill the monster.”

“What?!” Parenthetical Guy and I said simultaneously. Listen, I’ll admit, I haven’t been Sprinkles’ biggest fan in the past. She’s eaten me twice after all. But still, she was part of the How to Hero family. And I wasn’t about sign off on her murder. And besides, the Chorus had just helped us escape from Smuggles’ prison. Now we were supposed to pay them back by killing them? Absolutely not. There had to be another way.

(“There has to be another way. Sprinkles is one of us!”) Parenthetical Guy protested. I was glad to see someone agreed with me. Though I would’ve preferred if it had been one of the scientists or geniuses.

“No, it’s the sensible play. We’re simply dealing with too many crises at once. The monster and its organs are artificial lifeforms, it’s possible that we can restore them to life once this is done,” Gael said.

“Sir, are you sure?” Lorna asked. I could tell this didn’t sit well with her either.

My mind began to race. I thought back to my time in Smuggles’ prison. Plotting my escape with Cowboy Rockstar. I’d told him that when you’re trapped in a locked room, anything can be a key. This situation was my locked room. There had to be a way out that we could all live with…and live through. I scanned the wreckage of the command center, looking for “keys.” Nearly all the equipment had been pretty thoroughly thrashed. Either from when Sprinkles ripped a hole in the wall, or when a T. rex burst into existence within it. But my eyes landed on a pretty fancy piece of tech that had miraculously survived… And I’d seen Professor Flay do more with less.

“I’m positive, there’s simply no other way out of this. The rest of our people are on the ground. How long until one of them gets injured or worse because of these brawling behemoths. This isn’t how I’d like to resolve this either but I’m afraid we have no choice—”

“Professor!” both I and Gael shouted at the same time. He was calling for Professor Paleontologist and I was calling for Professor Flay. But Professor Paleontologists’ focus was still wholly on the carnage below, as he controlled the T. rex to protect the heroes and scientists below from the onslaught of blows from the Nemesystem-controlled Sprinkles.

“What?” Professor Flay asked me.

“You think there’s a lithioplasmic thingamabob and a terrakon whositwhatsit in that?” I asked, pointing at the sophisticated looking laptop that was hovering near Gael’s head.

“Ah,” Professor Flay said, a smile slowly creeping across his features. “Yes. I can make that work. It’s not going to go over well though.”

“Thank you,” I said, placing a hand on his shoulder. “PG, grab the laptop, let’s get to work!”

A devilish grin flashed across Parenthetical Guy’s face before he balled his hand into a fist and jabbed Gael in the stomach. Gael’s face contorted in pain as he doubled over, and Parenthetical Guy snatched the laptop out of the air.

“I’m not sure you needed to punch him,” I remarked as he passed Professor Flay the laptop.

(“I had to make sure he wasn’t going to activate some kind of force-field. What are we doing?”)

“We’re going to let the omni-disciplinary scientist rip this thing apart and build something that might just get us out of here in one piece.”

Professor Flay afforded himself one last glance at the rapidly escalating chaos that was engulfing us. The Tyrannosaurus Rex that was giving its all to hold the ginormous monster back from us. The shirtless man who was gripping a precious stone and muttering like the world depended on it, and it did. The legions of supervillains, zombies, and demons who seemed to be gaining the upper hand over our allies. The warship, upon which one brave superhero was fighting for his life to stop the forces of evil from raining death and destruction down upon our city. Professor Flay took it all in, centered himself, and flipped the laptop on its back.

“Wait!” Lorna shouted, stopping Professor Flay from wrenching open the device.

“Lorna?” I asked.

“He’s got a—” She cast a concerned glance toward Gael who was dusting off his pants and glaring at us.

“There’s a fail-safe, you’ll be zapped if you try to open the laptop’s casing. I know the deactivation codes. One second,” Lorna joined our little clump and Professor Flay passed the laptop to her.

“I implore you all to think about what you’re doing,” Gael said, wheezing to try to get some air back into his lungs following Parenthetical Guy’s precision strike. “I don’t want to let anybody die, but we need that laptop and the information contained within it to advise and organize our forces. That machine is crucial to stopping Smuggles and saving the world.”

“Haven’t you heard, Gael? We’re How to Hero, we know a thing or two about teaching heroes how to save the world,” I said as a defeated little *beep boop* signaled that Gael’s laptop was offline.

“Do your worst, Professor,” Lorna said, handing the laptop back to Professor Flay.

“Thank you, Lorna,” Professor Flay said genially and then ripped the battery pack out of the laptop, exposing the machine’s inner workings.

Below us, Sprinkles rammed the T. rex into the side of our building, causing the entire thing to sway in its foundations.

(“The sooner the better,”) Parenthetical Guy said unnecessarily. I couldn’t be sure, but I didn’t think Professor Flay was taking his sweet time.

Gael struggled to his feet and I stepped between him and Professor Flay…which was also unnecessary, as it turned out. Gael held up his hand in surrender and walked over to where Professor Paleontologist was standing on the jagged, uneven precipice of the former command hub.

“It’s clear that I’ve been outvoted, and I’m not exactly going to make the best use of my talents repeatedly getting beaten by you lot while attempting to recover a disassembled piece of hardware,” Gael said over his shoulder. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to test a hypothesis of mine.”

Gael joined Professor Paleontologist and grabbed hold of his free hand.

Well, that’s sweet, I thought, thinking that Gael was just showing Professor Paleontologist some emotional support or something.

Should’ve known better, emotional support wouldn’t exactly be making good use of Gael’s talents either, I suppose. Gael’s eyes started to glow like Professor Paleontologist’s and the red aura surrounding the Professor soon engulfed him too. I noticed that Professor Paleontologist’s stance had grown less rigid, like a huge burden had been lifted from him, at least in part, from Gael contributing his willpower to the situation. After another moment, both Gael and Professor Paleontologist started to mutter instructions in perfect unison. And the building shook as the T. rex let out a mighty roar, clearly rejuvenated by the added power.

“Whoa,” I said.

(“We should… We should join them, right?”) Parenthetical Guy said, before wiping his hands on his pants. (“I don’t wanna contribute sweaty hands to this life-or-death situation,” he said by way of explanation.

“Go, help them,” Professor Flay agreed, this will be ready shortly.

Lorna, Parenthetical Guy, and I walked over to Gael and Professor Paleontologist and, one by one, joined hands with them, contributing our own wills to the circuit and granting the T. rex even more power, which was good, because the more Sprinkles looked to be in need of assistance, the more supervillains came to join the battle, hacking, slashing, shooting, and biting at the T. rex’s heels.

My body convulsed as I put my hand in Parenthetical Guy’s and the mystical energy from Professor Paleontologist’s gemstone flowed into me, enveloping me in the crimson aura. I’d always heard that the Professor’s gemstone had been gifted to him by ancient dinosaur spirits and that he could use it to bend time itself in pursuit of his own unique, saurian brand of justice, but I’d never put much stock into any of that. It never seemed all that impressive to me. Nearly everyone on the street has access to some kind of magical gemstone that does weird stuff these days. But now that I was actually experiencing Professor Paleontologist’s magic, actually feeling it wash over me, I was in awe of Leon Von Iguanodon. All at once, my mind was consumed by an ungodly cacophony of sounds from the distant past as seemingly billions of prehistoric creatures vied for my attention. I squeezed my eyes shut and struggled to remain upright under the burden of it. I noticed Parenthetical Guy’s grip on my hand weaken and I squeezed tighter, and we held each other up, anchoring one another. After a few seconds of chaos, I heard a voice in my mind—a human voice—cut through the noise.

“Thank you all for coming, just focus on my voice. I will guide us all through this.” I breathed a sigh of relief as I focused on Professor Paleontologist’s voice. I’d never noticed how soothing it was before. After only a moment’s hesitation, I acquiesced control of my own voice to him, and before long I heard myself muttering instructions to our Jurassic jouster in unison with the others. The experience was like nothing I’d ever known, working in sync with so many people, fighting for a common goal. Battling evil to protect the good and the innocent. Protecting our home, our friends, our freedoms. I felt like I was a part of something so big, so grand, so right, that I could do anything. That feeling would not last.

I was shaken from my immersion in the battle when Professor Flay lightly shoved me, causing me to let go of Parenthetical Guy’s hand and break my connection to the others.

“Hey, rude,” I said.

“Don’t worry, I’ll take your place,” Professor Flay said as he shoved a small device into my hand.

“This the EMP?” I asked.

“It is.”

“What am I supposed to do with it?”

“I could only build a short-range one with the components I had available to me. You need to get close to the control collar, and when you do, hit this button,” Professor Flay said, indicating a blinking button on the kludged-together mechanism.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“You heard me, best of luck,” Professor Flay said before winking at me and then taking hold of Parenthetical Guy’s free hand and joining in the magical circuit.

“How the heck am I supposed to—? Oh.”

I guess Professor Flay had conveyed what needed to happen to the others telepathically, because the T. rex suddenly broke away from grappling with Sprinkles and lined its tail up perfectly with the jagged cliff we were standing on.

“Oh god,” I whispered. Well, I wasn’t going to get a better opportunity than that. Why hadn’t I ever taken the time to write a guide to running across a dinosaur’s back? What was I so busy doing? Writing about drills? Writing about the other kind of drills? I did a quick scan back through all of the advice I’d given prospective superheroes about wacky situations like this… This was kind of similar to fighting on top of a moving vehicle I guess? Except for then I had recommended strapping some pillows to yourself and wearing magnetic boots. Not super applicable here. Let’s see…

“Go!” my five compatriots shouted in unison. Which was both very creepy and super motivating. I took a deep breath and took off running. At its widest point, a T. rex’s width is approximately six feet wide, but I was still a little ways away from there. I tried to split the difference between cautious and speedy as I traversed the dinosaur’s tail as quickly as I possibly could, putting one foot in front of the other, refusing to look down, wishing I was wearing those weird glove-shoe thingies with separate sleeves for each toe for maximum dinosaur tail grippage. I was aware of the fact that T. rex was standing stock still, keeping its feet firmly planted as Sprinkles swiped and swatted at it. I was also aware of the tremendous toll this must have been taking on my teammates, on my friends, as they struggled to keep this king of lizards in check, forcing it to ignore its every fight-or-flight instinct so I could accomplish what needed doing. As I cleared the base of the tail and reached the wider body of the T. rex, I felt the dinosaur begin to move a little, dodging a swipe of Sprinkles’ flaming, spike-ladden tail. I picked up my pace a little, running across the dinosaur’s back and its neck as quickly as my legs would allow. I hoped against hope that the adrenaline would carry me through and that I wouldn’t start to feel the strain of the prison break, being eaten, and all the chaos of the battle around us until after I did this one last thing. As I reached the dinosaur’s head I was grateful for a handhold in the beast’s truly magnificent hair. I grabbed a handful and—whispering an apology to the dinosaur, whom I secretly harbored hopes of remaining friends with when this was all over—pulled myself up onto the top of its head.

If you’ve never seen the world from atop a tyrannosaurus rex’s head, I highly recommend it. Forget about boats or thrones, this is really where you feel like the king of the world. I took a moment to survey the world that I so very much felt like the king of. All around us, brightly clad or colored superheroes, monsters, and civilians were waging battle against a medley of similarly garish supervillains, criminals, ghosts, zombies, demons. Even a few skeleton warriors had managed to stumble their way into the fray, though, owing to the fact that they have no brains, they weren’t actually posing much of a danger to anybody other than themselves. Still though, things were looking dire. The heroes’ energy was clearly flagging. Most of our forces were students and trainees, they weren’t built for this. Not yet. Not to mention, Bald Brain’s death blimp was still hovering menacingly over everything. With only a chewing-gum themed do-gooder standing between us and oblivion. Plus, there was still the Nemesystem-controlled giant monster to contend with. That problem I could solve at least. I took a deep breath and climbed down in front of the T. rex’s eyes. It blinked at me, confused, but thankfully, Professor Paleontologist and the others were able to keep it from shaking me off. I looked into the dinosaur’s eye, nodded, and took off running down its snout. Sprinkles was right in front of us now, and there was no time like the present. As I reached the end of the dinosaur’s snout, the beast let out a massive, ear-shattering roar that launched me forward at my mind-controlled pet/mascot/two-time snacker.

<<”What’s this? Growing impatient waiting for me to kill you?”>>

Just doing some debugging. Just performing a quick techcorcism. Just giving my friend a little nemeshock to their Nemesystem. All great one-liners. All of which would have gone down in history with Neal Armstron’s “One small step for man” and Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze’s “Chill out.” Unfortunately, as I was flying through the air toward a giant monster while a tyrannosaurus rex roared behind me, all I could think to say was “AAARRHGGHRAAAHHHH!!!” Frankly, we were all lucky that I managed to keep the wherewithal to press the stupid button on Professor Flay’s device.

I did though, you’re welcome, world. I don’t know what I was expecting, but activating the EMP was a bit anticlimactic, all things considered. On the bright side, this definitely meant that Professor Flay wasn’t a secret supervillain or mad scientist or anything. If he had been there probably would’ve been confetti or a light show or a dramatic countdown or something when I’d pressed the button. All that happened was the device gave a little “beep-boop” and vibrated a little in my hand. Oh, and I continued to tumble through the sky toward a giant monster that, by this point, had a pretty well-established history of eating me. Luckily, though, that monster was on our side again. As I reached the apex of my flight, directly over Sprinkles’ head, I saw Nemesystem’s control collar go dark, and fall off Sprinkles’ prodigious neck. As I started my descent I heard cheers from the ground below me and I heard the T. rex roar one final time as it slipped back in time, having been released by Professor Paleontologist. Good, I thought, we did it. I made eye contact with one of Sprinkles’ many eyes and a look of relief and understanding passed between us. Sprinkles maneuvered herself underneath me and opened her mouth wide. I curled myself into a ball and braced for another trip through Sprinkles’ digestive system. I hoped that the EMP hadn’t rendered the Chorus of Organs’ portal technology unusable. I wasn’t looking forward using the…other exit.

Luckily though, I didn’t have to worry about that in the end, because just as I was about to plummet down the monster’s gullet, a strong, gloved hand grabbed my arm.

“Howdy, partner, looks like we got back just in time.”

I felt like the weight of the world had shifted from my shoulders as I looked up at Cowboy Rockstar’s shining face.

“Howdy,” I managed as Cowboy Rockstar lowered me onto the ground.

“Think you’ll manage to go ten minutes without being eaten if I leave you here?” he asked as looked up into the sky at Bald Brain’s airship.

“No promises,” I said, but he was already gone, flying off in the direction of the deathship and the one man who stood between us and an eternity of being zombie-slaves to a guy named Greg.

Only it wasn’t just one man now. I held up my hand against my forehead to block out the sun to get a better view of Cowboy Rockstar joining not one but two superheroes giving it their all against Bald Brain and his zany zeppelin.

“My god,” a voice next to me said. I turned to see Glassesman staring up at the sky as well, brandishing a pair of high-tech binoculars so he could get a better look.

“What’s going on up there?” I asked.

“Here,” he said, holding out his hand and generating another pair of binoculars for me to use.

I held them up to my eyes and saw a sight I had become well familiar with by this point: Gumball Man locked in combat with Bald Brain. But as I surveyed the scene I noticed someone else was there, Ultiman was back as well and apparently, while Cowboy Rockstar was rescuing me from Sprinkles, he had flown behind the airship and dug his superstrong fingers into its hull.

“He’s…he’s slowing it down? Is that possible? Can he do that?” Glassesman asked.

“I…guess?” I said, equally aghast.

I’m sure Gael or Professor Flay would be able to explain the science behind how a person in flight could use their strength to slow the movement of an entire airship without any kind of leverage or resisting force to take advantage of, but they were up in the ruins of the command hub. And I was standing next to a man whose only power was to generate eyewear from thin air. So all I can offer you by way of explanation is that sometimes, when the chips are down, and the world needs them, incredible people can do impossible things. Case in point, with Cowboy Rockstar now lending his strength to pushing back against the front of the ship, the zeppelin lurched to a halt, the momentum of which Gumball Man used to finally gain the upper hand against his longtime nemesis, dealing a decisive uppercut to the mad scientist’s chin and knocking him out.

Through the binoculars, I saw Cowboy Rockstar wipe his hands together and, in a flash of light, he and Ultiman appeared on top of the zeppelin next to Gumball Man, who was restraining Bald Brain.

“Hello, everybody!” Cowboy Rockstar’s strong confident voice resonated across the battlefield. “We’re back.”

The superheroes around me on the ground cheered riotously. Even Glassesman, though he stopped immediately once he realized I was looking at him.

“I kindly suggest that all of you villain types lay down your arms and surrender. Now. This is over. Ultiman and I have used or demigod and quasi-deified status to convene a meeting with Zeus, he has agreed to our terms and…”

He paused as, all around us, the various legions of Greg the Skeleton King’s undead army descended back to Hell.

“...Greg the Skeleton King has been removed from the throne of Hell.”

With the supervillains’ forces suddenly depleted, and two of our greatest heroes having shown up in such a dramatic fashion, the tide of the battle instantly turned.

I heard Gael’s voice resound over a hastily cobbled-together megaphone, barking new orders. Before our eyes, dozens of heroes took to the skies, fighting, but more often than not chasing, the airborne villains who had relished their air superiority just a moment before.

“But that’s not all we’ve been up to,” Cowboy Rockstar said, “Why don’t you tell them what else they’ve won.”

Ultiman flashed a smile so bright I was able to see it even without Glassesman’s binoculars. “Abracadabra,” he said. And the whole world shook.

Dozens of wizards, witches, demigods, and all manner of other magic users and creatures appeared out of portals, clouds of mists, and the fissures in the ground that the undead hordes had been dragged down.

“Under Zeus’...advisement, the doors to Magirealm have been opened, our friends in the magical community have returned to lend us a hand!” Ultiman proclaimed.

“Oh my god, this is… How did they pull this off?” I wondered as the weary superheroes raised their hands in cheer as the magical community came to their aid. Cowboy Rockstar and Ultiman picked up Gumball Man and Bald Brain and flew them both down to ground level. Where Bald Brain was apprehended by members of our Resistance and Gumball Man was tackled in a mess of hugs and enthusiastic claps on the back.

(“Is this is? Is it over?”) Parenthetical Guy asked as he approached me, supporting a severely exhausted Professor Paleontologist. The others had apparently elected to continue overseeing the battle from the ruins of the command hub. Apparently Gael, Lorna and Professor Flay had managed to dredge up and repurpose a couple more pieces of workable technology and were back at work coordinating our superheroic forces.

“I don’t know…maybe? I wouldn’t be surprised if Smuggles had a couple more tricks up his sleeve,” I said. “I mean, could it really be that simple?”

“YEAH!” a disembodied voice shouted.

Parenthetical Guy’s eyebrows shot up and Glassesman frowned, “Who said that?”

Suddenly, one last portal opened up in front of us and a lanky man wearing a purple vest over a black bodysuit emerged.

“Leonidas Da Vinci,” Power Jones said looking at Parenthetical Guy, “We are here.”

“Leonidas Da Vinci?” I said.

(“Um… What?”) Parenthetical Guy said.

“Literally, kill me,” Professor Paleontologist muttered.

“What is ha—?” Glasses Man started to ask before he was interrupted by dozens of individuals pouring out of the portal behind Power Jones.

“The Da Vinci Corps has arrived!” Power Jones bellowed.

“Yeah!”

(“This is the best day of my life,”) Parenthetical Guy said before literally squealing with delight.

***

The Haberdashery “Okay,” Ultiman said, looking around the table at the group assembled before him. Arrayed around the table was Cowboy Rockstar, Hatman, Gael, Professor Flay, Professor Paleontologist, Professor Fueller, Helm Lady, Glassesman, Murk, Ethynda, and, to everyone’s surprise, Power Jones, or Power Da Vinci as he’d taken to calling himself now that he had wrested control of the Da Vinci Corps away from our very own “Leonidas.”As it turns out, he’d always known that Parenthetical Guy was full of it when he’d told him about the Da Vinci Corps.

“I’ve got like eight different kinds of telepathy and besides, you’re just not a very good liar,” he’d said. But he’d loved the idea of leading his own multiversal army in defense of the ideals of creativity and learning that he’d formed one himself. Apparently, one of Power Jones’ many powers was the ability “to make myself a Da Vinci” as he put it. He’d then spent the next couple of days assembling his Corps, and once he’d done so, he’d been happy to ride to our assistance with his new team in tow. The Resistance, or I guess now, the expanded forces of Hero Force, didn’t quite understand why he’d shown up. But Ultiman wasn’t about to dismiss him out of hand.

“Without Greg the Skeleton King’s forces, the supervillains have, just about to the man surrendered. And Gael has done a great job coordinating our forces to best apprehend and hold them until they can be properly tried for their crimes,” Ultiman said, nodding to Gael who didn’t look up from his cellphone to accept the compliment.

“We’ve been very successful in dismantling Smuggles’ ogranization’s infrastructure and network in the rest of the world. Storehouses are being seized and weapons are being dismantled as we speak,” Hatman cut in.

Cowboy Rockstar nodded, “And as per our arrangement with Zeus, the Egyptian god of death, Shezmu has been put on the throne and Hades has been remanded to Olympian custody.”

“Are we sure we can trust this Shezmu?” Helm Lady asked.

“Probably not long term,” Cowboy Rockstar admitted, “But he knows he’d never have this power if not for me, Ultiman, and Zeus, he’s a minor player in Hell. And the rest of Hell knows it. He’ll be too busy fighting to keep his control to turn his attention toward Earth. At least for the time being.”

Ethynda nodded, “My contacts in the nether realms confirm that he’s already shoring up his defenses and he’s locked himself in his citadel, we won’t be hearing from anyone in Hell until this is all sorted out.”

“Speaking of which…” Ultiman said.

The rest of the table groaned and nodded. Our victory was still not quite as complete as any of us would have hoped. How to Hero Headquarters itself remained impregnable and Smuggles, Chuck the Fish Whisperer, Da Boss Marconi, Greg the Skeleton King and the rest of Smuggles’ inner circle and their henchmen were hunkering down inside, no doubt plotting their next move. Everything that Ethynda and the forces of magic had thrown at the building had had no effect. And anytime any superheroes tried to approach it, they were zapped into Smuggles’ Atomspace prison.

“Smuggles, the architect of all this, is still at large,” Ultiman said. “And while we are working on accessing Atomspace and freeing our comrades from the prison he’s built there, we still have no way of getting into the building he and his Consortium are hiding out in.

“I may be able to help you with that,” Power Jones said.

Ultiman smiled, relieved that his decision to allow Power Jones to sit in on this meeting was paying off. “What have you got?” “I can just poof the whole building away,” he said.

“Poof it where?” Hatman asked.

“Wherever you like, I figure,” Power Jones said. “That dimension you stashed ol’ Chuckie Fishes in for one.”

“That…could work,” Professor Paleontologist said slowly.

“Yeah!” a disembodied voice shouted.

“I’d just need, like, a day or so to charge up enough power to do it,” Power Jones said, shrugging.

“What?” Glassesman said.

“Well, you know, I expended a lot of power hopping around the Multiverse assembling by Da Vinci Corps, I don’t just have limitless power, you know. I’ve got to plug in and charge up every so often,” he said, holding up a slender silver device and waving it around.

“Erm…okay. A day you said?” Ultiman asked.

“A day, maybe a little more, then I can poof your little problem away lickety-split,” Power

said.

“Well, all right then. We have until then to come up with a better solution,” Ultiman said.

“Did you guys hear that?” I whispered.

Parenthetical Guy, Curly, Lawyer Guy, and I were huddled together with our ears pressed against the door, listening in on the big important meeting that, despite our collective protests, we had not been invited to.

{“Yeah, they’re going to poof our office into some other dimension!”}

(“Not to mention they’re going to leave it full of supervillains.”)

[“All of that really sounds fine to me. The sooner things get back to normal around here, the better.”]

(“Well, that doesn’t sound fine to me! All of my stuff is in there!”)

“Parenthetical Guy’s right, that’s our place. That’s our home. We can’t just let a bunch of supervillains use it to take over the world and then let them keep it!”

{“So what do we do?”}

“Well… You heard them, we’ve got a day before Power Jones makes his move. I say…I say we go handle this ourselves.”

To be concluded…

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howtohero · 3 years

Text

#300.1: Saving the World Part 1

Prologue

The Haberdashery

“Hi, my name is Murk. I am a mud monster and a product of mad science, but I am also an accountant and a lover of classical music. For most of my existence I have tried to simply live a regular life in an increasingly strange world.”

The conference room in Hatman’s Haberdashery was filled with all manner of colorfully clad, or just plain colorful, superheroes, super-trainees, monsters, vampires, werewolves, sewer-mutants, Da Vincis and even a smattering of regular civilians who looked tired, angry, but overall fearless. According to Leonardo Da Vinci II, an android duplicate of the original from the far future, there had never been such an eclectic gathering of people in all of history. They had gathered — or been gathered — because the world, and life as they all knew it, hung in the balance. The world’s supervillains, led by a formerly low rate smuggler named Smuggles, had managed to do the unthinkable, they’d taken over the world, and in doing so they’d imprisoned most of the world’s heroes, world leaders, and superhero bloggers, in a secret prison. The oddball assembly was the Resistance, and at the moment each of them had their eyes on Murk. Some looked at him with confusion, he was by far the most eloquent mud monster they’d ever heard. Some looked at him in awe, over the past several weeks, Murk had rescued many of them from danger and had inspired them to join him in his fight. A few looked at him with pride, they knew him from before you see, and as far as they were concerned, that made his heroics their heroics.

(“I know that guy from before,”) Parenthetical Guy whispered to the warthog-mask wearing man sitting to his left. (“And as far as I’m concerned, that makes his heroics my heroics.)

{“I work with that guy, he does my taxes,”} Curly whispered, nudging Hatman who was looking forlornly toward the room’s exit. There were far too many people between him and it, and it was causing him no shortage of distress.

“When the heroes fell,” Murk continued. “It immediately became apparent that I, and many others like me, could no longer afford the luxury of standing to the side. For a long time I, and many of my ‘monstrous’ ilk have been more than happy to allow superheroes to handle the world’s problems for us. Whenever our homes, our lives, our world came under threat we all said to one another, ‘well, that looks like a job for superheroes,’ and we declined to act. When the heroes fell I saw how selfish I had been. And so I would like to be the first to extend my heartfelt thanks, and my sincerest apologies to the brave heroes who have gathered here today. I, along with my partner and friend, Lawyer Guy have gathered as many civilians as we could. Regular monsters and people who have cowered from or turned a blind eye to the acts of the villains who have dared to subjugate us, and we have come here to offer our assistance. If you’ll have us, we would like to help in any way we can.”

His speech concluded, Murk quickly sat down next to Lawyer Guy who smiled warmly at him. A few people sitting near him muttered polite words of affirmation toward the hulking mud man but everyone quickly became silent once more as somebody else strode to the head of the table.

Everybody in the room, everybody in the world, recognized the gold and white costume, the chiseled, stony features, and the piercing blue eyes of Ultiman. He was the superhero par excellence and when he clapped Murk on the shoulder and smiled widely, Murk’s ragtag civilian crew let out a collective sigh of relief.

“Thank you Murk,” Ultiman said. “Thank you everyone. As I’m sure you can see, our numbers are small but our members are dedicated and we are thrilled to be able to count each of you among us. I’m confident that, working together, we can depose Smuggles and his entire Consortium of Crime.”

***

Smuggles’s Secret Prison

My name is Zachary Schechter and I’d been locked up for a while by the time anybody had made any noise about breaking out. You may know me as the creator, author, and only functioning brain behind How To Hero. Actually you definitely know me as that. It’s a very popular blog. Just take my word on this ok? I was in a secret prison because I allowed my subordinates to talk me into hiring a known supervillain to, let’s see, live in our basement and interject unwanted comments into my blog. As it would happen, this supervillain, Smuggles, took the job as part of some kind of protracted and complicated plan to take over the world. I should have seen that coming of course. That’s basically the only reason any supervillain does anything. For a few weeks I was alone there. Just sitting in a cell twiddling my thumbs. Trying to make conversation with the drones they had guarding the place. The only thing they’d given me to eat is fish. I imagine Chuck the Fish Whisperer had something to do with that. Frikkin supervillains and their sycophantic dedication to their own themes. But then a ton of superheroes ended up there with me, and I knew things on the outside had taken a decisive turn for the worse. The heroes were all stripped of their costumes and gear, and were given supervillain costumes instead. It’s all spikes, horns, and red contact lenses now. It’s a bit silly, but I think the idea is that if the heroes are dressed like villains and forced to do things like play evil charades and watch movies about heroes turning bad, then some of them might actually turn evil. Actually, I know that’s the idea, but I’ll get to that later. Eventually Cowboy Rockstar, the coolest hero of all time, decided to stage some kind of jailbreak. Which was great. And he wanted me to help him plan it, probably because of my proven expertise in all manner of superhero related topics. I bet it was my treatise on the many superheroic uses of drills that got his attention. There was just one teeny tiny problem though...

“So what do you think?” Cowboy Rockstar whispered.

“I think… I think that I designed this prison,” I whispered dejectedly.

“I beg your pardon?”

It was recreation time once again, and Giorgio the Evil Mime had selected an assortment of clips of superheroes becoming evil from various films and TV shows. It’s really shocking how many times Hollywood has returned to the well of “a superhero clad in red, white, and blue murders a person.” We must’ve watched like thirty different clips already.

“Look, Mr. Rockstar, I appreciate you coming to me and all. It’s an honor to meet you and plot in hushed voices with you and everything. But I’m like 90% certain that I designed this prison. And I don’t know about you but Iitalics certainly wouldn’t have designed a prison that people could break outitalics of.”

Cowboy Rockstar furrowed his brow, “Ah, you’re saying this prison is… from your blog?”

I held up my hands defensively. “Hey, I know how it sounds but look around you. The costumes, the robots, the charades. It’s literally ripped straight from my post about running your own unsanctioned prison.”

“You wrote a guide to running an off the books blacksite for housing criminals?” Cowboy Rockstar arched an immaculate eyebrow. “That’s not really a very superheroic activity.”

“Huh. When you put it like that it’s really no wonder that the only person who seems to have implemented any of it is a supervillain who seems to have taken over the world.”

“He had help,” I heard somebody grumble from Cowboy Rockstar’s other side.

Helm Lady was one of the only Hatman proteges to both survive to adulthood and continue her career as a superhero, so it was hardly surprising that she’d been able to sneak up on us.

“Helm Lady, good of you to join us!” Cowboy Rockstar said. “Zach over here was just telling me about how he designed this prison to be unescapable! Isn’t that exciting.”

“Hardly,” Helm Lady said glumly.

“I gotta agree with her on this one,” I said.

“Are you kidding me? You’ve been given a rare opportunity to outdo yourself in a grandiose and practical way! You’ve been here longer than anybody. It seems like Smuggles has some kind of vendetta against you specifically, and so he’s used your own tactics against you! Now, with our help of course, you can show everybody that you’re smarter than you!” Cowboy Rockstar was gesticulating wildly at this point drawing a sharp and reproachful glare from warden Giorgio.

“Hm,” I said, I had already written a guide to escapology. Maybe I’d already unwittingly outwitted myself. Besides, Smuggles’s prison wasn’t actually an exact copy of the one I’d designed on the blog. He’d had to make some changes to prevent it from having any real rehabilitative value. Dressing the prisoners like villains instead of heroes for instance. And villain costumes are very different from hero costumes. They’re like eighty percent sharp edges. I looked Cowboy Rockstar up and down. The costume they had him in had spikes up and down his arms. Maybe we could use them to pick the locks on our cell? We’d still have to deal with the robot guards and who knows what else. But maybe that was a place to start.

“Ok,” I said after a moment. “I’m sure we can come up with something, after all, as I say

on my blog, when you’re in a locked room, anything can be a key.”

Cowboy Rockstar grinned and gestured around the room at the assorted superheroes that were locked in with us, “And we’ve certainly got an eclectic bunch of keys here haven’t we.”

I smiled and looked around the room, maybe this could actually work.

***

“If I had an iPod and a busted time machine we could do this in a snappy montage and be out in no time,” I grumbled to Cowboy Rockstar.

It was the next day, and our recreation activity was something called “evil baseball.” There’s no batters, no outfield, and the only umpire was a deranged mime. The only real resemblance it had to regular “non-evil” baseball, was the fact that there were four bases, and players could steal bases. In fact, the game was pretty much just stealing bases. Because stealing is a crime get it? Ugh, the sooner we got out of there and stopped Smuggles the better. Cowboy Rockstar was manning first base for his team, and I’d just stolen first. I suspected it was because Helm Lady, the “pitcher” for Cowboy Rockstar’s team, had allowed me to get to first so we could chat. It might have been because I’m really athletic though. It’s hard to say.

“I don’t think that’s how anything works,” Cowboy Rockstar said.

“Oh what do you know?”

“A lot, I’ve unknotted several time paradoxes you know. Some experts even say that I ‘invented’ the current iteration of this timeline.”

“Ah, so this is all your fault.”

“Nice try, I didn’t give Smuggles access to an interdimensional warp gate so he could free his fish whispering friend from his prison.”

“Touche.”

“What have you got?”

“I was thinking, we know that Smuggles has everybody’s powers neutralized inside this prison right?”

“Yes.”

“Well not every hero has powers to begin with,” I started. “And there are few people here with relevant talents that Smuggles can’t turn off.”

“Talents such as?”

Giorgio blew his whistle. Apparently I’d spent too long dawdling at first base without even trying to steal second.

“I guess whistling doesn’t go against the mime code of silence,” I grumbled as I started to edge off of first base.

“Talents such as?” Cowboy Rockstar repeated before I took off.

I nodded towards his team’s second baseman.

“Being a giant rock monster with seven hands,” I said before racing off toward Rockblock.

***

The next night I laid awake, staring up at the ceiling of my cell, going over what was slowly starting to look like a plan again and again. If Cowboy Rockstar could use the many razor sharp spikes on his villain costume to pick the locks on his cell, — and he’d assured me that he could, upside down, in his sleep — and then get to the others, Rockblock could probably serve as our muscle until we got out and the other heroes got their powers back. He’d need to fight off dozens of battle drones though. No, that wasn’t much of a plan. Muscle was great, but we’d need some other way to guarantee the drones would stay off of us until we got outside. I consulted the scrap of paper I had hidden in the palm of my hand, directed away from any prying eyes or cameras. The scrap had been discretely slipped into the pocket of my hoodie by Helm Lady. She’d managed to steal a pencil during Evil Mad Libs, and had taken the liberty of jotting down everybody who we knew was imprisoned here. “Our list of keys,” as Cowboy Rockstar had called it. We needed to keep the circle of people who knew that we were planning a breakout small for now. That way there’d be less of a chance of any villains or drones getting wind of it. So Cowboy Rockstar wanted me to identify anybody who might be especially useful in the actual breakout, whereupon we’d obviously free the rest of the prisoners. I consulted the list again, mentally sorting the manifest into those who had powers, and thus were less likely to be especially useful without the use of them, and those who didn’t have powers, and therefore were pretty much operating at 100% effectiveness. There’s another thing I didn’t account for in my own designs, sucks to be you Smuggles. That’s what happens when you build your top secret superhero prison based on the musings of a comedy blog instead of doing your own work you frikkin goon. I circled a couple of names on my illicit scrap of paper and was just about ready to smugly smile myself to sleep when I noticed a faint buzzing. My first thought was wall bees. You wouldn’t believe how often strange buzzing sounds in the How To Hero office ended up being bees in the wall. But this buzzing was more mechanical and well, I guess it must have been there since I was first thrown into this dump. I had managed to sublimate it into the background noise of my time here but now in the dead of the night I was able to really listen to it finally. I tentatively got off of my threadbare cot and walked the length of my small cell. The buzzing was, as I’d feared, strongest by the door. Which could only mean one thing. Door bees! No, I’m kidding, it meant that the old fashioned deadbolt lock was either just for show, or just one part of the cell doors’ security systems. There was some kind of electronic component as well. One that probably wouldn’t be able to be thwarted with some evil-looking spikes. I looked at my scrap once more, I’d have to have a conversation with one of the other prisoners tomorrow.

***

“Professor Flay,” I whispered as I took a seat next to a glasses-wearing black man decked out in a purple jumpsuit with a skull belt buckle.

“Yes?” the man said, clearly startled, “I’m sorry I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“My name’s Zach, and I’m a fan of your Big Book of Fake Science.”

“Um, are you referring to my Complete Compendium of Improbable Science,” Professor Lucius Flay replied.

“Shoot, is that what it’s called? I knew it was something like that, only my buddy lost the cover and title page in a bet with a supervillain we knew who needed them to power his cover and title page powered doomsday device,” I explained quickly.

Professor Flay flared his nostrils, “And you have the nerve to insinuate that my science is fake. Is there a point to this, I don’t want to miss this performance.”

Our villainous rehabilitation activity for the day was “evil karaoke” only songs with the word “bad” in the title were allowed to be performed. Cowboy Rockstar was currently belting out an honestly breathtaking rendition of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”. It was an especially loud and especially drawn out version of the song, so that Professor Flay and I could converse in relative peace.

“What kind of scientist would you say you are Professor?”

“If you must know, I consider myself to be more or less omnidisciplinary,” Professor Flay said.

“That means you dabble in a little bit of everything right?”

“Everything scientific.”

“And that’s not a superpower thing right? You came by all that knowledge on your own?”

Professor Flay waved a dismissive hand at me, “Of course I did. I studied for years to get to where I am today. Sure I may have had to break a few time travel regulations to do it, but otherwise, I come by my intellect fair and square.”

“Excellent!” I shouted a little too loudly. “This is the best version of ‘Bad Romance’ I’ve ever heard!” I quickly added, to cover myself.

“Yeah it’s so good that they should call it ‘Good Romance!’” Rockblock shouted, no doubt trying to help me out.

Unfortunately though, that was the wrong thing to say. Giorgio the Mime certainly couldn’t allow anything gooditalics to happen in this evil facility, so he quickly put the kibosh on Cowboy Rockstar’s performance, much to the chagrin of everyone else in the room. I thought I even saw a drone flash a frowny face. The drones then started ferrying us out of the room and back to our individual cells.

“How much do you know about electronic locks?” I quickly asked as I pressed my scrap of paper in between Professor Flay’s belt and jumpsuit.

Realization flashed across Professor Flay’s face.

“Ah,” he said. “Enough.”

I hoped he was right.

***

The next day our recreational activity was evil baking. There were several different stations set up in the auditorium, each with ingredients set up to make different evil foods. I ambled past “exploding pies”, “sentient food that will actively beg for its life as you eat it”, and “kale cookies” before taking a seat next to Cowboy Rockstar at the “general poisons” table. Helm Lady and Rockblock were already there, and I noticed Helm Lady was taking special care not to touch any of the ingredients on the table. Rockblock, being made entirely out of stone and cando spirit, began handling the various herbs and toxins and following the recipe. I guess they’d decided that somebody at our table had to be doing something to avoid attracting any unwanted attention.

“Where’s Professor Flay?” I asked.

“He just walked in,” Cowboy Rockstar said, nodding toward the door, where a contingent of drones were herding in another batch of prisoners.

“Over here!” Rockblock bellowed, waving three of his giant hands while the other four mixed and mashed various ingredients.

“Quiet,” Helm Lady snarled. I was beginning to regret bringing Rockblock in on our plans so early.

Still, Professor Flay managed to get the message and made his way over to our table.

“Hello everybody,” he said as he sat down next to Helm Lady. He wrinkled his nose as he caught a whiff of what Rockblock was mixing in his bowl. “What are we making?”

“Sulfide sausages,” Rockblock replied.

“Lovely.”

“So?” I asked, raising my eyebrow inquisitively at the professor.

Professor Flay glanced around and, confident that there were no drones within listening distance, leaned in conspiratorially.

“I can build the device you described but-”

“Hey guys, sorry I didn’t come right away. I wanted to do a lap to see if there were any other cooler tables,” a pale skinned man clad in black chainmail and sporting thick rimmed glasses said as he sat down at our table.

“Er… what?” I asked.

“I know Rockblock called me over, but I’m not just going to sit down at the first table that offers me a spot, am I?” the other man replied as if that were a perfectly normal thing to say.

“Uh, I was actually talking to Professor Flay,” Rockblock said.

The bespectacled man laughed, “Oh Rockblock, I’d heard your sense of humor was legendary.”

Rockblock looked confused but Helm Lady put a hand on one of his arms.

“What do you want Glassesman?”

“Helm Lady! Great to see you. How’s the old man?”

“We don’t talk.”

“Oh, is that right? Poor Hats never could keep a protege.”

“Glassesman.” I said, interjecting before things escalated. “You weren’t on the list. When did you get here?”

“Oh, just recently. I wasn’t captured with the rest of you in the first wave.”

Cowboy Rockstar ignored the jab and leaned forward. “Are you saying that Smuggles has found whatever resistance there is? Where’s Ultiman?”

“Keep your ten-gallon hat on buckaroo, the resistance is fine such as it is. I was deep undercover in Smuggles’ operation, but I got found out.”

“No surprise there. You probably started handing out promotional sunglasses to all the villains as soon as you got in there,” Helm Lady muttered.

“Hey, supervillains are a market I have yet to break into. This was a rare networking opportunity for me!”

What a tool.

“Enough,” Cowboy Rockstar said, making sure to keep his voice even.

“What’s with all the hushed tones,” Glassesman said, looking us all up and down.

“Ah,” he said when he’d completed his appraisal. “You’re planning a break out.”

“No we’re n-” Helm Lady started but Glassesman held up his hand.

“Oh please, you’ve got a scientist, a jack-of-all-trades, a bruiser, a non-powered combatant and a…” he faltered when he got to me.

“Blogger,” I said curtly.

Glassesman raised an eyebrow but kept going, “So don’t try to keep me out of this, I’m non-powered too, and I can fight better than a Hatb- sorry exitalics-Hatboy any day of the week.”

Cowboy Rockstar looked as though he was going to say something to get rid of Glassesman but he just sighed and gestured to Professor Flay.

“Fine, sure. Professor you were saying?”

“Um, well, yes. I can build the… device, you asked for but I can’t do it from thin air. I need something to work from.”

We all sat in silence for a moment. I guess it was too much to ask for an omni-disciplinaryitalics super-scientist to be able to whip up an EMP device out of whatever he could find in his prison cell. I’d be sure to inform whatever board certifies omni-disciplinary scientists to amend an asterisk to Professor Flay’s credentials when we got out of here.

“Could you build it out of whatever those things are made of?” Glassesman said, jerking a thumb towards one of the drones.

Professor Flay appraised it, “It appears to run on a lithioplasmic core with a carbon-electrum chassis. Assuming there’s a terrakon multispacial chip rattling around in or near its processor… Yes, I wouldn’t even need too much of it. Just a chunk from the chest if I had to guess.”

“Excellent,” Glassesman said before he stood up and flipped over our table. “And you can tell that cap clad crank that I’m twice the hero he ever was!”

Helm Lady smirked and wordlessly lunged at him, wrapping her long fingers around his neck. Professor Flay and I quickly took cover behind the table. Flay because he was a nerd and wasn’t about to get involved in a fist fight between two highly trained combatants. And me to protect Flay naturally. We needed him fit enough to build us the EMP, I couldn’t exactly leave him. Cowboy Rockstar jumped on Glassesman’s back and tried to pull him away while Rockblock scrambled to gather up the ingredients from his poison. A stray pellet of congealed arsenic bounced over to me and I scooped it up into my hoodie. You never know, right?

In a minute several drones were trundling over to our little group trying to break up the fight. They’d just about managed to pry Cowboy Rockstar, Glassesman and Helm Lady apart when Rockblock let out a deafening roar and joined the fray, sending a handful of drones flying as he growled something incoherent about how hard he’d been working on perfecting his recipe. By this time the other assembled heroes were all looking toward us, but before anybody else could get any ideas about joining the riot, more drones than I’d even realized were in the prison poured into the auditorium and surrounded my friends. Finally managing to pull them apart.

The rest of the heroes, myself and Professor Flay included, were now being rounded up by some of the drones while most of them were being engaged by six of Rockblock’s giant fists. As we walked by though, I noticed his seventh appendage experly flick a chunk of metal in our direction. I stumbled slightly, bending over quickly to grab the robot chunk. And then discretely passed it to Professor Flay before we were split off to return to our own cells.

“I’ll have it done before tonight,” he said to me as he palmed the misshapen blob of metal and wiring.

I nodded and smiled, by that time tomorrow we’d be out of that forsaken prison and saving the world.

***

Night fell, and I paced anxiously around the length of my cell. Assuming Professor Flay was able to work as quickly as he claimed he was able to. And assuming Rockblock had gotten him exactly what he needed. And assuming Cowboy Rockstar and Glassesman and Helm Lady were able to pick the locks on their cells when the time came. And assuming Rockblock could keep any guards off of us. And assuming- Well, there were a lot of assumptions before I’d be tasting fresh air. Our plan was hardly fool proof, and we had at least two or three fools on our team, depending on who you asked. We were making a few too many assumptions for my liking. But it was the best we had, so I guess that was that. There was nothing I could do except wait for something to happen.

And when something happened, everything happened.

First there was a deafening boom, followed by a shockwave that traveled quickly throughout the cell block. If I hadn’t been deafened by the explosion, I would have noticed that the electronic buzzing I’d heard had gone silent. Professor Flay’s homebrewed EMP had worked. I ran to the door and saw several guard drones collapsed on the ground. Their cybernetic features were blank.

Seconds later three cell doors swung open and Cowboy Rockstar, Helm Lady, and Glassesman strode out. Glassesman looked especially smug, even though he was the last one out. The other two were such pros, they decided to let it slide. They quickly started working on picking the locks on the other cells. Helm Lady sprung Rockblock first, just in case there were any drones outside the EMP’s radius that might’ve been trundling our way. Professor Flay’s EMP was a one-shot kind of deal so we’d have to fight or evade any other drones we encountered.

“So far so good eh?” Cowboy Rockstar grinned as he unlocked the door to my cell.

“So far, yeah,” I said anxiously. “We’re pretty much flying blind from here on out th- Woah!”

I took a step back into my cell as Cowboy Rockstar became enveloped in a brilliant white light. I stood agape as he began hovering a few inches off the ground and the light faded into his body.

“What was that?” I asked.

Cowboy Rockstar landed adroitly on the ground and checked his pulse with two of his fingers.

“It’s… I think the EMP must have shorted out whatever device was neutralizing our powers in here,” Cowboy Rockstar said. His fists began crackling with energy.

I looked up and down the hall of cells. Powerful glows or crumpled cell doors told me that many of the other heroes were starting to regain access to their powers.

“Well that certainly changes the game,” I said as I began taking stock of all of the new keys we’d just acquired.

***

We quickly divided into a few teams:

Team One: Nightron, Foresight P. Jones, and Intangi-Bill. None of us had been outside since we’d arrived in the prison and so none of us actually knew where the exit was. Team one would use their respective speed, supervision and intangibility in concert to find a way out.

Team Two: Cowboy Rockstar, Rockblock, and Cannonballer: Baller of Cannons. Our heavy hitters. If anybody could break straight through the walls that surrounded us to the outside it was them.

Team Three: Professor Flay, Electrobug, Digitalized, Psionica. They set about trying to cobble together weapons and gear from the broken husks of the drones that we had at our disposal.

Team Four: Captain Patriot, Brad the Radioactive Man, Amphin, Glassesman, Helm Lady and the Human Wall. The best offense is a strong defense, and if any of our other teams were going to have any hope of doing what they needed to do, they’d need somebody keeping Giorgio and whatever drones he could scrounge together off of their backs.

Team Five: Dr. Hemer, Knife Knurse, and Super Surgeon. A lot of heroes were suffering painful side-effects either from the sudden reemergence of their superpowers or the power-deprivation they’d been suffering since they’d gotten here. Anybody who had any sort of medical knowledge would tend to them until we get help on the outside.

Team Six: Just me. My job was to come up with the team names and I’m not ashamed to admit that I totally phoned it in.

I was sitting back and taking stock of the other teams’ progress when a gust of wind informed me of Nightron’s return.

“We’re not the only prisoners here,” he said panting, parts of his supervillain costume were singed, he must have encountered other guards elsewhere in the facility.

“You’re sure?” I asked frantically. I’m not sure why it had never occurred to me that there might be other prisoners somewhere in this facility. But I had only ever seen the heroes that were in that corridor at communal recreational events.

“Positive, there are maybe five or six other cell blocks just like this one. They’ve got dozens of other superheroes here. But that’s not all. World leaders, para-folk, some civilians. I think I even saw some sort of zoo,” Nightron said.

“Probably for animal sidekicks and the like,” I mused aloud. “Were you followed back here?”

“No, but they saw who I was. I’m sure they know where I’m supposed to be. It won’t be long before we have company here.”

“You’re right. Professor, how are those weapons coming!” I shouted towards where Team Three was working.

“My EMP seems to have worked a little too well, there’s no resteoring powers to these machines, but Psionica has managed to use her telekinetic abilities to reform some chunks of metal into clubs.”

“That’ll have to do,” I said. “Nightron, grab a few of those clubs, if anybody comes you’ll join Team Four. Hit them hard and hit them fast.”

“But what about the other prisoners?” Nightron protested.

“We need to break ourselves out before we can worry about anybody else,” Glassesman said.

“I hate to admit it but he’s right,” Helm Lady agreed.

“Yeah but-” and then, in a whoosh he was gone, because it was at that moment that a platoon of drones filed into our hallway. Two of them hit the ground, their CPUs bashed in by Nightron, before the rest of us even registered what was happening but once we did, the rest of Team Four, sprung into action.

“Zach, over here,” Professor Flay called.

I ran over to him, he passed me a makeshift club and we formed a defensive ring around our medics and the wounded along with the rest of Team Three.

“We are through!” Cannonballer: Baller of Cannons cried.

We helped Team Five get to the large gap in the wall that Team Two had formed as Rockblock and Cowboy Rockstar went to join the fray in the corridor.

“We may have problem,” Cannonballer: Baller of Cannons muttered to us as we joined her outside.

Problem was an understatement. For one thing, the sky was a murky blend of purples, oranges, and reds, and I know I haven’t been doing a ton of “world-building” in this dramatic account of my escape from a supervillain run supermax, but the sky we were all used to seeing was definitely blue. The ground we were standing on was somehow both dusty and crumbly. Every step we took sent a cloud of dust and ground flakes into the air. And we couldn’t see any other signs of life or civilization anywhere at all. I had always assumed that we would be somewhere inconspicuous but local, so that Smuggles could keep an eye on us, but it appeared as though we were in the middle of nowhere with no way of getting to the middle of anywhere.

“What… What is this place?” Professor Flay said.

“Beats me,” I said with a shrug. When I designed this prison for How To Hero I recommended finding a large unused building with reinforced walls that was situated in a place that no cops would ever be caught dead anywhere near. There are literally four or five places like that within a twenty block radius of How To Hero headquarters so where the hell were we. Unless… crap.

“Atomspace,” I said. “We’ve been shrunken down and sent to a prison in Atomspace.”

“Well,” Professor Flay said, taking in our otherworldly surroundings. “That creates a wrinkle in our plans doesn’t it.”

“It certainly does,” I agreed.

And that’s when everything went black.

***

I awoke, chained to a chair, in what may very well have been the most garishly decorated room I had ever seen. And Parenthetical Guy once painted our office neon green and creamsicle orange so that was saying something. The walls were all a deep blood red and there were various supervillainous accoutrements mounted all over the walls. Scary looking masks, futuristic blasters, esoteric looking staffs. A giant serpent’s head wearing oversized sunglasses was mounted on the wall directly opposite me. Below the serpent head sat an ornate, obsidian desk with a high backed leather chair behind it. The carpet was the color of rotting bones, which made a lot of sense when I realized that it wasn’t really a carpet at all, but rather a mat made entirely of very thin bone fragments. Bone fragments that were incredibly sharp at the ends.

“Ouch!” I yelped as I lifted my feet slightly off of the ground.

“Well look who’s finally awake,” a snide voice to my left said.

I turned my head and my heart dropped. Joining me in this chilling chamber were the rest of my friends: Cowboy Rockstar, Helm Lady, Professor Flay and Glassesman were chained to chairs like mine while Rockblock’s hulking form was chained to the wall on the far side of the room. The humans in the chairs also had their feet up in various positions. Rockblock was stuck standing on the bone floor, but at least he didn’t seem to mind.

“What happened?” I asked groggily.

“We were all knocked unconscious after we broke through the prison walls,” Professor Flay explained. “Cerebral implants I’d guess.”

“You’re saying we were all chipped?” I said, bewildered. “That’s crazy. Why weren’t we all knocked out as soon as we broke out of our cells?”

“Because I wanted to see the look on your face when you realized you were in Atomspace.”

All of our heads snapped towards the door where a man wearing a dark gray catsuit, a bright orange domino mask, and heavy metal boots strode into the room. “Do you like how I’ve decorated? Greg the Skeleton King referred me to his interior design guy.”

“That explains the bones,” Helm Lady muttered.

“And the hellfire!” Cowboy Rockstar proclaimed. “From right before we were captured, I’d been wondering about that.”

“Smuggles,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Zachary,” he said curtly. “Mr. How To Hero himself, how does it feel to be so utterly defeated by someone you’ve spent years ridiculing on your infantile blog?”

“I’ll let you know when it happens,” I said.

“Always with the clever little jokes,” Smuggles said as he took a seat in the leather chair and steepled his fingers. “You have been utterly defeated though. I’ve been following your little escape attempt from the very beginning. My people are not idiots you know. We’ve been listening to every conversation, watching your every move. The riot in the cafeteria was especially amusing.” He nodded at Rockblock who just grunted in response. “Quite frankly, you got further than I expected you to. But I’m glad you did, because now you have to admit that I’ve completely bested you. You’ve been thoroughly trounced Zachary. Who’s the laughingstock now?”

I narrowed my eyes, trying to think of a way out of this for myself and my friends, when Glassesman burst out laughing. Smuggles’s eye flashed with rage and he slammed a hand down on his desk.

“I’m sorry, is something amusing here?”

“No no… Well yeah, sorry, it’s just… You got every supervillain to band together, captured most of the superheroes, and basically took over the entire world just to get back at some low rate blogger?”

“Hey, uncalled for!” I shouted.

“I’m sorry it’s just a bit ridiculous don’t you think?”

“Honestly, I kind of agree with him,” Helm Lady said sheepishly.

“I legitimately thought this whole thing was about me,” Cowboy Rockstar admitted. “I’m kind of a big deal you know, being a semigod and all that.”

“Don’t you mean demigod?” Professor Flay asked, doing a little wiggle shake to get his chair facing Cowboy Rockstar.

“Oh, I’m that too. But I’m talking about the cult I inadvertently inspired that has deified me,” Cowboy Rockstar explained.

Smuggles banged his fist down on his desk again.

“Enough!” he shouted, before cradling his fist in his other hand. “Now that your merry band has been epically thwarted and humiliated, I must decide on your punishment. I’m not about to risk you lot plotting another breakout.”

My mind started racing for a way out. This was the first time I had come face to face with Smuggles since he’d unleashed Chuck the Fish Whisperer in the How To Hero basement. Until now I hadn’t realized just how much of what was happening revolved around me. I didn’t even realize Smuggles had been familiar with my blog before we hired him. Maybe I could work with that.

“Do your worst Smuggles. I guarantee you it won’t be anything worse than what actual villains have done to me,” I said, affixing my most smug expression on my features.

“What are you talking about?” Smuggles said, clearly thrown.

“I mean come on. I lived with a real supervillain before. Remember Dr. Brainwave?”

“Wait, what?” Helm Lady said. “You lived with Dr. Brainwave? We’ve been looking for him for years!”

“Yeah well I don’t know what to tell you,” I said.

“Brainwave was a sentimental hack. Killing him was child’s play.” Smuggles said through mounting anger.

I faltered for a moment. So Smuggles had been the one who had mailed that bomb to our office? He was the reason Dr. Brainwave was dead? Sure the guy was a supervillain, but at the end of the day he had been my… my friend. And he’d sacrificed his life to save mine and my friends’. The fact that I was sitting less than three feet away from his murderer was almost too much to bear. Still, there’d be plenty of time to deal with him later. Assuming my plan worked.

“Still before you killed him he made my life miserable. You’ve read my blog, I’m sure you know all about it. So I honestly doubt that anything you plan to do can compare.”

Smuggles literally shook with rage, “I can… I can killitalics you! You ever think about that?”

Cowboy Rockstar grinned, “Good luck with that.”

Ok, honestly I’m not sure what thatitalics was about. Is Cowboy Rockstar immortal? Has anybody ever checked that? Regardless, I decided to just roll with it.

“Do your worst.” I said.

“Guys!” Glassesman shouted exasperated. “I love taunting a bad guy as much as the next guy, but maybe we should all ease up a bit!”

“Oh relax,” I said. “Smuggles is a Z-lister trying to kick it with the big kids. He can’t just shoot us or something. If he wants to be a world-dominating evil monster he’s going to have to come up with a suitably ostentatious way to kill us and honestly, he doesn’t have the imagination. Just look at his face, this is clearly eating at him.”

It was as though a lightbulb went off over Smuggles’s head. His face warped from grimace to grin and he strode around to the other side of his desk.

“I’ve already succeeded in taking over the world and routing your beloved superheroes. I hardly need to prove myself to the likes of you. You can expect to be executed in a ‘suitable ostentatious manner’ shortly.”

I was all read to shoot back a witty retort when everything went black again.

***

I awoke to the sound of cheering, which made me feel pretty good. I don’t often get cheered for waking up. I’m sure Cowboy Rockstar was feeling pretty regular though, people cheer for everything that guy does. I was in the center of a gladiatorial arena, the stands were packed with guard drones and more than a few supervillains. The presence of so many of them here sent a shiver down my spine. Had Smuggles really been able to recruit and control so many supervillains? Next to me, my friends laid in a rumpled heap, all of them still unconscious with the exception of…

“Now look what you’ve done,” Professor Flay said sternly.

I turned to look at him and saw the abject fear sketched across his features.

“Relax Prof, everything’s going to be ok.”

“How can you say that! Look at us! We’re in an arena surrounded by bloodthirsty supervillains for god’s sake!”

“It’s not the supervillains you should be worrying about, it’s whatever’s going to come out of that gate,” I said, pointing to a massive (well, massive relative to our shrunken selves) gate directly opposite us.

Professor Flay shuddered, “I imagine the others are still unconscious to prevent them from being able to do anything against whatever that might be.”

I nodded, “It makes sense, Smuggles doesn’t want to risk anything going wrong.”

“But I still want the satisfaction of watching at least some of you soil yourselves in fear,” Smuggles said as his smug visage appeared on a floating jumbotron that was hovering over the arena.

“You’ll never get away with this you knave!” Professor Flay shouted.

“Oh Professor, I already have. I think I’ll make today an international holiday going forward,” Smuggles said as he leaned back from the camera so we could see his entire upper body on the screen. He was sitting on a golden throne and his fingers were hovering above a big red button. I assumed whatever was waiting behind the gate would be released at the press of that button. And why prolong the inevitable.

“Why don’t you come down here so I can wipe that smug expression off of your face, you absolute goober!” I called up to Smuggles.

Smuggles frowned, “Goodbye Zach, you will not be missed.”

His finger pressed the button. The gate started to ascend. Professor Flay sighed and rolled up his sleeves. I had to admire him, he wasn’t planning on going down without some sort of fight. As the gate rose the cheers of the crowd grew even more fevered. I think I even saw a sign that said “Cowboy Suckstar.” Rude. After what seemed like an eternity the gate was finally fully open and a ferocious roar shook the stadium as a massive beast lumbered into the arena. The ginormous monster truly had it all. Dozens of eyes, face tentacles, spikes, a flaming tail. I had to admit this would certainly be a suitably ostentatious way to die. Of course, I wasn’t about to let Smuggles get his way was I?

“Good god what is that thing?” Professor Flay said as he backed away from the giant monster.

“It’s our way out,” I said calmly as I climbed on top of Rockblock’s comatose body, put two fingers in my mouth and whistled sharply.

“What are you doing?” Professor Flay shouted at me as the monster began galloping towards us on all fours.

I looked down at Professor Flay and smiled, “See you on the other side Prof.”

And then the monster ate me.

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