#parenthetical guy

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.”