The Moderator Saga #39: Eternal Love Previous Chapters ***     The apartment door slammed open. An angry teenager stalked inside and hurled her backpack onto the bed.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“How was your first day at college, then?” Danny Lyle asked from the tiny kitchenette of the one-bedroom flat he shared with the probability arsonist.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m suspended,” Kerry Shepherdson answered angrily. “There’s nothing in the Paradopolis U. Handbook about rules on setting fire to teachers’ lab coats. Absolutely nothing.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I bet there will be soon,” Danny observed. He shut the refrigerator door with difficulty and tossed a can of beer to the girl. “So what now?”     Kerry seemed a bit stunned by the idea that teachers weren’t fair game. “I dunno. I call Vizh, I guess, and tell him I screwed up. Again. See if he can straighten things out. Again.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Or we could find that teacher and torch his car,” suggested Danny. “Just saying.”     That got a chuckle from Kerry. She moved over and folded herself in Danny’s arms. “I think I remember why I keep you around,” she admitted, kissing him.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Perhaps I can remind you better than that?” he offered, picking her up in his arms and carrying her to the bed. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Are you okay?” Kerry asked, a little anxiously.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m fine,” denied Danny. “No scorching at all. Not in the temperature sense anyhow.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Icepack,” insisted Kerry. “I know I kind of lost control a bit there, when you… well, you know what you were doing, mister.”     Danny watched her pad nude over to the refrigerator. “I always know what I’m doing,” he told her. “That’s why I’m an archvillain.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, you’re an archvillain now?” Kerry teased. “Suddenly promoted, are you? And what terrible villainy have you committed since this morning that makes you so extra-bad?”     Danny smirked. “If I tell you you’d have to take me in, you being a goody-two-shoes superheroine and everything.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“If you don’t I’ll have to beat it out of you,” Kerry offered. She pulled open the fridge door.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Okay,” admitted Danny. “Since this morning I killed your boyfriend and stuffed him in your refrigerator, then pretended to be him to get you into bed.”     Kerry screamed and staggered back from the fridge.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Still waiting for that ice, Firecracker,” Danny told her.     Kerry rounded on him. He denied her powers long enough to hit her with the tranq dart, then hefted her over his shoulder. “You know, this never gets old,” he told her. “No matter how many times I do it.”     He thumbed a communications card in his pocket. “I’m ready to come back,” he told it. Then he vanished with Kerry.     The fridge door was left open. ***     It was a vast warehouse, filled with medical gurneys. On each one a person was restrained with steel handcuffs, fed by tube, kept quiescent by the cocktail of drugs which their bodies had become so dependant on that they’d die in minutes without them. Every trolley was connected up with a psychic energy leech-lead, which bled the power out of the patients on the beds so it could be channelled to better use elsewhere.     Every patient on every trolley was Kerry Shepherdson, hundreds of them, maybe thousands. Most were now mere emaciated living skeletons. The newer recruits still retained some flesh on their bones and had not been completely sucked dry. It didn’t really matter. There were plenty more where that came from.     Each Kerry Shepherdson came from an alternate reality, and each of those alternate realities was now no more.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“All thanks to you,” Danny told his latest acquisition. “Well, collective you. You’d be amazed how much power a thousand probability arsonists can put out. And that’s nothing compared to the narrative potential released when an Earth is wiped away.”     Danny hadn’t yet locked the ball-gag into Kerry’s mouth. “Who are you?” she demanded. “Who are you really? Why did you have to kill Danny?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You almost always ask that,” her captor answered. “Just before you start with the threats about who’s going to come and get me for this and what you’ll do when you break free.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So answer,” snarled the girl, her eyes hard and cold with hate.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m Daniel Lyle,” Danny told her. “Not a clone, not a shapeshifter, not an alien, not an imaginary story. Just Danny. Not the Danny from your world, of course. He was too stupid and slow, so he ended up on ice. But Danny all the same.” He looked down at the drugged helpless captive. “Danny who worked out he could be onto a good thing, if only he got over his squeamishness about using you as a power source.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Danny would never do that! Danny’s…”     Danny rammed home the ball-gag. “You’re going to be one of the preachy ones,” he guessed. “I’m not in the mood.” He tightened up the other straps, make sure the leech cables were properly in place, and patted Kerry’s cheek.     A tear trickled down onto his hand.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Aw, Firecracker,” he said to her, “Isn’t this how it’s supposed to end? Is true love supposed to last forever, and triumph over all?” He chuckled as he pushed the power drain up to its painful maximum. “See if you still feel that way in a month. Or a year. Bye, darling.”     He began to walk away then remembered the last part of the script. “By the way, I don’t call myself Danny much these days. From now on when you’re cursing me in your agonies you can just call me the Moderator. And you’re the secret of my success!” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Seen enough?” asked AL 36-24-36, the composite brain of Al B. Harper and Miss Framlicker, as they watched from the shadows.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah,” growled Amy Aston, clutching a pair of mole grips. “Let’s free ‘em all and see how clever he is then.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That would be immensely stupid,” the Harperlicker creature replied. Neither Al nor Miss F suffered fools gladly, and this composite didn’t have their tolerance. “The whole chamber’s laced with probability traps and other defences. Try and free the captives and they’ll die – and so will we. There’s nothing we can do here for these poor creatures.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Then what was the point of coming here? Just so we know who’s kicking our asses?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Because now we know who and what we’re up against and we can plan accordingly. Now let’s go.”     Amy nodded reluctantly. “We need to get back to Simon, and tell that Salieri kid what we found,” she agreed. “But I’m coming back here. I owe all these Kerry’s a really big explosion.”     Agreed, said the Manga Shoggoth as he drew them back through the chymeric gate and away.     And then there was nothing but the quiet sobbing of drained prisoners and the absolute darkness of love betrayed. *** Coming Next From Me: The Flapjack Factor ***I’ve agreed to do a couple more chapters. The first – hopefully this weekend - will bring out cast and storylines together and set things up for the grand finale. Then there’ll be a last chance for folks to get any tie-ins they want to do in to finish off any particular plots they want to resolve. Then I’ll do a finale. Then if people like they can contribute epilogues. *** Previously: The Moderator Saga #1 by Hatman The Moderator Saga #2: Minions for the Moderator by Killer Shrike The Moderator Saga #3: Captured is the Carpathian! by the Hooded Hood The Moderator Saga #4: Interview With the Archvillain by the Hooded Hood The Moderator Saga #5: Lord and Master of All He Surveyed by various posters The Moderator Saga #6: Mouse and Ming by Hatman The Moderator Saga, oh let’s say #7 by Killer Shrike The Moderator Saga #8: One More Day by CrazySugarFreakBoy! The Moderator Saga #9: Let’s Be Bad Guys by CrazySugarFreakBoy! The Moderator Saga #10: With his Hands Tied Behind His Back by the Hooded Hood The Moderator Saga #11: The Moderator Strikes Back by Killer Shrike The Moderator Saga #12: Acting On a Hunch by the Hooded Hood The Moderator Saga #13: Something Nasty in the Cellar by the Manga Shoggoth The Moderator Saga #14: My Little The Moderator Tie-In and More Tie-In by L! The Moderator Saga #15: New Players by Hatman The Moderator Saga #16: Meanwhile… by the Hooded Hood The Moderator Saga #17: Outlaws of the New Law by Jason The Moderator Saga #18: The Impossible Win by CrazySugarFreakboy! The Moderator Saga #19: Time for Genius by the Hooded Hood The Moderator Saga Part… What 19? by Visionary The Moderator Saga #21: Visiting Time by the Manga Shoggoth The Moderator Saga #22: Armed and Dangerous by CrazySugarFreakboy! The Moderator Saga #23: Check Again by the Hooded Hood The Moderator Saga #24: Outlaws of the New Law - 2 by Jason The Moderator Saga #25: The Birth (and Death?) of a Hero and #25a by Killer Shrike The Moderator Saga Part 25-odd: Attempting to Restrain Large Felines by Means of the Flexible Appendage to the Torso by Manga Shoggoth The Moderator Saga #27: Too Close For Comfort by the Hooded Hood The Moderator Saga #28: Outlaws of the New Law - 3 by the Jason The Moderator Saga #27 #28? by L! The Moderator Saga #30: Inbetween the Lines by Hatman The Moderator Saga #31: Purviewing the Purveyors by Killer Shrike The Moderator Saga #32: Outlaws of the New Law - 4 by Jason The Moderator Saga #33: The Mountainside by the Hooded Hood The Moderator Saga #34: Something Nasty in the Crypt by the Manga Shoggoth The Moderator Saga #35: Outlaws of the New Law - 5 by Jason The Moderator Saga #36: Fred Harris, Agent of SPAM by L! The Moderator Saga #37: A Pair of Purveyors by CrazySugarFreakBoy! The Moderator Saga #38: Outlaws of the New Law - 6 by Jason *** Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2008 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2008 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved.

Whether Kerry gets the chance or not, imagine what happens if Liu Xi is forced to relive a couple horrible incidents in her life when she hears what Danny's been up to...

If the Shoggoth is involved, then beware of intelligence leaks...

It seems only fair to let some of the cast remember what happened to them after things are sorted out, and for some of them to blame Danny.


Indeed.

In that case you're underestimating Liu Xi's feelings on the subject. It would be "don't leave Liu Xi in a room alone with Danny", more like. Of course that may prompt Visionary to do just that at every opportunity.

Well, this was a quite nasty chapter, and it certainly managed to out-do Proctor's room full o' Sersis for sheer horror. Certainly, any memories of this that make it back to our Parodyverse are going to cause some serious waves among the cast. I don't know if Vizh could handle seeing that room.

Gruesome and chilling... and not just the part with the refrigerator. I look forward to The Moderators especially painful stamping into the ground. Repeatedly.

I haven't read the Proctor Avengers stuff; what issues make up that story? I recently purchased the "40 Years of Avengers" DVD so as long as it was in the main Avengers title I can read it.

~Hat~

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It didn't dawn on me who our main villain until I started to read this. Then it made so much sense & I thought why didn't I figure that out before now!

Denial is one of the few people who can ignore Liu Xi's power long enough to reason with her. Kerry doesn't reason, though, so she might react strongly to asults on her boyfriend.

I really, really dislike this chapter. Of all the things I've done for the Parodyverse this is one of the things I'm least happy with.

I had the same experience when Vizh suggested the Moderator's identity.

Of course, Vizh is in full denial mode now - which is strangely appropriate.

Others have already covered this. I quite enjoyed the Gatherers Saga at the time. It's the best of the Harras material.

Depends if Danny is still her boyfriend after this. She could easily become fed up with him getting involved with every twisted scheme, even if it's not his fault.

That's partly what my comment was assuming, or at least that Kerry would be very angry with Danny. Liu Xi would pick up on that and act coldly to him as well.

Of course then there's the question of whether Danny would be willing to harm Liu Xi and how badly. That might not earn him any sympathy from Kerry though. Unless he has her so hooked that she'll believe anything he tells her, that perhaps Liu Xi deserved it.

Blaming regular-Danny would be like blaming Hatty for Doorman, or back in the Transworlds Challenge blaming G-Eyed for Blackhearted. Of course, people might know that in their heads and still have trouble with it in their hearts.

> Of course then there's the question of whether Danny would be willing to harm Liu Xi and how badly. That might not earn him any sympathy from Kerry though. Unless he has her so hooked that she'll believe anything he tells her, that perhaps Liu Xi deserved it.

While Danny has murdered people who he feels are serious dangers to him or Kerry he generally takes a more phlegmatic attitude, like his father. Kerry's more likely to react to threats to Danny than he is.