Previous Post The Moderator Saga #33: The Mountainside Previous Chapters Author’s Note: Round robins are always hard to close off at the end, especially ones as complex as these. This isn’t a final chapter either, but I hope it helps us move towards a complete resolution. Previous chapters have attempted various solutions but we haven’t yet managed one that draws quite all the themes together. Given that the last few contributions have all offered differing views of where the drama is going I’ve had to make a few choices. I didn’t want to invalidate anyone’s efforts, but it seemed to me that some of what we thought we saw couldn’t quite be what it seemed (for example, I know the Hooded Hood couldn’t actually be there in the flesh, or even be aware of what’s occurring, for reasons I should really get round to writing sometime). Hence I’ve had to be a bit revisionary; I hope not enough to give offence. For the purposes of dramatic fiction I’ve not revealed everything in order. This was a difficult chapter to collate but hopefully it all makes sense by the end. If not, I’ll include a summary at the bottom for authors of subsequent chapters to follow. HH ***     She felt cold. And Zdenka never felt cold.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Something wrong?” someone asked the goddess of the North. She turned round, surprised. Zdenka never got crept up on either.     The man was dressed in hunting outfit, complete with a long bowie knife, but no gun. Zdenka didn’t like guns.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re a long way from civilisation,” she noted.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A very long way,” the hunter agreed. “I was in the neighbourhood and I thought I’d drop by. I missed meeting you in Paradopolis.”     The goddess of the North furrowed her perfect brow. The wind whipped her long russet hair out behind her in a frenzied dance. “I’ve never been to Paradopolis,” she objected.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, not in this version of reality, no,” the hunter agreed. “But the one before, the one where you were born in Candia…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Candia?” The name seemed to resonate inside the goddess. It made her feel uneasy, unhappy.     The hunter hefted his pack off his pack and perched himself on a rock. It was going to be a spectacular sunset from here in the mountains. “In that other reality, there was a kind of narrative divergence in Canada. A bit of the world got fragmented off and evolved differently, and the two bits of geography ended up occupying roughly the same space, separated by a tiny vibrational difference. Drive up a road one day and you’d end up in Winnipeg. Go the next and you could be in Mulch. Candia was mostly sealed off, but there were ways and times to cross over. And in that reality you were incarnated in the Zgrudy Peaks of northern Candia.”     Zdenka realised that her visitor was telling the truth. “How did I ever forget that?” she wondered.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It was a retcon,” the hunter explained. “A retrospective continuity change. A very evil man called the Hooded Hood arranged it, and another wicked man called the Moderator benefited from it – or thought he did. The Moderator suddenly became ruler of the planet.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I know of this Moderator,” Zdenka shuddered. “He has an ability to… to black out, to delete those things which displease him. Whatever things displease him, great or small.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Right. Candia was one of them.”     Zdenka Zarazoza turned to regard the hunter more closely. He seemed human enough, a rugged-looking white male with broad, sensual lips and a glint in his eye. “Who are you, that you seek out the goddess of the north in her solitude?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Please, call me Mark,” the hunter invited her. “I’m a tourist.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A tourist who remembers a world that the rest of the world has forgotten.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I didn’t say I was a common tourist.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And why do you seek me out?”     The hunter looked Zdenka up and down. She was as beautiful as the wilderness framed by the sunset, her fur-clad shape outlined as the wind caressed her. “Apart from the obvious?” he admired. “Well, because I needed someone to discuss all this with. And we never got introduced before you came back north.”     Zdenka had too many questions. “You say I was in Paradopolis? Why? How? And why did I return? How can the world just shift like this? What is going on?”     Mark unwrapped his pack of ham sandwiches and offered one to the goddess. She declined. “You were in Paradopolis with your boyfriend, a hero called Hatman. I don’t know what happened between you for you to leave. I noticed you back then, but I’m not the sort of guy who’d go after another man’s girl.”     The goddess of the north didn’t blush. Usually.     The hunter took a mouthful of sandwich, chewed, swallowed, and went on. “The world has shifted because someone came out of a causal mess left on the west coast of America after a Narrative Bomb went off – the Moderator. He’d been wandering the lesser realities for quite a while, scavenging people and power, and he’d come to make his move. He and his people took on the Lair Legion, hit and ran, then tried to find a way to do to that reality what they’d done to others.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And they took it over,” Zdenka concluded.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Actually, no,” Mark replied. “Here’s the interesting bit. They tripped over an old contingency left by the absent Hooded Hood, and he boosted them to what you see now. Then there was a wager with some higher powers about keeping control for a month – time’s up tomorrow, by the way – and if the Moderator wins then he gets to keep all the marbles.”     Zdenka looked south. “I sensed something,” she admitted. “A long way off. Great forces shifting.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s about the truth of it, yes. This scenario’s brought a lot of big players onto the field. The Destroyer of Tales, desperately trying to bring about end after end to thwart the Moderator. The Shaper of Worlds, supposedly helping the Moderator, supplying him with all the information he needs except for the vital bit. He’s not even sussed that Symmetry used to be in bed with the Hooded Hood, literally, so why’s she being so helpful? The Chronicler of Stories, playing a losing game because sometimes that’s how you win when the games are over. Faite, sliding through the narrative to give it her trademark nudge, not realising that this time she’s leaving her fingerprints behind.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“For a tourist you seem very familiar with some powerful beings,” Zdenka observed.     Mark chuckled. “I am now. I’ve seen them all, what they can do, how they do it. What their limits are.” He flipped the top off a beer bottle with his thumbnail. “Very useful. Want a swig?”     Zdenka declined again. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ouch,” said Visionary. It hurt enough that he felt justified in saying it again. “Ouch.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Are you okay?” Samantha Featherstone asked him anxiously. “Do you know who you are?”     Salieri Meng peered over the side of the crater that the possibly-fake man had made where’d he’d landed in Pittsburgh after detonating at 40,000 feet. “I’d ask him how many fingers I was holding up,” the seventh-smartest boy genius in the world noted, “only from what I hear, even fully-functioning Functionary might get confused by that.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s not Functionary,” Vizh said, sitting up painfully. “It’s Visionary. And I’m really me, dammit.”     Samantha hugged him. “Oh, thank goodness! Now we’re saved!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Wait? What?” Vizh swallowed hard as the memories of the altered reality caught up with his normal ones. “How are we saved? Did Donar and Enty and Finny arrive?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re back,” Sam told him. “Vizh, I’ve made an awful mess of things.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s right,” Salieri agreed. “Her, not me. She’s the one who was all ‘Oh Hatman, now we’re saved’.”     Vizh rubbed his forehead. There seemed to be some kind of cap on there. “Um… he checked.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You retrieved then wore the Austernal headgear of the long-lost hero known commonly as the Neglected One,” said a petulant voice from somewhere atop his cranium. “That gave you the power to get the transnuclear weapon away from the city and save everybody.”     Vizh winced as he recognised those tones. “Yeah, I remember finding the confiscated headgear locker. I specifically picked the bull’s head rather than…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Rather that than me,” sulked the Sorting Hat. “Brawn over brains. Typical. But kindly note that it was me who reminded you of who you truly are when Miss Featherstone placed me on your head.”     Vizh wasn’t entirely sure he should say thanks for that, given the circumstances.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Brap brought the Sorting Hat out of there when you kind of blew out the wall,” Salieri explained. “Well, more like blew up the whole tower, really. The Moderator himself had to delete your damage.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I zaw ze ‘at an I knew it was important,” explained the mutated pig-creature.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You were trying to shield yourself from the blast and you grabbed me to hide behind,” accused the Hat.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Visionary,” Samantha interrupted, “I wasn’t kidding. We really need your help. I thought we’d found Mr Boaz and got him on our side. It turns out it was a Mr Boaz from an alternative dimension.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, ‘Atman’s evil twin Skippy Boaz,” Brap summarised. “’E murdered the Yellow Flashlight ‘oo was assisting the ‘eroes, and then escaped to warn ze bad guys that zey were coming.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That we were coming,” Sam told the pig determinedly. “You’re one of the heroes now, remember?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I deed explain ‘ow I was not a very successful experiment in making ze killing machine, non?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“If he didn’t, I’d be happy to list his shortcomings,” offered the Sorting Hat.     Sam bit back tears. “Vizh, people are dying and CSFB! and the others are heading into an ambush and there’s no way to warn them. S.P.A.M. are monitoring all the communications, filtering out anything that we try to do to alert our friends that they’re walking into a trap!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And my mom’s still in that Death Camp in Iowa, accused of being a Space Fandom,” added Salieri. “They’re going to execute her tomorrow, along with all those other prisoners.”     Vizh looked around. “Where’s Helen?” he suddenly wondered. “And whatever that Framlicker/Harper thing was.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“’Elen is wiz ze Purveyors of ze Peril,” Brap replied. “We were supposed to rendezvous wiz zem near ze target.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Until our ride got murdered,” added Salieri. “We’ve got to get there. There are things I need to do.” His eyes burned with mad genius. “Important things.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I can get us there,” Sam promised. “Same way I got us to Pittsburgh. But we need an experienced leader to get us to where we need to be while the Purveyors and the Legion are fighting.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Er, and that would be…?” Vizh fretted.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That would be you,” the Sorting Hat said with smug satisfaction. After all, he hadn’t burned up on re-entry protecting his wearer from transnuclear radiation like some headgear he could mention.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And we’re getting to this Death Camp place how?” Vizh puzzled.     Sam held up the object she was carrying. It glowed.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“In noblest hour and direst plight     When evil must be fought by might     When what is wrong must be put right     Beware my flame… the Flashlight bright!”      ***     Liu Xi Xian screamed.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Most excellent,” approved LOL INTERNET. “That was awesome!” He stepped away from his array of monitors and checked the vital signs of the four women strapped down on the VR beds. “You chicks are the best,” he promised them. “The total best!”     The subjects stretched out on the test racks were Yuki Shiro, Chiaki Bushido, Liu Xi Xian, and the android Anna. None of them moved, restrained as they were both by the power inhibitor collars and the fact their minds were currently projected into the virtual realm.     LOL INTERNET was a spotty youth with an intense stare that disturbed people. When he was forced to interact with humans he preferred it to be by texts to one of a series of online identities he’d established. Nobody was allowed to call him Zachary Zelnitz.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But hey, what’s this?”     LOL wasn’t really comfortable round people (he’d once kept a cat-girl locked up in his sub-basement but she’d escaped eventually). Their emotions and responses puzzled him. So he was particularly disturbed by the reading he was getting off Test Subject 103394.     LOL 2 SRC NGNR, he keyed into his mobile phone. CN U CM 2 LAB?     A few moments later Search Engineer strode into the reprogramming area with a glower on his face. “What now?” he snapped. Every time he died the Moderator insisted on bringing him back in some new host body rather and just let him come back in his own time in his own way. He’d just spent the last two hours escaping back to his proper form.     THS XPRIMNT SUX, LOL texted, gesturing to where the young women lay on the visualisation tables with the VR helmet on their craniums.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Speak to me properly of I shall decompile you,” Search Engineer threatened his employee. “Why have you interrupted me at this busy time?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It… it’s subject 103394,” LOL answered. “Sir,” he added hastily. “I’m getting some completely screwy readings from her.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The power dampener is working, presumably, since you have unfortunately not been fried to a crisp?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah. And the images are being pumped into her head just as we programmed them. But she’s not responding right.”     Search Engineerer touched the computer console and checked the data. “This is the elementalist girl we captured,” he summarised to himself. “The one we had Anna tell that her friends were dead. The one we woke in the Lair Mansion yesterday. The one Doorman… contained.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That was the master’s brief, sir,” LOL answered. “Make things as familiar as possible for her, and subvert her from there. Then we slipped her into the VR state without any trouble. It was all going fine at first.”     Search Engineer reviewed the readouts. “She accepted the shock of waking up ‘married’ to the Moderator. She accepted the reality of her surroundings – not surprising since we were tapping into her own sensitivity to matter to shape what she was seeing and feeling. She believed what Anna told her about her friends dying.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That Anna is one magnificent piece of kit,” LOL INTERNET enthused. “There’s no way a software patch could affect her without basically lobotomising her. She reacted to the VR telepathyware just like a flesh and blood human would. She believed everything she told the elementalist because we showed it to her first in the virtual realm.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“For all the sophistication of her programming she is still very naive in the ways of the world,” observed Search Engineer. “That’s why we selected her rather than the cyborg or the energy conduit or the samurai. You saw what they accomplished when we loosed them in the virtual realm.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Ch’yeah. The boss got Julienned. He totally had to reboot.”     Search Engineer didn’t point out that it was the reboot that had arranged for the encounter to only be in the imaginary virtual world of false sensory images which were now being fed to the prisoners. There was no need to reveal how close Faite’s attempts had come. She was eliminated from the situation now.     LOL got back to the problem. “Anyhow, it all seemed to be going pretty well. Subject 103394 was becoming more and more distressed as we hit her with all her nightmare scenarios – forced marriage, death of loved ones, loss of freedom, failing friends. She was well on the way to breakdown and surrender. Textbook. But then she changed.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Changed how?” demanded Search Engineer. “I thought we were just replaying the same scenarios with them now, over and over again, each time breaking them down a little more, each in their own separate version of virtual space?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s the workplan, yes sir. But this time Subject 103394 went a different route. She didn’t head in the directions she’d done every other time. She didn’t panic and despair. She went more… murderous.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Murderous,” the Engineer echoed. “How so? And why?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I dunno,” LOL admitted. “That’s why I called you. It’s like she’s suddenly gone psycho-killer. She’s doing all kinds of crazy screwy stuff in her virtual world that we never mapped and I’m having to shunt in data on the hoof. Last thing she did was summon some kind of occult book called the Necronastycon to wake up some guy named Shabba’Dhabba’Dhu.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“She what?” snapped Search Engineer.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I said she wanted to do some voodoo thing with this due names Shabba…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Get her out of that program now,” Search Engineer commanded. “Right now! Sedate her and get her out. Before she can wake that thing up.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Relax, man. It’s only VR. If she destroys the world the worst that can happen is… Oh.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Is that she can break free of the virtual world we made for her, discover the truth, and wake up?” Search Engineer challenged. “Quickly, man, get her…”     Just then Liu Xui Xian awoke the Groper Out of Grossness from his eternal sleep, cascading a change across the VR Parodyverse that changed the very stars and caused the fairly Great Old Ones to awaken. The program crashed. And burned. And the ashes gibbered in a corner. Bits of the system hardware crawled away.     Liu Xi Xian sat up.     So did the others. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Are you okay?” asked Amy Aston as the Sorceress winced.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Of course,” replied Nyarlurkhotep, currently bound to the body of Whitney Darkness. “Somebody just stepped over my grave. Or the grave of a close friend.”     Amy swallowed hard and trailed along behind the blonde magess until it was time for her to blow through another ancient sealed door. “Is it much further?” she ventured.     They were traversing tunnels deep beneath Gothametropolis, the former home of a clan of Scholar-Ghouls who had roused the Moderator’s ire. Now the charred and blackened caverns were filled with nothing but ash and echoes.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’re almost there,” Whitney promised. “The tomb of Visionatus Improbabalus, founder of the Improbable College. The Shoggoth’s hiding place.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You mean his prison,” Amy corrected her. “The place the Moderator forced you to bind him.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Of course. One more seal and we can get to him.” The Sorceress indicated another carving for Amy to jackhammer away. “These ancient mystic sigils are useless against modern power tools. I’ll have to remember that.”     Amy dutifully shattered the last warding stone. The door to the shadowed tomb creaked open.     The Shoggoth tekki-liid a war cry and burst out, a foaming gelid mass of more dimensions that were good for reality. Sorceress gestured and froze him as he lunged.     Amy opened one eye. “Did we call at a bad time?” she ventured. “I thought this thing was supposed to be on our side? When I catch that midget so-called genius…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, the Shoggoth would have helped you,” Sorceress admitted. “The Shoggoth would have been a great asset to you. That’s why I was summoned to destroy him.” She gestured and pinned the EEE engineer with the Scarlet Sashes of Saggeroth. “You get destroyed for free, as an entrée.”     Amy had time to scream as the Sorceress’ face turned to a boiling mass of carnivorous maggots. But instead she spat in her enemy’s face.     Then something black and shiny burst through Whitney’s chest from behind and ripped the Sorceress in two.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“W-what?” Nyarlathotep mouthed with sundered lips. “How?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You said it yourself,” came the strangely dual-voiced reply. “Ancient magics are sometimes quite useless against modern science – such as an advanced biotech alien venom symbiote being overridden by two of the greatest intellects on the planet.”     The Scarlet Sashes vanished, tumbling Amy to the floor, and she recognised her rescuer. “Miss Framlicker!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not entirely,” answered the composite creature. “We’ve not really agreed on a name yet. It’s in committee. But we’re on the same page about a few things, and rescuing you was one of them.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You knew that Sorceress was working for the Moderator?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Please. Geniuses.”     Nyarlurkhotep flowed free of the sundered Sorceress and rose in fury in one of his ten thousand forms. “Dead geniuses now,” he promised wrathfully.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Excuse me,” noted the Shoggoth, “but according to the rules, if you’re bound by a Chak’kathaar Ritual of Congruence and your physical form is destroyed you’re not freed, you’re banished. Bye bye.”     Nyarlurkhotep looked at the Shoggoth with pure loathing. “You didn’t have to remind the universe,” he snapped. Then he vanished.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I really think I did,” replied the Shoggoth.     Amy rubbed her forehead. “Somebody explain things to me. Preferably with diagrams.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’ve saved the Shoggoth as you intended,” Muffy B. Framharper answered briskly. “There’s nothing keeping him down here now. Next we go and find our friends and fight the villain.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And then maybe some Tenchi?” suggested the Shoggoth.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, we can do better than that,” the composite genius promised. “How about a ringside seat for the Secret Origin of the Moderator?” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What is it?” asked Killer Shrike with disdain.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s a bird costume,” Helen MacAllistair explained helpfully. “We retrieved it from the trophy dump raid. And you like bird costumes.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I like Killer Shrikes, the deadliest predator avian in existence,” Simon Maddicks objected. “I like my lost Killer Shrike uniform, because it comes with razor cuffs and taser loops and titanium claws and all kinds of useful kit. This is a budgie costume.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Technically it’s a Pigeon costume,” VelcroVixen snickered. “According to the label, it’s a flight and combat suit once worn by Falcon’s crimefighting girlfriend.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I don’t wear high crotch leotards,” insisted the butcher bird.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We could tape a mop to the helmet, if that helps,” offered CSFB!     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’ll borrow the flight harness. That’s it. Later, you all die.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Later everyone dies,” promised Gamona the assassin, with some satisfaction. Her mentor Dark Thugos had taught her that.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think we’ve assembled everyone who is going to come,” noted Gamma Ray Gary. “D’ur will be here with the latecomers as soon as he can, but we should proceed with the first stage of the Death Camp raid now.”     VelcroVixen took CSFB! by his non-robotic arm and hunkered up to him. “I guess it’s time for you to inspire the troops,” she suggested. “You know, I could use a little private inspiring myself, boss-man. I’m not used to working for someone I haven’t known.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Make an exception, Dr Girlfriend” CSFB! told her. “Okay troops, lissen up. It’s clobberin’ time! Yippee-ki-yay, m*&$#£^$£#!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sound off and go,” VelcroVixen called.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Gamona.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Gamma Ray Gary!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The… the Mouse.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Professor Manyarms.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Atomic Bumpkin.”          Ã¢â‚¬Å“Twisted Sister.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Fanboy.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Niobe.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Dynamo Dolphin!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Krotch! Hur hur.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Doorman!”     CSFB! swund round as Jay Boaz jogged out of the darkness to join them at the treeline. “You made it, big guy!” he beamed. “Is D’Ur here? How many others did he bring?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, it’s all just fine,” Doorman answered evasively. “And I’ve found the perfect way for you to go. Follow me, people. You just won’t believe this.” He led them off towards the killing zone. “Well, not for long anyway.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Thing is,” the hunter philosophised, “the Moderator, they’ve not really understood him, any of them. It’s right there in his name. He moderates what happens. If he doesn’t like it, he deletes it, even if it’s happened to him. There’s a strand out there where the heroes rally a scratch team of adversaries to launch a final assault on him, and they get within an inch of doing it – until he deleted that. There’s another where Faite empowers his executioner – until he deleted that. Another where Visionary becomes some kind of Austernal avatar and explodes for some reason known best to himself. And so on. The Moderator’s just playing with them, and if he doesn’t win the level then he reboots and replays until he gets it right.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There’s no stopping him, then,” Zdenka sighed. “You’re scaring me, Mark, and a goddess doesn’t like to be scared.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well, I’m a very scary tourist, Zdenka, but I promise you’ll be entirely safe during this scenario. It’s coming to an end now. That bit with the insane robot and the fake Hooded Hood unnerved him a bit, I think.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Fake Hooded Hood…?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh, sure,” Mark nodded. “The Hood’s vanished. Nobody knows where. Him and Xander both. And believe me, I’ve looked for them. The only influence he’s had on this scenario is all just remote control. It’s all just marginal manipulation for that bastard.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But the Moderator is unnerved.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Getting your brains bashed out does that,” the hunter pointed out. He finished his beer and stored the bottle back in his rucksack. “Point is, he’s set things up now to play out one last time, so he can claim the win and go on to rule forever in a permanently changed world. And his trial runs have basically blocked off all the greater powers’ manipulations and back doors, so it really is down to just the few heroes he’s left running around in his maze.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Like… like Hatman?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You boyfriend Hatman? No. No he got deleted very early on. The guy running around looking like him, Doorman, he’s an entirely different man. A right bastard, and he’s going to get worse. I suspect he’ll be making the transition back to the Parodyverse proper even if the heroes win this one.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The heroes can win? How?” Zdenka found herself suddenly yearning for people she didn’t even remember to somehow triumph over evil.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well,” confided Mark, “the Moderator’s set up this death camp, an execution centre. His PR people have got the world whipped into a paranoid frenzy about body-swapping aliens called Space Fandoms, and anyone he doesn’t like gets accused of being one and sent there for ‘processing’.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s evil!” objected Zdenka.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yep. So the Moderator has interred a bunch of people our heroes care about, and tomorrow they’re going into the ovens, on camera so the world can cheer as the nasty shapestealers get what’s coming to them.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The heroes would naturally go to save them!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“They’d try. But Doorman has already murdered one of them, and the others haven’t had a very successful recruitment drive. And Doorman’s most recent trick was to lead half of them right into the high security compound at the death camp where the ‘new’ Lair Legion have set up a kill zone.”     Zdenka bit her lip. “Can I get there in time to save them?” she asked.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“’Fraid not. It’s all down to them now. But the Moderator’s overlooked the detail that could trip him up. There’s a kid called Salieri Meng.”     Zdenka was running out of ways to prompt for explanations. “Who?” she asked despairingly.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Smart kid with a mouth,” Mark summarised. “In the prime Parodyverse he got killed with his parents in the first wave of the Parody War. In the Moderatorverse there wasn’t any such war, or even a Parody Master. The PM’s easy to delete now he’s been beaten for good. But that brought Meng back into play. The Moderator shouldn’t have interned his mother.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What can this ‘smart kid with a mouth’ do?” Zdenka wondered.     The hunter stood up and shouldered his pack. “That’s what I’m waiting to see,” he admitted. “Should be good, either way.” He turned to go, then looked back. “Hey, if the Moderator wins and Hatman stays deleted, or it things click back and it turns out you’re not dating Boaz, can I call you?”     The goddess of the north was rarely asked out on dates. “I still have no idea who you are, Mark,” she pointed out.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s what dates are all about, gorgeous,” the hunter told her. “But if you want to call me first I’m in the phone book under my working name. All phone books. Look up Carnifax. The Carnifax. See you later.” *** And still to come… The Secret Origin of the Moderator! The rescue of the Death Camp captives! The new Purveyors of Peril vs the New Lair Legion Visionary’s last charge! The fateful choice of Salieri Meng! Coming soon to a ParodyModeratorverse near you! *** So Where Are We Now? The Moderator’s deletion power continues to keep him alive and on top. He’s undone the damage Functionary did to the his Trophy Storage Facility and Lair Tower. He’s downgraded Anna’s lethal attack and the events leading up to it to a VR simulation to learn about his enemies. He’s got Doorman leading the Purveyors into a deadly ambush. He still plans mass executions on the morning before his ascent to power. The Purveyors – CSFB!, Gamma Ray Gary, Gamona, the Mouse, Professor Manyarms, Atomic Bumpkin, Twisted Sister, Fanboy, Niobe, Dynamo Dolphin, and Krotch - face the Legion - The Link (Cath Katz), the Scarlet Lawnmower (Bill Reed), Search Engineer, Sigmund the Superlative Simulacrum, Dr Spoon, Pirate Monkey, Partial Man, Dead Boy, and Killer Flea. There’s still an unaccounted-for traitor in the Purveyor’s ranks. I’m tipping that VelcroVixen has already been hired by the Moderator and might be the one working for him (she’s loyal to whoever hires her – whoever hires her first!). But all is not lost. Miss F/Al B, Amy, and the Shoggoth are going to root out the Moderator’s origin. Liu Xi, Yuki, Chiaki, Lara, and Anna are now awake in the deep research labs under the Death Camp. And Vizh, Sam, Salieri, Brap, and the Sorting Hat are flying by flashlight-power to Iowa so that Salieri can do whatever it is he’s supposed to do to turn the tide – but will he, when he realises he might be erasing himself and his family from existence? *** *** 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 Sorry about the numbering mix-up earlier. All those people who quoted the wrong chapter number were led to believe they were right at the time. I numbered #19 wrongly then missed it off the list. *** 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.

...but the bad news is I'm out of my element. My last post taught me that the style I'm using is too "Anime" and I'm selling it to a Silver Age-y classic comic audience who doesn't want it. Back when I was writer's blocked and stood aside during part of the Moderator Saga...maybe my first instinct was right. I'm not sure now.

Either way I'm happy I didn't have to lose yet another story to the bit-bucket. I do that enough voluntarily because I don't like the outcome of some of them. It's a little more painful when circumstances force it.

I wish I had a follow-up to it but I'm both unsure of where to go, and a little gunshy to try anything risky.