Author’s Note: This story is a cross-over with this really big story called The Moderator Saga. Reality has been changed so that a nasty villain called the Moderator is in charge of the world, and his minions are the new Lair Legion. And now the new Lair Legion need an expert…

This is kind of an experiment for me, using so many characters from other people. I wish I could have made it better. And okay, so I kind of used this plot before – but that was on a different world

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spiffy was dead all right. The superhero was smeared across a fair part of the room. There were scorch marks all over the back wall where some kind of power discharge had punched through his chest. His symbiotic fern was shredded to charred green confetti.
    
“What we need to know,” said Search Engineer, “is who did this.”
    
“It wasn’t me,” said Champagne.
    
“It certainly wasn’t,” said the Scarlet Lawnmower. He flexed his whirling psychic blades aggressively. “It was me that whacked him.”
    
“As if,” scorned Doorman. “I was the one who did him in. I get this kill.”
    
/I think you will find it was me that killed him./ wrote Sigismund the Superlative Simulacrum on his etch-a-sketch face. /Tell them, Miss Link!/
    
The Link sighed. “I honestly don’t know who it was, Sig,” she said. “He was like this when I found him. It could have been any of you.”
    
“Except is wasn’t anybody,” argued the Scarlet Lawnmower. “It was me.”
    
“You mean me,” said Doorman.
    
/It was I/ wrote Sigismund.
    
Champagne turned to Search Engineer. “Excuse me. Are you telling me you had those scary agents drag me all the way across the Atlantic to play detective in a whodunit where I have to find out who didn’t kill the victim?”
    
“Yes,” said the Moderator’s right-hand man. “You see, whoever got this enemy-of-the-state kill gets bonus credits, a larger profit-share, resurrection priority privileges, and an all-expenses paid vacation to Vegas for two. So there’s a lot riding on this.”
    
“It’s not just these guys,” added the Link. “Dead Boy, the Dominator, Killer Flea, Pirate Monkey are all claiming they did it, even though none of them was even in the building at the time.”
    
/I have not given any thought to the vacation./ Sigismund scribbled. /Nor to who I would take with me/
    
“Yeah, well I’ve got quite a shortlist,” smirked Scarlet Lawnmower. He leered at Champagne. “Not too late to be put on the list, darling.”
    
Champagne spotted a problem. “Aren’t you surrounded by those whirling mental blades all the time? Doesn’t that make… dating… a little bit difficult?”
    
The Scarlet Lawnmower shook his head. “It just means I don’t get many second dates.”
    
“Can you work out who did this?” the Link asked Champagne, moving quickly on. “The murder scene is pretty much as I found it.”
    
“Pretty much as I left it,” said Doorman. He pointed to the main clump of body. “I found spiffy breaking in here, infiltrating the Lair Tower. He came for me with his fern but I made a doorway between the door-frame here and a furnace-boiler loading hatch in Akron. While he was trying to put the flames out of his clothing I created a second door to the Harvard heavy-gravity particle accelerator maintenance hatch and that pulse pounded him as you see him. The useless idiot never had a chance.”
    
“Bull!” shouted the Scarlet Lawnmower. “That’s not how it happened at all. I found spiffy breaking into the records room here. Somehow that plant of his knew I was behind him, because he leaped out of the way on my first attack. See that damage where the tables are all matchwood? That was my psychic knives. spiffy tried a counterattack but I was able to slice that fern easily, then power a column of blades right through him as you see. One less nuisance, one Vegas trip for me.”
    
/You are lying./ wrote the Superlative Simulacrum. /This is what really happened. Alerted by my superior senses I investigated a possible intruder alert. I encountered spiffy looking through the records. I adopted the Dominator’s strength to shred my way past spiffy’s tangling vines, pinned him using CalmSereneFlunkyBoy’s SoberString, then used Killer Flea’s power blasts to cut through his defences and blow him to pieces. It was simple./
    
General bickering followed.
    
“You had best resolve this,” Search Engineer told Champagne. “A life may depend on it.”
    
“You’d execute your own people just for lying?”
    
“No. I was referring to your life, actually. Do begin detecting any time you like.”
    
“Ah. Right. Okay. I’ll just take another look at the scene.” Champagne took a closer look around the room, examined the corpse, checked the filing cabinet that spiffy had been examining.
    
“It was open like that when I came in here,” said the Link. “I don’t know how he got past the security seal.”
    
“The lock is still sealed,” observed the Search Engineer. “The tumblers are down and the bar is still extended. Whoever unlocked it must have fastened it again after the cabinet drawer was opened.”
    
“What was in here?” Champagne wondered. Whatever had scorched the wall behind the cabinet seemed to have incinerated the contents of the open drawer.
    
“That contained the personnel dossiers on the Lair Legion,” Search Engineer replied. “Including all of us here.”
    
Champagne turned to the villains. “Several of the people in this room are murderers,” she said, “but they didn’t commit this crime. Not the way they say they did, anyway.”
    
“What’s that supposed to mean?” demanded Doorman. “Listen, chickie…”
    
“Scarlet Lawnmower didn’t do it,” Champagne said. “His psychic knives don’t burn. He has no energy powers. So how did that scorch blast come to be on the wall by the filing cabinet?”
    
“Haw! I said so!” crowed Doorman. “It was me that gated in that flame and…”
    
“You were lying too. A furnace boiler blast wouldn’t be directional, and a gravity pulse wouldn’t scorch and shred, it would pulp.”
    
/And if you used a gravity pulse, why didn’t is push the cabinet drawer shut?/ added Sigismund.
    
“Because the lock-bolt was out,” Champagne answered promptly. “Or because the drawer wasn’t open when spiffy was killed.”
    
Scarlet Lawnmower was confused. “Huh?”
    
“Sigismund didn’t do it either,” Champagne said. “He said that he broke spiffy’s fern then used a power blast to blow spiffy’s chest out. But the tiny scattered fragments of fern are charred too, so they were still attached when spiffy took the fatal wound.”
    
The Link scratched her head. “Then who?”
    
“Well, it could have been you,” Champagne pointed out. “You see, there’s another thing. spiffy’s fern could absorb energy. It could absorb gravity pulses and heat blasts and Fleabot’s ray. None of those things could harm him. The fern generated a force-field around his body that kept those things out. Unless somebody was able to teleport those attacks inside his force field and get him that way.”
    
/Miss Link?/ Sigismund’s handwriting wavered a little in shock.
    
“Well, way to go Linkie,” said Doorman. “If you’re needing some company in Vegas…”
    
“I didn’t!” protested the Link. “Siege Engineer, I’m telling you…”
    
“I said you could, not that you did,” said Champagne. “But you did open the cabinet. That was when you discovered the scene, and before you alerted your Legion pals. You got past security by teleporting the lock away then teleporting it back into place when the drawer was open. That’s why the lock’s still in the closed position.”
    
“Why would Link want our personnel files?” asked Scarlet Lawnmower. “I’d give her my number if she just asked.”
    
/Miss Link does not require your number from you. Or anything else./ wrote Sigismund angrily.
    
“You have to ask yourself why spiffy was here,” Champagne said. “Of all the places he could go to when he broke in, why this records room?”
    
“There is vital data here,” Search Engineer said. “Data which not even some of our own members are privy to. Enemies of the state would find details of our powers and profiles very useful.”
    
“And somebody had something in their profile they desperately wanted to see. But this place is protected even against yourselves, so you needed an energy-absorber to break in and deactivate the devices. That’s why Link was able to open the cabinet with her power afterwards and remove the files. Then you didn’t need spiffy any more.”
    
“I… I wouldn’t!” gasped Link. “I didn’t!”
    
/Miss Link does not tell lies./ wrote Sigismund. /Except when she is on a mission being a villain./
    
“Okay,” said Champagne. “I tend to buy Link’s denial too, because she knows her powers well enough that when the force fields and stuff were down she could just teleport the files out without needing to open the drawer. Only a rookie would need to do that, somebody not used to using teleportation powers.”
    
Scarlet Lawnmower looked puzzled. “Now I’m baffled. And when I get baffled I kill people. So somebody explain.” His psychic blades whirled faster and closer.
    
Champagne thought fast. “Somebody helped spiffy get in here. spiffy thought he was getting the secret files to help the rebellion. Um, the unlawful insurrection against the Moderator’s rightful rule, that is. Somebody on the inside helped him past the systems.”
    
“There are very few people who could do that,” said Search Engineer.
    
“But you are one of them,” Champagne said.
    
“I’m not on trial here. I am not a suspect.”
    
“When spiffy had taken down the defences on the records room he wasn’t needed any longer, so somebody murdered him. Somebody who could do energy discharges inside spiffy’s force field.”
    
“None of us have that power,” complained Doorman. “I could open a door inside his shields, but I don’t have energy blas… er, I mean I did it. Sure. I just used one of Pirate Monkey’s power cannons. Easy.”
    
“One person present had the power to do this,” Champagne said. “spiffy himself.”
    
“This isn’t a very likely suicide,” objected the Link.
    
Champagne agreed. “The thing about this murder is that different parts of it could only have been committed by different people. Somebody spiffy trusted must have sold him on the idea of breaking into the building. Say Functionary or the Mouse or someone like that. Somebody with top security codes must have fudged the detection net to actually get him inside. Say Search Engineer.”
    
“But I did not,” said Search Engineer. He double-checked the logs. “Except… it seems that I did,” he added. “This makes no sense.”
    
“spiffy then used his fern-powers to break into the records room and start hunting for the files. That’s when he was discovered.”
    
“By the murderer,” Doorman insisted.
    
“By one of you with strength and energy projection powers,” said Champagne. “Probably Sigismund the Superlative Simulacrum, who can duplicate various powers.”
    
/That includes the teleportation I’d need to get past spiffy’s fern-field./ Sig said eagerly.
    
“Yeah, maybe if you’d told the story that way when you were first questioned,” said Scarlet Lawnmower scornfully. “But you didn’t mention teleporting anything.”
    
“Leave aside the question of how they suddenly happened to come into the records room right at the moment spiffy was in there,” Champagne said. “There was a fight. spiffy’s fern absorbed the power blasts used against him… then spiffy’s fern rechannelled them like it always did. But this time it rechanneled them inwards, to blow out spiffy’s chest!”
    
“Inside the forcefield,” said Link. “But why?”
    
“And why would whoever was attacking him not call security then?” demanded Doorman. “Just get everyone in here then claim the kill?”
    
“Ah, well,” said Champagne, “there was more to the plot yet. spiffy was dead. His attacker just walked away and forgot all about it. That’s LOL INTERNET’s power, isn’t it?”
    
/I could copy that power too/ wrote Sigismund.
    
“But not use it on yourself,” said Champagne. “And I think that’s what happened. You went away, then the Link came in here, teleported the lock out of the cabinet drawer, and got to the files.”
    
“I thought we just agreed that the Link wouldn’t need to shift the lock,” objected Search Engineer.
    
“Ah, but that’s when she’s in control of her own power,” answered Champagne. “But what if she was possessed at the time? What if Functionary, and Search Engineer, and Sigismund, and LOL INTERNET, and spiffy’s fern, and the Link had all been possessed in turn, each to commit their bit of the break-in, murder, and theft?”
    
Search Engineer scowled. “Dead Boy! He’s dead when I catch him!”
    
“Oh yeah,” agreed Doorman. “But why would Dead Boy want to steal our files? Are there naked pictures of Link and Mouse in there or what?”
    
“There are secrets about his own origin,” said Search Engineer wrathfully. “Things that even he does not know about his creation. He will be punished for this. Oh yes. Severely punished.”
    
“So no Vegas?” checked the Link.
    
“I get to help chop bits off him,” called Scarlet Lawnmower.
    
/He should not possess Miss Link. Nobody should possess Miss Link./
    
The villains hurried out to find the erring Dead Boy.
    
Champagne squatted down next to spiffy’s charred corpse. “I’m sorry, Mark,” she whispered. “But you won’t have died in vain.”
    
Since spiffy’s murder had got her in here, she still had time to empty another secure cabinet or two before the villains came to escort her out again.