Previous Post The Moderator Saga #12: Acting On a Hunch 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 **     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t move and you won’t get hurt.”     Functionary looked down at the implement pointed at his chest. “That’s a spoon,” he noted.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“A well placed spoon can do a lot of damage,” warned Flapjack of the Carpathians. “Don’t make me demonstrate.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re the prisoner,” Functionary recognised. “You’re supposed to be chained up in maximum security.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah. I escaped. I’m spooned and dangerous.”     Functionary wondered if he could edge towards the alarm button, but of course the Moderator and the Legion operations team were all out taking down CrazySugarFreakBoy! “I can’t be held hostage right now,” the possibly-fake flunky objected. “The Moderator will be back soon, and after a mission he likes to review the news footage of himself in slow motion. I have to set up the TIVOs.”     Flapjack nodded. “Yep, I do the same thing myself when Dancer goes into action. But right now I’m here to do you a favour.”     Functionary didn’t look happy. “With… your spoon?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You wish. But I owe you a favour, from way back. You won’t remember it, of course. It was before the Moderator got retconned to rule the world. You were a different person then.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I was?” Functionary checked himself. “I knew I couldn’t always have been a lonely no-life loser.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Moving right on,” Flapjack replied, “time was that you were the leader of the Lair Legion. And when I needed a break you gave me a job as the Legion’s butler.”     Functionary blinked. On the one hand it was a wonderful thought that once he’d been an important hero, leading the world’s greatest champions in their battle against evil. On the other hand, he’d allegedly hired this lurching pervert to work for the team. “Had I a history of mental illness?” he checked.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Depends who you asked,” Flapjack answered honestly.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What cool super-power did I have? Was it intangibility? I always fancied density control.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I can’t tell you,” the hunchbacked escapee told him. “The universe might explode if you knew. Let’s just say that a lot of people couldn’t believe the things you did.”     Functionary sighed wistfully. “I wish I could believe you, but I don’t think I’m cut out to be anybody important. I’m just me.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You were a dad,” Flapjack told him. “You don’t remember Magweed and Griffin do you? Your kids?”     Functionary went pale. “Kids? I had kids?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yep. Cute little rug rats, sneaky as all get-out and fizzing with fun. I guess your Moderator must have deleted them when he got his reboot.”     Functionary frowned. “I can’t have kids. Who was the mother?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s where it gets a bit complicated and multi-part,” admitted Flapjack. “Plus there’s all that hard-to-believe bit where you got to have sex. But I’m telling you straight, and here’s my favour to you, you once had two great children and they need you to fix things and get them back.”     Functionary had no reason to believe the hunchback. No reason at all. And yet…     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I… I wouldn’t want to let my kids down. If I had any. Which I don’t. But if I did…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s what I figured,” said Flapjack with a crooked-toothed grin. “Welcome to the team.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There’s a team now?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There will be,” Flapjack promised him. “Now take me to your Mouse.” ***     Helen MacAllistair dropped her circuit board in surprise as Functionary knocked on the door and poked his head into her lab. “Hey, it’s only me,” he said.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sorry,” the nervous science nerd apologised, scrabbling for the components she’d spilled in her alarm. “Sorry. It’s just I had a visit from that Scarlet Lawnmower earlier and he scares me. And I’m working on this terrible deadline and if I don’t get my project finished for the Moderator then I’m terrified he’ll send Mister Reed back down here and…”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s okay,” Functionary promised her. “You’re the smartest person I know. You’ll do fine.”     Helen might have been comforted except just then a grotesque deformed face peered round the edge of the door at about Functionary’s waist height and leered, “Hello darling!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s still okay,” Functionary calmed the Mouse. “Whatever you might think looking at Flapjack. Well okay, technically he’s an escaped prisoner and we could get executed for not turning him in to the master right away but otherwise it’s fine. Really.”     Helen swallowed hard. “This is some new definition of fine that you’re field-testing for the first time, right? Well my vote is that it’s not a version of fine I’m very comfortable with. It’s the sort of version of fine that gets me sliced to ribbons by the Lawnmower.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s tough being the smartest chick on the planet,” Flapjack told her. “But that’s why we need you, kiddo.”     Helen backed off from the hunchback. “I’m not the smartest chick – I mean woman – on the planet,” she denied. “I - I think she is.” The mouse pointed to the operating table where she’d just finished stabilising Miss Framlicker’s bio-implants and adding the Yukitech that the Moderator had ordered.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Whoa,” Flapjack gasped, recognising the Extraordinary Endeavour Enterprises administrator.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes, it’s very impressive,” admitted the Mouse. “She’s got a partial-brain transplant from Dr Al B. Harper and some amazing recall functions that got harvested from Lee Bookman, all tied up with a bio-technic interface processor from this cyborg girl that the master scrapped a while back. She’s literally two geniuses stapled together.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Huh,” scorned Flapjack. “I meant ‘whoa she’s naked under that sheet’.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“This is the project you’ve got to get working?” Functionary asked, baffled. “Some kind of hybrid brain thing?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“She’s just what we need,” approved Flapjack. “If anyone can help us figure a way to take down the Moderator and snap things back to normal then it’s a Harper/Framlicker mind-meld.”     The Mouse looked worried. “The technology’s not melding though. All her two hemispheres do is bicker with each other.” She followed Flapjack’s stare. “Her brain hemispheres,” she clarified.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, that sounds about normal,” admitted the hunchback. “So we need to get her out of here then get her working then use her to find the Shoggoth and hook up with the resistance. Then we overthrow the Moderator and get things back to normal. Then maybe we thing about getting her some clothes.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“How did I get roped into this?” Functionary fretted. “The Moderator will be pissed enough that I didn’t plump his seat cushion for the post-battle gloating. Now suddenly we’re kidnapping nude brain-trusts?”     The Mouse blinked. “You’re… you’re standing up to him? To the master? You, Functionary?”     The possibly-fake flunky swallowed hard. “Yes… I guess I am.”     Helen MacAllistair stared around her lab, her prison. She thought about all the terrible things that might happen to her if she ran away. She thought about the terrible things she’d have to do if she stayed. “Then I’ll come with you,” she promised in a whisper. “Revolutionary.”     Functionary considered that. “Revolutionary…” The name didn’t taste quite right. “Maybe Missionary? Reactionary? Dictionary?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’ll come to you,” Flapjack told him. “Bring Hallie and let’s get out of here. There’s only so many rampaging egomaniac supervillains you can hold off with a spoon.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hallie?” puzzled Helen MacAllistair.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And bring the genius Frankenstein chick,” Flapjack called back to his companions as he prepared their escape route. “Don’t worry if there’s no time to bring the sheet.” *** Continued… 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.

Because now I know what to do with a few characters if I ever get my tie-in finished.