From the skies over Arcadia Bay, the Marauders of Mars spot the approaching zombie horde. Their leader, Lord Starsight, yells down to the ground forces from atop his flagship, the Glitzed Glider: "Alert, me maties! The undead have risen, and they are approaching at TOP speed!" He grabs his laser sword and aims it at the enemies. "Prepare for war! This shall be the fight of our lives!"

Cracking his knuckles with the young drifters, Master Gohdo, and Dana on his shoulders, Jumbo tells the pirate, "Better not be of our deaths."

Rose Amber marches to the head of the ground forces, reloading her rifle as she does so. She peeks through her scope and sees the zombies approaching even faster now. Facing the undead, she tells her allies, "Steady." The zombies are still coming. This is the zombies' final chance to back down. "Steady!" No turning back… "NOW!" She fires along with the rest of the ground troops, hitting as many creatures as they can.


All the way across the country, in Washington D.C., an agent of the country darts through pale halls on the route to the Oval Office. Marching inside, the agent tells the Presidential Council - formed following the arrival of nine US Presidents from all throughout time, in addition to the incumbent 44th President Barack Obama - with a concerned tone, "Misters and Madams Presidents. Reports are coming in of an attack on the small town of Arcadia Bay. It appears that the dead are rising, being summoned by some sort of… skeleton king."

President Obama scratches his head and asks her, rather annoyed and wary of a 'yes' answer to the following question: "The one in the blue hoodie again?"

Shuddering, she adds, "N-no, sir. This is a different one." The agent pulls out a folder bulging with files, all pertaining to this apparent apocalypse at hand. The ten Presidents review the evidence as the agent tells them, "In addition, we've reported several tremors in the surrounding towns of Culmination and Beaver Creek, as well as a mass jailbreak in Oregon State Penitentiary. How should we proceed?"

Another President, a hovering cephalopod in a tan suit, proposes angrily, "I say we take 'em off the map. Let's play nuclear football with this skeleton king."

A mummified President shakes his hands while telling the squid, "Jesus, man! No! Send in relief efforts!" The other Presidents murmur amongst themselves in apparent approval. "Is it possible that these are related to the hostage situation in Independence?"

"Without a doubt." Scouring through the files, the agent adds, "We captured this copy of the skeleton king from outside the base in Missouri. He claims to be Bedlam, the Lord of Death."

Silence befalls the Council before nine of them break it simultaneously: "WHO THE FUCK IS BEDLAM?!"

"Oh, I've heard of that guy!", says a robotic voice coming from a robotic President. "Crap, this is the Fall of Old Oregon?"

The other nine Presidents and the agent yell angrily, "The WHAT?!"

Disregarding her position of power, the agent asks, "You pick RIGHT NOW to tell us this?!" As the robo-President gives a thumbs up, she continues, "Do you know how to beat him?"

The thumbs up stays up still. "It will be out of our hands." Pacing to the windows so he can see the country's snowy sleeping capital, he continues: "The details are real… weird. And brief. But we will be saved by light. That is all I know, at least. All that was put in our history books and databanks. Tonight, we do not make history. The people fighting for Oregon do."


A wormhole opens in the CCTV Center of the Base and out steps the Other Max with Elmer and Lord Laundry in tow. Sitting by the screens in an office chair, Dolly waves to them as she slides a new metal plate in front of her chest. "Welcome back, boys. Check it out. Mr. P. Lost in a tizzy." Laying on the floor by her feet is Sean Prescott, securing himself in a fetal position.

Dolly leans into the face of the Agency's moneyman and asks, in the guise of Nathan in his eyes, "How's it hangin', DAD?"

Throwing his fists at the metahuman, Sean Prescott screams, "You're NOT my son!"

Nathan giggles giddily. "Of course I'm not! Makes it easier to sleep at night, doesn't it?"

Dolly backs away as Prescott hides his eyes behind his hands. She jokes with them, "And to think, I'd be pulling this shit on lil' ol' Max in another universe. All on your orders, Asscott. Life sure can be… obtuse." She looks at her compatriots, and more specifically at the Other Max, and tells her, "As for you, it is regrettable that you won't be here with us. You'll be missing out on the fun."

The Other Max laughs, figuring that she isn't wrong. "On the contrary, with the fun I've got planned, things are going to get real fucking dark."

Dolly points at the ceiling with an evil toothy grin growing on her mask: "Dark… uh, the Netflix show."

The Other Max pats her on the shoulder. "You said it, you. Rawk on!" She opens up another wormhole to a monochromatic room where black robed figures await under a harsh white light.

Dolly cheesily waves goodbye and tells her, "Are revore, mon chair."

Slightly annoyed at the butchering of the French language, the Other Max says with a giggle, "Y-yeah. Bye." She walks into the wormhole as it closes behind her, making her exit out of this criminal plot.

For now.

Elmer looks at Sean and kneels in front of him with a smug grin on his face. Getting a peek at the villain, Sean asks angrily, "What are you lookin' at, porcupine?"

Squinting at the Prescott patriarch, Elmer explains, "I'm looking at a bloated loan shark. What do you-"

"NOT MY SON!"

Elmer jolts back in shock before chuckling to himself. "You're certainly a good judge of character." Suddenly, a devious idea crosses his mind, and he tells it to Sean: "Buuuut what if I am your kid? Maybe Dolly broke me out the loony bin. You don't know." He rubs his index fingers against his temples as he stares Sean straight in the eyes and tells him, "She's got you losing your head, maaaan!" Prescott almost passes out, so Elmer strolls over to Dolly and asks, "What's next, boss?"

"I've got quite a lot of the Agents rounding up those rich jerks and taking them to the Conference Hall. I'll round them up and reinvigorate them. Or kill them all. Or something, I dunno, Bedlam really gave me waaaay too much free reign here. But most of all, I've gotta capture Vicky and Kate, and maybe get them on my- er, our side."

The Lord quivers just a bit before exchanging looks with Elmer, who asks, "Wait, her? She's here too? But how?"

Dolly shrugs her shoulders as she looks at security footage of her arrival. "She controls light. The forcefield's made of light. She kinda just waltzed through it. Just as fate wills it!"

"So, what, we just hold them off from you?"

Nodding her head, Dolly says, "Yep."

Elmer scoffs as the Lord crosses his arms in slight doubt. "But they're so much stronger! They've probably beat Tangi, us two are no match on our own."

"Then, it's a good thing you're not alone." Dolly pulls out an Agency-issued walkie-talkie and waves it next to her face. "Now, go hold them off and I'll call for backup when the time is right. They're in the basement offices. Hut! Hut! Hut!"


Checking for any signal on her phone, only to be faced with zero bars, Victoria sighs. "No signal. Dammit." She walks through a dull gray hallway with offices surrounding them with Kate by her side. She emanates her sunset-like light while hovering along. "So, how was Arcadia Bay doing? Before you came here, that is."

"We confronted Bedlam, and I chopped his arm off with a laser beam." She raises her palm and it fades from a human hand to a red laser one.

"Nice! Did it hurt him?"

Shaking her hand back into a human hand, Kate explains, "It sure looked like it."

"Awesome. I guess your dad was right, huh?" The two laugh, remembering that convo at the Two Whales Diner. Still, Victoria tensely asks, "You think Max and Chloe can handle whatever's going on?"

Kate hums in humble disagreement before telling her, "They've got a sizable army. They can handle the zombie horde. But what we're doing is handling this whole scenario."

Victoria slowly nods her head, trying to wrap it around the idea of a "zombie horde" laying waste to Arcadia Bay. "Right." Putting that aside, she asks Kate, "Did Bedlam mention what this is, by the way? Like, his endgame?"

"Just that he wants to destroy Arcadia Bay because of all its 'sinners', and how it used to be better before… everything happened and the pesky youngsters ruined it. Apparently, we're part of the problem."

A smirk grows on Victoria's face. "I can live with that. All I heard was something about a revolution. And the clown talked about getting paid in the aftermath."

Kate taps her chin, thinking over these two motives. She says to Victoria, "This whole thing is weird. Like, none of their goals are tangible or related. 'Hey, let's end the world' but also 'hey, let's start a revolution'. Like it's a big smokescreen."

"Or, more likely, they're fucking idiots roleplaying as supervillains."

Kate teases, "Well, I'm technically roleplaying as a superhero."

Victoria pats her on the back and tells her, "And there's nothing wrong with that, bunny, because we're not the ones being assholes." The two stop walking as they face a glass door with a keycode keeping it locked. She asks, "What the hell is this?"

"A dead end. I'll see what's on the other side." Kate turns translucent and hops through the door. Victoria waits for a few seconds before she hops back out, snickering maniacally. Finally able to contain herself, she lets out an exasperated, "Whoa."

"'Whoa' what?"

"Whoa, it's the Enforcers… Two." Elmer steps out of an office, holding up two fingers, with Lord Laundry right behind him. He sighs and admits to his opponents, "Shit, this is sad."

"And yet, it's a fair enough match." As the Enforcers put up their fists, Victoria looks at Kate, completely ignoring the villains in front of them, and asks, "So…?"

"Hawt Dawg Men. Lots of Hawt Dawg Men! Look out!" Kate pushes Victoria aside as a fistful of laundry comes flying her way. Victoria smiles and the two choose their dance partners.

Kate lunges at Lord Laundry, knocking him into the floor while she pounds on him with large fists of light.

Victoria grabs a ruler while Elmer cracks his knuckles and tells her, "So, uh, I just wanna say, nothing personal."

She shrugs her shoulders and tells him rather confusedly, "Cool?"

Elmer rushes at Victoria and she retaliates by swinging the ruler at his face. It may be wobbly, but it is certainly metal, and hitting Elmer in the face with it causes him to fall to the side. He catches himself on a table and, while rubbing his cheek, starts throwing office objects at her. She dodges most of them and falls back behind a chair.

Kate continues punching at Lord Laundry's body, tearing him apart cloth by cloth. In a hurry, he grabs at her mask and tries pulling it off her head. As he does so, he hears it crinkle, as if lined with tin foil. With both hands, he pulls off her mask and plops it over his chicken mask head.

Still, Kate doesn't stop and keeps hitting him over and over, almost pulling him apart. But she feels the faint fear in his woolen heart, and so she backs off of him, leaving him to lay on the floor. She reaches for her mask, but it is too late as a pink parasite has taken root in her head. And that pink parasite's name? Dolly.

Elmer grabs a gift-wrapped cardboard box and throws it at Victoria's head as she peeks behind a table. It hits her and softly bounces, not containing anything at all. Still, it knocks her off-balance enough for him to rush her again and knock the beret off her head. He laughs in her face before grabbing it and rushing to a garbage bin. Standing over the bin, he vomits. A lot.

Victoria grabs her gun from her ankle and aims it at Elmer from a few feet away. "Give that back before I shoot!"

The spiky-haired criminal puts his hands up in the air and begs, "Don't shoot! Don't shoot!"

"Give me one reason not to."

He turns to face her and explains, "There's more to this shit than you can see." Wiping his mouth with one of his leather jacket sleeves, he tells her, "Dolly's insane!"

Victoria shrugs her shoulders and asks, "What else is new?"

"She's got too much on her plate - she wants to lead a meta revolution, she wants to kill the rich, she wants to fuckin' die! I don't even know what her top priority is, or who she's in control of with that body!"

Victoria lowers her gun just a little bit as she considers these revelations. "That's not her body?"

"Of course it ain't! Your girlfri-"

Victoria raises a hand before correcting him bluntly with, "Wife."

Elmer shakes his head in surprise. "Wait, 'wife'? I- You're both a little bit too young, but congrats, dude."

Already fed up with the small talk, she demands of him, "Just talk to me here."

Elmer laughs and continues, "She's in control of the Cyborg-Doctor, and some agents or something. And she's nabbing people left and right. All the rich people or whatever." Victoria lowers the gun and sighs. "We have to work together here."

"I CAN DO THAT!" The two look at Kate as she blasts Elmer away with a beam of light.

Shocked at Kate's brutality, Victoria yells in shock, "Kate!"

She doesn't have any urge to hurt her wife, which is unfortunately a sentiment Dolly does not share as she pops in just a few feet away from Victoria's face and grabs her by the throat with both hands. Dolly laughs through Kate's vocal chords and asks with a deranged smile on her face, "Just like old times, hm?"

Victoria grimaces as she realizes that Kate isn't in control of her own body. She wants to fight back and knock that little parasite out of her wife's head, but she can't. Not without hurting Kate, at least.

Kate places her palm on Victoria's forehead and laughs maniacally. "Now, let's get me back into your head." And so she tries.

And nothing happens. She keeps on trying, and nothing is happening.

Kate scoffs and stares her in the eyes before releasing her and holding her in the air. With Victoria unable to move around, Kate pats her down and asks, "Where are you hiding the tin foil?"

It takes a second or two for her to fully process the question before she responds, "What?"

Kate tilts her head and looks around. "Uh. Hang on. Lemme just check something…" She looks for the two remaining Enforcers… who have up and vanished without a trace. Under her breath, Kate growls, "Cowards." But her attention shouldn't be on her treacherous teammates, it should be on Arcadia Bay's old Queen Bee (for Bitch. Obviously.)

She looks at her as Victoria glares at her with all the rage in her heart. "What's the matter? No witty retort to throw in my face, along with a punch? Here, let me try." Spikes of light protrude from Kate's knuckles and she laughs; not just at Victoria's scared face, but also at Kate's futile resistance within her brain. "This is gonna hurt… Bitch."

Kate raises her fist and it flies at Victoria's face. She braces for impact… but it fails to do so. Instead, it re-routes to Kate's own face, knocking her back a few feet. As Kate recoils, she screams, "OWIE! The hell?"

Suddenly, Kate swipes herself off her own feet, causing her to fall on her butt. The spikes vanish as Kate starts writhing on the floor in an attempt to get Dolly out of her system.

Victoria cheers her on, yelling with a hopeful smirk, "Fight her, Katie!"

In her head, Dolly panics and screams once more, "No, not AGAIN!"

As she starts losing control of Kate, Victoria falls to the ground, heaving as she regains her composure. She pulls herself over to Kate and holds her close and tight, saying, "It's okay, Katie. I'm here with you. Fight it!"


In desperation, the Pink Moth flutters around in Kate's mind, where light takes hold of all. In this land, this brainy place in all of its Victoria-loving, Christ-loving, all-loving glory, a white rabbit of light hovers around on angel wings, motivated by all the fluffy things in life that keep us at peace.

In the church of her mind, the White Rabbit spots the Pink Moth and casually swims over in the air around them.

The Rabbit smiles. The Moth grimaces and lets out a disgusted "Eugh."

This little groan provokes the ire of the Bunny as she frowns. Sensing the Moth's misanthropic vibes, the little animal hops into action and bites straight into the moth menace, shaking and tearing into her with her two front teeth.

As the Moth is grinded down into psychological nothingness, she screeches, "NO! NO! NOOOOOOOO!"

And just like that, she is gone, leaving the Rabbit to hop along to her usual antics keeping Kate's mind rolling.


Kate opens her eyes as they glisten and burn out any last remnant of Dolly's mental ghost. Victoria runs her fingers through her glowing hair, calmly shushing her to keep her calm. It seems to have worked as Kate stops her glowing and looks at Victoria sadly. She tells her, "I'm so, so sorry ab-"

Victoria pulls her close and holds her gently. "It's not your fault, it wasn't you. It was Dolly. You're okay. We're okay."

However, she has spoken too soon as she spots a dozen Agents standing in their way out of the hallway. One of them, aiming their rifle at the two girls, chuckles and tells them, "Freeze, metahumans."

Victoria shields Kate from the Agents and tells them, "We're not metahumans. I mean, I get it, she's a superhero but, like, she's like Batman. No powers. Just that raw human power."

The Agents laugh as one armed with handcuffs steps forwards and adds, "Yeah. We hear ya. Take Miss Chase to her parents, and the bunny rabbit over to the Containment Cells for questioning."

The goons grab Victoria and pull her away from Kate, also taking her into custody and restraining her with the handcuffs. "Leave her alone! Get off of her! She's innocent!"

Leading her away, one of the Agents explains, "Maybe so, Victoria. But this is just how it goes." Victoria's eyes widen with worry as she figures out why the Agent is speaking like Dolly would. "Don't try yelling for help. We're not gonna hurt you. I mean, how else would I figure out your little trick?"

Victoria rolls her eyes at the villainess's attempts at intimidation and groans loudly. "Just shut the fuck up."