The vaulted corridor kept slightly meandering as the steps carried the three men onwards. Their mouths were drawn into mute lines most of the time, their suspicious glances leered at the arching walls, their heavy steps boomed with charnel hollowness. Not yet had the triplet come across any junctions or doors, excluding a few holes that were firmly bricked in. As this place was eerily robed in the atmosphere of ancient catacombs already, nobody quite wanted to know what ghastly secrets might lurk behind those heavily sealed exits.

But, who or what had built this vast architectural complex, and why? How large was it actually? Although this sole archway seemed slithering onwards for forever, it obviously was just some kind of an antechamber for a gargantuan subterranean fortress. In any case, evidently one or more intelligent beings lived here. Once, the troop gathered to amaze a potato chips wrapper lying among the centennial dust of one corner. Although foil quite did not decompose, that trash definitely looked like as though it had been there only a fortnight. So, whatever prowled here, consumed at least some amounts of junk food.

During one corridor curve, Booster made an uncanny note that his wrist communicator could not connect either to the satellite network, and that some diabolic fiend had stolen even the LAN connections. XR's com widgets were suffering from the same palsy. A few simple equations were solved, the conclusion being that there was indeed a signal-jamming force field gamboling around the underground rooms. But why all that complexity and nitpicky labor with shields? Laser-persistent walls, radar blockers... the more the steps went onwards, the more the weirdness took over the climate.

The alleyway was descending for the first time. The trio stomped down numerous stairways made of polished black stone. XR's yellow hobbling spotlight also revealed how the murals began bearing more decorations, though they mostly depicted the same wriggling stone serpents as the burned rocks up there. Occasionally they had to slip through moldy bug-eaten drop-curtains that were hung in the ceiling. The crimson tapestries had not been the cheapest of kind: gold and silver embroidery glistened gracefully in the lumen. Obviously the voyagers were coming closer to core of these headquarters.

Abruptly, embowed doorways diverged from the shadows. Their black openings gaped balefully at the triplet from the opposite walls. The yellow light orb was wide enough to exhibit the down-going escalators that were faintly looming beyond the thresholds. The men stopped their rush.

"Umm... should we go and check out these? Hot rockets, they look so scary!" Booster flapped.

"They are not scarier than me", Zurg grunted. "But I believe we ought to see were this main corridor leads until we shall begin to..."

A feeble moan coming from somewhere broke his sentence. The males almost collided with the ceiling in their sudden jumpiness. Something was silently moving in the unlit part of the alleyway, where more of those doors were outlined. A few sluggish seconds the team just stagnated stiff, and listened to the sepulchral, cold timidity.

Then, the sound was there again. A frail moan of pain, followed by a sweeping noise... as if something had dragged itself arduously along the stone. Such a ghostly sound in a cemetery-esque hole like this was only suited to enhance the creepiness.

"It is coming from this way", the Emperor prompted, and prodded a pale, skeletal finger towards one of the doorways some twenty meters ahead. "We shall go to see what it is. Keep your lasers ready." It was peculiar, how the normally so ludicrous and childish Zurg could keep so cool and severe in situations like this. All the mere doating preposterousness was washed away with strong soap.

With a swift speed, the squad reached the doorway. During the short route, the source of the wailing quickly took shape. A woman's weary figure had halfway hauled itself onto the stone slabs, her legs still being sunken inside the open gateways. She was gurgling and coughing hideously, dressed in something that looked like a badly torn Star Command uniform.

"Oh my goodness, it's MIRA!" Munchapper was to gasp his lungs out. Soon the men were kneeling around the sputtering woman, helping her out of the exit's gorge.

"Here the floor is cleaner, bring her here!" She was set a few meters away from the door's chasm to rest on the flagstones. The first notion was that Nova did not breathe properly. From the infinite stocks of XR's inners was soon picked out a small cylinder of fresh air. A respiratory-aiding mask together with an inhalator was put over her mouth. In addition, it did not require quite many microseconds to notice that she had been shot several times with plasma missiles.

"Who did this to you? Who closed you here?" Zora inquired gravely. But Mira's hacking and spluttering did not pass proper answers. She seemed to be teetering on the edge of obnubilation. Her hands were listlessly gesturing somewhere, but the men could not understand the meaning.

"B---Buzz... g-hh--- grhlll... g-gone m-mad..."

"What are you trying to tell us? Who did this?"

"He-he's g-ghh-gone MAD! Buzz... he--he's t-trying to kill me, help..." the Princess squirmed.

The men filched thunderstruck glances from one another. What was she talking about?

***

A pair of vile blue eyes scowled at the alleyway from the shelter of darkness. Their malignant glint was silently sniggering at the view spreading anteriorly: the intruders were in a fit to heal up the Shadow's quasi-dead victim. Oh that dismal will to nurse... they were so excited to kneel there in the dust and buzz around that sordid chick... backs against him... so easy. Too easy.

With a tender swish of robes, Evil Buzz emerged from the gullet of the same doorway from where Nova had been carted out. Almost in a caressing manner, he slid the plasma-laser regulator of his weapon into the full killing dose. A wide, smooth grin spread on his face as he pointed the viper staff towards the small crowd, drawling,

"Hands up, scum... unless you really want to get fried."

Zurg, Booster, and XR's heads were flung violently to the direction of the shout. In a few meters distance, a menacing figure carrying Buzz Lightyear's face, was hovering in the mere air, its black, glossy robes lightly rippling. Another sudden confusion hit the men hard on their heads, making them leap on their legs.

Mira gave a desperate moan on the floor, as the comprehension of an ambush dawned in her. Through the coughs, she raved,

"I...I t-tried to tell Buzz has gg-h-gone crazy! He... he has probably k-gh-killed his wife already and now he tried to kill me! He's b-been playing some dirty games behind our backs the... ghghh... w-w-whole time!"

Munchapper and the robot gawped at the hovering foe with horrid disbelief.

"B-but Buzz, it's US! Your friends! Your family!"

"Heheheh. Nice to meet again, idiots", the Shadow's lopsided mouth mocked, playing the thrilling game of a copycat. "You, fathead, pick up the chick. We're going to have a nice family reunion deeper in the dungeons." He gestured the Jo-Adian to lift up the injured woman. Balancing with his hover boots, his robes billowing, the man approached Zurg. "Oh, Daddy decided to join our little party too---" But, something in the deep frown of the old emperor made the syllables turn to dust on his palate. Zurg's scowl was nothing but fearful, moreover full of odd, almost calm savvy. And, the elder male's forthcoming hollow grunt truly created a few seconds' shocked stillness to linger after it.

"You are not my son."

"What?"

"I said -you miserable imitator- that you are not my son."

The Shadow's brows sprung up. He was looking straight into Zora's slit-turned oculars now. How was that man claiming things like that when everyone else around him had swallowed the lie, even that goody-doody twerp's wife? He did not want to break the spell of this amusing theatre. Thus, he attempted another sham, "And... what if I am? Hehehe, can't bear the fact that your son has selected the other path? I'm just following the glorious road of the Lightyear blood, nothing less. Hahahaha."

"Of course you may call yourself Buzz, but that does not make you my son..." the old man frowned, "You did not seem to enjoy impersonating anyone in your own universe, but here you fall to be just a pathetic juggling cavetroll who cannot even create unique ways of conquering the universe... Some supreme high commander... I should have understood it was your lackbrained presence I felt within the raising peril of the Dark Side..."

The villain's jaw clicked so wide open, that a pigeon could have easily made a nest in his mouth. A light trepidation made a lurch in his stomach. How could that weird man know? How could he know his identity? He had not ever even met that mountain-sized bull before, had he? So, through the drained seas of Bathyos, how could he know what he had been in his own universe? What the heck was that bloke?

Nonetheless, Booster's pip broke the half-frightened pondering. "Y-y-you mean... that- that he's not Buzz?"

"Technically he is Buzz. Just add the prefix Evil and think about the conception of an alternate universe."

The Jo-Adian and XR both uttered an amazed ooh. Nova in Munchapper's arms produced a flabbergasted series of coughs.

Now that the Shadow's cover was thoroughly blown, he carelessly whisked away his theatrical attitude. "Fine, whatever. So let's say you low-browed mirebloods might be right. But..." he swept closer to the beetle-browed Emperor, "...what I don't understand is, that how can you know? Have we... met before?"

"I have had the regrettable pleasure to meet many individuals during my long life. And unfortunately 99,99% percent of them have been insufferable puffin-brained lack-wits such as you."

Evil Buzz measured the towering elder man from toes to crown. This uncanny person, whose stabbing grim gaze was glowering from beneath the shadows of his bushy brows, was so tall, that he had to hover over a foot above the floor to reach the same height. With a lopsided grimace, the villain tried finding rationality in the puddle of miry confusions.

"Lightyear wasn't even supposed to have a living father. I once heard one decayed emperor gloat how he had killed him. Am I talking to a ghost? And craters, what I still don't figure out, is that how in a blasted way did you know I was in the bush the one day you were demolishing Lightyear's front door?"

Zurg stared at him oddly an instant, and then burst out into a hoarse, croaking scorn-laughter. "Oh, indeed. That day. Rhorrh, you ought to know what it is like to be the pawn of the Dark Side. You ought to know how it puts you to feel its rise and fall... mwahahah. So pathetic."

Evil Buzz could not perceive the full meaning of this jest. Only the cackle about the Dark Side had caught his hearing organs. Again, he made the crucial remark that there was the odd profundity sealed behind the dark-brown glower of that male. The lifestyle of a fluffy-feathered angel did not carve such a penetrating half-mad gaze into anyone. His eyes carried too strong signs of muffled anger and forcibly extinguished evilness.

Had that half-giant been on the Dark Side? Millimeter by millimeter, the Shadow scrutinized Zora's face, looking for any familiar marks. Indeed... now as he carefully observed, there was something dodgily familiar with Lightyear Senior. The way he pouted, the way his almost unnaturally long upper lip curved into that sardonic smirk... the histrionic, flowing, full-purple clothings he wore, that exact height... the way he used some certain adjectives in his semi-gloating vocalizations... lastly Evil Buzz remained to gawp at the cuff links of Zoxedaszeĉ's glossy shirt. He was still keeping his hands up in the air according to the command. But what was so special in those insignificant buttons?

It was the finely engraved emblem on them, Zurg's infinite obsession, the letter Z. And there was only one, sole person in this cosmos who would carry such symbols...

Spit was gurgling out of Evil Buzz' maw, when the grasp illuminated his dark mind. It all matched, this male was nothing but the Evil Emperor Zurg, the final downfall of his universe. So, he was a human, and in addition a Lightyear? How on Mars was that blasted spoilsport here, with no traces of his face-hiding imperial uniform? Without the royal and his trans-dimensional warp, the mirror universe villain could have stayed safe and sound in his own galaxy and rule it with the devil's claw. Although it had been technically Buzz Lightyear who had ruined his homeworld, the devastation had all started from this pestilential emperor. He was stuck in this dimension because of him: there was no yellow brick road leading home.

And that he was Buzz Lightyear's FATHER? And he was a form of Buzz Lightyear himself...

His mouth started belching out mind-splitting curses together with flying saliva. Evil Buzz repeated his every pondering aloud, so that the whole alleyway was echoing with blasphemies about Evil Emperor Zurg and the Lightyear inheritance.

"This is not true!" he bellowed, arms whacking the air, "You mean that the tetra-damned buckethead flipping burgers at Cosmo's is MY FATHER? NO! I won't believe it! This is not true! NOOOOO!" He ripped his beard in frenzy, his eyes almost bulging out of their sockets. "Quasars, I knew my family was nothing but worthless worms, but this is WORSE! Why wasn't my blood as noble as your ancestry had? I had to toil and drag myself up from the pathetic, valueless crowd of cringing peasants obeying sniveling every possible law written! And you don't need to tell me what you did with your life! I can fairly well GUESS IT!" he shuddered with nausea, shaking the deadly staff in front of Zurg's nose, "You had it everything, dark glory and a magnificent inheritance with the purest Dark Blood family I have ever seen! I though the Dark Lightyear splendor had died in this universe, but it's almost worse this way! You are a blood-traitor! It would have been better for you to die as an evil emperor than to drag on your unbearable life as a family betrayer! I heard your empire went down and that you died, but oh yes, I can see the false image. I can guess it, you REFORMED, didn't you? Faked your death, huh? What?"

Booster, XR, and Mira were goggling at one another with sheer bafflement. Either Evil Buzz had thoroughly lost his last brain cells, or then they had badly missed some crucial point of the discussion. Also Zurg, for the first time, looked rather astonished. The glacier-cool mien had been a bit defrosted.

"What? Oh, oh, I get it. Stupidity follows stupidity. I had to explain hours to your feeble-minded son what his inheritance truly was. Hahaha, and that really made that twirp to tremble in his puny trousers, the story was too much to bear for such a devolved mudblood." And, sneeringly thundering, Evil Buzz recapitulated the story of Nex Crucio in front of the four wide-flown ocular pairs. Zora, then again, gradually adopted back the cold stability of solid nitrogen. It was, after all, nothing new for him to hear that there was more darkness beneath the forgotten centuries. He had assumed long enough that there was something wrong with the Lightyears. And this knowledge explained everything: the attraction to the Dark Side he had had since the cradle, the lore of the earth... it was just this fortress calling its heir to take the throne and continue to rule the revolting legacy. Buzz' struggle with the wrong path... all affirmed, all haze gone.

Zora's severe serenity, if what, irked the wannabe-overlord. He wanted so much to put that old buffoon to squirm and shudder with mousy fear, but his narration seemed to have no effect whatsoever. The phenomenon in question had perfectly stung the rest of the gang though, but that gave the Shadow only a milligram of satisfaction.

"And now, it will be MY TURN to finally purify the Lightyear blood!" he threatened with his obsessive cliché-like roars, "My presence in this parallel universe has to have a meaning! It has to have, after all the losses I have suffered! So I will rise again! I will reinstate my might!" a manic, unsound gleam ignited in his rolling pupils. "You have such a blissful, untouched universe here... it exists there only so that I can pat it with my finger, and lay a beautiful necrosis onto it... HAHAHAHA! What are billions of killed people if I can annihilate perhaps trillions of them at once? I---"

It was Zurg who cut him short with a booming mock laughter. "Mwahahah, how pitiful. You trivial twithead. There is no glory in killing. It shall all backfire on you sooner or later. I was on the summit of my dark splendor as I fell. And the fall was long, painful, excruciating. I came to find my mind shrieking with all those voices I had extinguished during my lordship. Still they come into my dreams, all those millions of innocent people I slaughtered... Their cry drives you slowly mad, you never can forgive yourself fully. Nobody can forgive fully such a thing. Nothing is there to bring them back, whatever you try. And one day, I promise, you shall hear them all shrieking in your head too, unless that has already started. They wait... and hit, turn you insane. And... fortunately, the darkness has never taken an eternal grasp over anything. In the end, it all shall fall, the darkness shall be thrown into Tartarus and only the light shall prevail. Alpha and Omega is the light, never shall the evilness rule!" the old male orated with an almost blood-frosting, prophetic tone.

Thick smoke was coming out of Evil Buzz' cloak collars, as he boiled in his annoyance. The least he wanted to hear now was some hypocrite preaching about humanity, and his possible failure. No, he would not fail! He was perfect; he was the new shining crown of the Dark Lightyear inheritance!

"NO! I am the Alpha and the Omega! I came, I saw, I conquered! I will never fall, I will come back in a form or another, and now I have again returned from near death. And this time, I am stable, I WILL NOT FAIL!"

"Mwah hah hah. Remember, little boy, you are just a pathetic mortal like everyone else."

"NO I AM NOT!"

The triplet behind Zoxedaszeĉ was scowling at one another, exchanging whispers.

"He's sick."

"More twisted than a hundred Zurgs put together."

Mira added something to this quote with a voice lower than the feeblest thud of a single dust particle. Booster's expression was gaping with perplexity for a split second, but in a breeze, melted into discernment. He nudged the robot, winked, and prompted something.

"You worthless muck back there! Shut up when the heir of Nex Crucio speaks!" the Shadow addressed the trio, which had rustled in such a rude manner. "Now..." he went on, playing lightly with his viper cane, pointing it towards each intruder's chests in turn, as if measuring whom to terminate first. "Another unfortunate twist in my plans is that you got smashed here. I had everything in such a great, nefarious order. But..." he fingered his Van Dyke, "...now I should decide what to do with your valueless souls. I can get some fun with a few new torture puppets, but perhaps, perhaps, I could use you as my second ticket out of here. I was going to rely on the other Lightyear's help since he has quickly become my obedient servant... hehehe...  And you", he shook a glowed finger in front of Zora's nose, "You are more valuable than I thought, although you are just a mere blood-traitor. You know things beyond, your knowledge of the Dark Side seems to be vastly ahead of my own, I see it now... Perhaps you could share your knowledge---"

Abruptly Evil Buzz' tirade was cut short because of Mira's horrible coughing. Despite the respiratory aid she was wearing, she had begun inhaling as though her lungs had suddenly been full of cement. And, followed by that, her limbs began twitching with violent spasm, so that Booster had to concentrate hard on keeping her still.

"Now what?" the Shadow croaked, turning his eyes on the sudden sickness attack. "Can't you keep that darned chick still?"

But as if being egged on, Nova's terrible trembling only increased. Her breaths were nastily stridulous, and then, out of the blue, they just plain stopped. Her body turned utterly limp, as if all the life had suddenly been sucked out of her. Booster was forced to let her down onto the floor. The next wail came screeching from XR's mouth as he bent over her to analyze the morbid-feeling situation,

"Oh my goodness, there is no pulse!" 

...to be continued... Comments?