"The mistake Malice, Sabertooth, and the Toad made was in fighting with their powers, when they should have been fighting with their brains." I explained to Victor.

"You, of course, had them out-gunned in that respect." he commented.

"Apparently I did…"

---------------

In The Raiders of the Lost Ark, the biggest laugh—the best moment—is when the enormous guy with the sword comes forward to fight Indiana Jones in the marketplace. He goes through an elaborate display of his skills, slashing the blade through the air, tossing it around, doing everything but balancing it on his nose.

What does Jones do? Simply pulls out his gun and shoots him. In the contest of phenomenal skills and flash versus brains and tools, it's the brains that win.

That was what I had done to the others. Mastermind was a different story—or so I thought.

His powers were mental, and more than that, I knew he had undermined Jean Grey's sanity and stability, until she went mad and became the Dark Phoenix, eventually dying—again—temporarily. I don't know Jean Grey, so I don't know how difficult that might have been. It had taken great subtlety and ingenuity on his part. Mastermind was not an idiot. I was worried.

On the other hand, he had a very limited length of time to work on me—less than two hours—about an hour and a half, in fact. His illusions would have to be simpler, but no less dangerous. If he created the illusion of solid ground where there was none, I could find myself walking off a cliff and plummeting to my death on the rocks below.

My best strategy would be to find somewhere to hole up, as safe a place as I could find, and then make it even safer. That was where my bucket and the common household cleansers would come in very handy. And then I would just wait…

I had selected a few of the more useful items from the storeroom before I left the Toad there—more bottled water, some emergency flares, and a box of sports bars, among them. The island was a big place, and it would help if I could signal exactly where I was to Victor. I bundled everything up, and set off for a place I had discovered during my previous explorations.

It was a palatial building that had four towers at the corners of its high boundary walls. Once they had been connected by walkways that ran along the top of the wall, but now all but one wall had collapsed or been destroyed. Of the two towers that were still connected—and they were lovely things, like fairy-tale minarets—only one had a passable staircase inside. The other was blocked. That was the tower I had chosen to wait it out in, but to reach it, I had to go up by way of the other tower, and cross the walkway.

I entered the first of the towers, the one with the useable stairs. Some peculiarity of construction had caused it to be built without windows—one entered, and then climbed a spiral staircase up to the open cupola, from which one could see in all directions.

The first thing I did was to open up one of the two bottles of cleaner I had left in the bucket, and scatter the contents on the floor around the foot of the stairs. What was in it looked like nothing so much as gravel, but it wasn't. It was another form of clog-remover—evidently the plumbing clogged up frequently, but if Sabertooth used that bathroom, it was probably due to that mane of his. I was spreading crystalline lye around.

As long as it stayed dry, and I didn't get any in a cut, or in my eyes, nose, or mouth, it was harmless. Even if it were wet with water, it wouldn't be too dangerous. Shoes would protect anyone from the worst of it.

I climbed the stairs, and stopped at the top, where I uncapped the other bottle of cleanser. I lowered it down the shaft on a length of twine from the stockroom slowly and deliberately, until it was only a few meters from the floor. Then I let go. It dropped the rest of the way, landing messily. I could hear the splash as the blue fluid went everywhere, and a very faint hiss as it wet the lye crystals.

It was ammonia. Ammonia plus lye yields chloramine gas. Chloramine is deadly. It is also lighter than air, so I hastily spread one of my other very useful items over the stairs' opening in the cupola floor—a felted blanket, the cheap fiber kind that are given out free to homeless people in cold weather, in larger American cities. I weighted it down with a few rocks.

I had just created a gas chamber. Anyone who wanted to get to me would have to climb those stairs into a pocket of poisonous vapors—unless they could fly. Victor had propulsion units built into the armor; no difficulty there. But Magneto could fly, after a fashion, riding the magnetic waves over the earth. One can't have everything; Mastermind couldn't, and that was the important thing.

I crossed the walkway to the other tower, where I made myself at home, with my sports bars and water, wishing that I had a book.

The next hour of my life was extremely dull.

I had memories to keep me engaged, however.

Like those of my brief sojourn in the lands beyond life, for example, which I was still trying to make sense of. The problem with remembering what happened after I died in the courtyard well was that my brain didn't make the trip along with me, and it is in the brain where memories are recorded and stored.

It was my untrammeled spirit that went and came back, and whatever memories I brought along with me were engraved upon my soul. They were hard to get at, and harder still to interpret properly. Either the afterworld is psychotropic, and adapts to what one expects to find after life is over, or else my subconscious was trying to fill in the gaps, because—what I remembered seemed to be drawn from movies I had seen. I was fairly sure that the trip over the river, with the skeletal Charon acting as the ferryman, was straight out of Clash of the Titans, although I would have to see it again to make sure.

Once I was across, my soul had to be assessed, to determine whether I was bound for heaven or hell. This proved to be trickier than I thought, because it turned out that committing suicide, as I had, didn't automatically damn me. My soul was in an almost perfect balance, and the angel who represented Heaven urged me to repent or to pray, and tip the balance in the more positive direction. (He looked like Alan Rickman as the Metatron from Dogma, another reason why I distrusted my recollections of the whole episode.)

I needed to go to Hades, however, because that was where Victor was held prisoner by Mephisto, so I said I repented nothing and I would pray to no one. The angel said that he was sorry, but as I was led off to Hell, I saw him wink at me. I remember being led through a forest by creatures I knew were demons, although I remember nothing about then. The trees were twisted and blighted, the sky an ominous green, and the ground dry, crumbly, and sandy.

Again, this resembled something I knew—the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. As I walked through that threatening wood, with my indistinct escort, I heard sounds, plaintive protests issuing from the trees. Each was a damned soul. Either they had been transformed into trees, or else they had been pegged inside the trees as Sycorax did to Ariel in The Tempest. I was led to a bare patch of ground, where I was to be rooted—but I refused. I told them that I had to see Doom first. I insisted.

In the end, they gave in.

I had the Talisman, which, being a metaphysical artifact as much as it was a solid object, was whole and undamaged on this side of reality. Although he was there physically, he could use it. That was what I had gone to all that trouble over. I seem to remember that he was bound to a rock—which may be out of a myth I read, or it may be real. I am sure that the legions of Hell were expecting me to spit on his mask, and curse him.

I approached the rock, and said, "My lord?"

He turned his head, and met my eyes. "You?" he asked, disbelieving.

"You forgot this." I said, and put the artifact in his hand.

What followed, I don't really know. I think he said, after he was free, before he returned to the Earth we knew, "If you are here, then you are dead!"

I know I told him to hurry it up and get home before my brain got damaged. Being dead was odd. It's a very naked state.

In the here-and-now of waiting for Mastermind to make his move, I became aware of the smell of smoke. It was coming from the bottom of my tower. The stairs were only blocked to human passage; air could flow freely. He had lit a fire, and was trying to force me out.

Greasy black smoke billowed around me, trapped by the cupola roof. The tower itself could not burn, but I could suffocate. All my elaborate arrangement in the other tower wasn't such a good idea after all; I had blocked off my only means of getting down.

The smoke was terrible—it was choking me. My eyes were streaming with tears as I fumbled my way out onto the walkway—I needed to be able to breathe. That, too, was a mistake—because no sooner had I taken ten steps than the world went insane around me. The fire had been an illusion—the smoke had not been real.

I was lost in a full-sensory hallucination. All that I saw, heard, felt, was distorted. A large section of sky broke like an egg, raining gigantic yellow globules. I could taste screaming, smell the color magenta. I staggered, overwhelmed. No! That was what he wanted, that I should fall off the wall. The verses to Humpty Dumpty ran through my mind, as if sung by a debased choir…

I could not trust my senses. The towers still existed, the walkway was solid under my feet, even if I felt as though I were swimming. I could trust in their existence…The stone under me seemed to ripple, like a shaken bed sheet. It was all in my head, it was only in my head. I sank to my knees, put my hands out in front of me, feeling around to find out what was in front of me. I was groping in a snow bank, the flakes kissed my hands, and melted away.

Wait—had I heard a cough? I wasn't sure. I pulled myself together. My tower was there; I just had to find it. It was in my memory—I could work my way back to it, where there were no sudden drop-offs. I stood. I hadn't crawled out there—I could not retrace my steps if I were on my hands and knees.

Yes. I could do that…I was reentering a smoke-free tower, when I heard Victor say, "Joviana?"

I turned. There he was, in his armor, at the other end of the walkway, large and solid and reassuring. He had Mastermind by the scruff of the neck, and as I watched, he squeezed.

I could hear the snap as the illusionist's neck broke. I heard it quite clearly.

"They are all gone—executed by my hand for their presumption." he told me, tossing the body aside. It was so like him—in word and in deed.

I definitely heard a cough from somewhere.

"Come!" he commanded. "Let us go home." He spread his arms, as though to encourage me to run to him, and be safely folded in his embrace. There was nothing I wanted more….

So I did.

And then I kneed him in the groin.

I was rewarded by a sickening pain in my knee, as it made contact with his armor—but then the illusion broke and my pain vanished. Mastermind collapsed, clutching his injured parts, groaning and coughing simultaneously. I caught a faint whiff of chloramine gas on his clothing.

"He came up by way of the other tower, and had been partly gassed." I explained to Victor. "All he had to do to avoid it was not be stupid."

"Something of which he was evidently incapable. Well done. Although, if it had been I who you assaulted so personally, you might very well have broken your patella—not to mention committing an act of treason."

"It was a calculated risk. If it was you, since you do wear full armor,I knew that wouldn't have hurt you one bit—or else I wouldn't have tried it."

"I'm not sure I find that reassuring." The humor was there in his voice, though. "We are nearing the point where I enter the scene, however."

"Yes. As I stood there over Mastermind, Magneto deigned to put in his appearance…"

TBC….

Don't worry, Julietsdaughter. All will be revealed, eventually. Thanks! Wow, a reader in Portugal I have readers in a lot of different countries. This is mind-blowing!

Thank you, GothikStrawberry (love the name!) It is hard to wrap the mind around the concept of a benevolent yet ruthless dictator--somebody who gets enraged when his country makes the top bestfive countriesfor women,infants and children to live--because he didn't make the top three-or the first place. At least that's how I imagine him. I hope this chapter lives up to your expectations.