The sun shining through the broad plate windows of the Guard Shack woke Gary far earlier then he had expected. He draped an arm across his eyes and contemplated sleeping in a bit longer. It had been a long night what with Kim and the assassination squad. Besides the Monarch never attacked during the day; he was a night person. So there wasn't much need for a security watch this early in the day. But after a while Gary had to admit to himself that falling back to sleep wasn't going to happen. He might as well get up.

He set the recliner to its upright position and glanced at the row of monitors in front of him. About half of them were dead. That went to the top of the day's to-do list - walk the perimeter of the compound and check on all the sensors. He supposed that in the end he had been responsible for most of the dead sensors - back when he was a henchman for The Monarch.

Gary did a hundred push-ups and a hundred sit-ups before taking a shower. He had cheated a bit on the sit-ups but figured he had done enough to keep in battle trim. Gary's determination to be a mean, clean fighting machine fought daily with a lifetime of sloth. He searched through the Guard Shack until he found a spool of wire, a pair of pliers and a roll of water-proof electrical tape. He suspected that most of the defunct sensors simply had their wires cut. A little splicing would put them back into shape.

For breakfast Gary wandered into the Venture Residence and snooped around in the kitchen until he found some power bars behind some boxes of cereal. He stuck several in the shirt pocket of his new Venture Industries jumpsuit and armed with a clipboard, set out.

He was having a pleasant walk, with breaks from time to time to fix one of the security camera. The sun was bright but not too hot, the breezes fragrant with smell of pine trees. Birds chirped in the trees. "I could get used to this," Gary thought to himself. He was mangling the words to "Who do you love" - singing about 'walking 47 miles of barb wire...'" when he spotted something lying in the grass ahead. It was about the size of a football, black with red splotches all over it. With a grimace Gary bent down and picked up the head of a Monarch henchman. He turned it over until he could see the face. It was 130.

Poor bastard.

Gary didn't have any especial memories of 130 but it was a shame to have to die to feed the Monarch's rage. Poor fellow was only trying to stay alive and see where it got him. Gary didn't blame him for being a coward, he had been a coward once, before 24 had died and he'd lost all purpose in life. It was easy to be brave when living had no great appeal.

He tucked the severed head under his arm and headed back to the Guard Shack. He'd have to call the Guild of Calamitous Intent to find out where to send the head. The Guild was good about organizing decent burials for whatever remains of a henchmen could be found. It was part of their "Cradle to Grave" insurance coverage.

He wrapped the head in plastic and stuck it into the mini-fridge in the Shack. Rightfully the fridge ought to be filled with beer but he hadn't time to made a run into town to pick up personal supplies. He made the call, got an address, then hunted around to find a box to mail it in. He dumped in all the ice he could find in the Residence and called Fed-Ex for a pick-up. He found an old, unused notebook and logged his morning. Slapping the book shut he wondered if this was how it was always going to be - seemingly uneventful days filled with sudden, gruesome surprises?

The chirping of his wrist two-way communicator confirmed his suspicion. "Brock, get these boys out of my hair," Dr Venture barked without looking to see who had answered the communicator. Gary was about to explain that he wasn't Brock but the Doctor had already broken the connection.

"Who are you? Where's Brock?" Dr. Venture demanded when Gary got to the Residence.

"I'm Gary. We meet yesterday. I'm filling in for Brock. "

"I thought that fat guy - my would-be nemesis - Hatred? - was filling in for Brock."

"Hatred went A. W. O. L. after reconciling with his wife." Gary explained. "He hasn't reported in to OSI, hasn't been seen at his residience at Malice..." That was the Gated communiity over in the next country where various super-villains and retired super-villains lived. "He hasn't been taking his medications as far as can be told. So we think he's reverting to super-villainy. In fact, if he shows up here, you should treat him as a Hostile."

"Whatever," Dr. Venture snapped.." I've got importance science stuff to do and I can't think while the boys are running around like a couple of mad men."

The important science stuff Venture mentioned appeared to be watching The View. Hank and Dean were sitting quietly on opposite sides of the room making faces at each other.

"What are we going to do, 21?" Hank asked.

"Gary!" Gary corrected.

"Are we going to hunt for bad guys? Clear out the mole people that have been living in our sewers? Oh, I know, how about we race cars down the X-1's runaway?"

"We're not hunting bad guys. My job is to keep you alive, not get you killed. And there are no 'mole people' living in the drains. I'm pretty sure the alligators have eaten them all."

The boys moped the rest of the way to the airplane hanger, Gary was racking his brain for something to entertain the boys. What would two nerdy, reclusive boys want to do. Of course! What nerdy boy didn't want to play Dungeons and Dragons!

He had all his stuff stowed away at his mothers but he figured he could get the boys started with some paper and a regular pair of dice. And later he could have the OSI ship his stuff from his mom.

Out in the hanger he explained the rules, how the game was played and handed out some paper for them to work on their characters. As Dungeon master he quickly worked out a fairly simple game based on some of the games he used to play before joining the Monarch's crew.

Searching for a dramatic tone of voice he began, "You find yourselves in a dark hallway deep underground. In front of you is a large Minotaur. What do you do?"

Hank was wearing a Viking helmet made of paper-máché he'd found somewhere. He studied his sheet of notes intently, clearly at a loss what to do. Dean was biting his lower lip. "We meet a Minotaur once." he said.

"Did not!" Gary blurted out.

"Did so. It was in Peru."

"Bolivia!" Hank corrected.

"Peru! Remember we flew over those mountains and Dad got sick because of those tacos he bought from a street vendor?"

"Bolivia, you dorkhead. The Amazon is in Bolivia -"

"Brazil," Gary corrected. "The Amazon flows through Brazil."

"But parts of it are in Peru."

Gary conceded that that might be true. "So what happened?" he asked,

"He was trying to kill us!"

"That seems par for the course. How did you dispatch him?" Gary asked.

Hank pushed his paper helmet back and leaned forwarded. "It was cool. Pop took an electric motor out of one of the windows in our car and used my belt to make a van der Graff generator. Poked the Minotaur with 50,000 volts. Oh, you should have seem him dance."

"You shouldn't make fun of him," Dean complained. "He died. It's not right to make fun of people who die."

"But he was trying to kill us, you nimrod!"

"Only because we were trying to steal some sacred relic from the people he was trying to protect. The Xixilatl."

"It's pronounced Xichulatl!"

"You've got cotton in your ears, It's Xixilatl! 'ichi' not 'ichu' Can't you read Mayan at all?" Dean had stood up with fists clenched ready to start a fight with his brother.

"So what was so important about this dingus your father was stealing?" Gary asked before things got out of hand.

"It was made out of gold." Dean answered.

"Pop needed it!" Hank stubbornly insisted. "Anyway it wasn't really a Minotaur, just some guy with acromegaly. He had a big lumpy head that just kind of looked like a cows."

"He had cloven feet!"

"Pop said that was some other deformity."

"I thought Minotaurs were limited to Crete," Gary said interrupting the boys' argument. "What's one doing in South America." Both boys shrugged and sat back down.

"Let's start over. "You find yourself in a dark corridor. In a pool in front of you is a mermad..."

"Like Hank's imaginary mermaid that he says he made out with?"

"Teila was not imaginary!"

"You made out with a manatee. You had that fever and were delusional."

"We were looking for Atlantis and I was not delusional. You and Pop had been captured by the Beast-men but Teila rescued me when the X-2 sank. She took me to her home under the sea, feed me and everything."

"Coo-coo!" Dean made whirling signs near his head.

"She had boobies that she let me feel up. Manatees don't have boobs..."

"Actually they do, totally," Gary interrupted. "They're mammals. All mammals have breasts."

"The Platypus doesn't."

"They hardly count as mammals..." Hank insisted.

"Enough. We'll start again. You find yourself in a dark corridor. In front of you is a - have you guys ever met up with a zombie? Gary asked hopefully.

"Quick or slow?" Dean asked.

"What's the difference?"

"The quick are fast and like to eat your brains," Dean explained as if everyone knew this. "The slow just shamble along and try to hug you because they're cold, being dead and all."

"They're not cold," dork-meister," Hank said "They were trying to hump us. Why do you think they kept tearing at our pants."

"They made me wet my pants."

"Look, guys, guys. Is there some monster you haven't met? Werewolf?"

"Dad was one for a while." Dean began

"He got better," Hank finished.

"Mummy?"

"Zombie!" Dean reminded Gary.

"Frankenstein Monster?"

"Dad made one of those."

"Banshee?"

"That turned out to be the guy from AC DC."

"Medusa?"

"We had to use mirrors so I think that was a Halloween prank Pop pulled on us."

"Godzilla? Motha?"

"Pop's Time Scoop brought back a gigantasaurus once. I thought it ate us, but obviously not. Does that count?"

"Oh, the hell with this! You guys want to go into town and hang out at the mall?"

"Would we?" the boys jumped out of their chairs and stuck two spread fingers together "Go Team Venture!"

"Come on, Gary, join in. You're one of us now."

Standing up to join his fingers with the boys, Gary realized that there were yet more levels of hell.

What would Brock Samson do? Gary wondered idly as, he considered the Venture Industries motor pool. Two jeeps were present. One was wrecked and the other disassembled for some kind of repair. An armored personnel carrier was in a corner of the large, empty garage. An eighteen wheeler was over in another. Neither were exactly the thing for hip young men to be driving around in.

The phrase had been going through his mind a lot. Gary was thinking of getting a bracelet with "WWBD" (What Would Brock Do) engraved on it. Then decided that Brock would consider a bracelet too girly. Taking the boys into town proved more of an obstacle that Gary had realized. That required a car, and not Brock's Charger. For one thing he was afraid that the odor of the previous night's love-making might still linger in the car, and he didn't want the boys suspecting he'd used the car for immoral purposes. But Dr. Venture didn't have a car of his own, he let Brock do whatever driving around he needed, so the motor pool was a bit on the thin side.

Eventually he found an experimental car the old Dr. Venture had been working on. It dated from the 60s, had enormous fins, a bubble top and ran on nuclear power. The idea of driving around in a car that got infinity miles per gallon and could take out a small town if involved in a crash sent a thrill down Gary's spine. If only 24 were here to see this! Here was a car to put the Batmobile to shame! It even came with a Federal "Experimental Vehicle" license so he didn't have to work about getting plates - or insurance.

The car was bigger than the biggest Lincoln Continental he's ever seem, accelerated like a snail, took turns like a tank and needed a mile to brake. No wonder it never went into production. Aside from the Atomic Pile issue. Geiger counters were spotted all around the car and from the crackle of the detectors Gary suspected that long trips in the car was probably not recommended.

By the time Gary turned into the mall it was time for lunch, and to let the boys off the leash, as it were. Hank went over to the department store where a Dermott Fictel worked. Fictel looked like an old, beefier version of Hank. Dean hung around a fountain at the food court in the mall trying to pick up girls. Watching from a distance Gary saw a skinnier version of his teenage self striking out at every attempt to be friendly. At the time he thought the girls just hated him because he was fat but in hindsight he realized that the problem had been that he was boring. He had nothing to talk about and knew nothing of what interested girls. He wasn't sure he knew all that much more about women now, especially after making such a fool over himself over Mrs. Dr. The Monarch.

Rather than think about that fiasco, Gary pulled out his cell phone and called Kim's number. It rang eight times before going to voice mail. He hung up but not before hearing the automatic phone system say that it was "United Conflict Resolution Systems." Since he had some data minutes left on his phone he goggled that name and was surprised when it came up with nothing.

Must be a new company Gary concluded. Too new to be scooped up by Google. Oh well. Conflict resolution? That could be an interesting occupation. Not as interesting as being a spy, of course. He wondered for a moment what kinds of conflicts they resolved and how one goes about resolving conflicts - negotiations, arbitration, assets division... It had to be a stressful job, though, which would explain some of the stress he could see in Kim - and some of the scratches on his back.

Gary was about to circle around and check up on Hank when he noticed that Dean was talking to a girl sat the fountain. She was a mousy looking girl, in oversized jeans and a pull-over, but she had a finger stuck in a book where she had been reading. She didn't have that wary look that says "get me out of here," so Dean must have been talking about something she liked. Gary wondered how long it would take for Dean to say something stupid. Because even though he had been their bodyguard for only one day already Gary had come to realize that Dean (and Hank) being Dean (or Hank) would eventually say something stupid or offensive.

Around three Gary decided he's done his duty as a babysitter; it was time to bring the Venture Brothers home. All during the trip home Dean was talking about the girl he'd met, another fan of Giant Boy Detective. All Gary know about Giant Boy Detective was that he was apparently a giant and solved mysteries. He wondered if a talking dog was involved at all in these stories.

He parked the whale of a car back in the shed it had been stored in for so long. In light of the atomic pile built into it, Gary hoped the shed was lead-lined.

When he got back to the guard shack he decided to sit down on his recliner for a few minutes. It was dark when he woke. He tried Kim's number again. She answered quickly and a quick shower later he was stealing Brock's Charger once again.

It was just shy of midnight when Gary returned. He considered turning in for the night but feeling guilty about the nap he'd taken in the afternoon he decided to make one round of the perimeter before sacking out. He was half way around the grounds, coming back towards the main entrance when, turning a corner he spotted a red light off in the distance.

Instantly he flattened himself against the building. He dropped to the ground and eased an eye around the corner, expecting to be shot at at any minute.

The red light was still there, now more of an orange glow, but situated down the length of the current building near its separate entrance.

As he watched the orange light moved up a little then suddenly became bright red before dropping down again and fading to orange.

Cigarette.

A spy, caught off guard taking a smoke. There were probably other henchmen with him, scattered out doing who knows what. Gary kicked himself for being away from the compound when he was so desperately needed. "I should never have let a woman get in the way of doing my job. What would Brock say?" he thought to himself.

Gary look a quick inventory of himself. Black pants were good. The white polo short not so much. He pulled that off, thinking that his flesh, flabby and white as it was, as still a darker, less reflective hue than the shirt. He pulled off his shoes so he's had a better feel for the ground and avoid stepping on any twigs. He popped his twin knives out of their sleeves. He's taken them off while seeing Kim, and had felt somewhat naked without them. He'd strapped them back on as soon as he'd left her.

Carefully Gary crawled along the base of the building. Whenever the spy raised his cigarette to his face to inhale Gary would leap up and run forward a few yards before dropping silently back to the ground. He figured that with the tip of the cigarette glowing so brightly the spy would not be able to see anything off in the distance.

In only a couple minutes he had reached the edge of the entranceway. A low wall had been built around a small patio. It was knee high and and about as wide, made of field stone and cement. It looked an inviting place to sit. Gary dropping just behind it, panting as silently as he could, while listening for any signs of alarm. It was a little odd that no where could he hear either a sound of alarm or of people scurrying about in the darkness. Well, no matter.

He took a final breath and leaped up with a blood-curdling scream, throwing himself on top the spy, grasping for the head as the fell to the pavement. He fumbled around for a moment to find the head and grasp it for a final, fatal twist, his other hand over the spy's mouth to prevent him from calling out an alarm.

And as suddenly he stopped, letting go of his victim with an apology. As he had jumped up the victim had taken a breath of smoke and in the hot light from the cigarette Gary had seem who his spy was. Triana.

"What the hell?" she hissed, apparently as anxious as he was to avoid raising an alarm.

"I thought you were some henchman come to kill the Ventures. I was just doing my job. I didn't mean to hurt you."

"God! I can't sit out here having a smoke without you going all Brock Samson on me!"

"Weren't you supposed to have gone back to your mother's by now?"

"I decided to stay over for a few more days."

Gary helped her up off the ground. She promptly sat down on the low wall, stretched her back before looking for the cigarette she had been smoking. It had gone out and she couldn't find it in the darkness. She fumbled in the pocket of her skirt and found a crumpled packet. She straightened it out and peer inside before taking one out. She fished out a butane lighter from the pocket, fired up the stick and took a long drag on it.

"Are you going to be doing this all the time I'm here?" she asked.

"Are you going to be smoking out here every night?"

"Not if you're going to jump me every time."

"When did you start smoking?"

The girl looked at Gary, brushed her hair back behind her ear and sighed. "Why do you care?"

"Nasty habit. My mom smokes. She inhales. She coughs. When she's done coughing she takes another hit, and starts coughing all over again. I'd hate to see you like that."

"Thanks for your concern. Look, is it going to be OK if I smoke out here?"

"Why not smoke inside... oh, your father."

"Yeah, he doesn't know I smoke and would raise seven different kinds of cow if he ever found out."

"So why do you do it?"

"After moving in with my mother things got a little - tense. Her boyfriend, the Outrider, is a bit of a dick. Always on my case about curfews, doing my homework, who I go out to see. He even wants me to call him 'dad' but I told him no way. My dad is very much alive and even if he wasn't I'd still never call him that. Anyway shortly after that I discovered that going out and having a smoke did a lot to calm my nerves."

"I can see why you smoke over there, but why over here?"

Triana took another drag on his cigarette and sighed. "I love my dad. I really do, but sometimes... "

"Gets on your nerves."

"Uh-huh. I want to go into to town and see some of my old friends, go out cruising the mall, and stuff but he's got an itinerary for every second of every day I'm here. We had a big fight over it at supper. So I came out here to cool off."

"I never had a father," Gary said, somewhat uncomfortably.

"Literally, or -"

"Of course I had a father," Gary looked up indignantly. "he just left when I was two or three. I don't remember a thing about him. You honestly thought I didn't have a father?"

"There's a lot of weird stuff in magic. Getting born without a father, or somethings a mother isn't the strangest thing I've learned so far."

"What is the strangest thing you've learned?" Gary asked, the nerd rising to the surface for a moment.

"You don't want to know. I'm sorry I do know. There are things about the Other Realm that would curdle your blood. I know it did mine. I've been rethinking that whole magic thing. I don't think it's the future I want for me."

"Why did you start on it if you don't like it?"

"It's a long story." Triana dug around in the crumpled packet and pulled out half a cigarette. "Damn. You owe me for jumping on me tonight, so the next time you're in town I want you to pick me up some cigarettes, OK?" She tossed the packet at Gary. "Better make it a carton I'm thinking of staying here for a week."

He caught the packet in the air and set it down on the wall they were sitting on. "I jumped on you in the line of duty. What makes you think I owe you any cigarettes for that."

"You said duty."

"Of course I said 'duty' I -" He paused. "Wow! I've changed. I used to be the one who laughed whenever someone said 'duty.' Anyway - I'm head of security now so I have to check out anything suspicious. You shouldn't have been out here smoking. It's really your own damn fault."

"Yeah, right. Say, what happened to that fat guy who was the boys' bodyguard. Had that weird tattoo on his face."

"Sgt. Hatred? He reconciled with his wife, Princess Tinyfeet. You saw her, she as at the prom last month. We don't exactly know where he is anymore. He disappeared later that night, left all his medication behind. He could be on a second honeymoon or he could be planning to resume arching Dr. Venture.

""I left early. Dean was being a dick - again. Sounds like I missed the best part of the party. What else happened?"

"Well, the escorts Doc hired turned out to be assassins from Molotov Cocktease, then they turned into hideous bug-monster. Then Brock returned and - well, I'm surprised the hanger cleaned up as well as it did. There was blood and bug-parts everywhere."

"So why isn't Samson back bodyguarding the boys? I always had the impression that he genuinely liked them. I don't know why. I mean, they are The Venture Brothers..."

"There's a lot of OSI politics involved. Brock's been busy putting out fires. So he sent me to take his place. At least for a while."

"All the more reason for you to pick me up some cigarettes. I saw you driving off in Samson's car tonight. I'm pretty sure Brock never gave you permission to drive it. You get me some cigarettes and I won't tell Brock about it.

"Brock would totally understand," Gary insisted. "I was going out to see a girl."

"You've been here one-two days and you've got a girlfriend?"

"I meet her at the bar night before last. We totally hit it off. It was like love at first sight. - Or at least lust."

"I don't want to hear any more. So you're dating some bimbo from the strip club. What an accomplishment."

"She's not a stripper!"

"Then what was she doing in a strip club?"

"Having a drink - like me. It is the only bar in town," Gary reminded her. "You'd like her. She bright, pretty, witty, loves the same movies, like the Three Stooges, only she's a Moe while I like Curly best. And music. We both like T. Rex and Kraftwerks..."

"I haven't heard anyone mention T. Rex in a long time. I had a friend who was big on T. Rex. I was hoping to see her this weekend but I gather she's not in town. And Kraftwerk. She liked that too, all that electronic music."

"See? She's great. And she likes me, she really likes me."

"And all this after just meeting her - what? - twice." Triana had gotten up to leave. She turned around and looked at Gary, vaguely visible from the lights over the entrance to the building Dr. Orpheus had taken over as his residence. There was a quizzical expression on her face.."Why do you look familiar?"

"I was here when you arrived the other day."

"No. It's like I've seen you before that. Only you were different."

"I have been working out."

"Wait a minute, now I know you, you were one of Monarch's henchmen. You were always running around the place hiding whenever the Monarch tried to kill Dr, Venture. You had a partner, tall guy with a deep voice. What are you doing acting like Dr. Venture's bodyguard?"

She backed away and reached for a whistle hung around her neck. Gary leaped up and caught her hand. "It's OK. I've changed. You don't need to blew that whistle. I don't work for the Monarch anymore. I work for Brock Samson. totally!"

"When did all this happen?" Triana asked warily.

"At the prom. I found out that. The Monarch had been using me in some twisted game with his wife so I quit. I'd had enough of him messing with me. So I left and joined the OSI. They sent me here because they thought I could relate to the boys better."

"No one could relate to the boys..." Triana groused.

"But I am legit. I even have a tape from Brock explaining this. It's in my room if you want to come listen to it?"

"I'll ... stay here." She sat down with a long sigh. "Stuff just gets more messed up all the time. Good guys turn evil, evil guys turn good. Nothing stays the same."

"Would you want it to?" Gary asked, a question he'd often wondered himself.

Triana actually thought about it. "Change is good. I guess I just wish it didn't happen so often around here." She felt in her pocket for another cigarette, remembered she was out and stood up. "Since I don't have anything to smoke I may as well go back inside."

Gary stood up, a habit his mother had drilled into him about what to do when a lady was leaving. He must have looked expectant because Triana added, "I - don't do hugs. But it was nice meeting you Gary. It was nice having someone to talk to who wasn't my dad or - The Venture Brothers."

"I'll try not to jump on you again," Gary offered.

"Yeah, that would be good." With a smile and a wave of her fingers Triana left. Gary finished a circuit of the compound and called it a night as well.