"Hey, Gary, it's me," Triana Orpheus called from the edge of the open door to the guard shack Gary called home.

"He looked up from what he was doing and nodded to the purple-haired girl. "What's up?"

"I wondered if I could - is that a gun?" the girl stopped speaking with a little shudder.

"Technically yes, but it's just a little .22 automatic. it hardly counts as one."

"I'm sorry, I just never liked being around guns," Triana had a shopping bag in her hand, which she sat down on the counter near her. The guard shack was small, square, with a large window looking down onto the highway running in front of Venture Enterprises. To one side were a large collection of monitors connected to remote camera mounted around the compound. There was a recliner positioned in front of the monitors. But around the rest of the small room were floor mounted cabinets filled with a mixture of large and small drawers and swing-out doors for storage spaces. A counter covered the cabinets. There counter was cluttered with stuff all long the length of three walls. Gary had cleared a small space which he lined with old newspapers where he was cleaning and oiling a small gun.

Triana was overcoming her initial revulsion and looked over the burly security officer's shoulder at the gun laid out there. "Why did you say this hardly counts as a gun?" she asked.

"It's a .22 short, barely has any stopping power. It's Ok for squirrels and such but if you're trying to bring a man down you need something bigger, a .38 or a .45."

"You mean it won't hurt anybody?" Triana wondered.

"Eh! I've killed a guy with a Nerf gun," Gary said, then regretted it as it caused Triana to step back and pale. "Sorry. Ijust meant that anything can be lethal is used the right way. Sure, getting shot with a .22 is going to hurt a lot, and you're going to bleed, a lot, but unless you get shot in a vital area it's not going to slow down a very determined man."

"Then why do you have it, if it's so ..."

"Non-lethal?" Gary supplied. "Intimidation. "Most people don't realize how weak a .22 is. They just see a gun being pointed at them and think they're going to die. That's really all I need it for." As he was speaking he was fitting parts back together. In seconds he had the automatic re-assembled. he bent over and slipped into the harness clipped to his ankle.

Grabbing a shop towel he began wiping his hands. "So what can I do for you?" he asked.

"I was hoping I could stash this here until I come back next month." she said touching the bag she'd set on the counter.

Gary pulled the bag over and peered into it. Shaking his head he said, "Going home to your mom, huh. That's a lot of cigarettes."

"I don't want Dad finding them while I'm back at school."

"You know, if this were pot I'm be honored to hold it for you, but cigarettes... And you're buying them in cartons now..."

"I met this guy... "

"Selling out of the back of his trunk,"

"Yeah, How did you know?"" Triana seemed surprised that Gary knew about that.

The bodyguard took one of the cartons out of the bag and turned it around in his hands, inspecting it. "No state excise stamp," he noted.

"What?" Triana looked confused.

"It's illegal to sell cigarettes in this state that don't have an excise stamp on them, shows that the tax has been paid. Tax is like three-four dollars a pack now. Ten packs in a carton that comes to, what, a thirty dollar discount?"

"Twenty," Triana replied slowly realizing she'd been ripped off.

"What were you going to do if I said 'no'?"

"Come on, Gary, be a pal."

"I just hate having you turn out like my mother," Gary said. "She smokes constantly, looks like she's 90 and sound like she's a thousand. That's all." Ten years as a henchman had left Gary with little ability to express any kind of affection aside from the butt-slapping, towel-snapping jock kind. He wanted to say 'I care about you' but henchmen aren't allowed to care about others. It had been easy telling Kim that he loved her because that was a simple and direct emotion, but his feeling about the sorcerer's daughter were too subtle.

Gary got up and opened a few drawers until he found an empty one and stuffed the bag of cigarettes, bag and all, into the drawer.

"Have you told Dean that you're going back?" he asked.

Triana nodded.

"How did he take it?"

"With a lot of crying and whining."

"You did mention that you would be coming back in a month?"

"In one ear and out the other."

"Look - uh - I've kind of got you a little going away present." Gary opened a draw near him and pulled out a small pharmacy bag and handed it to the girl.

"You shouldn't have," she began as she opened the bag and pulled out the small box inside. "What the hell kind of crap is this!" she exploded, throwing the box at Gary. "Nicoderm patches? OK, I smoke, maybe I smoke more than you'd like but it's my life and I'll do whatever I want with it. I don't need you - mother - to tell me what to do."

She spun on her heels to stalk away but he caught one of her arms with a lightning like movement. "Triana listen to me," he said.

"Let go of me," she squawked at the same time.

Finding that she couldn't even more his arm at the moment Triana stopped struggling but she was visibly seething.

"I'm not trying to tell you how to live your life. That wasn't what this was all about." Gary had picked up the box of nicotine abatement patches and put it in her hand, closing her fingers around it. "But I know something about nicotine addiction. Do you honestly think you can go back to your mother's house and stop smoking cold turkey, do you? I've seen guys in the Cocoon try to stop smoking. They needed help. You're going to need help."

Triana looked at the box shoved into her hand. "So this isn't some kind of gross joke on your part?"

"I'll save the gross jokes for when you come back. Maybe leave a picture of a smoker's lung in one of the packs," Gary said lightly, trying to smile.

Triana wasn't mollified. "Now I've got something else to hide. What if my mom finds these? Then what?"

"Hide them someplace where she won't look, an old tampon box or something. Nobody looks in there, it's too private."

"How do you know about stuff like that?" Triana wanted to know.

"Years as Dr. Girlfriend's errand boy for all her feminine hygiene needs. I know way too much about those things. Oh, and if you do use those things, be sure to get rid of the old patches so they won't get found."

"Oh, yeah. Good idea," she said. There was an awkward silence. "You know what Dean told me last night," she said to be saying something. "I made him come with me to buy new stocking, thinking to humiliate him a little."

"That's not going to work," Gary said, "the boy's incapable of being embarrassed by stuff he doesn't understand," then waited for her to go on with her story.

"Anyway he was saying that his friend, that girl, Gloria? has been trying to talk him into putting on a convention for those books he reads all the time, Giant Boy Detective. Can you imagine that. Who would want to come to a convention about an old boy's book series that no one reads anymore."

Gary, who had a longer and more personal contact with nerds, collectors and fans, smiled kindly. "You never know. If the books are still in print someone must be reading them."

"I guess, but can you imagine Dean organizing anything, let alone a convention?" She stopped and thought about how Hank and Dean had worked together the day before to get out of the pit they'd fallen into. She realized that Dean had a lot more resolve then she generally gave him credit for. "Well, whatever," she added, then realizing that there was nothing more to say, pushed up from the counter she had been leaning against. "I'll let you get back to your work," she said, picking up the box of nicotine patches. "Thanks for the - ah - going away gift, I guess. The Outrider offered to pick me up tomorrow but I decided to catch a bus instead." impulsively she leaned over and kissed Gary on the cheek, then skipped to the door. She paused there to add, "If you hear anything from Kim be sure to call me."

"You'll be the first. And vice verse, alright?"

""Right." She smiled and for once looked happy. She ducked out the door.

"Gary!" she called a second later. "You'd better come here!"

As he stepped out the door she pointed to the moon rising in the North. Only it wasn't the Moon, it was the Cocoon floating eerily in the sky. Lights circled the lower portion of the Cocoon where the propulsion motors were located.

"What are we going to do?" Triana breathed.

" 'We' aren't going to do anything. You are going straight to your father's residence and button down. I'm gong to alert the Ventures then deal with this," Gary told her.

"But I can help. You can't take on the whole Cocoon by yourself."

"No, go! If you stay here and fight the Monarch you will be fighting the Monarch for the rest of your life. You help tonight and you're declaring yourself part of these games, and there's no getting out once you're in. Go, keep your head down. Stay out of it. They will respect that. You have enough to deal with being a magic user. You said so yourself. Don't get mixed up with the Guild as well."

"But you'll be killed!"

Gary was silent for a moment. That was something he had tried not to think about. The odds of him taking out a full-scale assault on the Ventures was pretty slim. But what could he do? He was a henchman. A henchman for the OSI, maybe, but still one of the little people whose lives didn't matter in the greater scheme of things. Facing the real possibility of dying, he wasn't thrilled by the idea but he didn't know what else he could do. And he couldn't tell Triana how he felt because then she'd insist on staying. Even though she wasn't part of his job he was as determined to keep her alive as he was the Ventures.

"That's not your concern," he said roughly, "Now get the hell out of here!" he shoved her hard towards her father's residence. She stumbled, nearly fell, scrambled back on her feet and looked back at the bodyguard. he was already back in the guard shack. The lights were off. He was doing whatever it was he had to. She suddenly realized that for all the fun they had had together, the easy comradery all this time, she had never been a part of his world, this world. With an oath she scrambled across the lawns of the Venture Compound to the building her father called home.

[]

Gary dashed back into the guard shack and pick up his "Little Slugger" baseball bat and a square of fine mesh cloth before jogging towards the main buildings of the Venture compound. As he race he wondered if Kim would have been as concerned about his potential death as Triana had been. He would like think so, but maybe she was already too far into the game of heroes and villains, too immured to people she knew dying?

He came up to the outside door to the small lab that fronted the exit to the Panic Room. The door was smashed to pieces. It had been destroyed during his fight with Kim when she was trying to kill Hank Venture. He should have fixed it before this but it reminded him too much of his girlfriend, the room beyond was a shambles, too, large splotches of blood still lay on the floor, some of it his, most of it hers. And of course the door to the panic room was broken, too. All things he should have fixed before this if he hadn't been blubbering about his lost love. Sizing up the situation he decided to make his stand just inside the outer door. That would still limit the number of minions who could come at him at one time.

Noise in the Panic Room made him look up. Hank and Dean were lifting the Panic Room door off the floor and shoving it into the doorway. It wedged against the door frame. They started piling any sort of crap they could find in the room against the door to prevent the Monarch's minions for breaking through. With luck it might hold for ten or fifteen minutes. Dr. Venture was behind the boys, giving directions but not bothering to lift anything himself. Seeing Gary looking at them Dr. Venture pointed his finger at the bodyguard and shouted "I expect to you to fix this door first thing in the morning!"

"If there is a morning," Gary thought to himself, turned around and went outside. This might be a better idea, he decided. The minion still could only come at him from in front and then he's have the lab to retreat to when their numbers got too high. Oh, to be a Jedi now, with mind powers and a real, working lightsaber.

In the distance he saw the Cocoon near the ground. A door opened in its side and dozens of minions leaped out into the air, gliding to the ground on their butterfly wings. A maneuver he taught them when he had been General 21, running the Cocoon under the Monarch's direction. The discipline wasn't as sharp as it could have been but he wasn't there anymore to keep the henchmen in line.

Someone remaining in the open door fired a number of flares into the sky, lighting the grounds ahead of ther minions. One of the flares malfunctioned, spinning off to the right and smacking into the side of the hanger for the X-1. It exploded with a dull boom and a large splash of fire on the side of the building. "Oh, great," Gary thought, something else I'll have to fix in the morning," forgetting for the moment that come morning he probably wouldn't be around to fix anything.

Waiting for them to race across the grounds from the Cocoon to where he awaited them was the longest two minutes in his life. He extended his knife-claws, flexed his shoulders to loosen the muscles and took practice swings with the bat.

The henchmen stopped about fifty feet from where Gary stood and unslung their dart guns from their shoulders. The darts were coated with an anesthetic drug that would knock out whose got pricked by the point. As they lined up to shoot at the bodyguard Gary shook out the sheet of fabric he had brought from the guard shack. He flung it in front of him as the first salvo of darts arrived. The projectiles got tangled in the mesh of the heavy fabric. Gary was taking a risk since his arm was still exposed holding up the fabric but it seemed safe enough since he expected them all to be aiming for his chest.

The cloth shuddered and twitched for a bit. As it settled down he heard a repeated roar from the henchmen, and flung away the sheet. The henchmen were charging him. He laid out the first few with the bat. A stinging backblow that left them flopping in their tracks. The next couple guys got a bellyful of steel from his extendo-claws. The action got a little more confused after that. The front row of minions were being forced forward by those in the back. It became hard to swing his bat, there was no room. He dropped it at last and began slashing with his other extendo-knife.

As the press got worse, Gary took a step back, placing himself in the empty door frame. he had less mobility there but the minions were even more limited. For a couple minutes he held his ground there. He wished he had his bat again since he now had room to swing it again, but there was no chance of retrieving it.

He was beginning to think he might actually survive the assault but he heard someone sing out "Head's up!" And over the heads of the minions in front of him sailed one of the corpses he had left while fighting outside. It hurtled right at him, coming too fast for him to dodge.

He sprang to the side, staying out from under the corpse's dead weight but that opened up the doorway and a stream of minion poured through. Gary was still struggling to his feet when someone grabbed his arm and held on to it tightly. He was trying to shake them off when another minion landed on his other arm. He screamed since he landed first on the extendo-knife, but his body immobilized that arm as well. Gary was so busy trying to get one or the other arms free that he never saw the boot coming that connected with his chin and exploded his head with flashes of light and extreme pain. A boot to the stomach and another to the kidneys left his limp, barely conscious. He head a voice order, "tie him up. The boss wants to deal with him special. You four, stay here and don't let the Ventures get out of their cage. We've got them right where the boss wants them!" The voice, Gary was guessing it was 15, the new commander of the minion, paused to laugh. No one else joined in. He could feel his arms being jerked behind his back and ropes twisted around them. Some arms tried to pick him up. he kicked out with his feet, just out of sheer cussedness, and got dropped to the concrete floor for his efforts. His head bounced off the cement and he lost consciousness.

[]

"Wake up and face the wrath of your lord and master," a voice said just before someone slapped him hard in the face. Gary opened a puffy eye. The other was already swollen shut.

Gary wanted to say something cutting and pithy but found himself too busy swallowing the blood in his mouth. And the moment passed.

"No one quits the Monarch and gets away with it!" The Monarch declared. He poised to slap Gary again in the face but seeing his former henchman staring him in the face desisted. "Soon, all too soon, you will feel the agony, the terror, the sheer of horror of your wickedness," the monarch declared instead, and continued with a long and rambling tirade.

"Just kill me and get it over with," Gary finally interrupted. "If I have to listen to your whining for another minutes I think my head is going to explode. God, how I hate your rants. They're so...stupid. You're so stupid. You have all this money and all you can think about is killing some has-been scientist. And you can't even do that! You're pathetic."

"Pathetic am I?" the Monarch screamed. "I'll show you pathetic!" He pointed his wrist at the former henchman but before he could unleash a fatal dart from his wrist cuff, his wife spoke from her throne, "wait!"

"What?" the Monarch asked petulantly.

"Can't you see, he's trying to goad you into killing him quickly. A traitor like 21 should be killed slowly, painfully, as an object lesson to the other minions."

Gary focused his one working eye on the Queen of the Cocoon. Her face was twisted in disgust and anger. Despite the fact that it was her sexual teasing and innuendo that had broken his heart and caused him to break away from the Monarch, Gary often had the thought that she had real feeling for him. But now, tonight, it did not look as if she had any thought except for the destruction of one Gary Fuu.

"Long and slow, yes!" the Monarch gloated. Then looked puzzled as he tried to think of an sufficiently painful form of death.

Gary looked around. He was in the throne room of the Cocoon. he must have been dragged here while unconscious. His arms were tied behind his back but his feet were free. Minions on either side were holding on to his tied arms. Another two were standing next to him with dart guns at the ready. Another six or eight minions were scattered around the large room as well as the dozen or so techs working the controls at the moment. Even if he could throw off the guards holding him it didn't seem at all likely that he could escape.

Still, a man could try. The Monarch had started pacing as he considered one idea after another. Some, like slow roasting over a fire even the Guild banned while others just seemed insufficiently cruel. But as he paced the minion's eyes followed him. By training they were ever attentive to his needs. The more attention they paid to the Monarch the less they paid to him. He waited until the Monarch had walked again to the far end of the room, then, just before he turned around Gary lunged to one side. He forced the minion on that side to stagger, a sharp twist and he wrested himself out of the man's grasp. The minion on his other arm was trying to pull him back into place, Gary let the man pull, then added his own strength, head-butting the guy as they closed in. Lightning seared through his head with the impact. Don't do that again, he told himself. But the minion went down. He swept one leg out and tripped one of the minions holding a dart gun. As he went down, he bumped into the other minion, slicing at him with the extendo-knives still strapped to his arms bounded behind his back.

The Monarch was shouting commands to the remaining minion. Dr. Mrs The Monarch had gotten out of her seat and stepped down a tier or two looking concerned. She almost never fought in fights like these but Gary knew she was a formidable opponent.

The other minions were bunched by the door. Gary plowed into them like a bowling ball,sending them flying. His size, bulk and conditioning simply overwhelmed their numbers. He burst through the doors into the corridor outside the throne room and started for the main hatch. He had to get to it before the Monarch thought to tell the minions there to close the door. At the same time he was looking for something to cut loose the ropes binding him, a knife or a shard of glass, even a torn bit of metal might have worked but none presented themselves.

From the corridor he exploded into the staging area by the main hatch. The room was empty and no one seemed to operating the controls to close the door. His heart leaped at the thought that he would be able to survive this.

"Hey!" someone behind him shouted. And a heavy weight fell on his back. Gary tucked into a roll as the added weight carried him to the floor, He hoped that he could roll free of this new complication but that minion clung to him tenaciously. Without his arms to help him Gary was unable to put up much of a fight. The door, the ramp to the ground was so tantalizingly close. He kept humping his way closer to the door, dragging the minion with him but he just wasn't making enough progress. For a moment he was rolled on his back and drew his knee up into a kick that finally pushed the man off but as Gary scrambled to his feet, the door from the corridor burst open and a full dozen minion piled through. He was nearly to the ramp when they fell upon him and dragged him down. Someone started beating his head on the floor and Gary lost interest in his surroundings.