"Throw a bucket of water on him," he heard Dr. Mrs. the Monarch say as he slowly regained consciousness. A moment later a small amount of ice-cold glass splashed on his face.

"I said a bucket!" Dr. Mrs. the Monarch said, "Not a glass of water."

Gary shook his head, causing everything around him to swirl and blur. "It's OK," he mumbled. His other eye was starting to close but he could still see well enough to tell that he had been returned to the throne room. Once again held in place by two minions holding his arms.

"Have fun?" The Monarch asked from near his left. He heaved his head in that direction, simply turning it was too much of a challenge. Gary was tempted to reply but found his mouth, his tongue, his lips so bruised and swollen that he doubted his ability to speak at all.

"This!" the Monarch proclaimed, holding up a syringe, "shall be your doom!" He laughed. "Say hello to your good friend Dr. Curare! If I've got my dosages right this will leave you living and breathing but unable to move. You will have a ringside seat on my revenge on Dr. Venture and his yapping sons, and then slowly you will starve to death, unable to eat or drink even thought you will be surrounded with fresh food every day of the rest of your short but miserable life! That will be the penalty for deserting your master!"

The Monarch plunged the needle of the syringe into the vial of curare and carefully withdrew a small volume. He handed off the vial to a minion and slowly pressed the plunger until a single drop appeared at the tip of the needle.

"Any final words you'd like to share while you still have the to ability to speak?"

Gary struggled against the two minions but they were holding on too tightly. With his hands bound behind him, his leverage was limited. He was too focused on avoiding the needle to come up with any final epitaph. As the Monarch advanced on him Gary tried to step back, forcing the minions to retreat slightly.

"Bare his arm," the Monarch ordered the minion holding the vial. The minion passed the vial to another minion before reaching into pocket to pull out a knife and cut away part of Gary's left sleeve.

"Swab" the Monarch continued.

The minion put the knife away, took out an alcohol swab and tore the packet open, handing the moist gauze to the Monarch.

"I don't know why I bother," the Monarch said conversationally, as he wiped down an area of Gary's arm. "Here I am about to give you an inject that will kill you eventually, and I'm worried that you might get an infection. Well, life is full of pointless gestures." He gripped Gary's arm, steadying it. "Hold him tight," he told the minions.

And then the door behind them crashed open. "Master! I home!"

"What the hell is that thing?" The Monarch shouted. "Kill it! kill it!"

Venturestein lurched into the room, brushed past the henchmen milling around the door and stumbled towards the Monarch. Henchmen fired round after round of their medicated darts at the mismatched creature, covering his chest with yellow tufts. They waited for him to fall but he just kept on moving. The Monarch took a step or two back as the creature approached, the syringe in his hand forgotten.

Texas threw his long arms around the Monarch and cried, "Home! At last - home!"

"Get it off! Get it off! Get it off" the Monarch screamed, trying to wrench himself free of the creature's embrace. Gary hoped that the men holding him would be the first to respond but they stood fast, holding him tight. The flanking men slung their dart guns over their shoulders and leaped to the Monarch's aid, tearing at the resurrected minion, only to be thrown back by a blow from the creature's arm. One man fell against the minion holding the vial of curare, knocking him over. The little glass vial hit the floor with a sharp crack, shattering, spilling the lethal fluid in a small puddle which he then fell into. The minion scrambled to get out of the liquid but stopped when he felt something sharp jabbed into his cheek. He pulled out a sliver of the bottle and looked at it with horrified eyes. "Oh Shi-" he began but the curare was already having an effect and his scream endings with a drawn out hiss like a deflating tire. He stopped moving, not necessarily dead, but so paralyzed that death would come soon and as a relief.

A couple more henchmen had to join in before finally they could wrest the creature away from the Monarch.

"Ah-h-h! He drooled on me!" the Monarch shouted in disgust. "I feel horribly slimed." He brushed at his costume then wrinkled his long, thin nose. "Minions! Throw that thing in the brig. I'll deal with it when I've had a chance to clean up." He turned to go and noticed Gary still bound and being held the two minions. "Throw him in with the monster. Maybe it will tear him to shreds and save me the trouble!" The Monarch turned and stalked from the room.

Dr. Mrs. The Monarch, co-ruler of the Cocoon since her marriage to the Monarch had been sitting quietly through all this, letting her husband have his way. As the Monarch left she stood up, but only to issue commands. "Lock those two away. Move it! We still have a lot to do tonight!"

[]

The brig was a small room down the corridor outside the throne room. It was about twelve feet by twelve feet and nine feet high. There were no fixtures or furnishings in the room, but it had a stout lock on the door accessible only from the outside. Like most of the Cocoon, the floor, walls and ceilings were made from light metal sheets riveted to the Cocoon's metal framework. Gary tripped over his feet as he was thrown into the room and skidded across the floor before piling up against the far wall. His head hit with a crack that brought more pain to the burly former minion. When his head cleared a few moments later he rolled around until he was more or less sitting up. Texas stood looking at the closed door with a confused expression on his face.

"I don't think they like us," Gary said.

"Why mad us?" the resurrected man rumbled. "I just want come home?"

"Like I said, Texas, this isn't your home anymore. They don't recognize you." Gary was struggling with the rope tying his hands together. He couldn't quite get his fingers on it, or bring one of his extendo-claws around. He was surprised that they hadn't removed the retractable knives. Perhaps the minions simply hadn't had time to get around to that, or maybe they were afraid to get close enough to their former comrade to take them off.

After a bit he gave up and rested. Looking at Texas, who was trying to push the door open, he was struck by the carpet of anesthetizing darts in the creature's chest. "Texas," he inquired, "are you feeling at all weak or tired, maybe a little sleepy?"

The misshapen man looked down at the darts. "They gave me butterflies," he told Gary proudly.

"Really?" Then seeing the syringe meant for him sticking out of Texas' chest as well, he asked, "No feeling of numbness, stiffness, no ..." he couldn't think of a third thing to ask.

"No."

Gary had no idea what Dr. Venture had done to resurrect Venturestein but apparently it had left him immune to even massive amounts of poisons.

"Hey, Texas," he called, "Can you untie these ropes?"

The creature walked behind Gary and started fumbling with the ropes tying his hands together. Gary couldn't tell what Venturestein was doing but after a bit he got the feeling that rope-untying was among the skills lost when Texas had first died. He suddenly started tugging at the ropes, as if he were trying to break them. Pain lanced up Gary's arm as the ropes bit into his flesh. "Hey, wait! Wait! Wait!" he hollered "Those ropes are made of nylon. They're not going to break!" but the creature just kept on pulling on the cords. Just as Gary was sure his hands were going to be torn from his arms there was a pop and his hands fell free.

Relief as being free was countered by an immense wave of pain that rose up his arms, spread across his shoulders and took his breath away. He tried flexing his arms, opening and closing his hands but they, at most, twitched.

After what seemed like an eternity but was probably only a minute at most, he tried flexing his hands again and found them - weakly - responding. Painfully, he pushed himself to his feet and touched the retraction button on his extendo-claws, pulling them back into their sheaths and out of the way of his hands. With one hand pressed against the wall for support, Gary took a circuit of their prison. By the time he had finished the short trip he was beginning to feel better. He brushed the blood away from his swollen eye and found that he could open it a little, getting him binocular vision again, somewhat.

They couldn't stay here. The Monarch would be done changing clothes soon. Even if he paused to shower off the sweat from Texas if wouldn't be that long before he was back with some new way of killing them. And what had Dr. Mrs. the Monarch sent off the minions to do while he was away?

Gary leaned against the wall while trying to remember every thing he could about the brig. It would take a can opener to get to the lock from inside the brig, and even then there were probably guards posted outside the door. So even if they could get the door open they wouldn't be able to get far. If they had a can opener.

Gary flicked one if his extendo-claws out and looked at it. It was made of the best hardened knife steel, razor sharp, with a needle point. He did have a can-opener of sorts. Maybe luck was turning their way. And then he remembered something else. The floor was made of heavy sheets of steel so it could support the weight of the equipment stacked on it. The walls were of a lighter gauge. Stout enough to resist any concerted effort by prisoners to break through. But the ceiling was relatively thin because it was thought to be too high for anyone to get at.

"Give me a boost up," he told the patchwork man.

He expected to climb up onto Texas's shoulders but the patchwork man laced his fingers together and lifted Gary to the ceiling with no visible sign of effort. He tapped around for a moment to find where the girders were, then jabbed his claw into the void between them. Venturestein staggered for a moment at the impact but the knife went through. Gary pulled down and along with his blade, cutting the sheet metal apart. It was only a few inches but he repeated the sawing motion again and again until he he an X-shaped cut big enough to get his big shoulders through. He bent back the metal, lifted his arms through and pulled himself up into the crawlspace between floors. He stretched out on the floor and held his arm down for Texas.

The resurrected minion looked up at him with confusion. "I home," he insisted.

"This isn't your home anymore. The Venture Compound is your new home. These people are trying to kill you!"

"Home?" Texas repeated.

"Get up here!" Gary ordered using a bit of the command voice he had developed as "General 21." That seemed to decide the matter, Texas took hold of Gary's hand and pulled himself into the crawlspace as well.

"This way," Gary said, leading the way. The crawlspace was a three foot high interfloor area of pipes and wires carrying air, water and electricity around the Cocoon. There were small water service lines, larger drains, bulky air ducts, bundles of wire and the occasional pump, reservoir or transformer. The pipes and ducts tended to be laid out in a formal grid. Gary lead them down on alley between pipes, crawled over some at a point he guessed at, then down another alleyway. Eventually they came to a curved wall blocking the way. Set into the wall was a hatch, locked with a wheeled clamp and gasketed around the rim. Gary turned the wheel and pulled the hatch back. He looked outside for a moment then pulled his head back in.

"This is a service port for working on the outside of the Cocoon," he explained. We're about twenty feet above the ground. Hang on the bottom of the hatch and let yourself down as far as you can before dropping. Remember to tuck into a roll when you land to break your fall." He crawled through the hatch, feet first, hands gripping the bottom edge of the hatch. He let go with a cry of "shit," landing a second later with a painful grunt.

"Texas, come on," he ordered, and the ex-minion wiggled through the hatch and landed next to him. Gary started jogging towards the main building. Venturestein followed behind.

[]

"Nuts!" Gary growled as he jogged in through the broken outside door near the Panic Room. He could see in a glance that the unrepaired door to the Panic Room had been pushed in. The piles of stuff seeking to keep the door in place have been pushed aside as well. There was no one in the Panic Room, just a lot of disorder, a few drops of blood. Gary suddenly realized what Dr. Mrs. The monarch had meant when she had told the minions there was still work to do. Work as in digging out the Ventures and dragging them off to the Cocoon!

And he had just gotten out of the place alive. Now he would have to go back in and try to free the old man and the boys. "You," he said, pointing at Venturestein, "Stay. I need you to - ah - defend the home front. Don't let anyone come in here, Ok?"

"'kay," the patchwork man replied.

Gary started jogging, not to the Cocoon but to his guard shack.

The first thing he did was swallow a handful of aspirin and wrap a cold towel around his swollen eye. He was going to need all the vision he could get out of it if he hoped to survive this assault on the Cocoon. He went around opening cabinet doors until he found the box of fireworks he wanted. The limitations imposed on him by the OSI and Dr. Venture's limited budget meant he would have to improvise weaponry.

He sorted through the box, finding a half-dozen M-80s and another half-dozen smoke bombs. He grabbed up a handful of spinners and stuck a punk stick behind his ear. Before distributing the fireworks into various pants pockets he carefully trimmed the fuses on the fireworks to give him at most a one second lead time before the thing exploded. There was a risk of blowing his hand off doing that but he needed fireworks that would go off almost as soon as he lit them.

He was going through the door when he remembered one thing more and went back to get it, a small collapsible grapple and a length of clothesline. He didn't have time to cover his face and hands in carbon black. He would just have to take the chance that a sentry might spot his white face running across the field.

Luck was with him as he got to the base of the Cocoon without any alarms being set off. He crept around the side until he found the open hatch there he and Texas had escape only moments before. He threw the grapple through the open hatch, getting a secure bite with the second cast. He had knotted the clothesline every four feet and he needed each and every knot to hold on to as he hoisted himself up to the work hatch. He lay panting for breath for a moment than forced himself to move on.

Gary moved around the pipes and wires of the crawl space until he reached a space that, if he remembered the layout of the Cocoon correctly, was directly over a restroom next to the throne room. He extended one of his knives and jabbed through the sheet metal covering the ceiling. He had a lot more leverage up here and quickly ripped open a seam in the metal large enough for him to drop through. He dropped to the floor, grateful that no one had had to visit the "little boy's room" while he was breaking in.

He pushed open the door a crack and looked around. No one was there except for one henchman at the communications desk. The one desk that was always manned no matter what else was happening n the Cocoon. Gary wondered where everyone had gone. If it had stripped the Throne room of the usual dozen men at the consoles it must be a Cocoon wide event, something like the Monarch slowly and finally killing the Ventures. But where?

Gary slipped through the door and quietly snuck up on the minion at the communications desk. The first the man knew that he wasn't alone was when a sharp steel blade encircled his neck and a husky voice whispered in his ear, "where is everybody?"

"Oh, shit," whispered the minion.

"Your stained uniform will be the least of your worried if you don't tell me where the Monarch and the Ventures are," Gary whispered back. He had always wanted to talk like that, soft, deadly, all menace like stuff he'd seem on the movie screen. It was probably just as well that he wasn't distracted by realizing that he was talking the way he had always wanted to.

The minion was only vaguely aware of the circle of wet foulness he was sitting in. The blade under his throat swallowed up every other concern.

"Where?" Gary prompted.

"Number 2 training room," the minion stammered.

"Good," Gary told him. "I'd ask you to keep quiet about this but that would never happen so - look at the birdie!"

With his off hand he pointed away across the Throne room. With his other hand Gary raised another little slugger baseball bat and cracked the minion over the head. He paused long enough to tell if the minion still had a pulse before heading downstairs to the training room.

Gary ran from the Throne Room, pausing only to look out the door for random henchmen before running down the corridor, around the corner of a cross way and finally to a set of stairs to the lower level. He kept expecting to run into someone but the hall, the entire Cocoon seemed empty. Even outside the doors to the training room were no guards posted, not even the random truant minion. Gary wasn't entirely happy about that. It meant a lot more people he would have to fight his way through in order to get the Ventures out of the Monarch's grasp.

He slid one of the doors to the room partly open.

The room stretched a long way to the left, less so the the right. The minions were standing in close formation around the Monarch and Dr. Mrs. The Monarch, their attention focused on the drama in front of them. No one was idly looking around, no one was looking at the doors.

The Ventures were lined up against the far wall. That wall was bullet, dart and flame-proof, as one would expect from a combat training room. Inset all along the wall were rings, used for tying various things up. The two boys and their father were currently tied up there, arms spread out like they were being crucified there, which, in a way, they were.

The Monarch was pacing around in front of them, a portable flamethrower cradled in his arm. Charred splotches littered the wall around their bodies. Parts of their clothes had been burned away, the skin beneath red and blistering. He was ranting something about Art and and Dr. Venture's inability to recognize Art when he heard it. This was punctuated by the occasional blast from the flame-thrower.

"This is all because I laughed at our poetry?" Dr. Venture finally snapped. "You have been harassing me and my sons for twenty years because of something I said about your poems? They were terrible, they deserved mocking," this was directed at Hank and Dean. "He spent his entire time in Creative Writing, writing these overtly erotic poems about butterflies. But he was rhyming things like 'orange' with 'loins'. Loin does not rhyme with orange. It needs a "g" sound in it for the rhyme to work. And that's why he's been trying to kill us for twenty years!"

"Dude," Hank began but his father shushed him. "Look, Monarch, lets just get this over with. Kill me if you want, I don't care any more. But let the boys alone, They've never done anything to you. Let them go and have your fun with me."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you, Venture," the Monarch snarled. "But I intend to torture you to within an inch of your life by killing your sons in front of you!" He shot a random ball of flame in the boys' direction.

Gary realized that he's better get to work, fast!

He withdrew into the hallway and lit the punk stick. He put it between his teeth for easy access then reached into his pockets and pulled out some of his fireworks. He selected four of the smoke bombs and arranged them in his hand for easy throwing. Pushing the door back open, he stepped into the room, took a moment to memorize where everything and everyone was standing, then started lighting and throwing the smoke bombs. Because of the shortened fuses, they started smoking even before they landed on the floor. With the Monarch shouting at the Ventures no one heard them fall. As the smoke started filling the training room Gary brought out three of his M-80s, lit those and tossed them around the room, making sure one landed near the Monarch.

They were off with a deafening bang, the explosions echoing off the metal walls, sending the minions into a panic. Between the smoke from the M-80s and the the smoke bombs it was getting hard to see anything in the room. Hardly before the bang from the M-80 had stopped reverberating in the room Gary was pushing forward through the crowd of minions. He didn't have his knives extended. At the moment he was counting on confusion to make his way easier. If the minions thought he was just another minion blundering around in the darkness they wouldn't react to him pushing through them. But if someone were stabbed that would tell them an enemy was among them.

Even knowing where the wall was, Gary almost ran into it. He slid along it until he found Dean. He extended one of his knives to cut him loose.

"Gary! I'm so glad..." Dean began before the bodyguard shushed him.

"Stay close," he whispered then went on until he found Hank and cut him loose as well.

"It's about time," Dr. Venture snapped while Gary was cutting him loose, but at least he know enough to whisper his complaint.

Grabbing the first hand he could see - Hank's - he hissed "hold hands and follow me." Gary pressed his back to the wall for a moment, visualizing the room that was too smoke filled to see in. He headed off in the direction he remembered the door to be.

The hall beyond was not nearly as smoky as the training room but it was filling with coughing, gasping minions. No one had realized yet that the Cocoon was under attack. Gary pointed towards the stairs leading to the main floor and told them to go. He turned around and reached into his pocket again for the remainder of his fireworks. He lit and tossed his last smoke bomb, lit and tossed a number of round, flat devices, spinners, down the hall. Fire pouring out of them at an angle turned them into swirling, sparking dervishies. As long as the minions didn't know what they were they would be scrambling to avoid the erratically moving sparkers. Gary fled to the stairs, pausing only to toss his last M-80. The crack of it exploding followed him up the stairs.

The Ventures were already out of the Cocoon, running down the gangplank as fast as their scalded limbs could take them. Gary pounded after them, pain lancing through his body with each step. He had never thought of Brock Sampson having to work through pain like this but obviously he had had to. Maybe Sampson's berserker rages, which had always made him such a terrible killing machine, kept him from feeling the pain. Gary wished he could have a little of that right about now

He was half way across the dark lawn, the Ventures already entering their residence, when Gary saw someone stumbling towards him. He could see the silhouette of a large afro and knew that it was Venturestein.

"Hey, Texas, what are you doing?" he asked, catching the other's arm and pulling him to a stop.

"Going home," the resurrected henchman said, as he always did.

"That's not your home," Gary reminded him. "They're trying to kill you." He plucked the syringe with curare out of Texas's chest. "Look, this was filled with poison. They don't know you; they don't recognize you. All they see is some weird looking dude from out of a nightmare! Your home is with me, at the Ventures. We know you. We'll take care of you."

"No. Not home." the creature pulled his hand away from Gary's grasp. He lurched once more towards the Cocoon.

"Texas," Gary cried, running after his friend, grabbing his shoulder. "If you go there, they will kill you!"

Venturestein shook off his hand. He turned an angry face at the Gary. "F-f-f- ... piss off, twenty-one! I'm going home!"

Gary was stunned by Texas's vehemence as well as his suddenly articulated speech. He watched as Venturestein lumbered toward the Cocoon.

There was a whistling sound that ended in a soft thud. Venturestein grunted, then suddenly exploded into flames.

Gary recognized the sparkly green burst of color as coming from a signal-flare. The Monarch stood in the middle of the gangway to the Cocoon fiddling with an oversized pistol. A Very Gun. Texas had walked into the round that had been meant for him!

Texas screamed, loud, agonizing, soul-wrenchingly. Gary took his eyes off the Monarch and looked to see how he could help his friend. He was going to push him to the ground, roll him around to quench the flames but the heat of it was too intense to get close. And there was something wrong about how the resurrected man was burning. People are two-thirds water. They don't actually burn; they're too wet. The charge from the signal-flare should have been all the fire involved, a powder that could be knocked loose while the ignited clothes smothered by rolling on the grass but Venturestein's entire body seemed to be burning. Flames wicked off his arms and head, his shoulders and legs. In the moment that Gary hesitated Venturestein's skin slumped off his body in gruesome sheets. His face began to melt. In another moment Venturestein collapsed to the ground, bones falling freely away from his body. He stopped screaming only because he no longer that lungs.

The stench of his burning flesh was horrendous. Gary almost gagged on it, but rage, rage at the Monarch, filled his mind to the exclusion of pain, odors, and sense.

"Damn you, Monarch. Damn you to hell!" he screamed, and started pawing at his pant leg. He came up with a tiny .22 automatic. The same automatic he had been cleaning when Triana had dropped in just before the Monarch's attack. The meaningless little weapon that the minions had never looked for when they had captured him, just as they had never tried to remove his extendo-claws.

Gary slipped the safety off and took a firing stance, aiming the tiny gun at the distant figure of the Monarch. He fired and noted the bullet ricocheting off the frame of the gangway door's frame. He corrected his aim and fired again. Aim and fired. Aimed and fired.

The Monarch was standing in the middle of the doorway shaking his fist at Gary and, no doubt, ranting on about something. Daring him to hit him, no doubt. The odds of hitting the Monarch at this distance was slim but he had twenty rounds in the magazine. One of them might get lucky.

Suddenly the Monarch took a flop backwards and disappeared from view. Gary paused in his shooting. He hadn't hit the Monarch. He had flopped between rounds from his former henchman. A moment later the door closed and the blinking lights of the propulsion system increased their tempo. The Cocoon rose into the air and drifted north, back in the direction it had come.

[]

Inside the Cocoon the Monarch was scowling at his wife and rubbing the back of his knee where she had kicked him. "What was that all about?" he demanded angrily.

"I didn't want you getting hurt." she answered in her gravelly deep voice.

"Hurt? 21 didn't have a chance in a million of hitting me. Anyway, when did he have the right to shoot at me with a gun!"

"It's in the rules. OSI members may use guns so long as they are smaller than .278 caliber."

"And we can't?"

"It's in the rules, look it up."

"But why'd you kick me? He couldn't hit me with that little peashooter of his." The Monarch had gotten to his feet and was walking around, working off the stiffness from where his wife's high heeled boot had kicked him.

"Gary was coming within three or four feet of you with every shot. Sweetie, I love you dearly. I'm too young to become a widow. Besides I don't look good in black..."

"I don't know, you looked pretty good in that little black nightie last night..."

"Malcolm, focus!"

He hated it when she called him by his birth name. It meant she was really pissed off at him.

"The mission is a failure. The Ventures have escaped. Gary has escaped. The only thing we've accomplished is, apparently, killing that zombie that been hanging out with Gary."

"Gary? Why are you calling him that. He's number 21. He's my minion and he will pay for deserting me! Or," the Monarch paused to look at his wife suspiciously, "are you secretly in love with him."

"Oh, please," Dr. Mrs the Monarch answered, "I won't even dignify that with an answer. But he's not your henchman anymore. He works for the other side and as such I use the name he uses. Just as I use the name you use as a member of the Guild of Calamitous Intent. That's all." She paused, then added in a softer tone, "I like to think I have a big heart but there's only room enough for one man in it, and that's you!"

The Monarch always liked flattery and forgot his suspicions as she pulled him into a tight embrace.

After a minute she pulled away from their kiss, "Besides, the minions are all in a panic. Gary scared the hell out of them. I need you to go among them and rally their spirits and put the fear of the Monarch back into them."

"The fear of the Monarch," her husband repeated. "Yes. They will know such fear!"

[]

Watching the Cocoon sail away out of reach, Gary suddenly felt all the pain and ache and exhaustion of his night's work. There was nothing left of Texas except a pile of his bones and a few odds and ends of mechanical devices Dr. Venture must have used to resurrect him. He sank to his knees and bowed his head and silently mourned the loss of his friend.

[]

next chapter: Epilogue!