A/N: And we're back with the chapter everyone's been waiting for!

Rest assured we're getting closed to the home stretch; this isn't going to go on for tens and tens of chapters - after all, this is a ventfic more than a saga. But I'm going to make the most of it, because right now, I'm having a whale of a time - and hopefully, you are too!

Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter!

Read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Burghlerhurgh.

Klaus yawned and muttered a few well-chosen swearwords as he bumbled through his parlour, hastily dusting off the furniture in a frenzied last-minute effort to make everything right for the incoming client.

Don't look too tired, he thought, gently slapping himself awake. Don't look as though you were dozing off in your chair. The Red Hat Commission wants this customer taken care of in a nice way, and that's what you're gonna do. You can sleep when you're finished, savvy? Just keep thinking of the bonuses you'll get.

It wasn't all that unusual for customers to call so late – or so early, depending on how you looked at it. After all, with almost everyone at work during daylight hours and no leave available for anyone except those at the absolute tippy-tip of the pyramid, most of the honest mediums and sexworkers of Red Level would sleep during the day when there were fewer customers around, when the very last dregs of the early-early morning customers had trickled off into the pre-dawn murk.

Then, hours later when the dayshift clocked off, the workers of Red Level rose from their filthy bedsits and flung open their doors to the outside world, inundating the underground with a veritable flood of workers, all of them anxious for distraction, be it chemical, sexual, or spiritual. Many would stay in Red Level once curfew began, either because they'd been having too much fun to stop, or because leaving would have been foolhardy in the face of all the patrols, and many a late-working professional found themselves dealing with these stragglers as more respectable business closed their doors for the morning: the sweat-soaked all-night poker games, the sleepy-eyed slack-jawed working girls in one-room flats, drug dealers hawking cat piss and crystalized sewage and all manner of other things no respectable dealer would sell… and of course, the mediums willing to give the most outrageous prophecies if it meant pinching useful information.

Tomorrow, there'd be festivities in these streets, an explosion of frenzied, desperate hedonism that started at four thirty in the afternoon and would last all the way until midnight, and Klaus would be awake for all of it.

But he'd leave the day shift to the most desperate of the Red Level's denizens, because as profitable as it was to cater to the morning shift as well as the night shift and the graveyard shift, it simply wasn't worth getting addicted to meth all over again. He'd seen the poor souls who worked a triple shift, desperate, hollow-eyed husks of people barely capable of running a shell game, barely aware enough to spread their legs for paying customers, and as for peddling drugs, dealers who did triple shifts usually spent their entire supply on themselves before they could get as far as selling it. The few exceptions to the rule were almost always robbed by more ambitious dealers; plus, the thieves usually got away with it, because when it came to the shadowy dons of the Red Hat Commission, triple shifters were too numerous and too cheap to be worth protecting.

Right now, it was coming up on four o'clock in the morning and this would probably be Klaus' last customer of the graveyard shift. Frankly, it should have been his last customer five minutes ago, for there was only so much the visitors trapped here by curfew could do before they gave up on having fun and just rented a room for the night. Truth be told, though, he was grateful that the request had arrived now, tired as he was: if they'd kept him awake any later than four thirty, he'd be out cold until lunchtime.

But who wanted a private reading at sparrow's fart in the morning? Who would actually want their palms read, their tea leaves examined, or their crystal balls fondled at sparrow's fart in the morning? Unless some desperate, luckless bastard needed a safe route home through the thickest of the patrols, what the fuck was the point of this session?

And the hell of it was that his landlords didn't seem to know either: he'd gotten the call from their rep about ten minutes ago, claiming that a VIP with close ties to the Red Hat Commission would be visiting very soon and was willing to pay top dollar for their very best fortune teller. They didn't know what the guy was doing here this late or why he'd requested this service ahead of booze, drugs, or hookers; all they knew that they had to give him the best predictions and prophecies he could ever hope for if they wanted his favour, so this client had to be someone very high up in the Hargreeves corporate family, maybe even one of Reggie's inner circle.

Regardless of who or what the guy was, the Red Hat Commission had given him a direct order, and as far as everyone on the Red Level were concerned, they might as well have issued the order from a burning bush. People who made the mistake of disobeying orders or denying the Commission a cut of their earnings tended to wake up on operating tables minus a few vital organs, due to lose a few more over the next few hours. For good measure, photographs of the operations were often mailed to the employees of Red Level, just to make sure that the rest of the district got the message. To date, nobody was sure if the Commission actually sold the organs to the bioresearch industry or if they did it just to frighten any future dissenters back into line, but then, it wasn't as if anyone wanted to find out firsthand.

Klaus paused in front of the mirror, hastily touching up his makeup with extra mascara and taking a very healthy swig of his rapidly-cooling coffee. He needed to look as fresh as possible if he wanted to earn the bonus: even if he was awake enough to handle the usual trickery, he couldn't afford to let the client know that he'd been snoozing up until…

He blinked, trying to remember what had woken him up. It hadn't been the phone call, because that hadn't happened for at least ten minutes after Klaus had lurched out of sleep. It hadn't been the sound of revelry from outside, because by now, Red Level was almost completely quiet apart from the occasional stray cat and the odd client searching for a place to sleep. So, what had woken him?

Maybe it had been his imagination, but as he'd opened his eyes, he could have sworn he'd seen a bright light shining across the parlour, as if he'd left a light on. But by the time he'd looked around, the light had faded. And even more puzzlingly, he'd felt very strange as he'd lurched to his feet: there was something different about him, a sense of reassuring familiarity that he couldn't recall feeling in years, though he couldn't put his finger on what it was or what it meant. But perhaps-

There was a hammering from the front door; the client had finally arrived. Trying not to swear too loudly, Klaus hastily pulled on his best golden robes over his tattered skinny jeans, took one last gulp of coffee, and ran for the door, unlocking it so hurriedly that he could barely get a grip on the handle.

But as he swung the door open, he realized at that his parlour's porch light didn't seem to be working: the doorstep was in shadow, too dark for even the neon signs overhead or the shopfronts across the street to illuminate. As such, he couldn't get a good look at the client, not with the lights from inside the parlour dimmed to suitably mystical levels; all he could see was a tall figure in a greatcoat and a fedora.

"Klaus Hargreeves?" said a hoarse voice.

"Yeah, that's me. Welcome to my Parlour of Prophecies, the gr-"

Somewhere beneath the drowsy haze still shrouding his brain, Klaus belatedly realized that the visitor had just used his full name. For the last five years, he'd been using an alias in place of his surname, if only because having the same name as a billionaire dictator tended to draw a lot of unwanted attention from surly criminals with more firepower than braincells. So, how the hell did this stranger know his full name?

As if in answering, there was a muffled thud from somewhere just ahead of him, as though someone had just dropped a thick paperback novel onto a table. Klaus had just enough time to recognize the muzzle flash before something struck him hard in the chest, sending him tottering backwards into the faint light of the parlour.

Reeling in surprise, Klaus looked down to see a ragged hole torn through his chest just below his collarbone, already merrily spurting blood down the front of his best robes.

Numb with shock, he looked up at the "client", belatedly realizing that he was looking at an agent of the secret police.

And now that his eyes had adjusted to the dark, he could finally see the handgun in the guy's hand as he took aim for a second shot.

Suddenly wide awake and already feeling the first inklings of pain, Kurt slammed the door shut with all his might, even as his vision lurched and spun with blood loss, but the assassin just kicked it open with one piston-like foot and fired again. By then, Klaus was staggering blearily away from him, weaving from left to right as he struggled to keep his balance, so the bullet completely missed his head; instead, it tore clean through his right ear.

"Fuck!" Klaus shrieked in pain.

And then, because he was a bit woozy from impacts and blood loss, he demanded, "What was that for?"

The assassin didn't answer. Instead, he aimed low and shot him twice in the knees.

Two white-hot blasts of pain erupted across his nerves as the bullets shredded his kneecaps, and suddenly no longer able to support the weight of his body, his legs buckled beneath him. Down he went, crashing to the floor and landing on his ruined kneecaps for good measure, and only his wildly trembling hands stopped him from slumping forward.

Through a haze of blood loss and pain, he saw the assassin lining up for the final shot, and in that moment, Klaus realized he was going to die – for the last time, this round. No more resurrections, no more dumb luck, just a one-way trip to the hereafter: go directly to the afterlife, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred years. He was dimly aware that he should probably feel upset at this, maybe even terrified, but in all honesty, Klaus was just annoyed that the assassin hadn't had the decency to kill him in his sleep instead of waking him up.

He tried to think of something to say, something deep, something meaningful. It didn't matter that the assassin probably wouldn't remember it and wouldn't care no matter how thought-provoking his last words were. But Klaus tried anyway, if only because it felt silly to end it all after so many second shots at life without saying something.

But in the end, all that sprung to mind was a bemused mutter of "Hope there won't be any pineapple chunks on the pizza this time."

The assassin hesitated, and for a moment, Klaus thought the guy was so confused he might hold off on shooting him just to demand an explanation. But in the end, professionalism won out: the assassin's pistol swung upwards, finger tightening on the trigger, and there was another loud thud.

This time, the headshot didn't miss.

Klaus fell backwards, blood pouring into his eyes as his skull cracked open and the bullet dug deep into his brain. He landed heavily, legs splaying out as his muscles went into autopilot, vision dimming, memories flying off in all directions, thoughts trundling to a stop like a clockwork toy finally winding down.

And to his embarrassment, his final thought was not of his family, of the cult he'd started and abandoned, of all the potential he'd wasted, of the version of Ben he'd never had a chance to say goodbye to, or even of Dave.

No, the last clear thought to run through the pulped skull of Klaus Hargreeves, before death claimed him for the very last time, was of a bowl of menudo.

Then, he thought nothing at all.

A woman in white was standing before him, mopping the blood from his eyes with a sponge, her eyes aglow with infinite compassion and understanding.

"Find me," she whispered.

And then, Klaus awoke…

…but not quite.

"Klaus? Klaus? Come on, dear, on your feet. We have a lot to talk about."

Klaus groaned, knowing immediately where he was and who he was speaking to. He didn't open his eyes, though: he could already tell from the gentle roar of waves in his ears and the feel of sand on his skin that he was lying on the shores of yet another one of the afterlife's endless oceans. And of course, there was no mistaking the woman's voice, not after the conversation he'd had with her on his secondlast visit.

"Can't I just sleep in for a little while?" he groaned, dozily.

"You are sleeping, dear. Well, your body's sleeping anyway, while it repairs itself. Your soul is wide awake."

"That's not what it feels like right now, Mom."

There was a pause, and then Klaus realized what she'd just said. Lurching bolt upright, he pried one eyelid open and demanded, "What do you mean, 'while it repairs itself'?!"

Rachel Herschberger smiled down at him, backdropped by an extraordinary panorama of crashing waves and dazzlingly desaturated blue skies. "Well, you have gotten pretty good at the resurrection thing, but you've been out of practice for the last five years: you need to give it at least a little subjective time before your body's used to it again. And then there's the spiritual effects, but that's another story."

"Hold up, hold up, hold up… are you saying I've got my powers back?"

"You didn't think it was weird that you saw lights in the room as you woke up? Someone was restoring your powers to you."

"Okay then, who and how?"

Rachel tutted disapprovingly. "That's for you to find out, kiddo."

"Oh god, don't tell me: this is gonna be another one of those craptacular learn-your-lesson-from-the-supernatural face-your-fears be-a-better-bastard vision quests, isn't it?"

"You've been watching too many sci-fi thrillers."

"Alright then, what am I supposed to do here? As much as I like these little talks, someone just killed me and once they seem me up and about, they'll probably try again."

"Does it really matter what happens to your body, Klaus? You can't die permanently, remember."

"That doesn't stop it from hurting. I mean, last sixty-odd times I died, I was usually too high to feel my bones breaking or whatever, but now I'm on the wagon and all the nerves are in working order, so everything hurts. I mean, I know what fatal brain damage feels like now! I already knew what it was like to get shot with a harpoon gun, run through with buffalo horns, and beaten to death by Reggie, and now I know what it's like to get shot in the brain!"

"And I know what it's like for my brain to cook in my skull," Rachel chided. "You're not completely alone in the afterlife, honey."

"Sorry. Kinda insensitive of me. But my point is, while I'm still averse to getting murdered all over again, what the hell am I supposed to do next? I mean, you've been watching everything that I've been doing in all these timelines, so you've gotta have some idea of what I should be doing instead of all the other shit I've been doing."

At this, Rachel hummed thoughtfully. "Well, what would you do if you knew your powers had returned?" she asked. "Wouldn't you take the chance to be a hero again if it meant finally putting the world to rights?"

Klaus sighed deeply. "Mom, I don't know if you got the memo all the way out here, but I'm not a hero and I never was. The Umbrella Academy weren't meant to be heroes: we were meant to be fuel for Reggie's big project, and all we were up until we were trained and ready for the Hotel Oblivion were a bunch of dumb kids duking it out with outmatched bank robbers. That was heroism to us: five dumb teenagers scaring the bejesus out of criminals who didn't know what they were up against and didn't get the option to surrender, plus one even dumber teenager playing recon. I'd talk to the ghosts of their victims and figure out their weaknesses, maybe ask the building architect if he knew any secret ways in, I'd tell Luther everything, and then I'd pop a few pills and try to forget all the screaming in the background. That was heroism in the Umbrella Academy's glory days. And you know what? I was happier when they finally decided I was too useless to be useful, because it meant that I wouldn't have to see the ghosts of the bank robbers wandering after us and trying to figure out what the hell just happened!"

He paused for breath, wiping a few angry tears away.

"And let's not forget all the other wonderful shit we did with our great potential while we were waiting around for Reggie to get us ready for Oblivion," he continued, bitterly. "I was a loser, a junkie, a soldier, and then I started a cult. Luther pretty much wasted his life on the moon before he turned into Jack Ruby's personal knucklehead. Diego could only get by as a vigilante gym-sweeper. Five was a hitman for the Time Police or whatever the fuck. Ben was dead and then he was the biggest asshole on his entire team and that's saying something. Viktor was so fucked up on mood drugs that he could barely hold down a job as a music teacher, then he got a boyfriend who turned out to be a serial killer, then he ended the world. And Allison… well, we all know how that went. Not a hell of a lot heroism to be proud about, is it? We weren't made to be heroes, Mom. No wonder we were so fucking terrible at it."

Rachel gave him a pitying look. "What about Harlan?" she asked.

"What about him? Viktor got a tiny thing wrong, so the kid's life went to shit, his mom died of cancer after a long life without the one piece of ass that made everything worthwhile, Harlan went nuts and accidentally killed you and all our other moms, and because we made the mistake of going back to the late 2010s instead of somewhere considerably less shit, we accidentally ended the world. End of story."

"I know," grumbled Rachel, who was sounding more exasperatedly maternal the longer she spoke to him. "I know. But can you imagine what might have happened if the Handler had gotten her hands on him? Can you imagine if your family hadn't even tried to get through to Lila? Or if you hadn't decided to join Viktor on his mission to save Harlan and Sissy? The others might never have followed him. For all you know, Viktor could have been killed that day, or worse, captured alive and converted into another one of the Handler's pawns. Five could tell you all about what they did while he was in their service; you saw how dangerous the Commission was with just one superpowered kid in their service; can you imagine what they would have been like if they'd had three?"

"What are you trying to say?"

"I'm saying that maybe, just maybe, you don't need to make a career out of being a superhero. Yes, maybe what Reginald did to the seven of you made you the wrong fit for a life of endless self-sacrifice and heroism. Yes, maybe you shouldn't have to dedicate your entire life to stopping crime and saving the world when there's already cops who can handle street-level crime without turning the whole thing into a massacre. But my point is that maybe what heroism really means is doing the right thing when it matters the most."

"But-"

"And yes, it went wrong with Harlan, but nobody could have predicted it could have gone that badly. That was beyond your control… in more ways than one," Rachel added, darkly.

"What's that mean?"

"Let's just say that probability is against you and always has been. I've seen a lot of things through the eyes of my other two alternates, and I've met more than my fair share of people who were alive to see Reginald Hargreeves up to no good, and though few of them saw the same evidence, all of them agree on one thing: given a choice between waiting for an excuse to use you for Project Oblivion and creating an excuse, Reggie'd opt for making the excuse every time. It's just that this time around, the Kugelblitz gave him the excuse instead."

"You mean-"

"That you'll figure that part out for yourself later. The point is that, now that you've got your powers back, what are you going to do with them?"

Klaus thought for a moment. "Maybe earn a higher salary?" he suggested. "I mean, the Red Hats will probably know what to do with all the info I can bring in from the other side, so I'm in a pretty good position to ask for more money; once I've got that, I can put some bribes into getting Five a better cell, get the rent paid in advance, keep Gracie's teachers from signing her up for indoctrination, buy Luther some top-of-the-line exercise equipment, maybe pay for some really nice catering at the next family reunion-"

Rachel shook her head and chuckled bemusedly. "You've gotten a little too used to being the breadwinner, you know that?"

"What can I say? When you know the family's on shaky ground and you've got a talent that can provide for all of them… well, it's easy to get your head stuck in the mindset, you know?"

For a moment, the woman that had been his mother in a different timeline and had never had the chance to be so in another seemed genuinely proud. "You've grown so much, Klaus. You've learned responsibility; you've learned how to take action for yourself; you've even become less of a hedonist."

"Key word being 'less' of a hedonist, right?" snarked Klaus. "Nougat is a great alternative to heroin, take it from me."

"It's a wonder you've stayed as thin as you are."

"That's the other bit of drug substitution magic: the ol' treadmill's better than cocaine once you get into a good enough routine."

"Nice. But now you've got to grow a little more, Klaus: now you've got to be ready to do the right thing when it matters. Now, you've got to be a hero… and take the fight to the people who really deserve it."

Klaus paused.

"Okay," he sighed. "I know I'm immortal. I know that they won't be able to stop me even if they bury my body in concrete. And yeah, thanks to Reggie's big motivational session, I even know how to get rid of the ghosts that just want to raise hell. But I can't command the fuckers. I can make them tangible enough to kill people, but I can't tell them what to do. I mean, back in the days when we were knocking over bank robbers, small-time terrorists, and maybe the odd wannabe supervillain, I got cooperation from dead architects and engineers because they didn't want to see their best work blown up by assholes. Everyone else was just there to talk at me or scare the shit out of me. The most cooperation I got in my life was from Ben, and that was only because we were brothers, and he's gone now; living Ben's a fucking asshole and he wouldn't help me if you dipped me in superglue and rolled my ass in a big pile of hundred-dollar bills. I'm still not seeing how I can be a hero."

"Things change, Klaus. You'll never be as weak as you think you are, and your powers have been more than you think since the very beginning. After all, you've always been persuasive in your own way; all you've got to do is apply that to the dead. Besides," Rachel added, "You're not the only one to get their powers back this morning."

"So what? We're still up against a guy with entire armies – armies, plural – at his beck and call, and even if we can fight our way through all his armies, Reggie's still got too many tricks up his sleeves. I've heard the well-connected types going on about all the crazy machinery he's got locked up in that Tarot-style tower of his, and it sounds a lot like the shit he had back at Hotel Oblivion. So really, it doesn't matter what we do to stop Reggie, because he's already won, and he's stacked the deck so he'll keep winning. The best thing we can do is get the hell out of dodge and stay safe until he forgets we ever existed, maybe use all our powers to make a nice copy of the Academy mansion out in the boonies where nobody will find us."

Rachel sighed, and for a moment, she was no longer a single woman at all, but three.

She was the Rachel Herschberger who'd given birth to Klaus and been left saddled with the stigma of the experience until she'd finally fled in shame, eventually accepting a paltry cheque from Sir Reginald in exchange for baby Klaus because she'd had no idea how much money she needed to survive outside the Amish community that had been her home up until then; guilt-ridden, fearful, and friendless, she'd been reduced to eking out a miserable living in a homeless community in another city, until the final battle with Viktor seared all human life from the face of the Earth. She was the Rachel Herschberger who'd been killed before she'd ever had a chance to give birth to Klaus, the woman who'd finally seen the wonders of the world and beyond through the veil of the afterlife, growing wise in death but having nothing to do with all the wisdom she had earned. She was the Rachel Herschberger who'd never been impregnated with Marigold and never given birth to Klaus, but had been forced to suffer the endless surveillance that came with being a loose end in the plans of a paranoid dictator; every single member of her community had been harassed time after time, Rachel herself subjected to endless interrogations even though she was now a middle-aged woman who'd never known the touch of Marigold… until last year, when Reggie had finally gotten too twitchy for his own good and ordered her village purged.

In that moment, she was all three at once, a three-headed goddess right out of Greek mythology smiling down at him with infinite compassion: she was the dead-eyed beggar dressed in tattered hand-me-downs, face lined with a million sorrows, eyes still wet with tears over the child she couldn't keep, body still wreathed in the fires of Viktor's apocalypse; she was the wise young woman in a white dress, the bittersweet ghost whose smile barely hid the blood that had poured from her eyes; she was a rotting corpse fresh from a mass grave bathed in quicklime, eyes rotted out of her skull, the ragged ligature mark still visible across her ruined throat.

"You've learned so much," said Rachel the goddess. "But you've still got one last lesson to learn, Klaus."

"Let me guess: it's the one about courage, isn't it? Or maybe the one about empathy? Or hope?"

"Of course not, you've already learned those off-by heart, thanks to your brothers. No, what you need to learn is to strive for greatness."

"Mom, do I really look like the kind of guy who could strive for greatness if he knew how?" He indicated his blood-splattered robes and disorderly curls. "I'm an ex-junkie turned prophet-for-hire; I can barely manage to be the Umbrella Academy's support act at the best of times. What makes you think I can be great? What even is greatness, anyway?"

"Not the point, Klaus," said Rachel. "You keep settling for less. Even when you're addiction free, you keep getting discouraged and trying something easier, because there's always been a quick fix to hope for. You gave up on trying to explain your new potential to the others because the big demonstration went wrong. You started a cult with Ben's help because it was easier than trying to enhance your powers. You gave up on saving Dave after he rejected you the first time and only got to try a second time because he came to you. You wanted to stay dead just because it was easier than trying to save the world a third time after Reggie disappointed you so badly. Even here, when you're being genuinely responsible and doing right by the family, you're still aiming too low: now that everyone in the family has their powers back, all you can think of is running away and building them a place where they can be safe, because you think that if you try anything more ambitious, it'll all go to hell."

"Well, considering the last time I got really ambitious about my life, I ended up getting left behind for the Kugelblitz, can you really blame me for hoping for something a little less painful… and pointless," he added, bitterly.

"Maybe that's the problem, Klaus: you still have hope."

"That's a bad thing?"

"It is if all you can hope for is to be mildly contented and keep your family safe. And make no mistake: settling for less will only end in you being forced to remain alive and suffering for all eternity, your family long-gone, and Reggie still ruling over a police state. Is that what you want? Is that the summit of your ambitions, or do you want to try for something better for a change?"

Rachel drew herself up to her full height (which admittedly wasn't much), the smile well and truly gone from her face. "Reginald Hargreeves isn't going to forget about any of you, not while you're the one thing that might disrupt his perfect world. He wants your family dead now, Klaus, and he will not stop hunting you until you're all gone for good. Fighting against him might seem hopeless, trying to undo the world he created seems hopeless, and yeah, it might end up being hopeless even if you win the day, based on everything I've seen of Reggie's world… but you need to understand that there's no settling for less here. You can either willingly accept being even lesser than what Reginald Hargreeves thought of you back in your home timeline, lose everything, and be satisfied with whatever you can get in eternal imprisonment… or you can be a hero and rise above everything Reggie expected, maybe even get a chance to build a better world."

Now it was Klaus' turn to sigh. "Mom, if he wants us dead, all the worst-case scenario shit might just happen anyway."

"True. Depending on possible futures, it might just happen anyway even if you're victorious."

"The hell is that supposed to mean?"

"You'll see soon enough."

"Look, let's just cut the crap: if I'm supposed to be setting out on this big quest to save the world one last time and undo all the fuckery that Reggie did to the planet, then how am I supposed to start when the odds are this stacked against me?"

A smile finally appeared back on Rachel's face. "Well," she said, slyly, "I was hoping to persuade you through the usual long lessons that your family keeps giving you, but… well, it's kind of expected for kids to never listen to their parents, especially after what happened with Reggie. So, I brought along some help…"

She gestured behind her, and even though Klaus knew better than to turn around to see what she was pointing at, he couldn't help but turn.

There, standing on the beach, was another figure that Klaus knew all too well. Like Rachel, he was divided between the selves he'd been across dimensions, though for a moment, the first overshadowed the other: a bitter, miserable-looking old man leaning on a cane, his clothes soaked with blood from the sniper's bullet that had ended his life so publicly. But then that version of him faded, and was replaced by a much younger man, his face almost obscured by fatal shrapnel, his body still wrapped in the bloodied remains of a USMC uniform. That vision of the man faded as well, to replaced by the version of him that Klaus had known the best, a young man in army camo, square-jawed and smiling – just as he'd been in the final seconds before the bullet had struck him, just as he'd been before Klaus had turned around and seen him lying dead next to him.

"You've got to admit," said Dave, "she's got a point, buddy. You do have a habit of settling for less. I mean, look how quickly you gave up on bringing me back when nobody was around to tie you to a chair."

Klaus opened his mouth to respond with a well-chosen witticism, but all that emerged was a hoarse squawk of surprise.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to give you shit for giving up on talking me out of going to Vietnam," Dave reassured him. "Your mom's already given you enough grief for that, and besides, I was being an asshole to you then. Well, that version of me was. Afterlife's a trippy place, you know?"

Klaus tried to say, "That's alright," but it got tangled up with "I know what you mean," and all that left his mouth was a mumbled string of gibberish.

"But sooner or later, you've gotta do something about settling for less, especially since you're willing to be that way about your own happiness. I mean, how you are supposed to live if you keep aiming low about the one of the most important things in life?"

"What the fuck am I supposed to do?" Klaus demanded. His eyes were starting to blur; he was tearing up, he realized with a thrill of embarrassment. "It's eight people against the world and the world's packing heat that can turn reality inside out. How am I supposed to do anything about that? How am I supposed to take a stand when everyone including my mom is telling me it's hopeless?!"

"Easily done, honey. You do it because you know it's the right thing to do. You do it because you don't want to give the other guy the satisfaction of admitting defeat. And you do it because you'd rather go down in flames than go quietly."

"Oh really? Where the hell did you learn that, Dave? I'm pretty sure the fucking Vietcong didn't teach you that shit."

Dave rolled his eyes. "No, that was what I picked up in my third life: once I was back in the States, I knew going to Vietnam was the worst mistake of my life, and going just because my uncle wanted to make a man out of me made it even worse. I should have said no, should have told him to go to hell, but I didn't. So, once I had a cause of my own to fight for, I dug my heels in and didn't give up, even when I knew nobody was listening, even when I knew I couldn't win, even when I realized it was probably going to get me killed – mostly because it was the right thing to do, but also because it pissed off the powers that be. The homophobes, the chickenhawks, the billionaires, Nixon, Reagan and his buttboy-in-denial Roy Cohn, even Reginald goddamn Hargreeves himself, it all got up their asses, and I went to my grave knowing that I was one of the few things on the planet that could make them lose their hard-ons."

He smiled, the same cheeky, boyish grin that had made Klaus go a little bit weak at the knees whenever he'd seen it. "Now, tell me: wouldn't you be happier if, when you faced the impossible, you knew it was pissing off Reggie just a little bit?"

And in spite of himself, Klaus had to admit it sounded attractive. After all, getting on Reggie's nerves had been one of the many bright spots in his life while he'd still been a permanent resident of the Academy.

"Besides," Dave continued, "there's one big advantage you and your family have over me and all the other poor bastards who died in Vietnam."

"If you say it's because we're alive, I'm gonna have to stop you right there, because right now, I'm-"

"Not that, numbnuts," chuckled Dave. "You and your family can do the impossible. Worrying about impossible odds and hopeless situations sounds like a lot of bullshit to me, because you people can do things that nobody else can even dream of doing; you don't have to save the world every day of the year, but what's the point in having powers – 'scuse me, in having your powers back – if you don't try and do something with them? So, fuck worrying about what's possible and what's not, fuck playing it safe, and most of all, fuck Reggie from asshole to breakfast. Just go out there and be a fucking hero."

He paused. "Yeah, I think that was third-life me speaking there. Sorry, he gets a bit carried away when he's on a roll."

"Alright, alright, alright… but supposing, just for the sake of argument, that you're right. What am I supposed to do to beat the odds?"

Dave grinned again. "Well, here's something to think about: you know how the other guys in our squad always used to say that you never had the makings of a general?"

"Because I worried too much about dead people, yeah. What's your point?"

"Let's just say that, when you wake up, you might just be able to prove them wrong." He winked. "Now, you willing to give it a try?"

Klaus did his best to awaken quietly.

It wasn't easy, given that his first act on returning to life was to take a deep breath, but somehow, he managed to muffle the thunderous gasp to a muffled hiss, though that was probably because most of his ribs had been broken and his jaw was busy trying to pop itself back into place.

Plus, there was still a massive bullet wound in his chest.

To his surprise, he was still in his parlour. A quick glance at the door revealed that his assassin was now on the porch, hashing things out with a very pissed-off member of the Red Hat Commission (easily recognized by the crimson hatband he wore around his homburg) with a second assassin mediating from the sidelines. Looking through the windows, he could see other figures in the street, some of them bullyboys on the Red Hat's payroll, some of them secret police operatives. Under any other circumstances, Klaus might have been flattered at all the effort Reggie was making just to put him down once and for all, but right now, he had more important things to do than to give his ego a good stroke.

So, as the argument skidded back and forth across the front porch, Klaus began to very slowly roll himself across the carpet, away from the assassins and back into the shadows of the parlour. By now, he knew his own house well enough to know that the floorboards would creak like an armada the moment he tried to stand up, so the best thing he could do was roly-poly his way along the blood-soaked carpet until he was out of sight. He knew he was getting even more blood on his robes; he knew he'd look like an idiot if they caught him trying to escape; and yes, he knew that it wouldn't matter all that much if this ended up with him being killed yet again. But if the fuckers ever figured out he was immortal, as Rachel had helpfully explained, he'd be up shit creek without paddles, lifejacket, or boat.

He needed to find some space to rethink things, figure out what the hell he could do to wriggle out of this mess, preferably before any of these fedora-wearing douchebags turned around and noticed him doing his best impression of a log being tumbled downhill. On the upside, they appeared to be too busy bitching at each other – for now, anyway.

"You know who we work for," the assassin was grumbling irritably. "You know better than to stop us from doing our jobs."

"And I also know that your boss made a very special agreement with us when he set up this district," snapped the Red Hat. "It's our job to hand over any fugitives to you, and in case you forgot, it's not because we actually like you people; it's so you don't fuck up our profits by kicking down the front door and shooting everything that moves."

"Circumstances have changed, old man," said the mediator. "Sir Reginald Hargreeves doesn't just want this one dead; he wants him dead with extreme prejudice, ideally as a warning to any future opposition."

"Is that why you had to kick the poor bastard's face off once you were done shooting him?"

The assassin laughed hoarsely. "Well, that was one reason. Sir Reginald's orders, y'see: apparently, your boy had a big mouth, enough to get on Sir Reginald's nerves, anyway, so he wanted the punishment to fit the crime."

By then, the last of Klaus' teeth had finally jumped back into place and his jaw was once again relocated, so he was almost able to chuckle without it hurting. Even with the pain still fresh and screaming across his body, it was still reassuring to know he could still get on Reggie's nerves without even being in the same postcode as him.

"I still don't get why your boss didn't think to warn any of us, though: Klaus was one of our best earners-"

"Yeah, he was. Past tense, get it? He was earning good money for you up until he pissed off Sir Reginald Hargreeves, and after that, if he'd lived a few hours longer, you'd have found out just unprofitable the little fucker could be, and you'd have been begging us to take him off your hands."

"Money is money, my friend: I expect to be compensated for this mess! The entire commission will expect compensation-"

"First of all, you're not my friend. Secondly, you're being compensated by not having the entire building burnt to the ground along whatever clients the lanky cocksucker had in there with him. Finally, we don't have to tell you any-fucking-thing if we don't want to. You're not here negotiating from a position of strength, buddy boy: you're on turf that you've rented from Sir Reginald Hargreeves, running businesses that he's permitted you to operate in his city, entertaining clients that he's allowed to visit this district. If anything, you should be compensating him for not having the entire Red Level filled in with concrete as a message to any other bastard hiding an enemy of the state."

The assassin paused for effect, and the mediator added, "If you still feel mistreated, I'm sure you'll be able to negotiate terms with the Hargreeves Corporate Family… if you think you've got a justified complaint, and you're prepared to risk the courts."

"I-"

"Are you willing to take this to court?"

There was a pause, followed by a low, barely audible mumble in the negative. Frankly, Klaus couldn't blame the guy for backing down, even if he was a cold-hearted gangster like the rest of the Commission. After all, everyone knew that Reggie had the power of veto over every single court in the land, from the federal to the civil, and getting on his bad side even in the most legal sense of the word was an open invitation to a show trial.

"Good," said the assassin. "Now fuck off: we've got a corpse to nail to the wall."

Klaus took a deep breath as the Red Hat scuttled off. They'd be after him now: once they saw he was gone from his spot on the carpet, they'd search the entire house until they found him, either killing him a second time or dragging him back to Reggie to figure out his immortality. Either way, not desirable.

But what the hell could he actually do apart from die, over and over again?

As he'd said many times before, he could conjure the dead, make them corporeal, even banish them thanks to Reggie's big tutorial… but he couldn't tell them to do anything for him. After all, the only reason why he'd been able to stop Commission's goons during the battle at the concert hall was because he'd had Ben around… and right now, the Ben he'd known so well was long-gone. So, what could he do but conjure up someone and hope they'd listen to him?

Maybe he should just conjure up some random ghosts from the area, use them as distractions, and sneak out in the confusion? That'd work well enough for now. Maybe he could get all the way out of the Red Level if he could just keep things too chaotic for anyone to notice him, and from there-

No.

Rachel and Dave had both been right: he'd been settling for less too long, and if he tried that now, then it would almost certainly end with him getting captured. He needed to clear the path, not sneak out like he normally would; after all, he was immortal – as long as nobody captured him, he was in the clear. Maybe, after so much time avoiding danger, it was time to get back into at least one of his bad old habits.

Once upon a time, he'd gotten answers out of a man by smashing a snowglobe against his own face.

Once, he'd ejaculated his way out of being interrogated.

Once, he'd gotten himself killed by jumping a pissed-off clubber to save Luther's life.

Once, he'd taken down an armed Commission goon with nothing but a birthday cake.

Once, he'd snuck into the Sparrow Academy with nobody's permission and on nobody's orders, without being caught.

Once, he'd done all these things and more before his family had lost their powers and he'd been forced to start being careful.

Maybe, it was time to be that kind of Klaus again.

So, reaching out with all his power, he looked for any ghosts that might be lingering around Red Level from the executions that this place had seen over the last five years, hoping that they might just be grumpy enough to cooperate with him.

And sure enough, there were quite a few of those, some floating around the lampposts where they'd been hanged, some drifting across the walls where they'd been shot against like spectral shadows, and some of them even buried in the sewers' foundations… but there were others here, glimpses of spectres that hadn't died in Red Level at all. There were ghosts following the secret police agents and assassins across the street, dogging their footsteps and doing everything they could to get their attention, without much success: there were unionized workers dragged off their strikes and hacked to death with machetes as a warning to others; there were secretaries who'd seen too much injustice to stay silent and been smothered in their beds for it; there were executives who'd found a conscience, only to be forced to hang themselves to spare their families from being slaughtered as punishment for their belated good deeds; there were even children who'd been unlucky enough to be awake to see their parents being murdered and earned a bullet for themselves in the process. All of them were here, overflowing with rage and despair at the injustice of their fates.

And with a jolt of realization, Klaus realized he'd seen this sort of thing before. Back when he'd run into Hazel and Cha-Cha, he'd seen the ghosts of their victims haunting them from all over time and space. These secret police scumbags might not have the same range across history, but they were even more bloodthirsty than any of the Commission's hired assassins: vanishing inconvenient people, dragging off suspected criminals to be tortured to death, bloody examples of anyone that Reggie personally despised, and all of that had left every single agent on the block haunted by a veritable army of ghosts.

And that was when Klaus reached out into the ether and began slowly bringing the dead into corporeal reality.

Twenty feet away, a secret police operative keeping watch on the perimeter looked up in shock to see the bullet-riddled figure of a little boy standing before him. For a moment, the two could only stare at each other, the ghost briefly taken aback by finding himself visible to his killer for the first time since his murder. Then, the cop drew a sidearm and opened fire on the glowing blue apparition before him – only for the bullets to pass right through it. Immediately, the other secret police operatives spun around to follow the source of the noise, just in time to catch the vengeful ghost taking a flying leap through the air and tackling his murderer to the ground.

As the cops struggled to make sense of what they were seeing and the more practical of them tried to drag the ghost off their comrade, the other ghosts were looking on in amazement, clearly not knowing how one of them had become tangible enough to punch a living human being in the face – and through senses attuned to the echoes and ripples of the afterlife, Klaus could tell that all of them were waiting for the chance to make their vengeance a reality.

So, he gave it to them.

Reaching out with hands glowing electric blue, he drew every single ghost on the block into corporeal existence, more than three hundred and fifty glowing blue spectres flickering into view around the baffled secret police operatives, every single fatal injury on display before the eyes of the murdered who'd inflicted them. And once the first terrified gasps had rung out, every single one of those ghosts knew at once that they could be seen – and more importantly, could touch.

The stalemate held for just six and a half seconds before a drowned union organizer wrapped his chains around the neck of the nearest operative and dragged him to the ground beneath the weight of the concrete blocks he'd been anchored with.

And with that, the ghosts swarmed.

It was like watching army ants overwhelming a leap of grasshoppers, hundreds upon hundreds of luminous blue apparitions washing over the fleeing secret police in wave after wave of punching, kicking, biting, clawing ghosts. A few desperately grasping hands could be seen reaching for a grip on anything that could lift them free of the horde, but then even those last paltry signs of life vanished as they were dragged back beneath the sea of spectres.

Through it all, Klaus could only stare, marvelling at the fact that he could somehow make so many ghosts corporeal at once, especially since he'd only just managed the same feat for one or two spirits at a time back before the sacrifice at the Hotel Oblivion. It even felt easier than before, too, as if his strength had increased in the years his powers had been inactive.

But while Klaus was distracted, the assassin who'd killed him a few minutes ago just barely managed to stay ahead of the horde long enough to duck inside the parlour and slam the door behind him. Then, as he looked for a escape route, he saw Klaus standing in the back of the room, hands still glowing with ethereal power. The assassin blinked in disbelief, clearly trying to square the fact that he'd shot Klaus dead with the fact that Klaus was now alive and kicking once again. Then, either because he'd realized that Klaus was causing the massacre or simply out of habit, he raised his sidearm and prepared to kill him a second time.

For a moment, Klaus resigned himself to returning from the dead for the second time in what felt like as many minutes.

But then instinct kicked in, and Klaus pointed at the assassin with a shout of, "stop him!" not expecting any of the ghosts to listen.

But to his surprise, an immured victim of the Red Hat Commission reached out from under the floorboards and grabbed the assassin by the leg. As the assassin screamed and screeched in terror, another ghost– a well-dressed suicide from an earlier era on Wall Street who'd known nothing of secret police or assassins – darted in from above and sucker-punched the assassin square in the mouth, sending the gun flying out of his hand. And from the underworld of a timeline that had been erased five long years ago, a gigantic ivory-haired Swede with a missing eye lurched out from nowhere, grabbed the assassin by the ears, and wrenched his skull a full 180 degrees.

There was a pause, as the body hit the deck and the carnage from outside fell silent.

Then, as if the situation couldn't get any stranger, all three ghosts turned and issued a crisp salute to Klaus.

"Your orders, sir?" said the immured ghost.

"Er, what?"

"Your orders. You command us now, sir. We sense it: you have the right to command us as you wish."

As if in a trance, Klaus stepped through the trio of ghosts and opened the front door. Beyond, an army of ghosts stood in readiness, even those of them who no longer had enough limbs to stand to attention, even those of the secret police who'd just been killed. All of them were waiting for orders, ready to kill on command if Klaus demanded it – and with a jolt of surprise, Klaus knew exactly why. He was the only man on the planet who could allow the ghosts a chance to be heard by their loved ones, who could give the wayward spirits a chance to feel again through him, who could even guide the tortured souls of the dead to their eternal rest. Like Klaus, they could sense the nature of the world around them, and their spectral senses were telling them all about the nature of his power – and all it could do to save them from eternal sorrow.

For a moment, Klaus could only boggle in bewilderment at the sight.

He'd progressed again without even knowing it. Back when all this had begun, he'd thought the power to make spirits corporeal had been impressive enough; then he'd learned that he could be possessed by ghosts and his power had started being terrifying all over again; then he'd realized he was immortal, and he couldn't help but marvel at himself once again, even with the various pros and cons of coming back from the dead in place… and then he'd learned that he could finally banish the spectral terrors that had haunted his dreams for all the years of his life, and he'd started to truly appreciate his own potential. Then, of course, it had all been taken away from him and he'd thought that once again, all the potential Reggie had bitched about wasn't worth a damn… but now, here it was again, another tier unlocked.

Now, he was the General of the Dead, Warmaster of Ghosts, Field Marshal of the Departed.

He could control the spirits of the departed, not just the ones that haunted an area or a person, not just the ones he could reach through the Veil of the Hereafter, but even those who'd died in other timelines – otherwise the Big Swede wouldn't be here.

And for the first time in five years, he wasn't sure what the hell he was supposed to do next.

But fuck it, he'd improvise.

"Um, okay," he said, trying to sound authoritative, as he surveyed the small army of ghosts that stood before him. "First thing's first, we gotta find the rest of my family. I want uh… half of you to spread out across the city, find the Umbrella Academy, and keep them safe until I can meet up with them. The rest of you, stay here to guard the people who work here. The secret police will probably want revenge once the agents stop reporting revenge, so you've gotta protect all the hard-working hookers and gigolos in this town. And then…"

He paused, furiously wracking his brain as he tried to think of what to do next. If the rest of the Academy was in the same boat as him, they'd probably have their powers back by now, and they'd probably also have assassins after them. On the other hand, even if they didn't know they'd gotten their powers back, they were still savvy enough to keep their heads down when the secret police came calling.

But, on the other hand, there was one member of the family that hadn't had to deal with any of that – and though deeply-buried anger and hurt immediately surged at the thought of her, he knew at once that she had to be warned. It didn't matter if she could be forgiven or if he'd already forgiven her out of sheer depression already – Allison had to be protected right now.

"I need to reach Allison," Klaus gasped urgently. "Quickly as possible. She's in danger and yes, she's been a pain in the ass ever since we got back from Dallas, and yes, she did a lot of heinous shit to get her daughter back, but I can't just leave her to die. Are there any of you in her area? Are there any shortcuts to the mansions district or whatever the hell she is?"

"Not sure if there need to be," said one of the ghosts.

"Why's that?" he asked.

Was it his imagination, or were the ghosts starting to look a bit small?

As he looked around in confusion, one of the wayward souls nearby reached up and touched the sleeve of his bloodied robes, and at once, Klaus realized that he was now a good eight inches taller than them – because he was beginning to slowly rise into the air.

He was channelling the power of the underworld itself to levitate, directing the energies of ghosts to float where once he could only order Ben to carry him over his head… and as he rose higher, he knew at once that it would only be a short step from here to flying. And from there, who knew what was next?

"Fair enough," Klaus remarked bemusedly, as he rose towards the ceiling. "You keep everything under control here while I'm gone, okay?"

A lone face in the crowd laughed and issued a salute.

"You got it, General," said Dave, with a wink.

Klaus returned the salute, grinning like a maniac.

For the first time in all his life, it was good to be back among the dead.

A/N: Up next... guess.