Subject: [OTL]: Pictopia II, part 11 (conclusion)
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 08:49:57 -0800
From: Dark Mark <darkmark90@yahoo.com>

Earlier chapters can be found on DarkMark's Domain at
http://members.tripod.com/Dark_Mark/darkmark1.htm

        Pictopia II

        part 11

        by DarkMark

The disarming of Captain Crisis's men had more than
begun.  All across Fourcolor City, it was a reality.

We saw most of it on the monitors at Central Robot.
The police-robs had gone out in their single-minded
way, sought out every Crisis guard in evidence, taken
his or her weapons, and hustled them into skyborne
paddy wagons.  A lot of the mugs had resisted, and
more than a few robots had gone down as scrap.  But
the thing about robots is that they're expendable and
plentiful.  Numbers told.

For a nasty instant there, I think I felt what the
general of a regular army feels during a battle.  I
didn't like it.

All over the city, the populance was cheering.
Liberation had begun.  True, they didn't have their
beloved heroes back yet.  But they also didn't have
those hopped-up storm troopers breathing down their
collective neck.

I settled back in the swivel chair in front of the
monitor bank and exhaled.  "Looks like we did the
right thing, for once," I said.

Smash Morgan was close behind me.  "Don't go soft on
me now, Noc.  We haven't recovered Delia.  And we
haven't gotten to Crisis."

Nadira put her arm about my shoulder.  "It's just a
matter of time, Smash.  Crisis wants to marry Delia
Ardor in public.  He'll either surface then, or he'll
come after us.  Either way, we'll find him, or vice
versa."

"We've also got enough robots standing guard outside
to keep a buffer between us and him, if he should--",
I was starting to say.  I'm pretty sure that's as far
as I got before I heard an explosive sound from the
other end of the chamber.

The safe door which guarded the Chief Robot's sanctum
sanctorum from the lower levels had been blown off its
durasteel hinges.  Visible in the opening was a lot of
smoke.  Once that cleared, we saw about what we
expected to see.

A weapons-rob, the charge-rod on its chest still
white-hot.  Beyond it, a phalanx of guards, a few
robots, and, wouldn't you guess, wait for it,
now...Captain Crisis.

Delia Ardor wasn't with him, and that was the only
plus.

"Youuuuuuuu...uuuuu....uuuuuu insufferable blots on
the escutcheon of humanity and comic strips," he
rasped in his high voice, "preparrrrre to DIE!"

One of the guards turned to him.  "You mean, you
really want us to kill 'em, boss?"

Crisis grabbed his helmet at the top and forced it
down harder on his head, as if trying to squeeze some
sense into his brains.  "No.  That's just rhetoric.
Take 'em alive!"

"Chief," I said, turning to the top cop of NorthAmWay.
 "Have 'em attacked."

I think he tried, but the blaster-rob unleashed a shot
of white energy that pulsed into him faster than even
radio transmissions could manage.  I lurched away from
a ball of hot air and gases and molten steel that was
setting fire to his rug.  Given his taste in
furnishings, the rug was not that much of a loss.

Smash Morgan had his blaster out and so did Nadira.  I
was making hypnotic gestures with the best of 'em.
The guards before me, and maybe even Crisis, were
probably experiencing the nastiest fantasies this side
of an EZ horror comic from the Fifties.  I was putting
out images of slavering vampires, slithering giant
amoebae, rabid werewolves, giant snakes, insurance
salesmen, and several mobile deformities that even Tod
Browning wouldn't have touched.  Smash and my lady
were zapping away at the bad guys on stun power.  We
really should have taken them.

The problem was that robots can't experience
illusions, and Crisis had a few on his side.  The
cop-robs were aimed with a concussive bomb that
couldn't really injure beyond a knockout.  It was
great for breaking up block parties.  Two of those
metal-jacketed myrmidons threw such things at us.
Smash got one, but couldn't get the other.

It exploded at our feet.  My head made friends with
the side of a metal desk.

The last I heard before I went off-panel was "Take
them unharmed.  We'll do the harming later."

        -P-

Curtain came up on the sight of Judge Doome looking at
me with the meanest grin I've seen this side of an
Army training camp.  I shook my head and decided that
was a bad idea, even though it seemed to stay
reasonably on my shoulders.  The feel of ropes about
various parts of my body informed me that movement
would be quite restricted, and I needed to go to the
bathroom.

Beside me, I saw Smash and Nadira, equally bound.
"Noc, tell me you're all right," said Nadira,
urgently.

"Oh, that's purely academic now," said Doome, who was
flanked by the Regulator and several other of Crisis's
plug-uglies.  All of us were in a holding cell
somewhere, and the only ones holding weapons weren't
on my side.  "But I have to give you all a piece of
information, now."

"I'll give you one of my own," said Smash, and
proceeded to describe Doome's true nature and
ancestry.  Doome roared and smacked him upside the
head with his gun.  Not to be outdone, Regs did the
same to me.  They were close, like that.  I shored up
my consciousness while Doome made the last Villain
Speech I thought I'd ever get to hear.

"The Captain countermanded your orders and our men are
now rearmed.  The city is once again in our hands.
And he was going to let you live long enough to see
the royal wedding, of himself and Delia Ardor."  Smash
flinched at hearing the name on the man's grizzled
lips.  "But he had a change of heart.  He ordered
that, once all three of you were awake, you were to be
eliminated."

Nadira said, "This isn't the end.  You haven't crushed
all opposition, and you never will."

Doome cocked his weapon--blasters still have that
nostalgiac feature--as did Regs and the five other
guards in that room.  "I hope we don't," he murmured.
"It'll give us something to do."

The guns were levelled at us.  I tried to catch some
of their eyes, tried to project an illusion, but there
was no hope.  It was time for one last desperate
chance.

"On the count of three, men," said Crisis.
"One...THREE!"

"Hey, wait a minute!" Regs turned to him, confused.
"What happened to two?"

Doome was disgusted.  "Not one of you fired when I
gave the order.  You failed the test.  You're all too
literal-minded, too constipated in your thinking.  Do
you think there has to be a 'two' in between every
'one' and 'three'?  Well, do you?"

"Well, actually, yes," said the Regulator, reasonably.
 "It's part of a set of numbers, Judge.  There's
always a two between one and three, plus a lot of
fractions and decimals.  Of course, if you were going
to count down using only the odd numbers, it would've
been all right.  But you didn't tell us that."

"That's right," chimed in one of the guards.  "If
you're not going to put a two between one and three,
we deserve to know beforehand."

"I second that," said another guard, and the others
were going, "Yeah!  Yeah!"

I shrugged.  "Actually, I think it's a good idea to
put a whole bunch of fractions and decimals between
all three of those numbers.  After all, there's an
infinite number of points to be accounted for between
'em.  You wouldn't want to discriminate, would you,
Doomie?"

Smash and Nadira were smiling.  Good.

Doome repointed his blaster at us.  "All of you,
Mister Mustache included, SHUT UP!  If I say there's
no two between one and three, then there is NO two
between one and three!  THE JURY IS ME, and THE JURY
HAS SPOKEN!  And now, on the count of three..."

Come on, last desperate...

"Thr--"

"Heeeeeere I come to seize the day!"

A great operatic tenor, booming out from somewhere
just beyond the ferrosteel walls.  The guards stopped
in mid-trigger.  All of us looked around, to see if
the joint was haunted by an old Lon Chaney role model.


Then the wall before me began to crack in the middle,
vertically, as if somebody had grabbed it near the
baseboard and was pulling it into two pieces.
Apparently whoever was doing that got tired of it and
just decided to go ahead and smash through.  So he
did.

Crisis's men triggered all their blasters on chest
height and blazed away. It was quite an impressive
sight and left a bunch of holes and pockmarks on the
concrete.

But the fellow who busted in was a bit under chest
height.  In fact, he was a three-foot-high rodent in a
red and yellow costume, black ears twitching, black
eyes flashing, black tail lashing, and teeth gleaming
like a Pepsodent commercial.

"You're not my usual fare," said Marvel Mouse, his
muscles bulging.  "But in a mousetrap pinch--I guess
you'll do."

With that, the Vermin of Valor leapt into the seven
bad guys and tore at them like a miniature tornado.
Body armor and weapons banged off the walls.  Then
bodies did, too.  By the time it was over, most of the
bad guys were in their skivvies, and all of them were
on the far side of waking.

Marvel Mouse dusted off his white-gloved hands, then
reached out and broke the ropes holding all three of
us.  "Well met, fellow fighters of wrongdoing and
felinity," he said.  "You'll have to excuse my
tardiness, but it took awhile for even my Super-Smell
Sense to track you down.  I am glad your friends got
word to us in time.  You are, then, Nocturno, Mr.
Morgan, and Ms. Nadira?"

"That's us," said Smash, rubbing his arms where the
ropes had bitten into them.  "And you must be the
representative from Funnyland.  Pleased to meet you,
Mr. Mouse."  He bent down and shook hands with the
Mouse of Might, wincing a bit at his grip.

"Likewise, MM," I said, shaking hands with the
White-Gloved Wonder.  "Glad Phan and Spec managed to
get to you.  How stands the city?"

"Well," said Marvel Mouse, "as your enemy said, the
forces of evil stand at full whisker again.  And I am
told the wedding of the master villain and his stolen
bride is to take place within the hour, at the Sgt.
Jock Memorial."

Smash surged forward.  I only barely held him back.
"Mouse, tell me: how many stand with you?"

He smiled, mousily.  "As many as I could bring.  They
don't have any cats on the other side, do they?"

"Not as far as I know," I said.

"Then," he said, cracking his knuckles, "this ought to
be an easy job."

"Let me find a john first," I said.

        -P-

In the Wartorn section of Pictopia, World War II's
been going on ever since the end of the war.  Sgt.
Jock and Queasy Company weren't dead yet, but the
city'd put up a monument to them for services
rendered, anyway.  There was talk about a Vietnam-era
memorial, too, but only a couple of good books had
come out of that one, so it was voted down.

Anyway, the 50-foot-statue of the Sarge, rifle in
hand, seventeen stripes on his arm, and a bas-relief
behind him of the combat-happy schmoes of
Queasy--Bullthrower, Little Half Shot, I Scream
Soldier, and all the rest--formed an impressive
backdrop to a truly sickening ceremony.  About half a
zillion Crisis Guards and robots were massed in front
of it, along with a bunch of camera crews, crowd
members from the city proper, supporting characters,
Axis and Allied soldiers, and a number of Wartorn
inhabitants in their ragtag underground getups.
Nobody of the latter crews looked like they were happy
to be there.

On the dais before the memorial proper were three
figures: Captain Crisis, looking very grinny; Delia
Ardor, sniffling a bit and not looking higher than the
tips of her white shoes; and a minister of sorts, in a
Crisis Guard uniform and big pull-down helmet.

This wedding would begin the dynasty of Captain
Crisis, if it was pulled off.  Well, given what I
knew, I supposed he'd already started dynastying with
Delia.  But she didn't look any too happy about it.

We were on the outskirts of the crowd, in civvies,
Marvel Mouse disguised beneath my coat as a large hump
on my back.  This drew some attention, but he stayed
still.  "We haven't got much more time," said Nadira.
"The ceremony's almost finished."

"I'm going on up there," said Smash, starting to push
soldiers and civilians out of his way two at a time.

"Wait, Smash," I hissed.  "It's suicide.  We've got to
wait for reinforcements."

He looked at me as if I were the lowest form of
paramecium or fanboy.  "It's already too late, Top
Hat.  By the time I get up there, she'll have already
said the words.  But I'll make damned sure that those
are the last words Crisis will ever hear."

Marvel Mouse said, muffledly, "Is it time yet?"

A French peasant to my side said, "Pardonez-mois,
m'sieu, but did I just hear your hump talk?"

Nadira smiled at her.  "I'm a ventriloquist, madame."

"Oh," she said, and sank back to the crowd.

Smash was still going ahead.  Nadira turned to me and
said, "Well, what now?"

"If we don't get the signal...what the devil, let's go
with him," I said.  "Stay on my back till I tell you,
Mouse."

"Affirmative," he said, his whiskers starting to
tickle me.

We could hear the broadcast of the ceremony on a PA
system as we followed in Smash's shoving wake.  The
minister was saying, "Do you, Captain Crisis, take
this female lead, Delia Ardor, to be your lawfully
wedded spouse, in sickness and in health, through
cancellation and beyond?"

Crisis did a short victory stomp and said, "Yeah,
baby!  That is, I do.  Certainly, I do."  He looked at
the woman in the extremely short bridal gown with
undisguised lust.

"Damn," damned Smash, shoving aside four persons at a
time in his fury.

An eternity of pause later, the minister continued.
"And do you, Delia Ardor, take this man, Captain
Crisis, for your lawfully wedded feature, in sickness
and in health, till news syndicate and low sales do
you part?"

She said, looking up for the first time since the
ceremony had begun, "I...I..."

"Stop with the three dots already," groused Crisis.
"Say it!"

"I...DO NOT!"

A mass gasp from the Crisis Guards, and even a
metallic one from the robots, accompanied Crisis's jaw
to the floor.

"I'm sorry, Captain," she said, tears in her eyes.
"You were a good gig.  You were security, status,
even.   But I have to admit it.  That's not love.  And
there's only one man I'll ever love...and that's Smash
Morgan.  I'll admit Marx the Magnificent came in a
close second, but Smash is the real deal."

A second gasp, and then a small patter of applause
from the front row spectator seats, which grew into a
major one from cast members all over, whether they
were from NorthAmway, Wartorn, Greater Fourcolor, or
anyplace else.  Coal-scuttle helmeted German soldiers
joined with tin-potted G.I. Joes in a victory shout.
Innocent bystanders threw their hats, or briefcases,
or schoolbooks in the air.

Crisis looked like he was about to tell the guards to
open up on the crowd.  But the surprises had just
started.  The minister said, in a more familiar voice,
"You know...I was kind of expecting you to say that."
Then he took off his helmet.

Underneath it was a head wrapped in a purple hood,
with an eyemask on its face.

Before any of those lead-headed bad guys could react,
the Phantasm had grabbed Delia Ardor in one hand and
the dinner-plate mike into which he'd been speaking in
the other, and hustled them both around the side of
Sgt. Jock's left leg.  He was ducking gunfire, but he
returned several shots, sent down at least four guards
with bullets in various parts of their armor or
anatomy, and shouted into the mike a fateful phrase:

"OKAY, CRISIS--HERE WE COME!"

At that, Marvel Mouse tore off of my back, ripping the
coat to shreds, and made a mouseline for the stage,
but not before picking up Smash Morgan under the arms
and flying him forward over the crowd.  There was a
unified "Ooh!  Aah!" as people pointed upward and took
note of the Hero of Tongo, even if it was hard for
them to place the mouse.  And Delia was still in a
position to look out, and still close enough to the
mike that her words rang out to us all:

"Smash!  Smash, darling!"

Crisis hollered an order to his troops.  "Kill them!
Kill all of them!"  Then he grabbed a blaster from the
nearest guard and said, "Scratch that, in part...you
take the rest, I'll do these!"

But before he could take another step, a twin bolt of
heat and light stabbed down from the heavens and his
blaster turned into slag.  The bolts had come from the
eyes of a flying figure...not Marvel Mouse, but in his
class.  A floppy-eared, blue-costumed, red-caped
crusader in galoshes whom I hadn't seen in a long
time, but who kept things on the up and up in his end
of Funnyland.

"There's no need to fear," he proclaimed, coming on
like a comet.  "Cosmic Canine is here!"

"Upstart," grumbled the Mouse, as the dog plowed into
a phalanx of robots and knocked them flat.

That was only the beginning.  Within the crowd itself,
a trenchcoated figure threw off its coat and a
wild-haired, vest-wearing, bird-beaked character with
a tiny, lightbulb-headed robot on his shoulder popped
up, standing on a contraption that rapidly expanded
underneath him to form a compact war machine.  It had
a metal circle about its body from which projected
about twelve metal arms ending in boxing gloves.

Garry Gearstrip, the inventor genius of Duck City,
pressed a stud and the fists began swinging in a
circular path, mowing down anyone in its path, and the
path was headed straight for Crisis's goons.  Behind
him, throwing off two other trenchcoats, were five
other figures, two adults riding piggy-back and three
kids doing something similar, to disguise their lack
of height.  They separated, and Midas McMallard,
grasping his top hat in one hand and pointing with his
umbrella in the other, shouted, "For freedom and
plutocracy, brethren--forward!"

Another trenchcoat was doffed, and within seconds a
brown tornado was ripping through the looky-lous,
parting them like Sherman through Georgia, and then
coming to the foremost of the Crisis Guards.  They
tried to draw down on him.  They never stood a chance.
 Within nanoseconds, they'd been drawn into the vortex
of the Tasmanian Terror, and few of them were ever
heard from again.

I turned to Nadira.  She turned to me.  We both
grinned and gave the thumbs-up.  We'd figured that
Crisis had nailed down everything in Fourcolor City.
But, just as he hadn't bothered with Pictopia,
thinking that none of the oldsters there posed any
threat to him, there were other lands he'd forgotten
about.

Such as the place where all the animated cartoon
characters of days past hung out, that world still
hung charmingly in the Fifties, which era I hope it
never leaves.

Funnyland had sent us their best, and we hoped it
would be enough.  But we knew that, alone, not even
Marvel Mouse, Cosmic Canine, and their ilk could turn
the tide.

Had one of our other divisions come through yet?

The answer came with a horrific laugh, the kind you
only want to hear when you're in front of a radio
speaker.  Within the mass of Crisis Guards, a figure
dressed all in black, with a floppy hat, materialized
out of reasonably thin air.  He had gleaming twin
.45's in hand and was itching to use them.  So he did.
 And even the robots went down before them.

"The crop of crime withers on the vine," he proclaimed
in stentorian tones.  "And before it may reach the
sun, it must face its reaper in the darkness...the
Silhouette!"

At that, another guy who had appeared to be a
five-foot-one schmoe with bad teeth, thick glasses,
and a limp, threw off yet another trenchcoat and stood
revealed as a six-foot-eight, steel-colored,
rip-shirted, mighty-thewed giant with the neatest
looking widow's peak in the world.  Veins rippled on
his arms like wires, and only one man's shirt was
ripped that perfectly.  The trill of an exotic arctic
bird came from his throat, as it always did when he
was having fun.  And he was having it now, bashing the
heads of bad men together like he had ever since 1933.

Doc Caliban had arrived, with his Amazing Five-Piece
Band and his beautiful cousin, Cathy Caliban, bringing
up and kicking the rear.

The Webmaster appeared with guns even bigger than the
Silhouette's and started making potted meat out of
everything in a wide radius of him.  Even the good
guys gave him a wide berth.  The Revenger, a
white-faced man whose features seemed to keep slipping
towards his chin, threw an inexhaustible supply of
knives at the enemy with one hand, and popped gunshots
at them with the other.  In the skies above, a famed
squadron of biplanes from the War To End All Wars
Until the Next One were seen, and we recognized their
markings before they opened up: Section 8 and His
Battle Aces.

The heroes of Pulpland had answered the call.  But
what about those who had called them?

One of the Crisis guards was about to open up on some
sailors from the Japanese and British forces, just out
of frustration, when his vision was blocked by a large
series of letters falling down on him from overhead.
By the time the signature of his artist had floated
down, the Spectral Man swung down on a lasso looped
about the rifle of the Sgt. Jock statue, and his heels
connected with the back of the guard, sending him
flat.  Swinging down on another rope, one made of
vines imported straight from the Bughausi section of
Africa, came Divana, who landed in the midst of a
contingent of bad guys who were trying to get at Phan
and Delia.  Before long, they were fleeing, and Divana
helped her lover and Delia to their feet.

"You always seem to need this sort of thing," said
Divana, smiling.

"Just so long as you're around to supply it," said
Phan, in return, and both of them looked like they
could fall into each other's arms.  Then a blaster
round knocked stone out of Sgt. Jock's knee above
them, and all three fell flat.  Phan returned the
fire.

Marvel Mouse dropped Smash Morgan into the fray, at
midpoint on the stage between the Crisis Guards and
Phan's bunch.  The guys in the helmets started to come
at him.  Smash turned and bared his teeth.

The bad guys thought better of it, and fell back.

Smash got to Spec, Phan, Divana, and Delia within
seconds.  There should have been time for shaking
hands, but Smash and Delia were looking into each
other's eyes, and time seemed to stop.  Bad guys
seemed to stop.  Good guys seemed to stop.  Heck, even
I stopped.  So did Nadira.

Heroes, villains, cast members, and animal
super-heroes froze in mid-flight, mid-punch, or
mid-step to hear what was going on next.  A guard
standing next to Captain Crisis, who was still in the
game, leaned over and said, "Captain, should I--"

"Shhh," motioned Crisis.  "I want to hear this."

Smash and Delia were just standing there, trembling,
mere inches apart.  Their hands were
half-outstretched, but not touching.  Their mouths
were open, but their tongues were still.  Finally,
Delia said, "Smash....Smash..."

Smash gathered his courage, swallowed, and said, "Yes,
Delia?"

"Smash, I was waiting for you to speak first."

"Oh.  Sorry."

"Smash, can you ever forgive me?"

He looked down at the ground.  "Well, like you
said...it probably was a good gig, and all.  You would
have been set up for life.  He'd probably make you a
better husband, from a financial standpoint."

"That's true, Smash," said Delia.  "I have to admit
it."

"Yeah," said Smash, softly, not daring to turn his
eyes away.

"But if money was all there was to it, I would have
married Marz the Magnificent.  After all, he had more
money than both of you."

Smash's jaw trembled.  "That's...that's kind of true,
when you think of it.  Even after what I did to him in
Smash Morgan Clobbers the Universe."

"Yeah.  But there's more than that, Smash.  There's
also...love."

Everybody, including myself and Nadira, gasped in
unison.

"And there's also a great-looking jaw and blonde hair
that I can run my hands through without getting too
much bear grease on them," she continued, her eyes
tearing up.  "And there's...oh...certain things that
I...that I can't even speak of without being between
panels."  She flushed a little.

Smash murmured, "It's all right, dear."  But something
she'd said started mechanisms turning in my head.
Still, I waited along with the rest.

"And Smash, as far as all of that goes...well, you've
got it all.  And if you want it...you've got me."

She threw herself into Smash's arms and he had his
lips wrapped about hers even before she fully landed.
The kiss lasted a good twenty-five seconds and, by
three seconds into it, everybody was giving them a
standing ovation.  Even some of the Crisis Guards
tried to join in, but the Captain bashed one of them
over the head with a blaster, so they subsided.

Finally the two of them broke the kiss, by which time
Delia and Phan were both trading wet hankies.  They
waved to the crowd, and somebody did a "Hip, hip,
hooray!" that everybody joined in.

When it died down again, Captain Crisis, standing
across from the happy couple, queried, "Well?  Are you
finished?"

"For the moment," admitted Smash, still holding Delia.

"Then DIE!"  Crisis dragged a long, black,
collapsible-snouted blaster out of his holster and
pointed it at them.  He was about to let fly with some
bolts that would do what Marx the Magnificent hadn't
managed in sixty years.

It was time for one last desperate, short, and very
embarrassing chance.

"Oh, nuhnuhno, Mister CuhCrisis!  I, uh, can't let
you, uh, hurt the lady like that!"

So saying, a guy in the uniform of a very short and
fat Crisis Guard detatched himself from the mass of
guards and grabbed Crisis about the ankles, sending
him down to the stage.  Before Crisis could arise,
Wonky Whizz ran over him and made it to the
dinner-plate mike.  He picked it up, got some
feedback, and said what he had to say.

"Muhmister Nocturno, if you're out there, he sent 'em
all between the panels!  He sent all of 'em between
the panels!"

My eyes widened to Bugs Bunny proportions.  Nadira
looked at me in shock.  Of course!  That was the
secret of the Whiteness.  How he'd done it, I couldn't
imagine.  But...how did we get them back from there?

"What are we going to do?" asked Nadira.

"Don't know, but last desperate chances seem to keep
coming up like clockwork," I admitted.  "See anybody
else in a trenchcoat?"

She looked around, and didn't say anything for a few
seconds.  I was looking at the stage.  Crisis had a
bunch of his guards training guns on our friends, and
he looked as though he was going to do Wonky first.
He'd make the biggest target, admittedly.  But I
didn't want to see the guy go.  True, he was just a
schlub of a sidekick.  Not even from my own strip.  A
guy who hung out with that turncoat, Flexible Flynn.

But I kinda liked him.

Then Nadira said, "Is that a trenchcoat?  I think it's
more like a raincoat."

"A what?", I said.

"Over there," she said.  "And it's colored yellow."

I looked, just as the guy in the yellow raincoat and
pooltable green hat and a jaw that could slice granite
bounded onto the stage, Tommy gun in hand, and let off
a burst that had all the bad guys dropping flat.

 "Drop 'em and get your hands up," said Dan Tracem.
"This is the police!"

A blaster-rob turned its power-rod towards Tracem, but
it was a little late.  A huge, turbaned Oriental swung
a scimitar at shoulder level and lopped its metal head
off.  Curiously, the robot didn't go "Squee!"
Instead, it managed a "Yi!"  Leaping from behind him
was a tall, bald, business-suited man, a little
red-headed girl, a ratty-looking orange dog, and a
sinister black-haired guy, none of whom had pupils in
their eyes.

A big blonde guy in a robe and a perpetual smile was
unleashing two boxing-gloved fists on any baddies
nearby, going "Tch!  Tch!"  A one-eyed sailor squeezed
the guts out of a can of spinach, downed it, expanded
his forearms to five times normal size, magically
played his theme song, and began turning robots into
metal scrap.  A hamburger-eating gent stood near the
place where he was throwing the pieces, and put up a
sign reading, ONE-EYE'S JUNK YARD.

There were others I recognized, others I'd sat with at
Captain Billy's for years, others who had been badly
in need of adventure for years but thinking themselves
too old or too enfeebled or even too chicken for it.

Guys like I used to be, before a few nights ago.

The brethren.

The brethren of Pictopia.

I can't say what I looked like then, but I do remember
it was awfully hard to see for awhile.

>From another quadrant, we heard a voice on a bullhorn.
 Yet another precinct heard from, one we hadn't even
considered.  The guy whose statue loomed over
everything stood beyond the stage and spoke in a voice
that could make a general seem second rate.

"Awright, you combat-happy schmoes of Queasy!  Are you
gonna let this buncha civilians do all yer fightin'
for ya?  Or are ya gonna get the lead out and follow
me?"

As one, the men of Queasy Company stood, alongside the
French battle-doll Mademoiselle Michelle, the Indian
pilot Johnny Whitecloud, the one-legged sailor Captain
Typhoon, the Second-Raters, the Overlooked Soldier,
and the entire crew of the Hassled Tank, together with
their transparent guardian ghost general from the
Union Army of 1865, the Damned Yankee.

"We're with you, Sgt. Jock!" their voices thundered.
And for once, the forces of the Allies and Axis united
and layed down a cover fire.  The bad men kept hugging
ground and trying to find somebody to shoot at.

All the forces of Good had united against the enemy.
It was a crossover come true.  Nothing could stand
before our united might.  This time, we were headed
for a happy ending.

Yeah, that was the way it seemed, right before we
heard a great rumbling and a huge tarpulin covering
half an acre or so beyond the memorial slid aside, and
a great green saucer-shaped craft rose into the air.
Everybody gasped.  It was one of Crisis's great
saucer-ships, and, as it reached a height of 90 feet,
two blasts of energy from its undercarriage lanced out
and blasted down Marvel Mouse and Cosmic Canine.  Both
of them dropped, frozen into paralysis.

The gunfire had stopped.  Crisis had stood, and was
smiling.

"You didn't really think I was going to let you win
this one, did you?  I've enough firepower in this
machine to wipe out the entire countryside, and
everyone standing on it.  So if you'll all be good
enough to surrender, form a line to the right over
there, and lay down your weapons, we can go on with
the ceremony, and I can have my way with the beautiful
Ms. Ardor.  That is, while I still allow her to live."

Another collective gasp.

Nadira turned to me.  "Nocturno, do something!"

I was busy.

When I started out in my strip, I had real magical
powers.  The ones on the Level Above decided that made
me too powerful, so they cut me back to just
illusions.  But I still had my heritage.  The heritage
of the mind.  The powers I'd developed at that school
for magicians and heroes in Tibet, from which I was
one of the first and proudest graduates.  No
correspondence school for me.

I had to make contact with those who were not gone,
but simply lost.

Smash drew Delia closer to him.  "Before you touch
her, star-scum, you'll have to burn my every atom," he
declared.

"Simple enough," said Crisis, and drew his blaster.
Another gasp.

"Nocturno," hissed Nadira.

I didn't say anything.  I didn't see anything.  Not
with my eyes, anyway.

I did hear Crisis cry out in pain.  Nadira told me
that it was Wonky Whizz.  The little guy was biting
him on the ankle.  Then Wonky cried out, "Ohoo," just
between Crisis clouting him in the head with the gun
barrel and his resultant slump to the stage.

"Now," said Crisis.  "If we're quite finished."  He
drew his blaster again.  Smash and Phan and Spec
wanted to rush him, but they were too far apart from
him.  He was going to burn them all down, and there
was nothing we could do about it.

Crisis triggered his gun.

Then he triggered it again.  And again and again.
Nothing happened, any of those times.  He shook the
blaster.  Then he looked at its mouth.

And even I heard the voice that came from it:

"Don't you know enough not to look down the barrel of
a loaded gun?"

A red-gloved fist and arm shot out of it, curved
around, and belted Captain Crisis, knocking him on his
Kevlared ass.  It was shortly followed by a costumed
guy with a rubbery body, the one who'd once made
common cause with us, and then became an upscaler with
an overmuscled body and a new uniform in Fourcolor
City.  But now...well, now he was back to his old red
and yellow uniform and his normal, lanky frame.

Wonky raised his head, and shouted out for all to
hear, "Flex!  FLEX!  You're BACK!!"

Flexible Flynn had arrived, all right.  Him and his
black goggles, his big grin, and his plasticine body
with the power of steel.

But he wasn't the only one.  The big green saucer,
which had been hovering in stationary position
overhead, suddenly started moving upward.  It was
obvious, from Crisis's expression, he had nothing to
do with it.  He pulled a control unit out of his suit
and started jabbing at its controls, but it was of no
use.

The blue-clad figures of Supreman and Supregirl were
holding onto part of the saucer's rim, with Captain
Majestic, Mary Majestic, Captain Majestic, Jr., and
Worthy Woman at other points.  Together, they flexed
muscles unknown to mortal men and women, and heaved
the saucer straight up into the sky.  I don't think it
stopped until it reached Aldebaran.  All I know is we
never saw it again.

The sky was darkening with reappearing heroes.  Coming
out of the Whiteness.  Homing in on the telepathic
beacon I had created in my mind.  The Emerald
Lamplight Corps, the Region of Super-Teens, the
Vengeancers, and all the rest.

Nadira put her hands on my chest and shook me till I
opened my eyes.  "Noc," she said, incredulously.  "Did
you have something to do with that?"

"My dear," I said, putting my hands on her wrists, "I
had everything to do with that."

On stage, Crisis obviously thought he had time for one
last last desperate chance of his own.  He had his
blaster out.  He pointed it at Smash and Delia.  "I
can't go back!" he raged, almost sobbing.  "I can't
lose my position here!  If I can't win--I'll kill you
both instead!"

But he hadn't noticed the purple-clad gent who'd
gotten closer to him while everybody was looking up.

"Crisis--give it a rest," said the Phantasm.  Then he
lashed out with the most satisfying punch I'd seen all
day.

POW!

Ring into chin.  Flinging Captain Crisis back thirty
feet across stage.  Landing in a heap amongst his
followers, who, reluctantly, began dropping their
weapons.

Smash looked at Phan, annoyedly.  "You should've let
me do that," he complained.

"I know, I know," said Phan, blowing on his knuckles.
"But I was in a hurry."

"Smash, look!" said Delia, pointing.  They followed
the line of her finger.  Captain Crisis was
shimmering, turning transparent, then vanishing
altogether.

Everybody seemed puzzled by this development.  After
they looked at each other for an appropriate time, the
Spectral Man made an observation.

"Well, Phan," he said, "looks like you knocked him
right out of the picture."

        -P-

And as far as such things can be figured, I guess he
had, because we never saw Captain Crisis again.

It'd be too easy to say things went right back to
their old status in our world.  They didn't, quite.
When all the stories were put together, the poobahs of
Fourcolor City realized they had one heck of a debt to
their outer boroughs.  The values of ghettoization
began to be questioned, began even to crumble.  From
then on, it became more common to see a Funnytowner in
a mainstream superhero strip, or a superhero in a
funny strip, or either one of them in a Wartorner, or
one of the Pulplanders in the cast of Majus, Robot
Smasher or the Regionnaires.  The artist may bury them
in a crowd scene, but trust us: they're there.  And
they have bigger parts than you know.

Supreman himself was the first to make a speech on
behalf of the Pictopians, calling them the "true
forerunners of the Fourcolors", and welcoming them
into the community.  We thanked him very much, and the
oldsters were quite entranced for a time with the way
their clothes and persons looked on the other side of
the Gate.  Some of them stayed, when they could find a
place over there.

But most of us stayed where we were.  The Fourcolorers
helped out a bit, with some renovation and a lot of
improvements.   They tore down the fences and the
gates and stopped the encroachment on our
neighborhood.  In fact, they gave back part of the
land to us, in gratitude.  You can come and go as you
like, for the most part, but we don't allow no rowdy
super-hero battles on our turf, and the Emeralders are
out there to make sure that law's enforced.  We can
raise all the hell we need down at Captain Billy's,
when we want to.

Still, we insisted that the look stay pretty much the
same.  Cleaner, better, more fixed-up, kinda like the
way it'd been in the Thirties when everything was new.
 But with the same character.

And with the same characters.  For the most part.

Flexible Flynn came back, with much sorrow that he'd
left us for greener pastures.  We took him in, made
him the butt of quite a few jokes, but accepted him
and Wonky into the community again.

The Phantasm and Divana were, needless to say,
reunited, and indeed got to go back to Africa again,
transportation furnished by the Emerald Lamplight
himself.  Mostly he's retired, but still hobnobs with
neighbors like Melvin of the Apes, Stella, Queen of
the Jungle, and the Black Leopard.  He hasn't come
back, but he sends wish-you-were-here cards.  Someday,
Nadira and I are gonna visit him.  I'm gonna do that,
one of these days.

Smash and Delia had the poshest wedding of the season,
in the salon of the Bopster Building, with everybody
dressed as characters from their strip.  They left in
a rocket ship with tin cans tied behind it, and went
to Tongo for an extended honeymoon.  They've extended
it several times already, with no end in sight.

The Spectral Man and Helen got married in the sewers
beneath Center City, with Commissioner Dole, yours
truly, and a number of others in attendance.  Even the
Hydra showed up, staying mostly in the shadows with
only his four-striped gloves visible.  He was the one
who handed Helen the ring.  It was a very nice
ceremony, and many floating letters were handed out as
party favors.

And Nadira and I?  Well, we retied the knot and
renewed our vows at the Magicians' Hall, and I made
sure Zangara, Zalamma, and all the rest of those
top-hatters-come-lately attended and got their share
of disappearing cake.  Prince Loather, my ancient
sidekick and another of Phan's new neighbors, sent us
a standing invitation to come and stay in Africa as
long as we like.  My old alma mater in Tibet wants me
to come back as a lecturer and instructor.  I got to
admit, that would be a trip and a half.

After all, the world can't survive well enough without
a steady stream of men with top hats, billowing
cloaks, and magic wands.  It just wouldn't seem right.

Maybe someday.

But every time I start seriously considering it,
there's Nadira in my confounded arms, still looking
just about as pretty as she did back in 1935, and a
lot easier to rescue now than she was back then.
Unless I'm the guy she needs rescuing from.

And that's when both of us go to the window, pull back
the curtains, and take a look at the town outside.
The town that looked like it was going to sepia ruin a
year ago, but has turned into a regular WPA miracle.
A town full of oldsters, and a bunch of younger folk
starting to move in around the borders, kind of
pleased by what they see...and maybe wanting to raise
their strip there, after all.

The place where it all began.

The place I'll always call home.

Pictopia.

******

EPILOGUE:

A writer awoke in his studio with an aching head.  His
wife came through the door.  "What's wrong?  Thought I
heard you fall over or something."

The writer shook his head.  "Did I...damn.  Must've
banged my head or something.  Feels like I broke it."

"You want me to call a doctor?"

"Don't know.  Guess I just fell asleep at the
keyboard.  Must've really...I don't see how I could've
hurt myself like that, just falling off my chair."

"You must've really hit your jaw."

"My jaw?"

"Yeah.  Your jaw."  She pointed at his face.  "Better
take a look at it, Marv."

"Okay," he said, uncertainly, and, stumbling down the
hall, hoped that he hadn't lost any of the script he'd
been working on when he dozed off.  True, it wasn't
the Big Crossover Book, but it ought to sell decently
enough.

He opened the bathroom door and went to the medicine
chest, his hand reaching out to open it.

The hand stopped in mid-reach.

He stared at the reflection in the mirror for a very
long time, with an increasing tremble in his limbs.

His chin had a very unusual bruise.

It was like unto the shape of crossbones.

The crossbones on the ring of a very famous character.

They would never go away.

*********

This one's for everyone who knows that True Heroes
never die.  Which means, approximately, everybody.
Dum spiro, spero.